Sunset Expedition

by MysteryMan97

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Equestria Girls, Science Fiction, Adventure, Crossover, Human, Sunset Shimmer, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 47850

Sunset Shimmer leaves Equestria and ends up in a wild and untamed land, but when she finally does make contact with the "humans" of this world, their meeting will change the course of history for both sides.

Long ago, Starswirl's mirror was damaged, and for some reason that nopony knows the destination was changed. Sunset Shimmer learns about this world, a wild and untamed land, and in a display of angry-teenage decision making thinks spending 20 moons on that world is a good way to get Celestia's respect.

Meanwhile, the year is 1889, Ether-Flyers traverse the inner solar system, and the tidally-locked world of Mercury is still a nearly unmapped mystery for humanity. The British Empire, nearing the height of its power, claims the world, but only maintains a small outpost in the small sliver of land between the eternal day of the hot side and the eternal night of the dark side known as the Twilight Zone.

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A crossover with Space 1889, a sort of steampunk sci-fi RPG setting that I am a fan of.

NOTE: This fic will get into the politics of the late 1800's, and the reality of the time was that most people in positions of power were pretty terrible by our standards and Equestrias, but this will not be a human-bashing fic, just because the governments of Earth are full of terrible people does not mean humanity is terrible.

Also available on Spacebattles, where I am much more active and respond to comments much quicker.

Published 2020-01-30 02:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-10-10 20:34:09 UTC

Chapter 1

Sunset Shimmer was going to leave Equestria. In another timeline, she would slip through the mirror with nothing and come out the other side changed into a human, dumped in a strange world where human counterparts of Equestrians lived their lives, completely unaware of the realm of magic hidden on the other side of a statue in front of a high school. In this timeline, things went differently.

Alright, Starswirl’s notes said that after some incident with a trio of sirens, which I could find nothing about, the portal shifted to a new world, one with background magic but without civilization. Sunset reviewed her research mentally as she prepared to cross, a pair of saddlebags loaded with books, equipment, and supplies for living away from civilization on her back. His trip to the other side was only long enough to determine that the background magic levels were too high to safely imprison threats to Equestria, since they could use the power to potentially find their way back, and then he left it. There are no records of anypony else going through, which means that I’m going to be completely alone, finally unbothered by “friends” or anypony else who could hold me back! Sure, getting what I need to survive wasted most of the three days the portal was open, but not dying before I conquer this alien world is worth it.

With a flash of telekinesis, she distracted the pair of solar guards in front of the mirror, and with a shove they flew across the room. Teleporting from her hiding place to right in front of the mirror, she felt the unicorn guards restraint spell start to grab her as she jumped through. When she hit the ground, it wasn’t on the cold stone floors of the palace, but on rough dirt, and as she stood up she found everything seemingly much lighter, as if her and all her equipment suddenly weighed less than half as much but her muscles were just as strong. Looking around, she took in her surroundings. Directly in front of her was a small hill, and to her left a quiet river flowed slowly as it looped around the hill. Behind her was a second hill, forming a “valley” around the portal a hundred or so yards across, and to her right the ground opened up into a grassland with scattered clumps of trees for a few miles before slowly becoming a thick forest. However for some reason it was so dim, almost like there was thick clouds in front of the sun despite clear skies above her, that she couldn’t see very far either over the river or into the forest.

Alright, first objective, get the lay of the land from up that hill, maybe see if I can figure out why it’s so dim here, is this worlds sun just very weak or something? At least Celestia keeps the world lit properly during the day. I know Starswirl’s notes said there were no cities around here, but he was only here for less than a day to make sure the other end was locked down and wouldn’t shift again, this is probably just something like their version of the Everfree. She began walking up the hill, the uncomfortable weight of her bags much lighter on this world for some reason. It’s so strange how everything feels lighter here, it must be the natural magic of this world… oh sweet Celestia.

Stretching out before her was a sight that proved beyond anything else that she was no longer in Equestria. To her right, a river looped around the hill she was on and headed off towards the sun for around half a mile until it met a body of water her mind insisted was a lake of some sort, stretching somewhere around one and a half to two miles across. However, from the way the water stretched from horizon to horizon and the faint signs of a constant flow from right to left, she had the sinking suspicion that whatever was in front of her was actually the largest river she, or likely anypony, had ever seen. However, even that wasn’t as strange as what lay on the horizon. This world's sun just... hung in the sky, half above and half below the horizon, as if Celestia had one day just gotten bored halfway through raising the sun and left it hanging in the sky when she went for a nap. Whoever is in charge of the sun on this world Sunset thought as she began to hike down towards the large river is either in a load of trouble, or so lazy that somepony else should take over for them. Maybe somepony with a cutie mark of the sun… She smiled as the image of herself as an alicorn filled her mind.

With that image in her mind, Sunset walked happily down to the junction of the two rivers. At the water's edge, she telekinetically lifted her saddlebags, and the first downside of this new world became apparent. Hmmm… the thaumaturgical background energy levels in this world seem to be lower than Equestria, let me just… alright, testing… 27.2%?! With that level of background energy I’ll burn through my reserves insanely quickly doing any sort of major magic.

She pushed the thoughts out of her head as she pulled out her field telescope and scanned the river. After a few minutes, she reluctantly admitted that Starswirl might have been right about the lack of civilization in this world. Waterways are an easy way to transport goods in a pre-railroad society, and they make for decent sources of irrigation water for farming, but both banks of this river are clear of any sign of settlement as far as I can see, and there aren’t any boats or barges on the river. Also, the clouds are obviously unmanaged, no sign of any pegasi or griffons. I’ll need more time to be sure, but I might actually be the only Pony on this planet!

After that revelation, Sunset spent a few more minutes magically testing the plants in the area to ensure she could eat them, since her whole plan would fall apart if she starved waiting for the portal to reopen. Satisfied that the plants were, if not the tastiest food she had ever had, at least enough to keep her fed, she turned and climbed back up the hill overlooking the portal to set up camp. As Princess Celestia’s student, Sunset Shimmer had a lot of knowledge and experience many unicorns two or more times her age would never have, but living in Canterlot and focusing single-mindedly on her studies tended to leave her with certain gaps in practical knowledge. For example, how to properly set up a tent.

“Look, you stupid thing, just get in there and… GAH!” Sunset screamed in frustration. “Alright, one more time, the poles fit together like… that! Yes! Alright, and now I just slide this on and… Alright! Finally!” She stepped back and admired her “camp” which at this point consisted of a tent and firepit (dug according to the diagrams in a survival book) next to the obelisk that contained the portal back to Equestria. She’d considered camping on top of one of the hills to reduce drainage issues if it rained, but if there were ponies or some other intelligent creature in this world they would be able to see her from the river if she did that. Sure, if they were friendly it might delay their meeting, but if they were hostile being harder to see from the river could only be a good thing.

As she looked over the camp, she felt an uneasy sensation in her horn, similar to wearing an inhibitor ring. In a panic, she cast a spell to clear any physical or magical object off her horn, but even though the spell worked there was nothing for it to remove, so the energy just disappeared. In a panic she pulled out her thaumaturgic background level scanner, and her worst fears were confirmed. 7.1%?!?! HOW!? How is it dropping that quickly, this shouldn’t be possible, none of Starswirls notes mentioned this… but he was only here while the portal was open. She looked down at the obelisk, eyes wide in terror. No no no no no! She ran down the hill, falling and rolling most of the way in her panic. At the bottom, she pulled herself up and rushed towards the portal before slamming into it and falling backwards. Dazed and confused, she pulled herself back to her hooves and tried to collect her thoughts.

If the magic disappears… If all the magic disappears until the portal opens back to Equestria, I’m doomed. Without magic, I won’t be able to hold things in telekinesis or with my hooves, and I’ll have to rely on the few plants I’ve already tested as safe for all of my food, and I don’t even know if I can boil the water without magic so I might either die of dehydration or some sort of infection! She curled up against the edge of obelisk and began to shake. This was a mistake, this whole thing was a mistake, I could handle this world when magic was only a quarter or so of Equestria’s, but with no magic… Sunset Shimmer let out a sob as she pulled herself closer, feeling the magic slip away from her.

However, after a few minutes of crying, when she climbed back up to the camp and looked at the scanner again, she noticed that it was holding steady at a couple percent of Equestrian normal, and realization dawned. Running down to the river bank, she tested the levels again, and her theory was confirmed. While the portal to Equestria dumped massive amounts of energy into the environment for a short three day period every twenty moons, the great river that stretched from horizon to horizon was giving off a small trickle of power. It wasn’t much, and the fact that the rest of the planet was thaumaturgically dead was a bad sign, but it was power, and Sunset could work with limited power much better than she could work with no power.

Pulling herself to her hooves, she started to plan. Alright, I’ll need to ration my magic use, and some of the enchantments on my equipment won’t be able to draw power from the environment at levels this low, but if I can make some thaumaturgical batteries… but how to charge them…? Maybe a magic circle to pull in and concentrate background magic? She thought to herself as she walked back up the hill to her camp.

As she set up her camp, she took the crystals she’d purchased for enchantments and laid them out. Relying on half-remembered principles and esoteric crystal lore, she arranged eight of them in an intricate double circle, four in the inner circle at the top sides and bottom, and another four rotated 45 degrees and a few inches outwards, connected by channels carved in the hard dirt. It wasn’t pretty, and any rain would disrupt it, but it was functional. Placing a ruby in the center, she watched as the circle began to light up, the gems working with the spell to draw power from the air into the gem. Alright, I have a few more crystals I can use as batteries, that gives me a decent reserve if I need it for complex magic. Now I can get to work. Sunset thought as she pulled out her books, looking through the spell matrices for any way to cut down the magic required for each spell. She might have been working with a fraction of the magic she was used to, but one does not get to become the personal student of Princess Celestia by being bad at magic, and as the alien sun rested on the horizon her expedition truly began.

Author's Note

Hello Everyone!

As a brief introduction to the setting: in Space 1889, the "Ether", the medium between planets that scientists theorized existed back when they were convinced light needed a medium to travel through, is real. Events follow reality more or less exactly up until 1870, when Thomas Edison figures out both how to build an ether propeller and that you need to be high up in atmosphere to use it, and he proves it by journeying to Mars, which is inhabited by a civilization that is clinging to life on their vast network of drying canals. After that, it's a bonanza, as Earths industrial powers run wild over the inner solar system (their ships are powered by boilers that use solar energy, and beyond the asteroid belt they can't get enough power to work), with Britain and Germany establishing colonies on Mars and Venus (cloud-covered jungle world of eternal rain with a native race of lizard-men).

However, because these are empires, the result is generally not pretty. In fact, King Leopold II has, in addition to the Congo Free State, a colony on Mars run the same way, and is making plans for further expansion. However, this isn't going to be a humanity vs Equestria fic where Equestria is better than humanity, although Equestria will come into conflict with individual human governments

Space: 1889 - Wikipedia
Anyways, let me know what I can improve, if no one ever tells me what I'm doing wrong I'll never improve!

Chapter 2

Expedition Log: Day 2

I have successfully managed to stabilize the enchantments on my equipment to operate in the new low-magic environment. However, I am having difficulty with even the most basic of magic in this reduced environment, even basic telekinesis is slowly draining my reserves. I have begun to look into the basic structure of many of the spells I use to see if I can modify them to be more efficient, but that sort of work will take time. On the bright side, I seem to have nothing but time, 20 moons at 30 days per moon gives me 600 days until I can go home, and since there aren’t any stores on this world for me to buy food or equipment, that means I need to be smart about this if I want to do more than survive, and I do.

I came to this world to get out from under Celestia’s shadow, and that is exactly what I am going to do. Figuring out how to become a princess by myself in a low-magic environment might be impossible, but not only surviving in but taming an alien world, one without magic? If anything will get Celestia to acknowledge that I deserve to be a Princess it’s that. Cadence just did some sappy trick with love magic and an artifact to ascend, and this is definitely going to be more impressive than that. Once I’ve ascended, I’ll build a more stable portal between these worlds and start recruiting ponies for my new realm, and finally Celestia will have to treat me as an equal.

I have a lot of work to do though, so I will be keeping this log to keep track of my plans, long and short-term, and my discoveries. I’ve never done this before, but it can’t be that much harder than keeping notes in class.

Basic needs:

Food: Native plant life is edible, confirmed with Clover the Clevers “Digestibility Examination” spell prior to loss of Equestrian magic.

Water: Main river is strangely brackish for a river of its size, but the tributary by my camp has plenty of clean water, although without magic to bolster my immune system I should begin boiling any water I drink to prevent infections.

Shelter: My tent is the best I could acquire in Canterlot with only a day to prepare, and I will be shepherding reserve magic to keep as many of its enchantments functional as possible. If it breaks, I have books on the construction of various shelters.

Observations

Directions: The sun does not move in this world, so I’m just going to say it’s to my west in an eternal sunset (could be sunrise, but I like my way better and nopony else is here to argue with me), meaning the river flows from south to north.

Civilization: As the Starswirl's notes indicated, this world appears untamed and wild. From my limited observations I have seen no sign of civilization, and given the size and slow current of the large river nearby I believe that if any civilization existed nearby there would be regular traffic along it. The lack of any ships or boats seemingly confirms my hypothesis, but further observation is needed.

Weight: Everything seems much lighter on this world, and while that’s making it easy for me to carry things around, it is taking a while to adjust, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever really get used to it.

Plan

I have food, water, and shelter. So long as I maintain my equipment properly, I will be able to last the next 20 moons in… well not in comfort, but it will be enough to live off of as I research this world and prepare to ascend.

As the book noted, Starswirl did not explore this world beyond verifying that it was different from the original destination of the spell, which means I, Sunset Shimmer, have the right to name everything I see.

Given the eternal sunset of this world, I will need to work out a way to keep time. My watch is decent so long as it works, but if it breaks I will find it difficult to keep track of time, and in the last three days I have not seen a moon that I can track, so without an alternative if my watch breaks I will lose track of time. Thankfully the portal lets out a burst of energy while it’s open, so even if my watch breaks I’ll be able to tell if it is open.

Expedition Log: Day 3

My watch runs on magic and ran out while I slept. I tried to recharge it and it was annoyingly difficult, I needed to dump all the energy stored overnight into the air so the enchantment would pull in some, and it’s nowhere near fully charged. Given that, I now have no economical way of charging this watch, and without it I have no way of checking time. Without the day-night cycle, I have to guess when to sleep and eat, and I can no longer date my entries accurately. To avoid confusion if anypony reads this in the future, I will from now on use “cycles” to refer to one period between waking up and going to sleep. Once back to Equestria, it will be interesting to see how far I strayed from a normal day length.

Additionally, I will not be writing an entry every day, I only have so much paper and ink, and I need to conserve both. I’ll only write when something important happens.

Expedition Log, Cycle 13

These last few cycles have been difficult, but I think I’m finally able to start exploring. I’ve started to preserve some of the plants I’ve harvested to carry with me on exploration trips. While I don’t think I’ll ever run out of food with the forest nearby, preserving food lets me only make a trip to gather more every few cycles instead of heading to the woods every time I’m hungry, and having stocks of preserved food means I can focus on covering ground when exploring instead of breaking to find food.

Additionally, I have used what magic I do have to make my camp more permanent, I used the instructions in one of my books to create a lean-to out of sticks to shelter my equipment and whatever samples I bring back from expeditions, and I used one of my tarps to cover my magic circle from the elements, although I’m going to need to find a large stone to carve it into if I want a more permanent solution. I’m also looking into making something more permanent than a tent, but everything I have requires magic, so it will take a long time before I’m sleeping in an actual building. Even worse, even basic transfiguration is to draining, so even after I have a permanent shelter I’ll need to hunt for some plants nearby to make blankets and a quilt!

In other news, I have decided on names for my immediate surroundings. While I could name everything after myself, my research before this trip told me that was considered poor form for geographic features.

The large brackish river that runs from horizon to horizon, I have named The Great River (note to self, I might not be the best at naming things)

The tributary that I have been drinking from I have named Starswirl’s River after the creator of the mirror that brought me here, since it was probably the only landmark he saw if he didn’t do any exploring.

There are mountains to the northwest, I can barely make them out with my eyes, and looking at them with my field telescope is dangerous now that the protective enchantments have run out of energy, but I can tell that they are at least a mile above The Great River, likely taller. I have named them the Rockhoof Range after one of Starswirl's companions in the Pillars of Equestria.

I will be making a journey south to explore the forest, if I am lucky I will find some plants that taste better than the grass and reeds of the riverbank.

Expedition Log: Day 17

My exploration of the forest, which I am naming Meadowbrook Forest to keep up the Pillars of Equestria theme for this region, went decently. I’ve had some experience with wild, untamed nature before, but this was something else. I didn’t recognize any of the animals or plants, and even with the battery crystals I brought I only tested out a couple dozen plants before I ran dangerously low. On the bright side, I found a few that were not only edible but actually tasted good. With how far my camp is from the forest it’ll be a hassle to bring it back to camp whenever I want food that tastes good, so I’ll have to either relocate away from the portal or set up a garden, or something like that. Maybe I can relocate the portal obelisk?

If I’m being honest with myself, I’m starting to regret this plan. It’s only been a couple of weeks since the portal closed, and the lack of company is starting to get to me. I think I spent so long shunning everypony else that I thought I would be able to take being the only pony on a planet for 20 moons easily, but that’s not true.

I’ll start looking into the portal obelisk, maybe there’s a way to get it to open more than once every 20 moons, so I can sneak in while Celestia isn’t expecting me and… I don’t know, find somepony who wants to come with me I guess? This planet is beautiful, so wild and untamed, and if it wasn’t for the low magic levels and the loneliness I’d be having the time of my life right now, so maybe if I re-open the portal for more magic and to bring other ponies in…

In any event, that’s more of a long-term goal. I don’t even know if the portal can be modified like that yet.

Expedition Log: Cycle 31

I need to get better at keeping this log updated. Since my last entry I began construction on a boat to cross the Great River, but it’s been slow going. I’m trying to hollow out a log like the book shows me, but between the magic I’m spending to try and set up a decent permanent shelter and my research into the portal obelisk I’m running low on energy constantly. The background magic levels have stabilized at approximately 2.3%±.2% of Equestrias background levels for the last week, and that’s better than nothing, but it’s just not enough for what I want to do. A lot of my equipment and most of the survival techniques in these books rely on a steady supply of magic, and without it I’m running into problems, which is alright for as long as I stay in the area near my camp, but it is ruining my plans for anything more than surviving.

In unrelated news, it turns out alien plants aren’t the best for my diet. I apparently was suffering vitamin deficiencies, something that I blew nearly my entire reserve of magic to determine, and then I spent the next week blowing through my reserves as fast as they refilled trying to find plants that will fill that part of my diet. The good news is I found a plant that does that. The bad news it tastes horrible. I’ve named it Dirt Flower because it’s a flower and it tastes like dirt. I had to eat nearly a pound of it before my symptoms finally went away, and I’m hoping that was just due to how long I went without those nutrients, because if I have to regularly eat that much I’ll go insane.

I’ll try cooking it with some other plants, maybe if it’s only part of a meal it’ll be less disgusting.

Expedition Log: Day 42:

My canoe worked… decently. I was able to make it over to the other side of the river, but I burned a lot of energy. On the other side I tested a few plants, made some notes, and got a better view of the area nearby.

Some observations:

The plants on the other side are similar but different than the ones I’ve grown used to, but I don’t know enough about botany to tell why. Something interesting to keep in mind for the future.

The Rockhoof Mountains are definitely huge, with some of the peaks about as tall as Mount Canterlot.

The wildlife is much more aggressive on this side. On my side near my camp, I was lucky to not see any large predators, while over here I had to burn precious magic reserves to keep some strange creatures that I can only describe as a giant lizard with a fin on its back.

The creature had crystals embedded in the base of its fin, as much as I dislike the idea of hunting a few more crystals could open up a lot of options magically, even if just as extra reserves for exploring.

While naming things like mountains after yourself is in bad taste for explorers, it’s normal to name things like forts and encampments after members of an expedition, and as the leader of the Sunset Expedition I have declared that my campsite will be named Camp Sunset after our expeditions chief biologist, and chief thaumatologist, and primary sponsor, and quartermaster, and secretary…

The more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe I should have brought more ponies with me...

I’m going to take a short nap to replenish my reserves (I set wards to warn me if that lizard comes back) and then I’ll cross back to my camp. With how much energy just getting here and spending a few hours took, I think I’m going to have to postpone any further trips across the river until I get a solution implemented.

Expedition Log: Cycle 43

The trip back was a nightmare. I was a little over halfway across when something came up from the deep and attacked my canoe. I didn’t get a good look at it, it kept ducking underwater and jutting out only for a few moments at a time, but whatever it was cracked my canoe open. I managed to save almost everything, but I lost a pair of thaumaturgical batteries and some food, and make it to shore by shoving everything in my saddlebags and activating their waterproof enchantments with one battery each before dumping every other scrap of power into a teleport to get myself as close to my camp as possible. I ended up a little over 100 yards from the shore, and I swear I will remember the sheer terror and fear I felt swimming to shore for the rest of my life. Every plant brushing my hoof was a monster out to eat me, every fish that swam up to me was about to chow down for a dinner of unicorn meat, and the current of the river itself meant that when I finally made it to shore I was actually north of the junction between the Great River and Starswirl’s river.

I was able to pull the batteries keeping my bags waterproof out and use them to teleport across the river to camp, and then I passed out in my tent as the adrenaline wore off. With the loss of two of my batteries, I think it’s safe to say that unless I can make more somehow any trip across the Great River is out of the question. Also, just in case there are predators like that on this side that I haven’t seen yet, I’m going to ring the camp in sharp sticks. It might not keep them out, but mixed with magic and it should slow even the big ones down long enough for me to wake up and start teleporting.

This trip was a wakeup call for me, there are things in these woods that would eat a pony like me alive without hesitation, and I need to be ready for them.

Author's Note

Alright, some hints from Sunsets journal as to how her expedition is going, I've got a bit of this written out to explain how her character changes from the Sunset who left Equestria to the Sunset that makes first contact with the humanity of this universe

Chapter 3

Expedition Log: Cycle 52

Figured I should write down something like this eventually. This world has a completely different set of plants and animals, and although I’m not an expert at cataloguing or anything like that I should at least write down my notes.

Plants:
● There are a great many mushrooms and berries in these forests, and although it’s annoying to keep checking to see if they’re safe to eat they are pretty tasty, especially compared to the bland or outright bad flavors of some of the food plants here
● Ferns are very common, and in such massively different sizes and shapes than back home
● Beyond that, even though they are different in size, color, and shape, most plants seem familiar enough to me.
Animals:
This is where it gets weird
● There aren’t any mammals. It took me weeks to confirm, but unless there’s something I’m missing this world is populated by reptiles and amphibians, and bugs, and it’s bizarre.
● One species I found is this weird salamander reptile thing, it walks on four legs like a pony, but it’s about as dumb as a regular animal, and it seems really lazy really. The only time I’ve felt threatened by one was when I got near its young, and they can be really threatening. They have these massive pinchers that sweep out in front of their mouth, and when they start waving them at you it’s clear that they mean business.
● Then there’s my “friend” the finned reptile from across the river, bigger than a pony, scaly, fin along its back that is taller than it is, ugly. Not much else to say.
● There’s some species of crab that lives in the grasslands near here, they just kind of live in the tall grass (which is weird, crabs back home live in water) and one of them gave me a nasty cut on my leg when I didn’t realize that the weird overgrown mound wasn’t a rock while walking by it. Thankfully, I’ve gotten used to checking ahead as I walk, because I once ran into one with pinchers large enough to take off my leg if I didn’t avoid it. Thankfully, they don’t seem to move that often, so I’ve cleared the tall grass from my camp, the area around the portal, and I’m starting to expand the cleared area down to Starswirl’s river so I don’t get paranoid walking for water anymore.
● There are also giant velvet worms here. I learned about them when a pack, yes a pack of worms I am not joking, tried to jump me and spray me with webbing. It was really annoying, and I do my best to avoid those things whenever I can, but the crafty little bugs are hard to spot in the dim light in the woods. On the bright side, I’ve gotten good at getting webbing out of my fur, mane, and tail.

Expedition Log: Cycle 60

This is it. Ten percent of the way there (I think). I’ve seen all sorts of amazing things, and learned so many things, but none of it will mean anything if I don’t get back to Equestria and tell somepony. When I left, I wanted more than anything to prove that I was worthy of being a princess, just like Celestia. It seemed so simple, tame an alien world, come back with a new understanding of magic and nature, show everypony how amazing I was and finally get the respect I deserve, but I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last two moons, and it’s made me realize that I was a self-centered idiot. I had a good life there, studying magic under the ruler of Equestria, classmates that were amazed at my skill, a warm bed, running water, and all the magic I could use… I threw it all away for this dream, and now I feel like I’m living a nightmare.

I want to write Princess Celestia, I want to apologize and beg for her to save me, but on the other hoof, I know that even if I could get a message to her, if I do that I will never have what I gave up. I betrayed her, disobeyed a direct order, and if I come crying back to her… my life will never be the same. I’ve probably already been expelled, my things shipped back to my family… I can’t do it. Staying here is hard, but I’ve gotten used to it. If I go back now, if I pry open the portal and crawl through begging for forgiveness, I won’t be going back as the hero who tamed an alien world, I’ll be the wayward student who ran away and can never be trusted. Like it or not, I have to stay here, I have to succeed, or I’ll have given up everything for nothing.

