//------------------------------// // Goddess of the Void // Story: The Immortal Dream // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// Pure silence filled my ears as I retreated up the spiral staircase. At the top, the elevator I had summoned on my way down was waiting for me. I didn't feel like thinking as I made my way over to it. There was too much... Well, I didn't feel like thinking about the reasons, either. I let my legs guide me, and they wanted to go home. The elevator doors closed around me, and with a smooth, well-oiled whir, it began to rise. I lost track of how long it rose for. A pink presence hovered on the edge of my consciousness, and no amount of trying not to think could block out the looming sensation of inevitability, of importance and necessity and need. In going down to explore the bottom of the world, I had picked up a magical flame. What was it? I hadn't the faintest clue. But not even a fool could deny that it was important. And as long as I was carrying it, I was responsible for it. If I messed up again, my actions could have consequences that extended far beyond me. I didn't know what they would be. That was just the sensation I got, trying not to think about it. Beneath my mask, I could tell the other me was even more terrified by this than I was. The elevator's momentum shifted to the side, as if it was rising at a slight diagonal cant. Whoever built it must not have had a destination in mind that happened to be directly on top of that crystal building... Finally, after an age, the elevator slowed to a stop. As it did so, I checked myself: my coat was tattered and covered in long-dried blood, one of my boots was missing, and the rest of me wasn't doing much better. Oh well. I'd just have to deal with it. The doors slid open. I was in a factory, but not a familiar one. A long, wide hallway stretched off to either side, its ends curving around and suggesting it was circular. Dim emergency lighting showed off high walls and a distant ceiling. Everything was wrought from the same metal, the walls designed in an elaborate, ridged, angular, futuristic style that reminded me of Cold Karma's top floors, only less lavish and more technological. The floor had similarly elaborate patterns, intermingled with conduits that probably would have glowed had the power been on. And yet, it was completely flat - much more flat, open space than would be required simply for ponies to get around a factory. This place was designed for something big to move through. Ill at ease, I kept my bracelet off and wandered out into the hallway. When I was a few paces away from the elevator, I stopped and looked back. The elevator shaft protruded from the floor like a cylinder in an alcove, and from its roof branched innumerable hoses and cables, thick and well-shielded. The cables trailed up into the darkness, hugging the ceiling and splitting off to the left and right. I took a few more steps back. The hallway seemed to be shaped like a gear, with many such alcoves lining its outer wall. Save for the one with the elevator, all that I could make out were taken up by gigantic glass capsules. I couldn't make out what was inside. My heart thumped. I approached a capsule. The light didn't get much better as I drew nearer. A wide metal pedestal served as the capsule's base, and from it rose a glass tube about the width of a two-track subway tunnel. I couldn't make out the top, but it was full of some clear liquid, and looked like the glass was designed to retract into the floor. There was a silhouette inside, squat, huge and immobile. After a moment of indecision, I gritted my teeth and lit my bracelet, letting my curiosity get the better of me. It was a machine, suspended in liquid. At its center was a stalk-like, vertical core, connected to a base that sported three heavy-duty, double-belt treads, presently arrayed in a triangle but looking like they could change their orientation at will. At its top was an armored metal dome, an array of sensors on the underside that probably made up its face. The stalk had four mechanical arms that looked like they could rotate in any direction, armed with another armored dome, a light cannon, a heavy cannon, and an oversized claw. On its back, protruding down from the dome, there was a giant, smooth metal spike surrounded by several rings, exactly like the devices I had seen in the flame chamber down below. Some of the cables from the elevator shaft, I realized, went into the capsule's roof. Odds were, the liquid in there had something to do with ether. For a moment, it was hard to tear my eyes away from the monstrosity or its dock, and when I did, it was to look at the other distant alcoves that each held their own systems. If this was a circle, and the pattern kept up... There could be over two dozen of these things. This wasn't a mere factory. It was a hangar. I noticed a control console in the alcove. Unfortunately, there weren't any keys laying around for me to steal, but there was a burnished placard. Pavise-Class