Aitran

by CTVulpin

Chapter 2

A/N- On the off-chance that you have never played Myst and don’t want anything about it spoiled, go get it and play it before reading further. It’ll be worth it.

---

“Twilight Sparkle, I don’t know whether I should hug you or kick you.”

“Why would there be kicking?”

“Besides the fact that you landed on top of me?” Rainbow Dash wiggled out from underneath the lavender unicorn, and then stood up and offered Twilight a hoof up. Once her friend was upright and steady, the cyan pegasus gave her a decidedly unfriendly slap upside the back of her head.

“Ow,” Twilight grimaced, “What was that for?”

“You came in after me!” Rainbow exclaimed, jumping into a hover.

“Well, I couldn’t just leave you in… well, here, alone,” Twilight said, looking around. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn she and Rainbow weren’t inside the Aitran book. The more she thought about it though, she realized she probably didn’t know better. The book might have teleported the pair to some far-off, real-life location in the wide, uncharted areas far beyond the borders of Equestria’s neighboring lands.

“Do you have a plan for getting us back home?” Rainbow asked sarcastically. When Twilight blushed and averted her gaze in embarrassment, the pegasus sighed and shook her head slowly. “You’re supposed to be the smart one Twilight,” she said, “but on the other hoof, I appreciate not being alone.” She flew up a little higher and looked around. “I’ll go take a look around,” she said, “see if I can find somepony or clues about where we are.” She zoomed away in a blur of rainbows even as Twilight nodded. The lavender unicorn smiled at her friend’s enthusiasm and then ran some quick calculations in her head. Assuming that their current location was the same island as described in Aitran, Dash would likely complete a cursory overview of the entire place in less than a minute, since the island’s dimensions would have made it able to fit within the boundaries of Ponyville at least twice, possibly three times, with room to spare.

Deciding to begin a more leisurely and complete survey, Twilight began walking along the dock she had appeared on. To her right was the sunken sailing ship, its mast and forecastle spar the only parts visible above the waterline. To her left, she saw a stone door set into the cliffside, which rose to just a little ways above her head. Up ahead was a staircase that would take her up onto the island proper, and then a longer one that curved up to a high platform of stone that had what looked to be a pair of giant gears stuck in it. Twilight stopped at the foot of the dock stairs, having noticed a curious metal podium there. At least, it resembled a podium that stood at about shoulder-height, with a sloped top, a wood panel on the front, and a mouth-operated switch on the top. After looking it over and giving it a light probe with her telekinesis, Twilight grasped the switch and lifted it into an upright position, where it clicked into place but produced no obvious effect. Twilight played with it a few times before shrugging, leaving it up, and moving on. Up on the terra firma of the island, she found herself at the side of a round building and opted to head left, leaving the elevated platform and gears for later. The path lead along the edge of the island to a path made of railroad ties embedded in the ground leading farther up the hilly island. She noticed another of the switch podiums was set up next to the door of the round building, and right next to that building was a larger, square building with an open doorway and a pre-classical pillar-supported facade. To her left was a small forest of pine trees with a path cutting through it from the door of the large building toward the far end of the island. The path seemed to be lined by marble columns on either side.

As Twilight continued up the path, her hoof landed on something that crinkled. Looking down, she saw that she had stepped on a piece of paper. Curious, she lifted her hoof and levitated the paper up, seeing that it was note written with ink with vaguely familiar horn-writing. Clover¸ it read, I have left you a message of vital importance on the viewer behind the dock. The access code is the number of marker switches on the island. -Star Swirl. “Marker switch?” Twilight mused, “I wonder…” Her thoughts were interrupted by Rainbow Dash’s return, the gust of wind from her sudden stop nearly blowing the note out of Twilight’s magical grip.

“There’s nopony here,” Rainbow said, “but there are quite a few buildings.”

