Desert Water

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 6: Separation

Silver Spoon turned over in the bed, holding the old blankets close to her body. They were scratchy and moth-eaten, and normally she would have considered just the thought of touching them disgusting. At this point, though, she was just so afraid that she could not do anything but huddle beneath them against the stone walls that surrounded her.

There was no way she could sleep, though. Logically, she knew that she was at least marginally safe. The doors to the room had not been as thick and secure as Pick and Diamond Tiara had hoped. When Silver Spoon and Pick had first entered the narrow and curve-walled bedroom, the plants had been close in pursuit. They had nearly knocked open the door until Pick had stopped them with his dial. Silver Spoon was not entirely sure what he had done, but the dial now sat attached to the door, producing a field of energy that was just barely visible at the farthest corners of the room.

Diamond Pick had not said it, but Silver Spoon knew that the dial was being pushed beyond its limits. He had already depleted its power; now its light glowed dim and blue, producing a burning electrical smell as the tiny gears ticked and ground together, dropping occasional spurts of silvery dust into a small pile on the floor.

Silver Spoon sat up in bed and looked across the room. The dim light of the dial and the moonlight filtering through the ancient tactical glass on the outer wall of the room barely lit the room, but it was enough to see. Silver Spoon sighed; the room itself had indeed been renovated, but all the wall paneling, carpet, and paintings could still not disguise the fact that the walls were made of cold stone.

Pick was across the room, lying with his legs beneath his body before a fireplace filled with strange, hole-filled logs. A small fire had been started, but it was barely as bright as a candle. Through its light, Silver Spoon could see that Pick was shivering violently.

“Are you cold?” she asked.

He looked up at her. His eyes reflected the light of the room, but in the shadows, he looked just like any other colt. He sighed, and then spoke weakly. “My homeland has a native air temperature of seventy five degrees,” he said.

Silver Spoon felt the air. “It can’t be less than fifty in here, though.”

Pick shook his head. “Centigrade, not Fahrenheit.”

“Oh. Is that a lot?”

Pick nodded. “My suit…it has heaters built into it. But without my dial, I can’t power them. I’m so, so cold. But that is my problem, not yours. Just go back to sleep. You’ve been through a lot. You need to rest.” He opened his wings and wrapped them around himself, trying to hide his shivering.

Silver Spoon leaned back in the bed she had been given, but found she could not enjoy it at all. She sat up again and sighed, pulling the covers back.

“If you tell anypony, I will have Diamond- -I will never forgive you, but you can come over here if you want.”

Pick’s head poked out from under his wings, his eyes wide. “But…you’re a filly. I think. And I’m a colt. It wouldn’t be appropriate!”

“You don’t trust me?”

“No,” said Pick, then, more quickly, “I mean, I do, but…”

“Look,” said Silver Spoon, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’re cold, and I’m scared out of my coat right now. I am just so, so afraid. It would really help me if I had somepony to hold onto, and my best friend is…is…”

She wiped away a tear that was forming. Pick stood up. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“You’ve already seen me without my pearls,” said Silver Spoon, pointing to the necklace on the dark-colored wooden end table beside her. “Just take off that suit first.”

“Do I have to?”

“You can’t go to bed wearing armor.”

Pick hesitated, but eventually reluctantly removed his armor. In a way, Silver Spoon wanted to see what he actually looked like. She had been expecting something exotic, but really, he appeared relatively ordinary. His entire coat- -and there was a coat, even if it was very short- -was gray green, and his mane short-cut and running down most of his back. His cutie mark, as his name implied, was a type of tool which to Silver Spoon looked more like an scythe than a pick. Aside from his low posture, though, he looked mostly like an ordinary pony. The thing Silver Spoon mostly noticed was not his morlock appearance, but just how small he really was.

He climbed into the bed and laid down as far as he possibly could from Silver Spoon, awkwardly pulling some of the blankets around himself.

“Are you scared?” asked Silver Spoon.

“I have no capacity for fear.”

Silver Spoon sighed, and looked at the back of his head. He was covered in blankets, but still shaking badly. Silver Spoon could feel the tremors that wracked Pick’s body through the bed. After a moment of consideration, she turned toward him and wriggled across the bed.

She gently put her hoofs around Pick’s slightly smaller body and held him close to herself, hugging him from behind. He resisted at first, but not hard enough to actually escape. His wings were bony and hard against Silver Spoon’s chest, but his underbelly was incredibly soft.

