The Pony, the Sphinx, and the Immortal

by HapHazred

Present Day: Glass

Morning came silently. Only a dim light that emanated from the cavern entrance served as a clue that it was time to wake up, and even then, that light was watered down by snow and clouds.

Twilight rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t been able to escape the dreams of the big, black column she had seen in Zerephonzidas’s drawings. This wasn’t a new phenomenon for her. Usually before a test she would go to sleep dreaming of numbers and spells, but the black column had an eerie, uncomfortable quality to it that leaked into her mind like a bad smell.

Her neck felt stiff and disjointed, as if her bones had crystallized and become brittle in the night. She stretched and slid out of the sleeping bag.

Zerephonzidas would probably have found the snowball by now.

She unzipped the entrance to her tent and poked her head out. Already she could hear the sound of boiling water for coffee, and the pitter-patter of hooves as the diggers slowly got around to the business of waking up.

Twilight could even see movement inside Rainbow’s tent, which was rare. Rarity was already up and waking herself up with a glass of juice and breakfast. She was wearing a scarf speckled with snow. She must have gone outside to get some fresh air.

Twilight couldn’t blame her. The cave was rather stuffy.

“Good morning, Rarity,” Twilight said, getting out of the tent. “How was your night?”

“Dreadful. Rainbow insisted we stay up until midnight to play snakes and ladders,” Rarity replied, and took a long sip of juice. “I didn’t even know she liked board games that much.”

“I think she rather just dislikes being bored,” Twilight replied.

“Well, I tried convincing her to help clean up this dreary cave, but she had none of it.”

“Maybe she dislikes not being able to fly as much,” Twilight suggested, and rummaged around her bags for breakfast. “Outside isn’t really an option.”

“It is rather chilly,” Rarity said. She finished her juice. “I need to go and wash myself. The tent is a rather humid environment.”

Twilight nodded, and pulled out a small hoof-mirror to examine her mane. It was an absolute mess. “No problem. I think I need to brush my mane too,” she said. She looked over at Applejack’s tent. “Is Applejack already up?”

“No,” Rarity said. “She was tossing and turning a fair bit last night. I don’t think she got a very good night’s sleep.”

“I guess that makes two of us,” came Rainbow’s voice from her tent. Unlike Rarity and Twilight, her mane looked about the same as usual. “I think I slept on a rock or something. And I have a headache.” She trotted over to Rarity. “Hey, this your juice?”

“Yes, it’s mine…”

“Awesome,” Rainbow said, and began pouring herself a glass. “Wouldn’t want to take some poor digger’s juice.”

Rarity sighed. “I’m going to wash behind a rock, now,” she said, and walked away. “At least we have plenty of water from all that snow.”

Rainbow looked over at Applejack’s tent. There was still no sound from inside.

“Pfft, it must be real cold in Tartarus for me to have woken up before AJ,” Rainbow said. She turned towards Twilight. “You want I should wake her?”

“No, might as well let her get some rest.”

Rainbow shrugged. “She won’t be happy she overslept.”

There was a clinking sound from the entrance to their section of the cave. Twilight and Rainbow turned towards the entryway. “Hello?”

“It’s just me,” came Zerephonzidas’s voice. “Might I come in?”

“Sure,” Rainbow said. “It’s not like we have a door to lock.”

“No coming behind my rock!” came Rarity’s voice, higher pitched than usual.

Zerephonzidas stepped into their ‘room’, taking up most of the space. He held Twilight’s snowball in one paw.

“A magic well?” he asked.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Guys, I just woke up, don’t send me back to sleep already,” she groaned. She trotted past the sphinx. “I’m going to get some food. See you boring magic guys later.”

Zerephonzidas stepped aside to give Rainbow space, then examined the snowball. “I’ve seen magic wells before, but this is a new one. Explain.”

Twilight quelled a momentary burst of satisfaction that she had provided some kind of magic Zerephonzidas, the million year old sphinx, hadn’t seen yet.

“It’s a snowball,” she explained. “I’ve made it absorb magic. The more magic it absorbs, the colder it becomes. It’s a really simple spell, I’ve just put it on something that’s easy to find.”

“I once saw a well in the shape of a beanstalk,” Zerephonzidas said. “It kept on growing the more magic it absorbed. A snowball is rather more… well, practical, I suppose.” He looked back up from the little white sphere in his paw. “I imagine this is to clear my vision?”

“Yes,” Twilight said. “Assuming I’m not wrong about you being able to see magic.”

“You aren’t, although my ability has been somewhat compromised over the years,” he said, gesturing at his lifeless eye. “Still, this should be helpful, once it’s absorbed enough that is.”

“It should take some time,” Twilight said. “And it’s only a small well. It’ll only work around you.”

“I gathered,” Zerephonzidas said. “Still, I appreciate the thought. And the ingenuity.”

“Are we any closer to the, ah, experiment site?”

Zerephonzidas nodded. “Yes. I believe, if memory serves, we shall be finding the first signs of the spell.”

“Should I be worried,” Twilight asked.

“Perhaps. If there are any problems, though I believe an alicorn princess and a sphinx should be able to handle them.”

Twilight said nothing at that. Instead, she simply looked away, unsure whether to be reassured by Zerephonzidas, or scared.

