Wahteg
I Wrote this world, as I did all the Lesson Worlds of I’strukun, with a very specific theme in mind, and the magic gave me exactly what I wanted and nothing more. Wahteg is probably the smallest world I have ever linked to in terms of traversable land. If it weren’t for the network of catwalks that begin at the tiny hillock of an island where a visitor will first arrive, it would be impossible to get anywhere without wings. I must take care that that doesn’t end up becoming a theme of these Lesson Worlds. Cirrus would not mind, of course, but Archeon would not find it at all amusing.
When I first went to Wahteg to inspect it, I found that not only the catwalks but most of the largest structures a student will encounter and interact with were already in place, but the connections between them were worn down and broken by time. I did as many repairs by hoof as I could manage, but to save time and get the dirigible in working order I had to resort to Writing repaired wires and pipes back into existence.
The world is fascinating, but the possible origin of the devices I’ve found raises uncomfortable questions.
Twilight arrived in Wahteg at the top of a sudden drop-off in the catwalk, which plunged from several feet above the surface of the tiny island to just above the water before heading off into a cleft in a high ridge of rock that was part of a larger landmass. Behind her was the unfinished stone hut with a somewhat wider section of catwalk in front of it. Nyx was already investigating the large vault-like door of the hut, which was held shut by two horizontal metal bars and had an unlit light bulb in the center. Nyx jiggled the handle below the bulb, and sighed when it barely budged. “We need to unlock this somehow,” she declared just before Twilight could pose any questions or comments.
“That sounds like a plan,” Twilight said, looking up and taking note of a cable that stretched from the top of the hut to a tall metal post next to another, abbreviated catwalk and then dropping suddenly into the water just off the island’s shore. Not more than a few yards off, a short tower made in the same cobblestone style as the hut rose out of the water with a metal platform on the top that reached out toward another metal post with a cable that stretched over and past a dam that connected what appeared to be two large, steep-sided landmasses. Twilight was willing to wager a guess about how the door was to be unlocked, but she held her tongue for Nyx’s sake.
The filly’s interest was currently on a round shutter framed by a teardrop-shaped piece of metal standing to the left of the hut’s door. The shutter slid open easily, revealing a book titled I’strukun inside. “Why’s this here?” she asked, confused. “We haven’t even got started yet; it’s way too early to have found the exit book.”
“Well, if our ultimate goal is to open that door,” Twilight said, “it makes sense for the exit book to be nearby. On the other hand, your father may have put it there just in case whoever is taking the class can’t figure out the solution and needs to go back to I’strukun.”
“Heh,” Nyx laughed sardonically, closing the shutter. “That may have been an important concession for Cirrus and Archeon, but I don’t need any forfeit options.”
“Good to hear,” Twilight said, a bit insincerely.
Nyx then looked out over the water at the dam. “Any idea what that is?” she asked after a long thought.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a hydroelectric dam,” Twilight said. When Nyx continued to look confused, she elaborated. “It channels water to rotate a turbine in order to generate electricity.”
“It’s an energy source then,” Nyx said, glancing back at the hut. “I think I get it. It’s like how you unlock the rocket on Aitran – we have to get power to the door before it will open. Twilight, can you teleport us over to the dam, please?”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea Nyx,” Twilight said, indicating the catwalk that led off the island and into the larger landmass. “We could miss something very important if we don’t explore this world by hoof.”
Nyx sighed, but acquiesced. “There’s probably more to it than hydroelec-whatsit anyway,” she said.
“Hydroelectric,” Twilight corrected her as they walked to the ladder off the island. The narrow catwalk prevented Nyx from getting ahead of Twilight, so the older mare let her ride on her back. The cleft in the rock curved a little and then opened up into a broad box canyon, the bottom of which was a dizzying distance below the catwalk. The path split, with the fork on the right leading into a cave framed with circular metal facade and the fork on the left leading out into the canyon, supported by hooked metal beams and suspension cables attached to the left wall, passing by a brown metal tower that rose up from the depths and continuing toward a giant metal door built across a cavern in the far side. “Where should we look first?” Twilight asked.
