I took a deep breath, and stepped out into sight of the three stallions.
Pirate King Rhodallis - scourge of the Ironridge army's morale, a guerilla raider who operated out of Varsidel and attacked military ships, taking their crews captive and then releasing them again for no reason, someone I knew only from keeping up with newspapers while I had been there - gave me the kind of glance you use when spotting a bit of money on the sidewalk and deciding whether to pick it up.
The armored stallion with the cravat, an older brown unicorn with a greased-back mane whom I took to be the Consul, had a more animated response.
"What is this thing doing in the castle?" he sniffed, turning up his nose at me.
Rondo, for his part, betrayed only a light gasp. "Halcyon?"
Rhodallis raised an eyebrow at him.
"She's with you, then, is she?" the Consul asked, sounding like he had a runny nose. "Sending spies in bad faith to snoop around the castle while attempting to curry favor with His Highness? And you wonder why we were unable to reach an accord."
Rhodallis chuckled. "Fair's fair, right? I let you on my ship. Hurry up, Halcyon! And try not to leave the good Consul's sight. We can't antagonize him too much until we have no further need of him, remember."
My head spun. I figured this might end with some sort of contract, I was trying to get on board Rhodallis' ship to get away from this castle, and yet before I could say so much as a word, he had picked me out and pressed me into an act as a member of his crew.
Well, okay. There were a million ways this could go wrong, and exactly zero it could go better. I nodded, and started walking.
An awkward silence ensued, Rondo pointedly holding his tongue even though he clearly wanted to speak to me and Rhodallis cowing the Consul into submission by silently daring him to run his mouth about spies. For my part, I had no trouble keeping my mouth shut: things were going my way, and the slightest thing I did could change that. I had stumbled into being a pawn on somebody else's board, as so often had happened before.
We exited the castle at one of its upper floors, onto an airship dock made entirely of metal and clearly not part of the original stone construction. This close to the edge of the world, even the sunlight felt oppressive, the distant rush of ether colliding with that burning line ringing in my ears. I glanced at Coda to see if she reacted to our surroundings in any way, anything at all, but she was just as still and unresponsive as the day I found her in Cold Karma's basement.
Ahead was the airship I had seen from below, its decorations bizarre and intimidating. Ignoring the shark face on its prow and the giant eye on its belly, the main body of the ship was painted and constructed to look like a ribcage, its hull closer to a cylinder than something with a deck on top. The lift and propulsion mechanism was centralized in several dozen glowing vents around its sides, bottom and rear: a dirigible-less class of mana ship that had been futuristic and promising twenty years ago, but was blocked from becoming mainstream after the Steel Revolution due to its poor energy efficiency and the spiking price of power. For one rich enough to operate one, they offered plenty of combat benefits, however, including good reaction time, a small profile and the ability to armor their critical components.
The cape attached to Rhodallis' armor billowed as he led the way, and the ship's side slid open, a door revealing itself in welcome. Just inside, I could see several ponies flanking the path, awaiting their master.
As the threshold approached, I focused, trying to ensure my legs didn't shake and fighting back a surge of self-consciousness at being seen without a coat. What was worse, choking under the pressure of my agency and failing my mission at the moment of truth? Or not having agency in the first place?
Whichever I happened to have, always wishing for the other was my lot in life. I closed my eyes, swallowed and said a silent prayer, hoping that fate - the one thing that did sometimes work in my favor - would be on my side again.
"Haven't cleaned this place up in my absence, I see," the Consul drawled as he stepped into the boarding room. "Well? I take it I won't be given better quarters, either?"
"Same room as last time," Rhodallis said, indicating a staircase with a tip of his head. I turned to follow where he was looking... and in that instant as I was distracted, his hoof hit me on the back, pushing me forward.
"And throw her in the brig!" he barked, several crew mates already rushing to obey. "She offended our host's hospitality in the castle, and we wouldn't want to tarnish our new relations by letting justice go unserved."
