Mommy's gems were dirty.
Baxter couldn't help but notice it; Mommy never did any of the cleaning herself, and always made him do it instead. He cleaned everything, except the gems. Mommy was very clear on that; touch her gems and Mommy would get unhappy. And when Mommy got unhappy.... Yet they were dusty, and he was cleaning, and maybe he could make her happy if he fixed it?
Baxter pulled a stool from Mommy's pantry and placed it in front of the shelf—Diamond Dogs weren't known for their height in the first place, but as a child he was especially disadvantaged. He stood upon it and carefully, oh so carefully, took down a big yellow gem. Trembling, he spat on his dirty cloth and rubbed the gem, facet by facet.
You know, a voice in his head said, you're about to make an awful mistake.
He tried to ignore the voice and squinted at the gem; the work was going well, and he was starting to make out his reflection, brown-faced and greenish-eyed. I'm doing it, he thought. I'm really doing it—
He hadn't realized that his spit was making the gem slippery. As he changed his grip upon it, he fumbled it and it left his grasp. A desperate attempt with his left paw only managed to send the gem flying, right into the wall.
CRASH.
You didn't listen, said the voice.
“BAXTER?” said the much louder, much more frightening voice of Mommy. Her ear for these things was astounding. “What did you DO, you stupid mutt?”
Baxter stumbled and fell off his stool, his eyes fixed on the fragments scattered across the cave floor. “I—I'm sorry,” he whimpered, pushing himself into a corner with his feet. “I didn't—”
Mommy was in the room, and she was livid—something that promised pain from a Diamond Dog who was twice Baxter's weight, though no taller than him. She howled in fury and pointed at the broken gem. “Baxter, you STUPID mutt! That was Mommy's best rhodizite, and now look what you've done to it!”
“I was just—I was just....” Baxter turned away and closed his eyes, lifting his arm in front of his face.
“I said LOOK!” With one meaty paw she grabbed his ears and lifted him. He squealed in pain; she ignored this and pressed his face against the broken pieces. “You were trying to be smart again, weren't you?”
He whimpered something incoherent—not that it mattered what he said when Mommy was unhappy. “IDIOT!” she screeched, grabbing him again—this time by the scruff of the neck—and holding him up. “Can't be smart yet, can you? Not until I've smacked all the stupid out of you!”
SMACK. Some of the gem shards were still on his face; he whined in pain as they were forced in by the blow.
SMACK. A cut opened up beneath his eye. His mother looked angrier than ever.
SMACK. SMACK. SMACK.
Baxter just let himself hang limp as the blows kept coming. That was the quickest way with Mommy: not to fight back. Just to apologize and to do as he was told, and then maybe the pain would go away faster.
That's right, Baxter.... Good dog. Now you remember.
The door closed, and Baxter realized first who, and second where, he was. He was not a Diamond Pup anymore, but a full-grown Diamond Dog—albeit still short. And he wasn't reliving one of his worst memories; he was somewhere that made him want to be back in the memory.
Look at me, Baxter.
And now he remembered that the voice in his head was not his own: someone else was placing it there. He turned around obediently and knelt in front of his master, kissing the ground before him. He did not want to look.
Appreciated, but no. Look at me. A coil of darkness grabbed his chin and forced it up, and Baxter beheld his master, for what he always hoped would be the last time.
To a Diamond Dog like Baxter, no light at all was plenty of light to see by, so to look at the space where his master was, and see only a roiling cloud of darkness, was an alien experience. Try as his eyes might, they could not penetrate past the black veil to the pony behind it—he hoped there was a pony behind it.
One feature, however, always made itself apparent. His master opened his eyes, and they blazed acidic green, with violet flames billowing at their edges and ruby cores at the centers of the flames, transfixing him like twin searchlights. Baxter squeezed his eyes shut, but more dark tendrils slipped beneath his eyelids and forced them open.
His master kept eye contact for what seemed like hours, while Baxter gasped for breath. Finally, the voice spoke—again, into Baxter's mind. Now, Baxter, tell me; if I tell you to gather more workers, what will you do? His voice was smooth, the same way rock pythons were smooth as they wrapped themselves around necks.
“G-g-gather more workers, master,” Baxter said, his eyes watering from more than being forced open.
And above all, what is the one rule you will follow?
“Obey the king,” he whimpered.
Good. The tendrils around his neck and under his eyelids retracted back into the cloud, and Baxter fell to the floor. He made no hurry to get up, preferring instead to grovel. Now get to work, slave.
With great effort, Baxter pushed himself off the ground and scurried away, mumbling, “Yes, master. Thank you, master.” He did not look back—that would have wasted his master's precious time, and he did not want his master to be unhappy.
“Beeeeady, do you miiiiind coming into work today?”
The pony in question, a dark gray earth pony, kicked at the ground in frustration before continuing to do a send-up of her boss's voice. “I mean, Beady,” she said, in the voice of someone who had no idea how to ingratiate, “I know it's Saturday, but your friend Gneiss just couldn't make it, and you'll get overtime for all your excellent work, and you're not really doing anything anyway, are you, and you'll be fired if you don't. It's just the one shift after all, isn't it, Beeeeady?”
Her teeth gritted, Beady continued to march through the rocky wastelands. “Beeeeady,” she said at an even higher volume, “we've got a big order from Doctor Blue Shift coming in, and we need a bunch more industrial gems for the factory, Beeeeady, so why don't you go out into the Badlands and use your super special gem finding powers to mark us out a vein? I mean, I know I said it would just be the one shift, but you're the only one who can do it, and you'll get overtime, and you're not really doing anything anyway, are you, and, by the way, did I mention that you'll be fired if you don't? UGH!” she screamed to the heavens, or at least to the clouds in the way of the heavens. Returning her gaze to the ground, she saw another rock a few yards off, ran over to it, and kicked it into the distance.
Beady took a few deep breaths. Okay, she thought. It's stupid. But I'm not gonna spend all day being mad about it.
Ten minutes later, she was not over it.
“And it's completely unfair, he knows I've got to work on my dissertation for my rocktorate, and he's such a jacka—ugh! Stupid gem-sense, stupid Gneiss, stupid Blue Shift, and stupid stupid boss!” she yelled at a rock. The rock did not yell back, or even offer any supportive remarks, which seemed kind of rude.
