As she elbowed between golems, pushing through a corridor that had standing room only, Faye felt grateful for a great number of things. Chief among them was her ability to tune out noise: when the golems were on their own, they spoke in well-defined words, but with this many of them, their words tumbled together and lost coherence, becoming a sea of pure emotion instead. And it was a stormy sea.
Indignation and frustration crashed into apathy and despair, which in turn warred against righteous fervor and vindictive glee, or else embarrassment and shame. But if the emotions battering her defenses were a sea, then the noise from the golems was merely surface turbulence. Beneath it, the heart of the city remained, steady and unchanging: duty, solemnity and grief, a powerful pull that felt like it could yank her straight down through the floor, and an equally powerful push that gave her ground to stand on.
She was also grateful that pushing the golems aside to clear herself a path didn't trigger her usual reaction to touching ponies. Whatever they represented, they felt just like plain old crystal to her. Faye was so used to feeling otherwise that the lack of sensation was almost endearing. It reminded her of why she treated machines like friends... and made her suspicious that these golems were some sort of machines, too.
But more than anything else, she was grateful that she wasn't Twilight.
Twilight looked haunted as she flew above the crowd, her pupils reduced to pinpricks. Starlight had a steady frown on her face, but was probably at least as good at tuning out the golems' noise as Faye was. Not so for Twilight.
"Are you still with us, darling?" Rarity asked, her and the rest of Twilight's friends visibly unsure what to do about this, all the more so because they had no idea what she was actually experiencing. Were they aware of how little there actually was that could be done? The problem was these golems, and short of forcibly silencing each and every one of them...
But the Daydream Network was supposedly how Chrysalis controlled her changeling hive, right? And Faye was a changeling queen. Theoretically, taking control of these communications and forcing the golems to be quiet - or at least blocking them from reaching Twilight - should be within Faye's abilities.
Theoretically. In practice, armoring herself against the warring emotions felt like a nice and safe thing to do, and she didn't think she had the strength to oppose or control this sea all by herself.
"Starlight?" she asked, making her way closer to the pony who seemed to know the most about this.
Starlight glanced at her with the expression of someone who was wearing noise-canceling earmuffs, but was paying attention anyway.
Faye took a breath. How to phrase this in a way that didn't make it too obvious what she was, and what she wanted to do...? "You said the Daydream Network is what Chrysalis uses to control changelings, right? If it's this loud and busy, how did she get strong enough to control it all by herself? It feels like all I can do just to keep my own head, here."
Starlight shook her head. "If you feel like you're keeping your head in the middle of this, you're doing far better than most could hope to. But you're thinking about it backwards. Chrysalis was a harshly tempered soul, but not in a way that could overcome a chorus like this. Rather, she became a chorus like this, took it inside her and gave it a body. Actually, it was forcibly put inside her, but that's a longer story... But listening to these golems is the closest experience to being around Chrysalis you will hopefully ever have."
Faye shuddered and let Starlight take the lead again. How was she supposed to think about herself and her own powers and potential when she kept learning things like this?
She needed Halcyon back. Her present sojourn taking the lead was going better than she possibly could have hoped, but Halcyon was the part of her that had any drive to come to terms with her powers and use them to make a positive difference in the world. But the more she learned, the more it sounded like a changeling queen's power wasn't a strength, but a weakness: the potential to become a vessel for a chorus like this, to lose herself and give this angry, chaotic crowd a body with which it could force its combined strength on the world.
Facing that reality and not having an immediate panic attack was only a minor step. The true challenge was figuring out how she could possibly call upon a power like that and then still retain any agency to ensure it got used for good in the world.
The hallway around the Oculatorium was long and curved, making a circuit around the room with periodic entrances opening out to staircases that provided access to stadium-like seating. It was completely full.
Starlight lit her horn, picked up a dozen golems in her telekinesis, and levitated them halfway across the room, freeing up seats for Faye and everyone else.
"Did you really just do that?" Rainbow asked, agape.
"Better take them before more golems do," Starlight said. "They'll probably get over it. And if they don't, I'll figure something out."
