//------------------------------//
// Sosan Shrine 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

The rail platform through the Sosa-Copsewood power tunnel finally lost its momentum, leaving the three ponies standing on board in varying states of disarray. Starlight had been smart enough to stand in Grenada's wind shadow as they blew along, and was able to recover with a few hoofstrokes to smooth her mane and a careful check to see if it was possible for her ears to do anything but lie flat. Grenada's short, purple Shinespark-styled mane was similarly suited to surviving the tunnel winds, naturally unruly and looking no worse for wear. Jamjars, on the other hoof...

Starlight tried not to snicker, no matter how much the filly deserved it. Her massive hair volume had been turned into a single, pointy blown-back spike as thick as her head, the stolen poster still somewhere inside, and it was already beginning to collapse and fray into an uncombed mess under the force of gravity. She had a feeling if she showed Jamjars a mirror, it would put her on the verge of tears... and pointedly didn't remind herself that she could conjure reflective crystals on a whim.

"Alright! We're here," Grenada announced as the platform pulled into a docking station.

As she disembarked onto a latticed walkway, Starlight's eyes crawled in every direction, but especially up. The pipe had opened into a wider room made from shiny, reddish metal, littered with massive glowing cylinders and drums that were fed by the incoming mana conduits, probably performing some important power functions. The ceiling, though, was unusually high, vaulted with curved metal crossbeams like the sitting room of Elise's mansion in Blueleaf. Starlight had little experience with industrial utility rooms, but it was enough to make her wonder if the room had served a different purpose in days gone by, or if the Sosans who built it took that much pride in their work.

The walkway hugged the length of the room, and at one point passed an open side passage to a spiral staircase going down. A sign in brilliant, mana-illuminated blue lettering proclaimed Breaker Room, causing Starlight to blink. Just like Blueleaf, was Copsewood designed with a master off switch to the entire town's power? She shuddered, and filed the knowledge away just in case. It would be uncomfortably easy to abuse that.

Grenada had caught her looking. "What? Are you admiring how much effort the Sosans of old put into their work?"

Starlight shrugged, opting to let Grenada reach her own conclusions. That was one question answered, at least.

"Ironridge has always been a rich city," Grenada continued, walking on past the breaker room. "That was true twenty years ago, and it's still true now... even if it has other problems. Back then, they showed it by making their technology both functional and aesthetically pleasing. It let them express how they saw themselves... and outcompete real coastal cities, as well. If you're a rich customer, you're going to buy a product that's aesthetically pleasing. We've since lost that spark, as you'll see if you ever visit Sosa as it is right now. Braen says we'll know Sosa is back and able to take pride in their work again when they return to making it look cool. Until then... this is one of the few places in Ironridge that preserves the aesthetic of the past. Everywhere else has either been left to rot in the weather, replaced by the new glass-and-steel look of the Sky District, or was never under Sosa's influence all that much to begin with."

"Huh." Starlight looked once again at the pristinely-crafted catwalk beneath her hooves, trying to imagine being a pony making it and thinking she was making art... but it was just a lattice, a set of vertical strips meshed together for strength, traction and drainage with millions of tiny slits angled and positioned at random.

She nearly tripped on the first step of a staircase, yelping in surprise. Jamjars was too busy nursing her mane to laugh.

"You sound skeptical," Grenada remarked, reaching the top of the staircase and stepping onto a large platform just below the ceiling. "Come here, and look at this."

Starlight came. Grenada was leaning over a railing made from slim, polished brown pipes fit together with real junction pieces that probably could have carried water better than any plumbing system in Equestria. But it was the catwalk below they had trotted in on Grenada was looking at.

"Do you see it?" the burgundy mare urged, forelegs folded on the railing.

"I, uhh..." Starlight squinted... and suddenly, what had been a random mesh of metal and holes up close morphed into a mosaic, her being far enough back to see it. It was a mare, seen from above, laying in a grassy field and sleeping with her forehooves under her head, almost as if she was taking a nap on the catwalk. "Wow."

"That's Radiance," Grenada explained. "She was the wife of the factory chief who first envisioned the construction of the Water District. History says she was kind, beautiful, generous, and one of the few mares to play a significant role in Sosan society... prior to the last twenty years, at least. But this is what Sosans once were. Can you see our legacy?"

Starlight continued to stare at the metal mosaic of a sleeping Radiance. It was a catwalk; a rough bridge for ponies to tread on with their dirty hooves and no more purpose than not breaking and not letting anyone slip... yet there, some craftspony had been so proud both of what they were doing and what had been done before that they baked art into the tiniest detail and most insignificant place. That, she realized, was the spirit that Sosa had lost over the last twenty years; the love and pride both in their work being the best and that made their work the best. That was what Shinespark thought she could restore with a secret airship, the first failure of which had caused the decline in the first place.

And if the Sosans of old thought that highly of an underground power station... what had they thought about their twin dams that formed the Water District? What did the present-day Sosans think about that monument to what they had been, and what Shinespark said they could be again? The dam that looked out over all of Ironridge, an was visible from virtually anywhere in the city... what would it do to them to see it destroyed?

It was the eastern dam, the one no pony could see from the city proper, that was at risk. But still. The loss of the Water District, Starlight realized, could hit the Sosans' psyches just as hard if not even more than the destruction by flood of their towns and factories. Had Grenada wanted to show her this; what was really at stake? She glanced at Jamjars and swallowed. Of course, if she did, she'd be indirect about it, since they weren't alone... and that was precisely what she had done.

"Yeah." Starlight nodded, throat dry. "I get it."

"...Good." Turning away from Radiance, Grenada paced across the platform, heading for a bridge to another tunnel that sloped upwards, presumably leading to the surface. "Follow me. We need to rendezvous with..." She caught herself, stealing a glance at Jamjars, who was still completely absorbed in her mane and making no progress whatsoever. "With Shinespark," she said as if unwilling to think of her leader by anything other than the name she had trusted all her life. "And the Spirit. We... have to finish preparations in the Earth District, and make sure everything is ready to go."

Bobbing her head, Starlight followed. Most of her had been rained on far too much by mountains she once thought of as pretty to experience wonder, but the part that hadn't lingered, reluctant to leave the metal shrine to Sosa's history.