"Ahh," Coda sighed, pacing in a circle. "Where to begin... I suppose I ought to start by telling you about what a changeling queen is. You are completely unfamiliar with the subject, I assume."
"I don't even know that much about regular changelings," I said. "Aside from the shapeshifting."
Coda nodded. "Changelings are creatures that act like conduits for emotion. Ordinary mortals think and feel, you see, but the contents of their heads have no effect except upon their own actions. Should you arouse anger in one of my peons, for example, I should imagine they might treat you differently for it, but that would be the extent of the matter."
"And changelings are different?" I asked.
"Changelings can use emotions to fuel a form of magic," Coda told me. "The most obvious example being shapeshifting, though the applications are numerous. Ones that can think and feel can use their own emotions to power this, but all changelings can utilize the emotions of others."
I stood stiffly, feeling my adrenaline begin to rise. "How's that work?"
"Simple," Coda said. "Imagine you are out on the streets and witness two lovers kissing in the passionate throes of romance, as I am told mortals are wont to do. Or perhaps a triad of dueling warriors exchanging insults and blows. Essentially, they are giving each other their love or anger or what have you, which I will admit is a concept it took me some time to wrap my head around. After all, why give to another what they have no use for? Changelings are different because they, when others feel emotions toward them, can make use of those feelings as if they were their own. Thinking changelings, mindless drones, queens, this can be done by us all."
I glanced at the organ pipes running their way to the altars in the other room.
"Indeed." Coda nodded. "Such is the mechanism by which I collect the prayers of the faithful. They offer me their devotion and love, and in turn it becomes mine, a holy reservoir to purify hatred and malice. Which brings us to the difference between queens and drones: drones are like pipes through whom emotion may only pass, and must be used immediately or cast aside. Queens are reservoirs who can store it indefinitely. My throne, affectionately known as Fugue, acts as a giant funnel of sorts through which the altars pour their emotion into me, and also as the interface through which my power flows back to the ship, running its mighty engine. Are you comprehending me so far?"
I nodded.
"Excellent!" Coda tapped her forehooves together. "Ah, but it is good to have a swift-minded contemporary. Now, you will recall I mentioned the remote-controlling of mindless drones. This is the greater half of a changeling queen's power, and indeed what makes us so strong. Once our powers have grown to a critical mass through the use of funnels such as Fugue, we become strong enough to attach ourselves to drones using a type of long-range magic my faithful have coined the Daydream Network. I bid you think of drones as pipes earlier. Now envision those pipes connected to me, in the same way the pipes in this room connect Fugue and my altars."
"So the drones can withdraw and deposit from your own emotion store," I said. "And you can control them, too."
Coda beamed. "You ken quickly, Princess Halcyon. Unfortunately, all of this is contingent on having drones, which I regrettably lack. None have discovered the means by which my mother obtained her horde, big enough to topple the Griffon Empire as it was. I am like a heart full of blood, without vessels to pump it through. But as long as I can entice my faithful to come and pray to me in person, I can still empower myself, and will still one day be able to face my mother in single combat. She, lest you should wonder, chose to engorge herself on rage and apathy and despair, vile emotions against which the power of love shall be as an invincible shield. Victory is all but assured... provided I can find her. That's the hard part."
"And the thing you want my help for," I hesitantly said. "That's where you're going with this, isn't it?"
"Indeed," Coda sighed. "But fear not, for I am not starting at square zero. You see, the ability of a a changeling queen to store up emotions like this is hardly a natural phenomenon, and has some unusual effects upon reality. I have a spell, unique to me as a queen, that can detect these disturbances within a radius of several miles. Fortunately, it is not triggered by my own aura, in the way that a pony can rarely smell their own breath, but always that of others. Between this spell and my airship, I have meticulously scoured the world searching for signs of Chrysalis."
"And she's in Ironridge," I finished. "Your spell detects her here."
Coda smiled wryly. "Alas, therein lies the rub. For you see, Princess Halcyon, changeling queens are not the world's only creatures capable of making such a disturbance."
My ears flicked.
"There are others," Coda said. "Most relevantly, a particular ancient being whom I know to be hiding in the city of Ironridge. Her name is..."
