Facets of Halcyon
"Seems like as good a place as any," I said, Dead Herman fading from sight behind me as the road back to the Day District twisted and turned, weaving through rocky outcrops and trying to remain something approaching flat. "So, err..."
Shiny me hovered in midair, slightly see-through, a figment of my imagination that was slightly more real.
"Where do we start?" I asked. "Who are you? Aside from me. What, like... I mean..."
I wasn't sure what to say.
"Like I said." She shrugged, wings furled at her sides. "I am you. To put it awkwardly, I was you before you existed. We... You... The pony everyone else knows as Halcyon has an eccentricity, or a condition, or a power to imagine herself as more than one person. One body and one soul, but different selves within that. I was the original, and I invented you as an imaginary friend. But, because of the way we are, you became a lot less imaginary and a lot more another facet of us. And now I'm just in your mind, and you're the dominant personality. I understand if this is a lot to take in..."
I shook my head, still walking. "I've always known I thought about myself differently. Why don't you start at the beginning?"
Shiny me sighed. "When I was young, about five or six, my best friend was a filly named Faye. She had some severe birth defects, and couldn't walk or move around on her own. Not long after, she died. In that condition, I suppose I'm surprised she lived as long as she did. I missed her dearly, and... started pretending she was still around. You can probably guess where this is going."
My pupils shrank a little. "You mean I'm..."
"A replacement for her?" Shiny me shrugged. "That's how you started out. You even look like her. How you see me is the way we used to look."
I stared harder. "I used to look like that? All shiny and stuff? How'd I change? I don't do stuff to keep my colors this way."
"Perhaps I just really wanted it," she said. "It happened gradually over a month or two, soon after I started talking to you. Mother and Elise decided it was psychosomatic, like how your mane can fall out from worry. And Faye and I looked very similar in the first place. It's part of why we became friends." She looked away. "I suppose this begs the question of what we should call each other. You wouldn't remember any of that, so you probably don't want to give up the Halcyon name. And I was the one who left, so I suppose it falls on me to change mine?"
I was a little too busy wrapping my head around the big picture and that this was happening in the first place to focus on the particulars. "Err, sure."
"Hmm," she mused. "How about Procyon?"
"Eh?" I tilted my head.
She nodded. "It sounds similar, right? And if I recall correctly, it's the name of a star that symbolizes good fortune. Fitting, given how we always dreamed of space travel. And it sure is fortunate we were reunited!"
"Alright." I nodded back, my thoughts getting a little easier to think now that I didn't have to trip over names. "Procyon it is."
Procyon did a loop in midair. "Great! So, you mind if I ask about what you've been up to since I left? I've only had the tiniest bits and glimpses, which is a roundabout way of saying I've been sitting in the middle of a dark void and know nothing at all. Where even are we? Not Icereach, that's for sure."
"How far back are we talking?" I asked, still walking. "You said something earlier about the avalanche? What happened to you in the first place? I know I can make myself forget stuff, but why like this? And what about the me that's already under my mask? Are there three of us?"
"I guess I should explain that first." Procyon sagged. "When I left... it would have been kind of sudden. I was kind of still in ultimate control of us, like a backup, even though you were technically in front. See, you were more of an idealization of what I wished I could be than a full pony, so you were a little unfinished around the edges... The way I think I tried to do it was cutting out everything that made me me, which is the me you see right now, while still leaving something behind to work the controls and watch out for you. Like a me with a big hole in the middle. So you could think of us as three Halcyons, or you could think of it as one and two halves. You'd have to talk to her to be certain, if she even can talk."
"She can," I said. "She definitely can."
Procyon pursed her lips. "Interesting. I wonder if she's grown more complete while I've been gone, just like you have. Maybe saying there are three of us is more accurate after all."
Suddenly, I felt an unnerving push from deep within, and-
-Halcyon's mask came off.
There were stars, clustered into galaxies and nebulae instead of the even spread she saw in Icereach. Procyon hovered in her vision. She held her mask, a physical chunk of emerald crystal, looked down at it, and then back up.
"...You're not me," she said, stern and glum.
"Ah," Procyon said, meeting her emerald gaze. "It's you. And believe it or not, yes, I am."
