“Flight Mechanics; Or Airs Above the Ground”
“Our level of technological development has never been very clear. So much that evidently was made by those with greater knowledge of arcane and physical arts remains in place, still used by modern ponies in the same manner that ants inhabit the trunks of trees. Can it be said then, that a loss of information occurred, at some distant point in the past? Why would this be so? Ponies have always written things down, preserved the most inane of details, spared no expense of foul vellum or later pressed hemp and ink. We know exactly what Princess Celestia had for breakfast on the sixteenth day of the ninth month of AN100, we know who made her then-retainer’s silken undergarments, for the love of the skies, but we cannot explain the methods of construction used in that grand edifice, her palace?
What of the station in the same city, which crouches in the shadow of that palace? It will not burn, exposed to even the hottest fires with which we make artificial rubies. The palace will not topple, despite its height of more than a kilometre, broad as a dozen galleon sails, where even the stupidest pegasus will know it is exposed to biting winds that would fell the stoutest of our so-called modern buildings.
This can only lend credence to my current larger hypothesis. Our histories have been tampered with. Evidence abounds through countless works. I have studied that which is there and that which should be but isn’t. I have myself dug below the topsoil around the slopes of our great mountain city, found things there that should not be. Two distinct strata of glasses, separated by perhaps a century. I am not a geologist, so I consulted appropriate works on the subject. Nothing! No eruptions, no wars, no industrial accidents. What dread heat made these layers? What titanomachy of the comparatively recent past has been hidden from us?” - excerpt from Fundamental Mysteries of Our Great Equestrian Heritage, published anonymously circa AN350, and currently believed to have begun life as a part-work, compiled between AN330 and AN349 by a number of different authors.
*
“The adult cock griffin (see alternative spellings, gryphon, gripen, griffon) stands approximately one point five metres at the withers, with hens generally being larger at one point seven five to two metres. Nose-to-flank measurements are equal between the sexes. Weights of around two hundred to three hundred kilograms are not uncommon, with hens in cub sometimes topping out at four hundred kilograms. The unwinged alce is shorter, generally less than one point five metres, though excessively muscled and far heavier, with some examples massing nearly eight hundred kilograms. All are armed with a set of talons to the fore, and a set of retractable claws to aft. These are remarkably similar to those found in Accipitriformes spp and Panthera spp, respectively.
Hyppogriffs (see alternative spellings as numerous as that for griffin) buck the trend of relative uniformity of morphology seen in alce and pure griffins, and come in many shapes and sizes. Individuals as large as the heavy earth ponies of our own dear race have been reported, as well as those no bigger than our foals. Flying ability is directly linked to mass, and the smallest and largest of them cannot take to the wing except in the most rudimentary fashion. Current theories suggest that the enormous variation in hyppogriffs, comparatively speaking, is the result of poor divine craftsmareship.” - A Yearling’s Guide to Griffins, AN955.
*
“My friends, it has always been said that open discussion of the precise limits on the powers and abilities of their Majesties was dangerous, and completely pointless anyway, since they Themselves will not be lead on it, and precious little evidence of any meaningful value exists. But, I say this is not so. Let me assert some obvious points. They exist as physical objects in our universe. Our universe is governed, is it not, by orderly rules by which it conducts itself without fail. Our understanding of these rules has never been greater, and our knowledge of thaumics is legendary, the envy of all.
Would it be so dangerous, then, so pointless, to also assert that our Princesses, being objects existing in our universe, are equally bound by orderly rules? And, therefore, that their powers and abilities are limited, explainable and drawable into the mundane? Friends, I ask you, how is it that, over the past three centuries, our explanations and theories for all manner of physical things, all types of life systems, of cells and their activities, of chemical reactions, of metallurgy, of flight and its impulsions, of magic and its functions, have advanced in leaps and bounds unimaginable to our grandsires, but that those so dear to us, so vital to the Equestrian way of life, the Princesses, are still couched in terms of mystery and superstition? I say that this is shameful to we modern Equestrians, an embarrassment no more worthy of continuation than Diamond Dog worship of rocks or the fear of windigoes.
I propose that we learned fellows of this honoured establishment resolve, right now, without hesitation or pause, to pull back the veil of centuries’ ignorance and, without worry for what they might think or what they could do to us, describe, define and right anew a true history of alicorns.” - from a speech by Doctor Noisemare, 342nd Annual Equestrian Guild of Right Honourable Mages and Engineers Gala Dinner, shortly before his tragic death in a cart accident.
*
Eventually the corpse of the East-West, caught up with the remains of Didn't Want to Stop For Tea Anyway, sunk beneath the filmy grey of the great canal. Despite the relatively shallow draft at this point of the route, very little could be seen through the pollution of the water, or the drifting morass of loose cargo and small pieces of wooden wreckage.
“This changes everything, you know,” Astrapios was saying, when Emboss trotted over to their little rescued group, which was hanging around on the mounded up canal bank, between the canal and the tow path.
“What does?” Emboss said. “The fact we're out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“No, you daft horse, meeting the King, just like that!” The little hippogryph was very animated, and couldn't help glancing over at the subgroup of the twins, Erisne and Ensire, and the King, along with the body of his friend, lain respectfully on the scant grass. “We just rescued him. He owes us. We even went back to get that corpse. Equestrians understand this concept, I know you do.”
“Very mercenary,” Truth said, frowning and resisting the urge to preen her husband. “His coltfriend just died.”
Astrapios' brow furrowed, and he glanced again at the body, before coming back to Truth.
“Bodyguard, mentor, not a lover! Whatever gave you that idea?” Astrapios said, keeping his Equuish low and whispered.
“He just seems very upset, anyway, isn't it a fashion of the Gryphic court to take males as lovers?” Truth said, quite seriously.
“Where did you read that? Some trashy romance novel?” Astrapios clicked his beak, making some gryphon gesture that was still mysterious to the ponies. “Nevermind. That was Foel, the last King's bodyguard, close family friend and mentor to the new King, Hywell Edda,” Astrapios said, irritably. “The same Hywell Edda there! Everyone knows about Foel. Every gryphon, anyway.”
