Emotional whiplash caught up to me like a flying brick as I stumbled, frozen, back through the entrance to the hideout, a long stone tunnel leading up to the main vault door. What was I doing? How had I let myself get into this mess?
First, I got kicked around by Ironridge. Then, I told myself I had toughened up. Next, I stuck my face back into Icereach, knowing nothing except that whatever could go wrong probably would. And now, I was getting kicked around by Icereach. Exactly what I asked for. Couldn't simplify it much more than that.
I could make it more complex, though. What had driven me, upon getting ambushed by Jamjars and a bunch of confused yaks, to decide the immediate best course of action was to go out in a storm, turn on my bracelet, and try using it to fight Balthazar? Sure, there were logical reasons, like how it would be a substantial advantage to have a handle on my own abilities now that the going was getting rough. But the more I thought about them, the hollower they seemed.
You did it because you were desperate, I told myself, my internal monologue speaking in Procyon's voice. You took a gamble. Showed off your secrets in front of someone else, broke your pact with yourself not to press your limits. You did it to test your luck, because you wanted to see if there was a higher power watching over you again like last time. To see if you could rely on more miracles. And you can't.
My backwards ears went further back.
So much for having grown, the voice of doubt insisted. You feel yourself losing control, and you panic. And do you know why? Because you're carrying a load that's too important to drop. Because you've taken on too many responsibilities. And, back there, you were trying to take on more, by demonstrating to yourself that there is more you could do. You know the adage, Halcyon. Because you can, you have to...
I hissed and shook my head, trying to distract myself from... myself. It wasn't perfectly effective. I dispersed the voice, but not the train of thought: Papyrus and his cavalier attitude drifted through my mind, making light of our situation and being as disrespectful as ever. Not a bad set of qualities to emulate, at least during this present dilemma. It would be much easier to-
"Stop it," I whined under my breath, feeling myself falling to pieces like sand through a sieve. "Why can't I get these thoughts out of my head? If this is Ludwig's aura..."
"It isn't," Procyon said, floating out of a wall as I leaned against the opposite one. "Your thoughts are our own."
I raised an eyebrow at her.
She shook her head. "Surely you've noticed the protective barrier around your mind. We're unique in more than one way, Halcyon. Multiple factors converging in a perfect storm that make our head nigh-impossible to tamper with... at least in theory. Even I have to settle for guessing at what you're thinking. For better or worse, all your problems right now are of your own making."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I grumbled. "But I'm gonna go ahead and blame Ludwig."
Procyon shrugged and floated away.
I slumped. Prioritization was basically impossible when, in my mind, all my goals had melted together into a soup of 'do something'. I wanted to get Mother back to Ironridge. I needed to make some degree of peace with myself so I wouldn't have to worry about losing control of my body again. And, already, I badly needed a rest. But all of that would have to wait, because Balthazar didn't feel like letting this Holy Sparkbearer and her entourage into the hideout, and so I was being sent back to rally the yaks for a parlay outside.
In the night. Where I couldn't survive if I couldn't use my bracelet.
"Hey," I shouted as I walked through the vault door. "There's some folks in the trench who want to... parlay..."
The relative warmth of the cave interior made me realize that I was a lot colder than I thought. Immediately, I fell over.
Several yaks immediately surrounded me. "Yo, you've got ice in your mane," Darius remarked. "You probably want to get that looked at..."
"Outside. Shoo." I flopped a wing at the vault door. "Your problem now. Go deal with it, please..."
The yaks shuffled around, clearly torn between checking out what was happening outside and paying attention to me, but at least a few started to leave through the vault door.
Good. If I hadn't shown up here, they would have proceeded to deal with this themselves anyway, so at worst I was having a neutral impact on how things went down. Now I just-
"Well, someone got down in the dumps in a hurry," Papyrus announced, swaggering over to me. "I swear, not ten minutes ago you were raring to go and begging me for some help in getting started. Bit off more than you could chew, eh?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," I grumbled, my limbs frozen and my eyes heavy. "Buzz off..."
