Project
Paper crackled as a column of light illuminated the space between a shelf of manuscripts and the wall, one of the books being pulled carefully free. Cradling my prize, I got back on all fours, instantly flipping it open and pinning down the table of contents with a wingtip. My eyes scanned it feverishly, the light of revelation burning somewhere within their emerald rings, and I quickly paged further in, before I read a few passages and frowned.
"Gah! What do you mean, redacted?" I complained aloud to the quiet library air. "Seriously, how's anyone supposed to pass down knowledge if you take what the last guys knew and throw it out just because they were dirtbags? Ergh..."
"Shh!" An irate librarian poked his head around a corner, holding a wing aggressively to his lips.
"Whoops!" I instantly caught myself, realizing my mistake and lowering my voice to a whisper. "Sorry."
He accepted my apology and retreated, and I reddened slightly, usually proud of my library etiquette. Still, it wasn't like anyone was sleeping in here, or anything.
Rolling my eyes, I put the book back and wandered through to the next aisle... and instantly ate my words.
"Corsica?" I craned my neck forward and tilted my head, staring at the pink mare. She was in a reading chair next to a rounded table in a corner between aisles, and had a book held cleverly in her hooves that would hide her eyes from almost all angles... a pose I had practiced myself sometimes in school, and one no unicorn with a functioning horn would ever want to use naturally.
"Mmh?" Corsica grunted, barely budging.
"Are you sleeping?" I whispered. "In the middle of the library? Don't you have more comfortable places to be?"
Corsica lowered the book, her eyes open, though she had clearly at least been cat-napping. Her bleary gaze bored into me, asking if I really wanted to say she looked like she had been slacking off.
I stared back. She did, but it wasn't the most important thing she looked like. For as long as I had known her, Corsica was a genuine and unflappable mare, who never pretended to be someone she wasn't, never put on airs she didn't want to and never let any troubles stick to her or make her worry. And that day, I could tell that Corsica was wearing a mask.
"...Are you alright?" My jaw hung slightly, and I tilted my head. "You look kinda... you know..."
She raised the book to cover her eyes again. "Please, Halcyon. I'm very busy. Leave me alone."
"Well, alright then." I turned and wandered away. "Have a nice nap, I guess."
Time began to speed up, my hooves retreading a familiar scene and my brain deciding I didn't need to be there for all of it. Truth be told, I had found Corsica in that chair over a dozen times in the last two years, and every time it had gone exactly the same. Some parts of my life were apparently more worth remembering than others, and I didn't get much of a say in what they were.
Yep. This was a memory, one from two years ago, when I was a sixteen-year-old nerd wearing the previous iteration of my big coat, just as skilled at using my special talent to be seen the way I wanted yet with a much less-mature grasp of what that vision was. And for some reason I never really understood, when I slept, I didn't dream. I remembered.
Three days passed before I saw Corsica again.
My memory skipped through them like the minutes and seconds were flakes of falling snow, drifting by in an unintelligible haze, far too quick and packed together to focus on any at a time. When it slowed, I was in the library again, sorting through books with an annoyed determination. All I was learning was that someone didn't want me knowing all the things I was curious about... My pacing carried me through aisle after aisle, hunting down index markers I had looked up ahead of time, in search of history texts - any history - concerning the batponies who had lived in Icereach before it became a research colony, but especially what they used the chapel for.
Instead, I found Corsica, propped up in another reading chair and skimming through a book without turning any pages, the blankest of all looks on her face. She hadn't noticed me yet. Did I want to try this again?
"Something sure looks enthralling," I carefully commented, drawing near. "What are you reading?"
"I'm busy," Corsica mumbled, not answering the question.
I leaned closer and tilted my head, reading the book's spine for myself. "Architectural building analysis and weight distribution for underground structures. Huh. Looks fascinating." I straightened up, staring at her vacant expression with a skeptical look. "Who's makin' you read that?"
Corsica paused, which was impressive considering she hadn't been doing anything. A few emotions ran across her face, mixing together and all manifesting as a tiny frown. Then she shut the book and slid it away across the floor.
Picking up the book and dusting it off, I thought about how to take that. "Are you alright?" I asked eventually, lifting my ears in concern. "No offense, but ever since you woke up, you've been working every single time I see you. I can tell you're hiding something, and I think you're getting burned out." I showed her the book she had been reading. "I know you just got your special talent, too, and that's a big deal and all, but is this really making you happy?"
"So what are you working on, then, Halcyon?" Corsica countered. "You're here in the library too."
I glanced back to my list of new references to check, and then showed it to her as well. "Me? Looking for any sort of history about that old chapel where they built the ether pump. I... had a rough few days while you and Ansel were in the hospital, and hiding out down there really helped me make it through. So now I feel like I ought to know more about it. Maybe I'm coping, or maybe I'm returning the favor." I met her eyes. "How about you, eh?"
Corsica looked away.
"Hey, I know I'm the last pony who's really qualified to give you advice, especially these days..." I shuffled uncomfortably. "And I get if you're a little messed up by nearly having died, but you gotta get a better way to cope. You're not acting like yourself, and I'm worried about you. You'd have to be blind to miss it, but I've looked up to you since forever ago, and I don't really like this new point of view."
"Deal with it," Corsica sighed. She didn't say anything more.
"...Well, I won't overstay my welcome," I said, beginning to back away. "Just take care of yourself, alright? I always thought you were cool because you never seemed to get down or bothered by anything. Whatever's got your mood in a twist, I'm sure you've got it covered. Take it easy."
I didn't even have to wait until evening before I saw Corsica a third time.
A long elevator rumbled to a halt, its doors opening to a half-natural room where carved, ancient rock intersected glittering crystals, and timeless runes and etchings shared space with racks of processing equipment and metal vats and hoses. At the end of the room, the wall was missing, a crystalline plinth extending out into a vast natural cavern, the blackness barely illuminated by a sea of starry ether below.
I had come down here to stare at the chapel and think. I hadn't come to find Corsica already doing the same thing.
"Halcyon?" She looked up, acknowledging me before I could do the same, looking slightly more alive than she had in the library.
"Surprise?" I walked closer, but not enough to get in her personal space. "It's pretty down here when you don't mind the machines. Any chance you're here because of me?"
"Maybe." Corsica hid her face with her mane, pretending to be absorbed in a carving on a wall.
"Might be a stupid question, but do you wanna talk?"
Corsica stiffened, but after a moment, talk she did. "You can't blame Ansel. He has partial amnesia. But he still feels like a completely different pony. And Father is... We had a fight. Some way to welcome me back, right? The only one who even seems to care about me right now is an annoying twerp like you, who's been following me around like a second shadow since filly school. My entire world is turned on its head. So you'll have to forgive me for reading into finding my special talent and thinking I can overwork my way back to normalcy. Satisfied?"
"Yeah, well, life is rough when you lose your stuff." I shrugged. "You want to call me a tagalong and say I was a third wheel for ages? Go ahead. Might have hurt, a month ago, but I had plenty of time to doubt myself while you two were unconscious. If your world's upside-down, I can relate." I stuck out a booted hoof. "The whole accident was my fault anyway. Let me help you. If you've got stuff on your mind, I promise I won't tell anyone."
