Timelapse

by Stik

Chapter 12

“What the blazes was that?” Applejack exclaimed in alarm. From somewhere far above them came a thunderous sound that shook the very rock around them. All three ponies stopped in their tracks, looking around nervously.

They were in the tunnel usually reserved for the train. Under their hooves dull rails lay, a little rusty after a long time unused. Water dripped all around them and a small stream had formed down the side of the tunnel, burbling quietly to itself. The climb had been tiring, and much longer than necessary due to the gentle gradient the train usually had to follow.

It had taken a bit of convincing to persuade Rainbow Dash to even enter the tunnel, she had been very reluctant to go into the dark hole. Twilight had needed to assure her many times that there were clearly no trains running, even pointing to the rusty track as evidence. It would be extremely unlikely that a train would come after no service for so long. Rainbow had countered that most of the things that happened to them seemed unlikely on the face of it, and she didn’t really have much of an answer for that.

Eventually they’d just ploughed ahead, and she’d reluctantly followed them when Twilight’s magical light had gone along for the ride as well. The phoenix had seemed unbothered by the whole situation, apparently just relieved to be free of the trees. Anything after that was probably a bonus. Twilight wondered just how long it had been trapped there, waiting for a death that would never come.

“Guys, I don’t like this,” Rainbow said, moving to stand behind Applejack, her wings partially extended in preparation for flight. Their voices sounded strange in the confined space, echoing from the hard rock walls and racing away down the tunnel.

“It’s fine, RD,” Applejack said, moving aside. “Just an earthquake or something.”

“Earthquake!” she cried in alarm, wings out wide. “What if the tunnel comes down on us?”

“Relax, Rainbow,” Twilight said calmly. “The engineers who built this railway knew what they were doing. There’s often tremors in these parts, and it’s never fallen down.”

As if to punctuate her words there came another rumble through the ground, and a few slivers of rock rattled somewhere in the darkness behind them.

“…much,” she finished, a little lamely.

“If you’re so worried, then why don’t we pick up the pace a bit?” Applejack suggested with a sly grin. “Y’all been moving so slow for the last two miles. Ah’m about ready to fall asleep.”

“Applejack, wait,” cried Twilight. She began to regret coming on a hiking trip with two of Ponyville’s most athletic and competitive ponies. Rainbow Dash was never one to turn down a challenge and for the meantime the threat of losing out to the farm pony had overcome her fear of the dark and earthquakes and she had sprinted off up the gentle incline.

Twilight initially rushed after them, still panting from the exertion just at the pace they had been going. She soon realised that neither of them had any means of producing light, and she smugly stopped and returned to a gentle trot, basking in the brilliance of the light spell she was casting. Sure enough in another couple of minutes she found the other two standing around sheepishly.

“Tired?” she asked smugly, head held high as she trotted past them. She could pretty much hear them rolling their eyes, an action that usually didn’t come with sound effects.

“Do you know where we are, Twilight?” Rainbow asked. “Are we nearly at the end?”

“Five more minutes,” she replied. “Not far now, at all.”

“You said that two miles back, sugarcube.”

“Well, if you two wouldn’t fool around so much, it would have been right, I expect,” she said, sticking her tongue out playfully. Applejack huffed.

As it turned out at least another hour passed before they actually reached the station at the top of the incline. It was only a service yard, but it was also the first time they had seen the stars since setting out half a day ago at the base of the tunnel. Trains managed it much quicker. Rainbow complained bitterly, saying she wished she had flown up and waited for them.

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“It’d have got boring,” she said. “Waiting for you. Alone.”

“…in the dark, with monsters around,” Twilight finished for her, and Rainbow scowled.

They walked the next mile to Canterlot in relative calm, it was nice to be out of the cold, muggy air in the tunnel and able to see the stars again. Twilight was a little pensive, now they were so close to the famous city they could no longer deny that it was dark and different. The life had gone from the place, the towers and spires and minarets no longer lit with magical fires or decorated for whichever festival was currently upon them.

Twilight worried about it deeply. If Celestia had been there then things would clearly be different. There was no question about that. She wouldn’t have let it fall into such a state. It felt to her as if the whole population of the once-great nation had disappeared.

As they drew even closer she could see the damage that had been done, buildings flattened, huge parts of the walls crumbled and crushed, gaping holes filled with absolute darkness. Twilight could feel her spirit being dragged down the closer they got. Somehow she had hoped in her heart that they’d find at least a little bit of life here in Equestria’s capital city, a little spark in the centre of a country that seemed otherwise empty of ponies, but there seemed to be nothing.

They walked in silence through the empty streets, stepping gingerly over the rubble and scattered rubbish. A shrill wind blew through the alleyways and the smell of the old world was thick in the air. Nopony had lived here in a long, long time.

She was slowly coming to understand that somehow the rest of the world had moved on, without them, and something terrible had happened in that time. After it all, they had simply been left behind. In her heart she knew what she had done, but it was too hard to admit out loud quite yet and so she quelled the thought, pushing it down fiercely. She wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

“Twilight,” Applejack said as they trotted solemnly down one of the main thoroughfares, once a vibrant market in the day and beautiful nightspot in the evening, now just another crumbling ruin. “The palace is the other way.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I have to see it.”

Applejack watched her for a while. “Your old house?”

She nodded, not sure she could speak without her voice wavering. There was a heavy weight in her stomach, pulling her down and making her feel a little sick.

As they got closer and closer she broke into a canter and then a full gallop, sprinting fast down the last street until skittering to a stop, the loose cobbles under her hooves rattling in the dark. Her horn flared brighter, illuminating the ruin before them. The walls had crumbled, collapsing in on themselves, and the roof and floors above had followed suit. The small garden her father had so carefully tended all her childhood had vanished, buried under weeds and crumbled stone.

“Ah’m sorry, Twi,” Applejack was saying from somewhere that might have been a thousand miles away. She barely noticed the warmth of her two friends as they stood beside her, a foreleg and a wing around her.

“This is my fault,” she whispered. “I did this.”

They shushed her, as she knew they would, but that didn’t change what she had done, her involvement in this terrible time.

The three plodded on in an uncomfortable silence towards the palace. Twilight’s head was down, and the others didn’t understand what she had done, nor how to help her.

Even the palace, a place that once thrilled her, even as an adult, was now a reminder of a better time, something that couldn’t be reclaimed. The steps up through the gardens were torturous, far harder then the climb through the tunnels had been, even though they were a fraction of the height. Twilight trembled, she didn’t know what to expect, what would they find there?

“Twilight,” Applejack said as they stopped at the top of the steps, a short walk now from the front of the palace, the dark entryway almost inviting them in. “We don’t know what we’re going to find in there. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

She nodded weakly.

“You remember that we’re with you, alright?”

She smiled for their benefit, although she wasn’t sure how convincing she was. “I’m fine. We’ll get in, have a look around and see if we can find out what’s happened, then we’ll go back to Ponyville. I’m sorry to have dragged you out here, it would seem it’s be a wasted journey.”

“That’s the second time in the last few hours that name, plucked from the very depths of time, has been mentioned,” the doorway said in a low, sonorous voice that reverberated in the cool night air.

All three stopped immediately and Rainbow looked about ready to run for it.

“Don’t be afraid, my little ponies. Come on inside,” said the same voice, soft but powerful, commanding.

“Hello, Twilight,” said another voice, much smaller and quieter this time. She looked back at the doorway to see Riley standing in front of her, lit by a flaming torch he held high in one hand. It seemed unreal, somehow. He looked so calm, despite the terrifying voice from behind him. He beckoned to her, and vanished mysteriously, melting back into the darkness.

She swallowed hard and trotted forward. Applejack followed a little way behind, and Rainbow Dash even further still. Inside it was dim, but lit at the far end of the great hall by huge clusters of candles that threw a soft light over everything. Riley stood in the pool of light with another pony lying comfortably on the floor next to him, tail swishing idly on the dusty marble. Completely dwarfing them both, however, was the bulk of a dragon, sitting curled around his impressive hoard, the flames from the candles reflected in every polished scale.

She gasped and fought the reflex to flee. They’d faced down dragons before, they could do it again. Nervously she stepped forward, every hoofstep loud and echoing in the giant hall.

“Welcome, Twilight Sparkle,” said the dragon, a strange draconic smile on his face.

Anything she was about to say evaporated on her tongue. “How do you know my name?” she gasped.

“How do you not know mine, might be a better question,” he said, sounding as hurt as a thirty-tonne dragon could.

