//------------------------------// // 17. Allegro on the Clouds // Story: Planet Hell: The Redemption of Harmony // by solocitizen //------------------------------// Planet Hell Solocitizen 17. Allegro on the Clouds Present Day Air rushed over him and under him. It cradled him, propelling him forward effortlessly. His feathers, they welcomed the wind. Where was he going? The answer came to him as a spark of color deep inside him: wherever you want. If he just followed the wind, it’d take him there. For a time the warmth of the sun heated his back and his wings, and then later it vanished with the taste of dew and a refreshing chill. He followed the strings of each moment, like water through the rocks of a stream. His whole body tingled as if lightning coursed just beneath his skin, and the more he concentrated on the sensation the more it pulled him into the moment and propelled him forward. He had only ever felt that way in fleeting moments of bliss and victory. At once he felt a presence, and an all too familiar voice asked him, “Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?” He nodded. “Y’know, you can open your eyes if you want to,” she said. “It’s awfully pretty out here, too.” The bright of the late afternoon sun greeted him. It painted the clouds all around him orange and gold. His two front hooves were stretched out and aimed straight ahead at a cloud as sculpted as a castle. “Pretty sweet, huh?” she asked. He glanced over at a blue pegasus racing along beside him on out-stretched wings over the clouds. He’d never seen a mane or tail as colorful as hers, and he’d never met a pony with a mark on her flank before either, but he knew her so well it didn’t even occur to him to ask who she was. Her mark--a bolt of lightning--matched the rainbow colors of her mane and tail. “‘Sweet’ doesn’t even begin to do it justice,” he said. “It’s more, I don’t know, breathtaking? Splendid? I know, it’s—” “Awesome?” “Yeah! It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever felt!” Then he took notice that her legs weren’t moving, and neither were his, even though they kept speeding over the clouds and through the air. In fact, when he thought about it, he realized his legs weren’t even touching the ground. “We’re flying,” he said. “That’s what they call it.” She rolled over in the air and clear over his head. “There’s something I came here to do though. Something’s wrong.” He furrowed his brow as he dipped out of the current, and into a pocket of turbulence. He watched the blue pegasus alter course to match his, and swoop over ahead and glided next to him. He blinked and saw Breeze comatose and gray. Then Lt. Cloud Twist, dying. As he gazed into the clouds ahead of him, he saw the faces of his marines staring back at him just as they did when Discord came to their camp. Their scorn and his betrayal flooded back to him and drowned out the lightning. “I’m flying?” he asked. “How is this possible? Ponies can’t fly.” The enormity of that statement, it sank into him and held him down. Her eyes widened with concern and she waved for him to stop. “I can’t fly.” Thunder Gale looked down, and the clouds beneath him parted into an abyss. In the black he saw his father, smiling bright as the day he let him into his office; he had tried to kill him. “Ponies don’t fly!” He plummeted screaming and clawing at the clouds as he passed through. He flailed and kicked as he tumbled over his head. He opened his wings and flexed uselessly. Tears ran up the corners of his eyes and his heart pounded in his chest. The blue pegasus zipped through the clouds above him and folded her wings back for a dive. She opened them again as she cut along side. “Help me!” Thunder Gale screamed. “I know where I’ve seen this all before: a nightmare I’ve had every night my whole life!” “Shut up, calm down, and cool your jets.” She cut closer to him with precision and control. “Can’t you see you’re just making it worse for yourself? You were flying just fine before you started to tell yourself you couldn’t.” “It’s more than that. I’ve done so much wrong.” “Look, Thunder Gale, I know you’re in a funk and I want to help,” she said. “But you’re the only one who can lift yourself out. I can’t do it for you. Now, do you want to keep falling like this, or not?” He shook his head. “Okay, that’s the first step. Now, do you want to fly?” “I don’t even know the first thing about flying.” Thunder Gale fell through a cloud bank and for an instant the pegasus next to him vanished behind the dew. “What do I do?” She let her face droop, unimpressed, and then wiggled the tips of her wings. “You got a pair of these, don’t