As Silver Spoon wrapped her body around Pick’s, his shivering slowed- -but it did not stop. It continued at a different pace, a shaking that was not caused by cold at all. Even though Pick was facing away from Silver Spoon, she could hear his muffled sobs.

“I lied,” he said. “I am afraid. I’m so afraid, and there’s nothing I can do…”

“It’s going to be okay,” said Silver Spoon.

“But what if it’s not? What if…what if I never see my mother or father again? Or even my big sister?” His shaking accelerated, and Silver Spoon realized that it was from fear. “They’ll never even know. I’ll just disappear.”

“Weren’t they the ones who sent you to save us?”

“No,” admitted Pick. “They don’t even know…I was just trying to prove myself, but I’m not ready…I’m not ready for any of this. I just want to go home, to my own room, to my own bed. I want the fear to go away, to feel safe again.”

“Shhh,” said Silver Spoon, gently, holding him tightly. “We’re safe now.”

“But when my negation field fails…”

“Don’t think about it,” said Silver Spoon. “I’ve got you. You’re not alone.”

Pick seemed to calm down, but after several minutes, he spoke again.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said. “When I called her a pig.”

“You mean Diamond Tiara?”

“She’s not fat either. I think she’s really pretty. Why didn’t I tell her that? Why wasn’t I strong enough to save her?”

“You can’t blame yourself, Pick.”

“But she was my responsibility…” he turned slightly, one of his eyes looking back at Silver Spoon. “How can…how can you be so calm about this? She was your friend.”

“She IS my friend,” said Silver Spoon. “And don’t you underestimate her. Diamond Tiara is strong. So, so much stronger than I could ever be. I trust her to keep her promise, because if anypony can, it’s her.”

Pick sighed. “I wish I could share your confidence…then maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad…”

“Just go to sleep,” whispered Silver Spoon. “Everything will be okay. I know it will.”

Pick pushed up against her, curling into her grip. His shaking slowed, and after a few minutes, Silver Spoon felt his breathing become consistent and slow. He had gone to sleep.

She lay awake, though. Even though she felt better being close to another pony- -even if he was not actually Diamond Tiara- -she knew that there would be no way she could go to sleep. Not with Diamond Tiara missing. Silver Spoon had not lied: she knew that Diamond Tiara could make it out- -but she had also taken a page from Diamond Tiara herself and feigned strength to mask her fear.

All that Silver Spoon could do was hope, and worry about her best friend’s safety. As she closed her eyes and held tightly to the cinnamon scented pony beside her, she prayed to every god and goddess she could think of for Diamond Tiara’s safety.

The walls were made of stone. The floor was made of stone. The ceiling was probably made of stone. Everything was cold and nothing was wet, and Diamond Tiara could see none of it. The darkness seemed to press in around her, and though it was rendered everything invisible, from the sounds she heard she could not help but feel that she saw the edges of strange things moving around her on all sides.

She had to keep moving. There was no other option. If she stayed behind, the cactuses would get her and do horrible things to her. Of course, she was aware that they could be ahead of her as well. She just hoped that they were as blind as she was.

Eventually, though, Diamond Tiara found that moving was getting easier. After a few moments, she realized that she was able to see. Looking up, she saw that evenly spaced shelves had been built into the wall. On each one was perched a large, white-blue crystal that was lit from within. They were by no means bright, but they produced enough light to make sight possible.

Fortunately, she found that there were no plants following her. Unfortunately, though, she found that she had completely lost her way. The lights indicated that the aqueducts beneath the well had lead into a cistern: Diamond Tiara had followed one wall, and now a vast and dark room filled with tall stone columns stood to her side. The light did not penetrate the darkness far enough to show what lurked in that cistern, but Diamond Tiara could hear things moving in the blackness.

She increased her speed, following the wall until she reached another aqueduct: a long, rectangular tunnel leading into the darkness beyond. Diamond Tiara felt her heart racing in the darkness.

Then, all at once, the air seemed to distort. A powerful wind came up from below. Though Diamond Tiara could not feel it against her, she heard it: a mixture of many rambling, rasping sounds like electrical static that slowly resolved. Diamond Tiara tried to force them away, but they imbedded themselves in her mind, quickly forming a torrent of voices.

