The Curtain Falls
Sunlight broke around Valey and her friends as they exited the commerce building, the sunny central plaza of Izvaldi's capitol welcoming them as warmly as always. The Immortal Dream floated in the sky above, and for the few families enjoying the breeze and the grassy warmth, the day was clearly perfect. None of their surroundings reflected the unease Valey felt, manifesting deep in her heart as she led her friends closer to the possibility of fully entering the Empire's political fray.
The conversation with Harshwater sat near the front of her mind too, pressing for precedence. But right now, her judgement couldn't afford the-
She blinked. Directly across, the hospital doors slid open, and Chauncey strolled out, his hood swapped for a miter and looking like he intended nothing more nefarious than to enjoy the weather.
"Well, there you go," Valey murmured, nudging Shinespark and Gerardo. "Remember, no binding decisions. We're gonna go make sure Ironflanks is okay with Crystal in person, so you guys see if there's any other side to this story you can pry out. I wanna hear from Chauncey why he and Crystal don't get along."
"Subtlety is the name of our game," Gerardo assured, pinching the bridge of his beak and nodding to Shinespark. "Shall we?"
As the unicorn and griffon wandered off, Maple and Grenada flanked Valey's sides, starting a slow stroll to Percival's manor. Their steps weren't hurried; Valey was hardly eager to rush things. And in the unlikely event Shinespark and Gerardo needed backup...
"Nervous?" Maple whispered. "You keep looking back at them."
"Yeah. Maybe. Nah." Valey tore her eyes away from where the three were already talking. "Look, I just don't want you to feel dragged into this, is all. I'm nervous."
"I wanted to help," Maple reminded her softly. "And we still don't know if we're doing anything yet."
"Do you not?" Grenada gave them both a look. "If Shinespark has any of her old self left in her, she would back down from being a pony's last resort for nothing."
Valey's eyes uneasily slipped back to the manor, and she scratched at her cutie mark with a wingtip. "Yeah, but there's always a first time to do something smart..."
Maple's eyes caught the movement. "Danger?"
"Eh..." Valey turned around and scrutinized herself. The old boxing glove was back on her flanks; she had worn her mark in its artifice form the Night Mother had revealed for about a day before figuring out how to switch it back and forth. "I mean, yeah, but it doesn't take magic to see we're about to jump off the edge of a cliff, here. Bananas, maybe I've got cold hooves, but another Ironridge? Can we really take getting that caught up again?"
Maple reached a hoof for her shoulders. "Valey, if you need-"
Suddenly, there was a muffled crump far beneath the ground. In less time than it took for Valey to process the noise, the entire hill heaved, tossing Maple into her with a cry. That cry was overwritten with a massive crackle of electric static, and Valey's world went white.
"Yaaah!" With a squeal from Maple, they both hit the ground, Valey rubbing furiously at her eyes. Burned into her vision was a pattern matching every window on every building, as if the entire town's lighting system had just turned into a massive camera flash bulb, and from the smell of acrid smoke, she began to guess it had.
"Was that an earthquake!?" Grenada scrambled upright beside them as Valey's vision cleared enough to see several broken windows. "What happened?"
Valey growled, a sudden, distant pain appearing and growing in her flanks. "Dunno, but it was bad news. Cancel everything and get back to the ship, right now. Whatever happened, I don't like this one bit!"
All around the plaza, the ponies who had been relaxing were anywhere from stunned to panicking. She saw Gerardo, Shinespark and Chauncey, their conversation cut short, all three staring at the fountain in the plaza's center... the fountain that was now glowing.
Water had ceased flowing from its orifices, replaced by thin arcs of energy jumping intermittently across its slick stone surface. After a frozen second of watching, Valey was vaguely certain they were getting stronger.
"Bananas, didn't you listen to me?" Valey shoved Maple toward the commerce building. "Airship. Now! Hey, Sparky!" She spread her wings, launching over to where her other friends stood. "Bad news, don't like this. What's going on?"
Chauncey gave her a shadowed glance, not turning his head from the fountain. "Misfortune. You are wise to flee. I think it would behoove us to evacuate this hill with all due haste." He started stumping towards the administration building, no hurry in his old legs.
"Birdo, you do that, you're faster," Valey snapped, and Gerardo instantly bolted. "Sparky, very kindly get those two back to the ship!" She flung a hoof at Maple and Grenada, then rounded on Chauncey. "Alright, buddy. So what exactly is going on, here? Something exploded, there was an earthquake, please don't tell me your big fancy underground is a bomb or something equally stupid."
Chauncey regarded her with impassionate eyes. "That tremor was likely the single-use transition transformer bank blowing out under load as my mana generator array was connected to the power grid. I recall explaining its function to you."
Valey's ears went back. "Wait, what?"
