Sohndar

by CTVulpin

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Original Character, Starswirl the Bearded, Adventure, Crossover
Length: 48234

The Sequel to Aitran. Myst/Riven cross-over

Twilight and Rainbow are asked by Star Swirl the Bearded to take on the challenge of finding his lost wife and daughter in the decaying world of Sohndar, which is ruled by an old enemy of Star Swirl's family who has been trapped there for uncounted years. Although their adventures in the worlds of Aitran have given our heroes the confidence to succeed, they'll soon find that Sohndar is an entirely different bale of hay.

Image by Muffinsforever

Published 2012-03-06 11:54:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-01-06 20:21:18 UTC

Chapter 1

Books and Branches Library, Ponyville

“Is it time yet?”

Twilight Sparkle looked up at the clock, watching the second hand approach the twelve o’clock position in perfectly timed increments. “Almost,” she said as she took up her position by the window. Spike stood by the main entrance to the library, hand poised to unlock the door at the unicorn’s signal. They weren’t normally so concerned about opening the library on time, but today was the day of the new book delivery and the librarians wanted to be ready the moment Derpy arrived with the box. The grey pegasus had impacted the door once when Twilight had been a little late in unlocking it, and the poor thing was dizzy enough as it was normally without repeated head trauma like that. Twilight gripped the “Open” sign in her mouth in preparation for hanging it in… t-minus ten seconds, and then glanced outside and dropped it. “Spike,” she said warningly, “you might want to move so you’re not behind the door when you unlock it.”

“Why?” the baby dragon asked, “is Derpy coming in too fast?”

“She's coming fast,” Twilight said, “but it’s not Derpy.” Spike shifted to the side as Twilight shot one last look at the clock, and then out the window, and called, “Go!” She lifted and hung the sign with her magic as Spike undid the lock just in time for the door to be flung open to admit a cyan blur with a rainbow highlight. It came to a sudden stop just short of the table in the middle of the room and, once the dust settled, became recognizable as Rainbow Dash.

“Is it here yet?” she asked bouncing slightly as she grinned hopefully at Twilight.

The lavender unicorn had a pretty good idea about what her friend meant, but she decided to ask anyway, “Is what here yet?”

“What do you think?” Rainbow retorted, “What could possibly have me rushing over here, on purpose, on new book day? It is new book day, right?”

“It is,” Twilight said, glancing out the window as she smiled, “but you beat the delivery by a good margin.”

“Oh,” Rainbow said with a sheepish smile, “I… guess I’m just that good then, aren’t I?”

“Whatever,” Spike said, rolling his eyes. He started to walk away from the door, only to be bowled over by a box as big as he was that came swooping in for a stop in the grip of a grey-coated pegasus with off-kilter yellow eyes.

“Special derp-livery,” the unflappable Derpy said as she set the box down and landed on top of it. Seemingly oblivious to Spike, who was rubbing his head and glaring as Twilight helped him to his feet, she gave Rainbow a bright smile and a wave. “Good morning Rainbow Dash!” she said.

“Hello Derpy,” Rainbow replied automatically. Derpy’s smile somehow got bigger and she gave Twilight a nod before hopping off the box and leaving. “I’m never sure where that pony’s mind is,” the cyan pegasus said as Twilight closed the door, “Or what she’s looking at.”

“Definitely not where she’s going,” Spike muttered darkly, still rubbing his head as he headed toward the kitchen, “I think I need an ice pack Twi. Be back in a second.”

“Go ahead and take a break Spike,” Twilight said with concern, “I can sort these books out on my own.” She picked the box up in the magic and carried it toward the back of the room, noting with amusement that Rainbow had moved quickly to look over her shoulder. “Patience Rainbow Dash,” she chided gently, opening the box, “I’m sure it’s in here. You’ll just have to wait for me to get it out.” She carefully removed the tape holding the box closed, opened it up, and lifted out a book. “Devilish Delights,” she read, “A guide to maximizing your per-bite chocolate intake. Pinkie Pie would probably enjoy this.” She it aside and pulled out the next book. “Dashing Debonair Designs for Delightful Dressage Demonstrations. Sounds like something I should recommend to Rarity.” Another book floated out of the box. “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this one,” Twilight said.

“What?” Rainbow said, getting exasperated with the wait.

“The first authorized account of our battle with Discord,” Twilight explained, floating the book over to the uninterested pegasus, “written with comparisons to the old legends and myths regarding him.”

“Ok, kinda cool, but I don’t care,” Dash said, pushing the book aside.

“Ok, ok,” Twilight said with amusement as she sent the book toward a shelf and looked into the box again. “Ah, here we go,” she said, levitating out a mustard-colored book with a colorful and easily recognizable picture printed on the front, “Daring Do and the Huaca of Huetotl.”

“Awesome!” Rainbow declared, grabbing the book and hugging it to her chest, “I can’t wait to start reading.”

“Is that the new Daring Do book?” Spike said from the kitchen door. He was holding a small ice pack to the back of his head and he came over and gave Twilight a disappointed look. “I thought I was going to get the first shot at it,” he said.

“Sorry Spike,” Twilight said, showing the baby dragon a list she grabbed from the table, “but Rainbow put her name on the reservation list.”

“I know,” Spike said with a sigh, “I just wasn’t expecting her to get here so early.”

Rainbow laughed at Spike’s disgruntled look and took a seat on the stairs. “Sorry kid,” she said, “No pony and no dragon beats Rainbow Dash to her favorite books.”

“Just don’t spoil anyth- urp.” Spike’s cheeks bulged as he turned away and belched up a tongue of green fire that quickly transformed into a scroll. Twilight looked up from her sorting and was about to comment when Spike burped again and another, larger scroll materialized.

“Two letters? That’s unusual,” Twilight noted as Spike grabbed both and looked them over.

“This one says to read it first,” Spike said, setting the second scroll aside and unrolling the first. He cleared his throat and began reading in an officious manner, “Dear Twilight Sparkle, I am forwarding a letter meant for you and Rainbow Dash. Our mutual friend Star Swirl the Bearded,” Spike’s voice slowed down and he raised an eyebrow slightly as he read the name, “appeared in the throne room just minutes ago and requested that I send it. He said it was of the utmost importance that you respond quickly, and after reviewing his letter I must agree. Star Swirl has already returned to Aitran and awaits you there. Signed, Princess Celestia.”

“Star Swirl,” Twilight said quietly, picking up the second scroll in her magic.

“I’d almost forgotten about that guy,” Rainbow said, setting Daring Do aside and standing up, “How long ago did we stumble into Aitran? Three months?”

“More or less,” Twilight said, opening the letter, “I wonder how long it’s been for him? Well anyway, here’s what he wrote:”

My friends Twilight and Rainbow,

I write to you on a matter of great importance which I hope you will be willing and able to assist me with. You may recall that shortly after we met I determined that my wife and daughter were trapped in another world known as Sohndar. Since we parted ways I have devoted my time and effort to verifying this fact and attempting to stabilize the link to Sohndar. My greatest hope and fears have both been confirmed: Clover lives, but she is in the custody of the enemy she and I struggled to isolate in that world so long ago. I know not if Nyx is with her as well.

As I am asking for your help, I know you will want some more information about the situation, and by learning it you will be better able to make your decision. Sohndar is not a world I personally discovered, but it is one that I am quite familiar with. It was originally linked to by the one I have simply referred to as my enemy up to this point. His name is Aldro, a being who greatly resembles a race of cave-dwelling Equestrian creatures known as Canis Anancite.”

“Say what?” Rainbow asked, confused.

“Diamond Dog,” Twilight translated, quirking an eyebrow in surprise. She resumed reading while Rainbow muddled over that bit of info.

“We were not antagonists at first. We crossed paths early in my career as a traveler between worlds, and he helped me come to a better understanding of the basics behind Writing. Aldro claimed to be the survivor of a civilization that had raised World-Writing to an art form, only to collapse due to a sudden plague coupled with disaffected citizens undermining their culture. I don’t know how much of that tale is true, but if Aldro is an accurate representation of his species, it’s probably for the best that they have fallen. He firmly believes that by Writing the linking books, he and all others who possess the skill actually create the worlds the books link to. Such an attitude gives him something of a god complex in regards to the inhabitants of the places he’s discovered. He does not even deign to name “his” worlds; in his records, Sohndar is simply “The Fifth Age.” His skill in Writing is… debatable to put it mildly; every world he’s linked to in his life, or those I’ve seen at least, has some fundamental instability that his linking seems to aggravate, leading to their eventually collapse and death. Sohndar is probably the most stable of Aldro’s collection, but even it is breaking apart.

It’s also Clover’s home world. She and I met on my first visit to Sohndar, and I took her away at her request. We chose to trap Aldro there because we were sure that once we had destroyed all of the linking books in that world, he would not have the means to construct a new one from the local materials.

I’ll tell you more when you arrive. For now I must return to my writing.

I hope to see you both soon.

Star Swirl.

Twilight rolled the letter up and looked at Rainbow, head cocked to the side in inquiry.

“What does he need us for?” the pegasus asked, “It sounds to me like he’s got all the answers already.”

“We won’t know until we go,” Twilight said, setting the scroll down on the table and heading toward the stairs, “I get the feeling we might be gone for a little while though. I’m going to bring some stuff just in case. Would you mind telling the girls so they don’t worry?”

“Sure thing,” Rainbow said, unfurling her wings as she started toward the door. She paused after a few steps and looked back toward Twilight, asking, “If any of them want to come with us, what should we do?”

Twilight thought about it for a moment and then said, “I’d be quite happy to have anypony who wants join us. The more minds and viewpoints we have, the better, right?”

Princess Celestia’s Chambers, Canterlot

“Absolutely not,” Princess Celestia said, placing a hoof firmly on the copy of Aitran, “I am sorry Twilight, but I share your feeling that Star Swirl will be asking you and Rainbow Dash to enter this land of Sohndar. It is difficult enough to send you into a place beyond my ability to come to your aid; I will not risk losing all six of the Elements of Harmony in one fell swoop.”

“Aww,” Pinkie Pie said, sounding like she’d just been denied candy.

“I reckon you’re right Princess,” Applejack said, “but it don’t feel right not being able ta support them…”

“Ah, don’t worry AJ,” Rainbow said confidently, “Twilight and I handled everything Star Swirl’s books threw at us. I’m sure this’ll be a piece of cake.”

“Thank you all for volunteering to come with us,” Twilight said, smiling at her four other friends, “Especially you Fluttershy.” The yellow pegasus kicked at the floor meekly, and then surprised everypony by jumping forward and hugging Twilight.

“Just come back please,” she whispered, and then hugged Rainbow and said, “you too Rainbow Dash.”

“No worries ‘Shy,” the cyan pegasus said, patting Fluttershy’s back, “We’ll be back before you know it. Pinkie Pie Swear.” The eponymous pony gave Dash an expectant look. “Cross my heart and hope to fly,” Rainbow began to recite, making the motions.

“Stick a cupcake in my eye,” Twilight joined in, remembering to close her eye before poking it with her hoof.

Celestia allowed the six ponies another moment as they came together for one last group hug and then coughed clearly but politely for attention. “Are you ready, my little ponies?” she asked.

Twilight and Rainbow reluctantly separated from their friends and nodded as one. “Yes Princess,” Twilight said, “as ready as we’ll ever be.” Celestia nodded and lifted her hoof from the book, sliding it toward the waiting pair as she magicked it open to the final page, where the magical linking panel waited to transport any who touched it to the dock of Aitran Island.

Library, Aitran

In many ways, the most important building on the entirety of the small isolated island of Aitran was unchanged. It was still a cubical marble structure built in the Classical style slightly into the base of a steep mountain, the interior was still a single wood-paneled octagonal room, and the three-shelf bookcase and paintings were still in their places. In other ways, however, it was quite different. The bookcase was almost empty save for five books, the ashen remains of the former occupants having been cleaned out. Two alcoves on the north and south walls, which had once held the paper-and-ink prisons of Star Swirl’s rebellious apprentices Cirrus and Archeon, were also empty. In the center of the room stood an octagonal wooden pillar with a niche in one side holding the pearly-white linking book that led to the throne room of Canterlot Castle in Equestria. On top of the book sat a note written in Star Swirl’s script:

Friends, I am waiting for you in my private study. If you’ve forgotten the fireplace code, I’ve drawn it out for you on the back of this note. Theoretically, two ponies of your size could fit inside the fireplace at the same time, but if that doesn’t appeal to you, at least leave the green book somewhere easy to find that’s not on the floor.

“Go to it egghead,” Rainbow said, giving Twilight a nudge toward the green-brick fireplace, “I’ll be here.”

“I would hope so,” Twilight responded, taking the note in her magic and crawling into the fireplace. She activated the code panel, copied the pattern of squares from the note on to it, hit the switch and waited for the room to rotate, and then plucked the green book from its hidden shelf and spun the fireplace back around. She crawled out of the fireplace, walked over to the neighboring alcove, set the book in it, and then opened it to the final page as Rainbow came over to join her. “We’re here Star Swirl,” she announced to the grey-bearded unicorn visible through the panel before touching it and letting the book transport her. Rainbow was only a second behind her.

Star Swirl’s private study was an underground cavern, with the only entrances and exits being linking books. The ancient unicorn scholar himself was standing behind a desk on a raised portion of the floor, concentrating fully on writing in a thick tome. The quill paused as Star Swirl glanced up at the two mares, and then he looked back down, continuing to write as he spoke, “Thank you for coming my friends. As you may have surmised, the favor I must ask is that the two of you go into Sohndar, rescue Clover, and find out what you can about Nyx’s fate.”

“Why can’t you just go yourself?” Rainbow asked, suspicious.

“There are two reasons,” the old unicorn answered, “Aldro has undoubtedly kept Clover alive to lure me into going after her. He won’t be expecting other visitors. Secondly, I must stay here and try to keep Sohndar stable while you work. Here.” He horn flared a little brighter and a small book floated off the desk and toward Twilight. “This is a journal of my recent work; it should explain things a little better. Keep it safe. Also,” he looked up and pointed with a hoof to one side of the room, “I believe it would be best if you go in disguise.”

Twilight and Rainbow followed Star Swirl’s hoof and saw a pair of roughly woven brown hooded cloaks, designed to cover as much as possible without restricting movement. They went over to the cloaks and Twilight picked them up in her magic to get a better look. “Uh, Star Swirl,” Rainbow said, “neither of these have holes for my wings. How am I supposed to fly in this?”

“You’re not,” Star Swirl said simply, focused back on his book, “There are no pegasus ponies in Sohndar, only unicorns and terr- er, earth ponies. You must try to avoid drawing too much attention to yourselves; Aldro will not be kind if he learns of your intentions and manages to capture you.”

Rainbow glowered at the cloaks and said, “I’m having second thoughts about this. What good am I if I can’t fly? Twilight’s got all the smarts you’ll need.”

“I’m not going to do this alone Rainbow,” Twilight said, “You might notice things that I don’t, we can keep each other grounded, and… Er…” Rainbow glared at her and she blushed in embarrassment. “Sorry…”

“Well, I guess moral support’s a good enough reason,” Dash said resignedly, “Gimme the cloak.” Twilight settled the rough garment over her friend and then put her own on after removing her saddlebags, putting them back on over the cloak, and then the two walked back to Star Swirl’s desk, Rainbow’s wings twitching uncomfortably in their confinement.

“Thank you both,” the bearded unicorn said, glancing up briefly, “One last thing before I send you in.” His horn flared again and another book floated toward Twilight. “For reasons of safety, I can’t send you with a direct way back, but I can give you this: this is a trap book that appears to link to Aitran.”

“Hold on,” Twilight said, pushing her magic against the book to stop its movement, “how are we supposed to get back if we don’t have a working linking book? And why send us with a trapped book?”

“If Aldro discovers how you reached Sohndar, he’ll expect you to have a way out,” Star Swirl explained, “You’ll probably need to capture him in this book in order to reach Clover and escape safely anyway. In fact, I want you to trap him. After you’ve accomplished everything, find a way to signal me and I’ll come with a linking book.” He wrote a little bit more in the book, looked the page over, and then closed it, picked it up in his magic, and opened it to the first page, which had a linking panel on it. The image was fuzzy and jittery, preventing anyone from getting a clear view of what lay within.

“Are you sure it’s ok to use?” Twilight asked, looking askance at Star Swirl.

“The link is stable, I assure you,” Star Swirl said.

“Well, ok then…” Twilight put the trap book in her saddlebags and then hesitantly lifted a hoof and reached out to touch the unstable image. The world faded away around her and for a few tense seconds all she could see was black. Then the light returned, the floor sank slightly under her feet, and bars sprang up in front of her, trapping her within a round metal booth.

Chapter 2

Sohndar

This is a fantastic start, Twilight thought sarcastically, trapped before I’ve even taken a step. The mechanics of the cage she’d appeared in were simple enough to understand. The cage was a metal tube with a tall doorway, and the floor was obviously a pressure plate that triggered the bars to close. Through the bars Twilight could see a large lever in the ground a short distance away. She began to focus her magic on gripping and pulling the lever, but just as the magenta glow began to form around her horn, she received a sudden, painful reminder that she wasn’t the only pony who had agreed to go to Sohndar.

The cage was tall enough to hold two ponies, but just barely so and not wide enough to allow for much movement. Rainbow Dash’s materializing on top of Twilight left the pair in a cramped, tangled heap of lavender and cyan fur, legs, wings, and rough-spun cloth. “Agh,” Rainbow exclaimed, finding her head slightly squashed against the side of the cage, “What the hay is going on here?”

“We’re trapped,” Twilight said, trying to free a leg to brush Rainbow’s tail out of her face before settling for using magic, “I’d say Star Swirl was right about Aldro wanting to catch him.”

“Can you get us out of here?” Rainbow asked.

“Maybe,” Twilight grunted as the pegasus’s squirming resulted in some painful jabbing to the ribcage, “If you’d just hold still I can concentrate on-”

“Cad e seo? Ta an gaiste curtha i ngniomh?” A pony, a unicorn of indeterminate coloring due to the brownish reinforced barding, helmet, and boots that he wore, walked into Twilight’s line of sight. He looked at the caged ponies in shocked bemusement for a moment, and then shook his head quickly and started muttering to himself, trying to remember something. After a moment he started to speak clearly, haltingly at first but with increasing confidence and cheerfulness as he continued, “Ta tu tar eis teacht ... Aois an Cuigiu. Anois, an ... ar n-aionna ... Aldros cheannaire. Agus ta siad a thabhairt suas aon leabhair le liom! Thuiscint?” His pleased grin faded when he saw Twilight’s uncomprehending stare and the distrustful glare Rainbow was shooting him out of the corner of her eye. The strange pony looked around nervously and then approached the cage, fixing his gaze on Twilight’s saddlebag, which had come open, leaving the trap book exposed to sight. “Sin an leabhar. Ta me e, ceart go leor?” he said, his horn starting to glow white. Twilight’s eyes went wide as she saw the book start to float between the bars and grabbed it with her own magic. “Ni dheanfaidh aon. Direach an leabhar,” the guard said, pulling against the resistance, “Direach… an… leabhar!” He kicked at a bar near Twilight’s face, startling her and letting him take full possession of the book. He stepped away from the cage and started flipping through the book, casting what he probably though were reassuring smiles at the mares every now and then.

“Let us out of here!” Rainbow demanded. The guard ignored her and quickly reached the back page. He blinked in amazement at the linking panel and then started to reach a hoof up to touch it. All of a sudden, he flinched and arched his neck, as if he’d been bitten by something, before collapsing in a senseless heap, the book landing a short distance away. Too surprised at the turn of events, Twilight forgot to take another grab for the book, merely watching as something out of sight dragged the guard away to the right. Shortly, another pony, beige in coat with a dark mane and dressed in a black coat with a large red collar, trotted into view, looking around furtively. It was wearing a mask that had large bulbous lenses in the eye sockets and a long narrow tube jutting out from the mouth area, giving it a vaguely insectoid appearance. It spotted the book, leaned down to look at it, and then closed it and tossed it into a bag strapped to its side with an expert flick of a hoof.

“Um, excuse me?” Twilight called out, “That’s ours. Can we have it back?” The newcomer looked at her and Rainbow, and then went over to the lever. Lifting the mask from its face, the pony grasped the lever and pulled it back. The bars slowly began retracting into the ground and as they did so the strange pony pulled something out of its pack, pounded it into the lever mechanism, and then replaced its mask and ran off.

“Hey!” Rainbow cried out, struggling to free herself from the nearly-opened cage, “Get back here you thiieee!” She came loose and tumbled out onto the rocky ground, bringing Twilight out with her. After some fussing and kicking, the two mares untangled themselves from each other and their robes and got to their feet. Rainbow glared in the direction the masked pony had fled, but there was no sign of him. “What they hay was all that?” she exclaimed in frustration, “Where’d he go? And what kind of moon language was that first guy speaking?”

“Moon language?” Twilight asked flatly, giving her companion an askance glance. “To answer all three questions,” she said, growing serious, “I don’t know. I’m glad we’re not trapped anymore, but now we have a new priority, right below exploring and getting information. That second one’s not going to be easy if the locals don’t speak Equestrian…”

“No kidding,” Rainbow said, starting to wiggle her way out of her robe.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked chidingly.

“Getting rid of this thing,” the cyan pegasus said, her voice muffled slightly as her head disappeared inside the cloak, “Our cover’s basically been blown, hasn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” Twilight said, firmly gripping Rainbow’s cloak in her magic and pulling it back into place, “If I had to guess, which frankly is all I can do at the moment, I’d say that first pony was working for Aldro, and the second one represents some sort of opposing group. He did let us out of the cage after all.”

“Yeah, after stealing our book,” Rainbow pointed out, “If I flew, I might be able to catch up with him.”

“Perhaps,” Twilight admitted, “but, you saw that tube in the mask? Judging by how the guard just fell over, I’d wager that was a blow dart gun of some sort.”

“Oh,” Rainbow said, perking up, “Like in Daring Do! She often has encounters with natives who use knock-out darts from…” She faltered, deflated a little, and then finished, “from ambush. You never see them or realize they’re there until it’s too late. All right, I’ll let him get away for now, but I’m keeping my eye out.”

“Good for you,” Twilight said, patting her friend on the back, “Now let’s get to work. Clover’s not going to come to us.”

The location of the trapped booth could be described in three simple words: barren grey rock. The topography seemed to favor sudden and extreme changes in elevation. The booth was situated near the lip of a sheer cliff that dropped into the sea below and close to another cliff that rose up to the left and ran for a short distance to the north before terminating. Along the base of this cliff a large sheet of metal took the place of the rock, widening as it went away from the sea-cliff. At the narrow terminus of the metal, a giant stone sculpture that looked like a strange triangular double-edged knife with a large ring bisected by a vertical line and another line resting on top in place of a hilt stood with its point buried into the rock. At the other end of the metal plate, near its widest point, was a structure built of from a brownish copper-like metal and shaped like an inverted raindrop, with the rounded end pointed upwards, held up by two metal supports attached to a circular railing welded on to the metal ground. The cage control lever, which now had a smaller replica of the giant knife jammed into it courtesy of the masked pony, was located at the base of another cliff that ran in a mostly north-east direction, growing taller as it went. The ground wrapped around the end of this cliff, providing a way to leave the immediate area. Heading around the bend, Twilight and Rainbow found a staircase carved into the side of the cliff that climbed up to a wooden bridge reaching across to another ridge to the south.

Arriving at the top of the stairs, the ponies were treated to a view of an island in the distance and the first sign of plant life. What seemed to be short scrubby trees grew on a few points of the distant, hill-shaped island, and a couple of tough-looking plants with broad, spiny leaves were visible on the small plain below, which another set of stairs allowed access to. To their right was the bridge, which they now could see lead to a doorway in the distant ridge. To their left, a tunnel slightly longer than a pony length led into a brightly lit room that looked like it belonged to a palace. “That looks to be worth investigating, don’t you think?” Twilight asked flippantly as she looked over at Dash, only to see that the pegasus’s attention was on something up above. “What’s up?” Twilight asked.

“Check it out,” Rainbow said, walking backward across the bridge to get a better look. Intrigued, Twilight stepped onto the bridge, turned around, and looked up. Her jaw threatened to unhinge as she saw a golden dome of monumental proportions behind the ridge. More accurately, it looked like two halves of a dome with a slight gap between them, but it was still obviously a single structure.

“What do you think it is?” Rainbow asked.

“I have no idea,” Twilight said, walking toward the cavern between her and the dome, “but I intend to find out, if possible.” Rainbow followed at a distance and stopped just inside the tunnel as Twilight entered the room and looked around. It was a perfect pentagon in shape, big enough to fit three ponies comfortably. In each corner stood a thick round column on which hung a large golden scarab, and the black marble floor was decorated with a large five-pointed star made of golden leaves pointing at each column and with a bisected square in the center. The only other doorway was to the left of the column opposite the entrance, and was blocked by a metal grate marked with the leaf-star and square. Through the grate Twilight could see a wooden bridge leading to the gold dome. “We’ll need to get this open somehow,” she said, giving the grate a light kick before turning around to leave.

“There’s a button here,” Rainbow said, pressing the round, hoof-sized button she’d spotted on the tunnel wall as she spoke. The distinctive sound of a mechanism unlatching and starting up rose from beneath the floor of the room, and then with a groan and the scraping of rock across rock the room began to rotate, taking the door with it from Dash’s perspective.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight screamed in annoyance over the noise as the room re-aligned to a new position.

“Oops…” the cyan pegasus said, pulling her hoof away from the button quickly. She eyed it warily for a second, and then looked to where the door had been. In it place was a round niche with a peep-hole placed high enough to require Rainbow to rear up and brace against the wall in order to look through. She could see Twilight in sitting in the middle of the room, looking around with trepidation. The door which had been to the left of the back column was now on the right side, but once again passage was blocked by a fancy-looking grate. “Twilight, can you hear me?” she shouted through the tiny hole. The unicorn glanced in her direction, looking unsure. “Sit tight,” Rainbow yelled, and then stepped out of the niche and pressed the button. The room rotated again and Rainbow found herself looking at another peep-hole niche. “Does that Aldro guy put spies in these things or something?” she wondered aloud, and then shook her head quickly and pressed the button again. “If the room lines up the same way every time, I should get a door this time,” she said as the room rotated once more. She grinned as she saw an open door slide into position in front of her, and then frowned when she noticed a lack of cloaked lavender unicorns inside. “Twi?” she called as she crossed the threshold and looked around. She noted that the grate to the right of the back column was visible again, but Twilight was nowhere to be seen. “Twilight! Where’d you go?” Rainbow shouted, whirling around in a panic, “you didn’t try going through a door and get caught inside the wall, did you? If you can hear me, give me a sign or… just teleport!”

“That won’t be necessary Rainbow,” Twilight’s voice said from the entrance. Dash spun around and heaved a sigh of relief as Twilight walked in to join her.

“Where’d you go?” Rainbow asked, “that freaked me out.”

“There’s a back door of sorts there,” Twilight said, pointing to the wall between the doorways, “In fact, each wall has a door or passageway, but obviously only two can be used at a time.” She looked at the position of the doorways, tapped a couple of spots on the floor with a hoof as she thought, and then nodded and said, “Sit tight, I’m going to spin the room again.”

“I’ll wait outside if it’s all the same,” Rainbow insisted, pushing past Twilight to get out into the sunlight, “This place may not be a cave, but it still gives me with shivers.”

“We’ll have to go through here to reach the dome,” Twilight pointed out, “assuming we can get the gate open that is.”

“Passing through’s fine,” Rainbow said as Twilight hit the button and then walked past the pegasus to take the stairs to the left of the bridge. Rainbow followed her down and around the side of the mountain to another tunnel opening. The entrance seemed to be blocked by a wooden gate held closed with a padlock and chain, but as Twilight quickly demonstrated, there was a large enough gap at the bottom for a little pony to crawl through. As Rainbow dropped down to follow, she noticed a little triangle-bladed knife with a circle for a hilt stuck in the ground next to one of the gate posts. “Do you think there’s some reason behind the shape of those knives?” she asked after she cleared the gate and got back to her feet.

