The Swirling Menagerie Chapters 14-15

# The Swirling Menagerie Chapters 14-15 ###### tags: `The Swirling Menagerie` Chapter 14 ========== ****** “SLOW DOWN SLOW DOWN CELESTIA SAVE ME SLOW DOWN NOOOOO!” You’re going to be sick… You’re dizzy, colors are fading in and out of existence, spots are there and then aren’t, points become lines, you can’t focus on anything before it’s gone. You try shutting your eyes, and it helps a little bit, but every errant bump or shift in trajectory reminds you of what’s occurring around you. Above it all, that same smoky cackle, abruptly cut short by a coughing fit. “Relax, birdie. S’just a damn drive. Nothin’ out o’ the ordinary.” “FOR YOU!” “Yer a big mare. Get a grip over ye’self. An’ open yer eyes, at the very least.” You were wrong before. Darkness is preferable to light in certain circumstances. Eyes shut tight, you imagine yourself falling, falling into a deep dark place. But it isn’t the darkness that frightens you now. No, it’s the anticipation of the crash, the moment of convening with the bottom at terminal velocity, impacting and impressing yourself on that stone cold surface. Into the light… into the cracks in the murky subaqueous… Surrounded by snaking monsters, never touching, only observing… “Come, then. Ye’ll be goin’ much faster than this on the express.” He speaks the truth. The Matron told you that intranational express trains can reach speeds up to four hundred kilometers per hour, an unprecedented and frankly unfathomable figure to your mind. Nothing in your limited reference frame can hope to make for a fair comparison, so perhaps it would be best to build up to it rather than risk an even worse reaction when that time comes. Once again, reason trumps thoughtless cowardice. Truth over instinct… “H-h-how fast are we going now?” “Sixty kilos per.” Gradually, your eyelids peel away until the fuzzy lights of the control panel, dials, switches, and buttons, coalesce into proper symbols. You don’t dare look up or out the windows until the time is right. “S-sorry. I’ve never g-g-gone this fast in my l-life.” “S’alright. Funny to think about, though, much less see firsthoof. Somepony walks all ‘er life, an’ never more’n a few hundred meters at a time to get anywhere she wants to go. How strange it must be fer you, then. What I’d give to swap spots wit you, right ‘ere an’ now.” “You c-can’t be serious. What insights could you possibly gain by stepping into my shoes when you’re infinitely more worldly than I am?” “Dunno. Just a feeling I ‘ad. S’more to life than just the places ye go, y’know. More’n the people y’meet. If I was you, an’ I’d never been in a lorry before, I ‘spect I’d be wingin’ an’ hollerin’ too. But wot do ye think we do in life? I mean, what’s our purpose?” “I’m not sure what you mean.” “Why are we here, in the places we’re in?” “That’s an easy one. Mater Solis’ will is my own will. Her light is Truth, and Her Truth delivers us to our destinies. When we act as She commands, we secure our place in the Mother’s Garden.” “Simple as?” You giggle. You still haven’t gotten used to this unicorn’s strange accent. “Simple as.” A soft grumble tells you he isn’t exactly satisfied with your answer. “So ye do wot she tells ye to do, and everything turns out alright then? How do ye know wot she wants ye to do?” “There are many methods by which Mater communicates Her divine will to Her faithful. The Matrons, the Sisters Solaris, the Arbiters of Truth, and some distinguished Clerici have what’s called Sight, bestowed to them by the Solenoids upon ascension and through ritual practices. They can see Mater’s voice as a kind of intangible sixth sense, and interpret it accordingly. She also makes Herself known through divining rituals, through chance acts, through epiphanies and waking visions. Her light surrounds us all.” “Comforting t’think about.” “Yes. Yes it is.” By mere chance, you’ve started to feel more comfortable as well. Perhaps reminding yourself that Mater guides you wherever you go, and has a plan for your future, is helping to assuage your abject terror at moving so fast. The bumps on the road still rock you, but they seem less threatening now, more like a natural part of the process. Still, you refuse to look up or out, lest you catch a glimpse of the gut-wrenching blur of buildings moving far faster than they ever should. Instead, you search the cabin for a source of attention. Curled up in this low posture, you find it at eye level. Brittle’s flank, pressed against the thick seat cushion on the driver’s side of the truck, bending and contorting with every minute tap of the piston pedals with his forelegs, is marked with a most curious symbol. A white circle, embroidered by twirling gold and brown embellishments. Twin arrows strike out from its center in different directions, one longer than the other, and twelve black dots are evenly spaced out near the rim of the circle. Something like a thin hairline crack extends diagonally from top left to bottom right. Having no cutie mark of your own, you’ve always found some measure of morbid curiosity when it comes to the subject of others’ marks. One by one, all your sisters were tainted in that small fashion by the Blight of magic, an unavoidable consequence of being a pony. To think that their “special talent”, or what would be their special talent, could be entirely summed up in an image, a single symbolic authority dictating the course of their life, was and is a frightening thought. Of course, the Sisters of Solemnity reject the meaningless dictations of Blight, following instead the course which Celestia outlined for them. Still, the cutie marks remain, a sordid reminder that had they not chosen the path of the light, your sisters all might have succumbed to inescapable destinies. This one, though… What is it? It almost looks like… Of course! You nearly grin from ear to ear as something in this strange new world breathes familiarity. It’s a mechanical clock, the type which… You recognize the vague shapes as those you wondered over in your youth within the Matron’s office, where one of the same general look stands. She even let you take it apart once, examine all its inside workings. Where the great bell tower operates on the principles of electricity, outfitted with an electric oscillatory unit for measuring out time, the towering timepiece in the Matron’s office uses a complex set of gears, pins, bolts, and a long swinging pendulum to count the minutes. You understood the basic principles then, but never ventured to fully learn how it functioned. “Your cutie mark… it’s a clock, isn’t it?” “Heh. Didn’t think ye’d be staring at me bum so soon. Only the first date, little birdie.” The lewd meaning of this eludes you. Brit shuffles slightly in his seat to give you a better look at his cutie mark. “Ye, it’s a clock, alright. Me father were a watchmaker, aye, an’ so was I. An’ me brothers too. Whole family turnin’ gears, windin’ an’ tinkerin’. I don’t make ‘em anymore, but the skills I learnt then, I make use of ‘em here. Wot I really am at ‘eart is a mechanic, a fixer of problems. An’ that’s wot I do round here, is fix problems. Mechanical problems, electrical problems, all that ilk. Still got quite a collection of me old watches, though.” Something clicks inside you. “Watches? As in, hoofheld clocks, correct?” “Right. It’s an old art, lots o’ plannin’ an’ perfectin’ o’er the centuries. Do believe they might’ve predated the Makers, matter o’ fact. The mechanical kind, that is. Nowadays, everyone wears the digital kind, wit the numbers showin’ on a screen. Me, I’m old fashioned or sentimental or a bit o’ both. I wear mine…” He gestures at the bronzed strap a few inches up the length of his left forehoof, holding fast against the notch of his fetlock a brassy clock face in miniature. Even across the wide center space, you can make out the second hand ticking on intervals, moment by moment. “…an’ I got me several back home, an’ one or two in this ‘ere lorry.” “I do hope it wouldn’t be too much to ask, but… would you be willing to part with one of your watches? I’ll compensate you, of course.” You reach for your saddlebag and the coin purse inside on the floorboard of your seat, but before you can touch its strings to undo them a hoof comes across the cabin to rest on your own, pulling it gently away. When you turn to look at the source, you find conflict in Brit’s darting eyes, as though he’s desperately trying to decide between playful and bitter. When he speaks, his tone comes out somewhere in between. “That… won’t be necessary, love. I’m sorry, but me watches ain’t for sale. If I were willing to part wit one, I’d give it to somepony like you for free. But I ain’t. Simple as. I’m… sorry about that, again.” Those glossy cerulean eyes, they sweep the cabin, here and there, up and down, ahead, side to side, anywhere but to look upon your own. Something hides behind them, something dark and… longing, perhaps. Despite your long history of forgoing closeness in favor of studies both divine and secular, you have admittedly always been quite adept at reading emotions Some ponies wear their hearts on their coats for all to see; others turn away from the light of Truth and slink in shadows of false promises and stony resolve. But you have seen through them all, or at the very least seen through all manner of sisters like yourself If one constant, rigid curriculum is meant to force out those