//------------------------------// // Chapter 02 - The Descent // Story: On Ashes // by Temp001 //------------------------------// On Ashes  Chapter Two – The Descent / by Libritium   “I guess this is it,” said Twilight raising her head from a tunnel entrance and turning to her friends. When they woke up in the morning, they packed their things and went to the garden to search for the mentioned tunnel entrance. After half an hour and a lot of torn vines and bushes they finally faced the arched aperture which was cleverly hidden behind a tall bush in the corner of the garden-yard. “They sure made it hidden,” Applejack commented. The entrance was about a meter tall, wide enough to fit a pony but unlikely a princess. Spike got off of Twilight’s back and Twilight entered the archway with her head lowered and her saddlebags slightly rubbing against the edges. The tunnel got quickly wider and taller right after the entrance and Twilight was able to fully straighten up and even spread her wings without touching the walls. Lighting her horn she glanced at the tunnel, the walls and the ceiling were polished and smooth and The floor was made out of cobblestone. She turned around to wait for her friends. Soon her friends joined her and after a quick approving nod they started to walk the straight tunnel exchanging glances with each other from time to time. Their walk was shortly interrupted by them reaching a circular chamber with spiral stairs on the walls leading down. They exchanged glances and by a silenced agreement started to carefully descend, checking every stair making sure it’s strong enough before stepping on it. To their surprise the construction was perfectly stable and soon they’ve reached the bottom of it. As further down they went, their surroundings lost more and more signs of a hoofwork, they became more and more natural, less torch-holders, supporting arcs, single stairs and flat floors. But the path still remained straight. There were no forks or dead ends along the entire path, it seemed like there were led to somewhere and surprisingly it was still whole after all this time. After half an hour of depressing silence, Spike finally broke it, “this place reminds me of the diamond dogs caves,” he said from Twilight’s back. “But without the diamonds,” said Rarity flaring her horn and looking around. “And dogs,” added Applejack. “And bahilion road splits and dead ends,” sealed Rainbow Dash. Soon they reached the end of it: a large underground lake. “Is... is it the The Magic Mirror Lake?” asked Rarity. “Pond, you silly. And no it is the, um...-” Pinkie sat down and put a hoof to her chin, “-Princesses Hidden Deep Underground Pond!” She finished with an enthusiastic jump. “How do you know that?” Rainbow Dash asked her with a confused expression. “Why shouldn’t I know it, silly? I had just named it. It would be very odd if I’ll forget things that I name, because then, no one will know it except the ponies I was able to tell it to them in time,” she explained. “...Anyways. This place is simply fascinating!” Said Rarity channeling magic through her horn to light the place even further. Truly, they stood on the shores of a big underground lake with strange crystals hanging from the ceiling and coming up from the floor. The water, it was crystal clean and smooth, like this place was never touched. “I think I know what those crystals are,” said Twilight. “If I’m not mistaken they glow when you charge them with magic.” With that, she pointed her horn on one of the crystals close to her and shot a ray of pure magical energy, the crystal exploded with light illuminating the entire cave. “This is simply fascinating! those crystals are exceptionally rare and here we found an entire cave full of them!” She exclaimed extinguishing her horn. “Lets take a break here” Applejack suggested. They all dropped their things and got closer to the water itself, with a simple spell Twilight confirmed that that water is safe for drinking and they all dove into it to drink and fill their flasks. The water itself was so delicious and refreshingly cold, that they decided to replace their own water from them. After that, Twilight started to wonder the place collecting some of the crystals into her saddlebags. Meanwhile, Spike insensibly tried to chew on one of the big chunks on one of the walls, Twilight spotted it and told him to stop it but it was too late, the wall collapsed and thankfully she managed to get him out of harms way in time, before the razor-sharp crystals almost fell on him. To their surprise, there was a hole in the wall behind those crystals and it seemed like there’s another room there. After a quick exchange of looks between the ponies they entered through the hole. At first it was dark. After a few steps Twilight lightened the place and they got their first looks at it; a typical underground deadened cave with those rare glowing crystals, but… there was something more there. The far wall had a strange, big, flat plate “built” in it, it looked unnatural, like someone built it in there, after they got closer to it they took their first good look at it; on the plate were some strange and undecipherable hieroglyphs: “Millenium corp. Property Restricted area” “What do ‘ya think is that?” asked Applejack. “I have no idea. I don’t recognise the writing, it looks so…” “Strange.” “Scary.” “Alien.” “Should we try to pull it off the wall?” Rarity Suggested. Twilight contemplated her offer for a moment. "Yea. Lets do it. But lets take it easy. Everyone, stay back!" First, she scanned the plate with magic discovering a hollow space right after it and that it's attached to a strange frame made of the same material but wider and tougher. That frame held the plate dead in its place, she grabbed