The sunlight had vanished over an hour ago. The only sources of light now were the dim, glowing patches of moss snugly wrapped around Rye and Tyria’s forelegs. Rye had decided not to light his horn during the journey. They were already risking enough with this poorly thought-out plan, there was no need to make themselves easier to discover.
Keron’s group of volunteers was comprised of six seapony stallions and one mare, all lean and fast swimmers. Speed, Keron had explained, was to be their best defense on the descent into hostile territory. Keron had briefly introduced the lead pony, a stallion named Beriac, whose neck Rye was hugging. The seapony swam so swiftly and steadily that Rye wasn’t sure his added weight slowed him down at all. A few meters beside them, Tyria and the seapony carrying her were faintly visible in the light of her own moss. Behind, a third pony waited for Beriac or the mare to tire, ready to relieve them.
Rye had not seen the other four seaponies since the sunlight had faded. They were spread around the central three in outrider positions, keeping watch for anything hostile. The tight formation did little to comfort Rye; if they were attacked, he and Tyria would be virtually helpless in the dark water. The journey had been dull thus far, but he was still alert for any sign of the sea chimerae Keron had spoken of.
Twenty minutes ago, they had crossed what must have been the “shelf” Meri had mentioned. It was an end to the gently sloping, sandy seafloor, a sharp cliff that plunged down into infinite darkness. The cliff wall had vanished behind them long ago, and they had been swimming in the black void ever since. The water grew colder and heavier as they descended, until Rye found his breathing labored and his limbs numb. The airstar clenched tightly against his face, retreating from their frigid surroundings.
They were not alone in the void. From time to time, Rye caught glimpses of alien creatures in the deep, short flashes of fins or tails in the dim mosslight. There were nameless things with tentacles, creatures with enormous mouths larger than the rest of their bodies, eyeless fish with bizarrely shaped spiny protrusions. Some glowed like tiny fireflies, others had pulsing strings of light that shimmered up and down their bodies. Once, the group passed carefully through a cloud of jellyfish, who floated quietly in their mindless hunt for food.
The abyss was utterly silent. Sounds traveled far underwater, but there was nothing, not the squeak of dolphins, or the rush of waves, or even the bubble of breath, thanks to the airstars. Only Beriac’s occasional call to the outlying seaponies assured Rye that he hadn’t gone deaf. He’d never felt so out of place, not even in Sleipnord’s vast wintry wasteland. This darkness was a place no pony had ever been meant to go.
He glanced over at Tyria, wondering if she felt as uneasy as he did. There was no way for them to communicate at length in the water, so simple body language had to suffice. He gave her a questioning head tilt and briefly waved around at the emptiness. Tyria just shrugged.
A fish with a glowing bulb attached to its forehead flashed past. Rye turned his head, trying to catch a glimpse of it before it passed out of the mosslight, and felt his blood run cold. The seapony behind them had vanished.
Rye shook Beriac’s shoulder, trying not to panic. Perhaps the pony had simply fallen slightly behind. Beriac slowed, looking back at Rye, who pointed to the absence of their escort. His eyes widened, and he sang out the low note Rye had begun to recognize as a call to report. There was a responding chirp from their left, then their front, then the right.
The rear guard remained silent. Rye felt his heart beating faster as Beriac whistled more instructions. Three pale shapes appeared in the mosslight, startling Rye before he realized they were the other seaponies. All of them wore expressions of alarm. Beriac whistled and sang quietly to the others, and the five seaponies pulled into a tight formation like a school of fish, with Rye and Tyria in the center of a small ring. Nothing leaped at them from the shadows, but the tension was thick and stifling. Rye was feeling so paranoid that by the time something finally appeared, it was almost a relief.
A stone pillar loomed suddenly from the darkness, and the seaponies swerved to avoid it. More pillars sprang out of the depths, and suddenly Rye could see the seafloor in the faint light of the moss. It was completely bare, just sand and rock without a plant or coral to be seen. From the sand rose broken marble columns, and other shattered remnants of buildings. His sphere of vision was tiny, but even so, Rye could feel the scale of what they were swimming through.
The ruins above in the sunlight were alive, filled with color and energy, beautiful despite their dark origin. This place was different. The broken buildings and shattered stone were untouched by life, frozen reminders of the calamity that had sent them here. This city was a dead thing, oblivion made manifest in the farthest depths of the ocean. The only colors here were brown and gray, all given a dismal blue cast by the moss.
