//------------------------------// // Chapter 67 // Story: Away and Afar // by PropsValroa //------------------------------// Collapse observes the action with the Wisp and the statue of the centipede. Well, at the very least it wasn’t a real centipede. She remembers that Magloria dealt with one near Pearlth. But this one was just an animated statue from the looks of it. Still dangerous though. “Well, we got two choices. Run and not deal with this - or we fight and destroy it. I am sure we could destroy it with our combined power - but I will leave that up to you…” Collapse glanced to Magloria. “To make a *command* decision, one could put it that way.” she spoke, allowing Magloria to choose what she wanted to do here, but it better be quick. "We've got bigger problems than this, like finding Jump Start." Magloria said, and quickly turned and ran from the centipede. "I doubt it's just going to let us go that easily though." And it didn't. It had spotted trespassers in its home and it was going to remove them, one way or another. Metal clacking on stone told them all that they needed to know that the centipede was pursuing them. The clacks slowly came at a more rapid pace as it moved, telling them that it was getting faster and faster. Collapse also ran alongside Magloria. "Well the centipede doesn't care about that, so we are going to have to take care of it - evidently." Collapse spoke, and as they ran she quickly charged up a laser and fired it back at the Centipede. Fairly low power, and aimed at its legs. Whether it was accurate or not was another matter entirely. The low power bolt of energy struck one of the many legs, but it neither had enough power to dent or melt the metal, nor did it have the force to cause the suit to stagger. Even if it did, it had dozens of other legs to keep it stable. In other words, her attack did absolutely nothing. "I'd prefer it if we found something that could help us instead of wasting our energy. If we exhaust ourselves we can't do anything against all the others." Magloria pointed out, before shouting out to Collapse to turn left down another corridor, doing so herself. The sudden change in direction caused the centipede to overshoot down the corridor they were previously in, forcing it to turn back and rebuild its speed. "Oh I know what we could do, Magloria." Collapse spoke as they ran. "We could lead it into the room with the machines and blow one of them up when it's stuck in here, that would do severe damage to it." Collapse spoke, simply not bothering to send off any other magical attacks at the centipede for now, acknowledging Magloria's statement. "Or find something else that would serve a similar purpose." she added. "How are we going to cause one of those to blow up? The first time was an accident!" Magloria stated, "Unless you plan on pressing more levers in the hopes that things happen." They turned a few other corners on the way to the machine room, which served to delay the centipede chasing them even further, so it wasn't an immediate threat at the moment, at least. "We lead it into the room and then we both fire a combined blast that will explode one of the machines. But let's keep going, perhaps we can find something." Collapse spoke, trying to lead them somewhere important, wherever that may be. Maybe the living quarters here had something that the dream did not. As if subconsciously reading where to go through the place, Collapse ended up leading them to one of the living quarters, the debris and piles of dust showing that something used to live here, but definitely doesn't now. The only places that look like they could've stored anything they could find were a few hollow places in stone cabinets or small rooms, their doors non-existent at this point if they even had any. Didn't look like it promised much. They didn't have long before the centipede would reach them, especially if they looked around for a bit. Unfortunately the living quarters only had 1 exit, so they'd have to encounter it one way or another. Well, at the very least Collapse didn't know this place only had one exit. Oh well, it was time to face off against this centipede since they didn't have that much of a choice. Collapse knew this was going to happen one way or another. "Well, how will we destroy that centipede now? It appears we have no other option, we might as well bight the bullet and think of something while we have the time. Get a plan to destroy it." she commented. "Idea - I have fire magic, you have ice magic. Extreme temperature differences can cause something to shatter, see where I'm going?" Collapse asked. "A different idea, we let it charge in, crash into a wall, and then use that time to run back out of the room. I can freeze it in place to give us even more time." Magloria suggested, before she thought over Collapse's suggestion. "But... we don't want to keep running from it, it's awfully persistent. Perhaps shattering its head would be best. Wait until it slows down, then I'll freeze it and you can heat it up after." she added, positioning herself right next to a wall in direct sight of the centipede. On cue, the centipede charged into