//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Caving // Story: All The Way Back // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// They made their way through the forest to the foot of the mountain. They could, of course, have covered that distance in a flash of flight lasting but a few seconds. But the sudden, open motion and the flare of their flightfields would have been all too obvious to the Dragon, if he was making any effort at all to observe them. Luna knew that Dragons were highly-intelligent and had excellent sensoriae: better even than Pegasi, and almost a match for Alicorns. Counting on the Dragon's incaution would be but arrant folly. So they galloped through the forest, as fast as they dared given the need for stealth and the very real possibility of seriously hurting themselves in the thick undergrowth. They ran between bushes, glad of their armor: even Summer Lightning's light leathers proving quite welcome as thorny branches lashed them; they vaulted fallen trees and small crevasses, deliberately using only their unaided musculature and the puerely aerodynamic gliding assistance of their wings; sometimes leaping small streams or splashing across wider ones. It was a wild race in the woods, driven by the need to rescue, dominated by the brooding presence of the Dragon, and both mares felt intensely alive. Luna -- who had first made such a desperate gallop, complete with hostile Dragon, as a filly over twenty-five hundred years ago with a young and friendly Discord at her side -- evaluated Summer's performance with an experienced eye. She liked what she saw. Summer, as her guide, was choosing the path, and choosing it well both in operational and tactical terms. As much as possible, they were staying in ground blind from the Dragon's likely perspective, and avoiding any obstacles too wide to leap over unaided by flightfields. Physically, Summer was almost flawless. Her small form flowed through the forest, moving above and around obstacles with deerlike agility, her hooves beating the ground in a manner precisely calculated for the best trade-off of speed and stealth. She had been pretty, even standing still; in motion like this she was beautiful, in so many senses of the word. Her beauty moved Luna -- neither in the manner nor to the extent which Summer probably would have liked, but Luna had to admit to herself that Summer was aesthetically pleasing -- and in many ways, she was an ideal Ranger. It made Luna all the more want her, for her Night Guards. Her intelligence and agility would both aid Luna's long-term plans. Though, in the short term, it definitely made that run through the woods more enjoyable. They topped a ridge, being careful to keep to a wooded notch and thus avoid skylining themselves, and descended into the valley at its other side. Along the bottom ran a stream, cutting itself a canyon into the rock at the base of the mountain. Summer Lightning picked the path down the hill, one which cut down diagonally and kept the trees, laden with lush summer leaves, between them and any point from which the Dragon might easily view them. Luna could find no criticism of Summer's fieldcraft. Finally, they emerged from the woods at the foot of the mountain, where Luna's deep-radar had located the entrance to the lower caverns. The lusty little stream was slowly undermining the slope above, creating an overhang which combined with a swell in the mountainside to completely shield them from observation from the highest slopes. They were in "dead ground," in the military sense of the term. The Dragon, if he were still in those high caverns, could not see them, even if he had many additional spy-holes. Still, they took no chances. Summer's skilled eyes spotted a crossing, where stepping stones afforded relatively-easy passage. Some of the stones were slick with spray, but both mares were sure-footed, and they were able to aid their balance with their wings, without actually engaging their flightfields. In a trice they were across, completely under the overhang, and thus invisible to any observer on the middle slopes of the mountain. Luna relaxed slightly. All the way in she'd been holding herself in readiness to shield Summer if the Dragon attacked. That Dragon could slay Summer with terrible ease -- a single full-strength lightning-bolt would destroy her beyond any healing powers any Alicorn Avatar had ever mastered. Luna knew this, and hated the necessity of putting the Ranger at such risk, but she needed a courier to communicate with her team, once they had gotten in far enough to make a meaningful assessment of the situation. Not for the first time in the past two and a half millennia, Luna wished for one of the convenient