Something moved in the corner of his vision. Rye’s head swerved left to catch the motion, but all he saw was the remains of a collapsed structure. He tapped Beriac’s shoulder and pointed toward the building. The seapony took a look, sang something to his fellows, and the entire group sped up. Rye felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
The attack came, not from the sides, but from below. Dark shapes erupted from the sand, and Rye had less than a second to process what was happening before one slammed into Beriac. Rye lost his grip and was sent spinning off into the dark.
Sand clouded the water. All Rye could see was thick motes of dust, all color washed out by the mosslight. Around him, he could hear the muffled thuds and thumps of fighting, fluting seapony calls, and strange, hideous squeals and shrieks. What little Tyria had taught him about swimming was impossible to remember in this panic, so he simply closed his eyes and curled up as tightly as he could.
After twenty or thirty seconds, the noise of battle ceased. Rye listened to his rapid heartbeat, hoping desperately to hear the sounds of a friendly pony. Cracking his eyes open, he blinked against the stinging sea. Whorls of sand spun lethargically through the water around him. He floated, motionless, unable to even tell which way was up. He strained to hear anything from the seaponies, trying not to think about the fate that awaited him if they had fallen to the creatures.
The cloud burst in front of him, revealing the pony he’d least expected to see. Rye uncurled, startled, as Tyria swam up beside him, giving a short wave. She turned and waved to someone behind her, the glowing moss on her foreleg leaving an afterimage in Rye’s dark-adjusted vision.
Beriac and the seapony mare swam out of the darkness, looking over their shoulders. Beriac sang something, and another one appeared above them. Rye and Tyria grabbed on to their guides again, and the remaining group took off like lightning. Rye twisted his head, trying to see if any of the other seaponies had survived, but only the three were visible.
Before them, a statue appeared out of the black. It was a zebra, ten meters tall, rearing back on its hind legs. It faced a pair of broken marble stumps and a carpet of rubble, suggesting it had once had a twin. The statues were clearly meant to stand before an entrance to a building.
The mosslight revealed a vast edifice ahead. The building had pillars upon pillars, stacked walls made from enormous stone blocks so large that they must have been moved by magic. It stretched up far beyond view, the roof completely lost in the dark. The mammoth wall of white stone reflected the eerie blue glow of the moss. Rye swallowed. Here’s the skull of this corpse of a city.
The entrance alone dwarfed the statue, but it had completely collapsed. No building as large as this castle-sized structure could have been carried into the sea totally intact. Rubble buried the entire opening, blocking their way. The seaponies seemed to expect this, swimming up against the wall and upward.
This close to the wall, Rye could see the fresh, unweathered cuts of the stones. This building had been newly constructed before the disaster, perhaps the last one erected before the city’s destruction. Rye’s eyes widened. There was only one thing it could be. The center of the cataclysm. This is where they built the fountain.
A great crack severing one of the wall blocks provided the entrance the seaponies had been seeking. The group slipped inside, and the mosslight revealed a hallway much like the ones in the city above. The walls were blank marble, and a thick layer of marble dust and sand covered the tilting floors. Debris poked through the dust, and Rye felt an unpleasant jolt as he realized that some of it wasn’t rock. White bones, half-hidden from sight, were thick all around them. The horned skull of a unicorn stared at the group as they swam past, the shadows playing in its empty eyes.
At last they came to a sizeable room. The ceiling had collapsed, allowing access to the floor above, and Rye saw the telltale glimmer of an air pocket’s water barrier. The seaponies surfaced with a splash, and gasped for air. They each had airstars attached to their sides, but they’d kept them off while not in use to better communicate.
He and Tyria clambered out of the pool onto the little bit of remaining floor, next to an open doorway that led into another hall. As he removed the airstar, shuddering as the tendrils retracted from his throat, Beriac spoke. “Be swift, surfacers. The creatures won’t stay away for long.” He looked back and forth between them. “Find our lost ones if you can, but hurry. We can’t remain here for more than a few hours.”
Rye rubbed his throat, shoving the airstar into one of his robe’s sodden interior pockets. “We’ll be as fast as we can. Good luck, Beriac.”
“To you as well.” Beriac nodded to them, and then the seaponies sank into the dark below.
Tyria inhaled. “We lost so many just getting here.”
Rye shook his head. “I just hope it was worth it.” They set off into the building.
The hallway was twisty, turning and doubling back on itself, weaving in apparently aimless ways through the darkened marble ruin. Unlike the last building they had explored, the walls were blank marble, with no sign of any artwork. The floor was so covered with dust that it was impossible to tell if any mosaics lay beneath their hooves. Not all of the dust was marble white; it took Rye a while to realize that the powdery black substance mixed in with it was volcanic ash.
