//------------------------------// // 20 - …pation. // Story: Evergreen Falls // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// Junebug - 19th of Harvestide (Nightmare Night), 4 EoH Little Ascension - Limited Perfection June looked at the vast field of rubble which had been the lining of their entry tunnel. She spared a moment to look upwards, tracking her eyes over the damage in the ceiling. If I am remembering the semester we spent on cave archeology correctly, we might be able to collapse that a second time to clear up the tunnel, and if not we basically will die down here, so brave face time, June noted before looking around herself at the suddenly illuminated cavern she found herself in. The walls here are perfectly smooth, and basalt isn’t something you should find without there being volcanos, which these mountains aren’t. June winced slightly, then cleared her throat to get the girls’ attention. “Uh, girls? I can’t prove this, but based on the shape of the rock overhead, namely a dome, and the fact that basalt shouldn’t be here, I think the city has shields and at some point, somepony tried to bury it in, uh, twelve to eighty cubic klicks of lava? So we probably can’t explore all of it. I don’t expect any shield charm to survive like, what, literally sixty, seventy meters deep across the whole bucking valley of lava at fully fluid temperatures? I mean come on.” Sam paused as she looked upwards for just a moment, keeping her rifle trained on the house across the street with the balcony just perfect for a sniper to perch on. “That tracks well enough. But we’re here. Obviously the shields are very strong.” “Or, they cut power to wards selectively to preserve the more important structures,” Violet mused thoughtfully. “Like how I’d cut power to things to keep my CPU going in the event of a brownout.” Trixie arched an eyebrow. “Brief aside, Vi, you’re not running a literal silicon wafer CPU, are you? Aren’t you basically a pony brain but not meat?” “Yes, but I was confusing townsponies with the difference so I’m just going to say CPU, because the only difference between the two arises from substrate bias.” Violet explained. June turned her attention to the smooth diamond cobbles. She bent down and examined them as closely as she could, shining her light through them, going as far as to take the lantern off her saddlebag and put it down for a moment to use it as a point light. “The road isn’t cobbled,” She said as she discovered the fact. “This is a textured sheet of diamond. Maybe six meters wide and more than eight centimeters deep.” Sam shook her head slowly. “Damn… See what I mean when I said we couldn’t plan for this place? Magic up to the eyeballs,” she said trailing off for a moment to think, still scanning the area around them. Violet tilted her head for a moment, doing her best to listen while trying to feel any vibrations she couldn’t attribute to her friends. Finding nothing she allowed herself a single active radar pulse, which also turned up nothing other than ruined buildings and collapsing garden beds. “I don’t think there are any monsters here,” Violet said calmly. “I don’t smell or hear anything moving. I— I think we just got noticed. So the city lights came on. Like, you know motion detectors? We have them in the observatory.” “Maybe,” Sam agreed as she reached up to her helmet with a wingtip to press her helmet radio. “Fluttershy, I know you’re under attack. We need a route. Can you help?” “Not right now!” Shy called back into the radio, the sounds of spell shots and gunfire reaching June’s ears through the comms. The radio hissed and crackled for a moment, then Enox’s natural voice came through. “Her gun’s needed right now. There are shadow gates spitting out muck monsters. Lots of them. We’ll get back to y— OH SHIT!” The ponies flinched as a dull thump shook the stone ceiling a split second later, prompting dust and loose pebbles to break loose and rain down around them. Violet began to hyperventilate and stare at the ceiling for an android’s eternity, stopping only after several long moments passed without the cavern collapsing. “Okay. So, plans A, B, and Evac are FUBAR. But we knew that would happen,” Sam said with a sage, world weary sigh. “June, you’re our expert. Fly up and see if you see anything… Palatial?” “Yes.” June snapped her wings open and pushed downwards, expecting to need a few flaps to take off. She felt her armor reach out and augment her flight magic with its own, and hurtled into the air with the speed and grace of an expert flier, albeit with a bit of wing straining from the unexpected boost causing her to over extend a bit. OW! Dang it… That’s going to be sore for days, but holy crap! June thought to herself, alternating between a wince and a grin. She hovered nearly halfway to the ceiling, turning in a slow circle to take everything in. The area around her looked like a suburban neighborhood. Several arterial streets with many smaller runs leading to short walkways to homes with nicely sized yards. If she closed her eyes, she could picture each yard filled with plants and life rather than bare dirt or patches of moss and lichen. She followed the streets, grateful for the city’s many mini-stars which served as lamp posts. They made it easy to see the streets converged near a stone-buried wall with an elaborate gate about a kilometer or so away from where they’d fallen into the cavern. June closed her wings, dropping to the street before opening them to break her fall and land. The armor made the stunt flying trivial, prompting June to grin like an idiot. I wonder