“There might be,” Twilight said, walking down the tunnel, which sloped steeply upward until terminating at an open doorway into the rotating room, “It’s probably a symbol for whatever group that masked pony belongs to.” The pair trotted through to the other door, but Rainbow balked when she saw that it currently led to another cavern passage. “It’s ok Rainbow,” Twilight said when she noticed her friend’s hesitancy, “I’m right here with you.”

“I-I’m fine,” Rainbow said, putting on a brave front, “I can do this.” However, she stuck close by Twilight as they moved down the rough, natural-looking tunnel. It curved slightly to the right and came to a dead-end after only a few feet. A hole in the roof admitted natural light, and also allowed for the venting of steam hissing out from the tall metal pipe rising from the cave floor. Partway up the pipe was a valve junction to another pipe that ran parallel to the ground and into the back wall, and the valve lever was currently pointed upward. A square sign with the picture of an upside-down teardrop shape hung below the valve.

“So, that thing is a machine of some sort,” Twilight mused as she turned the valve toward the branching pipe, “I’ll make a note to check it out if we ever end back in this area again.” She proceeded to do so, levitating a pencil and a piece of paper out of her bags as she turned to leave.

“What, not curious about it?” Rainbow asked in a teasing manner.

“Oh, I am,” Twilight said as she finished her note, “but we have more important things to do than play with everything we come across. I’ll strive to stay focused on those things that look like they’ll help us progress or reveal some useful information. Like this for example.” She stopped short of the tunnel exit and pointed a hoof at a sliding handle-lever on the wall to the left of the doorway. “And there’s this as well,” she continued, pointing to a familiar-looking round button on the right-side wall, “Care to guess what that’s for?”

“If you’re going to keep playing around in here, I’ll just wait outside until you’ve got the gate opened,” Rainbow said, brushing past the unicorn and heading for the exit, “Don’t get yourself trapped.”

“I won’t,” Twilight said sardonically, “So long as you keep out of trouble. No flying, ok?”

“Yes, mom,” Rainbow shouted back before disappearing through the other doorway.

Twilight rolled her eyes and pushed the handle-switch up with her magic. Besides a faint sound of metal moving along something, which reverberated through the rock in such a way as to prevent Twilight from pinpointing its source, nothing seemed to happen. Pressing the round button made the room rotate like she expected it would, so she spun the room again to provide herself with an open door and looked inside. The other doorway was ahead and to her left, where the second gated door had been. That gate was now gone, so Twilight pranced through the room to see what lay beyond. She found herself in a small square room with a dark stone door, engraved with the star and square symbol, preventing her from even seeing what lay beyond. Turning back toward the rotating room, she saw another handle-switch on the left wall and a rotation button on the right near the door. “I hope this opens the other gate,” she said as she raised the switch. Her door’s gate remained open and she heard the sliding sound again. Two more rotations of the room placed the doors so she could leave through the original entrance, and from there she went down to what she chose to think of as the “back door” tunnel to find Rainbow Dash laying on the ground and toying with the odd knife in boredom.

“You done?” Dash asked, glancing up at Twilight.

“We just need to re-align the room properly and we should be able to get to the dome,” the unicorn reported with a smile.

“Finally,” Rainbow said, standing up. She picked up and balanced the knife on one hoof, and then gripped it with her mouth, eying it critically as she did so. After a moment of deliberation, she reached over to open Twilight’s saddlebag and slipped the knife into it. “You never know, it might come in handy,” she said when Twilight gave her a quizzical look.

“Let’s just get moving,” Twilight replied, rolling her eyes as she led the way back up to the room.

3rd Entry

I did not create the world of Sohndar. It was Aldro who established the original link. Although I remain steadfast in my belief that the magical art of Writing Linking Books simply creates a connection to pre-existing realities, I can’t deny the fact that there is an intrinsic link between the original Linking Book and the fundamental foundations of its destination. As such, I am able to apply “patches” to attempt to stabilize the world by adjusting or adding to the book’s text. It is an extremely delicate process; one mistake and I could irrevocably change the link’s destination or sever it completely. I must take the risk if I am to have enough time to stage a rescue for Clover and Nyx before Sohndar dies.

Chapter 3

Twilight Sparkle paused for a second to take in the sight of the gigantic gold-plated dome after she emerged from the five-sided rotating room. Built upon a stone foundation, the dome itself, as well as the wooden bridge leading to it, stood a dizzying distance above the natural rock of the land, and the dome’s peak seemed to be as high above the unicorn’s head as a Canterlot tower. It appeared to be divided in half, with the gap as wide as the bridge Twilight stood upon, but about halfway up she could see that the halves were still joined by what could have been an upper walkway if a way to climb up to it existed. At her level, the gap served as a door to the dome’s interior. It was an awe-inspiring work of architecture, but Twilight didn’t have long to admire it before the cyan pegasus behind her started to become impatient. “I wonder how long it took to build this,” she wondered aloud as she trotted across the bridge.

“Probably a few months short of forever,” Rainbow said jokingly, “Assuming they built it all by hoof.” Her chuckles faded into impressed silence as they entered the building, finding themselves on a catwalk near the top of a deep, round, artificial cavern of a room with a pool of water that gave off a faint blue glow instead of a floor. The catwalk turned sharply left a short way inside and followed the curve of the wall for a quarter-turn before turning into a long set of stairs down to another catwalk just above the water and leading to another door on the opposite side. A second catwalk at their current level connected two other doorways, one directly across from them and one on the right, and then terminated a few yards short of connecting to the catwalk they were on. What drew Twilight and Rainbow’s attention was a large machine of some kind attached to the center of the roof. Five metal pipes sprouted from the domed bottom and went off in different directions passing beneath the catwalks and out through the walls. “What do you think that does?” Rainbow wondered.

“I’m not sure,” Twilight said, seeing a small sign attached to the railing where the catwalk turned to the left. On it was what seemed to be a simple map of the dome’s interior: a gold ring with a small gap in the bottom-right section and three short spurs jutting from the top, bottom, and right side. This was overlaid with five white lines radiating out from a smaller circle in the center. At the end of each line was a shape made up of small squares, each unique in the number and arrangement of components. Twilight pulled out a fresh sheet of note paper and started to copy the map. She only managed to sketch out the pipe-lines and the two-by-two square that went with the top pipe before she was interrupted by a gruff shout from across the room. She looked up to see a unicorn stallion dressed in the same style of armor as the guard from the trap-cage walking along the other catwalk toward her and Rainbow. He had a short sword strapped to his side.

“Ce go bhfuil tu?” he asked, “Cad e ata tu anseo? A labhairt!”

“Uh-oh,” Twilight said in a low tone, quickly stashing her stuff away, “Time to go.”

“Pah,” Rainbow said dismissively, “He’s only one pony Twilight, and he can’t even get to us.”

The guard paused upon hearing Rainbow’s voice and blinked in confusion. “Siad theanga a labhairt...” he said in a thoughtful tone, and then his gaze hardened and he ran to the end of his catwalk, shouting, “Stop a chur in ainm Aldro, strainseiri!”

“You telling us to stop?” Rainbow shouted back tauntingly, “Then come over here and make us!” The guard gave the robed pegasus a flat look as his horn began to glow, as did an extension to his catwalk as it slid out and connected to the one Twilight and Rainbow were standing on. “Oh… kay then,” Rainbow said, confidence waning.

“Let’s run now,” Twilight insisted, giving her friend a push toward the door they’d entered through.

“Fine,” Dash said with reluctance as she turned around. As the two mares broke into a gallop and exited the dome, the guard pulled his sword free and made chase. After crossing the bridge and passing through the rotating room, Twilight stopped and gave the rotation button a solid kick. The guard lost his balance as the floor started spinning beneath him, and he shot a cold but impressed look at the lavender unicorn before the doors moved completely out of alignment.

“That should slow him down,” Twilight said, relaxing a little.

“Now what?” Rainbow asked. Twilight pointed past her friend to the long wooden bridge right outside the tunnel they were in. Rainbow frowned at the sight of the cave entrance at the far end of the bridge, but led the way across, both mares picking up their pace a little as they heard the room start to rotate again. Rainbow hesitated at the end of the bridge as she saw that the cave was a staircase leading down into the depths. “He is only one pony,” she said.

“Keep going Rainbow,” Twilight said, “We’re not here to fight.” The pegasus grumbled but pressed on, moving down the stairs as fast she safely could. The stairs curved slightly to the right as they descended, and shortly after the top was completely lost from sight Twilight saw a door on left-side wall. Rainbow ran past it, but Twilight grabbed her tail and pulled her back up and through the door, saying, “In here, quick.” The unicorn shoved Rainbow past her into the room beyond and then slammed the door shut and leaned an ear up against it.

“What the hay Twilight?” the pegasus exclaimed, “This is a dead-end. An underground-“

“Quiet down,” Twilight hissed, “We’re hiding until the guard gives up looking for us.”

“Seriously?” Dash asked, and then facehoofed and moaned when Twilight gave her a fierce glare. She turned away from the door to see if the room held anything that she could use to try and keep her mind off being trapped underground. The space opened up considerably a few feet past the door and was dominated by a spherical cage with rather thin bars and no apparent door. Inside the cage was a stone chair with a low cushioned back and wide arms on a raised dais that would put whoever sat in the chair at the center of the globe. As Rainbow approached the cage to get a closer look, it reacted to her presence by rising up and spreading the bars out. Curious but wary, the pegasus stepped up onto the dais and then eased herself into the chair, finding it difficult to sit on properly without propping herself upright with her front legs braced on the arms. “This obviously wasn’t built with ponies in mind,” she said.

“Shh,” Twilight whispered, “I think I hear him coming.” Rainbow went still, and then noticed that there was a small sliding lever on the left arm and a button in the right one. Her hooves started to itch as she tried to resist her curiosity. Finally, Twilight visibly relaxed and turned away from the door. “All clear,” she said, and Rainbow responded by sliding the lever back. Twilight gasped as the cage closed up around the chair, causing Rainbow to chuckle.

“Don’t worry,” she said, sliding the lever back to raise and open the cage again, “I’m in full control here.”

“What is it?” the unicorn wondered as Rainbow closed the cage up again. Rainbow shrugged and pressed the button on the right arm a few times, to no apparent effect.

“Nothing useful apparently,” she said in disappointment. She started to open the cage, but then spotted two thick metal rings on the wall across from her, one on either side of the passage leading to the door, which were framing images that she couldn’t quite make out from where she sat. “Go check those out for me, will ya?” she said, pointing them out to Twilight.

Twilight had to tilt her head up a little to see properly after she approached the viewer on the left. The image inside the ring was a high-angle view of a large brown stone door in an unfamiliar location. There were thick stone columns at the edges of the image, and what she could see of the floor seemed to be tiled. As she took this in, the guard that had been chasing them walked into the image from the right, looking around in apparent confusion. So whatever that place is, it’s farther down the stairs, Twilight thought. She opened her mouth to inform Rainbow of what she saw, but the pegasus spoke up first, holding down the button on the chair as she did so.

“See anything changing?” In the image, the guard gave a start and spun to face something past the bottom of the picture, his head angled up enough for Twilight to make out the shock, confusion, and then realization that crossed his face in sequence. He galloped back out of the view in the same direction he’d entered from.

“Feathers…” Twilight swore, “You just gave us away Rainbow Dash!”

“What? How?” the pegasus exclaimed, throwing the cage lever up and jumping out of the chair as soon as the bars were raised enough for her to slip out.

“I’d wager that chair is a device that projects something - voice at least, if not more – into the room the guard was just in. He’s probably beating himself up for not checking in here on his way down.”

“Well then,” Rainbow said, smacking her front hooves together with a manic smirk, “Guess we’ll have to add to that beating then.”

“Don’t do anything-” Twilight started to warn, only to be interrupted as the door slammed open and the guard stalked in, sword hovering dangerously beside him.

“Ta… Ta tu ag miuileanna truaillithe,” he said in a low, triumphant voice.

“Wait, wait,” Twilight said, backing away from him, “I’m sure we can talk-” She ducked as the guard took a warning swing at her and popped back up with a dangerous look in her eyes and a bright glow about her horn. “Buck this,” she said. She shot a bolt of magic at the guard and he went down like a sack of flour, his sword clattering to the ground a split-second later. After a second, Twilight leaned down and put her head near his and listened. “Sound asleep,” she said with satisfaction, wrapping him in her magic and dragging him to the side of the room, “He’ll be out for a good while, but let’s put some distance between us before he comes to.”

“Right,” Dash said with a nod, “So, back up to the dome then?”

“Well,” Twilight said conflicted, “I’d really like to finish sketching that sign we found, but when he wakes up he’ll probably expect us to have gone that way… On the other hoof, if we go down we’ll probably have to figure out how to get past the big door…” She waved a hoof at the image viewer and Rainbow went to look at it. She contemplated the imposing-looking stone door, and noticed that there was a lever on the wall next to the viewer. On a hunch, she slid it up and smiled broadly as the stone door in the picture started to rise as well. Twilight saw the smile, came over and looked at the image, and shook her head in amazement. “How do you notice these things?” she asked.

“Dunno,” the pegasus said with a shrug, “Maybe I’m just lucky. Come on, let’s get going; this cave’s starting to get to me again.” She left the room and headed down the stairs, with Twilight trotting to keep up. The stairs ended in a masonry wall with a square stone door that stood half the height of a normal pony and held shut with a simple metal latch. Since she was in front, it fell to Rainbow to turn the latch handle and pull the heavy slab open, a task which was made only slightly easier by the smoothness of the floor and the properly greased hinges. The two ponies crawled through the opening and found themselves in the corner of a spacious, high-ceilinged building, partially hidden by one of several columns lined up along both of the lengthwise walls. While Twilight pulled the door closed, taking note that there was a latch handle on both sides, Rainbow stepped out into the open space in the middle of the room to get a better look around. They had entered near the impressively large door, which led outside to a short stone staircase. The columns were expertly carved from a tan rock and painted red around the bases and crowns and appeared to actually play a role in keeping the high vaulted ceiling from falling on their heads. The floor was tiled with irregularly shaped and sized slabs of stone colored mostly in shades of brownish red or off-white, but there was also the occasional dark blue stone. Some daylight flooded in from the open door, but the room’s primary illumination came from torches on the columns and a large circular yellow-stained glass window depicting the symbol of a bifurcated square inside a star at the opposite end of the room from the door. In front of the window stood a globe cage twice or three times the size of its counterpart from the previous room sitting on a stone base the height of a pony and as wide as the globe itself. On either side of the base sat statues of some sort of strange creature consisting almost entirely a large hunchbacked body with a head sporting predatory teeth and two long tusks attached to the bottom of the front end. Small fruits were piled up in front of each statue’s face. Rainbow lowered her head and sniffed one of the piles.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked, coming over to join her friend.

“Just seeing how fresh this stuff is,” Rainbow answered, giving a relatively large red citrusy-looking fruit an experimental squeeze. It gave only slightly under the pressure and the rind remained intact. “I’m no expert on fruit,” she concluded, “but I’d say that this hasn’t been here for very long.”

“This room has the feel of an old temple about it,” Twilight said.

“Really?” Dash asked, looking thoughtful, “It doesn’t seem to have any death traps though. The ancient temples Daring Do explores always have death traps.”

“Not always,” Twilight said with a sigh, “and this isn’t a Daring Do book anyway. I’d bet Aldro uses this place as a way to keep the locals under control. He’d be up in that room controlling everything and making an impressive and intimidating show for anypony who doesn’t know better.” She walked across the room to the open door, and then turned to face the giant globe. “Imagine,” she said, pointing up at the wireframe structure, her voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space, “a local pony bearing tribute approaches this place from the outside, and as they do so the door opens of its own accord and then possibly closes behind them after they cross the threshold. As they begin to cross the room, a larger-than-life image of Aldro appears in the globe and speaks, demanding to know why he has been disturbed. The supplicant replies – and I bet if I could find a hidden microphone in here somewhere if I looked hard enough – and makes a request that the Great Aldro takes into consideration. After the audience is over, and possibly at Aldro’s explicit direction, the supplicant lays an offering by one of the statues, and then the door opens again so they can take their leave.” Silence fell like a stone as she finished her speech, and after a moment she put her hoof down, coughed awkwardly, and added, “Then he probably sends someone out to gather the offerings every so often so they don’t just sit there and rot…”

“Yeah, I… I think I can see that,” Rainbow said slowly, “we should probably get moving now though; you’re standing in full view of that image viewer.”

“Right,” Twilight said, her gaze going up toward the ceiling for a moment. She turned around and led the way outside and down the stairs. They found themselves on a large shelf of rock on which was built a docking station for something designed to run on overhead rails, a pair of which they could see winding over the sea to a large island in the distance. A set of stairs was built a short ways from the end of the rails, and at their feet was a metal post topped with a round blue button. Twilight pressed it, and after a second they could see the vehicle speeding its way toward them along the rails. It maintained its speed until reached the edge of the island, and then it slowed considerably as it pulled up even with the stairs, settling down slightly as it came to a stop. It vaguely resembled a fish in shape, with a rounded main body, a smaller cylinder sprouting near the top on the rear end, and it hung from two arms that reached out from the top and over the rails, and above it all was a thick metal disk nearly as big as the main body. After it came to rest, a hatch on the side dropped down into more stairs to allow for entry. “Shall we?” Twilight asked as she climbed the stairs and looked inside. At the front end of the car was a chair in front of simple-looking controls consisting of a dome with a handle-lever on it, presently pointed forward, and metal arm coming off the left side.

“Seems a bit small,” Rainbow said, looking in as Twilight worked her way into the seat, “I think I’ll just fly alongside if that’s all right.”

“Get in Rainbow,” Twilight said sternly, “there should be enough room for you to stand behind me. We don’t know when we’ll bump into more guards, or if Aldro has other places under magical surveillance. You being able to fly is something we should try to keep in reserve until it’s absolutely necessary.”

“This is lame,” Rainbow whined, “how would you like it if you weren’t allowed to use your magic?”

“I’d cope,” the unicorn said simply, “Now come on. I don’t want to leave you behind.”

Still grumbling about the unfairness of it all, Rainbow Dash climbed into the car and sat down behind the chair, facing the back. Meanwhile, Twilight experimented with the controls and found that the lever in the dome refused to move. Moving her grip to the arm, she was able to turn it clockwise, spinning the dome so that the lever was now pointed toward her. Once it clicked into place, the hatch closed up and the cabin spun slowly around to face the way it had come. “Ok,” Twilight said, grasping the lever in her magic and pushing it forward, “here we go.” The grav-car rose slightly and then leaned forward before shooting out of the docking station and along the rails toward the distant island.

1st entry

It has been a long time since I last looked to the original Sohndar Linking Book. Several months, no more likely years by Aitran time, and certainly centuries by Equestria’s. I had applied several patches of my own devising to Aldro’s original formula, and those have held up against the strain while I sought out other, less taxing means of viewing Aldro’s prison. Until recently that is. It is serendipitous that Clover and Nyx were forced into Sohndar when they were, as it has allowed me to see just how close the world is to collapsing once again.

Chapter 4

Village Island

Twilight’s view of the island as the grav-car approached it didn’t provide her very much in the way of useful information. It was clearly larger than the island they had just left and looked like a mesa sitting in the ocean, all sheer cliffs for sides and its top seemingly flat and higher than anything Twilight had seen in Sohndar thus far. The grav-car pulled into a wide and deep cleft in the side of the island and as it settled into a resting position near the mouth of the cleft and opened the hatch the control levers rotated around so that the steering arm was pointed left and the drive lever was pointed forward. “Whew, glad that’s over,” Rainbow Dash said as she hopped down the steps, “The speed was decent, but overall it’s got nothing on actual flight.”

“Maybe you should look out the window next time,” Twilight said as she climbed out of the driver’s seat and exited the vehicle, “you might change your tune a little.” Rainbow scoffed and started trotting away toward the far end of the cleft. Twilight followed her and as they neared the base of the cliff she spotted a wooden ball stuck into the cliff-side behind the grav-car dock. She called Rainbow’s attention to it and then trotted over for a closer look. It was a smooth wood ball half again as wide as her hoof, decorated with a golden metallic paint to resemble an eye and attached to the socket it was seated in by only two hinged points on the left and right. “I wonder what this is,” she said as she scrutinized it and then tried to spin it with her hoof. It rolled downward until the back side was exposed, on which was carved a square with an arcing line that formed a “D” with the left side, and then rolled back on its own, the hinges making a strange chirping squeak as it settled with the eye facing out again.

“Well that was informative,” Rainbow said sarcastically.

“It’s probably part of something bigger,” Twilight said, spinning the ball and holding it with the square exposed while she floated a fresh sheet of note paper and her pencil out of her bags. “It is a bit out of the way after all,” she continued as she sketched the symbol,” and there’s something vaguely familiar about this shape. We should keep an eye out for more of these, just in case.”

“Sounds good to me,” Rainbow said, perking up at the prospect of a challenge. “Now, where do we go from here?” she asked a moment later, looking around.

“I see stairs,” Twilight said, pointing to the far corner of the cleft, where an opening in the rock showed the bottom of a staircase.

“Another cave?” the cyan pegasus whined, “This is getting ridiculous.” She resigned herself to the reality and started toward the stairs as Twilight took the lead. Rainbow cast a glance over her shoulder as she walked, hoping to find some alternate way up, no matter how unlikely, and then stopped and turned around with a curious “Huh…”

“What is it?” Twilight asked, stopping as well.

“Nothing,” Rainbow said, squinting her eyes as she looked toward the wooden eye, “I just noticed there’s a shape in the rock. Looks kind of like a frog…”

“Show me,” Twilight said, staring intensely at the cliff.

“Uh,” Rainbow said, pointing a wavering hoof, “that patch of slightly darker rock to the left of the ball. Actually, the ball seems to be the frog’s eye.”

“Yeah…” Twilight said slowly, squinting and leaning forward, “I… don’t see it. You’re sure it’s there?”

“It’s real tricky to make out, but it’s there alright,” Rainbow said with certainty, “Trust me. Maybe you should write that down: ‘frogaloid shape in cliff’ or something.”

“Frogaloid,” Twilight said dryly, giving her friend a flat sidelong glance. She pulled her notes out, scribbled “frog” next to the square, and then put everything away and turned back to the stairs. Despite its cave-like appearance, the staircase turned out to simply be a short tunnel through the rock, illuminated by small glowing blue crystals set on poles at either end of every third step, and let out into a narrow crevasse with more stairs that climbed to the right and descended to the left. Both routes followed a curved path that provided no clues regarding their destinations as Twilight considered the options. “Do you have an opinion Rainbow?” she asked at last.

“I have lots of opinions Twilight,” Dash deadpanned.

“Up or down?” Twilight asked in exasperation.

“Eh,” the pegasus said with a dismissive shrug, but then she got an idea and opened Twilight’s saddlebag, sticking her muzzle in and fishing around until she found and pulled out the knife she’d picked up on the previous island. She set it down on the wide stone step in front of her and set it to spinning with a light kick. “Whichever way the point… points is the way we’ll go,” she announced. Twilight gave an approving nod and watched as the double-edged knife with its odd grip spun with a faint grinding sound on the rough stone before coming to rest pointing directly at Rainbow Dash, who was standing on the downhill side of the landing. The two ponies shared a glance and a nervous chuckle, and then Twilight gave the knife a slight nudge with her magic so that it pointed more toward the downhill before picking it up and stashing it away.

Although much more narrow than the cleft housing the grav-car station, the stair-crevasse was wide enough for the pair to walk side by side as they descended. The rift curved to the right briefly before straightening out again. The stairs terminated at the end of the crevasse and the path turned immediately to the right and out of sight. Just past this turn was a tiny lagoon with a clump of large black rocks sitting in the middle of the water. Two strange-looking animals, looking like dark-skinned seals with long necks and bill-like mouths, were sunning themselves on the largest rock and looked up as the cloak-wearing ponies came around the bend in the stairs. Twilight and Rainbow both stopped in their tracks and stared at the seal-creatures in surprise, and after a moment the creatures laid their heads back down. “Fascinating,” Twilight said, “A whole new species of animal, to us at least. I bet Fluttershy would love to learn about them.”

“Too bad she isn’t here,” Rainbow noted dryly. Twilight ignored her and pulled out a clean piece of paper and the pencil and then started trotting down the stairs toward the creatures. Their heads snapped up and looked at her, and then one of them slid off the rock into the water, swimming out of the lagoon and into the ocean beyond.

“Wait, I don’t mean you any harm,” Twilight called out. The remaining seal-thing shuffled toward the edge of the rock, glared at Twilight with a dismissive honking snort and a toss of its head, and then slid down into the water and swam off after its companion. “Hmph, fine then,” Twilight grumbled as she put her writing supplies away, “I was just curious.” Rainbow chuckled as she walked down the stairs, brushed past Twilight, and then hopped off the pathway and started trotting around the edge of the lagoon. “What are you doing?” Twilight asked.

“Looking for clues off the beaten path,” the pegasus said. She came around to the far side of the lagoon near the inlet and spotted a wooden ball attached to the smallest rock sticking out of the water. As she waved Twilight over, she hopped back slightly to look at the rocks as a whole. “Ok Twi,” she said as the unicorn approached, “looking at it from this direction, with the ball as an eye, do you see an animal in these rocks?” Twilight stood right up next to her and cocked her head to one side for a moment as she contemplated the rocks.

“Probably?” she said at last, uncertain, “We’d have to go back to the temple and double-check, but this looks a bit like those statues, in profile. And without the tusks.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Rainbow said with a nod, and then nudged Twilight and said, “I bet the ball spins. Go check it out.” Twilight looked at the knee-deep water separating her from the, and then at the cloak she was wearing, and then cast the pegasus an askance glance. “Or I could fly over and do it myself,” Rainbow suggested with a large grin.

“Fine,” Twilight grunted, rolling her eyes, “but put the cloak back on when you’re done, alright?” Rainbow’s only response was to wiggle out of the brown hooded cloak, unfurl her wings with a flourish that narrowly missed hitting Twilight in the side, and then flutter casually over the water and up to the ball. She rolled it in its socket until the backside was revealed, carved with a square bifurcated with a horizontal line. After she released it, the ball rolled back to show the gilded eye, the hinges making an odd, quiet moaning sound. She flew back to Twilight, who already had her notes out and ready, and described the shape as she put the cloak back on. “Curious,” the unicorn said as she drew the bifurcated square, “That’s the same shape as in the crests on the first island. I wonder what the connection is…” She looked up from her notes and regarded the rock formation with a slight frown. The “head” containing the eyeball was situated to the left of the largest rock, giving the body a hunchbacked appearance, and two smaller narrow rocks sat in the positions of a fin and a fish tail. “What should we call this thing?” she wondered aloud.

“It’s probably some kind of sea monster,” Rainbow Dash said, “Something the locals would give up food for in hopes of not encountering one.”

“Fish Monster then,” Twilight said, making the note next to the square before putting everything away. She and Rainbow walked back to the path and followed it around the base of the cliff and up a set of stairs leading into a tunnel.

“What is with these ponies and caves?” Dash screamed in frustration as she plodded in after Twilight.

“It’s a better idea than trying to scale all the cliffs around here,” Twilight reasoned, “and keep in mind who wrote the book that linked here: Aldro’s a Diamond Dog, remember?”

“Good point,” Rainbow conceded, “There’s another reason not to like the guy.” Twilight chuckled. The tunnel sloped gently and continuously upward as it wound through the rock, lit by glowing crystals set on posts every few feet. Rainbow was grinding her teeth with the effort of keeping her claustrophobia in check by the time the exit came into view, and she pushed past Twilight to gallop out into the open air, whooping with relief. She emerged onto a walkway built of thick reeds and sticks that extended only a few feet ahead before terminating in a guard rail just after the cliff to the left ended. Just to the right of the end of the walkway was a small watchtower shaped like an elongated egg balanced on its small end on a post driven into the rock and with a small propeller on the top. Inside, a rust-colored pony, his close-cropped mane hidden beneath an ill-fitting helmet, gazed out at the cloaked pegasus pony with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness.