More disturbing were the bones. Fragments of equine remains littered the halls along with other species, not all of which Rye could identify. There were elk antlers, antelope horns, and innumerable chips of shattered bone that might belong to any of them.
Tyria jumped as one crunched beneath her hoof. “Gods! This place is a graveyard.”
“Perhaps they died in the eruption?” Rye clutched his robes tighter to his chest, looking around queasily.
“I hope so,” said Tyria quietly. Rye swallowed. The obvious alternative might have them soon joining the poor souls buried around them.
They walked on, their hoofsteps muted by the dust. Faintly, Rye heard something above them, a strange schlicking sound. He and Tyria paused, lifting their lights to reveal a number of worm-like creatures stuck to the ceiling. The worm-things were secreting beaded strings of some viscous substance.
Tyria raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating.”
Rye stuck out his tongue. “Repulsive.”
“Yes, that too.”
After a few seconds of examination to determine that the creatures posed no threat, they resumed their walk down the hallway. A few minutes later, they reached an intersection with another hallway. They stood at the crossing, eyeing each of their three possible paths forward. Rye sighed. “Any ideas?”
“I don’t think splitting up is wise,” said Tyria, biting her lip. She lifted her head and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled, and she looked over to the left hallway. “The air down there smells like… decay.”
“Then that’s where we should go, no doubt,” said Rye, grimacing. “You think the seaponies are still alive?”
Tyria cast a glance around at the ruined hallways. “I don’t see how they could be.”
“I don’t either, but… I’ve seen stranger things.” Rye fluffed his robe, which was mostly dry. “And we have to try.”
They set off down the offending corridor. It wasn’t long before the reek of rot grew noticeable enough to make Rye pull the hem of his robes up to cover his nose. It reminded him of a week-old battlefield he’d once passed through, not the full blast of rotting death, but the lingering foulness that lasted for days afterward.
“I hope that’s not one of our group,” said Tyria nervously.
“Can’t be.” Rye shook his head. “Whatever’s making that smell has been dead for days, at least. The battle outside was less than an hour ago.”
They followed their noses, coming at last to the source of the stench. Stretching from the lower wall on their right to cover the hallway floor was a thin patch of dense, red webbing. It had a fleshy texture, and smelled like a dead animal that had been left too long in the sun. Rye poked it, feeling the rubbery moss give under his hoof.
“Gods,” he said, “and I thought those ceiling-slugs were disgusting.”
“It looks like meat,” said Tyria faintly, covering her nose. “Almost… like veins.”
Rye gestured down the passage, where the floor was entirely covered by the stuff. “Ladies first.”
“You’re such a gentlecolt,” said Tyria dryly. She stepped cautiously onto the growth, shivering as it gave a squelch under her hooves. “Oh, lovely.” She took another few steps, turning her head back toward Rye. “Coming?”
Before he could respond, Rye saw something emerge from the darkness behind her. His eyes widened as a tentacle, covered in suckers, shot out toward Tyria. He was opening his mouth to yell a warning when it wrapped around one of her hind legs and yanked her off her hooves. Tyria gave a yelp of surprise, and then the creature pulled her into the blackness.
Rye took off after them, shouting. Tyria’s voice echoed in the hallway, wordless sounds of struggle. There was a loud thunk like hooves hitting marble, and Tyria swore. Suddenly Rye caught up, finding Tyria being dragged up to her chest into a large crevice in the side of the hallway. Her forehooves were planted on either side of the crack, straining to keep herself from being pulled through.
She looked up to see him. “Rye!”
He raced to her, looping his hooves under her shoulders, pulling as hard as he could. Whatever had Tyria’s leg was strong, far stronger than either of them. She groaned in pain, gritting her teeth. “It’s going to rip my leg off!” There was a jolt from the creature, and Tyria slid up the length of the crevice with another cry of alarm.
Rye’s eyes snapped to the knife buckled to Tyria’s foreleg. He grabbed the hilt in his teeth, yanking it out of the sheathe, and ducked under her. The crack was small, but so was he. He slipped inside, finding the thing wrapped around Tyria’s hind leg. It was an octopus tentacle, just like the ones he’d seen above, covered with suckers and glistening in the blue mosslight. Rye wasted no time, squeezing up against the tentacle and slashing at it with the knife.
The blade cleaved the tentacle in two, splashing blue blood onto Rye’s face. There was an alien shriek of pain from the other side of the crack, and suddenly the tension holding Tyria above him vanished. Tyria fell on top of him, smacking his head against the side of the little tunnel.
