Naborale

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 6

Chapter 1

Ponyville

“Special derp-livery!”

Twilight Sparkle looked up from her reading with confusion and then went to answer the familiar but unexpected call at her door. “Derpy?” she asked as she opened the door, “Are you ok? You look exhausted.”

“Heavier than it looks,” the blond delivery-mare said, indicating the box sitting next to her. It was made of wood and marked with words like “dangerous contents” and “handle with care.” In a corner of one side, Twilight found a label informing her that the box had originated from Appleoosa.

“Oh, I think I know what this could be,” Twilight said, levitating the box up and finding that it was a good deal heavier than its small size would suggest, “Uh, maybe. Can I get you a drink or something Derpy?”

“That sounds nice,” Derpy said dreamily, following Twilight inside.

“Spike!” Twilight called, “fetch our guest a cup of water please.” As Spike called back his acknowledgment from the back room, Twilight set the box on the central table and pulled off the lid. Inside were several layers of various packing materials surrounding a thick blanket of woven buffalo hair which was wrapped around a heavy metal box held closed with a magical seal. Twilight extracted the metal box and set it on the table with an impressive thud.

“What’s that?” Spike commented as he jogged across the room to give Derpy her drink.

“We’ll see in a moment,” Twilight said in eager anticipation as she applied the counter-spell to the locking seal. The box popped open and Twilight let out a small giggle of amusement at the contents. Derpy and Spike both came over to look and saw a normal-looking book with a sturdy brown cover with single word, Aitran, written on it. Spike raised an eye-ridge while Derpy just looked confused.

“It’s a book,” the wall-eyed mare said, “I don’t get it.”

“It’s a… rather special book,” Twilight said, levitating the tome out of the box and sending it and some of the packing material aside, “don’t worry about it.”

“Ok Twilight,” Derpy said brightly, “Thanks for the water.” She turned to go, but before she reached the door she stopped and gave herself a rap on the head. “Almost forgot, I got another package for you.” She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a thick rectangular item wrapped in brown paper. “I have no idea where it came from,” she announced after Twilight took it, “but the postage was paid and it has your name and address on it. See ya.” She smiled and flew out of the library, almost hitting her head on the doorframe as she exited.

“Why are you getting Aitran books in the mail?” Spike asked, going over and opening the linking book to confirm it was genuine, “Does that Star Swirl expect something from you again?”

“No Spike,” Twilight said, yanking the book out of the dragon’s hands and setting it down, “That’s the book Applejack’s cousin Braeburn found out in the San Palomino Desert last month and wound up sending himself and two buffalo into. I’m going to send it to Princess Celestia to lock up in the Archives so we don’t have a repeat of that particular incident.”

“Another repeat you mean,” Spike muttered. Twilight ignored him and unwrapped her second package, which turned out to be a small book gilded with the title Materan and an accompanying letter, written in a practiced, meticulous script that Twilight recognized instantly

‘Twilight, my dear friend,’ it read,

‘I thought I should tell you about recent events in my family’s life. We have decided to abandon the world of Aitran and live elsewhere: Equestria. To be more precise, we have built ourselves a home just outside the land of Equestria itself, and we have named the property Materan in honor of one of the leaders of the Moiety. (They are doing quite well for themselves in Tay, although they were looking to expand outside their original settlement the last I heard.)

Don’t worry yourself over the ramifications of me leaving the virtually timeless Aitran to return to a world where I should have died nearly a thousand years ago, as it seems Time is content to let me live on like any normal pony.

I’ve sent you something Clover has recently discovered in her own experiments: a Linking Book that can transport you to a certain location even when you are in the same world. Specifically, this one will be able to bring you to Materan, and we have one here that links to a park in Canterlot. Consider the gift an open invitation to you and your friends to visit us whenever you want.

Sincerely yours,

Star Swirl.’

“Oh my,” Twilight said, opening the book and turning the pages in quick but careful manner. Each page was covered, with nearly no margins, in an Old Equestrian script that was nearly geometrical and a single half-page sketch near the middle, both indicative features of the strange magical books that could transport a pony to new and strange worlds entirely separate from Equestria. The very idea that such a thing was even possible had been hidden for nearly a millennium until Twilight had come upon one such book - linking to the world Star Swirl had taken himself and his discoveries to - tucked away in the Royal Archives for extremely rare and valuable books. On the final page, Twilight found the last and most important clue to the book’s purpose: a rectangular panel enchanted to provide a true-to-life, moving aerial image of the destination, which seemed to be a network of round, roofed pavilions built into the end of a short canyon over a strong-looking river.

Spike picked up the letter from Star Swirl and read it for himself. “Heh, I knew it,” he said with a teasing smirk, “He does want something from you. I was just focused on the wrong package.”

“Oh Spike, it’s just an invitation,” Twilight chided good-naturedly.

“Are you going to take him up on it?” the dragon asked, “I don’t think we have anything pressing on the schedule today.”

“Hm,” Twilight said, thinking, “Well, it would probably be polite to drop in real quick just to let them know we got the book.”

“Ok then, I’m coming with you,” Spike said with determination.

“Spike,” Twilight said, surprised.

“No, don’t try to talk me out of it Twilight,” the baby dragon said, “I’ve had to sit back and worry about you winking around through books like this twice already, so I think it’s high time I got to go with you. And I kinda want to meet Star Swirl and see if he’s really all that,” he added with some meekness.

“All right,” Twilight relented with a chuckle, “This should just be a quick trip, but let’s lock up and leave a note in case somepony comes by while we’re gone.”

In short order, Twilight had written out a short letter which she hoped would clue her friends in to her location without revealing too much to anypony not in the know. Outside of the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, the Princesses, and a segment of the Royal Guard, no one in Equestria knew that the ancient unicorn scholar Star Swirl the Bearded was still alive, thanks to his manipulation of the flow of time inside his book worlds, let alone that Linking Books and alternate realities existed. The letter was pinned to the front door, which had been locked along with all but one window (in case a certain cyan pegasus absolutely had to get in), and the sign declaring the library’s availability to the public had been taken down. After receiving a brief spark of inspiration, Twilight had put on her saddlebags and placed the Aitran book from Appleoosa into them, realizing it would probably be even more secure with Star Swirl than in the Royal Archives. That ancient vault was vast, and she’d only found the copy of Aitran it contained by lucky chance, but adding a second copy would increase the odds of some other seeker of lost knowledge would stumble upon and use the link.

“Are we ready yet?” Spike asked, bouncing slightly with anticipation.

“I think so,” Twilight said, taking one last look around, “You want to go first?”

Spike hesitated, looking at the linking panel of the book on the table before him. “Um…” he said.

“Let’s go together,” Twilight said, levitating him onto her back, “This’ll be a good experiment anyway. I’ve never tried linking with somepony touching me.” Before Spike could fully voice his shocked objection to the idea, Twilight raised a hoof and touched it to the moving panel. A faint buzzing hum filled the air as the world faded away around her into a brief black void.

Materan

When reality reasserted itself around Twilight, she was presented with a view she hadn’t been expecting. She was standing on the edge of a roofed patio gazing out over a desert plain with wind-worn stone hills in the near distance creating a breathtaking vista. The floor under her hooves was tiled in a simple but artistic pattern and the roof seemed to be a mosaic of colored glass. Tall, leafy green houseplants stood on either side of her, providing a contrast to the view outside. After taking in her first impression of the area, Twilight realized she didn’t feel Spike’s weight on her back. Ok, so you can’t piggyback on somepony else’s Linking, she thought, I hope he didn’t get hurt when I vanished from underneath him. She heard the sound of a door opening behind her and started to turn around. As she did so, Spike materialized and landed in an awkward side-saddle position on her back, startling them both as well as the pony who had emerged onto the patio from behind one of the houseplants.

The newcomer was a unicorn mare with a light mahogany coat and a blue-black mane held back in a long braid, and she was wearing a simple red dress that reached nearly to the floor in the back. “Oh,” she said, recovering from her surprise and smiling warmly, “Welcome. Did you enjoy the view? I told Star Swirl to make the linking books point visitors toward those hills when they arrive. They’re beautiful in the sunlight.”

“It is rather nice,” Twilight said, letting Spike slide off her back before stepping closer to the mare, “It’s good to see you again Clover.” She gestured to the small purple dragon at her side and said, “This is Spike, my number one assistant. Spike, meet Clover. She’s Star Swirl’s wife.”

“It’s an honor to meet you Lady Clover,” Spike said, bowing regally.

Clover giggled at the display. “Likewise Spike; I’m pleased you welcome you to my home, but please, just Clover will do.” To Twilight, she whispered conspiratorially, “Is he always so polite?”

“Only when he’s trying to impress somepony,” Twilight muttered back with a wry smirk.

“I see,” Clover said, “We were about to have lunch. You should join us.”

“Oh, thanks but no thanks,” Twilight said, “We don’t want to impose. We just came to let you know we got the book.”

“It’s no problem,” Clover said, “Besides, you’ll have to go through Star Swirl to get to the book back to Canterlot, and I know he and Nyx won’t let you go without a conversation at the least.”

Twilight sighed, but with a small smile on her face. “All right, lead the way.”

The Materan estate was composed of two groups of round metal huts built onto opposite sides of the river canyon and connected by a single, central bridge. The patio Twilight and Spike had appeared on was on the side devoted to work and studies, while the living areas were on the other side. There were two doors leading off the patio, and the one Clover led them through opened into a greenhouse filled with strange plants that Clover said she’d brought in from Tay as an experiment. Past that was another greenhouse containing a more familiar array of food plants – carrots, celery, tomatoes, hay, and so forth – with several of the glass panes in the walls and roof designed to open to allow a comfortable breeze to blow through. In the center, on a patch of lawn obviously made for the purpose, a picnic blanket had been spread out and occupied by a grey unicorn stallion and a dark purple unicorn filly as well as a selection of food. Twilight instantly recognized the filly as Nyx from her cutie mark of an open book surrounded by swirling stars, light blue vest, and intense teal eyes that brightened slightly with recognition as she saw Twilight enter.

As for the stallion, Twilight had to do a double-take before she recognized him as Star Swirl the Bearded. His long tell-tale beard had been nearly cut away leaving only a small brush on his chin, and he had apparently taken to wearing a pair of half-moon spectacles. His wide-brimmed wizard’s hat was missing, and the robe he wore lacked the bells along the hem. He seemed oblivious to Twilight’s shock as he got up and came over to give Clover a peck on the cheek and then grab Twilight in a hug that surprised her even further. “Ah Twilight, what a pleasant surprise. You got my package I see.”

“Star Swirl,” Twilight managed to squeak out, breaking through her shock enough to speak, “You’ve… changed.”

“That I have my friend,” Star Swirl said with a laugh, “I wasn’t too keen on the idea at first, but Clover and Princess Celestia managed to convince me it was best I adopt a different style so that I won’t be so easily recognized by other ponies. I would rather not have to explain why I’m doing something other than being dead. And you,” he added, looking at Spike, “you would be Spike I presume?”

“Uh yeah,” the baby dragon said, “How did you know?”

“The Princesses mentioned you once or twice,” Star Swirl answered, “Now come, sit down and eat with us.”

Not feeling up to arguing about it twice, Twilight nodded and followed Star Swirl to the picnic blanket.

Nyx’s eyes grew wider as she saw Spike approach, and she bounded forward with a squeal to land right in front of him. “Oh my gosh, you’re a dragon, aren’t you?” she exclaimed, and then remembered herself long enough to add a quick, “Hello Twilight,” as an aside before going back to excitedly studying Spike. “I’ve heard about dragons, but I’ve never seen one before. Aren’t you supposed to be bigger? Are you just a baby dragon? What’s your… waaaait a minute.” She turned and gave Star Swirl a suspicious look. “Father,” she said, “you planned this didn’t you? Well, I refuse to be distracted.” She turned around smartly and walked back to the picnic blanket with her nose in the air.

“What,” Spike said in flat bewilderment.

“Nyx, what has gotten into you?” Clover asked.

“It seems our little filly has become quite skilled at sneaking into place she shouldn’t,” Star Swirl said, trying to sound disapproving despite the slight smile on his face, “She got into my study and discovered where I hid I’strukun.”

“It was right out in the open,” Nyx said, “on the shelf between Rime and Baseli. That’s not hidden.”

“I’strukun? Rime?” Twilight asked with interest, “Have you Written some new worlds Star Swirl?”

“No,” the old scholar said, “I haven’t found the will to attempt that again. They are two other Linking Books that survived the disaster on Aitran. I was on Rime when my apprentices began their destructive behavior, and they left it alone because of that.”

“Both books were among those Cirrus and Archeon were forbidden to use without permission even after Father gave them full access to the others,” Nyx added, “Or at least, I figured they were because they were kept with books like Sohndar in Father’s private cavern.”

“So, what’s the big deal with I’strukun?” Spike asked, “is it dangerous?”

“No,” the filly said, rolling her eyes, “It’s the first step for learning how to Write new worlds. And I think I’m ready to take those lessons!”

“That’s for your father to decide Nyx,” Clover scolded, and then looked at her husband and said, “She’s still too young.”

“Moooom,” Nyx whined.

“Nyx, my little star,” Star Swirl said gently, “Even if you were ready, I don’t know if the Lesson Worlds are.”

Nyx stared at her father in dumb shock. “If I were ready?” she said, “Father, when you sent them through the Lesson Worlds, you told me I’d be ready when I had my cutie mark! Well, I’ve got it now, and I survived in Sohndar as well! How can I not be ready now?”

“Nyx,” Star Swirl said, trying to placate her.

The little filly wasn’t having any of it though. “Don’t!” she shouted, “I get it! You don’t want me Writing books! Never mind that’s what my cutie mark means!” She bolted out of the greenhouse, crying loud, frustrated tears as she vanished across the bridge into the dormitory area.

“Oh dear,” Clover said, “I’ll go talk to her.”

“Let her be for a moment love,” Star Swirl said, putting a hoof on Clover’s shoulder, “Twilight, Spike, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Twilight dragged a hoof through the grass, feeling awkward. “Maybe we should just go,” she said at last, “Come back when things have cooled down?”

“Of course,” Star Swirl said, “You’re always welcome here. Come with me; I’ll take you to the link back to Canterlot.” He led Twilight and Spike back to the patio, and from there he went through the second door into a study. A couple of tapestries depicting important events in Star Swirl’s life hung on the back wall, and all of the furniture had been set up on the end closest to the door, leaving a large empty space to the left. The desk held some framed charcoal portraits of Clover, Nyx, and Cirrus and Archeon, much to Twilight’s surprise, as well as a few sheets of paper and an ink well. On the wall were shelves holding a number of books, only a couple of which Twilight recognized.

Seeing the books reminded Twilight of the one in her bag, and she got it out and held it out to Star Swirl. “Here’s the Aitran book that fell into the desert a while back,” she said, “It came to me in the mail the same time I got your package.”

“Ah, thank you,” the old stallion said taking the book, “it will be good to know Aitran Island won’t be getting anymore unexpected guests. Especially ones as big as that buffalo, Thunderhooves. I still count myself lucky no others like him showed up, or the library would have likely burst apart.” Twilight giggled at the mental image.

“It certainly caused a lot of chaos when he, Braeburn, and Little Strongheart vanished, only to turn up in the middle of Princess Celestia’s throne room a few hours later,” Spike said, “When they sent the book to us it was packaged up like some kind of toxic material.”

Star Swirl chuckled a bit, but then grew somber as he put the book on a shelf. “A lot of pain and trouble can be caused by these linking books,” he said, “especially when I see the damage Cirrus and Archeon caused to mine. The Forestsea is starting to recover, but Baseli and the Fortress are beyond my ability to help. I haven’t been able to find the nerve to go into I’strukun and the worlds beyond it, out of fear that I may find much worse than an empty fortress or desolate, sinking rocks.”

“Is that why you don’t want to let Nyx go there?” Twilight asked.

“Until I can be sure the worlds are still safe to travel to and the puzzles still operational, no,” Star Swirl said, “but, if I were to confirm my fears… I’m not sure spirit could take it. They are among my finest work.”

“Sounds like you need to send somepony else,” Spike said, “Somepony smart and brave enough to work her way through anything your crazy book-worlds can throw at her.”

Twilight quirked an eyebrow and looked down at Spike. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just making a suggestion,” Spike said, feigning innocence.

“I must admit,” Star Swirl mused to himself, “The thought of asking for help had crossed my mind, but I shouldn’t lay that on you. You’ve done enough favors for me as it is Twilight.” He levitated a book with a white cover and golden filigree on the spine from the shelf and set it on the desk, open to a linking panel showing a park in Canterlot. “There is your way home my friends,” he said, “Until next time.”

Twilight nodded and started to reach out to the book, but before her hoof touched the panel she paused. “I’m always willing to help a friend Star Swirl,” she said, “So, maybe, if it’s ok with you, I’d like to go to I’strukun.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a smirk of triumph on the corners of Spike’s mouth.

“I… I’d appreciate that Twilight,” Star Swirl said, “Come back tomorrow; there are some things I need to find so that you won’t be going in blind.”

Twilight nodded and then looked down at Spike. “See you tomorrow then,” she said, “Let’s go Spike.”

Chapter 2

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast and a flurry of last-minute preparations and excessive checklisting, Twilight and Spike left the Ponyville library in the hooves of Rarity and Fluttershy and took the Link to Materan. Star Swirl was waiting for them on the patio and ushered them into his study once they had gotten their bearings.

“Hey, quick question,” Spike said, “Is there any way to get in and out of this place without using a book?”

“Yes,” Star Swirl answered simply, and then took note of the saddlebags Twilight was wearing, each looking near to fully packed. “May I ask what’s in those bags?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure what we’d be likely to encounter,” Twilight said, “so I made sure to pack plenty of nice sturdy notebooks, some pencils, and food to last me and Spike for a day or two. Is it too much?”

“I tried to talk her out of it,” Spike said in a weary tone, “I mean, there’s a way for us to get bail out if we need to, right?”

“Technically yes,” Star Swirl said, taking a couple of books out of his desk, “It would take you to Aitran though, not back here. That’s one of the tasks I have for you on top of looking around: find the Aitran book in I’strukun, assuming it’s still intact, and replace it with a Materan book I’ll give to you.”

“What are the other tasks?” Twilight asked.

“Just one other,” the stallion replied, “I spoke with Nyx about your offer yesterday, and after some discussion I agreed to let her accompany you. If the Lesson Worlds seem to be unmolested, then she will undertake the challenges they pose. Allow her to take the lead on solving the puzzles and try to help her discover the principles each world exemplifies on her own.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Twilight asked, “I don’t know the answers any more than she does.”

Star Swirl laughed and levitated the books to her. The bottom book was a copy of Materan while the one on top was smaller, hoof-bound, and looked more like a journal. “I recorded my impressions on each Lesson World as I developed them for use, and each entry concludes with the lesson I wanted the world to impress on attentive visitors. Let it guide you in identifying anything that’s broken or in overseeing Nyx’s journey. Don’t let her know you have it; she’s a good girl, but won’t hesitate to use every shortcut she can find.”

“I get you,” Twilight said, taking the books and stowing them carefully in her bags, “That’s something most colts and fillies have in common.”

“I suppose you are right,” Star Swirl said, “Nyx should still be getting ready, so why don’t you get a start on reading?” Twilight nodded and went over to the far side of the study, laying down as she brought out the journal and began reading.

She managed to read through the entry on I’strukun when there was a knock at the study door followed by Nyx nudging it open and walking in, wearing a saffron-colored vest with pockets and a saddlebag that looked far less packed than Twilight’s own. Her attention was focused on Star Swirl, so Twilight surreptitiously put the journal away before standing up and walking back to the desk. “Morning Twilight,” the filly said in a cheerful tone that betrayed her excitement at what lay ahead, “You… look ready.” She eyed Twilight bulging saddlebags with some amusement, causing Twilight to chuckle in embarrassment.

“I guess I am,” she said, “How about you Spike? Still coming with us?”

“Of course,” the baby dragon replied promptly.

“Very well then,” Star Swirl said, removing a book from his shelf and setting it on the desk in front of the gathered trio, opened to the linking panel on the final page, “Have a safe journey. With luck, you should be able to finish the course by the end of the day.”

I’strukun

I Wrote this world with the intention of finding a place to serve as a central hub from which the four Lesson Worlds could be accessed, but I did not expect to find it already perfectly suited to my needs, or nearly so. While I worked on the finishing touches – mainly cleaning and repairing worn-out machinery and configuring the illusion viewer and locks in the central tower – I failed to find any evidence of the people who had built the vaults into the island’s tusk-like towers and given the disrepair of the various locking mechanisms I think it’s highly unlikely anything will be stopping by to protest my use of their property.

This island I have dubbed I’strukun would make a tiring place to live on without wings, as it seems to be mostly made of cliffs and giant boulders with ladders and stairs carved into them, fully encircling a low freshwater pond from which the central “tusk” rises to a dominating height. It is a small island, and impossible to get lost on.

Part of me worries that I’strukun is too perfect as a hub world, but nothing has ever gone wrong there and so I ignore those thoughts.

Nyx was the first to arrive on I’strukun, followed by Twilight and finally Spike. They found themselves on the flat top of a rock next to a short lantern with three glass lenses and a big red glass ball set in the top. To their right was a tall, dark monolith of a rock and directly ahead was a metal bridge that led around to the right. A sandy beach was visible close by and below the group’s current level, and the sound of the ocean’s surf filled the air. In the far distance, they could see what appeared to a gargantuan white tusk rising up out of a cliff, along with some of the trail they’d need to take to reach it and another lamppost. To the left was another short bridge to much larger rock from which a second tusk jutted into the air. To the right, just visible past the towering monolith, was a third tusk tucked into cliffs that seemed to plunge below sea level, and a couple more lampposts could be seen at certain highpoints along the trails there.

“Ok, let’s get started,” Nyx said, trotting off almost immediately toward the nearest tusk-tower.

“Hold on a second Nyx,” Twilight said, grabbing the filly’s tail in a light magic grip, “We should come up with a plan first, a way to search the island quickly for damage or trouble. Once we get that out of the way you can put all your focus on the Lesson Worlds.”

“Ok,” Nyx said, “I’m listening.”

“I think we should each check out one of the tusks,” the lavender unicorn said, “If Cirrus and Archeon destroyed anything, those would probably be the most likely spots to have things worth destroying.”

Spike had wandered over the railing at the edge of the rock and was looking at something past the rough monolith. “Twilight,” he said, “There’s a tower right over here. I’d be willing to bet the old exit book we’re supposed to replace will be in there somewhere.”

Twilight went over to take a look and saw a fourth tusk-like spire crowned with a round building made of red metal with a ring of windows just below the gently curved roof and what seemed to be a bubble-shaped window on the side. “That sounds like a reasonable guess to me Spike,” she said, “Would you mind handling that, and then you can investigate the tusk over that way.” She indicated the first tusk.

“Sure thing Twi,” the dragon said, holding out a hand to accept the Materan book Twilight levitated over to him. As he walked away, he heard Twilight ask Nyx to investigate the closest tusk while she would go around to the final one. The bridge led him around the corner of the monolith and out of sight of the mares and then right up to the base of a ladder set into the side of another tall rock. He couldn’t see the tower from this position, but he guessed he’d find a way into the building from the top of the ladder, and so he carefully gripped the book against his back with his tail in order to free up his hands and started climbing. He only made it a couple of rungs up when something peered out over the edge and gave Spike pause. The dragon blinked and rubbed his eyes in disbelief and when he opened them again the figure was gone. “That was weird,” he said to himself, “Coulda sworn I just saw Pinkie Pie. But she couldn’t possibly be here, could she?”