She paused dramatically.
"Garsheeva."
My eyes widened. "The Griffon Empire's old goddess?"
Coda nodded. "One and the same, albeit much diminished. I know little of what became of her in the aftermath of my mother's attack, other than that she survived, and took up new residence somewhere in this city. And this is where my problems begin: the spell I use to detect changeling queens has a wide radius, and can only give a yes or no on the presence of anything nearby. Garsheeva's existence in Ironridge causes the city to appear as a false positive whenever I attempt to scan it. Perhaps my mother could be using that as cover, to prevent me from conclusively determining she is here. Or, perhaps, it could be a red herring, the presence of changelings here a deliberate ploy to further distract my suspicions, and I am in fact wasting my time when I should be trawling the wastelands looking for her true hideout."
I rubbed an ear. "I get it. So Garsheeva's presence is turning Ironridge into a blind spot for your search."
"You have the right of it," Coda said. "That is where you come in. In short, I need you to find Garsheeva and convince her to leave the city, even for a day. Should that prove too difficult, merely giving me her location so that I might treat with her myself would prove sufficient. Then, Princess Halcyon, on my good name as the Princess of Love you shall have your airship and cruise the skies as you will!"
I took a step back. "You want me to find a hiding goddess and convince her to move out? And just what makes you think I can do a thing like that?"
Coda shrugged. "You are a princess, are you not? One should expect her to be responsive to her equals."
"Yeah, but that's just something you call me," I pointed out. "I'm not actually special, right?"
"On the contrary." Coda proudly stuck out her chin. "I started calling you that because you are an enigma to me. Lest we forget, you resisted my powers, praying fervently into my altars and betraying nary a spark of emotion. Your mind, Princess Halcyon, is shielded by a radiant barrier of divine mystery, or such is the only conclusion I can draw. But if you are immune to the tamperings of this changeling queen, that means you might be uniquely well-suited to parlay with gods and others of my ilk."
I felt myself shrink a little.
"My mother, I am told," Coda went on, "has such power that she could command a pony to die from miles away and it would simply come to pass. Obviously, if that is true, she is disinclined to use it, as Ironridge is undoubtedly still filled by the living. But still, is it not an immeasurable relief to be shielded from the tamperings of the divine? Perhaps she could put a knife in you the old-fashioned way if she objected to your investigation, but you would essentially be forcing her down to mortal means to fight you, which is still a considerable evening of the scales."
I winced. "Well, I was more worried about Garsheeva, but thanks, now I'm worried about them both. Are you seriously that sure I'm invincible to changeling queens? How? And why? I'm gonna need a minute to think, here."
"Naturally," Coda said, climbing back onto her throne. "Allow your mind to ruminate on the truths I have given you. Perhaps you shall even come to a point of enlightenment that has eluded me, making this entire endeavor much simpler."
And so I thought.
Changelings... emotions... changeling queens, all tied together. What was it Corsica told me on our first trip to the Sky District, about her special talent? When she overused it, it was like her capacity to care about things got sucked away. Was Corsica's talent somehow related to changelings, or based on the same mechanic? It sounded like it was powered by her emotions, in the same way as Coda described changelings...
And what about me? Why couldn't Coda detect and use my emotions like she could to others? Not like I enjoyed the prospect of having my thoughts and feelings being eaten, stuffed in a bag that was shaped like an alicorn and then used as airship fuel. That was unsettling, and the more I thought on it, the more so it became. But why? My thoughts drifted to my mask, to the split between the original me and the me that was doing the thinking. If I was a simulation of sorts, even if I thought of myself as my own pony, could it be possible that my emotions weren't real?
The chill around me grew deeper, and I searched frantically for a different explanation... and I found one.
Mother's bracelet.
She had worn it during the war, hadn't she? I had seen it in my dreams, watched her using it as we escaped. This was more conjecture than usual, but what if she had been using it to protect us against changeling magic? She knew about changelings, after all. She used to be friends with Leitmotif... Senescey, and made it sound like Senescey's identity as a changeling didn't matter at all to her. Maybe she knew all along what they were capable of, and how to fend it off. Coda said Chrysalis could kill you instantly at a distance, right? And that hadn't happened to us. I never learned how Mother got this bracelet, but there was a possibility it was explicitly an anti-changeling defense mechanism.
