//------------------------------// // Heart of Izvaldi // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// Gerardo's black sword swayed against his side as he walked two-file with Valey, stepping out of the hospital's elevator shaft at the lowest level their password let them access. Starlight followed in the second row, flanked by Maple and Jamjars and keeping her ears on high alert. The lights were dim for after-hours, flat panels concealing manaconduits disguised to look like the rest of the tiled ceiling. Clean and sterile, the walls hung with unused metal hooks, an occasional cart of equipment left here or there. But this level was a psychiatric ward, according to the elevator, so Starlight didn't expect them to need much... though a small portion of her was afraid anyone who could architect whatever they were walking into could find a use for a hospital full of insane ponies, too. A nurse pushing a mop trotted lazily out of a side room, gave them a single look, and abruptly decided an obviously-armed party of intruders in an after-hours hospital was none of her business. Valey let her go, pushing in on the thick iron door she knew led to Puddles' room. A familiar stone staircase room opened up, the stairs spiraling down its dark walls, and the empty nursery antechamber stretched beyond. Starlight shivered slightly as she walked through its happily-painted walls; it was a shrine to everything that was lost, yet hadn't been taken down now that Puddles was back. An altar to remembering what was gone that had now itself been forgotten. They entered the room beyond, the chill in Starlight's spine growing as she beheld the ruined mechanism Puddles' lift had fallen from. The windigo had been right: the curved, tangled pipes forming the walls and ceiling of her old chamber were definitely the same as Stanza's. Between the tight spot in the ceiling where they all converged and the hole in the floor they would be going down, if felt like she was in a giant metal stomach... and Starlight had seen these pipes move like they were alive before. "Two months and they still haven't cleaned the broken lift up, I see," Gerardo whispered. "Probably had better things to think about." Valey wandered stiffly to the hole's edge, looked down and sniffed. "Feels... stale. I can tell Puddles once spent a lot of time here, but it's only the barest aftertaste." She tongued the roof of her mouth. "But I can also smell it, and I don't think it's because I know what to look for this time. Stanza." Starlight gave her a scared look, suddenly wanting much less to do with that hole. Not while the Nightmare Module wasn't protecting her... "There's one here too? There are two of them?" "Unless the one in Gyre can somehow teleport." Valey nodded. "But this is weaker. It's down there, but far away. Not all around us, like the entire building was malevolent. I think I can take it." "Ahem." Gerardo cleared his throat, looking down beside her. "You do realize what we're doing, yes? You've thought this completely through? Because I have to remind you... We don't know what's down there. We know something is going on, but we aren't aware of what. This isn't about our odds of survival, though I also remind you you've taxed yourself heavily and I'm low on sleep... but once we proceed, we're going to be drawn in." He gave Maple a sharp, avian look. "I remember how things affected you in Ironridge, Maple of Riverfall. This is our last chance to turn back. If we proceed, I can all but guarantee we will find ourselves in that exact same place again." Maple hesitated... but then firmed her stance. "That may be so, but this time, I'm not a recovering mare who just wants to enjoy her vacation and having a daughter. This time I know someone's doing something wrong, and I'm willing to make a difference. And I'm stronger than in Ironridge, too." She briefly glowed with a pink outline, emphasizing her recolored eyes. "Whatever we find, if it's a monster, we'll be able to stop it." "Oh, there are monsters somewhere, alright." Jamjars pounded her hooves. "We're going." Starlight nodded firmly. "It's not like this wouldn't catch up to us if we tried to leave it alone, anyway. We'd have to completely fly away from the Empire, and now that we have our ship back, nothing's stopping us from doing that anyway. We're going in." "Cool stuff." Valey nodded. "But just so you guys know before you get too enthusiastic..." Her eyes shadowed. "There's something I need to tell you." Everyone tilted their heads, listening. "When I was in Gyre..." Valey took a shaky breath. "Right beside Stanza, as close as possible... that place was already screwing with my head, I was already wondering if I was hallucinating... but there, I think I passed out and saw something else instead. I was... somewhere. Everything hurt, and I mean everything, but especially my cutie mark. All my vision was gray, and it was snowing or raining ash or... something. I'm two hundred percent sure I was dying. I snapped out of it and we got out, and it was just an instant in time, but... bananas. I have no idea what that was. I just thought you should know." Starlight blinked in horror, a memory of snow and grayness and an older, dying Valey surrounded by dead monsters edging its way into her mind. "You saw... No... Was I there?