Cold Light

by Scramblers and Shadows

Powder Blue Rectangle

Sweetie Belle's secret … well, let me say, at this point, there doesn't seem to be much sense in blame. Whatever else you may think of her, I can empathise.

Chapter 20
Powder Blue Rectangle

The swollen sun sat on the horizon like a blood orange, leaving stretched shadows filled in with smeared Scarlight. Scootaloo sat pressed against her in Dignity's main cabin, eating a bowl of oats as loudly as it was possible to do so. It was oddly attractive, thought Sweetie Belle as she ate her own.

“… deserve …” whispered the daemon in her ear. “… eternity …”

“You did it,” said Scootaloo, looking up and attempting without success to brush away some oats stuck to her upper lip.

“Yeah.”

“Every time I tried to get to Ilmarinen, they managed to cut me off. They scored a hint on the wings.I thought … well, even these won't work forever.” Scootaloo went back to her oats for a while before continuing. “What about you? Is Blueberry still after you? And how did you find the hatchlings again?”

“We don't have to worry about Blueberry.” Sweetie Belle stared at the opposite wall for a moment before continuing. “The hatchlings … Saffron gave me a spell to call them. I think I might take them back to Equestria.”

“I think … I'll come with you.” Scootaloo scratched her mane. “I don't know …” She put her hoof to her forehead and sighed. “I like it here, but after everything's that happened …”

Sweetie Belle took her hoof. “Come back. Just to see everypony again. Apple Bloom and Rainbow Dash and all the rest. Take some time to clear your head. Then if you have to, you can always go to Amaranth again.”

“Unless these daemons destroy it …” said Scootaloo.

Sweetie Belle smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, unless that. But I bet they won't be a problem for long once Twilight knows about the problem, especially with Saffron helping. Anyway, if you come back, you'll get to …”

With that thought, she paused for a moment. There was something she'd planned to say. Her apology. Her admission. When she'd been trapped and alone, it seemed like the most important thing in the world. But bringing it up now would destroy this renewed rapport she had with Scootaloo.

She was going to apologise. Just not yet.

“ … you'll get a chance to say goodbye properly. I mean, if you want to leave again. We'll all support you if –”

Tom came clanging down the stairs. “Thought you might want to know,” he said. “No casualties on the Dulcet. We're less sure about the privateers … some probably died when the guns went up, but Millie thinks they got off lightly all things considered.”

The interruption made Sweetie Belle lose track of what she was planning to say. She waved a hoof at him. “Yeah, okay. Good. That's good.”

Looking uncertain, Tom nodded and began to retreat up the stairs. After a few steps he stopped, turned round, and came down again.

Scootaloo was frowning. “Are you okay?”

“Uh, apart from the aches, exhaustion, and general after-affects of having my sylphs die?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Yeah. Why?”

Saffron manifested in the cabin, giving her a concerned look.

“You too?” Sweetie Belle asked out loud.

“Every time you've got into a scrape with these privateers up to now, or anyone else, you've been concerned about not killing them,” said Saffron. “Just now, you seemed utterly uninterested.”

Sweetie Belle stared at her a few second. “Oh,” she whispered. “You're right. The daemons?”

“I think so.”

An ice-cold vacuum seemed to swallow her body from the inside. She looked from Scootaloo to Tom and back again.

---

“I thought I had it, you know? I mean, I could feel their effect – I really could – but I thought I was holding them off. I was trying so hard not to get carried away, not to do anything stupid.”

“Pacing won't help,” said Saffron.

“It feels like it helps,” Sweetie Belle shot back without stopping. She'd stopped speaking to Saffron out loud, out of some ill-defined fear that it was another sign of encroaching insanity. “I can't be trusted, obviously, I …”

Tom held up his paws. “Wait. You recognised what was happening when we pointed it out. You're not that bad yet.” He frowned. “Right, Saffron?”

“He's right,” said Saffron. She stared at Sweetie Belle for a moment. “Well, tell him then!”

Sweetie Belle did so, and then at last stopped pacing. “But I need to get back to Equestria before this gets any worse.”

Scootaloo followed her put a hoof on her shoulder. “Of course. I'll make sure you get there safely, alright? Until then … I guess this is a pretty good excuse to be a bitch, so make the most of it?”

Looking at her, Sweetie Belle saw a small grin and gave a laugh she didn't feel. “Yeah, okay.”

---

“These lights are so gloomy. Don't you think these lights are gloomy?” Blueberry asked the guard trotting beside her.

He looked at her, then up at the lights. They coated everything with a dusty red sheen which seemed to discolour his hair, and left ugly vertical shadows under his muzzle. “Yes, Miss Pancake,” he answered, as if still slightly uncertain this was the right thing to say.

