Josho made to step forward.
Rainbow Dash held her hoof out.
Josho glanced up.
The pegasus shook her head, flapped her wings, and hovered forward.
The two dozen survivors watched from where they stood. Props bit her lipe while Razzar and the Lounge craned their necks, gazing in silence.
Rainbow Dash flew into the broad corridor, her nose scrunching to the musky, stale air. After hovering in place for a bit, she brought a hoof to her pendant and rubbed the ruby lightning bolt a few times. A crimson glow splashed over dusty heaps of rubble before her.
The mare's eyes narrowed. She glanced to her right.
There were patches of charred granite and cracks in the wall.
She looked to her left.
The stone surfaces were marred in several places, as if by acid burns.
At last, she looked straight down.
She counted three... four... five chunks of rock missing from the floor—like miniature craters.
There were no skeletal remains.
Rainbow Dash's jaw clenched. Nevertheless, she looked over her shoulder, made eye-contact with Josho, and briskly nodded.
Josho nodded back. Levitating his shotgun alongside him, he trotted firmly forward. Razzar and two of his associates were not far behind. Soon enough, Props, Seclorum, Arcshod, Aatxe and the rest followed suit.
The surviving mares and stallions glanced nervously from wall to wall. Crossbows nearly rattled to the floor from a unicorn or two losing their concentration due to the intense silence. While Razzar and his team marched along, undaunted, Props paused every now and then to scrutinize various details with her goggled eyes. She rubbed her chin in thought, glanced up at the crew, then dashed back into formation with a nervous jump.
As Rainbow Dash floated along, she pivoted to her right. Her eyes narrowed.
In between the random cracks and fissures, a complex mosaic loomed. Swirling designs coalesced into the granite depiction of swirling clouds and cosmic nebulae. Emerging from the galactic miasma, solid circles glided in distant formation. Orbiting the outer rings of these circles, tiny globes floated. Only—upon closer inspection—they weren't exactly spheres. Rainbow Dash drifted close enough to a wall to see that the etchings were actually debris clouds consisting of multiple structures with a large platform located in the center.
Rainbow Dash tongued the inside of her mouth. She glanced towards the other wall, but it was beyond the penumbra of her glowing pendant's light. She kicked off the right wall and flew close enough to illuminate the other. What she saw caused her to stop in midair.
Equine figures had been illustrated, stampeding in a herd that proceeded out from the depths of the corridor. It took a while for Rainbow Dash to realize that the ponies weren't stampeding as much as they were flocking. Each equine had wings, and she would have liked to have seen the etchings of their muzzles—only all of the effigies had been marred in some fashion. Burn marks and impacts from blunt instruments had defaced them entirely.
Rainbow raised an eyebrow, pivoted about, and darted further down the corridor before the rest of the group could pass her.
"Tren'nalliuen dreneek'raat siul threanna," Arcshod murmured, breaking the silence.
Aatxe nodded. "It beats me. I think we would have run into them by now too."
"Into what?" Props chirped.
"Changelings," Aatxe muttered. "We may be big in number, but this is the perfect kind of trap."
"Maybe the Lounge are scaring them off!" Props said through a crooked grin. "Spark only knows they're scaring the soot out of me!"
Arcshod's nostrils flared. "Brendessa t'lenna thrillem hranna thiulen..."
"Huh?" Props blinked.
Seclorum spoke up, "We just did those shapeshifting creeps a favor by opening this place." He turned to frown at the others. "I doubt it's the Lounge scaring them."
"It will do no one any good if we scare ourselves," Razzar said without looking back. "Cling to your weapon if you can't cling to your courage."
"Hey, I'm a soldier, buddy!" Seclorum frowned. "Thirty years and running!"
"Running away, is more like it."
"Why you—" Seclorum darted for Razzar's backside, only for Aatxe and Arcshod to hold him back.
"Let it go, Secchy," Josho said. His grizzled lips curved. "Besides... that was a pretty good one."
Seclorum stumbled back, muttering under his breath.
