Even at a distance, Daring Do had felt a sense of disquiet. A certain wrongness, something that was hard to place. A deep instinct that something was not quite right. Something ether deep below her conscious mind, or above it, or perhaps both. The nearer she drew closer to the period, the more she felt that something about it was simply wrong.
And, standing before it, she felt the full brunt of that impact. Something in the silence, something she struggled to conceive but could not. It was a vast structure, a clear rival to any of the pyramids of Southern Equestria, perhaps even to the Great Pyramid of Hissan IV. Except that while those were coated in lovingly polished limestone, this one was built of vast cyclopean blocks, each made of disturbingly black stone—and each carved deeply and by some unknown means with a symbol. Always the same symbol, on bricks that must have weighted one hundred tons each. Never changing and horrid, from the bottom to the very pinnacle of the structure.
It was only as she stood staring at it, Wun beside her, that Daring Do suddenly realized the wrongness of it—and saw, at least partially, its source.
“Sweet Celestia...” She craned her neck, trying to make her eyes focus, thinking she must be wrong.
“I know,” said Wun. “I see it too.”
“There’s…there’s only three sides...”
Something in the distance suddenly released a solemn, terrible sound. A warble, at once shifting from near to far, like a somber scream, one not of fear but of abandonment and emptiness. Daring Do nearly jumped, but instead felt a shiver run down her spine.
She looked to the distance, past where ponies and griffons alike were hard at work repairing their camp from the damage caused by the thestrals. In the near-darkness and long shadows, across the blood-red sand, Daring Do saw creatures paroling the periphery of the camp.
They were black, as if they themselves were shadows. Thin, narrow, sable creatures with canine bodies moved by them, their yellow eyes watching each and every pony. They looked like dogs, and Daring Do thought they were at first—except for how thin they were. Grotesquely thin. And how their snouts were far too long and narrow, and their tails to stiff. And then, of course, their size. Even the smallest among them would have towered over the tallest of ponies.
Daring Do shivered again as another mournful call escaped them, joins by others and carried softly on the wind.
“Sha,” said a male voice, causing Daring Do to turn suddenly. A pony was approaching them, staring at the creatures. He was an earth stallion, one of the archaeologists, dressed in a shirt not too unlike Daring’s, although with a cravat worn beneath. He was dull in color, like the stone around him, and his messy mane had already started to develop flecks of gray despite his young age. It was also apparent that he had not shaved in some time.
The impression was immediate. Strong, ruggedly handsome, and an adventurous archaeologist. Daring felt her wings struggling to extend, but she did her very best to keep them folded on her back.
“Daring,” warned Wun.
“I’m not exactly doing it on purpose!” hissed Daring back at her.
The stallion did not seem to notice. His pale green eyes were too focused on the beasts that stared back at him from the distance. “They are sometimes called the Desert Winds. They dwell in lonely, empty places. Dark places, feeding on despair and desolation.” He shivered, just as Daring Do had upon seeing them. “Terrible creatures, and horrible omens.” He turned his eyes to Daring. “They say that just a single touch is a guaranteed demise.”
“I know what they are,” retorted Daring Do. “I’ve seen the hieroglyphs.” She looked over her shoulder at them. “I just thought they would be...smaller.”
The stallion smiled. “And would you expect a sphinx to be the size of a common housecat, perhaps?”
“And you are?” asked Wun.
“Pontracio Caballeron. Lead archaeologist on this project.”
Wun’s head tilted. The impression was elegant but distinctly inequine. “I was under the impression I had hired Ulderthunn Dirt, PhD. You are not her.”
“Ah. Yes. As you surely are aware, my mentor is of very advanced age, and the years have left her terribly frail. Her health, I’m afraid, took a turn in the last few months. Nothing serious, of course, but such an arduous expedition of this would simply be too much for her constitution.”
“Mentor. Imply you are a student, then.”
“Does that matter?”
“What matters is that I provided a substantial grant to the Canterlot Archaeological Institute to ensure that this operation is run not just adequately, but perfectly. My requirements are stringent. I paid for an expert. I did not pay for you. I do not know you.”
“I do,” said Daring.
“You do?” asked both Caballeron and Wun at once.
“You recovered the Ponochtitlan amoxtin. You translated them, I read the paper—and then the one where you identified character verisimilitude with the extinct written language of the Outer Bison linguistic group. You suggested a cultural commonality between the two, it revolutionized equine-bovine relationship theory. That, and your work on unicornic tracing by interpreting House Seal variations in accordance with medieval wizard heraldry—even if Pokin Hoolz had a brilliant counterargument based on practical magical theory—”
“So you are a linguist,” said Wun.
