The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

The Tower

"You're... coming with us."

"I believe that is what I said." Elise nodded, surveying the three of us as Rondo finished securing the door against the weather. "I see you three are all present, and that you had luggage delivered ahead of time. Are you ready to depart?"

Ansel overcame his surprise and stomped a hoof. "Now hold on one crazed moment! You can't just pull an about-face on us like that! What about taking due time to consider? Not four hours ago, you apparently wrote us a note telling us this was a terrible idea."

Elise regarded him seriously. "I understand your reservations, my little pony. It is wise to give things consideration. However, as I said, the situation is substantially different than I first assumed. May I ask you take my own assessment as sufficient in this matter and allow us to explain further while we are on the way?"

"It's not so urgent that they couldn't stop to tune up their engine and stretch their legs, first," Ansel pointed out. I found myself agreeing. However Elise felt about this job, apparently Vivace didn't think rushing it was worth skipping out on a repeat visit to that noodle shop.

"Kid's got a point," Leif said to Elise, leaning on one side with her forelegs crossed. "I'm not fully keyed in on the dynamic between these three, but this job isn't smiles and rainbows for everyone involved. We can wait around and explain here. The likes of us have all the time in the world."

Elise raised an eyebrow. "Be that as it may, I do not. My position within the institute has a demanding schedule."

"None of us are forcing you come," Vivace noted. "I shouldn't have to lecture a grown mare on the importance of prioritization."

"And I have decided that this mission is an urgent enough priority that it is worth carrying out with all due speed," Elise declared. "Needless to say, I also outrank you. Corsica, Halcyon, Ansel?"

I stared around the room, dumbstruck. Leif looked downright chagrined at being usurped aboard her own aircraft - at least, I assumed she was the leader. Vivace seemed unspecifically grumpy, and Rondo wore a poker face. Elise looked... tense, but she was hiding it well. Something big had clearly happened here before we arrived.

"How about no?" Ansel raised an aggressive eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure you can't just change your mind so quickly about something and then ask us to trust that you haven't lost your marbles before giving any semblance of an explanation. Not that I know you all that well, but aren't you supposed to be a bureaucrat who's level-headed and procedural?"

Elise glanced at me and Corsica. "May I assume you speak for your friends on this matter as well? This is, after all, Corsica's job."

"Ansel's our voice of caution," I responded, stepping up at his side. The last thing I wanted was to doubt Elise, but... "I think I've gotta be with him. What's going on, here?"

"...This is suspicious," Corsica agreed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to walk away." She looked at Elise. "But after the runaround you gave us with that letter, this'll cost you major street cred if your explanation's not up to snuff."

Leif banged a booted forehoof on a table. "Democracy rules! This ship's not going anywhere until everyone's happy with what's going on."

Ansel relaxed a little, and I nodded. "Well?"

"Yeah." Corsica nodded. "Let's hear it. Why's Elise acting so... whatever?"

Elise stared crossly at Leif for a tense moment, then eventually sighed. "Very well. This is your duty to explain."

Rondo looked at Vivace. Vivace looked at Leif. Leif straightened her shoulders and shrugged.

"To make a very long story short," she began, "we're undercover auditors from Ironridge, and no, this isn't a job to investigate an ether cave for potential sale value. I'm sincerely sorry for any misrepresentation when we met at earlier ventures. Some form of cover story was necessary for our operations, and we were hoping we could get you to visit and stick around longer to explain all this before the moment before departure."

I let that sink in, remembering how Corsica had apparently left early the previous day while we were here. Had Leif been planning to broach the subject then, and we just didn't stay long enough? My own departure had been abrupt, as well...

"Anyway," Leif continued, "the reason we're here is to investigate a serious potential breach of treaty by Yakyakistani officials in the Icereach administration. You likely know some of this already, but the set of rules both nations agree to abide by in the governance of this research colony are extremely complex. This isn't your ordinary loophole finagling, though. We have compelling evidence that someone high up is using Icereach talent and time to covertly design highly advanced weapons."

I felt my eyes widen. Really?

"...What kind of weapons are we talking about?" Ansel asked skeptically. "Rockets are just fast flying machines that can go really high, right? Doesn't seem like it would be that hard to pack one full of dynamite and fly it over someone you don't like. The same bit of technology can be used all sorts of ways. Or do you have something with evil weapon literally written on it?"

"It's easy to feel that way before you've seen it," Leif warned. "Just a disclaimer before we show you this so you don't freak out: our boss in Ironridge assembled this from ninety-two percent complex parts that have been patented in Icereach within the last five years. The remaining eight percent is a custom control system just to make sure we haven't accidentally built something we'll really regret giving life to. Rondo?"

Rondo tapped his hooves against the floor in a quick, rhythmic pattern that sounded like some sort of code, then nodded towards the stairs that led down to the hold. "Take a look."

A cold light flashed, and something emerged from below, almost a pony and yet very much not. Sleek, gleaming, silvery metal covered its body, fitting tightly enough to be skin instead of armor. Its legs reinforced the perception, slightly more spindly and angular than all but the slightest schoolfilly, and its entire body felt blown back and streamlined, the effect accentuated by thin, glowing conduits of teal that coursed in sleek patterns down its neck and across its chest and sides. Fine mechanical ears turned delicately to face us, and it surveyed the room with pupilless, glowing eyes that had no whites, only teal.

But none of that was what caught my attention the most. No, what I was fixated on was that its wings, flexing with sturdy hinges and transparent crystalline blades, were very clearly inertial stabilizer rotors.

"What the...?" I gaped.

"Is this for real?" Corsica seared it with her eyes, clearly noticing the same thing I had.

"Impossible," Ansel whispered, eyes wide. "It moves just like a pony..."

I nodded, realizing he wouldn't have the same background as us. "Yeah, and that's Icereach tech, alright. I literally found one of those wings laying around the other day."

"You recognize it?" Leif looked slightly surprised. "Well, that will make explaining significantly easier. We call this a Whitewing unit, and it's exactly what it looks like. This one is perfectly loyal to us - to Rondo, specifically - but you don't want to mess with it in a fight. Our mission at large is to figure out who designed this, how they were able to pull it off, and what they intend to do with them. If you've got questions before we get on to how this relates to you, then shoot."

"You're saying Yakyakistan commissioned this?" Corsica asked, a lot more alert now that the Whitewing was in the room.

Vivace shook his head. "Strictly speaking, we don't know for sure. It was made using parts designed by unrelated teams all across Icereach, each one with a separate function ostensibly tying it to Icereach's space mission. That means the only person who could have coordinated the necessary parts to all be designed, with strict enough specifications to ensure they could all be put together, would have been a senior project manager or higher. Someone with the ability to set design agendas all across your institute. And since it wasn't Ironridge, that doesn't leave a lot of options."

Corsica, Ansel and I all looked at each other. "So why us?" Ansel pressed, apparently able to put aside the fact that we had just been told our home might be designing mechanical, weaponized ponies.

"Yes, why you." Leif retook the floor, stepping forward. "We will be exploring a remote mountain cave. However, instead of ether crystals, it leads to a secure underground hideout that looks like a doomsday shelter for someone fairly influential. The first time we went there, we took care of all the security, so physically it should be completely safe. What we weren't able to defeat was a terminal controlling a genetic lock of some sort that functions via unicorn horn analysis. We analyzed the analyzer, though, and are fairly confident it's imprecise enough that a close family relation could still de-activate it. Are you following?"

Corsica frowned. "No?"

"Are you saying it belongs to Graygarden?" I asked, squinting. Corsica was the only unicorn among us, and he was her only blood relation...

"We've seen strong indications it belongs to a head scientist of Icereach," Leif replied. "Given the secretive nature of Icereach's administrations prior to the current treaty, a negative match would be almost as interesting to us as a positive one. You've got the right of it, though. We're thinking that if this does happen to be some sort of hideaway for your father, Corsica, and he as the chief representative of Yakyakistan is behind this project, unlocking this terminal could provide invaluable evidence for our investigation."

I glanced quietly at Elise. Suddenly learning that her Yakyakistani counterpart was suspected of being a traitor? That sure must have been a lot to take in. Maybe it explained why she was acting as antsy as she was. Although some things still seemed strange to me...

"So you're just casually asking Corsica to commit espionage against her dad," Ansel said, seating himself. "Not that I doubt she'd be all over the idea, but isn't that a little...?"

"Lacking in class? Perhaps." Rondo shrugged. "We were considering being a bit more discreet in how we asked, but after seeing you two interact in person, we decided you wouldn't appreciate it."

"...Hallie." Corsica turned to me. "You're the terminal expert. Have you ever heard of a security system like that?"

I shrugged. "Don't look at me. A terminal's just a switchboard with a fancy screen to show you what's what. This would be up to whatever machine's doing your the scanning. I've never heard of analyzing genetics based on a unicorn horn before, but biology's pretty far from my field..."

"The best security systems are the ones that you don't let anyone practice trying to crack," Leif pointed out. "Anyway, did that clear anything up?"

"In some areas. But riddle me this," Ansel said. "If old Graygarden really had something hidden out in these mountains, and he knew about it, how did he not catch on to what you lot were up to? The way I heard it, it sounded like he practically threw Corsica out the door to go on this job."

"Perhaps we were suitably convincing in our presentation," Vivace suggested.

"As Rondo alluded to, we've heard there's something of a rift between you two," Leif said to Corsica. "My condolences, by the way. The pessimistic answer would be that he's hiding something, assumes we found it and wouldn't mind seeing you on the opposite side of any conflict he thinks we might create, yet doesn't think anything he can do could stop us from investigating. The optimistic answer is that it's not his hideout and he knows nothing about it."

Ansel frowned. "Well, that's fine and all, but you still only explained why Corsica needs to be there. What about Hallie and myself? Inviting us along on a happy little pleasure cruise to hang out with our friend is one thing, but this sounds like the kind of affair where the fewer ponies are involved, the better."

"...Do you really want us to answer that?" Leif averted her eyes. "You say you do, but if you haven't figured it out yet, this is the uncomfortable part to explain."

Ansel stared levelly at her.

