Ungula

by AndiBanandi

Rating: mature
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Main 6, Science Fiction, Adventure
Length: 11853

The ESS Fire of Friendship is a small research and exploration vessel. As we all know from Star Trot, research and exploration vessels are the ones all the adventures tend to happen to. Fire of Friendship does not buck the trend.

Somewhere in the void is a star that by all rights should have collapsed in on itself and gone supernova a long time ago. It won't, of course.

Celestia. Tartarus. Equus and Luna. Bucephalus. Tambelon. The Umbre Belt. The Ungula system may be quite populated, but it has many depths yet unplumbed.

The ESS Fire of Friendship is a small research and exploration vessel. As we all know from Star Trot, research and exploration vessels are the ones all the adventures tend to happen to. Fire of Friendship does not buck the trend.

Bit of an experiment. This setting is inspired partly by Starfinder, as I originally wrote up the Ungula system as a location for a Starfinder campaign that never took off and decided I wanted to explore it anyway, though more in terms of vibes than anything else at this point. The other inspiration is a Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign set in Equestria, so. While the story as a whole isn't intended to be primarily horror, dark and horror elements appear, especially as backstory elements.

These hortses are getting traumatized but things will be okay in the end.

Published 2024-06-12 08:50:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-17 16:50:55 UTC

Prologue

Somewhere in the void is a star that by all rights should have collapsed in on itself and gone supernova a long time ago. It won't, of course.

Swirling around that star is a collection of planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies that by all rights should have spun off into the abyss, fallen into the sun, or crashed into each other a long time ago. They won't, of course.

Inhabiting that collection of planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies is a staggering array of living creatures, walking, swimming, and flying on any number of legs you care to name, all of which, for a number of reasons, by all rights should have perished a long time ago.

They won't, of course. Harmony willing.

Let us now enumerate these bodies that comprise the Ungula system.

Every star system must have its star, and Ungula's star is named Celestia. It is named this after the reason it has not exploded.

Nearest to Celestia is a red planet named Tartarus. Sweltering and inhospitable, people nonetheless manage to thrive beneath its surface, in colonies founded by prisoners who threw off their chains.

Next after that is a blue and green planet named Equus. The jewel of the Ungula system, it is from here that most of this life originates.

Orbiting Equus is a silvery moon named Luna, in whose forested craters dwell the thestrals. It is named this after the reason all of these bodies have not crashed into each other.

Beyond Equus lies the red planet Bucephalus, rich in minerals and fortune-seekers alike. Honeycombed with deep tunnels, hives, mines, and nests, many thrive in his arid climate.

Furthest yet is the deep blue gas giant known as Tambelon. Shrouded in its clouds drift great leviathans and the derelict remains of an ancient megastructure. Its depths have not been plumbed.

Drifting among all of this is the collection of bodies known as the Umbre Belt. It is named this after the planet it once was. What few umbrum remain are now quiescent among the ruins of their home.

The star will not collapse, the planets will not collide, and the peoples will not perish.

Harmony willing.

If You're Willing to Win, Your Position Will be Shelled

Clunk.

Rainbow Dash winced as another chunk of Umbre-rock banged against the Fire of Friendship.

"Behind you darling, five and level."

At Rarity's word, Dash glanced at the rear cameras and juked the Fire "down" to evade. Rainbow Dash was nearly as good behind the controls of a starship as she was with her own wings, but in a dense asteroid field like this? It was no wonder they'd taken some hits, leading to the previously mentioned and now just-repaired air leak.

That's why she had a copilot - to spot and warn her of anything she missed. Normally that was either Pinkie or Rarity, and as Pinkie was currently busy, it fell to Rarity. Her detail-oriented nature and experience at holding dozens of objects in her magic at a time made her perfect for keeping track of the myriad bodies assailing them.

"Two below, sixty degrees at three and eight."

Rainbow pulled up, angling left to pass between a trio of umbroids. It was times like these that her thoughts turned to Luna - the goddess, not the moon. Her job, as any spacefarer would argue, was by far the hardest of the three. Keeping a star from exploding took a lot of raw power, but it was one star. Luna had to keep thousands of bodies from crashing into anything important, as they all stubbornly deviated if left unattended, Neighton's first law be damned.

So, Rainbow couldn't really fault her for leaving a big clump of asteroids close together like this. She could, however, wish she'd left them somewhere else.

"On your left, there's a fast–" Clunk. "–Oops, sorry darling."

Unfortunately, she hadn't, and so Rainbow was jolted out of her musing by another big rock glancing against the Fire of Friendship. She gritted her teeth, refocused, and–

There was something standing on an umbroid. (Nine and level, some part of her noted absently.)

It was smooth and white and shaped like a pony. (It wasn't a pony.)

It didn't have a–

"–TWELVE! TWELVE!"

Her stare was abruptly wrenched away from the thing as Rarity yanked back the copilot's yoke, turning a head-on collision into another glancing clunk.

She barely heard Rarity berating her as her eyes searched the asteroid field for the figure. She found the umbroid upon which it had stood. Nothing there.

Then the lights went out.

In Space, Nopony Can Hear You Play the Drums

A wrench banged against a pipe.

It was joined by several more, banging rhythmically.

"Pinkie, are you gonna help me fix this conduit, or are ya gonna play the drums?"

"Can't a mare do both?"

Each member of the ESS Fire of Friendship's small crew was trained for at least two roles, and each role was shared by at least two ponies. This was according to the philosophy that a burden shared is a burden halved.

Currently, Applejack was finding Pinkie Pie to instead be an additional burden to manage.

"Well you can do both if ya want, but it's gonna be a mite hard to play the drums once all the air leaks out."

This was a bit less dire than one may initially assume. Everyone aboard the ESS Fire of Friendship was equipped with an environmental collar, a magical device that allowed one to survive in a vacuum for… well, a while. They had plenty of time.

The ship's hydroponic garden did not have an environmental collar, and, in fact, would likely not fare particularly well in a vacuum. Now, a ship this size could have easily made do with shelf-stable foods replenished at each port. But Applejack was a farmpony, and she'd be darned if she let her friends subsist on prepackaged rations when she could provide them with fresh produce.

This would have been a mere inconvenience that forced them to fall back on less palatable fare taken from storage, but unfortunately, Applejack had been a bit too prideful and insisted that they wouldn't need anything like that. That the shipboard garden she tended alongside Fluttershy would be all they needed.

And so, if all the air leaked out and the garden failed, they would be left with nothing but sugar, flour, and other such staples, suitable mainly for baked goods. Which Pinkie Pie had no qualms about eating for every meal.

Hence why, in the time taken to explain this, Pinkie Pie had not, in fact, taken action to repair the many leaks, and had instead started turning random valves and saying "I wonder what this does!"

She knew what this does. Applejack was fully aware that Pinkie Pie knew ESS Fire of Friendship's systems better than she did. She'd invented half of them.

Some time later, Applejack concluded that Pinkie Pie simply enjoyed being a bit of a pest. She was quite done with it, and believed she had found the perfect angle of attack.

"Look, Pinkie, if we lose all but the baked goods, we'll have to detour to Bucephalus on the way home to resupply."

