"Rremarrkable..." Kepler stood on Logan's shoulders, running a claw over the pale etchings against the surface of the black monolith. His spectacled eyes reflected a sea of ancient characters. "Absolutely... positively rremarrkable..."
Logan looked over at Rainbow Dash. "So you're certain you've seen all this shit before?"
"Not all of it, Big Show," Rainbow Dash said, pacing in mid-air. "But definitely most of it." She waved a hoof at the immensity surrounding them on all sides. "The architecture... the technology... the symbols..."
"And you think whoever made this city also made the Machine World?"
"I... I don't know..." Rainbow gulped. "But it's all looking the same. Right down to the durable metals and long-lasting building material. I honestly... legitimately think that this city's as old as the heart of Urohringr."
"If you're right..." Logan peered up at the skyscrapers surrounding them. "...then this place is older than every civilization on the Light Side."
Rainbow nodded. "Uh huh..."
"Older than Rohbredden... older than Equestria... older than the Divines... older than the—"
"Remember..." Rainbow pointed. "...the alicorns arrived here from far out there... originating in the Harmonic Plains." She took a deep breath. "Which is older—the alicorns or Urohringr? I'd say the jury's out on that."
"Would you be surprised if you ended up finding out that the alicorns were pubescent punks in comparison to this place?"
Rainbow Dash sighed with a slight shudder. "Not much surprises me anymore, Big Show..."
"Here's the golden question," Logan muttered, gazing all around the suspended platform. "We've got a giant-ass city abandoned for eons. Just... who in the Hell actually lived here?"
"Is it not obvious?" Kepler hopped off Logan's flank and glided to the metal street. "None otherr than the Angels themselves!" He stood in place, curling his scorpion tail. "The verry souls upon which the essence of the Herrald was orriginally founded... countless generrations ago."
"A... lot has happened since then and now," Rainbow remarked.
"Not herre, it hasn't! Herre we stand within the shadow of an absolute rrelic!" Kepler dramatically gestured with his wings. "To think this is wherre the Angels—the ancient pegasi—actually lived and brreathed and went about theirr daily business! Long beforre chaos and darrkness overrtook this landscape! Long beforre Divines and Alicorrns sought to maintain orrderr in a plane tossed adrrift in space!" He exhaled. "Long beforre therre was everr a Sunderring, this place must have thrrived! Bustling and humming with life!"
"Couldn't have been very harmonic life," Logan said.
"What makes you say that, brrotherr?"
Logan shrugged. "Well, what the Hell got them to split the ring up to begin with?"
Rainbow bit her lip. Before she could say anything—
"Hey, guys..." Flynn trotted up, levitating several tools alongside him. "Uhm..." A gulp. "Holy shit."
"Well, that's a nifty report," Logan droned.
"Any luck, frriend?" Kepler craned his hairy neck. "What have you discoverred from the dorrmant vehicles?"
"I... I've no words," Flynn exhaled.
"Humor us," Logan said.
"Well..." Flynn's mechanical eye rotated as he gazed off across the platform. "...I've no friggin' clue what once powered the stuff up. I mean... there simply is no manacircuitry to be seen in any of the machines. Nothing that would house circulating leylines in the way that we traditionally understand them."
"Maybe they didn't run on mana?" Logan remarked.
"I thought of that," Flynn said. "So I looked for steamworks... electrical conduits... even combustion chambers." He shook his head. "I still can't figure it out."
"Did you actually see what was inside all those things?" Logan asked.
"Essentially... a porous metal core," Flynn said. "But... there were no moving parts. No sign of a filtration system. Just... dead, seemingly useless metal. I mean... maybe they resonated with something once upon a time. But—if so—then... it's quite simply a source of energy I've never seen or read about before."
"So..." Logan scratched his stubbled chin. "...nothing we can power up ourselves."
"Ha!" Flynn grinned wide. "Ha ha ha ha ha! Heheheh... ahem..." He gulped and smiled nervously aside at Rainbow Dash. "S-sorry..."
Rainbow shrugged. "Don't mention it."
"Uhhhhhhh..." Flynn slapped errantly at the metal street below. "Trying to power up any of the shit lying around this place would be like a worker ant attempting to wrap its head around alicorn magic. It's just... far too beyond me." He gulped. "Far too beyond any of us."
"Can you tell what the function of the machines werre?" Kepler asked.
