The floor was colder than ice, stealing what little warmth she had and she shivered as she opened her eyes.
Her body felt heavy and slow, her mind even more so, and it took her a minute to remember how to use her limbs, once she did she still had to lean against the wall for support. Sadly, there was nothing to see once her eyes focused. The room outside her cell was plain, except for an old wooden table that was held together by tape and good luck, where two diamond dogs were playing a card game sitting on mismatched chairs.
One of them looked up from his cards at her when she stumbled into sight, he blinked slowly at her, sniffed, and went back to the game.
She recognized them as Neighsay’s guards, meaning that he was nearby. Maybe Chief had enough of her breaking the dishwashers and rat her out, still, did they have to drag her like this on her night off?
A door opened on the far side of the room that was outside of Starlight’s view, so she heard them first before she saw them. Neighsay didn’t surprise her, but seeing Steele and Moondancer as well confused her.
“…look, all that matters is that the ship is here, so stop complaining, and let’s get down to business.”
Steele sighed and looked at Starlight with a frown. “Why’s she here and why is she awake?”
“It wasn’t easy to lure her away from her guards,” Moondacer said, “and she seems to have a natural resistance against sedatives and other drugs, so keep that in mind when you sell her off.”
“What are you talking about?” Starlight said, gripping the bars of her cell with shaky hooves. “C’mon, Moondancer, I’m sorry if my nightmares keep you up at night, but this is taking it too far!”
She thought she saw a flash of guilt in her eyes before it was covered with indifference. “Nothing personal, Starlight, I would have sold you off sooner, but no matter what drugs I tried you wouldn’t go down long enough to bring you here.”
“Wait,” Starlight said, remembering all the times she’d run to the toilet after a meal. “You were poising me!?”
“I was trying to sedate you,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “And when that didn’t work I had to lure you here somehow, which was hard when Shining and Sunburst started guarding you.” She turned to the dragon with a glare. “And you made it worse by announcing her reward to the others, I thought we had a deal.”
“You were taking too long, I thought a little competition would either get your ass into gear or make Sunburst realize what he was missing,” Steele said with a shrug. “I kept raising the bounty to see if he would bite, but he refused, poor fellow, those morals of his will get him killed one day.”
“If you cared about him so much why didn’t you give him the money instead?” Starlight accused, kicking the bars in frustration.
“Because this is not a charity, miss,” Neighsay answered, taking a seat as he pulled out a computer, “we are a business trying to stay afloat in these trying times. With the Empire in shambles, that lunatic Grogar on the loose, and those Everfree scum doing as they please, we are all doing what we can to survive.”
They all gathered around him—to discuss more business, she assumed—and ignored her completely as she raged and kicked at the bars of her prison. The bars were thick, made of shiny new metal design to hold in even a raging Yak, a scared unicorn had no chance. After a while she fell to her knees, still gripping the bars as she panted. She could feel that the cell was magically reinforced, there wasn’t even a lock to pick, and five out of the six walls around her were made of thick sheets of metal that she had no hope of breaking through. She reached for the stone, wishing that Twilight were—
Her neck was bare.
Starlight jumped to her hooves, looking around her cell, then running back to the bars to look at the room. Her eyes landed on Moondancer, who flicked her mane back, and the Stone of Harmony winked at her under the white halogen lights.
“No!” Starlight screeched, repeatedly throwing herself against the bars. “Give it back!”
“You won’t be needing it where you are going,” Moondancer said over her shoulder.
“You don’t understand, that’s not a trinket, that’s—!”
A low hum was her only warning before an electric discharge flung her back. Her spine met the wall of her cell and she fell to the floor with a loud thud, her vision swam and her body twitched with the aftershocks, but she gritted her teeth and she got to her hooves shakily, approached the bars again, refraining from touching them, and glared at her captors instead.
“Couldn't you have done that sooner?”
“She has a lovely voice, especially when she’s desperate,” Neighsay chuckled, looking at what Moondancer had that caused such a fuss. He blinked, eyes narrowing before they grew wide with disbelief, and without warning snatched the necklace from her neck hard enough to break the humble string.
“Hey!”
He tossed the stone to his guard dogs. “Fetch!”