‘Uhhh, forward,” Nyx said after weighing the choices. Twilight stepped forward dutifully, and as she left the cleft and entered the canyon proper, she could see that the brown tower had another catwalk coming off from it several feet down, and near the far side of the canyon a ribbed pipe bridged the distance from the giant door to the opposite wall, supported by numerous cables coming down from an aching metal structure that Twilight couldn’t help but imagine as the spine of some great ancient beast. A short branch of the upper catwalk went around to the backside of the tower, which upon investigation turned out to be an elevator shaft. The elevator itself seemed to be a simple round platform with an upright lever set on the edge and attached to a spiraling track. The lever moved easily, but the platform remained motionless when it was pulled. “Needs power,” Nyx and Twilight concluded aloud at the same time. After sharing a wry smirk, they returned to the main path and followed it through an opening between the frame of the giant door and the side of the canyon. The catwalk turned sharply to the right and stopped just short of the opposite wall. A flat, teardrop-shaped canvas hung low from the ceiling with its pointed end pointing at the giant door, and after looking at it and the thick cables attached to it for a moment, Twilight realized it was an deflated balloon for a small air dirigible, likely only capable of lifting the weight of one or two ponies. She related this theory to Nyx, who merely nodded slowly and then hopped off Twilight’s back to walk to the end of the path, which terminated abruptly in front of a metal pipe with a valve wheel on top that ran toward the dirigible. To the right of the catwalk’s end, right up against the metal wall and giant door that made the natural cavern into an enclosed hanger, was a tall, partially open shaft. Inside was a platform with an upright lever on the side, a pressure gauge on the low railing, and four vent pipes with a valve wheel under each on the wall behind the platform. Up above, the ponies could see two more levels of vents inside the shaft.
“This should be an interesting puzzle once the power’s on,” Twilight said, honestly intrigued.
“Let’s get on that then,” Nyx said, eagerly. Since the path terminated at the tower, the pair backtracked to the fork in the road inside the cleft and entered the cave. The metal catwalk continued to serve as a floor, meandering slightly to follow the natural shape of the tunnel, and lights were set low into the wall every few feet. A short ways in, they saw two sheets of paper lying on the catwalk. Twilight picked them up and saw that they had writing that matched the penmareship of Margent’s journal.
It is coming back to me. Slowly. Who I am, how long I’ve been trapped here, but so much is still blurry. Entire chunks of time still floating in the fog that eats my mind. But if I concentrate, I can take pieces back.
It was the dream that first helped me. I was lying in the reeds near the tusk, staring at the sky. I see… a pony grow out of the cliff. First his head, then shoulders, soon his whole body, with rings of light around him. I can’t move. Has Death finally come to end my suffering?
No, the old pony just stands on the cliff, staring down at the lagoon as if something made him sad. I wanted to call out to him, to tell him it was me he’s come to find. But my mouth is dry, and before I think to stand there are suddenly two other ponies behind him and we are all inside the tusk. They make the first pony bring a metal flower up out of the pit and open it up to reveal a book and finally shove the old one into the book and tear it in half between them. All the while they say my name, taunting me with it. Margent. Maarrrgent!
Some time later –hours? Days? Weeks? I found myself in the highest part of the tusk and discovered that the flower was real, and still open with the book inside. It is real.
The fog tried to take me then, but I refused to go, holding fast to the reality of the book.
“What was that about?” Nyx asked after Twilight finished reading the pages aloud.
“My best guess is it’s the start of Margent’s emerging from a fugue state,” Twilight said, taking out the unbound journal and searching through its pages quickly. “Ah, yes, she did mention the fog in another entry. I think she’s using the word to refer to being in a state where she can’t remember anything and is barely aware of her surroundings. This journal seems to have started out as a way to fight that. In fact, I’d wager this is the very first entry.” She placed the two new pages in the front and carefully closed the journal before putting it away again.
“Then what is it doing here?” Nyx asked. Twilight just shrugged and walked deeper into the tunnel. Nyx grumbled to herself and then ran to catch up. After gently curving left for several feet, the tunnel abruptly stopped and nearly doubled back on itself to the right. At the corner was a metal door with a large red handle in the center. The handle turned easily in Twilight’s magical grip, but the door refused to budge when she pushed or pulled on it.