if Cadence would mind if I kept this and never took it off… No, No. Bathroom. Showers. Enox. Revision, let me keep it so I can do cool flier stuff. June cleared her throat and pointed down the street. “No palace. This is a residential area for sure. But there’s a wall with a gate in it down the street, left onto the arterial road, and then straight down it to the gate.” “What kind of gate?” Sam asked for clarity’s sake. “Garden, castle, city?” June blushed. Her wings and tail twitched with embarrassment. “Uh… I’d say city? That or the biggest castle ever.” “Then we’re going that way,” Sam ordered more than stated. She took a moment to look up, then Violet and hummed. “Flying would be faster, and there’s mooks topside so we’re not on our own schedule. Think we can carry Violet between the three of us?” “Maybe,” Trixie answered. “She’s about a hundred thirty kilograms, right?” Vi huffed fake-irritably. “I’m not fat…” Her ears perked, followed by a foalish smile. “Am I girling correctly?” “Yes,” June said, rolling her eyes. “But this is kind of a time to be serious. How much do you and everything you have on you weigh?” “Just over two-ninety,” Vi answered after checking her sensors.  The three pegasi winced and sucked in a deep breath. “Right… So, since none of us are weather ponies who could give us the extra lift needed for that, while we’re also fully loaded, and I don’t trust my gem power to last more than a few seconds at a time yet… We leg it,” Sam finished, gesturing for June to point the way. June nodded and began to run down the street. “This way!” The group gathered into a loose formation and ran down the street. The sound of their hooves striking the diamond street echoed and clattered through the cavern. If anything still lived in these streets, it knew there was something else out there. The clack-crick of hoof on diamond was impossible to miss, and nearly deafening after the fifth echo. Fortunately, the ancient neighborhood seemed to be deserted. June caught a glimpse of a few structures as they ran. Nothing appeared to have been lived in or disturbed. Closed doors. Dust-stained crystal windows too filthy to even see through. Mounds of dirt, debris, and rubble which would have been disturbed had anything even so much as sneezed near them still rested in their loose piles. No sign of persistent water intrusion, either, June noted. Nothing lives without water. Well, the moss is doing almost okay… Water probably trickles down after a rain, but it doesn't say here. Where does it go? There must be lower caverns. Probably the aquifer the city was built over. Or the storm sewers still work. Wouldn’t that be cool!? June looked up at the wall, admiring the damaged rune-carved metal plates covering the crystal wall. The runes were precisely etched, and carved nearly two hooves deep into the metal. To the untrained eye there would be no sign of how the marks were made, but June could make out the tell tell signs of directional burnishing meant to hide toolmarks. The house-sized runic wards had been horn burned and hoof finished. Into what looked like cold iron. The gate itself was a truly massive archway, big enough for ten ponies to walk abreast through at once, with enough vertical space for three layers of flyers to make it through at once comfortably above them. A row of brass and ruby spell-emitters lined the top of the archway, clearly there to create a layered redundant shield spell on demand to seal the gate. You don’t see craftsponyship like that every day, she noted, nearly running into Sam’s plot as Sam slowed to a stop in front of the gate. “Hold!” Sam cried, flaring her wings for emphasis. “June, what do you make of this?” “Well, we’re lucky the gate’s not closed. Looks to be a force field system,” June said as she moved out from behind Sam’s rear to look through the gate. June couldn’t help but gasp as she got her first view of the city center. The city’s entire architectural style shifted on the other side of the gate. The crystal buildings and diamond roads behind them transitioned into bluestone stairs which ran downwards nearly a hundred meters, with each step decorated with an inlay made from delicately interwoven gold, brass, silver, bronze, platinum, and gemstones of all kinds. The inlay was no mere vinework, knotwork, nor even something more practical like a rune casting or warding. Rather, each step served as a ‘frame’ in a comic-book-like depiction of historic events illustrating something which must have been unfathomably important to the First Kingdom, or the inlay would never, ever have been worth constructing. Let alone to such loving perfection that June could see the faces of each individual within the story were consistent and preserved. Every individual and object remained on model between steps to such a degree that June couldn’t see any overt errors within the work. “Holy. Bucking. Shit.” June swore to herself, taking off to get a look at the stairs. “June, the city please,” Sam prompted. “Just a second,” June said, not really listening. She looked at the stairs. The story began at the bottom and ended at the top, where she was. As far as she could tell, the story started depicting the First Creators, an unfathomably ancient species more legend than fact as far as she knew. It showed the odd bipedal creatures being killed in a war, a star dying, a star being reborn, the rise of the old changeling empire, then suddenly the dawn of pony kind but with only zebras, then only alicorns. The story progressed, depicting the march of progress and alicorn civilization until the top