Missing occupant, or not, curiosity got the better of us, and we all began to investigate the contents of the room, albeit gently, and without making a mess. This was another pony's room after all. Had the situation been one of mere personal curiosity, I would never have contemplated behaving like this, but we were investigating for the good of the entire population of Habitat Eleven.
"Hang on. Didn't the writings say that the old ruler's daughter was turned into a Hellite, then vanished?" Cacha asked from where she sat, at the pedestal on which the diary rested.
"Yes," Kakuun said "I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere. At least that's what I recall."
"So, how could she write that, if she was locked in here?"
"She didn't, obviously," Allie said. "She wrote some of the ancient writings, specifically, what we call the old diaries."
"And the others?"
"Some changeling historian or another? The first changeling queen or her foal? Some other pony?" Kakuun said. "I don't remember which book that was written in."
"There's more than one author, Cacha. It's a library." Allie said.
"A library that contains books that are at least two thousand years old, and has been used as a nest and playroom by changelings for just as long..." Kakuun added.
"Eww. How can you read anything?" Cacha said, as she imagined the resinous mess.
"Exactly," Kakuun said.
"Wasn't that Hellite princess part of a breezie tale?" I asked. "I don't recall. Whatever the case, we seem to have a pretty good lead on the missing princess, Hellite or not."
I looked back at the shelf in front of me. There sure were a lot of books in the secret royal chamber, and they were in much better condition than those in the library! Nonetheless, they were all very old. I suspected a little unicorn magic had held them together over the centuries. Many had ornately decorated spines, their titles being written in ancient cursive script. Titles included The Warning, The Gift, and Impending Exodus. I suspected they were not works of fiction.
Carefully, I moved the books a little, so I could extract the one titled The Warning from the shelf. I gently opened the cover, then turned to the first page with any text on it. The script matched that written on the spine. These were hoof or magic written books. I began to read. What was written there, while written centuries, millennia ago, was quite readable, even if the pronunciation, even the basic letter forms of ancient was different. After all, the books in the library were the same in that respect.
"Hey girls, listen to this," I said, attracting their attention from whatever they were exploring.
"What?" Cacha asked.
I started reading aloud.
"While we of Equestria are not unfamiliar with beasts and monsters, when they do appear, it is usually from below that they have escaped. To have them come from above is less common, from the moon, once, and that's the shame of the family, but from beyond that I have heard of no cases.
"Yet, there they were, riding great ships that filled the skies, the bulk of which cast much of our land into shadows.
"The ships were of an ugly, organic appearance, black, and shiny to the point they appeared to be wet. Tubes and pipes, like sinews, blood vessels, snaked along their surfaces. Phallic protuberances marked the hulls at regular intervals.
"As I watched, the belly of one of these great beasts opened, allowing a smaller example to drop from its middle, to descend to the earth in front of the castle.
"All the while, despite the terrifying appearance of their ships, the creatures spoke to us, in our own language, from the sky. They claimed they were not hostile, that they had come from beyond the nearest stars, bearing greetings, a warning, and if we so desired, assistance."
"An old story book?" Cacha asked.
I shook my head. "This was written by Princess Moon Glow herself. I think it is the story of what happened to us before we moved into the habitat."
"Don't their ships sound a bit like a Hellite in appearance?" Kakuun asked.
"They do, don't they," I said.
"I wonder where the Hellite modifiers first came from," I mused. "Ponies use magic to do so many things. Even though we no longer have lots of unicorns, many of the habitat's systems are still based on pony magic. We saw the magic power source the other day. Food generators and hoof scanners all have unicorn's horns in them, and rely on that magic to work. Even the computers are somehow powered by magic. In that context, the existence of modifiers doesn't make sense. They are not something ponies would have needed."
"Do you think they were introduced by these sky-creatures?" Cacha asked.
"I'm almost sure of it. No doubt it's mentioned later in this book, or one of the others. Even if they didn't come from the sky-creatures, Princess Moon Glow would have to write about them sooner or later, considering the role the Hellites played in creating the city in Habitat to begin with."
I turned the page and was about to start reading again when Cacha interrupted me. "Perhaps we should look for the princess before we invade too much of her privacy."
