San Palomino Desert
“Yeah-ha-ha!” Rainbow Dash whooped as she executed a perfect barrel roll that ended with passing through a narrow gap between two rocks rising from the river below. She slowed to a stop, went back to the rocks, and took a picture of the spot with the camera she was carrying. The camera extruded a photo, and Dash shook it lightly to speed up the development as she looked around the desert canyon again. “This place is perfect,” she declared with satisfaction. She put the photo in her bag along with the half-dozen others she’d already taken, and then resumed flying upstream through the canyon.
Coming around a bend, Rainbow Dash came to sudden stop at an unexpected sight. Up ahead was a natural stone arch high above a small waterfall, and a round metal structure had been built into the top of the arch. Just beyond the arch, Rainbow could see a small lake and several other buildings built up against the canyon walls on both sides. The pegasus hovered in place for several seconds, puzzling at the little compound, and then let out a noise that was partly surprise and partly disappointment. “Well whaddya know,” she said, “I found Materan. Great.” She looked back the way she had come, biting her lip lightly. “I guess it won’t hurt to ask,” she decided, and flew toward the compound. She went up, intending to go over the arch and get a bird’s-eye view to look for where anypony might be, but as she crested the building at the top she heard a series of explosions from inside and saw thin smoke start to rise from an opening in the roof.
Diving through the opening, Rainbow alighted on a large telescope just inside and looked around. The floor of the room was more of a wide walkway that stepped up every so often as one moved counter-clockwise, ending at the chair for using the telescope. Shelves, drawers, and a couple of workbenches full of papers and random objects lined the wall for the first half of the walkway. At the north side of the room, there was a large window that granted a view of Materan and a set of stairs leading to something underneath the telescope. Twilight Sparkle and Star Swirl the Bearded were by the window, still reacting to the sounds, sparks, and smoke of fried electrical wires.
Near the window was the source of the commotion: a large round machine with various controls and consoles attached to it. Specifically, the attachment on the left side of the machine was what was emitting the smoke, until Twilight Sparkle cast a bubble of magic around it. “That went well,” Twilight deadpanned.
“What happened?” Rainbow Dash asked, startling the two unicorns.
“Rainbow Dash!” Star Swirl exclaimed. “Where did you come from?”
“I was in the area,” Rainbow explained, hopping off the telescope and hovering near the damaged device. “I was scouting for a good place for the Wonderbolts to do some low-altitude agility training and wound up here just when whatever this thing is broke. What is it, anyway?”
“I call it a crystal viewer,” Star Swirl said. “It’s supposed to allow us to get glimpses of other worlds, although right now I’ve only been able to look into a couple worlds I’ve Written Links to. And as you can see, it’s a major headache to try and expand its capabilities.” He stepped closer to examine the fried attachment. After a few moment, he stood back, shaking his head. “Well,” he declared, “the wiring’s all fused, but it looks like the damage is isolated here; the viewer itself is undamaged.”
Rainbow fluttered back from the machine with a confused look on her face. “Why would you need this?” she asked. “If you want to see a different world, why not just Write a book and link to it?”
“So we can see what’s going on in those other worlds without the ponies there being aware that they’re being watched,” Twilight answered.
“That’s… creepy,” Rainbow said, giving her friend a mildly disgusted look.
“Perhaps we should start from the beginning, Twilight,” Star Swirl said over Twilight’s sputtering reaction. “Rainbow Dash, you remember my apprentices, Cirrus and Archeon?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow deadpanned. “You sent them into book worlds with no way back after they pillaged and burned most of your linking books on Aitran.”
Star Swirl nodded. “Clover and I have been discussing whether or not it’s time to release them,” he said. “Clover believes that after almost fifteen years alone-”
“Fifteen years?!” Rainbow exclaimed. “It has not been fifteen years since Twilight and I first went to Aitran. It’s been like… almost but not quite two?”
“Time moves faster in the prison worlds, Rainbow,” Twilight explained.
Rainbow blinked, then nodded her acceptance of the explanation. “Why, though?”
