//------------------------------// // The Tower on its Side, III // Story: Dreams and Dementations // by AShadowOfCygnus //------------------------------// She’s reached the edge of the crater—for a crater it is, some thirty metres across; a perfect circle, here in the grey wastes on the edge of the City; textbook. The white-glow thing fell in an untrammelled patch amidst the ruins, ignored or forgotten in the wake of the wavering spires that surround it on all sides, the spires themselves abandoned as so many of the proposed expansions have. The cordon (such as it is; six grey bodies patrolling four City blocks) seem ill at ease, shredded wings a-quiver, tympanic lobes alert for any sound or stray waft of thought. Their eyes are locked on doorways, windows, the shadows cast by radiance; the pillar of soft light in the centre of the dome draws neither their notice nor their interest. Compound eyes, watchful, searching, sightless, blind—so mindful of the needful, the endless here and now—that they cannot see as she sees, eyes forward, eyes in hind. She has the advantage, and some part of her knows that was always the case, even here, even now. The light is bright, and the sound is clarion; if she can just get to the crater, she knows, she’s made it. Made it to . . . She’s been here for at least two full rotations, now; there can’t be much time left. Practised thoughtlessness, a careful throw, the tiniest burst of magic against the background noise of the rainbow-white storm: the pebble goes sailing into one of the nearby buildings, and two of the six peel off to investigate. Good little automata, pseudo-ears a-twitch, dancing on her strings. Ha! She slips in behind them, waits a moment longer, and makes a break for it. The air is thick with sound and light, almost palpable in its wavelengths and weavings. She can feel the current lift her, carrying her along as she scrabbles up the dirt slope of the crater—and again, that same joyous voice, lifted in a protracted, gentle wail whose name she should remember. The light is blinding, even with her eyes closed, but she cannot afford to check her stride; cannot but succumb to the euphoric pull from every quarter—mind to heart to loins to hind—and give reckless chase. She claws, she leaps, she darts with feline grace, and around her the light and the sound reach a gold-sweet crescendo, triumphant and whole, as she crests the lip of the crater . . . . . . and abruptly cuts to silence as the dirt underhoof gives way. Down, down, down, head over heels over horn over hooves, down, down, down, into the bright and silent light. She rolls to a stop, breathless but unharmed, and she scrabbles to get her hooves beneath her lest some watchful pursuer close the distance. But there is no noise; no shouts against the sudden hush. The voice, too, is gone, and the blinding light with it. Her hooves slip and click sharply against the smoothness of the pit, but that is the only sound her pinned ears can make out beyond her own gasps. She dares crack an eyelid, then blinks—it is as dark and grey in here as anywhere else in the city ever has been, save for a faint light—an echo of the radiance that drove her here—and the thin slivers of reflection in the glass around her. For glass it is, flash-frozen in the instant of impact: smooth whorls and bands beneath, warm to touch; shining spears tapering around. Punji stakes, in form if not intent; a ward to the wary, and a bane to their pursuers. She looks around a moment in wonderment, but the light pulls at her again—throat, heart, horn—and she gasps at the intensity of it, the passion in that little grey-white light. Her way is clear of spikes and flesh, of chitin or of magic. She taps gingerly through the winding forest of sandblown shards, down to the very centre, the very heart of warmth, and at last the transfixion falls away. A star, it transpires, is a tiny grey-white orb, no bigger than an eye. It rests softly on its little dot of impact, looking for all the world like a child’s marble. Life and energy roil within, cloudy and immaterial, and even so it shines, brilliant corona cascading, washing her in colours of brightest fuchsia and gold. But no more does it sing; no more does it tug at her attention, or her heart. The soft-white dome above; the sentinel shards around—no, there is something in the air, as gentle as the need she’d felt before. Expectancy? It awaits only the touch of her hoof, her horn. Acceptance. Choice. Birthright. The word echoes through her like a blade. The thing she wants most, has dreamed of—to be a vanguard for her people, to lead those people back to the timeless abyss of what they’d lost; forward, to a future they could build, bright-eyed and alive again. It was glorious, bright and hers and possible. All walking together, all in Harmony. She, among the throng, joining her fellows in joyous— Among, not ahead? She started forward, stopped. She felt a mounting sense of urgency welling in her, in contrast to the warmth around. It had to be her, for she was the one that found it, and yet it didn’t? She was better than any of the mares in the Tower, any of the automata patrolling the streets, and yet the same as any other? She churns with the senselessness of it; a step forward, a step away. A slow orbit of the little silent gem in the middle of its blasted starscape. Is she the important one, here? Is she the reason her namesake fell? Did she wish, or did it? Is it offering, or demanding? Expectancy, or expectation? Choice, or commitment? She has spent so much time chasing comfort, she