It was not a terribly long journey back to Equus. The Fire of Friendship was quite fast. However, as inherently magical beings, equine metabolisms were also quite fast, and they went through quite a bit more food than you might think.

"Oh, come oooon Jackie, cupcakes for dinner never hurt anypony~"

Baked goods, consisting mostly of sugar and carbohydrates, were a major part of the equine diet. They were not, however, supposed to be the only part.

"Ahm sure there's somepony back on Equus with a birthday the delay'd make us miss."

This gave Pinkie pause, but only for a moment. She pulled a datapad from her mane, tapping the calendar icon with her nose, and shook her head. "Nope! I put all their gifts in place before we left!"

Applejack sighed. Deeply.

"Alright sugarcube, ya leave me no choice. Ah didn't wanna do this. This makes me just as hungry as it does you, y'hear?"

Pinkie had looked a bit concerned for most of that, switching over fully to confusion at the end.

"Apple pie. Blueberry muffins. Peach cobbler. Cherry jam. Banana cream pie. Lemon meringue pie. Key lime pie. Buckin…. rhubarb pie. Whole lotta pies. Apple turnover. Apple dumplin. Apple fritter. Apple–"

"Ack okay okay you win!" Pinkie was now drooling, and thoroughly motivated by the thought of all the baked goods that couldn't be made without the garden.

Applejack nodded with satisfaction, only for her smug look to fade when Pinkie turned one final valve and said "okay, done!"

Pinkie Pie knew ESS Fire of Friendship's systems better than she did. She had closed off every valve leading to the damaged sections and redirected the flow through intact channels, all while appearing to goof off.

Yes, Applejack concluded, Pinkie Pie enjoyed being a bit of a pest.

With You in the Dark

"First the air, now this? What is Rainbow doing up there?"

Fluttershy suppressed a sigh. She and Twilight had run into each other in the corridor – Twilight on her way up to the cockpit to see what was going on, Fluttershy poking her head out from the garden to see if the lights were out everywhere.

She really would have preferred to stay in the garden instead of being dragged along with them.

"I know we're not out of the asteroid field yet, but really! What if the next one takes out the engines?!"

Truthfully, Fluttershy wasn't even that bothered by the darkness. There was enough thestral in her that she could see well enough.

She still couldn't get the hang of the echolocation thing, though. All she'd managed this time was convincing Twilight that she was scared of the dark by making a high-pitched E that sounded more like an eep.

Hence Twilight sticking to them like glue with her horn casting the surroundings in rosy light.

So far all the hornlight had illuminated was ordinary corridor. Piping, wiring, paneling – as an experimental custom-designed ship, the ESS Fire of Friendship didn't hide these things away, but kept them out in the open for easy access.

Not that any of those things made clear why the lights were out. The gauges said power was flowing, nothing was sparking or on fire, there weren't any shattered tubes…

"How did they even manage this? Applejack said the backup lights should be working fine, but nothing happened even when she turned them on manually!"

"Um, Twilight…"

As Twilight brought up the backup lights, Fluttershy's gaze had naturally gone to them. The backup lights were old-fashioned incandescent filament bulbs, about as simple and low-tech as it was possible to get in order to ensure that nothing but electricity simply not passing through them could interfere with their function.

The filament was red with heat.

All three of them stared for a moment. The lights were working. It was just… dark anyway, save for the magical light of Twilight's horn.

Something was wrong.

"It's… some sort of darkness spell, maybe? You two get back to the garden and hole up, I'm gonna get to the bottom of this."

No! Fluttershy wanted to say, because something was wrong. But the darkness swallowed it up.

Something was wrong, but even as the two of them separated from Twilight, she couldn't tell what.

Your Best Friend

Nothing was wrong.

So why was Twilight so nervous?

Fluttershy and… and… they should be safe in the garden while she investigated.

Rarity would be safe with Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie would be safe with Applejack. That left…

(How many were aboard again?)

That was everyone. That was everyone, right?

Nothing was wrong.

Nothing was wrong.

NOTHING WAS–

Who was that with Fluttershy?

Twilight broke into a gallop.

Something was wrong.

It was just the two of them now, and Fluttershy was not at all comforted by the presence of her friend.

This wasn't the way back to the garden.

Fluttershy followed as they turned into a room she rarely had cause to enter.

On most starships, the reactor would be a great thing of metal and pipes, or plasma spinning in magnetic containment, or something of the sort.

On ESS Fire of Friendship, it was a tree. A tree of glittering translucent crystal, inside of which guttered a flame the size of a bonfire, smaller wisps of flame traveling up and down the roots and trunk and among the branches and through the air in winding streams of power.

The name of the ship, after all, was literal.

Anywhere inhabited invariably developed a magical field. Its strength seemed to increase with the number of inhabitants, with the crew of a starship usually generating only enough to power basic spells and simple magitech. Interestingly, solo crews generated no magical field at all – not simply not enough to do anything with, but zero.

Most ships made do with whatever meager magical field followed its crew around. Fire of Friendship was different: Her mission was to test the hypothesis that friendship was, literally, magic.

Six crew, each of them close friends with each of the others, created a magical field strong enough to power the whole ship on magic alone.

So, Fluttershy reasoned, it made some sense to come here, where the field was focused into power, in order to try and jumpstart things a bit.

"Um… the power is flowing fine, but… I guess it couldn't hurt to give it a boost."

Fluttershy hugged her friend.

The fire didn't react at all.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

SOMETHING WAS–

Fluttershy shoved her friend into an open flaming power conduit.

Twilight would have never expected to see Fluttershy snap and murder one of her friends, but for a moment that's exactly what she thought she had walked in on.

Then she remembered why she came after her, and realized that none of her friends would have actually been burned by the literal fire of their friendship.

It was burning.

The spell was broken, and she wasn't looking at her friend, but a faceless white thing that was shaped like a pony but proportioned all wrong, with no mane and a bald tail.

Where a pony would have a cutie mark, a nail had been driven into the flesh. There was no blood.

It barely reacted even as Fluttershy held it in the flames, yet its fur and flesh were unmistakably blackening. It just stared into the fire – at least, its blank canvas of a face was pointed directly at it. It wasn't fighting, wasn't struggling.

It wasn't their friend.

Twilight's lance of magical force pierced its skull, and it fell limp.

Inside

"Next we should examine the… um…"

"Darling, you're stalling. We've catalogued all we can, it's time for the internal examination."

Neither Rarity nor Fluttershy had expected to be performing an autopsy when they set out on this mission. The two of them were collectively the Fire of Friendship's medical team, with Fluttershy providing the medical knowledge and Rarity providing the magical dexterity to operate.

Between the two of them, Rarity felt that Fluttershy did most of the heavy lifting, what with having an actual degree. But the poor dear was still a bit shaken up from… attempting to become the cause of death.

"No, there's– There must be something. Go over what we have?"

Rarity sighed. She was absolutely stalling. But she indulged her.

"Subject has no pigmentation in the dermis or coat, and no mane, displaying both albinism and alopecia. The coat extends across the top of the cranium, but not the tail, leaving the dock entirely bald. Notably, the subject's lack of pigmentation extends to the rump, despite appearing to be adult in body. Additionally, the subject has no eyes, navel, anus, or primary sex characteristics."

Fluttershy nodded. "It's white, bald, and has no cutie mark. Or… anything back there. And it wasn't born."

