The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

Beyond The Rift

Corsica kept a keen eye on Princess Twilight as they walked - and rolled - the halls of the Crystal Empire's central keep. She wasn't alone; everyone else seemed to be watching Twilight as well.

"Hey," Corsica said, rolling up alongside Twilight, whose stride grew steadier with each extra minute spent acclimating to the Lovebringer's power. Her mane and tail hadn't stopped floating, though, nor had they lost their starry, eternal depth that flowed like the eldest princesses' manes. "Would it be bad taste to make a joke about how I'm always somehow present when you get your world rocked with some new power or news?"

Twilight blinked, her pupils leaking starshine. "World rocked? Oh, you mean the crystal city under my Tree of Harmony?"

"And getting a piece of the powers of creation thrust in your face and told 'use this'," Corsica added with a grin. "That can't happen every day."

"Actually, that's exactly what being an Element bearer entails," Twilight pointed out. "I guess it's not every day that you get charged with a second piece of the same power, but this has been my destiny since I was a foal. Even if I only found out what that meant several years ago."

Now it was Corsica's turn to blink.

Rainbow came to her defense, though. "Yeah, but the Elements of Harmony only let us clean clocks under really special circumstances. This one looks like you're, uh, literally about to explode from power."

"It's not that different from the Tirek incident," Twilight said with a shrug. "At least, not as far as the way it feels. I don't know if that's because it's actually a similar grade of power or just because both were sufficient to saturate my abilities as an alicorn, but I'll be able to control it with a day or so of practice. I've done it before."

"Tirek incident?" Corsica asked. "You guys keep mentioning that..."

Rainbow flashed an eager grin. "Tirek was this centaur who tried to sack Equestria a while back. His powers let him drain ponies of their magic and add it to his own, so the more ponies he beat, the bigger and stronger he got. Celestia, Luna and Cadance all gave their own powers to Twilight at the same time so she could be strong enough to have a fighting chance-"

"That's not what happened!" Twilight corrected, looking briefly annoyed. "I was supposed to be hiding their powers, not using them."

Rainbow raised a smug eyebrow. "But you did use them, right?"

"That doesn't matter." Twilight shook her head. "They weren't enough to beat him, anyway. We all eventually got drained too, remember?"

Corsica frowned, trying to keep pace while rolling along. "So how'd you beat him?"

"With the Rainbow Power," Twilight explained. "That's what we decided to call it, anyway. At my Tree of Harmony, there was a small altar where we presented keys made from trinkets we got from our friends, in ways that somehow exemplified our roles as Elements..." She blinked as if suddenly realizing something obvious, but then shook it off and continued. "Anyway, once we presented our keys, the altar gave us its power, and it was somehow enough to defeat Tirek the same way we normally do, with all six of us at once. Just a lot stronger than usual."

"You thinking something else, there, Twi?" Rainbow prodded. "I saw that face..."

Twilight sighed. "Just that my key came from Discord, who happens to be a draconequus, just like the Flame of Harmony in my palace... I guess he was a more fitting source for it than I thought."

"Hold up," Corsica cut in. "Evil centaur. Absorbs the power of most of Equestria's citizens, which is enough to beat a max-powered alicorn in a duel. Similar strength to what you have now with this new power. He gets your power too, right? So presumably around twice as strong as he was before. And then you just beat him anyway?" She tilted her head. "What's even strong enough to do that?"

"I hadn't heard the story this way before," Starlight added, dropping back to walk with them. "Might be because I spent so much time telling you my own story instead of listening to yours, but still... The Flames of Harmony are supposed to be the biggest fish in the sea. What I've heard is that they were made using power taken from the two Indus gods after they exhausted themselves in their fighting. This power and that power are one and the same. So if the Elements of Harmony weren't enough against Tirek, and the combined might of all Equestria's goddesses weren't enough, said might being roughly equal in practice to one of these, at least within the limits of an alicorn body, though I don't suppose you got new bodies..." She rolled her neck, listing caveats one after the other.

"I mean, we never thought it was that odd," Twilight interrupted, cutting Starlight off before she could ask the same question Corsica had. "We were still acting as the Elements of Harmony. Just with more power than we had before. This Virtue of Love feels much stronger than my existing Element, but what makes more sense: that some parts of the world are arbitrarily orders of magnitude stronger than others, or that we weren't using the full power of our Elements before? Of course Tirek with two virtues worth of power would lose to us with six. And that's ignoring the fact that we've always been stronger than the sum of our parts together. It's more than just addition."

Starlight shrugged. "I guess I was reading into things, then. Still, that just makes me wonder why you weren't more powerful earlier. If your Element of Magic can do that sometimes, why can't it do that all the time, especially when you're an alicorn? The Lovebringer doesn't seem like it's holding back."

"Also," Rainbow cut in, "we kind of did transform during that. With a flashy glow-up and everything. Just if, like, that matters."

Corsica retreated from the conversation just a little, relishing her apparent ability to ask questions no one had thought of before. But soon, a new question drew her back in.

"Hey," she said, feeling for an opportune gap to take. "You know if all centaurs can do that, or if Tirek was special?"

Twilight considered this. "I have no idea. I've never met another centaur in person, and judging by the lack of accurate literary information on them, not many other scholars have, either. From my experience, he didn't seem to be using any tools to accomplish what he did, so it's likely others could accomplish it, if they wanted to. But whether it's a natural ability or learned sorcery, I couldn't say."

"Huh." Corsica kept rolling, realizing that Twilight and her friends hadn't heard much about Duma - though the centaur she had watched Seigetsu subdue in the Snowport dungeons was certainly on her own mind.

---

After a bit more rolling, Corsica finally saw Princess Celestia come to a stop... outside of what appeared to be a random door in an unused residential wing.

Sure enough, as Celestia undid the locks and allowed the party inside, Corsica found herself faced with a suite much like the one where Twilight and her friends stayed: a central sitting room connected to an open kitchen and a big balcony, with hallways branching off to a multitude of smaller connected private rooms and sleeping quarters. The accommodations looked hardly shabby for being disused, though given the completely crystalline architecture, Corsica wasn't sure what it would have looked like if it had been run down, either.