"Oh—automotion," Flynn said. "Most definitely transportation. Movement. Heavy freight. But that's just scratching the surface of it." He pointed at the multiple platforms lingering all around them. "The architecture of this place is something out of a goddess-damned miracle. If we built this stuff? As in we mortal ponies of modern day?" He grimaced. "That shit would be falling apart within a decade. But whoever built this stuff knew something we don't. How this stuff is still standing in spite of the sheer weight is unfathomable. I might be able to learn more, but..." A sigh. "...I'd have to take a look inside some of the buildings to find out more, and even then I'm not so sure I'd be lucky enough to figure it out."
"Admit it," Logan muttered through a smirked. "You've got a total brain boner right now."
Flynn fidgeted. "Maybe..."
"Well, I wouldn't mind snooping around the innards of this place some," Rainbow Dash said. She gestured. "I already sent Ariel and Wildcard to the lower levels to have a look-see."
"Do you think..." Logan's brow furrowed. "...there could be a Machine Layer beneath all of this?"
"Ach!" Kepler beamed suddenly. "Imagine if therre was a rruby flame to discoverr at the hearrt of all this!"
"I... don't think so," Rainbow Dash muttered. "Yaerfaerda hasn't appeared to me since I visited the Last Seed past Bleak's Plummet."
"You're only seeing the location of the Midnight Armory, now, right?" Logan asked.
Rainbow nodded, nostrils flaring. "Yeahhhhh..."
"Well, if you ask me..." Logan looked at the others. "...we shouldn't spend too much time here. I mean... if we can find something that'll help us in our journey—that's fine—but if there's anything we've learned from this trip so far is that the older something is the deadlier."
"I dunno, Big Show," Flynn remarked. "Doesn't look like any trolls or changelings or anything else dangerous has dwelt in this place for millennia!"
"I know." Logan's gaze hardened. "That's what scares me."
Flynn bit his lip.
"I say we starrt looking inside some of the local strructurres," Kepler said. "See if we can learrn morre about this extrraorrdinarry culturre." He looked at Rainbow Dash. "With the Austrraeoh's perrmission, of courrse."
"Sure thing, boys..." Rainbow smiled faintly, gesturing with her hoof. "Knock yourselves out!"
"Hell yeah!" Flynn galloped off across the platform. "I'm checking out that skyscraper over there!"
"What for?" Logan shrugged. "It looks like all the others!"
"Yeah! But this one's shinier!"
Logan rolled his eyes while Kepler took a running start and glided after the unicorn. All three shuffled across the platform, investigating the entrance to the nearest structure.
For a moment, Rainbow Dash sat in silence. But she wasn't alone. She sensed a shadow looming above in the dim twilight. She tilted her head up. "Sooooo... what are you still doing here?"
"... ... ..." Seraphimus said nothing. She hovered in place, staring all about the metropolis in a pale stupor.
"You're free now," Rainbow Dash droned. "Don't you want to go off and enjoy your ascetic journey of self-discovery or some crap?"
"... ... ..." Seraphimus' charcoal eyes finally blinked. In a noticeably nervous jolt, she glanced down at the petite pegasus. "Uhm... what...?"
"Wow..." Rainbow's ears twitched. "...I think that's the first time I've ever seen you drool."
"?!?!" Seraphimus brushed a talon across her beak. To her surprise, she felt nothing.
"Snkkkktt... hahahaha..." Rainbow slapped at the metallic street. "Wow, girl! You've really fallen off your cloud, haven't you?"
"I... I have certainly drifted..." Seraphimus looked limply at the urban surroundings. "This... this is all..."
"Yeah...?" Rainbow nodded. "Crazy, huh?"
"I... I don't very well understand..." Seraphimus' beak tightened. "I just..." Her headcrest drooped, and there was more than a slight trembled to her limbs and lion's tail. "...none of this makes any sense..."
"Stuff from 'beyond the blight' is a great deal bigger than you expected, huh?"
"... ... ..."
"Tell me, Sera..." Rainbow cocked her head to the side. "...did Verlaxion ever have an explanation for crap like this?"
Finally, Seraphimus rediscovered her trademark scowl. "All that lies outside the Goddess' blessing presence is banal and pointless."
"Uh huh." Rainbow nodded. "Then why are you still hanging around?" She smirked. "Looking like a dumbstruck foal in a candy store?"
Seraphimus didn't answer. She simply stared at the spires towering around them. Gawking.
"Y'know..." Rainbow Dash's tail flicked as she spoke. "...a giant metropolis lying on the opposite side of the world, abandoned for all time, is pretty crazy, huh?"
"Mmrmmmmm..."