Corsica looked at my offered hoof and snorted, and for a second, I couldn't tell if she was crying or laughing. "How did my life even come to this?" she whispered as she took a breath, hanging her head.
"What, the two of us hanging out down here? Luck." I sat down and retracted my hoof, curling my tail around my legs. "Dunno yet if it's good or bad. Probably both. Or maybe fate."
"You believe in that?"
"Beats me." I glanced back at the rest of the chapel, at the mystical ether flowing slowly by below the edge where the room dropped off. "But I sure would like to know whether whoever built this place believed in it."
Corsica contemplated that for a while. "...Whatever," she eventually said, though it was more approving than dismissive. "If this is a coping project, your reasons sound more interesting than mine anyway. Tell me about it."
"Well, there's both a ton and basically nothing to say," I began, her invitation feeling almost surreal. "Mostly, I'm curious. It must've been real hard to get down here before they put in the elevator, but someone still cared about something enough to come all this way and build it, and from the wear on the floor it's been visited very heavily throughout the ages..."
I didn't come to all at once, memories of myself explaining to Corsica all about my curiosity in the chapel mixing in my brain with the reality of the waking world, leaving me in a half-asleep haze. But that reality was that our next-door neighbor was a budding musician with a current passion for elevator music, and such a reality was inevitably going to prevail.
Even when it did, I didn't immediately get out of bed, savoring the last dregs of the dream. Once upon a time, Ansel and Corsica had been close, and I had been an unwanted extra, an oblivious fool who told herself day in and day out that she wasn't being treated unfairly. Since I got to hang out with my idol, I thought life was automatically good. And then the accident happened...
I didn't know how, but we had rebuilt differently from that. Corsica was my friend now as well as my idol, Ansel no longer considered me a bitter rival, and the two of them were no longer joined at the hip. I had gone from being the third wheel to the bridge that linked them together. For a good two years now, everything had miraculously been better. And while the accident was the force that tore the old way of things down, my curiosity about the chapel had been the spark that started us building back up.
There was no way I was letting that spark meet an ignoble end on Graygarden's desk. The fault plane research paper had only been a spinoff of our project - we had plenty more material to draw on. And now, with a full night's rest behind me and my dream as a fresh reminder of the project's importance, it was time to get up, fix this and make things right.
...Fortunately, it was a weekend and I had my whole life ahead of me and Corsica seemed more annoyed about my half of the work being wasted than hers, so all things considered it wasn't so urgent that I had to run out the door without even getting dressed.
The dilemma I faced certainly didn't seem impossible, I reflected, already planning as I stared at my reflection in my mirror. The research paper that was the source of my worries had mostly been a harpoon to try to draw in funding, interest or support from the rest of the institute. Almost all of the central project was kept off the public record so that Graygarden didn't try to rain on our parade, so the big problem was that now he negatively associated that paper on fault plane dating with Corsica. It would be harder now to slip other portions of the project in past his biases. And we needed funding, most of all...
I certainly wasn't going to find that funding in the empty boot I was holding. Although, I had made it myself... Maybe I could get a real job and sell stuff for cash? Ansel worked part-time at a grocery store to help make ends meet, after all.
That idea got laughed off with a shake of my head as I slipped on my coat. Real work? No way. If only there was a way to patch up Graygarden's spat with Corsica... I wasn't about to underestimate that again after how I got into this mess. Even though I had mostly been joking the previous night about trying to con him into funding us, it honestly sounded more effective than asking nicely and directly. Corsica's idea of making him think there was legitimate economic interest in the ether crystals in particular held promise. Now that I thought about it, though, what if there were other parties who would find value in our work? The institute's official power structure was a bureaucratic monolith that answered only to our sponsor nations, but it wasn't too rare for third-party donors and patrons of the sciences to get involved.
A simple trip to the mirror ensured that I had sufficient bed-head to keep my scruffy mane going strong for the day, and I nodded, satisfied at my appearance. Yes, maybe I could try to subvert Graygarden entirely by building enthusiasm for our project with Icereach's wealthy donors and investors. If ponies with money cared about the project... I grinned at my reflection. See? I could do this. Time to get to work.
Shadow sneaking brought me under my door, and I rose silently, noting that Ansel was still asleep on the couch and Mother had left her bedroom door wide open yet again. I couldn't resist a glance, spotting her with the covers tossed off and her pillow cuddled like another pony, her mane a fright and some drool leaking down her cheek as she snored.
I shook my head and suppressed a smile. Someone aggressively didn't want to have grown up.
In the kitchenette, under a framed picture of Mother when she was my age and two ponies who looked like family, I found the breadbox and raided it. A look inside a cupboard revealed... three open, half-full jars of peanut butter, and nothing else. All creamy.
Apparently this was my breakfast, then.
I didn't take the time to properly eat my meal, carrying it along in my mouth as I left our apartment to wander the subterranean halls of Icereach. It felt like early morning, the pre-dawn hours where the sky was just beginning to tinge, but for all I knew it was already afternoon. I hadn't bothered to check a clock before leaving.
Water hissed through distribution pipes bolted to the tunnel ceilings, tube lights occasionally flickering in complaint of being at least two decades old. The walls weren't carved rock - they were concrete, molded into the tunnels over top of layers of insulation to protect us from the stone of the cold mountain core. I knew this because when I was young, some construction issue had caused them to dig out a portion of one of the tunnels, leaving a makeshift wooden bridge for us to cross as they did open-access repairs.
Back then, this place had been much newer than it was now. I had watched, year by year, as the bunker aged, its pristine concrete corners becoming stained and worn down as its lights grew dimmer and more flickery. The facility had already existed when Mother and I arrived, myself not yet old enough to speak and Ansel still in the womb, I knew that much. And sure, they'd expanded it since then. We had practically grown up side by side, the bunker and I.
An upside of that was that I knew the bunker's tunnels almost perfectly, having explored it for so long as a foal. A few shortcuts involving shadow swimming and an unblocked air duct later, and I was at Corsica's lab, the site of most of our actual science done in the name of understanding the chapel. I let myself in using the biometric hoof scanner, a gift from her father back when relations were better between them. The interior was half orderly workspace, with diagrams of crystal slices pinned to corkboards on the walls and a pristine metal desk for doing chemistry experiments, and half musty archive, stacked with boxes of old newspapers we had rented out from the institute archive library and combed through by hoof. I stared at the boxes, stared at the two empty chairs, stared at the half-dissected crystal cluster on the desk, and knew I had to make this right.
The lab's terminal was already on, for some reason. Decorated with pink and yellow trim, it was a fancy custom version of an early third generation model, sporting three whole input ports and a matching number of outputs - another gift from Graygarden, in the days when he still treated Corsica like family. I stepped over to the shelf where we kept our pattern cards, wondering if we might have a registry of notable Icereach donors in a format more convenient than sheafing through reams of paper.
