Twilight Sparkle was in a nondescript room. Hipparcos had said something about each member of the crew furnishing her own room, but the mare had completely forgotten about it.
Well, not exactly forgotten. It had not really registered in her mind at all. That is, until she had entered her simple chamber, with its monochrome spread and default, flat-sided nightstand and dresser, and had been thoroughly bored by it.
Somepony just now meeting Twilight might assume that she would like things utilitarian, simple, and uncomplicated. Granted, this wasn’t exactly untrue, but like anyone she preferred a measure of personalization, of familiarity. The lamp didn’t even have a shade. She could’ve asked for a lampshade from her parents, a lampshade with which she had grown up. It wouldn’t have added more than a few seconds to the visit, her parents couldn’t have refused, and she would’ve had a memento that would’ve comforted her on her journey.
She was scared. Dear Celestia, she was scared. Of course, she had no doubts of her safety, her crewmates, her own competence, but...
The walls of the craft weren’t very thick, and her bed was against the perimeter. It was well within range of teleportation, and no one would be able to hear or see the pop. Nopony would know until the launch was over, and then it would be too late to fetch her. There would be no more confinement; she would be free.
However, if her estimates were right, less than one twenty-ninth of a second after leaving the barrel of the mountain, even teleportation straight down at maximum range would place her far enough from the peak for the impact to kill.
There was one splash of color in the otherwise slate-gray room: a bright red alarm light, which would flash, accompanied by a buzzer, as soon as the takeoff began. It would deactivate again when the ship had exited its barrel, to signify that it was safe for the occupants to leave their rooms. When the buzzer stopped sounding, equine reaction time plus the activation and execution of a teleportation spell would take almost twice her theorized window of opportunity. Twilight would be trapped.
Deep inside of her, a remnant of her evolutionary past was screaming at her, feeling the walls closing in and all escape being blocked. It urged her to flee.
She intently directed her mind at other things. Hipparcos had said that the crew should lay on their beds to help reduce the effects of acceleration as they were taking off. She climbed into and lay on her bed. The launch hadn’t begun yet, of course, but she had nothing better to do and she might as well prepare. There would only be a few final systems checks before the ship was ready and her fate would be sealed...
Focus.
Rainbow Dash had been breathing rather heavily when they entered the craft. The pegasus was trying her best to hide it, but Twilight had known her long enough to see right through the act. She wondered what part of the mission was upsetting her so. The launch itself? The confinement of the Aethon, perhaps? The pegasus was known by her friends to be fairly claustrophobic, especially when there were no windows allowing her to see the sky. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the fact that there would be no escape...
Focus!
Pinkie Pie had seemed just as cheery as usual. In the briefing Hipparcos had mentioned something about the g-forces during launch being reduced to little more than that of a large rollercoaster. In response to that one misstep of phrasing, the earth mare had begun bouncing and gushing about how much she loved carnival rides. Twilight had always hated rollercoasters, personally. Just a lot of spinning and a lot of nausea. She had only ridden one once, dragged along by her older brother when she was just a filly. The unicorn recalled the fear beforehoof, and the terror when she realized that the harness wouldn’t come off however she pulled, that there was no going back...
Focus...
Focus...
Dear Celestia was she scared!
A blaring siren; the world was red. Twilight’s gut twisted as she realized what was happening, and her mind waged war with itself. She clenched the legs that told her to bolt. She quieted the horn that told her to blink. She bit the tongue that told her to scream. There was a crack like a massive explosion, and then there was a pony on Twilight’s chest. Then it was a manticore. Then a dragon. As the pressure built exponentially, a shriek echoed through the ship. The unicorn didn’t know which of her friends it was and didn’t care.
She had the excuse, and she screamed.
The wail choked off quickly as the air was fully expended from the unicorn’s lungs, leaving her sputtering and writhing in a futile attempt to inhale.
The rumbling of the ship soon turned into the wicked rattle and squeal of metal against metal. Mental images of the hull buckling and wrenching under the stress, despite its stability and all the precautions taken, flooded Twilight’s mind in terrifying flashes during those short, yet seemingly endless moments. She told herself that it would hold, that the pressure would ease up and she’d at least be given the chance to die in some peace. Her eyes ached dully in their sockets as the world struggled to show through a quickly constricting tunnel.