you?” “Yeah, but what do I do?” “Just do it,” she said. “Flying is just like walking: you don’t need an instruction book on how, you just do it. You never answered my question, do you want to fly?” “I, but—” “Do you want to fly? I can’t hear you!” “Yes.” “Louder, soldier!” “Yes!” “Then open your wings and make it happen.” Thunder Gale flexed his wings, gulped, and zeroed his eyes in on the cloud rushing up to meet him. He didn’t want to fall. He wanted to fly. So he shut his eyes like he had before the blue pegasus arrived, and listened to his body. His heart beat against his ribs as if it were trying to escape a cage, and the black behind his eyes was haunted by his father and Breeze, but past them all a rainbow shown. He traced its course along his spine and the sinews of his flesh. In time the phantoms passed, and his heart calmed, but the rainbow thundered brighter. Thunder Gale opened his eyes again to the raging abyss below, but aimed for a stray cloud at its edge. He wound back his legs and when he reached that cloud he shoved off. He spread his wings wide, and flapped until he broke into a steady ascent. Lightning coursed through him. “I’m flying!” He laughed and cheered. “I’m doing it, I’m actually doing it!” “I told you.” The blue pegasus fluttered up next to him. “All you had to do was lose that ‘I can’t’ attitude and make it happen.” “It feels so natural.” He looped over himself, embracing the force of the spin as he came back round, and drifted into a glide. “It’s like walking, or breathing, or sex.” He barely heard himself speak, but he did, and dropped a bit again, shamefaced, and sweating over that last word. “Not that I was trying to imply anything, I just, well, you know. Am I sinking again?” “Yeah, you are.” She looked right at him straight-faced and honest. “I don’t judge, or at least I try not to. I remember what having a body was like, and that is part of having one. For a pegasus, so is flying.” Thunder Gale drifted back up, and sighed a little in relief. “Hey, wanna race?” she asked. “You bet, but I’m warning you, I’m pretty competitive.” “So was I.” They didn’t count down to start or set a finish line, they didn’t need to; Thunder Gale and the blue pegasus took off in perfect sync. The blue pegasus peeled away from him and left a blast of air in her wake so strong that knocked Thunder into a roll and tore holes in the clouds. He righted himself, locked his ears against his head, and sped into her slipstream. He waited for just the right opening to overtake her, and eventually passed her, but she regained her lead in a matter of seconds. They shot and weaved through the clouds neck and neck. When one would overtake the other, the other would push forward. The blue pegasus was a much stronger flier than Thunder Gale, no doubt about it, but he made her fight for every inch she gained against him. Eventually they stopped, not because a clear winner had emerged or because they crossed an arbitrary line, but because they both mutually had their fill of flying and decided to do something else. “So, what do you want to do next?” she asked. As Thunder stared out at the heat and bright of the sun reflecting off the clouds, a flash of metal and cold raced across his body, and for a blink, he was back in the chair. The shock almost knocked him right back out of the sky, but his heart turned over when he thought back to why he subjected himself to it. “I need to find Discord, put a stop to his chaos, and rescue the mare I love,” Thunder Gale said. “I have less than half an hour to do all that. Can you help me?” “Here your perceptions of time are literally how you experience it. So try to keep from thinking about just how much time you have left and how much has passed. As long as you keep it out of your head, you should have as much time as you need.” The blue pegasus narrowed her eyes at something in the distance, and frowned. “What?” Thunder Gale followed her gaze over his shoulder and to a clock emerging out from behind the passing clouds. It read 00:29:55 and counted down by the second. “That must be the timer Urizen mentioned.” “That egghead.” She dragged a hoof down her face. “Great, now you really only do have twenty-nine minutes and that many seconds. Idiot computer.” “I thought you said you didn’t judge.” “No I didn’t, I just said I try not to.” Thunder Gale shook his head; it wasn’t worth the effort to argue over. “Okay, so now I have a timer.” He took a deep breath. “Can you help me or not?” “Okay, I’m totally willing to help, but only as much as I did when you were trying to fly,” she said. “There’s a limit to just what I can do to help, because I