//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 
// Story: Forbidden Deeper 
// by SaltyJustice 
//------------------------------//

	We trudged ever onwards, deeper and deeper into the earth.  The rock beneath us had changed color now, it was a pale brown and made a curious crunching noise as we walked, like sand but not quite.  I was sure Inkie probably knew more about it, but my mind was distracted by a feeling I was getting.  It felt odd, it wasn't quite the same as a disruption, like my senses would tell me about, but it was something.
"Please hold a moment," Luna said.  We all obliged, my legs were starting to hurt.  I had no idea how far down we had gone, the path sloped gently but it could be deceptive, it's impossible to judge distance down here.  The only landmarks were the marked signs indicating we were near shaft 33.  They had been getting more and more spread out as we went, the earlier shafts were all clustered but these later ones were often so far apart, well, I couldn't tell how much time elapsed either.  I wanted to say they were hours of walking apart, but it only felt like hours.
Luna turned to one side and walked up close to the wall, and her horn went dark.  Only Inkie's light now cast long shadows around us, and Luna felt the wall for something.  She backed up suddenly, and reared up.  I felt a surge flow through me as her horn lit up again, and a great body, far away, moved.  She turned to us when it was done.
"It is night time now," she said simply.  It may as well always be night down here.
We continued to walk, I didn't know how much further we were going to go, but we needed to rest.  Luna had no doubt never bothered with sleep, unless she was feeling bored, but I had become accustomed to it and liked getting a full night's rest.  It gave me time to organize my thoughts.  No doubt our companions would need it too, their biology, though different, had the same drive, in essence.  Time to relax and think about what's happened so far.
"Inkie, is there a place we can rest?" I asked her as we walked.
"Yeah, but we're a little behind where I wanted us to be," she said, her gaze fixed forward.
"Oh?" I led, but she didn't take the bait.
"Princess, I know I've been all grim with you, but it's all the circumstances.  Things haven't been going very well for us lately," she said.
"I gathered," I said.
"First this thing with papa, and now the house needs all these repairs we couldn't afford, then Pinkie went missing..." she said, trailing off.
"Pinkie?  Oh do you know her?" Luna asked, trotting up alongside us and butting into the conversation.
"Of course, she's my sister.  Pinkie Pie," Inkie said.
"Oh I see.  I did not realize, I had thought it a coincidence.  Is it a common last name?" Luna asked.
"Common as dirt," Inkie said.
"Wait, she went missing?" I asked.  This was important.
"Yeah, yesterday.  Just up and left without saying anything to anypony.  She missed her visiting hours with papa, and then it turns out she never went back to Sugarcube Corner after a little get together with her friends.  We didn't have time to search for her 'cause we had to watch the farm," Inkie said.
Hmm, do I tell her that I know where she is?  It may assuage her conscience, or it may disturb her further.  What to do?
"I'm sure she's just fine," I said.
"Yeah, she can take care of herself," Inkie said.
There was that feeling again.  I had felt it before too, a long time ago, but where?  When?  It was coming from somewhere in the walls.  It certainly didn't feel threatening, but I had felt it before.  No sooner had I thought of it than it was gone again.
I saw a reflective glint ahead of us, something square reflecting the light from Inkie's helmet back at us.  As we got closer, I saw it was a metal sheet with words on it, "Switching Station B.  All visitors report to the forepony's office.  No access without hardhats, this means you!"
"Oh, I forgot my helmet," Gabby said.
There was an uneasy chuckle in the air as the cave around us opened up.  It was strange, I had never spent a lot of time underground, and this, I was totally unprepared for.
It was like an underground city, the opened cavern has a number of wooden houses with barrels and crates in front of them.  They were labelled quite clearly, one house had a big red cross that unmistakably meant it was a hospital, and the other buildings had indicators for things like management, records, bunks, and storage.
"What is this place?" I asked nopony in particular.
"Switching station B?" Inkie said.
"It's like a village, but underground," I said.  I hoped I wasn't the only one in awe here.
"Yeah, when doing really deep mining, you have to build this stuff so your workers don't have to spend half their shift walking to the surface.  So we had doctors and bunks and a bar down here.  Must've been something to see," Inkie said.
"Must have?" I asked.
"Well it was all over before I was even born, you know," Inkie said.  I presumed her father had told her about this place, but it was no less fascinating to me.  If you didn't look up, you could be forgiven for thinking you had gone into town at night.  A particularly dilapidated town with no residents, so maybe a ghost town, but still.
"Over here," Inkie said, and we walked to one side of the main 'street'.  It really was like a street, with rails where minecarts would have run back and forth, and there were a couple broken ones stacked near another building we passed.
Inkie led us to a room that had been carved from the rock at the edge of the chamber.  A wooden door gave way to a small, two-room office.  The room behind the first had several slabs carved from the stone engraved into the walls.  It looked like an ancient tomb.
"We can sleep here for the night, this is about as good as lodgings get," Inkie said.
"Would not the bunkhouse be a better choice?" Wedge asked.  I had seen a building with a sign on it showing a picture of a bed outside, closer to the middle of the village.
"All the beds are gone, anything that was worth carrying was taken out when the mine was closed," Inkie said.
"Did you just leave the rest of this junk down here, then?" Wedge asked.
"If it'd cost less to buy a new one than to pay a pony to haul it out, better to leave it here," Inkie said.  Her demeanor was that of a hard-nosed naturalist, but she truly was a businesspony at heart.
There were some recesses in the walls where candles had once been, but I couldn't locate any in the office.  The only thing still here was a box filled with ancient looking work records, scratched on paper that'd turn to dust if you shook it too hard.
"Well, time to get scrounging," I said.
