Harshwater streaked through the hills, pumping her wings with practiced efficiency and staying low to the ground without losing her sense of direction. Starlight continued to cling to her, not about to be left behind when her friends could be in danger... even though she had no idea who was warning them, or what the danger was.
Eventually, the Immortal Dream drew into view... and its windows were glowing with light.
"What are they doing?" Harshwater hissed. "I thought we don't have power now! And why would we have the lights on tonight if we did?"
Starlight gritted her teeth. The skies above were empty, and they landed on the deck without issue, Harshwater immediately opening the door and stepping below. She made to rap on the engine room door... but couldn't, because Shinespark was already there.
"I'm experimenting!" Jamjars' voice echoed through the blocked doorway. "The griffons can go jump in a river. It's not like any of them will be getting close enough to see the lights anyway!"
Shinespark opened her mouth to retort, but then she heard Harshwater and whipped around. Her ears fell when she saw who it was. "Report."
"We got a message over the sound stone from someone we don't recognize," Harshwater immediately said. "They said there are hostile soldiers in the skies, and we need to make this place look abandoned from above. Whoever it is, warning us to hide from danger isn't all that likely to be a trap."
Shinespark's brow furrowed above her already-cold eyes.
"Can they seriously not wait?" Jamjars huffed. "It's obviously a false alarm, since we don't have any anonymous friends out here. Go tell me whether the controls on the bridge have power, and I'll be satisfied."
"Let me into my engine room!" Shinespark snarled.
"What's all the noise?" Nyala asked, passing through the library on her roller. "Isn't this a night to be quiet? Harshwater, why are you back?"
Starlight stared at the door, a powerful brightness leaking from beneath it that could only be caused by something very valuable... like her sword. "Nyala, shadow sneak me under the door," she requested. "I want to see what Jamjars is doing with my things."
"Take me under!" Shinespark demanded. "She's experimenting on my ship!"
Nyala sighed, getting off her roller with a heavy wobble and spreading her wings. "Come closer..."
Starlight gripped her, and Shinespark stood alongside. After a brief moment of altered vision, which wasn't nearly as disorienting as Starlight remembered it being, Nyala rose alongside both of them in the brightly-lit engine room, where Jamjars was surveying a rectangular cage, dozens of wires connecting apparatuses along its frame to plugs that were attached to the moon glass sword.
The door had been barricaded with a carefully-wedged chair, which Shinespark immediately kicked aside, allowing Harshwater entry as well. "Turn off the lights!" Harshwater hissed.
"Can't you do that from the controls upstairs?" Jamjars started to stick out her tongue, then thought better of it. "Leave it connected and I'll go check myself..."
"What did you do to my ship!?" Shinespark stared menacingly at a rack of equipment, several wires from Jamjars' contraption inserted into places they likely didn't belong. "This is not how you connect auxiliary power! You have to do it through the mana core, or-"
"Should have helped me when I asked." Jamjars shrugged. "So I found my own way."
"You're circumventing the ship's power distributor! I told you to wait because tonight we're dealing with griffons!"
Harshwater ignored the two squabbling ponies, looking desperately for something she could unplug to cut the lights. Nyala sat back awkwardly, and Starlight watched the whole dispute with a prickling feeling on her spine like she was being watched herself. It suddenly intensified, and she turned about, shadow cloaking herself on instinct and darting to the entrance to the deck.
On the horizon, something was glowing. It was the same kind of glow as the brightness every creature had, desirable to the point where she consciously reached a hoof... but this light was different. It wasn't just bright because it was light. It was bright because it had light, in the same way she wished to be surrounded by other creatures who cared about her herself. And staring into it burned her with fear and jealousy alike, the shadowy energy that empowered her briefly transforming into something else. Starlight felt her body flare as her muscles failed and she collapsed to the ground. She had to get away... couldn't be seen...
"On a scale of one to ten, how likely would either of you rate this to be fraud?" Felicity breathed, playing with the Forest King's rapier as she watched the sound stone breathlessly.
