Whatever we were standing on was impressively strong to survive the overflowing waves of ash and dust that had fallen on it from above. It became clear why as Radiant Dawn reached one of the edges of the building and started clearing away ash with a foreleg. There was stone under there, apparently strong enough to survive a volcanic eruption.
“Help me find the way down,” Dawn called, glancing over her shoulder. She was still cute, even as her bright colors turned to ashy gray. “We need to find something that can burn and start a fire. I have matches, so it won’t be too hard.”
I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I could copy her on another part of the room, shoving away ash with a foreleg and searching for— “What is it we’re looking for? Wouldn’t any wood on top have caught fire?”
“Dunno!” She peeked up from the ash, brushing it away from her goggles. The glass might do well enough for keeping it away from our eyes, but it didn’t actually make it easy to see. “I’ve seen lots of intact wooden stuff from ruins. But we’re probably looking for—here!” She squeaked with joy, yanking on something. “Help me with this!”
I had no idea what she meant, but I hurried over to see. There was a ring in the floor, and a panel of blackened wood around it. It had survived the eruption, and held up besides. Like many fragile objects taken from the Ashlands, it had an old and petrified look to it, the relic of something from a strange and alien place.
Could she really not manage on her own? I’m not sure that wasn’t an act. But I bent down beside her, and together we pulled it off. More ash exploded up around us, from all around the edge of the hatch. Bright sunlight above cast a ring down on the floor below, which lacked anything like stairs or even a ladder. Right, because their militaries are all just birds. Of course they don’t make them accessible to land creatures.
But unlike flying down from an airship, a jump of ten feet or so was more than within my power. Dawn hopped down into the dark, passing right through the obscuring cloud of ash and smoke.
“Are you, uh…” I wasn’t even sure she could hear me down there.
“What are you waiting for?” she called up after me. I couldn’t see her mouth under her dust mask, but it seemed obvious she’d be grinning at me. “Come on!”
“I’m a historian, not an archeologist!” I called back, leaning down. The opening didn’t show much—just a ring of bright light, where thick ash had fallen in around the edges of the hatch. There was a stone fortress beyond, though its outlines were only somewhat visible.
“Time to graduate!” Dawn responded. “You can be both!”
I sighed, spread my wings, and jumped.
Whatever magic they’d been doing during our fall, they didn’t do those things now. It was a good thing pegasus ponies land soft, because otherwise it would’ve hurt.
As it was, the worst part was falling over in front of Radiant Dawn, rolling onto my side and standing quickly as though it was nothing. “This isn’t really… what I had in mind when I wanted to come to the Republic,” I muttered, scanning the room. It was bright right under the opening, so much so that standing here made it difficult to see. “Aren’t you afraid of, uh…” I hesitated.
Dawn turned on me, tilting her head to one side. She was always so damned cute. “Afraid of what?”
“The bodies,” he said. The words sounded childish even before they were out of my mouth. But once they were gone, I couldn’t exactly take them back. “There are your… brothers and sisters dead in places like this, aren’t there? Creatures who starved to death, or—”
“Most of them didn’t starve,” she said. She didn’t sound like she was going to mock me. Her voice was solemn and quiet. “Anyplace close enough to the ashfall to get this much would’ve got the gas as well. Seeps into the cracks, and a mask doesn’t help. Invisible killer. The Vultures tell stories about it.”
She walked forward towards one wall, and I followed. If we were going to find the dead down here, I wanted us to do it together. But I couldn’t see anything here but a gigantic ash flow, filling what I assumed was a window, and covering up the ground all around it. The shelves beside it were heavy wood, sturdy enough that they’d survived even with a mountain of ash pushing down on them.
“Looks like we have the fuel for our signal fire. I don’t think they need these cannonballs anymore.” She hefted one to the side, and it landed on the stone floor with a hollow thump. The whole building seemed to shake, and I swore something moved under us.
Dawn froze herself, looking down. After a few seconds, whatever distorted echo we’d been hearing faded into the background, and silence returned.
Dawn took the next cannonball and lifted it down to the ground carefully, and the next. I wanted to help, but—ponies didn’t have the right tools for work like this. At least I could help break the shelf apart, and move it towards the opening.
“Do you think we’d be better off setting the fire up down here, rather than out in the open? The smoke-signal will make it just as high. If we’re lucky enough to find the right ingredients, I could make it huge. Like if they were mixing gunpowder, maybe they keep their sulfur somewhere we could find it, and—”
She pushed my mouth closed with a claw, silencing me. “I thought you weren’t an archeologist.”
“That’s chemistry. And everypony knows how to mix gunpowder, since we learned from… the war.” I looked away lamely. There were a few other shelves just like this, one beside each of three windows. There was a place furniture might’ve been in the center of the room, though only scraped stone remained. As well as stone steps leading down, not covered with ash. There oppressive shadows gathered, and I couldn’t see more than the first few steps.
