Empty Horizons: Sea of Stars

by Insipidious

V - As the Schools Research

If there was anything Sparkler loved about Sanctaphrax, it was how ridiculous it looked.

From afar, it could have been mistaken for a palace. For whatever reason, the original architects had decided “towers are awesome” and built every major structure as tall stone pillars that rose into the sky, coming to bright pointed tips or domes depending on the mood at the time of construction. These tips were almost always wider than the towers supporting them, giving them a feeling not unlike heads on a pin. This image of Sanctaphrax proper was eccentric, to be sure, but not ridiculous.

The ridiculousness came upon taking a closer look.

Because Sanctaphrax was at an exceedingly high elevation, air had to be pumped from below to ensure ponies had enough oxygen to go about their daily lives. It was safe to go outside for a short time, sure, but extended periods would result in suffocation, not to mention sunburn. However, the oh-so-wise academics of Sanctaphrax had decided the short amount of time it took to walk from tower to tower in thin air was unacceptable.

The solution?

Create glass tubes with color-coded stripes for ponies to walk in. Who needed to go outside? Just waltz through the glass tunnels, get some sun through the UV-blocking walls, and arrive at your destination without getting cold, running out of breath, or dealing with windy weather. Snow wasn’t a problem either, since the tubes were heated just like everywhere else and the white fluff could never build up.

The tubes were once confined to the ground where they didn’t interfere with the skyline; or so Sparkler had been told. When she first set hoof on Sanctaphrax all those years ago the tubes were already snaking through the sky in erratic patterns, sometimes coming together in small glass hub rooms, other times twisting around each other in a ridiculous attempt not to interfere with any other walkways. What resulted was a maze of endless glass with stripes of color that might once have looked ingenious but now appeared more like a foal had thrown color into a drawing randomly by smacking a crayon around in the blank spaces.

When the elevator rose to the surface, arriving in one of the ground-level tube nexuses, Sparkler turned to Rook with a grin. “So. Honest opinion, how does it look?”

Rook’s expression of wonder quickly turned to one of confusion and bafflement. The question “why?” was evident on her features.

Sparkler chuckled. “I’m telling you, it’s ridiculous.”

“It’s the way of the future,” the Admiral asserted, as she always did. “You won’t find this anywhere else.”

“Yeah, because it’s ridiculous!”

Rook pointed at Sparkler.

“Me? Ridiculous? Psh.”

Rook turned away from Sparkler dismissively. With a shrug, Sparkler pressed her copious mane onto the tank and started pushing. She followed the Admiral carefully through the tubes. Not that she needed any help figuring out where to go; at this point she knew Sanctaphrax’s lower tunnels like the back of her hoof. However, the Admiral was the boss, and she always lead. Sparkler didn’t mind—it was just how their dynamic worked.

They went right for the School of Medicine, a set of four massive towers tinged with the green of their school. Only one of the towers was topped with the proper vibrant green—the others were in different states of fading. This high up, the sun did a number on the paint and it had to be reapplied every so often. At one point, all the towers were painted at the same time, but as the years dragged on drift occured and now a tower was only painted when it was blanche white, creating a gradient effect.

The three of them entered the tallest tower, the Main Medicine Offices.

A crowd of medical students were expected to go into a bit of a frenzy over seeing a normal seapony dragged into their School. A seapony that waved back only heightened their reactions from fascinated to ecstatic.

“What is that thing?”

“Admiral’s really outdone herself this time!”

“How does it maintain mental cohesion down there?”

“The eyes aren’t blank, but the clots are evident…”

“Where did you find this beauty?”

“I see she’s brought another monster in for company.”

Sparkler winced at the jab to the Admiral’s race. She knew the Admiral sucked the attention—good or bad—up like one of the vampires of legend, but it still grated against Sparkler like a piece of splintery wood tangled in her hair. Out of respect for the Admiral, she didn’t shout out a biting remark. She did shoot the heckler a death glare, though, and that got him to shut up.

Parting the crowd with a hoof, the Admiral guided them to the lift. It was considerably nicer in appearance than the rickety wireframe thing that had brought them to Sanctaphrax’s surface, being made of smooth metal etched with elegant ponies. Sparkler rolled her eyes at the frivolity. She swore School of Arts only existed to make the others look good.

