Fueling complete. We are go for launch. Begin countdown when ready.
The rocket wasn’t much larger than the tests Meteor had been sending up over the last few weeks. Anypony who had worked on the previous devices would have seen a small change in mass, but otherwise the only distinction was the tip: a silver cone-shaped chassis specially designed to pop open and release a particular, tiny marble of magic once orbit had been achieved. The mechanism to do so was weight based; once a small weight no longer felt the effects of gravity, the cone would drift open and a small spring would push the marble away. The hope was that this would push the marble forward without initiating a disorienting spin.
For one final moment, the rocket pointed peacefully up at the night sky.
Begin launch.
Initiating… Ten.
Silver laid an entire scroll of blank paper out on his desk. He was going to fixate on this.
Nine.
Sparkler dragged Tirek away from a whiteboard where she had drawn a picture of the planet and a brief explanation of orbits. She pointed at the launchpad.
Eight.
Tirek could sense only a small amount of magic in the device. Definitely not enough to get it as high as Sparkler was suggesting. That was impressive.
Seven.
Leyline joined them at the window of his office, wondering what it was they were looking at. He was finally ready to move to the secluded lab and some spark in the sky didn’t seem that important.
Six.
Iota observed from the top of her tower, looking down with a blank expression. She sipped her tea.
Five.
Vespid glanced at the clock and immediately dropped the hamster heart she was sticking with needles to run to the window.
Four
Meteor’s grin widened as he leaned against the edge of the launchpad railing. “Final ignition.” A thundering roar shook Sanctaphrax.
Three
The back of the rocket exploded with brilliant flame, like a newborn star. For a second, there was no visible smoke, only light.
Two.
Rook poked her head out of her tank, jaw dropping. One of these days, when they make these things bigger, we’re getting on one.
Agreed.
One.
The Admiral spread her wings and focused on the rocket. Go. Fly. Fly higher than anypony ever has.
LIFTOFF!
The rocket lifted into the sky with much shuddering. Smoke billowed from the launchpad, following the spark of fire as it reached further and further into the night sky. The silver tip reflected the light of the moon brilliantly.
Hailing Fog looked up from the night market she was “working” in. Forgetting the customer she was talking to entirely, she turned her gaze to the rising light. Good for you. Hope your dream doesn’t come crashing down around you like it did me.
The few Sanctaphraxites attending the night market stopped their business to watch the spark fly. This was not the first experiment of Meteor’s they had seen, but they couldn’t take their eyes away.
The rocket rose higher and higher, until it was little more than a speck in the sky. Despite how exciting and monumental the moment was, it dragged as the fire continued without variation. As the distance between it and the island grew, it eventually seemed as though it wasn’t moving anymore. Yet, everyone watched until the light went out.
And then Silver kept watching. He couldn’t see anything through the eye at the moment, but he knew the engine would have detached, leaving only the cone. It would drift for a bit until it entered the full free-fall, and then the latch would open…
The Admiral, Rook, and Meteor arrived to watch him draw. He didn’t even look at them—all he did was wait carefully. It was as if the world was holding its breath.
Even though Silver was anticipating it, he was still shocked when the cone opened up and let a slit of light into his eye.
The Moon was right there. Glowing brightly against a backdrop of stars without a single cloud to obscure anything. He started drawing immediately: already more stars were visible than he knew. Already he could spot details on the moon usually visible only through telescopes. He didn’t waste time drawing them, since it wasn’t new information. Instead, he focused on what the eye saw behind it.
A small silver cone… and beneath that, the night side of the planet. The eye was high enough that the horizon wasn’t flat, rolling away from Silver’s eye in a sight nopony in recent memory had seen. Towards the edge of the curved world, there was a thin ring of blue. The entire atmosphere, condensed into a tiny bubble surrounding the dark sea.
Silver spotted a few lights, marking the larger cities on the more developed islands of Equestria. Through the location of Harvest, Heighton, Baltimare, and a few others, Silver quickly gathered his bearings. Compared to the entire ocean world, all of Equestria seemed insignificant, tiny, and empty. He started his first sketch with a simple circle, placing labeled dots where the islands he saw were. There was a dramatic lack of lights further to the south… and then a single speck at the horizon far beyond any charts they had.
He marked a dot with a question mark on it. His audience tried to ask him what it was, but he didn’t listen to them. He was too busy with this amazing experience.
And then the sun rose. Or, more accurately, he moved into the sun’s path. The world below glowed with a pristine light as the rays of celestial energy met Silver’s eye. It was, by far, the best sunrise Silver had ever seen.
