//------------------------------// // The Ruins // Story: The Outsiders // by Arania //------------------------------// Despite her initial three-week estimate, Lyra had managed to get Team Fifteen to their destination in only nine days, aided by the fact that, apart from Twilight at least, everypony seemed to instinctively know their way towards their next waypoint. Come rainforest, desert, abandoned cityscapes or barely-comprehensible honeycombs of stone interspersed with Void intrusions, nopony save Twilight needed much orientation on the long hikes. Most of Lyra’s work came in distinguishing the real interworld portals from the far-more-dangerous but visually identical Void intrusions, and ensuring Twilight didn’t get separated from the group. Beyond that, most of Twilight’s time during the trip had been occupied with researching the team’s innate pathfinding sense, a task made all the more difficult by the infuriatingly subjective nature of the ‘guidance’ Team Fifteen seemed to be following, and everypony’s abject refusal to acknowledge it as anything other than entirely normal. In fact, Pinkie Pie found it almost insufferably interesting that Twilight lacked this sense, taking every available opportunity to interrogate her on how it felt for such a feeling to be absent. After three solid days of attempting to explain how impossible it was for her to explain the absence of something she had never experienced in the first place, Twilight was forced to drop the topic entirely, opting instead for more passive observation than direct questioning lest she be forced to engage in more ‘philosophical’ discussion with the walking conundrum that was Pinkie Pie. In the end, however, she had come to very few solid, testable hypotheses beyond her initial observation of the effect, and an inkling that it may have been related to the innate strangeness that Outsiders seemed to radiate in the perceptions of Insiders. By the time they they passed through what Lyra claimed was the final gateway before their destination, she had become entirely fed up with being unable to scratch her investigative itch, and just wanted the journey to be over. “How much longer?” Twilight demanded as she emerged from the inky black gateway, squinting to mitigate the glare from this world’s far-too-large, far-too-red sun. “Home stretch now,” Lyra replied, checking to ensure no-one had spotted them emerging from the gateway as were preparing to ambush them. “This world has the last significant piece of civilisation this deep into the Ruins. We’ll stop there and resupply, and hopefully get some direction towards this ‘Dark Exterior.’” “And if we don’t?” Walleye asked as Lyra began to move, leading the team towards a large ridge. “What’s our contingency for if we don’t find any information?” “We’ll find something. The Shard has enough ponies that it’s impossible somepony doesn’t know something useful.” “Statistics doesn’t work like that,” Twilight muttered under her breath. Lyra ignored her, stopping as she crested the ridge. “Welcome to Harmony’s Shard,” she proclaimed, gesturing towards a huge spike of eldritch grey metal, barely distinguishable as a single object for the innumerable clusters of windowboxes, additions, and barely-hanging-on attachments that encrusted almost the entire visible surface. It hung suspended in what appeared to be a bottomless pit, the ridge they had just crossed rapidly turning into a sheer drop towards an eerie black abyss, a feature Twilight recognised as what Lyra has called a ‘Void intrusion’, a gap in space-time where the fabric of the world had been abraded or torn away and was now open on pure nothingness. Apart from an appropriately rickety-looking bridge comprised of what appeared to be mostly scrap metal and stone, the giant structure didn’t seem to be physically attached to the pit that housed it, beyond the jagged spires of metal that hung from the frayed bottom of the structure into the Void rift far below. It wasn’t until Lyra tapped her on the side of the head that Twilight realised she had been staring, mystified. “You in there, rookie? Time to get moving!” She nodded and began to follow, not speaking. “So, this is where you live?” Walleye remarked. “After a fashion,” Lyra replied. “I’ve got a mate here that I crash with, but I don’t really own anything here. Living in the Ruins, you don’t get too attached to any one place considering that they can just up and drop into the Void without warning. You’ve gotta be quick on your hooves.” “And yet, this place looks pretty thriving.” “Well, it’s the only actual city within about fifty vert of here, or at least, the only permanent one.” “...Vert?” Walleye asked. “It’s a unit of distance,” Twilight contributed. “‘One Universe’, essentially, if you were using a universe as an eight-dimensional yardstick.” “That’s what it really is?” Lyra remarked. “I just tend to use it as slang for the number of gateways you need to go through to get somewhere.” “Probably roughly equivalent, all things considered.” “Anyway,” Walleye cut in. “Care to clue the rest of us in on the plan?” “Well,” Lyra began, gingerly stepping onto the bridge as it swayed disconcertingly in the updraft. “Unlike what you’d expect, this place is actually pretty friendly to Outsiders, since Runners like me tend to use it as a hub and resupply. That, and we’re not the weirdest thing to pop up out here.” “Dare I ask?” “Just be thankful we haven’t run into any of them on the way here, and leave it at that.” “Right. Plan?” “I’ve got a few contacts that hang around here. We’ll talk to them first, see if they know anything, and if that doesn’t work, just pound the pavement.” “Metal.” “Whatever.” “Uh, girls?” Twilight hesitated as they drew closer to the Shard. “Does anyone else think this thing looks a bit… strange?” “You mean beyond the fact that it’s a giant spike of metal floating in a pit of nothing?” Rainboom remarked, sarcastically. “Yes, actually. Look