Chapters
-
A year passed.Rarely if ever did they ever see other ponies. Only once a month were they let out, walking around dark stone rooms while ponies replaced the straw. They were offered no clothing, no blankets, nothing but loneliness and the vague cycle of day and night visible through their windows.Drones grew up much faster than queens did, and very soon every other drone dwarfed Chip. This wasn’t to say that they beat her, that she had to struggle for food or anything. The drones understood their place in…-
187.6 K •
-
-
Rover stared down at the ruts his cart had carved in the dirt. The awful pony’s magic had done the work of months in a single day. The Alpha would have been greatly pleased with such a find.“I can’t believe you let them go,” Spot squeaked, his voice boiling with anger. Some of that was probably with the vanishing ponies and their stolen gemstones, though some of it was at him. “We wouldn’t have had to dig for weeks!”Rover could smell the aggression in his tiny rival, and his whole body tensed…-
9.0 K •
-
-
“It’s been the same for the last three nights,” Alex said, staring down at the floor. Jackie’s little corner of their shared room had all the lights covered, and survived only on the glow that came in through the crack in the door.But the bat seemed true to her name—she hadn’t once bumped into anything or expressed regret about making it so dark. “It doesn’t get any better. I’m always in the same place, I’m always… well, you’d have to see it. But it’s bad, and it’s making it…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
She almost left him then. Alex had already done more than she deserved, gotten more than so many others. She had met both her parents, and wouldn’t have to say goodbye to her mother for many years to come. But even still, she resisted. She looked at the Stallion who had done her so much harm, and found herself hesitating.She could see the emptiness in his eyes, the glances back towards the bar. She already knew he wouldn’t survive two centuries, because she didn’t remember meeting him then. There…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
Stephen did not like where they were taking him.Stephen did not like much of anywhere the prey took him, except when they let him loose in the forest to hunt. Yet no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't get away from the big male, the one with the spike on his head.Stephen remembered what it was like to live out in the forest, where there was ample hunting and little challenged him. Even the towering wolves had kept their distance, as was proper. Stephen was too small to hunt the things they killed,…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
Saul pulled his car to a stop at the end of a long stretch of trail, leaning as close to the window as he could and searching for danger. Only when he couldn’t see any sign of motion, neither pony nor predator, did he pull out of the trees, easing the engine cautiously down the slope.Even after months of practice, Saul still found driving this way required extreme concentration on his part—between putting pressure on the jointed rod he used to apply the brakes or accelerator, turning the wheel without…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
"It's wrong," Jackie said, staring down at the little strip of cloth and plastic levitating in Ezri's magic. Two more sat beside her on the bathroom counter, each one with two dark lines in the white fabric. "It has to be wrong. It's obviously, stupidly wrong."Ezri levitated the last test down beside the others. She was currently taller than Jackie, or at least this version of her was, with reddish fur and a greenish mane. She was a unicorn currently, though since she was also a male now that wasn't the…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
“I don’t understand this, cousin! Every year the Union grows more oppressive, its ponies more enslaved. Yet our spies return with this.” The Sargon was a griffon, just like the rest of the imperial house. He was nearly a foot taller than her, one of the largest ponies she knew.Jackie stared down at the table, and the sheaf of black-and-white photographs the Sargon had brought into her office. They’d been taken on the eight-millimeter that was the very best of their day, capturing surprising detail.…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
“It’s the smallest nuclear device ever constructed,” Sargon Antonio Engels finished. “Smaller than anything that was imagined a decade ago. Small enough that even the NAU will not suspect it.”Jackie looked over the case on the table in front of her—a briefcase, slightly bulging and metallic, with sturdy hinges and an oversized lock. But it was open, and she could see the mechanism of nuclear death before her.It was cruder than anything that would’ve been constructed in the last cold war, back…
-
187.6 K •
-
-
Nicole could barely lift her hooves. The snow was so thick that some steps brought it cascading onto her back, or up through her cloak and down her hood. The sliced and re-glued waterproof fabric of her clothes protected her from the worst of the moisture and wind, but even so she felt like every step cost her a few minutes of life.It wasn't as though she was walking through a blizzard, either. The mere cold of winter was enough. The unicorn mare was almost as large and healthy as an earth pony, with…
-
187.6 K •
-
- 1 2 … 136 Next