The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

Cold Mist

Lights blinked slowly and rhythmically, in time with the heart rate monitor attached to the hospital bed.

My ears drummed with the sound of my own heart, beating far faster than the blips on the screen. All I could feel was a frigid burning in my forehooves, one my boots weren't able to banish. A burning from frantically scraping at freshly-fallen snow, shoveling huge amounts of it, while knowing I was far, far too slow.

I shivered, even though it was hot in the room. Someone had decided turning up the thermostat was better than blankets for ponies who had just been caught in an avalanche. I probably would have turned it a few degrees higher.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It didn't feel like it was Corsica's life the monitor was measuring. It felt like it was my own. After all, what was I supposed to do now?

Corsica lay across from me, her side rising and falling, sans any shoes or ornaments, face far from peaceful. Eyes closed. Exactly the way she was in my dream.

After writing out the letter word for word and bringing it back for my friends to read, I had washed up and proceeded to nearly pass out in a hallway. That was the trigger I needed to finally convince myself that I couldn't do any more productive thinking without getting some rest, so I had moved to the plush bedroom and started trying to sleep. Progress was mixed: somehow, I was dreaming and aware of the waking world at the same time, in an overlapping haze that made it feel like I wasn't really a part of either. And I was still tired.

For her part, Corsica had come in to crash a while after I did, apparently deciding that the bed was big enough that she didn't need to evict me to avoid it being awkward. I probably wouldn't have woken even if she had suplexed me across the room.

Ansel was one room over. I wasn't sure why they put him and Corsica in separate rooms. His setup was much the same; the care he needed identical. It was probably to force me to make a choice: sit at one bedside or sit at the other. Probably not, actually, but that was how it felt at the time.

"I should be with Ansel," I muttered to an unused oxygen tank, sitting alone in the dead minutes when the nurse was checking on other patients. "He's my brother. I've got a duty to my family..."

But Ansel was never nice to me. I was Mother's favorite, and he knew it. Corsica was the one I idolized, following around like a second shadow. He resented me, and while I knew on paper that we were family, I didn't care for him at all. It made it easy to choose which room to haunt, which bedside to never stray away from. But it didn't make it easy to feel good about it.

Elise was awake. It had happened sometime after Corsica had turned in as well, and only Ansel was still up to greet her. Corsica had forgotten to close the doors on her way in, and now a conversation between the two of them drifted in from the terminal room, loud enough for me to make it out.

Predictably, and much to my chagrin, Elise knew what changelings were. Of course she got to know all the things that were censored from ordinary folks like me... But she had also ditched her aloofness from the airship, which was a good sign that she wasn't still an impostor. Now, she was actually talking about them.

Part of me wanted to wake up and go join the discussion, my curiosity trying to kick me out of bed like an unwelcome, muddy boot. But I needed sleep, and I could listen from here. And besides, if I woke all the way up, there was no guarantee I'd go back to having this dream again once the conversation was done. It wasn't that it was a good dream - it was a pretty bad one, actually. But of all the bad dreams today's stresses could bring about, this one wasn't so bad that I was eager to try my luck with another.

"...No change in her vitals," a thin nurse said, wearing a medical cap over her pointed, bony jaw. "No new bruising, either. That's good. I don't think there's anything more we can do for her except hope she makes it through the night."

I nodded from a chair in the corner. Looking back, it was obvious I was in shock. Why hadn't anyone bothered checking me over, too?

"You look like you've got a lot on your conscience, sweetheart," the nurse remarked, finally turning to me, crouching down so that she was on my eye level. "I know it's hard to see friends and family like this. But if you hadn't gotten them back here, they'd both be dead for certain. Now they've got a chance to make it through, thanks to you. So focus on the good you did, okay?"

The nurse's words bounced right off me. Her heart was in the right place, I knew, and she was saying the right things, but it was like she was running through the motions without really trying to put herself in my position and understand what I had gone through. I knew this because if she had thought about it even a little, she would have questioned how a sixteen-year-old filly had dug two unconscious ponies out of an avalanche, carried them up a sheer mountain wall, and then all the way back down the road from the tower to get them home to Icereach. She saw that I had done it, and so she accepted it, but she didn't stop to think about it or really understand.

If she could have looked a little further, she would have seen me struggling down that road, trying to strike a balance between carrying them quickly and carrying them gently. She would have felt the burning in my hooves from digging through the snow, berating myself for my lack of speed. She would have realized that I knew nothing whatsoever about avalanche first-aid, despite having a talent that could let me learn it in a heartbeat if I had ever previously cared about pretending to be a field medic. She would have felt just how much I was willing to give to have a talent that could simply let me pull expertise from the void instead, without needing something to learn from or time to learn it.

Was this guilt I was feeling? Was I weighed down first and foremost by the sight of my broken friends, unconscious on those hospital beds? No. It was the anticipation of guilt. My time to act was over, and all I could do was wait for my actions to be judged.

"I was powerless," Ansel growled, sitting in the terminal room with Elise, two doors away. "I did everything right, and it didn't matter. Knowing they were up to no good? I had them ratted out from day zero. With a little help from you, I even had Corsica and Hallie on board! But how do you play against someone who can literally pretend to be anyone they want? Should I have done something different? We are still alive, but our fate is in limbo..."

"I doubt you could have done much," Elise apologized. "The fault was ultimately mine for being captured by their tricks. Without my visage at their disposal, I doubt they could have convinced you to come at all. This was not your mistake."

Strange, seeing Ansel now thinking the same things I had thought two years ago. This wasn't over yet, not by a long shot - we were captive, but still alive. He had tried his hardest to protect us, and now all he could do was wait, helpless, for results that may or may not come. I knew that feeling like an unsavory ghost. And I also knew that if we somehow did make it home to Icereach, the changelings gone, everything back to normal, shaken but eventually fine? We would probably be treated exactly the same as I had been in my dream.

We would be cooed over and pampered, and everyone would talk about how much we had been through. But to them, our problems would have started the moment we got back to Icereach, not the moment we left. Because that was when our problems would enter their lives, become visible to them. After all, how could they worry about things they didn't know? I couldn't blame them for not understanding, really. It was just the way ponies were.

This time, thinking of the well-meaning platitudes didn't bother me nearly as much as before, and not just because I knew it was coming. It was also because I wasn't alone.

"You're not alone," Mother said, standing at Ansel's bedside and chewing a wad of gum. She looked exactly the same as in the present day, gaunt and wearing her bathrobe with her mane over one eye, the hairs stiff from being bleached and redyed far too many times.

Ansel's heart-rate monitor beeped quietly in the background. This was only the second time I had visited his room since the doctors had finished and left him to rest. "He was my brother. And Corsica was my best friend."

Half true. Ansel and I had never liked each other, and our relationship was mean and resentful, with me as a smart little prick and him as an aggressive showoff. Was that what a sibling relationship was supposed to be? I honestly had no idea. But we were definitely related, and it was easy now to wish that something between us had been better.

But I still had no understanding of the difference between idol and friend.

Mother chewed thoughtfully, putting on no more airs for her son at his hospital bed than she did for his birthday parties. "Was your brother. Was your best friend. Something happen to change that?"

I bristled, shocked out of my stupor.

"I'm not a psychologist." She blew a bubble and popped it, somehow not getting gum on her face. "I'm not good with making points gently. But I had friends once. From the east. All dead." She chewed. "Of course, I gave up on them before they were gone all the way. Maybe if I had said something different, they would have lived. Regret's a dangerous thing."

Was this really the most appropriate story for-

"Way I see it, you've got three options," Mother said, speaking slowly around her gum. "Get used to the idea of making new friends. There are hundreds of ponies in Icereach. Or, if you care, don't let these two go so fast. They're not dead yet, are they? You're capable of more than you think. Never too late to make a difference until you've given up." She shrugged. "Or do nothing again, and grow up to be like me."

I furrowed my brow, my heart urging me to rebel against everything she had said. "Again? What are... Oh." I looked away, ears stuck to the back of my head, trying to fold them when they were already naturally down. "What are you so concerned about me for when I'm not the one who's injured? Isn't Ansel your son too? And what am I supposed to do, anyway? If there's really something someone can do, why not lead by example?"

Mother turned to his bed, sitting and rubbing her injured foreleg, as if merely seeing him made it ache. "That's what I'm doing. An example for you to be better than." She shook her head, as if this was terribly obvious, and she hated it for being so. "I don't have the strength for this anymore. Just gotta prioritize where I can..."

It hadn't come instantly - not until Corsica and Ansel were fine, of course - but I forgave her.

