Summer stared down off the edge of the deck, adjusting her scarf under the jacket and flexing her wings one at a time. The Horizon couldn’t moor alongside the balcony as Sharp had first wanted, not with the wind blowing so fiercely. If the wind ever did stop, they might smash the gasbag up into the jagged ice, and they’d be stranded.
For humans this wouldn’t have been much of an issue: they could toss a rope ladder overboard and climb down with primate grace. Summer’s flying might not be great, but she was fairly confident that she could direct a downward glide enough to land on the icy outcropping below.
“How are you going to get down?” she asked, watching as Sharp folded a section of the railing. “I know your hooves are magic or whatever, but there’s no way you can climb a line.” The wind was near-constant, forcing her to yell every word. On days like this, she never would’ve left the observatory’s protective walls. But it didn’t seem like waiting would help much here.
Sharp didn’t answer, instead opening a compartment in the deck and lifting a mechanism inside until it clicked into place vertically. Rope was already coiled around it, along with a harness on one end. There was a crank on the other, and a thinner line with something like a handle on the end. “Getting down is easy. Getting back up is where things get buckin’ hard. You’ll probably have to crank me back up. Ten meters or so… should be doable. Hippogriffs are stronger than they look.”
She glared stubbornly back, but didn’t argue. She was too tense, so all she did was perch on the edge of the deck and watch as he slipped into the harness. Sharp would be carrying most of the weight—his saddlebags had the only tools they’d be bringing. Even their moving on the edge of the deck made the Horizon strain against the lines a little. Far below, ice rumbled in protest. Whether one of those lines was about to snap at any moment, she couldn’t say.
She didn’t jump to glide herself, waiting beside the mechanism as Sharp edged over the side of the deck, then walked backwards into open air. The rope spooled out for him in gradual clicks, lowering itself slowly without any input. She kept one claw near the crank anyway, ready to catch it if it dropped him. But it didn’t, and soon enough he was waving from the icy floor below.
Summer backed up a few steps, then took the railing at a running start, spreading her wings and angling down towards the ground. She was a bird, she was aerodynamic, made for this. Even so, she felt like she was swimming upstream, with the air shoving her back with all its might. She flapped, and the wind pushed. If she didn’t make it, the ocean waited two hundred meters below, filled with shallow rocks and sharpened spires of ice.
She landed a few meters from the edge, her claws digging and scraping into the ice before she finally came to a stop. Her wings shook, but she couldn’t keep the proud smile from her face as she hurried to catch up with Sharp. I actually did it. That was almost flying this time. At the rate she was improving, she would probably be able to take off and fly on her own right about the time she went through the Doorway and gave up her power to fly forever.
“Nice!” Sharp wrapped a hoof around her shoulder for a moment, before tossing the harness aside. “You’re getting so graceful, Summer. A year from now, and nopony will be able to tell you haven’t been flying your whole life.”
Is that a compliment, or…? She turned away so he wouldn’t see her embarrassment, scanning the surface of the ice under their hooves. “You sure there’s any way to get into this place? The whole city might be frozen, then how would we get anything out?”
“Then we’re bucked,” Sharp said flatly. “But I doubt it is. It wouldn’t have been any warmer when they built this place… if the Windigos were ravaging Unicornia, then it was probably colder back then. It will be protected from the ice. Even after all this time, it’s going to have… mechanisms in place. You saw the Doorway—the same creatures built this place. They understood engineering as ponies are only now learning to match. The traps they left behind in some of their oldest creations are still working thousands of years later.”
“That last one probably isn’t a good thing,” Summer said ruefully. “For us, anyway. I’m not Indiana Jones. I just want to know how our worlds were connected.”
They walked along the surface of the ice for a good few minutes, with nothing but the ocean behind them and a constant slope to remind them of what would happen if they lost their grip. Summer followed directly behind Sharp, digging her claws in with each step even as they went numb with cold. They didn’t seem to be stiffening much the way her hands would’ve. Bird limbs just didn’t work the same way.
Eventually Sharp pointed at a patch of unusually dark ice, looking eager. “I think we’ve got a way in!” He stopped, resting against her while he fished around for a metal icepick. “Being an earth pony might not have gifted me with the variety of abilities a unicorn can conjure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t put my talents to use,” Sharp said, securing the saddlebags again. “Now, get ready. I have no idea what will happen when we break our way in.”