I'm getting angry at a rock, she realized. I can't be angry at rocks—rocks are my profession. Well, gems, but whatever. “Okay,” she said, rubbing her head and closing her eyes. “I'm calm, I'm calm, I am so calm.”
Twenty minutes later, she was.
“You better—get back, missy Black—!” she sang, kicking into the rocky ground on-beat. “Better get back to the farm!” As her hooves touched the ground, she tuned in to her gem-sense.
All earth ponies were connected to the land in one way or another, but this usually manifested as enhanced farming ability. However, Beady probably couldn't work a till, but she knew rocks. More specifically, she knew gems, and even more specifically, she knew where gems were.
“Well, I—! Ditched! That name, and their—! Red! Neck games.” With her hooves on the ground, she could feel the mineral content of the soil around her. She focused as she continued to sing, and saw—or more accurately, felt—that there wasn't any vein of gems beneath her. Of course, she was singing, so she didn't care.
“And, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm... ohhhh!” She grabbed an invisible microphone and swung it around as she danced forward. “The change ain't gonna do me harm!”
Grooving onward, she felt something at the edge of her cone of perception, and did a little shimmy in that direction. There was an outcrop of rock in her way; she jumped over it with a cry of, “Well, you betta—! Get back, Diamond Black—!”
The landing threw off her focus for a moment. She stood herself up straight before continuing: “Living in the 'ville just ain't no way to act!” She was closing in on the vein now, but— “It's like—tryin' to find jade, in a—! Limestone mine, it's like—!”
But something was wrong. The vein wasn't a vein, and it was dead. “Tryin' to drink whiskey!” she sang, before the enormity of what she'd noticed hit her and she petered off with a small, spoken, “From a bottle of... wine?”
Most ponies didn't understand gem formation, but Beady knew that gems were—in a magical sort of way—alive as much as any fruit or vegetable. Once plucked from the ground, they died in much the same way. The difference was that, once replanted, it could take years for them to grow anew.
There was no vein of gems beneath her hooves: there was a monumental collection of gems, and they were dead. Which meant they were placed, which meant that somepony—or perhaps someone—was building something down there.
She focused, scrunching up her already-closed eyes out of pure instinct. Through her hooves she perceived massive onyx statues, huge obsidian-and-ruby murals, soaring arches.... Literally monumental, she realized. Someone's building a palace down there.
“The pony has a pretty voice, yes she does....”
Beady took an unconscious step backward even before her eyes opened. Standing in front of her was a filthy gray Diamond Dog, reaching out to her with one distended arm. She shrieked and bolted in the opposite direction. Stupid, she thought. So frigging stupid to go out on my own in the Badlands. A quick glance over her shoulder showed her the Dog loping after her on all fours.
A few seconds later, as she ran, she looked back once more to see that the Dog was gone, but as her gaze returned forward she skidded to a stop. A hole was opening in the ground before her, and within a second a new Diamond Dog had popped out. He was shorter than the other one, and his skin had a slight red tint under the muck.
Beady scrabbled against the ground, trying to turn around, but the red Diamond Dog had caught her. “It's mine, Baxter!” he yelled, his claws digging into her stomach.
“No, Korbel!” Baxter yelled, halting just behind her. “I saw the pony first, and you wouldn't have caught her without me!”
“Fine,” Korbel said, grinning as Beady tried to turn around in his grasp so she could kick him. “I'll tell master it's from both of us. Happy?”
“Put me down!” Beady screamed. She tried to twist around and hit him, but he was holding her too tightly.
“Oh, we can't do that, pony,” Baxter said, as Korbel turned her toward the hole he'd emerged from. “If we come back with a new workhorse, maybe master will be nice and leave us alone, maybe he will.”
Before Beady could protest any more, Korbel dove into the hole, and her vision of a cloudy sky was replaced by pitch-dark earth. She screamed again, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of the hole closing behind them, trapping her underground.
The Majestic Tale (of a Mad-Pony in a Box)
S1E8: The Empire of Shadows
By R5h
“I hate my boss!” Beady screamed, sliding down a slope that seemed to have no end. It had been half a minute or so, and she hadn't slowed. She'd given up on trying to attack Korbel—that wouldn't do anything to the gravity, after all—so after her exclamation, she let herself simply fall.
Finally, after what seemed like a minute, she felt the slope level out and tumbled to a halt on a hard cave floor. Korbel slid smoothly past her, and when she got to her hooves, he was standing above her with something in his paws. Before she could react, he shoved it over her head, and she heard something click.
“Don't bother trying to escape,” Korbel said, as Beady looked down and saw a red collar around her neck with a black jewel on it—not one she recognized. And she recognized everything. “Hey,” Korbel said, smacking her on the cheek. Beady looked up from her examination. “Did the pony hear me? Don't bother trying to escape. Believe me, there's no way out.”
With that, he turned around and walked forward, obviously expecting her to follow—where else would she go? She couldn't help but notice an identical collar around his own neck. Then she started at the sound of more sliding, and looked behind her: Baxter was careening down the slide toward her. She jumped out of the way just in time, noting a red collar on his neck too. Okay, nevermind, she thought, grimacing and following Korbel down the cave. I strongly dislike my boss. I hate whoever's in charge of this place.
Beady shifted her concentration from following the Diamond Dog ahead of her, feeling out her gem-sense as her hooves touched the ground. Directing her attention upward, she saw—so to speak—that there were crystals above her for something like a thousand feet. She cursed under her breath, then let her sense broaden into a sort of sphere around herself, only to recoil in disgust. She was approaching two of the gems she'd found from the surface in the false vein. She'd thought they were dead gems.
She'd been wrong: they had never been alive. She didn't know how that was possible… some sort of artificial crystals? Either way, she shuddered, like another pony might shudder upon realizing they were surrounded not by living, breathing ponies, but by wax statues. And it was just such a gem that was on her collar, too—she shivered again.
Moreover, as she kept walking cautiously, she realized that two of the unalive gems were getting closer, and that they were in the shapes of statues... she traced their shapes with her mind and stopped dead. He's gone. It was on the news—he's gone.