“I don’t think you’ll want to go this way Twilight,” Nyx said after the two had crossed the bridge toward the nearest tusk, “There doesn’t seem to be any other paths off this rock.”

Twilight looked around and found that she had to agree. She could see a number of stairs leading up and over other rocks between her and her intended destination, and a bridge farther along that seemed to lead almost to the tusk, but in order to reach the trail she’d either have to jump off the rock she was on – a fall of at least ten feet into the water by her estimate – or find another way down. As she turned to leave, however, Nyx raised a hoof to ask her to wait.

“Let’s get a few things straight,” the filly said, “I’m only here to take the lessons this world and the others offer, and I know the only reason Father is letting me is because you’re here to babysit me.”

“Nyx, I’m not going to-” Twilight started to protest.

“Eh eh eh,” Nyx cut in, “I’m not holding it against you, and I don’t mind having company, but don’t try holding my hoof through this. I want you to promise me you’ll let me take the lead when we get around to visiting the other worlds, and if you figure something before I do don’t tell me unless I’m really, truly stumped.”

“I promise Nyx,” Twilight said, “I’ll stay out of your way.”

“Good,” Nyx replied, “and in return, I promise not to sneak a peek at the journal Father gave you.” She laughed at Twilight’s nonplussed reaction and added slyly, “Yeah, I saw you with that book when I came into the study. I figure it’s something Father gave you to help you figure out if anything we find is broken, and that means it probably has all the answers. I’m going to do this course right, with no cheating.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Twilight said, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s cheating on a test.”

All of a sudden, a loud cry sounded from the direction of the central tusk, a cry that pierced Twilight through the heart with icy fear. “TWILIIIIGHT! HELP ME!”

“Spike!” Twilight exclaimed, and she and Nyx charged across the bridges between them and where the scream had originated. Twilight hardly paused when she came upon the ladder rungs set into the rock at the end of the path, instead wrapping herself in a levitation field and all but rocketing upwards. When she touched down on the top of the rock, she saw a strangely familiar-looking pony kicking her little assistant the last foot or so across a bridge and into the red building on the top of the central tusk before galloping in herself and slamming the door shut. “Pinkie?” Twilight muttered in a brief moment of confusion, but then shook it off and ran across the bridge to the door. The handle turned easily in her magic grip, but the door itself refused to budge, and through a small round window she could see a second door which also had a window, providing her a very small and slightly fish-eyed view of the room beyond. She could see the pink pony pacing impatiently on the far side of what looked to be a fenced pit in the middle of the room, but there was no sign of Spike.

“Twilight, what happened?” Nyx asked breathlessly. Twilight turned around to see the young unicorn pulling herself up onto the rock from the ladder.

“Spike’s been kidnapped,” Twilight said, fretting, “I don’t see the book back to Materan anywhere, so the kidnapper might have that too, and I can’t get this door open!” She blasted the door with a bolt of pure magic from her horn, but it just splashed off harmlessly. “Gah, seriously? Open up!” She spun around and gave the door as solid a kick as she could, but didn’t leave so much as a dent in the metal. Seething with frustration, Twilight finally resorted to furiously knocking on the door, shouting, “Spiiike!”

“Twilight,” Nyx said, trying to get her attention, “This isn’t working.” The lavender unicorn didn’t seem to register her statement, so she spoke up louder, “We should look for another way in!”

“Another way?” Twilight asked incredulously, “what makes you think there’s another way in?”

“Because there usually is,” Nyx said, rolling her eyes, “That’s how Father is about these things: he makes sure there’s always a way to get through or around a lock, even if it’s not obvious.”

Twilight stopped and took a long, calming breath. “Right then,” she said, scrutinizing the door and the wall around it, “I… don’t see anything noteworthy here.”

“There might be a back door,” Nyx said, heading back to the ladder. She stopped at the top and frowned down at it, trying to figure out how to get on it from her position. Twilight smiled slightly as she joined the little unicorn, and then picked her up and teleported both of them down, and then went a step farther by teleporting down onto the small sandy beach below the rocks. “Wow,” Nyx said as Twilight trotted off to the left, crossing over a shallow tidepool under the bridge between their arrival point and the closest tusk, “That’s a neat trick. Uh, can you put me down now?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry,” Twilight said, blushing as she realized Nyx was still wrapped in a telekinetic bubble. She climbed up onto a rock that stood between her and the trail leading around the island before setting the filly down.

“It’s ok,” Nyx said, “but, if you can do that, why didn’t you just teleport past the door?”

“I didn’t have a good enough view,” Twilight answered, pressing on down a set of stairs carved into the rock, “If I can’t clearly see or picture my destination, the spell doesn’t work.” The stairs took them close to the side of the central tusk and onto a bridge leading to a rock platform very close to one of the outer tusks. There was a brown door set into the side of the tower, but a long gap separated it from the platform. “Curious,” Twilight muttered before looking around and down. Another bridge led from the platform to a set of stairs heading upward, continuing what was likely to be a very hilly loop trail around the island. Far below, she could see the base of the central tusk, around which had gathered a small lake of water and a little vegetation. What really caught Twilight’s eye, however, was the rounded roof of a structure built into the tusk’s base. “Well, that should do,” Twilight said, “come on Nyx.” Leaning over the edge to get a good look at a landing point, she pulled Nyx close and teleported them both down onto a bridge linking the far side of the lake to the building, which seemed to be made mostly of stained glass windows and a metal roof. Without hesitation, Twilight trotted up to the wooden door and pulled it open. Almost immediately after walking inside, she found the way blocked by a metal gate, but to its right was a lever of obvious purpose. The gate swung open to the left, mirrored by another gate a few feet away to allow access to a second door to the outside. The gates were now blocking off an alcove filled with plants that looked like they’d been nibbled on and framing a large button on a short pedestal. Across from the alcove stood a short hallway leading into a larger room inside the tusk-tower itself, but a third gate blocked access to it until Twilight pressed the button and it tilted down to settle into the floor.

As Twilight and Nyx entered the room, the unicorn filly took note of a patchwork hammock hanging between a hook on the right wall and one of the two pillars in the middle of the room which helped to hold up the high roof and supported a C-shaped desk between them. A number of objects sat on the desk and on improvised shelves and end tables lining the right wall, and an unfinished portrait of a pony was painted on the wall on the left. Twilight, however, ignored all of this when she spotted an elevator on the far side of the room. It was shaped like a round booth, kept inside a black metal cage with crisscrossing diagonal bars. “Wait here Nyx,” Twilight said, galloping around the room and then around to the backside of the elevator to find the door, “I don’t want you getting hurt when I deal with that dragon-napper.”

“What? I can help!” Nyx exclaimed, but to no avail. Twilight entered the elevator, slid the door shut behind her, and then located the lever to start it placed outside the booth but accessible through a small window. The cage rotated around the elevator a hundred and eighty degrees, quickly swung back to its original orientation, and then the elevator began to rise. Nyx watched it go with a grumpy pout until it vanished from sight up the shaft. “I’m not helpless,” she grumbled to herself.

The elevator ride was quick and smooth, something Twilight was grateful for, but when it reached the top she realized she had a problem. When she slid the door open, she found herself immediately confronted with the door leading out to the upper approach to the central tusk, which was still locked by some mechanism she couldn’t see thanks to the elevator blocking it. She was facing the wrong way! At the back of the elevator booth was a round window, which gave her a view of the room she was trying to get to that was only marginally better than before and still not good enough for Twilight to feel safe teleporting. She could see the disturbingly familiar pink pony at the back of the room, standing over a dazed and hog-tied Spike. The pony was looking directly toward Twilight, apparently aware that the elevator had come up. After a second, she smiled in a taunting and creepy manner.

“Think you’ve caught up to me already, huh?” she asked, and Twilight took an involuntary step back in shock. The stranger sounded as much like Pinkie Pie as she looked, but there was still something off. “Here to take back your little friend?” she asked, giving Spike a light kick, “Or how about your book?” She poked her head under one of her wings – Wings! That’s it! She has bat wings! – and pulled out the Materan linking book for a second before tucking it away again. “Not yet I’m afraid,” she continued, sauntering over to a tiny table of some sort with a lamp hanging over it at the left side of the pit in the floor. She reached under her wing again and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and placed it on the table, flattening it out with a hoof. The lamp turned on and a gear-shaped ring dropped off the bottom of the table and out of sight and then floated back into place. A moment later, a small golden lattice cage shaped like a pointed flower bud rose out of the pit on the end of a similarly golden post. The bat-winged Pinkie doppelgänger retrieved the paper and stashed it under her wing again, and then looked at the window and said, “If you wanna catch me, better move faster, Star-swirly!”

“Star-swirly?” Twilight mumbled, confused, “does she think I’m…? No, no time to stand around wondering.” She looked around and found a green button in the wall outside the elevator’s side window, and pressed it. The elevator activated and began taking her back down to the lower room. “I’ll be back for you Spike,” she said, “Hold on.”

Chapter 3

Nyx had begun contemplating the incomplete portrait on the wall when the elevator returned to the room. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the cage the elevator car dropped into spun halfway around and snapped back before Twilight emerged and came around, looking mildly frustrated. “No luck?” Nyx asked in affected boredom. Twilight shook her head and then cast a puzzling look up at the elevator shaft. “I think the elevator is supposed to turn before going up,” Nyx continued in the same tone, “There’s probably something that needs to be fixed.”

“And would you happen to know what, Ms. Smarty-pants?” Twilight asked grumpily.

“No,” Nyx snapped, “I haven’t had much time to look around.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she noticed the pain and worry in Twilight’s eyes and felt guilty. “Sorry,” she said, “What happened up there? Is Spike ok?”

“She’s got him all tied up, but he’s alive,” Twilight said, walking up to Nyx’s side, “She’s got the Materan linking book too, and by the way she was talking I think she wants us to try and take them back from her. Ugh, this is…” She trailed off as she got a good look at the portrait on the wall and rubbed her eyes in disbelief. The portrait was of a strong-looking red stallion with a short orange mane, almost life-like in its details except for the fact that the eyes had not been painted in yet, and it gave Twilight a strong sense of déjà vu. “I’m going crazy,” she muttered, “First Pinkie Pie and now Big Macintosh!”

Nyx cocked her head to the side. “Huh? You know this pony?”

“I don’t, but,” Twilight said shakily, “Well, the pony holding Spike looks just like a good friend of mine, and this painting could easily be of another pony I know real well. I wonder why it hasn’t been finished yet…”

“Wow,” Nyx said, “No wonder you’re freaking out. How about you take it easy while I find a way to get that elevator turned around right? See if Father wrote something about it in his journal.”

“Hm. I don’t remember seeing anything like that,” Twilight said as she levitated the journal out of her bag, “but it won’t hurt to take a second look.” She laid down on the floor next to the wall and set the journal in front of her, opened to the first page of the entry on I’strukun.

Satisfied, Nyx started looking around the room in closer detail. The curved desk held some large items of particular note. First, on the right end, was a crude but effective-looking stone hammer. To the left of that was a tall balancing scale with a black metal ball hanging off one arm while on the other was a small basket containing four balls made of a foggy blue-white glass-like substance. Left of that, near the center of the desk, was a glass tube set into the middle of a spoked gear to keep it upright and two metal wires coming down from the top and connected to item number four: a larger version of the glass ball inside a metal lattice cage and capped with an inverted dish of metal attached to a crank. Nyx gave the crank an experimental turn with her magic and the contraption started to pop and crackle with electricity. Intrigued, she turned the crank faster and soon had a decent current going, judging by the fact that in the glass tube small chips of rock started to rise up and spin around. “Cool,” she said, causing Twilight to glance up in curiosity.

“An electromagnet,” the lavender pony noted, watching Nyx’s demonstration, “and rock that floats in magnetic fields. That is interesting.” She watched for a second longer and then went back to her reading. Nyx let go of the crank and continued her investigation. On the left end of the desk, a large snail shell was being used as the pot for a pitcher plant with a thick leaf covering the mouth to prevent any captive insects from escaping. Nyx started to move on, judging the plant to be a simple curiosity, until she noticed there were wines hanging over the edge of the shell’s opening, with a particularly long and thick one trailing across the desk to end close to the electromagnet. Overcome with what she would fervently declare “scientific curiosity” if she got called out, she laid the root across the wires coming off the electromagnet and turned the crank. As the electricity started to flow, the leaf covering the pitcher plant jerked up and quivered, and a little black fly caught inside took the lucky break given to it and escaped, buzzing around in circles for a bit before finding its way toward the door. Nyx noted the plant’s reaction with silent interest and then moved on.

Three short, hexagonal posts of dark-colored stone of various heights were arranged against the wall between the hammock and the elevator alcove. On the tallest stood another balance scale, this one balancing one of the blue-white glass balls with four wooden balls, and additional balls of both materials lay around the base. Glass isn’t that heavy, Nyx thought, trying to lift one of the glass balls with her magic, only to find it was heavier than it looked. Maybe not glass after all, she mused as she set it down. She then turned to look at the hammock, which had a large, thick green leaf curled up at one end like a blanket or pillow and a book sitting in the middle. As Nyx levitated it, she discovered it wasn’t so much a book as the cover of a book with unbound papers stuck inside it, and the cover itself was marked only by a brown pressed leaf. “Hey Twilight,” Nyx said, “You having any luck?”

“Not really,” Twilight answered, “Star Swirl mentioned having to make some repairs to the elevator, but he seems to have expected it to turn around by default afterward. How about you?”

“I found this,” the filly answered, bringing her book over to Twilight. Twilight took it and looked it over critically.

“Shoddy,” she concluded, “but it’s something at least.” She set it down on the ground and flipped it open to the first page. It looked to be a journal, written in Equestrian save for a strange little symbol in the top corner that likely stood in for a date. The writing was amazingly tidy, but the words were slightly disturbing.

I’ve done it. I’ve opened the swirly linking book to take me back home, and I used it. That was a bad idea. Maybe it would’ve been better to remain lost in the fog, to have died and become one of the ghosts. I arrived to find myself inside the shield, unable to see what I hoped and dreaded to find, and then they came. The voices, calling my name, low and loathsome name, but belonging to nopony I could see.

Oh Staid, did I hear your voices among them? The voices of the lost. I couldn’t dare hope, couldn’t stay.

I was about to give up today, to surrender myself to the fog again. It would have been easy, to let it make me forget, to not care anymore. But then I felt it, that old itch in my wings, the shiver down my spine. He’s coming back. Star Swirl. Or maybe they are coming back. Cirrus, Archeon, his students. Devils in pony form.

I must be mistaken. Why would they come back?

I can’t deny any longer. It won’t go away, that sense that somepony is about to enter my worlds again. Why Star Swirl? Was it not enough that your followers destroyed my home? Tortured me, left me to die! Will it be those two again, come to finish the job? Or maybe you’ll come yourself?

Ha. Don’t delude yourself Margent. He doesn’t care. He’ll send others. Cirrus, Archeon, new followers maybe? Another generation of Star Swirly betrayers.

I think not!

I still have time, I think. Time to prepare. I will take my revenge on the Star-swirlies, find a way to lure the head in and bring them all down, pay them back for the dead of Naborale. I’ve already long since opened his other worlds, and now I’ve begun to make changes to them and to I’strukun. I’ll force them to go through the worlds, make them see what Cirrus and Archeon did to me. Finally I’ll lead them to Naboreal, and there…

There is much to be done, but for now I’ll concentrate on the orbiter. I must try to understand it, and the materials that make it up. They remind me somewhat of the shield. If so, there’s nothing I can do to alter it. I may be able to change the other devices though.

This entry was written around little diagrams of things neither Twilight or Nyx could make sense of: sticks, loops, and a large gear on a track.

I have managed to reconfigure the scanner, but to do so I had to scavenge parts from another mechanism in the tusk. The remaining components should allow it to operate but may need to be configured by hoof.

This was followed by four pictures of gears, counterweights, and similar mechanisms, each in a particular, well-detailed state. Nyx and Twilight contemplated the pictures for a moment, and then exchanged a look. “Wanna bet the kidnapper wrote this?” Nyx asked.

“I can’t think of anypony else who could have,” Twilight answered, “and it appears she’s gone mad with grief thanks to Cirrus and Archeon. We have to get up to her and explain. I’m willing to bet the mechanism she mentioned in this last entry is the elevator. We just need to figure out where she took the parts from.”

“There’s a space under the elevator,” Nyx said, “I’d look there.” She trotted around to the back of the elevator alcove without waiting for a response and pulled the lever. The cage did its rotating thing, the elevator was winched up the shaft, and Nyx hopped down into the hole it had vacated. There were four spots where the wall had been broken away to reveal some of the mechanisms underlying the rotating cage. “These look about right,” Nyx reported, “Pass me down those pages Twilight; I’ll get everything set right.” Twilight removed the two pages with the appropriate diagrams, taking a mental note of where they were supposed to be in the journal, and levitated them down into Nyx’s waiting hooves, and then sat back and waited, her mind drifting with worry over Spike. She could only hope that she and Nyx were moving quickly enough to stop Margent, assuming that was the Pinkie-double’s name, before she did something drastic.

Although something tells me she’s not in a state of mind that can be reasoned with…

“Ok, I’m – oof – done!” Nyx announced as she pulled herself up out of the hole, “Everything down there matches the pictures, so here’s hoping it works.” She pulled the lever to bring the elevator down. When the cage whipped back to its resting position, the ponies heard something catch, loudly, and shared a satisfied look. It was a bit of a tight fit for both of them to get into the elevator, but they managed to squeeze in without causing any undue discomfort. Twilight reached out with her magic and pulled the lever, and this time the elevator turned around with the cage and was left facing the opposite direction as the mechanism reset itself and the winch started up.

As soon as the elevator came to a stop, Twilight flung the door aside and found herself confronted with one last door between her and her number one assistant. Through the window she could see that the golden lattice bud in the center of the room had opened up, and the pink bat-winged pony was pressing Spike’s snout onto an open book contained within. The dragon vanished from sight in the characteristic manner of Linking Books, and the pink mare quickly followed him, casting a wicked smirk towards Twilight before disappearing. With a wordless cry, Twilight burst through the door and right up to the railing around the pit, reaching out with her magic to grab the book, but to no avail. Before she could form a solid telekinetic grip on the book, the bud-shaped cage closed up and sank down into the pit, while at the same time a short bridge retracted into the floor and covers closed over three lensed devices on the walls. “No!” Twilight cried, tearing up, “Spike!” She sank to the floor dejectedly, staring mournfully down at the book now locked away from her grasp.

“Please don’t tell me you’re giving up,” Nyx said, “It’s not over yet; she’s backed herself into a corner now. None of the Lesson Worlds have links to anywhere except here in I’strukun.”

“Until now,” Twilight replied dully, “She took our link back to Materan, remember? What’s to stop her from linking there?”

“Well, if she does then my parents will deal with her and then come looking for us,” Nyx answered confidently, “but are you just going to sit around moping and waiting for what might or might not happen, or are you going to get up and do something to save Spike and the book?”

Twilight’s ears lay flat as the filly’s chastisement struck home, and then filled her with renewed resolve. “You’re right Nyx,” she said, standing up, “I’d probably still be stranded on Aitran with Rainbow Dash right now if I’d just sat around waiting for a rescue, and I’ve faced down a lot worse than a crazy friend-stealing pony. Let’s get to that book.”

It took the pair all of ten seconds to find the button that activated the room, located across the gap in the railing from the light table. When Nyx pressed it, the covers on the wall opened up and each of the three devices behind them emitted a beam of colored light up toward the ceiling, converging to form an image of Star Swirl’s head.

“Cirrus, Archeon,” the image said, “welcome to I’strukun. This world will be your first stop on your journey to learn the secrets of my Writing. Search the island and you’ll find three Linking books. Each connects to a world where you…” The voice faded away as the image distorted and was replaced by Margent’s face. As Twilight watched the image as it began speaking, she realized that although the pony was remarkably similar to Pinkie Pie in coat, mane, and eye coloring, she had several noticeable differences, mainly the bedraggled and ill-kempt rat’s nest of a mane, rather than a deliberately curled mess, and the coldness in her eyes.

The Margent image started out muttering, as if unsure of itself, “Ok, ok, working now… uh… right.” She cleared her throat and then looked down at Twilight and Nyx condescendingly and said, “Hello there star-swirlies, do you know who I am? Do you remember? Well let me tell you a little story to remind you. Once upon a time there were two nasty, mean, naughty little colts who came into my home pretending to be friends with great secrets to share and then proceeded to destroy everything that I loved. Your apprentices, Star Swirl the Bearded, Cirrus and Archeon. They took all that I held precious, and now, it’s time I returned the favor. I’ve taken something very important to you; a book, a follower, something you want back very badly. If you do, you’ll have to open to this device, but there’s one little problem: I’ve changed the three symbols that do that. So, if you want to catch me, you’re going to have to take your own class!” Margent broke down into laughter for a moment at that, appreciating a bit of irony she obviously felt, and then sobered quickly. “Find the three symbols little star-swirlies,” she said darkly, “and don’t keep me waiting.”

Chapter 4

“What does she mean by symbols?” Nyx asked once the image of Margent faded and the projectors turned off.

“According to your father’s journal,” Twilight said, “once you’ve reached the end of each lesson world, there’ll be a symbol you need to copy down. I’d guess you then have to place each symbol on this,” she indicated the tall round light table, “in order to reach that book.”

“What are we standing around here for then?” Nyx asked, heading for the elevator. “Let’s get started.”

“Not so fast Nyx,” Twilight said, picking the filly up in her magic and depositing her next to her.

“What?” Nyx asked in exasperated confusion.

“Your dad’s journal indicated that part of the means to get to each linking book can be found from this room,” Twilight explained. She went over to the nearest of the three projectors and peered into the lens. She started toying with a pair of levers on either side of the device, and by then Nyx’s curiosity was aroused enough to make her try to push in for a look herself. Twilight stood back obligingly and offered her back as a platform so the filly could get up high enough to see into the lens. To Nyx’s surprise, she could see straight through to the outside of the tower, although the view was somewhat enlarged and out of focus. A symbol was etched in the center of the lens that looked slightly like a leaf or a long, closed flower bud. The frame around the lens had four concentric tracks, each containing a yellow bead in a seemingly random position. Nyx gripped the lever on the right in her magic and slid it up, and the view zoomed out as the second bead from the center moved around in its track. The lever on the right moved horizontally and moved the innermost bead as it adjusted the focus.

“Ok, I think I get it,” Nyx said. “This is like a telescope and I have to point it at something. But how do I move it?” She felt around and inside the contraption with her magic until something moved and the view shifted a little to the right. Grinning, Nyx zoomed out as much as possible and started moving the view around. Above and slightly to the right of the telescope’s original orientation, one of the tusk-towers was visible, and high above its door was what looked like a small black window. Zooming in and adjusting the focus at need, she saw that the window framed a metal outline of the leaf symbol, so she made adjustments until the two overlapped. “Twilight, “she said, hopping down the floor, “make a note on how the beads are arranged; I’ll bet anything that’s what we’re supposed to take from this.”

