"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Rainbow Dash's eyes narrowed. She leaned her fuzzy head to the left... then even more fuzzily to the right. "... ... ...okay, Keps. I give up." She looked at the wyvern. "What is it?"
Rainbow Dash, Kepler, Logan, and Flynn were all huddled inside the lobby of the umpteenth floor of one of the many spires. The glass entrance had been completely shattered by a collapsed vehicle, and the group found a relatively tame and unassuming interior. The floor was done in an immaculately shiny marble with constellatory designs bespeckling the exposed surfaces. There were seats, tables, and round cylinders that—several eons ago—must have once contained floral arrangements of some sort. The group had stumbled upon a door that must have separated the lobby from a massive vertical shaft of sorts.
But that wasn't what they were staring at.
Rainbow, Kepler, Logan, and Flynn stood before a series of rectangular panels that hugged the surfaces of the wall situated along the far end of the room. The glossy black sheets lingered just above equine eye-level, and their quizzical expressions shone in the wayward starlight wafting into the lobby.
"... ... ...Keps?" Rainbow Dash repeated.
"Oh! Uhm..." The wyvern scratched his chin, studying the panels through his spectacles. "I must apologize, Rrainbow One, but I am at a loss to prroperrly hypothesize." He reached up with a claw and brushed the lower edge of one panel. "I am tempted to say a plaque of some sorrt..."
"But there're no letters," Logan remarked. He gestured outside. "We know whoever lived here could read, cuz there's crap carved into their public gazing-stone-thingy."
"They couldn't be mirrors...?" Rainbow Dash cocked her head to the side. "Could they?"
"Kinda positioned a bit high for that, don't you think?" Logan muttered.
"Ach...!" Kepler pointed. "But remember! The Angels were pegasi!"
"Right..." Logan droned. "...how I keep forgetting."
Kepler sighed. "Must you prractice sarrcasm in every field, brrotherr?"
"What?" Logan shrugged. "I was just—"
"Can it, fat ass." Flynn paced around the panels, eyeing them with his mechanical lens. "If only I could get a better look at the stuff."
"Whatever you do, egghead," Logan grumbled. "Just don't stupidly reach in there and break the Goddess-damn thing—"
CRACK! Flynn telekinetically yanked one panel off the wall.
"Grnnnngh!" Logan winced, teeth clenching. "Whyyyyyyyyy do I even bother?"
"HA!" Flynn grinned victoriously. His horn illuminated a series of cables dangling between the dislodged panel and the niche in the wall that previously housed it. "Just as I thought! An attachment to a power source running through the building's interior support structure!"
"Well, so much for that," Rainbow Dash remarked. "Doesn't look like this thing's received any power for epochs."
"It's not just power," a cold voice said.
"!!!" The group jumped in surprise. Logan almost unsheathed his axe.
"... ... ..." Seraphimus stood behind the group. She pointed calmly at the cables dangling between the panel and the wall. "There is a mechanism for transferring something besides just power."
"Like what?" Flynn asked, eyebrow arched. "If these ancient beings used artificially-coiled leylines, they'd likely rely on more than one physical cable to accomplish it."
"If these 'beings' are as old as you say..." Seraphimus' charcoal brown eyes narrowed. "...then they could accomplish that much with just one coil. Or no coil whatsoever." She nodded with her feathery head. "I suspect that this is some sort of manadisplay device."
Rainbow Dash blinked.
Logan looked calmly—but curiously—at Seraphimus. "What makes you say that?"
"As leader of the Right Talon of Verlaxion, I was in charge of guarding the locations of several state-funded experiments," she said. "At one point, several Frostknife manatechnicians were working on a method by which they could visually convey words across extended distances. It utilized a series of crystalline matrices, tightly packed together in order to properly arrange legible characters with mana-power illumination."
"How rremarrkable..." Kepler remarked. He reached a claw up to adjust his glasses. "Was the operration a success?"
Seraphimus shook her head. "Frostknife's engineers could put together a complex mechanism capable of computing information that would then be physically displayed via one crystalline matrix. But to accomplish the same feat across multiple matrices over long distances—simultaneously—proved impossible. Even with the utilization of enchanted leylines."
"Sounds like what you guys needed was a more complex mechanism for computing the information, storing it, and distributing it identically across multiple output devices," Flynn said.
