Wandering

To Know A Vale

Entry #8

1st of July, 19:50

Airspace, approximately 500km SW of Jägarfjället

3000m ASL

Temperature 6º C, Wind Speed 10 m/s E

“And what, that's how they invented the whole memory-magic thing? How long ago? They certainly didn't look anything like you fellows – they were unicorns, weren't they?”

Elytra huffed at me – inside my head, of course, but the sound was still pretty much the same – and I felt disapproval radiate from her corner of our minds. It was really 'ours', at this point – it was like having a roommate you couldn't get rid of, in a way. You had your own things and your own thoughts to care about, but whatever one did the other could see; or in our case, feel.

You're asking too many questions, too fast, came her response. First you're not interested, and now that I've shown you a bit you suddenly want to know everything at once? I would question the mechanics of your mind, were I not already a part of it. With a marked silence her presence withdrew from mine, as much apart as we could come. There'd be no more conversation on the matter of ancient changeling history today, it seemed.

I snorted irritably. Like it or not as she may, she had gotten my interest, and when it comes to knowledge – and stories! – I'm greedy to a fault for more.

Waiting wouldn't exactly hurt, though. It wasn't as if we had a lack of time to spend. We'd managed to cover just over a flight and a half during the day, but none of the scouts – or Chrysalis herself – had found any landmarks at all they could recognize, and that in itself told quite a bit about how far we still had to go.

In a way, I was getting used to flying. I'd spent some time with Elytra calibrating her spell to a perfect power level just after takeoff, and two hours in I was remarkably enough feeling quite natural in the air. It was a bit like skiing, in a way – you read the air currents much like you'd read the snow, looking for bumps and drops and smooth parts. We'd taken a short breather at a mountaintop around five o'clock, but aside from that we'd spent the whole time since ten in the air. Some of the changelings were looking a bit winded – haha, get it – which was understandable, since from what Chrysalis had told me they were only used to six hours of flight per day, aside from the scouts. I, on the other hand, felt none worse for the wear, and I would certainly have noticed Elytra getting tired. Not so strange, maybe, since for all intents and purposes we were a magical fighter jet in a pack of birds, but it felt nice to know I wasn't being a burden, despite having been just your average flightless human half a day ago.

However, much like most forms of long-range travel, even flying lost its novelty onceyou'd kept at it for long enough. Sure, I could still marvel at the sights of the landscape below me, but in all honesty it hadn't been changing very much. Valleys and mountains and little rivers and lakes were sprinkled across the land like sugar on a donut, and there really weren't much else. This was one single enormous mountain range, as far as I could tell. Emphasis on enormous; we weren't flying all too high up, staying in the valleys we found for good winds for the most part, but despite all the distance we'd covered I had seen no signs of it ending – be it for a bigger forest of some kind, or a coastline.

On the other hand, Elytra didn't even have the novelty of flying to break the dull monotony of travel, and she had quickly gotten the worst of our collective boredom. Thus, she started her interrogation. Now, I'm not denying that it was probably intended as an attempt at small talk, but as you can imagine that isn't really the most common skill for hivelings in general – much less one with Elytra's leanings. So began a very odd spin on the theme ofthe kid who gets invited into the cockpit.

In the beginning it'd been simple questions about my home and my people, which I'd tried to brush away politely so I could focus on flying. Once I'd gotten that part down, however, it had been hard to ignore her requests. I'd started off just answering what I could think of, as neutrally as I could; however, it had quickly spiraled into her obviously peeking at my memories whenever I tried to think back on something, and drawing conclusions from partial information. She'd quickly become... upset with several parts of human civilization; most of all, probably, with the way we linked as much we could of our scientific progress into the industry of war.

So instead, I'd begun quizzing her on the first things I could think of, in order to divert her attention – it goes without saying that the last thing I needed during my first day of flight was the equivalent an angry wasp buzzing around in my head. Quite soon I had gone from diverting her attention to diverting my own; I should've expected it, obviously, but meeting and learning the ways of an entirely alien civilization was rather fascinating.

