The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

To Bind the Broken

Faye stepped out from the crystal tree and into the canyon on the surface world, and was greeted by stars.

"Oooo," Pinkie said, looking up at the night sky. "I must have totally lost track of time while we were down there!"

"We won't have any trouble getting home, you think?" Rarity asked, glancing around. "I can't imagine a place like the Everfree is less active at night than in the day, and the few times I've had reason to find out weren't the most pleasant experiences..."

"It'll be fine," Fluttershy reassured her. "I know these woods."

Twilight, however, was standing at the front of the group. "Look," she said, nodding down the canyon.

Waiting for them was Princess Luna.

"Princess!" Some of the ponies, as well as Seigetsu, bowed.

"I have been awaiting news of your return," Luna said, stepping forward, her mane shimmering like a cloud of ether.

"Has something happened?" Twilight asked, her ears folding in worry.

Luna shook her head. "On the contrary, I desired to know how your expedition fared. Did you meet with success?"

Twilight slowly blinked. "Were... you expecting us to? You must have known what was down there, right?"

Luna nodded. "Indeed. Hence why I was not certain of your success. Your efforts were stymied, then, I take it."

"It's complicated..." Twilight shuffled. "But yes."

"I see." Luna turned her gaze to Corsica and Faye, Seigetsu and Nanzanaya. "And what of your companions? Did they repay the trust you showed in them by allowing them into that place?"

Twilight hesitated. "It... might have been nice to get a heads-up first about what was in there before I made that call, but I suppose so."

"Not every inconvenient truth can be learned at a time of your own choosing, Twilight Sparkle," Luna said. "By associating with these ponies from the north, by becoming invested in their causes, you draw yourself ever closer to a path in which such truths will be numerous beyond measure. Am I wrong?" She fixed Corsica and Faye with a look.

"Pretty much spot on," Corsica remarked with a shrug.

Faye tilted her head and frowned. "You sent her on purpose into a place where she'd learn some uncomfortable stuff with strangers just to teach her a lesson?"

"That's, um..." Twilight rubbed the back of her neck, looking equal parts embarrassed and annoyed. "Actually exactly something they might... I mean, Celestia was my teacher. Before I became an alicorn. And, it often involved a lot of learning from my mistakes." She glanced back up at Luna. "But this wasn't even a mistake, though. How was I in control of what was down there?"

Luna shook her head. "You were not. The only thing you had control of was how you reacted to it. Rest assured, we would not have sent you in so unprepared had we not already explored everything that place had to offer, and known it to be safe. But where these ponies may lead you, you will not have the luxury of knowing that we have gone before. That is why we desired, above even the success of your mission, that this be an experience you could learn from."

"That door, then," Twilight said. "With the twelve key words. That's the door to Indus, isn't it? Were you that confident we wouldn't be able to open it? I thought Indus was supposed to be full of dangerous knowledge. What would you have done if we had gotten through?"

Luna regarded her. "It took my sister and I nearly three hundred years to open that door, after we discovered it while exploring our new nation. One day, as a future ruler of Equestria, you will have to come to terms with the history that lies beyond it for yourself. Finding the keys will be a journey that you can undertake with companions of your choosing, or even alone. Know only that there is no urgency to the matter. What you see on the other side will help you grow as an immortal goddess and a leader... and nothing more."

Twilight glanced at Nanzanaya. "And it's not a bad thing that some ponies I may not completely trust yet saw it and now know how it works and where it is?"

"The way is guarded by a being of unfathomable might," Princess Luna said. "Even an army of alicorns would be hard-pressed to match a Flame of Harmony given corporeal form. And the tree behind you will not open lightly, either. Precious few could even make the journey to that door save from in your approving company."

She turned to Faye, Corsica, Seigetsu and Nanzanaya. "But even if such protections were not in place, I trust none among you would seek to betray Twilight Sparkle's trust in allowing you to know of this place."

"You need not even ask," Seigetsu confirmed. Everyone else nodded.

"In that case, I will accompany you back to your castle, and then take my leave for the night," Luna said, looking up at the starry sky. "You undoubtedly have much to think about."

"Yeah," Twilight sighed, giving her a grateful nod. "You can say that again."

