Jericho

by Crushric

Chapter 38 — Depths

Clang!

That would be about how I would describe the loud noises coming from my companion, Ylv, as we walked down the dark tunnels of Côrint’s undercity. Still not having found out that I may or may not have brutally murdered a mare just inches from him the other day, he had decked himself out in some thick platemail armor—complete with giant pauldrons that should have broken his goddamn shoulders—and been assigned to lead me through part of this dark, damp place.

Of course, that sort of translated into a sound. “Clang, clang, clang, clang!”

“Would you stop yelling ‘clang’ while you’re walking?!” I snapped.

“It’s for echolocation,” Ylv said with a sad whine. “The echos bounces off stuff and you can sometimes hear holes in the tunnels.”

I stared at him hard. The light from the brightly glowing crystal I’d shoved into my left eye socket made him hold a hoof up to his face. Oh, did I mention that? Erysa had given me a glowing crystal light thing, and I’d summarily just tossed it into my eyehole. I mean, where else was I going to put the damn thing? I had to sneak through an ancient, underused underground of a city in order to get to that mountain temple, and damn if I wasn’t going to do so creepily.

“Oh, right. Don’t need that; we can see well.” He kicked at the ground.

“And, Ylv, for God’s sake, take off those stupid fake bat ears! You are no—know what? Give me!”

“No!”

I tackled him to the damp stone ground and ripped his bat ears off with my teeth. “I’m having these!” I told him, putting the ears safely in my bags.

The idea of Cards wearing them came to mind. It was such an… interesting image that I resolved myself to swing by the local gift shop, buy some wrapping paper, and then mail them to Cards with a letter reading, “There, now nopony will notice your horrible ear-lacking mutilation. Toodles!”

“Gee, that was rude,” he huffed, standing up and brushing himself off. His massive pauldrons broke into pieces and fell limply to the ground. They sounded wooden, despite having looked metal. “Aww, nuts. I spent all day making those.” When he saw me staring, he said defensibly, “Well, what of it? Big pauldrons make me look scary and tall, you know, like yourself.”

I just stared at him harder.

Ylv feigned a cough and rubbed the back of his neck. Somewhere, water was dripping onto the ground rather loudly and overdramatically. “So, uh, since we’re basically going to be traveling together down here for a short little while, is there anything I should know about you? Certain things I should or shouldn’t do. It might be a while before we get out of this place.”

“You know, Ylv, I’m glad you asked.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a strategically located pamphlet. ‘So, You Want To Travel With A Deranged Sociopath’, with the last two words furiously scribbled out and replaced with the word ‘HERO’.

He took it with hesitation. Looking down at it, he seemed as if going to ask a question, but I interrupted him.

“I made this back in Songnam whilst waiting for Cards to wake up after Social Grace fucked her over and forced me to cut off a little sharkbite out of her ear to save her life. And, man—” I paused when I realized I’d use a bit of the odder slang I’d picked up from Calêrhos, and that it might not make any sense. Hell, I hardly knew what it meant. I really needed to stop doing that. “I was still dealing with the mental trauma of a certain mare in the Modern Times who took a particular fancying to me, so this helped take my mind of things. I figured it’d also work in this scenario.”

“Um,” he said, looking up at me, “items one through three on your list are all variants of ‘don’t sexually molest me’, plus a footnote taking up half the page explaining especial times not to sexually assault you. And who the hell is ‘Cherry the Berry’, and why is her catchphrase, ‘Only you can prevent aggravated sexual assault on Jericho’?”

“Well, it’s just that, uh, I’ve not traveled with a guy in some time. For some reason, all of my companions in my adventures seem to have vaginas and are usually a ‘rather’ or higher in terms of that Arbitrary Scale of Hotness. I don’t know if all stallions also want to show me their personal interpretation of the bad touch.” I shuddered, and said in a weak voice, “Daddy and Duke Elkington were bad enough…”

“O…kay, then. Cherry the Berry demands I take a scout’s oath that I won’t, and a quote, ‘vigorously manhandle Jericho’s sexual organs, external or otherwise. Or else’.”

Then I made him take the oath. Doing so required surprisingly little murder.

“Right, well,” Ylv said, running a hoof through his mane as I put my pamphlet back. “That was certainly a terrifying glimpse into the heart of insanity. Now that we are officially bros, any plans on what to do after all this? I was going to grab some crystal berry wine. Have any desire to come with? I could totally use a drinking buddy who will, by his mere presence, make me look badass by association. ”

I shrugged and proceeded to continue walking.

“Well, after that, I was going to try to gather my friends up for another game of Oubliettes and Ogres. I once worked for Shining Armor, the bastard, and every other Saturday or so he’d organize O&O games for us guardsponies after work. I got real into it. Any chance you wish you join? Same motivation on my part, and—”

“Okay, I’m going to have to stop you there,” I said sharply, turning around and putting a hoof to his breastplate. “Obviously you’re new to this whole shebang, so I guess I ought cut you a mite bit of slack, but what you’re doing right there is what I like to call ‘expendable behavior’.”

“Expendable what now?”

