The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

In the Darkness, Crystals

I felt a heady buzz as I approached the bottom of the emergency exit stairwell with the door to the Flame District. Although I had prepared as best as I could, that amounted to little more than a gas mask and a sturdy coil of rope. Fort Starlight didn't have any convenient maps of the caverns laying about, and the only reason I had hope at all that this wouldn't be a futile errand was that a failed goddess seemed to think it was worth her time to talk me into it.

"Well..." I took what might be my last breath of fresh air for a very long time, slipped on the gas mask, and turned the final switchback on the stairwell to behold the rusted door. "Here we go."

Procyon was waiting beside the door.

I took several steps toward it, and she just watched me. "You gonna say anything?" I eventually asked, my voice muffled by the mask. "Long time no see, by the way. I've almost started missing your words of discouragement."

"If I tried to stop you," Procyon replied, "would it really change anything?"

I shrugged. "Well, odds are this'll all go belly up and you'll get to say I told you so. Although... since I'm down here on my own, going at my own speed, it's probably not going to fail like last time." I stared at the door. "No machinations and shifting situations for me to fail to understand. Just a good old test of ability. I doubt I'm gonna have a panic attack figuring out how to solve a stationary puzzle."

"You're not concerned about dying?" Procyon asked, flicking her backwards ears. "This cave is supposed to be dangerous."

"I do a lot of stuff that's dangerous," I told her. "Not exactly a new risk."

"...Alright," Procyon said, turning her back on me. "I think... you should go for it. See what's down here. Try to find what caused that crystal tower to appear, and see if you can do anything about it. Everyone else accepted this as a lost cause and went off to Cold Karma instead. If there's anything to be done, it's your prize to claim."

I squinted at her. "Are you feeling alright?"

She shook her head. "How many times is it I've told you not to do something, and then you do it anyway and get hurt? And somehow, try as I might to help you, you're getting on better with the shell I left behind to sculpt you than with your creator. With me." I could sense her grit her teeth. "Apparently, she made you work different from the way I'm expecting. So I'm changing it up. Have some encouragement. Maybe you'll still decide not to listen to me and go home where it's safe."

I turned to the door and dimmed my bracelet. "You know I can't do that. And not just for my own peace of mind. That sky... Everything that just happened isn't natural, and I'm afraid nobody is safe. But thanks for the vote of confidence, misguided as it is. Now..."

She sighed. I turned the bracelet all the way off, dropped into the floor, and swam.

This time, I remembered to un-swim as soon as I was able, and managed to avoid falling through the grate walkway that attached to the door's other side. I stood up, lit my bracelet, and examined the room.

A thick, smoggy haze met me, the air stinging my throat despite the mask. Hopefully I didn't do any long-term damage to my lungs by spending too much time in here... The stinging lessened a little as I pushed my bracelet brighter, to the edge of when the flames started to appear around my body. Maybe pain relief was part of its power.

Silhouettes of crystals and machinery reached my eyes, eldritch things that pierced each other and wound across the cavern walls and down a pillar in the very center. Last time I was here, I remembered, the crystals had glowed, lighting pink in response to the light from Corsica's horn. This time, they were inert. I jumped down from my walkway to a crystal, and it still had no response.

These crystals sure had looked alive, they way they grew and lit in response to Corsica, the way I heard a faint cry in the air when I was around them before. But now, they were just crystals.

I made my way down the crystal's main stalk, frequently clinging on with my wings as well as my hooves to manage the steepness. How I would get back up probably should have been more on my mind, but I had enough to think about just ensuring I didn't fall as I rappelled lower. And besides, when I was using my bracelet like this, I somehow didn't feel tired. I turned it up a little further, and it was like any physical maladies I had were simply suspended.

Turning it this high did make me more aware of my inner emptiness, though. I almost felt like I could feel the other me, and I could definitely feel that seed of cold I had been left with after being restored from Ludwig. The cold felt stronger like this. Like I was still insulated and protected from it, but was leaning against the insulation, like the frosty window of a high-altitude airship.

I wished I could know how the other me had gotten us this way...

My hooves landed on a broken catwalk, sitting at an awkward angle, its end mangled where the crystal pierced through it. Below, I could see through the haze just far enough to make out the crystal I was on merging into the wall. If I could go no further that way... Catwalk it was.