One of the diamond dogs caught it and gave it a sniff. He growled, his hackles rising as he tossed it to his companion who had had a similar reaction.
“Old Magic.”
Neighsay jumped from his chair like a giddy colt on his birthday. “Bring the trunk! Now! Quickly! Quickly!”
The diamond dogs ran to the other side of the room where Starlight couldn't see and came back dragging a huge crate that took the both of them to even lift from the ground. Moondancer and Steele shared a confused look, and it was the latter that finally spoke up, once Neighsay’s minions dropped the trunk at his hooves.
“Neighsay, what—?”
“Shut up!” He snapped, pressing buttons on the top panel of the trunk. “This is more important than some slave trafficking. This…This is history in the making!”
The group had their backs to Starlight, she couldn’t see what they were looking at, so all she heard was the lid popping open with a hiss, followed by Moondancer’s yelp. “What the hay is that?!”
When Neighsay turned around the stone glowed and floated on its own accord by his side like a miniature star, following him as he moved. His eyes never left the stone as he spoke with a maniacal grin. “I knew you were something special Miss, but to hide such a gift from me, no, the universe! It’s unforgivable!”
“Because that’s not a toy,” she was careful not to mention what it was. “Put it down before you hurt yourself.”
“She’s right,” Steele said, stepping up. “There’s a reason why the Old Magic was sealed away, my ma’ still remembers when it ran rampant and brought nothing but trouble—”
There was a flash and Steele fell backward. He was dead before his body hit the ground.
“What have you done?!”
Neighsay smiled, the stone’s glow receding. “I didn’t even have to do much!” He cooed over the stone. “What other secrets are you keeping, little one?”
Moondancer stood there in shock, looking at the body and the pool of blood collecting underneath, then the fluid touched her hoof and she gagged, running out of the room never to be seen again. Neighsay didn’t even notice her leave and motioned to his guard dogs, they handed over a strange object that looked like an old-fashioned clock to Starlight, but it was small and kind of flat, made of a golden metal engraved with lines and strange symbols that she couldn’t read.
“This astrolabe was made during Queen Celestia’s reign, I thought that with our current technology, I could unlock the map it has hidden inside, but I was wrong, what I needed was magic!”
He put the stone in the center and the astrolabe came to life. The symbols glowed and the machine fell apart, only to rearrange and spin around the stone like the rings of a planet, they continued to spin until they were just a blur. Light flooded the room, bright enough that Starlight had to look away, and when it dimmed the bare room was covered in stars and swirling galaxies.
“Incredible!” Neighsay laughed, walking around the projected universe, he reached out to touch a star and it zoomed in on it, displaying all kinds of information written in ancient ponish. “And to think that each explorer had one of these in their pocket, nothing more than a trinket, now there are only a dozen left in the universe, and I have the oldest one discovered!”
Starlight glanced at the astrolabe, spinning above them, it seemed stable but for how much longer? “Ok, that’s nice, but you should turn it off now.”
“Turn it off? No dear, we are just getting started,” he made a motion with his hoof and the universe moved, galaxies and stars flying by. The astrolabe trembled but did as commanded, spinning even faster to project billions upon billions of stars speedily.
“Slow down! You’re demanding too much from it!”
“Shut up! I have been studying ancient technology for longer than you have been alive!” Neighsay grew impatient, scrolling faster and faster, tapping on the occasional star that caught his attention before dismissing it. “No, no, no! Where is it?”
The spinning astrolabe became more unsteady, but Starlight knew that it was not the artifact’s fault, it was the Stone. It was a powerful but unstable source of magic, Twilight had never let her use it, and she only did so sparely and with caution, the only time Starlight used it was out of desperation and panic. However, Neighsay was using it without care, demanding more of it without knowing its limits. Starlight looked at the astrolabe nervously and the bright unsteady light that surrounded it.
“You need to stop!” Starlight pleaded. “It’s unsafe!”
He ignored her, gritting his teeth as the stars flew past him, waving galaxies and planets aside like they were annoyances. The astrolabe continued to spin and shake above them, the projection of the star map around them distorting and taking longer to appear, until…
“There!” Neighsay stopped, his hoof hovering over a small galaxy. “This is it!”
