Desert Water

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 5: Run

Diamond Tiara jumped to the floor below, and Diamond Pick followed behind her, closing the trap door as he passed through. He fell to the ground gracefully, but his wing-plates did not extend. Diamond Tiara doubted that he could actually fly.

“Oww,” groaned Silver Spoon, lying on the hard tile floor. “I think I landed on something…” She reached behind her and removed what she had landed on. Her eyes widened as she realized that it was a skull. “EEEP!” she cried, “Diamond Tiara, my skull came out!”

“Well then put it back in, quick!” cried Pick.

“I can’t, I can’t, I don’t know how!”

“Silver,” said Diamond Tiara, taking the skull out of her hoof and rolling it across the floor. “It’s not your skull!”

“It isn’t?”

They both watched the skull departing down the slanted floor, and then looked at their surroundings. They had descended into a long and surprisingly sterile room, the walls of which were lined with equally spaced pedestals. Each pedestal contained a skeleton, carefully prepared and mounted in various artistic poses. Some had the narrow limbs and hooked skulls of deer, but others had wings and horns. They were ponies.

Silver Spoon screamed and huddled against Diamond Tiara. “They’re all dead!”

“Well, duh,” said Diamond Tiara, pushing Silver Spoon off. “They’re anatomical models, like in a museum. Probably donated their bodies to science…” Or, more probably, skeletons that Pith Helmut had pulled up from the desert during construction and articulated as part of his collection.

“Well, I would rather not join them,” said Pick, scuttling forward rapidly. Diamond Tiara helped Silver Spoon up and they followed Pick through the long-forgotten hall of dusty and collapsing museum pieces.

Diamond Tiara found that her mind was racing. Even in the almost darkness, the whole of the skeleton museum appeared to be in sharp focus, with every empty eye socket seeming to stare back at her. Her eyes flicked about almost automatically, looking for any sign of motion from the corners or floor, even though she was not entirely sure what she was looking for. The sun had set, and everything was cold and seemed eerily silent, save for the patter of their hooves across the tile.

“This is stupid,” said Diamond Tiara, slowing. “Why are we running, from what? Cactuses? Their plant’s, for Celestia’s sake!”

“I don’t know what they are,” said Pick, skidding to a stop, “but they are NOT friendly.”

“What will happen if they catch us?” asked Silver Spoon.

“I don’t know,” said Pick. “But from what my family has told me, it never ends well for ponies who try to live on this land.”

“And you didn’t tell this to us, um, WHY?” demanded Diamond Tiara.

“I tried!” yelled Diamond Pick, meeting her volume. “I tried to warn you repeatedly!”

“By chasing us through the desert?! Couldn’t you just, oh, I don’t know, SAY SOMETHING?!”

“I DID! But to be honest, I didn’t even realize that those hideous guttural sounds you make were language! Do you know how long it takes to calculate a translation cog for…” he pointed at his mouth, “THIS?”

“So you’re either an idiot or incompetent- -oh, no, wait, BOTH.”

“Well, the one time I tried to help you, you threw a grenade in my face and very nearly left me permanently blind!”

“You chased us! And you look like a mule’s butt! Do you have any idea just how scary you are?”

“Scary? I’m half your size! And, just so you know, YOU are WORSE! I mean, look at your eyes! They’re, like, the size of dinner plates- - is there even any room in your head for a brain? Oh wait, I already KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT!”

“So you’re saying that you were afraid of a pair of FILLIES? Great! So when we need the whole darn royal guard, we get a tiny bumbling COWARD!”

“Cow? What is cow? I am not a beef! At least I smell- -”

“You WISH you could smell me!”

“I can smell you, and trust me, I- -”

“Can you two SHUT IT!” cried Silver Spoon.

They both looked at her. Pick sighed. “The marginally attractive one is correct.” He turned around and started back on his path. “It is my familial duty to at least try to save you. Why you came here I have no idea…”

“My parents bought this place,” said Diamond Tiara, following Pick once more.

“Parents? I assumed your species ate their young. Where are your parents now?”

“They left- -but don’t even try to criticize them for that! They had important business in Las Pegasus!”

Pick looked over his shoulder, which was not hard considering how his eyes were on the edges of his head. “Compared to a pair of parents who sent me into this place to retrieve two surface-goa- -I mean surface-ponies?”

They reached the end of the room. The door to the outside was locked, but there were a pair of broad spiral staircases that led downward. The trio followed the stairs to the lower level, where they found an extremely dusty room that appeared to be a dining room, complete with a long table, the places still set as if in preparation for a great banquet.