Twilight nodded and pulled out one of her notebooks and a pencil, and then made a quick sketch of the symbol in the glass surrounded by four circles with each bead’s position carefully marked. She then followed Nyx to the next projector-telescope, where the process was repeated. All three telescopes operated in the exact same manner, with the only differences being the tusk they looked toward and the symbol etched into the glass, which were a bird in flight for the northern tower and a circle inside a rounded rectangle for the one nearest their arrival point.

“All right,” Twilight said when they were finished, “which lesson world should we start with?”

“Let’s do it them in the order Father wrote about them in the journal,” Nyx answered quickly and with an expectant look at Twilight. The older unicorn took the hint and brought out the journal, flipping quickly through to the entry right after I’strukun.

“That would be the… ‘Wahteg’?” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Where does he come up with these names anyway?” Nyx just shrugged. “Anyway,” Twilight continued, checking back in the I’strukun entry, “the book’s in the western tusk, the one with the leaf symbol. To get in-”

“Let me try to figure it out,” Nyx interrupted. “I know we have to save Spike, but I don’t see any reason not to go through the lessons properly. Besides, the crazy pony might have changed a lot more than just the final answers.”

“She may very well have,” Twilight said with a nod, recalling an entry that hinted to that effect in the unbound journal.

With their goal decided, they got back into the elevator, rode it down, and exited the tower through the door on the left. Crossing the bridge brought them to a steep series of stairs – first a set of steps carved into the cliff, then curving metal stairs that bridged the gap to another set of stone steps that forked near the top, the right fork leading up to the tusk-tower they were looking for. A narrow brown double door was set into the side of the tower, with a handle in the center below a round plate with five buttons arranged in a circle on it. A quick test of the handle proved the door was locked. A metal sculpture shaped like a hose nozzle sat on a rock, the wider end pointing at the door and with a partially covered clear glass orb sitting atop the narrow end. “What do you make of this Nyx?” Twilight asked.

“I think,” Nyx said, looking at the door, “the door’s locked with a combination and that,” she pointed to the nozzle, “will help us figure out the solution somehow.” She walked around the nozzle a few times, examining it from every angle, and the sat down, looking up at the glass orb with her horn aglow as she thought. She aimed a beam of light, light blue, at the orb and watched out of the corner of her eye as it got reflected downward and then scattered out from the end of the nozzle to light up one pie-shaped section of the disk on the door. “So, it needs light,” Nyx said.

“Preferably white light, I’d guess,” Twilight added. Nyx nodded and looked around. Although the ponies were not at the highest point of the island, their vantage point did provide a decent view of most of the island, and they could both just make out three or four lampposts like the one at their point of entry. Twilight started to voice the conclusion she reached, but managed to catch herself in time and instead gave Nyx a questioning look.

The filly thought for a bit longer, and then ventured, “We need to find a light source somewhere and relay it up here? Using the lanterns, maybe?” Twilight nodded in agreement and Nyx grinned as she set off in search of light. Twilight followed close behind as Nyx went down to the fork in the stairs and took the other, shorter flight up, which deposited the two ponies on a sandy path that paralleled the circumference of I’strukun Island. They passed a broken metal post like those the lanterns were mounted on, which was a cause of some concern to Twilight and Nyx. “I don’t think that crazy pony would allow any of the books to become impossible to reach,” Nyx said after a moment. “She wants us, or Father, to go into each of them.”

“Good point,” Twilight agreed. They continued on, and shortly came upon one of the lanterns, which had a yellow orb on the top. Twilight gave Nyx a boost and they investigated the lantern together. It had three lenses, and peering into them revealed that a mirror had been installed inside, making two of the lenses act as an angled telescope. The third lens only provided a dark view of the mirror’s backside. The lantern turned easily, albeit somewhat squeakily, on its post when Twilight applied the proper force with her magic and was heavy enough to stay at the orientation she left it at. Twilight turned it until she could see the next closest lantern through it, and then stepped back and let Nyx jump down from her back. “If you don’t mind me pointing it out,” Twilight began, and Nyx gestured for her to continue, “these will reflect light around the island until it eventually reaches the door, and I suspect the colors of the orbs will give us the code to the door’s lock once we’ve relayed the light correctly. We still need a strong, focused light though.”

Nyx looked around and spotted a device on the rocky cliff by the ocean that looked like it was in the same style of construction as the refractor by the tower door. “Would that do?” she asked, pointing it out to Twilight.

“Let’s see,” Twilight replied, walking over. The device was mostly a large, thick brown dish aimed at the yellow-topped lantern, and on the back was a small, clear crystal. Next to it was a valve wheel in a mounting that came up to Twilight’s shoulder. Out in the ocean, a large rough sphere sat on a pillar, and on top of it was what Twilight thought could be a light projector. Nyx cast a telekinesis spell over the wheel and started to turn it. The top half of the sphere turned a little for every full turn of the wheel, and after a few turns a gap became visible, revealing a silvery sphere inside the structure. As soon as the gap was pointed toward the island, the projector on top emitted a bright light aimed at the device on shore. The crystal on the back of the disk caught the light and focused it into a beam that came out of the center of the dish and went straight to the yellow-topped lantern.

“The first button to press will be the yellow one,” Nyx said, pleased. “Write that down Twilight.”

“Excuse me?” Twilight said, stopping and casting a disapproving look at the purple filly, who continued trotting back to the lantern.

“Please,” Nyx added to her last statement. Twilight nodded, mollified, and caught up to her. Working together – Nyx looking through the lenses as Twilight turned the lantern – they determined that they had to direct the light toward the lantern situated on a rock just a short walk to the east. That lantern was crowned with a blue orb, which Twilight noted as she and Nyx walked over and climbed up to it. It seemed reasonable that the next point in the relay system they were building would be the red-topped lantern at the spot where they’d arrived in I’strukun, which wasn’t too far away, but no matter how carefully Twilight adjusted the blue one she couldn’t both catch the incoming light and aim a lens at the red. Eventually she gave up and looked through the lantern while her head was blocking the light coming from the previous lantern, turning it until she saw a lantern in the center of her view. Moving her head out of the light’s path, she and Nyx looked to see where it was shining and discovered that the third lantern was on the complete other side of the island, and clearly only approachable by going the long way around the island. “Aaugh,” Nyx groaned, glowering at the distant lantern and the amount of climbing up and down that walking to it would require. “Twilight, could you possibly teleport that far?”

“That distance shouldn’t be a problem,” Twilight said, squinting, “and the view’s clear enough. Hold on.” Nyx braced herself as Twilight cast the spell, and in a flash of magenta light they warped over to the distant lantern platform.

“You’re good at that,” Nyx said.

“Thanks,” Twilight said, blushing a little as she sighted the second lantern in the distance and then started orienting the third one appropriately. “I just wish I was a little better; maybe I could have gotten to Margent before she escaped into another world.”

“We’ll get her,” Nyx said with confidence. “She can’t possibly be smarter than Aldro, and you outsmarted him. Oh, look,” she added suddenly, pointing to her right, “the next lantern’s real close.”

“So it is,” Twilight said, having already figured that out for herself from aiming the lantern. She wrote down the color, green, and then went with Nyx to the next lantern. Fortunately, the remaining lanterns were all relatively close together, although the two ponies did have to climb up and down a lot of stairs because most of them were off the main path around the island. The final lantern they had to aim happened to be the red-capped one at the arrival point, which Twilight felt was sort of appropriate. Standing in the light’s path as usual, she turned the lantern until she could see the light-refracting device set up by the tusk-tower, and was rewarded with the sight of it activating from the light that made it past her head and through the mirrored lantern. “I think we’re good to go,” she said to Nyx, noting down the final color in the code sequence.

“Then let’s get going,” the filly said impatiently. She started to trot over to the ladder down to the main trail, but after shaking her head in amusement Twilight grabbed Nyx telekinetically, floated her back to her side, and teleported to the tower door.

With the beam of light bouncing around the island and into the crystal on top of the nozzle-shaped device, a circle of light divided into five pie-shaped wedges of color was now projected onto the metal plate and buttons. Twilight started to wonder about why the light was split up in that manner and not a natural bow of colored bands, but an impatient nudge from Nyx reminded her that there were more important things to focus on. After consulting her notes, she entered the seven-button combination, and the lock on the door released with a clearly audible sound. Nyx took the honor of turning the latch, and the narrow double doors opened smoothly. The room inside was small, round, brightly lit, and plainly decorated. The floor was a simple stone mosaic of a green triangle with pointed gold ovoids and curlicues creating the impression of another triangle pointing the opposite direction. At the back stood a squat podium that had four beads set in concentric tracks around a big domed button. Overhead, near the ceiling, was an ovoid golden cage with a pointed bottom, and the presence of a counterweight hanging behind and to the right of the podium promised the cage would come down if the beads on the podium were arranged correctly. Nyx was just tall enough to see the top of the podium, but all she did after looking at it was nod and move aside to make room for Twilight.

“I was right about the beads around the telescopes,” she said. “You have the notes on them, right?”

“Right here,” Twilight said, pulling the appropriate notebook out of her bags. “Now…” she said, opening it. “Good, I remembered to sketch the symbols in each one. Which tower was this again?”

“The leaf one,” Nyx said after some thought.

“Got it.” Twilight moved the beads to match the arrangement she’d sketched out, and then pressed the button. A winch activated up above and the gold cage quickly dropped until it was just above the podium. There was an opening in the front, and inside rested a red book marked with the leaf-like symbol and the word “Wahteg.” Twilight motioned for Nyx to hop on her back as she opened the book to the linking panel. In the typical manner of such panels, it provided a rotating view of a part of the world it liked to. In this case, the view was of an incomplete-looking roofless round hut made of cobblestones and mortar sitting on the peak of a tiny island with raised metal catwalks along one side as well as glimpses of steep ridges of rock rising out of the inevitable sea. “You go through first Nyx,” Twilight said. “That should be more convenient for both of us. Nyx nodded and stretched out a hoof, to which Twilight obligingly floated the book and touched to the linking panel.

Author's Note

My choice of "North" and so forth on I'strukun and the other worlds is pretty much arbitrary. I tend to automatically assume I start each Age near "South."

Chapter 5

Wahteg

I Wrote this world, as I did all the Lesson Worlds of I’strukun, with a very specific theme in mind, and the magic gave me exactly what I wanted and nothing more. Wahteg is probably the smallest world I have ever linked to in terms of traversable land. If it weren’t for the network of catwalks that begin at the tiny hillock of an island where a visitor will first arrive, it would be impossible to get anywhere without wings. I must take care that that doesn’t end up becoming a theme of these Lesson Worlds. Cirrus would not mind, of course, but Archeon would not find it at all amusing.

When I first went to Wahteg to inspect it, I found that not only the catwalks but most of the largest structures a student will encounter and interact with were already in place, but the connections between them were worn down and broken by time. I did as many repairs by hoof as I could manage, but to save time and get the dirigible in working order I had to resort to Writing repaired wires and pipes back into existence.

The world is fascinating, but the possible origin of the devices I’ve found raises uncomfortable questions.

Twilight arrived in Wahteg at the top of a sudden drop-off in the catwalk, which plunged from several feet above the surface of the tiny island to just above the water before heading off into a cleft in a high ridge of rock that was part of a larger landmass. Behind her was the unfinished stone hut with a somewhat wider section of catwalk in front of it. Nyx was already investigating the large vault-like door of the hut, which was held shut by two horizontal metal bars and had an unlit light bulb in the center. Nyx jiggled the handle below the bulb, and sighed when it barely budged. “We need to unlock this somehow,” she declared just before Twilight could pose any questions or comments.

“That sounds like a plan,” Twilight said, looking up and taking note of a cable that stretched from the top of the hut to a tall metal post next to another, abbreviated catwalk and then dropping suddenly into the water just off the island’s shore. Not more than a few yards off, a short tower made in the same cobblestone style as the hut rose out of the water with a metal platform on the top that reached out toward another metal post with a cable that stretched over and past a dam that connected what appeared to be two large, steep-sided landmasses. Twilight was willing to wager a guess about how the door was to be unlocked, but she held her tongue for Nyx’s sake.

The filly’s interest was currently on a round shutter framed by a teardrop-shaped piece of metal standing to the left of the hut’s door. The shutter slid open easily, revealing a book titled I’strukun inside. “Why’s this here?” she asked, confused. “We haven’t even got started yet; it’s way too early to have found the exit book.”

“Well, if our ultimate goal is to open that door,” Twilight said, “it makes sense for the exit book to be nearby. On the other hand, your father may have put it there just in case whoever is taking the class can’t figure out the solution and needs to go back to I’strukun.”

“Heh,” Nyx laughed sardonically, closing the shutter. “That may have been an important concession for Cirrus and Archeon, but I don’t need any forfeit options.”

“Good to hear,” Twilight said, a bit insincerely.

Nyx then looked out over the water at the dam. “Any idea what that is?” she asked after a long thought.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a hydroelectric dam,” Twilight said. When Nyx continued to look confused, she elaborated. “It channels water to rotate a turbine in order to generate electricity.”

“It’s an energy source then,” Nyx said, glancing back at the hut. “I think I get it. It’s like how you unlock the rocket on Aitran – we have to get power to the door before it will open. Twilight, can you teleport us over to the dam, please?”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea Nyx,” Twilight said, indicating the catwalk that led off the island and into the larger landmass. “We could miss something very important if we don’t explore this world by hoof.”

Nyx sighed, but acquiesced. “There’s probably more to it than hydroelec-whatsit anyway,” she said.

“Hydroelectric,” Twilight corrected her as they walked to the ladder off the island. The narrow catwalk prevented Nyx from getting ahead of Twilight, so the older mare let her ride on her back. The cleft in the rock curved a little and then opened up into a broad box canyon, the bottom of which was a dizzying distance below the catwalk. The path split, with the fork on the right leading into a cave framed with circular metal facade and the fork on the left leading out into the canyon, supported by hooked metal beams and suspension cables attached to the left wall, passing by a brown metal tower that rose up from the depths and continuing toward a giant metal door built across a cavern in the far side. “Where should we look first?” Twilight asked.

‘Uhhh, forward,” Nyx said after weighing the choices. Twilight stepped forward dutifully, and as she left the cleft and entered the canyon proper, she could see that the brown tower had another catwalk coming off from it several feet down, and near the far side of the canyon a ribbed pipe bridged the distance from the giant door to the opposite wall, supported by numerous cables coming down from an aching metal structure that Twilight couldn’t help but imagine as the spine of some great ancient beast. A short branch of the upper catwalk went around to the backside of the tower, which upon investigation turned out to be an elevator shaft. The elevator itself seemed to be a simple round platform with an upright lever set on the edge and attached to a spiraling track. The lever moved easily, but the platform remained motionless when it was pulled. “Needs power,” Nyx and Twilight concluded aloud at the same time. After sharing a wry smirk, they returned to the main path and followed it through an opening between the frame of the giant door and the side of the canyon. The catwalk turned sharply to the right and stopped just short of the opposite wall. A flat, teardrop-shaped canvas hung low from the ceiling with its pointed end pointing at the giant door, and after looking at it and the thick cables attached to it for a moment, Twilight realized it was an deflated balloon for a small air dirigible, likely only capable of lifting the weight of one or two ponies. She related this theory to Nyx, who merely nodded slowly and then hopped off Twilight’s back to walk to the end of the path, which terminated abruptly in front of a metal pipe with a valve wheel on top that ran toward the dirigible. To the right of the catwalk’s end, right up against the metal wall and giant door that made the natural cavern into an enclosed hanger, was a tall, partially open shaft. Inside was a platform with an upright lever on the side, a pressure gauge on the low railing, and four vent pipes with a valve wheel under each on the wall behind the platform. Up above, the ponies could see two more levels of vents inside the shaft.

“This should be an interesting puzzle once the power’s on,” Twilight said, honestly intrigued.

“Let’s get on that then,” Nyx said, eagerly. Since the path terminated at the tower, the pair backtracked to the fork in the road inside the cleft and entered the cave. The metal catwalk continued to serve as a floor, meandering slightly to follow the natural shape of the tunnel, and lights were set low into the wall every few feet. A short ways in, they saw two sheets of paper lying on the catwalk. Twilight picked them up and saw that they had writing that matched the penmareship of Margent’s journal.

It is coming back to me. Slowly. Who I am, how long I’ve been trapped here, but so much is still blurry. Entire chunks of time still floating in the fog that eats my mind. But if I concentrate, I can take pieces back.

It was the dream that first helped me. I was lying in the reeds near the tusk, staring at the sky. I see… a pony grow out of the cliff. First his head, then shoulders, soon his whole body, with rings of light around him. I can’t move. Has Death finally come to end my suffering?

No, the old pony just stands on the cliff, staring down at the lagoon as if something made him sad. I wanted to call out to him, to tell him it was me he’s come to find. But my mouth is dry, and before I think to stand there are suddenly two other ponies behind him and we are all inside the tusk. They make the first pony bring a metal flower up out of the pit and open it up to reveal a book and finally shove the old one into the book and tear it in half between them. All the while they say my name, taunting me with it. Margent. Maarrrgent!

Some time later –hours? Days? Weeks? I found myself in the highest part of the tusk and discovered that the flower was real, and still open with the book inside. It is real.

The fog tried to take me then, but I refused to go, holding fast to the reality of the book.

“What was that about?” Nyx asked after Twilight finished reading the pages aloud.

“My best guess is it’s the start of Margent’s emerging from a fugue state,” Twilight said, taking out the unbound journal and searching through its pages quickly. “Ah, yes, she did mention the fog in another entry. I think she’s using the word to refer to being in a state where she can’t remember anything and is barely aware of her surroundings. This journal seems to have started out as a way to fight that. In fact, I’d wager this is the very first entry.” She placed the two new pages in the front and carefully closed the journal before putting it away again.

“Then what is it doing here?” Nyx asked. Twilight just shrugged and walked deeper into the tunnel. Nyx grumbled to herself and then ran to catch up. After gently curving left for several feet, the tunnel abruptly stopped and nearly doubled back on itself to the right. At the corner was a metal door with a large red handle in the center. The handle turned easily in Twilight’s magical grip, but the door refused to budge when she pushed or pulled on it.

“Something’s blocking it from the other side,” the lavender unicorn grunted. She tried to reach through the door and feel around with her magic, but after a few seconds of blind searching she gave up and glowered.

“Remember,” Nyx said cheekily, “there’s always a back door somewhere when Father Writes a world.”

“Right,” Twilight said, “we’ll come back to this then.” She turned away from the door and led Nyx down the other half of tunnel, which was lit by lights of a more bluish tint than the first half, to help tell them apart. The tunnel let out into a small room made of cobblestone and mortar. Directly ahead was a round metal tube large enough to walk through, and the sound of flowing water could be heard coming from the far end. On the left was a ladder leading up to the wood roof, and on the right in a recessed niche was a green board with five little diagrams drawn on it and connected to each other by dotted lines. The center diagram, where all the lines met up, was of a pentagon with small circles at each corner. To the left was a circle with angled spokes around the outside, on the right was what looked like a side-on view of a spring, the bottom diagram was a black, mostly rectangular shape with a lighter patch near the top, and the upper diagram was a partial ovoid with a small hollow square on the top. Twilight puzzled over it for a while before coming up with an idea of what it could be. She turned to tell Nyx, only to find that the little unicorn wasn’t next to her anymore. “Nyx?” she called out.

“Up here Twilight,” Nyx called back, peeking over the edge of the room’s partial roof. “I can see where we started from here. This is the hydro… hyd… the dam.”

“So, what’s up there?” Twilight asked.

“Not much,” Nyx replied, “just a wheel. There used to be something else, I think, but now there’s just a big hole next to the wheel.”

“Margent must have taken whatever it was,” Twilight said. “Try turning the wheel.”

“Alright.” Nyx turned to the wheel-crank, wrapped it in her magic, and tried to turn it clockwise. No matter how hard she pulled, though the wheel refused to budge. “It’s always to the right first, right?” she muttered, trying the other direction. The wheel turned easily counter-clockwise, which moved a belt attached to pair of gears that caused the wall of the dam to move away toward the distant ridge. The sound of cascading water grew louder, and although Nyx couldn’t quite see over the short wall around the platform she knew she’d just changed where the water was flowing, but nothing else seemed to have changed. She slowly climbed down the ladder, finally realizing the oddity of such a structure in a world her father had presumably designed with equine proportions in mind. Twilight wasn’t in the little room anymore, but Nyx quickly spotted her at the far end of the metal tunnel, which let out onto a metal platform just in front of the other rock ridge. There was a large, bolted door just like the one on the starting island set into the ridge, but Twilight was currently more interested in a ladder that led down into an area underneath the platform. “What’s down there?” the filly asked.

“Only enough space for one pony, from the looks of it,” Twilight said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go down and take a look.”

“Ok,” Nyx said, “but let me know exactly what you find down there. I can’t miss a detail if I’m going to learn this place’s lesson.” Twilight nodded and carefully mounted the ladder. She reached the bottom in relatively short order, and after a few seconds Nyx heard a crank being turned and something big sliding into place just under her hooves. Twilight climbed back out, looking satisfied.

“What I just did,” Twilight said, “is raise up the drive shaft of what I strongly suspect is an underground generator so that it’s connected to the dam’s turbine. Once we get the turbine moving, we’ll be producing power.”

“Great!” Nyx exclaimed. “Where’s the turbine then?”

“We walked through it to get here,” Twilight said, pointing to the round tunnel. “You already got the water flowing the right way, so something about the turbine itself needs to be adjusted to catch the water.”

Nyx walked into the tunnel and looked around. There were three windows along one side, and the glass in the one closest to the open rift they’d come from was mostly gone. Through it, Nyx could see part of the turbine itself – specifically a section of short, closed panels that presumably wrapped all the way around the large cylinder. Nyx focused her magic into a narrow point of force and pushed against one of the panels. It and all the others flipped outward and the turbine began to spin with a number of persistent but not annoying mechanical sounds. As she went back to Twilight, she saw that the light in the vault door was glowing green. “Is it unlocked now?” she asked as she turned the handle. The bars retracted into the locking mechanism, which then turned ninety degrees before the entire door slid backwards and down into the ground. A metal plate extended over the short gap, and just on the other side was yet another ladder leading down. “I… guess that’s a yes then,” Nyx said. Twilight just hid her amusement behind a hoof. “What’s with all the ladders though?” Nyx asked, waving a disgruntled hoof at the one inside the newly-opened cave. “Father Wrote this world for a very specific purpose, didn’t he? Why would he put in ladders that are so uncomfortable to use?”

“I don’t know, Nyx,” Twilight said. “You probably know more about how Writing Linking Books works than I do.”

“I do know more than you,” Nyx pointed out, “because I’ve actually helped to Write one.” She stuck her nose in the air and strutted proudly up to the ladder, and then got onto it and kept her snooty expression intact until she’d climbed down out of Twilight’s sight. Twilight rolled her eyes and followed the filly down into a small, round-ended metal chamber. Six cables ran along the wall opposite the ladder and the left end of the room. A door at the right end led into a meandering passageway with extensions of the six cables running along the left wall. At the left end of the chamber was a cylindrical object with a black glass screen on the end hanging from a supporting frame, and a bar with a button on it crossed below the cylinder. Nyx’s hoof was already poised to press the button when Twilight noticed it, and at her nod the filly pressed it. Twilight was momentarily shocked when an image of Pinkie Pie’s face appeared in the glass, but then mentally smacked herself when she noticed the slight differences in the eyes and mane-style which, together with the context, reminded her that it couldn’t be her friend but, rather Margent.

