//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4: From the Depths 
// Story: Desert Water 
// by Unwhole Hole 
//------------------------------//

	This time, the dream did not take a stop in Cheerilee’s classroom. There was no sampling of public nudity, and no embarrassment. Instead, the dream progressed forward, and once again Diamond Tiara found herself in the same place she had been before. 
Unlike last time, she now found herself standing in knee-deep water. The small, crystal clear river gurgled over the smooth, glossy stones just beneath its surface. Upstream, the waterfall poured from an unseen cliff high above, its mist refracting rainbows through the warm air. All around Diamond Tiara was a beautiful oasis of mossy rocks, ferns, and trees so high that she could not hope to possibly see past their tropical canopy. 
The river below was cold, but not unpleasant as it drifted lazily past Diamond Tiara’s ankles. If anything, it looked delicious. In her short life, Diamond Tiara had experienced foods that many fully adult ponies only dreamed of: the finest of imported oats, exotic flowers grown in the highest mountains, rich caviar, and more fudge flavors than Celestia herself was aware of. None of those things had tasted as good as the trickling, babbling water below her now looked. 
Diamond Tiara suddenly became conscious of a powerful thirst. Her mouth felt dry, but the thirst penetrated far deeper than that: the idea of drinking that water poured into her mind, forcing away all other thoughts and all other goals. It was as if she were drowning in the dryness of the air and that cool, crystal clear water were the breath she needed to survive. 
Unable to resist, she lowered her head to it- -but found that she could not reach it. She tried to drink, but none of it entered her mouth. There was nothing to swallow. Though Diamond Tiara could feel the water on her hooves,  she now realized that there was truly none there. 
The running of the river suddenly stopped. The water froze in place, unable to move. The sounds of the stream stopped, and in its stillness it became like a mirror, reflecting the sky and trees above- -and the ponies that surrounded the pool. 
Diamond Tiara looked up at them. They were the same as before, the gray ones whose faces were somehow obscured even when she looked directly at them. Now, though, they were different, but only slightly. As if Diamond Tiara could almost recall their names. 
Their lips were moving. The ghostly ponies were speaking, but no words came from them. Then, from nowhere in particular, the whisper of a female voice filled the air. 
“Please, Diamond Tiara,” it said, almost seeming to come up from the water as the cheerful and seductive bubbling had just moments before. “We’re so…so thirsty…”
Diamond Tiara did not know why, but she was suddenly afraid. The gray ponies stepped forward toward the very edge of the water, but did not try to drink from it. Instead they formed a tight circle, staring at her from all sides, all speaking their own words silently. 
“I don’t understand,” said Diamond Tiara, her voice shaking. “The water…the water’s right there!”
“WATER.” They all said it in unison, their head suddenly perking up and their white eyes becoming visible. “THE WATER.”
“Please, Diamond Tiara!” called the female voice. It was pleading- -but at the same time speaking with the tone of a demand both subtle and terrifying. It was only a whisper, but somehow so deafening. “Let us have…let us have the water!”
“No!” cried Diamond Tiara, suddenly. “You can’t have the water!”
She did not understand why, but somehow, she knew that if they were allowed to touch the stream, something terrible would happen. Because the water was not real. There was no pool of liquid. There was only her. 
The female voice on the other side of her perception suddenly produced a horrible scream, louder than anything Diamond Tiara had ever heard before. The grey ponies suddenly solidified around her, and as Diamond Tiara watched, their bodies desiccated into mummies, taking just one step closer to the water before collapsing into dust. 
The illusion of the oasis shifted and faded. The lush, green growth rotted and died as the ground was torn open by new plants. Diamond Tiara suddenly found herself in an endless field of immense, gnarled trees with long, hypodermic spines; around them grew thousands of different kinds of distorted cacti, all reaching out with their needle-covered arms toward her. All reaching for her water. 
Diamond Tiara looked down, and saw her reflection- -except that it was not her. Instead, it was that of a pony clad in rags and black-colored armor that prevented even a speck of his coat from showing. As Diamond Tiara looked down at him, he looked up at her. His mask was nearly featureless, save for two dime-sized marks on the sides of the most frontal portion and a wide breathing manifold. 
A circular clockwork device of silvery metal that was not silver clicked in the center of his chest, and he spoke. 
“Leave this place,” he whispered, his voice obscured through his mask but still perfectly understandable. “You need to get out of here. GET OUT.” 

Diamond Tiara bolted awake with a start. Immediate, the sunlight poured into her eyes, and she shielded herself from the open window on the far edge of the room. She was overheated and drenched in sweat, and part of the thirst of the dream continued within her. Her head felt terrible, and she was dizzy and groggy. 
She sat up and tried to move, but found that she could not. Diamond Tiara looked down at her waist and saw Silver Spoon, still asleep, clinging to her tightly. Seeing her like that reminded Diamond Tiara of what had happened last night, of how the two of them had barricaded off the section of the house that contained their rooms. Across the room, a mass of furniture was still piled against Diamond Tiara’s door, holding it closed against a creature that could apparently vaporize solid stone. 
It had taken most of the night to coax Silver Spoon out from beneath the bed. Even then, Silver Spoon was so shaken that she would only sleep directly beside and holding onto Diamond Tiara. Diamond Tiara Silver Spoon’s presence weird and excessively warm, but her coat was soft and she did not snore. That, and on some level, Diamond Tiara was just as terrified. So she had permitted the shared sleeping accommodations. 