But the world below was even better. With part of the world in day, he could see the brilliant blue of the sea easily twisting and swirling with massive clouds, storms, and even… a few islands? He couldn’t be sure, not this early. Looking to the northern edge, he could see the Gray—and the solid sheet of ice beyond that. From his current angle the southern edge wasn’t visible, but he knew the orbit would take him there eventually, assuming Meteor’s calculations were accurate.
Every ninety minutes, he would circle the globe. Over time he would have passed over virtually every part of the ocean… or beyond.
Is that…? No. It can’t be…
~~~
Several hours later, Silver was ready to begin proper work. No one who was watching had even tried to sleep.
The Admiral watched in awe as Silver took a metallic sphere coated in paper out from his desk, mounting it in an axis marked with latitude lines. He lifted a pen and set it carefully to the globe, marking the position of Harvest first, in the northern hemisphere. He moved out, drawing the other islands. Few were little more than dots with a name, one of the notable exceptions being Baltimare. Over time, the shape of Equestria began to stand out, including dots for Sanctaphrax and the Canterhorn; positioned from memory, not visibility. Once he was complete, he put the name EQUESTRIA in the midst of the floating islands.
It was smaller than the Admiral had expected.
Silver made the Gray next. Instead of drawing the drifting icebergs, he drew hashes across the area he’d seen them, an almost perfect circle around the north. Above that, he drew a solid circle, naming it THE WHITE.
The Admiral wasn’t all that shocked when he jumped to the bottom of the globe and created THE SOUTHERN WHITE and added a Gray circle around that as well. She’d talked with Meteor a lot about how the sun warmed different parts of the globe differently; it was natural to expect there to be two cold places.
What the Admiral hadn’t expected was what Silver did next. Above the Southern Gray, he drew several highly detailed sparks that didn’t look like city lights. He labeled these THE WANDERING LIGHTS.
“What are…?” She stopped asking since she knew she wasn’t going to get an answer.
He moved on, starting to draw dots for larger islands. They were dotted all around the map. A large number of them were clustered to the east of Equestria, but were otherwise sporadic. On the equator there were a small group of islands somehow in the overall shape of a crescent moon.
Just when the Admiral thought he was done filling in islands, he started drawing something big. A violent, swirling circle. She quickly realized it was drawn like a cloud, indicating it was a huge storm. Storms aren’t permanent…
Apparently this one was, since he labeled it THE ETERNAL STORM. He placed an island-indicating dot in the center of the storm, where no violent winds swirled. It was likely the island’s reference that convinced him the storm was permanent.
And yet, he still wasn’t done. Silver really had saved the best for last. He began to draw a confusing, sometimes jagged, sometimes smooth line running along the hemisphere opposite Equestria. It took a while for the Admiral to realize what it was.
That isn’t an island.
Once he completed the outline, he started filling in mountains and features that had stood out. Forests, deserts, rivers, lakes… and cities? Was that what he was marking? She wasn’t sure…
But she was grinning like a child when he labeled it THE MAINLAND.
“I will fill out more precise details in time,” Silver spoke. “But I believe this is mission accomplished?”
“Absolutely…” Meteor breathed.
“Good.” He turned to another sheet of paper, starting a star chart. “I will get more detailed drawings out within a day.” He didn’t ask them to leave as he started marking the stars.
The Admiral watched as the stars she’d obsessed over most of her life were put to paper. The stars she recognized… and then he moved to ones she didn’t. The stars of the other hemisphere of the world, connected in ways nopony had seen since the waters came.
There were less dramatic reveals: there were no new planets to find, nothing visible that wasn’t just new stars, but in many ways this enthralled the Admiral more than the map of the world did.
She eventually dozed off, standing, with the stars flitting across her vision.
~~~
Not all islands in Equestria had ponies living on them. Some were simply dead, lifeless rocks floating above the ocean with almost nothing of use to be found. Occasionally some mad airship pilot would fly to one of these to get away from the world, only to realize farming wasn’t exactly sustainable and water was hard to come by.
The last time this particular island had seen any visitors, it was one of these pegasus pilots. His bones still sat in the middle of the island where he had starved to death. The island was large enough that the ocean wasn’t visible from the bones’ location—the scenery consisted of oddly shaped rocks and the wreckage of his airship.
A light appeared in the sky overhead. At first, it appeared as a new star… but then it got larger, brighter, more intense. It was soon close enough to show the flames licking the metallic cylinder.
It was the main ignition stage of Meteor’s rocket, falling back to the world.
It smashed directly into the bones, disintegrating them and a large quantity of the earth around them. The last remnants of the pegasus were completely forgotten.
Two airships flying above the island recorded the impact.
It was exactly as they had been told.
The rockets were precise enough to hit islands.