“We’ll be traveling over sea ice for the last leg,” Penumbra said, lounging casually on the snow with the air of a pony splaying themselves across a comfy couch. “Be very careful of your footing, and avoid dark patches.”
“Ah’ve had ta walk ice around the farm before,” Applejack said. “‘Course in the lakes ‘round Ponyville, ya had to watch for where ice-cutters were set up.”
“Yes,” Penumbra said, her ears dropping very slightly. “Especially in driving snow, when it’s dim and the path is hidden. Without the greatest care, a pony will never see what happened, they’ll just...” She shook her head and stood. “Just be careful Elements, Dawn. I won’t be obliterated by an enraged demi-goddess because one of her wards was careless.”
“Would she even be able to?” Pinkamena said, her voice sounding quiet even accounting for the muffling of the hood she wore.
“I am not nearly as durable as the Guardian, and she slew him,” Penumbra said. “With help, of course. I also know what she’s capable of when angry. While I had Canceros on my strings, he reported that her passive anger can make cinders out of a small town; I’m sure her active anger is even more lethal.”
“Just the town square, really,” Dawn said. “But yeah, Mom’s got a direct line to the bucking sun.”
“I hope that was enough,” Penumbra said. “There will be a path running along the cliff face to the right, which will descend to the sea. Please follow in single-file, with Pinkamena directly behind me, Applejack at the rear, and Dawn roughly in the center.”
Not even Dawn gave the zebricorn filly any snark as they quietly lined up as Penumbra had instructed and followed her onto the path. After they had determined to go with her, Penumbra had teleported dedicated arctic gear into the cavern and instructed them on how to put it on. Twilight had begun to object that maintaining a bubble of heat around them as they traveled would create no strain on her font, but in between sentence and the next, ten minutes had passed and everyone was dressed in the gear--even her.
Penumbra had ignored her demands for an explanation, but Twilight swiftly worked out why the filly had used some kind of magic to override her objections and force her into the gear: compensating for all of the difficulties of traveling in extreme cold would have required many layers of spells running constantly, and trusting her reserves to keep layered spells running for the entire journey would have been extremely foolish.
“This isn’t run-of-the-mill,” Rarity had stated after a Penumbra had used a quick surge of teleportation magic to drop them into a snowfield out of sight of the Dragon Lands capital. “This is dedicated, professional-grade, type four cold hazard gear.”
“Your experience shows,” Penumbra had said. “It’s type four special, but you could not have known that.”
“How did you get it?” Rarity said, her tone dumbfounded. “And in our sizes, no less.”
“I made preparations for many possibilities,” Penumbra said. “I perused enough proprietors to piece together your measurements from your individual purchases. I then commissioned ponies with the proper expertise. The expense was a staggering one in mortal terms, but my longevity makes such expenses trivial, and the work is exquisite so I feel I came out the better in that bargain.”
“You…”
“Commissioned it, yes,” Penumbra said. “I also have gear fitted to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash’s measurements. I had been concerned that six months was too short a span to get the proper things for Dawn but if you pay enough bits to equal six months of the artisan’s highest profits, they can work wonders.”
“You’re older than compounding interest by at least an order of magnitude,” Twilight said. “So the longevi…”
“Pause and consider what you’re about to say, Princess.” Penumbra smirked at her. “I wouldn’t want you to feel foolish.”
“Developing every skill you’d need to make a rich living still doesn’t explain that degree of wealth.”
“Well-spotted.” Penumbra seemed to consider the answer sufficient because she’d immediately turned her efforts to packing food for the journey. It had taken her a moment to realize that Penumbra had put more into the saddlebag than its physical dimensions could possibly accommodate; like with the gear and her fortune, Penumbra ignored all of their inquiries about this.
“We’ll need to travel a kilometer towards our destination by hoof before I can move us more quickly,” Penumbra said presently. “I’ll explain things as we walk.”
“Ya can start with what th’ hay happened in that entire soiree we all were lookin’ in on,” Applejack said.
