Chapter Thirteen
“Concerning the Spiders from Mars”
The Gap was a gentle soul. She, who had stood guard over bottled thoughts for millennia, who had played with the threads and imaginings of every life form that had ever existed on all versions of the little blue and green world that hung steadfast in the black of night above her, who had witnessed the entire span of life itself, could be nothing less. This too shall pass, a Mareabian philosopher had once thought, and so the Gap thought it also. Words to live by, definitely.
So, when the dimension behind her, although this was only relevant in the strictest, topographically inconsistent sense, began to push against her, ramming itself between her figurative thighs like some drunken and overenthusiastic suitor and, in honesty, she had seen her fair share of those, she only hesitated for the briefest of instances which, for a trans meta thaumic entity whose origin was in the endless wishfulness of the combined thoughtforms of a hundred trillion minds, was not very long at all. Eight milliseconds after the pushing began, she opened a passageway to relieve the pressure, as a great many of the mares and stallions who, having met with the aforementioned drunken and overenthusiastic suitor, had also done.
The exact geometry of the entrance that she opened, being as it was a sort of wormhole, constructed from a great density of carefully organized and highly unusual matter, resembled a bell, at least when represented in the lower three-dimensional space. The spacetime that existed within the Selenite Principality, and the spacetime that existed locally around the Gap, suddenly became the best and closest of friends. All of a sudden, particles had a new vector to travel down, which they did, with great aplomb.
Entirely accidentally, Equinity, or rather, an emergent thaumic facet of it, had invented its first rocket engine. An enormous jet which, very rapidly, became miles long, spouted forth from the forty metre gap in the Gap. Great swathes of the lunar regolith were silently eroded away. Millions of cubic metres of various sorts of gas, under immense pressure, now escaped. The Gap was so surprised by this that she barely noticed a strange mauve and lavender sphere, perhaps big enough for two ponies to fit comfortably in, be ejected in the midst of it all, go scudding over the odd mounts and hills of the moon then, as the curvature of the satellite became more pronounced, gain altitude and attain orbit.
*
Twilight was dreaming deeply. Strange geometric images and weird dimensions beyond the normal four played through her mind like tiny insects dancing in the zenith-strong sun of a summer's day. Her neuroform raced at tremendous speed past monolithic cones a million miles tall, their peaks blazing with fierce white tips of fire that danced back and forth in time to an unseen beat, issuing forth clouds of white smoke that coiled through an obsidian sky, slate-speckled with the washed-out motes of cruel stars. These were the fever dreams of an illness-wracked foal, mind unleashed and boiled in its own fluids, perceiving the rank intensity of the seething universe. Usually, she dreamed of equations and bookshelves, of little dragons tending to them, of white sparrows, horned and sparkling, perched on the crescent of the moon or silhouetted against the sun, tending to the world that lay sprawled beneath, asleep and dreaming too.
There came a sound like thunder, but ten times worse, as though she were nestled in the crotchly bosoms of the thunder Gods themselves, listening to them play dread tunes on their implements of electric carnage. The cones themselves trembled, and great hunks of loose material, whatever dreamstuff they were made of, tumbled off them, heading for her. She tried in vain to escape from beneath them, but they became the sky itself. Fear and terror came over her, and the shadows closed in, imminent signs of her doom. It's the end, she heard herself scream. I don't want to die! Don't let me die, Princess Celestia! I trusted you! I trusted you!
The cones fell away, and the dream ended. An ache, profoundly penetrating, made itself at home. Somepony was coughing near her, and she opened her eyes to find the source. A pink pony with a frizzled, tangled and badly singed mane was staring at her, shivering wretchedly, curled up against a curving purple surface, wings and legs held tight to try and preserve warmth. There was a thaumic lowing, like a distressed cow suffering through colic, and a sputtering light from the pony's horn fighting against the dark.
“T-Twilight!” Whom said, desperate relief in her ditzy tones, the movement and effort of speech dislodging ice crystals, which floated away, sparkling specks in the feeble glow. “Twilight!”
“The Spiders from Mars?” Twilight said, blearily. “Where are the Spiders?”
“What? No! No, Twilight, it's cold, please, help....” Her breath came as a plume of rolling white, and the pitch of her plea triggered some primal part of Twilight's mind, spurring her to action.
