Scootawolf turned around and found the Emberwolf staring down at her. Pride shone within its eyes. Where had it come from? How had it gotten there? From a second staircase, perhaps?
There was no time to worry: because Scootawolf discovered that being an emberwolf pup was the greatest feeling in existence. She glanced at her new body. Her fur was made from fine strands of red-hot coal, and like the Emberwolf, she was drenched in flames. But the flames didn’t burn her, didn’t scorch her, didn’t singe her. Rather, the sensation put her in mind of every night she had sat snuggled by the fireplace, toasty warm even as the freeze of winter had huddled around the cottage. She knew in her bones that, so long as she kept the fires of her heart stoked and burning, then she would never feel cold again.
Her stomach was a furnace. She blazed with so much energy that she couldn’t stand still, but she had to rush and run, bound and leap! Scootawolf jumped through the air and landed on her paws. She laughed and raced through the grass. She felt so light! She was feather-perfect. It was the feel of floating.
And where inside of the world had she found herself? It was somewhere deep underground, a buried continent not found on any maps. This was a place untouched by pony hooves. It was a land hidden from all those who refused to let fire into their hearts.
When she finally stopped running and returned to the Emberwolf’s side, Scootawolf was surprised to find no trace of the staircase. The fiery archway had vanished into thin air, and there were no burn marks to show where it had stood. However, she didn’t wonder for long at this mystery, for the pair of them stood on top of a hill overlooking the forests of the deep. They were as rich as rainforests, and steamy and hot. Unlike a real rainforest, however, the grass was made from ruby, and the trees were formed from all varieties of crystal, from basalt birches to crocoite redwoods, and trees with trunks of jasper. The leaves weren’t green but sumptuous red. They sparkled and glitter-glistened. There were rivers of magma and pools of molten rock. The ground itself glowed scarlet. Vast clouds of softly glowing mist engulfed the forests, making the air hazy, dreamy.
Above them shimmered stars.
Scootawolf gawped at the impossible sight. They were a hundred miles below the surface, yet the sky was the richest navy she had ever seen, and the stars were bright white and vivid blue. There were big ones and small ones. There were galaxies, mixed with shimmering nebula which seemed to vanish whenever she stared at them directly. Only in the corner of her eye could she spy them, like silver glowing clouds.
She peered closer – and gasped. Because amongst the lights of the stars, she spied stalagmites growing from the sky like the fangs of the night.
“Actually,” said the Emberwolf when Scootawolf pointed them out, “when they’re on the ceiling, they are called ‘stalactites’. Stalac-tight-to-the-ceiling! That’s how you remember it.”
“But – but what about the stars?” Scootawolf asked. “How in Equestria are there stars down here? That’s impossible!”
“Because they are not stars at all, Scootawolf. They are glow-worms.”
Scootawolf gaped at the stars-that-weren’t-actually-stars. They were glow-worms. They were millions upon billions of glow-worms, clinging to the navy crystal ceiling.
A shiver passed through her. Here the two of them stood inside the stomach of the Earth – yet, incredibly, it bristled with life. It teemed with heartbeats. For she saw now that it wasn’t just the glow-worms that called this land home, but that the forest too was alive with animals, with magma-birds blazing between branches and singing the music of the Buried Continent. Their songs were full of restless life. Their voices flickered, Scootawolf thought. They flashed, and they sparkled.
She spotted movement at the foot of the hill, near the treeline, and she smiled. She felt that her whole body smiled. With a wolf-proud bound, she rushed down the hill and scattered the herd of diamond deer that had wandered from out of the trees – deer with platinum hooves and opal antlers. Crystal monkeys hollered from the branches. There were bugs made from emeralds and sapphires. There were silver spiders, gold groundhogs, and a topaz tiger which pondered Scootawolf for a moment, before nodding at her and pouncing back into the forest.
And the smell, the wonderful, stomach-happy smell! The forest air smelled joyous. Scootawolf struggled to breathe it all in. The trees were ripe with crystal fruit, and she caught the scent of honey crystals spun from swarms of amber bees.
Her stomach growled with anticipation. With her mouth, she picked up a glinting apple from the ruby grass and bit into it greedily. Fresh, clear mineral juice burst into her mouth. It was sweeter than chocolate. It was more filling than a Hearth’s Warming dinner.
Scootawolf gorged on apples, crystal coconuts and pyrite pineapples until she thought she would pop. Then she wandered from the trees and back onto the hill and lay on her side in the grass. The soil was red. Close to, she saw that not only did the floor glow scarlet, but that its glow pulsed in time with the heartbeat of the Earth.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what the heart of the Earth might look like… a heart the size of Equestria, made from fire and electricity, and pumping in a cavern larger than the moon…
She sighed beautifully. Here, in the Buried Continent, she was separated from Mom and Dad’s arguments by a hundred miles of rock and fire. Her friends weren’t around to call her selfish or tell her that she had changed. Right then, she thought, the only pony she missed was Rainbow Dash.
(With a pang of guilt, she remembered Aunt Holiday and Aunt Lofty. Had they turned back to normal yet? Or were they still stuck as candle flames on their bedside?)
The Emberwolf stood over her again. “Time to get up, Scootawolf. Oh, you are going to love this, I promise you.”
Scootawolf gazed at the mighty flaming wolf. “Huh? What am I gonna love?”
The Emberwolf shot her a lava-wicked grin. “Why, we’re going to destroy the forest, of course,” it said.