The Consul sniffed again as two ponies grabbed me from either side. "Yes, you do that. I'll be in my 'quarters', fulfilling my hopefully final end of our bargain..."
I didn't struggle. There was nothing it could possibly accomplish, even though from the feel of these ponies, I might actually be their equal in strength.
Of course I was being taken prisoner. That was how it always started. In the bunker, with Aldebaran. In the Barnabas weapon shop... Hadn't Egdelwonk wanted me to follow up on that?
Nothing to do but wait and see what he was keeping me alive for. And after that, see just how much more complicated my life could become.
Corsica didn't pass the time in her room. She knew from experience that if she went to bed without a good reason to get up, she would stay there for far too long and feel like garbage as a result. And she didn't have a good reason to do anything, so instead she chose to loiter in a public space where eventually someone would come along and scrape her off the floor if she became too sedentary.
The space she chose for that was the mess hall on the bottom floor of the Immortal Dream. When it wasn't in use for feasting, an unusual system of winches and chains could hook to the corners of the grand table and retract it into the ceiling, clearing out a wide, empty space with benches on the sides and nothing in the middle.
Instead of being plain wood, however, the floor beneath where the table would go was glass, offering a panoramic window through the bottom of the ship to the desert far below.
Who designed something like this? Wasn't there a risk it would break? Or had they invented failsafes somehow, however that had been? Wouldn't the money spent on making something like this actually practical have been better used improving flight performance? The Immortal Dream was full of things that made her ask this, from the beautifully carved and decorated woodworking to the sliding doors that somehow never got stuck, even when hinges would have been so much simpler.
It only could have been someone with infinite time and infinite resources who had nothing better to do than take something that didn't need to be beautiful and make it so regardless. This was the kind of thing Icereach would make. Except it was actually finished.
Corsica stared at the desert as it passed below, all of its water locked long ago in clay and then left in the sun to bake into stone. The sun hadn't yet set since they left Our Town, and by the next sunrise they would be out over the sea.
Hoofsteps made her ears twitch as someone wandered by, and she looked up. It was Rarity.
Rarity stopped, something on the tip of her tongue, though she didn't let it out.
"It's my birthday," Corsica remarked, offering her a conversation starter.
"Yes, I suppose it is," Rarity admitted, taking that as permission to sit down beside her. "But your mood doesn't look receptive to a congratulations. Do you mind if I join you?"
"Knock yourself out," Corsica offered. "On both counts. I don't... really care, anymore."
Rarity sat, and held her tongue. And after a long moment of silence, she said, "You know, ponies tell me I'm quite good at listening."
Corsica shrugged. "I just got ditched, once and for all by my best friend. What am I supposed to say about that? It happened. Words won't change that. And even if there were words that could have prevented it, I didn't have them. Not for lack of trying. I try and I try and I try, run myself ragged each day. Takes far less to do me in than it does for a normal pony. I guess she finally decided it wasn't worth waiting for me to keep up."
Rarity listened.
"You ever feel like..." Corsica tongued the inside of her cheek. "Like you're only moving because of momentum you had from some previous phase of your life? Like every day, you slow down more and more. Like there's nothing new that you're running on, like you've stopped having the kinds of experiences that make you alive and you're only living off your memories of experiences from long ago? I don't even know if I can blame this on my special talent. I haven't overused it right now. As of a few months ago, I was still raring to go, making plans to escape Icereach and live the big life once I had outran everything that was holding me back."
"As an artist, I can relate," Rarity said. "What you're describing sounds an awful lot like a creative funk, when I'm too busy rehashing old ideas to embrace new ones and then run out of old ones to rehash."
"What do you do when that happens?" Corsica asked, looking up. "I can't pretend my life's a work of art, but it sounds similar enough."