The Admiral pressed the second-to-highest button and waited. Through the ceiling, they could hear a muffled hiss of steam as the mechanisms pressurized.

Sparkler giggled and winked at Rook. “Hang on.”

Rook cocked her head just in time to get smashed into the floor of her tank as the lift rocketed to the highest part of the tower. Sparkler and the Admiral both winced as the pressure on their legs increased threefold, but they maintained composure.

The lift was merciful; it came to a stop slowly, letting out a soft ding as Rook rubbed her head in annoyance.

“I love this elevator,” Sparkler giggled. “The day they fix it there will be less beauty in the world…”

The Admiral gestured at the frivolous designs on the lift.

“That’s just mass produced decorum for ponies in fancy hats!” Sparkler huffed. “Real beauty doesn’t come from a factory… Real beauty comes when the factory messes up!”

“So progress isn’t beautiful then?”

“Uuuuugh, why do you have to be so literal-minded all the time? Look. There’s… spirit in this little lift.” She wheeled Rook out as she ranted. “But these little pony designs… there’s no beauty here. Maybe the first one had spirit, but they’re in all the lifts! That’s not progress, that’s stagnation, or… something.” She twirled some of her hair in the air. “But I don’t really know what I’m talking about. It’s not like I took any classes or anything.”

“But the idea of works of art having spirit is a curious one,” a new voice said. Standing before them was a middle-aged pegasus mare with a dull yellow coat and dark green mane streaked with pink. “And I would love to discuss the implications of such at a later time. Or, well, I would discuss it now, except you seem to have brought me the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen!”

Rook waved nervously.

“Oh, and it communicates! Fascinating!”

“Her name’s Rook,” Sparkler offered.

“Hell-o Rook!” she said with a pitch that wavered so much it might as well have come from two different ponies. “I am Dean Vespid Pin of the School of Medicine, and I can’t wait to learn more about you!”

Rook glanced nervously at the Admiral. Coughing, the Admiral tapped Vespid on the shoulder. “Iota’s ordered you to not cut her into slices of bread. We need her alive to lead us to a location at the bottom of the ocean.”

Vespid’s left eye twitched ever so slightly. “Well… yes, I suppose Iota would have doubts about my ability to maintain this specimen’s health. It’s not like it’s my job or anything.” She flared her wings, no doubt wishing to impress upon her visitors that her surgeon’s feathers were up to any sort of complex task. While they were no doubt impressive and meticulously cared for, Sparkler had grown tired of Vespid’s pride in her profession ages ago.

“But nonetheless I shall listen to our High Academe’s wishes. A standard pony checkup will do - and yes, that will involve drawing blood and you all can shut up. If Rook here’s squeamish that is not my fault.”

Rook looked scared for a moment, but her face quickly became overcome with a twisted anger.

Vespid rolled her eyes. “I see numerous lacerations on your person, tears in your fins, and scars from bites. Suck it up and get pricked by a needle that won’t cause any lasting damage.”

Rook glared at her. She bared her sharp fangs, rising out of the water aggressively.

“Not so safe after a—”

Rook bit down on her own hoof, drawing viscous, red-black blood on her own terms. She shoved the hoof in Vespid’s direction, dousing the dean’s face in the substance.

Using a hoof—because Princesses forbid she get her precious wings sullied—she wiped her eyes clear. “Not completely mentally stable. However, I appreciate the spirit! This sample will do nicely.” She smirked. “Thank you.”

Even Sparkler could hear the venom in that voice. She made a note not to leave Rook alone in the same room as Vespid. Rook got the same idea, given the glance she shot Sparkler.

“I’ve gotcha, don’t worry,” Sparkler said.

“Vespid, checkup?” the Admiral asked.

“Right, right. To my terrarium!” She trotted down the nondescript hall until she arrived at a large door at the far end. Pushing it open, she led them into a large, semicircular room with a wall made entirely of glass and trees growing within. Only about half the trees were green; others were purple, orange, or slowly shifted colors. There were plants in here Sparkler had never seen anywhere else. A truly royal garden.

