The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

The Long Road Home

Day eight...

Shinespark stepped into the dry dock where the Immortal Dream sat lifted on its supports. More than half of its outer hull had been removed, revealing the harder, secondary shell beneath. The detached, splintered plating was mostly laid out in sections nearby, the interiors facing the sky.

"Shinespark!" Ebb called, looking up from the boards, the only pony presently there and working in the early light of dawn. "Swell of you to drop by!"

"How is progress?" Shinespark asked, the sound stone dull in her satchel.

The young stallion scratched his head. "First one here for the day. I think we're starting to realize this northern tech is way more complicated than just a boat with a fancy engine."

"That's one way to put it." Shinespark nodded, stepping closer. "You're the one who's been contributing most to this restoration. What's your opinion on the progress?"

"My opinion?" Ebb blinked. "Well, I think the best we can hope for is to make it look nice. Look at all this! I thought this was just a plain outer hull, but the inside of this wood is completely covered in some kind of runes." He rubbed a hoof across the polished inner surface of the damaged boards. "The plan was just to pretty it up as a way to thank you for visiting here, but I don't think we have a hope of fixing stuff we don't even understand."

Shinespark nodded. "What's blocking you? Technical knowledge? You still have pony power, interested students willing to help?"

"Why do you ask?" Ebb gave a confused frown. "Just yesterday, you said you appreciated the gesture, but now you sound like you need it up and running."

"...I don't..." Shinespark paused. "But I do need to know if that's feasible within a time frame. I have an important decision to make soon, and whether this ship can return to the sky will play a big factor in it."

Ebb shrugged at the boards. "Then you'll need to get your hooves dirty and start helping us, because these look important."

"Right." Shinespark turned to the stripped boat. "The runes on the hull are a limited regeneration array initially developed to repair windows that cracked due to extreme temperature differences or were damaged by hail and the like. As long as the ship had mana power, they could repair cosmetic and minor damage to the exterior hull. Not something like this... not fully. But they could make your job easier if we connect the ship to the island's power supply."

Ebb's eyes widened. "Woah. You can do that?"

"Powerful corporations with foreign investment can," Shinespark corrected. "And we could copy it. But I'm guessing you haven't touched the insides..."

The stallion shook his head. "Only to clean, but we've left the engine room and all your cabins alone."

"We've removed our personal effects. No need to worry about privacy." Shinespark climbed the gangplank, the buckled areas of the deck removed to reveal damaged insulation between it and the cabin roofs. "Most of our furnishings will need to be newly restocked, regardless. Now, to make the power work, the ship's wiring might be damaged and parts of its generator and control panel are definitely fried, so we'll need any experts on mana circuitry you can find, as well as access to a lab and spare equipment. We'll compensate you if there's a financial cost."

"Roger..." Ebb scribbled notes on a pad of paper. "You really think we have the components you're looking for?"

Shinespark stepped around the open insulation to the siding door to the staircase, it fitting slightly rougher on its track than it used to. "The parts you wouldn't have are the ones that wouldn't be damaged. It's the conventional mana circuitry that doesn't survive power surges, and I've seen enough here to know your principles should be compatible enough with ours. There are a few higher-level components that will need custom fabricating, but analog sensors and inputs should just be a matter of specifications."

Ebb raised an eyebrow and blew on his bangs. "...You've got a different vibe about you today."

"I'm keeping my options open."

---

Day nine...

"Okay, zombie, work with me here." Anemone sat before a console in the depths of the Arc Manta, Valey perched like a vulture behind her. "Why, after taking on that faire you put in your windigo hearts, have our sensors become less scrambled?"

Valey half-grimaced, half-grinned. "I mess with you one time about all our magical weirdness, and it earns me a nickname, huh?"

"Jape with me, I jape with you." Anemone shrugged. "Look at these readings. There's a lot of micro-interference, but we're still able to see the prevailing ether current toward the crystal palace if we already know where in the data to look. See what happens when we transpose a hypothetical idealized map of the area over our vector field? The result looks random, which it shouldn't if it already was and we subtracted a coherent pattern."

Valey burped. "Is a vector a sport that you play on a field? I think I sorta get it..."

