Wisely - albeit at Corsica's suggestion - Sugar Belle had assembled a small posse of ponies to climb the gulch wall and go parlay with the ship, so as not to make this harder for Starlight than necessary. Night Glider was there, apparently serving in official capacity as the town's best flier and thus designated scout. Also present were a blue unicorn called Party Favor whom Corsica suspected had been in the crowd that mobbed her, and a white earth pony called Double Diamond she hadn't met, but evidently Seigetsu had.
Gasps sounded from the three ground-bound villagers as they crested the wall - Night Glider had flown on above. "That is Starlight's airship!" Double Diamond pointed a hoof, his voice breathy even when he was excited. "And look! They've come out to meet us!"
As he said, Starlight was off the ship, backed by Twilight and all her friends, with Halcyon and Nanzanaya lurking in the background. Eagerness was the last emotion Corsica could detect on Starlight's face, and yet it was clear that she had actually been coming, and wasn't just waiting.
Corsica smirked. It really had been a mission to buy time for Starlight to get over her nerves after all.
"Princess Twilight!" Night Glider called, floating down at a reasonable height and raising a hoof in greeting.
"Hey, Fluttershy! Hey, Pinkie Pie!" Party Favor called, mirroring the gesture on the ground.
"See?" Twilight gave Starlight a gentle nudge forward. "Not that mad to see you."
Starlight pasted on a crinkly smile. "Uh, hi? Same old welcome wagon, I see..."
"What are you all doing back here?" Double Diamond asked, taking point among the villagers. "Starlight, everything's going alright at your new home, it looks like?"
"We..." Starlight tapped a forehoof. "Have need of a magical artifact I left deep in the mountain caves, to put it simply. Kind of urgent, so you'll have to forgive me if there's not too much time to visit, but by any chance has every last pony in the village been stuck here and unable to use the trains to get out?"
Night Glider landed dramatically. "You do know about that! And it's due to an artifact in the caves, you say!?"
Starlight shuffled awkwardly. "Well..."
Starlight was forced to explain it a grand total of three times: first to the welcoming posse, again in the town's entrance, and finally before a collective assembly of every resident the town had to offer, each time with increasing levels of discomfort.
"And so, because I brought you all here on my airship, you know how far away this place is from your hometowns," Starlight finished, repeating herself more steadily than I was expecting. I was practically a ball of nerves just from imagining myself in her position, and all I was doing was spectating. But Starlight carried herself with an ironclad resignation, as if she was too broken to break further, and thus could keep going indefinitely.
"So you're saying because we know the real distance the train would be crossing, it won't work for us?" a mare asked from the crowd. "That's not how it worked back in Manehattan. You could get from there to anywhere else in Equestria in just a day trip. What's the point of having a train station out here if it has such a limitation?"
"I didn't build it," Starlight said, deliberately leaving out the part that the rest of Equestria's train lines worked this way too - presumably, she wanted these ponies to still be able to use those if they ever got out of Our Town. "It was here and like this when I first explored this land."
"Come off it," said a macho stallion. "Why would somepony build a train what don't work?"
"Good question," Twilight muttered under her breath. "I still don't see the reason for all this..."
"Don't get the wrong idea," the macho stallion went on. "I wouldn't leave Our Town if I had the choice. I came out here for a reason, and I've put in too much work touching up this place to want to leave it just 'cause someone's trying to stop me from leaving. Still makes me wonder what was going through the head of whatever bloke designed this. Oy Princess, you happen to know?"
The crowd's attention turned to Twilight.
Flustered, she spread her wings. "No, I don't know why it's like this, and I just found out a week ago! But Equestria can't function if its ponies can't reach each other, so believe me, I will be doing everything in my power to find out, and in the meantime get you some connections to the rest of the world!"
There was a round of applause, but I got the impression it was too early for the crowd to get fully on board with anything anyone said. "Princess Celestia would have to know about this, wouldn't she?" a mare asked. "Or because you don't know about it, does that mean she doesn't, either?"