Soul Armor Unit 17, it read. I stared at the thing again. And, suddenly, it hit me: I had seen one of these before. A destroyed one, granted, and that hadn't been in good light either. But there was one in the hideout, guarding the long corridor to the front entrance, where we had gone in when Leif first took us there. So many things had happened that day, I forgot all about it... But now that I remembered, it was undeniably the same. The hideout belonged to Kitty and Jamjars. And Jamjars, I remembered, had a statue in the upper levels of Cold Karma honoring contributions to weapons R&D. At the time, I thought she was somehow involved with the Whitewings, but... did she know about these, too? I swallowed, and ran to check another alcove. It was the same. Heart pounding, I chanced a little more light from my bracelet, and the ceiling came into clearer view. It was covered in Whitewings. For a moment, I felt like I was looking at the underbelly of a military drop ship. Row after row after row after row after row of Whitewings, neatly folded and tethered upside-down into docks. I tried to count, and after a few tries got thirty-five in a single row, and the rows went all the way around the ceiling. Mental math, mental math... If I wasn't miscounting, there could be as many as ten thousand Whitewings in this room. Each one of those things, I knew from personal experience, was strong enough to make trouble for an entire company of trained yaks, and that was when its pilot was more interested in learning than winning. War between Ironridge and Yakyakistan... If even a fraction of these things took to the field, it wouldn't be a fight. It would be a slaughter. And that was to say nothing of whatever the big ones were capable of. "I thank you, Elise." The Composer's words echoed through my memory. "While I came to Icereach for other reasons, I had hoped as a side benefit to gain insight into any backdoors Icereach built into these Whitewings, allowing them to neutralize their own creations. Now you've not only shown me, but given me the opportunity to successfully test a fix. You have my gratitude." Unless... Slaughter wasn't even the point. Because that wasn't how Kitty operated. When had she ever cared about bloodshed and wanton destruction? Winning or losing, killing or causing strife... What if the war with Yakyakistan was nothing more ambitious than a test run for this army's capabilities? But if that was the case, what was it supposed to be used for once she decided its performance was satisfactory? "Absolutely, friendo. You see, once upon a time, God was creating the world, and he got around to me, and he said, 'You, you will have an ugly face, and nobody will like your face,' and lo, it was so. I really hate that guy. Maybe one day I will kill him if I get the chance." I felt a deep, deep chill. The spark of cold in my chest seemed excited. The spark of pink seemed afraid. Personally, I agreed with the flame. "We've gotta stop this," I whispered to myself. "I barely feel like I know anything anymore, but this is so much bigger than my own problems. Anything I can do, I can do. Come on." "Anything, huh?" Procyon said, and I jumped a little as I realized she was still there. "You got something in mind?" I raised an eyebrow, keeping my voice low. "Just thinking out loud," Procyon said, surveying the weapons with an expression that appeared a lot more curious than disturbed. "Kitty controls those Whitewings by remote, right? Have you ever seen her control more than one at a time?" I shook my head. "Seems unlikely that one mare would need that many just as backups for herself," Procyon mused. "And there's too many of them for it to be a thing you'd need specialized equipment or training to use. Logistics get a lot easier when you're mass-producing machines than when you're trying to organize huge numbers of ponies." "What are you getting at?" I gave her a look. She shrugged. "Just thinking, if you really have a plan and want to avail yourself of as many tools as possible... They probably designed this so just anyone can pilot one of those, if they find the controls. And you're a fast learner." I stared up at the Whitewings again. "Is this more reverse psychology? Seriously, it's not like you to encourage me." Procyon shook her head. "Actually, this is very much in line with my interests. If you're acting through an avatar, that's a layer of insulation between us and the consequences of your actions. It's also the power of an external machine you're drawing on, rather than our own. Maybe you can even be satisfied enough with yourself to settle down and stop dreaming if you notch a win or two... which you will be able to do, because those things are powerful enough that resorting to violence is a guaranteed win condition." I shivered. "Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyway, this is probably Cold Karma's basement, yeah? I bet the core is close. If there's any chance Coda and the others are still trying to stop this..." I let