Jordan circled the angel statue in front of the mansion. A fire rune was carved into the base, followed by an inscription. The inscription and rune looked like they had been burned straight into the stone. She could see where the molten rock had melted out of the inscription area and hardened below as it cooled again. Amicus and Andrea stood nearby, watching her.
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The inscription read. The inscription began and ended with a fire rune.
"Religious stuff makes sense for Auntie, but why did she put fire runes in it?" Jordan asked.
"No clue. My bet is it's part of some puzzle. Sunset had an obsession with puzzles," Andrea answered. "Don't try solving it. Our sister also had a habit of having nasty consequences for getting the answers to her puzzles wrong."
"There's a Bible verse and rune in every room of the house, at every entrance, and every other notable location on the property," Amicus explained. "You can cover over them but don't remove them. That's part of Sunset's contract with you."
Jordan looked at the front door of the house. There was indeed another Bible verse written around the doorframe. She walked closer to the door.
No stranger had to spend the night in the street, for my door was always open to the traveler.
There were different types of fire runes at the beginning and end of the verse. It all looked like it had been burned into the wood. Did the runes indicate something about how she burned the inscriptions? Why would she mark that? Just drawing a single rune like that didn't do anything. At least, she didn't think so. Even if inscribing runes did anything, doing just one rune wasn't even a spell. The closest equivalent would be runes were individual letters; simple spells were words; more complex spells were sentences or paragraphs, and the really really complicated stuff was like chapters in a book.
"Kind of an odd thing for her to put on the door when most people aren't welcome here," Jordan said after reading it.
"Don't ever try to understand Sunset. Her hypocrisy will make your brain hurt," Andrea said.
Amicus gave the crystal pony mare an angry look. "Andrea, Sunset's our baby sister. You shouldn't say such things about her."
Andrea didn't seem fazed. "Do you deny that Sunset's a hypocrite?"
Amicus looked away. "You still shouldn't say it."
"I love her, but that doesn't mean I can't call her out on her shit," Andrea replied. "Still, I'm here, even after she decided to screw over Sinker and us by giving Wabash to some random nobody rather than-"
"ANDREA!" Amicus shouted. She then turned and faced Jordan. "I'm very sorry. Andrea's under a lot of pressure. She didn't mean-"
"Yes, I did," Andrea replied. "And the little college filly can't kick me out because I said as much; Sunset left me that much. The house should have gone to one of us, Sinker, Phobia, or one of her grandfoals."
Jordan's ears laid flat. "She did offer it to her grandfoals first, or at least, to Charlotte, but she said no. She said she didn't trust Arachne or Moon with it, and Phobia would never come to live here."
"And us? And Sinker? She didn't trust us?" Andrea asked.
"We're old; how long until we would need to find someone to take the house from us?" Amicus asked defensively. "Our kids have been thankfully kept far away from Sunset's issues, and I prefer it stay that way, so they're out. And Sinker…forgive me for saying this about our brother, but Sinker…Sinker is not a good fit."
Andrea grimaced. "Maybe. We can help him or get him the help he needs."
Jordan looked back and forth between them. "What's wrong with-"
Amicus shook her head. "Don't ask. It's a private family matter."
"Drug addiction," Andrea answered, earning a stern look from her sister. "He took our parents' passing away hard and fell in with a bad crowd for a while, a crowd that offered him alternative ways of coping with the grief. He's about your age, impressionable. Sunset had been paying for clinics to help keep him clean, but every time he comes out…well…yeah."
"Addiction is rough," Amicus said quietly. "I didn't mention it, but Sinker technically lives here too; however, he is rarely here. He's currently in rehab again. We're hoping to have him home again in a month. He isn't a bad pony. He's just troubled." She looked at her sister again. "Which is why he wouldn't work out as the manor's owner. We couldn't even hold it in trust for him since we have no idea how long it will take him to get clean and, more importantly, stay clean."