"I-"
Twilight was cut off as another stallion spoke. "Maybe no one's saying this for a reason, but I'm sure everyone's thinking it," he started. "But if you knew about this, why didn't you mention it last time you were here, to apologize?"
The question was directed straight at Starlight. The rest of the crowd fell into an awkward hush.
"I mean, none of you asked me," Starlight said with folded ears. "Would you believe me if I said it completely slipped my mind? I had a big week, and was trying to put the past firmly out of mind."
The crowd shuffled. "I told you I should'a said something!" one pony muttered to another.
"I saw that reunion was going better than it could have," Sugar Belle said, "and didn't want to make it awkward, just in case we were eternally cursed or something and there was nothing to be done..."
"I thought if you knew, you would have said something!"
"I wasn't there!"
Ponies piled over each other with excuses, and from the general embarrassment and tension in the crowd, I gathered that this matter really had slipped through the cracks last time, and no one here was comfortable with the fact that there wasn't a better reason than that.
If I was a less-jaded pony, I would have questioned how such a thing was possible, how every single pony here could have not mentioned the fact that they were completely stranded. But I had grown up in Icereach, a place where procedural delays caused by communications breakdowns and avoidance of responsibility were baked into the city's identity. And if ponies could let critical details go forgotten and unattended there, in a place that was ostensibly a bureaucracy, surely they could do it in the middle of an emotionally charged reunion with a tyrant who was trying to turn over a new leaf.
I glanced over at Corsica. "You getting any deja vu from Icereach's schedule slip, here?"
"That's what this reminds you of?" Corsica raised an eyebrow, answering under her breath. "Actually, it reminds me of a tactic Egdelwonk was drilling into me when I was working for him in Ironridge. It's easy to get everyone to forget something of critical importance by giving them something newer or tastier to chew on, even if it's shallower or less important in the long term. Classic sleight of hoof. Sounds like Starlight did it accidentally, making them fixate on how she had changed her ways instead of what they actually needed, and then leaving before they could come to their senses."
"Which is totally what we're doing now, right?" I huddled closer as the crowd kept on speculating. "I don't think anyone intends to stay here longer than it takes us to get down to the harmonic flame. This one assembly is probably all they're gonna get out of her. How many really important things do you think no one will think to mention with this much noise?"
Corsica frowned.
"Alright, that's enough!" Starlight cleared the air, waving her telekinesis around like a flag to get ponies' attention. "You're not going to accomplish anything by litigating whose responsibility it was to ask me about the trains! We're here now, and we can do something about it, so have you thought about what you need?"
The crowd quieted before her perhaps a little too respectfully - these were clearly ponies who hadn't grown unaccustomed to following Starlight's orders without question, and she knew it.
"Well," Night Glider spoke up. "Some of us had an idea to build an airship, not that we have the parts or the know-how. But you're saying that would work, since it's just the trains that are messed up?"
Starlight nodded. "It won't be a fast trip, but it's a good long-term option."
"This area is not so remote as to be completely inaccessible," Seigetsu said, stepping forward. "You are perhaps three to four weeks by hoof caravan away from a port town on a major trade artery known as Fort Redsand. Perhaps faster; my knowledge of travel times is more suited to mountainous terrain. From there you could barter passage to most any coastal area in Equestria, provided you have sea legs and are willing to wait a few months at sea. I realize such times may seem extreme for those used to Equestria's... closeness. But your situation is hardly unique. Much of Equestria's population lives in towns without train stations at all, and still they have learned to flourish."
The crowd muttered, discussing this.
"And you do have a train station, even if you can't use it," Twilight pointed out. "I can arrange for regular train service here for mail deliveries, provided you don't tell the conductor about this and make them unable to return too. And maybe we can set up a system where you can buy things from here, somehow, and then have them shipped to you, or ship things out to sell and have the profits come back here?"