"Oh, but I would like to know." He shoved his smile right up in my face. "And maybe you'd like to step away from that frigid door and get somewhere you can tell us all about it without dying of hypothermia. Fair's fair, eh?"
I blinked at him.
"Get up," Corsica commanded, stepping up beside him. "Or I'll carry you."
I heaved myself to my hooves, my body leaden and numb. Maybe I really had just gotten too cold... After Ironridge's heat, it was entirely possible I had lost my ability to differentiate between good cold and bad cold. "You got a tropical sauna in mind?" I mumbled. "I don't remember much of anywhere in this place being warm."
"Nope." Corsica shook her head. "Whatever you were doing out there, we've been busy in here, and we found something you need to see."
I found that I did, in fact, have the energy to walk, once I realized that Corsica's idea of carrying me was to ask Papyrus to do it himself. If only I didn't have a bad feeling that I was being summoned somewhere to call the shots on something, getting bossed around about where to go would almost have felt nice. I wanted to lick my wounds and figure out how to get back to the normal that let me think I was ready to go to Icereach and find Mother, not make any important decisions.
Corsica led us to the Nemestasis room, where, predictably, I saw Leitmotif staring at the machine. More surprisingly, Coda was there too.
"Luminous. Found her," Corsica declared, flopping down on a makeshift bench at the side of the room.
"Putrid," Papyrus added.
Leif nodded, pacing over to me. "Pastiche. Halcyon! Got a couple questions for you."
"Eh?" I tilted my head. "Might want to make 'em easy ones, because-"
Before I could blink, I was flung into the air and dropped on my back, a firm hoof holding my head to the ground. "There were two reasons we captured you the first time we met," Leif said, her voice sharp and urgent. "One of them was a side job. Why did we take it on?"
"What?" I struggled briefly. "You... It was from Graygarden, right? To get us out of the city..."
"Not who or what," Leif said. "Why did we accept the job?"
I didn't have the energy to fight. "You... Err..." Had she told me about this? When we were in the Sky District, surely... My brain clicked. "For money?"
Leif sighed and released me. "Sorry. Changeling precautions. Your password is now subliminal. If you're ever in a group of two or less for more than ten minutes, or after an hour regardless of who you're with, re-confirm who you are and then get a new one. Got it?"
I looked at her with a slightly surreal expression, climbing back to my hooves. "You're a changeling, and even you are this paranoid?"
She shrugged. "Just means I know better than most what our kind are capable of. And if those yaks are spooked enough to set a trap like that, I'm not about to write off their paranoia as jumping at shadows."
Behind us, Papyrus gently clapped. "Personally, I'm more of a fan of embracing the confusion, but this whole prove-your-identity thing does get entertaining after a while. Now then, Senescey, about your machine friend..."
"Stop calling me that," Leif growled. "Halcyon, I need to ask you: do you know any secrets about Coda's parentage? Anything at all she might not be privy to herself?"
I raised a weary eyebrow. "What's it matter?"
Leif pointed over her shoulder at the Nemestasis machine, which looked a lot more alive than when I saw it last. "Because she can make that thing turn on."
I blinked. There was absolutely significance to this I was missing.
Leif sighed, looking every bit as antsy and wound-up as I was weary. "Do you want the long version, or the extra-long version that I've already told twice today because nobody here knows how to sit still and stick together?"
"I'll tell it," Corsica volunteered, also audibly weary. "So. Remember last year, when they wanted my horn to unlock a terminal in the other room, that turned out to have a letter saying they were changelings?"
I nodded, part of Leif's story starting to come back to me, though I didn't want to interrupt now that Corsica was talking.
"That terminal was a fake," Corsica said. "Who knows why it was there; the windigoes probably did it to mess with them or something. The real machine they were looking for was this. It's allegedly got some hereditary biological locking and control mechanism. Beats me how it works, but it was supposedly tuned to 'the head scientist's daughter'. Which apparently isn't me..." She pointed at Coda. "It's her. Any ideas?"
