The Immortal Dream

I awoke to the feeling of being in my body, a misty light filtering in through the window. That wasn't as common a feeling as it once was. It felt like I had been spending a lot more time as a ghost, lately... and I had almost spent a lot more, barely meeting up with Faye in time to recombine before she fell asleep this morning.

What would happen if I just never came back? Would I wind up like Procyon, emotionally detached from everything that was going on and rarely showing my face as a result? It was an unsettling possibility to consider, though if the current trend continued, I might have to grapple with it, and sooner more likely than later.

But sooner didn't mean now. Before bed, I only had time for a cursory exchange with Faye before our body gave in to the clutches of sleep, just enough to share information and decide we could act on it in the morning. Or evening. Or whatever time it was now.

I rolled out of bed and dressed myself, grateful to have been given a room of my own. Faye felt like she was still waking up in the back of my mind, so instead I started making a list of the things we needed to talk about. Crowscone's vague and frightening powers, this play we were sentenced to perform in and how we could get out of it, whatever was wrong with our shadow sneaking...

In the common room, Lissa and Flarefeather were already assembled, dressed as usual in their Wilderwind uniforms. That probably made me the last one up.

"Hey," Lissa greeted with a raised hoof. "A guard just came by and dropped these off." She pointed to the stack of papers on the coffee table they were poring over together. "Information about our sentence. The Black Knight's already out and about, and with this, we're free to go as well, as long as we don't leave the city limits."

"I don't see what they could do to stop us," Flarefeather pointed out. "What do I care if he has one of my feathers? Not like I can put it back once it's plucked."

I hesitated, tempted to mention that Crowscone didn't have the feathers anymore, anyway... but Lissa and Flarefeather still didn't know that I could turn into a ghost, or even much about the split between Faye and I. Explaining this to them before I got a chance to talk with Faye would involve a lot of overhead explanations. And it might not be wise to give these two ideas for yet another problem they could solve in Izvaldi, at least not until I knew the full details on how their last problem-solving foray had gone so wrong.

"What time is it?" I asked instead.

"Got about three hours until sundown," Lissa replied. "Maybe four until it's pitch black. We got up early-ish because we figured we wouldn't want to stay up all night again. Power's still not back, by the way."

I sighed. "Alright. So what do the papers say?"

"They're kind of elaborate." Flarefeather beckoned me closer, my bracelet's light clearly welcome when the only other source was the dimmed light from the window... It looked like last night's fog had never burned off. The weather must still have been frozen.

"Apparently, Crowscone expects us to choose the topic, write the script and recruit any other performers we need," Lissa wryly said. "With the stipulation that it needs to be about a period of his life, and the unwritten mandate to be as flattering as possible. All he's given us is a wide list of resources to start with. Names, organizations, you name it. Some of these look useful. Others... really shouldn't exist. And we've got a letter of introduction to get in quickly with any of them."

"Check out his writing, though," Flarefeather interrupted, shoving one of the papers in my face.

I blinked. It was the most flowery, precise cursive I had ever seen, written in glittery gold ink with the letters immaculately spaced and all bearing the same perfect height, same perfect width and same heavily-slanted font. It was almost hard to look at, printed on stationary that seemed more suited for legal declarations or even religious degrees than for providing simple references. Crowscone clearly didn't want readers to think he was a slob.

"The Department of Civil Obedience?" I frowned, parsing the text and starting to read. "Is that what they call police here? I suppose they'd know about the ruler's temperament and policy. The Triandra Memorial Library? Wonder who that was." I turned a page. "The Church of Pegasi? That's a thing here?"

"Triandra?" Faye mumbled sleepily in my head. "Sounds familiar..."

Lissa shrugged. "I rest my case. Probably a local cult of political favor. But, if anyone around here knows how to flatter this guy, I bet it's them."

Flarefeather grimaced. "Yeah, cults are usually bad news. I vote we wait to check on that one until we can ask some other locals what they're like."

"Not a bad idea," I agreed, fighting back a sudden growl from my stomach. "Any of these places you think might let us eat while we work? I'm starving."

