i
When I came to, the world was still white, and the air still far below freezing.
The sun had still not risen, but through the long front window of the Sisyphys I could see a vast sky of stars.
I wavered in and out of consciousness, each time noticing something new and strange. First was the fact that I seemed to be underneath an itchy and uncomfortable blanket. Then, I noticed the choke-collar still attached to my neck, as well as a heavy clump of bloodsoaked bits of fabric masquerading as bandages.
I made to rise, but a sudden, spiking headache forced me back to the ship’s cold floor in a frenzy of grunts and curse-words.
“Celly!” Luna shrieked, springing seemingly out of nowhere and tackling me in a flying hug. “You’re okay!”
“That’s… one way of putting it,” I grumbled, rubbing my temples through the ratty blanket Luna had wrapped around me. “I feel like an elephant’s welcome mat, though.”
Luna gave a small smile, but didn’t laugh at my joke. “I was so worried, Celestia.”
“For me?” I smiled, too. “Well, now you know how I feel.”
Once more, I attempted to rise, and while my head was once more pounding at the tiny exertion, I managed to make it to my hooves and stumble over to the control panel of the Sisyphys.
“We’re… flying,” I said bluntly. We were flying through clouds and snow, so it was nearly impossible to tell just how high we were, but the sensation of movement—albeit one unaided by the rotors on the side of the ship—was unmistakable.
“Yeah,” Luna said. “I just kinda… did what you did. The spiny-things on the side stopped, though.”
“You dropped all of the ballast?” I guessed, but one look at the gauge answered my question. It was empty, and another glance showed me that our fuel was empty, too.
“I… I guess so?” Luna said.
“Damn miracle it didn’t freeze,” I said, but already my head had started to pound again with a returning headache.
“That stallion…” Luna pointed at my choke-collar. “He hurt you bad, huh?”
“I think I’m getting used to it. Anyways, it would’ve been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for you and Willow,” I replied. “I… I wanna apologize for yelling at you, Luna. You really were right about her. I shouldn’t have called you stupid.”
Luna said nothing. Eventually, I turned my attention elsewhere, searching for a metal-file somewhere on the Sisyphys’ deck so that I could get to work on removing the choke-collar clinging to my neck.
The choke-collar was not only awfully uncomfortable, it rather easily screamed to every single onlooking pony that I was at the very least an escaped slave, which meant I couldn’t expect to go anywhere public and not expect some sort of confrontation.
To my disappointment but not necessarily surprise, there was no file to be found on the deck. I cursed under my breath when every minute of searching yielded nothing, but it soon became clear I was merely wasting my time. Eventually, I returned to the control panel where Luna was still sitting, staring straight ahead at the emptiness out the Sisyphys’ main window. I instinctively went to take the yoke in my hooves, but stopped when I saw that they had been locked in position once again.
“How long have we been flying, Luna?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “The sun still hasn’t risen yet. But the compass has said ‘N’ since we left. I had to steer it back a few times, but I guess the wind is keeping us going.”
“Well, that’s… a lucky break.” I said. “Any company?”
“I heard a ship a while ago, but I think it was below us. I don’t think it could see us, cause I couldn’t see it at all.”
“Nah, Discord’s snowstorm is probably starting to backfire on him,” I nodded. “I’m surprised he’s keeping it up.”
“What if he’s not the one controlling it?” Luna asked.
I laughed. “And who else would be?”
Luna shrugged. “Maybe those Crystal Ponies that Willow mentioned?”
“Maybe,” I said, sounding skeptical. “I don’t know, Luna. I’m sure they’re good with magic, but I think the weather is something only Discord can control.”
“Yeah,” Luna sounded rather disappointed.
“Listen, Luna. I’m gonna go into the balloon and switch the fuel tanks. Then, we’re gonna drop below the clouds and get our bearings. If we really have been flying North all day, we may well have already put Stormsborough behind us, but if not, I want to make sure our props are working in case we have to make a quick escape.”
Luna simply gawked as I made my way on still-wavering hooves towards the access hatch to the Sisyphys’s balloon. At one point there may have been a ladder, but a discarded table I had bolted to the floor had long since replaced it.
