//------------------------------// // Chapter 66 // Story: Away and Afar // by PropsValroa //------------------------------// Going along with the most familiar of areas was her plan going forward - and so she went. Collapse went silent, evidently focusing on the task that lay ahead. Seeing how the two of them reacted, Collapse realized she talked *too* much. That was an issue with her. Collapse lacked self control that Magloria had, perhaps it was time to learn from the best. Her stance and manner of walking changed from the way she was completely. She was no longer giddy, but more of focused on what she was doing. It was time to get to the bottom of this mystery, and perhaps she may even impress her friends. Maybe that will happen. Maybe not. Who knows? Collapse might've decided to follow the sense of familiarity, but without specifying *which* location she wanted to head towards, either one she knew about or merely assumed existed, she ended up passing through many, many corridors. At some point they passed by a hall with crumpled insect statues that they could've sworn they saw before. Magloria rose an eyebrow. "Are you sure you know where you're going?" she asked, "Because it seems like we're lost. We've been wandering around for ages." Collapse looks to Magloria. "We are not lost. I just decided to test how far this feeling of familiarity goes and if it changes in intensity throughout where we go. Evidently not. As you can see, we've wandered back to where we were before." she spoke. "But now I'm going to test to see if I can take us somewhere. First, the great Dining Hall." she spoke, remembering the large Dining Hall from her dream. She followed her senses, aiming to take them there. A little more wandering through various corridors (and Magloria still not fully believing Collapse knows where to go) they came across one of the entrances to the great hall, one which put them at the top of a balcony of sorts. The room below looked oddly acceptable in terms of maintenance. Dust still covered absolutely everything like the rest of the place and it was very dark, too dark to see everything fully without a more powerful spell, but aside from things that were made of fabric which now had disintegrated into sad piles, the place looked undamaged by age. "This room is... pretty big. What do you think it was used for?" Jump Start asked as she looked over the balcony to the ground below. Collapse looked over the edge of the balcony. "Not exactly how it looked in the dream but the balcony was definitely here." she playfully grinned to Magloria. "I *do* know where we are going, after all." she said with an even wider grin as she looked throughout the rest of the place. "Maybe not a dining hall like I said, but I would imagine it would be used for some sort of congregations. Perhaps my dream exaggerated things a bit, but I do not understand how I would be feeling familiar about a place like this without some sort of other purpose for it. There were living quarter areas too, if anything this seems like a massive bunker to wait out a cataclysm, but if thats the case, where did everything go?" Collapse asked them. "If that was the case and this whole place really is a bunker, then perhaps whoever was supposed to get here didn't reach it in time?" Jump Start offered, stepping back away from the balcony edge after she was done looking down at the gloomy hall. "That's assuming it's even that in the first place. We could spend all day thinking about why it is how it is, but I'd rather find out, wouldn't you agree?" Magloria stated, looking to Collapse. "Is there anywhere else that is more important than this? A place that would have a reason to be surrounded by such infrastructure?" she asked. "Then the best place for that would be the lever room. Come on, let's see if we can make something happen." she spoke. With a flick of her tail she'd begin to lead them towards where she believed the levers were. Provided how this place worked, it's more than likely they'd end up somewhere like Collapse had in her dream. "I remember one of them made me feel something in my bones. I wonder how that translates into the real world." she added. Magloria and Jump Start turned with Collapse to the way they came, and once again wandered the mazelike halls that, if you didn't know where you were going, it would be very likely that you'd be lost for days. Upon arrival at the lever room, Collapse quickly found out that the visions she had seen of it were greatly under-represented. There was a set of levers near the entrance of the room, each one marked with faded etchings of unknown language like every other etching they've seen so far. But the room expanded beyond that, revealing a series of what could only be described as large machines, all of them covered in dust and completely silent. Their use was hard to place given she had never seen anything like them before, though perhaps she could tear one apart with complete disrespect to their creator and find out. "Ah yes, here we are. Now, I'm sure you'd say this is much more important?" she asked Magloria as she surveyed the levers and smirks somewhat. "Well, definitely was watered down in my dream. There weren't any of these machines or this large room as far as I can remember." Collapse spoke out as she walked towards the machines and would begin to inspect them. 