Salvation

by voroshilov

The Citadel

The Retaliator exited the Rift with a jolt, shaking violently as the Luminary fired retro-thrusters to save the ship from a gravity well they had transitioned right into. Fortunately for the two living crew - and the one undead crew - the shaking didn’t last long, with the Luminary regaining full control within seconds. As Ablazed Glory would remark, however, the manner by which it had regained control, especially with no input from or output to the crew, was rather frightening.

“What the hell? Do you want me to disconnect you?”

The Luminary beeped. “The gravity well of this installation is prone to fluctuations, this location is anomalous in nature, exercise extreme caution.”

Ablazed Glory muttered something that was definitely expletives as she rotated the viewscreen towards the source of the gravitational pull. The moment she caught sight of what lay beyond the Retaliator’s hull she went silent, suddenly understanding of the Luminary’s circumstance.

Barely ten metres from the outer hull was a wall, extending a few hundred metres above and many thousands below. The Retaliator was precariously half landed on a platform, leading into an enormous hall some hundred metres in radius, with the floor and walls all made of what appeared to be extremely well polished white marble, though it reflected a dull and sickly green.

“Land us,” Penumbra ordered, “and give me a scan of the surroundings, I want to know everything about this place before we disembark.”

It took barely any movement for the Retaliator to land, fitting more than comfortably on the platform, with the Luminary’s scan taking a few seconds longer. “Atmosphere is a nitrogen, oxygen mixture, breathable for your physiology, atmospheric pressure is one Chronove atmosphere, radiation levels are negligible. I am detecting pockets of an unknown substance, advise extreme caution.”

Ablazed Glory rose, having shaken off her surprise fairly quickly - or perhaps she had just hidden it well. “Luminary, prepare embarkation airlock seven, keep the ship running whilst we’re away.”

It was fortunate for Penumbra that the Retaliator had been designed with large things in mind, allowing her to move around relatively freely, without so much as having to duck under all but the smallest of doors. The airlock allowed just enough space for the two of them, with Penumbra so glad to escape from its confines and into the open air of wherever it was she found herself that she completely failed to notice what Ablazed Glory did.

The burning alicorn did not react with surprise to what she saw, more a sense of bewilderment and questioning. It took her more than half a minute to tap Penumbra’s shoulder and draw her attention to the horizon. Namely, the fact that there wasn’t one.

In the distance, bright as a star, hung the Milky Way Galaxy - Stellatum Mare to the more precise Dominion observer - apparently the source of light for where they found themselves. All around, stretching out miles until a vague ring of vapour marked its boundary, was what appeared to be an empty sea. Beyond the marble, geodes and grass of the settlement that seemed to directly surround them, was a near endless sea of gravel and sand, the odd rock scattered about preventing it from being completely flat. The emphasis, however, hung on the “near” part of near endless, as, unless their eyes deceived them somehow, they were on a flat plane, rather than the usual spheroid planet. They had seen only one such place before.

“Could this be another part of his Throne World?” Ablazed Glory asked the Shining Armour, “another place? Entropy’s Pinnacle? Penumbra,” she shouted, sensing that her companion’s curiosity had already dragged her within the building, “Shining says we need to be careful.” She turned and ran after Penumbra, who had entered the expansive hall the platform had been attached to. “There’s pockets of something he calls corruption here,” she said, her voice lowered but still echoing, given the height of the ceiling, “we mustn’t touch them, apparently not even you can stand up to them.”

“Like a poison,” the Shining amulet said, voice as guttural as it had been the first time it had spoken aloud, “it will eat you from within and without, transform you into more poison.”

Penumbra nodded, though the majority of her focus was on the throne a few metres ahead of her. It was large, but otherwise not particularly grand, made of the same white marble as the floor and walls, raised up by three steps and with a perfectly circular hole cut into the top of the headrest. The seat didn’t look particularly comfortable, not least due to the fact it was made of stone, though something told her it wasn’t meant to be comfortable. Something, though she didn’t quite know what, told her it wasn’t even meant for sitting on - just like her armchair under the stairs back on Sanctuary’s Watch.

As Ablazed Glory marvelled at the size of the structure, Penumbra trotted around the back of the throne, in an attempt to prove her new theory. Sure enough, there was an opening, a strangely obvious one all things considered. Apparently, there wasn’t so much as a cover, just a marble staircase down into a marble room beneath the marble floor. Perhaps it had been camouflaged from attacks from above.

Just before Penumbra could take her first step, a burning talon grabbed her. “Wait,” Ablazed Glory said, “something is down there, I can sense it. I’ll go in first.”

“And why should you?”