“I made a few erroneous calculations when I originally wrote Monolith and Ka’utani,” Star Swirl said. “I corrected the text a few months ago to align their time flows with Equestria, but yes, roughly fifteen years have passed for Cirrus and Archeon. Clover thinks that’s enough time to leave them isolated from other ponies. I’m not so sure. I’ve Written a means for us to visit Monolith and Ka’utani without providing the boys a way out, and Clover, Nyx, and I have spoken with both Cirrus and Archeon several times. The time seems to have changed them but… I’ve been fooled before.”
“So, you built that thing to spy on them,” Rainbow Dash concluded, pointing to the crystal viewer.
“A pony’s true nature shows through when they think nopony’s watching,” Twilight said.
“I guess that makes sense,” Rainbow said. “Well, I’ll just get out of your manes so you two can get back to work.” She flew up to exit through the opening in the roof, but stopped when Star Swirl spoke up.
“Actually, Rainbow,” he said, “if I could ask you for a quick favor?”
“What?” Rainbow asked, turning around with an intrigued look on her face.
“I should be able to fix this attachment with parts from the prototype viewer I built on Rime,” Star Swirl explained. “Collecting those parts will go faster if Twilight accompanies me, but Clover is busy on Tay right now and I don’t want to leave Nyx here alone.” He glanced out the window and frowned. “Also,” he added, “our little accident up here might have shorted out power to the entire estate. Would you help Nyx fix that? Twilight and I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so.”
“Hm,” Rainbow said, patting her camera as she thought. “Sure,” she said at length, “I can do that. The ‘Bolts aren’t expecting me back for a while anyway.”
“Thank you,” Star Swirl said. “Come along, Twilight.” The two unicorns walked down to the elevator underneath the telescope, while Rainbow flew out through the open roof and perched up there for a quick look around.
Counting the workshop Rainbow was on, Materan consisted of eight round rooms connected by walkways. On the east side was Clover and Starswirl’s bedrooom, two greenhouses, and a room that served as a laboratory of sorts for studying plants and small animals. A kitchen-slash-living area and Nyx’s room were on the west side, and Starswirl’s private study was located on the far side of the eastern cliff and accessible through a tunnel in the nature lab. There was only a single, movable bridge for providing access to Nyx’s room and between the two sides of the lake, and at the moment that bridge was connecting the kitchen and Nyx’s room. Movement in the kitchen area caught Rainbow’s attention, and she flew over to find a dark purple unicorn filly with teal eyes, a blue vest, and a necklace with a blue stone pendant in a silver setting poring over a pair of books on the table while an ink quill floated nearby in a magic aura.
Rainbow Dash’s arrival blew over some pages in one of Nyx’s books, causing her to look up. “Oh, Rainbow Dash!” Nyx exclaimed, “what are you doing here?”
“I happened to be in the area,” Rainbow said, giving a casual shrug. “What are you up to?”
“Experimenting,” Nyx replied simply, flipping the disturbed pages back to where she’d been reading.
“Uh huh,” Rainbow said, looking over Nyx’s shoulder at the books. One appeared to be a linking book, the pages covered almost completely in a nearly geometrical Old Equestrian script that Rainbow couldn’t make heads or tails of, while the other book seemed to be a copy of the first written in a more fluid style. “Are you making a copy of one of your dad’s linking books?” the pegasus asked.
Nyx shook her head. “I Wrote both of them,” she said. “I did this one last week while emulating Father’s writing style as closely as possible, but the Link doesn’t work, so I’m trying it again with a more relaxed script.” Rainbow Dash nodded politely as she felt her attention start to drift due to egghead talk. She forced herself to remain focused by trying to think of a way to tell Nyx about Star Swirl’s requests without making the filly feel talked down to.
Nyx wound up resolving the issue by setting the quill down and saying something about wanting to get something from her father’s workshop. She got up from her seat and walked out onto the veranda, grabbing a lever by the bridge in her magic and tried to pull it. The lever barely budged, and Nyx let out an annoyed grunt. “Father blew out the power again, didn’t he?” she asked Rainbow.
“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “Does that happen a lot?”
“It’s the third time this week,” Nyx replied. “Would you mind giving me a lift to the other side so I can give Father a piece of my mind? He has got to isolate the workshop from the rest of the power grid.”
“Uh,” Rainbow said, looking across the lake in time to see Twilight’s tail disappear into the nature lab. “Yeah,” she concluded, “I think we can catch up before he and Twilight go to Rime.” She scooped Nyx up and zipped across the lake to deposit her at the entrance to the lab. Nyx rushed inside, rounded the table in the center of the room, and barely stopped before colliding with the door on the far side. She turned the handle with her magic, but the door didn’t open.
