The Gilderoy Expedition

by PaulAsaran

Cptn. D. Design, 01-21-1005, IV

From the private logbook of Decadent Design, Captain HRH Aurora Dawn.

I regret to report that search efforts have been suspended for the evening. Seven squadrons of pegasi scoured the landscape for no less than eight dragging, weary hours. There has yet to be any sign of the Gilderoy Expedition. The land area covered is far greater than we expected would be necessary. My staff and I can only presume that Gilderoy never reached the coordinates that he claimed to be seeking as instructed by the university. If he had there would have been some evidence; tents, the sleds, equipment, bodies, something! It is possible he was driven off-course, or was deceptive about his intentions for being out on this vast glacier. The intel certainly paints him as paranoid enough for the latter! The thought which grants us the greatest alarm is the possibility he never made it out of that Tirek-awful storm. Might we have passed him in the morning, our keel floating right over their poor endangered heads?

There is nothing for it now. It has grown too dark for either our pegasi or our deck crew to see much on the ice, and to continue searching in such conditions runs too great a risk of passing by the expedition in the night. We have set up anchoring bolts in the ice to hold this position and will resume in the morning.

I am beginning to understand, at least emotionally, what my great uncle was referring to when he wrote about this place. It perplexes me to no end, but I swear I have this ceaseless feeling of being watched. Even when alone and in the tight confines of the lower decks. It is a queer sensation at best. The most peculiar part is that I can sense, distinctly, a direction for this ghostly apparition of a feeling: down. It is almost as though the Matti Ths Aioniotitas itself is observing me right through the ship’s mighty oaken timbers.

I did not wish to mention it to the other officers or any crewponies, and tried to maintain a jovial, upbeat attitude during the evening’s dinner with some of the staff. Once dinner was finished and the others had retired, either for the evening or to their posts, I was surprised to find that one stayed behind. It was Rusty Iron, and he seemed out of sorts. He is usually quite the bore, his idea of good dialogue being to boast about his family’s wealth, his family’s pedigree, his family’s ten mansions (“regrettably” only three after the Empire’s return), and so on. I only invite him to most of the dinners because his hereditary boasting is not without the backing of reality, and a stallion in my position would do well not to offend the bloviating self-advertisement.

But tonight he was perturbed, and notably silent throughout the meal. When he remained behind, I knew he had something he felt important to speak of in private, but he was uncharacteristically hesitant. I humored him and, I must admit, felt some genuine concern. As tiresome as he is, Rusty Iron is still a member of my crew, and his knowledge of the very laws of thermodynamics and thaumaturgy that keep the Aurora Dawn afloat in this bitter cold is of singular importance. I reassured the stallion that, as his captain, he could be certain of my complete confidence, and plied him a little with some pours of brandy that, speaking strictly in terms of regulations, I was not meant to possess during the course of our mission. I jokingly insisted upon his secrecy. There, were we not even? Surely he could share in this thing which troubled him so.

And share he did, though now I wish he had not. It appears that I am not alone in my mental ordeal, for Rusty admitted most dramatically to encountering the same sense of eavesdropping from some unknowable “below”. But where for me this was merely an uncomfortable sensation surely caused by some temporary malady of my mental constitution, he believed the whole thing to be a foreboding premonition. For the expedition. For the Aurora Dawn. Perhaps, even, for the whole world. I pressed him further, hoping to ascertain the cause of these fears. He offered them, though only reluctantly, and he refused any further brandy for fear that the spirits would rob him of his faculties at a time when his very life might depend upon them. Rusty Iron confided in me that his late parents had both been well-known historians back in the Empire’s time. Shortly after his birth they became obsessed with studies of the occult and conspiracy theories involving ancient, long-dead civilizations.

Equestrians such as Ms. Coxswain and Mr. First Star have their own concepts of that term, “occult”. When they hear it, they think of Nightmare Moon followers or perhaps some zebra practicing strange but altogether benign magics that are purely products of an unfamiliar culture. They were not alive in the dark days before Celestia’s more than a thousand years of rule truly united the lands in harmony and peace. In those days, “occult” did not mean a few voodoo masks or lower class mages in overt clubs communing together over the wrongs of modern society.

There was a time when occultism was far more ruinous a pastime, when ponies examined things not to be comprehended by such limited minds. I confess I never witnessed any such things myself, so I could not go into detail even had I the desire to do so. Still I remember the whispers, the court cases, and the rumors of forbidden texts.

Rusty Iron knew of the latter with great intimacy, for his parents were among those who believed and sought out such unpleasant things. His mother, he claims, died of what medical practitioners of the time claimed had been a stroke, despite only being in her lower thirties. Rusty did not believe such tales, not for an instant, for he recalled the dark leather-bound book his mother had been reading from and the odiferous concoctions she crafted and drank using instructions buried within its many indecipherable pages. His father, on the other hoof, was deemed insane and incarcerated for his own safety shortly before Rusty came of age, only to escape when the black tyrant rose to prominence, joining that foul soul in his subjugation of our crystalline race. His body was found after the Empire’s return, presumably collateral damage in the original battle between the wicked one and the Royal Sisters, although Rusty refuses to rule out the possibility that his blasphemous father may have attempted to directly interfere in that great conflict.

None of these things I knew about my aristocratic companion, and they afforded me a certain pity and perhaps even respect for the stallion. Yes, Rusty Iron has his many faults, but who would not after coming from such a deranged familial legacy? Though I am no psychologist, I suspect that a great deal of his boasting is aimed towards blotting out the black mark his parents set upon said legacy. That he has thus far succeeded in life, both in his mental faculties and his career, in spite of that hideous history says much about his strength as an equine and does warrant praise.

Still, while I entertained his ravings, I never really bought into this occult nonsense. Oh, I believe in the occult, as surely as does any well-learned crystal pony, and let the Equestrians laugh. But to think that any of it has anything to do with this mission, in this ice-covered nowhere, is all a touch humorous. I do not deny these queer feelings of being watched, just as I do not doubt that if I can feel it then so too may others. But it is only nerves, brought on by a stressful voyage aboard an untested vessel. After all, is not the glacier we now float above referred to as the “Eye of Eternity”? Our imaginations are running away with us, little more.

I reassured Rusty that he may take all proper precautions to protect his person against occult dangers, provided they not interfere with the ship and his duties as an officer of Her Highness’s Royal Air Navy. This seemed to assuage him, and I was able to send him off to his bunk for the night in, if not high spirits, at least a calmer state than he had possessed at the start of our talk. I did not have the heart to tell him that I had not the faintest inkling what might constitute a “proper precaution” against the occult. Given his family history, he would have a far better comprehension of such things than I. But if it eases him and permits him to perform his duties adequately, I see no harm in the promise.

I think I shall have one more glass before lights out. All this occult talk has done my anxieties no favors.

Comments

[Lurks-no-More]

Ooh, ominous. Rusty Iron has hidden depths, just as I think the glacier may have...