A slim possibility. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't tell if it made sense. Senescey would have recognized it if that was true, right? I remembered it being important that she forgot to take my bracelet in the hideout, when the changelings were pretending to be me. I was probably mistaken, then.
Maybe I really just didn't have real emotions.
"A thought does occur to me, if you have a break in your preponderances," Coda said from atop her throne.
"Eh? What's up?" I glanced over at her.
"A way to measure the extent of your invulnerability," Coda told me. "Fugue, you see, is a locus of my power. Touching it would expose you to the raw emotional suction that contains feelings within me, the power of which is great enough that it could very well devour your soul in its entirety. Of course, should that happen, I would possess all the necessary pieces to put you back together again, so you would be alright in the end aside from a brief experience of being dead. Should you be unfazed by the throne's pull, however, we would know with certainty you are immune to the most primal force a changeling queen can bring to bear."
I thought about that. I thought about it some more. Putting myself in a situation where I might literally die and be resurrected by a changeling queen rubbed me all sorts of wrong ways, but... I didn't think Coda was savvy enough with ponies to deceive me about her intentions. I trusted her heart, if not her skill. The biggest place something could go wrong here was if something unexpected happened.
Another thought flashed across my mind. Early after coming to Ironridge, Egdelwonk rewrote part of my memories to make me forget about our initial meeting, and I subsequently remembered them in a dream. I had been tampered with by... something, there. Successfully tampered with. And then I accidentally put myself back together.
Maybe it was worth the risk, to try and learn more about myself? Or was I being insane, treating my life as a science experiment?
A tiny flash of mother of pearl caught the corner of my eye, but when I looked, it was nothing.
Months ago, I had been terrified of learning more about myself and my abilities. Clearly, the me under the mask had something those fears were based on. Part of me wanted to respect that, even though I was no longer afraid myself, and follow her judgement to keep us safe. Part of me wanted to know the truth, face it fully, and show her we didn't actually have to be afraid. Maybe I could even get her to come out of her shell, talk with me, and have a friend who was closer than anyone else could ever be.
What would I put my trust in? Coda, to put me back together? The bracelet, or the me beneath the mask, to keep me safe in the first place? Or the status quo, and do nothing?
When I framed it like that, the status quo was a lame option. I wanted that airship, and that meant looking for Garsheeva, and possibly making Chrysalis mad if she was in Ironridge and Coda was right that she wouldn't like my helping her. Two gods who could mess with me in that direction. On Cold Karma's side, who knew what kind of powers I was messing with, aside from windigoes and whatever Egdelwonk was?
Another memory suddenly returned to me. In the hideout, right before Ludwig possessed Corsica, when he was explaining the rules of the game... Corsica volunteered for the position. Ludwig was taking volunteers. And he said I wasn't allowed to volunteer.
Did he know? He obviously knew something about me, but did he know I might be immune to windigo possession, for the same reason I was immune to Coda?
I squeezed my eyes shut. So much to speculate on, and no way to get concrete answers.
Well, no way that didn't involve taking risks. I made up my mind.
"I'll do it," I said, walking up to the throne. "You've got my back, right?"
"I swear it as a fellow princess," Coda proclaimed, holding a hoof to her heart, an undeniable curiosity in her eyes. I looked at her. No hint of malice. Actually, she looked more hopeful than anything.
I lifted a hoof, reached toward the throne... and remembered I had boots on. I extended a wing instead.
Fugue thrummed somehow as I got close, a deep reverberation I could feel in my heart and my flanks and my forehead. My bracelet flickered in anticipation. I made contact.
There was a spark of energy, and a loud snap, and suddenly I felt an indomitable, yawning chasm open up before me, filling my ears with a roar like when I took off my mask, only so much stronger. It pulled on me, yanked me physically forward until I was plastered against the throne, like gravity had changed directions and tripled in intensity, a great void that was trying to consume me in my entirety.
My mask slipped a fraction of an inch. Suddenly, my own emptiness was there, and it was pulling back.