"But here it is, right before your eyes." Rainbow leaned her head to the side. "So... like... just how much harder would it be to believe in a harmonic kingdom where royal sisters raise the sun and moon?" She blinked. "Or draconic immortals who possess the magic to shape-shift and deceive entire civilizations?"
"You are making your most pathetic attempt to convince me of your falsehoods yet."
"So, you tell me, Seraphimus," Rainbow spoke. "How can you truly explain all this crud?" She blinked. "Or the Gondola that brought us here? Or the existence of Darkreach? Or the crazy extra-sensory knack I have for perceiving the environment, our foes, and you?"
"Your logic fails you yet again," Seraphimus stammered, tail flicking in sickly circles. "I am... unconvinced."
Rainbow Dash bore a cheesy grin. "You're lyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingggggg."
Seraphimus' headfeathers stood on end.
"Maybe... just maybe..." Rainbow Dash flapped her wings and hovered in the direction that Flynn and the others went. "...you're running out of excuses for everything you don't understand."
"And what about you?" Seraphimus hissed. "I suppose you understand all of this—"
"I don't."
"... ... ..."
"I've been learning for my entire friggin' journey," Rainbow Dash said calmly. She looked back over her shoulder. "And still I haven't put it all together. That's part of the reason for why I keep on going." A breath. "You wanna fly off and discover yourself? I've danced to that song before, Seraphimus. And lemme tell you—it kinda sucks on your own."
Rainbow Dash flew off.
Seraphimus didn't.
The former Talon Commander lingered in place... gazing all around... drinking it in...
Anchored to that spot. That moment.
Thinking.
And so our heroes descend into the broken city, seeking anything that might be useful and perhaps some answers. Meanwhile, Seraphimus continues to question what she truly believes.
Don't miss our next episode "Secrets of the City" or "Tempest in the Shadows!"
More questions and investigations. And Seraphimus has a lot of think about. Also what happened to that music that Pinkie and Wild Card heard in the cave? Was that just some kind of red herring? Also nice reference to the movie with the chapter title.
There you go, Sera. Let your turkey bird brain chew on that. You're a sharp lass, you can figure out there are greater things.
Now there's something the fundamentalist doesn't do. Looks like our resident catbird of death is beginning to open her mind.
And then they activate the Remnant drones on accident and have to running battle their way out of the giant city.
Yes... Think about it, you crazy bird cat thing.
This is a good step for the murder-turkey. She doesn't have to believe the truth yet, she just has to start doubting the lies she's been told all her life.
Finally!
There you go Dash, that was the magic answer.
Admitting that you don't understand everything.
-Through the path long forgotten, into the darkness long begotten. Ofolrodi.
Hmm, best idea I can come up with, is that the porus metal objects Flynn found, even if they are the singular item in a given vehicle with little else but a single piece of material for the rest of it, which is looking more and more like Time Crystal, are that they are Escher Cores. The material again is Time Crystal, meaning its stable within evapouration limits, and the energy flows are gathered, concentrated, manipulated, and formed into fields and spell forms over a whle range of scales and complexities, by the spaces between the material. Trying to look at it in detail is trying to read a magic eye picture with one eye when you dont know what it is, but get the right accidental glimpse, from the right viewpoint and at the whole, and it can lead to seeing an overall shape, which can be filtered out to see smaller detail and then on.
They could be self sentient positronic brains, but you need a pretty hefty thunderstorm nearby to generate that much antimatter for a whole city. a single self sustaining system? Far less, but it was designed to run in a harmonic enviroment, not one suffused with chaotic energies. That takes a whole other level of run time, which the ruby flame reboot maybe inititialises. Its a single point of known operation, which the rest of the mechanism can use to ajust and adapt itself to available enviroment to continue restarting.
I wonder if Flynn gets a core running Pinkie will want to call it Holly, as opposed to the Cities decentralied controller, Queeg.
Aww, Murder Turky is getting nesting syndrome. she will be grabbing Logan soon and not wanting to let go. That, or strangling him for making her feel so in such a place.
[something something Noble]
What you did there, I see it.
... Seraphimus is so close, I just feel it.
Makes me think of a certain song, but this time with with Dash singing it to Sera
Obvious joke is obvious.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2017/10/7/1554203__safe_edit_edited+screencap_screencap_tempest+shadow_my+little+pony-colon-+the+movie_spoiler-colon-my+little+pony+movie_eye_eyes_fizzlepop+berr.png
If it wasn't on a ring, I'd be looking for the Shield World's Micro Dyson Sphere.
