The sound of a cough snatched Rainbow Dash from her sleep. Eyes snapping open, she jerked her head up and whipped around to the source only to find it was just Twilight, having finally woken up.
Twilight sat leaning forward heavily on her front hooves with her head hung. She paused briefly as she glanced at Rainbow Dash, then closed her eyes and bent over as she went into a fit of coughing. Rainbow Dash sat awkwardly, waiting for her to finish. After a dozen or more violent coughs, she seemed to get it under control.
Wiping her mouth with her forehoof, Twilight sat upright and rested her back against the wall. She moved her forehooves experimentally and winced, even as they circled in only a small range of motion.
Rainbow Dash watched her with raised eyebrows. It was always strange to see her weak like this, even if she’d seen it before when they first met. "You okay?" Rainbow asked, "I was worried for a bit that you might have gotten seriously messed up."
"What happened?" Twilight asked, her voice raw and scratchy.
"Some crazy pony kidnapped us and tried to keep us at her cottage." Twilight moaned again. Rainbow Dash tilted her head, her brow knitting together. "You alright? She gave you some sort of dizzying medicine stuff. From what she said, it sounded like she was trying to keep you completely out of it."
"It sure feels like she was," Twilight said. Her chest rose and fell with tiny breaths. Shutting her eyes, managed to bring one hoof up to massage her temple.
Rainbow Dash noticed the side she chose to massage and winced. "I sorta accidentally hit your head against a wall when I was carrying you. I moved us in here when I woke up and found you were still out."
Twilight let go of her head. She leaned to her side and retched, spilling a small trail of stomach fluid in the corner of the cell. There probably would have been more of a mess if she ever ate. She hunched over it, trying to catch her breath.
Rainbow Dash wrinkled her nose and looked away. "Uh, I know you usually don’t eat or drink much of anything, but should I get you something?"
Twilight shoved against the ground, righting herself in her seat. "Water," she said, pausing to take a breath after, "would help the taste."
"I think I can manage that." Rainbow Dash walked over to the wall where she’d laid her saddlebags and rummaged through them. Once she found her canteen, she brought it over to Twilight. "I’ve still got a decent amount left, but try not to waste any."
Twilight nodded, taking it from her. She slipped off the lid and drank a mouthful before passing it back.
Rainbow Dash accepted it from her, taking a drink herself before placing the cap back on it and stuffing it in her saddlebags. She looked up at the hole in the ceiling. The last sliver of the waning moon hung overhead, its pittance of light striking down into their cell.
"We’ll start looking again once you’re better. It doesn’t look like it’s all that long until the new moon. This is probably the safest place to rest up for the time being."
"You should just go," Twilight said. Her coat shined with sweat. "Find your friends."
Rainbow Dash snorted. "And what, leave you like this? Fat chance. I’m not ditching one friend just to go looking for some others slightly sooner."
She sat down next to her bags, digging through the food Applejack had given her. "Besides," she said, eventually settling on a canning jar of applesauce. "If that manticore is still there, I’m going to need you to watch my back. Heck, I’d just rather have you watching my back in general." Rainbow Dash blushed, thinking about how weak that sounded. "You know, just because of my wing and all. Not being able to fly messes up the way I learned to fight."
Twilight gave a slight nod. She grew quiet, as she often did. Glancing around the cell, her eyes rested on the door. "These are the ruins where we met," she said, staring at the melted hole through the door’s prison bars.
Rainbow Dash nodded. "Which means we must be close to where I got separated from my squad. This time I know which direction to go in."
"I came to these ruins from the southwest, through the forest." Twilight was forced to pause as she caught her breath. "Going through, I never saw any place matching the one you described."
"We weren’t near the forest. It was my first scouting run, so we tried to steer clear of danger by staying out in the open." Rainbow Dash sighed, drinking a mouthful of the applesauce. It tasted astoundingly sweet. "But I guess staying clear of danger just isn’t something you can do down here."
Twilight’s ears flattened as she hung her head. Her eyes seemed to stare past the ground.
Rainbow Dash’s brow furrowed. She straightened. "So what about you? What were you doing in the forest to the southwest? What have you been doing at all for these past seven years?"
Twilight looked up at her, then dropped her head back toward the ground. She remained silent. Her mouth curved in a thoughtful frown. Just as Rainbow Dash was beginning to think she wouldn’t get an answer, Twilight gave one.
"Searching."