"Aaah!" I heard Coda gasp from atop the throne, though my sense of direction was suddenly gone. "W-What is this!? Stop this at once! I-I command-"
Normally a placid slate, an empty canvas upon which I could write my identity, my emptiness was suddenly deep, and eternally empty. And it was alive.
It gripped me and held me, Coda's throne trying to tear me in half and devour me into its void, but beneath my mask I fought back, my emptiness a jealous vacuum that refused to yield me. The throne started glowing, brighter and brighter as the conflict reached a fever pitch in my ears. I could see stars, like when I removed my mask, and suddenly I could see lines too, a new phenomenon I had never seen before, even though I couldn't see anything else.
But I didn't yield. Suddenly, it was over.
I opened my eyes, and I was no longer in the throne room.
Polished basalt was beneath my hooves, cut into hexagonal tiles. I was no longer wearing boots. Or any clothes, in fact... Nothing save for my bracelet, which was inlaid with glowing emerald energy conduits and much, much more ornate than the plain black band it once had been.
The sky was a ruddy pinkish orange-red, brightest on the horizon and dimmer the further down I looked. The basalt made up a bridge, a walkway just wide enough for two carts to pass side by side. I crept to the edge and looked down. It was a black, bottomless void.
I looked up.
Above me was a supercell, a storm of a magnitude I had never seen before. Rather than flowing like a river, these clouds spun in a circle, red and pink and revolving around a black core, crackling with black lightning, stretching from horizon to horizon. The basalt bridge zigzagged and gained elevation, climbing directly into the heart of the storm. Or maybe the bridge was flat, and it was the storm that was tilted. Gravity, I realized, didn't seem well-defined in this place.
The storm should have made a calamitous roar, its ferocity great enough to level a continent, and yet the sound that reached my ears was a hollow whisper that couldn't be said to sound like anything. It was... empty, somehow. I got the strange impression, staring into the storm, that it was actually harmless. Not truly, but much weaker than it looked... Level a poorly-constructed shed, uproot a tree or two, and its fury would be spent.
I couldn't explain how I knew this. It looked almighty, set to end the world. I just knew.
Some kind of power was trailing from the storm, though, a connection I wasn't sure if I was seeing with my eyes or with something else, to a spot right next to me.
I looked. It was Coda.
She was still an alicorn filly, except she was petrified, frozen in place with her mouth open in protest and her eyes pinpricked from shock. The power seemed attached to her special talent, which was reduced to a vague, glowing patch of luminescence. That storm, then, was part of her. Was it her stockpile of emotion?
I reached out a hoof and touched the tether tying her to the storm. Immediately, voices filled my head.
"Oh, wise goddess, great and holy thou must be..."
"Can't believe you give money out like this for free. Must be a stand-up kind of gal, am I right? Ah, who am I kidding. Listen..."
"I just want you to know that I love you more than I've loved anyone, especially my ex, and I think..."
The voices all overlapped, running over each other, but with a bit of focus I could pick them out. Some started, and some stopped, but there were never more than six, and they were all running from Coda into the storm.
Were these... the prayers she was receiving, right now?
I sniffed the air, and looked up at the storm. Its frailty, the impressive facade with no substance... Those ponies were paying her lip service. A dozen separate facts I had learned before assembled themselves in my head, and suddenly, the full picture was alarmingly clear: Coda didn't know what real love was. She was taking watered-down thanks and praise from ponies who only saw her as a source of cash, not genuine affection. This storm of emotion she was building up was massive, but also shallow and worthless.
Unless Chrysalis was similarly full of junk... and I doubted it, when Chrysalis really did have the power to overturn a continent... Coda wouldn't even stand a ghost of a chance in a real battle.
Helpless, I swallowed. What could I do? Now that I knew this, now that I was part of Coda's inner confidence, could I in good conscience contribute to her cause? Could I move her closer to a fight she would certainly lose? Not two hours ago, I was planning to help her, take the airship in payment and run. But abandoning her in this situation would be abhorrent, not to mention helping to dig her hole deeper. But even if I wanted to do something, what could I do?
I didn't even know how to get out of here. Though, thinking about it, I decided to look behind me.
