Corsica frowned, watching from the sidelines as Halcyon peppered Braen with questions. Evidently, she hadn't been properly introduced to Shinespark and Valey's mechanical 'daughter' before... and was much more interested in making up lost time than with any other new acquaintance Corsica had seen her make.
Something like annoyance flickered in her gut. They had just returned from a very eventful scouting mission, talked with an alarming arcane entity that seemed to be living inside Halcyon's bracelet, had a wealth of new data to analyze and theories to formulate, and yet the expression on Halcyon's face told her these things were now the furthest possible things from her friend's mind. Halcyon looked like she had taken everything that happened, everything the spirit said for granted and moved on.
It was... it was bad science! First off, if they took everything the spirit said at face value, it would revolutionize science as they knew it. The world being alive, and having a soul? That soul being split in pieces, tasked with breaking the law of the conservation of energy in order to permanently counteract the pull of entropy? The crater's energy coming from 'the land remembering' an event of immense significance there?
Corsica wasn't a huffy traditionalist who poo-pooed new theories because they disagreed with established scientific canon. She was a researcher of an obscure, poorly-understood phenomenon who was looking to advance that kind of new theory herself, actually. But having those theories handed to her on a golden platter by a magic ghost felt like cheating, and not just because she hadn't worked for them. The spirit, when asked, had been unable to provide ways they could empirically verify what it was saying. And that meant the accuracy of what it said depended entirely on whether she and Halcyon had stumbled by accident upon some grand cosmological authority that the entire history of science had never seen before... or whether Halcyon had been taken in by some manner of fraud.
She couldn't write off either possibility, not when Halcyon believed so strongly that there was something special about the bottom of the world waiting to be found. It was equally plausible that Halcyon had really found her special something, or that she had been found by something that was exploiting her belief. What kind of thing would do that, or for what reason, were a mystery.
There was a third, much more likely explanation, too, and that was that Halcyon had stumbled upon something that wasn't a secret, and was new to them only because Icereach was living behind an information wall and they hadn't been in Ironridge long enough to learn about it. It was especially likely because Halcyon mentioned hearing about some of the things the spirit said from Valey - who, conveniently, hadn't mentioned any of this to Corsica.
If that was the case, sitting down and figuring out who to trust and catching up on missing information was just about their only choice.
Either way, she wished Halcyon would question this more, and help her question it to boot. Braen was likeable, sure, but was this really the most important thing...?
Oh, forget it. Maybe Corsica was just salty that Halcyon was being so talkative now after repeatedly dancing around something she had done in the caves while meeting this kindness spirit. Halcyon never talked that deeply about herself, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but now she was hiding something about the work they had shared over two and a half years.
Corsica closed her eyes and sighed. Better not to read too much into it. Either Halcyon would remain her partner, or she wouldn't, and there wasn't much she could ethically do about it.
"How do you, like, stay powered?" I asked, eagerly poring over every inch of Braen's metallic body, having long since concluded that her 'clothes' were actually metal parts of her exterior. "What's your energy source? How long does it last between charges?"
"Braen consumes many sources of energy!" Braen responded, eagerly showing off the mechanics of her joints and at one point even detaching a leg so I could see how the socket worked. "From normal mana to scary magic! I can even regenerate power supplies in my sleep!"
"Did you just refer to yourself in third person?" I pressed, examining an outstretched wing. It was clearly some form of inertial stabilizer rotor, but more curved and organic, and the blades were actually styled to look like feathers.
"Yes!" Braen beamed. "Ever since Nicov came to Fort Starlight, I have known that yaks are my spirit animal! However, speaking like a yak is hard. What is more, Mother gets very annoyed when I try to practice. She says it would draw tooo much attention. That is why I accidentally sound like a normal pony from time to time."
I took a step back and thumped myself on the chest. "Science pony Halcyon love yaks too. But yak speech of Braen need practice. Say 'a' too many times."
