Penumbra was getting paid an obscene number of bits to live out her childhood dream and elevate the scholarly efforts of her fellow batponies. Neither of those things made it any easier to get out of bed.
It was nearly evening. Work wouldn’t start for another hour, but as the team’s leader, Penumbra liked to get up early to get oriented. She wiped the sleep from her eyes as she stumbled from her suite. The observatory’s crew quarters were cavernous and designed without any windows. Penumbra loved it. That’s what happens when you actually consult batpony architects, she thought with a smile.
A long windowless hallway ended in a Y-shaped fork. Her sensitive ears picked up faint hoofsteps from the left. Probably Cozy Glow, the observatory’s sole pony worker, coming back from one of her long morning hikes in the surrounding mountains.
I’ll talk to her later. Penumbra turned right. The hallway opened up into a glass-walled corridor lined with dark laboratories. Each one was dedicated to one of the many various niche astrological fields the crew of the observatory studied. Penumbra passed them by in reverent silence. Walking down these halls was better for her mood than any steaming cup of coffee.
The crown jewel of the observatory was the largest mirror array in the world, a dazzlingly complex contraption made of hundreds of finely tuned discs of glass finished in vacuum-deposited aluminum. Every other lab depended on the array’s enormous data output. Their mission was lofty: solve the mysteries of the universe. Nothing less would suffice.
Penumbra picked up a checklist on a nearby work table and commenced evening inspections. She booted up the mirror aligners and found them already in good working order. Next she unfurled her wings and flew to the top portion of the array. This part tended to get a little gunky from exposure to the elements. But someone had already scraped it clean. The next item on the checklist was also complete. As was the one after that. It soon became clear her efforts were redundant. Someone had already gone through and completed the telescope’s pre-operations checklist.
Penumbra returned to the fork in the hallway. This time she went left. This corridor led to the observatory’s main reception area. On special occasions, this space would be filled with the heads of universities and important government liaisons dressed in tuxedos and waitstaff carrying hors d'oeuvres on fancy platters. Most of the time, it served as the crew’s living room.
The room was dark—another glorious windowless victory for the design team. The luxurious red carpet was all crumby from last week’s potato chip party. White suede couches bore cola stains across their backs. Wet laundry hung off the opened lid of the grand piano.
In the wet bar-turned makeshift kitchen, Penumbra saw Cozy Glow rifling through a tin of leftover jollof rice. The rice was at least a week old and clumped together into starchy rocks. Cozy found a few of the smaller ones and popped them into her mouth. Her jaw worked back and forth, grinding it down.
Penumbra waited until Cozy Glow had softened up the rice. Then she said in a loud voice, “How’s it taste?”
Cozy Glow painted the interior of the refrigerator with half-chewed rice. She whirled around only for her hooves to slip on the tile. She landed hard on her belly.
Penumbra caught the tray before it could fall and gave it a testing sniff. Fresh food was hard to come by this far up the mountain. The most recent investor conference had been almost a week ago, and the catering they’d left behind would only remain edible for so long. When the jollof rice was gone, it would be back to canned food.
“I take it the food’s only gotten worse since yesterday,” Penumbra said. She offered Cozy Glow a hoof up. “How are the slopes?”
“Abysmal,” Cozy Glow said. “I found one cave that led nowhere, then another that was too small to squeeze through.”
“You could just knock the rocks out with a hammer if you’re dead-set on getting down there.”
“Not without bringing half the mountain down on top of me.”
Penumbra nodded. She opened the freezer compartment. Inside were ice packs, some frozen burritos, chimicherrychangas, gak strips—basically nothing edible. She nosed through the detritus to the very back of the box. There, hidden behind the ice maker, was a pint of her favorite ice cream, Munchy Mare’s Raspberry Triple-Chocolate Obliterator.
“You worry me when you go caving by yourself,” Penumbra said. “It’s a silly way to sign your death warrant.”
“No need to worry! I can take care of myself.”
Penumbra grunted. “Good hikers can still get hurt.” She grabbed a tin of pre-ground espresso beans from the pantry. “Find anything good?”
“Rocks. Snow.” Cozy Glow shrugged. “When I find what I’m looking for, you’ll know.”
Penumbra took out a tin of espresso. “Breakfast of champions,” she muttered, more to herself than to Cozy Glow. She added the grounds to the kitchen’s fancy stainless steel espresso machine, then scooped ice cream into a decorative ceramic cup and placed it beneath the spout. A burble of steaming black liquid poured over the ice cream. Affooo-gatooo, Penumbra rolled the word around in her head as the heady smell of coffee filled her nose.