This planet hasn’t killed me, and it isn’t going to. Every cycle I stay here I get stronger, my body growing more used to acting without magic and my spells more efficient at using what power I do have. I also learn more about the world around me. The hardest part is over, from now on it’s a question of endurance, of if I have the strength of will to use what I know to survive, and I know that I do. When this mess is over, I’ll walk back into Equestria as a hero, and then maybe this whole mess will be worth it.

Expedition Log: Cycle 92

I’m surprised by how easy it was to get used to life without a clock. Even though there are no obvious days or the like, I have a schedule, and it’s almost relaxing to keep to it. First, I wake up and have a small breakfast of water and some root plants (there are a few different species, but the ones I like the most are a sort of miniature purple carrot, which I’ve called Purple Carrots because creativity is hard). Then I spend some time checking on my enchantments, cutting points onto sticks and adding them to my fence, and just doing general maintenance work around the camp. When I run out of chores, I have a couple of fruits and some water for lunch, and then it’s time for the real work. I’ve got a lean-to where I keep magical ingredients, reagents, and a few pots with some very basic potions, and I spend a few hours (I think) a cycle studying magic and experimenting with new techniques and ingredients.

Sometimes I only do potion work, sometimes I go through my spellbooks and look to see if I can reduce the power requirements of spells without making them useless, and sometimes I poke and prod at the portal. While I don’t want to go back as a failure, having it open even a little would flood the area near here with magic, and then I would be able to go from surviving to thriving. With more magic, I could teleport around, build wards strong enough to keep any predators out, and even start thinking about actual expeditions instead of just sliding into a routine until I go home. I’m not probing it hard enough to risk breaking the mirror, but I’m not just sitting around and waiting.

Expedition Log: Cycle 111

I’ve fallen into a pattern, hard. Cycle after cycle of the same routine is starting to take its toll on me. I had dreams when I came through, ambitions, and here I am stuck in a rut and just doing what I can to survive while a whole unexplored world is right there. I don’t want to just sit around and do experiments in my camp for the rest of my time here, I want to explore!

So, I made a decision. I’m packing up the tent, securing what I can, and heading east, up Starswirl’s River. I don’t know what I’ll find out there, and that’s half the reason I’m going. I’ll leave this journal behind if I never come back so the next pony to go through the portal will know what happened to me, but hopefully I’ll be back soon to right again

Expedition Log: Cycle 131

I learned more about this world in that one trip than I have since my first days in this world. I began my hike easily enough, just following the river to the east, away from the setting sun, but after a couple cycles of walking, it started to get very cold. After the eighth cycle of walking the sun was so far down I could barely see, and the air was barely above freezing, and just as I was getting ready to turn around and head back, I saw something amazing: Starswirl’s River starts at a massive ice wall stretching as far as I could see, a massive barrier blocking anypony who wants to go further to the east.

I think I finally understand this world now. Half the world is in permanent daylight, and half is in permanent night, and the area I’m in, the area the portal is in, is in the small gap between them. The farther from the sun, the colder it gets, which is why there are massive glaciers everywhere, and I’d bet anything that if I walked towards the sun it would just keep getting hotter, a massive desert across half the planet.

Anyways, runoff from the glaciers feeds the river, which feeds the big river which… I guess goes to a big ocean or something? It’s a lot saltier than most rivers, I think that’s my next expedition once I get stuck in a rut again.

All-in-all, this was a pretty productive excursion. I might not have found any ancient ruins or magical vortexes or anything like that, but I learned more about this world and got out of my camp for a while, and when I made it back the wards and fence had kept any animals that might have messed with my stuff out of the camp, so all-in-all I’ll say that was a good trip.

Expedition Log: Cycle 150

A quarter of the way there. Maybe. Honestly with how often I stayed up for 20 hours straight, slept for 8, and then did it again back in Canterlot I might be at least 50 days closer than I think at this point, all that time has caused me to feel a bit… introspective. The more I think about why I’m here, the more of my own mistakes I’m forced to acknowledge. I came here looking to get out from Celestia’s shadow, to carve my own path in life and maybe even ascend like Cadance did, but lately, I think I’ve figured something out. Cadence didn’t want to ascend when she did, and I’ll bet anything that when Celestia ascended, she didn’t either. Cadence ascended by using her love to defeat an evil, and she became Princess of love, which means that if I ever want to ascend, I need to perform a great feat of magic while embodying a concept the way she did. I don’t know why I thought I would ascend just by exploring an alien world. However, even if I don’t ascend after this, my time here has changed my life, and when I get back I will put everything I have into making a more stable portal to link this place to Equestria. I might not get to ascend from it, but hey, going down in history for opening up a whole new world is a nice consolation prize.

Author's Note

And here we have a bit more of Sunsets logs of her experiences.

There will be action in the next chapter, but I felt that writing this was a good way to give everyone a view of what sort of world this is, to make it feel more alive.

If you see anything you like, tell me about it so I can do more like it in the future, and if I did something that needs fixing let me know!

Chapter 4

Sunset shifted her near-empty saddlebags onto her back and began to walk towards the forest. By now, walking to the woods to scavenge for food had become normal for her, and she tuned out as she tracked down various flowers, fruits, nuts, and roots to supplement the plentiful but nutritionally deficient reeds and tall grasses that grew by the rivers near her camp. I knew from the portals spell matrix is mostly in Equestria and what I can see is just the bare minimum to keep the connection stable, but I think I can work around that. The connection is there even when the portal is off, so if I can just find a way to reach in and expand that constant connection, then thaumaturgical energy will flow from Equestria through the portal, like water from a full container through a hose, pushed by the different background energy levels! It won’t be as…

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sound that set every nerve in her body on edge, brought up every bad instinct her herbivore hindbrain had: the sound of a predator calling to its pack. Whipping around, she scanned the forest, her heart pounding as she tried to focus for even the hint of movement.

The sound of twigs breaking to her right was the only warning she got as some reptilian… thing jumped out of the brush and attacked her. It struck before she could get a good view, and she only barely dodged the first strike. Taking a moment, her eyes locked on a sturdy branch, and with a flash of light she was there, clutching the trunk and watching the land below. Oh dear Celestia what was that? I’ve never seen anything like that before, it was like a demented horror show version of a lizard mixed with a timberwolf! She watched as it pawed at the tree, shaking her perch with every strike. After a few minutes, it looked up at her, and even though it was an alien reptile wolf thing, Sunset could feel the sheer hatred radiating off the creature before it turned away and left.

… Alright then, I’m just… I’m just going to stay here for a bit, give it time to go somewhere else and find some other prey. Sunset thought as she felt her heart finally start to calm down. I can… I can go look for food somewhere else, north of Starswirl’s river maybe? Yeah, that sounds good.

After a few more minutes, she gingerly slid down, constantly on edge for the creature to return. Double-timing it, she rushed through the woods back to her campsite. Where did that thing come from? It looks too large for me to have missed it before now, is it migrating? Did it eat all the food in its last territory and relocate? Is it part of a pack? Why show up now? Not that I’m complaining, if it had shown up before I figured out low-energy teleportation I would be… She shoved the thought aside as she cleared the trees and walked the well-worn trail back to her campground. As she climbed the small hill, her blood ran cold as she heard the sound of snapping wood from her campground. Rushing forward, her worst fears were realized: the creature had followed her scent to her camp, her home!

The monster had walked through her wards and fence like they were nothing, smashed her tent open, and scattered the gems from her magic circle across the dirt. Her books, the same books that had taught her how to survive after her poorly-thought through plan dumped her on an alien world, were scattered, and she saw a couple that looked like they had been ripped up. She took this all in in one moment of sheer terror, and then the monster turned towards her, hate and hunger in its eyes.

With a yelp, she dodged its first strike with a quick teleport, and then another, but it wasn’t enough. She could feel her reserves dropping fast, and the creature just wouldn’t let up! Every time she teleported, it would turn around, find her, and charge again after only a few seconds, she just didn’t have the power for a longer-range teleport, and there were no trees nearby for her to climb up.

With one last *pop!* of teleporting, she sheltered behind an intact portion of “fence”, hoping the sharpened sticks might at least scare the creature off from making a direct charge. No such luck though, and as it began to close the distance again she realized something: It’s not going to stop! It’s too hungry to stop, or I pissed it off, or something, so the only way to stop it is… to kill it.

Like most ponies, Sunset wasn’t that big on the whole “killing” thing, but as the revelation sank in and the predator closed the remaining distance, time seemed to slow as her body shifted to fight. With a flash, she arrived just beside the creature, smacking it with a buck from both her rear legs as it charged, sending it stumbling to the ground.

Yes! Yes I did it! I… oh come on! She watched the creature stand up and glare at her, hunger filling its expression. Again it charged, and again she teleported to the side and bucked it to the ground, but this time it recovered before collapsing, and when she tried that tick a third time a clawed paw shot out and raked across her side, sending her sprawling.

Oh Tartarus, oh this is bad, oh dear Celestia I can’t stand up, I can’t stand! I can’t stand! She panicked as the creature rounded on her, marching forward with the air of a creature that knew it had won. No, I’m not dying here! I didn’t survive this long just to die to some overgrown lizard! I’ve got to… got to… She looked around in a panic, searching for anything that could save her, and as the monster got closer, her eyes fell on one of the sharpened sticks, laying on the ground where it had been knocked aside, and an idea sprang into her head.

Her horn began to glow, and her opponent paused for a moment in confusion, giving her the opening she needed. That stick was enveloped in a cone of light, its structure strengthened magically as it was lifted into the air, pointed at the temporarily frozen monster, and flung with laser precision right into its open mouth.

The beast fell over with a pitiful whimper. With her heart pounding and adrenaline running through her system, Sunset stared at the massive reptilian corpse for a long moment before slumping over on the ground as the pain of her injuries caught up to her.

The cut on her flank was bleeding badly, and she poured every last bit of magic she had into every healing spell she knew, desperately trying to stem the bleeding for just a little longer, when her reserves ran dry. Normally, a unicorn running out of energy is only mildly annoying, but in a low-magic environment the absence of magic in a body can be physically painful, and when combined with the post-adrenaline rush crash and the trauma from the cut the shock was bad enough to knock Sunset out cold, laying on the edge of her ruined camp with an open wound.

When Sunset finally woke up, she wished she hadn’t. Her body felt drained in a way it hadn’t since those first cycles where she had still been learning how to manage her powers, and her flank hurt in a way she had never truly experienced before. Looking over the wound, she saw that while her last bit of magic had kept her from bleeding out, it hadn’t done much more than that. To make things worse, she had plenty of other, less life-threatening cuts all over that side of the body from the same hit, and her rough landing had left her right side a mess of bruises and cuts.

Alright Sunset, you got this, just… just got to get one of the crystals I left charging, and use it for a healing spell. You can do it, just stand up. She forced herself to her hooves, and despite the sharp pain that seemed worse with every step, she walked into her camp. However, the magic circle had been disrupted, and the gems scattered, forcing her to dig around in the dirt for a gem with some charge in it.

Alright, I got you. Oh yeah, come to momma. She thought as she grabbed the gem telekinetically, pulling energy from it into herself. With that, the passive magic all Equestrians had returned with a vengeance, soothing her aches and cleaning infections from her open wounds, as she burned a good chunk of power to clean and begin to seal the cut on her flank.

With three more gems worth of power, she finished sealing the wound and flopped down on a small rock she used as a chair to observe her camp, munching on some food to fill the aches of hunger in her stomach. Let’s see, the tent is in pieces, my food storage lean-to is wrecked, my books are… damaged, and just about everything else has been trampled or smashed a bit. On the bright side, my cooking utensils look intact, a little banged up but nothing major, and as long as I don’t have to eat raw food for the rest of my time here I can figure out the rest. She looked down at her body and sighed. Even magic won’t heal that wound quickly, I’m not a doctor and I don’t have the power for constant healing spells, but I can’t afford to sit around, I need to save what I can… she winced in pain as she tried to stand, pain shooting up her flank. Alright, I’m just… just going to wait a bit, see if I can get enough energy for a bit more healing before I stand up again. Her journal caught her eye, and to her surprise on further investigation her ink was still there, even if several of her quills had been snapped. Need to replace those soon she thought as she reached out and grabbed her journal. Flipping through its pages, going through reams of notes and observations, she pulled up a blank page and began to write.

Expedition Log: Cycle 227

If anypony finds this, you should know that this world is not the paradise my earlier notes might have implied. Earlier today, while I was searching for food in Meadowdale Forest I encountered a strange new creature…

…

… And so, I don’t know what will happen to me. I think I’ll be able to avoid infection with magic and rinsing the wounds, but I’m not certain, and if another of those things shows up… if another shows up I’ll try the same trick and pray to whoever is listening, if anypony is, that it works again.

I’m writing this next part in the event that I die because of my wounds or an infection or some other monster, so unless you’re part of my family, stop reading. Celestia counts as family.

I’m sorry. I would say I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I did, and I just didn’t care. You all have been nothing but supportive, gave me such a wonderful life back in Equestria that I completely abandoned in a tantrum, and I can never make up for that. If you’re reading this, that tantrum killed me, and I don’t know any words to describe how sorry I am for that.

Sunset paused, looking at how much space was left on the page as she contemplated how to phrase the next part.

Please don’t abandon this world because it took me. Despite the predators, the crabs trying to take off my legs, the weird pony-salamander-lizards, and all the other weird creatures here, I’ve fallen in love with this world, and I don’t want to let it be abandoned. There are so many amazing things here, and if the portal can be held open all the time then there’s no reason to not let everypony see them.

Sunset closed the journal, leaning back and looking over her ruined camp. With a glow, she cast another healing spell on her wound, and after a few moments forced herself to her hooves. The pain was still there, but it was manageable now, and with grim determination she got back to work.

Author's Note

And in this chapter, Sunset learns that the wilderness is not to be taken lightly.

Coming up in the next chapter: Sunset studies the portal some more and makes First Contact with humanity.

Chapter 5

Expedition Log: Cycle 235

The cycles since the attack have been… difficult, to say the least. I got my magic circle back up and running, but some of my gems were cracked by the monster. I brought 17 gems with me, and as of right now I have only eleven functional, and eight are needed to keep the magic circle charging the other three. I’ll try experimenting with alternative designs, but as it is my magical situation is reaching critically low levels. On the bright side, I managed to get rid of the body, I dumped it on a couple of rotting logs from my failed attempts to build a canoe and shoved the mess into the great river. However, a lot of it was dangling in the water, and I guess that attracted river predators, because it only made it about a minute or so before somethingpulled it into the water.

Unfortunately, even though my wound healed without killing me from an infection (let’s just say thank Celestia that I got my magic circle running again, because it got bad there for a while) I now have a large scar on my side, which has changed the color of my fur in the area. The bad part isn’t the effect on my looks however, I can tell that it just… it didn’t heal correctly, that’s the only way I can put it. I still feel plenty strong, it’s just constantly using it, such as by walking to get food, or hauling logs to camp for firewood and building materials, makes it hurt. It hasn’t given out on me so far, so I guess I just have to live with the pain for a while longer and pray that when I get back to Equestria somepony can heal me properly.

Anyways, I’ve been finishing up my repairs, and I have a diagnosis: The tent is ruined, and although rain isn’t common, it happens enough that I need a replacement soon. Meanwhile, three out of my eight books, specifically Surviving in the wild by Bear Grills, Producing Potions: An Introduction by Smelly Brew, and Explorers of Equestria by Dusty Quill, have been damaged, their spines broken and pages torn out as that creature bit into them, I guess they smelled like me because I read them the most? I don’t know, but the fact is they’re damaged, and a lot of the information in them is just… gone.

That brings me to the big question: Why did that thing attack me? After thinking about it for a long time, I think I figured it out. While I was moving it down to the river, I noticed that I could see its bones on its stomach, even through the scales, and while it might be an alien, back on Equestria that is a sign of starvation. That made me feel better and worse: better because it really was it or me, there wasn’t anything else I could do once it attacked me because it was so desperate for food that nothing else I would have done would stop it, and worse because… well because this didn’t need to happen. If it had found something like those weird bug-lizards that hang out in the river shore, or the giant crabs in the grasslands, then it could have eaten well and never bothered me, but because I ran into it first it focused on me, and I had to kill it.

Moving on, I’m changing the layout of my camp as I rebuild. This time, I’m going to dig out a trench and use that dirt to build a barrier, and then I’ll put the spikes in that barrier. It’ll take longer, a lot longer, but I have time, and maybe with some passive wards that strengthen the spikes when something hit them I’ll actually be able to sleep at night without worrying that every sound is a new monster out to kill me. Anyways, I have a lot of work to do, and I still get a headache when using magic to write, so this is it for now.

As time passed, Camp Sunset was slowly rebuilt, bigger and better than before. Sunset used what power she had efficiently, and with no other predators arriving to ruin her work she made slow but steady progress. The ditch circling the camp not only provided material for a small barrier, but also drained away water during the rainstorms that struck seemingly without warning, and although the loss of her tent was a major blow, Sunset was able to build a semi-waterproof structure out of tarp and sticks, although a more permanent solution was needed.

With the perimeter rebuilt stronger than before, she made improvements within the camp, reducing the charging rate of the magic circle by reducing it to six crystals, which gave her five crystals loaded with energy for any expedition or emergency. Meanwhile, using half-remembered history lessons and vague guides in her books, she figured out how to identify and cut down trees from the edge of the forest, using an improvised sled made from the remnants of her rope to lug logs back to camp for the construction of a small cabin.

At first, she’d had a big dream of a building that included storage for food and neat samples, a laboratory, a bedroom, and a primitive bathroom using water from the drainage ditch to wash away “waste”, but after the first few cycles, and several breakdowns in the middle of the field as her scar flared up in pain at the exertion, she downgraded her ideas. Now the plan was for a one-room cabin to hold everything, with lean-to’s around the outside to keep whatever couldn’t fit inside somewhat sheltered. However, while the cabin itself was the easy part, between magic and trial-and-error it was relatively easy to get the logs stacked correctly, figuring out how to build a chimney from scratch was… well a bit difficult.

Her initial plan, to use stone, failed when she tried to pull up stones and realized how much magic it would take. Then her second plan, build it out of magically treated wood, failed when she tested the enchantment and it could not draw magic from the background at the current levels, which would mandate that she slot in a crystal or something to draw in power for it, cutting into her already critically low supply. Finally, she stumbled on some clay down by the river and decided why not just use bricks? Give it a nice homely feeling.

[Five cycles later]

“Alright you stupid lump of clay, I am your master! I command you to hold your shape and STOP STICKING TO THE FLOOR OF THE KILN!” Sunset screamed as she prepared to pull another test batch of bricks out of the kiln. “I am sick and tired of cooking outside! I will have a fireplace if it takes the entire rest of the time I have on this world, do you hear me!?!? I will not be denied!”

Grabbing one brick with telekinesis, it slid out of the kiln perfectly, no material lost to the floor or walls… but it also had another brick baked onto it. Sunsets eyes twitched as she looked over the entire batch, and something snapped in her mind. “YOU PATHETIC LUMP OF CLAY! I AM SUNSET SHIMMER, I SURVIVED MONSTERS AND HUNDREDS OF DAYS ALONE ON AN ALIEN WORLD, AND I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED BY A MOUND OF DIRT!”

The failed bricks said nothing, because they were bricks. Sunset threw them over the wall and they crashed down in a field as she fell to the ground and began to sob. “I just… was it really too much to ask for a fireplace in my dinky little one-room cabin, that I don’t even have a bucking door for because I can’t figure out how to make a hinge?” She asked the sky, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Celestia, oh I’m so sorry, if I’d just… if I hadn’t been such a greedy, self-centered brat I would be safe and sound in Canterlot, preparing for an actual expedition through the mirror, with plenty of help from ponies who know what they’re doing, and could talk to me, and could keep me from feeling like it’s all a giant waste of time!”

She laid there in the dirt for hours, gently sobbing, before her hunger forced her to get up and eat something.

Expedition Log: Cycle 288

It’s been a while since my last update, and honestly I’m not sure how accurate my cycle count is anymore, but I felt like this should be recorded. I finally had a full-on breakdown yesterday, screaming at objects, crying in the dirt, all that wonderful stuff. To be honest, I’ve seen this coming for a while, but I’ve been having a hard time recently with the rebuilding and mental health hasn’t been my primary focus for a while.

Well, that’s changing today. I’m going to start taking two cycles out of every ten “off”. Sure, I’ll still have chores and the like, but I won’t do any major construction work or studying. Honestly, I probably should have done this a long time ago, back in Canterlot I could get away with working all the time because somepony cooked for me, and kept the sewers working, and the guards kept any monsters far away from the castle, and if I ever needed time off I could just… stop, go on a trip, do something fun for a couple days. I can’t do that here, and that means I need to keep myself from burning out, because if I go past my limits, one mistake could snowball into a disaster.

Update on the portal: I’m pretty sure that I could force it open… for a few moments before whatever safeguards Starswirl set on the other side to prevent the creatures he sealed on the other side from doing literally that kick in and it all goes to hell. The crafty stallion built the portal in such a way that the vast majority of the spell matrices are in Equestria, and the only time somepony with access to one side can reach through and edit the other is when the portal is open, and if it was open I wouldn’t need to force it open. So in the end, the best case scenario is that I can access the spell matrices on the Equestrian side long enough to shut down the safeguards without closing the portal permanently, while the worst case scenario is I get rushed by the countermeasures and mess up, trapping myself here forever.

With that in mind, forcing the portal is officially something I will only do if the alternative is worse. I don’t know how that could happen, but having options never hurts.

There are aspects of the universe that Sunset Shimmer had arrived on that, as a lone unicorn stranded on the surface of a wild planet by herself, she was unaware of. She knew nothing of the human race in this universe, a human race that diverged from what we call “history” in 1870, even though the true differences are far older than that. This humanity had, over the last 20 years, slipped the surly bonds of Earth and laid claim to vast territories on Mars and Venus, which was only possible because in this universe all the planets of the inner solar system, Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, hold atmospheres that humans can breathe, are loaded with life and civilizations for human empires and merchants to profit off of, and sit in an invisible sea called the Ether, through which ships can travel. This was discovered when Thomas Edison crossed the gulf between worlds in a prototype “ether flyer” in 1870, discovering that not only was Mars inhabited, but it was full of a vast multitude of riches that eager human empires, from the powerful British to the up-and-coming Germans to the rapidly modernizing Japanese, were eager to take a bite out of.

However, Sunset was not on Mars, she was on Mercury, a planet that few humans cared about. The perpetual rain of Venus hosted vast arrays of plants for eager chemical companies, Mars had its Liftwood, which allowed the construction of airborne vessels of a vast size, and Mercury had… a small, 300 mile wide temperate zone of eternal twilight, surrounded by lands of eternal day that at some points got hot enough that vast lakes of liquid metal formed on the surface, and a land of eternal night, so cold that in some places oxygen cannot exist in a gaseous form. For most of humanity, Mercury was a distraction, a minor piece that could, theoretically, be valuable sometime in the future once technology had advanced enough to take advantage of its lakes of liquid metal or explore the mysterious structures in the eternal night, but for now it was the home of a few dozen prospectors, a British outpost, and one Unicorn, scattered across the temperate zone with hundreds or thousands of miles between each other

However, after all of that time alone, Sunset Shimmer was finally going to meet one of the inhabitants of this universe, another soul who had run away to Mercury in the hopes of finding fame and glory, and the meeting of these two souls on this wild world would shake both civilizations for decades to come…

Fascinating, despite being linked by the closed portal at all times, the spell matrices on each end barely interact at all! It’s as if the entire spell is three spells, the Equestrian end, this end, and the portal itself, and they simply appear to act as one because of these complex mini-matrices that connect them… What the tartarus was that!?!? Sunset whipped her head up as she heard a sound that was almost like a falling sky-chariot. In the sky above her camp something was falling through the sky. As it slid through the sky she watched it grow larger and larger, resolving from an indistinct blob into the shape of… a ship!?!? Not even an airship, just a regular ship?! Falling from the sky? What the hay is going on here?

The strange impossible ship flew through the sky, passing only a few hundred yards over her head before crashing and skidding across the ground north of Starswirl’s River, coming to a rest about two or three miles to the north of Camp Sunset. Sunset took only a moment to stare at the impossible ship, her mind wondering what possessed somepony to build a metal boat that flies even as she stuffed her journal and every charged battery crystal she had and rushed out towards the crash sight.

Teleporting over the relatively small tributary Sunset ran across the grassland, burning magic to avoid the native life that might attack her as she rushed to her goal. Somepony might be still alive in that wreck! Finally, after all this time I finally won’t be alone! Joy filled her from hoof to head as she ran forward, and by the time she reached the crash site she was near delirious with joy, and the shape of the ship filled her with even more happiness.

It’s still in one piece! It doesn’t even have holes in the hull! Oh Celestia the ponies on board probably survived!

“Hello! Anypony here!” She called out towards the ship.

For a few moments nothing happened, but then she heard something. A series of thumps and the sound of machinery from within the ship! Circling the craft, she found the noises were coming from a section of hull that, as she was watching, was pulled open by whoever was on the inside. Nearly jumping for joy, Sunset watched as a strange creature stepped out of the hatch.

The creature was bipedal, sort of like a minotaur but without the size difference between its upper and lower bodies, and it was absolutely covered in clothes except for a few spots where its skin was revealed. Huh, no fur. Does have a mane though, so that’s weird. I thought manes went with fur… it’s staring at me.