"It's simple," Vivace said from the side. "Whoever is responsible for this Whitewing design holds a lot of sway in Icereach. We're hiring Corsica to assist us in working to uncover them. In the event that she draws the ire of an influential criminal, we decided it would be prudent to close off as many avenues for retaliation as possible."

My eyes went wide, and I stared at Leif. "Wait a minute, so when you were pressing me for stories the other day, you just wanted to see if we were close enough that someone might...?" I trailed off, the reality of his words sinking in.

"In the interest of disclosure, yes," Leif sighed, "though that doesn't mean I didn't legitimately enjoy our conversation. Now, I want to be crystal clear that we're not trying to scare you into coming along. If any of you stay in Icereach? We've already left Tempo behind to keep an eye on things, but we might leave an even larger presence just to ensure no trouble starts while we're away. You aren't being obligated to come. Either way, it's our job to make sure you kids aren't accidentally caught up in the nastier side of all this. We just decided you might prefer the opportunity to stick together."

I swallowed, feeling slightly cold. "So say Corsica does unlock this machine. What then? Everything goes back to normal, right?"

Ansel mutely nodded.

"That's where it gets complicated," Leif apologized. "There are so many ways this could shake out that it's difficult to speculate. And it depends on a lot of things we likely won't learn down in that cave and may not know for a while. Best case for you is that there somehow is a third party responsible for this instead of Yakyakistan. That would mean everything can go back to the way it was in Icereach once we find them and take them out. Another possibility is that this is coming from Yakyakistan, but not the highest reaches of their government. In that case, the perpetrators would still have to get rooted out, but the treaty itself would still be intact and Icereach would continue to function under new management. But if it came to a situation where Icereach and its treaty were no longer feasible... Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. But if it does happen, Ironridge will look out for you."

Ansel looked pale. "What about Mother?" he asked. "You're saying we'd transplant our lives from one city to another, aren't you? But we have family in Icereach."

"She'll come too," Vivace muttered. "And in the meantime, remember that we left Tempo. She'll make sure there are no nasty surprises for anyone you care about in retaliation for messing with the powers that be."

Retaliation. There that word was again. I adjusted my bracelet, hiding it in my coat's short sleeve as a nervous tick.

Corsica looked spooked. "How did we even get involved with something like this? Not why; you just explained that. But, like, why?"

"We're in over our heads," I hollowly agreed. "I don't..."

This wasn't how I imagined my first trip outside Icereach going at all.

"We're not past the point where you can back out," Leif reminded, standing straighter. "Halcyon, Ansel. I'm sorry we've had to drop this on you all at once, but this is the way things are. If that's too much, you can stay home, and Tempo will look out for you as well. Corsica-"

"Corsica's presence is required," Elise apologized, breaking her long silence. "I am sorry to make this mandatory, but it is critical to the security of Ironridge and Icereach that we see this investigation through. As you are affiliated with the Institute, you fall under my jurisdiction and authority. You must come."

Corsica blinked, then scoffed. "Oh, you mean my title as Chairmare of Nothing? What are you going to do, fire me?"

"I was going to say," Leif said through gritted teeth and a polite smile, "that if Corsica wasn't comfortable with the situation, she can walk out as well, because we are a competent and flexible group of ponies who know how to find other ways to pursue our goal should the one we're working on fail to pan out. And she can of course keep the down payment for this job as an apology for getting her all caught up in this. But you know best, administrator."

The tension in the room felt like static crawling through my fur, and I quickly pulled myself back together in order to intervene. "I think we've got the picture," I announced, nudging Corsica's side. "It sounds like the three of us need a private huddle to decide what we're gonna do, yeah?"

Ansel nodded solemnly, and Corsica looked all too happy to get in the final word with Elise. The other ponies respectfully moved over, giving us a corner of the ship where we could discuss in slightly more private.

"Well?" Corsica whispered once we were all hunkered down.

"I'm only going to say this once," Ansel breathed. "I'm a hundred and ten percent against this. Whether or not they're telling the truth, this is something we don't want to get mixed up in, and I have a bad feeling that no matter what we do here we're not going to have heard the last of this. That said... Hallie, I think I finally understand what you were talking about yesterday, and I feel the same. If the two of you are going, and there's nothing I can do to change that, I'd rather join up than sit at home and do nothing. We go together or not at all."

"Thanks," I murmured back, nudging him in appreciation. "But don't write us off as going for sure. Corsica, what do you think?"

Corsica shrugged. "She literally just told us she'd let us take the money and run. At this point, I'd say screw this job, if it weren't for Elise. The last thing I need is two Icereach executives breathing down my ears."

"What's up with her, anyway?" Ansel quietly pressed. "Usually, you two talk about her like she's one of the more reasonable higher-ups. Got a head leveler than the Yak Hoof, and all that."

"I dunno." I scratched my ears. "I'm pretty sure I trust these Aldebaran ponies. If I were in their position, I would have made an alibi too." Besides, I lived behind a mask most of the time anyway, so how hard could I fault someone for lying to me when their intentions were purely beneficial? "And I usually trust Elise. She's one of the most trustworthy ponies in Icereach."

Ansel nodded. "I sense a 'but' coming..."

"But this isn't how a level-headed pony should behave," Corsica answered. "So she's got some startling news and she's shaken. Big deal. I bet you it's happened before. Even if she was getting some nerves, is she the kind of pony who would show it?"

"Yeah, you're right," I whispered. "And there's a few other things that don't add up about her either."

"Like, why wouldn't she know about this already?" Ansel agreed. "If she's the Ironridge top brass, you'd think they'd tell her they were sending someone to stick their noses in this, or at least that Leitmotif's team would tell her ahead of time themselves."

"Hmmm..." I frowned. "I dunno. I could see them having reasons not to, I guess. But maybe. Anyway, what about that censored law? How would anything Leif told us explain why Elise originally cared about keeping you and me away? How would it explain why Icereach censored that law in the first place? And why isn't Elise telling us this stuff herself? It was like she was making Leif and her crew do the work of explaining everything."

Corsica nodded firmly. "Something's definitely off with Elise. What do you think she knows that we don't?"

"Honestly, it feels more to me like she's forgotten things than learned things," Ansel pointed out. "Or don't you have a giant letter full of legal cautions and arguments she hasn't referenced one time since we got here? The smart way to go about getting us back on board would be to go through the individual things she said in there and explain why they've changed. Not let someone else drone on about how high the stakes are."

I stared at the ground, squirming a little inside. There were few things worse than doubting the ponies you looked up to, and a part of me wanted to cling to what Elise said and take her word at face value, but... my friends had made good points. I had made good points. The best explanation I could see was that maybe, somehow, Elise was behind the Whitewings and Leif didn't know...

Maybe Elise wasn't acting strangely, and we were just misreading the situation. That would be a comforting thought. On the other hoof, what if...?

"Hey, Ansel," I conspiratorially hissed. "What if that isn't really Elise?"

He blinked. "How do you...?" And then, slowly, his eyes focused as he caught my meaning. "No. Not a chance."

"What?" Corsica stared at us. "What if Elise isn't actually Elise? How can a pony not be themselves?"

Ansel waved a dismissive hoof, his serious demeanor evaporating in a heartbeat. "Oh, nothing to worry your pretty head about. Maybe we'll tell you when you're older."

Corsica bristled. "This is no time for-!"

"Settle down, you two." I pushed between them before anything could start. "Listen, what I'm thinking is this. I dunno about Elise, but I definitely trust Leif, Rondo and Vivace. Let's say we assume there's trouble brewing and it's coming whether we like it or not. We could be at home with only our wits and a sack of cash, or we could be on an airship with some folks who have strong ties to Ironridge, a great medic, and know a lot about fighting. I've kind of gotten the image that these Aldebaran ponies care more about honor and playing fair with us than obeying power structures or following the rules. So by that logic, maybe we should go with them just to stay safe. Besides, they literally said that was why they invited us."

Ansel slowly, unhappily nodded. "I suppose when you put it that way... But exactly how much confidence do you have in these ponies? Any charitable acts and good first impressions aside, it still stands that you've known them for barely half a week."

I paused, giving that as much consideration as I was able. "I'm not sure," I eventually decided. "But, I've had a lot longer and a lot more reasons to learn to trust Elise, and right now my instinct's saying that maybe I should slow down and think about her. Instincts are powerful. And I've got a good feeling about Aldebaran."

"Instincts are powerful," Ansel agreed, "which is why it sure isn't helpful when yours say the opposite of mine. I'll give you that they sure seem more on the side of the common folk than Elise is right now, but what if it's all a good-cop-bad-cop routine? You heard them saying how dangerous it would be for us not to come."

I frowned. "You say that like Elise and the Aldebaran ponies are literally in cahoots to kidnap us, or something. I know Elise is behaving weird, but isn't that way far out there?"

Corsica flicked her tail. "What she said. There's gotta be a simpler explanation for this."

Ansel shrugged. "If you ask me, one boatload of fraudsters and Elise having a temporary break with reality is a lot simpler than Icereach being the stage of a vast conspiracy. Outside of this ship, can you name even one thing you've seen to back up their claims?"

"How about Icereach's constant research delays?" Corsica offered. "Sure would make sense if they're not getting in the air because some project manager is having them unknowingly design Whitewing parts instead."

"I'll do you one better," I added. "There's literally a Whitewing wing in my bag over there. It's called an inertial stabilizer rotor, and it's one hundred percent Icereach tech. I always thought it was odd, how pretty it looked when no one was ever gonna see it. The fact that it's actually meant to be a wing makes way more sense than any other explanation for how it looks like that."

Ansel gritted his teeth, then thought for a moment. "...Well, I suppose you have a point or two. So where does this leave us?"

Corsica hesitated, averting her eyes. I frowned. Usually, she was the kind of pony who made a decision and rolled with it - seeing her put this much thought into something was unusual and almost as worrying as everything Leif had just said. My friend's reaction made it more real.

I had to do something. "Let's look at this logically," I began. "Who do we trust, across all of Icereach and excluding each other? Mother's my number one, but she's in no shape to deal with any of the stuff we're talking about, here. Second is Elise, most of the time, but not really right now. Third is Balthazar. So why don't we go with him on what to do?"

Both of them nodded. "Sounds good, with one tiny problem," Corsica decided. "Has anyone else got a funny feeling Elise wouldn't want us talking about this investigation to the local army?"