“Hang on, hang on,” she said, and focused for a second, trying to make sense of the shapes in her head.
It hurt to cast magic, but Twilight found that her strength was rapidly returning. It felt as though they were moving, and at a fair pace too. The standing thaumic background field was fresh and new, undepleted, and it offered its power to her in silent whispers. Despite the warning whines of the material of her horn, and a headache the likes of which she had never felt before, blessed warmth blossomed into the sphere they now shared. Whom whinnied gratefully, throwing aside all conventions of personal space and boundaries to climb awkwardly over Twilight's withers, curling around her head like a cat in front of a furnace.
Presently, the ice in the air melted and came apart, first a barely visible mist, then nothing. They sat nuzzled up for awhile, trying to find the strength to talk. Whom's shivering equally dissolved, and her breathing slowed down to a deep and meaningful pattern. Twilight could feel the mare's heart beat against her neck, forceful but oh so fragile, like a hummingbird made of the finest bone china, liable to break at the slightest provocation. Her mind began to assemble a plan, imagining what came next.
They were, given the rapid drop in temperature and the microgravity, outside the Selenite Principality. It made sense that they had exited the way that they had come in, but this was a big guess; very little made sense on the moon. They had been shot out somehow, and were likely not on the right vector for Equestrian capture and entry. Twilight had done some back-of-the-parchment workings out on this subject once, a long time ago, when she had still been a bright little filly on the cusp of marehood, with pretty bows in her mane and a glint in her eyes. It hadn't actually been on the subject of the moon as such, only on the study of objects passing between two gravitational sources, but the principles were the same. With the way that physics worked, for a non-magical object to get between two worlds, or any two objects to which they were gravitationally bound, they would need to be on exactly the correct pathway, going the exact right speed, otherwise they would miss; or worse, hit, but at quite the wrong angle for safe entry. Twilight doubted she could prevent catastrophe, at least for Whom, should that happen.
Another thought entered her head. She could teleport. That was how she had gotten to the moon in the first place. The problem was again one of velocity. For moving between two locations with different velocities relative to each other, certain corrections had to be made, otherwise one risked becoming a lot of very fine paste when one arrived, as the location you were going to would be moving so much faster or so much slower than the location you had come from. These modifications to speed formed part of the initial equation that began the teleport. The speed of the surface of the moon and the speed of the surface of Equestria were both known figures. It had only been a case of looking them up in a compendium of astrological and geological data, and she had all that she needed.
Their current velocity was not known, and if she guessed, the margin of error might be as much as one or two kilometres per second. Whilst she would likely survive that, Whom would not. At that moment, Twilight realized the mare was grooming her. Whom's neat little teeth and short, stubby, questing tongue were busy rooting through her mane, and she had been so lost in thought that she hadn't noticed until now.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Twilight said, voice somewhat tinny in the confined space.
“Pfnet?” Whom said, through a mouthful of purple hair, which she quickly disentangled herself from. “Oh, sorry, am I being too rough?”
“Why are you doing that?”
“T-The Nightmare used to sit and think like that for a long time too, and she always liked to be attended to, so I was just trying to be helpful...”
“Please don't, Whom, it's not necessary,” Twilight said, as gently as she could. “Just take deep, slow breaths, and try not to move.”
“Oh, okay, sorry,” she said, returning to her nesting position, shifting her tiny weight a little. “Why?”
“To save the air in here, there's only a finite supply, and you will need it.”
“But I don't need air in space, I have my vacuum spell.”
“I think that might be quite a specific enchantment. The levels of oxygen in here are already starting to be depleted. Life produces a certain waste gas when it respirates, which will accumulate in here. Oxygen depletion is fatal, or rather, asphyxia from the carbon dioxide is what gets you first.”
“Oh!” Whom looked as though she had seen a ghost, then took a deep breath in and held it. After a moment, red crept in across her cheeks, beneath the fuzz of her fur.
Twilight sighed and closed her eyes, gently shaking her head. Whom had a long way to go, physically and psychologically, before she would be ready for Equestria.