The pressure began to lessen at a sluggish pace. The muscles in Twilight’s chest pulled her lungs open slowly and with great difficulty, causing air to sickeningly trickle in accompanied by a dry wheezing. The unicorn knew that this was supposed to happen, but in her daze it only served to frighten her even more.
For the briefest of moments, the acceleration was roughly equal to one standard g, and at that point Twilight’s eyelids fluttered open as she regained consciousness. She greedily gulped down the air that she was finally granted access to, and immediately started panting at the ordeal she had just been through. She still ached terribly, but now that her upward plummet was beginning to level out a sense of relief was rising in her mind. The worst was over.
She struggled to regain control over her breathing and her thumping heart. Groping lightly at the sheets, she tested each muscle and joint in her body with hairsbreadth movements to be certain that all was still functioning and in one piece. It was, and at that she released a tremulous sigh. She hadn’t noticed just when the creaking and rumbling of the ship had stopped, nor when the red alarm had switched off, but she was relieved that they had.
Slowly she calmed herself and took hold of her emotions, gingerly reassuring them and rousing them from the primal fear that they had so rightfully been consumed by. Nearly a full minute passed unnoticed before she realized that she was no longer being pushed harshly against her mattress--in fact, it was now pushing her back, the springs taking their shape as they gently released their occupant into the air.
Twilight blinked in surprise, turning her neck to inquire just what exactly the mattress thought it was doing--then instantly regretted it as a stark throb of pain shot from the back of her head all the way down her spine. With startling suddenness her eyes began to protest the searing light which filled the room from the tiny apertures in the ceiling and cast the walls and furniture in bright contrast. Huge round splotches of gray invaded her vision as dark specks darted across her periphery, all accompanied by a soft ringing in her ears.
The unicorn observed this rebellion of her own senses with bemusement, slowly coming to the conclusion that it was due to blood flow being diverted back into her abused sensory organs. She may have entertained this curiosity, along with many other onrushing thoughts, had she not come to realize with a squawk that the ceiling was approaching her. She pulled in her forelegs and braced for impact.
As she bumped softly against the metal surface then gently rebounded in the direction whence she had come, she decided that her initial terror was a bit of an overreaction.
Right. Now it was time to really start moving. She grimaced as she stretched and rotated her shoulders, a minor jolt of pain running down her spine. She quickly noticed that this simple action had started her spinning over herself in an almost serene motion, turning her over to see a shallow pony-shaped imprint that was beginning to even out. Twilight wasn’t stupid, and seeing her bed a leg’s length below the truth of the situation finally dawned on her. A rush of excitement filled her being, joined by the triumph of having conquered herself and stayed onboard and amplified by the lingering adrenaline from the takeoff.
She turned again, the remaining aches slowly dulling, starting to become a nonissue for movement. The strange paths she took through the air as she moved felt weirdly familiar--as if she were floating in water, but without the friction or buoyancy inherent with the water itself. The feeling was odd, being simultaneously recognizable and yet very new, but wasn’t unpleasant in the slightest.
“This--well, uhh.... Huh.” Twilight blinked dumbly at the sensation. She then twisted her body again and began waggling her legs pathetically, but this motion only started her drifting lazily through space once more. She struggled to find traction in the thin air, but found it incredibly difficult to maneuver, her random flailing simply convoluting her trajectory. “Curse you, Laws of Motion!”
Despite her desperate attempts to act like a jellyfish and propel herself toward any solid surface, she just continued to spin and bob uncontrolled.
She released a loud sigh in irritation. A purple aura wrapped around her hooves and tugged them toward the floor, harshly enough to cause her to emit a small squeak. When she touched down on the darker metal, luminous tendrils of magic rose from below her and grasped her hooves like translucent vines. Somehow this only felt more awkward, being stuck onto the floor and yet still floating within her skin. Her mane wafted around her head, briefly obscuring her vision, and she could feel her tail floating as well. As she passively observed the state of her body, she absently wondered how long such a thing would take to get used to. She pondered just how well each of her friends would cope with it.
