//------------------------------// // Chapter 22: The Obsidian Halls // Story: The Forest of the Golden Abalone // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// The air within the tomb—if it could be called that—was intolerable. It bordered on unbreathable, a combination of the offgassing of the deepest peat filling most of the stone chambers combined with immense humidity that had resulted in every manner of strange mold and light-fearing fungus. For a pony whose lungs were themselves full of increasingly toxic mycelia, this was especially painful—but the disease within Caballeron found it more than tolerable. Even as he walked across the stone floor, he could tell it was here too. Not installed on purpose, as it was sometimes, but a simple aspect of old places. The very fungus that had infected him grew here too. He doubted the others felt the pain. The alicorn was surely immune to disease, as they all were, and he already knew that Argiopé was resistant to most pony-based pathogens. The mercenaries were likely safe; the crystal ponies had remained to secure the exit, save for two in a pair of hermetically sealed mechs that barely fit through the long, geometrically infuriating corridor. It curved in a way that was barely perceptible but ultimately great. It was deceptive in that way, as the deepest and strangest of ruins were. Arranged to look straight but in truth looping and impossible, a product of brilliant or diseased minds. From the patterns, it was clear that it was never intended to be subterranean—and yet it lacked windows or any sign of light sources. As if the inhabitants had totally escued the light of both the sun and the moon. For what purpose, Caballeron did not know, nor did he care to—and yet he was still aware of it. The culture had been an artistic one, which was fortunate. Those that produced carvings and paintings tended to be the less mad of them all, not like those that left the walls blank and their tombs filled with blasphemous and unthinkable machinery. Those that had sacrificed their souls to that which existed before magic had no need for art, nor understanding of it. Their ancient forms, long-since rendered inert, simply ticked in the darkness, waiting, their tombs barren—but here, the path of civilization had been carved into the walls themselves. Although they were covered with dark, often-large slugs, they remained distinct and clear, carved from pure obsidian by some unknowable force. The mechs projected a harsh blue-green glow, casting deep shadows on the frescos that represented a lost civilization’s last gasps. They were beautiful. Tall dressed in strange fashion. Robes that were at once ancient and yet strangely ancient, bearing a combination of northern earth-pony fashion as well as something more primitive, a remnant of a much older civilization. The artist had carved them in exquisite detail, but had stylized the faces, rendering them gaunt and stark, with large black eyes. These ponies that walked in the shadows of vast cities and towers, or who were depicted performing strange rituals that Cabaleron could not hope to understand—although he had a sinking feeling. The rituals these carved figures performed were not arcane. Nothing as simple as spells or summoning demons. No magic seemed to be depicted at all. “Such frescos,” said Tuo, from Argiopé’s body. “I will have to return here. To have them cut apart and brought to Singapone for reassembly. I have never witnessed one so complete. It would be a shame to let it decay here instead of in my possession.” Caballeron understood. He had done his own fresco-cutting, drilling through ancient carvings and slicing away priceless stone artifacts to be sold to museums—or, more often than not, the wealthy. Especially Wun. Her son seemed to take after his mother rather thoroughly. His methods, though, were despicable—but of course necessary. Still, Caballeron found his treatment of his beloved changeling unpleasant. He had spent enough time with Argiopé to be able to hear her, in a sense. All changelings were to some degree telepathic, but older higher-caste changelings were much more so than most. It was how they knew what to become when they changed. But the transmission had come to work both ways, and Caballeron could feel her, half-conscious and moving, forced into a restless sleep through dark magic and a will that was disturbingly alien. Argiopé very likely did not know how to escape the grasp of a being utterly incapable of love—which was why she had