Despite that, I still wasn't entirely sure what she had been talking about. Parts of it made sense - death was irreversible, and the difference between being in perfect health and at death's door was far smaller than the difference between there and being all the way dead. You could come back from an injury, but never from death. But what was a kid like me supposed to do about it?

I didn't have some talent in saving lives like Vivace, which could have let me change things two years ago. I cringed as I realized my instincts still pulled him up as a model for me to look up to... I also didn't have a talent in super ninja battle skills, which I probably would need if I wanted to do something about yak-busting Rondo and his scary Whitewing, which would surely be obstacles we'd need to remove by force. All I could do was sit on the sidelines and wait for things to resolve one way or another. All I had was a talent for pretending to be someone I wasn't.

...Actually, wouldn't that be the perfect talent for dealing with a squad of armed changelings? I would never be able to approach them in a fight, despite two years of training with Balthazar, but my heart sped up a little as I realized I had maybe the one talent in the world that would let me play them at their own game. I wasn't helpless.

Corsica's vitals were holding steady, the nurses told me. It wasn't very helpful news. What I wanted most was a way I could actually contribute, something better than sitting around in the gloom and listening to the beeping of the heart monitor. My nerves had held out on the long trek back home, but sitting here and waiting for my efforts to be judged was too much. I needed a way to do more.

Not only did such a way elude me, but I didn't even believe them that she was plateauing in the first place. It had been several days since the accident... Probably. I wasn't keeping a sleep schedule. And over those days, she had grown gaunt, her cheeks shallowing out and her ribs becoming visible and her blank pink flanks losing their smoothness to a hint of bone. Breathing and temperature and heart rate didn't matter if you were unconscious and couldn't eat. I needed to eat, too...

Ansel was going downhill. He was also the second one I had freed from the ice. I tried not to read into that.

"Why?" I whispered, staring at my idol. Why couldn't I protect her? Why did this have to happen to her? Why did this have to happen to me? I'd probably be much better off right now if I was as nonchalant about her as she always was where I was concerned.

...For that matter, since it did hurt so much, why did I care for her so much in the first place? What was in it for me?

I turned to the heart-rate monitor beside her bed, which was still monotonously beeping. "I don't get it," I quietly murmured.

The monitor didn't do anything different, but it might as well have asked the same questions I was asking. Corsica would tell jokes at my expense, side with Ansel when he and I got into arguments, act like it was a privilege for me to follow her around... Well, I acted like that was a privilege too, but why?

I had put her first and foremost in my life, so why was this my reward? Why were those things my reward before the avalanche had fallen? Why had I made her so important to me in the first place? Everything I had taken for granted in my life felt like it was drifting, untethered and directionless in a deep ocean. And the monitor had no words of wisdom to see me through.

...Well, some things hadn't changed. I was still talking to machines as if they were people. But still. I just didn't understand...

I wanted to reach back through time and reassure my past self that it would all work out in the end. With two years of hindsight, some of the questions that had cascaded down on me at Corsica's hospital bedside were clearer, now. Others still eluded me, yet didn't seem so pressing as they once had.

Something about myself I had only really begun to understand in the time since the accident was that at my core, I was completely blank. Most ponies - at least, I liked to imagine - had something immutable inside that made them them. Some traits that were foundational to who they were, that couldn't be changed and would always be reliable. In my case, I didn't have anything like that, perhaps because my talent made me adaptable enough that anything that would be unchangeable for someone else, I was able to change. I was nothing, but not a bad nothingness - a potent one, like a blank canvass that I could fill with whatever I wanted, and that meant I got full choice over what made me me.

But I never looked deeply enough at myself to realize this until those days soon after the accident, when my life was upended and I found myself without a foundation. These days, there were things I could do to take care of myself with that in mind, like building a shrine to myself in my room and holding my quirks stubbornlessly close, even if it might be advantageous to change them. But my younger self didn't yet understand, and made some painful mistakes as a result.

Getting hopelessly attached to a peer and leader, finding a place in the societal pecking order, all those were things I assumed were just normal parts of adolescence. The problem was that most kids, without their peers, would still be themselves. I was entirely dependent on what I chose to be defined by. So, logically, if nothing plus Corsica equaled me, then me minus Corsica equaled nothing.

Without doing anything wrong, I had set myself up for that fall.

"Why did it have to be changelings?" Ansel whispered, suddenly drawing my ears back to the conversation. "It's hard enough as it is, trying to get Hallie to appreciate the present and not play risky with her future. The kid's got such awful survivor's guilt, pretty much any entreaty to stay safe will bounce right off her. I ran afoul of that just yesterday. Or was it two days ago? Point is, with those monsters in the mix, you can't even trust the ground you stand on, let alone build a logical argument. I did talk her out of it, and they made it count for nothing..."

Elise nodded, listening.

"Well?" Ansel looked at her. "You've probably got a million secrets rattling around in that head of yours. Tell me what's so special about Icereach that brought those swindling pirates in to ruin our lives."

Elise returned the look, face passive. "What do you think?"

Ansel frowned. "What have I got to do with it?"

"You were mislead and captured by them," Elise pointed out. "I think that gives you full right to have an opinion on their motives. Besides, you likely spent much more time around them than I."

"Well, that's fine and dandy, but I asked in the first place because I haven't the foggiest what their deal is." Ansel shrugged. "Maybe they just find sadistic pleasure in pretending to be somebody they aren't. I can't imagine why else they'd want to steal my identity. I'm like a puzzle piece from the wrong puzzle, slapped into a spot where it doesn't belong. I sleep on the living room couch, for crying out loud! They'd have to be real desperate to swipe that out of necessity. Granted, it's still leagues better than what their kind deserve."

I squeezed my eyes shut. Ansel, don't say things like that...

"You have great reason to dislike them," Elise was saying. "I, however, am curious. I wonder what it must be like to be a changeling."

"What?" Ansel sounded disgruntled and confused. "They're a bunch of pirates and vagabonds. You'd want to imagine yourself in their shoes?"

Elise chuckled. "Banditry has nothing to do with it, though I was often considered a vagabond in my youth. A usurper, actually. So I can somewhat relate. But the changelings were originally-"

"You?" Ansel interrupted. "A usurper? I thought you were supposed to be, like, pure and honorable and all that."

"In a succession dispute over a corporate dynasty in old Ironridge, before the aerial revolution," Elise said airily, apparently letting the comment about purity and honor slide. "It's a long story, and mostly belongs to distant history. As I was saying, when the changelings first appeared, they were docile and listless, except when under the close control of their sovereign. The ones we saw in Aldebaran clearly evolved a long way, to be capable of speech and complex thought."

Ansel hesitated. "So that letter wasn't full of it, saying they showed up in the east during the war."

"No," Elise replied. "I do not know of any sightings of them prior to eighteen years ago. Which leads to some interesting speculation. Primarily, that if our captors also took time to develop into full and independent beings, they are likely very young. Much younger than any of you three."

Ansel was silent, thinking. "Or the same age, if you're saying they were basically livestock back then. I mean, have you ever seen an infant? They're not exactly much for rational expression."

That was a thought. I remembered confusing myself trying to puzzle out Leif's age earlier, based on the experiences she recounted from the Empire and getting baffled when they didn't add up. What if the reason her numbers made no sense was because she made them up? I had pegged Aldebaran as being similar to me, but what if they were literally my age as well?

"Believe me, I am aware," Elise laughed. "I have raised many children, both those of friends and my own. It may be a very apt metaphor. And so, I am curious what kind of creatures they have grown into."

"But why?" Ansel interrupted. "You've already seen what they've become! Captors, criminals, identity thieves... Are you pointedly avoiding condemning them?"

"I am," Elise said, eliciting a strangled snort from Ansel. "Primarily because such judgement would not accomplish anything productive, while keeping an open mind may yet let us discover something about our situation. But, also, because on the scale of events I have lived through, the fate we have fallen to here is a surprisingly tame and cozy affair."

My heart sped up. Her logic sounded much more grounded and reasonable than my own, but it was nice to know I wasn't the only one having trouble writing Aldebaran off as villains despite getting duped and abandoned...

"In what world is this tame and cozy?" Ansel protested, not at all sold. "We're practically in jail, here!"

"A jail with no guards, plentiful food and amenities, and apparently an entire wing our jailers failed to explore," Elise calmly explained. "Have you ever been in a real jail?"

Ansel was quiet. I got the impression he wanted to ask have you, but didn't want to get cornered if she said yes.

"...Look, whatever," he eventually said, backpedaling. "You want to know what I think they've grown or evolved into? I think they haven't evolved enough. Not if they're still doing what they were created to do. It's almost hard to blame them, when you think about it. Imagine being born with the ability to steal others' faces. You've basically got 'become a criminal' written all over you."