Braen regarded me with an expression of wonder.
I cleared my throat, my voice unaccustomed to going that low. "But, err, don't expect me to sound like that all day long. Also, I could swear you sounded like a dainty little waif when we met outside Fort Starlight?"
"Such are the trials and tribulations of being machine," Braen said with a shrug, apparently trying to take my advice to heart. "Mechanical bodies can be made however their maker wants them to be. I... err, Braen has to think long and hard about what to be when I grow up."
I regarded her with a smile. "Can the 'their' and 'the' and try again. Mechanical bodies..."
"...Can be made however maker wants them?" Braen's eyes lit up.
"See?" I straightened up. "You'll get there. I think we'll get along just fine."
In the background, Leif, Mother, Papyrus and Corsica were all watching, and I was only paying them a percent of my attention. "Don't get to watch something like this every day," Leif muttered, glancing at Mother. "This what you had in mind when you started raising her?"
Mother shrugged.
Papyrus waggled his eyebrows at Corsica. "Going once, going twice..."
"Shut up." Corsica slapped him with her aura, looking like she was thinking about something else.
After multiple solemn vows that there were no other stowaways aboard the Verdandi and an hour spent taking inventory of exactly what we wanted to carry with us, we set out for the village Papyrus had reported. Myself and Corsica had gotten little to no sleep, and already spent much of the night carrying hefty equipment to and from the crater, but that was our problem and I, for one, had a changeling queen bracelet to help me push through it. Leif looked ever so slightly concerned about our condition, but after too many weeks in Ironridge I was no stranger to pushing my physical limits. How hard could two more days of mountaineering be?
On my back, I carried my original coat, the one I wore when I fell in the Flame District still shredded, left behind in a room on the ship. I carried two satchels, one with my usual indispensable belongings, and another stuffed with pages and pages of raw measurements taken at the site of the crater that now wanted for analysis. Although, how dispensable my belongings actually were was suddenly up for question: when was the last time I had used my chess set, or my disguise kit, or my ocarina? All of these were for purposes I had found better ways to do as I grew and changed.
They still felt like a part of me, though. Things that were there at the beginning of the journey, and would stay along until they could see it through.
Corsica had agreed to leave most of the lab equipment behind. We had no idea where we would be going next after visiting this village, but locations where we could study ether were very rare, and it wasn't implausible we would be coming back up this way at some point in the future, either to investigate the crater or to recover Coda's airship once we had a new power source to get it back in the air. And dragging that equipment back up the mountains would be a whole lot worse than getting it down.
Speaking of power sources, I had gone to see Fugue again before we locked the airship and set off. Coda's throne was cold and inert, her crown missing from its head. Severed of its connection to her, it must have been only a matter of time before its residual energies ran dry. Why didn't I think of that when accepting the ship? I had even seen the crown on Coda in Cold Karma's basement, where she was interned in ice.
The possibility of replacing it with my own crown, my bracelet, had crossed my mind. But after thinking on it, I was fairly sure it wouldn't work: the ship was powered by the flattery Coda had absorbed from her worshipers. I had never done anything of the sort. As a changeling queen, I was empty, unfed and unformed, with only a single windigo and a half-dead embodiment of kindness rattling around in my... wherever changeling queens kept these things. So it stood to reason I didn't have enough stored emotions to run an airship.
And even if I did... I couldn't tell Corsica what I really was, so how could I tell someone like Papyrus?
Maybe one day, I would conquer the fear Faye insisted lived on inside us, find and dedicate myself to an emotion like Coda had tried to do with love, and then return and try to power the ship myself. But not today.
And so we set off. The journey started easily, dawn bringing warmth and long shadows as we marched south across a flat, grassy plateau. The forest with the crater was to our west, and I could still see an ethereal, shimmering quality to the air above it when I squinted right.
