"They only look like bugs, they are far worse!" I shouted. They had started to stream into the room from every tiny hole and crevice in the rocks. We had walked into a trap, and no doubt the trading post had been abandoned in fear of these things. It was a black swarm all over the walls and ceiling, so many, far too many to fight. We had to run.
"Luna, you're last! Follow me!" I shouted, and charged towards the door, smashing through and knocking it off its hinges. My friends followed but the bugs were already upon us, trying to crawl up our legs and do who knows what else. They weren't biting – yet – but I didn't want to wait to see what their plan was.
Luna, the last one out, sent a blast of wind in an effort to scatter them away from us, but there were already thousands in the tunnel as we charged through. Gabby screamed and started to slam her body into the walls, trying to crush the insects. They were hard, very hard, and the hits did nothing to shake them off.
Wedge spit something out and I realized they must have gotten onto his face. He wasn't yelling, but he was running. We just kept running, barreling through the narrow passageway in hopes of reaching the relatively safe natural caves beyond.
Unable to see properly, I slammed into the next door and tumbled through it, breaking it into splinters as I had hit it at a dead run. I tripped over myself and landed on my chest, before Gabby hit me and tripped as well. Wedge and Inkie spilled through and threw themselves on the ground, rolling in an effort to squish the insects, to no avail.
Luna stepped through the door, calmly, carefully, and I stood up to look at her. He pupils had disappeared, and her mane was billowing as though a strong wind tore through it. She did not speak, she merely concentrated and pricked each and every insect off our bodies and suspended it in the air, before taking it with her back into the tunnels. She disappeared from sight as we lay gasping, and a shield spell appeared over the doorway. It was to protect us from what was coming next.
A great flare of intense heat and light appeared from behind the shield as every molecule was being incinerated as though in the furnace of a star. I had my own problems, checking myself all over to see if there had been any bites. Luna, it seemed, had been thorough, and had missed not a single bug, but I was still getting a feeling.
"Yeaaaaaaaargghhh" Gabby screamed, and she slammed her head into the ground as she did. She then stood up and slammed it down again, grunting with pain and winding up for a third hit.
"Gabby! What's wrong? Did one bite you?" I asked. Inkie and Wedge helped form a circle around her, and I motioned to them to hold her still.
"One – one got on me. It crawled in my ear. Get it out!" she screamed again, a high pitched blast that stung my ears.
"Hold her down, now!" I shouted. Wedge and Inkie leaped on Gabby and pinned her to the ground, but she could have shaken them off if she wanted. She looked like she was having a seizure, her legs would spasm and her mouth was nearly foaming.
I focused and brought about my sight, looking intently at Gabby's light. I could not detect the black corruption, it wasn't on the surface. I ran around her quickly, trying to find it, circling, and then again, but there was no sign of it. She surely wasn't lying.
I put myself right up to her head and held it in front of mine, groping for her body as my sight hid her physical form. When I was this close, I could feel it. It was inside her, hidden from me by her own signature. This was going to take some finesse.
I pressed myself up against her, looking for all the world like I was giving her a hug, but that was not what I was doing. I was impressing myself into her consciousness, it was far too dug in to deal with surgically. I'd need to find it inside her mind, and pull it out with my own.
I stepped back, except I wasn't actually stepping back, not in the real world. I had managed to insert myself into Gabby's perception, I could see the world as she was seeing it, and it was completely dark.
"Gabs, open your eyes," I said. The world suddenly lit up, in a cone in front of her. It quickly swept over the cave we were standing in, and wherever the cone of light looked, the world lit up accordingly. Inkie and Wedge seemed a lot smaller here than when I looked at them.
Everywhere she wasn't looking, the world darkened slightly as she held it in her memory. Small objects like pebbles or marks on the floor disappeared as her short-term memory had forgotten about them. Behind us, out of her sight, I could see sound-waves appearing from the door as Luna finished her spells within.