I scratched an ear. "You mean it only works for one pony or family or whatever in the entire world, and out of every possible pony it could have been, it just randomly happened to be one we had with us?"
"Did somebody say suspiciously slim odds?" Papyrus asked from a corner. "See, that's what I said, but everyone else cares more about how pretty little Coda could be related to Icereach than how convenient it is that the first time anyone ever managed to drag her out of her isolated little airship, they took her right here."
Leif gave him a sharp look.
"What?" He shrugged. "All I'm saying is, if a certain secretive batpony from Icereach whom we know knew about this machine in advance happened to come to Ironridge with the intent of securing the friendship and presence of an elusive, wayward filly who happened to be the key to one of the world's most ridiculous weapons and bringing her back here, it would be an interesting plan to be in on, is all!"
I stared at him.
Coda was staring at me.
"...Halcyon?" she asked nervously. "This machine is... dangerous. It seems to be a control panel by means of which Icereach can launch bombs through the air at any place in the world. And everyone is debating the possibility that you won my trust and brought me here exclusively to have me use it. I can see their intentions, and no one truly believes you did, but only Corsica is certain you didn't, either. And even she is trying to hide from her doubts. It does seem quite the coincidence that... I know not even how it would be possible for control of this machine to run in my blood. Is there anything...?"
She trailed off and looked away, clearly not wanting to finish her question.
"No one except Papyrus is seriously floating that idea," Leif said, standing between me and the machine. "And I'll certainly not begrudge anyone their secrets. But if there's anything you'd like us to know, now would be a great time to say it, because the two alternatives are that this really is a coincidence - low odds, if I've ever seen them - or that someone else is manipulating things to a very thorough degree."
I...
I didn't have the mental energy for this. I was exhausted, and one little stun powder net, an involuntary bath and getting kicked around by the me under my mask was all it took to bring me this far down when I had been at my best.
Did Leif and the others seriously consider this was something I might do? Looking around at my company... Yes. A plan like that probably would be perfectly at home with Leif or Papyrus, and Corsica looked like she had just as much appetite for this as I did. And Coda was far too emotionally immature to sort through something like this on her own.
And, honestly, I had no alibi because even I wasn't certain I hadn't done this on purpose. Not when I had parallel selves who could keep my own memories hidden from me, or influence my phobias to control what I did with my life. For that matter, the avalanche - the point in time where I effectively came into being as a distinct person, according to Procyon and my own observations... The avalanche had brought me to the bottom of the Trench of Greg.
For all I knew, I could have been to this facility before, back then, and just not remember it. I sure had been within walking distance.
Maybe I had set all this up, subconsciously yet deliberately.
I swallowed, and made my choice.
"You should... probably tie me up," I sighed. "With a flashlight. Just in case."
Leif's eyebrows went up in alarm, and Papyrus's in eager interest.
"There is a very, very slight possibility..." I winced, choosing my words to hide as much as possible. "That I might... not... be playing with a well-shuffled deck. I promise you all I'd never do something like that on purpose. But there is a way, that I'd really rather not talk about, that I could be doing exactly what you just suggested while not being aware of why I was doing that. And I'm too worn-out already to be of much use to anyone, so you might as well be better safe than sorry."
Corsica looked at me with suspicious recognition. "Is this about the thing you told me in the sauna? About... you know?"
"Yeah," I said, nodding gratefully. "It's exactly that. And I'll try to deal with it. But still."
Leif started toward me. "When someone asks you to tie them up, questioning them is a great way for someone with a shallow imagination to meet their end."
Before I even realized what I had signed myself up for, it was done.
I was bound, gently enough that it wouldn't chafe but tightly enough that I couldn't escape, the old office room where I had once lost a game of chess against Elise serving as my well-lit prison. And, for a mercy, I was alone.
