The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Everything Is Perfectly Fine

"Hey girls, guess what?"

Felicity groaned. "Who's asking, and what time is it?"

"Like an hour or two after sunrise," Valey's voice replied. "Anyway, you're never gonna believe this, but the whole island is still standing. No disasters anywhere in sight. At least, me and Amber didn't find any on our morning run!"

"Good," Shinespark grunted. "Is it morning already?"

"Nyaah. If you're asking whether you have to get up, that depends on whether you wanna miss the breakfast Ironflanks has been preparing since before we left. I'll leave the door open and waft the smell in here..."

"All three of you are gone, darling? Wait, then-"

Valey turned on the lights, revealing just Felicity and Shinespark as the sleeping pile's remnants. "Wakey wakey!"

Felicity immediately reddened and tried to pull herself to her hooves. "Oh my. I didn't realize it was down to just the two of us..."

"Try not to make it awkward. It doesn't have to be." Shinespark looked awkward anyway, rolling out of the opposite side of the bed.

Valey shrugged and grinned. "Eh, nothing wrong with getting a little extra shut-eye. So, who's ready to raise a ruckus and show this island some fun?"

Felicity looked dubious, and Shinespark blinked.

"Right, well..." Valey turned to leave. "You two get yourselves psyched up for that. I'm gonna go stuff my face."

---

Soon enough, Valey, Starlight and Shinespark stood outside of Generosity Two, Amber and Felicity already wandering off to the south to explore College Town. A small squad of students were camped far enough away so as to not be imposing yet close enough it was obvious who they were there for, and Maple was signing autographs with a slightly surreal expression.

"So..." Valey rubbed her hooves together. "Who wants to go see the space department?"

With a soft thump of hooves, Nyala glided in and landed from above. "Actually... would you mind if I come too? I don't have plans."

"Uh, sure." Valey waved a wing, starting on her way. "Come along!"

Their journey to the space department passed without fanfare, waves and nods and a few wishful looks following them across the campus. One accosted building receptionist later, and Valey and her friends sat patiently in a lobby, waiting for Anemone or Sea Star or anyone else they knew.

Professor Sea Star eventually arrived, looking about as enthusiastic as she usually did. "Well, good morning."

"Hey, doc," Valey greeted. "Not teaching a class? I kind of expected we wouldn't run into you."

"I teach research trips," Sea Star replied, standing and watching them. "And until we can recalibrate the Arc Manta, it won't be any use taking it out to sea. Its sensors need readjustment after the last trip. Now what can I help you with? I wasn't expecting a visit."

Valey leaned closer. "Any chance you know where Anemone is? I owe her a visit, and brought some friends."

"Occupied," Sea Star answered, glancing at the receptionist and sounding not at all sorry. "Your delivery yesterday turned out to be more of a hoofful than expected. But this isn't the place to talk about that. If you'd like to discuss it, I have an office this way."

Valey's ears folded. "Ah bananas, it is? Yeah, let's hear what you have to say."

Professor Sea Star lead the way back through the space center, shooting a glance at Nyala, Starlight and Shinespark. "I assume Valey wouldn't need to worry about discussing anything that may be sensitive to you three?"

"I can know what she knows," Shinespark replied. Nyala and Starlight bit their lips.

Sea Star shrugged. "Well, it's none of my concern." She eventually closed a door behind them, not yet into the secure section of the building, shutting them inside a tidy office. "So. You're checking up on your windigo hearts, I imagine."

Valey raised an eyebrow. "I was hoping to call in a favor to a friend who might let my friends play with your gravity machine in exchange for doing some science on my cutie mark, but you're making it sound like the windigo hearts need a check-up?"

Shinespark sighed. "You had to jinx us by talking about how nothing would go wrong, didn't you?"

"Well, there's some news." Sea Star nodded. "We tried sealing them in a shielding material we've been developing that's supposed to be a harmonic insulator. The annoying news is that while the interference around this island that's been jamming our instruments certainly changed, it's still jamming us. I think now is the opportune time to ask if you have any more similar or substantially powerful artifacts with you that you'd like to disclose."

Valey's gaze shifted to her pendant. Starlight's shifted to her stick. Nyala's shifted to both of them.

"Of course, there's also the possibility our material is ineffective against them," Sea Star sighed, deciding not to press. "So Anemone took one and has been trying to neutralize it in... other ways. While she might learn a lot from her results, I for one am happy enough to take you at your warning not to fool around with these. If you know any particular existing experiments with negative consequences, now would be a useful time to divulge."

