Act I: Chapter II
Advancement
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For the one million, four hundred and sixty thousand, three hundred and sixty fifth time in recorded history, the sun had begun its ascent. Curious rays peeked from the row of mountains in the distance, sending lines of illumination sweeping across the frozen ground. The faint warmth failing to melt the snow, and successfully making Twilight's skin crawl beneath her coat.
Twilight missed being able to enjoy the sun, but even in the Frozen North she felt uncomfortably warm in its presence, like an unwelcome blemish beneath Celestia's charge, warranting a blazing glare of suspicion. She knew it wasn't true, Celestia didn't know about this. She couldn't. Twilight couldn't have bore the thought of Celestia's ancient heart breaking another time. No, she'd never know.
Twilight sighed, today was going to be a long day. Looking over her shoulder, she carefully watched the peacefully sleeping pegasus breath in the smells of the meal Twilight had cooked.
"Y'know it's kinda creepy, watching ponies sleep." Rainbow had subtly opened her eye, examining the impassive, yet eternally sombre face of Twilight. Looking around, she spotted a small fire, happily crackling with very real flames, and boiling some soup that smelled distinctly like honey.
"Honey? Really Twilight?" She asked, the substance had become a staple food for the sole living member of the duo.
"Yes, really. Honey is surprisingly good at staying preserved. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard of it going off." Twilight easily slipped into her egghead mode, throwing away the heavy hood of old memories.
Rainbow chuckled at this, finding herself slightly better from a good night's sleep. "But in a soup? This might even be worse than the time you burned that ice!" Twilight still didn't know how she had done it, and had spent the entire night trying to replicate it.
"You need your strength Rainbow, I shouldn't have had any last night; you can't keep this up forever." Twilight's concern was probably the only other expression she wore. Probably because she couldn't blush, and something about 'lack of hormones' or something like that.
"Like I said, I'll be fine. In fact, how about you say sorry by trying the soup? I know you can still taste food, Twi." Rainbow's weak smile betrayed her well being to Twilight. Who promptly gave in; if it'd make Dash happy, then she'd do it.
"Fine. I still don't like the idea of wasting your food." Rainbow's smile lit up like a hearth's warming eve tree. Motioning the mare forwards, Twilight resolutely pulled a small globule of liquid into the air. Hesitantly Twilight moved it into her mouth, allowing the warmth to reignite forgotten neurons.
Taste was an interesting thing for Twilight, after the curse. She could taste things as normally as anypony else, but it didn't tug at her appetite. It was a paradox of perfect clarity in sense, but numbness to appeal. Not even chocolate could pull her interest any more. Only that terribly wonderful liquid.
Twilight made a face. It wasn't bad per-say, it just didn't seem all that appealing. "It's fine Rainbow, just a little bland." In truth it was nothing compared to her normal food.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Twilight, you're drooling again." The mentioned mare's eyes lit up in shock, and Twilight promptly shook her head in a feeble attempt to escape the terrible thoughts.
"Seriously, am I really that tasty?" Dash asked, curiously peering over her soup towards the other mare, whose ears folded back.
"Like you couldn't imagine." Twilight responded, desperately attempting to avoid thoughts of doing terrible things to her friend. Terrible things that she knew she'd enjoy.
Rainbow harrumphed, turning back to her soup. The meal passed in silence, neither party saying much as the sun continued its ascent, causing Twilight to shift uncomfortably. With a clatter of ancient pottery, Rainbow stood up, daring smirk signalling her readiness to start a new day. How could she do it?
"Ok, let's go!" She declared, moving towards the mouth of the cave they had used to shelter her from the blizzard. Twilight nodded, moving to follow her rainbow maned companion.
-&-
Another town. This one was slightly more impressive than the last, proud spires piercing the sky, their crumbling state revealing hidden mechanisms of snow covered brass. Sparse, presumably decorative, cables hung freely from building to building, icy daggers softly swaying in the weak morning breeze. Softly chanting jingling threats to passersby, waiting to impale the two travellers.
Rainbow, of course, was innocent to the threat quite literally hanging above their heads as she gawked at the decorations, entranced like a foal in a candy store. Of course this candy store would be '20% cooler' than the other 'lame' ones. Ears upright, and eyes wide, she turned to Twilight.