The crowd murmured harder. "So wait," Party Favor cut in. "You're saying someone doesn't even have to see how far the trip is; they could get stuck here if we just tell them about it?"
Twilight bit her lip. "I don't understand this as well as I'd like, but that's my impression. Rest assured I will be testing and investigating the limits of this system as soon as I get a chance."
"Hey, I've got a question!" Pinkie spoke up with a bounce. "If trains come out here regularly, how come you didn't send for help with their conductors? And if they don't, how do you know the trains don't work for you?"
"Oh, they don't come here regularly," said a mare in the crowd. "We just tested with mine."
"And you are...?" Twilight asked as the crowd parted to let her forward.
A yellow unicorn with a blue mane and an average physique stepped up - I suddenly realized there weren't any ponies in the entire crowd with non-standard body types. "Name's Wheelcakes," she said, turning to show off a special talent of a train track. "I used to be a train engineer before I came here. So we tried to leave on mine."
"You have a train here?" Rainbow asked, hovering curiously. "I thought the tracks just dead-ended. Where do you keep it?"
Wheelcakes shrugged. "Well, when you're an engineer, you don't need to keep your train anywhere in particular. You just call and it comes."
Everyone looked at each other.
Twilight bit her lip. "Well, I've read that train operators have a special bond with their trains. But can you really do that? Just... summon your train at will?"
"Sure," Wheelcakes said. "I even called a few other trains, just to make sure it wasn't a problem with mine. If they're not yours, they're not guaranteed to listen to you, but then neither is yours if you don't treat them right. And there are always some nice ones out there willing to help out a stranger in need."
"Trains can talk to you?" Rainbow raised a skeptical eyebrow.
Wheelcakes gave her a fond, slightly patronizing look. "Never been around a pony with signature tools of the trade, love?"
Rainbow reddened and rubbed the back of her neck. "What, is this supposed to be common?"
"I talk to machines all the time," I volunteered.
Applejack nodded. "Have you even seen how we grow our crops down on Sweet Apple Acres?"
Rainbow floated away, embarrassed. "Alright, fine, sue me..."
"Anyway," Wheelcakes went on, "I tried to leave on three different trains, with some passengers. It was the same thing every time: we'd go and go and go, far longer than the trip should have taken, and the moment we tried to back up, we ended up here in minutes. The last time, I tried to get out of the train and explore a little, but I got this feeling in my bones, you know, and went right back to the train. Might have had a better reason than most to be adventurous, but you don't ignore an engineer's intuition."
"Have you heard about something like this before?" Starlight asked.
Wheelcakes nodded. "Myths and legends about trains that went on for infinity but never made any progress? Sure. Never met anyone who had actually experienced it before myself, let alone who could reliably reproduce it."
"Would you mind if we spoke more with you about this later?" Twilight asked. "We did actually come here for something important down in the caves, but if I could collect a complete testimony from you about your experiences testing this, that would go a long way toward helping my own understanding of this phenomenon, and helping find a way around it."
"Of course." Wheelcakes nodded along. "Already makes me feel better about not being able to get the trains out of here if a Princess of Equestria is stumped too! I'm up in that house over there, if you want to hit me up on your way out."
Soon after beginning the descent, Faye could feel the flame.
Sitting in the back of Halcyon's mind, keeping her thoughts to herself while her mask controlled their body, she had plenty of time to focus. This was different from either of the times she had been to a Crystal Palace before: in Ironridge, the flame had been nigh extinguished, and only through straining their senses while touching a crystal vein with a bare hoof could they feel anything at all. Convergence, on the other hoof, had pulled on her from the very surface, powerfully enough that she had to concentrate to keep her footing.