"No evidence of past wounds, stretch marks, wear on the teeth and hooves, or other signs of… any form of prior medical history, past perhaps a few weeks. With the exception of several notable wounds."

Again Fluttershy nodded. "Growing up leaves marks, and it… didn't."

"The existing wounds were caused by the nails shoved into either side of its rump. Age of the punctures are indeterminate, as no bodily processes such as bruising or coagulation appear to have occurred in response. Because it doesn't have blood. Two of these punctures, the ones in which the nails were left, are roughly symmetrical to each other. The remaining six are all on the left rump, and appear to have been earlier attempts at placement which were judged insufficiently symmetrical. Based on the angle of entry, none of the punctures were self-inflicted."

Fluttershy visibly wanted to linger on those wounds instead of proceeding to the more recent ones. Before she could come up with something to anchor the topic, Rarity forged ahead anyway.

"The most recent and severe wounds are a clean skull puncture resulting from an arcane lance, and–"

"And where I held his head in an open flame."

Both were silent for a few seconds at that.

"...The skull puncture traveled all the way through, exposing the cranial cavity with both the entry and exit wound. The cranial cavity is empty, with no neural tissue present. As no neural tissue was present in the cranium at the time of injury, the precise cause of death is unknown." She glanced at Fluttershy. "However, it is most likely connected to the skull puncture, with the other wounds unrelated to the cause of death."

Her words were meant as a comfort. A reassurance that Fluttershy hadn't been the one to kill it. She knew they would fall short. For all that it was an abomination, while alive it had made Fluttershy feel it to be her friend, and no amount of rationalization could ease the trauma of making the decision to do what she had.

"Darling…"

"Make the incision."

This was not at all how Rarity would have liked her to stop dawdling. This wasn't coping, this was just the external examination growing more painful than the prospect of conducting the internal one.

Nonetheless, Rarity formed her magic into a telekinetic scalpel and opened a Y-shaped incision across the cadaver, from the shoulders to the chest and down to the groin.

Then Rarity frowned and went over the incision again, cutting deeper. And again, and again.

"Darling, it's– it's just more skin."

"Wha–"

Well at least it took Fluttershy's mind off of the wound she'd inflicted.

"There's– okay. Exceptionally thick dermis. Possibly extending throughout the body, with locomotion taking place via magic instead of muscles. Keep cutting until the ribcage is exposed."

Rarity kept cutting.

She should have reached the ribs by now. She could feel them by pressing on the skin from the outside, they should be right there, but–

Rarity's telekinetic scalpel was more like a knife by this point – no less sharp, but as she focused less and less on precision and more on it has to be here somewhere, she unconsciously adapted its shape to the new task.

There were no bones. It was just skin, all the way through. But there were clearly bones, she could feel them from the outside, so why as soon as she went looking for them on the inside–

Rarity came back to herself as Fluttershy hauled her backwards by the tail. She didn't quite process what exactly the dear was saying as she stared at her work.

Layer after layer after layer of dermis had been carved away. It was less an incision and more an excavation. The burrow had been carved deep, deeper than should be possible. Forget hitting bone, it should have come out the other side twice over by now, and yet there was still just more skin.

Wordlessly, Rarity shoveled the pile of loose scraps of skin back into the hollow. She sewed one of the larger scraps over the hole, and slid the cadaver into a body bag. Autopsy bucking complete.

Twilight Collars Her Friends

The environment collar was created through a culmination of just about every race's magic.

Pegasus meteorological magic formed the basis, providing oxygen to the wearer along with a sheathe of atmosphere. Indeed, the earliest designs were entirely based on pegasus magic.

Unicorn magic kept that atmosphere pressurized, preventing it from being torn away. Without that stabilization, it would be constantly fighting against the vacuum, drastically reducing its reliability. Atmosphere was released from the field as needed to allow for cooling. It also kept it clean and added a shield against radiation, because the unicorns involved weren't about to let themselves be shown up.

Earth pony magic provided a pinch of gravitational adjustment. Gravimancy wasn't most ponies' first thought when it came to earth pony magic, but it formed the foundation of a great deal of their strength by adjusting their mass. In the environment collar, it allowed the wearer to survive in most high-gravity environments, prevented bone and muscle decay, and allowed the wearer to actually walk on bodies with gravity ordinarily too low to really stand on.

Thestral psionics formed the interface to control all the rest. Rather than wastefully run every function all the time and risk running out of operating time right when it was needed, or require manual activation that may not be fast enough in an emergency, each function was turned on the moment the wearer consciously or subconsciously felt the need for them. They also provided translation, so that diplomatic contact could be made with any new race encountered, and transmitted speech mentally to allow communication even through a vacuum.

Crystal pony magic provided longevity. There was a reason the greatest of legendary artifacts were all crystalline in form or in origin. Without crystallizing the magic, the enchantments would wear down over time, lasting perhaps a few years under normal circumstances – long enough, perhaps, but normal circumstances were far from guaranteed. With crystal magic the collars would last indefinitely, with the only restriction on their lifetime being how long they could operate continuously.

Thus was created the environment collar, by a collaboration of many races working together aboard Cadenza Station. Before, space exploration was a terribly risky endeavor; now, when all a spacefarer needed to travel safely was a moderately expensive collar, more ponies than ever before had their eyes to the stars.

"Rrrrgh! Why! Isn't! This! Working!"

All this is to say that the environment collar was horribly densely packed with enchantments, and Twilight Sparkle was having a hell of a time trying to pack in even more.

She was trying to create a countermeasure for the false friendship field that the blank pony created, and she was as of yet having little success.

Her problems were threefold: How to block the effect, how to cram it into the collar, and how to test if it worked.

She had so far solved exactly one of those problems, by rigging up a roomba to cast a charm spell based on the effect.

"Youuuu! Youuuuu are my friend. Why are you my friend? You're a robot! You can't think! And I cast five mental barriers!"

It wasn't a good charm spell. It was hacked together to create as close an approximation of the specific effect as she could manage, at the expense of basically all actual strength of the effect. It was only working at all because she was deliberately not fighting it, relying only on the magic she was trying to develop. But it did approximate the effect.

Twilight sighed and flopped onto her back. "Ohhh, why isn't this working, Roombella? I've tried everything I can think of. Why is there so little literature on blocking compulsions? Everything just says 'cAn Be ReSiStEd WiTh WiLlPoWeR'. You can't! Resist it! If you don't know it's there because it's subtle!"

Her roomba friend bumped into her in reassurance. Or because it wanted to mate with her. Or because it was trying to clean and she was in the way. One of those.

"You're right, I'll come back to it later. Time to beat my head against cramming something into the collar again…"

As Twilight started trying to get the collar to make the wearer see everything in shades of magenta, there was a knock at the door of her quarters.

"What? We're busy!"

"We…? Twilight, ya been holed up in there fer the better part of a day, and ya haven't come out to eat once. Take a break." (Applejack was fully aware of the irony of this advice coming from her.)

"I'll take a break when I know that's not going to happen again!"

Applejack opened the door.

"Y'all look like shit, sugarcube."

"Thanks Applejack! You're such a supportive friend." Twilight did in fact look like shit and she knew it.