"Isn't that another reason not to trust Elise?" Ansel pointed out. "You just assumed in cold blood that she'll try to block us from doing the smart and safe thing."

"I'm not saying we should trust Elise," I pushed back, waving a hoof at him. "I'm saying we should trust Balthazar. And the Aldebaran's been moored here for the better part of a week, and Rondo's been hanging out with the yaks, and last I talked to him Balthazar seemed pretty gung ho about this trip. He may not know the full details, but he's a pretty good judge of character who usually doesn't need them to figure out the important stuff. What I'm saying is, I trust him, I trust these ponies, he trusts these ponies... Ignoring Elise, I'll bet you anything that if we go, we'll be in good hooves. Right?"

Corsica still looked conflicted, but eventually she spoke up. "All I know is, I wish we get back safe and in one piece. I wanna know what's up with Elise, and I think going is the best way to get to the bottom of this. And worst comes to worst, we're a bit better at taking care of ourselves than most of the ponies in Icereach. So don't worry, okay? I'll watch your backs."

"Sounds like that's it, then," Ansel sighed. "We're in. I wish your wish comes true, and that we've chosen wisely. Although I'm willing to bet that if we get screwed, it wasn't because we chose wrong, but because there was no right choice in the first place."

"Buck up, you little pessimist." Corsica tousled his mane, earning a strangled noise of surprise, and straightened up from the huddle. "We're not gonna get screwed. Hey! Decisions are final, we're in!"

The adults all looked up from a discussion they had been holding - at least, the adults sans Elise, who was standing in an opposite corner. Leif winked. "Hey, that's the spirit! Remember, if any reservations come up halfway through, just talk to me and we'll sort something out. So, think we should start with our itinerary for the trip?"

"Hold up," I interrupted, pointing a wing at Elise. "One thing first. As a show of good faith, what's section 6.7 of the Icereach-Ironridge employment contract?"

Elise tilted her head. "Is this in regards to the letter I left you?"

"Yeah," I replied primly. "We went to the library to look it up, but they didn't have an available copy. I was wondering what it was about?"

Elise shook her head. "Unfortunately, it's classified. There isn't much I can do to elaborate."

Corsica raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You really remembered that?"

"Of course." I shrugged. "Not like me to give up when hitting a dead end."

I was silent as both of them dropped it. I had remembered the numbers, but 6.7 was the rule that applied to Corsica, not to me. Hers wasn't classified. Elise had explained it in the letter. And, as Corsica had pointed out in the library, Elise seemed to have been familiar enough with the censored rule that she had it on her mind before doing any legal research, indicating its number wasn't one she was likely to forget.

Maybe, somehow, this was an innocent mistake, but... as much as I trusted the Aldebaran ponies, something was badly up with Elise.

---

"First off, our schedule," Leif was saying, Rondo having descended from the engine room again and everyone gathered around to participate. "The facility we found is only about four or five hours away, thanks to our fast ship. Problem is, it's night, there's a storm, and the area is pretty poorly mapped, so while we have landmarks, it could take any number of extra hours to actually find the place again. So the current plan is to get to the general vicinity overnight, find it, and then descend at the crack of dawn. We'll aim to be back out before dusk, though it's a long climb so be ready for anything. You'll get back to Icereach either very late tomorrow or very early the next day, depending on our luck with spelunking."

"Question. How fast is this thing?"

Leif nodded at Ansel. "The ship? Under present conditions, we're about a seven-day flight from Ironridge, if that gives you an idea. She's about twice as fast as your typical commercial freighter at normal cruising speed, but a whole lot more maneuverable and weatherproof. Crazy-fast burst speed if we wanted to wreck our power supply, though. If you want us to floor it to see what it feels like, it might not hurt to stress-test Rondo's work on the engine."

Ansel glanced warily at the engine room. "Let's not and then tell everyone we did. I'd rather not see us impact the wrong end of a mountain."

Rondo chuckled. "With the material this thing's hull is made of, it's more like the mountain would impact the wrong end of us!"

Ansel slumped his plush reading chair. "Hardly reassuring, but suit yourselves..."

"We're all practiced pilots," Vivace promised, sitting in the pilot's seat. "And we're not about to wreck this ship. But just in case, that's one of the reasons we've left ourselves all night to get there. If the speed doesn't sit with you, we have time to slow down."

Rondo waved a grease-caked hoof. "Eh, it's not like you know how fast you're going in a ship anyway. Once, a great philosopher put herself in a box and had it moved around, all to prove it was acceleration that-"

"As lovely as that is," Leif interrupted, "how about we fire her up for real just to show you what we're dealing with? I promise she's as smooth of a ride as they come."

"Agreed," Vivace grunted, turning to the control panel and pulling a conspicuous lever.

The ship awoke, and anything I might have said was swiftly lost. A pair of previously-invisible conduits that lined the ceiling came alive with teal, transforming the ship's interior from a cozy, dimly-lit bronze to a room illuminated bright as day. The floor pulsed with a passing wave of vibration, and suddenly I could feel us moving, still resisting the wind yet now drifting up and away from the dock outdoors. I rushed to a window to see the clouds twisting, breaking their northern march to flow nearer to us, as if constrained by a massive magnetic field.

"Looks like all systems are go!" Rondo shouted, racing back to the engine room. "So, how about that stress test?"

Corsica shrugged, taking a loose stance. "Bring it on."

"Maybe we could not?" Ansel suggested warily, sinking into his chair.

"How about half a stress test?" I offered, bracing myself for anything and thinking about how much more fun I could be having if it wasn't for Elise. I was certain there was something up with her, and someone who could do something about it needed to know. Maybe Leif, if I could get her alone...

Vivace sat up straighter in the captain's chair with a nod. "Half a stress test. Unless you've practiced your sea legs, you might want to take a seat."

"Nah, just brace yourselves," Leif encouraged, taking a stance like me. "Acceleration is fun!"

Seeing even her prepare made me redouble my posture. No matter my thoughts or concerns, I wasn't about to be felled by a lowly burst of thrust.

Corsica raised an eyebrow at me, making no move to brace herself. Ansel hugged his anchored reading chair.

Slowly, we continued rising, turning east as the ship dipped into the billowing sea of clouds... and Vivace floored a lever, and we were gone.

Several things crashed around me, and I felt my boots skid a good few paces along the floor as Leif whooped in excitement and Vivace put Rondo's work to the test. Half of a test, allegedly, but it sure didn't feel like it. A hollow rumbling filled my ears, and I leaned forward, dug in, and somehow stayed upright as we evened out from our mad burst of acceleration. Even if I was crouched low enough to be only a few inches off the floor.

"Oh, baby!" Rondo cheered from up above. "The metrics on this thing are ludicrous, Leitmotif! Do it again! I think that tune-up squeezed out a whole extra three percent...!"

"Maybe let's let one time be enough," Leif encouraged, her mane blown back as she offered a wing to help me up. I took it and glanced around: Ansel was slightly dazed, a box near the galley had fallen over, and Elise was standing perfectly at ease, a bemused expression on her face. Corsica, however, had capsized and was laying against the back wall in a blushing heap.

"You could have warned me better," she grumbled, staggering to her hooves and beginning the daunting task of fixing her tail and mane.

Vivace shrugged, sitting fine in the captain's seat as we streaked through the heavens, coasting on momentum as we returned to a much slower speed. "You could have taken the warning I did give more seriously."

Part of me was still dwelling on Elise, looking for reasons to second-guess my decision for us to come along. Part of me was still terrified for Leif's depiction of what might be going on under the surface of Icereach's quiet local leadership. But stronger than either of those was the part that saw that we were honestly, truly flying. I wanted to rush to a window and glue my face to it and stare at how high up we were.

Unfortunately for all three, stronger yet was the part that saw Corsica, remembered her reaction when I hit my nose while trying to knock, and saw an opportunity for revenge.

"I could laugh," I whispered, sidling up to her and grinning stupidly. "And then we'd be even for yesterday with the door. Or perhaps I'll be the bigger mare, hmm? How about we-"

Corsica bopped my nose with a sucker punch, sending me reeling. "Ow, ow, fine," I admitted, rubbing it with a wing. "Killjoy."

"I'll bite you," Corsica threatened, removing her ear ornaments one at a time and brushing her mane.

Mission accomplished. I moved to a window to watch as Leif started talking again.

"Anyway, if that's cleared up, let's move on to the rules for the ship," Leif declared, looking slightly embarrassed. "First, a tour of where is where." She pointed to the two ladders that led up above, the back one first. "Engine room. That's Rondo's domain. Whatever you do, look, don't touch, unless you want to have a kiss-kiss-slap relationship with gravity. With a side of charred fur." She turned to the forward ladder, about halfway along the main cabin. "Observation room, and my private quarters. The observation room, help yourselves to; the view is great. My quarters? They're mine. Private means private, so no entry under any circumstances. Got it?"

I nodded, looking more at the window than wherever Leif was pointing. We were skimming so close to the clouds, it felt like we were hanging from them, like the storm was a giant zipline and the ship was a gondola. Below, the jagged, snowy spike of a mountain slowly drifted past, white around the base and slopes but turning gray as it got higher up, the needle-like tip too rigid for snow to easily cling to. In fact, most of the mountains here looked the same, a collection of tall, spindly spires that were nothing like the bunched ridges of Icereach...

"Main level." Leif moved on to the area we were presently in. "This is the living area, where you'll probably spend most of your time. Make yourselves at home, but stay out of the pilot's chair and don't touch the control panel unless you want to find out whether Rondo was exaggerating about what would happen if we rammed a mountain. Got it? Controls are only for Rondo, Vivace and me."

Corsica nodded too. How could the terrain already be this different? Was it the high-up view? I felt like I was shrinking progressively the more I looked, entire mountains small enough to fit in my living room...

"Outer deck." Leif stepped up right beside me, pointing to the two doors to the U-shaped area around the prow. "We don't have much of a walkable roof, so if you want some fresh air, it's there or bust. However, I personally advise not doing it at night, during a storm, while we're moving at these speeds. But that's just a preference, you do you!"

Wind whipped around the outer deck so hard I swore I could see it. The ship was so steady, I was almost starting to take it for granted, but now that she had reminded me... I was very glad we weren't aboard the junker Navarre.

