The cottage had been built upon the edge of the dusk, dusty wood, sitting precariously atop a barren hill. Much of its foundation had since rotted, leaving little but wood slabs and rusted nails to hold it still. Had it not been for the light flickering beneath the cracked walls, one may have taken it as naught but an abandoned, dead shack.
I looked down at the map of the forest—long outdated, although that was an unfortunate necessity, as our current object of search had been removed from most maps decades prior—and nodded to my companion, a young mare with bandaged wings and a crumpled, creased hat. She looked up, straining her eyes so as to see the cottage against the thick, dead trees behind it.
“You think this is the place?”
“Surely it must be,” I said. “Celestia knows we’ve searched long enough—surely it must be.”
She nodded wordlessly, chewing on her bottom lip as though in thorough contemplation. She asked me for the map, and after she had another chance to look it over and glanced back to the cottage, she appeared satisfied.
My hoof rapped against the creaking door once, twice, thrice—enough to make an impression, but not enough to leave a bad one.
There we waited for several minutes, silently, as the winds blew loudly across bark and air alike, in an almost melodic display of the forest’s inherent viciousness. My companion drew her hooves against the dirt in a show of blatant impatience; I, however, merely attempted to stand still, even as the rushing tide of frustration washed over me with neither mercy nor compassion. I shifted a bit and attempted to occupy myself by counting the spots on the cottage’s walls.
Eventually, the door creaked open like a coffin’s lid—a fitting metaphor, given the creature on its other side.
The stallion was of an ashen complexion, with a dark coat and a gray face. His mane was more dead than living, and resembled long, stringy tendrils of seaweed that clung desperately to his head. He held a lantern in his left hoof, as he lacked both a horn and wings, and it gave him the look of an old gravedigger—or perhaps a ghoul.
He stared at my companion and me for but a moment, seeming almost flabbergasted that we stood upon his doorstep; we were, after all, two creatures with whom he had never spoken. All he could do for those several awkward, tense seconds was stare, to which we responded in kind; neither of our two sides knew whether to speak or stay silent for fear of disrupting the social spectrum that had been long since established.
Then after the moment passed, the old stallion spoke.
“Can’t say I get many guests here. Please, ah… come in.”
My companion and I stepped into the cottage behind the old stallion—she first, of course, as she always did—and entered its murky depths.
If its exterior had shown its derelict nature, the cottage’s interior seemed as though even the smallest tremor or disruption could send it crashing down within seconds. Shelves held more than their capacities deemed able; books piled atop books bent them irregular angles, leaving them held solely by nails haphazardly placed on the walls. A dust-coated plaque sat on the far wall, the name “Professor Ancient History” the only visible text, though that, too, seemed partially worn away by time’s fangs.
Though the building’s interior showed several branding hallways and at least two pairs of stairs—both going up, although at perpendicular angles to one another —, every one was either boarded off—a similarly rushed job to the shelves, with neither rhyme nor reason to the placement of the thick boards—or blocked by the aforementioned shelves, which either hung too low or spilled their contents to the ground due to overabundance. As a result, the first room was also the only one that seemed to be in use, as evidenced by the bed in the corner and the bread on the nearby table.
At the old stallion’s request, I sat on the floor beside the table, due to the lack of chairs. My stomach touched to the dirt; my companion, too, sat down this way, although she seemed far more accustomed to resting in strange environs. It was fitting, I supposed, given she had far more field experience than I.
The old stallion poured us each a small cup of tea. Much to my shock, these cups lacked the clutter or mess of the overall room. When I asked him about this discrepancy, the old stallion merely claimed they were important to him, but did not elaborate further.
My companion took the tea gratefully, thanking the old stallion for his hospitality. Her bright eyes seemed to light up upon meeting him for the first time, contrasting heavily with her dulled, dusty, orange wings and coat. By the respect in her voice, I had no doubt that she and I had at last located the right stallion.
He poured out his own tea last, and took the steaming cup up to his lips with the hoof that had only recently gripped the lantern.
“So, why have you come all the way out to the edge of the Everfree?” he asked, setting his cup down on the table with the sort of care one would use to handle a newborn foal. “I trust you’re not here on my reputation alone.” He paused. “For I assure you, I’ve lost the right to any sort of reverence long ago.”
I nodded and set my own cup down; though the tea was excellent, I found myself with a somewhat-burned tongue due to my own impatience.
“Yes,” I said. “We actually came here to ask you for help. We’re archaeologists, you see—well, I am, at any rate.”
My companion shot me a sour look, which I ignored.
“We’ve been searching for something for awhile now,” I went on. “My group has, I should say. Unfortunately, though, we haven’t made much progress for the last year or so. One of my colleagues working on the project recommended you—said you were a genius.”
The old stallion paused midway through taking a sip, then stared at me as though taken aback by my words. He pressed a dark-gray hoof the table and met my gaze slowly.
“Listen here, and listen well,” he said. “I told you already that I lost the right to be called a genius long ago, so don’t do it. If you want my help, I’ll provide it, but I refuse to be put atop a pedestal.”
I shifted nervously under his gaze. “Ah… my apologies.”
The old stallion merely huffed and went back to his tea. His eyes broke away from mine, though he was still clearly irritated by my comment.
“Wait, really?” asked my companion. Despite her earlier thanks, she had not even touched her tea. “You’re really willing to help us out?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?” replied the stallion. “I may be old, but I was still an archaeologist—and even I needed help in my youth. If I can answer your question, then I gladly will.”
My companion cast a large grin at me. It appeared odd, given that it gave her the appearance of a kitten in a yarn store, rather than the archaeological mastermind—although I always saw her as more a general adventurer—she was.
“In any case,” I said. “We’re looking for an artifact called the Emerald Mirror. Do you know of it?”
The stallion paused again, though this time a large change came over his features. The single light on the ceiling cast shadows over his eyes, giving them the sunken appearance of a ghoul. His lips, meanwhile, twitched somewhat erratically, as though they were separate organisms with mannerisms of their own.
“The Emerald Mirror.”
The stallion’s pronunciation carried many separate emotions—nostalgia, disgust, sorrow, and excitement were but four of them I was able to understand. However, there was an underlying sense of something else that I could not quite follow that seemed to pervade over all the others. What it was, I could not even begin to fathom.
“And I had thought I’d never be so unfortunate as to hear that name again.”