“Zebras also know of this Foel,” iYut said, smirking, then spat. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. May the souls of his ancestors gnash their beaks in anguish at his passing.”
“Yes, well,” Astrapios said, sidling slightly further away in disgust. “In any case, he owes us. We can tell him our story. Hywell is a new king, but everything suggests that he is a good and just ruler, similar to his father. More liberal, I think, as far as that phrase has meaning here.”
“We should probably have told the authorities here anyway, come to think of it,” Truth said. “The Thiasus affects everyone on the planet. It's not just a pony problem.”
“Just finding the nearest official wouldn't have done you much good. The leadership here is a complex tangle of blinding fear and recrimination. The King and the Crown have always ruled with a combination of violence and mutual loathing of zebras and ponies.” Astrapios gave his gryphon smile. “At best, you'd have been taken to some local dukelet or vice-whatever, and ransomed. Or something. The closest you'd have come to the King would have perhaps been as an entrée.”
“I thought you said they didn't eat ponies here?” Emboss said.
“It's a big country.” Astrapios shrugged. “Herbivores get lost sometimes. Mistaken for deer. Four legs, smells good, looks the same, accidents happen, don't they?”
“Carnivore apologist scum.” iYut grinned, nudged the hippogryph. “Don't wind up the poor little ponies, they've just been through a very traumatic experience. Two very traumatic experiences.”
“Excuse me,” said a voice, speaking uncomfortable Equuish, small and shy, though somehow conveying immense dignity. “I hope I am not interrupting the conversation.”
“Your Majesty,” Astrapios said, bowing reflexively, which involved touching his chest to the ground then briefly exposing the neck. “May I be the first to offer my sincere condolences for your loss.”
“Your sympathy is most appreciated, at this trying time,” Hywell said, with a look of deep concentration on his face. “I apologize for my lack of the equine tongue earlier, but the Crown provides, in time.”
The King let that statement hang in the air for a moment, as his bright, falconic eyes with their still-unsettling circular pupils examined the ponies with predatory airs. Had they not already spent a good deal of time around gryphons, Emboss was sure that look might have spurred a stampede or two. As it was, the mesohippus brain writhed uncomfortably below the cognitive processes of his complex mind. Muscles wrapping his flanks and above his stifle twitched ever so slightly.
“What brings you to my country?” the King said, just before the silence became awkward, settling down on his haunches.
“We were bringing news from Equestria, your Majesty,” Astrapios said, before Emboss or Truth could say anything. “There is a plot underway, one which threatens us all.” The hippogryph stopped, clicked his beak, turned his head this way and that, and Emboss realized he was actually lost for words. Finally, he said: “An ancient compact is about to be fulfilled, and old Gods allowed to run rampant across the face of globe.”
“I see,” the King said, nodding once. “Who were you, again?”
“I am Astrapios, Captain of the Barely Eagle, acting as guide and interpreter for Double Emboss, a senior civil servant in the government of Her Majesty Princess Celestia, who is accompanied by his wife.”
Truth gave a little indignant huff at this, but held her tongue.
“There is a diplomatic channel, I believe…” the King said, dragging his right foreclaw across the grass. “Surely you could have contacted the ambassador in Canterlot?”
“One side effect of the preparations to commence this ancient compact was a sudden, severe and total deterioration in the security situation,” Astrapios said, slowly unfolding his wings. “The non-divine elements of the government have collapsed, military units are isolated and ineffective against such a large and widespread uprising, I’m sure you understand that evacuation was our only option.”
“What could possibly cause such rioting?” the King said, a gryphic expression of puzzlement on his feathers. “Ponies are a peaceful race, not inclined to violent outbursts.” Emboss and Truth exchanged bewildered glances at the words coming from the King’s beak. “At least, not without provocation.”
“Drunkenness, your Majesty, magical drunkenness,” Emboss said, voice nearly cracking. “It spread like infection, selecting victims at random and moving through the herd uncontrolled until everyone was either fleeing or fighting. We have been at sea for some time, and I fear that now the entire country is under the spell of the Thiasus.”
“And what are your Elements of Harmony doing?” the King said. “This certainly sounds like a task for them.”
“I… don’t know, your Majesty,” Emboss said, head drooping. “But Celestia is behind all of it, and she has always been their superior. I cannot help but think that she has found some way to negate their influence.”
“Or use them to her advantage,” Truth said, grimly. “Some or all may be unwilling assistants.”
“Well, on behalf of the gryphic peoples, I thank you for your warning,” the King said, standing up suddenly. “I know that it must have been a gruelling journey, not without risks to yourselves and others. I will see to it that you are duly reimbursed for your expenses by the Treasury, if you would compile an invoice and give it to my bodyguard…”
Through his interactions he had seemed to be reciting lines, some long-practiced mantra, but now he turned to the cooling body arrayed behind him and realized the mistake he had made. He looked back toward the ponies, and there were now tears rolling off hydrophobic feathers. He made a sound like a mouse being run over by a carriage.
“I’m sure we'll manage without, your Majesty,” Truth said, solemnly. “If there’s anything we can do...?”
Hywell shrugged, shook his head and closed his eyes, turning away. He tracked back across the poor and withered grass, then collapsed beside the dead gryphon Foel. His puff-ball tail lay flat, unmoving, and he moved only when further wracking sobs of some incomprehensibly deep sorrow emerged from him. Emboss felt his breath catch in his throat and had to look away. The barrier of species was nothing in the face of this.
“I think I speak for all of us when I say that didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped,” Astrapios said, after a minute’s awkward contemplation, in which the gryphon twins Ensire and Erisne resumed their respectful comforting.
“Whatever happened to the stoic gryphons?” Truth said, sighing. “Aren’t Kings supposed to be above individual tragedy?”
“He was doing a pretty well there, really,” Astrapios said. “Foel was the only thing remotely close to your Equestrian concept of a sire figure, by all reports. They were inseparable. I’d like to see either of you do your day job moments after you witnessed the violent death of a loved one.”
“Why doesn’t he just use his divine abilities to fix his friend?” Emboss said. “Our medical mages can repair all manner of traumatic injury, and they are only unicorns. If the Crown is on a par with the alicorns--”
“It is a wholly different beast,” Astrapios said, irritated. “The King can do no more actual magic than I can. The Crown decides for itself.”
