Through the Nether

by StormDancer

Finding Blues

Thankfully, there had been no spiders... giant, undead, or otherwise.

That there hadn't been any was as much a surprise as it was distressing however. Where large open spaces existed, spiders always found a way to live. Spiders could live because bugs could live. Open spaces meant a place for all kinds of creepy crawlies to scuttle around and hide and, in contrast, a place without them was a place without the means to support life.

All of which was meaningless to the undead, but still... the idea of being stuck in a hole in the ground for untold years was really far from an attractive future.

So, she rested. Propped up against one of the walls, she took a few moments to tear the last scraps of her cloak apart, using it to both pack and contain the remains of her innards. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't altogether comfortable to wedge the fabric up into her rib-cage, but she wasn't planning on having a repeat of the trowel incident from the garden.

No. If she was to be forced to scuttle around like some kind of broken, crippled, animal, then she was not going to be a broken, crippled, animal that was getting herself stuck on random gardening equipment.

A few minutes of work packing and tying the fabric between ribs, and she had managed a passable internal bag. It shifted slightly, the sensation bringing up memories of nausea and heartburn, but the overall effect was what she had been looking for: mobility. Experimentally, she lifted herself up on her arms, shifting and turning as she checked over the work.

She wouldn't be winning any beauty pageants (not even in the Undercity), but she could once more move without snagging some trailing bit of this or that.

Running her leathery tongue over her front teeth as she concentrated, she began the task of learning how to carry, rather than drag, herself around.

After all, when one is trapped in a hole, with nothing but time, one might as well make use of the time available.

-~oOo~-

---

The soft clicking and creaking of bone and leathery, paper thin, skin had begun to fade away as she practiced. Where originally the sound had seemed loud, nearly echoing in the cavernous expanse, she could comfortably say that she had either grown accustomed to her new form of locomotion or that she had substantially improved upon the methods she employed.

With an airless sigh, she lowered herself back down, twisting just as her ribcage contacted the floor to allow herself a moment to shift her weight, and rolled out her shoulders.

She couldn't tell how long she'd been at it, the crystal lined cavern gave no impression of the passage of time, but she imagined it had been several days worth of stoic practice.

She had begun clumsily enough, dragging herself around, getting the feel for how her fingers and hands clawed and scrabbled on the smooth floor, until she had gathered the confidence to try lifting herself. It had been a terrible idea.

Bone and crystal did not provide much traction. Thin, dry, skin provided even less, tearing through places and simply slipping at others. Slipping and toppling to her face had become common in her early exploration and had led to the slow creation of a raggedy pair of gloves salvaged from the loose scraps of fabric that had composed the remains of her shoulder guards.

They were worn, lumpy, filthy things, reminiscent of the festering sewers of some long forgotten dungeon, but they offered the moist flexibility that her body simply did not. Their creation had heralded the advantage she had needed to continue her practice, slowly building balance and familiarity with her new center of gravity.

Her explorations had become more extensive thereafter. Where she had originally stayed to the cavern she had fallen into, she began to slowly stray, clinging to walls or hobbling along with her two armed gait until she had located a number of small passages that littered the area.

Thankfully, despite finding more room, and the promise of another potential path to the surface, she had found no evidence of the depraved madness of the giant spider race she had originally feared.

She had been exploring a new cave when the soft glimmer of something caught her yellow gaze. Growing still, she slipped to the ground and waited, scanning the darkness for another hint of the thing that had caught her attention. The air was still, no breath of a breeze or echo of movement spoke of what might have drawn her gaze originally.

Waiting pensively, she squinted lidlessly... the yellow glow of tainted magic dimming from her dark sockets as she faded until she resembled little more than a desiccated corpse left in some improbably deep mine.

She waited until it happened again.

A soft glimmer of light, reflecting impossibly in the dark, from a distant crystal.

Slowly, with almost predatory joy, she rose to her hands once more, eyes locked upon the impossibly faint glow of the crystal, and began the careful process of following the infrequent light towards what she hoped was a way out.

-~oOo~-

---

The castle had been on high alert since the mysterious intruder had escaped.

The Princesses, all three of them, had made a public address warning the populace of the intruder's attempt.

The Guard had been cycled repeatedly, calling in troops from as far away as Hollow Shades, to maintain a presence in the city and ensure the safety of the common pony.

And not a single bit of it made Twilight Sparkle feel even the tiniest bit more comfortable while sitting in a tea room overlooking the bright alabaster walls of the capital.

"Pri-... Celestia," Twilight started as she settled the teacup carefully upon a saucer, "not that I don't think that increasing the Guard's ranks was a bad thing per-se, but if it can leech the life of ponies, apparently at will, won't doing so make it even more dangerous?"

