Journey to the center of Equestria

by Rarity Belle

Chapter LXV

“That’s, that’s true. We’re in this together and, it would be a shame if we didn’t finish what we started,” said Twilight to the mares. It was hard to say for her, but then her lips curled up into a weak smile. But the smile was a well-meant little thing. She released a deep exhale through her nostrils before she stood back up on her hooves.

What had caused it, they didn’t know for certain. But for one reason of the other they all just emerged in a massive group hug. A hug that was given tight to all of the mares. For the moment they all found each other equal. Nopony was different, they were all in it together and they would be solving it together as well. They had been chosen to perform the task, they were almost done with it.

Just for a couple seconds did the hug held itself together before the group just split up once more. The hug was broken as the mares all knew what question was going to be needed to asked. The question of just how they would be proceeding. The most dreaded question of all.

Before them laid a maze of magma and one wrong step would cause them all to lose their lives. The maze and the lake were a dreaded combination to tackle and one that required more thought than anything else they had done thus far.

Nopony asked the question, because they all knew the answer upon it. One way or the other did they had to cross it, whether it was liked or not. The unicorn soothsayer turned her attention away from the group as she glanced over the boiling rocks in the lake.

Hundreds of thoughts began to cross her mind as only one seemed to be reasonable enough for her. One thought that perhaps could have given off the right thing they needed to be doing in the matter. Yet even then, it was only a small margin of success that they would be having.

Anything was better than a wild goose chase though. So Twilight continued to think about her idea while she stroked her chin a gentle bit. Everything had to be worked out exactly as she needed it, otherwise troubles would arise. Calculations were made about the size of the room and the surface it carried.

Whatever laid beneath she didn’t took into calculations for the time being. As long as they would have been brought over to the middle of it or to any other source of where they could have been going down once more.

Nopony spoke a word, not even to each other. Silent as the night they just waited for the words of Twilight to come and see what she had to tell. Silence had taken over with the occasional interruption from the ceiling crumbling down.

Every once and awhile would the icicles of rock just crumble down and disappear within the sheer vastness of the magma lake.

Yet Twilight would never have removed her gaze from anything or all. For she had delved too deep in her thoughts while she continued to go past every possibility there was.

Minutes would have gone by while the mare paced up and down in front of the other mares. Countless of ideas had been surging through her head. The soothsayer tried to figure out which one would have been the best. Which one of those ideas would have been the best to go with.

In the end did she turn her head over to the mares with a smile going weak across her lips. She had figured out just what would have been the best out of her mad ideas. The craziest of them all could just have been the one that actually work. All it took was a bit of craziness to find the genius, or so the saying went.

The rest of the mares all perked their ears in order to hear what Twilight had to say to them. With the fullest of their attention did they give the mare the time to speak. “I’m having a plan, a plan that’s utterly madness but one that possibly can be helping us to get through the magma lake. And before you ask, no. I don’t intent to make a diamond longboat here.”

“May I ask why?” asked Rarity after she rose a gentle eyebrow to the unicorn.

“Simple, I do not know how to summon or carve diamonds and the temperature here is a lot warmer than at the previous lake. With this kind of heat, the diamonds would even melt even if they had been coated in ice. It simply isn’t going to work,” explained Twilight to the captain.

Who on her own turn gave her a gentle nod. The explanation was enough to work it and it also gave away for another thing. Just what was the idea that she had come up with?

“So, what’s that mind of yars having planned then?” Applejack asked. The admiral was the one more who spoke the words that were on everypony’s mind.

Twilight released the smile once more before she finally revealed just what she had planned on doing. “Okay, so what I have planned is, now that I know the rough dimensions of the place, is to make the way appear for us. It’s really simple actually but it requires a lot of magic to do. I plan to cast a spell that will reveal the way to us in a rather simple manner. Colored traces.”

“And, are you sure about all of this, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked. She was genuinely concerned about the whole plan. “If it requires all of your magic, who is to say you can defend yourself if you wake something up?”

Twilight turned her head over to the doctor and nodded calmly to her words. She was just so right with them. If the mare would release all her magic at once for one spell, she would have been defenseless. “That, is a problem I haven’t still fully been working out. However, our main priority is just to get the spell done. For all I know, we might be sitting right in the epicenter of every tremor and are they already busy destroying the whole of Equestria.”