My companion and I both perked up somewhat at that remark. I asked myself, quietly, why he would feel unfortunate to hear of such a legendary artifact; given his experience and knowledge, I had presumed otherwise.
“I’ll tell you what you want,” the old stallion continued absentmindedly. “First, though, I have a request.”
My companion asked for it, though her eyes claimed she was genuinely curious.
“I have something—a story. I wish that you both listen to me, and that you both understand the perversity of that wretched thing’s influence.”
He took a pause and looked between us.
My companion sat, staring at the stallion intently and discreetly slipping a notebook under the table, as though she were about to record his supposedly lurid tale. I, however, merely sat with my hooves upon the small tea cup, unwilling to move or speak in the tense atmosphere.
After a mere moment, we both quietly nodded.
The light hanging from the ceiling swung back-and-forth slowly, casting dark shadows around the stallion’s eyes that gave him the cold look of a ghoul. His lips were twisted in a whitish scowl, though he met our nods with a curt one of his own.
“When I was a youth age twenty-six—or so I recall, at very least—I saw something,” said the old stallion reflectively. “Never in my life had I seen it so blatantly, or so horribly, yet I saw it nonetheless.
“It began on that day. I remember it so clearly; the eighth of July. It was raining; a light rain, but with a sky that was blacker than an eternal dusk.
“I had recently been assigned to a mining quarry to the east of here, on the other end of the Everfree. The miners had located artifacts from an unknown civilization nearly three-hundred feet down, and so they were forced to surrender the excavation to our team until we deemed the area safe to mine further.
“Upon my arrival, I found the quarry was certainly well-mined; it was hundreds of feet both long and wide, with tunnels stretching out of it as it approached its current base. Scaffolding had been set up around the quarry as a makeshift series of staircases, so that we researchers could better reach our destination and study the walls for other items of note.”
He paused.
“In any case, as I stood at the edge of that quarry in the dusky rain, I was approached by a stallion—a lanky fellow, with a coat like a green river and a mane like wildfire. While he requested he take my bags, I refused, as I’d no reason to not carry them on my own; I was youthful and headstrong, without a bone of common sense in my body.
“Now, I would normally not mention this creature, for he’d little to do with this tale, nor did he matter much to it overall. However, he ultimately led me to my team of researchers—whom I had never met—and was the first to tell me a name that I could never forget, even if I tried.
“‘So,’ he told me, ‘you are here for that relic thing, yeah?’ ‘Yes, I am,’ I replied. ‘Then you’ll need to go down further,’ said he. ‘Several members of that team arrived already—couple of geologists, a medic, and another archaeologist—the leader, she says.’ ‘What do you know about her?’ I asked after a moment. Far as I was concerned, too many digs had been ruined by unqualified leaders, too obsessed with the title of their work to understand its greater meaning. The stallion replied, ‘Her name is Deep Down.’ ‘No,’ said I, laughing a bit at his innocence, ‘what do you know of her skills?’
“There was a pause, and then the stallion looked at me as though surprised his last response had not proved sufficient. His eyes were narrowed, his lips pursed, and he appeared to be chewing the inside of his mouth in thought. ‘She is brilliant,’ he said at last. ‘One of the best in decades… perhaps even centuries.’ Again, I could not keep myself from laughing. ‘And you, I’m sure,’ said I, ‘are of the same level of skill in your own career as she in hers.’ A pause. ‘No,’ said he. ‘Were that the case, I would not be here now.’
“Now I must not lie, as I was intrigued by this creature, Deep Down, who had been given such merit by what—by all accounts, at very least—should have been a total stranger. Yet here he was yet, looking at me as though my words had been heretical. Nonetheless, I thanked the gentlecolt and proceeded down the scaffolding and towards the base of operations.
“The base itself was as wretched and makeshift as the stairs which surrounded it. Before the artifacts had been properly located, it had been used as an area to process ores and other items, but had to be shifted to accommodate the change. Relics sat anywhere they could be placed—the stopped conveyer belt, still dusted with bits of rock and coal, seemed especially popular. Some even been laid on the floor, which was a harsh, scorched type of gunmetal, or hung from hooks on the blank walls. To put it more simply, the entire building was cluttered with these artifacts of some unknown civilization; how fascinating, then, that the creatures within were huddled not around those things, but were rather more fixated on an old, creased paper on the wall.
“One of those creatures seemed to notice me as soon as is walked in, though he had made no movements until I stepped closer. He was a stallion, tall and auburn, and clad in a lab coat so stained by rock and coal as to appear gray, and so much that I briefly questioned if it had ever been white.
“He introduced himself to me as the crew’s medic, Steady Hooves. His was another name I would not soon forget. I recall that he was the one responsible for the others even noticing me, as they had already been far too engrossed in that paper prior to my arrival.
“I met with the two geologists next, but I cannot for the life of me recall their full names. One was a mare with dark eyes and a saffron face with the surname Sparks, and the other was a black-feathered griffin with a thick accent whom we all referred to as Kite, as we could not pronounce nor spell her real name. While I recall them both immensely from our meetings, I unfortunately just do not remember their full or real names.
“I looked around the room, then, but found that there were only the four of us. ‘Is Ms. Down not here?’ I asked after a moment. ‘I had been told she was.’ ‘No,’ said Hooves, ‘fortunately for us, she is not.’ That should have been my first warning sign that something was amiss—that her not being there was considered fortunate. However, in my ignorance and childishness, I ignored that information, which should have been crucial, and simply asked for Down’s location.
“Kite—so we called her, for she resembled a bird of prey when in flight—responded, ‘I am not sure, but she may be down below—looking into zose dogs of hers, perhaps.’ ‘Dogs?’ I asked. Kite nodded, then gestured to the ground with one of her muddy talons. ‘Diamond Dogs,’ she said. ‘Down uses zem to dig.’ ‘Is that not illegal?’ I said. Kite just shrugged. ‘Ve do not question it,’ she said after a second. ‘Ve prefer not to.’
“Had I been thinking rationally, I would have questioned it further. I should have. Had I known what Down was truly doing, I would have gone to Celestia herself and had the excavation halted, for I had never seen such a horrible sight in my life… never…”
He paused.
After a moment of pure, unbroken silence, my companion at last spoke up slowly. Her hoof continued to quickly write beneath the table, jotting dozens of notes upon her parchment, as impatiently as she was most known.
“What was she doing?”
The old stallion met her gaze quietly, then took a single sip from his steaming cup. He set it down on the table, though there was an audible clink as it landed—perhaps from frustration.
