Starship Ponyville: Homeward

by Vylet Pony


VI. Elysium

The starship’s bridge was dim and had a panoramic view of the area outside. The stars could be seen around the room. Countless buttons and monitors twinkled and blinked around the bridge. Soft buzzing and tones were emitted rhythmically. Shadows could be seen moving around through the bottom of the doorway.

Satyrn reclined in the admiral’s seat, where Celestia would normally be. She was covered in bruises. She heard Celestia talking to somepony on the other side of the door, but she was far too tired to make herself concerned just yet. As she was listening, Princess Celestia entered the room alone. Her radiant, rainbow mane glistened and waved in an almost ethereal manner. Her poise was stoic, though her expression was calm and collected. Her voice was deep and maternal, and she spoke with regality. She was dressed in a dark coat with sherpa lining the collar, the formal attire of an admiral in the Equestrian Navy. Still, there was an ominous tinge in her eye. To confide with the Princess of Equestria itself is a mistake not many know to beware.

“We’re suspending surface operations on the asteroid for the time being,” Celestia said calmly. She stepped over to the pilot console, in front of Satyrn.

“Wait, that’s all? Shouldn’t we evacuate now? What are we waiting around for?” Satyrn protested.

“Enough of this. We are staying. With the current circumstances, the interest in exploring the asteroid further has grown substantially,” Celestia rebutted. She stared coldly into Satyrn’s eyes.

“Your highness… I think this is a high level concern. Don’t you think so too?” Satyrn suggested.

“We will make sure that nopony’s safety is compromised, that is a concern, yes.”

“Well, whatever those things were, they’re dead now.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“They were a threat to our safety. You shot at them yourself,” Celestia’s tone became subtly coarse and hostile. She continued pacing, appearing as if she wanted to say something else, but only managing to stare back at the girl. She pushed a button on the console.

“He can come in,” she said into a microphone attached to the console board.

Moments later, Vylet came in and rushed towards Satyrn.

“Hey, what—” Satyrn started, but was caught in Vylet’s embrace.

“Are you okay? I was so afraid I had hit you,” Vylet said.

“Hey it’s okay…” Satyrn paused for a moment, “wait.”

Vylet looked up at her, his eyes held back tears.

“What do you mean ‘hit me’?”

“Well…” Vylet sniffed, “I was at the cannon.”

Satyrn’s expression softened and she held Vylet to her.

“You did fine. You saved us,” Satyrn reassured him.

Celestia turned to observe the asteroid's surface. Carcasses of the slain creatures littered the grounds, stretching as far out as about a mile. The Princess scrunched her face in disgust, expressing so with a low sigh. Satyrn let go of Vylet and put her hoof on his shoulder.

“We’ll talk later, alright?” she whispered to him, “I need to speak with Celestia about something first.”

The Princess turned around, eyeing Satyrn. Vylet nodded and dismissed himself. When he had left, Satyrn continued to Celestia.

“You told me on your count, the cannons would fire,” Satyrn said.

Celestia stood without a word, her eyes fixated on Satyrn’s face as she sighed.

“He’s a smart kid, but he’s just a kid,” Satyrn continued.

The Princess said nothing still. Her expression had become faintly gruff.

“You couldn’t just do it yourself? You have magic after all.”

“Enough,” Celestia commanded, “I’ve given you the opportunity to make history on this vessel. Do not jeopardize your position, commander.”

Satyrn bit her lip and glanced at her reflection on the floor. The Princess paced around her, eyeing the girl with a commanding expression.

“Your continued loyalty to us will see us through these dark times,” Celestia assured.

“Your highness, I don’t mean to—” Satyrn began.

“What you mean has nothing to do with the power of your words. Intent has no place in this discussion,” Celestia interjected. She looked down at Satyrn, “You understand that, right?”

Satyrn nodded.

“You need to put your trust in me,” Celestia said.

Satyrn nodded again, questioning, “but I must ask you something.”

Leaning against the console, the Princess met her gaze.

“Yes?” Celestia said.

Satyrn stood up from the chair. She was much shorter than the Princess, and still had to look up at her.

“Why exactly did we land on this asteroid?”

“It displayed erratic movements, as if it was being piloted. We wanted to investigate.”

“How exactly could you tell?”

“We looked at the asteroid,” Celestia chuckled, “we studied its course.”

“Yeah, but why were you looking at it to begin with? I thought we were looking for planets to expand to, not space rocks that happen to have living beings on them,” Satyrn’s tone became condescending.