Jordan gave a sad nod to Amicus. "I'm very sorry about your brother. I hope he recovers and gets back to being his old self once again." She looked at Andrea. "And I know I'm not who you think is ideal to take over this place. I was probably more shocked than you were when Auntie offered it to me. I might be young, but I'm not a pushover, and I'll ensure I respect you and the manor. Auntie wouldn't have offered it to me if she didn't think I was up to it, and Auntie barely trusted anyone. If we're going to be living together, I hope we can be friends."
Amicus walked over to her and put a hoof on her shoulder. "I'm willing to try to be friends."
Andrea rolled her eyes. "I'll be civil, but no further promises. Just make sure to keep the place tidy. I can't stand messes. Amicus's study and room are bad enough. She couldn't keep things neat and clean when we shared a room as kids, and she still can't when we share a house as adults. She's as bad as Sunset."
"My study is in perfect order," Amicus protested as she removed her hoof from Jordan.
"You've got papers and books piled up everywhere!" Andrea shouted back.
"They are in sorted piles where I can get to them quickly!" Amicus yelled. "As a crystal pony, you should understand how much of a hassle it is to go digging through filing cabinets and bookcases. It's easier to keep the stuff on the floor."
"That's just laziness," Andrea scoffed.
"Well, you don't have to come into my room or study if me making things easier for myself offends you," Amicus said with a sniff.
Jordan's ears flattened again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause you two to start fighting."
Andrea laughed. "Oh, you had nothing to do with it. The three of us have been fussing with each other since Jimmy Carter was president."
"Well, since Reagan was president, in Sunset's case, but yeah, this is nothing new," Amicus concurred. "Don't worry. It's just fussing. We're still sisters, and we still have each others' backs. You'll hear us bicker all the time. If we aren't bickering about petty stuff like how one arranges one's room, we're arguing about politics. Andrea's conservative on many issues, while I'm rather liberal. Sunset…Sunset just pissed everyone off and pulled religion into it."
"I consider myself a libertarian–free market and social freedom. The conservatives are way too religious for my taste," Andrea said with a sniff.
"Neither of us cared for Sunset's religious zeal, and both of us found fault in her economic philosophies and other matters," Amicus continued. "Dinner discussions could get quite heated. It was even worse when Lántiān was still living here. That young mare was a full-on communist."
"You and the communist should have gotten along fine," Andrea smirked.
"I'm a Social Democrat, not a communist!" Amicus fussed. "Dealing with Lántiān should have highlighted the significant differences to you!"
"Maybe we shouldn't talk about politics," Jordan suggested. "It's my house. Can I make that a house rule?"
"No," Andrea replied.
"Yes," Amicus said at the same time. Amicus smirked at her sister. "Sorry, I'm the attorney representing the property, and yes, Jordan is free to make such rules…impossible to enforce as they are."
"Okay, so new rule, no talk about politics," Jordan announced.
Amicus nodded. "Rule noted. I must now tell you that the governor and the city council will send delegations to the house tomorrow. They want to know who they're dealing with…or won't be dealing with since they try to pretend this place doesn't exist. It will likely be their only visit."
Jordan backed up. "What am I supposed to say to them? What am I supposed to do?"
Amicus shrugged. "Be friendly. If they ask about the vaults, deny they exist and don't give them access if they ask to look. Say it is an invasion of privacy."
"Will that work?" Jordan asked.
Amicus shrugged. Well, that wasn't helpful at all.
Andrea sighed. "Try not to embarrass us. You'll have me by your side to stop them from pulling any shit. Years and years in the FBI means I know what they can get away with and what they can't. This Is a special self-governing district. They made this place self-governing so they didn't have to send help, take responsibility, or do anything involving this place, but that also limits how much they can make us do."
Jordan nodded, not knowing what to say. This wasn't what she expected inheriting a mansion would be like.
Amicus gestured at the front door. "Let's stop standing around outside. I'll give you a tour of the house–minus the vaults; we can sign the paperwork finalizing your taking possession of the property, then you can pick out your bedroom."
"Why aren't we touring the vaults?" Jordan asked.
"Because none of us are interested in dying. At least I'm not," Andrea answered. "The vaults are loaded with lethal traps, and no one here knows what they are or how to turn them off. When Sunset told us, don't go down there or you'll probably die, I'm inclined to believe her."