Flarefeather raised an eyebrow. "You're thinking of seriously going along with this? Don't we need to get you to that ruby tower, like, now?"

I shook my head. "It's not a question of going along with anything. It's a question of sitting in here until nightfall, or hitting the streets and seeing if we can learn something useful. Whether it's about Crowscone or the power outage or how to get south in a hurry, he's given us an excuse on a silver platter to go be nosy. We should take it."

Lissa stood up. "My vote says we visit the police. If they're the ones that enforce the laws, they're the ones we'd actually need to get past if we left. We play friendly, pretend we're doing Crowscone's research, and take a look at their resources. See if they'd care if we left, and what they could do about it."

"Oh, you're right!" Flarefeather's eyes widened in realization, and she grinned at her. "There's that brainy mare I love! Bet you we'll find them with their hooves full with all the stuff that's been happening, and they'll be in no shape to chase after a couple of escapees." She turned to me. "So, you ready to roll right now? We've kinda been looking at this while waiting for you."

"Sure am." I brushed off the strap on my armor, still new and untested since I crafted it in Wilderwind. "Let's get out of this creepy mansion."

The city streets of Izvaldi's capital were hardly deserted, but 'bustling' wasn't the right word, either. Through the cover of dense fog, golden late-afternoon sunlight filtered down, strong enough that it should have burned the unnaturally thick blanket off in an instant. Yet, that wasn't happening anywhere.

Ponies moved skittishly through the eerie weather, mostly earth ponies and unicorns. Fliers were much rarer, presumably because they could travel above the fog - I had flown up multiple times as a ghost, and it didn't go terribly high. But it was dense, deep enough to shroud the city and reduce visibility to little more than a couple street-widths.

Flarefeather and I flanked Lissa, the only one among us who had studied a local map. No one tried to bother us. Everyone we saw was too busy either getting where they were going or talking to their neighbors just outside their homes.

Hushed chatter carried easily to my ears in the windless, silent town. "...power out, we have no choice but to talk outside! Unless you like the dark..."

"...no proclamation from the government, though I heard the Black Knight has been sighted..."

"...evil mist. Next thing you know, there will be monsters lurking inside it..."

That last remark struck a familiar nerve. This weather, as unnatural as it was, didn't feel evil. It felt more like it was broken. And I had plenty of experience with real evil mist - windigoes in Icereach, and then the green fog in Gyre - so I felt like I was qualified to tell the difference. But at the same time, having experienced more than one type of ultra-cursed fog before made it pretty rational to believe it could happen again.

"Try not to jinx it," Faye warily warned, mostly woken up in the back of my head. "You did say you saw Croswcone with a real revenant in his desk, didn't you?"

Yeah. That was another reason to be worried.

"...So," Faye said. "The ruby tower is south of here. If I ghosted you to guide me, and then turned our bracelet to a steady burn, I could probably sprint there in a few days. It would be rough, and if we got our emotions stuck again like in Snowport, we'd be on our own for fixing it. But with the power out, even a friendly administration isn't getting us there any faster."

Right. And speed was of essence. The biggest problem was, that would mean leaving behind Puddles, Lissa, Flarefeather and Coda.

Running off on our own sometimes worked, but this was always the price.

"You could also fly there as a ghost," Faye continued. "Assuming you don't have a maximum range. But then you couldn't do anything once you arrived. So that's not useful."

If we did run there, and then somehow get inside the crystal palace, reach the bottom, save the flame and make it back out - all of which were very big ifs - would we be in any condition to run back to Izvaldi? I furrowed my brow in thought, barely paying attention to my surroundings as I followed Lissa. What could we do? Just take the next step and then figure it out from there?

There was always the option to just... do nothing. Sit back and watch the world die, and hope someone else would save it. But that was a terrible option.

"I have an idea," Faye said quietly.

Her voice bordered on intimidated, but I was all ears. An idea with any benefits at all would be better than doing nothing.