Celestia frowned playfully, raising her eyebrows, “That’s what we do in astronomy, Satyrn. We look at things in space, do we not?”

Satyrn silently conceded.

“Yeah. You’re right,” Satyrn replied, “excuse me, though. I want to catch up with Vylet now.”

“Glad you’re making friends here,” Celestia smiled.

Satyrn nodded and started for the door.

“Godspeed!” Celestia shouted, as Satyrn was on her way out.


Vylet held a small bottle containing a metallic, grey substance. He rotated it in his hooves, causing the substance to shift and move about. He watched it with interest.

“What is it?” Rayna asked, sitting on his watch.

“I’m not sure. Can you run a diagnostic on its composition?” Vylet asked.

“No,” Rayna’s tone was apathetic.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“You have no external equipment for me to use, what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Woah! Hey hey hey!” Vylet was alarmed, “Where are you learning to talk like that?”

“Stop watching medical dramas,” Rayna commanded.

The door to Vylet’s room opened without warning.

“Hey, Vy!” Satyrn announced her arrival.

“How did you get in here?!” Vylet shrieked.

“Rayna gave me your key code!”

“Rayna… what the fuck.”

“Woah! hey hey hey!” Rayna rebutted, “Where are you learning to talk like that?”

Vylet threatened to poke Rayna, but seeing as how she was a hologram, the threat was null and he was unable to follow through.

“How is she sending you this information?” Vylet asked.

“Oh,” Satyrn drew a piece of paper from her scarf. “She emails me. I don’t know how she got my address, though.”

She displayed the paper which read:

“Dear Satyrn,

Vylet’s key code is 89538. He’s been coding for the past hour and I’m getting very bored of it. Come by soon, please. Also, I want somepony to help me design a cool scarf like you two have! Vy probably won’t be competent enough to do that by himself.

Warmly,
Rayna.

P.S; he’s been staring at a strange alloy compound and it’s freaking me out, he really likes looking at it."

Satyrn looked up from the paper to see Vylet staring at the strange alloy compound.

“This is freaking me out,” Rayna mouthed to Satyrn.

Rayna drifted up to the bottle Vylet was holding and examined it closely. Satyrn came over to them.

“This is the stuff that fell on me in the cave,” Satyrn said.

“I went back out to the surface and took this sample from one of the bodies,” Vylet explained, “As far as I can tell, they don't have blood, but... they do have this.”

“May I?” Satyrn gestured to the bottle.

Vylet nodded. She took it and gently held it up to the light from Vylet’s laptop monitor. The substance moved like mercury, but had a more distinctly rugged texture about it. Additionally, it was dull like smooth stone and did not have the same shine as a pure liquid. Satyrn squinted.

“I think I’ve seen this in a book my father wrote,” Satyrn explained, “A liquid metal hybrid compound that had once been found in a crater somewhere out in Saddle Arabia.” She then turned to Vylet, “You’re a chemist right?”

The colt’s ears perked up. “Would you want to analyze it with me?” Vylet asked, his excited smile made Satyrn giggle.


Satyrn and Vylet walked through the main hangar. It was empty, not even the spacecraft were being worked on at this time. The ship had ten laboratory spaces, all of which were also empty. Vylet led Satyrn into the one he normally used, furthest back in the research wing. They set the sample on the exam table.

The lab was filled with cabinets and drawers of varying sizes and heights, full of cylinders, microscopes, and a myriad of other tools for testing and researching. Flasks and dishes were lined up nicely along the counters among stacks of used notebooks.

“So, you said you found this in the caves?” Vylet asked Satyrn.

“Yes. It dripped down from one of the creatures onto my hoof. It burned like crazy,” Satyrn replied. She started setting various textbooks and journals down next to the sample.

“Well surely, then, it’s a great idea to put paper products next to the sample right?” Vylet mused.

“What do you mean?”

“If it burned, wouldn’t those books be a fire hazard?”

“Wouldn’t the bottle be melting?” Satyrn retorted.

Vylet looked down at the bottle, shrugging. “Yeah, that is weird I suppose.”

Satyrn started swapping through the texts she brought, a multitude of books and journals from her family’s library. Some of the writings were by her father, who had worked as a royal scientist for Celestia before the expedition. She flipped through an illustrated field guide of Equestrian creatures her father had put together.

“What’s that for?” Vylet asked her.

“Look,” Satyrn pointed to a dusty page from the field guide. There was a diagram of a creature with a black exoskeleton, green eyes, and apertures across its body. The title read: “Changelings: Prior to the Hive Revolution”.