“New guy to the party, about to descend into a cavern inevitably full of horrors, starts talking about all the things he’s going to do ‘when this is all over’. Only serves to make your death more tragic. I mean, the only thing stupider would be if you took out your wallet and started showing me pictures of your kids, and how you were about a week from retiring.”

I glanced back into the darkness of the tunnel. There were faint hints of painted blue lines by the tops of the walls, and likewise an almost whitish quality to the center of this tunnel’s stonework, like some sort of road.

When I looked back, Ylv was standing there with his ears flattened against his head. “I have a little picture of my cute girlfriend on my person. I keep it tucked into my armor for good luck.”

“You should take it out and burn it,” I offered sagely. “It’ll ensure you’ll survive for slightly longer by making you less of a tragic possibility.” I examined him closely. Closer. Then not as closely, followed by extremely closely.

“Do I have to burn the picture?”

I leveled a gaze at him. In a slow, controlled voice, I said, “You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

“No,” he whispered, looking at the ground. “All I have a drawing of my sun-elf girlfriend in my O&O game. She’s a ranger and super pretty and tall. I worked so hard trying to muster the charisma in order to get a shot at rolling to confirm a charm check against her.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “You are a sad, sad little pony, and you’d have my sympathies were I capable of having them.”

“Look, before Sombra and his whole mess froze the empire in time, I wasn’t a guard or anything; I was just a ganger, see? Heck, in normal Mijôra, my accent is so ‘ghetto’ that many ponies don’t understand me. It’s kind of funny that my fellow crystal ponies understand my Equestrian more than my own Mijôra.” He frowned. “So forgive me for not really taking so well to the ‘respectable mares’ that all of the sudden showed up everywhere when the world returned to us. I’m trying to make an—”

“Going to stop you right there, mate,” I snapped. “Stop having such a backstory. The key to your survival is to be likeable and not very tragic. You are failing at both of these. I mean, hell, look at me—look at me! Do you know why I go out of my way for this heroic stuff? It’s because any other career would kill me hard, do you kenn?” I make a slicing motion across my throat. “All I have to do is stay chipper and just above the line dividing good and evil, and my being a likable good guy means that I can literally survive anything. You can drop the moon on me and then put me naked and unarmed with a room filled with Cherry Berry clones, and I’d probably still heroically survive to fight the bad guys or whatever, kenn?”

“What?”

I shook my head and made a disgusted noise. “Just go on out and point the way through this undercity. I know now that you must have been sent with me because your ganger nature somehow led to you knowing these tunnels, but—”

“We’re going to a part of the undercity that hasn’t seen use in probably ever. I only know it from brief, undetailed maps. It’s all dangerous ruins. Scary stuff, I hear. Some say reality doesn’t work so well in this undercity. Something to do with what the Elder Gods used to do here.”

Elder Gods. When first we’d met, C had used that term. What had he said? That the Elder Gods were slain by the “One True God” when the One True God awoke from his billions-of-years slumber? C’s people must have really weird mythology. Still, something felt off that this term would reappear here, less that thirty-six hours since I’d last seen the skinwalker.

“Err,” Ylv stammered. “Elder Gods were the fathers and mothers who gave birth to the gods, of whom only Chêngrêla survives.”

I made a dismissive gesture. “Look, we’ve dallied here for far too long. I wish to move, get my eye back, save the world, and give Cards a goddamn hug! Move it, mate.”

“Too many have died in this place over the millennia. I can feel their spirits. They do not know they are dead. They are watching us. This is a dark place. I do not like how they stare at me.”

Those had been C’s words once upon a time. Now, as I coughed up the dusty air this side of a wall of rubble and ruin, I felt as if I understood a part of that feeling. Ylv crawled up from a little hole under the rubble and joined me.

“Here we are,” he announced. “In the middle of nowhere. Where it’sdark and gloomy and leads eventually to the temple…ish.”

Something about this place felt wrong to me. It had been slowly building up for a while, from the barest hint of discomfort to this more vague but definitive feeling. Trying to understand the exact time and point whereat I noticed the feeling, however, was about as fruitless as Blackout’s womb. Bam! Staying topical, yes I was.

Still, had I not felt something like this before? It was like the raw energy of Anderwelt’s faintest hairs on its most minuscule tendrils had brushed up against my leg and then pretended not to notice my discomfort as it kept rubbing its leg hairs against me. It had all the charm of Cards trying to be seductive.

I cracked a smile at that thought. Whatever happened, I couldn’t lose myself; I had to stay happy, optimistic, and unaffected by the brutality of this world. “Do you feel that?” I asked.

“You mean that odd feeling? You’re noticing it now, too?”

“Noticing it was a bit like trying to recall the exact moment your body consciously becomes aware it’s come down with a cold, but yes. I notice it.”

“It’s like I said, sedhoas,” Ylv replied with a shrug.

He looked off down the dark corridor before us, with its two levels. The lower one was filled with a mucky liquid menacing with angry stalagmites… stalactites… with angry stalags and a dark feeling that just murmured ‘here be fish that swim up your urethra if you try to urinate in me’. The upper part, whereupon we stood and which ran down the seeming length of the corridor, reminded me of the station to an U-Bahn, a sort of underground in-city railroad we had back in the Reich. Subway, I though, might have been a decent translation.