my bracelet go dim. "You can fly around and invisibly do recon, right?" "If you're going to ask for directions, just keep walking," Procyon sighed. "The core is in the center of this ring. There's a door a quarter turn away. Though, you... Well, I'll let you discover it for yourself." She floated away. "Wait-!" I stretched out a hoof, but it was no good. Gritting my teeth, I took one last look at the Pavise's containment unit, and started running. Procyon hadn't lied. As I circled the hangar, an entrance came into view, just as huge as the hall I was in now. I quickened my pace, my gait uneven due to the height difference from my missing boot. It led straight to the center... The core itself opened up before me, though my attention was stolen by something massive standing on the floor in the middle. It was only a silhouette, backlit by a bright windigo-blue coming from something behind it I couldn't see, but it was monstrous, and far more organic than the Pavise machines earlier. It had wings. Leathery, batpony wings, fully extended and stretching from wall to wall. And a long, tapering tail that wasn't made of hair. And scales. And claws. My breath caught in my throat. A dragon. It was breathing. But it wasn't free, either. Its entire head was covered by some sort of machine attached to the ceiling, and it looked to be in some sort of mechanically-induced stasis. Another weapon for the hangar, then. And by the looks of things, the centerpiece of the fleet. What was the source of that light, though? I started circling it, craning my neck to see... It came into view. A pony. A familiar one. Coda. Encased head to hoof in ice. The fur on my back rose in alarm, and I ran forward. It was all I could do to stop myself from crying out. "Coda," I whispered, "Coda...!" The alicorn filly was sealed in an inch-thick layer of ice that conformed to her shape, radiating unearthly blue light. Inside the ice, frost poured like waterfalls from her unmoving eyes, her face set in a mixture of pain and determination. I skidded to a halt. "What is...?" Coda didn't move. Whatever had happened, had happened. The action was over. I was too late. Was I? My heart beating out of control, the dragon all but forgotten, I reached out to touch the ice. It felt... hostile. Alive. But also curious. I could almost hear its intention in my mind, even through the sole of my boot: was I a friend? Did I share its cause? It was... offering itself to me. In my chest, Ludwig's spark danced. It was the same, exact kind of cold. I stumbled backwards. "What... is this...?" "That's what happens when you eat too much of a seven-thousand-year-old curse that you happen to disagree with, I'm afraid," Egdelwonk's voice said from behind me. I whirled. He was standing on the dragon's tail, leaning casually against one of its spikes. "You...!" "Me," he said, giving me a frown. "Honestly, Halcyon, one of these days you're going to stop being surprised when I know things I shouldn't." "What's going on here?" I shakily asked. "What happened to everyone? Why is Coda like this? Why are you here?" Egdelwonk shrugged. "Oh, this and that. Your friends' coup succeeded, thanks partly to a certain someone using her body to seal away a power that's entirely capable of fighting back. Most of them are now playing bureaucrat, trying to get along with all the factions they didn't just depose. Except Corsica, the unsung hero of the hour who's still sleeping off a nasty bout of depression..." He leaned forward, putting on a monocle. "And you, who disappeared without a trace the better half of a week ago." My eyes widened. "A whole week!?" Egdelwonk waved a wing. "Oh, not quite, but to your friends it certainly feels like it. Honestly, Halcyon, you didn't think you could just fall to your death and then get right back up again without any consequences, did you?" He peered at me. "As far as these things go, you're lucky the slow speed is the biggest drawback. Although given why this happened, I suppose luck isn't quite the right word, is it..." "What are you talking about?" I swallowed. "What do you mean, given why this happened? What do you know?" "With a name like mine, isn't it obvious?" Egdelwonk snapped the spokes on his bat wing, and a dumpster poofed into existence in a cloud of purple smoke and polygons. "Anyhow, I'm just the welcome wagon. You look like garbage, there are plenty of ponies who want to see you again, and the solutions to both are one and the same. In you go!" I whipped my head around back to Coda. "But...!" Egdelwonk tsk'd. "She had plenty of warning and knew what she was getting into, and will still be here tomorrow and the next year and the century after that." "You mean..." I stared at the frozen filly, trying to put two and two together. "Ugh, fine." Egdelwonk rolled his eyes. "If you won't get in the dumpster and really insist on doing this here, wait one moment." He jumped in himself, and was gone. I could only focus on Coda. Changeling queens were... like giant reservoirs for emotional