“Wassamatter Star Swirlies?” the pink pony asked tauntingly, “Can’t remember how things work? Well, I remember what you said when you came to Naborale. You told me, ‘Margent I want them to learn from you, from these worlds I’ve brought together: Motivaria, Adene, Wahteg, and finally from Naborale. I want them to see your traditions at work so they can learn how a civilization can balance a world. And then you left with them and you never came back. But they did. Cirrus and Archeon… did.” The image faded away, with Margent’s angry, accusing eyes the last part to disappear into the black.

“Hmph,” Nyx said with unveiled sarcasm, “that was informative.” She brushed past Twilight and started walking down the passageway.

“I thought it was,” Twilight replied sincerely.

“It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” Nyx countered. “Margent’s gone crazy and blames Father for what Cirrus and Archeon did to her home.”

“Well, I know something about Naborale that I didn’t before,” Twilight said calmly. “Namely, what somepony is supposed to learn after visiting there. If Cirrus and Archeon left it in as bad of shape as, say, Baseli, we might not be able to learn that lesson first-hoof.”

Nyx’s ears angled back as she considered that. “Fine, I see your point,” she said at last. “I’ll listen to it again on our way out, and I’ll pay better attention next time.”

The passage ended at one final ladder, this one not quite as vertical, to both ponies’ relief, which led down to a pentagonal walkway that went around a large stone and metal cylinder with a whole net of cables and wires coming off the top and running along and into the ceiling. At each corner of the walkway was a rounded space that went right up next to the cylinder, where a slit in the metal granted a tiny view of the interior. Above the slit directly across from the ladder was painted a symbol that gave both Twilight and Nyx considerable pause: a square bisected with a vertical line. By silent agreement they followed the walkway counter-clockwise to the next corner and saw another slit with the symbol of a square with a round line on the left side. At the third corner was a square with two lines forming a K with the left side, and when they saw that the fourth corner’s symbol had a smaller square in the lower-right corner they stopped and both started speaking at once.

“Kl’kai numbers?”

“Why is Aldro’s language on this thing?!”

Twilight pulled Star Swirl’s journal out of her bags and hastily turned to the entry on Wahteg. She skimmed quickly through the first couple of pages, and then slowed down as she found the keywords she was hunting for. After going back and re-reading the appropriate section, she closed the journal and looked dubiously up at the Kl’kai numeral above the slit before her.

“Well?” Nyx asked impatiently.

“To paraphrase,” Twilight said, “Star Swirl was just as shocked as we are to discover these numbers here. He almost considered abandoning this world and Writing a new one out of fear that others of Aldro’s people were still around and could use it as a way to get into his space. After a long observation and considering how dilapidated Whateg was when he first Linked to it, he decided the Kl’kai had abandoned or lost their Links to it a long time ago. Since it fits your father’s purposes so well, it’s likely that they had been using it for more or less the same thing – to demonstrate that… Oops, I almost gave away the final answer there.”

“Oh,” Nyx said, calming. “Well, let’s see what it’s for then.” She climbed up on Twilight’s back and they both looked into the slit. Inside were three thick disks stacked on top of each other with short metal bands screwed onto the sides to create a broken path from top to bottom. Three large buttons were lined up on either side of the slit, and when Nyx pressed one with her magic the disk on its level turned in its direction, revealing a different arrangement of metal. Twilight nodded ever-so-slightly in comprehension and glanced back at Nyx. Nyx pressed a few more buttons as she pondered, and then said, “I’m pretty sure I need to get all the ends to line up, but I don’t get what that’ll do.”

“It’ll get us one step closer to powering the world,” Twilight said, “and one step closer to saving Spike.”

“Right,” Nyx said, biting her lip. She started pressing the buttons, starting at the top and working her way down, searching for an arrangement that left no bit of metal orphaned. She found one that looked correct in less than ten moves, but when nothing happened she and Twilight went to look through another of the slits and found that the metal didn’t line up there. Working from the second slit, Nyx found two more false positives before reaching the configuration that caused the cylinder to start humming with electricity, and as if to drive home the message that she’d got it right the slits closed up.

“Alright,” Nyx said, hopping off Twilight back, “what’s next?”

Twilight and Nyx wandered around Wahteg for several minutes looking for a clue to the next step they had to take. The steel door at the bend in the tunnel remained barred from the inside, the vault door on the starting island was still unpowered, and there was no indication that the steam-powered mechanism in the dirigible hanger was active. The only thing that had started to work was the spiraling elevator outside the hanger, and that only led down to a dead-end catwalk with an inoperative lever. Twilight eventually settled down inside the hanger, staring intently at the dirigible as if trying to intimidate it into giving up its secrets. Nyx continued to wander up and down the catwalks for a while, looking at the ribbed pipe crossing the length of the hanger canyon. An idea came to her, and she ran into the hanger and caught Twilight in the act of consulting Star Swirl’s journal. “No cheating yet,” the filly said quickly, and then squeezed past Twilight to reach the end of the walkway. Near the valve outside the pressure control shaft was a tall metal pole with horizontal bars coming out at regular intervals. “If I use this as a ladder,” Nyx explained to Twilight, “I can get on top of this shaft, and from there I’ll probably be able to walk along the pipe and find a maintenance access hatch somewhere. The pipe has to lead to the source of the steam or whatever needs to go into the blimp, and that’s got to be behind the locked door.”

Twilight frowned. “That’s a long ways up, Nyx,” she said, “if you lose your footing…”

“I’ll be fine,” Nyx replied flippantly, already starting to climb. “I’ll go slowly and keep three hooves on the ground at all times.” Twilight bit her lip as she watched Nyx climb up the pole and disappear onto the top of the shaft. A short second later, Nyx poked her head back over the side and some pieces of paper floated into view. “I found some pages of Margent’s journal up here,” she called down, “and there’s a hatch that leads right out onto the pipe.”

“Ok,” Twilight called back, still nervous, “hold on to the pages for now. I’ll look at them when we meet up again.” Nyx nodded and put the journal pages into her saddlebag, and then walked confidently but carefully out onto the pipe. The metal of the pipe was slightly rough, which made for easier footing, but the ribbed shape meant Nyx had to take big steps up or down every couple of feet. Twilight ran out onto the regular catwalk and followed Nyx’s progress with trepidation in her eyes, her horn glowing faintly as she readied herself for an emergency catch that was possibly beyond her reach. Despite the risk, Nyx made it across safely and found a small shelf of metal to the right of the pipe and underneath the rounded grate of another, wider pipe just barely poking out of the cliff face. The grate was held shut only by a simple latch. Before crawling inside, Nyx located Twilight and waved encouragingly to her. The lavender unicorn nodded and trotted into the cleft tunnel while Nyx crawled into the pipe. A surprisingly short distance into the pipe, Nyx came upon a drop onto another grate that swung open into an unfamiliar room. The dark purple filly braced herself and dropped into the room, narrowly avoiding hitting her head on a round podium with a bisected circle cut deeply into the face. A wedge had been driven into the bisecting line, and a red ball on a lever sat in the right side of the circle. Behind the podium was a big glass window showing a larger room with a giant gear on the far wall to the left and a thick-looking metal sheet that was nearly rectangular, if it weren’t for the convexly curved right side, with even spaced short metal bars poking out of either side. Above the sheet was an inactive ventilation fan. The room Nyx was in was quite small, and a ladder leading down took out the center of the floor. Opposite the window was the door that had stymied the ponies, and the blockage proved to be a metal stop that was easily turned out of the way. Nyx opened the door and peered out just as Twilight arrived.

“You’re ok,” Twilight said, visibly relaxing.

“I told you,” Nyx said. “Here you go,” she added, taking the journal pages out of her bag and passing them into Twilight’s magic grip. Twilight nodded in thanks and looked the pages over.

The cavern wall is almost ready. For weeks I have been polishing it, rubbing away at the cracks to obtain a smooth surface. I haven't been able to sleep much these last weeks. I was afraid I might never wake up, or that they would come as I slept. But if I can make him see all that happened—if I can show them the pain his family caused—it will be worth it.

Tomorrow, I begin mixing the paints.

A few small sketches accompanied the text, but Twilight couldn’t figure out what they were representing, so she just added the pages to the unbound journal. “Ok, I’ll admit that these don’t tell us anything new on their own,” she said. She entered the room with Nyx and looked around for a moment. “So, what do we have here?” she asked.

“Controls for something on the other side of the window, I think,” Nyx said, indicating the podium. She grabbed the red ball and tried moving it around. The wedge prevented it from sliding straight across to the other side and it refused to move very far in a clockwise direction, but when Nyx moved it counterclockwise it made a complete circuit before something clicked. In the other room, the metal sheet moved down a few feet. Nyx moved the lever clockwise, and the sheet rose back up to its original position. She then went down the ladder and found herself in an even smaller room that contained only a round metal door with a twisting latch in the center. When Nyx turned the latch, the door split open with a hiss to grant her access to the larger room. She could now see that the metal sheet was attached to a short catwalk with a railing and another bisected-circle control device, and that there was a small gear on a mechanical arm to the right of the platform which was clearly responsible for the raising and lowering of the platform. The platform was too high for her to climb onto, so Nyx went back to the ladder and asked Twilight to lower it for her. Once it was down at ground level, Nyx climbed on and immediately slid the lever through the middle of the circle. The small gear pulled away from the wall, and then the entire arm rose up, moved to left side of the platform, and then came back down and extended the gear back toward the wall, meshing smoothly between the larger gear and the spokes of the platform. The repositioning of the gear also revealed a mural that had been painted high on the right wall of the room. Intrigued, Nyx walked to the far end of the platform to get a better look. The scene in the mural was of several ponies fighting as leafless trees with large glowing sacs woven into the branches burned in the background. To the right of the conflict, a pink pony with bat-like wings watched sorrowfully alongside a larger red bat-winged stallion, and above it all were two ponies Nyx recognized as Cirrus and Archeon riding in some sort of flying chariot and laughing at the death and destruction below them.

“Wow,” Nyx said, amazed by the skill of the artist, “you did this, didn’t you Margent? No wonder you’re so angry at my false brothers. Still,” she hardened her expression as she went back around to the front of the control stand, “kidnapping Twilight’s dragon for revenge is going too far.” She tried moving the lever counterclockwise around the circle to raise the platform, but the lever refused to budge. Nyx glared at it, puzzled, but then her gaze shifted to the small gear and realization hit her as hard as the hoof she brought to her face. “Dur, it has to turn the other way now,” she said, and moved the lever clockwise. The platform rose, and at the same time a metal door in the far corner of the room opened and lava poured in, coming up to just a few inches below the platform. In a panic, Nyx spun the lever the other way, and then clambered up onto the podium when her common sense told her, a second too late, that she’d just told the platform to go back down, into the lava. As the platform descended, however, the lava just as quickly drained out of the room through an unseen hole as the door to its source closed. Nyx remained on top of the control podium, paralyzed by fright, until Twilight came galloping out and picked her up in a hug.

“Are you ok?” Twilight asked.

“J-just… No,” Nyx admitted. “That was lava!”

“I know,” Twilight said, soothingly. She carried the filly back up into the small control room and set her down gently. “You don’t look hurt,” Twilight said, “and at least you got it set up properly, so we should be able to just let the lava back in from up here and put this behind us.”

“No,” Nyx said, pointing out the window at the ventilation fan, “not unless that turns on by itself when the lava comes in.”

Twilight nodded slowly and moved the lever appropriately. The room behind the window took on an orange glow as the lava flowed in, but the vent fan remained stationary.

“Feathers,” Twilight grumbled as she reset the room. She looked around the control room and found no other buttons or switches. She then looked at Nyx and said, “I think I can shield myself from the worst of the heat, so I’ll go in and try to get the fan turned on, ok?”

“Be careful,” was all Nyx said.

Twilight went out into the larger room, mounted the platform, and shifted the lever back to the right to move the lifting gear away from the big one before using it to raise the platform. “Ok, now what?” she muttered to herself, before noticing a sizable hole in the spoked sheet at the end of the platform. There was nothing but blank wall through it at the moment, but Twilight suspected the hole wasn’t there just for looks. She also figured the switch had to be above the surface of the lava, which meant her best bet was to coax the platform to move a little higher. “But the gear won’t turn in the same direction twice,” Twilight mused darkly, “which means… Ah, feathers.” She moved the lift gear back to the left, surrounded herself in protective magic, and moved the lever counterclockwise. The platform came up, the top of the end-piece blocking the vent, and the lava poured in. Twilight walked to the end of the platform and saw a round switch through the hole, so she turned it and nodded with satisfaction at the sound of the fan starting to spin. She then went back to the controls, moved the lift gear away from the large one in order to keep the lava in the room, and lowered the platform to unblock the vent. Finally, she teleported into the control room and dropped her protective spells. “Alright, let’s go, “she said to Nyx.

“Gladly,” the filly replied, leading the way out of the room and toward the dirigible.

As they exited the tunnel and turned into the canyon area, Nyx asked, “Did you see the mural in the lava room?”

“No, I was too worried about the lava in the lava room,” Twilight said. “What mural?”

“It’s something Margent painted,” Nyx said. “It was a scene of her world burning, while Cirrus and Archeon watched and laughed.”

“Ah,” Twilight said, “I guess that’s part of what she meant in her journal about making the ‘star swirlies’ see what they’d done to her.”

“It was a really good painting,” Nyx said. “She may have gone crazy, but that obviously didn’t affect her talents much. Unless what she painted was majorly exaggerated.”

“Exaggeration isn’t proof of insanity, Nyx,” Twilight said.

They entered the hanger and heard the sound of escaping steam coming from the pressure control shaft. Excited, Nyx trotted into the shaft and studied the set-up. Three of the four pipes at the bottom level were open and allowing steam to escape into the air. The needle of the pressure gauge was steadily in the middle of the blue segment, which covered over a third of the gauge. A second, slightly smaller section was yellow and the remainder was red. A dotted red line was drawn in the blue area a few ticks from the yellow. “I need to get the pressure to that level, right?” Nyx asked, pointing to the line.

“It makes sense,” Twilight said, standing back a little to let the filly work.

Nyx turned the valve on one of the open pipes and it slammed shut, blocking some of the steam and causing the needle of the gauge to move significantly toward the yellow. Closing the other two pipes moved the needle moved the needle just as much, so that it ended in the yellow. “These have too strong an effect,” Nyx said, looking up the shaft, “so hopefully the higher pipes aren’t as influential on the pressure. But how do I get up there?”

“Try this,” Twilight said, grasping the lever that rose from the platform beside Nyx. She pulled it toward the steam pipes and the platform shot up into the shaft, stopping in front of the middle bank of pipes.

“That wasn’t funny, Twilight!” Nyx shouted down crossly before regarding the pipes. All four were open, and closing one only increased the pressure by four ticks. “Ok, that’s more like it,” Nyx said, pushing the lever forward. There was a faint hiss, but the platform didn’t move. Nyx glared at it. “You need more power or something?” she asked it crossly. “I’m not that heavy.” Nevertheless, she closed pipes until the needle went into the red and tried the lever again. This time, the platform obliged and went up to the top bank. After testing the pipes and finding they only moved the needle a single tick each, Nyx sat down and started thinking. She’d obviously need to work from top to bottom since her goal was in the blue area, but that meant her final moves would involve the largest movement of the needle, so she had to be very careful with her math or else have to re-close every pipe in order to do any fine-tuning. She decided to approach it by counting the number of ticks between the red line and the edge of the blue and trying to adjust the needle by the same amount before opening low-banked pipes willy-nilly. She closed a single pipe on the top bank and then spent a few frustrating moments figuring out how to make the platform go back down: moving the lever away from the pipes. She re-opened a couple of pipes on the second bank and then dropped down and opened all but one of the bottom pipes. The needle stopped exactly on the red line and Nyx cheered triumphantly.

“You got it, I presume,” Twilight said, amused.

“Yep,” Nyx replied, stepping over to the valve outside of the shaft and turning it. Steam rushed through the hose connected to the dirigible and its balloon inflated quickly. The dirigible rose slightly but was held back by a wire running through a small loop on the bottom of the little gondola. As Nyx closed the steam valve, the dirigible drifted forward until it bumped lightly against the inside of the hanger door, disengaging from the hose and the cables that had been supporting it. “Come on,” Nyx said impatiently, nudging Twilight toward the catwalk exit of the hanger.

“Ok, ok,” Twilight said, smiling as she obliged. The two of them went out to the elevator and rode it down to the lower catwalk, and then walked out to the end so Nyx could pull the lever there. The hanger door irised open and the dirigible came drifting out along its guide wire. It passed through the gap between two sections of catwalk and hooked on something, turning the segment Twilight and Nyx were on slightly before coming to a stop. Twilight climbed into the gondola first and squeezed back to give Nyx room to slip in. There was a lever on the gondola that released the hook when Nyx pulled it, and the dirigible set off along the wire again, going down the canyon and eventually up and over the hydroelectric dam. The final destination appeared to be the island the ponies had started on, but the guide-wire stopped at short catwalk attached to a column rising from the sea. On the column was a lever, which Twilight reached out and pulled with her magic. The walkway turned a little, carrying the dirigible with it and connected the wire to the one that dipped down into the water before coming back up to connect to the island. There a sharp electric pop, and then a prolonged cracking sound as the top of the island broke away from the rest and rose into the air, revealing a constructed metal interior, along with dozens of small rocks that stopped at random heights. Twilight and Nyx stared in awe for a moment before Nyx remembered to pull the lever to release the anchor hook again and the dirigible rose up to dock in front of the cobblestone hut.

“Ok, wow,” Nyx said as she climbed out of the dirigible, “This is… amazing. It must be taking a ton of magic to levitate this.”

“It’s not magic,” Twilight said. “If anything, it’s electromagnetism. Using magic at this point would defeat the purpose of this world. Now come on.” She approached the vault-like door of the hut, the indicator light of which was now glowing green, and turned the handle. The bars of the door retracted and turned and the whole door slid out of sight to reveal a large hole leading down into the floating island ringed with bars that served as a ladder. At the bottom was a metal hatch. Nyx and Twilight looked down and shared a glance with each other before carefully climbing down on opposite sides of the hole. The hatch slid aside with a touch to reveal a view straight down into the depths of the bottom half of the island. From this angle, the small rocks that hung spinning in the air took on the shape of a symbol made entirely from curved lines, vaguely resembling a small comet with a snaking tail that split into two curls at the end, along with a few other stray lines. “That must be one of the symbols Margent mentioned,” Twilight said, fishing a piece of paper and a pen from her bags. She copied the shape of the stones as closely as she could, and then put everything away. “It looks like this is it for Wahteg, Nyx,” she said, starting to climb out of the hole, “so what have you learned?”

“Well,” Nyx said, following, “I’ve definitely learned a few ways to get power out of a world without relying on magic, and that the connection between the source of the power and what it causes to move doesn’t need to be obvious at first glance. This entire area is about using the energy of the world. Is that what Father was aiming for?”

“More or less,” Twilight said, helping Nyx out of the hut. “I think he said it in much fewer words though.” Nyx gave the older unicorn a wry look and the pair went over to the pod containing the I’strukun book.

Chapter 7

Motivaria

I should not have been surprised that a world that contains the structures I wrote into the Motivaria book would be inhabited. There were two black and white ursine creatures on the island when I first arrived, along with the sprawling complex I expected. The creatures were intelligent and once we learned to communicate they informed me that they did not actually live on the island, but were merely caretakers of the complex. They performed their task out of duty to an eccentric and recently deceased uncle who had built the entire complex on what they considered a whim.

After I proved myself capable of maintaining the rails and the core mechanism that powers the island’s different stations, the natives gladly relinquished the responsibility for the upkeep and departed. I have not seen them since, but I assume they are happy pursuing their own lives. It is a shame they did not appreciate the beauty of Motivaria; it is both aesthetically pleasing and a magical-mechanical wonder. Its natural resources are also interesting, particularly the crystals.

Twilight and Nyx found themselves on a small hexagonal platform directly underneath a glowing lantern hanging from a red roof supported by red wood columns at each corner. Most of the floor dipped down into a rounded groove. Directly ahead of the pair, the groove met a pair of thick metal rails forming a track leading up to the top of a large hexagonal building with a sloped roof and eaves that swept up at the corners. There were some short, cupped platforms spanning the track, but the gaps between them were too large to jump across. Behind the ponies, the track continued, curving to the right before coming back around far out to sea before stopping in front of a set of three pillars and a covered platform. To the right was a long rope ladder leading down to a wooden walkway just above the water and which meandered through several thick columns of dark, hexagonal stone. To the left was a wood bridge leading to a platform similar to the one they stood on, and from there the path seemed to lead into a cliff formed of more black hexagon columns.

Nyx didn’t want to deal with climbing the ladder, so she crossed the bridge. On the second platform she found a wooden shelf with an I‘strukun book sitting on it. “Oh look, I found the exit,” Nyx said in mock excitement, but when she turned to see Twilight’s reaction she saw the lavender unicorn was still over on the original platform, looking enraptured by the central building. “Oi!” Nyx shouted, “you coming or not?”

Twilight walked over to Nyx quickly, but kept stealing glances at the building. “Sorry Nyx,” she said, “but the architecture of this place is reminding me of something and I can’t quite place it.”

“Well standing around here trying to figure it out’s not going to accomplish anything,” Nyx chided.

“You’re right,” Twilight said, “sorry.”

Another wooden bridge led to a tall opening the cliff, and a lantern was held suspended in the middle of wooden frame by four chains in the upper half of the opening. Just inside was one stone column that had been carved out to hold a glowing crystal. A chain hung guarding a sudden drop-off in the floor to the left of the lantern, while on the right side there was a natural staircase leading down. Because the entire natural landmass of the world seemed to be composed of the regularly-sized stone columns, the passageway at the bottom of the stairs meandered a little bit, lit frequently by more crystal lanterns carved into the walls. Thick patches of moss and the occasional glowing green mushroom grew out from between the stones, but Twilight and Nyx found their footing to be easy and sure.

A few meters down the tunnel there was a gap in the left wall that revealed that Twilight and Nyx were only a short distance above the sea, and little green plants poked out of the water near the stones. “You know,” Twilight said, stopping at the gap and looking out over the water, “I’ve noticed that Star Swirl has a tendency to link to worlds without very strong tides. Do you know why that is, Nyx?”

“Beats me,” Nyx said with a shrug. “I guess it’s for the same reason he tends to get small, isolated islands. Father Writes very detailed Linking Books; he has to note down the precise location of every single tree and important rock.”

“Oh, I know,” Twilight chuckled, as she started walking again, “I read most of Aitran before discovering what the book really was.”

“I think I want to be more like Mom,” Nyx said. “She hasn’t Written nearly as much as Father, and she’s less detailed, but she’s found some truly amazing worlds.”

A little farther down the passageway, the path forked. A wood walkway led outside and around the side of the cliff, and little crystals in paper lanterns floated in the water near the walkway. To the right, the path continued as a tunnel, and there was an elevator set into a small alcove on the left. Nyx decided to go left.

The walkways led to a large shelf of amorphous light brown rock pocked with pools of green water. Up against the far black stone cliff was a large wooden frame supporting a metal half-tube that connected two segments of rail track that wound around and through the cliff. The tube seemed to be balancing on an axel attached to a large gear, a metal basket hung off the right end, and a metal rod came down from the left end and into the top of building tucked away at the far corner of the shelf. The walkway passed through a cross-shaped platform with a podium facing the balance, and then continued on around the edge of the rock shelf to the small building.