“Then why does it even need a mortal host?” Emboss said, frowning.
“I don’t think now is right to discuss the finer points of thaumocosmology,” Astrapios said. “Time’s shorter than I am.”
“Let the King be with his miseries,” iYut said, shaking his head. “My people will be the solution here. What good can he do? Command his armies, instruct a nation? These things are as embers in the fire to beings of such earth shattering potential, as we are up against.”
“The Crown could fight Celestia, is where I imagine Astrapios’ thinking is going, iYut,” Truth said, almost stumbling on the words. “Combat her on roughly the same level.”
“Actually, I was thinking he could leverage his influence as King to get us safe and immediate passage to zebric climes, but that’s a good idea too,” Astrapios said, raising a hoof. “We must be careful, though. My people tell stories about the last time divines came to blows. Do you remember the sea marsh we came through on the way here? They say it was once a mountain range.” He paused and gulped, clicking his beak nervously. “They say it was so bright for so long that gryphons nearly forgot about nights.”
“We have told the Crown what it needed to know,” iYut said, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. “Kufa kutupwa.”
All of a sudden, the ground began to shake.
*
Cerberus charged the abominable thing like a rampaging musth-addled elephant, throwing up gouts of pulverized glass as he hurtled toward it. There was a sound like hammers on a slab of hanging meat, which pealed out across the tortured desert. Each of his three heads grappled in different places, clamping down hard, expressing forces great enough to forge diamonds. The thing’s beak opened in an anguished, burbling hiss, and it bashed at the great dog with its two largest tentacles. The eight smaller ones, which ended in barbed flails, attacked his torso and neck, scratching and whipping with ever-increasing fury.
The rear of the unspeakable nightmare being ended with a slug-like tail, one vast muscle for moving. It was banded with slippery plates of chitin, from which sprouted dozens of differing spines, some needle straight, some wildly curved and themselves coated in spines, as if a mad deity had combined all the parts of animals it didn’t like into one aberrant beast. Discord watched with glee as the tail finally succeeded in pushing out the whole of the creature, defeating the weight of Cerberus.
There was a flat boom and a blinding flash of light as Cerberus’ central mouth weapon fired again, this time at point-blank range. The creature screeched in agony, like a million bats being beaten slowly to death, and a great billowing cloud of smoke and steam erupted upwards, casting long shadows across the cracked black glass and scattered ruin of the gate complex. At the same time the intensity of the creature’s thrashing grew, the barbs finally finding purchase in Cerberus’ hide, peeling open his flanks and underbelly with eruptions of pink mist. The dog made no noises of pain, however, even when the tentacles penetrated the wounds, seeking to cause more damage within.
Discord clapped his mismatched paws together and giggled, watching the spherical aperture of the wormhole, which was now free to admit another horror. What will it be, he wondered. Something of Carnifex’s kin, a Very High Dragon, the Old Slithering Ones, the Smooze entity?
Three orbs erupted from the gate, each the size of a small carriage, perfectly smooth, grey-green and opaque. Two of them immediately ascended, speeding up from a trot to various low Mach numbers in under ten seconds. Discord watched them go, watched them turn westwards as they passed through two kilometres of altitude. He did not recognize them as any of Equestria’s past tormentors, but confidence was high as their Mach fronts washed over him. Cerberus made a grim lowing noise and collapsed as more of the tentacles were driven inside him, but he kept biting down on the squid atrocity. His left and right jaws were rewarded simultaneously, as chunks the size of grand pianos were rent, releasing torrents of foul black ichor.
The orb which had stayed behind suddenly became crazed all over, then split like a perfectly peeled egg. Discord could barely contain himself. I just can’t wait to see what unholy anathema, what dread threat to the continued existence of life it contains. Wasn’t it always said that all creatures great and small were kept inside? He wriggled back and forth with demonic joy, wings flapping with excitement, then his smile faded.
Four hundred thousand red Monarch butterflies had suddenly appeared above the desert.
*
As Twilight emerged carefully from the belly of Mytheme, she saw that much of Ponyville appeared to have survived the half-hour seismic assault. The timber-framed buildings that comprised many of the town’s private dwellings, whose loose wooden joints and beams had been able to sway and stretch with the energy of the quakes, still stood proudly, albeit with a little less in the way of thatch and some curls and gouts of smoke and flame that suggested cooking fires and lights had been disturbed.
The larger buildings had not fared so well. Generally built of brick and stone, they’d tried to weather the storm and failed catastrophically under the sheer force of it. A sad mess of broken structural members and half-pulverized red brick marked where once had been the Town Hall. Nottlygna were flying or walking about it, already scaring up a relief effort. Though they had evacuated the makeshift infirmary as soon as the earthquakes had begun, much in the way of material now sat beneath a blanket of ruin.
Ears flicking this way and that in the sudden, eerie calm, punctuated only by the slow rustling exhalation of a town’s many buildings contracting back to their regular shapes, Twilight trotted down the boarding ramp and into the still-warm air of an Equestrian evening. Luna joined her a moment or two later.
“Did you feel the way space curved?” Luna said, followed by a long, slow exhale. “This was an event of supernatural origin, undoubtedly.”
“I guessed as much, Luna,” Twilight said, glancing at her. “Do you think it might have had something to do with our… very tentative decision to go ahead with making the Nectar?”
“The coincidence and scale seem too great to be mere chance.”
“I agree,” Twilight said, nodding grimly.
A membranous winged shape appeared above the shaken rooftops, clad in the lighter jet plate of the trotlites. It spread chiropteran sails and shed the last of its cruising speed, thudding to a heavy landing on the abused near-quagmire of the Ponyville village green. Shoulder forepouldrons, a largely ceremonial piece of the stripped down nottlygna battledress, proudly bore dual images of blinded owls, posed dexter and affronte. The nottlygna did not break his stride, springing into a purposeful canter toward Twilight and Luna.
“From what damneder pit of an armoury did you dredge those, soldier?” Luna said, laughing. “I have not seen the emblems of the Strigidae in a dragon's age.”