“Something’s blocking it from the other side,” the lavender unicorn grunted. She tried to reach through the door and feel around with her magic, but after a few seconds of blind searching she gave up and glowered.
“Remember,” Nyx said cheekily, “there’s always a back door somewhere when Father Writes a world.”
“Right,” Twilight said, “we’ll come back to this then.” She turned away from the door and led Nyx down the other half of tunnel, which was lit by lights of a more bluish tint than the first half, to help tell them apart. The tunnel let out into a small room made of cobblestone and mortar. Directly ahead was a round metal tube large enough to walk through, and the sound of flowing water could be heard coming from the far end. On the left was a ladder leading up to the wood roof, and on the right in a recessed niche was a green board with five little diagrams drawn on it and connected to each other by dotted lines. The center diagram, where all the lines met up, was of a pentagon with small circles at each corner. To the left was a circle with angled spokes around the outside, on the right was what looked like a side-on view of a spring, the bottom diagram was a black, mostly rectangular shape with a lighter patch near the top, and the upper diagram was a partial ovoid with a small hollow square on the top. Twilight puzzled over it for a while before coming up with an idea of what it could be. She turned to tell Nyx, only to find that the little unicorn wasn’t next to her anymore. “Nyx?” she called out.
“Up here Twilight,” Nyx called back, peeking over the edge of the room’s partial roof. “I can see where we started from here. This is the hydro… hyd… the dam.”
“So, what’s up there?” Twilight asked.
“Not much,” Nyx replied, “just a wheel. There used to be something else, I think, but now there’s just a big hole next to the wheel.”
“Margent must have taken whatever it was,” Twilight said. “Try turning the wheel.”
“Alright.” Nyx turned to the wheel-crank, wrapped it in her magic, and tried to turn it clockwise. No matter how hard she pulled, though the wheel refused to budge. “It’s always to the right first, right?” she muttered, trying the other direction. The wheel turned easily counter-clockwise, which moved a belt attached to pair of gears that caused the wall of the dam to move away toward the distant ridge. The sound of cascading water grew louder, and although Nyx couldn’t quite see over the short wall around the platform she knew she’d just changed where the water was flowing, but nothing else seemed to have changed. She slowly climbed down the ladder, finally realizing the oddity of such a structure in a world her father had presumably designed with equine proportions in mind. Twilight wasn’t in the little room anymore, but Nyx quickly spotted her at the far end of the metal tunnel, which let out onto a metal platform just in front of the other rock ridge. There was a large, bolted door just like the one on the starting island set into the ridge, but Twilight was currently more interested in a ladder that led down into an area underneath the platform. “What’s down there?” the filly asked.
“Only enough space for one pony, from the looks of it,” Twilight said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go down and take a look.”
“Ok,” Nyx said, “but let me know exactly what you find down there. I can’t miss a detail if I’m going to learn this place’s lesson.” Twilight nodded and carefully mounted the ladder. She reached the bottom in relatively short order, and after a few seconds Nyx heard a crank being turned and something big sliding into place just under her hooves. Twilight climbed back out, looking satisfied.
“What I just did,” Twilight said, “is raise up the drive shaft of what I strongly suspect is an underground generator so that it’s connected to the dam’s turbine. Once we get the turbine moving, we’ll be producing power.”
“Great!” Nyx exclaimed. “Where’s the turbine then?”
“We walked through it to get here,” Twilight said, pointing to the round tunnel. “You already got the water flowing the right way, so something about the turbine itself needs to be adjusted to catch the water.”
Nyx walked into the tunnel and looked around. There were three windows along one side, and the glass in the one closest to the open rift they’d come from was mostly gone. Through it, Nyx could see part of the turbine itself – specifically a section of short, closed panels that presumably wrapped all the way around the large cylinder. Nyx focused her magic into a narrow point of force and pushed against one of the panels. It and all the others flipped outward and the turbine began to spin with a number of persistent but not annoying mechanical sounds. As she went back to Twilight, she saw that the light in the vault door was glowing green. “Is it unlocked now?” she asked as she turned the handle. The bars retracted into the locking mechanism, which then turned ninety degrees before the entire door slid backwards and down into the ground. A metal plate extended over the short gap, and just on the other side was yet another ladder leading down. “I… guess that’s a yes then,” Nyx said. Twilight just hid her amusement behind a hoof. “What’s with all the ladders though?” Nyx asked, waving a disgruntled hoof at the one inside the newly-opened cave. “Father Wrote this world for a very specific purpose, didn’t he? Why would he put in ladders that are so uncomfortable to use?”