Entering the balloon, I could see more clearly that it had begun to sag in places, undoubtedly shrinking thanks to the great cold. The fact that it was aloft at all was impressive enough—it seemed that, for the junk it was built from, the Sisyphys was a surprisingly capable ship thanks to my restoration of her.
There was a small canister of fuel presently not connected to either engine, and I dropped the hoses to both engines into it. It was an emergency auxiliary store, enough for maybe half an hour of engine life, but it would be enough to get us out of a pinch if need be.
For now, the sails were doing just fine.
Back at my seat at the front window, I unlocked the control stick and guided it forwards. Behind us, the long-dormant fins gave a long groan as they were forced back into action, and soon the Sisyphys began to slowly descend.
Eventually, we broke through the cloud cover and the world was suddenly more than one ship in a veil of grey haze. Snowy plains sprawled on all sides, mountain ranges stretching into the northern sky directly before us. The blizzard itself had stopped, and the world seemed beautiful from so high up.
The moon was struggling to pierce through the cloud cover that had veiled the land from us, but it’s light was so strong that when it did, the silhouetted form of the Sisyphys was projected onto the sparkling snow, racing over dead trees and wrecks of airships far less fortunate than us.
I afforded a backwards look at the window to the stern of the Sisyphys, and felt my heart skip a beat.
For behind us, standing unsullied against the eternal night-sky, was the near-mythical Stormsborough Mountain.
It stood as though it had existed long before the world around it, mighty and proud amongst the stark plains and dead trees all around.
I breathed a long sigh as I took in the great city of Stormsborough. I don’t quite know what I had been expecting, but nonetheless it had taken me aback. Around the mountain, great masses of what looked like islands were impossibly suspended in the air. Atop them stood buildings taller than any others I had ever seen, and airships hovered between the islands like circling vultures.
“We’ve come a long way from Cyclosa, Luna,” I said. “I never thought I’d be looking at Stormsborough with my own eyes.”
Luna said nothing, and leaned her head onto my shoulder. I wrapped a wing around her, and we continued staring in awe at the islands of Stormsborough gradually losing focus against the hazy horizon.
ii
With the knowledge that Stormsborough was already behind us, I felt less inclined to bring us back into the high altitudes and place more unneeded stress onto the Sisyphys’s balloon.
So, we continued to glide above the plains. The winds died down in strength and the ship slowed, but we continued onwards towards the mountains of the Frozen North all the same.
Not long after Stormsborough was less than a speck on the horizon behind us, I heard the distinct sound of propellers.
Luna was sleeping in the co-pilot seat when I heard them, and I decided not to wake her until I knew for sure we were in danger. I killed the lights on the control panel and extinguished the cabin lantern, and then searched for a spyglass I could have sworn was lying about in the Sisyphy’s cabin back in Cluster 13.
I eventually found it amongst the rest of the junk scattered about the cabin, and quickly looked to the pinprick of red light bearing down upon us from the East.
I counted four propellers, and to my chagrin, several rocket batteries. The airship itself was certainly no Scoutship, but I had my doubts they were anypony friendly.
“Luna, wake up.” I prodded her into wakefulness. “We may be in trouble.”
“Huh…?”
“Ship, bearing down on us. Could be pirates.”
Luna was awake in an instant, her eyes aglow with excitement. “Pirates?!”
“Yeah,” I said. I’d heard of them in the Scrapyards, from pilots spinning what part of me simply assumed were tall-tales. Ponies who made a living shooting down transport or passenger ships, raiding them for parts and taking the crew as slaves.
Hell, for all I knew, the Sisyphys herself had been a pirate’s vessel back in her heyday. She had the same haphazard amalgamation of parts one would expect from them.
“They must have spotted us when we dropped below the cloud cover. They’ve probably been waiting until we’re far enough from Stormsborough to intercept us.”
“What are we gonna do?”
I ignored Luna, and with a flick of a switch brought the Sisyphys’s engines back to life again. They’d seen us, I had no doubt, and we were getting nowhere drifting silently over the Frozen North.
