Night was beginning to fall. It was impossible to see the sun through the clouds above, but it was apparent from the plummeting temperature that whatever heat it provided to this frozen world was departing. Twilight was only barely able to feel the change through the morphiplasm that covered her body, but the sensors in her suit showed a temperature that was decreasing depressingly low.
“Will you be able to function at these temperatures?” she said to Silken.
“The current temperature is one hundred ninety. My body was built to withstand work in deep space. I am pretty sure that deep space is colder than this. I am more concerned for you.”
“Remni can feel concern?”
“No. It was a figure of speech. I would be able to survive one hundred ninety.”
“Yes. You would be able to function. For about twenty minutes.”
The thought was grim, and Twilight shivered as though she could already feel the cold. As an immortal, she was except from death- -but there were things that she had learned must be avoided at all costs. Drowning was one, but freezing was another. It would leave her trapped and barely conscious. If she had been alone, it might have taken centuries for somepony to find her- -or even longer.
This only made her feel more uncomfortable. The thick darkness that surrounded her, the cold, and especially the silence- -it was not a welcoming place. Thoughts began to push through the deep fog of her long memory, and she recalled a forest not unlike this, although it had been warm and wet, not cold. Where she had seen it, though, she could not recall.
“Why is it so quiet?” said Twilight, at last. “I can’t stand it.”
“I can try singing.”
“Um, no.”
“Of course,” said Silken, sounding mildly disappointed. She instead focused her eyes toward the darkness, and her tiny pupils dilated vastly to compensate for the darkness. “The environment seems to be completely devoid of vertebrate life.”
“No animals?” This saddened Twilight greatly. She sighed. “I don’t know why I didn’t expect that. After what we did to the planet, it’s amazing there’s even plants.”
“Most of them are actually fungus,” noted Silken.
“Still. I’ve run simulations at various points, whenever the mood struck me…I never predicted that there would be anything to survive here…”
As she spoke and as the temperature began to drop, the plants around them suddenly shifted. Their tendrils curved and pushed upward, waving as they moved. Twilight took a step back, although the plants only seemed to be reaching upward blindly. As she watched, the appendages separated to reveal buds which in turn quickly and gracefully unfurled into massive flower-like structures.
“Oh my Celestia,” whispered Twilight.
“It makes me uncomfortable that you pray to your peer,” said Silken. “But I agree that they are quite beautiful.” She reached out and touched one of the flowers. What Twilight had taken to be stamens reacted instantly, wrapping around Silken’s hoof. There was a plume of smoke as they burnt into the surface of her body, corroding deep channels into her hoof.
“Silken!”
“Somewhat less beautiful,” said Silken. She was oddly calm, despite that by this time her hoof had mostly corroded away to nothing. She jerked it out of the flower and looked at her damaged limb. Within seconds, the her body began to regenerate. “I would recommend against touching the flowers.”
“And I would recommend against you touching THINGS!” snapped Twilight, pushing Silken away. “We have no idea what any of this is, or how delicate this ecosystem might be! What are you, some kind of foal?!”
Before Silken could formulate a response, something moved quickly through the underbrush. Twilight whirled around. “What was that?” she cried. There was another sudden sound of rattling sticks, and three reflective eyes peeked out from beneath the fungoid plats. Twilight screamed and sent out a beam of magic. Twigs shattered and snapped from the blast, but without knowing what she was targeting, Twilight missed completely. Instead, something closely resembling a beetle with a gnarled, bark-like surface shot out the brush toward her, standing on what seemed like hundreds of long legs.
This time Twilight screamed even more shrilly and jumped onto Silken. She fired another several beams, but of them only one struck the beetle. It was sent rolling backward, but it was not even injured. After a moment of writhing and correcting itself with a set of motions that no self-respecting insect on Equestria should ever have used, it stood back up. It seemed to glare at Twilight, hissing loudly, before it climbed one of the stump-like plants nearby and picked off one of the flowers. The flower squealed and shook violently, its tendrils trying to reach the beetle, but to no avail.
As Twilight and Silken- -although mostly Silken, because Twilight’s actions were consumed by screaming “EEW EEW EEW KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!”- -the beetle took one last look at them before hauling the struggling flower away with some difficulty.
Twilight, now breathing her recirculated air rapidly, looked at Silken. “You said there were no animals!”