“Will you…” Dawn looked away, ears flattening. “Will you laugh if I say something most ponies wouldn’t understand?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “I might not agree with everything you say, but I promise not to laugh. This is your empire, Dawn. Or… it used to be.”
She glanced once at the stairs, then took a step closer to me. “There are ghosts in dead places like this. Caesarean birds laugh and joke about it, making fun of those who still believe in them. But the monasteries know it’s real. And you’ve seen the evidence yourself. The wraiths are the same kind of thing, only… way bigger. But they aren’t the only ones.”
“The ship I took to Accipio, the Daughter of Wintergreen—her crew were afraid of them too. So it’s not just you. But we’re… unless you want to fly off and leave me here, I don’t know how much choice we have. We’ll have to deal with them somehow.”
She nodded gravely, then fumbled with her pack. She shrugged, and the clasp wouldn’t open for her. She twisted towards me. “Can you take a look in there for me? There should be a dagger clipped to the inside.”
We were almost the same height, so it wasn’t hard. I flipped the pack open, and sure enough there was a dull dagger hanging off the inside flap. “This? What kind of metal is this?”
“Silver,” she said quietly. “Just like the grapeshot we were using against the wraith. Nothing else makes a dent, other than Voidsteel. And we don’t have very much of that.
I held the dagger towards her, and Celestia-be-thanked she actually took it. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if she didn’t—probably tried to use it anyway. Even wearing a mask and goggles in the dark she was pretty. “In the stories, what angers a ghost?”
“Disturbing them, mostly,” she said, spinning on the stairs and holding up her knife. But there was nothing rising up from below, at least nothing I could see. “The Vultures have to fight them most, since their whole clan is all about salvaging from places like this now. They wouldn’t have a clan if they couldn’t take things from the dead. But taking things is something they really don’t like.”
“We’re not here to take things,” I said flatly. “We don’t have to explore either. I don’t have to come back with an encyclopedia on pre-eruption Accipian military history. We can wait up here until… the Hammer of Gaius finishes with that wraith and comes back for us, I assume?”
She nodded weakly. “We should be okay if we don’t wait until nightfall. It’s way worse at night. Even my father won’t hunt wraiths when it’s dark.”
“You sure that isn’t because griffons don’t see well in the dark?”
She glowered at me. “That problem is more exaggerated than real. If there’s enough light, we can see fine, regardless of how bright it is.”
Something landed on the roof overhead, something heavy enough that chunks of dust tumbled off from above. A second set of feet landed a few seconds later.
Dawn cowered close to me, whimpering. But while she stood closer, she also didn’t let the dagger droop in her grip. She was braver than me—I just started backing away from the opening, gesturing for her to follow. She did, creeping close to me into the shadows.
Something moved up there, something heavy enough to be intimidating. “Maybe that’s our rescue party?” I whispered, as quiet as I possibly could.
Dawn shook her head once. “No fire. No way to find us.”
But someone had found us, and they were getting close. It was probably my imagination, but I could feel something wrapping around my heart in my chest, cutting off my breath. Was this what it felt like when a ghost was about to attack?
I couldn’t get to my pocketknife in time, and it wasn’t silver anyway, so it wouldn’t have made a difference. I didn’t know how to fight, didn’t even know how to hold a weapon. I probably couldn’t use a griffon weapon anyway, not without being a unicorn.
Something went flying down through the opening, something flat and glowing.
Radiant Dawn squealed in fear, slashing out at the empty air in front of her with the dagger. Nothing happened—and a few seconds later, the thing landed motionless on the ground.
It was a cloth.
Then a voice spoke from above, a voice as low and gravely as the desert sand. “Ones below are… alive, yes? Or dead?”
“Alive!” Dawn squealed, exhaling and slumping to the floor. I had felt her heart, beating so fast I was amazed it didn’t burst. But now she apparently relaxed. “We’re alive.”
“You have gone to where you ought not,” said the same voice, low and dangerous. “Abdera does not tolerate outsiders as well as some others. Too many dead.”
Something passed through the air again, trailing down towards them—a ladder, with flat wooden rungs. “Return quickly. Touch nothing more. If you value your lives, you will obey me.”
I didn’t need telling twice. I hurried back into the center of the room, and only once I moved did Dawn follow beside me. She sheathed the silver dagger, clipping it a strap of her saddlebags near her neck. Apparently even griffons didn’t greet strangers with weapons at the ready.
We climbed off the cloth, then up into the sunlight where we had first landed.
A bird waited for us at the top, a griffon wrapped completely in white cloth. I couldn’t even see claws from within his robes. His eyes were reflective specks emerging from within many layers that covered his face.