field phones so ubiquitous in the Age of Wonders. The basic technology -- two simple electrical devices, each with a mouthpiece and earpiece, some electromagnets and diaphragms, connected by a big but portable spool of insulated copper wire -- had been developed decades before Moondreamer's birth. Moondreamer's mother, Sweetie Finemare, had cut her technical teeth repairing and installing equipment like that in her early to mid-teens. Moondreamer had played with gadgets like this as a little filly. But the Change that had come with the Cataclysm had made the job of insulation more difficult on long wiring -- too much energy would be lost per hoof of length. It wasn't possible to just build things to plans from the Age of Wonders, the plans had to be modified for the new local bleed between electromagnetism and PKE. Crimson Quartz had -- before he went mad and become Sombra -- done a lot of the preliminary work on this. Still, one needed a serious industrial infrastructure to build electrical devices on a large scale ... ... and Luna almost hit herself in the face with a hoof, remembered just in time how much this would hurt wearing battle-sabatons, and aborted the gesture just in time. She'd seen it from the Moon. And again from her tower at the Palace at Canterlot. Equestria had such an industrial infrastructure, now. They were no longer barbarians squatting fearfully amidst the ruins, or even just-civilized Ponies pining after memories of a lost time of glory; the Ponies of Equestria had themselves come almost all the way back to the heights their ancestors had once won. Though Canterlot itself was mostly magelit, the large Earth Pony and Pegasus cities were building great generators and running electrical cabling everywhere. She'd seen the cities lit up on Earth's nightside. There was no reason, other than military conservatism, that the Night Guard should not have had at least field telephony as a standard means of signalling. Equestria was close to regaining radio as well, and if they'd had a radio, her team could have raised Canterlot, which would have let Luna communicate with them through Celestia. Why wasn't this all happening faster? The answer suggested itself. Because Celly needs a High Lady of War. She is no warrior herself, she is a mage and statespony at heart. She is more powerful than me but she is never really been comfortable directing military operations. Just like in the Princess Game, all those centuries ago, when we were fillies together. She needs me. Oh, sweet Megan, I turned on her and betrayed her over a thousand years past, and Celly has never been able to replace me. She needs me, and I am back, and I have been flirting with Pumpernickel and brooding when I should have been whipping our Guards into shape. No more! Obviously unaware of Luna's complex thoughts, Summer stopped, pointed with a hoof, and grinned. Her mane was slick with spray, her eyes were dancing with delight. She had found a cave-entrance. Even better, it was mostly covered by small trees, bushes and ferns -- the branches and foliage undisturbed; proof that nothing the size of that Dragon had been this way any time recently. It was possible that the Dragon didn't even know this entrance existed. Luna smiled back at her. A comparison of their location with her the deep-radar map in her eidetic memory told her that this cave mouth should lead to the main cavern network. Luna lit up her horn and stepped forward. The entrance was wide but low-ceilinged -- Luna could have bumped her head had she reared -- and a small streamlet ran down a little gully in its center. The air was moist, and cooler the moment they stepped out of the direct sunlight. Mosses grew on the rocks just within the entrance, and insects scuttled for cover from Luna's magelight. The cave twisted away into the mountain, rising and narrowing slightly, until it turned enough that Luna could see no further, even with her sensitive eyes. Luna nodded to Summer Lightning, who grinned even more happily at her implicit praise. "This cavern system be many-parted," Luna told Summer, "Branchwork down here, curling upward toward a more angular system. Then there's a rather regular part, and a vertical shaft leading up to the upper levels, where the Dragon has made his lair." "Formed at different times, probably, Ma'am." Summer said. "Different processes. I was friends for a while with a rockhound -- from Dunnich, of all places -- she was studying to be a geologist. She talked to me about rocks." She frowned. "A lot. I think that was the only thing she found interesting. Got me curious, so I read up a bit on it." "Your studies may prove useful," Luna commented. "Did she tell you how best to explore