---

Corsica had seen Twilight's castle from a distance when walking through town, but after visiting the crystal city, it seemed somehow that much less impressive. A giant crystal tree, with a crystal castle built into it with a treehouse aesthetic, made out of the same stuff as the city... Beautiful, but it didn't have nearly the scope of the architecture below.

Thankfully, it also didn't have any noisy golems.

Much to Twilight's gratitude, Pinkie Pie had offered to put Nanzanaya up for the night, meals included. That left just Corsica, Faye, Seigetsu, and Twilight entering Twilight's castle... and, for some reason, Starlight and Rainbow Dash.

"You live here too, or something?" Corsica asked, glancing at the pair.

"I do," Starlight said, not taking her eyes off her course.

"Nah." Rainbow hovered along, starting to give Faye the impression that she never walked so long as she could help it. "But I've got a hunch we're not just going straight to bed, and I've got some ideas about what just went down back there."

"The kind of thing we should leave to you three?" Corsica asked. "Seemed like that was a little more personal than you were intending."

Twilight looked conflicted. "Kind of you to offer, and I could use a little alone time after all that. But we're probably going to wind up discussing what we do next, and that's invariably going to concern you as well."

Faye nodded. "Makes sense to me."

"I will allow you to have that discussion on your own," Seigetsu said, walking with her hands clasped behind her back. "I've always preferred early mornings to late nights."

Inside the castle, Spike was waiting, and after a short greeting and a very brief summary of events, he left to show Seigetsu to her room, while everyone else migrated to a lounge on the second floor, sandwiched between the library and Twilight's personal study.

"...So," Twilight said, taking a deep breath once everyone was seated. "Options."

"One," Rainbow said. "Honesty Flame. The one in the ocean. Starlight, didn't you go there on a submarine owned by a school with ties to Princess Celestia? Are they still around? That might not be an awful way to go. I bet if we asked her to pull some strings, she could get them to let us use it again. Assuming that place still exists?"

"Kinmari Marine Research Academy," Starlight said. "It does still exist, and it might be our best option. It's also very far away, and there are no trains on the ocean to speed things along. You two are on a timetable, right?"

Faye nodded. "Once we get the flame fixed, we need to take it back to Ironridge. And we also need to get back in time to do something about Yakyakistan. Though, I don't know what we can do."

"Okay," Rainbow said. "Two: Laughter Flame. The one, uhh..."

Twilight gave Starlight an understanding look.

"The one you don't want to visit for personal reasons," Corsica said. "Look. Personally, I don't have a whole lot to lose if Ironridge gets murderized. I know how that sounds, but I've got plenty of more pressing things to worry about. You know... personal issues. Ones I don't really want to explain to every passing stranger. So, you not wanting to go to this flame and not wanting to tell us why, that's totally understandable to me. But what I don't get is why you can't just stay behind and let everyone else go do it. If you not being able to go there is the biggest issue with the Laughter Flame, why don't we just do that?"

Starlight looked extremely awkward.

"If we explain, it wouldn't leave this room, right?" Twilight asked. "Not that I'd be making the final call on whether we explain that, or anything. Just making sure we're all on the same page."

"Well, now I'm curious," Corsica said, leaning forward on her sofa. "But I can keep a good secret."

"Same." Faye nodded.

Starlight sighed. "Go ahead and tell them."

Twilight arched her eyebrows. "Really? I mean, well... If you're sure..."

Starlight waved her on. "Or if you don't want to, I will. Twilight and her friends are Element bearers. They've been chosen by the Flames of Harmony to wield their powers in some fashion. The flames are the source, Twilight and her friends are the wielders. That all makes perfect sense? Not fuzzy on any of the details?"

Faye and Corsica nodded.

"Well, I'm a Flame of Harmony," Starlight said.

Corsica's eyes widened.

"Are you serious?" Faye leaned in.

Starlight nodded. "Hope. One of the 'broken' ones... Though in my case, the flame is considered broken because it's not at its palace, where it's supposed to be. Instead, it's out wandering the world in the form of a pony."

Corsica whistled. "Well, that explains a thing or two."