can’t do anything for you. All I can do is help you to help yourself. You’re still physical, and I haven’t been for a very long time.” “Thank you.” He blinked away from the clock and turned his eyes down. “I was sent here to kill Discord, but--I’m just happy to have somepony on my side here.” The blue pegasus sped around in front of him, flapped her wings into a hover, and held a hoof out in front of him. “That’s not true,” she said. “You have all the allies and all the help you need and you don’t even know it. I mean, sure, I’ll admit things might look bleak, but they’re not. You’ve got more friends than you can count if you really thought about it, including a griffon you used to be best friends with who’s just itching for an excuse to reconcile with you. You’ve also got five of the best friends you could possibly imagine. Sure, four you haven’t met yet, but to the one you have, you mean everything in the world to. On top of all that, you’ve also got your friends here, and I don’t even have the time to get into all those. So, chin up.” “Wait, do you mean Gerard?” Thunder Gale spat out the name. “No way. Like that'd ever happen.” “Look, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.” She jabbed a hoof at him. “That’s not what I’m even asking. What I’m trying to get you to do is be a little less stubborn about holding onto this idea that you can’t achieve what you want and that you can’t be happy.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pushed her hoof away. “I don’t particularly care about what happens to that griffon. Look, I’m running out of time. I need to find Discord, and get Breeze Heart out of wherever he’s tormenting her.” She grunted, smacked her head, and veered around. “Follow me. I know somepony who might be able to point you in the right direction.” Thunder Gale stayed right on her tail as she accelerated around a bend in the clouds out into an expanse between one bank of clouds and the next. He took in a sharp gasp; seeing the cloudscape whole and at a distance, he realized just how shockingly the puffs and trails resembled domes and floating roadways. In fact, the longer he stared the more he recognized spires and rooftops beneath him. Everywhere he looked, coalescing and dispersing among the random billows, an entire metropolis sprawled. Ahead of him, the blue pegasus rushed to meet a castle rising from the cloudbank across the expanse. He tore after her, but as soon as he left the shelter of the cloudbank behind him, a harsh wind lashed into him and kicked up his mane. He steadied himself and continued after the pegasus as she ascended. From behind the castle came the sun. He hissed and covered his eyes at the suddenness of its light, but even as he held his eyes shut he could still feel its brilliance piercing into him. As its heat didn’t threaten him, even as it raced down his spine and in his head and heart. It had a frequency and a rhythm, and he drank it in. “It feels like electricity, but it’s not,” he called out to the blue pegasus. “Whenever Discord was right about to use his powers, and right before Chain Gleaming attacked Breeze and me, I felt something like this but it was painful and literally sucked the life out of the air. This is pleasant.” “It’s got a name, y’know: magic.” The blue pegasus was much farther ahead of him than he guessed, and her voice was raised to yell back at him. “Magic is everywhere, including in ponies, changelings, and spirits. Back in my time unicorns drew their magic from within. The changelings and spirits you’ve been running into, they’ve learned to draw it from everything and everypony else around them. What you’re feeling right now is how it’s supposed to be. Just hang in there and you’ll adjust.” He opened his eyes again and the light pierced right through them. He shut them as quick as he opened them, and blindly sped toward her voice. “Wait!” he shouted. “Slow down, I can’t see.” There was no response, and so for a third time he opened his eyes but he strained through the glare. On the ramparts of the castle where cloud met sun, the pegasus stood. Her rainbow mane flickered in the wind. In all of Thunder Gale’s dreams of flying and chasing, they always ended with him falling right as he was about to reach the sun. “Not this time though.” He grit his teeth and dug his wings into the air over and over. “This time, I fly!” So close to the sun, the heat and the light and the electric buzz pulsed through him with a force that threatened to tear him apart. But he kept flying up to the blue pegasus. He was so close he could see the red of her eyes. She held out a hoof to him. “Yes!” she said. “Just