“There definitely were ponies here once,” Twilight said, nodding and showing Rainbow the note, “at the very least it was Star Swirl and somepony named Clover.” The pegasus landed as she read the note, and then shrugged her wings in disinterest. “Have you checked inside any buildings?” Twilight asked.

“Nope,” Dash said, “but I am a bit curious about that tower up there.” She pointed and Twilight turned to follow her hoof. Behind the square building was a steep cone of a mountain topped with a cylindrical green structure that seemed to reach down inside the rock. “Everywhere else has a door,” Dash said, “but I couldn’t see any way to get in there.”

“Maybe we can get in through there,” Twilight said, nodding at the square building. Rainbow nodded her approval and the ponies walked over and peered through the door. The interior was comprised of a single octagonal room paneled in dark-stained wood. Directly across from the door was a three-level bookshelf built into the wall. A pair of oil paintings hung the walls to either side of the bookcase, one depicting the view outside through the front door and the other showing a doorway leading into a hallway. “I think this is a library,” Twilight said as she and Dash walked inside.

“Check out this fireplace,” Dash said, sticking her head into the green-brick fireplace that took up the entirety of the wall just to the right of the door, “It’s huge inside; I bet we could both fit in here. No chimney though.” She pulled her head out and gave her friend a confused look. Twilight shrugged and moved closer to the bookcase. As she neared it, her eyes went wide in horror, and she reached out a tentative hoof to touch a book, which wilted in a puff of black ash.

“They’re all burned!” the bookish unicorn exclaimed, sitting back on her haunches, “Who… who would do such a horrible thing?”

Rainbow started to roll her eyes, but when she saw tears start to form in Twilight’s eyes, she bit back her sarcasm and put a comforting hoof around her friend’s shoulder. “Maybe it was just an accident?” she suggested.

Twilight shook her head. “No,” she said, “only the books are burnt. If it was an accidental fire, this entire room would be at least blackened. Even the shelves are untouched. This was deliberate destruction of what could have been one-of-kind books!” Seething in anger and sadness, she dropped her head and screwed her eyes shut against the tears. Rainbow simply sat with a leg around Twilight, not knowing what to do or say to comfort the distraught librarian. Her eyes scanned the shelves, feeling a little anger herself at whoever would do something to upset one of her friends, when she noticed a book that didn’t look burned. Carefully removing her leg from Twilight, she leaned forward to take a closer look. She tapped the light-brown book with a hoof and, when it didn’t break, pulled it off the shelf.

“Twilight,” she said, placing the book on the ground where the unicorn could see it, “look.”

Twilight’s eyes cracked open, and the snapped to their full, surprised size. She glanced up at Rainbow, and then lifted the book up and opened it. The pages within were untouched by the effects of flame and filled with what the unicorn was coming to recognize as Star Swirl’s horn-writing. “‘When I first established the link to this illusion, I was determined it would provide me with an adventure unlike any I had experienced in the worlds I have visited before,’” she read, “This looks like a journal. I wonder what he means by this though, link to an illusion?” She looked up from the book and gave the shelves a closer look, discovering three more books that had survived the fire. One was bound in a blue cover with no title or distinguishing marks, while another was blue with a red square on the spine containing text written in a language Twilight didn’t know. The last book was green and bore the title “The Forestsea.” Each one turned out to be a journal as well, and Twilight quickly settled onto the floor to start reading them.

“You’re going to be at this awhile, aren’t you?” Dash asked. When the unicorn didn’t respond, the pegasus sighed and looked around for something to keep her attention. It didn’t take long. “Hey Twi, you missed a couple,” she said.

“Huh?” Twilight said, looking up. Rainbow pointed to two alcoves set into opposite sides of the room. In each sat a book, one blue and the other red, with a sheet of paper of matching color sitting next to each. Twilight’s horn lit up as she tried to bring the books over to her, but although the aura of magic surrounded the tomes, they refused to budge from their places. “That’s odd,” Twilight said, standing up. She walked over to the red book and scrutinized it. “Looks like it’s held in place with a spell,” she said, opening it to the first page. The red pages were written on with a slightly different red ink, making the text very difficult to see, but after a moment Twilight managed to make out the meticulous, geometric writing style that Aitran had been written in. “Dash, this might be the same kind of book that brought us here,” she said.

