The elevator slowed.
Starlight had lost count of how many exitless floors had passed by. Ten? Thirty? A hundred? The rational side of her brain knew that, when traveling upward from below the ground, one would eventually reach the surface, but she was a unicorn, not meant for flight and unused to thinking in vertical distances. For all she knew, they were nearing the peaks of the mountains.
Crawling to a stop, its double-doors slid open, revealing more blue stone. The chamber was jagged and cavelike, massive iron bulwarks reinforcing it where it might otherwise crumble. Rather than doors and passages, some of the walls simply melded into adjacent rooms, as if someone had carved house-sized pockets in the stone at random and they had happened to intersect. The only light came from blue-burning iron torches set into sconces high on the walls, and a deep chill permeated the stagnant air, causing Starlight to flinch and move slightly closer to Maple.
"I don't think we should be here," she murmured, put on edge by the area's ominous architecture. "Maple? This place is creepy."
Maple nodded mutely.
Sticking her head out around the edge of the elevator doors, Starlight saw another control panel, and perked as hard as her tired body would allow. "Should we go back down and try again?"
"N-No!" Maple shot a hoof out to pull her back, stammering. "Starlight, what if it takes us back down even further than we started? We don't know how the controls work, and there are a lot of guards down there...!"
"And somepony attacking the fortress," Starlight muttered. "But what should we do, then? We won't find any food in here and we're just going to get even more lost wandering around! Does this look like a maze or doesn't it?" She folded her forelegs. "It's cold, too."
"I'm sorry..." Tensely, Maple nuzzled her, eyes moist. "I don't know why I didn't think to pack at least some food! It's big, heavy and spoils quickly, and I thought we could buy some when we were here..."
Starlight raised an eyebrow. "What do you have?"
"Umm..." Maple hesitated. "Money, raincoats, some ballast, a few small things like our hotel key, a rope, and Selma's card key. I stole the last two." She hung her head. "And the card, I don't even know how to use..."
Starlight sighed. "So you just want to walk around until we find some stairs back down?"
"Yes. I..." Maple shuffled her hooves, standing up and taking one step toward the elevator door. "That might be the safest..."
Frowning, Starlight watched her take another. Very likely, they were up so high that there wouldn't even be a staircase back down, and all they would succeed in doing was tiring themselves out more. Her horn was useless, maybe good for one concentrated burst of magic at best, and that would probably knock her out for the rest of the night. They had no food, no bedding, and to say the catacombs they stood in looked poorly-traveled would have been a generous complement.
At the same time, Maple seemed to be giving up. Starlight was used to surviving on scant resources in poor conditions, and if nothing else knew how to hang on to her determination and grit. Her adoptive mother, though, especially given her history...
They might have to take a gamble, more for Maple's sake than anything. Starlight strolled out of the elevator, peering carefully at the control panel. It looked ancient, and every button was unlabeled, but if they were going to try again, better to be as prepared as possible. She was just looking sideways, trying to figure out if a cross-shaped button meant 'add more floors', Maple peering worriedly over her shoulder... when with a mechanical rattle, the elevator doors slid closed, and it descended of its own accord, having been apparently summoned from below.
"Well," Starlight grumbled dryly, "it looks like we're looking for stairs."
Starlight led the way through the dungeon-like caves of the upper Water District, her earlier predictions of the place being a maze having been proven sadly correct. Exacerbating the random placement of side paths and empty rooms was the overwhelming sameness of it all: everywhere she looked, the same jagged, stalactite-ridden midnight-blue stone, with the same massive, black iron support structures and utter lack of furnishing. Worst of all, the elevation remained so constant, it was as if the cave floor had once been liquid and left to cool in place. They were making no headway up or down, and that showed no signs of changing.
"I think we might be lost..." Maple whimpered for the tenth time. Starlight's ears folded.
"Ohhh, we shouldn't have stayed up here..." Fretting, she following closely behind the filly. "I should have let us go back down! I shouldn't have been impatient to wait for the first elevator! And why couldn't I have packed food? What was I thinking, why-"
"Stop." Starlight spun, lifting a hoof to the mare's mouth, an easy feat when she carried her head inches from the ground. "I'm fine. I've done this before. Don't worry about me." Her stomach gave a treacherous growl, and she ignored it. "You should be worried about yourself, instead! I'm worried about you! Because you're worrying instead of trying to survive!"
She looked away, and continued. "Maple... M-Mom... It doesn't matter whether we will or won't find our way out, because that hasn't happened yet. Right now, you can't think about what's going to happen or what already happened, or you'll stop thinking about right now and then you won't make it!" Expending precious energy stomping a hoof, Starlight lowered her head and added, "And I don't like seeing you give up..."
Maple stared at her, mouth slightly ajar. "Starlight..."
Starlight felt her cheeks burn. Had she really just yelled at Maple? More importantly, had she really just presumed to know better? To be her superior? For them to be different, just because she had crossed the mountains and Maple hadn't? Besides, it wasn't a thing she liked to think about, but the memory of Amber's stinging hoof from the last time that had happened...
