The hike to the southern road wasn’t much different from any other hike through a wooded area, except for the fact that there was a surprising absence of monsters trying to have a foal snack. Valkyrie explained that the local predators hunt seasonally, and the last hunting season ended roughly two months ago and wouldn’t start again for some time. Upon hearing that, Zebota urged everyone to respect their dormancy and not pick a fight just for the sake of fighting.
Meanwhile, Quantum Tech had her mech suit on autopilot while she ran some analyses on the strange orb that Bullseye had shot down. Despite her encyclopedic intellect, even she couldn’t make heads of tails of what all it was comprised of, much less how it functioned the way that it did. If this was some strange form of griffon technology, than she truly fell short of the avian race’s due credit. There were unidentifiable metals within its composition, some with slightly inexplicable properties, and she couldn’t discern how its ‘thrusters’ kept it aloft. She got out of her mech and showed it to Valkyrie. “Darling, do you per chance know what this is?”
“Huh?” Valkyrie got a good look at the orb, but unsurprisingly, she too was befuddled. “Err….no. Why?”
“It was flying around town and even in the woods. I had to shoot it out of the sky.” Bullseye said.
“I don’t suppose this is a griffon’s creation?” Quantum asked.
“If it was, I’d be one of the first to know. A griffon making something like this would be pretty impressive, unless it was Councilor Skadi, but she’d tell us if she was working on something.” Valkyrie said.
“Well then…. That gives me no answers.” Quantum muttered as she climbed back into her mech. “Oh well. Back to my instruments it goes, I suppose. Oh! That rhymed!”
“Perhaps it is related to this ominous light that you were sent to investigate. When it was observing Shrapnel and I, it emitted a red glow from within its shell. Could it have come from over the mountains?” Zebota wondered.
“That’s about the only conclusion we can draw at this point.” Shadow Shroud said.
“Pssh!! I can draw lots of conclusions. Just watch!” Crazylocks sprouted her wings and rapidly flew around the dirt path in front of them, dragging her wings and pigtails through the ground on occasion. This lasted for a few moments until she landed back in front of them. “TA-DA!!”
She had drawn a series of random sketches one might see from a kindergartener. Some were of common plants and animals, others were random drawings of unrecognizable shapes, but she also seemed to draw parts of their adventure. There were crude depictions of the crystal golem, the ruined castle, what looked to be Shrapnel holding her in his mouth, which made Zebota smile sheepishly like somepony who’d just been caught in a lie, the Fallen, the windigo, and the ice golem that attacked the Great Horn Temple. However, what looked like it was supposed to be Bullseye’s rampage on the Rockslide bandits depicted Crazylocks giving the half-blind berserker a big hug that calmed her down and smile wider than was probably possible for her.
“Aww! How sweet!” Greensprout cooed. She looked over at Bullseye to see that she was gritting her teeth while blushing. “See, sister? This is what it’s like to love others.”
Bullseye ever so slightly turned her eye to the motherly monk. “Well, she turned out to be more of a saint than you, huh?” she growled.
Greensprout giggled. “I think she just managed to touch your heart before I could.”
“Rgh! No she didn’t!” Bullseye protested. “She just-”
Crazylocks popped up in front of her. “I touched your heart!? <GASP!> I’m so sorry, Bullseye! It was NOT my place to violate on your private property! I MUST ATONE FOR MY SINS!!!” She rammed herself onto a nearby tree with enough force to cause it to topple over away from her. She looked back at her friends with teary eyes. “<sob><sob> It was a worthy sacrifice!” she cried.
Bullseye facehooved while Valkyrie snickered at her. “That’s a lot of love she’s showing you there.” She teased.
“Go to hell, Valkyrie.” Bullseye growled.
“What happened to her anyway? Was she always like this?” Valkyrie asked.
“Honestly… I’m curious myself.” Bullseye said.
“Aww. How sweet of you.” Spiral teased, earning her a glare from the angry archer.