The door on the lower level was easy to open, and Diamond Tiara entered into a long, dark hallway. Like so many of them in the house, it was one that she had never been in before- -but based on how difficult it was to reach, she doubted that it connected to the rooms above by any logical path.

Pick led them down one direction of the hallway, but Diamond Tiara suddenly found herself stopping. The hall was empty. She could see that, and knew logically that only the three of them were present in the house- -and yet she heard something. In the far distant, she could hear a voice. It was even more quiet than a whisper, but far more distant; because of the combination, Diamond Tiara could not tell what it was saying. She could feel the tone in it, thought. It was calling with such longing.

“Coming?” asked Pick. “Or would you rather stay?”

“Shut it, bug-boy,” said Diamond Tiara, even as she rejoined him and Silver Spoon. “Did either of you…hear anything just now?”

“No,” said Silver Spoon.

“No,” added Pick, after seeming to consider for a moment.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said to herself.

They continued down the hall for several more minutes, and Diamond Tiara wondered where exactly they were going.

“Names,” said Pick, suddenly.

“Names?” asked Diamond Tiara, confused.

“Yes,” he said, pausing and looking around a corner. “I would like…to know your names.”

“Hay no! You’ll probably do weird things with them!”

Diamond Pick looked at her. “Like what?”

“Silver Spoon,” said Silver Spoon.

“What?” said Pick. “How does one spoon silver? And why would I ever do that?”

“No. My name. That’s my name.”

“Silver Spoon?” said Pick, leading them out into a much wider corridor that was oddly steep and unlevel. “What kind of parent names their daughter after silver? It is a horrible waste material. Almost as bad as gold.”

“Says the guy who, like, mines SILVER,” noted Diamond Tiara.

“What?” said Pick, confused. “Who ever said my geneline mines silver?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because of the MASSIVE silver mine? Or did you not notice while you were creeping on us down literally inside it?”

“It’s not silver,” he said, as though it were obvious. “And we don’t mine here, so…no…”

“What?” said Silver Spoon.

“Don’t tell me that YOUR people were trying to mine the technetium.”

“Tech what?”

“The metal,” sighed Pick, exasperated. He poked at the dial on his chest. “What this is made out of.”

“I knew it wasn’t silver,” said Silver Spoon.

“No, of course not,” said Pick. “But your kind should not be anywhere near it.”

“Why?”

“For one, your stone-age culture has virtually no way to work it into anything viable. And in its unprocessed form, it is highly radioactive.”

“Wait, what?” said Diamond Tiara. “We were just talking about silver, and now radios?”

“No, radio- -toxic. It is deadly poison.”

“The miners,” gasped Silver Spoon.

Diamond Tiara realized that she was probably right. If the “silver” that they had been digging up had been as poisonous as Pick seemed to think it was, then the miners would be the first to be exposed. Diamond Tiara had no idea what “radioactive” meant, or if it could cause the hair loss, gaunt and sickly frames, or burns on the ponies from the old photographs, but it seemed at least plausible.

“So you wear the suit to protect from the metal,” she said. Then, more sharply, “or is it because your body is as ugly as your face?”

“What? No! I am not ugly! And of course not. It’s because the surface world is the most grotesquely toxic and inhospitable place in all of Geoterra.”

“Geoterra? What the fluff is that?”

“You’re standing on it.”

“What, you mean Equestria?”

“Equ- -who would give a nation of ponies such a ridiculous name?”

“Because ‘Equestries’ are ponies!”

“That’s not actually true- -” added Silver Spoon.

“Wait, are you telling me you have a NATION up here?” asked Pick, confused.

“Uh-DUH!”

“Wait,” said Silver Spoon. “How do you not know that?”

“My family is actually considered somewhat eccentric,” said Pick, nervously twisting his dial. “For believing in the existence of surface dwellers. Morlock science generally accepts that the surface world is completely uninhabitable.”

“So…you’ve never met surface ponies?”

“You are the first two non-morlocks I have ever met. And to be honest, I am not enjoying the experience.”

“Neither am I,” hissed Diamond Tiara.

“You,” said Pick. “You did not tell me your name.”

“Diamond Dazzle Tiara Rich,” she said.

“Tiara? They named you after headgear? Why?”

“Why did they name you ‘Pick’? Oh, let me guess. They forgot the ‘r’.”

“Oh. You’re mean.”

They passed sideways into a room ducked onto the floor beneath a window. Diamond Tiara felt a cold breeze dripping from the partially open pane, and she suddenly felt afraid. Slowly, she stood up just slightly, barely enough to see out the window.

Outside was exactly what she expected, and exactly what she did not want to see. Surrounding the house was an army of dry, dusty plants, barely visible in Luna’s moonlight. They had not been there before, not at that density- -but now they had formed a thick wall of spines and branches.