“I couldn’t help but notice someone did all the pre-checks in the main observatory,” Penumbra said. Her eyes remained focused on the espresso as it slowly melted the ice cream. “Did you see who might have done that?”
A wrinkle appeared in Cozy Glow’s forehead. “No. Sorry.”
“Well, whoever it was, that was very nice of them. They could teach me a thing or two about getting up early and getting the job done.” She shifted the cup from one hoof to another. “I called our sponsors. They’re going to see what they can do about getting you a paycheck.”
“I already told you—”
“Yes, I know, you don’t need it. But you do. You’re not much younger than me, but you’re so naive.”
“Believe me, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“If you were smart, you’d leap on the chance to write a scathing letter to the director asking him why he hasn’t paid his best employee for an entire month.”
“Exactly. It’s only been a month. The parcel service doesn’t exactly do daily delivery up here.” Cozy Glow smiled. “I just wanna give him the benefit of the doubt, y’know?”
Penumbra noticed Cozy Glow was looking at her affogato. Without a second thought, she hoofed the cup over to her.
“Can I give you some advice?” Penumbra asked.
Cozy Glow took a sip. “Of course.”
“You’re not doing enough for yourself. Life is indifferent. You have to learn to be your own advocate.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. You’re owed a debt, but no one is going to get it for you. You have to take it.”
Cozy Glow’s eyes turned down. She was quiet for a moment.
“Say that again,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“You have to take it.”
Cozy Glow stared into the little melting island of ice cream land in the ever-expanding espresso ocean. “Thank you.”
Penumbra left to take care of some paperwork, leaving Cozy Glow to finish the affogato by herself. She hated sweets, but the bitterness from the coffee and the mild caffeine buzz made the drink tolerable.
The kitchen soon came alive as the rest of the research team rolled out of bed and prepared for the evening operations. She stepped outside to get away from the crowd. Within second, the liquid espresso in the decorative mug froze.
She stepped right up to the edge of the mountain and peered over. The trail that led from the valley below up to her isolated perch would have been invisible to the naked eye, had it not been for the trail of glowing magic outlining it against the white. She followed it with her eyes up the many rises and switchbacks, up to the ledge where it terminated at the front door of the observatory. The longer she looked, the further the sun set, the more pronounced the trail became. Her frown deepened. Ice crystalized on her eyelashes.
She had been working this god-forsaken outpost for a full month with nothing to show for it. The demon was out here—maybe it was right under her hooves—but she just couldn’t find it. This wasn’t like the other two trials. There were no convenient caverns beneath the facility hosting any giant demons. She knew. She’d checked.
Her eyes moved to the silhouette of the observatory, the dome, the bump of the telescope pointed towards the sky. She’d spent all this time searching for a cave. But what if the demon wasn’t in a cave? What if the magic trail had led her here for another reason? Something to do with the observatory itself?
A harsh gust of wind snapped her out of her thoughts. She took her frozen cup and trudged inside. It was worth a shot. She had to try something new. Anything.
Unlike the other team members, Cozy Glow didn’t have specific tasks to perform during the observatory’s nightly uptime. She spent the time scheming and napping, only shaking herself from her thoughts when the hands of the ornate golden clock in the main gallery passed four AM. The clock hadn’t chimed since one of the crew had filled its internal gear mechanism with cheez-whiz two weeks ago, so she made little bong sounds herself to pass the time. She listened as the crew made a pit-stop in the kitchen for dinner, then returned to their living quarters. She waited some more. Sometimes a few of them liked to do little late-night rendezvous with their fellow researchers.
The clock’s hands, lubricated generously with processed aerosol cheese, moved silently past the quarter of the hour.
Good enough. Cozy Glow stood up. Silent as a mouse, she snuck down the lab-lined corridor to the main observatory room. Normally, the observatory shutters would have made a horrible squeaking sound. But multiple weeks of Cozy Glow’s thorough pre-test checks, which just so happened to include lubricating the shutter tracks and wheels, meant they opened with barely a sound. The computers were all up to date and booted without issue—also her.
The telescope’s main signal booted up.
Cozy Glow stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do next. She settled on keying in a set of random coordinates. The telescope’s internal parts shifted. A light on the computer went yellow, then green. Cozy Glow peered through the lens.
At first, all she could see was darkness. She zoomed out slightly and saw a lone galaxy several hundred light years away. She zoomed out again, following the long arc of a gas pillar up a hundred light years and a hair to the left. She let the tapestry of the universe guide her hoof. She saw supernovae, black holes colliding, stars being born and killed.
