The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Flying Closer

Hestia's departure left the bridge welcomely empty, Gerardo alone save for the flashing controls and blinding snow bouncing ineffectually off the windshield. He took a second to sigh, his sword returned to its rightful resting place... and instantly had his rest cut short as the door slid open and two icy ponies stepped through.

One was a pegasus, huge and red, half of his flimsy Defense Force armor missing, his neck singed and much of his mane burned off from an energy blast. The other, a forest-green earth pony mare, limped alongside him with one hind leg dangling uselessly, her side covered in bleeding lacerations, barely able to support her own weight.

"I say!" Gerardo's eyes widened. "You're quite heavily injured!"

"Ya think?" the mare growled, pained tension in her voice, eyes darting around the cabin.

"Hello," the pegasus intoned, stepping forward and revealing ice-encrusted wings that looked useless for flight. "I'm Lieutenant Blast Furnace, and this is Mosswater. Respectively, we are the highest-ranking remaining members of our companies of the Defense Force and the Spirit of Sosa. We wished to thank you for braving this storm and saving us."

Gerardo looked worriedly at the bleeding mare. "There should be first-aid supplies somewhere down below. This airship was very well-stocked..."

Mosswater nodded, then coughed. "We divided them already. The others needed them more."

"Oh! Erm, well..." Gerardo tried to stare at anything other than her side. "Perhaps there's a medical box or first-aid kit up here, of some sort? You'd think there should be..."

"If there is, send it down below." Mosswater shook her head. "It looks bad, but my life's not in danger. Two more minutes and that battle would have been over, no surrender."

"And yet, you're still alive now." Gerardo nodded. "Might I ask what happened?"

Blast Furnace stared at him. "Words were exchanged during the battle. We were told the Sosans were trying to destroy the west dam and directly flood the Earth District, but they said they were trying to stop us from destroying the eastern dam. When the dam exploded, it became apparent that they were telling the truth, so we caught and saved as many as possible." His eyes narrowed. "Listen. There are buildups of both Defense Force and Spirit ponies near Blueleaf. The Spirit were supposed to act as a decoy to force us to split our forces, making the battle on the dam smaller scale, or else invade and try to capture the Water District themselves if we didn't show up. Now, they'll likely want revenge. We don't know who is behind this, but it's not the Stone District and not the Defense Force! You have to take us there as fast as possible so we can talk them down, or else help the Defense Force so this doesn't escalate into a war!"

Mosswater coughed again, nodding in agreement. "We need to get there before either side loses! If the Defense Force wins, whoever was behind this will still have an army and could do something worse, but if the Spirit wins, they'll try to get revenge. Our economic engine is gone, so they might retaliate by attacking the skyport..."

"...Which contains enough delicate systems that it wouldn't take a flood to sabotage," Blast Furnace finished somberly. "If I were them, I'd go for the airship hangar."

"Gunga is dead," Mosswater said, her eyes tearing slightly... though whether from pain or loss, Gerardo couldn't tell. "He was leading us on the bridge. There are rumors Shinespark was there too. I didn't know she was officially a part of the Spirit, but if this fight killed her..."

"Shinespark is alive," Gerardo quickly interrupted. "I can confirm that, as well as that Herman is the mastermind behind this bombing plot. I was on the bridge myself, along with my friends, and saw the detonator pressed with my own eyes."

Blast Furnace's eyes narrowed. Mosswater's widened with hope.

"As for flying to Blueleaf, I'm unsure." Gerardo spun in his pilot's chair, the airship still hovering just outside the lighthouse. "I'm slightly new to this craft myself, and while it seems remarkably weather-resistant, I'd hate to destroy it against the wind barrier. Additionally, it's been well over two hours since the blast, and it may not be wise to make suppositions about the state of any battle in Blueleaf. Might I suggest that, since we're right next to the Sky District as-is, we make for the Skyport and trace our way down to Blueleaf from there? Though it would be a considerable amount of walking, it would be all downhill, we would be sure to intercept any approaching Spirit ponies, and you did at least say you had pegasi still capable of flight..."

"If that's what it takes, do it." Growling in pain, Mosswater sat down, while Blast Furnace blew on his wings and tried to defrost them. "Also... I don't know if it will help, but we took the backup battery for the lighthouse when we left. Since the city's power source is gone, we thought it could be important."

"Duly noted." Shoving a throttle, Gerardo angled the airship southwest, pulsing the engine and sending them streaking into the storm.

---

In the Stone District, torrents of rain scoured the empty streets, forming rivers of ice-cold runoff that storm drains channeled into steep canals. Not a soul dared to brave the night, every home-owning pony huddled deep within the crust of the mountain, curled around fires with their families and hiding from open-air windows. The world outside had lost itself to madness; a district was gone, and nopony knew the full story. Questions flurried like snowflakes: was my marefriend okay? Was my best foalhood buddy's house warmer? My old acquaintance lived in the Earth District, what happened to them? The yak embassy's walls rattled with a clock that never stopped ticking, counting down seconds until the sun would rise and the storm would break... or Ironridge would fall further, and the ponies below come up above to avenge what had been taken from them.