“Strigidae?” Twilight wondered, aloud. “Ah, more of our supposed hidden past?
The nottlygna gave a respectful tap with his back right hoof, standing at attention some distance away. Rivulets of rain, drying already, rolled like hot mercury down the face of his Coltinthian helmet, seeming to fidget and sizzle as they navigated the blood runnels of the armour.
“Our hidden past? You and yours were not even the gleam in the eye of your thousandth great damsire when me and mine were long dead and forgotten,” Luna said, smiling, still looking fondly on the nottlygna.
“We all trot on four legs, Luna,” Twilight said, frowning. “It was the general 'our', anyway.”
“Ah, permission to report, Majesties,” the nottlygna said, the gem-glazed eye-holes betraying nothing but a professional stare into the distance behind his betters. “Matters of urgency--”
“Say your bit, Strigidae,” Luna said, sparing an approving nod.
“I was flying a recce eastwards, about twelve miles as the anzu flies, when the earthquakes struck. I would not have noticed, had I missed the fissure that swallowed West Wingshade, and--”
“The fallen Cloudholme is gone?” Luna said, eyes wide.
“I did not stay to see what became of it, Majesty, because that was when I saw on the western horizon a great flame, as the earliest dawn, though it soon faded, and was replaced by a stain of smoke.”
“The Roarkes!” Twilight gasped. “The Roarkes must have gone up. Oh, sweet skies, this is a disaster. Port Dauphine, the cities of the coast, the changelings...”
“This event was widespread, then,” Luna said, her expression souring. “If so peaceful a range of mountains could be set to violence by it, I fear for all Equestrians, all peoples of this world.” Luna turned her gaze on Twilight with all the dread intensity of a reaping scythe. “Our very universe, home of all things, rages at our choices. Let us not be cowed.”
“I don't want to make the Nectars, Luna, not anymore,” Twilight said, taking an unconscious step back. “I just don't know what to think. I have been away, haven't I? How do I know I haven't walked into the middle of a civil war?”
The nottlygna wisely chose this moment to make himself scarce, somehow managing to sneak despite the weight of steel on his shoulders.
“Civil war?” Luna said, tasting the word and finding it bitter, lips pursing in disgust.
“Imposter? Mind control?” Twilight said, ears folded back. “These things I, we, have faced before. Need I remind you of the Royal Simulacrum?
Another step back.
“Twilight, we must stop our sister, it is the only way to end this for good.” Luna unmantled her wings just slightly, making her seem larger. “She will not be drawn into the open until the last moment. She must believe that her plan has come to fruition. Only then can we strike.”
“You would really cut down your own, then? Are all the stories of old fratricide true?”
“No!” Luna growled, showed teeth scarcely matching the dentition of herbivores. “Lies, all!”
“I have to gather the Elements,” Twilight said, feeling all the more a mouse before a tiger. “Whatever threat Equestria faces, be it from you--” Ultraviolet sparkles of magic flashed in and out of existence, grounded on the hull of Mytheme or buried themselves back into space/time. “--or Celestia, or the black old Gods of the places beyond, we will need to be together to face it.”
“I agree entirely, the Elements must be gathered, but some few thousand deaths phase you, some volcanoes set ablaze, some cities ruined, this make you reconsider your position?” Luna sneered. “You scarcely understand the doom poised over us.”
“That, Luna, is entirely the problem.”
Twilight was in the air, a pigeon's jumping bound for safety, before Luna had a chance to respond. The Queen of Tides turned to watch her ascent, but made no attempt to stop her.
*
Orderlies and porters dashed about the hospital, fetching, carrying and scurrying in the maelstrom of barely-organized chaos that followed the cessation of the shaking. Fluttershy had fled with the others to the relative safety of the skies, a terrifying half-hour, helping to carry those who could not loft themselves, but now was at a loss for anything to do. The doctors had predicted a flood of injuries, from the minor to the extreme, but few had come. There were rumours and second-hoof sightings of bat ponies all about, and some brave souls claimed to have seen Princess Luna disgorge from the object landed in the centre of the village.
Fluttershy was perched in the foyer, worrying over her options and on the verge of seeking out Twilight, wherever she had gone, when a unicorn in a surgical cloak coughed politely to announce his presence.
“I am Doctor Neighlen,” he said, gently. “You came in with the pink mare, some hours ago, you and the other Element, the Princess, yes?”
“Her name is Whom, I think.”
“Could you tell me who her next-of-kin are, please? Dam or sire?”
“Um, no,” Fluttershy said. “I'm not sure who she is, or really where she came from. Twilight said she found her on the Moon. I think that might be a metaphor.” Fluttershy sighed and shook her head. “Why do you want to know? Is Whom going to be okay?”
“A metaphor?” Neighlen said, frowning. “The Moon?”
“It's complicated.”
“Yes, right, well, we wouldn't normally tell non-relatives about patients, but I think we can make an exception, given the exigencies of this circumstance.” He smiled, faintly. “If we can't trust the Elements of Harmony, who can we trust?” Composing himself into an appropriately solemn mein and clearing his throat, Neighlen said: “I'm very sorry to tell you this, but I'm afraid that Whom passed away this afternoon. She was in no pain, and went peacefully.”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said, and looked away. “I see.”
“We did everything that we could.”
“I understand, Doctor.”
“If you need anything, let me or one of the other doctors know. We'll do whatever we can to help you.”
Neighlen bit his lip, made to turn away, then stopped. His brow wrinkled.
“Is something the matter, Doctor?” Fluttershy said, cocking her head.
“Look, I might be wrong, okay?”
“Wrong about what?”
“Princesses, right, they're...” Neighlen struggled with the right words. “Magical, very magical, right?”
“Twilight is the Element of Magic.”
“Yes, yes, okay, well, could it be that some sort of life ward is in effect?”
“Life ward?”
“Some sort of really high level, alicorns-only, deep magic thing, beyond the ken of we mortals,” he said, an increasingly pained expression on his face. “I'm only trained so far, but there have always been stories banded around, that alicorns can reverse death processes at stages when they'd otherwise be thought necromancers.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Whom's body is dead, there's no doubt about that at all. It was so badly damaged by this fall and the resulting heart attacks, you could barely tell it was once supportive of life.”