the room at Magloria, who quickly moved out of the way of the mechanical beast. It didn't end up crashing as hard as she expected it to, but it did cause a loud banging sound, echoing down the corridors outside. Despite that, neither the wall nor the centipede looked damaged, not that Magloria cared about that part as she let loose a stream of cold energy onto the recovering sentinel. Collapse agreed with Magloria and proceeded to charge up a fire blast while they waited for the centipede to come in. When it came in, Collapse quickly got out of the way to avoid being struck by it. She watched Magloria's actions, watching where she aimed. Collapse was going to directly fire at where she aimed when Magloria was over with her attack. When Magloria finished her attack, Collapse would aim her horn directly at it. Like before, a spiral effect would dance up Collapse's horn and the two streams from either side would converge onto a central point - forming a central focused beam of fire energy right at where Magloria had struck the centipede with her cold energy. It was a lot more powerful than a simple unfocused laser spell. The centipede didn't react like a living creature would when it got struck by the extremes of both hot and cold temperature. It repositioned itself in its attempt to charge at Collapse while she cast her spell. But as the metal shrank from the cold, then quickly attempted to expand from the extra heat, they heard the groaning sounds of metal under too much stress. Before it could manage to get halfway through it's next charge, Collapse saw out the corner of her eye the glow of Magloria's horn, right before an ice ball shattered against the centipede's head, the heavy force causing the now brittle metal to shatter, the entire head being torn off and scattered around the room in shards, revealing the inside of the centipede which glowed with lines of power. Its charge stopped as it tried to look around and find its targets again, but without a head it was blind. It didn't stop moving, but it definitely stopped trying to attack them so aggressively. Without something to go after, it began to leave... or tried to leave as it bumped into several walls. Realizing the failure of the construct it was inhabiting, the tiny blue thing extracted itself from the same hole they saw it climb into and fly off down the corridors, leaving the shell to power down and crumple into a heap, just like all the other statues. Collapse observes the fruits of her labor with a wide, almost evil grin. It felt so pleasing that she actually had an idea that worked and one that was not shut down by Magloria. Not that she would speak her mind - she wouldn't. It was best to show maturity by not gloating about one's success and to build a positive image with Magloria through actions, and not words. It was rather easily defeated by their combined might apparently, which was the most important thing. Whatever that blue light was - it was what was controlling the actions of the centipede itself. The tiny blue light was too fast for Collapse to catch up to, and while she tried, she stopped running right at the end of the room, knowing that it was too fast for her to catch. Looking back to Magloria she would say, "Whatever that blue thing is - it's certainly controlling these centipede statues. I honestly think it is a life form we are unfamiliar with. What kind of magic construct does that? Controlling things? Wandering the jungle, with unexplained knowledge? It's a lifeform, Magloria. It's something that is alive on another plane of consciousness than we are. What that white thing was? It was probably communicating something to me, maybe even trying to get us to come here in the first place." Collapse spoke, seemingly coming to a conclusion. "But that leaves many questions unanswered. Now - let's find us a pony named Jump Start." Collapse spoke, ready to move on. With her mind, she thought about Jump Start and wanted to follow where any leads might be. Perhaps the feeling of knowing the place could apply to knowing where someone is - within the place? Since Magloria wasn't the main focus of the centipede, it seems like she took a more elaborate approach to taking it down. She didn't throw an ice ball, or an ice spear, or even another table. She threw herself. Not literally of course, but rather than wasting more magical energy on a crippled opponent, she saw fit to run at it herself, jumping off of one of the nearby tables to get some extra height, spinning mid-leap so she could deliver one powerful buck to the side of their attacker. The spot she impacted crumpled beneath her, other segments buckling under the force. Her impact caused the rest of the compromised segments to tear apart, no longer having the proper shape to keep each piece together. The end result was a mostly intact back half, scraps of the front half scattered everywhere, a fleeing wisp of blue energy as its construct got destroyed, and Magloria standing among the half frozen, half scorched mess of metal fragments. "Jump Start is over there, she's fine." she said, motioning with her head in the direction of some sort of glassy blast