As Faye slipped into an uncomfortable, crystal-cushioned chair that would have been plush and opulent made out of a real material, she felt some ripples in the sea of emotions as the golems realized and reacted to what Starlight had done. She found that she could actually pick out the ones who had been moved, incredulous and offended but also enjoying the attention as other golems talked about how wild it was that some random ponies with faces would do such a thing, and others speculated on how they had made anyone fly through the air in the first place. An argument seemed to be brewing over whether or not it was new technology, with some golems certain it was, and others claiming they worked in the industry and had never heard of such a thing.
Plenty of them agreed that stealing the seats had been incredibly rude, and plenty of them seemed to want to do something about it... but not the ones who had been actually moved. And despite all the talk, none of the faceless golems near the stolen seats showed any indication with their body language they were aware this had just happened so close nearby. None of them made any physical moves to evict her, either.
These golems were mystifying.
"They don't know what telekinesis is," Starlight remarked as everyone finished seating themselves. "And they sound as if they're not used to flying regularly, either. These might not just all look like earth ponies, but all have originally been earth ponies, too."
"Well, Ponyville is a majority earth pony town," Applejack said. "Course, we were only founded by settlers in search of farmland within living memory, so there's probably no connection. Strange, though."
Down on the floor, a circular panel of booths surrounded a platform connected to a door by a single walkway, with some seating that was separated from the gallery by a recessed wall. Several golems had begun congregating there, ostensibly important but not visually distinct in any other way from the others. Faye tried to listen to see if they were participating in the mental debate, but if they were, she couldn't pick them out.
And then, suddenly, one of them tapped a hoof on a desk, and a louder voice on the network rose above the sea, clear and coherent. "Court Administrator Barrows, calling this trial to order."
The sea of emotion suddenly calmed and tensed simultaneously, arguments halting as every side listened to hear whether something would be said that furthered their own cause. It was hardly quiet, though, a wave of speculation still ongoing in the background. And, beneath it, the city's heart was as strong and steady as ever.
"First, will the prosecution announce their presence?" Barrows requested. His voice sounded generic, but some part of Faye's brain automatically confirmed that it was him, with all the certainty of a sixth sense.
A group of three golems entered from the bottom door. "Inquirarch Bootes," one declared, "Head of the Committee for Accountability and Oversight of the Hypothetorium."
"Mercat," another announced. "Lead civilian prosecutor as assigned by the Macrothesis Guild of Law."
"Inquirarch Indus," the third said, sounding less than excited to be here. "Steward of the Afterlife."
Twilight sat bolt upright. "Did he just call himself Indus?"
"What!?" Rainbow immediately jumped on her. "I told you! What did he say? Gah, why can't I listen too?"
"Maybe we can," Corsica said, staring at the armrest between her seat and Faye's. "Look at this."
Wedged into the crack between the chairs, underneath the armrest, was a crystal ring. There was one between every chair.
"That's, uh..." Rainbow scrutinized hers. "Not in a very accessible position. Like, at all."
Twilight fiddled with hers. "It looks like it's supposed to be removable, but because it's all made of crystal, it's stuck in place..."
"These let me talk with the terminal in the lobby, though," Corsica pointed out. "They might let us all listen in on what the important ones are saying now, too. I can't think of why else they'd be here."
"But how do we get them?" Fluttershy asked.
"Stand up," Starlight instructed. "Don't put weight on your chairs, just for a moment..."
Most everyone gave her a confused look, but obeyed. Starlight lit her horn, and after a moment of being surrounded by her aura, the chairs melded down into the floor, leaving the rings easily accessible.
Applejack gave her a look. "Do you just have a spell for everything, or something?"
"Well, that's how being an accomplished mage works-" Twilight started to say.
"No," Starlight said. "I just have a working relationship with Crystal Palaces. Now hurry up. This one is more interested than usual in retaining its original form."
Corsica tapped her flank on the ring next to Faye's chair, since Faye herself probably didn't need it. Immediately, a voice turned on in her head.
"-of disregarding safety regulations concerning live test subjects," someone was saying, sounding as if they were speaking directly into her ear at a modest volume.