“Bh-bhfeidhm ann. Ce a theann ann?”

“Huh?” Rainbow said, confused, “Sorry, I don’t speak ‘Sohndar-ese.’”

“Rainbow!” Twilight hissed, coming up behind the pegasus.

“What? It’s the truth,” Dash replied defensively.

“Whark dom!” the watch-pony exclaimed in fright, “Strainseiri. Dha cheann acu!” He reached up into the roof space above him, grabbed a rope in his mouth, and yanked it down repeatedly as the propeller began to spin, creating a low whistle that echoed through the open space beyond the walkway.

“What was that for?” Rainbow asked as the watch-pony ducked down out of sight inside the tower, “Hey, I’m talking to you! Don’t pretend you don’t understand me!” She started to slip out of her cloak, but Twilight yanked it back onto her with her magic and dragged the pegasus back a couple feet.

“First of all,” the lavender unicorn said firmly, “he probably doesn’t understand us anymore than we do him; he just knows we’re strangers and that’s cause for alarm. Second of all, would it kill you to not antagonize every pony we come across? We’re probably going to have guards all over us in a few moments now.”

“Oh, like whatever you’d have done would have had a different result,” Dash snapped, “You don’t speak their language either, so he’d have sounded the alarm anyway. Well, if they’re coming for us, let ‘em!” She stalked to the end of the walkway, took note of the ladder leading down from the left side onto a wide ledge, and then took a firm, challenging stance, eyes darting around.

“Rainbow…” Twilight groaned, and then gave a defeated sigh and turned to watch for ponies coming from the tunnel. Several minutes went by, and the only movement was that of the pony in the watch tower, who peeked out every once in a while only to duck back out of sight when Dash gave him a glare. Finally, Twilight sighed and relaxed, saying, “No one’s coming. Well, let’s get back to…” She trailed off as she turned around and took a long look beyond the end of the walkway. A vast crater lake was spread out far below, although a fair amount of it was hidden from sight by the cliffs on the left. It was a breathtaking sight, but with one curious detail that made Twilight rub her eyes and look again. “Rainbow,” she said, “is it just me, or are there holes in the water?”

Rainbow looked down and stared in bewilderment. From their vantage point she could clearly see four places in the lake where the water just didn’t exist and the surrounding liquid seemed content to stay put. “I see it,” she said, “but that should be impossible, shouldn’t it?”

“It should,” Twilight said with a nod, and then nudged Rainbow toward the ladder, saying, “Let’s head down and get a closer look.” Rainbow nodded in agreement and climbed down to the ledge below with Twilight right behind her. A large oblong basin with an irregular bottom was set into middle of the ledge, with a wooden spigot on the rim, a covered drain at the lowest point of the bottom, a small metal pipe opposite the spigot, and another gilded wood eye-ball mounted near the left end. “This makes three,” Twilight said, pulling out her notes while rolling the ball to see the hidden symbol: a square divided in half by a vertical line. Meanwhile, Rainbow turned the spigot and water started to rise up from the drain, filling the upper third of the basin and filling some of the low valleys in the lower part. When Twilight let the eye roll back, it made a sound like droning insect wings.

“Oh,” Rainbow said in realization, “That’s it. The water looks a bit like a beetle.”

“If you say so,” Twilight said, making the relevant notes, “I wish we could communicate with the locals and ask what the purpose of these eyes is.” She walked around the basin and found another ladder leading over the edge of the ledge and down in two stages to a walkway just above the water leading into yet another hole in the rocks. Consigned to the inevitable, Rainbow kept her grumbling to a minimum as they walked through the thankfully very short tunnel and emerged on a short metal pier over a hole in the lake water. The sandy lakebed was surprisingly close, not much more than eight feet below the pier, and the mares could see a set of tracks running along the ground leading into the water on both the left and right. “Underwater transportation,” Twilight mused, “That’s a unique solution for getting around. I’d have just built a bridge network. Now, where would we find the vehicle?”

“Up there,” Rainbow responded flatly, looking pointing directly overhead. Twilight looked and saw a large, mostly spherical contraption sitting on a short segment of track attached to the lip of the cliff above them.

“Oh, that’s great,” Twilight said sarcastically, “Where better to park your submersible trolley than twenty feet above the water?” She looked around and face-hoofed with a moan when she saw no levers or control mechanisms nearby or a pathway other than going back the way they had come. “Looks like we’ll have to go the long way around to get that thing down here,” she said.

“I do have wings,” Rainbow said hopefully.

“And there’s a guard pony back there that’s wary enough of us without seeing you flying around,” Twilight responded.

“Pah, that guy’s a pansy,” Rainbow scoffed, “What’s the worst he could do? Sound another alarm that nopony’s paying attention to?”

“We shouldn’t take unnecessary risks Rainbow,” Twilight chided, “All it takes is one wrong move to get half a dozen or more armed ponies on our tails. Look, if I can get a clear view of the top of this cliff I can teleport us over, ok?” Rainbow glowered at her and then turned around smartly and began walking back toward the ladder with deliberately heavy steps. “I’m sorry this has turned out so difficult for you,” Twilight said as she followed her friend, “If there were any way I could make things easier-”

“Let’s just get on with it,” Dash said crossly as she mounted the ladder, “The sooner we find Clover and Nyx and deal with Aldro the sooner we can go home. I won’t touch ground for a week after this.” She climbed quickly to the walkway at the base of the watchtower and blew a raspberry at the guard within when he looked out at her before turning to watch Twilight catch up with her. Once the unicorn reached the top, she turned around and quickly sighted the vehicle. After taking a second to memorize the flat area of land and the layout of the items on it - a large conical cement oven and what looked like a shrine built around a gold altar – she wrapped herself and Rainbow in magic and then released it into a teleport spell that deposited them next to the submersible.

The sound of breaking pottery drew their attention behind them, where they saw a unicorn mare galloping away from a shattered jar of fruit and disappearing into a jumble of scaffolds, ladders, and strange spherical cement huts built onto the tops of rock spires. A panicked cry of “Moiety! Moiety spiorad olc!” began to echo through the elevated village as ponies scrambled into the huts for shelter.

“Geez,” Twilight said, ears pulled back in consternation, “They’re acting like Cerberus just wandered into town. Have they never seen a teleport spell before or something?” She shook her head and turned her attention back to the submersible. It was a perfect sphere that rested on a pair of axles; the front wheels were the size of serving platters and the rear ones were three times as big across. A hatch on the top would provide access to the interior and a porthole window on the front would let the rider see where they were going. It looked to be well-used and in good repair, but there was one problem easily evident to both Twilight and Rainbow. “This is a single-rider vehicle,” the unicorn surmised, “And please don’t bring up your wings again Rainbow. I know.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” the pegasus said, feigning innocence, “So now what should we do?”

“Let me see,” Twilight said, walking up to the edge of the cliff and looking around. Directly across the large crater she could see a tall teepee shaped cage with a sizable hole in the floor standing in the lake. A metal catwalk extended from the peak of the cage to the nearby cliff face and ran along it for a time before ending high above the wooden walkway leading from the village to another part of the island. To the right, nestled on a low shelf of rock and nearly out of sight, was a plaster hut built in a somewhat more familiar, flat-on-the-ground style. “You know,” she said, casting a confused glance back at the precarious-looking ball-huts of the village, “I’m amazed that ponies are the dominant species in this world, considering that architecture.”

“I’m amazed they built that without pegasi,” Rainbow noted.

“That is odd,” Twilight agreed, “Anyway, what do you say we check out that hut down there? I should be able to teleport us that far.”

“Sure,” Rainbow said with a shrug, “why not?” One flash of magenta light later, the pair were standing on the path leading from a metal pier up to the wooden door of the hut.

Twilight took the lead as they walked up to it, and she pushed the door open gingerly, taking a cautious peek inside before gasping in surprise and throwing the door wide open as she charged inside. “It’s a school house!” she exclaimed happily.

4th entry

The newest patches seem to be working! The image in the linking panel is much clearer than it was only a few days ago, although it is still difficult to make out details. While I can never be completely certain, the islands seem to have settled down. Hopefully I will now have time to form plans for staging a rescue mission.

With all my work on stabilizing Sohndar, I have barely had time to think about how go about rescuing my wife and daughter. I have seen no sign of them in all this time. I fear that

No. I must not let myself think negatively, lest I undermine my own efforts to retrieve them.

Chapter 5

Kl’Kai Education Hut, Village Island

The school-house was a rough-looking one-room building, round in shape with two sets of long low tables and benches in six rows angled to face a small wire-frame globe set on a pedestal with a crank on the right side. Two irregularly-shaped blackboards hung on the wall behind the globe, and the one on the left was covered in strange glyphs written in chalk. Wooden slates each painted with a different glyph lined the walls on either side of the room near the ceiling, and Twilight counted twenty-five of them as she walked between the tables toward the globe. Rainbow Dash stayed near the back and looked around, seeing a small table tucked into each corner. Twilight stood in front of the globe and probed it with her magic a few times to try and find a clue to its operation. She couldn’t feel any latent spells on it or links to distant locations, so she grabbed the crank in a telekinetic grip and turned it several times. Mechanisms inside the pedestal began clicking and a hazy image started to form inside the wireframe globe. The image quickly resolved into the head and shoulders of a canine figure with stubby round ears, a short but pointed muzzle, and intelligent-looking golden-brown eyes filled with a condescending sort of fondness. It began speaking in a surprisingly smooth tone, but its message was obscured both by the language being spoken and the quality of the recording, which flickered and skipped occasionally. “This must be Aldro,” Twilight said.

“Huh?” Rainbow Dash trotted over to her friend’s side and regarded the image as it paused in its speech to nod at both sets of tables. “Hmph,” the pegasus snorted, “Well it’s about time we learned something actually useful, but what is he saying? Nothing around here speaks or writes in Equestrian; how does Star Swirl expect us to get the job done if we can’t understand half the stuff we find?”

“That’s a good question,” Twilight said, frowning, “With his family on the line, you’d think he’d make sure to cover all his bases…” Aldro’s recorded speech finally ended and the image faded as Twilight turned away with a sigh, saying, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to…” She trailed off as she felt something shift in her saddlebag. She opened the flap and peered inside, and then smiled slightly as she levitated out a small book. “This is the journal Star Swirl gave us before we left,” she said, “I forgot all about it. Maybe this will have what we need in it.” She set the book down on the nearest table, opened it to the first page, and took a stance that told Rainbow that they’d likely be there for a while.

“And what should I do?” the pegasus muttered to herself. She started to wander out of the schoolhouse when something on one of the tables in the back corners caught her eye.

12th entry

Time is nearly run out for Sohndar, and if I were to leave my writing to enact the rescue mission the world would collapse around us far too quickly. I must entrust the rescue of Clover and Nyx to others, and hope that means can be arranged to save as many of the Sohndaren ponies as possible. Hopefully those who rescued me from my treacherous apprentices will be up to the task.

I should find a way to extract Aldro as well. Not even my worst enemy deserves to die in a collapsing reality.

13th entry

After much pondering over the puzzle of how to get Aldro out of Sohndar without placing myself and innumerable realities at risk, I have found a simple and effective solution: a Prison Book. During the brief time that Aldro and I collaborated with each other I came upon the basic formula for altering a Linking Book to trap the user between realities while we were searching through a ruined Kl’Kai settlement in some other world. I kept this find to myself, and even now I assume Aldro is unaware of the concept. As such, combined with his noted lack of skill in Writing Links, he should not notice any discrepancies in the text of a trapped Aitran book.

14th entry

I am nearly ready to send for Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, but there are things I should include here first, for their benefit.

To you, Twilight: The ponies of Sohndar do not speak the same tongue as we do, which will make obtaining information from them nearly impossible, assuming any remain with enough backbone to converse with strangers. When Clover and I trapped Aldro there, he was beginning to instruct the locals in the ancient written language of his own kind, the Kl’Kai, and I do not doubt that he has continued to do so.

Princess Celestia has told me of your exceptional skill and power with magic, and so I trust you will be able to make use of the spell on the following page. When cast in the presence of a Sohndaren pony, it will grant you, and Rainbow Dash if you include her, the ability to understand the Sohndar language and to be understood in turn. Unfortunately, I don’t have a similar spell for translating Kl’Kai runes, so hopefully you can manage without.

Twilight’s gleeful reading of the spell was interrupted by a repetitive pattern of rattling and clicking sounds coming from near the schoolhouse door. Twilight looked up crossly to see Rainbow playing with something on a corner table. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just playing a game,” Dash replied, “come check it out.” Twilight came over, looking skeptical about the value of simple game. At first glance it seemed to be made all of wood and string. There was a round base with a carved sharp-toothed fish head on the right side, its mouth open and waiting for a small and very simple carved pony that was dangling from a string above it. A matching pony dangled above the left side of the base.

“What’s the point?” Twilight asked.

“The point is to not let your pony get eaten,” Rainbow said, putting a hoof on a small knob on the edge of the base near the fish head. “It’s a game of chance really, because you move the fish-thing like this,” she slid the knob to the left, which rotated part of the base until the fish was underneath the pony on the left, and something inside the base started to rattle as a panel on the front side of the base began to spin. After a few seconds the spinner slowed to a stop, displaying a square with a left-pointing arrow inside. “Depending on what shows up,” Rainbow explained as the pony on the left dropped by increments, “your pony gets closer to death by a certain amount. I think it’s about twenty drops or so in all before the fish bites down.”

“So, this is a number?” Twilight asked, pointing at the symbol. Rainbow nodded and Twilight gave it a closer look. “It looks familiar,” she mused, and then moved the fish to the right, watching the spinner as it zipped by too quickly to pick out individual symbols. It came to a stop on a square bifurcated by a vertical line. “Ah, that’s the symbol on the beetle eye!” she exclaimed giddily, dancing in place, “What’s its value?” She looked up at her dangling pony and frowned when it didn’t seem to be moving.

“One, I think,” Rainbow said, scratching her head. Twilight nodded and started to reach for the knob again, but the pegasus pushed her aside, protesting, “Hey, it’s my turn now.” She moved the fish and the spinner brought up a square with a plus sign inside. Twilight counted the increments under her breath as the left-side pony descended to its doom and came up with six. Twilight got a square cut in half horizontally and with a smaller rectangle in the bottom-right corner, which turned out to equal nine. Rainbow’s next spin produced a square with the rectangle but no horizontal line, which gave only four drops but put her pony dangerously close to the fish. “Dang it,” the pegasus said, “I have to get a one or I’m toast.”

“This is kind of a morbid game,” Twilight said, busying herself with drawing and labeling the numbers they’d learned, “What’s the purpose, giving colts and fillies the notion that there’s a monster fish that might eat them?”

“Discipline?” Rainbow suggested with a shrug, “You gonna take your turn or not?” Twilight quirked an eyebrow at her friend, and gave the game a half-hearted spin. The symbol that came up was a square divided by a horizontal line, and the pony figurine dropped five increments. Twilight made note of that while Rainbow took her turn and sighed at the inevitable as the fish bit down on her figurine and the game started to reset itself automatically. Twilight ignored her goading for another round and looked over the notes.

“Ok,” she mused, “each wooden eye has had a number on it, and an associated animal. Thus far we’ve found the one, the five, the…” She trailed off and her eyes widened as she noticed a pattern in the number symbols. She grabbed the game with her magic, turned the fish toward the right-side pony, and watched the spinner with anticipation, muttering, “Come on, come on...” Rainbow looked at her curiously, and then jumped back when the spinner stopped on a square with a curved line on the left side and a horizontal one through the middle, which made Twilight laugh in triumph and fix her gaze on the figurine. “One, two, three, four, five,” she counted, “and then another one, two, I’ve got it!”

“Got what?” Dash asked with trepidation.

“The number system,” Twilight said, eyes shining with glee at solving an academic mystery. She quickly added something to her notes and then slapped the page down onto the table to show to Rainbow. “I think it’s a Base 5 system nested inside a… Base 25,” she said, “There’s a symbol for the numbers one through four, and when you get to five, you just turn-”

“Twilight,” Rainbow interrupted, throwing up a hoof and taking a step away from the unicorn, “That’s great and all, but you can just translate any other numbers we come across, ok? I don’t really need to know the details.”

“Oh, ok,” Twilight said, disappointed, “Well, anyway, of the three wooden eyes we’ve found, the biggest number on them is five, so there should be at least two more, and I’d bet they’re clues to some sort of code.”

“Well then let’s go find them,” Rainbow said, heading for the door. Twilight nodded and packed her notes up before following. They stepped outside and walked down to the water’s edge and looked around. Rainbow pointed to a large wooden platform on the left between the opposite end of the lake and the elevated village and asked, “Can you get us there?”

“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” Twilight answered. She took a few seconds to study the platform and fix the image of it in her mind and then activated her horn and teleported herself and the pegasus, rematerializing in the center of the platform. Two bridges led off the platform, one heading toward a series of ladders leading up the cliff-side to the village and the other following the cliff in the opposite direction for a while before leading into a tunnel. With grumbling resignation, Rainbow nodded toward the tunnel and started walking. The wooden bridge continued for a short distance into the tunnel, as the lake extended inside as well and Twilight noticed a gap in the rock that seemed to lead out to the sea, but the ponies quickly came to a flight of steps leading up and then out onto yet another bridge near the top of a tiny box canyon. Halfway along the main path was a fork leading to a gate in the ridge on the left, and to the right of the bridge a conical watchtower sat well above head height. Rainbow cast a wary look up at the tower, but if it was occupied the pony within didn’t show himself. The pegasus stopped at the fork and considered both routes for a few moments.

“Any preferences?” she asked Twilight. Twilight shook her head. “Gimme the dagger then,” Rainbow said, holding a hoof out expectantly, “We’ll leave it to chance.”

“Ok,” Twilight said, floating the odd weapon out of her pack. Rather than give it to Rainbow, she set it down on the bridge at her friend’s feet and gave it a spin. The dagger wobbled a bit on the rounded slats that made up the bridge, but it completed several clean rotations before coming to a stop pointing to the gate. Twilight put the dagger away and approached the gate, which swung open easily when she pushed it. She started to walk through the gateway, but then stopped to take in the view with a slightly nonplussed expression. A set of metal stairs led over a narrow ravine, which glowed with an orange light of unknown origin, and down into an area that was lush with plant life compared to the desert-like areas the ponies had been traveling through. The ground looked dark and moist, supporting a number of trees, giant ferns, and some sort of bioluminescent blue fungus. What caught Twilight’s attention, however, was a stone tower of sorts almost directly ahead and which the path, now paved, passed through at the base, and on top was a metal dome that was rotating at a moderately fast pace. “I wonder what that is,” the unicorn wondered aloud.

“I could fly up for a closer look,” Rainbow suggested, managing to keep her tone mostly neutral.

“Not with that guard tower so close by,” Twilight, jerking her head back towards it, “Let’s see if we can find a way to walk up.”

“Fine,” Rainbow said grudgingly. She followed Twilight down the stairs and into the tunnel through the tower, which forked to the left and right. Hardly missing a step, Twilight chose the left tunnel. She rounded a curve in the path and stopped short with a startled squeak. The path ended at a cleared and flattened dirt area in front of a large tree with a spooky-looking and brightly painted wooden idol of the sharp-toothed fish-monster. “That must be one important monster,” Rainbow said, walking past Twilight to get a closer look, “Since we keep seeing it. Do you think it’s even real?”

“It probably is,” Twilight said, moving closer to inspect the area herself, “My question is what its connection is to Aldro in the minds of the locals?”

“If it were me in charge, and assuming I was that kind of pony, I’d probably try to make them think I could control the monster,” Rainbow said, walking to the side of the idol and looking closely at the jaw. “I think I see a gap between the rows of teeth,” she said, “It might be designed to open, but why?”

“Puppeteering perhaps?” Twilight guessed, “Aldro or somepony sits somewhere out of sight and makes the thing move.” She shrugged and looked around once more, seeing a metal catwalk partially hidden in the foliage overhead but no way to get up to it. “Let’s try the other way,” she said, heading back to the path. After emerging from the tunnel along the other fork, the path continued more or less straight to another short tunnel through a tree. Off right side of the path near the tree was a giant metal knife with a triangular blade and the strange circular handle matching the dagger Twilight carried. With unspoken agreement the two ponies stepped off the path to get a closer look. The giant blade’s impact seemed to have carved a divot into the earth, and at the end near the blade was another gilded wood ball, and a smaller dagger with a glowing crystal set into the hilt was stuck in the dirt nearby to illuminate the orb. Twilight spun the ball around to see the symbol: a square with a smaller rectangle in the bottom right corner. “This is number four then,” she said as she released the ball and started to bring out her notes, only to pause as the ball made an noise like a breathy honk as it spun back around and settled. Feeling a bit of déjà vu, she rolled the ball again and listened closer to the sound it made. “I swear I’ve heard this sound somewhere before,” she said, and looked at Rainbow and asked, “Do you see any animal figures around here?”

“Move back,” Dash said, and then looked the ditch over from several angles once Twilight was out of the way. “I’ve got nothing,” she concluded apologetically.

“Then I guess that sound’s supposed to be our clue” Twilight said, “and come to think of it, each one of these that we’ve found have made a different sound when they rolled back to show the eye. So, where have I heard this one before?”

“Don’t strain too hard Twilight,” Rainbow advised with a bit of cheekiness, “sometimes the answer doesn’t come until you relax and forget about it for a while.”

“Relax, yeah,” Twilight said, letting the tension out of her face, “You’re right. After all, we still don’t know what… Wait… That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“Relaxing!” Twilight exclaimed, hopping out of the ditch and then around in a tight circle on the path, paper and pencil floating behind her, “Those seal-things down in the lagoon made that noise when I interrupted their relaxation time! They must be the creature linked to that ball.” She ceased bouncing and wrote down the note, and then read over the whole page. “Ok, we’ve got a beetle as number one, a frog for two, seal-thingy for four, and monster-fish-god for five. Unless there are more than five, we only need to find ball number three and its associated animal.”

“And the puzzle that it all goes to,” Rainbow pointed out wryly.

“Well of course,” Twilight said, packing everything away, “Let’s continue on then.” She led the way through the tree-tunnel and along the path, which shortly led to another set of stairs leading up to another wooden gate. Beyond it lay an area that had once been filled with trees, but was now nothing more than a field of wide and very low-cut stumps with branching paths meandering through. The path Twilight and Rainbow were on took them near the edge of a cliff, and off in the distance they could see the giant gold dome of the first island, and to the left was another island that seemed to be linked to the dome by a long bridge. “Once we’re done here, we’ll find our way to that island,” Twilight said, pointing to it.

“We’ll have to deal with that guard pony again you know,” Rainbow said, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more on that other island. We can’t stay hidden forever.”

“True,” Twilight said, “But we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” She grinned goofily, but quickly deflated when Rainbow face-hoofed and groaned loudly.

“Twilight… just don’t,” the pegasus said, shaking her head. She started to wander off toward a rope bridge at the end of one of the paths.

Somewhat downcast, Twilight wandered along the path closest to the cliff until it ended at an open, stone-lined rectangular hole in the ground. Just inside, sitting on tracks that seemed to lead into the island, was a mine cart large enough to seat two or three ponies. “Hey Rainbow,” she said, waving her friend over.

The pegasus trotted over, looked down at the cart, and then saw the smile forming on Twilight’s face and said, “No. Not a chance.”

“Come on,” Twilight said, “The last ball might be down there somewhere.”

“Then you can go look,” Rainbow retorted, “I’ll stand guard.”

“Two heads are better than one,” Twilight said, “I’d feel safer with company, and I’m pretty sure you would too. Please?” She put on her best “charming little filly” face and gave Dash the full force.

“Nnngh,” Rainbow said, wavering, “Ok, fine, but just a quick look around and then we come right back up.”

“Deal,” Twilight said, and then jumped down into the cart, pulled Rainbow in after her with magic, and then located and turned a handle on the wall near the front left corner of the cart, setting the ride in motion before the pegasus could have second thoughts. The cart started off gently enough and picked up speed gradually as the track sloped downward and curved to the right. After what Twilight figured was nearly a full one-eighty turn, the slope of the track grew steeper, the cart sped up, and they began passing through glowing orange rings spaced a foot or two apart which gave off an almost uncomfortable degree of heat. Rainbow opened her mouth to comment on the rings, but fell into dumbstruck silence as the cart suddenly left the rocky tunnel behind and began rolling through a tube of water, the orange rings still whipping by every other second. Tentatively, Twilight and Rainbow both reached out a hoof and poked at the side of the tube, pulling back before they passed the next ring and finding that their hooves were wet. After about half a minute, the track sloped up and then leveled off several feet above the sea and the cart rolled sedately toward a cave in the side of the third island.

“Twilight,” Rainbow said as they entered the cave and the cart turned left, “Did we just ride through the water without getting wet?”

“It would seem so,” Twilight said, astounded, “It’s like those rings were holding the sea back by heat alone.”

“How does that even work?” Rainbow asked as the cart came to a stop at the end of the track, next to a platform slightly above the cart.

“I don’t know,” Twilight said, “but if I get chance, I’ll-” Her sentence was cut off as the bottom suddenly fell out of the cart. The pair landed in a metal chute and slid down it, out through a hatch, and toward the mouth of a machine filled with deadly-looking blades.

Chapter 6

Book Maker’s Island

“Aaaaaah!” In a split-second of blind panic and survival reflexes, Twilight’s horn flared brightly with power, teleporting herself forward and Rainbow Dash three feet to the right and away from the wood chipper’s mouth. However, the spell conserved their momentum, flinging Twilight over the guard rail of the machine’s operation platform to a hard landing at the edge of a giant and rather hot lake of water. Rainbow ended up impacting and then rolling down a pile of wood shavings sitting below the wood chipper’s output pipe, getting more than a few splinters in her muzzle and the parts of her legs not covered by her robe. Grumbling, she picked herself up and spent a few moments pulling the splinters out with her teeth, until she saw Twilight stir and slowly roll onto her hooves.

“You ok over there?” Dash asked.

“I think I’m going to have a few bruises,” Twilight said, wincing as she stood up. She staggered over to Rainbow, looked her over briefly, and then started plucking splinters out of her muzzle with magic. “Sorry,” she said, “That cart was a bad idea.”

“I’ll be ok,” Rainbow said, waving the unicorn off when she tried to help with the leg splinters, “I got off lucky compared to you. Take it easy for a bit; I’ll go take a quick look around and see what we have to work with here.”

“Sounds good,” Twilight said, easing into a seated position and looking around while Rainbow went off to explore.

There wasn’t a whole lot to see; the entire island seemed to be one giant volcanic caldera filled almost entirely by the heated lake, save for the crescent of dry land the ponies were on. The water was murky and several degrees past comfortably hot. The only thing on the shore besides the wood chipper was a large round metal structure which on closer inspection seemed to be a boiler. Out in the middle of the lake, connected to the shore by a metal foot bridge, was a domed post with a lever on top and four narrow pipes leading off from it to the wood chipper, the boiler, and two other points in or beyond the crater walls. Past the boiler and up near the top of the cliff, Rainbow could see a balcony and a catwalk. “Ok,” the pegasus said to herself, “I need to get Twilight up there somehow…”

“How about that ladder in the cliff?” Twilight asked. Rainbow gave a startled yelp and turned around to see her friend standing a short distance behind.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” Dash snapped weakly, “I thought you were taking it easy over there.”

“I’m ok,” Twilight said, although the slight wince that crossed her face as she walked past Rainbow toward the ladder rungs driven into the cliff below the balcony gave lie to her words. Stopping at the base of the ladder, she looked up to a see a closed hatch at the top and reached out with her magic to try and lift it, but the most she could manage without straining something was a light push which accomplished nothing. With an irritated sigh, she looked at the metal rings making up the ladder, contemplated the possibility of hanging onto them to get closer to the hatch, and then rejected it as the bruise forming across her belly twinged. “Rainbow,” she said, “Would you mind… flying up there and opening that hatch for me?”