"Maybe... uhm..." Props galloped forward until she was within earshot of Rainbow. "Maybe we should have had you close the door behind us, Dashie?"
Rainbow shook her head. "No... I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
Rainbow glanced at the cracks and craters and burn marks on the floor. "Uhhhh... call it a hunch."
Suddenly, her pendant's glow was swallowed up by pitch blackness.
She braked in midair and held her front limbs out. "Everypony, stop!" A beat. She looked over her flapping wings. "You too, Razzarlings!"
Razzar held a gloved fist up. His comrades stopped, as did Seclorum and the rest of the survivors.
Aatxe and Seclorum craned their necks to see.
"What is it, Rainbow?" Josho asked from where he stood in the middle of the group.
Rainbow Dash dropped down to her hooves. The ground had given way in front of her, and an abysmal pit loomed. She swung her body—and pendant—left to right. She spotted the beginning of two staircases.
"It's a stairwell, I think," she said. "Goes down pretty far."
"How far?" Aatxe asked, nervously.
"I'm guessing the entire depth of the structure." She tilted her pendant up, revealing a flat ceiling. "And that must be right below the room that controls the temples."
"Yes, it's all very intriguing architecture," Razzar droned as he shuffled up beneath Rainbow Dash. "But where are the mana crystals located?"
Arcshod cleared his throat and said, "M'lanna siulen drasta kran'adar. Menus la'tranna kelethiuen vreen."
"Judging from the distance Lasairfion sensed, it must be further down," Aatxe said.
"Of course," Seclorum grunted.
"Well, then..." Rainbow Dash flew forward. "Down into the heart of Stratopolis we go."
Suddenly, Props gasped. She flung a hoof and yelped, "Dashie, wait!"
"H-huh?" The pegasus glanced back, not realizing that her dangling forelimbs had traveled through a dim energy field. Just then, bright lights illuminated from an unforeseen rig of crystals that lined the edge of the platform right before the pit. "Aaaugh!" She flew backwards, rubbing her eyes.
Mares and stallions gasped in surprise.
"By Ledo's nose hairs!" Seclorum raised his crossbow at the blinding array.
"Ready, brothers!" Razzar gestured towards his companions. "Fire as soon as you see—"
"Will you vomittards just chill?!" Josho shouted, pointing. "Look! It's just a fancy light show!"
"Nnnngh..." Rainbow Dash rubbed her face, blinked, and squinted up. "Huh?"
Right then, the lights coalesced into a large translucent face. The flickering magical projection of a mare stared down at them. A scar ran down her muzzle while her multi-colored bangs peaked out from beneath a golden helmet. Her coat's graying age could be seen in the luminescent patterns, along with the cold hard lines of her jaw and cheekbones as she spoke. Despite the crackling quality of the sound sample, the booming authority of her voice rang true.
"Stop at once. Do not go any further." A pair of cold blue eyes narrowed. "Whoever you are, if you have pierced the walls of this chamber, then that can only mean one thing. You and I share the same spirit, both in purpose as well as in practice. But do not obey the impulsive courage that urges you to press forward, lest you wish to learn the same lesson that I did... through loss of blood and limb."
Razzar stepped up while the message was speaking and unabashedly pressed his gloved hand through the projection. "Hmmm... magic luminescent construction. And judging from the quality... a very ancient design."
Rainbow Dash shuddered. "Yeah... about ten thousand years ancient..."
Props flashed her a goggled glance. "How do you know that?"
"I think she's about to tell us." Rainbow gulped and bowed her head ever so slightly. "Commander Hurricane, I presume..."
The projection did not reply, instead thundering forth, "This door was sealed for a reason, and under my authority. My name is Commander Hurricane of Pegasopolis. I gave up my station as defender of the newly-formed Equestrian Alliance to see that this place remains forever untouched. If you value your lives and that of the Harmonic Realm, do not proceed any further. In the core of this sepulcher lies the blackest, vilest of hearts, and all you will find here is death."