I froze, every inch of my body tensing up.

Ansel wasn't finished. "Oh, they tried to hoodwink us through other means first," he continued, my heart beating out of control, "before using their sneaky powers. But it doesn't change for a moment what they were doing. Overthrow the east, overthrow Icereach... Who cares if they can talk now? They haven't changed a bit."

"The world is quite a large place," Elise said, a heavy pressure weighing on my chest. "I have seen crimes and disingenuous acts from ponies from all walks of life, from those with sterling reputations to the ones who are completely ordinary and unassuming. I have seen them carried out for every reason from greed to loyalty to bare necessity. I have also seen great heroics from ones from whom society expected only ill. Do you think it is really fair to blame the changelings for what they are capable of, instead of what they do?"

"But I am blaming them for what they did!" Ansel stomped a hoof with a sharp crack, causing Corsica to stir. "You can't tell me being here counts as an act of goodwill."

"My mistake," Elise apologized. "I understood your meaning to be that you didn't blame them, and instead believed their actions to be a foregone conclusion based on factors beyond their control."

For a moment, Ansel struggled with words. "That is what I... Look, where are you going with this?"

I heard a few hoofsteps as Elise paced away. "Did you know that your mother worked for a criminal syndicate in the Empire before the war?"

Ansel stopped dead.

"It was not such an unusual occupation," Elise continued. "In the Griffon Empire, conditions were such that in order for batponies to have substantial say over the direction of their lives, they needed to work outside the established system, and frequently formed extralegal groups to band together in their efforts. As many of them saw it, they had little reason to obey the rules when the rules were not made with their well-being in mind."

She turned around. "My point is that she, like many, had society expect the worst of them, and gave society what it expected. She also is one of the bravest and most courageous mares I know, and grew into an excellent and upstanding pony despite having every reason not to. I won't say more on this, because it is her story to tell at a time that she sees fit. It may be true that the changelings possess innate abilities or circumstances that would be easy to use nefariously. It may also be true that they have used what they have in ways you disapprove of. But before you condemn them for that, stop and consider that so do ponies you love."

Yeah, I wanted to agree. Like me.

I had just been thinking about my talent, feeling a rush as I contemplated how it might actually be a usable advantage that would be worth something against our captors - a rare feeling, when I usually wished my talent was something different and less mercurial. Now Ansel had gone and flipped all that on its head. I wanted to go out and slap him, tell him to knock it off, but my own thoughts were far too unsettled about Aldebaran to have a real argument about it, and Elise had explained things far better than I possibly could have, without even getting me involved.

How did she know all that about Mother, anyway? Did she just know everything? Or was this just part of actually being older than the institute and remembering things from outside its fortified censor walls?

...I mean, technically, I was older, and my memory-dreams did go back that far. Just not often, and my senses were undeveloped enough that most of those dreams were hazy and useless. Still, hearing Elise's defense was almost enough to make me want to go tell her everything that was on my mind, about what my talent did and how confused I was feeling about Aldebaran. If only I wasn't also mad at her for knowing so much that wasn't readily available for me.

"What are you, their mom?" Ansel asked eventually, taking a moment to get his bearings. "You sound like you're less concerned about what they've done to us and more concerned about them, like, in general."

"You are correct about my priorities," Elise agreed. "As I explained, this fate we've met is not nearly as bad as it could be, and ruing it will do little to improve our circumstances. This leaves me with abundant time to think. And, remembering the aftermath of their appearance, I am quite curious where they will go now that they seem to have agency over their actions."

Ansel just grunted. "Don't hold your breath."

For a moment, Elise paused. And then she said the last thing I was expecting. "Ansel, are you a changeling?"

Ansel nearly fell over in surprise. "What darkened corner of Tartarus did you get that idea from? Also, no. In case you didn't notice, I detest changelings."

"Yes," Elise mused, "I noticed you had very strong feelings about them that seem to extend more to their species than to the group that we encountered. I wondered if you might know of their kind from somewhere."

"That's some pretty flimsy evidence, yeah?" Ansel pressed. "Listen, don't go giving me a heart attack, here. The last thing I need is to consider the possibility that they might have swapped one of us out for a mole."

Elise hummed in consideration. "I do not think that is a terrible danger," she eventually said. "What would they have to gain from continuing to deceive us when we are already at their mercy? Furthermore, there are four of us and likely five of them. Were they to sacrifice one of their number to spy on us while keeping up appearances of our presence in Icereach, they would be greatly restricting their capacity to impersonate anyone else as the need arose. That, I believe, is a logistical disadvantage they would give some weight to avoiding."

"Then why'd you bring it up?" Ansel asked, still sounding a little scared.

"Because I was curious," Elise said. "And I did not ask if you were a member of Aldebaran. I asked if you were a changeling."

"Rather baselessly, I might add."

Elise regarded him coolly. "Two years ago, doctors were baffled by your sudden and inexplicable recovery from the brink of death. Your vitals exited a long, steady decline and sharply stabilized. Furthermore, you suffered substantial amnesia that never abated upon regaining conscience, accompanied by an abrupt personality switch."

"They called it a miracle," Ansel agreed. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"A nicer personality switch," Elise pressed. "I studied some medicine in my teenage years. Survivors of brain trauma who experience personality changes often become more irate or unstable. Their friends frequently describe them along the lines of 'shadows of their old selves'. It is rare indeed that damage could improve one's higher cognitive functions."

Ansel firmly met her eyes. "I don't like what you're implying."

Elise shrugged. "Then I shall cease my implications and trust you. As I said, I was merely curious."

The conversation ended, and I heard Ansel's hoofsteps climbing the stairs as Elise wandered into the nearby office room and sat down. A million thoughts swirled through my head, Ansel's anger at the changelings landing too close to home and mixing with my already unsettled opinion on what Leif and her friends had done. And then everything Elise had said piled up on top of that...

Eventually, the dominant feeling wound up being jealousy. I wanted to know how Elise could stay so cool and rational while laying out for Ansel how his anger had led him to err. Maybe a part of it was that she wasn't as directly impacted by what he said as me, but... I was still jealous. Being able to copy her mannerisms and act it out wouldn't be enough. I wanted to feel as calm as she had sounded, with respect to Ansel and everything else. We were locked up in a remote bunker, but she was perfectly at ease.

I bumped Elise up several places on the list of mares I looked up to, and tried to get back to sleep.

---

Ansel's readings were down. Again. At this rate, he could be dead within a day.

"It's not fair," I whispered to his bedside, my gaze hollow. "Still no change for Corsica, but nobody thinks you're going to make it. I dug you out second, you know. Searched where Corsica fell first. Just had to leave that on my shoulders on your way out, didn't you?"

No response, of course. Just the beeping of the heart-rate monitor. It was noticeably less steady than two days ago.

"Why couldn't we have been a normal family?" I breathed, tears in my eyes. "I dunno what Mother's problem was with you, but I... I've been a prick. I do feel alone. And... I should have tried a little harder, knowing I was the favorite, not to rub it in your face. So, I'm sorry."

I bowed my head. "Heh. Doubt you'll appreciate it. Probably would find it condescending. But I'll remember you, okay?"

It was almost enough for me to laugh, from stress if nothing else. Ansel was dead because of me. Well, dying, but it was the same thing. And here I was, doing... what. Promising to remember him. That was it.

But this was the best I could do. Whether he would appreciate it or not, my life would never be the same.

I still didn't know what to do with that. Questions about how I had let myself get here - and where I was in the first place - continued to plague my mind, to a backdrop of impending emptiness as I tried to imagine a future without my closest maybe-friends.

There had to be something more than this. Something beyond everything I was feeling, that wouldn't change at the drop of a hat. Or the drop of a mountainside, in my case.

"I'm... going down to the chapel," I told my dying brother. "Guess I need to stare into the abyss for a bit. Try not to kick the bucket while I'm gone, okay? Or do, if you wanna make me feel like a jerk for not being here. If anything stares back, I'll put in a good word for you while I'm there..."

---

I awoke before Corsica. That was probably a good thing, considering I had slept with my boots on - no need to get into yet another conversation about that.

My mind felt marginally clearer; my body marginally more awake. I still had no idea what to do with myself.

I set about touring the living area again, washing up and making myself some shroomcakes in the kitchen from tinned mushroom sauce and some sort of preserved grain cake. They tasted metallic, but filled me up and didn't kill me, so I counted them as a success.

Ansel was in the lobby room, and I gave him a wide berth. No matter his reasons, I was still mad at him for his earlier insistence that being good at identity theft meant you were destined to be a bad pony, and it would probably take time and a close talk to fix that. A talk that couldn't happen now, while we were all on edge.