it with her magic and tried to move it slightly in different directions until it finally gave up when she moved it upwards, to her surprise she discovered that this plate is some kind of door that slides up, so she slowly slid it all the way up and inside forward, she maximised the light from her horn to reveal a huge rectangular room. The walls, ceiling and floor of the place were mostly smooth, made completely out of some kind of a metal, dark grey and silver colors with a few of strange rectangular boxes filled with cylindrical  object hanging from the ceiling and stretching the length of the walls. The floor was similar in style to that of Canterlot, polished stone and ceramics but differently placed and shaped. This room was filled with box shelves, with thousands, thousands of boxes in different shapes and sizes. It must be some kind of a storage area, Twilight thought for a second. None of them had any idea what they were staring at, it was too hidden and advanced to be pony-made, too smooth and clear to be made by the Diamond-Dogs and too misplaced and odd-looking to be made by Griffons or any other known sapient creatures for that matter. It was apparent to Twilight that this is a very old place even if it was well preserved. There was no telling how much time it existed here. And the air, it was that heavy old air, filled with that ancient dust one can smell when opening a very old book from the top of that forgotten corner shelf in the library. From the start of their descent the air got heavier and heavier until the lake, there was a good and clean air. but here, it was calmingly ancient, and cold. All in all, it was an impressive feat of architecture combining both simplicity and beauty, but Twilight concluded that the creatures that built that place were higher than an average pony; for example, the distance between the shelves themselves were higher than usual, and the room itself was very high, more than it needs to be, something on the lines of the Grand Hall in Canterlot Castle. She wasn’t sure if she should just walk in there or teleport directly to the throne room in Canterlot Castle and report it to the princesses. “Errmmm…” She was about to say something but Rainbow Dash interrupted her. “So? are we going in there or what?” Everypony exchanged looks with one another. “I don’t thinks that it’s safe,” she’d managed to finally recollect herself. “Only one way to find out,” said Pinkie jumping in. Twilight held her breath watching Pikie bounce on the floor of the room from side to side. When nothing broke or fell on her, she made her first step inside. Then she second.  The third… Soon their little company slowly walked the strange hallways made out of box-shelves, looking around in caution and watching each other with worried expressions.  It was very stressing to walk the empty room with only the box-shelves around them. Without a well-determined direction they were just wandering the place as a single group. The shelves and the sheer number of them seemed very stressing to the group, the quite huge room buried hundreds of meters below a very dangerous, wild forest. And the loud, deep echo from their hoofsteps as the only sound to keep them sane and aware of their surroundings. After a couple minutes of walking they’ve reached the far-end wall of the place. There was a similar door like the one they’ve entered through. Twilight did the same with that one and when it slid upwards she lit a fairly tall corridor of some sort, decorated with the same cylinders behind a piece of glass stretching alongside the ceiling and the walls of it. She wondered what was the purpose of these. From here on out, all they faced were doors and strange rooms stuffed with a lot of things they couldn’t figure the purpose of; one of the rooms had huge glass towers with some strange green liquid in them and that liquid shone! There was one, completely sealed with a huge, massive thick metal door with an odd yellow triangle symbol with a strange pie shape in the center. After some time of wandering Twilight noticed a strange symbol near one of the doors; it showed something resembling a staircase and a small sun above it casting strange and odd angled shadows above the stairs. Or was is something else? She pointed to the symbol with her hoof drawing her friends attention to it. She opened the door near it and found a staircase that they could use to go to the upper and lower levels of the building. “Ok, now it also has floors!” Rainbow Dash grunted. “How big is this place?!” “I don’t know Rainbow,” Twilight answered her, becoming more nervous. “That question was rhetorical, Twilight.” Twilight frowned at her, but turn her attention to the stairs and after a short thought she decided to head to the lower levels, curious on how deep down that facility can go. After descending five floors on the uncomfortable-angled, sharp-ended stairs they reached the bottom floor, Having no reason to turn around and go up Twilight opened the door and walked into familiar-looking corridors. She exchanged looks with the group and continued on to walk the halls of the place peering into the unlocked doors she found from time to time. Occasionally the group passed a windowed walls and strange tall metallic doors as they walked the corridors but unable to make any of them to open or look at what was behind the black-tinted glass windows. In one the rooms they had to visit, they walked on a high balcony observing a huge metal construction in the center of the room with a giant metal pillar stretching from the center of it to the roof so high, they weren't able to see its end with the light Twilight provided. This room, along with many others had a good bunch of tubes stretching along them. Twilight saw a