"It's not a very good idea," she started. "I don't think you'll like it. I definitely don't. It would be a much better idea in the hooves of anyone but us. But if we don't have the resources to solve this on our own, we could ask for them."

Yeah, but from whom?

"Everyone. We tell everything to as many people as we can," Faye continued. "The authorities, the newspapers, people on the streets. We raise the alarm, and if anyone tries to stop us, we keep talking, even if it means making enemies and using force. And we hope that enough people take us seriously that by pooling our resources, we can find a way south that won't be too late."

I recoiled instinctively. Just what constituted telling everything?

"Good question," Faye whispered. "Enough for people to believe that once we do reach the tower, there's something we could do to fix this. No one will listen to someone who can't prove they have a plan."

I tried to envision myself standing on a rooftop, declaring to the world that I was a changeling queen who could maybe use her powers to preserve a dying flame at the heart of these recent events. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't.

"I don't know if I could, either," Faye apologized. "And I don't know how much to say, even if I could. This is Izvaldi. The place where they made Chrysalis into what she became. Whatever the locals' thoughts on changeling queens, they're probably strong."

Right. With everything surrounding the ruby tower, the power outage and now the magic I had seen Crowscone use, I had almost completely forgotten the original reason we were coming to Izvaldi: to track down the remnants of Chrysalis's throne. Before that, I had known the name Izvaldi as that of Coda's cult, the scientists who used to work here.

We just couldn't do it. I knew we couldn't do it. And yet, the thought of failing to save the world because I couldn't bring myself to say the right words at the right time was so stupid, I could barely bring myself to keep walking.

This was the kind of idea that, now that I had thought it, couldn't die.

"Seems like we're almost there," Lissa softly announced, unaware of our conversation as she broke the oppressive silence.

I sighed, pulling my focus back to the present. Casting as broad a net as possible, throwing what I knew out there and asking for help... I had no choice but to think on it. Once we were done scoping out the police, maybe I'd see what I could bring myself to tell Lissa and Flarefeather about why going south mattered. They already liked me, and trusted me more than most. See how badly this would go.

"Yeah, this looks pretty crowded," Flarefeather glibly remarked. "Something tells me these guys might be a little too busy to help us smooch up the big bad king's ego."

Ahead, the fog was just light enough for me to make out a large crowd of ponies and griffons, formed outside a building into a couple of disorderly lines. There were pegasi among them too, and I could see from the occasional take-offs and landings that my hypothesis they were all flying was correct.

It looked more like a strip mall storefront than a police station. I flicked my ears. "This is the police?"

Lissa glanced back at me. "The Department of Civil Obedience, which we assume is the police. Shares a government building with a couple other agencies, so if we're unlucky, all these people could be here for something else."

An earth pony couple passed by us as we approached, carrying a small, unmarked box that looked like it had been cheaply and industrially packaged in bulk. Some sort of disaster relief supplies, perhaps?

Curious, I drew closer, following Flarefeather and Lissa towards the crowd. When we had almost reached it, a uniformed stallion hailed us, motioning for us to stop.

"Organize into the lines," he requested, gesturing at the various rows of creatures. "That one if you're here for the candle distribution, over there if you've got more looting to report, and here if you have a pre-scheduled appointment with one of the other agencies. Walk-ins are closed for the emergency."

Looting, huh? Yep, people were here for the police.

He started to move on, only sparing us half a glance as he kept an eye out for more pegasi and griffons landing and needing instructions... and then did a double-take, scrutinizing us more closely. "Wait. You're not a sarosian, are you?"

I blinked, Lissa and Flarefeather forming up behind me. "Would it be relevant if I was?"

The officer gave me a serious look. "Would you mind coming with me for a moment? I've got someone who would like to ask you some questions." Catching the looks the three of us were giving him, he quickly added, "You're not in trouble. I'll allow your friends to skip ahead in line while you talk, so it shouldn't cost you any time."

I glanced at my friends, who both shrugged. We came here to talk to the police, but they were the ones who wanted to talk to me?

"Well, alright." I nodded, eternally wary but now deadly curious... and if someone had reason to believe I was worth pulling aside and talking to, maybe they knew things I wanted to hear. "What's up?"

