Frequencies: To End The Signal

by Lord Destrustor

First published 19th of May, 2013

Spike leaves Ponyville on a quest to shut down the nefarious Signal and free the unicorns from its maddening influence. Sequel to "The Signal".

The Signal turned Equestria upside-down.
The Signal made savage murderers out of every unicorn in Equestria.
The Signal lingers still, preventing any hope of curing its influence.

Spike has found the Signal. He knows how to get to its source.

And he will shut it down, whatever it may be.

---

You might want to read the prequel first; this is not stand-alone.
Mad props to NAME Revoked for the cover image.

Prologue: 108

In the flickering darkness of a wooden basement shone a few lamps, casting a dim glow around the room. Shadows danced on the walls, as if agitated by the events about to transpire. On a central table, the largest lantern shone its light on a single white horn pointed upwards.

The small white spire stood straight upright, almost attentively, like some stoic sentinel awaiting orders. It was already performing its assigned task, though. A thin, inky needle attached to the horn frantically swayed back and forth across an advancing sheet of paper. The needle traced a discernible pattern on the surface, following the tune of the horn’s imperceptible vibration.

A pair of reptilian green eyes followed the thin red line as it descended along with the cascade of paper, slowly pooling on the floor. The small purple dragon to whom they belonged stepped forward, staring closely at the horn. A tired chuckle escaped his lips, and he whispered:

“Gotcha.”

A distant and muffled moan of anguish echoed somewhere far above, snapping the dragon out of his fixation. She was crying again, or it might have been another nightmare. He’d have to go check on her.

He began heading up the stairs, but stopped after the first step. He turned away to hastily note something in a thick burgundy book before quietly rushing back upstairs.

1: Preparations

110

“No.”

“Applejack! You can’t be serious!”

The farm mare took her hind hooves off of the large desk they’d been resting on, shifting to an upright sitting position on the tall chair of the Ponyville mayor’s office. Her expression made her reply obvious, as she stared at the small dragon standing in the middle of the room:

“Ah can, an’ ah am. Mayor Mare, how many ponies are left livin’ in Ponyville?”

The gray-maned mare standing by the nearest window adjusted her glasses while thinking over her answer.

“I believe the latest census counted about… one-hundred-and-eighty-eight, including the seventeen afflicted unicorns we have in captivity.”

The orange mare huffed approvingly, turning her attention back to Spike.

“There. A hundred an’ seventy ponies left in town. This ain’t a city anymore. It’s a refugee camp. We ain’t got ponies to spare.”

“But I found The Signal!” he said, raising a section of graph paper as proof. “We can end this! We can put a stop to all of this madness! We have to-“

“Ah said ah ain’t gonna send a bunch of ponies t’ their deaths out there, just ‘cause you wave a squiggly line in front o’ mah face! Y’can go along with yer little suicidal goose chase all ya want, but ah’ll be damned if ah let anypony follow you! We. Ain’t. Got. Ponies. T’spare.”

Applejack was now standing up, both her forelegs stretched out above the desk making her tower over both Spike and the mayor. The little dragon looked at the beige mare by the window for support, but she quickly averted her eyes, head hung low. He looked back at Applejack, who held his gaze unflinchingly.

Spike crumpled up the paper in his hands and threw it at the rich carpet on the ground with all his might before storming out of the office without another word.

114

“Spike, no!”

“But I have to.”

“This is a ridiculously dangerous idea and I don’t want you to do it! What if you get Ngh hurt or worse? What if you NNnnrgh get lost?”

“Yeah? And what if I don’t? What if there’s no other way? What if I don’t go, and you get stuck like this for the rest of your life? What if I’m the only one in the whole world who can even try to stop this?”

“But it’s much too dangerous! You can’t go alone! Aarggkkh I don’t want you to go! I won’t allow it!”

“Humf, well Applejack certainly doesn’t want me to go with anyone.”

“Well just let me talk to her! I’ll-“

“I’m not letting her anywhere near you ever again! Don’t you remember what she tried to do?”

“Don’t think I’ve forrRRR-R-rrgotten! She had her reasons! And don't change the subject! You just can’t do this! I don’t want you to do this!”

“I can, and I will! I’m not just a baby! I can do this, I will do this, and I’m sorry, but you’re not really in any position to stop me!”

“…”

“ … Please don’t leave me, spiKILL YOU YOU LITTLE VERMIN I’LL EVISCERATE YOU AND STOMP ON YOUR STOMACH UNTIL YOU DIE AND BLEED FROM EVERYWHERE AND I’LL CRUSH YOUR EYES AND EAT THEM”

The stopwatch clicked, stopping at six minutes, eighteen seconds. Five seconds less than last time, but still squarely within the average. Still no sign of a definite trend developing. Absence of visual contact delayed the onset of aggression, but not by that much. Spike got up from where he was sitting in the stairway, out of Twilight’s sight, and poked his head in view. The lavender unicorn immediately began straining against the bars of her cell and growling, as usual. Tears had begun dripping from her eyes.

“I’m doing this for you, Twilight. I have to go. I can’t stand waiting here anymore. I have to do something about it.”

He turned and headed back downstairs. He had a new point of data to add somewhere in his charts.

117

Fluttershy trotted hurriedly through the light rain. She should have thought to bring an umbrella to the clinic this morning. Despite never working on the weather teams, her pegasus instincts had alerted her of the imminent downpour, yet she had ignored it. If only there were still ponies to control the weather.

Like Rainbow Dash.

She stopped for a moment, stunned by the mere thought of her late friend. She missed her so much. If only she’d stayed here, in the relative safety of Ponyville. If only…

She shook her head and resumed her walk. Rainbow Dash was gone, just like Pinkie Pie, and moping about it wouldn’t change a thing. It certainly wouldn’t bring them back, and she still had obligations for those who were left, those who still needed her to care for them. She needed to be decisive and active. It was what Rainbow Dash would have wanted.

The yellow pegasus made her way through the empty streets, passing collapsed buildings and piles of months-old rubble that nopony had bothered to clear.

She soon saw her destination looming above the wreckage of the once-thriving village: the lush foliage of the treehouse library casting both a shadow over the entrance, and a large, dry circle where the drizzle failed to reach the earth around the trunk.

She came up to the door and knocked gently. After about a minute, she knocked a little harder; Spike mustn’t have heard the first time. She finally decided to try the knob, as it was unlikely to be locked. The door swung open quietly and she carefully stepped inside.

“Um, Hello? Is anypony home?”

The main room of the library was as empty as it was perfectly clean. Everything was as neat and ordered as usual, perhaps even more so; Spike’s worktable had been cleared of everything but the research compendium and a strange grey steel cube.

Before the yellow mare could take a closer look at the unusual object, she saw Spike walking in from the kitchen area, carrying a tea set on a tray. He paused for a moment as he spotted her, quickly resuming his walk towards the tables in the center of the room.

“Oh hi Fluttershy! I didn’t even hear you come in! And you’re right on time too.”

He set the tray on his worktable, climbing on his usual chair after everything was in place.

“Have a seat, I just made some tea if you want some.”

She watched him pour two cups as she sat down, noting how much livelier he seemed. He wasn’t as depressed as he had been for quite a while. Maybe he had some good news about Twilight?

“So,” she asked, carefully taking the cup she was offered, “How’s Twilight doing? Any good news?” She paused for an instant as her expression shifted to grave concern. “Oh, no, I hope it’s not b-bad news, is it? D-did something happen to her? Is she doin-“

“Whoa, whoa! Relax! It’s fine! She’s fine! She’s, uh, well as bad as usual, actually. But nothing bad happened to her, okay?”

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, her posture deflating in relief. “I just get so worried sometimes…”

A few moments of silence followed. Spike usually didn’t have a lot to discuss with Fluttershy, and she certainly wasn’t known to be the talkative sort. Their only point of conversation for the last few months had just been brushed aside, leaving a gaping hole where idle banter should have been found. They both fidgeted with their cups for a minute.

“So,” he began, only to be interrupted by the yellow mare, much to his surprise.

“What did you want to see me for, Spike?”

Active and decisive.

“Well, actually, uh, …you know what? I think I’ll just show you.”

He set his cup on the table and slid the grey cube closer, clawing for a second at a small latch on one side. Once he flipped it, the cube split open with minimal effort, the top half coming to rest flush on the table. Linked to it by small copper hinges, the lower half was a simple full block upon which three wooden pegs stood straight up in an equilateral triangle. In the center of it all, a compass was embedded in the steel. The needle was very slowly turning, eventually coming to a rest in a seemingly random direction.

As Fluttershy observed the point swaying back and forth somewhere between two scratched-off letters of the compass, with no more than a degree of variation, Spike spoke up.

“I found The Signal. That compass is pointing straight at it. Or rather at the nearest source of it at least.”

The yellow pegasus paled visibly, instinctively hiding behind her mane and scooting her chair just a few inches away from the direction indicated by the compass.

“Oh, um, that’s great news, Spike, but, w-what does this have to do with me?”

The young dragon sighed softly. “Nothing,” he said. “Not directly. But I have a huge favor to ask, though.”

He gently closed the steel box and secured the latch, waiting for some sort of answer. Seeing that the mare was simply staring at him with an expression of anxious attention, he decided to assume she was at least going to hear him out.

“I’d really appreciate it if you could look after Twilight while I’m gone.”

“Gone? What, where? What do you mean, gone?” The pegasus looked around the room, fearfully looking for some kind of threat upon which to base her apprehension for the worst meaning of “gone” she could, and immediately did, imagine.

The little dragon simply raised his arm, instantly drawing back Fluttershy’s attention as he pointed his claw in the same direction as the needle did mere moments before.

“I’m going to go out there, find The Signal or whatever is causing it, and put a stop to it.”

119

“So I had the mayor prepare a special cell for her, with full opaque walls; she can sorta control herself for about five minutes when she can’t directly see anyone. Like, hearing ponies’ voices tells her they’re there, but she needs visual confirmation to, you know, ‘snap’ at them.”

Fluttershy quietly nodded in assent at Spike’s words as they both walked through the town, Spike towing a cart full of books with both arms while the yellow mare pulled a small tarp-covered wagon. They were being escorted by a pair of militia ponies, both advancing with their weapons drawn; a large club and a small crossbow, held in their mouths by straps.

“You’ll get to speak to her for a few minutes every four hours or so, if you stay out of sight. Also, I kept track of each dose I gave her over the months, and Zecora was right in her estimate that the magikill stays effective for just about eight days. So as long as you give her a dose every week, on the clock, she shouldn’t ever recover her magic.”

The few ponies whom were out on the streets glared at them as they passed, obviously resenting the dragon, the pegasus and their cargo but too intimidated by the guards to do anything about it.

Or maybe they were just squinting against the light of the sun, shining in their faces.

“I guess I don’t have to explain how to uh, feed her and stuff, but FYI, she doesn’t like daffodils anymore. I think she was eating some when she… uh, when The Signal got her, you know?”

“Oh my.” Said the quiet pegasus, keeping her gaze pointed forward at the towering spire of town hall slowly approaching.

“I already brought a bunch of books and with these I think she’ll be set for a while, but feel free to search the library for any other she asks for. I’ll give you the key if you need it.”

Silence fell on the group, broken only by the crunch of gravel under their hooves and feet, any piece of which might have once been part of a house’s walls of other such piece of the ‘before’.

The large building in the center of Ponyville crept ever closer, the roughly-painted patches of repair contrasting lightly against the older portions of its walls. A half-dozen ponies wandered about around the circular plaza surrounding it. Seeing Applejack standing next to the main doors left a bitter taste in Spike’s mouth, although her presence was hardly surprising.

She watched as they approached, her scarred face an emotionless mask.

The two guards, a mare and a stallion, saluted when the group came to a halt before the steps. With a simple nod, the orange mare sent them off back to their usual routines.

“Fluttershy!” She greeted the timid pegasus with a warm smile and a short hug. “Spike.” The greeting given to the young dragon nothing more than a passing glance and a nearly-imperceptible nod.

“Oh, hello Applejack, it’s so nice seeing you. We hardly have time to speak to each other anymore…” The yellow mare trailed off, hesitantly, as if unsure of what she was getting at herself.

“A darn shame too,” the farmer replied, breaking the hug to move closer to the covered wagon. With a simple flick she threw the tarp aside, revealing the bound and unconscious form of Twilight Sparkle. “But ah guess we all have our responsibilities to take care of.”

She covered the unicorn once more, turning around to speak to her friend.

“Y’all can go drop ‘er off; cage’s ready and ah guess ya know the way.” She simply stared ahead as she said this, watching a small orange pegasus approaching from further away.

They proceeded to do so, greeting the mayor as they entered the building. She was personally manning the reception desk and nodded courteously as they passed, carefully beginning their descent to the basement. The stairs had been replaced with a rough ramp; the captured unicorns were usually wheeled in, and stairs just weren’t fit for carts and wagons.

One of the basement guards came up to help them, her assistance making the incline much less dangerous. The two ponies and the dragon then made their way to the very end of the dungeon-like corridor, where Twilight would be residing for the foreseeable future. Her cell’s walls blocked the view completely, and their only features were the large steel door in the front and the many smaller sliding doors encircling the bottom. The heavy rivets seen all over the walls’ surfaces showing how the whole room was built to last, perhaps exceedingly so.

The guard unlocked the door before helping Fluttershy lift and move Twilight to her new bed, while Spike hastily moved the books in his cart to the shelves of the cell. Once everything was settled, the guardsmare locked the door once more, double-checking to make sure the room was secure before heading back to the entrance with a polite nod. The raging threats from the various unicorns imprisoned on either side of the corridor followed her away.

The pegasus and the young dragon stood there in silence for a moment, Fluttershy observing Twilight through the sliding peephole in the door.

“You’ll take good care of her, right?”

“Of course I will, Spike, don’t worry.”

Spike hugged Fluttershy’s leg. He did not need to thank her, they both knew that she would have done so no matter the circumstances. Besides, the gesture expressed his gratitude just as well as words could.

When he broke the hug, Fluttershy began to walk away, immediately stopped by Spike calling out to her.

“Wait! I… there’s something else I want to ask you, Fluttershy.”

She turned around to face him, wondering what was the matter. She waited for him to continue.

“Could you hold out your hoof, please?”

The shy pony cocked her head, taken aback by the strange question.

“Um, uh, why, exactly? …If you don’t mind me asking, that is?”

“I want to uh, attune my sending fire to you, so that I’ll be able to write you about what I find out there. You’ll be the one who gets the letters I send instead of the princess.”

The yellow mare took a frightened step back, obviously worried about whatever the process of tampering with magical fire would require of her. She’d seen burn victims from close enough lately that she knew she definitely did not want to play with fire.

“A-are you sure about this? Won’t this be d-dangerous?”

“The princess was fine when we did it last time, so I guess it doesn’t actually really burn. I mean, I use it to send paper all the time and the letters are fine, so it should be good.” Spike briefly wondered if his fire was indeed harmless or if the princess was simply resistant to fire, considering her natural bond with the hottest object in the known world. “It’ll be fine.”

Fluttershy hesitated for a moment before slowly, shakily raising her left forehoof, holding it at Spike’s eye level. The little dragon took a deep breath and gently breathed a steady stream of green flames over the mare’s appendage. She winced as the flames licked her hoof, withdrawing it a few centimeters before catching herself and extending it once more once she realized she felt no pain from the magical fire. Spike kept blowing his flames out until he ran out of breath, inhaling back most of the fire when he drew his next gasping lungful. He felt the flames quieting back down in his gullet, like they had done with the princess once; an awkward sort of squirming that left him feeling nauseous and hungry at the same time, with a lingering taste in his mouth. As if he had just eaten a part of Fluttershy.

The attunement was definitely still an unpleasant experience.

Spike opened his eyes to see Fluttershy still frozen in place with her hoof up and her eyes closed.

“Uh, it’s done.”

The mare relaxed, letting out the breath she had been holding throughout the entire process. She opened her eyes as well, in time to see Spike picking up a loose piece of paper from the cart he had towed in.

“Let’s test it out, okay?”

“Oh, um, sure. I… I won’t have to uh, burp it out, right?”

“No. It’ll kind of just appear in front of your face once I send it.”

With that, the young dragon spat out a spur of flame, engulfing the scrap of paper and disintegrating it in a plume of smoke and green sparks. The diminutive cloud quickly shot towards the pegasus, collecting mere inches before her cowering face before reforming as the piece of blank paper. It silently fell to the ground.

“Cool, it worked.”

The silence stretched on, Fluttershy inspecting her hoof with worry, searching for signs of damage. It was pristine and definitely unharmed. She eventually put it down, looking at Spike for a moment.

“Um, can I go now? …I don’t like it here.” She said, the not-too-distant growls of the unicorn prisoners making her flinch occasionally.

“Sure, I guess. I’ll be over in a minute.”

As she turned to leave, Spike took a moment to lay his hand on the wall of Twilight’s cell, wishing once more that he could stay by her side. He then retrieved the book cart and followed the mare out of the holding facilities.

120

Spike lay on his side, in the darkness of the silent corridor, quietly peeking through the food slot of his oldest friend’s cell at the mare in question peacefully sleeping inside. He himself couldn’t sleep, as usual, and had come here to watch her and… reminisce, perhaps? He fought the memories as fiercely as he could, pushing them back as soon as they so much as tried to surface. Reminiscing may not have been the right word, in such a context.

Still, he observed the tranquil sleeping form of the unicorn, his mother-like, sister-like best friend. She had been the one single constant in his life for so long, and was now mainly the source of more chaos and heartbreak than he had ever felt. And he would leave her, perhaps never to return.

“I love you Twilight.”

His whisper, choked by the burgeoning tears, was no louder than the unicorn’s breathing.

At the far end of the corridor, a lone figure turned away and quietly headed back upstairs.

Author's Notes:

And so it begins.
What have I gotten myself into this time...

2: Departure

Spike awoke with a start, sitting up in his basket. The sun shone sporadically through the window, casting occasional vertical stripes on the walls as it passed through the sturdy iron bars of Twilight’s empty cell. The tree library was likewise as empty, for the third morning in a row. The silence hung in the early morning light, smothering the screams and darkness of the dreams the young dragon had just escaped.

He took a moment to wind down, letting his heartbeat slow down as he cast the memories of the nightmares to oblivion. He knew full well that they would return as soon as he slipped back into the realm of dreams, just as they had done for well over three months now. Still, better to bury them as soon as possible, instead of letting them haunt him all day; he had work to do, after all.

Today was the big day.

He got up, stretching his limbs and pushing aside the two books he had bored himself to sleep with the night prior.

He realized, as he pushed the basket to its once-usual place near the foot of Twilight’s bed, that he would not sleep there that night. He would not eat his lonely, depressing meal alone in the kitchen that night. He would not bathe himself in silence, he would not empty Twilight’s waste bucket or feed her, or bring her her toiletries and a few books to help her take her mind off the horrible things she had done to ponies she loved. He would not dust and order the library that day, like the days and weeks before, each and every repetition making him more and more of a soulless automaton. He would not repeat the mindless tasks and data-gathering tests he had turned into a daily routine that day, toiling until he finally succumbed to his fatigue and sleep-deprivation and let them take him to the torment of his sleeping mind for a few miserable hours prior to starting all over again the next day.

He would not die a little more inside that day.

His gaze swept around the room, taking in all the things he would not see again for… possibly forever; the iron bars of Twilight’s cage, the thick, comforting wooden walls of the hollow tree, the books scattered everywhere in, on and around the furniture, Twilight’s numerous trinkets and possessions, her bed, his basket, her telescope and the abandoned perch of Owlowiscious.

The young dragon’s jaw hung partly open, his heartbeat accelerating slightly as he spun in place. He might never get to see any of those things ever again. He had known it, had mulled it over in his head over the past few days, but it was only at this point that it really hit him: he would leave here, and might never come back.

He was about to be free.

He blinked, twice, panting lightly, before shaking his head. He had things to do. He began descending the stairs, stealing one last fleeting glance at the room. Once in the kitchen, he rapidly consumed the last of the food in the library, the final portion of the carefully rationed supplies he had arranged to run out that very morning. He would not come back for quite a while, and had been loathe to have to throw out food that would have otherwise spoiled in his absence.

Once sated, he moved back to the main room. The wide, empty spaces among the shelves showed just how many books he had brought to Twilight. Hopefully it would be enough. A few feet from the door, a relatively large duffel bag lay on the ground, prepared well in advance and ready to go. On its green canvas was a simple envelope. He gently moved it aside to check once more the contents of the bag; some rations, a blanket, a map, a compass, minor tools. But most importantly, most prominently, the compass, the tracking device locked in its protective steel case. A small, sturdy vial of ink and an accompanying quill were tucked away in a side pocket, along with a compact packet of folded paper.

He had everything he would need.

Shouldering the bag, he opened the door and stepped outside. As he shut the door, he couldn’t help but cast a final look inside, the last time he would observe this place, his home. The hinges squeaked softly, the low groan echoing through the empty streets in the still morning air. The lower, louder knock of the lock turning soon followed.

The envelope was already addressed and signed, with a scant few words written on its surface.

Fluttershy. Here’s the key. Goodbye.

The library key was inserted in the envelope, and it, in turn, was engulfed in green flames, soaring away in the indecisive sky. Spike watched it go until it disappeared in the distance, heading towards the pegasus’ home.

There was nothing left to do in Ponyville anymore. He could go now.

He took his first step, then the other, then one more. Each one seemed to ease the clenching feeling in his heart. He was leaving. His steps took him to the edge of town, along the southward road. The train tracks were to his right, heading off into the distance while glinting in the sporadic sunlight.

He contemplated the road ahead. The signal detector had consistently pointed roughly south-east whenever he had opened it, meaning his path could follow this road for a time.

“Spike!” A voice shouted from behind. “Spike! Wait!”

The purple dragon turned around to see a stunning white mare galloping in his direction. Her deep violet mane trailing behind her, her hooves hurriedly pounding the earth as she closed the distance. As she got closer, he could see she was carrying heavy saddlebags, each one seemingly packed full.

“What are you doing, Rarity?” he asked as she reached him. “Did you come to say goodbye?” He definitely felt that, were that the case, he would have been immensely flattered. He had kept his feelings for her buried for a while, but had not forgotten them. The thought that she cared enough about him to do this made his heart soar a bit higher.

She stopped in front of him in a slight slide, struggling to catch her breath.

“No.” she managed to spit out between gasps.

An uneasy feeling swelled up in Spike’s stomach. She was there to oppose him, wasn’t she? She would try to convince him to stay, telling him it would be safer? She would plead and beg, asking him to stay in Ponyville, to stay safe.

To stagnate. To keep dying.

His face flushed in anger beneath his scales, his voice instantly rising to a shout.

“Well you won’t stop me! If you think I’m going to back down now, you-“

“No, no no no no!” The hornless unicorn cut him off, shaking her head. After a deep breath to regain her composure, she added: “You’ve got it all wrong, darling. I’m not here to see you off or prevent you from leaving in any way.”

“Then what are you-“

“I’m coming with you.”

“What?”

He couldn’t quite believe what he had just heard. Looking at her determined expression, and the proud, confident posture she had adopted, he soon had to admit she at least seemed serious.

“But… why?” he asked, trying to spot a hint of deception in her blue eyes, any clue that would tell him whether she was lying, insane, or simply hiding ulterior motives.

“Spike, do you really want a list of the reasons why I would want to help a friend put a stop to the malicious curse that robbed me of most of my friends, my sister, and my entire career? Do I really need to convince you that this Signal must be stopped?

“Do you know what my last sale was? Roseluck came to me last week to have a blanket patched up. That is it, nothing else. My business is dead, leaving me to rot in this awful, inactive stasis! Why would I want to leave, you ask? Why would I ever want to stay here if it means being nothing more than a sewing machine on legs? Ponyville doesn’t need me here, Sweetie Belle doesn’t need me here; What she needs is for somepony to shut that damned, condemnable noise up for good!”

Rarity was nearly shouting at that point, eyes wide and almost wild. She blinked a few times and, taking a deep breath, trotted past Spike with her head raised in the air.

“That is why I’m coming along.” Her tone was definitive, the matter was closed.

Spike hurriedly caught up to her as she walked away.

“But what about Applejack? She doesn’t want me taking anyone with me!”

“If the farmer wants to stay here and cower like a filly instead of trying to save Equestria again, who are we to oppose her? She can decide for herself if she wants to huddle and hide in her false sense of security, and although she may not want you to bring ponies along, she definitely has no right to prevent me from following you of my own volition! I am my own mare, I make my own decisions!”

She punctuated her argument with a flick of her mane and a dignified, indignant huff.

Spike didn’t quite know how to respond. It would be good to have company, but there would be untold danger ahead, countless occasions to die or suffer. There was no easy way through, no possible shortcuts. This was going to be hard; whatever was responsible for The Signal was undoubtedly either extremely powerful, guarding the source, or both. Wandering unicorns were bound to stand in their way, and other dangerous obstacles were all but expected.

This was suicide. Even for one immune to the most predictable threat ahead.

Looking at the former unicorn, Spike saw that she knew all of that. And still she insisted.

“Rarity!”

The mare stopped when her name was called with a shaky voice, turning around to see the small dragon rushing up to her. His arms wrapped around one of her legs in a tight hug.

“T-thank you.” He whispered into her coat, a few tears soaking the hair.

She sat down, wrapping her other foreleg around the purple dragon.

“There, there, Spike. I simply couldn’t let you go alone.”

Rarity absent-mindedly looked around as she patted the dragon’s back, her mind going back to her own words of just a moment ago. Could she let him go alone? Would she let him go? It would still be so easy; they were still on Ponyville’s metaphorical doorstep. A simple excuse, a retraction, a forgotten detail she had to attend to. Mea culpa.

Lies. It would only take a few lies, just like those she was telling herself at that very moment; why yes, she could back down right then. She could tell Spike that she wasn’t really coming. She could break his heart on the spot, betray him in the vilest way, trot away like a heartless monster while the little dragon cried his soul out. She could spend the rest of her life here as the most spineless of invertebrates after betraying the trust of the one being in Equestria who could always find a way to love her. She could decide to stay safe, to not risk her life, to settle peacefully in her protected hometown. She could break her promises for the sake of her own cowardice.

In the world of lies, she could do anything.

“But not here.” Not after saying these words. Not then, not anymore, never again.

“What?” Spike looked up, drying his tears and breaking the hug.

She stood back up, shaking her head slightly.

“Oh, nothing. I just think we should get moving, darling.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.” He adjusted his bag, draped behind his back, and set off with newfound enthusiasm.

She joined him, the two of them quickly falling in step. They walked quietly, Spike still elated by the prospect of the white mare deciding to risk her life with him, while she was simply content to have brought a fleeting smile to his lips. A smile that vanished after just a few short minutes.

He had smiled for but a moment, a rare occurrence these days, but as he walked ever further from the safety of the relatively protected town, his thoughts turned to the absolute lack of safety to come. She might have been ready to face danger for his sake, but was he willing for her to do so? Did he even have a choice?

The roiling, broken clouds flew overhead, remnants of a nightly downpour fleeing the scene of their demise. The packed earth of the path had dried enough to be devoid of the expected slimy muck, although grains of wet sand still clung to their hooves and feet. The trees swayed gently in the moderate wind, sprinkling droplets of dew and lingering rainwater around themselves. Spike couldn’t help but notice how the scene was unusually beautiful for a cloudy summer day, even as embroiled as he was in his rapidly darkening thoughts.

The silence dragged on for a while as the two travelers made their way up a low, grassy hill peppered with thick bushes.

“So,” Rarity began, “Where are we going?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, well, The Signal is coming from somewhere southwest of here, so I figured that we could just follow this road south until the detector points almost straight east, wherever that is.”

“Why don’t you just cut straight through?”

The young, feminine voice that had asked the question had come from a nearby bush, startling both Spike and Rarity. They turned to face the newcomer, trying to ready themselves for a fight.

A small, orange pegasus filly calmly stepped forth, nonchalantly shaking a few leaves out of her purple mane. Several pouches were strapped around seemingly random parts of her body, and a strange bag swollen by sharp lumps was held between her short wings.

“Scootaloo?” both Rarity and Spike shouted in unison, “What are you doing here?”

The pegasus casually glanced at their adrenaline-flushed faces, before answering in a tone as neutral as her own expression.

“Just doing my rounds, actually. But what are you doing here, miss Rarity?”

“Why I…” the unicorn began, only to be immediately interrupted.

“No pony is to leave Ponyville, unless escorted by or on duty as part of the militia. Captain’s orders, miss. I’m sure she’d be very thankful if I warned her that her dear friend was being dragged into danger, right?”

Spike stepped forward angrily.

“Hey! Back off! She decided to follow me! This is none of the militia’s business! This is none of Applejack’s business! You better not go tell her about this-“

“Oh yeah? Or else what?” The filly’s nose made contact with Spike’s, both sets of eyes glaring into each other. The stand-off lasted for a few seconds before the young pony shrugged and turned away with a smirk and a small scoff.

“You know,” Scootaloo began, her back to Spike. “As a standing member of the Ponyville militia, it’s my duty to report everything I see to the captain. Especially things that are against the rules. So unless you guys want me to go report this little camping trip of yours, you’re going to have to take me with you.”

The young dragon and the unicorn exchanged a surprised glance, immediately prior to asking a simple, simultaneous “What?”

Scootaloo grinned, turning back around to face them.

“No pony is to leave Ponyville unless escorted by or on duty as part of the militia.” The filly pointed a hoof to her own head, then to Rarity and finally to Spike as she continued: “I’m part of the militia, I can escort you, and you’re not a pony. If I go with the two of you the rules don’t get broken, and if the rules aren’t broken the captain doesn’t need to hear a word about this.”

The two looked at each other, both equally baffled. Was Scootaloo serious? Or was this some sort of trick? Had she been sent by Applejack to spy on them, or was she really here of her own accord?

Spike couldn’t help but blurt the first question that came to his mind.

“Scootaloo… why?”

The filly stomped a hoof on the ground, her expression halfway between anger and excitement.

“Because I want that stupid Signal gone, and you guys are the only ones who are even trying to do a damn thing about it! Helping you is more important than following some dumb rules!”

The small pegasus locked eyes with Spike to add:

“Besides, you won’t make it without me.”

“Excuse me?” Rarity said, stepping in. “Why I must say that this is rather presumptuous of you, young lady! We are certainly capable of taking care of ourselves, thank you very much!”

“Oh yeah, sure! Because fashion designers and assistant librarians are basically the uncontested champions of outdoors survival! Besides, sneaking in unknown enemy territory is such a breeze, I’m sure you’ll be fine without any sort of training at all! Yep, you’ve convinced me, I’m going home! Don’t forget to bring us presents when you come back from your little vacation! I can’t wait to see all the pictures you’ll take!”

Rarity stood, rendered speechless by the filly’s outburst. Scootaloo didn’t wait for a reply, pointing to a couple of bushes a short distance away.

“Look at those bushes! One has tasty, healthy berries and the other will give you cramps, fever, and diarrhea. Does any of you even know which is which?”

Both bushes looked frankly identical to Spike, each bearing a multitude of small red fruits among their dark green leaves. To simply know the difference between both at a mere glance was impressive. Applejack had seen to the training of every single one of the militia’s recruits personally, imparting a stupefying amount of survival techniques to them. The mere fact that Scootaloo had even been accepted into their ranks was a show of outstanding capability; not just anyone was entrusted with the defense of Ponyville’s perimeter.

Although he had pored over survival books in preparation of his journey, Spike knew that no amount of study could truly compare to field experience.

“She… does have a point, Rarity,” he said.

“ …I suppose she does, darling.”

“So, does that mean I can tag along?”

“I guess so, it’s not like we can stop you from just hiding and following us anyway, right?” Spike shrugged as he answered, taking a new step on the southward path. “Although you could’ve just asked, you know.”

“I could’ve, but I didn’t. The one without thorns had the poison berries, by the way.”

Both ponies fell in step with the dragon, the trio ascending the gentle slope of the hill. The path turned and twisted up the inclination in ways that made the climb far easier. After a few minutes, the group reached the crest, where Spike took the time to look one last time at the quiet, ravaged town of Ponyville down below. Shadows of the clouds slithered across the few buildings and the numerous ruins, playing and dancing around in an illusion of life. The town would never be the same as before, but it might still be made better. He would make it better.

“We’ll be back, Spike. I swear we will.”

Spike noticed the white mare by his side by the sound of her voice, and the filly sitting next to him on the other side by the affirmative hum she made. They stared at the village for a few seconds more before turning away as one and, without a word, heading down the south face of the hill towards their destination.

The first step was taken.

3: Silences

With the sun rising steadily and gradually chasing the remaining clouds away, the three made their way down the hill. Their steps were accompanied by the rattle of their packs; the rhythmic thunks of the steel cube in Spike’s bag impacting the rest of its contents, the unidentifiable clinks of whatever fragile things dwelt in Rarity’s saddlebags, and the near-silence of Scootaloo’s mysterious pouches.

The soft patter of eight hooves and two feet advancing on the moist earth of the path.

“So,” Scootaloo began, breaking the silence as she squinted against the glare of the sun, “first things first, I guess: Unicorn survival tips.”

She turned her head to look at her two companions, waiting to have their undivided attention before continuing.

“Number one: listen for birdsong.”

The filly stopped on the spot, making an exaggerated display of a listening pose, one raised foreleg held next to her ear. Spike and Rarity stood next to her, attentive yet puzzled. A few birds sung amongst the trees, their chirps echoing back and forth around the travelers.

“Okay, what’s so special about birds singing?” Spike asked. The sounds he could hear seemed perfectly normal, the same as every random assortment of birds he had heard in the wild.

“The fact that they’re even singing at all. See, birds aren’t stupid: they know that singing when a unicorn is near is pretty much asking for a face-full of crystal, so they stop when they spot one getting closer. I think they even warn each other before shutting up. So if you can hear birds singing, it means that there aren’t any unicorns close enough to hear them.”

“Well, what about me? I am a unicorn, after all.”

“I said they weren’t stupid, not that they were smart. They’re just probably looking for horns to tell them what kind of pony they’re seeing.”

“Huh,” Spike replied, “makes sense.”

The dragon set off on the path once more, the two ponies following suit. Scootaloo took the lead again as she scanned the surroundings in a fast and competent way.

Watching her go, Spike couldn’t help but notice how surprisingly professional she seemed: every movement calm and controlled, every step measured and sure. Despite her age, she knew what she was doing.

“Hey, Scoots? How long have you been… doing this, exactly?”

The filly barely glanced at him in the middle of one of her sweeps of the surroundings.

“Since the very first day the militia was formed, why?”

“Wait,” Rarity interrupted, “Applejack let you join just like that? Aren’t you a little young?”

Scootaloo snorted.

“Maybe, but when there’s only about twenty-five volunteers to choose from, you take all you can get.”

The trio kept walking in silence, guided by Scootaloo’s vigilance. Spike had never really known just how thin the militia was spread. A mere two dozen guardians for the town? No doubt more had joined since then; defending the village had turned into an essential activity, especially since so many other occupations had become obsolete. Rarity might have clung to her previous life until the last moment, but others had quickly realized that their skills weren’t as important to the town anymore.

The fleeting memory of once seeing one of the former spa attendants reporting to Applejack came to Spike’s mind.

Still, there couldn’t possibly be enough troops to truly defend Ponyville, especially now that they had taken away one of the precious few soldiers.

Rarity wondered what had even possessed the filly to volunteer in the first place. What was even still there for her to protect? Both her best friends were gone; Applebloom was dead and Sweetie Belle… It was best that Rarity refrained from thinking about Sweetie Belle. Maybe it was a simple matter of finding something to do with the boundless energy the young pegasus had always displayed, something to take her young mind away from the morbid thoughts of her friends.

The filly kept both her mind and her eyes on the road, knowing that any lapse in her attention could be disastrous.

The minutes stretched to hours as they walked south, the often awkward silence only sporadically broken by equally awkward small talk. While both Spike and Rarity were used to each other’s company, it was usually on gem-finding excursions that they found common ground to converse. Considering the wholly different circumstances, Spike just didn’t know what subject to bring up at the time. Everything he could think about seemed pointless or unnecessarily distracting. The fact that he couldn’t think of a single thing he had in common with Scootaloo just made conversation that much more difficult with her. Besides, the filly was already busy scouting their path and watching for possible threats, making it hazardous to distract her. Maybe silence was sufficient, he finally decided.

Without knowing it, all three travelers were thinking back to Ponyville, the small town still close enough to grip their hearts. Were they making the right choice? Possibly. Certainly.

Would they still come to regret it? Probably.

As the sun reached its zenith, the group stopped at a crossroads. They had all agreed that a break was in order; Rarity wasn’t known for endurance, and both Spike and Scootaloo were young and traveling on shorter legs. Even with her training and experience roaming the countryside, either with the other two crusaders or more recently on her rounds protecting Ponyville, Scootaloo still didn’t have the stamina to walk a whole day without rest. Having both lived more sheltered lives, neither did Spike or Rarity.

The adult mare collapsed under the shade of a tree, while the orange filly quickly surveyed the roads from the middle of the perfect cross they formed. Spike chose a spot close to Rarity, rummaging in his pack to withdraw the signal detector. He opened the device and set it in the grass, not sparing it a second look as he searched his bag once more to take some rations to eat.

“All’s clear,” Scootaloo announced as she took a resting spot under the tree’s shade with the others. “Hey, what’s that thing?” She was looking at the grey box open in the grass, the three wooden pegs standing in the breeze and the compass in their midst slowly turning.

“That’s the signal detector I made. It points to The Signal.”

“Really? How’s that work?”

“I’m wondering as well,” Rarity added, fanning herself with a small folding fan she had taken from her bags.

“Well,” Spike began, “those three pegs here are receptors for The Signal, meaning they are very in tune with its frequency. That basically means they have the perfect composition to vibrate in tune with it. So The Signal buzzes around and makes them shake along, which means the detector ‘catches’ the Signal’s energy. I hooked the receptors to a bunch of little devices that turn that vibration into electricity to power three small electro-magnets that I placed around the compass here. These magnets are so close together that their magnetic fields combine into one, and since The Signal seems to lose power over long distances, the magnet that’s closest to the nearest source of The Signal gets just a little more energy. That stronger magnet becomes the ‘dominant’ one, and it makes the whose field align with itself, and since the compass is right in the middle of that, it ends up pointing straight to the nearest source of The Signal. I also made the box out of steel to block out the natural magnetic field of the planet so there isn’t as much white noise to interfere with the needle.”

Spike took a breath after delivering his verbal avalanche, apparently ready to keep going. Rarity and Scootaloo watched him with their mouths agape, both clearly stupefied by the amount of technical knowledge the young dragon had recited. Even the surrounding birds seemed to have been rendered speechless.

“Oh but the downside of having the receptors so close together means that the difference in the amount of power they receive is really really small,”

Scootaloo frowned. Something was not right.

“…so the magnetic field takes a whole lot of time to realign itself since the magnets are very nearly…”

Spike had stunned everyone into silence, even the birds? Really? The birds had listened to that? The birds had cared? No way. The filly shot up to her hooves, urgency in her voice as she interrupted the dragon.

“Guys? The birds!”

Spike and Rarity looked around, unsure for a moment what exactly made birds worthy of such alarm, until Scootaloo’s words from earlier that morning came back to their minds.

