A full week went by since the Immortal Dream had landed in the Equestrian foothills. Slipstream and Starlight had made regular journeys to the wrecked airship, never to explore it but to clear out a section of hills to serve as easy landmarks, and for the former to build her endurance strength. Once, Slipstream and Harshwater had flown to the tracks and explored them west, but after several hours of walking were forced to return, concluding that they likely followed the sea for at least a day but not ruling out the possibility of an extended journey to see what lay at the other end.
Gerardo was walking, if not feeling up to flight. He swore he would shake off the last of the sword's effects every single day, to the point where he was trying to work even when unable to bench press a filly. In the medical ward, Maple and Saffron waited out their broken bones, talking so much they became fast friends. Meltdown had been cleared to leave multiple times, but stubbornly remained quietly in bed, and Felicity vaguely rebuffed all attempts to encourage her to leave. Gazelle still hadn't regained lucidity from his trance, though Harshwater promised his wounds were healing. And on the bridge, a unicorn with a broken horn sat, watching as an atrophied sarosian and a tired griffon competed fruitlessly to see who could be the first to climb a hill, a flurry of activity on the other side.
"Like I'm going to be beaten by you," Nyala panted, laying on a steep slope in the grass, her rolling walker discarded as she rested while crawling her way to the top. "Hnnngh... Ah!"
She pulled herself half a step forward, putting herself in the lead over Gerardo Guillaume. "A valiant effort, I assure you," the griffon countered, pointing a talon. "But your trembling legs tell a different story. I am merely hobbled by a curse, and am actually not tired at all! Can your stamina hold out?"
"You... bet..." Nyala strained, gaining another hooflength.
"Oh really," Gerardo chuckled. "Behold-"
He reached a talon forward, grabbing for purchase, and promptly uprooted a clump of grass. His face fell as he slid backwards several inches.
Starlight watched the competition with an even look, the two invalids' dedicated chaperone. Not that they couldn't be seen from the ship, but she wanted to be close.
She tilted her head, watching with interest as they competed. Both of them cared a whole lot about the competition, but Nyala in particular was easier to read. Between all the effort the batpony was putting into the climb, what she cared about most was spurring Gerardo to win... and getting better herself, but that was secondary. Starlight supposed her accuracy at reading Nyala's mind had something to do with the changes Glimmer had made so she could access the generator on the flight up the mountains, which for whatever reason hadn't been turned off yet like the time she got the same changes in Mistvale. She wasn't sure yet whether she even wanted to remind Glimmer to fix them. It sure would feel nice if she was able to see someone paying that much attention to her.
But that wasn't an immediate problem. Everyone was strapped for time and resources, and if her friends saw her being selfless and not asking for that time for herself, maybe it would pay off in the future.
"Hah!" Nyala crowed, panting, throwing a foreleg up in front of her. "I win!"
"I beg to differ," Gerardo growled, clawing himself up along behind her. "The slope may have evened, but we are hardly at the crest of the hill! And now I can... finally... stand!" He hauled himself shakily upright, took three steps forward, and promptly tripped, faceplanting into the tall grass yet putting himself decisively ahead of Nyala. "Take that."
"Bah... Good for you." Nyala crawled closer, having an easier time of it now that the slope was more even. "Aww, my legs hurt."
"The sign of an effective workout." Gerardo offered a balled-up talon for her to bump. "Good showing. We'll both be up and flying yet."
Nyala took it. "Now what's going on around here...?"
Starlight pulled back more grass, getting to work shearing it with Felicity's dagger. Harshwater had made the executive decision that grass-cutting and bringing the product back to the ship was a good use of time, since it could be feasibly de-weeded and dried into hay while their food supplies ran down. Howe and Neon Nova had seen hay-processing added to their list of duties, sharing space only with cleaning a now-thoroughly-cleaned pantry and guarding the Forest King's regalia, the latter a task they had begged and wheedled for themselves. She worked quickly, with skill born of practice, and Nyala and Gerardo followed as she cut a straight path to the edge...