“No. I said there were no vertebrates. That is an invertebrate.”
The beetle retreated into the woods, approaching what appeared to be a round pile of stones. It crossed over something that looked like grass, and just as Twilight was beginning to calm down, the grass suddenly retracted- -and a head with a mouth as wide as Twilight was tall shot out of the center of the ring of stones, stretching out on a perversely long neck. The beetle dropped the flower, but it was too late. A long, tooth-filled mouthpart shot out and grasped it, pulling it into the creatures mouth. The creature swallowed it immediately, but then turned its eight blind eyes toward Twilight and Silken. Being already full, though, it retracted its head back into the hole. After a second, the grass-like appendages returned, waving slowly in the breeze around the stones.
“See?” said Silken, smiling and pointing. “Invertebrates!” She paused. “Also, I recommend against getting near any of those.”
“Snakes. That was a snake.”
“I don’t know what a ‘snake’ is. There is no reason why I would.”
Twilight whimpered. “Why did it have to be snakes?”
There were more of them. The lower region of the forest, one that seemed to consist largely of a long-frozen lake, was covered in the rings of stones. Twilight found that both odd and disturbing. These things were living in ice, potentially ice of great depth- -and yet they had somehow found stones. Which meant that they either spanned the depth entirely- -or that they sometimes left their holes and walked the earth.
There were other things too. The flowers, the beetles, and many other things both smaller and far larger, few of which Twilight was able to see and even fewer that she wanted to. The planet had grown hostile in her time away- -but what made it worse was how quiet everything was. There were no animal calls, no sounds of crickets or squeals of whatever abominations roamed the land- -except when something panicked broke through the sticks or cracked across the crust of iced snow, everything was dead silent. That only made everything worse.
Twilight, of course, did not convey her increasing distaste for this planet. She had already acted incrediably unprofessionally with Silken. Though, as a remnus, Silken likely did not care, Twilight felt deeply ashamed. She was one of the three living gods of all ponies, and she was expected to act with some dignity. She was never supposed to show fear, and to exist above all others- -and apart from them. Instead, she had panicked and acted just like a pony would in the same situation. It was unacceptable.
The only thing that made the ordeal tolerable was the light. Part of it came from an illumination spell originating at Twilight’s horn, although a great deal more came from the sky above. Even with the sun having long-since set, the skies above were lit by a strange sort of aurora derived both from the incessant lightning and from the strange magical luminescence of the skies overhead.
“This planet appears habitable,” said Silken. “I can’t help but wonder why ponies never returned to it.”
“So remni can wonder now?”
“It is an expression,” said Silken. “By ‘wonder’, I mean I can recognize terraformable planets. And this one is far better than any planet yet discovered. I therefore fail to understand why it is not…well, terraformed.”
“The planet was quarantined,” said Twilight. “When we left, the planet had become so toxic that all of my models predicted that it would never again be able to sustain pony life.”
“But it is no longer toxic- -”
“Not to the naked eye,” snapped Twilight, “but you weren’t here. The surface may have plants, a sort-of breathable atmosphere, water…but there are no resources left here. Building here would be more expensive than it’s worth.”
“But even an exploratory team- -”
“No. You don’t know what I know. It may look like forests and ice, but there are things under the surface. Buried things. Horrible things. Things best left undisturbed. We should not be here, and I would never have returned unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“Other ponies may not agree with you.”
“They will agree with their god if their god orders them to. I inspected the quarantine array. No pony has entered this star system since we left it. No pony has ever seen a reason to until now.”
“Then why am I detecting artificial structures at five hundred meters?”
Twilight stopped. “What?” She suddenly turned, but found herself unable to see through the brush. “You’re scan has to be misinterpreting a natural feature. After four hundred and fifty thousand years, there is no way that any pony-built structures are still standing.”
“Then see for yourself.”
Twilight accelerated her pace, moving quickly through the trees. She knew that Silken was wrong, but at the same time, she felt an urge to sprint forward, or even to extend her wings unprotected into the night’s air and fly. Although she acted like a pony, Silken was at her core a machine. Her body had been built in a factory, and that, like the rest of her, was built in emulation of the pony form. That meant that she had no reason to lie, and that her descriptions conformed to a precise internal rubric. There was very little chance she was wrong- -even if her conclusion was impossible.