Starlight nodded again. "My presence on any mission to rekindle Kindness means we'd have two flames present instead of the usual one, and it's hard to see how that wouldn't be a benefit. The reason it was still worth trying to get to Convergence's place of power was so I could try to do the job myself, using its facility. The odds of that working are about the same as any other flame being able to do it without me, but we were already so close, it was worth a try."

"So..." Faye was still trying to re-adjust her train of thought to this situation. "Does that mean you're unfathomably ancient, and remember the previous world, Indus?"

"No," Starlight answered. "I'm around thirty. No documented birthday, so it's hard to know for sure, but I was found as an infant after a mountaineering accident. The working theory is that during that accident, I became entangled somehow with the flame. Either way, I'm in some respects a normal pony and in other respects a manifestation of the world's will to exist. It's a lot of fun."

Corsica frowned. "Then wouldn't you be in the opposite boat as me? If you're supposedly hope incarnate, you sound awfully tired and worn out."

"Princess Luna wasn't lying earlier," Starlight said, "when she talked about physical manifestations of the flames being unstoppably powerful. My particular power twists destiny, reality or whatever so that as long as I'm chasing a goal, it can never become fully out of reach. For example, as long as I care about living, either I can't die or someone nearby will magically discover a way to reverse my death. But this power doesn't help me actually achieve my goals. It only stops me from being forced to give up on them by circumstances outside my control. And the influence of the flame, or perhaps just my nature, makes me an eternal perfectionist who can't settle for good enough and can't give up. It's exhausting. My entire life, I've been trapped in a cycle of denying myself to find some measure of peace, and pouring everything I have into an endless quest that will never make me happy. Now do you understand?"

Corsica tried to imagine it, and it made her shudder. Her own wishes were granted by her talent, for no actual effort but at a cost to her ability to want them. If Starlight was telling the truth, then her wishes were forever dangled right in front of her face, and no amount of effort could ever fully realize them. They were opposites, and yet the same, in a twisted way. It was as if Corsica took everything she wanted, looked at it in a mirror, and saw only her present situation looking back.

"That's nuts," she eventually said. "You're serious, aren't you? This is why you're so reluctant to get involved with the north again? You're currently in the part of the cycle where you deny what you want, and are chilling with Twilight here and trying not to think about all the things you want to fix in the world."

Starlight nodded. "According to the other flames, I won't ever be truly satisfied until the entire world has been restored to the way they were all created to keep it. But that's an impossible task, and the reason they were created the way they are, giving their powers to champions instead of using them themselves, was to prevent the demands of this existence from driving them insane. Right now, I have a plausible chance that with Twilight and the other Element bearers, the next time we set out to do something, we'll have a shot at really succeeding. But I'm not ready to take that risk yet and put myself back out there. Because I know that even if we somehow succeeded at something as big as stopping Yakyakistan's war, it still wouldn't be enough."

Faye kept her mouth closed.

"That's rough," Corsica said. "But it gives me a stupid idea. If the other Flames of Harmony can choose Element bearers to do their jobs for them, can you?"

Starlight blinked.

"Hey, that's a good point," Rainbow said. "I never thought of that before!"

"Just saying." Corsica shrugged. "If you can, I'd volunteer. A mystical link to a font of divine determination sounds exactly like what I'm missing in life. And if you're too scared to throw yourself back in the great northern meat grinder, all I'm missing is the motivation to try."

Rainbow Dash pointed a hoof at her. "Girl, if I didn't know what your cutie mark meant, that would raise all sorts of questions."

Corsica grimaced. "Don't go shouting it around. I'd rather not tell everyone I meet what it can do. Or the price for using it."

Starlight shook her head. "Anyway. Have I sufficiently cleared things up, about why we'd be better off if I was present on any mission to rekindle Kindness, and why I'd really rather not revisit the north?"

Faye nodded.

"Right." Corsica cleared her throat awkwardly, caught in between the chill from imagining herself in Starlight's situation and admiring her for just putting something like that right out there... never mind that everyone in this room had at least an idea of her own. "So, our other flame options. After those two, we've got the one in the dragon war, which was an obvious no. What about your own?" She looked to Starlight. "Presumably, it wouldn't have any benefits over going to Laughter without you, since we'd still just have one flame. But if we went to your old palace, could you activate it again?"

