Still Alive
Starlight slowly came to, and opened her eyes.
It felt like she had been swimming in... something... for longer than she could remember. Her body felt hazy, like fuzz was clouding her senses, some sense she had never used before taxed to overloading and now interfering with her perception of everything else. But she knew what she had been doing. She had connected herself to the harmony extractor, to the windigo heart... there had been an explosion. She had regained her eyesight, and then faded from existence. The last thing she remembered was Maple...
But she had a body. She felt the ground beneath her hooves, flat and nondescript. She felt snowflakes alighting on her back, though oddly there was no temperature whatsoever. They didn't feel cold, they definitely weren't hot. They just... were.
She was standing on a featureless plane, looking out into a windless blizzard, thick, fat flakes falling without flurries in a curtain that ended her vision in a wall of gray. The layer of fallen snow coating the ground, if that was what it was, was hardly thick at all. There were no hoofprints.
Tilting her head upward, Starlight caught a flake or two in her mouth. Bland, but that wasn't saying much. They still lacked temperature.
After a moment, her eyes began to sting from the overwhelming grayness of the place. She turned around and around, but every direction looked the same: nothing but flatness and snow for the short distance she could see. Would it hurt the world to be anything but monochrome? Starlight stomped, shook her hoof... and completely stopped when she saw herself out of the corner of her eye.
Her hoof was gray. She raised it to her face, but there wasn't even a trace of color. Sitting down in shock, Starlight twisted, looking at as much of herself as she could see, but the same gray malaise hit her eyes. On her flank, where a cutie mark would go, a nondescript light pulsed gently, but even it was colorless, and didn't change as she watched it. Thanks a lot, world. Teasing her about a cutie mark at a time like this. Growling, Starlight punched the ground.
...This wasn't the first time she had seen without color, she slowly recalled. There had been another time, in Ironridge, when she had touched White Chocolate's moon glass. It had stuck to her, and Maple had pulled it off, but for a time her vision had been monochrome, just like this.
Moon glass was disharmonic. An absence of harmony, or even negation. She had just pushed herself as far as she could possibly go, taken her horn until it flat-out disconnected, and had everything drained from her as a result... Was this what was left? If she had been made of harmony, was what she was now a pony who had nothing of that? Was she dead?
Starlight quickly decided that if she was dead, the afterlife was decidedly boring.
"Rrrgh..." She lit her horn, surprised to hear it come alight with no effort whatsoever. Predictably, the aura was gray, and there was nothing for her to do magic on, but it didn't stop her from sending a bolt of crystallization energy straight into the sky, just because she could.
She waited for the twinge that came with using her horn. It never came.
Curious, Starlight fired again, without getting any sort of feedback whatsoever. Her magic was working, at least. In fact, working might have been an understatement; it felt infinite! Screaming purely because she could, Starlight pushed her horn as hard as it could go, forcing in raw magic without thought for form or function. A deadly cyclone of power whipped around her, and eventually she was forced to stop, drained and panting but not in pain... and as she stood, she felt her horn slowly recharging, all on its own.
Was that what normal unicorns felt like? What she had always been unable to do?
Great. She huffed, laying down on the flat, hard floor. Not only was death boring, and taunting her with that glowing spot on her flanks that neither went away nor manifested into a cutie mark, but it even had to tease her with a fully-functional horn. If she had had one of those in Ironridge, she might not have died in the first place. Starlight groaned, placing her chin on folded forelimbs.
She didn't want to quit, but it was difficult not to give up when there was nothing to do.
Suddenly, a sound reached her ears. Was that a yell? Ears folding in concern, Starlight turned and raced toward the source of the noise. If anyone else was here...!
She tripped over something and went sprawling on her face, though it barely even stung. When she looked back to see what she had tripped over, though, her heart shot into her throat.
It was a corpse. And not a corpse of a pony, but a hideous approximation of one, hard and black and lacking fur. Instead of skin, it had plates, interlocking like armor. A pair of transparent, insectoid wings protruded at broken angles from its sides, and its hooves were riddled with holes she dearly hoped were caused by whatever killed it. The head was missing.
As Starlight stared, bile rising in her throat, the thing's neck leaked with what looked like more snow... until with a dull glow of light, its entire body transmuted into a pile of the same stuff, spreading slowly out until it was indistinguishable on the ground from what had fallen from the sky. Starlight blanched, and almost considered scraping at her tongue. What was that?
