Salvation

by voroshilov

The Mists

The tower was immediately surrounded by a scattering of smaller buildings, apparently an abandoned settlement of some kind, constructed of the same marble as the tower though with a greater emphasis on the overall decor. Large, stained glass windows adorned their faces, with purple geodes arranged almost like hedges around them. Each one had, however, been empty of anything useful. They had contained one or two pieces of elaborate decoration, such as a crystalline ball surrounded by two rings of similar material that filled an entire building, though these, apparently, did nothing - not anymore, at least. Even though they had not contained what the two were searching for, they were certainly still nice to look at.

Their search forced them down a slope of rock and sand that ringed the edge of the grassy island, onto what was apparently a dried up sea bed, or at the very least looked like one. As both had suspected, their cursory combing of the beach yielded nothing once again, pushing them down to the gravelly bed.

When Penumbra took the first step down, however, she found her talons simply passed straight through the surface, causing her to immediately draw them back as her brain scrambled to figure out why such a thing had happened. It was then she realised that she wasn’t looking at the ground, rather a thin layer of light grey mist that seemed to stick just above it, with the actual surface invisible until the mist was wafted aside. The real bed was a slightly bumpy layer of grey stone, with a scattering of sand on top, which was perfectly safe to step on according to Penumbra’s test of standing on it and jumping up and down a few times.

She had gone a few metres out from the beach before Ablazed Glory called her from behind, “what are you planning to find out there?” She asked, with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice, “couldn’t even see the floor until a second ago.”

Penumbra turned to face her, instantly realising that her companion was correct and that if what she was looking for wasn’t in the buildings surrounding the main tower then it was unlikely to be hidden beneath the mist. She took a final look out at the expanse of mist that lay behind her - recognising that it would take her in the realm of months to search all of it and that it was unlikely she would find anything anyway - before trotting back up the beach and back towards the tower.

She had made it no more than a few steps up the sandy knoll when Ablazed Glory shouted in astonishment from behind her, “impossible. Look, over there!”

Penumbra couldn’t have jumped around faster, being immediately met by a grinning Ablazed Glory, pointing to the middle claw on her right talon, with no change whatsoever in the landscape behind her.

“That’s payback for throwing me off a building,” the burning alicorn laughed, whilst her companion metaphorically - as opposed to her own literal - fumed at the simple trickery.

The grassy island held little else than the buildings they had already searched; a small cave system ran below it, but was empty of anything interesting save a small divot in the dirt that appeared to have been dug by something; an opulently designed bridge led to another, smaller grass covered island, containing a large domed structure that contained only a series of marble bowls on plinths and a dark purple crystal orb, which seemed to have rolled from the centre of the room to rest on a semi-circular wall - evidenced by the large crack in the marble flooring. A precarious sneak around the side of the building, which Ablazed Glory nullified entirely by using her wings - a measure Penumbra had forgotten to take, further adding to her companion’s light hearted ridicule - led to what appeared to be a support pillar for another bridge, though the walkway was missing and what was once the bridge’s destination covered by a wall of mist, which rose sharply from the ground to cover up everything in that direction.

All that they could search had come up empty, with the tower itself providing no luck either, though only the lowermost floor was actually accessible due to an odd lack of staircase, or any other method of increasing altitude. After several hours of searching and coming up short, the two alicorns sat themselves down on the edge of the island, looking out over the mists, the vibrant lights of their home galaxy hanging above like a splattering of paint.

“It’s nice,” Ablazed Glory mused, “this place, I quite like it.”

Penumbra could only nod.

“Never thought I’d see something like this,” her companion continued, “see our whole galaxy from the outside. Somewhere in all those stars is home. Makes you think, doesn’t it, how small we really are. How small home really is. When I arrived in the Emperor’s Throne World for the first time I was amazed at the size of it. But, this?” She chuckled and shook her head. “Just makes you get all philosophical.”

“I remember what Equestria was like,” Penumbra said, staring almost blankly into the blob of visual noise that was the galactic centre, “we were so young back then, so innocent, naive, even. We thought we had harnessed all there was in space: the sun, the moon, the stars. Then, our illusion was broken in a second. I watched Equestria burn from the sky, we’d been like little children, imagining ourselves as some indestructible titans and believing there was no threat we couldn’t face. Then, a real titan arrived and our dream was gone, we were left to wander aimlessly in the real universe. I used to watch the stars from Equestria, I used to wonder if there was life amongst them, just like us. There was life, for sure, but it wasn’t naive or innocent like we were. I was worried what we’d find looking for Xayanth, I didn’t want to believe that Equestria wasn’t young, that we’d had our illusion of tranquility shattered sometime before. I’m almost glad there was nothing there, at least now we have an excuse for our naivety.”