steps, which showed alicorns, but radiating light and power as they ascended to the skies, landing on Creator Ruins depicted at the beginning of the story. “For the love of anything you find holy, please, PLEASE, do not damage the stairs while you are going down them,” June begged, giving everypony her best academic’s glare mixed with her own loving pleading gaze. “This is… This is a priceless window into their long lost culture. Our long lost culture. Please don't wreck this for me. Uh, and us and history and everyone and stuff.” “Got it, real careful on the steps, but what about the, I dunno, everything else?” Sam asked, returning June’s look with a blank and yet discernibly irate deadpan. “Oh…” June turned in the air to look at the rest of the city. “Oh! Um… The street signs here say the city is called ‘Limited Perfection’. We were just in a district called Little Ascension, and now we’re in uh…” June squinted at the sign then shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, I don’t know that rune. It’s one of the missing ones. We’re in something called… Blank, as in I don’t know, so, Blank Forgefloor.” “Ominous…” Sam and Trixie murmured in unison. The two shared a quick look and soldier’s nod, shifting to high alert and watching different directions. Violet took note of their subtle shift and picked a third direction to keep an eye on. June turned around to look at the city proper. As she’d previously noticed but instantly forgotten due to the cultural treasure she’d discovered, June took note of the city’s shift in architectural style. The crystal buildings gave way to structures made from elaborate carved blocks of stone. Bricks seemed inadequate as a descriptor, and June was also quite certain that none of what she was looking at was a vainer. Somepony had carved huge blocks out of semi-precious stones, mixed with granite, marble, and other building-grade rocks to make looming rows of towering cathedrals. They were everywhere. Intricate sky-scrapers covered in endless embellishments. Gargoyles, grotesques, free standing statues, aqueducts integrated across caryatid arches, skybridges of titan’s stone fingers, pillars and recessed columns with suggestive and evocative shapes lined entryways everywhere. Balconies, buttresses, flying and otherwise, adorned every bare wall they could. Every last complicated and hard to build feature June had ever even heard of being on a building could be seen on any of the towering spire-nests arranged before her. It’s like somepony looked at an ancient palace and thought “hey, we could do this cheaper and easier now. Why don’t we revive the style?” Then somepony shot him, gave another architect some cocaine and an unlimited credit account and said “Three of everything he ever thought of per wall, and quick.” How… How do you even classify this? The cathedral-buildings filled a radial grid within a truly massive cavern, again roofed in solid basalt as smooth as could be. June did her best to estimate how far across the city center was, but gave up after realizing it was at least ten kilometers and her rules of hoof didn’t cover that. It’s so big this city is probably the whole root of the valley, June realized. “Um…” June said to fill the silence as she hovered, staring out over the city. “It’s a whole forest of spires, isn’t it?” Violet asked, looking out over the far less welcoming, much more dead feeling city and taking a few steps back as her core began to pound with dread. “Good question,” Trixie said shapechanging into her pegasus form to fly up to June and take a look for herself. Her eyes widened instantly. “Oh… Oh wow! Sam, you need to see this! Vi, I’m so sorry you can’t fly. I— We should have brought a camera.” Vi hung her head slightly. “I promise I’m trying to learn…” Sam took off and joined the other two pegasi, whistling immediately. “Wow… It’s like a forest going up a hill.” June nodded, knowing instantly what she was talking about. “Yea, everything slopes up that way— CADENCE’S TEATS!” Everypony turned to look in the direction of June’s shocked exclamation, only to have a few of their own. The palace, as it turned out, was unmistakable. It truly defied description in detail. For all of the splendor found within the buildings of the city around it, the palace still managed to outshine them. It took the form of dozens of pyramids, themselves forming the general shape of a larger pyramid, all interconnected with bridges, landing platforms, and balconies. Impossibly ornate and elegant were the palace’s minimal standards for each component of the larger structure. So elaborate was its design that the building’s defensive runeworks were formed not from its physical structure, but from the negative space left behind within the bridgework. Its shape and form were so grandly perfect that one couldn’t help but appreciate them without noticing what the palace was made from. The smallest pyramids which formed the outer wall were mere gold. Those behind them were hallowed silver, followed by a row of rarified platinum pyramids, then vibrant electrum, lucent diamond, and finally, the innermost pyramid was made from a pure white crystal that shone with an inner light such that it appeared to be made of nothing more than etheric energy held in place through naught but an act of sovereign will. The central pyramid provided enough light for the massive cavern to be no dimmer than dawn. “Suddenly, Canterlot seems… Rustic,” Trixie muttered quietly. “You can say that again,” June said with a nervous laugh. “Suddenly, Canterlot seems rustic,” Trixie repeated. Sam sucked in a long breath. “I don’t even want to think about what defenses that thing isn’t flaunting.” “I mean, you sure as buck don’t need me to tell you that’s where we gotta go,” June said continuing her nervous laugh, squinting at the structure. “W— Wa— B— Girls? Those trees on the little garden platforms on the central pyramid… Are those redwoods?” Sam squinted. “What? No! Redwoods are about a hundred meters tall. Those are clearly some sort of cedar vari— Oh… Oh they are not.” “How the buck can we search that for a damn pedestal!?” Trixie demanded, gritting her teeth.  “What’s wrong?” Violet shouted up from the ground. “Palace huge, ponies small!” June summarized accurately but incredibly unhelpfully due to the impossibility of conveying the scale of what she was looking at. “Well duh! It’s a palace,” Violet objected from the ground. “No, like, bucking… The cavern’s entire base is a shell OVER the palace. It’s like… The valley is a third hollow?” Sam estimated with some back of the envelope calculations. “Oh,” Vi called out, somehow managing to sound shocked and distraught despite yelling to be heard. Sam shook her head slowly. “We’ve got to hope that Grape’s goon squad left some trail. Or that Shy gets back to us.” June decided to try and contact their mare in a chair and pressed her radio button. “Shy? We super need help. It’s huge!” “G— Good timing,” Fluttershy replied, a few monstrous shrieks and bellows leaking through the radio with her voice. “Enox dropped the workers some… Laser guns? It’s settling down. There’s a very, very, very big thing. L— Luna’s fighting it. Gone a little Nightmare. It’s okay though. She seems happy… Um… S— Sorry. Focusing. What do you need?” Sam pressed her radio button. “Directions. The palace is the size of a mountain. We’re bucked without you, Shy.” “I— I’m doing my best. Holes in the shed… There were acid-spitting-worm-things,” Shy said, sounding like a mare who would need one hell of a blunt later to take the edge off some PTSD. “Shy, sorry but we’re on the clock,” Violet advised. “Accept the situation. Understand it. Then help us. Don’t push yourself. That’s what my database indicates every therapist says is best for this kind of stuff.” “Or smoke a few really good joints,” Sam added. “Or one great joint with a friend,” Trixie said, offering Sam a smile. Sam couldn’t help but smile back. A few moments passed. Then Shy came back over the radio. “I— I think I can see your location. I had to make the scanners cross-pulse the— N— Nevermind. Not important. Are you flying next to a gate in a huge cavern with— Oh, my, Luna! Is that… That is one building. How? How are you one building? Who made you? How is there a Manger Sponge in real life that’s a building? Why? When is the time that physics was ok with you? With that? I don’t, I can’t even—” “Focus!” Sam ordered, snapping Fluttershy out of her panic-induced overfocus on some very legitimate questions. “Find us a route to the palace, then we need to find the throne room.” “Um… W— Well there’s just one bridge to the palace itself, somehow. There’s a big chasm moat thing all the way around. Um… L— EEP!” Futtershy yelped as a loud crashing noise peaked her mic. “Are you okay?” June asked, her heart starting to race in her chest. “No-but-physically-yes,” Shy squeak-whispered. “D— Down. First left. Straight two blocks. Third right. Left immediately. Bridge should be straight ahead.” “Understood,” Sam said as she dropped down to the stairs, gesturing to Violet. “We have directions, come on! Things are getting worse up there.” Violet nodded and fell into formation next to Sam, doing her best to watch their right flank while Sam keep her eyes on their destination. June and Trixie followed on their tails, with Trixie shapeshifting back to a unicorn to ready her horn for inevitable action. The girls spent far longer than they would have liked trotting through the ancient streets. The towering spires plunged the lowest level of the city into a darkness which felt more inky and black than a cloudy new moon night. The weight of their task, and the sheer bulk of the palace ahead of them, weighed heavily on June’s mind. The slow walking pace weighed more and more on her soul with each step. We need to be faster. June decided. She started to jog, not a run, just a jog. Sam immediately grabbed June’s tail, pulling her to a stop with a, “Shh! Walk.” “Why?” June asked. Sam blinked, staring at June before asking in a stage whisper. “Is your hearing average?” June shook her head. “A little below. Went to a few rock concerts a little too young.” Trixie shielded her horn with her hooves and cast a quick spell, the light of her magic mostly obscured. “Listen,” Trixie ordered. June closed her eyes and turned her magically honed ears this way and that, searching for any worrying sound. It didn’t take long. It was everywhere overhead. “What’s that skittering?” June whispered, shrinking in on herself slightly. “Bugs,” Sam said knowingly. “Big ones.” “Not changelings,” Trixie clarified. Violet looked up. “O— Oh… I thought they were, maybe.” She took a second to make sure her impact gauntlets were securely fastened to her hooves. Violet closed her eyes as organics did and inhaled through her nose deeply. “Nope. Wrong smell,” Violet clarified with a nervous flick of her tail. “Let’s all be real quiet and not bother them. They live here, so they eat here.” June nodded silently and resumed walking with the rest of the group. They followed Fluttershy’s directions to a T, at least, until just before the final turn. The road ahead opened up into a large plaza, centered around