"Fine, so where do we look?" I asked. "Do you think our missing pony snuck out while we were not looking, or stayed here, as per what her diary entry suggests? Perchance, is she hiding beneath her bed?" Of course, I wasn't being literal with that last part.
"There are two other doors in here," Cacha said. "Perhaps we should try them."
"That is a good point!" I said, closing the book, and slipping it back into its place on the shelf.
Of the three doors in the room, the magic arch was the most impressive, especially considering we could pass through it while it appeared to remain solid. The other two doors were downright mundane by comparison, reminding me more of the internal doors of a regular pony home than anything secure. We gravitated towards the right door. Kakuun, who arrived first, opened the door, and we marched past, leaving her standing there, holding it. The thought of a queen holding open a door for others amused me.
I didn't know what I had been expecting, perhaps even a walk-in wardrobe, but through the door, there were three small rooms, the first being a combined toilet and bathroom, of positively un-royal proportions, the second, the expected royal robe storage and dressing room and the third a kitchenette. Again, there wasn't anything particularly notable about the kitchenette. It was more-or-less the same as any kitchenette out in the city, featuring a food generator, a water source, and somewhere to park one's posterior while consuming the fare. Admittedly, this processor was one of the more luxurious variants with a selection of choices on offer. Evidently, loss of power to the archway hadn't deprived the other sections of this little sanctuary of power or other general services.
"Nopony home," Cacha said. "At least, not in here. What will be behind door number two?"
She squeezed past us, and back into the main room, us following her out.
"Surely it's got to be more impressive than what we've seen so far," Kakuun said. "This place looks more like somewhere you could retreat from being royal than a royal retreat."
"My place isn't even this fancy," I said. "Fanciness doesn't always make a good home."
"Green resin makes a good home," Kakuun said, quietly.
We hadn't even made it as far as the second door when we heard approaching hoofsteps, and by the sound of them, the pony had some weight. I guessed we had found our missing resident, and we were about to be caught like foals with our hooves in the cookie jar. At least we hadn't made a mess of the place.
I stopped, well clear of the door. Allie ducked behind me and hid, while Cacha and Kakuun moved alongside me, one on each side. Moments later, the owner of the hoofsteps pushed the door open, took a step into the room, and stopped when she saw she was not alone, staring down at us. She was large, easily twice my height, with a deep violet face, offset with a pale mane and golden eyes. Despite her impressive size, what was most notable was that she was also a Hellite. It had to be her, the missing princess from the breezie tale.
She neither seemed overly surprised, or panicked by our presence, which puzzled me. Two millennia in solitary confinement would send most ponies totally mad. Suddenly finding strangers in one's private sanctuary was also a pretty good trigger for outrage or panic. Then again, her diary entry of three days earlier indicated she knew it was now possible to enter and exit this room.
"This is an interesting delegation," the violet alicorn said, in an accent influenced by ancient Equestrian. "Two HELaTS and what I assume is a changeling. What does puzzle me is how you have managed to enter my private chambers through the alicorn arch." She paused, as if searching her mind for something to say. "I am Princess Lunar Eclipse. Bow. You are in the presence of royalty."
We didn't, causing her to raise her eyebrows in surprise.
"That is a terrible introduction," a small, disembodied voice came from somewhere behind me. "Besides, two queens and two princesses trumps one princess. Perhaps you should be bowing to us."
The alicorn's expression of surprise only increased.
"Allie!" I said. I let the tone of my voice convey the rest of the message. "Now, show yourself and introduce yourself properly!"
"Okay, Ma," she answered, emerging from her hiding spot, and walking around to just in front of me, where she curtsied towards the pony before us.
"I am Princess Allie, the daughter of the reigning pony monarch, Queen Aneki." It seemed she had taken it upon herself to introduce me, as well.
"A tiny alicorn?" the giant Hellite asked. I ignored the question. "That would explain how you were able to enter."
"As you can gather, I am Aneki, queen of the ponies of Habitat Eleven. Beside me are Kakuun, queen of the changelings, and my consort, Princess Cacha. My daughter has already introduced herself."
"You do not seem to be overly surprised to see me," Kakuun said.
"We knew a few changelings getting on board was always a possibility. We never considered it to be a problem worthy of particular attention," Lunar Eclipse said.