They extricated themselves, panting for breath. Tyria kicked frantically at the part of the tentacle still wrapped around her leg, and it plopped to the floor. The two stared at it, watching with trepidation as it rapidly turned black and dissolved, leaving the same stink as the moss.
Rye wiped his face. “What the hell are these things?” Absently, he offered Tyria the knife.
Tyria accepted the weapon, sliding it back into the sheathe on her leg. “I don’t know.” Her jaw was tight. “Let’s move, before it comes back.”
They picked up the pace, cantering down the hallway. “Did you get a good look at it?” asked Rye, glancing back over his shoulder. “All I saw was the tentacle.”
Tyria slowed for a moment, looking haunted. “I didn’t get a clear glimpse before it went through the wall, but…” She shuddered. “It had hooves.”
“Oh, hell… You don’t think…?”
“That thing might have been a pony once.” Tyria resumed a canter. Rye followed, processing this new development.
They came at last to something besides a hallway, a large, long room. The meat-moss and the bones were thick in here, concentrated toward the center of the room. There was a pile of skeletons in the center, like a macabre totem of the dead. The walls of the room, unlike the bare hallway behind, were covered with frescoes. They stretched up to the ceiling, their colors muted by the glow of the moss.
“These must be the only paintings they finished before the disaster,” said Tyria, looking around.
“It’s a history,” said Rye, taking them in. “That little town here on the left, that must be the original Phoenixian settlement.” The city grew as the wall progressed, the paintings cataloguing a variety of famines, natural disasters, foreign relations, naval victories, all the failings and triumphs of a once-great civilization.
The wall on the right held a different history. The mural began with a zebra, garbed in purple and gold, surrounded by a circle of a dozen others. The figures were all abstract and geometric, but Rye could see tiny triangular unicorn horns on the heads of the twelve. He walked down the wall, watching as the figures delved into vast libraries and built elaborate golden structures, all under the watchful eye of the zebra in violet.
At the halfway point, the painting changed. Instead of the unicorns, there were over a thousand carefully-detailed and tiny figures. There were zebras, ponies, elk, white-tailed deer, antelopes, even griffons, all ordered in rows that faced an as-yet-unseen source of golden rays.
“Goddess have mercy,” whispered Tyria. Rye felt a bead of sweat on his forehead.
The figures were being slaughtered. The unicorn mages walked between the rows, bloody knives above their heads. The victims were clearly in agony, cowering and crying in pain as the mages murdered them with cold efficiency.
“This wasn’t a war,” said Rye, feeling ill. “They’re sacrificing them.”
“For what?”
“That.” Rye pointed to the left, at the source of the golden light shining over the doomed rows of sacrifices. This final painting was the most elaborate of all. A tower of white rose from the ground, three-tiered and covered with twisted golden helixes. Four gold arches reached up from the ground to touch the top of the tower, and a pyramid suspended above it crackled with lightning. Above the tower stood the zebra in purple, surrounded by the twelve, who prostrated themselves before her with upraised hooves. Golden letters were emblazoned above them.
“What do you think it says?” Rye looked over at Tyria, who had gone pale.
“It’s the old unicorn alphabet,” said Tyria. She cast a glance at the peak of the tower, where a fountain of golden water streamed down. “It says Ad Vitam Aeternam. It’s a common epigraph on paintings of Phoenixia.”
Even Rye knew enough old unicorn to recognize the phrase. “Now we know where all the bones came from. And what our monsters are.”
Tyria’s brow furrowed. “What? You can’t seriously think those mages—”
“If the building didn’t collapse during the eruption, and they were inside, they might have survived the initial blast. Once the city sank, they’d have been trapped… with the fountain.”
“Fountain or no, there’s nothing to eat down here.”
Rye wordlessly swept a hoof toward the rows of sacrificial victims again. Tyria blanched further. “Sisters. And when those bodies ran out?” She covered her mouth in horror. “The seaponies… and gods know how many victims of the maelstrom.”
“We need to get moving again,” said Rye, breaking away from the nightmares on the wall. “Beriac can’t wait for us forever.”
The room had another exit, across from the way they’d entered. The fleshy tendrils covered every surface, now. Rye thought he caught the stuff pulsing in the corner of his eye, but whenever he tried to look more closely, it went still. They paused at the mouth of the hallway, peering into the darkness.
“Rye.” Tyria gave him an apprehensive look. “We need more light. Those things have to be waiting down there somewhere. We won’t see them coming with this moss.”
“I suppose they know we’re here already.” Rye laid his glow-moss down on the ground, and delved into the flow of the magic.
