//------------------------------//
// Deep City 
// Story: Their Otherworldly Grace 
// by MonoGlyph 
//------------------------------//

The inhabitants of Ponyville were not thrilled to see their town flanked by legions of faceless ghouls. Traversing the streets we saw stallions and mares staring intently at the skies. They did not ask for this, nor did they know how it came to be. I pitied them, but not enough to reassess my goals. Thankfully, the harbingers were now focused on circling and ignored everything and everyone around them. No pegasus could muster the courage to approach them in the meantime. This was unmistakably a sign of things to come. 
The mountains continued to shudder in the distance. I wondered if the two events were connected somehow. How would I go about investigating? 
We wandered the town aimlessly for a time. From the silence, I gathered the other two were likewise lost in their thoughts. This didn’t last long. We ran into Fluttershy and Rarity on our way back to the library. Pinkie excitedly told the two what they’d missed. They looked shocked as she told them of the harbingers’ assault on the royal carriage, and listened wordlessly as Rainbow Dash broke in to tell them of her encounter with the loathsome beings. Quiet fell over the party once more. Rarity turned to me. 
“Would you know anything about all this, Twilight?” 
The others glanced at me uneasily. I knew she’d been talking about me behind my back. 
“No. Why would I? Sorry, but are you accusing me of something?”
I may have gone too far. This outburst would likely confirm her suspicions and tip off the others. 
“As a matter of fact, I—“
“Girls. Girls,” Fluttershy put in, gently. “I guess tension might be running a little high but… Look. This isn’t really the best time to fight. I think. It’s been a rough day and maybe we should calm down a bit… Really think things through. Yes?”
Rarity backed down. I felt deflated, myself. Conflict was averted for now. I excused myself and returned to my home. Spike saw me approaching and held the door open for me as I came inside.
“So did you guys find out what happened to the Princess?”
“The guard said she was injured but returned to Canterlot without any further difficulties.”
“What about Rainbow Dash?”
“She’s okay. Everyone’s okay. I’ll just. I’ll be in my room.”
I sat in bed, contemplating. How did I get so abrasive? I used to be so friendly with Rarity and the others, and now I… I just didn’t care. I experienced a flashback of the days before my trip to the Archives. Life was good. I went on with my studies for myself and for my teacher, Princess Celestia. I was lucky to have her guidance, lucky to have my friends. Everything came easily, and times of adversity were endured. So what changed? 
I obtained the Volumes of Vehement Vengeance and experienced what they’d offered. I was plagued with horrific nightmares and ideas whose like I would never entertain in my previous life. I grew disillusioned with the order of things. I realized that I read as much as I did simply because my life lacked direction. I was inexperienced and after a few short decades I would die the same. Books offered me escapist fantasies, and I had been eager to lose myself in them. Over time I lost interest in the things I’d previously considered important. In a way, I lost interest in everything. In my building apathy, I clung desperately to the Volumes because they promised something more. In a world of uncertainty, these tomes would allow me to make a difference, to leave my mark on our collective history, perhaps even to transcend death itself. Or so I’d hoped.  
My eyes started to tear up. I’d given up so much in my mad pursuit of things I did not understand. Would anything ever be the same? Would it all be worth it if I lost my companions? I felt the caustic voice speak up again. This is weakness. Ignorance should not be sought or tolerated. Sacrifices are to be expected. These thoughts were getting me worked up. I needed a distraction.
I took the second Volume from its shelf and laid it onto my desk. As I looked upon its yellowed pages, I noted that although the patchwork dialect seemed unchanged, the penmanship was sloppier, almost as though the scribe was unaccustomed to writing. Perhaps the series was an anthology, rather than the work of a single author. The library shook as I started to translate the first paragraph, and my quill swerved abruptly. I’d ripped through my parchment. 
Ah yes. I had forgotten. The shockwaves originating in the mountains could still be felt here.  
“Aren’t you even a little curious about that?”
I turned and saw Solitaire standing before me yet again. Clearly privacy was a non-issue for the inhabitants of the Gray Domain. This was more than a little disconcerting. 
“Maybe,” I said guardedly. “So what? I’m busy here, you know.”
He took the cane out of his mouth and licked his lips. 
“That’s unfortunate. You see, I would like for you to witness His awakening in your world… personally.”
“Whose?”
“That’s for Us to know, and you to find out, my dear Twilight. Take the book and follow me, if you please.”
In the next few moments he began to fade slowly, before abruptly winking out of existence altogether. I looked at the tome and quietly asked what this was all about. It didn’t answer. I put it into my knapsack and moved to where the God had been standing. I was filled with confusion as the world around me spun on its axis. At last, as I began to feel ill from the movement, everything stopped. I had found myself on a lower layer of Equestria once more. Was I dreaming or had I stepped outside my world while I was conscious? There was no color here. Every object had been reduced to a complex framework of white lines that webbed wildly across the empty space surrounding me. The rules were different now. I couldn’t breathe but I no longer had any need or desire to do so. 