Seraphimus nodded. "If I am not mistaken, the devices inside the abandoned facility utilized something far more complex and combined it with advanced holography."
Silence.
"Darkreach..." Flynn's good eye blinked. "She's... talking about Darkreach, right?"
Seraphimus sighed.
"Yes, Flynn," Logan droned. "She's talking about Darkreach." He looked aside at Seraphimus with a muddled grin. "Though she could stand to use a few more proper nouns... if she's actually deigning to come out of her damn shell."
"Hrmmmnngh..." Seraphimus folded her forelimbs.
"The Emerraldinians of Darrkeach used technology gifted them by Onyxxus," Kepler declared. "But the Angels? Theirr technology was evidently utilized herre farr earrlierr than the time when alicorrns harrnessed theirr harrmonic gifts into temporral application."
"Hey, look..." Rainbow Dash gestured. "...all I know is that I've seen some pretty snazzy technology in my journeys." Her eyes narrowed. "If the Ledomaritans and Xonans could get giant battleships to fly in only a few centuries... then just who knows what tricks the ancient pegasi could pull off?"
Seraphimus pointed at the panel levitating in Flynn's magic grasp. "I think the extra cables were designed for the purpose of connecting to a nexus of information."
"That could be quite trrue, theorretically," Kepler said. He looked pointedly at Flynn. "Brrotherr?"
The unicorn was already rubbing his chin. He gestured aside. "Keps. Toss me a spare Emeraldinian Crystal."
Kepler nodded. He reached into his satchel of things and handed a red shard over.
Flynn levitated it alongside the panel. His good eye squinted and he licked his lips. Soon, a bright light pulsated from the tip of his horn. It connected with both the panel and the crystal. Rainbow and the others watched as Flynn concentrated through the shard, zapping the panel's cables with various alternating frequencies of magical energy.
About a minute into the ordeal, a bright light flickered across the glass sheet of the panel. Kepler and Logan gasped as a vibrant array of random colors and spectral chaos rippled across the otherwise dormant surface. It lit up the entire lobby with static confusion.
"Well, I'll be damned..." Logan exhaled.
"My starrs and garrterrs!"
"Where..." Rainbow Dash blinked. "...are the colors coming from?"
"From inside the panel," Flynn muttered, sweating as he applied more magic and magnified the kaleidoscopic randomness. "Following Seraphimus' suggestion, I tried firing mana-energy into the contacts. What you are currently witnessing is the result."
"But... but I don't understand any of it," Rainbow Dash said. "What the heck are we seeing?"
"Absolutely nothing," Flynn said. "Because this device was never built to process the input I'm giving it." He leaned back, dimming his horn and the crystal. The glossy panel went black in an instant. "But the Angels? Back in the day, they must have had this thing attached to a computational matrix that relayed information to anyone and everyone."
"So..." Kepler scratched his chin. "...they had an inforrmational brroadcasting system?"
"Looks like it." Flynn floated the panel back in place and nodded towards Seraphimus. "Way to go, murder chicken."
Seraphimus breathed hotly out the side of her beak. "You are welcome."
"So..." Logan folded his forelimbs. "...whatever happened to your dying need to fly off on your own... and die?"
Rainbow looked as Seraphimus.
"I..." Seraphimus lingered. "...appear to have gotten distracted."
Rainbow looked at Logan.
"Hmmm..." He smirked warmly. "...I guess cryptology loves company, huh?"
Seraphimus was silent.
Rainbow made to say something—
"Rainbow Dash!" Swooosh! Ariel flew into the lobby from the dimly-lit world outside. "There you are! Quick! You gotta come see—" She froze in place, glancing aside at Seraphimus.
"It's okay, Ariel," Rainbow Dash said. "Tell us what's up, girl."
Ariel gulped. "Well..." She finally peeled her eyes off Seraphimus and looked at Rainbow again. "It's Wildcard. He... we found something."
"What kind of something?"
"Just..." Ariel shivered slightly as she gestured at the group as a whole. "...come and look, alright? Please..."
Minutes later...
Sw-Sw-Swooosh!
Rainbow Dash, Seraphimus, and Kepler glided, descending towards a small courtyard suspended between four tightly-packed buildings. Logan and Flynn had to stay up above on the higher roads with the wagon.
The group touched down in unsettling darkness. There were at least five layers of platforms and suspended roads above them, obscuring the dim twilight. They had to squint to see where Ariel was—but at last they spotted her hovering besides the entrance to one of the skyscrapers' mid-floors.