energy, right? And windigoes were made of emotions. One emotion, specifically: wrath. At least, to hear Kitty tell it, or whoever it was who had explained that to me. Certainly believable, when I felt Ludwig's spark in my chest. Presumably, Coda had tried to fight them with the love she had absorbed from her followers throughout the years. It would have been a sensible plan from her point of view. But what she thought was love was only surface-level lip service, vain and shallow and lacking substance. One big attack, and the windigoes would have laughed it off without even a scratch. And then... she would have fought them another way, trying to absorb them and seal them away, just like she did to the prayers of her followers. She wasn't really a goddess of love. That wasn't her true power. She was a goddess of the void. And this was what happened when that void - the one I witnessed when I touched her throne so very long ago - bit off more than it could chew. I set my teeth. There were no windigoes visible in the core, no sign that any of the weapons here had been recently deployed... Valey's coup had succeeded. But this was the cost? A kid? A kid who had been raised her entire life to believe she was some kind of mythical, powerful savior, whose destiny and duty was to do things like this. And powerful she was. But... had she felt like she had a choice? Probably not. Maybe there were no other good options. I knew nothing about how the coup had unfolded, nothing beyond what I saw right here and now. Maybe if she had been given a choice, Coda would have done the same. But it didn't matter, because she hadn't been. I had... been trying to change that, to show her that the world was bigger than her little airship and there were all sorts of things she could be beyond a cult goddess and a hunter of legendary monsters. And she had been enjoying it, too. If only I had gotten a little more time, or made better use of the time I had, or... I could have changed this. This was my fault. If there was a price to be paid for saving the city, anyone deserved to pay it more than her. Like me, for instance. I organized an expedition to Icereach, and then... and then... "I did nothing!" I cried, slumping to my hooves. "I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry..." "Caught up in that turmoil, there was a young filly named Starlight, whom my system failed." Memories rose of Elise, sitting in an office in Icereach after the Aldebaran incident, answering whatever questions we had to offer. "I allowed her to shoulder a burden that wasn't right for a filly, by virtue of being unable to stop it. She, herself, was a runaway. Most of what I learned about her came after our brief meeting. She was exceptional, talented, incredibly resourceful, and also very lonely..." I almost laughed. Unlike Elise, I didn't have some grand ideology that guided me into making the mistakes I made. I was just incompetent. But... I guess, now, I knew how she felt. There had to be some way out of this, though. Something I could do... right? I held up my bracelet. Maybe... Coda, I noticed, was wearing her crown. I had never taken too close a look at it while it was on her throne, but it looked comically small on her, perched daintily atop her head rather than fitting around it. And, it was black. If I was to guess, the same kind of metal as my bracelet. And... about the same size, too. What...? The dumpster lid banged behind me. I turned. Egdelwonk reached out, depositing Howe on the floor next to it, before flashing me a wink and retreating back inside. "Woah," Howe said, stumbling slightly. "Not your garden-variety teleportation..." He noticed me. "Oh. Hey, uh, Halcyon. Little dudette. I see you, uh..." I blinked at him. "What are you doing here?" Howe shrugged, visibly less carefree than usual. "The Howenator heard someone was needed, and volunteered to answer the call. Wowza, you look rough." "Thanks..." I shifted my weight, standing so that my bare leg was blocked by the others. "Err..." It was hard to even appreciate Egdelwonk's sentiment. I didn't want to be around other ponies right now. Howe was more looking at Coda than me. "You look like you've thought about this a bunch. Figured out what went down." "...Yeah," I said, my ears pressed back. "Look, I... I'm sorry. I should've..." "Ol' Howe's got a question for you," Howe said, still looking at Coda. "You think she's a hero?" "I don't wanna think about that!" I punched the ground. "I wanna think about how I was too late! Apparently it's been most of a week I've been down here, and... and... I can fight windigoes too, okay!? I could have helped! It was my responsibility!" Howe scratched his rump. There were tons of questions I could have asked him, namely about things he wasn't asking me. Like, where had I been? Why was I so roughed up? Part of me wanted him to ask. Part of me was glad he wasn't. I didn't want to think about me. I wanted to think about Coda. "What are they saying about her?" I asked. "Is she still alive? In some