Aitran

by CTVulpin

Chapter 4

“Twilight, I’ve been thinking,” Rainbow Dash said as she and Twilight Sparkle stepped out of the hidden passageway and into the Aitran Library. They were each wearing a pair of small saddlebags Twilight had found in Cirrus’s wardrobe and insisted that they wear in case they found something they needed to carry. Twilight was carrying a few sheets of paper and a pencil she’d scrounged from the nightstands in the bedroom in her bags.

“What about?” Twilight asked as she went over and pressed a hoof against the painting-switch that closed the passageway and opened the library door.

“We’re fixing the books Cirrus and Archeon are trapped in because the spell on them doesn’t work due to missing pages, right?” Rainbow said, “How did the pages get torn out?”

“That,” Twilight said, stopping in the doorway, “is a very good question. Add to that the fact that only one page was near the books and… There must have been another pony involved, ripping out and scattering the pages after Cirrus and Archeon went into the books.”

“So maybe neither of them is responsible for destroying Star Swirl’s books,” Rainbow suggested, “This other pony could have tricked the two into the books and then torn out enough pages so Star Swirl wouldn’t be able to see them through the noise before burning the books.”

“Possibly,” Twilight said, nodding slowly, “but they would also have needed to do something to make Star Swirl suspect his apprentices. It would have to be somepony who had a grudge against Star Swirl and his friends, knowledge that Aitran existed, and the means to get here and leave.” She glanced over at her friend and added, “Of course, this is all hundreds of years in the past and the only clues that would have survived are trapped in the red and blue books.”

“Right, not worrying about it then,” Rainbow said, brushing past Twilight, “On to the rocket thingy.”

“Power station first,” Twilight said when the pegasus started to turn to the right, “we need to supply 62 volts to the rocket before we do anything else with it.”

“I knew that,” Rainbow said, swerving back onto the path leading between the columns. She trotted along quickly, focused on her destination but Twilight, who had not yet seen much of the island beyond the dock and the library, slowed down to take in her surroundings. Eight marble columns stood in two rows on either side of the path, which split to go around a small fountain pool and a marker switch. Each of the columns had a box with a bronze plaque attached it at about eye level, and on each plaque was a different symbol that Twilight found vaguely familiar. Inside the fountain was a model ship sitting under the water with only it mast and forecastle spar breaking the surface. The similarity to the sunken ship by the dock was not lost on the unicorn, but she had to file that information away for later when she caught sight of Dash waiting impatiently next to the last column on the right side of the path. “Done yet?” the pegasus asked.

“For the moment,” Twilight replied dryly, “I’d like to know how things stand when we try getting into the other places of protection.”

“They’re not going anywhere,” Rainbow said, turning around and trotting through the trees behind her. Twilight followed her and they quickly came to a rather tiny stone building, which was really more of a glorified doorway and roof for the stairs leading down into the depths of the island. To the immediate right of the building was a tall brick tower supporting the power cable reaching up from the building, and as Twilight followed the cable with her eyes she could see another tower farther down the coast before the cable reached the gilded rocket. Twilight gave the marker switch sitting next to the door only the briefest of glances before heading inside and starting down the stairs, which curved immediately to the right to stay inside the boundary between rocky land and endless sea. Shortly before reaching the first landing, where the stairs took another gentle turn to the right, Twilight noticed the lack of clopping hooves behind her and looked over her shoulder to see Rainbow Dash looking down at her from the top.

“Aren’t you coming?” the unicorn asked.

“Remember how I said I don’t like caves?” the cyan-coated pony said, “I really don’t like this one. It’s way too narrow and enclosed and deep. I’m pretty sure the bottom’s like the lowest point in this entire place.”

“You came down here before,” Twilight said, raising an eyebrow.

“I was looking for pages then,” Dash said, “It was a quick in-and-out job. There’s no way I’m hanging around down there waiting for you to figure out how to work things. Just let me know when you’re done.”

