Water
Well, if you insist on mucking around in an ancient ship left by an unknown civilisation in a ruined parallel world, what do you expect to happen? Universal peace, love for all creation, and I dunno, a free kitten for every household?
Precisely.
Here's something I want you to consider though: The Equestrians lived damned good lives. Safe, loving, fulfilling. And what do they do when they find Amaranth? A lifeless world filled with nothing but the sparse remains of a long extinct civilisation?
They come over in the hundreds!
Could it be that for the comfortable, hardship is like an oasis of clean water in a desert?
Are they really that perverse?
Chapter 2
Water
Sweetie Belle woke with her cheek pressed against the cold deckplates and damp with drool. A sour metallic taste clung to the inside of her mouth. Disorientation. Darkness. She raised her head, blinked once, twice, waiting for her vision to come back, and when it didn't, she tried lighting her horn. The cabin appeared, tinted in pale green: A statue before her. A shard of bone on the floor. With a surge of revulsion, she realised it had been right in front of her face.
Her knees were shaking, but she was able to stand. The only sounds were the clunk of her hooves and her own breathing, punctuated by little groans. She looked around the cabin again, then back to the statue. It had … attacked her? That was it: She had come here looking for water, run into the statue, passed out. As she remembered, a fragment a dream came back: Scootaloo in that awful foyer with the lilac blinds and vase of yellow daffodils.
Sweetie Belle shook her head and rubbed a hoof across her face, wiping the saliva off. No time to worry about that now. There were more immediate concerns: She hadn't searched the whole of the ship. There might still be water. And if not, she still had to get back to Hinny's Revenge. Perhaps somepony else had found some.
She brushed a few stray curls from in front of her face, shook her head once again, and left the cabin.
This time, she found water almost immediately in a cargo hold like the one she'd entered by. There were no holes in this part of the ship, but the lights were still broken, so she had to rely on her horn, coating everything in sickly green. And while the other hold was empty, this one held several metal cylindrical tanks, all intact and clean. Sweetie Belle tapped on the closest. The clunk echoed about the hold, loud enough to make her jump. Sounded like water. One more test, to make sure. The cargo went dark, and with her aura, she reached through the skin of the tank and swished its contents. Water! Pure, too. “Yes!” she squealed without meaning to.
The ship felt less foreign as she returned to the glider. Ancient and wrecked and mysterious, yes, and the writing on the walls was still illegible and incomprehensible, and the daemons still whispered, but it seemed as though the cloying aura of surreality had been leached out of the bulkheads while she was unconscious. On her way back, she peered into the cabin near the front of the ship at the statue. That was probably worth something as salvage too. Considering what it had done, it was probably a magical artefact.
What it had done. That worried her, even through the joy of finding water. Sweetie Belle hoped it had just knocked her out. If it had done something else … But even if it had, she didn't know what what she could do about it, and there were, at any rate, more immediate problems to deal with.
Outside, the sun was still high, and the heat was still oppressive. She hadn't been out for long then; the ship was probably still waiting. Sweetie Belle galloped back across the cracked salt, entered her glider, and brought the canopy down. As soon as she was inside, the glider's daemon greeted her with quiet jabbering and bits of what sounded like cruel laughter. She didn't mind. She'd found water!
A perfunctory test of the glider's controls, then Sweetie Belle inflated the balloon. Compressed helium hissed, and the glider rose. The mutilated ship dropped away, and she was in the air again. When the glider was high enough, the landscape of young and old rocks far below her, she let the helium out of the balloons, retracted them, and turned north-north-west.
Sweetie Belle was the last to return – no fatalities among the glider pilots – and she was the only one to find water. Less than ten minutes after she had arrived and reported to an officer, Hinny's Revenge had turned for the derelict. The news had swept the stifling melancholy from her decks. Now there was a clamour of activity, raucous shouting, profanity-laden jokes, and hopeful rumours and speculations: Not just water, but they'd found gems; they'd found a statue of pure diamond; they'd all be rich; they'd all get a big thank-you from an important but poor archaeological expedition; they'd all get drunk as lords when they reached port.
Sweetie Belle joined in with the celebrations. She had earned a fair bit of fame and a pat on the back from almost everypony she met, and the boisterousness of the affair reminded her of Scootaloo. What would Scootaloo think if she met her now? Laughing at jokes that were borderline treachery to the diarchy and making promises about how much beer she'd drink back at port? She ran through several different meetings in her head; in every one, though, a swooning Scootaloo told her how awesome she was, forgave her, led her by the hoof – no, actually, she was the one who led Scootaloo – into a private cabin.