“Reality doesn’t work so well down here. Some ponies can feel it. I’ve never been to this part, but it does feel a bit heavy. Jêl urji morghuên takarê.”

“What?” I asked.

“Jêl urji morghuên takarê, sedhoas. What the gods want, they will have.”

I grunted. “Oh, and for the record, you’re probably going to get eaten by a hellish demonic monster, since I’m getting that kind of vibe from this place.”

A little thing, at most no bigger than five inches, poked its head out from a crack in the wall. It was utterly pale, hairless, was clearly lacking eyes where its little head-structure would have suggested having them. Little red trees poked up from its neck, and a part of me recognized them as a form of external gills, although these ones were clearly interlaced with bits of crystalline materials. It shivered, looked towards us ponies, then quickly scampered into the water with a little splash.

Then a furry spider about as big as a saucepan squeezed out of the hole, made a low hissing noise, and charged into the water after the pale thing. I could hear the spider slapping the waters as it swam further down the cave.

“Well, whatever that was, I am now officially freaked out.”

Ylv and I continued down the dark path, the glowing crystal in my skull providing most of the light, until we came across wispy tendrils of faintly blue-green light hanging from the ceiling up ahead. For some reason, here the tunnel became like a massive cave, bereft of the artificial features of before.

“What the…?” I looked at Ylv, who shrugged.

“Crystal silk worms,” he said with a sigh. Had I not know better, I’d’ve almost thought it was a lusty sigh. Because, of course, the idea that my traveling companion had a lust for worms was just another reasonable thing to expect in my line of work. “Those threads are, uh, the light is natural, from body chemicals. I don’t know the word, but they use those strings of sticky silk to catch prey, like passing bats and other such horrors.”

Ah, so clearly crystalfolken were a cowardly, superstitious bunch who thought bats were horrors.

He continued on. “They can get really big, I hear. Never really seen them myself, although in the olden days, there used to be farms down here. Crystilk, as it is called, sold really well. I hear that wearing a pair of crystilk underwear felt like getting a constant blowjob for every second on every part of that part of the body.”

“Yes,” I said, “because what I really want is to receive fellatio on my thighs.” I let that sink in for a second. “Check the map. Are we lost yet?”

“Uh, allow me to see, and, uh… no, no we’re not lost.” He pointed off to a dark part of this cave system. “Over yonder ought be a way further down.”

“Further down? We want to go further down?”

“Yes, sedhoas. We did surveys of this area with ritual crystal magic and found that the best way through this area would be… Actually, I don’t know, but this way looks pretty cool, huh?” He showed me the map.

“Going to be honest here, mate,” I said. “I have no earthly idea how to read this map. But, I will at least compliment you on the fact that you managed to get a ketchup stain on your map.”

“Hey! That’s your fault, not mine.” He stamped a hoof. “And besides, much of the area up ahead on this level is flooded, though over yonder is not so flooded, and actually rather dry, understand? Let us go there; I do not want to get all soaking wet. Who know what’s in these waters?”

From somewhere distant, we both heard some kind of animal make a distant, hellish noise, like the wailing of the damned, filled with rage and hatred. Ylv and I exchanged glances. Perhaps we could argue later, and focus on trying to get to the other side of this labyrinth first.

At least an hour had passed us by. I could sense in my ears that we must have gone down at least some three stories into the dark depths, moving by enclaves of strange flora, crystals a-glow, and deep but small beasts without eyes in the various levels of streams and ponds and rivers here in the underdark. Caves mixed with ancient masonry made this place feel hellish to me, a huge crypt of the ancients. And if Ylv was to be believed, creatures here mutated quickly into new forms, a strange curse and a blessing from long dead gods. Rubbish, it had to be.

But still, something about this place sat with me about as well as the idea of letting a bunch of kids play in yon pile of used needles. It was just a sense of wrongness. Who had built this, really? No gods, that was for sure. And why had it been built? More concerning, why had it been so seemingly abandoned?

Aside from the hellish aspects, it reminded me of the titanic networks of caves beneath the Reich, wherewithout it might have been impossible to wage massive guerrilla campaigns against the forces of Chaos so many years ago. The caverns of the Reich had entirely self-contained forests, even clouds and rain and other such weathers endemic of those dark depths; there were great beasts, hunters and hunted, in those places. Those caves had almost no signs of artificial tampering save for the occasional U-Bahn that cut through them, and the rumors of several military bases built into those dark realms.

As I was telling Ylv about the shadowy vista of the underdark one sometimes got when the underground railroads crossed their paths, I paused, sniffing the air. Thanks to the gem in my eye, I could see that the path we were on ended in a large buttressed doorway as wide as a street. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

“What, the wet rocks?” he asked. “Let’s go. I can’t imagine the surface is too far away.”

I glared at him. “We’re a bit too deep for that. You know, since the location of the surface doesn’t tend to be ‘three stories below where we were an hour or so ago’.”

