Sun & Moon Act II: A Crown Divided

by cursedchords

Chapter 12: A Fine Day for a Thunderstorm

“Maybe it is all the same magic on some level, but even so the ways of the Pegasi are as indecipherable to me as these words would be to a pig.”

- King Solaris VII

Luna took a look over Swift’s calculations again, the shadow of her head dancing across the chalkboard as the flames on the hearth flickered.

“This evaporation coefficient seems optimistic,” she said finally, indicating one particularly complicated squiggle of chalk. “Perhaps we can try running this again with a margin for error and see if it still comes out looking good.”

Swift looked a little chagrined, but he settled back down to his desk quickly, and got right back into the calculations with his slide rule.

The two of them were back up in the Academy Tower, going over the agent’s theories concerning how a group of pegasi working together might be able to get a snowstorm going. If everything worked out to plan, they could try it this afternoon. It was far too hot in Canterlot for any snow to fall, but Luna was sure that her sister would appreciate any kind of precipitation at this point.

She went back to studying the model on the chalkboard. In theory, the process of starting up a weather system was pretty straightforward. Weather was really just the movement of air after all, and pegasi could achieve that with relative simplicity. When an air mass was already properly in motion most pegasi had an innate sense of how to make it grow, pare it down, or direct it to a particular location. It was rather like how a baker instinctively knew how to knead his dough in order to end up with the perfect strawberry tarts. The problem was the starting point. Swift’s model approached the situation from the logical perspective, where a coordinated group of pegasi started the convection flow using simple guided currents. It was all very basic stuff, but Luna had already thought of it all before, and it hadn’t worked when she had tried it. Even so, another shot was almost certainly worth it.

“Try this,” Swift said, coming up from behind her with a fresh sheet of parchment, now covered in ink marks where he had made his calculations. With one look, Luna grabbed a piece of chalk and began modifying the model on the board appropriately. There was no mention in any of the histories of pegasi using math to sort out their methods, but it had been Swift’s idea to try formalizing what up to then had been only guesswork. While it hadn’t led to any concrete successes, somehow the model gave Luna at least a sense that a sort of progress was being made.

“There!” Swift said as she made the final adjustment. “Still perfectly reasonable, if a little bit more intensive. We can pull in the second class as well, and then we’ll have more than enough pegasi, just to be on the safe side.” He had a beaming smile on his face. “Your Highness, I think that we might just have cracked it.”

“Leave the congratulations for the rainbow, Swift,” she answered warily, though not without a note of pride. “Every additional pegasus that we have to bring in is another layer of complexity. Without proper coordination, a plan like this can easily go awry, especially at this scale. We might want to practice a bit more before we go for the whole thing.”

“I can take care of the coordination,” Swift answered, trotting back to his desk to begin sketching out operational designs. “The models predict a windy period moving in, which means that it will only be a couple of days before we’re all occupied trying to keep Canterlot nice and cool. And by the sounds of things, your sister needs enough help with that as it is.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Yet even so, looking at Swift hunched over his desk, Luna couldn’t help but feel concerned.

“You’ve been working at this for days now, Swift. Maybe you should take a break while the rest of us do the experiment.”

Swift’s quill snapped off as he finished up another line of text. “Don’t worry about me, Your Highness,” he said, confident still. “We’re all stretched a little thin, but that’s because we believe in this project. Besides, this isn’t going to be easy, and I’m one of the best you’ve got. I’m not sitting this one out for anything.”

Luna knew all too well the gleam of fire in his eyes. Swift had been one of her first graduates, and indeed had been with her through a lot.

“True enough, guardspony. Just make sure that you’re careful out there. What’s most important is that all of us make it back to the base in one piece.”

“Understood, Your Highness,” Swift acknowledged, having already made up four separate sheets of operational briefs, one for each of the major companies that would be involved in the experiment. One each would be led by herself and Swift, respectively, with two of the other class leaders heading up the other companies.

“I’ll get these distributed right away, and we can have a meeting about it over lunch. Come the afternoon, we’ll be ready to get started.” He waited until Luna had given him the nod of dismissal, before darting out the curtain and into the frigid winds outside, only pausing for a moment to grab a scarf and hat from the rack.

Watching him, Luna could almost believe that today luck was going to be on their side. But something about this whole enterprise still felt wrong to her. The main reason why there was so little written down about how pegasus magic worked was because it wasn’t a mathematical discipline. Entire libraries had been compiled concerning the intricacies of unicorn magic, but for centuries pegasi had been less concerned with the details and more concerned with getting out into the air and letting their powers flow. Part of that was probably just a question of personality, but if there was anything that Luna knew about pegasus magic, it was that there was a degree of emotion to it. Pegasus magic wasn’t something that you willed into being, it was something that you felt, just on the edge of your awareness. You caressed it gently, and let it guide you onward to the goal that you wished for.