The creature’s eyes were wide and its mouth wide open as it stood in silence in front of her, and Sunset felt mildly annoyed. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you it’s rude to swear?” she snapped. “Seriously, you’re some naked monkey thing and I’m not staring at you.”

The creature shook its head and blinked rapidly at her words before responding… with a string of gibberish. Sunset felt like facehoofing as realization hit her. Because of course it couldn’t speak the same language as me, that would be to easy! And I don’t know any translation spells because everypony speaks the same language in Equestria! Even Griffons and Yaks and Dragons! My spellbook better have something for this, or everything here is going to be very hard to explain.

Putting a smile on her face she waved a hoof. “Hello. My name is Sunset Shimmer.” She gestured to herself as she spoke slowly and clearly, trying to project a trustworthy image through her body language.

It seemed to work, the strange creature said something else in its language, and then after a few moments where the two just stood staring at each other looked back into its ship and gestured inside. Sunset weighed her options. On one hoof, it would be rude to refuse an invitation, on the other it could be a trap… I have enough energy to teleport out.

That decided she walked forward, and her new host lead her into the metal vessel. It wasn’t that long of a walk, the craft was more like a boat than a ship, and soon her host was holding up… Wait, is that a camera? They have cameras! Well I mean I guess it’s not that surprising if they can make metal sky-ships but…

Sunsets musings were cut off by the cameras flash as the creature took several pictures of her. After a few photos the stranger started babbling on in its strange language, its excitability reminding Sunset of some of the more excitable students at Celestia's school, like little Twilight, always jumping around when she got a new book or manuscript to read…

Huh, I spent all that time resentful of her for cutting into my time with Celestia, and now that I’m away from her I miss her. Sunset chuckled to herself. “I know you can’t understand me, but I haven’t had anypony… errr, anyone to talk to in a while so I’m going to keep talking.” she told the creature before heading towards the door. “Anyways, do you want to see my camp?”

Her host just stared at her blankly, and Sunset decided to just lead it to her camp. Actions speak louder than words, and in this case it doesn’t matter how loud the words are because neither of us understand the others words.

As she walked out the door, her strange visitor from the sky rushed to pack its camera and several other items that Sunset was surprised to recognize. I guess that I shouldn’t be that surprised, there’s only so many ways to make a journal. At least it… she? It seems female, so I’m going to assume it’s a she. Sunset pondered the gender of her new companion as they walked through the fields, following the path she had trampled down on the way in, and during the trip Sunset watched as the strange alien mare looked around, her eyes wandering across the landscape as she tripped over herself in the low gravity.

Huh, I guess she’s not from here, otherwise she’d be used to how light everything is. Does that mean her ship can travel between worlds? Maybe that’s why it fell, it must be some sort of magic, and it ran out of energy! Could I use it to get back to Equestria early? Oh imagine Celestia’s face when I fly in on a metal ship with an alien!

As the pair approached Starswirl’s River, Sunset’s new companion looked over the river and pointing at Camp Sunset, saying something in her strange language before looking at the river itself and frowning.

Oh, she’s worried about crossing the river. That makes sense, not even every Unicorn can teleport, especially in a low-magic environment like this! Luckily for her I already figured it out.

“Hey” She said, mainly to get the mare’s attention. When she turned to face Sunset, Sunset walked up to her, wrapped a leg around her, and tapped deep into one of her batteries. Her guest squirmed and tried to kick away, but sunset just held on as she focused on the spell. Her horn began to glow, and in an instant the pair were across the river, just outside Camp Sunset’s entrance.

At that point Sunset let go of her guest and walked into the camp. “Well, come on in!” She said, waving her hoof for good measure. Once inside, Sunset felt embarrassed as her guest excitedly looked around at her camp. “It’s really nothing special, I would have been able to build something better in a week if I had all my magic.” She said, her words falling on uncomprehending ears. I really need to find a translation spell.

Gertrude Bell was ecstatic. Right in front of her, it’s nose stuck in an ornate book that would not have been out of place in her fathers library, was a unicorn! Not merely a horned horse, but an actual fae creature capable of magic, like transporting the pair of them across the river in an instant! She obviously had other magics as well, that book was far to well-preserved for this environment, and the way she had retrieved it, by enveloping it in a cloud of magic as her horn lit up with the same and pulling it towards her, only proved the point.

She is truly a marvelous creature, and intelligent as well! This is the discovery of a lifetime, proof that father was wrong about me, that I do have what it takes to be an explorer! I must see if I can induce her to board my ship, if I can get it airborne and return with her to Earth… Her musings were cut short as the strange orange unicorn’s eyes widened in excitement and it began to murmur to itself. A few moments later, she jumped to her feet, rushing up to Gertrude and babbling something in its strange, melodic tongue.

At Gertrude's incomprehension, the unicorn huffed in frustration before beginning to pace. Once again, after a few moments Gertrude could see an idea strike the creature, and it turned to her and… stood up on it’s back legs, with one of its front ones braced against the wall of its abode. As Gertrude watched the sight of an orange unicorn standing on two hooves, the unicorn pointed a front hoof at her, and then slowly lowered herself to the ground. She repeated this action a couple more times before Gertrude understood and sat on a smooth rock nearby. Taking only a moment to grab a pair of large crystals from a bag, the unicorn was soon upon her, horn pressed against head as it began to mutter.

Gertrude nearly panicked, it felt like something was prying at her mind, but the unicorns weight kept her seated and the sensation passed in a moment. As her host stepped back and opened her mouth, she was not expecting to understand the next words out of its mouth.

“Sorry about that, I’ve never cast that spell before, and the book said direct contact was the best way to guarantee that it worked. It did work, right? Can you understand me?” A feminine voice came from the unicorn, stunning Gertrude.

However, she was a proper English woman, and she did not allow her hosts question go unanswered for long. “I can understand you fair lady.” She said, her mind reeling as she tried to process the fact that not only could this unicorn speak English, it spoke it with an American accent. In her shock, Gertrude’s brain noticed the two crystals the unicorn had picked up were now glowing brightly as she held them in her magic.

“Oh, don’t be so formal! I haven’t had anypony to talk to in over a year, although you aren’t a pony… you look sort of like a minotaur, but you don’t have the fur or horns of one… Anyways, my name is Sunset Shimmer, and you have no idea how glad I am to meet you! Like I said, I’ve been alone for more than a year, and I was starting to go crazy!”

Minotaurs? She knows what a minotaur is but not a human? “My name is Gertrude Bell ma’am, and I am a human. Specifically, I am an Englishwoman.”

Sunset cocked her head at that last remark before realization dawned. “Ohhhhh, so that’s like what type of human you are. We have something like that to! I’m a pony, but I’m specifically a Unicorn. Anyways, it’s a pleasure to meet you, and I’m sorry if I was a bit rude getting the translation spell setup, but I was just so excited to finally have someone to talk to that I couldn’t help it!”

“That… that is understandable Lady Sunset.” Gertrude replied. Over a year with no one to talk to? I barely made it through the month and a half on the flight from Earth, I cannot imagine an entire year.

Sunset got a confused look at her words. “Lady Sunset…? I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disappoint you, I’m not a lady, just a spoiled brat who decided that going to an untouched, alien world was a good idea.” She said flippantly as Gertrude felt a wave of unease settle in her stomach.

Her father glared at her, his expression furious. “Gertrude, this marriage will secure our families place in society, and I will not let you ruin that because of some ridiculous scheme to become an explorer.”

“But Father…”

“That is enough, Gertrude. You are acting like a spoilt child! Return to your room, I will have the servants bring you dinner later.” He dismissed her with a wave, crushing her hopes and dreams…

“Hey, Gertrude, you doing alright?” Sunset called, looking at her with some concern.

“I… Yes, my apologies. I was… caught up in a bad memory.” She responded. “Forgive my rudeness, but you called this an alien world… are you from a different planet? We have legends of creatures like you at home, but they widely regarded as fables and myths, no one has ever seen a unicorn on Earth.”

Sunset perked up. “Oh? that’s interesting.” She said as she walked over to the stone obelisk in the center of the camp. “This is actually a portal, for three days every twenty moons it opens, linking this world with my home. If you stick around long enough, I could even take you through next time it opens!”

A portal to another world? Truly she is a creature of great magic, but she seems nothing like the unicorns of legend, although…

“Pardon me for asking, but am I the first human you have seen on this world?”

Sunset nodded. “Yeah, otherwise I would have tracked them down and talked to them.”

“Even if they were male?”

Sunset looked at her like she’d just grown a second head. “Of course, why would that matter?”

“Well, there are legends that unicorns are only accepting of young maidens.”

“... What is a maiden? Is that another type of human?”

Gertrude’s face heated as she explained exactly what a maiden was, and when she did Sunset gave her a look of sheer bewilderment. Of course, Gertrude had no way of knowing what Sunset said, because at that moment the glowing crystals went out, and the next few words out of Sunsets mouth were a string of melodious, and completely incomprehensible, neighs, although from the body language she could tell that Sunset was not happy with the revelation.

[En Route to Mercury, Ether Ship Good Fortune]

David Williamson was on track for the payday of a lifetime. Thomas Bell, owner of a massive network of ether flyer shipyards, producing the vast fleets needed to sustain the British Empire across the four worlds it held territory on, was paying him and his men a fortune for this job. Mr. Bell’s daughter Gertrude had apparently run off with one of her fathers new ether fliers to escape an arranged marriage, and Mr. Bell was paying an incredible sum for the safe return of both his daughter and the ship, a top-of-the-line prototype that hadn’t even been christened when young Gertrude left for Mercury.

Williamson, being the only man nearby with both a ship that could reach Mercury and the skills to track her down once there, had been able to negotiate a kings ransom for this job, and when his four man crew had heard how much their shares would be they had moved heaven and Earth to prepare to depart the next day. Onboard the Good Fortune, spirits were high. After all, how hard could tracking down one spoiled heiress be? She probably would lose her nerve and be waiting for them at Princess Christiana Station, the only settlement on the empty world. If she wasn’t there, then they would have a problem, but him and his men were professionals, if Gertrude was swill alive when they found her, they’d take her home to her father, no trouble at all.

Author's Note

So, a bit longer chapter than the last couple, but once I started writing I didn't want to stop!

Anyways, Gertrude is actually a canon character in Space 1889. Well, sort of. She's mentioned as a potential encounter for a party exploring Mercury on page 119 of the Mercury Sourcebook, and I took the basics of her characterization (daughter of a wealthy industrialist, stole a prototype ether-flyer from her fathers shipyard, crashed on Mercury and is persued by a band of professional mercenaries to bring her and the ship back) from that section. Everything else about her, as well as the entire characterization of the Mercenaries, is built on that foundation.

With that in mind, I have a question for more experienced writers, if any are reading this: should I tag this story OC?

Regardless, let me know what you think of this chapter, and if you have any questions ask away!

Chapter 6

Sunset Shimmer was speechless. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, it would be more accurate to say that Sunset had run out of ways to express how she felt about her guests' explanation.

What sort of perverted Unicorn goes to another world and tells them they can only be approached by female virgins!? Was it Starswirl? If it was then I am renaming that river, he does not get a river named after him if he spread that sort of myth about us! She berated the nameless idiot in her mind as she paced silently through her camp and Gertrude sat off to the side, nervously watching her. Alright, calm down Sunset, she just told you a myth, and she just survived her flying ship crashing down in the middle of a field, freaking out like this won’t help. Just… just calm down, get the spell going again, and talk it out.

With a glow, the translation spell reactivated and Sunset turned to face her guest.

“So, that rumor is not true, in any way. I have no way of telling if you are a ‘maiden’, and honestly I don’t know why I would care if I could.”

“I understand, and I apologize for repeating such a slanderous claim about your race.”

Sunset shrugged and sat down across the fire pit from her guest. “It’s alright, it’s not like you’re the one who came up with it.” and when I find out who did I’ll make sure every history textbook in Equestria talks about what a pervert they were! “Anyways, tell me about yourself! Or I can tell you about myself, either works fine, It’s been so long since I’ve been able to talk to someone that I really don’t care what we talk about as long as we talk. What do you want to talk about?”

Gertrude was not prepared for a unicorn, a magical creature of myth and legend, to babble at her like an eager child, but after the initial shock died down she found herself swept along with Sunset’s enthusiasm. “Well, perhaps we could trade stories about our homes?” She pulled out a notebook and prepared to write. This is it, a chance to be the first human to discover an entirely new civilization!

“Well, like I already mentioned, I wasn’t thinking right when I came through the portal. You see, I’d just gotten in a big argument with Princess Celestia about my magic studies and how much respect I deserved, and I was convinced that if I just went and tamed a new world I’d get the respect to convince her to make me a princess. Of course, at the time I was just angry that Cadence got to become a Princess and I didn’t, but after I took a few moons to think it through I realized why that was a stupid idea.”

Gertrude stared at her for a moment, her pencil frozen over her notebook as she tried to process what she’d just heard. “I’m sorry, but I feel like I am missing something. Could you explain more about this… Princess Celestia, and Cadence, and… becoming a princess? Do you mean she was adopted into the royal family?”

Before Sunset could respond, her stomach growled, and she blushed in embarrassment. “Maybe I should get some food going first, and we can tell stories while we eat?” Gertrude nodded in response, and Sunset got to work building a fire, chatting the whole time.

Well this dinner has been… enlightening. Gertrude thought, watching Sunset out of the corner of her eye. The tales about her homeland, a land ruled by an immortal Princess, who refused any higher title despite ruling a realm large enough and rich enough to overshadow several empire on Earth, such as the Austrians, the Japanese [1], or the Ottomans, and who raised and lowered the sun and moon every day had quickly passed beyond even the wildest adventure fiction and risen straight into the realm of pagan myths, with the noted exception that judging from Sunset’s own magical abilities there was likely much more support for these stories than most pagan tribes had for their religions.

However, when she had asked Sunset if this Celestia was some sort of goddess, the unicorn had laughed at the very idea! “Celestia doesn’t like being worshiped.” she had said. “She said that anyone who asks to be worshiped doesn’t deserve to be worshiped.” Sunset told her, and if that wasn’t enough the tale of Princess Cadence left Gertrude stunned. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale, and yet Sunset insisted it was real, and as she explained Gertrude finally understood what her host had meant when she called herself a “spoiled brat”.

If there exists a perfect example of entitlement, demanding that an immortal ruler raise you to her level before you have even reached 20 years of age is it. The Englishwoman though as Sunset focused on her bowl of soup, avoiding eye contact as she finished recounted the story of her arrival on Mercury. Although she at least seems aware of her own hubris.

“Well, that is quite the tale.” She said diplomatically.

“Yeah… looking back I made a lot of mistakes coming here, and Celestia is probably angry with me… but hey, I’m the first unicorn to meet a human since… well probably since before she took the throne! Plus there’s this whole empty world to explore and new magic to study, so that’s nice…” she trailed off, staring at the fire with a sigh.

After a few heartbeats of silence, Gertrude spoke up. “Perhaps we should discuss a different subject. Would you like me to tell you about how I came here and my own homeland?”

Sunset nodded, happy for the change of subject, and Gertrude began to speak. “I am from London, capital of the British Empire and home to Queen Victoria herself. It’s a vast city, full of industry and wealth, sitting at the center of an empire that stretches across multiple worlds. Those worlds are linked by ether fliers, ships that rise high enough into the atmosphere of a world for ether propellers to grab onto the ether that all planets exist within and journey to distant worlds. My father gained most of his wealth through shipyards that turn liftwood harvested on Mars into ether fliers, and my ship is a prototype from his factory, which is likely why I’m still alive after that crash.”

With a sigh, she thought back to the happier times of her childhood. As a child I would read the tales of the expeditions to Venus, adventures across the dusty canals of Mars, even though my father said it was ‘improper for a woman to go gallivanting through the ether’ I always wanted to have some adventures of my own but… my father disapproved.” She said, the memory of her father reprimanding her for “undignified” behavior coming back to her.

“When he came to me two months ago with the news that I was to be wed to the heir of some noble house to improve our families standing, I was furious. He had with one move crushed my hopes and dreams of being an explorer, and in my anger, I stole a ship from the yards and charted a course. After that, I spent nearly fifty days weightless in the ether between worlds, and when I arrived on Mercury, my inexperience caused my ship to crash.”

Leaning back, she was amazed at how much lighter she felt having admitted her sins. Father may never forgive me for this, but I don’t care. I’m on Mercury having dinner with a Unicorn, and he’ll never be able to take that from me.

“Wait, wait wait, hold on a moment.” Sunset spoke up. “Why would you being a woman be a problem? I mean, I could understand it if he was just overprotective, but why would your gender have anything to do with it? Aren’t you guys ruled by a queen? Why would she allow people to say women can’t go on adventures?”

Gertrude said nothing, staring at Sunset with a stunned expression as the unicorn waited for an answer. After a few moments Sunset noticed tears forming in the Englishwoman’s face, and she felt a wave of guilt. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine but-”

“No, it’s just… it’s nothing. I was simply not expecting your response.” Gertrude responded, her eyes still watering. The two sat in silence for a moment before Sunset moved over to Gertrude.

“Look, I don’t know much about humans, or comforting people… or even being friendly… but you know what? If your dad wanted to keep you from being an adventurer just because of what junk you’ve got, he’s a jerk. In fact, that ship you took? That’s his payment for being a jerk to you and telling you you couldn’t be an explorer.”

At that, Gertrude let out a soft laugh. “That is certainly a unique way of putting it.”

“Huh that worked?” Sunset asked in amazement, drawing an amused look from her new friend. “I mean, I’ve just never really done this whole comfort someone thing before, I was kind of a jerk to all the other students back home…” She trailed off awkwardly as Gertrude chuckled to herself. “So, moving on now that that’s out of the way, I have about a million questions for you and I need to ask them quickly since I think I’ve only got a few minutes left in these crystals… and they’re my last ones, and they only recharge about two and a half crystals a cycle… I might not have thought this through.

“What is this… charge?”

“Oh, well for some reason this planet has a really low level of background thaumaturgical energy relative to Equestria, which means that my spells have to rely entirely on my internal energy reserves instead of any in the environment, which burns through my reserves like crazy, so I used a few of the crystals I brought with me to rig up a device to concentrate what little energy there is into some other crystals so I can use them as a reserve for spellcasting. It’s actually pretty simple once you understand Starswirl’s fifth theorem for Thaumaturgical interactions and how it interacts with Mistmane’s theorems and… and that can wait for later.” She said, visibly restraining herself. “Sorry, it’s just been so long since I talked to someone and this whole situation is so weird that as soon as a topic I’m comfortable with came up I just started babbling and wow I sound like Twilight when I ramble.”

“Who?”

“Oh, Celestia’s new student, a bit younger than me, smart girl, likes to babble about stuff she read.” Sunset sighed and shook her head. “I miss the little brat, even if she did cut into the time I had with Celestia.” [2]

Gertrude nodded as she tried to find the words to respond to the exposition she had just received. “Well… perhaps we could work together to make a plan for the future?”

Sunset smiled as she rushed to pull out her journal. “Alright, let’s start by talking about what our plans were, then we can figure out how to work together! My plan is pretty simple, like I said I’m just going to wait here until the portal opens, go through, and try to make the connection permanent. What’s your plan?”

She seems incredibly friendly. We have only been speaking for less than an hour and she already is looking to make plans with me stretching months into the future. Perhaps it is a result of being alone for so long? I know I would rather stay near her than be alone again, and I only spent the few weeks of my trip alone. “Well, originally my plan was to visit Kelvins land...” she trailed off at Sunset’s look of incomprehension. “The coldest portion of the night side of Mercury, there are constant electromagnetic storms that stir up the frozen air, and everyone who has studied Mercury is convinced that something is beneath the ice, waiting to be discovered. I have the maps and charts in my ship, but they’re incomplete. However, I was more referring to our plans for the next few days and weeks.”

Sunset nodded. “Right, yeah that makes a lot more sense. Maybe as a first step, we could see about moving your ship over here to my camp? Then we can go over each others notes and be nearby if something attacks.”

“Is that truly a major concern?” Gertrude asked, and in response Sunset showed her her scarred flank.

“I got this scar when a monster a couple times my size jumped in here and ripped up a lot of my camp.” She said, watching as Gertrude’s eyes widened and she agreed that staying close together would be for the best. After that, the discussion turned to where to put the ship, and if it could even be moved, and before either knew it the spell ran out of power and they were stuck making incomprehensible noises at each other, and after a few moments the two simply parted ways as neither could understand anything more than basic body language.

[The next day]

Sunset stood just inside Gertrude's ship, watching as the human woman unloaded a chest full of books and maps about all the worlds known to humanity. As she did, she looked around at the strange wood that made up most of the ship. Contrary to her initial impression, the metal plating was merely a thin layer outside a solid hull of “liftwood”, a martian wood that was somehow lighter than air.

“So, this liftwood stuff the inner hull is made from… you said it’s only found on Mars?” She asked Gertrude, who was currently going over diagrams of the ships systems to figure out how to get it flying again.

“Not just anywhere on Mars, only in liftwood highlands on Mars, every attempt to grow liftwood outside those areas has failed, and the Canal Martians have been making attempts for centuries.”

Sunset pondered that. Trees whose wood could float and be fashioned into massive ships that flew through the sky… she would have to research it. Maybe Gertrude had some spare planks she could borrow? After all, who would build a ship and not include a few planks to repair damage with?

Shaking her head, she picked up one of the books she had been given and began to read:

“WELCOME TO Conklin's Atlas of the Worlds and Handy Manual of Useful Information, or Conklin's for shor,. an extensive, but by no means exhaustive, collection of maps and essays concerning the worlds of the inner Solar System.” [3]

Skimming through pages after page of introductions and sources that the author had used, most of which meant nothing to her, she finally got to the good part. First off was a diagram, the sun, four planets, and asteroid belt of the inner solar system laid out as if looking on them from above, with the “ether wakes” of each planet shown. Huh, just like ships through the ocean… except with planets. This ether gets more interesting the more I read about it. She thought as she read, flipping through pages and making notes of important topics when all of a sudden the words lost all their meaning and she found herself staring at a pile of nonsense.

With a sigh, she looked over and confirmed her fears: Gertrude had left the room, and the spell had collapsed without close contact between them. I need to figure out how to communicate without this spell, with it I can only read for an hour a day and only when I’m near Gertrude! There’s to much to learn for me to go that slowly!

After tracking down Gertrude and explaining the situation, Sunset found herself lounging on the upper deck of the boat as Gertrude checked the machinery that let the ship actually steer when in the air. Turning back to the book, she continued onwards.

Mercury:

The World River

Huh, I wonder why they call it that… no way. No bucking way. THE RIVER GOES ALL THE WAY AROUND THE PLANET!? WHAT?!

Re-reading the book, she took in every word. “…circles the globe, its flow driven by Coriolis effects rather than gravity. The World River is fed by rains and drainage from its watershed. And when the World River winds near the Ice Sheath, it is fed by the icebergs of continuously crumbling glaciers…” This is insane! How can something like this even exist? There’s nowhere near enough magic in this world to keep something like this going, so it can’t be tha…

Her mind went blank as she turned the page and read the next part.

“Waterfalls and currents are encountered more often than not on the World River. Quite unique, though, are the so-called Water Stairs, where the River flows over several stepped plateaus with an altitude difference of nearly 330 feet, or 100 meters. The real peculiarity is that the waters flow uphill!”

Blinking, she stared at the helpful drawing of the phenomenon in front of her, her mind trying to square the minuscule amounts of magic in this world with the image of water flowing upwards.

“Gertrude!”

“Yes Sunset?”

“Is this book accurate?”

“Yes! Conklin’s is the finest collection of knowledge on the inner solar system there is!”

This is magic. The World River is magic, it has to be… I need to run tests, I need to research these falls… but I can’t go there, if the portal opens… I’ll open the portal, then I’ll go. In fact, once the portal opens, I’m traveling all the way! I’m getting a boat, and sailing down the river until I get back here! Yeah, and then I’ll actually get to see this stuff and work on it myself.

With new determination, Sunset got back to work, making a note of all the landmarks of the World River as she made a list of sights to research on her next great adventure. Of course, she would have to survive her current one first, but she was more than confident in her own ability to do so.

Gertrude was exhausted after hours and hours of running over the propellers and control surfaces on the outside of her ship. At first, she’d been able to talk about some of the wonders of the solar system with Sunset to stave off total boredom, but soon enough the unicorn had run out of thaumaturgical energy and the conversation had stopped. Thankfully, without any way to read the books, Sunset had started helping her go over the hull, taking advantage of the fact that words really weren’t needed when she could just rap her hoof on the metal to point out holes for Gertrude to mark.

However, even with Sunset’s help, the conclusion was not good. The ship had lost most of its momentum before hitting the ground, and the steel around it was designed to survive the harsh environment of the wilds of the solar system, but even with that the bottom of the plating had been torn open by friction, and rivets popped out and plates separating all along the outer hull even at the top of the ship, completely opposite from the impact zone. Beyond that, the liftwood inner hull had warped and several boards had shattered, which was why the normally lighter-than-air ship was resting in the Mercurian soil instead of floating away.