So I'd first learned – confirmed, really, because I had been suspecting it for a while – that Elytra was apparently quite a scholar. Magister in the Field was her official title, which sounded fairly fancy to me despite her embarrassed assertion that it was most certainly nothing impressive at all. Changeling society functioned as some sort of modular caste-based society, from what I could tell – despite her horror at me using that word to describe it, she eventually had to accept the term was reasonably fitting. Every hiveling was born with certain potential and characteristics inherited from her ancestors, while maintaining the ability to adapt herself to whatever application she wished to fulfill.

Elytra herself was from a long bloodline of scholars, but she was adamant in pointing out that “anyone could become anything they wished”. A more fitting statement than usual, perhaps, what with their transforming abilities and whatnot; still, it felt a bit idealistic to my ears, and at first glance seemed more like an excuse to keep the castes in line with, than an actual truth.

Changeling civilization was made up of various Hives; city-like conglomerations of hivelings, bound under a single Hivelord elected from the populace, by the populace. The Hivelord and all his hivelings are in turn bound to the monarch; again, elected from the populace, by the populace. Direct democracy – even on a national level – is quite effective when the mayor of every city has a mind link to his citizens, it would seem.

The subject of the mind-link itself wasn't one Elytra wanted to broaden my horizons on, however, and when I started asking about her bloodlines and ancestral memories and whatnot she became even more evasive than before. Thus it started; first a half-hour long tirade of magical and scientific facts I couldn't understand the first thing of – I swear she made them up on the spot just to lose me – and then when I finally ran out of patience she opened up a scene of her own memory to me just to get me off her back.

Which was when I really started having trouble focusing on flying, because I became entirely absorbed by the thing. It wasn't any fast-forward overloaded feed of information, either – that might be how she did things, but I'm pretty sure I would've crashed my brain trying or something – this was like watching a movie.

A rather strange movie, of course, what with the ponies and all. Colorful things to be sure; rather like the changelings in many ways, except the part about lacking wings, a unified color scheme, common purpose, quicksilver skin, cheeselegs and a generally insectoid feel. Princess Mercury had definitely lived up to her name, however, which was rather amusing; her long, shimmering silver mane had almost seemed to live a life on its own before the eyes of the old stallion we'd looked out of, and while the pristine white of her coat was a stark contrast to the changelings' black, the familiar emerald sheen of her eyes and lit horn made the connection seem rather obvious.

Obvious in presence, at least, but thehow of it was entirely lost on me due to the fact that I lacked a single clue on how to go from a pearl white unicorn filly to the vastly more alien appearance and characteristics of the changelings in any reasonable timeframe. No clue, because I had next to no experience with magic or however the hell that would work – even if that was obviously the big kicker in it all – and Elytra was in no mood to let me find out.

So now I finally turned my attention back to our surroundings, trying to take stock of the land around us. The compass dangled around my neck on its bright red cord as I threw my eyes at every last corner of the massive landscape, trying to place the mountains around me. After a few seconds of that futile exercise – it was like counting stars, really – I reached inward for a bit, tapping into Elytra's senses to get a better picture of the swarm. One of the scouts were sure to have some sort of idea of the area we were in.

Discerning different types of changelings from one another was difficult, to say the least. For one thing, the fact that I was just borrowing Elytra's senses had its impact. It was like the difference between speaking face-to-face with someone and talking with them on the phone. Muddled, fuzzy and distant, in a way. Heck, my mom can't even tell if she's talking to me or my brother unless we tell her which one it is – his wife is probably the only one I know of who regularly can tell which one of us she's talking to, and it's not like we're twins or anything.

Of course I wasn't looking for voices, per se. Every changeling – every creature in the world, from Elytra's explanation – has their own magical, astral, whatever signature, that's unique to them. Changelings use this as a sort of ID tag, instinctively translating the signature to patterns in the way quicksilver is distributed throughout their bodies. Handy, one would suppose, in a society where everyone looks pretty much the same.

Looking with this second set of eyes, I could make out bright marks, like tattoos, across the flanks of the hivelings around me. Weakly pulsating lines ran across the rest of their bodies, near-invisible and spindly things, but the mercury marks were clear as day. Their designs were complex things that gave me the impression of hieroglyphs; images and shapes that came together in a strangely perfect symmetry, conveying a thousand words of every single individual.

Racking my head trying to figure out what the signs meant, I stared intently at the images one after another, until I noticed one that felt extremely familiar. Oddly enough, I couldn't see it – I felt all the signs and shapes, but it was like I was feeling somethingbehind me.