She pressed on, quickly finding another. This one's head was intact, sporting a short, curved horn and pupilless eyes, and it was similarly dead. As she watched, it too dissolved into snow, sending a deeper chill down her spine than any windigo had been able to cause. The afterlife, she decided, was a terrible place.
Something else came into her vision as she passed by more corpses, not bothering to watch them disappear. It was a wall, looming as a lighter gray through the storm, made of vertical white stone that stretched farther in all directions than she could see. She picked a direction and walked left along it, hoping to find something, anything, that didn't belong in a nightmare... or at least made sense.
"Heh heh..."
The voice was tired and raspy and, to Starlight's ears, unmistakable. Valey!? She charged forward, stumbling over another corpse as they grew thick enough to be piled, first in stacks, then in walls. Tripping, gritting her teeth and clenching her eyes, Starlight pushed through the stacks, both physically and with her horn, tossing them each and every way. Eventually, she found what she was looking for.
"Ow..." Valey groaned, covered in lacerations and missing her hat, laying limply on her back with her head propped up against a wall. She was barely moving, and with the signature emerald of her mane and tail missing, it took Starlight a minute to confirm it was really her. She looked less youthful, more developed and perhaps half an inch taller, but was also not nearly as filled out: the Valey Starlight knew stayed fit and exceptionally well fed thanks to a diet of nonstop fruit plundering, but this one's ribs were nearly showing. Her slitted eyes burned with a spark that wouldn't go out, though it had clearly come close, and her muzzle twitched with the memory of a daredevil smile.
She was unquestionably older, and Starlight did not want to know what had happened to her.
"Looks like no more are coming," Valey sighed, closing her eyes and resting, taking absolutely no notice of Starlight. "Guess that means I got 'em all. I told you I could do it. I told you I'm unbeatable."
With corpses turning to dust and snow all around her, Starlight tried to meet Valey's eyes. "You told me? Valey, why are we here? What's going on!?"
When Valey opened her eyes, she looked straight through Starlight, not even registering that she was there. "I wonder if it even matters," she whispered.
"Valey!?" Starlight tried to reach forward and touch her friend, but it was like time slowed the closer she got, freezing her until she drew away and returning to normal. The world wouldn't let her get close. Where was she? When was she? And what was happening?
"Starlight... Glimmer..." Valey croaked, sending Starlight's eyes wide. She looked back at the wall, and Starlight followed her gaze, realizing Valey was leaning against what looked like a door. The batpony craned her head back, looking up and up into the heavens, and sighed. "I still believe in you, no matter what you do. Just... gotta..."
She heaved herself unsteadily to her hooves, giving the door a grin. All the corpses were gone, now, and there was nothing but a gray filly standing between her and the open plane. Opening her mouth, she caught a few falling flakes just like Starlight had, then licked her lips. "Gotta stay alive to see it for myself. No way did I start this not to see it through. Heh heh... ow..."
Starlight tried to call out, but to no effect. Valey slowly limped past her, battered face set in determination. Only as she passed, though, did Starlight notice the one thing fundamentally different about her friend: her cutie mark, instead of being a simple rendering of a boxing glove, was a complex set of triangles and runes she was fairly sure she had never seen before.
"Valey?" Starlight blinked, following her. "Valey, where are we? How did your cutie mark change? You're older, and you know my full name, even though I never told it to you. Are we...?" She stopped. "How far in the future am I?"
Suddenly, a wall of pressure built behind her like static. Something inside her screamed for her to turn around, and she started to jump... but barely made it halfway through the action when her world was washed away in a river of billowing black. Starlight spun, tumbled, thrashing, as her perception shattered and the snowy plane became nothing. She was drowning, rising, swimming through a river of inky cold, fighting to hold her breath... and then she broke the surface, and everything was pink.
Starlight gasped, shuddering, as blackness drained out of her vision like droplets of water. Her ears were filled with a gentle crackling, tongues of shimmering pink flickering and dancing upwards around her. The ground she was on was hard but warm, and there were two ponies hugging her... one shaking, adult-sized mare, and one disembodied presence that was wrapped around her, yet bigger than a mountain.
"Maple?" Starlight breathed, recognizing the branches of a crystal brazier and walls of organic crystal around that. "Are we... back underground? At the tree?" She felt her heart beating, let her ears twitch, shook off memories of the suffocating, claustrophobic grayness. "Am I alive?"