"Woah," Rainbow said once hers was connected. "Okay, can we make this rewind, or something? I want to hear what they said from the start."
"No," Starlight grunted. "If you want to get the most out of this, then listen first and speculate later."
"Next, introducing the defense," another voice said.
A lone golem appeared in the doorway. Unlike everyone else in the crowd, he had a face.
"...Inquirarch Vulpecula appears to be wearing his face," a golem said. "Inquirarch, you are aware that we are broadcasting live, and no one can presently hear you?"
"He can't hear you when you say that," another said. "One moment..."
One of the golems in the center suddenly grew a face. "Inquirarch Vulpecula!" it called, using audible words. "Your face is on!"
"Yes, I'm aware of that," Vulpecula replied, also aloud. "I assumed it would be a courtesy."
"Inquirarch Vulpecula and Court Administrator Barrows are exchanging words in real space," a golem said through the ring. "Please hold tight while we get everyone connected again..."
"...You're aware of it?" Barrows asked, confused. "Inquirarch, no one can hear you like this. Protocol dictates trials be held through the Daydream Network in the name of transparency and public accountability. Ponies from all over Macrothesis are tuning into this from their homes-"
"And who created the Daydream Network?" Vulpecula interrupted. "I did. Who presides over it, administers it, and filled it with countless backdoors to ensure it would always be theirs to control? I understand, Administrator, that you have some concerns about my conduct while in office. And it is the right of the people to choose their leaders and then hold their leaders accountable. But by trying me in my own house, where your words themselves are reliant on me to reach their destinations, you would make a mockery of justice. We shall do this fairly, as it was done in the days of eld. For if you cannot even indict me without the power I have given you, what hope do you have of survival after I am gone?"
He tapped a hoof on the floor, and a shockwave rippled through the air, lightly brushing Corsica's mane and extinguishing her talent in the ring like a candle. Twilight, Starlight and Faye looked hit harder, and over the span of about a second every single golem in the room grew a face.
A panicked and very audible muttering immediately sprung up.
"Order! Order!" Administrator Barrows shouted, his voice sounding as if it hadn't been used in weeks as he banged on his desk with a hoof. "Order, I say!"
"Inquirarch, are you aware of what you are doing?" said another of the prosecutors in a dangerous voice. "This is an unprecedented breach of protocol that will all but seal your judgement!"
"I have been aware since before I took my first step along this path," Vulpecula said, his voice possessing a reverberating quality that rose above all the rest. "More aware than even you are now, Bootes. The question is, are the people aware of everything they would have to lose by rejecting me? Can you take my gifts for granted and then turn your backs on their creator? Can you survive without me in this dying world, forsaken as it has been by the gods? Who among you could take my place? The Hypothetorium has many geniuses of a caliber to rival my own, but can any of them boast of being free from sin? You decry my excesses and call me here to judge whether I am guilty, but your eyes are clouded. Of course I am guilty. Who among you wouldn't take what they are owed, sacrifice the weak so that the strong may live, and ruthlessly advance their own vision given the power? The question you must answer is whether my gifts are worth the trade."
"Inquirarch!" Barrows bellowed. "Silence! You will not make a mockery of my courtroom!"
"I have said my piece," Vulpecula said, still carrying over Barrows even as he spoke calmly. "Now pass your judgement, that I might return to my research quickly, or else leave you to perish for want of a savior."
Pandemonium reigned in the gallery, golems with faces milling about in a panic.
"This is madness," Twilight said, her mane frazzled. "At least they're not in my head anymore, which is fantastic, but this is so chaotic even Discord would be hard-pressed to keep up! Why is something like this in a Tree of Harmony? Especially my Tree of Harmony?"
"Because," said a voice as weathered as time itself, "our Element is not like the others."
Corsica blinked. Standing next to them was a hulking figure, completely covered in a hooded robe made from brown sackcloth. Inside the hood was only darkness.
"What-!?" Twilight jumped back a little.
"Come," the figure said. "I will show you."
Corsica felt compelled to blink again, and when she opened her eyes, it was gone.
"What was that?" Applejack demanded. "Come where?"
"I felt a power not unlike that of a dragon," Seigetsu warned. "Whatever it was and wherever we go, proceed with care."
