Gerardo shot through a raised glass tunnel connecting the destroyed atrium to the terminal where Shinespark's ship waited, the cylindrical surface swaying and shuddering around him from the wind pressure. While the atrium had been exposed, the presence of so many allied ponies had acted as a throttle to the storm's might; here, he was alone save for Starlight, and the storm's fury was nearly tearing the building apart at the seams.
They soared through lobbies, past plazas of shops for ponies who needed to kill time, threaded through waiting areas and avoided downed bits of ceiling, occasional currents of snow twisting in ribbons through the air. Banking and rolling as fast as his frozen wings would allow, Gerardo cleared obstacle after obstacle, careful to keep Starlight and her saddlebags safe. Finally, the room where they had entered from the ship came into sight.
"Aaaaah!"
Starlight hissed, trying to curl tighter as the temperature suddenly plummeted around her and winds whipped against her exposed lilac fur. Gerardo touched down; she felt the shock running through his talons. "A-Are we outside?" she stammered, teeth chattering.
"We're on the ship," Gerardo replied, his voice gentle and firm. "I'm going to ensure that Maple is where I left her and leave you there as well, and then we must fly. I'm optimistic, though, as the power appears to be on. Thus far, the plan has gone without a hitch."
Starlight merely nodded, hearing a shimmering roar from close above her head, and then the sound of a door sliding open. Gerardo trotted, his steps bumping sharply as he descended a staircase. She tried to recall the layout of the ship in her mind from her tour that morning... He turned right and slid open another door. The engine room, this would be.
"Maple?" Gerardo's voice called. "Ah, good. You're still here. I brought you Starlight."
No response... but then Starlight was placed against another pony. They were warm, laying on their side, and their muscles tightened slightly at the contact before softening again. They didn't move.
"Excellent." Gerardo's voice was farther away. "I must return and pilot the ship. Once we have the others, we can worry about the heart. Leave everything to us, and try not to worry."
The door slid closed, and he was gone.
"...Maple?" Starlight asked, not moving from where she had been set. The pony had a sudden tightness of breath, but still no response.
Starlight frowned. She couldn't see, they couldn't talk... so she began to feel. They were a mare, wonderfully warm against her frozen hooves. They were wearing one of Arambai's harmony extractors over their cutie mark, had a thick, loosely-braided mane, were an earth pony, and had a faint, lingering scent of tree wood, powdered sugar, and... loneliness? She sniffed harder. It was definitely Maple.
"Maple..." Starlight sniffed again, this time because her nose was starting to run. "I didn't want to get separated... I'm sorry... Valey said we were supposed to be waiting for you to get the airship, but we got taken by someone and moved somewhere else before I woke up. I should have woken up sooner..." She swallowed. "Sorry."
You're still so cold, little filly.
Words spoken in Willow's voice echoed through her mind. Had Willow said that before? She was certainly cold. "Maple, I'm cold..."
Maple had no way of responding, so Starlight hugged her harder, burying her face in Maple's mane. "I can't feel my horn," she whimpered, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "At all. It's like it's gone. And I can't see, either. I can't even see you. I'm sorry... I know you told me not to overuse my magic, but I did it to save you when we were falling... I miss you... P-Please do something..."
Nothing. Starlight stood up and took a step, crashing into a pole and hearing a spare harmony extractor helmet topple to the ground. Carefully, she sat back down, then laid down, positioning herself so she was holding Maple's head in a more upright position. "Maple..." She bowed her own head, pressing her ear so close to Maple's muzzle that it was all she could do not to flick it from the tickling of her shallow breaths.
"I love you..."
They were the faintest of words, more a pattern of air than actual sound, but Starlight felt them, and started to cry. "The Earth District and Stone District were fighting each other," she sobbed, feeling a sudden urge to tell Maple everything that had just happened, an urge that had been building ever since they met the Spirit on that first morning and one had shot her with an energy cannon. "Valey carried me... Took me up Skyfreeze. I don't know why she went. I think she thought you might go there as well and wanted to get back here, or something. And there was a note, and Herman said he was in the skyport..."