Contrasting this peaceful image were numerous cages and tanks filled with angry - and sometimes dead - creatures. There were at least four normal seaponies. Their flesh was all torn, their eyes blank white, and their muscles so ragged they looked like they might fall off. Monsters, pure and simple.

Rook shared some features with them: the blood under the eyes, the fins, the tail, and the sharp teeth. While she may have been scarred, she didn’t look ready to fall apart in a decaying mess like her fellow sea-creatures.

Vespid reached into a wall and pulled out a vial, holding it out to collect some of Rook’s blood drip. “So, she’s got somewhere to lead you, does she?”

“Yep!” Sparkler confirmed, taking a moment to tap the glass in front of the seaponies. The one that responded broke a tooth trying to bite through the reinforced wall.

“Somewhere further south,” the Admiral explained. “Treasure and something else. She can’t talk, so we aren’t sure what else is there.”

Vespid stood up on her hind legs so she could get her front hooves in Rook’s tank. “But she can communicate clearly, which is unheard of for wyrded beings…” Vespid pressed her hoof to Rook’s leg, feeling an active pulse. “Actually, it might be possible for her to prove my theories! Tell me, Rook, were you always a seapony?”

Rook shook her head.

“Were you a pony before?”

Rook nodded.

Vespid clapped her hooves. “Great! Great. Oh, but you’re not a normal seapony, it may not apply to them…” Thinking for a moment, the doctor pointed at one of the caged seaponies. “Did they used to be ponies?”

For a moment, Rook pondered this. Then, with a shrug, she nodded.

“Absolute confirmation of the existence of the corrupting wyrd influence. Yes!” She pulled a notebook off of a nearby wall and started scribbling in it furiously with one of her oh-so-agile wings. “They’ll have to give the theory some credence now, and real, proper research can begin…”

“What are you gonna do? Cure them?” Sparkler jived.

“Hah! Stars above, no, even if it were possible to remove the corruption the psychological damage is irreversible, and there’d be the annoying addition of having to treat the subject as a pony afterward, which severely limits progress.”

Sparkler shrugged.

“The point is, it’s knowledge. If we can isolate the pathogen that causes it…”

“It’s probably magic,” the Admiral pointed out.

“Then I’ll bring Leyline in on it, once I confirm that,” Vespid huffed. “Really… open your mouth, please.”

With a roll of her eyes Rook opened her mouth and allowed Vespid to put the popsicle stick on her tongue.

“So, what do you make of her?” the Admiral asked.

“Well, she’s either resistant to wyrdness or developed the equivalent of a mutated strain.” Vespid flashed a light into Rook’s eyes, blinding her temporarily. “Either way, she didn’t develop to the final stage. Or… I suppose she could be a recent patient.”

Rook shook her head.

“Live in Old Equestria, did you?”

With a smug, toothy smirk, Rook leaned in and nodded in confirmation.

“Fascinating… I’ll need to corroborate that somehow with the School of History at a later date. The chances of two sets of Old Equestrian minds surfacing at nearly the same time… Have you heard of the relics unearthed in Canterlot recently? Apparently there’s a unicorn who c-”

“We have Rook,” the Admiral interrupted. “There is literally no reason to go track any others down.”

Sparkler looked to the Admiral, a frown on her face. Are you really going to sideline Rook just because she’s from the past?

“Still, rumors are interesting,” Vespid said as she checked Rook’s ears. “She’s definitely got partial wyrdness, and I suspect she has some psychological disorder, but without further study there’s no way I could determine if that’s from the wyrdness or just being alone at the bottom of the ocean for a thousand years.”

Rook shrugged.

“If she were a normal pony I’d say the only concerning thing about her physical health is the blood under her eyes.”

“And the fins,” Sparkler pointed out.

“There were natural seaponies before the world flooded. We’ve found skeletons.”

Sparkler facehooved.

“Regardless, I’d like to keep her for observation overnight,” Vespid said, returning to her wall cabinet.

“I’m staying with her,” Sparkler said.