I jumped from the catwalk to a pipe, which provided excellent traction due to being covered in rust, and followed that for a ways to another catwalk that was more intact. This one had a ladder going down to a circular platform around a large machine, and I instantly felt my curiosity rise: you could tell a lot about a place by examining its machinery. The smog was too thick to see it properly from above, though, so I started down the ladder.

Whoever designed ladders really needed to consider a career change. At least I had wings to help hold on with, but most winged ponies would just fly, and everyone else-

Crack!

One of the rungs snapped out from beneath my hind legs when I stepped on it. My whole body lurched, and I clung sharply to the ladder to avoid falling... and that shift of weight caused it to crack again. Horrified, I watched in slow motion as one of the bolts holding it in place above me snapped, causing the ladder to swing and the other bolt to explode as well in a shower of rust. Untethered at the top, the ladder swung out over the void, with me still on it.

I let my instincts act for me and tried to drop off the ladder before it arced too far out, aiming to hit the platform below. But I was still clinging awkwardly to it after my first fall, and one of my boots got caught, twisting painfully against my leg and tangling me further in the falling ladder.

That was all the reaction time I had. The ladder fell over, hit the railing, broke off at the base and fell over the edge, with me still caught in it.

I spun at a dizzying speed, my bile starting to rise until an end of the ladder hit something solid, whipcracking its momentum around. Something slammed against my wing, and the socket erupted in pain that was too hot to process until something hit my back, and then I couldn't think anymore. My thoughts were lost in a burning shower of... of...

---

Everything was dark and peaceful.

I felt like I was floating. Were my eyes open? I wasn't as aware of my body as I usually was. I knew I was tired, though. This felt good. Everything I usually cared about was walled out by the darkness, thoroughly enough that I couldn't even remember what it was. I only remembered how scared I had been, how something had been going horribly wrong. Now, I was safe.

I needed this.

Except, there was a light. Something pearly and fuzzy. I wasn't looking at it normally. Instead, I was... aware it was there. As if I didn't have any of my normal senses here, and yet I had new senses to replace them. I couldn't describe it.

There were lots of emotions I felt like I could have felt about the light. I didn't remember what any of them were. Only a vague curiosity remained.

I reached out.

---

"Halcyon?"

"Halcyon, you... again..."

"This is entirely avoidable, you know."

"You have to take better care of yourself. Or at least listen to me from time to time."

"Ugh... I can't even say I told you so. The one time I decide to encourage you..."

"Get up. And please try not to make a habit of this in the future."

"Trust me, if you think your own questions are bad enough, just imagine what others will ask if they catch on..."

---

Pain pulled me out of a dream. My bracelet was burning, and I held onto that sensation to keep my mind afloat, even turning it higher as my consciousness tried to swim away again. It was... everywhere... but it was getting lesser. As I tried to focus, I slowly found it easier and easier, until my thoughts returned to coherency and I opened my eyes.

Procyon was close up in my personal space, watching me with a frown.

Her fur was mother of pearl. That color... felt like it had something to do with what I was just dreaming about, but why couldn't I remember my dream? I never forgot my dreams.

For that matter, why did I hurt so...

Oh.

I suddenly remembered how I had gotten here, and wondered how I was alive to be hurting at all.

My eyes followed Procyon's, tracing down her legs until they went from mother-of-pearl to a violent red at the hooves, like they had been soaked in... in...

I saw the surface she was standing on - and I was laying on - and scrambled to my hooves in shock. Something clicked in my mind that I never should have been able to stand in this state, not with any amount of determination or pain numbing, and yet, stand I did.

"Did... I do that?" I asked, swallowing, staring at the site where I had apparently landed.

"Try not to think about it," Procyon advised. "I mean it. Also, your clothes are probably doomed."

I was a little more worried about myself than my outfit, though it was impossible to check one without the other. One of my boots, from the leg I had caught, was completely missing, there was a big gash in the side of my coat - the nice one Corsica got for me - and everything was beyond dirty. My leg ached, and hurt when I prodded it, but it didn't move weirdly and when I put weight on it, it held.

There was a spot on my back that hurt more than usual, even with the bracelet on. And my right wing hurt at the base. My head hurt. My ribs hurt. My other legs hurt. And my whole body felt tenderized and... wrung out, like I was missing more of something than usual. But I could stand. Inexplicably, I could still stand.