"And there we have your fatal mistake," I muttered. "Had you put any effort into making them feel welcome, history would have been very different."
"Never mind that now," Lunar Eclipse dismissed me. "Do you know what became of Princess Moon Glow? If you are the monarch, as you claim to be, she can no longer be on the throne."
"Sorry, Princess Lunar Eclipse, but your mother died over four hundred years ago," Kakuun said.
"Oh, is that so. I guess I am not too surprised. How did she die?"
"She died of old age and poor health, a prisoner of the changelings you chose to ignore," Cacha said, a hint of condemnation in her voice.
"Oh. Then..." Eclipse's voice trailed off.
Princess Lunar Eclipse was resting on her bed, staring at us. She had settled there after the last revelation, and remained silent for several minutes, presumably out of reverence for her departed mother. We stood at the foot of her bed, patiently waiting.
"We shall now converse," she announced, "as it would appear there is much to discuss."
"While you do speak with an accent influenced by ancient, I'm surprised at how good your speech and understanding of us are," I said. "The last pair of isolated ponies I discovered were barely intelligible, and that was after twelve hundred years of incarceration."
"It is not as if I have not been exposed to the changes in language," Eclipse said. "You assume I had been locked in this room with no contact with the outside world. I can assure you that was not the case. I have been able to watch your media. I have seen the mundane that passes as news, and the silly little stories that never seem to have an end, yet garner a mass following. I have listened to your music, watched your mid-day shows and sitcoms. These recent, funny little fantasy adventures that explore outside the habitat are just so... amusing."
"Thanks, I think," I muttered. "You said you became a Hellite after the fake Princess Moon Glow started killing off the Hellites."
"Quite so. As all other forms of argument had failed, I thought if I became a HELaTS, my mother, would stop the senseless campaign of slaughter."
"So, your conversion was voluntarily?"
"It was. Unfortunately, the plan to calm my fake mother totally failed, her being a changeling, and all."
"Let me guess. You were herded in here by a gaggle of glowing ponies," I said.
"How did you know they were glowing?"
"Hellites see disguised changelings as glowing ponies. That's why the Hellites were being hunted – because they could detect the changelings, who by this point were totally paranoid about being discovered and driven from the habitat," I said.
"Then you are incorrect about my mother. She did not glow."
"Watch me," Kakuun said, a green ring of fire bursting around her, seemingly consuming her. As the flames faded, a hellite filly version of Princess Lunar Eclipse was revealed.
"You... are me," Eclipse said, quietly. "And you do not appear to glow. How is this so?"
"Queens are better at taking on a new form than the drones. If I so wished, I could also copy your mind. I would have your knowledge, mannerisms, skills and so on. Thus the former changeling queen was so well disguised you could not distinguish her from your own mother. My only problem in copying you completely right now is that I am too young, and thus take on your form as a filly. That, and the fact that I have no need to do so."
"So, where is this abomination that stole my mother's identity?" Eclipse demanded, her voice now somewhat angry.
"She died, many centuries ago, as have the numerous successors who also posed as Princess Moon Glow. When the real Moon Glow died, the changeling queens stopped making public appearances as royalty. After that, the media played down the role of the royals, simply crediting Central with being in charge," Kakuun said, her voice now sounding like a younger version of Eclipse, sans accent. "I would beg forgiveness on the part of my species, even if the actions of some of its individuals are unforgivable."
"Do you think such is possible? Have you ever had to forgive those who killed your parent?"
"I have. She's standing next to me," Kakuun said.
I gave a subtle wave.
"And you work together now? I would not be quite so willing..." Lunar Eclipse said.
"My great grandmother brought death on herself and those around her by trying to steal Aneki's identity, in an attempt to kill the remaining Hellites. Aneki fought back. My mother was a casualty of the resultant explosion, so perhaps the difference is in the circumstance. Nonetheless, I am now motherless, and her killer is forgiven.
"Perhaps if you and Princess Moon Glow had made the changelings feel welcome, instead of ignoring them, my ancestor would not have found herself in the position where she believed she had no alternative course of action. We shall never know.
