The Equestrian Enrichment Project

by GandhoofOfManyColours


Chapter 15: The Fall

Chapter 15: The Fall

Twilight groaned. She placed a hoof on her throbbing head, letting out a low moan at the pain given by the movement.

“Hey girls, I think she’s awake!” the voice of Rarity called out from somewhere above Twilight’s head.

“Twilight! Oh Twilight, are you ok?” Pinkies voice babbled sounding very close.

Twilight groaned in response.

“You hit your head pretty bad there sugarcube” Applejack added, concern evident in her voice.

Twilight slowly opened her eyes to take in her surroundings. She was lying among the debris of the Elevator in a dark chamber. The only meagre source of light coming from a dimly flickering bulb mounted on a wall nearby within a well rusted cage. Ahead of them lay a long wide concrete tunnel going off into the darkness. Looking up she saw more debris blocking the end of the shaft they had descended from. Around her stood Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Applejack all with looks of concern etched on their faces. Rainbow Dash sat alone a small way from the others staring at the floor. Twilight couldn’t see her face from where she was lying.

“wha… what happened?” The purple unicorn managed stuttering as she dragged herself to her hooves, still dazed. The other ponies looked at each other before responding.

“We fell.” Applejack finally answered. “A long way”

“We were falling for several minutes; this place must be very deep.” Rarity added. “We were lucky to survive at all. It’s these weird boots GLaDOS put on us they somehow took all of the damage from the fall.”

“…but…” Twilight processed this information before remembering. “Riff… What happened to him?”

A tear ran down Fluttershy’s cheek.

“We couldn’t save him.” Rainbow spoke suddenly without looking up from the floor. “He saved all our lives up there but we couldn’t save him. It’s my fault, I couldn’t open the gate. Maybe if I’d tried harder…” she trailed off not knowing how to continue.

“It ain’t your fault sugarcube, we tried, we all tried our hardest, you can’t fault ya’self for that.” Applejack trotted over to Rainbow placing a comforting hoof on her shoulder.

“Why did he even do it? Why would a diamond dog risk his life to save a pony? He didn’t even know us!” Rainbow looked up at the others.

“Well think about it RD. If it had been one of us and a group of zebra, or griffin in trouble, wouldn’t we have helped? It ain’t different here; one creature saw another in danger and was decent enough to offer aid. That’s all” In truth Applejack was a bit surprised too, but after all that had happened to her and her friends in the past she knew not to judge others by something so trivial as their species. Especially as in reality she knew next to nothing about the diamond dogs. “What happened was terrible and ‘I understand ‘I ain’t ready to forgive myself neither but that’s what we have to do. And we still have to get out of here.”

“AJ’s right.” Twilight said, wincing as she struggled to get to her hooves. She didn’t know what to think. Really she didn’t want to think about it at all. “There’s… there’s nothing we can do for him now, but he saved us. The least we can do is get out of here so it wasn’t in vain.”

“It’s just… could I have tried harder?” Rainbow responded.

“Oh don’t say that Rainbow, you always try your hardest!” Pinkie spoke in her usual friendly tone but there was a note of seriousness underlying it Rainbow hadn’t heard in a long time.

“You’re right Pinkie, it’s just…” Rainbow faltered, thinking for a moment. “You’re right. You’re all right.” She looked up a determined look in her eyes. “Let’s get out of here!”

“That’s our next problem.” Twilight said looking up at the blocked shaft. “How far did we fall?” she asked the group in general.

“Well we were falling for at least two minutes but I don’t know how far that was.” Rarity replied.

“Was it free-fall or were we being slowed by the lifts rails?” The purple unicorn inquired.

Rarity looked confused before answering. “I don’t know, but why is that important?”

“Well if it was free-fall I could estimate how far down we fell, assuming of course the gravitational coefficient of this planet is the same as Equestria’s but otherwise I’d need to know the speed we were falling. But if we don’t know then the best we can say is it was a long way.” She turned to Rainbow Dash. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can get us back up there?”

“No, we brought down most of the shaft with us; we’d never dig through it. It was only by sheer luck we weren’t crushed. If we’re getting out it’s that way” The blue pegasus pointed to the darkened corridor.

“Then we’d better get started. Come on girls, let’s go.” Twilight sighed and turned to start walking down the dark passage pausing only to activate her light spell.

The corridor ended abruptly. Sometime in the past two hundred years a roof beam had succumbed to age and the entire corridor ahead was blocked. The only light filtered the through small gaps of an iron grate uncovered by the collapsed wall.

“So that it then. We’re trapped.” Rainbow said, disheartened by the setback.

“um… Girls?” Fluttershy’s voice sounded from over by the grate, almost too quiet to hear.

Twilight sat down looking at the floor. “I think your right… unless anypony can see a way to dig through this pile, there’s no other way out”.

Fluttershy spoke up again, still almost inaudibly. “Um, I think we can-” She was cut off by Applejack.

“Well, maybe we can buck down one of these here walls.” She suggested.