"Starlight? Have you ever seen anything like that before?" Rarity quizzed, nervous.
"Hard to say." Starlight shrugged. "It could have looked like anything underneath that giant robe."
Turning to see the giant, however, had brought something more pressing to Corsica's attention.
"Look." Corsica pointed to the way everyone had entered - all the doors leading to the outer corridor were now closed, ornate crystal blocking the way. The only visible exit from the room was down in the middle, where the Inquirarchs and court team had entered through. "If we're supposed to be going somewhere, there's only one way to go."
"You think we should just follow it?" Rainbow asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Twilight insisted. "I need to understand what's going on here."
Getting down to the bottom didn't present too much of a challenge, since Faye was physically inclined and most everyone with her either could say the same, fly, or both. The administrators had all left, ostensibly declaring a mistrial and resolving to reconvene at a later date with additional charges in place for contempt of court, but Vulpecula was still there, standing and watching the gallery. No other golems had yet thought to approach him.
His crystalline face followed the group, but he seemed to be waiting for something.
Nanzanaya glanced at Seigetsu. "May I take point for this one?"
"Do as you wish," Seigetsu said, folding her arms.
"I did not devote my life's work to breaking down the barriers between ponies so they would be hesitant to approach each other," Vulpecula said, watching her. "And yet despite the ease with which my technology lets them do it, it is almost as if they have forgotten how. But you... Ah. You are different."
"Right on the money," Nanazanaya said. "And you're someone who doesn't let a little hubris stop them from trying to serve their home."
"You will find many targets in this world more susceptible to flattery than I," Vulpecula warned, turning to leave. "I take what I want by force, and create it when it does not exist. The whims of others, I found too fickle to rely on to meet my needs. Come."
"Does the fact that you're currently on trial mean nothing to you?" Twilight asked. "You're just going to nonchalantly chat up strangers about flattery?"
Vulpecula shrugged. "You did take the initiative to come down here. But I digress. My duty is to save this dying world, as is the duty of the Hypothetorium as a whole. I cannot allow trifling matters such as the manner in which the people desire salvation to interfere, and neither must my colleagues. That they do only indicates how much more work falls to my shoulders."
He passed through the door, into an ordinary hallway with a low ceiling. "Got any tips and tricks to pass along?" Nanzanaya asked. "Hypothetically, you know. Supposing a girl was looking for her own way to protect her home at all costs."
"That depends," Vulpecula said. "Do you consider your home to be worth saving?"
Nanzanaya frowned. "Of course I do. What kind of question is that?"
"This world faces threats beyond measure," Vulpecula said. "Desertification of the highlands draws more refugees by the hour. As the population rises and trade dries up, commodities that were once plentiful become scarce. Construction on Hypertheory, our sister city, proceeds at a blinding pace, but even if all the ingenuity of ponykind can outrun the physical threats to our world, what about the threats we pose to ourselves? The fabric of our society is fraying faster with each generation. Only a ruthlessness beyond measure can provide us with the power to survive, but will it leave us worthy of it? I have little confidence that someone like me is worthy to live in the utopia I can build through the power of science. But I know precious few who are different. Tell me, if you consider your home worth saving, does that extend to your people, as well? Do they deserve a world not faced with the threat of annihilation?"
"Of course we do! Everyone does!" Twilight burst out. "Is that even in doubt here? Is that why everyone in this city acts like they're in such a malaise?"
"...Yes," Vulpecula said, still walking. "There are many who question our right to exist. Few who would willingly surrender it, but many who struggle to take up arms in its defense. I am glad to hear your world is different."
Twilight blinked. "Our... world...?"
"In many of my laboratories," Vulpecula explained, "researchers labor tirelessly to breach the boundary between the worlds of the mind and of the body, in search of a means of salvation. Long has it been known that emotions, drawn into the physical realm, are most naturally embodied in the form of crystals. Memories have proven exponentially more difficult to work with, as they are the providence of a higher order of mind. However, under specific circumstances, we have been able to change the forms and compositions of emotional crystals based on the emotions elicited by recorded memories. It is theorized that a sufficient quantity of crystals, backed by significantly strong emotion and a sufficiently amplified and isolated memory, could create a complete and interactive simulation of that memory, playing out in the physical world for all to observe and experience."
