Through the Nether

by StormDancer

To Run Blind

Mutt stared at the disturbed ground of the courtyard. There was literally no other word for it other than "destroyed."

But, when a Princess of Equestria asks for a favor, you do that favor. His father had seen to his education. His mother had seen to his health. His Princess had seen to his well-being, and when said Princess asked for his help, he knew what his response would be even before she had told him what she needed.

Even so, staring at the gaping hole in the ground, the piles of dirt and sod, the remains of no fewer than eight bushes and shrubs, left him with precious little to track.

He was a diamond dog. His kind lived in the dirt and were well known for their talent in both tunneling and finding things lost in the depths, but this was almost beyond him.

Almost.

So, with a little nod, he turned to his Princess and gave a toothy grin. "Yheah. I can get you a tunnel that follows it. Might take an hour or so, the foundation here is pretty well solid, but I can get you a path. You wanted it shored up to allow safe passage or just to get where it's going?"

The alicorn beside the house sized pit stared down into the darkness before looking up, her eyes glimmering pools of selfless dedication, her mane, a living patch of the night sky.

"T'would be best a portal worthy of passage."

Mutt nodded and started making lists in his head.

If his Princess wanted a tunnel, he would MAKE her a tunnel worthy of a Princess, tons of marble be damned. In his mind, the floors were already being polished.

-~oOo~-

---

Twilight Sparkle sank back into her cushion at the small tea table. She had only been gone a few minutes, but the Princess' time was limited and her duties many. Still, a little piece of Twilight mourned the loss of her mentor's quiet reassurances, the times where the Princess would curl a wing around her as she cried into the night over some silly nightmare.

True, what plagued Twilight now was no silly nightmare, certainly not, but the reassurances were something she sorely missed.

Still, there was nothing for it but to put forth her best efforts and triumph over adversity.

Downing the last bit of her now-cold tea, Twilight rose and took a moment to gaze over the railing, down into the pit Luna had unceremoniously started ripping from the garden below.

There were Guards down there now; Guards and a diamond dog with a bright yellow hard hat. Twilight watched for a few moments before turning and walking back towards the doors that would lead further into the palace.

If Luna's contractor was there, surely things were in good hands. They wouldn't need her right now.

Which was good because her most recent little bout of anxiety had reminded her of why she had come back to Canterlot in the first place: The Mace.

The museum had indeed possessed a number of the ancient relics, both pre and post Hearthwarming. They had ranged from simple cudgels to elaborate designs of more form than function. The simplest had been little more than a rock lashed to a sturdy stick, something better used as a hammer than a weapon of war, while the most intricate was an impressive work of gold filigree and glittering gems.

She had been frustrated in that even with the care of the mares and stallions of the museum, none of the artifacts closely resembled the object the creature had possessed. Surely, there were similarities. There was a mass, various tool marks, a handle of some sort, and evidence of use, but for the life of her, it didn't explain half of the structures on the thing.

Maces were one of the simplest martial weapons in existence, and yet, it made no sense to have a weapon that had literal blade-like ridges on the non-smashing part. Not even the most stalwart Earth Pony would have been able to wield that thing without injury.

There had to be more to it.

-~oOo~-

---

Pulling herself along by the dim and uncertain glow of the gem was starting to wear on her. Granted, having only two limbs to work with, and both of them occupied in the task of locomotion, would leave anyone weary, but having to drag the mine cart along by rope held in ones mouth, behind said glowing gem, made the experience all the more trying.

Of course, difficult and repetitive activities were not uncommon on Azeroth. Someone always seemed to be losing their livestock or needing a book retrieved from the local serial killer... it was just the way of things, she supposed. When the world was as large and complex as it was, things just tended to fall into a kind of pattern. If A, then B. If B, then C. If C, then hire someone else to do it because you really only have time for A. And if C fails, repeat until you run out of money to get someone else to do your dirty work.

There was rarely a point in D.

Her musings on the socioeconomic structuring of the masses were brought to an abrupt halt when she noticed a faint glimmer in the distance. Stopping her cart, she shoved the mining pick into a rail plank to act as a break and scuttled up atop her small pile of things to get a better look.

