//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 
// Story: The Dark City 
// by awf 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 6

"Here, try this," Gustaf said as he and Rusty Bones were sitting a short distance away from the macabre remains. He passed her a small metal flask and she took a swig without asking what it was.

"GAH!"

It was too late to spit it out and Gustaf expertly caught her hoof before she dropped the whole thing. It burned! "Sorry, I should have warned you. It'll take the edge off."

Rusty wasn't listening because she was too busy washing the taste out of her mouth from her own water flask. "Yeah, it will take the edge off now. I thought it was water or something!"

The griffin held up the small, metal object. It was flat, easy to nestle in a pocket, and had a very small opening. There was no way of mistaking the shape of a spirits flask. It had been her own fault for not looking. In either case, it would probably help. The skeletal remains Curio and his students were examining had been somewhat unexpected. Now that she thought about it for a minute it should not have been. Finding bodies in a long-abandoned, unvisited place really wasn't that unusual. On the plus side, it also told them something about the history of the place.

"I guess we'll see more of that, huh?"

Gustaf nodded and glanced very briefly at the bones. He didn't seem particularly affected, but he was a griffin with combat experience, so perhaps this was nothing new to him. At least that guard had been dead for possibly thousands of years. "I reckon. Looks like they left this place in a hurry. Not even time to bury their dead. I wonder what happened."

Rusty Bones wondered too. It was part of what she and Curio were there to find out, along other important questions such as 'Who these ponies even were?' and 'Why did they live underground?' She looked up when one of the unicorns approached. "Professor?"

"Earth pony, about the same age as that lamp yesterday. Armor- is unusual."

"How so?"

Both she and Gustaf watched Curio Trinket with curiosity as he flipped through his notepad. "It has certain similarities with the pre-Grogar civilizations we know, but it's different."

"Which means?" Rusty had a thought, but she held her breath in excitement and waited to hear what the academic would say.

"Which means," Curio went on, "that this particular group had been separated from other civilizations for quite some time. Hundreds of years. I daresay they traded with the surface, the entrance and this room seem to suggest that, but they had their own craftsponies and evolved their art in a separate direction."

The mare nearly pumped her hoof in triumph, but remembered at the last moment that it would have been a little disrespectful to the deceased pony. "So we were right? A group of ponies splintered off and lived entirely underground for a long while before- well, before whatever happened here drove them out."

"It's a bit early to say, but yes, I am leaning in that direction. We'll probably know more when we find their armory, and perhaps something like a government office. You must let me enter first if we come across such a place."

"Why so?" Gustaf asked.

Curio glanced back at the corpse before answering: "It's a long shot whether any paperwork survived all this time, but some of the cloth pieces on that armor are almost recognizable. This place is incredibly dry, cool, no real air movement and a uniform temperature, some records might have survived."

"They might, but the moment you so much as look at them they will crumble into dust," Rusty pointed out.

The Professor grinned and his horn flashed very briefly. "I came prepared!" he said with a happy little twinkle in his eye. "Paper-preserving spell. I can cast it over a whole room, then we can handle the paper without fear and maybe even get something legible off it."

Despite herself Rusty Bones was impressed. Unicorns really were useful for expeditions such as these! "Clever! Okay, get your students- oh, you're already here!" She almost hadn't noticed, but the two other ponies had finished with their photographing of the ancient remains and were standing just behind their teacher. They took a step forward to join the conversation. "Anything even slightly looks like an office or an archive, get out as calmly and as quickly as you can, then fetch Professor Curio. We can't afford accidentally destroying anything!"

They nodded, but Ember Clover raised a hoof. He spoke when Rusty glanced at him: "Wouldn't have the previous expedition destroyed it before us anyway?"

He meant the ponies who had drawn the map. Rusty opened her mouth to answer, but paused to think for a bit. "Maybe, but we still don't want to risk it. I think they were only after valuables, so if they saw a room was just an office they might not have bothered searching it."

"Fair point, "Curio confirmed. "Okay, what's next?"

Rusty already had the aforementioned map out and held it up to the light. "We go down this corridor, that way," she pointed with a hoof. "The map doesn't show any traps and we should find an armory and a barracks. We'll probably came across more dead ponies, so steel yourselves. At least we'll know if it was only earth ponies or if there were other races here too."

They all agreed with her choice and soon the party filed out of the grand hall. That was what she was calling it, for now. Rusty had elected to keep a torch burning, because the sharp shadows cast by Curio's magical spell felt too unnatural in that place.

"This is definitely an area outsiders didn't get to see," Winter Shine pointed out, but then fell silent when a reflection of her voice came back: "See! To see! See!"

"Sorry," she whispered.

Nopony minded and Curio asked her as soon as the echo died down: "Explain."

She swooped a hoof along the corridor. "Hooks in the walls for art and curtains. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, rather than torch brackets. Tables and cabinets, looks like."