Listen for birdsong.

A few seconds of panic passed, everyone scrambling to their hooves and feet while frantically trying to spot the cause of the sudden and oppressive silence. Spike fumbled with the detector, hastily closing it and stuffing it in his bag as Scootaloo whisper-shouted “Hide!”

The filly jumped in the nearest bushes, quickly followed by the others.

They huddled in the leaves and branches, looking around to make sure they were completely concealed by the foliage. Their breathing was labored, fighting with both the urge to breathe and the imperative to remain totally silent. A minute passed in silence, the birds mute and the wind quiet, all three travelers forcing their lungs to maintain the lowest possible volume.

The soft clip-clop of hooves approached from further down the path. Soon a faint mumble could be heard. A voice, stammering and mumbling disjointed bits of words, wavering wildly between intonations, slowly rose in volume as its owner came closer.

“No no no no I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I DON’T LIKE IT! …I can’t like it. I’ll never like it. This isn’t me. I’m not a bad pony, am I? Left, right, left, right. Keep walking and don’t look at anything. The sky’s the limit if you limit yourself to it. I NEVER MEANT TO DO THAT! Why did it have to be like that? What did any of them do to me? I know what I did to them, but what did they do? They were running from me? I miss my friends. IS ANYPONY OUT THERE? PLEASE DON’T ANSWER ME! If they answer I’ll have to be a bad pony again…”

Spike, Scootaloo and Rarity could now see the legs of the mare on the path, through the branches of the bush. Her olive coat was dirty and matted with mud and various sorts of grime, and what they could see of her tail was ragged and unkempt. Her soft voice went from breathless murmurs to startling screams at random, her tone one of constant agitation even as she occasionally hummed songs and just as frequently sobbed between breaths. They saw her stop in the middle of the intersection for a moment.

“No no no can’t be a bad pony. NO I’M NOT! What does this one say? Ponyville? NO no no no can’t go to a ville, or a city or a burg or a village or town. Ponies in there. Can’t see them can’t hurt them can’t be a bad pony. I just want a friend. I’m so tired of walking why can’t I just lie down in a hole and die? I really should. Should I really? I’d get to see my friends again and KILL THEM LIKE THIS SQUIRREL DIE KILL KILL KILL”

A cracking pop sounded through the air, the whistling sound of crystals flying towards the death of some poor creature. The three travelers ducked closer to the ground, pressing themselves down in the dirt in the vain hopes that they may sink through it entirely and escape the danger. A small muffled squeak was heard through the resounding thunder of the crystals ripping trees and foliage apart, a quiet rain of debris punctuating the event.

“Oh no I’m so sorry! I’m sorry little squirrel! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’M SORRY!”

The olive mare dropped to the ground, burying her face in her hooves as she started crying.

“I’m a bad pony again! I’m sorry!”

Her shoulders shook under the weight of her sorrow as she wept quietly, occasionally mumbling apologies to the squirrel and to others. Spike watched her, reminded of the many times Twilight had sunk to such a state. It had been so common, such a frequent occurrence in his life that he seemed to have grown used to it. The unknown unicorn’s plight barely capable of making him feel anything, while a quick glance showed both of his companions shedding tears. Rarity stared at the stranger, her tears flowing from her eyes in complete silence. He face was an unreadable mask set in stone as her eyes remained glued to the weeping unicorn on the road. Scootaloo had looked away long ago, opting to cover her ears as well.

Spike looked back at the olive unicorn, thinking about all the ponies who must have suffered like her since The Signal had come to Equestria, about all those who, just like the mare before him, were still suffering. Just how many lives had it utterly broken?

The heavy silence continued for a few minutes, until the unicorn eventually picked herself up. Sniffing, she began walking away at last, head hung low and still mumbling her somber thoughts. Spike felt fortunate as he realized that she had chosen neither the road leading to Ponyville nor the one they would need to take to continue south.

The three travelers waited in silence, making sure to hear birds singing again at last before emerging from their hiding spot.
They quickly gathered their packs and hurriedly went on their way.

The next few hours passed in anxious silence, all three companions keenly attentive to their surroundings. Every lull in the rhythm of chirps brought them to a fearful halt where they held their breaths, standing still until finally another singer began the melody anew. They would then sigh in relief, resuming their progress on the earthen road.

The sky had cleared completely by mid-day, and the sun kept beating down on them throughout the afternoon. The rays were only hindered by the rare, occasional, and proportionally small clouds dashing in the way for mere moments at a time.

The trio didn’t bother to so much as try starting conversations along the way, the fear still fresh in their minds. Spike’s thoughts, even constantly interrupted as they were by the random and thankfully short bouts of terrifying silence in the birdsong, kept returning to the lonely unicorn encountered earlier.

How many more like her were there? How many other unicorns were left to deal with this curse alone, with no possible way of even understanding what had happened to them? How many minds had been ruined by guilt and incomprehension, tortured by their actions and their own alien urges? How many simply didn’t have the luck to have their friends not only survive, but to also see those friends help them and prevent them from killing more innocents?

How had Twilight been the lucky one?

The afternoon came and went, Spike swaying between his somber thoughts and the group’s necessary vigilance.

As the sun set, spreading its final glow of orange warmth over the land, the group finally came to a halt. Choosing a fairly secluded area near the road, the three travelers dropped their packs with relief and set about establishing camp. Blankets were unfurled, food was withdrawn from the bags, and Spike began forming a circle of rocks for a fire.

“Spike, what are you doing?” Scootaloo asked, observing the half-formed ring of stones as Spike returned from fetching another armful from the roadside.

The young dragon dropped the stones at his feet, already moving to resume placing them.

“Building a fire,” he replied, putting a stone in place. “What else?”

“Oh no no no no no!” The filly stepped in the middle of the incomplete circle, putting a hoof on the rock Spike was about to move next. “Are you insane? No fire!”

“What? Really? Why?”

The pegasus filly brought a hoof to her forehead, grunting.

“Ugh, look; unicorn survival tip number two: never make yourself more visible than you have to. A nice, bright fire at night is a pretty good way to attract attention, and attracting attention is the last thing we want! I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“Oh.”

Spike let go of the stone, standing back up to look around. The night crept along slowly, gradually swallowing the land. Scootaloo headed to her bedroll after delivering her warning, where she proceeded to undo the many straps of her numerous pouches and pockets. Rarity was fidgeting with the various trinkets in her saddlebags, laid down on her expensive-looking bedding.

The young dragon went to sit on his own blanket, nibbling on some of his food. The dried fruits were tasty, especially with the sapphire dust sprinkled on them, but he knew he would probably start to despise them if he had nothing else to eat once in a while. The three ate quietly in the growing silence of dusk, occasionally flexing their tired appendages.

“So, what are we supposed to do now, then?”

Scootaloo looked up, stirred from her thoughts with a short hum. Rarity hadn’t moved or shown a sign of acknowledging the question as she kept staring at the half-formed ring of stones of the unborn fire.

“We go to sleep, I guess,” the filly said, “We probably still have a long way to go, right? We need to rest for tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah, that reminds me!”

Spike took out the detector once again, opening it to the orange sky. The unmodified compass was soon placed next to it, Spike taking advantage of the fading light to read the instruments. Darkness was already dominating the sky when the needle finally settled. Squinting, the dragon could see that their destination hadn’t changed significantly. They were quite certainly still days or even weeks away. Scootaloo had wrapped herself in her blanket in the meantime and had closed her eyes, but showed no signs of sleeping yet.

“So?” She asked, her eyes still shut.

“Not much change, I think. We’ll see it better in the morning, but I think it moved by only about two degrees. We’re still days away.”

“Hmph…”

“Wait,” he said, noticing both ponies curled under their covers, “Shouldn’t we set some kind of watch?”

“Enh, the unicorns went to sleep too. Never anything to report on night shift. Be my guest if you want to anyway, I guess.” Scootaloo’s voice was slurred from the fatigue of the day catching up to her, while Rarity merely glanced at him for a moment. She held her gaze right up until she noticed Spike turning to look at her himself, before burying her head under the covers.

Spike drew his blanket over himself and lay down.

The moon slowly made its way over the road, emerging from the treeline as Spike watched its crawl across the stars. He sat on a rock on the side of the road, wrapped in his blanket. The nocturnal birds threw their occasional cries in the darkness of the clear night.

Even with the exhaustion of the day and the change in scenery, he still couldn’t find the relief of sleep. The nightmares had come back the moment he had closed his eyes. Wouldn’t they ever leave him alone? Was he really going to dream of blood and screams for the rest of his life? Why couldn’t he just find the embrace of slumber like Scootaloo? The filly seemed at peace, her regular breathing coming to his ears every now and then. Surely she had seen the same tragedies and horrors as him, right? Why was he incapable of moving past? Why was he so scarred? Was it a form of weakness on his part?

The soft patter of hooves on grass approached him. He turned his head sharply, sudden fear gripping his lungs.

Rarity stepped forth from the forest’s pitch-black shade. Spike sighed in relief, resuming his stargazing as she sat on the ground next to him.

“Can’t sleep?”

She shrugged.

“Too much on my mind, it seems.”

The unicorn watched the sky in silence next to Spike, immobile in the moonlight. She would sometimes shift her position slightly, occasionally glancing at the young dragon. Once or twice, she brought a hoof to her forehead, gently rubbing the nub of her horn. The second time made Spike glance at her sudden movement.

“I file it down every day.” She said, unprompted. “To prevent it from growing back.”

Her words came out almost mechanically as she stared straight ahead, her gaze now lowered to the horizon.

“It hurts. Well, no, not really, actually. It… it is more of a grating feeling, of sorts. Like a number of knives scraping across a chalkboard, except the board is your skull and the knives are somewhere inside your eye sockets. There are nerve endings in there, you know. In the horn. It is supposed to help control our magic.”

Spike watched the white mare spewing these words, her face slowly contorting between various emotions; anger, fear, annoyance, sadness. It was as if her own muscles couldn’t decide what she felt. Why was she even saying all of this?

“I hate it.”

Her voice cracked.

“I just… detest having to do this to myself! Do you understand? I… I-“

“Rarity! Rarity, what’s wrong?” Spike reached out with his hand, grabbing the mare’s shoulder. She, in turn, threw her legs around him in a crushing hug as she choked back sobs.

Spike remained stunned for a moment, his arms held up to the sides as the white unicorn shook against him. He slowly returned the embrace, awkwardly, still incredibly confused. Not knowing what else to do, he began whispering soothing reassurances to the mare.

“It’s okay, Rarity. We’re going to fix this, remember? We’ll make sure you never have to do it again, alright?”

She made a strangled sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, before pulling away. Fanning herself with a hoof, she shook her head and let out a grim chuckle.

“Oh my goodness, just look at me crying like a filly and getting comforted by someone half my age. I must look like such a fool right now. Forgive me, Spike.”

“No, it’s okay, Rarity. I just don’t understand. What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

The white unicorn took a moment to compose herself, seemingly with great effort. Her eyes were still glistening with fresh tears when she spoke next.

“That unicorn we saw earlier today.”

Before Spike could ask what she meant, what that unknown mare had to do with any of this, and what she had done to cause such distress, Rarity interrupted his thoughts with a question.

“Did…” Her tone was hesitant, awkward. She seemed to struggle with the words, as if holding back despite herself. “Did Twilight ever… say what… what it felt like to be… afflicted?”

She turned to face him, her blue eyes as deep as the night around them as the moon shone on their surface. She looked straight in his own eyes, a slight quiver lingering on her lips.

He looked down, his mood darkening; his confusion still vivid but quickly forgotten. Of course Twilight had mentioned it. It had been his duty to gather all the available information, and Twilight had been an outstanding source of information in that department. He had detailed transcripts of at least three separate interviews with the lavender unicorn buried somewhere in the pages of the research log. He knew what the affliction felt like as much as was possible without being in its throes.

He knew just how sick, perverted and pervasive The Signal could be, how disgusting its influence was.

Should he tell her? What good could possibly come of it?

“You better sit down.”

He waited for the unicorn to settle, watching him attentively, before looking away and begin his explanation with his eyes fixated upon a small stone on the road.

“So, she, it’s… She said it’s kinda like when you sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to eat a slice of cake. That sort of… guilty pleasure, where you know what you’re doing is wrong but you just can’t resist because it’s just so good and fun, or you just don’t care. Like, you tell yourself ‘oh, I really shouldn’t be doing this’ but you just do it anyway because deep down, you just don’t want to not do it. She said it’s just like all of that, but about a million times more irresistible.

“It’s just like that, but instead of some stupid cake, all you want are those horrible things; the rage, the violence, the screams and the threats. The Signal just makes you want to do those things. It just fills your head with these urges, those disgusting words they keep screaming, and she said that they never even feel wrong when you let them have their way. It’s only once you’re done, when you finally stop, that you see just what you did, and then you remember how much …fun you had. And she said it just drives you insane to know how horrible what you just did was, while still remembering how incredibly good it felt. She said it’s… she said killing feels even better than sex.”

“H-how could she say something like this? To someone your age?”

“The Signal makes her say a bunch of horrible stuff, I guess. ...She also said that the very worst part of it, of having all these urges in your head, is that they don’t even feel like they’re not yours. She said that she knows deep down that she shouldn’t like it, that she never wanted to hurt anyone, but she still did it willingly. She said she knows that it’s The Signal giving her all these urges and ideas that aren’t normal for her, but that she honestly couldn’t tell the difference. It must be what makes so many unicorns just… snap, knowing that you’ll always feel like you did it of your own free will, that you’ll always feel one hundred percent responsible for what you’ve done.”

He turned his head to look at her, and saw that she was trembling, her eyes shut and her hooves curled tight against her chest, silent tears pouring down her face. He had shed a few tears of his own, having plunged in the memories of those talks with Twilight and all the pain they had brought out of her. He had almost forgotten how much it hurt to have a loved one go through all the sorrow and madness he had just explained. And he just then remembered Rarity had a relative in that same situation.

“I’m sorry about that last part, I didn’t mean to remind you of-“

“NO! No, It’s fine. I… don’t worry about it. I’m the one who asked in the first place.” She wiped her tears with shaky hooves, looking up at the starry sky above.

“Why did you want to know?”

She took a few shuddering breaths, not taking her eyes off the stars.

“That unicorn we saw on the road got me thinking. I… I suppose I wanted to know the fate I avoided. No, actually, I think I needed to know. Thank you, Spike.”

She grabbed him again to pull him into another hug, placing him into her lap when she was done.

He watched her from below, her moonlit face hovering above him surrounded by stars as she gazed wordlessly in the distance.

His nightmares weren’t as intense that night.

Author's Notes:

Before anyone asks; Yes, I know the explanation for how the detector works are probably wrong and impossible in at least five different ways, but the thing to remember here is that that whole paragraph was just a huge wad of technobabble I pulled out of my ass, sprinkled with what little I remember about magnetism from high school science class. Because honestly, research is for squares.

4: Tracks

The Ponyville-Appleloosa line of the Ponyville express comprised over five-hundred thousand railway ties, each carved of solid, sturdy lumber over sixty years ago. The rails themselves had been forged with pride, every length made of high-quality steel in the mills of Detrot before being hauled south on the very tracks they would come to lengthen. The innumerable tons of materials had been painstakingly assembled by hundreds of the strongest, sturdiest earth ponies from all over Equestria.

As every other grand project of its kind, the railway had once more brought the ponies of the land closer together, uniting kindred spirits and forming friendships that would endure the distances. It was not out of capricious fancy that the locomotive that would travel its length for the next six decades had been named “the Friendship Express.”

Other than linking two budding communities, the tracks had opened the way for many avenues of both commerce and diplomacy. The buffalo tribes of the south were suddenly made readily accessible to merchants and diplomats from Equestria, allowing their rich culture and magnificent crafts to spread to new heights of popularity and respect.

Had it not been for those tracks, both Ponyville and Appleloosa would have been markedly smaller and less diverse towns. Indeed, after their long months of labor, many of the workers from the far corners of Equestria had chosen to settle in the growing hamlets. The fresh air, the open space, the easygoing and tame weather –at least in Ponyville’s case- had won over their hearts, kindling their desire to see for themselves how their work would bear fruit over the years. The commendable and outstanding hospitality of the Apple family had also swayed many an opinion, a tremendous factor in attracting new settlers.

The line closely followed the old road, an ancient pathway that had once been one of the only links between Equestria and its distant southern neighbors. Worn from the centuries as well as from the hooves of travelers long past, the old road still provided an alternate and more scenic route southward. Both pathways meandered in a rough parallel, the old road often swaying and swerving to avoid many of the obstacles that the railway simply plowed through. On two separate occasions, the two crossed; once where the old road climbed up a hill through which the railway tunneled, and another point where the hoofpath hugged the banks of a river at the bottom of a shallow gorge that the train soared over thanks to a proud, modern bridge.

Over the miles, both paths traversed varying environments, from the cool, temperate climate near Ponyville to the desert of Appleloosa, and the dry plains in between. Coming from Ponyville, one could think that a sudden drought was ravaging the land, thinning the forests in a matter of hours and making way to wide, flat plains of golden grass. Then the grass would slowly vanish, leaving only rocks and pebbles to see until they were buried as well under growing dunes and windswept dusty flats. From the opposite facing, travelers often felt like witnesses to the rebirth of the world, seeing sand and desolation morph into lush greenery and hospitable havens.

For the past few days, Spike, Scootaloo and Rarity had caught glimpses of the railway snaking around the landscape. It would sometimes hug the side of the road, clinging to its every curve as if glued, and abruptly take off, twisting away to reaches unseen. It was, of course, they and the road they traveled on whom would twist and veer away from the railway, as the twin lines of steel had been laid out in a much more efficient and straightforward fashion than the ancient road of packed earth. Still, the railway would always catch up, returning to their side after a few hours apart.

They had often wondered about the fate of the train itself as they went, as they had not seen it for many months. As with most everything else in Equestria, train service had been abruptly cut off when The Signal had arrived. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine some horrible accident had stopped the locomotive in its literal tracks, wherever it might have been located at the time.

But to see it in person was still quite a shock to the trio.

Five days after leaving Ponyville, the three had come across the Friendship Express.

They had been traversing endless plains of long, dried grass for almost two days by then, thankful for the cover the blades provided. The perfectly flat land and the endless sea of head-height grass had meant that it was quite impossible to be seen by anything that didn’t fly, and unicorns were thankfully incapable of such. They had not seen a single soul in that time.

Earlier that morning, they had reached a low plateau, the road climbing the side of a short, steep cliff. The railway had been out of sight at the time, far to the east to possibly avoid having to cleave a trench through the solid rock wall in order to scale to its summit. From the edge of the drop, they had looked back on the road they had come from; from the grassy plains at their hooves to the distant verdant hills far to the north, to the location where they imagined Ponyville to be, hidden beyond the horizon.

A sight much more inviting than the road ahead.

The top of the plateau was barren, only a few patches of yellow grass peppering the surface. Reddish-brown dust and dull stones made up the rest of the landscape, quietly absorbing the sun’s heat in the windless expanse. A few boulders loomed, casting their shadows on what scarce living plants lingered; some sort of short, thin vine.

With the sun beating down on them they had paused under the shade of one such boulder for the mid-day food and the guidance of the signal detector. For having seen it in action a few times already, Scootaloo swore it seemed to stabilize just a bit faster than before. Spike wasn’t fully convinced, though he had to admit that, in theory, increased proximity to one of The Signal’s sources would have that effect. Still, there remained much distance to travel, as the needle stubbornly refused to change its orientation by more than one or two degrees each day.

With their lunch over, they had resumed their journey.

Their legs were stained from the dust their steps disturbed, giving them the look of ancient rusted pipes. Rarity had not complained, though it had evidently been bothering her. She had made her mind days before though; she had promised herself that she would keep the whining to a minimum. She was one of the lucky few after all, and, as such, had no right or reason to complain. A great number of ponies were suffering much more than her, more than she could imagine. Too many ponies, in fact, which was one of the many reasons she was doing this in the first place.

Besides, loudly bemoaning her woes in a high-pitched squeal in the otherwise silent desert was a surefire way to attract unwanted attention.

Hours later, the railway had come back into view, forewarned by its steely silvery glint in the rusted wasteland. Not long after, they had begun perceiving a low, persistent rumble. A few minutes after, a dark gash could be seen in the distance, as well as a strange cluster of triangular shapes.

And now they stood on the edge of the gash, a gorge, hearing the rumble of rushing water down below, and looking at the tangled remains of what used to be a train and a bridge.

The rail line itself showed signs of damage well before the chasm, the steel twisted and slashed, bent and lifted off of the ties. Enormous gashes in the dirt showed the path of wayward cars as they had tumbled away, raking even the old road into an unrecognizable stretch of upturned rocks.

The bridge itself fared no better: only a single section remained in the middle of the chasm, turned sideways on its twisted support. It swayed gently in the breeze blowing through the gorge, emitting sporadic metallic grunts audible over the sound of the river below. It looked like a great tree of rusted steel had grown from the pit, standing tall on its trunk of bent metal and tattered beams. How it was even still standing was a mystery.

It seemed the train had derailed just before the bridge, dragging it and itself down into the ravine with the force of its momentum. The far wall showed signs of impacts, bits of metal planted into the cliffside and rough stones jutting out, yet to be eroded to the smooth finish of the rest of the rock face. Raw wounds in the stone attesting the force of the crash.

“There’s no way we can jump that,” Scootaloo pointed out.

“There has to be a way to the other side,” Spike retorted while cautiously approaching the edge to take a look down below.

“Couldn’t we look for another passage further along the stream?” Rarity was eyeing the chasm with worry, rooted in place at the edge of the road’s first scars. “Be careful, Spike!”

Scootaloo retrieved a pair of binoculars from her numerous pockets and scanned the gorge’s outline all the way to both sides of the horizon. Apart from a few hills to the west, she could see nothing different along the entire length of the ravine.

“That could take us days,” she said dejectedly, “maybe even more than a whole week, and that’s if we even find another way across. I don’t see anything close to that from here.”

“Well you said yourself that we are at a dead end, what else are we going to do?”

“I think there could be a way down there,” Spike stood on a flat stone on the very edge of the precipice, pointing down. The two ponies carefully stepped up next to him, warily glancing at the drop below. The far wall stood bathed in the rusty-brown glow of the sunlight reflected from the wall they stood on, erasing the shadows into a monochrome tint of dull orange swallowing the depths. “Look at the road.”

The turn had been scratched away in the crash, but it was plain to see that the old road bifurcated once it reached the cliff, headed away from them and the broken railway. It swerved to the right and followed the edge for some distance before turning to the left and engaging upon a slope. Hugging the cliff face, it then continued its way downward, passing just below their hooves as it sunk into the depths of the gorge. Much further to their left, they could see another stretch of the path climbing back up on the opposite wall.

“There has to be a bridge or something down there.”

“Can’t say I can see it from up here, though.”

Scootaloo had already set off on the path.

“Well, let’s go find out!”

She jumped over the edge, buzzing her wings to slow her descent as she took a shortcut. She waited for them as they caught up to her the normal way, before entering the shade of the opposite side’s cliff. The shadow felt nice, easing the heat of having been bombarded with sunlight for hours. The few feet of elevation making an enormous difference in the temperature of the air itself. The gorge held shade, moisture and wind, a haven of comfort in the arid wastes. They all sighed in unspoken relief at the sudden comfort as they walked down the slope. The sound of rushing water was much louder, reverberating on the walls and echoing all around them.

The feeling of well-being brought by the new climate was short-lived, however, as the new perspective revealed to them the full extent of the wreckage.

Down below them, in the water, lay piles of twisted metal and boulders, some parts charred black. Skeletal frames of rusting steel spiraled upwards, their ends resting against the scratched walls they had scarred in their descent. In the depths of the clear waters, the dark shapes of yet more debris and wrecked train cars rested. One car had found itself wedged between the walls and had gouged twin streaks in the narrowest part of the cliffs before coming to a rest, apparently suspended in mid-air. Up ahead, the last surviving pillar of the train’s bridge stood, a massive mound of stone and debris leaning against it.

The water had risen, the wreckage serving as a dam, swallowing parts of the road before them. The sound of rushing water came from there, just beyond the steel pillar. One of the cars had landed flush on the road in front of them, before apparently having a massive boulder land on the end closest to them. The result was an easy-to-climb ramp emerging from the shallow water, rising up where the road would have kept descending further below the surface.

“I don’t like this.” Spike said as they moved closer. Whatever may have been the way to the other side, it currently seemed either buried under the wreckage, or lying just beyond it. Just beyond an accidental, unstable, rusting and decaying dam holding a river’s worth of water.

The pillar groaned under the pressure of a sudden gust of wind. The top swayed, dropping minuscule specks of dust and metal flakes below.

Scootaloo hopped over the portion of the road submerged in shallow water, landing on the crushed train car with a metallic clang. She cautiously walked under the train car wedged between the walls some five feet above and stepped up to the front, looking beyond the obstruction of the wreck.

“There’s a bridge!” she gasped, pointing a hoof up ahead. Her expression darkened however, as she added: “But you might want to see that.”

The white mare and the dragon followed, hopping over the water as well and walking up the metallic incline of the train car’s roof. They stopped at the edge, observing, their faces taking on the same grim expression.

There was indeed a bridge. The road lay well below their hooves, still hugging the wall for a dozen feet before turning right to engage over the chasm on an ancient, sturdy stone arch. To their right however, the wreckage stretched across the gorge, containing most of the river except for a rushing jet of water erupting from a cleft in the dam. The powerful stream washed directly across the surface of the bridge with the force of a raging waterfall. The bottom of the gorge stood about thirty feet below them, encased within steep cliffs and continuously swept by the running water.

“How are we supposed to cross that bridge?”

“I don’t think it’s even possible, Spike” Scootaloo pointed with her hoof, adding “Just look at how the hoof-rails have been washed clean off. That water has some major punch.”

“We’d get swept down the gorge in an instant.” Rarity slumped to her belly, her eyes still on the water-swept arch.

Spike stared at the bridge, running every and any scenario that would allow them to safely cross it in his head. Jump over? Unlikely. Weigh themselves down and traverse the jet? As if that wasn’t too stupid to even consider. Pick up some loose wreckage and assemble a makeshift bridge over the existing bridge? Both parts of that plan were insanely reckless and idiotic.

“Hay, check this out!”

Spike and Rarity turned around to see Scootaloo pointing her hoof at a large steel beam, bent and twisted, one of its ends stuck among the wreckage mere inches from where they stood. The other end leaned away from them, coming to a rest on the side of the wedged train car. Once she saw that the others were following her hint, Scootaloo moved her leg to point further along the car, where it connected with the far wall. A small, narrow ridge could be seen just under the broken vehicle, traveling along the cliff until it loomed just over the road on the other side of the gorge.

“You simply cannot be serious, dear. You want us to walk on this?”

As if to second Rarity’s objection, the surviving section of rail looming far above swayed on its twisted pillar with a loud groan and showered them again with a few more flecks of dust and paint chips. Something made a crunching noise from deep within the dam, sending a small plume of smoke upwards through the wreckage. After another low grinding sound emitted from some underwater part, the dam returned to silence.

“The way I see it, it’s either that or taking the round trip around an entire river.”

“Let’s just try it,” Spike said as he stepped forward to inspect the beam. “We don’t have time for detours and we can’t just run around getting lost every time something stands in our way. If this thing held for over three months it’s probably here to stay.”

“Wait!” Scootaloo interrupted as she blocked the dragon’s path, “Let me go first!”

“Why?”

Rarity was the one to answer that time: “It’s only logical, Spike. She’s much lighter than either of us. We should definitely go in increasing order of weight. If the heaviest goes first and makes everything collapse, no one will have gotten to the other side.”

Scootaloo nodded, “Yeah, what she said. Besides, even if that dam held for that long, that thing here hasn’t spent those months fighting against an entire river.” She turned around, first gazing at the barrier of stones and metal below, before letting her eyes wander up the beam to the object of her argument. “For all we know, it can barely hold its own weight and is just waiting for a butterfly to land on it to slide all the way down into the water.”

Seeing as there were no more objections to her argument, the orange filly set one hoof on the steel beam, hesitating for a moment before putting another. The rusted metal didn’t collapse or shift, all three travelers holding their breaths while the pegasus stood over the gap between the train car’s roof and the former support. The seconds passed in silence, no movement to report among the wreckage. With a small gulp, utterly inaudible in the rumble of rushing water below, she pushed with her hind legs, hopping over to the beam and putting her entire weight on it at once.

Nothing.

The group let out a collective sigh of relief, Spike wiping away beads of sweat from his forehead.

The young pegasus began the ascent of the leaning pillar, finding easy purchase on its rough, rusted surface. The train car had been flipped on its side in its fall, and the end of the beam bit into the roof at the point of contact in the middle of a large dent. Scootaloo placed her front hooves over the edge of the vehicle and carefully hopped onto it as well. Once again, nothing made any indication of moving, every part of the accidental bridge remaining undisturbed.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she slowly made her way across.

“Do you think it’s stable?” Spike asked.

“It doesn’t look too wobbly, but I’d rather not test it out any more than we need to, you know?”

“Yeah, don’t go around jumping up and down on it!”

“Don’t worry about that.”

The filly safely reached the far side of the ravine, hopping down to the rocky ridge lining the cliff wall. She turned around to wait for the others to cross, shouting “Your turn now, Spike!”

With hesitant steps, the dragon approached the steel path. From the very edge of the crushed vehicle he stood on, the beam was within arm’s reach. He reached a claw and scratched at the rust. It wasn’t yet running too deep, exposing lines of shimmering metal only a few hair’s widths away. The piece of steel was still sturdy despite the extensive damage that had bent it and shaved most of the paint that once covered it.

He jumped on it.

Digging his claws into the metal, he clung to the beam for a moment, anticipating the inevitable collapse, the thunderous roar of the entire wreck sliding from under him and burying him under the weight of the gorge’s crumbling walls.

Nothing. The rush of water splashing over the olden bridge behind him, the quiet howl of the breeze streaming around his body. A few scrawny birds watching the scene unfold with occasional squawks, as if commenting amongst one another, discussing the events.

He opened his eyes half a second before Scootaloo’s call of “Come on, slowpoke, snap out of it!”

From his right, the naturally soothing voice of the white unicorn worded encouragements in an appeasing tone. “Go on, Spike, you can do it.”

Yes, right. Time to go. His claws unclamped the steel, moving forward along its length. He dared not stand upright, instead crawling along to ensure he could not slip or lose his balance. Both were impossible in his current position, proceeding forward with slow movements and careful grips. Had he possessed a longer tail, he would have wrapped it around the broken support, even further likening him to some sort of chameleon advancing on a branch.

The way to the topmost surface of the wedged compartment was almost an afterthought, lost in the relief of having more space around his feet than there was between them and his head. He stood up, adjusting his bag and the objects therein on his back. The broken, empty windows of the vehicle lined up in front of him, evoking the image of a ladder stretched over a chasm by mountain climbers on some faraway snowy peak. Some bits of fractured glass remained in the frames, and beyond those jagged teeth the interior of the train car housed only silent darkness. Soot and scorch marks lined the edges, as well as most of the cracks where the walls had been scratched or split open by the crash.

Fire had once filled the cabin.

He stepped forward, carefully peeking into the darkened interior. Indistinct shapes seemed to hover within, perched high above the distant foaming water and rocks of the dam visible through the opposite windows. A single… object could be seen silhouetted against the animated background, too shadowed to make out in any significant detail. It could have been a piece of luggage, a structural fragment, or something more… organic.

Spike averted his eyes, trying to convince himself that the object wasn’t a burned, rotting hoof, that he wasn’t walking on a mass grave.

How many bodies were buried beneath him?

The wedged car responded to the regular tap of his feet by bouncing up and down, a slight bobbing motion keeping rhythm with his steps. Halfway through, a loud metallic bang rang out from behind him, a sound not unlike an old kitchen appliance being struck with a hammer, or a thick, wide lead pipe colliding with some unseen obstacle. He immediately spun around to spot the source of the sound, but saw nothing. The bridge-car remained as motionless as him while every soul present held their breath, waiting for something, anything to happen that would hint at what had just made that noise.

Still nothing. The lone pillar gently lurched high above, only a faint whisper of grating metal to be heard from it.

Spike hurried along, going as fast as he possibly could while still taking every measure he could think of to ensure a safer passage. He adjusted his steps to be as fluid and smooth as possible to reduce their impacts, crouching down lower to gain better balance. Once he reached the other side, he threw himself to the ridge, landing in the arms of Scootaloo, who had thought ahead and moved to intercept him.

She let him gently drop to the ground, both youths then turning to look at the grown mare still remaining on the other side.
Although, she wasn’t actually there anymore. After a few well-timed gasps, they began calling her name in confusion and fear. Their cries were almost immediately answered as Rarity came running up the flattened train car, her legs dripping wet with a thin, clear reddish mud.

“What? Did something happen? Why are you screaming?”

“What were you doing down there?” Scootaloo asked irritatingly, frustrated by the sudden fear she now knew had been unfounded.

Rarity began wringing the muddy water out of her coat, running her hooves all over her skin to wipe away the dirty liquid.

“I was washing myself a bit. This red dirt is just horrible on my coat,” she said, ignoring how Scootaloo rolled her eyes. In a whisper they couldn’t hear, she added: “I don’t want to die filthy.”

She eventually picked up her saddlebags and hefted them to her back. She took a step towards the fallen beam, her leg stopping in mid-air as the pillar groaned again in the wind. She waited for a bit, looking up at the threatening ruin above as it visibly swayed back and forth, teetering over her head.

With a beep breath, she closed her eyes and set one hoof on the steel beam, lightly pawing at it until she was certain her appendage wouldn’t slip. Another soon joined it, further ahead, still unsure and fidgeting. The third and fourth followed. The white mare was now standing fully on the beam, carefully balanced, her eyes still closed in concentration or fear. The sloshing of water whispered in the silence.

In five short steps, she ascended the rusty incline and reached the flat surface of the train. It groaned lightly as she set hoof on it, but otherwise remained motionless. Her movements were slow and hesitant as she stepped forth, crossing the gorge on the precarious catwalk. She kept her head pointed forward, staring straight ahead in concentration, every methodical step bringing her closer to where she could at last relax.

The pillar groaned and swayed again.

A gust of wind swept through the gorge, making Rarity instinctively crouch on the train’s carcass. The pillar above lurched, filling the air with a stuttering, grinding sound of crunching metal. Some loud, dull percussion sounded from above, making all three travelers look up just in time to see a large, terribly heavy piece of steel plummeting down. A section of the bridge’s upper structure had been shaken loose, tumbling through the air in near-perfect silence.

Rarity’s scream was nearly lost in the deafening impact of the piece of debris as it slammed into the wedged train mere feet from where she stood. Glass shards from the window frames were sent flying upwards while the wall bent, and the piece of steel bounced away wildly to end its course into the pile of rocks and metal below.

The glass rained down, plinking on the metal, adding its own clatter to the lingering echo of the debris’ fall. Rarity stood wide-eyed, legs spread apart as she panted in terror, paying no mind to the bits of glass sprinkling themselves onto her mane. She instead could only notice the slow, rhythmic beat traveling up her hooves, its tempo accelerating as a low grinding noise began emanating from behind her. The metallic whine turned into a loud thump when the train car suddenly sunk a few inches lower. A single “pop” was heard, soon followed by a minuscule twinkle of steel. The mare looked down to see, between her shaking hooves, a loose rivet spinning on the wall she stood on.

Peeking behind, she could see the rusted beam she had climbed from had punched through the roof of the train and was now biting into the horizontal wall as the wreck attempted to slide even lower down the gorge. Either the roof would soon split from the wall, or the beam was about to rip free of the carcass altogether.

She turned her head back forward, noticing Scootaloo pinning Spike on the ground to prevent him from rushing back up on the vehicle.

“RUN!” the filly screamed, “JUST RUN!”

Another rivet snapped behind her, hitting and stinging her ankle. She was sprinting before she even realized it herself, her hooves banging against the metal wall as she ran for her life. She galloped, she jumped, she leapt across the length of the train, tackling the stone wall with very little restraint as the metal groaned once again behind. The makeshift catwalk slid even further in a shriek, the steel beam still propping it up curving under the weight, more rivets snapping off and peppering the cliff faces with their impacts.

The entire dam rumbled, screaming with the howls of tortured metal and stones cracking under pressure, groaning and grinding and screeching while the teetering pillar shook. The sounds weakened, losing their volume gradually while the three hurried along the rocky ridge.

And then nothing.

Their run slowed down, and they halted, fearfully looking back over their shoulders at the stabilizing wreck, its silence deafening after the fury of mere moments ago. Loose stones tumbled into the river, their dull clatter lost in the sound of the rushing water. A final rivet popped, arching nearly to the top of the gorge before plunging directly into the river with an inaudible splash.

One of the birds squawked in the silence.

They quietly hopped down to the road, observing the wreckage once they had reached the relative safety of solid ground. The wedged compartment still stood in its precarious aerial position, the edge of its roof torn open into a black scowl by the steel beam stretching the wall away.

“That,” Scootaloo whispered, as if afraid her voice would make the wreck collapse, “was close.”

The others didn’t respond. It was, after all, a fairly obvious affirmation. Rarity held a frantically shaking hoof to her chest, trying to catch her breath, while Spike watched her with worry. The pillar groaned softly above.

The orange filly eyed it with caution. “We should leave before this gets any worse.” With the immediate danger passed, her eyes wandered downwards, taking in the sight of the ancient drowning bridge. The water splashing on its surface radiated outwards in a wide, flowing puddle, caught by the remains of the old stone hoofrails to be brought to the edge of the road as a small stream.

“But we should fill our canteens first.”

She bent down to gather more water for the road ahead, Spike soon following her lead. He took it upon himself to do it for Rarity as well, the mare still visibly shaken.

Their reserves once more full, the trio made their way up the road. Their steps were measured and methodical, both to avoid stepping on the multitude of rocks and debris littering the path and to forcefully bring themselves to a calmer disposition. Every step they took away from the sporadically groaning ruins eased their nerves, until they at last emerged in the waning sunlight, crossing the threshold where the ravine’s walls muffled the sounds within to a mere whisper.

They kept walking south, eager to leave the train and its ghosts behind.

Only minutes after they left the shade of the gorge, a loud booming noise erupted behind them, loud enough to be heard from the depths of the ravine, loud enough to send tremors through their legs. They turned in time to witness what was left of the ruined structure of the bridge swaying and falling to the side, seconds before a thunderous clash sent a monumental plume of smoke and dust sailing high above the gorge. All was then silent once more.

The three exchanged looks of terror and nothing else, each knowing full well that they didn’t need words to understand what had just happened, and how close they had been to it.

They walked a little faster from then on.

Author's Notes:

Here you go, a slightly meatier chapter for you all to enjoy. Less emotional introspection and more worldbuilding for a change. This is, I think, the first time I've decided to consciously and deliberately go against canon, retconning Braeburn's line in "over a barrel" about Appleloosa being entirely built within the previous year. Screw that noise, sixty years ago it is.

Also, proofreading this made me realize I use the word "as" way too much. I need to watch that.

Have a good day, and a good read! (except putting this at the end of the chapter basically defeats the purpose of wishing that in the first place. Oh well.)