“I don’t know, Nyx,” Twilight said. “You probably know more about how Writing Linking Books works than I do.”
“I do know more than you,” Nyx pointed out, “because I’ve actually helped to Write one.” She stuck her nose in the air and strutted proudly up to the ladder, and then got onto it and kept her snooty expression intact until she’d climbed down out of Twilight’s sight. Twilight rolled her eyes and followed the filly down into a small, round-ended metal chamber. Six cables ran along the wall opposite the ladder and the left end of the room. A door at the right end led into a meandering passageway with extensions of the six cables running along the left wall. At the left end of the chamber was a cylindrical object with a black glass screen on the end hanging from a supporting frame, and a bar with a button on it crossed below the cylinder. Nyx’s hoof was already poised to press the button when Twilight noticed it, and at her nod the filly pressed it. Twilight was momentarily shocked when an image of Pinkie Pie’s face appeared in the glass, but then mentally smacked herself when she noticed the slight differences in the eyes and mane-style which, together with the context, reminded her that it couldn’t be her friend but, rather Margent.
“Wassamatter Star Swirlies?” the pink pony asked tauntingly, “Can’t remember how things work? Well, I remember what you said when you came to Naborale. You told me, ‘Margent I want them to learn from you, from these worlds I’ve brought together: Motivaria, Adene, Wahteg, and finally from Naborale. I want them to see your traditions at work so they can learn how a civilization can balance a world. And then you left with them and you never came back. But they did. Cirrus and Archeon… did.” The image faded away, with Margent’s angry, accusing eyes the last part to disappear into the black.
“Hmph,” Nyx said with unveiled sarcasm, “that was informative.” She brushed past Twilight and started walking down the passageway.
“I thought it was,” Twilight replied sincerely.
“It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” Nyx countered. “Margent’s gone crazy and blames Father for what Cirrus and Archeon did to her home.”
“Well, I know something about Naborale that I didn’t before,” Twilight said calmly. “Namely, what somepony is supposed to learn after visiting there. If Cirrus and Archeon left it in as bad of shape as, say, Baseli, we might not be able to learn that lesson first-hoof.”
Nyx’s ears angled back as she considered that. “Fine, I see your point,” she said at last. “I’ll listen to it again on our way out, and I’ll pay better attention next time.”
The passage ended at one final ladder, this one not quite as vertical, to both ponies’ relief, which led down to a pentagonal walkway that went around a large stone and metal cylinder with a whole net of cables and wires coming off the top and running along and into the ceiling. At each corner of the walkway was a rounded space that went right up next to the cylinder, where a slit in the metal granted a tiny view of the interior. Above the slit directly across from the ladder was painted a symbol that gave both Twilight and Nyx considerable pause: a square bisected with a vertical line. By silent agreement they followed the walkway counter-clockwise to the next corner and saw another slit with the symbol of a square with a round line on the left side. At the third corner was a square with two lines forming a K with the left side, and when they saw that the fourth corner’s symbol had a smaller square in the lower-right corner they stopped and both started speaking at once.
“Kl’kai numbers?”
“Why is Aldro’s language on this thing?!”
Twilight pulled Star Swirl’s journal out of her bags and hastily turned to the entry on Wahteg. She skimmed quickly through the first couple of pages, and then slowed down as she found the keywords she was hunting for. After going back and re-reading the appropriate section, she closed the journal and looked dubiously up at the Kl’kai numeral above the slit before her.
“Well?” Nyx asked impatiently.
“To paraphrase,” Twilight said, “Star Swirl was just as shocked as we are to discover these numbers here. He almost considered abandoning this world and Writing a new one out of fear that others of Aldro’s people were still around and could use it as a way to get into his space. After a long observation and considering how dilapidated Whateg was when he first Linked to it, he decided the Kl’kai had abandoned or lost their Links to it a long time ago. Since it fits your father’s purposes so well, it’s likely that they had been using it for more or less the same thing – to demonstrate that… Oops, I almost gave away the final answer there.”