After an hour or so of public rejoicing and private fantasies, the excitement reduced to a simmer, and the crew's attention drifted from Sweetie Belle and back to their jobs. Exhaustion catching up with her, and feeling more than a little dazed, she retreated to her bunk and lay staring at the chipped grey paint and pipes of the ceiling.
The aft starboard crew quarters stank of a dozen ponies who worked strenuous jobs with access to minimal hygiene facilities. The bulkheads funnelled the irregular roar of the engines well enough to make the ruste-flecked bunks buzz in sympathy. And the heat blanketed everything, even more than in the rest of the ship.
Sweetie Belle closed her eyes and listened to the daemons and the engines and the air and let dreams fall upon her:
A varnished teak table. A flickering candle that made the shadows on Scootaloo's face quiver. Five yellow daffodils in a vase. Sweetie Belle wore her gown, the ruffled one Rarity made her that shimmered in shadow and silver and white when she moved. Her mane was in ringlets, and she had her liquid eyeshadow on. She sat opposite Scootaloo.
“I'm going to Ilmarinen next,” she said.
Scootaloo grinned. Her grin. The one that was at once mischievous and warm. The one that made you feel like the two of you were in on a joke the rest of Equestria couldn't ever hope to get. The one that made Sweetie Belle's hooves tingle. “That's really cool, Sweetie. What're you gonna do there?”
“Look for you …”
“Awesome! Good luck!”
“Um, thanks.” Sweetie Belle looked around. They were on a stage in an empty auditorium.
“The waiters always take way too long in this place,” said Scootaloo.
“Are you there? At Ilmarinen?”
“No,” said Scootaloo slowly. “I'm here with you.”
“Oh.”
“Are you going to, y'know, sing?” said Scootaloo. She gestured at Sweetie Belle's gown.
“There's no audience.” Sweetie Belle looked down. “Unless you want me to sing for you?”
“Yeah there is. Look!”
The statue sat in the front row. Its ears swivelled from one pony to the next as they talked.
“Do you want me to sing?” Sweetie Belle asked the statue. It didn't respond. Of course it didn't; it was a statue.
When she turned back, Scootaloo had left her seat and was trotting through a door as the back of the stage. Sweetie Belle bounded after her, up to the door, but when she opened it there was just a desert of salt a hundred feet below her on the other side.
She stumbled back, into the foyer, and the door closed. A thump behind her. She turned round. Late afternoon sunlight, filtered by half-closed lilac blinds, turned a patch of carpet into alternating golden and brown stripes. The statue stood facing her, not casting a shadow. It opened its mouth to speak, and
Sweetie Belle woke up. She shivered without knowing why, then rolled over and buried her face in her pillow.
Sweetie Belle slept fitfully, interrupted by periods of consciousness that seemed to last an eternity and a few seconds all at once, with a sweat-damp pillow pressing up against her face.
She heard the door open, followed by the clipclop of hooves. A mattress opposite her on the lower bunk squeaked under a pony's weight. Sweetie Belle opened her eyes, then screwed them up. Her sense of balance was off; it felt like the room was spinning.
A sweet voice with an odd intonation: “Did they cross over?”
Sweetie Belle frowned. The was Muttershanks, a fellow stokehold worker.
“What time is it? Have we arrived yet?”
“Later afternoon. And almost. You've been asleep for an hour. Did they cross over?”
“Did who cross over?”
“Daemons. In the airship you found.”
Sweetie Belle turned to look at Muttershanks. “How should I know?” she said and immediately regretted snapping.
Muttershanks didn't seem to mind. “I don't know,” she said. “Did they do anything that made it seem like they did cross over?”
Sweetie Belle sat back and thought. “I don't think so,” she said eventually. “It felt like the ones in the ship had never seen a pony before. And … and I'm pretty sure there was only one in my glider. There and back.”
“And no daemons in the desert?”
“I didn't hear any.”
“Huh,” said Muttershanks. “Interesting.” She climbed off the bunk and headed for the door. “Oh, yeah,” she said, stopping. “Captain's looking for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Not a problem.” And Muttershanks was out the door before Sweetie Belle could respond.
She lay back on her bunk and tried to concentrate on the gentle rocking of the airship's cabin. It was hard to discern through the sense of spinning. Eventually she gave up, rolled off the bunk, and climbed down the ladder to the floor. At least she could still stand, she thought, trotting out the door.
Following some directions from an officer, she found the captain standing at the prow, looking over the desert. The ship was entering the field of rocks that surrounded the wreck.