“Something no creature should have seen, mortal or immortal, dead or alive. That I witnessed it and retained any shred of sanity was no result of mental endurance, but one of sheer luck. I will get to that shortly, but know that no word of mine could do it justice, nor do I want it to attain such justice, for it was nothing if not utterly ghastly.
“First, however, I must say this: on that day, I did not meet with Deep Down. I would neither see nor hear her for quite some time into the excavation—why, it took nearly a full year for me to finally know her, and the others had told me the same held true of them—the geologists, that is, and Hooves; not even that stallion out front, who had ranted and raved of her glory, knew anything of her beyond her reputation alone, for she had spent an incredible amount of time deep in the quarry with her pack of Diamond Dogs, searching with a sort of inordinate determination for her prize.
“So we spent those many months excavating the quarry. We—that is, I and the three others—searched the areas Down would not touch, and she would search the areas in which we were forbidden. We had a sort of rhythm going, I suppose; we would take the upper reaches and any tunnels that spread from them, and she had the base to herself.
“Around three months in, as I sat on the edge of the scaffolding, eating my lunch with the other three, the good doctor brought to my attention a most interesting matter. ‘I was poring over those texts you found the other day,’ Hooves told me as he ate, ‘when I noticed something most peculiar.’ ‘What is that?’ I asked, perplexed; I had yet to read those texts, you see, but I had certainly planned to. Well, Hooves, he looked at me, and his lips quirked up just a bit. ‘This civilization has some very interesting artifacts,’ said he. ‘For example—and this is something I thought would interest you all —, there is one such item—a mirror surrounded by emerald, and looking into it supposedly grants life eternal.’
“I rolled my eyes at that and simply chuckled. ‘Immortality?’ I scoffed. ‘That’s absurd; a dead tribe cannot also be eternal.’ ‘I know that,’ said he. ‘Still, you cannot deny how amazing such a thing could be—nor could you, for that matter, deny such a people’s naïveté.’ I agreed, at least in that respect, that the tribe or group must have been young indeed, or must have lasted far into the past, to not understand magic to the extent we had that day or do today. ‘But even so,’ I said, ‘such an item could be of great architectural value, even if we’ve only an idea why it exists.’
“We continued to speak idly of that mirror, our discoveries, and other, more mundane topics, but we eventually finished our food and returned to work. The rest of that day passed with neither excitement nor novelty, so I found my thoughts traveling back to that mirror constantly. That mirror, as well as Down, had become my obsessions while on that dig, and I found myself longing to know them both more as time progressed, to a point where I fantasized of both. Of the mirror, I pictured a stunning, shimmering glass surrounded by an ornate design of viridian; of Down, I longed to see her genius at first glance, and imagined her as either young and fair with a bright red coat, or older, with a high-boned face and a white mane.
“Regardless, my thoughts of these two obsessions hung over everything I did or found. An old, cracked pot covered with script, which I had originally loved and desired, was met with contempt and disappointment for not being my prize. And Down — how I longed to meet her! When rumors of her resurfacing would come up, I would beg to make sure they were true, all for that one, simple opportunity to greet a creature so gifted, so wise.
“The months again passed, and I found neither of the two things I sought so greatly. I certainly had grown closer to my three companions, but I still felt empty within, as nothing I had searched for so fervently had emerged. They—in particular, Kite and Sparks—seemed to enjoy themselves greatly in that put; they were already quite devoted to their careers, particularly Sparks. The mere mention of Down, however, was enough to freeze them both into complete silence. Every creature—even those who had not met her, much to my surprise—seemed to treat her with either fear or respect, or sometimes both at once.
“I once briefly questioned why her name could be so terrifying. Was it a result of who she was, or was it how she acted? Or perhaps, I reasoned, it was because she surrounded herself with Diamond Dogs, whose notoriously selfish behavior made it almost shocking that they would willingly follow any creature, much less one who was searching not for gems, but for relics. Any creature who could command that much respect from them was worthy to be respected herself, or at very least feared. Satisfied with my answer, I ceased my queries and went back to work without a second thought, only stopping once or twice more think of that mirror.
“What a fool I was.”
The old stallion paused again, but this time it was a pause to catch his breath.
“Tell me,” he said after a moment. “Do you believe in cruelty—true cruelty, the kind that appears far too wretched to be true, too evil to be real?”
Another pause.
“I did not, for a time. No, I thought Celestia would not dare to allow it, but… upon meeting Down for the first time, I came to realize just how plausible and nightmarishly evident such a concept could be.
“It had been nearly a year since that day I had arrived when Down finally emerged from those depths. At first, I had been ecstatic to meet with her, to know this creature that commanded such respect that even those considered beasts obeyed her. My longing to speak with a creature so intelligent caused me no lack of excitement, nor did my desire to ask her of that mirror.
“So when she emerged from the quarry, surrounded by those Diamond Dogs, I saw fit to approach and to speak with her. Upon getting so close, I was surprised how beautiful she appeared; her mane was a lengthy spread of red curls which reached down her back, penetrated by her short horn, her coat so white I had believed it to be chalk, and her eyes—oh, her eyes!—were so piercing and so cold as to send a shiver down a windigo’s spine.
“Indeed, she was beautiful, but I believe then was the time I discovered her duplicity. Upon her form, there was very little dirt or dust—odd, I’d thought, given her position. Her face was decidedly neutral, lips straight, and that cold look in her eyes displayed no sort of emotion. Her guards were the opposite, and I remember them well. One was tall, lanky, with a sand-dusted coat, a torn, gray jacket, and a rip on his left ear; the other was shorter, though more muscular, and had a gray coat of fur with a green jacket. Though different in almost every conceivable way, they both shared the same look in their eyes: pure, unbridled terror.
“It was only later that I would recall the dark red stains on their fur, clumsily hidden by the jackets, and weep at my own inadequacy. But Down had either expected us not to notice, or she had expected us not to care.
“In either case, those bloodied Diamond Dogs led Down over to our group. She stared at the four of us for a moment, then turned her gaze on me. ‘So you are the team,’ she said, in a voice more contemptuous and cold than any I’d heard before, or have heard since. ‘I should hope you all understand what we are here for—and that what you have done to this point is satisfactory.’ ‘Of course, Ms. Down,’ Hooves assured her. ‘We should hardly be expected to use little effort in hopes of finding grand things.’ Down fixed him with a glare. ‘Do not patronize me,’ said she. Hooves declared he’d had no such intention, but Down did not waver.