“Diamond….Tiara…” whispered the tunnel. “Diaaaaamond…”

“Stupid tunnel,” muttered Diamond Tiara. “Making me here things.”

“Help us…Diamond Tiara…”

“Help you do what?” she screamed. Her voice echoed off the long-abandoned walls. The things in the darkness that were chasing her surely heard, but she did not care. They already knew where she was, and they were just toying with her. Her fear was rapidly being overcome with her anger, and both continued to rise against her unseen enemies. “What do you want from me?!”

The voice paused. Then one perfectly clear female voice echoed through the halls: “MOISTURE.”

The forcefulness of the response was enough to make Diamond Tiara pause. As she did, she looked around and realized that the aqueduct was starting to give way to something else, a larger and much older set of tunnels. She quickly continued, though- -and this time walked faster.

“Well, you can’t have mine,” she said defiantly.

“Don’t want…yours…would never hurt you, Diamond Tiara…”
“Oh yeah? Well, that’s reassuring, isn’t it?”

“We love you, Diamond Tiara.”

Diamond Tiara once again felt herself moving more slowly. She knew that there were things approaching her from behind, following her- -and gaining slowly with silent footsteps- -but for some reason, her mind was starting to not let her remember exactly why they were dangerous.

“We have always loved you, Diamond Tiara…”

“Lies,” said Diamond Tiara, shaking her head. “You’re lying!”

“You are…one of us…and like us…you have been deceived…”

“Deceived…by what?” asked Diamond Tiara. Somehow, the voice sounded sincere and true. She wanted to doubt what it was saying, but found herself unable to.

“The morlock.” The voices shifted, and for a moment Diamond Tiara heard far more than just one voice echoing through the wall. “You have been lied to, Diamond Tiara…just as we were…”

“I don’t understand!”

“They did not come to save us…they came to reap us…”

“Reap?” Diamond Tiara shuddered.

“Those teeth…he is not trying to take you to safety…but underground. If you go…you will never come back up…”

“No,” said Diamond Tiara, stopping in the darkness. Her head hurt, and she put her hoof against it. “Pick wouldn’t…he wouldn’t dare do that to me…”

She tried to remember Pick, but all that came to her mind were visions of a terrifying, sharp-toothed monster. At the same time, she tried to remember why she was running- -and found that she could not remember if she was running from Pick or something else.

Something terrifying had gone wrong with her mind. Memories were different, and emotions were strange. She knew that she had not liked this house, that it was bad for some reason- -but all she could remember was how much she liked it. How much she wanted to stay. How nice a place it really was. How, perhaps, it might be even better if it were just a little bit bigger.

“We are not trying…to hurt you…” whispered something inches away from her ear. “We are your friends…we want you to succeed…where we failed…”

“What do you want?” asked Diamond Tiara, her voice cracking.

“Not much…left…so thirsty. We’re so thirsty, Diamond Tiara. We need…we need to drink…”

“I understand,” said Diamond Tiara. “You just want a drink…I will get you some water…as much water as you need…”

“But she…she’s protected…have to get past…have to get to the MOISTURE…”

The haze in Diamond Tiara’s mind suddenly shifted. “She?”

“The gray one…we need her…you will help us take her…give us SILVER SPOON…”

With that, the haze broke entirely. Diamond Tiara felt a surge of fear and rage well up from the depths of her mind, but not the same kind that she had felt before. This type was far stronger, bringing with it a much more powerful motivation.

“I will NOT let you hurt her!” she screamed into the darkness. “If you think you can have Silver Spoon, you’ll have to go through me first! And you will never, ever get through ME when I’m protecting my friend!”

The voice did not respond. Then, finally, it spoke, and Diamond Tiara knew that whatever abomination was taking had a smile on its unseen face. “So be it.”

Everything around Diamond Tiara seemed to burst forward at once. What she had though had just been shadows became roots, leaping out at her from their burrows deep within the cracks of the walls. She dodged, but a long and ribbed branch cut past her, scratching her side with its hypodermic spikes.

She ran. There was not enough light to see, but Diamond Tiara sprinted forward at full gallop. She repeatedly tripped on the dusty stone floor, and fell several times, but hardly noticed the pain of the impacts. She had to run, to get away, to the point where she did not even care that she could not see where she was going.