"What if somebody accidentally wanders down there?" Jordan asked with worry. "What if I someday have foals, and foals being foals, they go exploring and get into places they shouldn't go?"
Amicus smiled. "Don't worry. There's a massive vault door with a combination lock and armed guards guarding the door before even getting into the vaults. They'd have to figure out the combination, and they'd have to get rid of the guards to even get an opportunity to do so. No one is going to wander into the vaults."
"Once into the vaults, you get into the traps, but each vault has a separate door with a different combination. On top of that, each vault has several feet of steel walls if anyone tries to tunnel into them, and if the vault is entered without the door being properly opened, that's a trigger for another death trap," Amicus explained. "The vaults are fully secure. Any idiot could keep them safe. All you have to do is stop anyone shady from being in the house long enough to figure out how the hell to get through it all. That's not hard to do. Sinker could have done it."
"Let it go, Andri," Amicus said with exasperation. "I also wish Sinker had inherited this place, but he is troubled right now, so he didn't. Just accept it and move on. We should be more concerned about his health than him inheriting this place. At least Sunset guaranteed him a home here, no matter what. So who cares if his name is on the deed or not?"
"I care, but you're right; I should accept it and move on. This is all because of Sunset, and she is taking off to another planet in another universe, so I can't exactly yell at her anymore," Andrea replied. "Now, instead of foalsitting a family member, I'm foalsitting some random filly I know nothing about."
Jordan turned her flank towards Andrea and pointed at the picture of the open book with a heart in it. "Well, I love to read. I was almost killed as a foal during the Cataclysm of Riverview. Jessie is my best friend. I want to be a teacher. Auntie Sunset taught me some of my magic, and Phobia Remedy is my eldest sister. There, you know stuff about me."
"What I heard is you name-dropping a few people, which isn't something I care about. You pointed out one bit of foalhood trauma, which I'm sorry for, but you need to get over it. You have a pretty standard interest that you don't need a cutie mark to demonstrate, and if that is all your cutie mark is about, then I'm sad for you. I also heard you want to get a low-paying job that most people quit within five years of starting because they get treated like shit. You seem like nothing much to write home about," Andrea declared.
"Can you please be nice," Amicus hissed.
Jordan tucked her tail between her legs. How was she supposed to live with someone who so clearly hated her? Maybe hate was a strong word–perhaps strongly resented? No matter what the terminology, Andrea was going to be miserable to be around. Could she still back out of this? No, she'd dropped out of school for this. She'd upended her life for this. She might be feeling kind of foolish for doing it now, but she wasn't going to be run off by Sunset Blessing's eldest sister just because the mare was mad the house hadn't gone to one of Auntie's siblings.
She looked up at the door again. "No stranger had to spend the night in the street, for my door was always open to the traveler. I think she put that up there for a reason. Auntie put this big speal in her books about being kind to strangers. I know she's a hypocrite, but are you going to be a hypocrite too by treating me that way when that's what's posted on the front door?"
Andrea blinked twice and then smiled. "Well, at least you have a tiny bit of backbone. I can respect that. Sunset and I had many…many things we disagreed about, but I always respected her bravery."
"She literally pissed all over herself at any sign of danger," Amicus said flatly. "She also is running away to Equestria."
"I might disagree with how she dealt with the house when leaving, but she stuck it out here longer than anyone else would. Going to Equestria was sensible," Andrea replied. "As for pissing herself, yeah, she did, but she stood her ground as the puddle formed. I'm told she even stood her ground with shotguns pointed at her face. You'd be stupid not to be terrified in such a situation, but she took her stand."
"Urinating is a common defensive measure in the animal kingdom," Jordan said. Both the sisters gave her flat looks, and she lowered her eyes. "Or so I heard, anyway." Why did she even bring that up? Did she just compare Auntie with some random animal? Auntie's sisters likely didn't care for that.
"And there went your bravery capital," Andrea said with exhaustion. "Inside, filly; we have a tour to do."
"And paperwork!" Amicus chimed in. She sounded almost happy about it. Whether that was because she was excited about paperwork in general or for exiting the conversation, or both, Jordan wasn't sure. What a pair of housemates.