She hiccuped. "Selma said Herman died, but he didn't. He was there, and the Spirit were here too, and they were fighting Shinespark and each other. They killed Grenada and made it sound like they destroyed the whole skyport, and... and..."
Swallowing, Starlight wiped her eyes with one of Maple's ears, feeling a wetness trickle down from Maple's own eyes onto her hooves. "Then there was Herman, and he hurt Shinespark, and Dior was there, and I got mad. I couldn't take it anymore and wanted to get Ironridge back... for everything... and so I tried to fight him. I wanted to."
Starlight felt the ship rise under her; it was airborne once more. "Valey helped. We got him to tell everyone his plan... All he wanted was for Yakyakistan to take over Ironridge. As if that made anything worth it... Then he attacked us, and Valey killed him. I couldn't see anything, only hear. He was so mad, and sometimes she screamed too. But she's alive, though."
Maple kept crying against her, and Starlight knew... no, hoped that she wanted nothing more than to hug her, because she definitely needed it. "Then someone called Fire showed up," she said, gritting her teeth. "She said Yakyakistan had sent windigoes to Ironridge for sealing them away with that pink flame, or something, and because Herman made the city so mad they got loose... or because we messed with the windigo heart they had down there. Now they say the city's going to be destroyed unless they stop it."
She shuddered. "They have a plan, but it's really complicated and probably won't work. And we have this airship, which runs on harmony, which is why it isn't affected by the weather. They say if we don't do anything to help, Ironridge will turn into a glacier. But... we'll be fine..."
Mouth stretching in a snarl, Starlight hissed, "We'll be fine. It.. It can turn to ice for all I care. We can get away. We can keep going, go somewhere else... I hate this place. We could get Valey and go right now, and never come back. We can... We can let it freeze..."
As much as she shook, Maple couldn't say anything more. Starlight heaved, trying to get her breath under control. "Why?" she sobbed. "I... I hate Ironridge... Why can't you tell me that's wrong? Why do I have to do it myself? Because it is... Giving up and leaving would be giving up! And there are ponies here who need our help! We need to, and we're going to, because I can't give up, but I still hate this place... It doesn't make any sense... Why do I have to hate this city and not give up on them at the same time? Why can't I care about everyone, like you...?"
Suddenly, an intercom screeched to life. "Hello?" Gerardo Guillaume's magically-transmitted voice asked, coming from a speaker mounted on the wall. "Is this thing on? Testing!"
Apparently satisfied, he cleared his throat. "I'm afraid this looks inconvenient. We're en route to Skyfreeze, and the transport tunnel connecting it to the skyport seems to have severed. We have quite a few allies traveling this way on a mission of utmost importance, and I can see some flagging us down at the break now. We're going to have to act as a ferry. This could get bumpy, and as there are quite a few injured I'll need as many cabins cleared out as possible! We're likely to reach passenger capacity. And remember, they are all allies. Not fighting over resources is of utmost importance!"
Starlight stiffened. "Do you think they'll need our room?" she asked, fishing around in her saddlebags for the key. She found it, taking it in her mouth and dropping the rest of the bags. "Gerardo said the windigo heart we put there is important. I'm going to get it so we can keep it here and they can use our room if they need to. I remember the way. I'll be back, I promise!"
Once again, Maple couldn't reply.
The floor dropped and rose under Starlight as she felt her way along the wall, carefully locating the door. Its handle was meant for adults, not fillies, and she had to crane her neck to get enough leverage to slide it open. Picking back up the key, she trotted out onto the stair landing.
The ship collided sideways with something, likely a part of the smashed transport tube, pitching her forward and sending the key flying from her mouth. "Aaah! No!" She scampered forward, trying to catch it before it stopped bouncing and making noise... and her forehoof went off a cliff. It was only the top of a staircase, but only falling flat on her belly and spreading her legs for stability stopped her from sliding further and rolling all the way down. If the key fell down there...
Frantically, she kicked around, patting the ground next to her, and the key mercifully appeared. Hugging the railing, Starlight picked it back up, slinking along the bridge to the reading room.