Captain Gritstone was a heavy-set earth pony with a ragged grey mane. No matter how gruff his expression or manner, he was always let down by his large brown eyes, which in Sweetie Belle's opinion looked like those of a chastised dog and gave him a perpetually sad expression.
“Thanks for coming,” he said without turning. “And well done again. If you wanted to stay in the business, I think you'd make a damned fine salvor. Better than half by most of his crew.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sweetie Belle.
“But you won't, will you? Stay on, that is.”
Sweetie Belle paused, then decided to shoot for honesty. “No, sir.”
“I don't blame you.” Gritstone turned, glanced at her cutie mark, then finally looked her in the eye. “We all have our own dramas. We wouldn't be here otherwise; none of us are meant to live in this place.” He frowned. “Except for Ms. Muttershanks, perhaps. I don't know what to make of her.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. Gritstone looked back towards to horizon. “When you got back you said you found further salvage,” he said. “A statue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you describe it?”
As Sweetie Belle told him, the captain's frown deepened.
He didn't say anything for a while after she finished. She was about to prompt him when he turned to look at her again. “I was talking to a friend a few months ago. Captain Lucille of the Dulcet. She said someone was looking for statues like this. Offering a damned high price for them, too.”
Yes! With her share of the money, finding Scootaloo ought to be much easier. The captain wasn't smiling, though.
“What's the problem?” ventured Sweetie Belle. “… Sir?”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Extremely valuable artefacts with no apparent use. Anonymous buyers asking by word of mouth. None of that spells trouble to you?”
“Oh …”
“Smart salvors stay away from trouble. I'd have much preferred you to have just found engine parts or anthracite.”
Sweetie Belle felt like the deck had dropped away beneath her. An opportunity offered and then snatched away again. “Captain!” she cried. “We can't! Sir, we –”
“Quiet!” The captain's shout, coming without warning, was enough to make her wince, even if his eyes were letting him down. “You do not speak to your captain like that.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Sweetie Belle, looking down.
He stared at her for several seconds before returning to his former tone. “We're going to take the statue. The price is worth being a little stupid. But that doesn't mean we're not going to be careful, you hear? We'll hide it as best we can. Lucille should be in Ilmarinen. I'll go to her directly. I trust her, and she might be willing to buy it off us before selling it on.”
Okay, that was fine. Sweetie Belle relaxed.
The captain continued: “I want you with the salvage team to show them where to find the water and the statue.” He looked back to the desert. “How close are we?”
Sweetie Belle peered over the railings at the mass of rock and salt. “Not more than a mile,” she said, surprised at how quickly she had managed to recognise the geometry of the land.
“You'd best get ready, then,” said the captain.
“Yes, sir.” She turned and trotted towards the salvage deck.
The salvage was without incident. Along with the statue, they also managed to take a few undamaged structural members and assorted engineering parts.
To get better access to the wreck, the crew lowered the paired claws of the ship's crane inside the tear and opened them. The hull gave way with squeal and a crunch, and shrapnel rained down on the cargo hold.
The statue was the last to go, wrapped in greyish woven-glass canvas sheets and strapped to those great steel claws. Sweetie Belle sat in the cargo hold watching it as is rose into the belly of the ship. Behind it the Scar divided the reddening sky in two, framed Hinny's revenge, and was itself framed by the tear in the wreck's hull: the ripped edge of reality surrounded by the ripped edge of artefact.
“Traitor.”
Sweetie Belle jumped, and looked behind her.
“What's the matter? You okay?” called one of the salvors from across the hold.
Sweetie Belle didn't respond immediately. She swivelled her ears back and forth, listening. Just the whine of the crane, the creak of the wreck, the muttering of daemons. “Yeah,” she said, “I'm fine. Just thought I heard something.”
“Yeah, that happens,” said the salvor. “It's a weird place. 'Specially on the ground.” He grinned. “You'll get used to it.”
I really hope I don't have to, thought Sweetie Belle. She returned as sincere a smile as she was able and said, “Okay, thanks.”
“Anyway, looks like it's time to go,” he said, gesturing upwards. The statue was aboard, and crane was descending again. “And then,” he said, grin returning, “Onwards to Ilmarinen. And riches! I'm so pleased you found this thing.”
“Me too,” admitted Sweetie Belle.
They returned hanging from the crane, with their foreknees hooked over the straps, and once they were safely aboard, the ship, with grumbling engines, started towards Ilmarinen.