Far ahead, at the top of another long but shallow rise, she could just make out the slightest blush of light - yet to her, it was like stumbling back into the Undercity after a long slog through some unnamed cesspool of drudgery.

With her free hand, she pulled the gem from her mouth, popped her jaw, and gave an appreciative smile. Things were starting to look up.

-~oOo~-

---

There was no doubting it now, Mutt thought as he stared down into the darkness below. Somehow, whatever his Princess had been following had found a crack in the foundation of the palace, dug through several dozen meters of packed soil, sand, gravel, and roots, avoided the structural elements that reinforced the walls and gardens, and had driven directly into a gap between bedrock shelves.

Staring into the darkness below, he pondered his next move. Certainly his Princess would want to know he'd found where it had gone. She'd likely be both excited and a bit upset that they'd lost the immediate trail. Of course, that would also mean he wouldn't be able to finish the tunnel he'd been tasked with until she could look at the cavern. And she would want to see it for herself.

He weighed his options. One the one paw, he wanted to make his Princess happy. She'd want to follow along and see it for herself. But on the other paw, the tunnel wouldn't be ready for her majesty until later.

Struggling for only a moment longer, Mutt turned around, careful of his footing, and began digging his way back up, brushing past a few of the diamond dogs as he went, impressing upon his crew the importance of making the tunnel as neat and stable as possible in the immediate time frame.

His Princess would be coming, he was sure of it, and he intended for her to be proud of at least one crew from the palace.

-~oOo~-

---

Twilight blinked back to wakefulness as the sound of a pony politely clearing their throat dug through the haze of half-sleep.

She was leaned over, nearly laying upon a desk, notes and a few scrolls scattered across the space, with the misshapen lump of the mace studiously resting upon its stand. A small collection of teacups ringed her seat, and though she'd never admit to it, she knew their number and position based upon the degrees between the two cups visible to her right.

She'd been called a 'mess' one too many times and had developed a system of measuring just how involved a project was based upon the orbital distances of teacups in relation to radius from her mouth.

Spike still laughed, but not even he could argue against an accurate measurement system.

At the soft cough behind her, she blinked again and remembered how she had awoken.

"Yes, sorry, please... How can I help you?" she asked as she turned around.

Standing behind her, professional as always, one of the Royal Guards nodded. "Your highness, if it would please you, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have requested your presence at the dig site. Something about a spell focus and technical terms they would prefer not to share outside of the leadership."

Her mind spinning up as thoughts began to assemble themselves, Twilight glanced back over her desk, her notes and calculations sharing space with theories and unexplored tangents. She really didn't have much to go on yet, but at the same time, every second might very well make a world of difference.

Still, if Celestia and Luna were asking for her, she was more than happy to put aside her examination of the strange mace.

Just as she was getting to her hooves, she accidentally knocked the inkwell from the corner of her desk. Glimpsing the movement, her horn lit almost on reflex, her magic casting out like a net and snaring the crystalline bauble before it could strike the ground.

"Nice catch, Princess."

"Thank you. It's almost a reflex at this point," she explained, smiling as she seated the faceted inkwell back upon her desk.

As she turned to follow the guard, a nagging feeling caused her to pause at the door. Glancing back, she looked over her desk. Notes and scrolls, a few small books, a precisely measured ring of teacups on the floor, a mace, a three quills, and her inkwell. Something was there... something was right there and she couldn't see it.

Stopping fully, she turned back to look at her desk, the guard stopping and looking back as well. "Princess?"

It was there, right at the edge of her thoughts. There was something about the scene that was important. It was important in a way that should be obvious but just simply eluded her.

"Sargent," she asked, tilting her head as she studied the scene in the room, "what do you see when you look in this room?"

Blinking in thought for a moment, the guard nonetheless turned fully back to view the room. "I see a study, one of your dedicated studies, ma'am. A desk, arranged so as to receive the afternoon sun through the facing windows and the morning sun through the trailing windows. Two crystal luminaries for your late night sessions, whenever those may be. Fourteen books from the standard collection, seven from the historical archives, three from the restricted section regarding martial armaments, and various scrolls from sources I haven't noted. Notes and various writings pertaining to your assumed project, a highly ornamented maul, three quills, an inkwell, and thirteen teacups arranged as is your habit for late night study sessions."