Laughter echoed through her head, surrounding her- -but coming from nowhere. Beneath it was something else. Something whispering, that spoke into a voice that belonged to no one at all. Diamond Tiara felt like screaming, but she found that she was not able to; her rapid hoofsteps and heavy breathing echoed off the walls as she darted through the labyrinth of forgotten stony tunnels beneath the accursed house above.

She could not see them, nor could she hear them. Looking over her shoulder, she saw only pony-shaped shadows galloping forward. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape: wherever she went, she only went deeper underground, deeper a realm that had never once seen the light of the sun.

Finally, Diamond Tiara could run no more. Her body had been running purely on adrenaline, but she was not a physically fit filly. Her legs ached, her chest burned, and she was choking on the thick spit that had formed in her mouth.

She burst through one final door, leaping into one final room, and her legs gave out. She fell into the dust of the stone tile below, gasping for air. She knew at that moment that she had failed. There was no way she could go on, and she would not be able to keep her promise to Silver Spoon.

The briars sensed her weakness and sprang silently from the darkness toward her. Diamond Tiara shielded her eyes from the mass of plant material and fleshy, swollen stems. As they exploded through the door toward her, Diamond Tiara shrieked- -not just because of the plants, but because the room was suddenly filled with intense orange light.

As she watched, a deep dust-filled groove appeared in the stone, lighting from within. The plants above writhed in agony and then burst apart, their flesh mutating and overgrowing until the grotesque and mutated mass exploded into a plume of rot and decay, covering Diamond Tiara in stinking, sulfurous black liquid.

Diamond Tiara screamed- -as bad as being sucked dry by evil cactuses was, being covered in their guts was almost as bad. As Diamond Tiara tried to shake the foul fluid and spine fragments from her body, she looked around the room and saw that it was suddenly fully lit. The light came from the groove that was cut into the stone, which glowed from within as though the groove led to some place much farther below, a place lit by flickering flame.

As she looked around, Diamond Tiara saw that there was not simply one line. Rather, the glowing spell was shaped into that of a complex and ornate five-pointed star. She was standing within the boundary of a pentagram.

None of this initially made sense to her. She had no idea where the mark had come from, or why the plants had not been able to cross it. Of course, she was glad they had- -but the confusion itself only added to her terror as much as her newfound safety detracted from it.

Once she overcame her repulsion at the putrescence that was covering her- -and wiped away most of it- -she followed the narrow beams of light that slashed across the tiles of the floor toward the center of the mark. There, she found something odd.

In the center of the shape was a statue. It was no taller than she was, and appeared to be carved out of a white material- -a material that Diamond Tiara somehow knew to be bone. The bone itself had been carved into a tall, cone like shape, linked into pieces representing tiny figures of ponies in various states of decay and mutation. They were burning, writhing, rotting, broken and injured- -and many of them were smiling and laughing. Yet, despite that, their perfectly carved eyes- -no larger than peas- -showed signs of the most horrible agony.

Sitting atop the carved pile was a figure barely the size of a hoof. She was perched on a throne made of the bodies of those below her, and unlike them, her body was carved from solid gold- -and her eyes consisted of a pair of blood-red rubies.

Diamond Tiara shivered and backed away. The statue was grotesque, but there was something more to it, some deeper, instinctive loathing. It was like looking at something long-dead, something rotten and terrible. The yellow, red-eyed pony on the top seemed too real, as if she might move at any moment- -and as if her jewel eyes were somehow actually seeing, glaring at Diamond Tiara as she smiled from her throne. The very idea of touching that horrible statue was incomprehensible, but somehow Diamond Tiara knew that if she were to try, something far more terrible than being pursued by plants would befall her.

Her shivers not turning into full-blown shuddering, Diamond Tiara proceeded to cross the room. The pentagram, it seemed, stopped suddenly against the far wall. Diamond Tiara did not know how magic worked- -as an earth pony, she had never bothered to attempt to understand it- -but she figured that, logically, any sort of magic circle had to be a circle. They did not simply end.

Sure enough, after a few moments of searching, she found a door in the wall. It was not locked, but when she pushed against it, there was a surprising amount of resistance. The door did not open, but Diamond Tiara did not give up. She slammed her body into the door repeatedly, feeling it give slightly with each blow.

Then, suddenly, the objects stacked against it on the far side collapsed and, with a shout, Diamond Tiara burst through. She tumbled to the floor as a number of boxes and random pieces of wood fell around her and on top of her.

