The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

The Boss Door

Following the directions she had been given, Shinespark hurried along an ascending corridor, Gerardo's sword bumping at her side. She had about five minutes to spare, by her count, but there was no sign of guards or fighter escorts to block her path. Lord Gyre must have worked fast. She rounded a corner, expecting at any moment to see the open air... and ran straight into a suit of armor.

"Shinespark," Nyala said.

"Huh?"

Shinespark fell back on her rump, blinking. Her golden alicorn armor stared down at her, unblinking, its metal face as expressionless as always. "I got in. Do you... have a message?"

"Actually, I snuck off," Nyala answered, sounding subdued. "I don't think the others know where I am. The last fight went long because both sides were playing dirty and the loser had a tantrum, so we have a few minutes. I wanted to talk."

"About?" Shinespark folded her ears at Nyala's tone. "This sounds important..."

"It is to me." Nyala shifted slightly. "I mostly only talk about things with Gerardo and Slipstream. They're my friends, here. You and Valey and Maple seem to have your own friend group. And it's awkward for me, being around Valey, because she remembers me from a past life and has so many expectations for what I'm like, and it's either scary when she knows something about me I don't or is frightening when it feels like she has an expectation for me to live up to. She can be very intense."

Shinespark took a deep breath, having spent the last hour steeling herself for a fight that would very likely cost her her freedom and leave her temporarily a cripple, all for the sake of trying. She forced that back down, trying to open herself back up. "She can, yes. But I know for a fact she values you. We had a lot of talks about this after my own sister vanished for the second time."

"But she's awkward around me, too," Nyala continued. "And I do value her! Because I've heard about everything she did for me and have no reason to doubt it, and part of me would do anything to get my old memories and body back to be the person she remembers again, and who remembers her. But I'm also afraid that would make me not me anymore, and it's impossible, anyway. If memories and experiences didn't make us who we are, why would me and the sister she knew be any different?"

"Right..." Shinespark agreed. "So is there a way I can help? I'm slightly at my limit at this point..."

Nyala stared impassively down at her. "No. There's a way I want to help," she corrected, infinitely more passion in her voice than her stately appearance. "I can't stand fighting. It makes me feel bad inside, like I'm watching someone break something dear to me, and I could never learn to do it even though my body is a weapon. But I listened to you talking and saw you coming out here, and after you left, Gerardo was talking about Ironridge and explaining all the consequences of you coming out here like this and bargaining with someone to let you in, and you're doing it all even though that stallion could drop you with a single hit. Just because you feel like you have to act, you're doing it."

"I am," Shinespark confirmed with a sigh, a roar of cheering reaching her ears from further up the corridor. It sounded like the fight was reaching its end.

"I-I want to do the same," Nyala said. "I've thought about it a lot. I'm still thinking about it and don't know if I've explained it as best I can, but I do. You still have that sword. Did you find a way to take armor or weapons into the arena?"

"I did, but..." Shinespark nodded.

"Then take me, too," Nyala requested. "I've thoroughly studied my own blueprints on the ship's terminal. This armor has the same kind of interface your harmony extractor uses, and there are mechanisms for me relinquishing control while staying inside. I'll be along for the ride, but you'll be able to use your own knowledge and magic fighting with me. Everyone else will think whoever's usually inside me lent me to you."

Shinespark squeezed her eyes shut, then smiled. "I think this might give me a chance."

"That's what I was hoping," Nyala answered, sounding relieved. "If you're making this big of a sacrifice for her, I can make one too to help yours be worth something."

They held a silence for several seconds... and then a triumphant, battered, lanky griffon strolled by in the opposite direction, eyes widening at the sight of Nyala. "Whooo," he whistled in respect. "Now that's a classy disguise. Glad I don't have to fight that..."

Shinespark blinked as he rounded the corner out of sight. "I think that's our cue."

"It is." Nyala nodded.

Shinespark's horn lit, and with a pulse of sapphire, she was gone, feeling the familiar sensation of Braen's padded interior materialize around her. The armor took a moment to automatically adjust its padding to her figure, and she realized she must have been shorter when she wore it last.

She hadn't just grown physically. Memories briefly swept through her head, of a struggle with Valey atop a cracking dam and an awful night in a windy cave, of streaking through the dark skyport in a trail of blue and planning fervently over a triumphant breakfast with her old life's friends. A spark of magic tickled her flanks, and one by one Braen's systems reattuned to her as Nyala relinquished control, settling in to being a piece of moon glass along for the ride.

