"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Rainbow Dash's eyes narrowed. She leaned her fuzzy head to the left... then even more fuzzily to the right. "... ... ...okay, Keps. I give up." She looked at the wyvern. "What is it?"
Rainbow Dash, Kepler, Logan, and Flynn were all huddled inside the lobby of the umpteenth floor of one of the many spires. The glass entrance had been completely shattered by a collapsed vehicle, and the group found a relatively tame and unassuming interior. The floor was done in an immaculately shiny marble with constellatory designs bespeckling the exposed surfaces. There were seats, tables, and round cylinders that—several eons ago—must have once contained floral arrangements of some sort. The group had stumbled upon a door that must have separated the lobby from a massive vertical shaft of sorts.
But that wasn't what they were staring at.
Rainbow, Kepler, Logan, and Flynn stood before a series of rectangular panels that hugged the surfaces of the wall situated along the far end of the room. The glossy black sheets lingered just above equine eye-level, and their quizzical expressions shone in the wayward starlight wafting into the lobby.
"... ... ...Keps?" Rainbow Dash repeated.
"Oh! Uhm..." The wyvern scratched his chin, studying the panels through his spectacles. "I must apologize, Rrainbow One, but I am at a loss to prroperrly hypothesize." He reached up with a claw and brushed the lower edge of one panel. "I am tempted to say a plaque of some sorrt..."
"But there're no letters," Logan remarked. He gestured outside. "We know whoever lived here could read, cuz there's crap carved into their public gazing-stone-thingy."
"They couldn't be mirrors...?" Rainbow Dash cocked her head to the side. "Could they?"
"Kinda positioned a bit high for that, don't you think?" Logan muttered.
"Ach...!" Kepler pointed. "But remember! The Angels were pegasi!"
"Right..." Logan droned. "...how I keep forgetting."
Kepler sighed. "Must you prractice sarrcasm in every field, brrotherr?"
"What?" Logan shrugged. "I was just—"
"Can it, fat ass." Flynn paced around the panels, eyeing them with his mechanical lens. "If only I could get a better look at the stuff."
"Whatever you do, egghead," Logan grumbled. "Just don't stupidly reach in there and break the Goddess-damn thing—"
CRACK! Flynn telekinetically yanked one panel off the wall.
"Grnnnngh!" Logan winced, teeth clenching. "Whyyyyyyyyy do I even bother?"
"HA!" Flynn grinned victoriously. His horn illuminated a series of cables dangling between the dislodged panel and the niche in the wall that previously housed it. "Just as I thought! An attachment to a power source running through the building's interior support structure!"
"Well, so much for that," Rainbow Dash remarked. "Doesn't look like this thing's received any power for epochs."
"It's not just power," a cold voice said.
"!!!" The group jumped in surprise. Logan almost unsheathed his axe.
"... ... ..." Seraphimus stood behind the group. She pointed calmly at the cables dangling between the panel and the wall. "There is a mechanism for transferring something besides just power."
"Like what?" Flynn asked, eyebrow arched. "If these ancient beings used artificially-coiled leylines, they'd likely rely on more than one physical cable to accomplish it."
"If these 'beings' are as old as you say..." Seraphimus' charcoal brown eyes narrowed. "...then they could accomplish that much with just one coil. Or no coil whatsoever." She nodded with her feathery head. "I suspect that this is some sort of manadisplay device."
Rainbow Dash blinked.
Logan looked calmly—but curiously—at Seraphimus. "What makes you say that?"
"As leader of the Right Talon of Verlaxion, I was in charge of guarding the locations of several state-funded experiments," she said. "At one point, several Frostknife manatechnicians were working on a method by which they could visually convey words across extended distances. It utilized a series of crystalline matrices, tightly packed together in order to properly arrange legible characters with mana-power illumination."
"How rremarrkable..." Kepler remarked. He reached a claw up to adjust his glasses. "Was the operration a success?"
Seraphimus shook her head. "Frostknife's engineers could put together a complex mechanism capable of computing information that would then be physically displayed via one crystalline matrix. But to accomplish the same feat across multiple matrices over long distances—simultaneously—proved impossible. Even with the utilization of enchanted leylines."
"Sounds like what you guys needed was a more complex mechanism for computing the information, storing it, and distributing it identically across multiple output devices," Flynn said.
Seraphimus nodded. "If I am not mistaken, the devices inside the abandoned facility utilized something far more complex and combined it with advanced holography."
Silence.
"Darkreach..." Flynn's good eye blinked. "She's... talking about Darkreach, right?"
Seraphimus sighed.
"Yes, Flynn," Logan droned. "She's talking about Darkreach." He looked aside at Seraphimus with a muddled grin. "Though she could stand to use a few more proper nouns... if she's actually deigning to come out of her damn shell."
"Hrmmmnngh..." Seraphimus folded her forelimbs.