Using her aura, Sweetie Belle rowed the little boat with its flaking orange paint and squeaking oars across Rannoch Lake, occasionally glancing at the sky. Each gust of wind brought anew the smell of bracken, overpowering even this far from the shore, buffeted the boat, and made her shiver and huddle in her puffy coat. In the steely bluegrey water, the reflection of the pine-covered mountains on the far side of the lake fragmented and reformed.
She stopped rowing, letting the boat drift, and looked up again. An orange shape against the white clouds. At last. Sweetie Belle grinned, and with her horn sent a green flare a hundred feet into the sky above. The shape dropped, executing three wide loops on the way down, then levelled and headed towards her.
Scootaloo landed perfectly, flaring her wings at the last moment to shed her momentum just before she touched down; the boat barely rocked at all. Sweetie Belle felt a little frisson in her chest.
“Heya,” said Scootaloo. She settled at the prow, opposite Sweetie Belle, and looked around. “Cool place. How'd you find it?”
“Rarity told me about it.” Sweetie Belle grinned. “Oh, you'll like this. She had a client who liked to sail here, and he invited her along once. He was flirting with her, and thought it would win her over.”
Scootaloo snorted. “Hah! Must've been awkward.”
“Yeah. Not that she explicitly told me, but it was obvious from the way she talked about it.”
Scootaloo laughed, then gestured at a length of rope tied round an iron loop on the prow. “Want me to pull for a bit? You must be tired, rowing all the way out here without any help.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, you know, a couple things. Mostly how we're not moving.”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “No, I'm fine. Let's just sit here for a bit?”
“Sure, okay.”
With the next gust of wind, Scootaloo grimaced and shivered. Silently, Sweetie Belle opened her coat and shifted it to the side as an invitation. With a smile, Scootaloo settled in next to her.
They sat in silence for maybe two minutes, Scootaloo fidgeting and Sweetie Belle looking out across the lake and not minding. Puffy white and grey strings of cloud covered most of the sky, glowing pale where they were backlit by the sun. The mountain went from green to brown as the the pine forest ended, then to grey and finally to white. Ripples danced across the lake.
“So, uh …” began Scootaloo.
“Doesn't it break your heart to see anything so beautiful?” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo stiffened beside her, and she held her breath, waiting for a response.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle pursed her lips and looked down at the floor of the boat. She shifted and tried to lean into Scootaloo a little more. Scootaloo just looked out across the water and gave no indication she'd noticed.
“Hey, uh, Sweetie … I'm sorry, but I'm no good at this 'cooing at landscapes' thing. I'm not really the sort of pony who knows about beauty.”
“Oh!” Sweetie Belle winced inside, but gave her best attempt at a grin. “That's okay!”
“I mean, I tried and all, but I can't. And … I'm kinda bored.” Scootaloo turned to Sweetie Belle, ears pinned. “Sorry.”
Sweetie Belle silently berated herself. Stupid pony! Of course she's not gonna be interested in all that stuff. She's too cool for that. “It's fine! Totally fine. You wanna get moving again?”
Scootaloo nodded. “I'll pull!”
With Scootaloo flying ahead, holding the end of the rope in her mouth, Sweetie Belle was content to sit back and enjoy the view. They continued that way for around ten minutes, after which Scootaloo was clearly exhausted. Sweetie Belle cajoled her down and took up the oars once again, while Scootaloo sat at the prow in silence, chewing her lip.
“What's wrong?” ventured Sweetie Belle.
“Nothing.” Scootaloo stared out over the lake.
Sweetie Belle sighed.
“You're right,” said Scootaloo. “It is beautiful.” She gave a forced smile.
They continued in silence for a while, water slapping against the hull and gulls shrieking in the distance. A dull ache crept into the base of Sweetie Belle's horn. She concentrated on it and avoiding worrying whether the trip had been a failure.
Scootaloo gave in first: “Hey, Sweetie?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think of Amaranth?”
“Amaranth?”
“Yeah.”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “I don't know. I haven't thought about it much.” She saw Scootaloo's expectant expression and, realising the opportunity, pressed on. “Oh! I heard some stuff about it from Rarity. She says Twilight has spent hours and hours in meetings with all sorts of high-level griffons. Apparently it's a real political mess …”
“Yeah, but … wouldn't it be cool to go there?”
“Isn't it just a big desert?”
Scootaloo frowned. “Of course not. There's loads there!”
“Like what?”