“Would I?” Dash replied excitedly, grinning broadly. She slipped out of the cloak and took off like a rocket, pulling a tight reverse double somersault before coming to rest just below the hatch. She took a few moments to clear her throat and casually flex her front legs, which Twilight rolled her eyes at, and pushed up lightly on the hatch with one hoof. It didn’t budge, so the pegasus pushed harder, and then put both front legs into it, heaving with all the strength her wings could give her and not getting an inch. She dropped down slightly, glaring at the offending metal circle, and then flew up over the railing of the balcony to look at it from above. A pair of large metal doors was set into the face of the cliff, and a small metal latch and a set of hinges were holding the hatch closed. “Oh brother,” Rainbow muttered, face-hoofing. She landed, slid the latch aside, and then gripped the handle in her mouth and lifted the hatch open, resting it against the railing. She nodded and then froze as she heard the doors start to open. She whirled around to see the doors open under the magic influence of a familiar-looking armor-wearing unicorn stallion with a sword strapped to his back.

“Cad e ar fud…” the guard said, bewildered, his eyes sliding from Rainbow’s face down her exposed cyan fur to the wings on her sides.

“Oh, hey there,” Rainbow said coyly, backing up to the railing, spreading her wings a little, “Like what you see?”

“M-m-moiety,” the guard stammered, his irises shrinking slightly.

“Is that a yes?” Rainbow asked, titling her head to the side in confusion. The guard blinked, and then began to levitate the sword out of its sheath. “I guess not,” Dash said, and then whirled around and bucked the guard in the face. She vaulted over him as he recoiled and tackled him from behind, driving him forward into the railing of the balcony, knocking the wind out of him. The sword slid free of its sheath and fell over the edge, landing next to a startled Twilight, who looked between it and the struggle on the balcony and then ran for the ladder. Just as she reached it, however, the guard, in his panicked attempt to get away from Rainbow and get air into his lungs, reared back, lost his balance, and fell over the railing. “Head’s up Twi!” Rainbow shouted, and Twilight looked up again in time to see the guard falling and conjured up a bubble of magic to cushion the impact. “Is he ok?” Rainbow asked, flying down to join Twilight in checking on him, “I didn’t want to hurt him too bad.” The stallion gasped painfully as he finally managed to take a breath and sat up, casting about for his sword.

“I’d say he’s fine,” Twilight said dryly as she hit him with a sleep spell. She picked the sword up in her magic and sent it flying far out into the lake, and then pulled off the guard’s helmet and boots and did the same with them.

“What are you doing?” Rainbow asked.

“Making him less of a threat,” Twilight answered, levitating Star Swirl’s journal out of her bag and opening it, “I think it’s high time we got some solid facts about what’s going on in this world.”

“How?” Dash asked, “We don’t speak his language.”

“Star Swirl included a spell in here to fix that,” Twilight said, waggling the book a little as she studied its contents, “Get your cloak back on and get close.”

“I think I’ll keep it off, thank you very much,” Rainbow replied. Twilight gave her a look and she heaved a sigh. “He’s already seen my wings,” she said, “and keeping them visible might keep him off-balance enough to let more slip than he would otherwise.”

Twilight looked dubious, but she didn’t press the issue, turning her attention fully to the language spell. She read the spell formula until she had committed it to memory, and then put the journal away. After pausing for a second of thought, she brought out the dagger and floated it over to Rainbow. “Don’t actually use it,” she warned, “but we should try to convince him not to try anything.”

“Gotcha,” Rainbow said with a look of satisfaction in her eyes before gripping the dagger in her mouth and holding the point near the guard’s face. Meanwhile, Twilight began to gather magic into her horn and channeled it into a spell. Ribbons of glowing light spread out and wrapped around her head, Rainbow Dash’s, and finally the guard’s. As the directions had warned her, Twilight felt some resistance as the magic tried to enter the unconscious stallion’s mind and she gradually increased the pressure until it finally gave way. A sudden wave of pain rushed through her head, and from the look on Dash’s face she felt it as well, but just as quickly as it came the pain faded and the spell wound down to completion. “Did it work?” the pegasus asked around the dagger, rubbing her temple with one hoof.

“I hope so,” Twilight said, frowning slightly, “I don’t feel any different…” The guard began to stir out of the magically-induced sleep, to Twilight’s surprise. “That was quick,” she said, “Well, time to test it then.” She sat down in full view of the guard, with Rainbow on his other side holding the dagger at the ready, and waited as his eyes opened and cleared and he froze at the sight a sharp blade inches from his nose. “Hi there,” Twilight said in a neutral tone, “My name is Twilight Sparkle, and my friend and I have a few questions for you.”

“What could I possibly have to say that would be of use to you, Moiety?” the stallion asked suspiciously.

“What they hay is a moiety?” Dash asked testily. Twilight shot her a look and then gave the guard a smile that she hoped would come across as appealing.

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” she said, “We’re strangers to this world.”

“I don’t believe it,” the guard said darkly, “You may have had me fooled on that before, pretending not to speak my language and hiding your demon servant’s wings.”

“Hey, I’m nopony’s servant,” Dash said, pressing the point of the dagger threateningly into the stallion’s nose, “and I’m not a demon either for that matter.

“Look, we don’t mean any harm,” Twilight said, “We’re just looking for a couple of lost ponies and a book that was stolen from us.”

“Ah, I knew it,” the guard said smugly, “The Deceiver sent you to rescue his mare from the great Aldro. Well, don’t bother. She is being held on the smallest island, and the only way to reach it without becoming food for the wharks is through the great Aldro.”

“And where is Aldro?” Twilight asked.

“He is beyond the Domes,” the guard said, “preparing a new world for us to dwell in. Only those who know the secrets of the Domes can reach him now, and he does not like to be disturbed.”

“Oh really?” Rainbow said sarcastically, “Well, tough for him. Take us to him, now.”

“Easy Rainbow,” Twilight said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Now, Mr. Guard, as I said before, we had a rather important book with us when we arrived, but it was taken away by a pony wearing a strange costume and mask.”

“One of the Moiety,” the guard said, “He probably didn’t know you’d been sent by the one his band of rebellious traitors worship. Heh. You’ll never find that book now, I think; the Moiety can disappear without a trace, even those without horns. The Deceiver must truly be a fool to send such poorly prepared champions like you to save his mare.”

“Watch it buddy,” Rainbow growled, “you’re not the one with the knife here.”

“You don’t scare me,” the guard retorted, “as disturbing and unnatural as you may be, you don’t have the face of a killer.”

“By ‘Deceiver’ you mean Star Swirl the Bearded, don’t you?” Twilight asked, trying to defuse the situation.

“Our stories tell of how the great Aldro and a horned pony with a great beard and robes fought for control of Sohndar,” the guard said, “The pony had deceived Aldro, pretending to be an ally as he lured ponies away from the truth. The Deceiver taught the magic of controlling worlds to the mare he drew away first, and together they called down giant blades and axes from the sky while destroying Aldro’s other world-books. The war ended when the great Aldro tore open a rift in the earth and cast the Deceiver into it, but the pony had still managed to complete his goal and took Aldro’s power of creation with him. Ever since then, Aldro has held the ponies of Sohndar together while trying to reclaim his old power.”

“And he’s succeeded recently?” Twilight asked.

“So I’m told,” the guard said with a shrug, “The Book Maker’s guild would know better.” He paused in thought for a few seconds, and then smiled wickedly and slowly got to his feet. “Tell you what,” he said, pointing to the balcony far overhead, “I don’t see any harm in letting you continue to blunder around. You’ll either get yourselves killed by some misstep or you’ll actually manage to get to Aldro and he’ll deal with you. There’s a building up there that he used as his workshop before creating the new world. Let me go unlock it for you.” He started to walk away toward the ladder, but Rainbow and Twilight quickly pulled up on either side of him, staying in step to the base of the cliff. “Don’t trust me?” he asked, “Smart of you.”

“Just get up there,” Rainbow said, pointing up the ladder with the dagger. The guard started to climb, and Rainbow tossed the dagger to Twilight before taking flight to reach the balcony first. Twilight climbed up after the guard, giving him enough space to get to the top and out of her way before she reached it. The guard then indicated the open door in the cliff, which led into a cave with a metal walkway that curved to the left over a rapidly deepening crevasse. Rainbow and Twilight held a silent discussion of glances and eyebrows before walking in, the cyan pegasus putting a brave face over her claustrophobia so as not to show weakness in front of the enemy. The guard followed after them, and then turned around and closed the doors. The cave was just a bit too narrow for Twilight and Rainbow to turn around quickly, but by the time they managed it the guard was holding up a hoof calmly.

“The doors block the exit when they’re open,” he explained, indicating a gap in the wall to his left. He started to turn in to, then thought again and turned to his right, where there was another gap. “May as well show you one of the Domes before we move on,” he said, “Come.” He led the cautious mares down a curving flight of stone steps that ended in a metal door, which he pushed open and walked through. Twilight and Rainbow followed him closely and emerged into an artificial cavern dominated by a large, spinning metal done ringed by a metal walkway. Taking a closer look, Twilight saw that a full ring of circular symbols had been engraved into the dome at eye-level, but the dome rotated too quickly for her to make out any details. “Each of the five islands has one of these domes,” the guard explained, “inside them is a copy of the book leading to Aldro’s new world.”

“How do we get inside?” Rainbow asked.

“Figure it out for yourself,” the guard replied, “Of course, even if you get that far you’ll have to get past another lock, and if the domes aren’t properly powered it will all be for naught.” He gave the pegasus a smug smile as he brushed past her to head back up the stairs.

“Jerk,” Dash muttered.

“At least he’s giving us information,” Twilight pointed out, following the guard. After they reached the top of the stairs, he led the mares through the other passage, which quickly let out onto a catwalk along the wall of the crater. “May I ask what your name is?” Twilight asked as they walked along.

The guard thought for a while in silence as the catwalk took them onto a shelf of rock, hidden from the lake shore by a wall of natural rock spires, filled with small pools of water and mineral sediments. A small building with frosted glass windows making up most of the front wall and a peaked and gilded roof was nestled into the ridgeline of the crater, and the guard applied his magic to the handle in the center of the door, which unlocked with a click and then turned to allow the door to swing open. “Arcem,” he said, standing aside and gesturing for Twilight and Rainbow to head inside.

“Come again?” Twilight asked.

“You can call me Arcem, if you must have a name for me” the guard said, “Now, here we must part ways. Good luck not dying.”

“Hold on,” Rainbow said, moving to block his path, “you think we’re just going to let you walk away and tell your buddies where we are?” Arcem flinched as Rainbow spread her wings, and she smirked as she stepped closer and reached a wing toward him. “Get in there,” she ordered, nodding at the building. Arcem glowered at her and reluctantly walked through the door. “I’m keeping my eye on you,” Rainbow said as she followed him, “so don’t try anything.”

“Fine, but don’t expect me to tell you anything more,” the guard said, taking a seat just inside the door, next to a blue button on a post.

Twilight ignored the battle of wills occurring between her pegasus friend and their prisoner as she entered the workshop and looked around. A potbellied furnace sat in the center of the room and workbenches covered with all sorts of objects were set up along two of the walls. A second door leading outside stood opposite of the entrance, and through the frosted windows Twilight thought she could make out a grav-car station on a plateau far below. She went over to the furnace and peered inside, blanching as she saw the charred remains of thin, wood-bound books. “Why would he be burning books?” she wondered aloud.

“The great Aldro does not take failure well,” Arcem replied in a bored tone.

Twilight backed away from the furnace, trying not to think too hard about the implications of the guard’s phrasing, and turned to get a closer look at one of the workbenches. In the center of the one she approached first was a slim book bound with brass rings between two wooden boards, the top board marked with the symbol of the star with a bisected square – the glyph for 5 – in the center. On reflex, Twilight opened it to the first page and then gasped in surprise. “This is written in Equestrian!”

Chapter 7

Workshop, Book Maker’s Island

As Twilight quickly skimmed over the first few pages of the book, she found she had to revise her initial impression about its language. The characters were recognizably Equestrian, but from the spelling and sentence structure she concluded that it was a slightly modified form of Classic-age Equestrian, an old form that was still fairly easy for even casual modern readers to decipher. The writer of this book, however, didn’t seem to be a native user of the language, resulting in some curious phrasings. Flipping back to the first page, she began to slowly read in silence.

The freshly new formula for ink is a failure. I held high hopes, but upon conclusion of enscribing, the linking panel remained dark and useless. These constant failures produce much frustration, having to destroy what were in other ways perfect Books. There are days where the workshop is unbearably heated by the flames of ruined Books. So many Variables, trying to make the correctest kind of paper, bindings, inks, and onward, only to fail somewhere… My constant refinements only show that near infinite combinations exist. Without access to my Kl’Kai resources, it is perhaps my long-term goals are impossible.

“Well Twi, what is it?” Rainbow Dash asked, startling Twilight back to the present.

“Oh, right,” the lavender unicorn said with a slight blush, “I’m guessing it’s a journal Aldro kept of his work on trying to create a linking book.”

“You can read that?” Arcem exclaimed, incredulous.

“Yes,” Twilight said simply, giving the guard a flat look.

“But…” Arcem’s expression hardened and he shook his head. “No, I don’t believe you,” he said, “The Great Aldro’s private records are written a in a script he developed himself. Not even the Book Maker’s guild is taught it.”

Rainbow walked over to the workbench and looked at the book. “Looks like old Equestrian to me,” she said.

“Early-Classical Equestrian to be precise,” Twilight said.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Whatever, I can still read it. Heck, I’ll read this page out loud just to prove it.” She met Arcem’s suspicious gaze for a few seconds, and then looked back at the book and read off the first page in its entirety. “How do you like that?” she asked.

“You could have made that up,” Arcem replied quickly, “Looking around this place, it’s not hard to realize Aldro did work on his books here, and I told you myself he’s only created the one new world so far. Making up an entry about earlier failures isn’t that difficult.”

“You…,” Rainbow hiked her tail up in annoyance and stalked away to examine another workbench, “Like I care what you think anyway. Keep reading Twi, and let me know if you find anything useful.”

Twilight nodded and turned the page. She only made it through a few sentences before her eyes widened in interest. “Listen to this,” she said, getting Rainbow’s attention and a skeptical look from Arcem, and then cleared her throat and read, “‘I have concluded study of the star-filled fissure, determining I can learn no more about its nature with my present resources. If future fortune allows a return to study, I will record what has been determined so far. The fissure seems to contain its own space, existing separate but alongside the Fifth Age. Contrary to the stories which make rounds among the ponies, the origin of the fissure is unknown to me and was likely created by Star Swirl for the purposes it served him and Clover.’”

“Lies,” Arcem said, “The Great Aldro did create that rift, to cast out the Deceiver and several who sided with him.”

“Did you see him open the rift?” Twilight asked, giving the guard pony a measured look.

“Well, no,” Arcem admitted, “It was before my time, and it was sealed over shortly after its creation-”

“Sealed over.” Twilight said, “Not closed back up?” Arcem frowned slightly in thought and Twilight turned back to the book. “‘In our concluding confrontation,’” she read, “‘my foe cast himself and the final of my books into the fissure, linking out as he did so. It is perhaps evident that even Star Swirl knew little of the starry expanse, as he intended Sohndar as a kennel and not an execution ground for me. The fissure-world contains an atmosphere of its own, but sucks in a powerful vortex of air so strong I required much force and threat to make the natives approach to close it with metal. I once considered the fissure as an avenue of liberation, but for two reasons I dare not use it: I know not where it leads, if anywhere, as anybody thrown in is quickly lost to sight, and it is a present danger to the world’s stability. I fearfully dread what may occur if the seal is breached in these days of decay.’”

“Yikes,” Rainbow said, “I vote we steer clear of wherever that fissure is. Uh, where is it anyway?” she asked, turning to Arcem.

“It is on the Golden Dome’s island,” Arcem answered, “close to the trap laid over the spot where most outsiders appear.”

“Oh my,” Twilight said, eyes wide in shock, “That huge metal plate in the ground where we arrived…”

“Well, good thing there’s nothing to go back there for, right?” Dash asked. Twilight nodded slowly and returned to her reading, noticing that the wording was starting to resemble proper Equestrian now. The journal went on to discuss a large project Aldro had undertaken in the pursuit of creating a working linking book. Utilizing something he called “fire marbles,” he’d attempted to overcome the perceived weaknesses in his materials by focusing large amounts of power into the books. It had taken some time, but he’d eventually succeeded, establishing a link to a new world. After mentioning that success, the book transitioned into what Twilight figured was a meditation on Aldro’s culture.

I continue to find proof that the ancient Kl’Kai fascination with the number five is more than cultural. The strongest and greatest remnants of my people were constructed around that number, and even in other worlds it possesses power.

To look upon the surviving data of the Kl’Kai, my soul mourns for the loss of such greatness and how I have been prevented from restoring it and the Kl’Kai’s rightful place. Things have changed now though, with my recent successes, and all built around the number five. I shall continue in study of five’s power and history so as to fully implement. In particular, I must determine how the Kl’Kai colors mesh with the Number…

Below the entry were six small circles that resembled eyes, some with a dot for a pupil, some with a line instead, and some appearing to be opening sideways. Twilight copied them into her notes and labeled them “colors?” before continuing on to the next page. After a brief entry about catching somepony trying to read the journal and, to Twilight’s amusement, Aldro expressing relief that he’d been writing in a language the Sohndar ponies couldn’t read, he began to describe building the spinning domes as part of a network to provide continuous power to his linking books with minimal effort. From the accompanying sketches, Twilight deduced that the large golden dome on the first island was the central power hub for all the domes. “That bears more investigation then,” she muttered to herself. She skipped over most of the next entry, which focused on harvesting some creature called an ytrim that was used for something or another that Twilight didn’t wish to dwell upon. That entry ended with an explanation for the curious behavior of the water the would-be rescuers had noted: Aldro attributed it to a microscopic organism that could raise the surface tension of water to outstanding degrees and which fled from heat sources, taking the water with it. The final entry Twilight read really caught her interest, because it not only explained that the locks Arcem had said stood between opening the domes and accessing the books had been put in place because Aldro suspected a group of rebellious natives had been using the domes for their own purpose, but the entry ended with five of the Kl’Kai numerals. After casting glance over her shoulder and seeing that the silently cranky guard was apparently occupied with his own thoughts, Twilight copied the symbols into her notes and put the papers away. “Arcem,” she said in a charming-sounding but transparently manipulative voice, “By chance, do you know the code to unlock the books in the domes?”

“I won’t tell you what it is, so don’t bother,” Arcem replied brusquely.

“But you do know it,” Twilight pressed.

Arcem gave the lavender unicorn a flat look. “What are you up outsider? You’ve been putting on that reading act for so long…”

“It’s not an act,” Twilight said, “I run a library at home; I know my language when I see it written. Just tell me if I’m right or wrong on this: the code is seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, twenty-four.”

“How’d did you- I mean…” Arcem sputtered, trying too late and too hard to hide his surprise.

“Come look,” Twilight said, beckoning, “I think you should at least be able to read this bit.” The guardpony walked over and looked down at the page. His eyes went wide as he looked up into Twilight’s knowing smile.

“By my life,” he muttered, “you really can read this…”

“Hey Twi,” Rainbow called from across the room, “Come check this out.” Leaving Arcem to process the realization that Twilight could read his master’s “secret” script, Twilight went over to join her friend by one of the other workbenches. Rainbow was rolling a familiar-looking wooden ball back and forth with one hoof, a ball with a gilded eye-like pattern on one side and a square scratched into the other. “What’s this number?” she asked, stopping the ball so Twilight could get a good look at it. The square had two diagonal lines forming a K with the left side.

“Three,” Twilight answered after a second, “What is it doing here? Does this mean Aldro had something to do with placing these around the village island?”

“Not according to this,” Rainbow said, tapping a piece of parchment sitting next to the ball. Twilight picked it up in her magic and read.

While ambulating through the village, I noticed an object of peculiarity floating in the lagoon as if anchored in place. Ordering it retrieved, I saw it to be a wooden orb and took it for study. To my surprise, on the next day I noticed another had mysteriously appeared to replace it, and I have since been noticing similar balls placed around the largest island. The ball I first located floats near a point where villagers have been noticed to disappear suddenly and with mystery, which the ponies continue to blame on the Black Moeity, their boogey-hound spirits. The Surveyors Guild will record the location of the wooden balls and watch them for patterns and strangeness.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Twilight said, but then frowned at the ball and said, “unfortunately, we don’t know where this one is supposed to be located, so there’s no telling what animal it’s associated with.”

“Well maybe our new friend knows where it belongs,” Rainbow said, turning around, “Hey Arc-” She stopped short and looked around wildly, not seeing the stallion anywhere. The door leading out onto the catwalks stood ajar, its hinges squeaking quietly. “He got away!” she exclaimed.

“Catch him,” Twilight said, running for the door, “We can’t let him raise the alarm!” Dash beat her outside and saw Arcem galloping away to the right into a tunnel.

“Come back here!” Rainbow shouted, charging in for a tackle. Her shout alerted Arcem to her approach, and he whirled around and threw the journal at her, hitting Dash in the face and causing her to veer into the cliff face when she flinched. With a low laugh, the guard turned to start fleeing again, only to have Twilight appear in his way in a flash of light.

“One of you flies and the other moves without walking,” Arcem muttered darkly, “you really are spirits in pony guise.”

“Will you stop being difficult?” Twilight snapped, “Just help us with a few things and we’ll be out of your mane in a short time. At least promise you won’t try to stop us.”

Arcem snorted and cast a numbing spell that took Twilight’s front legs out from under her. “I am a loyal member of the Maintainers Guild,” he said, “Your weak methods of temptation are nothing to me.” He tried to move forward, but Twilight managed to block the tunnel with her body and a small force field. Arcem glanced over his shoulder to see that Rainbow was still dazed from her collision with the wall and whirled around to run back to the workshop, giving the pegasus another glancing blow to the head as he passed. He entered the building and slammed the door shut. Twilight grunted in pain as she fought off the effects of the numbing spell and feeling rushed back into her legs, and then she ran to check on Rainbow Dash.

“Are you ok?” Twilight asked.

“Which way’d he go?” the pegasus asked, in a daze as she tried to stand up.

“Back into the building,” Twilight answered, “He’s probably going to try and barricade himself in there so we can’t proceed.”

“S’nother door,” Rainbow slurred, “I’d say he’s making a break for it.” She spread her wings and took to the air with an unsteady wobble. “I’ll go head him off!”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Twilight asked, “You’re not looking too good.”

“Hey, I’m Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow said huffily, “The day I can’t fly after a little knock to the head is the day I die!” With that, she took off, skimming quickly over the workshop. Concerned, Twilight ran to the door and tried to open it so she could follow her friend, only to find it locked from the inside.

Dash’s head began to pound and her vision blurred slightly as she passed the apex of her arcing path over the building and began to dive down to the grav-car station on the other side. Cursing mentally, she acquiesced to her body’s demands and slowed down. As her vision cleared, she saw Arcem climbing into the grav-car, and by the time she got down to his level he’d already turned the vehicle around and engaged the thrust. Rainbow briefly considered chasing after him as the grav-car sped away along the rails to another island in the distance, but the pain in her head and her rule against leaving anypony hanging dissuaded her. She landed on the hard stone of the grav-car station and muttered dark threats against Arcem as she waited for Twilight to catch up to her. A minute or two later, the lavender unicorn came trotting down the stairs from the workshop, looking more concerned for Rainbow’s well-being than for the obvious loss of Arcem.

“How are you feeling Rainbow?” she asked.

“Like I flew into a cliff,” Rainbow answered flatly, “I’ve bounced back from that before; I’ll probably be fine by the time we get to the next island.”

“You think we should go that way?” Twilight asked, “He’s bound to be raising the alarm this time; we could be heading into a trap.”

“Then we’ll spring it on purpose,” Dash said resolutely, “There’s no point in being subtle anymore, and we still don’t have any idea of how to find that pony who took the trap-book or how to get to where Star Swirl’s family is. I say we just press on forward and handle whatever comes our way.”

Twilight frowned, unable to come up with a solid argument against her friend’s assessment of the situation. “All right,” she said at last, sighing, “but we’ll need to call the grav-car back over here.”

“There’s a button that looks just like the one we used to summon the first grav-car inside the workshop by the door,” Rainbow said, “I’ll fly ahead and meet you at the other end. I won’t go anywhere besides the station, I promise,” she added when Twilight started to protest.

“Be careful Dash,” Twilight said as she climbed back up the stairs.

Chapter 8

Survey Island

As Rainbow Dash approached the island, she flew high to see as much has she could of it in a few quick glances. Like the other islands, it was a massive blocky mesa rising from the water, shaped like a capital L that Rainbow and the grav-car track from the previous island approached from the “top”. The shorter horizontal part of the L stood at a much higher elevation than the vertical part and seemed to be hollow and open to the sky. The lower part of the island was covered by two shallow pools of water divided by a jagged sloped path that stretched from the end of the island to the cliff. In the pools were five sculpted islands of various sizes and shapes, although all of them were flat-topped and perforated with holes in a regular grid. The grav-car tracks led into a docking station carved into the end of the island, with a set of stairs leading out and up to the surface. Rainbow couldn’t see any ponies moving around, and so she landed in the station and waited for Twilight to arrive. There was another door in the back of the station on the opposite side of the depression where the grav-car would come to rest from the stairs leading up. Twilight’s transportation came in shortly, and as the lavender unicorn stepped out Dash noted that she’d removed her cloak, clearly accepting that remaining low-profile was impossible since Arcem had gotten away.

“I didn’t see anything suspicious on my way in,” Rainbow said, “but I want to give the surface a closer look.”

“Well, there’s a good chance Arcem’s goal is toward the heart to the island,” Twilight said, nodding at the closed door. She held up a hoof to forestall Rainbow’s complaint about going underground and said, “I’m willing to risk splitting up for a short while, to save time. You look over the surface and I’ll go a short way into the caves and then we’ll meet back here to plan out next move.”

“Sounds good to me,” Rainbow said, relief and gratitude clear on her face.

“Just be careful, ok?” Twilight said, “Try not to fight Arcem directly if you spot him, and if you see anyone else try to be friendly.” Rainbow saluted smartly and flew out of the cavern, looping up and around to zip quickly across the surface toward the higher portion of the island. The jagged rift between the two pools continued as a cleft reaching three-quarters of the way to the top of the cliff, in which an elevator had been installed. At the top was a small balcony overlooking the pools, and there was a panel on the railing covered in five gold buttons of various sizes and shapes that fit together in a perfect square. Rainbow looked at it with curiosity, and then out at the islands in the pools. They were spaced out and none of them were smooth-sided, but Rainbow could easily imagine them all squeezing together into a single, roughly square landmass. “Is this a map?” she wondered, glancing back down at the panel, “and what dos this do?” She pressed the largest button, and water began to rise out of the top of the largest island model, defying physics to form a lumpy mound on top of the sculpture. Rainbow pressed another button and the water receded from the first island while rising out of the one matching the second button. “Weird,” Rainbow said with conclusive dismissal and turned around. Across the elevator shaft was a metal walkway leading through the cliff and into the crater lake contained inside. The walkway split in front of a large structure that reminded Dash a squat mushroom floating in a giant inner tube, heading mostly straight to the left to a spinning metal dome and curving around to the right to some point behind the metal mushroom, and a set of stairs led up into the mushroom itself.