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "You know something?" "No, I..." Starlight swallowed and rapidly shook her head. "No. Nothing. Was I there?" She was sure nobody was convinced. "Bananas, I don't remember." Valey rubbed the back of her neck. "Was kind of focused on the crippling waves of pain just a little? You were definitely there with me in real life..." "We need to talk later." Starlight sighed and looked down. She swallowed again, suddenly feeling very bad about absolutely everything. "Does this throw a wrench in our plans?" Gerardo coughed. "It's clear everyone is privy to something I'm unaware of..." "I'm not." Maple tilted her head in concern. "Starlight? What's this about?" Valey shrugged. "Beats me. Starlight, if you know something important, you also know what's on the line if it isn't out there when it needs to be. All I know is that Stanza is weird and scary." Starlight weighed things in her mind for a moment. Had Valey really told her everything she knew? She still had absolutely no idea what her vision while being deconstructed after powering the harmony extractor meant, whether it was a future premonition, vision of some parallel world or afterlife, or anything else... anything but madness, now that Valey had seen the same. But did that tell them anything about what to do? She still remembered Valey knowing her full, real name in hers. If it was the future and she never told her, that couldn't come true, could it? Or was that just semantics? Either way, Starlight didn't think everyone having this knowledge would help prepare them for the pit. The vision had clearly happened outside, so if it was the future, going further indoors was safer in the short run... and they'd have time to discuss properly after that. All in all, she wasn't sure how they were supposed to react to a vague, ominous vision anyway. "I think we can go on." Starlight nodded slowly. "I'll talk to Valey later, but... Valey? How dangerous does it feel down there? Can your cutie mark tell that?" "You mean at the idea of going in?" Valey tilted her head. "Feels... yeah, sort of dangerous. Which is actually a good sign, because it's not ridiculously lethal dangerous, but if it felt completely safe, we'd know it was a trap. They could be ready for my abilities and mark, if they're expecting us. But I think this is as good as it will get." "Then we go." Starlight voiced her decision, stepping up to the edge as well and looking down into the darkness. Valey rolled her shoulders. "Sweet. Birdo has more lift than me, so I'll take Ironflanks and he can get you and Jamjars. Ironflanks, you're not lugging around anything heavy like bricks again, are you?" The floor clanged, and a pair of large iron ingots landed beneath an embarrassed-looking Maple. "Sorry..." "Really trying to live up to that nickname, aren't you?" Valey whistled. "Alright. On my back. Down we go!" "Indeed!" Gerardo swooped overhead, a talon closing firmly around Starlight's barrel and lifting her into the sky. Beside her, Jamjars yelped, suffering the same, and Starlight quickly remembered she had been airsick the last time Gerardo flew them in Ironridge. Hopefully her stomach had gotten hardier over the journey, because this hole was a long way down. Gerardo tucked in his wings to aid their descent, Starlight's horn lit to guide the way ahead. It felt like they had been falling for hours, even though she knew it was less than a minute: Starlight had fallen from dam bridges and mountains before, and she knew what a real fall felt like. The wreckage of the lift platform shot into view below, and Gerardo braked with his powerful wings, earning an unhappy wet noise from Jamjars and a reprieve to the wind blasting in Starlight's face. She telekinetically pushed her mane out of her eyes as they entered the bottom chamber, Puddles' imprisonment ring tilted at a slight angle with cracks all around the concrete base. Racks of equipment stretched from floor to ceiling around them, reminding her of a looser, darker version of Arambai's lab with more sharp things and needles. Starlight made out a hoofful of Stanza's pipes burrowing from wall to wall behind them, and most of the apparatuses looked like they were for processing liquid. Maple landed beside them with a thump, climbing down from Valey and taking a few minutes to steady herself while Jamjars crawled off to a corner. "Huh," Valey said, quickly scouting the area before letting herself get distracted. "One door. Guess they weren't intending for this to be a hub... Room's octagonal, which wastes space to look spooky and is usually a good sign of an insane or evil architect. Or maybe that's just me? Now what's all this..." "I don't like the looks of this," Maple murmured, pointing to a cart with a giant syringe that was attached to a tube instead of left to hold however much it could usually carry. "I don't like the looks of this at all..." "Strictly speaking, they could be attempts to find a cure?" Gerardo frowned. "That said, it seems Puddles was right about not receiving the best aid here after all." "All this stuff even has wheels." Valey kicked the cart. "For a solitary confinement chamber, that makes no sense? Why not just leave your tools here? Only reason is if someone was going to check this place out and you didn't want them to be found..." "Yet it's been two months and they're still here," Gerardo observed. "Much like this broken lift hasn't been cleaned up." "That's not our problem," Jamjars groaned, getting her step back and wandering out from behind a shelf toward the door. "Are you coming, or what?" Valey nodded, taking point. "Yep. Looks like we'd better proceed." The bottommost doors of Izvaldi's general hospital were circular and opened diagonally down the middle, rimmed with giant metal bulkheads that would have received too much money for construction anywhere else, but Starlight knew better. That doorframe was a giant pipe. Whoever had built this either had a very particular sense of style, or a machine that could grow pipes for free. The corridor beyond was also a pipe, reminding her of riding down the track through Ironridge's power pipes. Now that she was inside one, she could tell this was definitely not Stanza's work: it was too straight and inorganic, without the regularly-spaced rings of overlapping segments where new pipes had grown out. Still, the homage was obvious. Starlight had seen far too much of Gyre's underside to have any doubt this was related. "Turnoff. Which way..." Valey sniffed, then went right. "Air's fresher this way. Must be closer to the central ventilation system. A place like this probably