June 16, 9:32 PM

Send Sunburst to arrange her first meeting. He and Sam would be in danger, but they’d stand a much better chance of a positive outcome. (71%)

Wayfinder took the few steps over Sunburst, then rested her hoof firmly on his shoulder, meeting his eyes. Yes, she put him at risk. No, there was no other way to have the same chance of success. “Please, Sunburst. You’re so much better at this than you think. Without you, I never would’ve made it this far. And if that spell worked the way we think it did—Denver should be completely safe. We helped. They don’t have to fight the Overgrowth to live there anymore. Whatever objections they have, you can help them.”

He laughed, voice trending to a high-pitched squeak as he went on. “Hahahaha, yeah, any objections they…” He pushed her hoof aside. “I’ll set up a meeting at Starhall. I’ll gather our things. But I can’t be princess for you. Taking a few questions, sure. But that’s it. They’ll come to you for the rest.”

Wayfinder nodded. “That’s more than enough, Sunburst. More than I could’ve asked for. Let’s say—tomorrow afternoon. It’s already getting late. But I’ll be there if anyone wants to talk to me. And…” She winced. This was more for him to do, when she’d already be imposing more on Starhall than she’d done yet. Asking for a few tutors was one thing, but—now she’d be bringing the leadership of an entire city to visit, drawing attention that they never wanted.

“No,” Ruby said, before Sunburst could open his mouth. She pushed him gently behind her, tail whipping sharply to either side. “Sunburst doesn’t know how to tell you no, but I do. If she brings those people to Starhall once, that will become the new meeting spot every time. That’s one step away from surrendering the city completely. People will see how it is and want to move there, when there’s barely enough room for everyone we have…”

“It makes sense to want to preserve what we’ve built. And I agree it would be better to find another location for this meeting. But it will be impossible to keep an alicorn from ruling. If your world is like Equestria, she may soon rule this nation. As its… president. Or whatever title you give her.”

Even so, Wayfinder didn’t press the issue. If the spell worked the way she expected, the Overgrowth should’ve withdrawn from much of Denver, leaving plenty of empty buildings they could use for a brief meeting. That was the easy part. But knowing whether the city would continue to accept her authority after she became explicitly unable to act inside it, that was something else.

Despite her confidence with teleportation, she still didn’t feel quite up to the task of traveling directly to Starhall from an unfamiliar direction. Besides, her escort insisted on sending at least half their number with her regardless of her new restrictions. After a brief argument, she managed to convince two to drive the SUVs back with Sunburst and Sam, while the other two would accompany her to Starhall.

That meant four of them for the walk back into town: two soldiers, Ruby, Hazel, and her, carrying only what they could fit into their saddlebags. Good thing their new bodies were built for walking, because they had several miles of it to go. They began by backtracking to the nearest ramp, then descended through the ferns and bushes into the Overgrowth.

“You sure this is safe now?” one of them asked. Officer Renald, she was pretty sure. His uniform didn’t have a name patch, just the simple badge. “I know at least three guys who went into the Overgrowth and didn’t come out again.”

Wayfinder led the way, illuminating her horn as brightly as she dared. If she wanted, Way could pour enough power through it to light the sky like a banner, but that would have the side effect of completely blinding herself in the dark, so not the best plan.

Hazel kept pace just a step behind her, back in that pony shape that looked like a relative of Way. This time she’d chosen a different pony than before: instead of a horn, she had wings, albeit built like a pegasus instead of an Alicorn. She showed no fear as they passed through the trees. Considering how many times Hazel had traveled with Way to Starhall by now, that wasn’t exactly surprising, though Way did take some pleasure in watching muscular soldiers recoil in fear while Hazel practically skipped her way there.

Hazel was right not to fear. Even without a protected trail, the former dangers of the Overgrowth had been pacified. So long as they didn’t try to burn or chop their way through the forest, future travelers should have a similarly safe route.

It was already late by the time they made it up the gravel path. The lights were low, and few ponies looked their way. She did earn a few stares and energetic whispers. Enough of the ponies here had read the Equestrian books to recognize the significance of an Alicorn. Plenty of others knew who she was, and asked about the wings.

She mumbled something about Sunburst’s spell without getting into specifics, arranged for somewhere to sleep for her escort, then slumped into Sunburst’s quarters.

Wayfinder should’ve had a relatively restful night in Sunburst’s old quarters, still holding many of his belongings. The room was large enough, the space comfortable, and the utilities all worked. But Sunburst himself wasn’t there, and the outcome of his mission remained unknown. So she tossed and turned through the hours, ears going alert any time hooves echoed in the hall or voices called from outside.