“Looks to me like we’ve found our first challenge,” Twilight said.

“Looks like,” Nyx agreed, going to the podium and rearing up to take a look at it. There was a large lever next to the podium, and the podium itself had three black horizontal switches on the left and a vertically-moving lever on the right. The switches were labeled with a line with a single dot underneath on the left, the middle, and the right respectively. Nyx pulled the large lever first, and the platform rose several feet off the ground. Twilight, still down on the ground, looked up at Nyx, and then turned to watch the balance as the filly started testing the controls.

Nyx quickly figured out that only one of the three switches could be flipped at a time, because they caused the gear to roll to different positions beneath the half-tube. She put the gear back in the center position before trying the lever on the right. When she pulled it, something that looked like the top of the central building floated up into the air, created a large white ball, and then dropped back down behind the cliffs. The ball dropped as well, and a couple seconds later it came rolling along the track to the right of the balance. When it entered Nyx’s line of sight the first time, it seemed to dislodge a smaller wooden ball which rolled along its own track that ended at the basket, which caused the balance to tilt to the right. When the large crystal ball came back around a split second later, it rolled right off its track and hit the tilted half-tube, shattering into a million pieces. A mechanism leveled the balance, and a hammer kicked the small ball out of its basket and all the way back to its starting place.

Nyx frowned slightly in thought, and then brought the platform back down to earth. “We’ll need equal weight on both sides,” she said, walking toward the little building.

“Perhaps we should try to figure out how much the ball weighs first?” Twilight suggested.

“Right, good idea,” Nyx said, turning around. “Any ideas on how we’re gonna do that?”

“That elevator seems close enough to get us up to the ball,” Twilight answered. She led the way to the elevator, and then took Nyx onto her back when it proved too small for them both to fit normally. After riding it up, the ponies found themselves on a ledge right next to the balance. The wooden ball was sitting at the top of its track several feet away, and Twilight and Nyx had to squint to get a good look at it. The ball appeared to be only three-quarters wood; the remainder was a wedge of translucent white crystal.

“Well that’s great,” Nyx drawled.

“Let’s head back down and look at what’s on the other end before complaining,” Twilight said.

The structure underneath the far end of the balance turned out to be small wood hut with a sliding door made of paper stretched across a wood frame. Inside was a single room. The rod that came down through the ceiling from the balance ended in a half-sphere of wood, flat-side up, and shelves on two of the walls held black metal, wood, and crystal pieces that could obviously be used to complete the sphere. The floor under the hanging ball was littered with fragments of metal and broken crystal. After a moment of looking around, Nyx’s eyes lit up and she went over to the shelves and tried to lift some the ball pieces in her magic. She was able to move the wood chunks with little difficulty, while the crystal required some visible effort on her part and the metal chunk hardly budged. After trying each type, Nyx sat and thought for a bit, and then nodded with a smug smile. “Margent left us a clue to this in the central tower,” she declared.

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked.

“There were two balances in the lower room,” Nyx explained, “that demonstrated how heavy the wood, crystal, and metal are relative to each other: the crystal is four times as heavy as this wood, and the metal is four times heavier than crystal.” Twilight tried to make a common, but Nyx pressed on, having warmed quickly to the puzzle. “The ball that goes onto the other end is one-quarter crystal. It takes four of these pieces to make half a ball, so one ball is eight pieces big. Wood is the lightest material, so one piece weighs one unit. Crystal is four wood per piece, and metal is… sixteen wood. The other ball weighs…”

“Fourteen units,” Twilight answered.

“Yes,” Nyx said slowly, checking the math in her head. “So we just need to match that over here. Half the ball’s made of wood, so that’s four units we can’t change. We’ll have to add ten weight to the top.”

“That comes to two crystal and two wood then,” Twilight said, looking at the shelves, “and it looks like there’s just enough to do that.” Nyx giggled in glee as she and Twilight worked together to put the ball together and they both ran out to the controls. Twilight stayed down on the ground again as Nyx rode the platform up, double-checked the position of the fulcrum, and then pulled the lever. A new crystal boulder was created and sent rolling down the track. Nyx’s excited grin quickly changed to slack-jawed horror when the small ball reached the basket and the balance suddenly tipped to the left presenting the right end of the half-tube for the big crystal to hit and shatter against. By the time the mechanisms reset and allowed Nyx to lower the control platform, all she could manage was to stare at Twilight and point at the balance in frustration.

Twilight took the failure in far better stride. “We obviously overestimated the weight of the free ball,” she said. “Take a deep breath Nyx; I’ll figure this out.” She teleported up to the ledge, levitated the ball out of its track, looked it over, and then put it back and teleported back to Nyx. “That ball is only one-eighth crystal,” she said, heading back to the hut, “which means it weighs eleven units, not fourteen.”

“Hold on,” Nyx said, running to catch up, “can we even match that? We’d need three wood and one crystal segment, but there are only two of each type in the hut, aren’t there?” The pair entered the hut and Nyx counted the ball sections. “Yeah, only two wood,” she said. “This is impossible!”

“Not if we move the fulcrum,” Twilight said as she took apart the upper half of the weight and put the sections back on the shelves. “If the fulcrum is in the exact middle, the weights on both ends would have to be equal, but when the fulcrum moves to the left or right, one side of the balance becomes twice as long as the other. In that configuration, the short end would need twice as much weight to balance the long end.” She looked at Nyx and asked, “So, which way do you move the fulcrum and how heavy do we make this end?”

“Um,” Nyx said, thinking. Twilight offered her a piece of paper and a pencil, but the filly waved them off and traced on the ground with her hoof as she calculated. “Assuming you’re right about the weight shift,” she said at last, “this end needs to be twenty-two units. Can we do that?” She looked at the shelves, thought some more and said, “One metal segment and the two wood along with the base four would make twenty-two, but that only uses three pieces.”

“I don’t see anything that says this weight needs to be a complete sphere,” Twilight pointed out.

“Ok, let’s try it then,” Nyx said. She levitated the wood pieces back on the ball while Twilight did the heavy lifting with the metal piece. They then went back outside and Nyx turned the control platform on. She moved the fulcrum to the left, pulled the lever, and watched with bated breath as the top of the central building rose into view and dropped another crystal ball. The big crystal rolled down the approach track, sending the little weight into motion. The weight landed in the basket, and the balance tube stayed level as the big crystal rolled through it and around the end of the cliff, out of sight. “Yes!” Nyx exulted.

Something clicked and the control platform came down on its own. When it touched the ground, two reflective panels rose up from either side of the console and met above it. An image appeared in the metal, showing the pillars out in the water near the arrival point from I’strukun. A platform rose up out of the water between the first and second set of pillars, paused for a second, and then dropped back into the sea. The panels then folded back into their supports, which then closed down over the controls. The lid was marked with a pattern of hexagons. Nyx looked at Twilight, and the older unicorn looked back at her expectantly. “Solving this puzzle gives us a clue how to raise part of a bridge to where we’ll find the symbol?” Nyx guessed.

“That sounds reasonable,” Twilight said, levitating notepaper and her pencil out. She copied down the hexagon pattern and said, “I’m sure we’ll see more of these.”

The unicorns left the area and proceeded down the tunnel past the elevator. After a few feet, they reached a stretch where blue crystals growing out of the wall provided illumination. Beyond that stretch there was a ladder carved into the rock on the right leading up into what looked like another tunnel, while directly ahead the passage opened onto a small inlet of water with a walkway built along the right-side wall, beyond which a path of stepping stones curved to the right under broken stone arches. The ladder was too narrow and vertical for Twilight to comfortably climb, but with her help Nyx was able to make it up. Twilight waited as the filly explored, and in surprisingly short order Nyx poked her head into view and levitated some journal pages down. “There’s a little bit of the rail tracks with a walkway built underneath,” Nyx reported, “and it leads to the controls for another puzzle. I’ll work on it while you read these pages.”

“Alright,” Twilight said. As Nyx disappeared from view, Twilight opened Margent’s journal and tried to figure out where the new pages fit in.

Focus, Margent. You must not let the fog come and swallow you. There are long spells, I think. Days. Maybe months at a time when I can't remember what I've done. The fog rolls so thick around me, even if I hold my hoof in front of my eyes I barely see it. I strain and strain and strain but nothing sticks. I think

I think his students came to visit us twice—

On Naborale.

The first time, Star Swirl asked me to meet them. He told me they would come through the book. He says, they will not understand how your words fit together, but they will use them to open the shield. Naborale, he says, is where their lessons come together. Naborale is the last lesson they must learn.

I remember. Staid was carving a Spirit Mask into the Tree the day the colts arrive. He tugs my sleeve to get my attention. Points at a glide ship in the sky. I am shocked by how young the boys appear. They as strange as their teacher. One with wings like a bird. One has no wings at all. Yet they are different from the Star Swirly in more than appearance. They're more impatient. And they are angry not to be treated like stallions.

I take them to our home. I tell them I will teach them how to care for it. I say, together we will encourage the Lattice Tree to grow tall. They ask me why they have to work so hard. They tell me—

No, Margent!!! That was later. That was after Star Swirl took them away. You know this, because when you see them saying these things they are older. Their faces have become angled and hard. They have grown up, into stallions. And something dark is in their eyes. They tell you they've come back to fix Naborale.

Cirrus. And. Archeon.

The walls run red with steam and strangling branches. I see their bloated faces laughing at everything. I remember how they lied. I remember what they did.

They brought me here to die

I followed them

The Lattice Roots are black from too much overgrowth. Puffer spores float up in the hot steam and burst. No one was there to guide the spores to the branches. No one was waiting to perform the ritual Weaves. The fighting had torn my people apart.

They didn't care.

The Star Swirlies wanted Naborale to die.

“Poor Margent,” Twilight said, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Hey Twilight!” Nyx called down, but then hesitated when Twilight looked up at her with big watery eyes. “What’s wrong?” Nyx asked.

“Nothing,” Twilight said. “Just… Margent wrote something about how Cirrus and Archeon destroyed her home. How’s the puzzle going?”

“I think I need help,” the filly replied. “This one’s supposed to send one of the big balls through a looping section of track and through five big rings, but the ball disintegrates when it reaches the first ring. The controls are just a lever that kicks a ball up into a bunch of odd-shaped gears that move the ball over a set of buttons.”

“Okay,” Twilight said.

“It looks like we could get onto the loops,” Nyx continued, “so I think whatever needs to be changed has to be done out there. You go check it out and I’ll stay here at the controls. Let me know when you figure it out.”

“Shouldn’t you be the one to figure it out?” Twilight asked.

“I think I understand how it’s supposed to…” Nyx paused and glanced behind her. “Wait, I just thought of something. Gimme some paper.” Twilight floated a piece of paper and the pencil up to Nyx and she vanished back into the tunnel. When she returned, she gave the paper back to Twilight and said, “Here’s a sketch of the gears and the direction the ball moves through them. I don’t think their odd shapes are a coincidence.” Twilight looked at the sketch and saw that aside from the gear in the center of the picture, all of them had at least one outward bulge instead of round concave spoke-gaps for moving the ball. An arrow pointed in on the left side of the gears and another pointed down from the bottom, and Nyx had also noted the locations of the buttons with numbers that described a clockwise motion through the gears.

“Thanks Nyx,” Twilight said, putting the sketch away. She then pulled out the sketch of the hexagon pattern from the balance puzzle and floated it up to the filly. “If you get a different pattern after we’ve solved this, copy it down,” she instructed, and then walked out toward the stepping stones. She came to a sudden stop halfway along the little bridge in the walled inlet, because on the opposite wall was a mural depicting Margent standing in front of a withered and burning tree between two groups of violent-looking bat-winged ponies, while giant caricatures of Cirrus and Archeon’s faces with tiny black eyes laughed in the background. The image was a chilling echo of the imagery in the journal entry Twilight had just read, and the unicorn wondered if the pages had been scattered from the journal deliberately.

Walking out of the inlet, Twilight discovered that the stepping stone path brought her quite close to the central building and she was required to climb some rocks to get up onto the rail track that sloped down the side of the building and led to the cloverleaf loops. After passing through the six-way intersection, over which a peaked roof had been built, the track curved through one of the large rings and sloped down to pass through the hub on a lower level before coming back up for another pass. As Twilight approached the first ring, she heard a low buzz pulse in a short rhythmic pattern and quickly realized that the ring itself was making the sound. The sound was making the air inside the ring quiver visibly. There was a small platform just off the track next to the main support for the ring, and on the support was a simple dial made of a dark metal arrow on top of six lighter metal plates. Five of the plates were engraved with shapes that matched the gears in the control box.

“Clever thinking Nyx,” Twilight said to herself as she pulled out the filly’s sketch. She moved the dial to the section matching the first gear, and the pulse in the ring changed its rhythm. “Now how does that help?” Twilight wondered. “These rings seem designed to shatter the crystal balls with sound, so why does the frequency matter?” Looking around, she noticed that the sonic rings were topped with a glowing crystal each. She thought back to Nyx’s description of the control platform. “Five buttons, each paired to one of the gears… Ah! Those buttons must turn off the sound associated with the corresponding gear. This is just a matter of making the sounds of the rings line up with the order of the gears. In that case…” She proceeded to follow the track, wincing as she ran through the ring and the sound briefly assaulted her ears at full force. She paused in the lower intersection to admire how it was perfectly shaped to always direct the ball on a slight curve onto the next loop. It took only a couple minutes to trot through the entire cloverleaf and change each sonic ring to the proper setting. Feeling accomplished, she ran back to the ladder and called up to Nyx, “Go ahead, everything’s ready.”

“Thanks,” Nyx shouted back. Twilight trotted back out into the open air where she could watch the action. Nyx and the control platform were floating above a short cliff near the building, apparently being held up by magic crystals on the underside of the platform. Nyx pulled a lever, and the top of the building rose up and dropped a ball onto the track. Once it rolled past, Twilight climbed up onto the track and watched the ball go around. With the same precise split-second timing that allowed the counterweight of the balance puzzle to beat the crystal, the sonic rings all switched off just before the crystal ball reached them and stayed off just long enough for the ball to pass through. After the ball passed through all the rings and disappeared through a hatch in the side of the central building, Twilight went back to the ladder to help Nyx down.

“Two out of three done,” Nyx declared as Twilight levitated her down to the ground. She gave the hexagon sketch page back to Twilight with a new pattern drawn on it and labeled with a one. The pattern from the balance puzzle now bore a two next to it.

“Great,” Twilight said, “let’s get going then.”

Twilight led Nyx down the path, stopping just outside the inlet when Nyx noticed the mural. “This is similar to the painting I found in Wahteg,” Nyx said after studying the mural. “Margent’s really trying to play up the horror, isn’t she?”

“She lost her home and way of life to Cirrus and Archeon,” Twilight said. “That kind of loss does bad things to a pony’s mind.”

“You actually feel bad for her, don’t you?” Nyx accused.

Twilight looked over her shoulder at the dark filly. “Don’t you?” she asked.

“Maybe a little,” Nyx grumbled. “But, she kidnapped your dragon and stole Father’s Materan book! Aren’t you upset about that?”

Twilight paused at the bottom of the climb up to the cloverleaf track. She turned around and put a hoof under Nyx’s chin. “Of course I’m upset, Nyx” she said. “I’m scared to my core for Spike’s safety, but I don’t hate Margent because of that. She’s not like Cirrus, Archeon, or Aldro, putting me through this out of spite or greed. Margent’s a victim acting out of grief. When we finally catch up with her, I’m going to try to talk her down and offer her a shoulder to cry on.” Twilight’s face suddenly hardened. “If I find out she’s hurt Spike in any way, though, I’ll slap her around a bit first.” She lowered her hoof, climbed up onto the track, and offered a hoof down to Nyx. “Come on.”

The walkable area of the tracks ended a little beyond the final ring in the cloverleaf, right next to a path of hexagonal stones with bowl-shaped tops that rose above a small field of them that were just above the surface of the sea and filled with water. The path led to a shore that went between a long cliff on the left and the central building on the right. A leaning structure involving arced rails and what looked like large turntables with cups on the edge was just visible beyond the near end of the cliff. “There’s puzzle number three,” Nyx said, “now how do we get to it?”

The answer proved to be very simple: about halfway along the cliff there was a wooden gate held closed with a very simple latch. It opened directly onto a control panel facing the turntable structure. The controls consisted of two dials colored in alternating wedges of blue and white, with a hole in five of the six wedges. Below the dials was a cubby containing three red pins and a sliding lever. One of the holes in the left dial was filled with a pin held in place by a bit of metal. The turntables out on the structure alternated having an open ring and a round metal basket at the end of their six metal spokes. A little bit of track could be seen leading in from below and stopping just under an open ring on the right side, and another track starting under a different ring on the right led off and out of sight. Nyx took it all in and then pulled the platform activation lever. Twilight, finding herself stuck on the back end of the rising platform, sat back and observed.

Nyx levitated the pins out of their cubby and placed them in the dials at random, two on the left and one on the right. “Let’s see what happens first,” she said, sliding the lever to the right. The lever sprang back and from behind the ponies came the sound of the building’s top rising up and making a crystal ball. The ball rolled down the side of the building, through a hole in the cliff, and then launched off the end of the track, through the empty ring, and onto the closest arc which dropped it into a basket ring of the left turntable. The turntable and the left dial of the controls turned clockwise until one of the holes with a pin reached the bottom. The pin fell through a hole under the dial and rolled back out into the cubby, and out on the turntable the ball had stopped under another of the arcs. Some force launched the ball up into the arc, landing it in a basket on the right turntable. That turntable and its dial rotated counterclockwise until the pin dropped, leaving the ball stranded without a track to take back to the other side. The crystal subsequently shattered and the mechanism returned to the starting position, depositing the last pin back in the cubby along the way.

“Is that all?” Nyx said, disappointed.

“Already figured it out?” Twilight asked.

Nyx rolled her eyes. “The idea’s simple: stop the turntables at the right time so the ball eventually lands on the exit track. I just need to figure out when to stop them.” She stared intently at the dials, imagining the results of stopping them at different points. “Ah,” she said after a moment, “I get why this one spot on the left is plugged up. If the ball stops there, the puzzle’s solved in one step.” Twilight looked over Nyx’s head and saw that she was right. The blocked hole was two positions from the starting point, which would launch the ball into the third track out and right onto the exit track, which started out with an open ring above it.

Nyx plotted for a bit more, and then picked up the pins and placed them with confidence into the dials. She pulled the lever and leaned over the control panel to watch the show. The ball jumped into play, rode the turntable to the farthest arc, was launched over and rode the right turntable all the way back around to the second arc, crossed over, and then the left turntable rotated one position and launched the ball up and through the empty ring positioned over the exit track. Nyx leaned back as the metal panels rose up over the controls, showed the final section of track near the arrival point rise up from the sea, and then folded down to reveal another hex pattern. “Just our luck we did the hardest puzzle first,” Nyx said as the platform came down, “and that one wasn’t even that bad once we figured out how much the counterweight weighed.”

Twilight chuckled as she copied the hex pattern into her notes. “You’re a smart filly,” she said, “and I think this lesson world was designed expressly for analytical thinking we’re both good at.” She turned to leave the area, and noticed some journal pages sitting a rock next to the gate. “Well hello there,” she said, picking them up, “what horror story do you have to tell?”

The memories fly over me too fast. They race around inside my head, filling my heart with despair. And the more I think about how nothing can be done, how no one can be alive outside his shield, the faster the fog rushes in.

I could lose myself in the fog.

When it's thick enough, I can let go and be safe.

I can start to forget

But I mustn’t forget. I must remember every lie they told my people. How they manipulated us all to get what they wanted! They told they had come to fix my world. The books they carried in with them showed other worlds—beautiful places where ponies didn't have to work so hard to survive. They told my people that Star Swirl had written these books. That he had written Naborale, but that he'd made our world unstable. On purpose. They said he wanted to make us slaves to the Tree. Our master wrote this world to teach us, they said. To show his apprentices what a world shouldn't be.

I don't know what to say. I don't know how it could be true. But why would they lie? Why would Star Swirl have lied? The worlds they showed us in those Books

The Elders refuse to believe them. They say we cannot abandon the Tree. For thousands of years we have tended the Lattice roots. Without our traditions, we will die.

I don't want us to die. I don't! But Cirrus and Archeon said

They said they would come back, Margent. Just like Star Swirl once said to you, as well. He said he would come back, but then he didn't. He broke his promise. They killed our home.

But there is nothing you can do about it.

Nyx’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Father has never linked to an unstable world in his life!” she exclaimed. “And he doesn’t make them either.”

“I know Nyx,” Twilight said calmly, “but I don’t know if Cirrus and Archeon ever understood that. Archeon in particular seemed to have trouble believing all these worlds were real; he kept referring to worlds as illusions.”

“Oh yeah,” Nyx said, “he was always like that. It drove Cirrus and me crazy. I was never sure if he did it bug us or not, since it was obvious he felt that Aitran was as real as Equestria.” She sighed. “And it would be fitting that they’d make up whatever lies they could to ruin Margent’s world.” She brushed past Twilight, opened the gate, and walked out onto the path with determination in her steps. Twilight followed as Nyx continued down the path, which followed the cliff to its end and then dropped slightly onto wooden walkways that weaved between tall stone pillars that balanced on narrow crystal points on or slightly above the surface of the water. The walkway ended at the rope ladder on the side of the arrival platform.

After climbing up, Nyx looked out to sea and saw that the track still stopped short of the covered platform. She then turned to the central building and walked as far up the track as she could. Next to the track was a short podium covered in hexagonal buttons, and Nyx could see two more like it farther up the track. “We need those patterns, Twilight,” she said, looking to the lavender unicorn. Twilight pulled out the page with the sketches and held it up for Nyx to consult. Nyx pressed the buttons that matched the first pattern on the page, and two metal plates swung up from under the tracks to bridge the walkway gap. The ponies moved up, repeating the procedure with the other two patterns, and were able to walk right up to a large round door in the side of the building. Twilight braced herself for some heavy lifting as she searched for the door latch and opened it, but once she got the door started swinging up it continued the motion on its own. Twilight and Nyx stepped through the door to find that the building was full of rail tracks winding over and under each other to connect large hatches like the one they’d just come through. High above the tracks, a tiny platform hung from the ceiling. Before anypony could wonder how to get up to the platform, a suspended metal staircase swung over and unfolded in front of them invitingly. Twilight let Nyx climb up first, and at the top they found a metal frame holding four firm cushions in an arrangement that could only charitably be called a chair in front of a viewing device like the one they’d found inside the hydroelectric dam vault in Wahteg. Nyx hopped onto the chair, nearly lost her balance as it spun around in circles, and steadied it with a flare of magic and a glare. Once she was stabilized, she pressed the button on the viewer and Margent’s face appeared in the dark glass. She looked angry.

“Twenty years, Star Swirl. Twenty. Years! Alone. They tied me to a post. They burned their linking books in front of me, and they laughed! And when I finally made it back to Naborale, I saw… I…” She fell silent for a long time, too overwhelmed by anger or grief to form the words she wanted to spit out. Finally, the fire in her eyes turned to ice and she said, “It would have been better if I had died.” The image faded away.