Anemone facehoofed. "Never mind. Just tell me what changed that could have made a difference."

"Starlight's butt fell off and we kicked out a ghost Ironflanks may have been allowing to haunt her." Valey shrugged, and elaborated after an annoyed look: "Seriously! Have you not noticed Starlight no longer has a cutie mark? The one she had was kinda... unusual, and she'd thank you not to ask too many questions about it. But that's one change. And this kind of mostly dead pony Maple invisibly had on magical life support skedaddled on us. And we charged up the windigo hearts."

Anemone planted her head against the console. "Stop joking about ghosts."

Valey raised an eyebrow. "If I told you in a perfectly legitimate scientific context that one of our party members had actually turned into an incorporeal energy ghost and was prevented from floating away by Maple's cutie mark, what would it take to convince you I wasn't just clowning around? Like, imagine actually discovering that."

"I'm listening. Pull my leg again, and Sea Star's getting the next shift working with you."

"Sounds like a fun time." Valey played with her hat. "But yeah, what I said. We have no idea who or what she was, but some kid was tagging along on our ship. We let her stay after she kinda blew herself up to save me and... uh... an old hag from a painful, fiery death. And eventually she hooked herself up to the machine that powers Shinespark's ship, blew that up to save us from some monsters that the griffons up by the border were fighting, and drained herself enough that she would have disappeared if we didn't do anything."

Anemone stared at her. "How?"

"Bananas, beats me." Valey made a show of shrugging. "Part of the reason we came down here in the first place was to try and get some. Stuff like this sorta just happens to us."

Anemone grimaced. "Either you hate me, or your life hates science. What did I ever do to you?"

"Heard that I had a reputation for flirting with students and breaking their hearts. Remember when we first met?" Valey gave her a suspicious look. "Remember when you thought you could outdo the master?" She stuck out her tongue. "But nyaah. I'm pretty sure my life just hates science."

"But... ugh."

"That about sums it up. Sorry, girl. All I can tell you is that you're going to have an impossible time isolating cause and effect with us around."

---

Day ten...

"Hello there, Meltdown. You look marginally better than the last time we met."

Princess Celestia crouched, keeping her head low to avoid goring a hole in the roof of Generosity Two's bathroom with her majestic horn. Inside the bathtub, a frail, waterlogged mare looked back with an expression of shock and slight fear.

"P-Princess..." She tried to bow, already laying down.

"Here she is," Amber said, standing outside the bathroom door. "I don't suppose there's anything you can do for her, is there?"

"Hmm." Celestia surveyed the gaunt mare, then lifted her from the tub in her aura. "Perhaps. You are safe to ignite."

Meltdown shivered, steaming, as she was quickly carried to the living room, suspended in midair... and the steam rising from her coat quickly turned to ice crystals suspended within it. Amber blinked in surprise. "What...?"

Fwooom!

Meltdown didn't look like she could afford to think about it. Rapidly, an expanding shockwave of heat engulfed her... and was all wicked away by Celestia's aura, drawing as a stream of energy into her horn like a candle snuffed by a breeze. Meltdown almost glowed with energy, waves of fiery traces burning off from her, but the princess holding her looked entirely unfazed as the heat all twisted its way down into her horn.

"I am the Princess of the Sun," Celestia said, noting Amber's jaw-dropped look. "I command heat in all its forms, including producing cold by drawing it into myself. Controlling Meltdown's level of power is no easy feat, but it is precisely one I am good at."

Felicity stumbled heavily from the bedroom, rubbing at her eyes. "Darlings, what happened? I thought I heard an explosion..."

"You did," Meltdown replied, her voice stronger than it had been since the Griffon Empire. "...Thank you, Your Majesty. I haven't been able to feel myself for far too long."

Celestia nodded sagely. "Garsheeva's gifts are as double-edged as they are powerful. I wished to have a discussion with you regarding the Empire's and your own future, particularly in light of your present companions. Do you wish to move somewhere more private, first?"

Meltdown shook her head. "I have nothing to hide. Where is Shinespark? I am curious what fruition her efforts on my behalf have brought. This would be a better time than any for me to aid her."