“So you’re saying, you much rather have your own magic depleted and the way revealed then the other way around?” Rainbow added into the mix as she didn’t saw the logic behind the actions that were wanted to be done. Then again, the pegasus had never fully understood the unicorn culture to begin with.

“That is indeed correct, Rainbow. Rarity knows the arcane arts good enough to defend herself and hopefully me as well,” returned Twilight before she pointed over to the pirate captain. “Not to mention the fact that most of you carry quite the assortment of weaponry as well. I think, we’ll be just fine. We have made it so far against demons and shape-shifters.”

There weren’t any words known to them that could have countered Twilight’s. So there was only one thing left to do. “Well, whenever you’re ready, Twilight, do your thing,” said Fluttershy. The doctor had enough information to place her trust and faith in the unicorn. The unicorn nodded to the pegasus and quickly made her way over to the edge of the maze.

There she would charge up her horn with a set of closed eyes and allow whatever would happen, happen. The unicorn just stood there with her staff in one hand and the other curled up into a fist. She released deep exhales through her nostrils while deep inhales went through her mouth. All that the other mares could do was to wait for whatever would be happening.

They stood in a circle with their eyes all peeled to Twilight before the horn began to coat itself in the raspberry aura. The charge became bigger and bigger as her hands and staff also got coated with the arcane energy.

They had seen some charges made by the soothsayer, but that was perhaps one of the biggest that they had seen in their lives. The amounts of magic that were called up by the mare were just unparalleled by anything they had witnessed. Perhaps they were getting just that extra little bit more than where they had bargained for.

“Should we stop her?” Pinkie Pie said in a worried tone. The lamia’s eyes shifted near constant from left to right. She wanted to make sure that everything was going well with Twilight. Yet the other unicorn of the group placed a hand on the lamia’s shoulder.

"She’s going to be fine,” said Rarity in a reassuring tone. “This, is normal for a unicorn. But you might want to take a little step back when the discharge happens.”

“W-Why?” Pinkie stuttered, after which she looked Rarity straight in the eyes.

"That’s a lot of magic she carries there,” the pirate captain answered in a simple tone.

Pinkie seemed to understand the words that were said before she remained firmly on the ground. A little gulp was released by her throat before she closed her eyes. She didn’t had the desire to see what would be heading her way nor did she had the intention to do anything else.

The sounds of the magical charge became louder and louder with every passing second. Lashes of raspberry colored lightning were released from the horn and slamming into the ground with a soft sizzle. How long, before something good or bad would have happened?

The circle formation of the company had an interesting effect as even the magic of Twilight seemed to notice that. The unicorn soothsayer began to have a more difficult time to get everything under control. The eyelids were firmly shut against one another. Something had gone wrong with the preparations of the spell and she didn’t knew what it was at all, she didn’t even have a clue.

Whispers could be heard inside of her head that spoke of different chants and charms then the spell she wanted to cast into the wide world. Something was messing with her and the unicorn didn’t like it at all. Something was toying with her but it wasn’t Nightmare Moon or any of the Dark Witches that laid under her.

No, the voice in her head was soothing, manly and calm. Perhaps that combination of things was the thing that made her utterly terrified of it all. She didn’t had the control anymore while she also tried to listen to the words that were being spoken to her.

Words in a tongue and language unknown to her did their turn. The tongue was old, that much she could tell for certain. Anything else still remained a massive mystery to her. Whatever had managed to crawl inside of her head, it must have been doing so to aid them all instead of prevent them from reaching their goal.

The amounts of magic that had been stored in the horn almost became too much, the whispers faded out of her head and Twilight could only release everything as one massive blast. “R-Ready or not, here it comes!” she shouted under the sounds of a groan of pain. Twilight was used to channeling large amounts of magic through her horn, but the amounts she carried in that moment of time were even new to her. For everything was a first, the saying went.

Every last ounce of magic she possessed and could make was all directly sent towards the horn for the blast. A blast that eventually came in the form as a massive thunder flash. A thunder flash that didn’t just went one way, but went into five other directions.

“No! E-Everypony, stand, stand still!” Twilight shouted before she realized just what had happened. But her words hadn’t been spoken yet or the five other mares had been captured by the raspberry lightning.

Fear took everypony over for a moment. They all feared for their lives as they possibly could have been ended there and then. Yet it was the opposite that happened. Instead of getting weaker, they felt themselves stronger.

Each of the mares just felt stronger the longer they stood in the lightning. A lightning that began to change color from every mare it hit. The raspberry color disappeared whereas Rarity’s flash became white, Applejack’s became orange, Fluttershy’s became yellow, Rainbow’s became blue and Pinkie’s became pink.