"As much as we wish it were the case, blame can rarely be placed entirely on one individual. Placing such blame is usually selfish, anyway. Doing so is just a way to relieve one's own guilt by deflecting attention from oneself," Kakuun said. "I cannot be entirely sure I did not contribute to my own mother's death. What if I had argued harder? What if I had managed to get her to understand my concerns? If I had succeeded at that, we would have sought the help of the Hellites, not their death."
"Is that so?" Eclipse said. It wasn't a question. It was, however an end to that thread of conversation. "What changed that there are now two queens? When did this new arrangement begin, and again, why has very little about it been on the media?"
"I like my privacy!" I said. "And we can rule through the camouflage of Central just as well as our predecessors. We don't feel the need to have ponies and changelings bowing and scraping at our hooves. We do not need fame or fortune."
Princess Lunar Eclipse blinked, then stared at me hard, as if I had no idea what being a queen was all about.
"How long have you ruled?"
"Our alliance has been in effect for about a year and a half," Kakuun said. "As I said, the former regime came to a very messy end when they tried to steal Aneki's identity in an attempt to exterminate the last of the Hellites. I was the only queen, changeling or otherwise, to survive the encounter. Actually, I wasn't part of the encounter. I was observing from a remote location. Seeing Aneki's sheer power, I knew I was already beaten. That in mind, and a desire to stay alive, I passed leadership of the Habitat to the victor, Queen Aneki."
"So you are a queen only in name?" Eclipse asked.
"She is biologically the queen of the changelings," I said. "She is also the co-ruler, alongside me. Together, we try to do what is best for both species."
"So noble of you, but what of the other species here? Do they get a say?" I wasn't sure if she was being caustic or not.
"Apart from ponies and changelings, there are only insects, and so far, they seem content to not have a say." Somehow I managed to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"What of the dogs?"
"Those of Habitat Ten? Is that what they were called?" I asked. "It was the only other species I knew of that had lived in the habitat. They died out centuries ago, a victim of the former regime's war against the Hellites. Recently, I moved the Hellites into their abandoned habitat. Habitat Ten was better than the makeshift habitats the Hellites were using."
"So, you are saying that the HELaTS survived by living outside of the life support chamber? And down in the lower levels where there is little in the way of life support, at that?"
"Quite so, despite the modifier attacks that rendered us unable to breed true males," Cacha said. "They all came out like me – genetically male, but with a body that was externally female. We had to capture males from the life support chamber and convert them. That's how Aneki became involved. I accidentally turned her into a Hellite."
The princess raised an eyebrow. "That would explain the odd coupling. Also, I have ignored your strange pronunciation of HELaTS so far, but what do you mean by dropping the S?"
"Huh? A Hellite is a converted pony who lives down in Hell. Habitat Eleven Lower Levels," Cacha said. "It's your pronunciation that is odd."
"HELaTS is an acronym. It stands for Hostile Environment Logistics and Technical Support. As such HELaTS is both plural and singular."
"Ha! Well, I'll be," I said. "There's another gem that's been lost in time."
"It pretty much sums up our job, doesn't it?" Cacha said. "It's certainly better than Hellspawn."
"Hellspawn?"
"It's what Central called us," I said, "probably to make us sound nastier than we were."
"How old are you?" Eclipse suddenly asked, leaning forward as if to put us under close scrutiny.
"Cacha and I are in our mid twenties," I said. I didn't see any point in following Maisie's lead and lying about it. Lies usually came back to haunt the liar.
"And I'm twelve," Kakuun added.
Princess Lunar Eclipse clapped a hoof to her forehead. "Surely you jest! You are but children! Yet, you have the audacity to rule?"
"Don't knock it, Eclipse," Allie said, her voice lacking all respect. "If it wasn't for Ma and Kakuun, you'd still be locked in here. History already proves Ma's doing a better job than you ever did. And, by the way, I'm one year old."
That left me speechless! Apparently it also left Princess Lunar Eclipse lacking for words, because she sat there, mouth hanging open, and a come-back nowhere to be found. Eventually, she simply closed her mouth, waiting for someone else to restart the conversation. Score one, Allie.
"So who is this Allie, anyway? I know you call her your daughter, but..."
"I gave birth to her. Is that not enough?" Even if I wasn't originally sure she was my child, I was quite prepared to believe so now. With her coloration just like mine, it was so obvious that I wondered why Princess Lunar Eclipse was even asking.