P.S. I looove comments.

5: Appleloosa

They made camp not far from there, in the shade of a particularly large boulder; the cavernous space between its underside and the hard stone ground proving to be an appealing shelter in which to spend the night.

They spoke very little, occasionally peering north towards the gorge looming invisibly in the distance.

They had come so close to death.

Rarity shivered at the mere thought, the memory of the falling section of steel beam replaying in her mind every few minutes. For an instant, she had thought it was heading straight for her, aiming at her very body, seeking to end her life in a single bloody hit. And it shamed, terrified her to think that, had that truly been the case, she would have been unable to dodge or avoid it. She had been utterly paralyzed, frozen in absolute terror, incapable of merely screaming while the steel fell. If that object had been on a direct collision course with her, she would only have stared at it until the moment it crushed her skull in a red splatter.

She was only alive through sheer luck. What would happen once it ran out? And when would that happen?

“Are you okay, Rarity?”

Spike’s question cut the silence, an echoing quality to it probably caused by the boulder’s mass above them. The white mare snapped her eyes away from staring at the trembling hoof she absent-mindedly held aloft before her.

“Yes, I’m fine I- I’m fine. Get some sleep, dear.”

She turned away from him and began preparing for the night.

He simply watched her as she winced while filing the nub of her horn, while she brushed her mane in the growing darkness, and long after she finally curled upon herself with her head on the softer section of her saddlebags.

He watched her agitated form in the night, her mumbled cries and twitching limbs uselessly fighting the nightmares he knew would haunt her for many nights to come.

He watched until, in a single weary blink, the shade of night was replaced by the blinding morning sun, and he found himself lying on the ground with his limbs and tail curled up to his torso. He sat up from where he lay, noticing the claw marks around him indicating his own nightmares hadn’t forgotten to pay him their nightly visit.

Scootaloo was already strapping her various pouches and pockets to her body while absently gnawing on an old, dry biscuit. Rarity’s mane glinted in the sunlight as she brushed it again, returning it to the calculated shape it had lost during the night.

He chuckled as he retrieved the signal detector from his bags and set it on the ground. They seemed to have settled into a routine; Rarity making herself presentable for the miles of hopefully empty landscape they would soon resume traversing, Scootaloo erasing all traces of their prolonged presence here, and himself discerning their next direction. They’d done some minor variation of that every morning since they had left Ponyville. Next they would eat their actual breakfast, pack their things, then leave.

And so they did.

The morning sun was rapidly heating up the land once more, ridding the hardened earth of the small amount of cool moisture it had gathered in the night. The red dust soon resumed its powdery assault on the travelers’ colors, coating the hairs of the ponies’ coats and scaling the crevices of the young dragon’s scales.

“Stupid dust, stupid heat, stupid everything!”

Rarity’s mood had been rather poor since dawn, and it had only gotten sourer as the day advanced. Her sporadic tongue clicks had devolved into a quiet yet constant, frustrated and mumbled rant about most of everything she could see between herself and the horizon.

“Didn’t sleep much last night?” Scootaloo asked as the other two passed her. She was perched on a rock upon which she had climbed to get a better view of the path ahead.

The white mare wordlessly agreed with a rather undignified grunt, raising her eyes to the sky as she answered.

“I swear that damnable train wreck will give me nightmares for weeks! I’m not even sure how much time I actually slept, if any at all! I need my beauty sleep, damnit!”

The young pegasus caught up to them and returned to the front of the group, ever vigilant to the dangers ahead. There seemed to be none, which, as Applejack had taught her, meant she should be even more on guard.

“Hey, well, welcome to my world, a world full of endless days and horrible nights. There are snacks in the insomnia club lounge.”

The unicorn only grunted at the dragon’s attempt at humor and continued on her way.

Spike watched as Scootaloo climbed up and down various stones, crags and ridges, the filly observing their surroundings in every direction, constantly swerving her head left and right and scanning every nook and cranny of the ragged landscape they traversed.

Over the hours, millennia of erosion had slowly become apparent, digging trenches in their way and forcing the old road to oscillate down and through the criss-crossing pattern of gullies that marred the surface of the ancient plateau. The path would twist and turn, following a dry riverbed of dust for some time before ducking between the ridges to embark on another when the two shallow, immature canyons met. This went on for a while, the road jaggedly making its way south under the watchful eye of the train tracks who’d had the luxury of being built on what remained of the plateau’s surface thanks to their modernity. The road had to contend with its age-old path, decided in times immemorial by the hooves of ancient travelers who had merely found the path of least resistance across the clawed landscape.

The riverbeds showed increasingly frequent signs of vegetation, solitary grasses and desiccated bushes profiting from the looser sand to reach deeper with their roots. The crumbling ridges and occasional arches became scarcer as the day went on, their opposition to the plants waning as they did. Soon, the stone that once made up the massive bulk of the kingdom-wide slab could only be seen in towering chimneys and crumbling crags, few and far between. By the time the travelers made camp that night, they were mostly surrounded by cacti and scant yellow plants. They set their bags down in the shade of a pillar of stone, under the branches of a leafless, spindly tree.

Rarity had quieted down by midday, the fatigue of a bad night’s sleep followed by a busy day catching up to her. As soon as they had settled on a spot to spend the night, she had unceremoniously collapsed where she’d stood before half-heartedly wriggling her saddlebags to the side. She simply lay there for a moment, her eyes drooping while the others prepared to go to bed.

“This probably used to be a beach,” she said listlessly, her gaze lost on some grain of sand, her voice cutting through the silence despite its weakened state.

“What, really?” Spike drew his attention away from the two compasses, the one embedded in the steel cube having nearly finished deciding its orientation.

“What I’d really what to know,” Scootaloo swallowed her mouthful of dried fruits, looking at the older mare in the dimming sunlight, “Is what that has to do with anything.”

Rarity answered in a groan, rubbing her hooves over her face. “Oooh I don’t know! I’m exhausted but I don’t want to sleep yet. I suppose I’m just talking to stay awake.”

Spike glanced at Scootaloo, who simply shrugged and went back to her meal, both of them hidden from Rarity’s sight by the hooves she still held to her brow.

“Well, okay then. I guess talking never hurt anyone. What makes you say that, Rarity?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple, darling,” the mare began, dropping her hooves back to the ground; one of them pawed gently at the sand as her voice became slightly more animated. “The sand is too light in color; it couldn’t possibly be that way if it had been eroded straight from the badlands back there. It would be just as red and full of iron as those rocks everywhere. That sand is probably full of sedimentary calcium, deposited by millions of years of marine animal shells being ground to dust.”

“But we’re in the middle of a desert,” Scootaloo objected, “There can’t be fish and seashells around here!”

“Do you have any idea how utterly old these rocks are?” she asked, pointing at the looming column above, “This plateau we crossed might easily predate all life on this planet. It would take millions upon millions of years to erode those massive, sturdy stones to what we see today; a lot can happen in all that time. Maybe plate tectonics pushed this land above sea level, maybe the continent closed in around this sea and made it into a lake that gradually dried off, who knows?” She chuckled, “I bet if we dig deep enough, we could even find a great number of aqueous geodes.”

“Acke-what?” The filly’s face contorted in a moment of confusion, looking to the older mare for clarification.

“Aqueous, dear; it basically means ‘water’. Do you know what geodes are?” She paused as the filly nodded and explained what she knew of them, reciting the lessons of her schooldays. “Well, aqueous geodes are what happens when one forms deep in a large body of water; it can trap some of that water within itself. If the geode stays in good enough condition, that water stays inside nearly forever.”

“Oh wow that sounds delicious.”

A small smile graced the unicorn’s lips as she blinked tiredly. “I’ve heard they are indeed, Spike. They are somewhat of a delicacy among dragons. They describe them as ‘juicy’. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to get you one.”

As Spike smiled absently, no doubt lost in gluttonous thoughts, the sun finally set. Its last sliver of light dipped behind a distant hill, plunging the three in the bright dusk of the night’s immediate birth.

Rarity rested her head on her crossed forelegs and yawned.

“How do you know so much about this?” Scootaloo’s question snapped the others out of their reveries. “That’s the kind of stuff I’d expect Twilight to know, not… uh, you. No offense.”

“Oh I bet she does know a lot more than me on the subject, dear. As for me, well, did you never wonder why my cutie mark isn’t strictly related to fashion? The thing about cutie marks is that sometimes they may… mislead you a bit.”

Rarity straightened up, looking for words. Her eyes wandered up as she recalled the past, as if trying to avoid being distracted from her memories by the faces of her audience. A shy smile crept up her lips as she continued.

“After I got mine, my parents took it upon themselves to… guide me, as it were. They began searching for occupations that fit not only my interests and cutie mark, but that would also be lucrative. They wanted to send me towards a bright future, I think they really did. So, in short, I may have, upon their suggestion, taken a few geology-centered classes at some point of my higher education. I could have become a prospector or even a wealthy mine owner had I stayed on that path.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because at some point along the way, I realized that fashion could very well be more than a mere hobby. I had the flair, the talent, the drive to do it, and the –ahem- need for attention required to make it a very real career. So I dropped everything, blew the rest of my college funds into buying and renovating the old building that would become my boutique, and… the rest is history, I suppose.”

“Wow.”

Some nocturnal bird called in the growing darkness, welcoming the night as one would greet the day. The air remained still.

“I think we should leave the road tomorrow.” Spike’s voice cut through the silence as he stared at the signal detector. “It’s pointing exactly south-east now. I don’t think the path will be useful much longer.”

Scootaloo shook her head. “Nah, we should keep going for a while. If I read the map right, we’re not far from Appleloosa. We could resupply there if it’s not a ghost town yet. We’ll probably need to anyway, actually; there’s not a lot of stuff to eat in the desert.”

Scratching his chin, Spike answered “Yeah, you’re right. It won’t be much of a detour, and I am curious to see how they’re doing over there. What do you think, Rarity?”

The white mare was simply lying face-first on the ground, breathing slowly and regularly in the thickening shade. The two youths shared a quiet chuckle and a smile.

“Welp,” Scootaloo rose to her hooves to lay her bedroll properly. “I guess us adults should go to bed too, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, you do that. I’ll just watch things for a while.”

The young dragon turned his back to the rest of the group, absent-mindedly scanning the surroundings as the filly lay down to sleep. There were sand, rocks, and scarce vegetation, the train tracks glinting in the moonlight some yards away, unmoving in the darkness. The sudden whisper of flapping wings made him look up to spot a bird taking flight in the night sky, diving from the column of stone above. It flew before the crescent moon and further, its presence only betrayed by the stars momentarily blinking shut as it passed.

The rest of the night was quiet.

The rural town of Appleloosa turned out to be even closer than they’d anticipated. By noon the next day they stood on a gentle rocky hill overlooking the community.

The blue sky above was marbled with white streaks of stringy clouds, and a very faint dusty haze bleached its color. The wind whispered lightly, just enough to ease the heat of the sun as they looked down on the small town.

At a distance, it seemed… startlingly normal. Ponies walked the streets in peace, stopping to chat amongst each other and generally seeming to lead the same lives as before. While attentive scrutiny could detect a few signs that not all was as well as ever -namely a few suspiciously gutted houses-, the village was apparently no worse for wear.

The travelers set on the final stretch of the road leading them to the town. It was a gentle but winding slope, giving them ample time to ponder how they would approach the village, and how they would be received within. All three of them were also admittedly eager to learn how The Signal had affected Appleloosa.

To say the townsfolk were surprised to see visitors would have been an understatement. Most ran away to hide as soon as the three travelers were spotted, others armed themselves as best they could, a few simply froze and stared.

The tension dropped quickly when the newcomers’ intentions were understood to be anything but hostile. Questions were asked, from many mouths and from all directions. The most common were along the lines of “where did you come from?” and “what’s going on out there?”

The barrage of questions left no room to answer until a loud and cheerfully commanding voice cut through the din.

“Alright everypony don’t be rude now! Let our guests breathe a little, there’ll be plenty of time for talk later! Come on now, shoo!” Rarity’s ears perked up as she recognized to whom belonged the familiarly accented voice.

The crowd parted away from Braeburn’s approaching figure, the young stallion waving his hat around to disperse the ponies.

“Now don’t be too put off by the townsfolk, friends,” he spoke around the brim of the hat still clutched in his mouth. “We’re all jus’ curious is all! We’ve not had guests in over a month!”

He put the hat back on his head and finally opened his eyes, having held them shut as protection against the flopping headwear for the last several seconds. His eyes immediately lit up upon taking a good look at the newcomers.

“Why hello there! I recognize you! You’re that friend of cousin Applejack’s! Miss… uh,” He faltered, his brow furrowing in a moment of hesitation.

“Rarity,” said mare answered.

“Oh, right! How could I forget such a lovely name? And Spike! Friend of the buffaloes! And this little lady I haven’t been introduced to yet!”

He had tipped his hat to Rarity while she reminded him of her name, shook Spike’s hand vigorously as he greeted him, and held his hoof to the filly for the same.

“Scootaloo,” she stated simply as she returned the hoofshake.

“Well, miss Scootaloo, it’s a pleasure to meet you, and a real darn joy to see you both again! What brings you folks all the way down here to AAAAAppleloosa, if you don’t mind me askin’?”

“Well,” Spike began, “it’s kind of a long story, but-“

“Say no more, little buddy! Where are my manners? You must all be mighty thirsty and hungry after that walk of yours through the desert, and I didn’t even invite you for a snack or anythin’. Shame on me! ‘Sides, like my papa used to say: any long story deserves to be told over a good meal. Now follow me!”

The energetic stallion immediately turned and walked away, motioning for them to follow. The trio exchanged unsure glances, but ultimately found no objections to the idea of food and shelter from the sun.

They hurriedly caught up to the perky farmer, passing the buildings and houses of the mostly-intact town. It didn’t take more than a few passing glances around for Spike to spot what had happened to the few houses that lay in skeletal ruins; a green house sporting red planks, a shed’s roof covered with a scab of haphazardly-nailed red boards, both patches matching the remains of a partly-collapsed shack off the side of the road. A few piles of scrapped lumber lying uselessly, nearly out of sight but still visible in all their discarded decay. The tall, red clock tower missing one of its faces entirely.

Even Appleloosa used to have its fair share of unicorns.

Braeburn kept talking as he led them through town, mostly about the ponies who had accosted the travelers upon their arrival, and their reasons for having such an insistent curiosity.

“ …She has a cousin in Hoofington, you know, so she’s rightly curious about what’s happened and all. I don’t really know what’s got Dust Bowl so agitated though, he usually keeps to himself…”

The apple farmer led them to a modest house on the edge of town, overlooking the orchard. A few trees seemed to have been felled and dragged to the side some time ago.

They entered the dusty home, all four filing inside the one-pony living space. The sunlight of the advancing afternoon made its way inside through a remarkably unremarkable window, casting a bright patch of light perfectly centered on the modest table off to one side of the main room. The sunlit square propagated light in every direction, illuminating the entire space. Very few decorations adorned the room, practical and austere furniture lining the walls in every corner where an armful of simple farming tools didn’t litter the floor.

The host directed them to sit at the radiant table, gallantly taking Rarity’s bags before heading off to an adjacent room, where he was heard fidgeting with what sounded like plates and glasses. He came back soon after, carrying upon his back a carefully-balanced tray of apples in a great bowl and a pitcher of water.

Spike’s stomach groaned eagerly at the sight, reminding him of just how long he had gone without fresh, proper food. While Scootaloo had been an absolute boon in that regard, even the foraging she had been so diligent about had not come close to topping their dried rations as their main source of sustenance; and although the wild berries and surprisingly flavorful roots she had routinely found were a welcome addition to their diets of the past weeks, they could simply not match proper cultivated food.

Braeburn put the offered meal down on the table and sat, transfixed for a moment by the spectacle of Spike literally swallowing one of the fruits whole without chewing.

“So,” the earth pony began, his face bathed in the reflected sunlight of the table. “Just what brings you ‘round these here parts, folks?”

Scootaloo washed down her first bite of apple with a bit of water, Spike’s own mouth currently busy crushing a second whole fruit while Rarity seemed lost in some uncomfortable thoughts.

“Before we get to that,” she said, contemplating the apple in her hooves before reluctantly deciding that the second bite could wait for her to finish her sentence, “How’re things been going around here?”

“Well, there ain’t been much going on since that day where all the unicorns went…” The stallion waved a hoof in the air, apparently looking for a proper word, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his movement was awkwardly reminiscent of the rude circular motion usually depicting mental instability. “…loopy, I guess.” He ignored Spike who seemed to have taken a sudden and keen interest in something located in the confines of his dusty bag. “When they got violent, most of us just hid somewhere. When we came out, they were gone. I guess they left ‘cause they didn’t want to do any more damage. We... found notes of apology and such, and they even buried some of the poor folks they got. And then… well, nothin’. We had maybe two visitors, not countin’ you, since then. Is it true what they said? That it happened like that everywhere?”

“As far as we can tell, yes.” Rarity almost whispered, stubbornly avoiding eye contact with everyone present.

The blonde pony leaned back in his chair, the act bringing him out of the bright zone of light bouncing off the table. “How?” he simply asked, “What the hay happened?”

“That’s why we’re here, actually,” Spike said as he theatrically slammed the detector on the table, its cover open to show the compass’ needle crawling along. “We’re on our way to find out. There’s this… soundwave, this Signal in the air, that no one can really hear, that did this to the unicorns. I don’t know how many sources of it there are, but this compass points to the nearest one. And that’s where we’re going right now. We just thought we’d resupply here before moving on.”

“Besides, it’s just plain good to know that Ponyville’s not the only town left in Equestria.”

The stallion was silent for a moment, looking blankly at the table. Scootaloo returned to her apple after speaking, her companions already doing the same.

“Now that you mention it,” Braeburn straightened up as he talked, “How’s Ponyville? How’d it go over there? How’s… the family?”

Immediately, the farmer found that he didn’t quite like the uncomfortable looks shared between the young dragon and the other adult present, and that the immense grief that momentarily twisted the pegasus’ features was an extremely ill omen.

“Ponyville… it, uh… it was pretty bad,” Spike eventually said, keeping his eyes glued to the thin red needle. “We had something like seventy unicorns over there. I don’t really know how many ponies there were in total, but last I heard there was a hundred and eighty left. Total.”

“What about the Apples?”

“Big Mac is fine,” Rarity began, taking it upon herself to approach the bad news with some tact, “still working on the farm as usual. Granny Smith is still the same comforting pillar as always. I would have expected her to be quite shaken and stressed by the recent events, but she just seems to believe that everything working out just fine in the end is simply set in stone already.”

“Heh, well of course you can’t bring her down! Good ol’ Granny…” The stallion smiled in the silence. “But… is there something you’re not telling m-“

“Applebloom is dead.” The light itself seemed to drain from the room at Scootaloo’s blunt words. The three other occupants could only let their mouths hang open for a few seconds, both Spike and Rarity the first to recover enough to share a glance between them. Braeburn stared at the filly for a time before looking down and bringing his hat to his chest. Before anyone could say anything else, the young pegasus had dropped to the ground and passed under the table on her way to the door.

“I need some air.” Were her only words as she exited, the subtle crack in her voice lost in the creaking of the door as it closed; a firm impact, though lacking the violence of a true slam.

The cold void in the air lingered, with only a few distant sounds from outside to remind them that they hadn’t all suddenly gone deaf. It was finally Rarity who chose to break the silence, avoiding Braeburn’s gaze by staring at the young dragon across the table from her. It didn’t matter much, as the stallion remained hunched over, his mane hiding his face as best it could.

“Applejack… she took it pretty hard, honestly. I was there when… when she was told about it.” Her own tears sprang forth. “I’ve never seen her so… so utterly destroyed as that day. Never before, never since. I… I could swear I h-heard her break. I couldn’t even-“

“Enough!” A hoof slammed on the table. “That’s enough! Just, just stop talking!”

The white mare turned away, a choked apology escaping her lips. The two ponies stood frozen in place.

“She didn’t even want us to leave,” Spike continued, hoping to bring up a more neutral subject. “She doesn’t want anyone to leave Ponyville. It’s like she thinks the entire rest of the world is on fire or something. She’s paranoid, controlling and aggressive these days. And since she basically controls all the food in town and has her own army, no one dares stand up to her.”

Braeburn finally looked up as Spike talked, confusion and disbelief slowly creasing his face.

“I think,” Rarity interjected, “she is… scared. I believe she feels responsible for everyone’s safety, that the least of her mistakes could cost somepony’s life. It’s holding her back, paralysing her.” She locked eyes with the farmer. “Braeburn, she needs help. She needs her family’s support.”

“Yeah. She needs it more than her friends’, obviously,” Spike added. “At the very least she’d see that Ponyville isn’t the center of the world.”

Braeburn’s eyes had wandered back down to his hooves, and he didn’t bother looking up to ask:

“How? How am I s’posed to have a word with her? Walk all the way to Ponyville? Wait for the darn train to come pick me up? Did y’all even see the sodding thing anywhere lately? She ain’t exactly next do-”

“We did, actually,” Rarity cut him off sternly, holding a hoof to silence the earth pony when he looked back up, ready to continue his rant. “It crashed in that gorge two days north of here, taking the bridge with it. We passed the wreck just before it collapsed. I don’t think the road north is an option anymore.”

Pre-empting whatever the stallion was about to say next, Spike simply stated “I could send her a letter. It’d get to Ponyville in minutes.”

The usually perky farmer lost himself in his thoughts for a moment, looking increasingly defeated as the seconds ticked by.

“You’re right,” he relented, “sounds like she really needs some friendly words.” He rose from his seat, heading for the adjacent room. “I’ll have to think about this for a while. You’re welcome to rest here for the night, I’ll set y’all up later.”

There was so much pain in his tone, so much sorrow. It sounded like a complete stranger to Spike. It was enough to make him regret coming here. Bringing news, he realized, now meant bringing bad news, no matter to whom or from where they came. They would probably spread much sorrow on their journey. Would it have been better to lie? Would it be best to do so in the future? He cast his gaze back to the detector, its red needle twitching south-east, pointing almost mockingly at the source of this suffering. His eyes narrowed and fire swelled up in his gut in a moment of overwhelming rage. Whoever or whatever caused this all would be made to suffer. He would make It squirm, make It regret, and, if at all possible, make it beg for release.

He swore it to himself as he watched the stallion turn away, a stallion broken by the mere mention of the distant atrocities caused by The Signal.

Before he could leave the room, Rarity asked him if there was a place nearby for her to clean herself a bit. The farmer spoke of a shower outside, behind the house. The white unicorn looked horrified for but an instant, before donning a bright, somewhat forced smile and declaring that it would be just perfect. Both ponies left the room after the exchange, leaving Spike quietly sipping water alone, thinking. Thinking about the Apple family, about the train, about its passengers, about The Signal and the countless ponies ruined by it.

Thinking, inevitably, about Twilight.

Hey Fluttershy. We’re alive, we’re safe, we’re getting closer. That letter is for Applejack.

Fluttershy, as Spike already wrote, we are still in good health, don’t worry about us. I am sorry for leaving so suddenly, but I feel Applejack wouldn’t have let me otherwise. Take care of yourself dear. I miss you, and Applejack and Twilight as well. I promise we’ll come back.

P.S. Scootaloo is with us. I suppose it would have been a good idea to mention this sooner.

The piece of parchment was wrapped around the sealed envelope, its edges creased around the stationery to keep it clinging securely. Three ponies, each of a different tribe, each one damaged in their own way, observed the young dragon burning the light bundle of paper in a tongue of green fire. The sparkling cloud of smoke and dust headed north.

The four stood in the morning’s light, the sky a beige haze above their heads in the young day. The juvenile pegasus, the white unicorn, and the young dragon sporadically adjusted their bags, trying to acclimate themselves to the recent increase in weight from the generous supplies provided by the earth pony.

Their farewells were not a happy affair, their wishes of mutual good luck and good health were spoken without smiles, but they still remained honest and truthful.

The three travelers left, leaving the farmer to his duties and obligations. To his grief.

They turned their backs on him and walked away in the dusty, hazy air, heading south-east and leaving the road behind.

Author's Notes:

That magic moment when I write something sad enough to make myself cry slightly emotional, filling me with a whole additional bundle of sadness that I can then pour on the page in a self-feeding loop of sorrow.
I am such a jerk.

Bah! I still feel like that conversation with Braeburn went by too fast, too short. asgsagjbl.

Also, chapter 3: "Blahaha, research is for squares!"
Chapters 4 and 5: "Wikipedia, tell me all you know about train tracks and geology! My story about magical talking ponies must be backed by proper science! IT MUST!"

P.S. Comments are the source of my power.

6: Climb

The wind howled furiously, scratching and scraping and beating savagely around. Screeching everywhere among the stones and rocks, carrying streams of sand so thick that light itself was obscured to a perpetual twilight. The curtains of grainy particles flew about, whirling up and down, twirling in every direction, none of whom were pleasant. The sound was deafening, howling as if to evoke a gargantuan bird voicing the anger of a thousand scorned demons.

“We should have stayed in Appleloosa!"

The normally distinguished voice had lost all its usual sophistication as its owner had to scream to merely be heard, the sing-song intonations replaced by a strained, hoarse shout.

The wind kept screeching, nearly drowning out the voice as it added, “Braeburn warned us that there was a sandstorm coming!”

“Hey! We all agreed that we had no time to waste for a ‘maybe’ storm to pass! It was a group decision!”

That second voice sounded just as labored as the first, forcing its way up a parched, gasping throat.

“That still doesn’t make it a good decision, Spike!”

A gust whipped about, making the travelers tense up, bracing themselves against the push of the heavy wind, dense at it was with sand. It easily felt as though it was close to being composed of as much solid matter as air.

The young dragon’s claws dug into the ancient stone, gripping tightly to compensate for the paradoxically abrasive lubrication of the loose sand roiling in every nook of the rugged hillside. His every scale felt numb, having been constantly drummed upon by the prickly wind for several hours. He could feel the thousands of microscopic impacts of the grains hitting his hide, beating a tempo of several hundred steps every second. His scales could take it, at least. Or so he hoped, at any rate. He could only imagine the discomfort his companions felt if even his steely scales were being battered to near-paralysis.

Through the hastily-tied piece of cloth wrapped around his head to lessen the wind’s reach into his eyes, he looked ahead.

Just a few feet in front, in the mineral mist of the sandstorm, two ponies preceded him. Both were hidden beneath makeshift robes of blankets wrapped around their bodies, an attempt to protect themselves from the sand blasting around everywhere. He had to look up at them, both being a bit further up the slope they were climbing.

Although his diamond-like claws made climbing the moderate slope rather easy despite the conditions, he had elected to linger behind his companions in case one of them slipped. Though he wasn’t quite sure how much help he could actually be in such an event, it still seemed wise to the dragon.

Hooves were proving objectively poor tools for the task. Although the scraggly surface of the hill was rife with literally hundreds of points of purchase, the loose sand sifting and shifting underhoof, in tandem with the terrible climate conditions caused both ponies to repeatedly slip and stumble on their climb.

In order to counter the handicap of her natural buoyancy and lightness, Scootaloo had been saddled with the task of carrying the group’s water reserves. The extra weight thankfully grounded her, preventing the pegasus from being swept up in the storm. Unfortunately, it also took its toll on her stamina.

The wind’s ululations went up and down in pitch, rising to shrieking heights before falling to low, rumbling depths. Not once in its recital of howls did it stop.

“Can’t we just huddle up somewhere and wait for it to pass?” The white mare coughed for a moment after speaking.

“Are you insane?” The filly’s reply was almost buried in the confines of the cloth wrapped around her muzzle. “If we did find a nice little crack with-AHACK- without wind we’d get buried alive!”

“And it’s not like there’s any shelter around here anyway!” Spike chimed in, taking a moment to look around as best he could through the brown violent fog. “We’d be buffeted just as bad as right now!”

Small stony spires stood everywhere around the three, small pointed protuberances sticking this way and that out of the general mass of the slope in various states of erosion. A momentary thought passed through Spike’s mind, who pondered Rarity’s theory about the region having once been a great body of water in eons past. Standing among the diminutive towers as he was, he could easily feel akin to a diver in the midst of a great field of volcanic chimneys or giant prehistoric polyps. He might actually have been standing on what was an ocean floor some millions of years prior.

A long, possibly exaggerated, raspy whine from Rarity cut through the cacophony of the churning winds.

Spike noticed he had lingered too far behind in his moment of reflection, prompting him to hurry forward again. Despite the cloth around it, surprising amounts of sand found their way in his mouth. As he was used to chewing much harder minerals, it was a mild annoyance at best for him; though judging from their coughs and sputters, his companions found it to be a bit more than that.

A few minutes passed in the relative silence of the roaring winds and the soft grating rattle of the sand sliding around the travelers. A distant thunderclap echoed, the static discharge of a hundred million particles rubbing against one another for the past three hours.

“This is unbearable!”

“Relax, Rarity! We’re almost out of the storm!”

“How would you even know that?”

“Well I am a pegasus! I can… feel that sorta stuff about weather! Besides, we’re getting pretty high up; the wind won’t be able to carry as much sand up to our faces if we keep climbyaaah!”

A small stone nearly collided with Spike’s head after Scootaloo slipped on it, sending her sliding down the windswept incline. Her frantic flailing broke one of the stone spurs before she managed to grab another properly, tightening her grip as she let out a grunt of pain. The rubble rolled downwards, scattered by the winds as it descended among the tiny towers.

“Ow, ow, ow, ouch,” the pegasus hissed, her face buried in the crook of her foreleg. Spike and Rarity watched carefully through the brown haze, both having failed to react in time to the filly’s fall. They stared for a moment as Scootaloo, Spike taking a few steps in her direction in order to be more useful in case she slipped again.

“Are you okay, Scootaloo?” Rarity asked, taking a moment to prop her hooves into a few choice holds of the stone floor.

The filly shifted a bit to get a firm grip on the stone before shakily answering. “Yeah, I’m…” noticing her voice was barely above a hoarse whisper, certainly inaudible in the storm’s tumult, she spoke up louder. “I’m fine, I just ah… I think I broke that thing with my ribs, ow. I’ll be fine though, don’t worry.”

She rose back to her hooves, still clinging to the spire for balance against the wind. She slowly made her way back up to where she had slipped, taking very careful steps along the way. Once she had caught up to her previous progress, she urged them to continue.

“Come on guys, it won’t be much longer now.”

It was hard to tell with the way the wind battered them every which way, but Spike could swear he noticed a slight limp in the orange filly’s steps.

The following minutes passed as quietly as was possible in the maelstrom of sand, as the exhaustion of walking up a windswept hillside gradually asserted itself. They had been stuck in this storm for hours; three or four, as much as it was even possible to guess in the perpetually brown penumbra.

The wind kept howling.

It would almost have been tolerable if they only could have taken a few sips of water, but they refrained for the simple fact that the storm inevitably seized the chance to fill their mouths with almost as much sand as water; while Spike could have indeed elected to ignore the very slight inconvenience it brought to him, his water was more useful as weight for Scootaloo, and thus out of reach.

Another crack of lightning brought a fleeting instant of illumination in the dim haze, although not much; merely akin to lighting a single candle in a cavernous warehouse. It would have been indistinguishable from the constant blur of shifting luminosity of the throngs of sand flying above if it hadn’t been immediately followed by the rumble of thunder. Come to think of it, Spike could barely hear the difference over the unending hum of the storm. Maybe there hadn’t been a single strike of lightning at all.

As he took another step forward, hunched over in a practically quadruped stance, Spike noticed his limbs seemed a bit easier to see. After just a few more minutes, he was fairly certain of the fact that the ambient light was slowly rising in intensity. Minutes more brought a lightening sky, then a faint blue tint to it, then at last the sight of the unblemished playground of the sun.

After climbing a few dozen meters more, the three came to a halt in the flat slope, a break in its fossilized continuity where it seemed to crumble and roil into a misshapen mound of broken rubble. They turned back on a ridge, looking at the golden-brown clouds they had just finally escaped.

The agitated mass stretched to the horizon, an endless sea of twirling limbs of dust scattering and shifting with the winds. The distant arms of spiraling sand seemed like mere gentle wisps of fog, although they would likely be nothing but towering giants of abrasive fury up close.

Clean wind gently stroked their skin as they finally removed the layers of protection they had been trapped in for the past hours. Rarity took a moment to do her best to elegantly spit out the sand in her mouth, resulting in something more akin to a sputtering whine. To his left, Spike heard the sloshing of a confined liquid, revealed to be Scootaloo in the process of taking a greedy swig of water.

“Hey don’t waste it!”

The filly glared at him for a moment, her cheeks puffed around her mouthful. She lowered the canteen, one eye still trained on him and her mouth still full. She then swallowed the whole thing with a wince, before spitting out some muddy drool on the ground.

“Fine,” She spat, smacking her lips and rubbing her ribs gently with a soft grunt of pain.

Both ponies then set about scrubbing the crust of sand stuck to their coats by hours spent sweating inside their blankets, while the young drake simply dusted himself. The lingering numbness of the sand’s assault was rubbed away, massaged into a welcome sense of comfort. It was short work, letting him finish some time before the others. He took the chance to once again check their direction as they might have been turned around in the storm; it was better to re-orient themselves as soon as possible in any case.

“Hey… are your scales… shinier?” Scootaloo asked, squinting at Spike. Taking a look at his arms, he could indeed notice a gleam to his hide that he had rarely seen before. A glance at the ponies showed him that they hadn’t been so blessed; the parts of their coats that had been exposed to the winds were red and patchy. A great number of hairs had been sandblasted away, leaving the skin almost naked and definitely sore.

“Oh, yes, perfect,” Rarity grumbled, “We get shaved while he gets polished. How splendidly fair.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault!”

“I know, I know. I just… wish we could have avoided that despicable storm.”

They turned back towards said storm, its churning mass quietly rumbling in the winds. With the distance lowering the overall volume, the sporadic thunderclaps stood out much more, each one brightening a random part of the colossal cloud at unpredictable intervals. The wind still whistled around the travellers, albeit gently and soothingly devoid of sand.

Rarity took her water back from Scootaloo, drinking some before putting it back in its place inside her bags.

Somewhere beyond or under the sand sea lay Appleloosa, now as distant and unreachable as any lost city of legend; swallowed whole by the roiling murky ocean whose shore they stood on. The land itself might not have forgotten its life of old, the fury of a hundred billion gallons of water remembered by a hundred thousand tons of the bones of its inhabitants.

Each grain of sand the ghost of a fish or anemone longing for the swaying tides, howling to remember.

To be remembered.

Scootaloo poked Spike, showing him the detector had stabilized once more towards the south-east. They would need to keep going soon. Rarity rose to her hooves, carefully beginning her ascent of the broken rubble leading to the summit of the hill. Scootaloo slipped the dragon’s canteen in his bag before following, occasionally grunting from the bruise forming on her side.

Spike retrieved the detector, putting it in its place among his other belongings. He turned to follow them.

A wave of lightning crackled behind him, drawing his attention in time to see a bright flash spreading among the brown clouds, the entire mass seeming to light up like a massive fireworks display and rumbling, growling in its fury.

A pointless fury.

A rage for a world long gone, a wail of despair at the helplessness of the ghost of something discarded by a changing world. A world that had changed millions of years ago, that had never stopped changing in the eons since, and had changed once more four months ago. It would always change.

Were deserts such a bad thing? Should they all be destroyed, erased and prevented? If Spike failed, if the Signal was never stopped, would anyone cry over it ten million years in the future?

“Spike! What are you doing?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

The little purple dragon turned his back on the sandstorm and resumed climbing the hill.

Author's Notes:

Welp, a little short one this time. I thought at one point about making Rarity mention she had "sand in places she wouldn't allow water to enter", but I guess it just never flowed that way. Oh well.

Also, a fine fellow by the name of Chekhov seems to have dropped his gun in the last chapter. Perhaps you would be so kind as to find it for him? I, of course, wouldn't get involved.

7: Lair

The wind had died once they had reached the peak. As soon as they had crested the summit and begun descending the hill, the roar of the sandstorm had grown faint, a rumbling whisper and no more. A few dozen feet further down and it had died down completely. They followed the ridge of the hill in the sudden silence.

The sun, as bright as it had seemed not long ago, remained hazy, occluded by a fine mist of dust thrown into the upper atmosphere by the storm. Its heat still beat down on them relentlessly however, slowly cooking the ponies’ skin in the now still air. The reprieve from the winds quickly turned to longing, as although a raging storm was too much for comfort, a gentle breeze would have been welcome.

Still, complaining about the sun after hours spent wishing for it would have been naught but a capricious nuisance.
And so they remained quiet.

Two more days passed in the arid hills.

The badlands cutting off Equestria from the southern dragon lands were rumored to be particularly inhospitable, a desolate wasteland of impractical geography and poor weather patterns. Indeed, while some traces of civilization could sometimes be found among the broken hills, no proper settlement had ever been successful in establishing itself for any sort of long-term stay. Some mines could be seen here and there, all either abandoned or outright lost to the rigors of the climate. Rain in these lands was both scarce and dangerously abundant; while it usually only rained once a year or so, the downpours were always catastrophically torrential. Any buildings or pony-made structure would be washed away almost immediately along with the mounds of shifting gravel and rubble of the eroded hills. Even with pegasi on their side, every attempted settlement had failed to last more than a few hoof-fulls of months. There was only so much to be done with the weather when one of its most versatile components only came once a year and only in monstrous quantities.

There were still a few points of contentment, however. The blasted landscape was often so scarred that it evened out, in a way. The ridges of the hills and the edges of the craters worked seamlessly into a network of walkways and smooth paths, a sort of lopsided spider’s web covering the land. The effect opened an easy, flat path ahead, provided one didn’t mind constant winding detours.

Scootaloo had soon guessed that the dips in the land might contain water, judging by the presence of thin shrubs found exclusively at the bottoms of the pits. With a quick work of his claws, Spike had indeed confirmed the existence of scant moisture trapped in the depths of the stony bowls. It was meager amounts of dirty, muddy water at best, but they at least felt comforted that they would not die of thirst as soon as their rations ran dry.

The second night since the sandstorm was spent in an old mine they had just found. It had collapsed a mere dozen feet from the entrance, gathering a limpid pool of cool water next to the obstruction. To Spike’s surprised delight, a cart of gemstones had been left half-buried under the rubble. He had retrieved as much of the gems as he could without disturbing the stones, and the three had enjoyed a rare full meal; Spike had given his daily rations to the others in favor of the delicious gems, and all three had eagerly drank all the water they could want. They had even used some of the loose timbers of the mine’s broken supports to make a comforting fire, certain that this far out in the desolate, unlivable wastes they were safe from any wandering unicorns who might spot the light.

They even managed to laugh that night.

The tall, pointed mesa stood in the center of an immense crater, easily more than a mile wide. The large spear of stone jutted out of the dust at a sharp angle, looking for all the world as if it was about to fall over. It looked as if a giant had thrown a stake into the earth from beyond the horizon, shattering the landscape in a cataclysmic explosion where it landed. Dunes gathered upon the single slope of the stony claw, left there by the wind whom would occasionally blow past the tip to give the whole massive shard a flowing mane of sand.

The detector was pointing straight to it.