“Oh,” Nyx said, calming. “Well, let’s see what it’s for then.” She climbed up on Twilight’s back and they both looked into the slit. Inside were three thick disks stacked on top of each other with short metal bands screwed onto the sides to create a broken path from top to bottom. Three large buttons were lined up on either side of the slit, and when Nyx pressed one with her magic the disk on its level turned in its direction, revealing a different arrangement of metal. Twilight nodded ever-so-slightly in comprehension and glanced back at Nyx. Nyx pressed a few more buttons as she pondered, and then said, “I’m pretty sure I need to get all the ends to line up, but I don’t get what that’ll do.”
“It’ll get us one step closer to powering the world,” Twilight said, “and one step closer to saving Spike.”
“Right,” Nyx said, biting her lip. She started pressing the buttons, starting at the top and working her way down, searching for an arrangement that left no bit of metal orphaned. She found one that looked correct in less than ten moves, but when nothing happened she and Twilight went to look through another of the slits and found that the metal didn’t line up there. Working from the second slit, Nyx found two more false positives before reaching the configuration that caused the cylinder to start humming with electricity, and as if to drive home the message that she’d got it right the slits closed up.
“Alright,” Nyx said, hopping off Twilight back, “what’s next?”
Twilight and Nyx wandered around Wahteg for several minutes looking for a clue to the next step they had to take. The steel door at the bend in the tunnel remained barred from the inside, the vault door on the starting island was still unpowered, and there was no indication that the steam-powered mechanism in the dirigible hanger was active. The only thing that had started to work was the spiraling elevator outside the hanger, and that only led down to a dead-end catwalk with an inoperative lever. Twilight eventually settled down inside the hanger, staring intently at the dirigible as if trying to intimidate it into giving up its secrets. Nyx continued to wander up and down the catwalks for a while, looking at the ribbed pipe crossing the length of the hanger canyon. An idea came to her, and she ran into the hanger and caught Twilight in the act of consulting Star Swirl’s journal. “No cheating yet,” the filly said quickly, and then squeezed past Twilight to reach the end of the walkway. Near the valve outside the pressure control shaft was a tall metal pole with horizontal bars coming out at regular intervals. “If I use this as a ladder,” Nyx explained to Twilight, “I can get on top of this shaft, and from there I’ll probably be able to walk along the pipe and find a maintenance access hatch somewhere. The pipe has to lead to the source of the steam or whatever needs to go into the blimp, and that’s got to be behind the locked door.”
Twilight frowned. “That’s a long ways up, Nyx,” she said, “if you lose your footing…”
“I’ll be fine,” Nyx replied flippantly, already starting to climb. “I’ll go slowly and keep three hooves on the ground at all times.” Twilight bit her lip as she watched Nyx climb up the pole and disappear onto the top of the shaft. A short second later, Nyx poked her head back over the side and some pieces of paper floated into view. “I found some pages of Margent’s journal up here,” she called down, “and there’s a hatch that leads right out onto the pipe.”
“Ok,” Twilight called back, still nervous, “hold on to the pages for now. I’ll look at them when we meet up again.” Nyx nodded and put the journal pages into her saddlebag, and then walked confidently but carefully out onto the pipe. The metal of the pipe was slightly rough, which made for easier footing, but the ribbed shape meant Nyx had to take big steps up or down every couple of feet. Twilight ran out onto the regular catwalk and followed Nyx’s progress with trepidation in her eyes, her horn glowing faintly as she readied herself for an emergency catch that was possibly beyond her reach. Despite the risk, Nyx made it across safely and found a small shelf of metal to the right of the pipe and underneath the rounded grate of another, wider pipe just barely poking out of the cliff face. The grate was held shut only by a simple latch. Before crawling inside, Nyx located Twilight and waved encouragingly to her. The lavender unicorn nodded and trotted into the cleft tunnel while Nyx crawled into the pipe. A surprisingly short distance into the pipe, Nyx came upon a drop onto another grate that swung open into an unfamiliar room. The dark purple filly braced herself and dropped into the room, narrowly avoiding hitting her head on a round podium with a bisected circle cut deeply into the face. A wedge had been driven into the bisecting line, and a red ball on a lever sat in the right side of the circle. Behind the podium was a big glass window showing a larger room with a giant gear on the far wall to the left and a thick-looking metal sheet that was nearly rectangular, if it weren’t for the convexly curved right side, with even spaced short metal bars poking out of either side. Above the sheet was an inactive ventilation fan. The room Nyx was in was quite small, and a ladder leading down took out the center of the floor. Opposite the window was the door that had stymied the ponies, and the blockage proved to be a metal stop that was easily turned out of the way. Nyx opened the door and peered out just as Twilight arrived.
