That Which Hangs Off Cliffs
Rainbow touched down at last on the edge of the large round building. She almost slipped immediately on the slick wet stone.
“Wh-whoah?!” She spread her wings for counterbalance, but this was nearly her undoing. Errant gales of hurricane force wind shoved her forward, nearly plowing the pegasus into a marble column. With expert agility, she flipped, contacted the pillar with her hooves, and bucked off of it. Gliding with the wind, she came to a stop under the large overhang that wrapped around the building’s circumference. Here, the bulk of the structure’s outer shell finally acted as a wind buffer, and she could actually walk evenly.
Panting, she picked a random direction and trotted it, shuffling counter-clockwise around the outer rim of the building. As she did so, she looked to her left, staring at the wall of marble that was perpetually slick with rain water.
She could see patterned tiles, forming a mosaic of an ever-evolving image. Squinting, Rainbow saw mountains, forests, trees--and above it all a blue and purple sky with swirling bands of cloud and nebulae. But that wasn’t all. There lay a foundation beneath it all, or at least there once was. From what Rainbow could tell, somepony or ponies had chipped away the tile pieces that made up an entire layer beneath the illustrations of earth. It looked too neat a cut to have been done accidentally by nature or the elements.
“Somepony didn’t like the machine world…” Facing forward, Rainbow Dash muttered against the howling winds. “Hurricane, just how much did you know, girl?”
She suddenly stopped in her tracks, speechless.
A large body was blocking her way--a hunk of rusted metal with splayed mechanical parts.
Rainbow Dash blinked. She looked to the left. The front of the huge bulky structure lay flat against the inner wall of the building. She looked to the right. A pillar or two had been knocked aside, careening on either edge of the slender metal object. If Rainbow didn’t know any better, she would have guessed that this thing had crashed into the building. How long ago, she couldn’t say.
With pensive steps, she trotted around the thing. In so doing, she saw the tell-tale signs of a gondola, complete with rudders, masts, and the skeletal remains of a support structure.
“A zeppelin…” Rainbow Dash muttered as she squinted through a shattered porthole, staring into a compartment full of waterlogged junk and moldy interior furnishing. “How in the heck did it get up here?”
Her voice had a strange, confined echo to it. So she turned around, staring further down the edge of the building’s curved wall. She spotted not one but two more structures, both having impacted the building’s inner face just like the zeppelin before.
In a brisk pace, she galloped towards the two objects. Sure enough, both were airships. The hulls were in various states of decay, and she had seen enough vessels to know that one used a different kind of propulsion than the other.
“Okay… getting weirder…”
Rainbow walked along, and as she did so, she found more and more airships, all having crashed into the building’s side--evidently bow-first. She also found spaces where the marble floor of the building’s outer rim had been scraped and damaged, suggesting that even more ships had crashed there before, but over time they had either fallen off the edge or disintegrated from decay.
This pattern continued and continued. To break the monotony, Rainbow Dash paused in her counter-clockwise trek to stare out at the floating “city.” It was then that she discovered that other floating temples--some large and some small--were littered with airships themselves--be they whole entire derelicts or just the pieces of old metal carcasses.
“Luna Poop…” Rainbow Dash winced. “The Noble Jury isn’t one in a million after all…” She turned to gawk at the bulk of the structure she was traversing. “How long has this friggin’ place been gobbling up ships?”
It was then that Rainbow noticed a space of open stone to her left. She suddenly realized that the wall stopped curving, giving way to a wide partition that stretched nearly sixty feet across. Curious, she trotted past an inner layer of pillars and approached the chamber, surprised to see that no vehicle parts littered the space.
And then her hooves came to a scuffling stop. She looked straight up at the dead-center of the wall. Her mouth hung agape, and after a good solid minute, she lifted her rain-slick goggles to stare at the thing unimpeded with her natural born eyes.
“Huh…” Her expression hung between a grimace and a smirk. “Well that’s different.”
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The last supper of the pegasi. That's my guess.
Well it looks like it just sucks in everything that comes its way. I can't wait to see what RD saw on that wall
What's different?!