Jessica looked at the screen, scribbling out equations without looking at what she was doing. These numbers…they all had to come from the same galaxy, the same section of the same arm of Pinwheel Galaxy. That was over twenty million lightyears away. If people had looked for this when she was a kid, there'd be no hope of finding it; the telescopes back then wouldn't have been up to the task. Even now, it would take the Starpiercer telescope to get more detailed information about that region. She might not have had a hand in designing that telescope–her engineering skills were not near the level of her mathematics, but it operated on principles that came from her work. The Starpiercer only existed because scientists now understood Middleton's Law. So, in a way, this was a double victory for her.
Don't get cocky. You haven't found it yet, and there's still a chance this will turn out to be a dead end. Data from that far away is very unreliable. she chided herself.
She looked at the equations she had scribbled. The range of coordinates that she possessed, if this wasn't just a fluke, were good enough that someone should be able to locate any celestial body in the region. Now it was time to figure out how to make NASA turn the telescope to look. That probably meant telling the Dreamwardens and having them apply pressure. That meant talking to the Dreamwardens, which meant the end of her vacation. Fudge. Still, she couldn't help being excited.
Her ears twitched right before there was a knock at her door.
"Come in, Dusk," she said as she swiveled her chair to face the door.
The door opened, and her little brother stepped in. He looked at her computer.
"I thought you were on vacation," Dusk said, sounding resentful.
She smiled. "I might be done looking at these projections for good. I think I found whatever it is I'm looking for. Let's cross our fingers on that," She looked at his hair. "You look like you just came out of a wind tunnel."
He clumsily brushed his brown hair down with his hands. "I was playing with Eve. I was lying on the floor, and she got on my head."
"Building up your best uncle cred?" she asked with a chuckle.
He grinned. "I'm her only uncle."
"Yeah, but which is better for her to think of you as, her uncle or her best uncle?" Jessica asked. "Just your best big sister asking."
"Best uncle," he said, still grinning. "So…if you're still on vacation, can we work on the Oldsmobile again tomorrow? We haven't worked on it in a while. That liquid cooling system is sitting in the corner, waiting to be installed."
Jessica frowned. "Jordan just got into town, and I was going to visit her and…one second. Come in, Dad."
Her dad opened the door and stepped in, and looked at Dusk. "Sorry to interrupt; I'll get out of your hair in a sec. I needed to ask Jessie a favor."
"What do you need?" Jessica asked.
He leaned against the doorframe. "Mark is getting transferred to a temporary foster home on Monday. I know you'll be busy moving on Sunday, but I wanted to ask if you could revisit him, at least for an hour or so. He still isn't responding to anybody else, and I was hoping you could make some progress with him."
She looked at Dusk and then looked around her still-completely unpacked room. "I guess, but it can't be for long." She looked at her brother. "And I'll find time to work on the Oldsmobile with you too. We'll get that system installed. There still is a lot of work to do with it, but we'll still get it done before you're old enough to drive it."
"Thanks, Jessie, I appreciate it," their Dad said as he turned to go. "Have a good night."
Their father left, but Dusk remained, silently looking down.
"Why so glum, bro?" she asked as she stood and walked over to him.
"I don't want you to move out," he replied.
She sighed and bent down so he was looking down at her instead of her looking down at him. He was in the middle of a growth spurt, gaining almost a foot of height in the last year, but he still had a ways to go before they were the same height.
"I'm still going to be close by and will come by the house a couple of times a month," she said gently. "I've got to; can you imagine me living off nothing but my cooking?"
He let off a weak laugh. "I hope your apartment has fire insurance."
She lightly punched his shoulder. "Brat! I'm not that bad!"
"Remember when you tried to make chicken alfredo?" he asked.
She groaned. "I didn't think anything could smell that bad. I still don't know what went wrong. I'm sure I followed the recipe to the letter."
"You used that imitation chicken so you could eat it all without getting a stomach ache. I don't think it cooks the same. That was bad. We all got sick, and we had to air out the house for the next two days," Dusk laughed. "You shouldn't be allowed within a mile of a stove."