platform stretching from the balcony into the dark abyss, this balcony had some alien metal box with a lot of strange pieces bulging from it. probably some kind of a control panel, but for what? She wondered. It took Twilight about three hours of walking in it to realise that this place was tremendous, simply epic in size. She figured that in order to build such a massive facility, or city, she really had no idea because of the scale, the civilization who did it must be the most advanced and prosperous in all of Equestria, which left her with only more questions about its origin and what happened to them. It also had her realise just how much time she already have been wandering the place, so as soon as she found a small, mostly empty room she announced a break in it. Their little wander group unpacked some snacks, water and their sleeping bags to sit upon while Twilight pulled out one of the crystals she collected by the lake from her saddlebag and lit it so they could enjoy a little bit of light and warmth coming from it. The room was a small one with the same cylindrical glass poll on the ceiling, and some strange row of square decorations on the bottom side of one of the walls. The room also featured a desk and a pile of metals that appeared to be a long time ago decayed chair. “What do you think is this place, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I... I don’t know, it’s obviously very ancient and I doubt that it’s built by any of the sapient races I know.” “Maybe it were the breezies?!” “Yes Pinkie, that’s the work of the breezies, with the help of the Diamond Dogs,” Rainbow Dash answered her with sarcasm. “And a little bit of the Minotaurs!” Rarity exclaimed continuing the joke. “I mean look at the design of that flat, simple wall, it’s really a minotaur work.” “I dunno about you fellas but I don’t like that place at all. There’s something odd in here,” Applejack grunted. “Uh… ” Rainbow Dash stared at her in surprise before applying a smug smile on her face “you mean beside the HUUUGE ‘world’ a hundred meters below the surface of the Everfree Forest, or that glowing pillar or green liquid we found, or the fact that there’s no one other than us in here and it looks like it hadn’t been for a lot of centuries. I say, the Everfree Castle is looking less intimidating than this place.” “Ah got the idea Rainbow, thanks.” “I Agree with Applejack,” said Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash looked at her for a minute trying to formulate a response, but after failing she just rolled her eyes and looked away from her. “Seriously girls! Don’t you see what we have here? This place can be very well built by aliens!” Twilight suggested. “Then those aliens, came from within the planet and not from the outer space. I mean, it is built so deep underground. It has to be... um...” Pinkie Pie put a hoof to her chin signaling a deep thought process. “borrowings!” “Pink…” Twilight never finished her sentence, interrupted by the sound of Rainbow Dash’s facehoof. “...Nevermind.” She finally finished it. “Listen girls, let’s just stay together and be careful. I don’t know what we can find in here.” “Or we can just call it the day and head back to our homes,” Fluttershy suggested. “Wait, I want to find the heart of this place, somehow I have this feeling like we’re headed somewhere specific.” “Whatever you say darlin’, let’s just make sure that we’ll return in time.” “We will, although I have no idea what time it is, but I’m sure that it’s somewhere around noon by now.” Twilight answered Rarity. “Anyways, what do you think is that thing,” she pointed to the square boxes near the floor. It had some holes in it and when she tried to scan it with magic, she found out that they were the edges of a metal cable that run in through the wall. “I think it’s just a decoration Twilight,” Rarity answered her. “I’m not sure. I think it has another purpose beside a decorative one.” Twilight suggested. “Well, nevermind, let’s just continue on.” They all agreed with her as they finished their little break, they packed their things and turned to her ready to continue. She checked that nobody forgot anything including the crystal and motioned for them to continue following her. Soon they’ve reached a dead end after one particular long corridor they walked in. At the end of that one, there was a door but wider than the usuals they’ve seen here, with a strange symmetrical vertical crack in its center. It’s got to be a double door, Twilight thought. Everything she tried on that door didn’t seem to make it open but she wanted to, that door looked particularly alluring to her, she realised that there must be something important behind it. “Maybe we should head back and try a different turn” suggested Rarity after five minutes of watching Twilight forcing the door to open. “Wait! I’ve almost got it!”, she stopped them. But five minutes later she’d released a groan that signaled that she had had enough of it. Then, suddenly a black sparkling cylindrical metallic piece in the upper corner on their right moved and pointed at them. At first Twilight though that she began “to see things” but a quick glance at her friends assured her that they saw it too. And there, in the center of the room stood the biggest picture frame with the biggest symbol printed on it. That frame took almost the entire wall of that not a small place and there were numerous cables and tubes leading into it and throughout the entire room. And then, when they all gathered in the middle of the room, facing the biggest moving picture, it changed into something resembling a diamond piece with vertical thin lines crossing it and a big red dot in its center. They’ve heard a quiet, crystal-clear monotonic voice: “...Welcome!”