Then, suddenly, she broke through the forest. The land dropped away from her before leveling out into a vast plain of ice. The snow was falling heavily now, and the sun had set- -but in the light of the sky, and perhaps in the snow itself, Twilight saw that Silken could not possibly have been mistaken. There, stretching out across that vast and treeless plane, was a city.
“No,” she said, her heart suddenly racing. “It can’t be, it just can’t be.”
Silken emerged from the brush and looked out. “Oh,” she said, “so I was correct. Imagine that.”
Twilight turned suddenly. “Lifesigns!” she demanded. “Silken! Now!”
“None,” said Silken. “At least none out of place with the types of life I have already categorized. Large invertebrates. Arthropods, crinoids, cnidarians, platyhelminths, some things I can’t recognize.”
“Ponies?”
“No. I am not detecting any.”
Twilight looked out at the dark city. There was no sign of life, but it was undeniable that the flat-walled structures of dark stone rising from the ice had not formed naturally. “We need to go around.”
“The terrain surrounding the area is mountainous,” said Silken. “Unless you wish to fly, it would be strenuous and time-consuming. The signal is on the far side of this plain.” She stepped down the steep embankment to the flat ground below. “It will be easier just to walk through.”
“No! Silken!”
It was too late. Silken had already reached the land below and was walking toward the city. Twilight looked up at the looming structures one more time, and then cursed under her breath as she slid down the slope as well.
From above, the plain had looked flat, but that was far from the truth. A combination of wind and various sorts of upheaval from below had bent and distorted the ice, making passage slow and difficult in some places. The rest was covered in thick snow that reached nearly to Twilight’s thighs, which made walking difficult. Once again, she had an urge to use her wings, but resisted it. She pressed on toward Silken, who was walking across the surface of the soft powder without sinking. As much as Twilight was loathe to admit it, Silken had been right- -crossing conditions like this on the mountains would have been almost impossible.
Still, as the towers began to loom closer through the swirling clouds of snow, Twilight felt the urge to turn back. That city was wrong. It was not supposed to be there. There had been nopony to build it- -and yet there it stood, its buildings cutting from the ice and snow below and stretching upward.
The pony and the remnus stopped at the edge of the city and looked up. The buildings were now fully visible, and Twilight found herself detesting them even more. Their surfaces were nearly smooth, although rough and pitted and badly fractured in some places. Although they were geometric prisms, their cross-section was not square. Rather, they stood in various irregular shapes. None of them had any sign of windows, or doors.
Silken stared at them, her holographic visor shifting as her head scanned. “According to my analysis, the primary building material consists of stone, mortar, and unreinforced concrete. They are separated into floors, but I am not detecting any internal conduits for electricity or piping.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that whoever built them was architecturally advanced, but otherwise primitive. Most likely.”
“Most likely,” muttered Twilight, shivering.
“Are you alright, goddess? You seem worried.”
“This city. It wasn’t built by ponies. It couldn’t have been.”
“Based on?”
“How old is it?” asked Twilight.
Silken looked back to the city. “I cannot say for sure. However, based on the conditions surrounding us, I would judge that it is unlikely to be younger than ten thousand years old.”
“No pony has been here for much, much longer than that,” said Twilight. “So who built it?”
“Again. That is a question I could not possibly answer. It is meant for you.” Silken paused. “However, it is apparent that the city has been abandoned and unmaintained. Meaning that whoever built it…”
“Is long extinct,” said Twilight. She steeled herself, and started walking toward the city, entering a wide space that might once have been a road. Silken followed her without hesitation.
The city, like the rest of the land around it, was silent. As they moved deeper through it, though, it became far more apparent that it was in far worse condition than it had initially appeared. Many of the internal buildings were crumbling, their smooth façades falling away to reveal the corroded and broken stone beneath. Many had fallen, crushing others as they went, and now lay mostly buried in ice and snow.
There were no signs of the city’s builders. It was quite apparent that they had departed long ago for unknown reasons. The city, unmaintained, had been overgrown with plants that manifested as enormous trees with trunks as wide as some of the buildings that spiraled up amongst them, filling the sky over the city center with wood and a canopy of leaves. Unlike the other trees, though, Twilight recognized these. Although they were far larger than the ones she remembered, and clearly had undergone some level of evolution, she knew what they were.