She followed Celestia down one of the hallways into a humble bedroom that appeared completely unoccupied... at least until the air shimmered, and with an effect reminiscent of the Ironridge crater's old heat wave, Aegis was there.

Rainbow Dash raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "You put it in a random bedroom? No grand vaults or showy security or nothing?"

Princess Celestia gave her an amused smile. "The Crystal Empire does not have an infinite supply of grand vaults, and due to events a month ago, the one that we did allocate to this purpose was deemed no longer suitable."

Corsica pointedly looked away.

"Princess." Twilight bowed, trying to focus on Celestia even though Aegis was commanding everyone's attention. "At our meeting, you spent a lot more time talking about the Lovebringer than Aegis. But now that we're here, I..." She looked back to the metal dragon. "Did the dragons really say yes to us using this without even needing to hear us out on why we want it? They can't have known we only wanted to borrow it to fix an airship. What's the catch, here?"

Corsica slowly nodded. She had seen the vigor and paranoia with which Snowport activated its defenses in response to Duma's intrusion. In what felt like another life, she remembered multiple trains being sent to the Crystal Empire under the auspices of transporting Aegis on one of many identical decoys, only to later learn that it had been smuggled here another way in secret and was never on the trains at all.

"The decisions were made ahead of time," Princess Celestia answered, shaking her head. "While you and your friends flew to the Palace of Laughter, Twilight Sparkle, we have hardly been idle. The Convocation agreed to this because they have a long memory, and are more aware than most that the misuse of this machine is not the sole danger that threatens the world. It was to escape from the scourge of the windigoes that Equestria's modern denizens and the dragons of Cernial first made their pacts, after all."

Twilight waited, clearly expecting more.

"They are not without a stake in the matter," Celestia added. "And one of the conditions was that, should you take Aegis beyond the lands of Cernial's domain, you would be accompanied at all times by a trusted liaison."

"Seigetsu," Twilight guessed. "Is she here now?"

Celestia shook her head. "I have faith that you will meet with her in Snowport and apprise her of the situation before departing for the north. I was not able to contact her on such short notice to be present for this discussion, but as these lands are still within Cernial's ancestral domain, that should pose little issue."

Corsica frowned harder. Sending someone to keep an eye on everyone? Sure, that fit with how they did things. Being okay with staying out of the loop for even a minute, on the other hoof, didn't match up with someone who would do this much surveillance in the first place. "You really don't think they'd prefer us to sit on our hooves for one more day so Seigetsu can get here first?"

Princess Celestia turned to her, visibly weighing whether to answer. But before she could, Twilight cut in.

"I don't believe this is the whole story," Twilight said uneasily. "We've said... I've said multiple times now that all we need is to use Aegis to fix the Immortal Dream. We could probably have it safely back here by the end of the day. So why are you talking like taking it to the north is a foregone conclusion? Especially when you already just gave me more power than I know what to do with."

"Yeah, what's with that?" Rainbow asked, hovering.

"Given the way things tend to go around me," Starlight sighed, "it probably is a foregone conclusion..."

Celestia hesitated. "Am I correct that everyone else in this room intends to join Twilight Sparkle in venturing north to stop the war between Ironridge and Yakyakistan?"

Corsica blinked, realizing she hadn't consciously thought that far ahead. It wasn't something she had any reason not to do, right? The old, broken Corsica would have done it without thinking because all she ever did was go with the flow. But she didn't actually have to do this, now that she had the capacity to find something different to do with herself.

The last thing she wanted was to get tied up in obligations she hadn't thought through. But she didn't want to be a flake, either, and the truth was she had yet to contemplate either path, going or staying. She had been living exclusively in the present. And so a snap decision was here, whether she liked it or not.

Starlight's nod sealed the deal. Corsica nodded too; she wouldn't be the lone pony to chicken out of a high-stakes mission to a war zone. But she'd definitely have to put some real thought into this later.

"Looks like we're all agreed," Rainbow said, pounding one hoof with the other. "Spill the beans!"

Princess Celestia looked Twilight in the eyes. "The dragons have been unsuccessful in their endeavors to discover more about the incident that prompted Aegis's relocation to this tower. They are stalemated in their war and see numerous signs that their absolute control over their lands is slipping. And so they believe the safest place for Aegis to reside, for the time being, would be far away from Cernial, in the hooves of an operator powerful enough to defend it and known for their commitment to peace."

Starlight groaned.

"In other words," Twilight said, turning back to face Aegis, "we're taking this to the north whether we like it or not."

"Can you see no possible way this could go wrong?" Starlight entreated, giving Celestia a deadpan stare. Looking at an alicorn like that, Corsica decided, must have taken nerves of steel... That, or being so far beyond dead inside that she knew there was nothing even a princess could do to hurt her. Just like Corsica had been the last time she mouthed off in Celestia's presence, actually.

"It would hardly be the path of assured outcomes," Princess Celestia agreed. "However, the Convocation views it as merely a matter of time until the Aegis is compromised if left to remain in these lands. When faced between a gamble and a loss, they feel they have only one path, and that is to place their trust in allies who have a reach longer than their own."

Twilight put on a wry smirk. "I'm flattered they think so highly of me."

"I may have thrown in a word in your favor during deliberations." Celestia's smile was far more teasing, though it soon grew straight again. "Furthermore, it was not a coincidence that I happened to be in the Empire at the precise time when you came to call. In fact, since the Crystalling, I have never left. Representatives of the Convocation came here to treat with Equestria while you were away, and both before and after their arrival, I have remained here to stand guard over their god personally."

"And you think we're the best place for it," Twilight said. "In Ironridge and possibly Yakyakistan, which according to her are full of schemers and scoundrels and even Chrysalis." She pointed a hoof at Corsica. "Safer than any other corner of Equestria, protected by defenses you fully control? Why not put it in my Crystal Palace? Princess Luna had a lot to say about how Convergence was so powerful, no one with bad intentions could make it to that door even if they wanted to."

"We debated many options," Princess Celestia answered with a shake of her head. "Would that you had been there for it. However, this is the answer we decided upon... contingent on your acceptance, Twilight. I recognize that this mission already asks much of you and your friends."