a little more!” He fought through the static flowing down his spine and kept flying, but the pain, it was excruciating. If he didn’t turn back soon, he feared it’d shake him apart. “Not this time!” He screamed, gave his wings two final beats, and grabbed the blue pegasus’s hoof. Then he was swept away. * * * There was music in the air, and to his left and right bookshelves extended in rows so far that they narrowed into a distant point. He hovered off the ground, and for a time he listened to the melody of violins. He didn’t know how long he’d been there listening and hovering, as he didn’t remember arriving or making a transition. He just was. With a stroke of his wings he planted himself on the floor on all fours. “Hello? Is anypony here?” he called out, but was not answered. At once the soldier in him kicked in. On his own in an unfamiliar environment, his first goal was to understand the terrain and identify any immediate threat to him and his squad, locate his objective, and chart out the quickest possible route. Thunder Gale climbed on the nearest bookshelf, balanced his hooves on the little space the books allowed him on the edge, and scanned the aisles. No immediate threats, nopony around him at all, just row upon row of bookshelves. He paused and listened to the music for a second. He could hear every note of the melody and the counter melody running beneath it; whoever was playing that song couldn’t be too far away, but he couldn’t discern the direction and caught no glimpse of anypony else. “So where are they?” he asked himself. “Never mind, Thunder, you’ve got an objective: find Discord. Work on that.” He didn’t need to look very far. As soon as he turned his gaze up to the walls above the bookshelves, he found Discord and his yellow eyes staring back at him. It was one of many stained glass windows running the length of library hall. Each depicted a mythological scene. Most he didn’t recognize, but he knew of only one monster with the head of a pony, the claws of a lion and an eagle, and the tail of a dragon, and he needed no introduction about him. In the glass overhead he was bound in the light radiating from six ponies standing united against him. He recognized one of them, the blue pegasus from his dreams. “I’m not an ideal pony…” Thunder Gale heard the words echoing in the distance, startled, lost his balance, and toppled off the bookshelf. He landed on his stomach with an omph, but got up and galloped after the voice. “The crazy thing is, the idea that I’m an Element of Harmony doesn’t sound so insane.” The voice came from just around the bend at the end of the bookshelf. He peered around the corner and spied three mares gathered in an alcove. Two of them had both the wings of a pegasus and the horn of a unicorn--alicorns, princess of Equestria. One’s mane flowed like an aurora while the other’s shone in every shade of violet. Between them lay a unicorn with a frazzled, golden-yellow mane. They huddled close to the unicorn and leaned their support. His eyes widened and he let out a gasp. The alicorn farthest from him--the big one with the pearly white coat and the aurora mane--he had heard about her countless times in the old stories. He stood not ten feet away from the greatest pegasus and the most benevolent ruler who ever lived. “Celestia,” he whispered her name. She looked up at him and winked, and turned her attention back to the mare at her side. She was a great deal taller than him. “You can always walk over and introduce yourself, if you like,” a voice whispered behind him. “I don’t know if I should,” he said. “I’m not sure if a wink is enough of a sign that I should go interrupt whatever’s going on over there.” When Thunder Gale turned around to address the voice he leapt back shocked and ready to scream. “That’s very considerate of you, but it’s very lovely to see you again and I don’t want to miss out on this chance to catch up,” said Celestia. “I know you’re startled but please try not to alarm the other guests; this is a library after all.” She held herself and spoke with so much relaxed authority that Thunder Gale closed his mouth and didn’t let out a single peep. Her gentle touch invited him under the warmth of her wing and guided him as they turned deeper into the library. “How are you doing that?” He pointed over his shoulder in the direction of alcove, and the other Celestia they were leaving behind. “I can bi-locate.” She chuckled. “It’s not as hard as it looks and quite a useful skill for a princess to have. I’m sure that you didn’t come all this way just to ask me about the applications of metaphysics and the simultaneous nature