“Ok,” the pegasus said cautiously, “Where does it go?”

“One way to find out,” Twilight answered, flipping toward the back. A few leaves short of the final page, she found a section that looked like several pages had been torn out. Frowning at that, she continued to the final page to discover a moving image of red noise. The ponies’s ears flatted against their heads as they were assaulted by a whining, buzzing, aimless hiss that persisted until Twilight covered the image with the previous page. “If it went anywhere, it doesn’t now,” the lavender pony concluded.

Dash frowned and then galloped across the room to the blue book. She opened it to the last page and then slammed it shut when she found a noisy panel of blue on it. “Same deal here,” she said, “Fat lot of good that does us.”

Twilight glanced at the sheet of red paper sitting next to her book. A light push of magic revealed that it was not stuck to the alcove like the book was, so she picked it up for a closer look. It was covered with the same kind of writing as was in the book, and she noticed that one edge was jagged and uneven, as if it had been torn. Opening the book to the section of missing pages, she quickly found that the paper lined up with one of the torn spots in the binding. As soon as the page touched that spot, a line of light ran along the tear and repaired it, attaching the page back to the book. Grinning, Twilight ran over to the blue book, pushing Dash out of the way and putting the accompanying page into its place. “If we find the missing pages and put them back, maybe the book’s magic will work again.”

“Well, it’s something to do,’ Rainbow said, hopping into the air, “I’ll start looking.”

“Hold up,” Twilight said before the pegasus could fly off, “Let me see if I can figure out where these book go to. I’d rather not waste time on something that won’t get us home.”

“You can do that while I look,” Rainbow said as Twilight opened the blue book, “I’m not going to just sit around while-” she stopped and put her hooves to her ears as the book opened to the final page, unleashing the noise again. There was something different about it this time though; it was less consistent, fading out for brief seconds before rising back to its usual volume. In the quiet moments, Twilight and Dash thought they heard a voice.

“Cirrus? Is –zzzzt –there? Hello? zzZZzzt.” It was male pony’s voice, full of desperate hope that it would be heard through the static roar. Rainbow and Twilight crowded together to look at the book. The fuzzy, roiling blue cut away in time with the quieting of the noise, just barely revealing glimpses of the face of a dun pony with a thick brown beard and a wild look in his eyes. Those eyes blinked, and then the pony spoke, pleading between the interrupting chaos, “Help, I’m- zZZZzzrrt – blue pages. Bring them and Zzzt –le-release me! I-” any further words were cut off by a fresh wave of noise and static that seemed determined to stay. After a moment, Twilight gently closed the book and glanced at Rainbow, who was wearing an expression of surprise and fear to match her own.

“You don’t suppose…” the unicorn said slowly as both ponies looked over their shoulders at the red book across the room.

“L-like you said,” Rainbow said, gulping audibly, “Only one way to find out.” Together, they crossed the floor and peered down at the red book, which now seemed far more sinister than it once had. Rainbow gave Twilight an encouraging nudge with her shoulder when the unicorn hesitated, and after a quick thankful smile Twilight’s horn lit up and opened the book to the back page. When the red noise faded, a dusky blue stallion’s face became visible, his mouth framed by a neat blonde goatee, and his dark eyes gazing out at the mares in suspicion.

“Who are you?” he asked before the static flared across his image.

“Keep whatever you say short,” Twilight said, and Rainbow rolled her eyes at the obvious advice. “I’m Twilight,” the unicorn said when the stallion re-appeared.

“Rainbow Dash,” the pegasus said quickly.

There was another flare of noise before the pony responded, “zzt Cirrus. I’m tr-zZZZTzzr –must bring me red pages from Zzzrrrrzzt Red pages, not blue, und- zzzzzt.”