Rarity leaned back against the bench. "Well, don't stop, for one. Some ponies extol the virtues of taking breaks, but if you ask me, stepping back from your work at a time when you're struggling to engage with it amounts to giving yourself an excuse not to engage at all. You have to be ready to live with the fact that you won't make something up to your usual standards while the muse isn't there, of course, but I don't think I'd have ideas half as good if I let myself get out of that how can I use this mindset. And I think that applies rather well as a life philosophy, because the absolute worst way to find something worth living for would be to sit down and try to pause living your life."
"In other words, keep dragging myself along," Corsica said. "Where, though?"
"Where?" Rarity tilted her head, looking concerned. "Outside your front door, anywhere? Surely you must have some regular obligations and responsibilities that require doing things beyond sitting around in a funk."
"Nope," Corsica said. "Wasn't allowed any in Icereach, after a falling-out with my dad. And I don't exactly have roots in Equestria. The thing I've been throwing myself into these last few years is making Hallie's dreams a reality. And now, I just don't have anything to do."
"So you're not talking so much about a lack of inspiration as a complete and utter detachment from everything," Rarity pointed out with a frown. "Not even any duties or responsibilities."
Corsica shrugged. "Couldn't exactly take them with me from Ironridge. And here, my only job was to raise the alarm, and that's mission complete. As far as I'm aware, no one's counting on me anymore to do anything."
"Now that sounds like a vicious cycle for one's self-esteem," Rarity pointed out. "Well, I'd happily offer you an invitation to put down roots in Ponyville. Though, depending on what happens when we get back to civilization, the lot of us could be setting off on a northerly adventure, which wouldn't be very conducive to helping you get properly integrated into society."
"That was sort of the plan," Corsica told her. "When Valey sent us south, I don't think she seriously intended us to succeed at finding help. Part of her just wanted us to settle down safely out of the way."
Rarity thought about this for a moment. "Well, if you'd still like to do that the moment the next period of international peace and quiet rolls around, we'd all be delighted to have you, and for my part I have quite a few connections in Ponyville and could easily get you hooked up with a lovely and well-positioned abode. But if you don't mind me changing the subject a bit, your cutie mark... I've heard the most important parts on what it does, but what does it mean?"
"I dunno." Corsica glanced at her flank, where a series of triangles and runes sat that she told ponies back in Icereach represented architecture. "According to Valey, it's something called an Artifice, tied to the virtue of Hope. But its practical effect on me is opposite that, since it consumes my desires to run. So I'm not even sure it has meaning. Just function. All it is is a tool."
Rarity nodded. "Ponies in the north, I've heard your cutie marks are both rarer and more powerful than the ones in Equestria. My own mark, I doubt it would be particularly impressive to you, but it's something of a special one around here: it lets me detect nearby geodes with my horn. And cutie marks with actual physical powers are far in the minority in Equestria. Most of them convey some form of expertise, or even are nothing but meaning. A guide to help remind ponies of the purpose of their lives. So perhaps I'm off base here, and forgive me if I'm violating some major cultural barrier, here, but at least in my culture, it seems like the problem might be that your cutie mark isn't doing its job."
"Well, duh," Corsica said. "Did you miss the part where it makes it impossible for me sustain caring about things?"
"Not like that," Rarity insisted. "I mean that it isn't performing the basic function of symbolizing what you want to do with your life."
Corsica frowned. "I guess we don't really have the concept of that in the north. Icereach was a little different, but for most ponies in Ironridge that I talked to, you figure out what you want to do on your own, and a special talent is something the lucky ones get that's just power to help you get it done."
Rarity shook her head. "If I were more of a scientist, I'd wonder if northern and southern cutie marks are actually different things altogether. But I suppose that's a silly hypothesis when we know yours is different. Though I'll admit that this 'artifice' thing still throws me for a loop at times."
"The way I remember it," Corsica said, "you've got your three virtues: hope, love and knowledge. Starlight is the real thing. Who knows what the other two flames are doing. Probably spooky flame things. And then the artifices - like my special talent, and Valey's, and the one Celestia supposedly has - are cheap copies."