"The Emerraldinians of Darrkeach used technology gifted them by Onyxxus," Kepler declared. "But the Angels? Theirr technology was evidently utilized herre farr earrlierr than the time when alicorrns harrnessed theirr harrmonic gifts into temporral application."
"Hey, look..." Rainbow Dash gestured. "...all I know is that I've seen some pretty snazzy technology in my journeys." Her eyes narrowed. "If the Ledomaritans and Xonans could get giant battleships to fly in only a few centuries... then just who knows what tricks the ancient pegasi could pull off?"
Seraphimus pointed at the panel levitating in Flynn's magic grasp. "I think the extra cables were designed for the purpose of connecting to a nexus of information."
"That could be quite trrue, theorretically," Kepler said. He looked pointedly at Flynn. "Brrotherr?"
The unicorn was already rubbing his chin. He gestured aside. "Keps. Toss me a spare Emeraldinian Crystal."
Kepler nodded. He reached into his satchel of things and handed a red shard over.
Flynn levitated it alongside the panel. His good eye squinted and he licked his lips. Soon, a bright light pulsated from the tip of his horn. It connected with both the panel and the crystal. Rainbow and the others watched as Flynn concentrated through the shard, zapping the panel's cables with various alternating frequencies of magical energy.
About a minute into the ordeal, a bright light flickered across the glass sheet of the panel. Kepler and Logan gasped as a vibrant array of random colors and spectral chaos rippled across the otherwise dormant surface. It lit up the entire lobby with static confusion.
"Well, I'll be damned..." Logan exhaled.
"My starrs and garrterrs!"
"Where..." Rainbow Dash blinked. "...are the colors coming from?"
"From inside the panel," Flynn muttered, sweating as he applied more magic and magnified the kaleidoscopic randomness. "Following Seraphimus' suggestion, I tried firing mana-energy into the contacts. What you are currently witnessing is the result."
"But... but I don't understand any of it," Rainbow Dash said. "What the heck are we seeing?"
"Absolutely nothing," Flynn said. "Because this device was never built to process the input I'm giving it." He leaned back, dimming his horn and the crystal. The glossy panel went black in an instant. "But the Angels? Back in the day, they must have had this thing attached to a computational matrix that relayed information to anyone and everyone."
"So..." Kepler scratched his chin. "...they had an inforrmational brroadcasting system?"
"Looks like it." Flynn floated the panel back in place and nodded towards Seraphimus. "Way to go, murder chicken."
Seraphimus breathed hotly out the side of her beak. "You are welcome."
"So..." Logan folded his forelimbs. "...whatever happened to your dying need to fly off on your own... and die?"
Rainbow looked as Seraphimus.
"I..." Seraphimus lingered. "...appear to have gotten distracted."
Rainbow looked at Logan.
"Hmmm..." He smirked warmly. "...I guess cryptology loves company, huh?"
Seraphimus was silent.
Rainbow made to say something—
"Rainbow Dash!" Swooosh! Ariel flew into the lobby from the dimly-lit world outside. "There you are! Quick! You gotta come see—" She froze in place, glancing aside at Seraphimus.
"It's okay, Ariel," Rainbow Dash said. "Tell us what's up, girl."
Ariel gulped. "Well..." She finally peeled her eyes off Seraphimus and looked at Rainbow again. "It's Wildcard. He... we found something."
"What kind of something?"
"Just..." Ariel shivered slightly as she gestured at the group as a whole. "...come and look, alright? Please..."
Minutes later...
Sw-Sw-Swooosh!
Rainbow Dash, Seraphimus, and Kepler glided, descending towards a small courtyard suspended between four tightly-packed buildings. Logan and Flynn had to stay up above on the higher roads with the wagon.
The group touched down in unsettling darkness. There were at least five layers of platforms and suspended roads above them, obscuring the dim twilight. They had to squint to see where Ariel was—but at last they spotted her hovering besides the entrance to one of the skyscrapers' mid-floors.
Rainbow Dash glanced at Seraphimus... then slowly rubbed her Loyalty pendant. The ruby lightning bolt brightened, illuminating the path ahead in a fuchsia spotlight. Slowly, the three joined Ariel in entering the building.
Inside, the lobby was extra dusty. Debris had been strewn about, and the otherwise immaculate furniture had been knocked and thrown around—as if by a great cataclysm.
At last, Rainbow's pendant glinted off a pair of cold lenses. She illuminated the dark figure of Wildcard, situated in the corner.
"Okay, Double-Yoo..." Ariel took a deep breath. "...show 'em."
Wildcard gave the group one somber look. Then—with a flick of Bard's staff—he overturned a fallen piece of shelving...
...exposing a pile of mangled skeletons.
Seraphimus blinked. Hard.
Kepler's tusked jaw hung agape.
Rainbow Dash—meanwhile—peered harder. She stepped forward, shining her pendant over the calcified pile of remains.
Bone by bone, Rainbow's harmonic light revealed multiple branching joints... and elongated snouts.
Equines. With wings.
"Well..." Rainbow gulped. "...at long last, we meet."