Rainbow Dash glanced at Seraphimus... then slowly rubbed her Loyalty pendant. The ruby lightning bolt brightened, illuminating the path ahead in a fuchsia spotlight. Slowly, the three joined Ariel in entering the building.
Inside, the lobby was extra dusty. Debris had been strewn about, and the otherwise immaculate furniture had been knocked and thrown around—as if by a great cataclysm.
At last, Rainbow's pendant glinted off a pair of cold lenses. She illuminated the dark figure of Wildcard, situated in the corner.
"Okay, Double-Yoo..." Ariel took a deep breath. "...show 'em."
Wildcard gave the group one somber look. Then—with a flick of Bard's staff—he overturned a fallen piece of shelving...
...exposing a pile of mangled skeletons.
Seraphimus blinked. Hard.
Kepler's tusked jaw hung agape.
Rainbow Dash—meanwhile—peered harder. She stepped forward, shining her pendant over the calcified pile of remains.
Bone by bone, Rainbow's harmonic light revealed multiple branching joints... and elongated snouts.
Equines. With wings.
"Well..." Rainbow gulped. "...at long last, we meet."
Heloooooo, Angels.
I love the technical explanation on how magic Angel TVs would've worked. Neat stuff.
Also, those cables have gotta lead somewhere. I have a feeling we'll be finding out.
Finally, we see them. Skeletons they may be, but we finally see some Angels...well, long dead ones at that.
Also, Angel interwebz?
They really need to remaster this game, full orchestral soundtrack would be wonderful.
-Through the path long forgotten, into the darkness long begotten. Ofolrodi.
Oh. Okay then.
OH BOY! This is going to get interesting real fast!
Alright tv's! Time to watch some cartoons....
Goddam it Flynn!
Well now, that's not good.
Now all we need is a good sequencer.
Find the computer room
Ancient pegasi created the internet. Later they sundered the ring and destroyed themselves. I am unsurprised by this sequence of events.
I have to wonder just how much research IC is putting into this story, as that was a decently accurate summation of how a liquid crystal display and electrical data transmission works. I also must wonder what happened to the poor Pegasi that are now skeletons, and why we haven't seen a whole lot more of them, given the size of the city? On a lighter note it seems Seraphimus is getting a little bit better, even revealing information that they should not be told (though granted they can't actually make use of said information), small steps.
Oh my godssss! They used TV!
So, they had computers. Like, actual computers. Probably with internet.
...the Angels were us all along?
Why would Murder chicken bother to learn about the advanced technologies in research stations? Maybe its a mix of psychologyand capabilities. If you have a better idea of what the enemy could be using and how, you have a better chance at working out ways to deal with them efficiently.
Makes her a better Terminator.
If the only remains are in the darkest corner of the smallest access of the shadiest area, I can only think of one question.
How bright was the sun that fell.
8561459
I'd like to see a pegasus use a keyboard!
Nobody seems to be thinking about the possibility of those equines being from Darkreach.
I still am concerned about how He-Who-Would-Be-Living-A-Wet-Dream would would have reacted to this city.
sounds like you and the word epoch have a lot of catching up to do.
8561565
media1.tenor.com/images/267cc37abb0d2ff3dea12c16d882c530/tenor.gif?itemid=4954365
Ha! Finally, Kepler doesn't roll an 'r' in the word 'every'. His weakness is that word!
Like the Knights of Ni and the word 'it'.
Wonder what kind of things they had in those computers...
Been gone for a bit. Guess I got... well, not bored, just tired. I don't know why, but everything after the giant wyrm kinda felt stale, and even some bits before that. The meme-speak and constant Pinkie 4th wall breaks(she is good for other jokes, y'know) didn't help. Though it might just be the lack of anything interesting surrounding the group, which while intentional is still kinda dull. And the threats seem less threatening, since we kinda know they'll survive long enough to meet the soul-eaters. But, who knows. I haven't started reading the chapters I missed yet, so maybe they've run into a new villain named after me or something. For anyone who actually read all this, I sincerely apologize for your lost 30 seconds.
EDIT: As of Chapter 154 I withdraw a large part of my objections. I should've expected things to get better once the characters could interact.
DOUBLE EDIT: For a guy who watches anime, I really don't know how to spot a bad arc when I see one. All objections retracted, this comment stands as a monument to assumptions and why they're a bad idea.