Corsica watched everyone else for their reactions. Rainbow looked intrigued, and Starlight clearly considered acquiring Aegis to be a foregone conclusion.

"Alright." Twilight bowed. "If that's what's on the table, I'll do my best. Just... You know you can tell us this up front, right, Princess?"

Princess Celestia gave a knowing smile. "I won't get to tease you forever, Twilight. Now then. Aegis. Awaken."

"I AM ALREADY AWAKE," came a voice from the metal dragon.

"So how does this work?" Twilight asked, stepping uncertainly forward. "Starlight told me some of what Aegis can do, but I assume there's more to it than just saying what I want."

Princess Celestia nodded. "Aegis forms a special bond with its pilot using technology you may be familiar with if you journeyed to the heart of Convergence's palace. Once this bond is in place, it can act autonomously in accordance with orders, be directly controlled by remote, or be controlled physically from within the cockpit. The remote link can sustain energy transference, so merely being connected should help you to manage the Lovebringer's power."

She then turned back to Aegis. "Aegis, I would like you to transfer my pilot's bond to Twilight Sparkle. From now on, she will be your new master."

"ACCESS DENIED," Aegis said.

"What?" Celestia frowned in confusion. "Aegis, explain."

"OUR BOND WAS ESTABLISHED ON PROVISIONAL SECURITY PROTOCOL," Aegis said. "PROVISIONAL BONDS ARE TEMPORARY AND CANNOT BE TRANSFERRED. ONLY MY TRUE PILOT CAN INSTRUCT ME TO BOND ON A PERMANENT BASIS."

"Then who's your true pilot?" Twilight asked, looking up at the dragon's blank, featureless face. "Tetra?"

Aegis swiveled its neck and lowered its head, pointing straight at Starlight.

"I don't know why anyone expected anything else," Starlight deadpanned. "Why is it me? Are you sure you're not mistaking me for you-know-who that you used to hang out with all the time?"

Aegis's body flickered with sluggish pulses of light. "I AM BEYOND CERTAIN."

"Great," Starlight said, wiping back her mane. "You know what, I'm actually not interested in learning how or why this is the case. Can I make Twilight your new boss? And if so, what's the least-complicated way to do it?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. YOU CAN MANAGE SUCH FUNCTIONS FROM WITHIN MY CORE."

The armored plating on Aegis's chest split along asymmetrical, geometric lines, sliding aside on hidden rails to reveal a tall, shallow cavity. Inside was a large, flat-faced crystal that had been polished to a mirrorlike sheen, its exposed face roughly the size of a full-grown pony. Aegis stood, waiting, the crystal pulsing from within with a faint rainbow sheen.

Starlight frowned, reaching a hesitant hoof towards the core. "Do I just... touch it, or...?"

Princess Celestia nodded, standing watchfully by.

The surface of the crystal rippled like water as Starlight's hoof broke through it. It reached out, wrapping around her leg as she appeared to become weightless, floating up into the core and disappearing with barely a splash.

Corsica held her breath, watching Aegis for a reaction. The metal dragon stood in the bedroom, taking up most of what was already a spacious chamber, its head bowed to avoid scraping the ceiling and its strange, conical tail backed far enough into a corner that it probably didn't have room to turn around. Its wings were mostly furled, just loose enough to remind everyone of their presence. It was completely still...

And then Starlight's special talent appeared on its otherwise-blank face.

"Woah," Aegis said in Starlight's voice. "This is... surprisingly cool."

"Starlight?" Twilight asked.

"Whaddya mean?" Rainbow demanded, flitting around eagerly now that the tension had broken. "What's it like in there?"

"I have no idea why a disembodied goddess would give her mechanical body an interior like this," Starlight's voice echoed. "It's like a whole command center in here. There's even room for two! You could actually live in here and use this as a house in an emergency..."

"Can I see?" Rainbow pleaded, inching her hoof closer to the still-exposed core.

Starlight's voice hesitated. "Maybe it would be better if you didn't," she said. "This looks a lot more intuitive than I was expecting, but Aegis is definitely attached to my power right now... At least give me a bit to properly pass this over to Twilight. If she wants others messing around inside her divine exoskeleton, that's her call."

Rainbow gave Twilight a plaintive look that said you're letting me see it, right, my very bestest buddy in all the world, aren't you?

"Now if Twilight wanted to see if she can come in here, that might speed things along," Starlight's voice offered.

Twilight nodded. "Alright."

She reached her hoof up to touch the crystal, but was repelled by a ripple and a soft electromechanical buzz.

"Umm..." Twilight bit her lip, still holding up her hoof.

"Right, of course it wouldn't let anyone else..." Starlight's voice echoed from Aegis. "There, try again. Security systems."

Twilight repeated the motion, and this time she was pulled weightlessly inside, just as Starlight had been.

Rainbow Dash waited. And waited. And waited. And tapped her hoof. "Soooo...?"

"This is probably not going to be very entertaining," Aegis apologized with Twilight's voice. "And it might take a while."

"Like, ten minutes, twenty minutes...?" Rainbow tilted her head.

"Well, I can tell you I'm not taking Aegis outside this room until I can be a hundred percent sure I'm not about to accidentally demolish the tower by spreading my wings," Twilight's voice said.

"So probably all day," Starlight's voice apologized. "I'm going to help Twilight go through all this feature documentation, but unless you or Corsica really like reading manuals, it'll probably just make it take longer if we broadcast everything we're talking about. It might just be better if you two make your way back to Snowport on your own time tonight, and we'll plan to have Aegis ready enough to fly us there and meat you by nightfall?"

Rainbow's face fell.

"I should mention," Princess Celestia cut in. "Princess Luna is on her way here, and should arrive by nightfall. Cutie marks and premonition flux are much closer to her field of expertise than mine, and she was originally the creator of the mark that now ensnares your engine. If you desire any aid beyond what Aegis can render in solving your problem, this plan would allow you to benefit from her help, as well."

"Sounds good," came Twilight's voice, sounding as if she was already cozying up with a stack of reading material. "Is that alright with you two? If we all meet back at the Immortal Dream tonight?"

"Eh. Yeah." Rainbow landed and kicked the ground with a hoof. "I didn't wanna read manuals for hours anyway. Come on, Corsica, let's get out of here."