“Pony!” yelled Baxter from behind her. “Keep moving!”
“It's Beady!” she said, glancing at him before hurrying forward—she had to check, in case her gem sense was deceiving her. She brushed past Korbel, who snarled at her, but she just kept moving until the two statues were within visual range, and looked up. Her jaw dropped at the sight.
She stood in a vast entrance hall, maybe fifty feet high, forty feet wide, and twenty feet deep. In front of her was a ten-foot high set of double doors. Flanking these on either side were two plinths, and on the plinths were statues of—
She shook her head, blinked, and looked again. Nope. That is definitely King Sombra.
She'd heard about it in the news, not so long ago—how the Crystal Empire had reappeared after a thousand-year absence from the top of the world, and how Twilight Sparkle and the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony had saved it from the dark intentions of King Sombra. Sombra had, in fact, been almost an afterthought to the story she'd heard—the point was that the Empire was back, and its evil king had been destroyed.
As Beady looked up at a fifteen-foot radius crystal mural of Sombra, his face and horn rendered in black and red versions of those unalive gems, she realized that someone had told her wrong. Or maybe, she thought, it's someone with a serious hard-on for Sombra. Actually, that makes much more sense. She relaxed. That's probably it. Now the only question is, who has a hard-on for Sombra?
“Move, pony!” Baxter said, pushing her rear forward and jolting her out of her thoughts. She glared at him, and he amended himself: “Move, Beady.” She grunted and walked toward the doors, which glowed with a black aura and opened of their own accord.
On the other side of the door was another shocker: a huge hall, hundreds of feet high like some vast underground cathedral, whose floor was filled with ponies. Ponies chained together, pulling sledges of rock or massive cannons; ponies carving statues from crystal pillars; ponies covered in grime, heaving on ropes. Defiant ponies, whose every movement was resentful; fearful ponies, looking around for fear of punishment; and dead-eyed ponies who didn't seem to care one way or the other.
There were Diamond Dogs around the edges of the massive room, and more supervising various teams of ponies, some with sadistic enthusiasm, all with whips. In her peripheral vision, she saw Baxter and Korbel enter the room behind her and pick up whips of their own. Korbel raised his whip and swung it, cracking it on the floor to her right. “Weapons, pony!” he said, grinning. “To your right. I won't ask twice. And here's a bit of advice—don't look up.”
You didn't ask the first time. You didn't even command. Beady bit her tongue—clearly, criticizing the Diamond Dog with the whip was a losing proposition—and went where he'd directed. Okay, I REALLY hate my new bosses. In this aggrieved state, she disobeyed her captor and looked up.
At first, all she saw was the impressively massive room she'd beheld from the entryway. Perhaps a few more murals of Sombra on the soaring walls of the place—but after a few seconds she saw, in an upper balcony, a shadow that should not have been. She shivered involuntarily, then grimaced at herself for doing so and got moving.
At the right side of the room was a large table covered in long stone poles, each with a sham-crystal bulge at one end. Three other ponies were already working on sharpening these bulges into spearheads, and a Diamond Dog was standing there to supervise with a whip in his paw. “Get to work,” he said as Beady approached, waving the whip menacingly. Beady rolled her eyes and got to work, picking up a tool of the same sort as the other ponies were using—something to help chip bits off of the spears.
“Beady!” said a voice beside her. She looked to her right to see a light gray earth pony mare, dappled with black spots, and looking back at her with wide eyes.
It took a moment for this to register in Beady's brain, but when she figured it out, she blurted, “Gneiss!” She almost said, “I'm so glad you're here,” but managed to force it back; why should she be glad that her friend was imprisoned with her? At least now she knew why Gneiss hadn't shown up for work today.
She heard a whipcrack and jumped, then looked at the Diamond Dog. “Get to work,” he repeated with a grin. “Won't say again.” Fighting off an urge to sock him one in the jaw, Beady pulled her attention back to the spears.
“Did you just get here?” Gneiss whispered, without looking at her.
“Yeah, just got friggin' kidnapped.”
“Listen, you'll be okay. We'll all be okay, but—” Gneiss winced as she lifted a spear, her hoof shaking with the effort. “Oh, I wish they'd let me just fly on out of here! Just one little opening and then—”
“You're an earth pony, Gneiss, not a pegasus.”
“Oh, right.” She dropped the finished spear into a pile of like objects with a small sigh. “Right. But don't freak out or anything, you'll be okay. Just keep working, keep quiet, and we'll all be out of here soon enough.”
“How do you figure?” Beady said, scraping her spear end into a sharp point.
“Pretty soon, the princesses are gonna find out about this place, and then they're gonna barge in here and deal with King Sombra and we'll all be home free, eating delicious ice cream or—or whatever.” There was a strained looking grin on Gneiss's face, along with dark bags under her eyes, ones which barely showed up on her gray skin.
“Right,” Beady said, moving onto another spear. “So you really think it's Sombra? And, uh... since when is he a king, anyway?”
“Not so loud!” hissed a stallion working to her left, giving her a frightened look.
“Shut it, wise guy,” she said. “Gneiss?”
“I, uh... I just know, okay?” Gneiss said, staring more deeply at her work, talking faster. “I've been down here long enough, I've seen a few things, I just know.”
“Sure, you just know,” Beady said, rolling her eyes. “Right.” It wasn't as though Gneiss was always the most reliable source of information, particularly in a stressful situation like this.
She noticed something beneath her hooves, many yards away behind her, and rising fast—more of the unliving gems she'd come to know. Suppressing a shudder, she glanced behind her as she worked and saw a pony with a chisel, making the finishing touches on a sculpture of King Sombra. As he stepped down from his ladder, a pillar of the same gems erupted from the ground with a rumble, as rough and uncut as a geode. When it was a little taller than its counterpart statue, it halted. The pony sighed, pulled his ladder to that pillar, and got to work chiseling.
Something occurred to Beady about the last thing she'd heard Gneiss say. “Down here long enough—for how long, exactly?” She stared at Gneiss, almost forgetting to keep working. “Gneiss, when did you get yanked down here?”