In the valley below, a patch of ground had been cleared of grasses and weeds, Grenada standing at the edge with a glowing horn. A large shovel hung in her aura, working efficiently at a hole in the ground, with Jamjars and Glimmer spectating.
"What's going on!?" Nyala called down from the hilltop.
Grenada blinked and looked up. "We have decided restoring mana power to the ship is an important goal, so we can have lighting short-term and be able to sail once we find a way to reach the sea. So we are digging a test pit to see how much groundwater would get in the way of building a mana well."
"Unfortunately, it's kind of muddy." Jamjars frowned, poking at the ground. "So making a proper hole is annoyingly hard. We need a way to freeze the ground and stop it from collapsing."
"And that's just to reach bedrock," Glimmer added. "And no, we're not polluting this area by injecting obsidian into the mud to stabilize it."
Jamjars pouted and rolled her eyes.
"It is difficult," Grenada agreed. "At this point, we are likely to need to try somewhere else. I imagine this area has a lot of underground rivers we will have to carefully avoid. And those can only be found through digging test holes."
"Huh. Sounds fun." Nyala turned to Gerardo. "Race you around the hills at the edge of this valley?"
Gerardo chuckled lightly. "I think not. You're plenty worn-out as it is. But I'll race you back down the hill on our way home, if you like!"
Nyala rolled, trying to turn around without relying on her wet-noodle legs. "Bring it...!"
Starlight let them go. Glimmer was here, and she had a question that she was going to ask. She trotted carefully down the hillside, abandoning grass-cutting early, and reached out and tapped her lookalike on the shoulder. "Can we talk?"
Glimmer blinked. "Here?"
"Follow me," Starlight instructed, giving her tail as a guide. Jamjars thankfully stayed behind, more interested in the test pit than Starlight, and Starlight led them around to the back of a hill, out of sight.
"What is it?" Glimmer sat down and asked.
Starlight took a breath. "If you know everything that's going to happen, why didn't you stop us from getting stuck here, how would we normally get out, and what are you doing to speed that up or make it better? We've been here for a whole week and I'm tired of seeing everyone around me either busy or working."
"That's a lot of questions to answer at once," Glimmer replied, cutting her off. "As for the first one, I didn't know Crystal was going to become that at all, and a large part of the reason I couldn't do anything about it was because of this." She tapped her useless horn. "I already blew myself fixing one problem, you remember?"
Starlight's ears fell. "Yeah. You saved Valey and Crystal from an explosion. One of whom is now dead, and the other is the reason we're stuck here. It really seems like you could have fixed a lot of things just by not doing anything, even if..."
Glimmer sightlessly stared at her.
Starlight's eyes slowly narrowed in realization. "If this is an elaborate lesson on why it's better to not give everything protecting my friends, I hate you."
"It isn't supposed to be," Glimmer promised, "but in this case, it turns out to demonstrate it tragically well..." Her ears fell. "Are you really giving up on Valey as dead?"
Starlight shrugged. "You're the last pony I expected to question that. You want me to, don't you? I have her brand and her body, and can use Nightmare Modules. All I need is Nightmare Module Seven to bring her back. I don't know where that is, but I thought for sure it's the kind of thing you'd tell me isn't worth it in the long run."
"...Stop," Glimmer sighed. "All that is normally true. But right now, your body is overloaded with Nightmare Moon's emotions... with some unfortunate extra flavoring, given how you activated it from this time. Your mind is shielded from them, but this is like trying to drop the sun on the world and prevent it from burning a blade of grass. So what I'm telling you instead is to take care of yourself and your mind's wellbeing. Just..." She shook her head. "This is bad for me too, Starlight. As for what I'm doing about it now, I promise I'm doing my best. I might have a miracle or two up my sleeve, but you and your friends are going to need a lot more than just a blind filly to get out of this."
Starlight frowned.
"As for if you're feeling lonely or left out?" Glimmer turned back to the clearing with the pit. "Don't sit on that. Friendship is magic, and taking care of your relationship with your friends is critical to working together as a team. Higher morale means better progress. Don't set yourself aside because you think it will help and save time. In the long run, this could make the difference between failure and getting this ship out of here."