Then she remembered that two of them already were.
Weakening the spell on one foreleg, she lifted it to step toward the door, then promptly hit herself on the lower jaw and bit her tongue.
“Ach! ... This might be harder than I thought." Her noodly appendages pulled the foreleg back down slowly, intentionally landing it a touch ahead of where it had been. She repeated the process--sans kicking herself, of course--and tenderly and sluggishly worked her way across the room.
As she approached the entrance to her room, Twilight was surprised to find herself adjusting somewhat. Maybe this wasn’t really too bad a situation--though she still worried about the other passengers that didn’t have magic to help them. Rainbow may be doing alright, but judging by the difficulty in walking, flying might be an ordeal as well. Hipparcos, she imagined, could do just what she was doing; if anything the weightless environment made it even easier to maintain spells, without anything except air friction to wear them down.
When she came within reach of the door, Twilight heard a rather distinct “Wheeee!” pass through the material between her and, obviously, Pinkie Pie. With a click, a whoosh, and the tinkling of magic, the metal partition slid aside and hid inside of the wall.
In hindsight, she really should have seen this coming.
A pink blur was bouncing jubilantly across the hallway, jumping from wall to wall without a care. Twilight barely recovered her stance after awkwardly dodging one of the ricochets.
“Pinkie!” shouted the unicorn. The mare in question somehow managed to turn in midair and face her friend with wide eyes and an even wider smile. She had neglected to stop herself, yet she seemed not to care as she collided with the wall without so much as a blink.
“Good to know that you’re doing alright. I assume the liftoff went smoothly for you?”
In response, Pinkie Pie pushed off a wall, pirouetted, and stuck the landing right beside and in line with Twilight. She seemed almost unresponsive for a moment, staring blankly ahead of her with the same casual smile. She dramatically drew in a breath before squealing, “YES!”
Her hooves clamped over her mouth suddenly and she somehow managed to blush through already-pink cheeks. “Yes, yes! Well, no, actually.” Pinkie’s expression and tone took an immediate sharp turn. “The being-shot-through-a-cannon part really wasn’t fun at all. I know Celestia said it was going to be bad, but that hurt! You think she’d say something about that, right? I mean, the Princess wouldn’t have lied to me!”
Twilight stared blankly for a moment, then blinked at Pinkie as her brain clicked into focus. “No, I suppose not.” She paused awkwardly. “Anyways, I just wanted to be sure you guys were alright and, well, you seem perfectly fine.” The pink mare was now spinning herself on a horizontal axis. “Yeah, you’re good,” Twilight concluded with a chuckle.
Pinkie stopped spinning and landed on her hooves, her wide eyes aiming toward the opposite end of the hall. “Dashie hasn’t come out yet, and I heard her screaming when the ride started.” The earth pony said this wistfully and with a twinge of concern. “I-I was worried about both of you.” She turned to Twilight, “I heard you scream, too. I had a feeling that everything was going to be okay, but I still didn’t like to know you two were scared.”
The unicorn smiled warmly and nuzzled her friend. “Thanks, Pinkie. I was just a little... unsure, that’s all. I’m fine now.” She then directed her focus at the opposite door. “I don’t know about Rainbow, though. The way she was acting, I think it was the launch itself that was worrying her. We should probably go see-”
Twilight was interrupted by the hiss of hydraulics. A very haggard sky-blue pegasus floated awkwardly out of her room, the plane of her body slightly askew and bobbing in small circles from the motion of her wings. She was silent, carrying a very worn and apathetic look.
Somehow Pinkie Pie was now floating alongside Rainbow. “Hey!” she said gleefully, trying to cheer her most-excellent friend back up. “You don’t look too good, Dashie. But that’s okay now! The worst part is over, right? And now that we’re outside of the atmosphere we can play in the relative freefall caused by the expanding orbit counteracting the microgravity from the Earth!” Twilight blinked again.
“Pinkie?” Rainbow rasped when she was sure her friend was done.