It was short. Reluctant. Twilight didn’t meet her eyes and instead stared down the narrow hallway past the cell door, looking uncomfortable. She fidgeted ever so slightly.
Rainbow Dash stored it in the back of her mind to ask about later, but for now decided not to push it. "I guess that makes two of us," she said in between finishing off her applesauce. "Seven years, huh? Must be pretty hard to find, whatever it is."
Twilight nodded.
"Well, after we find my squad, how about I help look? I’ll be stuck down here, and Spitfire and Soarin will probably be itching to go back to Cloudsdale. I could spend the rest of my time down here helping you find it."
Twilight stared at Rainbow Dash, frozen and blinking. Then her whole body tensed up, and she leaned over to her side to puke.
Rainbow Dash’s lip curled while Twilight retched. She reached into her saddlebag, finding her waterskin, and slid it across the floor.
Twilight took it once she finished expelling what was still left in her stomach. "Do as you will," she said as she removed the cover, coughing. The corners of her lips betrayed the barest hint of a smile as she drank. "I’ve given up on trying to be rid of you."
Rainbow Dash crossed her hooves in front of her chest and huffed, but she supposed it would be the closest thing to a ‘thank you’ she would get.
Twilight stood, her legs shaking slightly, and hobbled over to Rainbow Dash. She paused in front of her, handing the water back with an outstretched hoof.
Rainbow Dash took it and placed it back in her bag. She turned back to Twilight, looking at the way her legs shook, braced in a wide stance that was struggling to hold her up. "You sure you’re going to be alright?"
Twilight nodded. "I’ll be fine. I believe I got rid of most of the poison," she said, glancing back at where she’d been sitting. She faced Rainbow Dash. "We’ve stayed here too long. We should keep moving."
Rainbow Dash felt like protesting, seeing Twilight’s state, but she knew by now the other mare would hate being treated as though she were weak. The stubbornness with which she feebly stood said she wasn’t about to wait around and rest. So with a sigh, Rainbow lifted her saddlebags and strung them over her back.
The two of them climbed through the hole in the cell door, Twilight’s spell having melted the door shut, and then made their way down the mossy stone corridor. The mummified body of the darkened pony from before still lay around the turn where Twilight had killed it. Its lifeless eyes were fixed with rage. Rainbow Dash tried to ignore it, hugging the opposite wall as they walked past, but she still felt a slight chill as she pictured its dead eyes following her.
The corridor opened up, and they stepped outside. Moss, crumbled stone, and the lightless night greeted them.
"How are we supposed to cross when the bridge is gone?" Twilight said, staring to their side at the bridge’s remains.
Rainbow Dash gestured for Twilight to follow her. "I know another way across."
Rainbow Dash led her to a dome-like structure with a large gap in its roof where the stone had caved in. Inside it were stairs that ran around the wall in a spiralling descent. Twilight lit her horn as she peered over the edge, staring down at the pitch darkness of the drop through the center of the stairwell.
"There’s a tunnel down here that leads out to the bottom of the gorge," Rainbow Dash said, starting down the stairs. "I poked my head out the door while I was here last time and saw a matching door on the other side, but I didn’t see much else since I closed it as soon as I saw how many darkened there were outside."
Twilight followed Rainbow Dash. As the light from the surface faded, the stairwell became filled with the echo of their hoofsteps.
"I think this place was once some sort of barracks or something," Rainbow Dash said. She walked near the edge and took a look towards the bottom. "Down there is where I got my that spear I had, after I lost my Cloudsdale one while running from the manticore." She glanced back at Twilight. "I know you’ve got your magic, but do you want to pick a weapon while we’re here?"
Twilight shook her head. "I was never formally taught how to use a weapon. During the time I spent studying at the University, I thought I’d never have need of one."
"Spitfire taught me how to use a spear, but most of what she taught me was how to abuse speed, flight, and reach to attack in a way where a darkened can’t attack back. I’m still trying to figure out how to fight while my hooves are planted firmly on the ground. It messes up everything I knew."
Twilight stared down at her hooves as she walked. There was a lull as neither of them spoke. Their steps filled the silence.
"If we wind up in combat," Twilight said, "will you be able to kill a darkened?"
Rainbow Dash gave a shrug while she walked. "Sure, if push comes to shove."
"Even if they’re ponies?"
Rainbow Dash hesitated briefly mid-step, then continued on. "I don’t know if I want to talk about this yet. There’s still a lot I haven’t made my mind up about—I mean, I don’t know if that’s me."
