• Published 18th Jul 2016
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Jacob was just an ordinary student the year the whole world changed. It started with the powers, powers that seemed to be spreading. Can he get to the bottom of this mystery and take back his life before there's nothing left to save?

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Chapter 43

Their jet had no parachutes, nor any way of landing in the Arctic wasteland below them.

“This is really stupid.” Michelle was dressed in cold-weather clothes, along with everyone else. How she had changed while monitoring the plane, Jacob was too afraid to ask. “There’s a research station a hundred miles from here we could land safely and not trash a 65 million dollar plane.”

“Yes, let’s add creating an international incident to our list of crimes,” Jackie muttered, flexing her wings. They poked out from the back of her jumpsuit, through two slices in the weather-resistant fabric. “Not to mention giving away to everyone looking for us exactly where to track us down. After fighting our way free, we’ll have a search party after us.”

“Stealth is more important,” Harley agreed. “You have the autopilot set, right?”

Michelle nodded. “I can have it flying back to the Atlantic right away, though… I’m still not sure how you think you’re going to open that emergency door. There are at least three reasons why that can’t happen. Even flying down this low, we’ve still got a pressurized cabin, and safeguards that won’t allow any door to open while the landing gear is raised.”

Harley seemed to be ignoring her. “Everyone grab your buddy and hold on. Flyers, follow me down. I’ll get us within a thousand meters, or I’m a drone.”

Jackie took hold of a panicked Michelle, even as Eric held Danielle, and Katie took both of his hands. This was a little less haphazard than an emergency jump: each of them had harnesses, straps that would keep them from drifting apart in flight.

“I have another question. What happens when we find this thing we’re looking for? Our jet will have ran out of fuel and crashed into the Atlantic by then. Do we plan on freezing to death in the snow?”

“Put in the autopilot correction, Michelle. We’re ready to jump.”

“If we’re right about who this is, she can teleport us all back to safety herself,” Jacob called after her into the cockpit.

“Great.” Michelle came back, then held still as Jackie started strapping her down. “I think I liked you better when you played it safe, pipsqueak.”

The jet swerved gradually left, beeping echoing towards them from the cockpit.

“She doesn’t have any idea, does she?” Katie asked, her hands tight on his. They were the closest of any of the pairs, and not just because they had a similar size. “But at least if you had died, I wouldn’t have had to watch that movie. My god that was terrible.”

“Well, when we get back to Imperium, maybe the internet will be turned back on and we can play more Overwatch together.”

“Psh.” She grinned sideways at him. “You’ll just keep playing Mercy every single game.”

“Brace!”

Jacob closed his eyes against the rush, and that helped with the nausea. The world exploded back a second later, with a roar of nearby engines and a tsunami of wind. Katie remained firmly attached to him, as they tumbled through the air.

Someone screamed, though he couldn’t have said who. They were torn about through the air, clinging together as Katie fought to right herself. Jacob could feel her moving, feel the way she gradually bore more and more of her wings to the air, slowing them.

There could be no words in the terrible tempest, and indeed Jacob could barely breathe. Black filled his vision more than once, threatening to steal his consciousness. He felt disoriented, lightheaded, confused… how had he gotten so high? What was holding him, why was he falling?

No answers came. At least the confusion didn’t last—eventually his breathing came easier again, and the fuzziness in his vision started to fade. Katie was still holding him, her face just a few inches away, apparently concentrating as they flew.

“Hey Katie,” he called, weak. “What was that?”

“Altitude,” she answered, her glance briefly jerking to the air above them. “The air is too thin. You blacked out.”

“Great.” He glanced past her, down towards the ground. He could see little more than white, rushing towards them at speed. Much slower than free fall speed, though. Jacob had flown with ponies enough times to know he wasn’t in danger. Pegasus magic was as real as what he did, or what Danni did. “I don’t think I like flying. I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you.”

“You hadn’t.” Katie grinned at him. “Maybe I should drop you for a minute or two. For payback.”

“I’d… prefer you don’t. I don’t think I can put my own pieces back together.” There was silence for several minutes, then, “Hey Katie, when are you gonna tell Jackie we’re dating? Are you that embarrassed?”

She stuck her tongue out. “I’ll tell my sister if you tell yours.”

“That’s not really fair. My sister is confused and barely recognizes me. Your sister is dating a bug. I bet Jackie already figured it out, anyway. I know Harley knows…”

“How?!”

“Changelings sense love, duh.” She glared, and for a second it seemed like she was going to drop him. She did something else instead.

* * *

The snow was cold all around him, though that wasn’t the worst part. Snowdrifts rose as tall or taller than he was, unbroken by human or animal tracks as far as he could see. Little white bumps with faint black ridges had risen to become mountains, insurmountable.

He had one advantage: Jacob was so close to being a pony that his body was lighter than a human would’ve been at his size. So long as he picked unbroken snow, Jacob could walk atop it without sinking through. Katie, Danni, and Elise could too, so the four of them walked side-by-side without too much difficulty.

That did not stay the cold’s bite. All of them had dressed for this, but even so Jacob found himself wishing for fur wherever the freezing air touched his bare skin. His legs, without delicate toes and with a pony’s coat, did far better than his arms and hands.

The more human among them had a harder time. They tried to fly a little, but the cold air had disastrous effects on Jackie and Harley’s wings both. Eric probably could’ve flown, if he weren’t so weak on his wings that trudging through the snow at the back of the line was easier for him.

Harley kept a dark gray device in her hands at all times, leading the way. “Still think we should’ve landed and hiked a hundred miles, human?”