"Oh, come on!" Valey growled, banging a hoof. "Stupid curious scientists and... Bananas. What did she do?"

"Tried to seal it with a known harmonic substance," Sea Star replied. "No one was hurt, but it made a large mess inside an irreplaceable laboratory that no one knows how to clean up."

Valey and Nyala shared a haunted look. "Magical ice?" Nyala whispered.

"No, it's..." Sea Star sighed. "Would you mind coming to take a look? Administration is going to get upset if we have to explain that this particular lab is extendedly out of commission."

"Well, let's get this over with," Valey muttered. "Hopefully it won't be anything we haven't dealt with before. Anemone's gonna owe us..."

---

As the elevator continued to descend with no sign of reaching its destination, Starlight began to get a good idea of just where this special lab room was located.

"We're going to the bottom, aren't we?" Shinespark asked, the elevator capsule's glass walls allowing them to observe the chiseled rock tunnel around them. "You have another crystal palace?"

"Nah," Valey replied, standing near the edge. "They just dug a hole. Only reason the hole they dug in Ironridge hit something is because the city just so happened to have been founded on top of something for them to hit. I'll bet you this isn't the only place in the world where someone's dug as deep as they can go just to see what would happen."

Nyala looked faintly ill, holding a wing to her stomach. "It isn't."

"Please try not to vomit in the elevator," Professor Sea Star insisted. "If elevation changes are hard on you, I can slow our descent."

"No," Nyala whispered. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

Starlight didn't need Gwendolyn and her cutie mark to tell that wasn't the case, but she held her tongue. "We're too far northeast to find another crystal palace. The closest one is either Garsheeva's or far southwest of here."

Nyala just nodded. Sea Star, meanwhile, gave Starlight and Shinespark a look. "I'm surprised you know about it," she told them. "There is indeed a large, underwater, crystalline structure protruding from a particularly deep part of the seafloor a long ways southwest of here. It's the harmonic focal point of the region, and the first major discovery to come of the Arc Manta. Its effect is so powerful, we were able to pinpoint it even using our very limited, early data and rudimentary analysis. But you sound already familiar with these structures."

"We talked about this on the way to the island, didn't we?" Valey tilted her head.

Sea Star nodded. "We did. This seems like as good a time as any to continue that conversation, unless you'd rather not say."

"How about this, then?" Valey took a step forward and raised an eyebrow. "You sounded kinda spooked when I told you some of the stuff I might know about. Like you know that there's maybe a lot of ways the stuff you're researching could be bad news. So now that you don't have students or guards listening, tell us. Why do you wanna know? What's studying this lifestream and harmony and crystal palaces to you?"

Sea Star watched her for a moment. "An edict from Princess Celestia," she eventually said. "Ancient history is difficult to study, and not my field. You'd have to ask Doctor Lost for the full story. But according to her, and she has lived long enough to know, the world upheaves itself in cycles, every thousand years. We are currently on the cusp of a millennium, and another such upheaval could be upon us within a generation... if her predictions hold true. Regardless, she came to our school in private several decades ago and bade the school's top faculty prepare. And so most of why we study is scientific curiosity... but also because she warned us that should the worst come to pass, the fate of Equestria may rest in equinity's ability to reach the moon without the aid of gods."

Valey glanced down at her moon glass pendant. "Just like the moon can reach down here, huh?"

"Why dig down, then?" Nyala asked, still looking uncomfortable. "If your goal is to go upwards..."

"Simple." Sea Star shrugged. "We believe we can use ether as rocket fuel."

Shinespark blinked. "Harmony? You're making your rockets with harmonic engines?"

"Not that kind of harmony." Valey nudged her shoulder. "Ether's apparently real different somehow from the stuff from the flames. And I think these guys might be less technically-advanced than science up north. At least, Yakyakistan has had rockets for at least half a year now, and if those can fly bombs across mountain ranges and continents, I'm willing to bet outer space isn't far behind."

Sea Star looked simultaneously put out and awestruck. "Yakyakistan? Surely not the tribal barbarian village in the fringes of the Crystal Mountains..."

"Crystal Mountains?" Valey tilted her head. "Is that what you guys call the Aldenfold down here?"

Sea Star nodded. "I'm aware of that name, and Equestria is broad enough that various sections of the mountain ridge have their own local names. The Crystal Mountains are what they're known as from the center stretching west for a ways."