Starlight looked like she hadn't fully considered this possibility. "I... don't see why not. But you're right that it wouldn't give us the advantage of having multiple flames. Also, with how much we found in Twilight's crystal palace that even I didn't know about, the odds of us running into unforeseen complications are incredibly high."

"Remind me where the Palace of Hope would be?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "That's not the one super far in the south, is it?"

Starlight nodded. "It is. The one in the zebra lands, where Nanzanaya is presumably from. I don't know what all of you think about her request. Personally, I'm even less inclined toward getting involved in that than I am to returning to the north. On the bright side, we'd at least have a willing guide to the area. But while the likelihood of us making it to the palace is high, the odds of getting caught up in something are all but certain."

"So that leaves our best options as Laughter and Honesty," Twilight said. "One is much slower, but you could come, Starlight. The other... Are you certain you don't want to face your old village again?"

Starlight winced.

"For what it's worth, we would come along and vouch for you," Rainbow offered. "Or we could even smuggle you through, and you wouldn't have to interact with anyone there."

"Maybe." Starlight took a deep breath. "I'm not that thrilled about extensive travel anywhere, though I suppose I did just go with you to the Crystal Empire. Maybe we should all sleep on it, and I'll realize in the morning how silly I'm being. I don't know. I just... don't want to start something again I might not be able to stop."

"Sleeping on it is good," Twilight said. "Even if we decided tonight, it's not like we'd act on it."

"Right." Starlight got to her hooves. "See you tomorrow. And, you two..." She looked over her shoulder at Faye and Corsica. "I don't envy your position. However this ends, good luck."

She trotted out the door, and was gone.

"Sooooo..." Rainbow interrupted as Twilight rose to follow.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Before you bail, Twi, I've got a theory," Rainbow said, rubbing her forehooves together. "Might be crazy, might be crazy awesome. You remember how we all got our cutie marks, right?"

Twilight smirked just a little. "Hard to forget."

"Yeah, yeah, well, I know you do," Rainbow said. "But you two northern nerds haven't heard yet, have you? How we initially became marked as Element bearers?"

"Nope," Corsica said. "You gonna tell us?"

"I did a sonic rainboom," Rainbow Dash said, holding a hoof to her chest. "Legendary, mythical aerial maneuver that no one but me has ever done in living memory or reliably recorded history. Dunno if they have these in the north, probably not. It involves a big, flashy explosion in the sky that you can see for miles around, right? I got my cutie mark when I did it, and all five of the other Element bearers got theirs at exactly the same time, as it was going off. Pretty neat, right? Our friendship and our roles as Elements was basically predestined, and all ties back to me. You seeeee where I'm going with this?"

Twilight took a sharp gasp. "That's ridiculous!"

"Is it, though?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow at her. "You've gotta admit, Convergence probably wouldn't have told you that the ability to draw together the Elements was hereditary if it didn't know for a fact it was relevant. What if my great-great-great-five-times-great grandparent was another Element of Magic?"

"But you're the Element of Loyalty," Twilight protested. "You can't have two Elements at once, can you? And if you did, wouldn't your cutie mark look more like mine than yours? For that matter, upon doing the rainboom, wouldn't this have made you the Element of Magic and not me? But I was chosen anyway. None of that makes sense."

Rainbow shrugged. "I mean, didn't Princess Celestia use all the Elements by herself in the old stories? I'm not trying to cramp your style, I'm just saying, what if?"

Twilight looked at Rainbow with the expression of an elder watching unwanted youngsters on her lawn.

"Okay, okay, I won't mention it again." Rainbow waved her off, turning her gaze toward a window. "I'm gonna get some shut-eye as well. Try not to stay up all night!"

With a zip of light, she too was gone.

"That mare," Twilight said, frazzled. "...Anyway. Can I get you anything? Spike should be able to show you to your rooms, or I can?"

"Thanks," Corsica said. "Think I could use some shut-eye too."

The three of them set off down a long, curved hallway encircling the second floor. "What do you think of Starlight's reasons for not going back to the north?" Corsica asked as they walked. "I get where she's coming from. But her friends are still waiting for her. And they've been waiting for as long as I've been alive. Think about it."