"Hey, I cooked some grilled cheese sandwiches once that were only slightly burnt."
"Define only slightly."
"They were only black on one side and not even completely," Jessica said with pride.
"Did you eat it?"
"Some of it."
He laughed again. "How does somebody as smart as you fail so much at cooking? It's easy. I can make grilled cheese."
"I'm a math genius, not a cooking genius," she answered. "Maybe I can invite you to my place for dinner–you cook."
"Look at you, needing your thirteen-year-old brother to cook for you," he said smugly.
She suddenly noticed a dark mark on his neck and reached for it. "What's this?"
Dusk quickly covered the spot with a hand and backed away. She heard his heartrate quicken. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."
She stood up. "It's not nothing. Is that a bruise? Did somebody hit you in the neck?"
"Don't worry about it," he repeated, still covering the spot.
"Let me see it, Dusk," she ordered.
He grudgingly removed the hand from the side of his neck. There was a black spot like someone had struck him with something narrow and flat.
"Can you just ignore it?" he asked. "Mom already freaked out about it, and I'll probably hear from Dad too after she talks to him. Robby didn't notice, but I think he is too short to have seen it. I didn't get into a fight. The kid whacked me with a book, and I ran."
She grimaced. "Did you tell a teacher?"
"No, it was my word versus a dozen other people's," he said, a hint of anger in his voice.
She put a hand on his shoulder. "Dusk, you can't let them keep doing this to you. I know you'll get in trouble for fighting, but if the teachers can't help, you have to stand up for yourself. Better to take the suspension than to let them think they can keep hurting you."
"You never fought anyone," he objected.
She shook her head. "That's different. One, nobody would dare get in a physical altercation with me, knowing that I'm as strong as I am, and two, because of that, I only ever had to deal with people saying things. This is physically hurting you, not just your feelings."
He looked away. "It won't help. I'd get in trouble, and they'd keep picking on me."
She grunted and removed her hand. "There's got to be something that can be done. Maybe now that I'm moving out, they won't pick on you for me being your sister anymore."
He looked at her. "They weren't picking on me for that this time. Since Auntie Sunset has been on the news for leaving, they started picking on me for that. They picked on me for my name and said that if I wanted to be a pony so much, I should be going to Equestria with my aunt."
Jessica held her tongue. Dusk had gotten his name because his parents had been Shimmerists when he'd been born and believed all things pony to be superior, so they gave him a pony name. She'd broached the subject of him changing his name to something more human, but he'd been the one to object, even though it caused him trouble. He said there was always something that caused him trouble. If it wasn't his name, it was who his aunts were. If it wasn't that, it was because he had a partial sister. If it wasn't that, it was because his older brother was the Warden of Fear's ward. Her little brother couldn't catch a break. It wasn't fair. It made her feel horrible. She was the big sister. She was supposed to protect him. She promised when he was born that she'd always protect him, yet she felt as helpless as he did.
"Wish I was a pony. Humans suck," Dusk muttered.
Her eyes widened. "Dusk! Don't say things like that. There's nothing wrong with being human. No species is superior to another."
"Ponies don't pick on me. All my friends are ponies," he grumbled.
"You've been picked on by ponies before. It might be less frequent, but it happens. Jerks come in all forms," she said, feeling awful that she was reminding him of bad experiences. "I might be your big sister, but I'm also your friend, and I'm not a pony."
He crossed his arms. "Well, it's still mostly humans. Doesn't matter. I'm never going to be a pony."
What to say to him? She didn't know. Dusk was unlucky enough to be born into a family with multiple famous and controversial people. At least the most contentious of those was leaving; that should help some things.
"I, for one, am glad you're human," she finally said. "You've got a chance to catch up to me in height or perhaps get taller. Do you know how tiring it is staring down at all of you all the time? It's even worse with Robby. I have to worry about tripping over him. Did you know that Mom tripped over Umber early today?"
He looked up at her.
"Oh, and don't get me started on how frustrating tails and ears get," she continued, whipping her tail. "You want to ever win at poker? Not when you've got these things. They make it near impossible to hide your emotions. Everyone knows if your excited, or anxious, or scared, or-"
"Or horny," Dusk giggled.
