We ate breakfast, mostly in silence. I noticed Inkie hadn't packed anywhere near enough food for the trip, most of her carrying space was flares and assorted mining tools, so I decided to forgo my food and let her eat it instead.
Luna also decided to abstain, though I could see her mouth watering as Gabby wolfed down a sandwich. Never one for table manners, Gabby burped and gave me a look.
"Forget how to eat?" she asked.
"I don't think I could after that display," I said.
"You've seen worse," Gabby said.
"Yes, and you were the worse. Were you raised in a barn?" I asked.
"That depends, does the back alley behind the porcelain goods store count as a barn?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
She stopped and stared at me for a few seconds, before stating, "Pottery barn, get it? Do I have to explain the joke to you? Criminy!"
I frowned back.
"I don't recall you ever doing much better, especially not with the way you eat cotton candy," she said after a moment of refection.
"That was one time," I muttered.
It suddenly occurred to me that if Gabby couldn't catch up with me over tea, she'd catch up with me during a life and death struggle for the fate of the world.
"But seriously, are you three not eating? If that's so, I won't save you a granola bar," she said.
"Three?" I asked. I looked at Inkie, who looked up suddenly with her mouth full of salad.
"Whah?" she asked, and lettuce fell out of her full mouth. She swallowed, then started choking for a second before recovering and coughing.
"I meant the other guy, pitching wedge," Gabby said.
I had to stop for a second.
"Gabby, there was a joke there. Sand wedge, sandwich, we could have made it work," I said. She nodded, closed her eyes, and thought.
"No, it's too much of a stretch. If it comes up again I'll use it," she said. She turned to Wedge.
"If you're not gonna eat, can I have your chocolate bar? I saw you put one in your bag in Ponyville," Gabby asked.
Luna cleared her throat. Gabby stopped and gave her a nasty look, before correcting herself.
"May I have your chocolate bar?" she asked.
"I already had it last night, as a snack," Wedge said. He hadn't eaten anything this morning, and was now putting his armored suit back on. Unlike me, he didn't smell terrible, and his mane wasn't greasy from lack of bathing, while mine was. I hadn't bathed in days. Some ponies get all the luck, and it seems I wasn't one of them.
I pushed my way out of the office and stepped out into the darkness, as Luna stepped out behind me and lit up her horn. As expected, Shining Armor wasn't outside, waiting for me. It had been a faint hope, that maybe he and his troops had stayed up all night to catch up with us, but it was not to be. In fact, he could be only minutes behind us and I wouldn't even know it, sound tended not to carry too far in these mineshafts before becoming so much background noise.
We trodded out, back towards the center of the switching station, before Inkie marked an arrow on the floor indicating a 45 degree turn, down a different path from the main one.
"Why aren't we taking the straight path?" I asked.
"Collapsed tunnel on the main shaft, we have to take a detour to get around it, unless you want to try digging through a few thousand tons of rock," she said.
We followed one of the mine cart tracks over to another shaft and Inkie marked the wall, then pulled out a map and looked at it.
I looked over her shoulder, but the map didn't make any sense, lines and markings that had nothing whatsoever to do with the mineshafts we had been traveling down. What good was a map if it didn't show you where you were and where you could go?
"This isn't good," she muttered.
"What isn't?" I asked.
"Nothing, this way," she said.
This shaft was narrower than the main shaft, and the mine cart track kept getting under me as I stepped, it felt like I was one false move away from a nasty trip. The cramped conditions weren't helping my nerves either, and the light from Luna's horn didn't carry so well when there was Gabby's flank in the way, blocking it out.
We followed the path for some distance, single-file, for about another half an hour, before Inkie stopped us and turned around.
"What is it?" I asked from behind Gabby, who tried to step to the side but was too big to let me do anything except see Inkie's dour expression.
"I need you four to wait here a bit," she said.
"Why?" Gabby asked.
"Well, you're too big, for one thing," she said, frowning.