The travelers had already gone halfway around the crater when they had assumed their goal to be inconveniently located somewhere beyond it; idly noting that for a random obstacle in their way, the colossal dustbowl was eerily picturesque in its own bleak way. By the time they had decided to take their mid-day break, Spike had found that the detector’s needle was suddenly pointing somewhere to the west, apparently fixated on the giant stone spire within the crater.

The three had merely looked at each other, then back at the sharp rock standing in the middle of its own little dust prairie.

Where the Signal was coming from.

They had dropped, as one, to a crouching position, hiding behind the stones lying on the edge of the crater. Scootaloo had wasted no time in drawing out a pair of binoculars and pointing them at the stone fang.

“I don’t see anything moving down there,” she had said after a moment, passing the binoculars to Spike. “I think there is something on that side there, but it’s too dark in the shadow of the hill and there’s too much dust in the air to be sure. I think we’ll have to get closer to get a better look.”

Spike observed for a time as well, trying to spot any sort of obvious danger or trap. The shifting of the sand, rolling on and over the dunes, was the only movement to be seen. A dark hollow, sinking deeper into the side of the cliff, was the only notable feature of the bare stone walls.

Dust and sand whipped around them, the gust of wind carrying it roaring down into the crater. The sky above was tinted brown from the haze of arid dust lazily floating about.

An entire minute passed in silence.

“So, that’s it?” Scootaloo asked, “We just go down there like tourists and take a look around? No one has a plan?”

“Well, the plan’s always been pretty much ‘go out and see where the Signal is coming from’, I guess,” Spike answered. “I just figured we’d improvise the next step from there.”

“The next step,” said Rarity, “Is to actually go and see exactly what is producing the Signal, obviously.”

The white mare rose to her hooves, decisively marching straight towards one of the many small gullies lining the edge of the crater and forming a path down the sheer drop. She calmly made her way to the floor of the nearly-filled, titanic bowl of sand. The others shrugged and followed her.

They all kept their eyes riveted to the massive stone needle as they approached it, looking for any sign of activity or life in its vicinity. They instinctively swerved between the dunes so as to never fully expose themselves by climbing to the tops. This hid the base of the formation from them as they got closer, although the massive shape overtook more and more of the beige sky above them.

The sight of the colossal stone above them soon reached dizzying levels of presence as the sky was eaten away; filling occasional, fleeting moments of observation with the disorienting feeling that the whole slab was about to topple over and crush them. They would then blink away and shake their heads to rid themselves of the terrifying illusion of perspective and resume their approach.

They did not speak. The seconds passed in tense silence, all three travelers wary of any sound they could make to unwillingly alert enemy forces of their advance. In truth, none of them would have been able to explain what they imagined to be waiting for them under the spire, or even whether they thought it to be a creature, an object, or an abstract force of mysterious nature. In any case, they all felt a silent approach was preferable.

They simply marched forward, dreading what they would find while in part rejoicing that they would at last get answers concerning the thing that had tortured them for so long.

Until they stood fully in the shadow of the single-stone mountain, the sky almost entirely hidden from view. In front of them, in the dark recess they had spotted from the distance, was a door.

An enormous door, easily tall and wide enough that almost any Ponyville building could have been built within its frame, with room to spare. A rough, angular arch carved straight out of the bare stone wall, visible thanks to the obvious gap in the rock face and the fact that the surface of the door itself was covered in intricate carvings. These ranged from obvious decorations, patterns and angular shapes curving around the edges of the frame, twisting and weaving all over the door, to what were apparently words carved neatly and deeply into the stone.

“No visitors, no tre… trespassers. uh… Send to enter.” Spike slowly read aloud, deciphering the non-equine script with some difficulty.

“You can read that?” Scootaloo asked, squinting at the strange runes.

“Yeah, it’s written in draconic. Twilight made me learn it a few years ago, ‘as part of my heritage’ she said.”

“Wait a minute,” Rarity chimed in, “What is a giant door with dragon language carved into it doing in the middle of nowhere?”

It only took a few seconds for Scootaloo to suggest “Maybe it’s a lair? I mean, with what Spike just said was written here, the owner obviously wants to be left alone; ‘around here’ looks like a pretty good place for that, doesn’t it?”

“Wait, we’re standing at the front door to a dragon’s lair?” Rarity’s worried tone immediately increased the tension of the two others, prompting the whole group to cast fearful looks around. As usual, nothing but sand and billowing winds were to be seen in the sections of their field of view that were not already entirely dominated by the imposing monolith.

“So,” Scootaloo began after a minute of their frantic search for an entire adult dragon they might have missed on their way, “how do we get in?”

Spike opened his mouth to reply, but quickly found that he couldn’t think of a single answer. The gigantic door had no handle, knob or latch, no visible way to open, no obvious mechanism to do it, and was certainly simply too massive for them to move manually in any meaningful way. What very few gaps could be found between the door and its frame were barely wide enough for Spike to slide his claws halfway in.

He tried scratching at the door, only producing shallow marks on the surprisingly hard stone, and realized it would take hours, days even, to break through. Looking down, he noticed the soft, loose sand under his feet and began digging. No more than ten minutes later, he had found the bottom of the door; inset as deeply as the rest in the solid stone of the wall. The frame encircled the entire door.

“I’m going to go look for another opening, okay?”

With no one objecting, Scootaloo set on her way, intent on circling the monolithic spire for any alternate way to enter.

Spike sat down, sighing. They had traveled weeks in the wilderness, endured the weather, the terrain, hunger, fatigue and danger, only to be blocked by a door? A single door in the middle of nowhere? The most mundane object in the world, in the most impractical place it could be, would stop them from fixing this? Really? That was how it was going to be? Did the door really expect him to just give up now? Did the door really think he wouldn’t dig his way through if he had to?

“Spike,” Rarity pensively interrupted his thoughts, almost hesitant to do so, her eyes darting back and forth between the door and the young dragon. “I think I have a silly, crazy idea.”

Spike merely grunted inquisitively, waiting for her to elaborate.

“Seeing you sigh just now reminded me that you can breathe fire, and I’m wondering if the idea that that is a trait shared by all dragons is true.”

“Well, I guess so? It’s not like I’m an expert on that, you know? What’s your point anyway?”

“What if that magical flame you use to send the friendship reports is something all dragons are capable of?”

“I don’t know!” Spike yelled, in no mood to deal with cryptic philosophy at the moment. “I don’t care! What does this have to do with anything? We’ve got better things to do than wonder who could send letters to the princess right now!”

Rarity eyed him for a moment, frowning at his outburst. “What I’m getting at is that, although I am currently about as magical as a rock, I’ve spent enough time around Twilight to deduce that a door without any physical opening mechanism is probably operated by magic, and that these strange runes are most certainly linked to it.”

“So?” Spike asked slowly, beginning to understand where the unicorn was going.

“I also know enough about greed to think that if I were to put a lock on my very home, a key that every other species in the world lacks would be a very good start to it. What I’m saying is that maybe this door only opens when a dragon breathes a very specific flame on it, the sort of flame specifically mentioned to be one that ‘sends’ things, as stated by the instructions on this very door. Wouldn’t that make sense?”

Spike stared at the door, the gears spinning in his head, considering the possibility that Rarity’s theory was correct. Could it really be that simple?

What could he lose by trying?

He stepped up to the giant slab of stone, breathed in, and spit out a lick of green fire on the surface of the door. At the flame’s mere touch, the runes lit up, as if Spike’s breath had been a paintbrush. Green light filled the deep furrows of the symbols where the fire had touched them, and slowly began to spread, filling more and more of the runes in the same way water flowing in a network of channels would.

Both Spike and Rarity stepped back, keeping their eyes glued to the door as they backed away, the green light spreading ever faster until every single line carved into the door stood out, glowing brightly in the shade of the mountain.

The glowing design shimmered silently for a moment.

A sudden clap made them flinch and cover their ears as the door split open, emitting the deafening roar of stone rubbing against stone. A slit had cut the door in two clean halves, both slowly drawing away from each other; the low, rumbling sound of their movement shaking the earth itself. The sandy ground below the travelers poured into the emptied space left in the thick door’s wake. They stepped further back to avoid the loose flow of sand, although it was wholly unnecessary as there seemed to be just as much sand on the other side to meet the flow in the middle and stop it immediately.

The two colossal slabs of stone parted wider and wider, opening the several-stories-tall passage before them. They ultimately retreated fully inside the walls, ending their movement with a resounding knock.

The pony and the dragon then stood before the gaping maw of a mountain, gazing into its dark depths.

“Hey! I heard something! What’s going on?”

Spike and Rarity turned to face Scootaloo as the filly ran up to them before having her question answered with a simple look. She slowed down, craning her neck to take in the doorway’s entire massive height.

The three travelers exchanged glances, warily peeking inside the large, darkened tunnel while Scootaloo caught her breath.

“Do you think anyone’s home?” Scootaloo asked.

“I certainly hope not,” Rarity answered, “That was loud enough that if anyone is here they certainly know we are as well.”

“Well, are we going in or not?” Spike stepped forward, heading inside the tunnel. He’d had enough of waiting, of walking, of not knowing. The answers waited within arm’s reach and he wasn’t about to let them slip away, let alone sit there untouched.

The two ponies looked at each other, gulped, and followed.

The giant passage was blindingly dark at first, before their eyes adjusted. It was hewn from the very stone of the monolith they now walked within, the walls, ceiling and floor merged as a single cylinder of roughly-cut rock. The floor was uneven, rising and falling randomly, throwing dips, holes and bumps at their appendages that they couldn’t hope to avoid in the darkness. Even with care, they couldn’t help but stumble a few times as they marched forward in the penumbra.

The travelers’ eyes eventually got used to the dark, although not enough to walk with any amount of confidence. A very faint glow seemed to emanate far ahead.

Their steps echoed around them, all three progressing in such silence that they could, in the short pauses they took on occasion, hear their own breathing reverberated from the walls.

A low rumble could be heard, a windy hiss in the darkness, resembling the howl of a storm coming from miles away. Apparently there was another opening to the outside, pushing a steady current of air through the newly-opened doorway.

The light before them grew in intensity just in time for them to notice a chasm in the ground, a large circular hole eating a third of the width of the tunnel in front of them as it plunged straight down into depths unknown. It was as wide as the main passage, although off to the side so as not to pose an insurmountable obstacle. They stepped around it carefully, noticing a faint outline to the stones, a nearly-invisible shimmer coming from the depths. Whatever that light was, it was too distant to be seen or to affect their surroundings in any meaningful way.

They decided to ignore it for the time being.

Soon, the glow ahead brightened, enough that they could avoid fumbling around so much. Enough to see an occasional red tint in the otherwise normal light.

As the passage suddenly opened into a massive cavern after a bend in the tunnel, the travelers slowed down considerably, hoping to silence the sound of their steps. Slowly, inch by inch, the colossal space was revealed to them.

It was easily wider than even Ponyville’s central square, even more so without the imposing town hall to obstruct the view. The bare stone walls rose up and inward, forming a dizzying canopy so high above that they would have had difficulty seeing it had it not been pierced by a single hole, a skylight illuminating the area. The opening far above was obscured by a single massive tarp, as large as any ship’s sail, lowering the light filtering through to a dim, colorless twilight. The tarp was held in place by large spikes driven into the solid stone ceiling.

The floor was occupied by numerous things, all of whom were eerily large, as if the travelers had suddenly found themselves shrunk to the size of mice. There were tables littered with various oversized tools, utensils, unidentifiable scraps of metal and other objects they could barely see from their low point of view. Along the walls stood what appeared to be large steel plates, thin and regular, held together by massive rings; looking for all the world like gigantic steel books. Several of those were propped up against the walls, bearing draconic inscriptions on their faces.

In one corner of the room stood the stereotypical dragon’s dual-purpose hoard of gemstones, serving as both larder and bedding. Beyond the pile opened another tunnel, sloped downwards, in which could be seen row upon row of the book-like stacks of steel sheets lining both walls up to the ceiling.

The very center of the room was occupied by a tall and strange tower, a spire of curved brass tubes and angular crystals, of steel beams and copper wires, of cogs and pistons. Three conical crystals near the base rotated and rubbed against one another, their points joined in the middle as they slowly spun in opposite directions. The three crystals crackled sporadically, occasional arcs of electricity jumping between them as they ground against each other; emitting a low rumble that intensified every once in a while, rising to a teeth-rattling squeak that made the intruders shiver. The spinning crystals glowed faintly, their touching faces covered in runes similar to the ones seen on the lair’s entrance door. Wires ran from these crystals up into the rest of the machine, on top of which towered the largest crystal of the contraption. Held in place by a supporting ring of brass, as well as numerous copper spikes linked to wires and tubes, this crystal pulsated with a bright red glow at rhythmic intervals; each pulse engulfing the incredibly intricate maze of runes and glyphs carved all over its surface. A final, intimidating brass spike held aloft by a large curved arch of steel touched the upper tip of the crystal, its other point extending up towards the opening in the ceiling.

Besides the travelers, no other living thing could be seen in the cavern.

There was no one home.

“What… is all of this?” Scootaloo’s question echoed softly, almost lost in the constant mechanical whirring of the machine.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” was Rarity’s idle reply as she kept looking around.

Spike had moved towards the steel stacks on the wall. His voice made the two ponies turn when he began translating the words written on their covers. “’Advanced Runecarving Techniques, by Ahrkalzahn the Gold’; ‘Principles of Electrical Flow and Behavior, a Primer, by Narcissa the Black’; ‘Subtleties of the Forge, by Hephaestus the Red’; ‘Tasty Tools: a Guide of the Many Uses and flavors of Gems, Jewels and Crystals, by Paracelse the White’ …guys? Those are books. Dragon books!”

“And they all sound so… technical, too. I wonder what-“

“Hey! What’s that?” Scootaloo interrupted Rarity’s musings, pointing to yet another strange device. This one was much smaller, no taller than the average pony house. It stood about a dozen feet from the library-tunnel, near the gem hoard. A glass dome containing a large green flame sat atop a box from which stuck out a few wires and even another, smaller cluster of spinning crystals. The underside opened up to several cylinders stretching a length of thick, sturdy canvas, all housed within a simple unadorned frame. The cylinders served to both keep the fabric from loosening while at the same time spooling it in a complex yet compact manner.

Spike walked up to the device, immediately noticing that one side of the canvas was covered in yet more draconic writing, printed on the fabric. With some difficulty, he unfurled a length of the giant scroll and read from it.

“Mhhhn nuh nuh nuh, ‘from now on, all correspondence between members of the project is to be sent via this very flux stream, so that it may be automatically archived for clarity’s sake. If any of you have any questions about-‘”

“Wait, did you just say ‘archived’?” Rarity asked.

“And what the heck is a flux stream?" Scootaloo inquired.

“I think flux streams are the kinda magical pathway thingies dragons send their letters through. Older dragons are supposed to be able to just… decide where they send stuff to but… I don’t really know, I’m not there yet. Twilight always hated how ponies know next to nothing about dragons.”

“Spike, dear, did you say archived? As in, ‘record and collect everything that happened here’?”

The white mare’s repeated question tore the youngsters’ eyes away from each other, both turning to look at her for a moment before all three sets of eyes jumped to the array of scrolls before them.

Spike scrambled to return to the top of the continuous page, cleared his throat, and began to read…

Author's Notes:

Thanks for reading!
I know how much of a cliffhanger this might be, but it's really the best cutting point of this situation here.

8: Archives

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Great news today, esteemed colleagues! I have received the Drakelord’s approval for my project, and have chosen both of you to participate in this endeavor.

If you are wondering why I am addressing this correspondence to a plurality, it is for the simple reason that I have devised a contraption whose effects modify this stream in a few significant ways; the first being that it allows the sending of correspondence to up to two separate recipients at once, an effect that I strongly encourage you both to familiarize yourselves with at the earliest convenience. Secondly, the device also produces a copy of whatever written words were sent. As such, from now on, all correspondence between members of the project is to be sent via this very flux stream, so that it may be automatically archived for clarity’s sake. If any of you have any questions about the exact mechanics or reasons of this rule, I will be happy to explain further.

The second point I would like to make is the introduction of another rule of communication between us, the standardization of our correspondence; all correspondence between members of the project is to follow the format of this very letter. Names of the recipient(s) as the header line, body of text arranged as sender pleases, signature (dated) as closing line. Any post-scriptum should be sent as a separate message. All this, again, for better clarity and archival.

Thirdly, I would like to request both of you to visit my lair within the next few days, as there are things I must give you that are impossible to send via mail, and a proper face-to-face conversation would also allow me to divulge the pointed specifics of the project in a much more forthright manner.

Lastly, as project lead, I wish to simply congratulate you both on your impressive credentials. I truly feel that your combined sets of skills will bring this project to fruition.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, twelfth season, twenty-third day.

To: Smaugaestus.

I know how off-putting Dagothurial can be at times, but I assure you this project wouldn’t be possible without his particular dispositions and capacities. I wouldn’t include him in this if it wasn’t absolutely crucial.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, twelfth season, twenty-third day.

To: Dagothurial.

Look, I am aware of your obvious disdain for Smaugaestus. I don’t know the reasons, nor do I care to, but please try to work with him. His knowledge is as important to this project as my own, and I would like for you to at least respect his usefulness.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, twelfth season, twenty-third day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

He is pathetic. Do not belittle yourself by equating your value to his. Though I commend you for avoiding the obvious blunder of putting me in your own place within your argument. I would not have taken kindly to being considered an equal to him.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/12/23

To: Ahrkalzahn

So, what are we looking for exactly? Any particular section we should scry or what? I’ve finally set up something close to a stable testing environment, and bribed a few diamond dogs to fetch me some subjects, so I’m ready to go.

-Smaugaestus, red, inferiorist biologist at the Withered Heath.
Earze 57, thirteenth season, day 13

To: Smaugaestus.

Anything, really. Any activity you can record will help the project progress, if only to provide a baseline. With how little we have at the moment even background activity would be a great improvement. Try exposing them to new stimuli once in a while, see if that changes the readings in any obvious way.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, thirteenth season, thirteenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Here are the latest brainscryes. I have noticed extreme physical pain to produce strikingly similar patterns in all test subjects, as you shall no doubt see for yourself. More subdued stimuli seem to have a more variable effect. Perhaps something to consider. I will attempt to provoke and observe other likewise extreme stimuli.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 13/ 34

To: Ahrkalzahn

Here’s what I’ve come up with as of yet. I tried to keep things shaken up at all times, to maximize the range of recorded data and avoid a routine. There’s also this bundle I got from recording this one mare for three days straight while she went about her routine, in case a full background noise sample was ever necessary. I labeled the crystals as they were filled, the things she did written on the crystals she did them on. I could do it again for other age groups or males if you think it’ll help, but I’ll need a whole lot more crystals to do it.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, thirteenth season, day 40

To: Smaugaestus.

That is quite a bundle, actually. You’re going to blow through them faster than I can extract and carve them at this rate. On the other hand, that is actually some interestingly valuable data. I’ll see what I can do to send you bigger crystals so you can keep gathering info on the different age/genders. Next time though, I think shorter samples from each variation would be sufficient; I could probably extrapolate the full spectrum by comparing them to that mare’s baseline. Six to ten hour excerpts should suffice.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, thirteenth season, forty-first day.

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

Astounding breakthrough this week! I have been able to induce a feeling of hunger in one of my test subjects, using nothing but the scryes provided by Smaugaestus and a modified sound emitter. The effect was extremely subtle, a mere fifty percent increase in feeding frequency while the emission was active, but I believe this is the first step towards concrete progress at last.

The most obvious flaw is that the effect only lasts as long as the emitter is active, I believe. I will have to perform some more tests in order to verify this fully, but in the meantime I am wondering whether or not it would be possible to make the effect more durable. Stimulating the learning centers of the brain, maybe? What do you think, Smaugaestus?

On another note, I may have come up with a name (or perhaps, codename) for our project: Ethereal Overlord. Tell me what you think.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, thirteenth season, sixtieth day

To: Ahrkalzahn

Do as you wish. The name matters not one iota to me.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 13/ 60

To: Ahrkalzahn

Good question, I guess it would be possible to make the effects of the emitter a learned behavior, like a trick taught to a pet, but I’ll need to do some pretty advanced testing for that. I’ll get to it on the double.

Also, I think the name is pretty good. It’s both ominous and completely cryptic.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, thirteenth season, day 60

To: Ahrkalzahn

Could you perhaps work on the possibility of providing me with one such emitter? It could open up several new avenues of testing.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 13/ 60

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Of course! Here are the basic schematics. I trust the two of you can build your own without too much problems, although I suspect the design is likely to change as we learn more and have to adjust our methods accordingly. Take it as a loose framework of things to come.

Let me know of any interesting discoveries you come across.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, Thirteenth season, sixtieth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

This technology is simply delightful! Any state of mind can be reproduced, it seems. Disgust, terror, despair; I have been able to induce these emotions in nearly all of my test subjects regardless of any other circumstances. I have brought lovers to despise each other at the flick of a switch. They were so utterly confused by their own behavior!

Included here is the one I am most pleased with: Obedience.

Breaking a pony’s will was both disappointingly trivial as well as thoroughly enjoyable; the only difficulty lay in capturing the exact mental process of choosing to obey my commands. I do believe it was a great step forward, would you not agree?

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 13/ 71

To: Dagothurial.

Would you mind sending me all of your test results instead of merely the one you find most interesting? I’m looking for the most comprehensive data set. Send me everything.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, Thirteenth season, seventy-first day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Oh, yes. How foolish of me, I was swept up in my excitement. Here they are.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 13/ 71

To: Ahrkalzahn

I’ve been pretty busy with the persistence experiments so I haven’t had much time to look into taking more samples. I left my test subjects alone for the most part, and when I came to check on them, there was this one completely catatonic pegasus. I guess she lost all hope or something, probably severe depression. I figured you’d want to have a look at her mental state.

As for the persistence of information, I’m pretty sure we’d need a way to specifically target the learning centers of the brain to have any sort of lasting effect; the most I’ve been able to do at the moment is “teach” them to expect a certain behavior of themselves under familiarly repeating circumstances. I got this mare to cry when I rang a certain bell even when I randomly didn’t send her the “crying” broadcast.

I think there are a few more things I could try, but making the effects even semi-permanent is probably going to have to wait.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, thirteenth season, day 78

To: Smaugaestus.

Well that’s a shame. I suppose we’ll have to concentrate on the ones with the most useful immediate effect, at least until we find a way to break the scryes and the behavior within down into their most basic components. I suppose I’ll get to that next.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, thirteenth season, seventy-eighth day.

To: Dagothurial.

Both Smaugaestus and I are too busy working on our parts of the project to do much live testing, so I need to ask you to do most of it yourself for now. Here are some things I’d like you to check out, possibly more than one at a time.

7A12: Obedience (possibly cleaned of hesitation)

8V03: Apathy (One catatonic subject in a state of severe depression, minus what you identified as despair in a previous test)

8V04: Despair

Let me know what comes of this.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, thirteenth season, eighty-first day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

When have I ever made it seem likely that I would enjoy being treated as a mere laboratory assistant?

7A12 works exactly as advertised: affected subjects immediately obey any direct order, up to and including actions causing harm to self and/or others. Subjects are only capable of refusing orders when the expected actions are physically or mentally impossible for subjects, I.E. earth ponies being asked to fly, or a subject being asked to recite a book they have never read. Orders must be carefully constructed to avoid being overly vague or confusing as the affected subjects may seek to obey in the manner most beneficial or least harmful to them, according to their own interpretation of the commands.

8V03 induces a nearly catatonic lethargy. Affected subjects seem incapable of acting on any impulse they might wish to execute. They remain conscious and aware, occasionally mustering up the drive to speak, although most seem incapable of such effort. Affected subjects will not physically act or react to anything, up to and including violence and unbearable discomfort. Subjects standing when the effect takes place simply let themselves fall to the floor. Affected subjects, when capable, express great distress while under the effects of 8V03, usually likening it to being “paralyzed”.

8V04 causes, as expected, an overwhelming sense of dread, despair, fatalism and defeat in all affected subjects. Disposition shift is instantaneous, often causing an abrupt change in occupational choice; entertaining activities are either abandoned immediately in favor of more subdued and passive activities, or continued with an increased but ultimately short-lived vigor. All test subjects eventually retreated to a corner of testing room to curl up, weep, or stare blankly ahead. Two of the ten subjects showed signs of retaining parts of the effect for a few hours after the end of the testing period, most likely out of awareness of being experimented upon. While not uncommon in and of itself after tests, this lasting behavior was observably more pronounced with 8V04.

7A12 plus 8V03:

Interestingly enough, subjects were able to use the contradictory nature of both compulsions to their advantage. Subjects were seen surrendering to apathy in order to act in a deliberately clumsy, slow and reluctant manner when given a harmful command, while a positive demand saw more effort on their part. The more interesting result to be distilled from this test is that 7A12 is more “powerful” or imperative than 8V03: subjects never failed to at least attempt, while their apathy was usually disregarded despite the overwhelming power it wields on its own.

Of note is the fact that all subjects exposed to both compulsions at once immediately complained of headaches.

7A12 plus 8V04:

Same as 7A12 alone, although with much less enthusiasm and decisiveness.

8V03 plus 8V04:

Subjects immediately show signs of deep, chronic depression. Threats of bodily harm are welcomed or accepted with indifference, conversations show death to be a desirable outcome, and nearly all acts of self-preservation become extremely reluctant. Only extreme discomfort or harm can cause subjects to react in a manner conducive to their continued existence. If left alone, subjects would let themselves wither and perish.

Of note is the fact that this combination still allows subjects to act if they are convinced of such; the lethargy of 8V03 is once again rendered less powerful than it usually is on its own.

I suspect that 8V03 is not the incapacity to act but rather the decision to not act, a deeply passive effect in itself. Any outside prompt to act is thus easily capable of overcoming the compulsion; if the action is not borne of a decision to act, the decision to not act is disregarded entirely. 8V03 is not a negative, it is merely an enforced neutrality, easily swayed.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 13/ 89

To: Dagothurial.

For somedrake so eager to complain, you sure seem to have fun at what you do.

Interesting results, I must admit. I’ll have to take a closer look at 8V03.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, thirteenth season, eighty-ninth day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Here are some upgraded schematics for the testing emitters, I figured they could use an overhaul. The new model should be at least half as resource-intensive, and possibly twice as stable. Some of those changes could also apply to the scrying devices, so I suggest you take a look at them as well. Oh, I just thought of something that might prove problematic. I’ll have to perform some verifications.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, second day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Urgh, that was an ordeal.

I finally managed to get this experiment working, and I think you’ll be very pleased with the results.

I gathered a bunch of my test subjects together in the same room, and had one of them teach something new to the others. I recorded every single one of them both individually and as an averaged whole. Even I can notice that every single sample has an obvious shared pattern, so you shouldn’t have much trouble filtering it out of the chaff.

I think I found the “learn” compulsion.

Just to be safe, I executed the experiment four times with different teachers, each one teaching something from a different skill; a motor skill (a single dance move), a mathematic concept, a language ability, and a short melody. This should cover most types of learning, I think.

I need a nap. This better be worth it.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, fourteenth season, day 8

To: Smaugaestus.

Even at a glance, I can tell that this might be the biggest breakthrough yet. This is astonishing! Excellent work, good sir!

I suppose you’ll need to replenish your supply of blank crystals after such an abundant delivery; you are eating through them at an impressive rate. Good thing I’ve put my idle test subjects to work in my mine!

I will definitely have to study these more closely as soon as I find the time to do so.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, eighth day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

I think it is high time we discussed a problem here. Two problems, in fact.

First of all, I’ve just read through the project’s archives and haven’t found a single instance of either of you addressing a message to the other one. Did you both forget the other’s existence or something? Need I remind you that this is a group project? A team effort? Communication is key here, I shouldn’t have to expect it to be a new concept; I shouldn’t need to say this.

Unless you’ve been sending each other messages via another flux stream behind my back, which is another problem entirely…

The second matter I need to mention is that I have run some range tests with our current emitters as part of determining their overall improvements over the previous model. The problem is that it has only then occurred to me to run the math for just how many we’d need to ensure a full coverage of all of Equestria; which turns out to amount to just short of five hundred, four hundred and fifty at the barest minimum if we optimize the placement to the point where some of them would have to be placed in the middle of their cities. This is ridiculous. Even if we could somehow distribute them all without being seen, there is no way we could mass-produce so many of them in any acceptable amount of time; and even if we did manage to build so many, we could never monitor and maintain them all properly, especially not if we were to do so covertly. We need a way to ensure a better coverage, and there’s only so much I can do to extend the range with current technology.

Any ideas?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw, team leader on project Ethereal Overlord.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, tenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Could we not use the obedience compulsion to create infiltrators for the purpose of building the emitters?

As for your first “problem”, I see no problem here. I have nothing to say to that simpleton.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 14/ 10

To: Ahrkalzahn, Dagothurial

There. Happy now, Ark?

I think I may just have a hunch for the range thing. I’ll need to run a few tests to be sure. I’ll get you back on it.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, fourteenth season, day 10

To: Dagothurial.

Infiltrators? I think you overestimate how far along I am at making these compulsions permanent. Even if it was something we had already achieved, we would still need a prohibitively extensive set of rules and commands, or constant, direct supervision in order to pre-emptively avoid any exploitation of loopholes. The latter is obviously not an option considering we are expected to take the nation covertly, and the former would still be unacceptably likely to fail and/or attract attention. We only have one try; we need to make it absolutely infallible.

Besides, I’d still need to personally carve every single rune of every single crystal because this is shaping up to require increasingly complex runework and I’m the only one here who can do this with any sort of reliability. This is what I meant when I said it would be nigh-impossible to produce so many emitters; there’s only so much carving I can do in a day.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, tenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Speaking of loopholes, I would be willing to test ponies’ ability to exploit them. Could you provide me with a simple command such as “choose right” or somesuch?

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 14/ 10

To: Dagothurial.

What a coincidence! I was just recently working on compulsion permanence with exactly what you seem to be asking for: 13B01, “never choose left”. It makes them avoid picking any option presented to their left.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, tenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Testing log for 13B01, “Never choose left option”

Test 1: Subject 14 was introduced to a series of rooms, all of which were connected in a loop. Facing clockwise, the looped path lay within the right-most doors, while the third and fourth doors of each room led to the outside of testing area and a simple reward of food. Compulsion 13B01 was activated and subject 14 was asked to leave testing area.

Subject 14 executed one full loop before growing worried, realizing its own inability to leave by itself. Subject 14 executed another loop before sitting down for a moment, obviously disturbed. Subject 14 then rose up, turned around so as to face the loop counter-clockwise, and managed to successfully leave, as the exit doors were by then the right-most option.

Test 2: Subject 20 was introduced to a simple room, containing two bowls side by side. The bowl on subject 20’s left upon entry contained fresh food, other bowl was bare. Compulsion 13B01 was activated and Subject 20 was not given any instructions.

Subject 20 attempted to consume the offered food, predictably failing to accomplish the task. Subject 20’s head would continuously deviate towards right-most bowl, much to subject’s dismay. Subject eventually began circling the bowls in confusion, at which point it was able to consume the food.

Test 3: Subject 14 was introduced to a room in which compulsion 13B01 was active. The room was bare save for a shelf at the far end. On the shelf were six bowls, each except the left-most one containing a stone. Left-most bowl contained food.

Subject 14 was left in that room for some time, largely enough for him to grow hungry. Subject 14 tried, and failed, to consume the food. Subject 14 waited for nearly an hour before trying once more. Subject 14 continued in its sporadic attempts for three more hours before growing angry. In its fury, subject 14 eventually swept the bowls from the shelf. Once all five non-food bowls were on the ground and out of sight, Subject 14 was able to feed.

Test 4: Two bowls were affixed to a wall so as to be impossible to detach by ponies of average strength. Subject 22 was introduced to the room in which the bowls could be found. Subject 22’s hooves were loosely chained to a rail on the ground, confining them to a vertically-limited area. Compulsion 13B01 was also introduced to the room. The left bowl contained fresh fruits, the right bowl contained weeks-old rotting fruits.

Subject 22 was left in the testing room long enough to grow hungry, at which point it attempted and failed to feed. Subject 22 tried again a short time later, and numerous additional times over the next two days. As Subject 22’s hooves were restricted, and both the bowls as well as their contents were impossible to move otherwise, Subject 22 eventually fell in a state of apathy for nearly another day. Subject 22 remained thus immobile for eight hours before suddenly rising to its hooves and decisively consuming the entire contents of the right-most bowl. Subject 22 waited for a few minutes before regurgitating the rotten fruits in a corner of the room. Subject then returned to the bowls and once more attempted to feed, failing until right-most bowl was removed from the room.

Conclusions: These tests show that while the compulsions are irresistible when the given parameters are sufficiently restrictive to prevent loose interpretations, said parameters can still be modified as long as doing so does not go against the compulsion.

As such, it is possible to exploit loopholes within the compulsions.

Whatever we use will have to be either restrictive and comprehensive enough to eliminate any possible interpretation except the one we impose, or vague enough that any possible interpretation still falls within acceptable possibilities suiting our needs. Any grey area within the boundaries of our commands will inevitably be exploited, as the ponies can be quite crafty when they truly need to.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 14/ 21

To: Dagothurial.

Hm, yes. Well, I’ll think about that. Outstandingly rigorous work, as always.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, twenty-first day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Dagothurial

Oh lord, guys. I think I just found something big. Really big.

I set up this huge, tedious experiment where I put an emitter on a rail and gradually drove it further from a unicorn, while sweeping through different frequencies to see if it made any kind of range difference. Come to think of it I should have just thought to ask you, Ark, since you’re the expert on this in the first place, but it might just be a good thing that I didn’t.
Because I found one particular frequency that just somehow managed to affect the unicorn for miles. Even when I decreased the emitter’s power, that frequency is effective up to 200 to 500 times the normal range. This is insane but I think I just found the natural resonance frequency of unicorn horns. They are incredibly more receptive to it than to any other.

It makes sense, considering the horns are basically optimized conduits in the first place, for their little magic.

I even put a mixed group in a room and used an under-powered emitter to test it, and it’s even possible to instantly affect unicorns without the non-unicorns even noticing the compulsion activating. This might prove useful, although the transmission seems to lose potency and even its most basic functions when I kept it locked to that particular, precise frequency.

The unicorns could still notice it, though.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, fourteenth season, day 22

To: Smaugaestus

By the Fang of Haynekhtnamet! And here I believed we would never fail spectacularly enough! I now see how wrong I was, dear colleague! A way to limit ourselves to only a third of our target population while also nullifying any desired effect is exactly what we needed! Thank you!

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 14/ 22

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

I was at my forge when I got Smaugaestus’ message, and lost it in the crucible. Who thinks the archive was a useless idea now?

Dagothurial, that was completely uncalled for. Losing two thirds of our targets is a problem that can be worked around much more easily than having no reasonable way to reach these targets in the first place. Please keep interactions between members of the project to a minimum of civility. You aren’t a minotaur, are you?

As for Smaugaestus’ discovery, this might be an incredible breakthrough. While I could have indeed confirmed that the maximal effective range does not normally change with the frequency, I never would have guessed that finding the natural resonance of their horns could bypass the distance/power degradation. This opens up so many new possibilities.

I will still need to run the math for the coverage radii, and find a way to convey the full information while locked to a single frequency like that. I think it might work if we switched to amplitude modulation for the data transmission, but that would require changing the entire emitter design though.

This might take a while, and it’ll pretty much have to be entirely up to me. Tell you what, why don’t you two take a break while I work this all out? I’ll contact you once I’ve dealt with all that research and experimentation you’ve provided me with. There’ll be much testing to do if all those new avenues of research open up to actual usable progress.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fourteenth season, twenty-second day.

To: Dagothurial, Ahrkalzahn

It can be extremely useful! Let’s say we inflict them with the apathy compulsion: Equestria instantly loses an entire third of its workforce. This workforce has to be replaced, at least in part, drawing resources away from the rest of the important industries. Earth ponies and pegasi have to replace unicorns in the crucial duties they performed, leaving less of these to grow crops and manage the weather. They also need to divert even more of their workers to care for the unicorns, lowering their production capacities even more. While yes, the unicorns would require a lot less food in that state, they would still need to eat and drink, making them a huge burden on a society that has already lost one in three of its workers. Their consumption needs would be reduced, but never as dramatically as their ability to fill those needs.

Just like that, Equestria becomes a slowly starving and weakened nation, at least until the unicorns are purged with old age. That’s at least three to five earze where Equestria is critically weakened and vulnerable to absolutely everything, and that’s not counting what the apathy could do to the princess. If it makes her unable to raise or lower the sun, the ponies would all die within a season or two.

And you say that it’s useless?

Ark: Okay, I don’t see what else I could do right now either. I guess I’ll wait for your next letter. I think I’ll just find a nice place to sleep for a while.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, fourteenth season, day 22

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

So it has been some time now, it seems. Time I’ve spent relentlessly analyzing, designing and splicing brainscryes together in never-before-seen ways.

It’s time to get back to work.

The learning data Smaugaestus sent me is still being dissected, but in the meantime I’ve finalized the new designs for the emitters, and the prototype is working splendidly. I’ve also made progress in the process of adapting all our existing compulsions in a format that these new emitters can broadcast.

So here are the plans for the new emitters, as well as some well-researched compulsions to test if they still function as well as they did before.

Additionally, here is an entirely new compulsion I’ve extracted from the gathered scryes: 6P32 Aggression.

Do note that the new emitters will only work on unicorns and that the new crystal format isn’t compatible with the old emitters; you’ll want to get rid of those or store them somewhere at your convenience. We don’t need them anymore.
On a bit of good news, quite fortunate in fact, I’ve run the calculations and found that this new model and its increased range of effect could easily blanket all of Equestria with a single emitter. It would need to be enormous, would push my design to its absolute limit and would need to be placed dead-center in the middle of Canterlot, but it could still be done. As it is, we could certainly achieve the same result with as little as three of those strategically placed on the outskirts of the kingdom so that their covered area came to overlap around the capital. It would be absolutely perfect for security, stealth and maintenance reasons.

Let me know how everything turns out once you’re done upgrading.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, seventh day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

The old compulsions function just as well as they did before, and the new one, 6P32, is quite interesting.

Preliminary tests show that it seems to fill them with unfathomable rage, causing them to lash out at everything in sight in any way they can. They also show great distress and regret for their actions.

It seems they only attack things that they do not see as mere objects. For example, one of my captives had grown to cherish a small piece of cloth found in her cell. 6P32 made her destroy it while none else paid it any mind.

Of note is that affected unicorns tend to attack each other as well, which I see as a potential detriment to the strategic value of this compulsion.

-Dagothurial, ashen, behavioral psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 14

To: Ahrkalzahn

Is it fine if I recycled the old emitters for the new ones? Some parts looked identical in both designs so I figured… Anyway, that quartz timer was a pain.

Unless I screwed something up with the recycling, the new emitters seem to work just fine and the compulsions are just as they were before.

That new one sure is violent though.

Is it just me or did the night kinda linger a bit too much this morning?

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, fifteenth season, day 18

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Gentledrakes, this is it.

I have finally isolated the precise sequence to stimulate a pony brain’s ability to learn, and, weaving both it and a standard compulsion into a single emitter crystal, gave said compulsion a dose of permanence.

