"Hi! Hello!" Amber waved enthusiastically, finding no shortage of ponies who were waving back. "I'd stop and bump all your hooves, but really need to rest and wash up...!"
Valey skipped the gangplank, leaping to shore with a single jump. Shinespark took the less-athletic way beside her, and the crowd's noise slowly changed as they realized the extent of her injury. "Your horn...!" a stallion gasped.
"Fighting isn't always pretty." Harshwater walked past with a shrug, taking some of the attention off Shinespark by putting herself more prominently in view.
That earned enough whistles to give Valey a grin. "I guess she's got the rugged survivor look down, huh?" She shouldered Shinespark.
Shinespark shook her head. "It's better than soldiers, but I don't particularly feel like a standing ovation right now."
"Right." Valey nodded, spotting the familiar suit of President Kinmari waiting for them up ahead. "Hey, big cheese!"
"I see your presence here has multiplied," the well-groomed stallion replied, stepping forward to meet the leading posse of Valey, Shinespark, Harshwater, Amber and Grenada. "Welcome to the Kinmari Marine Research Academy. I am President Kinmari. The archipelago and its school have been in my family for generations, and on behalf of the whole populace I wish you a welcome as warm as our weather."
"A pleasure," Shinespark grunted back. "But we're in poor condition for pleasantries..."
Valey nudged her, the windigo heart duffel bag weighing on her shoulder, having a feeling this was all going to be a speech she had heard before the first time. "Hey, I'm gonna run on ahead and take care of some stuff for you. You just take all the hospitality these dudes have to offer, okay?"
Shinespark nodded, and Valey saluted before blasting off, making sure to dazzle the students on her way out with a flyby trail of green. Her destination wasn't far off: the old observatory tower where she had seen Professor Sea Star to have an office. If anyone could help her safely contain or study disharmonic artifacts, she was the most likely candidate.
Valey soared down the staircase, banking tightly and running along the outer stairwell wall to burn her momentum and safely land. It didn't take her long to reach the office she desired, but she paused at the entrance. It sounded like there was already a conversation inside, but the voices were too low for her to make out.
She decided to knock anyway, gently just in case. "Uh, is this a bad time?"
The door cracked open, and Sea Star blinked when she saw who it was. "Oh. It's you again. Interesting timing. Come in."
Valey tilted her head and followed. The walls of the office were cobbled stone, but the floor and ceiling were wooden, more lightweight and without the need for support pillars. A working desk sat against one wall near a window, and numerous pinboards and bulletins hung around the walls, one dominated by a gigantic sea chart. Immediately below the chart was a couch, and on it lounged a thirty-something stallion with an open shirt and chin stubble. He looked up at Valey with interest. "Oh! You must be the philanderer I've heard so much about."
"Way to bring up a reputation, buddy." Valey grinned, but hefted her duffel bag. She didn't want to get sidetracked. "What's it to you?"
"Oh, nothing." The stallion shrugged. "Administrative policy tends to be just a little more lax when you lack the ability to get students with foal. Or professors, for that matter. I am Doctor Caballeron. It is interesting to meet you."
Valey blinked. "Well, that's one way to look at it. Uh, hi, dude. It's interesting to meet you too."
Caballeron laughed, but Sea Star tapped her desk, drawing Valey's attention. "I presume you've already seen to your friends' arrival. Now perhaps you can help me explain this."
Tilting her head, Valey walked over. On the table were a series of printouts, each filled with unusual patterns of purple and green. After staring at them long enough, she began to realize they were maps: each one had a discolored mass in the center surrounded by a field of even color, another mass below and to the right. The main one was roughly the shape of Kinmari, and it took up approximately a tenth of the page's width.
Sea Star shifted the pages along. They were in a sequence: as she moved them and time passed, the colors changed only slightly, but a phenomenon appeared from the northeast and quickly drew closer. It looked like a whirlpool, maelstrom or sawblade, like a storm system seen from above. Valey squinted. "Is that weather? Wait..."
"It's invisible to the naked eye," Sea Star replied, pulling out another chart that showed only a zoomed-in version of the whirlwind, a bright dot visible at its center. "And we're quite certain it's centered on your ship. If you know as much as you claimed to on the voyage here, I want you to tell us what this is."
Valey slowly narrowed her eyes. "How big is that thing relative to this island? And what are you getting these pictures with?"
"It is roughly the size of the campus," Caballeron chimed in. "Which is to say about two thirds of the island."
"And these were made using a harmonograph," Sea Star continued. "A complex machine that tracks harmony, for lack of a simpler explanation. You've discussed this with me before. To make sure we're on the same page, give me a brief overview of what you understand harmony to be."