"What are you implying, shorty?" Gabby threatened, but Inkie remained unflappable.
"If you want to crawl through this little hole here, be my guest, but otherwise, just wait here okay?" she said.
Just behind her, blocked by her body, was a hole that was exactly large enough for her to crawl through. I would probably get stuck, and Gabby was way too large. I wouldn't want to risk sending Wedge through either, he was probably too big, and Luna was right out, as she'd probably get her horn stuck if she tried. Personally, I didn't like tight spaces anyway, so I wasn't about to argue.
"Oh, and stand back. Like, back up until you can't see my headlamp anymore, okay?" she said.
It was too narrow to turn around, so we just had to back up. Luna was in the rear, and I had so desperately wanted to see her face as Wedge was forced to put his rump right in front of her nose. I couldn't hear embarrassment, so we just backed up until Inkie's light was lost in the twists and turns of the shaft.
We waited for a while. I could sit down and stretch my legs just a bit, and I figured I'd have a chat with Gabby while I waited.
"So Gabs, what's been new with you?" I asked her, hoping to defuse any tension that may have been building up.
"I'm stuck a thousand miles below the surface with my idiot friend waiting for somepony to do something I can't see, what about you?" she said, trying to turn her head far enough to see me.
"Not much, stuck a thousand miles below the surface with my idiot friend waiting for her to lighten up. Been keeping busy, I guess," I said.
"Yeah, tell me about it," she said.
I murmured my ascent.
"No seriously, tell me about it," she said.
"What? What I do to keep busy?" I asked.
"Yeah, all I hear is that you're all over Equestria doing 'something' that nopony can adequately describe," she said.
"I wander the streets at night, listening for the cry of the oppressed pony. When I hear it, I spring into action," I said, and Gabby's face broke into a grin.
"I am the blade that glistens in the twilight," I said, holding up my hoof. It scraped the side of the shaft as I did so.
"I am vengeance, I am justice," I said. Gabby was trying to turn around to get a better view.
"I am the Princess of Love, I am: Cadenza – The Class Q Foalsitter. I am the night," I said, and I heard a hissing noise. At first I thought it was Gabby laughing but she was just smiling at me. I tried to turn around to see if it was Luna or Wedge, but it wasn't coming from there.
"Do you hear that?" Wedge asked.
A blast of air so powerful it nearly knocked me down went firing past us as a sonic boom shuddered the walls and dust plowed through us. I didn't even hear the explosion, just the ringing in the air as it went past, making my ears sting and my eyes water.
After the aftershocks subsided, I heard Inkie's voice calling through the dust clouds at us.
"All right, get over here, move it!" she shouted. Wedge pushed me forward from behind and we blindly groped our way through the fog, emerging into the same main mineshaft as before after climbing a pile of rubble.
I was too busy coughing to accuse her of anything, so I let Luna take care of it.
"Oh, I take it that you used some magical device to clear the blockage?" Luna said.
"It wasn't magic, it was a bomb," I wheezed.
"Bomb?" she asked.
"Yeah I used a charge to open a hole. Now we're past the collapse site, so we can keep going. Shaft 51 is about an hour's walk," Inkie said. She had set off before I recover, and I had to jog to catch up.
My coat was now covered in gray dust, as was Gabby's and Wedge's. Luna was still the same navy blue as always, it was probably the same magic that made her hair look all goofy. Must be a pain to wash.
We were now getting right to the heart of the mining complex, the signs we passed showed "Shaft 45" "Shaft 46" and it would be no time before we reached the end. It was also getting very hot this far down, and the caverns were getting steamy. Any moisture stuck in the air, then to your fur, and sweating would avail you not. It was probably going to get worse before it got better.
"Hey look Cadence, you can take a bath," Gabby said, pointing to a small rivulet of water running out of a fissure in the rock. It was a crack running from the floor to the roof and water was leaking out, cascading down the slope further into the mine. It was merely a trickle, but it looked disgusting and stunk like salt.