sort of stasis? Can this be fixed? What will it take?" "You'd have to ask someone else about that one," Howe said. "The Howenator's gut says yes, yes, yes and lots." I looked again to my bracelet. Maybe... "You know, she thought this was her responsibility," Howe pointed out. "But you know that isn't right, and I know that isn't right. So maybe this isn't your responsibility, either?" "Shut up," I seethed. "It's your stupid cult that convinced her that it was hers in the first place. Why were you all friendly with them if you thought this was wrong?" Ludwig's spark throbbed in my chest. Fight, it urged me. This is his fault, not yours! "...Eh. Ol' Howe can see when he's making things worse." Howe turned away, back towards the dumpster. "He'll leave you to grieve. Got a thing for you on the way out, though..." He pulled out a pattern card, then dropped it on the ground and walked away. "Coda said she owed you an airship for some reason or another. And, hers is technically hers to give away. Sort of a last will and testament thing, after she started freezing up. Tons of witnesses. So, there's the key." I stared at the pattern card. My heart clenched. Not like this. "Oh, and..." Howe stopped just short of the dumpster. "Whatever answers you're looking for, after all that's happened... I doubt anyone who knows would keep them from you if you ask. Not after that, anyway." He nodded at Coda. "Would do it myself, but ol' Howe's getting a feeling you'd rather be alone right now. If he's right about that and you'd rather just figure it out for yourself, you could do worse than to check the confessional at the back of the third floor on your new boat. Hope you don't think too badly of us when you learn the truth." I swallowed. Egdelwonk ported him away, then leered at me expectantly, staring out from under the cracked lid of the dumpster. Giving Coda one more look, I stepped over and picked up the key. It looked... just like any other pattern card, save for the word Verdandi emblazoned on the side. I had seen that before. That was the name of Coda's ship. Whatever it took, I would find a way to set this right. I would help the pink flame, fix the sky, save Ironridge, and help Coda become a normal filly who could live and laugh and wasn't trapped in a block of ice, no matter how many miles I had to cross or inner demons I had to face to do it. I had a purpose, and along with it a frighteningly bleak picture of my own competence. In a way, it was the total opposite of how I had been at the beginning, searching for meaning and afraid of my own potential. But I could no longer afford to fail. I still would fail, of course, and when I did I would get back up and try again and again and again, because I had a purpose and it was too new and precious to give up on. This was who I was. Who... we would be. "I promise," I whispered, under my breath. And then I looked up and at Egdelwonk, still sitting in a dumpster in the middle of the most powerful weapons hangar in the world. "Any chance you can give me a lift? I have an airship I want to visit." Egdelwonk dropped me in a room aboard the Verdandi, and swiftly left me alone. I recognized the room. It was the same one I had slept in after saving Leitmotif from Lilith's school, when Coda picked us up in the Sky District. I left the room and stared out the hallway window. The ship was moored outside Fort Starlight. Nobody else seemed to be aboard. I wandered the halls just in case, but they were all empty. When I checked a window again, looking out at the fort's central clearing, it seemed a lot more populated than before. Maybe even some cultists, though it was a little hard to tell. The third floor was mostly passenger cabins, which made sense if the entire cult lived and traveled aboard the ship with its master. I checked it last, after visiting the bridge and the throne room and the empty prayer altars, which felt so much different in the day, without their master and with nobody around to pray. Two hallways. Four rows of cabins, the middle two back-to-back. And, at the rear, a door simply labeled 'Confessional'. I wondered what this was for, when there were plenty of perfectly good altars down below. Though, if Coda's own cult had secrets they would rather she not be privy to, I supposed it made sense. For all her talk about being able to read their minds, I suspected she was just conditioned to the way they acted around her, and was actually very easy to hide things from. The door was locked, but it was nothing a little shadow sneaking couldn't solve. Inside was a room little bigger than a closet, containing a desk and a chair and a stack of empty paper and a quill, and no ornamentation save for a tiny sculpture carved to look like the alicorn depicted in dusk statues. I seated myself in the chair and pulled open the desk's only drawer. Inside was a tome labeled The Book of Coda. So, I spread it out on the desk before me and started reading. The following is a thorough account of the factors involved in the construction