"No." Halcyon shook her head. "You're implying you're the original part of us. That would mean you remember everything. But you're too chipper. You could never be someone who knows."
"Am I?" Procyon's tone was suddenly harder. "I've had two and a half years of oblivion to change my outlook, but I wished for it in the first place. And if you're still letting that mask live all of our lives as her own, that means you do, too. We're the same." Her voice quieted, sadder now. "We're the same."
Halcyon said nothing.
"You know... that something was taken." Procyon looked away. "You can see the hole in your memory. You remember the price Unnrus-Kaeljos asked of us. Well, now I'm telling you that wasn't actually a price. Calling it a price was just a cover, so you'd never realize that what was lost - me - actually wanted to go."
Halcyon watched her. Procyon watched back.
"So now... you want to fit back in," Halcyon said slowly. "But where is there room for you?" She held up the mask. "She's her own person now. She doesn't need me, and even if you're telling the truth, she doesn't need you. And I don't need you either. You're not the cause of the emptiness I feel. I just want to be alone."
"You're right." Procyon shook her head. "I'm not the cause of anything anymore. I'm just a memory, rescued from oblivion. I don't know where I fit, or what's happened to the two of you since I've been gone, or what you need, or what you want, or even what you have. All I know for certain is that I am, for once, glad to be alive. Nonexistence wasn't as great as I thought it would be."
"...Then you had best watch yourself," Halcyon said, holding up the mask again. "She's walking a thin line between stress and hope. She thinks she can learn the truth and not wind up like me for it. I want her to succeed, so that some good can come of us, but she's already at her limit between all her ambitions and all the other actors who know too much. If you think you can legitimately help her navigate that and become free, be my guest. But if you tell her anything she's not ready for and break her as a result, you'll have me to answer to. If you really disappeared the way you claim you did, that means you abdicated responsibility for her onto me, and I'm not about to give it back."
Before Procyon could respond, she put the mask-
-back on.
I shuddered, taking a moment to steady myself as my senses recalibrated to normal. That... felt like I remembered the entire exchange? Had the me under the mask forgotten to hide it from my memories? Or did she want me to...
"Well," Procyon sighed, "that was definitely the old me, alright. Chronically lifeless and unable to smile."
I glanced at her.
She hesitated. "I don't know how much I should tell you, now. But the reason I, or, I guess now we, left you in charge..." She sighed again. "I didn't... like myself very much. For several reasons. One of which, since you said you remembered it, involved how helpless we were during an avalanche several years ago."
I nodded, remembering the desperation I had relived in my dreams over and over, the terrified monotony of waiting for my friends to wake up that came back to haunt me during the Aldebaran incident.
"I had reasons to want to disappear," she said. "The fragment I left behind has reasons not to want to be a part of your life. Both of us want you to be able to live our life to the fullest, on all of our behalves. So, I guess I'm apologizing in advance if we don't want to risk telling you more than you can handle. I mean, I've just met you after being gone for so long, so I barely even know what you're like these days. Right?"
"Makes sense," I mumbled, still working through what I had just heard while my mask was off. As revolutionary as it was to be talking to Procyon, some deep-seated part of me wanted to take the other me's side in their argument, the me under the mask. I didn't quite know why. She had been telling Procyon not to go too hard with the deep secret-spilling, secrets I wanted to know.
Maybe I had just lived with her fear of them for so long that I believed her when she said caution was important. I said a quiet, mental prayer that Procyon wouldn't tell me anything I really, really had good reason right now not to want to know.
Despite being all in my head, Procyon didn't appear to hear me.
I straightened up, more committal this time. "Yeah. Yeah, that's good," I told her. "I've probably got enough problems of my own to worry about right now anyway, without whatever's got you two bogged down, right? Maybe this is a good time to get you up to speed on what I'm dealing with, if you're gonna be around for a while..."
We reached the long, makeshift staircase back to the Day District, and I talked as I walked, glossing over the things I didn't understand and focusing on the repeating themes: not knowing who to trust, changelings, Jamjars, my job hosting weddings, and my ambitions to get an airship and fly to Equestria.