“Erm…. I don’t know how we’d explain that without setting her off.” Fire Fight said.
“She’s far more conscious than one might give her credit for.” Quantum said.
“Maybe when we go to sleep for the night, we could tell you. I’d hate to upset her.” Greensprout said.
Bullseye and Valkyrie looked at each other and shrugged. “Cool by me.” Valkyrie said. Bullseye nodded in affirmation.
Kickback happened to look down and notice that there were faint wheel tracks lining some parts of the dirt path apart from Crazylocks’ drawing. “Well, Ah reckon we’re gettin’ mighty close to one o’ them gem mines. Looks like Ms. Valkyrie was right about that.”
“Unless your people mined other precious materials from these mountains as well?” Air Slash inquired.
“I mean….metal ore should kinda go without saying, right?” Valkyrie said.
“Oh! Yes, of course.” Air Slash said.
“Here somethin’ I don’t understand.” Turf War said. “Why would there be a exit to the other side o’ the mountains if all they doin’ was minin’? That don’t make no sense.”
“Dude, because we just happened to hit the other side, duh!” Valkyrie said.
“Well, yeah, but ya figure that they was diggin’ down, not straight ahead of ‘em.” Turf War argued.
“Down and forward, my friend. Wherever the ore is, you dig, whichever direction it may be.” Air Slash said.
“In any case, we’re getting close to the mountain. I guess the only thing we need to hope is that we really can find a way through.” Fire Fight said. “Tidal Wave, what does the groundwater look like under them?”
Tidal Wave used his water sense to scan the area below the mountain range, but found very little to go by. There were only a few little oases of groundwater, but they were relatively sparse. “There’s not very much. Why?”
“Well, just in case we needed you to find us another way around or something.” Fire Fight said.
“Oh. No, there’s like….ponds, I guess.” Tidal Wave said before something crossed his mind. “Say…. Didn’t you guys tell me that Princess Luna warned you of some kind of ‘catastrophe’ or something?”
Valkyrie looked at him with concern. “Whoa! What now?”
“Oh! Y-Yeah…..” Fire Fight explained to Valkyrie their encounter with Princess Luna and her warning of something coming that she couldn’t quite foresee, but he then told her about their encounters with strange ice monsters that they believed might be connected to whatever was about to happen.
“Dude! One of those isn’t gonna pop up in Griffonstone, is it?” Valkyrie asked frantically.
“We can’t say. They’ve each appeared without warning or any apparent provocation. You’d do well to be ready to defend your people in case that happens.” Shadow Shroud said. “But why do you bring it up, Tidal Wave?”
“Well….those things that Councilor or whatever said she saw over the mountains…..you think maybe it’s part of the catastrophe?” Tidal Wave wondered.
“If it is, then I’ve got more than enough incentive to hop over there and ram it into the ground.” Valkyrie declared.
“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, guys. We’ll know once we see whatever’s happening over there.” Spiral Galaxy said.
“Point taken.” Tidal Wave said.
With some apprehension in their minds, the foals continued their trek with a clear path to the mountain. Something about its very presence was foreboding, as if to warn them of impending doom behind its high walls. The wind blowing across the mountain created an ominous whistle from all across the range, and the sunlight seemed to be being swallowed by whatever darkness was trying to peek over the peaks. Valkyrie’s warnings were coming to light before they even reached their destination, but the Battle Foals had faced too many horrors to be intimidated by a mere mountain range, and they pressed on.
Upon reaching the foot of the mountain as marked on the map, there was indeed an entrance to a mine that was littered with abandoned equipment that looked centuries old. The contents of a couple of toppled mines carts confirmed that this was a gem mine, and the bounties of them came in a variety of colors and shapes. The messy state of the site made it clear that the workers left this place in a hurry.
“Jeez. You weren’t kidding, Valkyrie.” Spiral said.
“What made you think I was?” Valkyrie retorted.