Wait. She took a deep breath; something was off. It was hard to be sure, thanks to her emotions and body getting in the way, but it had felt as if the tiniest gust of warm air brushed against her. Sniffing heavily, she thrust her brain into the coldest focus, tuning everything else out in the name of detecting heat. Because where there was heat...
She sniffed once, then again in a different direction, head held high. That was a lesson she had learned long ago, when she still attended school in Equestria: warm air rose, and cool air sank. There, in the high-ceilinged caves, it would be hard to feel anything warm on the ground, but if there was... it had to have risen from somewhere, which meant a way down. She took a few paces and sniffed again.
"Starlight?" Maple asked, voice slightly more sober. "What are you doing?"
"Finding a way out," Starlight answered confidently, locking on to a passage and striding forward, constantly sniffing the air and searching for any traces that didn't burn cold against her tired lungs.
"Well," Maple said nervously, "this is certainly a way down..."
They had come across their first real door in ages, completely unblocked and radiating warm air. Though likely little more than room temperature, it felt like a furnace against their chilled coats, and they had both stopped for a moment to bask before proceeding. That rest swiftly proved unnecessary, as they were stalled again, staring at what lay beyond.
It was a tunnel, if something of its size didn't deserve a bigger word. Broad and tall, it bored its way downward at a forty-five degree angle, a railinged observation platform at the edge of the incline providing a safe view down. Lit by periodically-placed floodlights that weren't even half bright enough to do their job, the bottom was lost to shadow, far beyond the vanishing point of the stark, boxy dimensions. Along the ceiling, two identical pipes ran, so massive that the Sosan trade cart they rode in on could have trundled through them with ease. A low, rumbling din filled the room, permeating upwards from the depths, soft enough to become inaudible outside the immediate chamber but deep enough to be heard with the chest, not the ears.
Parked at the top of the incline was a square platform with enough space to fit Maple's old house. It was fitted to a track that extended down into the depths, and to one side, a sizable conglomeration of engines and machinery sat, undoubtedly designed to power the ride.
Starlight nodded. "It's an elevator. I don't think it goes back to the Water District."
"But it goes down," Maple countered. "And maybe, if there are any ponies at the bottom, they'll help us..."
"Then let's take it." Starlight wasted no time stepping over the clearly-marked warning strip that separated the platform from solid ground, and Maple quickly followed her. "Where are the controls?"
Maple pointed to a panel next to the machinery. "Two buttons," she observed. "It's probably easy to guess what they do, but maybe you should..."
With a sigh, Starlight punched the lower of the two buttons. Immediately, there was a hiss, and a warning light flared as a gate rolled across, separating the lift from the exit. With a deep churning of gears, the elevator rumbled to life... and slid away from its dock, beginning its journey into the hazy blackness.
Starlight watched as the edge rolled away, then turned to Maple, sat, and curled into a ball. "It's probably going to be a long ride," she murmured, closing her eyes.
A moment later, she felt Maple coil nearby, wrapping a foreleg around her. "I'm sorry," Maple whispered.
"Don't be."
Maple ignored her. "It was a mistake, coming to Ironridge. I got excited, saw my chance and took it. But I didn't know what I was getting into, I... I thought it would be a fun adventure. And then we left that very night, without any time to think about it at all..." She sighed deeply, chest expanding against Starlight's back. "I wish I had waited. I wish I had thought about it more. There shouldn't have been a hurry; Arambai would have made Gerardo wait if I said I needed time. I should have asked them more about what I was getting into. I should have asked you..."
Her chin rested itself against Starlight's head. "I'm sorry," she repeated, the movement of her mouth slightly dulled by the filly's mane. "They warned me, didn't they? I wish I had listened. I wish I had made Gerardo leave us out of his delivery. I wish... I wish I hadn't come alone, and left my friends. I miss them..."
"Don't blame yourself," Starlight mumbled. "You didn't know better. Please."
"I didn't, did I...?" Maple answered, a strangely bemused tone in her voice. "I don't know better. I don't have any reason to, because I'm so new at this. And since I don't, I should be blameless..."
Something that might have been a tear landed on Starlight's ear, and it flicked. "It works, sometimes, when I think of it that way," Maple whispered, voice tightening. "That I'm not responsible for anything I do. That I can't be blamed for it. That I don't deserve to be blamed for it. That nothing I do matters." A sniff. "And every time I do, I decide it's horrible, and I would rather be guilty than meaningless. At least then, I'd have a chance... to do things right. I want to matter, Starlight. Please..."
"That's why you came to Ironridge."
"That's why I brought us to Ironridge, yes..." Maple took a deep, rapid breath. "Part of it. Starlight, my life was... I thought... It wasn't easy. It still isn't, sometimes, like now. I'm... I'm scared of not being able to do anything for the ponies I love."
"Well, you did something for me," Starlight said softly, feeling Maple relax around her. "So thank you."
"You think that...?" Hesitantly, Maple sighed. "Thank you, then. For... for being somepony I could..."
"We'll do something else, too," Starlight added resolutely. "We're getting out of here, and there's no point in thinking otherwise! And then we're going home... to Riverfall. But on our way, we'll do something. We'll find somepony to help, and make a difference for. I promise."
"Promise..." Maple whispered.
By the time the lift slowed into its dock at the bottom of the incline, both mare and filly were soundly asleep.