NRG (||||.|||||)

Warning! System corRUPtion ⚠

C/Equine to C/Hangeling interface established.

Uplink to uSer__Ratchet established.

Configuring new data libraries.

Configuring program: Symbiotic Shield.

Configuration: sucCEss.

Warning! Forceboot—⚠

Confused, not quite sure what had taken place, but knowing that he had rebooted, Sideralis peered around with one eye, trying to make sense of the situation around him. There was a terrible smell in the tunnel and it was difficult to see anything. Sideralis was having trouble engaging infrared or ultravision. A soothing green glow pulsed around him, and Ratchet became visible.

The ceiling above them had collapsed, showering the area with bricks, and revealing the bare stone hidden behind the bricks. The passage was in shambles. Sideralis heard grunting from Mjölna. Turning his head around, he saw her. He heard pained whimpering in his ears, but he was too horrified by what he saw when he looked at Mjölna.

The eyeball abomination’s eyeblast had fused Mjölna’s right rear hoof to the floor, her leg had turned a sickly shade of purple right up the the hock and the floor had turned the same colour as well. Mjölna was tugging on her leg, trying to free it, but she was unable to separate it from the floor. Sideralis stood there, not knowing what to do, and that was when he took in the whole situation and saw Spike.

A low, frantic moan escaped from Sideralis’ throat. Spike was fused to the floor. Both hind legs had melted into the floor, along with his tail, and both of his hands on his front legs. Spike was mewling with pain and there was nothing Sideralis could do.

He saw the remains of the minotaurs fused to the floor. In the tunnels, he heard low moans, cries, sounds, evidence that he was not alone down here in the dark. Terror welled up inside of him and he didn’t know what to do.

“Sideralis, help me,” Mjölna said in a somewhat panicked voice. “The blast transmuted my hoof to the floor and it’s stuck… I don’t think we can save it.”

“What do I do?” Sideralis asked, his voice sounding very much like a scared foal’s. The darkness around him was terrifying, omnipresent, if the lights went out, the things lurking in the dark would devour him and finish off his friends in their weakened states.

Ratchet, his wings buzzing, flew down near where Mjölna’s hoof was fused. The little changeling examined Mjölna’s leg, his horn glowing, his eyes flashing with a strange inner light. “Molecular composition suggests that part of the molecules of Mjölna’s leg exchanged places with the molecules of the floor and everything became jumbled.”

“Oh fuck me,” Mjölna said in a low whisper. “We’ve been working on a molecular scrambler… that dirty bitch beat us to it.”

Sideralis didn’t understand anything being said. He shook his head and tried to control the horrible feeling of panic welling up inside of him. “Can you fix it, Ratchet?”

“No,” the little drone replied, sounding sad to be reporting his failure, “the molecules are all scrambled together into one big spongy mess of fused molecular foam. All I can recommend is cutting it away.”

“Sid, do it… I don’t want to burn off my own leg… I can’t… please, help me, Sid, and then, together, we can figure out what to do about Spike.”

He felt his whole body go numb. Sideralis looked at Spike, trying to understand what had taken place, his mind a confusing jumble. Scrambled dragon molecules mixing with floor molecules. He heard Spike’s whimpers of pain.

Stumbling forwards, Sideralis lifted up his left foreleg, powered up his telekinesis projector, and selected a cutting beam. He had to angle his head so that his one remaining eye could see what he was doing. The projector powered up and smoke rose from Mjölna’s leg as the telekinetic force beam began its slow work of cutting through Mjölna’s leg, just below the hock.

“It hurts so much,” Spike whined, “I’ve never felt pain like this before… I can feel the floor… my body is in the floor.”

“Sideralis, when everything was exploding, you and Ratchet connected with a tether, just like you and I did and you and Stout did.” Mjölna did not look down at her leg while Sideralis was cutting it off. “Ratchet popped up a shield. It protected us from the blast and the falling bricks. How did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Sideralis replied.

“Please… kill me,” Spike begged, “I can’t bear this… hurts so much.”