“I decided to step in, if only to help the good doctor. ‘Ms. Down, I apologize on his behalf,’ said I. She turned her glare to me. ‘You are Mr. Ancient History,’ she said to me, more as a statement than a question. ‘If you’ve a want to take this excavation as your own,’ she continued suddenly, ‘I will not allow it.’ ‘I’ve no such intention,’ I replied. As with Hooves, however, this response did little to mollify her. She narrowed her eyes slowly, then nodded to one of the two Diamond Dogs—the lanky fellow with the injured ear. ‘Remove him.’
“A whirlwind of emotions went through me, then—anger and shock, of course, but also a sense of disgust; this creature, whom I had longed to meet, appeared as little more than a selfish, arrogant child whose obsession with power far outweighed her morality. And then she had said to remove me, as though I were damaging the project, as though I’d completely and utterly ruined everything. It was, quite simply, appalling.
“That Diamond Dog, he looked mortified at the thought, although he did not speak out. I presume he, at least, had some sort of moral compass. However, I would never know the truth, as I never saw him again.
“The others protested—Hooves especially, as I recall, had stated Down was foolish to remove such an integral member of the team. He was far too kind, let me tell you; I was no more required than Sparks or Kite, for both were equally qualified in my field, yet far more so in their own. However, the three of them tried to argue in my defense. It was at that point I realized that I not only trusted them, but that I also considered them my closest friends. Even today, I could hardly forget their kindness, no matter how they might have—”
He paused again, stopping himself mid-sentence. He went quiet for several seconds, just stirring his tea idly. We could only stare, then.
“In any case,” he said slowly, quietly, “their words nonetheless proved fruitless. Down was a shrewd mare, and her convictions never once wavered. A selfish, childish mare, certainly, but a shrewd one. Try as they did, my friends’ words never once changed her heart, never once caused her to reconsider my position. She was far too convinced in her own righteousness.
“I was removed from the team immediately. Those companions I trusted with my life, that dream of seeing the mirror—both of these were broken, forever lost to that endless void of apathy. Or so I had thought, at first; had it all ended there, I would perhaps have been happier. I would later be told that Down had justified my removal by claiming I had committed insubordination, although I never knew if she gave an altered account or not.
“For nearly a year since, I heard nothing from my coworkers, my friends. I did what I could to make a living during that time—odd jobs and such, as it was unlikely I would find a dig sight nearby, and more unlikely still that I would find one in general. When not working, I found myself drinking; I was still bitter, you see, with a bitterness that would not go away for some time. I often questioned why I had been removed. Had I questioned Down too far? Should I have said nothing? I did not know. At the time, I wondered if I ever would.
“Then nearly a year after that day, as I sat in my favorite bar, drinking my liquor long and slow, I was suddenly approached by my old friend, Hooves. Needless to say, I was quite surprised; the workers were not given permission to leave their posts until the excavation was deemed finished, and slept in specially designated quarters. Yet here was Hooves, standing before me in some old bar in the back alleys of Canterlot. To say I was surprised would be putting it quite lightly.
“After I regained my senses and convinced myself the stallion before me was not simply some hallucination caused by my wanton urge to drink, I ushered him to sit with me. He ordered his drink from the bartender—an old, fat stallion whose face was covered in stubble and who smelled constantly of roses—then set into his rickety seat to drink it. I finally brought myself to speak with him. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked. ‘I needed pause,’ Hooves explained. ‘Those tunnels were quite stuffy, you see, and the injuries were so sparse I didn’t consider myself necessary.’ A pause. ‘Besides, I wanted to see my family—’ ‘You’ve a family?’ I interrupted, somewhat surprised. ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘A wife at home. And a daughter.’ ‘A daughter, eh?’ I asked, laughing. ‘I’d never have pegged you as a father.’
“There was another moment of silence, then Hooves set down his glass and looked to me. ‘I left,’ he said bluntly. ‘We all did—Sparks and Kite, and most of the quarrymen.’ He took a drink, then looked at me seriously. ‘Down is insane.’ ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘I gathered as much.’ ‘No, you do not understand,’ said he. ‘You were hardly the last creature she fired. A day after you were removed, Down ordered a stallion leave due to making an innocuous comment she deemed as criticism; the next week, a mare made a disparaging remark within her earshot, and she, too, was fired.’ I said, ‘Then the others left—?’ ‘Yes,’ he interrupted. ‘Every creature left that quarry; the only ones left now are Down and her Diamond Dogs.’
“I took a pause to drink in that information. My brain whirled with questions, concerns, regarding that quarry, and how long it could last without the aid of its workers. And if Down were there when it collapsed, cruel though she was, I feared what could occur to she and her damaged workers. ‘How is that quarry or its tunnels to be kept standing, then?’ I asked quietly. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘It is unlikely, though, that it shall last long.’ ‘Those tunnels especially,’ I continued. ‘They were not constructed properly, and that scaffolding—’ ‘Yes, it is all liable to collapse without proper maintenance,’ said he. ‘In fact, I’ve been thinking that it shall all fall any day, now—especially since one of the workers went to all the trouble of removing some of the more important boards and nails out of spite before she quit.’ After a moment, I asked, ‘Sparks?’ ‘I shall neither confirm nor deny your hypothesis,’ said he, though the smirk on his lips only made me more confident about my suspicions. ‘And where is she, then?’ I said. ‘And Kite, as well? Do not tell me you all parted ways so soon.’ There was momentary pause, then the smile slowly fell from his lips. ‘Indeed,’ he admitted. ‘Sad though I am to admit it, the three of us went our separate ways.’ ‘I’ll assume they both returned home, then,’ said I.
“There was a moment of agreement, and after that, Hooves and I spent the rest of that evening chatting idly. Few of those conversations related to that quarry, or even to Down; instead, we merely talked over drinks, as friends are wont to do. We agreed that night to eventually locate Kite and Sparks, so that we could all be reunited once more. Of course, then we’d had no plans of returning to that quarry; though we had located so many relics and artifacts as to build a minor history of this odd people, and though we loved those acts of searching for and finding those relics, then spending hours doing little researching them to create a hypothesis of what it meant, we’d no desire to return. All we desired was to see one another again, and nothing more than that. But…”
He went silent again. This time, he did not go back to speaking. Instead, his eyes—now focused on the steam steadily rising from the cup—slowly clouded over in a mixture of deep though and, or what I interpreted as, sorrow. My companion noticed it too; she ceased her writing as she noticed his eyes, then simply stared at him for a moment in evident concern.
