Always Darkest Before Morning
"Your Majesty?" The Equestrian guards leveled their weapons at Aegis, their target entirely inert and unresponsive. "You recognize this thing?"
"Only from depictions that are older than I am," Celestia whispered, staring in shock at the dragon. "Either it truly existed and this is the original, or it was created by someone with far too deep an understanding of things that must remain in the past." She turned to Shinespark and the others in the doorway, voice strict and urgent. "Were you aware of this, where did you obtain it and what have you seen it do!?"
Shinespark snapped to attention, the goddess's command more than enough to shake her through her present state. "I've seen it before but wasn't aware it crossed the mountains with us. Others might know more. It runs on the same energy my ship is powered by, which we're presently out of, and it belongs to a filly I know nothing about who started flying with us in the Empire."
"Where is this filly and what does she resemble?" Celestia pressed. "And what kind of abilities has she been known to display?"
Shinespark's eyes fell dubiously. "I haven't been keeping tabs on my crew. As far as I'm aware, she hasn't done anything since she broke her horn in an incident in the Empire earlier."
Celestia's horn pulsed, sending up a signal of light into the sky. "Guards," she commanded, drawing the defensive perimeter out of the shadows. "The situation has changed. I must return to Canterlot immediately to seal this creation away. Too little is known to take any risks."
Felicity paced out behind them, ears folded. "I suppose that means we will have to wait?"
"I am sorry, my little pony." Celestia regarded her with folded ears. "I will leave my entire regiment here to protect you and return as soon as I am able. It is abundantly clear there is more to your appearance here than meets the eye, but until this is separated from anyone it may be associated with, you cannot be my first priority. Rest assured, they will keep you safe in my absence."
"Your Majesty!" the guards protested as one. "If this thing is dangerous, you mean to say you're escorting it yourself?"
Celestia turned to regard the ones who had spoken. "My prayer is that it will be inert without an operator. Should that fail to be the case, it would be very difficult for me to protect you. Prepare my train."
Wings snapped up in well-trained salutes, and several of the pegasi streaked off. Celestia's aura burned bright along the deck in a perfect square, a sheet of force slowly rising and lifting Aegis atop it, as if she was hesitant to grasp it with telekinesis directly. Slowly, shimmering, it lifted off, floating out over the railing and into the night.
A ways away, inside the ajar door to the bridge, a camouflaged Jamjars watched with an intense frown. "They're stealing your thing..."
"There was nothing I could do except hope they didn't find it," Glimmer breathed, true worry on her face. "And now those soldiers will ask around and find out about me. This is very bad..."
"Got a plan?" Jamjars muttered.
"As I always do, yes." Glimmer didn't sound thrilled. "It involves hiding and letting them get away."
"I've got you covered," Jamjars whispered back. "You've got this."
Glimmer's ears pressed back. "No. I don't. I only have increasingly desperate solutions for desperate situations that will make more and more trouble down the road. The more radical I reach for, the more I lose, and this time is no exception."
"Have you considered being honest and telling someone what your deal is so they know how to help?" Jamjars raised an eyebrow. "I get secrets more than anyone, but you can trust me, right?"
"I already am," Glimmer sighed. "If anything spirals out of control further and this ship goes from sinking to sunk, and I'm not around anymore... take the things I hid in your room. You'll know what to do with them."
Jamjars tilted her head. "Those papers?"
"Yes. Those." Glimmer hunkered further away from the door. "But we're not there yet. For now, we hide."
Starlight tried to sleep as the gondola rose through the heavens, but it just wouldn't come. Her eyes closed and her body relaxed, but instead of slipping into a dream, she got the strangest sensation that she was already dreaming and couldn't wake up if she wanted to.
No sound came from Chrysalis on the roof, or the cloud of ash inexorably drifting past around them. No wind buffeted the gondola, which would have defied belief in the normally-windswept Grandbell. Lyn didn't disappear, though Starlight kept half an eye on her at all times, cracked even while she was trying to sleep, refusing to let her friend disappear.
The ride could have lasted an hour, or maybe more. Starlight would have been sure something was wrong if she hadn't fallen from the mountains herself, remembering just how tall they were...
Slowly, the gondola rocked to a stop, its ascent complete.
"Where are we?" Lyn asked, going to the door and checking the window. She squinted, then rubbed her head, looking pained. "I don't recognize this. Starlight, where...? Why is it so hard for me to think?"