This flame - Laughter, according to Starlight - was a middle ground in intensity, and much more pure. Convergence had been a sea of emotions, many harmonious and discordant strands woven together around a theme, ebbing and flowing like a beating heart. Laughter felt more like a laser: one point source, one isolated strain, powerful and pure and unchanging. It was joy, relief and good cheer, a nostalgic feeling of rosy memories and a giddy excitement and anticipation, all woven into a single cord or baked into a single treat.
It was tempting. Part of Faye wanted to seize control, trade for her bracelet from Seigetsu and turn it up, drinking deep of the contentment in the air. She might have even done so, had Seigetsu not stayed back at the ship with Nanzanaya: that feeling wanted to be drank in. It told her, nudging on her mind, that it wanted its happiness to become her own. But unlike Convergence, it didn't try to overwhelm her or pull her in. It was like staring at a river, instead of a river bursting its banks and sweeping her away.
Laughter wanted to become her, but Convergence wanted her to become it. That was about as accurate as she could put it.
"These caves are something else," Applejack said, staring around at the high ceilings and lower floors as the party descended across a sloping rock bridge, still close enough to the entrance that a faint breeze blew against them. The walls sparkled with microscopic mineral chips in the shifting light of Twilight, Starlight and Rarity's horns, the stone slate gray with occasional bands of brown.
"The Aldenfold is riddled with them," Starlight explained. "I spent a week or two in them to get past the highest part of the mountains, the time I walked across. I'm not sure what purpose they serve, but they're everywhere."
"I can't believe no gem hunters have come here yet to despoil the natural beauty," Rarity remarked. "Not that I'm remotely innocent on that front, and I do believe a good gemstone shines brighter on the right dress than deep underground, but you can't truly use them in a way they deserve without having an appreciation for where they come from. And my fashion sense is telling me this cave is about to become a mother lode."
"I guess being out of the way does have its perks," Rainbow said with a shrug, hovering along.
"It looks fine," Halcyon said, sniffing. "But does anyone else smell something weird?"
Applejack's ears stood straight up. "Like mine gas? Can't say that I do, but..." She sniffed too, then again, harder. "Nope. Can't say that I do."
"What kind of weird?" Pinkie asked, bouncing over. "Because I've got a great sniffer, and there are at least twenty different smells down here I'd call weird."
Halcyon folded her backwards ears. "It's like... a new airship smell. The same way the Immortal Dream smelled when we were just starting to fly it, but it faded after the first day, I think. I wasn't really paying attention, back then, because I thought there was nothing unusual about it. But I smell it again now, and it's strange."
Starlight furrowed her brow. "The Immortal Dream isn't a new airship, though. It's been sitting in that cave for months since I flew it last. Are you sure you're not just smelling fusty cave smell?"
"A harmonic cave, at that," Twilight added, and Starlight nodded.
"I suppose so," Halcyon said, and let it drop. But to Faye, she added, Icereach never smelled this way, right?
Faye paid more attention, and agreed that she could smell it too. Icereach never had smelled this way, at least to her nose. And neither did the Kindness palace, or its surrounding cave. Though neither of them would have been as actively harmonic as this place...
Halcyon sighed in confusion, and kept walking. What Faye didn't tell her, retreating back to her own corner of their mind, was that she didn't think Convergence's city had smelled this way either. And nothing in any of her memories helped her figure out what this was.
The group reached a point where there was no other option but to wing it.
Rainbow dove off the edge, shooting the rest of the way down a claustrophobic craggy shaft and in through a hole in the ceiling of a larger room below, and Fluttershy gently followed suit. Twilight and Starlight brought up the rear, each of them lifting half of the ground-bound ponies in their telekinesis and flying carefully downward.
Corsica didn't mind being lifted as much as she could have. All unicorns learned from a very early age that trying to lift another pony in your telekinesis was one of the rudest things you could do, and she was fairly sure Equestrian mores about doing so were at least somewhat the same, if a little more relaxed. But she couldn't justify getting too uncomfortable when she was hovering next to Halcyon, a pony who by all rights should have been able to fly on her own, and yet couldn't.
Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie Pie gave her good company in ground-bound ponies who accepted this as a necessity, and none of them complained. It was for the good of the world, and all of them had suffered much greater indignities in the name of protecting the peace. But poor Halcyon.
The other reason she didn't feel awkward was because she was too busy feeling jealous of Starlight's flying spell.
To any outside observer, it looked like she was just lifting herself in her own telekinesis. But that was outright impossible, every unicorn foal had tried it and discovered it was the same as trying to fly by trying to push your barrel upwards with a hoof.
Eventually, Starlight and Twilight set everyone down, and the group resumed their usual progression method of following crystal staircases conjured by Starlight - staircases the ceiling hole had been too tight to accommodate. "That horn flying is pretty neat," Corsica remarked as they walked. "How'd you learn it?"
"It's not normal magic," Starlight said, sounding like she wanted to brood silently even though it wasn't good for her. "It's related to my role as a Flame of Harmony, and it's mechanically the same thing that keeps my ship in the air."
"Not something learnable, then?" Corsica grimaced.
Starlight hesitated. "...Maybe. Your cutie mark can make a lot of impossible things possible. Actually, I think it's even been used for this specific thing before. But it probably wouldn't do it in the way you're expecting."
"Eh. I've been feeling pretty good on this trip," Corsica said. "Don't want it badly enough to throw that away, though I suppose I haven't tried wishing for new long-term abilities for myself too often. But what do you mean, done it before? Is there a story here that's worth telling?"
"Not a relevant one," Starlight said, slinking back into brooding.
"Come on, tell it anyway!" Rainbow pressed. "Otherwise I'll try to tell it, and you'll get to listen to me botch your tale."
Starlight sighed. "Your artifice used to belong to Garsheeva. She used it to grant special powers to her top lieutenants, the ones who steered the Griffon Empire independent from the royal families. One of the ways she did that was by modifying and enhancing ponies' cutie marks. Cutie mark magic isn't subject to the same limitations as horns, or mana technology. Originally, Garsheeva bestowed the power of unicorn flight on someone seven or eight hundred years ago, using that method. But Garsheeva never reclaimed that modified cutie mark when its bearer died, and everything that uses the same mechanism today is derived from that mark in one way or another. End of story."
"What do you mean, never reclaimed it?" Corsica asked. "What's that got to do with anything?"
Starlight hesitated.
"Come on," Corsica prodded.
"Cutie marks don't perish when their owner does," Starlight eventually said. "They enter the lifestream - the river of ether down by the flames. And then they stay there, waiting for someone new to come back and bond to."
Corsica glanced at her artifice. "And that just happens? It's random, who gets what?"
"Not random," Starlight said. "It won't happen unless you're a good match for the hopes and dreams embodied in the mark. And I don't know how it works for batponies, since they get their marks before they're even born. This system was made before batponies, so it wasn't made with them in mind." She kept walking. "Also, it didn't used to be automatic. Before my flame 'vanished,' it was responsible for overseeing that cycle of cutie marks. An intelligent set of eyes to step in if a match wasn't going to be formed where one needed to happen, or if one was about to form that needed to be stopped."
"Your flame?" Corsica asked. "Is that why you have the power to remove them?"
"...Indirectly," Starlight said. "Much less directly than you think. But I suppose it has something to do with it. That would be more a question for Luna than for me..."
The group continued downward, along a sheer cliff wall and through a maze of tunnels with crazy slope grades, the caves alternating between wide and claustrophobic. Sometimes, Corsica felt like the walls were made of terrain features that belonged on the surface, squished and folded up like the land had been a wadded-up ball of parchment, with the caves left as natural holes in between.
Gemstones grew more abundant, first as isolated clusters and then as veins running through the rock. The deeper they got, the more common the crystal veins became, pulsing steadily with waves of baby-blue light that seeped up through them, reminding Corsica of blood vessels.