"Galley." Leif pointed to a small kitchen unit across from several racks that I noticed held the luggage Corsica and I had dropped off earlier. "If you're a cooking savant, try it out. It's the best way to become a local celebrity. If you're not, try it at your own risk, because the chef has to taste-test all their creations."

I eyed it with interest, finally breaking away from the window. A chance to cook, huh? With better ingredients than Mother's pantry, maybe? I could do something with that. Courtesy of my doppelganger talent, I was actually a pretty mean chef... Peanut butter and tinned fruit just didn't give me the greatest opportunities to practice.

"Now, here, we have the cargo hold." Leif moved on to a wide staircase leading down, near the back of the room where the Whitewing had emerged. "It's full of... well... cargo. Not really, because we travel light and the ship is new, but you know. If you ever need anything, you can try looking down there, but there's honestly not a lot we have that's useful. Nothing private, though, so feel free to explore it."

She shook her head. "And then we have the rest of the cabins here at the stern," Leif finished, indicating two doors on the main floor and two that were visible at the bottom of the staircase into the hold. "Four rooms, plus mine up top. Tempo's and Rondo's on this floor, Vivace's below, and the other one down there is a special case."

"So where are we sleeping?" Corsica asked, now pretending she had never tripped at all.

"A perfect segue again!" Leif chirped, spinning on her hooves. "Elise got Tempo's room; we negotiated it before Tempo headed out an hour before you showed up. The rest of you..." She blinked, rubbing the bridge of her muzzle. "Are you good sharing a room? I was about to say you can have Room Five, but figured I should ask."

"Err..." I glanced at Corsica and Ansel. On the one hand, Corsica and I had just tried this the previous night. On the other, she might try to get revenge for me calling her bed-head cute. Assuming she remembered. And the more ponies I was around, the more likely I was to give up and just spend the night in my boots... but I would much rather have a room of my own than sleep in public, where I'd have to wear my coat too.

"We slept in today," Corsica volunteered. "We'll probably be up for hours anyway. If Ansel has a more normal schedule, we can share a room in shifts."

Ansel nodded, accepting this as fine.

"Well, okay then!" Leif declared, looking relieved. "You three can have Room Five. So, the deal with Room Five is that we only have four official members, but there's a fifth provisional member who sometimes flies with us and usually doesn't. But she has her own room. It's complicated, but the important part is, she's not here right now. And we're not especially close, so if someone else used her room while she wasn't here to defend it? Stinks to be her. Just try to, like, roll with the decor and not completely remodel the place for me. It might be a bit eccentric, but everything looks the same with the lights out, yeah?"

Okay, now I was morbidly curious.

"Just to make it obvious, though, we take our rooms pretty seriously," Leif continued. "Tempo's and Five are special cases because their owners aren't here, but mine, Rondo's, Vivace's? Absolutely off-limits. The same courtesy applies from us to you, of course. While you fly with us, yours are yours. We all need our me-space sometimes, and this is the best way to keep everyone happy and getting along, so that's one of the ship's only two hard rules. The other being that the pony in the captain's seat has final word on anything, but that's just in case of emergencies so we have a chain of command. Whew! I think that's everything, so any questions or objections?"

"I wanna see this room we've signed up for," I spoke up, stepping gamely forward. "You make it sound like a skeleton closet. What are this mare's tastes, eh? Is she really into colt bands?"

Leif stepped aside with a twinkle in her eye, motioning to a door at the foot of the stairs that was evidently unlocked. "Oh, you'll find out."

Ansel bowed out, opting to let Corsica and I handle the horrors. Grimly, we marched in lockstep down to the completely unassuming wooden door. Why was Leif building suspense about this? Maybe it was some sort of joke to break the tension from earlier...

"Any predictions?" I whispered in Corsica's ear as we stopped outside it. "Watch it be totally empty and they're just trying to prank us."

"No comment, money's on you're wrong," Corsica whispered back, taking the handle in her aura. "Together?"

"Yeah." I tried to quiet my adrenaline.

Corsica swung open the door. We both took a single step inside and blinked.

The room was simultaneously dainty and a huge mess, as if it belonged to someone with the money to afford a lot of baubles but not the wherewithal to take care of them. But on second glance, it appeared a lot more messy and claustrophobic than it actually was, courtesy of a huge number of posters covering the walls, ceiling and every available surface. And every single poster was about mares.

Mares singing. Mares with lustrous coats and manes showing off hygiene products. Mares in business suits. Mares in poofy ballroom attire. Mares sailing or riding airships. Mares dancing with other mares. Mares standing underneath star-strewn skies. Mares in the rain. Mares surveying grand vistas, mares sitting in elegant, modern rooms, mares eating cucumber sandwiches, everything...

There was so much, I wasn't sure that even given an hour I could take it all in. But every last one depicted something either grand or refined. There was nothing wasted, nothing low-effort, nothing dull, inelegant, or even unkempt, despite so many of them being set outdoors. It was an odd contrast, when all the posters clearly showed off the owner's ordered definition of beauty, yet the curled corners and overlapping edges and wanton disregard for order in actually putting up the posters gave the presentation a childlike chaos. I got the faint image of a pony looking in from the darkness through a window...

This place was a portrait of who someone wanted to be, and all the distance they had to go to get there. It was exactly like my room.

Corsica still hadn't spoken.

"...What do you think?" I turned slowly to glance at her, for some reason feeling slightly defensive.

"I don't get it," Corsica said after a while, scanning the posters thoroughly. "There's nothing dirty. Not even a little smooching. It's a private room, and it's obvious what the owner has on her mind, but everything here is completely and utterly in good taste."

"Obvious what she's got on her mind, eh?" I went back to regarding the posters. "Then why's it confusing, what they're about?"

Corsica tried to say something, and trailed off, stumped.

I shook my head. How could such a brilliant scientist be so emotionally dense?

"Well?" Leif asked, standing two steps outside the door. "Think you can deal?"

Corsica flicked her ears. "I'm still trying to figure out what's so wrong with it. Other than that there's only one bed. This doesn't look that private to me."

Yep. She had completely missed it.

"Yeah, we'll take it," I agreed, figuring that Corsica wasn't about to back out and the room would probably be happier with at least one pony around who understood.

"Cool! Let someone know if you need us to dig out a spare bedroll, if you're not comfortable sharing." Leif turned her back and left, leaving us alone in the poster shrine.

Corsica turned to me and shrugged. "I guess she prefers her sapphic fantasies to be E-rated. What about you? See any I missed?"

I walked up to the wall, feeling like I had to speak up in the room's defense. "Yeah. I dunno about sapphic fantasies, but look at this."

It was a picture of a filly sitting in a chair, her mother carefully brushing her long, shiny mane. They were in a pool of light in a large, dim room.

"Now check out this one," I continued, moving along and pointed at another, a larger poster showing a mare standing atop a parapet and looking out over an immense valley of rolling greens and yellows without another township in sight, a distant mountain chain almost lost on the blue horizon.

"And this one, even." My wing landed on a mare who stood on a stage, dancing, for an empty audience. "Rich. Grand. Physically gentle, but emotionally harsh. Sometimes romantic, and sometimes dead opposite. These were clearly chosen by someone ambitious. She's a mare who likes money and status, but is too familiar with it to have been born into it, if that makes any sense. Someone who spends a ton of time looking at things, probably from the outside in. I'll bet you she's traveled against her will, too, because she likes epic scenery, but a lot of these feel crazy lonely, like someone who might not have a home to return to. You see all the ones for beauty products? I'll bet you she thinks she's the best and only tool she has, and is used to working and persuading ponies to get what she wants. Maybe even a little pushy, which could explain why the others didn't seem extremely fond of her. Furthermore, it's all very classy. Look at this fancy attire! And even though this is supposed to be a private room, you're right that there's nothing dirty to be seen. Nah, she's way too proud for that. I'll bet you her pride's real important to her, because it's all she has. Because if she really had all the rest of the stuff in these posters, why would she keep them around?"

Finally finished, I took a deep breath, spun on a hoof, and stared Corsica in the eye. "I'd say you missed quite a bit, eh?"

Corsica was staring at me with her jaw hanging. "It feels like you just yanked someone's soul out through a painting."

I shrugged. "Can only do that if they put it in there in the first place. That's why it's a private room."

Corsica averted her eyes. "Are you sure we should be staying here, then? Maybe that's why Leif takes everyone's rooms being off-limits so seriously."

"...I think it'll be alright," I decided, chewing my lip. "Better that we're ponies who understand instead of some barbarians, and the original owner wouldn't have left all this stuff here if it was too important to let the others go flying around with. Besides, between you and me, I've got a lot of posters in my room, too. So I can kinda relate."

At that, Corsica looked contemplative. "Maybe I should get some posters for the lab."

I looked up. "Yeah? What kinds?"

"Dunno." Corsica shrugged. "That's the point. It sounds like they're useful for learning about yourself."

"Fair enough," I admitted, surprised to hear that sentiment coming from her. Honestly, that was why I kept mine, too...

---

"Hey, how's it-?" I poked my head up the staircase to the main level an hour or so later, scouting for options to take my thoughts off of Elise and finding a story already in progress. Predictably, this one was being told by Rondo.

"And shockingly, that one actually worked," Rondo was narrating in his serious, dramatic tone. "Who would have thought you could make bank selling ice on the black market, of all things?"

Leif lounged in the captain's chair with her hind legs crossed and a lazy look on her face, and Vivace was on the other side of the room, so I crawled stealthily up to Ansel to avoid interrupting. "Selling ice on the black market? What are we talking about?"

"How this lot wound up working as auditors for Ironridge," Ansel muttered back. "I couldn't very well let it go unquestioned."

"Yep!" Rondo threw me and Corsica a huge grin in greeting. "Ironridge's climate has warmed up a lot in the last two decades. Not so good for food storage, or just plain comfortable living. Our old ship may have been a beater, but heading up west, filling the hold with snow and hauling it back down the mountains paid nicely for fuel and mooring."

"The black market, though?" Corsica pressed, curious. "Is it somehow illegal to sell snow in Ironridge?"

Rondo shrugged. "Well, there might be certain competition rules vendors are expected to abide by..."