shield structure. Collapse stood there and watched the scene unfold with a grin. It was a very comforting feeling to have someone to look up to - and to also see who exactly you look up to. Magloria had all this tactical knowledge, what else did she have in her head? Well, Collapse really wanted to give Magloria a big, tight hug but decided against it. There was one other who needed a hug, though. Looking to Jump Start she'd walk up to her and give her a tight hug. "There you are, Jump Start. We were looking all over for you. Please don't be afraid. You have nothing to fear anymore, with us by your side." Collapse said in a cooing way, even giving Jump Start a gentle head pat. As she hugged Jump Start she looked over to Magloria, as if wanting her to join the hug but did not say anything. "Seems like we got a lot to figure out here, don't we?" Collapse asked as she would gently pull away from Jump Start. Jump Start immediately latched onto Collapse when she got close enough, refusing to let go so she could feel safe for as long as possible. Even when Collapse tried to pull away she didn't let go. Not that Collapse could really do much about it, magic drained and up against earth pony strength. Magloria nodded. "Absolutely. This room alone makes most of this place seem boring." she said as she looked around at the room's contents, letting her eyes settle on the big ring structure that acted as a centerpiece. She furrowed her brow. "This one looks... incomplete. One of the pieces are missing." she stated, pointing at the gap in the structure. Collapse would allow Jump Start to hug her back like that, as she softly smiles and pets Jump Start's mane. Even though Collapse was a bit tired she enjoyed the warmth of Jump Start. "I am never leaving you alone again." she said firmly into Jump Start's ears as she pets them with her soft hooves. "You're so soft. You're so orange..." she cooed as her hooves rubbed her head gently. Looking over to Magloria, she would let Magloria do what she wanted to do. "Hmm...I have no idea what any of this looks like, maybe it's some sort of...experiment room, maybe? For spells and stuff? Perhaps alchemy?" she asked. "It quite possibly could be for spells, though this all looks too advanced for me. Alchemy though? Doesn't look like it. There's too much missing equipment." Magloria said. Looking back over to Collapse, she rose an eyebrow. "You have a proper academic record for unicorns, right? You'd be able to understand more about advanced spellwork. Does any of it look familiar?" she asked. Eventually Collapse decided to let go, having now calmed down enough that she felt comfortable, though she shuddered whenever she looked over at the remains of the centipede. "Well let me get a closer look at everything here, then I'll see what I can come up with." Collapse spoke as she would walk off from Jump Start and look over at the various bits of the room to see if anything felt or seemed familiar, or if she may know what the various things are in the room here. Occasionally she'd look back at Jump Start to make sure she was alright. Most of the stuff didn't seem all that familiar, despite knowing that they were important *somehow*. The ring felt pretty important, as did a piece of it that she found, collecting dust on a nearby shelf. That piece was different though, instead of having many etchings, it contained a single socket. An empty socket. Another important thing she found looked to be some sort of control panel, but instead of being simple levers, there was a whole range of what looked to be buttons and sliders. She felt an extreme sense of foreboding when she looked at several of the sliders, positioned at the top of their lines like something was set to the maximum. Jump Start was still fine, as fine as one could be inside a strange ruin and surrounded by strange artifacts. It wasn't like she was going to have a heart attack or anything. Collapse would look over these things for a minute or so. "Well first of all I do have feelings about this. When I look at these sliders here, it feels like it's at a maximum. A very foreboding feeling, I can tell you that." she spoke aloud and then walked to the piece of the ring on the shelf. "This definitely fits within the ring - but there is a socket here. Perhaps some kind of power source or something like that." she spoke, pointing at the hole in the piece. "Why don't we try to slowly turn those sliders down slowly, to turn the...whatever it is, down? Maybe that will do something. If you turn something down...it can't explode, so I feel like it is safer than what we did with those machines." Collapse spoke. "If you don't mind, that is." she added. Magloria looked curiously at the controls, then to Collapse. "Alright then, if you're sure about that..." she said, bringing her magic to focus. Several of the settings were enveloped by the same glow and brought down to about the halfway point. Nothing changed in the room. Whatever it's connected to is either inactive, incomplete or broken it seems. Magloria seemed a little disappointed that nothing happened, but at least nothing exploded. "Well then... this is looking