I dimmed the bracelet slowly, and then a little more. As its power receded, I felt the pain more keenly, but didn't suddenly collapse.

Somehow, I had just fallen from an immense height. I doubted it had been the kind of fall a bystander could witness and not be thinking about weeks later. And somehow, I was, to use the word loosely, fine.

I realized that the gas mask had fallen off too during my tumble, along with my other supplies. And yet, the only time it got hard to breathe was when I turned the bracelet down.

My bracelet... I stared at it in wonder. However much I routinely overestimated myself, I had yet to plumb the depths of its power. And if it could heal me from a very lethal fall, clearly there was a lot I had yet to learn about it.

I looked to Procyon for an explanation.

She turned away. "Like I said. Try not to rely on it. You make too many miraculous recoveries, and ponies are going to start asking questions."

Miraculous recoveries... My mind went back to the Aldebaran incident, when I got hit by shrapnel, lost a lot of blood, and walked it off in just a few days. Was she referring to that? Probably not, since she wasn't around back then and I wasn't even wearing the bracelet at the time, the hospital having removed it. But maybe it healed me before they took it off? Although, I hadn't been using it at the time. But still...

Whatever. Just another question to add to the pile of things I didn't understand about myself. For now, my mission remained unchanged, and taking this fall had done nothing if not brought me closer to my destination.

I surveyed the area around me. Procyon and I were sitting on a large metal drum, and shortly below us was standing water. At least, I hoped it was water, but a little toxic industrial sludge never hurt anyone, right?

Who knew how much deeper this went. And after what I had just been through, taking my chances with a swim felt like a really bad way to test my luck. Probably best, then, to get a little height back and make it to the cavern walls, and hope I could find a side passage that went lower?

A few wobbly jumps and a low-hanging catwalk later, I found a growth of crystal that looked promising. It seemed to grow out of the wall just above the water line, then flop over like a vine into the cavern and snake back underwater. The wall at that point was sloping slowly inwards, though, and the crystal appeared to be growing up through a pre-existing tunnel that looked like it had once been an elevator shaft. I stumbled my way over, the missing boot doing more to hinder my step than my injuries at this point, and managed to reach the crystal.

It was, indeed, growing up through a pre-existing hole in the ground. And while it filled that hole almost perfectly, there were a few slight cracks left over, just enough that if I shadow snuck through the transparent crystal, I could use the cracks on my way for air.

Was I foolish enough to take that risk to get lower? I... wasn't sure.

As I thought, though, I began to feel something. It almost seemed to be picked up through my hoof, the bootless one that was now touching the crystal. There weren't any words, or even feelings. Just an... awareness. Like the crystal had some semblance of something that might belong in the realm of what someone could consider a person.

I focused on that awareness, and on my emptiness, trying to use my emptiness to pull on it like a thread. There wasn't much of a response, but I was unmistakably certain that I was doing something, and that whatever I was connecting with was down this elevator shaft, toward the crystal's roots.

Sucking in as big of a breath as I could hold, I extinguished my bracelet and dove.

---

I shadow swam as fast as I could, gliding down the elevator wall in pitch blackness. It was a fairly smooth surface, and I constantly was feeling for pockets of air above me instead of crystal; I tried to only breathe from every other one so that some would be left over for my return journey. Not that I had any clue how that would be possible... and, after a minute, I knew exactly how long that return journey would be, because I hit the bottom.

The elevator shaft's doors were gone, and I stepped out, lighting my bracelet to behold my surroundings. The first thing I noticed was that the air was a lot cleaner here. It was ancient and musty, but it didn't smell like spoiled chemicals and dying machines. It smelled like a cave.

The second thing I noticed was that the crystals seemed to be protecting this place. Behind me, the elevator shaft was filled in with crystal, the big vein of it that filled the shaft snaking in from this room and up... but when I shone my bracelet bright enough, I could see through the crystal, and there was liquid on the other side.

I wasn't even far enough down yet to go beneath the flooded central cavern. And by growing up like that, the crystal had kept the flood out while preserving just enough of the shaft for a batpony like me to sneak through.