The energy that was sent towards the mares a moment ago all channeled back to Twilight after the color changes. The soothsayer was still trying to understand just what happened to them and her. But she couldn’t give a definitive answer upon it in the moment. All she could say was that they had become conducts of some kinds for the magic she had released.

Their formation had caused them all to become conducts for their own kind of magic which was being absorbed by Twilight. She felt herself stronger than ever before and her staff was raised upwards. Her horn couldn’t hold that much power, so the only logical way to channel it out was through the staff.

Her body managed to turn around and the steps she made were heavy. It felt like her hooves were stuck in cement or glued to the very rocks. Her eyes looked to everypony as the tears were spotted in all of their eyes. Even her own eyes weren’t able to be kept dry. The sheer amounts of power that was flowing through each of them just surpassed any expectations that they had.

“O-Only one way to end this,” the soothsayer said with hope in her eyes. Twilight then aimed her staff to the middle of the group. All of the mares nodded as if they knew what would be happening from the get go. Perhaps the initial blast gave them the same whispers in their heads as they had given Twilight. But where the soothsayer didn’t understood them, they did.

The staff then released the massive magical charge it carried as the soothsayer released a yell of pain. The power that rushed straight out of her body just hurt her so much. Never in her life had she expected that a charge of magic could have been that painful.

Yet in the middle of the group it formed itself, a massive orb. A massive orb that began to take the colors of the rainbow to itself when it was still being build. The mares all looked over the thing with a face of wonder as well as trouble clearly readable upon it.

Whatever the orb was, whatever it would be doing in the end, they had created it. They had helped in its creation and they alone would have been able to face the consequences. For all they knew, that would have been a rainbow colored bomb to explode the whole place. Of course the thought was utter madness, but that was a daily thing for them all by then.

The orb turned into a sphere the longer it was being created and the mares were all taken by the changing of colors. One moment it perfectly matched Rarity and the next it matched Applejack. They didn’t knew what it was, but they knew it would have something to do with the events to come. Twilight looked up to the orb with a painful expression as the power surges were almost getting too much for her.

“I-Im, Imp-possible,” said Twilight to herself. The last bits of magic were conducted through her and her staff into the orb. Finally had the ordeal been over and finally could she discharge her horn without the risk of anypony blowing up because of the broken circuit.

They all lost their color around them and the magic finally faded away from them all. The mares were all breathing deeply to themselves before they looked over to the orb with a worried expression. None of them knew what it was or what it would be doing.

Yet that didn’t stop them from falling down to their bums. The sphere was suspended in the air by itself and high enough for the mares to see each other from under it. Everypony thought the same, but only one could probably give the answer.

"N-Not what I, h-had intended, really,” spoke Twilight before she rubbed her face with a hand. She was still panting the hardest of them all as bits of smoke even left her horn and staff. “Never k-knew that magic, was that, that powerful actually.”

“But what’s that?” Pinkie asked as she pointed to the sphere. She even wanted to approach it but she was stopped by Fluttershy’s arm.

The doctor shook her head as the lamia looked to her with a confused expression. “I think it’s better if you just stay here for the time being.” The creature dropped her eyes a little bit as she stayed put. Only to receive a rather welcome pat on the head by the doctor. A gentle squee was being released by the creature before the attention focused back on Twilight.

“I think, it’s some kind of magical conduct. It must have stored the energy given off by you five, as well as mine,” thought Twilight aloud after she had taken the time to catch up with her breath. “But what it caused, is unknown to me.”

Without a warning did she stood up and simply approached the thing. Everything in her mind told her to touch it, even if it was just one fraction of a second. She had to place her hand upon the thing to see what would happen next. Every last bit of sense inside of Twilight then told her to not do it. Which caused the unicorn to be dropped once again in a fight with herself.

“I have to! I need to know,” she spoke aloud after a couple of seconds. Everypony feared just what those words could have meant but they didn’t scurry back or away. Instead they remained sitting where they were.

The hand of Twilight reached out for the surface of the magical sphere as she hoped it wouldn’t turn out in something bad. Then it happened, before she knew it had she placed her hand upon it and felt the magical energy surging through her. Suddenly her eyes went wide as she released a small gasp for air.

What happened then was that the orb launched itself into the air and travelled over to the lake of magma. The eyes of the mares followed it and what then happened was something that went far over their own imagination.