“We understand,” Twilight said when the view cleared up, “sit tight.”

“Funny,” Cirrus said, “I don’t have m-zzzZZZZt. Please hurry.” Twilight closed the book carefully and stepped away to the center of the room.

“Two ponies trapped inside books,” she said quietly, “And not exactly the way we are either…”

“Can I go look for the pages now?” Rainbow asked, starting to dance in place impatiently. Twilight nodded and Dash vanished in a cloud of dust and a rainbow contrail. Once the air was clear, Twilight went to the journals she’d stacked up in front of the bookcase and spread them out on the floor in front of her. After some deliberation, she picked them all up in her magic, set them to spinning in a circle in front of her, and the closed her eyes and stuck a hoof out. The books came to a stop when her hoof hit one and she opened her eyes to see that it was the blue volume with the illegible title. Setting the others aside, she lay down with her legs curled up under her body and began reading. It began with the tale of a pony named Basalt who lived alone on a tiny archipelago of rocks in a vast freshwater sea, subsisting happily on a diet of water plants he gathered with the help of a few trained aquatic animals. One day, another pony appeared on the Rocks seemingly from nowhere and accepted Basalt’s friendship and the name Branch. Later, a third pony, a unicorn named Trill, was discovered swimming near the Rocks, and thus was the state of things when the journal’s author, who Twilight assumed was Star Swirl the Bearded, arrived. Star Swirl had been intrigued by the constellations in the night sky and the strange lights that appeared on the horizon. He had attempted to write a ship into the world, only for it to appear broken in half and wedged on the largest rock in the group. Twilight paused over that entry for a while, puzzling over how the act of writing words could generate such profound effects. With her own magic she could change objects into other objects, and she recalled seeing the boastful unicorn Trixie seemingly create a bouquet of flowers out of thin air, although she suspected that was more of an illusion or summoning the flowers from a different location. In any case, being able to create an entire sailing ship out of nothing was well beyond her remarkable talents, and yet here Star Swirl had claimed to have done so, and in fact implied having created the entire world the journal was speaking about, with pen, ink, and paper. Under normal circumstances, Twilight would’ve rejected such a claim out-of-hoof as equivalent to curses, hexes, zombie ponies, and… well, probably not Pinkie Sense… The present circumstances, however, were far from normal. Twilight shook her head and went back to reading.

Basalt and his friends treated the sudden addition to their home like a playground, not minding that its state was the result of an error in calculations. Once the novelty wore off, the three ponies eagerly joined Star Swirl in a new project: constructing a light-house to try and contact the lights on the horizon, assuming they came from other pony settlements. Between entries noting the progress on construction were sketches of the building and the generator-powered lamps Star Swirl intended to install in it. A few days after the lighthouse was completed and turned on, two new ponies were discovered swimming toward the Rocks, and they proved to the forerunners of a wave of newcomers investigating the new light source. The final entry in the journal gave Twilight another mystery to puzzle over: 'It has been ten years by Aitran time since I visited this illusion, which I have named Baseli in honor of my first friend there, Basalt. I had changed the text to allow time to pass in order to see how the colts and their friends would develop. To my pleasure, all three of the Rock’s original inhabitants are now full-grown stallions with foals of their own and the Rocks are home to many new faces. They trade regularly with the distant islands and seem to have found gold in abundance, for it is used in decorations everywhere I turn. On a more somber note, I noticed that the rocks seem to have sunk somewhat into the water and my lighthouse, while still in good repair, is now partially submerged.’

Allow time to pass? Twilight thought, and there’s that term “illusion” again. I don’t get it. Is all of this just a reflection of Star Swirl’s imagination? She flipped through the next few pages of the journal, each of which contained a drawing of a constellation accompanied by a picture of what the stars were probably supposed to represent. Twilight didn’t recognize a single one of them. She set the book aside and started to reach for the next one when Rainbow Dash returned with a gust of wind that stirred some ashes from the bookcase and into Twilight’s face. “C-c-careful,” Twilight said before sneezing.