The room itself looked half-finished, some of the rock covered in metal plates that were abandoned partway through installation. It was a tunnel, with the elevator shaft crystal growing out of the floor a short ways down, and beyond it were several layers of barbed fencing covered in ominous warnings about trespassers and prosecution. No obstacle to someone who could shadow sneak, though.

Past the fencing, there was a cave-in, though someone had bored a tunnel through it with what must have been an incredibly high-powered laser beam. Loose boulders and rubble were fused together into glassy slag, forming a perfectly cylindrical culvert through the blockage that was big enough for two Howes to traverse side by side.

What could have made something like this? It would have taken a tremendous amount of heat and energy... Not that I was complaining. Anything that made my journey easier rather than harder, I would welcome wholeheartedly.

I started walking, and after the collapsed section, the main tunnel continued. Huge veins of crystal seemed to break in and out of the walls at random, growing more common as I went along, until I felt like I was walking in a tunnel made entirely of stalks of dull pink. The path was straight and purposeful, but long, too, leading away from the central cavern and ever at a sharp downward slope. An old excitement tingled in my mind: for the me of a month ago, this place would have been a dream come true, a prime sampling site to unravel the mysteries of ether crystals.

Now, I had so much on my mind I hadn't even verified whether these crystals were made of ether.

Feeling a little like I should rectify that, I stopped to inspect one closely... but without my lab equipment, it just looked like any other crystal. It was pink, granted, unlike the predominantly blue ones in the Icereach chapel, but for all I knew the ether was just a different color in Ironridge. I had also never heard of ether crystals growing wild like this, though I did know their growth - namely, their fault planes - were influenced by events in the greater world.

I shook my head and continued. If I wanted to properly understand this, it would take months. Hopefully when I reached the bottom, my prior knowledge of ether crystals from Icereach would be enough.

The tunnel reached its end, opening out into a circular room with a pit in the center of the floor. An old, decrepit mobile crane sat parked in a corner, looking like it had once been intended to raise and lower things through the pit. I stepped up to the edge next to a broken-down half-bridge that probably was a loading dock for the crane, and peered down.

It was... dark. And no matter how bright I turned my bracelet, I couldn't see the bottom. Only more pit.

Sighing, I considered my options. Jumping? Probably not wise to repeat my stunt from earlier, even if I was curious just how much miraculous survival of blunt physical trauma my bracelet granted me. Climbing? The walls were smooth, offering no purchase at all... but I could probably still shadow swim down them just like I had done in the elevator shaft. All I'd have to do would be make sure I didn't accidentally fall out when coming up for air.

Someone more practiced with their shadow swimming, I knew, could go up and down walls at will, but I was already unsure about this method for going down, so I'd probably need some way else to get back up. Particularly when I had to turn off my bracelet to prevent the shadows from disappearing, and I actually did get tired when it was off. But, I'd figure that out when I got there.

I jumped into a wall and started sliding.

---

I must have spent an hour scaling the pit, or maybe two. I was tired, my muscles burned, my body tingled, my injuries from the fall still ached, despite not impairing my functions. I began to pass veins in the walls that reminded me of mana conduits, the kind used in technology, except naturally occurring and empty. Something about that felt... wrong. In Icereach, when you approached the chapel, you could see a similar phenomenon, with power rising up through the rocks in such concentrations it became visible. That was the underlying principle of a mana well: you dug a pit on the surface, buried a large crystal pylon, and eventually it would start pulling in the energy seeping up through the world's floor, much more diluted by the time it got to that point.

Here, the conduits were still present, and they did emit a faint glow, but it felt listless, like whatever force normally pushed it up to the surface was gone. My focus was more on avoiding them so their faint glow didn't eject me into the air, but part of me was glad I hadn't studied mana transference to the surface too thoroughly. I could instinctively feel that this was wrong, and having the scientific know-how to understand the consequences wouldn't make it any better.

At last, the bottom came into sight, and I eventually got low enough that I felt confident enough to drop. The pit opened up against a structure with a hole in the roof, allowing me to slip down into a room that had very clearly been constructed by sapient hooves. It had angular walls and was completely constructed out of a monotonous, chalky substance, and the floor was covered in a thin sheet of liquid...

I leaned down to sniff it. Raw ether. Unmistakably so. The same stuff that formed the river of ether at the chapel.

I was close.

The room had one exit, a few steps leading up into a hallway, and so I followed.