The entire ship gave a sickly shudder as the propellers sprung to life, and I guided the throttle forwards gradually. The ancient propellers made a sound far from stealthy, but we seemed far past that point.
We needed cover, but the mountains that separated Erisia from the rest of the Frozen North were still several hours of flight away. It was nothing but ice and snow until then. Truly the perfect opportunity for the other ship to shoot us down.
And then what? Make our way across the Frozen North on hoof, on the slim chance they didn’t capture us anyways? We wouldn’t make it a day, and where was there to walk to?
Over the next hour, both ships continued forwards into the North—the pirate ship was constantly approaching, and soon I could make out the many sails and four engine cars on the ship that was not much bigger than the Sisyphys.
Nonetheless, I counted six rockets mounted on both sides of ship—easily enough to completely obliterate the defenseless little schooner I was piloting, although they looked to be static, and not the pivoting variety I’d seen on some more combat-centric ships in the Scrapyard. They posed a great threat to anypony in their crosshairs, but were next to useless to anypony behind them. Aiming was a crude affair anyways—most rockets relied more on the offchance of scattering fire onto the balloon than actually striking any target head-on.
Still, they were better than what I had—no more than several crude fire bombs made from a few jars of hard liquor and petroleum. Still, anything capable of producing flame posed a great threat against another airship.
At that thought, another idea struck me, and before I could rethink I gave the yoke a mighty turn and guided the Sisyphys into a gradual 180 degree turn. She turned slowly, and the wind was now fighting against us, forcing me to increase the throttle in return.
Now, we were flying towards the pirate’s ship head on.
“What are you doing?!” Luna screeched.
A flare of flame shot from the side of the pirate ship as a rocket was flung in our direction. It exploded off the port side, a symphony of shrapnel clinking against the side of the wooden cabin.
It was clearly a warning shot, which was exactly what I was betting on.
“What are you—!” Luna began again.
“They shoot us down now, and they’ve got a great big flaming projectile flying at them,” I replied. “They know that, too. So, I’m getting behind their rockets, where they can’t shoot us down.”
The distance behind the ships closed swiftly, and I mentally predicted the time it would take for the Sisyphys to bank out of a collision course. In just three days of flying her, I felt rather comfortable behind the wheel of the Sisyphys—truly, despite the garbage she was constructed from, she was a nimble and capable airship. At fifty feet, I knew I was cutting things close, and staring straight-on at the heads of the remaining five rockets was hardly a welcoming sight even if I knew they dared not use them at such a close range.
I counted several ponies in the cockpit, too—although with their flight goggles and helmets it was hard to discern mare from stallion. Their horrified glances, however, were quite clear.
At twenty feet I twisted the controls downwards. The Sisyphys banked, much slower than I’d intended, and entered a gradual dive to avoid the incoming pirate ship. While her nose managed to dip far enough to avoid a collision, the tall caudal fin atop the Sisyphys struck the pirate ship’s cabin. The sturdy frame of the fin began rending wood apart, and two loud thumps resounded onto the Sisyphys’s balloon as the fin sliced two engine cars off of the pirate ship’s side.
Finally, the awful sound of groaning wood ceased and the Sisyphys left the shadow of the pirate ship back into unsullied winter night. I twisted the controls again to bring us back North, but she was considerably less nimble with the cloth to the top fin now in tatters.
Still, both ships were now both flying to the North again, this time with us behind. If we'd had rocket batteries on our ship, we could have made quick work of the pirate ship, but for now I decided to simply count my blessings.
With both port-side engine cars gone, the pirate ship was starting to bank on one side. She had sails atop the balloon, but they seemed tattered and merely aesthetic.
With this in mind, I guided the throttle to full and brought the Sisyphys into ascent once more. Soon, we crept over the pirate ship, once again at an alarmingly close proximity. This time, however, it was intentional—the sturdy bottom fin, while smaller than the top, smashed into the pirate ship’s balloon, causing both ships to shake viciously.