Looking at the solar boiled, which concentrated solar energy to power the ether propeller and other systems on the trip, Gertrude considered how much weight could be saved by removing it. This ship needs a shipyard, or at least a skilled team of workingmen, before it will fly the ether again, and until then this and the ether propeller are just dead weight. But how could I remove them…

She turned to look at Sunset, who was roaming over the ship as if she could understand it just be feeling it with her hooves. Of course, given everything else she’d seen from the unicorn, she would not be surprised if that was the case. With a small grimace, she clambered back down into the ship, her muscles aching even under the lower gravity of Mercury after more than 40 days in zero-gravity.

Looking around, she watched as Sunset continued to prod at the exposed liftwood, the curious unicorn varying between acting like a normal animal at one moment and an intelligent, insightful woman the next. The contrast was stark, and as she watched she found herself thinking about the future. Eventually, Sunset would reopen the portal to her own world, and when that happened, what would happen to humanity? Or if the men who ran the empire decided that Equestria would go the way of India, what would happen to Sunset’s people?

Her peoples casual gender egalitarianism stood in stark contrast to the morals of Britain, where men and women are explicitly divided by law, and Gertrude had enough experience with the sort of men who rose to power in London to know that they would not take kindly to nonhuman women treating them as equals. The greater contrast though, was between how Sunset described Princess Celestia and what Gertrude knew of Britain's own ruling class. The upper levels of British society still refused to treat men like her father as their equals because of his lack of a noble title, something her arranged marriage was supposed to solve for his eventual grandson, and the less said about their treatment of men who had to work the mines and fields to feed their vast estates the better, meanwhile according to Sunset Celestia had taken her in as a student, giving her hours a day of personal attention to teach magic despite her complete lack of a noble title. The contrast was stunning, and Gertrude worried that some of the men, especially the ones her father had over for dinner regularly, would see the existence of a nation that went against the “natural order of things” as an insult, one they must correct as soon as possible.

With a sigh, Gertrude turned back to the hull. It’s silly to worry about these things now. I have much greater problems that I must handle before those questions need to be answered.

Expedition Log: Cycle 323

Ever since Gertrude crashed, everything has changed. My entire routine has been disrupted, there’s more work to do to get her ship over to my campsite, and the more we tell each other about our home the more questions I need to ask her. However, I only get enough power to run the translation spell an hour or so a day, and that’s if I do nothing else with that power. Needless to say, my life has gotten a lot more interesting.

The first major issue we had to deal with was her ship, after all with how far away it is from my camp it makes pooling resources and working together very difficult, so she pulled out some manuals and we tried to figure out how to get a damaged airship back in the air. In the end, we ended up carrying a lot of her supplies to me camp on foot, which was painful with my injury and burned a lot of power from teleporting over Starswirl’s River, but once we started carting out her books and clothes we finally got the ship light enough that even with the damaged liftwood segments it could float, and then I got to ride in it! I know there’s balloons and pegasi carriages back home, but this was something special, this was an actual ship that went through the sky like it was water!

After that, we put it on the hill just a few yards east of Camp Sunset, which was difficult because the hill wasn’t exactly flat, but the only flat lands turns into mud whenever it rains, and we were worried that the ship might just sink into the muck if we left it there. Anyways, we put her supplies back in and a few big rocks just to make sure it wouldn’t go anywhere, and then we had a meal of canned food from Earth, and I learned something very interesting.

“So your home world has all of these same foods?” Gertrude asked, looking at her with surprise.

“Yeah, that’s weird…” Sunset said, frowning at a can of apples as she chewed her last bite. “They even taste like apples… I mean I’ve never had an apple that tastes like this specifically, but I can still tell from taste that it’s apple.”

“Fascinating. With your world being host to many of the same plant species as our own, and the myths about races from your world… There must be some sort of connection, deeper than a few wayward explorers.”

Turns out they have apples, hay, carrots, and all sorts of other Equestrian plants on Earth as well. There has to be some sort of connection there, I mean, the word for their home planet is the same as Earth Pony, that can’t be a coincidence!

Also, apparently they have ponies on Earth, but they are basically just animals, which was kind of weird to hear, and if I’m being honest it just raises even more questions, but that’s a mystery for someone else to solve.

Unfortunately, the ship's library is nowhere near enough to confirm anything, and we’ve basically agreed that it’ll be something we have to figure out once I stabilize the portal home. I mean, I say “we” but really it’ll probably be a load of researchers from Canterlot, because it’ll be a lot of book work and I’d rather go out and get hooves-on work done. Fortunately, we have a few leads for that:

There are several structures throughout the inner solar system that seem impossible, or magic, the World River is one of them, and I’ll be trying to look into it if I can avoid getting eaten by the things that live in it. Longer term, there’s a few other features that I could look into, but the big ones are The Needles, a series of spires made out of a metal that no explorer has been able to get samples off of. They are clearly not natural, being giant obelisks much like the one the portal is located in, except made out of metal instead of stone and being much larger. They are spaced around the planet, 42 in total, and from what I’ve read about them they are all perfectly located on the midpoint between the day side and night side of Mercury. Some are in the middle of the World River, or when the river turns off the centerline they are on mountains or down gulleys, but they are always right in the center.

Once I’ve gotten the portal open permanently, I’m going to find the nearest one. According to Conklin’s, they are all 226.78569 miles apart, one forty-second of Mercury's circumference. I could go now, with how much longer it will be until the portal opens I’ve got time, but… I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel safe to wander off ever since that monster attack, and Gertrude's ship barely made it from the crash site to the camp. She says she can get the engines fixed if I give her enough time, and if she can we could use the ship to visit the nearest Needle, but if she can’t we’d have to go on foot, and with my scars that’s just not happening.

On a more positive note, I think we’re finally starting to work out a way to understand each other without the translation spell. Neither of us can talk without it, but we’ve got things like “come here” and “lift that” handled, which makes it a lot easier to focus on work when I don’t have to keep the spell running. Anyways, I’m going to get back to work soon, we’re going to go over old survey reports and try to figure out how far we are from the one outpost her people have here, Princess Christiana Station. I was surprised that she didn’t know, but I guess she wasn’t really paying attention when she started crashing.

[Princess Christiana Station]

“She’s not here.” David Williamson spat out the words as if they were a curse. “Our easy payday just got a lot harder lads, no one here’s seen any sign of her.”

A wave of muttered cursing came from his crew as he pressed on. “But we always knew this was a possibility, and we’re equipped for the task. The good Miss Bell thinks of herself as an adventurer, and the governor had a list of sights that warranted further investigation’ that the last few surveys found, I’ll be working with his assistant to make a list and an itinerary for the trip.”

At the murmuring from his crew, he raised his hands in exasperation. “Look, I ain’t happy about it either, but if we want to get paid we’ve got to try. Now off with ye, the governor wants me to meet some boffin in the laboratories they got set up here, so go on and enjoy yourselves, this is the only civilization on the entire bloody planet and we won’t be back for a long while.”

With that, the men scattered with a load of grumbling, taking in the “civilization” of a small station with fewer than a hundred people that is, when the planets orbits are best aligned, 35 days from Earth. As they did, David shook his head as he looked out on the eternal sunset. While he'd always known that they might have to search the planet for Gertrude, something about this whole situation felt… off, as if he was meddling with something far bigger than himself. As quickly as it arrived, the feeling was gone, and he turned back towards the governor's house. There was work to be done, this was no time for baseless superstition.

Author's Note

[1] At this time, the Japanese are wrapping up the Meiji restoration, and only a few months ago adopted a modern, western-style constitution. Although fun fact, Sunset arrived on Mercury the same year Nintendo was founded, selling trading cards in Kyoto

[2] So, I know in the comics Sunset left Equestria when Twilight was a little kid, but that doesn’t make sense to me. The same comic shows her entering the human world in the same form she was in in the movie, a teenage girl, and she doesn’t seem that much older than Twilight in any of her appearances, so I’m headcanoning her as only a couple years older, and Twilight's ignorance of her is due to either A) Twilight not caring about anything but her studies and/or B) Necessary exposition for the sake of the plot.

[3] This is actually the intro to the official atlas of Space 1889, which I am mining for information about the solar system for Sunset to learn about.

[4] The mystery of The Needles is unexplored in Space 1889, so I am coming up with my own explanation, which Sunset will be looking into in the future.

Anyways, let me know what you think of this chapter!

Chapter 7

Personal Notes of Gertrude Bell: Day 20 After Landing

I continue to marvel at the whims of chance that brought me here. Mercury’s Twilight Zone, the only livable section of the entire planet, is a 300-mile-across band wrapping more than 9,500 miles across the planet, and when I lost control of my craft upon disengaging the ether propeller, I found myself landed mere miles from the most extraordinary lady I have ever met. Sunset Shimmer, a unicorn out of myth and legend in self-imposed exile from her homeland due to her arrogance, rushed to aid me when she saw my ship crash, and without asking for anything in return she assisted me with repairs and offered to show me her homeland once she can return. In the twenty days since then, we have become fast friends despite the mere hour per day we can understand each other's words, a fact that has caused her no end of discomfort, as she seemed shocked at the idea that anyone would be willing to be friends with her. When I inquired as to why, she simply informed me that in her homeland she was known as a, and I quote: “snobbish, arrogant little brat who thought that learning magic from Celestia made her better than everypony else.”

Her admission was quite amusing, she blushed a brilliant shade of red-orange through her coat, which I did not even know was possible. However, the content of that statement simply illustrated again the difference between our worlds. The idea that someone who has become the personal student of the ruler of her nation is not better than the rest of society… such talk would see its speaker condemned as an anarchist in London [1]. It is fascinating to hear about her homeland, and from her reaction she has the same thoughts about London!

To hear her tell me, while their land might be superior in the thaumaturgical sciences (I informed her of the negative connotations of “magical arts” and she provided that phrase as an alternative), they are behind us by decades in many other fields, mainly industrial production and electricity. For example, according to her steam engines are a relatively new invention, post-dating the creation of their rail network by nearly a century! When I asked her for clarification, she informed me that many rail cars were, and in some cases still are, pulled by members of her species with a talent for using thaumaturgical energy to strengthen their own bodies far beyond what their muscles could accomplish unaided.

After that, she gave me a more in-depth explanation of her species. Apparently, not all of her kind are unicorns, some are Pegasi, ponies who channel thaumaturgical energy through wings to fly through the air, control wind patterns, and even lay atop clouds as though they were solid. Many of these flyers live in cities built into clouds, controlling the weather according to a strict schedule with an accuracy that any earthly power would pay a king's ransom for. However, the majority of the population are a third type whose name translates to Earth Pony. These individuals have less visually impressive abilities than their counterparts, with some using the aforementioned techniques to strengthen their own bodies, while others are able to encourage incredible growth from plants around them, creating vast fields full of crops that can be harvested multiple times a year, an ability that more than makes up for the lack of visually interesting abilities in my personal opinion, although Sunset, as a Unicorn, disagrees with me. The unification of these three races is far beyond anything seen on Earth, with miscegenation accepted as a fact of life and society integrated to the point that setting aside districts entirely for one race would be completely unthinkable. This unity is exemplified by Princess Celestia, who according to Sunset has the powers of all three races in addition to her nigh-immortal lifespan. Based on Sunset's experience with Celestia, I learned that the Princess is the reason for the unification of the races of her kind, being the only being in the realm who remembers a time where there was division between the races, she does her utmost to prevent a reversion to those older, more "savage" times. [2]

After her explanation, she inquired as to the races of the solar system, and appeared surprised that only one species of intelligent life had been found per planet, with Mercury and Luna having no intelligent life at all. Once that was complete, we spoke on minor topics for a while as we reviewed maps of Mercury and dreamed of future adventures, with Sunset revealing a near compulsive desire to investigate the mysteries of The World River, which brought us into conflict. I argued that The World River was the best mapped portion of Mercury, and if we wanted to discover something truly new we would need to leave the Twilight Zone and enter either the land of eternal night or eternal day. Sunset in turn argued that none of the previous expeditions along the World River had an expert at thaumaturgy with them, and as such we had the best chance of uncovering the mysteries of the river.

In the end, we admitted that the discussion was mostly theoretical. After all, until the hull of my ship is repaired we cannot survive either the hot or cold sides of Mercury and a journey along the World River is the only safe course of action. While this was disappointing for me, I still hold out hope for a new expedition into the frozen lands away from the sun.

Expedition Log: Cycle 335

This is my first entry in a notebook Gertrude gave me! With everything I was discovering, my last one got full, and the only thing keeping me from filling this one the same way is the hour limit per day. Now that she’s settled in and we’re looking at the long term, we’ve been spending more time just sitting around and talking about ourselves, and we’re getting closer and closer the more we talk. She called us friends one time, which was nice. And confusing. I’ve never really had friends before, and I don’t really know how to be a good friend to her, but she hasn’t complained about me so far, and she likes talking about adventures and discovering things, so I guess we’re doing alright?

Friendship is hard.

Anyways, I’ve been trying to explain magical theory to her, except I’m calling it thaumaturgy because she doesn’t like the word magic. Apparently her people think magic is something some demon uses to corrupt their eternal souls and send them to a fiery afterlife for all eternity, and I don't know enough about this world to argue with that. With everything I've seen and read so far, it might even be true!

So like I was saying, we were reviewing magic and how it interacts with the world around us, and if I’m being completely honest her education is… less than stellar. She says she had a tutor, but they only taught her the basics in math and writing before moving onto things like sewing and how to manage a house, and that just made no sense. I mean, sure managing a budget is important, but if her people need to spend so much time fixing their clothes that they can’t do other things, why do they even wear them?

Fortunately, she seems very eager to learn, and listened to everything I said like I was Princess Celestia herself! Of course, after a while the discussion reached cutie marks and special talents, and to make a long story short apparently the idea of a mark on your body symbolizing your special talent is “completely unprecedented and without any point of comparison” in human society. I’m pretty sure she was exaggerating, they have to have some way of knowing what other humans are good at.

Well, since then I’ve been working on an idea. I know from Gertrude's books that the World River is magic at some points, I mean come on, water flowing uphill? That’s magic. Anyway, after my last boat got attacked by a monster while I was going across the river, I’ve been cautious about going near the water, but what if the magic isn’t in the river itself? The Needles are apparently right on the center-line of the planet, and if my hunches are correct, then there is a concentration of magical energy flowing between The Needles keeping the magic stuff on this planet fed despite the low energy levels, and if I’m wrong then I’m back to where I started, trying to figure out how to measure magic in a giant river full of predators.

I can see Gertrude coming down the hill from her ship, I guess I stayed up working through the night. I’ve been doing that more and more lately, something about all these maps and diagrams just gets me excited about all the adventures I could be having, even if I can only barely remember what the words on them mean when the translation spell isn’t running, and I just can’t sit still and do nothing the way I did before she got here. She’s nearly to the entrance to Camp Sunset, so it’s time for me to wrap this up and get a move on. We’ve got an expedition to prepare for.

(Sunset’s POV) [3]

We’ve been working off-and-on on repairing the engines on Gertrude's ship for more than a month now. The worst part is, if we’d worked faster and focused on it 100% we could have had it done by now… but we have no chance of getting replacement parts, and neither of us have ever fixed an airship engine before, so we decided to take things slow, and there’s just so much we had to teach each other about our homes, rushing and pouring everything into one thing seemed like such a waste.

Plus, it rains about once every 5-10 days, sometimes for days at a time, and a lot of the work requires us to be outside to do it, and buck that.

Which is why we were clustered in my cabin, my tarp still covering the hole where I wanted to put a fireplace, and talking about magical theory as I tried to get oil and dirt out of my coat (all of my cleaning spells needed so much energy that it was a choice between talking and cleaning with magic, and there’s just so much more interesting things to talk about with Gertrude).

“So, to summarize, thaumaturgical energy both comes from the world around us and is created passively by living things that have spent a long time dipped in an environment with a high enough level of background magic… sorry, thaumaturgical energy.” I corrected myself, I might not agree with her views on magic but it doesn’t hurt to respect them.

“That process creates a self-sustaining loop that drives up the background energy levels, meaning that once a certain level of energy is ‘naturally’ created by the sun, or the planet, or some other factor, the creation of more energy by living beings pushes the level of energy in the system up even higher. At a certain point the planet itself falls far enough below the surface energy levels that it begins to absorb the energy back, acting as a constant drain in the background that pulls in more power the higher the background levels are. This causes gemstones and other magically attuned materials such as gold to come closer to the surface, pulled towards the surplus of energy, and creating equilibrium.

Which leads us to Mercury: by all accounts, the energy in this world is on borrowed time. Right now, the background energy levels are too low to start the upward spiral into a level on par with Equestria, but based on what I can remember from my studies, at a level this low the energy should simply fade out into nothingness, leaving a world empty of thaumaturgical energy. As we can see, this hasn’t happened, which means there are reserves of power somewhere that are keeping the planet supplied. Once those run out, Mercury loses its magic.”

“I see” Gertrude nodded, scribbling my words in her notebook as I clumsily ran the brush through my tail, pulling dirt and pebbles out of it. “And you believe The Needles and the World River are somehow connected to this reserve?”

I nodded. “Exactly! Once we actually get a chance to examine one of The Needles closely, I’ll be able to say for certain, but it makes sense if you think about it. The World River has things like waterfalls that go up hills, and mostly follows the middle of the Twilight Zone, and The Needles are on the same middle line. There has to be a connection there, right?” I asked before turning back to a particularly stubborn clump in my tail.

She looked up from her journal with a frown. “Sunset, I understand that you do not wish for someone without any experience to handle grooming you, but if I must be completely honest it seems as though you could use some assistance.”

Translation: Sunset you’re embarrassing yourself, let the nice woman who has experience cleaning hair and fur without magic give it a shot.

“Fine, fine.” I shrugged, moving over to lay beside her. I knew friends back in Equestria did stuff like this together, and she had mentioned that she had helped her sisters with their hair back on Earth, but this was the first time since I was a little foal that I was letting someone else brush me, and it felt like I was giving up. I’d been independent for so long, and now after only a few weeks here I was incapable of brushing my own coat?

I clamped down on those feelings as she ran the brush over me, pulling out dirt and undoing clumps of hair across my back and flanks. After a while, I had to admit that she was doing a much better job than I had, even if my pride still rankled a bit at the thought that I was being brushed like some filly who couldn’t be trusted to clean herself.

We laid like that for a while, talking about our plans for our expedition to the nearest Needle, how to finally finish my fireplace (I will be able to cook food indoors like a civilized pony before I leave here, that’s a promise) and some minor chit-chat. When I ran out of power for the translation spell, we stayed like that, since my coat was still a mess, and I just reviewed the notes I had made to see if there was anything I was missing when planning for our trip.

I was so engrossed in my plans and dreams of finally going on another adventure beyond this camp that I didn’t even notice as she put the brush down and laid down next to me with a book of her own, and in the dim light of a single low-power light spell we read our books together, taking comfort in the fact that, even if the nearest other members of our species were far away, we were not alone.

[SS Good Fortune, 43 days out of Princess Christiana Station]

During their voyage down the World River, the crew of the Good Fortune had encountered a camp of approximately a dozen prospectors sitting atop a load of gold, and they had halted for three days to trade supplies for raw gold and other precious goods. Given their complete failure to find any trace of Gertrude Bell, it looked increasingly likely that the gold in the lock-box was going to be their only compensation for this voyage. Fortunately for the captain, David Williamson, the gold nuggets were enough to keep his crew calm, and as the continued their search of the planet the mumbling of the men was easily calmed with the knowledge that, even if they never received their reward from Ms. Bell’s father, heading back to Earth and spreading the news of gold and other minerals found on Mercury could let them make a killing off of transporting supplies and prospectors.

However, even with that knowledge, captain Williamson was not sleeping easily anymore. Even if he could make his money back with future voyages, earning the ire of one of Britain's top industrialists was not something any sane man did lightly, and failing to return with either Gertrude or her ship after negotiating for a truly substantial reward was sure to earn the displeasure of Mister Bell and his allies in high society. Which brings us to tonight.

After more than a month, their airship had reached the World Spine, a mountain range halfway across the world from the station [4] that cut across the entire 300-mile wide Twilight zone, and they were prepared to spend days looking through the various peaks for signs of Gertrude’s crashed ship, and if they did not find her there, there was always the next stop on their list of sites a young woman with dreams of adventure might have gone to. With a sigh, Williamson poured himself a cup of tea, made from the few remaining leaves in the hold. It will all be worth it if we bring her home. He thought, determination filling him as he looked out over the vast peaks ahead of the ship. That reward will make this all worth it.

Author's Note

[1] Only among the wealthy industrialists and nobles at the top would the idea that someone's position does not determine their worth seem radical, Gertrude would be surprised to see how many factory workers would agree with the sentiment.

[2] So, this portion has a lot of headcanons in it, and keep in mind this is Sunset relaying it to Gertrude, who views it through a victorian lense, which I will blame for any inaccuracies.

[3] So, I'm trying my hand at writing first-person outside the journals, let me know what you think.

[4] According to the sourcebook, a log floating on the World River would take 133 days to circumnavigate the world, so I figured 40 days (43 total - 3 with the prospectors) was a decent pace for an airship to travel halfway around the world with all the stops at various landmarks to look for signs of Gertrude.

Chapter 8

Expedition Log: Cycle 365

Well, this is it. Even though I know I got off the 24-hour day cycle during that long time where I had no way to tell time, I’m declaring today my one-year anniversary of my journey through the portal. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what happened, and looking back there were a lot of things I could have done better, but at the end of the day, I’m still alive and I’ve made a new friend. Sure, it’s not the “go to another world, explore it, become an alicorn” that I was planning back then, but if I’m going to be honest I probably shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up to high based on one image of myself with wings in a magic mirror [1]. Anyway, I think things went about as well as were realistically possible so far, if not better! (Seriously, I made First Contact, that’s way beyond “realistic”).

The scars on my flank are a constant reminder of just how dangerous this world is, and how unprepared for it I was, but despite the few crazy moments of danger, my time here has actually been pretty mundane. I fell into a routine, re-read the few books I brought, and wrote down meaningless stuff for the better part of 300 cycles, and it was boring as tartarus, but I survived it, and it all paid off. One day, my boring routine got torn up when an alien fell out of the sky on a flying ship and all of a sudden that routine was shattered. For more than a month, we’ve been working with each other, telling each other about our pasts and homes, and actually becoming friends! Of course, this wasn’t just minor busywork like new students at school, this was an expedition to unlock the secrets of an alien world! This is what I was missing, this is what I almost didn’t do because I was so focused on surviving until I got home.

I’m going to lay out everything in this log, and Gertrude is doing the same in hers, that way whoever gets here first, an Equestrian team through the portal or a human expedition, they’ll know what happened.

So, to start off, the thaumaturgical energy field on Mercury is a conundrum: my initial thought was that it was some leftover energy from Equestria’s portal, which made sense in my mind: 3 days of energy flow through the portal, 600 days where it dissipates through the environment, slowly dissipating until the next opening, with any surplus slowly building up. That went out the door when I did the math, based on my estimates of the size of Mercury (which Gertrude confirmed) the math just didn’t work, the amount of energy dissipation if Mercury was a truly no-magic world would wipe it out in months, and yet in the year I’ve been here it ticked down .2% from the readings at the beginning of the trip. So, what’s causing the issue?

I don’t have the heavy-duty magic theory texts I’d need to reference to make any theories on why this is happening, and if I’m being honest I had put it on my list of “research for the future” before Gertrude showed up and I got to read one very interesting thing about Mercury. You see, there’s these large giant metal obelisks humans call “The Needles” halfway between the hot side and cold side, right along the entire planet evenly spaced once every 1/42nd of its diameter… in theory. Not all of them have been found, in fact not even most of them have been, and since even with all the pictures from orbit and maps made by previous expeditions we haven’t figured out where we are…

Well, we at least know where to look, all the ones that have been found so far are along the mid line, so we just figure out where that is based on the sun and follow it north.

Now, how does this tie into the thaumaturgic energy field? Well, I don’t know. I just know that no one has been able to cut off a sample of the metal to see what it is, I know that whoever built them had to have had a reason for doing it, and I know that something is messing with the energy field, either acting as a reservoir and slowly trickling out power for the planet or something else. It’s not the strongest connection ever, but it’s something, and my alternative theory is that there is some sort of magic in the World River (the big river that literally circles the entire planet, no beginning or end) that makes it work, and I can’t research that theory without risking an encounter with one of the creatures that live in the depths, so we decided we would travel to the nearest Needle and poke around at it, see what happens.

Now for the trip itself, we will be taking Gertrude's ship, setting ourselves directly in the middle of the Twilight Zone, and sailing north. Now, finding the Needle should be simple, it's a nearly 200 feet tall metal obelisk, and we won’t be flying that high, but since we have plenty of time, we decided to make sure that we don’t miss it by taking advantage of a neat little effect they have that I think just proves they’re magic: Once every 267 minutes, for 12.5 minutes at a time, a magnetic “pulse” goes off, making every compass in 15 kilometers turn towards it (I asked why they had both kilometers and miles to measure distance, and Gertrude just shrugged). So, we’re going to take this nice and slow, which actually works out better because even after a month of off-and-on repairing the engines, we really have no idea how well those repairs will hold up since, well, neither of us have any experience with airship engines.

… You know, when I started writing this I expected it to be a bit longer. Oh well, I guess there’s really not much else to say. We’re heading out soon, if you’re reading this and I’m not around then head north until you find Gertrudes people’s base, ask if they’ve seen us.