There was a portal. A glaring doorway of white. And to my surprise, it was tethered to me, in the same way the storm was tethered to Coda. My special talent was just a glowing patch of light too, and a wavering cord ran from it back through the portal.
The cord's color was emerald, but... it had a sizable knot in the middle. And the knot was mother of pearl.
Curious, I poked the knot.
Flash!
It became a pony.
A batpony, with backwards ears, like me. She stretched out, gracefully and groggily, ethereal yet coming into focus. Compared to me, her mane was longer, and silver instead of gray. Her coat, instead of my silver, was a radiant mother of pearl, seeming to reflect the light with an almost metallic sheen, and her hooves, instead of blood-red, were colored like the morning dawn: red and orange in a gradient, with hints of yellow and the barest trace of blue. Her talent, like mine, was an empty glow, the line tethering me to the portal passing straight through it.
Ponies didn't look like this. I already looked pretty unusual for a batpony, and she took everything special about me and exaggerated it further. She was me, but her colors more complex and vibrant, like I was looking at myself through a faint rainbow mist.
"Are you...?" I took a step closer, somehow not conscious of my lack of clothes. "Me?"
She opened her eyes in surprise. "Halcyon? You can see me?"
I nodded. "Yeah, but who-?"
"There's no time to explain," she said urgently, grabbing me tightly and not letting go. "I'll tell you once we're back in the real world, but right now, don't let go of me for any reason! I'm tired of not existing, I want to come back, I promise everything will make sense, just please don't leave me again! Every time I've seen you, you... Just please get me out of here!"
I staggered back again, very much unused to anyone touching me this closely - especially without my clothes on. I glanced at Coda. She was still petrified.
"And going through that light will get us out of here?" I glanced at the portal, shiny me still clinging to my side like her life depended on it. "Alright, but I'll hold you to owing me answers. But maybe we shouldn't leave that kid..."
Coda was limp, but about as heavy as an adult. Fortunately, I was strong enough to get her on my back with little trouble. Lights shimmering around us, my bracelet glowing, the storm rotating quietly in the background, I stepped forward and carried us through the portal.
Light seemed to materialize around my eyes, in a way that made me wonder if I had been seeing with something else entirely during my time in the storm. I sat up, realized I was leaning against Fugue, and jumped away... though it was no longer trying to grab me.
My clothes were back. I was still carrying Coda. Shiny me was nowhere to be seen.
"Unngh..." Coda stirred on my back. "Where am I...?"
I set her down, glancing over at the throne. The gem in the statue's choker had gone dim, but already it was flickering with blackish pink, clearly recharging.
"You alright, there?" I asked, focusing on the pony who was present for now and putting aside the one who was not.
"That was exceedingly unpleasant," Coda groggily mumbled. "I... had you touch my throne, and suddenly felt a great tugging, as if..." She scrubbed at her eyes. "But look at you. Unharmed and impervious. Apparently, your defenses against changeling queen infiltration are not merely passive. Woe betide my mother if she tries to get you with the same... same trick..." She flopped on the ground.
"Are you seriously okay?" I hovered over her, slightly more concerned.
"Far be it from an immortal to so easily be laid low," Coda said, slowly sitting up. "I shall recuperate in due time. In the meantime, I would be extremely not worried about Chrysalis getting the better of you. Your soul is not merely clad in iron most impenetrable, but ferocious barbs as well..."
"I..." What did I say now? Was this really the best time to tell her all the emotion she was stockpiling was useless?
It wasn't like this could go fast enough to get out of my control, if I gave her a break to recuperate before discussing that. Even if I somehow stumbled right onto Garsheeva's doorstep tomorrow, I would still get to choose when and how to report to Coda my findings. Besides, I needed some alone time to figure out what I had just done. And to see if shiny me was still anywhere...
"Cool," I decided. "Well, I guess I'll get looking. If I get stumped, I'll come back and we can brainstorm something together, right?"
"Excellent..." Not using her wings, Coda crawled back onto her throne, which reacted favorably to her presence. Immediately, she started to seem strengthened. "Before you go, the intelligence I do have on Garsheeva suggests that she might either be underground in the southern Night District, or somewhere in the Ice District. Alternately, either of those two points could be my mother. Do take care."