Not a cloud graced the sky, and the air was perfectly temperate, a breeze blowing in from the forest that smelled like growth and life incarnate. It was hard to tell how far the meadow stretched; behind us, it gave way to snow-streaked cliffs and canyons, and ahead, a few more snow-capped peaks poked up above the horizon, warning of a treacherous descent above. But I could only look at the eastern horizon for so long before being blinded by the sun, and during those times I found no trace of anything but grass and sky.
This was a different kind of beauty than the mountains as seen from above, with all the environments mish-mashed together without a care for the laws of geography. I could still tell those laws weren't being respected, but instead of feeling like a patch on a quilt, the plateau felt like an island, tranquil and welcoming yet surrounded by soaring vistas and hostile slopes.
I wondered why nobody lived here. Surely, enough things grew here that it would be easy to farm, and if the storms were too fierce then the grass wouldn't have found dirt to grow in. Speaking of storms, it was so flat that drainage should have been impossible, and yet the ground wasn't muddy at all, even though the grass had a vibrancy that I assumed could only come from plenty of water and care.
Eventually, we reached the plateau's end, Papyrus flying overhead to guide us and ensure we stayed on course to the village. It was so abrupt, it was as if the ground had been cut by a precision laser saw, the dirt wearing away to stone and a few feet later the stone dropping off in a wall more sheer than the walls of a house.
We were near a canyon in the plateau, and as I hugged the edge and looked down, I could see water jet out of the canyon far below and enter free fall, a waterfall pouring out of the side of a much bigger cliff that must have looked beautiful from below. At the bottom, in the distance, the water pooled and collected and became a river winding its way through a valley to the south, until a lake far in the distance where the valley seemed to widen out, the mountains that formed it gradually becoming more and more gentle.
On the far side of the lake, still shadowed from the morning sun, several telltale lights graced the windows of what must have been cottages. There was the village.
"Right, then," Papyrus said, walking up behind me. "There's a path by the river at the base of the cliff, so if we fancy a little skydiving then everything should be dandy. I did spy a switchback over yonder for anyone less aerodynamically inclined, but let's say it looks like a bad idea and leave it at that."
He gestured to the southwest. I looked, and across the river canyon saw a thin strip of rock from the same strata as the plateau hugging a mountain ridge that made up the western side of the valley below. Hugging the base of the mountain slope was something that might have passed for a treacherous path, but just looking at the snow pack on the peak, feeling the warm air around us, seeing how far it was to the bottom...
Corsica was staring too, and her expression looked vaguely nauseous. I didn't have to ask why.
"Right." I looked over the edge again. "So how are we getting down, again?"
Papyrus winked three times at me in rapid succession. "With our wings, dummy!"
Corsica gave him a look of annoyance.
I cleared my throat. "Well, err... You know, Mother kind of has a war injury, and..."
"Yes?" Papyrus fluttered his eyelids at me.
"Anomaly detected in Papyrus's attitude," Braen warned curiously, marching over and looking sideways at him. "You are correct that some among us cannot fly. But why focus on Halcyon?"
I gritted my teeth. "He's making fun of me because I don't like admitting out loud that I can't fly either."
Papyrus looked mock surprised, but Braen patted me on the shoulder. "That is okay. Papyrus is very rude."
"Me?" Papyrus held a wing to his chest. "I'm just trying to delicately handle a sensitive-"
In a show of strength that belied her lithe form, Braen stepped forward, picked Papyrus up and threw him off the cliff.
With a yowl and a rustle of feathers, Papyrus swooped back up over the cliff edge, though he remained hovering well out of Braen's reach. "Speaking of rude..."
Braen pointed a hoof at him. "Don't forget why I'm here, mister! Other Mother sent me to keep an eye on your shenanigans!"
Corsica laughed. "Great. So, who's getting carried by who? Dibs on not Papyrus."
Braen was already at my side. "Dibs on Halcyon!"
Mother and Leif glanced at each other.
