Penumbral Prodigy

by JakTheYak

Hi, Do You Have A Moment to Talk About Our Lord And Savior Princess Luna?

Lumina’s eyes were strained to the absolute furthest just trying to see as the light of day got ever farther from the two mares. They were walking down a tunnel that was steadily becoming increasingly claustrophobic. All around them were what looked like the kinds of scraps and general refuse that one would expect from an urban beachfront. Scrap wood and metal of all shapes and decidedly poor quality littered the ground. Some pieces were cobbled together with a ramshackle construction that looked downright prehistoric. All were obviously discarded like whatever they were meant to be used for was either a failure or torn down and replaced. The stone around them was grey with blackened swirls and whips placed like they were set by flowing water. Portions of cave walls were jagged and irregular, most certainly not natural, and smooth and grainy in others. Did the thestrals take some preexisting tunnel network and expand them? They had to have done all of this by hoof!

Hoping to dissipate the silence that had settled over the two, Lumina turned to her new friend, “You never told me why you were screaming when you ran into me.”

“Oh yeah, that. Well you see, in this town the only rules are the ones the Council sets--”

“Like a city council? A bunch of stuffy ponies voted in to do nothing?” The unicorn snickered to herself.

“Nah, more like a pack leaders kinda thing. Don’t really have elections around here, people just kinda say they’re in charge and if no one questions it then they get to be in charge.” Hollow shrugged apathetically, like the rule of might wasn’t some misbegotten relic of savage prehistory.

Lumina was more than a pinch confounded as she tried to gather a full picture of the thestrals’ way of life, and how far removed her readings were from this apparent reality. “Well then, that’s certainly… new let’s say. How long has the City been run like this?”

There was a subdued fluorescent cyan glow in the distance. The sound of steadily dripping water had just dawned on Lumina, who suddenly found herself wetting her hooves walking atop wet stone. The ramshackle rudiments from the beginning of the cave were now beginning to take shape as the tunnel began to slope down, gaining depth extremely fast. The white thestral subconsciously began to lift off and keep her hooves from the damp floor, not noticing the mare now suddenly attempting to avoid the mare’s large, leathery wings until the other had tapped the flying tuft of white on a hoof. The two began to walk at a roughly worked staircase of cut stonework, with glowing mosses dangling from the ceiling and water diverted and flowing in gutters on either side of the path. Suddenly the tunnel opened up and Lumina’s breath escaped her in one deft motion. She and Hollow were standing on shoddy wooden planks, haphazardly tied together and bolted into the stone of the cave wall.

“Welcome to the land of the Thestrals, Nox Arcana! This place has got everything from black market goods to magic bling! Ha I guess you could say it’s a magic bling-thing!” Hollow’s giddy flutter and snorting giggles were cut short when she turned to her newest, and second total, friend. “Hey, what’s got you down?” she said, voice caught between concern and defensiveness.

“This… this place. It’s a Luna forsaken shithole…” Her jaw was dropped, ears pinned back firmly. What happened to these ponies? What happened to a noble spirit and ingenious feats of subterranean engineering? What of an expansive oral history of servitude to the moon? Were the records wrong? Or is it the ponies? Sweet Celestia’s sultry flank what in Tartarus has happened to them?

From the ceiling hung square bags whose unnatural tethers were held together by bronze rings from which a slimy substance dripped. The bags were shown prominently thanks to the glowing mass gradually creeping over their forms. The entire cave – A cavern easily the size of downtown Manehattan- was carved in a cross shape, akin to those of a hospital. The place was at least three stories tall with walls that curved, making the entire cross like the intersection of two cylindrical pipes. These pipes were however filled with refuse and thestrals. The gutter that had carried the water alongside the intrepid pilgrim and her guide emptied down into a canal of rusted cast iron, snaking downwards and upwards, preserving momentum, all along the upper levels. The ‘aqueduct’ ran off to the buildings on the upper levels before emptying into the large pool over the center, where the iron just stopped and let the water flow down. The two mares were standing at about two stories above the submerged floor. From here they could see layers and layers of buildings all seemingly built into every free modicum of cave, with others built on top of that. It was like a shanty town expanded a thousand-fold.

At the lowest point of the cross -where the floor probably once was- a body of slowly flowing water resided, with several rotting dwellings attached to the walls and on stilts plunging into the filthy depths lining it. Each hovel was hardened by the harrowing misery of being the bottom of an already thoroughly disgusting barrel. The lower levels were made of hastily worked stone interlocked by rotting planks, for they were the base and load bearers of the immense weight of the city upon their backs. Inside each building was the same cyan glow emanated by the fungus and moss; at least, those buildings below the halfway mark up the cave walls.

The ‘buildings’ at the higher points had the yellow-gold glow of candle light gently dancing from within. These buildings were made of polished irons and elegantly carved woods, free of rot and coated in a pristine gloss.

The water was a thick soup of algae and was illuminated by floating mosses, making it some of the best lit in the entire cavern. Spanning the gaps between the waterways were massive stone bridges, elegant in design but crusted over with mosses and filth. Scaffolds plummeting into the water to hold the immense weight of hundreds of ponies provided the “street” that one would expect from a more ordinary city, that is at the lower levels. Vendors and vagabonds of all types strolled and set up on the massive crisscrossing stilted boardwalks between the levels and along the fronts of hovels. As one ascended the scaffolds gave way to hanging bridges of wood and whatever material was holding the odd glowing masses hanging from the ceiling together. Along Hollow looked, aghast with the assault upon her home’s honor “Well now I know it’s not exactly prim, proper Prance, but you seemed like the kinda gal that would be able to handle Nox’s say… rough edges.” What the newcomer had said was true mind you, but still what right did she have saying that!? She’d not even been there a full hour!