“You’re ok,” Twilight said, visibly relaxing.
“I told you,” Nyx said. “Here you go,” she added, taking the journal pages out of her bag and passing them into Twilight’s magic grip. Twilight nodded in thanks and looked the pages over.
The cavern wall is almost ready. For weeks I have been polishing it, rubbing away at the cracks to obtain a smooth surface. I haven't been able to sleep much these last weeks. I was afraid I might never wake up, or that they would come as I slept. But if I can make him see all that happened—if I can show them the pain his family caused—it will be worth it.
Tomorrow, I begin mixing the paints.
A few small sketches accompanied the text, but Twilight couldn’t figure out what they were representing, so she just added the pages to the unbound journal. “Ok, I’ll admit that these don’t tell us anything new on their own,” she said. She entered the room with Nyx and looked around for a moment. “So, what do we have here?” she asked.
“Controls for something on the other side of the window, I think,” Nyx said, indicating the podium. She grabbed the red ball and tried moving it around. The wedge prevented it from sliding straight across to the other side and it refused to move very far in a clockwise direction, but when Nyx moved it counterclockwise it made a complete circuit before something clicked. In the other room, the metal sheet moved down a few feet. Nyx moved the lever clockwise, and the sheet rose back up to its original position. She then went down the ladder and found herself in an even smaller room that contained only a round metal door with a twisting latch in the center. When Nyx turned the latch, the door split open with a hiss to grant her access to the larger room. She could now see that the metal sheet was attached to a short catwalk with a railing and another bisected-circle control device, and that there was a small gear on a mechanical arm to the right of the platform which was clearly responsible for the raising and lowering of the platform. The platform was too high for her to climb onto, so Nyx went back to the ladder and asked Twilight to lower it for her. Once it was down at ground level, Nyx climbed on and immediately slid the lever through the middle of the circle. The small gear pulled away from the wall, and then the entire arm rose up, moved to left side of the platform, and then came back down and extended the gear back toward the wall, meshing smoothly between the larger gear and the spokes of the platform. The repositioning of the gear also revealed a mural that had been painted high on the right wall of the room. Intrigued, Nyx walked to the far end of the platform to get a better look. The scene in the mural was of several ponies fighting as leafless trees with large glowing sacs woven into the branches burned in the background. To the right of the conflict, a pink pony with bat-like wings watched sorrowfully alongside a larger red bat-winged stallion, and above it all were two ponies Nyx recognized as Cirrus and Archeon riding in some sort of flying chariot and laughing at the death and destruction below them.
“Wow,” Nyx said, amazed by the skill of the artist, “you did this, didn’t you Margent? No wonder you’re so angry at my false brothers. Still,” she hardened her expression as she went back around to the front of the control stand, “kidnapping Twilight’s dragon for revenge is going too far.” She tried moving the lever counterclockwise around the circle to raise the platform, but the lever refused to budge. Nyx glared at it, puzzled, but then her gaze shifted to the small gear and realization hit her as hard as the hoof she brought to her face. “Dur, it has to turn the other way now,” she said, and moved the lever clockwise. The platform rose, and at the same time a metal door in the far corner of the room opened and lava poured in, coming up to just a few inches below the platform. In a panic, Nyx spun the lever the other way, and then clambered up onto the podium when her common sense told her, a second too late, that she’d just told the platform to go back down, into the lava. As the platform descended, however, the lava just as quickly drained out of the room through an unseen hole as the door to its source closed. Nyx remained on top of the control podium, paralyzed by fright, until Twilight came galloping out and picked her up in a hug.
“Are you ok?” Twilight asked.
“J-just… No,” Nyx admitted. “That was lava!”