Along the way, I learned some things in return, some of which was confirmation on what I had long-suspected and others that were wholly new. Unnrus-Kaeljos, Procyon told me, was the light spirit's name, a fascinating discovery I would be sure to cross-reference with any and all history and religion texts I could get my hooves on. That green crystal I had held the last two times I took my mask off really was me: not so much my memories, which apparently were different, but my temperament, my priorities, my personality, things I knew or was on an instinctual level. On Mother's bracelet, information was elusive, which was all but an explicit confirmation that it was just as important as Corsica thought it was. Procyon did tell me the bracelet was much more likely to hurt those around me than me myself, though. Mother's assertion that I would understand any consequences that were about to happen to me while I still had time to stop, she claimed, was true.
Even once I reached the train station and Procyon disappeared, my thoughts continued. Who was I? I had learned more about how I worked, and what was behind my mask, but a lot of what I did learn was how little I really knew. My other parts were afraid of us, it was plain to see. I had been conditioned to fear my own potential, and I hobbled myself throughout the Aldebaran incident by doing so. So they obviously knew what we were capable of... but from the way they talked, especially the me under the mask, you would think we had already done something.
Something bad enough to make them no longer want to exist, and set me up to do the living for them.
I wracked my memories for things that were foggy, things that felt like they had been tampered with, but it was no use. I only noticed those when I tried to think about them and realized they were gone, not when I was looking for them in the first place. What could a thing like that be? Where could it have occurred? Giving up on living was a pretty big deal, and they were both scared it could cause me to do the same, so it had to have been something massive. But I had lived at Icereach all my life, and I wasn't aware of any historical disasters there within my lifetime, let alone ones I could feasibly have caused.
What could they possibly have done?
I thought harder. There was one other irrational fear I had been given, aside from pushing my limits: letting others see my red hooves. Procyon's hooves hadn't just been red, they had been a whole dawn sky of colors, so they were originally even more eye-catching than they were now. But why did that matter? Was it related? It might have been. I couldn't imagine any other reasons they'd want me to keep my legs the strictest of secrets. But then again, I could think of even fewer reasons how my red hooves could be related to something bad they had done. Or how hiding them could relate to preventing it from happening again.
As much as I had learned about myself, it only served to bring the portions that didn't make sense into sharper relief.
Oh well. At least I had a name for the light spirit, and that alone was potentially invaluable. And it just so happened that I was on my way to work, and one of my co-workers happened to be a fan of obscure, ancient, arcane religious knowledge.
I didn't have time to be awkward. Everything Coda had asked me to do could wait, as could running from Cold Karma and saving Leitmotif. My oldest goal was calling, and I had a real, solid lead I could chase.
"And you swear, under your chosen virtues, to be honest and kind until old age take you, to work together in love and build yourselves up, that your bond may join with others as an example to all of the harmonious future that you so desire?"
"I do."
"I do."
"Then it is finished. In the eyes of the church and the world, you are now one."
Someone roared. A loud pop heralded a flying champagne cork, and the room burst into applause, ponies whooping and hoofstomps thundering against the floor. The couple embraced each other tightly, and Lalala smiled from behind the podium. Someone cranked up a record player, someone else lowered a disco ball, and the crowd began to dance, swaying and celebrating to the beat.
At the side of the room, near a marble column support pillar someone had done a very good job of making look real, Jamjars stood in a black tuxedo, thoroughly enamored with the proceedings. Thumper and Saturn flanked me, each of us clad in bridesmaid dresses, doing our level best to pelt the partiers fairly and equitably with rice.
It was an act, and one I played well. This was wedding five for the day, capping off a ten-hour endurance streak of receptions, deliberately scheduled for last because Jamjars' screening process said this party was most likely to trash the surroundings. I had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, hiked many miles and never been off my hooves, had no fewer than three major revelations and one magical incident involving the throne of a goddess, with only one long sleep between that and being kidnapped while in jail by Lilith. By all rights, I should have been a zombie, or have passed out long ago.
If I'd just been standing around doing nothing, I probably would have. Throwing rice at strangers just had a strangely therapeutic quality that gave me the boost I needed. Being rice, I could throw it as vengefully as possible and they'd be none the wiser.