“The pictures!” whispered Diamond Tiara, suddenly. Not because she had forgotten them, but because she realized what she had missed. In that picture of the family, she had been so focused on looking in the background for Diamond Pick’s ancestor that she had failed to see what had changed in each photograph. Although the rocks and inorganic elements of the landscape had stayed consistent, the plants never had. Trees that should have taken decades or even centuries to grow changed position, appearing and disappearing.

They were moving. They always had been. Now they stood outside, condensing toward the house, knowing what was inside.

“Okay,” said Pick, pulling out his dial and adjusting it. “The acceleration badly damaged the argon-cortex, but I have enough power to make all three of us invisible. I project the field, and then we- -”

“Did that lamp explosion damage your brain?” hissed Diamond Tiara, suddenly.

Pick’s eyes narrowed, making them even smaller than they already were. “Only slightly. Thanks a lot.”

“No, you idiot! Those are trees! Tell me, do trees have EYES?”

“Potatoes do,” said Silver Spoon.

“Stop that,” chastised Diamond Tiara. She turned back to Pick. “It doesn’t matter if we’re invisible, they can’t see anyway, but there still tracking us. I think the can, I don’t know, smell us or something! Wait…you mean your plan was just to charge through them?!”

“Well, yeah,” said Pick, defensively.

“Buck,” said Diamond Tiara, sliding down the adobe wall. “So you’re not just dumb, you’re crazy too. There’s a whole forest out there! There always has been! We’d never make it!”

“And how was I supposed to know that?!”

“Because they’re trees!”

“I don’t know how ‘trees’ work! I live underground! And until about ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know that they were dangerous!”

“Can’t you just, I don’t know, fly us out or something? You’ve got wings!”

Pick lifted his plate-like wings beneath his ragged robe. “These? You expect me to FLY? How can a pony possibly fly? That’s ridiculous!”

“The tunnels,” said Silver Spoon. “Can we take the tunnels?”

Pick looked at her, and then shook his head. “No. Not the tunnels. Those are bad.”

“I thought you were from underground or something?”

“I am, but those tunnels are ancient. Beyond old. I don’t know how to get through them, or where they even go.”

“But your people built them,” said Diamond Tiara, recalling Pith Helmut’s journal.

“They did, but they abandoned this region tens of thousands of years ago.”

“Well, if you can think of a better option than ‘sprint into a wall of needles’…”

Diamond Tiara lifted her head again and looked out the window. Her eyes took a second to adjust, and she realized that she could not see the border of the trees. Instead, she found herself staring at a tall saguaro inches away from the glass.

“BUCK!” she cried, jumping back and pulling Silver Spoon with her. Pick looked up at the window, confused, and released a sudden chirping sound from his wings.

“Tunnels it is!” he squeaked.

Never before had a distance that should have been so short seemed so long. The house was large, but a path across it should have been simple. Instead, it was a convoluted path through additions and forgotten corridors dreamt up by an architect who was either inept or horribly insane.

The physical distance, though, was only part of the larger whole. Every second felt like it took months. The black and empty distance roared with the sound of the wind and with the potential for danger; they were in a house, a home, but they might as well have been trying to march through the Everfree Forest at midnight.

Even worse was that Diamond Tiara found that Pick had been oddly and terribly apt in his description. The trees really did seem to be waking up. Through the all the twisting halls, sloping corridors, and silent stairwells, Diamond Tiara had never once seen one of them move- -but she knew that they were. Suddenly, they seemed to be everywhere. They grew from corners and beneath windowsills where she knew they had not been just hours before. Not one of them moved, and superficially they looked like ordinary houseplants- -until one realized that they had no pots. They just stood on bare roots, waiting.

Diamond Tiara could not bear to look at them. The idea was ridiculous, that they were being chased by plants, but the thought that she had walked around them and passed them less than a day before without realizing what they truly were frightened on an entirely different level. She dared not stare at any of them for very long, because she knew what she would see: those gnarled branches and spiny, fleshy trunks waving in a breeze that only they could feel, as though they were far more alive and aware than any sane plant should be.

Something deeper was wrong, though. Silver Spoon and Diamond Pick were running faster, trying to get to safety- -but Diamond Tiara felt a strong urge to slow. She knew that, logically, she should be afraid, that she should run- -but something was calling to her. Something said that the plants would not hurt her, that the situation was safe, that she was missing something important. The voices that she heard were growing louder, forced through the walls of the house by the powerful frigid wind outside. They were growing to the point where she could nearly understand them.

“Move your excessively wide rump!” cried Diamond Pick, his voice cracking with panic.