Gertrude Bell felt amused as she watched Sunset pace the deck. The Unicorn had been the main proponent for the “slow and steady” plan to make sure they found the Needle, but it seems she hadn’t quite grasped just how slow the 6 kilometer an hour pace they needed to ensure they didn’t miss a pulse was, as she was unfavorably comparing their speed with what she could accomplish if her leg was healed… and there were no obstacles in her path. Looking down at the swampy forests that clung to both banks, Gertrude knew that was not a realistic option for this journey. Of course, she knew Sunset knew that as well; after all, her first fit of pacing a couple hours before had ended with her laying on a couch and sulking at her leg, mumbling accusations of treason at it.

Gliding through the air, the Mercurian surface stretched out beneath them from horizon to horizon, the sun hanging on the western horizon, looking for all the world like an eternal Sunset. It is almost as if this world was made for her… Gertrude thought as she looked at the orange unicorn. She had been raised to view such coincidences as mere chance, with believing otherwise seen as superstition unbecoming a modern Englishwoman, but as she took in the symbol on Sunset’s flank, a symbol that supposedly revealed some great inner truth of her friends identity and purpose in life… she found herself doubting even more of what she had been taught.

After all, she was a Victorian Englishwoman, and Sunset had straight up told her that not only did magic exist, but so did a realm where the immortal ruler raised and lowered the sun and moon on a regular basis. Despite the demonstrated magic, it was hard for her to move past her upbringing and truly understand what she was being told, just as Sunset could hear Gertrude tell tales of an empire that stretched across four planets and had a city of millions at its heart and still could not truly comprehend the size and scale of the British Empire or the industrial powers of humanity.

However, ever since Sunset had told her the truth about Celestia and Cadence, that they were born as normal ponies and ascended to immortality and power after accomplishing great feats tied to their very identity, she had been wondering. Sunset says she came here, to a land in eternal sunset, after seeing a vision of herself ascended…

She pushed those thoughts from her mind, there was no point wondering about it now, after all, Sunset knew more about this subject than she had, and she’d laughed at how naive she was to believe she could be worthy of ascension. Gertrude had noticed pain in her eyes as she’d said it, and knew that bringing it up without a good reason would simply be rubbing salt into the open emotional wound. Fortunately, she had a good reason to take her mind off the topic: after several hours they were leaving the “shelter” of the mountains that Sunset had named the Rockhoof Range, and the clashing air currents between the frozen cold side and scorching hot side of the planet were occasionally buffeting the craft, and keeping it stable required all her concentration, even as Sunset let out an annoyed series of yells the first few times the ship shook.

Clearing the latest patch of turbulence, Gertrude looked out the window from the pilots seat, the ground below them opening up as the mountains fell behind, and struck up a pose. If only mother could see me now, an adventuress on Mercury, working with a unicorn to understand the secrets of the planet. Looking down at her dirty outfit, she imagined how her mother would react to the sight. Of course, before I could explain any of that she would begin to demand to know what I was doing wearing muddy trousers. I believe the “trousers” part of that she would object to the most. In some ways she was more hostile to my dreams than father: at least he was willing to accept that I could accompany a future husband on any adventures he had, mother would have had me remain in London the rest of my life.

Another gust of wind disrupted her musings, and as she stabilized the ship she heard Sunset call out to her in accented English, a sign that whatever she was saying wasn’t important enough to burn power on. “Gertrude! Over left, look!”

Turning to the side, Gertrude looked across the cold side of the river, her eyes searching the dimmed shadowed land for whatever Sunset had seen. Are we off the centerline? Is the Needle over there? She wondered as her eyes scanned the horizon and Sunset clambered up the ladder to sit next to her.

“Look!” She said, pointing a hoof to nearly the edge of the window, and as Gertrude followed it she saw something glistening in the distance, reflecting the suns low rays back into the sky. Turning to Sunset, she asked. “Shall we stop and investigate or continue on?”

Sunset’s face scrunched as she tried to translate the question, less than fifty days together being far from enough time for her to be fluent in English. After a moment, her horn glowed. “Can we do a fly-by? If we go a bit faster we won’t lose much time, and then we can see if it’s worth investigating in the future.”

That sounded entirely reasonable to Gertrude, who turned the ship ninety degrees to port and increased the engine speed. After only a few minutes, they had arrived at the anomaly, a large lake, literally crystal clear. Gertrude had never seen a body of water so clean, especially not a wild one: looking down from above, the two could see all the way to the bottom of the lake, where fish of all shapes and sizes darted between exotic corals and strange plants. Putting the ship in hover, Gertrude stared down at the lakebed, watching as a bioluminescent swarm darted through the crags of the reef, pursued by a large creature that, in the dim light of the cold part of the Twilight Zone, seemed to be made of shadow. [2]

The two stared down for a long moment, time passing as they watched the creatures of the shallow lake dart around in the dim light, a hypnotic display of life and beauty in the watery depths. According to the ships clock, this moment lasted only a few minutes, but Gertrude could have sworn she spent hours watching before Sunset nudged her. “How long camp?” she asked, shaking Gertrude out of the trance.

Turning back to the logbook, she compared their speed and the time they left camp and the time they made the turn. “I think… we’re about 40 miles north of the camp, and maybe a mile or so east.”

Sunset nodded, taking another glimpse down at the lake. “We returan? Return? I want investi…” Shaking her head, her horn glowed again. “We’ll come back, right? I really want to investigate this place. Plus, you know, it’s a lot nicer to look at than the area by the camp.”

Gertrude nodded. “Agreed, perhaps we will land here on the way back, in fact…” she cut herself off as Sunset staggered forward without warning, almost like something had struck her out of nowhere. “Sunset? Sunset are you well? Is it your leg, do you need to lie down-?”

“It’s close.” Sunset said, her eyes wide. “The Needle, it’s close.”

“How do you-”

“The pulse isn’t just magnetic!” She shouted, gesturing to the ships compass, which had turned nearly 60 degrees of its previous heading despite the ship remaining stationary. “It’s magical, thaumaturgical, whatever word we use that’s what it is! It’s like a wave of energy, and I can feel it!” She was nearly crying with joy, tears forming in her eyes as she pulled out her equipment. “It’s only about a fifth of the Equestrian regular background level, but it’s not stable! It’s flowing over us with peaks and troughs like waves!” She pointed at the crystalline device in her hoof, showing as the readings rose and fell with each second. “We need to get there, this could explain everything!”

Gertrude nodded, retaking the pilots station and throttling the engines, the ship speeding off to the northwest as Sunset basked in the feeling of having even a fraction of the power she had grown up with.

David Williamson and his men were giving up hope in finding Gertrude Bell. The sheer size of Mercury and the lack of success since they had left was wearing down their morale, and the knowledge that failure meant the only money they would earn was from the supplies they sold to some prospectors up the river was not helping matter. Williamson had had to break up three fights in the last week, one of them having escalated past words to fists, and he was beginning to feel the strain. But they had to press on, even if it meant returning to England in disgrace, because at least that would mean returning to England.

Sitting in the pilot's chair, he heard the voice of Patrick O’Brian, an Irish lad barely old enough to be called a man he’d picked up a couple years back to fill a vacancy in his crew, shouting down the speaking tube from the lookout station. “Captain! Captain I see a camp!”

Patrick was his best lookout, his young eyes seeing clearer than any of the rest of the men, which is why Williamson did not ask questions like “are you sure?” when he heard the message. Instead, he only asked for a heading and distance. After turning the ship, he pulled up the speaking tube for the rest of the ship. “Alright lads, we found something! Don’t know if it’s our missing heiress, but someone’s built a camp out here, and we’re going to go say hello. Be on your best behavior, if it’s Gertrude we want her to come peacefully, and if it’s not we don’t want to piss off our hosts.”

Half an hour later, after their hails were unanswered and they had to land the ship without help from the ground, Williamson and his men approached the small round camp, nestled between two hills. Walking in, he noticed that the camp seemed disorganized, with a cabin, kiln, and several storage tents strewn about wherever there was room, with the cabin itself unfinished, one wall covered by a thick tarp. Bee-lining for the cabin, he pushed aside the tarp over the doorway and held up a lamp, crouching over to avoid hitting his head on the insanely low roofs. Inside was a dirt floor, an improvised bed, and several bookshelves made from Mercurian wood, and on those bookshelves was a strange mix of books, most being in English, books on survival and ether flier maintenance, but a few were written in a strange language, one that seemed like nothing Williamson had seen before.

He was investigating one of the books when Patrick spoke up. “Excuse me sah, but I found somethin’ you’ll want to see.” He said, holding up an open book which had This Journal is the property of Gertrude Bell written on the cover.

Taking the book, Williamson flipped through it, skimming as he went. At first it was merely a tale of her flight to Mercury, boring monotony in the depths of space that all who had flown the ether knew far to well. However, her first few entries after landfall were far more interesting, particularly her description of the creature that had met her.

Her form is similar to the Unicorns of legend, although she claims no knowledge of any myths pertaining to unicorns that I presented to her. Her coat is a light orange, bordering on yellow, and her mane consists of hairs the same color as well as a darker, near red shade. Her native tongue flows like the melody of a songbird, and her eyes are a brilliant turquoise. Were it not for her behavior, I would say she is a Fae of myth, mystically beautiful with powers beyond any that a human can wield, yet she displays no sign of the trickery and deceit the legends of such creatures tend to speak of.

However, she does display powers that seem as if magic. When I made her acquaintance, she transported us across a river that was impeding our progress with a flash of light, moving us to the opposite shore without an issue, and then after consulting one of her books she was able to use another ability to speak to me, asking my name and introducing herself as Sunset Shimmer. After a brief conversation, we shared a meal at her encampment, and even after she was too exhausted to maintain the ability that let us speak, she allowed me to remain in her encampment, sitting silently and writing in a journal similar to mine as the cool twilight air washes over us and the fire burns low.

Below the entry was a drawing, showing the unicorn lying down, a quill pen engulfed in a beam of light emitting from its horn as it scribbled in a journal. By the time he had finished reading the entry, David Williamson felt like a new man. Gone was the exhaustion of nearly two months of fruitless searches, now he not only a lead to his original payday, but an even greater opportunity: to be the man to bring a Unicorn from Mercury to London. [3]

Looking at his men, he showed them the journal, and as they read, they came to the same conclusion. Patrick and a couple other men seemed uncomfortable about the idea of capturing a unicorn, but in the end they fell in line, their superstitions crushed by the image of the money and fame they would receive upon their return to London. Gathering Gertrude’s journals, Williamson began reading, hoping for a clue on where she went. Fortunately for him, Miss Bell was kind enough to dedicate the last entry entirely to explaining where she was going and how she was going there.

Within fifteen minutes of that discovery, the Good Fortune was airborne once again, and the hunt was on.

Author's Note

[1] In the comics Sunset's obsession with the mirror began when it showed her a vision of herself as an alicorn.

[2] The crystal lakes of Mercury are another unexplained phenomenon in Space 1889 that I am repurposing for this fic.

[3] This is a Victorian English mercenary captain, it would be entirely unrealistic for him to read about a talking unicorn and not try to profit off it.

Thanks for reading, leave a like if you enjoyed it and if you see anything you want to talk about, leave a comment, getting comments on my work is the highlight of being an author.

Chapter 9

Expedition Log: Day 366

I feel like a million bits right now. The energy the Needle is giving off, it’s a massive wave of thaumaturgical and magnetic power, and after so long with the scraps I could pull from the air around me even 20% Equestria normal is making me feel like I could go toe-to-toe with Celestia and win. With all this power in the air, I feel like I could handle anything this world throws at me! No matter what, now that I have magic, I can handle it!

Gertrude spotted the Needle. This is it, after weeks of just reading about things other people found, now it’s finally my turn to make some discoveries!

I know it seems kind of arrogant to write that when all the human expeditions found nothing and I’m not exactly a seasoned investigator myself, but I’m Sunset Shimmer, personal student of Princess Celestia herself! None of the human expeditions had a magical expert of any sort, and I was better at it than most fully grown unicorns! I’ll be able to see things that they never would have even known to look for just because of that, and sure I might not be able to decipher everything about it, but once I get some time to give it a once over I’m sure I’ll at least be able to figure out the basic of it.

Alright, I might have been a little too sure of myself when I wrote that… Sunset thought to herself as she stood in front of the Needle, the massive metal spire towering hundreds of feet into the air above her. This is going to be a problem…

The obelisk in front of her was visually impressive, standing nearly two hundred feet tall and 7.5 feet across, made of a polished metal that looked like silver or chrome of some sort. Pressing a hoof against it, and using some diagnostic spells, revealed that whatever the metal was it was definitely neither of those substances. With no sign of wear and tear on it, Sunset could have believed that it had just been built yesterday, but the dirt piling onto the base put paid to that thought, it was simply far to buried for that to matter in any way

However, none of that helped her find out what it was for. The Needle stood silent and alone, no runes marking its face, no directions for maintenance teams, no enchantments that would respond to any of her probes, not even an automatic expulsion of her as a foreign entity in the system. This told her one thing: the exterior existed to focus enchantments somewhere within the structure, and whoever had built it had believed that no one on the outside could access the core enchantments, otherwise they would have put something in it as security.

Looking over it again, she sighed and looked over at Gertrude, who was sketching the Needle and filling her journal with notes.

The surface of the Needle is smooth all the way to the base. There is no pedestal, no inscription, nothing to give any sign or direction for anyone who wishes to investigate it, and the pulse of energy that had empowered Sunset and boosted her confidence had disappeared shortly after we began our final approach, vanishing in only a few moments it was as if it had never been there, leaving her thoughts much more grounded. Gertrude wrote as Sunset returned to her studies of the Needle.

One more time, desperate for any sort of clue, she circled the obelisk, using what power she had to scan the base and look for anything she could use to figure out what this thing was for, before giving up and returning to Gertrude. “There’s a lot of enchantments here, but it’s all surface-level stuff. Durability on the metal and some channels that guide the effects of enchantments on the inside into the world, but I can’t tell what those enchantments are.” She told the Englishwoman, frustration in her voice.

Gertrude nodded, staring at the structure contemplatively. “Then it is likely that we need to dig deeper.”

Sunset gave her an inquisitive look. “You know, I said the enchantments were ‘deeper’ but I didn’t mean physically deeper, they’re likely more towards the core of the Needle. I mean, it’s wider across than you are tall, there’s plenty of space for some sort of magic…” she trailed off as she studied the metallic obelisk.

“Yes, but can you carve through metal that thick?” Gertrude asked pointedly.

“... no…” Sunset admitted.

Gertrude nodded in response. “So we can either try to climb to the top, hoping we can access the inner workings from higher up, or we can dig down and see if perhaps whatever base this structure has has been buried by the passage of time. After all, unless this obelisk extends through bedrock to the core of the planet, it must have a base, and this base would be the most likely location for any entryway, control panel, or other means by which its builders could access and maintain the thaumaturgical enchantments that it utilizes for… whatever task it was built for.”

Sunset looked up, her eyes roaming the full length of the obelisk, desperately searching for any blemish or discoloration that could be a sign of an entryway or even just a spell matrix close to the surface. The perfect metal stared down at her, free from any errors despite the centuries it had sat in the middle of the wilderness, untouched by anything with the intelligence to maintain it, and she sighed, hanging her head in disappointment. “... You’re right. I wish you weren’t, but you’re right.” Turning back to the Needle, she pawed at the ground. “This is going to suck…”

And it did. For the next hour they dug away at the ground, excavating the area around the base of the obelisk, Sunset pulling up huge chunks at a time before her magic was exhausted, then working with her hooves until she felt up to go again. Despite the massive progress that would have been impossible without magic, the work was slow, and the lack of visible progress wore Sunset down, especially as every time her magic ran dry reminded her of how she had felt during those brief, wonderful minutes where power had flowed through her.

Of course, Mercury’s gravity is a mere 40% that of either Earth or Equestria [1], and even with a limited supply of magic, the loose soil around the base was surprisingly easy for the two to clear away, inch by inch, until Gertrudes shovel struck something metallic…

What? She thought, testing the shovel again. Is this… “Sunset! I believe I have discovered the base of the obelisk!”

Sunset was by her side in an instant, her coat covered in dirt and mud from the digging as she had forgone cleaning magic to focus on the task at hand. “Where?!” She demanded, looking down as Gertrude demonstrated by clanging her shovel against the buried metal again. With a frenzy, she attacked the dirt, pulling clumps of loose soil up with her hooves, each strike uncovering more and more of the metal beneath.

Looking over the unearthed metal, she felt her gut begin to sink. The metal seemed to be the roof of the pedestal the obelisk was sitting on, and as she dug at the edge of the hole, she realized they were going to be stuck digging a lot more if they wanted to get inside, and if they did not go in, they would return as… well not complete failures, but close enough that after how excited she had been it sure felt like failure.

With that revelation, the two adventuresses broke for lunch, throwing together a meal of random Mercurian plants and some tinned salmon in a pot hanging over a fire with the eternally setting sun in th ebackground. Sunset muddled through her meal, eating slowly as she ran over the problem in her mind. Fifteen minutes of 20% or so of what I could do in Equestria, followed by 267 minutes of base Mercurian energy levels. In those fifteen minutes I could either move a bunch of dirt out of the way and hope that I find an entrance, or I can try to teleport us in, where we can search from the inside for a way out, but we’ll be trapped for the next couple hours…

She sighed, shaking her head as Gertrude came over to her, holding out her watch. Without the translation spell she didn’t know what the human woman was saying, but she didn’t need to in order to understand her meaning: the next cycle was almost here, get ready. Swallowing the last of her food, Sunset stood up and returned to the hole, activating the translation spell to ask for Gertrude's opinion on how to move forward.

After hearing her explanation, the Englishwoman frowned thoughtfully for a moment before replying. “If you teleport us into the structure, what guarantee do you have that we will arrive in a room full of poisonous gasses or some similar sign of decay? If this structure has been abandoned for a long time, perhaps jumping in blindly will not be the safest approach…” She trailed off as Sunset reared back, the first waves of the pulse filling her with energy as she listened to her companions words.

After a moment to adapt, Sunset turned back to Gertrude. “Well, there are safeguards for objects in the teleport spell that should prevent us from impaling ourselves on anything, but if it is poisonous… but really what are the odds that it’s poisonous?”

“High enough that I see no reason to rush. We are not exactly short on time Sunset, we have months to do this properly.”

Sunset sighed, nodding her head as she began to cast magic, scooping away the dirt from atop the base. “Fine, we’ll do it slow and safe.” She said, shoveling dirt away with each word, the strain evident in her eyes and voice as she pushed herself to move as much as she could while she still had power. While she did that, Gertrude found herself feeling exceptionally useless as she made sketches and notes in her journal. She claims that all creatures can use magic in some ways once their bodies have been exposed to enough of it, but what are the odds of that happening here on Mercury?

As Sunset cleared away the dirt, she found herself growing increasingly frustrated. The loose soil simply slipped through her grasp, leaving up to a third of what she’d grabbed stuck in the hole in the ground, and it seemed no matter how much power she threw into the spell her progress was increasingly small as dirt from around the hole slid in, refilling it as she dug.

Grabbing the edges and stabilizing them with a spell failed, the enchantments that would have worked wonderfully in Equestria buckling under the low and uneven tide of energy coming off the monolith, failing at random points before surging back to normal.

As time went on and Sunset felt in her gut the end of this brief window of power, her frustration grew. While scooping yet another blob of loose dirt off the uncovered base, she watched as the other side of the hole collapsed, a slide nearly burying the shining metal.

WIth a scream of rage and frustration, she tossed the clump of dirt to the side and focused everything on the hole. Magic flowed through her horn, drawn from her internal reserves and the environment in such a large amount that it actually caused her physical pain. With a cry, she let it all out with a wave of force, the exertion knocking her on her flank even as a massive orange glow smashed the dirt away from the dig site.

For the men of the Ether Ship ES Good Fortune, their journey around Mercury had shown them many wonders that people on Earth could only imagine. Stones that absorbed the light of the sun and turned it into electricity, strange floating trees that seemed like something out of the liftwood forests of Mars [2], water flowing uphill, and dozens of other strange things that they had only heard of in rumors and tales brought back to Earth by the explorers who had found them first. As their ship descended towards Gertrude Bell and her stolen ship, they were treated to a sight that blew all of that out of the water.

Before them, a vast metal obelisk rose from the dim, shadowed forest, towering hundreds of feet in the air above the surrounding forest. However, that was not what drew their attention. At the base of the Needle, a small equine form, approximately the size of a small pony, stood on the ground next to a woman who could only be Gertrude Bell, recovering from generating a blast that had thrown massive amounts of dirt out of the ground..

There was silence on the bridge for a brief moment before captain Williamson shook himself out of his stupor. Looking around, he saw his men begin to worry, to wonder what powers would be unleashed on them if they interfered with this creature. Or perhaps he was projecting his own fears onto them. In any case, he needed to present a brave front, to convince the men that they were not doomed.

“The journal we found stated that the creature only has a limited amount of energy to use her abilities with, and the blast outright lifted her into the air and left her unconscious for moments. Right now she is likely dazed and exhausted, and as Ms. Bell has already seen our ship and they will suspect we have ill intent towards them if we back out now, so our best option is to approach as calmly as possible while prepared to defend ourselves should the creature turn hostile.” He told his men, taking charge of the situation before panic could sink in.

After the initial panic dissipated, he began to bark orders, keeping the men busy so they wouldn’t question his logic. And more importantly, keeping his own mind from questioning it. After all, it was too late to back out now without the creature growing suspicious and potentially hostile, best to bite the bullet and do this while she was still weak and recovering.

Sunset came to a minute later as Gertrude shook her, the human woman saying… something that sounded concerned, she couldn’t tell for sure and did not dare try the translation spell with her horn sore to the touch, although even if she trusted her horn her head hurt so much she could barely focus to cast the spell. With a sense of clinical detachment she noted that these were symptoms of magic exhaustion, and as she slowly rose to her hooves she looked at what she had done to earn such a painful headache.

The ground around the hole had been cleared away, and the edge of the pedestal had been revealed, the upper half of a door that seemed to be made out of a similar, although slightly darker, metal than the rest of the structure visible from where she was resting. Turning to Gertrude, Sunset prepared the translation spell…

Only to pause as she noticed an unfamiliar airship descending on them from above, Gertrude frantically pointing at it and trying to communicate with her. Facing the unfamiliar craft, at that moment she felt a sinking feeling in her guy, as the energy pulse began to fade away.

Author's Note

[1] In Space 1889, which also has Mars being equal in gravity to Earth, so obviously the ether isn't the only thing it changed.

[2] While Martian Liftwood is valuable for building flying ships, the flying groves of Mercury float due to strange buds on the bed of roots that they rest on, which lose their properties after only hours or days, making them useless for industrial use so far.

Alright, bit of a delay on this one, I ran into a bit of writers block and then got distracted on another (non MLP) fic for a while. I'm not going to claim I'll be able to get this on a regular update schedule in the future, but the next chapter won't take as long as this one did

Chapter 10

Sunset stood up next to Gertrude, watching as a few other humans approached them. For some reason, her companion was not very excited to see other members of her species, which worried Sunset. As they approached, Gertrude kept one of her hands inside her jacket, gripping something metal that she had kept there while glaring at the approaching group. Before Sunset had a chance to ask her what she was doing, the leader of the group spoke up in the strange language Gertrude called “English” that Sunset still could not understand after more than a month of trying. Ignoring the splitting headache and pain in her horn, she activated the translation spell, wincing a little as she felt a lance of pain through her forehead, which distracted her from the way the approaching group took a step back at the sight of her horn lighting up.

“Hello, nice to meet you, I’m-” She winced, the spell cutting out momentarily at the pain. Oh I messed myself up bad this time…

“-I’m Sunset Shimmer, nice to meet you.” She said, trying to put forward a friendly face as she worked through the pain, hoping that Gertrudes wariness towards the other humans was misplaced, because if this turned into a fight she was not going to be of any use whatsoever.

The leader spoke up in response. “Greetings, I am captain David Williamson, and these are my men. We were completing a circumnavigation of the planet when we found your camp back up the river, and when we read about a unicorn-”

“You read my journal?!” Gertrude asked accusingly.

“It was an abandoned half-finished cabin, we had every reason to assume whoever had built it was dead or had vanished into the wilderness.” He replied defensively.

“That’s fair.” Sunset said, cutting off Gertrude before she could say anything more. “Well, here I am, unicorn. There’s a lot more where I came from. Now, is this just a social call or…?”

Williamson’s men tensed up, and Sunset heard one of them muttering about “this cockamamy scheme” before he cut them off with a shake of his head. “I’m afraid not. You see, Miss Bell here-” the way Gertrude tensed up when he said her name did not fill Sunset with confidence, and the way the rest of the men shifted in response seemed to confirm that impression. “-has a father who is very interested in her return to England, and the return of the ship she stole. He was so interested in fact that he offered £10,000[1] for their safe return to him.”

The whole gathering went tense as he finished talking, the humans all staring at Sunset, Gertrude with hope, Williamson’s men with fear, and the captain himself with a calm and collected gaze as he continued to speak. “However, after that display earlier, I feel that coming into conflict over this issue could cause harm to myself and my men, and I would like to resolve this peacefully if possible.”

“You can go back to London and tell my father that I am never coming back!” Gertrude spat out, her face contorted with rage as she glared at the captain. Sunset however had a different reaction.

“Why tell us this? You could have just lied and tried to nab her while I was asleep or something.”

The captain shook his head. “After careful consideration we decided that deception was… less than likely to resolve this situation to both parties' satisfaction given the likelihood of failure that several men believed to be present.”