"It is heretical to construct mana wells in the Empire. All power must be sourced from what Garsheeva provides," Chauncey rasped, watching as the plasmatic crackle around the fountain statue grew. "Ostensibly, a law to keep the Empire's currency flow intact, as power sales are the main income of the crown. But also an easy way to draw Garsheeva's attention, should any fools alter the pressure of power in the Empire's centralized grid. I built this as a beacon to draw the highest eyes in the Empire when my champion was ready to challenge them, but it seems someone with the proper activation codes has seen to it early. What a pity."
"Oh bananas." Valey swallowed, wondering if the most desperate mare she could think of could also have the said codes. "And who might that be?"
Chauncey ignored the question, shifting beneath his robes. "Irrelevant. In a matter of minutes, I expect Meltdown at the least to teleport in through the guild, likely with an inquisition army in tow. If the hour of my last stand has been decided for me, I will stand." He glanced back at Valey. "Artifice, this is not your battle."
Valey scratched her neck. "Yeah, uh, thanks for not trying to drag me into this, but why would you build a giant beacon to declare war on the Empire? And why is it going off!?"
Chauncey shrugged. "I had a chance of changing this continent forever, once, for the betterment of you and me and all sarosiankind. It seems fate was not on my side, but I will go defiantly. I had hoped to make my last stand in a month's time, but now is as good as any. You should leave."
"Bananas." Valey glared at him. "Who else has this activation code? Is it Crystal? That granddaughter who has a massive beef with you and is somehow related to Stanza?"
Chauncey raised an eyebrow. "So you've been talking to her, have you? I hope you found her a more pleasant conversationalist than usual."
Around them, the ground shook again, and Valey noticed the hexagonal path linking the six capitol buildings was beginning to flicker with energy too. "Are you just going to sit around here talking like you're having tea with me!?" Her fur bristled all along her spine, and she shot the hospital doors an anxious glance, ponies already streaming or being carried out of the darkened buildings. "She told me she's somehow linked to Stanza! Tell me what Crystal wants and if she could set off this generator thing to screw you over!"
Chauncey just looked to the sky. "Get along with yourself and do as you please. I have an encounter to prepare for."
"Oh, for the love of curvy...!" Valey stomped, then bolted for the hospital. It couldn't be a coincidence that this happened right after Crystal talked to her about breaking Stanza to foil Chauncey's plans. Was Gerardo right? Had they somehow gotten played? Was Crystal an idiot who had jumped the gun? Either way, she needed to be sure, and ignored the mounting pain in her cutie mark to fling herself headlong into the building.
The hospital's corridors were lit only by windows, some broken and some whole. Apparently, there hadn't been a lot of ponies to evacuate, which made sense given that they had a machine which could fix any physical injury. She reached the elevator and realized she had forgotten the upgraded password Chauncey gave them to return to the basement floor, but it didn't matter because the power was blown and the lights were out and the door had a crack at the floor.
With a slither of shadows, Valey was through, dropping into an elevator shaft beneath the carriage and breaking into freefall. Twisting, she passed a sparking power conductor on her way down, tapping the sound stone against it as she fell. "Yo, it's me!"
The response was instant. "Valey?" Shinespark's voice crackled. "Where did you run? I have everyone back at the ship, and you went into the hospital?"
"Yeah, I got some stuff to take care of. Get away from the city, Chauncey probably summoned a hostile army with this stunt," Valey called back. "I'll catch up!"
"Okay..."
Valey tucked the sound stone back under her hat, pulling out of freefall just in time to reach the bottom of the shaft. All around her were generator pylons, massive slabs of crystal propagating the huge underground chamber, and in the center she could see the huge power couple that had clearly somehow been activated. Its surface was completely covered in plasmatic crackles, and her cutie mark told her she could barely even approach the thrown breaker switch without getting fried... not that it would matter now, of course. Whoever Chauncey's machine had summoned would already be on their way.
Retracting moorings rippled in the air, and the combined telekinesis of Grenada and Shinespark easily lifted the gangplank back to its regular position as the Immortal Dream rose away from the commerce tower. Of all the buildings, that one was clearly the most heavily-populated, and alarms sounded through the air despite the blown-out power. Maple watched the receding plaza with wide eyes as Gerardo steered them further.
"Do you think this is because of what Valey was talking about?" Maple murmured, Jamjars lurking beside her.
"With Crystal and Percival?" Shinespark's eyes narrowed, the sound stone still floating nearby. "I hope not. I also don't know exactly what it is. Probably an Izvalden problem and best for us to leave, but they certainly don't look happy about it..."
Below, as ponies and griffons streamed to the lower concert field and the greater township to the north, the fountain glowed brightly as a point, the paths between the buildings forming a crackling hexagon around it. As everyone continued to watch, the grass on the hillsides began to smolder too, and suddenly a third blaze of electric blue grew into being, an equilateral triangle to complete the sigil.
"The Emblem of the Nine Virtues...?" Shinespark breathed.