Still, Silver Spoon had a surprisingly powerful grip. It took Diamond Tiara several minutes to unwedge herself her best friend’s grasp. Silver Spoon moaned and rolled over, burrowing beneath the covers in spite of the heat. 
Grumbling, Diamond Tiara stretched. Her body was incredibly sore. She had never run as much as she had the day before, and she had fallen asleep amazingly quickly. From the color of the sunlight coming through the window, she guessed that her and Silver Spoon had probably slept until mid-afternoon. The sun would be going down soon, but as long as it stayed up, they would be safe. Everypony knew that monsters never attacked during the day.     
The wood floor creaked as she crossed it, and Diamond Tiara took special care to avoid the crystal-light lanterns that were dispersed across the floor. Even in the afternoon light, they were still burning at full capacity. The night before, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had gathered every light source they could find and turned Diamond Tiara’s room into a chamber of intense white light almost as bright as day. 
The lights themselves made Diamond Tiara a bit nervous, though. Her hearing had still not recovered completely from the day before. Several times, her parents had warned her to be careful with the crystal lights due to the high price that the special crystals inside commanded. Diamond Tiara had been vaguely aware that they were volatile, but she had no idea just how dangerous they could be. 
After stepping gingerly over the lights, Diamond Tiara reached the window. Seeing the sun outside confirmed what she had expected: it had already started its downward decent. Likewise, she could see that there was no car in the access road. The servants had still not arrived. 
One thing she had not noticed, though, was just how many cholla trees had been planted outside her window. She remembered having seen them in passing, and thought that there were one or two. Now, though, she saw that there was a veritable army of them beneath her third-story window.
Of the spiny, aggressive cactus-like plants, one of them appeared to have had the audacity to start to grow into her open window. Diamond Tiara shuddered, but she did not know why. Something about those green arms- -the ones that had been tapping on her window the night before- -reaching through the small gap reminded her of something frightening that she could almost remember. 
“Stupid window,” she muttered. “I spend half the night moving gross dusty furniture and Silver leaves the window open.” She grabbed the top of the sill an slammed it shut, cutting off the growing arms of the tree outside. The spiky segments dropped to the floor with a rush of greenish fluid, and the hot air that was coming in through the window stopped. 
The sudden slamming sound caused Silver Spoon to awaken suddenly. She released a short cry, and then flailed beneath the blankets on Diamond Tiara’s bed. 
“It’s got me!” she cried.  “I’ve gotten got!”
Diamond Tiara sighed, and then kicked the cactus fragments out of her way as she walked back to the bed. She grasped the blankets and pulled them off sharply, causing Silver Spoon to pour out onto the floor. 
“Diamond Tiara!” cried Silver Spoon, grasping Diamond Tiara’s legs. “You saved me!”
“From a quilt!”
“An itchy quilt…” 
“Silver Spoon, this is serious!”
Silver Spoon frowned, appearing hurt, and stood up. She sat on the edge of the bed, wincing. Diamond Tiara noticed the large bruise that was spreading across her back where Silver Spoon had been thrown against the tombstone the day prior. Silver Spoon immediately began unwinding her frayed braid, clearly intending to re-braid it after she finished. 
“It’s still out there, isn’t it?” she asked. Her voice sounded tremendously heavy. “Please don’t say we have to go down there and close that door…”
“It is,” said Diamond Tiara. “And who knows how many holes it has into here. But no, of course not. I’m not going down there. Ever.”
“What are we going to do?” said Silver Spoon, compulsively pulling at her hair and shaking. “Can…can we run?”
“Where? Into a desert? To where?”
“I don’t know…I don’t know!”
Diamond Tiara sighed and sat down next to Silver Spoon. “The servants never showed up. We’re alone, and we can’t leave. We’d dry up like a pair of adorable prunes before we got anywhere near any ponies. Or it would chase us down when night falls.”
“You’re not making me feel better,” squeaked Silver Spoon.
“You’re not supposed to feel better,” said Diamond Tiara, jumping down from the bed. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.” 

Miraculously, during the chase up from the bowels of the silver mine, Silver Spoon had not even attempted to dump her saddlebags. They and their contents had stayed with her the whole time. Although some of the photograph plates had been broken when the mausoleum door had exploded, almost everything within was still intact. 
Now they were strewn across Silver Spoon’s room on several tables that had been pulled from the neighboring abandoned rooms. Old letters, photographs, and musty books had been poured out amongst the heaps of polaroid photographs of the fillies from their earlier cider-fueled escapade. 
It was through these that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon started sifting through, trying to find something of value, some fragment of importance that might help in their dire predicament. Diamond Tiara did not normally like this kind of work. It was boring, and she was not the best pony at reading. Whether by fear or by curiosity, though, she found herself diving into the texts and pictures. 
The first thing that was brought to both her and Silver Spoon’s attention was the set of photographs that they had recovered. They were terribly old and not well made, and not one of them was in color, but their subject was clear. Almost all of them showed pictures of the miners that had once worked this land. 
The ponies in the pictures showed dirty ponies dressed in frayed, filthy clothing. Their buildings were hastily constructed and rustic to the point where Diamond Tiara wondered if they were even livable. In at least one of the pictures, though, there was a dreary rendition of a town that seemed to have been thriving at some point- -and, from the image of the clock tower in the background, Diamond Tiara realized that the town pictured was the one that she and Silver Spoon had found long abandoned in the desert.