“Come along now,” called Solitaire, his musical tones echoing in the stillness. He stepped effortlessly through the lines that made up my wall. I leapt to follow… and kept going. I cleared what may have been one thousand paces in a single bound, soaring through several buildings outside before gently touching down on the grid that made up the ground. The mountains did not shudder in this layer because time did not exist here. Everything was a part of just one moment frozen eternally. We arrived at a nondescript diamond mine dug into the face of a cliff several hundred meters above ground level. I could see the outlines of the cavern network below. It seemed to go on for miles. 
We blinked back into the topmost plane. I blinked rapidly, trying to get used to the light, color and texture of Equestria.
“Is this how you always move around?” I asked of my guide. 
“Convenient, isn’t it. Maybe someday you’ll be able to do so as well, and without my assistance.”
I felt the mountain move again. Looking down, I noticed a weatherworn sign resting on the rock floor. It was a mass of several rotting wooden planks, hastily tied together with a rope at either end. A single word was scrawled on it in red. ‘CONDEMNED’. 
“What happened here?”
“The jewel prospectors dug too deep. They came across something they wished they hadn’t. One can find wondrous things below the surface of the earth, you know. It’s almost like travelling back in time.”
He picked up a discarded lantern and gave it to me. 
“You still rely on your vision to navigate the world, so you’ll probably need this. I’ll meet you back at the library after you’ve seen what you must. “
“You want me to go in alone?”
“I can’t take you through the whole journey, you silly filly. What fun would that be?”
“This isn’t dangerous?”
“It certainly is. Extraordinarily so. Not to worry. We wouldn’t let anything happen to Our favorite little unicorn, now would We. If you hold on to that book, I’m sure everything will go swimmingly. Cheerio.”
He stepped backwards and vanished once more. I sighed and scrutinized the old lantern. There was quite a bit of oil left over, but I was nervous nonetheless. Hopefully this spelunking trip wouldn’t take too long. I picked up a small white rock and tested it on the cavern wall. It left a distinctive trail. This would serve my purposes. I lit the lantern and began my descent into the network, drawing arrows on the walls as I went. I didn’t trust my navigation magic down here. It was not at its best where the skies could not be seen. I spent what felt like hours inside the dank caverns slowly working my way deeper and deeper into the mountain. The few lights I found had long since stopped working, and the darkness was always there, just out of reach of my lantern. I began to develop claustrophobia as the tunnels continued to veer off in different directions. I had to continuously remind myself that a collapse of the stone was extremely unlikely and that if I went back now this would all have been for naught. The periodic earthquakes did not inspire confidence, however, and I found myself catching my breath every time one occurred. Equally taxing were the strange dead ends I would run into every so often. The tunnels seemed to go on for a time, until they got too narrow for anypony to continue, adding to the illusion that the walls were closing in around me. It was while I was backtracking from one of these paths that I began to hallucinate. Unknown forms moved in the darkness ahead. I thought I heard something sliding over the rock. I didn’t call out. If something was there, it would’ve already seen the light. As I continued I felt that I wasn’t alone. The entities were always ahead, dancing in the darkness. Eventually it no longer mattered which path I took. All the tunnels would intersect periodically, like knots holding several threads together. As the miners branched out, they were always pulled in the same direction. 
At last the passages opened up to a massive grotto. The rock was pale here, more so than I’d come to expect. But the most striking thing about the cavern was that there were buildings here, carved from the stone, far below the world outside. The architecture was much different than anything I’d seen, consisting of bizarre angles and spiked parapets. The structures curved sharply beneath the high ceiling and their balconies angled downwards to a point where I wondered why they were there at all. Against all common sense, the pillars (those that were still standing) seemed to get thicker as they climbed. The entire settlement appeared to follow its own non-Euclidean rules of geometry. Trying to understand the principles that held the place together drove my mind in so many directions that I had to force myself to stop. Looking closer I saw brown stains on the circular windows. They stretched all the way to the floor, where the unknown substance must have pooled. I searched around and found furniture as alien as the buildings that housed it. It was all morbidly suggestive, reminding me of the torture devices I’d seen in my books.  I came across what was once organic matter as well. Unknown beings had fallen and were petrified here for the rest of eternity. I grabbed one of the fossils from the slanting floor. It was a six-limbed creature of some sort. Its legs were similar to a crab’s while the rest of its body and head were reminiscent of a catfish. I put it into my knapsack on a whim. The mountain shook once more. I could tell that I was close to the source.  
I continued on, galloping towards what I hoped was the center of the forsaken city. This place was evil, and I was desperate to leave, but I knew that I had to follow this through to its conclusion. As I entered yet another ancient plaza, I heard something similar to music. Someone or something was emitting the noise, and I grew more and more fearful as I silently followed it. It led me to a large gothic interior of a long-forgotten temple. As I passed the benches and the altar, the music steadily grew louder, rising to a ghastly crescendo. It was coming from behind a massive rock slab leaning against the far wall. I surmised that the stone served as a doorway of sorts. Ignoring the heavy sense of foreboding that seized my heart, I stepped aside and pulled the slab with my magic. With a sigh, it fell backwards and cracked as it hit the floor. A vile scent filled the room. Decomposing flesh. Rotten eggs. And there was something else, something unearthly. I fought fruitlessly against my gag reflex. After a minute of mental preparation, I entered the sickly quarters.