“What?” she said with a bewildered tone and glancing behind her for backup, but the other two were lurking by the entrance, some distance off. “Please, mister dragon, I’m sure we can arrange some sort of deal if you would let your prisoners go.”

The dragon laughed and rose from his bed of gold with a tinkling sound. Twilight stayed rooted to the spot, his gaze never left her as he moved toward her, low to the ground and as sinuous as a snake. “Don’t you recognise me, Twilight? Brighten your light, take a good look. Still no? Of course not. Three hundred years has not been kind to this little assistant.”

“Spike?” she asked, not believing her eyes. He was close now, and her light flared to illuminate his giant head, long and pointed muzzle almost close enough to touch. He was the correct colour, a deep purple, accentuated with splashes of green down the centre of his muzzle and in the scales along his spine. A long arched neck brought his head down to her height and he looked at her first with one eye, then with the other.

“Spike!” she cried joyously, jumping forward to embrace the tip of his nose. “I told them you were alive!”

Spike nuzzled her carefully, his head as large as her body. “Oh, Twilight, it has been so very, very long. I had almost forgotten what you looked like.”

Twilight sat back on her haunches and let out a deep sigh. “So it is true. We have been gone for…”

“Three hundred and eight years, yes,” Spike finished. “Why, Twilight? I thought you’d… died. Everything had gone.”

“I made a mistake, Spike,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I made a terrible mistake.”

“Sshh,” he soothed, the sound coming like the rushing of a mighty river, however soft he might have intended it. “Where are the others? I can smell two other ponies out there.”

Twilight called to them and they reluctantly came closer.

“It’s good to see you again, Applejack, Rainbow Dash,” Spike said as they approached. He hunched down, trying to look as harmless as possible. “I see you have found Philomeena, as well.” He turned to the bird, hovering brightly behind Applejack, and gave a light chirp from somewhere deep in his throat. The phoenix squawked in reply.

“He says ‘thankyou’ for freeing him,” Spike said with a smile, turning back to the three ponies.

“I don’t believe it,” Applejack was saying, shaking her head. For once she had taken her hat off. Rainbow Dash just stood in silence, mouth ajar and staring openly.

“You got big, Spike,” she said eventually.

“Yeah,” he said sheepishly, and Twilight could suddenly see the baby Spike she remembered so fondly. “I guess three centuries will do that to a guy.”

There was a lot of chatter at once, and Twilight shushed them and made them sit down calmly before they continued. Riley and Derpy came to join them, sitting a little way apart. Spike’s head joined in with the group, the rest of him lost somewhere in the darkness behind them. The occasional tinkling sound highlighted when he swished his tail in interest.

“I think, Twilight, the first question is, ‘what did you do?’”

The unicorn sighed again. “I think I know, now. I took Ponyville out of time. It’s a power that the alicorn princesses have. It’s how Celestia controls the sun, she adjusts the speed of the passage of time here on Equestria. I didn’t know I could do it, too. It looks like I found out how, a few nights ago. But, instead of simply slowing it, I stopped it completely, just in the local area.”

“That sounds plausible,” Spike said softly. “There was nothing there, Twilight. Every year I travel there, on the anniversary, to see if anything changes, but nothing ever does. It was a black void, not even light could survive in there. A great dome of nothing, in the middle of the country. Nothing that went in would ever come out again.”

The dragon held up his right foreleg, and Twilight saw with a gasp that he was missing some fingers. “I tried to get back in, of course, as soon as you’d cast your spell, but I couldn’t. Nothing could.”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight began, but he waved her away.

“It hasn’t hurt for hundreds of years. Only the loss of my friends, that still hurt. But finally you’re back! Although, I can’t help but notice there’s only three of you.”

“The others are well,” she assured him quickly. “Pinkie is doing whatever she usually does, Rarity and Fluttershy needed to stay behind at the hospital to help out. Ponyville’s in a bad place right now, Spike. There’s a lot of ponies hurt.”

“I remember,” he said sadly. “Discord’s minions were inbound, including that big flaming dragon-thing he’d found, they’d been attacking the town for a few days before that.”

“It’s got worse,” Twilight said glumly. “Although I think that might be a story for another time.”

She looked around at her friends, gauging their reaction to the story so far. Rainbow and Applejack looked interested but a little lost, occasionally glancing at each other, checking if the other was making any more sense of it. Riley looked pained and tired, and Derpy seemed more interested in him than anything else. He gave her a weak smile when he saw her watching. She returned it before turning back to Spike, “how did you escape?”

“I don’t think I can exist out of time,” he said. “Either you knew that and teleported me out just in time, or the universe itself knows it and popped me out. All I know is that I ended up here, at the palace, back in the very room you hatched me, in fact. I went straight back as fast as I could, of course, but it was too late by then.”

“I think the arrival of the humans broke my spell,” Twilight said, blinking away the dampness from her eyes. “Without them we’d have been lost forever.”

Riley took the opportunity to join in with the conversation, and she was alarmed by the strained sound of his voice. “That’s also quite plausible,” he said. Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Our warp technology, that is, the machines that let us jump between different worlds, it’s closely related to the passage of time. It’s entirely possible your spell is the reason we appeared at your planet. We were running away from an enemy at the time, but we were running blind. Your world was a beacon in the darkness, and we locked onto it. I bet my right hand that was your spell.”

The group was silent for a moment, the crackling of the old candles strangely loud in the old hall. Derpy was watching Riley with deep concern, and Twilight narrowed her eyes slightly, trying to work out what was going on. She wasn’t entirely sure why Derpy was even with him.

“This is Celestia’s home,” Twilight eventually said, her burning desire to know what had happened finally overcoming her reluctance to actually find out. “Where… where is she?”

The dragon sighed, resting his head on the floor and closing his eyes.

“With Discord, and Luna, and several other minor gods.”

“Where’s that?” she asked, frightened of the answer. She was a little annoyed to see Riley stroking Derpy’s mane soothingly. The poor mare looked distraught and worried, but Twilight was sure he should be comforting her, instead. After all, she was the one who had nearly ended the world. And was that a tiny sensation of… jealousy, as well? She shook her head and looked away.

“Gone, I’m afraid,” Spike replied. “I don’t know why, exactly. I think your spell did something to them, something I don’t understand. It worked, driving Discord out, but it also drove out the other gods, too.”

Twilight stuttered, unable to comprehend. She couldn’t have done that, it wasn’t possible. Gods were immortal. You couldn’t just poof them out of existence. Celestia had been there for thousands of years, it was ridiculous to think that little Twilight Sparkle could have… incapacitated… her.

“I’m sorry if it’s hard to swallow,” Spike rumbled. “It might not have been you directly. Maybe they went of their own accord, or maybe it was something Discord did? We can’t be sure.”

“What do we do?” she managed to get out. She felt weak, her lower jaw trembled of its own volition.

“Try to restore some order,” Spike said slowly. “You are the princess now, Twilight. You may not be a goddess – yet – but it’s your duty to restore Canterlot to what it used to be. You must take the throne, move the sun and stars and give hope and stability to the ponies in this land.”

Twilight giggled nervously, looking around surreptitiously for a way out. A lock of hair broke lose from her mane and stuck up at an angle. “I’m not the pony for this. I can’t do it. I’m not royalty! I’m just… me.”

“You’re the element of magic, Twilight, ah can’t think of anypony better,” said Applejack.

“And you’re kind of awesome, when you’ve not got your nose in a book,” Rainbow Dash added.

“But I can’t rule a country!”

“For now we just need to save Ponyville,” said Applejack pragmatically. “We can worry about the rest of Equestria once that’s safe. If you want to repopulate the rest of the land you’re going to need those hard working folks, anyhow.”

“There are more ponies around than you think,” Spike told them, drawing a huge forearm through the air in a great arc. “They’re scattered and a bit lost, but it’s not as bleak as you’re imagining. They’re mostly by the coasts now, the heart of the continent has largely been deserted, timberwolves, changelings, and other things rule here now. They just need safety and stability to come back to, and somepony to direct them.”

“Okay,” Twilight breathed, shaking her head. “Let’s pretend that last bit’s going to happen to somepony else, and concentrate on the little things.”

“The Elements,” said Rainbow Dash.

Twilight nodded and turned to Spike. “When I cast the spell, the Elements all vanished, too. Do you know where they are?”

He shook his large head, disturbing the dust on the floor. “I don’t know, I’m sorry. They might have gone, too. They’re immeasurably powerful artefacts, made by things far older and more powerful than any of us, even the alicorn sisters.