*
Twilight was digging through her panniers. She was, for what wasn't the first time, endlessly grateful for their special leather construction. Celestia had given them to her for seventeenth birthday, and for a long time she'd been less than pleased about them. The Princess hadn't said much on where, exactly, they had come from. Leather was a gryphon invention, inevitably imported to Equestria along with much of the rest of their culture. Her panniers weren't imports themselves, as a small but highly prestigious and very secretive guild had sprung up that was charged with their regulation and manufacture, but they were made in the style of the gryphon flightbag, adapted for the pony frame. The official narrative went that the guild had a close relationship with the bovine community, from where they presumably sourced their materials. Those tribals, some of whom maintained mutually beneficial camps near pony settlements where they traded milk for things like rope and wine, were a guarded people themselves, which added only another layer of mystery to the whole deal.
Later on in her life, Twilight had come to love her ethically questionable baggage. It had been roasted by dragons, drowned in more lakes and rivers than she cared to mention, slashed at by changelings and attacked by magical energy, had aqua regia poured on it, and yet it still survived intact. It was often said that the gryphons had a particular secret in the tanning process, which had been carried with them to Equestria, and bestowed unusual properties on the leather it produced. Certainly, Twilight was not in any hurry to dispute that rumor.
“Chemistry, chemistry,” Twilight mumbled, unbuttoning its internal pouches, pockets and other folds. “Ah Hah!” Several long, sturdy ponyoak boxes, varnished to a black sheen and well-used, wavered out wrapped in magic.
“What are they?” Whom said, peering curiously.
“Never leave home without your Ewenmarer flasks, that's what I always say.” She flicked open the catches on the boxes, revealing a series of wide-bottomed, narrow-necked flasks, nested in sponges and hay, stuffed with screwed up balls of paper. “Not to mention some other bits and bobs.”
“Oh, what are you going to do with those?”
“There's no telling how long this trip might be, and you're already suffering the effects of reduced oxygen levels -- just look at your cheeks; I bet you’re feeling pretty tired right now,” Twilight said, continuing her rummaging. “We've got oxygen here, somewhere, I'm sure of it, but we just can't breathe it, so it must be teased out.”
“I thought that was just because I’ve had a long day,” Whom said, shaking herself as if she were trying to dislodge something caught in her mane. “Can't you just magic some up?” She adjusting her lying position so that her head was laid over her crossed forelegs. “The Nightmare used to—”
“Heat, too much heat,” Twilight said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “All magic creates it, even the most carefully guided and expertly cast spells throw off some waste. It can't be helped, no thaumic process is one hundred percent efficient. If I started casting the kind of spells we'd need to conjure enough breathable air, I'd cremate you.”
“Cremate? What does that mean?”
“Incinerate; set fire to and burn,” Twilight said, pulling another flask out of her panniers, this one longer and with a capped nipple on the end. “Heat radiates into space rather poorly, and we couldn't keep this place cool enough for you to survive in.” She uncapped it and latched on, gulping down a sip of water to wet her mouth, then she offered it to Whom. “There's oxygen in this, as part of the molecule. We smash it open, you see. The molecule, that is, not the bottle. Have a bit, but don't drink too much. We'll need all we can get. Did you bring any fluids?”
“No, just some important stuff...”
“Oh, okay. What did you bring, anyway?”
“A nice chemise, in samite, with red satin and a black silk shawl,” she said, proudly going through the rather burned looking but intact cloth bags she was carrying and bringing the smock out. “I've also got the shoes that go with these, they're silver with an onyx band and nacre clips, I know it's a bit fancy, but--”
“You bought clothes?”
“Yes, of course, why wouldn't I have done?” Whom smiled in what she imagined was a mareish way. “One has to be properly dressed, at all times, when one is out in public, that's what Nearer Magazine says.”
“Well, your home was just destroyed, I'd have thought you'd have brought something more...” Twilight chewed her lip for a moment, thinking of the right word. “Meaningful? Sentimental? What about that picture which was on the nightstand?”
“What? Oh, that thing. No, I cut that out of a magazine. I thought it looked really happy, you know? Like a family should. It made me smile.” She broke eye contact and stared off for a moment. “Anyway, these clothes are sentimental, at least to me. I've been making them myself, from pictures. I've always wanted a chance to actually wear them, in Equestria.” She beamed, wriggling excitedly, like a gryphon who had got the meat.