generally found the purebloods so dangers. The alicorn tugged hard at the luminescent construct-chains that bound her pastel captive. Caballeron was, of course, not an idiot. He knew who the Elements of Harmony were, as did everypony in Equestria—and knew that one of them was very likely the daughter of his most hated enemy. By appearance at least. The blue one. But desperate times required dire solutions. Some sacrifices must be made. “Tell me, Princess,” said Caballeron, hoping to distract her from further tormenting the captive. “Why is it that you have obscured your identity?” She looked back over her shoulder. “Would you take me seriously if you knew I was Cadence’s daughter?” Caballeron considered, then shook his head. “But then why Fear? If I may ask?” “Because it’s my name.” “Your mother named you ‘Fear’?” “She named herself that,” noted Tuo. “Shut your pie hole. I’m rightfully the Scion of House Twilight. Because auntie Twilight went sterile when she got her wings. Which makes my dad the Scion. And now me. My name is Twilight Fear.” “Which is not a grammatically correct name,” noted Tuo, again. “House Twilight requires thematic unity in its naming conventions.” “You wanted to name me ‘Twilight Dawn’.” “It is heraldricly correct.” “It’s stupid!” “I like it,” said Fluttershy, quietly. “What—where did your gag go?” “I...might have swallowed it. Sorry. I’m stressed.” Flurry’s horn flicked, and another magical gag was stuffed into Fluttershy’s mouth. From Caballeron’s perspective, Fluttershy seemed to enjoy it slightly more than she should have. Then, behind him, Caballeron heard the mechs suddenly come to a stop. It was strange how they moved, how subtle their crystalline joints operated—they were almost totally soundless. They were themselves an aspect of technology, of the dark and accursed non-magic that Caballeron had come to hate. It was an ancient thing best left burried—although the Empress did not seem to believe that. The princess stopped. She seemed about to ask the question as to why the mechs had stopped, but saw what their lights were focused on—and she surely understood what Caballeron had already come to learn. That inside those armored tanks of crystal and platinum, there were still ponies, small and afraid. The room had widened into an asymmetrical ellipse, and in the center stood a statue, rising from the dark stone and basalt of the tiles, its form converted and carved at intersecting points into dark obsidian flecked with white speckles. Caballeron felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and the fear grow through his body. He could not help but smile. He had never thought he would know this feeling again. The mystery, the terrified joy, the sense of power of being one of the few who might witness things that were his job to claim—he was glad to have known it again, even if it was for the last time. Before them on a plinth of stone stood an enormous statue. In the light of the mechs’ crystal lamps, it seemed even more alien and ominous than it would have if lit by the flickering light of torches or the tiny glow of a unicorn’s horn. It was a pony, but only in the most abstract sense. It rose from the floor, standing on what amounted to several hind limbs, looming over them with its front hooves outstreteched—except there were too many of them. Not two, but a symmetrical set of six, two of them tipped with long and vicious claws, one with something unnamable but almost mechanical, and the others with cloven hooves. This assembly of angular material carved to impossible geometry sat around a core, represented in the figure’s hollowed-out body. A perfect sphere sat at the center of its body, between the two disconnected portions of its top and bottom, suspended in the air by some unseen and arcane mechanism. It was the only portion of so distinctly gray stone Caballeron had seen in the whole of the ruin, and it was slowly revolving, still turning by the pressure of a hoof that must have tapped it thousands of years prior. The head faced them, looking down at them with impassive but disturbingly alert-looking eyes. Its face was that of a pony, but rendered as a skull—in a strange and incomplete way. As if it was not meant to represent bone, but some other form, coming to angular lines and geometric shapes at its periphery. As if it were meant to look like it had once been alive to distract from the fact that it never was. Its tiny, small-pupiled eyes seemed to stare at them. On its forehead, though, there was a