That room, her ears told her, was full of injured ponies. "Hey!" she shouted, flicking her ears. "I'm blind and need to get to a cabin! Where are you? I don't want to crash into you!"
"There's a clear corridor straight in front of you, filly," a pained stallion's voice told her. "Turn about five degrees to your right... That's it. Now walk forward."
Starlight trusted him, doing as instructed, and eventually felt the side of a bookcase brush her fur. But that was a wall; she could follow it. Hugging close, she found a door. Hers and Maple's was second from foremost. Keep going.
She continued, nearly tripping over a pile of something a pony had left next to the wall, and found her door. This one was harder to open than the engine room, since she had to manipulate a key, and when she succeeded, she simply left it in the lock. Now all she had to do was... find wherever Gerardo put the windigo heart. Without being able to see. Great.
Starlight sniffed. She had her nose, at least. What would a windigo heart smell like? Snow? Or, since they were made of negative emotions... would it just smell bad in general? Her nose was already wrinkling from the scent of blood, but their room was very clean. Hoping to block out unnecessary scents, she slid the door closed behind her and set to slowly scouring the room.
Sniff, sniff, sniff... headbonk. Ow. Starlight sat back, rubbed her forehead and horn with folded ears, and tried again. Same result. But she couldn't give up: again. And again. She found the bed; it was so soft, and she wasted a second fantasizing about dragging Maple off that power supply and hibernating together until they were far away from Ironridge. The bedside dresser... Suddenly, something smelled off.
Running her chilly hooves all over the front, Starlight made out a number of drawers, though she was too numb to get a precise count. The bottom one was the biggest, though, and the heart wasn't tiny. She slid it open with her teeth; it contained a blanket. But still that funny smell...
Starlight dug, pulling out the blanket and tossing it aside, and was suddenly rewarded with something round and cool against her hooves. So hard it almost hurt, it was definitely the source of whatever odor she had pursued. Yay for her nose! Gritting her teeth, Starlight pulled out the heart, managing to carry it beneath one foreleg and limping out of the cabin.
She guided herself back through the reading room, mumbling, "Can't see, can't see," feeling hooves tromping along past her as more ponies were ushered on board. Everyone who didn't have business in Skyfreeze was coming below, most likely, since the ship would be even safer than the tower thanks to its energy source. Fortunately, they gave her a path to follow.
Swoosh! The engine room door rolled open, and she shut it behind her, trying to find Maple again by memory. "I'm back," she called into the darkness. "I just had to get this. It's important, and someone else will want to use our... Ow!"
With a clang, she tripped over the second helmet she had previously knocked over, colliding straight with its pole. "Dumb thing," she groaned, getting up and hearing the dropped heart rolling away. "Who designed these? They keep getting in the way! Maple! Where are you?"
No answer, of course, so she resigned herself to chasing the rolling heart. But just when she caught it... the floor disappeared.
"Aaaaaaaaa-" Thud!
She bounced heavily as the ship abruptly came to a halt, hearing Maple hit the floor somewhere behind her, the heart still in her clutches. Something was wrong; the floor was at an angle, and the magical shimmering she had grown accustomed to was gone. It was also suddenly much, much colder.
Scrkkkk! The intercom crackled again, much more staticky this time. "Hello!?" Gerardo sounded downright panicked. "We've somehow lost power! At least the emergency is on, but the ship cannot fly like this! Don't panic; I'm going down to check on the engine room as fast as I can! Please, stay where you are!"
Starlight crawled to Maple, wary of standing on the slightly-slanted ground, and found her just before the door opened. "Maple!" Gerardo gasped. "Are you all..."
"Looks like everything's off down here," Arambai's voice growled behind her. "Hello, Maple. You look slightly the worse for wear."
"Her eyes!" Gerardo quickly remarked. "They're back to normal!" He gulped. "You don't suppose that means... she's used the last of the energy she absorbed...?"
"I'll take it from you," Arambai said. "You're the ones who figured out how to power this thing, not me. But if that's the case, we're in a bit of a pickle."