He was almost bowled over by a blast of magical current. His ears rang with the roaring of a volcano, or a blast of lightning, or the sound of a million tons of water careening over a cataract. Rye clutched at his head, trying to stand up in the flow of magical excess. Tyria, looking alarmed, tapped his shoulder. “You okay?”
“It’s close,” he managed, feeling the overwhelming energy crash around him. “The fountain. It’s so wild. They barely bound it.” He staggered forward. “I could feel it all the way on the surface. And again, in the city.” Leaning on a wall for support, he measured his breathing, centering himself in the torrential outflow of power.
“Rye.” Tyria sounded seriously concerned, now. “We don’t need the light if it’s going to hurt you.”
“No, it’s fine.” Rye rubbed his forehead, standing upright and taking a cautious step away from the wall. “I just need to… find my balance.” He blinked rapidly, shaking his head. The magic was all around him—though still untouchable, damn it—but he was already learning to ignore the roaring in his ears. “We’re definitely headed in the right direction. It must be just down this passage.”
“Need a hoof?”
Rye nodded gratefully, looping his right foreleg over Tyria’s shoulder. Together, they walked down the hallway, alert for any sign of the creatures.
They hadn’t been walking for more than three minutes before a sound came from somewhere ahead. Rye lifted his head. “That sounded like a pony.”
“A pony in pain,” added Tyria, frowning with worry. “One of the seaponies?”
They hurried down the passage, coming to an abrupt stop as the source of the noise entered the golden glow of Rye’s light.
Tyria had been right, on both counts. A seapony was pinned up against the left wall of the corridor, his hooves stretched out to both sides and covered by the creeping red growth. His head was hung down over his chest, unmoving.
Rye stared aghast at the pony’s face. His mouth was twisted up on one side, and a crablike mandible jutted forth between the pony’s teeth. The eye above it was squeezed shut by the puffy skin, and a trail of drool dripped from his lips. The pony’s left foreleg had turned a dark red, and was covered in a hard, shiny carapace. It had separated along the middle, and Rye could see the clear structure of a forming claw.
“Shit.” Rye’s jaw worked as he tried to understand. “What did they do to him?”
Tyria gasped. “There’s another one!” She strode a few meters down the hall. On the other wall, another seapony was trapped in the moss. This one’s tail had no flipper, instead ending in what was unmistakably a stinger. “Oh, gods have mercy…”
Rye leaned closer to the first pony, reaching a hoof forward. “Are they still—”
The pony’s head snapped up. He lunged forward at Rye, his only open eye wild. His mouth, twisted around that hideous mandible, opened, and he screamed, “HELP USH!”
Rye jerked back instinctively. The seapony’s chest heaved, each exhalation drawing a quiet whinny of pain. Rye reached out a tentative hoof, touching the pony’s shoulder. “We came here to find you. Keron sent us.”
“Keron,” mumbled the seapony, his head dropping again. His shoulders shook, and Rye realized he was crying. “Pleash, help ush.” Rye could see his tongue through the gap caused by the mandible.
“We will, I swear to the Sisters.” Rye looked up and down the seapony, still reeling. “What have they done to you?”
The pony shook his head. “Hurtsh. Pleash.”
Rye heard the soft slide of metal on leather, and turned to see Tyria with the knife held delicately in her mouth. Her eyes were filled with pity.
“Tyria, no!” Rye turned to her, appalled. “They’re alive, we have to get them out of here!”
“Rye.” Tyria looked like she was on the edge of weeping. “There’s nothing else we can do for them.”
“No! We came this far, we need to get them out of this godsforsaken hole and back to their families—”
The seapony moaned. “No! No… pleash, don’ led them shee thish…”
Rye turned, feeling a pain in his chest. “Tyria… please, don’t.”
She trembled. “I don’t want to. But… I don’t think we can undo what they’ve done to him, Rye.”
The seapony moaned again, desperation and despair in his ruined face. “Pleash…” He looked at Tyria, nodding slowly.
She stepped forward, gripping the knife with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Rye turned away, feeling a bitter sting in his eyes. They’d come here to rescue these ponies, damn it, not…
There was a shuffling noise. Rye looked up, suddenly alert. “Tyria. Quiet.”
Tyria paused, her ears perking up. She tightened her grip on the knife. The seapony on the wall turned his head, eye wide. “Ish them. They’re coming back. Run. Run!”
Rye needed no further urging. Grabbing Tyria’s leg, he pulled her after him, racing down past the seapony. “We’ll come back for you!” he shouted over his shoulder. The only reply was a hissing from the blackness.
They ran faster, galloping past dozens more seaponies trapped in the red, stringy substance. Every step took them further into the depths of the building, closer to the source of that incredible magical outpouring.