No dice. I moved on to the archive stacks, shuffling papers and using my metal glow bracelet for light. Was this what I wanted? No, wrong box. How about... Hmm, this looked promising...
"You do know it's a weekend, right?"
"Waaugh!" I jumped in surprise as Corsica spoke up, realizing that she had been sitting quietly in the room the whole time. "Is sneaking up on me a game, now?" I frowned, clutching the papers to my chest with a wing. "And was it that predictable that I would be here?"
"Yes." Corsica shrugged, then tapped her slender horn. "And I keep the door trapped with an alerting spell. It lets me know if anyone touches the thing I last cast it on."
I squinted at her, skeptical. There was no way a door alarm could have allowed her to beat me here, and as far as I knew, she didn't know how to teleport. And now that I thought about it, the terminal had been on...
She stared at me for a moment. "So... you know our research paper is finished. You turned it in yourself. And we haven't started working on the next thing yet. So why here?"
"Well, just because we haven't started yet doesn't mean now is a bad time," I replied, rolling my shoulders and folding the donor registry papers into one of my coat's many pockets. "It's a brand new day and everything."
Corsica said nothing. I imagined she was giving me a look that asked if I was really dense enough to make her spell out that she forgave me.
"You don't have to help," I offered. "I mean, I'd appreciate it if you did, but this problem's all on me. I've been thinking about our options, and it's best to start while your brain's already working the circuit, right?"
A thick bead of sapphire telekinesis formed around the scruff of my neck as Corsica left the lab, lifting me up and dragging me behind her without a shred of dignity. "Nope," she announced, closing the door and locking both of us out. "Wrong."
I sat outside the door and blinked at her, because there wasn't much else for me to do.
Corsica stared me down, preparing to lecture. "First off, you're not officially employed. You don't draw a salary, don't report to a manager, and don't have anyone expecting you to show up on time who will turn their horn inside out from yelling if you slack off. So when you say you have a problem and you need to fix it, the first thing you need to ask yourself is who cares."
My face scrunched. "You make it sound like I'm not allowed to do that myself."
"Exactly." Corsica mussed my mane. "It's only a problem to you, so you get to say exactly how much of a problem it is. And that means you get to decide when it's no longer worth stressing over and working yourself to the bone to fix."
"Do I?" I deadpanned, glancing wistfully at the lab door. "First off, this isn't stressing, it's a work ethic. Second, I can't be working myself to the bone since I haven't even started yet. I'm well-rested and raring to go. And third, it sounds an awful lot like you're trying to decide that for me."
"Because you're being silly and not taking care of yourself," Corsica countered. "And I'm going to intervene before I spend all day relaxing while you pull your mane out over screwing up that report submission. It is the weekend. Get on your hooves and come have some fun with me. Let's celebrate finishing our paper, wait a while, and then sit down and figure out what we're doing about the bigger project. In that order."
I stared at her helplessly. "I just spent the whole night sleeping!"
Corsica matched my stare. "Weekend."
"We work weekends all the time," I pointed out. "Motivation is a good thing."
"Ah ah ah," Corsica chided, silencing me with a hoof. "Vacation first, work later. You might think you're fine now, but we're currently on the back hoof with this paper. When you have an emotional investment that goes beyond investigating for the sake of curiosity, it's not a good idea to work on a problem that's hard enough to have beaten you before. I'm not waiting until after you burn yourself out to take matters into my own hooves."
Burning out, huh? It was almost like she knew what I had been dreaming about last night. Or maybe she was remembering those conversations too... She probably thought our roles were reversed now, compared to back then. And if that was her mindset, whether it was an accurate one or not, I realized then and there that I would never be able to win.
How was it that I could be so envious of Corsica's ability to shrug off problems, yet when she sat down and physically dragged me through the motions, I wanted to resist? My brain didn't make any sense sometimes.
"Alright," I sighed, "have it your way. We'll go and slack off for a day. But just so you know, I need to make this right. And I'm not going to forget about it just because we go and get our adrenaline pumping, or whatever." I fixed her with my gaze. "And you know dead why. This isn't just some random paper, Corsica. It's the project that let us become friends. This is personal."
Corsica met my eyes with a stare of her own. "Two days. The whole weekend. And after that, I'll help you get back to work. You'd better not forget about it, because it's personal for me, too. Deal?"
I offered a hoof. This time, in contrast to our reluctant start two years ago, Corsica took it, and I straightened up, getting off my rear. "Deal. So what's your glorious plan for the day, eh?"
Just like that, Corsica's attitude was back. "First, we find Ansel. Second? You'll find out."
With a rattle of old gears, an elevator rose with me inside, lights flickering to show the floors as they passed. I was poring over the donor registry I had snatched from the lab, awake and just as scruffy as I liked to be. As far as I was concerned, everything was normal.
To my side sat Corsica, inspecting an errant strand of her mane with narrowed eyes, a more elegant version of my own satchel worn around her shoulder. Also normal.
And then there was Ansel, who looked like he had been roused on three hours of sleep. Though, to be honest, that was pretty normal too.
"Rough night?" Corsica asked coyly.
"Don't even get me started," Ansel warned, slumping. "Mother dearest wasn't kidding last night when she said our toilet went belly-up. I'd like to see you not sleep in after staying up past the witching hour patching together that pile of tin."
"Tin?" Corsica blinked. "You have a toilet made of metal?"
"Welcome to Icereach, Princess Porcelain." Ansel rolled his eyes. "Best watch your step. Around these parts, we have such mythical horrors as day jobs, metal toilets, and meals that serve bread instead of cake. I think we also have... Yes, I seem to recall rumors of an evil filly who treats her poor ex's beauty sleep like a pirate treats a chest of jewels..."
Corsica whistled innocently.
I raised an eyebrow at her with a probing grin. "Looks like not everyone has the same definition of slacking off, aye now?"
"The only ones who are slacking off are Icereach's plumbers," Ansel groused. "Must be in that profession because they were too lazy to make it as scientists, I swear. You'd think this place was built a hundred years ago."
"The bunker was started in the year nine hundred eighty-six," Corsica replied with a shrug. "And under construction for at least seven years. It's younger than I am."
"That narrative is demonstrably false," Ansel yawned. "Perhaps it's what they teach you in princess school, but my birth certificate is dated that very year, and stamped to the very apartment where you just dragged me out of bed. You're the ones who always complain about how slow Icereach gets things done. Do you really think they could have rigged up an entire underground apartment block in barely a few months? If you ask me, the bunker's older, and someone's got something to hide. Like a real age that's too embarrassing to utter..."
I actually could believe a construction crew would work that fast... though, granted, I knew nothing about construction. But rather than try to argue, I poked at the wall of the elevator, papered with a diamond pattern of beige, tan and brown that looked like it was trying to be fancy on the cheap but was starting to peel and lose its luster. "For real, though. I remember when they were building, when I was young. The place looked a lot newer back then. But these days, it seems like there's a lot more repair crews than construction crews around. Like everyone just wants the place to hold together until we can reach some milestone rather than build it up anymore. I don't care where the building came from, but it's kind of important, where it's going."
