Vinyl’s opening shot was a magnificent one with a spectacular result: the head of the leading quadrupedal mechanoid exploded into a shower of mechanical gore and the remaining body was flung backwards, away from its two companions. Tarnish, for reasons unknown, made an instant conclusion as to why the mechanoids had come here, or what he believed to be the reason. The system, whatever it was, had been alerted to their presence when he had communicated with the strange trees.

He reached his mind into the plants around him and found it easy—these plants were connected in ways that other plants were not. These were part of some greater network. They were designed for him to communicate with. By touching them, his mind awoke to new possibilities, new facts, new awareness. For a moment, Tarnish’s mind transcended his body and joined the natural wetware network. This wasn’t just magic, but coding. Druids weren’t just spellcasters, but technicians. The magic they carried—that he carried—was really just something called root access, a means to connect to the grid of improved lifeforms left behind. This was technology disguised and then further misunderstood as mysticism.

The plants, filled with Tarnish’s will, grabbed the two remaining mechanoids, overpowered them, and then held them in place. Of course, the automatons struggled, they fought, their jaws clanged together while biting at nothing. It did them no good, and with careful aim, Vinyl dispatched another one while Tarnish’s understanding of the grid continued to grow at a geometric, exponential rate. This was a self-sufficient, self-propagating system, and with Tarnish’s increased awareness, it was uploading a copy of its schematics into his mind, hoping that it would live again. When Vinyl fired for a third time, the threat ended.

Infinite possibilities could come of this, a restoration of what might have been, what still could be, and the vision, the bright, promising future dreamed of by the centaurs could be realised. With his awareness extended, he could sense that more automatons were coming, they were on the hunt. The metal creatures were unnatural and strange to the plants of the refinement biome, a fact that resonated within Tarnish’s expanded mind. Something had corrupted the mechanoids, something had caused them to deviate from their intended purpose.

There had been intruders in the network: Tarnish saw glimpses of it now, strange as it was, a jumbled, distorted, nightmarish collage of violation. Strange faces of unicorns and others, those who had no doubt tried to discover the secrets of this place. Germinations of Grogar’s magic already existed here, but the sudden influx of hatred, of tribalism had awoken the seeds of evil.

The entirety of the system was infected, damaged beyond repair, and needed to be purged.

So lost was Tarnish in his current transcended state that he did not notice how his skin was healing, that his body was repairing itself. He was still trying to understand the network around him and how it applied to him. The automatons drew closer and Tarnish felt a growing worry. Almost lost, almost adrift in his new awareness, he drew Flamingo and set her free.

“Verily I say, who doth dispatch the hounds?” she asked while she went streaking through the air, doing what she did best: seek and destroy.

The albino unicorn had a dreadful calm about her while she leveled out the The Army Cannon to take aim. Tarnish reached out and willed for the plants around him to slow, to hinder, to give them time. He was already feeling tired—this connection, this interfacing, this deeper understanding—it drained his body while leaving his mind revitalised, buzzing with excitement.

Daring Do and Rainbow Dash remained close, with an eager, ready stance. If for some reason, something did draw close enough to be a threat, it would be dispatched by the two rough and ready pegasus ponies.

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of brass!” Flamingo shouted while she made a neat chop that freed a head from a body. “There once was a pegasus named Flamingo! And she fought a mechanical dingo! She lopped off its head, leaving it dead, while marvelling at her grasp of the lingo!”

“Flamingo, that’s terrible!” Daring Do shouted.

“Well, it was either that or cunnilingo! Not much else rhymes with ‘Flamingo’, ya know!” There was a clang as she sliced another quadrupedal automaton’s head free from its neck. “Nasty bad ass-biting robots! Back! Back I say! Away from precious, meaty pony plots!”

Vinyl’s shots were constant and reliable. Every few seconds, she would fire, strike her target, and another mechanoid would go down. This fight was almost stress free, if one could call it that, and Tarnish hardly felt as though he was in danger. Had this fight happened elsewhere though, such as the hallways of a research lab, it would be a very different fight, and no doubt terrifying.

But this? This was almost leisurely. Almost a walk through a park. Only the park was a swamp populated by mutant monstrosities and boxing deer. It also had a computational network made of trees and plants. This was Skyreach, and this was the new normal. Bright green birds shrieked and whooped with excitement.

Perhaps sensing this was a poor place to engage, the quadrupedal mechanoids began their withdrawal, retreating back to their secret passageways that lead in and out of this area. Flamingo chased a few, but didn’t go too far, fearing some mean trick or some unexpected act of reprisal. When Vinyl stopped firing, her weapon had a bit of a glow to it, as if it was hot from firing. In silence, she studied it while Tarnish kept watch, the tall unicorn was wary for danger.

It was Rainbow that had to ruin it: “That didn’t feel like an attack.”

“Then what was it, Rainbow?” Daring demanded.

“I dunno.” Rainbow shrugged and her tail swished from side to side, expressing her agitation. “I guess it was an attack of opportunity, maybe… but why only three when they could have overwhelmed us from the start? Why break up into smaller groups? Why not come at us in one large pack?”