baneful individualities which may lead to Blight, how is it that you and your friends and the others of your age can be so different, in temperament, in opinion, in interests? Because there is what is learned through Truth, and then there is what is instilled in a pony from the moment of conception, and both are intermingled to define one soul bound for the heavens or the Depths. This one, sitting to your left, refusing to speak out on what troubles him; you cannot be certain which path he takes in life. The path he takes right now is Hoofington Broadway, as the glowing tube-lights on a passing elevated charcoal-black signpost so forcefully suggests from above. Forward acceleration suggests he’s slowing down, as well. Out of necessity, or to give you comfort? Perhaps a bit of both… an intermingling… “Brit, I…” Before you can inquire on his misgivings, the truck lurches to a sharp halt, to your surprise. “Wait. We’re not already there, are we?” He looks at you, and the uncertainty in his expression has been replaced with seriousness and a touch of frayed nerves. “No. Sit up. Don’t look like yer hiding. Be suspicious, it would. Don’t say anything neither.” Confused, you obey, shifting your posture until you can see over the dashboard and out the side window at your level surroundings. What you see nearly makes you shriek. At least eight ponies march or stand in place at varying points around the truck, all clad in the same attire. Green, brown, and black splotches, looking at this distance almost like the leaves of a tree, paint the uniforms. Square pouches, buttoned with simple metal ornaments, seem to line nearly every square inch of their bodies. Where there are no pouches, there are silvered stretches of armor, reinforcing their shoulders, backs, flanks, cannons, and throats. Their faces are barely visible, shadowed by round black helmets with white stripes and the letters “MP” bold across the fronts. But the most unnerving piece of their uniform is the long, thin steel barrel protruding from their right shoulder, mounted upon a smooth sphere and five vertical rods, a ball pivot of sorts. The back of the barrel is attached to a solid yellow chain-looking thing, fed through a side port and curving into a hidden slot on the pony’s flank. The front of the barrel has a few rows of long square holes along its length, leading up to a single wide hole in its front end, black and deep. Having never seen a gun, you can’t be certain what they look like save for descriptions in books and the chance diagram of their larger, older cousin, the cannon. But, staring into the black hole of the firing end of the steel weapon belonging to one of the ponies outside, who is at this very moment approaching the truck from the front, there is no doubt in your mind as to its identity. This is a gun, a firearm, a tool of killing, an implement of war. The black end of that barrel is meant to issue a bullet, a tiny copper shot fired out from a powder explosion, careening out in a straight vector at its target. Like the bows and arrows of old, but far more accurate, infinitely more deadly. Bullets, you’ve heard, move so fast you can’t even hear them coming before they’ve passed, or, if you’re unlucky, hit. The speed of sound in air is a fixed value, the mobility of vibrations set by the spacing of particles among other variables. The speed of a bullet exceeds that. It’s a terrifying notion that such power could exist in the hooves of a single pony. And said power is currently pointed right at you and Brit, swiveling on its ball axis to trace you as its owner walks around to the side of the truck. “Who are they?” Brit makes a shushing gesture with his hoof, his watch glistening in the sunlight pouring through the windshield. “Military Police. They guard the city at checkpoints like these. Y’know, wartime an’ all. Make it a real pain in the bum to move about, though.” “Aren’t we already in the city? It’s not like we’re entering from the outside.” “Lots o’ undesirables live out where you an’ I do, an’ beyond that there’s the Undermaw an’ its lot. Here’s where the part o’ the city populated by the ‘good folk’ of the Mons really begins. Train station’s in this sector. We gotta get clearance wit them before we can go in.” You nod in understanding, happy to let your new friend do the talking. As the shock of your initial viewing of the first group of ponies you’ve ever seen outside the convent, and the first guns you’ve ever seen, fades away, you start to take notice of the rest of your surroundings. In stark contrast to the cold industrial haze of the factory district, this strip of land is somewhat colorful, albeit darkened by multiple stacked overpasses. Buildings rise high on either side of the wide boulevard, though every few stories the facades of each seem to change completely in design. Like several shorter structures stacked upon one another by a storm, they arch and bend haphazardly, connected by bridgework and raised walkways. Flowing colored silk fabrics and a spider’s web of cables, exposed wires, round metal discs and framing lattices further dilute what little natural sunlight comes through from above. Most of the light in this strange crossroads seems to come from brilliant white-blue globes of burning light, artificial lamps of some kind spaced evenly along the sides of the road and elevated atop the same kind of black post as the road markers. The “checkpoint”, as Brit described it, is physically little more than sandbags piled six high across the width of Hoofington Broadway, a glass pillbox inside which a single MP pony sits at a control panel, and a stripe-painted lever arm that seems to be designed to raise to let vehicles through. A makeshift construction, but what isn’t makeshift in war? Distracted by these sights, you snap back to reality when a droning sound reverbs from your left. When you turn your head, you see that the sound is that of Brit mechanically lowering his driver-side window with the press of a button. Already just outside and just below eye level is the shaded face of the MP pony, a mare from the looks of it. From here, all that’s visible of her are her eyeglasses with glossy black lenses, her black and white helmet, and the barrel of her shoulder-mounted gun, its tip coming close to extending into the cabin. “May I see your credentials, and those of your passenger?” “Right then, love. Twilight, yer papers?” At first you’re rendered a bit dumbfounded by this request. “My… what?” At that, Brit’s expression changes from stern and calm to nervous. “Aheheheh… she’s a bit tired, she is. Not all there yet.” He leans in close, staring you down and speaking in hushed tones. “Yer credentials. Yer everlovin’ bill of travel, yer infotron, citizen’s license, all that. Don’t tell me you was tryin’ to board an express train without all that in yer pockets?!” “Ohhh, those papers! Yes, yes, I have those! Give me a moment.” You reach into your saddlebag, rummaging through your belongings to find that little red laminate the Matron gave you about a week ago. She had gone for the day, according to her, to the Office of Citizenship in the city to have all your identification information printed out and sealed to be given to you when the situation arose. She told you that when you were found at the shrine, days after your birth, one of the first things the Matron, then a Sister Solaris under the previous Matron, did was go to that same place to find out if a birth certificate for a newborn “Twilight Sparkle” existed in their registries. Nothing came up, so she asked for one be created for you. Only now, however, is it all printed and in your hooves. You feel the sharp corner of a plastic binder at the bottom of your bag, almost pricking your tender frog, and pull it out to hand to Brit. He opens a hidden compartment between you two, reaching inside to claim his own info, embossed in a more permanent black casing. He then passes both directly on to the armed mare, who opens them and examines their contents. First, the citizen’s license. Name, date of birth, “occupation” (if one could call serving the light an occupation), residence. Description of features: sex, color of coat, mane, eyes, your height, unicorn status. Next, the “infotron”, a slip containing mostly the same sort of information, with the addition of a few long numbers, coded ID phrases, and alternating thick-and-thin black vertical bars which you do not understand. And finally, your Intranational Travel Permit (ITP), a document which outlines your authorization by the state to cross territorial lines by train. She flips through them quickly, but not hurriedly, more like… practiced. Every few seconds, she glances up and over her tinted glasses at you, cyan eyes icy and narrowed. Somehow, those eyes are more intimidating than the mounted gun pointed directly at you and Brit. It could discharge at any moment, for what if she sees a flaw in your paperwork? What would she do if she thought you might be a dangerous immigrant of some kind? Would she shoot you on the spot? Enters your head, then the sound. Out the back, and the sound waves still carrying on in front… You shut your eyes, forcing such morbid thoughts from your mind. Mater protects Her children, Her light is cast upon those worthy to behold it, you are worthy, you bear Her torch of piety and her will. The Litany of Protection echoes in your mind, but blackness fills your vision. Blackness, preferable to the sight of the gun. “Take that back.” You open your eyes again to witness the MP mare handing Brit’s documents back to him, but holding on to yours. You watch nervously as she flips a few pages, then addresses you directly. “Twilight Sparkle, is it?” “Yes, m-ma’am.” “You’re from the city?