"I'll support ya in making sure ya eat enough. Come on, you can tell me bout what you've been up to on the way to the mess."

Twilight sighed, and got up to follow. She knew she couldn't escape.

Applejack opened her mouth with a look to Roombella, as if to drag it along as well. Then she shook her head to clear off the compulsion, and led Twilight away, closing the door behind her. "So what's yer problem, exactly?"

Twilight took a deep breath, about to launch into a technical rant, only to remember her audience and simplify a bit. "There's almost no literature on resisting compulsions. Everything just says to resist using willpower but that effect was subtle enough that you don't know to resist it! And even if I had a way to block it the collars are packed! There's no room for it!"

Applejack nodded. "Why's it gotta be part of the collar?"

"Because the collar reads our emotional states to know when to turn things on. Hooking into that is the best way I can think of for detecting artificial feelings like that to turn on the countermeasures."

"Why not make somethin else that reads em? And if ya can't block it but ya can resist it if'n ya know it's there, why not just have it let ya know to resist?"

Twilight stopped in her tracks. "B… Because it takes thestral magic to read emotions like that, and I could get by without the crystal magic but it would be so much better with it," she grasped.

"Fluttershy's part thestral, and Rarity's part crystal."

Twilight slumped, approached the nearest bulkhead, and applied her head to it, making an incoherent strangled sound in which she expelled the entire contents of her lungs. It sounded something like "rrrrghhh" mixed with a wheeze and a sob. Then she turned to go find Rarity and Fluttershy.

"Food first, sugarcube."

"...Mmkay."

The final product was a set of tags for the collars in the form of a crystalline acorn each, coaxed from the reactor and containing an ember of friendship. As it would naturally heat up in the presence of genuine friendship, the thestral component would detect if any such feelings were not accompanied by the ember heating up and signal the unicorn component to make the tag cool down sharply instead. Twilight went to bed.

Women B. Shopping

Rainbow Dash burst into the lounge. "WHO WANTS TO GO TO THE BLACK MARKET?!"

Let us take several steps back before we address that.

Cadenza Station was, in many ways, the hub of Ungula's spacefaring society even moreso than Equus itself.

The term "space station" brings to mind metal walls, cramped quarters, and artificial lights. This could not be further from describing Cadenza Station.

The station resembled a great crystalline hemisphere, a soft shimmer surrounding it with a bubble of air. The flat circular facet was dominated by green, broken up by glittering roads branching out and meeting at the center, lined with houses grown from the same bluish crystal as the station itself. The facet held an entire city, not dissimilar to the one the crystal ponies once called home on Equus.

This city held not just spacedocks, industry, and research institutes, but homes, shops, motels, libraries, universities, parks. A pony could forget they were on a space station at all, if it weren't for the fact that through every crystalline road you could see, far below and tinted even bluer than usual, the planet Equus.

Beyond the facet, on the rounded portions of the hemisphere, were countless dwellings more, clustered chaotically compared to the orderly city planning above. Many were grown from crystal like those above, but just as many were either built out from metal, hewn into the crystal, or both. This was the underbelly of the station, made possible to inhabit only by the gravitational effects of the environment collar – without one, you'd just fall off, and pass beyond the bubble of atmosphere only to reenter the natural one of Equus and have plenty of time to think about your life choices on the way down. Even with one, it was recommended not to jump around too much, just in case.

No ships could land on the underbelly, of course, but the major settlements upon it hewed out a hangar from the crystal, that a ship could land inside without any gravitational trickery. Many of the underbelly's buildings were like that – the interiors oriented to the actual direction of gravity, rather than the "down" the collars imposed when walking on its surface.

Rainbow Dash had chosen to dock the Fire of Friendship in one such hangar rather than a berth on the facet for one main reason: Going to the facet would mean going to see Princess Cadance for a debriefing, and she was pretty sure none of those who'd faced the thing were ready to talk about what had happened quite yet. Dash had only seen the thing briefly out the window and it creeped her out; she shuddered to imagine how Fluttershy must be feeling.

(Also, she just wanted to go there. The facet felt like a rather nice city – the underbelly was something unique.)

So, it was a bit of a complicated feeling when Cadance messaged them saying Twilight had sent her the short version already and not to worry about talking about it right away. On the one hoof, good, on the other, there was that foolish feeling like she'd thought she was getting away with something only for it to be revealed that they'd known she was doing it the whole time and hadn't cared. Oh well.

Of course, now she needed a different justification for why she'd taken them to the underbelly.

And that is why Rainbow Dash burst into the lounge and proclaimed, "WHO WANTS TO GO TO THE BLACK MARKET?!"

After everypony finished picking themselves off the floor (or ceiling, in the case of Fluttershy) and began telling her off (or not, in the case of both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, for very different reasons), Rainbow Dash concluded that she'd done a stellar job of taking their minds off of what happened.

She was very thoughtful like that.

They did, in the end, go to the black market.

Now, a black market is rather difficult to hide on the surface of a translucent hemispherical space station. Cadenza Station was a favorite target for everypony on Equus with a telescope, after all.

So it was really more of a gray market. A honeypot for things that weren't necessarily exactly legal, but weren't anything too heinous, such that the authorities looked the other way on most things and swiftly caught anyone who tried doing anything beyond the pale. The label of "black market" was more for advertising than anything, really. Which was why any of them apart from Pinkie Pie knew where it was at all.

The black market was a series of painted metal stalls with wooden facades, giving the appearance of somewhere ready to pack up and scatter at a moment's notice but in actuality being reinforced and bolted securely into the crystal because gravity was sideways here. Most of the stalls faced the same way, such that any wares that fell sideways from where they were secured would land safely inside the stand, and those few that didn't had the merchandise behind glass.

Pinkie Pie led them past stall after stall, each pronk taking her further than it should have as her collar's hold on gravity loosened and she fell a bit towards Equus, the weakened artificial gravity reeling her back in only for her to do it again. It made everypony who looked at her very nervous.

"And this stall has knives, and this one has drugs, and this one has spaghettinoodles!"

Spaghettinoodles was a Bucephalan baked pasta dish whose original name was mostly unpronounceable to anyone but a changeling but which sounded sort of like "spaghettinoodles" so that was what everyone called it.

Rainbow Dash had no idea why it was being sold at a black market. Or how you would eat it while gravity pulled it a different way than you.

Nonetheless, it was the most appealing thing they'd passed so far, because none of them really needed knives, drugs, or most of the other things that were sold at a black market. Except Pinkie Pie, who apparently came here regularly to buy explosives.

Evidently the others had the same idea, because they all swiftly agreed to stop for lunch.

Figuring out how to eat sideways turned out to be an excellent diversion. Rainbow Dash was going to get a good grade in friendship.

Debeefing

The ESS Fire of Friendship seemed just a little tighter a fit than usual when her crew all piled back in. Likely this was because they were all feeling a bit bloated, having had rather large helpings once they'd worked out how to eat spaghettinoodles in sideways gravity.

(It had involved setting their plates on a wall and treating it like a sideways table, which was a bit awkward but worked well enough.)

It was a quiet flight up to the facet, that sleepiness that comes of eating a large meal hitting in full force. Pinkie Pie was up in the cockpit with the door left open, no amount of food being enough to keep her down even as Rainbow Dash was out like a light, and the rest were all piled up against each other on a couch in the lounge. Even Roombella was quietly cleaning the carpet at their hooves.

