//------------------------------//
// Find Her, Starlight 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Gerardo sat at his usual post in the Immortal Dream's bridge, spinning the captain's chair from side to side as he waited idly for something to happen. Maple and Amber were there, silently thinking and occasionally muttering each other an idea but never finding them good or pleasant enough to strike up a conversation. Shinespark paced, Nyala was still, hooked up to the terminal, and Slipstream tried to look as if she wasn't even there.

The door slid open with a crack, dawn still a few hours away, and Jamjars was there.





"I found Starlight," Jamjars panted, her short mane frizzed and her sides beating as she caught her breath.

"You what?" Gerardo squawked, jolted out of half-sleeplessness. "Found her as in located her, found her, or found her found her?"

"You did?" Maple instantly perked up, and the rest of the crew followed suit.

Jamjars cleared her throat. "First off, be careful. I don't think I was followed, but I wasn't undetected." She gave everyone a serious look. "I saw the Night Mother."

She had everyone's complete and undivided attention. Gerardo drew his sword, getting up to stand by the door. "I suppose I should stand guard, then?"

Jamjars let him, figuring out what out of everything she had seen was the most important bit to tell first. "She said she got Starlight taken somewhere because there was something she wanted her to see, and that she'd give her back once she'd seen it."

"That doesn't sound ominous..." Maple folded her ears.

"Suspicious is what it sounds like," Amber countered, pounding one forehoof atop the other. "She wants her to see something? Elaborate."

Jamjars stared at her. "That's what I was doing. She was talking to Gazelle in the hospital's basement. A batpony civilian guided him down there, and as soon as they were next to the dusk statue, she transformed and turned into a sphinx and said that's who she was, and went back to being the pony when it was over. She said she had an agreement with him, or something, and that she was letting him play with the continent but was also upset there was a problem he wasn't dealing with. She made it sound like she wanted you to be aware of it so you'd fix it instead."

"Okay, hold on, that's a lot to unpack." Amber halted her with a grim hoof. "The Night Mother can possess batponies next to the statues? Is that what you're saying?"

"That's what it looked like." Jamjars nodded.

Gerardo rubbed his chin. "Do you think Valey is awake yet? If anyone is likely to have thoughts on the matter, it would be her."

"I'm more wondering why we never went to sleep," Maple sighed, eyes slightly red. "I should have made myself realize that worrying all night would never get us anywhere and just tried to turn in in case anything like this happened..."

Shinespark nodded at her. "Finish debriefing us as fast as you can. I'll want to be up when Valey is, but I think I'll nap as much as possible as soon as I know what I need to."

Gerardo cleared his throat. "A wise idea. Now then, what was this about an agreement and playing with the continent?"

"It was vague." Jamjars shot him a look. "Gazelle was talking about responsibly creating problems for sport. The Night Mother didn't sound happy with him, but kept pushing him in different directions. It was obvious they know each other and have a complicated history, and I couldn't understand half of what was being said. But she made it sound like she wanted to borrow Starlight to mess up someone else's plans, and said she would give her back when she was done. If you trust her."

"Whooo..." Maple pinched her brow. "I really wish we had Valey's opinion on this..."





"Not the nicest way to start my morning, Ironflanks," Valey sighed, running through a few wing stretches while she ate breakfast and prepared to resume her journey. "You're telling me you have an idea why Starlight got bagged, and it's bad news?"

Her ears folded further and further as her friends, with Jamjars' clarification, relayed everything that had been learned. "Bananas, not again!" she pouted, stomping. "You're saying Starlight is there to bait me because someone else wants us to clean up their mess?"

"Not just someone," Amber sighed ominously. "The Night Mother, who apparently is not only real but can take over batponies to become physical."

Valey paused. "Okay, to be fair, real quick: pretty much anyone can do that. Batpony bodies, like... change depending on what cutie mark or soul you have attached to them. We can guess about it more later, but it's like how I looked different while I was fighting Herman... or wait, did any of you see that? Never mind. I've got a ton of examples probably none of you have actually seen."