and ascension of the mare now known as Chrysalis, compiled at the behest of Dr. Zybar by his associates, meant to serve as a guide and manual as we seek to atone for this terrible sin. Most instrumental to Chrysalis's power is a black crown forged of the metal Umhuxanjarn, which is anomalous in many ways. Umhuxanjarn is an immutable, unbreakable, unworkable and non-malleable material usually produced in small nuggets through an involved ritual involving sarosians, Mistvale arts and raw windigo hearts [see Appendix A for ritual documentation and details]. The crown was possessed of much greater size and detail than these nuggets, however, despite no known method for forging the metal being in existence. More startlingly, accounts suggest that the crown was initially discovered following the murder of Lord Regent Victor, an event that placed great emotional stress upon the young Chrysalis, yet bore no resemblance to the ritual outlined above. It was concluded that Chrysalis caused the crown to manifest by her own volition, in order to attack or defend herself. The crown was subsequently appropriated by Chauncey for testing and eventual use in the Stanza project. During the course of the Stanza project, altars were connected to a modified dusk statue that served as a receptacle for the crown [see Appendix B for schematics]. These altars were placed in a processing center for convicted heretics scheduled for execution and used to record their emotions and state of mind. The Stanza project succeeded in its goals, but we neglected to understand the significance of the impact of these experiments and infusions on Chrysalis. Little is known about the link between Umhuxanjarn and a pony's soul other than that it conclusively exists: the crown belongs to Chrysalis just as a ritual nugget belongs to the sarosian from which it was produced. This property, which may be responsible for the immutability of the metal, created a duality in which Chrysalis experienced changes akin to what we were doing to the crown via the Stanza project. Upon inspection, Chrysalis's internal emotional flow was deeply abnormal, resembling a sack instead of the tree-like structure aligned with the skeleton that can be observed in normal ponies. The emotions with which we infused Stanza found their final resting place, instead, in her. In short, the construction of Chrysalis can be broken down into three distinct phases: one in which she was imbued with emotional energy, and one in which she began to wield it. However, Chrysalis manifested the crown before our experiments on her began. We suspect her unique emotional physiology, which may be tied to the crown, was in place from birth, and our experiments involving Stanza merely served to empower her. The circumstances of Chrysalis's birth are difficult to track [see Appendix C for a complete list of all hypothetical conditions]. Some, such as the experiments conducted upon her mother to allow sarosians to not breed true, are impossible to reproduce to exact specifications. Others rely on tools and equipment that are forever lost to us. However, the most promising factor is that Chrysalis's mother was a sarosian possessed of a different soul than the one she was born with. Due to the poorly understood link between the Umhuxanjarn crown and souls, parents with an unusual soul history make for extremely desirable test subjects. While we lack the resources to produce such potential parents ourselves, suitable candidates are known to exist in the world. Thus, we must retool our fledgling organization to focus on public interaction and outreach. The only way to challenge Chrysalis and atone for our mistakes in creating her is to create another who is her equal, yet raised from birth to be on the right side of history. If only Chrysalis's daughter hadn't been stolen, we wouldn't have to start from- I dropped the book. End of Act 2 ... Boop! Corsica swatted at whatever had touched her nose, her eyes blearily struggling to open. "Wha...?" "Congratulations," Egdelwonk said, lounging against a wall and retracting his wing. "You're promoted." "Screw off," Corsica slurred, her body feeling like a distant slab, barely attached to her mind at all. "I'm trying to rest..." "That's it?" Egdelwonk peered incredulously at her. "That's all the thanks I get?" Corsica just grunted. "Well, excuse me for thinking Halcyon's argh-I-failed-again shtick is getting a little repetitive," Egdelwonk groused, getting up and twirling in a circle. "Maybe I'm just salty she ignored my cool plot hook about the Barnabas weapon shop, but both of us know who's really been responsible for selflessly saving the day so far and both of us know you're going to do it again the moment you're out of bed. Anyway, welcome to the P.O.V. crew, we don't have any doughnuts, maybe now that there are two of you you'll be able to spice this production up a bit. Yadda yadda yadda..." He rolled his eyes and stepped into a waste basket that was smaller than he was. Corsica went back to sleep.