"Gabs, look around. Just keep looking," I said. As she did, I was searching, looking for the insect that was hiding somewhere in this perception. I, as an intruder, would be able to see it, but Gabby would not. She looked all around, scanning the cave, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"Look up? Check the ceiling," I said. There was no insect there.
Gabby shut her eyes and I heard her chin thump against the ground as she must have pushed my body back. A moment later I heard myself slumping over, and the cave began to vibrate as the pain came back. I had to get that bug out now, before it did any more damage.
"Come on, where is it. If I let it bond to her psyche – oh," I thought. I couldn't see Gabby's exact position, since she could not see herself, but I could feel it. I felt over her body, feeling for a lump, but there was nothing attached to her tactile perception.
Sight, Sound, Touch. Taste would probably not be strong enough to house the insect. Had it attached to her sense of smell? Those were linked, somewhere in the back of the head.
"Inkie, shove something in her mouth," I said.
"Like some food?" she asked.
"Anything!" I shouted.
A moment later Gabby contorted as the colors here changed violently, a backlash of the perception of taste and smell. I saw a big, obvious black outline as they flashed across my vision. Gotcha.
I felt around for where her mouth was, then opened it. I had no idea if I was really doing this in the real world, but nopony else was reacting, so I assumed not. I reached in with one hoof and felt her mouth, and there it was. The lump. It had attached itself to the back of her throat in her mind's eye, and was no doubt going to burrow further if I hadn't found it. I tried to tug it out, but it was stuck. I could hear Gabby sobbing now, but she wasn't moving too much. I put my other hoof down and grabbed it, pulling as hard as I could, but the bug was latched on, possibly with a hook.
I reared up and put my hind legs on Gabby's chest, and stretched my back out as far as I could, exerting the maximum possible strength any pony could muster, and I felt it give, slightly. The bug lost its grip and I kept pulling as the feeling of fluid began to fill the cavern, manifesting itself to me as sweat all over Gabby's body. She was bleeding, psychically, but there was no other way, the only thing I could do was tear the bug out.
With a sickening wet screech, the bug was torn out and I fell over backwards. I squished it easily and looked at the lump of flesh I had torn out with it.
"Gabby, tell me your name, your full name," I said.
"Gabriella Degine," she said. I could feel tears forming in her eyes, but the pain was over, for now.
"What is your favorite color," I asked.
"Blue," she said.
"What high school did you go to," I asked.
"Briarwood High, Canterlot," she said.
I rattled off several other questions about her life, quizzing her about anything I knew in common with her. She answered all the questions correctly, but I had to find what I had torn out.
"Who's your favorite Wonderbolt?" I asked.
"Screw the Wonderbolts," she said. I suppose that was correct.
"What's the heaviest thing you've ever lifted," I asked.
"A... book?" she was asking. Here we go, the memory there was incomplete.
"Yes, and why were you lifting it?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said.
"Who was with you?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. She started crying again.
"What happened after that? Before it? What job did you get that summer? Do you remember the festival?" I asked.
She just cried. A whole year of her life had been torn out, and only bits and pieces were left.
"It's okay, it's okay," I said. I couldn't leave her like this, the wound was too big. She'd risk going insane if she had such a big psychic wound left untreated, so I did what I always did when I had to help somepony who had their mind scarred. It was just a bigger patch job.
I returned to my othersight realm, and stood up to see Gabby's sphere. I took a part of myself, a copy of my own mind, a hunk no larger than your nose, and poured it onto her sphere of light. I pushed and prodded a few times until I found the empty spot, buried beneath the surface, and then allowed the hole to be filled by the part I had put on it. Never had I put such a large piece on another pony, but Gabby was an exception.
We waited about ten minutes for Luna to finish what she was doing in the cave. Wedge waited at the door the whole time while I monitored Gabby, who had passed out when I had applied the bandage. She would need time to process what I had put on her mind, and we weren't going anywhere. Inkie merely paced back and forth until Luna came striding out and lowered the shield.