a towering fountain topped with an obsidian sculpture of a male alicorn, wings spread, legs, tail, and mane posed as if soaring to the heavens like a rocket. Sam scooted to the edge of the plaza, crossing along the wall of a building on instinct. Trixie followed along after her, keeping an eye on the sky. Seeing the pattern and understanding the issue, Violet fell along behind June, with Trixie making up the rear. June scanned her eyes along the street level. Maybe they don’t fly. Maybe some huge centipede will skitter out from those doors and— June shivered, not wanting to finish that thought. When she opened her eyes, she saw a skeleton which had been hidden by the fountain. A pony skeleton. “Girls,” she said softly, knowing well that a whisper echos better. “Skeleton by the fountain. Pony… Um, probably an expedition member. Like, has to be. Should we look?” Sam took a deep breath, biting her lip hard. “Yes… They might have a map… Trixie, stay here. Eyes up. Horn ready.” Trixie almost laughed but stopped herself. “I am so ready for this to be a trap… If all this bucking nothing keeps up, I’m going to panic.” “I’ll cover our back, Trix,” Violet said as she turned around to watch the way they’d come from. Sam gave Trixie a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, then gestured for June to follow her and dropped to her belly to slow-crawl to the skeleton. June followed suit, wanting to ask why they were crawling, but also not wanting to make too much noise for obvious reasons. It didn’t take too much crawling for the two to reach the skeleton. Only a minute or so. Sam reached it first and hissed in shock, her tail flagging in alarm. “What?” June whispered. “Not a pony!” Sam squeaked, genuinely terrified. The skull filled most of June’s vision. Looks like a pony to me, June thought as she slowly stood up to look over Sam’s plot and head. June yelped as the full skeleton came into view. Her cry made everypony, herself included, flinch. Sam didn’t have it in her to berate June for the loud noise. Not when they were both staring at the same mangled set of bones. How they were still held together was a mystery, but not as big a mystery of how this thing had ever come to be. It had three heads, one with a horn, two without. It had three rib cages, almost entirely independent of each other, save for the bottom pairs being fuzed to the center-most of the hellish trio. The centermost individual of the melded bones could only be determined by how the three complete upper bodies’ spines merged into one larger set of lower vertebrae, with a single bulky shared pelvis and massive hind legs. All much larger than the skulls, forelegs, ribs, vertebrae, and single set of wing bones implied. “Okay… One point to the conspiracy ponies…” Sam murmured quietly. June nodded in agreement and quietly tiphooved closer to the skeleton to examine it more closely. Something’s… off about it. Besides the obvious. What is it? She bent down, examining the bones, taking note of long jagged, scraping marks and gouges on some of the larger surfaces. Mild damage to the backs of the skulls. Chips and cracks here and there… June began to frown. That’s not consistent with being dragged across something. That looks like tool marks. But nothing’s severed, so… Their flesh was peeled off. Why would people go through all that work and just leave the body in the streets? June gently touched one of the marks to try and feel for any hint of texture that might betray what left them. She recoiled immediately, the fact the bones had not decayed in twelve thousand years and were cold like stone both hitting her at once. “Fossilized!? But how? It’s only been a few milin—” Her ears stood up in alarm. “The bugs!” Sam turned to look over her shoulder, frowning curiously. “Some bugs' venom mineralizes their prey,” June said with urgency. “We should leave. Now! Then come back. With bug spray. And lots of newspaper.” This one skeleton could be my doctoral thesis! I wish I could safely move it, June lamented as Sam crawled back towards the group at a speed she’d previously thought impossible. June didn’t bother crawling. She opened her wings and flew back to the wall, arriving just as Sam did. Sam sprang to her hooves pointed to the plaza exit they needed and urgently hissed. “Go! Gogogogogo! All of the go!” Nopony needed to be told twice. Especially not Violet, who had overheard June’s comment and didn’t want to know what venom like that would do to her myomer. They cantered around the plaza, slipping into the street leading to the bridge, then stopped as Sam raised a hoof. “I can’t see a bridge. This road curves,” She whispered. “June, is there a street sign? Does it say ‘palace way’ or anything like that?” June bit her lip and looked around the street level, then upwards for aerial signs. She swore for a moment she saw a point of purple light wink out of existence as her eyes passed over a third story window. Please, please, please, be my mind playing tricks on me… June whimpered, then finally found a sign. “That sign points down the road and says: Blank Forgeheart. If this is Blank Forgefloor, then the heart is probably the palace. Given the layout.” “Good enough for me,” Sam agreed. “A bridge means exposed sightlines, so we move fast and stick together while we’re exposed. Trixie, stay on the rear. June, get behind me, Violet, get on her tail.” The group rearranged itself and began moving down the road. June continued looking up, doing her best to not look scared or like she was obviously looking for anything in particular. Every once in a while, she saw