Maple's teary eyes looked straight at her, watering and pink. "You're alive..."
"I feel alive," Starlight admitted, standing up and testing her muscles. No aches, no pains, no weariness, no nothing. She and Maple had been laying on the pink flame's pedestal, and as it licked up about them, she realized that was the second thing she had felt holding her. "What happened? What did I just see? It felt like a nightmare..."
"I don't care..." Maple shook, trembling, and clung to Starlight harder. "I don't care!"
Starlight took the cue and laid back down, letting Maple nearly smother her with a hug. "You're alive..." Maple whispered, over and over and over.
What had happened? What about Valey and Shinespark and Ironridge and the windigoes? What about the airship, or the pony called Fire, or the warring factions and Arambai and Gerardo? Starlight felt Maple's hooves around her, rocked with the shaking of her adoptive mother's body, and quickly realized one thing: she didn't care either. For three days, Ironridge had been running them ragged, and more than enough was more than enough. The city could do what it wanted, but if anyone wanted to mess with her and Maple, they'd have to get through her first... and remembering the first time the tree had augmented her magic, Starlight had no doubts that she could send even a yak packing with it on her side.
"Yes," she grunted, "I'm alive. And don't worry. I'm not going anywhere."
"You're not?" Maple choked back, a hint of anger in her still-weak voice. "You're not just going to try to disappear again, right in front of my face, even after I told you so many times not to!?" She swallowed, shaking, leaning away from Starlight. "I... I just watched you..."
Starlight winced, a thorn going straight through her heart. "You knew that would happen!? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I don't know..." Maple cringed, then wailed. "I don't know why I didn't! I saw it in Arambai's house, and again on the ship when you were experimenting! After you passed out, you started to fade, every time, and then stopped and came back... I told you not to play around with it, but you didn't listen! I-I didn't want to scare you with it, b-but..." Her voice wavered. "Then you were doing it again, and I couldn't talk or move or stop you, and it was so much bigger than the last times because... I don't know! You... You... I never thought I'd have to watch my foal die and have it be my fault and be powerless to stop it again..."
Again...? Starlight's eyes widened. It had been so long since that story with Amber and Willow in Maple's kitchen in Riverfall, she had completely forgotten about Aspen, Maple's biological foal whom she had miscarried. "S-Sorry..." she whispered, wishing she had let Fire and the others try to find a way and heeded Maple's warnings not to use the machine, violently quashing the part of her mind that told her Maple was right and really never had given her a good reason not to do it.
Gently, she wrapped her own forelegs around Maple's neck. "But at least I'm alive now, aren't I? I'm not dead. See?"
"O-Only because..." Maple hiccuped, ears flat. "Only because you were touching me when you did it. If you had been even an inch away..."
"Huh?" Starlight tilted her head, confused.
Maple gritted her teeth. "I had promised I'd... never use my cutie mark on another pony, but you were almost gone, and it was the only way..."
Starlight's eyes widened in surprise, darting to Maple's flank. "But... isn't it broken!?" The cracks in the image were still there, though they had begun to reflow, like a smith had melted down the edges and was trying to seal everything back together. "I was in there...?"
"For hours," Maple choked. "Hours and hours. After what you did... I couldn't talk, so when someone came to check on me, I couldn't tell them what happened, or where you were. Gerardo came. He said Valey and Shinespark had already passed out, that the ship was broken and we were stuck but the snow was melting and we could walk or be flown down once we recovered. He talked on and on about how miraculous everything was and how it was all sunshine and rainbows and everything would be alright and never once asked where you were or even tried to guess why I was crying! He took me back to Shinespark's room and set me there to rest, and told me to go to sleep, since our room had been taken after you unlocked it. Valey and Shinespark were there too. And I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't, since my mark is harder to use now that it's broken and I have to actively concentrate to keep from dropping things. It hurt... I could feel you, but I was so scared I'd slip and the moment I did, you'd be gone forever and I didn't even know what to do...!"
Starlight held tighter as she sobbed, cradling her head and gently rocking back and forth. "They put Braen's armor in that room in the morning," Maple whispered. "They were talking about moving ponies out. The ship got quiet, but Shinespark and Valey hadn't woken up, so they left me with them since I wasn't officially hurt and didn't need medical help. Eventually, I got enough strength back to drag myself across the floor, and reach the armor. I could move, but I had no strength. But I thought, since the armor is mana-powered and makes you stronger, maybe it could do something..."