She was right and when Rusty looked ahead she could see that one of the metal chandeliers was indeed lying in the middle of the floor, its chain rusted through. The furniture Winter Shine had pointed out was more guesswork than observation, but the small piles of wood could have been tables.

"I guess you're right," Rusty said.

The carefully circled the twisted mass of metal, but Ember Clover stayed behind a few moments to make a few more pictures. Rusty kept her gaze firmly on the corridor ahead to avoid the flash spoiling her night vision.

She suddenly stopped and her blood froze. "What was that?!"

They all came to a halt and Gustaf immediately jumped beside her, wings outstretched so he could push himself faster. "What did you see?" he murmured.

"A shape. I thought it was a pony! Up ahead!"

At those words Curio sent his ball of light flying ahead, where it revealed a large cupboard precariously leaning across the hallway. The ponies relaxed, all except Rusty.

"Come on, the armory should be right past that," Winter Shine said.

"No, that wasn't it. I was sure..." She didn't finish her sentence because Curio chuckled softly. He would have said something else, but his quiet laugh echoed back as a grotesque mockery of the original sound and sent a shiver down their spines. In either case, there was no choice but to press forward. As they neared the obstruction Rusty began to doubt herself. Had the shape really been that of a pony? She hadn't been looking directly at it and the camera flash had been very brief. Perhaps it had just been that old cupboard, twisted by the shadows and her imagination.

She didn't much like these ruins, but Rusty pushed that thought down and examined the obstacle. "I don't want to destroy it, but it looks like it'll fall apart the second we try to move it."

"Let me try," Winter Shine volunteered and her horn began to glow. The magic enveloped the whole wooden item and carefully lifted it upright and placed it in its original spot. It looked like it would remain mostly undamaged, until the mare released it and the cupboard simply collapsed in on itself. The crash was far louder than they expected and all of them jumped back, Gustaf included. The sound of tumbling wood and breaking crockery made a cacophony in the quiet corridor and Rusty winced as it went on and on.

"Sorry! I'm sorry!" the unicorn mare whined above the racket. She earned herself a glare from her professor, but Rusty really couldn't fault her. Winter had handled the cupboard extremely delicately, it just couldn't be helped that it broke apart when it was stood up.

Curio walked over as the final bits of debris settled and the noise thankfully receded. He lifted a few shards with his magic. "Shame about the pottery, but I daresay the thing would have fallen apart if we tried to open it anyway. We'll have plenty of time to put these back together back in the Canterlot Museum."

It looked like he was about to start collecting the fragments, but Rusty laid a hoof on his shoulder. "Leave it," she said. "It's not going anywhere, we can grab it later. No doubt there will be more ponies here once we bring our findings back. We should look for more important things."

The stallion seemed to agree, because he carefully laid the pieces back down, but his gaze lingered longingly on the ancient pottery. "Okay, you're right. Step carefully, though, don't crush anything underhoof."

Luckily the cupboard had sagged against the wall, so the wreckage was concentrated on one half of the corridor. The group was able to make their way around it without damaging anything priceless with their hoofsteps.

"Okay, this is the armory," Rusty Bones announced.

The corridor opened up into a room, but it was nowhere near as grand as the previous one. The ceiling was much nearer, though tall enough for Gustaf to walk comfortably upright on his hind paws. The room was also much smaller and there were no pillars. Probably not needed at this size, Rusty thought to herself.

"Wow. This place alone would keep our entire class busy for a whole semester," Ember Clover pointed out. Curio and Winter Shine murmured agreement as they stared.

There were racks. Most of them had been wood and had long since collapsed, but there were bits of armor and the occasional weapon visible under the rubble. Some stands were made of iron, or at least had iron frames, and those were still standing. Every kind of weapon conceivable to pony kind was there. It would indeed take a lot of work to catalogue and examine each item.

Rusty walked through the racks and peered into the room beyond. The shape of bunk beds was unmistakable, even if the mattresses had long since rotted away and most of the wooden frames had collapsed. "Ugh," she said, "more bodies. It looks like some of them were still in their beds, too."

"Yeah, there's dead ponies here as well," Ember called out.

Rusty pulled her head out of the barracks and saw that the archaeologists had spread out around the armory and were examining the items there.

"Earth pony," Curio murmured to them.

Winter Shine asked: "How can you tell? I mean, it's not a unicorn, or rather, it wasn't, but it could have been a pegasus."

"No," her professor said and switched to what Rusty called his lecturing tone. She walked deeper into the barracks, but the eerie silence and the echo ensured she heard everything without trouble. "See, that bit of femur there. Much too thick for a pegasus bone. Even if that didn't give it away, look at the armor. No wing holes."

She still wasn't convinced. "Maybe they just made one type of armor and pegasi wore it too?"