Starlight spoke up. "Does using it as fuel really involve measuring how it flows and...Woah!"

The elevator jolted beneath her, and she stumbled, its rapid descent suddenly slowing. The light from the ceiling changed color, and the floor pressed against everyone as the elevator stopped them from smashing against the shaft's bottom.

"We've arrived," Sea Star said, the door sliding open into a rocky, hewn tunnel. "Let's continue this conversation once we've seen if there's anything you can do to help my associate with her cleanup chores."

The professor strode on ahead, leading the way. The tunnel around them needed no lights, glowing faintly with a pulsing, natural illumination, like an extradimensional field of light was flowing through it and dappling its walls with watery blue.

Valey took a deep breath. "We're near the bottom, alright."

Starlight nodded. She could feel immense power nearby, she was sure of it. But it lacked the soulful feeling of the crystal palaces she was used to. There, there was a will, all the power concentrated into a caring presence that wanted to meet and talk to her. Here, it flowed freely. There was no tree to form it around her, boost her horn and let her use magic safely and without consequence... but after some concentration, she realized uncomfortably that she might be able to make the latent power bolster her own anyway, all on her own. Not that she was going to. It was too risky in case she was wrong and wound up hurting herself again. And besides, the thought of this much power sitting around free for the taking by anyone made her fur stand on end.

They stepped through a complicated door built with some kind of seal, and were in a room made entirely of glass.

"What is this?" Shinespark asked, her face twisting in surprise at the brightly-lit room. The floors, walls, ceiling, everything was glass... and Starlight could see a layer of water separating it from the rock, about two feet thick. They were in a glass tank that took up almost all of a deliberately-submerged room.

Professor Sea Star nodded, leading the way further down a corridor connected to more rooms. "Two of the things we know about ether are that rock is a conductor and water is an insulator. We're still several dozen meters above the lifestream, but the earth here is so suffused with it we tried to build this place to aid in experimental stability."

The room was filled with a mix of desks and experimentation tables, all filled with delicate equipment. Most rooms were similar, some with open water tanks and baths, others with pipes made of faintly-glowing metal. Several were taken up by large, round machines covered in hoses, and they frequently passed through the same sealed door design, an apparatus Starlight quickly realized was designed to fill itself with more water when closed.

"And here we are," Sea Star sighed, opening a final door and beckoning them through.

"Oh! It's you!" Anemone jumped in surprise, wearing a clear, sturdy-looking suit that didn't cover her head. She was standing in another tank room, and it wasn't hard to see the mess she was tasked with cleaning up: one of the tanks was half filled and partially broken by a giant, spiky, raw-formed crystal of moon glass.

Comments

[Phoenix Kitten]

....yeah, okay. Remember how windigo hearts absorb harmonic energy.. maybe that's what happens when they absorb too much.

[KMCA]

9986356
This isn't harmonic energy. If Harmony is ( + ) and Chaos is ( - ) then this would be neutral.

[Oberth Effect]

I expected something to go wrong when they tried to contain the effect from the Windigo hearts. I did not expect moon glass, considering the only known way as far as I can remember to create it up until now was a Nightmare Module (speaking of which, did we ever get an association between the "corrupted virtue" of the module and why it creates moon glass, e.g., the Jealousy Module created the shield to protect that which you desire IIRC?). Guess there's some deeper connection between moon glass, windigo hearts, and/or harmony/ether? I'm curious what "bat pony code" this glass would contain, if any.

I wonder if the Academy researchers know that the hearts they're dealing with aren't truly bare hearts, but hearts already contained in something the Yakyakistanis put in place. I'd hate to imagine what a bare heart would have done...

Wonder what's up with Nyala. I can't help but get the feeling she knows more than she is letting on.

And a large crystal structure that isn't a Tree of Harmony. Wonder what it is, then.

The research going on in Yakyakistan seems to be quite at odds with the image they seem to have among other civilizations. I'm curious whether this is intentional, and how they managed to pull off what seems to be such a massive technological leap.

I feel like there's a lot of threads introduced here. Can't wait to see where they all lead.

[Oberth Effect]

9986682

It isn't? Ether is a subset of harmonic energy, and they tried to seal the heart with a known harmonic object, so I'm not sure how it wouldn't be harmonic energy (unless we're talking about different things)

[Alchemik]

I try to expect the unexpected, especially in this fic. I have apparently failed. How? Why? I desire science to be executed upon this outcome.