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Why does your license not have a photograph of you?” You freeze. Photograph? How could they have a photograph of you? Were they SUPPOSED to have a photograph of you? “Umm… it’s new. I mean, it’s not n-new, but they just printed it out, at the Ci-Citizenship Office. A-and I wasn’t there when they did. So I didn’t have the ch-chance to get it-“ “Yes, yes. Alright. Here, take it.” Apparently satisfied with your gibbering, she passes your red binder on, and you return it to your bag. The mare makes a double wave motion with her forehoof, and the pony in the glass box obliges, working the control panel until a metallic clicking sound resonates in the partitioned street. A wheel mechanism draws the long lever arm up and out of the path of the truck. When the process is finished, the mare waves Brit on, retaining that same icy look in her shaded eyes. Brit wastes no time hoofing the acceleration piston, progressing slowly through the checkpoint and on into the city. At this slower speed, you’re more inclined to take a look out the window and admire the scenery. Though you can’t see much beyond the buildings directly on either side and the sky streets above you, you’re fascinated nonetheless. It’s all so unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and to see it up close is a rather different experience from wondering at it from miles away. As the checkpoint curves out of sight in the mirror, you notice that the streets are gradually getting more and more populated by citizens out and about. On the concrete walkways beside the roads, ponies with strange mane-dos and curling tails decorated with gemstones go about their daily business. Most of them are naked like Brit. That’s something you’ll have to get used to… Other vehicles, most lower to the ground, flatter, and more appealing to the eye than Brit’s rusty unpainted work truck, pass going in the opposite direction or across intersections. Shadows cross with artificial lights, the midday sunbeams reflect off of glossy and mirrored walls, windows, glass decorations. Overpasses and zagging high-walkways allow only a scant amount of that natural sunlight through anyway, and most of what you see is illuminated by the glow-globes. Slowly, imperceptibly, they’ve changed from blue to a mossy green as you move further into the city. So many twists and turns, avenues, narrow corridors of broken brick, moving up and down, looping back on different planes. The city is everywhere, and from here it appears to be inescapable. There is but a sole constant reference point; at most angles, from some vantage, no matter how high or low you go or how many stacked buildings stand in your way, you can catch a glimpse of the black rocky surface of the mountain, spotted by dashes of incongruous color. The ponies change organically with the “districts” as well, going from apparently well-off to grey and ragged and back again. Something to do with proximity to the sun, and the casting of that proper light versus the mimicry of these saturated humming streetlamps. The lower you go, the less they seem to have, and the more neglected their infrastructure. It’s really something, navigating this labyrinth of roads. You’re no longer certain that you could have done this by yourself had you not encountered Brit. Brit… You become aware of how much time has passed without him speaking to you. And you’ve been so engrossed in what’s happening around you that you’re only noticing now, looking at him, that downcast look, a sullenness in his wrinkled cheeks and eyes, a sober stare, longing for something… It’s a look you’ve seen many times before from sisters who have regretted, in certain terms, that they ever joined the faith, became part of the Sisterhood. Looking out there, wondering what they’re missing, dreaming about what they left behind. And he DID ask for conversation, after all… “Brit?” The old stallion doesn’t take his eyes off the road as he slows to a stop before an automatic traffic director of sorts, a red light shining in a box above an intersection. “Wot?” It’s a cold reply, distant and not at all like how he’s been talking to you. There’s no animation to him anymore, not since you passed through that police stop. The gun barrel, staring back at you in your mind, a hollow crevice, beckoning you inside. Swiveling, pivoting on its own, targeting you, subjugating you. Victimizing… “You said you were from the west, right? You and your family.” “I did say that.” It was pointed at Brit too, the gun. In that instant, he had seemed even more unnerved than you had been, seeing that instrument of death for the first time in your life. How many times has he stared down that abyss, wondering? “And… that’s where this war is happening now, isn’t it? West of here, that whole swath of land, it’s all… fighting. Death.” “Dead on.” Tense, an audible tightening of his grip on the wheel. “You didn’t just leave that place because of a lack of work, did you? You left that place because… because of—“ ”They.” One word, cutting like a knife through silken shadow, the tension both released and built upon. The light turns green, and Brit gently taps the accelerator, speeding into another dark trench with brick and metal walls. “They went there first. Me home. When they were just startin’ out, just beginnin’ to get traction out there, they went there first. Came with weapons, masks, awful tubing an’ augments comin’ every which way outta their bodies like they was machines themselves. The damned Exsilists, they… I got out. To this day, I don’t know how I got out, but I did. I left. Me father, his brother, they was old an’ weak. Weren’t fighting condition, or smart enough to have a place in that new age. They died. Me older brother, his wife, his little son… I don’t know. I got out, they didn’t. They stayed. ‘Spect they’re slaves now, workin’ a mine or a factory or… Celestia knows, I sure don’t. Always wanted to keep that out o’ me mind. Dinny want to think of it. Dinny want to consider…” The walls and the street and the long metalworks crisscrossing in the sky move around and behind you, warping about the path of the truck from one distant and cluttered horizon to another. You’re going faster now that traffic is lighter. Terminal velocity… It doesn’t matter now. You keep looking forward, unable to shut your eyes, unable to face darkness. Shadows and brilliant light, interconnected, pass in streaks, painted facades and hard edges meeting at crisp corners. All connected, all intertwined with one another. The Cult of Exsilium, from what little is known of them and what less has been communicated to you, are a force to be reckoned with beyond the western borders of this country. Thousands on thousands have succumbed to their zealous blitz, and now they’ve directed their attentions towards invading Canterium itself. They are extremists who use what knowledge they have of Maker technology to construct for themselves powerful armaments, impenetrable fortifications, and perhaps even mechanical soldiers to do the fighting for them. But the worst of what you’ve heard comes in the form of the terrible bionic augmentations they perform on themselves and on their slaves. All in the name of… some false god, perhaps. If anything about them is clear, it is that they are religious in nature. But theirs is not the light, or the will of heaven to teach compassion and faith. Theirs is not Truth. “Brit… I had no idea. I’m so sorry.” You venture a glance in the old pony’s direction, but his eyes remain forward, bloodshot and turned orange-yellow by the light of a passing glow-lamp. “Were a long time ago. Thirty years I been ‘ere, thirty years I toiled in the factories on Factory Street. Found love, lost it. ‘Ad a daughter, ‘bout yer age, she’s up north somewhere now. I lived me life away from that, hopin’ that one day, it’d just disappear, an’ I could move on from it. That I wouldn’t be… reminded of that, every day. ‘Ere, in the city, far from the war, as far as I could go. But it never went away. They’re still fightin’. An’ I still remember. An’ if they stopped fightin’ today, I wouldn’t forget.” Brit sniffles, drawing in a sharp breath. A droplet of salty mourning, fresh in the corner of his eye, is recalled with a twitch of his cheek. He refuses to cry for them, you realize. He refuses to let out what’s inside him, at least in front of you. “Me brother, he ‘ad a little red gemstone, flawless, beautiful thing. It were passed down from our father, an’ his father, an’ so on. ‘Spose they confiscated that. Added it to the reclamation heap. I wish I could’ve… I mean, take you, little birdie. You said you was raised in that abbey, ye? Never seen the outside?” “Yes. I mean, I was. I’ve never been this far from my home in all my life, except perhaps for wherever I came from.” “Then ye can’t know what it’s like. To be ripped away from that… potential. To think in terms of trajectory, to see wot life is gonny be like if only ye wait for it to come. When yer young, an’ ye see the future like it’s certain, only for the whole damn tapestry to get