Interlude - A Single Moment
Necropolis Dig Site
A faint crack split the air inside the tent, the sharp sound muffled by the cloth walls but still loud enough that it almost hurt. Dusty winced as the noise rushed through his skull, shaking his concentration and pulling it away from the papers spread in front of him. He spared the flapping, pulsing walls of the tent a single glare before looking back down at the assorted work spread in front of him, his eyes seeing the various diagrams and notes but not really comprehending.
“That was a close one,” Stal said from the other side of the tent. His wife was curled up on their cot, books and papers spread before her as she dove into every possible detail that could help them with their search.
“They’re all close ones anymore,” he said, shaking his head as he stared down at the copious amount of notes the expedition had produced over the last week and a half. “Sometimes I think every light storm in the desert goes right over the dig.”
“Close enough,” Stal said as he ran his eyes over another line on the dig. Slate had said she’d felt something down below, though once again they’d been forced to retreat to the safety of their camp. “We are getting hit by quite a lot of them. It could be why they abandoned the city.”
“But then why build it in the first place?” he asked, shutting his eyes for a moment as another low hum filled the tent, the light inside dimming as even it felt the pull of the supernatural forces outside. A moment later a sharp crack burst through the air, the walls of the tent bulging as the shockwave swept across them. “Seriously, Stal,” he said, sitting up and waving his hoof at the walls of the tent, once again flapped under the onslaught of the storm. “No one could build a city out here with this many storms rolling over it. We can barely dig.” It was infuriating, to be so close to their goal, so close to the conclusion of years of work, only to be held back by weather. Weather that nopony could control, much less predict. “If this keeps up, we might have to get more funding, just to cover the entire dig site so we can go to work.”
“Look on the bright side,” Stal said, smiling. “Sure, we’d need more funding to do that, but at least we won’t have any trouble getting that funding.” She let out a laugh and jumped from the bed. “Come on, Dusty, you should be celebrating! We did it! We found it! The lost city of the dead! It’s real, and we’re the ones who found it!” She began to strut across the room towards him, her wings held out and her head back in a regal pose, as if she was a model on a fashion runway. Minus the armor and formal blades.
“I know,” he said, shaking his head as he looked back down at scattered work filling his table. “But that’s not what I wanted, Stal. We both knew the city was out there. We’d done the study, done the research … Even when we were running into dead end after dead end, we knew that there was something at the root of it. Finding it was the big part, but that was an answer to a question we already knew. Now I want to know why and what. Why a city in the middle of the desert, at the end of a valley hit by what feels like every storm in the Turuncu? Why’d they build it? Why’d they leave? Was there an oasis that dried up, like some of the later stories say? Did the ecology shift? Are we going to find records of it if we ever get inside? Why are there no windows?” He threw his hooves up in the air and slumped back in his seat, his back rubbing against the canvas. “That’s what I’m really here for, and now that we’re so close …”
“The light storms,” Stal said, placing one set of claws on his shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I know, Dusty. And that last one gets me too.”
He frowned, his face twisting as he thought back on his small rant. “The records?”
“No,” she said, keeping her talons on his shoulder as she walked around the chair, coming to a stop right next to him. “The window thing. That one’s been making me wonder too.”
He nodded, his eyes drifting across the multiple sketches he’d been examining. Despite losing over half of each of their workdays to preparing for the light storms, and another quarter of that to the actual storms themselves, the remaining dig crew was hard at work cataloguing what they’d been able to find of the city. Which at the moment was just the singular structure—a structure so large they still hadn’t found the edges. Slate, ever faithful and still sticking with the dig, despite being one of the only two diamond dogs left, had dug down the side on her own several times—her additions were the blue ones on the paper—and still hadn’t found the base. Which meant that the historical topology of the area had to be incorrect, since they’d passed the depth of what was historically assumed to be the “floor” of the valley almost thirty feet above the depths that Slate had dug to.
It also meant that the building they’d found was at least sixty feet tall. Possibly more.
“Still trying to figure out where the end is?” Stal said, her red eyes peering down at the spread of paper. He nodded.
“Slate got another good dig in today before the storm came up,” he said, tapping the two most recently extended lines.
“I saw those,” she said, her shoulder giving his a playful bump.
“Do you believe them?” he asked, staring down at the paper. “I mean, I know Slate isn’t lying, obviously, but how big is this place? I mean, if this is one structure, the whole city must be …” He searched for a good comparison. “I don’t know ... As big as Canterlot at least!”
He slapped a hoof down on the table, his frustration boiling over. “I mean look at this, Stal. Slate followed this wall for four-hundred feet before coming back. And it just kept going. She didn’t even reach the end!” Stal nodded but didn’t say anything. He knew he wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know, just like he knew she was letting him burn off his frustrations by voicing them.