Something was off about the pictures, though, and it made Diamond Tiara oddly nervous. The ponies in the pictures were all obviously different, but they all had the same look about them. They all stared blankly from sunken eyes, and their bodies were tremendously thin and sickly. Their manes and tails were falling out in clumps, and they dressed in excessive clothing. In one picture- -an image of a family that had not one pony over forty- -part of a pony’s cloak-like clothing was being blown to the side, and Diamond Tiara saw that the skin beneath was badly scarred, as if it had been burned. 
Silver Spoon shivered. “What’s wrong with them?” she asked. “They all look so sick…”
“An outbreak?” suggested Diamond Tiara. “Like, in those old movies? But what makes a pony’s hair fall out…” 
Diamond Tiara flipped opened a yellow, stained folder. It was filled with more modern photographs. They were still in black and white, but they were at least paper. A group of them seemed to show a smiling family- -always the same family, and based on the rocks around them, always in the same spot, possibly taken once per year. They did not look like the sickly miners in the old plates, so Diamond Tiara guessed that whatever made them sick had gone away by the time the newer photographs were taken. 
Looking carefully, she scanned the background horizon of each photograph. After a few seconds of looking, she found him. He was by no means in all of the images, but he was definitely in some of them. Sometimes he would be distant, just at the edge of the horizon, a blackish smudge- -and sometimes he would be frighteningly close, so close that happy, smiling ponies in the foreground were barely ten feet away from him, somehow not detecting his presence. 
Those pictures were  eerie, and Diamond Tiara put them away. Instead, she looked at a different set of newer, clearer photographs. They were still not in color, and they mostly showed various aspects of the house under construction. By the way they were taken, Diamond Tiara guessed that they had been taken by a Pegasus. Some of the views were aerial, and the house beneath looked like an insane maze. Other than that, though, there was not much in them save for dust and cactuses. 
“Hey,” said Silver Spoon. “Look at this.” 
She pulled out a large discolored sheet of paper form a pile of blueprints and laid it out in the center of the table. Diamond Tiara gasped when she saw it, hoping that Silver Spoon had not seen her surprise, or just how familiar the design on the yellowed and stained paper looked. 
On it was an image of the pony she had seen in her dreams, the one who had stood in the pool as her reflection. By extension, Diamond Tiara knew that he was the same one that was lurking in the darkness, waiting, watching- -but in the image on the table, he had been rendered in sharp pen strokes and lacked any of the ragged cloth that surrounded his body. 
Diamond Tiara looked closer at the image and realized that it was not a picture of a pony at all. With the drawn-in cutaways and notes, it appeared to be an image of a kind of covering, like a diving suit. Diamond Tiara looked closely at the notes on the margins of the sketch. 	
“It’s a mining suit,” she said. “Or part of one, I guess. It’s supposed to keep a pony safe against…what’s Radon?”
“An inert gas,” said Silver Spoon. “It builds up in really, really deep mines.”
“And how do you- -never mind. This looks like the thing that the…that thing was wearing.”
“It can’t be,” said Silver Spoon.
“And why not?”
“Look,” said Silver Spoon, pointing at several regions of the diagram. “It was never finished. Half the breathing tubes don’t even go anywhere. And doesn’t the shape look a little off to you?”
Diamond Tiara looked down at the image. “Yeah…” she said, realizing that Silver Spoon was right. “This one looks like a pony…”
The two of them stared at it for a moment, and then Diamond Tiara sighed and put her head down on the table. “None of this is helping,” she said. “Silver Spoon, did you find anything?”
“Not much,” replied Silver Spoon. She blushed slightly and lifted up a book. “I actually got a little distracted…”
“‘Strange Alchemy’,” read Diamond Tiara from the book’s cover. “What the hay is that?”
“Historical fiction,” said Silver Spoon, her nose scrunching. Then she blushed much harder. “And it’s definitely not meant for little fillies!”  
“Silver Spoon! You were supposed to be helping me!”
“I was,” said Silver Spoon, putting down the dusty and ancient tome. She pulled out some loosely bound ledgers. “I checked up on that ‘silver’. I was right. I think they knew it was fake.”
“How can you tell?”
“The initial mine had to install special processing equipment, stuff way different from what you use to smelt native silver…which is silver in its non-ore form- -”
“I know what native silver is!”
“Well…snippy…the point is, a bunch of ponies tried to mine this place, but the silver always came out weird. Lots of complaints. There’s some memos that say it was ‘cursed’.” 
“Cursed? With what?”
“It doesn’t say. But the estimates say the mine is huge. I mean, MASSIVE. But everypony who tries to mine it ends up bankrupt, or…”
“Or what?”
Silver Spoon looked Diamond Tiara in the eyes. “Or the ledgers just stop. Like they all just suddenly disappeared.”  
The two looked at each other for a moment, and then back at the table. The photographs of the sickly miners and the incomplete hazard suit stared up at them. Diamond Tiara shuffled through the number of confusing documents. She flipped over one of the mad, indecipherable blueprints of the house and suddenly noticed a small book that she had not seen before.
“What is this?” she asked, picking it up. She opened the front cover. On the inside of the cover was a hoof-written name. 
“What is it?” repeated Silver Spoon. 
“‘The Journal of the Illustrious Sir Pith Helmut’. Wow. Overconfident, much?”
“But your diary says ‘Princess Diamond Dazzle Tiara’ in the front,” noted Silver Spoon. 
“Well, that’s differ- -HEY! I didn’t tell you that you could- -”
“Hey!” said Silver Spoon, suddenly. “What if this Pith guy was the explorer in that movie?”
“What give you that idea?”
“Duh. Because he was wearing a pith helmet.”
“Just because his name is ‘Pith Helmut’ doesn’t mean he wears a…oh.” Diamond Tiara looked up to see Silver Spoon, one eyebrow raised, her hoof pointing at Diamond Tiara’s own diamond tiara. 