it. A glimmer of purple light. Direct, faint, like a single led that happened to be purple blinking on then off. “Anypony else see the glowy purple?” June asked quietly as they began to move past what looked to be an old barracks, based on its broken down doors and rust stains in the shape of various weapons left on the stone floor. “Yes. Don’t look at it,” Sam said quite firmly. “What if I just looked at one?” Violet asked, a twinge of worry accompanying her voice. “Did you see what made it?” Trixie asked, clearing her mind to ready some battle magic. “Y— Yes.” Violet answered. “I have night vision… Unfortunately.” “What are we dealing with?” Sam asked calmly. “You know those sea parasites that eat and replace a fish’s tongue?” Vi said as she nervously glanced around her. “Like that, but big, and swollen, like a monster that swallowed a pony whole. And wings like a bee.” “Just… one?” June asked, clenching her teeth while trying to sound hopeful and optimistic and failing horribly. “My radar shows… Approximately one yes of them. In a given building,” Violet answered, her ears drooping back. “You have radar?” Sam asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you say so?!” “Doesn’t everypony have…” Vi trailed off and facehooved. The crack of her hoof on her silicon covered titanium skull echoed through the cavern. “I forgot you’re not all also androids.” “Well, good on you for not seeing race,” Trixie commented nervously, eyeing the sky. “Though do keep in mind, physical differences between tribes exist. And are important.” June eeped and recoiled as she felt something staring at her with what everyone who has ever been stalked ever knows is what malicious intent feels like. “RUN!” She shouted, bolting down the street mere instances before a large glob of purple glowing liquid splashed against the street. It didn’t sizzle, it didn’t bubble, but it smelt of death, Breakclean, and the fetid air of a swamp. The others didn’t need to know what was in it to know they didn’t want to be hit by it, and the group began to sprint down the road before waiting to see what it even did to the cobblegems. Nothing good, surely. Violet glanced over her shoulder to the skies. A stream of truly hellish insects, quite literally the thalassic chimeras Violet had described, were pouring from every window more than four stories tall in the street. They moved through the air with the grace of fish in the sea, and with the same silence. “Faster!” Violet yelped. “There are thousands!” “What?” Sam asked, turning to look over her shoulder along with everypony else. The girl's eyes widened with terror, lending speed to their hooves. “They’re owl quiet!” Violet shouted, forgetting for a moment of panic that her friends had seen the eerily silent monsters behind them. They raced along the street, rounding the bend and laying eyes on the palace bridge for the first time. It was made from green and red bloodstone and took the form of a massive suspension bridge, with the cables made from magically toughened jade chains. The bridge spanned a kilometer wide crevasse that plunged deep into the earth, deep enough that as they approached the edge of the bridge, zig-zagging to try and avoid the monstrous insects as they spat rancid death ooze, the ponies couldn’t see the bottom. Only an abyss. An abyss the bridge spanned… Poorly. Most of its cables were broken, the central support pillar was very obviously collapsed and leaning against the far side of the crevasse and, most terrifyingly to June, the sides of the support pillar and crevasse appeared to be coated in dried blood. “Bridge unstable!” Sam yelled, but didn’t slow down. “She means spread out!” Trixie shouted. “Distribute the load!” June moved left. Violet moved right. Sam and Trixie remained in the middle, making their formation into a loose diamond just as Sam set hoof on the bridge. Just in time for the flying monsters to begin to shriek and warble. Their cries sounded exactly how one imagines the sound of a child drowning in their own blood would. Not how such a thing truly sounds, mind you, with the sobbing and the choking, but the way everyone imagines it would, with the gurling and the burbles. June found herself screaming. Trixie turned and fired a barrage of spellbolts into the swarm, also screaming. Her bolts found their marks and dozens of the horrors fell from the sky, bursting as they struck the street. It didn’t matter. The swarm was uncountable. “I should have gotten a gun!” Violet said through a terrified grimace. Sam reared up, wordlessly screaming, sacrificing speed to turn and fire her rifle into the swarm while running backwards and operating her radio. “Mayday! Mayday! Send Luna now, damnit, now!” June felt something strike her back. A flash of light burst outwards from her armor’s wards,  negating the toxin’s effects, though the impact still threw her to the bridge’s deck. “Can’t. City shields up. Also she’s very very occupied. Entity from before summoned a bigger thrall,” Fluttershy reported over her own radio. “What’s wrong?” June jumped back to her hooves, electing to also snapp her wings open and take to the air. “Huge insect swarm! Toxic spit. Hits like a horse kick,” June reported, turning mid air to move to grab Violet. “Sam! Violet! Airlift, use your bucking gem!” Sam understood immediately. She took off, looping around to grab Violet while Trixie continued to shoot, applying covering fire as best she could. “I— Um… T— There’s computer architecture in the city. I— I found a magegem network. I’ve already latched the grid. I’ve been trying to find maps in the