//------------------------------// // What Lies Beneath // Story: Do Not Go Gentle // by ShinigamiDad //------------------------------// Twilight worked her way around the base of the royal palace, ending up at the foot of its tallest, oldest tower. She probed the ground and adjacent stone-work with her horn’s magic, and kept a pair of scrolls hovering nearby, referring to them frequently. “I wish Rarity was here,” she said impatiently, “she has a better feel for subterranean features!” She pressed an ear against a large, smooth-cut block of granite, and tapped tentatively with a hoof. The stone returned a slightly hollow report. Twilight tipped her head slightly and furrowed her brow: “This seems like the right spot. I wonder…” She looked around furtively, then boosted the magical glow of her horn, sweeping the stone’s surface. “Almost,” she said, squinting at the surface, subtly shifting her magic from its accustomed pale purple to darker shades, finally ending in the oily, unearthly black of dark magic. A pair of glyphs appeared, faint and scarred. “I knew it!” she said triumphantly, pulling a tattered, wine-red book from her saddle bag, flipping it open, and comparing the figures on the page to the glowing symbols on the stone. She leaned forward, wings spread slightly, anticipating a trap of some sort, and touched her horn to the first glyph, then the second. Nothing happened. “Shoot!” she said sharply, “I was sure that would work! Both sets of notes indicate…” She rifled through several pages, and pulled another fragment of parchment from her saddlebag, muttering. Twilight plopped down on the turf with an annoyed grunt, and continued to murmur various words and incantations from the books and parchment scraps, now spread about on the ground. An ancient architectural drawing of the tower before her caught her eye: “That’s odd. It looks like some of the foundation stonework’s different from the original plans. I wonder why?” She stood and walked back toward the now-blank stone, tipping her head slightly, catching the dying rays of the evening sun. She tapped and pushed against the granite, muttering various spells and power words while sending out pulses of magic from her horn. She sat down dejectedly, back against the cool stone, sweat running down her face: “Rarity, nothing--I could use a certain somepony who can just pass through walls right about now!” She began to pull the fragments and scrolls back toward her, when the wind caught a bit of parchment, blowing it a few feet around the corner, behind a tangle of brambles and vines, clustered beneath a drain spout. She reached out with her magic, but the scrap had caught on a branch, and wouldn’t budge. Twilight raised an eyebrow: “Odd. And a bit of a nuisance, as well…” She stood and walked toward the drain spout, ducking beneath a cluster of old vines, using her magic to clear a crude, narrow path. The glyphs on the stone behind her began to glow faintly, as the rays of the setting sun struck them, and Twilight’s magic lent a pale violet tint to the vines and stonework. “Why--won’t--these--vines--clear?” she grunted as she swept her horn back and forth. Twilight finally scooted between the wall and the thorny brambles, and leaned in to grab the scrap with her teeth. A vine suddenly looped over her horn, pulling her forward slightly, causing her to lose her balance and topple. The ground under her feet sagged and gave way, dropping her beneath the turf and its tangled cover of vines. The glyphs glowed a deep gold for a moment, then went dark, as the sun dipped below the horizon, and the western sky turned blood red, lending a pinkish cast to a single white rose, nestled among the brambles. Twilight fell down through a crumbling collection of pilings, loose stones, and discarded clay sewage pipes, dragging along a shower of dirt, sand, plant roots and flight feathers. She cried out as she fell, but immediately inhaled a mouthful of dirt, and coughed violently, causing her wings to spread out just enough to snag her left wing on an old timber support. The decayed wood snapped, and the sound of wood breaking was matched by the ripping sound of a tendon giving way in her shoulder. She screamed in pain, and blacked-out for a moment, twisting and dropping heavily to the stone floor below. Twilight came to a minute later, tears welling her eyes, searing pain radiating all along her left side. She lay on the tunnel floor for several minutes, trying to master her pain, and get her bearings. Her horn cast its accustomed light, but it seemed dim, and didn’t illuminate more than a few feet. “What’s going on?” she muttered through gritted teeth, as she sat up and pulled the straps from her saddlebags, fashioning a crude restraining band. She used her magic to clumsily work the straps around her abdomen and over her left wing, securing it to her side. She took a deep, shuddering