Diamond Tiara opened the book and turned to the front page. It was written in exceedingly need but exceedingly florid cursive hoofwriting. Diamond Tiara sighed. She hated reading cursive- -even it if was one of the only things she was actually good at in school. 
“October seventeenth, year of our Sunlord Celestia 886,” she read, slowly. “Once again, I am beginning a new journal volume to document my exemplary and extraordinary life…blah blah blah…oh, here:
“I recently acquired a substantial  house mysteriously constructed in the center of a desert so rural that it does not appear to have any manner of civilized name. The house itself was apparently once the centre of a mining establishment, and long before, a distant redoubt.
“As Equestria’s foremost archeologist- -despite what that fool Daring Feats may claim- -I had actually taken an interest in this location far earlier. My purchase of it- -at an oddly low cost, I might say, from the estate of the last remnant of the burro family that owned it prior, a raving and institutionalized madpony- -is anticipated to bring in a number of early Third Era artifacts. This area also appears to have been considered sacred to the local Mustang tribe before their extinction during the mid-Second Era. 
“In addition, though large, this domicile lacks any room adequate to display the numerous artifacts that I have culled from the lost tombs of Equestria. I intend to construct a small addition to serve as a museum for my collection. Construction will be overseen by my butler, Studly, who, might I add, indeed puts the ‘butt’ in ‘butler’. Oh my.” 
“Eew,” said Diamond Tiara, throwing down the book. “I did not need to know that!” 
“I think I might have,” said Silver Spoon. 
“That’s disgusting!” cried Diamond Tiara. “I mean, he’s a BUTLER.” 
Silver Spoon giggled slightly, but Diamond Tiara continued to look through the journal. It indeed seemed to be a firsthand account of a former owner of the house over one hundred years ago, which was exactly what she was looking for, even if it was only for a short section of the house’s long history. 
She spent several hours searching through it while Silver Spoon read various charts and legers that eventually caused her to lapse into unconsciousness. Diamond Tiara felt more awake than ever, though, and she could not stop reading. 
Some of the parts were boring, florid accounts of ordinary things ranging from the problems of hiring workers to the difficulty of removing the outdoor cacti. Likewise, there were some parts concerning Studly that Diamond Tiara would rather not have seen. A few passages, though, caused her coat to stand on end as she read them. 
One, concerning Pith Helmut’s rediscovery of the mine:

“June seventh, 892. I continue to examine the caverns uncovered during archeological excavation of the central keep. It appears that in our efforts to uncover hidden chambers and, ideally, the castle catacomb, we in fact burst through into the abandoned mines that honeycomb the earth below. 
“I was originally led to believe that the mines here were abandoned due to depletion, but that could not be farther from the case. All of the walls glimmer with the glint of silver; indeed, it seems to sweat from the walls themselves, as though the ground itself were made of precious metal. I know not why progress in the mine had stopped, but it simply appeared that all the miners just left.
“It was my desire to review the possibility of  reactivating the mine to have at these potent reserves of silver, but, to my chagrin, the workers I employ refuse to even touch it. They claim it is ‘cursed’. I initially believed that to be rubbish, but after excavating several skeletons of former miners…
“In addition, and perhaps the strangest of all: the mines appear almost impossibly deep, to extend farther than should have been possible to construct by any known method of engineering. Indeed, none among us have been able to reach the end. But…those who have traveled deep claim to have encountered rooms larger than any cavern, with sights of having been cut there. They also claim that they can hear noises. Not the ordinary sounds of machinery, but the endless churning of vast machinery so incredibly distant. All who have heard it describe it as coming from far, far below. All who returned, anyway.” 

Diamond Tiara shivered, and continued onward through the chapters of the journal. As she did, she realized that the book itself was incomplete. A large section of the center was missing. It had not been broken during transport, or by storage; it was a large section of the middle of the book, which meant that it must have been torn out. 
Even with a piece missing, Diamond Tiara could tell that something was wrong with the book’s author. Initially, he had written formally, with florid, neat writing. He spoke often of journeying into far and distant lands- -which were recorded in numerous other journals, apparently- -and always returning to the peace of his isolated desert home. 
As time went on, though, the writing became simpler, faster, and more intense. The hoofwriting became shaking and simplistic, and the sentences choppy. Through the journal, Diamond Tiara was watching a pony unravel before her eyes. The more time he spent in the house, the more he seemed to be overcome with strangeness and incoherence. 
One recurring theme was what he called a “spectre”:

“January- -no, April, year 894. Saw the spectre again. Night, always at night. She’s there during the day, but always distant. At night, she’s close. Can smell her, but don’t know what she smells like. Open my eyes at night, can see her clearly. Standing in the same corner of my room, watching. Black mask, no eyes, rags- -she always wears rags. I don’t know why. Can I know why? Is she even real? Perhaps I have gone insane from the thirst…but I’m not thirsty, am I? No, not me, but the other one, she is. 
“Always in the same spot. Always watching. She has it in her chest, the (the word was vehemently scratched out). Language- -is it language? Can the speak? I know there must be more than one, or how else would they breed? Can’t get close. Don’t want to. Tried once. Electrical sound, a discharge, spell? Then she was gone. 
“Oh Celestia, I’ve gone mad. Please forgive me for what I must do.” 

Something thumped, and Diamond Tiara cried out and nearly jumped onto the table. Silver Spoon cried out in fright as well- -even though the sound had been her sleeping body falling out of her chair and landing onto the wooden floor. 