Even with this city, she’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to you. And just because she was letting him vent didn’t mean she enjoyed it, though knowing Stal, she was fine with a little bit of frustrated temper. He’d always suspected she found his frustrated musings slightly entertaining rather than off-putting.
“I don’t know,” he said, dropping his head to the side and letting it rest in the curve of her neck, right up against the feathers of her ruff. “I’m fascinated on the one hoof, but completely frustrated on the other.”
“I understand,” Stal said, her head tilting to the side and rubbing up against hers. “I’m actually with you on this one, though, baby. It’s been bothering me too.” She reached out with one claw and tapped at the paper, just gently enough that the tip of her talon didn’t break through. “Has anyone managed to excavate another one of these?”
“No,” he said, letting out a sigh. “We thought we were going to get close with one of them today, but then the storm rolled in.” Another crack echoed through the tent, the cloth snapping as the winds shifted. “I had Slate do a quick dive down towards it, though. Just to get a good look. She says it’s just like the other one.”
“Sealed tight?”
“Yup.”
“No windows?”
“Nope.”
“That?” Stal said, lifting her head high enough to just to look him in the eyes. “That is weird. Who builds structures like that on top of a larger structure and then has no windows or access points?”
“Especially when they’re griffons,” he said, giving her a slight grin before turning his attention back down to the paper. “But you’re right. It’s strange. If we could just get inside this thing …”
“Sorry, baby,” she said, shaking her head. “No luck yet. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere without bringing in a specialist team.”
He let out a groan. “Really?”
“Really,” she said, shaking her head. “Whatever magic is keeping that door sealed tight, it’s good. Or more powerful and intricate than anyone on our dig is capable of working with.” She shrugged, her shoulders bouncing beneath his head as her body shook.
“That’ll mean we’ll have to tell them,” he said. “Once they find out, they might make a power play; try to get someone else in charge of the expedition.”
“Let them,” Stal said, her voice lowering to a growl as she spoke. “This is our dig, Dusty. They can try, but they’re not getting it. I don’t care how much they whine.”
“They could pull our funding.”
She let out a short, squawking laugh. “Sure. That’ll work. Half of the dig would stay here even if we couldn’t pay them, and we can practically write our ticket with any sponsor we want now.” She twisted, looking down at him. “And don’t the Princesses fund stuff like this?”
“If it’s good, yeah,” he said. Stal laughed again.
“If it’s good, Dusty?” she asked. “Really? Is this somehow not good enough for you?” she asked with a quick laugh.
He smiled as he lifted his head up. “Well, the weather could be better,” he said, laughing again as she rolled her eyes. He dropped his head back onto her shoulder, and saw her look at him once more.
“You know, if you’re going to keep doing that, that means I have to keep standing here.”
He contorted his lips and closed his eyes as if deep in thought, and then gave her a slight nod. “I find this acceptable,” he said, and she rolled her eyes again.
“Anyway,” she said, turning her attention back to the crudely assembled sketch of the dig layout. “Unless we find another opening, we’re probably not going to get inside without someone with some decent magic training to come and take a look at whatever spell is holding it shut.”
“No luck on any of those impressions near the front door?” he asked.
“Nope,” she said with a small shake of her head. “Blocked off completely. And I really don’t want to start our investigation by breaking through the wall to see what’s in there.” She paused. “One of the students did come to me with an interesting observation today, though.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re getting hit with light storms just about every day, right?”
“Right,” he said, a distant crack punctuating his words. The sound rolled across the desert, echoing off of the valley walls.
“And we’ve been digging here for almost two weeks.”
“Right again,” he said, feeling a pang of disappointment at how little they’d uncovered in that time. They’d found the entrance—or at least what they assumed was the entrance—by following the trail of broken bricks. And they’d mapped out the front part of the structure, though digging down had shown that where they’d settled their camp was actually above some parts of the giant structure they’d found. But a lot of their work had been burying and unburying the city itself. Or at least, the long building they’d found so far. Who knew what lay past it?
“So then, here’s the question,” Stal said, shifting her stance and forcing him to lift his head as she locked eyes with him. “Where’s all the light storm glass?”
“I … I don’t know,” he admitted. The question hadn’t even occurred to him. “We haven’t found any?”
“None,” Stal said, an odd expression on her face. “It was one of the unicorns who mentioned it. Dauntless, I think. He said that it was weird, but he hadn’t found any light storm glass since we started the dig.”