“What?” he almost snapped with enough horror in his voice that I couldn’t help but grin. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Well, since Erysa assigned you as some sort of guide, I had figured you’d at least know how to read your own goddamn ears.” I shrugged. “But, hey, it’s not as if I could expect competent associates.”

His ears dropped. “Well, you don’t have to be so mean about it…” He sniffed the air, glancing around the dingy tunnel. “And now that you mention it, I do kind of smell something. Is it… is it…”

I widened my eye to the extreme and stared into Ylv’s eyes. “It smells of despair—my favorite condiment!”

“I was going to say it sort of smelt like a distant fire.”

I grabbed Ylv around the neck and pulled him in close. “Keep low your voice, I suspect there might be ponies up ahead, thus. Sad, probably homeless ponies. Expect terribly adorable little fillies to beg thee for change, but for them to turn out to all be evil Roboter.”

“What’s a Roboter?”

Rather than answer, I removed the crystal from my eye and tossed it into a bag. The darkness was all-consuming, and it bit me as savagely as a swarm of mosquitoes, if those mosquitoes were actually Cherry Berry. I got low to the ground and half-scampered, half-crawled my way through the large doorway and around the curved corner, Ylv trying to keep up with me.

When I finally saw what lay beyond, I honestly wasn’t really sure what to say. It was a monolithic room it the vague shape of a square cross with rounded edges, or so I thought. There were two floors here, the upper one with a walkway going around it and crossing the room’s massive center. It basically reminded me of a shopping mall, complete with ancient doorways and other such structures carved into the walls on both stories. I’d always known shopping malls were evil, and this pretty much proved it to me. Somehow. Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to see it very well were it not for the glowing crystals growing out of various places on the walls, floor, and ceiling—not to mention, more concerningly, the great bonfire at the center of the mall.

The mall was separated from my tunnel via a long bridge spanning what was a doubtlessly a bottomless pit, although I could distantly make out the sounds of a rushing river. It reminded me terribly of the bridge and river that stood before the way into the cathedral-like illusion that was the lair of the Devil’s Backbone.

But for all that, the thing that caught and held my attention was probably that lone figure. It was a pony of some sort, clad in heavy black clothing, like that of a terribly angsty firefighter. Then, of course, there was the matter of the tears in the clothing, wherethrough sharp-looking glowing crystals poked out, like some sort of tumorous infection. The pony stared at the fire before shuffling around, just sort of ambling about with neither purpose nor care, always with its head slouched forwards, as if it had just been subject to the most thoroughly unsatisfying oral sex in history.

When at last the figure shuffled my direction, though it was still a great distance away, I could see that its face was all covered up, reminding me of the Atemschutzmaske I had somewhere in my bag. This was odd to me, since I specifically recall First Aide not even knowing what such a device was when I’d brandished it to save her life back in Songnam, so to see it here struck as anachronistic. And yes, that was the word that popped into my head, whether it was accurate or otherwise.

“Should we… should we say hello?” Ylv asked. “Maybe he’s friendly.”

“Or maybe it is some horrific monster that wants to rape you in the ear!” I hissed back. I paused for a moment, examining the mall. “Past the bridge I can see staircases on either side of the main area that lead up to the second floor. We can look down at the fire and that pony thence, don’t you think?”

“If you think that the guy down there is so dangerous, why not just go back and try to find another way around?”

I gave Ylv a glare so vile it would make a wooden crate shatter in sheer terror. “Because shut up, I don’t want to go back there.”

And with that said, I tried to cross the bridge as quietly as possible, sticking to the darkness and shadows, keeping my eyes on the shuffling figure. As we got nearer the figure, the louder and louder came a faint noise. It sounded like quiet, muffled crooning, not unlike a mother trying to coo her baby to sleep because its cries would alert the murderers outside to their presence. As we had crossed the bridge and were basically crawling up to the staircase to the right, I could hear words for sure. Not Equestrian, and coming from a feminine voice that ebbed and flowed as the haunting figure shuffled around her part of the mall, between ruined piles of indescribable junk and stone.

Ylv evidently hit something, one of the odd piles of ancient, rotted junk and crumbled stones that proved that this place was an ancient ruin. He inhaled sharply, and I snapped my attention to him. My eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness enough to see what he’d hit. And amongst the possible things I’d thought he’d bumped into, none of them involved a screaming mummy.

It was if the stallion had been frozen as he was howling in pure, unadulterated, bowel-evacuating horror when he’d died, and the look had stuck to his face as he was slowly mummified by the environment. He was hairless save for his still-green mane, his eyes eaten by bacteria, revealing the almost jerky-like texture of his inner eye sockets.

My companion met the mummy’s gaze for a number of seconds, before letting out a muffled cry of delayed horror that he only barely stifled. But there was another, more pressing matter, caused as a direct result from Ylv’s noise.

“Sir, please tell me, have you seen my daughter?” asked the ghastly figure, sounding unsure, even nervous. I slowly looked down the mall to see the pony, which I knew to certainly be a mare, staring at us. At me. “She’s such a beautiful girl; I’d do anything to find her! Only, they took her from me; they told me they came from King Sombra. I don’t know where she is. But she will return! She's smart, and strong, and she will find me, no matter how far away she is…” The mare’s voice slowly trailed off as she hung her head down once more, just staring at the ground.