The compulsions can be learned, letting their effects linger even after the emitter is turned off.

It seems to need some time to take hold, but once settled remains for an as-of-yet impossible to determine amount of time. My first successful test is still being affected by a compulsion it hasn’t been exposed to for six days.

As a sample, here’s one such permanent compulsion that I’m confident will be of some use: 7A12P, which I’ve tentatively dubbed “enslavement”. I would have liked to think of a name without such a harsh connotation, but it really is the best word to describe its effect. It makes the affected pony unable to resist any spoken order.

As an added achievement, I have been relentlessly dismantling every single scrying crystal you both sent me, to the point of near obsession I must admit, and have copied, catalogued and tested every little tonal shift in the recorded brainwaves.

This has been an extremely long and tedious process, one that is still ongoing every single day.

Nevertheless, I have thus begun to build an extensive library of extremely short and precise thought patterns, a vocabulary of sorts. I am confident that I can use this vocabulary to assemble thought patterns that haven’t been strictly recorded yet. I can create new, abstract compulsions with increasing variety, and will slowly unlock the capacity to create more as I continue to dissect the available data.

Ask me about new things you would like to see, and I’ll try to assemble it.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, twenty-seventh day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Both of those are fantastic news, and I heartily applaud you! I have already put 7A12P to work and the results are both hilarious and deeply satisfying.

Although when you mentioned that they needed time to take hold, I did not expect them to be utterly ineffective before doing so; the time between activating the emitter and the moment the compulsion becomes permanent seems completely devoid of any noticeable effect. Furthermore, I have noticed this delay to be variable for each individual test subject. This might be worth investigating.

If you are so inclined, I would like to request a few of those home-made compulsions. I believe something such as “never eat”, “walk backwards”, and perhaps “seek darkness” would be interesting to test.

-Dagothurial, ashen, behavioral psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 27

To: Dagothurial.

I don’t really see what kind of useful information you expect to get out of those, and I’m fairly certain that the second one is still beyond my capacities for now, but I suppose I could oblige.

As for the delay, I suspect it comes from the new format and the way their brains decode it. It is now less of an instantaneous imprint and more a sort of sculpting. My method of merging the different compulsion patterns makes them ineffective until they are fully integrated; the information is transmitted in random packets of unrecognizable points until the whole transmission can be assembled, whereas it used to be simply displayed directly. The first compulsions were crude strokes of solid-color paint while the new ones are more complex images that must be complete in order to be interpreted, if you wish to see it that way.

It would be a good idea to test the delay itself though, to see how it could affect things.

I’ll probably get Smaugaestus on it.

P.S.; The compulsions you asked for will hopefully be ready in three days. I’ll simply send them without a letter of context unless I have things to tell you. I might not have the second one though.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, twenty-eighth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Smaugaestus

Interview with subject 181, male unicorn of average age under the effects of compulsion 22B03P, dubbed “never eat”. Transcribed in equestrian to retain faithfulness to original conversation.

Dagothurial (entering room): Hello, One-eighty-one.
181: (does not answer)
Dagothurial: Are you hungry, One-eighty-one?
181 (defiant undertone): What do you think?
Dagothurial: Then why not eat, One-eighty-one? (Note: subject 181 is currently surrounded by its approximate weight in fresh produce)
181 (shouting): You know exactly why, you bastard!
Dagothurial (eating half of a melon, offering the rest to subject 181): Are you certain you do not want to eat some, One-eighty-one?
181 (beginning to cry): Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to you? Please, I’m so hungry! I haven’t eaten in four days! Why are-
Dagothurial (interrupting 181): You must not be as famished as you claim if you so vehemently refuse to eat.
181 (crying and shouting): I can’t! I can’t and you know it! You’ve watched me try didn’t you, you sick bastard? But you messed around in my head to make sure I didn’t! You did this to me! Stop playing dumb and pretending it’s my fault!
181 (limps to the floor, crying more abundantly): Why are you doing this to me? Why?
(181 sobs for a moment)
181 (still weeping): Please… Please fix me, please let me go… I’ll do anything you want! Please, I’m begging you! I-I… I don’t want to die, please…
Dagothurial: It is quite simple, really: eat one bite, just one, and I will release you. You need only do that which you claim to desire most at this moment. What say you? Do we have an agreement?
(Test subject 181 begins to whimper and babble incoherently while crying uncontrollably, refusing to answer any further questions. No more useful answers could be coerced from it except for incessant pleas for its life over the next few days. Subject was found dead on the morning of the twelfth day since exposure to 22B03P, its mouth mere inches from a fresh apple.)

Of note is the fact that subject could still drink, and attempted to incorporate tangible sustenance in its water. Predictably, as soon as the liquid contained enough crushed nutrients to be considered proper food, subject found itself unable to consume it.

-Dagothurial, ashen, behavioral psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 44

To: Dagothurial.

Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm and everything, but we don’t actually need to be informed of every little gruesome detail of your experiments. The formal, straight results are enough.

Besides that, could you perhaps ease up on the ‘killing test subjects’ part? I’m sure it’s very convenient that your minotaur friends are more than happy to provide you with anything you pay for, but the fact remains that if the entire unicorn population of Minaeth were to vanish overnight the Equestrian authorities would come snooping around. We are trying to be stealthy with this, and causing a diplomatic incident on top of being exposed would be counter-productive to that.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, forty-fourth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

And how were I to go about letting 181 live? I certainly was not about to start spoon-feeding it for the rest of its miserable life, and the permanent compulsion cannot exactly be turned off on a whim, can it?

At least I only used it on two subjects instead of the usual ten.

If you so abhor the idea of wasting test subjects, perhaps you could begin working on a way to recycle them besides “stew”, as the very concept of permanent compulsions tends to render them fairly unsuitable for reuse.

-Dagothurial, ashen, behavioral psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 44

To: Dagothurial.

I’ll try to find a way to erase the compulsions, but I doubt it’ll lead anywhere; brains don’t usually have a dedicated way of forgetting information that we could scry. I don’t think that we could order them to forget, and the only other option I can think of right now is to brute-force counter the imprinted compulsions with their polar opposite, and I’m not even sure about that.

But seriously, you used ten ponies on every single test you performed? Can’t you be just a tad less excessive?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, forty-fourth day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

I think it is time to discuss exactly what our end goal is right now. We’ve made enough progress with the technology that I feel we can actually plan what it is we intend to do with it.

It will probably be easier to do this in person. Meet me at my lair.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, fifty-third day.

To: Ahrkalzahn.

Let it be recorded that the members of project Ethereal Overlord have agreed upon the following course of action: Fracture.

Fracture will consist of a compulsion aiming to methodically turn the unicorns of Equestria hostile to the other present factions, in a way that will neutralize the nation’s political, military, and governing forces and render them unable to oppose a covert takeover. This will be done and executed in secret, never to be announced or revealed to anyone outside of the current Drakelord and the following personages:

-Ahrkalzahn the Gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist,

-Dagothurial the Ashen, Behavioral Psychologist,

-Smaugaestus the Red, Inferiorist Biologist.

This contract and the signatures upon it constitute an oath, never to be broken under penalty of traditional disfigurement and scarification as a traitor to Draconia, as well as the eternal shame such consequences bring to one’s color.

All present in agreement on this sixty-sixth day of the fifteenth season of Drakelord Baphomet’s fifty-seventh earze of rule.
-----------------

To: Ahrkalzahn

Now that those formalities are dealt with and I have finally made it back to my own lair, there is one thing I feel we need to test properly.

Could you fabricate for me, a compulsion that amounts to ‘an intense phobia of the color blue’?

-Dagothurial, ashen, behavioral psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 72

To: Dagothurial.

I don’t quite see where you’re going with that, but I found it rather easy, actually. I’m not even sure if I should really send you the permanent version as well, but I trust you won’t go overboard this time, right?

64F2

64F2P

Try not to make me regret this.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, seventy-third day.

To: Smaugaestus.

Anything to report or are you simply taking a nap?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, seventy-fourth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Urgh! You could’ve warned us that those emitters were unstable! I dropped some ruby crumbs on one, and the generator literally exploded!

It broke two other emitters I had in storage nearby, killed a test subject, and nearly tore off one of my talons!

Why didn’t you design some kind of protective casing around that thing?

I haven’t been able to get much done, on account of having to rebuild a bunch of complicated machines while wounded.

Other than that, I’ve been trying a bunch of delicate experiments, none of them working as well as I’d hoped. I may have something to report once I’ve had any success, or if I can be certain to get nothing out of it.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, fifteenth season, day 74

To: Smaugaestus.

It’s a quartz piezoelectric runefriction hybrid generator! Of course it’s unstable! How about you stop eating near sensitive equipment instead of asking me to child-proof my inventions?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, seventy-fourth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Smaugaestus

Testing log for 64F2(P), “cyanophobia” (irrational fear of the color blue)

Test 1: Subject was exposed to 64F2P prior to being introduced to the testing room. Testing room consisted of three connected corridors, two (2) of which were painted white, the last one painted blue. Subject was placed in the center of the intersection, and a large blue ball was rolled towards it through one of the white corridors.

Result: Subject immediately fled through the remaining white corridor.

Test 2: Same as test one, with the addition of several sharp blades at random angles through the walls, ceilings and floor of one of the white corridors. Ignited gas nozzles, jets of steam, spikes, caltrops, barbed wire and several dozen pounds of broken glass were also strewn along the length of said corridor. A large blue ball was once again rolled towards subject, introduced at the meeting point of the three corridors.

Result: (Gruesome little details omitted as per team leader’s request) Subject expired after attempting to flee through trapped corridor.

Test 3: Subject was exposed to 64F2P and left in testing room. Soon thereafter, a blue filter was placed around sole light source of the room, well out of reach of subject.

Result: Subject suffered severe mental breakdown, becoming irrational and incoherent within seconds. Subject quickly came to harm itself in its unsuccessful attempts to flee testing room. Subject eventually settled with cowering in a corner of the testing room with its eyes closed.

Test 4: Subject exposed to 64F2P as well as 7A12P, prior to being introduced to an entirely blue room. Subject attempted to flee through open door until told to stop and ordered to remain in testing room.

Result: Subject stood still, wracked with increasingly violent spasms until self-inflicted damage to teeth became apparent through the foam building around subject’s mouth. Subject then collapsed, apparently suffering from a seizure, and expired before any further actions could be taken.

Of note: dissection of subject showed cause of death to be a ruptured aneurysm; test results may be skewed by subject’s medical history. (This is why I would rather use more than one test subject)

Test 5: Subject 189, whose coat, eyes, mane and tail were all variations of the color blue, was introduced to an entirely mirrored room and exposed to 64F2P. A knife was provided.

Result: (Subject died from severe blood loss approximately five minutes into test)

Conclusions: Compulsions seem imperative enough to push exposed ponies to outright suicide.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 80

To: Dagothurial.

By Gorynych! What have I told you about killing test subjects? And what in the name of Zirnitra’s bloated testicles did you expect to gain from these tests? We already knew the compulsions could kill them!

What is wrong with you?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, eightieth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

For your information, my tests have only yielded 38 casualties yet, vastly outweighed by the 56 rendered utterly unusable by the permanent compulsions.

Furthermore, while we did indeed know of the lethal nature of the compulsions, they had yet to be proven to cause the subjects to willingly off themselves. Previous fatal tests had only shown to prevent a pony from escaping a dangerous situation despite its best efforts, while this has shown that we can make them actively seek their end, no matter how much they object to it.

As for what we gain from this, need I remind you that the instinct of survival is one of the most powerful imperative a creature can possess? If our compulsions cannot defeat it, they are not infallible.

I was merely testing the strength of our work. We needed certainty of this.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 80

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

So. As we’ve already discussed, the aggression compulsion, 6P32, is much too directionless to be of any real use. If used as is, only population centers of high unicorn density would be affected with any sort of significance, and most of the affected unicorns would count among the casualties.

This is not what we need. To be of any use to us, the compulsion needs to be refined. We need some sort of targeting, a way to make the unicorns seek out and destroy exactly what we want them to, or at least to avoid doing the same to each other.

What are your thoughts or suggestions on this?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, eighty-eighth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Smaugaestus

I feel the need to point out that it would be best if we also gave them a weapon of sorts: ponies are not, by design, killers, which greatly reduces their effectiveness as weapons. Just the ability to fly puts half of their possible victims out of reach, and the other half is usually both stronger and more resilient than them. A physical confrontation the likes of which is caused by 6P32 would be a losing battle by design. We need to use their only real advantage to ours.

Furthermore, would it not be possible to also imprint them with another compulsion to override their aggression towards other unicorns?

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 15/ 88

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

That would help, yes, but they would still need to recognize each other with a hundred percent accuracy: else anyone with a sufficiently convincing disguise would be safe from them. I don’t think the way we give them to identify targets should be based on visual input, or any other stimuli they could reproduce, for that matter.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, eighty-eighth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Dagothurial

I may have something for that…

The things I’ve been working on this past season are pretty horrible in hindsight, but I think it could be useful in this case.
I’ve taken my unusable test subjects and subject performed oper gradually lobotomized them. It was extremely hard and failed so many times, but I eventually managed to get a perfectly clean recording of nothing but the body’s autonomous functions.

Here it is, I really hope this wasn’t for nothing.

The best way to make them select their targets should probably be some sort of instinct. The rational mind is too easy to fool and manipulate.

Do what you do with it I guess. Do you mind if I take a break from the project for a few weeks? I’m just not really feeling it lately.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, season fifteen, day 89

To: Smaugaestus.

Go ahead, I’ll have this new little nugget to dissect in the meantime. This might actually prove useful, the interesting parts of the background noise cleared of all the chaff. I was not looking forward to tackling this the old-fashioned way.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, fifteenth season, eighty-ninth day.

To: Dagothurial

Hey Dag, do you ever wonder if we’re doing the right thing? I mean, genocide, really? Aren’t we going a little too far? They look so harmless in their little cities and I’m starting to wonder if it’s really worth it. Sure they’re sitting on some of the most insane gem deposits in the world, but I just don’t know…

Don’t tell Ark I said that.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Skyward Quill
Earze 57, season sixteen, day 8

To: Smaugaestus

If you wish to send private messages you could at least think to use another flux stream, you dunce.

Furthermore, just because I am a professional psychologist does not mean I want to be your therapist; there are fees associated with that. I do not care about your pathetic little doubts and issues, and your weak personal views and philosophies should not get in the way of your duties. You knew what you were getting into when this began. Need I remind you of the oath we both took just a little over a month ago or should I just sharpen my claws right now?

P.S. We are not friends. Refrain from using your idiotic little nicknames when addressing me from now on.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 16/ 8

To: Smaugaestus

No, I did not also forget to use a different stream; I merely followed the rules set forth by Ahrkalzahn.

Something you should consider doing more willingly than through mere accidents.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain.
57/ 16/ 8

To: Smaugaestus.

What is this I see about a “Skyward Quill”? I’ve never heard of such a place. Where the hell are you, and what are you doing there? And I told you to send everything through the archived stream, no exceptions!

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, tenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

In Equestria. Don’t panic. I was just visiting my green cousin who lives in a forest nearby. I settled in a cave on a steep peak not far from there and I just decided to call it that. It’s nothing really.

I’m coming back anyway; some ponies found me out and got curious and everything. Blegh, can’t even catch a wink around there. Before you freak out, just know that I didn’t have any of my research equipment with me so as far as they know I’m just some random dragon who tried to take a nap near their little town.

The project isn’t compromised. Your stupid mandatory archive is the biggest security risk here, I say.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist in transit
Earze 57, season sixteen, day 10

To: Smaugaestus.

Oh please, only a dragon could ever get in my lair, I made sure of that. Besides, I chose that spot because there were no ponies around to randomly disturb my reading. No one who cares about this except us even knows where I live.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, tenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Oh hey, I think I know what we could do to keep the affected unicorns from murdering each other. Did you analyse the core body functions recording I sent you? If so, do you think you could make them produce hormones and/or pheromones at will? Because that could be the key to it. Maybe invent some kind of pacifying pheromone or something for them to secrete to each other.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, season sixteen, day 13

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

Smaugaestus: Or just about any random pheromone they don’t normally secrete under any circumstance, and a matching compulsion to recognize that scent as a signal to hold their attacks. Yes… that would be worthy of dedicated research.

Dagothurial: About the weapon thing, are any of your unicorns particularly gifted with magic? You could probably order them to work on some sort of spell like I did mine. I asked them to come up with something specifically deadly to basically everything but dragons.

They’re not making much progress, maybe it would be best to put more heads to the problem. Smaugaestus, you should do the same too.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, thirteenth day.

To: Smaugaestus.

Hey, I think I finally did it. This crystal contains the formula for a hormone I made them secrete. I’m pretty sure it’s something their bodies would never produce normally, but it’d be best if you could synthetize a large quantity of it and slather it on a few of them to see if it actually has an effect. I hope it’s something their brains don’t associate with anything yet, but it would be fine if it does have an effect, as long as it’s sufficiently benign.

Also: 4X3P, the compulsion itself.

Scry them up to make sure to know if their brains even register it at all.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, thirtieth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

As far as I’ve been able to verify, that pheromone is entirely foreign to them. The brainscryes seem to indicate that they pick it up clearly enough, but they attribute nothing to it. Should be good.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, season sixteen, day 43

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

Ah, perfect. It should actually be fairly trivial to craft a compulsion to override their desire to kill anyone who produces that hormone.

Dagothurial: Any progress on that weapon spell?

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, forty-fourth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Smaugaestus

No. These worthless imbeciles could not invent their way out of a river.

On the subject of pheromones, have you thought of the children? Has either of you bothered to verify if the compulsions could affect infants, either pre- or post-birth? It would be a shame to lose potential agents due to mere age differences.

Besides, what if the unicorns currently alive in Equestria are in insufficient numbers to accomplish what we want them to? We will need the future generations, or a way to bolster their ranks in some capacity.

This needs to be addressed at some point.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain
57/ 16/ 44

To: Dagothurial.

Yes, you raise some very valid points. I think I have an idea about those.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, forty-fourth day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

The nerve! I can’t believe this just happened!

It seems my oh-so-faithful buffalo worshippers suddenly decided to make peace with the ponies, and won’t be abducting test subjects for me anymore. What a travesty!

They even had the cowardice to try to placate me with a chest full of gems! Ha!

Oh well, I don’t need as many guinea pigs anymore, so I humored them; I only squished one to make an example and let the rest flee. I suppose I could simply borrow some of yours if need be, and I’m confident I still have enough to simply make them breed if I feel especially patient.

Breeding. Huh.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, fifty-second day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Oh this is so disgusting. So hilariously depraved. I made them interpret that hormone to act not only as an attack deterrent, but also as a generalized aphrodisiac.

They’re going at it every chance they get.

If we include this in the final compulsion it should solve the preservation problem. It won’t matter if some of them die, they’ll just make more as fast as biologically possible.

And no, Dagothurial, I’m not about to send that one to you. I shudder to think about what you would do with this.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, sixty-first day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Oh, please. This is very nearly insulting.

Additionally, for the multiplication to function properly, I suggest we should avoid taking any chances at all, and make a secondary override to prevent them from harming unicorn foals. They should be protected at least for as long as it takes them to become affected.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain
57/ 16/ 61

To: Ahrkalzahn, Dagothurial

So, do either of you plan on joining up with the migration this earze?

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, season sixteen, day 73

To: Smaugaestus

I have not partaken in this exercise in frivolity the last seven times, why would I return to it now?

I am not about to grovel at the feet of the unmated hags like some desperate degenerate.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at Red Mountain
57/ 16/ 73

To: Smaugaestus.

I am fine at home. The northern brooding grounds can wait for another time.

One where we don’t have better things to do.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, seventy-third day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Sheesh, fine.

By the way, when are we going to have something to do? I’m all for taking naps and everything, but I feel like I’m wasting lots of time sitting here and waiting for either letters from you or some big magic discovery from brainwashed unicorns.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, season sixteen, day 73

To: Smaugaestus, Dagothurial.

Well I am also waiting on my unicorns to produce something, but in the meantime I’ve started planning the runemaps I’ll have to use to bind the compulsions together, and it looks insanely extensive.

We’ll have to go with the largest emitters I can design before they start losing potency from thermoelectric entropy, just from of the sheer size of the final emitter crystal. There is a limit to how small I can make my runes.

To that end, I suggest you both start looking for appropriately large quartz blocks for the generators.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, sixteenth season, seventy-third day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful. The most confusing riddles always have the simplest answers don’t they?

I have our weapon.

I suggested many paths of research for my unicorns, and the one I had the least faith in just recently proved to be the key, despite its utter failure.

I asked them to attempt to shoot out a burst of draconic magic.

This may seem foolish, as they obviously don’t have an ounce of our blood to create that magic. However, I theorized that it might be possible for them to convert their energies into something akin to ours, and project that at their foes; I was hoping being infused with more of our natural magic would be far from harmful to us while still being a relatively dangerous condensed beam of pure magic to everything else.

It didn’t work as intended: their unicorn magic seems to view the converted dragon magic as a foreign intruder, and actually coagulates around it somehow. This has the peculiar effect of creating a growing chunk of a strange crystalline material at the tip of their horns. After a while, the structure seems to reach a threshold where the opposing forces within can no longer support their own struggle, causing the whole mass to violently explode into a hail of high-velocity shrapnel.

The amazingly good news is that this crystal shrapnel is perfectly harmless to dragons. It seems the magic in our veins instantly overpowers the unconverted unicorn magic, softening the shards to a rubber-like consistency. Against anything else, though, they are incredibly dangerous; I’ve seen them slice through stone and puncture steel sheets. This is exactly what we needed.

Now that I look at this, I think we have everything we need to complete project Ethereal Overlord. Meet me at my lair so we can hammer out the final draft and map out where you’ll need to build your emitters.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, seventeenth season, ninth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn, Smaugaestus

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday; we should strive to let the affected unicorns remain fully aware and conscious of their actions. Striking a wild, feral animal in self-defense is easy; striking a terrified loved one begging for help is another matter entirely.

The psychological horror of such will make at least some of their potential victims hesitate enough to hopefully erase the ‘potential’ descriptor.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist in transit
57/ 17/ 17

To: Dagothurial

Wow, I hope you do realize how much of an absolutely disgusting slimeball you are.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Withered Heath
Earze 57, season seventeen, day 17

To: Smaugaestus

And I hope you do realize that it is only out of professional courtesy to Ahrkalzahn that I have refrained from crushing your spine to dust until now.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist in transit
57/ 17/ 17

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Can either of you remind me again when exactly I became the broodherd for two bickering hatchlings?

Dagothurial: You have a point. I’ll see what I can do.

Now both of you focus on establishing your new lairs and building the emitters while I work on carving those crystals. Remember: it must have at least a fair view of the sky so the emission isn’t blocked, it should be somewhere remote and difficult to access for ponies, and it should be no more than twenty kilometers away from the ideal locations we measured.

Let me know when you’re done, I’ll summon you when the crystals are done. You’ll have to come pick them up in person as they will be extremely delicate and I don’t want to risk sending them via flame.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial's Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, seventeenth season, seventeenth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

I’m done. A bit cold around here but whatever.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Cardinal’s Tooth
Earze 57, season seventeen, day 54

To: Ahrkalzahn

I have completed my new lair and am waiting for the crystal.

-Dagothurial, ashen, Behavioral Psychologist at the Dreamer’s Cleft
57/ 17/ 64

To: Drakelord Baphomet; Maw of Gleaming Mercury; Quicksilver King of drakes; greatest lord and ruler of Draconia.

My lord, Project Ethereal Overlord is nearly ready; we are merely waiting for your approval.

The final expected effects of the project are as follows:

Short term:

-Nearly immediate destabilization of all but the most recluse and rural equestrian communities;

-Initial death toll of thirty-five to forty-six percent of the total equestrian populace within the first week;

-Complete dissolution of governing associations at the onset of activation;

-Immediate crippling of all sectors of industry, commerce and communication, as well as most armed and first-response groups.

Long term:

-Complete and widespread societal collapse across all layers of hierarchy;

-Widespread extinction of most forms of life within Equestria;

-Possible military intervention from neighboring lands, failure likely, complete mutual destruction worst case scenario;

-Slow proliferation of agents inimical to all life but themselves and dragons;

-Total annihilation of any possible resistance to annexation by dragon agents.

Within two to five earze, Equestria and its abundant resources will be available to claim in total impunity, with nary a single drop of dragon blood spilled before, during, or after the conquest.

While Project Ethereal Overlord seeks to target unicorns specifically, it is possible that it will also affect the princess, rendering her unable to control the celestial bodies any longer. This has been deemed an acceptable risk, as there is always a possibility that she could be returned to her normal state once our goals have been reached. The full extent of how much of an effect this may have on her is unknown, as there was no possible way to covertly acquire an alicorn for testing purposes. As such, the princess has been excised from our predictions entirely, her possible influence deemed negligible.

I, on behalf of the rest of the team, eagerly await your review and approval.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial’s Claw.
Fifty-seventh Earze of your high reign, seventeenth season, eighty-fifth day.

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

I’ve finally completed all three crystals for compound compulsion 6P32/15B02.21B03-4X3.33A26.5S21-11B11/8AP45-3S10-PPP, “fracture”. Come pick them up immediately. I’ll tell you when to activate them.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial’s Claw.
Fifty-seventh Earze of Baphomet’s reign, seventeenth season, eighty-fifth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn.

Your Proposal Holds Promise. I Approve. Deploy Whenever Ready.

As Written Here On This Fifty-Seventh Earze Of My Rule, Seventeenth Season, Eighty-Seventh Day, At The Impregnable Iron Castle Ahzi Dahaka; The Three-Pronged Fortress.

----<>----Drakelord Baphomet, In Mercury Clad.----<>----

To: Dagothurial, Smaugaestus.

Activate the emitters tonight at midnight.

-Ahrkalzahn, gold, Master Runecarver and Harmonics Synthesist at the Sundial’s Claw.
Fifty-seventh earze of Baphomet’s reign, eighteenth season, fourth day.

To: Ahrkalzahn

Done. Now I’m going to get some sleep, if anyone minds. Wake me up if something comes up.

-Smaugaestus, red, Inferiorist Biologist at the Cardinal’s Tooth
Earze 57, season eighteen, day 5

To: Ahrkalzahn.

I Have Heard Good News Of Your Project’s Effects. It Seems The Kind Of Success I Would Celebrate In Person. Please Come And Enjoy A Friendly Stay At My Demesne. We Shall Hunt In Honor Of Your Ongoing Triumph.

As Written Here On This Fifty-Seventh Earze Of My Rule, Nineteenth Season, Twenty-Second Day, At The Impregnable Iron Castle Ahzi Dahaka; The Three-Pronged Fortress.
----<>----Drakelord Baphomet, In Mercury Clad.----<>----

Author's Notes:

Wow, that actually took way more words than I thought it would. Although, to be fair, at least 920 of those are Ahrkalzahn's signature alone, and the other two take probably just as many together.

So, the cat's out of the bag now, isn't it? *takes out bullshit umbrella in preparation of the upcoming rain of outrage*

Also, you may or may not have noticed, but every single dragon name in this chapter is in some way a reference to something. This also applies to the four names briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. The references range from "most High-schoolers should be familiar with it" to "I don't even think google can help you" levels of obscurity. At least one is so tangential and far-fetched that I'm not even sure it actually qualifies as a proper reference, and at least one other actually references someone else's reference to its most obvious source.
So, have fun with that! >>> /11 distinct references(unless I counted it wrong)

Final also: "Earze" is a completely made-up word. Dragons have a different set of time units, and this is one unique to them. For reference, Spike is about one earze old.

9: Fracture

“please let me go… I’ll do anything you want! Please,-“

“Spike.”

“I’m begging you! I-I… I don’t want to die, please…”

“Spike!”

“’It is quite simple, really: eat one bite, just one, and I will release you. You need only do that which you claim to desire most at this moment. What say you? Do we have an agreement?’"

"Test subject 181 begins to whimper and babble incoherently while crying uncontrollably, refusing to-“

“Spike! Stop! Stop it!”

Spike’s eyes snapped to the two ponies sitting a few steps away from him, the young orange pegasus huddled in the white unicorn’s arms.

He realized he was short of breath, inhaling and exhaling in rapid, shallow succession as tears he hadn’t noticed before soaked the thick cloth he had been reading from. The horror of what he held caught up to him and he threw the canvas away, falling backwards as he stumbled to distance himself from the terrible evidence.

The young dragon wrapped his arms around himself, on the edge of nausea, his eyes glued to the rumpled cloth lying before him as if it could suddenly come to life and attack him.

Someone had done this on purpose.

Willingly and intently.

No, no, no. That couldn’t be it. It simply could not be possible for someone to… create the Signal willingly, could it? He must have misread, or failed to translate the words properly or something! He scampered back to the giant scroll, carelessly tugging at it to pull out several lengths, skipping ahead.

Flashes of words, blinks of meaning swept across his mind as he skimmed the endless page; test subject, compulsion, crystals, the project, emitters. A succession of damning evidence and plans, of diagrams and blueprints lurked on every new line, in every paragraph. Every word hammering home the fact that this was real; the realization that this was not an accident, a mistake, or a careless force of nature.

The Signal was deliberate. Every part of it designed and engineered for the exact purpose of ruining Equestria as efficiently as possible.

“How?”

The young, raspy, shaking voice echoed in the room, its owner looking up from the tangle of hooves she was encased in. “How can anyone be so… so cruel?”

Rarity whispered a quiet statement of ignorance, as Spike simply stared at the scroll. Stared at the large drawing of a pointed spire of mechanisms and crystals. A familiar sight, it seemed.

“Who could do something like that? Why?” Scootaloo’s voice drew nearer as she stepped up next to Spike, horrified questions filling her mind all the way until the point where she caught a glimpse of the large blueprint. "Is… Is that…”

The orange pegasus simply let her question die in her throat as she looked up to the tower in the center of the room. Rarity followed her gaze, a look of dawning comprehension on her face.

“Long range emitter design, final draft.” Spike read out loud, translating the caption next to the drawing.

“You mean this is…” Rarity’s unfinished question lingered just long enough to be considered as interrupted by the sound Spike made by rummaging in his bag. The young dragon hastily retrieved the grey detector.

“Only way to be sure,” he said, opening the device in plain view.

The needle was already pointing straight at the tower by the time the lid flipped fully open. Spike laid the device on the floor and spun it around with a light tap. The needle almost kept up with the rotation, taking less than a second to realign itself once the spinning stopped. As a final precaution, to be absolutely certain, Spike circled around the machine. The needle followed it perfectly; instantly adjusting to every movement, every turn that would force it to point elsewhere. Only a few rhythmic twitches ever let it deviate, synchronously with the silent pulses of the red crystal all the way up above.

He looked up from the sporadically shivering needle, nodding slightly as he let his gaze travel up the dreaded contraption. This was indeed the source.

The machine from which the Signal emanated.

The seconds ticked by in the uneven rumble of the emitter, its crystal pulsing slowly in the half-light of the cavernous room. The three travelers stared at it, unsure of what to do, of just how to react to this; they had finally found it. They now had a name for their culprits, a cause for the madness and death, something at last to blame for the sorrow.

A cold, mechanical, crystalline pulsing crimson face to vilify.

A step was heard. Rarity walked forward, slinking to the side of a nearby table and grabbing a wrench’s handle hanging slightly over the edge. The oversized tool, although the smallest to be seen in the room, was as long as her body; its weight pulled her head to the side as she kept advancing.

Spike and Scootaloo could only see the unicorn’s mane, her face turned away from them as she dragged the instrument in her mouth. Her breathing was strained, though they could not guess whether it was because of the effort, the large piece of metal obstructing her mouth, or something deeper. What was obvious though were the tremors rattling her legs as she walked towards the cursed machine.

The two youths glanced at each other, the frenetic feeling of emotions rising high building in their stomachs. They knew they could both easily guess what the mare was about to do, and that it would be an intimidating spectacle. And although some part of him wished to leave the mare alone to her rage, Spike found himself simply unable to object to the core idea of the imminent outburst.

The white mare’s pace quickened as she advanced, culminating when she suddenly stopped in front of the tower to let the wrench slide forward from its momentum. Clasping the giant tool in her front hooves, she used it to push herself off the ground, swinging the length of metal cleanly over her head. As soon as the head impacted the stone behind her, the unicorn swung forward with all her might, hitting the machine with a loud and shrill scream of rage.

The tool returned to the ground, and the mare repeated the attack once more.

And once more.

And again; screaming pure, seething rage at the machine as she pummeled every part of it that she could reach.

“You horrible, cursed machine! You damnable monster! You deserve worse than this! You deserve to burn in the pits of tartarus! You took my horn! You took my friends! You took my heavens-damned family! I will destroy you, you worthless pile of junk! You are the worst thing to have ever existed in this world you damned… You accursed… You miserable… You… You UTTER PIECE OF SHIT! AAAAAH!”

Her blows slowed down, her breath labored and difficult. She leaned on the handle of her improvised club, tears flowing down from her eyes. She collapsed, wracked with sobs.

“You ruined everything! You destroyed so many lives, you horrible thing. You ruined my… sister’s… mind, my … family… You…”

Rarity’s word became muffled by her hooves, scrambled by her heaving breaths and the sobs and tremors of her sorrow.

The machine continued its humming, undeterred by the insignificant marks upon its metallic frame.

Spike, by the mare’s side in an instant, reached his hand to offer what little comfort he could. As she sensed her righteous anger about to be appeased by a friendly touch, the white mare loosed one final attack, launching into a sudden spin to throw the wrench as high as she could into the machine. The tool bounced nearly harmlessly on a length of copper tubing before landing head-first in the midst of the three spinning crystals near the bottom of the tower.

The pony and the dragon stayed there for a few moments, the mare crying as softly as her breathlessness would allow, the young drake patting her awkwardly on the back as if it could make her pain go away. Scootaloo watched in silent respect, feeling like an intruder and unsure of what she could or should say at the time. Her eyes wandered around in her discomfort, something quickly catching her attention.

“Uh, Guys? I think you should look.”

The others reluctantly glanced at the young pegasus, then at what she herself was pointing at: the wrench had gotten stuck between two of the crystals, preventing their usual rotation. The third component of the trio seemed to be picking up speed for some reason, its constant grinding hum noticeably turning into a screeching whine. Sporadic arcs of electricity flashed at random between the various parts, moving or otherwise, producing a worrisome crackle as they gained in intensity and frequency.

Smoke wafted faintly from the apparatus.

The three travelers began to back away, their eyes fixed fearfully on the intimidating display of lightning and smoke as the machine kept accelerating in its obvious malfunction. The three crystals were by then rattling furiously, smoke pouring out of their every crack as they fissured in unison and sent violent bolts of electricity shooting up the shaft of the intruding tool. The one unhindered crystal was just a blur by that point, its screech so high-pitched that it was barely audible anymore.

A cog from somewhere up above was shaken loose, and fell to the ground.

After a brief moment of intimidating stability, of a proverbial calm before the storm, the generator exploded.

The loose crystal shattered into an outward shower of shards, taking out a significant portion of one of the machine’s three legs in its proximity. Through the smoke the other two crystals could be seen falling to the floor, freed from the frame in which they had been held only to shatter in turn on the stone. The wrench fell on their fragments, crushing them further as smoke emanated from its scorched surface.

The sound, trapped in a circular and confined room, had been deafening more than once as it reverberated in the echo-prone chamber. The numerous impacts of the shattered crystal fragments shook the walls with their rattle, and the machine groaned in the returning silence.

The three looked up fearfully from the relative safety they had found under the large tables, all of them fortunate enough to have chosen a hiding spot far from the shrapnel’s path. Peering through the smoke, they could see the tower gently swaying back and forth on its two remaining legs, groaning as it did so.

Another cog fell onto another part of the machine only to hit one of the legs as it bounced. The freed debris punched a dent in the hollow tubular support, just enough to let it bend under the weight it held aloft.

The whole machine buckled over, almost freefalling until the partially severed leg connected with the ground, stopping the fall abruptly. Unrestrained in its socket, the large red crystal was jerked loose and fell to the sound of three voices shouting as their owners shielded themselves from the shards of its less-than-gentle landing on the hard stone floor.

Then all was quiet, save for the gentle sizzling of the crystal shards scattered around the room, and the distant hollow whistle of the wind filtering through the skylight’s cloth. The black smoke drifted lazily down the entrance tunnel.

“Is it over?” Scootaloo’s whisper broke the tense silence carefully, as if any louder tone would make the settling mass of the tower collapse fully.

“I think so.”

The trio slowly made their way out from under the giant tables, carefully picking their way through the bed of razor-sharp rubble covering the floor. Spike walked to the pile of red pieces, noting the very faint and still-weakening glow dissipate. Scootaloo began the slow trek to return to her companions, having taken refuge under a different and more distant table than them. Rarity stayed where she stood, observing the wrecked machine as one would observe a sleeping beast.

The persistent thought that the cloth scroll contained more than scenes of pointless torture brought Spike to its side again. There had to be more to this, perhaps a way to reverse it all or some useful technical information of some sort. He found the point where he had left off and resumed his read.

The occasional crunch of hooves stepping on the debris did not distract him from the words, nor did the short gasp from Scootaloo. She had probably walked on the shards wrong, and pricked her hoof or something.

“Guys, look at that! Is it broken or something?”

Spike glanced up for a moment, shifting his attention to the object of Scootaloo’s inquiry; the detector sitting in the debris, halfway between himself and the filly. He could immediately see what she meant, and what it actually meant for their quest.

The needle was spinning wildly, in any and all directions, in the exact way a compass locked inside an insulating steel box would if it received no other influence.

The Signal, at least in this very room, was no more.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said. “I think this thing is, though,” he added, pointing at the crumpled tower.

The smiles brought to the ponies’ faces were the most radiant he had seen them wear for as far as he could clearly remember, and their shouts of joy were infectious. Spike returned to reading the archives, his smile waning as he immersed himself in the chronicled conversations. He hoped to find a clue or a method, a way to reverse the effects of the Signal. A bit of morbid curiosity might also have been involved, in truth.

The seconds passed as he read, finding nothing more about a possible cure, only more despicable reports of experimentation on ponies. One thing caught his attention nonetheless.

“I think there’s only two more of those machines out there,” he said. “This Ahrkalzahn guy mentioned that this emitter model could cover Equestria with as little as three, and from what I can read here, these three bastards each built only one.”

“Are you sure about this, Spike? Couldn’t there be more?”

The young dragon shook his head in response to the unicorn’s question.

“He wanted them to be able to keep an eye on them for his ‘security reasons’, didn’t he? Besides, I don’t see any mention of them making any more than those three, or hiring help to watch them. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any more. We’ll find out eventually anyway, won’t we? We still have to shut those down too if we want to get rid of the Signal once and for all.”

Scootaloo chimed in as she looked around, suddenly a bit more nervous. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t those security reasons mean having a big scary dragon right in here with us?”

Two other pairs of eyes widened at the filly’s extremely pertinent question, and her disquieted mood spread to the whole group almost instantly.

“We should leave. All that ruckus would certainly have alerted him to our presence if he was here. That means he’s not, and that means he could come back at any moment.”

“Yep, I vote for leaving too.”