And Princess Celestia, towering figure that she was, smiled down at her former student. "Perhaps Twilight, but I do quite hope you recall that we still do not even know if it was the assailant or the victim."

Blinking slowly, Twilight raised the teacup to her lips once more, checked the locket at her neck and vanished in a flash of lavender magic.

-~oOo~-

---

Princess Celestia sat, looking out over the courtyard with the light scent of her tea wafting through the air. Pegassi were crisscrossing the sky every few minutes, small flags trailing from the teams to identify the different search patrols, while others ran information to and from the team captains. The earth pony Guard were likewise busy, having taken on the task of tracking the creature who had managed to escape under all of their noses.

She did not envy their position. Earth pony or not, dragging excavating equipment into one of the royal gardens would likely bring about the untimely retirement of at least one or two of the new recruits once the gardener got a hold of them.

She smiled slightly at the mental image of a batch of new recruits quivering and flinching at the wild howls of the elderly stallion.

There was nothing for it though. Until the diamond dog burrower could be brought up to speed, the only thing they could do was prepare for the experience.

A soft cough brought Celestia's attention back to the here and now as one of the castle staff refreshed her tea while surreptitiously laying a pressed envelope next to her saucer. "Milady," she said before bowing out.

Celestia watched the mare retreat until the balcony doors clicked softly shut behind her.

With a glance to the goings on below, Celestia levitated the letter up, skimmed the flowery preamble that continued for three full pages before getting to the point, before crumpling the pressed cotton pages in her magic, and using them to make a miniature sun in the haze of her magic.

Dismissing the tiny cloud of smoke, she returned to watching the courtyard as she waited for Twilight to return. The nobles, after all, could handle their own affairs without troubling her for permission to level an orphanage to make room for some fop's swimming pool.

And after a moment, she scowled. Of course they couldn't.

-~oOo~-

---

The crystal wasn't terribly large or shiny. It wasn't flashy or perfectly faceted. It wasn't cleanly cut from the wall or arcing with magical forces. But, what it was was the single most beautiful thing she had seen in a very long time.

It had taken her quite a while to bash the thing free, but it had been worth it. The fist sized lump of roughly shaped blue crystal gave off a faint glow and flickered every once in a while with unknown power. If she were an enchanter, she would likely have spent hours mapping out the strange crystal, charting the magical pathways and dissecting the aether for hints as to its abilities. As it was though, she was a priest with not a little knowledge of magical garments.

So, despite her inclination to see the softly glowing rock as something incredibly powerful, at the moment, it served as a light source.

She chuckled, the dry sound echoing in the enclosed space.

She couldn't fashion armor out of it, and a proper weapon was just as far from her experience, but she recognized the gem for what it was to her: a small bit of hope in a very dark place. With light, she could see further than her magically enhanced sight would allow otherwise. With light, she could explore more freely and avoid hazards. With light she could make progress or leave marks to leave a path back to where she had come from.

And in a pinch, that rock would serve in place of her mace if she had to fight.

Flexing her jaw a moment, she lodged the gem into her mouth and turned to resume her exploration of the caves, staggering off into the slightly less dark world with her two-armed stride.

Next would come the handle. Then, and only then, would she see about escaping.

-~oOo~-

---

Twilight Sparkle trotted purposefully through the various hallways and courtyards of Canterlot Castle as she mulled things over in her head. On the one hoof, she knew unequivocally more about the creature than all but two others in the nation. On the other, she still didn't know anything besides the manner in which it had arrived, that it had been alone, and that it had, at one point, been killed only to rise again through some twisted form of necromancy.

To say that she was frustrated that her research hadn't turned up more than cultural cues as to its unusual weapon... would have been an understatement.

So, it was with no small bit of surprise that a letter from Spike had given her the clue that was currently sending her out towards the wartime artifacts section of the Royal Canterlot Museum of Equine History. How Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, had managed to pick out something she had missed, was still shocking, but that she had told Spike that the 'awesome mace' he was dusting looked 'just like that one in the Cloudiseum' was something on an entirely different level.

Rainbow Dash was many things: fast, 'awesome', hot-headed, loyal, and not a little bit lazy, but somepony that visited museums and recognized a twisted and half-destroyed piece of otherworldly weaponry as an example of ancient, museum quality, war-construction... that was something Twilight would never have believed.

Of course, hearing from Spike that the situation which had led to the discovery had involved a high-speed collision with the inside of her castle via four sets of windows did lend credence to the story.

As she passed the outer gates of the palace, Twilight reflected that it was a miracle of at least equal caliber that Rainbow Dash still hadn't killed herself with the frequency and degree of her 'fly-ins.'

Twilight smirked softly at the nickname the pegasus had crafted for her crashes. Rainbow Dash.... would forever be Rainbow Dash.

-~oOo~-

---