---

Several rooms later, I was getting suspicious that the chalky construction material wasn't actually what the structure was made of. There were occasional patterns on the walls that looked just ordered enough to be intentional, but so shallow and hard to make out that no artisan would have called them finished in that state. Following a hunch, I stepped off the main path, marched up to a wall, planted a boot against it, and scrubbed.

The chalk resisted slightly, flaked, and eventually came off, revealing a sheet of pristine pink crystal beneath. Exactly the same stuff as the crystal veins, except...

I bit my tongue, trying to describe to myself how it was different. It wasn't that it felt more alive, because it was clearly just as inert as the tendrils on the surface. But it had a memory of being alive. Like it had existed for so much infinitely longer than those new growths before going dim.

The chapel had always held an aura, a feeling that ponies had venerated something there throughout history. Every worn dimple in the stone floor, every crystal and every facet, you couldn't stare at it and not feel that it had a history. But this place, rather than feeling like it had a history, felt like it was made of that feeling. I couldn't possibly explain how I had deduced that, or what sense I felt it with. I just did. Some buildings just had history. This building just was history.

How did the crystals form this way, anyway? I rested my muzzle against the crystal, praying for understanding. Ether crystals grew naturally, could be grown in a lab, and could be cut and polished, but this crystal was solid and contiguous, without blemishes or fault planes or any indication it had ever existed in a form other than what it was now.

Perhaps it had been created by magic to resemble something else. I wasn't aware of any spells that could instantaneously form large quantities of crystals, ether or otherwise, but that would certainly explain the feeling I got about its history...

I stared at the rest of the room. Those faint patterns I saw... I cleared off a small space on one, and realized they were all intricate murals. If I had time to restore this entire place, I could learn everything down here.

...But as I rested my cheek against the crystal again, something faintly pulled on me. It was the same awareness I had tugged on before, and it was stronger now that I was down this far. It felt warm and gentle, feeble and delicate, kind and scared.

Right. History could wait. There was something even more important down here, and fate willing, I wouldn't be too late.

---

I stepped into a hexagonal room with a high ceiling, and several things immediately drew my attention. First was that a lot of the crystals here had been scraped bare: not in a methodical way that suggested someone cleaned it on purpose, but more like it had seen heavy activity and just naturally worn away. This room had clearly been frequented before.

Second, and the reason for all the activity: this room had machines. Modern-looking ones, sleek and opaque. Cables thicker than my barrel snaked from them down a door to the side, which looked like it led to a staircase winding down. More cables crossed the room, merging into the walls of what was undeniably an elevator shaft.

I set my teeth. Of course there was a different way down here. And, unlike the previous elevator shaft, this one looked both new and clear of crystal.

Curious, I stepped up to it and pressed the call button. Nothing happened save for a light that lit up on a panel above the doorway. Odds were, the carriage had a long way to travel to reach me.

Well, there was my way out, though it definitely didn't go to the relative safety of Fort Starlight. I turned to examine the room more instead, and my eyes fell upon its center, where a crystalline table stood, completely free from chalky film.

I tapped the table a few times, but nothing happened. It sure looked like it was supposed to be important, and was definitely part of the crystal structure, but it seemed just as inert as the rest of the place.

My eyes traced back to the spiral staircase all the cables descended down. Nothing for it but to see where they went.

After several rotations, the staircase opened back out into a room I was fairly sure was directly beneath the previous one. I was standing on a narrow crystalline bridge, connecting my opening in the wall to a trunk of crystal that reached up to the ceiling from the depths. It reminded me of the growths from the surface and the Flame District, only it was thicker, gnarlier and older, like an ancient, venerable tree. If these rooms did line up, the crystal table I had noticed would be directly on top of this tree...

I looked up. The crystal ceiling was drawn into facets that reminded me of constellations, if you looked at the night sky and traced them out. I looked down, already having a feeling what I would see.

A short distance below, the walls of the room broke off, hanging over an endless expanse of emptiness. And below that, there were stars.

The ether river.

Despite everything that felt wrong about the crystals and the stone and this building and everything else, the ether river looked normal, just like I remembered it. The tree, I noticed, was growing out of it, rising from the starry depths. And the cables snaked across the bridge, entering the tree through a doorway that looked like a natural fold in the crystal.