"...How do you figure?" I asked, turning back to her on my way out, curious. "I thought your spell couldn't do locations."
"It is the purpose of our daily flights around the city," Coda explained. "Essentially, we circle the perimeter of my spell's range, and map the boundary where I no longer detect anything. From there, we can look at the center of the circle to obtain an approximate guess at the source's location. Would that we could map it more precisely, and we know nothing of to what degree Garsheeva roams the city. Are the multiple potential foci a sign that she has grown restless of late and prone to wandering, or could there be multiple targets in the city? Or is it simply a fluke of the math? We know nothing of how often my mother roams the land, either. Perhaps she comes and goes as she pleases from Ironridge with impunity."
Huh. "Got it," I said, wondering if maybe I should split up duties with Corsica if there were multiple potential places Garsheeva might be. Speaking of Corsica, hadn't she mentioned having a friend she could introduce me to who knew about Griffon Empire history? Maybe he'd have some sphinx trivia that could help me figure out what Garsheeva might like as a lair.
...I couldn't believe I was already thinking this flippantly about strategy for finding a goddess. How I had changed from even a week ago, when the thought of meeting Coda had me rattled.
We said our farewells, and I took my leave, not particularly paying attention to the rest of the ship on my way out. None of the clergy looked at me like anything was wrong, though. Clearly they didn't know I had somehow almost accidentally imprisoned their goddess inside her own throne.
I looked at my bracelet. Who, or what, was I? Was this all about the power I wore around my leg? Corsica suspected that was what Cold Karma's interest in me came down to. But this bracelet couldn't be responsible for my emptiness, for my mask, for thinking of myself as two different ponies, could it?
Two different ponies... I remembered the other me, and was suddenly burning with curiosity to talk to her again.
And then, there she was.
Transparent, sure. And hanging in midair without using her wings. And not quite right-side-up, like she couldn't feel the effects of gravity. I glanced down at my bracelet, but it wasn't doing anything - plain, black, no longer ornate like when I was inside Coda's throne.
"...Hey?" I said, hesitantly, to shiny me.
Her eyes widened, and she spun to face me. "You can still see me!?"
I nodded, looking around and deciding that this section of the skyport was suitably empty for talking to ghosts.
Shiny me swooped towards me, forelegs outstretched for a hug... and soared straight through me. "Whoops!"
"Err..." I spun around, following her. She clipped slightly into the floor. "So, you wanna tell me who you are?"
She sobered up quickly, meeting my eyes. We had the same eyes. "You don't remember anything, do you?"
"Should I?" I took a few steps to the side, circling her.
"Probably not, no," shiny me admitted. "How long has it been? Or... I guess you wouldn't know that either. The chapel under Icereach. Do you remember that?"
I nodded. "Went there all the time."
"There was..." Shiny me swallowed. "An avalanche. Do you remember that?"
Again, I nodded. "About two and a half years ago," I said. "I went down to the chapel after, but..." That was when I met the light spirit. But my memory of that encounter was hazy, like when something was hidden beneath my mask. And shiny me said I probably wouldn't remember...
"So that's how long it's been, then," she sighed. "Two and a half years. You've grown. As a pony, I mean."
"Who are you?" I asked, stepping closer.
"My name is Halcyon," shiny me replied. "You... started life as my imaginary friend. But many years ago, our roles were reversed, and after the avalanche, we forgot about me completely."
I stared, my jaw slightly slack.
"Do you ever find yourself seemingly talking to nothing, imagining it's talking back?" shiny me asked. "A habit from our time together you couldn't quite kick - originally, it was me you were talking to in those moments. Do you ever feel like there's another half to you, a part you can't quite reach, who says nothing when you approach? An empty shell that I left behind, like a bridge between you and our body."
I stared harder. My habit of talking to machines... The me behind the mask...
"I've got so much to tell you that you forgot along with me," shiny me said, her eyes brimming with happiness. "And so much I want to hear about what you've been doing with our life, starting with how you finally found me again! Do you want to go somewhere private? It probably won't do to be talking to no one out in public like this, although this does look pretty private..."
"Err... yeah." I felt a tingling sensation all throughout my body. "I'll find somewhere good."