"I think both she and they deserve the closure, and to see each other again," Twilight said. "And I think the north needs to be saved. But at the same time..."

"Was there even more she wasn't telling us?" Corsica guessed.

Twilight nodded. "I'm not sure if I should be telling you this, but Starlight used to have... visions. Whenever she went to a Crystal Palace, she would see these disturbing, apocalyptic worlds with nothing but rock and falling ash. We suspect they were warnings about a bad future, but we never learned for sure. The only thing we do know is that when she gave up and stopped trying to fight for her friends and the north, the visions stopped, as well. Going to my own palace with us must have taken a lot of courage from her, risking seeing one of those visions again - if they are a warning of the future, it would mean that by getting involved with your mission, she was putting that bad future back on track. And it would take a lot more courage for her to leave Ponyville and go traveling in search of another Crystal Palace. But going all the way back to the north and continuing her old fight? She has this on her shoulders, as well."

"Sounds like a complicated existence," Corsica said. "That got anything to do with why she doesn't want to go back to the Laughter flame?"

Twilight shook her head. "Actually, that's something yet again completely different. But this time, it's really not my place to tell you. We should think about this in the morning, alright?"

Corsica continued following. "Sure. Just remember that if safeguarding the future is really her biggest goal, then letting these flames go out might not be the best way to do it."

"You're welcome to remind her yourself," Twilight said, approaching a pair of doors. "Anyway, these rooms should serve nicely. If you need absolutely anything at all, give Spike a holler, okay? He keeps weird hours."

"Will do," Corsica said, peeling off and opening the door to her accommodations.

---

Faye swung the door closed behind her, and was blissfully alone.

Here, she could still feel the distant heart of Convergence, the feelings permeating that city welling up through the crystals. But they were far away, and it was almost like the crystals of this castle were dominated by a different set of emotions: nobility, earnestness, righteousness, friendliness and curiosity.

This new set of emotions was polite, and mostly left her alone. Here, she felt like she could get a good night's sleep.

Faye crawled out of her giant Crystal Empire robe and doffed her boots. As nice as that robe looked, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was less 'her' than her tattered old coat, or Corsica's new one that she had ruined in the Flame District... If all her obligations could kindly hold off for a day or two, she would definitely see about getting something new for herself.

Maybe she would even ask Corsica to come along and help pick it out. That seemed like the kind of thing that could help mend bridges between them, right?

She made to climb in bed... and realized she was still wearing her bracelet. Down in the city, she had resolved to trade it back for Halcyon tonight, since she wasn't using it for anything and had more than proved the point to herself that it was possible to take the lead and talk to other ponies again. But did she really want to wake Seigetsu over this at this hour...?

Probably not. As long as she did it first thing tomorrow. A new fear was starting to take form in her heart, one she had never thought about articulating before: what would happen if she completely, entirely left Halcyon behind?

Better for that possibility to remain unexplored. She was what Halcyon was missing, and Halcyon was what she was missing. To actually move forward in life, they would have to work together from now on.

At least to an extent. Faye wasn't sure how she would break the news to her superstitious other half that she had borne witness to a war between the gods, and was even less sure what she would do if she dreamed about that while Halcyon was in control.

Oh well. Halcyon wasn't here tonight, so if it happened tonight, at least, it would be fine. Faye crawled into bed, closed her eyes, and waited for sleep to claim her.

---

Faye was walking, and from the heat, she could only be in Ironridge.

To her right was a canopy of trees, indicating she was low down in the Day District, near the border of the Night District. Probably on her way home from working for Jamjars - a suspicion that was soon confirmed when she turned and saw Lalala, one of her old co-workers, keeping an unbothered pace beside her.

"What did you want to ask about?" Lalala asked as they walked.

"Everything, sort of," Faye said, the Halcyon of the past speaking for her. "But, specifically, I was wondering if you'd ever heard of an entity called Unnrus-kaeljos."

Unnrus-kaeljos? Faye immediately started paying more attention. She couldn't remember ever having a conversation about this with anyone outside of her own various selves, before, but if she was dreaming it, it must have happened. What had she said, or been told, that she forgot?