Those sluggish pulses grew brighter and more frequent as well, until Corsica almost felt she could extinguish her horn...
And then they rounded a bend, and a solid wall of crystal greeted them.
"Here we are," Starlight said, steeling herself and focusing her horn on the crystals. "The Palace of Laughter."
"When you say it like that, it sounds more like a carnival than an ancient ruin," Pinkie happily pointed out. "Is it too early to say this place is giving me all sorts of good vibes?"
"Well, it is your element's palace," Twilight pointed out. "Though I feel something in the air too. This place feels... more welcoming than the one in the Everfree."
On command, the crystal wall split and changed, forming into a doorway as it interacted with Starlight's magic. Corsica stepped through, expecting to be dazzled by another crystalline Macrothesis.
Instead, she emerged in a room made entirely of a weird, chalky film.
"What's this?" she asked, sticking her tongue out and rubbing at it with a hoof.
"The same stuff was in the Kindness Palace in Ironridge," Halcyon pointed out, following her in.
"It's some sort of ether residue," Starlight explained. "It builds up over thousands of years if the palaces aren't maintained, I think. You can rub it off..."
She took her telekinesis and scrubbed vigorously at a patch of wall. It took some effort, but the chalky flakes broke off as a sheet, revealing pure, faceted crystal beneath.
"It almost seems like a shame," Twilight said. "I suppose leaving these places alone is important for their own protection. After all, we're here because someone was misusing one badly enough to break it. But ponies should have a right to see and be able to appreciate what makes their world go around, and these places at least deserve to be kept clean!"
Some ponies have fun with cleaning, said a distant voice in the back of Corsica's head. But you're not here for that, are you? Come on down, I don't bite!
Everyone except Starlight jumped. "Did y'all hear that?" Applejack asked, looking around.
"My flame is really excited," Fluttershy said, touching her chest. "It wants to be here."
"That would be Laughter," Starlight said, looking at something down below the floor. "Since everyone here has a strong connection to either one of the flames or emotional magic, I suppose we'd all be able to hear them. We should... hurry, and get this over with."
The palace was bigger than Corsica expected, at least a dozen flights of stairs that had crusted into ramps forcing her to tread carefully. Eventually, they reached a room with a centerpiece that was completely free from chalk: a copy of the crystal map table in Twilight's castle, albeit baby blue and currently blank.
When Twilight approached, however, it sprang to life like a lazy foal caught napping by their teacher. Rather than showing a map, this one showed an array of dots laid out in a roughly T-shaped pattern, with four in a jagged line near one edge of the table and two far out, pointing toward the opposite edge. One of the dots in the line was noticeably brighter than the others.
Twilight frowned. "You said these usually display the Emblem of the Nine Virtues, with a hexagon inscribed inside a triangle. But if that's what this is, it's missing quite a few points..."
"It's missing three of them." Starlight tapped the table, its contents spinning at her touch. "Mine, Kindness and probably Generosity... which are all here, stacked on Laughter. I guess... maybe Generosity is here to help?"
"What would mine be doing all the way out here, darling?" Rarity asked, her perfectly curled mane slightly less perfect after the long spelunking session.
"Well, yours is one of the broken ones," Starlight admitted. "From what I understand, its palace is broken, but the flame is fine, so it just drifts on the lifestream without a center of power and can't do much as a result. Which might be what will happen to Kindness if we succeed here today."
Generosity is here to help, Laughter said, again speaking into Corsica's mind. Come on! We're just a little further!
Starlight and Twilight nodded, leading the way once again. Adjacent to the map table room was a tight spiral staircase, and after several revolutions it broke into a spacious chamber directly under the table. A glittering trunk of crystal rose up from a starry void below, branching out and connecting to the walls and ceiling, absolutely pulsating with life. Corsica glanced over to Halcyon, and offered her a shoulder when she saw her wobbling.