It was a companionable silence, recent events finally feeling behind them as they quietly reaffirmed their bonds.

Pinkie flew them on a wide and lazy path, in no hurry, quietly humming to herself. This was good, she felt. Her friends needed this.

There was no need to cut the moment short by indulging in her usual exuberance, or by docking again so soon.

Or by exposing their stowaway.

…Ah, yes, that was why the Fire of Friendship felt like a bit of a tighter fit than normal. It wasn't the everypony being overstuffed thing after all, it was the extra invisible person. Pinkie was glad to have put her hoof on that.

Hmm? No, don't worry, this wasn't another mind whammy sort of thing, silly! This was just someone invisible. She'd know if they were gonna hurt anyone or if she needed to warn her friends, and they weren't, so she didn't! She had a feeling it would work out fine, and her feelings were usually right, so she wasn't worried, and neither should you! Pinkie didn't want for you to get the wrong idea about that. This wasn't a horror chapter, this was a fluff chapter.

Cadenza Station did not contain a palace. This was because Princess Cadance did not want one, and as she was not only in charge – Celestia and Luna being far too busy keeping the sun from exploding and the planets from colliding, respectfully, to fit ruling a solar system into their schedules on top of their personal lives – but also the one who'd spearheaded the effort to create the station to begin with… Well, she'd just had them not build a palace.

Instead there was a large and slightly ostentatious city hall at the center of the station, where she did most of her work and which served as a convenient place to smile and wave to the public, and a large and rather nice house nearby, where she lived with her only current spouse Shining Armor and any other partners that might be staying over with either or both of them.

The appeal of this was obvious: By living separately from her place of work, her private life could be enjoyed separately from her work as a ruler. The apparent downside of having heads of state living in a normal if slightly secluded house without a live-in security detail was also obvious. Note, however, the wording of apparent downside, because there were several reasons this was not as much of a risk as it seemed.

Firstly, Cadance herself was an immortal goddess, and as such couldn't actually be assassinated to begin with. Even if anyone somehow managed it, she'd just come back a day or so later.

Secondly, Shining Armor was the former Captain-of-the-Guard – there was a new one now that he was prince consort, a mare named Sunny Field who'd been doing a rather good job stepping into his horseshoes so far – and as such he was more than strong enough to form his own security detail all on his own.

And, lastly, Shining Armor was also Ungula's foremost expert on Protection magic, and as such the house was enchanted to the void and back such that it would be near impossible for anypony on the grounds to actually suffer significant harm, or for anypony who meant them harm to force their way in to begin with.

All this to say, Princess Cadance could damn well have tea on the back porch with what she was certain was her sister-in-law's future polycule instead of some stuffy office if she wanted to. And as it happens, that is exactly what she wanted to do. So she did.

Twilight was having a great time. Her friends were getting along with her sister-in-law, she was going to see her brother later and then they'd get along with him too, and overall everything was going quite well. She was going to get a good grade in friendship, something it was both normal to want and – as she was increasingly learning to believe – possible to achieve.

The debriefing had been a bit rough to get through, but get through it they had, and Cadance had given Fluttershy a hug and all of them the contact info of her therapist.

They'd agreed there wasn't really anything actionable in there apart from what they'd already done and that they should continue as normal with their mission – which was, essentially, to fly around and have adventures and bring back the data from the ship's Amity reactor and anything else of note – and moved on to lighter topics.

…Now, to say Twilight was having a great time at this exact moment, while true, was a bit complicated, because the lighter topic in question was currently her love life. She had retreated under the table blushing furiously at the innuendo Cadance kept making. And then come back up very fast at Cadance's latest innuendo.

Her friends were not helping. They had ganged up to flirt at her. Even Fluttershy! They were all joking, obviously, but still! Huff.

She was saved from having to examine why her friends flirting with her felt rather nice by the abrupt appearance of what looked sort of like a really wrinkly black hippogriff asking for more details about that reactor they mentioned.

Gaze More Like Gays Oh Wait That's Everyone In This Fic

"Who and what are you and how did you get in here?" Cadance was quick to ask.

The wrinkly hippogriff thing obligingly paused in their questioning to answer, swiveling their head to look directly at Cadance. "I am Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead. Wandering umbrum extraordinaire. And, I walked."

Cadance was not terribly satisfied by this answer, as Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead had still popped up out of nowhere in her garden and started asking questions about experimental technology. But at least she knew what they were now. And had several dozen more questions as a result.

The Fire of Friendship's crew was visibly even less satisfied by this answer. Most of them were still reeling from the sudden appearance and deferring to Cadance in how to handle it.

Rainbow Dash was not doing that. "What kind of name is that? And what the heck is an umbrum? And why are you here?"

Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead turned to look directly at Rainbow Dash. "It is my name-story. You may call me Gaze for short if name-stories are too long for your tongue. I do not want to explain what an umbrum is, it is a long story and you can just ask your princess here about most of it. And I am here because those tags on your collars caught my attention and now I want to know more about that fire and the principle behind the Amity reactor."

Rainbow Dash was not satisfied, and got right up in Gaze's beak. "And what's–"

Rainbow Dash disappeared with a pop.

"I'll bring her back when we're done. Please tell me about your friendship fire reactor thing and the principles behind it."

It was dark, and Rainbow Dash didn't know why.

("...and the principles behind it.")

"Hey! What'd you do to me!"

She could still hear them. They, evidently, could not hear her.

As her friends protested her apparent disappearance, Rainbow Dash took stock of her situation.

("Why do you even want to know about that?" she heard Twilight ask, voice trembling but holding it together.)

Sound wasn't obscured, she could find her friends by their voices just fine. She should be able to find Gaze by their voice too, then.

("Because it's something we didn't know about magic? I think Web of Truths was working on a theory like that, but they didn't make it. Who knows, maybe it would have made the difference.")

Rainbow Dash tackled where Gaze's voice was coming from. There was nothing there.

("Now answer my question. You do want her back, right?")

("Th-the Amity Hypothesis states that friendship is literally magic. Magical fields arise from the bonds between sapient beings, with more and stronger bonds creating bigger and stronger magical fields.")

Dash followed Twilight's voice, this time, and gave her a nudge. She was right where it sounded like, but she didn't seem to notice the nudge at all.

("So it's not the number of beings, but how interconnected they are? Fascinating… That would explain quite a few observations made during the later days of our time in the Void, when we were all falling apart.")

Gaze must be throwing their voice somehow, or something of the sort, Dash concluded.

("That's what we think, a-and experimental data seems to bear it out. The Fire of Friendship has a stronger magical field than any starship before it, because its crew was specifically chosen for our strong bonds with each other.")

Rainbow Dash was the most pegasussy pegasus to ever pegasus. Sound went through the air, and that was meteorology. She didn't have the hearing of a thestral, but even they couldn't feel the atmosphere like she could.

("Your whole ship is powered by nothing but friendship, then?")

There. A tiny current of warm air that started and stopped with Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead's voice, on the other side of the patio from where it sounded like it was coming from. It was miniscule, it barely affected the atmosphere at all, if it wasn't so irregular she'd never have found it. But she was Rainbow Miriam Dash, and her friends needed her.