"Well." Ansel straightened up. "I can't rightly blame you. It's pretty funny, when you think about it. This place was designed to facilitate equine space travel, and at this rate we're going to need a whole new bunker before we even get our first living hoof off the ground."
"Hey!" Corsica snapped, flicking up the fringe of his mane with a hoof and making him flinch. "No pessimism about work. Halcyon's been stressing about that and she needs a vacation."
Ansel blinked owlishly at her. "I'm all for a vacation, but if my living room couch is to be such a forbidden Elysium, at least tell me where we're going?"
"To the surface!" Corsica winked as the elevator slid to a stop. "I thought we'd hang out with the yaks."
"Wait, are you seri-"
Our ascension ground to a halt, and the sliding doors interrupted him with a beam of blinding white and a blast of chilly air. We were at the surface.
"Ouch! What the blazes has gotten into you, bringing us up here without warning!?" Ansel hugged himself and aggressively shivered, the sun glaring off a plowed road and several massive snow piles before us. "You know I'm no good out here without a coat!"
I nodded in sympathy, brought back to reality by the cold. Corsica was Yakyakistani, and blessed with naturally thick fur. I never left home without my clothes. But for Ansel, being out on the surface could get a little nippy at times.
But Corsica only gave a cheeky giggle, strolling out into the white with her fur fluffed against the cold, wearing nothing but her ear ornaments and her dainty, noise-making shoes. "Oh, stop overreacting and run around a little. The exercise will warm you up."
"Of all the foulest and most indecent ways to bring a young stallion to his knees..." Ansel gritted his teeth and followed along. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. My coat was big enough to share... but he was the type of pony who seemed to enjoy complaining. No reason to ruin his groove.
Crimson Valley. That was the name of the mountainous cleft in which Icereach lay, so named because of the spectacular sunsets that beamed in from Yak Hoof Glacier to the west. During perfect conditions, the sun would reflect off the lowland ice sea as it set, sending its red and orange light straight up the valley's length and coloring the snow in ways that were impossible to replicate outside of Yakyakistan. Yakyakistan itself was shaped like a titanic horseshoe, a strip of developed and livable land curving around a seemingly-endless plane of ice, of which Yak Hoof was our own little corner at the far southeast edge.
To the east, an old, abandoned road wound up through Crimson Valley toward a distant pass. The valley's northern wall housed the bunker itself, a sprawling complex that had been built from a pre-existing system of natural caverns running through the mountain's core. The floor of the valley mostly played host to an array of huge underground rocket silo hatches, lidded with retracting doors to keep out the weather and snow. Don't ask me why we had so many silos when we were so bad at getting a launch together. Maybe during the construction phase, there had been ponies around who could actually achieve their ambitions.
Aside from the silo hatches, the one functional thing Icereach's surface was home to these days was a small military installation. Wedged against the northern mountain wall, it was a palisade compound housing a barracks, armory, mess hall, squat command tower with an airship dock, and two fields for drilling and training. All of Icereach's yaks lived there, much preferring the cold surface air and plentiful opportunities to smash things to the precise life of a scientist, along with a few of the hardier Yakyakistani ponies who were more at home with the rugged lifestyle as well.
In all the years I had been in Icereach, they had never been called into service, and I doubted they ever would be. To the north and west were vast, empty swaths of Yakyakistan, ruled by a friendly government and comprised of harsh mountains or else flat ice that left no cover from storms. Far to the east, once you made it out of this mountain chain, we were friends with Ironridge as well, a geographically small city-state that nevertheless possessed massive control over the world's central airspace. And there wasn't anything to the south - just a chain of mountains called the Aldenfold, so tall that even airships couldn't pass them, which everyone knew formed the edge of the world.
I wasn't sure who financed our military, as unnecessary as they were, but they existed. And the end result was a fortress so relaxed that the front gate was open and unguarded at all hours of the day.
"Ahoy! Balthazar!" Corsica strolled proudly through the entrance, hailing a group of yaks that were buffing their tunics outside the mess hall.
The yaks looked up and grinned. One disengaged, striding forward across the ploughed, flattened courtyard with hooffalls that sent tiny tremors I could feel in my chest.
"Squishy science ponies!" Balthazar the yak stomped up to us, giving Corsica such an affectionate pat on the head that her legs gave out and she collapsed in a heap. "Balthazar friends do too much eggheading and need to get out and feel like real yaks again?"
Corsica pushed herself back to her hooves, making a show of fixing her ear ornaments. "She did." She pointed over her shoulder at me. "Too much stressing about work. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't try to fix that?"
"Graaah hah hah!" Balthazar let out a deep belly laugh, turning and waving us back over to the other yaks by the mess hall. "Good! Come. Is swapping stories about yak ancestors who fought in war sixty years ago. Good for adrenaline."
There was something about yaks that put me at ease, I noted, following along. I was a pony who always lived in my head, consciously filtering how I saw the world and controlling how I acted, preferring the company of my own thoughts to most others, often dealing with trust issues... but I wasn't even sure Balthazar knew what duplicity meant. The yaks were bigger than me, tremendously strong, generally good-natured, and had relatively simple goals with no disconnect from their actions. They were coarse, uncouth, and overall a balm to someone who pretended as much as I did.
"It was heroic battle," a yak with a long, droopy mustache was narrating, his blue eyes smouldering with the memory of an ancient fire. "Grandfather Tolten was stationed at Fortress Anemo when Yakoso region revolted. Anemo stay loyal to Imperial Yakyakistan, but deep inside separatist territory. Besieged for months! Tolten could kick boulder so far, was famed for boulder-kicking skills. Once took out entire enemy trebuchet with perfect shot..."
A yak with shoulders that looked like slabs of concrete chuckled, his face so flat he didn't have a muzzle at all. "Tarkov grandfather fought for separatists in Yakanova! Joined with forces for first failed assault to liberate capitol. Then fell for young refugee lass on way who became grandmother and eloped from army before battle. Probably saved life. Hahah!"
All the yaks roared with laughter, and I relaxed, the cold mountain air brushing through my laid-back ears. All I knew about Yakyakistan's civil war, I had heard from the soldiers here: it marked the collapse of Imperial Yakyakistan when their territory grew too big to manage, and the surviving nation had reshaped itself into a pacifistic theocracy ever since. As odd as it was to think about a society of rough-and-tumble yaks swearing a collective oath of military non-aggression, the proof of it was right here before me. Only sixty years later, and here were these soldiers laughing together about how their ancestors had been on different sides of their nation's most recent conflict in history.
"How about squishy science ponies?" Balthazar asked, scratching himself with a hoof. "Have any ancestor with heroic deeds?"
"Eh, you know." I shrugged. "Mother's a refugee from the Griffon Empire. It was the big war eighteen years ago... batponies versus griffons and other ponies, so it was getting real dangerous for us down in the griffon-majority south. We had to scram while things were still heating up, right when I was an infant. No idea who Dad was. But anyone who can live through something like that's gotta be a hero, right?"