of space-time. Now, please tell me, what brings you here?” “Celestia, ma’am, excuse me but something tells me you already know,” he said. “I’m short on time, and I’d rather just skip to a solution.” “I know, but I find that answers to a lot of problems come easier after we slow down and talk them through. Besides, I haven’t spoken with you for a lifetime or two and I’d like to catch up. Think you can spare some time to humor me?” Thunder Gale sighed. Underneath Celestia’s wing, the warmth of her body and the calm in her step put him at ease. He put his guard down. “I came here with my—well, I guess she’s my friend; I never even thought to ask for her name. Anyway, she was trying to help me find Discord. You know who he is, right?” “You could say we’ve met before,” she said. “Please, go on.” “I came here to find Discord so I could rescue somepony special to me, but I think I’m supposed to kill him. I’m kinda twisted up about all this, and I’m not sure what to do or how.” “What do you want to do? Why don’t you start by answering that and working your way through the rest?” Thunder Gale stopped in his tracks and looked down at his hooves. He thought for a time, and when he blinked a flash of rainbow colors surged inside him. Celestia paused a few steps ahead of him. Without the sounds of hooves falling on the stone floor, the only sound in the whole of the library was violins’ songs. “I want to be together with Breeze again,” he said. “She means the world to me, and I’m an idiot for not acting like it sooner.” She tilted her head a little closer to him. “I hate Discord, yes, but only because of what I see of myself in him.” Thunder Gale paced away from her and looked up at the stain glass image of the six banishing Discord rather than meet her gaze. “If I were to kill him, it’d be to try to kill something I see in myself. I can’t do it. Not from the changeling who tried to attack me, and not with Discord. Not that it matters much now. I don’t even know how to reach him in the first place.” “You might not believe it now, but you already possess every resource you need to resolve this conflict, without resorting to violence,” Celestia said. “Like what?” Thunder Gale spread open his wings and chuckled. “I don’t even have my power armor.” “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Celestia took another step towards him and her hooves rang on the marble. “You’ve seen it before. It’s how you’ve always managed to pull yourself up after you fall and achieve each new dazzling speed. And in your most graceful of moments, it shone across the whole sky.” Thunder Gale spent a moment contemplating that while his eyes fell into his shadow across the marble. Then he noticed a clock embedded high in the far wall. It read 00:17:51. “I’m sorry.” He yanked himself away from the clock and shook his head. “I don’t have the time.” “Then make it.” He took in a sharp breath and cantered over to the wall. A cloud passed overhead and cut the light streaming in from the high windows. He traced the gaps in the tiles beneath his hooves while he thought and tried not to panic. The violins climbed into a crescendo. “Okay,” he said. “How?” “Come with me.” In a clearing sectioned off from the rest of the bookshelves, Celestia spread out a blanket and a pair of pillows. She invited him to make himself comfortable with a nod and wave of her wing. So, he lay down on one of the pillows and let his hooves drape over the side. The satin was too smooth for him and drove him up onto his hooves again. Celestia chuckled. “Okay, so now what?” he asked. “Do what comes natural, and be patient.” She cantered out of the clearing and into the aisle. “I’ll get us tea.” For a long while Thunder paced in a circle, and every time he paused to check down the endless aisles, his hooves broke into tapping. After a time, he gave up waiting for Celestia and sat himself down on his pillow. Another cloud passed outside and he lowered his head against the bookshelf behind him as it came and went. “What do I even do?” He raked his hooves down his cheeks as he thought back to every word she had said to him, and then his wings opened. “Did she mean? No, she couldn’t possibly know. How could she?” A cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, and he pinched the pillow tight between his elbows and his hooves. When he put aside his fretting long enough to listen for the lightning beneath his skin, he found it. Fainter now than during his flight, but as undeniable as the sun it cascaded up his spine. Magic. That's what the blue pegasus had called it. He closed his eyes, waited for his body to relax, and then called upon it. When it answered, the electricity rose with a renewed ferocity, and he traced it back behind his eyes and deeper within himself. He followed it for a time, but as soon as his mind began to unclench, a myriad of blues and greens and reds bloomed. That time he was prepared for the burst, and as he continued to ride the colors deeper, more emerged to join the growing rainbow. It didn’t answer him in words, but as he drank in its light, certainty sprouted in him. When he opened his eyes again, Celestia sat across from him with her front legs crossed over her pillow. A tray bearing cups and a kettle of tea sat between them. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked him. “Yes, or at least I think so.” Thunder Gale scratched the back of his head and sat forward off the bookshelf. “I was hoping I’d get a straight forward: this is how you can get resolve this whole business with Discord and Breeze free. It was more of an impression, a wordless kind of answer. I don’t have the answer I wanted, but I think I’ll have what I need when the time comes. For now, that’s enough. I still don’t know if she’ll even want to see me when I find my way to her.” “I’m happy to hear you’re beginning to find yourself again. Would you care for some tea?” “Yes, ma’am.” The tea kettle floated off the tray, followed by a pair of cups. In the air they shimmered in a golden light. She tilted her horn in the suggestion of a nod, and the kettle filled one cup and then the other. The first drifted over to Thunder, and he plucked it out of the air and the glow faded. Lavender and lilac steamed off the cup, and when he sipped, it warmed his bones. “I wanted to show you something,” she announced a moment later. “This library contains a record of everything ever written, and everything that never was. It’s surprising, the things you can stumble upon in here.” Her horn lit up in a shimmer of gold. From off the shelf beside her a datapad drifted, and landed before his hooves. When Thunder Gale set down his tea and scooped it up, his wings flung open. The datapad opened to a letter from Breeze Heart he’d never seen before, but it was dated several days after they left Marble and in it she thanked him. “No matter whether I’m stuck in a jail cell or if news from home only tells of trouble and loss,” she wrote. “I always felt well loved when I’m with you. You help me find the light even in the darkest of times.” “We play this game where we send little love letters to each other,” he said. “I got something like this eventually, but it never said anything so heartfelt. Also, she broke character. She never does that. What happened?” “She got shy and a little self-conscious. The spirit behind her words is what the library remembers, not the exact words themselves. I did say this library contained everything never written. There’s more for you to read.” He scrolled out to the index, and before him spanned the entire length of Special Snowflake’s conversation with Cherry Pit, and many more entries he didn’t remember sending or receiving. There were thousands of them, but often when he checked the contents of her letters, they merely read: “I love you.” “There’s more clips, letters, notes, and security logs all around you,” Celestia said. “There’s an entire lifetime of them, and more if you go back far enough. Now tell me, do you really think she wouldn’t want to hear back from the colt you see recorded here?” “I wasn’t there for her all the time.” Thunder Gale slid the datapad back in its place on the shelf. “And that doesn’t undo the fact that I betrayed her.” “No, I suppose it doesn’t, but it also doesn’t undo the fact that the reason only reason why you've ventured all the way out here isn’t to continue your mission, but to go home with her.” “Thank you, Celestia.” Thunder Gale got up off the floor and threw a hoof around her neck for a hug. “You’re very welcome.” She lowered her head around him to return the hug, and chuckled slightly. “But I really didn’t do much of anything. Now, when you’re ready to confront Discord, all you have to do is lock onto him with your heart and will yourself there. It’s just like flying.” Thunder Gale released himself from her embrace and said, “It was amazing talking with you, Your Majesty.” “And you as well, Your Grace” she said. “Feel free to visit anytime.” He faced into the bookshelf across from him, eyes closed, and when he opened them again a red curtain span the wall before him, flickering and teasing at his hooves. Behind it, he heard the sound of wind as it passes through pines and rain. He gave Celestia a final salute, and pushed past the red and into darkness.