“Not without some…”
“Y’all can give the context second,” Applejack said, her eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. “Ah still owe ya a good horseshoe ta the plot for trotting into my family’s farm with my family there. Even if ya didn’t mean no harm by it, yer intent weren’t benign.”
“It was benign towards your family,” Penumbra said, turning back to look Applejack directly in the eye. “It is true that I used it to manipulate you personally, but what harm did I do to you?”
Applejack frowned at her, huffed, and nodded once. “Not even a scratch. Though ya woulda if Pinkie didn’t step in.”
“To save my life only,” Penumbra said, with a slight catch in her ordinarily steady voice. “I’ve killed so many in my long life that I was not going to add you to that toll unless you left me no other way.”
Applejack blinked and actually took a half-step back as the zebricorn filly turned away from her. “Ya… what?”
“That is part of the context,” Penumbra said. “But you don’t want to…”
“OK, fine, start with yer context,” Applejack said.
“I’m glad you see things my way.” Penumbra started trotting towards the ponderous doors to the chamber they were in, and they swung outwards without any indication that she’d moved them with her magic. “I’ll be as concise as I can.”
“I was born dead, or so I understand it; naturally, one does not tend to remember being dead when returned to life. My mother has always been dead. I do not remember her being alive, and I don’t even know her name, nor the name of my sire. The only family I’ve ever known is Father, and I’m sure you understand that he cannot possibly be my direct relation in any way.”
“Are you his vessel, the way Luna was the vessel of Nightmare Moon?”
Penumbra smiled a little. “I grew up on stories of the Dread Empress, Princess Sparkle; you can drop the pretense and her assumed name. However, the truth is that I do not know. I am Father’s anchor to this mortal plane, and carrying some portion of his essence is what causes me to have an unsettling presence and be as cold as a corpse, but a vessel of a nightmare wholly contains them, and I do not.”
Twilight nodded to this. “And that is why you are so old?”
“I do not know that either,” Penumbra said. “I know why I am alive, but not why I have remained so for hundreds of times my natural life span. I was spared a return to being dead by my own choice, and it would be grossly inappropriate to explain that any further, but to never die was not my request nor an offer made to me.”
“That must be hard.”
“You’d think so, but the ravages of time have left me with no great sorrows, nor any particular regrets.” Penumbra took in a breath and sighed it out with a smile. “Mortals are ships passing me in the night, an experience to be deeply treasured and many good memories left behind. I visited the Havens--Tempest, Dust, Vine, Tumble, Arbor, Eddy--at the height of their glory; if I never saw another great thing in my entire life, the Havens would be enough.”
“What’re the…” Twilight let the question die when Penumbra stopped and turned to look at her with a pitying expression. “What?”
“You, one of the most well-read ponies in Equestria, the daughter of Celestia, have to ask me that question.” The filly looked at her for several moments longer, before she turned and continued walking. “It is good that I finally seized the sword and began my journey. This has continued for far too long.”
Twilight looked back at her friends and got looks of concerned confusion. “Seized the sword?” She thought at Munin. “Monomyth?”
“Monomyth,” Munin said, the illusion of the thought-construct suddenly walking beside her. “She seems to regard what she’s doing as a hero’s journey.”
“That seems…”
“...bad,” Munin agreed. “Everyone is the hero of their own story, but they’re rarely conscious of that thought.”
“So the logical question is what elixir she’s seeking.”
“Kay, I’ll bite,” Dawn said. “What’s been going on too long?”
“Mismanagement,” Penumbra said. “Mismanagement, and me being idealistic and sentimental instead of doing the right thing. I’ve refused the sword so many times because I thought it was the thing that a powerful immortal should do. That I don’t know everything, that I can’t know what is best for people different than I, that I ought not to impose my sensibilities on others. I spent thousands of years being that foolish child with Father patiently and persistently chiding me for not crossing the threshold.”
“So yer… enacting a hero’s journey?” Dawn smirked at her.
“That is the scholarly term for it, yes,” Penumbra said. “I see it as admitting to myself that power has purpose, and I was not given my life to simply sit by and watch mortals suffering because of my bottomless sack of excuses.”