Diamond Tiara blinked, realizing just how dark the room had become. Through the window, she saw that the entire horizon outside had become one vast rainbow- -the sun had already set. 
“What is it?” said Silver Spoon. “Ms. Cheerilee, I wasn’t- -oh. I’m not in school.”
“No, you aren’t,” said Diamond Tiara. “But at this point, even school would be an improvement.”
“Oh yeah…” said Silver Spoon, looking at the unfinished ledgers and blueprints before her. “And I was having the weirdest dream. Scootaloo’s wings fell off, and we were trying to find them before they went bad, but I secretly had them on me instead. And I think I was Fyr’mond- -”
“Silver, shut it,” said Diamond Tiara. She held up the journal. “I’ve been reading this.”
“Well, I don’t know what else you would be doing with it.”
“And this guy, Pith, he got really messed up. This house did something to him.”
Silver Spoon whitened. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” She did know. He wrote continuously and intermittently of strange things, of the spectre, of the Voice, and of water. He almost always referenced dreams concerning water, a stream, and a number of pale faceless ponies that surrounded him. That was what made Diamond Tiara the most afraid, and she could not bring herself to tell Silver Spoon about that part. 
“Did you read the end?”
“The end?” 
“Well, yeah. Every journal has an end. It’s when the pony writing it…well…stopped writing.” 
Diamond Tiara gulped, and flipped passed the missing section of the book and all the way to the last populated page. She gasped when she saw the state of it. Through reading the journal, she felt like she had gotten to know Pith Helmut- -but skipping to the end had shown just how far he had fallen. 
The writing now bore little resemblance to real words. There was no punctuation, and the lettering was shaky to the point of near illegibility- -save for the symbols and circles filling most of the page and the margins, which were all perfectly formed but totally unintelligible. 
Silver Spoon looked over Diamond Tiara’s shoulder, and both read the mess of black and red-brown ink. 
“Last time last one last I am the last where are they where are the others;; I don’t know anymore but SHE is still here the other the other she went away but SHE SHE SHE SHE SHE still taking never stops never stops talking burning into my HEAD. Don’t know what year it is can’t tell might have gone backward in time no way to know for sure where is everypony I can’t finish the construction by myself.
“Have to build, have to make it bigger, can’t stop mustn’t stop can’t know don’t want to know what will happen a caddisfly. Yes. YES. No. A larva that surrounds itself with material of its surroundings but why is it hiding or is it hunting looks like a rock looks like a house should have listened she always spoke to me, always told me but I never listened listened to HER instead not a her not female flowers they will flower flowers everywhere they smell like rot so much rot and blood.
“Dreams they always get closer always closer always thirsty the time has come. Yes. The time has come. This will be my last entry. Tonight I will not be able to stop them. They will reach my water, and they will take it. I’m sorry Studly. I truly loved you. I could not save you. I could not save any of them. I couldn’t even save myself.”

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon looked at each other. 
“Silver Spoon,” said Diamond Tiara, feeling her voice creak as she closed the book. “Have you been having…weird dreams, since you got here?”
“You mean Scootaloo’s wings kind of weird?”
“No. As in dreams where there’s water. A river. And a lot of ponies around you taking, but you can’t see their faces or hear them talking?”
Silver Spoon’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “Why?”
“It’s the same dream he was having. The whole time. The only one he ever had since he moved here. And…I’m having it too.” 
“Buck no,” said Silver Spoon, stepping away from the table. “Nope nope nope! I’m not doing this!”
“Silver- -”
“What the hay happened to us!” she screamed. “We’re just fillies! And we’re alone in a house with a madpony chasing us, and now you’re telling me that you’re probably going to end up like that guy, who went completely INSANE! Diamond, I can’t take it! I just can’t!”
“You’re not the one with the dreams!”
“That’s the POINT! If it was me, I could take it- -but I can’t lose you. You’re my only friend, my best friend!” She cried out and slammed her hoof into a nearby desk, causing the polaroid camera on it to shake. “What the hay happened? We were supposed to just be fillies. Sneaking a taste of your dad’s cider and taking funny pictures…”
Silver Spoon picked up one of the numerous photographs and stared at it, smiling- -and then her eyes widened and her pupils narrowed to the tiniest dots. Silver Spoon’s entire body suddenly started shaking.
“Silver Spoon,” said Diamond Tiara, standing. She was immediately concerned for her friend, and terrified. “What is it?”
Silver Spoon’s lips moved, but nothing came out. The photograph she was holding dropped from her hoof and slowly floated to the floor. Diamond Tiara picked it up, and saw Silver Spoon’s tiny pupils staring at her. Then she looked down at the image. 
Immediately, she understood why Silver Spoon had reacted the way she had, and felt her whole body suddenly become cold and frozen. The image was exactly what she would have expected: a picture of two smiling fillies pouting their lips, the image overly brightened by the flash of the camera. Laughing, having fun, wasting film- -like fillies did. 
Behind Diamond Tiara’s back-tilted head, though, was a black mask draped in a hood of rags. It was the creature, the spectre, the horror in a mining suit- -and it was inches away from her. Suddenly she understood how the ponies in so many of the old pictures had failed to see it. These pictures were not old, but they were just ordinary photographs. There was no way to doctor them, or change them. The creature had been there in the room with them, standing close enough to reach out and touch them- -and neither of them had seen it until they looked at that photograph.