Sunset heard one of the men whisper something that sounded like “I ain’t lying to no fae beast, I know what they do to liars!” which just left her more confused. Fae beast? I’m pretty sure Gertrude said something about Fae earlier, but calling me a beast is just rude!

Williamson turned, fixing the man with a quick glare before looking back at her. “Regardless, although we do not wish to come into conflict on this matter, we must insist that Miss Bell return with us to her father. You may accompany us as well, if you are concerned for her safety.”

“I have little concern for my safety in your custody, “Gertrude replied, “however I must decline your offer to return me to London, and I must ask you to leave at once.”

“If you think we came all this way to-” One of the men began to shout before Sunset fixed him with a glare and Williamson cut him off.

“Miss, you don’t seem to understand our situation. Returning to Earth without you is a very good way for us to end up shamed and penniless as your father ensures we can never find work again, and as such I must insist that you come with us.”

Sunset blinked at the exchange, her mind racing as she worked through the headache. They need her to come back with them or her father will ruin them for failing, she will not go back and I would not want her to… looking down the hole, where the half-buried door was visible under a fresh layer of dirt that had slid down into the hole. Maybe there’s a solution here…

She turned back to the arguing humans as Williamson was talking. “Miss, you are allowing your emotions to cloud your judgement, think about the long term, Mercury is no place for a lady-”

“I’d rather die a free woman on Mercury than return to Earth and be married off to some barons son so my father can pretend to be a noble!”

Sunset cleared her throat, interrupting the argument. “Captain, Gertrude isn’t coming with you, end of discussion. However, I understand not wanting to go home as a failure, believe me. So, how about we redefine what success means?”

The captains eyes flicked over the Needle at her words, and she felt a small grin on her face as he asked “what do you propose?” He never wanted a fight, but came down here to talk anyway. Even if he didn’t plan for this specifically, he must have had the thought in his mind. She thought with a grin.

“Well, that obelisk behind us is an ancient artifact that emits a pulse of ma- thaumaturgical energy “she corrected herself, remembering at the last minute that the layponies term for their abilities translated into some sort of demon-worshipping nonsense in English “on a regular basis when the rest of the planet is nearly dry of it, that means that somewhere in there is something that could make whoever finds it famous.”

“...Famous enough, perhaps, that a certain industrialist muttering about how we failed would find himself spitting in the wind for all the good it does him.” The captain finished with a grin, confirming Sunset’s suspicions that he’d been thinking along those lines before she brought it up. “That is an intriguing offer, however there is little guarantee of success, and I am hesitant to risk everything with only a promise of payment.”

Sunset nodded, a grin spreading over her face as she remembered Gertrude sitting down with her to explain just how valuable the gems she had been using for magic batteries and other things were. Of course, losing one or two of her remaining gems would be a problem, but considering the alternative it was one she could work with. Burning through her a good chunk of her reserves, she pulled a single gem from her bags and tossed it at the humans. “If you’re willing to stick around for a few months after we’re done here, I can get a dozen or so more just like that one from my home.”

David Williamson was stunned yet again. It wasn’t enough that this unicorn had the power to toss around hundreds of pounds of soil like it was nothing, or that half of his men were convinced that she was a fairy from legend who would punish them if they lied, she also apparently had access to rubies the size of a small apple, perfectly cut and clear, shining in the low light of the eternal twilight. As he held it, he felt his men press around him, looking at the jewel in his hands as a smile formed on his face. “Well, I suppose we can work something out…” he said, still staring at the gem as his men nodded along with him.

Watching the men cluster around the gem and begin to whisper to each other, Gertrude rounded on Sunset. “What are you doing?! They came here to take me back to father, we can’t trust them!”

“Why not?” Sunset asked. “They don’t want to fight, I offered an alternative to make this trip worth it for them, and if they want any more gems like that one they need me to cooperate with them, since I’m the only one who knows how to tell when the portal is open.” [2] She told the Englishwoman with a shrug. “Sure, it’s not perfect, but this way we don’t go in there all by ourselves and get caught by a trap or anything. It’s a win-win, everyone gets something out of it, no one goes home empty-hooved!”

Gertrude found herself at a loss for words. She knew on an intellectual level that the society Sunset came from was different from her own, but the way the unicorn simply dismissed her concerns about the men in front of them like they were nothing showed her just how different they truly are. “Sunset, you can’t just trust a band of mercenaries you just met!”

Sunset cocked her head at her, confused. “Why not? We made a deal, if they break it they don’t get any more gems and have to fight me, and they seem afraid of me, so they really don’t have any reason to betray us now” she replied confidently. Before Gertrude could respond, Sunset winced in pain and ended the translation spell, giving her an apologetic sound in response. Sitting next to the unicorn, the young Englishwoman considered her words. As far as she could tell, there was nothing logically wrong with Sunset’s logic, but despite that she was uncertain about the men sitting down across from them, and resolved to keep a close eye on them.

Author's Note

[1] a little less than £1.3 Million or $1.6 million in 2020 money
[2] Sunset may have spent a long time sitting around doing nothing instead of mastering the high school social scene in this fic, but she still has enough talent to pull of something basic like "bribe them and promise more if they get you back home safe"

Alright, I just want to say right now, I'm sorry about this chapter. I had this big idea in my head, where there would be a confrontation between them and tension and the scene with the gem was a big show of how smart Sunset was for thinking of the mercenaries not as enemies to be overcome but as people who can be reasoned with, but no matter how many times I wrote and re-wrote the chapter it never worked out, so I eventually was left with this.

I'm publishing this right before packing to move back in with my parents, the Coronavirus BS killed my job hunt after graduation and I can't afford rent at my apartment without a job, so my life will be a bit messy for the next few days and I don't think I can devote more time to this story for a while. I'll try to give this chapter a re-write, expand some plot points, fix some errors, and so on once my life is stabler.

Thanks to everyone who reads, comments, and leaves likes on this story, it feels nice to see that people enjoy what I write, even if sometimes what I write isn't the greatest...

Chapter 11

Sunset Shimmer had not expected this when she had gone through that portal all those months ago. She had been planning to perform a great deed, to understand the magic that linked this strange new world to Equestria and prove that she was the greatest of her generation. Instead, she had spent months living in a low magic environment, scrounging for anything to help her survive as she slowly but surely adapted to the new world. That on its own had been a large enough obstacle to change every plan she had, on top of serving as a nice big humbling moment to cut down on her ego, but then she had stopped being alone.

First Gertrude Bell, a daughter of an industrialist fleeing an arranged marriage, had crashed her ship out of the sky and introduced Sunset to humanity, this strange species that walked on two legs and somehow lived their entire lives without using magic, at least openly, and had explored multiple worlds in this solar system. The two had become fast friends, mainly due to Sunsets loneliness causing her to stay near the human at all times and Gertrudes fascination with the unicorns stories causing her to not only accept the constant companionship but enjoy it. Of course, then they decided to investigate the mysteries of Mercury, encountering the mercenaries Mr. Bell had sent after his daughter, and convincing them that attempting to complete their task was a bad idea and that they would be much better rewarded by aiding the two in their expedition.

Which brought them here, with Sunset standing in a deep pit dug out by both muscle and magic, sighing as she shoved a pile of dirt to the side, pounding it down with her hooves clear the access into the dig site as she waited for the next pulse of thaumaturgical energy to give her the power to, once again, move a whole bunch of dirt out of the way to uncover the doorway into the mysterious metal obelisk before them. To the side, the mercenaries reinforced the hole, stopping dirt from sliding in and undoing her hard work as they talked amongst themselves about things she could not understand with the need to preserve every scrap of power. Gertrude paced the outside of the dig site, recording the excavation process on a pad of paper as she looked up at the towering monolith before them.

The Needles, the mysterious ring of metal obelisks that ringed the planet Mercury perfectly along the midline between the tidally locked worlds day side and night side, were the great mystery of Mercury, and as far as Sunset was concerned, uncovering their secrets was the key to understanding how a world with one side blistering hot and the other freezing cold all the time could possibly be suitable for pony or human life. However, despite their progress, the digging was slow with how buried the base of the monolith was.

It feels like we’ve been just digging away here for months. Sure, in the 15 minutes I get power every four hours I can talk to Gertrude and move dirt out of the way, but the rest of the time is literally just sitting around and waiting. This is getting so… aahhhh, it’s time. Sunset felt the first pulses of thaumaturgical energy begin to flow over her, the power absorbing into her body as she rose to her feet. Activating the translation spell, she called out. “Alright! Fifteen minutes people, show me where to move the dirt!”

The mercenaries captain turned away from his work, followed shortly by the rest of his men. “Lady Shimmer, we have two options for digging: either fully uncover the door or try to pry open the part we have uncovered and hope the dirt does not spill inside and block the passage.” He told her as they stepped to the edge of the dig site. “But we don’t know how tall the door is, and if we did we would be able to tell which option is superior.”

“Find how tall the door is, got it.” Sunset says, charging a spell as she slid down into the hole in the ground, grimacing as she slipped into a puddle of mud. This will all be worth it once I get inside… as long as I don’t break whatever’s in there by doing it. She thought as she walked up right to the edge of the uncovered portion of the doors, looking down and focusing as she gathered the energy for a spell.

With a blast of power, a clean line of dirt was shoved to the side, creating a thin triangle of air along the front of the door, which Sunset followed up with a light spell as she scanned the space. “The door doesn’t go much farther down!” She cried back. “We’ve got it about a third of the way uncovered right now.”

She saw the humans nod and begin to talk, the mercenaries drawing on experience working as manual labor for other mens excavation projects across the solar system. “Can you find the opening mechanism?” The ‘Irishman’ named Patrick yelled down to her. Pushing aside her curiosity about what an “Irish” was, Sunset nodded affirmative, causing the mercenaries and Gertrude to get excited, the lot of them sliding down into the dig and clustering around her.

“Alright… give me a moment…” Sunset gritted her teeth, maintaining a grasp on the handle as she held the dirt back from covering the door again. Oh this is difficult… and it’s locked… “No.” She gritted out through her teeth. “I’m not waiting hours to do this again, this door is opening!”

“Sunset, what are you-” Gertrude was cut off as the door shuddered, and from inside the sound of metal snapping could be heard by the gathered crowd, most of whom slowly stepped back at the reminder of Sunset’s power, something they were still uneasy about. However, that concern collapsed when the massive double doors, nearly three times the height of the tallest man, slowly slid inwards, splitting apart to reveal…

“Huh, I expected more.” Captain Williamson noted, looking into the undecorated, spartan chamber inside with a twinge of disappointment in his voice. Turning to Sunset, he said “I believe we could form a ramp out of the dirt down into the entrance, there are no artifacts I can see that would be covered.”

Sunset simply turned to him and gave him a tired look as she replied. “Yes, I already thought of that, and I realized that right now we are standing on the dirt that would be best used to make a ramp.”

“Ah… an astute observation.” Williamson notes as he steps back with Gertrude and his crew, watching as the unicorn slowly stepped back, releasing her grip on the dirt and watching as it slid down into the chamber, using a bit of intervention to smooth it out, make the slope shallower, and pack it down a bit to make it more stable, all tricks she had learned from experience digging this far down. Without waiting, she leapt down the ramp and into the base, grinning as she finally entered the structure. And now we finally get to see what makes this thing tick.

She heard the others scrambling down after her, and soon enough the five mercenaries, one woman, and a unicorn were all gathered in the center of the chamber, their path lit by the dim light coming in from outside. The chamber was vast and austere, forming a large square with the main area taken up by a large, flat space that was cleared of any sign of activity, while the back quarter consisted of a rectangular raised platform, completely vertical on the side facing the main door with three sets of stairs, one on each end and a third larger one directly in the middle. Just behind that set of stairs was a large doorway, their entrance into the rest of the structure.

“We’re inside, and that door…” she tested it magically, feeling the handle turn without resistance. “...is unlocked, so no pressure.” She turned to look at the gathered humans. The mercenaries were exhausted and dirty from the digging, and she knew from experience that when this pulse ended she would be just as exhausted as them with how much magic she slung around, so with a wistful look back at the door she shook her head. “We’re in no condition to go deep inside, especially if there are traps in there. Let’s take some time to eat and get some rest and I’ll store up as much thaumaturgical energy as I can for when we get inside.”

Expedition Log: Cycle 369

We have finally made it into the antechamber of The Needle, and it was much less impressive than everyone was anticipating, just a large, undecorated chamber with a raised platform at the back. Despite their wariness towards me whenever I use magic, the mercenaries (who are all male for some reason, something to do with humans' strange attitudes towards gender roles? Not important right now) are very talkative once they get a little bit of beer in them. Gertrude doesn’t approve, but Captain Williamson said it was a way to boost morale, and I think it worked.

Then their chef, who isn’t a dedicated chef, he also does other stuff because they don’t have the numbers to let one person do only one thing. Anyway, he’s named Daniel, he’s from somewhere called Scotland, and he cooked up a nice dinner for us all out of canned food and local plants. He didn’t enjoy the flowers I brought, even though I thought they were delicious, but some of the roots and berries I had identified as safe made their way into the meal, so I helped out a bit.

Look at me, rambling like this. I’ve been without company for so long that just having somepony… no, someone to talk to has made me all excited like a filly on her first day of class. “Dear Diary, today I made a new friend! We made soup together, and I showed him some tasty flowers!” Seriously, I think being without people to talk to for a while has had effects on me.

To get back on track, David Williamson has a very experienced crew, and listening to their stories has been informative about this strange place I traveled to. I’ve learned a lot about humans just from listening to them talk, and the stories they tell about their adventures are something else. Apparently before this they had just come back from an expedition deep into the deserts of Mars, journeying through “an ancient temple of some long dead religion”, which was interesting. It all sounds very adventurous, and at first I was slightly confused how a group of adventurers like them ended up being sent after Gertrude in the first place when he explained it to me.

[Flashback]

“Adventuring doesn’t pay, at least not consistently. Sure, every so often you hit paydirt, find an ancient artifact that’s worth a lot to a collector or the like, but day to day it’s a constant question of if you’re gonna make enough with each excursion to pay for the supplies and equipment you use. This job seemed perfect for us: a rich man wanted his daughter and the ship she took found, in exchange we got enough pounds to cover our expenses for the next five years.” He seemed a bit regretful as he shook his head. “We had no idea that the simple task would possibly turn out like this. If we receive the reward you promised though, then I will say it is completely worth it.”

Once he finished dispensing that sage wisdom, he retired for the “night”, because with the sun never moving nothing can ever be considered night on this planet, and I went back into Gertrude’s ship, watching as she locked the doors behind her and muttered about the mercenaries couldn’t be trusted. I tried to reassure her that they want the gems I promised them, and we’d need to go back to Equestria to get them, and at that point they won’t have the ability to make her do anything… but she still doesn’t trust them.

I know she knows other humans better than I do… but I still can’t help but think she’s overreacting. After all, the captain seems like a reasonable man, and he wants to be paid. Plus, we’re about to enter an ancient magical construct. If we can’t trust them to at least be greedy predictably, then this expedition is in trouble before it starts.

Hours passed by as the group slept, a constant watch up in case the Mercurian wildlife decided to interfere. After two more pulses, leaving her internal reserves feeling full and all her crystals nice and charged, Sunset was ready to go, joining the six humans who had gotten cleaned and fed during the break. They loaded up with supplies and equipment down in the antechamber, eyes adjusting to the dim light as lamps were lit and Sunset approached the smaller door to the inside.

I feel like I should make a speech… she thought but I have no idea what… ah heck with it, let’s go. “So, we’re here, we have no idea what’s inside that door other than it’s shooting off a magnetic and thaumaturgical pulse. If we figure it out, we have a decent chance of figuring out how Mercury is liveable at all. If there’s nothing else…” Her horn glowed and the door swung open. “... let’s get to work!”

As she stepped inside, the first thing that she noticed was how clean everything was. The walls had held up and the doors had kept out the dirt, leaving the inside barren. The glow of the lamps bounced off the walls, the flickering flame driving home just how smooth the walls were even after however long they had been abandoned. The passageway itself was wide enough for a human to stand on either side of her without issue as magical light was replaced by a lamp, allowing her to husband her reserves.

Captain Williamson took position to her right as Gertrude walked to her left, the humans both focusing on the walls around them. “This architecture seems strange, almost like many martian ruins, but more refined, cleaner.”

“That could just be the state of things.” Gertrude pointed out. “A corridor that is filthy and crumbling is hard to tell apart from one that is in good condition, which this appears to be…” She trailed off as she looked up, eyeing a pattern engraved along the top of the wall. “However, that raises a question: If the ancient martians had the ability to cross the ether to Mercury, why did they not also go to Earth, or Venus? Why stay on a dying world when they could leave?”

Sunset nodded along to those questions, her eyes darting back and forth as she listened for anything beyond the footsteps and voices of the group. “That is a good question. There are four worlds that your explorers have found that can support life, and if they could leave Mars, why not go to Earth? I’m not exactly an expert on human history, but I feel like things would be very different if they had.”

“You are both absolutely correct.” Williamson responded, raising an eyebrow at them as if surprised that a unicorn who had been taught magic since she could walk and a woman who had some of the best tutors a girl could receive could be so intelligent. “Which only adds to the mystery of this place, if the martians were here, why are they gone? If they could build something that lasts this long, why have the structures on their own homeworld not resisted the passage of time as well?”

As the captain asked his question, the party reached a split in the path, nearly like a T junction with themselves on the long end, but with the two arms curving, as if to form a massive circle. Directly in front of them was a large but nondescript door, and when it did not budge despite Sunset pressing it with her magic, the unicorn turned to the others and asked “alright, who knows how to pick a lock?”

“Well, let us search the rest of this floor before we go farther down, we don’t know what we could miss by going straight down.” Williamson suggested, causing Sunset to flush. Right, check everything before going forward, we are not in a time crunch here, it’s like a project back at school with a generous deadline, focus on every little detail. With that, they began to explore, confirming that the halls curving off from the intersection did form a circle as they searched the top level.

It wasn’t a very long search, as despite the floor being a circle with a radius of more than a hundred yards, every room, hallway, nook, and crevice was empty of any furnishings, artifacts, paintings, personal items, or any sign whatsoever that it had ever been inhabited by anyone. It was all very eerie, and the resident mechanic, a short man by the name of Thomas with a working class London accent, commented when they met back up at the door that “it’s cleaner up here than any bunkhouse or barracks I’ve ever seen, even when people leave there’s usually dents and scuff marks on walls, but here… there’s nothing.”

Sunset nodded at that, frowning a bit as she inspected the strange door and saw no sign of anything that looked like the locks back in Equestria. “That is strange… maybe we’ll find more answers through there. Not like we have anywhere else to go but outside.” She said, pacing back and forth in front of it as she pondered what to do. “Alright. I can use my reserves to help pry it open, it’s pretty solid though, so everyone should stand back…” She trailed off as she saw all the men scurry away in fear, reminded of the blast that had been their introduction to her less than a day before, frowning at that. I’m not scary, it’s just magic! If they think that was scary they should see Celestia raise the sun… oh wow I really need to convince them to come to Equestria for a day or two just to see the looks on their faces she thought with a grin as her horn lit up, power reaching for the door, pressing against it as she listened for signs of weakness…

“Ah ha!” She yelled, feeling the door give way and slide open, revealing a dark shaft inside that was soon lit by the lamps of the party. Looking through it, they saw a large shaft, the walls coated in symbols that were not merely painted on, but etched into the metal walls. Everyone present paused at the sight, the sheer amount of metal plating necessary to coat the entire shaft, which one of the men estimated as more than 30 yards across by chucking a rock he had carried in from outside to the other wall and seeing how long it took to strike. Peering down into the darkness, there was no sign of a bottom, only an empty space that looked like it was for a large elevator to carry large groups or heavy cargo down, although only dangling ropes that swayed in the breeze without any weight on them gave any clue as to where the lift had gone.

Staring down, Sunset put a hesitant hoof on the first step down the staircase, feeling the ancient metal underneath her. Gazing down at it, it was as she suspected, reinforced by magic. Turning back, she told the others “The stairs seem safe, let me check each step with my… abilities, but if the engravings keeping this thing running for so long have held on, then there’s no reason for these ones to not work.”

With that, the party began their trek down into the darkness, pausing at the next floor down and prying open that door, revealing an identical hallway that, as they explored, lead to a nearly identical floor. It was larger and had more rooms, with a radius perhaps 10% larger than the floor above it, but it was still empty, with nothing other than doors and walls, not even the dirt covered windows the outer levels of the first floor had had, implying that it was built underground to start. The only extra detail was a second, larger circular hallway that ran approximately where the wall of the first floor was, with the added space on the outside of that circle.

The next floor down was more of the same, another ten or so yards larger radius, with the inner circular hallway around the shaft, the outer one at the first floor edge, and more rooms around it. After that, looking down, the decision was made to work their way to the bottom and see if it was more of the same, and so they did, stopping only to check each door at each landing they encountered, finding identical hallways or rooms of some sort, some of which even had windows looking out into the shaft. All of them shared the same empty, unfurnished look, smooth bare concrete that was still in one piece due to the intervention of maintenance enchantments.

To distract from the near omnipresent darkness around them, some of the crew began discussing the topic of where the builders of this place had gone again. “At least if the martians made this thing, we would know where they are and what they’re doing now.” One of the crewmembers, a tall tanned man named Jacob whose hair had been bleached by the sun during his years on Mars. “If someone other than the martians built this, then we have no idea where they are, or what they’re doing now.”

Gertrude pondered those words and nodded, looking at Sunset and asking “Sunset, you are certain they could not have gone through to your world, correct? Your homeland certainly seems more enticing to a culture that uses thaumaturgical energy than this place is.” She asked as the party continued to walk down the stairs.

“The portal here was created by one of Equestria's finest wizards, and after he scouted it out he had it sealed away in the royal palace. It cannot have been used to move the people who built this, not without leaving some record, and I read his notes before I came here.” Sure, I skimmed to the most interesting sections because I had limited time, but I would have noticed an entire civilization of people with abilities like that, and someone would have made a note of them coming out through the royal archives Sunset thought to herself, deciding that those details were not important to share at the moment.

Gertrude and the others accepted her response as the party continued to walk down the stairs, pausing on a regular basis to inspect the various levels and small chambers accessible from the main shaft. They were all stripped bare, with nothing that could serve as a sign of what they were for left behind. As they finished inspecting yet another empty room, Sunset shook her head and turned to Captain Williamson. “Hey, is this… normal? No furniture, no storage rooms, just empty room after empty room as we get closer to the bottom?”

The captain pondered for a moment. “Well, if the place had been looted for valuables and scrap material, I could see the rooms being this clean… but these doors are solid, good quality metal just like the rest of the interior shaft, with the corridors and rooms lined with solid concrete that is in superb condition. If there were scavengers coming by, why have some of their more desperate members not squatted here and made a living? They would have had to have a way into the structure in order to scavenge the furnishings, and although the water is a bit brackish, it’s also full of fish with fertile soil and a good supply of timber along the banks. I have seen squatters make due with far less over my career.”

“Does that not provide evidence that whoever was here last left for a reason? Combined with the reports of the last explorer to enter these tunnels, we should be incredibly cautious.” Gertrude pointed out, drawing affirmative murmurs from the men and Sunset.

“Quite right Miss Bell, but we are professionals, so between our experience, Sunset’s abilities, and your… enthusiasm, we have a far better chance than a single individual delving into matters he did not understand.” Williamson replied, and although Gertrude felt a wave of indignation at the way he phrased that sentence, she could not deny that he had a point. She was mainly here because she wanted to go on an adventure and had been able to steal a ship to get here, but that didn’t mean she’d be very useful if they ended up in a fight.

With every step down into the darkness, the party became more on edge. Sunset could hear murmurs from the back, as some of the men wondered to each other if following her into “the depths of hell” was a smart idea, while the flickering lamps and the soft glow of her magic as she tested each and every step and landing cast a flickering light through the large, empty shaft, reflecting in strange colors off the dim and inactive runes surrounding them. At times, some men wanted to turn back, or take a while to explore each floor, but Sunset disagreed.

“There is something at the bottom, I don’t know how…” She gazed downwards, the low light meaning they could be as close as two stories or as far as two hundred and she would be unable to tell. “... but I just look at these runes, at this construction, and it seems almost familiar… like someone used some of the same rules of magic as Equestria, but in a completely different way, for something none of us ever thought about needing. Just looking at the runes tells me nothing, it could take weeks of watching them while active to just figure out the basis of the system they are using, but if my hunch is correct…” she took yet another step down, feeling more and more confident in her decision as she did. “Then this is where we need to go.”

As she finished her impromptu speech, she noticed a strange flicker below them, not along the edges like light reflecting off the wall or staircase, but in the vast darkness they were slowly circling. Biting her tongue in case it was just her eyes playing tricks on her, she took another few steps, but after another ten stairs down, the light of the lamps was beginning to fully illuminate the ground below, smooth and solid like the walls.

Gertrude looked ahead, staring at the massive double height doors before them. “What will we find now that we’ve reached the bottom?” She asked.

Williamson stepped forward, closely inspecting the door to admire the craftsmanship of its construction. “We discover what was so important that whoever built this place put it all the way down here. Beyond what Miss Shimmer said, from my personal experience I have found that the types of people to build vast underground structures tended to also place the most valuable, and most dangerous, of their artifacts and belongings at the bottom for some reason, let us hope that the similarities with the martians hold true.” [1]

As he pressed the door, it gently slid, surprising everyone both with how well balanced the massive metal entryway was, and with the fact that unlike the very top, the door was completely unlocked. “Now that’s peculiar, why would they lock the top but not the bottom…” He wondered as he pushed the door open cautiously, his men, along with Sunset and Gertrude, standing ready for action… only to find nothing.