Mjölna’s head turned and she looked Sideralis in the eye. Her brows furrowed and her lips pressed into a straight line as she gave Sideralis a stern look. “Half of Spike is fused into the floor. We’re stuck down here surrounded by enemies. We can’t leave him, not like this. We need to figure out what to do.”

“What are you saying?” Sideralis whispered.

“I’m saying that if we get out of here somehow, go back and get help, and then come back to get Spike, I think we’re going to find a new flesh warped mutant roaming these tunnels,” Mjölna replied.

Spike let out another long, low whimper.

“No,” Sideralis gasped. “No. We’re his friends. I’m his friend. I’m not doing that. If he can’t leave with us, then we stay down in here in the dark together.” Sideralis stared down at Mjölna’s leg and watched as the telekinetic beam cut through the last little bit.

Snarling, now freed, Mjölna waved her new stump around as she stood on three legs. She grumbled, her wings clanked, and then she stomped over to stand next to Spike’s head. She lowered her own head down and tried to comfort the dragon.

Meanwhile, Sideralis didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t even imagine trying to cut Spike free from the floor. Spike could feel pain. Spike would suffer. Spike would feel every agonising minute. Spike could die from this.

Limping, his own legs damaged, Sideralis went over to where Mjölna stood, the tiny spark of hope that he had dying like a suffocated, smouldering ember. He needed fresh air, he needed light… he needed his friends. All of them. He needed Twilight.

He needed his mother… not Wisteria, even though she had always tried to comfort him, but Luna. If Luna was here, somehow, she would make everything better. She would promise to make everything better and his mother Luna would keep her promises. Luna always kept her promises.

Sideralis had reached the point where he wasn’t certain he could go any further. He had reached his end. He was in pain, a terrible pain that his cybernetic systems could not block, could not treat, could not prevent. All of his fellow C/Equines were now crippled. All of them. Spike was probably dying. He had failed. He had not reached the pony lives that he could sense within the hill. He had failed them too. All felt lost.

“Sideralis?”

Startled by the sound of his name being shouted, Sideralis peered ahead down the dark tunnel, trying to see. It had to be some trick, some deception. The changelings were trying something new. He ran a self diagnostic and found that his weapons still had functionality, but his targeting systems were offline.

“Sideralis? Mjölna? Spike?”

That voice was all too familiar. Too familiar. It had to be a trick. Some horrible, devious trick. Sideralis growled in the darkness and much to his surprise, he still had some fight left in him. He took several steps forwards, hoping to shield Mjölna and Spike with his body.

“Chrysalis? Is that you?” Ratchet asked. “Identify yourself before Sideralis obliterates you!”

“Sid, don’t you dare obliterate me! Not after the trouble I had to go through to rescue your sorry biomechanical ass yet again!” Queen Chrysalis’ sarcastic reply echoed through the tunnel, along with her nervous laughter. It wasn’t the sort of laugh that one had when one found something funny, but the laughter one did when there was nothing else that could be done, the laugh of the desperate clinging to whatever hope there was left.

“How did you get down here?” Ratchet asked as he buzzed near Sideralis’ head.

“We came down the central pipe, the big pipe where they pump olive oil up into airships so it can be hauled off… we had a bit of a fight, but we managed! We found pods! We found survivors!”

Sideralis felt hope flooding back into him. He felt his legs go weak. He wobbled, overcome with emotion. A low gibbering cry escaped his lips. He wanted to sob with relief. He had never been so happy to hear Chrysalis’ voice.

“Hurry, Spike is hurt in a bad way, Mjölna is missing a limb, and Sideralis is suffering from multiple critical failures. I think Spike is dying,” Ratchet said to Chrysalis.

“Hang on, I’m coming!” Chrysalis shouted back.

It was over. Help was on the way, there were survivors, and the horrible feeling of bleak depression was lifted away from Sideralis. Not everything had been a total failure. He powered down his weapons. He could hear sounds ahead, and the rescue party was coming closer.