("If the hypothesis is correct, the amiable force could be codified as a fifth fundamental force of the universe, allowing us to finally place where magic fits in with the standard model of physics. So yes, it's powered by friendship.")

("Mm, that always was a tricky–")

Rainbow Dash pounced.

"–problACK!"

The illusion broke, and she could see again. Her friends turned from where Gaze had seemed to be, now able to see Dash and Gaze both.

Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead felt just as wrinkly and leathery as they looked. It was kind of gross.

"Kick its ass, girls!" Rainbow shouted.

"Whoop, that's my cue to leave! Good talk! We should do this again sometime!"

As they all charged, Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead contorted out of Rainbows Dash's grasp and seemed to split into around a dozen of themself, each of which took wing and flew in a different direction. Bolts of magic flew through them as if they weren't there, revealing them to be illusions.

None of them were the real one, of course. Gaze was gone.

Shining Armor Orders 72 Tacos

It took some time for the hubbub to die down after that, during which Rainbow Dash explained that Now Turn Thy Gaze Ahead had simply made her imperceptible rather than actually foalnapping her and Pinkie Pie sheepishly confessed that she had known they were there since leaving the market but had been pretty sure they didn't mean any actual harm and hadn't wanted to ruin the moment.

Everypony was a bit ticked about that but ultimately agreed that it had worked out alright and they had needed a few hours to just relax together. Nopony was really about to begrudge Pinkie Pie for trusting her gut, after all.

"Okay, so don't be mad, but I might have gotten too many tacos."

Shining Armor coming home with seventy-two tacos might have also sped up the process of recovering from the scare.

"Shiny. Shining Armor. My dear husband. Shield of my heart. Why did you order seventy-two tacos?"

"Well, I asked for twenty-four crunchy meals, because there were gonna be eight ponies and I figured three tacos each seemed about right. But, uh. It turns out a crunchy meal is already three tacos."

"What part of crunchy meal made you think they were only one each???"

"A slappy meal is only one hayburger!"

"That's because a slappy meal is for foals! Did you think you were ordering from the foals menu???"

"Look, I wanted to see what toys they would come with!"

"They came with a pillow to the head, that's what!"

Twilight caught the tacos in her magic as her brother fled from the pillowy wrath of his wife. It was good to be home.

Twilight Sparkle was a mare with nine tacos on her plate and just as much curiosity. She was torn. She wanted to ask so many questions, but she also wanted to stuff nine tacos into her face hole.

Look, yes they'd had a big lunch, but it had been several hours since then and Twilight really liked tacos. It's not her fault Shining Armor got so many. Seventy-two tacos divided by eight people equals nine tacos each, this was her mathematically correct share. And she was going to eat them all. So there.

She did also really want to know about umbrum, though.

(Twilight Sparkle was now a mare with eight tacos on her plate.)

She was saved from her dilemma when Cadance, who had put only four tacos on her own plate like a sucker, started explaining of her own accord in order to head off Twilight talking with her mouth full, which it very much was.

"So. Umbrum. I learned a bit from when Umbre originally showed up, and most of the rest later from chatting with their sort-of-dead goddess, Between Starlight and Clay."

…Twilight swallowed her taco. (Yes, she had put the entire taco in her mouth.) "Okay that raises several questions."

"Yeah, I was confused too at first, but she's voluntarily not coming back all the way. Poor dear. What was the other question?" Cadance took a normal-pony-sized bite of her taco.

It was Rarity's turn to speak up, because Twilight had most of another taco in her mouth. "Umbre showed up? I knew it was originally a planet, but…" She took a fancy-pony-sized bite of one of her three tacos. She acted like she was above such base gluttony but Twilight knew she had eaten the most spaghettinoodles of any of them at lunch.

"Ohmf! I know this one." Rainbow Dash held up a hoof in a 'one sec' gesture, also having most of a taco in her mouth. Rainbow Dash had taken ten tacos. Twilight felt a small pang of envy and admiration at her friend's casual defiance of mathematical taco share allocation.

"So this was, like, thousands of years ago, right? Archaeologists aren't really sure exactly how many, there's conflicting accounts. But one day a whole planet just kind of appeared, one big chunk at a time. Nopony really knows why or where it came from. This was after Discord's Comet bucked up everything's orbits, so Luna would have already been managing things, but this was, like. A hundred times more things than she'd had to manage before, and they refused to stick together. So, that's when Luna stopped having time for ruling."

Twilight shoved another taco into her mouth, making her slightly reddened cheeks bulge. Rainbow Dash was normally a jock, but for certain subjects like meteorology and archaeology she was a big nerd, and it never failed to stoke Twilight's feelings of friendship towards her.

That knowing look Cadance just gave her didn't mean anything.

"Has it really been thousands of years…? Well, yes, it's just as Rainbow Dash said. Most of the pieces appeared over the course of a week or so, with the rest – mostly mantle and core – trickling in over the next few months. That's about all I knew at the time – I had suddenly found myself very busy, since I was the only one left who had time to actually rule."

Cadance took another normal-pony-sized bite of her taco. Beside her, Shining Armor shoved his fourth taco into his mouth. He had taken fourteen tacos, having nabbed the rest of Cadance's share.

"At the time? Ya found out more later from that ghost lady, then." Applejack said. She had taken nine tacos and somehow already finished seven of them. Twilight did not know how. She was taking normal-pony bites, but somehow she was out-eating Twilight herself.

"From Between Starlight and Clay, yes. I suppose I should start from the beginning… Okay, so Umbre was a rogue planet, without a sun of its own, inhabited by… owl people, sort of. Umbrum. And Between Starlight and Clay was their mother."

Cadance took another normal-pony bite. Twilight matched it with most of another taco. Pinkie Pie escalated, shoving two into her mouth at once. Twilight couldn't beat that.

"I should clarify, any gendered terms for umbrum are essentially arbitrary, they're hermaphroditic and their own language doesn't even have a concept of gender. So it's mostly based on presentation and, like, vibes. And Between Starlight and Clay's vibes are very much those of a mother goddess."

Rainbow Dash swallowed her taco. "So does that mean every umbrum is gay and trans?"

"Yes," Cadance deadpanned. "Yes it does. Anyway, one day Umbre was dragged into a hell dimension, because it turns out that's something that tends to happen to planets that aren't near a sun."

Well if anypony present didn't already appreciate Celestia's work keeping the sun from exploding, they sure did now. Twilight, for one, liked not being dragged into hell dimensions.

"Define 'hell dimension', please," Fluttershy spoke up. She had taken a respectable six tacos.

Cadance took a bite – and another, taking a long moment to collect her words. "The Void is kind of like space but it hates you."

Twilight swallowed. That was half her tacos gone, now. "Doesn't space already kind of hate you?"

Cadance shook her head. "Space is indifferent towards you. The Void hates you. Anything with a magical field, it wants to essentially swallow and digest it."

Twilight imagined Equus in the position of the taco she had just shoved in her mouth. Poor taco.

"So, there they were, being digested. The Void isn't empty, it's less than empty, and anything inside just gets… eroded away. So, uh. A lot of them died over the first couple months."

"They musta got out of there right quick, then, if there are any of em left at all." Applejack had finished all nine of her tacos. Her unnatural consumptive speed had been her undoing.