"Hmm," Lalala hummed, her ears folded thoughtfully. "Yes, it rings a bell. I couldn't tell you what it means, or even whether it's an entity, but I've seen the word before."

Faye perked up.

"I told you about my background, right?" Lalala explained. "I grew up in Silverwind, on a school campus frequented by archaeologists. Many thousands of years ago, there used to be an ancient civilization there, and bits and fragments of their knowledge come back to us from the digs. Tablets and writings, some of which were translated, others we were never able to. If I recall correctly, Unnrus-Kaeljos was one of the words on the infamously unsolved Aldenfold mural discovered about forty years ago."

"Aldenfold mural?" Faye pressed, just as curious then as she was now.

"One of just many ancient mysteries that desert has surrendered to time," Lalala elaborated. "The Aldenfold mountains are said to have risen from the land one thousand years ago, when our modern calendar began. Yet the civilization of Silverwind existed between five and seven thousand years ago, and the word 'Aldenfold' appeared in a prominent mural that was discovered largely intact. That implies the word had a meaning before it was given to the mountains, but to my knowledge no one ever discovered the purpose of the mural."

The word 'Aldenfold' appearing on an ancient mural, huh? Faye's thoughts instantly went to the door beneath the crystal city. Halcyon of the past wouldn't know to ask about that, but if there was any chance these were related...

"What did it look like?" she asked. "This mural."

"I never saw it for myself," Lalala said. "It was too big to bring home, carved onto the wall of what had once been a palace or temple of sorts. I just know it had words that couldn't be translated."

Words. Multiple words, that couldn't be translated, but could evidently be phonetically read.

It had to be. Presumably this mural wasn't also a door, but it could easily have been a copy of the door's surface, made in an era when the door and the land below it hadn't been completely forgotten. And if there were archaeologists studying this mural and trying to translate it, then any hints they might have gathered could be invaluable in piecing together the keys!

Assuming she actually wanted to go to Indus. Faye suddenly realized she cared more about solving the puzzle on the grounds that it was an impossible puzzle that took two alicorns three hundred years to solve than to actually open the door.

Come on, come on, what would Past Halcyon ask next...?

"Where did you hear about it?" Lalala asked instead, continuing the conversation herself. "I hardly ever hear ponies talk about Silverwind, let alone the things that are found there."

Faye shrugged. "I met someone who mentioned it in passing. Made it sound like a god, or something. It got me curious, and I wondered if you knew."

Lalala shook her head. "As far as I know, the Meridi - the civilization responsible for most of the history in Silverwind - worshiped only the Aegis as the one true god."

As she spoke, her voice started to grow tinny. Was the conversation moving past the part her dream wanted her to remember, and speeding up? This didn't feel quite like that. In fact, something didn't feel quite right in general, a tension in the air that defied easy explanation, as if the dream itself was made of taut twine.

Faye said something else, but the words were muddled, as if she wasn't fully in control of her mouth. And then it hit her: she actually was in control of her mouth. She had stopped walking. The scripted dream still tugged at her muscles, but it had lost purchase, tearing like wet paper.

"What's going on?" She spun around, hearing her own voice loud and clear. Lalala had stopped moving, as had all the other ponies around her. They looked almost two dimensional, even.

This wasn't right. What was wrong? Her dream was-

The sense of gravity in her heart intensified, tugging her gaze upward to the sky, where the fabric of reality itself suddenly buckled, as if something was punching the world from another dimension. And then it tore, fire from on high exploding into existence, at first a fireball and then a sea of red, a visage she knew all too well from earlier that very day.

Ironridge was gone. In its place were towers, burning buildings and a far-off city, surrounded by distant mountain walls. She knew what was directly overhead before even looking.

From on high, Aegis exploded with radiance, three lasers narrowly missing their mark and slamming into the landscape around her, carving rainbow spheres out of reality that lingered for several seconds and left nothing in their wake. The dragon's opponent swooped in a circle, burning with gold and trailed by energy projectiles in the form of innumerable swords, seeking their enemy like a swarm of bees.