"Well, if she's not sleeping, I'll be rather upset with her," Felicity sighed. "She's been up for three days straight working nonstop elsewhere on the island. Apparently she thinks she can make both that and restoring our airship full-time projects at once."

"...I see." Meltdown looked to Celestia. "How can I best leave her instructions?"

Princess Celestia gave her an interested look. "Your first concern is to this other mare?"

"This would be a poor time for me to abandon humility." Meltdown shook her head. "She thinks she can recreate coolant power armor in the line of my old imperial suit. And I so far have placed my hopes in her. In my weakened states, I won't be able to do anything for my country even if I could make the journey home."

"You intend to return, then?" Celestia asked.

"I do." Meltdown nodded, fiery energy swirling around her. "I appreciate your offer to intervene, but what I need most is my full capacity permanently restored. If you're offering me aid, help Shinespark instead."

Celestia's eyes seemed to stare through her, purple and unblinking. "Fascinating. I've never heard you put your faith so freely in another."

Meltdown shrugged. "We have met rarely."

Celestia shook her head. "I speak not to you, but to the dynasty of your office. I know what it is Garsheeva grooms her favorites for; to rule in her stead and decide the fates of the ponies and griffons for yourselves. Invariably, she chooses ponies willing to act on their own judgement and unbound from the whims of others. Yet you put your faith and fate in Shinespark's hooves?"

"Pragmatism," Meltdown assured. "And I am... more easily emotionally compromised in lower power states."

Celestia regarded her a moment longer. "The Griffon Empire has already met an era of irreversible transformation. I wonder what would happen if you took it further and allowed yourself to embrace that compromise and make more frequent use of such states."

Meltdown hesitated. "Time will tell. Shinespark is still where I've chosen my faith to lie. And allowing myself to rule more frequently by following my heart than my plans may sometimes improve my life. But at the same time, it isn't the duty of a ruler to risk their subjects for their own behalf. I will wear my mantle, and my personal life will have to remain a separate thing."

"...I see." Princess Celestia finally nodded. "You have no binding obligations to return to the north and your people, yet your first thoughts really still lie with them after all. If this is your path, I wish you wisdom along the way."

Comments

[Phoenix Kitten]

Perhaps Celestia knows some kind of heat drain rune that she can infuse into a headpiece that can function similarly to what she's doing for Meltdown now.
As for Valey, well perhaps get Maple to show off her Cutie Mark's storage ability. She's carried Starlight in it before, perhaps she can try again just to prove it's possible.
Or have her store one of Starlight's crystal constructs, like she was practicing to do in the Griffon Empire.

[ZanyZapper]

10025585
It's all good. Believe me, I was mainly lamenting my own lousy memory (which vexes me in many other ways beyond details in this story!) I'm thoroughly enjoying the story and really appreciate the time and effort you've put into it! And thanks for the reply and a bit of a peek into your process. I've wondered how much was planned ahead vs on-the-fly.

[Oberth Effect]

10025585

Zany pretty much said everything I was about to say, and much better than I could have put it. I don't find the interludes bad, it's just kind of an "AHHHH" moment when I have to do a bit of a context switch.

[Oberth Effect]

Seems Shinespark has basically turned into a completely different pony. Went from listless moping to workaholic.

"Why, after taking on that faire you put in your windigo hearts, have our sensors become less scrambled?"

Faire?

"Starlight's butt fell off and we kicked out a ghost Ironflanks may have been allowing to haunt her."

Close enough

I don't know how you keep coming up with Valey's lines, but they're great!

I command heat in all its forms, including producing cold by drawing it into myself.

Wonder if there is any connection with cutie marks producing mana by reversing entropy.

Given Meltdown's predecessor was Temperantia, I wonder whether it's connected more with "temperance" or "temperature". If the latter, I'm curious whether Garsheeva purposefully gives heat-related cutie marks to her regents based on Celestia, or if it's just a convenient coincidence.

It's interesting what is going through Meltdown's mind. I'm curious whether she would continue to think voluntarily relying on others is a good idea after (if?) she is able to return to a more permanent high-power state, given that she probably is mentally more capable than most ponies when powered up.

10025769

I don't think it's the storage part that's throwing the scientists, it's the "ghost" part.