The officer beckoned to another officer who was organizing the crowd, pointed him to Lissa and Flarefeather, and with a few short words of explanation the three of them were on their way, Flarefeather giving me a weirded-out glance over her shoulder as she was led into the crowd.

"You have any sarosian friends around here?" the officer asked, leading me on a different route through a door into the strip front of buildings.

I shook my head. "I'm from out of town. Just arrived recently."

The officer grunted. "Then you might not have heard about what's going on. Something is up with the local sarosians. I'm taking you to talk with a doctor who's currently on the case. She'll want to know about any strange experiences you've had recently, as well as what you've done and where you've been over the last few days. It should help to pinpoint the source of all this, especially if you've recently arrived. We appreciate anything you can tell us, citizen."

Strange experiences, huh? Boy, that would take a day and a half... I didn't catch the sign on the building, but inside was a waiting room of sorts, a receptionist sitting behind a desk and a decent number of ponies sitting in chairs and glumly waiting. At least half of them looked surprised to see me.

Several large candles were set out in impermanent fixtures, providing a minimum level of light not to crash into any walls or bump into other people, and as the officer led me deeper into the building I wondered why Crowscone's mansion didn't have the same. Many of the doors in the hallway were ajar, though since only the hallway was lit it was difficult to make out whatever was inside.

Finally, though, we turned a corner and entered a larger side room that was lit. It had a number of sterile-looking beds lining one wall, several of which were hidden by hanging privacy shrouds, and from the garb of the mare who was currently trying to read a clipboard by her own hornlight, I realized this had to be a hospital.

"Doctor Sophia," the officer greeted, catching her attention. "I found a sarosian who seems to be on her hooves. I thought you'd like to interview her right away-"

Clack!

The doctor flung her clipboard like a shuriken, axepoleing him perfectly in the forehead. "Are you daft, stallion?" she barked, urgently marching towards me with a get out look in her eyes. "We don't know if it's contagious, why would you bring someone you don't think is afflicted in here with the others!?"

I blinked hard.

"Out! Shoo!" She swatted at me to back off, stomping towards me. "Any room but this one, unless you fancy yourself a science experiment! What part of move it don't you understand?"

Demanding answers first seemed like an excellent way to tempt fate. I quickly backstepped into the hallway.

The doctor - apparently Sophia - stood me up in a hallway several rooms away from where I had initially been led, the officer long since dismissed to return to his duties. She had a sharp-tipped horn and a bright red neck-length mane that was so curly it made her look like a sheep, in a way that would have been endearing if I hadn't just seen her assault a police officer. That had to take guts.

"You're a sarosian," she remarked, appraising me. "Are you feeling alright? Any sudden dizziness, light-headedness, feel like you might faint?"

I shook my head. "No. That guy mentioned something weird was happening, though. What's going on here?"

Sophia raised an eyebrow. "Something 'weird' happening? We've had several sarosians brought in this morning who were found unresponsive in their beds by roommates or family. Enough of them that it was safe to assume this afflicted every sarosian in town, until you showed up. Tell me, where did you spend the previous night? Did you have any unusual experiences waking up this morning?"

I blinked. "Just got up a little while ago. I was up all night, after..."

After the airship crashed. But I had missed the crash itself.

"We were stuck in that red space," Faye agreed in my head, putting two and two together exactly as I did. "And we only got out by using our void on the redness..."

I felt slightly cold. "That happened because I'm a sarosian? And it affected every other sarosian, too?"

Sophia leaned closer, stress visible in the bags under her eyes. "What did you experience? And how did you recover?"

"Felt like I was locked in a sea of red," I explained, feeling like the universe was laughing at me as I weighed how much of my precise situation to divulge. "I... got better because I've got a cursed magical bracelet that keeps me safe."

"When?" Sophia pressed. "And where?"

Well, those questions, I could answer. "Must have been a little past midnight," I told her. "I was on an airship flying in from the north, and was up late reading a book. About three hours' walk from here. When I came to, the ship was landed with no power, so it was exactly when the power went out."