Gneiss didn't say anything for several seconds, but her hooves started shaking harder. “I think it was early on Friday... what day is it?”
“Saturday—like, six o'clock or something—Gneiss—”
“Oh, thank Celestia,” Gneiss said, rubbing her forehead. “I thought it might have been longer.”
“Gneiss,” Beady said, noticing once more the dark bags under her friend's eyes and the tremors wracking her body, “have they let you sleep? Have you had anything to—”
Another whipcrack startled her, and she glared at the Diamond Dog responsible. “We weren't doing anything,” she spat.
The Diamond Dog grunted and jabbed at the spears, which—now that Beady looked at them—had all been sharpened. “Ponies, get these to the armory,” he said, jabbing at a door on the other end of the room. “Now.” The assorted ponies didn't need telling twice; each one grabbed about a dozen of the long crystalline rods and put them onto their backs.
“Here,” Gneiss said, as Beady tried to do the same; she grabbed one of Beady's spears from the pile, leaving her staggering under the weight. “Everyone, give me an extra. I can lift them with my unicorn magic, heh heh.”
“You're not a unicorn, Gneiss, you're an earth pony. We just went over this.”
Gneiss panted through her smile as their grateful co-slaves piled on the spears. “A girl can dream, Beady.” She took a few steps forward, then stopped as her legs shook—then gave out on her. The spears rolled off her back and clattered to the floor, each one filling the room with resounding echoes as it struck.
The room fell silent, and all eyes fell on Gneiss as she panted, eyes wide. “No no no,” she said, pulling herself to her hooves and trying to pull the spears back onto her back. “No, I can do this, I swear—” She glanced up at the ceiling for a moment.
“Aww, pony tried to carry too much,” said their overseer with a yellow grin, as Gneiss managed to shoulder all of the spears. “Let me help the pony.” He pulled one from her back, then stabbed it into her rear left leg. Gneiss cried out in pain and collapsed. The spears fell again, louder than before.
Beady shook with rage. “You son of a—” She was raising her right foreleg to knock his jaundiced teeth out, but it occurred to her that Gneiss needed her help more. “Gneiss, are you okay?”
The ponies and Diamond Dogs around them were backing away, Beady noticed—there was a wide, unpopulated radius around them. “Gneiss?” she said, trying to help her friend lie down, but Gneiss tried to stand up instead, despite the blood trickling down her leg. “Gneiss, what are you doing?”
“No!” Gneiss said, looking up. “No, I swear, I can still work! I can still do this!” The background noise of work and whispers, Beady noticed, was dying away.
“Gneiss, who are you talking to—” Beady looked up and squinted. The shadow she'd noticed before was gone.
Do you think you can lie to me, Igneous Gneiss?
It wasn't a voice. At least, not the kind that came from a mouth, that traveled with reassuring normalcy through the air to land in an ear. Beady didn't hear the words, she thought them—or someone else thought them into her head. She spun around, looking for the source of the words, and saw the shadow.
There's not enough left in you for labor, said the shadow—no, not just a shadow, a void. Shadows could be seen through, but all Beady saw in the coal-black depths of this apparition were two eyes, blazing violet, staring at Gneiss. Besides that, there was no color, no light.
Gneiss cowered before him, her face on the ground. Her words were muffled by the dirt. “Please, no, I just need a little time....”
Look up, Gneiss. Look at me.
With a whimper, she obeyed, looking up tearfully at his eyes—eyes that would have been just above her eye level, had she been standing. As it was, his blank, black form towered over her. A tendril extended, like a finger of darkness, and wiped the tears off her face with two strokes. Don't worry, Gneiss. You're about to prove very useful indeed.
“What do you mean?” Gneiss breathed, standing up with sudden, desperate vigor and skittering away from the void. Her breaths came faster and faster. Her gaze was fixed on the ground that she seemed reluctant to keep any one hoof on for too long, like she was scared of her own shadow.
But it wasn't her shadow. It was darker, and it was bigger, and as her rear hoof came down to the ground, it plunged into the void below as if into a marsh. “No,” she panted, trying to pull it out—but in the process she planted her other hooves into the void as well. “No, please, I'll do anything—”
Yes, you will.
Gneiss stared at him for a moment, all four hooves inches into the floor, tears streaming down her face, and finally Beady didn't care whether or not it was dangerous shadow magic, whether or not she'd share Gneiss's fate—she leaped forward, screaming, “Hold on, Gneiss!”
Gneiss looked at her, her mouth opening in a gasp as the distance between them closed—then she plummeted. Her legs, torso, neck, and head were swallowed by the abyss; then the shadow dissipated. Beady was several feet away, one leg reaching out toward nothing.
The silence of the hall remained. A hundred onlookers watched Beady's outstretched foreleg fall to the floor.
The two burning eyes blinked. Then the void turned around, moving toward a nearest exit. Back to work. Around them, a few Diamond Dogs dared to move, prodding the ponies closest to them.
Beady's jaw was so tight and tense that her teeth felt ready to shatter. You, she thought. You shadowy son of a....
Her legs were moving before she'd told them to, running at the shadow faster than she'd run at Gneiss. Within seconds she was close enough to touch it, but she didn't just want to touch it—she wanted to hurt it. “You son of a bitch!” she yelled, punctuating the last word with a haymaker swing at where the shadow's head might be, if it had a head.
And it did. Her punch, thrown with muscles built up by regular factory work, connected with something and made the cracking sound of hoof meeting skull. Beady landed, and the void reeled—the void melted away. Its outer edges ablated, and she could see the dark-colored form of a stallion within, staggering in pain, nearly toppling over. “You little,” he gasped, its eyes reduced to glowing green slits. “You little, insignificant....”
The room had been merely silent before, but now it seemed so quiet that silence would have been deafening. No one seemed to be breathing except for Beady, but she made up for the rest—she heaved great breaths, shaking her achy hoof. “Wanna go again, huh?” she yelled, stepping toward him and raising that hoof. “Wanna go for round two, you shadowy son of a—”
His eyes opened wide, with red irises small as specks in virulent green oceans, staring right at her. With a snarl he swept a hoof at her, and the void followed, striking her like a runaway carriage. She sailed back with the force of the blow, landing yards away in a tumble on the floor.