takes just as much work to keep breathable as the Defense Force base..." She kept her voice down as she walked, leading and beckoning them onward with her tail. They were on a main artery, Starlight quickly realized, smaller tunnels branching off to either side in irregular intervals. Then the main tunnel ended in another door, and suddenly Starlight was outside. ...No, not outside, but in a cavern big enough to pass for it. She remembered the basement of Karma Industries, and as her eyes adjusted to the lights in the dark, realized it was a far more apt comparison than she initially thought: the entire floor below them was littered with row upon row of crystal pylons stabbing into the ground, capped at the tops by expensive-looking equipment with sluggish red lights. They looked out from a wall halfway up, metal catwalks forming a platform and branching along the sides and toward the center. "Oh bananas. It's a generator room." Valey moved aside to let the others through, eyes tracing the output pipes and cables that congregated along the ceiling. "I guess this is where all of Izvaldi's power comes from? This thing is huge! It's probably nearly enough to power all of Ironridge, though Sparky would know better than me..." Gerardo regarded the room with fascination. "Where all of Izvaldi's power comes from? I dearly hope that's what it's used for, but I'm afraid it's probably not. Since it's one of the less-remembered rules, you've probably forgotten, but Garsheeva names it a heresy to extract mana energy from the earth. This entire room's existence is treason on a divine scale." Valey's pupils shrank in awe. "Whoever built this is insane..." "Already established," Jamjars grunted, moving off down the catwalk to the distant center. "So are we going to check it out or what?" The room's center was a pillar, all the power pipes and conduits converging toward it before dropping, spreading through the air like the legs of an upside-down giant spider, entering the pillar beneath Starlight's hooves. In the center of the pillar was a conical statue covered in manaelectrodes and mirrored by another cone and pillar above, clearly an energy transference device of some sort... except the contact cones were carvings of three figures playing together. A pony, a griffon and a batpony... It didn't take long for Starlight to recognize the design of the Izvaldi central plaza's fountain far above. "You think we're directly beneath the town square?" Gerardo whispered to Maple, frowning up at the device. "I'd bet you a pineapple we are," Valey answered, pointing around the pillar to another catwalk ninety degrees from their own. Shortly along it, it passed a glass and white metal tower that stretched to the ceiling, clearly an elevator shaft. "Look. There's the main hospital elevator. Could have saved a ton of walking if we had the full password for that thing..." "At least it might be a way out if we have to retreat in a hurry." Maple nodded. Jamjars cleared her throat from the other side of the statue. "So what's this thing mean?" "Buh?" Valey darted around to her side, Starlight following. A huge breaker switch was engraved into the statue beneath the batpony, looking just as artistic as the rest of the carving yet guarding an unimaginable amount of energy. Text was carved into the top and bottom of the switch, the top in a language Starlight didn't know, but the bottom read The Last Day. She wasn't about to flip that switch down. "Yeah, maybe let's not touch that, okay?" Valey took two cautious steps back from the apparatus. "Come on, we gotta, uhh... Oh bananas. Yeah, I still smell Stanza. Still not everywhere, but it's stronger down here, and it's that way." She pointed down the catwalk with the elevator towards the wall far beyond. "This is really spooky, but that's the way we have to go." Starlight didn't protest, her little hooves clacking against the floor's grated metal. Instead of normal supports, this catwalk rested atop a huge pipe, providing a flat walking surface over the tube below. They reached the far wall, a short metal staircase connecting them to the platform before the door. This wall had three doors in series that all opened at once, revealing the same well-lit room behind. Clearly, whoever made this room didn't want the doors getting held too easily as a chokepoint. It took a moment for Starlight's eyes to adjust to the sterile white brightness, and her eyes had to rest on a black hole set into one wall for a moment, but the moment she could focus, it was impossible for her to turn away. Stanza was there. Mounted on a cart atop a rail track on the floor, Stanza played its lonely tune, unmistakably the same disfigured alicorn statue Starlight had seen beneath Gyre. Only now, it was even more broken, the organ's pipes that once connected it to the tunnels beneath the city slashed, severed and frayed, like it had forcibly been torn out and physically carried away. The alicorn's notes were muted and pained, just as wretched and empty as when Starlight had heard them first yet now sapped of their network, volume and power. She felt something like an infant's hoof press feebly at her mind, and then it was gone. "What the..." Gerardo breathed in shock as Valey trembled, looking to Maple and then standing nervously near Starlight. "Is that...?" Maple swallowed. "It's making my body feel weird. Like the flames inside me are angry..." The room wasn't empty, either. Batponies and unicorns in lab coats and construction outfits walked back and forth, repairing a hole in the wall Starlight wondered if had been used to get Stanza in. How did they transport it here so quickly? And why? Suddenly, Valey froze even harder, eyes going pinprick on a raised observation platform Stanza's new rails led up to, and a snarl stretched across her face at the long-maned batpony surveying the proceedings. "There he is," she whispered, emerald fire in her eyes. "There's the murderer that wears my sister's body."