It was beautiful. But none of it was what she was looking for.
She let herself wander aimlessly through the universe until a flashing light caught her eye. A pulsar, moving so fast it flickered in the lens. She zoomed out a little and realized it was one of three bright flashing stars stacked in a perfect triangle shape, as if set there by a master jeweler.
A smile creeped across Cozy Glow’s face. Hello. She zoomed out more. A line of stars took shape. The spiral arm of a galaxy torn apart by a rogue black hole formed a curved snout beneath the triangle—no, it was not a triangle, it was eyes, two on the bottom and a third in the center of a wide forehead. Clouds of gas formed an elongated, pointed horn. Cozy Glow zoomed out more. Galaxies formed the delicate curvature of a neck, and collarbones, and a back, impossibly slender and made of white dwarves. A system of a hundred red giants formed a beating heart. Wings of stardust flashed brilliantly against the black.
She zoomed all the way out. A constellation she had never seen before came at last into view. An alicorn made of stars, dominating the sky where none had been the night before.
The eyes began to flicker in unison. A pit formed in Cozy Glow’s stomach. The smile fell off her face. She tore herself away from the lens. Stupid, she chastised herself. Don’t be silly. She returned to the lens. The feeling of unease redoubled. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this constellation of a trillion different stars was somehow looking at her.
Then it blinked.
Cozy Glow launched herself away from the lens with so much force she cracked the glass wall behind her.
The following evening, Penumbra rolled out of bed and made her way to the telescope room. She booted up the mirror aligners only to find they hadn’t been updated. A faint line creased her forehead. She flew up to the top of the array and found the top part gunky and uncleaned. The rest of the items on the checklist were similarly not completed.
“Huh,” Penumbra said aloud.
While the rest of the team was still filing into the kitchen for their morning coffee, Penumbra went down into the basement, past the boilers and arcana crystals and chilled server rooms, to the little storage area in the back they’d insulated and repainted for use as a makeshift bedroom for Cozy Glow.
Penumbra knocked on the door. “Cozy? Cozy Glow?”
She tried the handle and found it wasn’t locked. She eased the door open. Cozy Glow was sitting on her bed, her back to the door. She mumbled incoherently to herself. She clutched a hoof-drawn star chart.
“Hey.” Penumbra knocked on the door, louder this time.
Cozy Glow snapped her head up. “Huh? Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed. “Hi Penumbra.”
“Are you feeling alright?”
“Yeah!” Cozy Glow put on a strained smile. “Awfully early for you to be up.”
“Morning pre-checks and all.”
Cozy Glow’s smile faltered. “Oh tarfeathers. Penumbra, I’m so sorry—the time just got away from me, and—”
“It’s fine, I covered it.”
Cozy Glow punched her mattress ineffectually. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been so preoccupied with—well—it’s not important.” She tucked the papers behind her. “I’m sorry you had to pick up my slack.”
“It’s literally my job. And it’s not technically your job to do those pre-checks, either.”
“Still.”
Penumbra asked if she could come in. Cozy said yes. Penumbra sat on the edge of her bed, the way her own mother used to when she was just a filly. Yikes, she thought, do they see me as the team mom? Ugh.
“You doing ok?” Penumbra asked.
“Yeah. Never better.”
“Are you feeling any isolation?”
“I have the whole team here.”
“All the same. It can sneak up on you, even if you’re careful.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m really fine.”
“I believe you. I also want to let you know that you’re entitled to two weeks of leave, and that doesn’t include the time you spend getting off the mountain. It starts when you hit base camp.”
“That sounds like a rule you came up with.”
Penumbra nodded. “It was. Everyone needs a break. This team works so effectively because we have measures in place to minimize burnout. This mountain’s no good for anyone in the long term.”
Cozy Glow looked like she was about to say something, but stopped short. One hoof went to her star chart, toying with the edge.
“Let’s say I were to take over the pre-checks for a bit. You’d get a few extra hours of sleep. You could hike some more. Does that sound good?”
“No, not really.”
“Then I’m ordering it.” Penumbra detected a note of motherly sternness in her voice. Jeez, she even sounded like her mom now. “I want to arrange a short vacation for you—”
“No.” Cozy Glow drew back. “The work’s not over.”
Penumbra smiled. “I like your spirit, kid. That’s why I’m ordering you to do it.”
“I don’t technically work here. I don’t have to take orders from you.”
“Then I’ll kick you out for trespassing. The choice is yours.”
For a second, it looked like Cozy Glow was about to break down. She balled up the drawing papers in her hoof. Her eyes unfocused. Then the moment passed, and her grip relaxed, and her eyes were back, sharp and clear as ever.