torn down, stitch by stitch… an’ find yerself someplace else, a different pony in all… I realized then that’s wot life really is. Tearin’ down, and buildin’ up again. Change, always unexpected. Never settlin’ in, an’ for the better.” “You can’t really see it like that, can you? I mean… look. Mater’s Truth is the absolution. Her will is the beginning and the end of time, and She has you in Her design.” ”So that’s all there is, then? To you. Just a big bloody wheel, spinnin’ as fast as yer sun goddess likes, an’ yer happy with that? To be a gear? Yer sayin’ everything wot happened to me, wot happened to my family, is wot she wanted to happen?!” “What I’m saying is that a tapestry isn’t torn apart, re-stitched from scratch. It’s only added upon. It’s woven from one side to the other. A needle, weaving, not changing, only building on what’s already there. Maybe what happened to you happened for a reason, Brit. Or maybe it was only an act of unfortunate chance. All that I know is that the life you live now is greater than any potential you could ever dream up. Because it’s real. Because it’s True.” Brit’s mouth moves in the shape of potential words, but no sound comes out. He merely keeps looking forward, looking at the end of the narrow street, now widening into a larger space with uncertain edges. His eyelids close and open again, and his dry eyes are at last replenished with moisture teeming on his short lashes. You see him now as a tapestry of his own, a long strip of yarn woven into something meaningful. That place he’s from, the far west, where the blasphemers roam and warmongers strain the technologies of forebears to their limits in manners even you find distasteful, you hope to never see. Brit takes a sharp right, swerving into a kind of circular portion of road surrounding an elaborate stone fountain. The light of the Radiant Mother shines here brighter than before, with less wirework and scaffolds to block Her rays. As your eyes adjust to that brightness, you are able to better assess your surroundings. At the far edge of the circle, this space, which you now see is an enormous forum, much larger than anticipated and teeming with pedestrians, is cut off flatly by a high white hull From this distance, you can tell the “hull” rises in thick decorative corrugations, and appears to be made entirely of marble or some such other glistening mineral. Pillars and arches alternate at the bottom, nearly ten meters tall on their own, and the structure climbs much higher than that. It’s a quarter cylinder in its entirety, you note as the full thing comes into focus, unobscured by surrounding buildings. Its horizontal plane meets with the ground, which on the left side drops off into sheer nothing down into the basin below. You’ve ascended higher than you thought in this vehicle, moving in the last half-hour gently up the steady slope leading up to the mountain proper and looping back in the artificial switchbacks which are the cause of the projected darkness at the bottom of this labyrinthine city. Its vertical plane meets with the black face of the mountain, giant foreign reliefs carved into the surrounding space and lit partially by flat colored lights in all the tints of the spectrum. Evidence of the “lifts” Brit spoke of earlier is here too; fat silvery cables extend upwards in square groups of four all around this place, up into the parts of the city unreachable on hoof or by car. If you had to guess, you’d say this was a transit hub of some sort, judging by the lift cables, and now the multitude of long, bulky vehicles with rows on rows of windows and only a single door each. You think they’re called “buses”, and they’re stationed all in a line wrapped about the near edge of the white structure, perhaps waiting for citizens to board in droves. The structure itself, the hub, is teeming with activity; a multicolored frenzy of shifting ponies moving every which way, going to and from the building, moving past, ascending and descending stairs and ramps, standing in place holding signs with inscriptions too far away to read, purchasing goods from street vendors, wearing all manner of exotic clothes. On one side, the north, you think, the hub seems to end on a dropoff, jutting out just a bit past that fall into nothingness, anchored in place by steel buttresses. On the south side, a wide array of metalwork, flat parallel vectors conjoined by cinder block and reinforced by white plates with uniform oval holes, glistens in the sunlight, sloping gently downward around the mountain until it disappears from sight. They look like metal tendons, swooping from the site down into the valley once more, wires and chains and rebar gripping on tight to them, a massive unwalkable road of sorts, inaccessible and caged on either side. You’re more confused than ever now. “What is this place?” No answer, just a heaving sigh. Did you strike a nerve with Brit? You only meant to comfort, but in doing so you may have reminded him of something he wanted to forget… But as he said, he’ll never forget, no matter how hard he tries. Like a healed wound, a scar, never fully going away, always there beneath the skin. “Brit?” The unicorn tenses up, thumping the wheel and turning his head slightly to meet your gaze. Perhaps he just hadn’t heard you the first time. “Yes, love?” “Where are we?” “Why, we’re ‘ere, of course. The train station.” Your heart skips a beat as the whole of this picture out the window suddenly comes together. The buses, the lifts, the bustling throngs, the wide archways, the unreachable road. “This is… that’s the railway?” “Sure is. Maglev. They revamped the whole system ‘bout, five years back, maybe more. Train floats over the track, never really touches it, an’ it whistles along at speeds wot never been possible before.” Floating trains? Using magnetism to accomplish that, you presume. This at least is something you can wrap your head around. With just the right balancing, the right positioning, and tiny adjustments at the proper times, an object as large as a train could indeed be both lifted from the earth and propelled along a fixed track by magnets alone, overcoming the force of friction itself. Excitement washes over you momentarily as you realize that you’ll get to experience this effect firsthoof very soon. You’ll be moving multiple times as fast as you just were, in the truck, but it won’t bother you now. For whatever reason, your fear of speed has vanished without a trace. Coming as close to the train station as he can without getting in the way of the bus platform, Brit pulls the truck over into a marked-out yellow space, coming gently to a stop. A signpost next to you reads “Dropoff Parking Only” As you begin to try for the door, you pause for a moment, and an odd realization hits you. You’re about to part with the only friend you’ve ever had outside the walls of the convent. Should you ask if he might be able to… No, it wouldn’t be right. His life is here, among the mechanisms grinding together, among these ponies. He would probably hardly even call you an acquaintance, considering you’ve only known each other for a little over an hour. And nearly half that time was spent not speaking to one another at all, while he reminisced over lost things. And yet, you see him as a friend. He’s helped you make a journey you wouldn’t have been able to make on your own by any measure, and it was only the first leg of this quest ordained on you by Mater Herself. This is your task, and your task alone; nopony else can guide you on your way. “Well, we’re ‘ere, little birdie.” “Yes. I suppose we are.” Brit suddenly opens his own door, stepping down and out of the truck and walking towards its rear. “Brit? What are you doing?” “Gimme a moment, birdie. Don’t go just yet. I got a present for ye.” A present? When could he have possibly acquired this present? “I’m… not sure what you mean.” Brit pulls open the back left door, reaching in and appearing to rummage through a dusty brown bag with yellow stitches. Finding his mark, he chuckles and recalls his hoof, now grasping something shiny. “Hop out, ye? Don’t wanna be late for yer train there.” You do as told, pushing open the passenger door and jumping down onto the warm concrete plaza paving. A row of trees planted in soil beds gives some shade on this curb, but it’s a hot day nevertheless. As you reach back in to retrieve your saddlebag from the floorboard, Brit comes around the back and stands behind you. Turning around to face him, you see a friendly, rugged smile plastered on his face, and a hoof outstretched towards you. Lying on that hoof is the shiny thing: a six pointed star-shaped watch with a pearly white face and a brilliant blue-silver band. The numbers and hands gleam a pale pinkish color, some alloy you’ve never heard of. You contain a gasp, raising a hoof of your own to your mouth as you stare down at the gift. You’ve never owned something so beautiful in your life. How Mater abhors vanity in her Sisters of Solemnity… “Brit, I… it’s beautiful.” “It’s yours. If ye want it, that is. I know I said I wouldn’t part wit any one of ‘em, but I couldn’t stand the thought of you, out there, lost an’ not even knowin’ the proper time o’ day. Made it, oh, just a couple o’ years back. I don’t sell ‘em anymore, like I used to.” “I can’t accept it. It’s priceless.” “Priceless? Hah! I’m glad you think so, little birdie. It’s worth about two thousand bits to