After a minute or two of tense flight, Rainbow Dash reached the top of the cliff. Once there, she didn't rush into the open. Instead, she perched her petite body on a jutting shard of rock, peering over the edge and into the pale light source beyond. Her ruby eyes narrowed, and a curious breath left her muzzle.
Finally, after much gazing, she flapped her wings and proceeded forward, gliding limply into a large open chamber with a high ceiling. The rock here was different; it looked far more polished and smooth than the surfaces of the caves in lower parts of the mountain. Moisture trickled everywhere, as if something was melting along the ceiling or beyond it. Several torches burned in the corners of the place, but something was unnatural about the flame. The flickering fire was pale, and it gave off no smoke. What's more, the torches themselves were actually granite brazziers with intricate lines etched into them.
As Rainbow's eyes came into focus, she realized that a unique architectural design wove throughout the entirety of the chamber. She saw marble pillars leaning on end. She saw collapsed roofs of stone temples. There were also courtyards, houses, and the remnants of ancient libraries. The spectacle of the mess wasn't nearly as startling as the blatant familiarity. She stopped besides a cluster of pillars, put down her lantern, and ran a hoof along the marble columns. They were moist to the touch, and each time her hoof swept across their glossy surfaces, beads of condensation would appear immediately afterwards. She became aware of tufts of steam rising up all around her, forming a thin cloud along the roof of the cave. The cloud would then gradually condense and drizzle cold rain onto the floor, which led to the moisture that trickled loosely down the steep tunnels from which she came.
"Cloudstone..." Rainbow Dash murmured aloud. She smirked down at the floating eye in its jar. "I've seen the stuff before where I was born. Only, like, this stuff is really... really old, and it's losing the power to stay together n'stuff. It's like a huge hulking pegasus city melting in the center of a mountain."
Just then, a nervous thought struck her, and she folded her eyes as her pupils shrunk.
"Horseapples..." She gulped. "This is that sky city that Fancy Pants was talking about." She glanced back up at the clusters of shattered buildings. "And this is the Cloudstone that he's searching for."
Footsteps.
Loud footsteps.
Rainbow Dash winced as her colorful hairs stood on end. She swiftly clasped the handle of her lantern with her muzzle and darted off to hide beneath the dark alcove made by a partially collapsed temple. Her hooves crunched through ancient shards of pottery and Pre-Classical spears. She crouched low, her eye catching a mural of Commander Hurricane lit faintly by torchlight beside her.
The footsteps intensified. Rainbow Dash watched pensively. At last, several thick legs shuffled loudly into view just a few feet ahead of her.
The eye came to life, spinning like an ambulance light. Rainbow Dash clenched her jaw and shoved the thing behind her, using the bulk of her tiny body to cancel out the glow.
The basilisk clambered down towards a lower part of the cavern, his legs rummaging through several bags of things. With a flick of his tail, he almost entirely disappeared from view.
With courageous poise, Rainbow Dash crept forward, sticking her head out from beneath the alcove and peering into the dip of the cavern. What she saw made her blood freeze.
Rows upon rows of frozen buffalo stood frozen like a stone army. Their limbs were bone-white, even paler than the marbles of cloudstone that formed the eggshell surfaces of this ancient domain. The basilisk was in the process of fishing his claws through the whole lot of them, picking one bison up after another, and then planting it back down in its chosen spot with a disgruntled breath.
At last, the basilisk exhaled through a curved set of teeth. It smiled as it picked up a relatively small specimen. It was a female bison, its body bent back in an eternal gesture of flinching.
"Hmmmm... you are small enough," the basilisk said in perfectly understood speech.
Rainbow Dash blinked.
The basilisk reached back to one of its many arms, then pulled out the shard of stalactite that Rainbow Dash had seen it snap off earlier. After making a suckling noise, the basilisk spat onto the upper body of the frozen buffalo, drenching her cranium with saliva and sticky mucus. It then planted the blunt end of the shard against the poor bison's forehead. The reptile's spat fluids made the thing stick in place, so that it looked like the quadruped had a horn sticking out from its forehead.
"Hmmmff... perfect..." The cavern shook from the monster's chuckling lungs. "The dumb sap won't even tell the difference..."
Just then, from the far side of the cave: "Why are you taking so long?! Polyph wants to start the game already!"
Rainbow Dash gasped, her teeth chattering.
"Grrrrr... just hold onto your buttocks already!" The basilisk gripped the augmented buffalo with his tail, turned his massive body around, and thundered up the hill of fractured Cloudstone and pale torchlight. "Don't think you'll win my riches that easily, Polyph!"
Rainbow Dash retreated into the shadows. "H-holy cow..." She gawked at the eye as it turned to glow on her. "There are two of em, Squidgy!" She gulped. "What am I going to do?"
The eye merely spun around and sloshed in its container.
Rainbow Dash took a deep, deep breath. She closed her eyes. Her wings stretched out, the feathers fluttering. All she could see in the darkness was glistening rows of orchards. A smiling, freckled face stood out in the center of the landscape.
Her hooves grinded tightly against the Cloudstone. She opened her eyes with a tight frown.
"Yeah, well, neither of those creeps belong here. And their ugly butts are parked on what Fancy Pants is after."
She grabbed the handle of the lantern and followed its quivering glow.
"Let's check out this 'game' that they're playing..."
Like a blue shadow, she slinked out from the alley and crawled up the mounds of Cloudstone, following the direction of the two monsterous voices.