“Sure thing,” said Diamond Tiara, snidely. She passed him. “Anything to avoid looking at yours. You’re going the wrong way!”

“No, this is the right way, I’m sure!”

“This way,” said Silver Spoon, pushing them in a third direction. Diamond Tiara initially started to protest, but then she found that she recognized the strange way that the hall suddenly became wide and how the ceiling suddenly broke from an arch to a flat, square hole filled with rusted pipes. This was the direction that they had taken to get to the library, though the long hallways of the former sanitarium that ran between the outer wall and the central keep. They were still far away from their goal, but at least Diamond Tiara now knew the way.

“What if- -what if they follow us in?” asked Silver Spoon suddenly.

“They won’t,” said Diamond Tiara. She waited for a moment, and then looked over her shoulder at Diamond Pick. “Right? RIGHT?”

“I- -I don’t know! They could!”

“For Celestia’s sake, why didn’t you tell us that?!”

“Well excuse me if I’m new at this! I don’t exactly know how monsters OPERATE!”

He was about to say something else, but suddenly encountered a staircase and descended with a series of thumps and pained squeaks as he struck each stair tread and descended the stairs in the fastest way possible.

“Smooth,” said Diamond Tiara, passing him at the end of the stairs. Pick was stuck upside-down, his tiny armored limbs flailing.

“Are you okay?” said Silver Spoon, helping him up.

“I hurt,” he said. “But not badly. I hope.”

“Try not to get squashed,” said Diamond Tiara. “You’re a bug, right? So you’re as boneless as you are spineless?”

“Are your spare ribs boneless? Or are your bones, you know, especially large?”

Both of them were too out of breath to continue their verbal sparring match, but Diamond Tiara was sure to cut off Pick so that she could be in the front of the group. She remembered exactly how they had descended the last time, moving from the decaying and peeling concrete and brick walls of the old sanitarium to the cyclopean gray cubes of rock that formed the ancient forth, where worn steel-tread steps gave way to dusty and uneven stone ones.

Within minutes, Diamond Tiara once again found herself at the end of final staircase. Beyond it, she knew, was the library. Without a light, though, the threshold was a precipice into absolute pitch darkness- -darkness that at this point could be populated by any number of things.

Pick stepped past her without pausing, entering the darkness. The reddish light from the glowing components of his suit cast a small circle of light around him, but it was barely enough light to even see him, let alone the room.

“Hey!” cried Diamond Tiara. “Don’t go in there if you can’t see!”

“See?” said Pick, looking back to her, sounding genuinely confused. “Why would I need to see?”

“Wait,” said Silver Spoon. “You mean you can find your way in the dark?”

“My people have little concept of light, generally. So, yes.”

“I can see why,” said Diamond Tiara. “I mean, imagine them having to look at each other. Eew.”

“But we can’t see,” said Silver Spoon.

“Oh,” said Pick. “I forgot about that. Hold on…” He removed the dial from his chest and switched parts of it, changing its shape and structure rapidly. Then, with a final twist, an iris in the front opened and a harsh, flickering white light poured out.

Pick’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at the light in disgust. “Flickering…that’s not good.”

“Why is that not good?” demanded Diamond Tiara, stepping into the now marginally lit darkness.

“I’m using a quartz-argon core system.”

“And…?”

“And it is…dying.”

“What do you mean ‘dying’?”

“Quartz never lasts long, and I’ve been using it a lot.”

“If it fails,” said Silver Spoon. “You won’t be able to use spells anymore?”

Pick paused, and his already mostly closed eyes narrowed. “There’s no such thing as magic, you know that, right?”

“Um, no,” said Diamond Tiara. “There literally is.”

“Perhaps in your ignorant mind,” said Pick. He tapped the device on his chest. “This is not magic. Magic is a made up concept. But yes. If the crystal fails, my dial will go dormant. And, for the more ignorant among us…” he looked at Diamond Tiara, “…that is very, very bad.”

“The door is this way,” said Silver Spoon, rushing forward in the newly acquired light. Her companions, now on the verge of physical combat, hesitantly followed her. As they did, Pick looked up at the high stained-glass windows. They glowed eerily in his blue-violet light, their colors washed into cold shadows save for the blood-red eyes of the yellow pony pictured in each one of them.

Diamond Tiara watched as Diamond Pick became increasingly nervous with each passing image.

“You’re not scared, are you?” she said, leaning in close to him.

“This is a bad place,” said Pick, with all his combativeness gone.

“What do you mean?” Diamond Tiara was taken aback by his sudden seriousness. He was supposed to be as confident as she pretended to be- -unless, of course, he was just pretending too.