“Fine,” Twilight said, turning her face back to the stairs. There was one more landing that aimed the stairs back to the left a little before coming to a stop in front of a metal door with a glowing blue button in the wall next to it. “This island was definitely designed with non-unicorns in mind,” Twilight said as she pressed the button and saw the door slide open, “Come to think of it, what type are Cirrus and Archeon anyway? I don’t think I saw a horn on either of them…” With a quick shake of her head, she focused back on the task at hand and stepped through the door. Reacting to her presence, a series of lights turned on to reveal a long bank of generators stretching out into a cavern behind a glass window. In front of the window was a control panel with two metering dials currently pointing at zero and ten small buttons arranged in two columns on the right side. “Ok then,” Twilight mused, reaching out a hoof to press one of the buttons. The needles on both dials jumped and settled on the number 5 as the sound of the generators warming up echoed in through the window. Twilight pressed a few more buttons and watched the dials climb in perfect sync. So, what’s the difference between the two? the unicorn thought, scratching her chin in perplexity. Looking around for clues, she found a drawing of the control panel attached to the wall next to the doorway. The dial on the left was labeled “power at station” and the one on the right was “power to ship.” The ten buttons were also displayed, but were simply numbered one through ten. Ok, Twilight thought as she turned back to the controls, That probably means I’ll trip a breaker or something if I give the ship too many volts. I need to find the combination of buttons that will supply 62 volts without going over. “Good thing I brought note paper,” she said aloud, floating a sheet and her pencil out of her bag while turning off all the buttons. She drew ten squares on the paper in the same arrangement as the buttons and then turned each one on and off in turn, noting the voltage each one supplied. She ended up with values ranging from one to twenty-two and distributed in a seemingly random manner between the buttons. Shrugging that off, Twilight put her pencil to work on adding the values together in search of the proper combination.

In short order, Twilight found a solution and confidently pressed the five buttons she had picked out. The whine of running generators rose to a dull rumble as the twin dials climbed and came to a stop precisely on 62 volts. “Cakewalk,” Twilight said proudly as she turned and left the station. After climbing the stairs and stepping out into open air, she found Rainbow Dash standing by one of the pillars, pressing the embedded plaque with a hoof, the engraving glowing green every other time the pegasus touched it. “Bored Rainbow?” Twilight asked, giving Rainbow a start.

“Yeah, kinda,” Rainbow said, glowering a little.

“Well, I’m done,” Twilight reported, “The rocket should have power now.”

“Awesome, “Rainbow Dash said, taking flight, “race you there!” She was off like a shot, leaving Twilight in a rainbow-tinted cloud of dust.

“Wait! Rainbow!” Twilight called, galloping after the pegasus. By the time she reached the start of the raised walkway just past the north-west corner of the library, Rainbow had already reached the rocket and was sitting in front of the recessed panel in its side that most likely the door. Twilight slowed down to navigate the narrow walkway that was taking her relatively higher above the descending coastline with every step. “That wasn’t exactly a fair race you know,” she said when she reached the first bend in the path.

“Don’t worry, I won’t count it,” Dash said flippantly, and then turned around to regard the rocket. “Now how does this op-” she said, tapping the door with her hoof and then flinching back when it slid aside. “That was a little freaky,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Twilight. Twilight smirked as Rainbow stepped into the rocket and started looking around, but her amusement turned to horror as a loud, sharp pop sounded from behind her and the power cable broke off the nearby breaker tower in a shower of sparks. The rocket’s door slammed shut just as Rainbow Dash turned around, her eyes wide and irises shrunk in fear.

“Rainbow!” Twilight yelled, throwing caution to the wind and running up to the rocket. She spun around and kicked at the door, producing an impressive gong-like sound but not leaving so much as a dent in the metal.

Inside the pitch-black rocket, Rainbow covered her ears as the sound reverberated through the structure. “Geez Twilight, you trying to deafen me?” she shouted once the din died down. A response from outside was muffled by the thickness of the walls. “Louder!” Rainbow shouted, “I can’t hear you!”

“Sit tight!” Twilight yelled after a second.

“Seriously?” Rainbow muttered, laying down on the floor, “not like I’ve got much of a choice. Oooh… I hate enclosed spaces…”

After what felt like an eternity to the rainbow-haired pegasus, a low-pitched buzzing filled the air and the lights flickered on, allowing her to at least see the interior of her prison. She stood up and placed a hoof against the door, hoping that it would respond. The door began to move aside, but made it only a few inches before it stalled and the lights dimmed dangerously. Rainbow pressed an eye up to the gap, straining to see out and locate Twilight. With a flash of light, the unicorn teleported onto the platform in front of the door, looking like she’d just finished competing in the Running of the Leaves. “What happened Twilight?” Rainbow asked.

“Cable… broke,” Twilight said, trying to catch her breath, “I had to… cut the power… Try and repair the… the break and then power everything up… again. Also… teleporting is suddenly a lot harder to do than I remember.”

“Well, I appreciate you wiping yourself out trying to help, but,” Rainbow said, rapping a hoof against the door, “the door’s stuck.”