“Ya killed lotsa folk.”
“Yes.”
“Take it from me,” Rarity said. “Not saving someone is not the same as killing them.”
Penumbra looked over her shoulder at her for several moments. “I thought that once,” she said. “And then there was a very, very hard winter. It was… mm… about a thousand years ago, just after the fall of the Crystal Empire, likely because of the fall. Ice boxes were still used to preserve foodstuffs so deep winter was when icecutters worked, cutting extremely thick ice off of ponds, lakes, rivers, sometimes even the sea. Back then, they didn’t make a practice of making their work sites.”
“Granny told me ‘bout the times when a marker got buried.” Applejack’s expression was grave. “Bet it was worse when there weren’t any markers at all.”
“Yes.” Penumbra walked for nearly a whole minute before she continued. “I had been visiting--practically living--in a wagoneer’s inn at the time. I knew all the ponies by name, and their families, and friends. Became… close to a couple. None of them knew, of course; I was just a young mare, traveling the world. Wagoneering was--still is--very hard work. You often had to go out in foul weather just to scrape by. There were many who didn’t come back from a run, all of them found in the spring or along a road much too late.
“I… can’t say what was different that specific day, when it was practically whiteout conditions, but there was a… a sense I had about a specific mare I knew. Somehow, I was sure that when she left with a loaded cart, I would be seeing her buried come spring. There was no reason to think so; she was blessed with a curious talent for never losing her way even if blinded. But I had such a certainty about it that it presented the situation to me with a directness it never had been before: she was going to die, unless someone followed her right then. No one else had a reason to; only I could do it. I told myself that letting her die was not killing her; there was no reason her death should be my burden.
Applejack snorted. “What a load of horseapples.”
Penumbra gave her a brief smile and nod. “You are right, of course. I’d believed the comforting lie for many thousands of years by then but this time…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t swallow the lie anymore. I follow her into the storm. I found where the wagon had slipped off a steep bank over an unmarked cutter’s field. I was only barely in time, but I was in time.”
She smiled broadly. “The first time using immense power to do a selfless thing is… unique. It leaves a mark, a very good mark, and changes so many things. Mortal lives are that of mayflies to me but… I had acted to extend a mortal life just a bit longer. I brought her back to her friends, her family, gave her a future, even rescued the submerged wagon so she could complete the delivery. It made me realize that allowing others to die when I had the ability to prevent it was no different than killing them myself. It would be years yet before I crossed the threshold but it was in that moment that I realized that I had to.”
“Because you’d be responsible for any suffering that happened if you didn’t,” Pinkamena said.
“There was that, but it was far more than that. Imagine, Pinkamena, if you had spent most of your life with your immense power to give joy to other ponies, to lift their spirits, to give them that little candle in the tempest and you just… didn’t. You remembered all those that you could have helped and did not, remembered them in almost excruciating detail, and had a great deal of time to mull it over in your mind and contemplate it.” Penumbra took in a breath and sighed, and her voice became lower. “Then imagine that one day, for reasons you could never put into words, you did use your power to help. You saw the joy on that pony’s face, you dried their tears, you helped them move on from grief, and it was so very, very easy. You realized that it took no effort at all, that you could do it almost without meaning to.”
Pinkamena visibly thought about this a moment before she quickened her pace and took up position at Penumbra’s side. “I’m sorry.”
“I knew that you would understand.” She looked over her shoulder at the rest of them. “Although I could posit the same thing to any one of you, even Dawn, and I suspect you’d understand just as well. Please remember this understanding, because there are unhappy things ahead of us, and you will be greatly outraged by my decisions at the end. I know you will not forgive it, but I would like you to understand what kind of burden rests on me, driving me to do what I have done and will do.”
“Why do you care?” Dawn said. “And why are you bothering to drag us along anyway? It’s not like you need us, and it’s pretty bucking clear that you don’t need to worry that we’ll get in your way. What the hay is this even about?”