“I know,” Twilight said, soothingly. She carried the filly back up into the small control room and set her down gently. “You don’t look hurt,” Twilight said, “and at least you got it set up properly, so we should be able to just let the lava back in from up here and put this behind us.”
“No,” Nyx said, pointing out the window at the ventilation fan, “not unless that turns on by itself when the lava comes in.”
Twilight nodded slowly and moved the lever appropriately. The room behind the window took on an orange glow as the lava flowed in, but the vent fan remained stationary.
“Feathers,” Twilight grumbled as she reset the room. She looked around the control room and found no other buttons or switches. She then looked at Nyx and said, “I think I can shield myself from the worst of the heat, so I’ll go in and try to get the fan turned on, ok?”
“Be careful,” was all Nyx said.
Twilight went out into the larger room, mounted the platform, and shifted the lever back to the right to move the lifting gear away from the big one before using it to raise the platform. “Ok, now what?” she muttered to herself, before noticing a sizable hole in the spoked sheet at the end of the platform. There was nothing but blank wall through it at the moment, but Twilight suspected the hole wasn’t there just for looks. She also figured the switch had to be above the surface of the lava, which meant her best bet was to coax the platform to move a little higher. “But the gear won’t turn in the same direction twice,” Twilight mused darkly, “which means… Ah, feathers.” She moved the lift gear back to the left, surrounded herself in protective magic, and moved the lever counterclockwise. The platform came up, the top of the end-piece blocking the vent, and the lava poured in. Twilight walked to the end of the platform and saw a round switch through the hole, so she turned it and nodded with satisfaction at the sound of the fan starting to spin. She then went back to the controls, moved the lift gear away from the large one in order to keep the lava in the room, and lowered the platform to unblock the vent. Finally, she teleported into the control room and dropped her protective spells. “Alright, let’s go, “she said to Nyx.
“Gladly,” the filly replied, leading the way out of the room and toward the dirigible.
As they exited the tunnel and turned into the canyon area, Nyx asked, “Did you see the mural in the lava room?”
“No, I was too worried about the lava in the lava room,” Twilight said. “What mural?”
“It’s something Margent painted,” Nyx said. “It was a scene of her world burning, while Cirrus and Archeon watched and laughed.”
“Ah,” Twilight said, “I guess that’s part of what she meant in her journal about making the ‘star swirlies’ see what they’d done to her.”
“It was a really good painting,” Nyx said. “She may have gone crazy, but that obviously didn’t affect her talents much. Unless what she painted was majorly exaggerated.”
“Exaggeration isn’t proof of insanity, Nyx,” Twilight said.
They entered the hanger and heard the sound of escaping steam coming from the pressure control shaft. Excited, Nyx trotted into the shaft and studied the set-up. Three of the four pipes at the bottom level were open and allowing steam to escape into the air. The needle of the pressure gauge was steadily in the middle of the blue segment, which covered over a third of the gauge. A second, slightly smaller section was yellow and the remainder was red. A dotted red line was drawn in the blue area a few ticks from the yellow. “I need to get the pressure to that level, right?” Nyx asked, pointing to the line.
“It makes sense,” Twilight said, standing back a little to let the filly work.
Nyx turned the valve on one of the open pipes and it slammed shut, blocking some of the steam and causing the needle of the gauge to move significantly toward the yellow. Closing the other two pipes moved the needle moved the needle just as much, so that it ended in the yellow. “These have too strong an effect,” Nyx said, looking up the shaft, “so hopefully the higher pipes aren’t as influential on the pressure. But how do I get up there?”
“Try this,” Twilight said, grasping the lever that rose from the platform beside Nyx. She pulled it toward the steam pipes and the platform shot up into the shaft, stopping in front of the middle bank of pipes.