caves?" Summer nodded. "Mainly, don't go in alone, Ma'am. Though she did all the time, but she said she had some sort of special affinity with the rocks, part of her Talent. And also, don't get lost." She reached into her saddlebags with one wingtip and pulled out a large chalk. "Good idea," said Luna. "When we find the captive, I may have thee bring her to safety, while I stop the Dragon from following after." Luna said this matter-of-factly, but Summer's eyes widened, presumably as she realized exactly what Luna might mean by "stopping" the Dragon. "If I must needs fight the Dragon," Luna explained, "neither thou nor the captive should be nearby when this happens. Ye might be sorely scathed in our fight." Summer nodded, sobered at the thought of what such a battle might entail. "So blaze the trail well, Lieutenant," commanded Luna, "I need no markings, but I may not be leading you back this way." "Yes, Ma'am!" They walked deeper into the cave. Their way wound, and rose, as they left the twilight zone near the entrance where there was natural light, and the growth of plants, and entered the true interior, where there only existed those life processes entirely independent of sunlight. The air was still moist, and where it condensed on the walls Luna could see slimes which the infra-red revealed to be significantly warmer than the surrounding rock. Even here, life persisted. The rock was damp under their hooves. Here and there the way dipped, and they plashed through cold pools. They moved carefully enough, but Luna was struck with the thought that they were making perhaps the loudest sounds that had been in this place for countless years, decades, centuries. How long had the caves been forming, how long since anypony had disturbed this place? Luna's Cosmic self was almost three times older than the planet, but she rarely felt very connected to that part of her. And she had only been the Alicorn Pony, Luna Selena Nyx for a bit over two and a half millennia. The age of the caverns, and of the mountain which they hollowed, was surely greater by a factor of at least thousand or so. Luna wished for a moment that Summer's rockhound friend could have been here to tell her just how old was this place: Luna was war-captain and engineer, not geologist. Neither spoke. There was only the gentle clopping of their hooves, the occasional clink or scrape of the blades of Luna's war-sabatons against the rocks. Where some tunnel or side-cavern diverged from the main route, there was the scritch-scritch of Summer blazing the way, careful to choose a dry surface, and careful to make the marks big and obvious. If they were coming back this way, Summer would need to use the magelight from her little standard-issue Ranger light-gem, which would be much weaker than the continual light spell Luna was radiating from her horn. The way rose and widened into a gallery. Luna saw the long pointed shapes hanging from the ceiling, the similar shapes rising up to meet them, and the glitters from between them, and she knew what was in here. "Observe," said Luna softly, and she turned up her light spell to dazzling brilliance. There were stalactites and stalagmites -- forests of them, marching in stately columns, no doubt following the ripples of hair-fine cracks in the ceiling, where water sank through fissured rock to absorb calcium and deposit it over countless millennia in these stately forms. Elsewhere, the moisture had seeped into salts, triggered blooms of crystal formation. It was a fairy cave, a cavern of wonders, sleeping unknown and unguessed of in this deep place, a marvelous production of Nature. "Oh!" gasped Summer in delight. She nearly took to her wings, but Luna moved her hoof in the ancient "keep groundbound" signal of Pegasi battletalk, and Summer remembered the need not to light up her flightfield. "Sorry," she said. "No matter," said Luna. "I fully understand why you want to do so. I would myself, if it were not perilous. Perhaps someday we may return, when we are not troubled by a Dragon." Instead, Summer described a slow circle on the ground, drinking in the beauty around her. "It's so marvelous," she said. "Like it's been here forever, waiting for us to find it!" In her happiness and awe she had temporarily forgotten to call Luna "ma'am," something of which Luna was herself glad. "Yes," said Luna. "I do not know how long it has been here. But none has marred it, and certainly no great Dragon has been this way." She peered at some of the stalactites and stalagmites. Some of the former had broken from the ceiling, and some of the latter shattered when those fell upon it, but the pattern seemed random. She saw that they had started to reform from the broken roots. "Who did