"Hah!" a fourth yak with a pear-shaped face bellowed, thumping his chest. "Questionable ancestry is only real yak ancestry. Nicov mother not know who father is. Say tracking these things for eggheads."
Tarkov chuckled. "Nicov tell ancestor story first. That make Nicov biggest egghead."
Nicov kicked Tarkov in the face.
Balthazar and the mustache yak both roared with excitement, quickly and carefully grabbing us and spiriting us across the courtyard so that we wouldn't get trampled in the ensuing melee. In seconds flat, the five of us were arrayed across from the brawl, Nicov and Tarkov's horns locked as hooves flew and meaty thuds and insults rang across the compound. Hooves collided like blows from a jackhammer, the other yaks picking sides to root for and cheering and booing as Tarkov got a hoof under Nicov's chest, slamming it upwards and making his adversary wheeze.
That was the edge he needed, and he caught Nicov with his horns beneath the smaller yak's shoulders, lifting from below and hoisting until Nicov was on two legs, then staggered over backwards and tipped over, defeated.
Any other scientists in Icereach would have been dumbstruck by the suddenness and ferocity of the brawl, perhaps blinking or stammering now that it had ended just as fast as it began. But I was far too used to this for that, and was loudly cheering Tarkov on instead.
"Really?" Corsica scowled at the loser, fishing through her purse as Ansel grinned smugly beside her. "I had money on you..."
"True tragedy." Balthazar shook his head sadly as the fighters brushed themselves off, Tarkov helping Nicov to his hooves. A casual observer would think that all animosity had been forgotten, but there had never been any in the first place - this was just the way of things. "Now have to buff tunics all over again. Third time this has happened today. Going to need more stories at this rate..."
"Still not convinced egghead scientists not secretly yaks," Nicov grumbled, stomping over to us and sporting a black eye. "Normal scientists never give yaks time of day."
"That because normal science ponies not know time of day," the mustache yak rumbled. "Too much living in caves. Cannot see sun. Intelligence is questionable sometimes."
All the yaks laughed.
It was true, though. I wasn't sure if somehow the military was a secret none of the other scientists were privy to, or if the three of us really were different. Everyone I had asked about it didn't find the soldiers of value to their research, or else was put off by their unrefined mannerisms and dubious grasp of grammar, but to Corsica and Ansel and I, hanging out here was good entertainment. The fights were fun, you got to see the sky, and sometimes...
"So, Nicov," Corsica began, shifting all her weight to one foreleg. "Want to soothe your ego with an easier battle for a change?"
Yep. That was us. Three against one, us with training weapons and them unarmed, they held back so as not to hurt us and we had yet to win a single fight after two years of trying. But we hung out with the yaks, watched the yaks, even exercised with them from time to time, so it wasn't that nonsensical for us to challenge them occasionally as well. According to us, at least. I doubted anyone else in the bunker felt the same.
"Eggheads spoiling for fight with Nicov too?" Nicov stretched and rolled his shoulders, a few joints popping. "Hoo... Feels like everyone want patented Nicov punch today. Bring it on."
Less than two minutes later, we were already losing.
"Hah... That all eggheads have?" Nicov flexed as Ansel went sailing through the air. I stood my ground and whistled as he arced over my head, not even trying to catch him or spare him a hard landing. I knew from experience how that would go.
"Ouch!" Ansel groaned, rolling to a stop. "I'm okay...!" He lifted his head, blinking owlishly at Corsica and I. "What are you clods standing around for? Capitalize on my... ow! My opening!"
Corsica blinked between him and Nicov, who was standing perfectly at the ready, pumping his biceps and posing as he waited for us to make the next move. "He doesn't look all that open to me. Get up and we'll attack together. Otherwise I'm going to be the one flying through the air like that next time."
"Yes, heavens forbid you should become the party tank..." Ansel got shakily to his hooves, propping himself up on a pair of reinforced hoof braces dedicated to a fighting style of punching, his training weapon of choice. He pointed a brace straight at Nicov. "You hear that, you walking carpet? Here I come!"
I stepped into action, following him and looking for an opportunity to flank. Out of the three of us, I was definitely the worst at fighting, having not even found a weapon I liked yet - my initial infatuation with cool, massive broadswords failed to pan out when I realized how hard it was for a mare of my stature to lift them. But I had a decent mind for tactics, and was still an expert at controlling how others saw me. The best way for me to contribute was convincing Nicov that I wasn't a threat, then getting in close...
Or maybe I just didn't want to stand where I could get hit because I was mentally running through a list of tactics for shaking down Icereach's third-party donors for money, once I could find a spare minute to read the list I had snatched. Not that I couldn't take a few solid whacks, but I really, really didn't want to lose my train of thought.
Corsica and Ansel ran at him side by side, swerving and switching places several times to obscure their approach. Corsica's weapon was a large, wooden lance, something she braced against her side like a jousting rod and maneuvered properly with her telekinesis. Her style was both the most creative of the three of ours, and also the most tailored for what we were fighting, the only thing we had that could hit Nicov from farther away than he could hit us. Her lance and Ansel entered the yak's reach at the same time, forcing him to prioritize.
Whud! Nicov chose the lance, stepping on it and rending it from Corsica's grasp. But she had already dropped it from her telekinetic grip, her aura now surrounding Ansel instead, grabbing him and propelling him with a last boost of speed as he rammed into Nicov's chest with his hardest punch.
My eyes were vacant, too busy sorting strategies for wealthy families and generous businessponies and organizations and brainstorming leads to easily focus on my surroundings, but the back of my head still managed to analyze what was going on. If that punch was hard enough to make Nicov rear up, and I went for one of his hind legs, maybe we could topple him...
It wasn't hard enough. Nicov puffed out his chest, and Ansel bounced ineffectually off, and by then I was too committed. My quarterstaff rammed into a joint at the back of his hind leg, and he met me with a halfhearted kick, flipping me hard. I spun, tumbling backwards, all sense of orientation and direction and soon vision lost as I rolled and rolled and hit something hard, acute dizziness fogging all of my senses.
"Ouch!" Ansel yelled a moment later. "I'm okay...!" He paused. "Wing-ears, would it kill you to follow up on my pressure from time to time?"
"At the rate you're getting pummeled, probably," Corsica's voice replied. "Good game, Nicov. We surrender."
"No! Don't surrender on my behalf! Look how much fight we've still got in us!"
His protests fell on deaf ears, the other yaks cheering and stomping around now that the fight was officially over. I stayed put for a while, until a pink hoof rolled me upright. "You okay there?" Corsica asked, her face swimming in my vision.
"I'm sure I look worse than I am," I muttered, staggering drunkenly to my hooves. "Thanks for the assist. Who knows, maybe one day we'll really get 'em?"
"Someday," Corsica agreed. Self-consciously, I ran a wing through my mane: somehow she hadn't taken a single hit in the fight, and her appearance was perfect. It would have been enough to make me sympathize with Ansel about her being the first one to throw in the towel, if I hadn't been too dizzy to surrender myself.
