The hum fully coalesced into drums. The noise came from Curveside and resonated at every conceivable angle. Rainbow Dash and her friends couldn't conceive the sheer amount of instruments that would be required to make that beat. But—the closer they came to their goal, and the more the marching hooves of the Dihmers filled the gaps between the percussion—the less they found themselves even paying attention to the rhythmic thumping. There was a manic wakefulness about the place, and it forced the group's eyes wide open as they pierced the fringes of the city.
The horizon gave out—dipping suddenly—and there it was: civilization. Or—at least—a crude stone fascimile of what the Light Siders had come to know "civilization" as being. Short, squat buildings had been fashioned out of granite slabs. Some of the larger, seemingly more important structures had rigidly geometric construction to them, but the majority of houses were fashioned out of crudely-stacked boulders and chunks of earth. They resembled roughly-domed huts, and dull black biomatter—like mud or peat moss—had been used to fill in the cracks and insulate the confines within.
Despite the ugliness of the structures, they were arranged quite elegantly—forming narrow rows that ran like worn teeth towards the vanishing horizon. The ground dipped quite a bit, and many aqueducts had been carved into the stone to collect the multiple tributaries of merging river streams from Alpha. Despite this noble engineering, the liquid looked less than hygenic, and a foul stench hung over the myriad figures hunched over the canals to gather water and clean their possessions.
Arriving at the city, the Herald witnessed unmoving Dihmers for the first time. The shorn ponies sat and stood like statues, their eyes vacant, their faces expressionless. Nary a blink was witnessed among the citizenry who lingered on street corners and building fronts. It was a good thing this part of the world didn't have a sun, or else many of these stagnant, gazing souls would have gone blind at some early point in their lives.
Yet again, Rainbow and her friends were hard-pressed to see many elders among the Dihmer populace. For that matter, there were next to no children as well. Neither Fluttershy nor Applejack could detect a single foal. The Dihmers hovered aroung the average age of early-to-late twenties, from what the travelers could tell, and they were all made near-identical through having their coats and manes and tail-hairs completely shaven. It certainly didn't help that nearly every Dihmer possessed dull gray eyes, as if any shred of magic had been sapped from their bloodstream countless generations ago.
The Herald's movement slowed noticeably. None of them said much of anything. Like the Dihmers, they had been rendered silent as they stood amidst the primitive architecture, digesting the visual information all around them. At first, the stone streets looked paved. Twilight Sparkle surmised that the smoothness was actually the result of hundreds of thousands of Dihmer hooves trotting steadily over the ground over the course of eons. There was no telling just how ancient this city was. The Spindlers probably knew—but most of them had been driven out long ago. Rainbow couldn't even pretend to hear the hint of violin strings beyond the constant pounding and thrumping of unseen drums.
Rainbow sensed a shift in movement out of her peripheral. Along with Applejack and Twilight, she turned to look. Rainbow saw caravans of Dihmers arriving from Edgeside. They were greeted by identical-looking Dihmers who trotted up and ceremoniously removed the heavy satchels of slaughtered meat from the hunters' flanks. Then—after taking their weapons—the greeters produced tiny daggers that glinted in the twilight. They approached the hunters and—with slow and careful precision—carved a narrow cut across their front fetlocks.
Fluttershy winced. She gawked at the other ghostly mares with a look of confusion and distress.
Rainbow squinted. She watched as the hunters stood stock-still, not even flinching to register the pain of the bladed ritual. As the dark blood dribbled down their forelimbs, Rainbow spotted multiple horizontal scars beneath the newly-created one. Each Dihmer had a different count, some on both fetlocks. When the bloodletting was done, they spoke no word to the companions with the daggers—instead trotting down the street and retiring inside a random stone hut. Black blood dripped onto the road as they passed by, and it was then that Rainbow saw charcoal-black stains... marked permanently from the ages.
Meanwhile, the Herald was squirming visibly—most of them. Rainbow Dash sensed her companions' unease without looking directly at the group. It wasn't difficult to be chilled by such a setting. Here they were, surrounded on all sides by a bustling community of hairless and mutilated hunters both coming and going, and the only sound was the marching of hooves and the persistent drumbeat in the background. Even then—as Rainbow continued to get her bearings—she could hear the noise reverberating off every slab of granite, every curve of the street, every chunk of wood. Not only were the roads perfectly polished, but they were free of all pebbles, dirt, sand, and sediment. So many sustained eons of vibration must have undoubtedly shaken the mess clean.
Curious, Rainbow Dash ascended slightly. She flapped her wings until she rose above the craggy stone "rooftops" of the nearby buildings. This exposed her to countless rows of identical huts and domes—all as drab and unexciting as all the rest that had been witnessed before. She couldn't imagine just how anypony would recognize or discern any one street from the rest. Then it occurred to her that—quite likely—the Dihmers simply didn't. This made more sense as she witnessed the flow of non-hunting Dihmers trotting in random directions, like aimless ants, settling for whatever structure or canal or stone wall that ultimately stopped them and forced them to stand in petrified, seemingly thoughtless silence. There were no smiles. There were no sobs. There were simply gray eyes... opaque... gazing... looking... but not even remotely seeking.
"Rainbow..." Twilight Sparkle tapped their anchor's shoulder. Once she stole Rainbow's attention, she pointed towards an alleyway two blocks over.
Rainbow squinted, but she had no trouble seeing what Twilight had pointed out.
There was one particular mare—a young specimen—trotting down the road while balancing two buckets of water across her shoulders. She was just as hairless and bland and unindivualistic as the rest of the local equines. Only... there was one noticeable distinction, or in this case two. She had an extra pair of limbs sticking out of her sides. At first, Rainbow thought it was a deformity: the spoke-like bone structures were thin, narrow, and bent backwards like fragile spokes. Then, to Rainbow's startling horror, she realized that they were featherless wings... or rather a very small and stunted version of wings. There was no doubt that the poor Dihmer had never flown in her entire life... much less dreamt of it.