Spike looked at the ponies for a moment before glancing at the scroll briefly. He repeated the actions once more, his mouth opening slightly as he did.

“Hold on. I think I want to try something. Can you help me out with this?”

He pulled on the scroll with all his might, unfurling what little of it he had yet to read until the stretch of fabric detached from the machine’s cylinders. He pulled harder, ripping it out from where it exited the machine; a point where it was held firmly in place for the printing process.

The two ponies made their way to him as he painstakingly rolled the gigantic scroll back up, helping with the dragon’s efforts as best they could. They ended up with a loose and rather ugly bale, roughly the size of a cart.

“What are you going to do with this? We can’t just take it with us if that’s what you’re thinking; it’s way too large for any of us to carry.”

“You’re right, Rarity; it’s too big to carry, but we don’t have to. Look.”

The little dragon made a show of taking as large a breath as possible before spitting green flames at the scroll, circling it as he did to engulf it equally from all sides. He returned to his starting position to watch the magical flames consume the cloth with an alacrity normal fire would never match. His breathlessness could not fully suppress the chuckle he let out as he observed the nearly-frightening column of smoke rise to the ceiling and escape through the skylight.

“Oh, clever.”

Spike saw Scootaloo’s hoof extended towards him and returned her compliment with a bump from his fist. “Thanks.”

The small dragon then rummaged through his bag in order to take a piece of parchment and his quill.

After a moment of hesitation, he added;

His hand slowed and lingered on the page as he stared at the words he had just written, suddenly and terrifyingly aware of just what he was. He stood frozen, his eyes tearing up, just long enough for Rarity to put a hoof to his shoulder.

“Spike, are you-“

“I’m fine! I’ll be fine, don’t worry.” He looked away, wiping his eyes and sniffing back the tears. His sending fire took their place in his nostrils as he sent the message to Ponyville. It took the same path as the previous missive.

“Let’s go now. I’m done with this place.” He gathered his belongings back in his pack and headed for the entrance tunnel.

The two ponies followed the dragon, Rarity taking the time to grab a piece of metal she found on a table and throw it at the wreckage of the emitter for good measure.

As he knew stealth wasn’t strictly necessary, Spike took the liberty of lighting the way back with occasional bursts of flame. With his light, the three travelers made their way to the massive door in about half the time. They saw that it had closed by itself in the time they had used to explore the lair, and Spike opened it once more with his flames.

Once the sandy threshold had settled again, they stepped out at last, into the dusty haze. The sun’s obscured rays were almost blinding after the penumbra of the dragon’s halls, making them squint against its glare for the first few moments of their return to the edge of the monstrous bowl of sand and dust.

As he looked back from the rim, Spike could only think that the events that had taken place here were far more monstrous than the dimensions of their setting.

And that the creatures responsible were far worse still.

Author's Notes:

And here you go, just in time to be miserable for the holidays! Don't ever say I'm stingy on the gifts!
Fun fact: The original 18k word prequel took me about three months to write. these 15k's worth of big reveal only took one. Does that mean I'm speeding up? Maybe not: I was working on this a lot more consistently often than I did on The Signal.

So yeah, the Big Reveal. Dragons did it. Now they only have to travel to the two polar opposite ends of Equestria and ask two adult dragons to kindly step away from the extremely incriminating evidence of their evil for long enough to ruin everything the aforementioned evil dragons worked for in the past two years.
Should be easy, right?

Oh yeah, the archives actually contain a bunch of drawings and diagrams that I couldn't really include in the chapter, namely by virtue of them just outright not existing. Just imagine chapter eight to be filled with extremely boring technical blueprints.

10: Companionship

The wailing fury of a thousand wings thundered above, drowning the sky itself in a sea of shadows and wind. The red light from the fires bathed everything, the dark flocks that seemed as clouds and the black clouds that could have been distant flocks glinting in the horrifying glow.

Spike reached his arm forward, dug his claws into the earth, and pulled.

We did this.

The screech of metal momentarily smothered the howls of the predators above as Spike dragged himself forward.

He thrust his other arm, burying his claws in the earth again. Another pull, another screech of tortured metal. The ground was too weak to hold fast under the strain, and split around his sharp talons. A handful of dirt was easily shaken off his face.

Us.

Ponyville was visible, so close yet so far. No matter: he would get there eventually, and the inhabitants were on their way towards him anyway. They were fleeing the fires.

We.

With each pull of his arms, with each push of his hind legs, Spike felt his backside sway. The massive tower of twisted metal and glowing crystal was such a heavy burden. The brass roots and pipes growing out from between his scales hindered what few movements he could still make.

You are just like us, are you not?

The ponies huddled before him, struck with fear at the sight of the massive beast crawling in the way of their escape. A hundred wings flew overhead, raining fireworks on the town as colossal hailstones from a storm.

You are one of us.

Spike smiled. The metal of his lips scraped against the metal of his teeth, drawing blood from his gums. His mouth opened, taking air within. The inflation of his lungs distended his scales, allowing countless itches to snap back into place with a chorus of pings.

One of us.

Spike screamed. Spike howled, Spike roared. His note raced across the crowd of ponies, easily swallowing their own cries as they clutched their heads. Soon they rose, trembling, and immediately the unicorns began slaughtering the others.

The confused anguish, the fear, the desperation were palpable.

Palatable. Spike licked his lips, cutting his tongue on the sharp spurs of steel and crystal protruding from every crack between his scales.

Delectable.

You are one of us.

Spike resumed his crawl. Six mares were still untouched.

And we did this.

Two of the mares broke from the group, their wings silent in the roar of the thousands of other wings in the sky. The blue one hovered defiantly, extending her front legs to shield her friends.

Isn’t this grand?

Spike’s left arm rose, the metal boxes from which it was built glistening in the red illumination of the fires, their windows and wheels and joints screeching and breaking under the strain. A chimney on his hand blew a cloud of smoke, a blaring whistle escaping the metal shell as the appendage came down on the two pegasi. The blue one only looked at the arm as it descended, her expression unflinching for the two seconds it took to make her vanish. The impact threw the yellow one into the bushes, where she only cowered and cried.

You should be proud of us.

Spike took another step forward. Two of the remaining mares broke off from the last two, their hooves thundering across the blood-stained ground. Before they could even utter a single word to him, Spike swept his right arm in their way. The misshapen mass of razor crystal caught them both in its path. The pink one was effortlessly bisected, exploding in a shower of blood. The orange one almost avoided the attack, but was still thrown to the side. She screamed, the left side of her face entirely shaved to the bone by the deadly talons. Her desire to fight extinguished, she simply lay down to cradle the body of a small headless filly, petting the yellow coat and red tail as she wept.

You should be proud of yourself.

Only two left now. The hulking beast of scales and steel crawled once more towards them.

Of what you are. Of what we did.

The two unicorns stood their ground, their eyes filled with equal parts terror and disgust. Spike smiled at them. At their beauty. At how much he loved them both in different ways.

Of what you did.

His smile turned into a grin, his grin into a scowl, his scowl into an intake of breath.

You are just like us.

His howl shook the earth itself, causing the entire town to collapse into the suddenly birthed dark void in the earth. In the tremor, the numerous victim’s corpses exploded all around him and the unicorns. The purple one was sent flying, getting immediately covered from head to hooves in the blood of the other victims. Her laugh echoed in the air as she fell down the abyss, licking her wet appendages until her fall took her away from his senses, and she vanished.

As guilty as all of us. You are us.

No!

The white one had only seen her horn explode from the scream, gouging bloody cuts all over her once-pristine visage. The rush of air and sound had tripped her, pushing her nearly into the deep pit. She clung to the edge of the chasm, struggling to rise back up on solid ground.

We are you, you are us, and we did this.

No! NO!

Spike gently brought one of his crystal claws to the white one, delicately using it to lift her chin so she could look him in the eyes. Her own were filled with nothing but horror as she begged him for help, as she dug her trembling hooves in the earth to keep herself from falling.

You did this.

Without a single word, he thrust his finger forward, impal-

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

For a moment after his eyes opened he thought the nauseatingly black clouds still hung in the sky above him. Only when a pair of warm, delicate hooves wrapped around him did Spike recognize the pitch-black shapes as the innocuous foliage they were.

“Shh, Spike, It was just a dream,” the white one Rarity cooed in his ear as she struggled to hold the still-trashing young dragon. “It was just a dream, Spike, calm down!”

“Noooo!” Was all he could say, halfway between a sob and a shout. His hand clenched into a fist, he began pounding at his own head, repeating the word with every impact until the white unicorn finally managed to restrain him. “No! No! No! No! I’m not like that! I’m not like them!”

He struggled for a few moments more before giving in to the soft warmth of the mare, burying his face in her neck to weep.

Rarity held him, rocking back and forth while whispering occasional little words of comfort. The words did not matter so much as simply being there in that moment. Scootaloo watched from a distance, in the darkness of the near-twilight.

The two ponies and the dragon remained where they were, Rarity slowly calming the dragon in her arms while Scootaloo surveyed their surroundings to make sure Spike’s cries hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention. A few minutes passed, bringing out a pink tint to the eastern horizon.

The eighth dawn since they had discovered the culprits was fast approaching.

They had turned towards the coast as they left the dragon’s lair, hoping to find a bridge to cross the river in which the train had crashed once they got closer to the sea. At the very least they expected its shores to turn into something else than steep canyon walls as it found its way to softer lands.

Furthermore, the decision to avoid going back over their own steps made even more sense given the way the signal’s detector needed to guide them; they were at one point of a triangle, evenly distanced from both other ends. Inadvertently heading towards the middle would leave the detector spinning uselessly between two equally strong signals. They had then decided to aim for one of the edges of the confusion zone, where the compass’ needle began to hesitate. Not two days later they had been rewarded with a definite result; the needle pointing almost straight north by then.

The mountains of gravel of the badlands had abruptly given way to an almost impenetrable maze of forested crags, considerably slowing their advance. It had not taken long for the desolation of their previous locale to seem inviting once more after trudging through wet underbrush for nearly two days.

The lands they traversed were mostly uninhabited for a reason, after all.

Still, they had eventually found a road and begun following it north as it led them to more hospitable lands. They were now in a rather pleasantly temperate forest, lost somewhere in the vast expanse of vegetation between Baltimare and Dodge Junction if their map was to be trusted.

Spike still sniffled softly, his nerves reigned in and his agitation quelled. Rarity held him rather loosely, sleep threatening to take her back as soon as she would allow it. Scootaloo simply observed the two in the muted light of the crescent moon.

“Things were kinda looking up, you know?”

Spike’s voice was barely above a whisper, yet more than enough to snap Rarity back to attention. He sniffed some more. “I mean, staying holed up in the library with Twilight… it was… it was eating me up, right? And then we left, and all that walking… it helped. I had something else to do instead of obsessing about Twilight, and with how exhausted I was after walking all day I could finally get some sleep for once.” New tears sprang forth when he realized how much of a pathetic achievement that was, and how depressing it was that that had been the highest point of his recent life. “I was getting …better.”

His grip tightened around Rarity, and he had to make a conscious effort to not dig his claws into her back as he spoke the next words. “But then it… it had to be dragons, didn’t it.”

He broke free of her embrace, taking a few steps away before sitting down on his own tail in a curled-up slouch. He idly toyed with the spear-like tip for a moment.

“I…” his mind filled with questions, doubts he felt were important in some way, thoughts he knew would only fester in his head if he chose to let them unvoiced. What he felt about himself, what he thought that meant, and whether or not that opinion had any worth at all anymore. The only thing he could bring himself to express, however, was:

“I hate dragons. Every last one of them.”

His fingers pinched one of the scales of his tail, and he pulled on it while Rarity silently opened her mouth in an attempt to reply. The pain was too much to simply rip the scale out, but it helped distract him. Being unable to tell exactly what caused his eyes to water helped.

“Spike, I know it’s-“ the unicorn began, no doubt dredging up an excuse or a weak proverb in an attempt to make him reconsider his drastic statement. He didn’t let her.

“Every dragon I’ve ever seen, met, or heard from has either been a heartless jerk or a total monster! Don’t try to tell me they’re not so bad! They did this!” He punctuated the word by pointing at the unicorn’s bare forehead. “This, and everything back in Ponyville! Isn’t that enough to hate them?”

The mare briefly looked up, glancing at the spot where a white spur had once stood in her field of view; obstructing a part of her vision for most of her life. The dreadful absence of a part of herself. Her gaze soon returned to the ground.

“I… I do hate them,” she said, gently shaking her head. “I hate these three… psychopaths directly responsible. But I don’t hate all of them, all those others who weren’t involved in this abominable curse.” She met his own impassive gaze with a small smile. “In fact, I know at least one who-“

Spike laughed, a dry, short bark completely devoid of any joy. “Pff, like the one ‘good’ freak is an example!”

“Spike! You’re not-“

“I AM! I’ve been raised by ponies! That’s not… that’s not normal! How do you know it didn’t just mess me up? Or what if it’s just a gradual thing? I’m good now, and then I’ll grow up to be a teenage brat, and then an evil adult. …Do you think I could be happy if I was evil?”

“Spike, don’t do this to yourself.”

“WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?”

His scream had ended with him standing up, facing Rarity with his arms open and stretched out. His face was being consumed by the shadows of the upcoming sunrise behind him as he slowly regained his breath.

“How else am I supposed to feel?” His voice had lowered to not much more than a whisper. The silence stretched on, broken only by the soft chirps of waking birds as the morning drew ever closer. “I’m not… I’m not one of you guys. Unless I get into some kind of accident I’ll easily outlive you, and your children, and probably their children’s children too. I’ll never be a pony… and now I don’t even want to have anything to do with dragons. I’m not a dragon, I’ll never be a pony… so what am I?”

He had sat back down by then, once more pulling at one of his scales. More tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m nothing. Some kind of freak who’ll never fit in.”

The first rays of the sun finally lit the tallest branches, igniting them in a golden glow. Some still shined in bright green tones, emeralds hanging from their branches; while others had already begun to pale to a faint yellow.

The voice that spoke next wasn’t much of a surprise to him.

The words it said were somewhat understandable, considering who spoke them.

The hoof striking Spike’s jaw, however, was one thing he wasn’t prepared for.

“And who ever said it was a bad thing to be different!?” Scootaloo yelled as Spike reeled back from the blow. It hadn’t done much in the way of harm; even for fully grown ponies, the dragon would have been nearly indestructible unless real weapons were brought to bear. The lack of damage had little effect on the sheer shock of being struck, though. “Who cares that poor little Spike is all lonely? Snap out of it and stop making this all about you for once! Who cares if you’re the only nice dragon in the whole friggin’ world? You know what that means? You know what that gives you? It gives you the chance to show them what a real, good dragon looks like! You say you hate them? Fine! Just get up and go wreck everything they own then! Show them what a real dragon can do, show them who’s the best freaking dragon out here! Show them all just how much better than them you are!”

Her voice lost its edge, her anger melting even as she stood over Spike. He still lay on the ground, one hand feeling his jaw as he glared at her. “You can cry all you want, but not now, and definitely not here. Bawl your eyes out for all I care, but only once those bastards are done paying for it.”

“That’s enough.” Rarity put herself between the two youths, a hoof gently coming to rest on Scootaloo’s back even as her eyes looked at Spike. “I think we should get going, seeing as we are already up and the sun is about to as well. Spike, my ears are always open to anything you might want to share; you can tell me anything that upsets or troubles you. Scootaloo’s point still stands, though. You need to be strong for us, for Equestria, and for Twilight, understood? Can you do that for us, dear?”

A simple nod was his only answer, his furious eyes still trying to bore into the orange filly.

The light drizzle had begun around mid-morning, adding a touch of bitterness to the already foul mood. It was a constant mist, as if legions of pegasi were playing with spray bottles up above. An unending barrage of microscopic droplets looking more like oversized fog than actual rain, and it brought with it a wet chill that they would have traded for the desert’s dry heat in an instant.

In the total absence of wind, it felt and sounded like they had walked in on the entire world taking a gentle yet unfortunate shower.

Both Spike and Scootaloo had yet to say a word since that morning. Spike had quickly sunk back into preoccupied silence, and Scootaloo seemed determined not to be the one to speak first.

Rarity didn’t dwell on it too much. She knew they would eventually come around and at least resume speaking to each other. Maybe even consider the other’s feelings on the matter at hoof.

For now, she was simply content in letting the rainy haze wash the grime from her coat and listen to the gentle impacts of her hooves on the road. The quiet rush of water from under the bridge they were crossing.

The distant racket of discordant metallic percussions echoing from further down the road before them.

She stopped, her eyes going wide and her ears entirely focused in front of her. The other two took one more step before noticing her sudden halt and the expression on her face. Without a word, they were all looking around, wide-eyed and immediately alert.

What little few birds had occasionally been communicating through the mist were now all perfectly silent.

Through the humming chatter of the mist could be heard a clatter of metal, coming closer. A faint voice spoke unintelligible words.

The three travelers looked around themselves, searching for a hiding place, anything they could use to remain unseen in case the approaching… person were to be dangerous. There were none. They were in the middle of a bridge, out into the open with nowhere to hide.

A small, sharp “click” came from somewhere right next to them. Spike and Rarity managed to silence their surprised gasps as they turned to the source of the noise: Scootaloo held, in her hooves, a small crossbow that she had just finished loading. Spike noticed a small bag, now empty, sitting on the filly’s back. A bag that he had seen her lug around, full of sharp lumps, for most of their journey. The bag she had never opened and that they had assumed to be another one of her mysterious and numerous belongings.

Of course she would bring a weapon.

Scootaloo levelled the crossbow, pointing it at the end of the bridge where the newcomer would soon appear.

The sound of hooves on cobble told them it did.

In the middle of the crossroad where the bridge met a perpendicular road suddenly stood a unicorn.

His coat was difficult to see under the eclectic array of pots, pans, and utensils strapped to his body in such a way as to produce the loudest racket imaginable. Old dirt and mud covered his legs, and a large blindfold wrapped over his eyes hid even more of his features. What little could be seen of his coat seemed grey, and his mane was white. His ears swiveled around, attentive, before being drawn backwards as a voice shouted something from far behind him. Dense bushes and weatherworn rock formations hid whatever he was listening to from the eyes of the three.

He was roughly fifty feet away from them.

“Yeah, yeah, I know already, geez!” His answer to the unseen voice contained no small amount of annoyance, but returned to a more neutral tone as he cleared his throat. His next words came with the underlying discontent perfection of a practiced speech.

“If there’s anyone here,” he yelled to no one in particular, “you need to hide and stay quiet! My friends are right behind me and you can’t let them see you! If they see you they will hurt you, so you need to hide, stay quiet, and let us pass!”

The stallion then waited a few seconds before turning his head back to address his friends once more. “Sounds clear! Come on!”

The distant voice called something back, and the grey stallion sat down while he waited for his companions to catch up to him.

A quick look behind told the three travelers that they would never reach the opposite end of the bridge before the unicorns got to the crossroad and spotted them, even if they decided to run away in a loud and obviously suicidal gallop. Spike was raising his arms in a defensively combative posture, while Scootaloo’s weapon shook in her hooves.

They were not fit, or even ready to take on a group of unicorns. One, maybe. Two if they were lucky. Anything more would overwhelm them.

There were obviously more than two.

In a moment of perfect clarity, Rarity slipped a leg around Scootaloo, clamped her teeth around Spike’s tail, and pushed herself into a roll over the bridge’s railing.

The fall was short, and so sudden that the two youths only had time to gasp as they fell. This both prevented them from screaming, and filled their lungs with air before they were plunged into the water below.

The sudden cold slap of the river made Rarity let go of her companions, and she was immediately glad to have directed her hooves downward as she fell; her legs hit the muddy bottom no more than a second after the dive. In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, she also felt numerous stones strewn about the riverbed while she pushed herself back to the surface. A head-first fall could have been deadly.

She surfaced, strenuously fighting the instinct to gasp for air and instead take a slow, silent breath. Scootaloo and Spike soon also emerged, both thankfully managing to remain silent as well. Rarity reached out and grabbed them before using her hind legs to slowly wade through the shallow water. Thus spared the noise that swimming might have created, she quietly made her way to a soft brown stone held against the bridge’s support by a tangle of branches. All three pressed their backs against the stone bridge, looking up to where they had been standing a moment ago, somewhere over the arch above their heads.

Their bags gently bubbled around them as they filled with water, while the rain quietly hissed on the river’s surface. The total lack of wind and the slow currents let the water stand perfectly still, its surface only stirred to the appearance of frosted glass wherever it wasn’t covered by a bridge.

“My legs are killing me,” came a distant voice, easily audible in the quiet stillness. “Are we getting closer, or is this another signless intersection?”

“A hundred and seventy-eight miles. It’s-”

The rest of the sentence was cut off by a clamor of rattling cookware, followed by the voice of the grey unicorn that wore it.

“Aww, man! really? I thought we’d be closer by now!”

“Why are you so eager to get there?” asked a new, feminine voice. “It’s obviously a trap. I mean, come on, really.”

The second voice replied in the same gravelly gruffness it had used to quote the distance just a few moments ago. “It’s not a trap, Poppy! It’s the only hope we have, you know that! Maybe they can help us somehow.”

“Yeah, by putting us down like the animals we are.”

“And would that really be such a bad thing, Poppy? We aren’t exactly a good influence on Equestria right now, you know.” The first voice, the one who had complained of tired legs, had almost mumbled the last part. It had still been enough to be heard, especially in the glum silence that it created with the statement.

A few moments passed, none of the voices speaking while the two ponies and single dragon huddled under the bridge. Spike noticed the soft brown mass on which they had settled was somehow adorned with an armrest of a familiar design. A look around let him see, in the tangle of branches nearby, a single tattered hat floating gently on the water’s surface. Somewhere at the bottom of the river lay a large wooden trunk, similar to the ones often taken aboard trains; previously hidden by the cloud of mud they had disturbed upon their dive. A knot formed and churned in his stomach as he recognized they were pressed against a bench of the friendship express, a whistle escaping the metal shell as the appendage came down on-

…Spike decided not to share this realization with his companions.

“Oh for the love of… Starburst, get the hell off your damn sister!” The older, gruff voice was filled with annoyance and indignation as it shouted, and a hint of disgust crept along as it soon shouted once more. “I meant now, son!”

“Tsh, fine!” Legs-Are-Killing-me, the one apparently called Starburst, replied. The three travelers looked up as the sound of hooves crept closer above them, each step taken in obvious frustration. Starburst stopped right where they had jumped off, and they could hear his disgruntled mumbling ever more clearly in his approach.

“like it’s my damn fault she’s the only mare around… wouldn’t be a problem if we’d let that couple join us last week. But nooo, ‘they look deranged’… as if we’re any different…”

“And don’t look in the damn river, unless you want to drown like an idiot chasing fish!”

“Oh get off my back, will you? I can’t see a damn thing down there with all that damn rain anyway!”

Starburst’s voice returned to its brooding mumblings after his reply, although it became strained and hissing as it went; punctuated by grunts and short breaths in increasing frequency.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, old fart? Riding me like I ride her? Or maybe you just don’t want me to get that flank all to myself? Oh, yes, I see you looking at her when we camp… you old pervert… you want to get a piece of her too, don’t… you… Hhhh… I don’t even… care, mmhh, anymore… I’d take you both… Oh yeah, even Rhinestone too, I wouldn’t… bite… Urhhh… Ghaaahhh…”

Rarity had her hooves tightly pressed to Scootaloo’s ears long before that point, as soon as she had realized just what the unicorn was doing up above. Her own ears were splayed back and her eyes closed as she tried to ignore the voice. Spike simply stared at the faint shadow of the pony’s head, projected on the matte surface of the water.

He soon saw drops of water falling from above; distinct in that they were even visible at all, unlike the fog-like drizzle. The unicorn named Starburst took a moment to catch his breath, before resuming his whispers. These had lost all the grumbling frustration of the previous mumblings, instead replaced with something both much feeble and infinitely more… wounded.

“Oh my damn stars… I’m so damn disgusting. I hate this. I hate this so damn much, why can’t I stop thinking like that? …What’s wrong with me? Sweet gods above, how did I become such a horrible, filthy piece of shit?”

More drops fell from above the bridge.

Starburst remained there for a few moments, finally sniffing back and taking a few steps to join up with his companions, who had continued their conversation while he was away from them. A more muted conversation followed, the four unicorns speaking of various mundane subjects regarding their supplies and plans.

Soon, the older stallion raised his voice to command the rest of his group. “Okay, let’s get going. Starburst, you’re staying on seeing duty, everypony else put their blindfolds back on.” A short pause later, he continued. “Alright, ready? Go ahead, Rhinestone.”

The clatter of cookware resumed as the pony called Rhinestone set on his way once more, soon guided by Starburst’s shouts. “You’re drifting to the right again, watch that. Branch on the ground, on your ten, in like… six steps. Five, four, three, two… right there. Yeah. Kick it out of the way for the others. Now just keep going straight for a while.”

The sound of Rhinestone’s movements faded as he got further and further. After a moment more, Starburst quietly prompted his other companions to follow him, and they left as well.

Rarity waited a few minutes more before moving the slightest bit. When she did, her movements were slow and deliberate as she waded through the shallow water once more. Silently, she vigilantly kept her footing secure while she crossed to the next support of the bridge. Now lacking the buoyancy that their bags had afforded them before filling up with water, Spike and Scootaloo had to paddle to stay afloat. The trio rounded the corner of the support and crossed over to the next, and the next, and finally to the shore. They quietly shook off the water -for as much good as it could do in the constant rain- and Scootaloo crept up the slope to where the road stood.

After a thorough look and a pause to confirm the return of the birds’ disinterested chirping, she finally motioned for the others to join her.

“Well,” Rarity began once she had stepped on the road and looked westward to confirm to herself that the unicorns were gone, “It was certainly… nice of them to come up with a way to warn ponies of their presence.”

“Yeah, well, we still got lucky again,” was Scootaloo’s answer, spoken without a glance spared in the unicorn’s direction. Her eyes were only focused on the crossbow she had managed to miraculously hold onto while she was thrown off a bridge. The bag that had concealed the weapon since the beginning of their journey had not been so fortunately saved. The orange filly began unzipping and opening some of her various pouches, apparently looking for something. “I kinda wish we could stop depending on that alone…”

“I wonder what they were talking about,” Spike inquired as he walked towards the assortment of road signs planted at the intersection.

The matching set of official signs installed by the equestrian government attested that the road to their right led to “Baltimare, Fillydelphia, Stoneshade”. The way they had come from, across the bridge, was simply announced to lead to “Dodge Junction, Dragon lands”.

Whatever had been written on the westward sign was now entirely covered by a newer, hastily-crafted sign that had been nailed over it. This one, in hoof-drawn lettering, bore most prominently the ominous mention of “Cloister, 178 miles”. Below those words, smaller text added “Unicorns: Head to Cloister, bring food and supplies. Everyone else: AVOID CLOISTER AT ALL COSTS” The last few words had been underlined in red paint.

“Cloister? I’ve never heard of such a place.”

Rarity had just joined Spike in front of the signpost, soon followed by Scootaloo. The filly now carried her crossbow on her back, a sash-like length of rope holding the weapon steady and secure.

“Wow, that mare was right: that does sound like a huge trap.”

“Well even if it’s not,” Spike replied, “It just means it’s full of unicorns, and that’s pretty much the same thing to us, isn't it?”

“In any case,” Rarity said as she strode forward on the east path, “I’d rather leave this place as soon as possible. We are still heading for the coast, right?” She only needed to hear the short hums of assent before continuing: “To Fillydelphia it is, then.”

Spike and Scootaloo exchanged glances, before the filly simply nodded and uttered a quiet “yeah.” She followed the mare.

Spike looked at the sign and then at the bridge, remembering what was under it. His fists clenched as he turned his gaze to the west and the four unicorns he could not see.

“I didn’t do this. I’m not one of them.”

With the gentle sorrow of the clouds up above drowning the sky in a grey mist of silence, Spike spun to face the east, put a foot forward, and resumed walking.

Author's Notes:

Choosing an innocuous chapter name that turns out to be horrible in hindsight...
I should try to do that more often.

Thank you for sticking with this for so long despite my abyssal output.

Reader Farsight found one of the dragon name references, if anyone is interested at all. Smaugaestus references Tolkien's famous dragon. That was the easy one.
1/11

11: Tyrant

The assumption that the small town of Stoneshade would be a good point to stop was mostly driven by three things. One, that it was much closer than Baltimare, and only a half-day’s detour; two, that after seeing the quiet desolation of Ponyville and Appleloosa, a small part of the trio’s minds was simply curious to witness first-hand how other towns had fared in the troubled times. A morbid curiosity to see what the unknown communities had been driven to in order to survive; or to simply observe how they had failed to do so and died.

Lastly, and despite the commendable efforts they had made in order to find a somewhat dry cave in which to light a small fire and spend the night drying off both themselves and their belongings after their soak in the river, the trio felt more than ready to taste the modern comforts of civilization once more at last.

It would have been so simple.

The first thing they had seen of the small forest town was the immense stone spire rising high above the treetops; most likely the namesake of the town, the large column stood at a slightly tilted angle over the gentle wisps of smoke wafting from fires they could not yet see. The geologist in Rarity recognized the natural monument as having been carved out of some ancient strata of bedrock by the millions of years spent standing in a river’s delta. It certainly wasn’t the only one in the area -they had passed by several hundred more since their departure from the badlands- but it was quite notable by its sheer size; easily dwarfing anything from there to Canterlot.

The second thing they had noticed as they approached was a peculiar catwalk built around the monolith, from which a conspicuous shadowy shape seemed to fall as they got closer.

The third, and most worrying thing they saw of the village of Stoneshade was the literal wall of iron stomping its way towards them with a roar.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE PONIES!”

Taken completely by surprise at the sight of the pockmarked, mangled piece of steel advancing upon them from around a slight bend in the road, the three travelers only had time to exchange panicked glances before they found themselves face to face with the object. With an earth-shaking thomp, what seemed to be an entire flattened refrigerator dropped to the ground mere feet from where they stood.

They had started to back away from whatever terrifying contraption stood in all its faded-green-painted, flaked glory in the middle of the road when a second, equally-terrifying object drew out from behind the first. This one was, at first glance, an amalgamation of several concrete-filled mailboxes strapped to a streetlight by the iron rings of at least two barrels.

The second object was held firmly in the grasp of a single, dark grey hand.

The hand was attached to an arm, who belonged to a bafflingly massive minotaur. How the beast had managed to remain entirely concealed behind what he apparently used as a shield on his way there was only one question among the generally terrified thoughts of the much smaller trio.

If Rarity had dubbed her only experience with minotaurs, Iron Will, a monster, this individual required some effort in order to think of a stronger, more proper way to qualify his girth and general appearance. Abomination, perhaps; horror, if one was to go with the effect of his presence.

Where Iron Will had stood twice as tall as Rarity, the fuming specimen blocking their path was at least a head taller still, even when accounting for his worn-down and broken horns. Dozens of scratches covered his body, marking everything from his bulging muscles to his face and even his ankles with the scars of past violence. Both his skin and the fur of his legs were darker than what the unicorn remembered of her only point of comparison. He wore no tie nor nose ring, instead being adorned with a single earring.

And he seemed beyond furious. His beady yellow eyes, ridiculously small compared to a pony’s and thus appearing microscopic on the huffing mountain of flesh, were bloodshot to the point of looking downright orange. His stiff breaths only seemed able to escape his nostrils as rumbling grunts and puffs of steam, and his ears occasionally flicked this way and that as if trying to swat flies. From time to time, his head twitched, prompting angry snarls and shows of bared teeth.

“Are you,” the minotaur began, his voice seething with threat, “here to cause trouble?”

Another quick exchange of terrified glances was immediately followed by a squeak from Rarity that could have been, under the right circumstances, mistaken for the word “What?”

“Are you being FOLLOWED?”

Spike was about to object, to ask who this stranger was and what he was talking about, when a rustle of leaves behind the beast announced the arrival of a new face.

“Woah, woah! There’s no need for that, Ty! Calm down buddy, you can see they’re not dangerous, right?”

The minotaur only ground his teeth and growled in response, inching closer to the ponyvillians with such intensity that his whole body shook. The Stallion, whose coat was a very light shade of lavender, moved to stand the slightest bit in the minotaur’s way. He put a hoof on the giant’s maul-wielding forearm and tried to establish eye contact with the monster.

“Hey there, easy. They’re not going to hurt anyone, Ty.” The earth pony turned his head to glare suddenly at the three travelers. “Right?”

The hurried assurances that the trio had indeed come with no ill intent proved enough for the massive beast, although he required three long seconds of immobile fuming before it became apparent of such. He eventually closed his eyes and forced his short, choppy breaths to return to a more controlled state, before rising back to his full height.

“Take them back to the village,” the minotaur said, cracking his neck as he spoke. Anger was still prevalent on his features. The stallion silently motioned for the three to follow him as he began walking backwards towards where he’d come from, keeping his eyes on the tall minotaur and a concerned frown on his face.

“And tell Sleet Shield to get back to his damn post!” the dark beast added, “I’ll take a look around to make sure they weren’t lying.” His eyes fell on the trio as he put his maul down on its head, grabbing a nearby tree branch as thick as a pony’s leg in his hand instead. “And if they are…”

The branch snapped immediately, crushed to splinters between his massive fingers. He shook the wooden shards out of his grip, only to point two fingers to his eyes and to the group in rapid succession. He then left without another word, dragging the massive hammer behind himself as he cleaved through the underbrush.

The ponies and dragon pressed forward, all visibly eager to put distance between themselves and the minotaur. As soon as the minotaur’s heavy hoof-falls and loud trampling went out of earshot, the stallion passed a hoof through his nearly-shaved mane with a sigh.

“Look,” he said as the three others stopped to face him, “I’m sorry about Tyrone. He’s… he hasn’t been his normal self lately, ever since that whole business with the unicorns.”

“You mean that minotaur back there?”

“Yeah,” the stranger answered, motioning with his head to continue their trek. “His name’s Tyrone Fist. He was… he was just here in Stoneshade when the unicorns went crazy for some reason. A really polite, calm guy until… whatever happened.” He chuckled dryly, picking up the pace as the town was quickly becoming visible through the woods. “And then he just punched them all out of here. Literally.”

“What?” Spike stopped in his tracks from the surprise, quickly catching up again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said,” the light-coated stallion replied, “When the Pickles and the rest of the unicorns started killing everypony, he just pounced on them, knocked them all cold with his fists, and dragged them out of the village. It was pretty awesome.”

“And he didn’t get himself killed?”

“Oh no, ma’am! You wouldn’t believe how fast this guy can move, given his size, but I tell you he was slapping them senseless before they even had a chance to react! And just after that, he started working on that hammer and shield of his, and those sure came in handy a few times since then.”

The village now surrounded them, thatched-roofed houses making up the vast majority of the few dozen homes around them. It was painfully reminiscent of Ponyville, although on a thankfully smaller scale and with enough distinctive log cabins to dissuade any further comparisons.

“Yep,” the stallion said without looking at them, too busy waving over a brown mare who was already heading straight for them. Upon noticing that she had indeed been made aware of them, the lavender pony returned his attention to them. “Anyway, my parents were weird so my name’s Pearl,” he rolled his eyes at that, “and welcome to Stoneshade! It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

At that point, the mare came within earshot, prompting Pearl to raise his voice ever so slightly. “Uh, Russet here will show you around, I have to go watch what Ty’s doing, you know? See you later!”

The brown-coated, blond-maned mare gave a slight bow and introduced herself. “HI, I’m Russet Gold! You guys must be exhausted from all that walking! Follow me, I’ll show you where you’ll stay.”

She headed off towards the village proper, motioning for them to follow.

“Oh,” Rarity said as she caught up to Russet, “How wonderfully generous of you all to offer us shelter for the night without questions or hesitation! I assure you we are very grateful.”

The mare waved a hoof dismissively. “For the night, and the day after, and as long as we need to let this whole thing blow over, no problem. Don’t worry, we’re not going to just throw you guys back out there. Oh, you’ll love it here!”

Russet walked a few more steps before noticing that the others had stopped following her.

“Uh,” said Spike as the mare turned around inquisitively, “We kinda need to go back out there soon.”

“What? Why would you ever want that?”

“So that is why we need to be back on our way as soon as possible, and why I still don’t understand how it could be a problem.”

The small, dusty kitchen of the recently-abandoned house that they were to spend the night in was a far cry from what Rarity would have been comfortable living in, but it was sufficient for a conversation.

Russet Gold kept her eyes on the detector lying open on the table as she seemed to think over her next words, a hoof to her chin.

“Well,” she eventually said, “it really shouldn’t be a problem, but the keyword here is ‘shouldn’t’, if you know what I mean. …It’s Tyrone.” She ran a hoof through her mane, lingering a bit on a spot just behind her ear. “I don’t think he’ll let you guys leave. He’s become… very protective of us townsponies, and I doubt he’d let a single mare and two children go back out there.”

“But we’ve been fine all the way to here! We can handle it!”

“Yeah, well, look uh… Spike, was it? He… he doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and he’s incredibly hard to convince of… anything, really. …Not that anyone ever tried very hard; I mean, you guys have seen him, right?”

“Yes,” Rarity answered, “but Pearl said he hasn’t always been like that? What happened to him?”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?”

“No one knows, really. He’d been in town for about two days when that whole mess began, he said it was for his hobby. Rock climbing or something, he’d been circling around Old Watcher up there and looking at it a bunch ever since he got here anyway. He kept to himself mostly, and he was very polite and respectful when he talked to us.” The brown mare chuckled a little, showing her age from the budding wrinkles around her eyes as she did so. “He really looked like he enjoyed my famous baked potatoes in any case, I’ll make you some if you want, by the way.“ Russet’s face sobered slightly, forgetting the smile it had held a minute prior. “But when the unicorns began hearing that buzzing, he said he could hear it too and… what?”

The brown pony found herself worried by the terrified looks her guests exchanged. “You… you don’t think he’s going to go insane too, do you?”

Spike scratched his head, mulling the question over for a few seconds. “Well, I don’t know. I only skimmed their notes, but those dragons seemed to have a very hard time calibrating the signal for unicorns specifically. I don’t even think it could affect anything else, even if they could hear it. I’m pretty sure different species’ brains work differently.”

“I sure hope so. …Anyway, not long after that, he became very angry for no reason, and I do mean unreasonably angry. He’d punch walls, break stuff for no reason, and he completely forgot about his plans to climb the rock, and he was actually getting worse as the day went on…”

Tears could be seen gently budding in the corner of Russet’s eyes as she brought her hoof to her mouth before continuing. “He was getting terrifying… we were all scared and then… then the unicorns went completely berserk and he… h-he just…” She ran her hoof over her face, almost mechanically while she inhaled sharply. After a second where she looked away, biting her hoof, she blinked and turned back to her guests. “Sweet Pickle. She had just… hurt somepony, you know? She was just standing there, screaming at the top of her lungs and, and, even I barely saw him coming from behind her, you wouldn’t believe just how fast he can run when he wants. …He, he just literally punched her face into the ground from behind and she, s-she just stopped moving and I don’t, I,”

Rarity moved to lay a comforting hoof on the brown mare’s shoulder but was gently pushed away. Russet took a long breath through her nostrils, her mouth obstructed by her hoof as she held her eyes shut. After releasing her breath, she resumed her tale. “Look, long story short; he knocked them all out one by one as soon as they flipped like that, and then he dragged them out of town, to that crossroads to Baltimare I think. Then he came back, all cut up and bleeding from the few shots he barely dodged, and he started working on those weapons of his, because he said ‘fists aren’t enough’.”