Blueberry smiled at him. “It's the aesthetic of somepony who enjoys skulking. Somepony who has to hide in the shadows even when they're in control. As if they're ashamed of what they're doing. Pathetic.” She tossed her head. “And it doesn't complement my mane at all.”

“Your mane looks much better in natural light,” he agreed.

She stopped, leant in towards him until there was only an inch between them, and said, “Well, thank you. That's lovely of you to say.” The moment hung for a couple of seconds, then she started trotting again. “I'd tear it all out and redecorate, but we won't be needing this ship for long.”

He led her to the cell, the room that had once been Sombra's. Outside stood two chevaloids.

The transition had been more trouble than she'd expected. Too many ponies with strong loyalties. With them, the thrall spell wouldn't work unless it was strong enough to rip out all capacity for independent thought. She'd had to make up the space with chevaloids.

There were probably a few working for her who wanted to bring Sombra back, even if they didn't know where he was. Gentle, continuous applications of the thrall spell would change their minds – or, at least, soften their resolve to the point where they wouldn't think to move against her,

The chevaloids opened the door for her and stood ready.

Inside, Flay glared at her.

It was a gaze that had transcended mere petty anger, a sort of acid that had burned away all posturing and falsity to leave nothing but a cold, austere contempt.

“I'm not here to gloat,” she said softly. “We'll be at Tanelorn soon. After the work you've done, I thought you might like to see it even if your liege isn't here.”

Flay said nothing. His robe hung limply around his shoulders. The inhibitor clung off-centre to his horn. To him, she realised, everything she said was just noise.

“No? Well, don't get too comfortable. We'll be needing you soon. ” She smiled at him, then swept out of the cell and gestured at the chevaloids to close the door.

By the time she got back to the bridge, the airship was already slowing. The crew of three worked silently. Outside, less than fifty metres away, the salt flats stretched in all directions, featureless, drawing the eyes to the horizon. In the gloaming and Scarlight, they seemed to glow faintly in some hideous, unreal colour. They crawled past and eventually came to a halt.

“This is it,” said the navigator. She looked up a Blueberry. “The co-ordinates you gave us.”

“Exactly?”

“Exactly.”

“Wonderful. Go on.”

The navigator hopped out of her seat and cantered across the room to the communication funnel. “Lower the dynamite!” she yelled.

“Understood,” came the faint, tinny reply from the tube. A moment later, there came a faint squeal of an unwinding drum through the hull. Blueberry walked up to the window.

Two chevaloids stepped into view on salt still too hot for a pony to walk across. For a few minutes they worked at their chosen spot, digging, planting. When they were done, they retreated out of sight below the airship.

The explosion came with a dull crack. A pale grey cloud bloomed, and detritus pattered against the underside of the hull.

The clearing smoke revealed a crater several metres deep. At the lowest point the ragged salt gave way to something else. Like a buried mirror, giving a glimpse of the evening sky beneath the ground.

“That's it,” Blueberry said. “Lower the ship and give me a view from the fore-starboard hatch. As close as you can please. Then prepare for high turbulence.”

Passing her bodyguards on the way out, she murmured to them, “Make sure you hold on to something, boys.”

By the time she reached the hatch, the airship was already descending. She pulled it open, and looked out: A clear view to the approaching ground below, to the crater, to the surface of the shield. Something caught in her throat as she prepared her spell. How long had it been since she first learned it? More than a year. And now she was finally here.

When it was close enough, she used her spell: A single bolt of aura impacted the mirror

The surface seemed to ripple. Reflections danced across its surface, broke and reformed, distorted, and finally faded. For a second the surface became transparent, revealing a dark cavity.

The crater collapsed inwards, cracks radiated across the plane, and with a deep rumbling sound, chunks of the ground fragmented and fell away. Air roared past them, rattling the corridor, making the airship lurch, and finally dragging it down into the darkness.

---

Skulltown rose on on the horizon like a mountain, lit up false-orange against the black night sky. How quickly we become accustomed to even the most absurdly surreal things, Sweetie Belle thought, watching it approach. The incomprehensible is just another place to live, work, and fight.

They were stopping at Skulltown to repair the Dulcet and Dignity, and for Sweetie Belle to finish her part of the deal. She'd go into the skull one last time to pick up a proper map. Every bit of magical activity that might be important, every hint to possible buried salvage. After that, Millie would take her back to Omphalos, where she could finally return to Equestria.

But tonight she would rest.

Dignity approached the base of the skull's cheekbone, where a cliff of teeth bigger than airships extended to the left, and parked below the docks in the Dulcet's shadow. Millie sent up a balloon and told Sweetie Belle, “You can go up to Skulltown or sleep here tonight. Either way is fine by me.”

“I'll sleep here,” Sweetie Belle told her.

“Righto.”