"I wonder, who was more advanced, us or them?" Rainbow asked, tone searching for answers from her purple friend. The answer was obvious. Equestria, right? Under the princess' rule, things like trains and electricity were beginning to become common, even the magic of computers were emerging slowly into the market.
"That's silly Rainbow, we're more advanced." Rainbow gave an odd look.
"Is it silly Twilight? What about those gears over there, or the moving wall thing?" She asked, throwing away her ruse of stupidity to implore Twilight to reexamine the way she thought. Twilight was having none of it.
"The gears are decorative, and I still say you imagined the whole moving wall thing; there was hardly any radiation there." She scathed, somehow managing to let her bodily cold slip into her tone.
"How could you know that? They could be part of some machine we don't understand!"
"Okay then, how about we put your hypothesis to the test?" Twilight quipped, visibly annoyed with her companion.
"Great!" Rainbow chirped in response, undeterred by the ice in her friend's tone. Shaking her head, Twilight turned towards the closest of the towers with gears showing, a surprisingly sturdy construction sporting a plethora of open windows and decorations, barely visible at this distance, allowing snow to gently fall onto the partially hidden staircase beyond. The trek would be treacherous due to the snow, however the duo had learned to adapt to the icy biome.
Twilight shot Dash a glare, who simply rolled her eyes and unfurled her wings. With a strong flap, and a small jump, Rainbow Dash was airborne once again. Normally Rainbow loved to fly, preferring it to the "boring" walking ponies normally partook in, however Twilight's increasingly non-recently acquired diet kept her too lethargic to comfortably fly as she used to. Much to Dash's chagrin.
Twilight's safety, of course, was irrelevant. Her condition seemed to be highly conductive to not dying an embarrassing death on a set of stairs. Cautiously they entered the marble structure, intricate designs forming elegant yet sturdy pillars, each pillar joining with two others to form an ascending row of arches, seemingly windowless by design, with small mounds of snow piling through them onto the icy stairs. Facing inwards, the arches revealed mosaics depicting dulled scenes of various mythological creatures and ancient figures. And on occasion, an aperture to often sparse circular rooms.
Within the hour, both travellers found themselves at a barrier where the stairs ended, with an open arch leading inwards to another circular room. However, rising out of the centre, a small spiral staircase leading upwards into a hidden room.
Climbing it revealed a scene that made Twilight's blood run even colder.
The room was about twenty-seven yards in diameter, white marble theme still remaining indoors. Random devices and diagrams adorned the walls, pausing around a large, slanted cylinder attached to a system of cogs, peering out through a narrow slit in the domed ceiling.
It was an observatory.
For Twilight, the scene was too familiar. Shaking herself free of her own ghosts, she cautiously made her way around the room, inspecting the assorted artifacts.
Surprisingly, not a single boast was heard from Rainbow, the lack of sound was deafening to her ears. Which she found had plastered themselves to her head.
"Twilight, you ok?" She asked.
"No but I'll liv-, I'll be fine." She stated, feebly attempting to mask her gnawing anxiety.
"Well, this is obviously an obser-, observer-"
"Observatory." Twilight amended.
"Observatory, so maybe we can learn more about their history? Who knows, it could be like one of those Daring Doo novels, and there's a clue hidden away right beneath our noses!"
"It wouldn't hurt to try..." Twilight admitted, eager to let her scientific curiosity chase away the lingering haunts of her past.
Walking towards the telescope, Twilight saw a series of levers, six in total, forming a dull brass plus shape, gleaming in the reflected snow-light. Shrugging, Twilight pulled the leftmost lever with her magic.
A mechanical groan echoed through the building, shaking the floor beneath their hooves, freeing ancient snow from it's resting places, allowing a sole ray of intense light to skim Twilight's coat and illuminate the floor. Twilight ignored the minor burning pain, and turned to Rainbow.
Dash was clearly alarmed, wings raised in the instinctive urge to appear both more intimidating, and ready her to take to the air at a second's notice.
"What the hay was that!?"
"I think, I think the levers control the telescope."
"Hmm, that's odd, if they do why're there six?" Dash said. Twilight gave Rainbow an odd look, the latter rolled her eyes and explained.
"Every junior weatherpony learns that there are three angles a pegasus can use: their pitch, yaw and roll. I get the telescope using pitch and yaw, but what's the point of having roll? Unless it does something else..." She had a point, tentatively Twilight used her hoof to move the leftmost deviant lever. Nothing happened. However, the lack of burning on her side revealed the previously searing beam of light had expanded into a pale circle of illumination.