"Huh huh." Balthazar lumbered amiably up to me and Corsica, Nicov goading Tarkov into an eating contest in the mess hall and wandering away with the mustache yak to judge. "Squishy science ponies fight very stubborn. Reminds Balthazar of snow."
Corsica raised an eyebrow. "Beautiful when we're fresh, and with a tendency to get walked on?"
"Haha! No. Yaks eat snow for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Second breakfast too. Also supper, brunch, teatime, midnight snack, and nameless unscheduled meals that are just as important. You know how is." Balthazar shrugged. "But no matter how much yaks eat, more always fall."
I slumped my way over to a bleacher that had been set up at the edge of the courtyard, ostensibly for when fights drew big enough crowds to demand special seating, and flopped down on it, Corsica and Balthazar following. "Well, what can we say? Life gets boring down below sometimes."
The yak squinted at me. "Boring sometimes? Other science ponies fight like first place in mess hall line is prize, but egghead Halcyon barely paying attention. Something else clearly on mind. Balthazar know this."
"Perceptive little carpet, aren't you?" I leaned back and looked at the sky. The compound's lone tower also served as Icereach's main airship dock, though only two ships were moored there today, leaving plenty of space for me to stare into the cloudless heavens.
Corsica spoke up for me. "It's just politics. The kind of stuff you'd think is pointless to worry about."
"Which is why science ponies are on surface, hmm? For distraction?" Balthazar raised an eyebrow. "Many things in world are pointless to worry about. Is age-old yak wisdom. Very wise and sensible." He shuffled, getting comfortable. "But sometimes brains refuse to be wise even when know wise thing to do. Happens to everyone. Tell Balthazar of your worries."
I blinked, but Corsica nodded at me, so I sighed. "It's not politics and I'm not worrying. I just made a mistake on something I care about, and now I've gotta think of a way to fix it. Took a risk that didn't pay off, basically. Tried to get something I wanted, and didn't think it through and lost some other stuff. So, my brain's a little busy with trying to find a way to get back to normal."
Balthazar grunted in thought. "Ah. Easy answer is to treat self to something else nice. Go take bath with bubbles and lots of perfume. Balthazar hear that is all rage among female ponies. Then eat lots of unhealthy food and sleep in. Is weekend, no? Very important to convince self that is not end of world. Will be many good things in life other than missed opportunities. And will be much easier to solve other problems once no longer sad about missed chances."
"See?" Corsica winked. "He gets it."
"No, hold on, though." I scrunched my shoulders and frowned. "It's not that I'm bent out of shape about losing any chances, I just want to clean up after myself. We've got this project we've been working on for two years, and... well, it takes a while to explain, but it means a lot to me."
Balthazar rubbed his chin. "Does problem get worse if Halcyon do nothing? Pony could break favorite weapon, and only consequence is not being able to train until repair it. Or pony could drop food on floor. Dropped food become very unpleasant after days of not being cleaned up."
"The first one," Corsica answered for me. "And it's a weekend, so we shouldn't be working anyway."
I huffed.
Balthazar frowned. "Still stand by advice to do something nice for self. Science pony clearly not really feeling it when fighting. Even if problem is little, still is problem." He turned it into a grin. "And then back to work! Balthazar once had friend who suffer humiliating defeat in contest. Smashed many things in rage. Then got good so could smash opponent next time. Better than would have been if not defeated in first place! Halcyon seem to have same spirit." He raised an eyebrow at Corsica. "Pony clearly care about friend Halcyon, but it sound like she not need Corsica to hold hoof. Strong enough to learn from experiences."
Corsica went beet-red. "I'm not hoof-holding! I just don't want her to work herself to the bone to drown out all her problems!"
"Thanks for the backup, big guy. You do get it," I said to Balthazar with a grin of my own, sitting up, ignoring Corsica, shaking off the last of my dizziness and looking around. There had to be something nice I could do for myself that wouldn't require my focus to be away from the research... "Hey, where's Ansel?"
"Went home in a huff to wash up." Corsica shrugged. "Turns out getting thrown across a field gets you a little dirty."
I gave myself a better look, now that I could see straight again. The military compound was regularly cleared of snow, but it was impossible to avoid at least a little wetness getting left behind, and rolling across the packed earth floor had absolutely muddied my coat, wings, and tail. The garment didn't look too bad, since it was designed to be rough, but silver and gray really wasn't a color scheme that mixed well with copious stains of brown, and I imagined if I could see my mane, it wouldn't be much better.
"Eh heh..." I held my tail self-consciously. "You know, maybe you've got a point about the bath thing."
Corsica blinked, an idea hitting her. "Come over to my place. You want to treat yourself well, Father has the best accommodations in Icereach. And then you won't have to wait for Ansel to finish! See if he calls me Princess Porcelain again after seeing how good you smell when you treat yourself to real acommodations."
Balthazar laughed, straightening up and preparing to stroll away. "Perfect plan! Go treat self like princess. Then smash problems. And once problems are smashed and everyone feeling good again, come back and hang out with yaks more. Maybe swap guesses about ship that showed up this morning!"
I grinned thankfully and followed Corsica, glancing up as I did. Now that I looked twice, one of the ships moored at the tower definitely wasn't one I had seen before - sleek, dark and lacking a dirigible, it was smaller than a cargo liner and had no flags or insignias whatsoever. Something like that had to belong to a group or individual with lots of money and a willingness to use it... Probably one of the third-party sponsors I had just been brainstorming about. How hard would it be to find the owners, introduce myself to them, get them excited about the ether crystal research, and have them make up for the bad first impression I had given Graygarden about what we were doing?
Heh. It seemed obvious my train of thought wasn't giving up on this soon.
"You know," I said to Corsica as we navigated the top floor of the residential district, an area reserved for larger houses and apartments for anyone with the station and income to afford one, "I don't think I've ever actually been this way before. To your place, that is." I always figured it was because of her father and never pressed, but... "Why the sudden change of heart?"
Corsica shrugged carelessly. "You'll see."
I blinked and tilted my head. "Eh?"
We turned a corner, and I sensed that she was thinking carefully about how to word something, an action completely at odds with her usual reckless behavior. But I followed and waited, and eventually she spoke.
"Just so you know..." Corsica hesitated as we approached a large, solid-oak door, standing in sharp contrast to most of the bunker's steel-and-concrete construction. "It's not that you don't need a bath, but I want you to see this because you need to stop beating yourself up over that research paper. If you're so hung up on it that the yaks can tell from the way you're fighting... Well, go right on in."
She unlocked and cracked the door open for me, motioning me in first. I frowned. "A normal thing to say to your friend before inviting her into your home, that," I quipped, pushing on the door. "Don't go out of your way to brace me for the skeletons in your closet or anyth..."
My jaw wouldn't let me finish. Neither would my eyes, and I lifted a hoof to my chin to stifle a laugh. "This is your house? Are you serious?"
It was large, first off. I counted at least four doors in the first room alone, which was already as big as my entire apartment. It was bright, too, and meticulously styled and clean... and also overwhelmingly pink.