“Where do you get samite, satin and silk from, on the moon?” Twilight frowned, oxygen related endeavours paused for a moment as a puzzle appeared before her. “Wait, don't tell me, Nightmare Moon has her own silk-worm farm lurking in amongst all that.. horror...”
“Yes, she does. Well, sort of. You see, there are these worms that live under the castle, inside the pipes,” she said, playing with the delicate fabric she held in her slight magical aura. “You have to be super careful with them, but if you treat them right and feed them lots of leaves and occasionally a rabbit or two, they make a lot of silk thread. They don't look like the silk worms in the book, and it never said anything about the rabbits or anything, but the result is the same.” The material suddenly vibrated and shuddered, becoming jet black for a moment, taking on the texture and appearance of dried, arterial blood before turning back into samite.“M-mostly...”
“Yikes.”
*
“Whom,” Twilight said, as she decanted water into one of her flasks, preparing to construct the series of tubes required for the process she intended to carry out. “What’s that smell?”
“Oh, are you noticing my feminine musk?” Whom seemed very excited, as if it were Hearthswarming Eve and she was a tiny filly before the fireplace. “I dabbed some on this morning.”
“Uh, it’s more like… mercaptans I could mention…” Twilight’s nose wrinkled at the pungent aroma.
“Produced by the decomposition of vegetable matter?”
“Yes, probably, at least in this case.” She coughed, eyes starting to water a little, just as a series of strangled, awkward sounds that reminded her of air being let out of one of Pinkie’s balloons, very slowly. “Oh, sweet starry foals, what did you have for breakfast today?”
Whom did nothing but keep smiling.
*
“They call 'em the Diamond Dogs,” Truth whispered, leaning close to Emboss' ear as she glanced over at a table on the other side of the bar, which held a host of furry, hooded guests. “They're poachers who hide behind trees.”
“Darling, you've seen them before,” Emboss sighed, taking another bite out of his toasted hay bagel, buttery crumbs tumbling down to litter the plate below. “Don't let the actions of a few social outcasts mar the reputation of a whole population; most of them are good, honest, hardworking persons. You do seem to be in a good mood this morning, though.”
“I feel positively wonderful,” she giggled, nudging her haunches closer to his, nuzzling up close on the big, wooden benches that surrounded one of the Gusset's breakfast tables. “Serene, you know? Just vibrant and wonderful. Very 'in tune' with the world.”
“Probably all the drugs you ate yesterday afternoon,” Emboss said, smirking slightly.
“I had some great dreams last night. Anyway, you make it sound like a bad thing.”
“You might've been a bit sore this morning had I taken you up on any of your many offers.”
“Oh, hark at you, who thinks he's Ennis or something!” She bit him playfully on the neck, laughing in the back of her throat.
“Don't start on me with 'Ennis', you harlot.”
“Queer. Poof, friend of Prancy!” She collapsed into soundless mirth. “Let's go back to bed...” She added, sotto voce.
“We've got to go and see a stallion about a boat actually, or have you forgotten why we're here at all, in your drug fuelled haze?”
“Oh, did you find someone then?”
“I was just going through the petite publicité section in the newspaper, I've got some rather promising leads,” Emboss said, sipping his burdock and camomile tea between further bites of the bagel. “Most of these lines take passengers to pad out their takings, apparently. You have to be a bit careful, but as long as we find someone of repute, I'm sure we'll be okay.
“I wonder if gryphon lands will be as exciting as this place has been so far?”
“I'm sure we'll see, in good time.”
*
It was a matter of pure happenstance that Truth and Emboss were walking through Port Dauphine's sprawling harbour at the exact time they were. A minute or two later or earlier, and they would have missed their chance entirely. They'd spent much of the day crisscrossing the city, going from one haulage firm to another, seeking out ship captains and, in the end, basically anyone who owned a boat. They had so far gotten nowhere with their objective. Actual trade across the dauphine sea, or la dauphinsee as most referred to it, generally with a terrible impression of a Prench accent, was set to a very firm timetable of seasonal schedules, crew availability, the political situation, and a million other factors that simply hadn't occurred to Emboss.