that?" asked Summer sadly, following Luna's gaze. "Destruction," she said. "And some foolish Ponies who tried too bold a leap of technology, like foals trying to feed a fire with blasting powder." She felt guilt deep within her soul. Moondreamer had been one of those foolish Ponies. Summer looked at her questioningly. "This damage dates back to the Cataclysm," Luna explained. "Four thousand years ago. When the Earth shook, and the seas slopped out of their beds, and the proud towers of the Age of Wonders toppled into ruin in a single day of fire, and the hopes and dreams of generations perished. along with those who had hoped and dreamed them." Oh, my sweet Dusk, she thought. I am glad you did not live to see that day. In that one respect, your early death was a mercy. "Oh," said Summer. "So that was real? My rockhound friend once said she knew it was real, that the rocks still hurt from it ... but she said a lot of strange things." "She must be a wise student of the earth lore," Luna commented. "Yes. Ponykind rose up to heights beyond your imagining, and was cast down from them. And the Cataclysm left its marks all over the Solar System. These are some of them." "That's so sad," said Summer. Luna raised an eyebrow. "That the Ponies of old rose so high, and fell so far ... Ma'am," added Summer, seeming suddenly aware of her previous informality. "That their dreams died with them. It seems ... wrong." "Does it make you want to give up?" Luna asked. "No, Ma'am!" said Summer. "It makes me want to try harder. If we did it before, we should be able to do it again, shouldn't we? Only ... this time ... not make the mistakes we made before. Do it better. Make the dreams come true this time!" She suddenly realized that her voice was rising, and said "Sorry, Ma'am. I got carried away." Luna hugged Summer. She used only one foreleg, wrapping her wings around the small pegasus, being careful not to put any of her weight on the lieutenant's smaller frame. Summer gasped, and for a moment stiffened in startlement. Then she relaxed to press her cheek against the front of Luna's neck, sighing happily. Luna released her. "Friend Summer," Luna said, "Survive this day. I will have need of Ponies like unto thee." "Um ... yes, Ma'am?" said Summer, still surprised. "This is not the time nor the place for such speech between us," Luna explained. "But thou mayest have a role to play in making just such dreams come true, in my service. We shall discuss this on later occasion" "Yes, Ma'am!" Mine, now, Luna knew, from long experience if not also from the emotions she sensed emanating from the small Pegasus. But no arrow-fodder, to be squandered in some vainglory. No, this mare had intelligence and vision, qualities which were wasted in her rustic posting. She had probably been drifting into drink and other sorts of debauchery, frustrated from her true potential, because Celestia's peacetime Guard was not structured to make use of any but very limited forms of talent. That will change, Luna silently promised both herself and Summer. That will change. After that brief halt, they reluctantly left the gallery and resumed the long road upward. The cave rose, and as it did they passed one after another trickle of water feeding the streamlet. They were of course going upstream, and so the streamlet shrank as they trod each mile, more arduous by far than each would have been on the surface. They had to move carefully over uneven stone, and limit the use of their wings to occasional flaps for balance -- not that there would have room in most of the cave for any but the tightest and most nerve-racking flight in any case. Eventually the streamlet ended in a sort of pond, fed by water trickling from the walls and dripping from the roof in several places. The rocks glistened with water and slimes, and the trickle of the water was soothing. It was Summer Lightning who spotted the bowl, nestled in a natural alcove of one wall. Luna levitated it gently in her aura, and the two Ponies examined it curiously. It was nothing much -- a simple baked-clay bowl, not even properly glazed, and with no remaining signs of paint or any other decoration. But it spoke of makers -- some Ponies or Deer or other intelligent creatures had made this bowl. Some, possibly the makers, had come to this pool, probably because it was a source of water, and used this bowl, probably to get some of the water. And then one day, for some reason, one of them had left it here, and never come back for it, and so it had stayed here for unknown centuries or millennia, awaiting their discovery. It might date back to before the Coming of the Ice. It might date back to before the Cataclysm. It might even date back to before the