Grenada frowned. "If I did not know better, I would say it looks designed to catch attention from the air."
Shinespark's ears suddenly pressed back. "Trust Valey to take care of herself. I have a feeling we need to clear this airspace, right now."
Another shadow sneak let Valey through the doors from the generator room to Stanza's white-coated testing room. Broken, sparking lights illuminated the entire facility, a thick blanket of smoke coating the ceiling from another door on the opposite side. Here, the quake looked like it had hit hardest, floor and ceiling tiles broken or dangling and errant wires hanging where they had been dislodged. Stanza wasn't present. But in the middle, back to her, was Crystal.
"Valey," Crystal said, turning to look over her shoulder.
"Bananas, I knew you'd be down here!" Valey stomped toward her. "Did you just turn on that generator? Do you have any idea what it's going to do!?"
Crystal turned to her, emerald eyes stressed to the breaking point. The lighting was uneven, and part of her form was hard to make out, but it was plain to see that she had shed her maid dress and was here on her own, unadorned. "Of course I do," she answered over the sound of the generators and distant groans from the structurally-destabilized building. "You were looking for a way out of helping me. You finally saw you had gone too far, and were making excuses, so I had to try myself. This will create a distraction so nobody sees when I undo Stanza, and Gazelle and Meltdown will come to see to Chauncey like you suggested. There is collateral damage, but if I don't do this, I will die with my foal."
Her voice was deathly cool and composed, devoid of emotion, and as Valey walked closer she could smell the fear before even seeing it in Crystal's eyes. The mare's wings were spread, she realized, wrapped around her swollen belly like a leathery shield, and Crystal watched her with the poise of an animal who had nothing it wouldn't risk.
"Well, congratulations on making our decision easier," Valey deadpanned. "Look, if you can get out of here alive, I guess you can come with us until we figure something out, because this really isn't the place to be having a sentimental chat. Can you move?"
Crystal gave her a dirty look. "I still need to find Stanza." She turned to the tunnel in the wall where Stanza's rail tracks disappeared, lifted her nose, sniffed, and took off running.
Valey blinked, actually having to try to keep up. Crystal's legs didn't just look good, she was fast! And while this heavily pregnant, too? Clearly the exercise equipment in her room wasn't just for show. Briefly, Valey tried to imagine how strong the mare would likely be if she wasn't so encumbered, then mentally slapped herself for it. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong thoughts period!
Crystal raced around a split in the tunnel, and then another. "How do you know where we're going?" Valey called behind her, only able to follow thanks to her good night vision.
"Stanza can find me, I can find Stanza," Crystal replied, somehow even able to talk while running. "I always know where it is, even provinces away."
The tunnels didn't last much longer. Crystal skidded to a stop, and Valey collided with her rear, having followed too closely. That earned a scowl, but they were there: the back of the tunnel was dimly outlined around Stanza's silhouette, as though the statue was glowing with faint green light that didn't illuminate its own surface. A whisper of anguished organ notes reached Valey's ears, bearing a mortal longing for love and light and joy and happiness, flooding her with thoughts of an infinite void that needed to be filled. For a moment, her mind teetered, memories of hallucinations in the Gyre tunnels returning, and her cutie mark spiked along with them. The danger in her flank was reaching a concerning pitch.
"Hey, uh, Crystal?" Valey pulled out the sound stone, its stored glow casting a tiny amount of illumination on the scene. "You know what you're doing, right?"
The stone illuminated Crystal, balanced on her hind hooves, reaching up and standing from Stanza's rail cart. Her forehooves were on the statue's chest, a look of grim determination on her face as she wrested and wrenched and yanked at the jagged black crown embedded in Stanza's choker where the dusk statue's lunar gem lay shattered. "Nnngh...!" She heaved, throwing her entire weight back and forth, trying to tear the thing from its bracing.
Valey watched with wide eyes as Crystal fought the statue for possession of the crown, Stanza's empty eye sockets meeting Crystal's frantic ones. Even encumbered with her foal, Valey was fairly certain the older mare was stronger than she was, and was suddenly glad they hadn't come to blows while arguing in her room before. A punch from Crystal looked like it would have hurt.
Sweating, shifting her hoofing, Crystal strained, rocking herself from side to side and twisting at the midnight crown. And as Valey watched, she realized this was the first time in proper lighting she had seen Crystal without her dress before. No matter what would have usually stood out to her, in this framing, there was only one thing she could see: on Crystal's flanks, her cutie mark was an exact image of the crown she was trying to break free.
"Away from the city!" Shinespark urged, waving at Gerardo to move the ship faster. Izvaldi was a ring in the distance, close enough that the Emblem of the Nine Virtues was still visible shining up into the midday air, but this was as far as they were going to get.