At this point, the disappointment and other stresses were beginning to wear thin on everyone’s nerves. “Why did we even come here if there’s nothing?” A voice muttered from the men, who voiced similar thoughts about the pointlessness of this. No valuable items, no ancient manuscripts, nothing but empty rooms and a freaky set of runes that none of them knew the first thing about.

As they grumbled, Sunset looked around, a bad feeling in her gut. The runes are powered by something, something that has to be nearby, but… “this doesn’t make any sense,” she proclaimed out loud, cutting off the discontent as she walked through the hallway at the base, kicking in a door only to find nothing, yet again. “The Needles are the source of the magic that is making this planet livable, so where is that magic coming from?” At this point she was beyond caring about the humans issues with the word magic, she was far too focused. “If it was a high magic environment then those runes would be fine on their own, the system would passively absorb all the energy it needed, but nothing we’ve seen makes any sense in a low magic environment like this. There has to be a source, something feeding energy into the system to let it run, but there’s no connection… unless it’s buried under the floor?”

As she casted spells on the floor, searching for something that could serve as a connection between whatever power source existed and The Needle itself, she was even more confused. Gertrude stepped forward, resting a hand on her shoulder as she said “Sunset, it’s alright. We’ll figure it out, just… let us remain calm.” She said, pointedly looking at the men who were agitated by the overt and increasingly bright magic glowing off the Unicorns horn as she searched.

Captain Williamson coughed into his hand to draw attention. “Yes, well… I personally agree with the sentiment, we must remain calm and keep our wits about us.” He began to give a speech, the type of inspirational monologue that inspires men to remain loyal through hardships and trials of the worst sort.

Sunset did not care, she could not understand any of it as the translation spell was cut off, all her energy pouring into demanding answers. This makes no sense! It’s like there’s two systems, The Needle starting in the shaft, and this other one that feeds energy into it. But why build two instead of connecting them, and why do all the thaumaturgical pathways end with no reason… oh no.

She felt the hum in the air, the gentle thrum of power coursing through her signifying a return of magic to the air, even as the realization hit her. “It’s broken.”

Those words cut through the captains speech, silencing everyone as she turned to Gertrude. “How long until the next scheduled pulse?”

“Sunset what do you mean-”

“How. Long?” Sunset gritted out the words, not caring that Thomas had his gun out, terror in his eyes at the shift in her demeanor while he muttered to himself in fear.

Gertrude checked her watch quickly. “Approximately two minutes.” She answered, and the sinking feeling in Sunsets gut turned into a bottomless pit. The schedule had never been more than 10 seconds off their entire time observing it, and despite that, as power flooded into the air around her, she had final confirmation of what was happening. “Sunset, what are you talking about, how is it broken?” Gertrude’s question snapped her back to reality.

“The Needle is broken, and unless we’re really lucky, every single other one is to.” She forced the words from her mouth. “It should be one system, power goes into the runes, powers them up, it all works… but it’s not, it’s broken, and so the energy doesn’t flow, it stays, like there’s a dam in the way, but then it… overflows the dam.” She strained the metaphor, hoping her words made sense to the humans listening. “And that sends energy into the environment around it, deep underground where the base of The Needle picks it up, shunting it upwards in a pulse. But it drains the energy that has built up, once the gap between energy in the system and the environment is bridged… it’s like the dam crumbles, and it all just flows out, some going to The Needle, some to enchantments on this level, and most… into whatever else is nearby until it is drained, and the dam is rebuilt.”

Those words got a reaction from every human present as Sunset felt the magic levels rise far above anything she’d felt since leaving Equestria, the air full of power as her body thrummed with energy as if she’d just woken from the best nights sleep of her life. Gertrude did not look so good, her face pale as she asked “Sunset… what will that mean for us?”

“I don’t know, I never studied what happens when someone with no magic is just surrounded by it…” Sunsets mind brought up the story of the explorer who had entered the tunnels below another Needle, barely making it out before dying. “Oh no.”

Like a wave crashing over them, she felt the last restraint on the outflow of magic give way, swamping the room. She had no idea how much energy was in the air, only that it was far, far more than anything she’d ever felt in her time in Equestria. As the magic rolled over the humans, they all felt as their body absorbed the strange energy, interacting with their biology in wildly different ways that left them in varying states of distress. Gertrude’s pale face went white as she nearly collapsed, while Captain Williamson doubled over and began dry heaving as he fell to his knees.

Patrick, the short Irish human, simply began babbling in a language that neither Sunset or any of the others could understand, tears streaking down his face as he slid down the wall, clutching his knees. Jacob, the rough and tanned veteran of years on Mars, reacted the “best” of the humans, cursing loudly and watching as magic burst from his palm before crossing himself and muttering prayers for his soul.

To the side, The groups chef, a burly scotsman named Daniel, clutched at an old scar on his shoulder he’d acquired in a bar fight nearly twenty years ago, the old wound burning as magical energy flowed into it and “healed” him… the sheer force of the healing doing more damage to him, which it then healed in turn, causing him to feel that his whole body was aflame. Finally, Thomas the mechanic for some reason lasted a bit longer than his companions. Watching as they all succumbed to the wave of magical sickness, he panicked. His pistol had already come out and been trained on Sunset from earlier, but he had stopped pointing it at her when she had explained herself. Now though, the same fear, a deep instinctive fear of seeing his comrades fall ill around him, mixing with a cultural fear of magic and all involved with it, took over.

“You fairy witch! You’re doing this!” He screamed, fear and confusion in his voice as he reacted by instinct. A shot rang out, and Sunset flinched as she realized the impact had never come. Blinking once, twice, then a third time, she met Thomas’s eyes as his terror took over, joining Patrick in babbling nonsense, although where Patrick was at least speaking a real language, he simply spewed nonsense as he looked at her, fear filling his every movement. Looking at herself, Sunset realized why. The bullet was glowing as she held it in midair, having not even realized she was doing it as instinct had taken over, fueled the excess magic in the air flowing into her, and as she dropped the bullet to the ground she could feel the magic cleaning up her old leg wound and dozens of other bruises and scrapes.

That… he tried to hurt me, but I caught it! I wonder if that proves the theory that magic passively improves reflexes... but that’s not important right now… she looked over the gibbering human he’s barely capable of thinking right now, so I take away the gun and get to work, if he still wants to hurt me when he’s sane again that’s a different story, but for now I have bigger problems. Such as how much magic is in the air right now? It has to be at least ten times the Equestrian Baseline, more likely twenty or more… her mind ran through the possibilities as she casually snatched the gun away from Thomas, along with all the other guns everyone was holding or had dropped, and watched them fall ill and freak out, even the best of them clearly in pain from the interaction of a low magic body and an incredibly high magic environment. Gertrude, the woman who had broken her monotonous existence as a loner on this world, opening her eyes to the wonders she was missing out on in her fear of not being present the next time the portal opened or of dying to some random monster, was hyperventilating on the ground, with the mercenaries, men who she still didn’t like all that much, but still people, laying on the ground in various forms of distress, their reward for willingly (if with some convincing) following her on this mad expedition down into a place she knew was dangerous but was convinced they could handle…

Guilt and terror washed over her as she pried through her mind for every spell she could think of to figure out what was going on with them. Yet again, the memory of the human explorer who had died flashed through her mind, and she began wondering if it was the initial surge of magic that killed him… or the sudden lack of it right as his body was adapting.

Whichever it was, she had to figure out how to help them survive, and she had to do that sometime in the next 15 minutes before this pulse of energy ran dry.

Author's Note

[1] Because Space 1889 is a Role Playing Game, there are lots of ancient ruins that follow the rule of "the deeper you go the better the loot"

So, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry, to all my readers, I hit massive writers block with this chapter. I had the vague outline ready for months now, but I kept tweaking and adding on and it slowly kept growing and growing as I realized that I needed to add more and more to make what I had planned make sense. But after all that, I can confidently say that I have gotten this thing done.

It's ready to go, prepared to publish, all that, and I hope you all enjoy it. I won't make any promises on a solid update schedule until I've got another chapter or two out, but I am aiming for once every two weeks on Friday or Saturday.

Chapter 12

So… exploring ancient ruins is dangerous. I knew that, and yet… Sunset Shimmer looked around at the humans laying on the floor, convulsing in a weird mix of pain and relief as the overly saturated magic in the air flowed through their bodies. … and yet I did not expect this. I honestly can’t tell why I didn’t, I spent so much time trying to figure out how this planet works, and going over how magic could play a role, it was downright stupid of me to not think about something like this!

Ok, think, I need to make sure the humans don’t die. First because it would be morally wrong, and secondly because they are literally the only people on this planet for hundreds of miles and I am allowed to be greedy and I need to focus! She moves over to the still form of Gertrude, the heiress shivering as if she was in a snowstorm, her skin pale as sweat dripped down her brow. Alright… I don’t know much about human medicine, but color changing and not being able to talk or stand are probably bad signs… Sunset mused as she leaned down, casting a healing spell on the woman…

Only for Gertrude to jerk back as if she’d been hit. Pushing the spell away, Sunset grimaced, trying to consider what the heck she could do to fix this mess. Alright, so, magic is causing their bodies to react, but magic healing isn’t helping. And, according to a story I am hearing third-hoove, it is possible that the magic going away in less than fifteen minutes will kill them, somehow, not really sure on the details there, but point is that’s a problem, and I need to figure out how the magic is effecting them…

Looking down at the human woman, Sunset frowned as she realized that she didn’t have time for anything fancy. “Gertrude, if you can hear me… this is going to hurt. Sorry.” She said, her horn lighting up again as she prepared to cast a spell that would trace the flow of magic through the humans body. Nearly immediately, she saw Gertrude seize up in pain, and as the spell worked its way through her body, she saw why.

Every part of her is observing magic like a sponge absorbing water, and it’s like… it’s like her body is healing itself, but it’s overhealing with the excess power, and each overhealing causes it to heal itself again, but that causes more… it’s like she’s literally being ripped apart and stitched together, all over her body. And if the magic cuts out… then she won’t be able to heal the damage anymore.

Sunset stepped back, frowning at the realization of just how messed up her friends body was. Well, at least now I know what is causing the damage, and what will… kill them… if I don’t stop it. That’s more than I knew a minute ago. Now, I could wait till the magic dries then use my own reserves to heal each of them… no, with how extensive the damage is, even with gems to hold the extra power it won’t be enough, and what if there’s some other factor, like they get hit with shock from suddenly losing magic and that exacerbates the issue? Just because the human in the story made it out alive, that doesn’t mean they will… worrying won’t help, I need to act, now!

Pacing back and forth, she traced the flow of the magic through the ground beneath her, pulling on the power in the air to rip up solid stone flooring and reveal vast, intricate networks of carved ley lines, gems glowing with magical power, metals of all colors, all designed and operating as one to flood the air with magic. If I had time, I could spend literal years studying this runic network… it’s so different from any in Equestria, which makes sense if it was devised by a completely separate race with no connection to us but… no, focus! She scowled at her wandering mind as she traced the flow to where it left the enchantments and entered the air. In a vast circle, stretching from around the base of the massive shaft as far as she could detect, Sunset felt a huge, irregular break in the flow, and uncovering it she saw the problem.

A vast, twisted array of metal, stone, and gems greeted her, and she could see magic literally flowing out of one of the connections, taking on the appearance of a rainbow before dissipating into the air. That sight brought a smile to her face, not for how pretty it looked, but for what it represented. Her horn alight, she ripped chunks of gem and metal out of the ruined connecting area, grabbing the humans telekinetically and pulling them into a 10 yard diameter circle on the floor, peppering gems around the outside and connecting one edge of the circle to the gem leaking a rainbow.

Here’s hoping this works. She thought, and with a massive push of power, the spell circle she had created around them thrummed to life.

David Williamson had been through many perils in his life. From escaping the slave dungeons of the citadel of Kraag Barrovar on Mars to a perilous three weeks dodging French gendarmes while attempting to extract a prominent member of a “smuggling ring” that Her Majesty's government took far to much an interest in for him to believe that the man only smuggled goods, he had fought and escaped numerous deadly situations. And so, when he woke up, his body feeling like it was inflamed as his stomach fought to reject his last meal and his head on the verge of splitting open, instead of giving a pithy one-liner like so many amateurs would, inspired by those ridiculous stories that were all the rage back home, he simply opened his eyes a little at a time as he fought to remember how he ended up here.

The sight of the orange unicorn tending to his men jogged his memory relatively quickly, and after he took a few moments to watch and ensure she was not harming his men, he began testing his weakened body, pulling himself upright, the effort causing him to moan with pain.

The Unicorn… Sunset’s head whipped around to see him, and he was taken aback when she… smiled? What the f-

“It worked!” She cried, which did not answer any of his questions.

“Ah… considering how I feel, I am afraid to ask what ‘it’ was if this qualifies as a success.” The mercenary captain replied, finally having pulled himself to a sitting position. We were discussing The Needle, she said it was broken, and then… oh.

“Well, you’re alive, and if you wait just a moment I’ll see about making sure you stay that way.” Sunset chided him as she finished inspecting his men, doubling back to the still form of Miss Bell, who she stood over like a protective guard dog. “And… if I’m being honest, I don’t know if it actually worked. We have about three more minutes before the pulse ends, and while I hope what I’ve done will keep us from running out of ma- thaumaturgic energy, well…” she shrugged at him, causing him to once again marvel at how human her body language was. “The only way to know for certain is to test.”

David took a moment to ponder that as her horn lit up, enveloping him in a warm glow that reduced the pain and weakness he felt across his body. With a sigh of relief, he looked at her and asked “well, for those of us who are not experts in thaumaturgy, would you mind explaining the basics of why that was necessary?”

She nodded. “In very simple terms, for ponies like me, that energy that hit you is part of our lives from the very beginning, so as we grow all the minor issues are passively healed by it. You didn’t have that, so when the energy entered your bodies, it interacted with them weirdly, trying to heal you but messing up, overdoing it, healing things that didn’t need to be healed, and… well, healing something the wrong way or to much can be like injuring it, so that made it heal more. This was made a lot worse by the sheer amount of energy you were absorbing, and it was to the point where if the magic got taken away, which it would have, your bodies would be… messed up, to put it mildly.”

“Well that sounds... unpleasant.” David responds, taking a moment to consider her words. “And now?”

Sunset gestures around, letting him see the circle they are surrounded by. Glowing crystals, each the size of his fist or even bigger, filled the perimeter, as smaller ones were physically embedded into the floor in the middle. “The circle let me taper off the amount of energy inside it, which let your bodies still heal without overshooting and making it worse. At that point, you all passed out, so I grabbed energy from outside the circle and did a basic controlled healing of all of you, although if you woke up hurting then apparently I need to do some more… but the point is, I hopefully figured out how to prevent you from dying… as long as you stay inside the circle until the outside is less dangerous, and as long as the little modification I made to the system beneath us to keep this circle powered holds out when the pulse ends, because otherwise you… well you might be fine now after being healed, although I should try more…”

“I see.” He replied, taking in her long, rambly explanation. Less than 24 hours ago, I was thinking of her as some inscrutable, fae-like creature, and now… well, now she seems more human than many of the men I’ve worked for in my life. I never expected a unicorn saving my life with magic and then going on a speech explaining her magic to make her seem more human, but we do live in strange times I suppose. “So, with that said and done… is there anything else to do but wait?”

Sunset paused for a moment after casting a healing spell over a nearly comatose Patrick, the Irish man relaxing and sighing as he started to recover. “Well… I guess so. The big problem is more of a long term thing…” She said, averting her gaze as if embarrassed.

Raising an eyebrow curiously, David looked over at her. “Something we need to be concerned about?”

The unicorn continues her sweep through the group, the next round of healing leaving all the men, as well as Miss Bell, in a calm slumber, no more signs of pain in the way they laid. “Well, to be honest, I might have torn up and modified a piece of an unfathomably ancient magical construct that had miraculously been continuing to function for thousands or millions of years to make this work, and that sounds impressive but I’m just kind of waiting for it to break and leave us back where we started or worse.” She admitted, which did not put either of their minds at ease.

An uncomfortable silence filled the air as the watch clicked down, both keenly aware of the risks that any part of the ramshackle magic circle they were inside. Looking around, Captain Williamson felt a wave of emotion come over him, letting out a wordless sound of frustration at just how helpless he was to escape. With everything he had gone through in his life, the lack of control was frustrating for him, and he silently swore If I make it out of this, I need to figure out how this thaumaturgy works. Not in the way the boffins back home will pick it apart and write about, but in ways that will let me figure out ways out of messes like this…

He was snapped out of his thoughts by Sunset as she tensed, looking over the group as a strange sound filled the air, as if the entire structure around them was letting out a deep, rumbling sigh. Sunset’s eyes widened as she listened, her horn glowing in the manner that showed she was using her thau- Her magic, I can at least be honest to myself about the abilities. She claims no connection to the devil, and I see no reason to not believe her, however she clearly uses magic. And has used it to save my life. The least I can do is not insult her by engaging in base superstition…

Sunset let out a sigh of relief as the rumbling noise came to an end, cutting off David's thoughts. “Well… how are you feeling now?” She asked, walking through the circle as if feeling the air. “There’s been a big reduction in energy in the air, and… well, it seems like you’re not dying.”

“I… yes, that is the important part of this situation.” David acknowledges, feeling a wave of exhaustion coming on as if the energy in the air was actually what had been keeping him going. Slumping forward, he nearly falls asleep before he feels a warmth coat him, opening his eyes to see Sunsets healing him. “Ah, I take it that was the result of the energy reduction?”

“Yeah,” Sunset replies as she works over the rest of the sleeping humans, her stance tiring w. “But… well, I don’t exactly know about the long term effects that sort of thing can have on someone, since… well, no one knows how humans respond to magic in their bodies. It would, if you were from Equestria, balance itself out and leave you healthier than when we came down here, but I have just absolutely no idea if that’s how humans deal with magic, and then there’s the issues I may have caused with the workings of the enchantments down here and…” She shrugs, a nervous look on her face as she ponders the possibilities.

David looks over at her, an eye raised as a simple thought runs through his mind. Her skills with magic saved our lives and may do so in the future, therefore the best thing to do is to keep her calm and rational. Panicked men make mistakes, and I would bet anything that the same is true for unicorns. “Is there anything we can do now about all that?” He asks, causing Sunset to stop short and ponder the question for a moment before shaking her head.

“No, it seems like the enchantment system is stable enough as is, and until the others wake up…” as soon as the words left her mouth a loud, piercing siren cut through the air, causing David and Sunset to both cover their ears. Looking down, the mercenary captain clinically noted that the other humans were waking up as the sound continued. They were simply in a deep slumber? Well now I feel foolish for not attempting to wake them earlier. He thought as he moved over to his men, inspecting them as Sunset checked on young Gertrude.

Looking them over, he felt relieved as many of the men reported no major injuries or pain, and sighed with relief as he verified that there were no outward signs of harm. Turning to Sunset, he paused when he saw the look on her face.

“What is wrong?” he asked her, and at her confused look he clarified. “Miss, you may not be human, but I recognized that look. That was the look of someone who wants to scream ‘run’ but knows no matter how fast we are we’ll never escape what is coming. Well, I’ve seen it on men before, and I’m still alive, so I know those situations are survivable.” He told her, adding the last part mostly for the benefit of the crew's morale, as it was in truth a not entirely accurate statement.

Sunset appeared to believe his words, taking a deep breath and looking over the humans with a critical eye before speaking. “To save your lives, I broke the magic system here. I hoped it was minor, but with how loud and annoying that alarm is…” A pulsating high note came through the steady background level of the alarm, drawing their attention just as they were able to start tuning it out. “It’s possible that alarm isn’t as bad as it sounds!” She says, clearly not believing it much herself. “But if it is, and if I’m right that these Needles are linked into the planet itself and how it functions… then we’re in a lot of trouble, and possibly the whole planet is.” She says bluntly, biting her lip as her mind runs through options to get them out of this mess.

“Well… what do we do now?” Patrick asks, the young irishman clearly antsy about the situation. Sunset looks at him, blinking rapidly.

“Unless you figured out how to do magic in the last few minutes… but even if you knew Equestrian enchantments you would still be on the same level as I am, able to see some of what this thing is doing but not enough to figure it out, and because I can’t figure it out we’re all going to die-”

“What are the enchantments in this place?” Gertrude asked, causing all eyes to turn to her as everyone wondered, but only Sunset asked aloud, What does that have to do with anything? “Humor me Sunset, this has a point.”

“These enchantments… they’re patterns and lines carved into solid rock, metal, and crystal, and what they’re carved in and what the pattern is means something, but I have no idea what beyond ‘this magic goes here’ and I need to decipher the patterns… myself…” She trails off as Gertrude raises a finger and points out of the circle to an uncovered part of the enchantments, where dim but visible magical energy runs along the grooves and curves.

Realization dawns on the unicorns face. “And you can see the magic flowing through the patterns… and the carvings, and the metal, and crystals… which means you can see as much of it as I can as long as it’s active… and now that I broke it so power is always flowing out into this circle, it’s staying active.”

David gets it second. “Which means this isn’t a one-unicorn job anymore, we can all put our heads together to figure out what is what here.” He said with a grin, exhilarated at the prospect of no longer being a helpless bystander reliant on someone else. Sure, playing ‘figure out the enchantments’ isn’t the most glamorous work, but it beats sitting on our arses and waiting for a unicorn to save us!

Sunset looks at him and nods. “Yes… but if any of your men feel ill, get them back to the circle here, or call for help, and I’ll try to heal them. Otherwise… well, we’ve got an entire floor to tear up, a massive amount of enchantments to look over and decode, and an alarm that might mean things are going to get bad at any moment.”

“What, is that all?” David asks sardonically.

“Well, keep in mind captain this is only my first time on one of these adventures. One must not get into too much danger during ones first time” Gertrude points out, causing Sunset to laugh as David tips his nonexistent hat in recognition of the verbal riposte.

Sunset interrupted before either of them could say another word. “If you want to talk about how easy it is, first you should do a bit of work!” She says, leaping forward and tearing up sections of the floor with magic to reveal the enchantments underneath, the others following her out. The humans felt woozy as they left the circle, but they had been in a moderate magic environment long enough that their bodies were not at risk of death, and they quickly went to work doing the same thing with muscles, eyes, and notepads marking all of the patterns in the ground.

Looking out over them, Sunset let out a sigh. Well, it could be worse. I could have not saved their lives and messed up The Needle… but for some reason I don’t think this is going to be all that easy… She thought, feeling the sheer size of the power reserve they were dealing with. Pushing those negative thoughts to the side, she got back to work. A planet (might) be counting on me, no time to get cold hooves!

Author's Note

So, guess whose brain was acting up and really wanted to do a loredump on the Space 1889 universe and how I'm fitting the strange stuff in it with magic from MLP? This guy!

I am restraining my inner infodumper and technobabbler, but it is hard, I personally actually really like exposition in stories, and only my knowledge that a lot of people only like it when it fits properly into the narrative keeps me from just dumping it mid chapter. Hopefully once the action is done, I'll be able to write more parts of Sunset talking to humans about this universe and them learning about her homeland, and I will be able to satiate the exposition monster burning in my chest to be released. Until then, I hope everyone enjoys this arc, we're a couple chapters away from finishing it, and things are going to calm down then... after getting a lot higher paced for a bit.

Chapter 13

Sunset Shimmer took a brief moment to reflect on the choices that had brought her here. First, I was arrogant enough to think I could ascend to being an alicorn by just exploring another world, then reality hit, then I met some humans… and promptly went and led them into a trap because I was convinced that I could handle this, no big deal. She looked around, watching as the magic flowed through the uncovered patterns on the ground, the humans she was stuck here with doing their best to map out the flow alongside her. At least I didn’t tell them to sit back and let me handle the magic myself like I wanted, then we’d all be doomed. As it is though…

“Has anyone found something new?” She called out, eyes sweeping the flow of magic as she telekinetically jotted down notes on a small piece of paper. A chorus of no’s and not yets came back, and she sighed with frustration, working harder as she tried to determine what exactly was the cause of the massive alarm that continued to blare out. In many cases, she would have been fine leaving this place behind, letting the alarm blare, and returning later with more notes, maybe even a full team of experts from Equestria once the portal was opened… but the fact that this massive magical construct, a spire of metal filled with enchantments that pulsed magic out into the environment, was likely part of the reason the planet they stood on had air that could be breathed, water that could be drunk, and plants that could be eaten…

Leaving to try another day doesn’t seem like a very good idea for this situation. She mused, returning to her work for another few moments before a voice rang out. “Miss? I think I found something.” And with that, it seemed like everyone paused. Rushing over, she found the humans chef Daniel standing over a large crystal, far from the center of the intricate pattern of enchantments. This crystal was, like many others, sending out constant streams of magic from within itself, but unlike the others there was no sign of where the magic came from, only a bright glow coming from deep within. “Pretty sure this is where it’s coming from, at least in this part.”

Sunset nodded in agreement. “Yes, it looks like it… I have no idea how it does that though, so let’s not mess with it, but now that we have a full map of the path the energy takes between the source and The Needle itself…” she trailed off as Daniel shook his head.

