Summer Ray stood in the doorway of a room full of corpses, trying to process what she was seeing. In some ways, this was worse than having Kate try to kill her, or even jumping out of a window. At least she only had to fear for herself then, instead of burning with the sympathetic agony towards these people and the battle they’d fought.
It was worse than anything she’d seen on film. These weren’t show-props, but real corpses, each one its own unique flavor of horror. Skin was shriveled and sunken, turned gray or brown and curling up around the hair. Fluids had leaked, then frozen, and bones were exposed from wounds or just uneven decay. At least it was too cold for maggots.
She made her way down the steps in a daze, ignoring Sharp’s restraining hoof as she looked between them. She wasn’t particularly religious, or she might’ve offered a prayer for these ancient dead. That made her more of an investigator instead, trying to make sense of a battle that had ended before the new world was even discovered.
“You don’t have to stay here,” Sharp called. “It’s probably not going to get us sick, not with this cold. But you don’t have to see this. Most creatures don’t do well in…” He winced, wobbling on his hooves. “Graveyards.”
He might be physically strong enough to knock down a door of solid wood, but pony constitution had its limits. Should she be proud that she could look at this without turning away? It’s going to be in my nightmares though. Emerald can’t see this.
They were so big. Twice her height, maybe more. She’d felt like she was big compared to ponies sometimes, but now that put her in perspective. It was like walking through a graveyard of giants. Fighting her sickness, Summer reached down and removed the camera for a few quick stills, catching as much of the room as she could. It didn't matter how much it confused her, there might be critical information here and she couldn't miss it.
“Are we sure the hippogriffs were the ones who built this place?” she asked. “Think about the ceilings, the doors. These people could’ve used the whole building. It’s not like the buildings at Mt. Aris had huge ceilings everywhere.”
He did his best to follow her, dodging between the dead with nervous hooves. His tail lifted high behind him, as though he was afraid it would brush against any of the corpses. “That’s an interesting theory, except it was on hippogriff maps. It supposedly held a great treasure, remember? More than the wealth of a king.”
“Maybe it did.” She gestured at the center of the room. “Look at these bodies. It looks like they were trying to protect this… thing at the center. They’re circled tight around it. Those fallen shields there, I bet… it looks like they were holding someone off.”
“Who?” Sharp’s voice was thin and reedy in the vaulted space. “There’s nopony here, Summer. Were they fighting each other?”
She frowned, circling the room as she searched for more evidence. Near the back, there were bodies without armor. They had only brown robes, but they carried heavy iron picks. Those might match some of the damage to the object in the center…
“I think I got it!” Without realizing what she was doing, she lifted into the air over the artifact, hovering there as she spoke. “Look in the corners and off to the side. Those are carts, and some of them have stretchers. I feel like… this has to be another Doorway. Given this evidence, I think we’re safe saying it goes to my world.”
“Sure,” he said, staring up at her. “The construction is the same as the one in the north, certainly. Maybe even more complex. A later design.”
“So, I imagine… there was an evacuation. The humans who lived in this fortress were fleeing back the way they came. These soldiers dead here were guarding the way. And when the battle was lost, these people in back broke the machine so that it couldn’t be used to follow them. They fought until the end.”
“But fought who?”
“Hippogriffs, I think.” She landed beside him, walking carefully back towards the open entrance of the room. “Look at all these arrows. Stuck into the door, all over the ground here… but not one body. I think the hippogriffs won this battle. That’s why there aren’t any of their dead here, because once they’d finished they could bury them properly. They abandoned Athemis not because of some mythical creatures attacking, but because it wasn’t valuable anymore.” She pointed at the object in the center again. “This was what they wanted. Without it, there was no point keeping creatures living somewhere so cold and remote. I should know, I’ve lived somewhere like this for months at a time. It sucks.”
Sharp frowned again, his expression pensive. “That’s an… interesting theory, Summer. It does seem to fit the evidence in this room. But even if it’s true, it only raises more questions than it answers. Why didn’t the hippogriffs fix the portal? What were Travelers doing here? Why were they killing each other?”
“I don’t know,” she finally said, settling back onto her haunches. “There are… plenty of lost land myths from this period in my history. Thule, Hy-Brasil, Kvenland… maybe they did exist, and we didn’t find them because they weren’t on our planet at all. They were here.”
But she was losing steam fast. This wasn’t a historical site—these were corpses, shriveled and rotten with bones exposed surrounded by pools of organic refuse that had to be their own blood. They’d died in agony, her own ancient cousins, fighting hippogriffs. For some reason. I’m gonna be sick.
She stumbled back from the room, flopping past Sharp and making her way out the door.
She leaned against the wall as she hacked and coughed, spewing her breakfast out onto the frozen floor. As it turned out, vomiting didn’t suck any less as a bird.