She swallowed. "It did. It even opened when I touched it. I don't know how, but I was able to get in. And it worked. Even though I could barely move, it was able to strengthen my movements and move for me. So I thought... that if you were disappearing because of a harmony extractor, and if that was the same thing as this tree... that I could take you down here, and it could save you..."
"Maple..." Starlight's own eyes stung with tears as she held on tight. Looking beyond the flames, she could now see the empty suit of Braen's armor standing at attention. Some parts of Maple's story didn't make any sense, but that didn't matter right then. "I love you," she sniffed, burrowing into Maple's fur. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to disappear! But I'm alive now, and... we're alright..."
Maple sniffed back, laying on her side and drawing Starlight close.
"We can just stay here," Starlight declared, her cheek resting against Maple's fuzzy side. "We don't have to go anywhere. I don't care what happens. I don't want anything to happen. I just want to... to slow down, so I can feel like me..."
Maple's stomach growled right next to her ear. "I wish we could," Maple murmured. "But I was starving even before I got into the armor, and we've been down here for so long. I fell asleep while you were coming back... I think I'm weaker than I was when I came down, now. I hope I can even get us out. I just want to go home and see Amber and Willow..."
Starlight frowned. "Really? Huh. I feel kind of full."
"Lucky," Maple murmured weakly, not questioning it.
"Right." Starlight slipped free from her embrace, the pleasant rightness of the pink flames still trailing off her horn. As long as she was down there, she had as much magic as she needed. "Then I'm carrying you out, and and we're going to find as much food as you need. You probably need it to get your strength back, or something. Ready... Nnnngh!"
Heaving, she lifted, and managed to get Maple awkwardly on her back.
"Starlight..." Maple murmured.
"That's my name," Starlight said, climbing down from the flame pedestal, still feeling its warmth swirling around in her body and radiating off Maple's. "And we're going back to Riverfall so you can see your friends. If you carried me down here, I can carry you out, and anyone who gets in my way gets crystalled. Let's go home... Mom."
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Ooh, first time Starlight called her "mom" directly isn't it?
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction!
I guess that kinda counts as Starlight being in a crate?
Is nobody concerned about how many dead changelings there are inside of Maples cutie mark, umm, I mean brand?
8842374
yeah...
And Valey, too.
Hey, I called it! I knew she would have to hammerspace Starlight at some point.
8841320
Is... this a Portal reference?
WHAT YEAR IS IT
9064781
Given the chapter title, I couldn't resist!
I wrote out a whole theory here, but before I post that, I’ll ask this: Author, if you happen to see this, could you remind me if we get an explanation for what this vision shows, or the mechanics behind them, to avoid my potentially sounding very dumb? You don’t have to say what that explanation was—I’ll get to it in my reread eventually—but I can’t recall one, and, if we still don’t know exactly why Starlight saw what she saw here, I have nonsensical theories. I’ll edit the theory into this comment later.
EDIT: Aha! Thank you. Glimmer, as usual, does nothing but make the story more confusing.
Anyway, we have here a vision of an older Valey fighting changelings, with her Artifice visible, knowing Starlight’s full name, and seeming to rely on Starlight for something. My wild theory, therefore, is that this vision somehow shows part of the war between Ironridge and changeling-controlled Yakyakistan which started recently in TID. I’ve theorized for a while that Valey would eventually unlock the full power of her Artifice, and the war seems like as good a time as any. The description is also visually similar to her TID self, with her being thinner, slightly older, and with the spark in her eyes diminished. She’s waiting for Starlight in this vision and seems to think of her almost reverently, which tracks with her having sent Halcyon and Corsica south to get help from Starlight with the war (I’m not sure how she’d know of Starlight’s wrongdoings, but there are a lot of ways that could happen).
If this is the case, I will be both impressed, since it would require planning this four million words in advance, and shocked, as I have never correctly predicted anything in this fic besides one thing that I stole from someone else. Might as well keep trying, though!
Other edit: This theory is consistent with some of the other visions, but others seem entirely unrelated. Hmm...
11797359
Nope!
Well, sort of. But the character who gave that explanation later admitted to making the whole thing up and having no idea what the visions were about or even what was in them. So no.
and yet somehow and for some reason starlight gives up maple even after this, just leaves and becomes a small time villian back in equestria. There better be some end of story and/or sequel story where she goes back to maple. maple is a cinnamon bun who deserves good things.