"Hmm?" Luna said, looking at me.
"It means searching, I'm going to try to find a candle or two.  Wanna come with?" I asked hopefully.
"I'll go," Wedge said.  Luna nodded in assent.
"All right, let's go check the storage building.  Be back soon," I said.
The two of us ambled off into the dark, and when the door shut, we were left in pitch blackness.  Wedge cleared his throat somewhere off to my left.
I waited a moment.
"Princess?" he asked.
"Give me a second," I said.
The feeling was back, as we had walked into the dark, it became stronger.  I was considering an experiment.
I cast a light spell, and I didn't even screw it up too badly.  It took me a few adjustments to get the intensity down below 'blinding', and as the light became less intense, the intensity of that odd feeling became greater.  I still didn't know how to place it.  What was it?
We passed a rickety looking shack with a picture of an ale stein on it, and I stuck my head inside briefly to see if anything had been left.  The whole place, however, had been ransacked.  Leave it to a bunch of miners never to forget the booze.  Then again, it'd probably have turned to vinegar by now.  Or, it'd be a finely aged wine, if they had any, but the building was completely empty, save a bar stool or two.
The second building we checked was marked as a storehouse and it yielded some results.  There was a pillow inside, but it smelled nasty so I left it where it was.  There was also a toolbox full of bolts and screws, some old-timey magazines (mostly oriented towards a colt demographic, I'd venture), and a candle with a decent amount of wax left.  Otherwise, the building was empty, probably not ten bits of actual value remained in the whole complex, just a lot of forgotten junk.
I picked up the candle and put it in Wedge's saddlebag, but he didn't seem keen on leaving quite yet.  As I turned to walk out, he stayed where he was.
"Is something the matter?" I asked him.
"I needed to talk to you, in some amount of privacy," he said.
"What about?" I asked.  I was getting tired, and didn't want to have another discussion when I could be taking a nap.
"It's about your sister," he said.
I chuckled.
"Luna?  What about her?" I asked.
He paused, trying to think of the right word.
"Has she ever had a relationship before?  It seems as though nothing I do even makes an impact on her," he asked.
"Well, we're leaping a few steps ahead, aren't we?  Do you realize the rules of propriety here?" I asked.
That one flummoxed him.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"If you fancy my sister then you must behave as a gentlecolt would.  Need I remind you that her etiquette is over one thousand years out of date?" I said.
"Oh.  When I was a lad, I would just ask mares to a dance.  What did she do a thousand years ago?  Was it that different?" he asked.  This was going to be more like a history lesson, I felt.
"Yes and no.  Courtship between most ponies was just like today, let me tell you," I said.  It brought back a memory of mine, a stallion, Alexei?  No, I had always called him Alex.
It hadn't gotten serious between us, but I still remembered him, eleven-hundred years ago.  Ah, he had been quite a charmer.  How did he first approach me?
"Writing letters!" I said.  Wedge turned his head sideways.
"I don't understand," he said.
I was going to leave Alex out of the conversation, if I could;  I doubted Wedge would understand my strange circumstances, and I didn't want to make things confusing for Shining Armor.  That'd upset him quite a bit, if Wedge said something out of place.
"In the old days, a gentlecolt would write his lady letters, always sent with a pen-name but otherwise anonymously.  They were like poems, extolling the virtues of the lady and her family.  You have to write it to make her feel like the most important pony in the world, get me?" I said.
"But she already knows me," he said.
"Yes, and she'll figure out who the letters are from pretty quickly, but that's how you do it.  You have to win her heart like that, then tell her to meet you someplace romantic and do a big reveal.  That's how you woo a princess," I said.
"Is that how Shining Armor won you over?" he asked.
I blushed.
"Ah - no, he lifted a book for me," I said.
Wedge wisely let that one slide.  We made our way back to the office to find Gabby already asleep, and Inkie looking like she was about to collapse.  Luna, though she was laying down, did not look the least bit tired.
"I was wondering if I'd need to retrieve you," she said as we entered.
"Just follow the smell," I said.
Luna lit the candle for me as I put it in the recess on the wall, and it cast an orange glow over the room.  Much more natural that our light magic, and I estimated the candle would still be burning when we woke up.
I didn't want to go through all the effort of pulling off my armor, and Luna had left hers on as well, but Wedge disrobed quickly and stacked his gear in a corner.  I noticed Luna watching him intently, but I decided not to mention anything we had talked about earlier.  She would find out soon enough.
"Not going to sleep, sister?" I asked her, as I made myself as comfortable as possible.  I didn't feel quite right trying to sleep on the rock slabs as the others had, and I figured the floor was just as comfortable, so I propped myself in a corner and laid down.
"I will keep watch," she said, but gave me an intense look.
"What?" I asked, answering her stare.
"You ought to remain awake too, but you sleep.  Why?" she asked.
"Did she just ask you why you sleep?" Inkie muttered.  I couldn't tell if she was awake or half-asleep, and she didn't seem interested in an answer.
"It's how I relax.  You're always on edge, you need to lighten up," I said.  Her stare was as intense as ever.
"I have reason to be 'on edge'," she said.
There was that feeling again.  It was closer now, but still very distant.  I sat up again.
"Do you feel that?" I asked her.  She shook her head.
"Are your senses telling you something?" she asked.
"I don't think so, maybe I'm just uneasy," I said.  I yawned.
"Hmm.  Good night, then," Luna said.
"Good night," I said.  I drifted off as I laid my head down, but there was still an uncertain feeling coming from somewhere nearby.  I remained aware of it even as I closed my eyes, like I was only partly asleep.  That awareness tugged at me, but I was too tired to listen.