plate, one inscribed with ornate but incorrect letters. “Crap,” swore Flurry Heart. “An idol, perhaps,” suggested Tuo. Caballeron shook his head. “No, my boy. I know idols. And that is not one.” Tuo turned to him, incredulous with his stolen face. “Oh?” “It is like their walls, their carvings. Not a religious aspect. Not a god.” He smiled weakly. “It is a recording.” “Of what?” “I’d rather not know,” said Flurry. She tilted her head, as if trying to view it through her helmet. “Why do I feel like I’ve seen it before?” “What does the word on its head mean?” asked Tuo, ignoring his associate. Caballeron looked up at it, translating. “It is a nonsense design. Stolen from the lexicon of the Great Helm and bastardized. I doubt this culture had much in the way of writing at this point. If they even developed it at all.” “That does not answer the question.” “Life,” said Caballeron. “But spelled poorly. The second character is not the appropriate one. It really says something closer to ‘un-death’ or ‘not-dead’.” Tuo stared at him, as if contemplating this knowledge, then nodded. Perhaps he was thinking of how to sever the statue from its plinth, to put it in his bathroom or whatever the wealthy were apt to do with sacred relics. Caballeron did not especially care, but knew the difficulty of hunting such large statues. The infrastructure required was simply too great an expense. Small idols were far more profitable. Furthermore, he had a sneaking suspicion that this was a bad sign. It was ancient, but not the safe magical runes that his former rival Ahuizotl had favored. The lines were too strange, the structure too odd—the sphere in its core too perfect. Caballeron suspected that this was not a god or a mutant at all—but a representation through the lens of a primitive culture exposed to blasphemous ancient concepts. Their depiction of a machine. Crossing its path, and moving onward, he felt this sneaking fear grow deeper and more intense. The walls opened, broadening to a degree that it was almost impossible to light the whole of it—and the geometry changed, no longer built to the same sacred angles but to far more precise curves, governed by new math beyond even the sorcerer-architects that had constructed the far older paths beyond the statue. The icons they drew had increased vastly in complexity. A richness and surge of culture, depicted ever more stylized, the figures with longer faces, darker eyes, limbs distended and lengthened against bodies increasingly geometric and symmetrical. Bodies now depicted in abstract, surrounded by geometric patterns and symbols that Caballeron did not understand. Ones with right angles and lines drawn between them, tracing out patterns sliced deep into obsidian. A certain motif became increasingly common, one Caballeron found distressing even though he did not understand the cultural significance of it. A long, drawn-out symbol of a latter, a twisted double-helix that had been annotated, its rungs labeled with the same repeating pattern of four symbols. Symbols that appeared more and more often in smaller and smaller font, depicted around the figures that grew increasingly more and more gaunt, more and more descriptive in contrast to the excessive stylization that they were depicted in. Caballeron did not know why so much anatomic focus would be placed on figures that were clearly not drawn to be realistic. As if the creators of these increasingly complex carvings were obsessed with describing the art their culture had generated rather than depicting something realistic. At least, so he hoped. He saw Tuo’s eyes focused on the double-helix motif. “Weird magic,” muttered Flurry Heart. “This is not magic,” said Tuo. “Really? How can you tell?” “The helix only has two. They were earth-ponies.” He looked back, his eyes luminescent in the light of the mech’s glow. He stared directly at Caballeron. “Like you.” Caballeron looked at the distorted figures and shivered. “No. They were not. Not this far into the temple.” Tuo considered this in solemn silence, then continued—and so did the carvings. Along the walls, they grew increasingly into a wild array of designs, the ponies depicted ever-changing in form and shape, their diagrams and patterns rising toward a crescendo of utter madness. And then, at a point, a total collapse. The madness continued by the carvings became sloppy. Confused. The figures were not carved deep, and the stone fractured at points, broken by shaking hooves and improperly chosen chisels. The mechanism to