“I’ve had a lot of time to study the history of the Elements, Twilight. There’s not been a lot for me to do, so for hundreds of years I’ve travelled the world seeking books and knowledge, most of it now accumulated here in this hall. The alicorn sisters and the Elements were a particular interest of mine.

“I think it’s likely they were cast away, their physical manifestations destroyed again.”

“Like when we first retrieved them?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Although as I understand it they were simply hidden back then, not physically absent from this plane entirely.”

“What are you saying?”

“That I don’t think you should rely on their assistance this time,” he warned. It was a sobering thought, there were few things more powerful than the Elements of Harmony. Twilight knew a little of their history, they were spirits of the world, she and her five friends merely shared a link to them, an affinity that allowed the Elements a channel through which to act upon the physical world and the bearers a chance to steer their actions.

“The Elements are fragments of creation itself,” Spike said, resettling his bulk in the darkness with a tinkling of treasure. “Pieces of the oldest magic left over when the world was new, pieces left behind to ensure a balance between the things that inhabit the planet. They’re not alive, as such, but they are aware, and they follow their own rules and play their own game. Perhaps this is their new idea of balance, maybe Ponykind has had its time, and now it’s the turn of another race?”

“That’s a very dark thought, Spike,” she said sternly, starting to lecture as if he was still the little baby dragon she remembered. He chuckled darkly.

“I’ve had a long time to brood, Twilight, longer than you can imagine. Forgive me.

“The Elements can be controlled, to an extent. You special six can impose your will upon them, if you are strong enough. At the very least they can be steered in the right direction. But first, you need to find them, if you do mean to rely on them.”

“Where do we begin?”

Spike shrugged, a ridiculous action for such a large creature. “The problem is, I think, that if you were to find them now, you might not recognise them. They probably won’t be in the form of torcs or tiaras any longer, they were simply beautiful pieces of work wrought by master jewellers of a bygone age, imbued with the spirit of the Elements and designed to hold them close to where it mattered, the heart. And in your case, of course, your horn.”

“So you think they’ve been reabsorbed into the world? What do your books say? Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s very little written about them. Their true origins have been lost to time itself. They existed in the form we knew them as for many hundreds of years, and the records just don’t go back that far. Who knows what shape they took before that.

“If I had to hazard a guess, however, I’d say they’re maybe around here somewhere. This rock on which the city is built is not natural, it has existed for longer than I know, but it doesn’t belong here. It’s charged with magical energies that nopony has ever been able to understand. The princesses adapted small parts of it and built Canterlot on top, but there’s an unending supply of mystery just under the surface. My instinct is that, if they’re anywhere, they’re down there.”

“There’s caves down there,” Twilight said, nodding. She uneasily remembered her time trapped down there with Cadence while the first changeling invasion took place. “Huge ones, like a termite nest, sprawling forever.”

“Indeed, and those that ponies have explored are just the very surface. Countless caverns and older civilisations are underneath, each layered on top of the other.”

“But we’d never find our way,” she said sadly. “And we don’t have the time to just wander around. Experienced explorers have spent lifetimes digging around already.”

Philomeena had been standing quietly, his fire barely glowing, and most of them had forgotten that he was even there. He burned brighter now, spreading his wings and alighting. He squawked at Spike, fluttering around his head. Spike chirped back again, and some sort of conversation was taking place. Twilight watched in amazement, she remembered the pet phoenix Spike had kept for a year when he was younger, before it left to be with its family. She had no idea he was able to communicate, however.

When he spoke to them again his voice was thick with excitement, and Twilight could suddenly see the same baby dragon she loved again, the real Spike underneath his wise and ancient appearance. “Philomeena says he can lead you to Celestia. She is here.”

“How?” Twilight asked, looking at the bird. If it was true then stumbling across him in the hungry wood was a huge stroke of luck.

“He shares a very strong bond with her, I think,” he said, watching the bird. “Celestia hatched him in the same way you hatched me, Twilight, and they’ve been together for millennia. A phoenix is a very magical creature, more so even than me, it’s unsurprising he can feel her.”

“Then we should go right away!” Twilight said earnestly, rising to her hooves and hopping excitedly in place.

“I think you’ll have to go without me, I’m afraid,” Spike said with a sad smile. He opened his huge wings a little way, stretching them from wall to wall, highlighting his enormous bulk. “I’m too big, now. I’ve not been able to fit down there for hundreds of years.”

“Oh,” she said, a little crestfallen.

“I’m sure the others will go with you,” he said, looking at them in turn. Applejack and Rainbow nodded enthusiastically, she’d have struggled to keep them away if she’d wanted to, she knew. She looked at Riley hopefully, but he looked away, the ugly scratch over his face glinting in the candlelight.

“I need to get back, my mission is done, and they need me back at the ships.”

Twilight looked sad, having him along would have made her happier, she felt safer with him around. She also wanted desperately to introduce him to Celestia. She also realised that if he left now then she would never see him again. He would be long gone by the time they returned to the town. “Please?”

“I suppose I have no real choice,” he admitted after a long pause and grimace. “I wouldn’t be able to get back without your help. It’s too far. I’m afraid I’m not feeling my best right now.”

Derpy stood up protectively and glared at Twilight, the effect lessened somewhat by one eye glaring at something else. She blinked a few times in frustration until they both aligned correctly. “He needs to get back to his people. He’s hurt.”

“What?” Twilight exclaimed, trotting over.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly as she starting peering at him intently. “I’m just feeling a bit unsteady.”

It didn’t take her long to find the bloodstain around the torn hole in his jacket and gently pulled it apart with her magic, stifling a gasp at the mess underneath. The square bandage he had placed over the hole had soaked through, stained almost completely red now, with a sickly yellow smudge in the centre. The visible skin around it was red and inflamed.

“Why didn’t you say something! What happened?” she asked, in a shocked whisper. “Does it hurt?”

He ground his teeth as she poked at it very gently. “Yes,” he managed, pulling his jacket back over it. She withdrew her magic guiltily.

“This is very bad,” she said, fidgeting on her hooves and worrying her lower lip. “Very bad, indeed.”

He put on a brave face, setting his mouth in a firm line and glaring at her, but she could see the sweat on his skin and the tenseness in his neck muscles, borne from the pain he was trying to fight past. There was no way he would make it back to Ponyville, she was sure, he looked pale and ill in the candlelight.

“It looks infected,” she said, pulling the jacket away again, despite his feeble protestations. She was aware she was beginning to panic again, an unsteady feeling in her legs and bubbling in her stomach. “Badly. You need treatment right away, Riley! Normally there’s magic to help this, to clean out the blood, but I don’t know about humans. Usually Sunbright’s Seventh Salve would do, but I’m afraid of side effects. Hmm, maybe a combination, the standard Aetherfian treatment followed by the Seventh? Morning Light’s Episensinali? No, too many leylines, not enough time to tie them.” Twilight paced, head down and horn still aglow, muttering to herself.

“Some of Korigan’s later work was on spells for zoological care,” Spike said helpfully, turning ponderously away to his piles of books, Equestria’s largest surviving library by the looks of things. Twilight followed him anxiously, her hooves ringing out around the hall.

“Yes,” said Twilight eagerly, mind working quickly. Spike pointed to books with his claw and before long she had a whole ring of them around her, spinning in the ghostly light of her magic. “Yes, yes, Korigan’s work studied the effects of wide ranging spells across all mammals, usually less effective but safer for the untrained novice and applicable across the board. A few minor modifications to her buffer spells and it should integrate with the seventh. Brilliant, Spike! You’ve kept to your studies, I see.”

“Riley!” she called excitedly, clattering back over to him. He shielded his eyes from the brilliance of the light she was emitting. She dropped the books unceremoniously behind her, and barely heard Spike sighing like he always used to when she would leave the library in a mess. “I’ve got it! It won’t cure you, but it should help.”

“Wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “I’m not sure you should be…”

She ignored him, pulling the jacket apart again and concentrating hard on the multiple spells she had to cast at once, feeling the familiar tingle all over her as she drew magical energy from the charged air around her, letting it fall deep into her core before it came rushing up and up through her spirit, the torrent of potential and the thrill of casting new magic making her giddy. She focused the spells, weaving them expertly into one perfect canvas before releasing them gently.

It was as if she could feel the spells working on him, the magic coursing through his bloodstream, stripping away that which shouldn’t be there, bundling it up into little packages and crushing them into harmless mush, purifying everything. She even applied a little repair work to the wound itself, magically stitching the worst of it together to lessen the bleeding.