“Stupid door!” she yelled, throwing the items off of her and standing up. “Who even blocks a door anyway? I mean, I need to get in here!” She looked around the room, and felt a chill. Her voice dropped in volume greatly. “Is…is anypony here?”

One of the boxes that had spilled clattered loudly toward onto the floor appeared to be filled with crystals, and Diamond Tiara recognized them as the same kind that adorned the walls in the aqueduct. These, though, had been fixed into copper clasps- -now green with oxidation- -that formed them into lanterns.

Diamond Tiara picked one of them up, and as she did, the crystal glowed slightly. She shook it more violently, and the crystal inside glowed with a dim internal light. It was by no means as bright as her modern, expensive lanterns, but the dull blue glow augmented the orange of the remainder of the pentagram enough to allow her to see.

The room seemed to be filled with a number of shelves, several of which had been stacked against the door. Those that remained were filled with books and notes, and every bare part of the wall was covered in faded, torn charts written in oddly familiar script.

It was what was at the desk against the wall that gave Diamond Tiara pause, though. Slumped against the desk on one side of the room was a pony skeleton, a tattered pith helmet still perched on his skull.

“No way,” said Diamond Tiara, slowly approaching the remains. She knew that she should have been afraid- -or at least disgusted- -but mostly, she felt sad. If she was right, she knew the owner of these bones. She had read his journal, and she felt like she had come to know him. In many ways, he had not been unlike her: sad, angry, and often alone. To see him lying here, forgotten and alone, just felt wrong.

The desk that his torso was sprawled over was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Diamond Tiara winced in disgust, and then blew the dust away. It immediately filled the room, making seeing almost impossible. It smelled like a really old barn, and it made Diamond Tiara cough violently.

Once Diamond Tiara finished her coughing fit and regaining her composure from the fact that she had been breathing hair and dust that had probably at some point belonged to a dead guy, Diamond Tiara looked at the table. For the most part, it was just covered in various pages and notes, all strewn about and faded, and all showing iterations of the same thing.

What drew Diamond Tiara’s attention, though, was an object sitting in the center of the table. Although it was covered in cobwebs and tarnished with age, Diamond Tiara still recognized the glimmer of its silvery metal and its hoof-sized, round shape. It was a technetium dial, the same kind that Pick wore in his chest.

All at once, Diamond Tiara remembered where she had seen it. It had been in that bizarre black-and-white film that Silver Spoon had brought up from the basement: an artifact discovered nearly a century ago during the construction of the house. It was one that Pith Helmut had clearly taken great pride in finding- -but had never once mentioned in his journal.

Diamond Tiara reached out and, being careful not to touch what was left of Pith Helmut, picked up the relic. She found that it was surprisingly heavy.

Almost as soon as she touched it, the skeleton lurched forward as if reaching out to retrieve its prized possession. Diamond Tiara dropped the dial and jumped back with a squeak, but quickly realized that her tiara had brushed it and simply caused it to shift.

She picked up the dial again, but this time, noticed something else. Beneath one of Pith Helmut’s skeletal hooves was a stack of paper, bound with staples. Diamond Tiara realized with a gasp what it was: the torn-out section of his journal.

Putting down the dial, Diamond Tiara instead reached for the fragment of the book. It was dusty and dry, but still the pages were still durable enough to turn. Diamond Tiara shook her lantern again and set it on the desk as she gingerly opened the book piece.

“…and of course, I conducted an archeological dig over the sight of the new addition prior to the start of construction. Who knows what treasures were lost or covered by previous, uneducated builders as they developed this monstrosity of a structure with their careless workpony hooves. This area, I have found, is unusually rich in Mustang artifacts in addition to a number of skeletons in multiple strata. This leads me to believe that this place may have been a burial area, or some other sort of sacred place to them. Which, obviously, means a great deal of artifacts can be recovered with careful attention.

“Item #116 was found by one of my mule workers. Initially, I believed it to be an amulet or ornament of Mustang origin. However, closer inspection revealed it to be exceedingly complex. Too complex for Mustangs by far, and even far too complex for the war ponies at the dawn of the Third Era. I am hesitant to allow myself to grow excited at this one discovery, but I daresay that this is something entirely new. Something of great potential…”

Diamond Tiara turned through the pages, finding a new passage.

“Item #116 has become the object of nearly full-time study. The more I analyze it, the more mysteries appear to me. In all my years, in decades of acquiring artifacts from tombs, temples, and graves, I have never before seen a device like this- -and to think it was dug from my own front garden.