He tapped it and the galaxy grew larger and larger until it took the whole room. He zoned in on a large blue planet with swirling white clouds and blue oceans with a singular satellite, a small moon with the face of a mare carved into it.
Equus. It said above in ancient ponish, one of the few words Starlight learned to read in that language.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Neighsay said, walking around the projection of the planet with a wide smile. “This is our home, the place our forefathers and mothers left behind in their quest to conquer the stars. It was only thanks to their magic that they managed to get this far, and for the Queen to take that all away and run, what a selfish creature is that Twilight Sparkle!”
Starlight looked up. Pieces of the astrolabe started to fall, but Neighsay didn’t notice, he only had eyes for Equus.
He continued, too caught up in his monologue. “No matter, she can keep that magic, because the fool left behind the most powerful of them all: the Elements of Harmony, and once I have the coordinates I can sell that information to the highest bidder and…” he paused, then his smile widened. “Why sell it? I should keep it, gather all the horsepower I can, and take them for myself!”
The astrolabe fell into pieces and Starlight ran to the back of her cell, even so, she felt the heat of the explosion singe her tail and the force of the shock wave rattled her cage like it was cardboard caught in a solar flare. She closed her eyes and threw her forelegs over her head as she tumbled, her world reduced to nothing but light, shadow, and chaos for a few eternal seconds. The world stopped spinning once the cage hit the wall, but the explosions continued, along with the screams and the destruction outside of her view, and as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there—curled in a ball waiting for her eyes to focus and for her ears to stop ringing—but she only came to when she heard someone screaming her name.
“O-Over here!” she yelled, coughing as the pain in her ribs gripped her lungs. “Help!”
The explosion had left her cell facing upwards, towards the burned ceiling that lit up with a few flickering lights. She saw Sunburst peering over the edge for a few seconds before he disappeared and her cell started tilting forward slowly. With her cage facing the right way, she stood up, clutching her sore ribs as she approached the cell bars. Sunburst wasted no time in using his robotic strength to bend the bars aside wide enough for him to slip through and rush to her side.
He hugged her, tightly, and Starlight yelped in pain.
“I’m sorry!” He said, letting her go hastily but still hovering close by. “I looked everywhere for you, I had no idea that Moondancer would be capable of this, I gave her a piece of my mind when she told us what happened, but I came as soon as I knew and this is all my fault and I’m so, so sorry I should have been more careful and warned you when Steele started with this bounty nonsense and—hmph!”
She gripped his cape with her hoof and yanked him down in a desperate kiss. He responded quickly to her demands, only letting go when they both ran out of breath.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Starlight said, before breaking into sobs and hiding her bruised face in his chest.
He hugged her, gently, burying his snout in her dirty mane. “I thought I lost you.”
Starlight didn’t want this hug to end, she didn’t want to move or see what happened next. She wished that the world would end right then and there in his embrace, but she knew that she wasn’t so lucky. It didn’t matter how much she wanted to give up, she couldn't, as long as the Stone of Harmony was hers she had to keep moving, no matter how painful it was, she just had to.
“Ahem.”
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath of Sunburst's comforting scent before backing away. Shining Armor was there at the exit, looking amused. “Look, I’m all for romance, but we got to go before we get caught in the manure storm that’s about to break once they find what’s left of Neighsay.”
Sunburst nodded, offering his foreleg for Starlight to lean on.
“Wait, I need to get…something,” she said, her eyes flickering to Shining. After the Moondancer fiasco, she didn’t have it in her to trust any pony right now. “Sunburst, Neighsay has…had the astrolabe.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it survived the explosion.”
“It’s worth a look.”
They exited her cell and Starlight hardly recognized the place. The walls were charred black and some were practically melting in some places, she dared not to look at the black lumps on the far side of the room too closely, keeping her eyes on the ground as she looked for the stone. Luckily, she found it not too far in the center of the room where the heart of the explosion occurred, the force of the blast had formed a crater where the stone and the astrolabe lay side by side, intact.
Starlight took the stone, examining it, but it was perfectly fine, if a little weakened from overuse, the only thing missing was the string she used as a makeshift necklace, and she handed the astrolabe to Sunburst.
His face was unreadable as he examined the treasure that his parents sacrificed their lives for, but he accepted it all the same and put the astrolabe in his pocket before they all left the room.