The yellow Pegasus tried again “But through here-“

She was cut off yet again by Twilight. “No that wouldn’t work; we might bring down the entire ceiling on ourselves.”

“Well does anypony else have an idea of how we get out of here?” Rarity asked.

“Well, I think I know…” this time the other ponies finally heard Fluttershy speak. They all turned to face her.

“I…I think we can get out through here…” she trailed off, leaving her hoof on the grating.

“Fluttershy…” Applejack thought for a moment for the best way of phrasing her response. “There’s no way we’re gonna fit through that, you know that right?”

Twilights eyes suddenly went wide and she quickly trotted over to the grate, looking through it.

“Of course! Fluttershy, you’re a genius!” she exclaimed.

“I am? Thank you.” Fluttershy answered.

“Er, Twi? You sure you’ve thought this through?” applejack asked nonplussed.

In response, Twilight pointed her fore-hoof at the grate and operated the top control on the Portal device. A shot of Orange energy exploded from the end of the device passing through the grate unimpeded and impacting on a wall beyond. She redirected the device a few feet to the right and shot again, this time sending the blue portal out at the tunnel’s wall, creating an intra-dimensional tear in the fabric of space time and an exit from the corridor.

Applejacks mouth hung open for a moment. “Now how in the hay did I forget we could do that?” she asked nopony in particular.

Pinkie Pie responded as she bounced through the open portal. “Silly Applejack, you’re not thinking with portals!”

The area beyond the grate looked like a junkyard. As far as the eye could see piles of rusted machinery, pipes and unidentifiable objects lay in disarray. The noises of decay were louder here. Creaking metal and distant water dripping put the pony’s nerves on edge as they examined their surroundings.

Twilight gasped as she looked up. Above them rising up from the ground were monstrous pillars. It looked like the entire facility was up there most of it lost in the hazy darkness above them. Several of the pillars has collapsed over the years and were leaning against each other and many more rusted pieces of debris hung down, trapped on various supports further up. Each of the pillars had a name and number stencilled in massive letters across its face. The name of the pillar closest to the ponies filled Twilight with foreboding; it was labelled ‘TARTAROS 09’ in age worn paint. Twilight gulped and did her best to steady her nerves before she spoke.

“Looks like we fell all the way down.” She tapped the chambers natural stone floor with a hoof. “This place must be built into a natural cave, or a chasm of some sort. Most likely to remain hidden from the outside world but for what reason I have no idea.”

Fluttershy had noticed the writing on the column and was backing back towards the group with a worried expression on her face.

“You… you don’t think this really is Tartaros do you?” the fear was evident in her voice.

“Na, I’m sure it’s just somepony’s idea of a joke there Sugarcube, this being the bottom of a pit an’ all, no need to go worrying.” Applejack responded attempting to comfort her friend.

“But that’s just it.” Rainbow started. “It wasn’t somepony was it? It was some human. Some human who somehow knew about a place in Equestria? How is that possible?”

Twilight looked thoughtful before answering. “It’s possible just some sort of inter-dimensional coincidence, maybe it was also a place in human mythology or it exists in this world as well.” Seeing the other ponies doubtful expressions Twilight continued. “I know it seems like a stretch but these humans obviously spoke Equestrian, even if they probably called it something else, now that’s a massive coincidence. It’s likely that our dimension and theirs are close together or even linked in some way.”

“Well of course we speak the same language silly!” Pinkie exclaimed suddenly with a manic grin. “How else would the audience understand us?” the pink pony turned with a cheery grin on her face and waved a hoof at an empty spot in the air. Incidentally the exact spot that, if the ponies were being observed by an audience, would be the best vantage point.

Twilight facehoofed. “Pinkie, just… oh, I just don’t know!”

“So what do we do now?” Rarity asked trying to bring the conversation round to some semblance of normality.

Twilight looked back up into the facility. “Rainbow, any chance you could fly us up?”

“let’s take a look!” Rainbow Dash saluted Twilight and took off into the vast open space of the facility.

She was gone for several minutes and the ponies were just starting to get worried when the Blue Pegasus returned, a look of defeat on her face.

“There’s a ceiling. It seems to go right across the entire facility several floors up, it’s like this whole bottom section was sealed off from the rest. I can’t see any way through from in here.”

“So that’s it? We’re just stuck down here in this dreadful place?” Rarity asked dawning horror on her face.

“Well we’re not flying out, but there must be another way through. After all we got down through an elevator shaft and that may be blocked now but this place is massive there must be some other way, all we need to do is find it.” Twilight responded not wanting to lose hope.

“Well let’s get looking then!” Pinkie started bouncing off in a random direction. The other ponies paused to look at each other for a moment before following.

It wasn’t long before the direction the ponies had chosen brought them to the edge of the facility, the rough natural stone wall towering above them. They continued along the damp wall avoiding the larger obstacles for what seemed like an age before reaching an area where a large concrete barrier had been built over the bottom of a natural opening in the stone. The barrier itself was old and cracked. It contained an old blue painted door in the centre the words ‘KEEP OUT’ emblazoned on it in yellow lettering. The wall was plastered with signs. Many deteriorated beyond legibility but those that could be made out all displayed a similar message. The largest of which, stencilled in yellow paint across the entire wall read ‘CONDEMNED TESTING AREA’.