to be a bit of a puzzle." she muttered to herself. "Well, guess nothing happens then." Collapse shrugs and looks to the piece with the socket. "Maybe we can find something that goes inside of this socket here and see if we can get it working." Collapse suggested and looked around the room for anything that would fit into the socket, perhaps it was for a lightbulb? There were a few things around the lab that they found, but most of them didn't fit exactly. They were either too big, too small, or weren't the right shape. Only one thing properly fit into the receptacle that the ring piece had, a glittering stone that shimmered many colors when light reflected on it, like an opal, carved and polished exquisitely. It had a large crack down its side, but that probably wasn't going to be a problem. Upon discovering the glittering stone, Collapse would put it into the ring piece they have had. "Alright, let's see what this does." she spoke, and would carefully slide the ring piece into the ring itself, and would step back a bit. The moment that Collapse slotted the ring piece into the frame, it sparked with energy as a circuit was completed. Power began to run through the entire frame as everyone could feel something drawing on their minds. The stone began to glow bright as the ring's energy started to expand into the center, creating a swirl of pale blue magic- That abruptly collapsed on itself as energy sharply struck out from the crack in the stone, striking the room in several places with arcs of magical lightning. Magloria immediately pulled Collapse back and down to the floor to reduce their chance of getting struck. The stone broke apart before falling to the floor, leaving the socket empty and halting the spectacularly dangerous light show. Without a filled socket, the energy in the ring dispersed and the whole process shut down again. Collapse yelped and duck down to avoid the lightning that shot out from the gemstone, but by the time she thought to do so Magloria had pulled her down to the floor, looking to where the stone once was she was silent for several moments. "Holy shit..." she muttered in shock. "Y-yeah, we aren't messing with these things further I can tell you that..." she laughed nervously. "But we can at least take some of these for examination when we get back home..." she suggested. Magloria looked down at the remains of the broken stone, gently kicking one of the halves as she did so. It didn't seem like it retained any of the energy that had flowed through it beforehand. "Looks like this wasn't strong enough to handle it. I blame that crack it had. If we had an intact one maybe it wouldn't send out lightning everywhere then break." she said, now picking up the half in her magic to inspect it closer. "Where would we find a whole one of those though?" Jump Start asked. "Finding another lab, one could say. Let's see if anything in here is worth keeping." Collapse spoke and looked around the place to see if any of the parts were worth keeping, such as the ring piece - something she figured which were keeping. If the others agreed, Collapse would unsummon it in a gold flash. "If we are done here, we should see what else there is, maybe I can follow my feeling to another lab." There were many little things that looked like they could've been worth keeping, but much like a shiny metal spoon, a lot of them were probably just mundane stuff used as tools or components, which would be worthless on their own outside of being 'artifacts'. Jump Start was perplexed at Collapse's idea to take the ring piece. What would she even use it for? Was she just going to keep it with her until they somehow managed to get back to Equestria? "Wouldn't it be better to keep that thing where it belongs? It was doing something there at least." she said. "Unless you're planning on taking the entire ring, the only thing we could do with it is just sell it to some nerdy academic type who wants to learn what it does... and would get a hilariously incomplete picture, judging from this room." Magloria added. "Well, I would want to take the whole ring set, do you think we could do that maybe? But that would definitely be pushing it..." Collapse said, scratching her hoof on the floor with a bit of a defeated look, since she wanted to take everything they found so that they could bring back new knowledge to Equestria. "But I suppose there may be other things around here, wouldn't there?" Collapse asked. Magloria moved over to the ring and started trying to pull other pieces of it apart for Collapse. They didn't budge. Something was gluing or bolting them together. She even attempted to move the ring from its spot, but it was stuck to the floor. She shook her head. "I don't think you'll be taking this anywhere, unless you can somehow fit the entire ruin into your unsummoning place." she said. "Other rooms with different stuff, maybe?" Jump Start suggested. "Not sure if you can top this place though." "Well, let's go." Collapse spoke and began to lead them out of the place, wanting to take them somewhere like this. Maybe there was another lab elsewhere she can take them there by following her feeling? "I