“Then how am I supposed to get—”
He swung, and the ice under their hooves began to crack. She watched the cracks spread from the point of impact, a thin spider web of lines that groaned and grumbled for a few moments before finally giving way.
She spread her wings by reflex, though it did her little good. The space was so tight that she couldn’t do much to slow herself down, only tumble into the gloom beside Sharp.
At least she couldn’t fall very far. Less than ten feet they fell, until she landed in an awkward heap against one wall, completely tangled with Sharp and half-buried in chunks of ice.
Sharp groaned, sitting up so soon he hardly seemed affected by the fall in the first place. At least he offered his hoof for leverage to help her pull herself up. “You know, in retrospect I probably should’ve realized the whole thing was going to cave in around us. You good?”
She flexed her wings in turn, finding herself only a little sore from the fall. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean… nothing’s broken. Might be sore in the morning.” She reached down to her mostly-empty saddlebag, removing the one thing she had that might actually help with something like this: her headlamp.
She flicked it on with one claw, grinning at the glow that surrounded them. There wasn’t much she hadn’t been expecting down here. An ancient icy chamber, every surface packed thick with snow. There was a doorway leading sideways, positioned well up the wall.
“What did I tell you about weatherproofing?” He hurried over to it, resting one claw against the door. It was only wood, and despite its age didn’t look terribly weakened. It lives in a freezer. Not too surprising. “All that empty space below the door… that’s not just to make it inconvenient to walk around. There’s a drain down there. And even with the drain frozen over, it stopped the door from getting blocked off. I bet you a dozen bits there’s a hallway that goes up on the other side, like a sewer trap.”
She made her way up beside him, nudging the doorway with a hoof. The wood wasn’t quite as strong as it looked, wobbling a little under her touch. “Looks like we can break through. Ready for what’s inside?”
“Nope!” He grinned, then shoved his shoulder up against the door with all his might. The old wood groaned, then shattered like glass, splattering all over the floor. Warm air blasted all around them—well, warmer air. It wasn’t like the heated interior of the Horizon, but it was enough to turn the ice in her feathers to frost.
“Interesting,” he said, sniffing deeply for a few seconds as he took it in. She did the same, fearing the worst. Maybe this city was abandoned the way Moria had been in Lord of the Rings, and it would be full of bodies. I should probably show him that movie. He’s ready for a little war.
But there were no bodies in the hallway, just a low arch that led up exactly as he had predicted, before going back down again. Into the gloom beyond, and God only knew what.
She made her way forward slowly, wishing irrationally that they’d taken the time to make a gun. Because of course a gun would be incredibly effective against the sort of traps most likely to survive for thousands of years. It was totally rational!
“Does your research say anything else about Athemis?” she asked nervously. “Aside from the name.”
“Uh…” He slowed for a moment, thinking. “It was supposed to be a jumping-off point for expeditions. A… center of learning. That’s why I was so eager to find it. Your necklace came from here, or I think it did. I suspect that may be why no bird recognized it.”
“You don’t reclaim the explorer’s outpost if you don’t want your birds to explore,” she finished for him. “They did send us with that message for Earth, though. Maybe they’re ready to start again.”
“Guess so.” He paused another moment. “Keep close with that light, but I should be in front. I’m an earth pony, I’ve seen us take spears without bleeding. Most of the old traps down here were made for other birds, I bet. They’ll bounce off me like nothing. But you…”
“I’m not Superman, I get it. You can go first.” It was where she’d rather be anyway. Summer wasn’t Indiana Jones. But being along for the ride was maybe a little more worth it.
They passed through several uninteresting rooms, filled with mundane objects and simple script on the wall. It seemed the top floors were used to store their basic supplies—which she thought was completely stupid, until she realized how this place probably got everything. This far north and in such an unfriendly location it wouldn’t be easy to grow much. They’d have to bring it all in from elsewhere.
“And you said this place was… how old? Over a thousand years?” At his nod, she continued. “Damn, the history of your world is confusing. You don’t have basic technology, but your ancient cultures could do more than ours ever could. Supplying a whole city out in the middle of the ocean. I’m not sure how we’d do it without commercial aircraft. Unless huge airships are a thousand years old too.”