Megan, even before Celestia had first sported upon the Earth in Pony form. It looked very old. Luna had no idea how old; while she could have used her senses to determine isotope ratios, she had never studied the technique as Luna Selena Nyx, and Moondreamer had no idea how to do it with Alicorn magic. Just another minor mystery of an old world, a world thickly layered with history and lost races and the mysteries they had left behind them. Perhaps someday, if the Ponies climbed all the way back to the heights of their ancestors, these mysteries might be studied, and catalogued, and the long unwritten histories teased out of the Earth and Sea and unraveled, to be laid out in books and displayed in museums for the edification of all Ponykind. No time for this now, of course. They had a mission. They continued climbing, now through a labyrinth of dry caves, more angular in their general structure. Here some sort of deep faulting had produced crevices, and the passages were high but narrow, so Luna and Summer often had to walk in single file, Luna generally leading the way. Luna was not sure of the geology of this place, and she wished Summer's rock-hound friend might have appeared to help guide them. But the crevices never narrowed beyond passage, which was good, because Luna neither wanted to backtrack nor to engage in the emission of magic on the scale needed to blast them a passage. Such would almost certainly reveal them to the Dragon. At one place the cave system changed to something that had locally been eroded from outside, like the entrance below, the caves widening. "Sometimes these are made by wind and sometimes water," Summer commented, "or so the books said. I don't know which, here." Luna didn't know either. But a subtle shift in the light made her realize something. "Stand still," she told Summer. "I'm going to veil my light." Luna did so, and abruptly they were standing in absolute darkness. But not absolute! Luna could see a glimmer of multiply-reflected light from one direction. "I'm unveiling it now," Luna informed Summer, giving her the chance to close her eyes before she resumed her magelight. "Sunlight?" asked Summer. "Yes," said Luna. "From that direction," she pointed with her hoof. They did not have to walk far, just left around a turn and then right around a kink, before they saw daylight. It came from a sizable mouth in a fairly wide cave. Luna consulted her mental map of the mountain, and decided that they could risk a peek outside, as they will still far down from the Dragon's lair, and there was an overhang to screen them. They looked down on the valley below from something like a quarter-mile of altitude. They could see right over the ridgeline they had crossed to reach the foot of the mountain, though from this angle they could not see the base camp of Luna's team. The Sun was setting over the west, the sky reddening as the day ended. It would probably be night by the time they rescued the captive -- which was not a problem from Luna's point of view, and if they got into trouble with the lowered light, Luna's Night Guards could help out Summer and any civilians. There might be a way down from here. Luna saw that the slope on this face was reasonably gentle, angling off to the left ... but she could not see if there was a path without flying out and possibly revealing herself to the Dragon. Which led to the other obvious problem, if there was pursuit ... Luna shook her head regretfully. "Thou canst not get out this way," she said. "Not unless the captive can also fly." Could she? Luna was assuming an Alicorn, and Alicorns could fly, but an Alicorn foal? Anypony's guess, and in the high winds around a mountain, with a lightning-throwing Dragon chasing them, was not the ideal situation in which to discover the foal's capabilities. Trying to walk down the mountain with an angry Dragon in pursuit would be even more certain suicide for Summer. "And t'would be dangerous even if she can." Summer nodded. "Right, Ma'am. No point coming all this way, and then losing her!" The two mares went back to the main path. The way rose rapidly now, along narrow high passages that climbed in staggered cliff faces. They could have flown up the cliffs, but feared to give themselves away to the Dragon; instead they roped themselves together and fumbled for hoofholds, sometimes leaping up almost vertically to attain the next ledge. Luna had the advantages of strength and reach, and improved her grip slightly with Earth Pony telekinesis, which had far less of a PKE signature than Pegasus flightfields. Summer was small and wiry, and by dint of determined effort kept up with the Alicorn's pace. They were soon more than halfway up the mountain, though still