at all the stuff that’s been strapped on! It’s corroded, tattered, weathered, but the metal underneath is untouched! Pristine, even. And if you look closely, I can’t see any bolts or welds anywhere! Most of those boxes are clamped onto protrusions, or hanging onto some girder anchored inside. Nothing’s actually physically attached!” “Huh, fancy that…” Lyra said. “You’ve been here how many times and you’ve never noticed that?” Walleye asked as she looked up through her rifle scope. “It’s never come up before. To be honest, not sure why it’s a big issue now. The Shard has always had conspiracy theories about its origins and nature and all that, that’s never going to change.” “Gotta agree with her on this one, Twilight,” Pinkie chimed in, sounding oddly disappointed. “It’s not all that weird, really. Now you not being able to feel where to go, that’s weird.” “It’s only weird from where you’re…. standing…” Twilight trailed off again, scurrying over to the railing to peer towards the Shard’s base. “You alright there, rookie?” Walleye asked. “You’re weird!” Twilight exclaimed, pointing at the team. “Come again?” “You’re weird. Outsiders are weird. You seem weird to me, and to other Insiders.” “Yes, that has been established.” “And this Shard is weird!” “That, on the other hand, is contested.” “No, see, that’s the thing! You’re weird, and it’s weird, but it’s the same sort of weird, so you can’t feel it like I can.” “You’ve lost me.” “Ugh, okay. I felt it the first time back on the Exterior. Everything felt… wrong somehow, as though the world was ever-so-slightly out of kilter. It didn’t occur to me until now that that feeling, and that wrongness that Insiders get when looking at Outsiders is connected!” “Still not following you.” “Alright. Have you ever gotten lost on the Exterior? Ever not know where you’ve needed to go?” “No.” “Lyra, have you ever gotten lost in the Ruins? Have you ever had a moment where you didn’t know which way to go to get to the next world?” “I… not really, no,” Lyra replied, pondering for a moment. “Getting ‘lost’ in the Ruins is different than that. You need to know the general layout of the worlds so you can find your way long-distance, but it’s hard to get stuck on any one world, you can always find your way off.” “Same principle. And you’ve never really questioned it because, to you four, this is all perfectly normal, an extra sense that feeds into your subconscious, like you’re tuned into something extra in the world that Insiders are blind to.” “Makes sense,” Lyra said. Walleye stared at her, incredulous. “What? It does!” she reaffirmed. “She’s right. For all we might talk about how you get lost in the Interior, does that ever really happen? It might take a bit of skill to know what portal leads where in the Ruins, but we can always find one.” “That’s what makes an Outsider,” Twilight explained. “You’re tuned in, somehow, to the little holes where the Void leaks into the Interior, and you can find them. But that same ability makes you seem strange to somepony like me, since we aren’t tuned into that. I’d wager it has something to do with how your bodies and minds interact with ambient magic fields.” “Congratulations, you’ve solved the enigma,” Rainboom quipped. “I’m sure you’ll be nice and famous when-slash-if we make it back, but how does this relate to the giant mysterious shard of metal?” “You four seem strange to me, instinctively, because of that… let's call it ‘interference.’ I got the same sort of strange uneasy feeling, multiplied by about a thousand, every time we went through one of those portals on the way here. And I also had it, practically non-stop, when I was back on the Exterior, as though there was something wrong about it in the same way I feel like there is something wrong about you.” “I take it you’re actually going somewhere with this, rather than trying to indirectly insult us by calling us wrong?” Walleye demanded. “I’m getting that same feeling from the Shard.” “You think it’s a piece of the Exterior,” Lyra realised, eyes widening. “Yes!” “Lovely,” Rainboom deadpanned. “Can we go in now?” “We don’t even need to. That’s the beauty of it. It’s still attached.” The four of them stared at her, varying states of confusion on their faces. “It’s… ugh,” she grunted. “You remember the explanation back on Slateform? About how bits of the Exterior get broken off when worlds violently detach? This piece of the Exterior didn’t get completely sheared off.” “My head hurts,” Pinkie complained. “We’re not on the Exterior. How could it still be… part of not-here?” “I get it,” Walleye said. “It got almost torn away, and then fell back, and now it’s just… hanging there.” “But it’s floating,” Pinkie pointed out. “You can’t be hanging from something and floating at the same time.” “It’s not floating,” Lyra explained. “It’s being… held up? I don’t know, this is confusing.” “It’s a matter of perspective, but you’re right,” Twilight confirmed. “If it wasn’t still attached to the Exterior by something, it would either have punched into this world more completely, or just fallen back out into the Void.” “So we just follow the bits at the bottom and we find the Exterior?” Rainboom asked. “Well, yeah. Can’t be too far, either. A thousand hooflengths, maybe?” “Lyra, you got some rope?” “Yeah,” Lyra replied, pulling a length from her saddlebags. “Wait… you’re not going to-” She didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence before Rainboom snatched the rope coil from her hoof, tying a hoop around her barrel just above her wings before tossing the rest to Walleye. “One tug for ‘help me’, two for ‘come though’, got it?” Walleye nodded, and Rainboom took flight, diving over the edge of the bridge in a flash of her chromatic tail. Twilight dashed after her, barely fast enough to watch as the prismatic blur tied a loop into the rope around the jagged spires before disappearing through the rift into the Void.