Once Millie and Tom had gone up into Skulltown, Sweetie Belle went into the hold where the aelewyrms were playing some sort of game that involved chasing one another in circles. She nuzzled at Chardonnay and patted it behind the eyes.

“Do you ever need to feed those things?” Scootaloo asked, standing at the door. She closed it behind her.

“I don't know,” said Sweetie Belle. “I guess so? They must eat oil or something. But they don't seem hungry.”

“Oils, tars, some silicates,” said Saffron. “But they can go weeks without food – you don't need to worry about that for a while.”

Sweetie Belle relayed this to Scootaloo who smiled, then looked around awkwardly for a moment.

“Tom told me,” Scootaloo said at last.

“About what?”

“Why we don't have to worry about Blueberry.”

“Oh.”

Scootaloo walked up to her and put a hoof on her shoulder. “You could have told me, you know.”

“Yeah. I was going to. I …” Sweetie Belle busied herself scratching at Chardonnay's mandibles. “I thought you might, you know, get angry with me. Because … I'm not strong enough to deal with her. I'm scared of her. Because my sister saved the world more times than I can count when she was my age, and I just got captured, defeated, and ran away.”

“You didn't run away,” said Scootaloo. “You came to get me.”

Sweetie Belle tried to respond, but her tongue seemed paralysed. She turned to Scootaloo and nodded, then hugged her.

“Besides,” she said at last, trying to keep things practical, “Saffron doesn't think she'll have much luck with it anyway. She doesn't have enough energy, and the whole thing is locked away with some magic she doesn't know about.”

“Well, then, we're fine. Oh yeah! I also wanted to ask … could you have a look at my wings?” said Scootaloo.

Sweetie Belle stared at her.

“I think one of the pirates managed to get a lucky shot.” The left wing extended with a whispering noise, the lamplight glittering faintly off its surface. “It's been jamming every time I try and move it.”

“Wouldn't Millie be better at that?”

“I want you to do it. Besides, you've got a qilin engineer in your head.”

“Ah,” said Sweetie Belle, “Now I feel wanted.” She grinned at Scootaloo.

Beside her, Saffron appeared, looking bored. “Come on, then. Tell her to spread 'em.”

“Open your wings, then,” said Sweetie Belle, giving her a look.

If there was anything wrong with them, she couldn't see it. If there was any way they could go wrong, she couldn't see it. The feathers glided over their support structure with no mechanism. The only thing that looked at all mechanical was the pendant hooked over a feather vane on the left wing.

“Touch them with your aura,” said Saffron. “There, I think I see it. Tell her to close and open again.”

As the wings moved, Sweetie Belle saw a minute jerkiness in the otherwise smooth motion.

“Got it,” said Saffron. “Stress-induced corruption in the beta field. The wings themselves work, but the neural connection is peeling away.”

“And what does that mean?” asked Scootaloo when Sweetie Belle relayed this.

“It means the problem will quickly get worse unless I reset the wings so the connection can heal. That'll take a couple of days.”

On being told this, Scootaloo paced across the hole a few times, then opened and closed her wings. “If we run into any trouble in the next couple of days …”

“Then you'll have wings that work badly. But if we run into trouble after two days, and we don't fix it … ”

Scootaloo sighed, then sat in front of Sweetie Belle. “Okay, have her do it.”

Aura in Saffron's control, Sweetie Belle's horn flashed once. Immediately, Scootaloo's wings closed with a faint whisper.

“That's it?” asked Scootaloo.

“That's it.”

Scootaloo stood and prodded at the closed wings on her back. “This is weird,” she said. “I can't feel them at all.”

“Can't you take them off and fly naturally?” said Sweetie Belle.

“Nope.”

“They're bolted directly into the spine,” said Saffron. “In principle, they could be removed, but for that we're in the realm of major surgery. I think it's better to wait, personally.”

“Wonderful,” said Sweetie Belle, shaking her head. Scootaloo gave her a curious look, so she recounted what Saffron had just told her.

“Huh,” said Scootaloo. She wriggled her back. “Cool.”

---

Later that evening Millie and Tom returned with food. They gathered together around bowls of powdered scorpion, mice, oats and lettuce, with some beer that Millie dubbed, “Not all that terrible.”

While Scootaloo told them about the issue with her wings, some spot on the far wall seemed to take up most of Millie's attention. “Well,” she said when Scootaloo had finished, “I reckon you got off lucky. T'advanced salvaged tech can be reight dangerous.”

“You have experience with it?” asked Tom.

Millie said nothing, just grabbed at lettuce leaf and chewed at it slowly. Eventually she nodded. “Aye, a couple of times.” After looking at the three of them, she said, “Oh, sod it. You lot're close enough to friends. I may as well tell you.”