With a building pressure wave, a dark spot on the horizon expanded, barreling in from the south a healthy distance out of their way. The effigy came into relief as a sphinx the size of a barn, mist trailing from Garsheeva's wings as she streaked towards the city without flapping, pulling up and alighting herself on a hilltop to the south across the river, then craning her neck like a vulture and grinning down at the plaza over Percival's manor with bared teeth. "You have my attention," she rumbled, tail flicking in excitement.
A gust of wind swept past the Immortal Dream's deck, built up and released by Garsheeva's flight. Everyone on deck glanced at each other, and Shinespark frowned. "Gerardo, take us higher. Anyone who couldn't hang on if we suddenly accelerate, get back inside."
Everyone ignored her except Gerardo. "Are you sure this is a safe distance?" Maple murmured above the atmospheric wind. "I can still see individual ponies in the plaza! And the field below!"
"Hmm..." Shinespark floated over a spyglass, pressing it to her eye. "Chauncey. I think everyone but him was smart enough to get out... though I can't speak for the underground. But we're not going far enough that Valey can't see us."
"Why not?" Starlight frowned. "She can follow my scent back here, can't she? Whatever she's doing, you couldn't help by going after her."
Chauncey must have been saying something while they were talking, because Garsheeva's grin widened. "It's just me today. My subordinates haven't been as happy as they should be to evict you and your problems, and it's satisfying to have an excuse to do this in person." Then she raised a massive paw, individual claws the sizes of bathtubs, and slammed it down on Chauncey in a stroke faster than Maple could blink.
Crack!
Before Valey could stare too long at Crystal's cutie mark, the statue gave. Crystal tumbled backwards with a yelp, dropping the crown and sending it skittering away along the rail tracks.
"Woah!" Valey darted forward, catching her gently with a grunt. "Be careful! Really not the best time of your life to take a bad fall."
Crystal blinked, eyes starting to shake as they widened. "I-I almost... Thank you," she whispered, taking no steps to right herself.
Valey blinked, still holding her. "Uhh... You're thanking me? Are you alright, girl? No offense, but that's not like you."
Crystal didn't reply, gingerly sitting down and hugging herself.
"Whatever." Valey held the sound stone like a torch, approaching the fallen crown. There was no question that this was Stanza's core. Separated from the corrupted dusk statue, its feel was entirely different: the smell of the emotions surrounding it was gone, the music had stopped, there were no more notes in her head. But the feeling of a yawning, infinite, loveless void persisted as she stared at it, and the pain in her cutie mark built to such a pitch that her vision began to flicker, a hallucination superimposing itself in bursts over her present state where the air was filled with falling flakes of grayness. "...This thing's creepy."
"Don't touch it," Crystal warned, tenderly rubbing her child. "It's less in my head, but it's still there. It would probably paralyze or kill anyone but me."
"Duly noted." Valey rubbed her neck. "So what do we-"
The entire structure heaved again, sending Valey to her knees and forcing Crystal to brace herself. Stones fell from the ceiling as the tunnel roof spiderwebbed with cracks, and Valey had to get up halfway through the tremor and kick one away that was about to fall on Crystal's head. "Bananas, what's wrong with this place!?"
By the time the shaking subsided, a wall of fallen rubble blocked the way out, and from the burning in her cutie mark Valey guessed the rest of the tunnel was about to go.
Garsheeva recoiled from her slam, the entire hillside rippling from the shock of her blow. Maple and Shinespark pressed their heads together, passing back and forth a single spyglass, trying to make sense of the aftermath.
The Emblem still crackled brightly, raising its light to they sky in defiance of a goddess who had her own religion for the entire eastern continent, though the fountain was smashed and reduced to a pool of muddy rubble. Beside it was a crater, fitting a perfect barrier of gray hexagons. In the center was Chauncey, and Garsheeva's ears tilted as he said something they couldn't hear. Her teeth bared harder in a smile that was half anticipation, half vengeful doom, and her paw drew back to strike again.
Shadow swimming was a skill Valey had practiced extensively, yet swimming through rubble was one of the most disorienting things she could do. With one hoof, she probed her two-dimensional way forward, slipping in and out of chunks of broken stone and twisted iron reinforcement, the other holding Crystal and pulling her along. Physically fit or not, this was one area where Valey was definitely faster.
Odd angles pressed in on her body from all sides, threatening to eject her under a heavy concrete slab or into a sharpened spur, and she didn't have her cutie mark to fall back on. It felt like her butt was on fire, from proximity to the crown and the tunnel's collapse and who knew what else was happening. Her muzzle passed through a space to breathe, and she gulped down air, pulling herself along and following Starlight's scent towards the exit.
Finally, rubble clattered around her, and she kicked off a severed chunk of cement and pulled Crystal upright in her wake. The older batpony wore Stanza's crown like a hoof bracelet, and Valey glared at it. "I thought the point was to destroy Stanza, not steal it! Just because that thing's no longer attached to a dusk statue doesn't mean it's not dangerous!"