“Oh, my, that's awful.”
“Yes, but the brain is still alive, you see?” Neighlen did a nervous little two-step. “I'm a thaumocorpist by trade, I can scry inside organs and determine their functionality, or lack thereof. Her body is dead, but the brain lives. She's sleeping, dreaming.”
“So she isn't dead.”
“Dead, but not dead, dreaming. You see my problem now?” He whinnied. “I'd never even entertain these thoughts, were there not--”
“Exigent circumstances, yes, you said.”
Neighlen quieted, and his posture relaxed. The little veins that had sprung up on his neck began to diminish.
“So, are you--”
There was a thaumic shove in the air, like someone opening a door using only a large, inflatable ball for leverage. The big ponyoak slabs that fronted the foyer slammed open and the mare behind the reception desk squealed in surprise. A purple spectre swooped in half a second later, looking all the part of a graceful swan preparing for an equally graceful landing, only to trip the moment hooves made contact with the highly varnished wooden flooring. Twilight came to a decidedly awkward, stumbling halt before them. Fluttershy screwed her eyes shut reflexively against the dust that her desperate forward strokes brought flying into her face.
“Thank… whatever Gods may be, you’re still here,” Twilight said, slightly winded. “We’re assembling the Elements, there may be very little time.” She folded her wings, adjusted pannier straps, then peered at Neighlen and Fluttershy, who were staring right back. “Oh, and how is Whom?”
“Your Majesty!” Neighlen gave a bow of the head. “I was just speaking to your colleague…”
“She didn’t make it, Twilight, I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said, sidling up close and laying a wing over her shoulders.
“But, the--” Neighlen began.
“She didn’t…” Twilight said, and gulped, words strangled in her throat by the tight, icy feeling that had appeared there unbidden. “Oh, no,” she managed, and her vision blurred as tears formed. “Why? How?”
“Doctor Neighlen?”
“T-The broken rib slipped and punctured a lung, which collapsed, allowing fluid to escape and compress the rest of the abdomen,” he said, starting to tremble. “The drop in blood pressure resulted in cardiac arrest, and irreversible damage to the heart muscle.” He dipped his head. “B-but--”
“But, Doctor Neighlen says her brain is still healthy and active.”
“Yes!” he whinnied, looking as though he were about to bolt. “It’s inexplicable. Her brain is still alive, she, the pony that she is, remains in there, somewhere.” He gulped, ears flat. “Dead but dreaming!”
Twilight frowned bitterly and wiped her eyes, then stared down Neighlen.
“I don’t understand,” she said, breath coming a little ragged. “How? How is this possible?”
“Well, your Majesty, with all due respect,” he said, withering under the gaze. “I was rather hoping you could tell me that.”
*
“We engaged the gryphon formation approximately twenty-five minutes after dusk, upon the Roarke High Plain, ten leagues west of the small settlement of Dauphine, having happened upon them with four units from the Princesses' Third Unarmoured Division, two of the Wingshade Thirteenth Heavily Expurgated Division, and nine of the Night’s Guard Third Secondment Brigade. Mages of the Third and the seconded nottlygna trotlites scored immediate kills from long range, making excellent use of flame and spear. The gryphon formation, being composed primarily of reconstituted elements of the Eleventh Company of the Stalwart Beak, the Ninety-Seventh Company of the Alarmed Duchy and various others, were not intimidated either by the conjured fire or the fanged, screaming mass of charging Guard.
It has been noted that Equestrian and gryphic air power was entirely uninvolved in this engagement. Whilst twelve units of the Princesses' Own Aerials and four of the Cloudsdale Legio VII Victris were in the area, they had been summoned to support actions against remnant gryphon naval elements in the Bay of the High Dauphine, and were therefore unavailable. Equally, while the gryphon formations included elements from several reconstituted aerial battalions, none put to the sky for fear of mages, as had been their practice during the campaign.
Lacking their own ranged abilities, except for a pair of captured Debussy 11s, which were dealt with rapidly by the mage’s antimaterial spells (rubyfire), the gryphons met the challenge of the Guard with alacrity, beginning the close-quarters stage of the engagement. The mages abandoned their fire and engaged from behind the nottlygna, along with the archers of the Unarmoured and the heavily plated Expurgated. It has been mentioned before that this was not the ideal order of battle, that those of the Expurgated, plated in twice their bodyweight of enchanted steel, should have gone first. It should be remembered, however, that nottlygna are hard to stop or organize when they have captured the scent.
As we had been out of communication with the greater forces of the nation for some time, tracking the last of the gryphon host, we had not realized that we pursued the Margrave Lawgoch’s Guard as well, until Lawgoch herself raised her colours and entered the fray from the rear of the enemy formation. Riding upon the back of her famed deerstrier, Ceffyl, she blunted the nottlygna charge. Following that collapse, the Expurgated were surrounded and rapidly struck down, though each soul fought bravely to the end and to the last mare.
Routed, the mages began to fall back, covered by the archers. Initially in good order, the gryphons had been rallied by the appearance of their war leader, and overtook the withdrawal rapidly, overcoming conjured fire and strikes of lighting. With little cover on the plain, our loss appeared imminent, until Her Majesty descended upon the field of battle from the direction of the sun, bearing with Her nine regiments of Her personal Guard. Scattered elements of the nottlygna and the surviving mages, archers and squires were equally rallied by this miraculous sign and symbol of our assured victory.
Her Majesty quickly surrounded the enemy formation, and numerous gryphons fell to unrestricted mage fire and bolts from Guard weapons. In moments, Lawgoch struck her colours, and the engagement ceased. Ceffyl, having taken arrows and fire through his barding, bravely carried Lawgoch out to meet Her Majesty Princess Celestia. She circled Celestia once, then her mount collapsed and died. Lawgoch knelt before Her Majesty and stripped off her armour, laying down her sword and other arms upon the ground. She remained there in silence until the Guard took her away.” - excerpted from Ex Defensio Regni, Ex Defensio Populi, an official account of the First Invasion, AN 466. Compiled by a number of scribes, historians and secretaries, this account is considered the authoritative history, and remains a standard text.