For a moment, Vespid’s smile was replaced with a scowl barely visible in the reflection of Rook’s tank. “Ah, well, unnecessary, but I doubt I can talk you out of it.” Vespid put a surgical glove over her wing and trotted over to a tank with a dead seapony in it. She plunged her wings expertly into the seapony’s exposed chest cavity and removed a small, blue crystal from it. “Silver, the reports on seapony decomposition are put on hold for now. We’re going to be watching this ‘Rook’ now.” She tossed the crystal ball to Rook. “There you go, have a toy.”

Rook poked it with a raised eyebrow.

“It just looks at you. Nothing else. Silver calls them ‘eyes’ anyway, so you might as well think of it like one.”

The Admiral turned to Sparkler. “You’ll be fine here?”

Sparkler smiled. “I mean, don’t abandon me forever, send one of Brusk’s kids to relieve me so I can sleep. Otherwise, I’m good.”

“Then have fun and keep the two of them out of trouble.”

Vespid snorted. “I’ll be keeping miss mane-iac under control if I know her…”

“Ooooh, such a creative nickname,” Sparkler snorted. “Did you get it off the school playground?”

“How could I? You never attended.”

Rook made a sound with her mouth that sounded vaguely like sizzling.

“Et tu, Rook?” Sparkler whined, faking a swoon.

Rook shrugged while Vespid let out a terse sigh. The Admiral, rolling her eyes, left the three of them to whatever annoying antics they might get up to.