“Mhm?”
The pegasus cleared the obstruction from her throat and continued weakly. “No, please, not right now. Please? I feel sick.”
“O-oh. But...”
Rainbow’s brow furrowed as she shook her head again. “Stop. I’m serious this time.” She angled her wings to glide silently around and past Pinkie Pie, who had now frozen in place, her jaw slack. She then quickly set her expression, seeming to understand.
Twilight eased up toward the pegasus, who had awkwardly taken a seat on a padded bench bolted to the wall and was now staring blankly at her lap. “... Rainbow?” said the unicorn as smoothly as she could manage.
Rainbow Dash snapped her head upward and glared, but her expression quickly softened at Twilight’s hurt response. She sighed. “I’m sorry, guys. I really am.” She looked straight forward, daring not to look into anypony’s eyes. “I just... I didn’t like it, alright? I’m not a huge fan of flying without using my own wings.” She rubbed her eyes furiously, then grumbled, “And smacking a wall the second my chest stops hurting didn’t help, either.”
Twilight imagined the pegasus flaring her wings, firing herself across her bedroom and into the hard metal surface of the ceiling. She suppressed a tiny giggle at the irony of the scene. This mirth quickly fell as Rainbow pulled her hooves from her eyes to reveal the slight wetness surrounding them.
“I’m... sorry that happened, Rainbow Dash.” Twilight gave a reassuring smile. “But Pinkie was right about one thing--well, she was weirdly correct about a lot of things just now--but yes, it’s over now. And that’s going to be the worst part of the trip. Not even the reentry will be quite as bad as that.”
“Yeah, alright. I hear you.” Rainbow was now floating a few inches above her seat. With a flutter of her wings she forced herself back in, then folded her hind legs underneath to keep herself grounded. “But could you at least get the gravity going? This is really annoying.”
Twilight hesitated. “Oh, sure.” She turned and crept the short distance to Hipparcos’s door, then knocked briskly. Silence greeted her. She knocked again, and this time the stallion’s voice bid her enter.
Inside, she found him rummaging around in a bureau that was bolted to the floor. He levitated out various items; pens, papers, small booklets and an astrolabe. Eventually he came across a rather chunky picture camera, and at this he replaced everything else in the drawer. The camera seemed rather expensive and had a very large eye.
Twilight looked on, wondering just what there was onboard he could be photographing. She nearly gasped when she realized that what he had it for wasn’t onboard at all. Immediately she began scrambling around in her position in search of the nearest window. There was one above Hipparcos’s bed and, foregoing the magic that held her to the ground, she leapt.
Upon smacking face-first into the wall, she took a moment to simply lie prone and wallow in whatever-it-was-that-ponies-who-catapult-themselves-into-walls-were-supposed-to-wallow-in. She then wrapped a magical tendril around her torso and pulled her head up to gaze through the porthole, and while doing so noticed that she had finally caught the attention of Hipparcos, who was now smiling at her.
“I understand your enthusiasm,” he commented as he continued to tinker with the camera. “It really is beautiful, isn’t it?”
Twilight didn’t speak. Not at first. She gawked, her mouth agape, at the staggering abyss of space. She saw the vibrant swirls of nebulae and the brightly burning lights of uncountable stars. Were they all like Celestia? Twilight could imagine a cosmos as abuzz with life as her own planet, only on a far grander scale. There was magic here, untapped magic much unlike anything she had ever experienced.
The unicorn pivoted her head in an attempt to soak in as much as she could of the unimaginably vivid starscape that lie before her. She was well acquainted with the sky, of course, but even through a telescope on a clear night it was sullied by atmospheric disturbances and light pollution. Never before had she seen it so close, so unspeakably vast. It made her feel so small.
Hipparcos chuckled. “I suppose that’s a ‘yes.’” A loud click and high-pitched whine came from the camera. Seemingly satisfied, he retracted the device’s lens and hung it by a lanyard around his neck. “I’m happy to know that you and your friends survived the launch in one piece,” he said while looking out the still-open door. Pinkie was gazing curiously inside, while Rainbow was still sitting on the bench, her eyes closed.