I felt a hoof on my shoulder, and I damn near screamed and threw myself to the ground. But it was only Ylv coming to speak to me. “Sedhoas, it’s a ghost!” he whispered harshly. “She’s one of the lost souls!”

“Excuse me?” I asked, looking at the bonfire that the ghastly mare was slowly getting further and further from as she shuffled. From here, it looked as if there were a huge pile of clothes scattered around the edge of the fire, as well as random piles likewise scattered around the mall. And… were those blood stains? They were sparse, and I’d mistaken them previously for dirt, but I was sure there were scattered marks of blood on the ground floor of this place.

“This place is weak! Sometimes the dead come back here, their souls trapped.” He tugged on my shoulder. “We need to leave—this is an unholy place.”

Though she wasn’t looking at us, I could hear the mare’s low croons. “Oh, hello… what’s your name? Do you know where my daughter is…?” She sounded so desperate, as if on the verge of tears. “Why are you here? Who is Duke Elkington? Does he know where my daughter is?”

The hairs on the back of my neck, which amazingly seemed thoroughly bored by yon scary lady, suddenly stood on end. In her non-Equestria jumble, had she just mentioned Duke Elkington? I had to know.

“Duke Elkington?” I inquired, and she snapped her head up at me. I had the sudden idea of a poor book about to be violently devoured by a savage librarian, as librarians were the most brutal of all monsters. “Why did you say his name?”

“They told me he knew where my daughter was. I helped them. They were liars!” Her tone frothed with murderous intent as she gave a single twitch of the head. “They wouldn’t help me find my daughter! They didn’t want me to have my daughter—they wanted her all to themselves!”

Something stirred. I looked over to see a stallion, dusty and clearly hacked up badly at some point, rising from under a pile of dirt and rubble. He wasn’t looking at me, but still I could see the pink glow from his eyes. I almost did a double-take at his uniform. Despite its ragged, dirty state, I couldn’t shake the notion that it was some form of the Carolean uniform I’d seen back in New Pegasus.

Despite the death rattle that somehow bribed enough health inspectors to let it pass as a species of breathing, the stallion opened his mouth. His body looked almost like that mummy, only if that mummy had been exposed to nigh lethal amounts of pruning. “Do you know why the locals say this place is weak?”

His mouth moved as well as it could, teeth dancing as he spoke. Only, he wasn’t speaking. The voice had come from the mare, and sounded like an incredibly aggravated parody of a real voice.

From far away, I heard a series of low, echoing growls.

“Sedhoas, please! We must leave!” Ylv tugged harder at my shoulder, but I only shoved him back. He yelped as he fell onto the mummy.

What I’d originally taken for weird piles of clothing around the fire stirred, slowly ambling up to their hooves. Not all, just some. They were clad in the same dark outfit as the mare with all the crystals poking out of her body. Breathing hard and heavy, as if struggling terribly, they proceeded to slowly shuffle about. They would occasionally cast glances at the mare, but were otherwise just… shuffling.

“We were sent to investigate supernatural rumors and the dark feeling Duke Elkington’s empath sensed,” came the parodic voice, again with the Carolean stallion’s ruined mouth making all the motions to imply it was speaking. “No, we don’t know where your daughter is.”

“Liar!” she roared, the little other pony-things making questioning grunts and moans as they looked at her. “How dare you play with a mother’s bleeding heart!”

I glanced back to Ylv, who had scrambled from the mummy and was now mouthing words to himself. It looked like frantic prayer. It made me pause, not for his sake, but because until then I hadn’t noticed just how hard my heart was pounding. It was enough to shake me side to side ever so slightly, or so it felt like. I was actually afraid to swallow, my heart was so high in my throat.

Then the ghastly mare cried out, “How dare you hurt them! How dare you try to burn them all! They’re just trying to help me find my daughter!” Her last word echoed in on itself with a sound not unlike a thousands mothers screaming as they futilely try to save their child from death: “Die!”

The puppeted Carolean stallion let out a groan, and I watched as his body twisted in ways that a body shouldn’t able to twist, tearing and pulling under unnatural, mind-boggling forces. It was like a psychotic little filly playing with a frog, with every intent to rend it limb from limb so that it could fit snugly into her doll’s dress.

Stale blood spurted from new gaps, and it crumpled down to the ground in a fit of crushing blows raining down from the aether. It seemed to last forever, the snaps echoing throughout the mammoth caves with deafening loudness. The strange ponies in dark clothes and gas masks paused to looked upon the ghastly mare, seeming to ignore the brutalized figure.

Ylv stared wide-eyed at what had once been something resembling what might have not been a pony. His eyelid twitched as his hooves shook, Ylv’s mouth moving as if trying to form sounds but just remaining silent. It seemed like somepony who’s just spectacularly failed their sanity check.

Instead of saying anything else, that damn mare with the crystals coming out of her body just hung her head and went back to shuffling about. “T’agradas jogar?” I heard her mutter in a language that wasn’t Equestrian, her voice strangely echoing.