"You'd rather I leave it here for anyone to find?" Crystal countered. "I can't break this. We're going to throw it away where no one will ever find it, and if it does get moved, I'll know. Argue less, stay alive more!"
Valey had to admit, Crystal was much nicer after whatever had happened. Was it breaking Stanza? Something as simple and mundane as catching her when she fell? Or was she starting to have hope again that this would work out?
She tried to hide her own annoyance; this was the last way she wanted to depart from Izvaldi. Her ears folded at the fresh wave of destruction in Stanza's testing room. Clearly, whatever the generator had done wasn't the last abuse the world had in store for this place, but the sound stone had gone dim during the swim and she couldn't contact her friends up above.
"Alright, elevator. We'll fly up, I'll help you." Valey pushed Crystal along, trusting the mare was too ready to escape to complain... but right before they could clear the doors, there was another tremor, and the entire ceiling of the generator room caved in.
A crunch rent the sky as Garsheeva's second blow landed, compacting in the center of the plaza, all six buildings wobbling as their foundations were suddenly separated by a full story halfway through. The Emblem flickered as its generators were crushed, and all of the central lines burned fitfully for a moment before resuming intensity. Wide-eyed, Shinespark started to tremble, and Maple's shoulder was the closest one for her to lean on.
"I can't believe this," Amber murmured. "That's supposed to be their goddess, right? She's destroying their whole city..."
"Not their whole city," Gerardo remarked, strolling out of the bridge with Slipstream and Nyala left behind in control. "Merely their capitol, which was built entirely by a stallion who now challenges her to combat. They even evacuated first. That said, it does reek of wasted money and effort."
"But there was a hospital," Maple murmured. "You don't suppose...?"
Gerardo shrugged. "Garsheeva more than likely knows what she's doing. Unless you plan on intervening, I see no course of action we should take, and even if we did, whose side would you pick?"
"Theirs," Shinespark said, throat tight, pointing down at the evacuees in the lower concert field below. "Although with the structural damage those punches must be doing..."
Grenada's frown mirrored Shinespark's. "Anything we would do, it is already too late. But observe that Garsheeva has no interest in the population centers or citizens."
"Only with the ponies arrogant enough to challenge her," Amber sighed, folding her forehooves on the railing. "I wonder where Percival is?"
"More importantly, Valey," Shinespark said, gritting her teeth. "Starlight? There's no way you can...?"
"Tell where she is? No." Starlight shook her head. "But she's definitely fine. Trust me."
Valey was not definitely fine.
"Okay, uhh..." She glanced from exit to exit, but both of the paths out of Stanza's testing chamber she had explored so far led to collapsed areas. The only room left was billowing smoke; she was sure it held whatever equipment had exploded connecting Chauncey's generators to the power grid and bringing his beacon online. Dangling roofing panels hung around her, a few splintered crossbeams spiking through the ceiling of smoke, and she had nothing. "Bananas. I literally don't know which way to go."
Suddenly, a strong forelimb wrapped around her barrel from above. "Woah! Hey!"
"Don't struggle," Crystal commanded, pulling Valey against her with one leg as she flew, rising into the smoke. "And hold your breath."
Valey obeyed, mind running uselessly through how she could possibly be carried single-hoofedly through smoke by a flying, pregnant sarosian when suddenly Crystal did even more. Pulling back her free, braceleted hoof, she punched the ceiling... and with a clatter of twisting metal, an air vent grate fell out of the way beside them. Valey gaped, regretting it instantly as smoke stung the inside of her mouth, but Crystal didn't give her time to pause. The mare tromped onward, dragging her through the airless tunnel as fast as they could go, until a lifeless fan blocked the duct and Crystal stopped to tear it aside too. Pulling Valey along, she pressed on, stomping so hard on the duct floor that it threatened to give beneath her, until she found what she was looking for: a bit of floor resting on a support beam. Setting Valey down, Crystal braced her hind legs against the floor, and through the smoky haze Valey saw a flicker of energy surrounding the crown bracelet... and Crystal punched the ceiling, her empowered hoof tearing away part of the duct and the floor of the room above. Grabbing Valey by the tail, she yanked both of them into the breathable air along with a plume of smog, rolled onto her back, and lay shivering and coughing.
For a moment, Valey coughed as well, eyes streaming from the acrid spray. "Bananas, you..."
Beside her, Crystal curled up and uncurled, heaving for breath, and kicked the crown from her foreleg, the fur beneath it faintly singed a darker shade of black. Clutching her unborn child, she glanced at Valey with eyes that clearly said, your turn.
"...Yeah." Valey got up and nodded, smoke still rising from the hole in the floor. If she had been going to yell at Crystal for activating that generator, the time was long passed. They were in a room that looked like it had been used for experiments, but it was connected to a hallway that was still mostly intact... She grabbed a bucket from a wall and threw it over the crown, scooping the thing up and holding the handle in her teeth. "Coming?" She beckoned around it to Crystal with a wing.