An invitation? That was nice. Corsica was hardly done looking at Aegis, but if it was stuck with them on their journey, she imagined she'd get to see a lot more of it going forward.

---

Corsica and Rainbow left the castle, finding a lively town below under auspiciously sunny skies. There were enough crystal ponies out that Corsica found herself quickly distracted by thoughts of whether she could get her coat to look like that, too... but she pushed that temptation aside, keeping herself focused for a little longer.

"That happen often?" she guessed, nodding up at Rainbow.

"What, the eggheads doing egghead things?" Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Uhh, pretty much all the time. I just wanted to see how they were going to get the thing out of there when it was twice as big as the only door."

"Good question," Corsica muttered. "So what are you going to spend the rest of the day doing? Probably nothing an overworked invalid could do without cracking twenty ribs?"

Rainbow Dash shrugged. "Probably try to track down the others. I've been sort of getting the vibe that some of us are more attached to the idea of kicking butt in the north than others, but Twilight hasn't sat us down yet to declare that this is an all-in mission for the Elements of Harmony, and she's probably not going to do so until it's too late. Like, imagine going, 'oh, oops, Rarity isn't here, let's ride two hours to the next city over to go look for her' right when we're trying to leave."

Corsica raised an eyebrow. "Isn't your Element magic supposed to only work when you have all six of you together?"

"Sorta?" Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck. "We can only do the really big rainbow laser thing when we're all together, but I think Twilight might have that covered. And for the last year or two we've been getting picked and chosen for missions in pairs much more often than all at once. My money says this one's gonna be me, Twilight, Starlight and Fluttershy, though. Not sure if the other three will be coming."

"Oh yeah?" Corsica nodded along. "Why Fluttershy? I haven't seen much of her since we got here."

Rainbow gave her a weird look. "I mean, her palace is half of the reason we're going up there, right? We saved the flame, now we gotta fix its home too, or something. Right?"

Corsica felt herself redden. "Look, I... All that stuff in Ironridge pretty much happened to someone else. Not me. I just remember it because I got some of her memories stuck in my brain when I rewound myself, but I can be forgiven for forgetting."

Rainbow winked. "Eh, I forget stuff all the time. Just means you've got more important things to think about."

"Keep telling yourself that," Corsica retorted. "Anyway, does rounding up your friends involve any sitting in place without excessive wandering around? Preferably in a way that's not existentially boring?"

"Pretty much the exact opposite." Rainbow gave her a shameless grin. "But, uh, it's kinda crazy to see you actually looking for something to do. What have you been doing since you woke up, just recuperating on the ship?"

Corsica shook her head. "Rolling back and forth across Snowport trying to pick up the trail of Starlight's missing mom. Dunno what I can manage when even the Inquisition is stumped, but it's something to do. And I think I'm about to re-injure myself if I keep it up."

"Yikes," Rainbow hissed, drawing her teeth into an exaggerated grimace. "But you mean Maple, right? Any good leads?"

"According to Seigetsu, she came through Snowport about sixteen years ago," Corsica explained. "Got dead-ended by a train that couldn't reach its destination, came back to Snowport, and disappeared without a trace after that. I haven't found much, but I did get that engineer we brought back from Starlight's village to offer to take me on an off-the-books train run later today so I could see what it's like to have the magic turn us back."

"Trying to retrace her steps, huh?" Rainbow rubbed her chin. "If Seigetsu lost her trail around here, that's a pretty good lead, but sixteen years ago is, like... a lot. Before the Crystal Empire, I dunno that there was much else besides Snowport up here, though I guess I didn't know about Snowport until a month ago either. And you think the trains didn't work for her because she knew about how big the world really was?"

Corsica nodded. "I don't know exactly where Starlight's been, but I get the impression she's well-traveled. And that Maple went with her as a kid across most of the world."

Rainbow frowned, clearly recoiling from the most obvious way that someone could vanish decades ago with no clear way to get anywhere else, yet not leave a trace. "Well, I think it's a pretty good lead," she eventually decided. "You meant Wheelcakes, right? What time are you meeting up with her to go see what it's like?"

"Forgot to ask," Corsica admitted. "I'll probably just hang out at the train station until she says she's done."

"Oh yeah? Eh, might as well come with." Rainbow shrugged, and set off towards the train station at a leisurely enough pace that Corsica could keep up.

---

It took three hours of waiting, during which Rainbow left and came back again with most of Twilight's friends in tow, but Wheelcakes eventually arrived.

"Still holding me to our deal?" she asked Corsica as the other passengers boarded, the late afternoon sun hanging low in the sky.

"Yep." Corsica grinned. "Any chance this is your last run for the day?"

Wheelcakes nodded. "Someone else gets to handle the night trains. I've been driving all day! But, a promise is a promise. After I get this last ride to Snowport. Hope you're fine ending there for the night, because that's where I sleep."

"Spiffy." Corsica winked. "Even if it's as boring as you say, I've gotta see this magic for myself."

Corsica settled comfortably into the train car cushions to wait. The car was fuller than on the way in, its passengers mostly equine and mostly looking like they were on their way home after a full day's work. But surely as a cripple, no one would ask her to scrunch up and share a bench, right?

The last two creatures to enter were Seigetsu and Halandyne.

"Hello," Halandyne said, surveying the train car before wandering over and taking the bench opposite Corsica. "You didn't seem bothered by my presence this afternoon, so I assume you will be similarly unbothered now."

"You two know each other?" Seigetsu asked, amused, standing at the entrance to Corsica's booth.

"Sure. Make yourself at home." Corsica flicked her tail in welcome, unwilling to muster the strength to lift her head.

Seigetsu took a seat next to Halandyne. "You seem to have been keeping yourself busier than advised," she noted.

Corsica flicked her ears. "Sue me. I want stuff again."

Seigetsu nodded, sitting back and folding her arms.

"So are you two working together on top-secret church business?" Corsica asked, glancing between Halandyne and Seigetsu, recalling how difficult it was to pry information out of Halandyne earlier. "Or am I not allowed to know?"

"Merely attempting to catch up on my backlog from spending a month following you," Seigetsu acknowledged. "Though from what Her Majesty tells me, I may as well have to give up on that altogether."