breath and stood, pain shooting up her legs and across her back. She wobbled forward a few steps, and decided nothing else was broken, so she picked her way back to the point where she had landed, and looked up at the small hole through which she had fallen, some 25 feet above her head. Twilight cleared her throat and shouted: “Can anypony hear me? This is Twilight--I’ve fallen down a hole next to the wall, behind some vines. Be careful--the ground is soft and thin!” There was no response. She called out several more times, but to no avail. She tipped her horn toward the ragged opening and tried to send a beam of light through, but as before, the glow from her horn died away after less than 15 feet. As the the final rays of the setting sun dimmed above ground, the hole darkened and disappeared. Twilight trembled for a moment, but hooked her horn through her saddlebags, stood tall, and began to slowly walk down the tunnel, looking for an open chamber, or cave, which might match some of the map and scroll fragments she had with her. After about 120 feet, the tunnel did open out into a partially-excavated chamber, about 20 feet high, and roughly rectangular. Twilight set down on a rough-hewn rock, and pulled out a map. “Now I wish I had my brother and his stupid graph paper! I don’t have any way to make a map, and I don’t know if these old things are accurate!” She squinted at a fragment, then tried to cast her light as far as it would go in order to illuminate the whole space. The radiance of her horn seemed almost double what it had been at the other end of the tunnel. “Well that’s a little piece of luck, anyway!” she exclaimed as she got a good look at the chamber, and the map. She nodded: “Yes, it looks like this chamber is on here. And if I go to the left another, oh, 100 feet or so, I should come to another cave or room or whatever. That one seems to be close to the hidden stairway up in Starswirl’s secret room.” Twilight closed her eyes and gasped as a spike of pain shot from her damaged wing down her left foreleg, followed by a wave of nausea. She gritted her teeth and stood unsteadily. She shuffled wearily down the partially-brick-lined tunnel, noting dark water seeping through, forming puddles on the uneven floor, reflecting her horn’s light. A mass of something white, embedded in the tunnel wall off to one side caught her attention. Twilight stepped closer, and was finally able to make out various bones, tucked into a rough niche in the wall, partially covered by fallen brickwork. She recoiled: “Ugh! I guess Reaper was right--some ponies did die down here and were never found!” She leaned in and examined the tangle of skeletal remains: “One, two, at least three skulls. I wonder if more ponies died in these caves and chambers than Reaper let on?” She stumbled back away from the bones, wincing in pain, and walked out of the end of the tunnel, into a low antechamber, barred at its opposite end by a door. There was a collapsed stairway leading upward on the right wall. Twilight walked to the stairs’ entry and peered upward into the ruined passage: “That sure looks like Reaper’s collapsed and melted stones. I must be in the right place.” She sat down gingerly on the bottom step and brought a tattered scroll out of her saddlebag, peering between it and the nearby, iron-banded door. She looked up at the ceiling, and back at the ruined stairs. “Alright,” she said, rising wearily to her feet, “let’s see what you have to show me!” She tucked the scroll away as she approached the door. She tentatively touched her horn to the door’s pitted and stained surface, pushing slightly, emitting slight pulses of magic at the same time. “C’mon,” she muttered, “don’t make me blast you in. I don’t want anypony to know I was here, just in case!” She elevated the magic level coursing through her horn, revealing the door’s surface in greater detail. The stains, in particular, caught her eye. She leaned back from the door and focused on one particularly well-defined, dark patch. She swept a beam of dark magic across it and sighed. Twilight raised her left foreleg up, and focused a thin ribbon of bright, silvery energy from her horn along the inside of her wrist, lancing the skin. She bit her lip as a bead of blood welled up from the incision. She dipped the tip of her horn in the blood, and moved back toward the door. As faint bands of dark magic played across the surface of her horn, Twilight traced a bloody glyph on the door’s surface. It shimmered for a moment, then went dark. The door swung inward silently a few inches, then stopped. Twilight sucked lightly at the wound for a moment until it stopped bleeding, then squared her shoulders and pushed the door open. She stepped slowly into the darkened space beyond. “OK,” she whispered, lighting up her horn, filling the space with radiance. “Let’s see if this was worth…” “Oh, my.”