What was I doing with myself? Hadn't I just gone down this train of thought, walking in from the cold? And now I was worse off than I had been then, not just with dubious agency but with none at all.
I had thrown it away. Gotten overwhelmed, and my only response was to hide and curl up when there was who knew how much work to be done. If anything, I was worse off than the previous time I had been imprisoned here. It was like all of my experiences, my lessons, weren't building me up, but breaking me down.
It wasn't fair. I started to cry.
"This is always our response, isn't it?" Procyon asked, appearing once again.
"Shut up," I told her.
"Still think you can carry all of our burdens put together?" She raised an eyebrow, refusing to disappear. "An accidental, well-meaning betrayal did this to you. There are hundreds of thousands of millions of worse possible fates ponies can suffer, and you're well and thoroughly broken after a few little knocks. I regret my time in the void, Halcyon. Disappearing, nonexistence... It wasn't all it was cracked up to be. But look at yourself now and tell me you truly can't understand why this is a reaction you - and thus I - might have."
"Shut up," I repeated, a little more forcefully.
"You just need to accept our lot in life and stop trying to make us whole again," Procyon insisted, shaking her head. "I'm doing this for both our survival. Because, in case you forgot, I'm currently dependent on you to do anything except float around and phase through walls." She tapped one for emphasis, her ghostly hoof slipping right through. "You don't need to fight yourself like this. Just accept our limitations and live with what we can't do."
I glowered.
"If you want to prove me wrong, the bracelet is right there, on your leg," Procyon pointed out. "I bet you could burn away those ropes, if you could turn it on. Go outside, survive in the cold, be a hero and solve everything. The issue isn't whether you can, but whether you will. Because if you try, you'll only end up hurting yourself. Badly. It's how you wound up like this, right now." She stared me in the eye. "So if your vision for our future will work, then bring it about. The only thing stopping you is yourself. Keep trying to prove it until you give up and realize I'm just trying to protect you."
I took a deep breath... and yanked off-
-her mask.
A green crystal tumbled from Halcyon's bound hooves, landing a few steps away.
Oops.
She sighed, looking up at Procyon. "Stop trying to make your point. You aren't helping."
Procyon blinked. "Ahh. You again."
"Me." Halcyon's voice was dour, her void rushing distantly in her ears. "So... you know anything about what Leitmotif was talking about? Did we know about Coda, and bring her here on purpose?"
"You need to ask me?" Procyon shrugged, her posture slightly more confident and aggressive than when Halcyon had been wearing her mask. "Speaking of, I'm surprised you're asking anything at all. An empty, administrative shell like you shouldn't have those kinds of interests and desires. Or have you grown back a little bit of a soul while I've been away?"
"I am as I've always been," Halcyon replied coldly. "The only hole in my memory is the price we paid to Unnrus-Kaeljos... which you claim used to be filled by you. And I certainly don't wear a mask because I have no soul. So if you have any information about Coda and Nemestasis that you conveniently took with you when you left... Now is the time to turn it over."
Procyon frowned. "No need to be so prickly. We're on the same side, aren't we? Our goals for our old body going forward are the same: live out a life in peace and normalcy, and not go digging into things that are better off forgotten."
"Like you?" Halcyon raised an eyebrow. "Miss 'I didn't used to be a very nice pony'? Because I'm always watching, and you've been acting more like you're trying to break my mask than help her. What do you think is going to happen if you keep up goading her into playing with our powers and making her feel like fixing your dim outlook on life is her responsibility?"
"I've experienced what it's like to be forgotten," Procyon countered. "And it's worse than you think. I'm not just doing this for her, but for myself and apparently you, too. Living out your existence as a shade at the back of someone else's mind is an existence you'll eventually tire of, and you'll thank me then for all the work I'm doing to head that problem off."
"That's not an answer," Halcyon flatly stated.