"So she can project herself, or something," Amber finished for her. "And I remember you telling me. Like how your sister turned into that scientist Navarre after he swapped their cutie marks."

"Yeah, that." Valey waved a hoof. "But seriously, her aside..." She banged her head into a wall. "Really? After all the stuff we do to stay unimportant and happily doing our own thing, it's not even me getting famous over Wallace that drags us back into trouble? It's our reputation from Ironridge? This lady just thinks we're heroes that can be thrown at whatever immoral thing she wants gone? I mean, sure, once I see it I'm probably gonna want to do something, but... guh..." She sagged. "I had a lifetime of this with Herman already. Getting pulled and prodded around and schemed over. 'Oh, I know her so well, she'll do this naturally, I'll just put her in the right situation and she'll do exactly what I want!' Blech! I'm not a tool...!"

"Apparently the Night Mother begs to differ," Gerardo sighed. "My advice would be to wait this out and follow through until Starlight is no longer effectively hostage, and then we can pursue a course of action."

Valey tensed, growling. "Yeah? And what kind of course of action do you suggest, Birdo? She's revered by practically every batpony in the continent, so she's got a huge following. Sounds like she's in cahoots with the world's least-stable prince as well, and even if she didn't have public backing and we knew where she actually was behind that statue, she can apparently possess batponies remotely at will?" She shuddered. "I don't wanna deal with that..."

"We can figure that out later," Maple promised. "For now, I just want to make sure you're on your hooves?"

"Bananas, I am." Valey was standing in a heartbeat. "Not letting some harpy like that take my friends, bait or not. Whatever she wants us to find, well, me and Starlight are just gonna have to deal with it."

"We'll be here for you when you get back," Amber assured her. "Just do what you need to, okay?"

Valey sighed, eyes turned toward the northern horizon, Starlight like a tiny pinprick on her nose's senses. "Yeah. Just, here we are, getting drawn back into national backstabbing and drama and politics for no good reason, and..." She closed her eyes and winced, then looked up again. "Bananas. I hope the Night Mother doesn't think this is how to make allies, because after this, we are not gonna be on good terms. Now let's see what we're supposed to see."





Traces of frigid air wrapped past Starlight, making her wonder if something significant was ahead or her new nightmare state made her more sensitive to cold. She didn't doubt the latter, but somehow felt this was more real than just a magical chill.

The more levels she descended, the thicker the river of pipes was on the ceiling, wrapping and twisting and knotted over itself like something organic. Who built like that, anyway? The pipes were made of metal! Any individual line would be impossible to trace, leaks infeasible to find and plug, but it certainly had an effect on the atmosphere. She briefly imagined each and every one of those being connected to a gargoyle in a cell, tiny lines of echoing sound carrying convicts' anguished or infuriated ramblings to who knew where... and then her hoof slipped, a tiny patch of ice nearly causing her to lose her balance.

With a jolt in her shoulder, she caught herself, resolving to look down instead of up for a while. Still, she felt like she had seen those pipes before. Laid carelessly over themselves yet still roughly parallel, like something flowing, or even muscle tissue. Where had...?

She turned another corner, and her mind dredged up an image of a room made entirely of pipes, descending from a point in the ceiling to cover and form all the walls, only a single point bare over the lone entry door. A room with a hole in the middle, and a golden ring on a platform... but what was this place doing with a similar architectural style to something she had seen in Izvaldi? To Puddles' containment room?

This couldn't be in Izvaldi, could it? True, the capitol had tunnels, and she had no idea how deep they ran, but the only thing else she could use to link that memory to this place was the cold. Puddles made ice, she was cold, this was cold...

Starlight suddenly hit a wall, and her eyes widened.

The entire corridor was frozen over, a solid sheet of faceted ice blocking her entry into a round room beyond. In the center of the room was a table, and around it, encased in ice, were several scientific-looking batponies and unicorns... and in the middle, there she was, wintery, two-tone eyes fixated pleadingly on Starlight.

The ice shifted as Starlight stared at Puddles, and her eyes had to refocus to see the change: surface-level scratches, forming four simple letters.

Help.