Marks of Harmony: ReMastered

Marks of Harmony: ReMastered
Part 3

“Spit, where did it come from?” Gleam questioned the colt, clasping him in her magic as the voices died in the hum ridden air. “The ship! Which direction did it come from?”

“I… I… I…” he stuttered, struggling inside the changeling magic that held him still.

Inky shook her, trying to keep the level of panic in the room down despite the sinking feeling in his gut getting deeper and deeper. “Gleam! Gleam! Calm down, baby, please…” At the contact, Gleam’s head whipped around and for the briefest moment, Inky saw a glimpse of the old steele of a Hive Guard in her orange eyes. He nearly recoiled, but as quickly as it had surfaced, the old Gleam sank down again. Her gaze softened to one of petrified guilt, and her magic disappeared to let Spit fall in a rather ungainly heap.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry,” she whispered, hiding her face from the two of them.

“This is what I mean, Inks,” Spit muttered, nervously brushing at a leg and trying to contain his visible shaking.

“Gleam, look at me baby,” Inky said quietly, sitting himself on the floor and slowly bringing his breathing to a controlled pace. He flicked a webbed wing in Spit’s direction, hoping he’d catch the drift to keep a watch on the street. A vandalous, overly-enthusiastic pain in the plot Spit might be, but he had enough sense to know when to make himself scarce. “It’s been a record four months since you tried to kill somebody,” Inky tried coaxing Gleam into looking around once Spit was out of earshot. “And you snapped out of it quickly enough…”

“It was Spit though… I know him…” Gleam replied in hushed, heaving breaths.

Inky sucked in a well of air, relieved. She was already talking, the best sign she was already through the shock.

“Ah, but you don’t know what’s outside,” Inky pointed out to her. “None of us do. There was a threat and you reacted to it. No one’s going to blame you for that.”

“I will not be pitied for what I left behind,” she said stoutly. Inky just smiled and kissed her on the cheek. He didn’t have enough hairs in his mane to count the number of times he’d heard her say as much.

“I know, but we have to take care of each other. And sometimes that means -” he was saying until a shiny black hoof touched his lips.

“Shush,” Gleam said with a renewed grin. “Wouldn’t have you any other way.” With a small nibble to his wing she trotted past him to the front of the store . “Sorry for that, Spit,” she said, taking her own position to cautiously peer out the window.

“I’m taking it as a healthy reminder not to futz with you honestly,” Spit shrugged.

“Where did it come from though?” she asked. “Griffon territory or Equestria?”

“Oh, out of the desert for sure,” Spit said with a small grunt as Inky squeezed beside him to get a look through the window. “Why?”

“I wanted to make sure it wasn’t, for some unholy reason, changeling,” Gleam replied. Spit eventually realized Inky wanted a look and adjusted himself and the sight at the other end of town couldn’t have been more alien. Well, Inky was sure it could’ve been, but the supposed ‘airship’ was definitely in the running.

It didn’t glint like he thought it might, the metal being unpolished and dirtied by a sure layer of grit and sand. The entire thing’s true size was impossible to tell from his current angle, but it was easily wider than the single street running through the center of the valley and probably half its length. And the entire thing was shaped like a hoofball with thick pikes coming off its rear end.

“I want to get closer,” Gleam said, her tone laced with wary curiosity.

“What a wonderful role-model you are, love,” Inky half-smirked.

“Oh please, sweetie,” she answered with an eye-role. “Spit is the color of these tan rocks, and he still sticks out like a sore horn.”

“If you’re dead set on getting a better look, at least wait ‘til it’s dark,” Inky said, dropping from the window with Gleam.

“You would be the one to say that,” Spit grumbled behind the two of them, clearly miffed over Gleam’s comment.

“I think I can see a hatch at the base, but no one has left it yet,” Gleam went on.

“Who said it had to have anyone insi-!” Spit started to drawl, but was cut off at the sound of unstable magic bursting from somewhere. It was a deeper, more primal sound than before, but just as Inky recovered from nearly jumping through the roof, the pink tint around everything flickered.

“Recharge,” Spit said when Inky and Gleam both eyed him for theories. “The shield casting the haze is motherbucking huge…” His eyes drifted to the ceiling, as if seeing past it to the barrier above. “Only the prodigies can cast ‘em this big ya know.”

“Closer,” Gleam said with a knowing nod. “And yes, before you say it and make me regret falling for a romantic, we go together.”

“Under the cover the night makes more sense, love,” Inky said.

“Too obvious,” Gleam smiled. “Think like a Changeling and hide in plain sight.”

“Shadows from the valley wall?” Spit guessed, but Inky was already rubbing his temple with a hoof.

“No. That would make too much sense,” he gritted his teeth and tried to keep from looking at his still smiling lover. “We walk right in the middle of street, straight toward it. No hiding. Am I right, love?”

“You know me too well,” Gleam giggled. “Let’s face it. If we were all supposed to die horribly in a mess of fire and falling rock, something that size would have already offed us.”