“Great,” Twilight said dejectedly. She walked up to the door and Rainbow moved back to let her look through the crack.

“Why don’t you just teleport in here and then get the both of us out?” the pegasus asked.

“Sorry Rainbow, no can do,” Twilight said, backing away from the door, “Even if I wasn’t worn down, I can’t see enough of what’s in there to be able to cast the spell safely."

“I can’t be stuck in here!” Rainbow exclaimed, finally giving in to the panic that had been simmering under the surface, “You have to get me out Twilight!”

“Calm down,” Twilight snapped, “Give me a second to think.” Rainbow bit her lip and watched as the lavender unicorn started to pace and think aloud, “This is one of the places of protection where Star Swirl hid some of his surviving books. Odds are good that these books link to illusion worlds like those described in the journals and thus warrant this kind of protection. If you can find one of those books, you can at least get out of the rocket, although it’ll be anypony’s guess where you’ll end up.”

“And I’ll be stuck wherever that is instead of on this island,” Rainbow said.

“I doubt that Rainbow,” Twilight said, trying to reassure the pegasus, “Star Swirl obviously intended the illusions to be places you could visit and then come back from. Besides, would you rather be stuck forever inside this thing, or in a strange yet wide-open world?”

Rainbow turned away from the door and closed her eyes tight as she weighed the options. She couldn’t deny that she was going stir-crazy even with the door slightly open, but the thought of separating from Twilight did not sit well with her. Element of Loyalty aside, Rainbow Dash was a pony who needed to have other ponies around her. An athlete and stunt-flyer was nothing without an audience to perform for and get feedback from. On the other hoof, showing weakness wasn’t her style, and Twilight sounded confident in her guessing. Coming to a conclusion, Rainbow Dash turned back to the door and peered out at her friend. “Promise me one thing Twilight,” she said, “If I go into a book, you find a way to fix this dumb oversized firework so you can come in after me if I can’t find a way out.”

“Pinkie Pie Promise,” Twilight said, “Now, what’s in there with you?”

Rainbow pulled her gaze away from the door and finally took her first real look around the rocket. “I don’t see any books,” she said, “There’s a panel with sliders and a lever at the front end and a… a small pipe organ at the other.” She walked over and hit a key, eliciting a musical tone. “It’s got a funky kind of sound,” she said, dragging her hoof up and down the scale a few times.

“Interesting,” Twilight said, sounding thoughtful, “I think I’ve seen… Ah!”

“What?” Rainbow asked, heading back over to the door.

“I’ll be right back,” the unicorn said as she trotted away from the rocket. Rainbow watched her until she vanished from her very limited field of vision and then her gaze slid back to the organ. After staring at it for a few seconds, she gave a shrug and went to play around on it, inventing random tunes to pass the time. By the time Twilight returned, the pegasus had started setting words to her improvised melody. Twilight raised a hoof to knock and get Rainbow’s attention, but then paused and listened for a little bit.

“What was that going by oh so fast? It was the great Rainbow Dash, going by in flash and… uh…” Rainbow tapped down on the keys she’d faltered at several times as she tried to think of the next line. “Eh, whatever,” she said, turning away with an up-scale swipe across the board.

“That was pretty good,” Twilight said.

Dash froze up and blushed slightly and blushed in surprise. “Ah, well of course,” she said, recovering, “Among my many other awesome talents, I just so happen to have perfect pitch. My dad would always joke about how if I hadn’t got my cutie mark for being such a fast flyer, I’d have been a singer. Anyway, what’cha run off for?”

“This,” Twilight said as a blue book wiggled through the space in the doorway, wrapped in the aura of unicorn magic. Twilight set it on the floor as Dash came over to look at it. “It’s one of the journals,” Twilight said, a bit unnecessarily, “It’s a bit disconcerting because the world it describes is prone to earthquakes, and lots of entries in the middle seem to have faded away, but near the end there’s a drawing of a piano, er, I guess it’s actually an organ keyboard, with five keys highlighted and numbered.”

“Gotcha,” Rainbow said, cutting off any further instructions the unicorn wanted to give. She picked the book up and fluttered over to the organ while flipping through the pages to find the drawing. It turned out to be drawn at a ninety-degree angle to the bottom of the page, requiring Rainbow to find a way to prop the book up against the pipes without letting the previous pages fall over the picture. “Ok, let’s see here,” she said, taking a close look, “a high note…” Using her wings for balance, she put her front hooves on the keys and played the marked keys. “Not much of a tune,” she noted dryly, looking around expectantly. When nothing happened, she frowned and played the phrase again, trying to keep a regular rhythm. “Nothing’s happening,” she said loudly so Twilight could hear her through the door.