Twilight still seemed wholly distracted. The stallion coughed. “You know, we could get a better view from the top. The oculus up there is much larger.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, giddy excitement plastered on her face as she finally turned it away from the pane of glass. “I didn’t even think of that! Oh, and we also need to turn on the-” She paused, looking down at Hipparcos’s strangely sure footing and inert horn. He followed her line of sight down to his hooves, which were adorned with strange-looking metallic boots. “What are those?” Twilight asked, almost accusingly.
He lifted a foreleg and turned it over for inspection. “These? Magnetic shoes. They keep me on the floor so I can work easier in zero-gravity, and can keep me on the side of the ship if we go outside.”
“Magnetic? Why not just use magic?”
He shrugged. “Why not use magnets?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, let’s get to the bridge and look at more stars!” She then remembered Rainbow Dash’s issue earlier. “And we should start up the magical systems, as soon as possible.”
Hipparcos nodded and began trotting toward his door. Twilight noticed a bit of resistance each time he lifted a hoof and a sharp bang each time he put it back down. The magnetic field was a bit too strong; there were drawbacks to each method, she supposed.
When they exited the room, Pinkie Pie floated up to Hipparcos and began talking. The very sound of her voice caused Rainbow to put a hoof to her temple. “Ooh, what are those?” the pink mare asked. “What do they do? How do they work?”
“They’re magnets,” Twilight interrupted before Hipparcos could speak. She continued rather hurriedly, “We’re going to the bridge to turn on the ship.”
“Ooh, can I come?”
Twilight thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No, probably wouldn’t be good to have the distraction... no offense.”
“None taken! I’ll just stay down here and...” She glanced back at Rainbow Dash. “Stay here and be very quiet, then.”
Twilight nodded in agreement, and the pair of unicorns started up the stairs to the top floor. The purple sorceress paused midway to peer through the archway to the kitchen, noticing inside four chairs and various types of cookware all floating in the air. She suppressed the urge to reorganize and pushed onward.
One more semicircle around the perimeter and they reached the gilded ivory of the bridge. Twilight nearly stumbled as she hurried toward the center, still not quite comfortable walking with her magic. She attempted to look up at the oculus, though it was quite far away. The act of craning her neck at such an angle brought back old aches from the launch.
Then she remembered the basin. She looked down, noticing appreciatively that the pool of mercury almost perfectly framed the view through the oculus, and once again stared slack-jawed at the most astounding view she had ever seen. This time she focused on picking out heavenly bodies that she recognized against the stunning splashes of color. She barely noticed Scorpio, its individual stars shining somewhat brighter than the surrounding areas--then she spotted Venus, impossibly far away, reflecting the light of the sun in its creamy hues.
Twilight was completely absorbed in playing name-that-constellation until Hipparcos clanged slowly around to the other side of the basin and appeared at the edge of her view. “Let’s save the stargazing for after we have the systems running,” he suggested. Twilight looked up and chuckled nervously.
“So I’m the one that’s going to be powering this, right?” she said, immediately getting down to business. “But... you’ll be doing all of the actual piloting?”
“Yes,” the stallion affirmed. “The mercury will accept your magic and redirect it through the ship. The life support and gravity will always be on, and I’ll have the ability to redirect the power flow to other processes to guide the ship.”
Twilight nodded. “Makes sense.” She then looked back down at the quicksilver pool. “So I just shoot raw power into it? How will I keep that up while I’m in other rooms?”
“It’ll bond with your aura, making it a lot easier. This is quite typical for mercurial spells... though I can see why you might not know that. Quicksilver hasn’t been used for magic in almost a century.”
“I’ve read about it,” Twilight retorted, “but all the books were rather fuzzy when it came to the practical details. I think I get it now, though.”
The younger unicorn aimed her horn downward and focused. Casting raw magic didn’t so much take skill as it did discipline; sorcery was a very mental art, requiring complete affixation on whatever task was wanted. If a unicorn were to, say, levitate a pen, they must first imagine the pen floating in the air.