It took me a few seconds until I realized that I was in fact sensing Elytra's own mark, now an invisible brand on the back of my neck. Immediately after realizing this, I felt the semblance ofknowledge in part of the mark. Without my eyes deceiving me, I could much easier understand the message it was trying to convey. This was a scholar's mark.

Like the inevitable force of the rising tide, understanding fell into place from nowhere into my head. She was female. She was nineteen years of age. She was of the scholar caste. She had two parents – the number seemed significant somehow – both of whom were of the scholar caste, and of the same bloodline. She was a Magister in the Field, promoted four months back from the ranks of scribes in the Basileo. She had broken no Oaths. She had never procreated. She had–

STOP!

Elytra's scream rung in my head, accompanied by a spike of pain. Instantly the silvery lines across my vision evaporated, as she drew her self as far away from mine as she could. I could still feel the enormous, looming fire of her emotions burning in the distance, but our minds were as far from each other as they could get. Hers was an eruption of embarrassment; mine was a stirring pot of wild and confused thoughts.

“Why?” were the first words I could manage to form. “Why!?” Eventually, I was able to evolve this simple interjection to a more sensible query. “Gudars skymning! Do you wear your entire lives like clothing? Hells,procreation! Is there anything at all that's private to your kind!?”

And then, finally, did the dots connect. The one secret she had, and she'd shared it with me.

Her name.

“I'm sorry,” I managed after a decidedly pregnant silence. “I'm sorry,” I repeated, “Elytra.”

Several minutes passed before my companion had calmed her spirit enough to let me use her eyes again. Tense silence hung between us as I looked around me; not too hard, not too much. Privacy was a strange notion to changelings, and difficult for me to apply when a simple glance could be as invasive as rummaging through someone's room, diary and mail all together.

After a few moments of piecing together caste signs across various hivelings, I swept my wings and fell down a bit to catch a word with one of the swarm's scouts.

The muscular female gave me a considering look as I fell in beside her, but resumed her vigilant watch of the land flying by beneath us once she'd adapted her position to my massive wingspan. “Careful with those, Hunter,” she admonished me in a deep, crackling alto. The wind was reasonably mild now, so shouting was no longer a necessity to make yourself heard. “What brings you?”

I managed to crack a grin at her. “Why does anyone seek a scout? I need a report on our surroundings. Also, the swarm is tiring. Are there any suitable landing spots nearby?”

The scout shot me a suspicious glance – fair enough,  before returning her eyes to the front. “Let her Majesty worry about the swarm, Hunter. There's a water-filled valley another few beats to the southwest. We should be able to get there before nightfall.”

I raised an eyebrow at this. “So we're out of the Arctic, then? Are you sure?”

She shrugged dismissively at me, and I realized I wasn't really reading her body language as much as I was feeling her project emotions at me. There was no way she could've conveyed any sort of message I could understand otherwise. “I don't know anything about this 'arctic' of yours, but on our current latitude the sun will pass the horizon in approximately two hours.”

I gave her a nod in thanks, and beat my wings to gain height. It would be nice to see the night sky again.

The vale was enormous, carving a path tens of kilometers across between two mountain ranges like a scar in the earth itself. Half of it was underwater, while the other half was now speckled with spots of black here and there. The sun was going down – it'd been almost a week since I saw that last time – and the hivelings had broken up into little congregations of their own, settling down in the valley. In cove not far fromthe water's edge, I was sequestered with Chrysalis and her personal guard – the very lot that had stood their ground against me during our first encounter – and of course, Elytra.

I must say I had mixed emotions about being down on the ground again. Now that I'd learned how to handle myself in the low-gravity environment her magic provided me, I felt a bit clumsy walking around with so much weight on me. Of course, my mass was still the exact same, but knowing the physics of it didn't help one bit in relieving myself of the feeling of being a fat, lumbering drunkard I got as I walked around our little camp, trying to get my feet used to being back on the ground.

All in all, however, it was a fairly uneventful evening. I drew quite a few wondering gazes as I yet again unpacked my trangia – I hadn't used the stove on our lunch break, so none of the other hivelings had seen it before – and stirred up my dinner. All while this was happening, the changelings were having their own dinner, so to speak. I'd gotten quite a bit better at handling my emotions; another skill that I'd been able to train up with Elytra's help during the flight. Channeling my emotions was still a fairly weird experience, but the senses Elytra shared with me gave a whole new perspective on the thing – and more importantly made it a whole lot easier. I could actually feel it, now. The power rushing through our collective veins as she absorbed my feelings of love, alongside the asphyxiation, the strange sense of loss and numbness that came with Chrysalis taking her share.