Quantum Tech scanned around and found nothing of real note, but she was thankful that the mine entrance was big enough for her mech and Shrapnel. “Well, if there’s nothing else, then I see no reason to delay- huh?” She then happened to look back into her analytical table and notice that the orb was pulsing a faint red light despite the fatal damage it had sustained. The pulsing was very glitchy and jumpy because of the damage, but it was there. She checked the data flowing in, and it appeared that the orb was drawn to a signal coming from within the mine, which caused her a little anxiety. “O-Oh my…”
“Something wrong, sister?” Greensprout asked.
“Err…I’m not sure. L-Let us proceed, shall we?” Quantum stammered.
“Right. Into another totally-not-cave-of-death-and-despair-beyond-our-worst-nightmares! <sigh> Fun times…” Fire Fight said as he led his pack.
Fire Fight and Spiral didn’t have to make their horns very luminous since the gems on the walls of the abandoned mine glistened in what light they gave off. The sight of it all was simultaneously breathtaking and ugly just for the sheer fact that many of the gems had been broken from mining and presumably falling off the walls they were embedded in. They shouldn’t have expected a mine of all places to feel welcoming, but the foreboding feeling they got from the mountains down bled into its bowels. Something just didn’t feel quite right….
“Valkyrie…..how long ago would y’all think this joint was poppin’?” Turf War asked.
“No idea, dude. I’m no expert in the more hazy parts of our history. These mines were everywhere and operated over quite a few eras.” Valkyrie said.
“Surely the miners left a map of their claim somewhere. Perhaps we should check back outside?” Greensprout suggested.
“If this mine has been condemned as it appears, then a map would be of little use. Tunnels may have collapsed and thus are no longer usable. The best we can do is carefully explore.” Air Slash said.
Zebota looked up at his monster. “Shrapnel, mark any intersections we come across with your claws so that we may not become disoriented.” Shrapnel grunted in affirmation.
It was mere moments later that their descent brought them to a three way fork in the road. The middle path went straight ahead, but from the foals perspective just went into a dark void. Its neighboring paths, however, seemed like they might be winding as they had turns well within one’s line of sight. Shrapnel took the time to leave a large, deep claw mark in the ground below them to indicate their presence should they somehow come full circle.
“Should we….split up?” Spiral asked.
“No. We can’t risk getting lost in here. We’ll just have to go one way at a time. I vote we down the middle path just so we know what’s down there. It looks like it’ll be an easier walk anyway.” Fire Fight said.
“I suppose it’d be a quick errand if nothing else. No objections here.” Quantum said. Everypony else was in agreement. “However….I seem to be detecting residual traces of….some form of radiation, it seems.”
“Hol’ up! Radiation!? Don’t that give you cancer, ‘cause I ain’t ‘bout to go down there if there is.” Turf War said.
Quantum rolled her eyes. “I said ‘residual’, Turf War, meaning that it was once here, but is no longer. It just left….hoofprints, if you will. We should be fine.”
Shadow Shroud happened to catch something out of the corner of her eye just before she could follow her friends. From within the tunnel to the right, she could’ve sworn she saw a large shadow silently fly around the corner just before she could see it. “Hmm?”
“Something wrong, Shroud?” Fire Fight asked.
Shadow Shroud went faced him, and then faced the corner down the other tunnel again with her nerves of high alert. “I know this should go without saying, but keep on your toes. We might not be alone.”
“Well, s***.” Bullseye mumbled. The foals then continued on.
As the foals hiked deeper into the tunnel, the oppressive feeling became gradually stronger, as if they were being told over and over by something that they didn’t belong there, and they found themselves on constant alert. Apart from that, the pulsing from the orb seemed to gradually get stronger, as if whatever was inciting it was drawing nearer, making Quantum Tech more nervous. The tense silence was broken when Fire Fight accidently kicked something.
“WHOA!” Everypony including him was startled when his metal gauntlet suddenly collided with another metal, but when they looked down, rather than a pickaxe or other mining tool, there was something even more bizarre. “What the-?”
