A search of the ancient ruins proved more difficult than Faith might’ve initially suspected.
With an entirely enclosed space and nopony around to stop her, she would’ve expected to instantly locate a set of iron eyes. Then she could put them on over her real ones, and everything would be perfect forever. Obviously there would be no further trouble with her position in Moonrise once her resourcefulness and success was so plainly known. And with her vision restored, she would be able to salvage all kinds of useful things from Vanaheimr, enough that she would be renown throughout Moonrise for the rest of her life. She’d go out on Dustwalker missions not because she had to, but because it was her passion to serve the community.
Her fantasy did not survive contact with reality.
The chamber was barely large enough for her to squeeze around in, let alone easily search. There was just enough room between the shelves for the little metal thing to extend, with its strange claw for grasping. What was worse, it didn’t seem like there was any particular organization to the objects stored here. Almost all of them were in containers exactly the same size, with the same flexible not-glass containing them. Many had paper labels, which of course she couldn’t read.
At least if there was any consolation, it was that anypony would’ve had just as hard a time as her. It wasn’t like anypony but Nightmare Moon herself could read the ancient tongue of this tomb.
Without any other clear guide, there was nothing more for her to do but to open each and every container she could get her hooves on and search for things that felt like eyes. Getting the first one open proved problematic—despite lacking locks, it was held closed with a complex interlocking system of tabs, which had to be pried very carefully. It wasn’t meant for hooves, that much was obvious to her. But with her teeth and just the right pressure, she could get it to let up for her.
But once she got it open, she could do little more than taste and feel her way around through each box. Many smelled immediately foul to her, and those she shut as quickly as they were opened. The ancient Alicorns who had built this place were experts at preservation, so that even their dead things could survive through time to stink into the future.
But there were some things that might be interesting to a pony with full senses. Metal things with bits of glass, or moving parts. Those she stowed carefully into a single one of the boxes, which she’d found empty to start with. If it could keep the contents safe through time, then she could expect it to keep them safe through the rest of their trip through Vanaheimr.
After a half hour of searching, during which she found nothing round or otherwise obviously eye-shaped, Arclight finally began to stir. He groaned, and his scent shifted instantly to uncomfortable. “Stars above, Faith, what did you eat?”
“It wasn’t me,” she defended. “I closed the box as soon as I could, but some of the smell got out.”
“Oh.” He sat up, twisting around. “That’s disgusting. You realize our air is going to follow us around for the whole trip, right? There’s no way to get rid of a bad smell.”
“Magic,” she suggested. “Did Cozen never teach you any spells like that? Seems like an obvious oversight.”
He groaned. “I thought you were supposed to be my marefriend. Shouldn’t you be nicer to me?”
She tapped him on the shoulder with a wing. “It’s nice to tell each other our faults so we can improve them.” A lie—ponies had been telling her how blind she was every day of her life, and she was still bucking blind. But it felt like the sort of thing a marefriend should say.
“You really destroyed this place,” he went on, a few moments later. “Aren’t you worried? The princess isn’t going to…”
“You think Nightmare Moon is going to be mad that we put some trash on the floor in a city of corpses? This place is so big she’ll never find this one little room.” She settled back onto her haunches a moment later, wings folding to either side. “It’s pointless anyway, because I didn’t find any metal eyes. So I guess this isn’t the room we needed.” She pushed her box of trophies towards him across the floor. “This stuff all seemed interesting, but none of it felt like eyes.”
He lifted up the box, and she heard metal bounce around inside it for a moment as he shuffled through its contents. “I wonder what any of this stuff does. Do you know?”
“Not a clue,” she said. “I guess the ancients liked mostly flat rectangles. But it feels… complicated. Like they cared a lot about those things. I figure if they cared, it’s powerful. And if not, then at least it’s metal.”
“Makes as much sense as anything.” He pushed the box closed, then there were fastening sounds as he secured it away in their saddlebags. “I’m about ready to move again. I just… have to take it slow, so I don’t use too much energy at once. And… unless you want to sleep in a room we find and trust it won’t take our air away, we can only stay here as long as I can stay awake.”
“If that’s true, then…” She pointed again, straight through the walls. “I can’t be selfish and keep looking for eyes. We need to go there.”
“I still have no idea what you think is that way,” he said. “We haven’t found anything but corpses so far.”
She rose to her hooves, prancing forward towards the edge of the bubble as confidently as she could. Expecting him to follow. It worked—behaving like she was in charge might be an illusion, but it had a way of making ponies act like she was. It worked on Arclight more often than not.
“I guess we can go that way,” he finally said. “Even if I don’t know what you’re looking for. I don’t know where else we would go, so… a random direction is just as good as a plan.”