"The governing entity of Ironridge is Cold Karma Incorporated," Leif explained from the front, gulping from a thick mug of something foamy. "Guess what their primary product is."

Rondo nodded sagely. "Climate control. There's such a thing as a free market, and then there's trying to undercut the government on the service it uses to legitimize its rule."

"Huh. Weird." I stared into space, thinking about it. On the one hoof, anyone who literally made the land more habitable probably deserved to rule it, and I doubted I'd question them if I was there. On the other, the idea of rulership via selling ice sounded flat-out ridiculous, when Icereach's surface temperature was below freezing all but a precious few days of the year. And when it was right on the edge of a boundless sea of the stuff. And when it literally had Ice in its name... I laughed.

"Silly, isn't it?" Rondo agreed. "Eventually, we did get busted, but Cold Karma isn't a very wasteful place. Why squash your competition when you can have them work for you instead?"

"So they hired former smugglers to audit their partners for breaking the law?" Corsica raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Well, that was just our hoof in the door," Rondo explained. "One day, there was a dust-up with some sky pirates who were a little too far south of Varsidel for comfort. We got involved by proximity, and wound up saving Cold Karma a considerable amount of resources. That got us some executive notice. One thing led to another, and we discovered one of their backstage second-tier execs had similar Imperial expatriate ties as us."

Leif played idly with the ship's wheel, twiddling her wings as the storm barreled past unabated outside. "Or, more accurately, they discovered we had similar ties to them."

"Hey, this is my stage!" Rondo shooed her with a hoof. "Anyway, a few stiff drinks later and we were practically bosom buddies. And it turns out when you've got friends in the big cheese's inner circle, you can get pretty much whatever company work you want."

I blinked at that. "You mean you specifically asked to come poke around Icereach? How come?"

Rondo shrugged. "Well, we had our reasons. It was an excuse to visit! Who doesn't think space rockets are cool?"

"Ponies who build them in Icereach," Corsica snarked. "You can't have missed how little optimism there was around the place. Or did you know about that in advance and choose the job because you wanted to breathe down our backs and make that dream actually happen?"

Leif winked. "Would that be so bad?"

I glanced at her. No, actually. If these ponies had the clout to get Icereach working a little more smoothly, that would be fantastic... Assuming it survived their investigation, of course. Leif's accusations against Yakyakistan were taking their sweet time sinking in.

"Anyway," Rondo finished, "that's where this job of ours comes from. Same for this ship, the Whitewing, all our cool swag... Our boss in Cold Karma is generous. We even picked our themed names together! Let me tell you, this is the life..."

"I did notice your names were all music-related," Ansel remarked. "You seriously fly under call signs because you and a middle manager thought they would be cool?"

"Jealous?" Rondo waggled his eyebrows. "You could make some too, you know!"

As my brother reddened and prepared a retort, I stepped back and tried to relax. So they were detectives, and had concealed their true purpose because they had to to do their job. But I also hadn't been wrong in any of my earlier assessments. These ponies were free, adventurers, who could go where they wanted because they wanted to and find their own answer to the world. If they could make up code names and then joke about it, then their personalities had never been lies. Worry over the seriousness of what we could be involved in continued to bubble at the back of my mind, but... their job was really cool.

"That's awesome," I said aloud, pulling myself back to reality and approaching Rondo. "Hey, so while we're telling stories... Think it would be too much for me to ask about the Empire again? I can't have ran you dry after only one day."

Rondo wiped his mane back with a hoof, realizing I was standing there with eager, gleaming eyes. "Oh, well... You know I'd love to, but how long do you think I'll keep going for once you get me started on the good old days?"

"All night?" I asked hopefully. "I sorta slept in pretty late today."

Rondo shuffled in his chair in embarrassment. "Loath as I am to decline such a generous request, I did just pull an all-nighter putting that engine back together just for you... I'm afraid I've got one or two more tales in me at most."

"Go to bed now, muscle colt," Elise commanded, opening Tempo's door and poking her head out. "I'm expecting everyone to be well-rested come morning, and you need it more than most."

Rondo pouted, but I tilted my head, giving her a funny look. "Muscle colt? Isn't that Tempo's nickname?"

Elise shrugged. "I picked it up while waiting for you. It turns out to be an effective way of getting his attention."

Interesting. The tension between Leif and Elise had been physically tangible when we got here earlier, but apparently Elise and Tempo got along well... Probably the reason why Elise was currently put up in her room? Tempo was the crew member I knew the least about, and I didn't really have a read on her.

"Fine. No more stories from me tonight," Rondo yawned, getting to his hooves and accepting his fate. "I suppose I'll leave you to Leitmotif's ever-capable tongue instead. But be warned, she can drive a hard bargain."

Corsica gave him a sharp look. "There had to have been a better way for you to phrase that."

I tilted my head. What?

Rondo just saluted, staggering off to his room and pretending to be far more tired than he actually was. "That guy's a clown," I declared when he was gone. "Likeable, but a clown."

Leif chuckled. Elise went back inside and closed her door.

"Well, kids..." Leif stretched in the captain's chair. "Looks like your evening of free entertainment just hit the sack. You know the drill, Halcyon. You want my stories, pay up."

"What!?" Corsica blanched, instantly distracted from whatever she had been thinking about Rondo. "We have to pay literal money to hear what you have to say?"

"Nah," I sighed, rolling my eyes and rising to my hooves. "She means we gotta trade a story for a story. Thing is, I recall I paid up front last time." I raised a challenging eyebrow at Leitmotif, preparing to haggle. "Come on, then. You first."

Leif gave me an innocent, winning smile. "Sorry, kid! You cashed that in when I did that pose for you right before you left. Back to your turn!"

I thought about that for a moment, and decided that my thoughts were too heavy for any proper narration. "Oh. Well, I guess I'll pass. Got a lot on my mind, and all."

Leif looked visibly disappointed. "Seriously? Drat. Well, understandable, I guess."

"So how's this work, story swaps?" Corsica asked, stepping in where I had retreated. "So like, we scratch your back, you scratch ours? That's your game?"

I sat back and let her go. If she was excited about the prospect...

"Only if they're interesting." Leif winked, then went back to piloting the ship. "Bonus points if they're about you and your friends. You game too? You look like a mare with a big mouth, if you'll accept the compliment."

"Oh, I am all over this. Move aside, Halcyon, I've got the floor." Corsica tossed her mane and straightened her ear ornaments, clearly a lot more gung ho about the talking aspect than I was.

"Well, okay. Fine by me, I guess." I sagged back into a cushy chair. Not like I didn't appreciate someone else doing the work for me, but I had a strange feeling Corsica wasn't going to care as much as she could stand to about the returns.

---

"...Completely ridiculous. That was the one and only time we actually kissed. Have you ever actually kissed someone inside a school supply closet? Because looking back, it can't have been worse than what we wound up trying. Let me tell you, it was the least-romantic thing ever."

Long enough had passed that I was starting to get tired again. Vivace had swapped the pilot chair with Leif, and Rondo and Ansel had gone to bed, leaving just me and Corsica chatting with Leif in the cushy reading chairs. The only problem was, Corsica was enjoying this far too much, and never made Leif drop a story in return.

Predictable. But, at least it gave me time to think.

"Hah. I didn't go to school." Leif waved a lazy wing, draped over the back of her chair like a rug and spinning slowly in circles. "Sounds claustrophobic, though. Can't say I can relate. My first filly crush turned out to be a griffon, and surprise surprise, that's illegal..." She rolled her eyes. "Big Sis had to sit me down hard to explain that one. Griffons, ponies and batponies? No can do, friend. The forbidden triangle. Second crush? Never got up the courage to ask. Third crush? Was too busy with work to get serious. Fourth? I moved again before we could get to know each other. Fifth? Tried to do a thing, fell apart due to a conflict of interest. Sixth? Already taken, and hoo boy that conflict of interest issue returned with a vengeance. No closets involved in any of them, though I did try to date someone in a sewer once. Really don't recommend that as a backdrop for this sort of thing. Really."

Okay, I took it back. Leif was dropping plenty of stories, but they all turned out like... this. Who cared about romance, anyway? Having friends was great, but the idea of someone intimately understanding me sent a shiver down my spine. There was such a thing as privacy!

Corsica burst out laughing. At least she was having a good time... "For real? How'd that come about?"

"Long story. Not as interesting as it sounds," Leif apologized, sounding wistful. "Short version, the Empire is pretty old, things get built on top of other things, a lot of tunnels get buried and left behind, and the underground is more private, you know?" She leaned forward, returning a question. "So, I tried a date in a sewer. Care to one-up that? I know, I know, only one flame for you, so I'm at an advantage. Forget about that. Embellish if you need to. Give me a romantic catastrophe."

Corsica reddened. "I just told you about making out in...!"

Leif shrugged. "And then I returned the favor! Ball's in your court, girl. We're all mares here, right?"

Corsica glanced to the side. "Did you happen to see... a big stone tower when you were flying into Icereach? From Ironridge, out to the east?"

A big stone tower. Those words cut though my funk, and I instantly lifted my head, guarded and alert. "Wystle Tower? You really wanna tell stories about that place?"

Something in my voice must have betrayed my feelings, because both of them looked up, Leif glancing at me in confusion. "What's she got to do with it? Your date was catastrophic because of your flame's sister and an old ruin? Come on, this I've gotta hear."

"Well..." Corsica looked at me, suddenly realizing what I was thinking. "On second thought, maybe some things are better left unsaid."

Leif gave her a cross look. "I will wake Rondo and ask him to give so-late-it's-early yodeling lessons."

Corsica winced. "Please don't."

Leif glanced to the front of the ship, where Vivace was pretending not to listen. "I will bribe Vivace to make this ship do a barrel roll."

"No," Vivace grunted.

Leif pursed her lips. "...I'll pay you money." She reached inside her armor robe and drew out a pile of coins that looked almost big enough to restock all the reagents for the chemistry set in Corsica's lab.

Corsica eyed it, then gave me a guilty look.

"I wasn't gonna make you not tell it. And we do need the money," I sighed. "But give it to me, not her. She's already making piles of cash from this trip, and I can barely afford to take Mother out to get some noodles."