"Magic is usually involved in the creation of alicorns. They are not always born that way. My mother only had one alicorn descendant, me. So far, none of my own children have been born as alicorns. And my one year olds certainly could not speak, let alone converse."
"She was talking within a day of being born. As for her genetic heritage, Allie is a modified clone of your mother," I said, frankly. "Embryos were created from centuries-old DNA samples taken from Moon Glow. My modifiers corrected the damaged portions of the genetic code, replacing that code with mine, thus her coloring. It was the previous regime's last-resort method of creating an alicorn in an attempt to bypass the race based security lockouts."
"Then, why was I not released, instead?" Lunar Eclipse asked, as if doing such should have been obvious.
"Because you were forgotten?" Kakuun suggested, shrugging.
"Your existence had been reduced to that of a breezie tale," I said. "Fortunately for you, some of us have been doing research." Admittedly, her discovery had been accidental, but there was no need to share that detail.
Cacha leaned closer to me, which was quite some feat, considering she was already glued to my side. "Something here is odd," she whispered.
"A lot of things here are odd," I whispered back. "Which one in particular do you mean?"
"She's sane. Our thousand year old Hellite is absolutely nuts, and she had company when she wanted it. This one has been alone for two thousand years, give or take, and can hold a civil conversation? That is just waaay too weird."
"I can hear you," Eclipse said. Oops. "What, in Heaven's name, makes you think I am alone?"
Double oops? Did she have imaginary friends?
"You appear to be living in a royal bed-sit, with only one way in or out. What other conclusion should we draw?" I asked. "Personally, I would go mad if I was trapped in here for just a year." How could anypony run in this cramped space?
Lunar Eclipse harrumphed. "This room has more than one exit, albeit none into the habitat itself," she said. "This is the ready-room, the captain's room attached to the bridge. The area we are confined to is relatively small, but is many times larger than this bed-sit, as you call it. The space is quite livable, even if resources are scare."
"What bridge?" Allie asked, no doubt picturing a structure that spanned a gap.
"It's the room from where they control the motion of the habitat when it is traveling, Allie," I said. "At least, it would have been if the habitat had actually gone anywhere."
"I am surprised you know that we have not traveled." Eclipse said. "I have never seen any mention of it on the media."
"Of course you haven't. As you full well know, until recently, they taught that nothing was outside the habitat. And I don't mean the absence of matter by that. I mean the absence of existence. The funny little stories on the media that you were laughing about before were my idea, to soften the population to the concept that something is outside, even if we don't know what it is. The population don't need to know about the habitat's engines, or the fact that they have only ever been used to supply power to the life support chambers," I said.
"Is that so? At least I can educate you on that matter, even if it will mean an end to those amusing little tales. I think it is time for you to come with me to the bridge. There you will learn much," Eclipse said. Without even waiting for an answer, she climbed off her bed, and walked out through the one door we had not yet investigated.
We followed the princess through the left of the two doors at the opposite end of her ready room to the magic arch. We found ourselves in a short, nondescript corridor in the standard habitat lack-of-color scheme. The corridor soon opened out into a large, circular room. Unlike just about everywhere else in Habitat Eleven, this room wasn't cream in color. In fact, it was a rusty brown, or more accurately, variations of a dark, rusty brown. There were multiple work stations with consoles that formed concentric rings around the central point in the room. And there in the center, much like a throne, was an elaborate couch, presumably the captain's seat.
Most of the consoles were deactivated, or dead, just empty shells from which their components had been stripped. Some still had seats near them, but most did not. Only one or two of them were glowing with life. From this distance, and angle, I was not able to make out what was being displayed. If this desolate and damaged room was how the habitat was meant to be controlled, it didn't look like we would be going anywhere, but then, I knew that already. There was not enough fuel left in the tanks for a trip of any appreciable duration.
The room wasn't totally devoid of life. A couple of the seats were occupied by violet ponies with fluffy great mops of pale violet hair, and amber eyes with unusual, vertical slit pupils. They appeared to be engaged in some sort of game with each other, which involved moving small pieces of scrap around a checkered board. They looked up to see who had entered the room, their eyes enlarging and remaining fixed on us. That was when I noticed they had wings, leathery ones quite unlike Allie's feather covered wings.