Leaning forward, she pushed back the tuft of mane that covered her forehead. Barely visible beneath it, there was a small lump. She sat back.

“Got that about two year ago,” she said, ruffling her mane. “Meant to be a horn, I think, or summat like it. Me and friend found this machine and decided to try it out.”

“Saffron?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“Yes. Medical technology, meant for prosthetic antlers Or horns, in your case. But it's meant to be used in a controlled environment, not by … by barbarians. ”

“It hurt worse than owt else I've ever been through, and in the end? It didn't even work.”

“What about your friend?” asked Tom.

Millie cocked her head. “What do you think? She didn't make it out.”

“Oh.”

“'Oh.' That about sums it up, aye. I'm not tellin' you lot so you can feel sorry for me, and I'm not tellin' you any more. There are enough sob stories in the world, and mine ain't anything special. Now let's move on to summat more cheerful.”

No-one tried to get any more out of her.

---

Before Scootaloo left for Amaranth, but after their argument, Sweetie Belle sat in her room listening to music to try and drown out all the fragmentary thoughts that attacked in waves – about what would happen, what to do, how unfair everything was, what a bitch she was.

It didn't work. She went to sleep as uncertain and upset as she had been when she got back.

The next morning, she lay staring through the window at a featureless plane of pale blue sky for several minutes before she realised what her calm she was. It was the calm of the utterly screwed, and brought with it a sort of clarity. The choice was simple.

Either apologise to Scootaloo, live with her decisions, work towards understanding – or don't, and lose her as a friend and a lover.

Which, considered like that, wasn't a choice at all. She moved the duvet and unhurriedly got out of bed.

She rehearsed, revised and rehearsed again her apology as she walked through the old streets of Canterlot. The scent of hawthorne was thick in air, mixed with a barely-perceptible hint of diesel exhaust.

At the door, she raised her hoof to knock, then realised her mistake. In her resolve, she'd forgotten what day it was – Saturday mornings, Scootaloo always went to the gym. Sweetie Belle swore under her breath, turned away, then turned back again. Her calm was already wavering, and leaving now might ruin it.

She knocked once to make sure, then extracted the hidden key from a cavity beneath the skirting board and let herself in. Scootaloo wouldn't mind – she'd done this a dozen times before.

There was an open envelope on the small hallway table with its contents spilling halfway out. Sweetie Belle glanced at it idly as she pushed the door close with a rear leg, then stared at it.

It was a visa application.

There had been a time when you could go anywhere in Aquileona and stay as long as you wanted. But since the discovery of Amaranth, the Aquileonan government had taken another of its fickle democratic turns, and relations had cooled. Now, for certain lengths of stay, for certain places – like Magnesia, on the far side of the dragon territories – you needed a visa

This was it. Proof that Scootaloo was actually going. She must've planned to post it on her way to the gym and forgotten.

Still calm, Sweetie Belle reached into the pile and pulled out a little powder blue rectangle of card – covered with griffon heraldry, printed numbers and Scootaloo's scratchy writing – and tore it in half.

A chill raced through her. She stood frozen in place for a few seconds, staring at the two halves of blue card in front of her. Then she opened the door, let herself out again, and put the key back in its hiding place.

On her way back through Canterlot, the sky seemed at once oppressive and dreamlike.

She tore the card in half once more, and left each of the pieces in a different bin along her route.

---

Two ships floated in the darkness like half-remembered dreams. Light from the chevaloids' lamps glanced off the silvery-blue hulls and was lost in the interior space of the hangar. The faint outlines of giant arches overhead sometimes come into view. The hull surfaces – you were unsure whether they were made of metal or crystal or something else – extended seamlessly into spires and spines and other objects. It was impossible to tell the decorative from the functional. The chill air smelt dry and faintly metallic.

“Is this what Sombra was looking for?” asked the navigator.

“Part of it,” Blueberry told her. “One of these could defeat anything in the old world. This and an army, and you could rule everything.” She grinned at the navigator, whose neck was still craned to look at the ships above them, then to Sorghum and Cannons who followed silently. “But our ambitions are greater than that, aren't they? Now come along. I'll show you how it all works.”

Beneath the baroque belly of the nearest ship, between the gracile landing struts, a bulge extended to the floor. Blueberry led them to the sloped front of this extension, and hit it once with a spell.

Part of the wall unfurled with liquid grace. Inside, a strong, fulfilling light – like sunlight from a perfect day – spilled out from a cylindrical corridor painted in some complex pattern of jagged fragments in various shades of grey and blue. The air inside had a different quality – warmer and almost comforting.

Blueberry took them inside.

Comments

[dracone]

8119664 even so, it could still be used as an introduction chapter

[Scramblers and Shadows]

8119683

It could, but then that chapter would have to go without an separate title.