“Bless you,” Rainbow said.

“Thanks,” Twilight said, “how’d the search go?”

The cyan pegasus blew short raspberry. “All I found were a bunch of empty buildings, a sunken ship, giant gears, some odd-looking giant gold firework thingy, and still no way into that tower.”

“You seem rather fascinated by the tower,” Twilight said, raising an eyebrow.

“I feel like it’s taunting me,” Rainbow said, “It’s the highest point on this island, I’m fairly certain there’s something inside it, and I can’t find the door!” She huffed and crossed her front legs across her chest. “I didn’t see any pages or other bits of paper anywhere, so we’re at a dead-end again.”

“There’s that note I found earlier,” Twilight said, looking around, “where did I drop- oh, there it is.” She called the note over from its resting place near the fireplace. “There was a door in the hillside on the dock,” she said, reading the note, “did you check in there by chance?”

“Nope,” Dash said, “I… didn’t realize it was a door.”

“No worries,” Twilight said, “I was going to head in there after I figured out what Star Swirls meant by ‘marker switches.’ Any ideas?” Dash just shook her head. Twilight frowned slightly in thought and looked around. On the wall between the red book and the door she spotted what looked like a map of the island’s natural features. “Marker switch means they’re meant to mark something,” she mused, approaching the map. When she came within touching distance of it, it gave off a light buzz and lines of light appeared in a few spots – a white square to the left of the grey splotch that was probably the mountain behind the library, a blinking circle on the mountain’s peak, and lines describing the dock and the sunken ship. “Hm,” Twilight said in thought, “Rainbow, did you notice those pedestals with the levers on top of them?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said, “They’re all over the place.”

“There’s one by that building next door,” the unicorn said, keeping her eyes on the map, “could you go flip it up for me?”

“Sure thing. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Rainbow galloped out of the library, and a few seconds later a new circle of light appeared on the map, right where the round building would be. “Well?” Rainbow asked, coming back inside.

“Those are the marker switches,” Twilight said with a smile, “How many did you see while flying around?”

“Didn’t count ‘em,” Rainbow said wearily, turning toward the door again. “I’m getting a tiny bit tired of flying,” she added in an undertone.

“I’ll meet you at the dock when you’re done,” Twilight said, “And you might as well turn them all on while you’re at it. I get the feeling there’s a little more to this map than just displaying locations.”

“Gotcha,” Rainbow said, taking flight once again. She zoomed off and Twilight trotted toward out after her before turning back toward the dock.

---

“I counted eight,” Rainbow Dash reported as she came in for a landing next to Twilight on the dock, “including one by the off-shore clock tower.” Twilight gave her a quizzical look, so she added, “At the other end of the island from the library there’s a clock tower sitting a gear-shaped platform just off the shore. I’m pretty sure it’s broken because it’s been pointing at twelve o’clock sharp every time I buzzed past it.”

“Eight it is then,” Twilight said, facing the slab-like door in the hillside. To her surprise, when she touched it with her magic, it slid aside under its own power. “There are some really sophisticated spells around here,” she said as she led Rainbow through the door and into a short corridor, “A touch-activated door, the spells binding the marker switches to the map, not to mention the books those two ponies are trapped in.” A flight of stairs at the end of the corridor brought the ponies into a vault-like room that was bare except for an ornate raised circular pool in the center.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Dash asked, looking around as she approached the pool, “Although I gotta admit, this water looks a little weird.” She stuck a hoof into it, and then blinked in surprise and pulled it out, perfectly dry. “It’s fake,” she said, swirling her hoof through the “water” without leaving so much as a ripple in the image.

“A viewing device that operates on illusion spells,” Twilight said, fascinated. She walked around the viewer a few times, locating a button on the front side and another on the back. Pressing them produced no effect, confusing the unicorn. “How is this supposed to work?” she asked.