Gerardo swiftly agreed. "We must take one or two strong fliers, such as myself, reach the opposite end of the break in the tunnel by... flying through the storm..." He audibly gulped. "And merely proceed with the plan from there. Starlight, is that the heart?"
Starlight realized they were talking to her, and almost jumped. "Yes. I'm not leaving Maple."
"Well... good," Gerardo decided. "Keep it safe, then. We'll need it soon... if all goes well, for which we can only hope. Now, I can carry Dior, but will Maia be able to fly herself in these winds?"
"Sounds like she'll have to," Arambai sighed. Then, the door rolled closed, and they were gone.
"...So we can't even run, then."
Starlight drooped. She sagged, still holding the heart, and fell across Maple's side, sobs returning and increasing until she could barely talk, but she didn't even try. Eventually, she wiped her eyes with a hoof, still laying limply across Maple, and said, "I knew that plan wouldn't work. Too many things could have gone wrong. They're still going, but they're not going to be able to do it now, either. Something else will happen..."
She hiccuped. "We could die."
Maple said nothing.
"We will die," Starlight said. "I-If no one does anything. We can't even run away. I don't want to die..."
Swallowing, she added, "I don't want you to die..."
Still, she couldn't even see her. "I'm going to do something. Don't worry..."
The wind grew louder outside, and Starlight sniffed. "I'll just... refuse to die when the windigoes freeze me, or something," she muttered. "I'll keep you warm. They can't actually kill ponies, right? Just freeze them? That's not a myth, right...?"
Her hooves shook. That wasn't good enough. She had done her part, even, retrieving the windigo heart from their room! She wanted to scream, to light her horn and force all the windigoes away with a barrier of magic, to protect herself and Maple, but her horn wasn't working. She had overtaxed it, and the only way to fix that was-
Was with the harmony extractor an entire hooflength away. And it wasn't like anyone else was using it.
Starlight rested a foreleg on the device attached to Maple's rump. No, that wouldn't be good enough. The extractor knocked her unconscious, and that test she had ran the previous morning suggested the more beat-up her horn was, the worse the side effects. She could fix herself, but after what she had done to her horn, she probably wouldn't recover for a year. That would be way too long to help Maple and the others, unless she could force herself to stay awake through sheer willpower alone.
But... She rolled the windigo heart over in her hooves... The more overtaxed her horn was, the stronger the harmonic discharge too, right? And it was a discharge that happened all at once, which was why it couldn't be used for continuous power. A discharge... A blast... Starlight felt her eyes widen. An attack didn't need to be continuous, did it? Wasn't the whole point to hit something as hard as she could, all at once?
A sufficiently strong harmonic attack, Fire had said. Like the Elements of Harmony. How strong were those? Comparable to an exploding filly? Something told her that if Fire and the Yakyakistan church worshiped those enough to name their bishops and faith after them, she was probably horrendously outclassed. But still, Maple powering the airship using the dregs of the energy from the pink flame had been enough to force the windigoes back, according to Gerardo, right? And Shinespark had said her weaker surge had been strong enough to power it too, albeit for all of two seconds. Maybe there was a chance?
She held up the windigo heart again, and felt her attention drifting to the second helmet. Windigoes were somehow attuned to each other, so if the heart got charged...
Could she possibly charge it as hard as the tree, or even harder? If a single second could knock them out or weaken them, Fire had said she could fight them. Reverently, Starlight got up, located the second helmet, and set the heart inside, realizing she had something more than a plan: a real chance.
"Maple," she said, voice resolute. "I know you don't like me doing this, and you can scold me all you want afterward, but I already almost killed myself fighting the mercenaries and then shielding us when we fell off the cliff, and I'm not giving up now. I will protect you. I-I'm sorry."
She leaned back against Maple's side in preparation. When she passed out, the least she could do was let Maple hold her. Maple was tense, as if every working muscle in her body was fighting, but it wasn't even enough to budge a hoof. Starlight reached out and removed the extractor helmet from Maple's cutie mark.