A table sized for two sat in an alcove, set with lace doilies and a vase with a single fake orange rose. Framed poetry hung from the walls, and where a couch should have been was a white wicker bench set with tiny velvet pillows, the whole thing looking far too delicate to take more than a foal's weight. The walls themselves were a perfect strawberries-and-cream, accented by pure white trim and doorways, a tiny chandelier with heart-shaped bulbs provided illumination, and the whole thing looked more like a life-sized dollhouse than anything a real pony would live in... let alone a proud, balding, middle-aged science executive like Corsica's father. I burst out laughing.
"Bwahahahaha! You're pulling my tail!" I doubled over, holding my stomach and leaning against a flowery wall. "Did you steal this from a five-year-old's princess fantasies? Have you secretly been the girliest mare in all of Icereach and were holding out on us? I can't believe Graygarden would actually sleep in a place like..."
I trailed off, blinking. "You decorated your home to look ridiculous just to take a swipe at your father. Since you know you've got more free time to mess with it than he does. Does he just sleep in his office, or something?"
Corsica gave me a flat look. "Actually, it's the other way around. What did you think I was doing at the lab early enough to chide you for showing up there on a weekend?"
My laughter slowly subsided.
"Take a seat." Corsica motioned toward the flimsy-looking bench, closing the door with her tail. "The bath is still the best in Icereach, and I meant what I said when I invited you here. You'll feel like a queen. But first, I want you to see this. Take it all in."
I watched, waiting for an explanation, and rubbed at my eyes. The room didn't give them anywhere to rest...
"Father has a mistress," Corsica said plainly. "She lives in Ironridge and visits sometimes, and the place is like this for her. They've been seeing each other for about two years. Think a little about what that means."
My backwards ears slowly fell even further. "So he wants to disown you as his heir, because... The way he treats you never even was about you, was it? That's why things changed so suddenly after the accident two years ago. I always thought it was because of that, but you're saying it's just a coincidence they happened at the same time?" I shifted my gaze. "I suppose it's a secret, then. Let me guess, you have a secret half-sibling now, too."
Corsica shrugged, sitting on the pale wood floor. "Disown me? Sure feels like it. It is a secret, and it's not one that would improve my relationship with him if he ever knew I let it get out, so keep it to yourself or else. And as far as I know, no half-siblings yet, but who knows how long that will last?"
I stared. "I'd offer you room in our place, but we're not exactly overflowing with guest rooms..."
"It's fine." Corsica shrugged. "I prefer sleeping in the lab anyway. But do you get this?" She motioned insistently to the garish decorations. "Do you get that my relationship with him has nothing to do with either of us and there's nothing we can do to change it, and that if you're feeling like you messed up with the paper, it's not your fault that your plan didn't work?" She pinned me with her gaze, preventing me from even trying to look away. "That if anything, it's mine for not giving you a better idea of my situation? Now lighten up and stop beating yourself up over this."
"Hold on," I interrupted a thought suddenly striking. "Are you projecting on me?"
Corsica blinked. "What?"
"You are, aren't you?" I pressed. "You're thinking my plan fell through because you should have done more to convince me it wasn't worth trying, so now you're insisting I'm handling it poorly so you have someone to make it up to." I smiled coyly. "Sly filly."
"No." Corsica snorted. "I'm just looking out for you. Didn't you come here to use the bath?"
Bingo.
I lifted a filthy, mud-caked boot and grinned. "If our heights were reversed, I'd be ruffling your mane right now, you scallywag."
Corsica held her mane away from me. "Not with that filthy thing, you won't. I just cleaned this! I can't believe this is what I get for worrying about such a curmudgeon..."
I stuck out my tongue. "Actually, you just walked out of a brawl with a yak. Fair's fair that you get as dirty as the rest of us. Come on..."
"Ugh," Corsica groaned, only offering token resistance as I proceeded to ruin her careful grooming. "How are you the same timid thing that used to live in my shadow? It's like you're a completely different pony."
"Are you complaining?" I shrugged, letting up. "You're pretty different yourself, and look how it's worked out for us."
Corsica glanced at an ornate wall mirror, her mane endearingly frightful with askew hairs and a speckling of chipped mud. The fluffy carpet around us had started to turn brown.
"I'm looking," she said. "And I see you helping to clean this up before Graygarden straps us to the underside of a rocket."
I looked at the floor. "Oops."
"Go take your bath." Corsica shook her head, lifting me in her telekinesis and pushing me toward a fancy door. "You'll just make it worse if you try to help right now. I'll go see if the Icereach clinic knows any emergency resuscitation procedures for carpets."
"Heheh... Thanks..." I opened the door, suddenly a lot more aware of how dirty I was. "Good luck?"
"Don't mention it. Seriously." Corsica snorted, but gave me a nod. "Try not to get overwhelmed by the stock of conditioners, and speaking from experience, don't mix more than three unknown fragrances at once or even look at the curlers. Smell you later."
Yaks, I reflected, had to be the wisest creatures in the world.
The bath itself had just been a nice treat. Spending two hours teasing dirt out of the carpet after both of us had cleaned up, however, had served as a reminder to both of us that there were some things in life that had to take precedence over our project and its needs and failings. Somehow, Balthazar's advice had gotten us in a situation where neither of us could do what we wanted, yet there was plenty of time to talk and mellow out.
Which wasn't to say the bath wasn't divine. My fur still felt warm from the lengthy soak, like a shell that kept out distractions and cold so I could think in peace. It was especially impressive considering I was outside again, at night and even up high, wearing only my signature coat, a scarf, oversized earmuffs, a fluffy hood and two extra layers of padding to protect against the chill. Granted, there wasn't any wind, but still. Bath? Good.
Now I was back at it, my spirits high and my mind fishing for ways to relieve Graygarden of his cash. That was why I had snuck up to the airship docking tower in the military compound, watching the dusky sky and praying that inspiration would strike.
"Squishy science pony going to catch cold up here at night. Critical wool deficiency, yes?"
I looked up, my tail dangling off the side of the aerial dock extending from the tower. "Eh? Oh, hey, Balthazar." I waved my friend over, adjusting my scarf. "Nah, I'm gonna go back inside before it gets too cold. I'm all bundled up nice and proper. Thanks for the advice, by the way. It really helped."
Balthazar made a rumbling noise deep in his throat. "Difficult not to notice. Pony smells just like Corsica with soaps and shampoo."
Caught me red-hooved, he had. What, was I supposed to get an invitation to use Corsica's own cosmetics and not try to figure out her precise combination? Learning these sorts of things was my special talent...
"Doing better now, yes?" Balthazar tilted his head. "Yak advice is best advice. Never fails to improve quality of life."
I shrugged. "Well, it didn't exactly make my problems go away, if that's what you mean, but I do feel a little better. Better able to handle them, that is. Back to brainstorming now."
Balthazar gave me a flat look. "Then why science pony trying to turn into night air popsicle? Temperature at night drop faster than yak when pushed off cliff."