Neon Nova held his silence, and Howe bit his lip. "That our avian adversaries have subdued our compatriots and sent that message as a ploy to get us to abandon the plan and break position? Not likely, unless they wished to tail us as we fled to our main base. But that would imply they already knew the details of our separation, so they wouldn't have anything further to learn..."
The sound stone continued crackling with wind, guards' voices occasionally breaking through. "Princess," one voice said, "We've gotten near enough that the fortress is in range of our transmitter. They're acknowledging our communications."
"Have they anything to say, soldier?"
"They say it was extreme weather that damaged the stronghold, which I have difficulty believing. All personnel are reported accounted for in the emergency bunker. Shall I send the signal for them to come aboveground for a damage assessment and to clear a place for us to land?"
"Yes. Tell them to prepare to accompany me to the Empire if necessary. They control facilities that may be involved in any unusual-"
"Your Highness! Pardon the interruption, but there appears to be a boat in the hills below. Lights are on in the windows!"
"...Hmm. Captain Strongwind, do you recognize anything about the make of that craft? Does it appear to be an airship?"
"Not one of ours, and not one of northern design, but it's hard to tell from this distance. If there was weather bad enough to damage our fortress, perhaps they were beached by a heavy storm surge?"
"That is possible. We can investigate once we have seen to the fortress, and render aid if they are friendly. But it also may be a trap. Do not stop or slow down now."
Everyone looked at each other, and Felicity had to stifle a giggle of relief.
Starlight burst into the engine room, legs shaking. "Why are the lights still on!? They'll see!"
Shinespark and Jamjars were still fighting, while Harshwater was trying unsuccessfully to disconnect the cobbled-together device. Nyala looked at her with concern. "Starlight? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I need..." Starlight panted, reaching for her sword. She needed to hide, needed it to defend herself, needed to cut the power and plunge the ship into shadows, and her sword was clearly involved in Jamjars' machine. She commanded it toward her, reaching for it at the same time. The blade started to move, dragging the cage along with it, tripping Harshwater in the wires.
"Ow, hey!" Harshwater complained.
Starlight grabbed the sword, trying and failing to yank one of the plugs off it that held it at the center of the frame. Jamjars immediately stopped fighting Shinespark, her ears falling. "Don't break that! I spent all day getting Grenada to help build it for me!"
"Then turn off the lights and give me this," Starlight panted, aware that the light she had seen was directly overhead, passing by like a ravenous hawk. "Give me my sword...!"
She willed it towards her harder, and the sword reacted with a gleam... its surface suddenly flashing and redoubling in stickiness as it responded to her desire to no longer be apart. Before Starlight could process what she had just willed it to do, it was ravenous once again, and she was pulling it against her chest with both forehooves rather than cautiously touching it with one. She didn't have time. There was nothing she could do but scream.
The sword pulled harder, and with a ripple and a flash, Starlight was gone.
Light swirled around Starlight like burning clouds and falling stars as she plummeted and spiraled, a tunnel of black emptiness tearing through her fur with motes of light. Forks of energy swirled in the distance, connecting her to the center of the abyss, brightness and darkness clashing in a chaotic storm that pierced every orifice and flowed through her like a tide of black feathers. Flakes of gray rained from the sky, and then she was falling up, tumbling head over heels so fast that gravity lost any meaning, or might have not existed at all. Stone, metal and planes of glossy blackness soared through her head, reflecting off the insides of her eyelids with a cacophony she felt in her core, turning her inside out and around and around until she was nothing but a bright spot on her flanks. The rush faded first in her ears, only for vertigo to kick in, and she finally realized she was herself again just in time to process that she was falling normally and didn't have her nightmare shield to protect herself from the ground. But when she landed in a puff of ash, it didn't hurt at all.
Thunder rumbled distantly ahead, and this time she only heard it with her ears.
Starlight stood shakily and turned around. Flakes of gray were gently drifting through the air, falling without wind onto a carpet several inches thick. The sky was black, and so was the horizon. She had been here before, yet this time was real.
She completed her rotation, facing a chunk of metal that braced a lopsided flagpole. On it, in a scrawl of indeterminate age, were the words, Welcome to Indus.