“Although it appears to be silver, the material is something else entirely. I am not sure if there is even a word for it in pony language, but I think that it may be the same manner of material that the abandoned mines below formerly produced.

“Initially, I suspected that it might be some sort of magical device, a relic created by one of the Dark Goddess’ mages during the war. Tests on the material, on the structure, they all prove something different. Not only does item #116 not use any sort of detectable magic, but it appears to be resistant to it entirely. It is badly damaged and impossibly old, but the inside is clockwork unlike any I have ever even conceived of.

“I have moved my research into the tunnels that are beneath this house. They were designed to conceal the Dark Goddess’ soldiers from the power of the Sun. My work must not be discovered, and I grow suspicious that there are spies among me. If Celestia were to find out about this, about it what it could do to pony society…”

“What?” demanded Diamond Tiara. She turned to the collapsed skeleton beside her, as if it could respond. “What does it mean? I don’t understand, you idiot…”

“…situation growing dire. Something is wrong with my head. At first, I thought it was too much research into item #116, spending too much time in that old basement. But things are not getting clearer. My mind feels heavy. Each time I leave, it gets harder. Harder to leave the house. Am I getting older? Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am too old to compete with Daring Feats. A relic of a bygone era. But something still feels wrong. But I don’t know why.

“At the risk of sounding insane…but I must write it. I have started hearing voices.”

Diamond Tiara read quickly, her eyes streaming across the pages. The lamp was growing dim, but she did not even bother to shake it again until it had almost gone out. Journal entries flowed past her, filing in the joint between when Pith Helmut had been a gentlecoltly explorer and an unraveled madpony that had been missing from his journal. Much of what he had written concerned the specifics of the dial, and of how its mechanisms might work. Some, though, was frighteningly familiar: he wrote repeatedly of the dreams, of how he found himself night after night at the shores of a pool of crystal-clear water. Dreams that only he experienced.

After several entries, there was a long pause in dates. What was scrawled on the pages made little sense, and when Pith Helmut finally came back, his writing had changed drastically. What had once been beautiful cursive had been replaced by shaky, child-like scrawl.

“Why didn’t I listen? Why didn’t I see it, or understand? Even know, the blindness…I can feel it. Yes, I can see, but my mind…they’ve been doing things to my mind…

“They took Studly. Dear Celestia, why? Why take him? The only stallion I ever truly loved, and he’s gone. I will never see him again. I never even had a chance to say goodbye.

“I have secured my sanctum with the Idol of Ponyzuzu. The damage to my body was substantial, but it worked. At first. It can keep them at bay- -why don’t I know what they are? I see them but I don’t remember what they are!- -and it kept the thoughts away. It kept my mind clear, but. But it has been fading. I can hear them even when I am in here now.

“It’s the dust. Oh Celestia, it’s the dust. They live in it, and they get in your lungs the moment you get here. Into my lungs. Never even saw them, never knew they were there. But why am I still here? The others go. They leave, and never come back, but I…I always stay. Only I can hear them talking.

“Something is wrong. Item #116 barely interests me anymore…nothing does. Even memories of my beloved are starting to fade. They are replaced with an increscent desire to build. This house, I have to expand it. It’s like a drug. It have to make it bigger. Even the thought fills me with anticipation. But I don’t know why. Why does the house need to be bigger?”

Then, on the last page:

“This may be the last entry I can make with any semblance of lucidity. My mind is failing, but I have an idea, a plan. They are the plants. Whatever makes me…like this…it does something to them. Or do they do this to me? I don’t know. I probably never will. They are not letting me understand some things that I should be able to see clearly.

“But the solution. The solution is item #116. It is broken. Nonfunctional. But if I could get it to work, if I could repair it, I could escape. I could fight. I could cure myself. Who knows? The power in that device may very well be limitless, a vestige of an unseen culture that evolved on a different path from ours. One toward technology instead of magic. The one that gave birth to my spectre. Even she does not come to me anymore. Even she has forsaken me. I hope she remains unharmed. I should have gone with her, but I was too much of a fool. If only I had left when I had the chance. Or could I even have, if I wanted to? Would they have let me?