Rainbow Dash stopped. She turned around. "I want to be like you, I really do. I want to be like Spitfire and like Soarin. All my life I’ve wanted to be like them, and I knew sometimes they kill darkened. I understand it’s a mercy to kill them and that sometimes it needs to be done. I’ve tried to picture myself there with my spear, standing face to face with them, watching it end by my hoof, and I can’t."
Turning back around, Rainbow Dash huffed. "Yeah, yeah, I know it’s stupid, but I don’t feel like I have any right to be making that decision. And so I can’t take somepony’s life, even if they’ve gone dark."
"It won’t be whether to kill or not to kill, it will be to either kill or die," Twilight said. "Maybe as a Wonderbolt you would have been able to avoid it, only coming down for brief day trips to scavenge supplies, but you’re stuck here now. Spend enough time down here and you will find yourself in such a situation. It’s the reality of life here on the surface. It will be them or it will be you."
Rainbow Dash glared back at Twilight. "You don’t think I know that? I’m not some naive filly. I know that it’s dangerous here, and I know completely how easy it is to find yourself in a life-or-death situation down here. It’s not like I don’t think about it, okay? I think about it constantly—and you know what? It scares me. I’m not even afraid to admit it. The thought that any phase of the moon now I might find myself in a some situation where I have no choice but to kill somepony is terrifying. But you know what? Being badgered by you constantly about it, as if saying, ‘Yeah, Twilight, I think I’ll be able to kill somepony now’ would actually mean anything, doesn’t help!"
Twilight blinked, her frown gone and her ears flattened against her head. She opened and closed her mouth, but ultimately nothing came out.
Rainbow Dash huffed. "Whatever. Forget we ever had this stupid conversation," she said, and stomped off, continuing back down the stairwell.
Twilight silently followed.
They continued down for minutes in mute discomfort. Occasionally Twilight would catch Rainbow Dash stealing an over-the-shoulder glance at her, and whenever she did, Rainbow would jerk her attention back forwards, glaring at the walls.
As the seemingly endless spiral of stairs gave way to an end, Twilight looked around. A chill sat in the recess of the ruins. The thick, old stones from which it was built so long ago had frozen deep down in the dark.
Rainbow Dash motioned towards a door on the opposite side of the stairwell floor. "The armory is through here."
The two of them crossed the stairwell floor to the iron door. Rainbow Dash undid the metal latch and gave it a stiff shove. The hinges on it groaned and screeched miserably as it slowly swung open, leading to a larger room.
Twilight glanced about the room’s dark corners, staying by the door. It looked to be a mess hall of sorts. Ten long wooden tables sat in half as many rows while weapon racks lined the walls. Another iron door mirrored lay on the opposite side of the room, though unlike the one they entered, it supported a heavy wooden beam, bracing it shut against the outside.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes as she stepped inside the room. "Come on. It’s safe. I made sure to lock up last time I left, so we don’t have to worry about any darkened down here."
Twilight entered and immediately crossed over to the walls to see the weapons. Rainbow Dash closed the door and joined her, following as she strafed the walls. Each weapon rack Twilight came to, she was greeted with the orange-brown sight of rusted steel.
Twilight stopped after viewing all the armaments in the room. The only ones there were blunt, heavily rusted short swords and spears. "Most of these wouldn’t be much better than wielding a stick," she said.
"That still leaves them being better than a stick," Rainbow Dash said, picking up a spear off the wall. She slid it back into the loop in her saddlebag where she carried her old one. She glanced around the room. "I don’t see any weapons that aren’t rusted."
Twilight gave a slight shrug. "I’ll be fine without one. I would sooner rely on my magic than a rusted blade."
"Suit yourself," Rainbow Dash said. She began walking towards the braced iron door. "The way outside is through here."
Leaving the hall, they entered the long and winding corridor. It never branched nor opened to any room, yet every hundred or so paces there was another of the underground ruins thick iron doors.
Eventually they came to a gigantic iron door, its hinges as thick as an entire hoof. At it, Rainbow Dash stopped and turned to Twilight.
"There’s another door like this on the other side of the valley. I’ve only ever opened this gate once. What I saw was… well, I don’t know what happened to the guards that used to be here, but I’m pretty sure most of them are behind this door."
"Darkened?" Twilight asked.