Sophia nodded, writing this quickly down. "Was it a sudden onset? And are there any lingering symptoms?"

Back to the slightly harder questions. "I dunno," I said. "I think I felt something off, like, a second or two before it happened. And I feel fine now, but something's really wrong with my shadow swimming. But that could be because of anything."

Sophia pondered this. "How long were you out? You're certain this coincided exactly with the time of power loss?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, and when I came to, we had been landed for a while. But we were flying smoothly before it happened. Also the same time as the weather froze."

"I've been in this office all day." Sophia shook her head, sounding patiently frustrated. "People keep saying the weather's unnatural, but so far that's the least of my concerns. Now, you say you were spared by a 'cursed magical bracelet'? Not simply by being farther from the epicenter of this effect?"

I held up my bracelet leg, lit it and tapped it to show it off. "It was still strong enough out there to take down the entire ship. I don't think it would have fallen off that quickly. And I definitely had to use this."

Sophia squinted warily at the bracelet. "I've seen my share of magical artifacts. What did this do to help you, and what kind of curse is it under?"

I winced a little, and decided to push my boundaries. "Well, it's technically a holy artifact for a really inexperienced god monster, so it's more dangerous and unpredictable than literally cursed. And there's no ethical way to do the science to make it more reliable..." My squeamishness definitely showed on my face.

Perplexingly, Sophia seemed to take this in stride. "With the world in its current state, I'm surprised there aren't more people running around with things like that. How did it cure you? Deflecting or absorbing some other curse?"

Huh. She took that better than I expected. "I'm pretty sure it removed some sort of metaphysical soul sludge," I explained. "Not a toxin. More like an insulator, or interference."

Sophia sighed. "You're 'pretty sure'? I thought I ruled out soul magic earlier... My only hypothesis left is a curse strong enough to be completely undetectable and resistant to all conventional forms of counterspells. But I'm not an expert. No one is, these days. This bracelet of yours doesn't let you talk to your patron, does it? Can you ask them for more specifics on what they did?"

"Say what?" I blinked, incredulous. "You believe me about my bracelet, then disbelieve me about soul sludge not because you don't think it's real, but because you already ruled it out?"

Sophia gave me a strange look. "Well, yes. What part of that... Oh." She shook her head. "You must be from Varsidel or Ironridge. Aren't you?"

Now I just felt embarrassed. "Icereach, actually. Though I did my time in Ironridge as well..."

Sophia adjusted her posture. "The Griffon Empire might be fallen on paper, but we're still the same people. This was a theocracy where most of the population watched our goddess soar the skies, and some of us spoke to a different one through altars. No one here denies that beings like that exist, though I couldn't tell you why they don't try to carve out slices of the central territories. As for soul magic, we are in Izvaldi."

Two and two clicked in my brain, about Coda's cult who created Chrysalis and the legacy they must have left behind. "Really? I'm out of the loop on that."

"Before the Empire collapsed, we had a number of scholars here focused on it," Sophia explained. "Or, more accurately, before Lord Percival's government was blown up in a battle between Garsheeva and a heretic. I was just an intern at the government-run hospital at the time, so I only got to hear about it from colleagues. But there was an entire underground wing of the facility researching empirical, magic-based cures for disorders of the mind. Depression, amnesia, vegetative comas... Some even said demonic possession."

She sadly shook her head. "But everyone who worked directly on those projects left after the fall, and Crowscone locked away all their surviving materials when he came to power. So, I've had nothing but memories of hearsay for the last two decades. And I might have overlooked something important as a result." She leaned closer. "So, can you ask your bracelet god for more specifics, or not?"

I saw a corner, and she was unknowingly giving me a choice whether to back myself into it or not. But my conversation with Faye was still at the forefront of my mind, and for someone like this, who seemed to have the information to contextualize just about anything I could tell her...

"...Yeah," I promised. "But like I said, she's really inexperienced. And pretty reclusive, too. And it's dangerous because most of the time, she doesn't actually know what she's doing, which is the case right now."