As the party came into swing and a live DJ began setting up shop, we slipped away, gathering with Jamjars in an area outside the fake chapel walls, slightly quieter even though the building almost visibly vibrated with noise. "Five more happy couples, primed and ready for consummation," Jamjars sang, a look on her face that was somewhere between dreamy and satisfied and smug. "Romance takes work. Hard work, and never forget it. But you did that work, and so you reap the rewards. It's payday, minions!"
She pulled out several jingling money bags that looked designed specially to jingle, and passed them out to everyone. Suddenly, I was no longer broke.
"Cleanup tomorrow night, right?" Saturn asked, looking ready to limp back home and collapse into bed.
"Cleanup and setup," Jamjars replied. "We'll have more ceremonies in this venue the night after next, and we don't have to move until after that."
"You realize this would be much less labor-intensive if we had our own facility," Thumper pointed out.
Jamjars airily sighed. "As always, I suppose it would, and as always, Ironridge's eternal upward migration means it's never a good time to buy. Besides, getting to move contracts around like this instead of renting a permanent space gives me a little dynamism in the space-renting world that translates into financial goodies for you, so think of it like extra pointless leg work to generate cash out of thin air. More satisfying that way?"
I wasn't complaining. I was sitting on a crate, transferring the money to a pocket where it would hopefully be less jingly, one eye fixed on Lalala. Before she left, I wanted a talk... and it looked like she was packing up.
"Hey," I said, catching up. "You mind if I walk with you back to the train station? Was hoping to hear more about that ancient religion history stuff you were talking about last time."
Her ears perked up. "Of course," she said. "You can walk with me."
We left the building soon after, Jamjars talking with Thumper about money in our wake. "What did you want to ask about?" Lalala asked as we walked.
"Everything, sort of," I said, unable to remember what we even argued about last time. "But, specifically, I was wondering if you'd ever heard of an entity called Unnrus-Kaeljos."
Procyon was watching me from a distance, I noticed. She hadn't appeared while on the train, or at the wedding. I was fairly certain nobody else could see her, but she seemed to be shy.
"Hmm..." Lalala folded her ears in thought. "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."
I perked up, listening.
"I told you about my background, right?" Lalala said. "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?" I tilted my head.
"One of just many ancient mysteries that desert has surrendered to time," Lalala told me. "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."
My mind went back to the mural in the sealed area of the Icereach chapel, depicting three progressively bigger worlds and their corresponding gods. I never did learn just how old that one was. Although, I did have several drawings of it back in my room at Jamjars'...
"What did it look like?" I 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."
I thought about that. If Unnrus-Kaeljos was a name for an entity, maybe it didn't have a translation at all, and that was why they were stumped.
"Where did you hear about it?" Lalala asked. "I hardly ever hear ponies talk about Silverwind, let alone the things that are found there."
I 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."
"You know there's a comic book about that, right?" I asked. "About Aegis? A mechanical dragon that flies around and shoots lasers?"
"I have seen it." Lalala's ears fell. "My feelings about it are mixed. Everything we know about the Meridi says their god had no physical form, and existed outside the bounds of reality so as not to be constrained by the world's laws. But when the Aegis appears in surviving artwork, it is depicted as a dragon. It is possible that comic book was inspired by some legitimate knowledge from Silverwind, and that through the creativity of that artist, the Aegis's legend lives on... no matter how distorted and unrecognizable from the original thing."
"I still don't get the whole outside-reality thing," I told her. "How can something exist and not exist at the same time?"
Lalala shrugged. "I don't know how to explain it to a rational scientist. I'm sorry."
I hung my head, then looked away. Procyon was still floating along, keeping her silence.
...She technically existed only in my head. And yet to me, she was real regardless. Maybe it was the same principle at play.
We arrived at the train station, and said our goodbyes, and soon the clatter of wheels on rails consumed my world as I lost myself in a crowd of ponies on their way home. Even though I was anything but, I felt blissfully alone.
My thoughts unpacked themselves on the journey back to the Ice District, a day full of compressed and pent-up happenings. It took some effort to organize them into actionable, memorable items, but it was effort well spent.
Light spirit: it had a name. I had checked that name, and learned it might have been known to an ancient civilization, which frankly was a lot more exciting than I realized at the time I learned it. Lots of pieces here, like whether it related to the Aldenfold's namesake and the mural in the Icereach chapel. Interesting pieces. But not ones I could put together yet. Fortunately, not a pressing concern, either.