“Ok,” Nyx said slowly, turning in the chair to face Twilight, “I guess I can’t blame her for… Twilight?” The lavender unicorn’s face was screwed up in confusion and she didn’t seem to be paying attention. “Twilight, are you ok?”

Twilight blinked and her face cleared. “Sorry Nyx,’ she said, shaking her head, “I got distracted trying to figure out Margent’s timeline measures up with Equestria’s. Everything your father’s touched in these other worlds seems to move so much slower than back home it gives me a headache.” She looked at the chair Nyx was sitting on and frowned. “There’s hardly enough room for two of us on this platform,” she said.

“Then wait here then,” Nyx said, “this is my lesson after all.”

Twilight shook her head and eased her way onto the platform. “I get the feeling we’re almost at the end of this,” she said, “and I don’t want to get left behind if you end up going for a ride.” Nyx grumbled but accepted the uncomfortable position of having Twilight’s side pressing into her.

Above the viewer was a pull chain. Nyx gave it a tug and the platform shot up, coming to a stop inside the open peak of the building. Clamps connected the platform to the building, and then the peak rose up into the air, giving the ponies a bird’s eye view of the whole island, particularly the three puzzles and the starting area. As they took in the sights, a box resembling the puzzle control panels approached the platform and opened, revealing a panel with nine circles marked with lines. Around the edge of the panel were four colored lines that started from the middle of each side and stretched over to point at one of the corners. Four colored buttons hung down from the roof, one above each puzzle and one over the starting area. As Nyx turned her chair to look around, Twilight was forced to walk along the edge of the platform. Nyx reached up with her magic and pressed the blue button, which hung above the cloverleaf track. A mechanical arm with a hooked end swung into view and spun around, forming a crystal ball out of thin air and dropping it. The ball rolled through the cloverleaf, the sonic rings turning off in turn as they were supposed to, and after the ball passed through the last ring Nyx heard the sound of something rising out of the water and dropping back down behind her.

“Ok, so we can run the puzzles from up here,” Nyx said, turning back to the box, “so what?”

“Well,” Twilight said, nodding out at the gap between the track and the covered platform, “each puzzle causes part of a bridge to come up. And this,” she pointed at the box, “looks to me like it could be a map of the tracks inside the building if the circles are turned right. I’d say try to design a course that goes through each of the puzzles in the order they raise the bridge pieces and ends at the red dot,” she tapped the start of the red line.

“Oh!” Nyx said, smiling. “Ok, so if the first piece is raised by the sound puzzle, and that’s the blue button… we start from this corner.” She spun the lower-left circle until one of the lines touched the end of the blue line. “The balance beam was the middle piece, and that’s… yellow…” She spun circles for several minutes, occasionally needing to back up and think when she created a dead-end, and at last she had mapped out a course that went through each color and ended at the red. She sat back with a satisfied smile, but nothing happened. “Did I mess something up?” she asked.

Twilight looked over the map for a bit, tracing the path, and said, “It looks good to me. Maybe we need to do something else to get it going.” She looked behind her and pressed the blue button with her magic. The whole floating structure moved at once. The puzzle box closed and moved away, the clamps released from the platform, and the hooked arm came down and moved around the chair, encasing the two ponies in a mostly transparent ball of crystal. The floating structure moved out over the track leading down to the cloverleaf, and Twilight felt her stomach start to ride in her throat. “Oh dear,” she said, and then gravity took control.

Twilight had seen roller coasters before, but she’d never been on one. As the crystal ball rolled off the last of the track segments that had sprung out of the ocean a mere seconds ahead of the orb and slowed to a gentle stop near the end of the covered platform, she was determined that nothing would ever convince her to get on one so long as she lived. As the ball stopped in a divot prepared to receive it and disintegrated around the ponies, Twilight look over at Nyx, who was still leaning back against the chair with an enormous grin plastered on her face.

“Oh my gosh that was awesome!” Nyx exclaimed, leaping off the seat without warning and bouncing in place on the platform floor.

“At least one of us enjoyed it,” Twilight muttered dryly.

“Are you kidding me?” Nyx said, “That was better than the underwater cart on Sohndar. There was speed, hills, the rush of coming within inches of danger, and the turntables! We were practically flying!” She threw her hooves in the air to emphasize her point, and then her adrenaline ran out and she flopped onto her back. “Once this is all over,” she declared breathlessly, “I am coming back and riding that again.”

“Uh huh,” Twilight said, tuning the filly out as she spotted the symbol painted on the floating columns, which from the platform appeared to be lined up right next to each other. The symbol looked like a wide curvy M with a smaller half-circle under the right hump and a fruit with two leaves sitting in the left-most curve. Twilight drew the symbol on a clean sheet of paper, and then turned to look at Nyx and pulled out Star Swirl’s journal. “I’m glad you had fun,” she said, “but what did you learn from this world.”

Nyx sat up and frowned deeply in thought. “I am… not sure,” she announced. “I mean, we solved a bunch of puzzles, but in the end, what did we actually do besides make the best motion experience… Wait.” She smiled. “Everything we did involved changing some kind of force, like weight or sound. By adjusting those forces, we changed four separate devices into one complete system. You can create changes in a world just by altering some of its foundational forces.” She looked at Twilight expectantly.

“That’s it,” Twilight said, “but I should point out your father’s notes on the lesson emphasize dynamic forces. Now, where’s that I’strukun book?”

Chapter 8

I’strukun

After materializing in the upper room of the central tower, Nyx pulled the new symbol sketch out of Twilight’s bag and ran it over to the light table. Twilight swallowed the rebuke that sprang to her lips, amused and understanding of the filly’s impatience. By the time Twilight reached the light table herself, Nyx had managed to position the sketch properly to activate the table. As before the gear-shaped ring flipped down from the underside of the table onto the raised rods on the floor, creating an impression of the Motivaria symbol, and again the gear turned a little and another unseen lock fell open. A short walkway extended out from the edge of the pit toward the gilded cage holding the linking book to Naboarale. Also as before, the lights in the room went down and the three telescope-projectors cast an image of Margent onto the ceiling.

“This isn’t what you expected to find when you came back, was it, Star-swirlies?” Margent asked. “How does it feel, to have your life’s work broken and changed? Oh, I wish I could have broken your lesson worlds completely, the way you destroyed my home! But I can’t; not if I’m to show you what you Star-swirlies did to me. I want you to see Naborale as you left it: broken and dead with nothing but gho… gh… No! Margent, there’s nothing left. Nothing!” The bat-pony’s face twisted in torment as the image faded and lights rose back to the normal level.

“Was… was she about to say ‘ghosts’?” Nyx asked.

“Probably,” Twilight said calmly. “She might think she hears the voices of her family and friends. I’ve heard that hallucinations like that sometime happen to ponies who suffer from survivor’s guilt. Now come on, let’s see about getting into that last tower.” She walked over to the exit, then paused and closed her eyes in thought. “It’ll be faster if we go out through the bottom of this tower, but we’ll need to climb some ladders to get up to the door.”

Nyx came over and hit the button for the calling the elevator with her magic. “I can handle ladders,” she said.

After the two ponies rode the elevator down and stepped out into Margent’s workshop, Nyx asked, “What if there really are ghosts in Naborale?”

“Don’t worry, little Nyx,” Twilight said, patting the filly on the head, “ghosts aren’t real.”

Nyx ducked away from Twilight’s hoof with an annoyed huff. “I’m not worried, I’m curious!” she snapped. “Ghosts might not exist in Equestria, but Naborale is an entirely different world with its own rules. Aitran doesn’t have a sun or a day-night cycle, for example.”

Twilight shuddered. “Oh, I’m well aware of that,” she said. “I still don’t understand why Star Swirl would make a world with no sun.”

Nyx smirked. “I’ve read enough of Father’s Linking Books to notice that, as detailed as he tries to be, he never manages to cover everything. He mostly focuses on the geography, climate, magic fields, how time moves, and stuff like that; not so much on who or what lives there or how the world is lit. The magic kinda… fills in the gaps however it wants I guess.”

“I understand where you’re coming from,” Twilight said, “but I seriously doubt that ‘filling in the gaps’ extends to things like whether or not ghosts exist.”

“Hm,” Nyx said, heading toward the exit, “we’ll see who’s right once we reach Naborale. Come on.” Twilight followed her out through the stained-glass greenhouse and to the base of the cliffs near the final tusk tower. Nyx began climbing the first of two ladders built into the cliff with gusto, but about halfway up she lost steam and stopped to rest. Twilight climbed up after her, then wrapped the both of them in a teleportation spell up to the shelf between the first and second ladder. “Thank you,” Nyx said. She looked up at the door set into the side of the tusk and too far from the top of the cliff to reach. “How are we supposed to get in there?” she wondered.

“That plant-like growth might be the solution,” Twilight said, pointing to a green and red mass stuck to the rock face between the tusk and the clifftop. “On the other hoof, though…” she teleported herself and Nyx to the top of the cliff, and then reached out and opened the door with her telekinesis. “If you don’t mind, let’s save our puzzle solving for the actual lesson world.”

“Works for me,” Nyx said with a smirk. Twilight nodded, focused on the room she could see through the door, and teleported herself and Nyx inside. The pair consulted Twilight’s notes, arranged the beads on the winch mechanism, and brought the book down with practiced speed. The book leading to the third and final lesson age bore a bird-shaped symbol and the title Adene.

Adene

I am still amazed at how perfectly this world turned out. It is such a masterpiece of wild nature that it sometimes seems a shame to utilize it as a Lesson World. What appears from the outside to be just the tall, hollow, and wind-smoothed corpse of a tree stranded in an endless sea is in fact the shelter of a complete ecosystem of plants and animals that cooperate to not only move water and nutrients from the sea up to the crown but also to facilitate a visitor’s travel throughout the system. Clover would be quite impressed that my Writing has accomplished this.

Perhaps the most amazing part of this world is the large birds that nest at the top of the tree. I was initially concerned that traveling through the tree would create irreversible changes to the environment which would render some sections impassible. On my second trip through the world, however, I found that everything had been restored to their original positions and spied the bird that currently resided in the nest replacing a log I had dislodged previously. Further study has convinced me that the birds are intelligent, although unable to communicate with a pony, and seem to actually enjoy my presence despite the messes I make of their nesting area. I have seen at least three generations of nesting mothers come to the tree so far, and each one is more amiable than the last. I shall try to incorporate their behavior into the puzzles of Adene.

Twilight and Nyx materialized on a natural shelf of wood near the top of the great tree, next to a strange large flower. A tangle of vines growing down from an outcrop of wood formed a kind of natural cage hanging over the deep abyss of the tree’s hollow interior. The peeping of baby birds and the faint roar of distant surf were the only sounds present. A quick examination of the large flower revealed that it had a transparent core that served as a natural telescope, and the flower could be moved around a little and would keep its last position. Looking through the telescope lens, the ponies saw an I’strukun book inside the vine cage.

“What do you think, Nyx?” Twilight asked, “is that the early-exit book, or our destination?”

“I don’t see any obvious way to get there yet,” Nyx replied, “but I expect the final book to be at the bottom, after we’ve traveled through the whole tree.” She turned away and walked down the shelf, which had seemingly naturally formed steps leading down a little ways, until it stopped next to a tall plant with a single, thick, spined leaf corkscrewing up the stem. The leaf was broad enough to stand on and the top end was next to another shelf of wood, so Nyx stepped onto the leaf with the intent to climb. She let out a surprised yelp as the plant reacted to her weight by undulating the leaf in a way that propelled her all the way up to the top and deposited her gently on the shelf. When Twilight joined her a moment later, Nyx laughed and said, “That was fun!”

The shelf sloped up to a dead-end with another telescope flower. As Twilight and Nyx walked up to the flower, they heard a short, ear-piercing cry. They looked toward the sound and saw a large, brightly-colored bird with a fan tail and a long beak flying into the tree from outside and land in a nest built on top of the branch that the vine cage grew from. Twilight and Nyx raced up to the telescope flower and looked through it for a closer look at the nest.

“Aw, it has a baby!” Nyx exclaimed. The bird was tearing pieces off some sort of purple fruit and feeding them to the chick, stopping occasionally to glance toward the ponies and emit its cry at them.

“That’s cute,” Twilight said sincerely, “but where do we go from here?”

“Good question,” Nyx said, tearing herself away from the flower. She trotted back down the shelf, looked through a wide hole in the wall, and then waved Twilight over. “There’s a branch we can walk on out here.” Twilight followed her through the gap. The wide, mostly flat branch sloped up toward the very top of the tree, but just around the corner of the gap the ponies discovered another corkscrew plant growing up from far below. This plant’s leaves were curled up tight against the stem and a vine coiled down from the top into the dish-like leaf of a different kind of plant. Hanging from the wood above the dish was a translucent vegetable globe that jiggled slightly when Nyx poked it. “This has a lot of water or something in it,” the filly said. “If we break it open, it’ll fill the dish and this plant can get a drink.”

“Mmhmm,” Twilight said. She started to examine the globe closer, but a loud cry from the nest distracted her for a moment. The large bird, evidently done feeding its chick, took flight and circled high above the ponies for a moment before diving down out of sight. Twilight turned her attention back to the water globe, but probing it with magic revealed the casing was extremely tough and there was no obvious way to make it release its contents. “Let’s keep climbing up,” she decided. “Maybe we’ll find another plant or something that makes up a puzzle with this thing.” Nyx nodded and led the way.

The branch ended between two flat areas. On the left, sitting at the edge of the shelf facing into the tree, was a large yellow flower with a thick stem and a tendril coming out of the center on the back of the bloom. On the right was a plant made of several long green branches with a single broad palm-like leaf on the end of each, all spread wide to catch as much sunlight as possible. Twilight went over to the flower and touched the tendril, which curled in as the flower’s back opened to reveal a yellow telescopic core. The lower proved just as easy to move around as the other telescope flower, and it only took Twilight a moment to sight the closed-up corkscrew and the water globe. Leaving the flower focused on the globe, Twilight turned away to inform Nyx of her theory just as the filly pressed down on a button-like nodule at the base of the fan-palm.

The plant’s branches all swung to full upright positions and the leaves curled, uncovering a shaft of sunlight that hit Twilight square in the eyes. “Hey,” Nyx exclaimed as Twilight tried to blink the spots out of her eyes, “I found the quitter’s book!” Twilight squinted in the direction Nyx was pointing and saw that, indeed, there was an I’strukun book sitting on a curing branch that had been hidden behind one of the fan-palm’s leaves.

“Great,” Twilight said, “now, would you mind helping me figure out what this plant over here is supposed to do?” Nyx trotted over and, with Twilight’s help, looked through the yellow telescope lens. She saw that the water globe had shrunk down and its contents now sat in the dish, and that the corkscrew plant’s leaves were spread out.

“Looks like it already did what it’s supposed to do,” Nyx declared. Twilight looked confused and peeked through the flower. “I think this flower is focusing the sun onto the globe, and that made it heat up until the water broke out,” Nyx explained.

“Ah, that does make sense,” Twilight agreed. “Good work, Nyx.”

The ponies worked their back to the corkscrew plant and Twilight stepped onto it first. The plant was much taller than the first one had been, and it took almost a minute for both Twilight and Nyx to ride it down to the bottom. The branch the plant deposited them onto wove through narrow gaps in the tree’s internal wall, and small patches off barely glowing lichen started appearing on the wood as the ponies walked down the branch’s gentle slope. After two turns, they came upon another large dish-leaf full of water. A flat fish-like creature with short tentacles around its mouth was swimming placidly in the dish, but as Twilight and Nyx watched it bumped into a plant growing into the dish and the plant twitched with electrical shock until the fish swam away.

“Huh,” Nyx said, tilting her head slightly, “that seems oddly familiar.”

“How so?” Twilight asked.

Nyx shook her head. “I can’t quite remember… Let’s keep moving. Maybe it’ll come back to me.” Twilight nodded and they continued down the path. After passing through another gap in the wall, they found a water-globe plant on their right, but the globe was shriveled and empty. On their left, lying on the ground, was a stack of journal pages. “Oh joy,” Nyx said flatly as Twilight levitated the pages up and scanned them quickly for Margent’s number symbols, “more insane ramblings from the pyshco-pony.”

“Well,” Twilight said, getting the pages in order and fitting them into what she thought was their proper place in the journal, “this set seems to start out coherently enough.”

I have ruined the poem he placed in the columns. I could no longer stand to see Naborale's artistry in his other worlds within the tusks. I think I can do something with sap to cover the second one, but I'm not sure what to do about the island. I don't know how to alter the power.

Perhaps, if I bring some of the unusual floating stone from Motivaria? Something about the rock in that world causes it to attract and repel other stone quite forcefully. Maybe, if I introduce some of it to the soil on the island, it will interfere just enough to damage the last poem. I will have to experiment.

This is taking me too long! Every minute that passes brings me closer to the time when the star swirlies will arrive. I don’t know when exactly it will be, and I am just a single, little pony. Too often I find myself wishing for the wonderful strength of Staid.

Then I remembered my Staid is dead. I left him to die when I went after the devils. I told him to go to the reef, to take our two fillies there and hide. I took the necklace he gave me to remember him by and I told him

Oh Staid! I told you it would all be okay! For years, I prayed my words were not a lie. That you had made it to reef. That you were tending the ailing Lattice roots. By the weaving, Staid, how I prayed!

Until I found his machine.

I saw Naborale through his shield.

And even though the barrier kept me locked inside, I knew. I knew that Lattice Tree had died.

Naborale can't survive without the Tree.

No one can be alive outside his shield. And yet I hear voices, calling my name. Accusing me.

My attempts to produce a carnivorous hybrid have had limited success. I thought I was making greater progress, but the life that grows in the forest isn't like the plants on Naborale. It's much more tenacious. Less susceptible to grafts. Perhaps, if I try mixing in species from the swamp?

“I’ll give her this much at least,” Nyx said after a moment, “she’s a smart one. But what poems is she referring to?”

“Probably the symbols we’ve been collecting,” Twilight said. “We found the symbol in Wahteg after levitating an island, and the one in Motivaria was painted onto those floating columns. I guess that before Margent altered them the symbols were poems written in Naborale’s script.”

“Ok, that makes sense,” Nyx said. “Any ideas what the ‘carnivorous hybrid’ could be?”

Twilight shook her head. “Not so much as a clue,” she said, “so I’m just hoping that whatever it is, she couldn’t make it.” She put the journal away and turned her attention to the shriveled water globe. “Now, do we do something with this?” she wondered, poking at it. Her hoof struck a nodule on the end of the globe, and the plant reacted: with rhythmic pulses the globe began to expand and fill with water. Before either of the ponies could wonder where the liquid was coming from, a final pulse pulled the electric fish from farther back into the globe. The fish swam a quick circle, but then settled down to a lazy drift within the globe’s confines. “I hope there’s a reason for this later,” Twilight said.

“Knowing Father, there is,” Nyx replied, nonchalant. “We’ll just need to explore farther to find it.”

Pressing on down the path and around a corner, the ponies came upon a log spanning a gap that appeared to stretch almost to the base of the tree. A wide variety of new plants were rooted into the tree walls, including a couple that seemed to just be one, long and thick curled-up leaf. The green and red fungus the ponies had seen outside Adene’s tower in I’strukun grew down one of the walls and had infiltrated the log bridge, but the structure still proved sturdy enough to support a pony’s weight when Twilight tested it.

As Twilight and Nyx walked across the bridge, a loud crashing sound echoed from below, accompanied by the distressed cry of the large bird. The ponies exchanged a worried look and started moving a little faster. The path looped to the right but didn’t descend, and came to a sudden end at the base of one of the curled leaves. Hanging from the ceiling was a flower with a spiraling tendril hanging down from inside the closed bloom. Twilight gave the tendril a tug, causing it to retract and the flower’s petals to open and reveal a brightly glowing core. In response to the increased light, the large leaf uncurled to allow the ponies to walk out over the abyss facing the log bridge. Off to the right they saw a ledge with the first artificial objects they’d encountered so far: a lamp and a winch attached to a rope from which hung a small trapping cage made of sticks and woven fibers. From a branch above the end of the uncurled leaf was a blue plant dangling a blue vine with a natural cross bar at the end.

“Are we supposed to swing across on this?” Nyx asked, tugging the vine with her magic. The vine stretched down to a more convenient height for swinging from. “I’m thinking that’s a yes.”

Twilight eyeballed the gap between her and the far end of the abyss. “Looks like that log would be in our way off swinging all the way across,” she said, “but if we take it out, then there won’t be any way for others to progress, or for us to get back to the I’strukun book.”

“Why would we need to go back?” Nyx asked. “The better question is how do we get rid of the log?” Twilight started to reply, but Nyx cut her off. “No, better yet, you can just teleport us to where we’re supposed to swing to, right?”

“So long as I can get a good view,” Twilight said, “but… Never mind, I don’t have a good reason not to. We’re not making a habit of this though, ok?”

“Deal,” Nyx said.

The ponies walked back around the bridge, and then Twilight teleported them across to the ledge opposite the swinging vine. One of the curled leaves grew from the ledge, with another of the lamp-flowers dangling near it. When Twilight opened the flower, the leaf uncurled to near the upper end of the log bridge. “And that’s how we’d go back up if we needed to,” Twilight declared in a flat tone. “But still no clue to how this ‘puzzle’ could be reset.” She frowned in thought until Nyx gave her a poke, and the pair moved on.

The path from the ledge snaked down in a gentle slope that skirted the exterior of the tree. After passing a few holes that permitted sunlight in and fairly normal-looking ferns and flowers to grow from the gaps between the floor and walls, Twilight and Nyx heard a frantic shuffling sound. Trotting a little faster, they came upon a pitcher plant big enough to engulf them both. The path let them approach near the plant’s mouth, which was rimmed with inward-facing thorns and capped with a large leaf. Something inside the plant stirred, and the ponies gasped when the large bird’s head popped up into view. The bird eyed the pair for a moment, let out a plaintive sound, and slipped back down into the plant’s gut.

“Oh no!” Nyx exclaimed. “We’ve got to get it out of there!”

“Right,” Twilight said. She wrapped the plant’s cap leaf in her magic and tried to pry it up, to no avail. Twilight then tried pounding the plant with spells of irritation and transformation, but the magic just washed over the plant ineffectually. “Ugh,” Twilight said, stomping a hoof, “If I had my books with me I could probably find a spell that works, but…”

“Well, there’s got to be something we can do!” Nyx exclaimed. As soon as she said the words, she remembered something from I’strukun. “Electricity,” she said. “Margent had a small plant like this in her I’strukun workshop. It opened up when I applied an electric current to its roots.”

“Ok,” Twilight said, “but I don’t have any electricity spells memorized.”

“No need,” Nyx said. “We’ve got that weird fish in the water-globe. If that plant reaches down to this one’s roots and we can get the fish out, then… Zap! The bird’s free.”

“Hm,” Twilight said. “The sounds like a long shot on the surface, but given how these worlds tend to be laid out you may have found the answer. Let’s go.”

The pathway led briefly outside as it dropped and looped around. Right after re-entering the tree’s interior, Twilight and Nyx saw a shriveled water-globe in the middle of an unusually broad and flat section of floor, partially walled on the far side by thick, thorny vines. They walked around toward the front of the water-globe, and came upon a picture painted onto the wall. In the center of the painting, Cirrus and Archeon stood beside a stack of books and were holding one aloft as they spoke to the bat-winged ponies around them. At the far left, separate from the group and partially in shadow, Margent watched the scene with great sadness.