“I am,” said Caballeron, his brow furrowing as if that had been intended as an insult.
“Are you a cunning one?”
“Excuse me?”
Wun leaned to the side, closely inspecting the stallion’s flank. “Firm. But not the cutie mark of a linguist.”
“And you wear a dress that covers yours.”
“Black tacca bloom with a percent sign. I would be glad to allow you to see it if you would help me undress myself.”
“He’s one of Equestria’s leading experts on ancient and dead languages,” squeaked Daring Do, suddenly supremely excited to meet a pony of such renown—and perhaps a bit overexuberant for the sake of her competitive spirit. “He’s published over thirty articles spanning the entire field—”
“Daring, do control your appendages.”
Daring Do looked back and blushed, having found her wings completely erect.
“Archaeology excites me!” she cried, so loud that several griffons heard her and laughed.
“It is a means to an end,” said Wun, dismissively. “And a prolific linguist is still that. As firm as your stallion body is, you belong in a library sniffing dust. Not sniffing dust I own near my pyramid.”
Caballeron frowned. “If I may be candid, Lady Perr-Synt, I do not especially want to be here myself. I had to delay my dissertation preparation to come here as a personal favor to mare who is well into her late nineties—and before you say it, yes. I know. As earth ponies, we do not have your prodigious lifespan. Nor does a pony with a yam flower for a cutie mark have any business telling me how to conduct a dig.”
“I am not old. And it is not a yam.”
“Technically it is,” said Daring Do, dismissively. She turned to Caballeron. “What were you working on?”
“If you must know, my primary study focus is on deciphering Higher Crystallic.”
Daring Do gasped so hard she nearly choked herself. “Crystallic? That’s the deadest of dead languages! The entire Crystal Empire is lost, and the only crystal pony ever known outside it was illiterate in her own language! They say non-crystal ponies can’t even comprehend it...”
“Which is of course absurd. I have made substantial inroads into understanding it, despite the difficulties. What few fragments we have of their text could revolutionize our understanding of the world, of science and asthmatics—and yet they and every valuable artifact relating to the Empire keeps...disappearing.”
“They did not grow legs,” said Wun. “Do you mean they were stolen?”
Caballeron’s eyes flashed. “I mean leaving locked rooms. Vaults. Secure containment areas. Nopony steals them. They simply vanish.”
“You are not instilling me with confidence.”
“Do you have any other choice?” Caballeron motioned behind Wun, where, between several tents, the remnants of the supply skiff were being pulled into place. Near them, Cretin had disassembled what was left of his airplane and had begun to put it back together. At present, he was contemplated why the fully reconstructed plane had left an equally sized pile of spare parts.
“Only if I am impatient.”
“He started already. Let him work.”
“Indeed.”
Wun stared at the Pyramid. “Show me.”
Caballeron began to walk. “The entirety of the pyramid is coated in blackstone,” he said, gesturing to it. “Our geologist indicates that it was quarried locally.”
“Coated?”
Caballeron nodded. “The outer black surface is a facade.”
“Really. And the symbols?”
“As of yet unidentified. They will need to be cross-referenced. We have taken photographs.”
“I have an idea on that,” said Daring, coming up behind them and pulling out her journal.
Caballeron sighed. “Miss, I assure you, this is something that requires careful consideration--”
Daring Do ignored him, opening her journal and flipping to a page where she had carefully transcribed an image from Twilight Felt’s own notes—one that matched the ones carved into the vast stones of the pyramid. Beside it were Daring Do’s own copies of inscriptions and notes, largely drawn from memory. She held up the pictures to Caballeron.
“The symbol shares motifs with some times of older thestral grave markers from the early Post-Unification Period.”
Caballeron looked at the notes, his eyes widening. “There is no way to verify that, thestral works are as rare as their species--”
“No, few have been translated. You know that. There’s plenty if you don’t mind reading thestral.”
Caballeron looked up in disbelief. “Nopony reads thestral. It has no homology to any known Equestrian language, to learn the tonal assonance alone would take decades—”
“I didn’t say I speak it,” protested Daring Do, “but it’s not hard to read.”
“Not hard to—you can’t—”
“Our father’s library holds a significant number of unique thestral texts, so I can attest to her ability. And to the horror of her trying to squeak it out.”
Caballeron looked from Wun to Daring Do. “You two are...sisters?”
“Of course,” said Wun. “It should be obvious. After all, I have made it clear I prefer stallions.”
“Excuse me?”
Daring Do elbowed Wun and snatched back her notes. “What’s weird,” she said, ignoring her sister, “is that thestrals don’t build graves, or monuments. Not usually. They have catacombs. The only time they would ever use a grave marker is for a criminal, or in the later era apostates from the worship of their goddess Khonshu, the Black-Night-Queen. The size relates to the crime.” Daring Do stared up at the pyramid. “A general in service to Celestia once got one four inches across. The largest ever recorded.”