Rainbow started up the stairs, but as she set her hoof on the first step, she heard a faint noise echoing from the back side of the basin. She took a quick glance inside the structure and declared the machine she saw inside something more worth Twilight’s attention, and then took flight to investigate the repetitive sound, heading up and over the metal mushroom. The walkway ended suddenly, far from both the surrounding cliffs and the metal structure. The sound Rainbow heard was from a grey-green earth pony with a sand-colored mane and a white robe kicking at the post of a surveying telescope so that it was bent out of alignment. “Hey,” Rainbow said in as innocent a tone as she could as she flew closer to the pony, “what are you doing?” The pony jumped in fright, looked up at the flying cyan pegasus, and let out a shriek as he jumped back and flipped over the railing into the water. “Oops, sorry about that,” Rainbow said embarrassedly, perching on the rail and extending a hoof, “Need a hoof up?” The earth pony paddled away in a loud panic. Rainbow sighed and face-hoofed. “I’m not what you think I am, promise,” she said with some irritation, and then noticed a shadow rising from the depths of the lake, quickly growing larger as it moved beneath the pony. “Watch out!” Rainbow cried as she dived and grabbed the swimming pony, hauling him up into the air seconds before a monstrous humpbacked fish with sharp gnashing teeth and large tusks jutting out from either side of its head broke the surface, mouth gaping as it tried to grab the ponies out of the air but falling short. It crashed back into the lake and stared up at Rainbow and her passenger for a moment, before vanishing back into the depths. Rainbow continued to hover for a moment more and then finally came down for a landing at the junction of walkways, quivering with adrenaline.

“You… you saved my life?” the robed pony asked, incredulous.

“Duh,” Rainbow said, “It was kinda my fault you fell in in the first place, so what else should I have done? What was that thing anyway?”

“Whark,” the pony answered, “Aldro keeps one of the wharks in this lake. I never dared ask why…” He shook his head and looked at Rainbow Dash with new eyes, full of admiration. “Whatever you are, flying one, my life is yours to do with as you please,” he said, bowing deeply, “Use me gently, if it’s not too much to ask.”

“Wha?” Rainbow said, “Hey, no need to be so dramatic about it! I just did what I had to; you don’t owe me anything.”

“I do!” the pony insisted, “You’ve shown me mercy I never expected. When one of the Maintainers came through here, stripped of weapons and half his armor, he was yelling about demons and servants of Aldro’s Enemy who would destroy any pony they came upon. He ordered the island evacuated, but only after somepony – me – was volunteered to try and sabotage their ability to reach Aldro’s new world.” Rainbow cast a glance in the direction of the bent telescope and then gave the pony a questioning look. “You proved him wrong though,” he continued, “You saved me from becoming whark food. I have to repay you somehow. Just name it.”

“Hm,” Rainbow said, thinking, “Well, you definitely have a better attitude than Arcem. Heh heh heh. Ok then Whark Bait, tell me what you do on this island.”

“W-whark Bait?”

Dash laughed and gave the pony a few pats on the head. “Yep, that’s what I’m gonna call you. Got a problem with that?”

“No,” Whark Bait said, eyes going wide with fear of displeasing the pegasus, “Uh, ok, what I do. This is the island of the Surveyors Guild, tasked by Aldro with studying and documenting the shifts that the world undergoes and keeping the Builders Guild aware of changes that need to be made to the routes between the islands.” He nodded at the path leading back out to the lower plateau and said, “Out there is the main map of the five islands of Sohndar, and they’re connected to the grid viewer there,” he pointed to the metal mushroom, “for more detailed views of the topography.”

“Ok,” Rainbow said, “I guess Twilight could find that useful, somehow. What about those spinning domes? What does messing up that telescope thing have to do with them?”

“So, you are trying to get to Aldro’s new world?” Whark Bait asked.

“I think so,” Rainbow mused, “Our mission is to find and rescue Star Swirl’s wife and daughter, and apparently they’re being held on the one island that isn’t accessible by normal means.”

“The prison island, yes,” the Surveyor said, smiling, “The only other island it’s close to is Temple Island, and there are no bridges or grav-car tracks to it. You’d have to pass through the new world and come out into the right power-dome to get there. A-actually, you could just fly there, I’m sure…”

“That won’t do Twilight any good,” Rainbow said, “she can’t fly like me. We have some business with Aldro as well anyway.”

“Oh, I see,” Whark Bait said, “The domes are locked though, and the Maintainers are likely to turn off the central power now, in order to stop you.”

Rainbow snorted with a confident smirk on her face. “If it can be turned off, we can just turn it back on again,” she said, “Where is the central power switch?”

“On Temple Island,” Whark Bait answered, “the Golden Dome there essentially is the power generator for the other domes. Turning the power on once it’s turned off isn’t that simple though. It’s a complex procedure that only Aldro and those who trusted with the secret know. Figuring it out without prior knowledge of the elements involved is probably close to impossible.”

Rainbow deflated slightly. “That’s not what I wanted to hear,” she said, “I mean, Twilight’s real smart, but we’re still figuring things out as we go.”

“Do not despair flying one,” Whark Bait said, “The trick to restoring power to the domes lies in the geography of the world, and nopony knows that better than the Surveyors Guild.”

Dash grinned broadly and drew the pony to her side with a foreleg. “Whark Bait, “she said, “you and I are going to be great friends. The name’s Rainbow Dash.”

When Rainbow flew out to investigate the island’s surface, Twilight leaped across the depression in the middle of the grav-car station and headed for the door to the interior. The door was a simple slab of the same gray rock that made up the walls with a latch on the right side, but it opened into a short, wood-paneled hallway that ended in an ornate five-sided shaft illuminated with golden light and that seemed to be filled with water up to a foot below the hallway floor. Thick chains hung down into the water in four corners of the room, and a lever sat conspicuously near the edge. Twilight pulled it back and the chains began to lower with winching sound. After a moment, a fancy-looking booth with a peaked roof and covered with gold leaf on every inch rose out of the water, rotating around until it came to rest with a small glass window facing Twilight, and then the entire side lowered down into bridge to allow entrance. Twilight stared in astounded silence at the opulence of it for several seconds, and then shrugged and walked inside. “This better be worth it,” she said as she hit the only button inside the booth and waited. The wall rose back into place and then the elevator descended, rotating slowly as it sank beneath the surface of the water and then quickly broke back into open air. Twilight’s eyebrow went up, glad that she wasn’t going to get wet but confused because the shaft didn’t feel particularly warm. The booth rotated a full hundred-eighty degrees by the time it came to rest in front of a short passageway made of glass and metal leading into another tunnel through the rock. It took a few seconds for the elevator to open up again, and as it did so Twilight heard voices coming from farther ahead. She trotted forward into what looked to be a naturally occurring and winding crack in the rock with a smooth concrete path built into it and saw a pony in a hooded white robe running through a doorway on the left, followed closely by Arcem.

The guard pony staggered slightly in surprise upon seeing Twilight and gave the robed pony a rough push, barking, “Hurry! The sorceress is here!”

“Arcem, hold it!” Twilight shouted, firing a stun spell as she galloped forward. Arcem dodged the spell by ducking into the doorway and threw up a force field across it before Twilight could reach him. The lavender unicorn stopped just before colliding with the barrier and met Arcem’s glare through it. Behind him, a grav-car was settling into place as the robed pony glanced fearfully in Twilight’s direction. “Look, Arcem,” Twilight said, “I know we got off on the wrong hoof, but-”

“Stow it,” Arcem spat, “There is nothing you can say that will make me betray the great Aldro. If you wish to continue your quest, you’ll do so knowing I have personally seen to the removal of any pony on this island who could let slip the knowledge you need, and wherever you go the Maintainer’s Guild will be standing in your way. The only way you’ll see the Deceiver’s mare now is when Aldro locks you away with her. Assuming he deigns to do that rather than feed you to the wharks. Good-bye.” He turned around smartly and joined the other pony in the grav-car, which turned around and flew off before the barrier faded.

“Great,” Twilight muttered, turning away and heading back to the elevator, “Nothing to do now but warn Rainbow Dash about this…” She rode the elevator back up and returned to the first grav-car station. She sat down to wait for Rainbow to return from her scouting, but several minutes went by with no sign of the pegasus. “Darn it,” Twilight said, leaping across the depression and heading for the stairs to the surface, “She better not have gotten herself into trouble.” As she walked along the path between the model islands, she paid them only passing glances as she focused on locating Rainbow.

She took the elevator up and trotted through to the crater lake, taking in the metal mushroom-like structure with slightly bemused curiosity until she heard the sound of hooves striking metal, followed a moment later by a stallion’s voice saying, “That’s a little better, but still too left-ish.” Following the walkway around to the right, she came upon the scene of Rainbow Dash delivering a flying buck to the pole of a surveying telescope while a white-robed earth pony stallion gave directions. Twilight cleared her throat, making the robed pony flinch and whip his head around to look at her. Rainbow smiled and waved Twilight over.

“Hey Twi,” she said, “Nice of you to show up. Whark Bait, this is Twilight Sparkle. Twilight, meet Whark Bait. He’s going to help us get into the domes.”

“Whark Bait?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow, “Is that really your name?”

“No,” the Surveyor said, “but Ms. Rainbow is amused by calling me that, and since she did save my life I won’t hold it against her. If you are a friend of hers, I am glad to be of service.”

“Uh huh,” Twilight said without conviction, “Rainbow, can I speak with you for a moment, alone?” Rainbow nodded and followed Twilight to the front side of the metal structure. “Are you sure we can trust him?” the unicorn asked in a low tone.

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Rainbow answered, “He’s answered every question I’ve given him so far without even hesitating.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Twilight asked, “I mean, no offense, but you’re a freak of nature in this world. Arcem was nearly scared out of his wits after seeing you fly, so why is this ‘Whark Bait’ guy cool with it?”

“Oh, he was plenty spooked at first,” Rainbow said lightly, “but after I saved him from becoming monster fish food at the last second he warmed up real quick. Why do you have a problem with him? I thought you’d be jumping for joy at finding a pony willing to help us out.”

“I ran into Arcem down below,” Twilight explained, “He got away, but before he left he told me he’d evacuated everypony he thought we could trick or fool into helping us. I figured that meant the island was abandoned, but then I come up here looking for you and find that there’s another pony with you…”

“Huh,” Rainbow said, hanging her head slightly as she thought, “Whark Bait was in the middle of messing up that telescope so we couldn’t use it, but that was before I saved him from certain death. I’m confident he’s had a change of priorities now.” She flew up next to Twilight and threw a leg around her shoulders in a coaxing manner. “Give him a chance Twi,” she said, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Fine,” Twilight sighed, “I’ll trust your judgment Dash.” They went back to the end of the walkway and Twilight wrapped the telescope in her magic as she looked at Whark Bait. “What, exactly, are you trying to do with this?” she asked.

Chapter 9

Surveyor’s Island

“I won’t pretend to understand the reason why this is so,” Whark Bait explained as he and Twilight worked on realigning the survey telescope to look on the rotating metal dome in the distance, “but the magic books Aldro creates in the attempt to make new worlds will not work without power from the Fire Marbles. I think it’s leaning forward now.”

Twilight pulled the post back a little with her magic and said, “I know; I found some of Aldro’s notes on the domes. They didn’t go into detail about what the Fire Marbles are though.”

“Tiny bit to my right now,” Whark Bait said, gazing through the telescope. “All I know is that the Marbles have a lot of potential magic in them, especially for being so small. There are six in all, each a different color, and might be from the time before the land began to divide and Aldro made himself known to the ponies for the first time. Now they serve as the power source for the Books. Ah! Perfect, hold it right there. Now let’s hope the mechanisms still work.” He pressed the button sitting on the top of the telescope, and after a few seconds the slotted disk on the front of the telescope began to spin. Whark Bait looked through the telescope for a moment, and then smiled and nodded. “Looks like it’ll work,” he said, stepping back and gesturing at Twilight, “Take a look.” When Twilight stepped up and looked into the eyepiece, she saw a circular eye-like symbol that appeared to be closing, and then a pair of curved lines closed in from the sides, removing the horizontal line and then opening again to reveal a dot in the center. At one point during the cycle, the symbol turned yellow for about half a second.

“Wow,” Twilight said, looking up from the telescope and observing the dome as a whole, “This makes it look like all the symbols engraved on that dome are a single moving image, like those old spinning cylinder toys that predate filmstrips.”

“Let me see,” Rainbow said, pushing her way between the others to peer into the telescope itself. “Neat,” she said after a moment, “but why is one of them yellow?”

“If you hit the button when you see that symbol, the dome will stop and open,” Whark Bait said, “But, if you don’t mind, I need to see what one it is first.” Rainbow and Twilight made room and the robed stallion peered through the telescope until the yellow symbol appeared. “Ah, green, right,” he said as he pressed the button. The dome and slotted disk both gradually slowed to a stop, and then the dome flipped over, revealing its underside to be two gilded half-domes with space between them, a miniature replica of the giant dome on the first island.

“Wait, what’s green?” Rainbow asked, “The symbol for ‘stop here’ was yellow.”

“It was tinted yellow to stand out, yes,” Whark Bait said, “but the symbol itself was for the color green. Didn’t you recognize it?”

“We’re, uh, not familiar with the symbols and writing of this world,” Twilight explained. She dug into her bags as the Surveyor made a sound of understanding and realization. “Ah, here we go,” Twilight said, levitating the sheet of notes she’d made from Aldro’s journal and showing the row of eye-like symbols she’d copied to Whark Bait. “These are the color symbols, right?” she asked, “Could you tell us which is which?”

“Ah, those are indeed the colors,” Whark Bait said, “and they’re in proper order too: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.”

“The rainbow spectrum,” Twilight said, casting an involuntary glance at her friend’s multi-colored mane, “That makes sense. So, are the colors important for powering the domes?”

“Oh yes, very much so,” Whark Bait said, “To send power to the domes and activate the books inside of them, you need to know the color associated with all five and their precise location in the world. You could use the Surveyor Guild equipment on this island to figure out the latter part if you wanted, but I happen to have the entire map of the world memorized. We’ll have to go to each dome and look for the associated colors though; I don’t remember that part too well.” He smiled apologetically.

Twilight’s brow furrowed as she regarded the mushroom-like structure in the middle of the lagoon, and then the robed stallion’s guileless face. She smiled. “Ok then,” she said, “let’s get going then, shall we?”

“Back to Aldro’s old workshop then?” Rainbow asked, flying slightly ahead as the trio left the lagoon and headed toward the grav-car station, “Unless there’s another way off the island I haven’t noticed.”

“There’s a grav-car that will take us to the village island,” Whark Bait said, “We should use it; it’s the only way to reach that island’s dome.”

Twilight shook her head. “Arcem left that way,” she said, “I suspect he’ll be lying in wait with friends if we take that grav-car. We should backtrack and check out the domes on the other islands first. I remember seeing where the dome is on Village Island, so once we work our way around to it, Rainbow Dash can just fly up and see which color goes to it.”

Rainbow scoffed and rolled her eyes, flipping over to give Twilight a disappointed look. “Those guards aren’t so tough Twilight,” she said, “You’ve knocked Arcem out twice already with your sleep spell, and the others we’ve encountered were those pansies in the watchtowers. We’re bound to run into them eventually anyway, so why not get it over with now?”

“I agree with you in part Ms. Rainbow,” Whark Bait said, “we will undoubtedly meet resistance from the Maintainer’s Guild, but they are not to be underestimated. If they are truly on alert, the only safe place to be might be a Moiety hideaway, assuming we are lucky enough to stumble upon one and they don’t find us in the meantime.” He shivered at some unspoken fear. “All things considered, I’d prefer the safer route.”

The group arrived at the station and Twilight looked between the waiting transport and the door leading to the island’s interior and the other grav-car station, although Dash remained hovering just outside, looking miffed at Whark Bait. “Fine,” she groused, “Guess I’ve been outvoted. See you two in a bit.” Without another word, she turned around and began to fly back to Book Island. Twilight started to call after her, but the pegasus moved out of earshot too quickly, leaving Twilight to simply sigh and climb up into the grav-car. Whark Bait followed her and sat down in the space behind the pilot seat, and then Twilight turned the craft around and engaged the thrust.

“Whark,” Twilight asked as the grav-car began to pick up speed, “tell me something. Do you really believe that Aldro created this world?”

“I… don’t have any reason to doubt that claim,” the Surveyor replied hesitantly, “I mean, I haven’t seen any of the other worlds he’s made, or any really spectacular miracles performed by him, but… Well, he’s certainly a lot older and smarter than any pony on the islands.”

“But then why did he populate the world with ponies and not beings more like himself?” Twilight asked.

Whark Bait started to answer, but then closed his mouth slowly as he pondered the question. “I’ve never really thought about it,” he said at last, and then his tone grew serious as he added, “Ms. Twilight, I realize you and Rainbow probably are actual agents of The Deceiver, and that means you consider Aldro your enemy, but he’s not as bad as you’ve been led to believe. He can be a strict taskmaster at times, and his laws aren’t always easy, but everything he does has been for our benefit. Sohndar is dying, the islands are drifting farther apart by the day, and Aldro has been struggling ceaselessly to create a world that we can all take refuge in before the end.” Twilight felt her gut tense up as the stallion’s conviction pierced her mind, and her ears drooped slightly. “I owe Rainbow Dash a debt for my life,” Whark Bait said after a moment, “I’m repaying it by not prying into your intentions and helping you reach Aldro. Beyond that, I can only hope you consider your actions carefully.”

“Whark Bait,” Twilight began, but a knock on the grav-car window distracted her.

Rainbow Dash was hovering in front of the window, hooves on her hips as she glared impatiently at Twilight. “Are you guys coming?” she asked, and Twilight realized the grav-car had already docked at the station and the hatch stood open. “I’ve already scouted ahead,” the pegasus continued, “the coast is clear, so let’s go!” With a sheepish blush, Twilight and Whark Bait disembarked and followed Rainbow up the stairs and through the workshop. Whark Bait paused and looked around the building with interest in his eyes, but Twilight and Rainbow kept walking and went out the other door, forcing him to run and catch up.

“I have never been in there before,” he said as he pulled up behind Twilight on the catwalk.

“Oh?” Twilight asked, “Then how did you manage to map out the island?”

“I’m not the only Surveyor for one thing,” Whark Bait said, “and I come here the same way everypony does: across the bridge from the Great Dome.”

“Heh,” Rainbow laughed humorlessly, “Twi and I rode the mine cart from Village Island to get here the first time.”

“Mine cart? Oh, you mean the cart that brings the wood.” The Surveyor’s eyes went wide as the idea fully dawned on him. “That… must have been quite the experience,” he said.

“It’s the most thrilling ride I’ve ever been on now that I think back on it,” Rainbow said, “Although nearly landing in the wood chipper at the end was probably a bit too much…” Twilight grimaced at the memory and the bruise on her stomach started aching again for a second. The group came up to the entrance to the cavern and Rainbow slowed down, casting a nervous look around.

“Why don’t you stay out here and keep watch?” Twilight suggested, taking pity on her friend, “It won’t take all of us to check the dome.”

“Yes, good idea,” Rainbow said, quickly putting on the appearance of casual confidence as she took a position hovering above the opening in the rock, “and maybe I should have the dagger, just in case.” Twilight nodded and levitated the curiously shaped blade out of her bag and up to the waiting pegasus, who took and held it in the corner of her mouth. Neither mare noticed Whark Bait’s shocked reaction to the weapon’s shape, and he managed to compose his features before Twilight glanced his way to see if he was ready to proceed. At his nod, the two entered the cavern and moved quickly for the stairs down to the spinning dome.

“Look,” Twilight said, slowing her pace, “I don’t fully understand what kind of history Aldro and Star Swirl – the pony you call The Deceiver - have and I’m trying not to judge Aldro until I’ve had a chance to meet him, but I do know a few things with certainty. Aldro is holding Star Swirl’s family against their will, and Star Swirl is currently doing everything he can to either stop Sohndar’s decay or at least hold it off until an alternative can be found, but he doesn’t know what Aldro recent activities have been. Rainbow and I are going to free Clover and Nyx and… try to arrange a way for Star Swirl and Aldro to be able to talk to each other. After that it’s out of our hooves.” Whark Bait simply nodded slowly. They reached the foot of the stairs and Twilight pushed the door open. “Well, here we are,” she said as they entered the chamber, “Now, where is the…” She trailed off as Whark Bait closed the door behind him, revealing a passage into another, smaller room behind it. “Oh.” Whark Bait smirked and stepped through the opening, and a moment later the dome slowed to a stop and flipped over. Twilight went over to get a closer look and found that in between the two half-domes was a smaller, curved cover with a round window on it, through which she could see a book. Below the window was a ruled slot with five sliders bunched together on the left end and below that was button. Including the positions taken by the sliders, Twilight counted twenty-five ruler ticks on the slot. Looks like this is how I’ll have to enter that code, she thought, making a mental note for later.

“The color is yellow,” Whark Bait called, pulling Twilight’s attention back toward the door. It stood open again and Whark bait was waiting patiently for the unicorn to join him before heading back to the surface. “You were looking at the lock over the book, weren’t you?” the Surveyor asked as they climbed, “I think I could recall what the combination is, but I’ve never actually had to use it, so-”

“I already know the code,” Twilight said, “Aldro wrote it down in a notebook he left out in the open.”

“Ah, lucky,” Whark Bait said, “Well, here’s another thing about those locks: even if the domes aren’t properly powered the combination will still work. You’ll just end up inside the dome with a useless book though.” They reached the top and emerged back into the open air to find Rainbow still hovering diligently on watch.

“Oh, back already?” the rainbow-maned pegasus said, “All right then, next stop!”

“The big dome,” Twilight said.

“Temple Island,” Whark Bait said at the same time. He exchanged a quick glance with Twilight, and then set out down the catwalk with purpose. He led the mares past the workshop and through a straight tunnel onto a bridge leading off the side of the island toward the giant golden dome on the first island. Near the end, a section of the bridge had been raised to a near vertical angle, preventing the group from proceeding. A wooden lever sat near the raised section and Whark Bait grasped and pulled it without missing a beat, although his ears perked with mild surprise when the bridge began to lower into place. “I guess we got here before the Maintainers had a chance to lock things down. The mechanism for raising and lowering the bridge is powered by a steam vent on Temple Island, and it’s normally left on for convenience but…”

“Yeah yeah,” Rainbow said impatiently, “where’s the spinny dome?”

“It sits on top of a rock spire just off the side of the island,” the Surveyor answered, “Follow me. We’ll probably have to do a bit of walking back and forth to open the path up.” He led the pair across the rest of the bridge and up a set of stairs that led into the giant dome. They found themselves on the upper portion of the catwalk, directly opposite of where Twilight and Rainbow had entered on their first, abbreviated visit to the dome. Halfway around the path connecting those two entrances was another doorway that Whark Bait made his way to. It let out onto an elevated walkway that curved around to head into the rotating room, but the robed stallion stopped just short of leaving the dome and looked down at a section of the walkway that stood apart from the rest. “This is good,” he said, turning around, “this means we’ll be able to use the elevator below.” Twilight and Dash had to back up to give him room as he came back into the dome and continued walking around the catwalk, making for the stairs to the lower level. From there they exited out onto a stone path that wrapped around the base of the giant dome, and Whark Bait came to a stop just in front of an apparently purposefully dug tunnel and pointed up to his left. Twilight and Rrainbow looked to see another of the rotating domes sitting on a tall rock standing apart from the main island. “We’ll need to go down from here to reach the stairs that lead up to that,” Whark Bait explained, “but the elevator only takes one passenger at a time.” He nodded to a square section of stone carved into the path at the tunnel entrance.

“I’ll just save us some time and fly up there,” Rainbow said, spreading her wings.

“But you don’t know what the symbols are for each color yet,” Twilight said.

“You’ve got them written down,” Rainbow pointed out flatly, “and I can definitely remember what it looks like once I’ve seen it.”

“Right,” Twilight said sheepishly. Rainbow took off with a particularly strong stroke of her wings and flew up to the dome. She spotted the rotary telescope a short distance back on the bridge and alighted behind it, peering through with a hoof poised to press the button when the tinted symbol appeared. Even so, she barely reacted in time when it flashed by, a circle with a horizontal line bisecting it. She waited to see the dome slow to a stop and flip over, and then flew back to Twilight and Whark Bait. Twilight pulled out the note containing the color symbols and Rainbow pointed to the one she’d seen.

“Orange,” Whark Bait said, “Well, this just leaves the Village Island dome. I’ll have to guess on the color for the fifth island, but at least there will only be two options.”

“Or…” Rainbow said, fluttering the ends of her wings suggestively.

“Would that be safe?” Twilight asked, “That’s the island where Clover’s being held prisoner, right? Wouldn’t there be guards there?”

“Not likely,” Whark Bait said, “The only way to get there – besides flying – is to go through the books Aldro wrote his new world into. The island itself has a caged room that’s virtually escape-proof, and the waters around it are particularly thick with Wharks. I think Maintainer guards would be unnecessary with all that.”

“Just be careful Rainbow,” Twilight said, “and if Whark Bait’s right about there not being any guards, see if you can get to Clover and let her know we’re here to help her.”

“You got it Twi,” Rainbow said, saluting, “Stay out of trouble until I get back; maybe wait in the ‘back entrance’ cave by the rotating room. I’ll be back soon.” She started to get into a flying pose, and then hesitated and asked, “It’s that smaller island right?” She pointed to the lightly tree-studded island visible past the spire with the dome. Whark Bait nodded and Rainbow took off like a rocket, leaving a rainbow contrail behind. As the contrail faded, Twilight and Whark Bait turned around and began to head back the way they’d come. As they neared the entrance to the giant dome, however, they heard voices and hoof-steps echoing from within. Twilight gulped as she recognized the loudest of the voices, which was directing others to split up and search every available path.

“Oh no,” the lavender mare said, “Arcem’s found us.”

Chapter 10

Prison Island

As Rainbow Dash approached the small island, she realized she’d been had. It turned out to be little more than a giant rock poking out of the sea with a few small trees holding fast to cracks near the top. “What the hay?” she asked as she landed on the very peak of the rock and glared around, “That Whark Bait played me! I oughta…” She trailed off as she caught sight of something far out to sea, barely visible through the haze of distance. Rainbow squinted her eyes in an attempt to peer farther and made it out as a flat-topped island-like shape. She glanced back in the direction she’d come from and after tracing a mental line between her take-off point and the distant shape she realized the rock she was standing on stood more or less in between the two. “Oh,” she said, “maybe he wasn’t talking about this one after all.” Taking off again, she headed for the distant island. After several minutes of flying, she was able to make out details about the island. It was a small landmass, perhaps only a quarter the size of the Book Maker’s or Temple Island, and sat unusually low in the water compared to the veritable mesas the other four main islands appeared to be from a distance. Dirt and rock only accounted for about a third of the island’s overall height though; the remainder came from the gargantuan white tree trunk that covered the entire island, and on top of that was a round metal tower with what looked like a large anemometer on the roof. Just off the north side of the island, built on a barely submerged shelf of rock, sat the spinning dome, and a metal walkway led from it to a doorway at the base of the tree. Rainbow peered down it and saw an elevator a short ways in. She hovered in front of the doorway, glancing between it and the tower up above as she pondered. She was willing to bet anything that Clover was in the tower, but she wasn’t quite as sure she’d find a convenient window to talk through if she flew up from the outside. Of course, if she was going to encounter any trouble it would be by taking the route any normal, non-flying Sohndaren pony would take. “Piece of cake,” she said as she made her choice, flapping harder to gain altitude.

The prison tower sat in the center of the flat plane of the tree trunk’s top and was rather plain in appearance; just a simple cylindrical tube with a dome roof and a smaller shaft stuck onto the side for the elevator. Rainbow flew in an ascending spiral around the tower and found a recessed balcony near the top, closed in with iron bars. A unicorn mare with a light mahogany coat, a long blue-black mane tied into five thick braids laced with ribbons, and wearing a crimson dress that covered most of her body and obscured her cutie mark from sight was sitting in the alcove staring wistfully out at the horizon. At least, that’s what she had been doing before Rainbow Dash flew by and startled her. She bit back a yelp of shock and watched wide-eyed and the pegasus looped back around and came to a hovering stop on the other side of the bars.

“Hey,” Rainbow said, waving, “are you Clover?”