"Right, right," Rarity said, pushing in as Corsica got to cheap copy. "But darling, what if... I don't know, I'm spitballing here, but what if this artifice isn't meant to be your real cutie mark? If you're feeling directionless in life, it's certainly not helping, and what if it's even blocking you from getting your real cutie mark by taking its spot or something? Around here, magic that interferes with or attempts to change the process of getting a cutie mark usually has disastrous results."
"You think?" Corsica rubbed at her flank, half expecting her special talent to peel right off. It didn't.
"You did get it in an unusual way, didn't you?" Rarity pressed.
"While I was in a coma," Corsica admitted. "From what I've seen, getting these isn't the same between north and south, but this wasn't normal for either of our homes. I've been lying about it for years to casual acquaintances just to avoid weird questions and speculation. Didn't even know what to make of it myself until I met Valey. Now, my best guess is that while I was unconscious, some part of me didn't want to die so badly that I attracted this somehow, and it let me claw my way back to life. But imagining myself with that much willpower in this day and age..." She closed her eyes, and suddenly found that there was a tear ready to fall. "I miss who I used to be."
Rarity put a tentative hoof on her shoulder. "We all do, sometimes. Whether it's youthful innocence, or a missed opportunity, or... I'm sure someone older than I could put it much better, from experience. But I don't think there's a pony alive who hasn't wished they could go back and redo something they did before."
"I try not to wish to change the past," Corsica said, letting the hoof remain. "When I've done it before... it always does something, but it always makes things worse. Usually, I learn the truth about something that really happened, and the thing I wanted to change turns out to be a lie I've been living all along."
Rarity blinked.
"Can you imagine that?" Corsica asked. "Living life knowing that anything you experience could be fake at any given moment? What if future me loses control for the tiniest second and suddenly all the things I remember happening now are just a skewed interpretation of what really happened? Either history is malleable and I've just wiped something away, or I'm not malleable and all my thoughts and wishes are predetermined in accordance with what really happened."
"I..." Rarity managed. "I might be badly out of my wheelhouse on that one, I'm afraid. But if you're worried about stuff like this, I would strongly recommend talking to Twilight. Out of all of us, she's the only one who has direct experience with time travel."
Corsica felt a strong sense of deja vu, as if she had been told this before and immediately forgotten even though this was an important revelation. "I'll... give her a chat," she said, itching at the opportunity to do something productive instead of sitting here feeling sorry for herself. "Good talk. I needed this. Thanks."
"Always happy to help," Rarity assured her. "And happy birthday, by the way."
"Oh, yeah." Corsica gave her a defeated look. "I guess that thing we were working on is kind of a dead elephant now, huh?"
"The present for Halcyon?" Rarity guessed. "I don't know how much she was expecting to receive a gift from someone on their birthday, even if that's a tradition I've indulged in myself on multiple occasions, but I suppose we'll just have to hold onto it until your inevitable reunion. Which will happen, darling, and when it does I promise I'll be there to slap some sense into her with you."
"Thanks," Corsica said, getting to her hooves. "I've got an extra-strength one socked away for her choosing this of all days to leave on..."
The ship's brig turned out to be poorly constructed for batponies, just a couple of cages in a hold with vertical iron bars and low ceilings. But anything better wasn't needed: only a fool would try to escape mid-flight, rather than accepting their fate and sitting still. And though I might have been a fool, I wasn't that bad. Yet.
I held my tongue, and the crew mates didn't prompt me to speak. Rondo never crossed my limited line of sight; Rhodallis probably wanted us separate on purpose. He was probably also interrogating Rondo first to learn everything he could about me. I didn't see the Consul or the Pirate King either, and after enough hours had passed, I slipped into a light sleep, weary from my climb out of the canyon and trek through the crumbling wastes.