This was usually simple enough, of course; but raw magic was different. In order to channel unaltered energy intended to literally do nothing before receiving further orders, one had to completely empty one’s mind. Any stray thought or sensory distraction could corrupt the magic, so the mind had to be completely blank--even thinking about casting raw magic would make casting raw magic impossible.
Many unicorns required several minutes of meditation to achieve this, but Twilight was very well-practiced and well-acquainted with her own mind. After just under thirty seconds of intense focus, an electric-blue bolt of energy snaked its way up the spiral of her horn and shot upward, soon arcking down as if drawn magnetically to the mercury.
There was a strange moaning sound when the energy hit its surface, and then a backwave pushed its way up the arc and back into Twilight’s horn, sucking the color out of magic as it did so. As the silvern power reached the base of the her horn, the entire arc fizzled away and the runes on the walls began to glow with a golden light.
However, Twilight didn’t stop floating when the gravity came on. Nor was the light of her horn extinguished. Hipparcos looked on in recognition and horror as the mare’s eyes flashed open, burning with an immaculate inner light.
Power flowed out of Twilight’s being in an unbearable torrent of fire and brimstone. The gentle tug that had accompanied the connection with the spell matrix was overshadowed by the increasingly violent energy that felt like it was going to blow her horn from its socket like a missile. Her mind raced, and as it did she could feel the immense power that she was wielding scurrying to latch onto any stray thought.
Twilight’s shocked expression quickly set, and she focused on tapering off her magical flow. She could do this, she just had to remain calm. It was purely psychosomatic...
Soon her hooves were back on the floor, and her eyes once again showed their pupils and irises.
She blinked, then looked across the room to see Hipparcos standing numbly, terrified shock displayed on his face. Twilight was suddenly frantic. “Ohmygosh, I’m so sorry! I just... I didn’t know what it would feel like to have it bond with me! It asked for more power, enough to give to the whole ship, so I just opened up, and I was so focused that I didn’t realize I was losing control! It broke like a dam, and I couldn’t close it right off, but-” She trailed off.
Hipparcos was laughing heartily. “Well! At least we know we have some surplus power!” He chortled again, then straightened up. “You’re quite a talented young mare, Twilight. I can see why Celestia took you under her wing; if you hadn’t learned to take control of that power, you might’ve fried me. Or worse, punched a hole in the ship.”
Twilight blushed for a moment, then realized that her hooves were firmly on the ground and that her hair was hanging limp over her head and hind legs. She glanced around at the illuminated runes. “So I guess it worked? No problems?”
The stallion closed his eyes and his horn briefly gleamed. “None that I can feel; you did a good job. And with that out of the way, we can now start our journey in earnest.”
* * *
Celestia continued to stare into the sky, despite full knowledge that she couldn’t possibly see anything. The craft was too small to sense by her own power, and too far away for her earthly avatar to spot. The trail it had streaked through the atmosphere had long since faded, but still she stared.
Another pony slunk up behind her, so light-footed that Celestia saw her before she heard her. “They’re gone, Sister,” said she to Luna, sounding almost disappointed. “It’s out of our hooves.”
Princess Luna followed her elder sister’s line of sight, and gave a slight nod. “Thou hast prepared for this event for five thousand years. Finally, it has come time for us to rest. There is naught left that we can do.”
Celestia’s expression shifted, hardening slightly. She still felt driven to do something, to continue working toward her subjects’ safety, though she didn't know what. Perhaps she had simply grown accustomed to it, stuck like a muscle that has been held in place so long that it can’t be put to rest. She worked to soothe that impulsive part of her mind.
In the morning Apollyon would return to the Earth, and so would begin the delicate dance to retain peace among the populace while dodging the Elements’ vindictive might. But even should they fail, the planet could be safe. Lacking its Diarchs, perhaps, but safe nonetheless. They would be safe.
A white streak drew across the sky, the reflection of Celestia’s light off of a metal surface. Had she really been standing out here long enough for them to orbit?
Luna must have noticed this as well. “Thou truly shouldst be asleep, my sister.”
With a reluctant sigh of exhaustion, Celestia relented. “I suppose you are right.”