A Bronzed Moon

by Eric Longtooth

Chapter 7: Momentum

Chapter 7: Momentum.
By Eric Longtooth

“We work together or we die. That’s our lot now. Even if it’s just for one more Trial, we live. Even if it just means waking up to one more campfire in the long, endless night, we live! Ingloriously, messily, and dishonourably, we live! Even if it means dragging ourselves out of that gate on our ruptured bellies with our entrails hanging behind us while we scream ‘fuck, fuck, fuck!’ We. Will. Live!” - I-A-M, Dead by Sunset

*o0(@)[ Princess Luna ](@)0o*

The princess was angry.

With Celestia, with the factory, and most importantly, herself.

‘Wretched machines! Curse their boomsticks and their foul witchcraft!’ She mentally hissed as she tried, and failed, to cast a mending spell on her horn.

The temptation to drop the glaive from her mouth and vocally express her displeasure was strong, but considering the explosion, there was little time to spare.

“Princess! Get off your ass and help me!”

‘When we leave here, she will die. This godless abomination of steel and ash will not take that from me.’ She grumbled as she hurried up to the Queen’s side, only to pause at the sight of the detonation.

The jar that she had given Millthorn was a bit more powerful than the witchfire they used to enter this damned place, seeing as it had been mixed with a volatile concoction of solarite and arcanium.

In theory, it would be enough to blow a hole into the Canterlot Vaults, which is one of the many, many reasons witchfire is banned.

It is always amazing how flexible rules become in war.

Regardless, it was clear that it did its job. As where the hidden door had once been, there was a hole. A hole about the size of a small building.

The edges of what survived glowed a sickly neon green and yellow as flames danced across the ruined metal. Past the metal on each side, the stone had taken considerable damage as fragments of metal embedded themselves in every possible surface, each shard having tried oh-so desperately to escape the explosion.

Just past the hole, right before the door that leads further into the factory, half a torso sits sparking. Burnt to charcoal black and stripped down to a metal skeleton, the last of their attackers leaks oil stained blood as it fades into death.

The smell of foul magicks, sulphur, oil, and ash hangs heavy in the air, laying its own personal war against those who can smell. Stinging and irritating all it can.

But, in the end, that wasn’t what grabbed the attention of the ageless alicorn.

No, that honor belongs to whatever had been passing through the gate before it blew.

Even in death, it was terrifying. Consisting of a body the size of the largest yak, with thick plating and forests of cables that fed liquids of all colours across its hide. Further, there was the ‘upper torso,’ not unlike a centaur’s it was created with the likeness of chiseled muscles upon more armor plating before branching off to four main arms and a octuplet of smaller grabbers and inserters. The two top arms ended only in the claws of a dragon, but, the underarms however, where much more interesting.

Each ended in large, boxy ‘guns,’ but unlike the normal weaponry she had seen, these were covered in tubes of bright blue and red and all fed into the central ‘barrel’ of the gun. The damaged tubes leaked red and blue fire, and the barrels glowed ominously, but, thankfully, they were still.

Few ‘legs’ had survived the blast, mainly those that were on the opposite side of the hull to the explosion, and the reasoning was quite obvious. Unlike the impossible bulk of the rest of the machine, the legs were barely thicker than a pony’s hoof. They looked like something from a spider, and, if she were to make an educated guess, prior to the blast there eight in total.

Finally, there was the head.

There was little left of it, but Luna could make out the likeness of a sort of mechanical pony’s skull, with the eye sockets instead taken up by dozens of small, beedy red cameras.

The entirety of the right side of the skull had been melted off, but, surprisingly, it the rest of the skull was more or less intact. At least, if one ignored a few darkened cameras, and what she could only assume to be an immolated brain.

“Impressive bombsmareship princess, I doubted the little twerp, but he got that thing pretty well.” Chrysalis chuckled as she dimmed her horn. “Hopefully there’s enough left to salvage a map.”

“Just get on with it knave, We still have to go back for Millthorn before we leave.” Luna said after planting her glave into the ground. “We art still stuck in here, and there art still foes around every corner. Don’t get lazy.”