Papyrus raised an eyebrow at Corsica. "Now look, I know you were the first to speak, but the math is saying otherwise..."
"You can carry the luggage," Corsica said, floating her bags over to him. "Someone's gotta do it. The responsible fliers can just make two trips."
Papyrus stared at all our bags. "If such is the price of currying your fickle favor..."
Riding on Braen's back was a sensation I was wholly unable to describe.
It wasn't like flying disembodied across the mountains, in which I was truly alone. Nor was it like riding on an airship, which felt little different than setting hoof in a building. But it wasn't like riding on a flesh-and-blood pony, either. The part of me that normally resisted physical contact was tense, in a high state of alert, waiting for some signal that just never came. The closest experience I had had, I decided, was riding the trains in Ironridge, where I existed in a perpetual state of anticipating getting bumped into.
Instead of making me uncomfortable, flying with Braen made me anticipate being uncomfortable. Which was still uncomfortable, just... in a different way.
Her flight was much less hover-y than the Whitewings I had observed during the Aldebaran incident, involving heavy use of her actual wings. That made me think back to the inertial stabilizer rotor that was still in my satchel, and the weapon I had once tried to make with it. What would Braen have to say about that? At the very least, maybe it would be handy to have around as a spare part...
We descended quickly, and were at the bottom before I could even complete my thoughts on the process. Braen dropped me alone, as we were the first ones to arrive, saluted, and flew back up to help with the supplies.
Here in the river basin, it was cool, but not cold. All the trees were coniferous, and as they got thicker, I could see a dense carpet of pine needles covering the path ahead. Braen hadn't put me down by the river itself, but rather on the western slope, on the path I had seen that looked in danger of avalanches, right where it exited the valley, made a switchback and began to climb.
A natural silence surrounded me as I stared into the forest at the path ahead. Which was to say, it was anything but silent: I could hear the distant burble of the river, and the even more distant rush of the waterfall, and all the tiny cracks and noises of the forest, sounds that would normally be invisible if it weren't for the absence of all the things I was used to hearing.
How many ponies got to be here, and to hear this? Hopefully, the ones who did had stopped to enjoy it. I glanced at the path leading up the mountain slope, and it was covered in a thin layer of gravel and scree mixed with occasional drips and dots of slush that must have rolled down from above. There were no signs of regular maintenance.
I didn't get to appreciate it for long, however, as Papyrus arrived with the first load of luggage and Leif arrived with Mother and Papyrus flew back up to get another load as Braen came back with Corsica. It took one more trip after all that to finish getting our stuff - I questioned why we had packed so heavily when Corsica left behind the lab equipment and Mother wasn't known to be a heavy traveler, but maybe I was just underestimating how hard it actually was for pegasi to carry loads. By the end of his second trip, Papyrus looked legitimately ready to collapse, even though he had only flown back up the cliff face once.
At least it made him less talkative as we entered the forest. The sensation of my boots sinking into pine needles was so alien and interesting I was tempted to take off my boots to experience it directly, but then again, with so much company...
I resisted the temptation and pressed on. The path hugged the river, which swelled several times as tributaries joined it from the mountains to the east, until it had gone from a large stream to something you could sail with a very small boat.
With how big the Aldenfold were, you'd have thought it would be larger.
After a while, a gigantic fallen tree trunk blocked the way, much larger than any of the other trees near the river. Where had this come from? Maybe there was some different environment up above, and it fell from one of the bordering mountain ridges? I shadow snuck beneath it, and while I waited for the others to make their way across, I noticed that someone had used a very sharp knife to carve an awkward but effective series of hoofholds that one could use to climb over.
From the amount of moss on the log, and how it grew into and around the hoofholds, this hadn't been recent. Also, they were surprisingly close together. The rest of the trail hadn't received any maintenance, and the log wasn't so big that it would be impossible for a full-grown pony to scramble over...
Thinking about it, this almost looked like it had been done by a foal.