“Well I for one am not afraid to be called a coward for keeping my plot right here,” Spit said, sitting on the floor a little harder than he intended if Inky judged his wince right.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” Inky shook his head and heaved with an amused sigh as he and Gleam cautiously pushed open the door and stepped outside onto the rough gravel road.

“Watch the shop, Spit, thank you,” Gleam said to the stubborn colt before slamming the door shut with a hind hoof kick. And with that, she and Inky set off down the abnormally silent Caedmon thorough road directly toward the resting ovoid.

The walk from one end of the town to another wasn’t terribly long, but the lack of street brawls, shouting vendors, and drunk, stumbling creatures made it feel considerably longer. Every hoofstep to pass another building made the dirt and rock crunch beneath their hooves, and the sound echoed down the street as they continued towards the potentially malicious contraption.

But the ship only kept sending a a pulsing ring of pink magic from somewhere near its top, making the shield around Caedmon shudder and pulse. Far more interesting for Inky was the attention they were getting as they made their way closer to the ship. “We’re being watched again,” he mentioned to Gleam.

“I noticed,” she nodded. “Spit just wants the glamour without any real work.” She paused, noticing some of the more daring colts and fillies sneaking out to watch them pass with something akin to cautious wonder. She smiled back at them, even if it made them slip back behind the house they’d come from. “Whether I meant to or not, I’ve worked hard to be a better mare and make this place a bit more livable, and I’m not going to give that up just because it’s big and made of fancy metal plate and rivets.”

“Wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you,” Inky snickered. “And somepony has to watch your back.”

“Oh ha ha,” she said dryly, turning to give him an unimpressed glare. “Just like a beginner to think he knows enough to hold his own.”

“Who’s mocking who now?” Inky jabbed, ruffling a hoof in her mane. “I’m a fair bit more than a ‘beginner’.”

“Shall we just settle on being completely lost without each other?” she asked, playfully jabbing him in the ribs.

“I think we can,” Inky winked to her. The remainder of their walk was marginally less interesting due to leaving Caedmon behind entirely. Due to the ship’s immense girth, the scale from a distance was all skewed, leaving Inky and Gleam several miles outside Caedmon before coming into the ovoid’s shadow proper.

And still, it remained unresponsive save for the now rhythmic discharge of the magic rings. “If its whole job is to be eerie and make my insides squirm, it’s doing a damn good job,” Gleam hissed and lowered her head as their walk carried them beneath its metal hull.

“The metal part confuses me, but you think it might be some kind of zebra experiment?” Inky posed the question, his concern having waned as opposed to Gleam the longer he’d been close to it. “They tend to like magic they don’t have to watch over…”

“I want to light up to see what kinds of magic are here, but I’d rather not be mutilated by magic activated traps,” Gleam growled.

“Cool head, cool head,” Inky reminded her. “But, no, I wouldn’t advise lighting your horn just yet.” They were incredibly close to the belly apex now, and Inky had his hoof ready to brush away some sand on the hull that seemed to be obscuring some kind of emblem when a sharp metallic grating burst through the silence. He yanked his hoof back, wings flared, and fangs barred in the direction of the ovoid’s lower apex. Gleam was similarly postured, but crouched so low to the ground her belly was scraping the gravel.

Where once had been the same plain plates of metal, there was now a simple square gap to the interior. Inky only briefly caught a glimpse of a rough wooden interior lit by an unknown source before the gap was filled with all manner of creatures. Griffons, ponies, changelings, zebras, and even a few young dragons filed from the opening. They formed two columns and once in place, a lone griffon strode from the opening. He was aged, but in a rough, distinguished way. Far into life, yet still seeming to draw on the energy of his prime.

“May the future forever reward the brave, for they are few,” he said, and Inky immediately recognized the first voice that had carried across Caedmon. His tone was just as old and refined as he looked, almost to an unnatural degree. Gleam must have thought something similar, judging by how she stiffened ever so slightly at his words. “My name is Juno, loyal ambassador for Red Dunes and Lady Streak. Allow me to offer my apologies that our entrance may have caused an undue amount of fright.”

“Red Dunes!?” Gleam scoffed, even as the same realization hit Inky. “Red Dunes is a lifeless desert no one cares two bits about.”

The griffon’s (or rather Juno’s) ensuing smile bordered on the twisted as he said, “Celestia’s Red Dunes, perhaps. We are of the true Red Dunes, and it is far from lifeless I assure you.”

“And the barrier?” Inky questioned with a hard edge.

“I could explain. Truly, I could,” Juno replied with a flare of a claw. “But such queries are best asked of Lady Streak. She explained she was most eager to meet the first to find it within themselves to see Rise.”

Inky and Gleam cast a quick glance to one another. They’d seen and dealt with enough rough types and gangs passing through Caedmon to know the difference between an invitation and ultimatum.

“This Lady Streak… she’s inside?” Gleam asked, slowly snaking back to her normal posture.

“I can take you to her straight away,” Juno beamed.