'We'd have to take these apart to figure them out I bet, but I don't wanna risk messing with something that may go awry." Collapse stated. "Although we can do so anyways." she shrugs. Magloria nodded as she examined the different parts of the room. "This looks much better. Some sort of system for controlling something about this place. An engine room of sorts, perhaps?" She moved over to the lever controls. "Though it seems a bit simplistic. There aren't many switches to decide what happens." she said, wiping away some of the dust on a lever. Jump Start moved over to one of the machines opposite of the one Collapse was inspecting. On the outside they appeared to be covered in a ceramic shell, with a hole in the top that appeared to flow into a large tank which took up half of the machine's internals. Some sort of sludgelike liquid that smelt horribly acidic rested at the bottom. At the back of each of them appeared to be pipes constructed of similar ceramics to the shell, each of the pipes connected the machines together before entering several slots in a wall, going to an unknown location. "The best I can also guess is these could perhaps be some sort of like generators? Or this is a pumping station that pumps fluid for...some usage?" Collapse asked as she looks over the machines, finding the design completely unfamiliar. "Acidic, hmm. Could perhaps contain some sort of battery acid that has long since dissolved apart into its constituents, but that's just a shot in the dark." she commented casually. "But mainly what I want to find is some sort of records about this place. Even if its not in a language we can understand, we can take it back home with us and someone could hopefully translate it." I stated. "I am going to try pulling one of these levers to see if anything happens. It's the only way we are going to find out about this place, at least so far. So if you don't mind I am going to pull one of these levers slowly." Collapse said and began to do so with her magic, but she'd stop if Magloria or Jump Start wanted to prevent her from doing so Jump Start looked around some of the others, noting to the others that all the machines looked more or less the same, though the insides of some of them were empty. Perhaps they hasn't been properly filled? Magloria pointed to the inscriptions in the wall. "Well there are records here, but we can't exactly take them. Anything else that's not preserved in absolutely top condition seems like it would've crumpled to dust by now, or would be made of something we can't bring back with us, like rock." she said. Neither of them objected to the to Collapse pulling the lever. Nothing happened until she pulled it all the way, then they started to hear a low humming and rumbling from all of the machines. Some of the machines began rumbling faster than the others... **BOOM!** One machine in the far corner spontaneously combusted, sending out a shockwave and pieces of ceramics around the room. Collapse heard her ears start ringing, and she had trouble focusing on the flames in the back of the room, or the orange and light blue figures that staggered away from the roaring heat. Upon hearing the rumbling of the machines Collapse would start to back away from them. She knew that something was going to go wrong from the sounds of the rumbling growing louder and louder. She knew something was off from the start of it. There was too little time to properly react to what happened next. All Collapse knew next was the machine exploded. Instantly after she saw Magloria and Collapse staggering away. Collapse did her best to keep up and follow after them. There was no time to react for anything else. With all of the adrenaline in her body, she would run out of the building - to escape the growing flames. "Shit! Shit! **Fuck!** I should have not have pulled that!!" Collapse shouted as she ran away, the best she could. Everyone had the same idea, whether they knew it or not. It became a sudden mad rush to the exit, and it felt like one of them tripped over the other at some point, but it was hard to tell who. Some unknown time later Collapse found herself running down a corridor, an uncertain distance away from the room she had fled from. Her focus and hearing finally returned to her enough that she could make proper sense of the world again. Even better was her magic, which seemed to be doing a pretty good job right now as she could clearly see the corridor she was running down. Except she couldn't detect her magical light anymore. It was also a pale green color, not her usual light's color. Wherever she ended up at she had to stop at some point to get her bearings. Once she did she felt her senses return and she was longer in a frantic frenzy. The first thing she noticed was her pale green magical light. Wait. It's not supposed to be like that? It's supposed to be that yellow-gold color. Whatever that explosion was, it was certainly not the way she expected. But now that her senses had returned something else came to mind. Her friends. What happened to them? That was the most important thing. Whatever magical alterations Collapse had gone through can wait. She was the one who knew her way around this place, in a sense. They didn't. They would probably find themselves lost - and if they did, that would make them even harder to locate. First thing's first. She began to call out for her friends, and begin returning to the area slowly, carefully. Now that she had *definitely* cleared her head and could properly understand her surroundings, she saw that her *own* magic wasn't affected because her light wasn't even on in the first place. Dozens of small indentations in the upper walls previously thought to just be decoration were now glowing that pale green light, many only dimly functioning or not functioning at all, but it was still far more light than Collapse's magic produced. It didn't take Collapse very long to come across Magloria who, upon hearing her voice, easily followed it, made even easier with the lights now everywhere. The mare looked a little battered, a scratch or two from the ceramic shrapnel and a mane blown out of proportion (much like Collapse's own), but nothing serious. "Ah, there you are. I take it you haven't found Jump Start yet?" she asked. Collapse looked to Magloria. If this were any other situation perhaps her frazzled mane would have earned a few giggles from Collapse. Clearly at the moment, Collapse was not at all giggling. She was very concerned. Magloria was safe. That is good. She was concerned about Jump Start now. “No. We need to go back and check to see where she went. Come.” Collapse said somewhat shakily as she would lead Magloria back, calling out for Jump Start along the way, Collapse looked very frazzled and messy. Her mind even more so. She didn’t bother to comment on the green lights either. While they hurried back, Magloria commented on the new lighting surrounding them. "Well despite some setbacks, that lever you pulled did at least have some good come out of it. I wonder if there is anything else that now works because