Also, I was curious myself about whether he was a changeling. Elise had a better point than she knew. But this definitely wasn't the time for talking about it, so I moved along.

Elise herself was in the study, doing apparently nothing. We nodded, acknowledging each other's presence, and I moved on.

I walked two more laps of the bunker, and nothing changed. There was something hypnotic about just walking in circles, mirroring the movements of my brain. Didn't I have questions from that conversation I overheard that I wanted to ask Elise? Something about... something?

At first, it felt like I was walking through a cold mist, and then a deep, dark ocean. What was wrong with me? Some part of me knew this wasn't right: I could be doing something productive, like raising my friends' spirits or learning things I usually couldn't ask about or exploring the rest of the complex. There had been another door in the Nemestasis room, I remembered. Why was I just pacing, my senses cushioned and my thoughts clouded? Was this how I had felt two years ago, whiling away the days at Corsica's bedside? I didn't feel panic or fear like I felt then. I just felt... lost.

"Chess?" a voice asked.

It was Elise. I blinked, realizing I was passing by the study yet again, and she was standing in the doorway, looking on expectantly.

"Chess?" she asked again. "I recall you might have carried a set, and it seems we could both use the pastime."

"Oh. Uh, sure." I shook my head, partly clearing it, and stepped back into the bedroom where I had stashed my duffel bag and remaining possessions. There was that inertial stabilizer rotor again, and my disguise kit, and my ocarina... I pulled out the board and carried it into the study.

The room that Elise had appropriated was small and square, with several iron filing cabinets and lots and lots of papers, though the tops of the stacks appeared to be blank. She was seated behind the old metal desk, and had already drawn up a chair for me with her aura. She nodded as I started to set up.

"You looked like you were struggling for something to do with yourself," Elise remarked, giving me first pick of sides - I picked black. It was an invitation to say pretty much whatever was on my mind.

"You too?" I guessed, more in a mood to listen than try to put my feelings into words.

"In some ways." Elise nodded, starting with a pawn. "I am finding this a rather luxurious vacation from the usual rigors of my day job. However, I recognize that feeling doesn't likely apply to you three. And this place is quite bare on ways to actually spend one's time. Have you had the displeasure yet of going through this room's archives?"

I frowned, countering with a safer pawn of my own. "Displeasure?"

Elise floated a few papers up to me in her aura, moving a knight. "Take a look."

I took and shuffled through them, not needing to look at the board to advance my next pawn. All of them were blank.

Not unused, oddly. Just blank. Most of them showed signs of use around the edges. A few were smudged with graphite dust. One had a brown ring from a coffee cup. Some were stapled together, and others loose. And the levels of use, while all minor, still varied from page to page, exactly like I would expect to see from the usual contents of a busy desk. Except all of them were blank.

"What the...?" I screwed up my eyes, holding the papers sideways against the light to see if there were any impressions from a pen, perhaps suggesting erasure or invisible ink. Elise moved a bishop, and I moved a bishop of my own.

"Playing defensive, I see," Elise mused, moving another pawn to threaten mine. "As best as I can tell, every single paper here is like that. Including everything in the cabinets. It's quite mystifying."

I guarded my pawn with a knight. "Is it magic? Can't imagine someone would just put useless paper here on purpose."

"Probably," Elise acknowledged, taking my pawn. "I don't know of any spell that could have caused this, but perhaps it was the work of a brand or special talent."

"A talent for making papers blank, huh?" I accepted the trade, bringing my knight forward again. "Doesn't sound like the most common thing. Ever heard of anyone who can do that? Maybe this place belongs to them."

Elise moved up a pawn to threaten my knight. "That is what I've been thinking about. I once heard tales of an Icereach scientist named Navarre, head of operations there in the years before the treaty and the Institute. His talent supposedly let him store and retrieve written information. But I mainly knew of him from a sister-in-law, and she only from heresay. The previous Icereach administrations were secretive groups, and assuming he could do as rumored, would storing text cause it to physically disappear?" She shook her head. "It is my best idea, but alas, I do not know."

"Navarre?" I tilted my head, pulling back my knight. "You mean like the old Institute airship that nobody likes?"

Elise brought out her queen. "Named after him, I suspect."

I castled in response. "Must be nice, not having to deal with censorship blocking your inquiries all the time."

Elise moved moved another pawn out and raised an eyebrow. I winced a little, not meaning to have been that short.

She just chuckled as I brought out my other knight. "Not the move you wanted me to make, hmm?"

"What? No. I've got this in the bag. I just..." I trailed off, my tongue getting tied. "Didn't mean to be snippy."

"Halcyon, you're a teenage mare," Elise explained, moving her queen. I forced another pawn trade, and she brought out a rook in response. "Snippiness is just part of the package. I don't take any offense from it."

There was that jealousy again. Corsica seemed to brush most things off by virtue of a thick skin, but this imprisonment had cracked her. Elise, though? It was like she had already accepted everything that could happen to her and made peace with it long ago. I moved my own queen out, promising a lucrative trade.

"So if I can be snippy," I asked, testing the waters and frowning as she didn't take the bait, "how come you get to know all these censored laws and things about history that's banned from the library and stuff?"

"Because I am a high-ranking official," Elise said, as if that was all there was to it. Pivoting from a hyper-offensive formation to a defensive one with a flourish, she added, "And, right now, because you look as though you need less on your mind, not more."

"You say that." I pursed my lips, feigning a bait and figuring if she ignored this one too, it would give me cover to set up for an aggressive terrain grab. "While I'm wrecking you at chess."

Elise shrugged, ignoring it as I planned. "Halcyon, are you a changeling?"

I nearly fell out of my chair.

"I see," Elise mused as I hauled myself back up, not giving me a chance to answer. "I had thought that this might have been what was vexing you. You really ought to be louder when you eavesdrop, Halcyon."

My wingtip pushed a piece across the board, some deep part of me playing on auto. "What?"

Elise chuckled. "The moment you stop hearing the sound of slumber, it means someone's listening at the door. My kids pulled that on me far too many times for it to catch me by surprise. Relax, though. I hadn't meant for my conversation with Ansel to give you the idea that your own identity was suspect. His case is unique. I wanted to clear this up if the need to prove your own identity was on your mind."

I stared, my attention only on the game enough to ensure that she wasn't cheating while I was distracted. "You're telling me, apropos of nothing, that you don't think I'm a changeling."

That was... a bizarre thought. Trying to look from her perspective, I could see why it might seem a comforting or necessary thing to say. At the same time, she probably had no idea how much I was struggling with all the similarities between Aldebaran and me.

"Yes," Elise agreed, still playing. "At least, I'm certain you're not an operative they left behind. Contrary to what I told Ansel, I am rather concerned about this fifth member of theirs, but I don't think we need worry that any of the four of us are different ponies from a week ago."

"How do you know?" I asked, skeptical.

Elise nodded. "In your case, it comes down to your bracelet," she explained. "They stole your backup clothes, did they not? And as Corsica had backups of her own on their ship, it seems quite likely that they wanted the costumes to go with using your faces. But they did not take or try to obtain your bracelet, either the original or a copy. I imagine that's because it is quite unobtrusive when turned off, and they didn't realize that you are never seen without it."

I blinked, realizing it was true. I never actually had used my bracelet while any of them were watching, so they must not have known it was more than an easily-missable band of metal...

"In short," Elise finished, "the fact that you are wearing it now indicates that you don't match up with their idea of a Halcyon disguise. Congratulations. You are you."

I blinked again.

"Checkmate, by the way," Elise added, moving a rook in for the kill.

I finally re-focused on the board, realizing what had just happened. "Hey, that was dirty!"

Elise smiled knowingly. "Was it? I was merely lightening the burden of worry on your shoulders. Surely that would have left you with more capacity to dedicate to this game. I would wager it was the finest game you've played in days."

"No," I protested, "I wasn't worried about that in the first place! You just did that to distract me so you could win!"

"Rematch?" Elise offered cheerily. "I doubt any number of victories could regain you a perfect score, but we could at least call it best out of three."

I glowered. "I didn't take you for a chess cheat," I accused, my backwards ears quivering as I pointed a hoof.

"I'll admit, it's not one of my usual professions," Elise said, standing up. "But it seems to have accomplished my real goal admirably. You look much sharper and more lively than when I called you in here. I may have distracted you from the game, but it seems my tactics were also enough to distract from whatever had your mind in a gridlock. Am I wrong?"