Her attempt to sleep finally over, Starlight rose and put a wing around Lyn, making sure she couldn't wander or get lost. "It'll be alright. Come with me. We're going to get both of us where we belong."
"Sure you are," Chrysalis drawled, dragging open the door. "This ought to be entertaining..."
The world outside looked nothing like Starlight had been expecting. The horizon was vertical, a solid wall bisecting the world up and down, running as far as the eye could see. A gray void of falling ash filled the sky above and below, Starlight's vision in all directions lost in the mist. The gondola had let them out on a nondescript, rectangular pier of metal that protruded from the wall, a door visible at the far end. Once her hooves stepped onto solid ground, Lyn along with her, the gondola slowly retreated back down into the mists.
"Whose memory is this?" Starlight asked, staring at the alien landscape with wide eyes. "Are we halfway up the Aldenfold...?"
She led the way towards the wall and the door, already certain this was somewhere else. She had tumbled down the mountain wall, and while it was sheer and vertical, this face was unnaturally smooth. In fact, the only flaws were rectangular patterns and angles that looked almost like the borders of giant sheets of plating... This structure was made of metal as well.
"Don't look at me." Chrysalis shrugged, looking oddly tense.
"Starlight, do you know where we are?" Lyn asked, even though the answer was obvious. "I feel lost. Something's weird..."
Starlight pressed her eyes shut and didn't let her go. "We're all lost. Just hang on..."
When they reached the wall, it was, in fact, metal. The door was a single smooth sheet that looked like it could retract by sliding, a panel on the side that looked vaguely familiar from somewhere. Starlight leaned in, squinting.
"Terminal access," her Nightmare Module voice said, making her jump in surprise. Unlike every other time she had heard it, though, this time it was out loud instead of in her head, and from the looks on the others' faces they had heard it too. "Initiating scan... Detection complete. Welcome, Eylista."
The door smoothly and seamlessly opened.
Starlight just stared at it. "What?"
"You heard it. In we go." Rolling her eyes, Chrysalis strode forward and through the portal. "Don't think too hard about a memory. It spat technobabble and let me in last time I found this place, too."
Starlight pulled Lyn along through, the former sphinx not resisting at all. "You've been here before?" she asked as lights came on and illuminated the tunnel around them. The first thing that caught her attention was that in here, no more ash was falling.
"Perhaps." Chrysalis shrugged and took the lead, looking adamantly like she wanted to be in front. They were in a long corridor, the floor and walls adorned with an architecture Starlight had never seen before, like if the architects for the Ironridge skyport had taken their ambitions and designs twenty steps further towards a glass-and-steel vision of the future.
Lights glowed along ridges in the walls, tiny filaments and conduits that traced lines and angles that reminded Starlight of hexagons. It was impossible to tell exactly what the metal was it was made from, but it seemed to have many layers, yet been cast in one piece without any assembly or welding. Starlight was so absorbed in looking at the scenery, she didn't even notice the next door until it passed.
"Yo, finally, I get some visitors!"
Starlight's heart leapt so hard at the voice it felt like it smashed into her head, and she nearly dropped Lyn to scurry forward. "Valey!?"
This room was long and narrow, with a polished interior and two long lines of parallel, flat-screen panels along the walls, each large and frameless and showing flickering static like broken terminals from Ironridge. But at the far end of the room, a bigger panel than all the rest was hung, placed high and tilted downwards to oversee the entire space. Looking out of it like it was a window, staring directly at Starlight, was a giant version of Valey's head.
"Hey." Valey folded her forelegs crossly, no spark of recognition in her eyes. "Do you have any idea how long I've been stuck here? Bananas, it's boring. Who are you, anyway?"
"How long you've been stuck here?" Starlight dashed forward, racing for the screen. "How long do you remember? Do your memories not get reset like everyone else's!?"
Valey blinked at her in confusion. "Uh... no? What are you talking about? I've just been stuck here for ages and dying of boredom."
"I'm getting you out!" Starlight yelled up at the screen. "I don't know how, but there's a way! I can feel it!"
She skidded to a stop as she neared the screen, a triangular pedestal rising from the ground surrounded by rings and arrays of complex runes. Starlight frowned, stepping up and examining it. It seemed to have three slots, one filled by a red stone, another by a midnight blue stone, and the third empty... In fact, now that she looked at the ambient light harder, in this whole place she could see color. The materials it was made from were just mostly gray.