"Thanks," Halcyon managed. "This place is... a lot more intense than the one in Ironridge."
A narrow crystalline bridge connected the staircase to the tree trunk, and through natural folds in the trunk's surface, the pathway continued, opening out into a sanctum that was free from chalky residue. Concentric runes on the floor surrounded a smaller tree, growing up from the center of the main trunk, its branches split and spread and interlocking to form a brazier that burned with a flame the color of the summer sky, its dancing tongues trailing off into lively sparkles and motes instead of smoke.
To the side, another small tree had grown, looking like it didn't quite belong. It had a large, translucent bud made from polished amethyst, and a purple flame burned within, less robust than the blue one but still vibrant and healthy.
"Woah!" Pinkie gasped. "I'm vibrating!"
"This is the place," Fluttershy said, stepping forward. "Everything feels right about this. We can do this!"
"We can give it our best shot," Applejack said, tipping back her hat and setting her face in determination.
"Yeah! So how do we do this, exactly?" Rainbow circled the room.
Such a thing has never been done before, said the purple flame. There is no script to follow. However, we nine are forged from the intent to keep this world in its rightful state. It follows that the intent of your actions here should be more important than their exact form.
"I'm going to stand in the brazier," Fluttershy announced. "I think that's the focal point of this place's power. It won't hurt me, right?"
I'm as gentle as a summer breeze! Laughter announced, a new bud growing opposite Generosity's. Buuut I'll move over here, just so Kindness can have the pedestal to herself.
"Kindness is a girl?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "You guys have genders?"
Not in the sense that you understand them, Generosity said.
But it feels right, Laughter added. And maybe we used to, before we were made!
"...Right," Twilight said, sizing up the situation with a nod. "Let's all take up positions in a circle around Fluttershy, then, us Elements and Starlight. Umm..." She glanced at Halcyon and Corsica. "I don't suppose either of you have relevant magic to contribute?"
Corsica took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I wish... that this plan succeeds."
She felt as if the ground shifted slightly around her. In her mind, a mountain appeared, ready to annihilate her if her wish was consummated: she had just tried to wish a god into existence. Pure dread settled over her as her thoughts caught up to her actions.
Starlight was looking at her with concern. And, she realized, so were both of the flames.
The tool you wield was not made for those who pay the price for their actions themselves, Generosity said. But for those who inflict it on others.
Yeah... Laughter added. It's made for gods, not mortals. Are you going to be alright?
"Well, what am I supposed to do?" Corsica's voice cracked. "Just sit by and not contribute to something as important as this? I'm just one pony, you think my life is going to matter a hundred years from now when I'm dead and gone but millions of others still call this world home? How can I possibly justify not helping, even if it's a price that's too big for me to pay?"
The flames sparkled.
Your heart is noble, Generosity said. You sacrifice beyond your own means for the sake of those you will never meet. You do so instinctively, without stopping to consider the cost. I sense, in part, this is because you have lost hope for your own future, but it is also because you care. You are worthy of my power.
Corsica blinked. "What...?"
Just this once, Generosity said, I will bear your burden.
A purple crystal vine snaked out from the smaller tree, winding over to Corsica, reaching up and then waiting for permission.
She didn't move.
It tapped her flank with a sensation like a static shock, except prolonged. After half a second, Corsica nearly blacked out, an intense vertigo ripping at her mind as gravity destroyed herself in her senses... and then it was all gone. The vertigo, the connection, even the mountain she had summoned in the back of her mind.
Racing through the tendril were angry blue storm clouds, crackling and sparking with midnight-blue energy, the tendril disintegrating in their wake. The clouds were sucked into the central bud, where they shared space with Generosity, slightly pushing the flame aside.
"What... are those...?" Corsica blinked, stepping closer.
Your scientists know this phenomenon as a premonition flux, Generosity explained. A means conceived by Princess Luna of allowing the artifices to skirt this world's prohibition on knowing the future. As the keepers of this world's fundamental laws, we are less than thrilled by their existence. But without the combined might of our nine seats of power, there is little we can do about something that merely pushes the line.