The long dark nightmare was over. The survivors had been secured and were going to be rescued. Sideralis would be able to rest, begin healing, and the recovery process could begin. He looked at Mjölna, who had remained with him throughout this entire ordeal. He didn’t know what he would do without her and he understood why Twilight valued her as a friend. He thought of Spike and wondered how they would get Spike out of here.

One nightmare had ended and now a new bad dream was beginning.

Standing in the central vat, Sideralis had himself a look around. The walls pulsated and throbbed with changeling biomass. Changeling eggs glowed with a faint green light. The walls were lined with changeling pods—Chrysalis had informed him that there were no adults to be found, only foals, forty nine of them in total. Out of a population of tens of thousands, there were forty nine foal survivors.

Most of the adults had probably been shipped off on cargo drones, while others… others had become some of the flesh warped mutants no doubt. Sideralis felt sickened and disgusted just thinking about it.

In the middle of the vat on the floor were a group of green and yellow crystals that pulsed with their own inner light. Sideralis knew what they were, but he didn’t know how he knew. They were communications crystals that allowed Queen Mariposa to communicate with this colony, give them direction, and broadcast the Unity Web for the dreaming foals. The sleepers were a battery, providing just enough love to keep everything running.

Bellowing with an equine cry of fury, Sideralis smashed the communications crystals, shattering them, venting his rage and fury about Spike, about his companions, about all of the death, pain, misery, and loss of life.

He watched as a drone cut down one of the changeling pods from the walls and then lowered it down to the floor. A group of drones examined the pod, their horns glowing, and Queen Chrysalis herself gave them a nod. A drone cut the pod open and the goo inside spilled out. A little slimy yellow pegasus filly was in the pod.

“What now?” Sideralis asked.

“Now comes the worst part,” Chrysalis replied, shaking her head. “We get them back on the ship and if we’re lucky, one third of them will live through waking them up.” The changeling queen let out a sad sigh. “It’s awful. We hold so many funerals for the little sleepers that can’t open their eyes. Fluttershy weeps for each and every one of them and she gives them all one final hug because she says that somepony has to.”

Chrysalis’ words struck him like a physical blow and Sideralis recoiled. After taking a moment to recover, he shoved his way forward, and the changelings made way for the biomechanical nightmare with no skin. Sideralis thought of Mustang, how he had freed her. He had power with his voice.

The shredded remnants of his tail flicked, nothing more than the charred, blackened, hairless remains of his dock. Sideralis lowered his head down close to the little yellow pegasus filly. She looked a bit like Fluttershy, but instead of pink, her mane was a soft shade of blue-green.

“Wake up, little one,” Sideralis said in a low voice.

Much to the shock of all witnessing it, the little filly woke up. Her eyes opened, slowly, and she stared upwards with unfocusing eyes. She let out a burbling, wet cry and a slime bubble popped upon her lips. Her body wiggled a bit, but she was unable to move.

Sideralis felt a strange peace overcome him. The horrors of everything he had endured began to fade. Unbeknownst to him, two patches of skin grew with rapid, explosive growth on his backside, covering his hips.

“Know peace, little one, go back to sleep… good night little one, go back into a deep and dreamless slumber. The nightmare is over.” Sideralis lifted his head as the foal let out a weak, bubbly yawn and her eyes closed.

On the new patches of skin, Sideralis’ destiny manifested. A bright red alarm clock with big brass bells appeared, glowing for a moment. Sideralis was unaware of this development however, all he knew was that he now felt a peace unlike anything else he had experienced, and his sense of hope had been revitalised. He felt as though he could keep fighting.

He would find out soon enough, but that would come later. For now, there were forty eight more foals to free from the Unity Web, and Sideralis would finish his task. It was what he was made to do, he was the restorative power that could undo his mother’s corrupted magic. He was the hope that Luna had given the world, the means of undoing what she had been forced into doing.

Sideralis was a promise kept.

Author's Notes:

And so we conclude this part of the story. Coming up next, rest, recovery, and a race against time.