"What's this?" Starlight leaned in, the stones like vertical tablets set upright into slits with their narrow sides pointed towards the pedestal's center. They each had engravings, both complicated messes of triangular runes. In fact, the blue one reminded her faintly of Garsheeva's cutie mark...
"Some kind of power system, according to this thing." Valey's image tapped the edge of the frame. "I don't get how a million percent of it works. Don't get a lot of things, actually, like where this even is or why I'm stuck here. Watch out for the creepy lady, by the way!"
Starlight turned, having forgotten about Chrysalis, who now stood between her and the door. "What?"
"Oh, nothing." Chrysalis walked forward and licked her lips, and suddenly seized Starlight in her telekinesis. "Thank you so much."
Starlight snarled and tried to react, but before she could, Chrysalis picked her up, flipped her upside-down, and thrust her face-first against the third, empty slot on the pedestal. A horrible vacuuming rushed through her body like a windstorm, one she knew all too well: the sensation of being connected to a harmony extractor.
"No! Get off! What are you doing!?" Starlight screamed and flailed, her sarosian body lighting up with bright lines that began to tug on her consciousness. "Stop it! Lyn, help!"
Lyn rushed forward, her mind still present enough to act when she needed to, but another wall of green smacked into her, bowling her to the side and under one of the wall screens. Starlight lasted about a second longer before her body gave out.
A whirl of everything flooded her senses, tumbling her through pure chaos and mixing every sensory input she owned, until she had the sound of triangles in her ears and felt the taste of ash against her nonexistent hooves. But after everything she had been through, her reflexes were good and her mind was strong, and she regained control of her sight just in time to look down from above and see her gray former body burst into a lifeless puff of ash.
"Huh," Valey said beside her, and Starlight realized she was somehow in the computer screen as well. "You know, I can't remember for sure, but I wonder if that's how I got stuck here as well..."
Below, Chrysalis burst out cackling, standing by the pedestal and wiping her mane back in glee. "Oh, it is. You left me for weeks, Starlight. Weeks and weeks to plan my revenge. I found this place early on, the moment I tried flying upward out of rage and frustration. It reacted to me. It could tell I had a hoof still in the land of the living. Do you know where we are?"
Starlight snarled. "Let me go! What are you doing!?"
Chrysalis giggled cruelly. "Nightmare Modules are instructions for machines. Sarosian bodies are those machines... or so Chauncey thought. But he was looking for Nightmare Modules inside obsidian, don't you remember? His experiments on Puddles the windigo, designed to use her chaotic body as a sieve to fish out that code from within fallen obsidian. But this place, where we are now? This isn't anyone's memory. It's part of the obsidian itself. A livable dream, if you will. And us being here, Starlight, you and I who belong in the real world, is enough to make it manifest."
"Who cares?" Starlight flailed in the screen, unsure how her senses were adapting to lacking a third dimension, only that they were. "I don't even know what that means! Let us go!"
"Oh, I don't think so." Chrysalis chuckled. "What I mean is that this isn't a memory. It's a dream, one you and I are having that's hard-coded into your obsidian by the Nightmare Module's design. I spent days wandering these halls and investigating this place, and whoever dreamed it dreamed of a place where souls and brands themselves were separable. Complete control over all three parts of a pony... A mad scientist's dream in the waking world, but here, anything that can be imagined can be reality."
Starlight tried to punch the screen. Her hoof moved uselessly through empty space.
"Nightmare Moon's dream, perhaps?" Chrysalis shrugged. "The so-called goddess who created the Nightmare Modules? When I first found Valey, lost and reliving her own memory out in the wilds, I knew you would be here for her someday. Merely wanting to find her led you here, because that's how this world works. If you want to find someone, you will, eventually. She was bait. And now you're trapped here too..."
"Hey!" Valey made a rude hoof gesture at Chrysalis. "I dunno what your problem is or who either of you are, but I know someone who's asking for a beating when I see them! Lemme go and see how tough you are then, hag!"
Starlight ignored her, staring dead at Chrysalis. "What's the point of trapping me here? Because you're trapped, too? So we can sit here and be miserable together, forever?"