create beautiful carvings had been lost. In places, they had fallen away, revealing the basalt beneath and the lining of deep metal conduits cast and implanted directly into its rune-inscribed structure. Images of sickness. Distortion. Of encroaching cancer—and a focus on slugs. Slugs that grew from flesh, arising from the hulking and swollen forms of something horrifically similar to ponies. A decadence that increasingly tended toward repeated depictions of gastropods—before ending entirely. And the walls became blank. Then, finally, they came to a precipice. The walls simply seemed to open up to an abyss of darkness. A foul, wet smell arose from the depths—and slight gurgling echoed from the void. A thin precipice extended outward over the pit, ending in a tiny, suspended platform. “Here we are,” said Tuo. “Where?” asked Flurry. Tuo produced a small crystal, one taken from his support ship, and held it out in Argiopé’s green changeling magic. It twisted, projecting an image of letters. A recording of a secondary-source text. “It is recorded that these depths contain the Guardian. It defends the final room, the ultimate temple itself where the Golden Abalone were once bred and were kept. The Agency lists that there are secondary pathways, ones they drilled sixty years ago, but we lack the time to clear our way through the rubble and labyrinth. Would you not agree, Doctor?” Caballeron nodded. “Then I see. We are forced to take the traditional route. What is required?” “According to the text, it is a standard sacrifice system. The required offering is listed as one (1) maiden.” “Wait, what?” said Fluttershy, suddenly alert. “Dang it—you swallowed another one?” She squeaked. “Sorry. I have a strong bite.” “It does not matter. Sacrifice her.” “You don’t have to tell me twice.” With no further formality and utterly lacking the appropriate flair, Flurry Heart levitated Fluttershy, still bound, and placed her on the platform. Then nothing happens. “Isn’t there supposed to be, you know, sacrifice?” Tuo skipped through his crystal. “The source is unclear. Perhaps we ought to have marinated the maiden? Or based her in her own juices?” “I’m not marinating Fluttershy.” “A dry rub, perhaps?” Their discussion was interrupted by a sudden gurgling—that grew louder into a wild gibbering. The ground subtly shook, and it became apparent that they sacrafice was indeed occuring—just at a slow rate. The slug rose from the darkness, at first a pure and inky black—but as its massive form pulled itself up the walls on a river of slime, its body ignited with bioluminescent fire, a pattern of green lights like thousands of eyes arranging themselves into twisting lines of illumination. It roared, leaning back, its wavy pale tentacles opening to reveal eyes with narrow, distressing pupils. Fluttershy stared up at it, releasing a squeak and cowering. The creature loomed over her, and although it was not as large as the giant that had sealed the tomb with its body, it was still hundreds of feet high, a bulk of muscle pouring torrents of stinking slime from its warty surface. It seemed to see her, then leaned forward—its front end opening, revealing a vortex of millions of translucent fangs as long as a pony. It descended toward the platform, and Fluttershy sighed. “Well, I do taste delicious. At least I’ll be a good meal for you, Mr. Slug. Or Ms. Slug. Sorry.” It leaned in, its barbells reaching forward and tasting her—and continuing to taste her, covering her with slime as they gently patted her. Then, after a moment of consideration, its mouth closed and its head fell flat against the end of the platform. “Oh?” It nuzzled Fluttershy gently, further covering her in slime. “What the heck?!” cried Flurry Heart. “You call that a sacrifice?! Tuo, you read the book wrong!” “I am very adept at reading,” said Tuo, frantically flipping through the pages of his copied text. “Something must be wrong.” “Give it to me,” sighed Caballeron. Tuo hesitated, but eventually acquiesced. “How do I turn the pages on this thing?” “Here.” Tuo adjusted the crystal to show the correct page, translated to Equestrian—but Caballeron did not read the translation. He instead focused on the image of the original text. He sighed. “You are indeed a linguistic novice. Your translation abilities have a great deal of room for improvement.” “Of course,” said Tuo, demonstrating a remarkable degree of humility for a pureblood unicorn. “You are of course our resident linguist. And, from this one’s memories, you appear to