Rainbow Dash gave a nod. "Around twenty. Maybe more. I got a look at the valley and shut the door after seeing how many there were. I didn’t want to stick around to have them notice me." She craned her neck up and stared at the top of the iron door. "I have no idea what could have caused them to all turn or why they’re all out in the valley."
"The dark is constantly moving. In a deep, narrow channel like this, it’s likely that a cloud of it swept through before any of the guards knew what was going on. It would have turned them all dark in an instant." The light from Twilight’s horn flickered and dimmed. "Darkness grows in places the moon fails to reach. It’s a good reason not to explore far from starlight."
"So is there a chance we’ll get turned if we go out there?"
Twilight’s lips thinned in a slight grimace. "I don’t sense the miasma being any denser than normal on the other side of this door. Still, with the new moon it would be best if we don’t linger in the valley."
A sharp snort came from Rainbow Dash. "Not like we’d have any reason to want to." She rubbed her shoulder, staring up at the center of the door. "Maybe we should just head back and walk around this whole thing."
"When I passed through here, this crevasse stretched in either direction as far as I could see. I’d sooner pass through here."
"Okay. So then what’s the plan for getting past the regiment of darkened and getting through the locked door on the other side?"
Twilight walked up to the door and slid its latch open, having to shove the iron widget with both hooves. With the door unlocked, but still closed, she faced Rainbow Dash.
"Follow me and stay quiet."
They slowly eased the door open, a low groan of metal scraping against metal coming from its hinges. The outside was pitch black, the new moon robbing the crevasse of what little light usually reached its depths. With its high walls blocking the night sky, only the light of a few stars reached them.
Twilight was the first to step outside, the light from her horn dimmed to light a minimal brightness.
In the darkness around her, beyond the reach of her light, the moaning of the darkened filled the crevasse. Their voices, thin and rasping, called out to the darkness itself, lost and begging.
Rainbow Dash joined her and shut the door behind them, closing it by the latch outside. Sliding her rusted spear out of its loop, she bit it by the middle. Her stance widened in preparation.
Into the abyss they walked, surrounded by an unseen battalion of darkened. They took their steps slow but with lengthened stride so as to cross quickly and unheard.
They were unnoticed for but a few scarce moments. As they passed through, the moans of the darkened grew more restless, and accompanying their cries in the dark were the sounds of their shambling, of chainmail rustling and of metal plates scraping against one another.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash’s pace quickened, their hoofsteps growing louder.
Out of the dark ahead of them, a darkened stepped into the light. Its pale white eyes locked on them, its face contorting in rage just moments before Twilight slew it with a blade of flame, melting a hole clear through its chest and the armor it wore. The darkened dropped quietly with its strings cut.
In the darkness, however, the cries had escalated to furious howls of anger.
"Run!" Twilight shouted, breaking into a gallop.
Rainbow Dash followed suit, her head whipping around with her spear at the nearby howling of the darkened. One lunged at her from the side, and she shoved it back roughly with the butt of her weapon.
"More light!" she shouted around her weapon’s handle, barely managing to react in time to shove away another darkened on her other side with the blunted head of her spear.
The light from Twilight’s horn grew, and the visible area around them tripled in size. As its area grew, the light encompassed more than a dozen darkened. Some ambled or limped, falling behind, while others ran with nearly the same speed they did. Some ran at them with spears, some with swords, and many of them with nothing other than a mindless hatred.
Most were behind them or to their sides, as the far wall of the crevasse came into sight. The iron door wasn’t far off of the direction they were running. They angled their course towards it as the few darkened drew close.
Of the three darkened ahead, Twilight engulfed two in pillars of flame while Rainbow Dash charged the third. The two that had been set alight writhed as the fires cooked them in their armor.
Coming into range of the third darkened, Rainbow Dash swung with a sweeping strike, using the blunted head of her weapon like a club. The rusted metal crashed into the darkened’s foreleg and bent it at an unnatural angle. Not stopping there, Rainbow Dash pulled her spear back and spun it around for another sweeping strike at the darkened’s second leg, the heavy spearhead snapping the bone like kindling.
With both its forelegs broken, the broken guard drove face-first into ground.
"Get to the door," Twilight said, her commanding tone rising clearly above the senseless cries of the darkened.
Rainbow Dash ran past her and reached the door, whirling to face the darkened in a lower stance.