Michelle shook her head vigorously. “I still think we’ll die if we’re caught in this after dark. Unless one of you has one of those tent things from Harry Potter, where you pop it open and it’s like a huge house inside. Then maybe we’ll be okay.”

“Unfortunately not.” Aside from their steps, it was deadly quiet in the plain. No birds called, no animals moved, no water flowed. Only their steps broke the silence.

“How much further, anyway?”

The changeling turned to glare down at him. “Watch it, kid. I’ll turn this conspiracy around.” Her expression broke into a smile. “Less than five hundred meters. We’ll be there in no time.”

There were no hills in front of them, no rivers, not even any trees. And it wasn’t just Jacob—the whole party started to slow, since it was abundantly clear there was nothing in front of them.

“I swear, if this is one of those dumb trail things…” Eric said. “Like if someone wrote a clue onto the ground under the snow up there… unless you think we can teleport back up to the plane?”

Harley laughed again, so loud the sound echoed all around them. “Sure, yeah. Forget eight variables, let’s go with sixteen this time. Three of which are unknown and constantly changing.” She rolled her eyes. “Maybe Twilight Sparkle could do that, but not any other pony I know. Not even a queen has brains like that.”

They continued in silence for the rest of the way. Despite an apparently short distance, the cold and the rapidly waning sun made it feel much longer. Eventually, Harley stopped walking, gesturing at the ground at their hooves. “Okay ponies, we made it.” She gestured down at the empty snow, as devoid of footprints as anywhere else. “If this is the part where we discover Elise bullshit her way through the code and got us killed, I’m going to be a very unhappy bug.”

“I didn’t,” Elise grumbled. “Eric verified my calculations. I wouldn’t have come out here just to freeze to death.”

Eric nodded his agreement. “She got it right. Doesn’t mean the code was taking us anywhere meaningful, though. It could have been lying.”

Jacob took one look around them, and couldn’t help but agree. No trees, no obvious shelter, and no running water he could see. The wasteland continued in all directions until the mountains on all sides obscured his view. They had survival gear—as much as the largest group members could carry. But how much could a folding stove and a few survival blankets do for uninhabited wasteland? “If you can’t teleport us onto the plane, maybe you could get us to the research station? That’s supposed to be… a hundred miles?”

Eric and Michelle had started doing something with the snow in front of them. Danielle advanced to help, and with her strokes huge waves of white flowed out of their way. He ignored them.

Harley did too. “Why don’t you do it, Jacob. You can do short jumps, now. You tell me how easy it would be to go a hundred miles without a rift.”

He sighed.

Katie squeezed one of his hands, watching Harley too. “What if we, like… all got together and sang you a song about how much we believed in you?”

“Sounds delicious.” Harley pocketed her device, rubbing her gloved hands together against the cold. “But power doesn’t mean distance by itself. Diminishing returns.”

Katie tugged on his arm, and he turned back. “What?”

Her eyes were suddenly wide, wings spread. She didn’t say anything, just pointed ahead of them.

He looked, expecting to see a pack of gigantic wolves, or maybe an army of polar bears. There was neither. In fact, there wasn’t anything but a pile of snow. Eric, Danni, and Michelle were gone. “Uh… Harley?”

She followed his gesture, then hurried ahead into the place they had been. She took three steps, then tripped, tumbled forward, and vanished below the snow.

They hurried over, crowding around the opening Danni and Eric had been digging, though neither left the protection of the snowdrift.

A fissure in the stone below the snow stood out clearly against black rock, with little veins of quartz glittering in waning sunlight. It was easily wide enough for even the largest humans, though not wide enough to give them a good look at whatever was below. Only a long, long fall.

“Guess everyone else beat us down.” Katie turned, and without needing to say anything Jacob reached out and unzipped the wing holes, guiding each one through the opening.

His sister was down there. Jackie, Eric, and Harley all had wings, and the earth ponies were tougher than a bag of nails. Michelle was neither. “Let’s go.” He held on without the harnesses this time, as Katie scattered powdery snow around them. The chill dagger of the air gradually dulled as they sunk down into the rock, and light itself faded to a glow.

“This sucks.” Katie winced as her wings struck the side of the cavern, and their fall got faster. “Not… quite… big enough…” She fought on, Jacob tugged his hood down with a free hand, then lit his horn in an even golden glow. The light did nothing for the chill following them down, but even that felt trivial. Whatever opening they had found was a far warmer place than the wilderness of Greenland.

Rocky ledges slid past them as the world dropped out of sight. Eventually the space below them seemed to open a little, and Katie could do a better job controlling their fall.

They landed in a massive dark space, extending for hundreds of feet forward and with a ceiling lost in the gloom. Jacob’s horn did a poor job lighting it, even when he concentrated on the glow as much as he could.

Just a few feet further were all their missing friends, looking bruised but uninjured. Even Michelle was standing on her own, suggesting she had been caught or helped on her way down.

He expected a little campfire, maybe some magic plants Twilight might’ve been using to survive. There would be a makeshift camp here, and a wary but relieved Alicorn with a magic portal.

That isn’t what he saw.

Jacob and his friends stood in a ruin carved from stone, with a vaulted ceiling at least a hundred feet above and massive corinthian pillars lining the wall. Not simple rock either, but shining white marble. It held up a ceiling of the local volcanic rock.

A mosaic had been set into the floor, its colors faded but design intricate. Most surfaces had writing, though Jacob couldn’t read or even identify the languages.

“Well, that wasn’t what I expected,” Harley said.