Next thing she knew, she felt a leg wrap gently around her shoulder, holding her close. Sharp’s body was warm even through his jacket, and she leaned against him without thinking. “I thought you were invincible,” he said. “It scared me a little, that you could see that without it getting to you. Guess we all deal with horror a little differently.”
She nodded weakly, wiping the slime from her beak and going for her flask. She emptied the whole thing in a few gulps, washing away the awful taste of bile.
“I feel like I was… putting it out of my mind for a bit there,” she said weakly. “Until I couldn’t suddenly, and…” She straightened. “I’d rather find a library, but this is big too. I don’t know what it means, but… I feel like it’s an important piece. When I was in the hippogriff court, they spoke about an ancient enemy, that had followed them here to try and kill them. They seemed convinced they would come back. That was why they didn’t send a whole expedition to Earth with us. They didn’t want to expose themselves too much and attract their old enemy back.”
“That might be important,” Sharp agreed. “But if Travelers were here, why doesn’t everypony know?”
“Maybe… they didn’t care much about ponies?” she suggested. “Maybe they really were fighting the hippogriffs. For some reason.” She glanced back around the corner, then felt her stomach protest again, and quickly turned around. “It’s been long enough, we should probably head back and check on the ship.”
Once they were walking, she continued, “What’s really weird to me is how different those people are. I recognize some of their symbols, they’re from a different part of the world than the one I thought was connected to Equestria. I don’t know when exactly everything happened, but…” She hesitated for a moment. “Those parts of my world weren’t connected back then. And if they did fight…”
She shuddered at the implications of a medieval Europe with mechanical crossbows and esprit de corps against hunter gatherers in the far north. If they fought, it wouldn’t have been a long war.
“We don’t have to figure everything out right now,” Sharp said. “With what we’ve seen… we can come back and look through this place with fresh eyes tomorrow. And probably after you’ve shown Emerald around a bit. I don’t want to tell her about that battle until we’re gone, though. No filly should see that.”
Summer didn’t argue the point. She wished she hadn’t seen it either.
They made their way back up the way they’d come, doing their best to follow the same paths. It wasn’t a maze, and it probably would’ve been a straight shot to the room if it wasn’t so old. But battle or time hadn’t been kind to the old place, and sections of stairwell and corridor had collapsed.
Summer heard it as they neared the top of the stairs, a distant rumbling that first sounded like the ocean. But as her ears finally settled on the sound, her eyes went wide. The Horizon’s horn.
“Listen!” she called, going dead silent and putting out a wing to stop him. “Can you hear that?”
It took his pony ears a moment, but then he tensed. “Oh buck. The walls… I should’ve realized we wouldn’t be able to hear it well through all that stone.”
They ran, galloping between rooms and hallways, following the chalk Sharp had left on the walls. They didn’t have that far to go, really—but it felt like miles as the horn sounded again and again. She could practically make out Emerald’s desperation as she used it over and over, begging for help that wasn’t coming.
Finally they emerged in the top floor, scrambling up the pile of ice and debris until they were out in the open.
The Horizon strained against a single anchor line, trailing the others behind it into the open sky. The wind buffeted the poor ship back, straining a little more against the rope with every second.
“Quick!” Sharp urged her forward, and she scrambled behind him, nearly slipping sideways off the ice for a second, claws scraping and tearing through it but stopping her from falling. It was a good thing Sharp had better footing.
He reached the harness moments later, offering the loop of rope to her. “Here, Summer. Get in.”
“Buck that!” She shoved it right back, wrapping it around him with the vastly improved dexterity of her claws. “Which one of us can fly that ship?”
Sharp grumbled, but stopped fighting and went to work with the buckles. “I guess you were flying earlier. You just didn’t want to tell anypony you could?”
“I… what?”
Off to their left, the single anchor-line snapped, whipping back around to smack into the roof with a terrifying impact. Sharp yelped as the harness ripped him away into open air, dragging him back with the Horizon as it finally lost its battle with the wind.
Meanwhile, all the stress they’d done to the thick layer of ice was finally enough. The floor began to slide away from her, off the roof of the ancient fortress. She backed up, squealing with terror, but she was much too slow. It took her over the edge, out into the angry gray sky.
She spread her wings as she fell, catching herself in the air and letting the torrent of ice and snow rumble past her. She was falling, or… no, she wasn’t. She was holding herself in the air, her wings moving in regular time. They were stronger than they looked, stronger than her size suggested should be possible.
Summer Ray was flying. Or… maybe “hovering” was a better description. The ocean wasn’t getting any closer. She tried not to think about it, for fear that she’d stop and start to fall again.
“Summer!” Sharp called, his voice fading as the Horizon fell away from view. “Summer, get aboard! Emerald can’t work the crank by herself! I won’t be able to fly back to you!”
Right. I can do this.
She wasn’t going to have much choice.