“I have torn out this part of my journal, anything that pertains to item #116. I see now. Memories that are not mine. They are the dead ones, the ones driven to the depths by fire and light. Celestia must never know. No one must know. I pray to the only goddess who has not forsaken me that nobody ever finds this fragment.”

As Diamond Tiara flipped through the last page, a piece of notepaper dropped out of the back. It fluttered to the ground and landed amongst Pith Helmut’s bones. Diamond Tiara reached down and picked it up. It was not a page of the journal, but it was written in Helmut’s hoofwriting. It read: “They got me. Reached sanctum, but too late. Lost too much blood. Studly, I’m coming home.”

That, Diamond Tiara realized, had been his final words. From the outside, though, he would simply have seemed to vanish, along with everypony else who had been with him. Then, she knew, somepony else had simply purchased the house and repeated the cycle. The cycle that had passed through the intervening decades until it finally came to rest upon her.

She set down the journal, leaving it where it was meant to rest, and instead picked up the dial. Pith Helmut had put great faith in this machine. Perhaps too much. His expectations might have stemmed from his oncoming madness, or from the desperation of his situation. Diamond Tiara had seen one of these dials in action, and though powerful, it made Diamond Pick no stronger than an ordinary unicorn.

This one was different, though. It was slightly larger, and the structure was different. Diamond Tiara wondered if they varied between each morlock- -and in turn wondered if this one was more or less powerful than Pick’s. Likewise, she had no idea how to actually use it. No matter what she did, it seemed to stay closed and still.

Even if it did not work, though, Diamond tiara knew that it was important, so she kept it. She instead turned her attention toward finding a way out, and a way to get back to the surface. Pith Helmut had failed to save himself, but Diamond Tiara would not.

The door she had come through was an option, but not a good one. The creatures were waiting on the other side, and even if they were not, Diamond Tiara did not know the path she had taken to get to this room- -and it led to a well that she could not climb out of.

Pith Helmut had gotten down here, though, so Diamond Tiara knew that there must be another way. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary- -and then she saw it: a slight rim of molding behind one of the heavy bookshelves.

With great effort, she pushed the shelf out of the way and found a door behind it, likely the one that Pith Helmut had come through nearly a century ago and never come back out of. The hinges were rusted, and a number of poorly-installed deadbolts all sealed. After a bit of effort, though, Diamond Tiara was able to get it open.

The room continued on the other side into what appeared to be a storage room. Of all the storage rooms that Diamond Tiara had been in, though, this was possibly the most odd. It appeared to have been Pith Helmut’s personal vault: the walls were lined with various artifacts from his numerous Equestria-wide travels. There were statuettes in crystal, gold, stone, and every other kind of material and necklaces and jewels by the hundreds, some glittering with strange internal magic. These sat beside rare, ancient bones, preserved frescos, and even a gold-encrusted sarcophagus.

Jewels and art were nothing new to Diamond Tiara; she alone had tens of pounds of them in her family’s least used summer home alone. Most of the jewelry was old and clunky anyway, and anything silver was tarnished. That, and there were no tiaras.

What caught her attention was not the glitter of precious metal and stone, though, but rather a mannequin set in one corner of the room. A mannequin dressed in a familiar suit of armor.

Diamond Tiara smiled when she recognized the prototype from the schematic that Silver Spoon had found. It was dusty, and the material that it was made of was cracking from age, but it defintly resembled Pick’s armor- -or at least, as near as any non-morlock could make it.

The mining suit must have actually been developed, if not by Pith Helmut then by one of the mining moguls before him. If Silver Spoon was right, the internal mechanisms probably did not work. Much of the external portion, though, seemed viable- -and it gave Diamond Tiara an idea.

Quickly, Diamond Tiara pulled the suit off the mannequin. It consisted of multiple parts, and just as Silver Spoon had suggested, it really only appeared like Pick’s suit. There were no internal mechanisms, no air systems or pumps; it was the clothing equivalent to costume, glass diamonds. Diamond Tiara did not need those things, though. What she was looking for instead was the material of the suit itself: a hard, impervious fabric meant to protect deep-earth miners from the hazards down below.

The suit, of course, had not been designed for a filly. It was the size of an adult stallion. As such, Diamond Tiara had to discard some of the pieces. The rough, cracked rubber outside had to go, but fortunately, many of the internal parts were adjustable through a number of metal straps and clasps. When adjusted properly, they were surprisingly tight and form-fitting.