The orb just disappeared beneath the surface of the magma. All their work had just vanished like that. And for a couple of seconds there was nothing that happened. Though just when it seemed that the mares had lost all of their hopes of something good happening, there was a massive explosion happening right on the spot where the orb had entered the lake.

Out of instinct stood everypony back on their hooves and saw the huge column of magma just rushing up towards the ceiling. “N-Now would be a good time to run!” spoke Twilight when as she looked for an exit or other high lying place.

Though the only thing she saw was the tunnel through which they came from. That would have been a guaranteed death trap. “Never mind that,” the mare added when she noticed that their only means of escape would have been more trouble.

“Twilight, either my eyes are lying to me, or this is really happening!” Rainbow shouted up. With a finger that trembled had she pointed to the column.

The soothsayer turned herself back around to see it for herself. The sights that she caught within her eyes were some of the most unbelievable they had seen during the whole trip. For the magma that was boiling hot one moment, seemed to be turning into stone right before their very eyes. It almost seemed as if the lake was cooling off for whatever reason.

It went from pure magma, to pure rock in the matter of possibly less than five minutes.

“Unbelievable, no, this can’t be,” said Twilight as she was just baffled about it all.

“There’s yar proof, it’s happening,” countered Applejack with disbelief to her voice. Not even the mare of the sea could believe it. Her eyes had played a lot of tricks over the years but for once in her life she was certain about what she saw.

“L-Look over there!” Fluttershy screamed to the best of her abilities as she pointed to a gap. Instantly did the eyes of the mares look towards the place where she pointed and once more they couldn’t believe what they saw. For at the gap it was formed, almost as if it was being carved out of it live before them.

A staircase. Another staircase that would be leading them even deeper into the lake. There was no more going around or about it, the mares of the company just knew that they were on the right track. At the bottom of the place laid the destination they had been working towards for such a long time. “Girls, I think, I think we’re going to cross it by hoof. But be careful, I have no idea just how hot the magma remains beneath us,” commented and warned Twilight. She took the first daring step over to the rock solid used to be magma lake.

One by one they followed the unicorn while adrenaline was the only thing that managed to keep them all standing up. They were all pumped up and ready to tackle anything that would have been thrown in their way.

They came closer and closer to the edge of the cliff where the stairs had been formed and none of them could resist the urge. Before they walked down the stairs, they needed to know exactly what laid at the bottom of it all.

But as they made their way over to the cliff, they all realized just how cold the magma had become. The magma hadn’t just cooled down a little bit so that the top layer would have been able to become solid again. No, it felt as if there was barely any magma left in the entire lake.

It was both a relief as well as a trouble for Twilight as she hoped that they hadn’t disturbed the natural flow of it too much. Then again, the answer was also pretty obvious when she thought about it.

Closer and closer they came to the edge of the gap in the ground and six pairs of eyes looked down. Six pairs of eyes which glanced down into the abyss that played out before them with curiosity. Six pairs of eyes all were fallen upon the same thing. The thing that they had only been able to dream about since their journey had begun.

At the very bottom of the abyss it just rested. There it then finally was and revealed to them in its fullest of glories. The sphere of magma that had been tormenting the thoughts of Twilight for so long. Finally had they discovered it and finally could they work on the solution of the trouble that had formed itself on the surface.

Nopony released a single word when they saw it. Nopony had the right words to say actually. Nopony was having anything that matched up with the unusual beauty of the sphere as it was presented before them. All of them were baffled at the sheer size it had and how it spun on the spot.

They were there, they were ready, they had made it. Almost had the company made it.

“Everypony, one last descend,” the soothsayer eventually spoke. Twilight was more than ready, she was even heading over to the staircase. Everypony else just blindly followed her. They felt the rush of adrenaline already fading away from their bodies.

Slow but sure they realized just how much power had also been drained from them all with the charge of magic. Gasps for breath were made by them all as the eyes could be kept opening with difficulty.

They needed to stay in the game just a little bit longer to achieve the unachievable. They needed to keep their heads together for one last staircase, after that they would just crash down. Step by step it became more and more difficult for them all to stay focused.

Even Twilight was having her issues as she just trudged down the steps. There wasn’t anything else that she could be doing in the moment. Only once they had reached the end of it all would they have been able to catch up with their breath.