wish I could summon up this entire place and take it with us." she giggled. The others followed after her, though Magloria couldn't help but feel that place was probably the most important room out of the entire place. Whatever was happening in there was well beyond their understanding. A handful of minutes passed wandering through corridors and avoiding those wisps of energy. Collapse didn't sense that anything around the place was familiar at the moment. It didn't stop them from entering what appeared to be an armory of sorts. There was a variety of armor sets, but all of them had become damaged and fragile through the passage of time. Even if they weren't, none of them looked like they would fit anyway. The weapons however... were strange. There was a bunch of what looked to be sword handles, but none of them had actual blades. Several other handles and grips were also there, still without the important parts. The only weapon that actually looked functional was a set of spears, but they were large and heavy, heavier than they rightfully should've been. Magloria was obviously disappointed with the selection. "Who even designed this?" she growled as she tossed the spear she was inspecting down to the floor. Collapse approached the weaponry on the armor sets with a confused look. "Hmm, that's...pretty weird to say the least but then again those wisps of energy and their statues do not have hands to grab the blade with, so why would they need handles? But anyways that's really odd..." she spoke and then looked to the spear on the floor that Magloria was inspecting. "Well, probably is heavier and like that since it's not designed for the pony form - but that begs the question, why are there physical weaponry here when we have yet to see any physical creatures besides...sentinels piloted by wisps of energy? There had to be some other species here at some point." Collapse suggested. Magloria shook her head. "No, the spear is heavy for its size. It's like they used lead to make it, which is stupid in its own right." she said, before she looked around the room, trying to see if there was any remnants of something that once lived here. There was not. "Perhaps there were physical creatures here at some point. I really doubt that tiny balls of energy were capable of creating all of this. Even the big one didn't see that compelled to do anything." "Which in that case, where did they go?" she asked. "That's a good question. How about this - how about we try capturing one of those tiny balls of energy with our magic? Catch a...Wisp? Streak? Whatever they are." Collapse suggested, since they couldn't make much use of anything that was within this room. "But if they are truly alive I don't wanna hurt them though, I just wanna get an up close look and study them or something, you know?" Collapse suggested. "As long as you're fit to take down another one of those centipedes if something goes wrong, because that's exactly what will happen should it happen to escape after you try to contain it." Magloria pointed out. "Wait, how are you even going to catch one anyway? They're balls of energy, where would you even begin? Stick it in a box surrounded by a metal cage or something?" Jump Start questioned. "We contain it in a magic bubble, for example?" Collapse suggested, forming a magic bubble with her magic and hardening it's thickness just for a demonstration. "Or we can come up with something, but I don't think we've seen anything we could use for that around here, at least not yet." Collapse stated. "Well in that case, are you good enough to take on the centipede when things go wrong? If you are, then let's go." Magloria stated. "Maybe if we pin one down for long enough we could get something out of them before they fly off." Jump Start looked around, pondering to herself out loud. "I wonder if they have magic restraining equipment around here? Probably not. Would've stopped working ages ago." "Yes, I suppose we are good enough for that." Collapse said to Magloria and would proceed to walk out of the place, looking for any of the blue balls of energy floating about the place. When and if they saw any, she'd point it out to the others and begin chasing after them. It didn't take long before the group had come across one of the patrolling wisps of energy, slowly moving through the corridors. While Magloria would've preferred to ambush it for an easy capture, it seems as though Collapse didn't think that way, given how she immediately chased it. As expected, it's color changed from blue to red as soon as it had detected Collapse, immediately making a break for the nearest centipede shell so it could drive her off. Given that Collapse had already given chase of the wisp of energy, she would speed up her chase before summoning in her fly ring. Using her fly ring, she would fly up into the air carefully and float after the wisp of energy, hopefully the others could keep up. As Collapse neared towards the wisp of energy, she would attempt to reach out with her magic to catch it. Her telekinetic field managed to catch the energy wisp, but she quickly found out that unlike solid objects, attempting to