“Lead on,” Inky said with a motion of his hoof.
______________________________________________________________________________

Twilight knocked her temple with a hoof a few times, trying to beat the dull headache into submission since the painkillers hadn’t done a lick of good yet. As any sane logic could have predicted, hoof knocking only made it worse. Twilight sighed before letting out a groan as she tried to refocus on her evening’s bit of light reading.

She glared into the pages, trying to get the words moving through her brain. But no matter the wilting powers of her twitchy eye, the words refused to engage her or do anything other than sit there and quietly mock her. She tried once more (as she really, really did want to learn about the classical financier responsible for creating the bit), but to no avail.

She snapped the book closed and sentenced it to her bedside table as she crawled from under her sheets, silently grateful for Spike having a room of his own. She could vent and rage all she wanted no matter what hour of the night it was.

A swift spell to make the bed later, and Twilight was sending an orb of light from her horn to the chandelier in her new… well, she called it an office no matter how many times Dash so flatly declared it to be an evil sorcerer’s idea of a funhouse. This headache had been nagging in the back of her skull for a day or so now and since every available magical, medicinal, and herbal remedy had failed her, Twilight was determined to rid herself of it and take back her evening reading time.

She took a deep breath to clear her head and rolled her eyes at the unfortunate irony of the first step to her investigative method. She cleared off a small space of desk, cast some initial analysis spells, laid out a projection gem, and shifted around the spacious room for a spare or relatively clear scroll. She seated herself at her cleared area, but before she could even write a proper title on the scroll, one of her spells lit the gem with a find.

Which, really, made no sense. Her spells were nothing if not thorough. They usually took a good couple minutes before producing any helpful data. Except when she looked to see what was causing the oddity, there was nothing. The gem wasn’t showing the spell had detected anything. “I know I casted correctly,” Twilight murmured to herself, diving into the spell structure just to be sure. And she was right. Nothing was wrong with her construction. “Bucking headache -” she nearly swore in irritation only to have the spell signal her again. She shot her eyes to the gem projection just in time to see a ripple of magical distortion before it became blank once more.

“Oh ho ho ho…” Twilight nearly giggled, rubbing her hooves together as she watched the projection eagerly. “Who’s out there experimenting with a pulse, hm?” And as to validate her enthusiasm, the gem briefly flashed again in what Twilight suspected to be the exact same time interval as before. So by the third time, she was ready, ceasing the connection to her monitoring spell and the gem.

But where Twilight was hoping to see a complex spell matrix befitting of a magician able to master pulsing spells, all she got instead was a shield buffing weave. She stared at it for a good while, despite being a fair bit more familiar with the type than she would like (she loved him, but sweet Celestia could Shiny go on for longer than even she could tolerate on shielding spell buffs and re-casts).

Part of her wanted to ignore it. With the massing of the Guard in Canterlot, there were bound to be a fair few talented unicorns showing off to their peers. And it wasn’t unreasonable that a pulse would cause her a headache, especially if it wasn’t a perfect cast. But something just didn’t feel right about it. And the sensation only increased the longer she stared at the simple matrix. She hated carrying deeper dives into a subject on just a gut feeling (no shortage of chemical explosions into one’s muzzle would do that to a pony)... But she was already up, already in the mood, and the solution to her headache problem had honestly come too quickly for her.

Twilight debated simply returning to her book with a quick shielding spell for her head, but her curiosity succinctly squashed that notion (and after casting the spell for head, which immediately worked wonders), and she rushed for her analysis toolset.

And, well… after laying them out to dive deeper into the pulse’s exact matrix design, her desk was just as full of clutter as before she’d cleared it off. And other ponies wondered why labs were all messy. Self-confident thoughts brushed aside, Twilight attacked the first layer. Her quill immediately began a rapid scratching over parchment.

Already, she could confirm the pulse as some kind of re-buff of a pre-existing spell, but it was more interesting than that. The spell was a shield as it had all the standard repelling effects one would expect, but Twilight was more perplexed by a single inverted layer.

The spell was keeping something in… odd. She attacked the second matrix layer at that point, but where she had been expected some variety of containment spell, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Her tools told her there were seven levels of the matrix below the second, but at each analytical level, there was only more nothing. And yet, the first layer was diverting cast energy somewhere. It had to. Without a prepared place for the directed magic to accomplish a task… “You would get nothing but a pad of....” Twilight let herself trail off as her ears dropped behind her head. Very slowly, every so slowly, she moved away from her desk, careful to never take an eye off the apparent matrix void.

She reached to her side, feeling over the nearby bookshelf with a hoof until she felt the spine she was searching for. Magic levitated it out, and Twilight cracked it open, wishing the dry pages wouldn’t crack so ominously. She found the entry, and in the face of the elder, more thorough research, she could only wonder why Princess Celestia had insisted it was only a ‘training muster’.

An early morning trip to Canterlot was in order it would seem. Twilight mindlessly pulled away the spells powering her equipment and the chandelier, wondering just how she could question the princess with something other than, “How bad is it really?”