The log drifted from my mind as we kept walking and left it behind. By now, the hours of hiking and lack of sleep were beginning to take their toll in earnest; we were traveling lighter after a break for food, but that could only compensate for so much. It wouldn't be long before the sun slipped behind the mountains, close to us as they were, so I made the most of the light to turn my bracelet up a little while I still had a chance of not getting spotted.
Step. Step. One hoof after the other. The sun slipped away, and I trudged on through the forest, a resilience to boredom born of crunching numbers in a lab for hours on end carrying me forward. How Leif and Mother were still going, I didn't know, the former having been locked in Lilith's science purgatory for months and the latter having three usable legs, but at least they presumably had gotten a full night's sleep. Corsica and Papyrus looked even more dead than me, and another hour of marching saw both of them using Braen as a crutch at the same time.
And then, just as I was beginning to fear I'd need to steal one of their spots, the trees lightened and abruptly gave way.
Ahead of us was the lake I had seen from above, and beyond that, several smoke plumes, which almost alarmed me until I realized they probably had chimneys here. Non-industrial ones, used for heating... With a sigh of relief, I collapsed on the ground.
Across the lake, in the early evening gloom, a bonfire was flickering to life, several colorful ponies visible around it. It didn't take long for one of them to notice us, and point us out to their friends. Several waved.
Braen waved back. Some of the ponies left the bonfire and started skirting around the lake, following a trail that would eventually lead to us.
Two of them, specifically. As they got closer, I started being able to make them out: one unicorn, and one pegasus, both mares.
The unicorn was a compact, tubby yellow mare with a special talent depicting a fish, probably in her mid-50s. The pegasus, about half her companion's age, was also short, but not nearly to such an extreme, boasting a white coat and an even whiter mane and tail that looked more like they were made from silk than hair.
"Greetings!" the pegasus called first, though she was bringing up the rear.
"Don't see this every day," the unicorn added, stepping close, her horn lit for illumination. "You six have the look of folks who've come a long way."
"You can say that again," Corsica grunted, leaning against her bags. "Got any hospitality for weary travelers?"
"And not-so-weary travelers!" Braen added, carrying about half of the group's stuff and still looking chipper and hale.
Both of the townsponies gawked at her.
"Excuse our robot," Papyrus cut in with a half-dead smile. "Our airship ran out of fuel mid-flight, and we've been hiking for weeks. As my friend here said, any hearth or place to rest our hooves, we'd make well worth your while..." He showed off a few griffon gold coins from Coda's stash.
Not that I was complaining, but... why was he being polite now? Usually, he couldn't help himself.
The pegasus sniffed the air. "Not weeks," she decided. "Definitely not weeks. But I can't think of any other way so many ponies would come from this direction..." She glanced at her companion. "Do they have you-know-whats?"
"Yep." The unicorn's horn went out. "Except, uh... whatever you are. No offense." She nodded at Braen. "You're not showing up to the spell at all, so I suppose you're good?" She looked to everyone. "Northerners, I take it. Didn't think I'd live to see another writ holder, much less five in the same place. The name's Fish Fillet, or Fishy, and I'm the mayor of this here town, known on the maps as Sires Hollow. I'm sure you all have a story, but that can at least wait until you're back by the fire."
She gave us a look that suggested she wanted our names before we started walking.
"Leitmotif," Leif started. "Leif works too. These are-"
"You can call me Papyrus," Papyrus cut in, interrupting her attempt to introduce him. "The name's been in my family for generations. A storied one, really..."
Leif blinked at him. As everyone else went around introducing themselves, I detected a very well-hidden note of tension leave his shoulders... What was that all about?
"And I'm Fluffy Fleece," the pegasus with the impossible mane finished. "Professional artist, interior designer, upholsterer and barber by popular demand."
"Huh," Corsica said. "Do all Equestrians have two names?"