“Nopony knows for sure, but… I doubt they were as impressive as today. The pegasus ponies had them first—towing clouds around with wing power. But hippogriffs could’ve done that too, so maybe.”
Despite his fears, they didn’t encounter any traps in the upper floors. Just a structure that could’ve come out of the human middle ages. Stairwells leading down were broken with large bulwarks of stone she took for checkpoints, several of which had collapsed and forced them to find another way.
Eventually the utilitarian corridors and tight stairwells gave way to something that seemed like it was actually made for someone to live in, with a floor of finished wood and regular mounting-brackets on the wall for something. Candles, maybe? It would take an awful lot of them to light somewhere so big.
“This place is huge,” Sharp muttered. “Makes you wonder just how extensive the ancient birds managed to explore. You don’t build a fortress like this unless you think you’re going to use it.”
“If the Doorway was the only one like it, you’d think they’d put the fortress right there, instead of all the way out here.”
“There probably was something up there,” Sharp said. “Remember, they had cities all over, or at least… points on the map. I don’t know how big they were. But they didn’t survive, so we don’t have any way of knowing now. Unless we can find a records room or something in here. Some of their books might’ve survived, if they stayed dry enough. It’s plenty cold.”
They wandered from hall to hall, passing areas that had obviously once been bedrooms and living quarters, with ancient furniture that didn’t quite fit in any era she knew of. It clearly wasn’t built for ponies, judging from the claw-scratches on anything at the right height, and the high ceilings. So high that Sharp looked a little uncomfortable, eyes always scanning for danger that could be around any corner.
But the deeper they got, the clearer it became that his suspicions were incorrect. There weren’t traps, not even the broken remnants of them. Only more fortifications, some broken in ways that suggested they’d been used.
“I don’t understand,” Sharp said, after holding them up for almost ten minutes investigating a massive set of double-doors. “The creatures of this era were fanatical about protecting their creations. They were so hard to make that entire lifetimes of their best craftsponies would be spent to make just one, and they wanted them protected. But there’s… nothing here. Not so much as an effective curse written on the walls. Unless that necklace doesn’t work as well translating this language.”
“Pretty sure it’s working,” she said absently. “I don’t think they expected intruders. Maybe the soldiers stationed here were the trap. Getting past them was more than they imagined.” She nudged him in the shoulder, grinning. “For someone who hasn’t had this place try to kill him, you sound upset. Did you want the danger?”
“No.” He shifted uneasily on his hooves for a moment. “I just don’t know how to place this construction. It’s so utilitarian, but then the scale just makes no sense. Ponies could fly over our heads and not kick us by accident. Maybe that’s the point? Like… two lanes of traffic?”
“Maybe.” She glanced back the way they’d come, frowning deeply. “How long until we go back and check on the Horizon?”
“Let’s make this next room our last for the moment. We can go back and check on Emerald, then maybe you can take her back into a few upper floors a little later. Without any of the danger or treasure, she’ll probably get bored before too long.” He settled one hoof on the old locking mechanism, then twisted and snapped it cleanly off the door. He shoved, and the old wood groaned as it swung inward.
Summer froze in the doorway, staring down into the massive stone chamber beyond, its ceiling so high that her headlamp barely illuminated. Her eyes swept over an ancient, shattered mechanism, with all the complexity of the ancient arctic Doorway, a massive vessel with an inner cavity broken. Whatever this thing had been, it didn’t work anymore.
All around it were the bodies, pierced with arrows or gored with claws or slashed with swords. The cold had preserved them remarkably well, in many cases even freezing the pain on their faces when they died. Ancient armor of chain and padded mail, with a single knight in full plate dented and scratched by the blows that had finally shattered it and felled him. They had bright banners, and shields painted with house liveries, all faded somewhat with time. Even so, Summer was fairly certain she recognized a few.
But even if they’d rotted to dust, Summer would’ve been able to see the truth from the shape of the armor and the size of their weapons. These weren’t ponies, or even hippogriffs.
The frozen bodies staring out from around the broken device were humans.
“Sweet Celestia,” Sharp said, staring down with wide, horrified eyes. “What kind of monsters were the hippogriffs fighting?”
“Travelers,” Summer said flatly. “Remember when you asked what I looked like? These are humans. Or… were.”