Procyon: I was... three ponies stuffed into a single head. Somehow. And none of us seemed to see eye to eye with each other. Just another step in the long, weird journey of discovering who I was. Also a thing I couldn't put all the pieces together on, but also not pressing, because I could probably talk to her just about any time as long as we were reasonably alone. Perhaps more pressing was the fact that I was all but certain my other parts had done something really bad that made them unable to live with themselves anymore, hence my own existence... but I had absolutely nothing to go on in finding out what that was.
Coda: a real, live changeling queen who really shouldn't look up to me as much as she did. She would pay me an airship for the low, low price of finding a goddess and convincing it to leave Ironridge. The Griffon Empire's goddess, Garsheeva. Who was alive, not dead, and in Ironridge. Assuming I heard all that correctly and wasn't hallucinating or insane. Unfortunately, even more problematic than trying to find and convince a goddess to leave was the fact that I was all but certain Coda's so-called power of love was bogus, and if I did help her get in a fight with her evil mom, I'd basically be signing her death certificate. I couldn't do that to a kid who trusted me. But I had no idea what else I could do.
Rewinding further, Corsica, telling me that Cold Karma was interested in the two of us because Icereach was secretly a weapons depot and my bracelet and her special talent had been squirreled away there to stay buried for eternity. And that Yakyakistan had built working rockets before I was even born, which alone could have shattered my entire worldview a year ago but now barely even merited a postscript.
Was that all? Was that the full extent of what I had learned in just the last day and night alone, all after my ordeal with getting kidnapped again and suspecting Kitty of being a windigo and vowing to save Leitmotif?
I held a hoof to my forehead and laughed. That was anything but simple.
...And it wasn't even everything, I remembered as I walked through the halls leading up to Jamjars' apartment. Egdelwonk wanted me to investigate Barnabas' Self-Defense Emporium, the Night District weapon shop where I got arrested. Right.
Surely that was everything... Nope. I had also learned that Jamjars probably owned the hideout where Aldebaran stranded us, and might be connected to the Composer. Right. Dealing with that was supposed to have been my priority for the day, and I completely forgot all about it. Because my life was just so eventful now that learning my parental guardian might have kidnapped me and might be working with ancient ice monsters just didn't even qualify as news anymore.
I couldn't help it. I laughed.
If there was one bright side, my experience with Coda, combined with what I remembered of Ludwig's behavior around me, suggested I really might have some sort of power that was specifically suited to making mind-magic users shove off. And maybe I had just been pushed across a breaking point where I wasn't afraid anymore.
Pushed past my breaking point, and I wasn't afraid. Against all explanation, it was a wonderful feeling.
I shadow snuck under the door to let myself in, since it was locked and I had beaten Jamjars home. The house was faintly thumping with a musical beat; Kitty was clearly having a party down below. Lights were on in the room I shared with Corsica, but not in Ansel's.
Corsica's door cracked open, and her head peered out. "Hey," she greeted. "Eventful night? You look beat."
"Yeah," I sighed, figuring I'd take a shower before Jamjars showed up and I had to figure out how to deal with that, too. "You?"
Corsica nodded. "I hit up the rest of the Junior Dumpster Despot Corps. We'll be having a hangout tomorrow night, and you're welcome to tag along. Just in case you wanna pick their brains. Egdelwonk made some exceptions for you in our non-disclosure agreement, so we can tell you secret stuff."
"Nice," I said. "I fought a god and won, and learned I might have forgotten I existed a few years back. I need a bath."
Corsica snorted and withdrew into the room.
Moments later, I set the last of my clothes aside and stepped into the tub. Before I cranked up the water, though, I searched the rim, finding a small tuft of yellow fur that Jamjars must have left behind earlier. I sealed it in a tiny bag and stuffed it in a pocket, preparing one last test to confirm my suspicions: if it was the same yellow as the sample I had taken in the hideout, I would know Jamjars was involved with Aldebaran for sure.
Water steamed down, washing over my tension, the thick shower curtain and the lock on the door momentarily separating me from the world and all its troubles. What would I do after we got our airship and flew across the Aldenfold, I wondered?