There wasn’t anything wrong with any of the marks on the chalkboard, of that Luna was certain. From a theoretical perspective, the result should inevitably be a strong convection current and a nice, gentle summer shower to go with it. But somehow she just knew that there was something they were missing.

---

The Academy had its own covered reservoir up in the mountains, kept secret in a valley where it was warm enough to stop the water from freezing. For most of the time, the surface of the lake was protected by large white tarpaulins that hopefully kept as much of the Sun’s warmth off of the water as they could. Anything lost to evaporation couldn’t really be replenished after all. The existence of the lake was kept as a secret since it was imperative that it be available for weather tests much like this one.

In all, the experiment called for no fewer than fifty pegasi, and this time they had sixty, just to be on the safe side, split up into teams of fifteen. Forming and maintaining the convection current was the biggest concern, calling for three of the teams’ full efforts. The other fifteen would pitch in where necessary and hopefully keep a handle on the resulting clouds, when and if they managed to create any.

Luna was the head of that last team, which meant that she had oversight over the whole project and right now she was perched over top of the mountains overlooking the lake. Swift’s crew was handling the upper level circulation which meant that he was situated right across the valley from her, at the head of a column of students of his own.

It was in situations like these that Luna was very thankful for her sister’s voice amplification spell, though the valley’s acoustics also helped. Everypony had already been briefed on the specifics of what was about to occur, but it still paid to make sure.

“You all have your assignments,” she began, her voice echoing through the valley and coming back to her own ears after a second. “What I want to do is make sure that nopony here thinks of the implications or possible consequences of anything that we are about to do today. This is possibly a momentous occasion, certainly. But what we are doing will be difficult enough without any distractions to cloud your judgment. In order to do this, we’re going to need perfect timing and coordination. Naturally, all of you have been chosen today because you are the best that the Academy has. No matter what happens today, nothing is going to change about that.

“That being said, we should be careful not to take any of this lightly. I expect concentration and coordination from all of you, just as you would give for any other task.” From her post, Luna could make out all of the other pegasi arrayed in their formations over the lake. She dropped her chin down square and determined to reassure them. “Let us begin.”

The first step was straightforward. Flight A had to create an updraft, a column of rising, moist air. Normally, it would have to be warm for a real evaporative cycle to start, but a skilled pegasus could make it work even in chilly conditions like these. Flight A was so well practiced they could have done it with their hooves tied, and soon enough Luna could feel the moisture coming up off of the surface in the water change the feeling of the atmosphere around her.

The next step was cloud organization for Flight B. The rising water naturally condensed as soon as it got to the colder air above, and it was their job to organize the resulting clouds into a steadily building thunderhead.

Now, both of those two steps were relatively simple; indeed the theory required to accomplish them had already mostly been known when Luna had started working on the weather file. A storm was easily created in such a manner, enough to dump plenty of rain on the local area. The issue was that such a storm would do little to solve the issues currently facing Equestria. In order to alleviate the drought, they needed to be able to transport the system to where the rain was needed, and quick clouds like these weren’t stable enough to make the journey. That was where Swift and Flight C took over. Their job was to create a spiraling flow of air around the core of the storm that Flight B was building, and along the way, manage all of the smaller currents required to make the storm self-sustaining.

Luna basically already knew that her group was to be needed here, and as the clouds began to form and Swift gave his signal, she steeled herself for jumping in. Establishing the circulation was the most complicated and dangerous part of the process, and skilled though Swift’s team were, nopony had been able to make it work yet, and that was counting Luna herself. Yet, hopefully that wouldn’t be the case this time.

Flight C was arranged in a circle ringing the core of the updraft, and at the signal they each began their own circle. Slowly at first they moved, keeping their distance precisely and watching each other in the hopes of compensating for any mistakes.

At first it seemed to be going well, the first few clouds being fed into the cyclone at about Luna’s eye level. Swift and his flight were circling the column, and Luna flew up to level with them, watching out for perturbations in the airflow. They were professionals of course, but all that it would take was one little slip to destabilize the cyclone, and with the updraft and the shear winds coming across—

An unexpected gust of wind caught her from behind, reflected off of the face of the mountain, and as she righted herself, Luna did the math in her head to understand where in the spiral the error must have occurred. She and Swift had dissected this whole area, breaking it all down into angles and reliefs, and so she quickly knew that the rogue wind must have come from the far side of the valley.

Luna left the rest of her Flight to deal with issues as they presented, and flew over that way herself, taking the top route over the cyclone. It was intensifying as the circulation developed, rising high into the atmosphere now, and Luna couldn’t even fly completely over it. Cutting through the core was unnerving, as the air around her noticeably warmed within the clouds, but on the other side she found Swift already doing his best to recover.