No one followed the trio to the starport, but they all moved as if that was the case.
The ship they took was nothing special, just a normal cargo starship used to ferry goods between colonies, no one stopped them or questioned them as they broke through the atmosphere and headed into open space. Sunburst herded her to a spare room so she could rest, and she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Lulled by the sounds of engines, she slept like she hadn’t slept since the day she left the Ark. Strange dreams accosted her but they were so confusing and nonsensical that they weren’t worth the effort of remembering, all they did was leave her with a feeling of discomfort, but at least she felt rested and like herself again.
She left her room and ventured out into the hallway, the ship was so small that she found Sunburst and Shining in only a few minutes, hunching over a small table in the small kitchen/break room and eating rations.
Sunburst smiled and moved aside as an invitation to join them. She did and smiled when he draped his foreleg over her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “Feeling better?”
“Yes,” she nodded, taking a bite of the dehydrated protein bars he offered her. “How long was I sleeping?”
“Like twenty hours, but we figured you need it after all you went through.”
She felt like she could have slept through another twenty hours, but said nothing as she chewed on her food. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, she asked:
“What happens now?”
“We were waiting for you to discuss that,” Shining said, prodding at a bracelet on his hoof to display a hologram of the latest news. “The death of Neighsay and Steele has produced a vacuum of power in Trojan L5, so they will all be too busy biting their tails and fighting among themselves to even notice we are missing, much left come after us, so we are clear in that regard.”
Starlight glanced at him briefly before going back to eat in sullen silence.
His expression softened, sensing her discomfort. “My apologies probably mean nothing to you but I’ll offer it anyway: I am terribly sorry for what Moony put you through, I was the one who brought her into the group after all so blame me all you want, believe me, had I known that her side gig was pony trafficking I would have kick her out myself.” Sensing that she was still not convinced, he exchanged glances with Sunburst before continuing. “Sunburst has filled me in about, well, everything. The Ark, Queen Twilight, Equus.”
Starlight gasped and glared at Sunburst. “You told him!?”
“We would have been dead twice over without his help,” Sunburst said hastily. “Besides, it was a long time coming.”
“Yeah, no shit!” Shining said with a roll of his eyes. “I don’t care where you come from, but after ten years of knowing each other you would think this would have come up sooner, honestly—you were my best pony at my wedding and the godfather to my child.”
“You’re married?” Starlight asked, skeptical, remembering all the times he flirted with other mares during lunch breaks.
“Yep, to the most beautiful mare in the universe,” he tapped his bracelet and the hologram changed to display the picture of a beautiful pegasus mare holding a baby in her hooves. “That’s my Cadance and little Flurry Heart, I think I’m going home for a while and watch my baby grow, I had enough adventures for a while. What about you two? Going on a honeymoon?”
This set off Sunburst into a rant that Shining was all too eager to goad along, Starlight just watched them, amused but a little jealous of their bond. The ponies she had shared such bonds with were long gone, along with her home, she had nowhere to return to and no one waiting for her. She looked down at the stone and the crude necklace she made to keep it together, it was all she had to her name that was worth protecting, but was that really what she was meant to do? Was she supposed to wander the universe and avoid capture until the day she died? What would happen then? The stone would still be around even if she perished, she would just be delaying the inevitable.
It was such a small thing, barely the size of her hoof, but it was a heavy burden she could not share with anyone.
Sunburst brought her out of her dark thoughts by gently lifting her chin to face him. “Starlight, whatever you think it’s best we will do it.”
Starlight smiled, but it looked more like a grimace. “That’s the thing, I don’t know what to do, much less if it’s the right thing,” she sighed, hiding her face in her hooves. “I wished Twilight was here…”
“You know, Grogar has been strangely quiet ever since you landed on Trojan,” Shining said, crossing his forelegs in a pensive manner. “No attacks, no looting, no killings, no nada! Besides, if he had defeated Queen Twilight you would think he would be bragging about it or something.”
“Twilight would not go down that easily,” Sunburst agreed. “But even if she were alive, where would she go? Half of the known universe is in Grogar’s pocket, the rest is just plain inhospitable.”
The group went quiet until Starlight spoke up.