Slowly, I lowered my hoof, realizing it was true. My thoughts were racing again, but not in a circle. The fog was gone. I was mad, but I could focus again.

Elise had played me, for my own benefit. And she had played me well.

"Thanks," I muttered, both grudging and earnest. "I, err, owe you one. Both a favor and revenge."

I left without assenting to another game.

---

Moments later, I was in the Nemestasis room, face to face with the unexplored door. It was time to explore the rest of these tunnels.

The hallway twisted, turning slowly to the right, a sharp enough bend to grant good cover to anything trying to surprise me, yet shallow enough that I didn't feel I had good cover myself. I didn't think I was feeling particularly paranoid, and yet something about the lack of lighting fixtures and unusually ribbed, ripply texture of the rock put me on edge anyway. At least my head was clear. I pressed close to the inner wall, keeping my bracelet on as I advanced.

My stoked imagination kept me alert, and eventually I reached a door at the end of the tunnel. It was a big, sturdy steel door, studded with rivets, the kind I had seen on the money vault in Icereach's payroll office. Fascinatingly, it was locked from my side, with a big metal wheel and gears that powered an array of well-oiled sliding bolts. That made no sense. If someone was retreating deeper into the bunker, wouldn't they want to seal the way behind them? I tested the wheel, noting that it was designed to take a considerable amount of strength to turn. Not enough to be unmanageable, but enough that it was hard to imagine some pompous executive doing it themselves... This place was either built for someone very strong, or someone who was unafraid of getting their hooves dirty.

...No. Someone whose engineers were unafraid of letting their boss need to dirty their hooves.

Except, for some reason, it didn't have a doorjamb. There was a good half-inch of space for me to slither through underneath. So, sparing myself the effort of opening it properly, I extinguished my bracelet and did so.

What was I supposed to learn from this? I already suspected that whoever built this place either didn't know or didn't care about batponies. Elise had mentioned a previous head scientist of Icereach, but my kind were supposedly natives there before Yakyakistan turned it into a research colony. Any Icereach executives would have to know about us.

It also raised the question, since going through an air duct would be an odd design choice even by batpony standards, where was the intended way to get back here?

I straightened up in the darkness, sensing that this room was much colder than the one I had left behind, lacking the machines to heat it up. It made sense that they wouldn't bother with proper heating outside the main living areas, I supposed... I turned my bracelet back on.

This was easily the biggest room I had been in yet, cavernous compared to the others. And it was filled with statues.

Identical statues. Each one was maybe four times as tall as I was, counting their pedestals: carved from jet-black stone and polished to an immaculate sheen, the same mare stared down at me four dozen times over, her proportions elongated and her muzzle notably rectangular. She had both wings and a horn - also longer and grander than a normal pony's - and wore a large, ornamental collar that drooped to cover her chest, a crescent-moon gemstone socketed cleanly into its center.

"Woah," I breathed, turning in circles and admiring the collection. A forest of emerald lights glittered back at me, reflections of my bracelet glinting in their gemstones, the statues looking on with poise and majesty, wise and regal. I stopped in front of one of the closer ones, brushing my hoof against the pedestal.

It gave me the strangest sensation of a hanging curtain, with someone standing behind it who was only present when you weren't looking.

Wings and a horn, at the same time. I sat back and took in the features. Alicorns, these were called. At least, that was their name in the young adult fantasy books in Icereach's school library. These were sort of a genre-wide trope there, accepted by many authors to symbolize a perfect being. But I doubted these statues had been made by children's book authors.

It suddenly occurred to me that I might have been overlooking the one place in Icereach that could smuggle legitimate information past the censors.

"Awesome," I muttered, resuming my walk. The room was long and mostly rectangular, with the statues set up around an aisle down the middle, giving it a clear sense of structure. Two more tunnels branched off through the stone, both back behind the array of statues, and another vault door was set into the rock at the end of the path. This one was large, enough so that someone could carry heavy machinery - or statues - through it. Again, it was locked from my side, and this time, it was heavily insulated.

Something told me that a door like this had to contain something very interesting and relevant. Despite the insulation, a chill air seeped in through the other side, and I felt my fur stand on end with excitement. Obviously, no one had gotten that big Nemestasis machine in through the tight zig-zag tunnel and carried it down those rickety stairs up above... I had an electrifying suspicion that what Aldebaran had found, or been given, was actually the back door.

So, like any genre-savvy explorer, I backed off and went to go check the two side tunnels first. Best to save the most important discoveries for last so that you didn't get sidetracked and miss anything useful. That was what watching Ansel and Corsica play their old tabletop games had taught me, anyway.

I tried the leftmost tunnel first. It was just as ripply and unnatural as the one linking the statue room and the one with the Nemestasis machine. Another steel vault door barred my path, once again locked from my side. Why was that? If I assumed the cold-feeling door was an exit to the outside, then it made sense, locking the door from within. But did this tunnel lead to another way out? You didn't install doors like these for no reason...

Curious, I slipped beneath it, yet again encountering no doorjamb. I straightened up and turned on my bracelet.

This room was much smaller, and another machine room. Most of it was taken up by a tiered dais that looked faintly arcane, with a sloped walkway making it easy for a pony to walk to the middle. Above the middle, a bulky, conical device hung from a steel arm, a little bigger than my barrel and pointing directly at the center. It was attached directly to the wall, and several thick, solid metal cables snaked into the wall near the mounting, though there was no door to follow them. Some kind of console that didn't have any visible information or screens completed the strange contraption.

"...Huh." I circled the dead end, looking for anything I may have missed. What did this do? It was clearly functional and probably turned off, likely built to do things to whatever was placed on the pedestal. Maybe a component of the Nemestasis machine, a final output device for doing whatever it did? With a bit of imagination, it looked almost like a laser cannon. I decided not to step on the dais.

The room resisted my searching, completely devoid of documentation, but I did find a pattern card plugged into an input port on the console that easily came free. Someone had scrawled a few unintelligible characters on its surface with a black sharpie - useless at first glance, but it told me our text-stealing friend apparently hadn't been this way. Interesting. I pocketed the pattern card, figuring I might as well take it back to the main terminal to see what was on it.

I still couldn't figure out why the door would be oriented to lock someone in here when the room was just this machine and a dead end. Or why it was even here at all.

My bracelet was already off in preparation for swimming back out when something gave me pause, and I turned it back on. Could that really be all that was here? That door had to be important. What if there was a secret tunnel from here to the rest of the bunker, and this particular door was designed to lock the inhabitants in, not keep someone else out? So far, all of my assumptions about the place had been that it was a hideaway for someone rich and overprepared, but what if it was exactly what it was being used for: a really plush jail?

Either way, I needed to be on the lookout for the way ponies were normally meant to get from one section of the complex to the other, in the event that I wanted to bring my friends through this way. And it wasn't like I had any shortage of time... So, I started banging on the walls, combing every inch of the room and searching for anything that felt hollow.

Something just felt good about repeatedly punching the blue stone, and it wasn't only the lingering curiosity about that door. All my conflicted feelings about Aldebaran and everything else were still there - bottled handily away by Elise's cheap chess trick, yet still there. A wimpier pony might have punched a pillow in frustration, but I worked out with yaks. It took a wall to stand up to me. And with each hit, as that wall stood, the mess in my head began to unravel just a little bit more.

I had three different lines to walk, like a tight rope twisted into a triangle, all part of the same problem and yet all distinct, too. On one side was Aldebaran: despite the overwhelming evidence that they had tricked and betrayed us, I still wanted to believe in them. Doing so had brought us visible harm, and yet while it lasted, it brought me a great amount of hope for the future and peace of mind as well. According to my brain's subconscious calculus, the cost of trusting them didn't actually outweigh its benefits - at least, not to a degree that I didn't still have my instincts wanting to give them another chance.

It was unhealthy, I knew. I should do the smart thing and turn my back on them forever. But my mind was loathe to do so, and I felt like I finally was able to articulate why.

The second problem was Ansel. That one was a lot more self-explanatory. He was mad at the changelings, understandably so. And I, too, was mad - also understandably, in my humble opinion - at him for taking it out on everyone who might be remotely good at identity-

There was a secret drawer under the console.

My thoughts were instantly abandoned, raw curiosity shoveling aside my other feelings like used ash from a kiln. The console I had looted the pattern card from was shaped like a desk, with room underneath to push in a chair that wasn't present, and a search of that space had turned up a loose panel with a key slot on the underbelly of the main metal chassis. I flipped on my back and held up my bracelet to examine the thing.

It looked like a simple enough lock, built into the console rather than attached by a third party. Lockpicking was something I could be great at if I bothered to learn - I was great with wing-based fine motor skills. But, alas, the ability to slide under doorjambs as if doors didn't exist had never left me with a particularly pressing desire to pick up that skill.