“This is about rectifying my past errors,” Penumbra said. “In the past, I killed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, and let an order of magnitude more languish in misery and hopelessness by doing nothing. I trusted too much to the greatness of individual mortals, believed too strongly that I could hope for the best and that would be sufficient. When the four races of ponykind crossed into the sliver of verdant lands that are now the Canterlot-Ponyville line, the world changed in a very positive way. Relatively speaking, it took very little time for Equestria to push out to its present borders, and then Luna and Celestia ascended to govern the sun and moon. I believed at that point that all my worries were done with. I could go about doing good at a low level and feel like I was making a difference, but I didn’t need to worry about the higher level.
“Your mother acted as the glorious sun queen: larger than life, radiating maternal warmth and charisma, at her most dangerous when it was time to war with words. Luna forged a special bond with the changelings and they became the Black Host, the sword and shield of the Dual Thrones. No one could oppose them; none of the ones who tried lasted for long. It was a world of the Pax Equestria, the peace of the ponies, backed with the immense military prowess that the changelings represented.”
“But it didn’t last,” Twilight said.
“You have some idea of what preceded the exile,” Penumbra said. “Celestia might have stopped it; she did not. Luna might have stopped it; she did not. But it was Celestia who chose to send the changelings away.” She sighed sadly. “So passed the pony peace. So passed the last hope I had that I could have my deepest wish without my intervention. All the plans I’ve put into practice began the day that Amaryss and her people disappeared into the deserts of the Eastern Waste.”
“Like what?” Applejack said. “Ya still haven’t answered the question, yanno. What was with that scene we looked in on, with that Canceros feller, and Zambet, and the rest? How does it show what kind of evil Zambet is? What was it even for?”
“To show you the nature of other Evils that are not a blunt instrument like Tharalax. And so you saw them: Zambet with her flawless Pillars accent, bickering with Canceros who is one of innumerable Emperors of All Maladies.” Penumbra leered. “Who is most certainly also dead. Part of the improvisation required being the one to pull his strings but I don’t care for plague personifications so I gave my hired help a little treat.”
“Set ‘im up to get whalloped by Celestia?”
“Assuming she’s able,” Penumbra said. “It can be very, very difficult to reach the true Evil behind the projected mortal form but if any mortal could do it, it would be the one with the power to annihilate cities. However, no matter the result of the confrontation, Cancerous will die and Celestia will live. This is as it ought to be.”
“You know stabbing Canceros in the back doesn’t absolve you of the suffering you inflicted by using him,” Rarity said. “Your employee, your responsibility.”
“Those afflicted have their lives,” Penumbra said. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“And the chance for trauma,” Pinkamena said. “Does that matter to you?”
“Only the living can be traumatized, and they will heal.” She looked at Pinkie. “Verdant Heart is a single pony and you know what she can do. There are hundreds like her, and each with but one purpose in life: to be a balm to the troubled soul, to soothe the storm-wracked spirit, and to quell the nightmares. The traumatized will heal.”
“And that makes it okay?”
“Absolutely. I took a situation where hundreds of thousands would die, and horribly, and created one where the only dead were those that brought the plague. I could not slay Canceros myself, and chasing him off would make him a free agent who could rampage in any direction that pleased him, without my sabotage of his precious sickness.” Penumbra’s gaze became stony. “You think you would prefer the path not taken, but I’ve been there and you do not understand the cost.”
“So what about Zambet?”
“She is an eldritch horror with a fastidious Pillars accent and attractively plain features. She’s also the best mercenary someone operating on my level can buy. She coordinated the elimination of the plague’s lethality, provided vital intelligence on the state of Equestria, and has personally overseen the most critical parts of my plan.” Penumbra snorted. “She also obtained the key to all of my endeavors and offered it to the highest bidder, just to be cheeky and make a point. I made my own point to her, and I believe it’s resulted in a very productive working relationship.”
“The two of you sounded quite friendly when you were instructing her to meet you at the Glass Waste,” Rarity said.
“Always be polite,” Penumbra said. “It costs you nothing but breath, and buys you as much as your life. We are polite to one another but I would be lying if I pretended that associating with another cosmopolitan of unending life was not also pleasant. She played at being a noble because the lust for the finest things isn’t something she has to fake.”