Procyon rolled her shoulders. "Well, forgive me if I've forgotten the question, Your Emptiness. Look, it was you who tripped her up back there when she tried to use the bracelet. She's been growing, Halcyon. She's pushing your limits. And far better for her to run into them in a situation where doing so won't get us all killed, no? You and her need to have this fight so you can establish some hard, spoken rules with each other. Otherwise, with me or without me, she's going to keep pushing you."
"Then I'll phrase it as an order..." Halcyon's eyes narrowed. "Stop messing with my mask. I'll accept her having a greater grasp of our powers if it means I get to think less and do less interacting with the world. Everything you've done since appearing is trying to get everything outside my mask to have a greater role in her life, and that's the opposite of why she's here."
"What can I say?" Procyon didn't look particularly bothered. "Oblivion changed my mind."
Halcyon sighed.
"You know what I don't like about you?" Procyon asked, hovering. "You remind me of the way I used to be. I'm sure you're about to state the obvious reason for that, so spare yourself the trouble and move on to the less-obvious but more-important one instead: I've changed. You haven't. You represent a me that I dove into the very abyss itself to escape from being, and apparently the miserable shade I left behind is still trying to do the same in the shadow of our new, dominant self. Seeing that it hasn't changed you the same way, I'd hazard a guess it isn't working. Our mask might be trying to face her fears because she wants to cheer me up and get me a happy, flowery future, but I don't need it. Don't you realize that the one who benefits most from the fruits of my labors is you?"
"You know nothing about her state of mind," Halcyon growled. "She's not doing it for you, or me, or anyone else. She's doing it for herself. She's got causes she cares about, ways to use our powers for good, and that's something I might have not wound up the way I did if I had some growing up. It's not about you. Or me."
Procyon arched the bare corner of an eyebrow. "You almost say that like you weren't the one to interfere back there when she tried showing off with the bracelet."
"If I was strong enough to sit back and let her do it, I wouldn't have needed her in the first place," Halcyon sighed. "Now leave me alone. She's broken enough to come to me, no thanks to you, and I need to put her back together enough that we can survive this and I don't have to get my hooves bloody all over again to do the work for us."
Procyon shook her head. "Just try not to change her in the wrong direction..."
And then she floated through the closed door, and was gone.
Halcyon's heart hammered, a whole host of unwelcome emotions tight in her throat, and all of them thanks to Procyon. Keeping a distance from things was easy when she was in the back. But stepping up front to deal with the world like this...
Well, she could understand her mask's response, at least. It was the same as her own.
She focused on the bracelet's power. Her mask was beyond the kinds of personality melding she had once employed, months and years ago. There was only one good way to do this, though she wasn't looking forward to where it would lead.
With a flicker of emerald flame, a pointy, hole-ridden changeling horn appeared on her forehead, longer even than Corsica's. Unlike most of the other changelings she had seen, hers was also straight.
An emerald aura came to life around it, her void rushing louder as the power congealed into a light far solider than a normal, shimmery unicorn aura. It focused on the gemstone sitting on the floor...
And I opened my eyes.
"What...?" I scrubbed at my eyes, kicked a hoof, tried to get up... and my hooves went straight through the floor.
I was ephemeral. Just like Procyon.
Halcyon... My body was right in front of me, which meant I was where the gem had been. I looked down, pulling up and away into the air with an instinct so easy, it wasn't even intentional. The gem was gone.
I looked back at myself.
"I figured," Halcyon said, meeting my eyes, "it was time we met face to face."
For the first time, I could talk to the me behind the mask, know for certain she was listening, and expect an immediate response. And I had nothing to say.
"Not a pretty sight, is it?" she asked, her oversized horn disappearing. "Watching other parts of yourself argue. You probably don't envy either of us. But that's why you exist. To be better than we'd be otherwise."
I shivered. "The bracelet..."
"Is powerful," Halcyon finished for me. "Even I don't know everything it can do. But, I know enough."
"And you're that afraid of letting me use it," I said.
Halcyon just nodded.