Everyone was quiet.
"I follow the research of my subordinates keenly," Vulpecula continued, walking along and not watching the party. "Closely enough that I should like to think, were I to exist as a projection in such a simulation, I would be able to tell. Of course, to conclusively prove myself to hold such a state of existence would require more agency than such a projected memory would possess. But now you come, ponies with the strangest ideas about the world you live in. You don't stink of loneliness or despair, and even take it for granted that your fellows are worth protecting at all costs. If I'm wrong, of course, and this is yet reality, far be it from me to care what you think of me for proposing such. But still, I cannot help but wonder."
Rainbow Dash shrugged. "Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Must be disturbing, being aware of the fact that you're not real."
"Oh, I won't be aware of it for long," Vulpecula said. "And it isn't much different from what this world is always like, these days. But if our efforts to save our people somehow did meet with success... then I am glad."
Before anyone could speak, he was gone.
Faye looked around sharply. Behind the group stood the hooded giant.
"You!" Twilight jumped.
"After a series of mistrials, Inquirarch Vulpecula was convicted and removed from office by a vote of the public," the giant said. "His arrogance proved too reminiscent of the gods for the people to stomach, even though they knew that without his mind, they would lose a great tool in their fight for survival. Some believed that it was imperative that life endure at any cost, no matter what they would have to suffer themselves to become. Others believed that the end of the world and the disappearance of the gods was a trial, one in which it was our duty to find the right path forward... or else not live on at all."
Once again, the giant was gone.
"Twilight?" Rarity bit her lip. "This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies."
"This is kind of metal," Rainbow said. "Except that it was probably also real."
Clacking hoofsteps announced the approach of more golems. It was Court Administrator Barrows, Prosecutor Mercat, and Inquirarchs Bootes and Indus. All four of them still had faces, and were talking out loud, walking with purposeful strides that suggested they were still going to ignore everyone they came across, even though they could actually see and hear them now.
"...Never in all my days," Barrows was fuming. "What is this world coming to!? Of course he made the accursed Daydream Network, that doesn't give him the right to sabotage-"
Mercat shook his head. "It was less rowdy than the Corndol trial two months ago. This is just the new normal now. The only way to get a lid on it is to be more forceful and remind defendants why rules are rules! And prosecutors, as well. The amount of frivolous suits that come into my office looking for someone to help press them..."
"I could care less about the procedural issues," Indus grunted. "The only thing that matters is that these spliced souls from his experiments can't properly move on. If their host body dies, they stick around like ghosts and my powers become useless on them."
"He's done a lot more than just that," Bootes growled. "The Hypothetorium is the best and only hope of equinity, and we need the public's support. There's a loud enough faction already accusing us of trying to usurp the role of the gods in society, and seeing that stallion up at the stand confirming what they're thinking is only adding fuel to the flames."
"Better to all perish as equines than be stuck in purgatory for eternity," Indus said. "Unless you would prefer a future where we live endless lives as intangible ghosts on a hunk of desiccated rock."
"What I would prefer," Bootes sharply insisted, "is a future where we rejuvenate our dying world and society both! And Vulpecula is prioritizing only the first at the expense of the second!"
"I doubt he'd tell you that," Barrows scoffed. "He'd probably tell you all this soul manipulation research is supposed to 'metaphysically change us' and 'make us nicer people'. As if someone like him has a right to talk about what a model citizen looks like..."
"Who does, though?" Mercat asked. "Genuine question. Everyone these days can tell you what's wrong with each other, but no one has a compelling vision for what we should be doing. Only what we shouldn't. Except for a few nutjobs like Corndol, but they get shouted down by anyone with a sane head on their shoulders."
Barrows shook his head. "A job for the philosophers, not the courts. And you know how much authority that has around here."
"More than you would think," Indus said. "Recall that there was enough clout during this very facility's construction to build it safely over top of that old church, rather than bulldoze it like most of the Hypothetorium wanted. Few will answer honestly when asked for their thoughts on the old systems of authority, but I believe they command more respect than the polls still show."