“Not all the ponies that lived in this house were good,” said Pick. “And not all of them needed our help. Some were…worse than what was already here.”

“What do you mean ‘worse’? What could be worse than pointy plant monsters?”

“My great grandmother,” said Pick, “when she came, this place was a hospital. Something went wrong, and she was badly injured. They helped her…but…”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. She never talked about it…but she only barely escaped this place. And…I think she saw something. Something much, much worse than all this.”

“Hurry up!” cried Silver Spoon. She was now standing at the large wooden door to the mines below.

“Hey,” said Diamond Tiara, sounding serious herself. “Is the mine safe with all that, um, radioactive around?”

“Radiation,” corrected Pick. “Just try to hold your breath.”

“Even a radioactive mine is better than this place,” said Silver Spoon, taking the large iron ring in her teeth.

Diamond Tiara winced. The room should have been silent. They were underground in a dry, lightless place- -but she still hear the sound of the wind, and the voices on it. She heard them laughing.

Her eyes widened when she realized why.

“Silver Spoon! Get away from the door!”

“Huh?” said Silver Spoon as the door slid open. The darkness on the other side immediately lurched forward as a mass of writhing branches leapt forward. One of them slid outward with tremendous force, and Silver Spoon screamed as its needle-covered, vine-like appendage slapped her across the room and into a nearby bookshelves.

“Silver!” cried Diamond Tiara, leaping over the falling and fallen books to help her friend.

A second vine leapt forward, a long barbed trunk. Diamond Tiara braced to be hit, but Pick jumped in the way. There was a small plume of sparks as his armor was struck, and though uninjured, he was sent sailing into Diamond Tiara, knocking her into Silver Spoon.

The vine retracted, pulling away the ragged cloth that Pick had been wearing over his armor. Diamond Tiara watched as it was pulled into a writing mass of what looked like green, barbed worms- -and then watched in horror as the vines and branches began to lurch forward.

They could not move efficiently, but as Diamond Tiara watched, they began to coalesce. Each of them connected to the others, their bark combining as they grew into each other. From the mass of plant flesh arose a shape cast of cactus- -a cactus that stepped, half formed, out of the doorway on a pair of forelegs.

“Diamond…Tiara…” it said, its voice seeming to echo within her head itself. “Help…us…please…”

“Get away from me!” she cried, throwing a book at the mass of several individual trees that were now marching out of the darkness, connected into the depths by long segmented roots. One of the books hit the cactus and was impaled on a stake-like spine.

“The roots!” cried Pick. “The mine is infested!”

“Help me pick her up!” said Diamond Tiara, lifting Silver Spoon. Not that Pick could do much good- -he was tiny and weak. “We need to go, now!”

“I- -I don’t know what to do!” cried Pick. As they watched, the cactus looped outward toward them. The stems swelled and burst open. Smaller, writhing plants splattered onto the floor and began to race across the stone rapidly.

Diamond tiara draped Silver Spoon over her back and grabbed Pick by the hoof.

“RUN!” she cried.

Diamond Tiara tossed Silver Spoon into the dark room and pulled the heavy metal door closed behind her, barely leaving enough time for Pick to squeeze through the opening. The rusted hinges creaked wildly as she slammed it closed and closed the lock.

She had no idea what kind of room she was in. There had been to many of them for her to choose a real path. It was almost as though they had been coordinating, leading the fillies and colt into a trap. They had just suddenly come from everywhere, growing from every crack in the stonework or walking along on their twisting, jittery roots. Diamond Tiara had simply found the first room that she had encountered.

It had been part of the sanitarium, perhaps a storage room. The floor was made of broken tile, and the pipes overhead indicated that it might have been used as an extensive bathroom at one point before being converted into a storage room for heavy pieces of cast-iron equipment coated in peeling paint. It was, at least, lit- -bright moonlight was pouring through several high, broken windows overhead.

“Wow,” said Pick. “We…we made- -”

Diamond Tiara shoved him hard in the chest, causing him to fall onto his back.

“This is all YOUR fault!” she screamed.

“MY fault?” he yelled back, squirming as he tried to right himself. “You’re the ones who moved into a house infested with- -with- -I don’t even know!”

“Oh? Our fault? OUR FAULT? Because my parents bought a house that I had to move into? That you’re people didn’t, oh, I don’t know, PUT UP A SIGN? ‘Hey, this place filled with cursed cactuses, it’s probably a bad idea to live here?’ But no, you don’t bother to actually do anything until it’s all going to Tartarus!”

“Excuse me,” said Pick, stretching his wings to flip himself over. “If I am risking MY life to help YOU! I don’t NEED to be here, I could have let those- -those THINGS do whatever their trying to do to you, but no. Now I’M trapped here with you!”