Wun and Caballeron stared at the pyramid, and at the blocks the size of most buildings.
“Which implies,” said Caballeron, “that you believe this was built by the thestrals. Even though no thestral culture has ever shown a cultural predilection toward constructing megaliths, and they are culturally distinct from southern Equestrian pyramid-building peoples.”
Daring Do did not speak, because she did not need to. In fact, she preferred the mystery. It made her wings tingle, and she admittedly took some joy in having proven herself, at least in part, to an older and more experienced archaeologist.
“The connection is...intriguing,” admitted Caballeron.
“Does it have an entrance?” asked Wun.
Caballeron seemed to become pale. “Please. This way.”
The work had already advanced significantly before Daring Do and Wun had arrived. At one end of the three-walled pyramid, construction equipment had been assembled. Much of this revolved around a crane that had been constructed to lift one of the massive black stones several yards above the ground, where it now dangled, supported precariously by strange chains.
“Is that safe?” asked Daring Do, staring up at it.
“We had nowhere else to put it,” retorted Caballeron. “Removal risks collapsing the whole of it. Besides, those are unicorn-forged chains. They will support it. Not even the dynamite dislodged it.”
Wun’s eyes widened. “You used dynamite on my pyramid?”
“You wanted to get in. So I did.”
“If you damaged it—”
“Some of the facade crumbled, but that is hardly important.
“The facade? How could you blow off the side without damaging the interior stone?”
Caballeron smiled humorlessly and led them under where the great stone had been lifted.
Immediately, Daring Do understood—and at the same time was utterly mystified.
The surface of the pyramid, behind the blackstone, was not stone at all. It was something else. Metal.
Daring Do paused. “What…?”
“Our examination has revealed that the entirety of the pyramid’s core is made of metal,” said Caballeron. “What few tests we could do indicate it is some kind of iron.”
“That’s impossible,” said Daring Do. “This thing is pre-Celestine. Even out here, it would rust...” She stared at it, seeing that it was still smooth and black. Not quite as black as the stone that covered it, but somehow more disturbingly so.
“We cannot identify the alloy. What we do know is that nothing we can possibly do even scratches it. Dynamite does nothing, nor do any of our tools. Paint or chalk does not stick to it. Even griffon bullets rebound as if made of rubber.”
“You shot my pyramid?!”
“An accident while cleaning his ridiculous blunderbuss, I’m sure.”
Caballeron gestured to the surface, and Daring Do narrowed her eyes, suddenly realizing that it was not consistent. Not only was there an indication of some kind of pattern, but part of the surface was darker than the rest—because it was not part of the surface. It was a hole.
“It took me four weeks to open this,” said Caballeron, pointing to a complicated mechanism beside the door and a chalkboard covered in schematics and diagrams. “I may be tasting chalk for the rest of my life.”
“You had it open, and you did not go in?”
Caballeron frowned, as if he had been told he might as well try to eat the pyramid rather than explore it. “It is incredibly unwise to be the first to enter a tomb like this. There could be a curse.”
“A curse? Are you a gullible child?”
“We live in a world where a third of the population can, in fact, use magic, and where ‘wizard’ is a mundane job description. Yes. There are curses. And I do not intend to step in one. I do not even shave when I am near such things, for obvious reasons.” He looked to the workers rebuilding his camp and equipment. “If I may, I recommend we send one of the griffons in first.”
“My mercenaries? Why?”
“They are expendable. Is that not their point? I’m sure they would do it for some coin.”
Wun did not get a chance to answer because, overcome by excitement, Daring Do ran toward the pyramid. Before she could be stopped, she left over the threshold and into the blackness within—and promptly fell a good distance, her face landing hard against cold metal.
“Daring?” called Wun, peeking her head in after her.
“There’s a drop-off,” called Daring back. “Also...um...it’s really dark in here. Can one of you throw down a torch?”
Caballeron sighed, taking a torch belt from a rack and wrapping it around himself. He produced a torch and lit a match, igniting it as he slid it into the belt’s holding tube.
“I do appreciate her enthusiasm,” he admitted. “But please try to control her.”
“That is not my job.” Wun’s horn flashed with light, and three spheres of blue light foomfed into existence near her, levitating around her as she walked toward the hole. “She is not wrong, though. I wish to see this with my own eyes, to see what we have acquired.”
She jumped into the hole and Caballeron frowned. He had not planned on it going this way—but he would make adjustments as needed.
Then he followed them in.