“Professor?” she asked quietly.
For a moment, he said nothing in response, as though he were trapped in some sort of trance. Then he blinked those ghastly, deep eyes of his, then slowly turned them up from his cup and towards us. He remained silent; to me, it appeared that he had lost whatever words he intended to say, with his tongue trapped by those memories that consumed and haunted him. Finally, he managed to loosen his tongue, and his gray lips opened slowly.
“I apologize,” he said, then stopped again. A moment later, “I’ve been speaking for awhile now, I believe. It has probably grown dark already, or is at least close.”
I blinked, then sat up in my chair. Had it truly been so long? His story had been lengthy, yes, and his voice slow and deliberate, but it had been mid-morning when my companion and I had first arrived at his cottage. Then again, I could hardly see the outside due to a lack of windows, and the Everfree was oft prone to odd weather patterns, so I had no way to ascertain his claims.
“If you both wish to return home, I will not stop you,” he continued idly, stirring his tea with a silver spoon. “I assure you that I’m not a storyteller by any means, as I’m sure you are both aware; there is no need for you to stay here longer than you absolutely have to.”
Another moment passed, then I shook my head slowly. I glanced to my partner, who met my gaze with her own, then looked back to the old stallion. I contemplated my answer—for, although I knew it already, I was not quite certain how to phrase it—and then I spoke.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I legitimately meant it, “but I must ask you to continue your story.”
“And why?” he asked. “What is your obsession with the Emerald Mirror? Why do you desire its location?”
My companion sat up in her seat. Her wings, orange as the twilit sky, fluttered briefly against their wrappings, then went still. She fixed him with her gaze, then gave one of her typically cocky smiles.
“If we wanna understand the past, we need every artifact we can get,” she said, and set her notebook down next to her. “Besides, you’re the best lead we’ve got—the only lead, actually.”
The old stallion looked between us, then grimaced. “And what of the time? Surely, when I’ve finished my tale, it will be midnight or later, when the Everfree is at its most dangerous.”
“We’re willing to risk that,” I said. “Besides, the two of us are hardly slouches in dealing with dangerous creatures; my companion, in fact, has made a quite lucrative career from it.”
She grinned at that, then took a swig from her cup—more like she were downing a shot than drinking tea, really. She chuckled, then, and passed me a wry grin.
“What can I say? We all have our talents.”
“And here I thought you were attempting to be more humble,” I said.
She laughed. “Sure, but I’ve gotta take at least some pride in what I do.”
I turned back to the old stallion, who by that point was watching us with no small amount of amusement. He appeared to find our conversation quite engaging, or at least distracting from his story.
“In any case,” I said in an effort to bring our conversation back to its original topic, “the fact of the matter is that we would be delighted to hear the rest of your story, Professor.”
He looked between us for but a moment, those ghoulish, tired eyes surveying us with a sort of caution one could only expect from a creature so old as he. The old stallion stood up from the table for a moment, then stepped over to a nearby shelf and began looking through its contents.
“I suppose nothing I say could possibly change your minds, then?” he asked, and he stopped looking through the shelf. He simply stood facing away from us, motionless in his contemplation, and then said, “Perhaps I should be thankful, really; thankful that there are still those determined to protect that which once was, and that which will never be again.”
He pulled one of the books from the shelf. It was old, with a dust-soaked cover whose brown color had long since faded into a dull gray, and whose pages were torn and yellowed by the passage of time. The old stallion blew the dust from its cover, and then he opened it, and swept through those ancient leaves. Then he stepped back to the table and set that book down to its open page, upon which a picture I had never seen lay.
Like the rest of the book, the picture was quite old; rather than a photograph, it was a painstakingly illustrated painting, done in such a way that I believed only an expert could have made it. It was a simple picture of a vividly green plain of grass, whereupon four creatures sat grinning. One, I recognized as the old stallion, albeit far younger, with a vibrant brown coat and a flowing mane of black. To his left was a young mare, no older than my companion, whose coat was indeed saffron, and whose eyes glimmered with a dark mischievousness, but whose smile was innocent nonetheless. To his right sat a black-feathered griffin—smaller than most, I mentally noted—who stuck out quite noticeably amongst the three ponies, but she seemed content with her position, much like the others. And next to the black griffin, an unnaturally tall stallion with a reddish coat sat contentedly, seemingly the most relaxed by far. Among them, that smile was evident, and it looked entirely genuine; those four creatures were all quite content where they were.
“This image was painted long after my departure,” the old stallion said after my companion and I finished staring at it. There was an air of nostalgia behind his words, and, for a brief moment, his smile matched that of his younger self. “It was crafted several months after Hooves and I met in that bar—seven months, I believe, but I cannot recall the exact date, much as I wish to.”
My companion stared up at him, and began to discreetly write beneath the table once more. However, she seemed entirely focused on his words, as though the writing was but an afterthought to the overall story, with her hoof moving almost of its own accord.
“You mean you saw them again?” she asked. “Sparks and Kite, I mean.”
“Indeed,” replied the old stallion. “Hooves and I located them both weeks before that picture was painted—we had searched, you see, but not with any sort of immediacy; we had lives to live, after all, and careers outside of what had transpired within that quarry. Unfortunately, as Hooves was the one to find them both, I never did learn their names as well as I should have. I have always been wretched with names, you see, as the only ones I truly recalled from that quarry were Steady Hooves and Deep Down.
“In any case, Hooves was indeed able to locate the others, much to my joy and, dare I say, excitement; regardless of our experiences with Deep Down, we had bonded over the course of that year, and had all grown to consider each other as friends, which was not to be destroyed by that cruel mare’s plotting. It took time, yes, but we were able to meet again, and we had that painting made in commemoration. At the time, the four of us were ecstatic, as we could speak without fear of Down, talk openly of that quarry, and enjoy our lives to the fullest. That was before we decided to return.”
I sat up and stared at him, confused. I thought that I must have misheard that statement.
I said, “I’m sorry, Professor, but did you just say you all returned to the quarry?” When he nodded, I added, “But why? Surely, you had no real reason to go back!”
