Zecora and her team stopped at the edge of the near rim of the chasm, and waited for a moment as a dark-purple pegasus approached from the far side. Her eyes were shut, and her head swayed lightly back and forth as she flew, tossing her short-cropped, pale-golden mane from side to side.
Solar cocked an eyebrow: “Closed eyes? This must be Blackout, yes? Fascinating!”
Shatter nodded: “Yeah, that’s her, though she isn’t showing off--” She raised her voice to a yell: “Hey, Batsy, don’t you know you have an audience? You’re not strutting your stuff like usual!”
Blackout called back: “Yeah, feels like you brought four guests, Captain…”
“Shit, I always knew you could see! This whole 'blind' thing is just a dodge to get out of normal duties!”
Blackout laughed and began weaving in and out of stalactites and outcroppings, barely missing, brushing off loose stones and dust with her wingtips, all while keeping her eyes shut tight.
Zecora gasped: “How can she employ maneuvers so brash? / Surely this practice must end in a crash!”
Shatter shook her head: “You’d think so, but no--she’s been doing this since she was a filly. Sometimes I really do think she’s half bat!”
The purple pegasus alighted in front of Shatter and Zecora with a smile: “OK, your turn, Captain!”
Shatter laughed: “Fuck that! I mean, I could, but we’re very busy, and I don’t have time for parlor tricks!”
Blackout grinned: “Suuuure. Anyway, what do you want to know?” She nodded to her left: “Stormy over there has the latest maps, as of about two hours ago.”
Shatter turned to Noble Steel: “Red Tabs--go get the maps from the Cartographer back there.”
Steel ground his teeth, but started off toward his right, heading toward a small, pale grey pegasus who was standing at a low, chart-covered table.
Shatter turned back to Blackout, who tipped her head quizzically: “Red Tabs?”
“Unicorn. Can’t wait to scratch his General Staff itch.”
“Eww.”
“Tell me about it! If they tried to stick those on me I’d chew ‘em off!”
Shatter stepped to the edge and peered down into the chasm's impenetrable depths: “So what the fuck’s down there?”
Blackout shrugged: “Don’t know.”
“Well, what do you sense when you hit a thousand yards down?”
“Nothing.”
“Literally?”
Blackout nodded: “Literally. You know how you sighted ponies think of the blind, right? We just perceive total blackness and absence where you see light and color and form.”
“Something like that.”
“Well in my case, I can sense spaces and objects, and it fills in for me the way your eyes do for you--no color, but otherwise it’s pretty similar.”
Zecora stepped up beside the pegasi: “So your senses fail as they touch the Void / just as light itself is also destroyed?”
“Yeah. There’s nothing there. And it’s not like when I fly outside in the open. There I can sense the space, it’s just too vast to wrap my head around. Whatever’s down there simply doesn’t exist. It would be like you trying to see something in a totally lightless environment.”
Shatter furrowed her brow: “So how do you know how far down it is?”
“Well, besides the plum bob sounding, I can fly quite a ways down and perceive the nearby cave walls. But I have to admit that right around eleven-hundred yards I simply had to bail out--I couldn’t feel anything anymore.”
“You were literally flying blind!”
“Exactly.”
“Captain…”
Shatter turned to see Steel and Stormy behind her.
“Report, Lieutenant.”
Steel levitated a set of of rolled-up maps and a notebook from his saddlebags: “The Cartography section has given us a fairly-detailed map through a series of tunnels, landings, drop-offs and chambers down to three-hundred-forty yards.”
Shatter studied the maps: “So why’d the mapping team stop, Stormy? And I want your take, not the official report that you had a set time limit. That sounds like a cover story.”
The lead mapping officer shifted her hooves nervously.
Shatter glared: “That’s what I thought. C’mon, Major--the real reason, not the horseshit staff briefing!”
“Alright--you’re heading down there, so you have a right to know.”
Stormy looked around and noticed Smudge off to the side, completing her and Steel’s pack-outs. She lowered her voice: “When we hit the end of the map, it started getting, well, weird.”
“Weird?”
“I could swear I was hearing Top Cover and Green Streak telling us to turn back, or to come forward, or to go to sleep, or sometimes all of it at once--I couldn’t really unravel it.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No--well nothing solid, anyway. Shadows, dim shapes, things like that. At the end of our mapping mission we could throw our strongest light down the passage and it would be swallowed-up, like shining a light into murky water.”
“And that was as far as you went?”
“We weren’t sent down here for combat, Captain. One of my equipment bearers literally shit himself out of fear.”
Shatter sighed: “I understand, Major. That’s why Smudge, the Lieutenant here, and I are along for this little undertaking. And by all accounts Zecora can handle herself in a fight.”
Zecora nodded.