“That … That doesn’t make any sense,” Dusty said, shaking his head. Another crack rippled through the air as the storm outside released its fury. “We’ve had maybe fifteen storms since we got here. There should be light glass all over the valley.” Even as the words tumbled free of his lips, however, his mind was galloping back. When had he seen light glass last? It had been … somewhere along the brick road they’d followed.
Stal was right. He hadn’t seen a single piece since they’d started digging up the Necropolis.
“It gets weirder,” Stal said. “I started asking around? No one else has found any either. Even Slate.” She emphasized the diamond dogs name, as if to draw attention to the fact that not even the most experienced digger on the team, the one who could, for all intents and purposes, tunnel through the sand, hadn’t found anything.
“I even took a quick break and took a look of my own when I was checking on the storm earlier,” she said. “Usually you can see some of the stuff glinting in the sun if you get up high enough. This dig?” She shook her head. “Nothing. Hiç.”
He felt a small pool of unease settle in his stomach. That was odd … Like one of the things that ended up as a small footnote in a history textbook talking about some of the more esoteric oddities that archaeologists had found.
“So the entire site is glass free?” he asked. “How?”
Stal rolled her eyes. “If I knew, baby, I’d be writing a research paper on it right now, and we’d be swimming in grant money. Swimming.”
“We’re already about to be swimming in grant money,” he said. “What would we need more for?”
Stal shrugged. “Bank it for a rainy day? Anyway, it’s just one more thing we can use to get more grant money.”
“Again,” he said, smirking. “Probably not going to be a problem for the future. Whatever this turns out to be, we’re definitely going to be well-off for the next couple of decades.”
“Mmm,” Stal said, giving him a small smirk. “I like the sound of that. Well off enough to maybe start thinking about a few little hippogriffs running around?”
Another crack echoed across the valley and he paused for a moment to glance upwards. The strike had been close. Really close. “Maybe as long as we can put a bunch of tin roofing over the crib.” Stal was giving him the look now, the slightly lifted eyebrow and twitching tale that told him she was amused but slightly off-put. “What? If anything, it’ll be good for them. It can keep the children alive until we find a death trap we need to disable.”
She was shaking her head now, her red eyes rolling hard towards the back of her head. “Sometimes, grounder, I don’t know why I married you.”
“Oh, really?” he said, cocking his head to one side. “You just don’t like that plan because it means less wings for your litter.”
“Queens deserve litters,” Stal said, sticking her chest out and spreading her wings. “And after all, I am a queen, aren’t I, grounder? Flying high above the dusty earth?”
“Okay, now you’re just taunting me,” he said, trying not to laugh. Leave it to Stal to make sitting in the middle of a storm, stalled out of a dig, bearable. “Still, I must admit the idea does have appeal …” She winked, and his laugh broke free.
“So,” Stal said, smirking at his laughter and then grinning again. “I mean, walking around all day does get tiring.”
“I still like my deathtrap idea,” he said. “Even if it would mean a lot of feeding in the meantime.”
“And diapers,” Stal said, sticking her tongue out in disgust. “Yuck.”
“And four AM feedings,” Dusty said.
“Vomit.”
“Crying.”
“Mommy.”
“Daddy.”
“It’s going to be great,” they said at the same time, each looking at the other. Then, as one, both grinning, they added on the last bit together. “Soon.”
It was an old ritual, a reminder of some of their other plans past uncovering an ancient treasure that hadn’t seen the light of the sun in almost two-thousand years.
“So,” Stal said, tilting her head to one side and looking down at the diagrams. “Any other updates we’ve got to cover?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Slate assured me again that she and her cousin are sticking around until the end of their contract, though once that expires they’ll have to leave.”
“Weird,” Stal said, shaking her head. He nodded in agreement.
“Other than that, a lot of the students are still debating over what we’ve found,” he said. “Half of them are convinced that we just missed the rest of the city and started digging up the central building. A few are still working on proving that the whole city is just one big building—”
“With no windows and doors?” Stal asked.
“Hey, we were both students once,” he said. “In fact, I seem to recall someone calling my theory on Dahl’s business trade with Barika an ‘utter steaming load of halfwit theories and bull leavings.’”
“In my defense,” Stal said, rolling her eyes. “They were. You completely ignored the social climate at the time. Dahl never would have risked doing business with Barika. It would have been social suicide even if his honor didn’t die over it. And he was a vocal supporter of King Tallcliff the Second.”
“The point is, past mistakes aside,” Dusty said, his cheeks burning. “There are a lot of theories going around.”
“Anything new, though?” Stal asked, and he shook his head.
“Not really. Most of them are just getting more and more confused the more we find.”