Below, on a switchback road bordered by waterfalls, a posse of pegasi bravely advanced, with one hatless leader and two dozen brave, weary guards, terrified by the knowledge that they were all that stood between a district of innocents and the ponies who had been losers for ten years. If any of them had compassion for the lower districts, it was edged out by fear, indoctrinated knowledge saying how little it would take to push these ponies over the edge. That edge had come, and so had the time to fight for those who couldn't.

Ahead, in a five-story stack of material lit by the last lights in Ironridge, the city of the oppressed shuddered the same. The mighty Earth District, Ironridge's engine of production and Sosa's backyard, thrown to the bottom of the city when the mountains became the new capital... everyone there had a reason to be, whether by tradition or inability to move up. Blueleaf was the bottom of the bottom, the landing pad for ponies economically fallen from the Stone District, and now the top had declared war on their new home. Sosa had vanished, the pegasi were coming, and they would be next. For the first time in history, Blueleaf had something the rest of Ironridge lacked: a power generator. The surest of the citizens strode forth to defend it, and everyone else stayed in their lit wooden shacks, fearing the ponies above and wishing they weren't about to be destroyed.

Karma Industries loomed to the north, surrounded by water and host to thousands of refugees. At the top, the remaining executives waited, looking out over Blueleaf's lights and Sosa's watery remains and thinking back on the twenty years that had led their city to this. Could it have been avoided? Where had they erred? Did they deserve another chance? And if they got one, how would they proceed?

The overflow of refugees filled processing warehouses all throughout the fruit groves, the ground outside muddy and rapidly turning to ice. Great pools of standing water surrounded tilting trees, showing where the already-receding floodwaters' highest surge had reached... but with the freezing rain, the ponies could only hope the waters wouldn't rise again. Most refugees knew nothing but claustrophobia and bad smells, living in one of the only hot places left in Ironridge thanks to the propagation of body heat and listening with folded ears to the rain drumming on the roof. Rumors flowed; no one had news of home for sure, and the orange-vested organizers walked patiently through the crowds had nothing but petitions for medical ponies to share. In a second-story manager's office, a family of twelve and a half waited without even rumors, White Chocolate trying desperately to protect her foals from the waves of panic breaking against her mind.

Far above them, separated by rain and wind and snow, blueish-white stormclouds churned like an endless explosion, spilling down from the mountains and out across the badlands for miles and miles. Somewhere beyond the eastern edge, an airship puttered, the last commercial flight to leave before the skyport closed for the night, the power outage and the storm. The passengers murmured, crowding around the windows and remarking with sophisticated ignorance how dreadful Ironridge's weather had always been. Two mares in particular, a pegasus and a unicorn, their tickets provided free of charge by Shinespark after they had assisted Gerardo with the Defense Force the day before, stared downwards instead, wondering if the river always looked that swollen, taking note of the small town below.

The Sky District itself was receiving the full brunt of the storm, the power outage removing energy to the anti-weather enchantments that strengthened and tuned the glass and steel against the wind and snow. A streak of black and green shot down one transport pipe with a blurring of wings, Valey and Starlight soaring through the connection from Skyfreeze at top speed. The tunnel swayed around them on its elevated supports, unable to resist being buffeted by the wind, and snow was already piling up and freezing in place against the meager shelter of the extruding supports. Everything groaned, the tunnel shifting like it was an awakening limb of a giant beast, but the chaos did nothing to sap the batpony's speed or determination.

The only place worse off was the eastern valley, its bedrock already at glacial temperatures from being buried for millennia. The lakewater had stopped draining; it was frozen in place, snow piling up over sheets of flowing ice and settling into holes in waterfalls that had solidified mid-tumble. Icicles formed from ledges, their shapes curved from the wind like fangs or claws, not even a wind barrier existing to protect the ground from the storm's wrath. To the north, Sosa suffered the same, the city's watery ruins afforded only a fraction of the protection of the Earth District by the fringes of the barrier. Everything was still, save for the snow and the wind... and then there was a flash.

A burst of violent, multi-colored magic ended with a plume of smoke on a semi-sheltered roof, intact enough not to collapse despite the conditions. There was a brief spell of coughing... before a strong, yellow stallion stepped out of the haze, scratching his beard and surveying his surroundings.

"...Heh. Looks like the long-distance teleporter worked like a charm. Always suspected a team of ponies would be enough to get that functional, since it never required a sustainable reaction... It's been too long since I've seen this place."

Arambai's grin held for an entire half-second, snow already beginning to catch in his black mane. Then it vanished. "And it's all flooded. Looks like they blew the dam after all. Not what I wanted to come back to, Ironridge..." He took two steps forward, a gigantic, threatening broadsword strapped to his back. "I hope whoever bungled this place up has good life insurance, because when I get my hooves on their sorry hide, there's gonna be tartarus to pay."

Comments

[alamais]

yo wut up it dat boiiii

[alamais]

Is there still time for an epic Arambai v Herman duel?

[Davidp1522]

It just occurred to me that all those fruit trees are probably going to be killed by all this ice water. Isn't ironridge a major exporter of food? Might cause a widespread famine.