The snazzy ancient tech on display is neat, but it doesn't seem like the group is scavenging up much of anything that's useful. I kind of wonder if this society actually had a need for weapons and armor, as if not then I doubt the group will stumble across an armory. Still hoping they find a clean and working water source, if only to explain how the heck the Herald is keeping hydrated all this time.
Interesting thought that another one of the Sentinels might've dropped the piece of building on the city, although I still think it more likely it just came from the upper areas of Urohringr when the whole thing got Sundered. But if it was another Sentinel, then one wonders if one of the other Dark Side factions might've snagged it and taken it elsewhere to use.
Anyways, c'mon Seraphimus, either commit to sticking with the group, or to doing your own thing already! Or is this going to be the new norm? You're going to Tsundere the whole Herald, hanging out with them but constantly pretending you don't like them or anything?
Look Sera, until you actually join the group in an official capacity I'm going to keep counting you as flying solo! Just you see if I don't.
Seraphimus Solo Quest Chapter Counter: 9
How is it that the more we learn the more hyped I am for learning more?
8561356
Your profile pic makes that the perfect reaction.
Hm, is there a reason why they find bodies inside buildings, while the outside is completely clean?
So the ancients had computers basically. That is freaking awesome. Also what a note to end on, the first corpses we've seen here. Please continue!
8561411
when he interesteds, he do.
8561565
Feathers, and keyboard keys with 3 grams of actuation pressure.
8561485
If it is Celestia's Sun, then just bright enough to orbit the plane and look the same size and brightness from the ground as our star-sized Sun. That would be small for a star but of course a lot bigger than any city. Anyways, we know Celestia's highest stats are Politics and Sun-dropping. It wouldn't be surprising if she trained the second stat in the supposedly empty dark side.
8561411,8561459,
Huh. I jump the gun commenting last chapter. Some of my theories have been confirmed.
Now to the thing I found hilarious:
8561709,8561325,
Pfft, they've just found the display/touchscreen to an elevator. My bet is that the data wire runs to the elevator's controller in the basement or other utility room.
8561565
Here's an image for you: touchscreen + noseboops = pegasus pecking keyboard display.
8561970
Localized atmospheric and gravity failure leads to exspacing anyone not strapped down or trapped under debris? Scavengers millennia ago ate or dragged away the bodies? Assuming this is before power was lost in this sector, automated paramedic or cleaning systems remove the easily accessed dead and injured for medical (or mortuary) processing?
It will become known when we are meant to.
8562419
Makes sense Flynn would not be able to detect or understand the underlying technology. He comes from a society that is basically Gilded Age America, with a dash of Nazi Germany thrown in. Electrical was still mostly in the experimental stages, with the Telegraph being the biggest means of communication, and it was extremely basic as far as electrical comms go. If you gave someone, even a scientist, a modern day computer they would barely be able to make heads or tails of it, due to the fact that they lack a lot of the knowledge behind solid state devices, the first true solid state device not being patented until 1925, well after the gilded age. Flynn is only able to guess things based on what he knows, and in the grand scheme of things what he knows is actually not all that much.
But are they high definition?
8562486 Were that the case, the flying cars and various other debris would've also been ejected.
And that's just what they discovered in the first hour! Again one has to ask: why does everyone else seem to stay away from that trove of technology?
8561602 It's not off the table that they might have been Sarosians, either. Both just feeds into the question of what it is that causes the denizens of the dark side to avoid that city.
And the skeletons are out of the closet. Literally.
8561829
Eh, she's slowly coming around, give her some time\. Also quick shoutout to seeing the angels for the first time sinds like...ever now that i think about it
Interesting....
Ponies invented magic LCD screens.
8562486
8572732
How do you comment with pure perfection???????
The Angels had the INTERNET
This is so fascinating! Really hope that no monsters attack and force them to leave the city before they can explore more of it.
I’m disappointed pinkie isn’t making a 4th wall tv joke.
8727147
I'm dissapointed how RD meets the Angels.
First time we’ve seen an ancient Pegasi skeleton since Blue Nova.
... how does one lean "fuzzily"??
9140064
In a very fuzzy manner
Well dang.
O.o
Were they trying to make their own internet?
I wonder what the Angels watched on TV?
So the Angels had the internet? Or the like super basic 90s version?