"Nooooooo. No, they, uh. Didn't. Small stuff like a starship can slip in and out, but as best they ever figured out, the more gravity stuff is going on the harder it is to make the transition either way. Which is why suns and solar systems make planets safer from falling in – that's a lot of extra gravity stuff going on. But it's a lot easier to fall in than to climb out, and to get a whole planet out……"

"So they weref stufck." Twilight swallowed. "How'd they survive, then?"

"The Halo, they called it. An artificial ring around the planet. The last great work they undertook as a unified race. It took years to construct, during which Between Starlight and Clay took the entire burden of shielding the umbrum upon herself, and then… It wasn't actually light that it shed, exactly. It was undark. I don't quite understand the theory, but that was important, light doesn't stop the erosion but undark does."

"Sounds like bullshit. Fascinating. I want to know everything about it." Twilight punctuated her statement by shoving her seventh taco into her mouth.

"I thought you might, sorry I don't understand that bit better. The thing is, though, the Void really hates you. And usually it just digests you, but if it can't, it slowly twists you."

"O-oh. So that's why they look like, er, that…?" Rarity was on her second of three tacos, because she was too fancy to eat nine tacos.

"Eventually, yeah, their bodies became… malleable. They all look different, though it seems like now they're here a lot of them have modeled their bodies after Ungulan races. But that wasn't the big problem, the minds were. It was… it couldn't get them all at once, it preyed on negativity and isolation. And the ones whose minds it twisted…"

Cadance took another bite, collected herself. She was on the third of her four tacos, and her face was mournful. "Vantumbrum, some called them. Blacker than the dark between stars for which Umbre was named. Unknowing slaves of the Void. And they were still her children."

Twilight swallowed. She didn't know what to say to that.

"Things fell apart. It wasn't an all-or-nothing thing, they were all twisted up a bit. And the bonds between them were twisted just as much. Not broken, never broken – but twisted. The only bonds it couldn't touch were from Between Starlight and Clay to her children. She was the only one seeing clearly as her children descended into infighting, explored more and more depraved magics… Fell further and further."

Twilight hadn't taken another bite.

"She doesn't know exactly how long it was, there weren't any stars or anything to easily tell the passage of time by, but it was centuries at least. The malleable body thing got rid of, y'know, aging. So they were all festering in there for a long time. Eventually, Between Starlight and Clay made a desperate gambit. She repurposed the Halo."

"But wouldn't that mean…?"

"Yes. If it didn't work, they would all be digested. She… judged that better than letting her children fall even further."

"Oh."

It was a very soft 'oh'. Twilight understood full well the sheer gravity of a mother goddess taking the ultimate mercy upon her children.

There was a moment of silence. After a long few seconds, Cadance continued.

"She turned it from undark to ungravity. The more gravity, the harder it is to make the transition – so she negated the planet's gravity. The Halo shattered, Umbre flew apart – but it worked. She got them out of the Void."

Shining Armor laid a hoof upon Cadance's shoulder. He had heard the story before, and knew what was coming.

"They killed her for it. And she let them."

All That's Made Can Surely Break

"Well what about that one?"

"Mmmmmmmantle."

"That one?"

"Mantle again!"

"Ugh, are they all mantle? How about that one there?"

"Ooh, core!"

As you may recall, ESS Fire of Friendship's mission was, essentially, to fly around and have adventures while writing down what happened and how the ship performed.

"We're not looking for core! Aren't there any here that were crust?"

"I think that one has a little bit of lower crust! Mostly mantle though."

As such, having learned that Umbre was once inhabited, they all decided that having a look at some ancient ruins seemed like a pretty good adventure to have. There are few adventure hooks as clear as ancient ruins.

"Why are they all mantle?"

"Cause most of a planet is made of mantle, silly!"

As you've overheard, this was not as easy as it seemed, because a planet's volume is much greater than its surface area, and so most of the chunks of Umbre were simply big rocks.

Rainbow Dash was getting a bit sick of finding nothing but big rocks. No wonder nopony had explored these things before, it was like finding a needle in a hayburger.

Pinkie Pie was having a much nicer time, because she was looking at rocks. As the team's geologist, it was her job to discern which umbroids were actually worth investigating. If she wasn't pointed at a new target, however, she tended to……

"Did you know the mantle flows? It's really slow, but it's like an ocean down there! And the continents are boats! I mean, not these bits of mantle obviously, they're not hot enough anymore."

"Pinkie. How about that one?"

Pinkie Pie really liked rocks. Not as much as her sister Maud, but you didn't grow up on a rock farm and not like rocks. No farmpony ever tires of their own crop, they all say.

"That one looks good!"

"Uh-huh. And what about– wait, it does?"

"Yepperoni! See, the mantle and core ones expanded a lot once they were no longer under pressure, and the lower crust ones too. So there's cracks and deformations and stuff. But that one shows nooooo signs of expansion!"

Rainbow peered at the umbroid, comparing it to those around it. "I guess? But shouldn't we be able to see, like, the surface? That'd look different from just rock, right?"

"Ssssssort of? It's all dirty and stuff, is the thing, see? Ungravity and soil meannnns… You ever put a vacuum cleaner in reverse, so it sprays the stuff in the bag everywhere? It must have been like that, but the whooooole ground is the vacuum cleaner."

"...Right. I don't… I don't think vacuum cleaners have a setting to do that, but sure. And then it settled down and coated everything once the Halo broke and the ungravity stopped, I guess?"

"I mean, it didn't stop, Cadance said the pieces refused to stay together, buuuuuut… probably! I dunno, I wasn't there. But it's all covered in grayish dirt that makes it kinda hard to tell apart from rock at a distance. I mean, if you're not a rock pony, anyway."

"...Right."

Rainbow Dash decided she was just glad they'd finally found an umbroid to explore.

The exploration teams were as such: Pinkie Pie was accompanied by Rarity, because both of them wanted to look for rocks in some form. Applejack and Fluttershy were united in being a bit aimless and planned to simply wander around and see what they found. And Twilight and Rainbow Dash, of course, were huge nerds.

"So how are we actually gonna find, like, a structure?"

"Uhh… I think I have something for that, actually."

Twilight flipped through her datapad.

"No... No... Not that one... Aha! Clover's Civilization Compass. Designed for finding your way to the nearest settlement – and then if you were still lost, you'd use Clover's Capital Compass to find a bigger town. For thiiiiiiis… We're looking for any size, even a single building, so I'll strip out this, and don't need to check for inhabitants so I can get rid of this… Expanding it to look for ruins too is a bit trickier, but if I… mhm… aaaand… There! The newly minted Clover's Cabin Compass!"

Twilight's horn glowed rosy. She bent down, and the glow shot off across the ground. "That way."

Technically this variant wasn't made by Clover the Clever like the others, but you didn't just break a pattern in a spell name like that. You didn't necessarily have to make it alliterative or put a name on it, there were many ways to name spells, but whatever convention it used, you did your best to keep when you derived something from it. Unless you changed it enough to be a whole new spell rather than a variation, or you thought the old name was stupid, or what have you.

Not that most ponies ever thought about that. Most ponies just used the existing spells, and anything original that happened to arise from their special talent. Twilight Sparkle was just built different.