“Apples,” she said. “These are apple trees.”
“Apples?” That was a word that Silken knew; no doubt she was familiar with the small decorative shrubs that were grown in many of the few remaining Tribunal arks. “Those are apples?”
“No doubt,” said Twilight.
“But they’re so big!” Silken bounded toward the base of one of the trees. She paused at a gap in the ice, and as Twilight approached she saw why. The trunk of the tree was separated from the ice by nearly a meter, and the dark whole it produced seemed to stretch down for eternity.
“I think the city may be deeper than we thought,” said Silken, turning to Twilight.
“This is only the top of the city,” said Twilight, for the first time marveling at the situation around her. “These are the tops of buildings…the rest is under the ice.” She took a deep breath. She was simultaneously terrified and excited by the implications of this. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“No.”
“It means that a civilization arose after we left. Something past ponies. They built this.” Twilight cursed herself mentally. “But they’re gone now…if we had just been here. If I had just come earlier, I might have seen what they were…”
“I doubt that,” said Silken, staring into the hole.
“What?”
“These buildings. They are empty. Every floor I can perceive…they have no contents.”
“The inhabitants must have taken them.”
“But all of them? There is no furniture, no trash…no bones. Just the buildings. Empty buildings.”
Twilight shivered, because she knew that Silken was right. There were buildings- -but there was no evidence that this place had ever been a city. It looked like a crumbling ruin that had never been inhabited, save by the monstrous apple trees that grew up from the seemingly endless ice below.
“We should keep moving,” said Twilight. “I don’t like it here. And we can’t get distracted.”
“Agreed,” said Silken.
The city was large, but not impassable. The roads- -or what Twilight took for roads- -were effective for passing across the ice field. There were only a few places where deep fractures made continuing impossible, or where the area became choked with monstrous apple trees, but those were easy enough to circumvent even without teleportation.
The whole time, Twilight felt it surrounding her, seeming to press inward. It felt like being surrounded by the skeleton of some long-dead thing, one that she had no way to identify. She was not sure she wanted to. What kind of thing had built those dark towers would be strange and alien to her, perhaps incomprehensible to any pony. Had she been looking at this from an academic perspective, perhaps from the comfort of her own temple, she would indeed have taken an interest- -but standing among it was different entirely. When it was visceral and real, it felt so much more terrifying.
In time, though, the city came to an end- -but the region where the buildings suddenly stopped made Twilight feel no better. They ceased abruptly, superseded by a line of obelisks. They showed signs of having been intricately carved at one point, all though unlike the rest of the city they had long-since weathered away to battered stone spikes. Many had collapsed, but looking in either direction Twilight could see that the line was slightly curved- -and perhaps the leading arc of a massive circle.
“What are these?” said Silken, approaching one.
“I don’t know,” said Twilight. She approached as well, but did not reach out to touch the stone that she stood in front of. “They appear to be markers of some kind.” She looked closer. “And they are much, much older than the rest of the city.”
“Indeed,” said Silken. She looked toward one, and through the light of her holographic visor Twilight could see the reflection of the various frequencies she was using to examine the stone.
“Those are markings,” she said.
“Carvings, yes,” said Silken. “These stones were once engraved.”
“Can you translate it?”
“There is no guarantee that it is language. Or was language, rather. They are far too eroded.” She took a step back. “But it was apparent that at one point something was written on them.”
“A warning,” said Twilight, darkly.
“We cannot assume that. It could as easily have been graffiti.”
“No. The magic signal is coming from the other side of these stones. They were built to surround it- -and look at the city. It doesn’t go beyond them.”
Silken looked past the stones, and saw that Twilight was correct. “What is your proposed course of action?” she asked. “These stones predate the city. Probably by quite a lot. Whatever your spell is detecting, it has been here for a great deal of time.”
“That is a positive sign. This might very well be the way to Cadence’s tomb.”
“If it is a positive sign, why have we stopped?”
Twilight frowned, but she knew that Silken was right. “Because this seems wrong. If I’m right, and this was a warning, they were afraid.”
“Should we turn back?”
Twilight looked up at Silken, and then turned slowly toward the land that the stones encircled. She took a deep breath and stepped past them. “No,” she said. “We continued.”