And power breeds more power, as the saying goes.

Sitting there eating and riding the high like an electrical surge through my body, I felt pretty content with things. Not that there was any change in my objectives – I still had to get home, no matter what – but at least, it seemed as if this little detour wouldn't be as unpleasant as I had thought. The opposite, even. Pleasant indeed, if today's experiences were any guide. Flying! Gods, who would've thought.

And now this. This unmistakable feeling of force, power like nothing I'd ever felt before. Surging through me like a storm, screaming in my neurons like a thousand eagles, rebounding, rebounding, rebounding, rebounding–

“KUH!”

I drew a long, deep breath, filling my almost empty lungs and alleviating the ever-growing pain in my chest. Slowly but surely, the black-green specks of emptiness fled my vision as oxygen rushed back into my body. The sensation ofpower was still burning inside my head, pulsating like a strobe, but I had managed to break out of the loop. My head felt like someone was striking it with a hammer; worse, I could feel the exact same mirroring across from Elytra, as well, her pains beating in rhythm with mine.

But through all of that, there was still the power. Elytra was in complete ecstasy, filled to the point of breaking and entirely incoherent. Glowing cords of light were half-visible in the air between me and Chrysalis, fading slowly as I broke out of my reverie.

Chrysalis, whose face was one of panic.

The queen dashed up to me and slugged me in the shoulder with a hoof. “Youidiot! You mindless, shell-brainedchild! You could have burned yourself out like a snuffed candle! You could have killed yourself! You– UGH!” With a roar, she started pummeling me for all she was worth in a flurry of holey hooves and smattering wings.

Which, honestly, wasn't too much.

“Relax, Chrysalis,” I said as soothingly as I manage – despite the twin headaches boring through my skull – fending the rampant queen off as best I was able. “Bloody hell, woman, calm down! You're letting my emotions get to your head.”

A shocked silence permeated the camp, and Chrysalis froze in my arms. The next moment, I heard a stifled laughter from behind me, and it was quickly joined by several chuckles throughout the guards' ranks.

A sullen Chrysalis let her eyes bore through my skull as I let her go, planting her hooves back on the ground. “That wasn't funny,” she grumbled. More likely, though, she was just bitter that I'd stolen her joke before she could think of it. The next second, my other half voiced my thoughts, and I felt an immense relief surge through me. I hadn't turned Elytra into a vegetable trapped inside my head. That, at least, was only good.

A few minutes later, the camp was mostly back to normal again. Chrysalis and Elytra both had lectured me on the need of learning to control my emotions when channeling, and avoiding loops like that at all costs; I had joined Chrysalis in her renewed criticism of melding as a whole, with the dangers of it now a bit more obvious; and completing the fancy little triangle, Elytra had agreed with every word I said about Chrysalis' hotheadedness. Letting emotions get to her head, indeed – with changelings, that was almost literal. Quite apparently, they were affected by the energy they absorbed, and the Queen more so than any others, since she could draw upon it faster.

It was a nice little mess I left behind me as I took my stove and cup, and started walking down towards the lake. The guards were settling in for the night, and Chrysalis had already fallen asleep by the time their little green watchfires sprung up around the camp. At last darkness had claimed the land again, and I felt very relaxed walking through the sparse forest on the way to the beach. I've always been more of a winter person, really, and going without proper night for too long tends to make me antsy. The sky was still faintly blue, but I could make out a few of the brighter stars; in an hour or two, we'd have as much of a night as you can get this time of year.

She won't need to feed anyone for days, now. Elytra's voice chimed across my thoughts like a chorus of bells.That single outburst gave her almost as much as she had in Canterlot, and the rest of the swarm should be filled to the brim. That sort of beacon could've been felt flights away, Martin. She held a cautious tone, but I could feel her wonder sifting through; she was still riding the high. Not too strange, seeing as she'd taken it all point blank, filled herself to breaking and when she couldn't take any more, funneled the rest over to me. If I'd been a walking battery for the changelings before, I must've been a damn fusion reactor for a minute there.Burning like the sun itself, Elytra whispered.