I grabbed Ylv by the collar and hauled his ear up to my mouth. He did not resist. “We need to go. Now,” I whispered, indicating the staircase. “I don’t want to go back, and I don’t want to mess around with these guys, but there’s clearly something interesting going on here, and I’m fixing to find out what’s up.”

He gave me a sad little whimper that sounded like it’d be more appropriate for Cards’ lips than his. We crept to and up the stairs as quiet and as fast as a stallion trying to steal a pile of hamburgers from an enormously fat but snoozing mare.

When we got to the second floor, I glanced over the solid railing to peer at the ghastly mare, who was continuing to shuffle about without any real purpose. Those other ponies, if I could call them that, were slowly stopping, some even just collapsing to the ground. From up here, I could see that a few of them had little inklings of crystals poking out from holes in their black, all-encompassing clothing.

Ylv nudged me, pointing to what looked like a door. In fact, this upper level was filled with doors and what did indeed look like long abandoned and glassless shop windows. Somehow, I felt that this was probably some sort of ancient temple, yet much like the idea of cancer the sun plants in your skin every day, the thought that this actually was once a mall was growing.

Of course, the one he’d been pointing at was a large double doorway hanging ajar, with a swastika carved into the stone of the closed part of the door. The icon had been painted blue at some point. I recalled back to the swastika, the so-called “manji”, that the Carolean Proud had worn around his neck when I’d met him in Caval. He’d mentioned it being a Songnam symbol of good luck, and when I’d asked him, he told me it was also the coat of arms for House Elkington, a symbol which had been passed down his line ever since Elkington’s great great grandfather or whatever married a refugee princess of Neighpon.

I tapped a hoof to the Iron Cross I wore around my neck, nodded to Ylv, then moved towards the building. It was a ways away, past many façades of old buildings. Passing by one, I glanced through a window and asked Ylv what he saw. When he looked, he got even paler and said, “Some whispered in the darkest corners that King Sombra used to do the worst, most horrible things possible to ponies. I heard once that his wizards knew spells that could turn a pony into paper.”

“Looks more like a desiccated husk,” I said, but Ylv refused to say anything more.

When we got to the door, I pushed the swastika portal ajar and peered in. Tthe place reminded me of a military campsite. There was evidence of a fire, which was odd considering how deep we were, until I looked up and saw a chimney hole in the ceiling, which only raised further questions; boxes of supplies, many whereof had been opened, but a distressing amount whereof had not; and other assorted odds and ends reminiscent of a campsite that had been hastily abandoned, with stuff just strewn about the ground and in ruins. Hell, I even saw a good few tents, one whereof seeming to have been torn to shreds.

I quickly closed the doors behind us, noticing that the backs of the doors looked thoroughly scratched up. Not as if from constants usage, but as if some clawed animal had been trying to get out from this room.

“Sedhoas,” Ylv whispered as he walked up to the fireplace, “this place is evil.”

“What gave you the first clue?” I snapped, attempting to still be quiet. I walked over to one of the closed boxes and opened it. The rather small thing was filled with cans of food. Next thereto was an opened box filled with little tubs of water, which was weird, as I’d never before seen water transported in square tubs.

As I was about to go check on another box, Ylv called out, “Sedhoas, what’s this?”

“Is that a…” I asked as I walked up next to him. He was standing by the entrance to the largest tent. “Oh my God, it’s a Voixson!” I shoved him out of the way and tackled the air, grabbing up the Voixson and cuddling therewith. The interior of the tent had a little writing desk with an inkwell with the feather pen still therein, plus a little sleeping bag bed.

I rolled onto the bed, laying on my back, as I held the Voixson to my chest. “These things are awesome. It’s like they’ve got some magic spell on them that compels ponies to tell their deepest, darkest secrets.”

Before pressing the on button, I noted the luggage tag had the black-and-white of a stallion in what appeared to be Carolean digs, the words “Jorn 1, Rapòrt de la situacion” written thereby.

“Capitani Quinzen Sanhargués, onzen batalhon de Carolingians. Personalament, compreni pas perque lo manual recomanda de comolar los rapòrt Voixson—ni perque me cal emplegar totes aqueles nom estupidasses. Mas coma capmèstre d’aquesta expedicion, me cal crear un precedent.”

I pressed the off button with a frown on my face. “What the shit-eater spidermonkey cocks was that? That wasn’t Equestrian—I don’t speak that! You are worthless to me!” I tossed the Voixson off to the side.

“Sedhoas, pleeease!” Ylv whined. “Not so loud.” Then, with a helpful smile, he added, “It sounds kind of like French.”

I scoffed. “But it wasn’t. It sounded similar, but was all sorts of different.” I had a thought, back to Felicitat. “Mayhap it was the language of the Red River Valley. I recalled they had a very weird name therefor. I think it was… I think it was ‘Valada de la Ribièra Roja’.” I emphasized the last word, ‘roo-zho’, for effect. “I think were it transcribed I might sort of understand it, but I speak only a little Hochfranzösisch.”

He repeated, in a rough approximation, the word in his own language, frowning. Standing in the doorway of the tent, he did a quick check of the outside before turning back to me. “I do not understand.”