“No, we did not,” he replied, already stirring his tea again. “To this day, I am still unsure why we all went back. On the surface, we told ourselves it was just nostalgia, but I think that we knew otherwise in our hearts. Perhaps it was merely a brash act of youth, in our attempt to prove Down incorrect, or perhaps we all somehow knew—or felt, at least—what was occurring in those black depths. Perhaps it was even an attempt to find that accursed mirror that has haunted our dreams with its mesmerizing presence. But in any case, we did return. I recall what Sparks said so clearly: ‘Why not go check out that quarry again? I’m sure that jerk’s out by this point.’ We all had hoped she was right, for none of us desired to see Down again. It took some coaxing, yes, but Sparks proved to be as excellent a motivator as she was a geologist, and we all agreed to meet at that quarry by the end of the week.
“The day we gathered again was the twelfth of April. I could never forget that date so long as I lived. It was raining, just as it had on my first day, and the sky was just as black as it was originally, as though that eternal dusk hung over us like a blanket. The air was colder than normal, and the rain had formed a mist that necessitated lanterns in order to properly navigate. In short, it was ominous. Nightmarishly ominous. It fit, really, for that was the day when everything shattered.
“The four of us stepped to the edge of that quarry and peered down. From the lack of light and the blackness below, it appeared as though we were staring deep into the maw of Tartarus itself. We stepped onto the wet scaffolding—Hooves nearly slipped, I recall—then began stepping down into the fell pit. We had never been so deep as the bottom, you understand, as Down had forbid our entry. However, we cared not now, as we were far too busy obeying our foolish desires. Ah, were foresight as vivid as hindsight, then we would never have stepped down! But we did, and that fact is irrevocable, much as I wish it were not.
“At the base of the quarry, where the ground had long since turned to mud, I looked to my three companions. ‘Where do we go now?’ I asked, looking between them, a lantern clutched in my hoof. ‘That tunnel,’ Sparks said, and pointed her hoof in the specified direction. ‘That’s where Down and those Diamond Dogs worked the most, I think; I saw them go in more than once.’ ‘And you are so sure,’ said I, ‘that this way is correct?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, and then she looked around a moment. ‘I looked into some of these tunnels in the past, you know. Most of them are dead ends.’ ‘Very well,’ I said, and I turned to look at the original destination. ‘Then we shall traverse that tunnel.’
“We stepped into it tentatively, with the care of creatures attempting to not awaken a sleeping dragon, and stepped through those once-untouched—by us, that is, for I’ve no doubt Down left no stone unturned—earthen hallways, checking our shoulders and glancing to and fro, frightened that Down could emerge at any second to attack us. Our steps were wet, for the water had leaked down into that place, forming small streams and puddles throughout that tunnel, which only served to put us more on edge.
“Then, after some time had passed, we came upon a Diamond Dog. He was a short fellow, with a hunched back and a short snout, and was leaned up against the cave wall, asleep. At first, we feared that he had noticed us, and would report is to Down the first chance he had. But he made no movement, no matter how close we stepped. Eventually, Sparks volunteered to go look at him, but she had only taken a few small steps before she froze in place. We asked her for what had happened, but she would not answer us. I chose to step forward next, to see what had crippled her so, when I, too, froze in terror.”
The old stallion paused, then took a deep, shaky breath in. He did not meet our eyes, but stayed silent for several seconds.
“Sweet Celestia!” he exclaimed suddenly. “The poor beast’s chest had been cut in two, slit straight down from his neck!”
I stilled as the blood rushed from my face. “H-he was… dead?”
“Dead?” the old stallion said, turning his eyes on me. “Dead? I’d wished he were dead, but no. The poor beast had been slit in half and he was still alive!”
No matter how I tried to avoid it, the image lodged itself in my brain—the image of a Diamond Dog, eviscerated, with its entrails and organs hanging out its front. I struggled to keep the tea in my stomach, rather than my throat.
“And he was not the only one,” the old stallion added gravely. “There were dozens of them, mutilated in some gruesome, horrendous manner. One had been crucified, nailed to one of the walls, and gurgling, for a nail was through its throat. Another hung from the ceiling by its neck, its entire body scorched black and its eyes gouged out. Everywhere we turned was the same nightmarish scene, and my companions appeared troubled enough keeping their sanity at the gruesomeness that abounded. They had all been suffering so greatly, and even death evaded them. Their moans echoed through those black halls, and we could not escape them no matter where we ran.”
My companion looked ready to retch, her orange face now a sickly green. Her eyes had gone wide and her hoof had stopped writing, perhaps out of self-preservation.
“Eventually, we escaped the sight of those poor, tortured things, for that is what they were; they’d wanted no part in what had happened, after all, and it did not take us long to conclude who must have harmed them so.”
The old stallion stopped, then, and looked back into his cup. He grit his teeth harshly, and pressed his hoof into the table so hard I had thought it likely to crack.
“At the time, we had thought of Deep Down as little more than a brat,” he said slowly. “Never did we imagine that she was a complete sociopath. But there was our evidence, laid out in black-and-white—or rather, laid out in red. Those Diamond Dogs had been tortured, brutalized, all to fulfill her foul ambition, and Down had hidden it all from us under the pretense of a private investigation. We agreed, then, that we would have to find her; more than that, we had to stop her, and by whatever means we could manage.
“For hours after that, we searched those tunnels as best we could. We four stayed as one, for we’d no desire to separate in that dark, cold place, and we looked through for any signs of Down we could find. However, even after hours of searching, we found not even a single trace of her within that cursed quarry. Much to our chagrin, it appeared we would have to return to those maimed Diamond Dogs if we wanted to locate Down and bring her to justice. Somehow, we had never thought to simply go the princess and beg for her aid, for we were far too busy with our vigilante work to obsess over such trivial matters as due process or the court system. Yet we knew we had to find Down, we had to punish her—and never once did we entertain the notion that it was a result of our own bitterness, as a means of petty revenge for her not treating us, her workers, correctly, and for having us removed over trivial matters—but oh, if only we’d realized why we were really being removed so much sooner!
“But we never entertained such ideas, and we suffered for it. We suffered harshly, and we suffered justly. I’ve since wondered if we truly cared about those Diamond Dogs, or if we were merely too obsessed with our own self-righteousness to understand how they suffered. What fools we were! What complete fools! Never once did we use logic, never once did we think! But we acted. We acted, for we were children, selfish to the core, and stupid for every matter we could imagine! Idiotic, foolish, selfish, stupid—!”
The old stallion stopped, then, and looked at us with tired eyes. “I-I’m sorry,” he said after a second of silence. “I merely… I’m sorry.”