Of course it wasn’t perfect, the spell had been severely limited to avoid accidentally damaging anything else, there were so many differences between the patient and the things the magic was designed to fix. A lot of the sickness remained, but it was buying him some time at least, time to get him back to his people and their unbelievable machines.

“There,” she announced, opening her eyes. To her satisfaction he was looking down at the wound wordlessly as the redness was already starting to subside. He was breathing easier, and he finally seemed to relax a little. “Did it help?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding unsure. “I mean, wow, I feel great.”

“Well, it’s not really that complicated,” she started explaining. “It’s mostly based on the work of an eminent…”

Applejack tapped a hoof on the stone for her attention as she launched into a full ramble. “Twilight, ah’m sure it’s very interestin’ and all, but perhaps you could explain it later? After we’ve got through this mess.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she stammered, ducking her head slightly and hiding a bookish smile. She gave a nervous laugh. “I just get carried away, sometimes. I think you should wait here, with Spike,” she said to Riley, trying to sound commanding and princess-y. “It wouldn’t help you at all, crawling around dusty ruins with me.”

Riley stood, shakily, leaning heavily on Derpy once again, and Twilight wondered if she should try to help instead, but one look at how much trouble the athletic mail-mare was having supporting him gave her the impression she would just make a fool of herself and possibly hurt him even more.

Spike led them slowly out of the palace and down through the decaying city, his footsteps surprisingly delicate despite his great size. He barely fit down some of the streets, and the tips of his folded wings dragged along the walls of the buildings to either side, dislodging plaster and tiles with a noisy clatter.

“Mister Dragon, please stop!” Derpy called forlornly from the back. Twilight turned to see Riley slumped on the ground, gasping for breath again, a thin sheen of sweat over his skin.

She rushed back to him and felt his forehead with the back of a hoof, he felt dangerously hot. His eyes were unfocused and distant, and he barely seemed to notice she was there.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” she said rapidly, peering at his injury again. It had returned to being red and sickly looking, and his skin was a deathly shade of white all over. “His body is rejecting the magic, the structures I create can’t survive long enough to keep the infection at bay.”

She felt around the wound, and the skin there was even hotter. He moaned in discomfort and she drew back, suddenly very afraid. His condition was deteriorating by the second.

“Spike, can you take him back to Ponyville?” she asked, looking up at her giant friend. “You could fly there very quickly. His own people could help him, I’m sure of it.”

“Twilight, I can’t fly that fast, I’m not built for speed. It would take hours.”

“That’s too long,” she whined helplessly, her voice wavering. “I don’t think he’ll survive.”

“Can you cast the spell again?” Derpy asked, chewing her lip anxiously and fussing over her new friend.

“I can try, but the same thing will happen again and again. I’d have to keep doing it over and over, and even then it might not be enough. Maybe I could be a little less cautious and increase the strength a bit, but there’s many risks and other factors…”

“You can’t let him die,” the pegasus whispered sadly, nudging him with her snout. “I promised I would bring him back. I promised!”

Twilight blinked a few times to clear her mind, taking deep breaths and preparing the spells again. This time there was little satisfaction in a job well done, she knew it was merely a stop-gap measure, extending his life by minutes at a time.

“Urgh, Twilight,” he said, finally seeming to notice her as he returned to the lucid world once more. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”

“It’ll be okay,” she said, forcing an artificial brightness into her voice that she certainly didn’t feel. “You can come with me, and I’ll just keep renewing the wards, and we’ll get you back to your people afterwards, and they’ll fix you. I can keep your condition from deteriorating.”

He swallowed hard, clearly still in some discomfort. “I don’t think I can make it. You would do better to leave me here.”

With some effort he sat up, resting one knee and leaning heavily on the other while Derpy fussed around him like a nurse. He shrugged his backpack off, and Twilight helped him with her magic. With an unsteady arm he gave it to Derpy, and she took it in her mouth. “Remember, you said you’d take it back to Ponyville,” he said to her softly, holding her gaze. “You mustn’t forget.”

“No!” she exclaimed, offering it back to him with wide eyes, realisation dawning. “You will take it yourself, mister.”

He smiled weakly and pushed it away again. “Then at least carry it for me. I’m not sure I have the strength anymore.”

Derpy reluctantly allowed them to strap it around her back. It sat between her wings, looking somewhat ridiculous on a pony. The former mail-mare seemed undeterred, probably used to carrying strange shaped packages all day.

“I hate to rush you,” Twilight said unhappily. “But we should hurry. The going will be slow with you injured. We have to get Celestia and/or the Elements and get back to Ponyville before it gets worse.”

He got wearily to his feet and nodded. Derpy announced she was coming, as well, and Twilight hid a mild scowl again, he was her human, and she could help him perfectly well, thankyou-very-much. She knew that was a lie as soon as her subconscious had thought it. She felt terribly helpless.

Spike led them on to an ornate building that once served as the entrance to a museum built on the site of an old crystal mine, nestled against the sheer face of the mountain above them. Twilight vaguely remembered visiting as a young filly on a school trip, dull, grey days out listening to a very tedious teacher waffle on about the economics and politics of the gem supply to Stalliongrad or some other far-off place.

Behind it was an entrance to the top of the old mines, Spike informed them, but that was as far as he could go, he was far too large to even fit through the main door, let alone the actual mines behind. He told them he would wait in the same spot for their return. Twilight replied that they could be gone for a long time, and he pointed out that he had waited three centuries already, another few days was not going to be a trial.

Philomeena circled restlessly in the halls of the old museum, a bright spark in the darkness, casting a warm orange glow over the dusty artefacts and fixtures. Twilight could see that a lot of the display cabinets were broken, their contents scattered or missing entirely. She frowned, not wanting to imagine ponies sinking to the depths of looting.

Applejack broke them through a few doors at the back and into the darker recesses hidden under the museum. The soft, ancient wood shattered with a sickening crunch under her kicks. The phoenix led them down into the old mines, lit eerily from pods of glowing crystals that looked a little organic, as if they grew from the walls. Old minecart tracks ran underhoof, dull and pitted now after centuries of neglect.

As they dove deeper there was a sense that very few things had remembered about the place in a long, long time. The unending caves and caverns lay unvisited and forgotten, still and empty, no hooves had echoed in their halls in many generations.

Their layout was bewildering. Twilight had long since given up trying to remember the countless twists and turns they’d taken, they had left the tunnels that the museum used well behind, and several ‘condemned’ notices had needed removing recently. Philomeena seemed to know where he was going, or if he didn’t then he was hiding it very well behind confident turns. She wished she could understand him when he twittered at her a few times.

Seeing Spike so big was something of a shock, she admitted to herself. Although she had maintained he was alive and well to her friends she realised that in her heart she had very nearly given up hope. Her heart ached when she thought of the hundreds of lonely years, years without her. He had always been around for her, and now she had missed most of his life.

Riley was struggling again, she noticed, and they called another rest stop for her to renew her spells. Each time she cast it she was getting a little more experienced, at least, and he seemed to look a little better each time, perhaps with some more practise she would be able to help him recover properly, instead of just sticking a magical bandage on the problem. She just wished she could do more, she felt shamefully impotent for a pony supposedly destined to become Equestria’s next ruler.

In the back of her mind she was also aware that the moment they returned to Ponyville Riley was likely to disappear, he had found the artefact he was looking for after all and there was nothing stopping the interlopers from leaving. The thought brought her a deep sadness, and she wished she could spend more time with him, especially since the current circumstances were not the sort of quality time she was imagining. When he was lucid he seemed reluctant to talk to anypony, and the rest of the time he simply shambled along in a vague daze, propped up by Derpy who fussed over him like a new mother.

It was hard to even keep a steady rhythm up in the twisting, uneven tunnels. The floor sloped sharply in places and many areas had never been finished off properly, the raw edges of the rock ready to trip and often painfully sharp on their hooves. A few occasions had involved scrambling down rockfalls, slithering and slipping from one boulder to another in the dark while Riley would curse softly under his breath in his own language. While she couldn’t understand him the essence of whatever he was saying was quite clear.

In a few places the tunnel roof had partially collapsed, leaving them with an excavation job and a difficult clamber over the fallen stone, a thousand tiny crystals each glittering in the etheric light from her horn, just another obstacle to their path. The going got slower and slower, and she became more and more frustrated.