“I’ve crawled through the gutters of every city in Equestria, don’t test me.” Lumina didn’t even bother to look at the mare, instead glaring daggers at the city as if were her enemy. “It’s a grimy sewer of a city, but I’ve had worse. Lets go meet this Hellfire Hearth of yours.” Her voice softened a little as she went on, quieting the instincts telling Hollow to take off and leave this strange unicorn alone.

“Oh boy I can’t wait to introduce you guys! It’s gonna be grand, trust me!” she flared her wings in a single deft flourish before artfully taking a quarter twirl and jumping into the air. Her movements her like that of a ballerina, even in flight she constantly was twirling and swooping as if every wingbeat was a cadence in a masterpiece for her to dance to. The display before Lumina mesmerized her, and it took Hollow looking a back and shouting for Lumina to catch up.

Hollow wasn’t exactly sure what angle this newcomer was working, and she seemed to be a bit testy. Eh beggars can’t be choosers mom always said. Besides, she needed some more friends, they were always in short supply in the city with everything.

Lumina judged about where she would be let out and jumped off the platform, plummeting towards the floor. Halfway down she felt the shadows wrap around her coat and, with a deep, focusing breath, she phased through the planes of reality. Down and down she went, onwards to oblivion. And… there! She rent reality once more and exploded at full gallop on a scaffold. Keeping stride, she weaved around the crowds of merchants and ponies and dove off the scaffolding. Pssh this is nothing compared to weaseling out of a Cold Hay concert with saddlebag of bit pouches! The wind whipped her braided mane back and forth as she dove, horn aglow, towards the next substantial patch of shadows. She hopped between shades and gloomy corners, constantly in fluid motion. Swinging on her forhooves from a cross beam, to a quick few paces on a wall. Only to jump off once more onto a darkened floor she had no intention of ever touching. Then exiting with full sprint going. The workout felt amazing, especially after so many hours of boring chariot ride. Eventually she zeroed back in on a particularly oddly white thestral and made a final jump before appearing behind the mare.

“Oh hey you made it! I actually kinda forgot you didn’t have wings back there, sorry about that” Hollow said sheepishly. “Well I’m glad you figured something out. Anywho, Hearth lives right up here.” She pointed her hooves to a mostly metal building a few paces up the walk from them. They were on one of the walkways that went perpendicular to the cave wall.

The scaffolds were attached via a ramshackle ramp with structural stability most akin to Twilight Sparkle when one of her plans blew up in her face. Every step was met with creaks and unsettling buckling underhoof.

As the two got closer to their destination, Lumina noticed that the smith’s forge was in an open air ‘porch’ attached to the side of the main building. The workstation was completely devoid of any wood, instead having a floor and facing wall of well-kept metals and stones intermingled in a haphazard, if effective hodgepodge.

“Ok look you wingless jerk-off, the boss said he wants yas ta stop producin’ goods for them Black Batz kids and that means yous best be stopping right now, or else.” A pair of dark coated stallions stood before the threshold of the smith’s workstation. Both had massive knives strapped visibly on their sides, as if to be both a warning and a challenge. They wore black and white suit vests and fedoras. Their speech was like horrifying halfassed fanboy imitation of actual Manhattan Mafia speech, and they spit the words “Black Batz” as if it were venom on their tongues.

“I already told you, the Council put it that I make tools for everyone. I can’t be picking favorites, and even if I could I’d sure as hell not be throwing my lot with you, Gundinos.” His voice was deep enough to shake a pony standing too close and had enough gravel to give a farm road an inferiority complex.

The stallion was a gargantuan slab of muscle and scarred over burns, easily dwarfing even Celestia’s largest guardsponies. One look at Hellfire’s face, eyes set with graven indifference and jaw taught, was enough to tell Lumina that those two stallions were complete idiots for picking this fight. He has a coat the color of ash, with orange flecks and several burn marks alongside a mane short, nearly buzzed, complimented by surprisingly tidy mutton chops. One of his sides was punctuated by an orange wing matching his mane, and the other was strangely missing its wing. There was a stub of bone which looked as though it did at one point have a wing attached. Before verbally backhoofing the ‘guests’ before him, he had set down a wickedly large forge hammer, whose head was easily the size of Lumina’s skull. His cutie mark was an anvil with a blazing pyre erupting from its surface.

His eye twitched almost negligibly, making flashing contact with Lumina’s gaze. In that second was all the time the Lumina needed to let him know exactly what to do.

“Well well, looks like you didn’t learn your lesson when you got that winga yours ripped off. You really shoulda taken the time to--”

His threat was cut short by Lumina appearing from under him and delivering a rib cracking uppercut. As Lumina was handling the first mobster, the forge pony hefted his hammer and gave the second a smith’s recreation of a mother’s disciplinary slap. The force of the impact sent the poor stallion sprawling several feet from where he once stood.

“Nice follow through.” Lumina was focusing her magic on lifting the knives from the crippled ponies.

“Nice initiative. I’m Hellfire Hearth.” His face was cocked with a half-smile. “Oh Hollow, hello. Sorry, it looks like your ‘running distraction’ didn’t help resolve things. Sorry about that kiddo.”

“Pssh don’t worry about it Helly--”

“I’ve told you not to call me that.” His face was that of an exasperated parent with a hyperactive filly.

“You say it like I’ll stop~” She singsonged in a sugar sweet ballad with eyelashes a flutter. “Anywho, this is my newest BFF, Spookums!” she made the exaggerated arm motions of salesmare showing of a brand-new product.

“Sup?” Lumina wasn’t entirely confident in these two tentative friends, but she was on her own in a wholly new, uncaring world within a world. She wasn’t at liberty to be picky.