“Guys,” said Silver Spoon, her eyes wide as she shakily stood.

“Oh, and that!” cried Diamond Tiara. “Our current situation: the tunnels are blocked, the house is surrounded, and we have no way of stopping them from getting in!”

“It was your idea to use the iieih’iiaei tunnels!”

“And it was YOUR idea to try to run through them!”

“Guys,” said Silver Spoon again, this time slightly louder.

“I’m eleven ieah’ie years old! I’m not from a military family! My family is technetium mining nobility! I’ve only even had this dial since I got my cutie mark last year! What do you expect from me, you fat PORK?!”

“Oh, so the family in charge of protecting us sends an ugly BUG child to do their job? What, did they send they not want to send the GOOD sibling, so they sent us the worthless second-born?”

Diamond Tiara had finally hit her mark. She saw the hurt in Diamond Pick’s face, and she felt the glee of having hurt him with her words- -but somehow felt terrible at the same time.

“Oh yeah?” he whispered. “This is part of my noble duty…at least MY parents did not abandon me here.”

“GUYS!” screamed Silver Spoon, so loud that she nearly collapsed.

“WHAT?” yelled Diamonds Pick and Tiara. They both turned to her, and, with a quivering hoof, Silver Spoon gestured toward her flank. Diamond Tiara nearly cried out; just anterior to Silver Spoon’s cutie mark was a green fragment of cactus, its long, glass-like needles imbedded deeply in her skin.

“Road apples,” swore Diamond Tiara. “Don’t move.”

“Get it out,” said Silver Spoon. “It hurts…get it out get it out GET IT OUT GET IT OUT!!”

“Stop moving,” said Diamond Tiara as Silver Spoon started to jump around. “It’s just a cactus.”

“Just a cactus…JUST A CACTUS? Diamond, help me!”

“Okay,” said Diamond Tiara. “This is an order, Silver Spoon. Don’t you panic now. Don’t be a coward like that moron over there. You got that? I don’t want COWARDS as my friends.”

Silver Spoon took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Tears were running down her face, but she nodded.

“Okay,” said Diamond Tiara. “We just need to pull it out…”

She reached up toward the cactus with her hoof and poked it. She had barely touched it, but felt a searing prick in her hoof as the needle poked her. Then it moved.

Diamond Tiara nearly vomited as the cactus squirmed like an enormous spiny maggot, and Silver Spoon screamed, more from disgust and fear than pain- -although the needles in her flank must not have been comfortable.

“Ow,” said Diamond Tiara, putting her pricked hoof in her mouth.

“HOW DO YOU THINK I FEEL?” cried Silver Spoon. “Oh…my beautiful flank…ruined…”

“Do either of you have a comb?” asked Diamond Pick. They both looked at him, and he sighed. “Not for my mane. To pull it out.”

“Where in Equestria would we keep a COMB? Pockets?”

Diamond Pick groaned. “I suppose I can use my teeth…”

“I don’t think your teeth are going to…to…”

Diamond Tiara trailed off as Pick retracted his lips- -or rather, moved his jaw forward. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon both cried out in horror as they realized that the sharp tips that were visible when he spoke were just that- -tips. As his teeth pushed forward and his lips pulled back, they both realized that his gum line was much, much farther back than it should have been. His teeth were at least five inches long, like long, white needles.

“What?” he said, speaking as well as ever even though he no longer had use of his lips.

“It’s just- -you are REALLY unnerving!”

“Have you ever seen your eyes? You both freak me the aaeh’ii out.”

There was more too it, though. Diamond Tiara knew that the creature before them was Diamond Pick, but with his jaw extended outward like some kind of grotesque fish and his teeth and reflective eyes glimmering in the moonlight, he looked like an unearthly horror- -but a horror that Diamond Tiara somehow recognized.

Then she remembered. Though it had been unclear, he looked exactly like the creature from the film. The one that had been in the bed, beneath the curtains- -it was one of his kind, its teeth extended and its blind eyes glaring at the unfortunate pony who had tried to film it.

Diamond Pick stepped toward Silver Spoon, and she recoiled.

“Silver Spoon,” he said. “Please. Do you trust me?”

Silver Spoon looked into his reflective eyes, and then she nodded.

“Then let me help you.”

“If you bite her, I WILL kick those teeth out of your skull,” noted Diamond Tiara.

“It’s not like they don’t grow back,” muttered Pick, stretching his teeth outward even further. Diamond Tiara watched as each tooth flicked slightly, articulating individually. Silver Spoon laid on her side and closed her eyes.