My dream was fevered, putting me back in the Crystal Empire as I was fraying, succumbing to tunnel vision and having trouble functioning as a mask. It was an unpleasant dream, made worse by the real-life effects of trudging through the wastes, which felt more draining after the fact now that I could look back and see what I had done. The edge of the world had taken something from me, nothing I couldn't recover with time but enough that spending more than a few hours there would degrade me in nameless ways until I eventually fragmented and crumbled to dust, just like the rocks. These thoughts intruded through the light barrier of sleep, mingling in my mind with the dream's already-harried subject matter and making it feel like I was caught in a whirlpool of dust. But I held on, remembering how close Coda was and focusing on her, and as the dream drew to a close, I still had my wits about me.
A rattling noise finally ended it as the lock on my cage was undone, pulling me firmly back to wakefulness. "Boss wants to see you," said a gruff stallion with chin stubble, fidgeting with a ring of cast-iron keys. "Up an' at 'em, girlie."
Once again, I had nothing to gain from resisting, and this time the pirates didn't forcibly carry me, clearly determining that I had no desire to disobey. The ship's internals were cramped, and we navigated up several staircases that were only wide enough to take single-file before reaching a room full of navigational instruments that seemed to be an auxiliary bridge. Not the primary bridge, I gathered, because instead of a host of pilots working the controls, there was a single large desk, set into a corner of the room with powerful, dark architecture.
Seated behind it was Rhodallis.
"Well, well, well," he said as I arrived, getting to his hooves and making no motion to dismiss the guards. "You've done an admirable job of playing along and holding your silence. But now that idiot Consul is gone, and you and I can talk freely. So what do you say you answer a few questions?"
"What do you want to know?" I asked, swallowing.
"Let's start with who you are," Rhodallis said, his tongue coated with arrogance, though he didn't seem to have decided yet that I was worthy of more scorn than anyone else. "Not just anyone can go sneaking around in that castle. It's one of the hardest places to reach in the world. You're not a spy working for the crown, are you?"
"No way," I said warily. "I'm Halcyon, from Icereach. Your stallion, Rondo, he and I met about half a year ago. There's some bad blood between us."
"Alright," Rhodallis said. "your stories line up, I'll give you that much. Your mother, what's her name?"
"Nehaley," I answered without hesitation.
Rhodallis nodded. "Good enough. Now, how did you get there without an invitation from a Consul?"
I swallowed again, realizing that even if I wanted to tell the truth, my story wasn't believable in the slightest. "Underground. I went along the ether river - the lifestream - and then climbed out through the canyons near the castle."
Rhodallis looked intrigued. "Really, now...? And that protected you from the effects of the Boundary? Even if it did, you must have spent some time on the surface, at the end. How did you get past the vertigo layer?"
I blinked. "Vertigo layer?"
"Come off it," Rhodallis growled, "no one's that tough. The effects caused by the liquid in your ears getting funny ideas about which way is down?"
I wasn't prepared for this. Not only was I not ready with a lie, I didn't even know what the truth was, let alone whether it was important to hide.
"...Legitimately clueless," Rhodallis said after a moment. "Well, you might be a bigger prize than I expected. Provided you're being honest..."
He tensed for a moment, and suddenly my fur lifted as some kind of force sucked at me, ineffectually. After another second, it subsided.
"Well, I'll be," Rhodallis said. "Moving along. Why were you in the castle?"
"What did you just do?" I asked instead, my fur just starting to lie flat again. Thinking back, raking through my memories, that had felt almost like a much, much weaker version of touching Coda's throne...
"Cooperate well enough, and I might give you the chance for some questions of your own," Rhodallis said. "But we're not there yet. Why were you in that castle?"
Fine. Truthfulness it was. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, let it out, and said, "I was looking for someone. Coda. That filly in ice you were pulling around."
Rhodallis' eyes widened with further interest. "Were you, now? And what would a brat like you want with her?"