Twilight blinked.

"Ma'am?"

"I... really wasn't expecting quite that much detail, honestly."

"It's our duty to be watchful, your highness."

"Yes... yes it is. Thank you."

"Was there something you were looking for, Ma'am?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe?"

Tilting his head, the guard looked over the scene again before looking back to Twilight with a professional calm. "If there is something specific you are looking for, I can assign another guard to locate it in your absence."

Looking back into the room for just a few more moments, she finally relented, turning back to the door and floating the mace, stand and all, over to her as her guard watched.

"If you're ready then, Princess."

"Thank you. Let's go."

Turning to open the door, the guard nodded back and offered up a polite smile. "It's good to have you back, Princess."

She paused. "Back?"

His smile faltering just a bit, the guard nodded. "With everything that's happened recently, Many were starting to worry. It's good to see things getting back to normal."

Twilight paused, studying the guard's face, before looking back into her study with all its familiar things. With all its comfortable nuances. She looked over the desk, the nearby shelves, even the luminaries that would flare to life when the sun dipped below the horizon. She looked over all the things that made that room just a little more comfortable, a little more like home.

Like the two or three others scattered around the castle or the little study nook she maintained back home.

She stared, looking at all the familiar things, before turning to gaze at the mace floating in her aura, its sharp edges and strange crafting seemingly all too alien to even exist within the space of her comforting little slice of normal.

It was the exception. It was the thing that stood out. It didn't belong.

And yet, as a student, as a researcher, such things would necessarily exist in such a place. Where else could they exist to be studied?

She was a princess, and she had a mace. Those two things did not belong together. But she was a researcher, a scientist, and she had a mystery. Those two things DID belong together.

So she was a princess and she had a mace.

The existence of one thing did not, automatically, infer the other.

She blinked.

The mace was a weapon, but that did not make its possessor a warrior.

"Sargent?"

"Yes, your highness?"

"Please lead on."

"Yes, your highness."

-~oOo~-

---

The cart had almost made it all the way out of the caves when time and decay had finally won out. An axel, rusted and ground nearly to dust, had failed, derailing the cart and dumping her finds across the rocky floor.

In other circumstances, she might have been frustrated, she might have even been infuriated at being so close to her victory and having something so simple give out.

She, however, simply couldn't find it in herself to care.

With a smile, she propped herself up on a boulder just outside of the caves, the chain wrapped around her shoulders and the excess looped through her ribs to keep it from dragging. The lantern, sadly, was a lost cause, having fallen and popping apart went the cart did. The gem was safely wrapped in a few more scraps of her robes and tucked away where one of her lungs had previously called home. The shovel had become just a shovel head when the handle struck the ground, but she hadn't had much hope for it in the first place. Instead, she'd wrapped a bit of rope around the blade of the shovel and tossed the rope across her back, to keep it out of the way. The mining pick, that she kept in her hands. Rusty or not, the pick was still in good enough condition to be used as a tool or a weapon.

Still, even with a few losses, she was out in the open again.

Idly, she picked at a ragged bit of flesh on her hand. Would have been nice to be able to trim that back cleanly... a cleaver, even a simple filleting knife would have done well to keep it from tearing but... well, it wasn't like she was planning on winning any beauty pageants.

Silvermoon had those, she'd heard, though she highly doubted the Forsaken would be allowed to attend, let alone participate. She chuckled at the thought of prissy little blood elves trying to be polite about makeup on a corpse.

Glancing down to her truncated torso, her smile fell a bit.

Not that she'd had much to lose at that point, but she had always been rather fond of her legs. Well, the legs she'd had since the plague at least... her own had been torn apart or eaten or something, but those apothecaries and craftsmen had done a fine job at finding two that weren't being used at the time and doing a remarkable job at getting them to fit.

She'd been horrified initially, of course, but after a bit, she'd gotten used to them... to her.

And now, even years after her death, she'd found herself once more missing them.

Pushing herself back up upon her hands, she wedged the handle of the pick between two loops of chain and started to make her way from the caves.

It sounded like there was some water nearby, and where there was water, there was a way down.

Besides, the Forsaken weren't some weak little race that had time to mourn the loss of something as trivial as legs. There were things to do... and who knows... maybe she could find some replacements in the future.