Bootes shook his head in disgrace. "Construction money that could have gone towards Hypertheory, or research budgets, or supporting the evacuations and refugees, or even the Tower of Babil... Do you know how many Inquirarchs in the Office of Architecture are still sore about needing to build around that ramshackle thing?"
"Now you sound like Vulpecula," Barrows accused, as the group moved on around a corner. "He's the one who always..."
A crystal wall rose up behind them to block off the passage, and another one lowered, revealing a staircase down. At its top was the hooded giant.
"Why are you showing us this?" Twilight whispered. "Is this really what the world once looked like? There's no doubt about it: this is Indus. A memory of it. The world that came before ours."
The giant regarded everyone, nothing but blackness under its hood. "After Vulpecula's fall, people who had already been consumed with the question of equinity's worthiness to exist began actively seeking solutions. Signs of decay were all around us. The Hypothetorium took increasingly draconian measures to control the land, using their power and technology to construct cities with nigh-infinite housing, manipulated plants to create industrial quantities of food in exchange for little space and water, ensured that Macrothesis and its surrounding valley could provide for the entire population of the planet. But no amount of technology could erase the despair of the refugees, having lost their ancestral homes amid a shrinking world, and all the distractions we made to take away the pain only allowed us to grow further apart."
It turned down the staircase. "Families disintegrated. Siblings warred over ideology, marriages split apart, and role models were in precious short supply. Eventually, the populace turned on science itself and began to question its methodologies and practitioners, even as they lived only by the grace of its bounties. The Hypothetorium chose to maintain control by force, abandoning its claim to moral superiority, re-instating Inquirarch Vulpecula and pursuing a strategy shaped by survival and nothing else. And in response, the people cried out for deliverance from any who would listen: the Hypothetorium, oblivion, or even the gods themselves."
Once again, it vanished from sight. Faye's heart was pounding, and she broke into a run in pursuit.
Stairs flew by beneath her as she somehow kept her balance, no end to the staircase in sight. This wasn't right. The world should never, ever have been allowed to reach such a state. Why couldn't anyone have done anything? Why didn't anyone stop it, long before it got that bad? The war in the north was a brewing cataclysm, and yet it was still a battle with a clear evil to be resisted. But the hooded giant's words poured into her like a bucket of resignation: everyone had seen the end coming, and been too scared or mistrusting or unable to work together to even agree on what a better future would look like.
She knew how that was. Fear of herself was always her greatest obstacle, mistrust of how she would use her powers and responsibilities. Halcyon had been a solution to that, a version of her designed to look to a higher power for guidance, and not be the arbiter of her own fate. That was why Halcyon believed in miracles and saw them in everything, why she loyally sought out the light spirit and searched for a purpose that was bigger than herself. And Faye wouldn't have been able to make her that way if, on some level, she didn't want an infallible god to put her faith in, as well.
But such a thing couldn't exist. If it had, it would never have allowed the world to reach such a state.
She stopped to catch her breath, and allow the others to catch up. And as she did so, the staircase around her began to shimmer and change.
The crystals grew from an opaque blue to a violent orange as tendrils of emotion wrapped around her, reaching up from the floor and prying her eyelids open. The walls reached the consistency of glass, and then weren't there at all, and she was standing on the roof of the tallest building beneath a burning sky, a second sun hanging low in the sky.
It shuddered with radiance, a golden equinoid emitting light enough to blot out the sun, surrounded by a halo of energy, runic wings stretching five times the length of its body out to either side. Faster than Faye's eyes could track, the silhouette of a dragon appeared above it, its conical tail burning with a rainbow of light. A laser dropped down, and reality contorted to contain it, rings of rainbow energy encircling it on its journey to the ground.
The golden equinoid teleported out of the way, and a sphere of power appeared on the ground where the rainbow had struck, lingering for several seconds before vanishing, a perfect crater carved away in its wake.
As the rainbow dragon wheeled, looking for its opponent, the golden figure returned, its wings changing form and brimming with energy. Golden swords emerged from the runes, shooting and twisting through the air, leaving lingering trails of light.