“Who are…” the mare stammered, eyes widening further as she took in the sight of the cyan, rainbow-maned pony, “Flying. And you are speaking Equestrian.” She came up to the bars and beckoned Rainbow closer, dropping her voice to a near whisper as she asked, “You are the one he sent, aren’t you? I knew Star Swirl had sent somepony, but I never expected he’d send a pegasus pony! How have you not been caught already?”

“I’m just too good for those lame-o guards Aldro’s got,” Rainbow said dismissively, “I didn’t come alone either, but my friend is a unicorn, so she’s working on finding another way to get here.”

“She’ll have to get past Aldro,” Clover said, “and that’s not something he’ll allow. Unless…” Her gaze dropped for a moment as she thought in silence.

“How tough is Aldro anyway?” Rainbow asked.

“He’s strong,” Clover whispered, “and crafty. He may even know you’re here already and is hoping to use you to escape Sohndar. He’s arrogant though, and not very open to ideas outside his own perception. You and your friend must make sure he’s out of the way before you make any attempts to free me. Find the Moiety; they can help.”

One of them took the stinking trap book, so they better be able to help, Rainbow thought to herself. To Clover, she asked, “How do I do that? Aren’t they all like sneaky and secretive and stuff?”

“Look for their signs,” Clover said, “They’ll know to let you contact them soon enough. I can’t say too much; Aldro has the room under constant watch. It may be best that you go now.”

“Right,” Rainbow said turning to leave, “Oh one last thing. Is your daughter, Nyx, with you?”

“Nyx is out of Aldro’s reach,” Clover answered, “You may get the chance to meet her, but don’t go looking.”

“Ok…” Rainbow said, “See you later, I hope.” She flew off a short distance, stopped to get her bearings, and then zoomed off back toward Temple Island. About halfway between the two islands, she came to a sudden stop and smacked herself on the forehead before turning back, having realized she’d forgotten to get the color symbol from the prison island’s dome. “Fat lot of good getting Clover out of her cage will be if we can’t get her off the island,” she muttered to herself, “Sorry to make you wait longer Twilight. Hope you and Whark Bait are ok without me.”

Elsewhere, Later

Twilight awoke in near darkness, and with an irritating pressure at the base of her horn. Moaning as she shifted into a more comfortable position and opened her eyes, she saw that she was in a small room carved out of the ubiquitous dull-colored rock that composed Sohndar’s crust, which was lit only by the faint moon- and starlight coming in through a small, barred window. “What?” she muttered, confused, “It’s night? When did… How did I get here?” She reached up a hoof to rub her horn and felt a tight metal band wrapped around its base, and suddenly she remembered.

After her shocked exclamation that Arcem was coming their way with reinforcements, Twilight had felt her bags being lifted off her back and whirled to see Whark Bait holding them in his mouth by the straps and turning to run off. She had cried out and demanded an explanation, but the robe-wearing earth pony had ignored her and disappeared around the curve in the path leading toward the rotating dome. Twilight had tried to make chase, but a blow from behind caused her to trip and fall to the ground, whereupon she was pinned down by an armored earth pony stallion. She had teleported herself free and galloped away, hoping to catch up to Whark Bait and possibly find a way to escape, only to find that direction suddenly blocked by a pair of guards who had used a section of the walkway overhead as an elevator down to her level. Whark Bait was nowhere in sight, and despite her best efforts it hadn’t taken long for Twilight to be subdued, forcibly fitted with a magic suppressor on her horn, and hauled off as she lost consciousness.

What happened to Whark Bait? Twilight wondered, standing up on her hooves and looking around. The cell she was in was tiny, just big enough for two ponies to fit and still have room to stretch, and she was the only thing in it. The back wall seemed to be constructed of irregularly shaped bricks, the door was thick, solid metal, and rest of the room was excavated rock as her first impression had told her. The view out the barred window wasn’t very good, but Twilight was able to make out the top of a conical, cage-like structure she vaguely recalled seeing from a distance in the village, and a metal catwalk leading to its crown directly from the cell door. She frowned up at the night sky and its unfamiliar stars and wondered, How long have I been out? And what happened to Rainbow Dash? She has to have been looking for me, but… She tapped her horn against the door a couple of times, looked wistfully up at the now useless appendage, and turned away with a sigh to lay down in the corner. There was nothing she could do now but wait.

Some time later, she was shaken out of a doze by the sound of her name being whispered from the other side of the door. It took her a moment after she approached the window to recognize Whark Bait standing outside. The gray-green stallion had lost his Surveyor robe somewhere and was sporting some mostly-healed wounds, including a triangular nick in his right ear, and had a cloth pouch slung across his back. “What are you doing here?” Twilight asked, feeling a bit suspicious now that she was facing the pony who had left her to the guards.

“I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” Whark Bait answered, “Getting up here without being noticed by the Maintainers is impossible during the day, and I had to move carefully so as not to arouse suspicion while I visited this island’s dome and made this.” He took the pouch off and dug into it for a second before pulling out a large folded piece of parchment and slipping it through the bars. Twilight took it and, with some difficulty, managed to unfold it in a bright patch of moonlight. A large grid of squares, numbering twenty-five in both dimensions, had been drawn on it and five of the squares had one of the Sohndaren color symbols drawn in them. “That’s the key to powering the Domes,” Whark Bait explained, “The machine is located on the top of the Golden Dome; there’s a way to make stairs leading up to it.”

“Well, that’s great,” Twilight said, “but it doesn’t do me a whole lot of good while I’m trapped in here!”

“Shhh,” Whark Bait warned, “I can’t let you out, but don’t worry. Rescue is on its way.” With that, he moved out of the window’s line of sight and Twilight heard his hooves moving away on a walkway of metal.

“Wait,” Twilight called after him desperately, “Don’t go yet! Where’s Rainbow Dash? Do you know what happened to her?” The Surveyor pony didn’t return, and Twilight sank to her rump in frustrated disappointment. She looked at the grid she’d been given again and examined it closer. “There’s a color and location marked for each island,” she mused, “Which means he knows the color for the fifth island, and that means Rainbow got back to him. He knew where I am, but he obviously didn’t inform Rainbow for some reason because she’d have rushed right over to break me out, and buck the risks.” She sighed and folded the parchment up, and then laid down on top of it in case a less friendly pony came by and looked in on her.

It was difficult to tell time in the dark, especially without knowing how long the nights lasted in this world, but Twilight guessed about half an hour went by before anything else happened. She heard stone sliding on stone behind her and turned to see a section of the back wall sliding away from her, revealing a space behind the jail cell. After the wall section came to rest, a very jittery-looking Rainbow Dash poked her head out of the hole and smiled with visible relief at the lavender unicorn. “C’mon Twi,” she whispered before Twilight could speak, “Let’s get you out of here quick.” She pulled her head back as Twilight got up, picked up the parchment in her mouth, and crawled through the hole and into a tunnel leading to the right. Rainbow wasn’t alone; a pony in a black cloak with a large red collar and a bug-eyed mask was standing next to the pegasus, and once Twilight was clear of the opening it pulled up a metal handle set in the floor that made the wall section slide back into place. It then reared up and undid the suppressor ring from Twilight’s horn and turned to walk down the tunnel.

“Uh, thank you,” Twilight said, transferring the parchment into the grip of her magic and following Rainbow’s example of following the masked pony, “Can I ask who you are?”

“They’re the Moiety,” Rainbow answered curtly, “They don’t like to talk much outside of certain places and they really like moving around these underground tunnels like… moles.” She shuddered, clearly fighting to control a bout of claustrophobia that was making nearly every hair stand on end and her wings to twitch ceaselessly. “Not like there’s much of a choice but to humor them,” she continued in a mutter, “Clover told me we have to work with them, and the guards are starting to figure out ways to force me out of the sky.” The Moiety pony cast a warning glance at Rainbow and she clammed up with reluctance. The trio walked down the gently sloping tunnel, which was illuminated by bright yellow crystals set on sticks in the wall every few feet, until they came to a stone door on the right side of a left-ways curve. The Moiety raised its mask enough to expose its mouth, grasped the metal ring set in the door, and started to slowly pull it open. After a moment, Twilight added her magical strength to the door and it quickly swung around to block the left path and reveal a new one leading right. The Moiety gave Twilight a thankful nod and then led out again. The tunnel shortly led into a wide, high dome of a cavern with a ring of stone slabs set upright in a ring around the center and decorative-looking channels carved into the wall. The Moiety pony gestured for Twilight and Rainbow to wait while it went back into the tunnel for a few moments to close the door. It then came back, went to sit at the far side of the cavern, and removed its mask, revealing its gender as a mare at last.

“Now we may speak more freely,” she said, “I am Materi, one of the Moiety, those who seek to depose the false god Aldro and save our people. We have been watching you with some interest since you first came to this world, but until just recently we were unsure of your motives.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rainbow said impatiently, “Look, let’s cut to the chase so I can get out of these caves. Can we get that book you guys took from us back?”

“We will return it, yes,” Materi said, “But there are things you should be made aware of before you act. If you are uncomfortable here, we could go elsewhere.” She pointed to the ring of stones and elaborated, “If you can unlock the path to our true sanctum, we will speak there. Word is you’ve found the clues already.”

Twilight and Rainbow approached the ring of stones and looked them over. On the inward-facing side of each slab was the image of an animal in black paint, each one different, and Twilight noticed the stones were set into grooves with some space to wiggle. “The wooden eyes,” Twilight said, “each one had an associated animal.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said, pointing, “There’s the frog you couldn’t see in the cliffside. There’s the beetle in the pool of water, the whark, aaaand… The duck-billed seal thing!”

“There were five though,” Twilight said, “We never got a chance to figure out where the ball we found in Aldro’s workshop originally came from. On top of that, I lost my notes; how am I supposed to remember the numbers for each animal?”

“Ah c’mon Twi, you’re smarter than that,” Rainbow said, “Just concentrate. And hurry please.” Twilight looked askance at the pegasus, and then sighed and tried to focus her thoughts. She thought back to each ball, trying to recall as many details about the location, the conversations she and Dash had had over them, and the balls themselves. “Invisible frog was… the D shape. Two. The Whark was in the little lagoon… Just a line. Five or one. The beetle… that was one. Number four we had to guess by just the sound… But I still can’t guess what number three would be!” She stomped in frustration and gave Rainbow an apologetic look.

Rainbow grumbled and flared her wings out, and then stalked toward the stone with the beetle picture on it. “I’m not giving up that easily,” she said, “We know four of the right choices, so we’ll just have to keep guessing until we get it right.” She pressed down on the slab, which slid easily into its groove and clicked into place, and then went and did the same to the frog image. She paused for a moment, looking around, and then selected the slab with a picture of a triangular-shaped fish on it, and then finished up with the long-neck seal thing and the whark. When the last stone clicked into place, the texture of light in the room changed and water began flowing along the channels carved into the wall, defying gravity to stay on the carved pathways and surround a section of wall behind Materi. That section slid up and a shelf bearing an open book moved out. Twilight and Rainbow shared a surprised look, and then Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Your crazy luck strikes again,” she said good-naturedly.

“It’s a gift I guess,” Rainbow said, trying to put an air of nonchalance through her claustrophobic twitches.

“Well done,” Materi said, turning around to face the book, “I will go on ahead and announce your arrival.” She replaced her mask, and then touched the book and vanished. Rainbow rushed over to the shelf and regarded the book. A square piece of transparent crystal sat on top of the page bearing the moving rotating image of a giant lumpy sphere made of what looked like cement held up by a similarly colored tree on a small island in the middle of a lake under a starry night sky.

“What’s this supposed to do?” the pegasus wondered, nudging the crystal with her hoof. Twilight came over and, after looking it over, levitated the crystal off the page. The linking image went dark. Twilight quickly replaced the crystal and, to her and Rainbow’s relief, the image returned in full detail and motion. “Ok, let’s go,” Rainbow said, all but slamming her hoof onto the crystal and activating the link panel. Twilight waited a few seconds to give Dash time to move away from the materialization point on the other end before touching the panel herself and vanishing into the temporary darkness between worlds.

Chapter 12

Tay

As Nyx bid Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash good-bye and made to leave the room, there was a knock at the door and Materi entered. “Am I interrupting?” she asked, looking at the young, dark filly.

“We’ve finished our discussion Materi,” Nyx answered with a stiff bow of her head.

“Ah, good,” the Moiety mare said, reaching out a leg to stop Nyx from leaving and turning her back around to face the Equestrians, “Would you mind taking part while I discuss our future plans?”

Nyx stared in wide-eyed surprise for a second, and then quickly adopted a casually aloof expression and said, “Well, I suppose I could.”

“Thank you,” Materi said sincerely, and then looked at Twilight and Rainbow, getting straight to the point, “Dawn will break soon on Sohndar and the Maintainers will realize that Twilight Sparkle is not in her cell. If you thought Aldro’s lackeys were riled up before, that is nothing compared to how things will be. They’ll be certain – and correct – that we Moiety are assisting you and will try to prevent you from reaching anything important. This may draw Aldro out, but I wouldn’t count on it. Ever since Kovar was captured he’s hidden himself away in his new world, likely working on something where we can’t harass him. With that in mind, what do you intend to do?”

Twilight shared a concerned glance with Rainbow Dash for a moment or two, and then cleared her throat and said hesitantly, “Well, our most important goal is to free Clover, or Kovar, or whatever, and get her and Nyx to a place where Star Swirl can come in and get them and us out quickly.”

“We’ll have to go through Aldro’s world to do that,” Rainbow said, “I don’t think I could carry her flying between the prison and the closest island.”

“So,” Twilight said, “to do that, we’ll have to power up the domes and get inside one of them without being spotted by the guards who will be expecting us to do exactly that.” She frowned at the dubious prospect and looked at Materi. “Any advice?” she asked.

“It won’t be easy, to be sure,” Materi said, thinking, “We can get you pretty close to the Great Dome through the caverns, but once you go topside you’ll be exposed. You’ll need a distraction.”

“It’ll have to be a big one,” Twilight said, “There’s one Maintainer in particular that has his sights on us: Arcem, if that means anything to you.”

“Why not launch a raid?” Nyx suggested, “A big one on the village a little before these two make their move. In fact, why not go all-out and drag everypony we can lay our hooves on here to Tay?”

“An attack of that scale would have to include most of the Moiety,” Materi said, disapproving, “Our entire group would be exposed and at risk, as would our linking book.”

“So what?” Nyx shot back, “It’s not like they don’t know we exist, and we’d be enacting Mom’s ultimate plan anyway. This world was meant for all the ponies of Sohndar, not just the Moiety. Besides, we’ll have to do something big and crazy anyway, so why not have it be forced evacuation?”

Materi looked like she was going to chide Nyx, but then thought better of it and sighed, closing her eyes. “I cannot decide this on my own,” she said at last, “I must discuss this with the rest of the Moiety. You may remain here and await our decision if you want. Nyx… perhaps you should come with me, if you want to make your case.”

“Of course,” Nyx said resolutely, “come on.” She left the room, and Materi followed after bowing slightly to Twilight and Rainbow. The two Equestrians traded a look and came to a silent agreement to stay put and get a little more rest.

A few hours later a small, bright yellow sun peeked over the top of the cliffs surrounding the lake and the Moiety’s village tree, and a pony brought a small meal of curious fruits to Twilight and Rainbow before escorting them down to the dock, where Materi, Nyx, Whark Bait, and a couple other important-looking Moiety stood waiting, watching somepony rowing feverously toward them from the other shore. It was an earth pony stallion dressed in the full costume of a Moiety scout, and even before the boat came to a stop at the island he hopped out, tore off his bug-eyed mask, and inclined his head toward the group. “Materi, Eina,” he said, “As we predicted, the Maintainers are on high alert searching for the escaped captive, but there is graver news. The tremors have returned, with greater intensity. Some of the outlying tunnels have collapsed, and there is panic and confusion all across the surface.”

“Resumed?” Twilight asked, looking at Nyx, “I thought you said the tremors were ubiquitous.” Nyx looked back at her blankly, apparently not understanding her choice of words. “I mean, they’re always happening, right?”

“Generally, yes,” Materi said, turning to look at the scholarly unicorn, “For the better part of my lifetime the land has shaken and the islands drifted almost daily, but for the last two months or so they’ve grown quiet.”

Twilight thought that through for a moment and a few passages she’d read from Star Swirl’s journal came to her mind. “Oh, that must be why,” she said quietly, and when Materi and Nyx gave her a curious look she spoke up and explained, “Star Swirl has been hard at work trying to stabilize Sohndar long enough to rescue Clover and Nyx. He had me and Rainbow come in his place because he can’t get any of his fixes to stick long enough. If the islands are starting to quake again now though…” She trailed off from a combination of not wanting to speak her fears and seeing the looks of reverence and awe crossing the faces of the gathered Moiety.

“Then we have to start moving the rest of the ponies out of Sohndar,” Nyx said insistently, “before we lose the rest of the extra time my Father has given us!”

“You’re right Nyx,” Materi said, coming back to the present, “An open raid on the village combined with the chaos of the earthquakes should be more than enough to keep the Maintainers and other Aldro loyalists distracted. Eina, gather everypony and take charge of getting them through the book and into position. Twilight, Rainbow, I will get you as close to the Great Dome as possible.”

“Thank you Materi,” Twilight said, “You’ve been a great help.”

“You still have the map I have you, right?” Whark Bait asked.

“Right here,” Twilight said, patting the satchel hanging from her neck, “You’re sure it’ll work?”

“Without a doubt,” the former Surveyor said confidently, “Best of luck to you, and you as well Ms. Rainbow.”

“Stay out of trouble Whark Bait,” Rainbow said teasingly, “Don’t go making that nickname into a reality.”

“All right, enough talking,” Nyx said, “Let’s go!” She galloped toward the rowboat and jumped to get into it, only to be caught in mid-air in a wavy bubble of magenta magic. “Hey!” the filly protested.

“Sorry Nyx,” Twilight said, levitating her back to shore, “but I think you better stay here for now. I don’t think either of your parents would forgive us if something bad happened to you.”

“All I do anymore is sit around and wait!” Nyx whined with a cute pout. Twilight shook her head and gave the filly a telekinetic nudge toward the village tree. “Fine then,” Nyx said petulantly, and stormed off muttering under her breath. Materi watched her and the rest of the Moiety group head back to the tree for a moment, and then gestured for Twilight and Rainbow to get into the rowboat as she climbed in herself. The pegasus opted to fly again, and soon the trio had reached the opposite shore and were approaching an open linking book on a pedestal inside a small cavern near the dock.

Moiety Tunnels, Sohndar

They emerged into a shuddering world, the grinding roar of shifting earth echoing and amplifying through the subterranean cavern where the Tay book sat hidden from the surface. Twilight and Materi instinctively drew together for support as the floor moved beneath their hooves, but Rainbow simply froze in place, every limb splayed out straight and stiff as a board, her eyes going pure white save for a pinprick of rose in the centers.

“Oh no oh no oh no we’re gonna die we’re gonna die!” she muttered in panic, unheard over the rumbling.

The tremor only lasted a few, endless seconds, and Twilight released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as the rumbling faded away and the floor settled down. She looked at Materi to see that she was also relaxed, possibly more so than Twilight felt, but then looked to Rainbow and saw her caught in the rictus of pure terror. “Rainbow,” she said calmingly, “it’s over now; we’re ok.”

Dash exploded, leaping suddenly to the left and pulling Twilight to the ground in a crushing hold on her neck and back. “We’re not ok!” Rainbow exclaimed shrilly, “We’re trapped underground, everything’s shaking, and we’re going to get buried by a cave-in or something and we’re all gonna die!”

“Rainbow…” Twilight gasped, struggling to free herself from the hysterical pegasus, “I can’t breathe.” That only served to push Rainbow to greater panic, and soon Twilight was forced to hit her friend with a powerful sleeping spell, and then extracted herself and hefted the pegasus up with her telekinesis. “Sorry about that,” she said to Materi, “She’ll be fine, but we should probably get to the surface before she wakes up.”

Materi nodded and led the way out of the book cavern, pushing open the door at the entrance and then closing it behind her and Twilight after they passed through so they could head deeper into the tunnel system. “I can’t help but wonder at the wisdom of having her come to this world,” she said after a moment, “I mean, I shouldn’t doubt He of the Stars, but even the surface of Sohndar has many caverns and underground passages. He would know that.”

“I’m not sure if we ever told him about Rainbow’s claustrophobia though,” Twilight said, “and even if we did, it’s never been this bad. Rainbow’s a tough pony, and it takes a lot to make her give in. I guess the earthquake was just too much.”

“I see,” Materi said, “Let us be quick then.” She led Twilight down ever-descending tunnels, heading so deep that Twilight figured they were well below sea level when the path finally leveled out. They trotted quickly and in relative silence, their pace only broken by aftershocks from the earlier earthquake. Twice they encountered a section of tunnel that had collapsed, forcing Materi to find an alternative path. Twilight quickly lost track of the time and distance they’d traveled, distracted by the effort of keeping up with the quick-moving Moiety while keeping Rainbow Dash asleep and balanced in her telekinetic bubble.

The interminable journey finally came to an end shortly after a fresh tremor collapsed both branches of a fork in the tunnels ahead of them. Materi swore an oath that Twilight’s translation spell seemed to leave unaltered, and then turned around and gestured for Twilight to do the same. “It seems we’ll have to emerge sooner than I would like. Move quickly and prepare to be sneaky.” Twilight nodded with obvious reservation and moved to let Materi slip past before turning around to follow again. The Moiety mare led Twilight to a previous intersection of tunnels and soon they were climbing upwards. They came to a stop at an apparent dead-end and Materi gestured for Twilight to wait before opening a hidden latch and pushing part of the roof open, letting in a sliver of daylight. Materi cautiously poked her head through the opening and looked around, and then pushed the door open wider and climbed out. Twilight followed, levitating Rainbow behind her, and saw that she was at the grav-car station of Dome Island, on the opposite side of the track’s anchoring stone from the entrance to the temple. “Come,” Materi said in an urgent whisper.

“Hold on a second please,” Twilight responded. She lowered Rainbow to the ground and released her magic with sigh of relief, and then nudged the pegasus into wakefulness. “Stay quiet Rainbow,” she warned as Dash’s eyes opened and focused, “We’re out of the caves now, on the first island. Are you ok?”

“Ugh,” Rainbow moaned, “I never want to see another cave as long as I live.” She climbed to her feet and looked around, unfurling her wings slightly. “The first island, huh?” she said, “Ah yeah, I recognize this spot now. It’s a bit of a walk from here to the big dome, isn’t it? Couldn’t get us any closer?” She gave Materi a judgmental glance with her last question.

“Unfortunately, no,” the Moiety replied in a level tone, “We’ll have to move carefully to avoid any Maintainer patrols.”

“Heh,” Dash said, “You might. I’ll fly ahead and spy things out.” She took off, flying over the peak of the ridge and out of sight before anypony could protest.

“Reckless,” Materi noted with disapproval, “Perhaps that is why normal ponies do not have wings.”

“That’s my friend you’re talking about,” Twilight said, “And she’s no stranger to risk. She’ll be fine.” She stepped out into the open and approached the entrance to the temple, but then hesitated when she saw the door was closed.

“There is a pressure plate under the first step to open the door,” Materi explained, walking past Twilight and walking up the stairs, “And even if Aldro is not seated on the control throne an illusion of his face may appear in the projection globe for a moment, so don’t be alarmed.” The temple door had opened enough to allow the two ponies to see inside, and they both froze when they saw a large, translucent image of a unicorn stallion wearing the armored helmet of a Maintainer guard staring out at them from within the giant wireframe globe with a growing smirk on his face. The face vanished as the door finished opening, and Twilight and Materi exchanged a glance.

“That,” Twilight said, “wasn’t Aldro.”

“No it wasn’t,” Materi agreed, whirling around, “Hurry, we must hide before they come.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Twilight said, grabbing the Moiety mare and pulling her close, horn glowing with rapidly brightening magenta light, “Hold on tight.” With a quick, rising whine of gathered power followed by a faint crack, the pair vanished in a flash of light.

They reappeared just outside the main entrance to the rotating room, underneath a mildly surprised Rainbow Dash. “Decided not to risk being underground again after all?” she asked jokingly.

“Something like that,” Twilight replied dismissively, “the guards might think me and Materi are down at the grav-car.”

“Cool,” Rainbow said, “Now, let’s see if they closed the gates to the dome.”

As it turned out, the room had indeed been reset to the way Twilight and Rainbow had originally found it. While Twilight went through the process of rotating the room around to reach the gate levers, Rainbow flew around to scout out the Golden Dome and figure out how to distract the guards that would inevitably be crawling around it. To her surprise, there was only a single pony patrolling the walkways inside the dome, and he had not yet had the pleasure of encountering the cyan flying pony, judging by how slow he was to go for his weapon when Rainbow charged him with a gliding tackle. She flipped him over the railing and held him dangling over the pool of water at the bottom of the dome with his tail clasped in her hooves. “Two questions,” Rainbow said brusquely, “Is that water deep enough to drop you in from this height, and could you get out if I did let go?”

“I-I-I…” the guard stammered, clearly confused by the questions, “spare me demon, I beg of you!”

“Sure,” Rainbow said congenially as she slowly lowered him down to the water, “Here’s the deal: you stay down in the water until somepony comes to get you, and you don’t tell anypony I was here. Got it?” The guard nodded vigorously and Rainbow let him go to drop the last couple of feet into the pool. She then flew up and met Twilight and Materi crossing the bridge into the dome. “Aldro really needs less cowardly ponies on his guard,” Rainbow said, rolling her eyes, “None of these stallions would last a day in the Royal Guard.”

Twilight glanced down to the miserable-looking Maintainer treading water, and then up at the ceiling. “Now how do we get up to the controls?” she wondered, “Whark Bait mentioned stairs…”

“The bridge is the stairs,” Materi replied, pointing to a lever just inside the doorway, “Assuming the steam vent powering it is properly set, this will do the trick.” She nudged Twilight out onto the bridge and turned the lever to the left. With the click and hiss of mechanisms starting up, the bridge started to angle up and shift into a set of stairs, raising Twilight up to a narrow corridor between the two halves of the dome. “I’ll stand guard here to keep anypony from reaching you,” Materi called up as Twilight walked down the corridor and Rainbow flew up to join her. The corridor stretched from one side of the dome to the other, but at the halfway point a large metal device blocked the path. It came up nearly to Twilight’s shoulder, narrowing slightly near the top to a large grid of small squares, twenty-five in both length and width, each with a round divot. To the right of the grid were six small marbles in individual holders, each a different color of the rainbow. Above the machine hung a large piston attached to a square lid obviously designed to cover and form a seal around the grid.

“Here we are,” Twilight said, pulling out the diagram Whark Bait had given her, “Finally taking a real step toward completing our mission.” She looked the diagram over, and then whistled appreciatively. “Rainbow, do you realize just how impossible this would be if we didn’t have any clues to this machine’s secrets?”

“No, but I think you’re going to tell me.”

“There are 625 spots on the grid,” Twilight explained, “and six marbles. Each marble can only be placed once, each hole can only hold one marble, and not all the marbles may be needed – in fact, we know it takes five – and so that…” She trailed off and her eyes bugged out as she tried to calculate the odds in her mind. “By Celestia, “she said at last, “that’s well over a trillion possibilities!”(1)

Rainbow was gob-smacked. “Wow. Thank Celestia for Whark Bait then,” she said. She fluttered over Twilight and reached down to touch the purple marble, giving it a curious look. “What’s so special about these things anyway? They’re awful small to be so important for Aldro’s books to work.”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said, levitating the orange marble out of its holder and scrutinizing it. She tried to get a feel for potential power stored inside of it, and in response felt a disorienting buzz of warmth inside that tried to feed back along her magic aura into her horn. She quickly withdrew all but her telekinetic sense and consulted the diagram before placing the marble into a slot in the topmost row of the grid, ten slots from the right side. She shooed Rainbow back and made quick work of placing the yellow, green, blue, and purple marbles according to the diagram, leaving the red one in its holder, and then stepped back to review her work. “That looks right,” she said, “now the next step will be figuring out how to turn it on.” She examined the machine for signs of a hidden control panel while Rainbow gave the corridor a closer look.