“At least keep me around until the next scheduled resupply,” Cozy Glow said. “That way we don’t have to drag the hauling team up here just for me.”
Penumbra nodded. “I can live with that. Until then, we’ll share pre-check duties. Sound good?”
“Yeah.” Cozy Glow worked her jaw back and forth. “Penumbra?”
“Yes?”
“I... uh...” She tapped her chin. “This is gonna sound so random. I’ve been thinking about how else I can contribute to the observatory. And I have this idea for a big project in my head. Something that’ll change the world.”
“Is that what you’re drawing?”
Cozy Glow nodded. “It’s not finished yet. But I was hoping to get your advice on it. At least, the planning of it. I’m running into a wall.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Okay. So let’s say...” Cozy Glow scrunched up her face in thought. “Let’s say there’s a significant investor out there. And the success of the project hinges on getting their eyeballs on the proposal. And I want her to come up here and see the project I’m making. Because that’s the only way the proposal will sway her—if she’s here, on the mountain. But she’s really busy, and doesn’t have time to come all the way up here for something that might not be worth her time. How do I convince her to come out?”
Penumbra considered the question for a minute. Then she said, “Force her hand. Show her an offer she can’t refuse.”
Slowly, like water freezing to ice, a smile crept across Cozy Glow’s face. “Yeah,” she said, her voice low and withered. “That’s a great idea, Penumbra.Thanks.”
Cozy Glow stopped going on hikes. While her batpony teammates worked, she sequestered herself away in her basement lair and plotted.
Show her an offer she can’t refuse. Penumbra’s advice brought forth a great burst of creativity. She couldn’t go into space and meet the demon on its home turf—her near-asphyxiation in the volcano was a painful reminder that her protection rune couldn’t supply her with a source of breathable air. What if she could somehow lure the demon to her? That would require bait of a magnitude Cozy Glow couldn’t conjur.
That is—until she realized she didn’t have to conjur anything.
The star demon was an alicorn—admittedly one made of stars, but an alicorn all the same. There were also alicorns—much more accessible alicorns—right here on earth.
One was in the crystal empire, surrounded by a populace as strong as they were suicidally zealous. Cadance was a powerful mage in her own right, as powerful as any demon. Fighting her without some kind of ace up her sleeve would be ill-advised.
So she turned her sights on the distant plains of Equestria. The nation was small, though mighty, with its alicorns and princesses and coffers full of gold and castles cast in marble and gems. The nation took part in no wars. Its citizens rarely ventured outside of its borders, except to export their entertainment and their designer sunglasses and their signature saccharin brand of friendship. The sisters of Canterlot had been bested before by forces within Cozy Glow’s purview. But again, all those defeats had come with some kind of trump card. Initiating a fight with them would be as simple as dangling a few of their subjects off the edge of Mount Canter. Finishing that fight—which would be two-on-one, by the way—would be another matter entirely.
That left the newest member of the alicorn family. Twilight Sparkle. She was powerful as any eldritch Canterlot princess, but her lack of experience made her weak. At least Celestia and Luna had a thousand years of perspective tempering their actions. Twilight Sparkle could barely solve friendship problems.
And wouldn't you know it—she was in the process of opening up an international school of friendship. They didn’t even check visas. They just let you in.
This was going to be easy.
Before she could enact her master plan, there was one final thing she had to do at the observatory.
She waited patiently for the batpony team to finish up their evening tasks and return to bed. Only once all the late-night rendezvous were complete and the only sound in the observatory was the soft howl of the wind outside did Cozy Glow make her way to the telescope room. She moved with deliberate, silent strides. Her mouth was set in an inscrutable line.
They couldn’t know about the star demon. Maybe the team wasn’t able to see it. Some of the team had been working the observatory for over five years. If they hadn’t already seen the demon up there, they were unlikely to find it now.
But she couldn’t take that chance. Not with what was at stake. She just couldn’t leave this thread unsevered.
During Cozy Glow’s many fruitless searches of the facility for a secret space big enough to hold a demon, she had came across something else: the observatory’s fire suppression system. It held enough liquid foam to smother a small pan fire in the kitchen. Beyond that, it was useless. It was a fatal flaw, but one easily overlooked. The batpony architects had probably been so preoccupied with their crusade against natural light they had simply left the system as an afterthought.
Cozy Glow thanked the batpony design team for their gift. Then she trundled outside to siphon the gas from the emergency generators. The luxurious great room carpet would serve as the perfect fuel, but it needed a little something to get things going. Just a little nudge.