The dragon charged, wheeling between several missiles and blocking another with a massive shield, barreling into the equinoid and grappling it, the two tumbling toward a second city on the horizon. The sword missiles arced around in search of their target, but many missed, slamming into the skyscrapers instead in plumes of flame.
A mind-rending screech rang out, and the equinoid dodged another rainbow laser, this one shooting out horizontally across Faye's field of view. Her head swung to follow it, and it impacted a distant mountain wall that extended as far as she could see - a ring, or something akin to one, around the valley where the beings were fighting.
Faye took several steps forward on shaky legs. The city across from her was burning, and the one down below her was burning, too.
The gods wheeled through the sky, trading missiles and lasers, the light from one impact scarcely having vanished before the next one struck ground. Sword missiles streaked through the air, leaving crazed patterns of light, like a camera trained on the stars set to too high of exposure and then spun at low velocity. An unbearable heat penetrated her coat like a chorus of screams, and a laser soared so close overhead that she could see the lightning coursing along the beam's length, caused by the plasmafication of the air.
Faye turned, stumbling, looking for the stairs, for how to go back. Starlight and Twilight were there too, both just as transfixed as she was. And so was the hooded giant.
The giant regarded everyone sadly as the air began to shimmer, the staircase fading back into existence. "The gods returned."
"Twilight! Are you alright?" Applejack was shaking her.
"What happened?" Rainbow demanded. "Starlight? Uhh..."
Faye tried to stop herself from shaking as the palace released its grip on her, reality fully reasserting itself. The hooded giant was already gone. "Who else saw that?" she asked, looking to Twilight's friends, then Corsica. "Did any of you see that?"
"I saw it," Starlight whispered, haunted.
"What did you see?" Fluttershy asked. "It looked like there was some kind of enchantment on the walls, but I didn't see anything beyond that."
"That was Aegis," Twilight said, ears flicking rapidly in agitation. "And... and... must have been the other titan, as well."
"This," Starlight said, "must have been how Princess Celestia found out about the end of the previous world. And why she and Luna are so scared of Aegis falling into the wrong hooves."
"Yeah," Rainbow insisted, "but what did you see?"
As Starlight and Twilight slowly explained, finally sitting down to get everyone on the same page, Faye was left to her own thoughts... except for Corsica. "You alright?" Corsica asked.
"Physically," Faye said. "I..."
Corsica waited for her to get her words together.
"Ludwig told me," she eventually whispered. "And the Composer, too. Kitty. They told me the windigoes' goal, the reason they were trying to break out, was to kill God, who they called their father. I wonder if that's who I just saw."
Corsica kept listening.
"I saw them fighting," Faye said. "Two gods. One was Aegis, and one I didn't recognize, but they looked equine. I don't know why they were fighting, or who started it, or who won. But if they were the gods of the previous world... Maybe if one of them left Ludwig and the windigoes behind, to live on in this world..."
"You saying you think there's a chance the windigoes might actually be on the right side of history?" Corsica asked. "Don't forget who they are and what they're like."
Faye shook her head. "No. I'd never side with the windigoes. Just... if it's at all possible that they're fighting someone who could do something like what I just saw, maybe I don't want either side to win."
Corsica nodded.
"Hopefully I'm wrong, though," Faye said, straightening up and testing her legs. "Hopefully that wasn't actually the windigoes' father. Because they seem to think their dad still exists and is in need of fighting, and we know Aegis still exists. I'd... rather not imagine seeing what I just saw there, except for real."
"Everyone?" Fluttershy asked, standing at the front of the group. "I don't want to push anyone who's not ready to move on. But I think this staircase points exactly in the direction we want to go."
Faye looked up, reorienting herself. Fluttershy was right. The core of the city was straight ahead.
"Right," Starlight said, her normally solid facade heavily shaken. "Let's keep going and get this over with."
There would be time enough to think later. Plenty of time to unpack her feelings on the windigoes, and how a fear just like her own had destroyed this society, and how the light spirit had been golden, too. But for now, Faye picked up her hooves and kept marching on.