They stopped for a longer break after many hours, resting on the sloping floor of a cavern that stretched up above them to unseen heights. Their voices, soft as they were, echoed on and on, and any loud sound made the space ring like a bell. It was difficult to make out the true extent of the cave, but Twilight thought it didn’t sound so large. In the darkness a thousand tiny lights twinkled and glimmered, little phosphorescent crystals in the rock, each possessing a tiny glimmer of magic of their own, left over from when the world was born, some believed.

She poked around on the ground, looking for a dry spot. The deeper they had gone the wetter everything seemed to have become, even to the point where a few times they had been forced to splash through small puddles and had avoid a yet another new hazard: slippery stones.

Nopony had escaped without some bruised shins from kicking stones and there were more than a few cuts and scrapes after somepony had lost their footing and gone slithering down an incline in the dark. Derpy was limping particularly badly. She watched Riley stroking the soggy pegasus’ fur soothingly with his deft fingers and she forced down another small flash of envy that grew deep inside. It had taken her days of pestering to get him to accept her friendship, yet he seemed to have had no reservations with the newest addition to their group. She looked away bitterly, the dark path her thoughts were taking was not healthy, and certainly not helping their current predicament.

Philomeena flew in circles up above them, calling softly as if chastising them for stopping. Rainbow Dash was grumbling to herself, having learnt not to complain too loudly anymore after everypony had told her in no uncertain terms to stop whining at least once.

Twilight finally found a comfortable spot and sat down, resting her sore, tired hooves. The others sat around her on their own dry patches, keeping close for the light she was producing. Applejack had brought an old oil lantern they had found in the museum, but it had very little fuel and she was keeping it in case of an emergency.

“I didn’t think it would be this far,” she told them apologetically. “Philomeena, is it much further?”

The bird cooed back to her from up above, a useless response. He probably couldn’t understand them, and they certainly couldn’t understand his replies. Twilight sighed and levitated a piece of soggy biscuit from her saddlebag and nibbled on it. Around her she could hear the others doing the same.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said to Riley. His reply was a grim smile, twisted by pain. She looked away guiltily, feeling as if she had dragged him down there. If only she had taken more time to learn about their physiology, maybe there would have been something she could do. The humans had learnt about theirs, afterall, they had helped Rainbow Dash, almost miraculously, and many of their medicines and machinery had helped out at the Ponyville hospital to great effect.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I appreciate the effort you’re putting in to help me, although I worry that you’re wasting your energy.”

Twilight looked at him in confusion and he fixed her with a baleful gaze. “I don’t think I’m getting out of here, Twilight. Promise me you’ll help Derpy get my pack back to the others? They’re relying on it. Can’t let all this have been for nothing.”

“Don’t be silly,” Twilight said on reflex, and she realised she was grinding her teeth a little. She forced herself to relax. “You’ll be fine. It’s under control. We’ve got a working system, and I’m getting better at it all the time!”

“I appreciate the encouragement,” he said, very quietly, and Twilight’s heart began to pound uncomfortably hard in her chest again. “But I think we all know that’s not the case. Coming down here has been nearly impossible, every step has been agony. There’s no way I’m getting back up there. I just can’t do it.”

“I’ll carry you myself, if I have to,” she said, almost pleading. There were some murmurs of agreement from around. He smiled sadly, and she knew that if it came to it she wouldn’t really be able to. She was not built for strength. Maybe if they all took turns they could manage it, with exceptional luck, but even then it was highly unlikely. It was all they could do to get themselves down the dangerous tunnels without getting hurt, getting back with such a burden would be impossible. Their only hope was that they could somehow find Celestia and return her to the world, maybe she could get them out. It was a long shot, a very long shot. They had no idea what the situation was, or if they were even going to be able to find her.

“We should get moving again,” she announced, and the others groaned. It had not been all that long since they started their short break. “We need to make the most of the time we’ve got.”

The next hour passed slowly and they didn’t make anywhere near as much progress as she was hoping. They had come to yet another blockage and she angrily tossed rocks out of their way, shunting them with far more magic than was necessary. The sound of splitting rock echoed down the long tunnels, bouncing up into the galleries above their heads and coming back seconds later. Somewhere in the distance an almighty crash rumbled through the air and ground, a length, drawn out, shuddering sound.

“Whoa, there, Twilight,” Applejack said, looking up at the rocky ceiling above them with alarm. “Ah don’t want to be buried down here.”

She felt a touch on her shoulder and turned to see Riley watching her with a worried expression. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said, and she sagged visibly, everything was going wrong. Nopony – nobody – should get left behind, if they could only get to Celestia, she could solve everything…

“I’m feeling better,” he said, giving her a bright smile. “Just take it carefully.”

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, he didn’t look any better, and she felt sure he was just saying so to try and calm her down. She had little time to question him however, as Applejack shouted out in alarm, “water!”

She stopped and listened, and sure enough there was a distant sound coming down from somewhere up ahead, a low, threatening rumble with an undertone of hissing, rushing water. It was getting rapidly loudly, and the thin trickle of water running down one side of the gallery they were in was rapidly growing in size. Very quickly it had overflowed its small channel and was swirling around her hooves. Her ears popped, as if she had just descended quickly in her balloon.

“Run!” yelled Applejack, darting back the way they had come with a clatter of hooves on stone. The others were running with her, Twilight following as the water rushing around her feet threatened to knock her down. Derpy was half airborne, half scrabbling as she pulled Riley along with her just in front. Behind them the roaring of a large amount of water had grown deafeningly loud and Twilight found herself slipping in the white foam at her hooves, suddenly carried along, spinning and swirling as the water pulled her about like a leaf in a mountain river, battered by small fragments of rock rushing by.

Applejack had managed to scramble up onto a higher ledge, almost out of the water and was hanging on with her strong legs as she called out to them. She heard Rainbow Dash shout out as she collided with a rocky outcrop, unable to fly properly in the dark, tight space. There was a splash, barely audible and Applejack was calling out to her, stretching a limb out to catch the pegasus as she was swept by. Twilight tried to grab on as well but missed, and there was no fighting the powerful pull of the torrent around her to go back. There wasn’t any time to recover, and within seconds her friends were out of view, no sign of them other than a forlorn cry, barely heard over the cacophonous sound that filled her world.

Twilight looked around frantically, desperately trying to stabilise herself in the water and avoid the rocks that loomed out of the dark. She inhaled more water with every panicked gasp she took, her head ducking under the water as she tumbled, body aching with an urgent need for air. She had never been a strong swimmer, and this was well beyond her abilities.

Riley, Derpy and Philomeena were nowhere to be seen, and she called their names with increasing desperation, spluttering as she spun in the water, completely disorientated. Her world was in chaos, she couldn’t even tell which way was down, and the deafening sound was drowning out her voice and her thoughts. Her light faded, flickering fitfully as she lost concentration.

She was going to die, she realised, alone and so far away from everypony.

Suddenly there was a pressure on her leg and something caught her, spinning her around violently and holding her against the onslaught of the water. She struggled to the surface, kicking with her hind legs until something else caught her. A strong limb was wrapped around her barrel, holding her tightly. She rekindled her light and nearly sobbed when she saw Riley and Derpy right beside her, the human holding her against his chest, impossibly strong arms keeping her steady. She gratefully hooked her forelimbs around his neck and he held her out of the worst of the water as she choked and coughed up what was in her lungs.

“The water’s rising,” Riley yelled into her ear, barely understood over the crashing water. “We’re in an air pocket, can’t stay here.”

“I can’t swim!” she told him, crushing him tighter in her panic. The world was still spinning and she was breathing too fast, beginning to hyperventilate. “I’ll drown!”

“I won’t let you,” he said firmly, squeezing her to remind her he was there. “Just keep your light on. Close your eyes and keep hold of me. I need my arms. Derpy, keep close. Take a few deep breaths and hold it, we go on the count of three.”

Twilight tried to calm down and do as he said, holding her last breath so full that she feared her lungs might burst. With a sickening lurch he pushed away from the wall they were hanging on to and back into the maelstrom of swirling water. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and hung on tightly as he pulled her along with him, her light burning bright to guide their way. Derpy was following closely, one foreleg hooked around his chest on the other side and wings working deftly in the water to stabilise them both.

Twilight risked cracking her eyes open to look around as they bounced from one side of the cavern to the other, Riley guiding them expertly between handholds and sheltered eddies. Derpy looked strangely calm under pressure, and her eyes were both clear and pointing in the same direction for once. Twilight ground her teeth together again, not caring if it made her look like a madmare.

She felt a shock as they collided with the tunnel wall, and Riley grunted as he absorbed the impact, sheltering her from it. At the same time the timbre of the sound was changing, the crashing, turbulent waves giving way to a slightly different sound.