Which was much needed. The mares just crashed down against the staircase as soon as they had reached the ground floor. Deep exhales were given off as their eyes could only focus upon the massive sphere. They had done it, they had gotten that far. Only one problem still remained, what would have been next?

Everypony had crashed down against the staircase because they all felt just exhausted. None of them had been used to giving off that much energy in the way that had done to fuel the massive magical orb that caused the lake to be turned into stone.

It didn’t took them long before they all had passed out and had fallen into a light slumber. The mares of the company just laid there as Twilight was the only one who still seemed to have been awake. She wanted to make more observations about the whole thing before anything else would happen.

But the chance wasn’t given to them. She had been the main conduct of the whole operation and it was her magic that had been depleted the most of all. So the only thing that the mare could do was to give in to the losing battle and pass out as well. “Perhaps, a little bit of sleep, can’t be harmful,” said Twilight to herself before her body would have dropped itself against the side of the staircase and she closed her eyes.

Within seconds had she lost her consciousness and had she travelled off to lands only she could enter. Sleep to regain their energy, that was perhaps the best description of the events that happened at the moment. Though the question of just how long they would have been knocked out remained unanswered.

~~~~

Minutes, hours, maybe even seconds had gone by when the group of mares all woke up seconds after one another. The system of who woke up first and who became second was never fully expected as they only knew that they were awake again.

They all came back to the land of the living as the expression on their faces were turned to confused. All of them were having different memories of the events as they had happened. Whatever had caused them to be knocked out in the first remained unknown. They all have their thoughts, but those would not have been spoken by any of them.

Twilight was the first one who managed to crawl back up on her hooves. Her eyes looked over the rest of the mares first. Everypony seemed to be waking up at their own pace and she could live with that. They were waking up, that was the priority of the trouble that they were having.

Only then she turned herself around and glanced over the massive sphere of magma. A sphere that was even levitated in the air by an unknown source and never seemed to lose any of the boiling cargo it carried.

It almost seemed as if it was having its own gravity pull for some reason. Twilight couldn’t make anything out of it as she scratched herself behind the head. They had reached their destination finally, then the second stage of their problems could begin. “What’s next?”

“First, let’s get to it a bit closer,” said Rainbow to them. The pegasus pointed in the direction of the sphere. “It may seem close, but it isn’t. It’s a trick that’s being played on your eyes, Twilight. The cliff was also much higher. Some nasty perception messing magic is going on here.”

“How, do you know, all of that?” Twilight asked the major with a confused expression clearly visible within her eyes. The unicorn couldn’t fully understand why the major had the knowledge of such a thing, especially because she didn’t. Twilight just had to know it.

“The griffon shaman’s used it during the war. They would make the ships seem closer than they originally had been so we would fire at things not even there. I reckon, about a mile of rocky terrain before we finally are there,” explained Rainbow to the soothsayer. Who at her own turn just released a massive shrug and nodded calmly.

Rainbow probably would have been right on her words and the soothsayer wasn’t in the mood to argue against them. The one thing that they could be doing from then was to follow the intuition of the pegasus and hope on the fact that she was right.

“Let’s go then, the last mile is always the toughest they say. I think they were pretty accurate,” said Twilight as she replied the go signal for hopefully one last time. Though they were all having fresh courage and energy to guide them. And what was one mile on the trek that they had already been doing so far? In their eyes it was nothing compared to the rest.

One mile of nothing but the magma sphere before them, that was all. One mile to think about what needed to be done next. One mile to come up with an escape plan.

And a mile that also was walked easier then they all would have thought. The company had walked the mile quicker than they ever could have expected and had passed a magical barrier that acted like some sort of mirror. Rainbow had explained to them that that was the barrier they needed to cross in order to see the real place.

Though once they were through it did, they finally saw it for the first time in the reality of the situation. The massive sphere of magma was actually there. It was still levitated and still not losing anything from its cargo. Once again there wouldn’t have been words that could even come close to the feelings that the mares were having.

It remained just as amazing and wonderful to look at as it was with the perception shields up. The mares of the company were relieved that they finally had reached their destination. They had done it after all. They had done the seemingly impossible and reached the very center of Equestria. Joy suddenly overtook the mares as they almost were ready to erupt out in a party.

But the feeling of joy was quickly taken over by the feeling of fear. A fear that crawled forward out of the unknown. None of them knew either what would be happening next or what they could be expecting to happen next. The fear of the unknown primed each of them. It sharpened their senses and made them anticipate the events to come. If they were to come to begin with.