Corsica cracked a grin. "You're getting shoveled into our party long-term to keep an eye on some treasure we might be dragging up north?"

"A crude way of putting it," Seigetsu said. "But yes. I am being 'shoveled into your party' to 'keep an eye on some treasure'. With luck, this will also further my other duties, but that possibility is tertiary to the will of the Convocation."

Corsica's eyes slid over to Halandyne. "Other duties such as... what she's helping you with?"

"Halandyne is Yelvey's replacement in Snowport," Seigetsu explained. "A much higher-ranking and more-tested member of the Order of Silence, given the circumstances... and yes, the task both of us are working on at present is discovering what happened to her predecessor after he fled the city."

"You got any thoughts on those three polar bears?" Corsica asked, her mind snapping to the brainwashed trio in Fauntleroy's bar.

"Almost certainly the doing of a member of the Order," Seigetsu said.

"You say that like it's not necessarily Yelvey?" Corsica raised an eyebrow.

Seigetsu sighed. "Snowport is unique among Cernial's lands in that Yelvey... is not our first cleric to go missing. Some years ago, when the city was controlled by an entirely separate lord and administration, another member of the Order vanished without a trace. I should stress that in Cernial, this is an exceedingly rare event, and to suffer two instances in the same location not three decades apart is completely unheard of. The first time this happened, it resulted in inquisitions. The second time... Let us just say that Yelvey's actions have many in the Convocation believing Snowport to be cursed."

Corsica frowned at Halandyne. "This first time wouldn't happen to be the name you asked me about this morning, would it? Nar-something?"

"Nencosay," Halandyne said. "It would. A prevailing theory is that our inability to find her is because she crossed the mountains to the north."

"The Convocation is not wont to let a single case of mutiny among the Order's ranks go without investigation," Seigetsu explained. "As a Special Inquisitor, I have made solving this notorious cold case to be my life's work. And now Yelvey's own disappearance has turned it from a cold case into one hot enough to merit the intervention of senior clergy..." She closed her eyes and let out a breath. "But if the Convocation decrees that my presence is more needed in the north, then so be it. And perhaps I will find a clue as to my target's whereabouts on that side of the mountains, along the way."

"I get it." Corsica glanced between the two of them again. "So this is like you handing off your case to a new investigator before you get stuck with us for a while."

"Yes," Seigetsu said stiffly. "You could put it that way."

Huh. No wonder she was feeling talkative about it. Corsica didn't want to guess how old Seigetsu was, but having her life's work taken from her and given to someone else at the whim of her superiors... What would it even feel like to have a goal she had been chasing for years, let alone lose it to circumstances beyond her control?

It was impressive she was handling it so civilly. Corsica nodded, concealing her jealousy. And then, just because she could, she replied, "Well, I wish you find a killer clue in Ironridge with us."

Seigetsu gave her a knowing look. "That no longer does anything of note, though I do appreciate the sentiment."

"I know, right?" Corsica grinned, her mind blissfully free of looming wishes and penalties. "I'm just glad I can root for someone again and actually put my heart into it. I mean it. I hope you get the lead of the century."

"It is not impossible," Seigetsu admitted. "When I first found you and your friends in Stillwater, I assumed Halcyon to be a bearer of the same kind of power that the Order of Silence possess, and thus an indicator that Nencosay - or someone else versed in those arts - had made the trip to the north. Though I now know that she must be something far different, there are enough similarities to give me hope that more clues may reveal themselves in the north, with time."

Corsica rolled her eyes. "If you're specifically looking for anything related to Halcyon's brand of weirdness, you'll be drowning in clues. Trust me. You should actually be careful what you wish for."

"Advice born of experience, no doubt," Seigetsu said. "I suppose we will see how it plays out."

---

Little more of interest was said, and eventually the train pulled into the station at Snowport, its passengers disembarking one by one until it was just Corsica, Wheelcakes, and Rainbow Dash's entourage.

Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy and Rainbow had all turned out for the field trip to nowhere, apparently, and as Corsica quizzed each one of them on their reasons for being here, she soon found it was pointless to question it.

"Are you crazy?" Pinkie asked, giving her a wide, sideways stare. "Trains can't just run in place and look like they're moving without going anywhere. That would be bizarre! Of course I want to come see it in action!"

"You know, Pinkie," Applejack pointed out, "you've done some much stranger things than just running in place without going anywhere before."

Pinkie patted one of the seats lovingly. "That just means the train is a kindred spirit."

"Well I, for one, have been boondoggled by this whole never-ending train business ever since it started," Rarity declared. "And as an avowed lover of solving mysteries, I'm quite relieved someone has finally gotten some pieces together to try and tackle it... Thank you, Corsica, darling. Besides, if I don't see this phenomenon for myself and simply take everyone else's word that accepting Discord's help is the only way of getting back to Ponyville in one piece, not to mention making future travels for business endeavors..." She wiped her brow, looking mildly overwhelmed. "Let's just say that there will be a loophole, and I'll do my part and more to see that we find it."

"Um, I'm just here for emotional support," Fluttershy added. "Since none of you seemed to listen to the warnings that this actually doesn't feel very nice, somehow."

"Right," Rainbow announced. "So, how are we doing this?"

Wheelcakes satisfied herself that all other passengers had left the train, and then nodded, sliding the door shut. "I'll take us down the southeast tracks that would usually take us around the coast of the Griffon Palm Sea and eventually get us to Catantan, where Our Town was. The alternative is going back towards the Crystal Empire, then taking either the south junction towards central Equestria or the west junction deeper into Cernial, but because that area of the tracks is local enough that the magic doesn't stop me, it would take at least an hour to reach the point where things start going weird. Southeast, it should start much faster. And I'll just go until you tell me to turn around."

"Sounds good," Corsica agreed. "Any objections?"

"Yeah, let me off," Rainbow said, moving to open a window and preparing to climb out of it. "I just thought of a better idea: why don't I fly along above you and watch the train and the land around it from the sky? I bet I can keep pace with a measly magic train. And if I can't, that'll be interesting to know, too."

"Have fun!" Pinkie waved energetically.

Corsica glanced around. "Any other objections?"