"I could..." I touched my leg, where the bracelet belonged, and realized that once again, I had no clothes on. "I might need that power. With... where I'm going."
"You might," Halcyon agreed. "Maybe even you will."
"Then why not let me use it?" I whispered. "Why fight me? Don't you want me to succeed and be happy and protect my friends? You have to care about Mother as much as I do."
Halcyon averted her eyes. "Where do you think... the fear you felt back then comes from? You think I just pluck it out of thin air? That I say, 'wow, I could use some fear right about now,' and then you feel it, just like that? That I'm twisting knobs on a machine?"
I didn't answer.
"It doesn't work like that," she said. "You knew this at the beginning, but the idea was for you to forget as you grew more solid. The mask is a filter. A lens. You are me, just... protected a bit. In ways that I don't know if I deserved to be, but never was. All of your emotions, though, I feel too. You may not understand why you're feeling them, but we're the same person. Everything you feel, I feel, and vice versa. So back then, when you were trying to use the bracelet just now... We just got a little closer than normal. That's all."
My ears fell. "What are you that scared of?"
"Savor the time before you find out," Halcyon replied. "By now, you're well-formed enough that I'm not sure I could take it away if you learned everything and regretted it. Perhaps you could handle it. Like I just told our third counterpart, you have tools and resources that I never did: friends to share your burdens with, and a worthy cause to apply your strength to. But I don't know for sure that it'll be enough. Maybe it's more than enough and I'm a coward who's afraid of nothing, but... can you imagine what it would be like if you had to join me at the back of our mind and we started over again with a new mask? I'm not sure I could take it."
I shuddered.
"I know you want to say you're strong enough," Halcyon insisted. "But you've seen where we are now. You're keenly sensitive to how and why we got in this state." She pushed uselessly at the ropes holding her. "I know this. I felt it too. I don't mean to discourage you or beat you down, I just... We have to be able to survive this. Because situations like this are going to happen again. There's just no amount of molding a mask can do to make us... me, you... not want to take risks and step out of our comfort zone in search of something better."
"Can you help me?" I asked. "Is there anything you can do?"
Halcyon shrugged as best as her ropes would allow. "I'm already doing more than I've done in nearly three years, coming out and meeting you like this. I can't live my life, staying in control for every hour of every day, being me and knowing all my decisions will have consequences and everything else involved in living. But what I want more than anything else is for you to be able to do that. Take this with a grain of salt, because most of my limitations are emotional, not physical... but if there's any way I can help you, I will."
I sighed. This was... not how I imagined trying to make peace with myself would go.
"What about Procyon?" I asked. "Why were you and her so hostile to each other?"
"Dunno." Halcyon slumped. "Maybe she's telling the truth about not liking the way she used to be. I certainly wouldn't have become you if I was happy with the way I was. But... I don't like what she's turned into, either. Listen, our power... I know that power is only a tool, and whether it's used for good or bad depends more than anything on the heart of the one using it. But can you truly say you don't have a dark side, even after all my work to keep you from having one? We were raised without friends, Faye notwithstanding, by a negligent single mother. For an understandable reason, but the effect was the same nevertheless. We're lacking a lot in life. We have so little that we can't afford not to be at least a little selfish, and we maybe haven't had the best role models either. Procyon just feels like what I fear I could turn into if I stopped caring about the consequences of my actions."
"...But she's still part of us," I pointed out. "We've gotta learn to live together somehow. And trying to disappear or live off the map from each other clearly isn't working."
"I know," Halcyon sighed. "And maybe you can do it. I'm just afraid of what she represents."
I thought on this for a moment. "What's she even want? She was talking to me like it was impossible for me to use the bracelet, but talking to you like she wanted to goad me into trying it."
Halcyon shook her head. "Wish I could tell you. I can't see her thoughts like I can to yours. I don't remember her at all, either. Which, according to her, is the point..."
"You think she knows anything about Coda and Project Nemestasis, then?" I asked, aware this had been discussed already.