“The beginning of Cirrus and Archeon’s attack on Naborale,” Twilight said.

“You think Margent was actually that worried at the start?” Nyx asked, pointing at the aggrieved expression Margent had painted for herself.

Twilight shook her head. “She painted this in retrospect, and I have doubts about the accuracy of her memory given the trauma and fugue state she went through. There’s no way to really tell how she first reacted to Cirrus and Archeon.”

A shuffling sound from the pitched plant somewhere above reminded Twilight and Nyx of their current goal, and the young filly pressed the nodule on the water-globe. The globe expanded as it pulled in water, and with one last pulse the electric flatfish emerged into the globe’s interior. “All right,” Nyx said, “now where?”

Two paths led from the mural: one to the right that seemed to stay on more or less the same level as the mural, and a staircase-like branch that led down on the left. Twilight tried to follow the paths with her eyes as best she could, and said, “Going down might just take us deeper into the tree.”

“Well, obviously,” Nyx said, although her gaze was drifting upward to follow the vines hanging down from above. “Hey, I think these are actually roots for the pitcher plant! I’ll go down and see where they end; you can take the right path if you want.”

“Ok,” Twilight said, “but don’t go too far ahead.” Nyx gave her a grumpy look and headed down the stairs. After the stairstep section ended, the branch continued to slope downward slightly as it cured to the right, encompassing some large plants with glowing pods and a large basin-like leaf which the pitcher plant’s roots trailed into. Above the left side of the dish, just out of Nyx’s reach, hung another empty water-globe. Since she couldn’t reach it with her hoof, Nyx focused her magic on the globe and tried to press the nodule. It took her a minute and some posture shifting before she could concentrate enough force onto the nodule, but it did eventually retract and the globe started drawing in water and the electric fish.

A sudden flash of sunlight hit the globe once it was full. Nyx turned around to investigate and saw Twilight standing on a different branch next to a lily-shaped flower with a reflective interior. The flower was catching light cast onto it from another such flower which hung in a pool of sunlight to Twilight’s left. Twilight adjusted the flower she was standing next to for a bit, frowning, and then noticed Nyx. “Looks like these don’t focus the light enough to heat up the water,” she shouted to the filly.

“There’s gotta be something,” Nyx replied. She looked around, and spotted a familiar plant partially hidden by a branch above and to her left as she faced Twilight. “Look,” she shouted, pointing. “Isn’t that the same kind of flower we used to pop a water globe at the top of the tree?”

Twilight looked, and then nodded. “Good eye, Nyx,” she said. “I can’t get there from here, but I think I see a way you could. There’s one of those bridge leaves behind the roots, and it looks like it will stretch to a hollow log you can climb up to the flower. One second.” She went behind the reflective lily and aimed it a different direction. “Great, that worked,” she announced. “The leaf’s uncurled. Head on up; I’ll try to bounce the sunlight up to you.” Nyx nodded.

The branch continued to loop around the basin leaf, sloping gradually downward and passing under the branch Twilight had used to get to her position. When Nyx came to the back side of the basin, she spotted an image viewer like the ones in Motivaria and Wahteg tucked up against the side of the basin. “Huh,” Nyx said, walking up to the viewer, “I need to ask Father how these things work. How would it be getting power in this world?” She pressed the button below the screen, and Margent’s face appeared.

The pink pony was looking down. “This morning, I woke up, and I couldn’t picture Staid’s face,” she said in a tone of faint horror. “The crease on his face that pulls his whole mouth down when he smiles, the handsome cant of his eyes. I tried so hard to picture him, to put him down on paper as if that would bring him back. I couldn’t do it.” Her gaze came up, looking straight at whatever device had captured the moment. “Star Swirl, I’m not you.” The image faded.

“And what they hay is supposed to mean?” Nyx snapped. “‘I’m not you.’” Knowing she wasn’t going to get an answer, Nyx huffed and stepped away from the viewer. As she walked to the end of the branch and started crossing the leaf bridge, however, she decided to vent her frustration anyway. “What, Margent, do you think we can just Write ponies back to life or something? Recreate what’s lost with a stroke of a pen?” She paused momentarily to size up the hollow half-log before her, which was covered inside by shelf fungi that proved strong enough to hold her weight and thus serve as steps as she climbed. “If Writing could manage… miracles like that so easily, Father wouldn’t have needed to spend all his time keeping Sohndar stable while Twilight and Rainbow took on the world itself. Father could restore everything Cirrus and Archeon took from him!” She exhaled loudly as she pulled herself up into another hollow log and crawled out onto the ledge where the magnifying flower was planted.

The flower was already open and aimed at the water-globe, which was good because Nyx discovered that the flower refused to be moved about. She went to the edge and watched Twilight move the reflector lily in the patch of sunlight until the light hit another lily across the abyss from Nyx, which bounced the light to a point above Nyx’s head. Following the light’s path, Nyx saw a third lily on a ledge above and behind the magnifier. Reaching that ledge was a simple matter of walking up, and it was the work of mere seconds to aim the reflector down at the magnifier. A short moment later, the water-globe burst open, dumping its water and the electric flatfish into the leaf dish. The fish evidently went straight for the pitcher plant’s roots, because Nyx saw electricity arc up the thorny vines and the pitcher’s lid spasmed upright. The large bird hauled itself out of the plant’s gut, looking remarkably unharmed, then spread its wings and took flight. It circled once at Nyx’s level, let out a cry, and dived deeper into the tree.

“Yes!” Twilight cheered. Nyx ran down to the lower ledge and looked down to see Twilight beaming up at her. “Great teamwork, Nyx,” Twilight said.

“Thanks,” Nyx replied.

“Of course,” Twilight said, sobering, “that leaves the question of where do we go from here? It looks like I’m in a dead-end, so…” She shrugged.

“Up here’s a dead-end too,” Nyx said, “but maybe…” She started to go back the way she came, and when she crawled back into the hollow log, she saw the answer. Returning to the ledge, she reported, “the log I climbed branches near the top. The other way has to lead somewhere.”

“All right,” Twilight said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Rather than just wait around, Nyx decided to scout ahead a little. She initially considered trying to jump the gap between her side of the log and the other, but on a second look at the distance and the size of the hole she was aiming for, she decided to play it safe and scoot down onto the fungus ladder and climb up into the other branch from there. The hollow branch followed a consistently left-curving path, and long cracks on the top provided illumination. When Nyx came to the point where she could no longer see her entry point, she spotted a couple journal pages lying against the wall and picked them up. After a little over a quarter of a circle, the hollow branch came to an end on top of another, flat branch that sloped and slightly and terminated after only a few feet, right in front of a blue vine that split into an inverted T shape at the end. With nowhere else to go, Nyx sat and waited until Twilight emerged from the hollow branch, breathing heavily.

“I think I got a splinter,” the lavender unicorn panted, dropping onto her haunches and inspecting the fetlock of her left front leg. “Nope,” she concluded after a minute, “just my imagination. Still stings, though.”

“Here,” Nyx said, levitating the pages she’s found over to Twilight. “Maybe this will take your mind off it.”

Twilight quirked an eyebrow at Nyx, but accepted the papers without comment. She noted the symbol in the corner of the first page and said, “This is a very early entry. Probably the second overall, if I understand Margent’s number system correctly.”

The book sits on its flower-like platform, it's swirling panel reaching tentacles to grab me. I want to close my eyes, to shut out these false illusions before they suck me into the fog. I do not want those swirling limbs to touch me.

Why? Why am I so afraid of this book?

I want to remember. I must. I think—

I think this stallion may have come to our village. But he was younger then. Wingless. A smaller beard. Wearing those same strange robes with bells on them. He carried a book with him then and he's always using it. Always writing down notes. His eyes are covered by thick glasses, but his face is warm and friendly. He tells me his name. He says it's Star Swirl.

I remember now! His name is Star Swirl.

Star Swirl says he's come to our village from a faraway place because he wanted to learn about the Tree. He says he'll only stay awhile. Doesn't want to interfere with our labors. He says he wants to help, if we will let him.

Oh Staid. Why did we let him?

Keep writing, Margent. Write everything down.

This Star Swirl stayed with us for months. I taught him how to trim the delicate lattice roots. How to splice old and new growths together so the walls of our houses will grow strong. I tell him the traditions of the Weave. How by using the spores to support the growing branches, we keep the Lattice Tree alive. He wants to learn everything I know. He wants Naborale to survive.

I take him to the rift, to where the sea flows through gaps in the world. Steam flows up from the waterfall. The puffer spores are ready to take flight. We stand in the shadows of dusk and watch spores begin to rise. He points to one of the spores. It's smaller than the rest. Small enough to fit the niche we'd woven into the branches that morning. Its skin is milky white. With just the faintest touch of pink.

That one, Star Swirl said. That should support your new daughter's room perfectly, I think.

I remember I nodded. Then I flew out to guide it gently with the wind from my wings. Star Swirl stood on the ground, holding his breath as my wings pushed the hollow spore in close. As soon as it was near he netted it and dragged it in.

This is what I remember.

This is why I said he could send me his students.

Nyx smiled faintly. “That sounds exactly like Father,” she said. “He once told me that the reason he Wrote so many linking books was the simple joy of discovering and exploring the unique world each one linked to. Mom said Father used to spend months on end studying just one new world, and that if time actually moved on Aitran, Father couldn’t have seen a fraction of what he made.”

“But then,” Twilight said, inserting the pages into the journal, “after all the work Star Swirl put into establishing good will with Margent and her tribe, Cirrus and Archeon go in and… do their thing. Confused and betrayed, Margent tries to get an explanation only to end up beaten and stranded on I’strukun and loses years of her life to despair and fugue. Now she’s haunted by her own memories…” Twilight spanned the journal shut and put it away. “I hate to admit it, but her actions do make sense.”

“But she’s blaming Father for what Cirrus and Archeon did!” Nyx exclaimed.

“Your father blames himself for not seeing what Cirrus and Archeon were turning into,” Twilight replied. “Honestly, I think he and Margent would benefit from meeting face to face again. We’ll just need to convince her not to try to kick his head off first.” Twilight looked at their surroundings or a bit. “So, where do we go from here?”

“Probably this,” Nyx said, tugging the blue vine with her magic. The vine stretched down easily and sprang back when Nyx released it. Nyx frowned in thought for a moment, and then jumped and wrapped her legs tight around the vine. The vine stretched rapidly under her weight, taking the filly on a fast ride down into the deepest area of the tree. The vine came to a gentle stop just a foot above a branch pathway surrounded by dark-leafed plants and luminescent fungi. Nyx let go of the vine, watched it retract up to the branch Twilight still stood on, so far above that Nyx could barely make the lavender unicorn out, and then stepped back to give Twilight room to land.

Twilight rode the vine down, giving Nyx a disapproving look as she hopped down onto the branch. “That was a dangerous risk you took there, Nyx,” Twilight said.

Nyx rolled her eyes. “That was the second time we’d encountered that kind of plant,” she said, “and although we didn’t end up using it the first time, it was obviously meant to be used. If it wasn’t safe to use to get down here, Father would have Written something else in. Stop worrying about me and let’s keep going; I’ve got the feeling we’re almost at the end.” She brushed past Twilight and walked along the path.

“It’s great that you trust your father’s abilities,” Twilight said, following the filly, “but you should still look before you leap. Star Swirl isn’t the only pony who’s put a hoof into adjusting these lesson worlds, you know.”

“Well I haven’t seen any evidence that Margent intended to hurt anypony going through these worlds either,” Nyx shot back. “If she really means harm, she’s saving it for after we go into Naborale and seen the damage Cirrus and Archeon caused there.”

It was dark this deep into the tree, but the plant life around the pathway was thick and plentiful. Rather than growing from nooks and crannies of the wood, the plants were rooted in dark, marshy soil. The branch stayed above the dirt as it meandered toward the center of the tree’s base and then suddenly formed a small hill. Standing on the peak of the little hill, Twilight and Nyx gazed upon a giant purple plant similar in appearance to a closed lotus blossom. The pathway forked on the other side of the peak; the right path went behind a wall and plants that obscured the view of lay at the path’s end, while the left passed through a rare patch of sunlight and snaked down to a blue root bulging out of the waterlogged dirt. In the sunlit patch hung a reflector lily.

“Well, Nyx,” Twilight said, “which way first?”

“Let’s go right,” Nyx said. “This has to be the last puzzle, so let’s try to look at everything before we take it on.” Twilight nodded in agreement and the pair turned right.

After winding around the wall, the path approached and partially circled another giant flower. This one’s petals were open, revealing a large purple, wedge-shaped fruit that looked like it was the last of a bunch that had once been there. Two stalks rose from the base of the plant up into a patch of sunlight, and a cloud of insects swarmed around the ends of the stalks.

Nyx looked over the scene, and scoffed. “This is too easy,” she declared.

“Oh?” Twilight prompted.

“If we replicate these conditions over at the first flower,” the filly said, “it’ll open up. I’ll be anything we find the symbol and the exit book inside. We’ll need sunlight, obviously using that reflective plant to get it in the right place, and get some of those bugs for good measure.”

“And how do we do that?” Twilight asked.

Nyx frowned and approached the plant for a closer look. Around the base of the flower grew lumpy beige pods, and when Nyx poked one with her magic it spewed out a cloud of foul-smelling spores. “Ugh,” Nyx said, backing away by reflex, “that… gives me an idea, actually.” She picked her way farther around the lotus and found a particularly large pod growing near where the twin stalks attached to the flower’s base. She poked the pod and jumped back as it spewed its spores into the air, right into the cloud of insects. The bugs flew away, but when the spores dispersed and the stench faded they returned to swarming around the stalks. “Dang it,” Nyx muttered. She started to walk back around the lotus to check the other side when the sunlight light suddenly faded and the flower’s stalks curled down as the bloom closed up. Nyx gave the flower a befuddled look until Twilight walked around from the far side.

“Remember that palm plant at the top of the tree?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah,” Nyx said.

“There’s another one right next to the opening the sun was shining through,” Twilight said, “so-”

“Yeah,” Nyx interrupted, “its leaves are blocking the light now, I get it. No light means the plant’s all closed up, which means the bugs have no reason to hang around right here if something drives them away.” She turned to go back to the stink pod. “Thanks, Twilight.” She returned to the pod and poked it, and this time the insect swarm stayed away. “Good,” Nyx said, “now let’s finish this.”

Nyx and Twilight walked back to the fork in the path and took the left branch to the reflector lily. Twilight grabbed the flower in her magic and twisted it until a beam of sunlight fell on the first lotus flower’s curled-up stalks. The stalks reacted instantly, uncurling and opening up their ends, and a few seconds later the insect swarm flew in and congregated on the stalks. The flower’s petals opened to reveal a complete bunch of its purple fruits, arranged so the fruits formed a platform and the stems a wide-barred cage.

As Twilight and Nyx made their way down the path to find a way to reach the lotus, they heard the distinct cry of the large bird. When the ponies reached the end of the path, the bird itself flew in from outside and landed on the fruit bunch. After settling itself, the bird looked at the ponies expectantly. “Yes, we get it,” Twilight said. “Give us a second.” She looked around a bit more, and then told Nyx, “I can teleport us right over there, if you want.”

“Go for it,” Nyx said, scooting up close to the older unicorn. Twilight channeled her magic, and in a flash of light the pair moved from the path to the fruit platform. The bird took off, and for a second Twilight was worried she’d scared it off, but once it left the tree it wheeled around and came back, grabbing the fruit cage in its feet and hauling it and the ponies into the air.

“Whoa!” Nyx exclaimed as they flew outside and out over the sea. The bird banked around and went into a gentle climb, bringing the great tree into view. “Wow,” Nyx said in awe.

“Do you have this world’s lesson figured out yet, Nyx?” Twilight asked.

Nyx rolled her eyes. “I had that down about halfway through,” she said. “It’s all about balanced ecosystems. This world is alive because all the plants support each other. Our bird friend here probably helps things when there aren’t ponies around to press buttons and reposition flowers.” The bird honked.

The bird brought them in for a landing in its nest at the very top of the tree. It hopped off the fruit stems and pointed with its beak to a down-ward sloped branch on the ponies’ left. “Thank you for the lift,” Twilight said. She and Nyx then slid down the branch into a vine-enclosed shelf where some long, thin leaves had been twisted into the world’s symbol: a curling branch with a round fruit hanging inside the left curl. On a nearby bit of branch sat the book back to I’strukun.

Chapter 9

I'strukun

“Here we go,” Twilight said, levitating her sketch of Adene’s symbol onto the light table, “one last lock to undo, and one last taunt from Margent before we meet face to face.” She pressed the paper onto the light table and stood back while the machine did its thing. Once the symbol had been scanned, mechanisms triggered deep in the tower’s guts and the cage containing the book to Naborale opened. The lights dimmed and the projectors turned on. To Twilight and Nyx’s surprise, Margent’s face didn’t appear on the ceiling. Instead, it was the face of Star Swirl the Bearded, looking quite pleased.

“You’ve done well, my students,” Star Swirl said, “but there is one more task ahead of you. The Linking Book before you leads to a world called Naborale. It is a very delicate world, and a civilization has emerged in response to the world’s imbalances. It’s also the first inhabited world I’m sending you to alone, but don’t be afraid. The knowledge you’ve acquired so far will give you the keys to open the world to you. Now go, and experience all that Naborale has to offer.”

“Margent left the original message in place,” Nyx said, scratching her head. “Why?”

“I’d guess it’s to provide an ironic counterpoint to what we’re actually going to find,” Twilight said. She walked out onto the bridge leading to the cage and levitated the Naborale book out of its place. “She is not going to be happy to see us,” Twilight said as she brought the book back to solid footing.

“I don’t think she’d be happy to see anypony,” Nyx replied, giving Twilight a sideways look.

“You’re probably right,” Twilight said, “but she’s expecting to see your father, or Cirrus and Archeon.”

“She should be used to disappointment by now,” Nyx said. “Let’s quit wasting time; we’ve got your dragon and our way home to save.” She plucked at the book in Twilight’s magic until the older unicorn set it down and opened it to the linking panel.

“You’re right,” Twilight said. “I’ll go first, in case there’s trouble.” She set her hoof on the linking panel and vanished through it.

Naborale

It is good that I am the one who discovered Naborale, and not Aldro or anypony who lacks the appreciation I have for this world’s delicate state. Ponies are masters of their environments, and the Naborale natives prove that better than anything, but if foreign elements are allowed into the world without careful regulation, the natives’ delicate traditions and rituals would swiftly come undone, and then everything would be doomed.

For this reason, I will not only lock the linking book away behind the lessons of I’strukun, but place a lock within the world itself around the arrival point. Only those who truly understand what Wahteg, Motivaria, and Adene mean to teach are worthy to interact with Naborale.

Nothing leaped out to ambush Twilight as her senses came back to her, so she took a quick look around. She’d materialized in a room made almost completely of braided white wood and woven reeds. The floor was made from reed mats fastened tightly in the gaps between thin wood branches that seemed to have grown into their positions, and the walls were columns of braided wood connected by translucent panels of some membranous material. Large red banners embroidered with symbols similar to those collected from the lesson worlds hung on most of the walls. The only exceptions to the theme of natural materials were a tall, round-sided metal wall to the left of the banners, a contraption on a raised section of floor consisting of two metal globes connected by a pipe with a lever midway between them, and the pipe that ran through the floor connecting the contraption to the metal wall.

There was nopony in sight, so Twilight stepped away from the arrival point and waved a hoof, hoping Nyx could see her through the linking panel back in I’strukun. A moment later, the filly materialized and started taking in the room for herself. “This doesn’t look bad at all,” Nyx said. “Everything’s clean, in good repair, and kind of pretty-looking.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” a boyish voice said, startling the two ponies. They went toward the source with caution, climbing a short set of stairs to the raised area with the globes, and came upon a wall made only of the white wood forming a random web of holes. On the other side of the wall, on a balcony with a gondola, Spike was rocking on his feet, eyes starting to brim with hopeful tears. “Twilight!” he exclaimed, “you finally came!”

“Sorry it took so long, Spike,” Twilight said, reaching a hoof through one of the holes to stroke the dragon’s head. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Nah,” Spike said, wiping his eyes and putting on a brave face. “That crazy Pinkie look-alike didn’t rough me up too much; she just threw me in here and put up that shield over there so I can’t wander around.” He pointed to his right, indicating a tall, whitish ovoid that blocked a doorway right next to the web-wall.

“Where’d she go?” Nyx asked.

“Upstairs,” Spike answered, pointing to his left. “She hasn’t come back down since.”

“Ok,” Twilight said, looking in the direction Spike indicated and seeing a set of metal stairs partially hidden behind the metal wall. “Sit tight, Spike. We’ll get you out of there soon.”

“Hey,” Nyx cut in, “you breathe fire, don’t you? Why don’t you burn your way out of there?”

Spike quirked an eyebrow at Nyx and then coughed some fire onto the wall; the flames washed over the wood without leaving so much as a scorch mark. “Tried that,” Spike said. “The wood won’t burn no matter how long I hold my flame on it.”

Nyx shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Come on,” Twilight said, heading to the stairs, “let’s get this done.”

Nyx followed Twilight up the metal stairs, which led to the roof of the little structure they were in. From this position, they could see that the structure was actually mostly metal and that the room they’d come from had apparently grown around it. Most of the floor was a ventilation grating that would have revealed the structure’s interior, if it weren’t for an obscuring mist backlit by a warm orange glow. The view of the rest of the world beyond the structure was likewise obscured by a spherical shield like the one that kept Spike trapped; all that Twilight and Nyx could make out through the translucent whiteness were tiny floating objects of some kind. At the far side of the roof was a little metal maintenance access door, which opened when Twilight and Nyx were halfway across the roof.

Margent stepped out onto the roof, clutching the Materan book with one bat wing. She had a gleeful smile on her face that faded quickly to confusion when she laid eyes on Twilight and Nyx. “You’re not him,” she said, approaching slowly. “Where is he?!” She came to a stop several paces away, and her mouth twisted in a snarl. “He didn’t come, did he?”

“You mean Star Swirl, right, Margent?” Twilight asked. “No, he’s not with us.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Margent muttered, turning away. “Foolish little pony. Did you honestly think it would work? That he would actually bother to return himself, to actually lay eyes on what he’s done, the death he brought to Naborale, to take responsibility?”

“It wasn’t his fault!” Nyx shouted. “Don’t try to pin Cirrus and Archeon’s action on my Father!” Margent whirled around and ran up to Nyx, her eyes wide and wild.

“Father?” she said. “I knew it, I knew it! Just more proxies, more star-swirly brats so he doesn’t have to dirty his hooves himself. Perhaps I should have taken you instead of that lizard.” She reached for Nyx, but Twilight quickly summoned a barrier around the filly and pushed Margent back with telekinesis.

“Stop it,” Twilight said. “Margent, I know how much you’re hurting right now-”

“What would you know of my pain, star-swirly?” Margent sneered, getting right up in Twilight’s face.

Twilight opened her bag and brought out Margent’s journal. “I read the pages you scattered around,” she began, but Margent lashed out before she could continue, knocking the journal out of Twilight’s telekinetic bubble and scattering the contents everywhere; many of the pages slipped through the grating, lost forever.