“There’s a switch on the wall,” Rainbow said, pointing. Several feet back from the machine, on the left wall as the ponies faced toward the stairs, was a box with a slider light switch. At Twilight’s nod, Rainbow slid the switch up, which caused the piston above the grid to slowly lower into place. Moving the switch also revealed a button hidden behind it, and Rainbow pressed it without a moment’s hesitation. The piston fired downward once, letting out a brief hiss of steam from a pressure release valve, and then everything went still. “Is it working?” Rainbow asked slowly. Twilight walked up to the machine and leaned an ear in close, but she couldn’t make any sounds of activity within. She regarded it with a dubious frown, checked Whark Bait’s diagram, and then shrugged and turned away.

“It seems like the only way to know might be to open one of the smaller domes and see if the linking book works,” she said. She trotted down the corridor to the bridge-stairs and called down, “Are you ok down there Materi?”

“I am fine,” the Moiety mare called back, “everything is clear. Have you powered up the domes?”

“I think so?” Twilight replied, “Let me down; we’ll have to check one of the books.”

“I recommend the one on this island,” Materi said as she turned the lever to lower the stairs, “It is nearly adjacent to this great dome, so there will be less risk of encountering anypony.”

“Yeah, we know where it is,” Rainbow said as she flew down to join the flight-impaired pair, “Let’s go.” She flew ahead, leading the way through the dome to the lower pathway around the base, and then flew up to open the dome, which had been reset to its default rotating position, while Twilight and Materi figured out the controls for the elevator that would let them walk up to the dome.

After approaching the dome, Twilight’s confidence faded when she looked upon the slider-lock that stood between her and the book. “You guys never gave me back my notes,” she said, turning to look at Materi, “I had the combination for the lock written down in them.”

“It is Seven, Eleven, Twelve, Seventeen ,and Twenty-four,” Materi responded, “I was part of the group who helped Kovar gain first access to Tay; we all memorized the lock code. By the way, Rainbow Dash,” she added as the pegasus moved to join her friend in the open section of the dome, “Considering your condition, it may be best if you stay behind. When the code is entered the dome will close up again, and it is rather close and dark inside them.”

“I can handle it,” Dash said indignantly, “There’s no way I’m leaving Twilight to wander around a strange world looking for Aldro alone.” She hopped over Materi, but as she landed a powerful earthquake struck. The rock spire the spinning dome was sitting on remained intact, but all around the base of the giant dome rocks cracked and split. The elevated walkway leading out the side of the dome buckled and collapsed as the rock its supports were sunk into split and shattered.

The quake lasted for maybe twenty seconds, and it took several more for the ponies to get over their panicked immobility enough to share a glance. “They’re growing stronger,” Materi said, “We may be racing against very little time, and there’s no telling what the next quake may end up destroying.”

“Good point,” Twilight said, “The faster we can get everything done and signal Star Swirl, the better. Rainbow, perhaps you should fly on ahead to Clover’s island and work on getting her out. I’ll deal with Aldro and meet you there, ok?”

Rainbow frowned and shook her head. “I’m not leaving you Twi,” she said, “Bad things tend to happen when we split up. Remember the rocket on Aitran? And you got captured by guards the last time I flew off. We have no idea what we might run into in Aldro’s world. He could have guards with him, or worse.”

“Unless he wrote other beings into it, Aldro will be alone,” Materi said, “The Moiety have never seen his world, but we have kept an eye on the domes since learning their purpose, and we know he only allows ponies to enter it briefly to report on the most dire of emergencies.”

“Well then,” Twilight said, levitating the trap book out of her satchel, “All I’ll have to do to be safe is convince him that this will link him to Aitran. I’m pretty sure I can handle that on my own.” Rainbow looked unconvinced, so Twilight gave her the most confident and trusting look she could muster. “I’ll be counting on you to get Clover out of her cell,” the unicorn said, “can you count on me to handle Aldro? Please?”

Rainbow sighed and took flight, hovering just off the ground. “All right, you win,” she said, and then poked Twilight in the chest and added, “and you better meet us on the fifth island in a reasonable time or I’m coming in after you.” Twilight nodded and Dash flew off. After the rainbow contrail faded from the air, Twilight turned back to the dome lock and moved the sliders to the appropriate positions. She pressed the button and braced herself as the dome flipped over, sealing her inside with only two dim spotlights on the floor to prevent complete darkness. The lights were focused on the book, which was set on a stand that rose up slightly to bring the tome to eye-level. The cover was embossed with a pair of the square Sohndaren numerals, which Twilight deduced to equal two hundred and forty three. She opened the book to find a blank, black linking panel on the first page, but before she could worry an expanding ring of red fire spread over the panel to reveal the spinning image of a strange new world. It looked to be a world of orange skies and receding seas, with gigantic rock spires that had eroded in such a way as to resemble cone-capped mushrooms dominating what passed for the landscape. In the center of the image, perched on the peak of a lonely steep-sided mountain, was a squat building with a huge bowl sitting on top of it.

Friendly looking place, Twilight thought wryly as she lifted a hoof to touch the panel, I’d prefer Sohndar any day, death-throe earthquakes and all. She laid her hoof on the panel and everything went black.

When she came to, she was in a cage.

Author's Note

(1) 58,752,420,690,993,751 possibilities to be precise.

Chapter 13

Age 243

This is turning into a distressing pattern, Twilight thought sourly as she took in her surroundings. The cage was circular, with thick bars made of a yellowish metal that reached from the floor to the ceiling, and stood in the center of the room. Large windows filled each wall in the five-sided room, with a single door leading outside and a hole in the floor near the back with a ladder built into it, obviously leading down to a lower chamber. Just beyond the bars, which were spaced wide enough for Twilight to fit a hoof through, were five stands holding books, each identical except for the pattern of squares drawn on each cover. Twilight recognized the patterns as those representing the five Sohndar islands, but when she flipped them open to the linking panels she saw that they were all dark and useless. As she faced toward the door, on the right was a round table with another book and writing materials on it and a short cushioned stool to sit on. To her left was a spherical metal oven-like contraption with a lever on the front and small bubble window but no door, and she noticed a panel with a star-shaped button was affixed between the bars of the cage. To the right of the table she saw another lever on the ledge below the window, and the fifth side of the room was notable only for the ladder leading down. There were no signs of anypony being around, so Twilight carefully lit up her horn and tried reaching out to manipulate things in the hopes of opening the cage. To her shock, her telekinetic sense stopped when it reached the bars of the cage, as if she’d hit an invisible barrier that refused to budge no matter how hard she pushed.

“Great,” she grumbled, glaring around, “anti-magic materials.” She then took a calming breath and checked her satchel to make sure she still had the trap book with her. She looked around once more and then cleared her throat loudly, following up with a shout of “Hello?” when she didn’t get a response. She looked at the button set between the cage bars for a calculating moment, and then sighed and pressed it. An air horn sounded outside, sounding muffled to Twilight’s ears but undoubtedly loud and attention-grabbing to anyone wandering around outside. “If that doesn’t do the trick, I don’t know what will,” Twilight muttered to herself as she sat down and stared at the door expectantly.

She didn’t have long to wait. In less than a minute, she saw a figure clothed in a thick protective coat, goggles, gloves for fingered hands, and carrying a strange-looking spear gun climb up to the door from below and open it, letting in a hot, dry breeze as they entered. This was without a doubt Aldro, and Twilight could see immediately that Star Swirl had been accurate to describe him as similar to a Diamond Dog. There were obvious differences however. Unlike the skulking, ape-like cave dogs, Aldro’s legs were much closer in proportion to his arms and he walked with a fully upright stance. As he turned around to close the door and set his spear aside, Twilight saw his tail peek out from under the coat and noted it lacked the spiky club most Diamond Dogs had on the end. His fur was a rich auburn, save for around his muzzle where it seemed to be graying with age, and looked properly cared for. He turned back around to face her, regarded her for a second, and then removed the goggles, revealing his intelligent golden-brown eyes. Overall, he gave the impression of someone who would prefer following scholarly pursuits surrounded by modern comforts but had adapted easily to making do with less.

“I must apologize for the cage,” he said, walking around to place the goggles on the writing desk, “but recent events have required I take extra precautions for my safety.” His voice took Twilight by surprise. It was not the rough, dissonant voice of the Diamond Dogs that had ponynapped Rarity, but a rich, deep, and cultured tone that would have fit perfectly at a gathering of Canterlot’s elite.

Twilight quickly shook off her surprise, reminding herself that this was a creature who had set himself up as a god among the ponies of Sohndar and held Star Swirl’s wife captive. Finding her voice, she replied with carefully measured sarcasm, “Don’t worry, I’m starting to get used to it.”

“Ah, well then,” Aldro said with some amusement as he removed his gloves and set them beside the goggles, “I doubt you’ll mind staying in there while we talk then. As you can guess, my name is Aldro. I’m sure you’ve heard a great deal about me and my actions in the past from Star Swirl. Some rather… unpleasant things I wouldn’t doubt, given the nature of our last encounters before he trapped me in the Fifth Age.”

“What makes you think I’ve even met this Star Swirl?” Twilight asked, looking to test Aldro’s reasoning.

“I’m no fool my dear,” the dog answered, narrowing his eyes at her, “I am not ignorant of events in the Fifth Age that occur while I’m here in the Two-Forty-Third. Besides, your coloration and bearing are quite out of place for the Fifth Age, or any Age of my creation for that matter, and I highly doubt old Star Swirl would leave the linking book unguarded. Am I wrong in my assumption?”

“No,” Twilight said grudgingly, “you’re quite right, and Star Swirl didn’t have much to say about you that was good.” It was evident she was in for a serious battle of wits with Aldro.

“All of it was true, I’m afraid,” Aldro admitted, and Twilight got a sinking feeling in her gut, “It would be a sad understatement to say that he and I had disagreements about the nature and morals of Writing worlds. I even tried to kill him. That was nearly thirty years ago by local time; thirty years of exile, it gives a dog time to reflect and think.” He sighed and sat down on the stool facing Twilight, head hanging down. “Doubtless Star Swirl still thinks me the same self-absorbed tyrant I was when we warred over the Fifth Age,” he said, and then looked up and met the unicorn’s eyes with an earnest expression as he added, “but I have changed. I understand now why Star Swirl did what he did and I’m willing to admit it may have been the right choice.”

“That’s easy enough to say,” Twilight murmured in reply without thinking. Dang it Sparkle, she thought as she bit her lip and watched Aldro’s face warily for a reaction, we don’t want to antagonize him too much!

To her relief, the canine creature laughed and stood up. “Ah my dear,” he said as he started to walk slowly around the cage, “You are a pony after my own heart it seems.” The words sent an involuntary shiver down Twilight’s spine, but she kept her outward reaction neutral. “I am not one who easily trusts the words of another, be their pony, Kl’kai, or some other intelligent being. If you can speak, you can lie; it’s in actions that one’s true intentions are revealed.”

“What I’ve seen of your influence on Sohndar doesn’t fill me with much confidence,” Twilight replied, “I mean, I’ll grant you that most of it – the temple, the symbolic association between you and the Whark, and the fanatic belief in your divinity I’ve seen in some of your guardsponies – could be attributed to traditional habits you set in place in the distant past, but if you’ve really changed your attitude and accepted your punishment, what am I to make of us having this conversation somewhere other than Sohndar?”

“You are aware that the Fifth Age is on the brink of dissolution, yes?” Aldro asked, and Twilight nodded. Aldro came back around to the writing desk and laid a hand on the book there. “I don’t believe Star Swirl intended my entrapment to be a death sentence,” he said, “and I certainly do not wish it to be so, and so I have devoted myself to making a safe haven in which I and the ponies of the Fifth Age can flee to.” Twilight cast an askance glance out one of the windows at the inhospitable-looking rock spires surrounding the shelter, a look that Aldro noticed and acknowledged with an irritated shake of his head. “My…” he began, and then quirked an eyebrow at her, “You haven’t given me your name yet.”

“Twilight Sparkle,” the unicorn answered.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Aldro said musingly, “You obviously do not fully understand the hurdles I’ve had to overcome these past thirty years. When Star Swirl cut off my ability to leave the Fifth Age, he cut me off from all of my Writing resources, including the notes, formulas, and frameworks for world creation that I had gathered from the ruins of my people’s former empire as well as the ideal physical materials to let me Write a working Linking book without relying on external power. This Age you see is the result of years of intense effort to recall my formulas, and although it is not quite fit for habitation it is a success. I’ve learned from it, and the Two Hundred and Forty-Fourth Age should be a more appropriate sanctuary.” He patted the book on the desk fondly.

“So, you just have everypony’s best interests at heart,” Twilight said.

“Everypony… yes,” Aldro said, “I doubt Star Swirl would ever see it that way; he likely still thinks I’m the same as ever, and that’s why he sent you in his place. As for Clover… well, there may have been a small chance of convincing her, if the Moiety hadn’t gotten to her first.” He let out a weary-sounding sigh and began pacing around again. “The ponies of the Fifth Age are a simple, superstitious lot and easily intimidated by things they don’t understand. The Moiety have sought to exploit this in their deluded quest to destroy me. They look to Clover as some sort of religious figure, and I fear it may have gone to her head. I had to lock her away before she could incite the rebels to actions that would prove disastrous to the world as well as myself. Star Swirl would hardly recognize her the way she is now, so I must caution you against freeing her, for all our sakes.”

He’s lying, Twilight thought, that’s the complete opposite of what Nyx told me about her mother. She kept her expression plain; if Aldro knew she’d been in contact with the Moiety she’d lose what credibility she had with him.

Aldro came around to the spherical oven and turned the lever, which let it fill with a glowing red fluid that could have been magma. The five books on the stands around the cage all seemed to grow brighter in hue and the stands rose slightly. “I know you came to the Fifth Age in the company of another pony,” he said, “and you were in possession of a Linking book that was taken by the Moiety. I’m granting you full access to all the islands of the Fifth Age. In return, I would like you to retrieve the book if at all possible and bring it and your friend to me.”

“Why?” Twilight asked, tilting her head toward the book on the table, “I thought you were about to have a breakthrough on your next world.”

Aldro paused, a glint of anger briefly flashing across his eyes before he composed himself. Coughing into his fist to cover the lapse, he gave Twilight a charming smile and said, “Time is running very short Twilight Sparkle, and there’s no guaranteeing I can finish the Two Hundred and Forty Fourth Age and confirm its fitness for habitation before the end. Knowing that there is a working Book within reach will make things… less stressful for me.”

If you have a working Book there’s no need to finish Two-Forty-Four, Twilight thought, And if that Book lets you get to Star Swirl, all the better. Aldro returned to the table and started putting his gloves back on, and Twilight hesitated in her move to bring out the trapped book. The Kl’kai dog seemed to be gearing up to go back outside, and since he’d apparently powered the Linking books, it was entirely possible that Twilight and Rainbow could bring Clover through the Age while Aldro was gone, letting them get away without his knowing. She was also starting to question the morality of trapping him in a book. She had seen what time spent in a virtual void had done to Star Swirl’s rebellious apprentices, and if there was a chance Aldro was being sincere she couldn’t feel justified subjecting him to that. He lied about Clover and the Moiety’s intentions though, a mental voice that sounded like Rainbow Dash’s pointed out to her.

He could just have assumed the worst, she argued back at herself, He obviously doesn’t know Clover Wrote a link to a new, stable world.

Because she doesn’t trust him, the other voice countered, we’ve only just met him, while Clover and Nyx spent a year on Sohndar and haven’t changed their opinion of him. They’d know better than us.

Besides, if he has reformed, couldn’t Star Swirl just Write a way out for him later?

“Aldro,” Twilight spoke up just as he was reaching for his spear gun. He paused and looked back at her quizzically, and she levitated the trap book out of her bag. “I’ve already managed to retrieve the book.”

“Ah, good,” Aldro said, turning to face her, lifting his goggles up and casting his gloves aside, “I’m impressed Twilight Sparkle; the Moiety are nearly impossible to pin down. How did you manage it, if I may ask?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Twilight said evasively. It was a true enough statement; she doubted she’d have managed it if the Moiety hadn’t come to her.

“Well, give it here,” Aldro said, reaching through the bars to grab the book. Twilight relinquished it with only token resistance, and sat back as Aldro opened the book, flipping quickly to the back. He contemplated the image in the link panel for a few seconds, and then turned back to the front and skimmed through the words. He read through a few more pages, frowning slightly in thought, turned back to the link panel, and made a few false starts at touching it. Twilight started to sweat and struggled to keep the nervousness out of her face. Did he suspect anything? She couldn’t tell, and so she stayed as still and natural-looking as possible. She started to wonder how she’d retrieve the book once Aldro used it, but before the thought could completely formulate the canine closed the book, reached through the bars, and opened it to present the linking panel to Twilight. “Perhaps you should go through first,” he said, voice grim and eyes locked on hers.

Twilight froze, staring at the innocuous-looking aerial view of Aitran Island hiding the link’s true nature. Aldro was indeed suspicious, and now Twilight was caught in an impossible choice. If she refused, she’d confirm Aldro’s suspicions and the entire plan would be shot. If she did as he said, he’d be convinced the book was genuine, but she’d be trapped as well. No, that’s not right, her flailing rationality shouted over the din of panic, Remember what Star Swirl said would have happened if you’d fully repaired Sirrus or Archeon’s book? You’d have swapped places with them. Trap books only hold one prisoner.

“Is something the matter?” Aldro asked, bringing Twilight back to the present.

Twilight shook her head. “Just a little worried about being able to get back to Sohndar quickly enough to get my partner out. She’s… not doing well after our encounter with the Moiety. There should still be enough time though.” Quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she reached up a hoof and touched the trapped linking panel.

The darkness didn’t fade away. There was no sound. Twilight could feel her body, but there didn’t seem to be anything around her, not even a floor. There seemed to be air aplenty to breathe, because her lungs and heart were working a bit of overtime from anxiousness. She knew she wouldn’t die of starvation – probably – considering how long Sirrus and Archeon had undergone their ordeal. However, those books had been on Aitran, where the passage of time was all but nonexistent. Twilight wondered whether the location of a trap book had an effect on time’s passage for the prisoner, or whether it was based on the supposed destination, or possibly neither and every trap book led to a timeless void. She wasn’t in a hurry to come to a conclusion, she just needed to keep her mind off her helpless state until-

An image appeared before her. It was Aldro, busily slipping on his gloves and checking his spear gun while giving the book only a cursory glance. Twilight didn’t know if he’d be able to see her if he paid attention, so she kept silent and tried to will herself out of the link panel’s frame. Surprisingly, the image did shift up a ways, giving her a skewed view of the top of Aldro’s head and the building’s ceiling. After a moment, the light went away again as Aldro placed his hand on the panel.

Reality asserted itself again, and Twilight found herself on the floor, outside the cage, with the book laying closed next to her. She picked herself up, shook herself out, and then levitated the book up and opened it to the linking panel. Aldro’s head filled the middle of the rectangular panel, and behind him she could still make out the moving aerial image of Aitran. Aldro’s face was blank with shock, which soon contorted into frustrated realization and rage.

“You… you…” he sputtered, too angry for words.

Despite herself, Twilight smiled at him in a fair impression of Princess Celestia after a good-natured prank. “Gotcha,” she said, closing the book on him.

Chapter 14

Prison Island

As yet another earthquake came to an abrupt end, Clover crawled out from beneath the relative safety of the table and surveyed her cell. It really hadn’t been the most unpleasant place to live in once; it could have passed for a comfortable apartment if it weren’t for the bars around the balcony and the lift platform that she couldn’t even control from her level. The return of the earthquakes had changed all that, and the room was now a mess of fallen and broken mirrors and wall hangings, disheveled furnishing covers, and more than few worrisome little cracks here and there. Clover was looking rather disheveled herself from worry, not just for herself but for all of Sohndar and the ponies her husband had sent in to rescue her.

“Hey Clover!” a voice called from the balcony door, pulling her out of her thoughts. She ran out to see the cyan pegasus pony hovering outside. “Are you holding up ok?” she asked.

“As well as can be expected, I think,” Clover answered, stroking a braid self-consciously.

“Good,” Rainbow said, “Because it’s time to break you out.”

“It is?” Clover asked, “But what of Aldro?”

“Twilight should be dealing with him by now,” Rainbow replied, “She’ll meet us here once she’s finished, and I expect to have you out of that cage before she arrives.”

“That may be difficult,” Clover said, “In order to free me you’ll have to rotate the lift, and to do that you’ll have to play the right sequence of sounds at the lift’s base. There are three possible sounds and the sequence is five sounds long. Aldro keeps the combination somewhere, likely in his new study. You’ll never be able to just guess it.*”

“Wanna bet?” Rainbow said confidently, “I happen to be pretty lucky when it comes to finding puzzle solutions. Just sit tight.” Before Clover could protest, she flew around the tower and dived down to the doorway leading in to the elevator.

The elevator looked like a cage, its bars made of a yellowish metal and spaced just far enough apart to comfortably reach a hoof through. A handle on a chain hung from the top, attached to the winch that obviously moved the contraption up and down. In the wall behind the lift cage were three buttons, each connected to a wire stretched up to a hemisphere with a horizontally oriented lever, and a pipe led from the top of that to something at the top of the shaft. “Ok,” she muttered, “play five notes and pull the lever. Seems simple enough.” She reached through the bars toward the buttons, paused in thought, and then pressed them from left to right and back again. She slid the lever to the right, which proved a little difficult as it wasn’t designed with hooves in mind, and let out a small sigh when nothing happened. “Round two.”

It took Twilight a few moments to locate the button on the ground that would open up the dome so she could get out, and once she had pressed it and turned around, she paused for a moment to take in the awe-inspiring sight of the fifth island. Her first thought was that it was mostly comprised of a white rock that had worn down by time and happenstance to resemble the stump of a giant tree, but as she reached the end of the walkway from the dome and started climbing the stairs at the end she realized it actually was a tree stump. Once she entered the stump, her attention went entirely to the elevator at the end, where Rainbow Dash was hard at work on something.

“Round fifty,” the pegasus grunted as she pulled the lever of the sound lock to no effect. “Gah!” she cried, whirling around to buck the bars of the lift cage in frustration, only to pause with her legs in the air as she saw Twilight.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked with a trace of amusement.

“So much for being ready to go before you got here,” Rainbow sighed, “I’m trying to get this elevator turned around so Clover can get in it. Did ya get Aldro?”

“I did,” Twilight said proudly, levitating the trap book out of her pack, “It was a close call though; I had to use the book myself to convince him it was what he thought it was. It can only hold one prisoner,” she added when Rainbow gave her a confused look.

“Ah, well, ok, good. Oh! Gimme that for a sec!” Rainbow grabbed the book and flipped it open to the linking page before Twilight could protest and said “Tell me how to let Clover out,” to the trapped Aldro.

“What the…” the Kl’kai exclaimed in surprise, “Who are you?”

“I’m the pony telling you to cough up the code to Clover’s cell,” Rainbow shot back imperiously. Twilight felt that she should protest her friend’s actions, but couldn’t come up with any good reasons why when she thought about it.

“Now why, pray tell,” Aldro said slowly, “would I do what you say? Look at me: trapped in the dark void of a faulty linking book, granted only a small window of light for brief moments beyond my control and no way out. What, little pony, could you possibly threaten me with to make me help you further your goals?”

“Uh…” Rainbow said, looking to Twilight for help.

“I’m afraid he may have a point,” Twilight said, shrugging, “Maybe there’s a clue laying arou- Ahhhh!” An earthquake cut her off and both ponies bolted out of the hallway into the open air. The rock beneath the giant tree stump cracked and the stairs built into it threatened to come loose but ultimately held on.

“I think they’re getting worse,” Rainbow said, continuing to shake even after the quake ended, “If we don’t get Clover out quick, the tower might just fall… Wait, idea!” Tucking the trap book under one wing, she ran back into the elevator and pulled down the cord. Twilight, galloping a few steps after the pegasus, barely managed to jump up into the lift cage before it rose out of reach.

“What in the worlds are you up to?” the lavender mare asked in breathless irritation. Rainbow just gave her a smug smile and waited for the elevator to reach the top before taking the book in her front hooves. Clover was standing near the middle of the room and gave the pair a confused, slightly disappointed look when she saw the lift cage still stood between her and freedom.

“All right,” Rainbow said, opening the book so Aldro could hear her and see into Clover’s cell, “Here’s the thing Aldro: this tower we’re in might not be stable for much longer, and we’re going to get Clover out of it one way or another. Either you tell us the code to turn the elevator around, or Clover switches places with you and we leave you behind.”

“What?” everyone else exclaimed.

“Are you crazy Rainbow?” Twilight asked, “we can’t trap Clover in the book! Star Swirl would be furious, and I can’t imagine what he’d do!”

“I must object as well,” Clover said, “and not just for my own sake. This cell is under surveillance, and once Aldro’s loyalists know he’s in here they’ll release him.”

“We’d have plenty of time to get away,” Rainbow argued, “and once we’re away and everything’s settled we could just find some little creature nopony’ll miss and swap it into the book to get Clover out. I’ll just need to remember never to mention that part to Fluttershy.”

“Rainbow Dash,” Twilight began, only to trail off as the sound of low laughter began to issue out of the trapped book.

“Ah, you poor fools,” Aldro chuckled, “do you realize how hopeless you’ve made things? Star Swirl’s faith in you was admirable, and perhaps well-placed, but the tasks he set were impossible.”

“Says the dog we managed to trap in a book,” Rainbow retorted.

Aldro laughed loudly. “Don’t you see?” he said, “By succeeding in that, you’ve sealed your doom. You don’t dare let me out and you’ll never convince me to help you free Clover. You can’t leave without her, not without betraying Star Swirl. In fact, by trapping me you’ve also guaranteed there will never be another Age in which to take shelter. Two-Forty-Three can’t sustain life by itself, and the Fifth Age will soon collapse on itself. You’re doomed.”

“Are you really so petty Aldro?” Clover asked, “You will die as well, when the world’s collapse destroys your prison.”

“I’m as good as dead in here anyway,” Aldro said, “the only regret I’ll have is never getting to see Star Swirl’s face when he realizes his wife and two trusted friends have died along with the entire population of an Age he couldn’t preserve.”

“Except most of us won’t be dead,” Twilight said with a confident smile even though she wasn’t in Aldro’s line of sight, “The Moiety are ‘overseeing’ a mass evacuation to Tay even now. That’s partially the reason Rainbow and I even made it to this point.”

“Oh? Wonderful,” Clover said with a smile of her own.

Aldro’s mirth died as he blinked in confusion at Clover. “What is Tay?” he asked.

“Tay is the name the Moiety gave to the world I linked to for them,” Clover answered, walking right up to the bars and leaning her face in close to the trap book, which Rainbow helpfully held at a comfortable angle, “I wrote the link about a month ago, using a book you had rejected as a failure.”

“You… you lie,” Aldro said, “It took me nearly thirty years to refine the materials in just the right way, and even then the links aren’t stable without the fire marbles.”

“The link isn’t very stable,” Clover admitted, “but the world of Tay is. It’s hospitable, inhabited, and a better home than Sohndar ever was. I may not survive to see my husband or my dear daughter again, but I can die without regret Aldro.” Her voice dropped slightly, taking on an almost pleading tone. “Can’t you see now? I, a pony of simple origin in a world you claimed to have created, have accomplished with rejected paper something you have failed to match. Does the fault lie with the books, or with the one who wrote the words?”

Aldro grimaced and dropped his gaze. After a moment, he muttered, “Middle, right, right, left, middle.”

“Come again?” Rainbow asked, leaning over the top of the book expectantly.

“Middle, right, right, left, middle,” Aldro said more clearly, “It’s clear I’ve lost, but I want to have a word with Star Swirl before the end. Do not leave me behind.”