The coins landed on me, and I scooped them all together and into my coat, keenly aware that they were winding up in the lab's finances either way. Yet something about being the one to get paid just felt... fulfilling, even if it was for something as stupid as this.

"So that tower," Corsica began, straightening her back. "Real ugly place. It's three stories high plus the basement, and they put it right at the top of Mt. Wystle. The highest mountain that borders Crimson Valley, at the far northeastern edge? Huge dropoffs everywhere, and the best view of the Yak Hoof Glacier for hundreds of miles. Even a good view of the Aldenfold. I'm not good at describing landscapes, but take my word that if you don't have an airship, it's as good a look as it gets. See where I'm going with this?"

"You chose an old ruin for a date." Leif nodded, at least sensing that this story was more serious than the others. "Daring."

"This tower was built a long time ago," Corsica continued. "We're talking decades. Probably about fifty or sixty years, but there are no records to know for sure. In the beginning, Icereach was a colony of batponies cut off from the world, but long before the Yakyakistan-Ironridge treaty and the institute and the bunker, Yakyakistan decided to make this a research colony on their own. They didn't have the resources to excavate this place, so that tower was built by the first administration to work in instead."

She leaned back, only partially relaxing. "No one knows what those scientists did for sure. Everyone who's in charge now says they were unethical, and 'we're not going to space on a foundation of unethical research', whatever that counts for. And there are urban legends, of course, about mysterious disappearances and monsters and something to do with a black meteor. These days, those scientists are long gone, the tower's been thoroughly looted of anything of value, and now it's just a haunted house where nobody goes on the far outskirts of town. Great place for a date, right?"

Leif whistled appreciatively. "Sounds like the Empire. There are abandoned castles and ruins with crazy histories there pretty much everywhere you look. So what happened? Got spooked?"

Corsica's brow shadowed, gauging how much she needed to say to satisfy Leif. "There was... an accident. It put Ansel and I in the hospital with comas for more than a week. Let's just say we stopped dating after that."

"Wow. Sorry I asked." Leif sounded genuinely apologetic. "Must have been rough. Guess I owe you one, now? Anything you like."

Corsica glanced at me, letting me have this, and I in turn thought for a moment. Anything I wanted, huh...?

"The one you wriggled out of yesterday. You've got a bad history with the goddesses, or something? Spill the beans."

Leif whistled, laying back in her chair and glancing conspiratorially at Corsica. "That one? I'm warning you, it's a long one."

Corsica shrugged. "Go for it."

"Well, let me try to explain." Leif settled herself and started. "My foalhood was... less than enviable. I was born in the Imperial province of Gyre. It was, in the words of an old friend of mine, a frankly horrid place that nobody should ever go. Corruption and mismanagement at their worst, you know? The Griffon Empire wasn't exactly the fairest and most just nation in the world, but at least in Gyre, you knew that everyone was equal... equal at the bottom of the barrel."

I curled back up and listened. "Sounds harsh."

"That's one way of putting it," Leif agreed. "There were two things that kept me going. One was my goddess, the Night Mother, an absolute in the world that I could count on. The other was that when your life is as hard as it is in Gyre, surviving makes you strong. Eventually, I was able to leave the province and carve out a space for myself in the world. Maybe not fairly or ethically, but it's what I did." She frowned. "But let me ask you this. What do you do when you hate the circumstances of your life?"

"I dunno. What did you do?" Corsica muttered, pushing the story along.

"Blame the ones in charge, of course." Leif shrugged, as though it was obvious. "The same thing everyone does when they're hurt by things outside of their control. Now, what do you do when you hate the circumstances of your life and also get strong enough to do something about it?"

We were quiet.

"Well, you do something about it," Leif continued. "So I found some like-minded friends, and together we decided to take it out on the sphinx lords and nobility - Garsheeva was a greater sphinx, and the ruling class in the south was the lesser sphinxes, if Rondo forgot to explain that."

"Hold on," I interrupted, finally realizing something that was bothering me. "What are you now, twenty-five? Thirty? The Empire fell eighteen years ago. You can't have been more than a filly back then."

Leif sighed. "Like I said, it was grow up fast or don't get the chance to grow up at all. Anyway, us versus the lords. Some would have called me a seditionist. Others, a freedom fighter. Historians today would usually have made the final call... except the war swept aside everything we were trying to change, and now they have new things to remember and write about."

"And?" Corsica pressed.

"The Night Mother and Garsheeva." Leif nodded. "I was with the Night Mother. I figured I'd throw my hat in with the side that didn't claim Gyre as their territory, you know? But all the time I fought against those corrupt lords, I thought of it in terms of our side and their side. Sides oriented around the goddesses. Their peoples were constantly at odds with each other. Those two commanded absolute physical might, and cultural authority where that grew thin. They could have stopped the war, if they wanted to. They could have made themselves something other than symbols of opposition to each other. I realized that, and... I found them wanting."

She looked away. "Having someone to act in the name of, having friends united around a common cause... It was like having a roof over my head. But I was too young and too indoctrinated to see that my appointed enemies saw it the same way. The two goddesses, banning relationships between different species? It was like they wanted us to be unable to connect. They brought about that war. The lords and nobles were the symptom, not the source. Near the end, when everything was falling away, I lost everything, that feeling of justice and all, and I was finally able to see that our true enemies were the ones at the very top."

"...Huh," Corsica said.

My thoughts tumbled. I trusted Leif, but... did I trust this? She was so biased, but was it for good reason, or was she an accidental victim of something else? Goddesses were supposed to be perfect. Maybe it was possible that the Night Mother and Garsheeva just weren't the real things, but... I found that I really wanted her to be wrong.

Not like it mattered, if the eastern goddesses were gone.

"That's sort of the end," Leif admitted. "Hard for me to go on without getting soapboxy about my views on power structures and all that. You can probably guess, but I wasn't too impressed by Graygarden when I met him. He's a far cry from an immortal sphinx goddess, but he's still the highest ruler and authority around."

I frowned. "I mean, I know he's not the nicest, but you really think everything that goes wrong in Icereach is somehow his fault?"

Leif gave me a knowing look. "Well, in case you've forgotten, that is the premise of why we've hired you."

Corsica looked troubled. "You're comparing my father to a pair of goddesses who started a continent-wide war? I'm the last pony who will defend him, but that sounds... extreme."

"It's a much smaller scale," Leif admitted. "Icereach has hundreds of ponies. The east had hundreds of thousands. But he is still the highest and most responsible authority to be found. Even if this investigation turns out to be nothing, are you fully satisfied with how he's done?"

Corsica chuckled dryly.

Leif hesitated, looking uncertain. "I wasn't sure if I was going to say this," she eventually said. "And it's something that might just be coming from my history, and has nothing to do with my work for Ironridge. But you two are locals who can't live the way you want to live because of bad blood with the powers that be. Depending on what we dig up tomorrow in that cave, if you decided it was your duty to your home to step in and find a better way, I wouldn't stand against you. Better someone who cares than another cold, apathetic boss pony to rule the roost."

"Us? Leaders? No way." I hugged myself and shuddered. "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need that many eyes on me, you know? Kind of the opposite of what I'm going for."

"And I've got plans for my life," Corsica added. "Ones that don't involve sitting behind a desk all day."

We glanced at each other, on the same page and definitely uncomfortable.

"Not that this is a request, or anything," Leif clarified, seeing the look. "It's more of an offer, subject to change based on what happens in those caves. I wouldn't want to put you on the spot. Speaking of which, we're getting very close to the area where we start searching."

"We're almost there?" Corsica perked up, then yawned. It seemed Leif was willing to let the subject drop.

"Impossible to say how much longer it will be," Vivace said from the front, reminding me that he wasn't asleep at the wheel. "Like I told you earlier, this region is poorly-mapped, and it's hard to make out landmarks in these conditions. If you want to get any sleep before we get there, do it now."

Corsica glanced at me, then nodded. "Guess I'll go tell Ansel it's our turn."

"Yeah. Thanks." I waved her along and got up, then looked back at Leif. Me, lead Icereach.

Somehow, that thought bothered me more than anything else I had heard this evening. Other ponies could be the power players in the world, making decisions that mattered. They could even be suspect, or nefarious. But I'd still be more comfortable with it than if I was the one making decisions.

And yet, what if there were decisions that needed to be made, and no one else could make? Being in a situation like that was easy to imagine, because I was there right now.

Swallowing, seeing that it was just me and Leif, with Vivace working the controls in the background, I made my decision and spoke.

"Hey," I said softly. "Before I go, there's something you need to know about the way Elise is acting..."

---

I passed Ansel on the way down, Corsica having roused him and told him it was our turn to get some sleep. He looked half-awake, and I was still thinking, so we let each other be.

Inside the room, a bedroll was already spread out, the lights on and Corsica standing before the vanity, removing her ear ornaments and adjusting her mane. "Nyegh," I yawned, closing the door in my wake.

"Whoever owns this room has good taste in fragrances," Corsica remarked, nudging a bottle of perfume with her aura and acting like the previous conversation had never happened. "Ever wanted to try a new one? I bet this would fit you."

"Rooting through her cosmetics, are we?" I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the door, then stepped up beside her wearing only my boots and illumination bracelet. "Eh, sure, why not?"

Corsica passed me the bottle, a little squeezer at the top to blow the perfume that didn't look like it was proofed for batpony fangs. "This is the kind that requires your mane to be wet to stick, but I've got some at home if you like the scent. Father's mistress has literally everything that's here."

"I guess they run in the same circles," I said, feeling slightly awkward at the small talk. "Can't be too many different beauty product lines in the world."

"It's a small world." Corsica nodded. "Works out in our favor, though. Now we'll get to smell the part when we take over Icereach."

I raised a sharp eyebrow, trying to work the perfume with my wings. "You really think that?"

Corsica strolled to the bed and flopped spread-eagled on her back, mane strewn beneath her. "I haven't decided what to think. They flat-out said earlier that they asked for this job. They just asked us if we want to take over from Graygarden. Elise is off her rocker. Who even knows what's up with the Whitewing? Don't forget that censored law supposedly keeping you grounded. Feels like there's too much going on here to be sure of anything right now."

I hesitated, standing at the bedside. "I... told Leif that something's really suspicious with Elise."

"Oh?" Corsica lifted her ears.