Pale blue filled her window by the time news came, jostling her out of her half-sleep and into the waking world. Blazing’s voice came muffled through the door, sharpening from haze into the second half of whatever he had been saying. “…don’t have a long time to get there, so you should probably think about heading out about now. I know you’re a mare and it takes longer to get ready now, but honestly we don’t have—”

Hazel sat up from the bean-bag she’d made into her nest, and had the door open before Way could even get out of bed. Bright white light spilled in from the hall, briefly blinding her.

Way’s wing lifted by reflex, extending in front of her and blocking out the light. It helped, at least for the few seconds it took Sam to cross the room and rest one of his paws on her shoulder. “Way, did you hear me? Your boyfriend pulled it off. You’ve got less than two hours to have somewhere set up for him to meet you and have this meeting. You’re not allowed to blow it now, not after how hard he worked to make this happen. Should’ve heard him in there…”

She flailed her foreleg towards him, without effect. Her horn lit up, and he went sliding backward along the floor, held in exactly that position. Until she let go, and his forelegs landed on the carpet in front of him. “Way?”

“I heard you.” She yawned, sitting upright in an almost human position. Her wings spread wide, her arms extending above her. “Never… doubted him.” She shook herself sharply in place, and her mane splayed around her in a disorganized mess. “Alright. Alright. I… I think I… we’ll want to use somewhere close to the edge, I think. That way… they won’t be afraid. Close enough they think they can get out again. Will also stop them from getting too close to Starhall right away. Ruby will be happy about that.”

She brushed past him, then opened the bathroom door. Sunburst’s quarters were one of the many “studio” style apartments in the expensive dorms, meaning that Way had a bathroom to walk into. She took one look in the mirror and winced at what stared back at her.

Sunburst hadn’t been wrong about the leaves, little green things braided through her mane without seeming to originate from anywhere but her scalp. Yet there were also bits of debris from their hike here. Becoming Equestrian royalty did not make her immune from dirt. “Hazel? Can you get my papers and things together? Then go downstairs and see if you can find any volunteers to help me set things up. We’ll have to clear out somewhere in a hurry. If you can get Silver Clover, that would be amazing.”

Hazel buzzed to her hooves, then saluted with one exaggerated bend of her hoof. “Course, Way! I’ll get them together in the hall?”

“Yeah.” She levitated the shower doors open, and had the door halfway closed before she stopped short. What was she stopping him from seeing exactly? “You’re loud. Tell me what happened while I’m cleaning up.”

Sam shrugged and followed her. He stopped in the doorway, raising his voice over the sound of the shower. She stepped into the heat, leaning her mane into it. If the hot water was going to hurt whatever was growing in there, she didn’t feel anything.

“From what I could tell, your people didn’t have a clue why you’d gone to the mountains. Sounded like they thought you were super religious or something. You… probably should’ve made it clearer you were doing something real and not just taking a vacation. When the magic happened, the Overgrowth started glowing, trees ripped themselves out of the ground, animals lost their shit. Town nearly did too—bunch of people ran out of the isolation zone. Guards watching the borders didn’t want to shoot, so no one stopped them. No telling how many people actually left. Might be… thousands, more even. Then when the dust settled and people wanted an explanation, you weren’t here.”

Way spun in the shower, spreading shampoo through her coat with magic while moving the nozzle around on the hose and constantly changing the temperature. She was barely even aware of it happening, with all her focus on Sam instead. “Someone had to remember what I said. I told them I was going up there to practice magic where it couldn’t hurt anyone. I said… said that if we succeeded, it would help contain the infection all over the world, and make it so we didn’t have to fear the Overgrowth swallowing Denver. I didn’t tell them I was going up there to pray.”

Muffled laughter echoed from beyond the shower curtain. “Yeah, well. You know how people are about magic. Your boyfriend used to say things like it a lot in the lab.” He raised his tone by an octave, shifting into an overwrought nerd persona. “Many of your kind have the intellect and the open-mindedness to accept magic. But none have the lifetime of familiarity with it. You don’t see the obvious applications even when they’re right in front of you.” Sam cleared his throat. “Sorry, too… can’t keep talking like that. Anyway, he was right. You said you were doing magic, but they didn’t realize that meant, like, building a power plant, and not like ‘arranging crystals and hugging trees with indigenous chanting in the background’.”

The water finally ran clear, and Way switched it off. She shook herself off there in the shower, letting her wings open however they wished to shed the moisture. “But Sunburst convinced them,” she supplied. “They’re going to meet with me?”

“Yeah. Few of the officers, power and water and supply are all sending someone. And there was a whole thing about a video link I didn’t really get. Someone named… Command. No clue who that is, but she’ll be watching too apparently.”