old system. It’s huge. But… Um, are you on the palace bridge?” Shy asked. “Yes,” Sam answered before letting go of her radio to grab Violet’s shoulders while June got her flanks. Sam closed her eyes, focused, and the gem in her chest began to glow brightly enough for the light to leak out of her armor. A pale aura began to form around her. “Boosted. Go. Fast!” Sam ordered, starting to flap her wings as hard as she could. June followed suit, Violet gulped and went still as she could as the two pegasi lifted her off the bridge and began to bolt down its length. “Trixie! Shapeshift and fly!” June shouted. Trixie continued to run backwards, firing shot after shot. “They’re not shooting at me.” Trixie said, half stunned, half certain. “Only you three!” June spared a moment to glance back only to see the changeling was correct. The monsters didn’t appear to see her. Their jelly-like glowing purple eyes were fixed solely on the three of them. Their six-part jaws clacked and hissed, spitting only in their direction. Their dozens of hooked legs flexed and snatched the air, hungry for the flesh of only those they beheld. “Doesn't matter! Any door we find is getting closed!” Sam yelled. “MOVE IT!” Trixie burst into flames, emerging as a pegasus in flight, looping around to race towards her friends as fast as she could. “Ah ha!” Shy proclaimed over the radio. “I thought so! I found a thing that looks like defenses for the palace earlier and I can turn them on. I can’t read this language, but I have a crude translator program. I think this here is air defenses? I’m not sure. Do you want me to turn it on?” June flinched. “Somepony tell her those are never good for Amilic!” Violet put a hoof to her radio, flinching as a toxic bolt raced past her hoof, nearly hitting her and Sam both. “June says translator bad!” “I know. But it’s better than nothing, and I memorized some of it helping her, too. The system is also learning Equish alarmingly as fast as I hack it,” Shy said, as disturbed by her statement as everypony else was. Sam looked to June around Violet’s head. They were halfway over the bridge, and so far only luck had prevented them from being hit while flying. “Odds it kills us too?” If there are defenses that are off, then there are probably some that are on and we haven’t been attacked by them. Ponies might be on a friendly fire list… No way to know for sure. June shook her head. There wasn’t time to explain why.  “Trixie! Tell her to do it!” Sam yelled, not seeing June’s negative. Trixie yelped as one of the swarm took note of her and perfectly nailed her at the base of her spine. The impact sent her slamming into the ground. Trixie stood up, took note of her flack skirt sizzling and bubbling anywhere organic parts could be found, and ripped it off, throwing it to the side. The swarm began to separate into two wings, one going for the three mares, one for Trixie. Trixe dodged another glob of toxic spit, then another, frowned, and quickly shapeshifted back into a unicorn. The swarm turned away. “They don’t attack unicorns!” Trixie shouted, excited at her discovery and grateful for the reprieve. “That’s great for all us bucking unicorns!” Sam yelled back, suddenly feeling extremely relieved that Trixie could just run across the bridge. Her relief broke her focus. “I’ll do it,” Violet said as she moved her hoof up to touch her radio. “Shy, Sam says turn them o—” The glow of Sam’s gem faded substantially. June, Sam, and Violet lurched down, spiraling out of control as their combined wingpower dropped about a third. June yelped and flapped harder, drawing on her armor’s magic to try and make up the difference. Sam fell into a swearing fit, trying to refocus herself, but failing over and over. Violet squirmed, starting to panic. “Let go! I’ll slow fall! I’ll slow fall!” June looked down, they were towards the side of the bridge, but moving parallel to it. It was safe to drop her. Here’s hoping they only attack pegasi. “Okay,” June said as she let go. Sam let go as well, agreeing with Violet’s plan. Two globs of toxic sludge smashed into Violet’s side, throwing her several meters over the side of the bridge. With only one pegasus lifting, the two dropped like a stone. “NO!” June screeched, twisting mid air into a dive to grab Violet. Her hooves caught hold of Violet’s oddly calm forelegs. June pulled upwards, straining her wings, back, and withers as she flapped with all her magically armor-boosted might… But could not pull her sister up alone. “June,” Violet said calmly. “I have a climbing kit. I can slow my fall. Let me go. I’ll climb back up.” “For all we know, the bottom is magma!” June growled through clenched teeth, straining herself harder and harder. “We’d see the light. It’s black. There’s a solid floor. No lava. I see tiles.” Violet repeated, this time with a worried expression. “June! They’re splitting off. They’re coming for you. If you get hit over the pit, you CAN'T slow fall!” She’s right… June’s eyes teared up. “I’ll come for you as soon as—” Violet flexed her hind legs, bunching them for a kick with her impact boosting boots. “June! Now!” June let go and Violet plunged away into the darkness, tuning into a pinprick of cyan light as her magic blazed to life to slow her fall. “I’ll find you!” June yelled down into the abyss. A glob of purple sludge flew past June’s wing, singing off several feathers and reminding her she was hovering over the void while being shot at by some thankfully fairly inaccurate insects. Falling back on basic survival instincts, June raced for the bridge deck, scooped up Trixie, and