"Don't drink that," Inkie said.
"I had no intention," I said.
The water was coming out of more cracks as we went further down, each one adding to the stream behind it. Soon we were walking through a marsh, the cavern floor had half an inch of water running over it and we splashed as we went. The stuff smelled terrible, like rotten meat mixed with moldy hay, and I had to breathe through my mouth or I'd probably throw up.
"What is this curious substance?" Luna asked Inkie.
"Brine," she said.
"Like pickle brine?" Wedge asked.
"About a thousand times saltier. Don't drink it," she said again.
"You already said that," I observed.
"Sorry, it's an old habit. Pinkie used to try to drink it whenever you took your eyes off her," she said.
I briefly tried to imagine what it'd be like to drink a brine so loaded with salt, but then concluded it'd be about the same as just eating a hoof-full of table salt. You'd have to be some kind of nuts to try that more than once.
We were getting closer to Shaft 51, and I figured it'd be a good time to dismiss Inkie and send her back to the surface. There was no need to get her further involved, and she'd likely be in a lot less danger if she wasn't accompanying us. I rehearsed my lines in my head a few times, trying to get it to sound inoffensive and concerned at the same time.
"Here we are," Inkie said, stopping at a sign labelled "Shaft 51". The main mineshaft continued for some distance down past this one, but the water was getting pretty thick at this point. It'd probably be flooded if we kept going down any further, and I knew this was the path we needed to follow.
"Thank you muchly for your assistance, Miss Pie. We can handle it from here," I said. Short and to the point, and now comes the inevitable counter argument.
"Good, glad to be rid of you," she said.
"Well I – what?" I asked.
"I don't want to be down here any longer than I have to. Do you have somepony to guide you the rest of the way?" she asked.
"Huh?" I was dumbfounded.
"Is there something more than just a mineshaft here?" Luna asked me, or maybe Inkie, it was hard to tell.
"Yeah, this shaft opens into a gallery carved out by our neighbors. Do you know them?" Inkie asked.
I honestly hadn't thought of it any further. I just knew this was where I was supposed to go, not any of the specifics. I had figured the shaft went into the Abyss, but it seemed not. This was not good.
"I thought this place was off limits," Gabby said, peering into the shaft. It was way too dark to see anything, but I thought I could see a bone.
"It is to ponies, but dogs don't care about our laws. They had a mining project down here a while back, tried to sell us the gems at an outrageous price, let me tell you," Inkie said.
"So their digging intersects with yours?" I asked. Inkie nodded, but gave me an uncomfortable look.
"So I take it that means you don't know the way? Lovely," she said, and pulled out the same map as before. Perhaps the reason it didn't make sense was because it had been made by Diamond Dogs instead of the Pie family.
"Any idea what you're looking for down here?" she asked.
"Have they ever come across a rock that they were unable to pierce with conventional picks? Something resistant to even explosives?" I asked. The stuff lined the edges of the Abyss, made it nigh-impossible to tunnel into from the side. There were a few entrances here and there, gaps in the rock, and these were what Celestia had had in mind as a shortcut. Then again, the Ziristone shell had been weakened, so it was possible there were even more entrances elsewhere, but this was a surer bet. She had been adamant this would work, but hadn't told me exactly why. I was trusting her blindly at this point.
"You kidding? Look at this," she said, pointing to a large arc marked in black on the map. It was then that I realized the map was not showing mine shafts, but rock layers, and there was nothing on the map past the arc. Because that arc was impenetrable. Perfect. Sort of.
"They told me that the gems were enormous right up until they found this thick black stone they couldn't cut through, and then they had to give up. I told em to get stuffed, because I had heard rumors about where they came from. The Pie family doesn't buy or sell illegal gemstones no matter the price," Inkie said.
Inkie shined her light down the mineshaft ahead of us, and something white glinted a reflection back. Pure white, a ribcage, but the rest of its owner was nowhere to be found. She swallowed audibly.
"Here we go," she said.