Most of the firms weren't actually able to tell them when exactly they were going to sail, just define a period in the vague and muddy future when the winds would be right. Now that it had been explained to them at length, it seemed blindingly obvious. They had arrived in the middle of a bit of a furlough in the timetable, and most of the boats they'd seen in the port were only local fishing craft or pleasure boats. The larger, ocean-going ships were laid up in drydocks further down the coast, undergoing vital repairs. Many crews had gone off to Canterlot and environs to visit their families, or were drowning their sorrows in the beer and mares of the innumerable pubs and other rough venues that went claw in hoof with the working theme of the city.
Down on the quay, it smelled of dead fish and salt, and satinal smoke, and of the sweaty exertions of street trotters and their clients, occasionally punctuated by a grunt or a pleasured squeal. Wickedly fast tunes spilled out of the doorways of clubs, and the sailors and punters inside were singing the lurid and ferociously complex lyrics with a very palpable gusto. Little herds of them wearing the matching uniforms of their ships or lines, staggered along the wide dockside. The buttons of their waistcoats sparkled in the thick and turgid afternoon air where they had been undone part way as a defense against the heat, and their owners sparkled equally, enjoying what was probably the first time off they'd had in months.
When they passed alleyways, more of the undercurrent of the city revealed itself. There was a whole extra community here, living in the narrow streets, cuts and rat runs, aside but within society. Odd-dressed ponies and minotaurs played dice games, and some played fiddles, or drank dark black liquor from square bottles. Zebra lay in little groups, smoking from long-stemmed pipes and laughing and talking in their strange, chittering language. In some, and it seemed that there were socially designated alleyways for it to happen in, pimps and whores plied their trade, and many a time Emboss turned away in vague disgust as another fine young zebric mare, tired-looking pony who seemed older than they were on first glance, or even androgynous Diamond Dog, was ploughed or themselves ploughed a furrow through an oft-hooded customer. It was surprising, at least to someone like Emboss. Canterlot did not have a problem with street folk, beggars, or very much obvious crime in general. Celestia's machinations, at work again. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that she was mashing them all up and putting them in pies.
On several occasions, some large-set minotaur fellow tried to sell him a deal of satinal, or some other substance of dubious origin and worth. Every time he politely refused, he could see them sizing him up for something, those hungry, carnivorous eyes picking out the muscles he had on display. He suddenly felt very self-conscious, and trotted away somewhat faster than before, hoping that the image of a fleeing animal wouldn't spark some uncontrollable feeding frenzy. I have to wonder, how many of those poor mares go into dark alleyways or pub rooms and never come back out again. In a city like this, I bet you don't even need to do it yourself. Live prey would just be a matter of asking the right person, all delivered to your hotel suite. Freaks and perverts everywhere. “So, would you like the hay and toast with orange juice for breakfast, or maybe we could put the parts of that filly you didn't eat last night in the oven for a few minutes, warm them up for you? Would sir like that?” Sweet foals, watch over us.
As buoyant as she was, Truth kept close to Emboss. Their recent setbacks hadn't phased her at all. She was having the time of her life. Emboss kept stealing little glances of her face as they moved through the crowd, heading for the last destination on the list, and something profound occurred to him. They'd settled down far too early, become dam and sire together, then stallion and mare, well before their time. It wasn't that he didn't love and adore his foals, nor that he regretted them in any way. After all, it was, ultimately, for them that they were on this trip at all, if not the whole of Equestria as an added bonus. It was just that they'd never had a chance to enjoy this sort of thing, to see what else life was before giving that life to something else.
Port Dauphine was a beast to navigate at the best of times, having essentially been built at random over the course of many years, but it wasn't long before they turned up at the particular mooring they had been directed to by the last person who had rejected them, an eight foot tall minotaur who looked like whatever force had made him had decided to eschew the traditional meat and bone approach in favour of cutting him directly out of a block of granite. Emboss couldn't quite work out what kind of boat it was supposed to be. The day's traipsing had quickly inducted him into a lot of basic knowledge of ships and shipping, and he'd not seen anything like it so far.