I pointed at the sky, the last vestiges of twilight visible out over the glacier on the western horizon. "Eh, the weather's nice. I've got a few more minutes before I freeze. The bigger question is, why isn't everyone else? For a town of scientists trying to send ponies to space, a whole lot of us spend basically no time looking at it. It's like they're not even curious. Maybe that's why we keep stalling out trying to transition to live tests, no matter how much everything works in theory."
Balthazar watched, sensing I wasn't done.
"Personally," I continued, pointing a hoof up at the purple emptiness between the stars, "I think there's something out there, bigger than all of us. You've probably never seen it, but there's a thing deep in a cave called a river of ether, and it looks exactly like the night sky if you stare at it for long enough. There's an ancient chapel down there too, like someone wanted to pay respects to it hundreds of years ago. I bet whoever built that knew something about the world that's since been forgotten, and we could be on the verge of rediscovering it if only everyone would care just a little about what's out there to be found."
I curled my tail tightly around my hooves, thick layers of padding cushioning all my movements. "So, that's what I'm risking getting popsicled for. I've had a setback, I took today off and might do the same tomorrow. But I've gotta keep going soon, and staring at the sky is just my way of psyching myself up for it. Think that's a good reason?"
"Huh huh," Balthazar chuckled. "Make good points. Balthazar always think it silly how ponies think they can touch sky from inside cave. And world is big in every direction." He glanced toward the mystery ship I had noted earlier in the day, hovering idly at the dock with a single light on in the bridge. "Always new things to learn about. Is science pony job to learn things, yes?" He got up and turned to leave. "Just make sure not accidentally learn what is like to be pony popsicle. Huh huh."
His wisdom hadn't let me down so far, so no reason to start brushing off the big yak's advice now... Stifling a yawn, I took a last look at the sky, my eyes lingering extra-long on the new moon that was low on the western horizon, and got up, heading back into the tower to find the staircase back down.
I could keep thinking about how to redeem our project in Graygarden's graces in my dreams.
"Hey! Hallie! Wake up in there!"
A loud knocking forced me from my slumber, dragging me out of a dream where Ansel and I were playing as foals and forcing me into the unwelcome reality of a weekend where I didn't get to sleep in.
"Oi, knock it off, I'm having a decent dream!" I grunted, my legs flailing about under the covers in a doomed effort to lift my head without sacrificing my comfortable position. "Whatever it is, I'm not interested!"
"Corsica is at the door!" Ansel's voice carried through my own, heavily-barred bedroom door, making me frown in confusion. "She says it's urgent!"
"Oh, of course it's urgent," I snipped, falling out of bed and extracting myself from the covers as I searched blindly for my boots, forgetting for several seconds to turn my bracelet on. "First it's paramount that I spend the weekend slacking off, but of course sleeping in is against the rules because it's too urgent that I relax and...!" I tripped over a boot and hit my head on my vanity. "Arrgh!"
"Her words, not mine," Ansel echoed, leaving me to wallow and get dressed in peace.
Eventually, I got my boots on, feeling a bit of dried drool at the corner of my mouth and very aware that my fur was rumpled, but if Corsica wanted to make an unsolicited early-morning visit, she had better be prepared for what she got. Shadow sneaking under my door, I nearly tripped as I got back to my hooves, already on an internal tirade about how the only reason I was going out there was to give Corsica a piece of my mind.
Or Ansel, if she wasn't really there and this was a prank...
I quickly ate my words, though, as I saw that not only was Corsica here, she was in our living room, sitting on an armrest of the couch and staring at me with a raised eyebrow.
"Look," I began, "if this is payback for me ruining your mane and the carpet-"
"Do you sleep in those boots?" She cut me off, staring.
I blinked. "What? No! I just don't like anyone looking at my legs! Now seriously, there had better be a good reason you changed your mind about me taking the weekend off."
"There is," Corsica promised, her tone instantly businesslike and my tall boots forgotten. "I don't know what happened, but something changed Father's mind about the fault plane research. He thinks there's money in it. How quickly can you groom and meet me at his office to back me up?"
Well, I was awake now.
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Updating weekly feels weird.
Why haven't you responded to my comment?
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Because I don't always respond to every comment I get. Questions about the future direction of the story, in particular, I might consider spoilers, or want to leave up to reader speculation, or just not be ready to commit to an answer on - the latter, in this case. The Immortal Dream is far too new for me to give a remotely accurate wordcount estimate.
In general, there are enough good reasons I might not have an answer to a question that I figure me not leaving a comment should be equivalent to me leaving a comment saying I have no comment. I'm sorry if that wasn't a good assumption.
Hmm.. a non dirigible airship...
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say "Hello Shinespark."
As pointed out by others far smarter than I am, this is quite fitting given Halcyon's name.
Kind of curious what Luna would see when dreamwalking. Would Halcyon just never show up in the dream realm?
Getting some tantalizing hints, but nothing clear about what might be momentous enough to cause a fault plane in ether crystals... Or it might be a coincidence, the same way they thought the fault plane(s) corresponding to Nightmare Moon's return was a coincidence. If that's the case, I don't think we're going to know what it is given we're in uncharted waters timeline-wise.
What no description of what they look like?
I'm half convinced these are deliberate red herrings hinting at Felicity/Senescey/Larceny, but there's just oh so little to go off of.
My new tangled-web-of-red-string hypothesis is Larceny, but there's very little (if anything) to support that...
Hmmm... Wonder if what Herman said in TOW still applies: "And while I know not what was delivered in a streak of light over the mountains at sunset... An experimental, ultrafast technology known as rocketry... I can see the details of its security classification. A classification that mandates it be protected by a group of yak warriors." It'd explain the silos, at least, assuming that's where the rocket came from in the first place.
Batponies? Now that's interesting. Was that from Halcyon's recollection, something Mother said, or what she was taught in school?
Seems like Harmony tech has gotten further out of the prototype stage? Wonder how many airships of that kind are flying around at this point in time.
Well that was an idea that went from planning to success slightly faster than expected...
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Maybe her design but doesn't she have her hooves full with Ironridge?
Oh boy, just who does that airship belong to?
A batpony who can apparently shift her appearance and doesnt like people looking at her legs?
sounds like a changeling to me
Ah, parallelism.
Hey, Mother sleeps the same way I do <3
It’s very interesting that the events in the Empire eighteen years ago are described as a war; to my memory, it was more of a coup and half-hour genocide. I see two possible explanations here: One, Mother is lying for some reason. Two, there was an actual war after the TOW crew left, most likely related to Chrissy having taken over the country. Both are intriguing, but I suspect it won’t be relevant for a while. And, of course, option three is that it’s just a weird word choice and I’m looking into nothing.
Oh, and Halcyon’s Changeling vibes are increasing, but I said that about Valey for 500k words back in TOW and it didn’t go anywhere (yet.) so I hesitate to make assumptions.
Well well well.
I’m not going to make predictions about this until we learn whether it really is the ship you obviously want us to think it is, but I’m certainly excited…
the yaks seem nice. i like them.