Oh well. It didn't look like an incredibly sturdy door, and if Aldebaran had to make an insurance claim because I solved things the yak way, it would stink to be them.

A bit of twisting and leverage later, and I had gotten the corner of the door caught on my boot sole, and then broken the hinges entirely. Three scrolls and a loose piece of paper fell out on my face.

"Jackpot!" I cheered, helping myself to the liberated paper, noticing that the loose piece was a letter and beginning to read.

Old friend,

Next to many of the miracles you ask of me, stealing these from Canterlot Palace turned out to be surprisingly feasible. Chaotic beings have targeted Equestria frequently as of late, and the disturbances they create prove excellent cover for sneaking about. Do not worry yourself over Starlight; I have confirmed her village on the Catantan Peninsula was far removed from the turmoil.

Unfortunately, this will be the last errand I can run for you for some time. The prophecies of the deep south are proving disturbingly accurate, and are certainly centered on our present time period. It seems this region will not be as safe to ignore as we once thought, and I must depart to keep a careful eye on it, lest we be blindsided at an inopportune moment. May Tetra guide you in my absence.

I sat, stunned. Canterlot Palace? Equestria? Catantan peninsula? I had never heard any of these names, but what reason would someone have to make them up? More importantly, accurate prophecies? Chaotic beings? 'May Tetra guide you'?

Predicting the future was condoned by science; modeling things was pointless if not to make predictions. Prophecies weren't. And they referred to this Tetra as though their will was providence! I needed an atlas, fast. Odds were these were nations and places on the coast of the eastern sea that were too small for me to have known about before, but they were absolutely going to the top of my list for places to visit as soon as-

...Right. We were stuck in changeling jail and probably didn't have an atlas. Planning for future adventures really wasn't what I needed to be doing right now.

But what was the deep south? Icereach was about as far south in the world as you could go. The world was roughly a semicircle, a little less, and the Aldenfold mountains formed its straight, endless, impossibly high southern edge. Did they mean there was civilization in the Aldenfold? Or... what if by deep south, they meant Icereach itself? If there were legitimate prophecies I didn't know about tied to the chapel...

With a tight breath, I bent down and picked up the scrolls that had been stored with the letter. Well, maybe they would elaborate. They had to hold something critical, if stealing them had been comparable to miracles. Maybe I could get in good with this Canterlot place if I kept them safe and gave them back... but, of course, if this was a place of gods and prophecies, there was no way I wasn't reading them first.

I glanced at the door to make sure it was still closed as I undid the first one, shivering from a secretive thrill.

Its beautiful wax seal parted, an image of the sun, and it came open, made from a strange, spongy paper that felt almost closer to cloth from the way it didn't hold its shape at all. The scroll's abnormality heightened as I unrolled it far enough to see the text: instead of legible markings, it was all an interconnected scrawl in shifting, silvery ink, which seemed to glow and constantly change. Were these runes? They glowed brighter the farther I rolled the thing open...

The moment I was able to see the page in its entirety, the ink burst into a silvery mist, hovering just off the surface. I gasped. It floated for a second, and then swirled, trailing wisps as it rushed around me and shot into my flanks, disappearing with a cool tingle.

I didn't feel any different. The scroll dropped to the ground, empty. So much for giving it back safe and sound.

Feeling slightly surreal, I reread the note, but it didn't have any clues whatsoever on what these mist scrolls were supposed to be. They were certainly valuable, and whatever the one I opened had done to me was definitely deliberate. But... it didn't seem to have done anything. What if I had misused or wasted something incredibly important? A single-use spell, maybe healing magic, or...?

My heart chilled, and I carefully tucked the note and the surviving scrolls into my pockets... then after a little consideration, rolled the blank one back up - its paper was already flat, as if it had never been rolled - and put that in too. Whatever they did, I still had two left. Hopefully I'd find a way to figure out, and it would be something useful.

---

"Just a set of coordinates?" I asked the screen, both forehooves on the burnished Nemestasis console as I stood in front of the machine. "That's really what was on there? Huh. Wish I could see where it points to..."

The Nemestasis terminal hadn't been able to decode my purloined pattern card, but it could at least show me a visualization of the internal standing mana wave, the analog signal that pattern cards used to encode data. To most ponies, that would be an unintelligible, flowery, squiggly and probably beautiful sight that someone would want to frame and hang on the wall. But for a nerd like me who spent too much time learning obscure things about terminals, it was possible to glean a little more.

This wave was a simple one, a data format developed way back in the early days of terminals by sailors, traders and map-makers in an attempt to make a worldwide coordinate system for measuring locations and distances. The problem was, encoding location data was based on some esoteric and closely-guarded technology involving magical space radiation and the curvature of the atmosphere, and Ironridge held tightly to the technology as a means of preserving its dominance in the airship industry. Actually, this technology had a lot to do with how they became dominant there in the first place...

I was getting distracted. The important part was, I could recognize the overall format, but had no way of telling what location it was pointing to. Probably the only way for me to actually read it would be to stick it in the terminal of a modern airship, like the Aldebaran... And I was very, very curious to know what a card with a random world location's coordinates was doing in a place like this, and where that location might be. Especially when I had found it so close to that letter and the scrolls, describing places like Equestria and Canterlot that I had never heard of.

"Mrrrgh..." I grunted at the Nemestasis machine, both for being unable to decode it further and for giving me just enough information to get my curiosity hooked in the first place. I had more exploring to do...

I tore myself away from the screen and re-pocketed my pattern card, pushing thoughts of scrolls and higher powers to the back of my mind. There were more tunnels to explore. Based on what I had found so far, I couldn't imagine the next areas wouldn't be just as intriguing.

---

The second side tunnel, yet again, had a vault door. Yet again, it was locked from my side. I was beginning to revise my opinion from this place being built for someone who didn't mind getting their hooves dirty to it being built for someone who really loved getting their hooves dirty. Or just really loved unlocking giant vault doors.

Like the one I had earlier saved for last, this one was properly insulated, so I had to open it the normal way. I touched my cheek to the metal, and despite the chill temperature in this room and the tunnels, it was even colder.

I felt my excitement rise, and reached up, throwing my whole body against the wheel to get it to spin. With some effort, it began to rotate, and the door came open, swinging slowly inwards.

The tunnel continued beyond. It had mist on the ground.

"Uhh..." I stopped, curious. A dim light came from somewhere around the bend, just enough to see by without the aid of my bracelet, coloring the mist faintly blue. Wispy trails of the stuff slunk across the ground in sluggish, eddying currents, so thin it should have dissipated in seconds. Yet its consistency didn't change.

A few tendrils crept through the opened door and curled curiously around my legs. It didn't feel like much of anything. More importantly, why was it here in the first place? Mist wasn't known for forming when it was cold and dry, especially inside of pony-made structures...

I experimentally shut the door. The mist that had leaked through quickly faded away.

"What the..." I breathed, leaning my back against a wall and staring at the ground where it had faded. Opening and closing it a few more times repeated the process: the mist, gently twisting, never grew thicker or fainter in the hallway beyond the door. But it seeped out when I let it, and quickly dissipated when cut off from its source. It was like a singular entity, that I could push back with the door and that wouldn't continue to exist if separated from itself.

My ears rose in excitement. Maybe there was a good, logical explanation for this, but what if there wasn't? What if Elise was right that this place had something to do with a previous Icereach head scientist, Navarre? I never had gotten to ask her about that censored rule that would have stopped me and Ansel from coming on this mission, but I remembered my earlier hypothesis that Icereach might have hidden something supernatural out in the mountains and set up rules preventing anyone outside of their authority from easily sticking their noses into it.

Right then, right there, I didn't feel like a victim or like a prisoner. I felt like a prophet. I was going to see something special, that someone badly didn't want me to see.

The mist curled around me lethargically as I reopened the door and stepped inside, and the tunnel kept curving, infuriatingly stopping me from seeing all the way to the other end. Something was glowing, though... I kicked into a gallop, curiosity driving me on.

It was another vault door, once again lacking a doorjamb, the light seeping out from underneath. Once again, the lock was on my side. But this time, I doubted I'd have been able to open the door even if I wanted to, because it looked like it had partially melted.

My eyes bulged at the twisted frame, the drips and sloughs in the metal surface, the blue mist leaking out from underneath. I remembered the sealed door locked from my direction - potentially not oriented that way to keep someone out, but to keep something in. And all my enthusiasm suddenly had to tangle with the possibility that the reason someone didn't want me down here was a good one.