“Oh my.” Daring’s words were soft, a surprised gasp.

“It’s like they were sizing us up, maybe measuring our response times or something.” Now, Rainbow’s head shook from side to side, moving in time with her tail. It was obvious that she was a creature of high-strung movement, and she had fitful twitches while she cogitated, reflecting upon the situation. “It’s like.. it’s like throwing your poorest players into a warm up match to see how the other team plays, so you can watch and learn.”

“We should keep moving,” Tarnish said to the mares around him while he looked to and fro for danger. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m feeling great. We should push ahead and see what doors can be found along the edges of this… biome place.” In an absentminded manner, he continued eating more of the strange fruit, and when he took a large bite, some of the juice went dribbling down his fuzzy chin.

Saying nothing, Flamingo sheathed herself, returning to her sanctuary to recharge.

The hollering, shrieking green birds were quite unusual. Bioluminescent blue lines formed intricate patterns on their long, hooked beaks and their fresh deposits of fecal matter had a vivid bluish glow. Tarnish could sense them, he could almost tune into their awareness and knew that with effort, he could probably control these birds.

The flicking illusory sun was setting and the swampy biome began to grow darker. No stars seemed forthcoming, no lights of night, just a uniform blanket of darkness. Looking at the birds, they made sense. If there was no program of illusion that lit up the scheduled darkness, some animals would have to adapt, somehow, or were engineered to adapt.

Tarnish didn’t fear the dark, he had his own source of light, but he did worry about what the dark might bring.

The light continued to persist, but in the worst way possible. The overhead ceiling was damaged, broken somehow. It strobed sometimes, glistered at other times, and on occasion there were coruscating flares that were blinding. It was like being in the worst sort of storm with irregular lightning. Strange bioluminescent forms lurked in the swampy muck, not just the birds, but other… things.

The boxing deer had gone into hiding and there was no sign of them.

“Shine some light over there,” Rainbow said while she gave Vinyl a nudge.

Vinyl did, and a fresh horror was highlighted: something dreadful crawled through the boggy water. A long series of interconnected torsos formed a chain, and from each torso segment a pair of arms sprouted. At the end of each arm was a misshapen hand with weird, long fingers. There was no sign of the head, nor any sign of the tail, just a chain of pale, bloated torsos was visible in Vinyl’s spotlight spell.

“I kinda wanna scream right now,” Rainbow confessed.

“As do I.” Daring pressed a little closer against her fellow pegasus. “It is as if they just decided, hey, body parts are modular, let’s randomly string them together and see what happens… unnatural.”

“Was that… a… manipede?” Tarnish asked.

“Tarnish, stop being scientific, right now, this instant!” Daring Do commanded.

“Well, it was like a centipede with arms and hands… sort of looked like minotaur arms and hands, but those torsos looked off—”

“This instant!” Daring Do shrieked. “It’s dark, it’s spooky, and this swamp is full of awful things!”

“I wonder how many ribcages that monster had—”

“Tarnish, stop!” Daring Do was now standing beneath Tarnish, trembling, and peering out from behind his legs. “Under most circumstances I have no fear of the dark, but this is most unnerving! Stop making it worse for me! Please!”

“A door,” Rainbow said while she almost stumbled through the muck.

Turning his head about, Tarnish turned to look. The door was open, stuck in the halfway position. It was made from the strange green metal and a steady stream of slimy, oily looking water trickled from out the doorway, draining into the biome. Pulling out the ancient reading spectacles, Tarnish had himself a look at the letters embossed in the doorframe.

“Specimen containment,” he read aloud.

“Somepony left the door open.” Daring Do, now gripping Tarnish’s leg, stared through the open doorway, trying to see beyond it, but there was only darkness. The light appeared to be broken. When something gurgled in from deep within the darkness, the otherwise brave pegasus gulped.

“I think we’ve found where the boxing deer came from.” While Rainbow spoke, Vinyl stood beside her, nodding, and pointing her weapon at the doorway. “So, uh, do we wanna go in there? I mean, it’s a door, and we were looking for one, right?”

Lowering his head, Tarnish sniffed at the oily water with a rainbow sheen that poured from the half-opened doorway. After a few sniffs, he raised his head, pulled off the reading glasses, and tucked them back into his saddlebags. The water smelled acrid, it burned the nose, and sort of smelled like old batteries did.

“We’ll come back to this door,” he announced. “For now, let’s keep following the wall and see where else it leads us. This biome is huge, I didn’t think it would be this large. Daring, you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She didn’t sound fine and her companions all looked on with concern. “Not much ruffles my feathers, but that… that… that thing, it bothers me. Out of all of the awful things I’ve seen so far during this excursion, that… that… manipede creature is the most unsettling so far. That was clearly made for the sake of making it and not for any sort of practical purpose. It’s just wrong.”

“I understand.” Tarnish found that he really did understand, and he shared Daring’s concern. Why had something like that been made? What purpose could it have served? Why would the centaurs make something like that? “Come on, let’s keep going.”

Author's Notes:

All those ribcages...