The Sisyphy’s front window shattered from the impact, scattering powdery bits of glass all over the control panel and turning the ship into a wind tunnel for the frozen air around us.
While we continued to overtake the pirate ship, I brought my horn to the makeshift fire bombs I’d crafted. With the inhibitor still on my horn, I had to rely on simply getting the metal ring hot enough by forcing it into action, instead of actually casting magic myself. Still, with a little effort and a greater deal of throbbing migraine-like pain, the cloth ignited, and quickly began burning at a quicker speed than I’d intended. I hit the lever to open the gangplank and galloped to the slowly descending board, the bottles grasped in my unbroken wing.
The air was whistling madly, the cold and wind threatening to extinguish the madly burning bottles. I threw both at the pirate ship not ten feet below us, and they fell directly through the long gash the Sisyphys’s fin had made.
The pirate ship exploded in a great burst of flame. I could feel the burning hydrogen gas even through the frigid northern air, and the flames licked dangerously close to Sisyphys. The flames hit the rocket batteries, and in seconds bits of flaming airship were raining down onto the ice below.
The Sisyphys, however, was already passing the pirate ship now, leaving the great ball of fire alone to the south whilst maintaining her bearing forwards. The engines continued to sputter, but it was clear they were running on fumes now. Upon reaching the controls, I found my destructive maneuver had severed the steering cables, leaving the Sisyphys unresponsive to my attempts to steer her.
Still, the compass on the panel remained aimed to the north ahead. The wind would do the rest.
iii
For hours, the Sisyphys simply drifted. The fuel was long spent, the wind had died, and the temperature continued to drop as we flew. I had tried and failed several times to fix the steering column, but it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to do much unless we landed.
At which point, taking off again would be an impossibility.
It did not take long for hunger to begin hunting us, either. I searched about the Sisyphys for something—anything for Luna and me to eat. At best, I found several spores of fungus growing on a rotten board, but I hardly wanted to take a chance with eating it—more likely, I would just end up throwing up what little food was still in my system.
Defeated, I wandered back to the control panel, where Luna was staring blankly ahead at the passing ice. I wrapped a wing around her, although we both mutually shirked a little from the sudden contact—Luna felt frozen and I knew I most likely felt the same. Still, it was better than mutually freezing together, and Luna made no move to escape my embrace.
I noted with dismay that Luna’s breathing had a horribly laboured quality to it—hunger and cold already having a horrifying effect.
The cold became a sort of living shadow constantly lurking over us. Less a force of nature, and more a villainous presence constantly trying to wrap its icy tendrils around us. Our cloaks did little to deter it, and the shattered glass of the Sisyphys’s front window meant the entire cabin was flooded in inescapable cold.
Eventually, I lifted Luna up with one of my weary hooves, placing her onto my back in a piggyback-like position. She mumbled something but seemed too weary to object, so I rose and carried her to the back of the Sisyphys.
While the gondola of the ship was small relative to most other airships, it was still large enough to house—in addition to the main control area—a small bedroom. It, of course, had no proper furnishings, but there was still an old, ancient bed that, uncomfortable as it looked, seemed much better than the co-pilot’s seat. I put Luna down softly upon it, and then unclipped my cloak and draped it over her.
“Stay here, Luna,” I whispered. “Stay warm. I’ll come get you if something happens.”
Luna mumbled something in objection, but made no move to contradict me.
Back at the control panel, I continued scanning the wastelands for signs of life—some nomad camp or trading cluster I could land at. There I stayed for what must have been hours, only rising once when I had to pee, which I did leaning half-off of the Sisyphys's gangplank.
The whole while, I let my thoughts wander. Not on my future, like I had been expecting them to, but rather the world behind me. Ever since I had seen Stormsborough from afar, the idea of Erisia herself being behind me had finally set in proper.
I should’ve felt ecstatic, I suppose, but I did not quite feel such.
Nor did I feel melancholy—for what was it I was leaving behind? My parents, who hadn’t ever loved me enough to protect me? The scrapyard, that had stolen my childhood away and turned me into the cynical, survivalist brat I was? The cold, lifeless wastelands that surrounded the pathetic slums that ponies insisted were cities?