None were voiced, and so Wheelcakes moved back to the engine, leaving the door open so everyone could see and communicate with her as the train pulled away from the station and slowly picked up speed.

"Right, then," Rarity said, pulling out a notepad and quill. "I'll be on landmark-watching duty. Primary objective: detecting if we've crossed the same terrain twice, and creating a ledger so that on our way back, we can see precisely which parts are skipped."

"I'll help with spotting," Applejack added. "I've got a good eye for the lands."

Methodology was good. As a scientist, Corsica approved... but what she really wanted was to stare into the illusion and see if it stared back.

Because it had to be an illusion, right? Something, whether on the trip out or the trip back, or maybe both, was desynced from reality. She watched idly as Pinkie Pie threw a rope out the window and dragged it along the ground beside them as the train moved; so long as the wheels didn't clip it, that was smart. It would let her verify that the ground out there was actually solid.

The train moved faster, passing between two hills and entering a deciduous grove. That pass was very memorable. The note-takers would remember it for sure; she heard Applejack commenting to Rarity about what kind of trees those were. Nothing Corsica saw looked blurred or fuzzy; Pinkie's rope was properly brushing the ground. All signs indicated that the world around them was real.

Keeping her focus sharp was a trial, but Corsica was invested, and her attention didn't waver: no supernatural distraction forced her to blink, no lapses in attention span covered up a mystical discontinuity in the land around them. The grove ended in a bridge across a stream, and the tracks curved ever so gently to the left, crossing a wide, saddled valley with long green grass, moving towards a low range of mountains in the distance that were just steep enough not to have soil.

At their present speed, how long would it take to reach the mountains? Corsica craned her neck, winced at the movement, and noted the forest receding behind them. Probably... No way it would be less than ten minutes. Curious, she closed her eyes and began counting seconds under her breath.

It was a skill she had acquired in Icereach for flexing on her peers when doing experiments in school, and time had done nothing to dull her senses - not that it had been more than a week. When ten minutes had passed, free from any blips or shakes in her stream of consciousness that could have heralded magical interference, she opened her eyes.

The mountains were close now, and they were still in the same valley, the sea visible in the distance to the north.

Come on. When would the supernatural stuff start?

They reached the mountain pass, the ridges rising just high enough to block her view of the terrain around her, hewn away by whoever constructed the rails in times of yore. Surely this would be it, right? When she couldn't see anything of note around her? This would be where the mumbo jumbo started. They would emerge from the mountains and be right back at the start of that valley...

The pass came to an end with another bridge, and from the river far below, Corsica realized they had gained substantial height since they went in. Why hadn't she been watching their elevation? Had the train just pulled a fast one on her? A raised plateau was coming up, flat and unremarkable save for a smattering of lone trees, and as the train crested its lip, she saw instantly that it went on farther than she could see.

Infinitely repeating terrain. That had to be this plateau. She could taste it already. The few trees that they passed barely counted as landmarks, and could easily start repeating...

And yet, not five minutes had passed before the tracks veered gradually to the edge of the plateau, descending on a smooth, gentle ramp towards the shoreline far below. Corsica could see them stretching out at least a mile in the distance, running near to the beach, crossing a bridge over another tributary, eventually becoming obscured in another grove on the horizon.

"How long does it usually take to start repeating?" she called forward to the engine.

"It doesn't repeat!" Wheelcakes called back. "It's just infinite. Everything after the grove we passed at the start, I've never seen this way before! If we went back and tried this again, none of it would be the same after around that point!"

"Perhaps we ought to give it a few more minutes still before turning back," Rarity offered. "So far these landscapes have been detailed and different enough that it's easy to keep a log of where we've been. I ought to be able to point out exactly what parts we skip on our way back, and the more we've seen before we turn around, the bigger of a splash it will make, so to speak."

So they kept going... at least until Rainbow Dash dropped down, rapping on the windows with a hoof to be let in.

Pinkie Pie opened her rope window further, and Rainbow tumbled inside, her mane blown back from a good high-speed flight.

"Whew!" Rainbow said, shaking herself out and fixing a stray feather. "So, has it gotten crazy down here yet? Because out there, I definitely noticed the spookies."

"What have you seen?" Fluttershy asked, as Rarity and Applejack pointedly kept their focus on the terrain.

"So," Rainbow said, as Corsica rolled over to listen. "I set out to keep pace with the train, right? And at first, I could match it perfectly. But the longer I flew, the more the train started falling behind. And even when I slowed down to let it catch up, it, like, didn't work?" She scratched her head. "I really don't understand it. Like, you were moving forward, and it looked like your speed was constant? Except it wasn't, because after a point, you just never caught up to me even if I stopped and hovered in place. And the craziest thing is, to reach you guys again, I had to fly backward. Back towards the train, right? And the train moved away from me, backwards, even though it was still moving forwards according to my eyes. Trying to get back to you guys felt like catching up to someone in a race, even though it looked like we were rushing straight at each other. It was the trippiest thing ever."

Corsica listened, both eyebrows going up.

"I'm pretty sure, like..." Rainbow waved a wing. "I probably actually backtracked the exact same distance to get back to you guys as I flew while thinking I was gaining just a little ground, in terms of what it feels like I flew. And I'm a pro, I know my flying distances. So I think you might actually be stuck in one physical point in space right now, even though it looks and feels like you're going forward? Ask an egghead, that's just what I saw. But let me tell you, there's definitely something going on here."

As Corsica listened to Rainbow's spiel, a sensation slowly began to grow in the back of her mind... or perhaps it had always been there, and she was just now noticing it. But it was a sensation she knew intimately well, and never wanted to feel again.

A premonition flux. A wish waiting to come true.

"Sounds like maybe we should stop the train and think this through," Applejack offered. "If we've come far enough that the magic is kicking in, it's not like we'll learn more by spinning our wheels. Besides, all of a sudden I'm getting the shakes for some reason, and I wonder if this is the feeling we were warned about."

"I can feel it too," Fluttershy murmured. "I know you said to expect this, but I feel like we should go back home for some reason."

Part of Corsica sagged in relief: the others could feel it too. This wasn't her talent returning to exact its vengeance. Another part of her bristled in anger: how dare the railroad employ a force like this to accomplish its job? Could its architect really not have thought of something less wantonly destructive?