The helmets were connected to each other, Shinespark had said. Something to do with testing multiple ponies wearing them at once. So she would power hers, and that would power the system, and that would power the heart... and that would be enough. It had to.
It had to.
She slammed the helmet down.
FLASSSSHZZZT!
Every wall, floor, ceiling and surface in the ship fluctuated with arcing sheets of midnight-blue energy. The control panel on the bridge saw every dial tilt to max, then crackle and burst with smoke, growing still. In the engine room, both helmets and the wires connecting them to the machinery instantly vaporized, leaving scorch marks on the walls and floor. The windigo heart gleamed like a knife made of pure light, bubbled... and melted, swiftly evaporating and leaving nothing but a pile of seared gold flakes on the floor. Meters and switches on the machine casing lining one wall exploded in gouts of blue flame, so many sparks flying that the noise was deafening... but the rail system that guided and funneled harmonic energy affixed to the ceiling was intact and alive.
As the essence extracted from Starlight coursed through it, flames transformed into mist and that into stars, like the roof of the world had been torn away and there was nothing but night sky going on for ten infinities at once. The nebulae pulsed, swirled, as if struggling not to be contained by the physical plane... and vanished, sucked away along the mechanism to reveal rails dripping with frost.
Above the deck, the ship's propulsion energy comet reformed, this time dark blue instead of pink. But instead of shimmering gently like a watchful guardian, this one roared, escaping the magical guidelines that held it in place and angling itself straight up, the tail burning against the deck, leaving runes etched in the freshly-fallen snow where it touched. The tip undulated, sharpened, formed into a gleaming star... and it fired, leaving the ship smoking and dormant as it arced toward the clouds.
With a crackle deeper than thunder, the energy mass struck, brightening the ghostly clouds until they were burned away, then expanding in a cosmic ring of blue that forced them away, growing and increasing in speed exponentially as the clouds were shredded. Snow turned to rain midair, ice turned to slush, and clear night sky was left in its wake.
"Arooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
"Arooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
"Arooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
One by one, eight flashes of brilliant white burst in the sky as the ring vaporized seemingly random patches of clouds, and tiny gleams could be seen falling where they occurred, sparkling in the moonlight. No wind blew to alter their course.
Not a creature could speak as the explosion faded from the edges of the sky. The only sounds that graced the night were the crackles of burnt-out mana equipment and the trickle of draining meltwater.
A vicious wind tore at Starlight, thousands of tons of physical force trying to convert itself to kinetic energy and send her flying... but she didn't budge. When she opened her eyes, she realized she could see again. The room around her was a mess, but she was touching Maple. She was touching...
She saw the remains of the windigo heart in front of her, and her heart skipped a beat. "I did it?" she whispered to herself, first in shock, then in exuberance... and once again in shock when she realized she couldn't hear herself speak. Was something wrong with her ears? She didn't feel wrong...
But she wasn't sleepy, not even in the slightest. She tried to turn, grinning, to Maple, and that was when she realized something was wrong.
She couldn't feel the floor.
She couldn't feel anything. Not the floor, not Maple, not the warmth of her side nor the rise and fall of her breathing. Starlight's breath caught in her throat, and it was the easiest breath she had ever taken, because she wasn't moving any air.
"What!?" she tried to squeak, and held up her hooves... and she could see the far wall through them. In fact, they were growing fainter as she watched.
"N-No!" Panicked, Starlight swung at the floor, and her hooves went straight through it. Little more than outlines by now, they had no physical touch whatsoever. "No! Maple!"
She swung around, inertia and twisting her body allowing her to turn her head. Maple's own head was lifted to look at her, actually lifted, held up by her own strength... and at the look of anguish on her face, Starlight instantly broke down.
"No! Maple!" she wailed, thrashing with limbs even she couldn't see any more. "Maple! What's happening to me!? I'm sorry!" She tried to light her horn, and felt every connection working, but no effect came out. "Maaaapleeeeee!"
Maple looked back at her, straight into her eyes, and moved her mouth... barely. "Starlight..."
Starlight disappeared.