The sign attached closest to the door caught Twilights eye. “Vitrification order, 1961?” the lavender unicorn said to herself.

“What in the hay does that mean?” a confused Applejack asked stopping in her tracks.

“Well, Vitrification means to turn into glass but in this context it’s probably being used to mean to seal off something dangerous by encasing it in something, possible glass or some other substance like concrete. It’s basically saying this area was abandoned and blocked off in 1961, which if I remember correctly is about 40 years before we were brought here. It’s almost as if the facility is built on the ruins of previous iterations of itself.”

Applejack looked at her for a moment. “So we don’t wanna go through this door?” she asked.

“Well if the sign is literal then we won’t be able to, it would be all blocked off beyond, but-” the lavender unicorn was cut off by the door ahead of her suddenly opening and Rainbow dash walking through from the other side.

“RAINBOW?! But, what? How?” Twilight exclaimed in shock.

“I just flew over the wall while you were overanalysing. Obviously whoever was told to vitri-whatever this place couldn’t be bothered. Come on everypony, there’s a passage leading off past here!” Rainbow Dash turned back through the door and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

After shaking her head in disbelief for a moment, Twilight and the other four ponies followed their multi-chromatic friend through the opening.

A rusted walkway lead out of the doorway on the other side ending in a small set of steps. Obviously at one point in time the tunnel ahead had been artificial in nature consisting of a set of large concrete tubes but over the years of neglect many of these had crumbled leaving only a series of rings jutting out of the rubble at the bottom of the natural narrow passage. Part way down the tunnel there was a sudden drop in floor level where the entire of the artificial floor had given way leaving a series of rusted pipes exposed. The sounds of decay in the facility above echoed strangely from the walls coming to a focal point at the base of the tunnel filling the air with noise, more than once strange sounds in the near dark caused the ponies to start and look around for the source.

Eventually the tunnel opened up to a large cavern. A series of floodlights mounted onto the bare rock of the ceiling lit the area focusing on a truly gigantic round metal door. The door had been left open and was hanging in the air from some unseen machinery revealing a short round concrete passage ending in a sheer wall containing only one normal sized door also hanging open. Either side of the cavern were two small rooms each with its own illuminated sign, both showing only the number zero.

The group of ponies approached the doorway carefully picking their way across the strewn debris on the chamber floor.

“That’s a big door…” the blue Pegasus said an expression of shock on her face as the other ponies took in their surroundings.

“If this place had been closed off like the sign said, would they have not at least closed the door?” Rarity asked turning to Twilight.

“Yes, yes I’m sure they would have.” She responded. “In fact, it probably means that we’re not the first to come down here in the last two hundred and eighty years.

Fluttershy’s eyes grew wide for a moment. “You don’t think it could be…” she trailed off a look of hope forming in her eyes.

Twilight examined the frame of the massive opening before answering. “I’m sorry Fluttershy but I don’t think so… the frames rusted and covered in dust, it’s not two hundred and eighty years’ worth but I doubt it was that recent.”

“Oh, ok then.” The yellow Pegasus hung her head, the fleeting hope extinguished.

Twilight did feel bad about upsetting Fluttershy like that but she knew the only way they could possibly get out of this was by being logical about the situation.

“Whoever it was, their likely long gone now. It was probably a human, maybe one of them escaped GLaDOS down here and tried to find their way out of this place. I think it’s a good sign that this is the right way to go as any human who was working here when that happened would likely know the layout of the place much better than us.”

“so ya reckon’ this is the way outta here?” Applejack spoke up.

“It stands a chance of leading somewhere useful, it might even lead to the outside world after all there must be one. And if it does them maybe we could find another way back down to the gate room.” The unicorn responded.

“So what are we waiting for? Let’s get going!” an excitable Pinkie Pie exclaimed bouncing through the open door. With a collective sigh the other ponies filed through the smaller doorway into the corridor beyond.




High up in the facility, thousands of meters above the ponies heads in GLaDOS’s chamber something was wrong. Something impossible was happening. It started with a surge in the exotic partial count in the upper facility, seemingly everywhere at once at first but quickly collapsing into a single point. Then the sensors went haywire, erratic readings flooded into GLaDOS’s IO ports from all areas of the facility, and then life. Life signs suddenly popped into being where none had been before. The readings lingered for just a moment before vanishing again into nothingness, too quick to get any sort of meaningful lock on whatever they were but they were defiantly there.

GLaDOS was annoyed. Whatever this was it had happened before, though it was a distant memory. She issued a command to her primary database, the mainframe quickly responding and returning her an old file. She scanned the contents of the file refreshing her RAM of the incident in question, its timestamp marking it well over one hundred years old.

Something was going on in her facility and had been going on for a very long time and she was going to get to the bottom of it. She sent the commands to the construction mainframe to begin reanimation of her robotic test subjects; she was still going to need them.