Stormy gestured toward Solar who had joined Smudge: “What about the old-timer?”
“He’s a specialist in dark and eldritch magic. He and Zecora will re-bind that whatever-it-is.”
“Well you’d better hurry. You’re running out of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s spreading. We can already tell some passages and chambers that were adjacent, or visible through fissures, are no longer accessible. That thing’s spreading.”
Shatter raised an eyebrow: “How fast?”
Stormy took a deep breath and tapped her chin: “Based on this morning’s measurements--when we finally had to turn back--I’d say we only have about three days before that Void fills this chasm and begins to intrude on the space above.”
Shatter sighed and ran a hoof down her muzzle: “Lovely. Zecora--I suggest we get started as soon as possible.”
Zecora nodded, turned and called back toward Solar Gleam and Smudge in the distance: “Come join us now, my fearless cohort/ and let us now this dark evil thwart!”
Shatter turned to Steel and pointed a wing toward their distant companions: “Go give Smudge a hoof securing the last of the supplies.”
Steel turned and walked away: “Yes, Ma’am!”
Shatter turned back to Major Stormy: “Anything alive down there we need to worry about? I mean living critters can be just as dangerous as dead ones!”
Stormy furrowed her brow: “Funny you should ask. No--there’s nothing alive down there, at least not as far as we went. We saw lots of traces--droppings, bones, tracks, whatnot--but nothing alive or dead.”
Shatter pursed her lips and sucked against her teeth: “Huh. Well, I guess we’ll see what we see.”
Smudge, Steel and Solar Gleam joined Zecora and the pegasi at the edge of the chasm, where a narrow path began its shallow descent to a series of shelves and rock spans.
The ponies gathered there stepped aside as Steel moved through, nearly poking Stormy with a bundle of long, shimmering spears: “Pardon me, Major!”
Stormy raised an eyebrow: “Argent crystal lances! Is Lieutenant Sable Dusk qualified as a Lancer?”
The charcoal-grey pegasus grinned: “Just ‘Smudge,’ Ma’am. And yes, I’m fully-rated with the shiny, pointy sticks! The Lieutenant here is trained as a Grenadier, so he has my back with the recharge.”
Stormy shook her head: “I don’t know, Shatter--heavy weapons in an enclosed space?”
Smudge shrugged: “The charge is variable. It’s just nice to have a wide range of options!”
Shatter nodded: “It’ll be alright. I hope to Celestia we don’t need the damn things, but just in case, I want to be able to tear a new, regulation-sized asshole in anything that blocks our way out.”
Zecora patted her saddlebags and opened a pouch hanging around her neck: “I’m hoping to spare us such a fight / by keeping our presence out-of-sight.”
Shatter leaned closer: “Cloaking magic?”
Solar nodded: “Yes. She’s created an obscuring powder, very similar to an ancient unicorn compound. Combined with my low-intensity energy field, it should make us nearly undetectable to most senses.”
Blackout raised an eyebrow, fanned her wings and rose into the air: “Show me!”
Zecora tapped out a small measure of glittering yellow powder and tossed it over her head. As it began to settle, Solar generated a pale, pulsating umbrella of magic, catching the powder, and forming an obscuring nimbus that covered the five ponies. They faded from the others’ view.
Blackout tipped her head back and forth for a few moments as if listening: “I’ll be damned! Try to move from your spot!”
A muffled voice came back to her as though from a great distance: ”We already have. We’re about 20 feet down the path.”
Stormy’s eyebrows jumped: “Really!” She trotted forward toward where Zecora’s team should be, and promptly ran into Smudge’s backside--the cloaking effect fell away like water running down a glass dome.
“Careful, Ma’am!”
Shatter looked over her shoulder with a grin: “Just be glad the Major’s not a unicorn!”
Blackout circled once then landed beside Stormy: “Crazy! You just vanished! I didn’t have any sense of you until you spoke.”
“Yelled.”
“What?”
Shatter nodded: “I had to yell loudly to get you to hear it.”
“Cool!”
Stormy chewed her lip: “Well, good luck to you five. We might be able to send help if you can get a message back, but I wouldn’t necessarily count on it.”
“Ah, we’ll be fine! You left markers as far as you could, yes?”
“And some scattered lanterns as well. You should hit the end of our mapping mission sometime late this evening.”
Zecora nodded: “You have our thanks, Stormy, you and your crew / The morning grows late, we must bid you adieu!”
She turned away from the mapping team with a salute and took the lead in front of her team. Shatter fell in beside her.
“When next we return we’ll have settled the score / and Canterlot will not need fear anymore!”
Stormy and her crew stood silent for a minute as they watched the five companions pick their way down the slope into the chasm.
“I hope you’re right…”