be a very cunning one.” “Don’t look at those memories!” snapped Caballeron before turning his attention back to the document. “You translated ‘maiden’ without the appropriate cultural context. The more correct term is ‘virgin mare’.” They all looked at Fluttershy. Her eyes widened and she immediately blushed. “Oh...well...oh my. This is...just as public as I imagined it would be.” She cleared her throat. “I am...well, an adult mare, and I have...certain needs…” “Stop please,” plead Tuo. “I would rather not go into specifics. I think most individuals would rather not know the specifics.” “I unfortunately know the specifics,” muttered Flurry. “Not...all of them,” admitted Fluttershy. “One more word and I toss you in the pit.” Tuo sighed, taking the crystal back and putting it away. “How inconvenient. Then I suppose I am forced to resort to my original plan.” Flurry turned to him. “Original plan? What original plan?” Tuo approached her then, with Argiopé’s full strength, pushed her out to the platform. “Wait, what—NO! Not ME, you idiot!” “You meet the parameters. Just get eaten and stop whining.” “I—I—” Flurry Heart bristled. “I am the daughter of the goddess of LOVE! I am the one true ruler of the Crystal Empire, The One True Goddess, destined to reign with an iron hoof! I spend every night on a veritable HEAP of the softest, muskiest stallions in the Crystal Empire—no, all of EQUESTRIA! My conquests are innumerable! I am a TRUE RULER, corrupt and powerful in all the ways of snuggle-sexy-times—” She was interrupted as the slug’s mouth opened and a spear-like tongue was driven through her body, its lethal point emerging through the side of her chest. Flurry looked down, her eyes wide, and immediately blushed. “Buck all of you,” she sighed, before screaming loudly as she was pulled into the creature’s maw and immediately swallowed whole. Caballeron gulped back down his bile at the sight. His impression of Tuo had darkened, but his respect improved. “You would sacrifice your own friend—a Princess—for monetary gain?” “A princess who is distinctly indigestible. And who will not be pleased with me. My body will heal. Yours, though, is not so durable.” He paused. “Further, my actual body is currently unconscious. And Snails is on his way.” “The woodsman?” Tuo nodded. “I cannot do much with this body, and without Fear, we are badly underpowered. So, again, we must hurry.” Caballeron nodded. Before them, the slug had responded to the offering and formed a bridge to the unseen far side—but from its pained gurgling, it was apparent that its meal of fresh virgin was disagreeing with it. From the muffled swearing, apparently quite a bit. How long the indigestion would continue before an extremely angry alicorn was passed through one of its orifices remained unclear—but Caballeron doubted the situation would be pleasant. Passing Fluttershy, now unbound, he gestured to her. “Throw this one in the pit.” “The—the pit?” she squeaked. Caballeron smiled, but continued walking, his path illuminated by the bioluminescent flesh of the slug. Tuo approached her. Fluttershy squeaked, but took a defensive stance—and his stolen magic sparked, sending out a cutting spell. The bandages covering Fluttershy’s wings fell to the ground, her wings suddenly exposed. She gasped. “You fiend! You pervert! What are—what are you doing to do to my wings?!” Tuo leaned closer. “Can you fly?” Fluttershy flapped her wings. Although it still hurt, she knew that it would suffice—and she nodded. “Good. You will be wanting to leave.” “Not without saving the Golden Abalone. And...um...probably getting Flurry vomited back up. She has a lot of angst but I think I still need to be a responsible adult.” Tuo shook his head. “No. I do not think you know what we are dealing with here.” Fluttershy paused. “And you do?” “I have read my mother’s copy of the Necroponycon more than once. I know what the figure that statue was meant to represent is...or was. And I believe I have discovered the true meaning of this facility. It is not a temple. It is a machine. Meant to do something you would rather not witness.” “Is it dangerous?” “Not to you. If you escape. Please, Fluttershy. I have no interest in harming you. Just go.” And with that, he shoved her off the platform and into the blackness below, watching as her wings caught her descent a few yards below. He stared at her for a moment, nodded, and continued on his way. Fluttershy, likewise, watched him go—and was left alone with a glowing giant slug and a choice.