Crystal just winced, rubbing the singed spot on her foreleg in pain.
"Gotcha." Valey ducked closer, doing her best to hoist the mare comfortably on her back. It was awkward, with Crystal unable to fit and leaving her hindquarters practically dragging, but after whatever that had been, she wasn't about to leave the other mare behind. Crystal's forehooves locked around her neck, and Valey took off, running as fast as her load would allow.
Garsheeva reared back, jaws opening wide... and a plume of smoke lanced out to attack Chauncey like a ray, red and black and moving in far too straight a line for any gaseous material. Inside, it boiled with energy, and through the spyglass seemed covered in giant, thorny spikes... The goddess wanted Chauncey gone. Again, the effects cleared to reveal Chauncey safe in his nightmare shield, and Garsheeva actually looked somewhat irked. "Fight back! Don't challenge me only to bore me, worm!"
Chauncey's reply was lost to the winds, but his behavior didn't change. "She can fight him, right?" Amber whispered. "That shield seems to stop at nothing..."
"It doesn't matter." Shinespark swallowed, watching the collateral of the fight. "He's already done what he wanted to, which is spite her on his way out. It's all about the..." She looked in a circle, scanning the skies, then trailed off, suddenly pale.
"Shinespark?" Maple felt the weight increase on her shoulders as her friend stiffened again. "What's wrong?"
"Oh no," Shinespark breathed, face ashen, staring with pinprick eyes at the western horizon. "Oh please no not again. No, this can't be..."
Everyone was now paying more attention to her than the battle, some scanning the horizon as well. "I don't see anything," Amber remarked. "Are you okay?"
Gerardo squinted at the sky. "There's something bright and silver, an extremely long ways off... Barely bigger than a grain of rice. See?"
Valey panted hard, slipping under a half-collapsed doorway with the bucket in her teeth and Crystal halfway on her back. Puddles' ruined experimentation dais sat in a room of tumbled shelves and equipment, and cracks raked the walls, but the tunnel leading up was still intact and open.
"Alright..." Valey sagged, gasping, and dropped the bucket. "We each fly ourselves up. Think we can make it?"
Crystal nodded, taking a final breath before getting to her hooves and spreading her wings. She took the bucket, deciding not to remove the crown, and lifted off, spiraling into a straight flight upward. Valey kept pace, meeting her ally's eyes as they rose. The older mare had the look of someone who knew they were going to die a day ago and it hadn't come to pass: unshackled, unfettered, and ready to go down trying.
"I think," Valey panted, "I see the top..."
They crested into Puddles' room, the Stanza-esque metal hoses that made up the walls much more resistant to earthquake tremors than the rest of the building. Crystal shoved the door, not needing Stanza's enhancement to free it from its frame, and they raced through the old nursery, long since cleared of all the possessions left there as a shrine by Wallace and Morena. The stairs in the next room had hairline cracks, but nothing stopped Valey and Crystal from flying past, a few errant warning alarms still blaring around corners and from adjacent rooms.
"The elevator is left," Crystal panted, forcing the next door... but left led to a collapsed ceiling, and Valey doubted the shaft would be intact on the other side. "Right, then!"
Through the psychiatric residential ward they raced, some rooms never occupied and others with the doors still ajar from where ponies and griffons had been hurried out minutes before. Crystal's eyes flew wildly about as they reached an intersection... and settled on another ceiling vent. "Air duct!" she hissed, flapping up and tearing it free.
"Again?" Valey raised an eyebrow, hovering behind her. "You sure this is a way out?"
"Of course I'm sure; I know these buildings' layouts," Crystal snapped, hauling her bulk into the duct. "Follow me."
Valey obliged, this duct significantly tighter than the last one. But Crystal was just as limber as she was strong, and didn't slow her down any more than an ordinary pony who had experience with vent-crawling. Several times they turned, and Crystal's tail snapped at Valey's nose to ensure she was following.
Another fan had to go, this one taking Crystal twice as long to wrench out of the way without the aid of Stanza's crown. But soon after it she pushed out another grate, slithering out of a wall and into a cozy office space that reminded Valey a lot of the teleportation guild. "Hold up, are we in...?"
"The administrative building's basement," Crystal finished, nodding, sitting down and checking her child. "We haven't had a tremor for a while."
"Yeah, we... we haven't..." Valey tried flicking sweat from her brow, but it was no good. Her cutie mark was still burning, danger encompassing her like a blanket of knives, not even fixed on the crown anymore. Briefly, her stomach lurched, threatening to be upset by the pain. "Urk... Guh, can we get out of here? We're not safe..."
Crystal pointed to a staircase, doubled over around her womb. "One floor up, there's a window to the-"
"I think I see it too," Maple murmured, staring into the sky. It was before noon; the sun was at their backs, glinting off whatever Shinespark saw to the west. "It's a silver... something. Is that an airship? It's either tiny or moving fast."