"...She's my friend," I admitted, leaving it at that.
"Your friend? That thing?" Rhodallis suppressed a chuckle. "She's not even a real pony. You know that, right? What she really is?"
"...A changeling queen," I ventured, figuring there was very little chance that he didn't already know that. "Doesn't stop her from being my friend."
Rhodallis shook his head. "I've stumbled into a farce. You, kid. What's your opinion on changeling queens?"
Now we were getting into dangerous territory. "I don't really have one," I ventured. "Just like batponies, or unicorns, or anyone else. There are... all kinds of changeling queens. Coda is a great person. But then there's ones who do things like Chrysalis."
"How egalitarian of you," Rhodallis pressed, stepping closer. "What's your opinion on Chrysalis?"
"That depends," I said. "I'd like to know why she did what she did. But from everything I do know, I'm not sure there's a way to forgive something like that."
"You think forgiveness should even be on the table?" Rhodallis spat. "Chrysalis was a hideous monster, irredeemable in every sense of the word! I've flown all over this world, kid. And I've never seen anything a hundredth as dark as the inside of her heart. Everything she touches festers; everything she leaves behind is a stunted ruin. And here you are, equivocating on my doorstep about forgiveness and talking about being that block of ice's friend..." He shook his head. "You're a piece of work, kid. So naive I envy you. Do you even know what was lurking in that castle you snuck into?"
I tensed, taking a step back. "N-No..."
"Heh. Heh heh heh." Rhodallis turned away. "Still, even if you're naive and clueless, you've got skills. Some kind of protective power as well, I'll give you that much. Just what have I stumbled upon, here...?" He began to pace. "The thing in the ice. Chrysalis's daughter. How much would you do in her name?"
"What do you mean, in her name?" I asked. "Are you offering to give her to me if I work for you?"
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Rhodallis warned. "A pawn this valuable doesn't find its way onto my ship every day. But if you can make yourself useful... You know what? Go ahead, ask your questions. I'm curious what they'll say about your motivations."
"Okay." I swallowed and regained my composure. "You were trying to sell her to the owner of that castle? What was that about?"
Rhodallis shook his head. "While you were snooping around in there, did you encounter any sort of prison?"
My backwards ears fell. "Should I have?"
"Well, it depends on how thoroughly you look," Rhodallis said. "And whether my information is accurate. There's a... person supposedly held captive there I need to kill. I was hoping to conduct an exchange, obtain him by offering that block of ice as a trophy. As you can see, discussions broke down before they even began."
"Who is this prisoner?" I asked. "Why do you want him dead?"
Rhodallis shrugged. "Some rebel or freedom fighter. I couldn't care less who he is. All that matters is putting him out of his misery. But that's only one goal on my list among many. I still have other potential buyers for this ice cube. And we're already on our way to pay the next one a visit..." He rubbed his chin. "If you really want that demon spawn for yourself, you won't object if I throw you back in the brig and haul you around with it while I do the rounds, and take more time to think about how to use you. That's how you think, isn't it?"
"I can follow the rules, if you have something more for me to do than sitting in a cage," I offered. "But I do want to follow her."
"I'll need to trust you a lot more before I give you anything like that," Rhodallis said. "But no need to be as silent as you were earlier. Talk with my crew, learn why they follow me. Maybe they'll even let you see your precious ice cube." He raised a hoof. "I've heard enough. Take her back to the brig."
As his ponies motioned for me to go back down the stairs, I interrupted. "Can I get one more question, first?"
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow, and the others stayed their advance.
I nervously cleared my throat. "What's your relationship to Chrysalis?" As a changeling bishop, I wanted to add. Actually, what even is a changeling bishop... but that would be a lot more than one question.
Rhodallis laughed. "I'm just here to give her what she always knew she deserved. Take her away."
The crew mates nudged me more forcefully, and this time I complied without resistance.