And a third part recoiled in fear. She had lost her mind to this power before, felt her soul destroyed from blow after crushing blow until she could no longer muster the will to live anymore.

Her new flame was precious. She could not risk it for something as idle as curiosity, no matter how much she wanted to smash this dumb system and break it over her heel.

Could she?

The train ground to a stop as the others talked around her, debating the merits of pressing on versus turning back and trying to objectively analyze each other's - and their own - cowardice. It would have been amusing to listen to, if Corsica wasn't so torn by her own dilemma. Take the smart road, give in to her foreboding and do what the train magic obviously wanted? Or fight back against something that was incredibly stupid?

She had spent the entire ride trying to pierce the illusion and finding nothing amiss, she noted. The feeling only sprung up when Rainbow Dash swooped in, offering concrete evidence that not all was as it should be. This might be a reactive power, intelligently applied, or perhaps applied in response to her own thoughts and emotions. By that measure, trying further to piece together how the phantom terrain worked would only increase the penalty she would have to pay.

But... Corsica had only broken last time under three years of unrelenting pressure. It wasn't any individual wish that had undone her; it was the collective lack of oxygen, her inability to ever be free and recover, the fraying of her support system and her social life and everything else going wrong around her when she had no way to cope. Others who knew about her talent had remarked about her resilience, how it was borderline incredible that she had carried the weight of the Artifice of Hope for so long. And she was fairly sure that she really was back at her prime now. So long as she didn't subject herself to that unending purgatory again, she was almost certain she could shrug off a single large blow with no long-term consequences.

If lack of space to recover was what had doomed her before, then so long as she had space to recover, she could be fine. And she would have that space, because she no longer had a special talent that would sap her every stray thought. Corsica smirked at the world. If this was the best defense it had to offer, she had already taken this and more.

To sate her curiosity, and more than that, to spite the system, it was worth it to push the boundaries.

"Screw the magic," she announced, rolling towards the train doors. "Screw the rules. I'm gonna go outside and touch some grass. Who's with me?"

Some of Twilight's friends looked at her like she was crazy, and in the end, only Rainbow joined. "Uh, I'm not a coward, just saying," Rainbow offered as Wheelcakes reluctantly opened the doors. "But just so you know, even though we were told we'd have a bad feeling about this, I have a bad feeling about this."

"Oh, this could be a lot more than a feeling," Corsica promised, eyeing up Pinkie's rope. "Hey, could you tie that to my roller? Just in case I get smote by the powers that be and you need to drag my unconscious carcass back into the train."

A burnt-out ghost of a mare flickered in Corsica's vision as Rainbow obliged, and Corsica swept it aside. She was fresh. And maybe a little headstrong and stupid as a result, and maybe she was trying so hard to put her dead self out of her mind that she was forgetting the lessons she had learned from that. But even as the mountain grew in the back of her mind, a little spark of rightness pushed her forward, a feeling she couldn't understand and had never really felt before. She knew how this would go, at its very worst. She had felt the clobbering of a premonition flux before. As long as she had room to breathe, she could recover from anything it did to her. So, this was a way of facing her past, wasn't it?

That was a good way to think of it. Corsica rolled out, Rainbow flying carefully behind her, onto the grass next to the train tracks.

It felt... solid enough. Its blades brushed at her fetlocks, at least where they could reach around her little silver shoes. But when she reached down to take a nibble, it tasted faint, and she couldn't be sure that she had swallowed anything at all.

"Faker," Corsica told the landscape, with its violet evening sky and scattered, towering clouds that had been drizzling earlier in the day and would probably start again before morning. "Might be pretty. Sure ain't real. That's how illusions work, right? You see through them and then they vanish? So what's your deal?"

With her telekinesis, she grabbed around for a stick or something that could serve as a souvenir, but there was a lack of organic debris laying around in the grass. So, instead, she popped off one of her shoes, held it in her aura, and started using it as a shovel to dig a hole.

"You like being interacted with?" Corsica asked, the mountain in her mind growing. "You actually have any dirt under there, or are you just surface-deep? What is this, some kind of touchable projection that scrolls along while we're stuck here? Why can't we just move? And what would you do to a poor, determined mom who doesn't know what your deal is and pushes too hard because she just wants to see her kid again, huh? You able to weigh motives? Bet you hers is better than mine. Mine's just..."

Rainbow called something from behind her, but Corsica realized too late that she couldn't hear: the sound of voices and the sea and the wind in her ears had been replaced by that same awful buzzing that surrounded her special talent in the engine of the Immortal Dream. This was the fever pitch, the breaking point, and as the mountain in Corsica's mind teetered on the edge of a cliff, she rejected her last chance to turn back, stabbing the ground once more with her shoe. "Screw you!"

The mountain fell. Corsica felt it coming, knew its weight, braced herself for the crippling exhaustion and loss of all she had just come to care about. She propped herself up on that small little spark that told her there was nothing it could subject her to that she hadn't seen before, growled in defiance... and slowly trailed off in confusion as nothing happened.

Her spirit didn't break. The mountain didn't even hit her at all.

Instead, it hit the ground beneath her hooves. With a sound like breaking glass, Corsica felt the land below her give way, and with a surprised yelp, she fell.

---

"Unnngh..."

Corsica had fallen off her roller. Her entire body stung; it would be a miracle if nothing had re-broken. But aside from the brief shock of tumbling and a hard landing, her mind felt fine. No missing desires, no quenched flames. She was, at least mentally, okay?

She pried open her eyes. Her mind might have been fine, but the world around her was anything but.

Plants and grass were sparse around where she had landed, and grew sparser as she looked towards the railroad tracks... Or where the railroad should have been. Instead, a few short hoof-lengths from where she lay, the ground dropped away in a sheer chasm that burned with yellow energy, radiating up in waves that looked like an aurora made of sunbeams.

Pillars rose from the chasm in regularly-spaced intervals, made from gray metal and dotted with crystals and cables that glowed, blinking at regular intervals. At the top of the pillars were supports, a raised railway track running between them, carving a latticed path through the sky about twelve feet over her head. Around the rails, she could see the ghostly outline of grassy terrain, replete with a jagged, shattered hole where she had broken the illusion and fallen through. Rainbow Dash was standing at the edge of the splintered hole, gaping down at her.