Pick descended and dexterously put his teeth around the cactus. They meshed with its long spines, and it suddenly reacted, trying to squirm deeper against Silver Spoon’s flesh. She moaned and wept, and Diamond Tiara held her hoof.

“Hold on,” she said. “Don’t be a weakling, Silver Spoon.”

With a sudden motion, Pick pulled hard. Silver Spoon’s eyes shot open and she shrieked as the cactus fragment was pulled cleanly free. She immediately curled up against Diamond Tiara, and Pick threw the cactus against the dirty tile floor.

It seemed to realize that it had been disconnected. It squirmed, using its spines like legs and trying to move its bloated body away, back to safety- -or back to Silver Spoon’s rump. Diamond Pick looked down at it in disgust, and then slammed one of his armored hooves against it.

The cactus burst open like an overfilled water balloon, splattering the floor and the three ponies around it. The air was filled with a metallic smell, and Diamond Tiara realized that the fluid that had come out of the still-twitching plant was not green or clear, like she had expected. It was red.

“B…blood,” said Silver Spoon, her lip quivering. “It was…it was taking my blood…”

“That explains what they’re after,” said Pick, darkly, wiping his hoof on the ground and retracting his teeth back into his mouth.

“Buck,” said Diamond Tiara, softly. “Buck me…”

Pick looked confused, and then shifted his dial. “I think I’m losing power. Translation is starting to get poor…”

“Then we don’t have much time,” said Diamond Tiara.

“Time for what?” said Pick. “I don’t…” he took a deep breath. “I…I think I have failed. I don’t think there is a way out of this.”

“If we can’t leave, then we stay.”

“Stay?” said Silver Spoon, her eyes wide.

“This place is a fort,” said Diamond Tiara. “There has to be some place where we can, I don’t know, barricade ourselves in or something. Seal ourselves in until Mother and Daddy get back, or until the servants get here, or until you can summon one of those drone things.”

“That…that’s actually not a bad idea…”

“Until we run out of food and water,” muttered Silver Spoon.

“It’s the only chance we have,” snapped Diamond Tiara. “Do you know anywhere like that?”

“I didn’t memorize all the blueprints…and I feel really, really dizzy…”

“The outer wall,” said Pick. “There are watchtowers there, or what used to be. They’ve been renovated, but they are sealed and in good condition.

“Can we get there from here?”

Pick looked up at the windows, and then down at the floor. “I…I think so. It’s a straight shot from here to the east tower.”

Diamond Tiara looked up at the windows. Moonlight was coming in, but so were narrow bands of thin, spiny vines.

“We need to get out of here first,” said Silver Spoon.

Diamond Pick removed his dial. “I have enough energy left for one more resonance explosion. After that, if I use the dial for anything substantial, it will take permanent damage.”

“So we’ve only got one spell left,” said Diamond Tiara. She looked at the wall, and then helped Silver Spoon to her feet. “Alright. So you’re going to knock down that wall.”

“And everything within forty aie of it on the far side.”

“And then we run. As fast as we can.”

“I don’t like this plan,” said Silver Spoon.

Diamond Tiara adjusted her tiara, and looked to Pick. She smiled, and so did he, even if his was filled with nervousness.

“I do. Let’s do this.”

Pick nodded nervously and crossed the room to the exterior wall. He disconnected the device on his chest, and once again the red lights of his suit faded. With one shaking hoof, he attached the circle to the wall and adjusted it. It expanded, extending a set of clamps into the concrete and opening like a flower. He adjusted the delicate wheels and gears inside, and then stepped back as the bright white light in the center of the dial flashed and flickered.

The air fell profoundly silent. The trio of young ponies were surrounded an all sides by a legion of monsters, but the only sound was the distant howl of the wind. Sometimes, though, they could hear the rustling of branches.

Then the air was cut with a loud, synthetic whine. The sound rose in pitch, and was then punctuated by a powerful explosion that echoed off the stone and brick of the house. Stone shrapnel was driven outward, and in the bright light of the moon Diamond Tiara saw the bodies of hundreds of cactuses and trees- -many of which shaped themselves into forms reminiscent of ponies- -torn apart by the blast.

“RUN!” she cried as Pick and Silver Spoon ducked. She raced forward into the breach, and was quickly joined by a crying Silver Spoon. Pick grabbed his dial from the rubble and inserted it back into the chest plate of his protective armor, and then ran joined the other two.

“Up ahead!” he called, pointing toward a looming, crooked tower emerging from the wall in the distance. Upon seeing it, Diamond Tiara’s heart sank. It was not that far, but in the darkness, the distance to it seemed impossible.