Ablazed Glory looked her dead in the eye and cocked a flaming eyebrow. “Because you’re stronger than me and if something’s in there you can kill it after it reveals itself ambushing me.”

Ablazed Glory proceeded immediately past her, conveniently providing light to the otherwise pitch black room. There was more than enough room for both of them, with a few extra feet from Penumbra’s full height, with just enough space for her to stretch her wings out horizontally. Initially, the space below the throne appeared empty, at least to Penumbra, Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, was certain something lay just ahead of them.

Just as Penumbra was questioning whether to turn back, something was illuminated. A circular frame, not entirely unlike those of the portals on Cradle, though built from a smooth black rock. Whilst the frame seemed to be intact when viewed from the front, a cursory glance behind made clear it was damaged in some way, with large chunks of rock outright missing, with the fibrous glowing white bundle that ran through its centre missing a portion approximately half a metre long.

“What is it?” Ablazed Glory asked, giving the frame a tap with a claw.

“A portal,” her companion answered absentmindedly, focusing on observing the frame, “broken, but it seems fixable.”

Ablazed Glory laughed hoarsely. “What do you mean by that?”

Penumbra took the two ends of the white fibre bundle in her talons, feeling its - really quite inexplicably - silky smooth texture and attempting to compare it to any material she knew. “I think we could fix it, we just need the materials.”

Ablazed Glory laughed again. “Are you sure that’s all we need? We don’t need, say, experience constructing a portal, or anything - if that’s even what it really is? Besides, should we even repair it? We don’t know where it leads.”

Penumbra was silent, granted, she didn’t know exactly where it led, but she knew it was somewhere important, somewhere she had to be. Her heart - which was a more poetic way of saying some inexplicable and inherent feeling - told her it was where she needed to be, so she’d get there, even if it meant searching the entirety of Entropy’s Pinnacle for something to repair the portal with.

“We have to repair it, I know we have to, and I know how.”

Ablazed Glory sighed and shook her head. “Alright, let’s do this then.”

“First, we need to find spare parts.”

Ablazed Glory nodded, suggesting she go on.

“As in, we need to look for them.”

The burning alicorn rolled her eyes, an almost invisible motion given the fairly uniform colouring of her eyes but carrying no less of the weight that it would have done otherwise, and physically sagged. “Any ideas of where to look?”

Penumbra began to make her way out of the room. “I’ll be honest, no, but I doubt they’ll be up here. Let’s head down to the ground and have a look around.”

“Nice rhyme.” Ablazed Glory followed her to the platform, where the Retaliator was still waiting. “But, how do we get down?”

Penumbra stopped, turned to her companion and grinned wickedly. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she said, chuckling, before throwing Ablazed Glory off the edge, the alicorn yelping in surprise then screaming wildly as she went. Penumbra herself simply hopped off, folding her wings to her back and allowing herself to shoot down like a bullet, rapidly gaining on Ablazed Glory, who was flailing madly in the air.

Drawing alongside her companion, who was screaming in between yelling curses that got longer and more colourful each time, Penumbra made a rather complex gesture of bending her right wing at two points and simultaneously flapping it and pointing to Ablazed Glory’s own wings, which hung above her head as she continued to fall.

The burning alicorn, miraculously, recognised the signal, righting herself then opening her wings to control her descent, with a look of pure rage on her face, her already burning body burning even brighter. Although she’d likely never live it down, Penumbra smiled and laughed, before unfolding her own wings and gliding down safely to the ground.

With surprising grace considering her size, she landed, not so much as a sound coming from the landing, her wings carefully folding onto her back as she stood up straight, taking in the surroundings and the feeling of the grass at her feet. Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, practically slammed into the ground, then barrelled into Penumbra, sending the two of them tumbling to the ground.

Ablazed Glory’s usual candlelight mane had been transformed into a raging inferno, with her body looking far larger than it would usually be thanks to the flames covering it being twice as large. Her fury was both visible and feelable, the grass around them becoming blackened and scorched in seconds.

“Hey,” Penumbra said, recoiling slightly from the intense heat, “I got you down, didn’t I?”

“You nearly got me into a pile of mush,” Ablazed Glory growled, jets of flame shooting out of her nose and baring her teeth at the end of every word.

With a laugh, Penumbra hauled her smaller companion off. “But, I didn’t,” she said, a statement that elicited an eye-roll and a chuckle from the suddenly calmer alicorn, who, with a beat of her flaming wings, began to hover above the ground.

“And I’m not landing until I’m sure you won’t throw me off the next cliff,” she japed, “we’re supposed to be fixing stuff, not breaking me.”

“I’ll bear that in mind next time I see a drop.”