I sighed, taking a seat near the bedroll. "Have you ever heard of a pony who's really, really good at pretending to be someone they're not?"

She tilted her head. "Is that what you meant when you asked Ansel that thing earlier? About Elise maybe not being Elise?"

"Yeah. Have you?"

"...Beats me." Corsica frowned. "Elise looks pretty distinctive, doesn't she? How would someone even do that? Magic?"

"Well, just take my word for it that it's possible," I said, rubbing self-consciously at my talent with a wing. "I don't wanna think too much about the implications, or what someone could do in Icereach by pretending to be important ponies, but... I asked Elise some trick questions she really should have known, and... I told Leif I think she might be behind this Whitewing stuff. Or, at least, the Elise with us now. And Leif kind of believed me."

Corsica's eyes widened a little. "What's she going to do?"

"I dunno." I shrugged. "She said she'd take care of it. I really hope I was right, but... I'm scared and needed someone to trust, alright? Ansel's got a point about not wanting to travel. I just want to go home and get our old, boring lives back."

"Hey," Corsica cut in. "Can I tell you a secret?"

I looked up.

"Sometimes," Corsica whispered, turning off her horn so that the room was dark, "I think my luck is cursed. I succeed at things I never should have succeeded at, for no reason, whether the result is a good one or not."

I blinked in confusion. "You sure you're not just that good? And, I mean, you sure haven't succeeded in getting Graygarden to like you."

"Wow, thanks," Corsica snarked, and I realized my faux pas. "I thought you said you liked being superstitious, right? Well, I'm a lot less of a fan than you are, but I figured I'd tell you that I sort of believe in this too. Maybe my luck will bring us home safe and sound, who knows? You need something to trust in, boom. Right up your alley."

"Huh." I smiled a wry smile. As far as credible higher powers went, this was about the weakest legend I had heard, and yet the sentiment behind it made more of a difference than I was expecting. "You know, that's a lot sweeter than I was expecting from a prickly cactus like you."

Corsica snorted. "I'm not prickly! I'm like... dark chocolate. Bitter and sweet at the same time, right?"

I tilted my head, then grinned. "So you're saying you're sweet, is that it?"

"Once things are back to normal, I'll slap you," Corsica grunted, rolling over in the bed. "But for now, whatever gets you through the night. Now get some sleep."

For a moment, I stood there. "So, err... You're taking the bed, I guess?"

"I take the floor every day in the lab. Tonight, it's your turn."

Well, alright then... I turned around, lit my bracelet again and checked the spread on the floor. Unlike the ones in the lab, this one actually did look durable enough to handle my boots. I'd need a good shower and a chance to air them out when we got home, but that could be arranged.

Before turning my light back off, I took one last look over the posters on the walls. A low-down one stood out to me, one I hadn't caught before: the Firefly Sisters, a performance advertisement for a Griffon Empire band. Back from before the war. The poster looked pretty old, but seeing it made me smile a little: I had one for exactly the same group back in my own room, a little fragment of the continent of my birth. Seeing it made me feel just a little more at home.

---

"Sure is a beautiful day out," Corsica remarked, strolling down a slushy street and tossing her mane. In these days, she had been in a phase where she grew it even longer than it was today... the length where it got on the ground if she bent her head over to look at something, but it hadn't done so for long enough yet that she got fed up and cut it. "Hey, Ansel. You wanna... go for a hike?"

Ansel glanced over his shoulder at sixteen-year-old me, wearing the previous iteration of my coat and the same boots as ever. "Are you sure about that? I am on sister duty, after all."

Corsica huffed, a metal platform to our left with a chain-link fence that housed machinery for opening the lid of the rocket silos. "But you're always on sister duty," she pointed out, giving me a look that asked why I couldn't have stayed at home with Mother. "And it only gets this warm a few days every year. Come on, let's hike up to the old research tower and look at the view. Maybe we can make out on the roof."

Ansel gave me an uncomfortable look. "Does it have to be with her around, though? We always let her tag along..."

"Because she's my biggest fan." Corsica rolled her eyes. "And because if you ditch her so we can be alone, your mother goes to my father behind both of our backs, and you know how that works out. Why couldn't you have been the favorite child instead?"

I bit my lip, internally as well as in the dream, knowing exactly when and where I was. To sixteen-year-old me, there weren't a lot of prices that weren't worth paying to spend a hiking trip staring at a pony whose boldness I desperately admired, even if she didn't want me there... I opened my mouth and offered a compromise.

"How about you let me come with you, and I'll just stay behind outside the tower and you can be alone there?" I smiled, trying to make my terms as generous as possible. "And then I won't tell Mother. I really want to go hiking. But you can have your kissy alone time."

Ansel frowned, but Corsica kicked him. "It's a good deal. We'll take it. Now come get your kissy alone time, loverboy."

And so we set off, my past self's hoofsteps speeding and melding into a blur as the memory skipped by what wasn't important. I didn't want to follow. I didn't want to watch this for what must have been the dozenth time. By now, I should have been numb to it, but my dreams were so vivid that they even reproduced shock and adrenaline and other states of mind. And I especially didn't want to feel that buildup, knowing what was going to happen and being powerless to control it... This time in particular, it was far too close to the feeling of inevitability I had in the waking world, like circumstances were snowballing and there was precious little I could do.

Tonight, my dream had sent me to the last day we weren't yet friends.

Time advanced as we walked east up the valley, following a slanting road that had once been built into the northern mountain wall. A long time ago, this road had been wide and clear, built some sixty years ago when the old tower was new and Icereach had been freshly chosen as a research colony. Corsica's words from the present-day evening drifted through my head, until my mind started narrating in her voice all of its own, telling stories about abandoned experiments and haunted buildings that never even came close to the real and present dangers of a derelict tower and the narrow path to get there.

And narrow it was, the broad, heavy-duty trail of the old days eroded on one side and encroached upon by glacial ice and snow down the other. The path of my memory's days was slushy, courtesy of the warm weather, and just wide enough for Corsica and Ansel to walk side by side, occasionally sharing a nuzzle.

I trudged stiffly behind them, wishing the slush wasn't quite so cold against my boots. Crimson Valley tapered off at its eastern end, the road running up and out through Wystle Pass after a substantial elevation gain, the tower visible to the left if I looked almost straight up at the sky. Behind me was an awesome view, the whole valley spreading out before me, but a last, short hill concealed something even greater up ahead. Corsica and Ansel rallied, and we crossed the mountainous divide.

This wasn't my first time up here, especially now that I visited this place on unlucky nights in my dreams, but memory or no the sight of it always took my breath away. A tremendous canyon ran from north to south, its opposite rim nearly as far away as the glacier behind me. You could fit an entire Crimson Valley inside and not even span its width. The length was even more impressive, stretching for three miles to the north and losing itself in the shadow of the Aldenfold to the south. But the eastern wall was lower than we were, letting me see on to the next range beyond, and yet more mountains rose past those, extending out for infinity until they were lost in the clear blue sky.

The rift's official name was Trench of Greg, after a yak mountaineer who had scaled both walls around fifteen years ago and overwritten whatever it used to be called. Most ponies just called it the Trench. A pointed, rocky spur jutted out from the pass, extending the road into a natural viewpoint that made it feel as if you were flying, completed the view, letting me stand in the middle of the Trench and feel the wind and the mountains all around me. Silverhorn's Plummet, the spur was called. There were a lot of named locations around this place. It must have meant a lot to a lot of different creatures before. I let my mane blow. When this memory was made, I had been imagining what it would be like to have my name stamped here as well. Now, it felt like a lot more of me was tied to this place than just a name.

"You're just going to wait here?" Corsica poked me in the shoulder as she walked past, making sure I was paying attention. "Good. We're going on to Wystle Tower. If we're not back by the time you get bored, don't bother waiting around."

I glanced over my shoulder at the road, which turned sharply and followed the cliff face north, spiraling up towards the peak of Mt. Wystle. The tower stood at its peak like an old stone monolith. The view from up there, I knew, would be even better.

"Or I could come too," I offered. "It's pretty here, but it does get kind of windy..."

"You promised," Ansel warned, giving me a dark look.

I nodded. I had what I had asked for... Of course, I wanted more, but if I was going to work my way into their good graces, keeping my word was an excellent place to start. "Fine. I'll meet you here, then. Once you're ready to go back home?"

"Sure." Ansel shrugged, not even making eye contact as he began to wander further up the path.

"Hold it!" I stopped him with a tug on his own hiking boots. "You have to promise properly. Otherwise you're going to find another way back down or something, and leave me here until sunset as a joke."

"Fine..." Ansel exaggeratedly sighed. "I solemnly swear to meet you here on my way home. No hidden meanings or falsehoods. Happy?"

"Relax," Corsica assured, already several steps ahead. "We're not going to leave you all on your own forever. Now hurry up! I want my date in a haunted tower."

I stood on the spur and forced a smile as I watched them go. The air stirred around me, and the sun beat down, its faint warmth creating a heavy glare off the dense Wystle snowpack...

Too dense a snowpack, and too shiny in the summer sun. My past self's eyes were on my friends, but the only thing I could see was right above them, a frozen wave of white paused in time on its way down the mountainside. Past Halcyon stared, my body giving in to the relaxation of boredom. Present me relaxed as well, but more from resignation than-

Something sharp and tingly slapped my cheek, distracting me, and a moment later I felt restrained. "Hallie! Wake up!"

"Nnngh...?" Light broke in through my eyelids, and I realized that my dream had been interrupted... in the form of Corsica leaning out over the side of the bed, preparing to slap me again with her telekinesis. "Why's it nguhhh..."

"Nightmare?" Corsica guessed, sounding groggy.

"Yeah. Thanks." I didn't even try to rub the sleep from my eyes, quietly praying that I could go back to bed and get a little more sleep before we arrived. "Did I wake you?"

"Don't mention it." Corsica retreated back into her bed. "Just what friends do..."

If it wasn't morning for her, it wasn't morning for me. Hopefully I would be able to get a little more sleep without the dream starting right back up where it left off.

---

"Assemble for landing!" Leif called, marching down the length of the Aldebaran with her armored robe flapping around her. "Rondo, stabilizers! Vivace, there's been snowfall, we need to secure the entrance and make it safe! Whitewing, form up!"