You've just made the last mistake of your LIFE, Beady! It sounded once more like her own voice in her own head, but she knew better—the voice was enraged beyond belief. Pulling herself to her hooves, she saw him again, disappearing into his shield of void until only his eyes were visible. The flames about them blazed like bonfires.
He was advancing upon her. She turned and ran, but there was a line of ponies and Diamond Dogs in front of her, and they were scared stiff. “Let me through!” she screamed, trying to force her way between two of the ponies, but they pushed her away; they didn't want to be responsible for letting her escape. Heart racing, she turned and ran the other way, giving the shadow a wide berth.
Get her. You know what I'll do to you if you don't. With that, the circle started to shrink. The ponies only moved forward, choking Beady's area of freedom, but several of the Diamond Dogs broke from the circle and ran at her, shrieking wildly. The breaks disappeared behind them.
Beady ran forward at one of the Diamond Dogs and socked it in the jaw, but another one got on her back, forcing her to the ground. She recognized the filthy paw in front of her face. “Baxter!” she screamed. “Let me go!”
She tried to shake him, but Baxter clung to her like iron manacles. “I can't,” he said, and she noticed he was sobbing. “I can't be bad again.” She tried to twist in his grip, to get in an attack on him, but something struck her in the face, sending Baxter and her rolling across the ground. She blearily tried to get up, but Baxter grabbed her legs and forced her down again.
Look at me, Beady. She looked up dazedly and saw fury in those burning eyes. You are about to cease to exist. She looked down, and saw her shadow deepening around her, but had a vague notion that that wasn't what she was looking down for.
As long as she was looking, she noticed—with a little satisfaction—that the deepening shadow around her contained Baxter as well. A second later, he noticed as well, and looked up at his master in fear. “Master, I've been good!” He tried to lift a paw from the ground, but it was stuck in the darkness. Something's coming, she realized, and she didn't know what—it felt ugly and twisted and wrong. She struggled a bit against the shadow, but it held her like flypaper.
Oh, Baxter, Baxter.... A piece of shadow pulled away from the main body of the void and patted Baxter on one of his cheeks; the other was stuck to the ground. I know you've been good, but whyever should I care?
It was coming right at them, and Beady realized what it was just before it hit—another pillar of unalive gems, right beneath her body and rising fast. She braced herself just in time.
The shadow disappeared beneath her and Baxter, replaced by a plateau of red gemstone that carried them up and up and up. With a gasp from the sudden acceleration, she peeked over the edge to see the slaves that had surrounded her falling further and further away. The void beneath her was almost invisible.
As the pillar kept rising, she started getting vertigo from looking down and made the mistake of looking up instead. The ceiling was incredibly high, but approaching rapidly: was this her death sentence? Did he mean to crush them like ants?
Her upward motion stopped all at once. Beady didn't dare to look down, to see how far she was above the hall's floor, but she could look around, and saw—
There was no doubt about it, this was the balcony from which the void had looked down upon them, and its unglassed windows were close enough to jump to. There were several doors in the room, but next to one was an arrow symbol, made of the same ruddy gemstone and pointing at the door. Beady hesitated—could this be some sort of trap?
The wall beside the arrow shivered, and three crimson letters pushed their way through, one by one.
R
U
N
That was enough for her. She gathered her legs beneath her, jumped into the room, and ran for the door.
Their master stood in his veil of darkness, staring up at the pillar of crystal.
Korbel dared to breathe again as hushed conversations erupted from the ponies around them. “There's a pony under there?” said one stallion to his right.
“Forget about that—who just saved them?” said another. “Maybe he can save us too!” Korbel had a dim notion that his master would expect him, as a supervisor, to punish this kind of traitorous talk—but a rather less dim notion told him that right now, he didn't care.
“When she socked him—” A mare punched two of her hooves together. “I can tell you, I definitely want in on that.”
As conversations like this continued, Korbel heard a rumbling noise and looked up: Sombra's eyes blazed high, and the crystal pillar was descending into the floor. Good for you, Bax.
“Quiet,” he said, as the ponies kept talking. “You don't want him to hear—”
The room went dark. Not merely dark, in fact: Korbel could see nothing at all, nor hear anything. Something was pouring into his eyes, like black sand—
Korbel stood, shaken, in his master's great hall. His eyes, despite his better judgment, looked down at the place where Beady and Baxter had just disappeared into darkness.
“Did you see that?” said one stallion to his right. “When she just ran at him—what was she thinking?”
“And then she swung at him,” said another, shaking a little, “and then—and then her hoof just went through his eyes like he was a ghost....”
“Shut it,” Korbel said, cracking his whip on the ground; the ponies around him obeyed. “Back to work.”
Their master turned around and walked from the room as the circle of horrified onlookers dispersed. Korbel went back to his station, whip gripped in his paw, trying not to think about what had just happened to his friend. Poor, poor Bax.
Left. Right. Left. Up a flight of stairs. Left again. Up another flight.
At each stage, another ugly arrow appeared to direct her, and Beady didn't stop to think. She just kept running for minutes, hoping that this was the way out of danger and not into it.
Eventually, she reached a point where instead of an arrow, four letters appeared: STOP. She obeyed this too, and came to a halt, panting as her adrenaline rush drained away.
Several seconds later, she heard more breaths behind her, and whirled around to see Baxter running clumsily at her. “You!” she yelled. It hadn't occurred to her that he'd be following the same directions as she was. “Get away from me!”
She lifted a hoof threateningly, and he stopped several feet from it. “Please don't,” he said, backing away with his paws in front of his face. “Please, pony don't make me—”
“My name is Beady!” she yelled. “And you're working for that shadow thing, so get lost!”
Well, if we're being fair, you were, too.
The words appeared in the wall to her side; to her disgust, she flinched away from them. After a moment, more came out: Both slaves to the same, what did you call it? Shadow thing? Not a great descriptor, that.
“What is that?” said Baxter, pointing a shaky finger at the words.
“The same person who saved us,” Beady replied, rolling her eyes at him.
Baxter shook his head. “No one but our master has crystal magic like that. It's a trick.”