Except... I could hear something, and it hooked my curiosity before I could lose heart. It was music, coming from beyond the door, only I could hear it in my hooves. Where... they were touching the mist. What? It was like how you could feel deep vibrations in your chest, rather than your ears. Only I was hearing with my hooves.

The sheer bafflement gave me pause, and for a moment, I stopped to listen. Filled with emotion, the music gave me a clear picture of an aristocrat explaining a vendetta before an audience: calm, yet scorned; civil, yet spiteful and mean. And yet it was somehow less righteous, like they had been in the wrong all along, and were mad that their vice had been thwarted. What was that?

My better judgement tried to intervene, and my curiosity filed an injunction and gave it a forced leave of absence. I opened my mouth. "Hello?"

"Ey there, friendo," a grating, metallic voice said from beyond the melted door. "What is up? I do not get many visitors!"

I jumped, squeaking in surprise. The voice sounded like ice and thunder, like a sword stuck in massive gears. Bitingly sharp and mechanical, it would have been most at home coming from the destroyed sentinel that we had passed in the tunnel down from the cave's entrance. And now it was coming from behind this twisted door, somehow friendly and inviting despite the buried anger laced all throughout its cracks.

Exactly like the music. I was talking to the mist.

"What are you?" I hissed, surprised yet fascinated. Now that I knew it talked, any chance of me bailing before my curiosity was sated was slimmer than Elise's barrel.

"Eyy, friendo, no need for fear, yes," the voice insisted, paradoxically calming yet made of primal fury. "I am just some rando monster they put down here a few years back as a power source for the heat and the lights. They don't like your face, they put you away, am I right?"

I stared, processing what I was hearing. "Err..."

"So what did your face do to tick them off?" the mist asked. "Me, I just had an ugly mug. But you, friendo, you don't belong here. You are real mad about it, I can tell. Why not tell me about it? If there is one thing I hate, it is the ponyos who cannot get the revenge they deserve, you know."

Too many questions I never thought I would get to ask an unusually friendly mist monster collided in my head, and only one could win out. "Are you the one making all the writing down here disappear?"

"Aie ya yai. Sonata's blueberry hips, you are a blunt little ponyo. But nah, that was the other guy. I never met him myself, but I heard he was a real scumbag. You would hate him, friendo."

I scratched my head, feeling like the sound of its voice should have been giving me a colossal headache, yet doing more or less just fine. "Wait, so someone literally did steal text off the pages? What kind of magic can do that?" I blinked. "And what's a ponyo?"

"It is you! And probably. I just took over this hole because nobody else seemed to want it as much as I did. All of this was before my time." The mist had the tone of someone lounging in a fancy, oversized chair, its wrathful little tune still tinkling away in my mind. "So what is your story, eh eh eh?"

"What's yours?" I asked back, hardly convinced I should trust this thing.

"Eyy, that is the mistrust I like to see! You know, I cannot help but notice you ditched your own friendos to come sniff around here yourself. One of them in particular you do not like right now, I am thinking. You, friendo, you really might be cut out for this."

I frowned at the change of topic. Did it somehow know that Ansel's harsh words to Elise were still on my mind? "Being solo can be helpful sometimes." I rationalized, brushing it off. "Cut out for what?"

"Revenge, of course," the mist drawled. "The ponyos who trapped you down here, you hate them. I can smell it. Like a cigar. A high-quality one, friendo! I agree, of course. Anyone who would stick someone's face in a hole like this has it coming, don't you think?"

Wait a minute. That tune that was playing... it sounded suspiciously like an accompaniment. As if the song - the mist - wanted to be angry, yet had nothing to be angry about, so it wished to direct its anger on my behalf. Like it was inviting me to take the lead.

Mega creepy.

"I mean, yeah, they do, but why should you care?" I asked the mist. "And why should I care that you care? You keep changing the subject when I ask about you. I feel like something bad might happen if I let you out, and you're not helping your case."

"Because I am an expert at planning revenge, little cigar!" the mist eagerly exclaimed. "And is not the whole point to make something bad happen? To the ones who wronged you, you know. You have a score to settle. You should tell me all about it so I can help you make them wish their loved ones had never been born. Yesssss..."

"Now hold on, I don't want to go around getting payback on anyone's family-" I blinked. "And I'm not a cigar."

"Though I cannot help in person, I am afraid," the mist continued, ignoring me. "Being around too many nice ponyos will cause me to shrivel up and hibernate. It is pretty gross. Like a raisin, you see. I am not even actually trapped in the first place, so you do not have any letting me out that you can do. I just hang out here because nice ponyos do not usually come this way. And if I wait around here for long enough, maybe I can get some revenge of my own."

"Err..." Good to know? Like I'd believe that scary sealed door wasn't there for a reason. "You've got a grudge with someone too, then?"

"Absolutely, friendo. You see, once upon a time, God was creating the world, and he got around to me, and he said, 'You, you will have an ugly face, and nobody will like your face,' and lo, it was so. I really hate that guy. Maybe one day I will kill him if I get the chance."

I froze. That wasn't what I had expected to hear. And I sort of wished I hadn't heard it.

"God? Say that again?" I asked, my muscles still all locked up.

"Well, to be true with you, I never met that guy either," the mist admitted. "I do not get around much, living in hole after hole. But there are some things you just know, you know?"

Great. So the first person I ever would meet who was as superstitious as I was turned out to be a strange, icy mist monster living in a secret wing of a hidden bunker turned jail out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe we could kick back, forget about Aldebaran and have some nice, perfectly normal and not at all worrisome discussions about ancient mist monster lore...

"My theory, my theory is that King Father had a slightly below-average face," the mist was explaining, "and when it was our turn to be made, he was like, 'My face must be known far and wide to be of true beauty. I will make you so ugly, I will be handsome by comparison!' But then we were so ugly, he locked us in a hole so he would not have to look at-"

"That's... nice," I interrupted, forcing myself to wave a hoof. "Listen, about getting revenge and all that. Do you know if there are any ways out of here? And if so, is there any storm gear that would let me survive indefinitely in the mountains? Or at least a map with the easiest directions for getting back to civilization? I can't do anything about anyone if I'm stuck in here." With you, I added mentally.

The mist seemed thoughtful. "Good question, little cigar. I have ice powers, you know. Perhaps I can share with you my power so that you can survive in the cold? I am always up for helping to kick some evil in the face. Like I said, I am not leaving this room, but there may be something I can do."

"Borrowing powers from a mist monster?" Okay, that was a bad idea. All issues of trust and the wisdom of doing such a thing aside, the last thing I wanted from any interaction with the powers that be was to become more powerful myself. That defeated the entire point! "Think I'll pass..."

"No, pause pause pause, I want to see what kind of ponyo you are. This is easier with some than with others, or so I have heard. So lean down and sniff the mist. Yeah. Sniff it real good! It smells minty, friendo."

I looked down at the wisps poking at my boots, still projecting their uncanny tune. "Maybe let's not."

The mist reached up a tendril and booped me on the nose.

It was, in fact, minty. It stung my throat and my nostrils, yet came with a refreshing burst of clarity, like a faceful of sharp winter air after sitting inside for too long. I felt an odd prickle of pain in one ear, and the music came into much sharper relief... and then it withdrew, and the sensation faded as fast as it had arrived. I was fine.

Bizarrely, the same couldn't be said for the mist.

The moment it touched me, a convulsion shot through it, and it began chanting shakily in a ringing language I didn't know, saying the same verse thing over and over with varying intensity. Its blue wisps crawled faster along the floor in jerky motions, like a creature flopping about. I had just been touched by an unknowable being, but the mist was acting more like an unknowable being had just touched it.

Eventually, it fell silent, resuming its usual slithering. And then: "...Psych! I wish I could have seen the look on your face, little cigar. See, if I can get you that good, imagine how bad you can mess up your enemies with my-"

"Okay, screw you," I interrupted, turning and striding away, thoroughly done with this mist and its shenanigans. "And seriously, some folks just don't know when to quit with the nicknames..."

"This is so sad," the mist complained as I left. "Hey friendo, remember me for next time if you come back here after they kick you in the face!"

---

"Yikes," I said to one of the regal alicorn statues in the main hall, getting my bearings back after firmly locking the mist door behind me. "What was that thing's problem?"

The statue's eyes and choker gemstone glittered back at me, silent and all-knowing.

"Bet you've been neighbors for a while," I guessed, rubbing at my booted hooves to warm them up after standing in the chill mist. "How do you stay sane, with a guy like that next door? Too much exposure to that, and I'd want to kick something."

The statue listened and said nothing.