You know, he has a point here. This place would be perfect for anything to hole up in, yet (as far as they know, again, big city) this place is deserted. There has to be a reason for that, otherwise odds are this place would be fought over, much like the machine world entrance on the ledo-xonan border. Instead this place is dead and silent, and I don't like it.
The tech is neat by description alone, I have to wonder if the transports use the energy Urohringr gives off to power themselves, like a subway train running off the rails it runs on. Wonder if the night shard has similar (though bastardized and less capable version of the) tech powering their works.
Finally it looks like Seraphimus is having her faith tested, and is finding said faith wanting. I don't think she even knows what she wants anymore, other than to make the hurt she feels go away. About time Rainbow gets to pass on some of the hard earned lessons she learned, even if her 'student' is less than willing to listen.
Not all of you, no, not necessarily...
Well excuse him if the prospect of advancing civilization as a whole by countless millennia by simply salvaging a few pieces of scrap material excites the fellow.
8560299 It's disconcerting, is it not? Apart from the obvious comfortable and highly defensible housing opportunities, this place must contain incredible opportunities in furthering technologies - and if it is just in uses as extremely primitve as strapping pieces of broken structure to your body to create an indestructible armor. Something in that city has kept even the desperate factions of the Trinary War apart.
Something in that city is too horrifying even for them.
8560175 Thank you. For a moment I thought I would have to be the one to post that.
Seeing Sera in this chapter reminds me a lot of Roarke when she started opening up to Rainbow Dash...
>le sigh
8560420
There are parallels, certainly. Roarke's cage was another's design.
Seraphimus built her own cage from a cracked, but polished foundation.
That is a good question, Logan. Why haven't any of the warring factions taken the city over. Or any of the other darksiders, for that matter. I can't believe that it's the mountains keeping the troll from this place, we've seen how determined they can be. And it's not just that. From what flutters said, the only life here is mushrooms. And we still don't have a answer to the spindlers.
This right here.
- - -
Unrelated: Sounds like these skycars were powered by some sort of technological antigrav or monopolar magnets. Neat.
Please don’t be that stupid.
The light Side had the Smooze. The dark side had the Termarenators.
I have hope for you, Sera.
Also, isn't food an issue when it comes to staying in a town for any great amount of time where they obviously won't be getting anything edible?
Calling it now: the machines ran off Chaos Metal. That's why the Sundering happened.
8560299 8560774
You two may be on to something...
"Porous metal" strikes me as having metal bits and non-metalic (semiconductors?) bits in the middle. Solid-state electronics can definitely exist without moving parts. Hell, it's technology we humans have. Add to that some type of supercapacitor energy storage and a magnetic linear induction propulsion (in the car or the roads); we've got a (from our perspective) possible explanation for the transportation system seen these chapters. I am curious if some of the technologies described above might be on too small a scale for Flynn to properly differentiate using his magic.
Of course Flynn has a brain bone. Just look. He's a unicorn.
"See the world from where I stand!"
Maybe the cars were powered by souls?
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"Open up your eyes, see the world from where I stand: Me among the fuzzy, you chained at my command."
8572021
PERFECT.
Also, the catbirb is dumbstruck!
8560105
Please provide links to this Time Crystal novel and the bit about Escher Cores, i want to read more but google has failed me.
Come on, Sera! Join the party! They need better DPS!
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DPS?
8726950
Damage Per Second (DPS), refering to how useful 'Sera' is in fight.
At last, something so unfathomably undeniable that she can't lie to herself about it. And now she's begun to truly, deeply think. It's begun.
I'm just imagining she touches something and a bigass door opens with an elevator ping.
"Welcome, Austraeoh" some disembodied voice would ring, "we've been waiting for you~"
She'd just look back at the Heraldites...then walk right in.
So how will this go wrong...
[Socrates, from the Henry Cary literal translation of 1897]
Rainbow is smart enough to keep an open mind. That makes her one of the wisest among her friends.
11/15/2019
22:36 UTC
We’re getting there.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Now, I only hope skyscrapers and infrastructure composed of ancient hyper-materials and vehicles that seem to be wirelessly powered don't all somehow count as a cave. That's the last thing we need right now.
Heh. Movie hadn't even been out for a month and a half at this point. Nice timing to snag it as a chapter title.
This is the way to approach the situation. Good on ya, Big Show.
Give it up, Sera. Rainbow has a 'living' lie detector on her side. You can't hide nothin' from her.
The fact that you're still hangin' around is a good sign, though...
[Seraphimus] has possibly rejoined the party.
Oooooo, that might be the kicker to get Sera to chill out with us more.