“Falls!” cried Derpy over the roar, and Riley acknowledged her and indicated another haven as the gallery widened out, the flow of water behind them subsiding a little and allowing a short respite. Twilight dared open her eyes completely, taking deep breaths now she could see it was safer.

Off to the side the water dipped and vanished into a dark abyss, the surface slick and shiny. “Twilight, more light?”

She grunted and flared the light brighter, throwing deep shadows into the cracks and openings high above them. They appeared to be in another wide gallery, the ceiling stretching far up high. Many tiny openings looked back at them, dark and much too small to squeeze into, even if they could get all three of them out of the water and airborne somehow.

“I don’t see any way,” Derpy said, looking around.

“No idea what’s over those falls,” he said, panting hard. His voice dripped with reluctance as they drifted nearer and he shook his head. “Very bad idea.”

Twilight swallowed nervously, all of a sudden she saw where they were going, and it wasn’t a nice thought. She held on tightly as Riley took them over the falls, plunging down and down into the empty space beyond as her stomach fell away underneath her. She screamed as they fell for what seemed like a lifetime. Every nerve in her body willed her wings to open, but sheer terror incapacitated her.

All of a sudden they were underwater, first hitting the surface with a smack that knocked the breath out of her. Immediately Riley was pulling them upwards with powerful strokes of his arms, kicking hard and she gasped for breath again as they broke the surface. Derpy was nearby, treading water like she had been born in it.

She looked around, brightening her light more and more until it wouldn’t go any further. Still she couldn’t see the walls or ceiling, they were floating in the middle of a large expanse of water, relatively still apart from the ripples radiating out from their plunge and the falling column of water nearby.

The water was frigid and she could feel her limbs going numb. Riley had wrapped an arm around under her forelegs again and gently persuaded her to let go of his neck, turning her in the water until she was facing away from him. He swam backwards, pulling her gently with him, carefully keeping her head above the water. She was certain she felt something brushing against her legs, long and sinuous and she trembled, afraid of everything. It was like some frightful nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.

It seemed like an age passed before she saw the blessed reflection of her light from a rocky wall, and soon there were stones under her hooves in the water and they were scrambling up a shore of sorts, loose pebbles clattering underhoof. Riley fell back against the stones, half sitting, half lying, breathing heavily. She could feel his heart beating hard against her back.

She lay panting in Riley’s arms, leaning back against him. He was warm, despite the freezing water, and the strong embrace he held her in was safe and calming. He stroked her soaked mane, brushing it back from her eyes tenderly. She realised she was shaking all over, uncontrollable shivers that shook her entire body, and would be sobbing if she wasn’t so afraid. He was making soothing noises, words that she didn’t understand and didn’t care to. His closeness was all she needed at that moment and she huddled against him.

Derpy was shaking herself off nearby, looking around with interest at their new surroundings. There was little light, except what Twilight was producing and the glimmer from a few crystals high above them, protruding from a rocky bulge. Ripples from the water lapped at the rocks, sloshing softly. In the distance they could still hear the roar of the waterfall, splashing down into the subterranean lake, the sound thin and strangely distorted by the huge underground space.

Riley was carefully disentangling himself from Twilight, and she tried to avoid resisting, as much as she wanted to stay there. “We need to move on,” he said calmly. “It’s not safe. The waterfall’s woken something in the water.”

She sat up with a jolt, remembering the slithering feeling around her legs. The water lapped at the shore innocently, little ripples from some disturbance, or maybe just from their earlier passage. Derpy led them up the shore until they were a good twenty paces from the water’s edge and up against sheer rocks. Twilight searched the lake nervously, shining her light brightly. She convinced herself she could see shapes just under the surface, loops of sinuous bodies undulating across the surface, although in reality she could see nothing at such an oblique angle.

Nothing tangible appeared, only the ripple of the water. “That was frightful. I thought we’d had it, for sure,” she said at length.

“Promised I’d keep you afloat,” he said with a smile, ruffling her soggy mane.

“Where are we?” said Derpy, flying a little way above their heads and peering into the darkness. “There’s a tunnel up here.”

Twilight sniffed at the air, cold and stale. There was no breeze at all, everything was perfectly still. There was something nagging at her, however, and she cast about with her magic, exploring the leylines nearby and following them as far as she could see. There was something nearby, something magical, something big.

“There’s magic here,” she said, curiosity and interest helping distract and calm her at last. “Something huge. I can feel its power, the magical structures that drive it are all around us.”

“Is it what we’re looking for? Can you find it without the bird?” Riley said, sitting down on a large boulder and pulling up his torn jacket to inspect his wounds.

Twilight inhaled sharply as she remembered how ill he was, in all the excitement and terror of the moment she had forgotten, and now she felt ashamed. It was amazing that he had been able to do all of that when he was knocking on Death’s door, humans really were fascinating creatures, strong until the very last.

His bandages were soaked, the blood had leached from them turning them a sickly pink colour. The skin underneath was pale, far too pale. The wound itself had stayed mostly closed, although as she watched she could see fresh blood welling up from within. She hastily cast her spells again, fortifying whatever effects still remained. The adrenaline from the wild ride was starting to wear off, and he was in pain again.

“Which way, Twilight?” he was saying, tapping on the side of her neck to gain her attention. She focused on him, finishing the spells. He looked unbearably tired again, worn out and exhausted. “Where do we go?”

“I…” she looked around, trying to reconcile the magical sensations with the physical layout of the world, most non-magic users, and even many unicorns, didn’t realise that the two worlds were completely different shapes. The leylines didn’t look the same, at all, and it was very hard to follow them in the physical plane. “I’m not sure. Down the shore, this way, I think.”

A sudden sloshing caught her attention and she snapped her head around, shining her light against the shoreline. Her heartbeat had increased twofold almost immediately and she felt a little dizzy. There were a couple of larger waves coming, splashing against the stones with wet slapping sounds.

“There’s no time,” he said suddenly, jumping to his feet and pulling her up with him as if she weighed nothing. “Derpy, where does the tunnel go?”

“A long way!” she called back.

“Good enough. Twilight, fly up.”

She tore her gaze away from the water and looked up, it was only a short flight, but her wings were soaked and heavy, and her confidence shattered right now. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned back to see something long and black working its way towards them. She gave a quiet scream, and another shot out of the water, writhing up over the rocks towards the sound of her voice.

“Go!” Riley shouted at her, leaping forwards and distracting the mysterious, wriggling tentacle. A short knife had appeared in his hand and he was standing in a crouch, watching the things carefully as they snaked towards him, all the while stepping cautiously backwards.

Suddenly she felt strong hooves grabbing her sides, pulling her wings open, and she looked up to see Derpy tugging at her. “Come on, Miss Librarian!”

She took to the air, shaky and unsteady on her cursed wings. Underneath her the human had dodged a thrust from one of the tentacles, and she could see a third slithering towards him. Each one was tipped with a sharp point, glittering white in the bright light from her horn.

As the limb missed him by a hair’s breadth he turned and locked an arm around it, twisting his entire body and bringing his full weight down on it. Like a sprung trap his other arm brought the knife plunging down into the fleshy tube, tearing and sawing at the tough hide. A sickly black liquid pumped out of it and the appendage thrashed wildly, drawing back into the pool with a splash.

Riley turned to face the next one, but both were coming at him. He narrowly ducked the first and took the second flat across his back, knocking him forwards with a grunt. He fell across the rocks, losing his footing on the slick surface and stumbling. His fall was the only thing that saved him as the point of the second tentacle clattered off a rock where his head had been.

On his back he kicked out fiercely, knocking the other away with a meaty thud, again and again as it lunged at him with lethal intent. Somewhere down on the shore there was a grinding of stones and a muffled, gurgling growl of frustration. Twilight turned her light towards it, still struggling to stay alight. There was an amorphous blob of something working its way up the stones, a sharp beak snapping in the middle of the mass and four or five thick tentacles propelling it from behind as it fought with Riley.

He had got his knife back into another tentacle and was struggling to remove it, hanging on as it thrashed and bucked, pulling him with it and actually helping him to his feet. With a cry he let go of the knife, losing it to the monster. Now unarmed it looked as though he was in serious trouble and Twilight finally snapped out of her daze and flapped across to hover above the monster’s head, kicking at its beady black eyes with her hooves.