She stepped out onto the bathmat in front of him, levitating both towels over. The hairdryer came off the wall too, and she started working it over her tail first, moving the brush along with. She was still completely exhausted from her awful night, but each passing second made her feel just a little more alive. “I assume they asked all kinds of questions. What did they want to know?”

Sam watched her for a second, then turned conspicuously aside, his tail swishing rapidly from side to side. “Obvious mostly. Why couldn’t you come back, how were you going to keep running Denver, what did you actually do? Easy to be a believer when the ground starts shaking, I guess. Curious what you’re gonna tell ’em.”

Way sighed. “You don’t have to talk to my wall, Sam.”

“No offense Blue, but I do.” He didn’t elaborate, though the effortless confidence was just a little dampened. “That’s the short version. I didn’t pay a ton of attention through the whole thing. Lots of little things, but no one tried to pull a gun on your boyfriend. I’ve always been better at reading machines than people, but it felt almost like they were relieved you were coming back. Only one who sounded mad about the whole thing was the lady named ‘Command.’ Couldn’t make out all of it, but there was some yelling apparently. Who is she?”

Way hung up the towels, then faced into the mirror and ran the heat over her mane. Part of her felt incredibly silly doing this. But part of her position meant looking like a leader as much as being one. “The power behind the throne. Command is what everyone calls her. She’s the one who replaced the old Captain with me. She liked the job I was doing before, but I didn’t exactly involve her in that spell. I hoped to take care of it on my own.”

“Oh. I guess… guess that would match up with what I saw. Furious in a way that I don’t usually see unless someone has a reason to get really pissed off. Whatever you did to go over their head…”

Wayfinder nodded. “My problem. For now, we find a place, we get everyone together, and… see if I’m still in charge of anything in a day.”

Sam settled one hoof heavily on her shoulder, grinning. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that one, dude. Those people are desperate. Everything you’ve set up—who’s gonna run it without you? The pony way, with plants grown by magic, watered by a pegasus team, unicorn magic fixing infrastructure—I guess Sunburst gets the credit more than you, but still. No one can do that job but you, and those guys all know it.”

The next few hours were a rush of activity. They gathered up as many volunteers as she could find, then rushed through the Overgrowth back towards Denver. With so much of that space transformed, finding somewhere to work for a temporary meeting place wasn’t easy. Somewhere close enough to the edge that the visitors could see their way out and could leave, somewhere intact enough to have a conversation without feeling like they were back in the apocalypse.

In the end, she selected the only structure that had somehow survived the encroaching trees: an ice rink. Maybe it was the thick concrete foundation and infrastructure that kept the trees from growing inside, or maybe wild magic enraged by the suffering of the dead just really liked to ice skate. Either way, it was the only structure they found that had a roof and a view to the streets of Denver at the same time.

The interior had been spared the slow-consuming breath of nature that found its way to so many other structures, so she didn’t need her volunteers to yank up thousands of weeds and shrubs. They wouldn’t have had the time even if she wanted to.

Yet for the trees, there was nothing she could do. A single enormous pine had somehow started growing in the lobby, where it enjoyed commanding light from broad windows on either side. She told every one of her volunteers three times that it was not to be touched, unless someone wanted to water it. Yes, it ripped through the carpet.

“It’s no problem,” someone said—a teenager, grinning sidelong at her when he said it. “We’ll just decorate it for Christmas all year. Problem solved.”

They had so little time. Wayfinder could only trust the earth ponies to handle the straightforward stuff, with Sam and Hazel to occasionally report back to her. They could clean trash out, arrange one of the birthday party rooms into a conference area, sweep up the broken glass from the trophy case. All the easy stuff. Way’s own attention went entirely to the electrical room, where she spent her remaining two hours scribbling something in grease-paint over the electrical box. She could hear the hum of an engine by the time the light from her horn faded, and several clicks rattled through the large structure. Industrial air-conditioners began to spin outside, chopping a few stray weeds to shreds as they came to life.

“We’ll have to come up with somewhere better,” she told the forest, as though it were listening. “Somewhere you can have a say.”

There was no answer. But maybe—it did feel like someone was watching her.

She walked back in through the rear of the building, and found the lights on as she passed through. Steady and bright, more than they used in any structures today. An old building, for an older way of life.

She found two ponies waiting in the lobby. A large crowd gathered outside, including a frustrated-looking Sunburst. “You can’t keep me out here!” he was saying. “That’s the captain in there! I’m her executive secretary!”

Clearly the ponies could stop him, because they had. A single enormous earth pony wearing a vest and tailored suit stood near the hallway, carrying a briefcase. “Command wants to talk to you,” he said, voice a low rumble that shook her through the chest. “Before anyone else. Where?”

She winced, then gestured down the hall. “We got a conference room ready. Doors should be open.”

He eyed her, ears flicking towards the opening. “After you.”