Summer turned, eyes narrowing as she focused on the retreating Horizon. It wasn’t flying away from her, but it wasn’t moving fast enough to fight the wind either. It probably could’ve been helping her reach it if Emerald hadn’t rushed to the crank. But she could hardly blame a kid for wanting to help him.
She began to fly, eyes widening as she realized she wasn’t as helpless as she’d feared. She was moving, the ship growing bigger even as her wings began to strain from the effort. Her body might be built for this, but she’d basically never used these muscles, and they were already starting to scream from the effort. If they gave out, she’d hit the ocean like cement.
But she didn’t give up, didn’t let herself look away from her goal. She wasn’t going to vanish into the ocean, she wasn’t going to drown here. She flew.
She scrambled up over the edge of the deck like someone who’d been lost at sea might climb up into the lifeboat, her whole body shaking from the effort. But there wouldn’t be enough time to wait. Emerald waved her wings frantically, face desperate. “Help me! Summer, he’s slipping!”
There was no time to be proud of what she’d accomplished. Summer darted across the deck, knocking over a crate of supplies and not caring that she was scratching up the wood. Poor Emerald strained against the crank, which was slowly twisting the other direction, the mechanism giving out at last.
Summer rose onto her hindlegs, then gripped the crank with both claws. It twisted her around for a moment, her hooves scraping along the deck—then she braced against a wall, and stopped moving. Her wings and back were still burning, but she hadn’t used any upper-body strength yet. She still had a little energy left. “With me, Emerald. Turn… now!”
The gears squealed and protested, and for a second she wondered if they’d lose this rope too, and Sharp would go careening into the ocean. But painful second after second, the crank held.
After what felt like an hour of agonizing struggle against gravity, one of Sharp’s legs poked over the edge of the Horizon. Summer flopped forward onto the crank, holding it in place with her weight. “Help him up,” she said, pointing. “We’re… almost through this.”
Emerald squealed, flying over to the edge and offering her hooves. She wasn’t terribly strong, particularly after using every ounce of strength she had to lift him, but he didn’t need much. Just a little leverage, and he finally managed to heave himself over the side, laying onto his back and gasping for air. His mane was swept back and covered with ice, and his whole body was shaking. He opened his mouth to gasp, but there wasn’t even any condensation in his breath.
Fuck he’s going hypothermic.
“Emerald, I need you to make sure we don’t crash. Can you do that?”
“I, uh…” She shivered. “Sure. Just drop some ballast, and we’ll rise. Nothing to crash into up high.”
“Perfect.” She bent down beside Sharp, pushing back one of his sleeves and feeling his leg. It should’ve been protected from the biting arctic cold by his jacket, but apparently not hanging over the ocean and getting whipped around for ages.
“Hey, can you hear me?” she asked. She couldn’t speak too gently, not with the wind still howling all around them. “Sharp, say something.”
The earth pony groaned in response, struggling to stand.
She pushed him back down. “No, I got you. I worked in an arctic research base. They trained us for this.” She bent down, removing his saddlebags and the harness, shoving them as far away from the missing railing as she could. She could only hope they wouldn’t go flying into the ocean.
Then she heaved him up onto her back—no easy task, considering they were about the same size. But she wasn’t going to leave him out here to freeze, no matter how much it hurt.
Summer clambered down belowdecks, moving as slowly and deliberately as she could. She couldn’t risk slipping and dropping him, but she did need to get him inside as quick as she could.
The stairs were hard, and she could feel her legs about to give out from the strain. She was a software developer, not a lifeguard. This was all much too intense for her.
Finally she made it to the sofa, and she could settle him down, removing his soaking-wet clothing as carefully as she could. Pony fur had done him one favor at least: clothes didn’t want to freeze to it like they sometimes did to human skin.
“I’m… not that bad…” he finally croaked, eyes watching her groggily. “You were out in it too. No… reason I shouldn’t be able to cope with it.”
She shrugged, removing the huge comforter from the bed and dragging it over. “I’d like to use chemical heat-pads for this,” she said. “We had a hypothermia kit in the airlock of Barrow for cases just like this. This won’t work quite as well.”
“There’s… hot water,” he said. “In the shower.”
“Can’t do that. Heating you up that way can stop your heart. It has to be more gradual than that.”
She tossed her own jacket to the floor, then peeled off the damp thermals underneath before clambering in next to him and throwing the blanket over them both.
“I’m the warmest thing I can think of,” she said. It wasn’t quite what she’d imagined her first time in bed would him would be like, but at least now she was too invested in keeping him alive to be embarrassed about it.
“I thought you were… a scholar.” He turned slightly towards her, cheeks still sunken and colorless. She felt a brief flash of disgust as she remembered the bodies they’d left behind, now trailing away as the wind pushed them. “How do you know all this?”
“I was a scholar with a sense of adventure,” she countered. “Now stop squirming. At least you don’t have any fingers and toes that might have frostbite.”