Who was Sparkler kidding? Would get up to.

~~~

The Admiral’s last stop of the day arguably didn’t even take place during the day. This was intentional, on her part. For as much as she had rebelled from her nocturnal instincts, her favorite part of the world was hidden from sight by the glory of the sun. Only when the fiery master of the heavens dipped beneath the waves far below did the stars peek out from the blue shroud of sky. Only when darkness descended could the real beauty of the universe be seen.

Even though Sanctaphrax was well-developed and heavily industrialized, there wasn’t much in the way of artificial light to distract from the stars. The stars needed to be studied by many of the professors, after all, and light pollution wouldn’t do the School of Navigation any favors.

Speaking of which, that was where the Admiral was headed; walking through one of the highest tubes in Sanctaphrax to the Tower of Navigation. The School only had the one black-tipped tower, but it was taller than most of the others and outfitted with numerous windows. No doubt dozens of them had ponies looking out at the stars, charting maps, and taking careful notes on what the sky told them.

This was her destination, but it was not what drew the Admiral’s gaze. In this darkness, the glass around her might as well have been invisible. She was floating in the air with the stars above and the ground far, far below. If she spread her wings she could almost feel the wind whipping in her mane…

The time will come, she told herself. Patience.

Eventually, the black tip of the School of Navigation eclipsed the sky, bringing her focus back into the present moment. Entering through the highest door, she found herself in the main observatory. Extremely smooth glass lined the edges of the walls, each segment designed so that it could fold out to accommodate the excessive size of the massive telescope.

Speaking of, the device took up the majority of the room. Currently, only its tip was sticking out one of the windows, examining something only a short way above the horizon. The bulky lens took up the majority of the telescope’s front face, narrowing slightly as the encasing dark metal tube reached the telescope’s base. This base was anchored to the floor on a rotating track that allowed it to point in any direction. There was a mechanism beneath even that which could push the telescope all but out of the observatory entirely, allowing it to angle nearly straight upward, though the Admiral had only seen that done once.

In the center of the telescope was a seat, one occupied by a black, elderly earth pony stallion with unkempt white hair and an impressive, wiry mustache. He wore a thick white coat, which was to be expected given the altitude, and a small oxygen mask rested on his muzzle to counteract the thin air. The Admiral glanced at a pile of masks near the entrance but decided she wasn’t going to stay long enough to need one.

Littered around the edges of the observatory were various star charts, diagrams, and even a clockwork model of the world with the sun and moon around it not unlike the one in Algol’s Shadow. The Admiral passed a fresh diagram showing the orbits of the sun and moon that commented on day shift.

The black stallion noticed her before she spoke. Immediately, he popped the mask off his face and grinned widely. “Admiral!” he greeted with a voice full of energy, though it also scratched with age. “Welcome back!”

The Admiral shot him a genuine smile. “Been a while, Meteor.”

“Oh, it has, it has! Please, please, you simply must look at Ensa, it’s absolutely brilliant tonight.” He pushed her into the chair, all but smashing her eye into the tiny lens at the tip of the telescope.

Focusing, the Admiral was able to make out a soft-blue crescent shape in the center of the view with a small blue ring around it. “We must be at the perfect angle.”

“We are! In a few minutes the sun will move behind Equis and we’ll lose it. You really did come at the best time!”

“Learn anything knew about it?”

“Distance calculations are proving difficult without cooperation from the Baltimare Observatory, but I think I can use the rate of solar dissipation and relate it to the diameter of Equis to get a rough idea. It would help if we had a better estimate for Equis’ diameter…”

“You should get back to observing, then,” the Admiral said, jumping out of the chair and shoving Meteor back in much the same way she had been. “Who knows, you might miss something incredible!”

“Yes, yes…” Meteor chuckled, returning to his examinations. “Tell me, Admiral, how goes the quest?”

“For you? Found a store of ancient oil already packaged. The Chemists should be cooking it into kerosene for you as we speak.”

“Absolutely excellent! That should be the last of that we need. I trust it wasn't too difficult to get?”

“Granite blew up the foundry.”

Meteor let out a sigh. “Wasted materials… the secrets to large scale manufacturing could have been there.”

“We can rediscover that on our own,” the Admiral said with a smile. “After all, we’re doing something they never did.”

The Admiral strolled to one of the windows, looking down at the edge of Sanctaphrax. Near the western dock, on a patch of rock without any complex towers, there was a flat octagon of shaped metal. Littered around the edges were several small, metallic spikes with fins at the bottom. One of these silver objects stood in the center of the pad, pointing at the sky.

“How long until you test that one?” the Admiral asked.

“As soon as the sunlight fades from these rings,” Meteor said, squinting his eyes. “Which… it’s doing right now. Excuse me for a second, I have to get the timing down…”

He was silent for a moment as he scrawled a note with a pen. During this, the Admiral looked up slightly and blinked in confusion. There was what appeared to be a flat barge made of haphazardly slapped together materials floating out a short distance from Sanctaphrax, held aloft by propellers of all things. That had to be impractical. Then again, the Algol’s Shadow wasn’t exactly practical, either, so she supposed she couldn’t complain too much.

“I see you found Bonzai’s latest project,” Meteor said, having finished his notes. “The emergency platform, he calls it.”

“Why?”