More words erupted behind him, and he yelped and spun around. I think this is where I introduce myself, Beady and Baxter. I'm the exception to the rule. The Doctor, for short. Hello! :)
Beady squinted at the odd bit of punctuation at the end. “What's that last part?” Beady asked.
It's called an emoticon, it looks like a smiley face if you turn your head... never mind. Forget you saw that, that is not gonna catch on any time soon. The colon and right parenthesis receded into the wall.
“You're the one who saved us,” Beady said, looking down the corridor. “Where are you? How can you see us?”
Long story, said the Doctor. Beady didn't bother to look, instead letting her gem sense trace the words. It was a little unnerving, feeling those imitation gems, but she stomached it. Now, a really important question, very important: Have you seen a certain gray earth pony? Long dark hair, and purple eyes?
Beady shook her head, then looked around to see that Baxter was shaking his head too. Are you sure? the Doctor asked. Treble clef cutie mark, usually seen wearing a bowtie, answers to Octavia?
“Never heard of her,” Beady said. “Who is she?”
A friend of mine. She went missing a few days ago, and so did a bunch of other ponies. Why can't I see her?
There was a pause before more words came out: Anyway, I'd made a promise to another friend of mine, so I went looking for Octavia and I found this place. Well, mostly it found me—some obliging Diamond Dogs dragged me down. You were one of them, Baxter.
“What?” Baxter said. “No, I don't remember any doctor ponies.”
You might not at that. In any case, I managed to get the Diamond Dogs to take me to their leader, and it turns out it was... well, you already know, seeing how he's got his picture plastered everywhere.
Beady took a deep breath. “Are you saying it is him? It really is Sombra? He's still alive?”
In order: yes, yes, no.
The wall was out of space. Beady walked forward to the next section of corridor, where the Doctor continued: That darkness you saw was King Sombra, but whatever he is, I would not call it “alive”. He hasn't really been alive for a thousand years. But he's about to be.
“What do you mean, about to be?” Beady asked, continuing to walk as the words kept coming.
He's rebuilding himself—dare I say, regenerating himself. It won't be long before he's got a proper physical form. He's biding his time down here, building his palace and fortress, but once he's done he'll bring it to the surface and wage war on Equestria.
“Bring it to the surface?” Beady said. “What, a whole fortress?”
He is incredibly strong.
An arrow appeared on the wall, pointing up. Sombra and I had an... altercation. I'm okay now, but bad news is, I'm trapped where I am. Good news is, you're not, and you've got me to be your own personal sat nav. Just follow my directions, get to the surface, and once you're out, go find the Princesses immediately so they can stop this thing before it starts.
“Wait,” Baxter said. “How did you escape from our master? No one escapes!”
Did I mention how exceptional I am? Chop chop, B-Team. Nearest stairwell is: The upward arrow on the wall spun around and pointed straight ahead, down the corridor.
“So I can go up and be the hero, is that it?” Narrowing her eyes, Beady sat down. “You have all this power, and you can't go up yourself? Why choose me instead?”
More arrows appeared under the first, all pointed in the same direction. I'm noticing a distinct lack of chop chop.
Beady snorted. “No kidding! You're not telling the whole truth, Doctor, and I have no idea where you're sending me, so I'm not moving one inch unless you give me a reason to trust you. And neither is he!” she added, looking back at Baxter. He gulped and sat down too.
A few seconds of stillness followed. Then, the Doctor responded: You don't have one. But I saw you down there, Beady: You're determined, you're unafraid, and you are my best hope of saving Equestria and my friend. So I have every reason to trust you, which is why I'm asking you to take a chance and—
“Shut up,” Beady said, turning away from the wall and closing her eyes.
I'm sorry?
“No buttering me up, no screwing around with saying how special I am. Give me a reason, now.”
The earlier words receded back into the wall to be replaced by others. By now, Sombra's sent some of his other slaves after you. If you stay where you are, they'll find you. If you go downstairs, they'll find you that much more easily. Your only option is to go up, but you have no idea where you are. I do. So if you want to get out of here alive, Beady, you really don't have any other options. Stairwell, that way. Now.
“And you'll be fired if you don't,” Beady muttered, standing up. “Got it. Baxter!” she yelled at the Diamond Dog, who stood up with a jolt. “We're moving.” With a hasty nod, he fell into step behind her.
To the Doctor's credit, there was a stairwell there.
Beady worked at a small factory near Ponyville, and her job there was to operate a gem-crushing machine, turning large crystals into smaller ones suitable for drill bits and other industrial applications. It was pony-powered, requiring her to push down on one pedal after the other for hours at a time. After all that legwork, surely a few flights of stairs would be no problem.
This hypothesis had been disproved about ten stairwells ago.
“Stairs,” Beady grunted, panting for breath once she'd reached what felt like the hundredth landing so far. “Are.” She gritted her teeth and looked up to see that this stairwell's end was at the landing above hers. “The worst,” she managed to say, before she forced herself to take the last dozen or so steps.
Well, tried to force herself, but her legs felt like she'd filled them with boulders, and she made it six steps before collapsing. “I swear,” she panted, “I am going to live in a one-story house for the rest of my life.”
Sorry, said the Doctor, in words extruded from the stairwell's wall. Sombra can't help himself. I think he's got a fetish.
Beady chuckled between harsh breaths. “Hilarious.” The Doctor had been chatting with them on and off as they'd ascended, mostly to provide directions or to warn them away from pursuers. At the very least, it had helped her get over some of her revulsion for the unalive crystals he used to communicate with; she could ignore the constricting feeling in her throat that looking at them gave her.
She'd gotten enough breath back now, so she took the last six steps to the top. It took a lot of willpower not to collapse then and there, but she managed it, albeit with legs that shook like stilts in an earthquake. So much for stamina, she thought.
It was some consolation that Baxter was even less prepared to make the climb. As the thud of her own heart became less painful in her ears, she was able to pick out his distant gasps for breath. “Come on!” she yelled down at him.
After a few seconds, he spoke up from what must have been at least three floors down. “Pony... I need a minute.”