Searching for a goddess, for Princess Celestia, didn't hold the same appeal as it once did, but there was a new appeal in the old one's place: a desire to know how everything fit together, where my place was in the gigantic picture I was putting together of who I was and how the world worked around me. A friendly goddess, like Coda but with much more worldly knowledge, could maybe answer some questions I was starting to be able to ask.
I didn't just want to do that, though. I wanted to see the world, to live a broader life than I had been afforded in cluttered Icereach and a freer one than in Ironridge, where everyone who was anyone wanted my bracelet for themselves. When I came to Ironridge in the first place, I had that dream, and it was still intact, just postponed indefinitely. Just because this wasn't the place where I could live it out didn't mean the dream was flawed, as well.
Maybe it would be possible to take Coda with me. She seemed like someone who needed to get out and see the world. Leave her cult behind, and her so-called destiny. Was Chrysalis actively wrecking the world, here and now? Maybe. There sure was changeling activity in Ironridge. But did she need to be stopped? Did there have to be a destined savior like Coda thought she was? Ordinary Ironridge ponies didn't look like they had changelings as their foremost concern. So it was quite possible she didn't.
My number one priority was to get some sleep. Then go to work, scheduled for early in the night. Then, I would rescue Leitmotif. I had a ticket out that Egdelwonk had all but promised me would work; I just needed to find my way back inside. In return, I would find out everything she knew about Jamjars, and decide what to do about Jamjars from there. After that, I would find a way to slip Coda out past her clergy, take a walk and show her the world.
After that? Well, at some point I'd have to go find Garsheeva, and also investigate that weapon shop, and also meet with Corsica's friends, and maybe make sure Ansel wasn't being too hard on himself for us getting arrested, and maybe also talk to Kitty to see if I could learn what the windigoes really wanted. But that could be figured out in the future.
I finished toweling myself off, dressed and stepped out of the bathroom. Jamjars was cooking dinner, still glowing with satisfaction after the night's weddings. For a moment, I almost considered asking her directly whether she was involved with Aldebaran, just spitting it out then and there.
But I didn't. Instead, I retreated to my room, pulled out the other fur sample I had collected in the hideout, and compared the two side by side.
Identical. Jamjars owned the hideout. The revelation had nearly given me a panic attack earlier, and now here was the proof.
Somehow, I looked inside myself and realized that as long as she didn't mess with my own plans, I no longer really cared.
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...Did she cause the avalanche? That seems to be the only event that has happened in recent times that she could have any involvement in. From my brief retread of the flashbacks of that time, we didn't get an explanation of why the avalanche happened. But being the cause of the event that killed her brother (if I'm remembering that part correctly) and put the person she idolized in a (temporary) coma...
I'd probably agree about not wanting to exist anymore.
On a separate note, we don't have an explanation on why she doesn't fly either, right? I was thinking I had forgotten something from the previous story that affected batponies but from the looks she got helping with those wedding preparations without flying and after meeting Valey again I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
Blep.
Just caught back up on, uhh...four months of backlog? Things sure have happened.
Random questions:
Random ponderings:
I wonder if there's an analogy to be drawn here between Hallie's 'mask' and the structure of reality we learn some of in TOW. Whether the 'Aldenfold' in ancient writings is Indus, or even whatever predated that, is each new world analogous to a mask over the previous? For the Indus case after the war between Tetra and Swordperson, I could even see a similarity in the creators of the current world/remnants of Indus not being able to live with what they'd caused, and creating the new world/mask to move on as best they could.
I note also that at the end of TOW, Glimglam had a sorta Gandalfy experience of having blown herself out of existence for a bit, and then 'Something' asking her a question, which she perceives as coming from beyond the current world (beyond even the remnant of Indus/Tetra/Aegis), of which she is a part. Something slipping through from behind the modern mask? Or even from behind the Indus mask?
Given that there may be soul shenaniganery going on, I wonder if that could have something to do with Halcyon's...everything. Her weird personality structure, her regrets, the ability to go even further with the partitioning into what she is now, the changelingish ability to take on other personalities, the body morphing. Did she get a special soul out of the grabbag that Glimmy freed? Or from somewhere else? Wild speculation: she's got Chryssi's soul. Her big regret is that whole crazy mass-murdery bitch thing. It would go with the inverted crown cutie mark!