“Paranoia, I suppose. An island fell into the sea recently, as I’m sure you’re aware, and the brightest minds are thinking of what to do if Sanctaphrax starts to drift down. That platform is Bonzai’s idea. The only other one that’s getting any traction is the expansion of the Cloud Loft. Hired a gifted pegasus to do nothing but fuse stone into clouds all day long. I’m surprised the fellow’s putting up with it.”

The Admiral grinned. “Before too long he’ll be making insulting cloud statues of the High Academe. She won’t be able to do anything to them.”

“Oh, if you get clever enough, anything can be destroyed,” Meteor chuckled.

“...Is our project safe?”

“Nopony has any reason to interfere. The worst that happens is we explode and destroy the launchpad. We have most of the materials; all that remains is some processing and last minute work before the big day.”

“Assuming it works. I remember last time.”

Meteor smirked. “Well… allow me to demonstrate.” He jumped over to a small radio in the floor and pressed a button. “Experiment R-17, begin.”

The spike in the center of the platform began to tremble. Had they been at the launchpad itself, they would have been witness to a countdown, but up here they got no such thing. They watched with anticipation as the experiment trembled, spurted some smoke… and then finally unleashed an immense burst of fire that pushed it into the air. Gaining speed alarmingly quickly, the pointed device itself was soon lost in the sparkling fire as it rose higher and higher into the sky - until it looked like the reverse of a shooting star, the noxious smoke trail all but vanishing in the dark night.

The Admiral narrowed her eyes. She had seen the devices last this long before, but, invariably, around this point they would explode and shower the sea below in fiery shrapnel. Time and time again Meteor’s precious work would be reduced to nothing.

This time, however, it was different. No explosion came. Instead, The Admiral was able to watch as the streak of fire became a curve that, minutes later, ran out of fuel and fizzled out—but it hadn’t exploded.

“A success!” The Admiral said, bouncing onto the tips of her hooves.

“Third one, actually. Got a few off while you weren't here. I’ll need to test a few more, naturally, just to be certain - but I think I’ve got the final design now! The Engineers are already machining the parts, I’ve got all the control mechanisms…”

The Admiral noticed he was trailing off. “What are you missing?”

Meteor sighed. “Silver’s not convinced he should give up one of his eyes for this. After all, if we succeed… it’s going to be stuck forever. He doesn’t think it’s worth it…”

“I’ll convince him,” the Admiral said. “I’ve got some time tomorrow morning before I head off. He’ll give up his eye one way or another.”

“Don’t be too rough with him, now.”

“This is the future of ponykind here, I’ll be as rough as I want. If we pull this off we’ll prove that we can take what the ancients couldn’t—the stars themselves. We’ll finish this rocket and we can finally turn all this nonsense around. A stingy stallion’s magic isn’t going to get in the way of that. If I need to I’ll call in…” she licked her lips. “Favors.”

Meteor nodded. “Only if you absolutely need to, you understand.”

“Naturally.”

“...Admiral, I do want to thank you for all you’ve done. Before you arrived, astronomy was a joke.”

The Admiral gave him a smug smile. “Just get us up there and that’s all the thanks I’ll ever need.”

“Oh, I will!” Meteor chuckled. “If it kills me, I’ll get this done…”

“The world will turn to the stars instead of the sea.” The Admiral tapped her hoof excitedly as the prospect danced in her mind.

Meteor tore his gaze from the window, turning to some paper with orbital sketches. “Speaking of the sea, anything of interest this time around?”

“A seapony that apparently wants to be our friend or something.”

Meteor stared at her.

“I’m serious. I’m still not sure what to make of her.”

“Well… I’d like to meet this seapony before you leave. Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“I’m sure Rook would appreciate you.”

“She has a name!?”

Comments

[Booster Spice]

I wonder if the islands are falling because something is eating their lift in order to try to escape this world?

[ponepony]

“Absolute confirmation of the existence of the corrupting wyrd influence. Yes!” She pulled a notebook off of a nearby wall and started scribbling in it furiously with one of her oh-so-agile wings. “They’ll have to give the theory some credence now, and real, proper research can begin…”

“What are you gonna do? Cure them?” Sparkler jived.

“Hah! Stars above, no, even if it were possible to remove the corruption the psychological damage is irreversible, and there’d be the annoying addition of having to treat the subject as a pony afterward, which severely limits progress.”

They test the cure on some random seapone, and out pops a hippogriff and everyone becomes confused.

[FanOfMostEverything]

“It’s the way of the future,” the Admiral asserted, as she always did. “You won’t find this anywhere else.”

I take it the hamster has gone extinct, then. This sounds like a case of Habitrail for insanity.

She swore School of Arts only existed to make the others look good.

Well... yes. And the School of Tautology is the School of Tautology.

She shoved the hoof in Vespid’s direction, dousing the dean’s face in the substance.

Oh. Oh dear. That's not going to end well

“We have Rook,” the Admiral interrupted. “There is literally no reason to go track any others down.”

"We are not crossing over with the original story. So help me, I will turn this entire city around and go back home if I have to."

I suspect she has some psychological disorder, but without further study there’s no way I could determine if that’s from the wyrdness or just being alone at the bottom of the ocean for a thousand years.

Or she was just born that way. Never neglect the possibility of garbage data at the outset.

Ooh, rocketry. Though kerosene will only get them so far, and it's not like they have the facilities to liquefy and store oxygen... I assume.

In any case, I definitely get the feeling that Cozy Rook will leave an impression on this place. I just hope there will be some survivors.

9858831
"Finally! I've wanted to go up those stairs for centuries!"

[Thought Prism]

Okay, how has nopony checked to see if Rook can write yet?