Valey scratched an ear. "It's a kind of energy. Like mana, except there are things you can use it for that you couldn't do with mana, no matter how much you had, even though you can also make mana with it? And it's related to cutie marks and emotions, I guess?"
"Close enough," Sea Star sighed. "Now I want your best guess as to what this is, because at present this vortex is touching our instruments and as long as it remains doing so, they are as useful as a wind sock in a tornado."
"Uhhh... Yeah, about that." Valey squinted at her duffel bag, then held it up. "Pretty sure it's this thing. I will kick both of your rears if you even think about stealing it, but I'm kind of here in the first place to see if you have any ideas on how to make it stop."
Both professors sat up and leaned closer with interest. "What have we here?" Caballeron asked keenly.
Valey opened the bag and popped out a heart, tossing it and catching it with one hoof. "Ever seen one of these?"
"What is this?" Caballeron rose to his hooves, staring intently. "This has the look of something deeply arcane..." His cutie mark briefly flashed. "Hah. And it is beyond value. It is not often I appraise an artifact so."
Sea Star ignored him, staring into the core of the windigo heart. "Where did you get this?" she asked, her pupils reflecting frosty blue.
"Up north." Valey shrugged. "I guess neither of you have seen one before?" She glanced at Caballeron. "And what was that?"
"Oh, my cutie mark assigns a monetary value to anything I wish." The stallion shrugged. "But it usually only says infinity for living creatures. I suppose it is not so fond of the idea of slavery."
"Are you certain this could be causing a harmonic vortex?" Sea Star continued staring into it. "It's an artifact, and harmony is intensely related to thought and emotion. Though that could line up with your mark treating it like a living creature..."
Valey paled, fumbling so hard she nearly dropped the orb. "Are you saying this thing could still be alive!?"
Both professors squinted at her. "What do you mean," Caballeron asked, "still alive?"
Valey frowned at the heart, folding her ears. "This is the core of a dead windigo. A windigo heart."
"Windigoes are a myth," the professors said as one, but they looked at each other with a look that dared someone to question it first.
"Nope." Valey shrugged. "Go get kissed by one at a romantic beachside resort and have it make house-sized ice sculptures of the two of you cuddling in the middle of public roads, and then come back and tell me they're a myth."
The professors stared at her, nonplussed. "But you didn't actually do that, though," Caballeron pointed out.
"Oh, I did." Valey tossed her mane. "It wasn't exactly consensual, but still. You guys asked what was causing it."
For a moment, both professors continued daring each other to speak. "Well, that would raise very interesting implications about that data of yours," Caballeron volunteered.
Sea Star snapped to her hooves, stalking back to her desk. "Windigoes, storms... I'm a biologist, not a lorekeeper. This storm-like vortex pattern..."
Valey stowed the heart back in the bag. "So what do you mean this could still be alive?"
Caballeron ignored her. "But the ruins of old Unicornia have never been found to exist. Even the fertile valleys of the far northwest hold little archaeological evidence of ancient civilization..."
"Yo!" Valey snapped the spokes on her wings. "Regardless of what these are, you know what they're doing, right? Because your machine can pick it up? See, I was kind of afraid they might have an effect on the area around them, and it would be real neat if you knew how to seal them off. Sounds like it would benefit all of us if we could make them stop."
Sea Star rubbed the bridge of her muzzle, deep in thought. "The space department has harmonic isolator and shielding panels for their engine research. I have a..." She glanced at Valey and hesitated, then continued with a look of deep resignation. "A friend who works there. There's a vague chance she could be bribed into letting us use experimental resources."
Caballeron breathed deeply with a happy sigh. "Ahh, this is a friend you will like to meet, I think," he said to Valey, rising and heading for the door. "Let us make haste! I am curious to see what knowledge can be gleaned from these windigo hearts."
Elsewhere on the island...
"Doctor's orders: food and rest for all of you," a green nurse mare was saying, smiling at the lineup of everyone who had been on the boat. "We'd like to check over all of you, but you can tell us best who needs it." Her eyes lingered briefly on Shinespark's horn.
"There's not a lot you can do," Shinespark replied dully. "And if you can, it isn't urgent. It hurts, but it's livable. It hasn't changed a lot since it broke."
"And baths, right?" Amber stretched her legs. "I had better not be stuck in a hospital bed after spending so long on that boat. I need to go swimming."
Another nurse nodded, stepping out of a closet with a rack of linens and towels. "You know what you need. If you're cleared for injuries, go out and run around!"
"If anyone, you should be focused on the stallions," Harshwater added. "They were in a fight way more recently than us, and were way worse off. And Felicity and Maple are already here."
Maple nodded too, standing off to the side with Felicity, Gerardo and Starlight. The batpony and griffon were busy in a quiet conversation about the camping trip, and Starlight wasn't paying attention.