“Home,” Starlight said. “To Equus.”
“It doesn’t matter where she is, but let’s operate under the belief that she made it out of the Ark somehow,” Shining said, pointing at the two of them. “Either way, you are in no condition to go looking for her, you have no ship, no money, and no crew to make the journey.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Sunburst answered with a roll of his eyes. “That’s what I have been trying to do all this time! But it’s not easy to gather a crew to go after what many believe to be a fairy tale.”
“What about Sunset?” Starlight turned to him. “She’s with the rebels, right? Surely some ponys still believe in the Equestria of old.”
Sunburst groaned, rubbing his forehead with a grimace, and Shining looked at her with an amused expression. “You know, that sounds crazy enough to work.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Why not? No one’s crazier than the Everfrees!”
“We need experts! Not con artists and wannabe survivalists!”
“No, what you need is a good ship and enough horsepower to run it, doesn’t mean they all have to be the best, they just have to be willing to work.” Shining tapped something on his bracelet, scrolling to screens until he pulled out a picture of a red-haired mare that had Wanted written on the top, and a bounty with so many zeros that Starlight couldn’t count with a glance. “She might be able to give you that.”
Sunburst shook his head. “No, no way, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing in this universe that will make me contact my lunatic sister—!”
He made the mistake of glancing at Starlight, who gave him a pleading look, and he folded like a house of cards.
Shining grinned. “I’ll set course to the next starport.”
She liked this planet better than Trojan L5. It was greener, cleaner, and the ponies there a little friendlier, but she could sense that their kindness was conditional, and…there was just something in the gravity here that set her on edge, similar to the atmosphere in Trojan, that made her want to take off as soon as possible. Maybe it was nothing, maybe it was because she had been born in space and wasn’t used to the feeling of a planet’s gravity pulling her down, either way, she was all too eager to finish her errands and take off.
When she returned to the ship, she was surprised by the quantity of supplies that Sunburst had purchased. “Can we afford all this?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sunburst said as he started loading the boxes into the ship. “The next starport is far from here, so I rather we be prepared.”
Starlight put her things to the side and started helping. “Any luck with Sunset?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding almost regretful. “I know where she is.”
“Do you think she will help us?”
“I don’t know, but Shining was right, we are out of options.”
She turned to the starport, looking at the hundreds of ponies mingling about and the hundreds of ships docked alongside them. Their little cargo ship looked like a toy alongside the bigger and slicker models. “I’m going to miss him.”
They dropped Shining off when they landed here earlier this morning, insistent that he needed to go back home and watch over his family, but before he did so he left them a considerable sum of money, stating that it was the money owned for the time and work they did in Trojan, plus some extra for their “honeymoon.”
“We’ll see him again, believe me, he has the talent of appearing when you need him the most.” His confident smile dimmed before he continued. “Starlight, we don’t have to do this—”
“No, don’t start with that nonsense.” Starlight snapped. “The Stone of Harmony, I’ll guard it with my life if I have to, but I get the feeling that it’s not my destiny for it to be in my possession forever, I don’t know how to explain it, what I do know is that Twilight has the answers—in fact, she has a lot of explaining to do.”
Neighsay’s words echoed in her mind relentlessly, intermingled with the memories of her teacher, the image of regality and serenity tainted by the truth of the universe around her. If it was true that she had taken the magic of her subjects and left them to fend for themselves, then why? Why had she secluded herself in the Ark all these years? Why had she let Equestria crumble in this manner? They needed to find her and set things right, no matter the cost.
“We can’t run away from this.”
Sunburst didn’t look convinced, his mouth pressed into a thin line to keep himself from arguing. He let it go with a sigh, continuing with his task. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“Yeah,” Starlight said, picking up where she left off. “Me too.”
With their supplies restocked, their tanks full, and their engines running, there were no longer any excuses to keep them here. Starlight sat on the copilot seat and strapped on before Sunburst had even made it through the door, he took the pilot seat and did the initial engine checks, all that was left to do was wait for clearance to take off.
“You’re ready?”
Starlight nodded, despite the gargantuan task ahead of them, she was eager to be back in space.
The engines roared to life and Sunburst took them into the sky, across the stars, and through the galaxies.