The mare wiped her tears and locked eyes with the trio one by one. “I don’t know if you guys are right about that …signal thing affecting him, but I’m telling you right now: he is dangerous. He’s always angry, and any little thing can send him over the edge. That’s when the fists go flying, and no one wants that.”

Russet rose from her seat, absent-mindedly patting down her blond mane as she turned towards the door. “I’m just a small-time potato farmer, and I don’t know if you’re fibbing me or not about that dragon conspiracy thing, but if you guys are really telling the truth about this, this is way more important than your safety. I’ll try to convince him that it’d be better to let you leave, but he’s very, very dedicated to protecting us from unicorns. He gets… upset when we tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, and it’s even worse when we don’t do what he says.”

She paused with a hoof on the handle. “And I don’t recommend trying to sneak out; despite his attitude, most folk consider Tyrone a blessing for the town and they follow his commands like a bunch of soldiers. There are patrols around town. They probably won’t let you leave either, if only to avoid having an angrier Tyrone on our hooves.”

Russet opened the door, stepped out, and turned to them long enough to add “I’ll see what I can do.” Before closing the door behind herself.

Leaving looks of worry and consternation on the three faces behind her.

This town was stupid. Even ignoring the fact that Old Watcher -as the colossal pillar looming above was called- was standing directly west of town and thus plunging everything in shade as soon as noon rolled around, Scootaloo couldn't help but feel an air of casual hopelessness to it.

The townsponies, numbering around eighty, seemed truly content with living under Tyrone’s frankly tyrannical “protection”, sacrificing comfort for safety instead of organizing their own defenses and keeping most of both.

Stupid.

The foals weren’t much better. Of the only two fillies her age around, one was filled to the brim with empty bravado, talking big and claiming superiority to anything without the actual courage to take any risks; while the second was both completely delusional and extremely cowardly.

“’Daddy went to Canterlot to warn the princesses about these meanie unicorns’, my feathered flank,” the young pegasus muttered. What would normally have been a tragic tale of sorrow regarding the obvious true fate of the filly’s father had been turned into mere annoyance at her delusions by the fact that the three travelers were still trapped in Stoneshade.

Or, as Pearl had so insistently corrected, “hosted” in the small town.

Russet, Pearl, and the two other leader figures of Stoneshade had been back in the evening to inform them that staying in the village was in everyone’s best interest. What followed had been a lengthy discussion about their “obviously misguided” desire to leave, the “nonsense” and “unbelievable” reasons for them to want to do so, and some pleas for the travelers to stay put and refrain from agitating Tyrone. Pleas that soon devolved into threats and shouting as the spirits heated up, until the villagers decided to storm off before attracting Tyrone’s attention.

Before leaving, Russet had attempted to apologize and placate the travelers with a gift of her home-made, potato-based cooking.

Bitter resentment and anger make for terrible spices.

After a short night where the villagers did everything in their power to make the travelers know that they were under constant vigilance, a new day had come.

A day the orange pegasus wished could end soon, sitting under a tree whose shadow had already been consumed by that of Old Watcher. Having the townsfolk encourage their fillies to socialize with her had eaten up her morning; a few vapid, frustrating hours that had soured her mood further until she had managed to sneak away from them.

“There you are, Scootaloo!”

For a time, at least.

Scootaloo groaned as Misty Dew trotted up to her, the pudgy blue filly carrying a worn notebook in her mouth. She dropped it between the two of them before continuing.

“I’ve been looking all over! You could’ve told me you were going to look for a more comfortable spot for us to plan my daddy’s return party for when he comes back from Canterlot!”

Scootaloo pressed her hooves to her forehead, groaning as silently as possible while struggling to stop herself from telling the filly that her father would most likely never come back, provided the town’s adults had not outright lied to her about him even leaving the village in the first place. ‘Going to Canterlot’, sure. A great way to get yourself killed… like Her.

A look at the blue filly’s eager pink eyes brought forth memories of an all-too-similar pony, although one with a mane of many different colors instead of the plain sheet of lavender draped across Misty’s head. One much older as well, admittedly. Scootaloo looked away, her eyes drawn to the sky instead. From the catwalk hanging around Old Watcher’s sides a pegasus dashed away.

What was the point in even telling her? Would Misty even comprehend that her father was probably feeding worms somewhere? What would it accomplish? Even if she understood, even if Scootaloo was the first to try and even if Misty didn’t simply refuse to believe her, what would breaking her heart do for Scootaloo? A few hours of peace? Did Scootaloo really need to bother with any of that?

Through the inane chatter of the blue filly, Scootaloo began hearing voices in the distance.

No. A voice. Drawing closer, and yelling.

Scootaloo’s ears perked up, curiosity flaring. They pivoted around, trying to tune out Misty’s oblivious rambling about which banner color was more appropriate for a grown stallion’s homecoming celebration.

The voice was calling out a name. …Tyrone? Somepony was calling out to Tyrone with panicked, breathless desperation. The young pegasus rose to her hooves, her instincts kicking in. For once, for a short moment, Misty seemed aware of the situation and stopped talking. In the moment of silence, Scootaloo felt and heard something massive drawing closer.

The white pegasus, the vigil who had hastily flown away from Old Watcher moments ago, passed once more overhead.

“H-hey where are you going? If they’re calling Tyrone it could be dangerous!”

Scootaloo paid no heed to the other filly. She was already galloping to follow the hurrying pegasus, both heading towards the fearful voice.

A voice belonging to a dark blue mare who had just burst from the trees on the outskirts of town, sprinting as fast as she could. A mare whose expression changed from one of pure desperation to one of elation when her gaze swept beyond Scootaloo. Not a moment later, the earth-shaking steps coming from behind the filly passed her; Tyrone’s massive shape flew by.

Despite having more than enough room for normal pony activity, the barren, earthen space between the town’s buildings suddenly seemed narrow and diminutive compared to the massive stature of a minotaur running at full speed while holding six times a pony’s volume in metal and concrete.

For an instant his shadow engulfed the running mare as he leaped clean over her head in a single bound. He landed a mere half second before another pony burst from the trees, about fifty feet from him.

The unicorn’s fury was visible on her features for no more than an instant, soon turning to horror as her eyes fell on the relatively bustling village, and then to terror when she noticed Tyrone charging at her.

“No!” She screamed. “NNnnnnrrrrgggraaah!”

Scootaloo’s hooves kicked dirt as she skidded to a halt, instinctively taking cover behind a trashcan when the mare’s horn began glowing, the once-innocuous light now synonymous with imminent bloodshed. The misshapen ball of deadly crystal grew quickly and exploded, a wall of shards racing towards the minotaur.

Still running, he calmly extended his left arm; shield tightly gripped and held forward as he reached as far right as possible. A fraction of a second before the spikes could stab him, he swung the shield back and sideways with great force, swatting the crystals out of the air with a clatter. They scattered harmlessly away. The force of his shield’s swing twisted his torso, bringing his right arm forward in a wide arc. The colossal improvised hammer flew overhead, smashing into the earth a mere dozen feet from the unicorn.

She screamed, more magic gathering within her horn, while Tyrone’s run transitioned into a jump, using the hammer as a jumping pole. His hooves landed heavily, planting themselves in the ground; his torso twisted back as he still clutched the hammer and his entire musculature bracing and bulging.

He swung.

From left to right, with enough force to whistle despite the hammer’s head still clipping the ground, he swung the weapon at the unicorn.

For a second she vanished, lost in the rumble and the wave of dirt kicked upwards. Scootaloo heard her scream, and she saw the crystal spikes misfiring wildly to lose themselves in the forest.

The dirt fell down and with it, a limp form slid down the trunk of the tree it had just met.

Tyrone stood there, breathing heavily as he watched the unmoving unicorn. Some blood dripped from his left arm. She did not rise.

Raising his head, Tyrone yelled to the sky. “ANYONE ELSE WANT SOME?!”

There was no response, only villagers slowly emerging from their hiding places to congratulate him.

“So, we’re really stuck here, then?”

In the precocious darkness of the evening, Spike, Rarity and Scootaloo shared a meal. Potato salad, once more graciously offered by Russet; the kind farmer seemed to be the main provider of the town’s food supply.

Spike took a moment to savor the food, relishing how normal it felt. Trying to forget how unusual that had become for him.

“For now, I guess,” he finally spoke. “I snuck a look at their patrol trail, it’s… it has a great view. It’s clean, wide, and they have a lot of ponies watching it; at least five at any time. Plus there’s that pegasus on the catwalk for even more eyes to avoid, and the villagers to watch out for. Sneaking out of here is going to be a real pain.”

“And there’s no way we could get out by force,” Scootaloo added, shaking her head. “This Tyrone guy is basically unbeatable. He’s faster than any of us and we couldn’t hurt him if we tried.”

“We need a distraction,” Rarity said after a bite. “I talked to the ponies around here, and they all seem to share the same cautious… ‘optimism’ that it’s better to just stay put until this blows over, or that someone else will take care of it.” She brought a hoof to her forehead, rubbing it gently. “Either that or ‘because Tyrone said so’.” She sighed, looking back up at her companions. “Convincing them otherwise is going to take longer than we care to afford.”

“So we need to wait for a distraction then,” Scootaloo concluded. “Next time a unicorn comes around here, we just get out in the opposite direction while he’s too busy dealing with them.”

“Yeah,” Spike simply answered, “Let’s keep our stuff packed up so that we can go as soon as we get a chance.”

Rarity blearily opened her eyes for the second time that day. The first occasion had occurred when the sun had risen above the treetops, assaulting her with a sudden ray through the curtain-less window. She had opted to turn around and fall back asleep lest she be reminded of the terrible tedium of her new life in Stoneshade.

A life she would hopefully escape soon, and in more than just her dreams.

The panicked screams filtering in from outside told her that “soon” might be even sooner than she could have hoped.

She jumped to a standing position on the bed, hastily scanning her immediate surroundings as stress surged through her body.

Spike was also standing, looking around as if the walls could become invisible were one to peer at them with enough want. Their eyes met, both pairs open wide and filled with rising panic and questions; the most prominent among them being ‘what is happening?’

Without a word, they threw themselves at their packs, just as the door burst open under the hooves of a frantically running Scootaloo.

“Something’s happening!” the filly yelled, scrambling for her own belongings without sparing even a glance at her companions. “I don’t know what, but we gotta scram!” She struggled for a few seconds with the numerous straps of her pouches, paused for an instant and simply threw everything in a loose pile on the nearest bed.

“What do you mean you don’t know what’s going on? There’s probably a unicorn, right?”

“No.” Her reply was partially muffled by the act of tying a knot in the bed sheet she had wrapped around her things. She spat it out to continue. “Not a unicorn; a huge bunch of pegasi just came out of nowhere and started yelling all over the place! I don’t know what they want but I’m sure I don’t even want to find out! Let’s move!”

As she dashed towards the door, a booming voice from somewhere uncomfortably close outside echoed, making her falter in her run.

“I want everypony outside their houses now! Don’t make us come and get you!” The voice’s tone then grew somewhat more personal and surprisingly angrier when it added “Blue team! Green team! I said I want that damn thing on the ground right now!”

The three looked at each other; a single, silent plea exchanged between them: ‘Get ready to run’.

A bellowing roar from Tyrone shook the windows and at that moment, the three travelers began moving at last.

Only to find themselves held at spear-point as soon as they passed the threshold.

“Woah there, you three,” the spear-wielding pegasus said with a malicious grin. “What’s the big rush? You wouldn’t want to get hurt now, would you?”

A second pegasus landed next to the first one, his own spear at the ready. Everywhere in town, the villagers were similarly threatened. The few who ran or tried to fight were quickly subdued, tackled to the ground or knocked out.

A good two dozen pegasus were whirling around the raging form of Tyrone, constantly kicking him in the back while he spun around in his best attempts to smash them out of the air with his weapon. Whenever he managed to strike one of the strangers, no less than two more took its place. In a few minutes, he was brought to his knees, and then face-first on the ground under the weight of six nets and enough ponies to hide him completely from sight.

A tall, muscular pegasus put the following silence to good use by leaping up to the roof of the tallest house in town. He wore a familiar golden helmet, one usually seen adorning the proud brows of the royal guard; although his demeanor and the rest of his outfit swore otherwise. Aside from the helmet, the only thing he wore was a blue sash embroidered with the image of a simplified white tower standing on a cloud.

“Listen up you worms,” he shouted, revealing the unknown authoritative voice to be his own. “We got mouths to feed, you got the food, and I hope I don’t got to explain exactly what’s going to happen here now, do I?”

A second of silence passed while the villagers looked up at the pegasus, most mouths held agape.

“What!?”

Russet’s outraged question was quickly followed up by Pearl’s own voice rising as he stepped forward despite the spears he immediately found held at his throat. “You can’t take our food! It’s ours! Who are you all?”

“Oh?” The white pegasus put a hoof to his chest to emphasize his obviously fake concern. He glided down towards Pearl as he added: “I’m sorry, I didn’t know!”

He nudged the spears away from Pearl’s neck, replacing them with his hoof around the smaller stallion’s shoulders. “Tell you what, buddy –can I call you buddy? – There’s just one thing you need to know: I. Don’t. Care.” The white pegasus punctuated his last three words by violently scrubbing Pearl’s mane with his free hoof before shoving him down, eliciting laughs from the other pegasus newcomers.

“Alright ladies! Enough fooling around! Start rounding up whatever you can find in this mud pit so we can split it and be done!”

“See?” his voice mellowed out as he turned back to Pearl, although it still kept an obvious contemptuous edge. “We’re not monsters; we’ll let you keep some of the food.”

At that, a younger-looking soldier added “And you can just graze anyway if that’s not enough!”

Some of the invaders laughed at the remark, their leader content with simply smirking.

One of the two warriors keeping an eye on Spike, Rarity and Scootaloo had been squinting at them for a while when he suddenly spoke up, yelling sideways with his eyes still fixed on them.

“Hey Cap’n? Dun’ that look like of o’them elements of ‘armony mares?”

“What?” the white ‘captain’ yelled back, jumping and gliding over to the group. His icy blue gaze fell upon them, and Rarity drew the other two closer to her, as if aiming to shield them. “Hm, yeah, she does seem familiar, private.”

“W-what do you want with us,” Rarity stammered. “Who are you all?”

“Think the major will want to talk to them?” The first pegasus, who had halted their escape just beyond the doorway, asked the captain.

The muscular Stallion rubbed his chin, obviously growing more disinterested by the second, before shrugging. “Worth a shot, I guess.” He spread his wings once more, returning to his previous perch on the tall house. “Bag’em,” he casually ordered as he left.

“What? No! Wait! Get away from us!”

Despite Rarity’s protests, a third soldier came closer, three bags held under a wing. With help from the spear-wielders ensuring a minimum of reluctant cooperation, the bags were placed and tied over the three’s heads. They struggled at first, but quickly realized they were hopelessly outmatched and outnumbered.

The warning stab given to Spike’s hide only confirmed the sentiment.

Once properly blindfolded, they were led away, eventually being guided up into the bed of a cart, and then onto a strange metallic floor. With the creaking sound of a pair of hinges, they knew they had been put in a cage.

The next half hour or so was spent huddled in silence, the faintest whisper answered by an order to shut up from a soldier obviously perched atop the cage itself to watch them. After a few minutes, a heavy object was thrown on the cart next to the prison, and then another. This continued for a moment, the dull rhythm of the cart being loaded the only faint distraction from the constant terror of being held captive.

The Captain’s voice kept echoing around the village, supervising his troops in the raid on Stoneshade.

Eventually, the three captives heard him much closer, a dozen feet at most.

“Red team, ready?”

A chorus of voices answered a synchronized “Aye, Sir!” even closer, all around the captives.

“Careful with the wounded, you hear? Liftoff!”

The cage, the cart jolted forward, gaining speed and a stomach-churning amount of altitude compounded by the blindfolds. Rarity held the other two even tighter than before, while Spike clutched the iron bars of the cage’s floor.

Before the rising sound of rushing winds swallowed his voice, they heard the captain shouting again, calling out to the rest of his troops.

“Green, Blue, Yellow, Black! On my mark, all teams withdraw! …Liftoff!"

And Stoneshade was left behind, the last sign of its presence below being the resounding screams of rage from Tyrone.

Author's Notes:

If this story updated at a halfway reasonable pace faster you'd all be at the edge of your seats right now...

12: Stratofortress

Dark corridor after dark corridor, she advanced. This far down in the bowels, the illumination from the skylight shafts didn’t brighten her surroundings so much as it brought to mind the faint memory that the sun actually existed somewhere outside. The few and sporadic enchanted lamps lining the walls failed to make much of an overall difference, their light only sufficient in making the pools of darkness even deeper by simple contrast. Thankfully, the soft composition of the walls, their even surface and their wide, smooth curve meant colliding with them was easy to avoid and painless either way.

She huffed when a misstep caused her to swerve to the left until her face came to rub into the wall. She had yet to get used to her new center of balance, to her great irritation. Using a hoof to push herself away and back to the approximate middle of the corridor, she grumbled under her breath.

Couldn’t the messenger have been any more annoyingly cryptic? The raiding teams had come back and the captain had said that ‘she’d want to see what they’d brought back’. Of course he couldn’t tell the messenger any more details; he had to be as unhelpful as possible, didn’t he?

“Annoying prick,” she mumbled as she passed a stallion standing guard in the middle of a side passage, under the dull yellow glow of an enchanted lamp. It took her three more steps to stop and turn her head back towards the pony, his eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “Not you,” she tsked, “I… look, just forget it, okay?”

She looked away and resumed her walk, adjusting the thick brown coat hanging loosely over her back. That spot was still infuriatingly itchy, she noticed.

She sighed, her mind quieting slowly, bit by bit under the sporadic pools of light that she traversed. At least that whole waste of time was somewhat of an excuse to avoid the mounds of paperwork she usually had to deal with after the raids. Or, rather, it delayed it by a few minutes; short-lived victory that this was.

Squinting in the dim twilight, she made her way through the unfamiliar bowels of the fortress. She rarely had any reason to come here, but the cryptic promises were as good a motivation as any. Arriving at the prisons let her see a slightly denser concentration of guards; the increased security reassuring a small, quiet part of her mind that she hadn’t actually gotten lost.

A quick query to one of the guards let her know which room she was looking for, and she soon found it among the grid of hallways.

The cloud door slid open without a sound, and she paused to grab the non-magical lantern hanging outside, lighting it in order to see inside the windowless, lightless room.

The quiet huff of the door closing once more behind her was the last sound heard within that room before the light of her lamp reached the three prisoners and a deathly silence fell.

The steel cage sat on the clouds, infused with pegasus magic to keep it from sinking straight through the floor like most of its occupants would. The young dragon, the younger pegasus filly, and the hornless unicorn mare all stared at her, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open.

She stared back, her rose-colored eyes frantically jumping between the three faces before her, their own eyes locked onto her.

“What,” she said, her near-whisper shattering the silence. The prisoners mouthed the word as well, seemingly too dumbfounded to actually speak. In an act of synchronicity that would have been comical in another situation, the rest of her sentence was uttered simultaneously by them. “…are you doing here?”

Although she was done with her question, the three prisoners added, to the end of theirs, her name as well, for they recognized her as much as she recognized them.

“…Rainbow Dash?”

The blue pegasus stared at her friends, three of the many she had not seen in three months, three of the many more she thought she’d never see again.

The lantern fell, softly bouncing twice on the soft cloud floor. Rainbow Dash threw herself at the bars of the cage, reaching inside to embrace the three travelers. Her tears mingled with Rarity’s, peppering the floor with small craters in the cloud surface. She had no words, nothing could ever properly express her relief; no words could describe the warmth blossoming within her as she hugged her friends.

*Whack*

Rainbow staggered, pushed away from the hug more by the surprise than by the blow she had just received on the right side of her face.

“Where the hay were you!?” Scootaloo screamed at the top of her lungs, her hooves firmly planted on the clouds, through the bars of the cage. “It’s been three Celestia-damned months! What have you been doing? Why in the world didn’t you come back? Where. Were. You?!”

“Scootaloo!” Rarity put a hoof on the filly’s shoulder, immediately pushed away. “What has gotten into you?”

“Me? She abandoned us!”

“I’m sure she had good reasons, really! She would never abandon us without some sort of justification…”

“Oh, yeah,” Scootaloo replied, turning towards Rainbow. “What’s your excuse?”

Rainbow had just finished getting back up on her hooves, tightly holding her coat to prevent it from slipping from her back. “I… tried. I couldn’t… I-”

“What do you mean you couldn’t?”

The blue pegasus faced the younger one directly, her expression shifting more and more towards anger. “Hey! It’s not that simple! I tried to go back to Ponyville, but it’s complicated, okay?”

The disdain on Scootaloo’s face told far more than even her words when she replied. “Tsh, element of loyalty, huh?”

Rainbow’s mouth hung open for a second, the blood-red glow of anger rushing to her head as she took a step forward. “You take that back! It’s not that easy! It’s not like I can just fly out of here, you know!”

Scootaloo stepped forward as well. “Oh yeah? Why not? Who’s going to stop you? Aren’t you the fasted dumb flyer in all of Equestria? You can just outrun any-“

“I CAN’T!” The shout came with a burst of tears, loud enough to silence the room as the three prisoners watched the usually proud face melt into a mask of pain. Rainbow averted her gaze, turning to her left as her lips quivered. Her left foreleg came up to her right shoulder, nudging the thick coat as she whispered breathlessly. “I’m… not the fastest. …Not anymore. Not like… this.”

The coat slid from her back, snagging on her left wing and causing it to twitch in discomfort. As it did, the coat was pushed further back, revealing the wiggling stump where another wing once stood. The bare, pink, lumpy flesh occupying the space where a bone should have extended to support a fan of feathers that was now missing entirely.

Rainbow Dash cringed at the gasps of horror, refusing the idea of looking at her friends’ faces. She would only see…

She knew they would only look at her like a victim; a helpless pony to be pitied and cried over. A weak, pathetic filly who needs a hug, a sad whining puppy, a…

“I’m sorry,” Scootaloo stammered, her voice barely audible. “I didn’t kn-“

“Don’t.” Rainbow cut her off, her own voice gaining an edge even she did not like. She couldn’t bear to have the conversation continue on its current course. “Don’t any of you dare feel sorry for me. I’m Rainbow Celestia-damned Dash! I don’t need your damn pity!”

She still didn’t look at them, her eyes locked onto the first thing she had found to latch onto. The flickering lamp rested silently, nestled in the cloud floor. Her heavy, furious breathing filled the silence, until Rarity’s voice arose, quivering in an almost imperceptible manner.

“Rainbow, who… who did this to you?”

Rainbow Dash’s head sunk lower, and she somehow couldn’t stop herself from letting out a chuckle. She knew what she was going to answer. She welcomed the distraction from talking about her wing, and a small part of her also relished the idea that her revelation would put them in the same torment they had put her through by digging up the feelings she hadn’t had time to bury completely. Some sort of payback, some sort of horrible prank whose punchline was its absolute honest veracity.

That is why she was smiling, weakly, somberly, when she looked back at them and answered “Princess Celestia. The signal got her too.”

“So I flew to Canterlot, right? Well, there wasn’t much left to see. Most of the buildings were still standing; I guess all that white marble can take a few hits of those crystals before going down. Everything was empty though… Well, I guess everything looked empty, since I stayed pretty high just to be sure. The… bloodstains were obvious enough anyway, I didn’t really need to get closer to understand what’d happened. And everything was so silent, I felt like I was flying in space or something. So after I took a look around the city, I went to the castle. That was what I was there for anyway, and I was kinda starting to worry about the Princess. You know, not getting a word from someone and then seeing that the town where she’s supposed to be in is just an empty ruin… it’s the kind of thing that gives you ideas, right?

“The castle… well, if you think you’ve seen a ruin, you haven’t seen the castle. I don’t think there’s even a single wall left standing, just floors and piles of rock. I looked around for a while, and then I spotted her; just a big mess of those four colors of her mane lying on the floor of what I think used to be the throne room. She wasn’t moving or anything, just lying there, so I… I…”

Rainbow cleared her throat and frowned. Deliberately avoiding facing her friends, she walked up to one of the walls, ripped out a chunk, and put it in her mouth. After about a second of something between chewing and gargling, she swallowed, and cleared her throat again.

“I’m going to be honest here, I was really dumb that day. I saw her lying there, and the first thing I thought was that maybe she was hurt or something, or maybe dead or I dunno. When I saw her, I just thought ‘she needs help’ and I started diving towards her and yelling ‘Princess’”

She brought a hoof to her face, sighing. “I guess… I didn’t expect her, I didn’t expect the signal to be able to get her of all ponies, right? …When she heard me, she just jumped to her hooves, looking everywhere. And when she actually saw me, I… I heard her scream, she sounded like she was already crying or panicking or something. You know how she’s always so calm and… in control? Yeah, the total opposite of that; she was completely terrified, and do you have any idea how scary that is coming from her? I stopped right then, trying to reverse as hard as I could.

“She only had the time to yell ‘no’ and ‘flee’, and then the crystals came out.

“I… I still remember those things when I go to sleep. I don’t have nightmares about them or anything, okay? It's just… you guys saw Twilight’s crystals, right? How they were a little bigger than the other unicorns’? Yeah… Celestia’s… those things were kayaks. On fire. Shooting them literally blew rubble away from her… I managed to avoid the first ones, but she just kept shooting and shooting and screaming and I… I just decided to bail out. So I tried to just fly down and away from her until I could hide under the edge of the castle’s floor level.

“Thankfully she couldn’t chase after me, because I don’t know who or how or when or whatever, but she was chained to the floor. There was this big, silver-looking chain around her neck, keeping her stuck about ten feet from the spot where it was just planted in the floor. So, yeah, you guys can probably relax, she’s not going anywhere. I think. …I hope.

“So then I was heading for the edge of the cliff to just fly down the mountain and away from her, while she just shot hundreds of those insane burning crystals everywhere… and, and…"

She shook her head, taking a deep breath which she exhaled in a shuddering sigh.

“I really tried, guys, I tried to dodge them all…”

She was lost in thought for a moment, taking the time to adjust the coat draped over her back. After a deep breath, she continued.

“I don’t even remember the pain. I think I blacked out as soon as it touched me. I was almost low enough to be safe, too… which I guess is what saved me; she didn’t get another chance to shoot me. I must’ve crashed into one of the waterfalls and drifted downriver, because the next thing I remember is waking up in here, about four days later. Apparently a raiding team spotted me floating in the middle of the river splitting Vanhoover in half and rescued me before I got swept out to sea.”

Spike broke the tense silence they had been wrapped up into while listening to Rainbow’s tale. “So then they amputated your wing because it was too damaged?”

“Ha!” The short bark that escaped the blue mare’s mouth could only be considered a laugh if filtered through a heavy dose of imagination. Her mirthless grin was much the same. “No, no one did anything to my wing. That… that’s just where it stopped burning. Cauterized on contact.” Pulling her remaining wing out of her coat, she touched a point just past the furthest joint. “This is where she hit me.”

In the stunned silence that followed, Rainbow picked up the lantern and suspended it on a cloud hook she extruded from the wall. Then, with her usual grace and follow-through, she proceeded to change the subject away from any more talk about her wing.

“So, what are you guys doing here?”

Visiting the grand office was a chore at the best of times, making it an outright torture for the blue pegasus given the urgency of her business. Several security checkpoints slowed her progress to the point where she considered taking the shortcut of plowing through the walls and getting to her destination immediately.

Nevertheless, at least and at long last, she pushed open the sturdy double doors of the grand commander’s office.

The harsh glare of the nearly-setting sun caused her to flinch and squint, turning the silhouette of the room’s other occupant into an indistinct blur.

“Major Rainbow Dash, what do you need.”

The words were thrown at her dejectedly, in the kind of monotone that only exists in the mouths of ponies who are beyond busy. Rainbow’s eyes gradually acclimated to the light, letting her finally see the turquoise coat and golden mane of Cloudsdale’s grand commander.

“Can we drop the formalities, Dust? I have a favor to ask.”

Grand Commander Lightning Dust looked up from the report she had been reading and into Rainbow’s eyes. “What is it?”

Rainbow Dash compulsively adjusted her coat, straightening the collar over her neck. “I need transport to the surface,” she said, “one of the balloons or something.”

“For you?”

“Err, I’m also going to need a prisoner release authorisation.”

Lightning Dust narrowed her eyes, immediately moving to pull out another piece of paper from one of the piles on her desk. “A unicorn, a dragon, and a filly?” she asked as she read from the page. Just as soon as Rainbow Dash began answering yes, before the word had a chance to be completed, Lightning Dust interrupted. “No.”

“What? Why?”

“I have all the reasons in the world to say no to that, and you know it.” The report went back to the pile it used to rest on, and Lightning Dust joined her hooves over her desk before leaning on them. “You know how it works, Dash: I have to look good for those who like me in charge, and even better for those who don’t. Releasing prisoners we just captured is going to raise questions, and questions make me look bad.”

“Oh, come on! This is important! Can’t you make an exception just this once?”

“Ha!” Lightning’s short, aggressive bark echoed in the wide room. “Make an exception? Who do you take me for?”

“For someone who wasn’t afraid to break a few rules, remember?”

“Yes, Dash, I remember exactly how breaking rules killed my dream!”

Rainbow stomped a hoof on the cloud floor. “Oh, come on! These are your own rules we’re talking about now! This is different! Why do you even care about breaking them if you’re the only one who could punish you for it? Besides, it’s not like your dream would’ve had a chance even if you didn’t screw things up at the academy!”

“Wow, Dash!” Lightning slammed her own hoof on her desk. “Thanks for reminding me I was destined to fail no matter what! It’s great to know I never had any control in my life!” She held out a hoof to silence any reply while she took a deep breath, eyes closed. “Look, everything I’ve ever wanted was ruined because someone, somewhere, failed to control something. I failed to control myself at the academy, everyone failed to control those damn unicorns, and my dad failed to control his stupid disease!”

Lightning rose up behind her desk, stomping once more on it. “Well guess what, Dash; now that I’m in charge, I. Will. Control!” A hoof blindly swept across the wide window behind her, beyond which the vast cavernous expanse of the central room could be seen. “All those idiots down there might not like it, but I’m in charge, I make the rules, and I’m damn well going to enforce them for absolutely everyone; because if I don’t, I look weak, and if I look weak I lose control; and if I lose control, something, somewhere, goes to shit!”

The turquoise mare slowly lowered herself back into her seat, straightening her golden mane while breathing deeply. She then clapped her hooves together and adopted a thoroughly insincere smile of smug arrogance. “So, Dash; tell me why, in the wide, ugly world of Equestria, I should release those prisoners.”

“Because that thing with the unicorns? I think they can fix it.”

“Pfah! Fix it? How do you fix mass treason?”

Rainbow dash took a step forward, a glint of hope sparkling in her eyes. “By the fact that it’s not treason! They’ve all been brainwashed!”

“By who? Who in the world could brainwash every single unicorn in Equestria at once? Who even has that kind of power?”

“Dragons. Dragons did this to the unicorns.”

Lightning eyed the one-winged pegasus with an expression of complete disdainful bafflement. “You’re kidding right? Dragons? Those big dumb overgrown lizards found a way to voodoo all our dear innocent unicorns into killing everything against their will? Do you really expect me to believe…-“

“Yeah I do, it’s true-“

“…That unicornist propaganda bullcrap?” Her hooves waved out in front of and around her face in a mocking imitation of placating gestures. “Oooh, the poor widdle unicorns killed everyone and laughed about it but it’s not their fault! Ooh, it’s the big bad dwagons that did it!” She leaned forward, stomping both hooves on the desk again. “Are you even hearing yourself, Dash? They’re obviously trying to shift the blame like the slimy assassins they are! Why are you even listening to them? That’s a unicorn we’re talking about! A unicorn and a dragon, the kind that you just said yourself are responsible for all those deaths! They’re the enemy, Dash! Why do you trust the enemy?”

“They’re not the enemy! No one is the enemy! Dragons are the enemy! And I mean the other dragons, this one’s cool!”

“Are you seriously telling me that you trust those liars and their stupid lies?”

“I trust them more than I trust you!”

Lightning’s mouth hung open for a mere second, quickly setting into a grim companion for her narrowed eyes.

“I-I mean,” Rainbow stammered, trying to defuse the quiet anger she could see on the other mare’s face. “I know them, they’re my f-“

“That will be all, Major. Dismissed.”

Rainbow stood there, wracking her brain for a way to calm Lightning down, looking for the perfect word to convince her to listen to her requests. An irresistible hook that would make her instantly reconsider her decision to expel her from her office. She did this under the ever darkening glare of the grand commander, instinctively looking to buy herself some time by taking slow steps backwards in the hopes of fighting Lightning’s growing impatience with appeasing gestures of minimal compliance.

“I mean,” she eventually croaked, halfway to the door, “you can trust them if I do, ri-“

“GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!”

And so, reluctantly, she did.

Spike slowly dipped his hand through the cloud floor, waving it around in the wet mass before bringing it out, glistening with newfound moisture. Licking the water from the appendage was one way to quench his thirst at least.

Glancing at Rarity beyond the apparently sleeping form of Scootaloo, he could easily see the same unease he felt show on her face as well. The panic of the tumultuous morning had made way to a few dozen minutes of tense dread as they rose ever higher in the air, eventually coming to a stop inside this gigantic and mysterious cloud structure. The following few hours had been spent wallowing in a roller-coaster war between helpless dread and boredom, until Rainbow Dash had come to meet them.

That visit had been a mostly pleasant surprise, at least. It would have been better to see her intact, but it was still an unexpected miracle to know that she was still alive.

Spike lowered his arm once more into the cloud floor, letting it hang freely in the ethereal mass. Somewhere below was the ground, and indeterminate distance away. The immensity of the cloud structure they were held in should have made it impossible to hide from the ground. From what he had seen of the colossal object, it was roughly the size of a small mountain; either they were at an unbelievably high altitude or they had been transported at least beyond the horizon he could have seen from Stoneshade. Where were they?

The only answer they’d gotten out of Rainbow Dash before she went away to attempt to get them out of there was that they were in Cloudsdale, somehow. Far from being helpful, this answer opened up so many more questions; what had happened here and why was Cloudsdale within flying distance of a small east coast town being the most prominent.

He closed his eyes for a moment, sighing as he laid his head on the cold metal bars that made up the floor of their cage. These questions were pointless for now. There was no way to answer them while locked inside a cage. He might as well try to sleep a little, now that night had arrived; he could not think of an easier explanation for why the clouds surrounding them now seemed as opaque as bricks. What little light managed to filter through the thick cloud walls had completely vanished hours ago, leaving only the dimming radiance of the dying lantern to give them sight.

“They could have at least brought us something to eat,” he heard Rarity mumble as the lantern finally died. “Oh great, now we’re in the dark. Marvelous.”

A few more minutes passed in silence, Spike opting to roll over on his back in preparation for what was to be an unbearably uncomfortable night. Scootaloo at least had the advantage of being able to put some of her weight on the soft clouds of the floor; without that luxury, both Spike and Rarity were going to have to endure cold steel bars as their only mattress.

The soft jingle of the lantern moving made him think that he might need to reconsider his plans for the night. “What was that?” Scootaloo asked, obviously still awake despite the appearances of a few minutes ago.

“Shh, guys,” came Rainbow Dash’s whispered reply, bringing both a small hint of relief and a fair amount of apprehension to the pit of Spike’s stomach. Why was Rainbow sneaking around in a place she was ostensibly free to roam? “It’s me. I’m breaking you out of here.”

“What?” Rarity choked out, nearly unable to contain her shout. “How would we even get out of here? This cage is the only thing between me and a fall to my death!”

“Shhhhh, look; I can carry you, and Scoots can carry Spike, okay? There’s a balloon hangar about six hundred feet from here. We go there and put you guys in one of them, inflate it to about half, drop out of the city and let the balloon act as a parachute until we land, or maybe even fly it if Spike can fill it up enough between here and the ground. We’ll be out of here and out of sight before they even know it.”

Metallic sounds could be heard for a few seconds, followed by the jingle of the lantern once more as Rainbow approached the cage. “Hey Spike, a little fire please?”

“Uh, sure.” Spike breathed a small spur of fire between the bars of the cage, which Rainbow used to reignite the lantern. Grabbing the handle in her mouth, she screwed back the cap of a small bottle labeled ‘lamp oil’, before hanging the light on the nearest wall.

Rarity reached through the cage to put a hoof on her friend’s shoulders. “Rainbow? What is going on? Why are we sneaking away in the middle of the night? Are… are we in danger?”

The blue pegasus bit her lip for a moment while she patted her large coat. “Not unless we get caught, ha-ha…” Her weak smile fell flat in mere seconds, soon after which she found what she’d been looking for and pulled out of her coat a pair of bolt-cutters. “Seriously though, she… I mean they don’t want to release you guys, and I’m not sure we can afford to wait until they change their minds.” In a second she snapped the lock of the cage, punching a hole in the floor with a hoof where she threw the bits of broken metal. “What you told me of this whole dragon conspiracy thing makes me think this is important enough to risk it.”

She opened the door, stepping inside and lowering herself to the floor so the unicorn could climb on. “So come on, we gotta move fast before the night patrols come around.”

Rarity slowly, hesitantly clambered on top of Rainbow’s back, laying down and wrapping her hooves around her friend’s shoulders. Rainbow Dash rose up once more, taking the precaution of putting all four hooves between the bars of the cage so they’d rest directly on the clouds. They sank slightly deeper than usual yet remained stable, the clouds providing solid support despite the added weight.

“Are you really sure about this, Rainbow?”

“Yeah,” the pegasus answered, lifting a hoof to lower her friend’s grip on her neck so she could breathe a little better. Stepping out of the cage gave her pause as the hooves around her neck tightened uncomfortably. “Rarity you’re kinda choking me, relax; I got you.” After a moment of hesitation, the unicorn’s hooves tentatively moved back, this time finding their grip just behind the pegasus’ legs. With her breath once more possible, Rainbow looked back at the two young ones still in the cage. Scootaloo seemed easily capable of supporting Spike’s weight.

“Okay, follow me very closely, Scoots.” Rainbow’s first step forward immediately brought, to her annoyance, Rarity’s left foreleg around her neck again. The unicorn’s breathing was shallow and fast.

“It’s going to be fine, Rares, I promise. Just… okay, you can put that leg around my neck if it makes you feel better, but just keep the other one where it is, okay?”

Feeling her friend’s weak nod, the blue pegasus advanced once more. Carefully, she made her way to the lantern and snuffed it out. “Just follow the wall, squirt.”

A few seconds of shuffling about led the group to the door, which Rainbow cracked open to peek at the hallway beyond.

“Coast is clear,” she whispered in the darkness. “Follow me very closely, and stop whenever I raise my wing like this, okay?”

Scootaloo observed the swift, silent motion of her idol’s wing; a movement blurred in the shadows visible only as a deformation of the misshapen black mass standing in front of her. The muffled hoofsteps signaled the resumed march through the darkness. They turned left.