Sophia sighed. "Right. So, that's all I'm getting..."

"Could I see the patients for myself?" I asked. "I'm ninety-nine percent sure this stuff won't randomly smear off on people. And if it does, that's probably a good thing, since I'll be fine anyway and it would dilute it on them."

"As long as you're cognizant of the risks," Sophia said, getting up and beckoning for me to follow. "If you somehow are a charlatan, no insurance in the world would pay for your stay here once you pass out."

She led me back to the room I had first seen her in, and drew back some of the bed curtains once we were there. Inside each one was a sarosian, and at first glance, they didn't appear to be breathing.

A second glance confirmed it. "Are they dead?" I asked, hackles raising in alarm.

"They certainly look it," Sophia said. "They have no pulse either. But they're still warm, and they haven't even stiffened despite being like this all day. Ordinarily, there would be all sorts of measurable changes in a day-old cadaver, yet these ponies seem by all rights to have been suspended in time."

A weird thought struck me. "Like the weather?"

Sophia shrugged. "Beats me. Like I said, I haven't been out all day. But if you've seen it, does that mean anything to you?"

I looked over each of the patients, squinting and staring, yet could see no outward signs of red contamination. And yet, that didn't mean there wasn't any. The red sludge I had eaten, I could still feel sitting in my void, tasteless and useless and emotionally destitute, lacking any quality that could register to my external senses. I needed some other way...

"Maybe I could tell, if I was up front," Faye said in the back of my mind. "Part of your function as my mask is to have more distance between you and our powers. But I don't know what confirming this would do for us. We can't use our bracelet to suck out their redness like we did for ourselves. You know what would happen if we tried."

Right. My thoughts drifted to Mother, and her disfigured side.

It had been a while since I had feared I could scar myself like she had been. My bracelet couldn't seem to hurt me like she had been, at least not physically. But other batponies were different. If I tried that on these patients...

"This continent has seen a changeling queen do that before," Faye said, finishing my thought for me.

I closed my eyes and lowered my bracelet hoof. This was a boundary it would be foolish to cross. To my knowledge, we had only ever used our void's power on two ponies before: Coda, when she used her throne to probe my defenses back in Ironridge, and Rhodallis, when he attacked us in the catacombs beneath Gyre. Neither of those were ordinary batponies like these. The odds of something terrible befalling them if I tried to help were simply far too high.

Yet, now that I had remembered that day with Coda... Hadn't she suspected something terrible could happen to me? That her changeling queen powers could potentially tear me out of my body, the way Chrysalis had done to the Empire's batponies long ago? And she rationalized it as being fine because if that happened, she could put me back together again.

I looked back at the suspended batponies. What if I could do the same? Somehow cleanly separate them without causing whatever had been done to Mother, cleanse them of redness, accept that this would probably involve devouring their souls, and then put them back together?

Maybe it was a foolish gambit. It had probably been foolish back when Coda did it, and she had resources I didn't, like all of her cult's changeling queen knowledge, and the presence of her throne.

Even as I thought that, I did another double-take. Hadn't Sophia just said that those very same scientists had left a trove of material behind that was confiscated by Crowscone? And it might not have been mine, but there was a changeling queen throne buried somewhere under this city-

"Stop," Faye forcefully interrupted. "You're making thousands of dangerous assumptions and if you want to push our boundaries that badly, we could always do it with my idea from before. I'd like to help these ponies too, but have you considered what might happen to us if we make a habit of using our void on people? There is no one but us who can police us and ensure we use our powers for good. We can't let ourselves wind up like Chrysalis."

I recoiled in surprise. True, I felt my own deep sense of unease about this prospect, but where had that come from?

Faye said nothing.

Alright, then. There was nothing we could do to help.

With a weird sense of resignation and a determination to discuss this later, I turned to Sophia and shrugged. "Basically zero odds that I could do anything for them. This bracelet would probably kill them if I tried the same thing as it did for me, or worse."