the right buyer. But you ain’t a buyer, are ye? Yer a friend.” Somewhere, in a dark place, a light illuminates, casting no shadows, only filling that space with warmth. You see it in your mind’s eye, a calm glow bringing you to content. You see it in his eye, that light blue chip, and the face of the watch, reflecting sunlight in perfect round spots. Perhaps this world isn’t as unfriendly as you thought it would be. Perhaps all ponies simply seek to be contented, in happiness, in purpose, in their work, in their families and friends. You reach up and take the watch from his hoof, fitting its elastic band around your own left fetlock. Tick, tick, tick… You can almost feel the pulses of the device against the tender skin beneath your coat. You return his smile, which makes him look somehow younger than he looked then, approaching in the hazy smog of the factory district, behind that high, menacing fence. Or maybe it’s only an illusion, and he was as he is now that you know him better. “Oh, one more thing. Promise I’ll let ye off after this.” Brit hands you a small white slip of hard paper, on which is written his name, his occupation, and a ten-digit number. “Me card. An’ me phone number. Ye know how to use a phone, right?” “Funny you should mention it. I just learned about a week ago so that I could call my Matron and let her know where I am once I reach a payphone.” “Good. Well, if it ain’t too much trouble, I’d ask ye do the same for me. Call me when ye get to… wait. Just realized, I don’t even know where yer off to, little birdie.” “Mount Fillai. It’s in the Appleachians. There’s something in the valley there I need to find. I don’t know what it is yet, but that’s where I’m going.” “Ah, ye, I think I know where that is. Rich Valley, I think they call it. Bloody massive plantation, biggest supplier of lumber in the whole of the country. Fruits and vegetables, too.” Rich Valley. Tree slaves and cutting machines… “Well, when ye get there, gimme a call on the mobile ‘ere, I’ll answer any time o’ day.” “I’ll be sure to call you right after I call the convent. Thank you so much for the ride.” Hoisting your saddlebags over your back, letting them sag and rest against your clothed flanks, you nod one last time at Brit before turning back towards the train station. It seems to beckon you forth, this fallen white pillar buried into the corner of the earth. You’ll enter with a crowd of other ponies, ponies just like you, ponies trying to find someplace else to go. You’ll make a purchase, exchanging money for a ticket, the first you’ll have ever made in your life. You’ll board that train, and from that gaping portcullis you’ll strike out again, into the wind, like a speeding bullet down the mountain and into the unknown. And from there… who knows? Mater Solis knows. She knows you will find what you’re looking for. But now you know two things for certain that you didn’t know before. One, that the place you venture towards is named Rich Valley, and it’s a monument to agriculture. Two, and more presently germane, you know the time of day. Both courtesy of a friend you never thought you’d make. You look back one final time at that unicorn, standing there and watching you, sad for his past and hopeful for his future. A smile, and unreadable eyes. ”Goodbye, Twilight Sparkle.” “Celestia be with you, Brittle Bong.” \*\*\*\*\* Chapter 15 ========== ****** It’s been two hours. Two of the longest hours of your life. And that’s saying something, all things considered. When you factor in all the Solar events you’ve partaken in, full days of reciting text verbatim and studying the auspices of wax drops and shadow gradients, this could be a stroll through the garden for all its troubles. Not to mention all the occasions during which you’ve lain awake anxiously, mentally preparing yourself for examinations the following morning; arithmetic, history, both religious and secular, the arts, the natural world. Ticking away at boxes with the quill of the mind. Tick, tick, tick… It isn’t that you didn’t enjoy your studies then; in fact, quite the contrary is true. But… well, ruminating on it now, you realize that even this brief experience so far beyond the walls of the convent has broadened your perspective substantially. You’re already molding to that golden standard of the secular pony that the Sisters Solaris so frequently warned you about. Impatient, impertinent, inattentive… No, it isn’t so. You can at least attribute your lack of concentration on meditation in this moment to the constant clamoring about you, ponies of all manner of tongues and temperaments moving and speaking and interrupting the flow of your psyche. Every few minutes, somepony even addresses you directly, asking in some fashion or other why you’re blindfolded in the middle of a train station. At which point you must calmly explain to that pony, for what seems like the hundredth time, that you are attempting to meditate, it being the proper time of day to observe the Syncresis within. You can almost feel, in this partial darkness, mauve blindfold gripping against your open eyes, showing through taut fabrics vague directions of movement and the rectangular presence of the bench opposite you, yes you can almost *feel* their gazes locked on you, confused asides, worried, fearful, disgusted even. These ponies are disgusted by the mere action of performing those duties necessary to serving the Goddess… Blasphemy! Cold, silent blasphemy. Based on pure assumption, of course, since you can’t actually see those aside glances. Again, only a shadow of a sensation… Get a grip, Twilight. Sighing, you figure that this meditative cycle, which you’ve been repeating from the beginning over and over for nearly thirty minutes now, will have to come to an early conclusion. Mater Solis will surely forgive this small infraction of ritual if you supplant yourself to Her tonight. Tenderly, you remove the blindfold, folding and tucking it away into a special inside pocket of your saddlebag. Once again, you are subject to your surroundings, and by consequence your situation. Your hindquarters are planted firmly on a hard white plastic bench, the seat curved to accommodate your form. It’s one of several lined up in a space located underneath an overhang, brightly lit from above by long, harsh artificial ceiling lamps. On your left, odd drawings, real images spliced with abstract icons, advertise products and scenic locations in multiple languages. To the right, the ebony linoleum tile floor stretches out a few dozen meters, past the row of light-decorated pillars holding up the second level above you, onwards to the nearest train platform. From here, you can glimpse the solid yellow line wrapping the edge of the platform, which drops off into a trench of wires and magnetic mechanisms. That line, you muse, must be the only design choice in this station that isn’t in monochrome, black and white. Though, you can’t exactly claim superior taste; most of the interior design in the convent is the same as its outside: unpainted stone, various shades of grey and tan. You jump slightly as you catch in the corner of your eye the sable sheen of a polished rifle-gun descending a protruding set of stairs. This one is not like those swiveling terrors you encountered at the checkpoint; it’s strapped firmly in place to the flank of its owner, and seems to be hoofheld in design. You’re surprised to discover that overt weapons are allowed in a place like this, with so many ponies channeling in from beyond the city, a scant few bound to be dangerous in some capacity. However, the uniform the gun-wielding pony wears, a simple cotton grey jacket on a white collared shirt and silver buttons, with matching grey flat-cap, tells you that this one might be a soldier, hence special permissions. Sure enough, a flock of ponies wearing identical uniforms follows down the stairs a few moments later, chattering amongst themselves. Are they going to war? Returning? You can’t be certain, but if what you’ve heard about the scale of horrors possible in the deadly conflict out west is true, they wouldn’t be smiling and joking if they were coming back. New recruits, then, off to fight, perhaps even to die, in service of their “glorious” country. You shouldn’t snidely disparage such tragic waste of life; Mater abhors such entitlement and refuge in cynicism. But neither you nor any Sister of Solemnity holds allegiance to the nations of ponykind. Your nation is the promised Kingdom of the Sun, your holy land the Mother’s Garden. When you are to die, it shall be as you lived, in service to that ideal alone. Before she was a prophetess, Celestia’s kingdom was fabled in its magnificence, yet it, along with she, lacked patience or the recognition of privilege. Their privilege was in the accommodations provided to them by the Makers, stern but fair instructors in their ancient arts of working all manner of elements. Their impatience was spearheaded by Celestia herself, and only through the light of Mater Solis was she able to quell the hubris that brought her reign to an end. She did not win her kingdom back through conquest and warmongering, but through acceptance and faith. And before she vanished into the Cave of Wisdom, when the Prophecy of the Prophetess was at last fulfilled, she spoke those everlasting words that would resonate through the ages, through books and tongue and the moral foundations of these