Halcyon frowned. "I couldn't tell you. I really don't know what to make of her. You know the feeling you get when you think on things that are obscured from your memories, right?"
I nodded.
"I never get that feeling when I think back on my life," she said. "Ever. There's one time, when I visited Unnrus-Kaeljos, where my memories are a different kind of fuzzy. There's gray static. It feels like watching a projector film when the recording is bad, and then there's a split in the middle where two ends are just stitched together. But I don't feel like that anywhere else. However Unnrus-Kaeljos's magic works, it's different from what I did when making you. Because of that, I have no clues to anything that might have been taken along with Procyon when she left."
"Huh." I looked away. "How many memories are there? Ones that I don't have?"
"Not as many as you'd think," Halcyon answered. "One dream, that I re-erase every time you have it again... or at least try to. It involves our red hooves. I also obscured events around our meeting with Unnrus-Kaeljos, because... I thought your life would be easier if you could place your belief in a mysterious deity you knew nothing about, and build up your own belief system instead of relying on what I saw. Your friendship with Corsica never would have been the same, otherwise. Then I let you forget Ansel was a changeling, though that one got reverted already. Beyond that, just things I learned early in life about the nature of our powers."
"Huh," I repeated. "Guess you're as clueless as I am about that business with Coda."
Halcyon hesitated. "I know... one thing that might be a piece of the puzzle. But it's dangerous, and it wouldn't help you right now anyway. If this particular thing does become important later on, I promise I'll at least try to make myself tell you."
"As long as it doesn't involve us trying to use Coda as a key to the rocket controls," I said, shaking my head. "Well... what now?"
"How are you feeling?" Halcyon asked, tilting her head.
I seriously considered it. And, honestly, I was feeling a lot better. Somehow, getting to sit back, take a break from the action, and talk in earnest with my secretive inner self was exactly what I needed.
"Decent," I decided. "Not sure how much good it does us, though, now that I've gotten us tied up."
"We're not that stuck." Halcyon pulled at a rope. "With the bracelet, we could break these easily. But what would you do next?"
Odds were, emotionally wreck myself again. I looked down. "I dunno."
"You could stay like this for now," Halcyon suggested. "As a... whatever you are. Being up front isn't so bad when there's nothing to do like this. And being invisible, intangible, going through walls... Maybe you could learn something useful like this. Don't pretend for a minute we've walked into an easy situation. Come back here when you've got something you know you need to be free for. Get your determination back, show yourself you can bounce all the way back from what just happened to you. When you're ready, I'll turn you back into my mask, put you back on, and you can try again to use our power."
I nodded. "Do I have a maximum range? How does this work?"
Halcyon shrugged. "Never done it myself. You'll find out, though. You've always been fond of testing your limits."
"Thanks," I said earnestly, psyching myself up for a lowest-possible-stakes reconnaissance mission where I actually, unironically, had no actions I could take that would affect the world or have immediate consequences. "Once we're properly safe and finally get a break from all the crazy, I'd really like to talk to you again, by the way."
"Heh. Maybe." Halcyon's laugh was flat. "Just focus on making something of our life first. I'll be rooting for you, even though you know how I feel about what will happen if you win."
"Last question," I said, floating towards the door. "We're a changeling."
"That's not a question," Halcyon pointed out. "Anyway, didn't Leif tell you as much?"
"Yeah, but she said there was a difference between batponies and ones who had 'awakened' or something," I pressed. "And you summoned a horn just then. We can shapeshift."
Halcyon hesitated. "What we can do... is far, far from normal, even by changeling standards. Don't put too much stock in how Leif says this works." She tapped the bracelet for emphasis. "She doesn't have one of these. But, yes. We can shapeshift. I may have cheated just a little bit in the past to make your disguise kit talent work better."
"Hope you're feeling up to cheating a little harder in the future," I told her, floating for the door. "Something tells me that if I do come back here with something urgent to do, that would be a pretty useful ability to have."