"Princess!" Wedge said, and looked as if he was about to throw herself at her before stopping.
"Captain, is everything clear out here?" she asked.
"Yes ma'am," he said.
"The hell were you doing in there?" I asked her.
"Such an apt term, is it not?" she said, and smirked. I doubted the Diamond Dogs would come back to this place any time soon, but at least when they did, it would be safe. All their possessions were likely ash at this point, though.
"Will she be all right?" Luna asked, and laid down next to Gabs.
"Yeah, it got bad, real bad," I said.
Luna probably hadn't heard me, as she was doing her dreamwalking thing. Her eyes closed, she placed her head on Gabby's back and made a humming noise for a few moments until Gabby suddenly woke up, sputtering.
"I'm awake," she said. She groaned and tried to stand up, her legs shaking as she did. I had to brace her before she got her balance. She didn't take her eyes off me the whole time, a thousand-mile stare right through me.
"Are we quite far from our destination?" I asked Inkie, who had finally stopped pacing and come to stand near us.
"Two hours, tops," she said.
"No more detours, agreed?" I said.
"Agreed," she said.
"An ambush, you think?" Luna asked me, as we trekked towards the next door.
"No, or at least, not for us. That was for Inkie's neighbours," I said. Luna nodded.
"It would have been nice to see someone else, if at least to remind myself we are not alone," she said.
"Hmm," I grunted. We kept walking.
We passed through two more large, open caves, before Inkie made a mark on the ground that didn't point towards the nearest doorway. This one was pointing down through the cave itself, and not along the artificial cut points.
"Last one?" I asked.
"Yep, we can follow this underground river most of the rest of the way," she said.
"I see no river," I said.
"You will," she said, and trotted off.
It was amazing that I could not hear it at all, but as we crested the next rise in the cave, there was a river, flowing out of a cut in the rock and cascading down, further into the caves. It went so far I could not see the other end as it twisted. All around us, crystals were growing out of the floor and Photophorm lights were everywhere, reflecting off of them. It was almost as bright as daylight out, and the water flowed without a peep.
All across the surface of the water, I could see little rafts of crystal growing and flowing with the water. Beneath it, stone pillars grew up from the bottom of still sections of the river, where the water was ponding, and reached the surface where they would spread out, just like a rock Lilly pad. Some aquatic species of Photophorm backlit the whole thing from below, casting eerie shadows all over the ceiling as we stood.
"Incredible," Luna whispered in awe.
"Don't take any crystals or I'll get sued," Inkie whispered. I wondered if she had seen this sort of thing so many times it no longer made an impact.
We set off again, and Inkie made sure to keep us away from the banks of the water as it had cut its way through solid rock. She had warned us that the banks looked sturdy but could collapse, so we kept close to the wall. As we walked, Gabby sidled up next to me, and slowed down such that I had to drop my pace as well.
"Subtle," I whispered as we were now at the back of the group.
"Sorry," she said.
"What's up?" I asked.
"Listen, Cadence. What did you do to me, back there?" she asked.
"The same thing I do for everypony who has been hurt. Princess stuff," I said, "I'd do it for anypony."
"It's so weird. I know who you are, who you really are, because it's like I lived it. Why didn't you tell me about this before?" she asked
"Would you have believed me?" I asked. She shook her head.
"I'm struggling to avoid calling Luna my sister," she said.
"I'm sure she won't mind," I said.
"I, uh, erm..." she said, hesitating before spitting out, "Shining Armor."
"It's okay! But I'm not sharing," I said. She giggled.
"I've got a new respect for you, okay? But don't do that again," she said.
"Why not? Would you rather I left you?" I said.
"Yeah. All your memories make me feel short. I don't like being so tiny, it's unnatural," she said. She picked up her pace and trotted back to the front of the pack, and smiled at Luna as she did.