I rolled my eyes, standing up and going to the desk. “Hochfranzösisch, the language some speak in Reichsmark Kadien, the state that stands on the border and only land border the Reich has with the hellish Wastelands to the west. Imagine the French you probably know, only set it back a thousand years or so, possibly more.”

“Excuse me? I still do not understand.”

As expected, the little journal was similarly noted to be in that not-French. But when written, it was… really hard, but I thought that I could almost sort of read it. “Well, while Reichsstaat Preußen was founded by Nûlkor crusaders, Kadien was founded by… Look, it doesn’t matter. Just know that Kadien once spoke French, then Teutsch overtook it, but then two hundred years ago it had a renaissance and so now that area speaks the French as it was recorded about a thousand years, okay? I’ve seen modern Equestrian French, and it’s damn weird, but I can understand it better than this. Now let me think!”

I studied the journal for a short while, taking out a pencil I had and using it to scribble the teutsche translation above the words in a tiny font. When I was satisfied, I came to the conclusion that the Carolean here had a very weird name. It was “Captain Fifteen Sanharian of the Eleventh Carolean Battalion”, roughly translated.

From a military standpoint, that was odd, being that a battalion could be in upwards of 1,300 strong; from another, it took at least three months or so to train a soldier back in the Reich, and I doubted it could have been more than two months time since I sort of was labeled as “the Butcher of Songnam”, which was the event that let Elkington get away with his Carolean pseudo-military.

However, being as the journal was really only one page long, the only other thing I got out thereof was that he didn’t like this place, but something was something or other, and an archaeologist lady was something-ing a whatnot.

Okay, so my translation sort of flubbered out there at the end, but dammit, I tried!

Because giving up was the first step to admitting you have a problem, I groaned, kicked the desk, and found a weird spike of joy when a drawer rolled up and revealed a newspaper article, missing most of the rest of the paper. It consisted just of the headlines, and then the part inside the paper that dealt with the headline. The headline read “So Long As There Is a King in Songnam…”

The article itself, written in a place called “Canterberry”, and really bothered me because it spelt words all weird-like—such as “honour”, “manœuvre”; and bafflingly enough, “horrour”—was a simple enough read. In short, it was a critique of the recent policies of Duke Elkington, calling him a variety of fancy-sounding insults, like “a cocklorn with a lickspittle-like fixation on Princess Celestia not three steps away from worship”, who was neverless an “utter snollygoster”.

It noted that the Viscount of Canterberry, one Lord Petticoat II, volunteered his opinion on Duke Elkington’s procedures. Lord Petticoat II voiced hesitant support of Duke Elkington, claiming that “at least somepony in power is doing something to try to better this country, not just keep the status quo pro bono”. The paper then notes with some bitterness that Lord Petticoat owes a sizable sum of money to Duke Elkington.

I glanced up to see that Ylv had wandered off and out of the tent and back to the campsite. Knowing him, he was probably being eaten to death by a cardboard box or something. Worst come worst, I supposed that I could always use him as pony-bait and throw him at those monster things down there.

With a sigh, I folded the paper into a tiny bit, planning to put it in my bag and save it for later, but that’s when I noticed the very back of the last page in the article. It was seemingly a normal side, but someponies had been writing thereupon. Or so I had assumed, as it seemed like a secret note written between two ponies, like Caroleans.

“Do you think the crystal pony’s gone mad?”

“Yes, she’s an utter loon all of the sudden. What do we do, Cap?”

“Tell the others to arm themselves. I doubt anything that physically grows out of the equine body means anything good.”

Nevertheless, I tossed the folded newspaper into my bag for later reading, then trotted out of the tent. Then I saw that Ylv was pawing helplessly at a strange Voixson, and then tackled him to the ground.

“Mine!” I hissed, jumping off him like a wild antelope and bounding for the Voixson.

“You’re a dick,” he moaned.

“You were going to hurt it,” I retorted, and then pressed the play button. There was a moment of silence, filled only by the crackling of the audio recording software, and I prayed that the recorded pony would speak in proper Equestrian. I looked at the thing’s handle and found another luggage tag; it read ‘Field Observations’, with a picture of a crystal mare’s head attached via paperclip.

“Right, so. That’s how this thing works,” said a mare with in a hesitant voice, her accent ringing of somepony who had an irrational fear of the letter R following a vowel. “When I heard that a troop of those odd Caroleans was here in Côrint, I didn’t know what to think. Not that it mattered much, being that I’m a professor of archaeology. Although when I heard that they were in the university, asking around seemingly on their own authority, I was a little bit intrigued. Somehow, now I’m on a ‘fully paid vacation’—don’t ask me how they bullied the administratum into allowing that—and I’m working in these old ruins way beneath the city, trying to uncover something.

“All I know is that I’m an expert at this sort of thing, at least that’s what the documents say. And…” She hesitated, as if checking over her shoulders. “Well, that this was the place where they took her. I miss her, and I’ll do anything to find them. Shining Armor and Snechta can be damned for all I care, but… maybe down here, I can find clues to where they took her.”

