Chapter 12: Monuments to Infinity

Chapter 12

Monuments to Infinity

The next day, or what passed for a day in the Frozen North, the ponies set out on the road beyond the ancient, ruined archway. It was surprisingly easy going. The road was paved with cobblestones, worn smooth and in a surprisingly good state of repair for their age. The mountains on either side showed much evidence of having been altered for the building of this road. In many places, they appeared to have been chipped away by some means, probably magical, so that for all the hours of their ascent, they never had to tackle any extremely difficult slopes. Best of all, the mountains sheltered them from the icy, blasting wind.

In the midst of a long, gentle curve, the road finally began to level out, signaling the apex of the climb. Pinkie Pie hopped excitedly to the front of the group.

“Easy going from here on out!” Then, she ground to a halt. “Or maybe not.”

As the other ponies reached Pinkie's position, they saw what had stalled her gleeful momentum.

“The guardian,” whispered Twilight.

What could only be described as a colossus towered over the pass. It was an alicorn in its form, but obviously made of steel. Everywhere on its body there sprouted gun turrets and the barrels of cannons, and its entire surface, weapons included, was ornately engraved with patterns obviously born of the same art legacy as those few which had remained in the ancient town. It straddled the road, two legs to either side, its head held high and proud. Looking up, the ponies could see that where a unicorn's horn would have been, there sprouted instead a cannon that dwarfed even the dozens that bristled all over the rest of its body. This weapon was so large that even big Macintosh could have stood upright in its bore and still had room to spare overhead. The steel horse's joints were massive gears, its eyes empty, black and hollow. Its wings were ornate, their feathers being blades covered with strange runes that must have once been magical – and perhaps still were. Rust had formed in the joints between the many armor plates that made up its outer shell, but otherwise, the antiquated engine of destruction still gleamed bright.

The group stood silent in the shadow of this giant for some time, until Shining Armor finally spoke.

“It's okay. It's just an old, abandoned machine, like a giant walking tank.”

“I miss my turtle,” said Rainbow Dash.

"He's a tortoise," said Fluttershy.

The group of ponies, uneasy in the shadow of this time-worn monument to the violence of ages long since forgotten, moved on, and passed beneath the machine’s body, each one thankful for its dereliction.

* * *

It came into view suddenly, as they rounded a bend in the last of the great swaths cut through the stone of the titanic, jagged mountain range. Twilight and Shining Armor saw it first, and when they did, they stopped to wait for the other ponies to see it. As each of them did, he or she stopped and stared in silence. The wind whistled softly, sending small clouds of dust flitting amidst the intrepid adventurers, and a sense of mixed relief and awe swept over them. This was, without a doubt, the place they had come to find. In the valley below, ringed on all sides by the lofty, jagged peaks of this ancient, nameless mountain range, there stood a city.

It was pure, enduring majesty; a relic city with a face unchanged by the cruel indifference of time. It spread out for miles, with great, pale blue towers and spires that gleamed with warm purples, reds, and yellows where the sun glinted off their surfaces, as if the whole city was gilded with some strange, translucent metal. At its center, there rose a great spire, taller than all the rest, which shone gloriously in the sun's low, unsleeping light. From where the ponies stood, because of their position high on the mountainside, the city's location so far north, and a strange coincidence of time, they could see the sun, sitting as if it rested upon the eastern peaks, and the moon, likewise resting upon those in the west. Somewhere, between those two great lights, the sovereign, holy charges of Celestia and Luna, they would find the Aethervox.

As the ponies moved down into the valley, they sensed the temperature begin to drop more quickly than ever. Rainbow Dash could not help but comment on the bizarre weather patterns.

“This place is amazing,” she said, “but I still don't see how it can be this cold here and there not be any snow. I guess there are just no ponies to make any.”

Twilight looked at her. “Remember, the weather doesn't work the same here as it does back home.”

“I know,” said the pegasus. “I just guess I was expecting a place that used to be inhabited by ponies to be more like Equestria.”

“Whatever,” said Shining Armor. “Cold or no cold, snow or no snow, this is what we came to find. The sooner we get in there and find the Aethervox, the sooner we can head back to somewhere it's warm. Let's get moving.”