Score one for team egghead.

The glow led the pair to the base of a cliff studded with openings and balconies, in what had once been a forest.

Shockingly little happens to a tree in a vacuum. It dies, of course. But it still looks more or less like a tree, if a very brittle one, and without living fungi to rot it, it continues to look like this for quite a long time.

The forest was filled with the graves of trees, all fallen over when the soil to which they were rooted floated away only to fall back down again. Roots reached into the air, trunks and branches snapped where they fell, nearly all coated with dirt. Here and there, stumps and branches lay bereft of their trunk – signs that someone had harvested them sometime after it all ended.

Nearer to the cliff, not all the graves were trees.

Leaves crunched upon the ground, brittle and freeze-dried.

The thestral magic imbued within her collar fed meaning into Twilight's mind as her gaze lingered upon alien writing carved into the flat memorial stones, the Umbrish script astoundingly dense with meaning and context. It whispered that each name-story was a Prologue, a name-story given to a chick after first flight and carried until they find a name-story of their own.

A Clear Evening's Rain. Slumber Under The Canopy. A Choir Of One. A Pattern In The Stars. My Kingdom For A Quill.

Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Unnamed. Yet Un

Oh, Worm?

Inside was better.

After ascending the stairs, Twilight and Rainbow Dash had found themselves in a wide, airy hallway, with one side filled with great bay windows empty of glass, overlooking the gray forest remnants.

Opposing the windows were doors, the wood preserved just as the trees had been. They were proportioned just a bit wrong for a pony, thinner than was entirely comfortable, but perfectly traversable. If they weren't solidly closed and locked, that is.

There was no soil coating everything in here. No– there was, once, by the windows, and traces still remained. It had been cleaned.

"What do you think this place was?" Rainbow Dash ventured to fill the silence.

"Government building? University? …Library, even, I don't know how they categorized."

"What, you think they had a different room for every section?"

"Why not? They were all birds, they could get between them easily. You know, when there was air to fly through. Amazing for logistics, that, although– ah."

They had come to a door which was not closed and locked. It was open, just a crack – and light spilled from it.

A brief wordless exchange conveyed mutual understanding of several things. For one, that there was someone in there. For another, that whoever it was may not take kindly to their intrusion. And finally, that they were going to intrude anyway.

Twilight pushed open the door.

"Oh hi! Cmere, look at this."

This presumably-umbrum resembled a very colorful owl. Their feathers were cardinal-red, but upon each was an eyespot pattern like those of a peacock, each in a different vibrant color. The overall effect was that of a very colorful and excitable mop looking everywhere at once.

Cautiously, the pair approached, and examined the indicated section of floor.

Twilight blinked. "That's a snail."

"I know! How do you think he breathes? It's not magical, I checked. So what gives?"

…Rainbow Dash groaned as Twilight, too, became engrossed in the rather large snail. Dash was a nerd for archaeology, but Twilight was a nerd for everything.

As the snail gang chatted about anaerobic respiration, Rainbow looked around at the room. It was… normal. Tables, cushions, rugs. Perches, which were slightly interesting but ultimately were clearly basically just chairs but for owl people. –There! A small bookshelf, mostly bare but for two tomes, one atop the other. Rainbow Dash reached out to open the upper book.

"Wait, don't– oh, you touched it. Nevermind!"

Thaaaat brought the conversation up short. "Whyyyy…?" ventured Twilight.

"Death worm."

"Death worm?!"

"Death worm."

Rainbow Dash rapidly withdrew her hoof.

"–Oh, not in the book, silly! It just gets mad about it. It'll be here–"

There was a knock at the door.

Now, here it is important to remember that there is not, in fact, an atmosphere in this place beyond that which our intrepid explorers bring with them. All of this conversation, while still spoken, is being relayed telepathically to get around the problem of sound not transmitting in a vacuum. This 'knock' was not being relayed telepathically. It was reverberating through the solid stone floor and up through their hooves, jarring their knees as it came and ultimately sounding not actually all that much like a knock.

All this to say, something slammed very hard into the wall just outside the room.

"–around now. Oh, my name is On The Leyline From Knowledge Into The Unknown, by the way! In case you need something to scream while we fly for our lives."

"Twilight Sparkle." "Rainbow Dash."

The red peacock-owl – Leyline – scooped up the snail in her beak and deposited it in a small bag nestled amongst her plumage.

Twilight scooped up her datapad, on which she had pulled up an article on the Farasi Giant Snail.

Rainbow Dash scooped up the pair of books and deposited them in her saddlebag. If there was a death worm guarding them they'd better be good.

The death worm burst through the door and began to do its best to scoop up all three of them.

On The Leyline From Knowledge Into The Unknown was having an exciting night!

First she'd found a big snail, a big interesting snail, which she'd decided to name Life Finds A Way.

Then those ponies had found her! It had been a while since that had happened. Ponies knew different things from umbrum sometimes, so she'd asked them about the snail, and one of them had ideas!

Then the other one had touched that one book that someone had trapped. She didn't really know why they did that? Trap the book, that is, not touch it, that was understandable. I mean, it was sitting right there, begging to be touched, and there was a whole other book underneath it that she couldn't get at! Frankly, Leyline was kind of glad someone had just yanked the feather out and picked up the book.

Whoops, almost died!

You couldn't really fly in a vacuum. Leyline had never quite gotten used to that. When her body was moving on instinct, such as when dodging a lunge from a giant death worm, sheeeee still tended to try and fly. And it didn't work.

Leyline was really glad the purple one was here! She knew things about snails and had just pulled her out of the way of that death worm. Dying would have sucked, probably.

The blue one could fly a little bit. How come? She'd have to ask later, when there wasn't a death worm. Leyline liked the blue one. She was pretty, and colorful. Leyline liked colors, that's why she put so many on her feathers. Maybe when there wasn't a death worm they could go flying together? That would be nice.

Huh, so that's what happens when you set off a thaumobaric charge inside a death worm in space. Makes sense!

Oh, she didn't know the death worm had had baby death worms. That was a lot of them.

"Back in the ship back in the ship back in the ship back in the ship!"

Twilight Sparkle was having a rollercoaster of a day.

First it was exciting, then it was sad, then she made a new friend and it was exciting again, and then the death worm showed up and it was terrifying.

It reminded her a bit of the worm from Dawn, that movie about a worm that lives in the sun and excretes drugs. Thick hide, tripartite mouth full of lots and lots and lots of very long and sharp teeth, hunts by vibrations. Several meters in diameter. Wanted to eat them. Intelligent enough to cut them off from their exit.

It had been a stroke of luck to find that unstable thaumic crystal in a storage room, easily turned into an improvised thaumobaric explosive to feed to the worm.

And then it turned out death worms carried their young inside them, and they were hungry and angry.

What followed was a mad dash down the stairs and to the ship pursued by around two dozen stubby meter-thick worms. And a lot of screaming.

"WHO is THAT and WHY ARE THERE WORMS!"

"World's most autistic bird, I touched a thing, and get back in the ship!"

"Nice ship!"

"Thanks, it doesn't have worms in it!"

Twilight Sparkle had had a rollercoaster of a day, and the moment they lifted off she was all too happy to flop down on the couch in the lounge and refuse to move for several hours.