"Holy Celestia!" one said.
"Visitors!" said the other.
Clearly Princess Lunar Eclipse was not living alone, just as she had said, because here were two ponies, quite alive, at that. As I stared back at the pair, awaiting an introduction, I noticed they were illuminated by two light sources, one of them a silvery blue, that appeared to be coming from the large, dark, hexagonal recesses that patterned the ceiling.
As curious as I was about these odd ponies, I was more interested to see what was lurking in the darkness above. I took a couple of uninvited steps forward, so I could look up into the opening, and was greeted with the surprise of my life. These weren't light recesses – they were windows, and through them I could see some of what was beyond the walls of the habitat. This was my first time seeing beyond the walls of Habitat Eleven.
It was the first time I had ever seen something that was over twenty miles away. It was the first time I had seen anything that indicated just how pitifully small Habitat Eleven was. The sheer size of it was beyond what I could really understand. My eyes were telling me it was larger than I could imagine. My brain was telling me my eyes were underestimating it by a few orders of magnitude.
Logic dictated that the bridge of Habitat Eleven had to be right at the very top of the habitat, and presumably was sitting atop the shell of the giant globe that contained the world we knew. That put us further out of the habitat than I had ever been. I recalled the nausea I had felt when I passed through the magic arch. It must have transported, no, teleported us here. The other ponies were immediately forgotten by me, my mind occupied what I beheld, and what it could mean for all of us.
"So, now you know," Princess Lunar Eclipse said, walking up behind me. "That is what is outside."
"Just how big is it?"
"I believe it goes on forever. If any pony ever went out there to find out, they must still be looking, because they have not returned."
As I stared upwards, I felt the others who had come in with me move up by my side, various breathy exclamations made as they did. Apart from that, we remained in silence, content to stare upwards for as long as our necks would allow.
Directly above the habitat, central to the view, was the source of the light; a single star, on par with the projected size of the sky dome's virtual moon, Luna. The star was bright, but not so much that it hurt our eyes to stare at, whether we had Hellite enhanced eyes or not. Surrounding it was a giant sphere, the sides of which glowed pale blue, coloring the light that passed through.
The top and bottom of the sphere were a different matter, encrusted in some sort of dark, chaotic growth, for the lack of a better term. Spokes radiated horizontally from the glowing band of the star encasing sphere, and these were what my mind had referenced when deciding that which was top and bottom. Of course, had I first seen the view from a different angle, what I now considered top and bottom could have been left and right.
I could directly see the two spokes that reached out towards us, one to either side of us. Hints of spokes on the other side of the sphere were visible as pale tracings through the glowing sphere itself. A thread-like trace joined them together. I presumed it would be tube-like and of the same diameter as the spokes, the distance diminishing its apparent size. It was huge, magnificent, and very, very foreign.
Of course, that was not everything I could see though the windows. There was a lot of black. Everything that wasn't part of the structure was black, and that black was studded with tiny points of light. It took me a few moments to correlate the tiny, bright points of light with the comparatively dim glow of the pixels of the life support chamber's sky dome. So, that's what real stars looked like. They were much prettier, and if my eyes weren't mistaken, even varied slightly in color. I could spend an eternity staring at them. What would they look like closer? Would it be possible to view them with a telescope?
Of course, I didn't have a telescope, but I did have a gun sight. I activated the targeting spell of my inbuilt weapon system, using that to zoom in on the tiny points of light, but the result was disappointing. Even magnified, the stars remained as point sources. Something much more powerful would be needed. I dropped the targeting spell.
"What is wrong with this picture?" Kakuun asked, from beside me.
"It's not a picture," somepony answered, presumable one of the two that were in here when we arrived.
"Obviously," Kakuun said. "What I meant is why does the sky look nothing like what the sky dome suggests it should?"
"That is a good point. Have we been lied to all of these years?" That was quite possible, after all. "Aren't we meant to be sitting on some sort of spherical planetary-body?" I asked. "Or have we really moved, even though the engines were not used?"
"Yes, and no," Princess Lunar Eclipse said. "We are exactly where we used to be. The planet, the Earth, however, isn't."
View from the bridge. Note the pony reflections.
This is what Aneki thinks it looks like from a different angle.