There was silence for a few seconds, before Ablazed Glory spoke up, “you worry me sometimes, you know. Just, try not to think about it. Best advice a wrench monkey like me can give you.”

A pregnant pause followed, with the two watching over the slowly swirling mists. Penumbra, a master at spotting patterns, very quickly noticed one in the swirling about half a mile from the island’s beach, with the mist seeming to slightly sink and follow a trench of sorts. The alicorn flung herself up and down the incline with a single beat of her mighty wings, with Ablazed Glory scrambling behind her.

“What are you doing?” Her flaming companion yelled, catching up to the landed Penumbra only through use of her wings, “threw yourself off that cliff. What’s with you and throwing things off of other things today?”

“Look.” Penumbra pointed ahead with her horn, to a slight dip in the layer of mist. “I think there’s a trench in the ground there.”

Ablazed Glory shook her head. “So? It’s probably just another hole, or are you planning on practising your sky-diving in it?”

Penumbra ignored her companion’s doubts, knowing fully well that she would follow her anyway. Upon reaching the trench and clearing the layer of mist over it with a telekinetic blast, her suspicions were partially confirmed: it was a track, probably. The trench was around three metres deep, deep enough for Ablazed Glory to jump into and not be able to see over the edge, but extending a good hundred metres wide, leading in a lazy snaking pattern towards a large, rocky formation in the distance.

“I think these are tracks,” she said to her companion, who had jumped into the trench and was unable to see over the edge, “and I think they lead over there.” She pointed towards the distant formation with a claw.

Ablazed Glory, her heat keeping back the mist around her, blinked. “What could make tracks this big?” She asked, a slight tinge of worry creeping into her voice at the end.

Penumbra simply shrugged, “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, “maybe it was a road once? Whatever it was, I think we have a good chance of finding what we’re looking for wherever this leads to.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“It’s the last place we’ve looked. Now, come on, let’s get walking.”

Ablazed Glory gave an embellished sigh and sagged her shoulders, before cantering forwards once she realised her companion had already started her march along the side of the track - she would rather happily admit she would rather not be left in the massive snaking track in the mist sea, thank you very much. Her fire cut a vaguely bubble shaped gap through the mist, which rapidly closed behind her, allowing Penumbra to see her and for Ablazed Glory herself to not be smothered by the vapour.

The rock formation was far further away than originally anticipated, with Penumbra only realising such after a good ten minutes of walking, with the formation getting larger and larger yet not seeming to come any closer. Ablazed Glory, naturally, was first to comment on such, “it’s massive,” she said, “what the hell kind of thing could live here? You could put all of New Horizons in there and still have enough room for a Dominion fleet.”

“I think it’s a mountain,” Penumbra said, in a response apparently to her own mind rather than any verbal question, “maybe there’s something beyond it?”

“Could put a planet beyond it and you wouldn’t be able to see it from here,” Ablazed Glory muttered, “probably is one, knowing my luck. Oh yeah, a whole planet of little sandy nooks to search for - what are we even searching for?”

As the formation loomed larger and larger, the track began to widen and deepen, where once Ablazed Glory could have jumped to see over the edge, she now could not, gradually descending down a steepening and widening ramp until she took flight and hovered above it, with Penumbra joining her soon after.

“I was concerned before,” Ablazed Glory said, scanning their approach intently, “now I’m worried, what could have made this?”

The formation was kilometres tall, at least, but was only a few dozen metres thick at its edge closest to the approach of the two alicorns, who rounded it quickly to reveal what couldn’t have been anything else but their target: a cave so large that everything just beyond its mouth was in near total darkness, mist pouring from it, the formation behind it extending for miles.

Slowly, the pair descended, trying to locate the bottom of the track, which they quickly found. Whilst the track had widened significantly again, it was barely two metres deep at that point, increasing very slowly as it approached the cave’s entrance. They proceeded slowly, half concerned as to what lay within and half in awe at the sheer size of what they were facing, the cave’s mouth alone must have been hundreds of metres tall, with the mountain above it extending for thousands more.

Ablazed Glory’s little pocket of open air became smaller and smaller in comparison to the cave, until it almost vanished entirely as they reached the waterfall-like wall of flowing mist that came from within. The two stood at the opening for a few seconds, both silently considering whether investigating further was a smart move, until, eventually, Penumbra shot a ball of light within, illuminating the entire cave in a flash before slowly fading away.

A single eye, three metres or so in diameter, surrounded by pulsing, sickly green and grey flesh, veins bulging and looking fit to burst, sclera a dull yellow and iris glowing a deep red, opened at the flash, its pupil widening suddenly.

“Shit.”