“I’ve got things covered, Your Highness!” he called out as he made his way back into the line.

Unconvinced, Luna opted to join up with him anyway. It was uncharacteristic for him to be the first to fall out of line, and it was possible that she could help him out if he faltered again.

“Are you sure that you’re alright?” she shouted back as she fell in line right behind him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered. “This time it has to work, if we want there to be any hope for this year’s harvest. I’ve got this part of the storm covered. You need to be elsewhere.” Around them, the building thunderhead crackled menacingly, sheets of lightning racing through it every so often as the winds grew. It was getting close, but the last part was always the hardest.

“There’s no time to reposition now,” she said, though she could only hope that Swift had heard her, the winds howling so strongly that she was sure they would swallow up her words and splatter them soundlessly against the walls of the valley. She thought of reprimanding him further, but Swift really was right after all. There wasn’t any going back now, and if this time there was any chance of the experiment working, then it was a chance that they were going to have to take.

“We need to think about sealing off this circulation!”

Swift shook his head. Every signal that they sent each other had to be exaggerated so that they would know the other had been able to discern it.

“We don’t have enough energy yet! If we try to close off the circulation now, the core will collapse back into the lake!”

Luna had more to give, so she beat her wings even harder to put more power into the storm. The signal to increase the cadence passed around the spiral in both directions, quickly for a good reason. If anypony fell behind now, it would imbalance the whole structure. The whole roof of the valley now was crowded with dark storm clouds, which made visibility a lot harder to find. Luna could barely spy Swift in her front view, and looking back she could just make out the pony behind.

Naturally, they had planned for this as a way to ensure that the Flight stayed in contact even in the thick of the storm. However, despite this precaution it was hard not to be disturbed in the midst of the tempest of icy winds, swirling downdrafts, and dense clouds.

The other thing that the storm enveloping Flight C meant was that the other two Flights would be breaking off soon, shutting off their assisted inflows in the hopes that the storm would sustain itself now that it had been properly built. Luna could feel it when it happened, like a slow tapering of one of the crosswinds coming at her tail.

It would be hard to say that there was a tense silence in the midst of the maelstrom, but even so Luna was mentally holding her breath as she waited to see what would happen. Her body was still doing its utmost to help the circulation, but she wasn’t thinking about that right now. The cyclonic pull of the storm had to sustain itself. It just had to. Sadly, despite her desire Luna felt it falling away, slowly, not gone yet, but just dropping a little, and she went on hoping that this time it would work.

“NO!” Swift’s agonized cry came to her from the front, and her view of him vanished. It looked perhaps like he had cut to the inside, in the hope of increasing his effective wingpower by decreasing the radius of his arc. Falling out of line would destabilize the current, but even so Luna wasted no time in diving in after him.

The cyclonic air current helped to guide her through the storm, so long as she kept in mind that the center would be off to her left. At this speed, losing one’s orientation could be worse than just falling out of order, as the unforgiving face of a cliff wall could rear itself up suddenly out of the clouds.

Luna felt the roots of her mane grow rigid as a pool of static electricity built itself up above her. With nary a moment to think, she nimbly dodged away just as a bolt of lightning sliced through the clouds around her.

Finding Swift could have been all but impossible in the midst of the clouds, so Luna thanked her stars when she emerged through a dense dome of clouds to finally see him again, straining against the winds, hoping to hold up the storm’s flow. It was still there to be felt, in fact it was somewhat stronger now that they had worked their way into the storm’s center.

“Swift!” she cried out, and was relieved to see him turn his head back and acknowledge her. “We’re done! We’ve done everything that we can now. Staying is just taking too much of a risk.”

“We’re right on the cusp!” he shouted back, his mane streaming out behind him on an odd angle as the swirling winds took hold of it. “I have to hold it together for just a little bit longer. Think about it, Princess! Think about the lives that we’ll save if we make this work! We have to do everything that we can.”

With renewed fire, he turned himself back into the wind, giving it his all, but Luna could see that it wasn’t going to be enough. She was exhausted from the work of keeping the storm together, so it was probably even worse for him.

Coming in behind him, Luna felt that hair-standing-up sensation again. “Lightning!” she called, dodging out of the way with a quick roll again.

But Swift wasn’t so quick. The bolt took him in the left shoulder, spinning him around like a top. “Aaughh!” he cried, doing his best to get himself back into line.

Each flap of his wings was weaker than the last though, and before her eyes Luna saw him fall, just at the moment when she felt the circulation stop entirely. The storm was going to fail, and Swift surely would be saddened by that afterward. Now she needed to make sure that he survived to figure out what had gone wrong. Without hesitation, Luna dove after him.