If Hallie's going to work for Wonk, she should get Coda a job as her stand-in working for Jamjars. Then Coda can snack on all that sweet, sweet wedding love and get properly powered up for her slapfight with Mommy Dearest.
Also, Hallie needs to get a proper night's sleep for her science brain so she can tell Coda to do some proper scans at various altitudes and positions over the city and not just circle it. Then maybe they can get a reading on what height/depth the ex-goddess is at. If she really is just trying to hide maybe she's down in the crystal doodad, which I'd think should be pretty distinct from her just chilling in a cottage in the city or locked in a cell in the Ice Cake.
Speaking of crystal doodads, was Ironridge where the other array that runs the Aldenfold barrier thingy was? Because if that's been overclocking itself for years trying to make up for the one in the Empire getting fried, seems like that could explain the heat. Or it could be someone doing something nefarious with same system. I wouldn't think the actual crystal spirit thinger would allow itself to be misused to cook a city, but the barrier stuff was just colocated hardware...
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Those are some great questions, but I guess most of them are still open at this point. I got one more:
What is Corsica's special talent? (But I guess at this point it's far too obvious already.)
I think the story hinted well enough at who Hallie's mom is without outright spelling it out. But just in case: Yes definitely 1000% Larceny. The picture with the initials while we know what happened to the other two, her description perfectly fits Larceny, her behavior fits her. If it's not her I'm gonna eat my hat.
Ooooh, I definitely have my idea for that. But we'll see, it's pretty much wild speculation on my part as well, but Just have a little hint about what I mean, just a tiny quote from TOW:
Convenient that we never learned that in TOW about a certain someone, isn't it? ;)
I kinda like that idea and I'm thinking in a similar direction. There are those emerald colored things about Hallie that can't be ignored. That almost screams to me for her having some relation to Chrysalis. But her soul? It's complicated. After Coda described how she could not penetrate Halcyon's mind, I faintly remembered something similar from TOW, and it took me a while, but I found that passage again. It was about Felicity trying Mistvale arts on Crystal. She sensed some impenetrable barrier inside of her. And the reason she stated for that was her having multiple cutie marks! Isn't that curious? Especially after the last two chapters. But this would also mean: Mother knows. And she also refused to teach Hallie Mistvale arts, didn't she? I wonder why.
There is something even more curious about all of this when combining those two wild speculations considering how the former one was depicted in TOW. I'm not quite sure where that would lead us yet, but it would surely be something truly epic.
Oh I like that idea and it makes so much sense. I wouldn't be surprised if that was planned to happen from the very beginning.
I was under the impression that this is exactly what they are already doing.
Nope, that one was in Yakyakistan. We have seen the tree in TOW after all and there were no generators tapping its power.
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Yeah, that person! With the sword! Maybe!
Ehh the description she gave at least to me felt like they were doing more of a 2-D scan, just circling the city. Seems to me if you did more of a 3-D scan (including points directly over the city) you'd better be able to distinguish between Night District and Ice District, since there's a significant altitude difference. Buuut maybe it's not sensitive enough, or maybe smol culty horses are bad at math.
Ah, well.
Then I guess it's just Kitty's arch nemesis playing vidya gaems with RTX on.11228945
I think you got this wrong. Those are two separate places they found, not one blurred out location. And they even located one of them as as being underground.
I thought the sword belongs to Starlight now?
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Coda said Catgod could be in either place, or moving around, or maybe they screwed up their math. If she's not moving then more data should be able to distinguish between them because of the height difference. Unless they're just bad at math, period. Or she's moving around really fast, I guess. Ooh, maybe she uses teleporters...
It didn't when they fought with Tetra. :V
Well then. That was interesting. Full confirmation that she has the ability (harmony-empowered, even?) to psychosurgery herself into not just a shell, but can duplicate and edit.
At least she's feeling upbeat and confident about things.
so is Procyon like a actual ghost-like being, or just a visualization thats all in halcyons head? Cause it would be cool if she could be used like undetectable ghost spy or something.