"Do all northerners have only one name?" Fishy shrugged. "Just the way things are here, kid. But let's get to know each other back where it's warm."
"Starlight," Fishy said as we settled in around the fire, which apparently was being used for a village cook-out and thus a perfect place for us to rest and seek food. "That's a name I'll never bring myself to forget."
There were six or seven other ponies around the fire, looking visibly curious to meet us, yet we were deep in conversation with Fishy and Fluffy when we arrived, and something about Starlight's name seemed to act like a signal, causing all the other ponies to wait and listen rather than ply us with questions.
"She's been through here, then?" I pressed.
"Aye." Fishy nodded, the word cutting itself short in her mouth. "She grew up here around twenty, thirty years ago. I was friends with the ponies who adopted her. Her parents in this town, not the adventurer ones... Well, I doubt you'd be asking about her if you didn't already know her story. I'd given up long ago on any of her friends coming calling after her..." She surveyed us. "Don't recognize any of you, though. But I bet you at least know the group that was with her last time?"
I tilted my head. "You mean Valey and Gerardo?"
Fishy nodded again. "Valey. Gerardo. Maple. Amber. Shinespark. Slipstream. Harshwater. Grenada. Even Jamjars."
"Quite the memory for something that happened two decades ago," Corsica remarked.
"In a town like this, not enough happens for it to be worth forgetting," Fluffy explained. "I've heard it's different in the big cities, and things are busier. But you see, Starlight already got forgotten after the first time she ran away, and then everyone had to remember her when she came back. So when she ran away again... This time, we remembered."
"I suppose it was too much to hope for that she'd still be right here, snuggled up in her old home," Papyrus sighed.
Fishy nodded. "I take it you'll be just passing through, then?"
"Depends what our options are for travel," I admitted. "First off... do you have a map? The most recent thing we know is that she might be somewhere on a place called the Catantan Peninsula."
"The Catantan Peninsula?" Fluffy Fleece brightened. "That's not too far away. Well, not in the grand scheme of things, at least. Close enough that some ponies in this village have set eyes on it!"
"I have!" volunteered another of the ponies around the fire, a weathered stallion who looked like he had seen a lot in life, yet still had a fire in his eyes.
I brightened too. "Seriously? That's pretty lucky. Who are you?"
"Name's Hard Harvest," he said, his red face marred with stubble. "I run a ship out of port, bringing back big-city goods for the ponies here... or I used to, before they expanded the road and I switched to land caravans instead. Catantan is way to the east, about four months by my boat. It's about as far as you can draw a map and have the map still be useful."
"Out of port?" Corsica tilted her head. "There's an ocean nearby?"
"Sure is." Fishy waved a hoof to the southeast. "Well, more like water access to an ocean. It'll make sense once you see a map, I promise."
I was more fixated on the time. "Four whole months on a boat?"
Hard Harvest nodded. "Yeah. Usually you wouldn't make the trip, since there's nothing much out that way and it means you can't make it to Snowport and back before the weather turns."
My face fell. "Gonna guess there are no high-speed boats that make the trip on commission, then?"
"Or airships?" Papyrus wore a cheekily pleading expression.
Fishy barked out a laugh. "If we waited for someone to invent a faster boat to go out and trade with the world, we'd still be living in holes in the ground."
I gave my friends a look. For whatever reason, Mother and Leitmotif didn't share it.
"But you said there was a road?" Papyrus pressed. "One that's now fast enough that boats are obsolete. Any chance that happens to go remotely in the direction we're interested in?"
"Yes and no," Fishy answered, floating a tray off the grill that was built over the bonfire pit. "Here. Get some food in your bellies before you think too fast about moving on."
I chowed down into some form of vegetable bake. Icereach's censorship, Ironridge's political drama, even the magical mysteries of the Aldenfold were suddenly very old news. Now, my mind needed to wrap itself around the reality of a very new challenge: finding a way to travel cross-country through a world I knew very little about.