"I understand," Sophia replied, weary and a little dejected. "I'm also aware that this isn't your problem, and you have things to do and places to be. Thank you for giving me as much time as you have, here. But if you or your patron learns anything more, and you feel like doing something to better the world a little, I'll be here for a long time yet."

Are you alright? I asked Faye as I walked back to the entrance of the hospital. What was that about? I knew we both had a lot on our mind lately, but we had used our powers a lot before, and there was rarely any discussion of winding up like Chrysalis as a result. Sure, I wasn't comfortable either, but why now, and why so strongly? Had something happened?

"...I suppose I should tell you," Faye sighed in the back of my mind. "It's my star sight. You probably remember it from the times you used to take the mask off, before the split between us was so cleanly defined. It's one of the parts of our power you don't have access to, since the point of you was to seal it away. But, those stars correspond to people, in some non-geometric way."

I nodded. I knew that much.

"Last night, while I was sneaking with Lissa and Flarefeather," Faye said. "I tried to push my boundaries too hard. We figured out that the reason we've never been able to take passengers while shadow swimming is because it requires bodily contact, and clothes get in the way... or, at least it does with how our swimming works now. At the same time, I was trying to lean further into the star sight, to see if it could give us useful warnings for when guards were approaching."

I nodded again. That all sounded useful.

"It should have been," Faye agreed. "But getting that close to them while seeing them as stars... It made me realize that this is what our void is for."

Say that again? What our void was for?

"That's right," Faye murmured. "Those two are incredibly vibrant and bright. I think anyone would be, if we got that close. But it was a craving unlike anything I've felt before. It was like... it was the natural order of things for them to exist in our void, for their light to belong to us and no one else. It felt like seeing them walking around, that was the anomaly. I was terrified by myself. I almost broke down. And I'm worried that if we do something like this carelessly, it could awaken some taste in us that's so far been dormant, even if we successfully fix them and put them back together when we're done."

My gait stiffened as she talked. Was she serious? Had this been buried so deep in our psyche that even she didn't know about it?

Faye didn't answer. My thoughts drifted to Procyon.

"It's possible," she agreed. "Procyon does always say she was an evil pony. I don't know. But for now, it's starting to feel like I've reached the limit of how deep I can safely dig into who we are and what we can do."

My heart fell. What could we even do about this?

"Well, as long as you're up front, our star sight doesn't work," Faye pointed out. "And I think our aversion to touching people might be due to this, as well. So as long as we stop digging now, and just work with what we know about ourselves instead of trying to learn more, I don't think it's too late to put a lid on that. But we have to be careful."

And Chrysalis's throne? Crowscone's cache of research from the team that created her?

"I don't know," Faye apologized. "For now, none of those are as important as the ruby tower. As long as we only eat non-standard things like red sludge or flames of harmony or windigoes, I don't think we'll have to deal with whatever it was I felt. And I don't think anything we've found here will help us get south."

I wasn't sure I agreed. There was always the slim, tiny hope that if we knew more about our powers, we could use them more safely... but she was right that it wouldn't get us where we were going any faster. Unless I suddenly learned to fly. That was a mystery I hadn't even started cracking.

"Well, girl," Flarefeather greeted, waiting for me at the hospital's exit to the fogbound world, "we got candles."

She proudly shoved a box in my face, just like the ones the other ponies here seemed to be receiving. Candles, huh? I pulled my focus back to thirty minutes ago, recalling the officer saying something of the sort. That did seem like an appropriate thing to hand out en masse during a power outage. Though why would Crowscone be willing to hand these out to the public, but be too cheap to add them in his own home?

"Also..." Flarefeather raised an overly-serious eyebrow. "Wasn't your luck supposed to be super ultra mega-cursed? Because you just let yourself get bagged by a police officer and then walked right back out none the worse for wear."

I grimaced. "Actually, I just found out I'm the only sarosian in town who isn't hit with a time-stop curse. Not sure this is a good thing, even if it could be worse. Did you get anything besides candles?"