"Prohibitions on knowing the future?" Twilight's eyes widened. "This is a premonition flux? After hearing Starlight's story, I read all the papers I could find from the Kinmari Marine Research Academy, but that line of inquiry was supposed to have dead-ended when-"
Focus, Generosity commanded. The price has already been paid in the future. Restore our sibling.
What she said! Laughter added.
"Right." Twilight took a deep breath. "Everyone? Let's do this!"
Fluttershy held her head high, embers of pink flame beginning to waft from her coat in anticipation.
Twilight lowered her head and fired a horn laser at her. Rarity and Starlight mirrored the gesture, except Starlight's was midnight blue instead of her usual teal aura. Then Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash somehow did the same, lacking horns, the energy streaming out from their chests instead.
Streams of flame burst from the two buds as well, all of the energy converging on Fluttershy as it intensified and swirled. Fluttershy's wings spread, her eyes turned to disks of silver plasma, her hooves lifted off the ground and her mouth hung open in a wordless cry... and the rainbow swirling around her fused with her mane, and her mane with it, the energy cloud taking on a gentle, fiery pink.
One by one, the elements' lasers broke off, and Fluttershy settled back into the brazier, burning with pink flame. She closed her eyes, and then opened them, her irises thoroughly changed to pink. "We did it," she whispered. "You say it'll be alright now... right?"
...I am restored, the pink flame said in a shaky voice, more feeble than the others as it bled back into the brazier. My power will take time to recuperate before it can be used again. My home remains destroyed. I shall drift in the lifestream like Generosity, my sibling. But even weakened, I am no longer fading. You have saved-
Corsica felt it in her heart before she heard it, like the world was drawing in a sharp breath. And then the Generosity bud exploded.
A brilliant flare of blue lightning rocked the tree, a storm that stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Twilight and Starlight reacted as one, encasing everyone in the room in teal crystals and those in a protective barrier, and still Corsica felt the fabric of space rent in twain, as if a hooflength was no longer a hooflength and a second was no longer a second for the briefest of breaths. And then it was over.
I endure, Generosity's voice came in her mind, sounding more like Kindness's than the strong flame it formerly was.
The tree, however, was ruined. Every crystal was cracked, half of the brazier smashed, and it was a miracle the thing hadn't fallen to pieces. Oh no! Laughter cried out, vanishing into the ground and becoming a sky-blue wave, running through the crystals and beginning to fuse cracks back together. My beautiful home!
Starlight blinked, then snapped to attention, lighting her horn and beginning to seal cracks with her own crystal magic as well.
Everyone else was transfixed... save for Halcyon, who darted out the door.
My heart hammered in my chest as I left the tree's interior behind. I could feel all three flames' presences, they would be fine. And even if they wouldn't, the others were better-equipped to deal with it than I was.
The room around the tree had cracked from the force of the blowback as well. What had that been? Something related to Corsica's wish interacting with the Generosity flame as it came true. I didn't have the time to understand fully. I had a hunch, and I had to investigate. Nothing else mattered.
I reached the bridge, and knelt down to examine the cracks. That disturbance, that shock wave, that feeling that time and space had suffered an earthquake somehow... Ether crystal fault planes were spread by radiating shock waves that originated in points, in response to events on the surface world. Cracks in reality, cracks in the crystals, perhaps the use of all the elements in one place? Or was it the premonition-
The bridge broke under my weight, too narrow and not yet reinforced by Starlight and Laughter. I fell along with it, unable to catch myself.
A large slab of crystal landed in the ether with a splash, and I landed atop it, floating in the river. From down here, I could see forever, the rock never dipping down all the way to the ether river, a thin sheet of air separating the world's crust from its starry foundation.
And in the distance, I could see a golden light, steadily building and drawing nearer.