I stepped forward, my heart still. None of the tree was covered by flaking chalk, nor the ceiling it wove into. This was the core... and something about it still felt alive.

The entry passed over me, and I had to squeeze to fit through the tunnel along with all the pipes.

Step. Step. Now that I was walking on the cables themselves, they felt inert too, as if whatever they had been doing, they had since stopped. The stillness in this place sat like a spike in my side, and I hurried my step, ducking beneath an overhang and pressing through a final squeeze.

A room greeted me, round and faceted. The cables led into several giant drill-shaped machines around the edges that all pointed to the center, where a second, smaller tree grew, this one splitting at the top and weaving all of its branches up and outward into an immaculate crystalline brazier. And in that brazier sputtered a tiny few embers of pink flame.

Help me, the flame said in my mind, its voice sounding incredibly distant and muffled. Please, help me. I'm scared. Empty one, please, help me. Please, help me. Please, help me.

My heart pounded in my chest. "What do I do? I'm here, how do I help? What do you need?"

Please, help me, the flame begged. Please, help me. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore. I need my champion. Please, help me.

"Your champion?" I asked. "You want me to bring someone to you? Who, and where do I find them?"

Empty one, the flame whispered, please take me to Fluttershy...

"Take you?" My eyes widened. "I... Can I? How?" I reached a booted hoof toward the brazier... then thought better of it, pulled off the boot, and tried again.

The embers felt like a gentle caress against my hoof, but also like a lost, fearful child.

Please help me, the flame repeated. Please, please help me...

How did I do this? What should I do? I wracked my brain, and... the little spark of cold left over from Ludwig shivered uncomfortably in my chest. It didn't like this flame.

Somehow, though, my other self had attached Ludwig to me, in the process of pulling me back out of his body. Could I... do the same with this flame? Take it and carry it? It was what it wanted. And it called me empty one. When I was being rejoined, I remembered the pull of my own emptiness... Was that what I was supposed to do?

I used to think of my emptiness as a nothing, rather than a thing to be wielded. But over the past few days, that had been changing... Even if I could use it, though, I couldn't do so when my mask was blocking it and covering it up. Swallowing, I silently asked the other me for help, and took-

---

-off her mask.

Halcyon swallowed.

Please, the embers said in her mind.

"I'm not fit for doing this," she whispered. "Whoever you are, you deserve someone better. And, anyway, are you sure you want to share space with a windigo?"

Please, the embers repeated, not at all dissuaded.

Halcyon focused... and the roaring in her ears intensified as her emptiness became a void, boundless and bottomless, hungering and pulling at the spark of life sitting in the tree.

The spark let go.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Halcyon put her mask-

---

-back on.

I stumbled a little from the transition, but the more I did this, the easier it got to recover quickly from the change. The brazier was empty. The vestiges of life I had felt in this central trunk ebbed visibly away, and the whole structure seemed to groan a dying groan.

But the flame was still there. In me, in my chest, warm and gentle and comforting, a little seed of goodness and pink. It felt like... it was sleeping.

Responsibility settled onto my shoulders like a mountain. Ever since I left Icereach - long before I left Icereach - I had been driven by the feeling that there was more to life I hadn't yet discovered. The goal that drove me, my singular purpose - aside from staying alive and out of political monkey business - was to find a goal. To see the world and decide what I wanted to do with myself. I had a desire to be something, and nothing to be.

Until now.

Now, I was a courier, carrying a force I didn't understand to a destination I didn't know. Fluttershy, the flame had told me. Its champion. I had never heard of someone called Fluttershy before. It didn't even sound like a pony's name. And now, I had to find them.

This wasn't just a thing I was deciding to do on a whim, like returning to Icereach to look for Mother. This had been dropped on me, given to me because I happened to be curious enough to be in the right place at the right time, and my every instinct screamed that it was monumentally important.

I swallowed. Whether I wanted it or not, I had a job now, and I quietly swore to myself that I would see it through.

Ludwig rose out of the floor.

"Are you serious about this, friendo?" he asked, still a ghostly light mote.

I raised an eyebrow at him, much more interested in thinking about the flame.

"That was a shiny pretty whachamajiggy of niceness and goodness and blech," he griped. "Meanwhile I am a cool and handsome windigo of dastardliness. When you devoured my face the other day, I was kind of hoping it at least meant you had decided to join Team Windigo, but apparently you are just not a picky eater? Phooey."