well below the Dragon. They reached a large slab-sided cave, rested for a few minutes, drank some water. Luna pulled out her sketch-map. "Past here is a section of regular tunnels," she told Summer. "I suspect some old mine workings. We must be wary: parts may be unstable. My scan showed a clear way to some caves which have a shaft that gives access to the upper caverns, and the Dragon's lair." "This mountain's way south of the mines around Nickerlite," Summer commented. "And we're beyond where the old North-Realm colonized. Who do you suppose dug these, Ma'am? I didn't think Deer were much for mining." "They are not," affirmed Luna. "Diamond Dogs, mayhap. Or older still. It matters less who made them than that we take care that they do not fall on our heads." Luna could actually have preserved them and extracted them both from any collapse, were Summer simply in her presence but both the roar of the collapse itself and the blatant radiation of energies she would require to do that would surely alert the Dragon to their activities. It was a short squirm through some tight places and then they were in the first of the regular tunnels. Their regularity was obvious; the walls were square-cut, though here and there sections had fallen in and then been dug out later by beings unknown. The old supports had long since rotted; they had been replaced more than once, and in different materials and styles. Here and there, what must have been the original floor was visible, and there could be seen twin parallel lines of utterly-corroded iron, little more than lines of rust. "Mine trackways," said Luna. "Standard gauge for the Age of Wonders. They laid them a little wider than we do today. Parts of these workings are over four millennia old. It is good they survived the Cataclysm." "I just hope they last a little longer, Ma'am," said Summer, a nervous edge in her voice, as Luna brushed one wall and that scant pressure caused a little dust to drift down from a crack in the ceiling. "These have lasted for forty centuries," replied Luna, with greater nonchalance than she actually felt. "They needs last us less than a day longer." "Celestia willing," Summer said automatically. "It falls to me to ward us both here and now," replied Luna, smirking slightly. "But I shall convey thy wish to mine own Sister later, if thou desirest." Summer blinked in astonishment, apparently just now emotionally-grasping the implications of the identity of her companion. Luna laughed merrily. "I know full well, 'tis but a turn of speech. Fear not: I am sure she would also will our success!" They passed many side tunnels, some of which were choked by old rockfalls. It was impossible to tell from their brief passage what had been mined here, though it looked as though it might have been different things at different times. Occasionally they found old tools, inevitably bristling with almost fungoid fuzzes of crystallized corrosion. Once, they saw what must have once been a side track with a regular lumpy object that had probably once been a mine cart. More than once there were ominous creakings or groans, grit sifting from the ceiling, to remind them that these tunnels were far from safe. Their luck held, though, and they took no harm worse than a little dust in their manes. Finally they emerged into a large, square-cut chamber, supported by columns of the living rock. It had clearly been some sort of station, but Moondreamer had never specifically been a mines engineer, nor had Luna, and so she had only a hazy idea of its previous function. There were a lot of old trackways, and some slumped objects that might have been minecarts or even some sort of small locomotive, though it was nothing but a mess of collapsed, corroded curvilinear and angular parts, now. There was a collapsed area around what must have once been a vertical shaft upward, and more collapsed tunnels which must have once led to other sections. And there was one intact tunnel leading outward. This was of a different design than the mineshaft. It had been heavily reinforced by thick concrete arches. Though slightly cracked in places, the arches had not buckled and sloughed outward over the millennia, which instantly told Luna that whatever steel lay within was strongly resistant to corrosive failure, the usual fate of ferroconcrete over mere decades. The great flaw of the engineering of the Age of Wonders had been that, due to their very wealth, they had not usually built to last; this structure was an exception to that rule. She instantly recognized it, of course. Moondreamer had designed the original model, of which this installation had been a copy. She hadn't been a mines engineer, but this was no mine. It was a missile base.