“These look a lot like the creatures from the caves,” Vylet noted, “but aren’t changelings vibrantly coloured? Like Chrysalis and Thorax.”

“Yes, but they used to look different. You never read about the Hive Revolution?” Satyrn asked him.

“I failed history,” Vylet replied, scratching his head.

Satyrn flipped to the next page. It was filled with diagrams of the insect-like changelings, followed by the metamorphosed, technicolour changelings that they knew from Equestria.

“More than three decades ago, changelings used to be the hive mind of Queen Chrysalis. The first major conflict we had with them was during the Royal Canterlot Wedding between Shining Armor and Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire,” Satyrn explained.

“They look kind of creepy,” Vylet said.

“Yeah. They would feed on the love of friendship between other ponies and creatures in order to make the Queen more powerful. But one day, Starlight Glimmer confronted the hive with Trixie, Thorax, and Discord. Trixie was still a traveling magician, Thorax was still a pre-metamorphosis changeling, and Discord was.. Well he hasn’t changed much has he?”

They laughed as Rayna chimed in. “They managed to convince the changelings to share their own love instead of relying on taking it from others. They’re fueled by a very potent magic force, so it didn’t take long for them all to transform. Although, Chrysalis took a few more years; she attempted multiple times to attack Equestria, even allying with the prisoners of Tartarus, like Tirek and Cozy Glow.”

“Since when do you know so much?” Vylet tested her.

“I read as much as I can,” Rayna stuck her tongue out at him.

Satyrn stared down at the illustrations in the field guide.

“So my question is, why do the creatures on the asteroid look so much like them…” she pondered, looking up from the book at the bottle on the table.

“My father wrote,” she began, shuffling through another journal and turning to a page on pre-industrial history, “‘Aisha Spellbound’s Crater, a place in northern Saddle Arabia where a meteorite was believed to have hit centuries before. It was found by settlers during the 900’s period, where many unique curiosities were procured.’”

Satyrn paused as she skimmed the entries. Vylet peered over her shoulder, mouthing some of the subtitles to himself. Satyrn stopped on an entry titled “Kytzdominum”, which she read aloud, “Kytzdominum is an element between elements. Containing properties of both liquids and metals alike, it defies the life sciences we have relied on for so long to explain our world and our universe.”

On the same page, a diagram of a container resembling the alloy in Vylet’s bottle was sketched, likely hand drawn by Elden himself.

“That’s all? This is pseudohistory. Does this even say anything else about the substance?” Vylet scrunched his face in suspicion.

“What do you think this is, then?” Satyrn gestured to the bottle.

Vylet glanced at the bottle. He saw his face, contorted by the shape of the glass reflecting his image every which way. The compound sat idly in the container.

“How sure are you of your father?” Vylet asked reluctantly.

“He worked under Celestia, he knows his stuff,” Satyrn spoke eagerly.

Rayna scoffed at Satyrn, “I’m not sure that makes him more credible at this rate.”

Satyrn appeared offended. She glared at the hologram. “We need to trust her, Rayna.”

“Defensive. Are you sure you’re not brainwashed?” Rayna escalated.

“Hey, what is up with you?” Vylet scolded her. Satyrn was restraining exasperation as she bit her lip back.

“I’m really sorry,” Vylet apologized, “she’s usually not so hostile.”

“Don’t patronize me. I’ve been trying to warn you that Celestia’s keeping information from everypony,” Rayna validated.

“Even if that’s so,” Satyrn replied, “it’s a crime to be accessing her classified documents. We’ve talked about this.”

“Even if that’s so, she’s very distant from the rest of the crew. If I know anything, documented news reports have proven to me that she’s been like this since the war,” Rayna was adamant.

Satyrn sighed and pointed her snout to the ceiling, as if she were silently imploring an external force for an answer.

“Just how many of her documents have you accessed?” Vylet’s expression and tone softened as he questioned Rayna.

“As many as I’ve needed to,” she replied.

“How long have you been suspicious of her?” Vylet continued.

“Since the letter.”

Rayna flitted over to Satyrn, “You know that Celestia has had Luna spy on the thoughts and dreams of ponies across Equestria, don’t you?”

Satyrn turned to Rayna. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

“You’re close to the royal family, of course you would defend them,” Rayna said.

“I…” Satyrn started, “I didn’t know that.”

Rayna’s eyes widened, “I see.”

Suddenly the doors of the lab closed with a loud metallic blast, and the room became pitch black. Satyrn and Vylet fumbled around for the lights.

“What’s going on!?” Vylet yelled.

A moment later, Satyrn flipped a switch and the lights of the lab flickered to life.