“It was…it was here with us,” said Diamond Tiara. “Right behind…right behind us…” 
They both looked at each other, and then in unison looked around the edge of the suddenly oh-so-dark room. Their response was little more than instinct, a kind of imperceptible joke. They were looking to see if it were still there, too see the room that it had somehow moved through unseen. Neither of them really, truly expected to see anything. 
Both of their eyes fell onto the same corner, where it was standing, watching. The room fell silent as the two ponies stared into the blank, opaque face of the rag-clad being. The only sound Diamond Tiara could hear was the sudden pounding of her heart within her chest and the clicking of the silvery machine in the creature’s chest. 
At first, Diamond Tiara did not know what to do. The now familiar feeling of her mind and body freezing crept through her. She wanted to run more than anything, to escape from the monster- -but something held her in place. Something was wrong, something she did not fully understand. 
Then, with an electrical sound, the creature flashed and vanished. Diamond Tiara looked around the room, wondering where it had run to so quickly- -but she knew that it was still there. She could still hear the ticking of the clockwork machine that it bore. The ticking not only persisted, but started to slowly move closer and closer. 
A hoof suddenly appeared on her elbow, and she started to scream until she saw that it was not coated in black material but rather gray.
“Come on!” cried Silver Spoon. “We have to go! NOW!”
“Rig- -right!” stuttered Diamond Tiara, the spell that seemed to be holding her in place instantly breaking. She turned and followed Silver Spoon, leaping over stacks of books and sending papers flying. The door, which had formerly been no more than fifteen feet away, suddenly seemed to have moved to a distance of several miles. 
Suddenly, there was a second electrical sound. The creature materialized in the doorframe. Diamond Tiara felt a surge of adrenaline run through her body, but instead of running away she ran toward it. She struck the creature in the chest with her hooves, and was surprised at how easily it was knocked back into the hall. 
“MOVE!” she cried, both to Silver Spoon and, on a different level, to the creature itself. Her and Silver Spoon then dashed into the unlit hallway, racing through the slowly curving corridor. The only light that lit the path was the dim twilight that managed to find its way through the thick curtains of the empty, dusty rooms on either side. 
“I can’t see!” cried Silver Spoon. 
“Just follow me!” yelled back Diamond Tiara. She stopped suddenly at a narrowing of the hallway and pushed over a large section of shelves. For a moment, they did not seem to move, but then they moved slightly- -and rapidly tipped over, collapsing and shattering against the floor.
Diamond Tiara looked back over her shoulder as she sprinted away, and saw the creature moving just behind the collapsed shelves. It was running as well- -if what it was doing could even be called that. Its limbs moved rapidly, but they were so low to the ground that it was more of scuttling, like a huge insect. 
It did not even slow when it reached the fallen shelves. Instead, it simply changed course slightly, clinging to the wall and then finally rising to the ceiling, its ragged clothing draping beneath it as it continued just as quickly above.
“What they HAY IS THAT THING?” cried Silver Spoon, looking over her own shoulder.
As if in response, sound suddenly filled the hall, echoing off the peeling wallpaper and wood paneling. It was something like that of crickets, a complex and rapid song of chirping and creaking. Diamond Tiara realized that it was coming from the creature. 
Then, suddenly, it dropped downward in front of them. Its tattered cloak shifted just long enough for Diamond Tiara to see the clothing beneath- -the suit, just like from the blueprint, accented with luminescent red elements. Then it hissed loudly and jumped forward, grabbing Silver Spoon.
“NOOO!” cried Silver Spoon. “Diamond, help me!”
Diamond Tiara felt a sudden urge to run, to let it have Silver Spoon while she escaped. Instead, though, she found herself grabbing a heavy lamp off a small table. She pulled it free from the wall and slammed it into the creature’s head. The ceramic base of the lamp shattered, but the creature was knocked free of Silver Spoon. 
As it rolled to the side, dazed, Diamond Tiara lifted the jagged remnants of the shattered lamp over her head, preparing to bring them down on the creature’s now exposed underbelly. She would bring it down, pierce its insect body, and make it dead. She would protect herself and Silver Spoon. 
She paused, though. It occurred to her that the creature was oddly small. She had never gotten a proper look at it, and always assumed that it was slightly larger than a full-grown stallion. Monsters were supposed to be big and scary, so she had just assumed that it was- -but now, looking at it, she realized that it was barely as large as she was. 
“Oww…” it said, rubbing its head. “You hit me with a lamp…why would you even do that?”
“You- -you’re a colt!” cried Diamond Tiara, feeling her fear suddenly replaced with anger. 
“Clearly,” he said. “As for you, however, I cannot discern.” He slowly rolled over and stood. He did not look like a pony, at least not superficially; his stance was low, and his legs splayed outwardly instead of sitting below his body. Likewise, his head was not held above his body but rather in front of it. The effect was unpleasant, but the fact that he was comparatively tiny made him seem far less frightening than he had been before. 
“What is WRONG with you?” cried Diamond Tiara, pushing him in the chest and nearly knocking him over. “Are you some sort of pervert?! Does it tingle your jimmies to chase around fillies?! Putting on a mask and trying to scare us!”
“Oh, clearly I’m the villain in this! Well, I may wear this mask, but YOU are the one who really needs it! Do you even own a mirror?!”
“You did NOT just say that! I’ve seen what you look like, and YOU are the ugly one here! Why else would you wear a mask, huh?”
“I will have you know that I am considered quite handsome, surface-goat!”
“GOAT?!”
“It is what you are!” he leaned closer, turning his head so that the slightly darker parts on the edges of his mask faced her. “Except perhaps not, because you clearly resemble a PORK!” 