No, I didn’t miss anything at all.
So why did I feel so incomplete leaving it all behind?
A great, shimmering light suddenly caught my attention, wrenching my gaze from the land below to the skies.
The night sky, free from any clouds, stars, or moon, was instead a shimmering tapestry of green. It looked almost supernatural, waving like water but stretching across the air itself like clouds. It danced in beautiful patterns, rippling into the distance where we were drifting. It was as though the entire sky was pulsing with life, charged with energy no pony, and no chaos king could generate.
Something so beautiful was surely not Discord’s doing.
Suddenly, there was another flicker. This one, much brighter, and much more real. It stuck out against the dark, for it was a pulsating glimmer of red against a world of muddy greys and blacks.
An airship beacon! I’d only seen one in use before, during a dust storm back in Cyclosa. This one, by my memory’s comparison, looked considerably more crude, but it was ponymade nonetheless.
Surely then, they had seen us approaching.
And surely, I had no choice but to land, for what other option did I have? Trusting the intentions of a random nomad tribe on the outskirts of the Frozen North seemed like suicide, but without food, water, or fuel, Luna and I wouldn’t last the week on our lonely drifting journey.
Besides, hadn’t this been what I was searching for? Life outside of Equestria? Hope elsewhere? A start at an ordinary life, far from Discord?
Then again, the wings on my back wrenched that thought away quickly. No matter where I was, no matter if the ponies worshipped or loathed me, my life wouldn’t exactly be ‘normal.’
I could at least do my best to make sure Luna’s, at least, would be.
Instinctively, I reached to the lever on the dash that vented out the hydrogen gas in the ship’s balloons. The whole mechanism was either frozen, or the cable herself had snapped. Either way, the control panel before me was evidently worthless.
I was weak, weary, and did not wish to with every bone in my aching body, but before I knew it I was sliding the port-side window of the Sisyphys open and climbing out into the night. I suppose I could’ve gone through the shattered front window, but with such huge shards of glass protruding from the edges, I didn’t really want to risk any further injuries than what I already had. My whole ivory coat was probably more bruises and cuts than unsullied flesh as it stood, and my head was weary enough from hunger that any more blood loss would probably see me swooning over and falling to the ground a hundred feet below.
The Sisyphys had no ladder on her exterior to bring me from the gondola to the top of the balloon, but the balloon itself had enough precautionary ropes connecting it to the haphazardly bolted-on gondola that climbing it would at least be possible.
That said, possible didn’t quite equate to simple. Wrapping a hoof around a mooring line, I began my ascent. My urgent breathing was so intense that I almost couldn’t see my way forwards through the vapour I was stirring up in the cold air, but nonetheless after nearly ten minutes of climbing I found myself past the steepest angle of the balloon, and things swiftly got simpler as the curvature of the balloon lessened.
Regardless, I made a mental note to get a damn ladder put on the balloon as soon as possible.
At the top of the Sisyphys, I could see with even more clarity just how damaged she was. The balloon was sagging so significantly that parts of her metal skeleton were jutting visibly, making the ship look like a malnourished foal back in Cyclosa.
Nonetheless, it made finding the manual-release valve for the gas balloons within an easier affair, and soon I was huddling over the valve no bigger than a dinner plate.
Gripping the rusty thing in both hooves, I began to turn it with all my weight. It was reluctant to move initially, but after several turns the air was filled with the rancid smell of hydrogen gas as it vented from the ship.
The effect was instant. The Sisyphys was soon beginning to fall towards the ice and life below.
I began to make my way back down towards the Sisyphys, when I lost my footing on a patch of ice that had settled onto a puddle formed in a small dent in the ship’s sagging balloon.
It was a small slip, but that was all it took to send me slipping down the slanted balloon. I clawed urgently in an attempt to slow myself, when suddenly a sharp pain ripped across my neck, directly where my choke collar still stood.