*
Rainbow Dash came to consciousness out of painful half-dreams, filled with vague monster shapes dragging her down, sandwiched between distant visions of ruined cities. The remembered aches of the dream segued smoothly into what she feared were real wounds. There was only darkness all around her, with a soundscape of slow grinding and nearby whimpers, moans and desperate shouts for help. The air stank, and what wasn’t overpowered by the awful stench of cracked sewer mains and volatile alcohols becoming vapour was marred with the scent of terror from several species at once.
The pall of booze was gone entirely, banished by adrenaline, leaving only a slight fuzziness. Trying to move produced only more pain, of an acute, stabbing type that had her wincing and grinding her teeth together. Something had come down on her lower back, trapping her left leg. It didn’t feel right. She could barely move anything beyond her stifle. Worrying, wet and warm sensations of fluid accompanied the pain. Old memories of emergency first aid training, a mandatory part of any career on the wing, began to surface. Whatever’s on top of me could be the only thing keeping the blood inside.
This realization set her heart hammering, but she bit down on the fear. It would only worsen her condition. What happened, anyway? The bar! Yes, that’s right. Twenty-Two Skidoo. What a dive! I bet the ceiling collapsed under the pull of all the miserable bastards drinking away their last bit. She tried to laugh, but further ills exposed themselves, and she groaned lowly instead. Rib’s gone, maybe a couple, actually. Wait a minute! Earthquake! The short-term recollection, obviously knocked out of action by some bash to the head, came flooding back. Oh, ace. That’s all I needed. What idiot scheduled an earthquake? I’ll geld the bastard myself. With my teeth. She blew her nose and tasted iron. If I ever get out of here.
Blinding light stung her eyes. Sounds of physical exertion and the familiar keening of unicorn magic, filled the little space, along with a flood of cold air. She hadn’t realized how hot it had gotten beneath the insulation of a hundredweight of tumbled-down stone. Stinging grit invaded her vision. She shook her head, trying to make it clear, as tears came to help.
“Medic!” a stallion bellowed, amidst a crunch of rock. “Quick as you like!”
Half-formed images of ponies and ruined spaces slipped past. She must have passed out, because she couldn’t recall the rescue. The sensation of the string-webbed stretcher under her body was one well known to her, and she managed to convince herself to relax. Whoever was carrying the stretcher stopped, and the sounds of many hooves moving aside to admit someone else met her ears.
“Scared up some thiopental,” a mare said, breathlessly. “I’ll put her under for now. Just watch the airway, alright?” A beat, then: “Hey, isn’t this one of the Elements?”
There was a sharp sting under her right leg, then nothing.
*
Twilight, Fluttershy and Neighlen stood silently in the hospital’s underground mortuary. Plain, white-tiled walls pressed in around them, and the rough marble floor, devoid of any retained natural patterns or swirls that were the custom elsewhere, made loud clacking noises whenever anyone moved. The only assent to any decoration was in the occasional half-glyph or sparkling rune, which betrayed how such a building had survived the earthquake.
“Show me,” Twilight said, after a moment.
Neighlen nodded politely and his horn lit up, the usual keening sound amplified to unpleasantness. Filamentary lights like glow worms appeared in the air above Whom’s motionless body, which was lain respectfully on a big steel tray, yet to be loaded into the ranks of cold storage. Neighlen closed his eyes and concentrated, and a tenuous image boiled up out of nothing, as though they were looking into a mirrored pool. Structures that Twilight recognized from the plates in her anatomical texts resolved. Neighlen cleared his throat.
“As your Majesty can see, the cardiac muscle is almost entirely dead,” he said, more composed now that he was in his professional element. “The thaumocorpic spell set provides false colour representation to describe different properties of any given tissue. Black means necrotic.”
The view shifted, fuzzed and flickered, before resolving again, this time on a different scene. The unmistakeable whorls and gnarled furrows of the brain appeared. Purple and gold flairs ran inside and out of the neocortex and subordinate structures, whirling and dancing in time to a regular rhythm like a colony of ants bathed in starlight.
“As you can see, it is very much alive,” Neighlen said. “She is dreaming, though deeply, as if she is just about to enter the central dreamless phase of sleep.”
“Recovery mode,” said a new voice, and there was suddenly a two beat clop upon the marble behind them. “She awaits retrieval.”
Neighlen snapped around and gasped, then bowed reverentially.
“Princess Luna, Your Majesty, welcome to the hospital, I had--” he began, but Luna talked over him.
“One down, Twilight, four to go,” Luna said, nodding politely at Fluttershy. “I will remain here and coordinate a relief effort.”
Twilight furrowed her brow and glared, then said: “What do you mean, recovery?”
“After the first few iterations, I realized that the brain was the most vital, and most unknown, part of the whole equation,” Luna said, sidling up Whom’s reposed form and sniffing the back of her neck. “Bodies are easy. Anyone with time and energy can do bodies. Muscles, sinew, ligaments, a few highly mechanical organs with known and defined purposes which operate on micro and macro scales. Easy.”
Doctor Neighlen audibly gulped and adopted a safe distance from fully half the world’s alicorns, lest his ears accidentally pick up some dread pronouncement that would make mere mortals drop dead at the hearing of it.
“Brains are more complicated. Wouldn’t do to lose them every time there was an incident, and oh, were there incidents!” Luna said, dourly. “I remember now. I can remember everything.” She orbited the tray, eyes flicking up and down the body, absorbing the scene with a hungry ferocity. “When a serious accident or injury is detected, the brain clamps shut and switches to an onboard mode, drawing power from magical sources.”
“Hah! I knew it!” Neighlen shouted, then gasped as he realized what he’d done. “Life ward!” he whispered.
“It won’t last forever, though,” Luna said. “A few hours, at most. Oxygen and nutrient requirements are a tricky thing to meet with magic alone. Too much heat builds up, along with metabolic products it cannot get rid of. Drowns, sweating in its own filth. Just enough time to recover her into a new body, no more.”