The plants around them took a moment to react, but they quickly realized that their prey was moving. In the moonlight, Diamond Tiara saw them move: trees lurching forward, marching on their roots, swinging their spiny tendrils blindly were joined by crawling, creeping cacti that seemed to have no bodily symmetry or logical order to their structure. The worst, though, was the ones that had shaped themselves into pony shapes. The way they moved was just wrong; they shook and jittered, their joints snapping forward with a gait that no pony could ever even attempt to copy.

“Diamond Tiara!” cried Silver Spoon, tears pouring from her eyes. “Don’t let them get meeeee!”

“Just keep running!” she ordered. “Come on! MOVE!”

Diamond Tiara fell back and pushed Silver Spoon’s rump with her forehead, forcing her to accelerate. Pick had taken the front of the line. With his armor, he was able to knock back some of the branches that were starting to close in, but without his helmet he was by no means safe. Diamond Tiara regretted asking him to throw it away; she shuddered to think about what would happen if one of those vines grabbed him and took him away.

Fortunately, the plants seemed to be powered fully on instinct. They had been drawn toward the building where the trio had just been, but they had not filled the dusty courtyard that filled the space between the hospital and the tower.

For a moment, Diamond Tiara though that they might make it. She felt herself growing lighter with hope, and found that running was not so hard. Then she saw the ground underneath Pick shift, his light form causing something just beneath the sand to deform and shift.

Pick was light enough to get across it without even noticing, but Silver Spoon was not. There was a crack as the dry plywood below cracked, and Silver Spoon started to drop.

“No you don’t!” cried Diamond Tiara, rushing forward and slamming her body into Silver Spoon. Silver Spoon tumbled to the ground, but was knocked past the border of the abandoned well. Diamond Tiara was not; while she had forced Silver Spoon back onto solid ground, she herself had landed in the suddenly open chasm beneath. She cried out as she fell and then slammed into the floor beneath.

Pick helped Silver Spoon up, and ran to the stone edge of the circular hole.

“Are you dead?” he called. From the tremor in his voice, it was clear that he did not mean it as a joke.

“Owww….no,” said Diamond Tiara, standing. She looked up from the hole and saw nothing more than a tiny circle of moonlight overhead, casting beams through the dust.

“Hold on!” cried Pick. He put one of his feet on the stone wall of the well and attempted to descend. Although he could adhere to the wall, the stone could not; it slipped free and nearly fell onto Diamond Tiara below.

“I can’t- -I can’t get down!” cried Pick in a panic.

“Pick, they’re coming!” cried Silver Spoon.

“I can’t leave her!”

“You have to!” cried Diamond Tiara back up the well.

“Are you INSANE?”

“Pick!”

“No! Leave me, save Silver Spoon! There’s no way you can get me out in time! Go!”

“I can’t- -”

“Silver Spoon is everything to me! She’s my only friend! Save her! That’s an order! Or do I have to come up there and kick you rump?!”

“No! Diamond Tiara!” cried Silver Spoon. Diamond Tiara saw her looking frantically around her as the plants were drawing closer. “I- -I’ll come back for you! I promise!”

“Don’t,” whispered Diamond Tiara. “There’s no reason…no reason to. There never was.” Then, loud enough for Silver Spoon to hear: “Get out of here!”

Pick nodded to her and grabbed Silver Spoon’s foreleg. He pulled her away as a shambling mass pulled itself over the edge of the well, covering it and blocking out all light. Diamond Tiara found herself unable to see, but the plant had also blocked out all sound from above- -save for the dry stretching sound of its appendages growing, descending downward into the blackness, their lethal spines seeking blood in the darkness.

Sight was impossible in the darkness of the dry well, but Diamond Tiara knew that she was by no means trapped. Before the light had faded, she had seen that the well was just one connector onto a much larger set of much older chambers. With her hoof on the stone wall, she descended into the pitch-black aqueducts below.

She did not know what she would find down there, or whether she would ever see light again- -but that last image of Pick and Silver Spoon’s faces was burned into her memory. If she was going to fail, she was not going to fail without a fight. She was Diamond Dazzle Tiara, the daughter of the Rich family- -and she was not going to give up at all easily.

Comments

[Clawfoot]

I am gripped by this wonderfully dark tale.

[Rubber2Duck]

“Why did they name you ‘Pick’? Oh, let me guess. They forgot the ‘r’.”

Holy crap, that is the best insult I have ever heard, Diamond Tiara is a freaking savage

[Moosetasm]

“Buck,” said Diamond Tiara, softly. “Buck me…”

Pick looked confused, and then shifted his dial. “I think I’m losing power. Translation is starting to get poor…”

Heh.
Seriously though, DT could do worse than marrying a Prince who just so happens to be an heir to a successful mining empire.