“Well good,” Stal said. “Then we’re all on the same page. Means we’ll all be thinking about it when we find something that helps us get to the bottom of this whole thing.”
“And we should have a response from the museum soon, too,” Dusty added. “The letter should have reached them by now.”
“Yeah,” Stal said. “I wish I could see that meeting! Can you imagine them passing that picture around?”
He grinned. Easily. Stal had spent several hours laboring over her sketch of the front door, capturing every bit of detail—from the smooth, almost unnatural texture of the tan stone to the solid mass of the door itself, set into the side of the Necropolis. Flush with the outer wall, the door itself was slanted inward, its peak towards the center of the structure … wherever that was. If Slate’s estimates were correct, it was buried under hundreds of feet of sand somewhere past the end of the valley.
Either way, Stal had captured every detail of the entrance to send back to the National Museum. From the size of the door itself—easily four times the height of a pony—to the strange, triangular depression halfway up its face. No one had been able to figure out yet what the downward-pointing impression was for, though two of the unicorn students had said they’d felt a faint trickle of magic somewhere inside of it. An announcement which many in the camp—particularly a few of the griffons—were still loath to believe. After all, griffons couldn’t work magic. Not inside stone, anyway. Which meant—at least to some of the more excitable students—unicorn involvement. That was the easiest answer, certainly, though he was sure the student tents were alive with controversy during each storm.
Either way, he could imagine the responses the board would have. Outrage. Indignation. Disbelief. Panic.
But underneath it all, curiosity. And disagreement. And those two, more than anything else, would mean a steady supply of grant money.
“Thinking about it, huh?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head, the image vanishing. “It’s a pleasant thought.”
“Really?” Stal asked. “That’s pleasant?” She looked down at the table and then back up at him. “That’s it?”
“Well ...” he said, “I can think of other pleasant things.”
“Like what?” Stal asked, her tail flipping into view behind her as she gave it a single, sharp lash.
“If you’re done with whatever you’re looking at, and I’m done with what I’m looking at …”
“Aw, baby,” Stal said, giving him a sly smile as her wings stretched out wide. He could see her dropping into a crouch, readying herself for a pounce . “I thought you’d never ask.”
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So they send a message and Anubis gets wind of it. Gut feeling says that this many touchy-feely moments is going to wind up with one of them dead before the end of this... Then again, I'm probably being influenced by watching Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, where things keep going from bad to worse for the heroes.
Also, got an idea for a potential drawing, but I have yet to figure out what a griffin would look like when headbutted.
I just want to let you know I love these scenes with Stal and Dusty, especially this one. Lovey treasure hunters are the best ones
Stal and Dusty are great. Of course, that means I hope that they will make it through the story in one piece.
So many things are really starting to come together in the last couple of chapters. And I wonder what will fit in that triangular?
This is purely myth related, but you are going with hippogriff for resulting offspring of that pairing? I've been pondering it myself (for a little side project) since a male griffon X female horse is supposed to make a hippogriff but I can't find anything for a male horse/pony X female griffon. The closest thing would be a leucrocuta and that description is, frankly, terrifying.
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Oh hey! A question I can answer!
I'm going with hybrid genetics (as Dusty and Stal made clear), though regardless of mother/father species, the result will be the same: a hippogriff. From there, that child's children will be determined by whatever genetics are present in their spouse—pony=pure pony offspring, griffon=pure griffon offspring.
It's a bit magical genetics, but that's actually a thing in this world!
I'll give you a few freebies too. If the mother is a griffon, than she lays an egg as is normal, the egg hatching a few weeks later. If the mother is a pony, then she carries it full term, no egg needed.
Edit: And hippogriffs are basically pegasi equivalents.
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I can go with magic genetics! Thanks for the info. I really doubt it will have any impact on the story, it is just fun to know.
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Are you sure? Maybe not this particular story ...
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Oooooo. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You've tied some things from the first story into this (in a rather big way).
I wonder if those depressions they found are opened by Anubis' second key?
Bringing in magic specialists from Equestria could be a very good thing, given who we know is going to be making his way there as soon as possible...
That lack of light storm glass is going to be very significant, I can feel it.
And I wonder, are those sealed buildings filled with dead bodies for Anubis? Perhaps prepared some special way for his use??
I like the sound of that, too. I actually d'awwed when I read this bit and imagined a bunch of little hippogryphs running around. Aren't these two just the most adorable unwitting instigators of doom? (Get on that one, tropers, if you haven't already.)
Talking about retirement and their future? Yep, they're getting killed to death.
I love the countdown with the "Moment" chapters. Very subtle, yet effective.
Also, I have this sneaking suspicion that Dusty's gonna die before Stal finds out she's pregnant...