-~oOo~-

---

Twilight stepped to the balcony railing beside Celestia and Luna, taking a moment to look out over the former garden as numerous construction ponies and diamond dogs swarmed over the street-sized hole that had taken shape while she was away.

"It's really rather impressive, don't you think, Twilight?" Celestia's voice rose barely above the sounds from below.

"What's impressive, Pr-Celestia?"

Smiling softly, the solar princess looked over to Twilight as she gestured below. "The speed that they work at. The various people below, working together towards a common goal. The artistry being brought to simply make a hallway."

"The efficiency with which our perpetrator evaded all our efforts," Luna muttered darkly.

Pursing her lips, Celestia nodded slightly. "Yes... that too, I suppose."

Twilight looked down at the hole, noticing masons and carpenters working side by side with excavators and basic construction ponies. Piles of supplies covered in tarps littered the area while earth ponies and burly diamond dogs alike hauled soil, clay, and the occasional boulder from the workspace.

All in all, it looked like Ponyville after any number of events, though she did admit there was a fair bit more marble involved.

"You called for me?" Twilight prompted as the silence drug on a bit longer than expected.

"Verily Twilight Sparkle. We have need of your skill with numbers and spells." Luna did not look up from the ground below, and from the frown on her lips, Twilight could tell she was more than just a little agitated.

"Indeed. As Luna says, we will be needing your help."

"Any time, Princess," Twilight smiled despite the situation.

Celestia nodded slightly before turning away from the scene below. "You should know that they have well and truly escaped, Twilight." She paused as a pegasus guard flew by. "Evaded capture, thwarted the guards, and even bypassed the castle walls by digging, of all things, through the soil and, apparently, bedrock."

At Twilight's shocked expression, Celestia could only shrug slightly. "So Luna's contractor has informed us, at least. We've yet to see it for ourselves."

"But... but if all that's true, and you're already following their tunnel, that means even a tracking spell would be useless." Twilight tilted her head in confusion. "Not that you didn't know that, of course, but then why call for me?"

Celestia's expression turned to a brief grimace but before she could speak, Luna spoke over her. "Our prey was hasty in their cowardice." She snorted before tearing her gaze from below. "They have left that which we might use to return them to us."

Twilight blinked as she thought.

"Something intimate, personal, or imprinted would be best, though I doubt a grave robber would intentionally bring anything like that."

"Nay, Twilight Sparkle, In their haste, they have left us with something much more... personal than any such trifle."

At Twilight's look, Celestia interrupted. "Don't worry about it, Twilight. Just know that it should be more than unique enough to summon them back."

Twilight blanched. Another summoning? Another SUMMONING?

Distant screaming began to echo through the castle, hammers sizzling as dark... things.... unspooled across her memories. The smell, that horrible smell of ~cooking~ as flesh and bone charred and splintered and the hissing scrape as the howls died down but the body kept writhing.

It wasn't until she heard Celestia's voice and noticed her surroundings had changed that Twilight realized what had happened.

"Twilight.....you're alright. It's alright. Just breathe and listen to the sound of my voice."

Slowly, very slowly, Twilight began to feel the staccato rhythm of her heart begin to ease. Several minutes and the soothing voice of the princess taking the panic from her thoughts.

Luna stood near the balcony doors, watching the work continue below, though her ears were turned to listen to her sister and Twilight.

"I... I don't think I can do another summoning, Princess," Twilight weakly whispered.

Celestia simply stroked her mane, holding her softly as Twilight glacially calmed.

"I'd prefer not to either, Twilight... but we've run low on options and if they were brazen enough to desecrate a grave, they may have done much much worse that we simply do not yet know."

Burying her head into Celestia's coat, Twilight did her best to control her breathing as, even as the warm embrace continued, wails tore at her memories and hammers chimed the hour.

-~oOo~-

Comments

[Clay Pigeon]

Sweet Celestia, it lives…

[StormDancer]

11315273
<Chuckles> Yes... I'm still alive and I'm still writing. This is just on the back burner ATM.
...
I really ~should~ use the Hiatus tag occasionally, but then I feel like a traitor. Meh... I've had the next few chapters roughed out for months... should probably get around to releasing at least one or two.