“It's Beady. Don't make me come down there, ya mutt!” As she listened, his panting restarted, and his speed seemed to have picked up.
A scraping sound came from the wall above the stairwell's exit, as more of the Doctor's words forced their way from the rock. Not so loud. Someone might hear.
“Someone like who?” she said, not bothering to keep her voice down. “We haven't heard anyone else in like twenty minutes.”
Beady, I am asking you to be quiet. Sombra will have sent someone, and just because you can't find them doesn't mean they can't find you.
“You're actually telling, not asking,” she grunted, but brought her voice down.
The panting from below got louder and louder, until Baxter appeared on the stairwell's last landing, his coat drenched in sweat. Well, I don't look like that, Beady thought, and smiled. “Seriously,” she said, at the same reduced volume, “this place is huge and there's almost no one in it. What's Sombra gonna do with this dump?”
If you'll be so good as to turn around, you'll see exactly what this room is for, at least.
She did the first of those things, but the second wasn't coming easily. The rectangular room was almost as large as the great hall she'd been working in, and was similarly adorned with likenesses of Sombra, particularly a massive stained-glass window a hundred feet from the ground, depicting him in a heroic pose, high on a mountaintop.
On the floor, far below, two rectangular areas had been tiled with marble and divided by a central aisle, and each was bordered at their far end by a short obsidian wall. An elevated pulpit stood beyond those, ornately carved with spirals on the sides and red droplets down the middle. If she was being really generous—and she wasn't—it almost looked beautiful.
Beady kept looking around, then gave up. “Okay, you got me. What is it for?”
It's a church.
“A what?”
Oh, right, organized religion never really took off in Equestria. This is the Umbral Cathedral, where you go to worship King Sombra.
Beady's jaw dropped. That's the plan, anyway, the Doctor continued. And ponies say I have an ego—there isn't a thing in the world Sombra loves more than himself. Not even stairs.
“You're not kidding,” Beady said, walking onto one of the marble sections. “So this is where we sit and... what, tell Sombra how glad we are for being enslaved? How he's such a good king for working ponies to death?”
Loud gasps hit her ears, and she looked to the stairwell to see one of Baxter's paws reach out of the stairwell. A second later, his head popped above floor level. “Here,” he croaked.
“About time too.” Beady squinted at the short wall, and noticed a hair-width edge across its top. “What the hell is this for?” she said, touching its top with a hoof ever so gently. As she looked at her skin, blood started seeping through, and she hadn't felt a cut. That's obsidian for you, she thought. You could slice somepony open from head to tail and they wouldn't even say “ow”.
Blood tribute, the Doctor said. Note the gutters below? She looked down and saw that the few beads of blood she'd left on the wall were sliding down into a gutter, then around the marble and to the back end of the cathedral.
“Creepy,” Beady said, shuddering.
Yup. These letters were a bit blockier for some reason, like the visual equivalent of a grunt.
“Pony, look.”
“Beady!” She said it on instinct without moving. “What is it?”
“Beady,” Baxter repeated, and Beady did look his way. He was standing now, though still shining with sweat, and he pointed at a small mural on the wall. It depicted a newborn unicorn with a wispy gray coat, lying in a bed of ermine red. Around him were his mother and father: beautiful ponies, who looked upon him in wonder to have created such a perfect son.
There were more pictures as Beady kept walking along the wall. The little unicorn grew up in a happy community, surrounded by friends—of whom he was the leader—and graduated top of his class, after which his father the king tragically died of old age. With utmost dignity and nobility, the unicorn accepted the crown. He stood atop the highest pillar of the Crystal Empire as his adoring subjects bowed before him.
And then two dark figures came—two alicorns, one silhouetted against the sun, one against the moon. With expressions of evil glee they banished him into the frozen wastes, where he slept in solitude a thousand years, waiting for the day that his birthright could be—
“Oh, please,” Beady said, looking the other way. A glance to the opposite wall told her that the story continued on that side, but she didn't need to see how it ended. “Is that what he expects us to believe?”
“Strange,” Baxter mumbled, still looking at the pictures.
“It's pretty damn strange to me too, ya mutt,” Beady said, rolling her eyes. “Now come on, back to the stairs—”
“Not just that,” Baxter said. He tapped the picture of Sombra assuming the crown, one which featured him about as prominently as every other picture in the place had. “You can see master everywhere, except master.”
It wasn't an easy sentence to parse. Beady scratched her head, forgetting for a moment that this meant spreading blood across her face. She flinched, tried to rub it off, gave up, and said, “Run that by me again?”
You ought to get going, the Doctor said, and the letters were definitely rougher this time. They came out of the wall more quickly, too. Next move is up the staircase behind the pulpit.
“You saw master,” Baxter said, turning to face Beady, “except you didn't... see master, because the darkness covers him. The darkest blackness. But we see what he looks like everywhere else.” Baxter pointed up to the massive stained glass picture of Sombra. “Why?”
“Well....” Beady squinted. As much as she hated to admit it—which was why she wasn't going to—that was a really good question.
You need to get going, the Doctor repeated, the words protruding from the wall fast enough that she heard the stone grinding against stone. You need to get moving right
The next word didn't appear, and Beady stared at the place where it should have done so: directly beneath the image of Sombra's birth, and right in front of her. “Now?” Baxter asked.
NOW
The word didn't stay on the wall. It blasted outward like a cannon shot, right at Beady. With a cry of surprise she jumped back as it grew past her and punched into the opposite wall, destroying one of Sombra's murals.
There were more crystals coming. Beady felt them.
“Move!” she yelled, as if she and Baxter were in any shape to run—but they did, as another pillar of crimson crystal burst from the ground where she'd stood a second before, then one from the ceiling, filling the air with sounds louder than rock being dynamited. Beady's gem-sense deciphered the words with her barely realizing she was doing it—
GET OUT OUT GET OUT GET MY HEAD GET OUT OUT OUT GET OUT
“The stairwell!” Beady and Baxter ran for it, and then she felt something coming from the ceiling, the largest crystal yet, and it wasn't a word—but it was coming right at her and tapering to a point, and she wasn't fast enough. As she tried to step forward, it speared her in the leg, forcing her to the ground with a scream of pain. She looked forward to see the stairs inches from her hoof, and Baxter already on them, reaching to her, but there was another pillar descending from the ceiling, another stalactite, and this one was coming for her head—
The sound stopped. The stalactite came to a halt an inch from her eye. If she blinked, she could brush its point with her lashes.