“And be quiet, everyone.”

The penumbra of the corridors felt palpable, a thick blanket of shadows seeming to absorb their breath as much as the vaporous floor absorbed their steps. The few blinding pools of light cast by the lanterns brought nothing of the expected comfort; rather, the fear of being seen only increased in the few heart-pounding seconds where they had to cross them. Would this be the one where they would hear the surprised gasp of a guard behind them, or a commanding order to halt? Would this lantern be the one under which they would come across another pony at the meeting point of the hallways?

Thankfully, besides a few distant silhouettes, Rainbow seemed to know or intuit a path upon which they found no living soul. Every time any sign of life in the path ahead made itself known, she would change course into a different corridor, one always desert. She knew exactly where she was going, despite her three companions now being irredeemably lost amidst the maze of passages.

Soon, however, Rainbow opened a large door to the side, ushering everyone into a vast room whose ceiling would have been lost in darkness whether or not they had brought light with them. The vast space was necessary, they soon understood, for the purpose of storing at least a dozen hot air balloons, each one sitting on the cloud floor with their envelopes held by some unseen manner to hang loosely, deflated, above.

No one was in sight, and only a single lantern above the door offered any sort of illumination. The faint enchanted glow was just enough to guide the group to one of the balloons, where the two pegasi relieved themselves of their carried friends.

“Okay Spike, you can inflate that thing with your fire breath, right?”

“Uh, I think so, but…”

“What about our stuff?” Scootaloo interjected. “All my gear and their bags and stuff?”

Squinting as she did her best to inspect the balloon’s slack lines and fabric, Rainbow clicked her tongue. “Look, it’s not really important, guys. Not as much as getting out of here right now, okay?”

“Oh, Rainbow,” Rarity said, “I do hate to be contrarian, but we do need our belongings. The Signal Detector in Spike’s bag is our only way to know where to even go.”

Rainbow Dash tore her gaze away from the balloon’s rigging to look at her friends with wide eyes, before bringing a hoof to her forehead with a groan. “You’re kidding me.” It was a question as much as the bored groan of an office worker receiving an additional three hours’ worth of work at the end of a grueling day was a question. It was to the realization that one’s day had just become twice as much of an ordeal the same thing that a scream was to fear; an immediate instinctual response to a given stimulus.

She rubbed her temples, her eyes firmly closed.

“Okay, if they confiscated your stuff, it should still be in the raid triage room, I think. Probably.” She opened her eyes, looking around the room before turning back towards her friends with a tired, short sigh. “Right, fine, okay. You guys just stay here, hide in the basket, and wait ‘till I come back. I’m gonna go get your stuff, or at least that detector thingy. What does even it look like again?”

“A big metal cube about as big as my head,” Spike answered, “In the big green bag; should be easy to find.”

“Okay, cool.” With a flick of her coat she had turned around, heading for the door. “Stay hidden and don’t make a move until… I dunno, you hear my voice or something.” She waved a hoof. “I’ll be right back.”

After a quick peek outside, she was gone.

The three companions settled on the balloon’s rough floor, thankful for the return to a somewhat solid surface to rest on. ‘Rest’ was, however, a massive exaggeration, given the nerve-wracking proximity of their escape, and how every second passing was yet another chance to be denied that possibility. Thinking about the fact that the only thing keeping two of them from falling to their deaths was a relatively thin layer of pegasus-magic-infused wicker was also similarly unhelpful in their attempts to relax.

Minutes passed, the nervous silence filling the basket as much as the shadows cast by the light above the door.

Perhaps Spike could begin inflating the balloon in advance, he thought, if only to pass the time until Rainbow’s return. If they were to somehow launch the vehicle without inflating it fully, it would still need a substantial reserve of hot air to attain buoyancy between here and the ground, however far that was.

As he pondered this choice, lying on his back and staring at the limp canopy dangling above, he heard the soft hiss of the opening door. Glances were exchanged; hopeful, relieved and curious. The muffled rattle of metal spreading around the room turned those looks to worried stares. More than one pony had just entered. The three froze, their breaths suddenly stuck in their throats in an effort to quiet any sound they could make.

The new ponies quietly shuffled around the room, not making a sound beyond the quiet clink of …armor, or tin cans, possibly, if one wanted to venture into less plausible ideas. The fearful glances shared among the three companions echoed the same silent questions; why were these ponies so quiet, what were they doing here, and where was Rainbow Dash? Was she with them? Who were they? Why had they not heard Rainbow calling out to them if she was with the strangers?

Then, all at once, these numerous questions ceased to matter; as the glaring ceiling lights flashed on and illuminated the three friends’ startled faces while someone outside their secluded basket shouted.

“Alright, fugitives, you either show your faces or you hope to get lucky when we start poking spears in all those soft little wicker baskets!”

The one thing that really surprised Spike as he and his companions rose up from their hiding spot wasn’t that they had been caught, or that their overall treatment at the hooves of this general group of pegasi had been infallibly rude beyond reason; what really surprised him was this day’s uncanny ability to constantly outdo itself in terms of getting increasingly worse. Clearly this was shaping up to become one of the worst days of his life.

Author's Notes:

Surprise! So chapter 13 ended up being 3666 words, according to the word document, which means I feel it can be its own chapter like a big boy. I'll put it up on the 31st, because why pass up a chance to publish chapter 13, with 3666 words, on freaking Halloween?

And no, I won't turn this into an emo-Dashie mopefest of "Uuuuu, I loast mah wing, woe is meeeee!"
She had four months to get over it. She's not going to break down in tears every five feet.

Also, Dun dun duuun!

13: Trial

Spike was starting to feel like he could explode. His every pacing step brought him closer to an outburst of some kind, just as every second seemed to bring him closer to the resolution hanging above his head.

If only they could pass faster.

The only thing keeping him from screaming, or an attempt to wrestle with the bars of their new cage, was his increasing sense of exhaustion. Indeed, a quick estimation told him he had last slept over twenty hours ago, if his guess of the current time was correct. Incidentally, his frantic pacing back and forth was as much an attempt to chase the tiredness away as it was to hold off sleep itself.

Things could happen any minute now, and he wanted to be fully awake and focused for what was to come.

The massive room they had been brought to sported rows upon rows of seats, sloped in stair-like ways from the two wider walls. The other two walls held doorways, mostly, as well as a large, elevated courtroom bench. From somewhere in the darkened ceiling, the large chain holding their cage descended, letting them sit, swaying lightly, in the very center of the room. The cage hovered a few inches above the floor, next to a strange cloud lever jutting upwards. The cage’s floor consisted of two rectangular panels of metal forming a square, providing slightly more comfort and stability to Spike’s steps than mere bars would have otherwise.

Blue banners hung on every wall, each adorned with a stylized white tower.

The three of them had been brought here directly after their capture, and had been left in this new cage ever since. Two guards stood by, to ensure no more escape attempts. The same blue sash as the captain who had captured them; with the same white tower, adorned their necks.

Spike stared at one of them, and for a moment was reminded of just how hopeless the situation seemed; they were trapped, prisoners of some unknown group whose motives were just as nebulous as their current actual location. Everything was confusion and worry, and he couldn’t even begin to fathom how they would get back on track.

“I’m sorry girls, I shouldn’t have dragged you in this mess…”

Spike’s apology provoked an annoyed huff from Scootaloo, who had remained sitting in a corner ever since they had been dragged into this cage close to an hour ago. “Seriously, Spike? How many times are we going to have to tell you we decided to follow you? Stop acting like you could have made it this far without us!”

“And what does it matter how far we go if we just end up in jail for the rest of our lives or something?”

Both Scootaloo and Rarity opened their mouths to reply; one with an obviously growing frustration and the other hoping to calm the spirits, but at that moment the door slammed open and a new pony walked in.

He stumbled slightly after pushing the door, rubbing his eyes while he drunkenly advanced and climbed the steps to take a seat in the upper rows of the room. Free of the burden of supporting his weight once they could rest on the back of the forward seats, his hooves went to massage his temples and forehead while he emitted sounds halfway between sighs and groans. He eventually managed to look up at them under his disheveled mane. Eyes narrowed in obvious confusion, he muttered the words “What the...” before blinking once, groaning, and apparently deciding that his head belonged on the soft cloud structure in front of him. In less than a minute his snoring could be heard.

Spike let his legs rest at last; things were probably on the verge of getting too interesting to let him fall asleep. He sat down. Both ponies with him were already doing the same, with Rarity staring intently at the sleeping stallion.

Only a few minutes passed before another newcomer came to sit next to the still-sleeping pony. The mare seemed just as hastily-woken as the stallion, holding a small mirror and trying to straighten her mane with her wings while she whispered to him.

“Hey, Hey.” Only when she prodded him with a hoof did he stir, blinking groggily with a groan. “What’s going on? Who are these,” she cast a quick glance at the caged travelers, “…Ponies?”

“I have no idea, I just got some guy beating on my door to tell me I needed to get here absolutely right now, and that it was an order from the grand commander. Look, I don’t know anything, and I’m tired, and I don’t really care and… Ugh, can you just let me snooze a little?”

The mare huffed and returned to her mane while her compatriot let his head fall back on his would-be pillow.

Slowly, one by one as the minutes ticked by, more ponies trickled in, all in various stages of obvious fatigue. Most followed the first stallion’s example and tried to catch up with the rest they’d been denied, while some simply held whispered conversations.

Spike sat there, looking at them through the growing haze of his clouding mind. How long had he been awake now? Twenty hours? More? Insomnia might not have been new to him, but it still took its toll. He did not think of pacing some more to fight the exhaustion; too many eyes already watching him, too many stares whose attention he could draw.

And then the door opened once more, slamming into the wall as it did. Instead of the sound of wood impacting a wall, the vigorous movement sparked a minor clap of thunder between the cloud constructs, startling the sleeping ponies. A wooden table was hurriedly carried into the room on the back of a new guard, with another one following closely behind carrying several bags on his own back. The first one set the table a few feet from the cage, while the second guard tossed several bags on it.

Recognizing the bags was fairly easy for Spike; he had carried one for weeks now, and had been seeing the other for just as long. The third ‘bag’ was a simple knotted bundle of fabric, a bedsheet unwittingly stolen from a small town called Stoneshade.

A mare then entered the room, walking with confidence in her steps and a look of barely-restrained fury on her face. She spared only a short glare in their direction, a sneer of pure hatred that was quickly hidden as she passed them on her way to the central bench. It seemed she had only just barely refrained from spitting on them.

“All rise for the honorable Lightning Dust, grand commander of the Stratofortress!” the four guards bellowed in unison, prompting the assembled ponies to straighten up in their seats and quickly salute.

“At ease, everyone,” the turquoise mare said neutrally as she seated herself at the highest seat in the room. “We’ll begin once everyone is present.”

“Wait, begin what?” Spike asked, immediately answered by a jab in the side of the head from the blunt end of a spear.

“Silence!” the nearest guard shouted, “You will speak when the commander tells you to!”

Rarity caught the young dragon before he collapsed, cradling his writhing body as he groaned in pain. She looked up angrily at the mare looming above them, a mare she recognized somewhat. The golden-maned pegasus only spared a short glance before returning her gaze to her desk, where she seemed to be quickly reading or skimming unseen documents.

Obviously she had no intention of allowing them to speak.

Spike, for his part, was suddenly much more aware. Aware of the searing pain pulsing in his head, of the gentle hooves holding him; and, after a few moments of silence spent nursing his bruised head, of the door once more slamming ajar to let through a struggling Rainbow Dash dragged along by yet two more guards.

“Nrgh,” she grunted, “Let me go, you idiots! I can walk on my own!”

The guards brought her near the crowd of unknown ponies, slamming and pinning her to the floor on the other side of the table where the travelers’ belongings rested. With not much else to do, and for the first time since she’d entered the room, Rainbow opened her eyes fully.

Their path around the vast room took very little time, as did the rapidly growing look of panic on her face. The pegasus’ rose eyes locked onto Spike’s, or on Rarity who stood just above; or perhaps on all three captives. Spike’s heartbeat quickened when he recognized her new, sudden expression.

Fear.

“Oh, woah,” she stammered, looking up at the high-sitting mare in a way that let Spike notice the single trickle of drying blood that had apparently leaked from her mouth. “W-what’s going on? Dust, what-“

“You will speak when I allow you, Major!” Lightning Dust rose from her seat, straightening her forelegs in a way that would have made her tower over every other soul present even had she not been standing on the most elevated section of the room. She raised her voice to cover the struggling, muffled objections of Rainbow Dash, whose face was being pressed into the floor in an attempt by the guards to silence her. “Gentle mares and stallions of the jury, I summoned you here at this… early hour for a very important, urgent matter. A great crime happened tonight; these three… enemies of the stratofortress,” she gestured dismissively at the cage in the middle of the room, “tricked a loyal member of our community into helping them. They made her free them from our prisons, and convinced her to steal our resources for them.” She pointed at the table and the bags resting on it.

“What?” Rainbow’s shout drew stares, and she had the time to add “What are you talking about? They’re my friends! That’s their stu-“

“They used their friendship with Major Rainbow Dash to turn her against us,” Lightning Dust continued while Rainbow was being once more gagged by a mouthful of floor clouds. “And we are gathered here to judge these enemies of the Stratofortress, bring them to justice, and clear the major’s name.”

She went back behind her desk, rummaging through papers for a second. She then looked up, directing her gaze towards Rarity. “You, white mare. Your name is Rarity, yeah?”

Rarity nodded timidly, unsure about her chances of speaking without being assaulted by zealous guards.

“And you’re a unicorn, right?”

Another nod.

“What happened to your horn?”

Rarity looked at the surrounding guards, watching for signs of being on the verge of receiving a spear to the forehead if she dared answer. “I… lost it,” she finally said. The guards did nothing to her. Lightning Dust, however, erupted in mocking laughter.

“Ha hah… yeah sure!” She barked, wiping an imaginary tear from her cheek. “Hey, that reminds me, I forgot my wings in the shower! Maybe someone wants to go get them for me?”

A short, awkward, nearly-whispered laugh spread through the jury, most of them trading looks of unease as they chuckled.

“How many innocents did you kill, unicorn?”

What little dishonest mirth had built up in the audience turned to rapt silence by Lightning Dust’s question.

“Why, I…” Rarity stammered wordlessly for a moment, a hoof coming up to her chest in indignation. “None! I never hurt anypony! I lost my horn before the Signal could affect me!”

“Let me guess,” Lightning replied, “That ‘signal’ you just mentioned is some kind of weird magic mind-control thing… machine or whatever, and that that thing is what’s responsible for your… kind, killing so many innocents?”

“Yes, exactly! Rainbow Dash told you about it, didn’t she? Unicorns are innocent! It’s not-“

“Oh, yes,” the turquoise pegasus interrupted, “She told me about that nonsense. She also told me dragons were responsible, at least according to you.” Her head turned slightly, suddenly facing Spike. “Hey, speaking of dragons, here’s one right here! What a coincidence!”

Rainbow Dash’s struggle let her free her mouth long enough to shout. “Lightning! What the hay are you doing? I told you they’re innocent! They’re trying to stop this unicorn crap on the surface! What’s this about? What are you going on ab-Ow!”

The guard holding her pinned to the floor with a hoof pressed between her wing and her stump had silenced her with a gentle punch in the back of the head. Rainbow found herself once again muffled by her face being driven into the floor.

“Did you hear that, dear members of the jury? Did you hear how completely they turned her to their needs? How they made her turn to the enemy?” Lightning rose to her full height, towering above everyone else present. “And make no mistakes; these are enemies of the stratofortress! The unicorn needs no explanation; you were all touched by their disgusting betrayal nearly six months ago. And don’t forget your history either; how even before Equestria was united, dragons and pegasi fought for the sky! They are our enemies, and they don’t deserve compassion!”

“Oh yeah? And what about me?”

All eyes fell upon Scootaloo, defiantly standing as close as she could to the bars of the cage, facing Lightning Dust. Spike and Rarity were the only ones close enough to see the tremors of her legs. Whether they were shaking from fear or anger was hard to tell.

“Stop,” Lightning ordered to the guard about to punish Scootaloo for speaking. He lowered his spear, and the grand commander shifted her gaze back to the filly. “I was getting to you, filly.”

She shuffled the papers on her podium for a second, bringing a worn document to her eyes. “If this is correct,” she seemed to read from the page in a much softer tone than she had previously used, “your name is Scootaloo, born here in Cloudsdale nine years ago. Your family moved down to Ponyville, near Canterlot, three years back when you were diagnosed with a birth defect ‘stunting the development of your wings’. Is that correct?”

The orange filly’s eyes wandered downwards, and she nodded with a frown. “Yeah.”

“And have you been able to fly since?”

“No,” Scootaloo replied, before straightening again. “But last year when we went to the doctor’s place, she said I’d be able to in about five years! And what’s this have to do with anything?”

“Well,” Lightning began, sitting back down as she dropped the papers back to her desk, “since you’ve lived most of your life here in Cloudsdale, you’re officially still a citizen of our fair city; that’s why I want to offer you the chance to live these five years here, in the safety of the stratofortress. You just have to officially renounce all ties to these two enemies of the state, forever deny any affiliation with them or any of their kind, and swear loyalty and allegiance to Stratofortress Cloudsdale.”

A few seconds passed while the young pegasus contemplated the offer. “And what if I say no?”

“Then you’ll be declared a traitor to the stratofortress, and suffer the same punishment as these two.”

“NO!” Rainbow Dash had screamed. A real, full, bellowing scream, of sudden yet increasing terror. “No, no, no no no no NO! Don’t do this, Dust!”

Rainbow’s struggle intensified, causing one of the guards formerly watching the cage to come and assist in restraining her.

“So, what’s your answer, Scootaloo?”

Scootaloo looked at Rainbow Dash, her eyes meeting her idol’s. Rainbow stared back, shaking her head as much as she could with the weight of three ponies pinning her down. Scootaloo studied her idol’s face for a moment, trying to determine what was causing such distress to the mare. Maybe she was worried that the young pegasus would say yes? Scootaloo smiled reassuringly, before looking away to answer. “No, I’m with them all the way.”

“Nooo!”

Confused, Scootaloo glanced back towards Rainbow Dash, who was suddenly struggling with even more intensity. Her attention was drawn by Lightning dust once more, as the mare spoke next.

“Very well. I think we have enough evidence to vote now, members of the jury. These three are enemies of our nation, a danger to the stratofortress, and the cause of a betrayal. All in favor?”

“Lightning, stop that! Don’t you dare do this!” Rainbow shouted from her spot on the ground, almost succeeding in getting up.

“Why isn’t she restrained yet?

“We’re trying, Ma’am!” the guards replied to the question Lightning Dust had snapped at them.

“Anyway,” Lightning said, addressing the jury once more, “All in favor of declaring these prisoners enemies of the stratofortress?”

The ponies of the jury traded unsure glances, some of those nervously jumping between the three captives, Lightning Dust, and Rainbow Dash. “I said, all in favor?”

A few hooves slowly rose up, some of them shaking from sheer hesitation. Rainbow shouted some more, half-insulting and half-begging them to lower their limbs.

Lightning Dust ignored her. “All opposed?”

Four ponies raised their hooves this time, although one lowered his back down when his eyes met the Commander’s scowl.

“We have a majority vote. As the grand commander of this establishment, I hereby declare these three individuals enemies of the stratofortress, to be punished as such. The punishment for this cri-“

“Lightning! This trial is crap and you know it! Call this off right now or I swear to Celestia I’ll k-gah!”

The bulkiest guard behind Rainbow hooked had just hooked a leg around her neck, lifting her from the floor in a crushing chokehold.
“You’ll speak when I order you, Dash! The punishment for this crime is death! All in favor?”

The single hoof immediately shooting up did not seem to be enough for the commander, as she slammed a hoof on her desk and screamed at them. “I said all in favor!”

More hooves joined the first, enough to outnumber the ones who didn’t.

“NO! This is so unfair! We didn’t do anyth-aah!” A quick jab in the ribs from the blunt end of a spear was the only answer to Rarity’s objection, followed by another between Spike’s eyes when he tried to shield her while ordering the guard to stop. Scootaloo only had time to shout “You idiots brought us h-“ before the act of dodging the spear cut off her sentence.

“Since none of you can fly,” Lightning Dust’s voice rose above the din, “the method of execution will be freefall. Seal the pressure doors, open the trap.”

“No!” Rainbow managed to yell, pushing the strangling leg away from her throat. “Stop! Stop this, Dust! You can’t do this! Why are you doing this? You’re completely insane!”

The entrance to the room was tightly shut, cloud mechanisms slid into place to prevent it from opening again.

“This is what happens to traitors, Dash.”

The strange crank on the floor, near the cage, was pulled. A short hiss of air followed as the room suddenly dropped to the pressure of a seemingly considerable altitude. Rainbow’s eyes went wide at the sight of the gaping hole in the floor, directly below her friends.

“Noo! Don’t do this, Dust! Don’t you dare do this, you bastard! I’ll murder you! I’ll kill you with my own hooves if you do this!” As she gasped for breath, a realization sparked into her mind. “You,” she nearly whispered. “Traitor? You… you’re just doing this to get at me, aren’t you?”

Lightning Dust’s amber eyes stayed as impassive as her voice, and she simply stared at Rainbow for a moment. “Drop the prisoners.”

A guard clamped his teeth around a flat metal rod sticking out of the cage, at the meeting point of the two floor plates. Setting a hoof on the cage itself, he pulled with his mouth, and pushed with his hoof. With an echoing sound of steel jarring loose, the cage’s floor split, sending the three occupants sliding towards the middle; and then through the gap.

As her friends’ terrified eyes slipped out of sight, and their screams filled her ears; Rainbow’s mind emptied like a field of dried grass in a raging firestorm. She… she screamed, something that could no more have been a word than the wails of a foal, and the emptiness consumed her senses. Sounds, sights, smells, pain. All made way to a single voice.

Punch.

She punched the guard on her left. Headbutt. Her head flew back, colliding with the snout of the strangling guard. Spin. Her hind legs pushed in opposite directions, sending her into a twist that let her front hooves batter the guards and push them away from her. She stopped spinning when she began to fall back down, facing the hole in the floor.

Jump. Her front hooves dug into the cloud floor even as her hind legs pushed forward, propelling her cleanly over the table standing in her way. Ballast. Take. Her arms swept wide, clamping around the three bundles of cloth and fabric filled with unseen, indeterminable things. She slid on her stomach on the table’s surface, hooking her hooves through the various straps and knots of the packs as she did. Roll. She landed with a tumble between the table and the cage, her movements letting her see the guards who once held her; barely recovering, and still standing where she’d left them. Kick. She ended her roll with another leap, slamming into the side of the cage with all her might. The cage swung, away from the hole, and gave her a view of the deep tunnel extending below the room. Dive. As soon as the cage swung far enough to let her slip through the hole, she pushed her legs; diving straight down towards the darkness of the ground far below. Towards the shrinking, already miniscule dots of color she could see between her and it.

Save them.

And she was gone, a brown flash of her coat flapping once behind her.

Author's Notes:

Fun fact: Spell check wants to correct "Stratofortress" to "Orchestrator". I don't know what's the deal with that.

Happy Nightmare Night, or that weird human Halloween thing I keep hearing about. With Fimfiction's unfortunate habit of counting words differently than Microsoft Word (as well as some minor last minute changes), I sadly couldn't make this chapter's word count end with 666, but oh well.

And yeah, I'm aware the pegasi are humongous sky jerks in here, but there's a somewhat reasonable explanation for that. It wasn't feasible to include that kind of slow, boring exposition dump in the hectic current events, so it'll have to wait until later. I just hope you guys can trust me on this and hold your judgement until then.

Or not, I guess. I'm not the boss of you.

14: Freefall

The filly scrunches her face in either concentration or effort, or perhaps a mix of both. Her tiny wings buzz ineffectively for a moment before she remembers the motions described and explained by her father. ‘Imagine the air is a ball; grab it with your wings and thrown it down.’ She feels a sudden pull, startling but in no way discomforting; it merely feels like crawling on a slippery surface until a hoof finally finds purchase, bringing a liberating sense of motion.

Her legs stretch tall, merely following instead of supporting her body as it rises. Every flap of her feathery appendages brings her one more inch away from the soft cloud, quickly reaching the point where her front hooves can only reach for the soft cushion below.

“Don’t panic, honey, you’re doing great!”

She can feel her father’s tender gaze upon her back, his soft, calm voice mouthing encouraging words as he watches over her on this day. She stops trying to grab the cloud and lets her limbs fall limp below her. A few more flaps and her hind legs join the other pair in their surrender of their most important role. She will one day learn how proper leg placement is integral to even the most basic flight, but not today; the lesson of the day is both much simpler and fundamentally more important.

“You’re awesome, Baby Dee! Keep going like that, it’s perfect!”

“Dad,” she replies in annoyance, “Stop calling me that, it’s embarrassing!”

“Don’t lose your focus, honey!”

The filly looks down to see she has lost a considerable amount of altitude in the short moment she took to speak. Her legs are now a hair away from touching the cloud again. Her father continues as she struggles to regain the progress lost:

“And I’m sorry for distracting you, but you know you’ll always be my baby. I can’t help it! I promise I’ll do my best to stop, okay?”

The father looks at his daughter as she begins propelling herself in circles above the fluffy cloud. After a minute or so, she feels confident enough in her new skill to dare a reply.

“You always say that but you never do!”

Her father’s laughter comes to her ears, deep and comforting like a thick blanket on a chilly winter night. She finishes another lap to see him smiling warmly at her, his mouth opened to the last gasps of his mirth.

“I guess you’re right, honey. I just can’t resist your cute widdle face.” The stallion brings his hooves to his own face while he speaks, squeezing his cheeks together into an expression reminiscent of fishes.

She rolls her eyes.

“Daaad.”

Another minute passes in silence. The filly is starting to feel the strain in her muscles, but she soldiers on. It’s not every day that one finally learns to fly without assistance.

“Getting tired, honey?”

Darn that fatherly gaze, always so perceptive. The filly wonders what gave it away. She’s not panting that hard, is she? Maybe it’s the fact that she has once again lost altitude.

“Just a minute, okay? I want to try something!”

“Okay, but be careful! Mommy wouldn’t want to lose her most precious little pot of gold! She’d never forgive me!”

The little pegasus flies forward for a second, coming to the edge of the cloud. She looks down, past the few low-hovering buildings of Cloudsdale, and to the distant ground below. There’s grass and trees and other weird things down there, and it’s such a long way down. The filly’s heart beats faster as she creeps over the edge, suddenly keenly aware of just how much empty air separates her hooves from any sort of support. Her little wings flutter faster for an instant, but she keeps going for a few more feet; she knows her father would catch her if she fell.

“Careful, now.” He warns from behind her. She notices he sounds a bit closer than he did before. No doubt he moved as a precaution, a way to be ready for anything.

She feels like her wings are on fire, but she smiles through the pain. She closes her eyes, savoring the triumph of having learned to fly. She is hovering, miles above the ground, with nothing between it and herself, and all under her own power. She wants to be sure to remember this moment for as long as she lives. A breeze blows past her, the wind gently caressing her face on its way to her father. She imagines it is currently pushing her backwards towards him, shortening the distance she’ll have to traverse to get back to him. It gives her just a few more seconds to enjoy the feeling. With her eyes still closed she lets the light wind fill her lungs, inhaling freely…

The sudden rush of air felt like a punch in the gut as the rainbow pegasus managed to somehow forget her air intake for a moment, letting the wind catch in her nostrils with the force of a full-grown mare diving at terminal velocity.

She coughed, expelling the offending gases to a tolerable amount. The first thing her eyes opened up to see was the breathtakingly endless expanse of deep blue sky around her. The familiar comfort of the sky all around her felt so invigorating. The warmth of the sun caressing her coat directed her attention its way, and she squinted as she watched in plummet behind a mountain far to the east.

No, it was morning; the sun couldn’t be setting. She looked down to the distant ground below, the scattered embers of foliage glowing in the sunlight outside of the mountain’s shadow, beneath her; and the miniscule white dot between herself and the shadow-blackened earth.

Her blood froze in her veins, the chill of terror clutching her heart more starkly than the mountain’s shade as she finally plunged in it.

For the first time in her life, she understood the fear of heights; the dreadful terror of imagining oneself end in a single brutal meeting with the cold uncaring earth; the keen knowledge of just how much empty air separated her from a bloody death and the fact that none of it could do her any good.

The certainty that she would die this day.

She could now see two more dots far below, plunged in the same shade as them; one orange, one purple.

She decided they would not die this day.

She gathered the various packs closer to her body, holding them tightly with one leg while stretching the other in front of her face. She placed her body like an arrow pointing down, increasing her speed.

Soon the dots grew, each second spent catching up to them an agony of anticipation; she couldn’t help them until she reached them. She only hoped she could touch them before the ground did.

Closer and closer she got, eventually capable of seeing their individual limbs, most of whom were flailing madly. The features of their faces revealed themselves to her in tandem with the sound of their screams, their terror setting hers ablaze; turning it into a blazing, furious determination.

She would not let them die.

Her years of flight experience came rushing to her, the moves and techniques and rules not yet forgotten from misuse. Wing cramp response, emergency landing tactics, air rescue procedures… It could be done. Nothing had ever prepared her to attempt all three at once. No manual, no instructor had foreseen this scenario.

She would find a way. She had to.

“Rarity!” She screamed just in time to bowl into her friends. They spun once in the air, and a simple wing flap stabilized the bundle of beings. “You need to do exactly what I tell you, exactly when I say it, and without questions! You. Are. My limbs, all of you!” She grabbed the white unicorn’s barrel firmly, from behind, and shouted into her ears. “Now Rarity; stretch your legs as far and wide as you can, and just catch as much wind as you can! Now! Don’t ever stop until I tell you!”

Rarity did as instructed, shakily extending her limbs to the sides, and as far back and forwards as she could reach. Rainbow extended her hind legs as well, making sure they didn’t line up with her friend’s. Proper leg placement was an integral part of her rescue attempt.

“Scoots!” Rainbow shouted over the howling wind, “Now you get up here and grab onto my back!”

The orange filly did as instructed, crawling over her friends, clutching tightly to their bodies to avoid being blown away from them. She soon found herself gripping her idol’s shoulder loosely, standing just above the horrific stump.

“Grab on as tight as you can!” Despite the shiver these words brought to her, the filly immediately complied, her hooves wrapping around the withers of the older pegasus. The twitching stump poked at her belly, reminding her of the misfortune of her friend.

She soon noticed the disturbing movements of the scarred lump of flesh matched the ones of the remaining blue wing. “Flap your wings as hard as you can!”

For a single second, an infinitesimal fraction of a moment, Rainbow’s words snapped Scootaloo’s mind in half, filling it with a deafening explosion of rage. What in the unholy flaming pits of Tartarus did Rainbow expect her to do? Why was she expecting her to solve this problem, to save them all?

The anger passed in a blink, making way to a myriad of other emotions, each just as fleeting as the first. Indignation fluttered once, reminding her that she could not fly; and asking why Rainbow thought otherwise. Confusion flashed next, wondering what the older pegasus was thinking; mild disappointment bit at her heart, opening the way to self-pity. Why was she destined to fail her idol? Why was she, in this most crucial moment, unable to provide the help that a normal pony could have?

The flare of emotions passed too fast for Scootaloo herself to register properly, but it nonetheless left her with a single question.

“Rainbow you know I can’t fly! What am I even sup-“

“It doesn’t matter! There’s no way we’d fly anyway! We just need to slow down! Just flap as hard as possible and hopefully we’ll balance each other out so we don’t end up spinning too much! Think of the air like a ball; grab it with your wings and throw it at the ground!”

Spike could only watch as both pegasi began working their wings relentlessly, the flaps sporadically shaking his grip whenever Rainbow’s single powerful appendage beat simultaneously with Scootaloo’s weaker, faster ones. Latched onto Rarity’s neck, he did his best to look up, avoiding downward glances at all costs. His eyes, of their own volition, helpfully opted to remain shut most of the time. He could feel every wingbeat tugging at his insides, each one providing a sudden pull.

They were slowing down.

Or rather, he hoped they were slowing down; a cynical, despicable part of his mind kept whispering that he might have been imagining things in his state of desperate terror.

“We’re still going too fast!”

Scootaloo’s words echoed in Rainbow’s mind, as a simple reminder of something she already knew full well. Of course they were still falling too fast. If somepony who had never flown in her life could intuit this fact, an experienced athlete like her was sure to be aware of it at all times.

She didn’t know what more she could do. Gliding was out of the question with such an imbalanced set of wings; they’d probably only manage to corkscrew themselves until the centrifugal force threw them apart. She already had enough trouble keeping the rotations to a minimum with her one wing. Her large coat might have been used as a parachute of sorts, if doing so didn’t mean such a monumental use of time spent figuring out how Spike could be used to hold it securely without simply being flailed around by the coat’s flapping.

She… she might be able to manoeuver at the last second to be the first one to touch the ground. With any luck her destroyed body would break her friends’ fall enough for them to survive…

The ground was rising up towards them at an incredible speed, and for a moment she felt like a microscopic thing looking up, in awe, at a gargantuan pony’s hoof about to step on her. She was just a frail little speck, about to get crushed beneath the hoof of an unseen colossus so titanic that the bottom of his hoof covered the entire horizon.

He had better bring it on.

Rainbow was distracted from her thoughts by Spike. The young dragon’s hand constantly clenching and unclenching below her throat. A quick glance at his face showed he was frantically looking at the ground and at herself, then back at the ground and so on. He seemed hesitant about something, unsure. Then he turned his head in her direction once more, his teeth gritted and his face set. She noticed he was not actually looking at her; his eyes were focused on the large, green duffel bag hanging from her shoulder.

He suddenly sprang up, opening the bag and rummaging inside. He drew out a grey steel cube, pushing the bag aside and out of his way. His hands let go of Rarity’s neck, his only grip provided by his legs and tail; and he opened the cube. Inside were three wooden pegs and a compass embedded in the steel. Spike held the box in one hand, his other one moving hesitantly between the three pegs, until he finally clamped it around one of the three.

His hand clenched, and a crack was heard; almost too soft to be heard over the deafening wind. His other hand came up from below the box, slammed on the surface, and pushed.

At the same time, the other hand, the one closed around the peg, pulled.

With a loud snap and a crunch of metal, the peg was ripped out of the device, leaving a short trail of wires behind. Bits of wood flew out of Spike’s fist, still tightly clenched around its prize. A hasty throw returned the box to its place within the bag, and Spike brought his arms back to Rarity’s neck.

His right hand still clenched, he crawled further forward, placing himself between the unicorn’s ears.

“Spike!” she screamed, “What are-“

“I’m sorry Rarity!”

And with these words, without giving anyone any time to respond, he slammed his fist on Rarity’s forehead.

She screamed in pain, her limbs instinctively curling on themselves. The wooden peg disintegrated when Spike let go of it, the thin bits of wood flying away in the gale of the group’s fall.

“What are you do…” Her shout of indignation died to a strangled breath as she looked up to the source of her pain. “I… IS THAT MY HORN?!?”

The unicorn’s horn was indeed present, the last flecks of the hollow wooden tube that once hid it from sight scattering away. A sliver of metal embedded in its base was now also plunged into the stump that had replaced it on Rarity’s forehead. It was slightly crooked, held a scrap of broken wire jutting out of the seam, and was an abominable sight; but her horn was there.

“I’m so sorry! I can’t think of anything else to help! Use your magic to slow us down!”

“Have you completely lost your mind? Are you absolutely, irredeem-“

“Rarity!” Rainbow interrupted her, “Shut up and try it! You can yell at him all you want once we’re on the ground!”

The unicorn twisted her neck to look at her friend. “But what…” She trailed off, the impending impact with the ever-approaching ground brought to her mind by the sight of trees at the corner of her eye. She looked down, the terrifying proximity of her death freezing her breath.

She closed her eyes, grit her teeth, and concentrated. Although self-levitation was as patently impossible as an earth pony learning to fly by flapping her hooves with great speed, it was nonetheless theoretically possible to focus on her friends and push them upwards. As long as Rainbow held her sufficiently tightly, her descent would be slowed as well.

Remembering such a fundamental part of a unicorn’s life was far from difficult; the difficulty came from trying to use a horn as heavily damaged as this one. The metallic spike running through it made it immensely more sensitive while simultaneously causing interference. The mere act of channeling magic through the appendage was both painful and overwhelming to her senses, the throb of the stab’s pain sending a nauseatingly electric chill down her spine.

Blue sparks flew from the jagged seam, and Rarity gritted her teeth. A blue haze reached out to her friends, indistinct and uneven. Once she held their bodies in her grasp; once she knew they were firmly within it, she pushed. The most basic, raw impulse upward, attempting to shove them away from her.

A few things happened at once, sending her heartbeat soaring somehow higher than it was already going; Rainbow’s hooves seemed to slip slightly, her grip loosening for an instant before she reaffirmed it; Rarity’s horn ever so minimally flopped downward, a microscopic movement she could feel as jarringly as if her entire spine had been set on fire; and most importantly her stomach stirred as though she had been lightly punched in the intestines.

An unimaginably distant day flashed in her mind, akin to a lone bubble popping on the surface of a still pond; a far gone day of happiness where a young unicorn filly had ridden a rollercoaster with her parents.

The sudden pull, startling; the disturbing inner tug of inertia. A sudden change in velocity.

A smile found its way to her lips, and a single tear of joy came to join the ones forced out of her eyes by the blinding, rushing wind.

It worked.

“Rarity!” The blue pegasus’ cry of her name was unlike anything she’d heard before; it was torn between two completely separate feelings. The pleading, desperate hope in her friend’s voice reminding her of the most important thing she could think about.

It worked, and she couldn’t allow herself to stop anymore.

Rainbow Dash could barely believe it. Their descent was slowing down, every magical punch in her gut hammering it deeper. Despite the ground’s terrifyingly fast approach, despite the still rapidly-shrinking distance between it and them, and despite already being close enough to it that she could distinguish the individual branches of the trees below; they were slowing down. Her wing, rejuvenated by hope, increased its cadence. She heard Scootaloo’s own doing the same as well, and the filly’s hooves tightened around her neck.

She couldn’t help but do the same, gripping her white friend’s barrel; a grip that was reciprocated by a right foreleg suddenly clutching her own. Spike looked her in the eyes, and the glance they exchanged felt like centuries; a single instant frozen in abject, unimaginable terror. He was but a child thrown to his death, and he could only powerlessly hope to survive.

She did not feel much different, truthfully.

She broke the stare, closing her eyes to focus entirely on the effort of pushing her wing to its limit; to strain it harder than it had ever strained. She felt like her wings were on fire, but she couldn’t possibly stop yet. She screamed, involuntarily; the exertion making her push out a low groan that gained in power over the few seconds she could feel were left before the impact.

They were still going too fast; dangerously fast, terrifyingly fast.

But if her wing kept beating, if Scootaloo’s kept buzzing, and if Rarity’s telekinetic bursts continued slamming into them; they might slow down enough to survive.

They just had to keep going slower.

If they could go…

Just a bit…

Slower…

Author's Notes:

Arguably the worst five minutes and thirty-six seconds of their lives.

Mirthful Joymas to everyone.