"A tempting offer." Chrysalis shrugged. "In less hopeful circumstances, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing you rot for eternity. But here and now?" She tapped the pedestal, staying carefully clear of the exposed slot. "Brands." She pointed to the two slots that were filled, nothing left where Starlight had been. "Obsidian binds you by your brand. This machine binds you by your soul instead, somehow. You might have showed up before I was fully ready, but sit tight. With more study on this dream, I might find a way to use this machine and switch our places entirely, and our bindings to our outside bodies. You'll get to live as Stanza for eternity, and once I find this way out you're so sure of, I'll have all your friends and the happily ever after you were too stupid to enjoy when it was staring you in the face! Hahahahahahahaha! Oh, Starlight..." Her face twisted in a sickly sweet smile. "I warned you. I told you I would have stayed with your crew if I could do it over again. I told you I despised you and would never be your friend, and you just had to stick with me anyway."
Celestia departed, and Shinespark stared as she vanished over the horizon, all the Equestrian guards looking thoroughly unsettled.
"So, if I may..." Felicity tentatively raced one. "What happens now?"
"We have our orders," the guard grunted, looking disturbed. "Rest well, Ma'am. You look exhausted, and we are fit to guard you."
"When you say guard us..." Amber strolled up carefully, Valey at her side. "You mean keep us safe, right? Because we hadn't exactly finished the discussion on how and whether we were allowed to stay..."
Far in the distance, an unearthly bellow sounded through the silence, carrying tidings of the griffons' battle with the brood of Arimaspi. The guards looked at Amber as if that answered her question.
"Right." Amber sighed. "You guys have some escaped monsters, or something, and we've got shady griffons. Let's just sit back and hope they beat each other into submission and make cleaning up the winning side easy?"
Some of the guards saluted, confident and strong. Others shuffled nervously.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Saffron gave them a sidelong look. "None of you look very confident."
"Her Majesty told you about the brood and the children, and their battle?" The guard who spoke looked in less-good condition than the others, like he had recently been through a long ordeal. "I'm from the fort where we were keeping them. They're... you know..." He swallowed. "The griffons used to hunt the brood and kill the oldest and strongest, to keep their population under control. Which meant none of them grew up all the way. And they haven't been culled like that in a while. The plan was going to be that Her Majesty would take care of them personally once we let the griffons finish fighting while we were talking with you... Let's just say it's not a fight I'm looking forward to."
"Quiet, you," a better-equipped guard threatened, gesturing with his spear. He turned to Saffron. "You have no need to fear. We are not Her Majesty's elites for nothing. She has ordered us to keep you safe, and we will do so with our lives."
Gerardo cleared his throat, standing in the doorway and looking like he badly needed to sleep. "I hate to interrupt, but unicorn, anyone? The sound stone is glowing."
Grenada frowned and lit her horn. "Here."
Soon, it was hovering in her aura, a familiar, pained voice filtering through in the middle of the group. "Hey," Gunther panted. "You there, Gerardo? Ah, forget it... Listen. My subordinates and I got in a bit over our heads. I lost Violet, Red and Chartreuse are dead, and Blue fled like the coward he is. Of course, I did too... There are five of them, two injured. If you haven't gotten jailed by Equestrians yet, get out of here. This is someone else's stomping grounds, now."
In the distance, another roar sounded, this time much closer.
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well I was half right, Chrysalis was planning a body jack, she wants to be Starlight.
Ooh, good chapter! So sounds like Chrysalis still needs a third soul to activate the machine? Going to shove Lyn in there? Or does
And what is Glimmer up to? Tho that's pretty much been the question since she first appeared! But in particular what did she give Jammy?
And sounds like we're about to get an epic guards vs monsters battle.
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It seems like the souls of the 3 artifices are required, since one of those stones in the slots look like Garsheeva’s cutie mark and the other is likely the true form of Valey’s.
Missing word?
Wonder if Glimmer is referencing her original timeline, where she took increasingly desperate measures to protect her friends (at least based on her talks with Starlight and other commenters’s guesses).
Glimmer’s papers contain info on Varsidels’s weapons program, right? Wonder what Jamjars is supposed to do with them.
Sounds similar to the location seen by Starlight in her first vision in Ironridge. Wonder if the fact that the Aldenfold seems to be an artificial barrier in this world too is significant, since I think the Aldenfold didn’t exist at the time the Nightmare Modules were created, or when Nightmare Moon was banished.
Have we seen the word “Eylista” before?
Wonder what name Chrysalis and/or Valey were told.
In any case, it would have been smart to take advantage of Lyn’s cutie mark here to see what Chrysalis is up to (assuming the mark still works here).