Diamond Tiara releasted a long and indignant gasp. “YOU…DID…NOT just say that to me! Do you know who I am? I’m Diamond Dazzle Tiara, daughter of Filthy Rich!”
“Wait, your name is ‘Diamond’?”
“But clearly you wouldn’t know ME, because from the look of you, you can’t even AFFORD to buy clothes from my father’s CLEARANCE section!”
“Oh yeah? Well, at least I don’t smell like a HORSE!” 
“Well at least I don’t smell like…” Diamond Tiara leaned in close to him, expecting to smell the scent of a dirty, unwashed plebian. Instead, she discovered something entirely different. “Cinnamon?” 
“How DARE you!” He turned toward Silver Spoon, whose eyes were widened in shock. “What is this cinnamon of which the pork-goat speaks?”
“It comes from…from the bark of a tree.”
“Ah, yes.” The colt turned back to Diamond Tiara, paused, and turned back to Silver Spoon. “What is a tree?”
“That,” said Silver Spoon, pointing.
All three of them turned. Standing where Silver Spoon was pointing was a mid-sized cholla tree, seemingly growing from the center of the worn hardwood floor. It had not been there a moment ago, and now it just stood there, its spines glimmering in the dim light. 
“How did that get there?” asked Diamond Tiara, approaching the tree. Something was deeply wrong, but she did not understand how a tree had gotten into the middle of the hallway. 
“Get away from it!” screamed the masked colt, grabbing Diamond Tiara and pulling her back. “Run! We need to run now!”
“Let go of me, you smelly little- -”
The colt slammed his hoof against the clockwork mechanism in his chest, and it spun rapidly. He grabbed Silver Spoon with his free hoof and, suddenly, they surged forward, propelled by some unseen force. 
Diamond Tiara cried out at the sudden acceleration, and watched as the corriridor seemed to slide around them at impossible speed. The colt could not control the motion, though, and the three of them suddenly fell and splayed out on the floor. 
The colt skittered across the floor and coughed violently. “Ieaeih’ieahiieaieeaiah’ai...” He said, suddenly, shaking as he stood. 
The hallway was blocked, though. The space that they had just come from was now barricaded by several gnarled trees, their long and narrow cactus branches swaying in an unseen breeze. Diamond Tiara looked down at their roots, and saw that they were not planted; rather, the equally spiny appendages seemed to be clinging to the floor. 
“More- -but- -the’re trees!” 
“Trees bad survival good!” cried the colt, body slamming- -lightly, considering his size- -Diamond Tiara into a nearby room. 
Silver Spoon slammed the door shut, and the colt removed the silvery core from his chest and placed it on the door. There was a familiar electrical whine, and then a sudden burst as the door fractured and expanded in its frame, sealing itself closed. 
The colt twisted the metal device back into the chestplate of his armor and stepped back to the two fillies. All three of them watched the door for a moment, not knowing what to expect.
Then, suddenly, something slammed into. Whatever it was struck with enough force to cause the door to deform slightly, and in its weakened state it nearly burst open. There were several more powerful blows, but then silence. Absolute silence. 
“What was that?” said Silver Spoon, looking wildly to the other two. Her eyes then focused on the colt. “And who the hay are you?!”
“Iiehiieaeiyh’eeieaehehei,” he said, then, realizing that they could not understand what he was saying, reached down and turned the dial on this chest. The clockwork hummed and his voice suddenly came into focus “…surface-goat idiots fail to listen to ANYTHING we ever tell you because your brains are so tiny and poorly evolved I have met foals smarter than either of you put together!”
Angrily, he pulled the silvery device off his chest and began to turn the surface wildly. The object changed shape readily, expanding and twisting by a dizzying system of internal mechanisms.
“You at least owe us an- -”
“Shut your pork-goat mouth, your guttural language is hideous to me!” He twisted the dial again, and then produced a sound that did not translate. “They are jamming me! I can’t summon a drone!”
“What’s a drone?” asked Silver Spoon.
“It’s a DRONE,” said the colt, as though it were obvious. “As in, a drone…no, wait, you dirty surface primitives have no concept of such things. Like a big, metal pony. Used to dig the mines. If I could get one, I could have us lifted out of this hole!”
Diamond Tiara had had enough of his insults and picked him up by his collar. He was oddly light, and as an earth pony- -even a poorly exercised one- -she was strong enough to slam him sharply against a nearby wall.
“Ow! Unhoof me you pork- -”
“Call me a pig one more time, ONE MORE TIME, and I will kick you so hard that even my daddy wouldn’t be able to pay to fix your face! And my daddy is very, VERY rich!”
“But you are- -”
“And YOU are a big dirty BUG.”
“A- -a BUG?! An INSECT?! How dare you- -”
“Please stop!” cried Silver Spoon. She collapsed on the ground, shaking, and Diamond Tiara released the colt. He dropped to the ground and continued returned the circle he was holding to its normal location on his suit. As soon as it linked, it twisted, reengaging, and the red elements of his suit slowly began to light again. 
“What exactly is that thing, anyway?” asked Diamond Tiara, putting her foreleg around Silver Spoon, who was sobbing silently.    
“It’s a technetium dial,” said the colt. From his tone, he sounded like he had calmed down, if only because he felt bad for making Silver Spoon cry. “All nobility have one.” 
“Nobility? YOU?”
“Excuse me,” he said. “I will have you know that I am the second child of Lord Niobus of the Upper Extent mining family. My mother is Pyroxene, eleventh daughter of seventh-tertiary king Beryllium Hammer of district fourteen.”