The prow was clearly a thoroughbred descendent of a clipper ship, fiercely V-shaped and finely varnished. It had nine masts, however, and though he could not see the type of sails, as they were stowed, this was far too many for any clipper. The stern was another matter, looking like some weird, eyeless hybrid of a dhow and a high-backed ancient galleon, with lots of extra parts above the waterline that seemed to function to increase the deck space inside. The figurehead was, promisingly, a rendition of a gryphon in flight.
Emboss trotted closer and squinted at it. There was another figure beneath the gryphon, a pony mare, who seemed to be lying prostrate, tail raised, and impassioned look of deep ecstasy, or possibly satisfaction, on her romanticized features. He realized what was going on, what the artist had captured with his work, a moment after his wife did. She began laughing like a bellows at an insomniac blacksmith's mill, until she fell over on the stone-lined dock, half-pointing at it, half kicking her legs in the air, paralyzed with mirth.
There was a sound of hooves approaching, but the beat was off, like only two hooves were striking the ground at any one time. Emboss turned to look, and saw a creature that, before then, he'd only read about. There were precious few hippogryphs in the country, and very few of that small number ever made their way as far inland as Canterlot. Something about the hippogryph struck him immediately, and that was the size. He was quite sure he had read about them being at least as tall as a gryphon, which towered over the average pony. This one, however, was just about the size of a older foal, perhaps a young stallion.
“Out of the way!” the hippogryph shouted, getting to the edge of the dock, barging through them and then suddenly taking wing, fluttering weakly but enthusiastically through the air, up over the side of his ship.
“Excuse me!” Emboss said, peering up. “Are you Mr Astrapios, captain of this boat, by any chance?”
“No, no sir, not him, he's not here right now!” the hippogryph shouted, the tones of his faux Canterlite accent immediately obvious to Emboss as fake.
“Oh, that's a big shame, we wanted to talk to him about hiring this boat.”
“Hire the boat?” the hippogryph said, his tiny, gold-feathered head poking out and looking down at them, wiping away a stain of blood from what seemed to be a cut across his face. “What for?” He glanced back and forth between them, eyes furrowing which, in lieu of eyebrows, was likely a frown. “I don't do wedding functions, you know, or changeling bondings, or anything like that whatsoever, not even the kinky minotaur stuff--”
“We're going to the home of the gryphons, and we need passage rather urgently,” Emboss said, hopefully. “We can pay four times the standard, and we won't take up much room--”
“You're in luck,” he said, disappearing, at which point there was a long silence, and then a series of clicking and whirring noises, and part of the forward hull began to open, joints and gears working in concert to expose a prow door, from which a long ramp was extended, spat out like a tongue with a loud thud onto the dock. “I've just been called away on some extremely urgent business, and am leaving immediately for Ugurtz, via Stotluz and Longazz, so if you'd like to step onboard--”
“How immediately? Can we have a moment to fetch our luggage?”
Astrapios glanced away, looking down the line of the dock as if he was waiting for a flood to happen. He clicked his short, yellow beak together a few times, then shook his head, stamping one of his back hooves on the deck.
“It's now or never. This business is absolutely vital, and if I don't leave right now I'll miss the tide.”
Truth and Emboss exchanged looks. A lot was said in those few moments, as is often the case between husband and wife, who have known each other for a great span of years and can read one another's features like open books. There was no need for any sign of agreement, and they climbed through the mouth of the prow door, the ramp bending slightly as it took the weight of two ponies.
There was a lot that went into the casting off of a big ship, but the captain had installed a series of ingenious ropes, pulleys and other gears that meant he could not only operate the ship, which would normally have been a tricky job, given his size, but that it could all be done in a matter of minutes, sped up by the helpful application of a bit of unicorn magic in the manual labor department. Emboss and Truth were keen to show their new, if diminutive, host that they were valuable assets, as well as paying customers.
A few minutes later, the ship was shifting out of the dock, wide, trapezoid sails taking the wind beautifully, even if they were embroidered with a series of images evidently designed by the same artist who had crafted the figurehead. By the time a large, angry mob, mostly earth pony mares, many carrying nooses, swords, barrels of pitch and even several kilos worth of unusually shaped root vegetables, the Barely Eagle was well away, leaving only frustration and a long, feathery wake of foamy sea behind it.
*