They set off down the halls again, in the bounding lope that was standard for the moonborn. None of their parents were ever quite as good at it, even Penumbra. But for them, the bouncing skid was natural. If the other tribes had wings, Faith guessed that learning to fly would be simple for them.
“Unless we see a library,” Arclight continued. “My mom is always saying that it’s not objects we’re missing, it’s knowledge. That Nightmare Moon knows so much more than we do, that our lives could be much easier if she’d share. But she doesn’t, because… well, nopony knows. Except maybe your mom.”
“Penumbra?” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure she knows as much as everypony thinks. She’s an assassin with nopony to kill. And…” She’s bitter about dad. He could’ve been one of them, and been immortal like her. But he wouldn’t.
“And?” he prompted.
“And keep your eyes open for a left, we’ve gone too far this way,” she said lamely.
They continued like that for what felt like hours, with her directing him along an unseen track towards a destination that neither of them understood.
From the things Arclight said during their trip, Faith assumed there was much to see. Ancient, crumbling monuments, massive devices that he insisted “resembled” some of Moonrise’s own infrastructure. A few little rooms he guessed had once been the cozy homes of the noble and great Alicorns of Vanaheimr.
But there was no time to waste on any of that, not when her goal was so certain. Faith was going to find the light in the darkness, the one that seemed to call to her. She couldn’t prove it, but it felt almost as though it was the entire reason she’d wanted to come to the city in the first place. Like she’d known about it without ever knowing it existed.
But there were plenty of discouraging things to find in Vanaheimr too. Frequently they found their way down a hallway that seemed promising, only to see it end in a gaping cliff, torn away from the structure itself, or with a skylight of molten metal that obviously hadn’t been part of the original construction.
“What do you think did that?” she said, nudging at the edge of one with her hoof. She felt the metal there, its shape boiled and irregular. Not like anything that came from the forge, or like the metal that Dustwalkers found on the moon’s surface. It tasted funny too, a slight burn against her tongue. Like it remembered the fire it had brought to the city.
“A weapon, obviously,” Arclight answered unhelpfully. “We were an army once, I’ve heard Lord Commander Chain Mail talking about it. We were winning the war in Equestria, that’s why we got banished here. Apparently we had… trebuchets, I think they’re called. They would fling things at the tyrant’s castles. Fire, rocks, lightning. The better question is: who? Who hated the Alicorns so much that they would come all the way to the moon to burn their city down? And…” He fell suddenly quiet, tone fearful. “If they could beat the Alicorns, what hope do we have?”
“They won’t come for us,” Faith argued. “Whoever they were. That would be like… a princess attacking a village. It doesn’t make sense. You go for enemies that matter. We don’t even know who they are. They got their way, Vanaheimr is gone, and… we’ll just have to hope they don’t come back.”
Arclight nodded his agreement, though he didn’t smell like he’d been convinced. More that he didn’t want to argue with her.
They continued their search, until eventually they reached the source of the light that Faith had seen. Arclight was dragging his hooves a little by then, worn down by his constant shield spell and having to reign her in all the time.
Faith could tell they’d reached somewhere special before the object of her fascination actually came into view. The room felt somehow… still, like the shrine to Nightmare Moon sometimes did when she visited alone with a prayer.
The space itself was broken with lots of square, regular blocks, each one made of more metal and glass and frequently trailing wires. But probing one of them with her hoof didn’t reveal anything interesting, so she quickly moved on.
“Stop,” Arclight said, yanking her back with his magic. He spoke in a low whisper, the sort he used when he was trying not to be overheard by anypony else. “There’s light down there. It feels… alive.”
“I know,” she whispered back. She didn’t fight against him, but leaned in close. She wanted him by her side. Not just because the bubble wouldn’t reach all the way to the source, she could already hear that. But she didn’t want to face it alone. “What do you see, Arclight?”
“There’s… a doorway, all sealed up. And right in front of it, like a… pedestal? There’s a thing on it, glowing. It’s the strongest magic I’ve ever seen, Faith.” He lowered his voice even further, hot breath against one of her ears. “It’s more magical than the princess. I’ve never felt so much power in my life. I don’t think we should be here.”
More magical than the princess. The words themselves were heretical. They’d probably earn the pony who spoke them a few months hard labor if Nightmare Moon was in a good mood, or a one-way ticket to the surface if she wasn’t.
Yet now that she was near it, even Faith could feel what he meant. The power was so intense she didn’t have to be a unicorn to feel it drawing her downward. Like an invisible slope in the floor.
“It’s calling me,” she said. She wasn’t sure where the words came from, yet once she spoke them she knew she was right. “It’s been… waiting for me, for years.”
“What?” Arclight wrapped one foreleg around her neck, pulling her back into a worried embrace. “Faith, don’t be stupid! You’ve never been here. There’s no reason for it to do that.”