"An airship?" Amber squinted. "It looks like a shiny insect. You recognize that, Shinespark?"
Shinespark was frozen, ears down and tail between her legs, her eyes pinprick and her lips drawn in loose, straight, teeth-baring despair. "Valey, give me the detonator..."
"What are you talking about?" Jamjars asked, glancing quizzically at her.
The thing was getting closer, and Gerardo stared at her for a moment... then blinked in wide-eyed realization. "Well. That's a silver sliver I do recognize after all. Maple, remember the bridge?"
Maple frowned, squinting through the spyglass. The incoming object was long, thin, and seemed to have a burning tail... She gasped. "It couldn't be!"
Amber stomped a hoof. "Stop beating around the bush!"
"That right there is a recent Yakyakistani invention known as a rocket, my yellow friend," Gerardo murmured, putting a talon between her ears. "And I believe the first and only time any of us have seen one is the one responsible for delivering a payload of windigoes to Ironridge."
Maple let the spyglass go slack as the rocket drew closer, moving faster than she could conceive. For a full second, it was plainly visible, close enough to make out propulsion at the tail and a thin, pointed nose, and her brain took as much of the time to make connections as it could: Yakyakistani technology, Chauncey had stolen a scientist from Yakyakistan, Chauncey was stalling against Garsheeva, Crystal's foal would have been bait, the sigil was bait, the sigil was a target, the sigil was the emblem of Yakyakistan-
A lilac filly threw herself over the railing, and then the world went red.
Crystal was mid-sentence when Valey's time froze. She glanced around frantically; danger was here and now. But where was it? Her heart began to beat faster; it couldn't be Crystal, but she couldn't see what it was. Direction? Everywhere. She had to move, but there was nowhere to go...!
The time-stop wore off. Reality returned without giving Valey a target, and she spun towards Crystal as a vacuum-like silence engulfed the room... and then again in slow motion, letting her watch her own death, the air rippled and the room bent and everything caved in from the side. The roof was pushed backwards, the wall was gone in an expanding sheet of heat and force and light and flame. Her fur would burn first, her cutie mark told her, and then her flesh and... Teal.
Suddenly, Starlight was between her and Crystal and the explosion, hooves touching her, horn flaring with a corona of teal light. Her aura expanded as the shockwave reached them; Valey could feel her fur igniting... and then it was encased in cool gemstone, and the fireball roared on by.
Starlight's shield held as long as it could, but the explosion's aftershock ripped it into a million shards, tearing the filly's magic apart and freeing the mares with a scream. An immense, fiery wind split Valey's ears and bowled her over, and with her last shred of willpower, she grabbed Starlight's tail in her teeth, preventing the filly from blowing away, and flung herself over Crystal...
The roof was gone, but the falling debris wasn't. Her cutie mark was too taxed to try anymore, but Crystal was prone, belly to the sky, too shocked to move. Valey braced herself over her, throwing Starlight into her hooves and planting her legs as cinders and pellets and tiny hot chunks rained across her back. Something sharp struck her spine, then something hard, and she knew she was burned or bleeding or both but stood her ground. A brick struck Valey in the side, but she stayed upright, too focused even to muster a battle cry.
Finally, the onslaught ended, the heavier debris gone and only cinders falling. Valey arched her back in pain, unable and unwilling to move, too exhausted to question whether the mare who connected that generator in the first place deserved it. She did this for others. That was what she did. And with Starlight beneath her, horn sparking and eyes blank and unconscious, and Crystal below that, going into shock but whole and unscathed, if she could have moved, she would have felt like laughing.
From the deck of the Immortal Dream, every last pony stood speechless. Gerardo gaped. Amber cried. Shinespark was numb from horror.
"Not again," Shinespark whispered, the sound stone glowing in her aura but no one to pick it up. "No, not again. Not again, not again..."
The capitol hill was a crater. Layer upon layer of underground rooms lay exposed, covered by a thin and growing film of detritus and ash. There was no sign of Chauncey. What had once been a barn-sized sphinx was now a charred husk missing several major parts, and a lament was rising from the field below a red-tinged sky full of soot.
"T-That was a bomb," Grenada stammered, slack-jawed at the destruction. "That stallion lured Garsheeva into a bomb that large?"
"And not just any bomb," Gerardo murmured. "One delivered expressly from on high. Detonating your opponent's feet is one thing, but dropping destruction from above? Everyone had to have-"
VERY FUNNY, Garsheeva's growl roared in Maple's head, and she winced from the volume. It nearly made her drop the spyglass, but training it back on the crater, a lone figure hovered above the destruction... an unstained sphinx, only slightly bigger than normal, with Garsheeva's coloration and hanging in midair above the huge corpse. I HAVEN'T HAD THAT TRIED IN A WHILE. WAS THAT A DECLARATION OF WAR I JUST FELT?