It howled in anger and brought a tentacle at her with alarming speed. Through some sort of instinct she didn’t know she possessed she managed to knock it to one side with her hindlegs, kicking off it to gain a little height and easily dodging the second swipe. Derpy had taken her chance and dived down to Riley, grabbing him unceremoniously by the back of the jacket and heaving him up and out of harm’s way with a strained grunt.

Twilight shot across to them, barely stopping in time to avoid colliding with them. She took his legs, helping take a little of his weight from Derpy. Between them they managed to get him up to the opening she had found, dumping him heavily on the rocky floor.

“What kind of world do you live in,” he was saying, gasping for breath, not moving from where he was sprawled. Down below there was an angry squealing from the squid-thing as it flailed against the rocks below, unable to climb. “Everything here tries to kill me.”

“It’s not normally like this,” Twilight said hastily. “It’s Discord. He’s unsealed Tartarus. All the dangerous, bloodthirsty things in the world used to be trapped in there, free to fight amongst themselves in another world far, far from ours. But now they’ve been free for three hundred years. Even the intelligent monsters that used to remember the rules have forgotten. For instance, the roc you encountered should have known it can’t eat ponies. Or humans, I suppose. They’re not usually that barbaric, but nopony has taught them.”

Derpy came trotting back over to them. “I’ve found a light,” she said, blinking at them slowly. “It’s really pretty.”

“What? How are you so calm about all this?” Twilight demanded, exasperated.

Derpy looked taken aback and shrunk back from Twilight, looking down at her hooves as if she had done something wrong. “My father used to tell me that there’s no use getting worked up about things you can’t change. You just have to get on with life.” She nodded, as if that was all there was to the matter, and Twilight stared at her in silence.

“But you nearly drowned,” she stated flatly.

“No, I didn’t,” she responded, somewhat pragmatically. “You nearly drowned. I can swim very well. I go swimming every day. I can hold my breath for ages.”

“Where next?” Riley asked, interrupting before Twilight could get any more worked up. She glared at Derpy, she had no right to be so good at all this, not after she broke everything in sight back at home.

“Well, I’m not going back there,” Twilight said with a shudder. The wet slapping sound of the monster’s tentacles was still echoing around from time to time. “So, onwards, I suppose. What’s this light, Derpy?”

They followed the pegasus a little way up the tunnel, and Twilight noticed that the walls were regular now, no longer the uncut stone of the higher tunnels. In places she could see patterns, intricate carvings of shapes and symbols from a language she didn’t even recognise, let alone able to understand. They were a long, long way underneath Canterlot now, some of these bits must be many millennia old.

Derpy was peering through a crack in the wall, a crack through which a soft blue light filtered, soft and gently pulsating like a giant heartbeat. Twilight peered through with interest, whatever it was had to do with her earlier feeling, many strong magical fields flowed through the area, the rock and air was saturated with it.

“Stand back,” she said, picking up a large boulder with her magic and preparing to throw it at the thin stone wall. It piled through with a crash that echoed on and on and on. The squid thing screeched, thankfully behind them, although Twilight was worried about where they would go next. They certainly weren’t going back the way they had come, but who knew what other horrors lay down in the depths? Maybe this was a case of better the enemy you knew than the one you didn’t.

When the dust had cleared and the rattle of falling stones had died away they stepped through into the room beyond. Twilight was pleased to note that this actually was a room, not just a water-worn tunnel through the rock. The edges were square, with plenty of pleasing geometric shapes in the architecture. That meant that ponies (she hoped) used to come down here, and that in turn meant there must be a way in and out somewhere.

The glow was coming from an opening in the far end of the room, still throbbing invitingly, soft and warm despite its blue colour. She let her light go out, there was enough to see by now. Beams of cyan light shimmered in the clouds of dust that hung in the air, kicked up by Twilight’s overly enthusiastic entry. Riley was leaning against a wall, hunched over slightly, in pain again. Twilight sighed and rubbed at the base of her horn, the constant use of magic since they started their descent into the mountain was giving her a terrible ache.

“I don’t think it’s much further now,” she said to him softly as his laboured breathing returned to normal. “I have a good feeling.”

“I’m glad,” he said. Twilight hid the frown that tried to creep onto her face, he may still have had a funny accent but she had known him for long enough now that she could tell when he was being insincere, and this felt like one of those moments. The way he seemed to have resigned himself to death was deeply upsetting, she felt as if she was having to carry hope for the both of them, and that seemed very unfair.

“Before I came down here, after our meeting with your admiral, I was very upset, and I wanted to give up. Applejack gave me a talking to and told me that I had to stop moping. She was right, you know. And you should stop moping, too. Never give up!”

“I’m not ‘giving up’,” he nearly growled at her. “I’ve done everything I came here to do. I’ve got the warp core, and I’ve kept you alive thus far.”

“But you’re giving up on going home,” she said, looking away.

“Not really, I’d very much like to, if I can. But the odds are poor. It’s simple probabilities.

She frowned, his logic was correct, but it was an awful way to live one’s life, judging everything on the mathematical chance of success.

“I’m sorry I said it in the first place, I didn’t know you’d take it to heart so badly. I’m just being pragmatic.”

“You’re being silly,” she said stubbornly. “When we find Celestia she’ll be able to get you back, or fix you, or something. I don’t know. But you can’t just give up, Riley.”

“That’s putting a lot of faith in a god that’s been missing for three centuries,” he pointed out. “Assuming, of course, that this whatever-it-is you’ve found is actually her.”

“Well, why don’t we find out?” she said, pulling him away from the wall and towards the doorway. Derpy was nosing at a dusty bowl on a low stone table against one wall. It looked as if it might have had some fruit it in once upon a time, but now there was just a small mound of shrivelled grey, practically petrified things, unrecognisable after so long under the thick blanket of dust that covered everything.

“This way!” she called, trotting ahead of them. Riley called out to her to be careful, and Twilight was inclined to agree, their encounter with the beast in the water proved that things were still alive down here, even after so very long. Things they had never seen before.

They rounded a corner and found themselves on a balcony opening into a great hall. Two staircases curved off to the sides, coming to face themselves again at the bottom. Immense carved pillars ran along the length of the hall, holding up the vaulted roof high above them. The light was produced by a great portal of some kind at the far end, raised on a pedestal and surrounded by ornate carved figures and low altars, the surface glowing so brightly it appeared white. The light from it illuminated every corner of the room. A very old carpet was underhoof, crumbling as soon as they stepped on it and producing little puffs of strange smelling dust. On the walls hung the shreds of old tapestries, mostly torn down by their own weight to lie in crumpled heaps along the edges of the hall. Stained glass windows lined the walls, although what they looked out onto was anypony’s guess.

Derpy hopped up onto the edge of the balcony and then jumped off, gliding down to the floor below in a lazy spiral. Twilight and Riley took the stairs, the human leaning heavily on the banisters for support. Twilight rushed over to the portal with barely contained excitement, she had never seen one so large before. It towered above her, at least ten times her height and just as wide.

She had seem similar things before, of course, and had even made small ones herself, large enough to drop a pebble through, but the amount of magical energy required to keep something this large open was almost unimaginable, at least to her. The very air around it seemed thick and excitable, strung tight like a lyre string, humming with arcane energies.

The downdraft from Derpy’s wings ruffled her fur and sent tiny little flecks of prismatic light flashing across the surface of the magical gateway as the pegasus hovered beside her, peering into the portal.

“What is it? Is it the princess?”

“No, silly,” Twilight said, prodding it gently with her magic. “It’s a portal, but different to one I’ve ever seen. I’ve no idea where it goes.”

“There’s muffins in there,” Derpy said slowly, sounding a little distracted. “It goes to muffins!”

Twilight stared, there was nothing there. “I don’t trust it,” she said, but it was too late, Derpy had already reached forward with a foreleg. With a soft hissing sound she vanished in a flash of blue light. Twilight jumped back in alarm, just in time for Riley to catch up with her.

“Where does it go?” he demanded in a strained voice.

“I don’t know,” she replied axniously, another worry to add to her collection. “It could be anywhere, it might not even be a portal at all. Let’s keep calm and think about this rationally, what would it be doing down here? Why is it so large?”

“Rational, my ass,” he snapped, and Twilight realised with a shock that he was incredibly angry, an emotion she hadn’t really seen from him yet. “She’s got the goddamn core.”

She shrunk back from him a little, he was a little scary, face twisted in an angry scowl and breathing hard through his nose. “She said she saw muffins,” she began.

“I don’t give a – a something – what she saw. I can’t fail this now. Not when we’re so close.” He snarled something furious in his own tongue. “I should have just made her fly straight back, not drag her down here on this ridiculous trip, just to look after an invalid. I’m an idiot.”