“Words on a page!” Margent exclaimed, “Is that all you think we are, star-swirlies?! You just write something and it’s instantly true? Then why not change my truth? Why not fix Naborale, and give me back everything that was taken away!” She turned away again. “You can’t. He won’t. Won’t even look on his old work.” She started to stalk away, but then the wing holding Materan twitched and she turned back to Twilight and Nyx with a calculating look. “You know,” she said, “you’re stuck here now, with me. I’ve got the linking book to I’strukun locked away where you can’t get it. Even if you could, there’re no books back to Aitran; Cirrus and Archeon destroyed the ones they brought with them, and the one Star Swirl hid away in the central tusk. Maybe this,” she held out the Materan book for a moment, and then clamped it back against her side before Twilight could get a magical grip on it, “maybe it’s your way out. I’m holding onto it anyway. I don’t need to hurt you; I just need to keep you here until Star Swirl has no choice but to come himself.” She smirked and backed away a few steps. “Then again,” she mused, looking around, “you see this shield Star Swirl erected? It keeps us locked away from the rest of Naborale, and I have never managed to get past it, not once in all these years. If you clever little ponies can get it open then, maybe, I’ll let you have this book back.”

“What do you-” Nyx started to protest, but Twilight overrode her, pushing the filly gently behind her.

“We’ll give it a try,” Twilight said. “But, I want more than just a ‘maybe.’ If Nyx and I get the outer shield down, then we get the book and you can go mourn your family properly.” She held out a hoof for Margent to shake. Margent frowned in hesitant thought, so Twilight pressed on. “If we can’t get it down, then we’re stuck here like you said. No matter what happens, you win.”

“Fine,” Margent said, “move that lever over there to turn on the power, and get started.” She turned around and walked back to the door, stepped over the threshold, gave Twilight and Nyx one last hard look, and then closed and locked the door.

“All right,” Twilight said, turning away from the door, “let’s gets to work, Nyx.”

“What the hay, Twilight!” Nyx exclaimed. “Why are you still playing along with her games? We could have grabbed the book right then and linked home!”

“Spike’s still trapped,” Twilight said. “And even if we could have gotten the book away from her, we have no way of stopping her from following us through. Do you want a psychotic pony rampaging around your home?”

“No,” Nyx admitted with reluctance.

“I didn’t think so,” Twilight said.

“But she could follow us anyway if we do get the shield down,” Nyx protested.

“True,” Twilight admitted, “but she’ll be less angry, and I expect she’ll rush off to see what’s left of her actual home. That will buy your parents time to prepare for her arrival.” Nyx grumbled but didn’t argue any further, so Twilight went over to the lever Margent had indicated and moved it from left to right.

Spike greeted the ponies as they came down the stairs with, “Do you still have the food you packed, Twi? I’m getting hungry.”

“You’re taking your situation well, Spike,” Twilight noted as she took off her saddlebags and started to rummage through them. She came up with a couple of wrapped sandwiches and passed one of them through the holes in the wall.

“Well, you’re here now,” Spike pointed out. “I know you’ll have things sorted out in no time.” Twilight blushed.

“That’s great,” Nyx said, “but where do we start?”

Spike unwrapped the sandwich and inspected it. “Before the crazy pony threw me in here,” he said, “she did something with the metal ball on the left.” Finding the sandwich’s contents to be to his satisfaction, he took a large bite.

Nyx went over to the globe and gave it a closer look. It had a hatch on its side, but it refused to open when Nyx tugged at it with her magic. Instead, it made a sound like a motor trying and failing to start up. Nyx rubbed her head and looked over the rest of the contraption. She noticed the lever between the globes was pointed at the other globe, so she grabbed it in her magic, turned it to face the left, and tried opening the hatch again. At the touch of her magic, the globe rose up a couple feet on a post and the hatch popped open. “Why must everything be too tall for me?” Nyx whined, rearing up to look inside. Twilight chuckled and came over, levitating the filly onto her back. “Thank you,” Nyx said.

Inside the globe, the ponies saw twelve wire patterns consisting of four overlapping circles inside a larger circle; the patterns were arranged in three diamond-shaped sets of four. An experimental touch to one of the circle segments made it start glowing orange, and a second touch turned the segment back off.

“We’ll have to draw certain patterns in this,” Nyx said, “but how do we-”

“Hold on!” Twilight exclaimed suddenly. She summoned her saddlebags over and extracted one of the sketches she’d made of the symbols from the lesson worlds. Consulting it, she tapped wires in one of the sets of four until she’d recreated the symbol exactly. She then set Nyx down on the floor and trotted over to one of the red banners. Nyx followed her, curious, and gave the banners a closer look herself. Each banner was embroidered with six symbols in two columns, and under each symbol was a word such as “Energy,” “Love,” or “Mutual.” A large smile spread across Twilight’s face, and she declared, “I’ve got it!”

“Got what?” Nyx asked.

“It’s all coming together,” Twilight said, summoning her bags over once more and pulling out all the symbol sketches. She floated one in front of Nyx’s face and said, “Look, this is made from two of the symbols on this wall.”

Nyx grabbed the paper and searched the banners for the matching symbols. “Change and Force,” she said once she’d found them. “So?”

“So,” Twilight said, “remember how Margent mentioned altering the symbols? And her reference to poems in her journal?”

“Yes,” Nyx said, “can you get to the point, please?”

Twilight sighed. “I think the original symbols were made of four parts,” she said, “each one being a four-word poem on one Lesson World’s lesson. Margent just took out half of each symbol to make the ones we found.”

“So we have to finish the poems, and then put them into the globe?” Nyx hazarded. Twilight nodded. “Ok,” Nyx said, “give me the other sketches; might as well finish the class properly.” Twilight passed her the papers and a pencil, and as the filly went to study the banners, Twilight went back up to the wall separating her from Spike.

“Spike,” Twilight said, “I’m sorry you missed out on the other worlds.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Spike replied. “How could any of us have known there was pony waiting around to dragon-nap me? What’s her deal, anyway? She didn’t say much to me, other than muttering about Star Swirl and payback.”

Twilight sat down and unwrapped her other sandwich. “That’s a bit of a story,” she said. “It started with Star Swirl and his treacherous apprentices, Cirrus and Archeon.” She laid out the key points of Margent’s history as best she could remember, while Nyx worked studiously on completing the three symbols.

When Twilight finished the story, Nyx came trotting up with a satisfied look on her face. “I think I’ve got them,” she said. “Come give me a boost so I can check my work.” Twilight nodded and went over to the globe, lifting Nyx onto her back. “I just hope I don’t have to put everything in before finding out if I messed up something,” the filly grumbled as she sorted through her papers. “Let’s start with… Whateg,” she decided. “Energy powers future motion.” Twilight watched out of the corner of her eye as Nyx recreated the symbols on the top set of four wire patterns, moving clockwise from the top of the diamond. As soon as Nyx completed the last symbol, the glowing wires changed from an orange glow to a bright white light.

“Looks like you’ve got it,” Twilight said. Nyx laughed in triumph and moved to the next set of wires.

“Now from Motivaria,” Nyx said, “Dynamic forces spur change. Took me a while to find a verb on those banners that worked.” She copied the symbols onto the bottom-left set and beamed when they turned white as well. “Adene, then,” she said, shuffling her papers to the right page, “nature encourages mutual dependence.” She copied the symbols in the last set of wires. When those wires turned white, the hatch on the globe swung shut and the barrier in the doorway faded away into nothingness.

Nyx, Twilight, and Spike whooped and cheered as Spike ran in and leaped at Twilight, arms outstretched. Nyx barely managed to jump off Twilight’s back to avoid being thrown as the lavender unicorn and baby dragon hugged each other tightly. Nyx turned her attention to the globes, wanting to give Twilight and Spike their space, but then Spike let go of Twilight and grabbed Nyx in a tight hug as well. “Great job there, Nyx,” Spike said. “I owe you one.”

“Thanks,” Nyx said, “but we’re not done here yet.” She grabbed the handle on the globe contraption and turned it toward the other globe. With a hiss of power, the inner barrier reformed in the doorway. “Huh,” Nyx said with a frown, “how’s a pony actually supposed to get out of here, then?”

“Let’s solve this last puzzle first,” Twilight said, “and see what happens.” She lifted Nyx onto her back again and activated the second globe. When the globe rose up and the hatch opened, it revealed a single set of four wire patterns like in the first globe. “We need one more symbol,” Twilight said.

“From where?” Nyx asked.

“I saw another set of stairs leading down when you took the first barrier down,” Spike said.

“Good eye, Spike,” Nyx said, hopping to the floor and turning the lever back to the first globe. Once the barrier disappeared again, Nyx led the way through the door and down the stairs. The group came into a room much like the first, complete with banners bearing two dozen new poem symbols. Spike, Nyx, and Twilight searched the room, but the only other point of interest they found was an empty bookstand by the entrance. “Well,” Nyx said, sitting down in a huff, “I see why Margent hasn’t gotten through the outer shield on her own! Not so much as a clue to the final symbol!”

“The parts have to be here,” Twilight said, examining the banners, “but, you’re right: I don’t see anything to get us started on figuring it out.”

“Well, where’d you get the other symbols from?” Spike asked.

“The other worlds,” Nyx answered. “One from each lesson.” Her ears perked up slightly. “Then wouldn’t the fourth symbol be the lesson of Naborale itself?”

“That makes sense,” Twilight said, “but then there really ought to be a clue in here, since we can’t leave without it.” She turned away from the banners and approached Nyx. “I don’t want to suggest cheating,” she said, “but your father did write down the four-word lessons for Wahteg, Motivaria, and Adene in the journal he gave me, so he must have noted down Naborale’s as well…”

Nyx moaned and rubbed her eyes. “That is so tempting,” she said, “but Cirrus and Archeon managed to get out into Naborale without Father’s notes, and we’re each smarter than both of them put together. We can figure this out. I know we can.”

“I like your confidence,” Spike said, “but where would we even start from?”

“We start with what we know,” Nyx said. She stood up and started pacing. “What do we know about Naborale? I mean, as a Lesson World?”

“It’s the only world in the group where we’re meant to encounter a civilization,” Twilight said.

“Yes,” Nyx said. “And both Father’s recorded introduction to this world and Margent’s journal emphasized the delicate balance that the civilization exists in. Bat-winged ponies and a ‘lattice tree’ depending on each other for survival; if the ponies don’t cooperate, the tree doesn’t grow right and everything suffers. Oh!” She stopped and started scanning the banners. “I think I might have… Was there a symbol for ‘civilization’ or something similar upstairs?”

“Uh,” Twilight and Spike said.

“Never mind,” Nyx said impatiently. “Fresh paper, please.” Twilight pulled some paper from her bag and hoofed it over, and Nyx quickly sketched several symbols before dashing upstairs. Twilight and Spike shared a bemused look and then followed the filly. When they reentered the first room, Nyx herded Twilight toward the second globe, turned the lever, and then recruited Twilight as a step-stool again. “I’ve got three parts of this for sure,” Nyx said, tapping wires at a manic pace, “I just need to find the right word for the bottom symbol. Balanced system… something… civilization.”

“Create?” Spike suggested.

“Not an option,” Nyx said quickly. “Perhaps nurture?” She tapped for a few seconds. “No. Sustain? Nope. Stimulate?” As soon as she created that symbol, the wires crackled and turned white, and the translucent outer shield dissolved away. Nyx hopped down from Twilight’s back, and the trio went to the cage-like wall to look out on Naborale proper.

The view was partially blocked by the gondola parked by the balcony, but beyond that the ponies and dragon saw an endless void of pink mist in which floated greenish organic sacs anchored by woody vines and linked together by the rope the gondola hung from. In the distance was a massive, withered and burnt-black tree. “That must be the remains of the Lattice Tree,” Twilight said. “Margent’s old home, ruined by Cirrus and Archeon.”

“Speaking of Margent,” Nyx said, “she owes us a book.” She turned to head to the stairs to the roof, only to see Margent barreling toward the group in wide-eyed surprise.

“You actually did it?!” the pink bat-pony exclaimed. “How?” She pushed past Nyx and Twilight to reach the second globe and opened it. “Balanced systems stimulate civilization,” Margent said in awe as she backed away, “that’s the fourth symbol. I should have known it would be something like that!”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Nyx said, “I mostly figured it out by luck.” She held out an expectant hoof, “Now, I think you owe us something.”

Margent didn’t respond, as her gaze had drifted to the view beyond the gondola and something caught her eye. “No,” she whispered, “can it be?” She whirled around and ran up the stairs.

“Oi!” Nyx shouted, making chase. “Give us Materan, you… loony!”

“Nyx!” Twilight yelled, running after the filly. Spike was hot on her heels. The short chase almost came to an undignified end when Nyx stopped at the edge of the vent on the roof, forcing Twilight to leap over her to avoid tripping, and Spike did bump into Nyx’s rear end.

Margent was perched on the lever that gave power to the whole structure, her bat wings spread for balance, as she stared and pointed at something in the far distance. “Do you see?” she asked, “beyond the ruins.” Twilight, Nyx, and Spike crowded to the edge of the roof, and looking out they could just see another large tree growing out of the mist, its branches wrapped around one giant gas sac and several relatively smaller ones, with a space clearly prepared to hold another sack the size of the largest one.

“Another Lattice Tree?” Nyx asked.

“Yes!” Margent exclaimed. “They’re alive! All this time, they survived to cultivate a new Tree and…” She trailed off and a sad look crossed her face. “I thought the voices were mere ghosts, figments of my guilty conscience. Were they real the whole time? Was my Staid trying to reach me? He would.” She let her head droop.

“You can go to them now, Margent,” Twilight said. Margent turned around and gave Twilight a thankful smile.

“Once you give us back the Linking Book you stole, that is,” Nyx cut in with a sideways look.

“Yes, of course,” Margent said with a chuckle. “One minute.” She half-flew over to the maintenance access door, went inside, and emerged a bit later with the Materan book under one wing. She held the book out to Twilight and Nyx and said, “You’ve restored what was taken from me, so I’ll return what I took from you with both my thanks and deepest apology.” Twilight nodded solemnly as she accepted the book. Margent took a couple steps back and spread her wings. “Farewell, st- er, friends,” she said, “and thank you again.” With a mighty flap, she launched herself into the air and flew off toward the distant Lattice Tree. Twilight, Spike, and Nyx watched her until her pink coat rendered her invisible against the mist.

“Well,” Spike said, clapping his hands together, “time for us to go home now.”

“Yes,” Twilight said, “but let’s put this book somewhere appropriate first.” She led the group down to the lower level of the structure and placed the book on the stand at the bottom of the stairs. She opened it to the linking panel and then lifted Nyx and Spike up so they could link through before touching the panel herself.

Materan, Equestria

After Twilight, Spike, and Nyx all materialized on the covered patio of the Materan homestead, Star Swirl stepped out of his study and did a surprised double-take. “Ah, you’re back,” he said, “wonderful. How did it go?”

“It’s a very long story, Father,” Nyx said wearily.

“Oh?” Star Swirl said, “Well, you must tell me everything.”

“We will, Star Swirl,” Twilight said. “I particularly want to talk about how you handled setting up the last puzzle in Naborale.”

Author's Note

And so the ending off this particular tale has finally been written. Thank you to everyone for your infinite patience as I struggled through this.

Chapter 6

I’strukun

When Twilight Sparkle and Nyx returned to I’strukun they found themselves in the upper room of the central tusk-tower, near the elevator. Twilight went over to the light table by the hole in the floor, pulled out her sketch of the symbol formed by the floating rocks of Wahteg and laid it carefully on the table, saying “I hope this works.” The lamp above the table turned on and the gear-shaped ring on the bottom dropped down and flipped over, somehow forming a thin sheet of metal inside of it and pressing it down on a bunch of small metal rods that had popped out of the floor below the table, creating an impression of the symbol on the paper. The gear-ring and the symbol rotated a little over a quarter turn and something fell into place with a loud click. The ring rose back to its original place, and a moment later the metal lattice cage holding the book Margent had escaped into rose out of the pit. The lights in the room dimmed and the projectors turned on, casting the image of the crazed Pinkie Pie doppelganger onto the ceiling.

“Not so easy is it, star-swirlies?” Margent asked tauntingly. “Feeling like a Squee running through a maze, looking for the answer? Is it over here? Is over there? Is someplace I haven’t looked?” Her expression hardened and her tone became one of accusation. “Cirrus and Archeon didn’t care about Naborale. They came to us with talk about fixing instabilities, rewriting our world so that we would be free to live our own lives, free of the traditions that bound us to the Tree. We believed you, abandoning our traditions while forgetting that they were the very things that kept Naborale alive. When the first branches started to die I realized what had happened and followed them to this place to tell them what they had done, to beg Cirrus and Archeon to save my tribe! And they laughed. They said… you would never fix Naborale; that they had already taken everything it had that was worth saving.” She paused for a moment, visibly overwhelmed by her anger, and then she finished the message through clenched teeth. “Find the remaining two symbols, star swirlies. Don’t. Make. Me wait.” Her glaring eyes faded away with the rest of the image and the lights came back up.

“That was strange,” Twilight said. “Her words were all very coherent, but she’s apparently having trouble remembering who exactly she’s talking to. It’s like most of the time she’s able to tell Star Swirl apart from Cirrus and Archeon, but sometimes her mind conflates them all into one.”

“Do you think that’s why she calls us ‘star-swirlies?’” Nyx asked, “Although, that could just be the name she has for all ponies from outside her home world.”

“It’s hard to say,” Twilight said. “Maybe if we find more journal pages lying around we can get a better grasp of her mental state.” She started to turn away from the pit in the floor, but then paused and glanced back at the Naborale book. “What a striking difference,” she said to herself.

“Huh?” Nyx asked.

“Nothing,” Twilight said, shaking her head. She took Star Swirl’s journal out of her bag and walked over to the exit, but then hesitated after opening the inner door and looked down at Nyx, who was starting to look a little annoyed at the bigger unicorn. “Nyx, have you ever been to the Forestsea?” Twilight asked.

“Not since we escaped from Sohndar,” Nyx answered with a shake of her head. “I don’t think there’s much worth seeing there anymore. Father said that the last time he checked, the natives had left their old village to find someplace new to rebuild.”

“Natives,” Twilight said, both surprised and a little relieved. “I suppose that explains it then. When Rainbow Dash and I went through the Forestsea we encountered one of the native frog people and he helpfully showed us around the level Cirrus and Archeon had claimed. I never gave it much thought, but in the back of my mind I always wondered if he had been the last of his kind or not. If he had been, I’d have said his reaction to Rainbow and I was strikingly different from Margent’s behavior. But, since he apparently wasn’t alone…” She trailed off with a shrug. A dull silence hung for a moment.

“Where to next then?” Nyx asked at last.

“Ah,” Twilight said, opening Star Swirl’s journal and turning to the appropriate section, “The world is called Motivaria, and the book is in the tusk nearest our arrival point. Come on.” She led the way out of the tower and teleported herself and Nyx down to the base of the ladder.

As they walked toward the tusk-tower rising from the seaside edge of the rock area they were headed for, Twilight asked, “Tell me Nyx, what do you plan to do after you’ve learned how to Write links to other worlds?”

“I’m going to Write and explore until I’ve found the perfect world,” Nyx answered.

“A perfect world?” Twilight asked, “Do you not like living in Equestria?”

“Equestria’s ok,” Nyx said, “even though Father has us living in the middle of nowhere. It’s just… missing something. I can’t put my hoof on it, but I know if I explore to the limits of where Writing can take me I’ll find what I’m looking for. What would your perfect world be like, Twilight?” Twilight started to answer, but Nyx cut her off to add, “And don’t say Equestria. That’s too easy an answer.”

“Well, I don’t know then,” Twilight said. “All I’d need is a world where I can spend time with my good friends and a place to go home and curl up with a book every evening. Actually, now that I think about it, Aitran could have been perfect if I’d been there before Cirrus and Archeon ravaged it.”

“You would have loved it, I’m sure,” Nyx said with a knowing look. “You’re a lot like Father.”

Twilight blushed faintly at the filly’s opinion, and then noticed that they’d reached the tusk. The little window with the symbol was at eye level, but Twilight’s quick look around didn’t reveal any sort of doorway. “How do we get in?” she asked.

“When I looked around here earlier, I noticed a hole in the rock over there,” Nyx said, pointing to the corner of the rock farthest from the rest of the island. She and Twilight went over and looked down the perfectly round hole. There was a single-shaft ladder leading down onto a brown metal walkway. Twilight climbed down first and saw that the walkway was attached to the wall of a small cove that the sea had carved out of the rock. The walkway started out level, then sloped down before leveling out again in front of what seemed to be the tusk’s entryway. A large metal object resembling a squat barrel resting on its side blocked the walkway at the bottom of the slope.

“We need to get that out of the way somehow,” Twilight said, thinking. She and Nyx looked around and spotted a podium on a rock just outside the little cave. There were several large rocks poking out of the water between them and the podium, so Twilight looked at Nyx and asked, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nyx nodded and walked down to the metal barrel, where the rocks were closest, and then hopped across them to the podium. Twilight followed her, teleporting from the last rock to get behind Nyx. There was a ladder set into the rock leading up to the top, but the ponies ignored it for the time being.

The podium had two levers on it, and by standing near it Twilight and Nyx could see that the walkway was anchored to tracks in the rock at four points. Nyx slid the lever on the right down and the platform shifted so that the middle third was flat and the ends sloped down, which also moved the ladder at the right end away from the hole. The metal barrel rolled down the newly created slope and bounced off the tower door with a loud clang, coming to rest right on the end of the walkway. Nyx then slid the left lever up and the walkway shifted into a mirror image of its original configuration. The barrel stated put. “This is easy,” Nyx said in a bored tone. She moved the levers with careful consideration, noting that the barrel always rolled back to the base of the current slope, until she had coaxed it over to the far right and then reset the walkway to its original state.

“Good job Nyx,” Twilight praised the filly as they rock-hopped back to the walkway.

“I just hope that Motivaria has some real challenges,” Nyx said, turning the handle of the door and letting it swing in. She started to walk in, but ten stopped when she saw that the floor was missing and the rock underneath was a deep divot that would make it impossible to reach the combination lock for the book. “Is this intentional?” Nyx asked.

“I don’t remember anything about it being mentioned in your father’s journal,” Twilight answered. She looked into the room, at the doorframe, and finally back at the metal barrel. “I think the barrel will fit through the door,” she said, “and it’s probably big enough to fill the hole enough to be a replacement floor.”

Nyx considered the suggestion. “It’s worth a shot,” she said. Twilight teleported the two of them back to the podium and Nyx got to work. In short order, the barrel rolled through the tower door and came to a stop with a satisfying-sounding crash. The ponies teleported back to the door and saw that Twilight’s estimation had been correct.

“If the floor were intact,” Twilight said, “rolling the barrel in here would’ve made the room inaccessible for most ponies. That just goes to show that while Margent’s made changes around here, she still wants everything to be doable.”

Aside from the missing floor, the tower room was identical to the one that held Wahteg. Standing on the barrel was a little strange, but Twilight managed to keep her balance as Nyx climbed up on her back and waited for her to get out her notes and arrange the beads on the lock.

The cage with the book came down, and Twilight opened it to the linking panel. The view flew close to a dark landmass with glimpses of structures and rails before settling on a spinning image of a small platform with a peaked roof supported by red posts and bridges leading off two sides. “Once more,” Twilight said, levitating the book up to Nyx’s waiting hoof.