The entire room went quiet. My companion looked at him, met his eyes with her own, and then quietly asked, “What happened then?”
Again, silence. Then the old stallion pressed a hoof to his forehead and ran it through his mane.
“We found her,” he said tiredly. “It took us all night, yes, but we found her. The four of us had grown tired, weary, and mentally exhausted from our search, but we found her. She was passed those Diamond Dogs—there must have been dozens of them, each worse than the last—in some a large, carved-out room with an altar at the far end. Down was huddled in the corner, her pristine coat splattered red and her mane disheveled, with her legs wrapped around something green. She was muttering something, and she sounded far less cold than she had the first and last time we had met.
“I remember a stream of sand was falling from the corner she crouched in—a result of the poor maintenance, no doubt—that coated her mane and coat and made her disturbed appearance all the more pronounced. She had yet to notice us, but we noticed her all too easily; more importantly, we noticed what she held in her bloodstained hooves. That green object was gorgeous, stretched into images of leaves and vines so masterfully crafted I’d almost thought them real. It was rectangular, but those decorations jutted off from it, making it appear oddly shaped and beautiful, as a real work of art should have been.
“I will save you both me ranting of its beauty, and me ranting of my correctness at being so obsessed, for it was the Emerald Mirror. And there was Down, sitting in the corner, clutching it to her chest with a manic gleam in her eyes. She noticed us, then, and fixed us with eyes so wide I’d feared they would burst from their sockets. ‘Stay away!’ she screamed, clutching that mirror even closer. ‘This mirror is mine! Immortality is mine! It’s all mine!’
“We were all quite taken aback by her behavior. After all, the Deep Down we knew before was cold, calculating, and paranoid, but this mare before us showed only the last of those. Whether that other side of her personality was just a farce, I could not tell you, for I did not know her well enough to claim either way. Likewise, I could not say whether or not she had always been so mad, or if the mirror had driven her to insanity. Regardless, the fact remained that Down was fixing us with a terrified, hideously angry glare the likes of which I had never seen before, nor have I seen since.
“Kite was the only one among us with the courage to speak. ‘Vhat did you do to zose Diamond Dogs?’ she said forcefully. ‘The Diamond Dogs?’ Down asked, and then her face twisted into a wide and self-satisfied smile. ‘Tests! Yes, tests… Had to make sure it worked. The immortality. Had to make sure it never failed…’ She started to laugh, then, her face contorted to match her insane laughter. ‘Good subjects—great subjects! They survived everything! Everything! The mirror worked… It worked!’ I’ll never be able to forget those words. I hear them every night in my nightmares, they are so lodged into my mind.
“Kite stepped forward, and Down recoiled further into the wall. ‘No!’ said she. ‘It’s mine! It’s mine! You can’t have it!’ Kite flinched at that, seemingly unable to go any further. That was when Sparks stepped forward. She stepped up to Down, and demanded that Down face justice for what she did to those Diamond Dogs. And then Down, she—”
The old stallion suddenly stopped, and then he let out a single choked sob. He pressed his hooves to his forehead, and said nothing for a long while.
Neither my companion nor I responded. We did not know how to. And then the old stallion pulled his hooves away from his head, and he used one of them to wipe his face.
“Down suddenly lurched forward, and she stabbed Sparks in the throat with her horn. Sparks fell back, she gurgled, and then she… she died. One of my friends laid there in her own blood, and then Down looked at the rest of us with a snide smirk. ‘How sad,’ she said, with those same wide eyes, though her smirk had become decidedly more psychotic. ‘She wasn’t immortal.’“
I felt the bile return to my throat, followed by an influx of hatred. My companion, too, looked both aghast and disgusted, though mostly the latter. Even she, with her cool and cocky personality, could not hide her anger at the murderer.
“That was enough for Hooves, who immediately tackled her to the ground. As he collided with Down, she dropped the mirror, and it slid to the ground face up. Hooves pinned her to the ground, and she began to scream, demanding ‘her mirror’ back, and telling us not to touch it. She struggled quite a bit, but Hooves was a strong stallion, and he would not yield. That is when Down enacted her second great attack on us.
“Her horn began to glow, not pink or blue, or even white, but black—black like that quarry had looked from above, black as those tunnels, black as death. Before Hooves could react, she struck him full-on with that spell, and he was sent flying back. He stood up again, and he tried to tackle her again, but it was to no avail; he came close, but then he fell beside her, as though he had been redirected by some invisible force. ‘It worked!’ Down said, giggling madly. ‘It worked, it worked, it worked!’ Hooves demanded to know what had worked, then Down simply giggled louder. ‘The curse! I cursed you! Now you’re luckless forever! You and your children, and their children, and their children! Forever!’
“Hooves did not seem to believe her—how could he? It sounded absolutely absurd, at first glance—but every one of his attacks faltered, and he soon found himself despairing as the reality of his situation set in. And then, in the middle of that chamber, Hooves completely broke down, and the once-stoic stallion fell to the ground and began to sob. We were broken, powerless, it seemed, and Down simply sat in the corner, giggling that incessant, wretched laugh of hers.
“Then I saw that mirror, still facing up, and I caught the smallest glimpse of my own reflection on its polished surface. And by the cry I heard beside me, so, too, had Kite.”
A pause.
“That day, in that dark room, all four of us were cursed. Sparks was cursed with death, Hooves was cursed with eternal misfortune for the him and the next three generations of his family, and Kite and I were cursed with life. Eternal life.”
My mouth went dry. My throat went numb. My mind simply shut down. That was impossible, I told myself. A mirror could not imbue life eternal. That was simply absurd. It was a legend, of course, the likes of which could not feasibly be believed.
My companion, however, did not look quite as shocked as I felt. Perhaps due to her experience with the strange, she seemed to take the matter in stride.
“In any case,” the old stallion said, brushing the matter off as though it were ultimately unimportant, “Kite and I were terrified by the implications of looking into that mirror, to the extent where neither of us could bring ourselves to move. Hooves lay on the ground, desperately trying to hit Down, but to no avail, and Sparks’s blood still stained the dust red. I could not even bring myself to move; I was still in shock over all that I had witnessed, and all in the span of several minutes, no less! I could not move even if my legs had the energy to walk.
“But Down still laughed. She sat in her corner and laughed, poisoning the air with that hideous sound, as the sand poured down on her from above. She did not move. Why should she have? She had already accomplished her goal of breaking us down—physically in some cases, mentally in all of them. In effect, Down had already won.