"What do you know," I pressed, my voice dangerous, "about what I just did?"

"A whole entire amount," Ludwig earnestly promised, bobbing in midair. "Which I will be incredibly annoying by not telling you about and might be completely making up. I guess you will just have to be extremely paranoid about making the wrong decision and permanently screwing up your life while you figure it out for yourself, eh eh eh?"

"Enlightening," I told him, wishing I was alone. "Now take a hike."

Instead of Ludwig leaving, Procyon appeared.

"Ehh?" Ludwig vibrated at her.

Procyon floated closer... then suddenly pounced, catching Ludwig between her forehooves. Ludwig made an indignant, incoherent noise.

"That is my other self you're toying with," Procyon warned, not letting go. "Originally my body. Originally my powers. And even in this form, I'm still much more powerful than you. So unless you want me to experiment with exactly how much more powerful I am, you will let us handle our own affairs at our own pace and be a quiet passenger who doesn't interfere. Is. That. Clear?"

"Clear as your passionate desire to smoochy-smooch the raspberry ponyo, giant cigar," Ludwig squeaked out. "Though I would not get my hopes up if I were you. Your mug is pretty hideous compared to the little cigar's. You should just give up right now as long as she is on the stage."

Procyon glared and squeezed harder.

"...Ow?" Ludwig ventured.

Procyon released him. "Your job is now to stay as silent as the grave. I don't care whether or not you can leave: don't come back. Got it?"

Ludwig blew a raspberry and drifted off into a wall. "Good luck enforcing that..."

Procyon looked at me once he was gone.

"...Thanks," I said, slightly uncertain what had just happened. "I guess you don't want him hanging around either?"

"No," Procyon said, looking away. "He has no real power anymore. Nothing that you haven't stolen. Just words. But if he makes enough of a nuisance of himself, that would be a powerful incentive for you to find a way to get rid of him for good. Which... would involve learning more about us. And it should go without saying how I feel about that."

"So selfless." I rolled my eyes. "If you really want me not to worry or poke into things, give it to me straight: will anything bad happen as a result of Ludwig's power being... whatever happened to it?" I tapped my chest. "Or that flame. Or anything I just did."

Procyon glanced back at me. "If you never use it? Not a chance. If you do figure out how to use it... Well, then I suppose it would depend on what you use it for." She turned toward the exit. "And if you're worried about having Ludwig and that flame in there at the same time..." She shook her head. "When it goes wrong, it's going to be because you got a bad idea and acted on it. Not because of anything magical. Yet."

"Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence." I rolled my eyes. With everything that had happened, I felt like me figuring myself out once and for all was a foregone conclusion: enough pieces were present. All I needed was time to think. "Let's get out of here."

Procyon didn't try to stop me.

Comments

[Boopers]

You make too many miraculous recoveries, and ponies are going to start asking questions. Good thing I haven't seen anything! I'd have a lot of questions otherwise!

Past the fencing, there was a cave-in, though someone had bored a tunnel through it with what must have been an incredibly high-powered laser beam Oh boy! That must have been the big scawy dwagon!

big enough for two Howes to traverse side by side. That's what she said.

please take me to Fluttershy... Now that is a first for this story. Now I'm excited where this is going!

[KMCA]

You had my intrigue before, now... well, whatever is more than intrigue.

[Workable Goblin]

It's a good thing she has the Writ, not that she or anyone else really knows it yet. Time to go find Starlight...

[Numinos]

Ayy, so now we're roping old guard into the fray. Good luck getting there : )

[Alchemik]

Halcyon: pony of holding. This can clearly only go well. Hallie is also showing a dangerous tendency to wander off on her quests alone, without much consulting of her crew. This, too, can clearly only go well.

But hey, we got the big quest hook! I guess we add Halcyon, mailpony to the list.

[RoboRed]

I might be getting my mental wires crossed, but I swear something about this feels familiar from the first story...Ah well.

Halcyon seems to suddenly become the one to hold a lot of different stuff inside her. And if this first flame is any indication, I'm expecting several more stuffs.

Procyon giving the smackdown to Ludwig was entertaining.

[Venlinelle]

Discord is going to have a field day.