Within a few minutes, they all stood before a ponderous iron gate. The whole wall was intimidating, with literally dozens of tall turrets and ports sprouting cannons like those mounted on the colossal, metal guardian. and with sharp, dagger-like crenelations ringing its top. However, this gate, along with the two towers that rose to either side of it, was especially foreboding. Whatever color it had originally been, the accumulated ice had turned it pale blue-white, and its two sides bore images in deep relief of twin, armored alicorns, rearing high and with starbursts at the tips of their horns, as if they were about to unleash some powerful, destructive spell. Their cutie marks were mobius strips, looped in such a way as to render the symbol of infinity.

Shining Armor stepped up to this enormous portal and examined it.

“Frozen shut. If the mechanism still works, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy might be able to fly up to the tops and find a way down inside to open it. Spike will have to heat it up enough to melt the ice, though.”

“On our way,” said Rainbow Dash, pushing her wings out from under the thick, woolen cape that shielded them from the cold, and giving them a stretch. “I'll take the left tower. Fluttershy, you get the right.”

“Can't we stick together?” Rainbow Dash paid no attention to Fluttershy as she slapped her wings against the icy air and lifted herself upwards.

“Fluttershy, aren't you going,?” asked Twilight.

“Oh, alright... I guess.” She daintily spread her wings and hopped upward, using the momentum to help carry herself aloft.

Within a few seconds, both pegasi had disappeared over the tops of the towers.

“Rarity, we need some firewood,” said Twilight.

“Such a waste,” Rarity sighed, opening up one of her saddlebags to reveal a treasure trove of precious stones.

“Wait,” said Applejack. “All you brought was soap and jewels?”

Rarity turned up her nose defensively. “I also brought my cold weather clothes, didn't I?”

“Soap, jewels, and clothes,” said Applejack. “I ain't even surprised.”

Rarity tossed her mane haughtily and magically dumped a pile of gemstones out onto the ground near where the little dragon was standing. As she did so, Big Macintosh mumbled something about not needing the wagon for awhile, and unhitched himself from it.

Spike crunched down several clawfuls before Twilight cleared her throat, at which he giggled before stepping up to the gate.

“Now, don't touch it,” he said. "It's gonna get really hot.”

Spike cut loose a green flame on the gate, and held it there. Slowly, the ice began to melt away from its surface.

Fluttershy looked across to the other tower, and saw Rainbow Dash wave her towards the opposite corner of the roof on which she herself stood. Turning around, she noticed an opening in that corner. As she looked back, she was somewhat alarmed to see that her friend had disappeared from her sight, but quickly realized that she must have gone down a similar opening on her side.

Approaching it, she realized that there had once been a hatch there, but it was long gone. Only a quartet of hinges, rusty and sealed beneath the ice, remained to mark their existence. Even here, in this cold, time had rotted away the wooden shutters. Peering through the hole, she saw that a staircase led down into the darkened tower, and she reluctantly entered it.

As it spiraled downward, the darkness grew deeper and more oppressive, until she finally saw a faint light coming from what must surely be a doorway at the stairwell's bottom. A few steps further proved true her assumption, and she stepped into the dimly-lit room.

The light she had seen came through a pair of narrow slits that served as windows, and she was very thankful that in their dim light, she could see a large, iron mechanism on the wall closest to the gate itself. She would hopefully not have to go any deeper into this dark, foreboding place.

There was also a strangely-shaped ice formation evident in the corner near the big machine. It was larger than Fluttershy herself, and exceptionally bizarre in its form. For once, her curiosity overcame her fear, and she stepped up and placed her hoof on its cold, smooth surface. She squinted her eyes in the darkness in an effort to examine it, but it was of little use. The room was large, and the windows were far away. Later she would realize that it had probably been for the best that she had not been able to tell what it was on which she had just set her hoof. For had she known, it would likely have sent her into a panic.

Stepping away from the ice, she examined the mechanism. Two large chains that ran from a central hub into iron fittings on the wall. Both were covered in ice, but she could see that it had already begun to melt under the sympathetic heat of Spike's breath on the gate outside.

Fluttershy quickly surmised that the central hub to which the chains were connected was a simple spool onto which they must obviously wind. At first, she was afraid she would be unable to turn it, but she was surprised to find that by some feat of engineering, it was not beyond even her relatively small strength. It took a fairly stout hoof on the several iron posts that protruded from either side, but it gave under her efforts, and the chains began to wind, scraping and grinding as they went.