“So, that’s what was in the graves, in the Lunar Principality,” Twilight said, lowly. “Her former bodies.”
“Yes, though she recalls them as… something else,” Luna said, sighing. “If she actually recalled dying and living again, in as many cycles as that, it would have negatively impacted the study. So, I told her they were her sisters, and that they had died before she was born, and that was that.”
“How…” Twilight said, expression wrinkling as she thought of other voids. “How was she, uh…”
“Synthesis, directly from magic,” Luna said, smiling faintly. “Why, what were you thinking of? You know as well as I that no foal could be conceived and live within us, Twilight. I had no stallions, anyway. That should be obvious. I assume you found the toy.” She winked, and Doctor Neighlen looked as though he might actually fall down dead.
Twilight winced and nodded faintly, then sighed and tapped her hoof on the marble.“It took me to the edge of my abilities just to synthesize a few grams of oats,” she said, steering the conversation away from the unspeakable. “It wasn't a question of mechanics, anyway. It was a lack of local power. You just can't draw that much from any one locale.”
“Very true, but there are ways around this,” Luna said, casually. “All you must do is thread wormholes of a very small width through local space, as much as you need. All physically separated space, when causally linked in any way, behaves as the same space.”
“But they aren't stable, wormholes collapse on time scales of milliseconds.”
“Come now, you know that isn't true,” Luna said, smiling. “Did you yourself not come through the Tartarus gateway?”
“Speaking of which, who exactly is responsible for all that?” Twilight said, changing the subject again. “That's technology in there. It seemed like a demesne, when I first got inside, but orders of magnitude more powerful, more vast. We traversed it for days at high speed, saw all manner of things, saw--” Twilight stopped, wondering whether to reveal Starswirl's presence and vanishing. “Saw great works, like nothing made by any race I know of.”
“I hate to say it to one such as you, Twilight, but nopony really knows,” Luna said. “Like the other demesnes, they were discovered. We co-opted the smaller, easier to understand, places for our own purposes, but Tartarus was different. They are inarguably of design, but by whom or for what, I cannot say. That we use it as a prison is merely because we could not discern what the rest of it is actually for.”
“Majesties,” Neighlen said, and received the rapt attention of both. “I am not a learned scholar of the thaumic arts, beyond where they apply to my profession, but I think I have followed this conversation and, if there is any chance we can save this patient...”
“Oh, no, impossible,” Luna said, dismissing it with a shake of her head. “Against the current magical background, the requisite network of wormhole energy siphons could not be made, I'm sure you've noticed, Twilight.”
“That's how we ended up in Tartarus in the first place,” Twilight said, nodding.
“Ah, I see, to fashion a new body, yes,” Neighlen said. “Could a donor be used?”
Luna looked into the middle distance, a curious expression on her face. She cocked her head, then nodded.
“I do not see why not,” she said. “Although, host might be more correct. Physical transplantation of the brain structure would be out, for immune reasons. The other body would attack what it saw as an invader.” Luna paused, deep in thought. “I could use your thaumocorpic spell, Doctor Neighlen, to build up a record of the entire brain, then adapt the structures of another brain, using microtelekinetics, to match the recording.”
Everyone was silent. Neighlen had a look on his face as though he had just experienced some ineffable theophany, and Twilight was still catching up on the implications. Without missing a beat, Luna said: “I shall need a volunteer.”
“Just repair the heart, Luna, sweet skies!” Twilight said. “That's the only part that's damaged, right, Doctor Neighlen?”
“L-Lungs, lungs and ribs, yes, and the heart,” he said, all the veins on his neck appearing again.
“There's no reason to do all that, what you just mentioned, Luna,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “Would that even be Whom, anyway?” She laughed, though it was without humour. “I could write a dozen books on it, and we'd only have established the terms with which we'd hammer out the truth.”
“Hmm, replace the hardware components, restore the major physical system...” Luna said, as though the idea had never occurred to her.
“Stop talking about her like she's a machine!” Twilight said, stamping a hoof.
“Must we have this discussion again?” Luna said, rolling her eyes. “Whatever relationships you have formed with the simulacrum are comments only on your own ethics and intellect, they are none of my concern, and matter not in any case.”
“Excuse me?” Twilight said, fighting the old horsey urge to turn her back to strike an attacker, instead squaring up to the Princess. “My intellect? How dare you!”
Luna smiled faintly, as if talking to a foal who has just discovered how fast it can run. Her horn hazed from view, then adopted a nimbus of pale blue light. Twilight’s furious breath came suddenly in puffy clouds of vapor and, at the same time, she felt the unmistakable sensation of thaumic feedback. It took the edge from her anger, a stunning blow as the semi-conscious functions of her mind analyzed the returned signal for signs and symbols of its bearing.
“I have begun,” Luna said, dreamily, eyes staring off into the middle distance at something nobody else could see. “Doctor Neighlen, my learned friend, it would be highly advisable for you to leave at this point. You as well, Fluttershy. The air temperature is liable to reach toward its lowest minima.” She wriggled in the throes of mage’s bliss, as if trying to scratch an awkward itch. “Oh, yes, where the smallest parts of matter stop dead in their tracks. We may soon swim in our own breath.”
Neighlen nodded quickly, took a look around, then fled at a near canter, not even sparing a glance back through the heavy steel door, which he held open only long enough to admit Fluttershy, before he slammed it shut and bolted the lock. Water vapour in the air began to pattern it with frost moments later.
“What are you doing?” Twilight said, finding nothing she recognized in the vibrations of her own horn. “We never agreed to anything.”
“Replacing the physical hardware components,” Luna said, the corner of her mouth turning up ever so slightly. “Direct thaumosynthesis of materials required, not much mass overall, easier to do. Patch and fix.” She grunted disapprovingly. “Deconstruction of necrotic tissues, cleanup of existing cellular decay products… yes, all of this. Use the mass to lower the bill; carbon is carbon, after all.”
“What are you doing with all the heat? Why is it getting colder in here?” Twilight rolled her shoulders uncomfortably, feeling the skin prickle.