“But then something happened that none of us could have expected. From nowhere, Kite suddenly stepped forward. She grabbed the Emerald Mirror in her talons, then advanced on Down. She raised the mirror over her head, so that the glass faced the ceiling, and crashed it down on Down’s head with a force I had not thought her capable of.
“Have you ever heard a unicorn’s horn break?” the old stallion suddenly asked. “It is not a pleasant sound, I assure you. That day, in the tunnel, I heard it for myself—the sound of a bone snapping, then bursting into dozens of pieces. It was the first sound I heard after Kite smashed that mirror on Down’s head, followed only by the sound of Down screaming in agony. That is something else that disturbed me so greatly; her scream sounded so normal, as though it belonged to any mare who had just been injured, rather than to some cruel, utterly insane sociopath. That scream haunts me as well, and I fear I shall never forget it so long as I live.
“Yet at the same time—much as it disgusts me to admit it—I found that scream cathartic, too, knowing that Down’s murderous, violent tendencies had finally garnered some retribution, even if it hardly made a dent in her list of atrocities. Still, as much as that scream haunted me, it gave me that sick satisfaction—that thrill. I wondered for a long time whether or not that made me just as evil as Down. Ultimately, I could never decide; I know that I never will.
“Soon, however, I found different matters to worry about. As Down stumbled around, groaning in pain, and Kite tossed the bloodied mirror into the corner, the ceiling gave way. What had once been a stream of sand turned into a torrent of dust and rock. It filled that corner first, falling on and covering the Emerald Mirror until it was lost beneath a pile of rubble. As soon as Down saw the mirror vanish, she let out an anguished cry, and then she ran to the pile to dig the mirror free, even as the rocks pounded her from above. Then the hole in the ceiling widened, and Down, too, was buried, even as she screamed for the Emerald Mirror with her blood-filled lungs. ‘My mirror! It’s mine! It’s mine!’ she screamed, over and again, until the last rock crushed her skull completely.
“It was only then that my legs unlocked. I grabbed the good doctor by his fetlock, quickly helped him to his feet, and led he and Kite from the collapsing altar. We were forced to leave Sparks behind; that may haunt me more than anything else. To this day, what occurred in that room still keeps me awake at night, even so many years later. But still, the sight of Sparks’s face as I ran, twisted so horribly—her face had been so friendly, you see, but then it looked like some sort of demon—has been seared into my mind forever. Even if I somehow forget Down’s words or that scream, that face… it disturbs me no matter how much I flee it.”
The old stallion stopped, then, and stirred his tea idly.
“That was not the end of it,” he said quietly. “Sad as I am to say it, that was not the end of it. After we fled that altar and escaped the tunnel, our group broke apart, understandably. Kite left for parts unknown, and I’ve no doubt we shall never meet again. Hooves—oh, Hooves!—he suffered more than any of us. His fortune was eradicated, replaced only with an ever-present lucklessness that followed him like a wolf. Every action was at its nadir, every worst scenario came true. I recall it so clearly, when we met at that bar one month after Down destroyed us.
“Hooves looked at me seriously, then he told me, ‘I killed a patient.’ ‘That wasn’t you!’ said I. ‘That could not have been you. It was your—’ ‘It doesn’t matter what it was!’ he declared angrily, cutting me off. ‘A patient died because I failed. This wretched curse has crippled me beyond salvation. I’m completely hopeless. I can do nothing anymore, and there is no way to flee this curse.’ It was no small surprise when I opened the newspaper the following week and found his name in the obituaries. He had tried to hang himself, but had failed to tie the noose properly, so he simply hung there in horrible agony for several hours until he finally died. Thus, my best friend had killed himself—and thus, he passed on his curse to his daughter, and she to her daughter, and she to hers.
“I never saw Kite again. Wherever she is now, I’ve no doubt she is better off than she would be here. But being immortal is a curse I would not wish upon anypony; when I told Celestia of my current status, I believe that she pitied me most of all. It was she who gave me this cottage, you see, and who erased it from the map at my request. I could not stand if a creature were to come along, only for me to have to acknowledge their death in a comparatively short time to my ‘life.’ I have watched this world change, twist, and alter into its current form over two centuries, but I still cannot forget that day all those years ago. I could live forever, and I would never forget that day. Like ashes, lost in the wind, only to return later, or a look into that eternal dusk. Forever undying, unliving, forced to know the past, to never forget… never…”
He went silent again, but this time the silence seemed permanent. Then he looked up at my companion and I.
“That is all.”
There was no sound for quite some time. That old, creaking cottage seemed to take on a new meaning, in light of the old stallion’s identity.
“So you quit immediately, then?” I heard myself ask. “Archaeology, that is.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I took some time before I left, but I ultimately could not manage it. There were far too many bad memories associated with the field for me. I am surprised, though,” he added, “that your colleague knew of me. As I said, I took great pains to hide myself from the rest of the world, to the point where I’d imagine few even know this cottage exists. They must have been quite dedicated to the cause.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling thinly despite the tragedy of his story. “She is.”
I stood up, then, and turned to my companion. I nodded curtly, fully prepared to deliver my next question.
“Are you ready to go, Ms. Do?” I asked her.
“Wait, now!” the old stallion said, standing up quickly. “Did you not want to know the mirror’s location?”
I shook my head, then smiled back at him. “No,” I said. “I believe I’ve already gained the information I came here for—and besides, I would hardly wish to deal with a creature such as Down, or to be cursed with immortality myself. I’ve no need for things like that. There are other relics, after all.”
My companion shot me a glance. “Hey, are you sure about this? I mean, you’re the one who—”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “I am quite sure. Thank you for your time, Professor,” I said to the old stallion, “but I believe we should get going. It is late, after all.”
He just blinked, clearly confused by my change of heart, then nodded slowly.
“I see,” he said after a second. “Well, I wish you both a safe journey back home. Not all of us live forever, after all.”
He clearly intended that statement as a joke, but I could not help but detect a somewhat ominous air from it.
My companion packed her notebook into her bag, then waved goodbye as she stepped out the door.
“Heh… Well, see you, Professor!” she called, still clearly a bit confused. “I hope we meet again some day!”
We stepped out that front door, and into the dark embrace of the night sky outside. My companion and I walked silently for a moment down the path to the cottage, and then we plunged directly into the forest beneath the starlit sky—the place still covered with that eternal dusk.