I gurgled and flailed about, trying to detach the long chain tangled around a stray bit of docking rope, effectively hanging me off the side of my own ship, while the sharp spikes in the collar dug into my already abraised neck.
No. This wasn’t seriously happening. I hadn’t come all this way to bleed out on the side of my own ship.
Grabbing the chain in my hoof, I began to pull with all my weight, trying to climb back up to a point where the choke-collar wasn’t the only thing keeping me from a long fall and quick, painful end.
The moment it looked like I was making progress, however, the rope finally snapped and before I knew it I was sliding down the steep balloon which was only growing steeper.
Time seemed to slow; it felt as though I had been staring at the chain flailing above me in freefall before I even past the gondola, where Luna was undoubtedly sleeping peacefully, completely oblivious to her sister’s peril.
Still, some part of me knew a hundred feet was no distance at all, and if I didn’t immediately focus I’d be dead before I knew it.
So, I did the only idea I could think of, and spread my wings.
With one still broken from the bastard stallion back in Trance, I couldn’t restrain a loud scream of pain as my wings caught the air, the pain singing in my frail bones becoming the only known sensation. I didn’t give a damn about the wind or the cold or the ice racing towards me, I was almost hoping the fall would be enough to kill me in order to put a stop to the pain in my broken wing. I didn’t register the Sisyphys falling past me, making a dangerously steep descent towards the ground below. I didn’t think of Luna, asleep peacefully, completely unknowing of the fact that the ship was seconds from crashing.
I couldn’t even fold my wings in if I wanted—they’d already caught the wind and I was far too weak to fight against them. I was instead being guided downwards like a four hundred pound kite.
I hit the snow before the Sisyphys did, my hooves flailing about in preparation for my landing. It wasn’t the most graceful thing, but it was certainly more graceful than certain death, and I was at least able to stay standing to watch the Sisyphys strike the ice. The great ship lurched forwards, one of the engine cars snapped clean off from the impact, and she continued to slide against the flat ice for nearly fifty feet, heading directly for the nomad settlement that I could now see was made up of a dozen or so tent-like buildings that looked alarmingly fragile against the encompassing cold.
The Sisyphys didn’t come to a graceful stop, she instead slid directly into what must have been a fishing hut. Either way, it laid waste to the small thing with ease, finally coming to a stop on it’s wreckage.
In an instant, I was galloping across the snow in pursuit, desperate to get to the ship before the nearby nomads. I didn’t even care that my cloak was still probably wrapped around Luna, leaving my wings exposed to all, all I cared about was getting myself between whoever these strangers were and my own sister.
It was, of course, impossible, considering the Sisyphys had crashed much closer to the settlement than I did. Before I could even reach the ship, a small group of thickly-dressed ponies were standing with spears and harpoons angled in anticipation to my approach.
They were all wearing enormous hooded clothing made from what was most certainly animal fur—I hadn’t seen enough wildlife to know which animal it belonged to, but either way, it seemed more than efficient against the Frozen North. I couldn’t make out any of their faces in the dark, but it was clear from their body language alone they were in shock at the sight of an alicorn sprinting towards them.
“Get the hell away from that ship!” I snarled, panting and coming to a skidding halt a dozen feet away from them.
They stared, perplexed. One muttered something in a language I didn’t know.
“Hey, you savages hear me? Back off! Don’t make me use my alicorn powers on you!” I snarled, spreading my unbroken wing for emphasis.
Without a word, each and every one of the nomad ponies dropped their spears and descended into a bow before me.
This time, it was my turn to stare. They stayed bowed, undoubtedly waiting for action on my part, but I didn’t quite know what to say.
Then, I remembered what Willow had said, about the Crystal Ponies.
And just like that, I knew.
These weren’t any random nomads. I’d stumbled across the Crystal Ponies themselves. Which surely couldn’t mean…
“Well well well,” a stallion’s voice called out. I turned—and there he was, walking casually towards me, nearly unrecognizable in the heavy fur attire he and the rest of the Crystal Ponies were wearing.
“Nopony lay a hoof on the alicorn,” Sombra said, smiling. “She still owes me a drink, after all.”