Eventually, we reached the shoreline. The moon hung full in the air like a silvery pearl, and the still waters of the great lake reflected it like a mirror. More stars were out now, with the night sky ever darker, but they only served to make the land brighter in return.

I ran my eyes across the vale as I worked the dishes with my hands, rinsing the remains of mashed potatoes and peanuts from their metal surfaces. Aside from the tiny ripples I made with my hands, the water was entirely undisturbed. All the light reflecting off it made it almost shine, and I could almost make out little glints in the corner of my eyes. Glints, shining little sparkles of scintillating light–

I jutted my head to the left, as I finally caught the strangely familiar sight with my eyes. Like tiny versions of the giant beam I'd seen yesterday – though it felt much longer since – they permeated the air around the beach, swirling around each other like a swarm of fireflies. Seconds later they started gathering, and I had to shield my eyes from their brightness. A single clear tone, crystalline and pure, rung through the night, and I cautiously moved my hand aside to take a look.

On the sandy beach stood, balanced on its tip, a bright blue heart-shaped crystal. It shone with a mellow yellow glint, but I could almost feel its presence in the air. Hairs rose on my neck as Elytra gave a loud moan, and this time there was nothing I could do to stem the tide of undiluted love that washed through the air.

Only moments passed, though, before the flow turned to ebb. A murky shadow manifested atop the crystal heart, radiating an aura of menace that I could feel even without Elytra's senses, and soon it took on a more defined shape. Equine, more clearly so than the changelings were – very much like the unicorns I'd seen in Elytra's memory, in fact – yet it was clear that it remained a formless cloud of shadow, from the way its wispy limbs stirred in the slight wind.

“Why are you standing there?”

The words rung through the night, spoken from no mouth, and my eyes widened – as did the eyes of the mysterious dark unicorn in front of me.

“Wise one... I am waiting. It is the way, the order of all. The Crystal Heart – the Venus star – comes, and I follow. It draws the others, as it draws me.”

The shadowy creature's voice was like a wind, but its menacing tone had me frozen on the spot, hoping dearly that it wouldn't turn around.

“What of the others? Do you have all the stars?”

I thought I could make out the image of a giant eye hanging in the air behind the unicorn, staring at the dark creature; still, the disembodied voice held only an immense weight. There was no intent in it, none of the pure hatred that radiated from the shadowy form's words like heat from a bonfire.

“The latter stars remain lost, wise one. Opposing elements repel each other. Even if they follow one another like Mercury follows Venus, I can only track one group at a time. I would not lose the stars I have for a meager chance at finding the ones I do not.”

The eye let its gaze linger on the dark unicorn; for a moment, though, I felt as if it was looking through him, right at me. My bones felt laden with ice as it once more spoke up.

“I can feel it, Sombra. It will return soon. You must not let them light the beacon. They will try, but they must be stopped.”

The eye faded – if it had ever been there and not just a vision inside my mind, it was surely gone now – and as if on cue, the crystal heart dissolved into a myriad of tiny sparkles once more.

“Unity's embrace...”

The shadow – Sombra – remained only a second before he, too, dispersed into a thin mist of nothingness. His last words hung in the air like a silent gunshot, however, and it took me almost a minute before I could move again.

Dishes were the absolute last thing on my mind now – I left my things lying in the water and ran up to the spot where the phantasms had appeared. There, in the sand, was a tiny conical hole, the only sign that remained of where the crystal heart had stood only moments ago, as steadily entrenched in the earth as if it'd rested on a pedestal made for it.

“It was there...”

I could feel Elytra starting to gather her thoughts for a reply, but before anything could come of that I once again heard the clear, crystalline tone from before permeate the air. It was not the same – nine years of music education and more had taught me more than well enough to differentiate an F# from an E – but it was the same sound, as if it had come from the same, perfectly tuned instrument, or been sung by the same voice.

The next moment, I heard a loudplop behind me. I spun around, half expecting to see the dark unicorn again; all I could make out, however, was my dishes, showered in a bright, blue light coming from the water. Or rather, thesomething in the water that I'd just heard goplop.

Much to my surprise dishes were now the absolute first thing on my mind, as I scrambled back across the beach to see what the hell had just happened.