“I had wondered.” Twilight said.
“It was entirely on her own initiative,” Penumbra said, “and she has told me nothing about the life she pretended to lead or any of the secrets she ferreted out. I asked once, politely, and she said that her false life was no one’s business but hers.”
“So she’s just hired help?”
“No Evil of her power can be just anything but yes, she is a mercenary.”
“So, ya’ll started a plague in Equestria an’ that Zambet thing is working for you, and so does Canceros, and yer taking us this way ta look for a crystal heart.”
“All true,” Penumbra said. “But what shall I do when I find it? What even is this crystal heart I seek, and why do I seek it?” She looked at Twilight and Dawn. “Perhaps the well-read ponies among us know.”
“Do I know?”
“Yes, but the details are secondhand and vague. Perhaps Penumbra will offer us more if you tell her what you do know. The Crystal Heart…”
“...was some kind of artifact owned by the Crystal Empire,” Twilight said, speaking in time with the hallucination. “It extended a magical effect over the Empire, keeping windegos at bay and allowing them to have a prosperous nation built on the ruins of the previous pony civilization, before we moved to Equestria.”
“And it was powered by love, so I’m sure you can guess who some of the most numerous citizens of the Empire were,” Penumbra said.
“Changelings.”
“Yes. The du Arkis family, heavily mingled with the three other races. Opulent and beautiful, before the wrong pony sat on the throne and it was removed from the flow of time, along with the Heart.”
“If it was removed from the flow of time, how are you planning to get at the Heart?”
“You will see, Princess,” Penumbra said. “I know how it left, and how to bring it back.”
They had been traveling about an hour over the sea ice when Twilight first saw the mast rising out of the perpetual fog that seemed to hang over the frozen field, and she stopped; a moment later, so did Pinkie. Penumbra went on for several more paces before she noticed that they’d all stopped and she turned around to face them.
“Is something the matter?”
“Is that a… mast ahead of us?”
“It is.”
“The mast of a sailing ship?”
“If my sense of direction remains true, it’s more of a modified barge, but essentially correct.”
“From the Crystal Empire.”
Penumbra grinned. “Why yes. Due west was Glacierfast, the Empire’s cold-water port and one of the most significant shipyards in the known world. At least, for the time it existed; I believe the Ironhoof Sound yards near Trottingham are this era’s center of Equestrian shipbuilding.”
“Ain’t ships have lookout posts an’ what not?”
“The VLCCs didn’t need them. Very Large Carriers of Cargo,” she added before Twilight could ask. “Not a flowery name but an accurate one. Very ungainly, but also so stable in unpredictable seas that the royal family of the Empire purchased one and…” She stopped. “At any rate, they didn’t need elevated lookout positions to navigate.”
“So why the tall masts?”
“Signaling between themselves and the rest of the convoy,” Penumbra said. “They never went anywhere without an escort, and the escort did the navigation. This particular VLCC is special, although I don’t yet know the way in which it’s special. It, its sister ship, and their single escort are our destination.”
“Ships stranded in sea ice are going to reawaken this Crystal Empire.” Twilight didn’t look back, but she could feel Rarity’s best level look.
“Precisely.” Penumbra grinned widely. “No one would ever think of looking outside the Empire’s former borders for the way to restore it. The Empire is suspended in time within its borders. The Crystal Heart is within its borders. It logically follows that the means to put both within reach again must be within the borders. But I know one great secret that no one else knows.”
“That being?” Twilight said.
“The magic that whisked the Crystal Empire away was not a curse, and not the working of a dread artifact, and no feat of terrifying magic on the part of King Sombra--the exceptionally puerile nom de plume of Night White, the ‘wrong pony’ I alluded to--as the Princesses believe. It is a defense, the ultimate defense, taking the Empire out of the reach of its enemies.”
“And the ships?”
“A defense so powerful can remain in effect forever, so a way was devised to signal that it could safely slumber.” Penumbra gestured towards the distant mast, a merry grin spreading. “A shame Rainbow Dash couldn’t be here. This would be right up her alley.”