“Maybe we missed a step?” Twilight suggested.

“Maybe,” Rainbow said, looking toward the other end of the ship at the panel with the sliders, “or maybe there’s another step to take.” She walked over to the panel to give it a closer look. There were five sliders, shaped to be easily gripped in a pony’s mouth, with a lever to their right and an opaque glass dome above the panel. Rainbow gingerly bit down on a slider, which began to emit a steady tone. Quirking an eyebrow, the pegasus slid it up and noticed that the tone rose in pitch. Returning the slider to the bottom position, Rainbow pulled down on the lever. Each slider lit up in turn from left to right and played the exact same tone for about half a second. “That’s it,” Rainbow said, grinning, “I set these so they play the five notes from the journal and I’ll unlock the real hiding place.”

“Sounds tricky,” Twilight noted as Dash returned to the organ.

“It could be,” Rainbow agreed, “but so long as this thing’s still in tune, I’ll have it done as soon as I’ve memorized the sequence.” She played the musical phrase over and over, humming along with the organ. Outside, Twilight had to bite her lip to keep herself from complaining about being driven crazy by the repetition of the very disjointed tune. Just when the unicorn thought she couldn’t take any more, the organ fell silent and the sound of Rainbow’s hooves on the floor of the rocket briefly covered the pegasus’s humming until she reached the panel. Then a new wave of noise hit as Rainbow worked at the sliders, pulling them rapidly up to the neighborhood of the correct tones before gradually homing in on them. After getting the first three in place, she went back to the organ to refresh her memory before taking on the last two.

“Have you got it?” Twilight asked when tones stopped flowing out of the rocket.

“We’ll see,” Rainbow said before grasping the lever and pulling it. She hummed along as the sliders sounded off, nodding in satisfaction at the end and looking expectantly at the panel. There was a faint buzz and the glass dome slid up to reveal a metal plate that rolled out to present Rainbow with a book. “Just the one eh?” she asked, opening it and flipping through to the final page. The linking panel on the page displayed a fly-by of an island that was more steep ridges than anything else with bridges, stairs, and similar structures here and there. “I think you were right Twilight,” she said, “This is definitely the same kind of book as the one that got us here. I’m going in; wish me luck.”

“Wait a second,” Twilight said, “Do you think the book can fit through the door? I should probably go with you if it’s possible.”

“What if the exit drops me back in here?” Rainbow countered, “We can’t both get stuck inside here with nopony around to rescue us. I’m counting on you to get this door open Twilight.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” Twilight said uncertainly.

“Don’t worry, I can handle myself,” the pegasus said.

“Ok,” the unicorn said, “but take these,” she floated her pencil and two pieces of paper out of her bag and through the gap in the door, “I don’t know what you’ll find, but it may be smart to take notes on anything interesting.” Rainbow nodded, grabbed the supplies from Twilight’s magic, and put them in her saddlebag. “Good luck,” Twilight said. A few seconds later there was a low humming noise and she peered in to see that the rocket was empty, save for a book that lay open to its last page. “Well Sparkle,” the unicorn said to herself, turning toward the breaker tower and her attempted repair on the power cable, “time to see where you went wrong.”

Comments

Sigh. Back to waiting for a new chapter...
Keep up the good work.

I think you might need to fix the formatting for this chapter.

Other than that, good stuff. Looking forward to the next chapter.

[CTVulpin]

75152
I derped the indents again?!
Fixed now. Hopefully I won't forget again...

[FinalGamer]

Is it bad that I remember the EXACT order of sounds on that goddamn piano organ, and I easily imagined Dash playing it over and over again.

[Kwakerjak]

432618 I actually read that the game's creators were stunned to learn that most players didn't pick up on that. They thought the theme of sound in that Age was so obvious that folks would figure it out easily---they didn't think anyone would be masochistic enough to assume that trial and error was the way the puzzle was supposed to be solved.

Of course, if you're hard of hearing, it wouldn't help much.

[Starcat5]

546106
Of course, given the era that the game first came out, not everyone even had speakers on their computers. Thankfully, I didn't actually get my hooves on the game (despite trying) until significantly later in it's life cycle (RealMyst).

[ShadwSonic]

284188
Considering I just played both versions less than a month ago and DON'T? Probably.