She gave him a pop on the shoulder. "You are too young to be saying stuff like that!"
He rubbed his shoulder, and she briefly worried if she'd hit him too hard, but then he put his hand down. "I'm not a little kid anymore. You don't have to avoid that subject."
"You're still too young," she asserted.
He gave her a flat look. "Mom said you were eight when she had to explain the birds and the bees to you."
Her face reddened. "I'm an unusual case. I physically matured way too early. I looked older than you are now when I was eight. I didn't have the social and emotional reasoning to keep up with everything my body was going through. There were a lot of predatory people out there more than ready to take advantage of a naive young girl in a young woman's body."
Dusk gave her a worried look. "Do you need to get some coffee?"
She blinked. "Why would I need to get coffee?"
He shrugged. "I dunno, you seemed stressed, like I hit a sore spot. So, I figured you might want to get coffee to help calm down."
She blinked again. "Is that something I tend to do? I'm not being snide. I really want to know."
"Sometimes, I guess," Dusk replied with another shrug.
"Oh…well, coffee doesn't sound like a bad idea," she replied.
"Can I get some, too?" he asked.
"You want coffee?" she asked, giving him a small frown.
He gave her a defiant look. "Am I too young for that also?"
"I suppose not," she answered. "Are you sure? It will make it harder for you to fall asleep."
He pointed vaguely towards where the stairs would be. "It's Friday night. I don't have to go to bed early, and I want to spend time with Robby too."
She gestured at the door. "Then let's go get some coffee. You better drink it all, even if you don't like it. I don't want my coffee wasted."
"Are you going to brew it?" he asked skeptically as he opened the door.
"I'm not going to burn it, you brat!"
It had been a good night. Any night spent with both her brothers was a good night, but it still had been enjoyable.
Now, she was asleep and ready to deal with her not-so-fun employers.
"Jessie, are you reaching out to us on your vacation?" Arbiter asked, appearing before her in her typical angelic getup. "How interesting. I would have expected you to take a longer vacation."
Jessica looked at her aunt. "How hard is it to contain your excitement? You know why I'm here."
"You haven't given me permission to respond to your thoughts," Arbiter replied. "I must conduct myself as if I don't know. These are the rules."
Jessica smiled. "Maybe we should talk about the weather then, or maybe we can talk about the latest episode of Godzilla in the Dragonlands."
Arbiter's face didn't even twitch, but the void around them somehow seemed to grow more menacing. "Careful, Jessie, I might not be able to respond to what's on your mind without permission, but I can respond to your obvious attempts to annoy me. You don't want me to be annoyed."
Yinyu appeared and swam around the pair of them. "Someone is annoying our stick-in-the-mud sister? Let's watch this. Annoying Arbiter is one of my favorite diversions."
Rebecca appeared in her blobby white form with a vague image of a smiling face. She joined Yinyu in circling them. "It might be fun. How will the angel lady react?"
Ghadab appeared only as a small trail of flame, and he circled as well. "Will the sycophant vent her rage? Is her half-breed niece immune to it?"
Jessica eyed the three circling and sighed.
"You're flickering again," Arbiter informed her.
She looked at herself. She was a yellow earth pony mare. She stomped a hoof and reverted to her proper form. She then looked back at the Dreamwardens.
"I give you all permission to respond to my thoughts," she snarled, now angry that she'd been unable to maintain her proper form. It wasn't rational to get angry at it, but rationality had little to do with it.
Arbiter gave her a sympathetic look that touched her eyes. "You still struggle with how you see yourself, even after all this time. You need to make peace with yourself."
She frowned. "I give you permission to access my mind, and that's what you focus on?"
Arbiter reached out a hand to her, and even though they'd been far apart a second before, her hand touched Jessica's shoulder, and Arbiter was right there.
"You're still a dreamer and my niece. The Dreamwardens serve the dreamers, and aunts care about their nieces," Arbiter gently said.