lands. “In death, I live. In darkness, I perceive. By the Truth, I abide. As I descend, the world ascends about me. I am bound, and you are free. Sow the six seeds, and in time, my kingdom shall be yours to behold.” The six seeds… What precisely Celestia meant by this epithet puzzled the faith for centuries to come. Was she referring to her six Solarian acolytes, those apostles who swore their lives to the propagation of her teachings far and wide in Old Equestria until the end of their days? Or, perhaps, the six Unified Kings, or their respective kingdoms? Did the Eight Absolute Truths, minus the two spoken through the Prima Cabal in the first channeling of Sight rather than from the lips of Celestia herself, have anything to do with it? Or, and this is but a hunch… Truth, will, light, Syncresis, humility, Sight. Six tenets from the Eleventh Book of the Sun, categorized as the binding phrases which encompass in their unique forms all which is and shall ever be Mater Solis’ greatness. She speaks Truth, Her will is golden, and Her light is cast upon all manner of creatures, great and small, wicked and generous. She shares Herself with the nuclei of her presence, Her cells, the ponies within. All of these contribute to the ideal of humility, that a devout pony should recognize these divine aspects and not deign to rise to Her limit. And, finally, only through Sight can all of these aspects be revealed to the faithful; She would be but a great light otherwise, Her words falling in terrific wavelengths on blind eyes. Celestia’s kingdom lacked all of these qualities when she was but a monarch, filled with hubris and contempt against the Makers for having what she did not. Now, in the kingdom of the heavens, she awaits the faithful and the just, and her light is all-redeeming. “Hmm…” Now *that’s* what you call introspection and meditative insight! Perhaps the mere act of attempting to isolate your senses with a blindfold was what distracted you in the first place. Whatever the case, your present situation isn’t looking much brighter. For some reason, you had assumed when you entered the train station that there would simply be a train waiting to carry you off immediately after purchasing your ticket. Now, it seems like a rather foolish and self-centered thing to believe, but then it made perfect sense. What you were treated with instead was a long queue for the ticket booth, a bag inspection, a “biometric scan”, and presently an hours-long wait in the wings for your train to even arrive. But, at least, you think your wait is almost over. This is abruptly confirmed for you by a voice without an owner, sounding through the air to address everypony in the waiting area. “All boarders: the time is now 2:45 PM. The 3:00 East-Southeast Express for Horseshoe Bay is ahead of schedule and will arrive in station shortly. Please gather your belongings and prepare to present your documents and ticket to onboard attendants. Thank you.” The first time that happened, you nearly jumped out of your seat and screamed. Now, you’re somewhat used to it. If you had to guess, you’d say it’s coming from those boxy installations with bellbox-like grated hemispherical protrusions from their fronts. Live audio, filtered through a broadcast system and transmitted to entire rooms. This technology fascinates you for some reason, despite the fact that it so clearly pales in comparison to the maglev railing on central display. Something new, you suppose. Regardless, that’s very good news. One of the desk clerks, a rather tall mare with an eggshell-white coat and pouty, high-society lips informed you that the time of transit by train from Mons Canteria to the station in Rich Valley, counting intermittent stops, would be around four hours. At this rate, the train should be off before 3:30 (you’re beginning to get the hang of counting time with intervals between hours, seeing as how you’re constantly admiring your new watch) and you should arrive at your ultimate destination at 7:30. You begin to formulate a mental checklist, twisting your muzzle from side to side in motions you’ve found stimulating to analytical thought. First, upon arriving at Rich Valley, you should locate a place to stay for the night. This could be a simple task or an arduous one, depending on your luck and your instinct for gleaning information. Call the Matron and Brit, one after another, to let each know that you’re safe. Get situated, spend the night, wake up refreshed. After that… well, you’ll just have to play it by ear. Hopefully you can find a reliable map of the location someplace, then it’s on to scouting out the object of your travel. You’re not sure if that object is someone, something, or somewhere, but in some capacity Rich Valley holds the key to satisfying what was laid out in your epiphany. If it were easy to find, it wouldn’t be an adventure, now would it? On the other hoof, the angel would not have been so intentionally vague if you were expected to weed out an impossibly obscure conclusion to all of this. Laying out the logistics of your voyage in this manner definitely takes away from its spiritual essence, in some small way, but it’s becoming more and more necessary as time passes. Time… You glance at your watch, which reads 2:47. A squealing sound goes out across the rest of the cacophony, something high-pitched and droning. It bounces off the immensely high curved glass ceiling of the station, between rafters and walls and tracks, and seems to maintain a focal point right into your eardrums. It’s the sound of a train entering a station, its undercarriage sliding smoothly against the steel rails just outside. You’ve heard it already twice before, but this one is different. It… signals something, you suppose. This is your train, the vehicle that will carry you on your way towards your purpose. As the other ponies around you begin shuffling, standing, grabbing their baggage and proceeding up the stairs as instructed, you follow suit. At the top of these stairs, you turn right to follow the crowd over the long, wide, white-tiled bridge stretching across the seven parallel sets of tracks and the boarding platforms between them. A glass roof bows over the length of the bridge so that… well, why *is* it there, exactly? So much excess, so many design choices that seem unfathomably wasteful. Is it *necessary* to have this many platforms when there seem to never be more than two or three trains in the station at a time? Sheer decadence, and refuge in luxury, all of it. Looking to your right now, towards that great gaping maw filled with sunlight, the mouth to the station’s throat, out into ill-defined expanses and horizon-cutting structures, you at last see the source of the screeching. A white rod with slanted black squares lining its flanks like rivets, a conjoinment of four shorter segments, about seventy-five meters long in total, comes screaming into station from the outside. Horns adorn its top, little bumps evenly spaced on either side, and on bottom its edges curve down and around the underside of the tracks to facilitate the magnetic levitation at high speeds. It slides beneath you slowly, now even more slowly, now coming to a near-full stop as it brakes into its destination. Descending another adjacent set of stairs, you pass a signpost reading “Platform 5” in bright bold lettering. This is it, all right. As soon as the current passengers have unloaded, you can show your binder to the ponies onboard and find a seat. You hurriedly step along the tile floor towards the now-stopped maglev train, waiting for the automatic doors to swing inwards and for the multitude to pour out. Other ponies have crowded around you in the same space, probably thinking the same thing. Everypony seems to be in a rush, and you can partly understand why. For some of these ponies, this sort of experience is routine, far from once in a lifetime. Everything you see, from the lavishness of the décor to the marvels of engineering in plain sight all around to the efficiency of the whole process, corralling and managing all these passengers at once, fascinates you. They look listless, tired even, waiting to get on and get out of here. “Clear a path! Everypony, clear a path, please!” You turn your head to try and locate the source of the voice emanating from behind you, but as soon as you do, somepony bumps into you in an effort to make room. You’re squeezed between several now-curious-looking ponies, all gazing at something you can’t see from this angle. Out of the corner of your vision materialize five grey jackets and caps, five long sleek barrels tied about-flank. You gasp audibly, recognizing the troop of soldiers you saw earlier, who are presently marching through the trench of ponies made especially for them. They cross the terminal in an orderly line, wrapping around the front edge of the crowd and finally taking their places before the door on the back (now the front, you suppose; they’re seemingly interchangeable) car of the train. “Stand back, please! Do not cross the platform line!” The first soldier you saw earlier, a yellow earth stallion, barks out commands to the crowd, which you happily oblige. A white flash, reminiscent of lightning, catches you off guard. You turn again to see where it came from, but find yourself face to face with several ponies wielding strange black boxy objects with glass lenses protruding from their centers. Another flash, definitely emanating from one of the objects, sends you reeling, spots blurring your vision momentarily. “Hey! Wh-what did you just do to me?” The pony who made the flash peers out from behind his box, an annoyed expression matting his face. “Move, filly! Let me in, I need a better shot!” A better shot? So these are… weapons?! What just happened to you? You’re dizzy. Ponies moving all around you, shifting positions, the black boxes held high above heads on shoulder-mounted lever devices. Flashes, stomping of hooves, jostling you, disorienting you. From what you can tell, the doors of the train have opened, and the three compartments down the line are emptying out their passengers. But this one, nearest to you and this crowd, remains unchanged in its capacity. Nopony has entered or exited its open door. The bright flashes of these boxes seem to be focused on that vacant entrance, however; pegasi ponies are even lifting themselves higher off the ground to get better direct angles at it. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” The faint question was directed at nopony in particular, but the mare in front of you turns around what amount she’s able, drawing your eye. “It’s the Chancellor! He’s coming out soon, I think! Oh, this is so exciting! I didn’t know he was taking a normal passenger train, either! He’s just like you or me, like that.” “Um… forgive me for asking, but… the Chancellor?” You aren’t sure who she’s referring to. The mare simply cocks her eyebrow and smirks, as though she thinks you’re in on some joke. “Seriously? *The* Chancellor. Chancellor Neighsay?” This leaves you with even more questions. That name sounds somewhat familiar, but you can’t be certain… “Chancellor… Neighsay?” Now she lets out a deliberate groan and knocks her hoof against her forehead. “Sun and stars, are you some kind of foreigner? Chancellor Neighsay, Speaker of the Senatori. He’s here, now, he’s about to come out of there! Why do you think there are so many guards?” Oh, now you’re beginning to get the picture. And, as it happens, from this angle you can better see the backsides of some of the strange black boxes carried by these rather rude new ponies, onto some of which are projected display feeds, showing what is in front of them. All of them are resplendent in buttons, switches, turndials… If your intuition is correct, these are cameras, devices which can capture images of what lies in front of them at the press of a button. Before the New Maker’s Handbook, cameras were reliant on photographic plates and celluloid film, inventions given directly to ponykind by the Makers in the time of Celestia, but now you suspect the technology is entirely digital in format. Therefore, these are not weapons; your heartrate slows dramatically at this revelation. Chancellor Neighsay of the Senatori… somepony important enough to have a full passenger train car devoted to himself as well as a private escort of military personnel. You have a vague understanding of the role of the Senatori and the Chancellor in their respective roles in the Canterian government, but you aren’t learned enough on that topic to make any judgments. For now, you can only watch and wait as the crowd around you steadily grows and closes in on the open sliding door, the anticipation reaching a boiling point among the photographers, the passersby, the waiters for boarding and those who have just stepped out of their own cars, further up the track. That anticipation has gripped you as well, in a smaller sense. You lean in… And see at last a white hoof cross the threshold, stepping past the doorframe and onto the short bridge extending onto the platform. With another step, the full figure of the owner of that hoof comes into view, and before you can even register that figure in its entirety your field of vision is flooded by flashing lights from every angle. The clicks of falling shutters assault your ears, as does a flurry of shouted questions from ponies with black, felt-tipped rods, aimed like knives towards the Chancellor. “Chancellor Neighsay! What was the front like in Unicronia?” “Chancellor Neighsay! Do you have any comment on the rumors that the Pegasus Armistice has access to nuclear technology at this time?” “Chancellor, your approval ratings have been up in the last few months. Would you attribute that to the success of publicity stunts like these, riding on passenger trains rather than private jets?” “Chancellor Neighsay, Horse’s Mouth Magazine. Are the rumors about you and Madame Fleur de Lis really true?” Stuffed between two large ponies, you can somewhat see through the layers of crowd ahead of you in the midst of this eruption of activity. The Chancellor, a rather tall white unicorn stallion with black glossy combed-back hair and a strip of facial hair down his chin, wears an elaborately pleated burgundy cloak, clasped at the middle by a golden medallion and draped around his flanks almost down the ground. The garment would almost remind you of your prayer robes back home, if it weren’t so much more complex in its arrangement and dotted with pins, stripes, seams, and a silver sash across the right shoulder. Surrounded by his entourage, he appears unbothered by the barrage of questions aimed at him, marching straight forward and giving the occasional aside smirk or wave to onlookers. As he passes through another crack in the mob, directly in front of you, you can see the five soldiers marching along with him, two at each side and one behind. But what really catches your eye is a seventh figure, a dark… thing, trailing behind and to his left like a shadow. You’re not really certain what you’re looking at. From this vantage point, you can at least tell that it’s a pony, but the way it moves is unnatural, uncanny even; it almost glides along the tiled floor with every step, skating in slow, grim tempos. To call it a shadow was an apt description, for it’s covered head to hoof in a skintight black bodysuit, broken up by pinkish-red diamonds and zigzagging arrow marks. Unlike any fabric you’ve ever seen, the bodysuit appears to absorb every trace of light that touches it, leaving no sheen or hint of texture to be seen, only a deep void in the shape of an animated body. Darkness layered upon darkness, cold and monstrous. You cannot see its face, though you imagine that it, too, is masked in impermeable jet. It stays close to the Chancellor as though protecting him alongside the soldiers, but at no point in your observation of the thing do you see any weapons on its person, no guns, no swords, nothing. In an instant, you feel the sudden urge to prostrate yourself and pray fervently, even here in the midst of this chaos, for the irrational parts of your mind are screaming for salvation, informing you that what you now lay eyes upon is a beast from the Depths, an abomination. Deep dark, dark on dark, moving and encircling in a rapturous whirlpool. You’re short on breath from all the squeezing, and the heat generated by this crowd is beginning to affect you. If you could just sidle your way out, board the train and be on your way… The Chancellor and his entourage pass beneath the overhead bridge crossing the tracks, their path towards the staircase straight and to the point. You realize that this is your chance, planting your hooves firmly on the spot as the crowd follows Neighsay. They jostle you a bit more, but eventually they’ve moved on and left you behind. You hastily reposition yourself, reaching into your saddlebag and producing your papers with shaking legs. Before, your motivation to board this train was your ultimate destination of finding Truth; now, all you can think about is putting as much distance between you and that shadow pony as physically possible. No; calm down, Twilight. Close your eyes, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in rhythm, utter the Litany of Protection, find solace in that light above… Opening your eyes again, you feel refreshed and much calmer. You check the time: 2:55. Still, however, there’s a lingering feeling of uneasiness, a lightheadedness that often comes before an impending thunderstorm. Danger from above, you tell yourself. Tilting your head slightly up, you see the overhead bridge, protracted and lacking any foundational support across all seven tracks, casting a faint shadow from five meters over the heads of the Chancellor and his posse, concealing them from the diffused sunlight streaming in from the glass ceiling high above. Behind the railing, from this angle, you can see rather vaguely a light green pony peering over the opposite edge of the bridge, watching and waiting. Another admirer of the Chancellor’s, most likely. But, then again, this pony isn’t with the rest on the bridge, who are all positioning themselves by the top of the stairs to intercept him when he comes up. No, this one is hovering directly overhead, steady and poised, as though ready to… Pounce. In a split second, the pony is gone, vanished from their vantage point, replaced by a flying green and red blur hurtling over the railing of the bridge, down into the fray, descending on the crowd. A glint catches your eye, the tip of something sharp, but you can hardly react to it because *what’s going on what’s happening no no no what is this*— Screaming, first from one voice, then joined by a chorus. Against all notions of sanity, you gallop towards the event rather than away, into the yelling