“It’s not a ridiculous trip,” Twilight said quietly, affronted. “This is important. Celestia is our ruler. We must find her.”

“She’s got precious little left to rule over!” he snapped back.

“It’s every bit as important to me as getting your thingy back. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that this is more important. We need Celestia to put an end to this mess. You just need your bag so that you can run away, when you could have a much better life by just staying. There’d be no war here.”

“It’s not running away,” he growled. “We go to save lives. That’s our job and duty. Furthermore, you wouldn’t appreciate us staying. I know you’ve got some deluded idea that you can domesticate us all and convince us to spend our time playing under rainbows and eating cakes and spreading love, but I can tell you for free, we don’t work like that. I’d give it a couple of years before you find you need something considerably stronger than Tartarus to hold us.”

“You do yourself a disservice,” she said, stamping a hoof. “I’ve seen your caring side, you can’t pretend you don’t have one. You’re the same as us, inside, you’ve just had a hard time, and you can’t see that there is good in the world.”

“I’m having a hard time, right this very moment,” he snapped. She wilted under his angry gaze, cowering down. Maybe he was right and humans had an unstoppable dark side. It was as if a switch had been flicked, and the Riley she thought she had been getting to know had simply vanished, replaced by something much darker that wore the same skin.

Her distress must have been plain to see. He pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to look away, closing his eyes with a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I’ve not had a good day. I know this is important to you, but I suggest we drop this subject until later.

“Can you find out where the portal goes, or should I just jump in and hope for the best?”

“No!” she said hastily as he took a step towards it. “No, that would be unwise. Just give me a few minutes to investigate. Please. It’s complicated.”

He crouched down nearby, giving her a respectable distance to work. She closed her eyes, feeling around the area for magical influences she might recognise. Many years of study underneath Celestia had left her with a very good sense of the princess’ magical imprint, and she was fairly certain that neither Celestia, nor Luna, had built this thing. That was surprising as she wasn’t aware of any historical figures who could have outperformed them.

Celestia had been here, however, or was still here in some way. The familiar feeling of her magic, which Twilight had always associated with rich cream, was tangible around her, wisps of it tangled around nearby leylines, like tufts of sheepswool snagged on a prickly bush. She followed them eagerly, more than a little lost in the wild magical flux from the portal, an onslaught of power that left her drunk with the chaotic, raw powers.

“We’re very close,” she murmured, and when she opened her eyes again they were glowing white hot, twin searchlights that almost overpowered the light from the portal. Riley fell back in surprise, watching her a little fearfully. “The power from this gateway is beyond words, I can see everything.”

“Twilight, are you okay?” he asked. “Are you with me?”

“Yes,” she replied simply. “They’re buried, much, much deeper. At the very root of this mountain, many miles down.”

“Derpy?”

“I think she’s with them, although her magic is negligible and hard to see against the glory of Celestia and Luna.” She paused. “…and… him.”

“Him?”

“Discord is down there, too,” she said with a gulp. When she next blinked the power had dispersed and her eyes had faded back to their familiar deep purple. Riley visibly relaxed.

“How do we get there?” he asked, climbing painfully to his feet.

“I think the portal leads to a prison of sorts,” she said. “A place like Tartarus, but much more specific, separate fields for each, um, inmate. I wonder… I wonder if I sent them all there, when I cast my spell. I can almost remember it, but not enough to be sure. I used the Elements somehow, their power is beyond even the goddesses. With their potent energy perhaps I could have done this. The princesses possess the power to banish one another, it stands to reason I might also have inherited that, I just needed the power source.”

“You imprisoned a god?”

She swallowed nervously. “Not just one. Three gods.” She turned her head up to the ceiling, fighting back the sense of panic that rose hotly in her throat. “Oh, Celestia, you should never have given me this power. I was not ready.”

Riley seemed unconcerned. “If you locked them up, then you must have the key to unlock them again,” he argued. “Can you do it? Can you bring them back up here? And Derpy?”

She could see the words he really meant to say. “And your precious satchel? No, not from here. We’re going to have to go down there. And the only way is through the portal. I suspect, although I don’t know for sure, that it’s pointing at Discord right now. He’s up to something, I can’t think of any other reason why Derpy would see muffins otherwise. She loves the wretched things.”

“This guy is the cause of all these problems, right?”

“Yes, he unleashed Tartarus and set them on us. He is wicked beyond forgiveness.”

Riley chewed at his lip, shaking his head slightly. His expression had softened significantly. Twilight spotted a valuable opportunity to needle him. “There, I can see your softer side that you insist you don’t have. You’re worried about Derpy, as well as your mission, aren’t you?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again straightaway, then sat in silence, a look of deep contemplation on his face. At last he spoke, “she has a kid,” he said, then looked directly at her, his gaze steady. “Waiting for her, back home.”

“Yes, she does,” Twilight said, feeling a little smug, the softer side was showing through after all. She had won, again.

“I used to have a son,” he announced suddenly, and she felt like she had been kicked in the chest. She sat down heavily on her haunches, staring at him mutely. She started to say something, but he didn’t stop talking.

“He never even saw his second birthday,” Riley said morosely, looking down at the floor, shoulders slumped. His voice was slowly and very hesitant, as if he knew he shouldn’t be saying it. As he got into his story he became more confident.

“I’d been called away, when it happened. The Thala broke through the defence net. A lucky shot took out a repeater relay and left a whole colony off the grid. It didn’t take them long to lay waste to the station’s defences after that.

“There was no hope for my son, and his beautiful mother. The nearest frigates were half an hour away by warp, and outclassed to match. Their fate was sealed, the Thala would break in minutes later. We’ve seen it a thousand times before – they’d eat about half the population there and then, the rest they would load aboard their cargo ships, battered and broken. The survivors would be the unlucky ones, they’d be hosts for newborn Thala drones, a living food source. It could take weeks to die.

“In the end it was my own father who was their saviour. He was the governor of the colony, an ex-marine, and he’d seen what was coming. He blew the main reactor, destroying the entire colony in a microsecond. They wouldn’t have felt a thing. When I returned there was nothing but an airless crater.

“Sometimes, Twilight, it is better to give up. But this isn’t one of those times. My unit, the wing that crashed on your planet, is one of the most experienced fighting forces in the galaxy. We’re needed out there, each day we spend here is another day that could have helped save someone from the pain of losing their family.”

Twilight didn’t know what to say. There were no words that were suitable, no sentiments she could express that could help.

“Maybe now you can understand why I wanted you to leave me behind, to leave me to die. One life isn’t important, not when it’s offset by a thousand tortured, dying souls. You just can’t allow sentiment to interfere in something that big. I don’t know how long I’ve got left, but I know I have to spend my last hours trying to fix this as best I can. I have to get that core back. I have to do whatever is necessary, I hope you understand that.”

He stopped and looked away from her, some unreadable expression his face. “And I hope you can forgive me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to cry, nothing seemed fair anymore, her world was in flames, but then so was his. Could she fix both of them? She could at least try, she owed him that.

“I think I can adjust the portal,” she said, trying not to choke. “I think it’s designed to be moved, if only I can work out how.”

She forced out the sadness, channelling her being into magic with single-minded purpose. The shapes and patterns in the portal’s magical mechanics resolved to familiar designs and she pushed gently at it, nudging key parts carefully. In the end it turned out to be quite simple, with the amount of energy the artefact was putting out she had a lot of magic to play with and the mechanisms to reset the position of the portal’s endpoint were then trivial to activate. The portal flashed a few times, the white light flickering as it realigned itself.

“There, it’s connected to some sort of atrium now, a key position rather than a holding area. I think it’s safe. I hope.” She looked at the portal suspiciously. It didn’t look any different, the same pulsating blue-white glow spilled from it, glistening off Riley’s sickly skin. She helped him to his feet, conscious of the deep sorrow in her chest. He didn’t speak again, lost in his own despair, she imagined. She felt extremely bad for causing him so much pain, she shouldn’t have prodded him so. He looked strange, now, sadness and what she could only assume was guilt. He wouldn’t look at her.

She held out a hoof to him and after a moment’s hesitation he took it in his long fingers, holding it gently. He looked at her at last, his face a perfect picture of a resigned man. She nodded and they stepped forward together, touching the surface of the portal and vanishing with a fizz of residual magic.

Comments

[DreadedCandiru2]

A bit jealous of the more athletic types, aren't we, Twi?