"It controls a focussing lense." Twilight's mouth opened slightly in bewilderment. What's the point of having an adjustable lense? Let alone one this powerful? It didn't make sense. Casting her glance around, Twilight studied the room with renewed interest. Eyes ever widening in growing shock.
"They were studying the stars... but why? Why in so much detail? You don't need a lense that big to see them. Erg! This doesn't make sense!" There was nothing to the stars. They were pale spots of magical light Cel-Luna decorated her night sky with. Nothing more, nothing less, regardless of their haunting beauty.
"Maybe there's more to it than you thought. Ya know I've already proven you're wrong." She had a point. It seemed Twilight had rubbed off on her.
"Assuming you're right, then what could it be?"
"I dunno, read some of those notes, they probably know. I'll go see if I can make those panels show moving pictures again." Twilight suppressed a groan at her intellectually bipolar friend. Looking around, she grabbed and studied a sheet with what appeared to be a diagram of a constellation. Her knowledge of ancient Equestrian had improved with her stay in the Frozen North, however the scientific sheet proved a worthy adversary to her growing vocabulary.
"Hmm... planets... satellites... grr, what does it mean!?" Stars having planets? She must've misread the papers, and what the hay were satellites?
"Hey Twilight, I got the pictures to move again."
Lightning fast, Twilight turned to face Rainbow Dash. The panel in front of her was glowing softly, projecting the words she roughly translated at as:
"Project Celestis: 74.2%? What?" Before she could finish, the number jumped to one hundred.
Metallic clangs attacked their ears as the arches closed themselves with metal covers, and the grinding of cogs heralding the staircase's descent out of the room, plugging the last vestige of light from them. A low hum followed the air as a pair of cool blue lights, one on the ceiling and one directly below, lit.
With a flash a cool blue sphere hovered between them, slowly rotating on its axis.
"Is... is that the world?" It was irrelevant who ask the question as they both stared into the hauntingly familiar image of their map.
"This doesn't make sense; the round Equus theory hasn't been proven, there's simply no evidence!" Twilight shouted, anger rising in her throat.
"Whoever they were, these ponies thought different. Hey, maybe it's a map, to the cure!"
A cool voice that, if it had a color, would be blue, calmly resonated through them in ancient Equestrian. Twilight quickly began translating. "User: 'Unknown', state your business."
"Uhh, we're here to find a cure for her curse; the one princess Luna had." Rainbow asked. Surprisingly, the spirit was able to understand. What else did it know?
"User recognised, welcome 'Project: Ascendant'. The project you have mentioned is not recognised. Inferred project is 'Project: Eternal', is this correct?" The voice asked, it's words bearing more questions than one for the purple mare.
"Uh, I guess."
Wordlessly, the image of Equus began to deform into a flat image, resembling a table. Upon the table lay a detailed map of the Frozen North, with evenly spaced lines creating a precise grid. The lines for some reason were ever so slightly curved.
A blue dot hovered above a random point on the map, to then slowly drift across the map and disappear over another location. "Error: Satellite data unavailable, projected route and topography has been estimated."
"Thanks. So, Twi, d'ya think this is it?"
"Seems so..." Before Twilight could continue, the voice returned, an almost panicked quality within it's speech.
"Warning: Core destabilisation imminent. Estimated time to decimation: -Error: Sensory receptors are returning null -Error: Null-" The voice's speech hastened with each utterance of error. A low rumble punctuating its implicated fear.
"Error: Motor controls returning null, resetting available motors." Knifelike, the metal panels slid away whilst the staircase rose angrily from the floor. The duo wordlessly descended it, sensing the encroaching danger.
"Error: System clock is returning null-"
Hurriedly they descended the outer stairs, racing to escape whatever death may befall them.
"Warning: Connections to projects one through one hundred fo-"
The tower began to shake as they left, elegant columns unable to hold the building under such duress. The voice hauntingly echoing throughout the town.
"Alert: Sleeper cells activated, await further as-"
Further and further they ran, the town's whole structure rumbling like a child's toy.
"Warning: System preservation subroutine activa-"
There was a moment of stillness, a sound like a large bass drum had been beat, or the bass in one of Vinyl's raves had dropped. The air raced past them, rushing towards the town. A thundering boom echoed across the landscape. A flash of light, a wave of heat, nothingness.