of it." she said. When they reached the room with the machines they didn't see any sign of Jump Start, aside from several scattered orange hairs. The fire in the corner of the room was still going, creating smoke which lined the roof, but for some reason it wasn't filling up the room. The rest of the machines seemed to be working fine. One was a bit less stable than the others, but it didn't act violently like it was about to explode yet. "Magloria, do you think you can use your magic to dispel the fire in the corner? I don't want anything else blowing up - do it quick." Collapse said, pointing to the flame, she looked around the room further. Clearly Jump Start didn't get burned or exploded within the room - she went somewhere else, by the looks of it. "I am sure this did something else, we'll have to look at it. Be careful, just incase." Collapse warned. Magloria examined the flames heating up the room, constantly burning on whatever substance had been within the machine's tank. "I could try, however that's a lot of flame. Might take a bit to cool it all off." she replied, moving closer to the searing heat so she could get a better aim. Her horn sparked alight and started to charge, before a stream of chilling wind erupted forth, aimed at the ground around the flames. The flames were determined to not go out however. As soon as Magloria cooled down one part of the machine and moved to the next, the flames spread across the substance coating everything and reignited. After a few minutes of fighting the blaze Magloria had finally found a method to keep the flames from spreading again and reduced it down to a manageable size, before snuffing it out entirely. All that was left was a blackened shell of a machine. scorched flooring, walls and roof, and a horrible acidic smell in the air. Collapse stood there and observed how Magloria would put out the flames. The smell of the room was absolutely disgusting and she wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Once the flames were done Collapse looked to Magloria, "We are gonna need to find Jump Start now. We may need to do some medical aid on her, since it seems like she either got scared and ran further than either of us or something happened to her." Collapse said in a serious manner, and began to look down the halls, calling out for Jump Start's name. There was no reply to Collapse's calls. Jump Start must've already been out of earshot by now, given the size of this place. Or she ran into something that made it difficult to return, like a plasma beam trap. "We're done here anyway." Magloria stated, giving a glance over to the levers. "We're not touching those controls anymore, given what might accidentally happen again if we did." At that, she began the search through the halls for the orange mare. It didn't take long before the saw something they hadn't seen previously, but it wasn't Jump Start. A small blue wisp of energy levitated down a hall ahead of them, moving out of sight when it went around a corner. It looked quite similar to the one they had seen out in the jungle, but *significantly* smaller. Collapse looks to the blue wisp of energy there, raising an eyebrow at that. "What is that?" she asked. "Only thing we've seen that looks like that was the one we saw in the jungle but this one is not of the same kind. I'd rather we find Jump Start before we mess with strange energies though." Collapse said to Magloria. "But when we find her, I wanna check that one out as well. I am sure there are others here...but do you think it could have been 'activated' by what we did? We didn't see anything in here before." she stated. Magloria shrugged at Collapse's final question. "I have no idea, for all we know it was hiding and only now decided to come out." she replied, deciding on taking a passage that *wasn't* where the blue thing went to look for Jump Start. Several minutes of calling out with no reply later and they spotted yet another blue thing, but this time it was floating down the corridor in their direction. It was still a fair way off and hadn't reacted when they saw it, just like the large one. Collapse looks down the hall at the blue thing there. "I don't know what these things are, but where could Jump Start have gone?" Collapse asked, now getting more worried by the moment. "Let's keep going. I remember that she had fallen? I think? But Its hazy, and I don't remember seeing her run off after that." Collapse replied. "She could've gone literally anywhere in this place. Being an earth pony she's fully capable of running anywhere she wanted. By now she's probably lost and wandering around trying to find us, or she could've gone into one of the rooms and hidden instead." Magloria suggested, before thinking something over. "I wonder if there's something here that can help us track her down..." The blue thing got closer to them, but when it got close enough to detect them, it changed. The blue colour turned red and it seemed to come alive, no longer drifting through the halls, instead navigating quickly in a haphazard flight path, down the hall towards one of the insect statues. "Well, maybe the blue things might help. Whatever they are - it seems like some sort of automated system - but what if they are more than that...what if they are alive? Sentinels of this place. Guarding it long after their creators have died out." Collapse said in wonder. "Oh, how little we know about the world..." she pondered further. Magloria narrowed her eyes as she watched the blue, now red, wisp of energy enter into a small hole in the statue. "I think you might be right about the whole 'sentinel' thing." she said bluntly. Energy sparked through the entirety of the shell, causing etched lines in the centipede suit's segments to begin glowing a blue similar to the wisp before it saw them. Part of the energy within could also be seen through gaps in the segments. Dozens of legs clicked and creaked as it began to move them again after so long of being dormant, shifting its weight around until it stood before them. A single large centipede eye formed on its face from a ball of red energy, which then focused on them. "...and living or not, I don't think it's going to help us." Magloria added.