“What… was that?” Vylet said looking over at the now locked doors of the lab. Satyrn checked the time on Vylet’s watch, and looked up at him.

“Curfew,” they realized aloud, together.


June 16, 2051 [Sol 65]

An hour past midnight, Vylet had set up a drip test station to see how the compound would react with other organic materials. They tested with various metals and woods; each time, the Kytzdominum would burn through, back into the bottle.

“This stuff is really inconsistent…” Vylet noted.

“Well,” Rayna started. Satyrn and Vylet looked over at her. She was sitting on the exam table next to the bottle, a few virtual displays surrounded her. “The substance is highly conductive at its neutral state. From what I can see so far, there is no way for us to cause it to solidify or to melt completely using any temperature-oriented stimuli.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Satyrn replied.

“However,” Rayna continued, “I would like you to try something. I don’t think this is a natural compound.”

Satyrn and Vylet stared intently at Rayna.

“Try whistling. I noticed that there were light fluctuations in its density whenever we were testing it with the copper, in correlation to the whining sounds the metal made,” she said.

Reluctantly, Satyrn stood straight and tried whistling a song that Amber would sing her to sleep with. Nothing happened, and Rayna put her face in her hoof.

“What I meant was, do so at a high pitch and hold it.”

Satyrn scrunched her face at Rayna, who rolled her eyes in response. She whistled at a relatively high pitch. The Kytzdominum began to climb the bottle and change shape. Then, started bubbling and moving erratically. When Satyrn stopped, it returned to a resting state.

“That’s not normal,” Vylet exclaimed, wide eyed.

“Precisely,” Rayna replied, “The alloy has a significant Sor-to-atom ratio. This stuff was made using magic.”

“I’ve never read of a spell that could do such a thing,” Satyrn was slightly shocked, “How did you figure this out, Rayna?”

“Did you even hear what I said a minute ago?” Rayna scoffed.

Vylet started whistling as high as possible, Satyrn had to cover her ears. The Kytzdominum started moving about again, but suddenly, it began to melt through the bottle. Vylet stopped and frantically dashed towards a cabinet to get a glass petri dish. Before the compound could start melting through the table, Vylet scooped it up and dumped the rest of the bottle’s contents onto the dish. He was breathing heavily.

Rayna burst out into laughter, and Satyrn joined her. Vylet stood there, aghast, and looked over at Satyrn with concern.

“Maybe don’t do that again,” Satyrn snickered.

Vylet turned his gaze back to the petri dish and ruffled his hair. Rayna spoke.

“So this is a magical substance. I saw its Sor packet count fluctuate as Vylet… Did whatever that was.”

“This is amazing,” Satyrn said.

“We need to go back into that cave,” Vylet suggested.

Satyrn turned to him, a serious countenance had come over her. “Really? That idea doesn’t frighten you?” Satyrn asked.

Vylet’s expression slowly became brooding. He stepped to the table and examined the Kytzdominum closely. Rayna and Satyrn exchanged glances.

“This is rather peculiar, isn’t it,” Satyrn realized aloud, “of all the uninteresting asteroids we could have come across.”

She looked out the lab window at the creatures’ bodies sprawled across the rocky surface of CX38.

“Well, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t leave the ship now. Celestia told you that she would be suspending operations on the surface until further notice,” Rayna cautioned her.

“Since when were you somepony who likes to follow the rules?” Satyrn mused at her.

Rayna’s admonishing tone became mischievous, “Never, I would say.”

Satyrn turned away from the window to Vylet.

“Sylver could help us get out before tomorrow night’s curfew. He knows his way around the ship pretty well,” she said.

“So, you want to go, then?” Vylet yawned. He sat down on the floor and stretched out his legs.

“That’s brave of you to want this,” Satyrn said.

“I suppose…” Vylet paused, “What did you see in there?”

“A door.”

“A door?”

“Yeah. We were going to bring a group down to breach it, but then the incident happened.”

Vylet reached behind himself for the table and fumbled around sleepily for the field guide. He opened the book to the changeling page.

“Rayna, what do you think?” he asked, groggily.

“Think?” Rayna squeaked.

“Do you think those things are changelings?”

“The diagram shows correlations that one can’t deny,” Rayna analyzed, “I think they are changelings, but that leaves us with a question of why they’re all the way out here.”

“And why haven’t they transformed like the ones in Equestria?” Satyrn added.

She looked over at Vylet who was now fast asleep on the floor. Rayna drifted over and rested on Vylet’s head.

“Sleeping,” Rayna scoffed.