doesn’t remember need. She has spent so much time evading necessity that she doesn’t remember comfort. She yearns to lead and be recognised; to be led and not have to work for it. All there is to her is grey and muddy—except for everything about her that isn’t. Would that she could submerge completely. Would that she could stop fighting the nameless, screaming impulse to resist Tower and Grey, honesty and artifice, self and self. She is two mares, or three, or a score, each of them screaming in her head, at the star, at the world. She sways on her hooves as tidal passions wash over her. Love. Fear. Spite. Hope. A shard of glass snapped off one of the fractal spires, turning lazily in her field. There is strength in this. There is power in this, in choice. Isn’t there? It shouldn’t take much, but the work is slow regardless. Wavering in her field—up, down, up, off-centre. There is no sensation, no sound, as the sharp tip makes contact with the soft sheen of the marble; only the slightest resistance as sinks in. The shard trembles for the briefest moment with forces beyond her comprehension, then the little soap-bubble marble pops, and the last of the light fades to grey. *** They find her sobbing at the centre of the pit, surrounded by broken glass and dying embers of the impact; wordless, mewling. She desperately pushes herself up under the chin of the first guardsman into the hole, desperate to fill holes they could not see or understand. As the Towermares sweep the blasted tableau for any sign, any reason for the flash or the light or the dome, the ranks of grey close around her, shushing and grooming and offering the gentlest of words. There, now. It’s alright. You’re safe, pet. Whereabouts have you come from? Let’s get you home. A moment of panic: authoritative barks from the Towermares, and they open ranks long enough for them to see—see the huddled mass, the blank stare, the thoughtless fear. Clucking dismissively, another avenue stymied, the mares return to their work, and the comforting grey draws close again—neither warm nor cold, soft nor hard, but there. And as they lead her back through grey little streets to her grey little home in the grey little block of flats, she has never felt emptier, nor more at home. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?!’ It was unlike her to shout; still less so to lash out physically. Her vision was still clearing from the Dreamweave, but her ears were already pricked to the rattle of various instruments and arcana about her lab, shaken from their neat arrangements by whatever blow she’d dealt when she lashed out. She felt for the marble desk with a hoof, felt the edges of the chunk she’d taken out of it. Sighed. The wages of godhood; her hoof didn’t even tingle. Sight returned at last, obscured only slightly by the cloud of powderised marble, which she banished with a thought. A quick check of the shelves—nothing had fallen, just moved; she’d need to spend some time sorting those later—and she realised with a start that her wings were at full attention, trembling slightly with emotion. She clamped them to her sides, clicked her tongue at the inelegance, turned back to the surviving half of the table. So close. She had been so close this time. The star, the light, the metaphor—the promise of release from the dull existence she’d built for herself? It had been perfect. ‘So why won’t you see, Starlight?’ The little grey dome did not answer her, nor the chattering array of burnished clockwork, crystal, and lenses that surrounded it. Two-score wards, a dozen crystal viewers, and all the tech she’d begged, borrowed, built, or summoned to make this work—panoptic panoply, perfect and ordered and still not enough. Not her finest work—perhaps not even in the upper half. The City, an obvious metaphor; the Changelings, reliable in their unwavering contours. But what more fitting fate—what irony more suitable than the answer to her own questions? The purest example of the world she’d tried to forge? What better prison could there be? Was she blind to it, at last? Or was the light simply blinding? Staunch in her refusal of correction, or unable to see the failures it stood to correct? Her ears pricked again. From behind her, the familiar, steady click of polished chausses—silver, she somehow knew—against the floor of the hall outside. She sighed as the door nudged softly open. ‘Luna, this isn’t the best time.’ ‘Childe, we are full-well aware. Your anger is as a clarion to all those with an ear to Hear.’ ‘Celestia sent you, then? Making sure the . . . the Alicornity isn’t being misused?’ ‘Our sister your mother hath naught but faith in your progress, Childe.’ ‘She is not—’ ‘Forgive . . . an old mare her customs. The term long antecedeth your own standing.’ She sighed again, feeling the faintest needle-prick behind her eye. Pulverise a table but still had to contend with headaches; some apotheosis. ‘Yes, I’m angry. An answer is eluding me, and the sooner I can be free of the problem, the sooner I’ll be able to return to my other duties. Until then . . .’ She gestured to the grey little half-orb swirling murkily upon the desk. ‘The inquest continues.’ Luna inclined her head. ‘Oft we find solutions that elude us are best found in the minds of others. One cannot learn without the chance occasion to be taught.’ ‘You sound like her on her worst days. Except, you know, a thousand years out of date.’ ‘If you seek to drive us back through force of provocation alone, Childe, rest assured that a thousand years’ jaunt through the Expanse teacheth naught if not patience.’ The Night Princess stood beside her now. Her mane flowed, gently, in the perpetual, unseen celestial breeze. She frowned at the glass, her practised eye taking in the notes, the spilt ink, the schematics, the runes (mercifully unmangled) inscribed around the marble workspace, the angry half-scrolls of blotted parchment. ‘What answer eludes? The prison is of sound design, the corrective measures obvious and well-conceived.’ ‘She does. Either she’s not understanding what I’m showing her, or she’s refusing to look just to spite me. Nearly two-hundred trials’ worth of experience since I caught up to her last month, almost a quarter-century of relative time. The proper answer is there each time, sometimes agonisingly close, but she just won’t take it.’ ‘Prithee, then, Scion—have you given much thought to the alternatives? If, truly, she be the irredeemable creature of spite your reports paint her . . .’ ‘I could. I might, if this goes on much longer. But even if things do progress to that point, I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of thinking she was right. That her . . . her moral crusade was anything short of antithetical to life, to the world . . .’ ‘Hubris is unbecoming, ‘tis well understood.’ ‘Yes, and don’t think I don’t hear the warning there.’ Luna smiled, wanly. ‘’Tis a lesson we are all compelled to learn, Twilight Sparkle. And learn again, forever anon, as time and circumstance demand. None moreso,’ she opined, delicately, ‘than those upon whom power—be it great or small—is thrust.’ ‘No.’ Twilight shook her head. ‘I don’t regret this. The library, maybe; the damage she was able to do before I caught up to her, but not . . .’ ‘We know.’ ‘You know, or she does?’ ‘We do. ‘Tis enough.’ Luna’s wing, unaccustomed, wrapped around her own. ‘And prithee, bind thyself not to the notion that she somehow must be saved. She hath done . . . terrible things, in pursuit of her own answers—tortured innocents, ensorcelled cities, nearly undone Time itself. Your prison is sound, and it might serve to hold her, for a time; the chains of Tartarus, be they yet unbroken; Finality, if all else fails.’ ‘If.’ ‘Peradventure, yes.’ Twilight smirked in spite of herself. ‘Alright, now I know you’re doing this deliberately.’ Luna made a great show of sticking her nose in the air. ‘What you call archaism, We call the preservation of history. In a world wracked with change and unmindfulness, clearly, ‘tis the duty of every immortal to study and develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything done, said, or thought in her lifetime. Language especially. Surely you have been taught this.’ ‘Oh, of course. I seem to recall that being slotted in there somewhere between “The celestial bodies move at your will,” and “the fate of all ponykind rests on your shoulders, young Sparkle”.’ They chuckled at that, too briefly. The soft hum of charged crystal and whirring clockwork filled the silence that followed. Twilight was the first to speak. ‘Alright, I should get back to it—give it at least one more trial on the day. Thanks, Luna—any last suggestions?’ ‘Mm.’ Luna’s brow furrowed for a moment. ‘There is an old adage—lookst thou not at me that way; I am full serious—that suggests that the fate of some small few is merely to serve as example for others. Should you not be able to turn this . . . Starlight Glimmer, should you be obliged to seek alternatives, consider her not a failure, but an opportunity to learn.’ Twilight winced. ‘Either Celestia’s been reading you my old letters or I’m still more a slave to the perfectionist idol than I realise. That hits home.’ ‘Mayhap both; peradventure neither.’ ‘Oh, you hush.’ Luna politely ignored that. ‘All comes with time, Childe. Patience, understanding, acceptance of the things we cannot change about ourselves or the world we inhabit—or those that inhabit it beside us.’ They glanced at the little grey hemisphere. The still light was unmoving, the grey froth ceased; Starlight would wake again soon. Twilight sighed. ‘I know. I know. I can’t . . . I can’t afford to succumb to pettiness in this, no matter how much she might want me to, somewhere, deep down, under all that prescriptive fog. She may not be worth the time, or the trouble, but the answer is. So that even if we can’t save her from herself, we might save another in another time.’ She turned to Luna. ‘All those millennia, a score’s score of lifetimes—there’s always someone like her, isn’t there?’ ‘Always.’ ‘Then the trials continue.’ ‘The trial continues, yes.’ ‘. . . whose, Luna? Not just hers.’ ‘Hers, yours—all of ours. Every day, every moment, awake or abed. Never ours to rest, nor to cease in restless pursuit.’ ‘Not perfection, then. But as close as we can get?’ ‘. . . as close as we can get.’ The grey light of dawn winked through the dull clouds of the dome. ‘I have to go, Luna. She’s almost awake.’ Even as she spoke, her horn lit with the unconscious magics that came so readily now, so easily wrought. Luna was fading from her sight, the Dreamweave taking shape around her again. ‘Go, Childe. May the trial unfold as it will.’ A room was taking shape, now—twisted metal, ragged fabric, a ratty cushion in the centre of it all, far too small for its tightly-curled occupant. ‘Check back in a few hours? Maybe I’ll even have good news.’ ‘Mayhap.’ Somewhere deep in the fogged glass, Starlight’s eyelids fluttered, cracked open. A familiar tableau: the room, the curtain, the dull spire beyond. Is the tower on its side, she wonders, idly, as the world around her churns to life, or is she?