* * *

As the gate began to open, Spike ceased his fiery persuasions, and stepped back, shivering violently.

“Gimme some gems, Rarity. That ate up all my body heat.”

Despite her disdain for seeing such pretty jewels consumed in such a way, Rarity could bear their destruction more easily than she could the image of Spike shaking like a leaf in the frigid wind.

“Here you are,” she smiled, pushing the bag towards him again, as the gate continued to open.

Spike crunched down several good-sized clawfuls of the jewels, then allowed Rarity to shut the bag and put it back on her side.

Looking up, the six ponies were amazed to see what unfolded before them as the gate swung open. Though aged and frozen, the city's grandeur exceeded that of even Canterlot. Great, ice-blue domes, towers, and spires rose above the buildings, which were themselves faced with great stone stairways and impressive, fluted columns. There were elegant carvings of the same splendid, flowing types they had previously encountered, but here they were preserved beneath the same sheet of ice that covered everything else, thus showing a degree of detail that must have required incredible skill to render. What made this most astonishing was that they were everywhere. The entire city was a magnificent work of art that must have taken centuries to realize.

These carvings were not the only evidence of such mastery, either. All of the buildings' pediments bore lifelike carvings of equines in deep, detailed relief. There were scenes of battle, of discovery, of romance, and of death. Whole narratives played themselves out in a loop around any given structure. It seemed that a careful student could learn this culture's entire history and mythology through examination of their architecture, alone.

Most impressive was the sheer scale of everything they saw. Even the individual stairs of the stairways that led up to most of the building's doors seemed excessively large, and many of the carvings bore equine images that were as large as or larger than a real pony.
Amidst all this, looming to greet them, was a colossal statue of an armored alicorn, his flanks emblazoned with the same infinity symbol that had marked the two alicorns on the gate. He was every bit as large as the war machine had been, and was carved in such minute detail that things like the spiral of his horn and his individual teeth were still apparent, despite the presence of the same thin layer of ice that covered everything else.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, their task complete, flew down and lit beside their friends, and tucked their wings back into their thermal capes. All stood silent, their eyes overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they beheld, their minds grappling with the ages across which these frozen edifices spoke.

“That's so strange,” said Rainbow Dash, the first pony to break out of her awe and speak.

“I know,” said Twilight, “What a weird thing to see a ruin like this in such a state of perfect preservation.”

“No,” said Rainbow Dash, walking forward towards the statue, the rest of the ponies following her. “Well, yeah, that too, but what I mean is the ice. I chalked up the ice on the gate to frozen dew fall, but the humidity here is too low for that, now that I think about it. There's no rain or snow here, and even if there was, ice doesn't form this way, in a perfect, smooth sheet. It's like everything is coated in glass, or something.”

“No, it's ice," said Spike. "It melts."

“I know. It's so weird,” said Rainbow Dash, not even catching the intended facetiousness of Spike's comment. “There should be icicles or uneven spots or something, but everything – everything – is coated with a perfectly even layer. It's like it formed all at once, in an instant, and then never melted or got thicker or anything. It's impossible.”

“I had no idea you had such an academic take on this sort of thing, Rainbow,” said Twilight, amused.

“Hey, I'm good at my job,” said Rainbow Dash, “and my job is weather.”

“Once we find the Aethervox, you can have a little while to look around and see if you can figure something out about it, if you want,” said Shining Armor.

“No," said Rainbow Dash. "It's probably just some weird way things work outside of Equestria. Some kind of weird natural weather pattern, kind of like in the Everfree Forest, maybe.”

“Oh, my holy Sisters of the Great Lights,” Rarity half-whispered. The length of her oath and the fact that she did not scream it made it somehow all the more jarring. “Look.” She nodded across the large, central courtyard where the statue loomed.

Across the square, close to the nearest of the great stone buildings, there stood what at first appeared to be a group of odd-looking ice formations. Fluttershy in particular recognized them as being like the one she had seen in the gatehouse tower, but in the light she quickly realized that they were something far more horrible than mere blocks of ice. Her heart skipped a beat, and she alone remained silent amongst the gasps and curses that surrounded her.

“Ponies,” whispered Pinkie Pie, finally. “Frozen ponies.”

“Nope,” said Big Macintosh, darkly.

Applejack's voice was barely audible as she spoke what they all were coming in unison to realize.

“Frozen horses.”