She stopped, and turned a little so that she could feel his forehead against hers. She couldn’t look into his eyes, but she could imitate the gesture. “I’ve never told anypony this… but I’m not completely blind.”
She felt a hoof against her muzzle, sudden and sharp. Not actually hard enough to hurt, but completely unexpected. “You didn’t see that.”
She glowered at him. “I can’t see very much. Only… some things. Two ponies—my mom, Penumbra, and the princess. And only them. Not anything they’re touching, or their clothes… just them. It only works for a little ways, like one room over. But this…” She pointed directly at the object, though there were several of the regular square walls in the way. “I could see this the instant we got here. It means something, Arclight. It means…”
But she couldn’t finish her sentence. She knew it was important, but that was as far as it went. She couldn’t say if the object was a friend, or if her senses were leading her towards danger. The two were very closely tied with the princess, and her own mother was one of the most dangerous creatures in all of Moonrise.
“You don’t have a clue,” Arclight said. “Maybe it’s important, maybe not. But I know magic, Faith. I know whatever spell is on that thing could make it so we never existed. If we go up there, I won’t be able to stop it from doing whatever it was designed to do. Or… whatever it wants.”
“I know.” She pulled away from him. “I don’t care. I’m going.” She started walking, stepping out from the broken square towers. If it was a pony, it would see her now—but it didn’t react.
“I could leave!” he said. “You’re not going without any air!”
She stopped, glaring back in his direction. “You wouldn’t do that to me, Arclight. Because I’m not stopping.” She called his bluff, marching down the gradually sloped floor towards that single point of pure light.
Where the princess and her mother were darkness, this was… illumination. Waiting for her.
As she walked closer, she found the light grew so bright that she could see more than just the light. The ground under her hooves suddenly had dimension defined in more than just her imagination. Pillars appeared around the light, far more clearly than her sonic senses could give her. Though like that sense, there was nothing of what ponies called “color.” Only an incredible light, and everything else.
Including herself. This was what Arclight meant about the danger of this object. Its power turned on her could erase her from existence and leave nothing behind.
“Stop,” Arclight called, his voice distant now. He wasn’t that far away physically—he was close enough for her to see the shadow he made in that single incredible light. But she didn’t turn around.
“I’m here,” she said, and not to him. She reached out towards the object, one hoof extending. Reaching towards it was like pushing against an open tap with all her might. The flowing water within wanted to wash her away. But she wasn’t going to be deterred.
Then she touched it, and the entire world went still. Arclight’s voice faded, along with the settling of the ancient city. Even her own heartbeat seemed to freeze, a single immortal moment.
“Evaluate. Reconstitute.”
She heard it, speaking clearly into her mind. It didn’t sound like a pony—it didn’t have sex or age. It communicated directly in the idea behind each word, as pure as she knew them.
Communication was instantaneous. Somehow she felt she knew what it meant, even if her mind couldn’t wrap itself around the instruction.
What are you? she thought back, knowing she would get an answer.
“Cognitive Singularity. Designation: Polestar.”
She didn’t have any idea what that first part meant, though it tried to show her. A mind, or… a parent. A guardian, but with a religious weight. A set of eyes wiser than any pony’s could ever be. The second part was easy, its name.
Where are we?
“Vanaheimr. Shelter, waystation. Destroyed.”
Is it safe for us?
“You.”
What are you watching, Polestar?
“Progenitors.”
Why?
Instead of answering with words, it showed her a weapon. She saw it as a sword, though she knew it wasn’t. It swung, and a whole world cracked in half. Equus, as her mother described it hanging in the sky, collapsing into a ball of molten rock. Thousands of other worlds doing likewise, in an expanding cloud as fast as light. Once swung, everything would die.
She began to cry—not just because of the horror of the vision, but because this time she did see. Reds, and yellows, and oranges and browns. Polestar gave her the words for things she’d never known. Don’t take it away. She would watch the world burn over and over again, if only to see something.
“Rectify. Damaged. Iterate.”
It burned her. Heat wrapped around her from all sides, throwing her backward across the room. She landed in a heap, sliding along the ground until she smashed into one of the tall metal cabinets, and finally came to a stop.
“Faith!” Arclight darted towards her, dropping down to her side moments later. She felt his hooves wrap around her, holding her against his chest. “Talk to me, Faith!”
She rolled towards him, moaning with pain from the impact, and something worse. Her whole body still ached. But when she opened her eyes—there was no more vision than before. The Polestar had spoken to her, but it had not healed her.
She cried a little louder then, into Arclight’s chest. This was it—a power so vast it should’ve been able to fix her. But it hadn’t.
“It seems you are still alive,” said a voice, dark and dangerous as it echoed through the room. “The Polestar did not judge you—I suppose that means I will.” She was still blind, but Faith needed no sight to recognize the voice of her Princess.