One of the swords came dangerously near, impacting the other side of her roof. Faye jumped out of the way as a ring of fire flung itself from the sword, barely managing to hide behind a boxy rooftop ventilation duct, feeling ash singe her face and her ears wilt from the heat.

This was different. This was wrong. She had seen their battle, but this wasn't just reliving a memory in a dream: she was in full control, and their attacks weren't the same. That projectile hadn't come nearly so close the last time she was here.

"What's going on!?" she screamed. "Why are you fighting!? Stop it! Let me out of here!"

But her body wouldn't wake up. This felt real. More real than any of her memories. What was happening?

She was still wearing her bracelet. All around her, the world burned with caustic emotions, but if she couldn't use her powers to defend herself in a dream gone horribly wrong, where could she? She lit it, pushing the emerald flames all the way to the max.

"Stop it!" Faye cried, pulling on everything around her, concentrating it and pointing those volatile feelings back in a beam aimed straight for the dueling gods. And then she released them, and emerald flames flew forth.

The entire world froze, as if someone had paused a movie.

Faye's heart was hammering out of control, her bracelet still coursing with green. "What's going on?" she whispered. "Please, let me wake up..."

One of the gods - the nameless equinoid, the King of All Monsters, the golden sword wielder and presumably Ludwig's dad - started to descend.

Light rippled around it as it drew on level with her burning rooftop. Half of the building had collapsed where the sword struck, and the half that remained was strewn with flames that rippled and danced with the city's pain.

The god came closer.

Faye couldn't move as it arrived, facing her, barely a stone's throw away, a featureless equinoid with a halo of runic light around its barrel, two wings of light growing out from the halo as it ceaselessly spun.

"Why am I here?" Faye whispered. "This is horrible. Who are you?"

"I AM UNNRUS-KAELJOS," the god said. "AND MY HANDIWORK IS AS TERRIBLE AS YOU SAY. WE HAVE MET BEFORE."

Despite the blistering heat, Faye felt cold.

"Why am I here?" she asked. "What do you want from me?"

The light spirit watched her, holy light wafting from its wings and polluting the burning sky. "LONG AGO, I BATTLED TETRA, THE GREAT DESTROYER, IN ORDER TO SAFEGUARD ALL THE CREATURES OF THIS WORLD - A WORLD I CREATED. IN ATONEMENT FOR THE DEVASTATION WROUGHT BY OUR BATTLE, I THEN BANISHED MYSELF FROM EXISTENCE, THAT MY CHILDREN MIGHT LIVE BETTER IN A WORLD FREE FROM THE FOLLY OF GODS. BUT YOU HAVE THE POWER TO REMEMBER THAT WHICH REALITY HAS FORSAKEN. BECAUSE OF THIS, I WAS ABLE TO ANSWER WHEN YOU WISHED FOR A SIMILAR BANISHMENT, YEARS AGO."

Faye swallowed. "And what do you want me to do? Why are you here, now?"

Unnrus-kaeljos gleamed all the brighter. "TO DISPEL THE DOUBTS YOU HARBOR ABOUT AIDING MY LOYAL SERVANT, NANZANAYA."

Before Faye could say anything else, the fire faded from the sky, the heat and the lights vanished, and she awoke in Twilight's castle in a cold sweat, the night sky still visible through the window.

Panting, Faye heaved herself out of bed, running to the window and gulping down some fresh, non-smoky air. Her face still felt burned, her fur singed, her heart racing-

"I saw it too," Procyon said, hovering just outside the window.

Faye jumped.

Procyon shrugged. "Hopefully invasive dreams like that don't happen too often. But look on the bright side: at least now you can stop thinking in me-and-Halcyon terms, and acknowledge that I was once a part of us, too."

Comments

[Numinos]

Just hug already : )

[Mini-Joe]

Man this is crazy

[penguincascadia]

11618335

More thoughts on rocket trips to or over Indus:

If suborbital rockets, they would likely be one way trips to Indus with the explorers likely having to find their way back, or a flyby above Indus with a launch from one edge of the world and a landing at the opposite edge of the world.

If orbital rockets, they could just map the entire world from orbit if they can get into a polar orbit above the disk of the world. Getting down would require experience with retrorockets, through...

[PropsValroa]

Wow...