“Didn’t map the path, figured you all were working out from the middle, so I came out here to find the end and work in towards you.” He admits, deflating Sunset’s excitement just a bit.

“Well… that’s still good, now we all know about how far away we need to be looking to find the end.” She says, scanning over the cluster of humans. “We’re making progress, and the alarms haven’t got worse, so we’re doing fine, we just need to get back to work!” Sunset tells them.

The mercenaries accepted that readily and got to work, with Captain Williamson seeing her surprise and chuckling. “Miss, we’re used to being trapped in dangerous situations. The scale is a bit beyond our experience, but in this case we have an actual unicorn helping us survive, so I would say that, in the balance, this isn’t all that worse than some of our previous scraps.” He told her with confidence. As the others went back to work, leaving him and her as the only ones in earshot, his voice got a bit lower. “Although I am concerned about the men, morale is not exactly high, and many of them still feel sick from their condition, despite your healing.” He confided.

“I know, and I’m starting to worry. We might have to start sending small groups back to the camp for water and so they can rest away from the constant alarms, but we don’t exactly have many people to start with… this would be a lot easier if there were more people here.” Sunset admitted, casually trying to trace the flow of the magic from origin to end, noting the sheer number of branches would make properly mapping out the flow take far, far too long.

Williamson nodded, but before he could reply, Gertrude came over from where she was working. “Sunset, we’re not going to get much done if we keep working at this rate, there’s just too much and… well, we’re getting off track.” She said bluntly. “Right now we’re trying to figure out the patterns in the enchantments that remain, but why?”

“Because we can’t just go around and try to fix something without knowing what it does.” Sunset replied, tilting her head curiously. “Otherwise we could make this even worse.”

“Yes, but think about it, the damage isn’t in the parts we’re working over, they’re in the parts that are busted. Is what we’re doing helping us repair those parts?” Gertrudes question cut through Sunset’s thoughts, and she did not like the implications.

“Well, it must.” Williamson said. “If we understand the basics of how these enchantments work, then we could be able to replace the missing ones, and then… well, perhaps then we might be able to fix this mess, and stop worrying about the planet dying underneath us.” He insisted. “Otherwise… well, otherwise we are in for a lot of trouble.”

“Yes, I don’t deny that, but stating that something must be useful because if it is not we are in trouble is not logically consistent. We need to figure out something that actually helps, not just hope that our first instinct was correct.”

“I understand your point Gertrude, but there actually is a reason we’re doing this.” Sunset spoke up. “The fact is, Captain WIlliamson is right, we do need to understand the basics before I can try to fix this damage. The main problem is that… well I don’t know enough to know what is wrong here, so I can’t try to start fixing it yet. I mean, yes there’s a massive ring of damage around the base where magic flows into The Needle directly, but what caused it? If we reconnect it, will whatever caused the first break happen again? Or will it work? Can we take the chance and try to jury-rig a connection, and if we do, what do we use?” The unicorn shook her head, sighing as she looked over the enchantments leading into the center. “We just don’t know what to do…”

With that, the trio stood around uncomfortably for a moment before dispersing, returning to their tasks as they searched for answers in the intricate and well-crafted runes below their feet (and hooves). After a few hours, the humans and one unicorn gathered around, the constant ringing of alarms having shifted into basically being background noise for them at this point.

As the little circle discussed what they had found, notes were shared, and as the picture of the situation formed in Sunset’s mind, she couldn’t help but feel that she was looking at something familiar. The sources are in a circle, with major channels flowing from them inwards through a series of enchantments that change the color of the magic, split it from one channel to multiple, recombine it… all sorts of effects. There are also these side channels, letting magic from one source flow to the ones on either side of it, and those are clearly redundancies of some sort…

But that makes me wonder… what exactly caused the damage? The whole setup looks well designed, with no way of causing damage to The Needle itself… “I might have a bit of an idea about the cause of the damage though.” She announced, all eyes turning to her as she began to explain. “The setup we’re seeing, unless I’m missing something, looks well designed to handle any surge of power, with numerous dead ends that could take more power and potentially even release it in the event of a power surge. So, with that, we have two options for what caused the damage: someone sabotaged the enchantments directly, or there was a backlash of power through The Needle that caused the damage.”

“Makes sense, in a way.” Came the reply. “How does that help us here and now though?”

“It…” Sunset pauses, looking over the damage as the pieces slid into place. “If it was sabotage, then all we need to do is reconnect the two parts of the system. If it was some sort of build up, then well… the backlash could hurt us if we’re nearby, but on the other hand we don’t really have much to go off of for how to start repairs, so the question is hypothetical. There’s some debris we could fashion to make a connection, but we’d need to make it removable so we can cut it out at will, and it’ll also need to hold up when we leave…” She pondered, her brow furrowing as she talked

“Well… what do we do now?” Came the question she had been dreading. Being the “expert” is not exactly a fun time… I can’t wait until we’re in a situation where one of them is the one that has to answer that question, because this is getting old. She thought to herself. Looking up and down at the humans and enchantments around her, she shrugged.

“Give me a minute, I need to think. Captain, if you want to this would be a good time to send a couple of your people up to the surface to get some rest, I think we all could use some time aboveground and away from the alarms right now.” She said, those same alarms both feeling like background noise and feeling like they were blaring directly into her ears. As Captain Williamson nodded, she sighed and plopped down, pulling up her journal.

Sunset Expedition Log: Day 367

I am going to be completely honest, this last day feels like it has gone on for literally months. So far we’ve ended up deep in the ground, with a broken magical device that I broke even more to save everyone’s life. We’re barely scratching the surface of what there is to find down here, and to be honest I am getting worried. I might have just messed up an entire planet, an ancient enchantment made by someone so much more skilled than me that it’s like a filly messing up one of Celestia’s spells. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

Right now I’m racking my brain trying to think, but I just… the only thing I can come up with it “Connect where the magic is to where it is supposed to go and hope the massive damaged scar in the enchantments didn’t have anything important in it. Which… well, not the greatest option, but as it is the planet could literally be dying.

Or it could not, and there’s enough redundancy in the system that even with one Needle damaged and out of commission, the others can keep the planet alive. But… am I willing to take that chance? Am I going to just walk away, say “I’ll come back later” and leave it to potentially get worse and worse until it’s too late to fix anything? That feels incredibly irresponsible to me, and I just can’t accept that as the path forward.

With that said, I am going to write out a note, in both Equish and English, describing what happened here, what I did, and what I think is happening. I will do my best to convince the humans with me to leave with the letters, taking the English one to the human outpost in the north of the planet and the Equish one to Celestia when the portal opens if I don’t survive. Gertrude will be worried that without me the mercenaries might try to take her back to her father, so I also have a note to write that will get Celestia to pay them what I promised if they show it to her, but only if they bring Gertrude to her alive and well. I don’t think it’s necessary, but it’ll keep her from worrying.

After that, there’ll only be one thing left to do: connect a massive source of magic to a massive magic using machine and not get blown up.

And if I do that right, I’m going right back to the camp, waiting there until the portal opens, and not doing any more of this adventuring crap. This one day of adventure has caused me more stress than months of living on this planet, and I am for one ready for a break.

As Sunset put down the journal, she sighed at those words. I really am looking forward to going home. Indoor plumbing, soap, hot cakes… I miss them all so much. She thought as she began to write out the promised notes. However, as she did, she felt her eyes drawn to the damaged enchantments. But first… I have some magic to do.

Author's Note

Alright, second-to-last chapter in The Needle, with the big event coming on fast!

I have to say, this isn't as good at being a build up chapter as I would like, but I kept going over it and tweaking, and I just couldn't see how to improve it without a re-write or just cutting it out and going straight to the planned end of this arc, and that chapter isn't written yet.

Also, I will now be updating on Saturdays, same schedule of every other week.

Chapter 14

From the Log of Captain David Williamson of the ethership Good Fortune. October 9th, 1889.

The last two days have truly been eye opening and revealing to me. I was still a boy when the first ethership, a modified hot air balloon, slipped the surly bonds of Earth and flew to Mars, and in the 19 years hence the exploration of the solar system and the expansion of the British Empire to all the habitable worlds that are reachable has created a realm that the great Alexander himself would be envious of. Now here I sit, recording the second world shattering revelation of the last 20 years. Moments ago, our party exitted The Needle, the vast metal structure buried deep into the surface of Mercury itself, created by an ancient race of unknown origin and power, after witnessing firsthand the power of magic, and what such power can accomplish in the hands of a trained user.

This information has thrown many certainties of the world into doubt, and I am sure many philosophers and priests will argue the theology of the matter for decades, but the core truth is one that I doubt any man on Earth is prepared for. We have seen proof that magic, far from being restricted to unicorns, is something that all thinking species can wield, and I have no idea how the powers that be on Earth will react to this information. I want to believe this revelation could lead to a golden age for humanity, but I have seen far too much of man's works to ever believe such an age could come about.

In the depths of the planet, nearly twenty levels below the surface, we were standing in the great ruined enchantments that used to power this grand structure when our equine companion, Sunset Shimmer, informed us that she was about to attempt to repair the structure. She told us that she had no idea if her actions would be harmless or potentially fatal for all involved, and entrusted us with a set of sealed letters for her homeland and an estimate of the next time the gateway to it would open. As she was explaining to us how her word would guarantee that we received the promised payment even if she were to perish, Gertrude Bell, the runaway we were searching for when we arrived on this planet, interjected and attempted to tell Sunset that she was not going to leave the unicorn to risk her life alone.

As the two women, and I surprise even myself by the ease that I wrote that phrase, argued, I noticed something peculiar about Miss Bell. Her clenched fists seemed to glow with an unearthly light, and as I watched a burst of ethereal flame shot from them in the middle of a gesture. The room fell silent for a moment as we all took in what had occurred, and Miss Bell appeared to be torn between a manic joy and a deep concern as Miss Shimmer explained, in simple terms, that what we had seen was likely some sort of magic breakthrough akin to what the young of her kind experience. She pondered the situation for a moment and concluded that, given the amount of thaumaturgical energy we had all received, we would likely all have similar but distinct magical incidents in the near future, speculating that Miss Bell’s occurred first as a result of the time spent nearby while she was performing magic.

Turning to us, she told us that in the event she was to perish attempting these repairs, the next best bet for ensuring that this process did not harm us and that we could control it was to reach her people, where with the letter of introduction provided by her we would be welcomed as guests. Given the way the men were acting in response, I feel that it is likely I will have a crisis on my hands if Miss Shimmer were to perish below ground. Thomas and Jacob want nothing more than the return to civilization and put this all behind them, and I have noticed both glancing at their own hands as if terrified of what could come out of them, while Patrick and Daniel seem more interested in learning about magic, for their own reasons. Patrick because he’s a young man, if he told the truth about his age when he signed on then I’ll eat my hat, and the thought of learning magic has him excited in a way that young men always are at the prospect of an adventure. Daniel because, in his words, “If I am going to be loosing fire from my fists, then I want to only do it when I say so, not whenever I get pissed, otherwise no pub in Britain will let me in the front door.”

I have to keep them all calm and focused, but right now is the worst time for that. After their argument, and with Miss Shimmer’s insistence, all humans present, Miss Bell included, began to ascend the dark staircase towards the surface, the silence only broken by our footsteps on the ancient metal. Now that we are at the surface, the men are still barely speaking, bracing for the worst, while Miss Bell has retreated to her vessel, clearly distrusting us given our original reason for being on this planet.

With the men ill at ease and without knowing what will happen now, I have given the order to take off and circle the site. In the event of a blast of some sort, I hope that by retaining a wide berth and being in the open sky instead of level with the canopy of the nearby forest will improve our odds of survival.

Now all that is left is to wait for the bright orange unicorn to fix the magic enchantments…

I will never be believed if I tell this story back in London without proof.

In the base of The Needle

Sunset Shimmer continued to count down the time. The others needed a head start in case this went badly, and she needed time to psyche herself up for what she was about to do. So, the energy starts at nodes on the perimeter, spreads out through channels working their way in, but can move laterally as well to other channels to reinforce them, which should mean that theoretically even one connection should be enough to get energy into the center. However, that connection would need to be strong enough to handle that much power… well, let’s see if I can get something set up.

After waiting a bit longer for the others to clear out, she sat down, focusing as she pulled out five scraps of metal from the wrecked elevator in the shaft. Using her magic, she straightened them all and etched enchantments into each and every one that would guide the magic down them. They were crude, but they should do the trick… she hoped.

Gripping all five with her mind, she set them all down, allowing the energy of the active enchantments to flow into them while verifying that they were all equidistant from each other, the one nearest to her on top of a massive, glowing crystal, humming with energy. With a sigh, she counted down, one, two, three, and as one pressed the five metal rods to the center…

And jumped back as they split in two, metal fragments flying everywhere. She barely got a defensive spell up in time to avoid a large piece that had gone flying straight towards her head. Looking at the enchanted metal, the tips still hot enough to glow, she realized she had a problem. I don’t have enough power to keep them in place, not with how much energy is involved. I just can’t make something strong enough to hold the power… at least, not right now I can’t.

Well… maybe instead of connecting them like that, I should try to repair the enchantments themselves… after all, it’s the same principles as any other repair spell, aside from the massive amount of power in one part of the system that may explode on me if I do things wrong. Sunset thought, stepping onto the same crystal she had used as the base for one of the poles, muttering spells as she tried the pull power from it for a repair spell… only for it to fail. With a grunt of frustration, she stalked around the circle, eyes like a hawk on every square inch of surface, searching for any hint of a solution. But all she saw was an empty circle, the enchantments connecting the power source and The Needle long since destroyed. But a thought touched the back of her mind, a low, quiet idea that continued to speak to her, getting louder and louder as other theoretical options were disproven.

Connect them with yourself. Become one with the system, see how it works. The idea was insane, and she knew it… but at the same time, she was increasingly running out of options. Another voice told her Don’t be stupid, you can leave this be, the planet won’t be destroyed that quickly. I should just leave, go back to the camp, and bring Celestia with me-

No. She shook her head, shutting down the second voice with certainty. This is what I have to do myself. I made this mess, and I’m not running back to Celestia and asking her for help.

Is my pride worth risking-

It’s not pride. I made this mistake, and that makes it my responsibility to fix, and for all I know not fixing it could cause so many problems with the planet that I will be dead by the time I can talk to Celestia again.

I could die doing this.

Yeah, well taking an entire planet with me because I was a coward isn’t any better. This structure is on the centerline of the entire world, directly in between the face that is always in sunlight and the face that is always in darkness. It is magical, pulsing with energy for unknown purpose, and the big huge river that follows the same center line has some places where the water falls up! The fact is, this planet should not be liveable, it is to close to its sun, the river that waters it relies on magic… if I don’t fix the magical structure that is part of the system running that, how much of the planet will suffer? Am I fine slowing the world river for a year waiting for Celestia to show up? How about letting the winds between the cold and hot sides pick up, causing massive storms that destroy the forests of the twilight zone? I am not doing this because of my ego, I’m doing it because I might have just messed up an entire planet, and I refuse to run away from my mistake!

There was no response, since she had only been arguing with herself. The young unicorn sighed, snorting with annoyance as she stepped up towards the center, one hoof on a glowing crystal, the others farther forward in the dead zone surrounding the central pillar. If she were to just lean forward, then her horn would touch the structure, and the thaumaturgical energy involved would have a clear path through her to the enchantments within. All she had to do was lean forward…

I could die. The thought cut through her brain like a knife. This much power, coursing through my body… I have only seen one pony use this much energy at a time, and she regularly raised and lowered the sun and moon. I’m not Celestia’s equal though… and I doubt I ever will be. The admission would have, when she first went through the portal all those years ago, driven her ego insane. But now… now it was just a fact, one she had accepted because denying it would be to deny her own weakness, and surviving in an untamed world was no place for an ego.

With her breath catching in her throat, Sunset looked up at the vast pillar in front of her, the alien alarms that had first hinted something was wrong still ringing in her ears. “I don’t know if anyone can hear this, and if you can then… ah what the hay. Look, I was a brat, and an idiot, and I honestly would have died if I hadn’t packed as much as I did and been lucky, but… this is stupid.” She shook her head, staring around as she just sighed with acceptance. “I am Sunset Shimmer. I’ve made mistakes, and was an absolutely horrible student, but none of that matters right now. I found this place broken, broke it even more to try and save the lives of the people I came here with… and now I’m going to fix it, not just for them, but because leaving it unfixed might destroy this planet.”

Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward, pressing her horn against the metal. With a muttered spell, power flowed through into the enchantments, drawing from her inner reserves. With another spell, she began replacing that power with energy from the enchantments on the floor behind her. Pushing the power through herself, she felt the energy flow, as if she had just opened the spillways on a dam. Each and every moment that passed, the flow intensified, and she could see enchantments lighting up as power flowed into The Needle the way it had been designed to.

However, it wanted more. It was like a vacuum, sucking up every ounce of power, pulling it through her body like a hose, the vast amount and speed of energy flowing through her making the unicorn physically ill. With her legs shaking, she reached out, attempting to enact the second part of her plan. She felt the flow of magic, doing her best to see how the enchantments in The Needle took in the power and distributed it, while at the same time trying to feel the currents in her own body. But despite her focus, it was like trying to watch the currents in an ocean while on a raft in a storm.

Magical energy leaked through every portion of her body, from her hair to hooves, and she felt her mind begin to, for a better word, spread, observing the entire system as her very soul was bound up and to the magical flow. No, no I need to focus. She thought to herself, struggling against the power as she tried to cast a repair spell, anything to make a connection that wasn’t herself. But nothing happened, the magic would not be contained, or even directed. It went where it wanted to go, and Sunset nearly gave in to despair as she realized what a mistake she had made.

This energy… it’s the energy of the planet. I don’t know how it’s being generated, but it’s not coming from a reserve anywhere, it’s literally the magic of Mercury, focused and concentrated into these Needles. And now… now I am the one connection between the planet and a Needle on the planet. The revelation shook her to the core, as she realized the sheer magnitude of what she was working with. She had had a hint beforehand, but the sheer scale of a planet is always something that is hard for people to wrap their heads around until something forces them to understand or die.

I shouldn’t have done this all by myself, I shouldn’t have sent everyone else away and said it was for their own safety! She ranted internally, feeling the power start to wash at her soul, threatening to erode away her very essence. “But you know what!?” She shouted out loud, gritting her teeth. “If I was just doing this for myself, to prove how strong I was, then I would be willing to give up, to try and pull out… but I’m doing this for an entire planet, and everything that lives on it, and I’m going to fix this or die trying!”

Sunset stopped fighting to control the magic, embracing it and metaphysically opening the doors to her soul, absorbing the power coming from Mercury and feeling it merge with her own. She felt the echo of the original design, the power flowing out from the planet into The Needles, not only keeping the planet liveable, but doing… something, to the other planets of the system. She could see what was what, which enchantments performed which tasks, not because she understood the language of the builders, but because she was mentally watching every inch of enchantment in the massive structure and deep below, seeing how the planet itself slowly produced magic, crystals deep in the core buried by the creators of The Needles. She did not need to see why they were built to know that these builders, with all their power, had used these massive crystals in the crust of the small world to turn it from a dead realm into a source of magic, one that she could only assume went terribly, terribly wrong.

Looking at the amount of power pressing against dead connections, yearning to be freed, she realized that solving the problem of The Needles was going to be challenging. With a careful effort, she grabbed debris near her physical body, reshaping and changing it according to a pattern from elsewhere in the system, and slowly placed it in the dead zone. Bit by bit, she filled in the gaps, painstakingly focused on her task, with emotions, thoughts, everything but the objective pushed from her mind. Sunset Shimmer was part of the system, this vast magical system that covered so much of Mercury, and the needs of her flesh and blood faded away as she focused on the damage to her enchantments.

From the journal of Gertrude Bell, October 10th, 1889.

The last day was one of the most nerve wracking I have ever experienced. When I fled my father's home and stole this vessel from him, I never had a chance to stop and think about my actions until I made it out of the atmosphere of Earth, and even then the demands of teaching myself to control a vessel through the ether en route to Mercury denied me any true free time with my thoughts. That was not the case on that day. With the revelation that my body had gained the ability to unleash spurts of magic power, and Sunset’s insistence on attempting to repair an ancient monolith by herself, my mind was not exactly filled with pleasant thoughts as I waited on the ship.

There was no emergency to distract me, no tomes of engineering or navigation to study as if my life depended on them, I had only to sit and wait, anxious and terrified, with the sealed letter Sunset had given me resting like a lead weight in my trousers. The minutes ticked on like hours, and even now looking back I can only remember it as a long blur of emotions.

I still am surprised at the speed with which I became attached to my Equine companion. She showed me kindness and was willing to listen to me, and it appears that simply returning those gestures was enough to make us friends. I believe that mostly speaks to how lonely the two of us were at the time, but I do not wish to complain, far from it. Becoming friends with Sunset was some of the greatest luck I could have had after landing on this planet, and I was terrified beyond all relief that I would lose her when I noticed out of the corner of my eye The Needle beginning to glow with multi-coloured light…

Piece by piece, hour after hour, Sunset/Mercury worked, each inch of ground around her glowing with energy. But rebuilding the structure wasn’t enough, otherwise it would just break the way it had before, so she was also searching, looking over it inch by inch. Despite her awareness covering the entire Needle, she didn’t know the purpose of many enchantments, only what they were doing now that they had power. Looking over them, she saw the ones affecting Mercury and left them in place, and the ones affecting everything else she simply shut down, with small, easily identifiable cuts, some instinct deep inside her/their combined senses saying that certain things must stay and some must go. As she/they slowly worked over The Needle, she felt the magic flowing in other Needles across the planet, her/their actions used as a template. The part of the combined essence that was Sunset, which provided the brain and personality, was fascinated, taking constant mental notes whenever she reasserted herself, while the other part, the vast magical reserve that had no thoughts of its own, only a desire to be fixed and flow freely once more, ignored her, continuing on its path. Through it all, Sunset Shimmer’s body glowed with magical light, her form disappearing inside it and giving the impression that there was only a vaguely equine sized ball of pure energy.

After hours of this, she felt the last piece slide into place, and the connection was made. The energy flowing through her physical form dropped off, and her soul was left, exhausted, battered, but in some ways stronger than ever. She had risked everything, accepted that she could die, and done what she could to make right her mistakes. With a sigh, the orange pony collapsed and fell on her side, only barely noting and reacting to the slight pain she felt from landing on the new pair of limbs jutting from her flank. After a break that could have lasted for hours or seconds, surrounded by the enchantments around her humming with power, Sunset pulled herself to her feet and began to walk, step by step climbing the stairs out, her pace slow and steady as she slowly ascended from the depths, to exhausted to ask some very big questions about what had happened to her body.

Reaching the top, she shuffled through the empty hallways, the magic in the air the only thing keeping her going as each and every step felt like struggling through gelatin. Finally, she reached the exit, blinking and squinting as the low magical light she had been using was outshone by the light of the sun, even in the Twilight Zone of Mercury. Struggling out the massive dirt ramp that she had helped the humans dig out what seemed like weeks before, she could barely focus, her body begging for food, water, and sleep. As she approached the campsite, seeing it packed up, she worried that she had taken to long, that everyone thought she was dead and had left, when she saw movement.

Gertrude stared at Sunset, trying to comprehend what she was seeing. She… she grew wings. Did she not tell me that the only way for that to happen was… to ascend… The runaway heiress shook those thoughts out of her head as she saw her friend stumble, barely catching herself as she fell. Rushing over, she stood next to the pony, reaching down to place a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Easy Sunset, I’ve got you.” She said.

Looking up, she could see the mercenaries craft coming in to land, and sighed with frustration. She understood Sunsets reasoning for working with them, but to act so casually with men who do anything for money, who were sent here to bring her back to her father… she reached with her free hand under her coat, resting it on her revolver in case it was needed.

As the ropes came out, with men sliding down them and wrapping the thick lines to trees, she saw the captain himself approach alone, a smile on his face. Likely pleased he’ll receive his payment. She thought darkly as the man approached. However, when he was about ten yards distant, he paused, looking at Sunset.

“Miss Shimmer.” Captain Williamson asked, staring at the wings on her flank. “I can’t help but notice that not only is The Needle active, but you have… wings.” He said, trying to keep his tone calm as he stared, trying to wrack his mind to remember if she ever mentioned such a possibility.

Sunset blinked, incomprehension on her face at first as she simply stared at him for a long moment. Turning to the side, she looked at The Needle behind her, glowing with power, and then at the feathery limbs sticking out of her side. Had she been fully awake, she would have felt overwhelmed as joy, awe, and dozens of other emotions would flood through her. As it was, she stared at them for nearly a solid minute before uttering a single phrase.

“Huh. I don’t feel like a Princess.”

And with that, Sunset Shimmer passed out, sliding against the side of Gertrudes legs and laying on the dirt, chest rising and falling as she slept, leaving the humans around her to just stare and ponder what the hell they had just seen and heard.

Author's Note

Alright, this one... I hope I did this right. I tried to build up to it, but the long gaps between chapters might have robbed it of a lot of the impact, and I just... I really hope I did enough foreshadowing and made this properly epic.

Considering the canon ascension we saw in the show, I know it doesn't have to be "epic" to ascend, but... well, I still hope it was impactful enough.

Getting through The Needle was exhausting, and took IRL months for me to write, so I just really, really hope this little story arc was enjoyable. If you did enjoy it, then let me know, I'll do my best to reply to every comment I get on this chapter with as much detail as I can.