I glanced around as a weird tapping and crackling noise afflicted the device. Vaguely, I recognized that as the sound of the recording being turned on and off. Ylv was getting settled in to listen, still casting me harsh glares every now and then.

“I told them today about the rumors. Captain Sanhargués gave me this really weird look. He said that back home, there were some scary legends. His people had a particularly scary tale about a mythical figure he called ‘lo Violonista sus l’Èrba’; and he had hunted vile monsters as a child with his father, so-called ‘pofranga’, a sort of half-crab, half-octopus thing.” I nearly did a backflip when I heard that. She was speaking of the bogtopi, wasn’t she? I liked my name better! “‘But in all my years,’ said he, ‘I’ve ne’er seen nor heard such a horrific tale.’ And Captain Sanhargués said that he would help me accomplish my goal alongside the goal Duke Elkington has them down here for.”

There came that click of the Voixson going off/on again, but this time I actually pressed the pause button and looked up at Ylv. He had found a strange little bundle of small blankets in one of the tens, and had pulled it out, revealing therewithin to be a small wooden box. We met each others eyes, nodded in that way stallions do whenever they meet eyes, and he set the box down by me.

“Do you wish to open it?” he asked. “I feel that if I open it, something will jump out and stab me in the throat. But not if you open it.”

I shrugged. His logic was entirely sound. I opened the little container, with some minor trouble trying to undo the little latches, and revealed an interior stuffed with yellow straw, the centerpiece holding a glowing crystalline shard that seemed as if to hum with a red aura. I squinted my eyes, and I swore to God that it looked as if the crystal had tiny bits of veins and possibly the small ends of arteries running therethrough. It was almost as if it was organic.

The top of the box’s inside had a little noted taped to the top, which read simply, “Sample #4”.

I let the box alone and turned back towards the Voixson. Its message had to be finished.

The voices sounded more distant, as if the Voixson had been turned on to record, yet had been placed in a hidden location. “…not usually,” came the archaeologist mare’s voice.

“So, you are implying that this sort of phenomenon is not unheard of?” asked a stallion, a trace of a decidedly French-ish accent in his.

“Well, nor am I saying that.” She paused. I heard scuffling, a distant gasp for ragged breath. “The crystals that grow down here are caused by bacterial colonies; the crystals and their glow are sort of a natural byproduct. They grow off cave walls, eating little… well, we don’t know, but they do, and these things are the result.”

“You’re deliberately dodging my question,” the Frenchpony stated with a forceful undertone, as if he was pressing the mare up to a wall and was this close from mauling her to death. “I asked what in Fiddler’s Green it was that caused that.” Somepony screamed off in the background, and the buck swore under his breath in what was likely Occitan. “And perhaps more pressingly, of all the ponies in that tunnel, only the Carlean buck got affected, while you crystalfolk are just fine.”

“Because the Crystal Heart protects us!” she blurted out.

“Come again?” Slow and methodical, like one who is skilled in how to coax information out of someone during the classic game of ‘good cop, serial torturer cop’.

“Look, I don’t know what those things were, but they felt… wrong. Okay? I told you, this place is where reality is weak from the works of the Elder Gods. Bad things happen here. That’s why King Sombra was so fond of these dark depths!”

“So, you’re saying that so long as that giant crystal thingy that the local Princess is so keen to defend is working, my good Caroleans  need suffer and die, yet you and your ilk are fine?”

I heard her take a breath, something getting knocked down and falling to the ground. “In effect, yes. Whatever’s wrong with those… organic, bloody crystals that’s infecting your stallion over there won’t harm us here.”

There was a long pause.

The Carolean sighed and spoke in a hushed down. “Then we’re going to destroy the centerpoint of all this wrongness. That alter/pillar thing in the center of this place? We’re going to burn it and seal off this vile curse from afflicting anypony else.”

A slight hesitation. “But I feel it may already be far too late…”

Click off, and then somepony putting it back up. A tired, husky voice muttered in a language I didn’t understand at all, then choked up a date and time. “If anypony should find this, may Celestia and Luna have mercy on your souls—run!” And then I heard the wailing of the damned, filled with rage and hatred.

And that was all there was. I looked down at the red crystal and closed quickly its box, latching it up good. Something about that last recording, the date and warning, was really running through my head again and again, as if I’d missed something crucial.

“Sedhoas, is that it?” Ylv asked. “We are not here to solve a mystery. We just must pass through and onto the temple. Please, I think we can get there if we’re quiet.”

“You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, and I’m not going to tempt fate by trying to figure this out. I can save the day down here when I get my body back to normal, aye?”

“The stallion sees reason! Ah, praise be!” He pulled out his map, but I just kept thinking to that last Voixson entry. “I think if we go this way, we can get out of here. I admit, I had not believed anypony had been down here in many years, but… I guess I was wrong, but I do not think I am wrong about this, no.”

Then, like a child wondering why that black dot in the sky was getting bigger and more cinderblock-looking, it hit me. With haste, I pulled out my pocket watch.

“What? What is it, sedhoas?”

“You heard that last recording, right?”

“Aye, sedhoas.”

“It had a timestamp.”

He nodded.

I showed him the time. “It was only made an hour ago.”