This time it was Gustaf who answered: "Nope. A pegasus warrior is almost like a griffin warrior. Flying is just too great an advantage, a skilled fighter would never give it up. I reckon a pegasus would rather fight without armor than without flying."

It was about what Rusty herself would have guessed and she nodded, even though nopony could see her. She proceeded further into the barracks, counting the dead ponies in the bunks. She was up to eight when she heard soft padding behind her and guessed it was the griffin. He was easy to tell apart from the ponies on that hard floor.

"I thought you said nopony goes alone," he whispered quietly to her. She could almost hear his grin.

"Obviously I meant that for everypony except myself. Well, maybe you. We know how to handle ourselves."

The bird didn't reply and joined her in looking around.

"Nine. That's ten. Um... A little help, are those two bodies or one?"

It was hard to tell when the bones were strewn about and mingled with the wreckage of the bed. "Two, I think," Gustaf said.

"Whatever happened, some of them were still in their beds. Only that one had his or her armor on," she pointed. Perhaps thanks to the protective suit the bones seemed to have retained more of a pony shape than the others in that room. The remains were sprawled on the floor, the ancient soldier's spear beside them. "Facing deeper in," Rusty pointed out thoughtfully.

"Is that unusual?" Gustaf asked.

"Maybe not, but this is the second one like that.

"What kind of a sudden catastrophe could happen to an underground civilization?"

Rusty spent a few long seconds thinking it over. "Uprising? No, they'd have kept the place and cleared out the bodies. Some kind of creature attack? Diamond Dogs, Yaks, what else lived up here?"

"Maybe your Professor will know."

"Probably. What else? Flood?"

"Hmm, we'd see more rust, I think. Some of these iron frames look too clean," Gustaf commented, pointing at the metal beds.

"Yep. Disease is also out, they wouldn't have died suddenly. I really don't know what it could have been. I guess we'll go with 'creature attack' for now. Something scary enough so that it either wiped them out completely, or the survivors didn't want to come back."

The two of them stared at the far wall, which was only dimly lit with their torches. A scary monster, rising up from the dark. Could it still be lurking in this place? Were she outside, Rusty Bones would have laughed at herself for such silliness. There was nothing to eat in the ruins. Even if a beast had been trapped inside, it would have died long ago. There, in the darkness, surrounded by the rubble of furniture and the dead, staring eye sockets of ponies long gone, the thought didn't sound quite as ridiculous. She swallowed a lump and firmly pressed an image of something long and scaly out of her conscious thoughts.

A clop of hooves alerted them to another arrival. It was Curio, with his own copy of the map held before him and illuminated with his spell. The sharp, crisp shadows it cast on the wall through the wreckage and bones looked like nightmare creatures in their own right and Rusty couldn't help but shudder at some of the things she saw from the corner of her eye.

Curio tried to push past her. "Looks like there's some kind of officers' quarters through here. Maybe they have records or something. I should go ahead."

Rusty held up a hoof to block his path. "Yes, but at least let me look inside for traps."

The stallion agreed and they made their way around a few smaller piles of rubble to a doorway. There had once been a wooden door, but now it lay on the floor, iron hinges torn out of the soft, rotten wood. There was no real choice but walk on it and Rusty grimaced as her hooves sank into the material. She could feel it breaking apart under her weight. "Send the light this way."

Unnatural shadows or not, the magical light was still useful. She inspected the smaller room for anything suspicious, but it looked fine. Her map also lacked any symbols in it and this was still the part of the labyrinth that had been explored well.

"Okay, looks good. There's a desk, maybe some paperwork in the drawers. Cast your spell." She didn't have to say it twice and Curio Trinket joined her in the entrance. His horn glowed brightly and emitted a bubble of light, which plastered itself to the walls and every object in the room. It glittered for a few moments then seemed to settle into the material.

"There. Now we can examine it safely," the Professor said, a clear note of satisfaction in his voice.

"Go ahead. I'll go look at this other corridor out there, looks like it goes to the mess hall. We might find more pottery and cooking utensils, which might give us clues about their diet."

"Agreed. Don't disturb anything if you find it, I'd like photos of exactly where each item was before we moved it."

Rusty just nodded and left the officers' room. Gustaf looked from Curio to her, then sighed and followed the mare. "You really weren't serious about this 'always in twos' rule."

She shook her head and flashed him a smile. "I said we have to stay in pairs for the unexplored areas. The armory and the barracks look safe, they can spread out and examine them to their hearts' content. Good call on coming with me, I would have asked otherwise."

Gustaf inclined his head and padded quietly after the mare. Sometimes she envied griffins their silent stride. The echo of her own hoofsteps, no matter how carefully she placed them, was becoming bothersome.

"Careful up here. The map says there are iron doors, but there might also be traps. Keep your eyes open," she warned him.