As Twilight drew near the iron door, her horn glowed bright, and a bonfire erupted from the ground. Racing across the ground, it spread in an arc around them until the ends of it crashed against the gorge, its flames splashing up against the rock like an ocean wave. An unfortunate darkened who stood in its path became consumed. Dropping its weapon and letting out a shrill cry, it writhed against the flames as they covered.
A living torch, it stumbled about blindly for a brief second. Once it fell, its struggle ceased.
Two more of the darkened grew enraged and attempted to charge through the wall of fire, meeting the same quick and agonizing end. Beyond that, no more tried, though their disgruntled cries could be heard on the other side of the fire.
Twilight faced the iron door, her horn fading to a dimmer light as the flames lit the area. The center of the door began to glow with heat. "Make sure none of them slip past," she said to Rainbow Dash without turning around, her attention fixed on the door.
Rainbow Dash stepped forward, standing protectively in front of Twilight with her spear ready. For a full minute, the darkened moaned and howled on the other side of the fire. Whatever sensibilities that remained kept them from trying to cross the fire.
As the melting began to form a hole in the door, Twilight’s magic grew strained. The flame barrier flickered and waned as the wails of the darkened grew ever more frustrated and impatient.
A pair of darkened let out a cry and charged through the fire. One, carrying a sword, burned up and crumpled to a stillness the moment after it landed.
The other, carrying a spear, howled as it caught aflame, but did not fall. With its flesh still burning, it charged at them with the rusted point of its weapon forward.
Rainbow Dash watched it come, prepared with her spear. Sweeping the darkened guard’s weapon aside, she jammed the head of her rusted weapon into the hindquarters of its weight-bearing leg.
The darkened stumbled back from the blow. Fire spread across its skin, and it collapsed.
The hole Twilight was melting had grown large enough for a pony to easily fit through. She stepped through it, careful of its red-hot edges. Once inside, she turned around to look at Rainbow Dash through the hole.
Rainbow Dash hesitated for a brief moment before slipping her spear into the loop on her saddlebags. She stepped carefully through the hole, feeling the proximity of the melted iron from the heat on her coat. Once through, she glanced back outside, where the flaming wall still held the darkened guards at bay. The bodies of the darkened who had tried to pass through the wall of flame still burned, fire flickering across their skin. Rainbow Dash swallowed.
"I can hold the wall for a little while longer," Twilight said, "but we should go sooner rather than later."
Rainbow Dash nodded, and the two of them pressed on down the dark stone corridor, leaving the flames and the cries of the darkened behind.
Like the last, the corridor contained a series of iron doors facing out toward the crevasse. The first they reached was unlocked, and once they had bolted it shut behind them, Twilight allowed the glow around her horn to fade, a scarce pink light remaining.
She leaned against a wall, breathing heavily, but before Rainbow Dash could ask whether she was alright, she shoved away from the wall and righted herself.
"I’m fine," she said, answering Rainbow Dash’s concern. "The poison hasn’t completely left my system yet."
"Well, this might be the last safe place to stop and rest if you’re actually not feeling fine."
"It’s passing," Twilight insisted, and began to walk down the hallway once more.
Rainbow Dash shrugged, following her.
They passed two more iron doors before they reached a stairwell like the one they had gone down. Drops of water fell from above, and as they ascended the stairs, the dripping grew until the sound of rain reached their ears. By then there had become a steady shower of water falling down one side of the stairwell’s open center.
As they reached the top, the stone beneath their hooves became slicked and wet. Rain poured in through a collapsed hole in the roof above, through which only clouds could be seen.
"At least it waited until we made it to the other side," Rainbow Dash said as she stood beneath the hole, rain pelting her. She squinted up at the black sky, flicking her now-damp mane out of her eyes. "So much for staying under starlight."
Twilight pulled her cloak’s hood up to the base of her horn. "The rain should make it harder for any darkened to spot us."
They stepped outside the crumbled tower. The ruins across the gorge behind them were all but swallowed by the night and rain, and the plains which were still ahead lay mostly in darkness. What could be seen of the plains was their very edge, where mute-grey grasses sagged and drooped from the weight of the water dripping down their stalks.
"It’ll be a long walk," Rainbow Dash said. "When I was lost and heading across these plains, it was nearly a full phase before I found these ruins."
Biting the string on the front of her cloak, Twilight tightened it around her collar. "Then we should go now and cross quickly."
Starting down the cobbled road outside the tower, the two of them left the ruins behind and made their way across the plains.