The door to Department Blue's Alpha Storage slid open with a hiss of mana. His horn glowing, Garnet casually strolled in. A broad, dark chamber of metal stretched before him like an artificial cave.
"Blue Shelf is nestled within a mountain ripe with mana-conductive crystals, which is what makes a subterranean facility like this so perfect for the magical preservation of sensitive materials and artifacts." Garnet chuckled, rolling his eyes. "Of course, there's no need for me to tell you this, is there, Doctor?"
Silence.
Garnet turned around. "Doctor?"
Gulping, Bellesmith stuck her head in through the door. She trembled as she looked left and right across the dark interior.
"Is... something the matter?"
"Where...?" Belle glanced at the floor, her eyes wide as she surveyed the penumbra of light piercing through the darkness. "Where is all the blood? The bodies?"
"Good Doctor, whatever are you rambling about?" Garnet maintained a nonchalant grin. "I don't know what the sequencing has made your poor mind come up with, but there is certainly no blood here. This chamber is as sterile as they come, which is rather important, considering the nature of the sequencing subjects. As for the bodies, however..." He turned and fired a beam of mana at an overhanging crystal.
The place lit up like noonday.
Bellesmith shrieked, covering her face with her hooves. At the murmuring insistence of Garnet, however, she parted her forelimbs and gawked at the scene.
The entire room was filled with white metal sarcophaguses, all standing up like a forest of cocoons. Each one hung from a vertical metal track that led to a sealed hatch positioned in the ceiling.
"There... there are..." Belle spoke aloud, breathily, as she trotted through the mesmerizing scene. "There are dozens! But... th-that's impossible! There should only be one!"
"That would... be quite impossible, Doctor," Garnet said, leading her gradually towards the center of the chamber and past the initial line of containers. "These samples are hundreds upon hundreds of years old. A single one of them isn't intact enough for us to draw information through intimate sequencing. That is why we have to use all of them as an energy matrix, a server of multiple, like sources. It was assumed that they all mutually shared the same memories, and this was discovered to be true after ponies like you and Dr. Felicity first took their leaps into their preserved afterthoughts."
"Mutually shared... memories?"
"We discovered them all at the same site, after all," Garnet said. "Aridstone."
"Aridstone?!" Belle stammered. "I was there?"
"Yes indeed. Mmmm... I suppose you'll remember it soon enough..." Garnet trotted to a stop in front of one particular sarcophagus. "Once your mind calms down." He turned towards the container. "Ah, here we are. Subject #1491." He manipulated the latch and swung the panels to the front of the sarcophagus open.
"No!" Belle swung a hoof out, gasping. "Wait!"
"For what?" He turned back at her as the sarcophagus revealed the petrified remains of a pegasus, its bones and wing spokes coiled within elastic twine. The skeleton hung within the confines of the container, its flesh reduced to paper-thin flakes of ash. "I very much doubt she or he is in the condition to leap for your throat, Doctor Bellesmith." He turned towards the body once again as he spoke. "This figure is the most intact compared to all the rest. That's why we focused all of our sequencing on its spheres, using the others as a bridge. Sequencing with the subject means navigating the combined memories of dozens of extinct flying ponies, ultimately falling upon the recorded experiences of this particular pegasus in question. It takes a genius mind to do battle with so many conflicting and criss-crossing visions, a genius mind like yours."
"There's... there's so much here that doesn't make sense..." Bellesmith murmured. A pit formed in her throat, and she almost trotted up to rest a hoof against the subject's skull, to search for remnants of a spectral mane. "Why would they be in Aridstone? Did the dragons of Silvadel chase them there? Where did you get all of this chaos metal?"
Garnet closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and turned to smile calmly at her. "Doctor Bellesmith, I know of no... 'dragons of Silvadel' or 'chaos metal.' You asked me to show you evidence, and here it is. However, something tells me that evidence alone will not suffice in this situation. What we both need is for you to relax and allow your mind to adjust to reality. I'm starting to believe that such cannot happen here."
"But... But there's so much to—"
"I'm putting you on an indefinite vacation, Doctor," Garnet said. He closed the sarcophagus in front of them as he gestured her towards the exit of the chamber. "Yes, I'm sure, the Doctor Bellesmith that I know would be flabbergasted at me too. But, it's never too late for associates like the two of us to begin on the right hoof. Hmm?"
"I... I..."
"That's an order, Doctor."