Beady didn't blink. She held her breath, and with the greatest of care, she pulled her head out of the way of the stalactite. Then she started heaving breath after panicky breath—the room was filled with these ugly, unalive, fake crystals, and one of them was inside her. She looked down at her leg, bloody from the piece that had speared her, and the constricted feeling got back in her throat. If she weren't so tired, she'd have thrown up.
“Beady!” Baxter yelled, running to her side and kneeling. “You're stuck?”
“Baxter,” she panted, “listen to me. Very carefully, get my leg away from the crystal.”
He put his paws on her leg, treating her like she was made of glass. “Carefully,” Beady said around the choking feeling in her throat. Baxter pushed down, trying to pull the wound away from the crystal, but it was in too deep. He tried again, and it didn't move. Finally he growled and wrenched it.
The tip of the crystal broke off. Her leg came free, but the horrible fake bloodstone was inside her. “No,” she blurted out. She sat up and getting both hooves on the wound, trying to pull the thing out, but her panicked, clumsy movements just pushed it in further. “No no no no no no no—”
She dry-heaved. She couldn't stop herself from feeling the thing's utter wrongness, like having dead flesh on her leg, reeking and crawling with maggots. It was in too deep now, and she couldn't pull it out.
“Beady,” Baxter said, reaching toward her leg, “let me—”
“Get away from me, you stupid mutt!” she screeched. She threw her hoof out, and it smacked him across the face. “You can't do anything right!” He whimpered and backed away, tears forming in his eyes. Good, she thought.
“And you!” she yelled, looking up at the ceiling. “You bring me up all those stupid stairs and you try to kill me?”
I'm sorry. I am so sorry. The many crystals that he'd summoned started retracting into the wall, and smaller crystals formed more words around them. It was an accident.
“Bull! You don't nearly kill somebody on accident!”
I'm sorry. I lost control.
“Oh, great! You've been trying not to kill me!” She choked out a harsh laugh. “How freakin' reassuring!”
No, not like
The words, projected as they were from the nearest wall, suddenly shot forward by a foot. Beady jumped away, then growled as the words retreated back in. “Stay away from me,” she said. “You hear that, Doctor?”
“It's a shame.”
Her breath caught—she'd written that voice off as a goner. She turned around to see a pony with bedraggled hair, leaning against the cathedral pulpit. “This room was kind of the only nice one,” she said, looking around at the carnage that had been wrought not a minute earlier.
“I don't believe it....” Beady ran as fast as her leg would let her, biting her tongue with every step, toward her best friend in the world. “Gneiss?”
Gneiss hopped down from the podium, and the two of them embraced. “You're okay!” Beady exclaimed.
“Sort of,” Gneiss replied with a faint smile. As she pulled away from the hug, Beady saw dozens of shallow cuts and ugly bruises beneath her coat, particularly heavy around her collar. With this and her disheveled mane, she looked like she deserved to be confined to a hospital bed, but she was standing firm without any tremors. “King Sombra's punishments aren't usually sunshine and butterflies, heh heh.”
Beady grimaced at the sight. “That looks painful, but... but I thought you were dead for sure! How'd you get out of that shadow thing?”
Gneiss shrugged. “It was more like getting teleported than anything—it dropped me off in a torture chamber, but the guards were Diamond Dogs, so... not too hard to escape. No offense meant,” she added, tilting her head to the side to look at Baxter, who still sat sniveling on the ground.
Don't listen to her, said the Doctor.
“Please, mean as much offense as you want!” Beady shook her head, the grimace turning back to a smile. “I'm just so glad you're okay.”
“There's more.” Gneiss leaned closer to Beady, a conspiratorial smile on her lips. “There's a way out, just up ahead.”
Beady's jaw dropped. “There's a what?”
“Crazy, right?” Gneiss laughed. “I'll show you. Follow me! It's just downstairs.”
She's lying, said the Doctor. Don't follow her, go upstairs, not down.
“Oh, and I'm supposed to believe you over my own best friend?” Beady rolled her eyes, and lifted her two forehooves in imitation of a scale; she winced as the movement put weight on her injured leg. “Let's think about this. Should I trust the ghost in the walls who nearly killed me, or....” She let her hooves sway for a second, then pulled her right one down in a decisive motion. “I'm gonna have to go with my best friend here.”
She is lying, Beady. Sombra had her in his clutches. She can't have escaped.
“Who's that?” Gneiss asked, glancing back as she ambled toward a door at the far end of the cathedral.
“Some jerk,” Beady replied, then directed her voice once more at the wall. “And why not? If you escaped, why the hell can't she have?”
I didn't escape.
Beady narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
I didn't escape. Don't believe her
But suddenly the letters were blocky and misshapen once more. Beady sensed rumbling behind the walls, and trotted away as little crystals began forcing their ways through, until the words they surrounded were unrecognizable. “Stay away from me, you psycho,” she said, then moved to follow Gneiss.
A thought struck her, and she looked back to see Baxter still pooled on the floor. “Hey, mutt!” she called. “You coming or what?” With great reluctance he stood and followed Beady.
Gneiss led the way through a bloodstone door, and down a flight of stairs, and then another one. Considering Beady’s three-legged status, it was a welcome change of pace from climbing up flight after flight, but she wasn't sure how this was getting them closer to an escape route. At least Gneiss seemed to know exactly where she was going.
At the bottom of the flight of stairs was another door, this one jet-black. Gneiss pushed the door open and walked inside the room behind it.
It was a dark room, lit only by four feebly glowing red crystals in the corners. At the end of the room was a table. On the table rested a knife.
As she hobbled in, Beady looked around and saw no other doors save the one the three of them had just come through. “Gneiss,” she said, “you said there was a way to the surface through here.”
“I didn't say there was a way up.” Gneiss strode to the table and picked up the knife; then, with a weak laugh, she turned around and faced Beady. “I said there was a way out.”