Up above her, Luna heard the whisper of the storm’s core collapsing, and the ripple out through the cloud layer as the collected moisture of the lake fell freely back down along with her. Luna had to dodge around remnants of ice in the air that had only started to fall, but for the most part it was her racing against the rain, down through the sky as fast as she could muster herself to travel.

In seconds, she had broken out of the underside of the storm, and the valley was revealed again, all of the rocks now lashed by rain, and a few scorched by stray strokes of lightning. The rest of the pegasi had all pulled back out of sight, probably up to the peaks of the nearby mountains. They would be able to see her as the clouds dissipated, but none of them would be able to make it down to help in time.

Swift was up ahead, free-falling, tumbling through the air with the lake mere seconds away. He was still conscious, as Luna could tell from the look in his eyes whenever she caught sight of them, but clearly he didn’t even have the energy to right himself, let alone pull out of the dive.

Luna pulled back her wings, extending a hoof out in front of her to cut the wind. If she had looked off to her side, she would have seen that she'd drawn level with the raindrops that were falling around her, and even outpaced them just a little. But she only had eyes for her guard. She was gaining on him, but would she have enough time? Not only to grab ahold of him, but also to pull out of the dive without crashing into either the surface of the lake or the sides of the valley.

Each second came and went like a minute as she reached forward, closing the distance heartbeat by heartbeat. Twenty feet, ten, five. Then she was finally able to get her legs around his midsection. She caught a hint of a smile on Swift’s face, and it looked like perhaps he wanted to say something, but there was no time for that now. Luna stretched her wings forward, and extended them out in an attempt to grab the wind.

The sudden deceleration felt like it would rip them off of her back, and Luna knew that she would have to stretch them out for a week in order to not be sore whenever she flew, but the two of them had just enough space to curve out of their dive. Swift’s ears dragged in the water as they zoomed over the edge of the lake, throwing up twin sprays of foam that felt like icy needles wherever they hit her. But then they were away, level again.

Finally out of danger, Luna flew over to the edge of the lake and set him down, as all around them the torrent of rain that had been raised from the lake kept crashing down.

Luna looked up and saw the Sun, peeking its way through the clouds overhead, as the last of the storm washed itself out. This water wouldn’t be making it out of the mountains, not unless they carried it in buckets. Briefly she considered the possibility, but even with everypony in Equestria helping, there wouldn’t have been enough time. Besides, right now, she had Swift to take care of. That lightning had caught him in the left shoulder, so there was no telling how much damage it had done. She knelt down next to him and felt for a pulse, and there was one, fast, but still fine.

In front of her, Swift cracked open one of his eyes. “I’m… I’m sorry, Princess,” he croaked, taking a deep breath after each word. “We couldn’t finish the job.”

Luna bent down over him. “You’d better be sorry, Swift. You dropped out of line at the most crucial moment in the exercise. You took an insane risk, and if I hadn’t been around to save you, you wouldn’t be alive right now.”

Embarrassed and humbled, Swift bowed his head on hearing that, but then she gave him a warmer smile. “This country needs you, Swift, as do I. There’s no way we would have gotten as close as we have without you.”

Swift returned the smile, and then he winced, gritting his teeth before his head fell back against the rock underneath. Not dead, of course, merely unconscious, probably from the pain in his shoulder. He was going to need recuperation at the Academy for days before he was able to fly again, and naturally Luna was going to keep him out of the unit for even longer, lest he ever think that he could get away with such a ridiculous stunt again.

The breaking of the clouds overhead was accompanied by a rustle of feathers from right beside her. Looking up, Luna saw Fit and Flick, the leaders of Flights A and B, with the rest of their flights hovering nearby up above.

“That was incredible, Princess,” Fit started, gasping as if she still couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed. “We saw it all from the top of the gorge. Did you manage to save him?”

Luna nodded solemnly. “Swift will be alright. Alas, his recklessness is something that I could never save him from. Did everypony else make it out okay?”

“We checked,” Flick replied. “All of us broke off as soon as the circle was complete, with C and D following shortly afterward. It was only you and Swift who were unaccounted for. We were all watching for you, but we didn’t see that Swift had fallen until it was too late.” Her head dipped, embarrassed.

“You all did fine,” Luna said, making sure that everypony above her heard it as well. “We might not have finished up a storm today, but we were closer than we ever have been before. Some day, perhaps even next time, we’ll get it. Now, somepony get Swift back up to the Academy. He’s going to need a few days of rest before I ever let him fly again.”

Fit and Flick both snapped off quick salutes as they directed their Flights in to collect Swift, and then organized themselves into columns for the flight back to base. For Luna’s part, she almost felt as though she would fall asleep right where she was standing if she allowed herself to, but determinedly she hoisted herself into the air too. Swift may have believed that without this storm Equestria’s fate was sealed, but for her it only meant that they would have to try even harder the next time.