Seems being an Artifice isn’t enough to retain your memories here, although it seems Valey’s memory hasn’t reset despite being alone for a while? (Ninja’d by Starlight, apparently)
Wait, is that what it feels like? I thought that every other time Starlight was blasted across the room and lost her short-term memory, except for that one time where there was barely any effect. Did I forget another time?
And does this mean Starlight is the third Artifice of Luna? How did Chrysalis know this? And we still don’t know what power (or characteristic; i.e. Valey’s is love, Garsheeva’s is... knowledge, was it?) is associated with it, do we?
I’m curious what memory this is. My best guess would be something to do with Icereach, but I’m not sure that qualifies as “wild” enough. When has Valey been in an uncivilized area?
Wait, Stanza? Not “Chrysalis” or “me”? So is Stanza the one stuck in the obsidian with Starlight? And remind me, Stanza was created from Crystal, right? And funneled all the negative emotions into Crystal? What was their exact relationship again?
Unless they can tell something is up? Especially Glimmer, if she really is Starlight. Does Chrysalis know about Glimmer?
Wonder if this will lead to what we saw in Starlight’s first vision. Starlight/Valey talk while Chrysalis is away, and Starlight reveals her full name to Valey. They somehow escape, run into changelings Chrysalis set to guard them, and Valey beats them all up.
Guessing they’ll run into the Immortal Dream and everyone will have to fight together? Or someone will go to rescue them in return for a favor or two.
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IIRC the papers were won from Garaheeva in a bet over whether Starlight would use the wish granted to her. I want to say they contained info about weapons either designed or produced by the Griffon Empire for Varsidel.
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Now that you bring it up, Garsheeva’s Artifice being there without some form of Garsheeva also being there is kind of odd. Maybe it’s because Valey’s soul was yanked along with her mark because Sarosian souls aren’t bound as tightly to their bodies, so it’s Valey’s soul in the computer, while Garsheeva only lost her mark to Chrysalis? If that’s the case, I’m curious what form Garsheeva’s artifice took in this place, since it didn’t have an accompanying soul.
To be honest, I’m just getting really confused with all these cutie mark vs soul vs body shenanigans going on. I need to reread the chapter that explained all this again...
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Ditto on the confusion! That plus my rather poor memory means I'm really struggling to keep up with what all has gone before and how it fits together. Still loving the story, just wishing I had a better grasp and memory of all the details!
One other thing I thought of: Valey seems a bit nonchalant about this. Did she forgot how to interpret the signals her mark gives her, did it not activate, or something else?
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I believe her mark only works when something is directly threatening her. As she wasn’t physically there and what Chrysalis did only affected Starlight nothing happened that could of set off her mark.
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I definitely could have worded my question better; I was thinking of when Valey got trapped by Chrysalis in the first place, not when’s a starlight got trapped. Speaking of which, it’s interesting Chrysalis appears to know how this thing works. Wonder if there’s an instruction booklet sitting somewhere, or maybe she knew something from Chauncey’s experiments?
On an unrelated note, I wonder if Starlight being unable to use magic in Nightmare mode is because it’s basically accessing her Sarosian side.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how hardy Arimaspi‘s brood is. They seem able to handle a group of griffons fine, but what about, say, an abandoned boat full of gunpowder that hopefully hasn’t been ruined with moisture?
Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal, Chrysalis! Starting as she intends to go on, I suppose. But hey, at least we found Valey and Empress Adorable.
In a twist that surprises Starlight and exactly zero of the readers, Chrysalis was scheming!
In the interest of your getting a somewhat more positive comment than certain others…
…Huh. You know, the amount of things in this story which are just plainly (if briefly) stated and only “officially” revealed much later is quite funny. Granted, you’d have to remember some pretty minute details to put this one together, but still. Garsheeva’s being the Night Mother was the same way, I noticed.
I forgot how much I adored Chrysalis and Starlight’s dynamic; it’s like the less-miserable, more campy Chryssy we know and love from the show and other fics shines through. Briefly. She had an ulterior motive, of course, but I can’t see her having not meant more or less everything she said. Crystal didn’t really lie like that.
The amount of genuine care and regret she has around her foal makes me very excited to see what her meeting with Halcyon is like. And any potential reunion with Starlight, of course.
Chrysalis plan seems kinda like a deus ex machina. like completely made up bullshit. Why is there something that can even do that? and how does she somehow know what it is?