“But who are you?” asked Silver Spoon. 
The colt stared at her- -or at least Diamond Tiara thought he was staring; she was not entirely sure of the structure of his head, but she doubted that his mask had eye holes. “My name is Diamond Pick.” 
“Diamond?” said Diamond Tiara. “Why on earth would your parents name a thing like YOU Diamond?”
“And why would your parents give the name of our most precious stone to a pi- -to a creature such as yourself!”
“ ‘Creature’? What do you mean ‘creature’? We’re not pigs, and we’re not goats! We’re ponies!”
Pick paused. “No, you aren’t.”
“Yes, we are!”
“No. I know ponies. I am a pony. You are not a pony.” 
“What kind of pony are you?” asked Silver Spoon, quietly. 
Pick looked at her. “We are called morlocks.”
“And those…those things, outside the door…what are they?”
Pick looked down at her, and then began pacing the room. As he moved, Diamond Tiara saw that he had something on his back resembling a pair of wings. They were not soft and feathery like Pegasus wings, but rather hard and bony, molded into plates against his body like the shell of a beetle. 
“I don’t know,” he said, sounding on the verge of panic. “I don’t know! This land…this land is a bad place. I never knew why, they just said that it was bad. It is sitting on top of one of the largest technetium veins in history, but even we don’t mine it. Because something is here. Something bad.” 
“Those- -those are cactuses,” said Diamond Tiara. “Plants. They can’t move. Not on their own!”
“I don’t know what plants are,” said Pick, “but they are waking up, and they are waking up faster than they ever have before.”
“Before? This has happened before?”
“Yes,” said Pick condescendingly. “It happens anytime you surface-goats- -or ‘ponies’ if I am to believe that creatures as bizarre as you deserve that name- -mess with this accursed place.”
“The others,” said Diamond Tiara. “You were the one in the background of those pictures!”
“What? No! Don’t be thick…well, I suppose you can’t help it. I’m eleven.”
“But the pictures! You were in the background!”
“Um, no. I don’t know what a ‘picture’ is. But any recordings were not me. My family has been here, though. For a long time. There is a city about thirty miles from here.”
“What?” said Diamond Tiara. “Where?”
Pick pointed- -straight down. “My family is the only ones who dwell higher than the Upper Shield. It is our duty to warn you of the threat this place- -”
The door was suddenly struck with tremendous force. Silver Spoon jumped as the wood cracked and a narrow cactus arm poked through. As the three of them watched, it stood perfectly still for a moment and then began slowly gyrating, turning around and searching blindly. 
“That is not good,” hissed Pick. He seemed to run almost wildly around the room, searching for a way out. “We need to get back to my family’s facility. It will be safe there. If we can get out…”
“There is a trap door,” said Silver Spoon. “At least, there should be.”
They both looked toward her. “How do you know that?” asked Diamond Tiara.
“The blueprints…it was in the blueprints. This room leads to an abandoned section below.”
“Good,” said Pick, suddenly sounding happy. “This is good! Perhaps we won’t be…I don’t even know. I can lead you out of here.”
“No way,” said Diamond Tiara, standing. 
“Wha- -what? Why?”
“Because you’re a weirdo in a mask who just showed up out of, like, nowhere! Why should we trust you?”
“I’m risking my life to save your bacon!”
“Oh yeah? Then prove it!”
“How?”
“Take off that mask.”
The door creaked as roots began to break through it, snaking into the room toward Silver Spoon, who gasped and jumped away. 
“We don’t have time for this,” said Diamond Pick. “I don’t know what they want from us, but it will be about as unpleasant as your face.” 
“Take it off!”
“Fine!” 
Diamond Pick reached up and grabbed his mask. The clamps that held it in place disengaged. There was a slight hiss in the air, and something like the scent of rotten eggs pieced the air of the room. Then, with one simple motion, he pulled away the cover over his face.
Both Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon gasped. The face of the pony beneath the mask looked oddly like the mask itself: his skull was roughly pony shaped, but flattened. His coat- -if it could be called that, and not just skin- -was pale green, and his mane flaxen. Diamond Tiara initially thought that he had no facial features whatsoever apart from a narrow pair of nostrils running up what should have been his forehead, but then she saw that he did in fact have a pair of dime-sized, silvery eyes directly on either side of his bizarrely wide mouth.  
Diamond Tiara shuttered as his silvery eyes flicked toward her. “Eeeew!” she said, grimacing and sticking her tongue out. “Did your parents beat you with an ugly stick or something?”
“Did your parents beat you with a fat stick?” he retorted, “or did you just eat it?” 
Diamond Tiara almost punched him, but she really did not want to touch him- -especially considering that as he spoke, she could see that he had way more teeth than a normal pony, and all of them were pointed. 
The door creaked beneath the force of the trees slowly growing through it, and a high window on the other side of the room shook as it opened and a network of long, snaking cactus vines peeked through. 
“Door,” said Pick, his eyes widening and flashing toward Silver Spoon. “DOOR?!”
“What- -oh!” 
Silver Spoon stood up, shaking, and tried to grab the edge of the dusty rug that lined the floor of the room. Diamond Tiara joined her and, with their teeth, they pulled it back. Beneath, just as Silver Spoon had said, was a large wooden trap door. 
Diamond Tiara immediately pushed Silver Spoon through the gap. She cried out, but took several seconds to actually hit anything, meaning that the hole probably was not that deep. She then looked up at Pick, and immediately regretted asking him to take off his mask. Not just because he was hideous- -and he was- -but because she could now see the expression on his face: that of a terrified, panicked colt.