"I still say she needs to get laid," Yinyu said, coming to a halt. "Nothing makes a person more proud of their form than a lover looking at them with longing."
"You jump to sex as an answer too much, Miss Seapony," Rebecca chided. "She shouldn't need anyone else's adoration to be proud of her uniqueness."
Ghadab flickered. "She has no shortage of pride, sisters. I think she still resents that she was forced into her form. She has no hatred for her form; she has a rage that it is not hers by choice."
"It was my choice," Jessica told the flame.
Ghadab flared. "To be whole in body or in pain and a cripple, if you lived at all, is hardly a choice. You had none."
"If life gives you lemons, cut those lemons up and make a smiling lemon face," Rebecca said, briefly transforming into a smiling face made out of lemons before reverting to her white blob. "She's unique and should take joy in that."
"And a bedmate might help in that," Yinyu asserted.
"Stop thinking about sex, you whore!" Ghadab yelled at Yinyu. "Sex isn't the answer to everything!"
"But it's the answer to a lot of things," Yinyu countered
"Jessica should make peace with herself and move forward from what was after deep introspection," Arbiter stated.
A large shadow with red eyes appeared. "Yet she fears how the world views her. She is at the mercy of her fear."
Jessica stomped. "I didn't come here for all of you to try to fix me. All these years searching for this thing, and I've found it. I'd have thought you'd be excited about that."
"May have found it," Ghadab corrected.
"We don't want to get our hopes up yet," Arbiter said. "We have invested ourselves in things before, only to find disappointment. We aren't ignoring this, and we're very interested. You may not see it, but in private, we're all talking quite animatedly about this."
"They're giving me more work; it's horrible," Rebecca whined, making a large sad face.
Ghadab made a body so he could glare at the Marshmallow. "And you will pawn that work off on others, like the lazy gluttonous sack of fat you are."
"It's called delegating," Rebecca said proudly.
Phobia shifted to a smaller pony-shaped shadow and fixed her gaze on Jessica. "You'll need to contact NASA with the coordinates. You can tell them that we have been asking you to search for something for years, and you think you've narrowed down where it might be."
"It would help if you could tell me exactly what to tell them to look for," Jessica replied. "So far, you've all given me no clue."
"They'll know it when they spot it if they're looking at the right place," Ghadab said.
"It's unique. They'll never see anything else like it, a one-of-a-kind place out of the whole universe. They won't be able to stop talking about it once they notice it," Rebecca confirmed.
Arbiter gave a small flap of her wings. "If you want a helpful response, then I'll tell you they are looking for a huge chunk, say roughly around the size of Neptune, chunk of super dense thaumic matter. It should be radiating and absorbing unenergized thaumic energy on a scale that NASA's Starpiercer shouldn't be able to miss."
Rebecca took her human form, minus clothes, and crossed her arms in annoyance. "Spoiled sport, taking all the fun of discovery out of it."
"Not all," Arbiter gently corrected.
Jessica gasped. "So it's some sort of thaumic black hole?"
"Not quite," Arbiter said with a shake of her head. "It is something unique. You'll be amazed when you see it."
"And we have a super deep space probe ready when you have calculated more exact coordinates to send it to. Although, that will take NASA spying it from a distance first," Rebecca said.
Jessica blinked. "How will you get any probe out that far or obtain data from there? It is tens of millions of light years away."
"Magic, silly," Rebecca giggled, shifting back into her white blob form. "We've got a probe and a deep space exploration craft ready to go. We've just been waiting for our target to be found."
"They were costly to build, using up considerable amounts of the OMMR's resources. Their builders were unaware of what they were constructing, although I am sure they had suspicions. Keeping the entire thing secret was also quite the hassle. Luckily, this isn't our first time constructing things in secret," Phobia explained. "They can teleport virtually any distance, to the edge of the universe if needed, and then return. The probe returns on a timer, while the explore craft must be directly triggered."
"You have a spacecraft that can go…anywhere?!" she asked in shock. "Do you understand the implications of this?! This advances space travel by millennia! This leaves Star Trek technology in the dust! We could explore and colonize the universe!"