"I can still see," Nyala whispered in her ear as Shinespark moved her hooves, feeling the augmentations and readjusting to her enhanced size. "I think I could move if I wanted to. How is it?"

"Familiar," Shinespark whispered back. "I feel like... I've grown into it."

With a mental command, the helmet clacked, splitting apart at the muzzle and folding backward down her neck, exposing her red mane and its teal stripe for the world to see as she strode toward the exit. "And it's not a disguise."

---

"Bananas, what is this place?" Valey hissed under her breath, speeding through what had once been a sewer corridor beneath the Gyre capitol's already-submerged main level. Through various cracks and entrances, one corridor had led to another, and now she thought she was in a dungeon of sorts... only one that had been disused for a long time. Maybe the old city had a castle with a sub-basement level? Arched corridors held cells to the sides with rusted, failing bars, and somehow, Starlight was still many levels down.

"This way or that way..." She made a guess at an intersection, having difficulty using the smell for anything when her target was essentially straight down. Starlight's precise direction was obscured, too, as if something was blocking it. It wasn't doing a very good job, but to block Starlight from her at all... She never questioned how her sense worked, but it was usually infallible.

She pulled up quickly, her tunnel opening into a tall room with magical, smokeless torchlight adorning the walls. It was far cleaner than anything she had seen before, a pattern of runes adorning the floor she hadn't seen since... Ironridge's crystal palace? Valey blinked. On the floor, in a dungeon beneath Gyre, was a massive copy of Yakyakistan's Emblem of the Nine Virtues.

"Woah. Weird." Against her instinct to hurry, Valey stopped to investigate.

Unlike the past sigils she had seen, this incarnation was colored. The six dots forming the central hexagon were all pastel, while the outer three were richer shades of neon in hue. Red, yellow, midnight blue... For the most part, the room's construction was careful and meticulous, clearly built far more recently than the dungeon that led up to it, but the stone tile on which the blue circle lay was cracked heavily, as if someone had deliberately thrust a sword or an iron stake all the way through. The tenth circle, at the center of all the others, was just an empty outline, unpainted from the color of the stone below.

Weird as it was, it was inert, and not getting her anywhere. The rest of the room was held up by hexagonal pillars, the smooth brick walls between them emblazoned with reliefs of griffons, ponies, and sphinxes. In one, griffons and pegasi lived harmoniously, working together to push a cloud across the sky. In the next, a griffon locked swords with a unicorn's glowing horn, several bodies bleeding beneath them. In another, three dragons beheld a red stone as a field of trees burned beneath them. In the fourth, a gray, bearded unicorn with an impressive hat stood before a hole in the ground, and in the fifth, a massive, featureless outline of an equine held an entire population of tiny figures in her forelegs. The final one showed another triangle, a sphinx at the top and a pony and a griffon at either side.

"Okay... huh..." Valey figured the murals had to be there for a reason and flew closer to inspect them, running her hooves over the surfaces. Stone, stone... She blinked. The dragon mural had a perfectly straight crack down the center, like it was designed to split in half. A door?

Going with the easiest way to find out, Valey hovered up to one of the artificial torches, regarded it, inspected her hoof... and punched it as hard as she could.

Crack! The light went out.

She flew in a circle around the room, giving each one the same treatment until the floor had dimmed significantly that she could shadow sneak. With a running start, she dipped beneath the stone, faced the crack, and charged.

An instant later, she tumbled out beyond the door, landed in a sitting position, and nearly choked when she tried to take a breath, the air stinging the back of her throat. For a moment, her reaction was that she was going to suffocate... and then her senses and memories caught up with her. She had smelled something exactly like this before: the blizzard in Ironridge, up in Skyfreeze and the skyport. Only where that sensation had been born of magical monsters and hatred, this sting felt heavily entrenched, as if it had been growing here for a long time. The corridor continued downward with the smell infused in its walls, a physical force of regret, loneliness and despair. Whatever this place was, it was used for something evil.

Valey got back to her hooves and continued downwards, resting her senses on Starlight like a dark spot in a sea of burning light. Her destination wasn't far.

Comments

[Pluie]

Hmm, the Sirens and Starswirl. And the featureless outline is maybe the Night Mother? And maybe Stanza is a windigo? But Chauncey mentioned something about a song. What if she's a Siren? With the other two singing sisters that would make three...