"Yeah, I guess refusing to speak would do the trick," I admitted. "Though I bet it's wicked good at carrying on a one-sided conversation. Almost like me. ...Not that I'm relating to a mist monster, or anything! I just... you know... No one can keep a secret like someone who can't talk, you know? I trust you."

After a moment, I added, "Do you think I'm weird, talking to machines and inanimate stuff all the time?"

The statue didn't say yes.

"I've pretty much always been like this," I went on. "At least, since I was old enough to have sensible conversations. I think it started more than a decade ago. When I was real little, like five or six, I had a friend called Faye. She, err... She died. Must have been an injury or something, since I always remember her in a wheel cart. That's pretty much the only thing I remember about her. Couldn't even tell you what she looked like, since I haven't dreamed about her in ages. But, if my dreams are anything to go by, after that is when I started talking to random stuff. What do you think that says about me?"

The statue contemplated, seeming to consult with all the others in the room, a faint chorus of sparkly green refracting from their gems as I shifted my bracelet leg ever so slightly. They didn't come to a conclusion.

"Yeah, I dunno either." I got back to my hooves. "At least I do know that you don't mind. Anyway, good talk. Who's betting that last big door leads to an exit back outside?"

The statues all watched as I approached the final vault door, insulated and big enough to carry huge racks of machines through, much colder to the touch than the mist one and aligned directly with the aisle around which the statues were arranged. Fortunately, it was well-oiled, and after a moment of bracing my back and heaving, the wheel began to turn.

Iron grated and sheared as the hinges themselves began to move, and I swore I saw a few sparks as frosty air billowed in. What would I do if this really was an exit, as it appeared? We were in the middle of nowhere, and much less safe out in the wilderness than down in this bunker. And yet, I needed to see the sky. At the very least, I wanted to know we had the option to be free.

As soon as the barest crack was available between the door and its frame, I dropped my light and shadow snuck through, keeping as much heat inside as possible. Beyond was a long, straight tunnel with a spot of bright white at the end. I took off running.

The white grew nearer, until I could hear a low rumbling all around me, wind blowing against the side of the mountain. My eyes adjusted, and I made out snow. And then I burst out into the open.

I was outside.

In the middle of a storm that could become a blizzard at the drop of a hat, in what must have been late evening, at the bottom of a long, deep mountain valley in the middle of absolutely nowhere, yes. But I was outside.

I craned my neck up, aware that my wings were about to get frozen to my sides, and stepped out of the lee of the cave mouth. Boiling rivers of snowclouds churned past at breakneck speeds... Probably the same storm that had carried the Aldebaran to this place, with us on board. They would be flowing from the south, of course, as the Aldenfold mountains were the source and nexus of all storms. Which meant south was... that way. To my left. Straight down the valley.

Massive rift in the mountains, running straight from north to south... It was almost enough to make me nostalgic, when we had one of those right next to home. The Trench of Greg, ours was called, just east of Icereach and overlooked by Mount Wystle and the old research tower. The mountains were a big place, though. It couldn't be too much of a coincidence that two places could-

I froze, staring down the valley at one of the peaks on the opposite, western side. It was the tower.

We were barely two miles from home.

Instantly, things fell apart and reassembled themselves in my mind. So that was what was up with our flight's schedule! Vivace must have flown us in a giant circle to make us think we had gone farther than we really had... There was my final piece of evidence that they had been intending to leave us here all along, as the only possible reason to obfuscate the distance would be to make us think escape was impossible.

But it wasn't impossible. I had made the climb back to Icereach from the bottom of the Trench before. And I could do it-

A gust slammed into me and bowled me over, my legs too frozen to remember what balance was.

Spitting ice water and shaking snow out of my mane, I scrambled back to my hooves. Here at the bottom of the Trench, the wind was funneled in one direction with nowhere else to go, roaring between jagged peaks that rose like teeth on either side. The clouds skimmed the mountaintops, depressingly close to touching that icy little spur I remembered getting a view from right before the avalanche. Home was right there, and yet upwind, up that sheer, rocky cliff, too steep for snow to stick to, it might have been a thousand miles away. I was so much closer, and yet nothing had changed.

Wait out the storm, I told myself. Last time you made that climb, it was midsummer and the best conditions you could ask for. You've trained with the yaks and gotten way stronger since then. You can do it. Just be patient and wait for the right time.

What could I do, though? Haul myself, exhausted and frozen, through the gates of Icereach, knowing nothing about where Aldebaran were or what they were doing with our identities, and expect to stop them all by myself? What would that accomplish? They were professional mercenaries, at least to hear them tell it. They had a flying combat robo-pony and had demolished that massive sentinel we saw on the way down...

No. I stopped myself from thinking that. It didn't matter what I could do, because I had the opportunity to do more than nothing. Any piece on the table, even the smallest one, meant you were still in the game.

For now, I needed to go back inside, not die of hypothermia, figure out a plan, and tell everyone else that we were only a stone's throw away from home.

Comments

[Phoenix Kitten]

I was nothing, but not a bad nothingness - a potent one, like a blank canvass that I could fill with whatever I wanted, and that meant I got full choice over what made me me.

"Your power is like the number zero. Empty, yet full of infinite possibilities."

Hmm.. so the Elise that was making them suspicious was one of them disguised as Elise.
Ho boy... Halcyon got herself one of the Harmonic Writs....

[KMCA]

"Absolutely, friendo. You see, once upon a time, God was creating the world, and he got around to me, and he said, 'You, you will have an ugly face, and nobody will like your face,' and lo, it was so. I really hate that guy.

Cuddles 2.0?

[alamais]

HmmmMMmMmmm...

Sonata's blueberry hips

Is this...a siren? Or something related? If that is the reference, at the very least he would have to be old enough to have been around when the sirens were...or I guess come from a society that had extensive contact with them in the past. On the side of it being one, the EqG sirens also had a mist effect, though theirs was green and mostly seemed to represent the magic they were slurping out of people, but they were also in a mostly magic-free world so idk.

Either way, seems like a standup chap. We should trust him completely and be the bestest of friends.

[Zapdroid]

The mysteries just keep building up… I wonder if Haley can read those wordless scrolls after absorbing that “ink?” I don’t want to wonder what she can do after absorbing that other stuff. For the life of me I know those alicorn statues are important and we learned of their purpose in the first book, but I cannot remember now!

[Thunder twister]

10806152
Were they the shrines to the night mother? I can't remember what they were supposed to look like

[RoboRed]

Alrighty, It's been a longass time since I read Olden World and I'm pretty late to the game here already. But the way that talking mist thing speaks sounds very familiar and I'm wracking the heck out of my brain trying to remember who or what it might be. The iciness is a big clue that kicked my thinking off...I think I recall the group encountering a Windigo? In the depths of a facility? And it possessed someone and tagged along for a while but things (like a lot of stuff that happened), didn't quite have a happy end.(?)

I dunno, I might be mixing some stuff up.

[Venlinelle]

Darling, you are going to kill me with these chapters. At least, until I get back on my computer and I can comment live as I read.

Alright, to begin with, your character work is as phenomenal as ever. I love the magical mysteries as much as anypony, but nothing compares to things like Halcyon’s introspection, Elise talking to Ansel, or the chess game. I’m really falling in love with Halcyon. I confess I’ve forgotten some of my reasons after reading the insanity at the end of this chapter, but suffice to say she’s a great mix of upbeat and insecure, and I really look forward to seeing her discover that she is a complete pony, no matter what her talent happens to be. Also, it’s nice to have a protagonist who I can, like, be hopeful for. I adore Starlight, but her POVs and perpetual magically-induced depression got bleak sometimes.

So, that note! I have absolutely no idea who wrote it; the voice doesn’t feel familiar. The question is then who it was addressed to: someone who both cares about Starlight’s well-being and needs things stolen from Canterlot. The list of potential addressees is long, and I’ve got nothing at the moment.

Then Halcyon gets what I can only assume is a Writ, which is all but confirmation that a decent bit of this story will take place in Equestria (very exciting!). This makes me think that either the author or intended recipient of that note was one of our TOW crew, since they were the ones collecting writs like Pokémon.

And then… I have no idea who’s in that room, but they talk a lot like Cuddles did when they weren’t putting on a front with Valey (well, they were sort of both real personalities, but you know what I mean), so my initial guess is another windigo. My guesses are famously wrong, though, so perhaps I should assume it’s literally anything else. Either way, I’m deeply curious as to how and why they’re using expressions that name one of the Sirens.

Good lord these comments are long. I blame you. Onward!

[sploopy slooder]

was that a friggin harmonic writ she just found? damn son, the novel just started and its already popping off. i love it.