I staggered up the stairs from the hold, scrubbing at my eyes, Corsica leading me by a good distance. We had stopped moving, though the storm still raged; I couldn't see much more from the back of the ship.

"Hallie!" Ansel appeared quickly at my side, giving me a once-over and frowning. "You look out of it. Bad sleep?"

"Yeah, something like that," I admitted, self-consciously tugging on the rims of my boots and making sure they went as high up my legs as they would go. "Only had half a night, and half of what I did have wasn't so restful. But I'm up now."

Ansel nodded sympathetically, his voice slightly raspy. "Anything I can do to help?"

I yawned heavily. "Just give me an earful if I look like I'm sleepwalking before I get on the wrong end of a frozen puddle, or something..."

"Only if you'll return the favor." Ansel nodded honorably. "Can't say I'm well-rested either, what with all those posters watching me."

Hey, I thought the posters were nice... Dropping it, I nodded in assent and moved to join Corsica up front, where Leif was working the controls while Vivace and the Whitewing crowded outside on the narrow forward deck. A misty gray light shone down through the billowing, churning storm, which was now blowing directly at us. As best as I could tell, we were partially hemmed in by mountains, with at least one substantial ridge to our left and a sagging line between two peaks dead ahead.

That line, I quickly realized, was actually so far bent forward as to be the roof to a massive cave, like a lean-to with two corners grounded and two raised on poles. The wind blew toward us up the slope, curling snow drifts and icicles over the lip like a menacing upper jaw. I couldn't see how far down the cave bottom was, but it went back enough that the wall was black and barren, nothing but unlit mountain stone protected from the ice and snow.

Leif frowned in concentration, nudging the ship forward and to the side... and with a rocky crunch, she drove the prow ever so lightly into the lip of the cave.

I watched, disbelieving, as Leif eased at the console levers and the ship began to strafe to the side. Snow cracked and billowed, icicles shattered and fell, and with a precision that should have been impossible for an airship in any conditions, let alone a storm, the prow made its way along the ridge, clearing off the excess snowpack like a plow.

She took avalanches seriously. It was heartening. And yet seeing the ship used in such a manner, even seeing it attempted, was beyond my comprehension entirely.

When Leif finished, my jaw was too far down from the display to even register surprise when the Whitewing jumped off the deck, extended its inertial stabilizer wings, and glided into the cave.

"Looks like we're in good hooves," Corsica muttered quietly. "...Did you get back to sleep?"

"Yeah." I was barely paying attention, far more captivated by what Leif had just made the ship do. "You have that fine of control over the thing?"

"They don't call it state of the art for nothing," Leif replied, craning her neck keenly to see the Whitewing, hovering in the air and pulsating with what looked like a coded signal. "Better to knock it down now and see what height we have to work with than risk a big fall snowing us in. But this doesn't look too bad."

"The height we have to work with?" I asked, watching the Whitewing. It drifted to our side, its wings spread and beating, as if they actually contributed to its flight. In theory, inertial stabilizer rotors had an effective inertia that varied with the level of mana charge you applied to them, so if you gave them high inertia on the way down and lowered it on the way back up, what I was seeing was actually scientifically possible. And a way more creative use for them than retroactively canceling vibrations around the core of a rocket engine. Almost like they hadn't just been artistically designed for this purpose, but mechanically invented for it too...

Leif adjusted two more levers, and we started flying into the cave.

I stammered something sleepy and incoherent as Leif sank the snip down and turned its port side towards the entrance, eyes constantly on the signalling Whitewing. We strafed to the left, and the sound of the storm changed, the winds becoming less of an unchanneled, endless roar and more like someone was pouring a bucket of thunderclouds through a pipe. The dark cave lip passed over my sight, and then we were inside.

"There we go!" Leif locked the console, looking pleased with herself, though the ship was clearly still on. "Bring only what you think you'll need. It's a long walk down and back up, and everyone gets to carry their own things. No bulky saddlebags; there are tight corners. And remember that we're here for the security system on a machine we found, not an ether cave. So no need for research equipment. Rondo, we're heading out! You'll be right behind!?"

"Aye!" Rondo called from the engine room.

"Right then." Leif opened the port side door and waved us on.

Corsica went first, but Ansel paused on his way out. "By the by, where's Elise?"

Leif shot me a knowing look before turning to Ansel. "She won't be joining us, actually. Personal matter. Related to why Rondo will be late. Vanguard is just you three, me, and Vivace!"

Elise wouldn't be joining us, or even seeing us off. It sounded like Leif had taken my concern more than seriously... Once again, I said a quiet prayer to anything that might be listening, wishing that my judgement might be for the best. And then I followed the descent party outside.

Despite Leif's commandment to bring only what we needed, I shouldered my entire duffel bag. The bulk of it was a backup coat and spare pair of boots in case I got soaked, and taking along the whole thing would be far easier than extracting only those and carrying them loose. This was only what I had guessed could happen while packing back in Icereach, though. Maybe we should have taken some time during the previous night's storytelling to go over what we really should be prepared for...

I shook my head and walked down the gangplank after Ansel and Corsica, both of whom carried nothing. Time to get this strange job over with and hopefully return to our normal lives.

Comments

[Phoenix Kitten]

I had remembered the numbers, but 6.7 was the rule that applied to Corsica, not to me. Hers wasn't classified. Elise had explained it in the letter. And, as Corsica had pointed out in the library, Elise seemed to have been familiar enough with the censored rule that she had it on her mind before doing any legal research, indicating its number wasn't one she was likely to forget.

Maybe, somehow, this was an innocent mistake, but... as much as I trusted the Aldebaran ponies, something was badly up with Elise.

"She may have dug her own grave, but you gave her the shovel."

Doppelganger talent huh...

Number 5 is Jamjar's, calling it now.
And she's in that room, just invisible.

[Oberth Effect]

What if that isn't really Elise?

How can a pony not be themselves?

Hmmm... Very interesting implication here. I'm a little surprised Ansel knows, since he was born in Icereach, but I suppose he could have been filled in easily enough. Also makes me wonder how much Halcyon remembers of her time in the Empire; I wouldn't be surprised if she was too young to remember, but maybe there's the chance she had first-hand (hoof?) experience.

Still wonder how Mother/Halcyon survived, but I suppose we'll learn that later.

I had remembered the numbers, but 6.7 was the rule that applied to Corsica, not to me. Hers wasn't classified.

Yeah, this is super sketchy. Could be played off as a mistake, but that doesn't appear to be characteristic for Elise.

Just try to, like, roll with the decor

Oh no

It might be a bit eccentric

Oh no no no

courtesy of a huge number of posters covering the walls, ceiling and every available surface. And every single poster was about mares.

...What in the world is Jamjars doing here?

And there are urban legends, of course, about mysterious disappearances and monsters and something to do with a black meteor.

Huh. Did the original bat ponies get forced out or otherwise leave? Or did they simply not pass on their history? Or is sixty years longer than I think it is?

It was, in the words of an old friend of mine, a frankly horrid place that nobody should ever go.

This is very interesting. Felicity says precisely that phrase in TOW, and her, Senescey, Larceny, Maple, Valey, and Starlight appear to be the only ones in the room at the time.

Lief's views sound vaguely familiar, but I can't remember if I've seen them before in TOW.

Father's mistress has literally everything that's here.

...Boy, it'd be quite something if that turned out to be Jamjars.

Time to get this strange job over with and hopefully return to our normal lives.

You had to say it, didn't you...

Quite a few more hints here. The mystery grows....

[KMCA]

Yup, between the posters, perfume and description, that's totally Jamjars... or maybe Puddles?

Also locking the fake Elise up in the ship under guard... Lets file that under "sounds good but totally going to backfire"

[Workable Goblin]

10761783
From what I recall, Leif's views are quite similar to those of Larceny, Felicity, and Senescey (or, if I'm misremembering the names, the prostitute/assassin batpony sisters). Although I know some of them died...

[Sharp Quill]

Eh, I'll just throw this out there: Elise is actually Valey, who has discovered and developed her latent shape-shifting powers. She's there to investigate Jamjar's highly-suspicious involvement in Icereach (they aren't on the best of terms). The Aldebarans have no idea about any of this.

[Oberth Effect]

10762379

Hmmm... yet another interesting link then. You got the names right, and we know that Senescey’s cutie mark/soul returned to the lifestream, but Larceny and Felicity’s ultimate fates are still unknown, though I’d guess Felicity would still be in Equestria.

Wonder where that particular hint is leading.

[Zapdroid]

Oh god, oh no, oh why. Don’t do this to me. I thought I was finally rid of that little devil. Please...

[Sharp Quill]

Next chapter two days late… withdrawal begins…
i.giphy.com/media/2GjTdNHnmk2IM/giphy.gif

[blankity-blank]

Graygarden’s mistress has the same exact perfumes as their fifth member… Is his mistress Jamjars?

Wild theory, Leif is actually Larceny in disguise.

[Venlinelle]

"If you ask me, one boatload of fraudsters and Elise having a temporary break with reality is a lot simpler than Icereach being the stage of a vast conspiracy?”

You have no idea. I wonder if Elise knows about the prior use of Icereach? I don’t think she met Valey back in Ironridge, but I can’t quite recall.

I’m going to echo the others here and express extreme surprise that old Jellyjugs is here (or, if she’s not, you so clearly want us to think it’s her that I can be forgiven for assuming it). It’s kind of cute that she still has that same poster.
Even though she was indirectly responsible for the depressing ending of TOW, I’ve always liked her, so I’m definitely not complaining. Or at least, I liked her after the squad reached Riverfall.

Kudos to another commenter for noticing that Lietmotif’s description of Gyre is a quote from Felicity. If Felicity got to know Leitmotif, either Leotmotif has been to Equestria, or Felicity somehow returned north in the past eighteen years.

Incredibly intriguing stuff. I feel a bit bad for focusing primarily on theorizing and TOW rather than our protagonists, but they are growing on me.

[sploopy slooder]

Is that some jellyjugs foreshadowing i see? i liked the little gremlin up until the end, when she pulled that shenanigans. But mabey the jamjars of 18 years later has mellowed out. Or maybe its all a giant misdirection and its just someone else.