It looked to be a piece of a strange skeleton, specifically a limb. It had the attributes of an arm, as there were joints that one could compare to an elbow and a shoulder. However, there was something odd about where the hoof would be. Quantum Tech lowered herself out of her mech suit to examine it. “Goodness me.”
“What is it, Ms. Quantum Tech?” Kickback asked.
“What indeed….” Quantum answered. She noticed that the ‘hoof bone’ was much smaller than anatomically normal, assuming this was even supposed to be a pony. When she inspected the hoof’s sole, there was a red lens that made it seem like some kind of flashlight. In her curiosity, Quantum Tech tried to use her magic to power this ‘flashlight’ just to see what it would do. It worked, but when her glasses suddenly detected a dangerous influx of plasma emanating from it, she quickly pointed it away from herself. “OH DEAR!!”
Rather than emit a controlled beam of soft light, the arm violently fired a blast of the plasma she detected as a bolt of red light and blew a chunk out of the tunnel wall, the recoil knocking her back, but Shrapnel managed to catch her in his mouth. He released her. “Quantum Tech!” Zebota said.
Everypony had braced themselves and gotten in front of some others when the blast occurred, and when it subsided, they calmed down. They were all ok. “Oh, h-heavens…” Quantum was shaken as Zebota helped her to hooves. “Thank you, both.” She brushed herself off. “Well! I certainly won’t handling that without the utmost care in the future.”
“Who could have created such a dangerous item, and why?” Zebota asked.
“Umm…. Guys?” Spiral stammered. She had horn shining light further into the tunnel to reveal heaps of other mechanical parts and scraps that looked as though they had been torn apart. One that was mostly intact revealed what they all must have looked like. It was a bipedal-looking entity with black and red armor plating over their skeletal frames, and only one hand had opposable digits while the other had the plasma blaster. Its head was shaped something like a beetle without antennae and had no apparent eyes.
“Damn… We back in the hood?” Turf War asked.
Quantum quickly thought of the orb and fetched it from her mech. Sure enough, it was reacting strongly to the very presence of the foreign machinery. “This is simply marvelous! Where could this all have originated from!?”
“I’d like to know what destroyed them all. This all looks fairly recent.” Air Slash said.
“You know…. Is it just me, or does it look like some of these gems have been kinda…blown up?” Tidal Wave asked.
“Of course there were explosions, dumba**. This is a mine.” Bullseye hissed.
“Ok, don’t call me that. Second, it would have been a lot bigger and made more than just a crack in the gems. They must have been blasted by these robots.” Tidal Wave argued.
“Let’s just hope something from the other isn’t responsible. It’s possible that something managed to crawl it’s way in here unnoticed.” Valkyrie said as she drew her sword.
With that, the foals pressed on through the scrap heap of strange robots. Their thrashed forms and mangled shrapnel lining the tunnel made them feel more uneasy. They were especially careful not to set any of them off and avoid more plasma blasts. Eventually, they came into a huge chamber where the gem deposits were surprisingly few a far between. Even when Fire Fight and Spiral Galaxy put off more light, it was just swallowed whole by the darkness surrounding them. What wasn’t hidden was more scrap heaps of the strange robots.
“This looks promising…” Valkyrie muttered.
“Don’t be afraid, everypony. Our strength hasn’t faltered yet, and it won’t today.” Greensprout said.
Fire Fight then shivered a little. “Is it just me, or did it suddenly get a little cold in here?” His very statement made his blood go cold. “Oh, crap! It’s cold!”
“Why’s that so bad- Oh wait!” Valkyrie and the others quickly caught onto what he was getting at.
Suddenly, from within the darkness, the foals heard a low but powerful growl. “<GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!>” When they looked up, a pair of piercing red eyes stared them down, and whatever it leapt towards them from the darkness. “<RAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRR!!!>”
Fire Fight lit his horn like a volcano and everypony drew their weapons. “HERE IT COMES!!”