###@$%%^*{--ERR.--}===@###!

MODEL: P.V.1223
USER NUMBER: 001-0

SYSTEM STATUS: RECOVERY MODE

Status =/= Online
Status =/= Offline
∴ display error log.

ERROR LOG:

---(*)---
DAMAGE = Rating >8
TIME SCALE = <1 second

∴ DAMAGE CAUSE EXCEEDS DEFENCE RATING | INT. DEF-PROTOCOL ‘POSSUM’
---(*)---

Reason == Satisfactory
Current Status =/= Optimum.
∴ Display damage log.

DAMAGE LOG:

(==|==)

HEAD: 67%
- CORE PROCESSOR: 0%
- OPTICAL [R]: 13%
- OPTICAL [L]: 89%

TORSO [UM]: 89%
- ARM [MTR]: 73%
- ARM [MBR]: 65%
- ARM [SR]: 87%
- ARM [MTL]: 88%
- ARM [MBL]: 91%
- ARM [SL]: 78%

TORSO [LS]: 74%
- BACKUP PROCESSOR: 100%
- LEG [R1] 0%
- LEG [R2] 77%
- LEG [R3] 0%
- LEG [R4] 0%
- LEG [L1] 100%
- LEG [L2] 0%
- LEG [L3] 91%
- LEG [L4] 76%
- HULL GUN [FL] 0%
- HULL GUN [FR] 2%
- HULL GUN [TC] 0%
- HULL GUN [BC] 35%

(==|==)

Confirmed.
Damage =/= Optimum
Damage == Acceptable
∴ Load Bootstrapper
- Set ‘SECONDARY PROCESSOR’ to: Master

CONFIRMED.
LAUNCHING…

*o0(@)[ Princess Luna ](@)0o*

As much as it hurt her pride to ask for it, Luna did, eventually give in and ask the Changeling Queen to heal her horn. Surprisingly however, Chrysalis had no snark to give on the topic, and only responded with things along the lines of ‘you’ll need that to fight.’

Regardless, she was currently doing some sort of techno-wizardry with the husk of the fallen machine whilst Luna stood guard. Surprisingly enough, the only foe to appear was a hooffull of bonepickers and small, bird-sized, flying machines.

“Millthorn has yet to appear… hurry thy work so that we may find him before our foe doth end him…” Luna whispered, neglecting to put enough effort to maintain her ‘princessly speech,’ instead defaulting to a flat, tired tone. “Our horn can barely maintain telekinesis, and we would rather not wait for more machines to find us.”

“They’ve already found us, don’t worry about that.” Chrysalis commented with a roll of her slitted eyes, “the fact that we have yet to be swarmed is a miracle within itself.”

“So why doth they wait? We know there to be enough weaklings within this place to drown us in bodies.” The princess mused, flicking off bits of greymatter from her blade. “We were foalish to come here, but this place seems to refuse to capitalise on our weakness. Why?”

She shrugs, removing the long, thin cable from the lower chest cavity of the beast with a quick yank. “Perhaps it enjoys toying with us, or maybe it is retarded, it doesn’t matter in the end.”

The small ‘tablet’ Chrysalis held in her magic began to glow and hum as it began to project a three dimensional map. Near one of the walls, a small red dot flashed, and began to project a dotted line that wound in odd patterns for a good distance before existing near the base of the tower.

“Well, this explains why this place is so painful to navigate.” The changeling chuckled dryly as she gestured with a hoof towards the shifting insanity that was the map. “It seems that below the surface, the tower is situated on sections that slowly turn… Just slow enough that one wouldn’t notice of course, but still enough to throw any invaders off.”

“Another dishonest trick from this foe… we art not surpris-”

“VRAAAM!”

Before she could continue, the princess was cut off by Chrysalis being engulfed in burning red-blue plasma as the ‘slain’ beast began to rise once more...

Author's Note:

What is this foul witchcraft!?! Two chapters in a month!? Barely a day between them!?

Comments

[Merula]

Well....RIP Chryssie

[Lovecraftia]

Oh shit

[Clawfoot]

Nice reference to Dead by Sunset, and an excellent chapter besides.