Diamond Tiara made up the rest of the armor by scavenging pieces from Pith Helmut’s collection of Nightmare Moon-era suits of armor, some of which lay in disarray in his vault. Interestingly, not one of them had rusted or tarnished. They were all made of the same type of heavy, silvery metal- -or a metal that was not silver at all.

The result was heavy, but not entirely unwieldly for an earth pony. Diamond Tiara just hoped that the combination of random pieces would be protective against spines. For how ugly the combination was, she sure hoped so.

Near the back of the room, there was a long, spiraling steel staircase leading both upward and downward. Diamond Tiara did not want to go downward- -although she did wonder just how deep it went. Instead, she began to climb the rickety, rusted structure.

At some point, she felt the air change. The voices in her head started to whisper again, and she knew that the plants could detect her again. She had passed the boundary of the pentagram’s protection, but still continued to climb the stairs until she reached another set of smaller tunnels that looked somewhat more modern.

She followed these for a long time, until, at last, she reached a termination point. The path had narrowed, and suddenly stopped with only a ladder leading upward to a heavy, wooden door. Diamond Tiara climbed the ladder carefully as the dry rungs creaked beneath her and pushed the door open.

Instantly, she knew that she had arrived at the surface. Light poured through several high, glassless windows in a wooden-walled room that smelled of old oil and gasoline. Looking around, Diamond Tiara saw that she had come up in a groundskeeper’s shed.

“Eew,” she said, pulling herself out and closing the door behind her, noting how perfectly the top seemed to fit into the grain of the splintery, dusty and stained floor of the room. “Of all the places…couldn’t be a wardrobe, or, like, a money room or something. No. A shed.”

She crossed the room as quickly as she could, passing the old gardening equipment and trying not to step in anything gross and workponyish. The floor creaked as she walked, and she wondered if the plants could hear her.

Her question was answered almost as soon as she reached the door. Something heavy rammed it from the far side, imparting enough force to knock several of the hinges out of place and to start to tear the frame out of the wall.

Diamond Tiara shrieked and fell backward into one of the shelves. Tools and containers, their contents long-since evaporated, dropped onto her- -as well as a dusty old calendar filled with pictures, apparently of Princess Cadence.

“Ow,” said Diamond Tiara. Her armor deflected most of the objects, but they were still heavy and her head was still exposed. She had not bothered to take the suit’s mask; it was too big, and it would preclude her wearing her tiara.

Something hit the door again, and this time it nearly collapsed. Tendrils of spiny, swollen plant branches began to snake through the openings forming between the door and the wall. Diamond Tiara felt panic flowing through her again, and she reached through the pile of tools, trying to find a shovel or a rake or something that she could use to defend herself.

Then her hoof fell on something different, something with a strange handle. Diamond Tiara looked down and smiled when she saw the tool that had fallen beside her: a gas-powered hedge trimmer.

She stood up and picked up the trimmer in her hooves. With one quick motion of her mouth, she pulled the staring cord and, miraculously, the device hummed to life, its blades clicking against each other as the motor revved.

“Groovy,” said Diamond Tiara as the door burst open and the plants poured in. They almost seemed to pause in confusion as Diamond Tiara charged them, swinging the hedge trimmer in her mouth.

The first cholla tree she struck resisted, but then its flesh gave way as it was pruned by the clacking blades. Diamond Tiara was covered in a torrent of grassy-smelling plant fluid, and spiny, writhing branches rained down on her armor. The tree was followed by a pony-shaped cactus, and Diamond Tiara struck it where its bark was thinnest- -in the knees. Her clippers cut through it easily, and it fell on its side.

“Who’s your gardener NOW?!” she taunted, her words slightly distorted by the gardening tool in her mouth. She quickly climbed past the attacking creatures, cutting her way through the crowd outside, letting their body parts fly around her.

Her cutting was effective, but mostly, as soon as the plants detected any of their precious moisture escaping, the fragments that Diamond Tiara was generating would pounce on it, or on each other, trying to devour it. The distraction was almost as effective as the cutting tool.

Either way, Diamond Tiara did not care. She just kept moving forward, letting nothing stand in her way.

Comments

[Legioner8]

Hail to the Queen, baby!

[Brony1337]

9176113
That.

[Moosetasm]

“The gray one…we need her…you will help us take her…give us SILVER SPOON…”

The plants didn’t realize their mistake until DT went all Ash Williams on them.