From the change in tone of the crowd below, Maple wasn't the only one to hear it, but everyone else on the ship looked at her in puzzlement save Shinespark, who was too limp to care. "Maple? Are you alright?" Gerardo offered, stepping forward in concern.
"Starlight..." Maple slumped, stretching a hoof at last to where her filly had disappeared over the railing. "W-We... We need to look for... Someone with wings, Starlight and Valey, they..."
Shinespark just stared.
Valey breathed, standing, trying as hard as possible not to move her back. She was in bad condition. Without even seeing it, she knew this would spell the end of her tournament ambitions, and the machine in the hospital that could heal her would certainly have been destroyed...
"How?" Crystal breathed up at her, eyes too dry from the hot wind for tears.
"'Cuz I'm me. This is what I do," Valey gasped, breathing lightly. "Ow. You alright...?"
Crystal slowly crawled out from beneath her, brushing off a copious amount of ash and dust. "I-I..." Her belly shifted ever so slightly from a kick. "I'm alive. We're alive. How?"
Valey gritted her teeth. "Same way you got me out of that smoke room. And you really should thank her. Bananas, I've only seen her this bad once before..."
Starlight's horn was crackling faintly and radiating heat, and her eyes were open but unseeing. Quick, shallow breaths rocked her little body, and she was just as soot-caked as Valey knew she was becoming herself. Crystal's eyes widened when she focused on the filly.
"I'll fly us out of here," Crystal mumbled, her emerald eyes shining with newfound respect. "But first..."
She kicked aside a fallen, singed board to reveal the bucket, and from that plucked Stanza's twisted crown. They were on the remains of a blown-out hillside, and it was clear the river was already backing up to resume its course and continue its path to the sea. Crystal stared down at the rushing waters, rising darkly and dragging debris off into their building currents... and hurled the regalia with all her might, banishing it with a tiny sploosh. "Never again," she whispered, and the crown was gone.
Something clicked in Valey's back, and she lurched painfully. "Ow bananas..."
"Is that your ship on the horizon?" Crystal asked, trying to maneuver Valey safely onto her own back. "Hold tight. I'll get us there."
"And Starlight too..." Valey groggily reminded, her flanks hurting worst of all with the memory of her cutie mark's pain. In all the haze, she realized she couldn't even smell Starlight, even though she was right there. It felt like she was in the sky some distance away...
"The filly? I have her," Crystal assured, spreading her wings and lifting away from the wreckage, skimming close to the ground.
"It's just like Sosa," Shinespark whispered, Gerardo standing nearby with wings over Maple and Amber. "It's just like Sosa. Yakyakistan. We... Was it something we did? Was there something we could have done? It was because we came back here, wasn't it? Because of that offer Valey received..."
"We don't know," Maple stiffly replied, trying to keep her own heart from exploding. "Even if we set something off, even if it feels like this came out of nowhere, this was building for a long time, but we don't know what happened. It's not your fault. Now we just have to get everyone back and fly away from here, and let others worry about how it occurred..."
Shinespark continued to stare at the ruin. Then, slowly, the door to the cabin slid open and a lilac filly stumbled out, rubbing her eyes. "What's happening?" Starlight grumbled. "I'm trying to nap..."
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Glimmer did an oopsie. This has to be one of the best chapters in this story yet!
Holy cow, what a ride! Fantastic chapter. And now the Glimmer is out of the bag, so to speak. Hope we find out exactly who she is now.
And not sure simply throwing the crown in the river is a great idea. 100s of years from now some pony will probably fish it out, kill his friend, go insane and live in a cave until another pony steals it in a riddle contest! Should have tossed it in a volcano instead.
holy frickin moly, that was awesome. its GLIMMER TIME
Holy crap
heeeeeere’s glimmy
goddamn
Boy, that Yakyakistani weapons program is really cutting- (exploding-, burning-...) edge!
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Is your last paragraph a reference to something?
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Sounds like Lord of the Rings.
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Not only is the comment a Lord of the Rings reference, but throwing the crown in the river was too.
Well. She did hold to that. May not be just this once now though.
Dang Chauncey. That was a bold plan. Feels like the other shoe is about to fall too, whether an extension of the plan or repercussions thereof.
Yeah, Glimmer is out in the open, Garshiva is PO'd, the important question here is... was the concert field far enough?
Also, I love how this chapter's name is a callback to another around two hundred and fifty chapters earlier.
homestuck.com/images/storyfiles/hs2/00247.gif
Now that’s interesting- it looks like Glimmer has the same magic problems as Starlight, which, if she’s future Starlight like Twilight and I assumed, is very odd.
Glimmer… changed things? Was Valey supposed to die?
really? a fucking NUKE goes off and all she says is "i was trying to nap"? goddamn she must be a heavy sleeper.