"And that's where most of our staff is." The first nurse winked. "Anyone who knows they're fine except for exercise and nutrition, come with me. We have an area for assisted bathing for anyone elderly or infirm, and the tubs are some of the largest and cleanest on the island as a result."
Slipstream, Harshwater, Nyala and Grenada all eagerly set off, with Amber trailing behind. "Come on, Maple!" She waved. "For old times' sake?"
"I'm still pretty delicate," Maple apologized, shuffling slightly. "Have fun, though?"
Felicity huffed and tromped after Amber. "Well, I, for one, know better than to turn down an offer like that. Let me tell you, having someone else to get under your wings is simply divine..."
"Your mane smells like you just washed it this morning!"
As the group started to leave, Starlight was shaken out of her thoughts by Jamjars thrusting a satchel into her chest. "Hold this," the filly commanded. "Please. Don't let anyone open it and I'll owe you a big one." Whispering in Starlight's ear, she blushed a little and added, "It's my fiction portfolio. I got a little carried away writing romance about our crew to pass the time..."
Starlight blinked, taking the satchel and resolving definitely not to open it. "Okay."
Jamjars bounded off to join the bathers, leaving just Shinespark, Saffron and Meltdown out of the crew left behind. The remaining nurse sized them up, then moved to help prop Meltdown up, taking most of her weight off Shinespark. "Follow me, then. Let's get the three of you looked at."
"Hmmm..." The nurse frowned at a display, her aura holding a conical machine over Saffron. "You've been in a lot of scrapes before."
"Professional adventurer and fighter." Saffron shrugged. "I know how to take a knock or two."
"You're certainly hardy," the nurse replied. "These injuries are all old enough there's not a lot more we can do for them. You'll be sore for a while longer, but you'll be fine. Just go easy on yourself and rest well."
She moved on to Meltdown. "...Well, you don't look good at all."
"Her situation is special," Saffron called out. "Put her in an ice water bath and she'll feel much better. Magic reasons."
The nurse scrawled a note down, then moved on to Shinespark. "And you have... your horn."
She was a medical student. Odds were, she was no stranger to blood and injuries. But she was still a unicorn of about Shinespark's age, and there was no hiding the discomfort in her eyes as she looked closely over the cracks in her fellow unicorn's horn.
"Sorry if it isn't pretty," Shinespark said.
The nurse sighed. "I have to admit, I've... never seen an injury like this before. Horns are hardy and resilient, and they don't just break. What have you...? Are you...?"
"Yes, it hurts, no, it doesn't work anymore, and no, it hasn't changed recently," Shinespark repeated. "This is... how I've been living now."
"So you're stable, then," the nurse said, looking for assurance that Shinespark wasn't hiding anything.
"Physically."
"...You'll have to be seen by a professor," the nurse decided. "And a psychologist. If you're not in danger, that's where my job ends, but there has to be something someone can do."
Shinespark shrugged. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not talk about what I've lost."
"Right," the nurse sighed. "Well, I will go over vitals just a few more times for you..." She paced back to Meltdown. "And see what anyone has planned for catering and lodging. This isn't a resort, and most of you would be much happier elsewhere, I know."
Shinespark nodded, then rose to her hooves after the mare checked Meltdown again and left. She turned to Maple and Gerardo. "So."
"So," Gerardo repeated. "You look... better than you were at your worst, at least."
"So is this place really as good as Valey says?" Shinespark asked earnestly. "The way she looked... She was so..."
"Happy?" Maple guessed. "Satisfied with her life? It's a very new look on her. I like it a lot. I think she's been having the best time on this island, but it really is good for us. I've been feeling like I can finally breathe, sometimes. It's not a miracle cure, but it's so much better than being stranded."
"I've certainly been enjoying myself," Gerardo volunteered. "Though part of that has to do with the fans. I have to say, it's rather odd being admired so openly by so many when you're used to the Empire and its heresies..."
Shinespark closed her eyes. "Has Valey really been flirting freely?"
Maple faintly smiled. "I haven't followed her too closely around, but I think she's managed to find new boundaries for herself that make her much happier. You'd have to ask Felicity."
"Or Valey herself." Shinespark's eyes wandered. "Where did she go? She said she'd be back..."
"I'm sure she's thinking of you." Maple stretched out, taking one of the room's beds for herself. "In the meantime, why don't we catch each other up? You've been sailing, Gerardo's been camping, I've been watching a break-in mystery... It should carry us until food arrives."
"Agreed," Gerardo chimed in. "I have a particularly exhilarating story from the first evening in which we were assessing the condition of the lavatory cabin, only to discover a very large hive of bees..."