“You know, ancient magic and technology and stuff.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her friend, trying to organise her thoughts. “I dunno … I'm sorry, Scootaloo, but to be honest, I don't think I would ever want to go there. It's already contested territory, I've heard it has pirates, and the princesses can't protect anypony there. And if it has ancient magic … what if it's dark magic?” She wrinkled her nose. “It sounds really dangerous.”
“Of course it's dangerous!” said Scootaloo. “It's a frontier! It's where all the cool stuff is happening.”
“Cool stuff happens in Equestria too,” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo flared her wings and furrowed her brow. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, working her jaw. “Maybe for you,” she said.
A sudden juddering and scraping, and the boat came to a halt. Sweetie Belle looked up; they had reached the shore.
Hinny's Revenge flew toward Ilmarinen. The sun fell rippling behind the horizon, and the sky darkened soon after, leaving a starless inkblack background still divided by the Scar. The salt flats below turned orangeish, and the shadows on the deck lay at contradictory angles in the scarlight.
During the night, Sweetie Belle found herself unable to sleep and so paced across the empty decks, stood by the railings and watched the salt pass. There were crewponies on the night shift, but they were down below with the engines or back towards aft. Here she could almost imagine she had the entire vessel to herself. The world to herself. A lone inhabitant of an eternally travelling ship above an infinite desert.
She wasn't sure how long it took – Amaranth can skew a pony's perception of time – but eventually, perhaps in rebellion to the solipsistic conceit, the ship left the salt behind and came across a plane of scoured rock riven with a web of sand-filled fractures. With her reverie thus swept away, she finally retreated to bed.
Day came again, and with it, not long after noon, a second change to the landscape: Bits of unsalvageable material lay strewn across the rock. Occasionally the gutted carcass of an ancient ship or outpost. Occasionally the gutted carcass of an impossible animal, mummified and torn. (Sweetie Belle had once heard that the early griffon and diamond dog salvors had tried eating this meat when stocks were low – the ends of such stories varied from the startlingly banal to the grotesque.) They were close – there were whoops and cheers from the crew for the first few sightings. This was a land they knew.
In the evening they saw Ilmarinen silhouetted against the bloodied sky, a cluster of a dozen balloons floating above the ground. This too drew a cheer. Details sketched themselves as the ship flew onwards: The gorge underneath the city with a thick black pipe hanging from the balloons into the aquifer below; the hyperboloid docking towers surrounded by dozens of gnatlike airships; the forest of cables holding the city in place; more cables and walkways betwixt the balloons and the towers.
Closer. The crew lit the shuttered limelight above the deck and started signalling the city. The nearest tower responded in kind.
Closer still. The balloons of the city – spheres with surfaces of thousands of triangles of glass and plastic – dwarfed Hinny's Revenge. The docking towers dwarfed Hinny's Revenge. Some of the airships dwarfed Hinny's Revenge.
A variety of airships she'd not seen since her arrival at Omphalos: Hastily assembled salvor airships; airships bristling with weapons and armour; airships with steam engines and diesel engines and solar funnels. Some looked like long, slender cigars, with enclosed gondolas built into their structure rather than suspended below – an aquileonan design. At one of the ports floated a lone balloon, railing from a flat-looking ship on the ground.
The growling engines finally stopped. Glistening black prehensile ribbons emerged from the docking tower's nearest port and embraced the ship, pulling her inwards. Teams of ponies rushed to set up and extend a gangway.
Sweetie Belle had arrived at Ilmarinen.
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You tease, you tease and I need more!
I love this. The daemons and the whole world of Amaranth is the kind of highly imaginative thing I like to see in an adventure story. Plus the romance angle is well played. Can't wait to see what happens next.
4724565
Imaginative is what I aim for. Thank you!
Is this ambitious? Yes
Do I want you to succed with it? Double yes
I'm not one for romance, but I think it actually adds to the story in this case- a very rare thing
Only a couple chapters so far, but full of awesomeness. You very much have my attention.
4731738
4750527
Cheers!
Now all I have to do is keep it up for a couple dozen more chapters.
I greatly enjoyed what you have put together here. The imagination behind Amaranth is huge and I loved just about every part of the introductory chapters. Your writing is brilliant and really sealed the deal. Wonderfully well done!
4812332
Wow. That was one of the best reviews I've ever had. Not just because it was mostly praise -- the amount of detail is amaing, and even the criticisms are well-placed. Thank you.
I'll do my best to live up to your expectations. (No pressure, eh?)
4771159
Thanks!
Don't you mean hard? Also, extra space there.
Missing a comma.
There's still numerous grammar and punctuation issues. When I catch up reading, I can offer editing services if you'd like.