"So what will you do sister?" Princess Celestia kept quiet despite her sister's question. She was doing two things.
One, she was doing her very best to actually detect Grim, the one her sister spoke of. And Two, she was thinking of what to do about him. Of course She had no doubt many other groups would do their best to contain him, or do their best to. Especially the one she'd just sensed only a few moments ago as if they'd been somehow hiding from her omniscience with life energy. However much thinking that had to be done, She knew she couldn't give an actual answer yet. "Nothing. I know we must do something about him, and we will" Luna looked only a bit worried as her sister walked out to the balcony and looked over the kingdom, or what was half of it if not a bit more. Luna yawned loudly and nodded "Okay, well we will retreat to our chambers for a few." Celestia nodded to her tired sister, who now walked to her room, presumably to get some sleep, but she knew her sister more than she let on, despite their thousand year separation.
The ground behind him wasn't really disturbed, but he wondered if his armor would get ruined from being drug against it for so long. "Why are you so heavy?" Grim chuckled loudly and replied to the pony's rhetorical-sounding question "Why do you think, last I checked armor wasn't something that was dragged on the ground easily" his captor stopped in what looked to be a slightly shaded area and he heard what sounded like the dropping of chains. Grim could still hardly see anything in front of his face but at least his eyes weren't hurting anymore and that made him sigh with relief.
His legs were still bound together at the hooves by the same set of shackles, but he shook them anyways, which got a response from his captor who he heard directly in front of him "Don't worry, you'll be out of those in no time"
Grim let out a smoggy huff again and simply laid there. Eventually Bones picked the chains u again and resumed the process of dragging him.
Eventually a familiar sound reached their ears, that's if Bones had any ears. The sound of a portal, and again the light hit his eyes, forcing him to close them shut. Soon he felt an ambient energy nearby and huffed a breath as he did his best to break the shackles, but to no effect he did so. With what felt like a sudden tug Bones entered the portal, and the chains were pulled in with a jerk, almost throwing Grim in.
Portals were much less painful than warp points or teleports, in that they didn't require any disassembling of the cargo, in this case it was Bones and Grim. Grim was thankful for almost nothing, save for the fact portals existed.
As he was thrown from the portal into the other side, he hit the ground with a loud thud he hardly felt. He opened his eyes and sighed with relief yet again as there was no sunlight anywhere to be seen.
He used an armored wing to prop himself onto his hooves, allowing him to look around. The sound of crumbling rock and burning lava came from nearby pools of lava. The entire place was mostly just rock, not much to see, save for a few spikes jutting from the ground. Bones picked the chain up and for once Grim got a decent view at him. Bones was a decent-sized Earth Pony stallion that looked as if he'd absolutely no flesh, skin or blood of any kind "I see why you're called Bones" Grim pointed out with a blank face. Bones nodded and tugged on the chains, seemingly impatient to get what he called home. The path before them was not a long way away, but at he pace they'd been going it was going to take about a half hour to reach the gates. Grim was actually hopping on what was effectively a single hoof, until he feigned fatige and fell over onto the ground, with which Bones complained "Oh Come on, we're almost there!".
Grim knew himself to be mean-spirited at heart and grinned at the bone pony's apparent despair and faked a complaint "But I'm so tired, hopping on all fours while being hogtied is so difficult!" He more or less whined on that one as he refused to get back up.
Bones pulled against the chains giving a groan before gaining some momentum. After a few minutes of dragging Grim past the gates of Tartarus, Bones put down the chains and went away for a few moments, later somepony else, a pony that was almost twice as high as Celestia, and most likely scarier than anything as he himself had a fair number of chains attached to his coat and weights tied to his wings with a large wheel around his neck. He came instead of Bones to get the black armored stallion and carried him to his cell, giving idle chi-chat on the way there as Grim sighed "Don't worry lil' guy, you'll enjoy your life here, or the rest of it that is"
Grim only smirked and replied "That's a cute thing to say" But the moment the mountain of a pegasus questioned his words, Grim replied rather smugly "I didn't say anything, you must be hearing things". The chit-chat was over as fast as it started and a few moments later he was held in the pegasus's mouth and dropped into his cell, the door closing soon after.
He sat up after his shackles were then removed by a slightly stained, purple energy and called out "It's alright, I could use a vacation!"
Though nopony answered, he felt he was being watched and huffed out his usual black smoke he always exhaled out.
During the entire time Grim was dragged into Tartarus and into his cell, Stormy was still running. She suddenly tripped on a small basket and tumbled into a shop stall. She hit the stall hard, however it barely moved an inch.
Panting, Stormy laid on the ground, looking around, still a bit panicked as she slowly came to, and realized she sat in Ponyville.
"Thank Celestia I'm out of that forest..." She said to herself, sighing with overwhelming relief as she felt her fear turn into cautious optimism. Soon somepony walked up to her and asked with concern "Are you okay?" Stormy looked and saw it was none other than Twilight Sparkle. "Oh, hey Twilight. Yeah I'm... I'm okay, Thanks" She said as she got up onto her hooves, still a bit shaky and pale however.
"Are you sure? You look like you've seen a ghost" Twilight asked once more, it was clear she was concerned for one of her friends, but Stormy shook her head "I'm... not sure. I gotta go think for a while" And then gve Twilight a gentle hug in appreciation "But thanks for the offer" and after walked to her favorite spot in the whole town, Sugar Cube Corner.
As she stepped into the shop, images of the monster she'd seen through the copy and of it trying to jump out of the hole, up at her flashed in her mind. She shook her head furiously as she bumped into somepony in the line.
When it was eventually her turn to order something she asked for "Just some water" and took the glass she was quickly given to a table in the shop, sitting on a chair. As she looked into the window across the room from her table, she stuck a hoof into the glass and zoned out.
She couldn't stop thinking about that... thing in the pit. She'd never known something that huge and terrifying ever existed, well she knew of something else that big and almost as scary in her childhood. But something like that wasn't natural, obviously.
As she thought and dwelled on that one terrifying experience, her hoof absorbed the water like a plant and dirt would with water. It was how she usually drank any sort of liquid after all. She stayed there until the moon rose and she was told to leave, since the shop was closing, and usually did when it was about 10ish at night.
But since it was night, she headed home, climbing into a nearby barrel and curling up on the surface of the coffee-like powder like a cat normally would and fell asleep.
She hoped she wouldn't find the monster in her dreams, that notion almost made sleep feel too risky. As what normally happened, her body slowly started to lose cohesion and density as she slowly melted into sleep, both metaphorically and literally.