Lissa whistled. "Well, we learned that the local cops are far too busy trying to keep order and tamp down on looting to tell us stories about how nice Mister Trills-a-lot is. There's enough weird rumors starting to circulate about the weather and everything else that some people are acting like it's everyone for themselves out there. So, a time-stop curse, huh?"

I nodded, briefly filling them in on how the city's batponies all seemed to have gone into a magical stasis coma when the ruby tower appeared and that I seemed to have been uniquely spared by my bracelet. Both of them looked unnerved.

"Is someone compiling a list of everything we know is wrong since that happened?" Lissa mused. "I know you want to reach this tower, but there's so many different things, there has to be some sort of cause and effect. We've got this, the weather, the power... All these things can't have been caused by the same event and have nothing else in common. Maybe, I don't know, sarosians need the weather to function? Something like that?"

Flarefeather looked more thoughtful, frowning as we walked further into the city. "What was it like for you when the stuff happened?" she asked, glancing at me. "You were the last one to the bridge after the ship touched down. Late enough that we were kind of worried, honestly. Was it just, like 'Flash! Pow!' And then you had to shrug it off?"

I shook my head, repeating what I had just explained to Sophia a few minutes ago... "It was pretty immediate," I told her. "Came out of nowhere and took a while for me to recover. Why're you asking?"

Flarefeather narrowed her eyes at Lissa. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Lissa tilted her head. "That this isn't the first time the Empire's sarosians have gotten insta-blicked by a magic field?" She winced a little at me. "No offense."

"That Consul," Flarefeather answered, a glimmer of excitement in her eyes. "The one who randomly keeled over last night. What do you want to bet he was a sarosian?"

"Yeah, the one we pretended to investigate last night," Lissa agreed, blinking. "That would mean..." She frowned in thought.

Flarefeather mirrored her expression on purpose. "Yeah? What would that mean?"

"Last night, it really looked like Neeve was the culprit," Lissa said. "But if the Consul was hit by this curse and no one realized he wasn't actually dead dead, then it could be neither side's fault, so both are convinced the other did it."

Flarefeather chuckled. "Hey, if we solved this, you think we could clear up such a big headache for both of them that they'd drop our sneaking punishment and help us get south?"

I was thinking something very different: the Consulate ruled the south. If anyone could roll out a red carpet to get me to that tower as fast as equinely possible, it would be one of the people who ran the place. And if anything would give one of those people a reason to favor me, it would be saving them from this red sludge stasis.

Of course, this would involve doing the exact thing Faye and I had just agreed should be completely off-limits, and praying it both worked and had no consequences. That was a similar level of nope to her earlier idea, spilling everything to everyone and hoping some of them could help.

My secrets for an unknown amount of unqualified help? Or a risk to my sanity for a non-guaranteed shot at some very qualified help?

Flarefeather attempted to choose for me. "Alright," she declared, "think you can make your way back to the mansion on your own? If I fly back, I can get there much quicker, see if he's a sarosian, and start talking. Bet you I'll have this whole case put to bed by the time you catch up. Any objections?"

She didn't wait for any objections before spreading her wings and leaping into the air. A second later, she crashed right back down to earth.

"What?" Flarefeather blinked, looking shocked and upset as she picked herself up, brushing mud off her glittery, newly-scuffed uniform. She flapped her wings, stationary. "What happened? It's not supposed to go like that..."

Lissa flapped her wings too, jumping a few times in place. She, too, was unable to take off, and beneath her cool facade I saw confusion grow and quickly blossom into a deep, alien fear.

Both of them looked helplessly at each other, and then at me.

I shrugged, flapping my wings uselessly for emphasis. "I never could fly, remember?"

"What's going on?" Flarefeather whispered. "When was the last time we flew? Do you remember?" She turned to Lissa. "We flew on our way here from the ship, right? So it can't be whatever happened last night..."

Lissa glanced back at the crowd in front of the police and hospital complex, where pegasi and griffons were still taking off and landing to avoid the fog. "Nope. It's definitely just us." She shuddered visibly. "Just when we needed another random, unconnected thing to go wrong. Let's get somewhere I don't feel so exposed, and quickly."