“That wasn’t funny, Twilight!” Nyx shouted down crossly before regarding the pipes. All four were open, and closing one only increased the pressure by four ticks. “Ok, that’s more like it,” Nyx said, pushing the lever forward. There was a faint hiss, but the platform didn’t move. Nyx glared at it. “You need more power or something?” she asked it crossly. “I’m not that heavy.” Nevertheless, she closed pipes until the needle went into the red and tried the lever again. This time, the platform obliged and went up to the top bank. After testing the pipes and finding they only moved the needle a single tick each, Nyx sat down and started thinking. She’d obviously need to work from top to bottom since her goal was in the blue area, but that meant her final moves would involve the largest movement of the needle, so she had to be very careful with her math or else have to re-close every pipe in order to do any fine-tuning. She decided to approach it by counting the number of ticks between the red line and the edge of the blue and trying to adjust the needle by the same amount before opening low-banked pipes willy-nilly. She closed a single pipe on the top bank and then spent a few frustrating moments figuring out how to make the platform go back down: moving the lever away from the pipes. She re-opened a couple of pipes on the second bank and then dropped down and opened all but one of the bottom pipes. The needle stopped exactly on the red line and Nyx cheered triumphantly.
“You got it, I presume,” Twilight said, amused.
“Yep,” Nyx replied, stepping over to the valve outside of the shaft and turning it. Steam rushed through the hose connected to the dirigible and its balloon inflated quickly. The dirigible rose slightly but was held back by a wire running through a small loop on the bottom of the little gondola. As Nyx closed the steam valve, the dirigible drifted forward until it bumped lightly against the inside of the hanger door, disengaging from the hose and the cables that had been supporting it. “Come on,” Nyx said impatiently, nudging Twilight toward the catwalk exit of the hanger.
“Ok, ok,” Twilight said, smiling as she obliged. The two of them went out to the elevator and rode it down to the lower catwalk, and then walked out to the end so Nyx could pull the lever there. The hanger door irised open and the dirigible came drifting out along its guide wire. It passed through the gap between two sections of catwalk and hooked on something, turning the segment Twilight and Nyx were on slightly before coming to a stop. Twilight climbed into the gondola first and squeezed back to give Nyx room to slip in. There was a lever on the gondola that released the hook when Nyx pulled it, and the dirigible set off along the wire again, going down the canyon and eventually up and over the hydroelectric dam. The final destination appeared to be the island the ponies had started on, but the guide-wire stopped at short catwalk attached to a column rising from the sea. On the column was a lever, which Twilight reached out and pulled with her magic. The walkway turned a little, carrying the dirigible with it and connected the wire to the one that dipped down into the water before coming back up to connect to the island. There a sharp electric pop, and then a prolonged cracking sound as the top of the island broke away from the rest and rose into the air, revealing a constructed metal interior, along with dozens of small rocks that stopped at random heights. Twilight and Nyx stared in awe for a moment before Nyx remembered to pull the lever to release the anchor hook again and the dirigible rose up to dock in front of the cobblestone hut.
“Ok, wow,” Nyx said as she climbed out of the dirigible, “This is… amazing. It must be taking a ton of magic to levitate this.”
“It’s not magic,” Twilight said. “If anything, it’s electromagnetism. Using magic at this point would defeat the purpose of this world. Now come on.” She approached the vault-like door of the hut, the indicator light of which was now glowing green, and turned the handle. The bars of the door retracted and turned and the whole door slid out of sight to reveal a large hole leading down into the floating island ringed with bars that served as a ladder. At the bottom was a metal hatch. Nyx and Twilight looked down and shared a glance with each other before carefully climbing down on opposite sides of the hole. The hatch slid aside with a touch to reveal a view straight down into the depths of the bottom half of the island. From this angle, the small rocks that hung spinning in the air took on the shape of a symbol made entirely from curved lines, vaguely resembling a small comet with a snaking tail that split into two curls at the end, along with a few other stray lines. “That must be one of the symbols Margent mentioned,” Twilight said, fishing a piece of paper and a pen from her bags. She copied the shape of the stones as closely as she could, and then put everything away. “It looks like this is it for Wahteg, Nyx,” she said, starting to climb out of the hole, “so what have you learned?”
“Well,” Nyx said, following, “I’ve definitely learned a few ways to get power out of a world without relying on magic, and that the connection between the source of the power and what it causes to move doesn’t need to be obvious at first glance. This entire area is about using the energy of the world. Is that what Father was aiming for?”
“More or less,” Twilight said, helping Nyx out of the hut. “I think he said it in much fewer words though.” Nyx gave the older unicorn a wry look and the pair went over to the pod containing the I’strukun book.