"I'm... sort of alright," Corsica groaned, praying that she hadn't cracked any ribs.

And then she saw the train.

Oh, it looked like a train on the surface. But from below, she saw the truth: that carriage car was just its back, and the engine was nothing but a protrusion on top of its head.

Its huge, black, chitinous head, born of a cross between Princess Celestia's features and a stag beetle.

The creature's body was long and slender, but also hollow, the train tracks passing clean through a hole in the center. It was segmented like an ant, with a clear joint where the head-engine was connected to the body-coach, and looked as though it could become as long as it wanted by adding more cars. Elegant, spidery legs straddled the true earth on either side of the canyon. And it was watching her.

It was at once sickeningly grotesque and possessed of an ageless dignity, a kind of nobility or soul that only gods could match, befitting a creature that predated the equine race. Corsica thought she saw kindness and wisdom in its empty eyes, and pain and shame as well.

She glanced again at the hole in the illusory terrain... but before she could think too hard, the ground began to shake.

The train looked away from her, down the tracks. And then it stepped to the side.

Corsica stared, baffled, as the tracks simply phased through its body, the creature stepping off them and to the side. As it moved, the illusory terrain moved with it: in fact, it almost seemed grown into the creature's body, as if the terrain was a part of it, somehow. And then another train appeared in the distance, its legs flying like a griffon fiddler's talons as lumbered forward at a staggering speed.

This new train was surrounded by a new set of illusory terrain, which moved both with it and relative to it, and Corsica's mind was just fast enough to realize that it would have looked like real, moving terrain to anyone riding the train on the surface. It extended a ways out before and beyond the second train, and the two beasts made eye contact as they passed, the second one pouring a torrent of yellow energy down into the chasm in the form of a laser beam running from a gland on the bottom of its chin.

As it moved on, Corsica saw a shimmering outline of chains in its wake, swaddling the tracks like translucent silver cobwebs... but those soon faded, as did the illusory terrain. Wheelcakes' train sidestepped back onto the tracks, its terrain once again moving with it as well. From Rainbow Dash's expression, no one on the surface had noticed the second train's passage at all.

Corsica's mind might have been safe from the premonition flux, but this... this just might break her. At a loss for words, she locked eyes with the train, noticing a small cloud of crackling yellow thunderheads around the gland on its chin the former had been using to shoot its laser into the chasm. The illusory terrain was part of the trains, and the hole she had made...

"Sorry," Corsica whispered, wincing once again at the motion. "Didn't mean to hurt you. I'll... try to fix that. As soon as I can stand again."

Comments

[Venlinelle]

Well then.

"Given the way things tend to go around me," Starlight sighed, "it probably is a foregone conclusion..."

"Can you see no possible way this could go wrong?" Starlight entreated, giving Celestia a deadpan stare. Looking at an alicorn like that, Corsica decided, must have taken nerves of steel... That, or being so far beyond dead inside that she knew there was nothing even a princess could do to hurt her. Just like Corsica had been the last time she mouthed off in Celestia's presence, actually.

"I don't know why anyone expected anything else," Starlight deadpanned. "Why is it me? Are you sure you're not mistaking me for you-know-who that you used to hang out with all the time?"

"Great," Starlight said, wiping back her mane. "You know what, I'm actually not interested in learning how or why this is the case. Can I make Twilight your new boss? And if so, what's the least-complicated way to do it?"

She's so hilariously done. Watching Starlight get repeatedly forced by the universe to be the protagonist and the Most Important Pony Forever And Always is possibly my favorite part of this fic---it's funny, it's quite sad when you think about it, and I'm willing to bet she'll eventually complete an arc by accepting her role and it'll be extremely satisfying.

Seeing Corsica happy and determinedly focusing on a goal---particularly a goal which involves finding Maple---is equally cathartic, both for story reasons and personal ones.

The creature's body was long and slender, but also hollow, the train tracks passing clean through a hole in the center. It was segmented like an ant, with a clear joint where the head-engine was connected to the body-coach, and looked as though it could become as long as it wanted by adding more cars. Elegant, spidery legs straddled the true earth on either side of the canyon. And it was watching her.

Hey Celestia! I've got a few questions?

I do recall her saying to Corsica in Snowport that the price for her Artifice was paid long before it was made; there are a ton of things that could be referring to and I doubt the timeline even works out here, but, given that these creatures resemble her and clearly use some sort of Knowledge-related power, I wonder if she somehow sacrificed part of herself to create them or maintain them?
I don't see how that would causally connect, but it's the only thought I currently have.
EDIT: Nope! The trains are specified as being created alongside the Aldenfold by Celestia using the Virtue of Knowledge, which was after the Artifices were created. I'm back to having no ideas.

I'm willing to bet (though not a large amount) that the area Corsica has fallen into is the real space between populated areas in Equestria, and that it's where Maple ended up stuck.

[Okie Brony]

Holy (long string of curse words), things got weird there at the end. Reminds me of the subway-eating worm from "Men in Black." Loved Wheelcakes' "train" stepping out of the way so the other "train" could pass.

Spider-Train, Spider-Train, does whatever a spider-train does! Can he swing from a web? No, he can't, he's a train. Look out! He is a spider-train.
🕷

("Centi-Train" would be more accurate, but "Spider-Train" is funny.)

[BurningSkies]

Black, chitinous insect things give me changeling vibes. And given that changelings are the "true form" of batponies, created with the Artifice of Hope, an insectoid form might be a "creature made by the Virtues/Artifices" thing. Maybe Indus had a thing for bugs? Or maybe bugs just look cool in a weird way.

[Venlinelle]

11902708
Yeah, I'm thinking similarly. Strictly speaking batponies are made of ether, so we don't know that creatures created with the other Virtues (which presumably have different accompanying substances) would have visual similarities, but it seems like an obvious thematic connection.

The fact that they resemble Celestia is very strange, though. I mean, she made them (presumably), but it's not like batponies look like Luna.

[PropsValroa]

Trains are alive, and bug-like creatures then. Celestia has a lot of answering to do.