“No waste!” Luna snapped; those teeth again. “Extremely limited energy budget, can’t use Indra’s Web generation mechanism, must be frugal. Exchange energy for time, small use per second but longer operation.” She licked her lips, and the teeth were gone. “Also, small local violation of certain rules usually held inviolable. More work, more heat, usually, but now, more work, less heat.” Luna sighed, deeply. “Hope, pray, universe won’t mind in current state. Censure now would be catastrophic. Also, balance of risks. Alicorns, local environment; capable of very low cooling, absolute minima well known. No absolute hot; alicorns also survivable but local environment very much not.”
Twilight laughed, shook her head.
“So you are capable of simple speech,” she said. “That’s always bothered me. At least you’ve got it when it matters, right?”
“Styles and manners, Twilight.”
The mercury in the thermometer on the wall had receded completely below minus thirty-seven degrees, the lowest point it could accurately measure. The metallic liquid seemed to have frozen solid. The magic feedback signal abruptly changed, metamorphosing in the illusory second sight of her thaumic senses. It took on an electric aspect, shifting from mysterious but seemingly mundane to vibrant and majestic. Twilight heard someone gasp, breaking the near-silence of the morgue. The gasp turned wet and choking. The motionless corpse on the tray began to spasm and flex, spastic motions of muscles in random and uncoordinated ways, limbs banging against the embrittled steel. Part of the tray gave out and the risen mare shifted.
With a final pulse of numbing chill, air misting in patches, the magic vanished. Luna’s breath caught in her throat. She held it, let it tremblingly out. Sweat rolled down her flanks, down her neck, was blinked out of her eyes. Whom had stopped moving. Twilight, ears flat, though from fear or anger she could not tell, slipped carefully closer, not daring to disrupt whatever fragile magic had been worked here. She scanned Whom’s belly, looking for signs of life.
Pink fur rose gently up and down.
*
“I’m telling you, the scouts last sighted Mother heading in this direction,” Infra Base said, as she and Zo Nar stalked into the hospital, garnering more than one alarmed look from the staff. “We have to find out what’s going on, for the good of the herd.”
“Curiosity killed the gryphon, sister,” Zo Nar said, all-too aware of how loudly her armour was clanking. “If not curiosity, this lot will. Any longer here and they’ll burn us as vampires.” She locked eyes with the medical secretary, who squealed and dove for cover. “Perhaps buried under a crossroads with a wooden stake through the heart, yes.”
“Quiet, you’ll give them ideas.”
Suddenly, a stallion appeared in the foyer, sanitary cloak billowing behind him. He was taking bounds across the floor in a wickedly fast gallop, and did not break his stride as he shot past the two nottlygna, bellowing; “They’ve done it, they’ve raised the dead! They could do it all this time! I quit!”
*
“In general, gravity makes the probability of thaumic decay smaller; in the extreme case of a very small thaumic density difference, it can even stabilize the false thauma, preventing thaumic decay altogether. We believe we understand this. For the thauma to decay, it must be possible to build a bubble of total thaumic zero. In the absence of gravitation, this is no problem, no matter how small the thaumic density difference; all one has to do is make the bubble big enough, and the volume/surface ratio will do the job. In the presence of gravitation, though, the negative thaumic density of the true thauma distorts geometry within the bubble with the result that, for a small enough thaumic density, there is no bubble with a big enough volume/surface ratio. Within the bubble, the effects of gravitation are more dramatic. The geometry of spacetime is that of anti-de Neigher space, a space much like conventional de Neigher space except that its group of pentagrams is obverse rather than obtuse. Although this spacetime is free of singularities, it is unstable under small perturbations, and inevitably suffers gravitational collapse of the same sort as the end state of a contracting von Neighmann universe. The time required for the collapse of the interior universe is on the order of a few moments, or less.
The possibility that we are living under the pall of a false thaumic cataclysm has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Thaumic decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; under the new order, there are new constants of nature; after thaumic decay, not only is magic as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw gnomic comfort from the possibility that perhaps, in the due course of time, this new order would sustain, if not magic and thus life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy.
This possibility has now been eliminated.” - excerpted from Professor Frankly Spoken’s final treatise, Magicae et Gravitae, written shortly before his long foreseen suicide in AN 933.
Students at the Canterlot Institute for Unconventional Magic often report sightings of his ghost, seen wandering the halls, warning of dread, though generally unintelligible, calamities. Any graduating student who fails to cast his dissertation spell on the first try is said to have been ‘Franklied’.
*
Expanding and expanding, driven to insanities of swell and height by megathrust earthquakes beyond the wildest nightmares of any geologist alive, the wave evolved across a vast front, encompassing all oceans as if some cosmic stone had been cast into a lake. It struck almost simultaneously against the western seaboard of the gryphic continent, taking mere moments to close extra distances incurred by inlets, river deltas and other items of the coast. Though most had seen the wave coming, the half-hour of warning was only enough time to panic. No warning could have been enough.
Gryphic towns, solidly built to weather past Equestrian conflicts, immediately ceased existing. Stone, wood and metal were erased by the sheer blunt force of an uncountably many millions of tonnes of water slamming down upon them at speeds enough to soundly court the sound barrier. Marshes, which edged the continent as relics of Divine fury ten centuries past, fell quickly beneath the implacable ruin of the wave. Muddied, carrying the pulverized detritus of tens of thousands of lives, they ate up tall forests, devoured moors and rained down into valleys.
Those bergs large enough to place much of their expansion below ground lasted some small measure of time longer than their surface dwelling friends, though they had never been built to withstand water pressure, let alone of such magnitude. They drowned just as surely; the luckiest merely confused, the remainder gripped with the blind terror of a sure, certain and unassuaged end. Tiers of housing, businesses and the many nests of gryphons collapsed into one another under the weight of inundation, before the waters ran them through and suffocated the survivors.
The longest lived were those fliers of the race, who took to the wing as soon as the wave was sighted. Some fell under it when it approached, unbelieving of its sheer height and not having gained a safe altitude. Those who achieved the required flight level, now cut down to something slightly less than a mile, beheld the doom of their kind smother the land with pitiless completeness. Finding no safe harbour, for the mountains were a thousand miles away, they one by one exhausted themselves and fell to join the rest.
.