Chapters
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The teleport took her in a flash, briefly blinding her and setting off all the thaumic energy indicators in her helmet. She had given herself a full twenty feet of breathing room over where she guessed the surface to be, in case her calculation had been vastly wrong. It was, and twenty feet was more like fifty. The parachute on the back of her armor exploded outward as she started to fall, but it wasn’t enough. Parachutes weren’t meant to work at such short distances. It was night, but even the gloom…-
153.4 K •
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There was no more drama for a few hours as Radio Springs mobilized. Alex learned then that the pegasi flying from Motherlode had been sent to tell the city about the attack and the armored pony that had killed three of their guards and been heading for the settlement. Thank God she had noticed them, or else she might’ve walked right into the city and been arrested.White did not correct the misinformation, not yet. If the pegasi heard that some other story was being passed around, they might be able to…
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153.4 K •
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The disused mine up on the back hill proved to have been barricaded to prevent further escapes. An hour or so and a crowbar later, and they could use the lift to start bringing trapped miners back up. Just in time too: the rain had flooded the mine, and the water level had continued to rise. The storm seemed to have lost interest in the complex once the battle was complete, but even so most of the Refugees emerged wet as well as hungry.Alex made sure she was out of sight as this happened, hoping the miners…
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153.4 K •
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Bingham Canyon proved not to be the paradise of technology and progress Alex had promised: mostly it was temporary buildings and lots of metal supports sunk into concrete near the bottom of a gigantic open-pit mine. Yet even the temporary structures on the rim had electricity and running water. As Jackie went into surgery, Alex learned that she herself was being brought on as an advisory engineer on the construction of “Paradise Crater.”Not because there weren’t any humans or ponies of the HPI to do…
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153.4 K •
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So it began. Archive had been recruited to protect the HPI from Athena’s influence. Now she realized that influence had been Athena’s feeble attempts to slow the expansion of Gideon’s Outsider faction. Instead of working to root out Athena, she began moving to support and conceal her. Even so, it was not difficult to contribute in other ways. Working directly with Athena meant the two of them could easily fabricate “victories,” such as “inventing” systems Athena could not monitor. What gains…
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153.4 K •
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Form and meaning unraveled in the void, where symbols were as true as the things they represented. Time ceased to matter, just as space did. A battle raged; a battle she could not possibly win on her own.The other wished to frame it in terms of Equestria, of ponies and spirits and magic. Alex refused, and so gave the duel form in another way. A human way.Archive saw a roadside diner, right out of any number of 1950s era movies. It was late at night, and she pulled up to escape the wrath of a torrential…-
107.0 K •
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Last night, little Riley had learned that the information Alex had shown her from the library hadn’t been wrong after all. Just as the Equestrian books said, she could will herself into new forms. The effort was exhausting, and she had very little idea of what she was doing. Yet the instinct was there. With the original pony helpless before her, she had all the time in the world to make sure she got every detail exactly right. The pony who called herself Carol, whose real name was apparently True Sight,…
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107.0 K •
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Adrian was alone in a world of pain. The spirit called Odium pressed down upon his mind, trapping him in his worst moment, stretching into forever. Thousands and thousands of times Adrian watched that memory replay. The pain of the crash was bad, but it wasn’t even close to the worst part. He saw the mare on the roof of the hotel. He heard her over and over, a hopelessness crushed by the weight of an uncaring universe. Nothing he could say made a difference. Eventually, when she thought he wasn’t…
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107.0 K •
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Cloudy Skies did not return to Alexandria until near nightfall. Her mission, though important, felt hopelessly mundane. Without knowing when Lonely Day and the other ponies would return from Philadelphia, and with no way to call and tell them, it was her job to find a satellite phone, make it work, then report on what they had learned.It would’ve been far worse than boring to travel off on her own when Blacklight was putting herself into danger with all her other friends. Except Cloudy Skies had company,…
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They were all there, the day they had the vote. Everyone but Alex, unconscious as she was in a hospital bed. There were no more attempted suicides; not now that the shock of having Odium gone for good was finally over. That left Alexandria with a problem, of course. What could they do with a dozen ponies that had tried to take over? Moriah participated in several of the proposals that were made, just as all of them did. Rather than keep all of them locked up in little cells during the week or so it took…
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