"And do you realize that anyone we send in this thing could be going to their death?" Ghadab growled. "There's a chance this thing will teleport straight into a swarm of Devourers! The universe is a perilous place. They've already devastated that region; we have no idea if some remain in the area. Your big dreams of exploring and spreading humans and ponies across the universe are impossible. Our best hope is for the probe to gather information and get back before the Devourers can respond because they will notice it immediately."
Rebecca got right in Ghadab's face. "You don't have to be so mean in how you stomp on her dreams!"
Ghadab glared back at Rebecca. "Bringing her back to reality is not cruel, especially when lives are involved. Plus, you know how this can be misused. We are already risking enough."
Jessica stared, and her mind started working. "How do you know how to do this? You only know what information is in the dream realm and what your former Dreamwardens knew."
Arbiter gave her a sad look. "Because past Dreamwardens did know how, and it didn't matter against the Devourers. It was a rather new ability back then, and Joss and Triss were the only ones who used the spell frequently–since they were the only ones who had the power to do it on their own, but you can't use it to escape the Devourers. You can run, but they will follow. New worlds, even potentially inhabitable ones, can't just support a population at the drop of a dime. Even with magic, it can take generations to shape a new world to support intelligent life. They didn't have the time."
She sat down, not caring that there was nothing to sit on. Ever since she was little, she dreamed of helping Earth reach the stars. The Dreamwardens had a way of getting to the stars the entire time. Not only that, the stars were still out of reach because of the Devourers. Her dreams were impossible. She knew the dangers of the greater universe, but having something like this spacecraft available and being unable to use it still felt like the reality of it was coming down fresh and hard.
"You bozos made her cry," Rebecca growled.
"Bozos?" Ghadab scoffed.
Jessica waved it off. "It's fine, it's fine. I was aware of how things were. It hit me hard right then, but it's fine."
"Repeating that repeatedly doesn't make it true," Rebecca said.
She shook her head. "There's nothing to do about it. I need to ask, why do you even have such a spacecraft if it is that dangerous?"
Arbiter looked at the others before answering. "We hope to send a small team in once we have found what we seek. Luna has already agreed to come to power the ship and the probe before it–they take an exceptional amount of magic to operate, a key weakness of this travel method. We'd be sending the Marshmallow along as well, as our eyes. Call it sentimentality, but we want to see it. If we can make it a short trip, we should make it in and out before the Devourers can react since they do take time to coordinate and decide a target is worth attacking–it all depends on how close they are to our destination, the probe will hopefully tell us that. If they aren't currently in that solar system, that gives us at least hours and perhaps years before they can respond."
She looked up at the group. "I won't ask why this is so important in the fight against the Devourers, but as compensation for my service, can I be a part of the team? It is my only opportunity to go into deep space. I spent years searching for whatever this is. I want to see it up close as well."
Arbiter noded. "We anticipated this request. It is granted. We must confirm that it is the correct location and it is safe to make this mission, but if it is, we shall allow you to be a part of it. If the telescope finds it, we may need you to recalculate the space-time position of it for the probe. So your service is not yet done."
"Although, you may need to start expanding your horizons," Rebecca said. "If this is the right place, you will be done with us, and your childhood dream might be fulfilled. That leaves you in need of new goals. Maybe it is time to start thinking about what those might be."
"Let me worry about one phase of my life at a time. No counting chickens before they're hatched," Jessica replied.
"Indeed," Arbiter said, then touched Jessica's shoulder again. "We do appreciate the work you have done for us, Jessie. I'm sorry you have had to dedicate your formative years to this. I'm sorry that you had to give up the years you should have been playing with toys. That was my fault, and I can't ever make that up to you or to those who perished that day. I took an action that may have saved the world, but that doesn't make me any less sorry to those who suffered for my deed. I hope we're coming to the end of your service that began soon after that day, and you get to chart your path from here on out, whatever that may be. It is cruel that we took that from you…that I took that from you."
"It's okay, Aunt Arbiter," Jessica said quietly. "Just tell me that it was worth it."
"I hope it was," Arbiter answered.
Always note how a Dreamwarden words their responses. They cannot say a lie; that's what makes them great liars.