“We weren’t planning on it,” Twilight said, taking hold of the book, “Rainbow and I are just the errand ponies. Your fate is in Star Swirl and Clover’s hooves.” She closed the book and put it away as she pulled on the elevator cord. “We’ll be right back up,” she told Clover. At the bottom, she stepped out to make room while Rainbow tapped out the sequence Aldro had supplied and pulled the lever. The lift cage rotated around as it rose, and a short moment later it came back down with Clover by Rainbow’s side.

“Thank you both,” Clover said, grabbing Twilight and Rainbow in a brief hug after stepping out of the elevator, “I can’t believe you’ve managed this, capturing Aldro and freeing me. Now, I’ll go see how the evacuation of the village is going and fetch my daughter. Meet us by the Fissure and prepare to signal Star Swirl.”

“Signal, right,” Twilight said, “Uh, how are we going to do that?”

“Didn’t you read my journal?” Clover asked, “I wrote down all the steps we’ll have to take. Be safe, and I’ll see you again soon.” She brushed past the Equestrian pair and trotted off toward the spinning dome.

Looking sheepish, Twilight levitated Clover’s journal out of her bag and looked at it. “Looks like I’ll be reading on the run,” she said, and then shot Rainbow a look as the pegasus started to snicker. “Let’s go.”

Dome Island

The trip back to the place where the Sohndar adventure had begun was blessedly uneventful. The flat plain where the covered Star Fissure was located was unoccupied when Twilight and Rainbow arrived, and a quick investigation revealed that the cage booth that had been built around the point of Linking entry was open and unarmed. During the brisk walk from the island’s dome to the fissure plain, Twilight had been speed-reading through Clover’s journal to find the entries relevant to the fissure and telescope as well as Star Swirl’s notes on his work on the Sohndar book in the hopes of finding a clue to possible means of sending a signal to him.

Eventually, as she approached the inverted teardrop-shaped telescope and put the books away, she reached a conclusion. “The image in Sohndar’s linking panel was nearly impossible to see anything clearly in,” she said, “and it’s likely to be worse now, so I guess our only option is to do something so dramatic to the structure of the world that it makes a noticeable change to the book. And the only way to change Sohndar that much while on it is to crack it open.”

“Wanna run that by me again egghead?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“The fissure under this metal plate isn’t actually part of Sohndar,” Twilight explained, “No one’s sure what it is exactly, but all the theories I’ve read point to it being like a gaping wound in the world’s fabric, a gateway of sorts to some other reality that opened because Sohndar is just that unstable. Aldro sealed it up before it could spread and cause more damage, but now we’re going to open it again, and it’ll probably break the world beyond all hope of repair.”

“Yikes,” Rainbow said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s the only idea,” Twilight said with a sigh, “I’ll wait until Clover and Nyx get here though, so we can get out as quickly as possible once Star Swirl comes with the book out.” Rainbow nodded and sat back while Twilight contemplated the telescope. According to Clover’s journal, it would be the means of opening the rift. The telescope was positioned over a thick pane of glass which was currently covered with a locked plate. The journal helpfully contained the combination to the lock, acquired by Moiety spies some time ago, and also pointed out a mechanical stop that would need to be removed to allow the telescope to be lowered far enough to break the glass.

The sound of little hooves on the rock drew Twilight from her thoughts and she looked over to see Nyx round the rock face and walk over to her and Rainbow. “Hey girls,” the filly said, panting a bit, “Thanks for freeing Mom. She told me to tell you to go ahead and start signaling Father. She’ll catch up in a minute.”

“All right Nyx,” Twilight said, “Thanks.”

“How’s the raid going?” Rainbow asked as Twilight tapped out the combination to the cover lock.

“We were just about finished when Mom showed up,” Nyx answered, “There were only a few Maintainers still putting up a fight. The village in Tay’s getting kinda crowded.”

“They’re all safe at least, right?” Twilight said as she lifted the cover and exposed the glass. She pulled the stop out of its place with a casual telekinetic tug and turned her attention to the lever and button on the telescope’s support railing. She turned the lever down and pressed the button, and the telescope slid downward a foot or so. With more button presses, she brought the telescope down until it was resting right against the glass, and the paused and looked around. Clover still hadn’t arrived. “How far behind you was she Nyx?” she asked.

“She should be here any second,” Nyx said, “Just go for it.”

Twilight cast one last worried look toward the path Clover should be coming from, and then turned back to the telescope and pressed the button to lower it one last time. There was a deep groan as the pneumatic pressure of the telescope struggled to overcome the resistant strength of the thick glass plate until finally, with an omnious but quiet sound the glass began to crack and then gave way. Color seemed to drain out of everything in the area, leaving a uniform brown tint behind except in the eyes, coats, and manes of the ponies. The ground trembled and split, and Twilight backed away as the metal plate the telescope was mounted on buckled and collapsed into a deep chasm below, accompanied by a sudden rush of air. The rift grew wider as sections of the ground broke off and fell into it, swallowing the rest of the covering metal as well as the giant strange-handled knife at the end.

“Whoa,” Rainbow called over the roaring wind being sucked into the rift, “This is crazy!”

“I’ll say,” Twilight replied, looking up in time to see Star Swirl the Bearded materialize in the arrival booth.

The ancient unicorn sage took a second to get his bearings, looking impressed at the state of things, and then galloped over to the trio. With a joyous cry, Nyx pounced on him with a big hug, which he returned with equal joy. He only took a moment before letting her go and came up to Twilight and Rainbow with a look of concern. “Where is Clover?” he asked.

“Star Swirl!” the mare in question called out as she ran into view, a satchel tied to her back over her dress. He and she hugged each other and exchanged quiet words for a moment, until a sudden lurch in the earth reminded them of the current predicament.

“What of Aldro?” Star Swirl asked.

“Contained,” Twilight said, bringing out the trap book and levitating it over to the stallion.

“Wonderful,” Star Swirl said, taking the book and putting it in a bag at his side, from which he then took another book and said, “Now let’s go home.” He opened the book and held it out as Nyx and then Clover touched the linking panel and vanished from sight. “My friends,” he said, turning to offer the book to Twilight and Rainbow, “ladies first.”

Smiling, Twilight lifted a hoof to lay on the panel, but before she could she saw a unpleasantly familiar unicorn in battered guard barding and a crazed look in his eyes gallop onto the plain and fix the group with a murderous glare.

“Demons!” Arcem howled, “Deceivers! Destroyers! Vengeance!”

“Watch out!” Twilight cried, pushing Star Swirl aside as the furious Maintainer leapt and tried to throw up a barrier to hold him back. Her magic activated too late, and she went down under Arcem’s weight, the two rolling to a stop at the precipice of the fissure. The world lurched again and the ground gave way beneath the struggling unicorns, dropping them into the starry unknown below.

“Twilight!” Rainbow exclaimed, spreading her wings and diving in after her, “I’m coming!”

Author's Note

* (243 possible 5-tone sequences, 364 possibilities if you don’t know how long the sequence has to be)

Chapter 15

Beyond the Star Fissure

Twilight Sparkle had occasionally dreamed of flying among the stars, surrounded by their light and the wondrous magic that made them the way they are. Those dreams were usually fun, with her feeling welcome and in control of her destiny. Sometimes she’d be warm, sometimes cold, sometime the stars would be close enough to touch or else merely a distant backdrop.

She was usually alone in those dreams, and she certainly never dreamed of being locked in a free-fall wrestling match.

The battle she fought with Arcem was only one of the conflicts she was dealing with as the two tumbled through the strange void. Arcem was obviously trying to kill her, but a part of Twilight didn’t want to be left utterly alone, and so as she fended off his attempts to strangle her or beat her to a pulp she made no effort to push him away. Besides, the fight helped keep her mind off the questions she wasn’t sure she wanted to face.

Am I going to be in this place forever?

Where could I end up going?

Will I survive?

The Star Fissure of Sohndar was a shrinking line of light in the distance, something that at least gave Twilight a sense of direction. All that could be seen in every other direction was pinpricks of light in a black void, occasionally obscured by strange dark clouds. Time started to lose meaning, until another body arrived to interrupt the fight between Twilight and Arcem. Rainbow Dash came diving in, grabbing Twilight in her front legs while lashing out to kick Arcem in the face with her back legs. The Maintainer let out a small grunt as the blow knocked him unconscious, and he spun away from Twilight and Rainbow, quickly becoming an indistinct blot in the distance.

“Hey Twilight, you ok?” Rainbow asked, looking at her friend in concern.

“Oh Rainbow Dash,” Twilight exclaimed, hugging her tightly, “You saved me.”

“Not quite yet I haven’t,” Rainbow said, looking up at the rift of light overhead, “I still have to get us out of here. Hold on tight.” She positioned herself and Twilight for maximum speed and began flapping as hard as she could to reverse their velocity. It was slow going, as even from their apparent distance the wind being sucked into the fissure from Sohndar was blowing against them, and the swath of light never seemed to grow closer.

“Rainbow,” Twilight said after a moment, “Maybe we shouldn’t try to go back. Sohndar’s being destroyed because I opened the fissure. What if Star Swirl has already left?”

“I’m not giving up Twi,” Rainbow said through gritted teeth, “Even if he did leave us for dead, he can’t have taken the book with him. It’ll still be there, if I can just reach it!”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Twilight said in a low tone.

Several interminable minutes went by and Rainbow Dash’s strength began to flag. The light representing the star fissure didn’t seem to grow any closer, and as Twilight and Rainbow watched it began to fade away, dispersing into faint wisps until, at last, it was gone. Rainbow groaned in weary defeat and let her wings rest, and she and Twilight pulled each other closer for comfort.

“Now what happens?” the pegasus asked.

“I don’t know,” the unicorn replied, “I guess we just keep each other company until… wait, what’s that?” She lit up her horn and cast out a beam of light, which reflected off a book that was slowly tumbling through the void past them. “Could that be…?” Twilight said incredulously, “Rainbow!”

“On it!” Dash said, turning around and fly toward the book. Once it was close enough for her to get a good look at it, Twilight grabbed it with her magic and reeled it in. The book was bound in a familiar brown cover, embossed with the title Aitran in black ink. “Oh my gosh yes!” Rainbow crowed as Twilight opened the book with near reverence to the linking panel and held it up for her friend. The pegasus wasted no time in laying hoof to panel and vanished from sight.

“Thank you, Star Swirl,” Twilight said as she waited to give Rainbow time to move away from the arrival point before linking through herself.

“After casting myself into the fissure, I realized the book would not be destroyed as I originally thought. I often wondered what became of the book over the following Aitran months. Would it continue to tumble through that starry void forever, or was there something beyond those stars that it would eventually reach? The questions faded from my mind after a while, but it later became obvious that that book’s story had not yet reached its conclusion.” Star Swirl’s eyes twinkled as he smiled at his audience in the library of Aitran, particularly the two mares standing right in front of him. “That book happened to be the seventh copy of the link to Aitran I’d ever written.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide with surprise. “The Aitran book I found in the Royal Archives was the seventh copy!” she exclaimed, “You dropped it into the Star Fissure and it ended up in Equestria, probably hundreds of years ago.” Star Swirl nodded.

“Wait,” Rainbow said, “are you saying if we’d kept going through that place we’d have ended up back home anyway?”

“Possibly,” Star Swirl said, “Knowing what happened to that linking book has led me to theorize that the void beyond the Star Fissure was the space that separates the different worlds. Each star might actually be a world, and if you were to reach one you’d enter it. By chance, the book I dropped into the Fissure to trap Aldro in Sohndar reached Equestria, and because of that Twilight was able to find it, and then you and her came here and resolved my little… problem with Cirrus and Archeon.”

“Well, I’m glad everything is finally resolved,” Clover said, but then cast a sad look at the mostly empty bookcase at the back of the room, “but so much has been lost because of those two apprentices of yours Star.”

“You could always write new books, can’t you Father?” Nyx asked, “And Mom has Tay.”

“You do?” Twilight asked, surprised.

“After all I went through to save my people, do you really think I’d just leave them?” Clover asked with a slight smile, “I’ll have to write a better, proper linking book to it when I get the chance, but I made sure to take the original book and its link crystal with me before meeting you at the Fissure.”

“To be honest,” Star Swirl said, “after all that’s happened, I may have lost my enthusiasm for Writing.” Everypony gasped or looked at him wide-eyed, and he put up a forestalling hoof. “I haven’t made a final decision yet,” he said, “and if I do stop that work I’ll likely find something equally troublesome to devote my time to. At any rate, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, I am deeply in your debt for everything. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, feel free to ask.”

“There is one thing,” Twilight said, “promise me you won’t judge Aldro too quickly. Clover might have managed to get something through to him at the end.”

Star Swirl exchanged a glance with his wife and then looked at Twilight with a grave expression. “Aldro has a long history to answer for,” he said, “what you saw of him was but a drop in the bucket. I’ll take your request into account, but I don’t have much hope for his changing. Now, the two of you should probably get back home soon and ease Princess Celestia’s worrying.” He nodded toward the Equestria linking book, which still rested in its alcove in the library’s central podium.

“Right, we should,” Twilight said quickly, “good-bye Star Swirl, Clover, Nyx. I’ll come visit soon.”

“Catch you later,” Rainbow said with a wave of her wing as she followed Twilight to the book.

After the pair had finished linking out, Nyx turned to her father and asked, “Father, where do you think the Aitran book we used to escape will end up?”

“I couldn’t even begin to guess, my little star,” Star Swirl said fondly, “The possibilities are infinite.”

A Few Weeks Later, San Palomino Desert

Out in the vast wilds, far from the nearest pony settlement and along the ancestral stampede grounds of Chief Thunderhooves’s buffalo herd, a small mountain unlike any other rose from the desert floor. Shaped like an irregular cone, its sides were too steep and smooth for casual climbing. The buffalo considered it a sacred site because strange sounds would echo out from its hollow top, and in the past some had attempted to decipher them as omens. Nowadays it was more an interesting landmark on the stampede trail, although the sounds could be unsettling at times.

Braeburn listened with rapt attention as his buffalo friend Little Strongheart explained the mountain’s history to him while leading him slowly around the base. The majority of the buffalo herd lay in camp a long walk away. They treated the mountain as a landmark, but didn’t normally get too close to it.

“So it makes sounds does it?” Braeburn asked, “Anypony ever been brave or stupid enough ta try and find out what’s makin’ em?”

“Not so far as Chief Thunderhooves has told,” Strongheart replied, “And his memory for our history is very long.”

“I’ll take your word that partner,” Braeburn said, “And I’m mighty glad y’all agreed to bring me out and show me this stuff.”

“You are quite welcome my friend,” the buffalo said. They continued walking for a moment, until they came upon something quite strange around a curve of the mountain base. “My stars, what is this?” Little Strongheart asked, staring at the mangled remains of some strange metal object bigger than she was.

“I don’t rightly know,” Braeburn said, scratching his head, “This wasn’t here the last time you came round these parts I take it?”

“It wasn’t,” Strongheart said, getting a closer look, “It looks as if it fell out of the sky from some great height. Could it be something a pegasus team dropped?”

“Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen,” Braeburn said, “and I can’t think of any reason a bunch of pegasus ponies would be lugging a big ol’ metal contraption way out here.”

“Here’s something else,” Little Strongheart said, reaching into the ruined telescope to drag out a thick-bound book. The cover was brown and made of something neither pony nor buffalo could identify and looked to be in fairly good shape, apart from a slight dent on one edge. In the fading light of the setting sun, they could still easily make out the embossed and inked title of the book: Aitran.

Chapter 11

Moiety Sanctum: Tay

Upon materializing in the world, Twilight found herself on a stone dock across the lake from the tree-like structure. Rainbow Dash was standing nearby, and the Moiety mare Materi was at the end of the dock, waving in a long rowboat being paddled by a unicorn stallion wearing the black and red cloak of the Moiety society. The two rebel ponies traded words as the boat nosed up to the dock, and then Materi gestured for Twilight and Rainbow to get in. Twilight climbed in and settled down, but Dash elected to fly alongside as the boat cast off and the rower took up his oars to propel them toward the island.

“So, Rainbow,” Twilight asked, “How has your day been since we split up?”

“Busy and stressful,” the pegasus replied, her fatigued tone sounding at odds with how her body seemed to be reveling in the freedom of flight, “I didn’t have any trouble finding Clover on the fifth island, and she seemed almost more concerned for us than for herself.

“When I got back to the big dome, I couldn’t see anypony around, so I searched high and low until I found Whark Bait cowering in a dark corner with your saddlebags on his back. He told me you had been about to be cornered by the guards and he managed to get out of sight with your stuff before they showed up, but you couldn’t get away in time. He wasn’t confident we could rescue you, but I convinced him to at least show me where they’d be taking you. We went to the village island and tried to get to the village itself by going through that little patch of jungle, but we got jumped by the guards. I tried my best to fight them off, but there were too many to handle. But then all of a sudden, ponies started falling over as darts flew out of the jungle and struck them, and bunch of Moiety jumped out to take care of the stragglers. Poor Whark Bait was freaking out, certain that he was about to die, but once the guards were all knocked out the Moiety just took us down into their tunnel network. He and I explained ourselves the best we could and they pretty much took over the planning at that point. They snuck Whark Bait around so he could make the diagram he gave you and kept me out of sight until the time came to break you out.”

“You couldn’t have acted sooner?” Twilight asked peevishly.

“You were being kept in the cell for those sentenced to death,” Materi explained, “Aldro personally oversees and carries out executions, and so we were hoping he would be lured out of his new world.” She gave Twilight a reassuring smile and added, “Had that happened, we would have broken you out immediately. We use that secret entrance quite frequently, to the dog’s irritation.”

“I see,” Twilight said, mollified.

The rowboat docked at the island and Materi led Twilight and Rainbow to a doorway in the base of the tree. They went up a spiral staircase just inside and emerged at the top into the interior of the giant sphere, which turned out to be a veritable hive of spherical huts like those in the village on Sohndar, held up and linked together by a network of wood and rope scaffolding, ramps, and walkways. There weren’t many ponies moving about, but Rainbow thought she could make out the shape of a few in the higher levels, and most of the huts had lighted windows on one side, indicating occupancy. Materi took the pair to a door near the sphere’s equator that led into a small room with a bed, a table with a basin of water on it, and a window to the outside. “Wait in here please,” the Moeity mare said, “Somepony more qualified to speak of important things than I will be along shortly.”

“Thank you for all your help Materi,” Twilight said with a friendly nod as Materi took her leave, and then turned to her winged friend and asked, “are you going to be ok in here?”

“I’ll be fine,” Rainbow said, flopping down on the bed, “It feels homely in here, and there’s a window. If you don’t mind, I’m going to try and catch some Zs before our new friend shows up. I haven’t had a real chance to rest all day.” Her eyes were closed and her breathing became deeper before Twilight had finished nodding.

Twilight went to the table and laid out the grid diagram Whark Bait had given her, studying it until she started to drift off as well. A knock at the door a short time later snapped her back to full wakefulness and roused Rainbow to a bleary-eyed, half-awake state. They both watched as the door opened under the power of teal-tinted magic to admit a unicorn filly who looked to be not much older than Apple Bloom and her friends, her coat a dark purple that bordered on being pure black and contrasted significantly with her bright cyan mane and teal eyes. Unlike most ponies of Sohndar stock that the two Equestrians had encountered, she had forgone the typical full-body robe or cloak in favor of a simple brown vest and a satchel, leaving the partially open book with three stars swirling out of it that adorned her flank visible to all. She looked at Twilight and Rainbow in silence for several seconds, as if sizing them up, and by the look in her eyes as she did so she didn’t seem impressed.

“Um, hi,” Twilight said, smiling awkwardly, “Are you… Uh…”

“So you’re the ones Father entrusted with rescuing me and Mom, huh?” the filly asked, “I’m surprised he didn’t make Cirrus and Archeon do it.”

“I seriously doubt he would count on those two,” Rainbow drawled, “even if they were still capable.”

“Yeah, I’d expect them to try and ally themselves with Aldro or something,” the filly said darkly, “but what do you mean by ‘still capable?’ What happened to them?”

“They got themselves trapped in a couple of other books,” Twilight said, “So, I take it you’re Star Swirl’s daughter, Nyx?”

“That’s me all right,” Nyx said proudly, “Daughter and heir to the greatest of Star Swirl’s secrets. And who are you, that my father trusts so much?”

Twilight was taken aback by the filly’s smug tone, which brought to mind memories of Trixie, but managed to keep her expression and tone under control as she answered with as much modesty as possible. “I’m Twilight Sparkle,” she said, “the personal student of Princess Celestia herself. This is Rainbow Dash-”

“The greatest and fastest pegasus pony in Equestria,” the pegasus proclaimed, jumping to her hooves to pose dramatically, “and the only living being who can do a Sonic Rainboom on command.”

“Uh huh,” Nyx said, her unimpressed tone causing Rainbow to bristle with barely withheld anger. “I’ve never met Princess Celestia,” Nyx said, “but, Father has spoken highly of her, so…” She sighed and dropped her gaze with grudging acceptance. “I shouldn’t second-guess Father,” she said, “but there’s a lot he wasn’t able to tell you about how things are in Sohndar now, and if you’re going to be any kind of help you have to listen to what I have to say.”

“Tell us everything you need to Nyx,” Twilight said, “We’ll be glad of all the help we can get.”

Nyx nodded, and then levitated the satchel off her back and over to Twilight. The lavender unicorn took it and opened it up to look inside. She found it contained Star Swirl’s journal, the fake Aitran linking book that had been stolen at the very start of her and Rainbow’s adventure, and a third, narrow book with a folded piece of paper stuck in near the middle. “That is the journal my Mother kept of her impressions and activities after coming to Sohndar after me,” Nyx explained, “You can read it if you want, but I went through most of it with her, so I can summarize it all for you.” Twilight considered the book for a moment, and then put it into the satchel along with the others and gave Nyx an expectant nod.

“It all started when I discovered Cirrus and Archeon abusing Father’s books,” the filly narrated, “They physically forced me to enter Sohndar, and because of how unstable the image looked I was scared I’d get stuck somewhere between worlds, or worse. When I awoke, I was too relieved at surviving the trip and ignorant of my surroundings to realize that the booth I materialized in was a trapped cage that I was apparently too small and light to trigger.”

“Lucky you,” Rainbow said dully, recalling her and Twilight’s own experience with the cage.

“I was,” Nyx said in agreement, “by failing to spring the trap, I also avoided alerting any of Aldro’s Maintainer guards to my arrival. I wandered a short distance away and sat down to wait for somepony to show up, preferably Mother or Father linking in to rescue me, but any friendly face would’ve been welcome.

“I’m not sure how they convinced Mom to come after me without bringing a link back to Aitran, but she arrived empty-hooved a short time after I did and triggered the trap. Luckily, the Moiety showed up before the Maintainers, and after drugging both of us with their knock-out darts they secreted us away to their underground hideaway.

“A generation or two has passed here since my parents had battled Aldro and trapped him on Sohndar, but it was soon clear to us that Mother’s face had not been forgotten. Once we were declared fully recovered from the drug and allowed some freedom to explore the caverns we discovered an old mural that depicted scenes from the conflict, chiefly the final confrontation at the Star Fissure, which Father threw himself and the last linking book out of Sohndar into. The mural’s implications disturbed Mother, especially in light of the awe most of the Moiety held for her. After learning the language and asking around, I wound up confirming her concerns. It seems a few Sohndarens witnessed the final conflict at the Fissure and correctly deduced that Father had been victorious. Up until then, Aldro’s status as a god was all but unquestioned by the locals, and so those ponies decided that Father was another deity who had stripped Aldro of his power. Mom was born in Sohndar and was well known at the time for assisting Father in his efforts against Aldro, so the Moiety proclaimed that she’d been chosen to ascend to godhood as Father’s consort, or some such thing.”

“And what about you?” Rainbow Dash asked, “As their daughter, are you some sort of goddess in the making?”

“No,” Nyx said with some bitterness in her voice, “I hadn’t even been born yet, and the Moiety’s… silly religion doesn’t seem to have any room for me in it. They accept that Mom calls me her daughter, but that doesn’t afford me anything special. Those who started the group devoted themselves to continuing what my parents had started, resisting Aldro’s control and fighting against him, all while looking forward to the day that ‘He of the Stars’ or Kovar would return to fully liberate Sohndar.” She paused for a second when Twilight and Rainbow gave her blank looks, and then added as a quick explanation, “Kovar is Mom’s original, Sohndaren name.”

“He of the Stars would be Star Swirl then,” Twilight said.

Nyx nodded and then launched back into her narrative. “Mom tried to dissuade the Moiety from revering her, especially because they looked to her for guidance even though they knew what was going on better than she did, but it’s never really stuck. It became obvious fairly quickly that Father wasn’t coming to our rescue any time soon, which Mom feels is for the best considering Aldro’s grip on the surface, and the fact that he was making linking books!”

“How long ago was it that he succeeded?” Twilight asked, “I found a journal of his laying around, and it seemed he was having a hard time of it.”

“I’ve been here, er, in Sohndar, for nearly a local year,” the filly answered, “Aldro was on the verge of success when I arrived, but he only managed to get a solid, consistent link established a couple months ago, and that was only through using those domes of his to sloppily mend the flaws in his materials and writing formulae. Sohndar was chosen as his prison because it was supposed to be impossible for him to find or make the books, paper, and inks to the precise specifications required to write stable Links. He managed to get close enough to convince himself of the possibility, and then cheated to make up for the gap.

“And before you ask Ms. Twilight Sparkle, there are flaws in the physical books themselves as well as Aldro’s approach to Writing. You see, Sohndar’s dying and it’s happening fast. Mom says the last time she was there the five islands were all a single landmass, and now they drift farther and farther apart by the day, accompanied by tremors and earthquakes. Mom didn’t know what Father was going to do when he discovered we were trapped in Aldro’s prison, and she wasn’t very hopeful of being saved before the islands decayed completely. So, she made use of her unwilling status among the Moiety to lead them in an attempt to acquire a rejected linking book from Aldro’s workshop. Once she got it, with no small bit of help from me, she set to work Writing a world into it which the Moiety, and as many of the ponies still loyal or subservient to Aldro as possible, could take refuge in before the end. At the end, however, she determined we’d still need the power of the domes to open the link, and doing that was even more dangerous than getting the book in the first place. There weren’t any other options though; she considered the Star Fissure for a short time, based on Father’s brief experience in it revealing that ponies can live in its space, but ultimately rejected it because Aldro had sealed it closed and reopening it might push Sohndar right to the brink of destruction and we had no idea where, if anywhere, going into it would take us. Still, Mom didn’t want to risk using the domes more than we absolutely had to, and so I suggested trying to write some kind of alternative solution into the new world.

“Once that was done, the Moiety stole another book for Mom to write a return link into and we waited until Aldro activated the dome power himself, and then Mom slipped into one and powered the first book up, linking to the world we are in now. She found the shortcut material I’d devised, a special crystal, and found that it worked perfectly. She brought a crystal sheet back with her and soon the Moiety had relocated here and named it Tay.”

Nyx’s head and tail drooped, and she faltered for a moment with tears welling in the corner of her eyes. “That was a month ago,” she said, “Shortly after, Mom began expressing concerns to me that Aldro would have noticed the theft of two of his books, rejects though they were, and she told me to stay here while she went out to spy on him. She didn’t return; Aldro caught her somehow. The Moiety can’t free her; it’s difficult enough for them to get spies out to keep her informed of what’s going on.” She looked up straight into Twilight’s eyes, her own teal orbs hard and fierce through the tears. “Father trusts you to get me and Mom home,” she said, “and Mom trusts Father’s judgment, so you had better live up to it! Do whatever it takes to eliminate Aldro and get Mom out of her prison, and then get us home, ok?”

Twilight and Rainbow both met the filly’s eyes with full solemnity, and then the pegasus went over and put a front leg around her shoulders and said. “Kid, your mom’s in good hooves. I never leave anypony hanging, and I’ve got the smartest, most magical sidekick in the entire universe.” Twilight rolled her eyes and chuckled, letting Rainbow have her moment of hamming.