"A pegasus?" Applejack squeaked, craning her neck.
"She's... not exactly fully-grown," Fluttershy said.
"She looks like a mature mare to me, darling," Rarity said.
Fluttershy looked at her sadly. "What I mean is... her wings aren't fully-developed."
Rarity blinked. "Do they look larger without feathers? I... I-I never thought about it much before."
"Back in Cloudsdale, Rainbow and I used to see ponies in the avian atrophy ward of the local hospital," Fluttershy said. She glanced at their anchor. "Remember that, Rainbow? They looked a lot like that mare, only their wings were larger, of course."
"Why's she so... messed up?" Pinkie asked.
"Probably the result of inbreeding," Twilight said.
"Oh come on, Twi..." Applejack gestured at the town. "There must be thousands of these here Dihmers! Dun ya think the pool is slightly larger than that?"
"But was that always the case?"
"... ... ..."
"Remember... these poor ponies first came here as prisoners of the Changelings," Twilight Sparkle said. "For their forebearers to have escaped Chrysalis and Tchern unnoticed, they couldn't have been that big in numbers."
Rarity exhaled, glancing at all of the bodies below. "Do you suppose that's why they all look so... same-y?"
"You mean their eyes?" Applejack shrugged. "Yeesh... I figured that was just on account of bein' without harmony so long and all."
"She has a point," Fluttershy said quietly, nodding. "You've seen their blood. It doesn't glow even remotely."
"And assuming there were more earth ponies than pegasi from the start..." Rainbow Dash breathed. "...it might explain how they got diluted in the gene pool."
"Way to bring it around, Rainbow," Applejack droned.
"I'm sorry. Flightless ponies... depress the heck out of me."
"No wonder you were less than cheerful throughout most of Rohbredden."
"Meh."
"Pssssssssst..." Pinkie Pie leaned in, hissing. "I think the Herald wants your attention, Dashie!"
Rainbow Dash looked down.
Five sets of eyes and a pair of lenses stared up at her. Waiting.
"Whoops..." Rainbow dropped like a graceful anvil and stood among them. "So... uh..." A crooked smile. "...where do we find the postcards?"
"Rainbow, this place smells like ass," Ariel spat. Her ears drooped foalishly. "Can we pleeeeease go find that Ocean and drown in it now?"
"You know as well as I do that we gotta figure this place out first," Rainbow said. "Ask around."
"Eeeeeeugh..." Ariel face-hoofed. "I know... I know..." She shuddered as silent, unlooking Dihmers marched past them in a glacial line of identical bodies. "But this place just... guhhhh... I-I think I'd rather be at the Bloodwings' lair."
"Gotta admit," Logan droned. "That giant lunar laser beam had more personality to it than these buckers."
"Let's keep our head in the game, ponies," Flynn said, looking around. "So... what do we know so far about the Dihmers?"
"They're emo as hell," Ariel said. Her eyes crossed. "Only... without the emo part."
Pinkie Pie could be heard giggling.
Flynn rolled his good eye. "What are they all about doing?!" he barked. "What have we seen?"
"Uhhhh..." Logan eyed the bloody satchels of leather being carried in from Edgeside. "They sure as Hell love meat. And not in the sexy way."
"Then... where does all that meat go?" Flynn asked. "Shouldn't... like... there be a butcher's shop around here or something?"
Kepler tilted his hairy nose up. He leaned his tiny weight against Ariel as he sniffed and shiffed. "Hrrmmmmm..." His scorpion tail curled and uncurled in thought. "I detect a hint of soot in the airr. Something is definitely burrning. Could they be cooking up the meat nearrby?"
"That is not the scent of a kitchen," Seraphimus corrected. She nodded towards Omega-Curveside. "There is a forge nearby."
Rainbow and the rest turned to see a thick column of smoke rising into the air. It blended with the blackness of the night's sky, making it difficult to discern unless the group focused on it.
"A forrge?" Kepler's poor eyes squinted, gazing into nothingness. "They arre smelting metals herre?"
Wildcard nodded, then gestured: "It is definitely from a large blacksmith's shop of sorts. Bard and I saw something similar in Rust on more than one occasion."
Kepler's ears tickled to the clicking of metal talons. "I do hope our featherred frriend said something informative therre..."
"He says Seraphimus is right about it being a forge," Rainbow found herself explaining. "But..." Her eyes narrowed. "I didn't see any mines or quarries along the way here." She looked at the others. "Did you guys?"
"Nope." Ariel shook her head.
"Maybe they dredge it from the ocean's floor," Logan suggested. "Like the barges back home."
"If the Dihmers are in the business of smelting ore..." Flynn gestured. "Why are all their shitty houses made of piled-up rocks?"
Seraphimus exhaled slowly. "Some answers would be most beneficial. But I doubt we can get much by asking questions of these heartless cretins."
"Maybe you just got to ask the right heartless cretin, Sera," Logan said.
"Highly unlikely."
"Why?" Logan smirked. "We got you to give us answers eventually."
She glared daggers at him. "One of these days I am going to rip that smile off your face."
"Wow, so intense!" He winked. "Wouldn't it be easier to grow on yourself?"
"Go drown in blight."
"Too late, toots."
All this time, Rainbow was staring at a group of Dihmers standing off to the side. Her ruby eyes fell on one mare in particular. The shaved pony had more than fifty horizontal scars... spread across all four limbs.
"I know where to start asking questions," Rainbow said.
"Oh yeah?" Flynn looked over. "Where?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Rainbow trotted towards the heavily-scarred mare. "We start with the oldest."