launched herself across the bridge as fast as she could. She made it three quarters of the way across the bridge, spotted Sam holding position near a doorway into the golden pyramid directly across from the bridge (firing her shotgun randomly into the swarm) when the gold pyramids suddenly emitted a loud droning mechanical cry. June felt it more than heard it. Her bones vibrated as much as her inner ears. A heartbeat after the rumbling cry, the pyramids tops split open into quadrants, peeling away from large floating emeralds. The emeralds shimmered, sparked, and blazed to life with bright white light, holding the blinding radiance within their cores for several heartbeats before unleashing it as scintillating rays of burning light with a sound like an electric hawk shrieking as it dove for its prey. The light cut into the swarm, making a visible dent as the beams swept and tracked across the densest parts of the swarm first. “You should go,” Shy warned with quiet terror. “I um… I can only make it shoot the denser groups first. It will shoot you too, on its own.” June grit her teeth and dove for the open door at the base of the pyramid. She flew through it, closed her wings, and dropped Trixie to her hooves before landing, turning around, and grabbing one of her cloud bottles. “This is for my sister you… You monsters!” June shrieked before unleashing the lightning within the bottle into the swarm. Sam raced to the door, ducking June’s lightning, sliding into the pyramid’s entryway. Not commenting on June’s nearly-friendly-fire, Sam turned to Trixie and yelled “DOOR!” Trixie lit her horn and yanked the sliding door down from its recess in the ceiling, slamming it all the way into the floor over the protests of ancient gears. “Sorry! Was looking for the controls, but buck it!” June dropped the empty cloud bottle and fell to the floor, crying. Sam swore under her breath and slowly stood up. “June… I’m sorry. I— I lost focus.” June wiped her eyes on the back of a foreleg. “It’s not your fault. It’s those… Those things! She would have hit the bridge if they hadn't—” Trixie bit her lip and raised a hoof to her helmet. “Agent Lulamoon to mission control. Violet is MIA, situation very bad for the rest of us. We could use a rescue, over.” June grit her teeth and stood up. “I am going out there. We have climbing equipment. I will help her put the pinions in and climb out!” “Uh, do not do that,” Shy said, audibly crying too. “I um… I can’t turn them back off. The system is angry I think? N— Not at us. It hates the… It calls them, uh, Cymothoa? It won't stop shooting…” “Something was stopping this city from protecting its citizens.” Sam noted to herself. Trixie realized she was still transmitting, thus carrying June’s words to Shy. “Uh… Can we get one of the Princesses down here once it's safe to teleport Violet out of a hole that’s… Like at least three kilometers deep?” “Holy…” Cadence crackled over the radio. “That’s one gaping hole. Might have to out compete it!” “Will you focus?!” Luna snapped. “We almost have it where we want it. Sam, the palace throne room will have the defense controls. Turn them off when you arrive. If I am free then, I will scry Violet and retrieve her. If not, I will when I am free. Fluttershy, tell me if you can turn them off from here.” “Yes, Princess,” Shy said quickly. “I can’t right now. Maybe soon?” Trixie let go of the transmit button. “We’re sure she’ll be fine, right?” June shrugged and wiped her eyes again. “I— I don’t know. She can slow a fall. I don’t know for how long. I don’t know how deep that hole is. We don’t know what’s down there… And there’s those monsters up here…” Sam took a deep breath. “Okay. We can take a break here if—” “No,” June said, shaking her head. “No we can’t. Violet might be alive. If that thing breaks free, a lot of ponies will die. They’re fighting up on the surface, too. We have to go on.” June turned around in the unadorned golden box that was the palace entryway, and squeezed her radio button. “Fluttershy, which way do we go?” “O— Open the inner door. Take the sixth left. Then—” Shy squeaked as something happened on her end. “O— Oh dear. Um… Let me know when you get there. The monsters are gone for now and um… There are a lot of hurt ponies and I know first aid.” Sam pressed her own radio. “Do what you can, we’ll tell you when we need more directions.” she let go and nodded to Trixie. “Door.” “Found out how they work,” Trixie said as she pressed an alicorn sized hoof print shape on the otherwise polished to a mirror shine golden walls. The inner door slid open, revealing a truly gargantuan hallway with a golden roof, silver floor, and crystal walls lined with glowing runes of power. Their red light provided the only illumination for the open space. June gave her axe a practice swing. It seemed to cleave the very air, making a whooshing noise which sounded more like a cut than a swing. We’re going straight there. Astrolabe goes on its stupid bucking pedestal, and then I’m saving Violet! Then the shields will go down, and Luna can get us all out, June thought as she entered the palace proper. And I will kill anything that tries to so much as slow us down. June took a few steps into the dim red lit hall. Her hoofsteps echoed sharply, then softly, then softly again. Her determination butted up against the sudden remembrance of the place’s sheer size… And while diminished, it persevered. “I forgot how huge this place is,” June admitted with a nervous flick of her tail. “Yeah… Which is why,” Sam said pointing behind them with one hoof. “That, girls, was the easy part.”