and the moving back and the tripping and tumbling. From what you can make out, there’s a scuffle happening at the center of the arrangement, just below the bridge. The red and green pony lashes out first, striking a soldier before he can draw a melee weapon from his combat boot. A red mist sprays out from his neck, and it takes every fiber of your being not to pass out instantly at the sight. No, breathe, remember the breathing techniques that the Matron taught you, don’t panic *don’t panic just watch and don’t pass out or else you might be*— The mist dissipates in the air, but the condensed droplets splatter across the ground and into the matted, tense coats of the nearest ponies, and the cut soldier falls to the ground. A vicious face comes into view, that of the green pony with a tied-back orange-red mane, bunched into queer thickets of hair. The mouth on that face makes a noise, a scream or an intonation or maybe even a sentence, but you’re too scared to know the difference. Turning back around, the green pony, a mare, charges at the Chancellor, knife in hoof, the other four soldiers still fumbling for the firearms tied to their flanks. Knifepoint, hurtling through space, terminal velocity, a sharp and swirling reflection of a multicolored terrified mass, each face contorted into a different shade of surprise, grief, shock, horror, or other similar emotions… You can’t see your own, because your mind is transfixed on this violent dance, your eyes pinpoints pricking into oblivion. *Bloodbloodbloodbloodblood.* Blood everywhere, in the air, on the floor, obscuring your view, washing into the tiles and coats and faces. Blood in waves and droplets and sinusoidal curves and clawing spikes. But… not the Chancellor’s blood. You blink rapidly, your brain taking desperate leaps to attempt to catch up with what just transpired. Accompanying the sound of a scream, the attempted assassin’s mouth is contorted cruelly, a show of immeasurable pain. She’s lying on the ground now, front legs pressed into her barrel, back legs outstretched, knife clattering against the floor far away. The flexor tendons of both her back legs have been neatly severed, arteries spraying and seeping more syrupy red liquid than you can bear to look at. So you avert your gaze elsewhere, first to the visage of the Chancellor, frozen in fear and apprehension, next to the figure standing directly behind the would-be assassin, arrow-shaped knife in hoof. No, knife in hoof wouldn’t be precisely accurate, more like knife *is* hoof, for as soon as you glimpse that bloody tip it seemingly retracts into the pitch black heel from whence it came. The shadow pony stands tall over its victim, having saved its… master, you imagine? Employer? Its Chancellor, nonetheless. The assassin’s screams turn to cries, then moans, then futile mumbling and a defiant kick. Through all of this, the shadow pony remains silent, unmoving, simply watching. “Longshot, Metal Jacket, get the Chancellor out of here! Blank, get a damn medic for the private, he’s bleeding all over the place! His damn carotid’s severed, hurry, damnit!” The soldier stallion barking out orders leans down and, producing two pairs of metal loops joined by a chain, restrains the snarling assassin from attacking anypony else. The rest do as told, one speaking clearly into a hoofheld radio of some kind, the other two gripping the Chancellor in hoof on either side and dashing down the platform, up the stairs, and out of sight. The pink-patterned shadow pony starts with a single step to follow the Chancellor’s getaway before… It turns, front leg raised, back stretched, spotless of bloodstains. It turns its head to face you. You, whose posture hasn’t changed since you first saw blood spilled, your expression still petrified into a soundless scream, eyes microscopic dots on white convexities. At last, that face is revealed to you: black as the darkest night, blacker even, somehow, than the rest of the outfit, or so it would seem to you. There are no eyes, no mouth, no defining features at all on that mask, but for more of the same pink patchwork patterns arcing here and there, below the cheeks, above the brow, down the muzzle, a double zigzag about the throat like a noose. But even though you can’t see the thing’s eyes behind that dreadful veil, there exists no doubt in your mind that it is staring straight through yours, deep into your mind, into your soul, blacking out all hope. Yes, it’s looking at *you*, nopony else. You can’t move, speak, or react in any form; all you can do is match its stare and accept whatever fate it has in store for you. You can’t even close your eyes… It’s coming… and— Nothing. The staredown ends as suddenly as it began, as the shadow pony swerves back around to glide-bounce back towards the absconding Chancellor and the soldiers carrying him. Barely three seconds passed, yet it seemed like an eternity. A few moments later, they’re all gone, save for the restrained assassin on the floor and the pegasus soldier anxiously hovering over her. Gone; it’s gone. “Guhhhhh!” All the air you’d been holding in evacuates your lungs at once, almost uncontrollably so, and you begin to heave and wheeze. You fear you might vomit on the already crimson-stained tile floor, but thankfully nothing comes out. The remaining ponies around you, those who didn’t run away, have settled down into a steady murmur. They, like you, are trying to figure out what just happened right in front of them, that which they could not reconcile quickly enough to comprehend. In a word, they look confounded. As are you, to put it lightly. You just witnessed your first major act of violence, and an attempted political killing at that. You haven’t even left the *train station*, for Celestia’s sake! Is the outside world truly so unforgiving, so reckless in its danger? You manage to gather enough energy to lift your shaking left foreleg off the ground to check the time. 2:56. All of that, in less than one minute. The attempt, the panic, the injured soldier, running into the fray, the Chancellor backing away, tripping over his cloak, the cut tendons, foiling the plan, the stare, and the lasting confusion that followed. One minute was all it took for your resolve to be shaken to its foundations. For more than a mere moment, you consider turning right back around and walking back to the convent. You don’t care how long that would take, for all that matters in your mind right now is a primitive appeal to safety. But… you are not primitive. You’re a Sister of Solemnity, a Missionary of the Faith, a seer of Truth and a prospective Matron. As impossible as all that would have seemed just a few short weeks ago, it is what now defines you. The Matron believes that you’re capable of fulfilling this task, and you will not let her down in that regard. You back away gently, relieved that at the very least there are no bloodstains on you or your cloak. Breathe in, breathe out, reduce the beating of your heart, don’t allow that fear to penetrate your soul. Whispering under your breath these uplifting litanies, warding off the evils you’ve witnessed here, it feels as though nothing or nopony can halt your endeavors. At best, they might only succeed in slowing you down. You’ve no doubt that this episode will cause some delays in the train schedule, but in time you’ll be off, far away, to whatever comes to you. Almost immediately, that suspicion is confirmed over the communications system, that same muffled electronic-scarred voice transmitting out another warning. “Attention all passengers. Please remain calm. The situation on Platform Five is being resolved, and boarding for the 3:00 Express eastbound for Horseshoe Bay will be momentarily delayed until the situation has been properly assessed and proper safety protocols have been enacted. Thank you for your patience, and once again, please remain calm. Thank you.” The voice, uncanny in its measured feminine cadence as it is, reassures you nonetheless. So much for “ahead of schedule”, however. The marvel and whimsy of this city, this world, that you had previously inwardly extolled, has now given way to an underlying cynicism, not necessarily fear, just a… darkness. It was there before this bloody experience, to be sure, so it isn’t simply frayed nerves. You know you should feel impressed and astounded that a train could carry you so far in so little time, but now you’re wishing you could simply close your eyes, tap your hooves on the ground a few times, and open them again to find yourself in Rich Valley already. It’s wrong, unbearably wrong, to think this way, to be a bastion championing the necessity of Maker technology to your sisters and to crumble so absolutely when given the chance to get used to a world that uses it, but you can’t help it. It’s infecting you already, that “golden standard”, in a deeper sense. 3:00. The assassin is being hauled away, the blood cleaned up by hurried janitors in pristine white clothes, head to hoof. After a time, all evidence of the incident has been washed away; soldiers, shadows, stains. How many more invisible wounds are out there now, erased from history? How blind are you and those around you to injustice and chaos? You’re across the platform now, watching, waiting, impatient and grim. It will be better, you tell yourself. Beyond all this, it will be better. ****** <a href="https://hackmd.io/@barney/Hk9xt18n5">Chapters 16-18</a>