hold something made of energy was incredibly difficult, like trying to hold an oily ball between her hooves. She could feel it slipping through at a very fast rate, and it wasn't that far from reaching a nearby shell. With such a precarious grasp - Collapse really *really* didn't want to lose it. Her energy field shifts form to that of a solid encasing sphere much like a shield, and she slows down. "I-I got it, come help me, quick, or I might lose it!" she shouted to the others, more so Magloria. The solid barrier of magic does the trick with containing it, however now it attempts to find a way out of the sphere by rapidly spinning around and around the edges, like a fly trapped in a glass. "Help you how? It's not like I can just mimic what you're doing." Magloria stated as she stepped up next to her, watching the energetic thing as it spun around. Collapse would harden the sphere around the blue wisp and would bring the sphere down closer to them, now standing on the floor with the sphere right in front of them. "We should get it to some sort of container to where I don't have to hold the magic spell up like this. I think I got it contained." she spoke calmly. Magloria sighed. "Perhaps you should've thought about finding something to keep it in *before* grabbing it. Now we need to find somewhere that actually has something like that." she said, looking down several corridors in case there was anything that could lead them to some such things. There wasn't, it was all just maze-like corridors. Jump Start began shuffling through her saddlebags. "Don't we have something that we could stick it in? A pot or a jar perhaps?" she asked. "We should have thought of that before, yes..." Collapse narrowed her eyes and watched the blue wisp spin around inside of it more. "Hmm, let me check my pocket dimension." she said, thinking about the items she had. It came to her mind that she had a jar, although she can't remember why she had the jar. It wasn't from the Constance - it was before that. Maybe she was going to keep some screws in a jar to keep her workshop all organized? Yeah, that was what it was for, actually. Collapse summons the jar on the ground next to them. As it was a jar for screws it was probably on the smaller end. Seems like they could just shove it into the jar, then. While Collapse was summoning in her jar, Magloria has searched around her own saddlebags and found the crystal flask she had made a while ago. It was a little bit smaller than the jar, but probably stronger than simple glass. The energy ball didn't seem like it cared about which new prison it would have. It was still trying to get out of the one it was already in. Collapse looks to the crystal flask. "Hmm, that looks like a better place to contain it." she mentioned, and held out the jar. "Whoever wants the jar can take it. First come, first serve. One fine, unique and *totally not just a regular jar *- jar!" Collapse giggled, wanting to see if either of them would take the jar, regardless, she'd look to Magloria. "Alright let's put the blue wispy ball into the flask." she said, thinking about how to do that. Magloria and Jump Start looked at each other, neither of them wanting to take Collapse up on her offer for a jar which had probably been sitting in an unknown dimension for who knows how long. "No thanks. Just do what you were going to do." Magloria said. She wasn't really sure why exactly Collapse wanted to study one of these things anyway. Perhaps it was an unicorn of proper academics sort of thing? Collapse would take the top off of the flask and put it up against her magic sphere. Directly over the top the sphere opened a hole and the sphere began to shrink, forcing the blue wisp ball into the flask, if it was possible. Collapse puts her jar in her saddlebag, mumbling something about "my favorite jar". She was just being weird. Before their eyes they saw the very first wisp in a bottle. It still didn't seem all that pleased about its situation, but it's not like that was going to change any time soon. Magloria sealed the top of the flask with a layer of ice, knowing full well that it was temporary. They'd have to find something else later on to seal it properly. Now that she thought about it, maybe she should try and come up with a design for an all-in-one bottle and stopper? "Well, you got it. Now you can do whatever you want with it I suppose. Take it home, read it a story, drink it- actually don't do that last one." she said. "I think we should try to capture two of them, they may be able to produce off spring and we can breed them, maybe? If that would even work. I can imagine these little guys being popular back home, if we can tame them, that is." Collapse said, holding the flask and looking at the wisp with childlike eyes. It was so cute, it was so blue! "What the... I knew you didn't have restraint, but... seriously?" Magloria exclaimed at Collapses sudden announcement of her intentions. What was this mare even thinking? "They're balls of some unknown magic! What even makes you think that they could create more of themselves, let alone do so willingly when trapped inside a bottle?" she stated.