“Maybe this is a clue?” Twilight looked up to see Rainbow looking at a sheet of paper attached to the wall near the entrance. She went over to take a look. The paper was mounted on a steel plate and contained a short list of three three phrases: topography model, marker switch diagram, and turbulent water pool, each with an accompanying two-digit number.

“Ok,” Twilight said, casting a sidelong glance at her friend, “that second one might have been useful a little while ago, but how does this help me figure out how to operate the machine?”

“You could try the button,” Rainbow said, reaching up to hit a small button cleverly hidden in the top left corner of the plate behind a glowing blue dot. The panel slid down into the wall to reveal a panel with a display showing the number 67, each digit sitting between a pair of triangular buttons and a fifth lighted button near the bottom. Rainbow gave Twilight a smug smile and gave her a light push to tell the unicorn to move aside while she switched the numbers to read 08 and then pushed the lit button. The button flashed and beeped a few times, and then the steel plate slid back to the closed position.

“Good eye,” Twilight said approvingly. Turning back to the viewer, she saw that the water illusion had vanished, exposing the inside of the device to view. A grid of nine round yellow crystals were installed in the bottom of the viewer, likely the medium through which the illusion spells were focused. She pressed the button on the front side and stood back as the crystals began to glow and an image began to form in the air just below the lip of the tub-like device. The illusion resolved into the form of the head of a grey-coated unicorn with a long flowing beard, blue eyes, and a tall pointed wizard’s hat with bells attached around the brim and on the point. “Star Swirl the Bearded,” Twilight said in quiet awe.

“What’s with the bells?” Rainbow asked. Twilights shushed her as the image began to speak in a voice that while surprisingly strong and clear for a pony of Star Swirl’s apparent age, was tinged with sadness and urgency.

“My dearest Clover," it said, “something terrible has happened. My library…. Most of the books have been destroyed! Clover, it was one of the boys! I suspect it was Archeon, but I should not jump to conclusions. I’ll find him and Cirrus and find a resolution.” Star Swirl sighed sadly and fell silent for a second before continuing, “I’ve taken the remaining books and hid them in the places of protection. You shouldn’t have to use them before I return, but if you’ve forgotten the access keys then use the tower rotation. Don’t worry Clover, everything will be fine. Keep yourself and little Nyx safe. Oh, and erase this message after you’ve listened to it.” The image of Star Swirl faded from sight and the viewer turned off.

Comments

[CTVulpin]

57779
That didn't even occur to me!
My pre-reader Miyajima thought I was hiding a reference to one of those new blind-bag ponies with poor Rarity's impromptu coat dye job.
confound my unconscious mind, making these puns and references without telling me

Wait...
Nyx is in this story!

Interesting developments.

I have, however, noticed that this latest chapter appears to have a larger number of mechanical errors than the previous one; you might want to be more careful about such things in the future.

[Letedwend]

I don't think I'm gonna keep going with this, because it feels like I'm reading a dramatisation of a GameFAQs walkthrough.

To anyone else who's read further than this (chapter 2), does it get more interesting later on?

[AzureSkies]

i just realised, myst would be soooo much quicker to finish if you could fly. all that trekking around to get from point A to B is annoying.

[Sketchy Markks]

58170 ....Nyx?

[Sketchy Markks]

58170 ....Nyx? what?

[Starcat5]

1912695
Given the kind of **** her game counterpart got up to, Nyx might actually be underpowered for this role. //dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Luna_lolface.png

Me? I was shocked at seeing Starswirl and Clover the Clever* ended up an item. I mean, a teacher dating a student comes off as squick nowadays.

*(Let me guess, 57963, you're giving her Clever Clover's color palate?)

[Doctor Tex]

381768
Yes, it actually has more character development for the brothers and Rainbow and Twilight. Plus, it's not all the same, the solutions are different for each puzzle, so you can't copy them like that.

So how long did this take? 6 years? Yeesh.