“Dang it!” Nyx snapped. “Of course, he’s put the lock on. I swear, he’s getting more paranoid by the day.” She whirled on Rainbow Dash as the pegasus approached. “He told you to look after me while he was gone, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did,” Rainbow said. “But what’s so strange about that? You’re his kid, and you’re not a grown-up yet, so...”
“I guess...” Nyx admitted sourly. “That’s not the worst of it, though. Father’s convinced that somepony keeps sneaking into Materan and rooting around for something. There’s nara locks on almost everything that can be opened around here, he’s trying to talk Mom into allowing him to set up surveillance spells...” Nyx shook her head in frustration.
“What’s a nara lock?” Rainbow asked.
“Nara is a substance that’s virtually indestructible,” Nyx answered. “It’s something the Kl’kai invented or discovered a long time ago; Aldro was able to point Father to a cavern with working nara fabricators a little while ago and-”
“Whoa, whoa, did you say Aldro?” Rainbow exclaimed. “The Diamond Dog that’s your family’s sworn enemy, the guy Star Swirl had Twilight and me trap in a book when we rescued you from Sohndar? Don’t tell me you let him out too!”
Nyx gave Rainbow a strange look. “First of all,” she said, “we haven’t let anypony – or kl’kai – out yet. Aldro’s still in that trap-book. Whether Father ever will release him… I personally think that’s more likely than freeing Cirrus or Archeon. Aldro’s actually been very helpful lately. Like I said, he’s shared his knowledge of ancient Kl’kai tech with Father, and he’s been teaching me a bit about the differences between the Kl’kai style of Writing links and Father’s to try and help me figure out why I can’t Write working links yet. I don’t how much of his ‘knowledge’ is useful, but it is a different perspective...” She shook her head and walked away from the door, slipping past Rainbow to go to a wooden box with a sliding cover mounted on the wall near the exit. “Anyway,” Nyx said, sliding the cover up to reveal what looked to Rainbow like a modified typewriter keyboard under a board covered in columns of lights of various heights, “let’s see what the power situation actually is.” Rainbow went over for a closer look as Nyx made a mildly miffed sound. Two columns of lights were each lit up to their second-highest – and distinctly green – bulb, while all the other bulbs were dark and the symbols below the middle two columns were blinking orange.
“That’s not good, I take it?” Rainbow asked, pointing to the blinking symbols.
“No,” Nyx said, “but it could be a lot worse. Those blinking symbols are for the back-up hydroelectric dam gates, and they need to be reset before I can direct power to them. Fortunately, between the workshop elevator and the kitchen, here’s just enough reserve power available to open the dam and get everything else working.”
“Cool,” Dash said. “What do you need me to do?”
Nyx gave the pegasus a grateful glance. “Just outside, the walkway forks,” she explained. “Go right and through the cleft and you’ll be at the controls for the dam. Push the button to reset the breakers, then pull the lever once the lights come back on white. I can move the power around in a jiffy.”
“Sounds good,” Rainbow said, moving past Nyx to reach the door and heading outside. She followed Nyx’s directions to the dam, and found a post with the button, lever, and lighted symbols on it just beyond the cleft. She pushed the button and the blinking orange lights went dark. Rainbow sat down and looked at the little hydroelectric dam while she waited for Nyx to do her part. It wasn’t a particularly complex construction, simply a pair of closed floodgates with paddle-wheels just below them. Just as Rainbow Dash was starting to get bored, the symbols lit up again. The pegasus pulled the lever and waited until the floodgates had opened and the water that poured out had spun the paddle-wheels up to an appreciable speed before turning around to rejoin Nyx.
As Rainbow Dash reached the fork in the walkway, a strange rumbling sound came from somewhere underhoof, followed by a larger crash as everything started to shake. Rainbow’s wings snapped open instinctively as the walkway buckled and collapsed, but before she could fly to the safety of the lab she was knocked to the ground by some rocks that had been dislodged from the cliff. As she landed among the wreckage of the walkway, a green mist billowed up around her. Combined with the shock of the crash, the mist made her vision swim and she quickly blacked out as she heard a terrified scream from the lab.