I have to wait ALL THE WAY 'til tomorrow to find out!
Holy crap, this is just like the Bermuda Triangle.
Some cool stuff is happening!
I like that the floating city is an airship graveyard.
At first I was thinking - "Roarke, what happened to you?"
And by the way the thing on the wall is a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of Celestia burned on it.
It's gonna be a sign saying 'Welcome Rainbow Dash'.
I'm going to say it's like Lost, but instead of a magnet it's winds and instead of numbers it's magic.
I was going to make a joke about Applejack, Roarke, and Gold Petals, but it probably would have been in poor taste.
So where's the smoke monster?
"No goddesses. No princesses. Only ponies."
Yeah. Different.
The first question that comes to my mind is: Did any of the others who arrived there ever escape? If not, what became of them? Is there a pile of bones somewhere, riddled with skulls frozen in a rictus of horror? Or... are there Others in this temple?
Also, I wonder who chiseled away the machine world from the murals. Clearly they must have had some concept of what they were looking at to have objected to it.
Hmmmmm...that puts a little bit of a damper on my theory of "that wind tunnel was meant to pull in pegasi"...
I wonder what happened to the crews of those other airships?
4181162
It would seem that bones might have been blown away more easily.
4180751
This is the most important comment in the last dozen or so chapters.
4181261
Ah, I forgot about that. We may never know what legions of wayward travelers crossed through this place on their way to echoing oblivion.
4180636
And Rainbow Dash is (wait for it) NOT Jesus. She's in Judas's spot and betrayal conspiracy theories etc etc.
Also must express love for chapter title.
What could it be?
I think this is the worst cliffhanger so far this book...
inb4 the next chapter is all about the others back at the Jury,or we get another peek at the exploits of Roarke.
so either this place just randomly sucks airships in, or a lot of pegasi have come by over the ages... probably the former.
Obelisks are simple. If you are capable of approacing teh area in flight, you have a chance of solcing the problem and restoring operation. Or, you are an intresting specemin delivering yourself to the lab for sampling an analysis?
Its a pity that all the machines seen so far, break on capture,meaning the only way to reach the source of food on the ocean surface below. is one way?
Stratoplolis: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
They have found the Bermuda Triangle. Pity it isn't as warm though. But then again, they are in the Strip of Flurries.
I still think this is the "eye" of the storm.
holy fart nuggets what is going on with these cliffhangers
I want to know what has happend to all of the ponies in those ships. Surely they all didn't just retreat back into their zeppelins to die. Some must have died outside of their ships. Or, did they just not die and were abducted by... ?
This is very interesting,
What happened to the ponies on the ships?
-Spirit
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
Hoo boy! Mystery and intrigue...this place gets better and better. So has the pony who's controlling the storm been consciously pulling in ships and zeppelins in order to make them crash? If so, then why? Perhaps this pony had a use for the ponies that would crash land...These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
P.S. Sorry I haven't been evaluating as frequently, I've just started a nine to five job and I've been pretty tired. I mean, it wouldn't be too much on its own, but more often than not, I have other commitments that I've got to take care of after job hours, so I've been pretty much tired all the time. Don't worry! This won't be forever.
Ship graveyard, huh? Interesting. It seems that they weren't in any real danger entering the storms beyond the wind. They would have ended up there anyway.
So, if there are so many ships, that would suggest that nobody was able to leave, and that by extension the Noble Jury will suffer a similar fate.
How convenient for the plot
My theory is the pegasi who once manipulated the machine world used stratopolis as a mobile maintenance station, or perhaps resource gatherer.
Well,t here goes my idea about a pegasi being needed to get into Stratopolis.
Unless... this is where the rest of the world's pegasi have gone
This chapter reminds me of when Rainbow was exploring Silvadel before she found the dragons.
8591114
Cataclysm incoming.
Everyone, fasten your seat belts...turbulence is huranteed
An erotic mural depicting Zaid milking Props and making cheese and fantasising about eating grilled cheese sandwiches (among other things) only to find out that they're out of bread.
Stratopolis reminds me of Skypiea from One Piece, with the kind of ship graveyard they got going on.