The sphinx turned to leave, lumbering out of the makeshift room.

“Thank you for the, ah, snowball,” he said. “I’ll be sure to call you once we find anything of interest.”

Twilight nodded, but still couldn’t find anything to say. Images of the column still swam in her mind.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to find whatever was down in the depths of the dig site any more. Not if it came with danger.

Applejack slid outside her tent. Large grey bags hung under her eyes, and her mane was a mess.

“Rough night?” Twilight asked.

Applejack nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be fine,” she said, and pulled an apple from her saddlebags. “Just need coffee.”

---

Work proceeded as normal. Digger Douglas oversaw the excavation with a watchful eye, sometimes glancing back behind him, as if he was being watched.

He invariably was. Zerephonzidas was quite a distance away, recording their progress, but he’d regularly look up at Digger Douglas to check that everything was going smoothly. He tapped his claw against the now ice-hard snowball, getting impatient.

There was a loud ‘clink’. The entire digging crew froze. Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow.

“What was that?” he asked. “Did one of your tools break?”

“Snapped in half!” came a voice. Digger Douglas trotted over to the pony who had shouted.

The stallion was standing over a snapped trowel.

“You use it wrong?” Douglas asked.

Zerephonzidas appeared behind the chief digger like a phantom. Douglas froze. How something so big could move so quietly was a mystery to him.

“We have found something,” Zerephonzidas said, looking towards a small patch of rock. “Your stallion broke it on this.”

His claw tapped a patch of incredibly shiny, almost mirror-like stone. Or was it crystal? It looked too smooth to be part of the soft stone they had been cutting through, Douglas thought.

The digger who broke his tool touched the patch of mysterious stone. “It’s real smooth,” he said, tilting his head to the side.

Zerephonzidas frowned, and examined the claw he had tapped against the stone. As he did so, blood began to trickle from the digger’s hoof.

“Don’t touch it,” Zerephonzidas said, as the digger shouted in pain.

---

Rarity tightened the bandages around the digger’s hoof, who was still wincing. Twilight watched as the team carefully began excavating whatever it was that had caused the injury.

Zerephonzidas filed his claw on a nearby stone. His claw had been severely dented by the strange material. Rather, it hadn’t been dented so much as cut, like cheese on a grater.

“It looks smooth,” he explained to Twilight, “But there are ridges so small the eye can’t see them that sliced right through that stallion’s skin.” He examined his claw. “I hadn’t noticed in time, unfortunately.”

Twilight wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the thing Digger Douglas was excavating. It wasn’t natural, that was for sure. It seemed to be made out of some sort of glass. Not normal glass, though. It was almost the same colour as bottles, a shade of green that could be mistaken for emerald, but infinitely darker.

The team were careful not to touch it.

“We have to dig around it then levitate it out of the way if we want to proceed,” Douglas said. “It’s dangerous to just leave it here.”

So far, about a third had been uncovered.

“Do you know what it is?” Twilight asked, trying to peer through the gloom.

Zerephonzidas picked up a lamp and shone it on the reflective surface. “I have my suspicions,” he said, “But right now I’d hazard a guess and say it’s a statue of sorts.”

The light did strange things to the glass, Twilight noticed. If she looked closely, she could see through it. It wasn’t solid. It had… tubes and strange shapes inside. Twilight narrowed her eyes. It looked suspiciously like…

“Are those… organs?”

Zerephonzidas didn’t reply.

More of the rock surrounding the glass fell away. Twilight swallowed. One of the other diggers took a step back.

It was made of solid glass, but there was no mistaking it. The statue was that of a pony. An eerily lifelike pony, complete with glass organs, bones, and veins.

“Please tell me that’s just an example of ancient art from five-thousand years ago,” Rarity said, wincing. “Artists do the strangest things, sometimes. I once saw a piece of art that was made completely out of old banana peel.”

A sinister smile spread across Zerephonzidas’s face. “Fascinating,” he said.

“Zerephonzidas…” Twilight began.

“This isn’t art,” he said. “It’s a corpse.” He pointed towards the side of the statue. “I suspect whoever this was was turned to glass during a magical blast. Those invisible ridges are all oriented from the center of the blast, I reckon.”

Twilight felt her stomach churn. The statue continued to stare with lifeless glass eyes.

Many of the diggers had stopped working. Twilight noticed that Rarity was no longer around.

“If it makes you feel better, it would have been instantaneous,” Zerephonzidas said. “Alive one moment, glass the next.” His one good eye looked into Twilight’s. “There are worse ways to go.”

“It’s still horrible,” Twilight said. “You can see inside… him? Is it a him?”

Zerephonzidas examined the statue closer. “No, it’s a her.” He turned towards Digger Douglas. “Come on. The faster you get this thing out of the rock the sooner Twilight and Rarity can levitate it to safety.”

“We’ve found something else,” came another voice. “We’re not in natural caverns any more.”

Zerephonzidas and Twilight both moved towards where the digger was pointing.

“Ah,” Zerephonzidas said. “We’ve reached the ruins.”

“There’s no more rock here,” the digger said. “Just… sand.”

“It poured in after the blast, no doubt, and was preserved by the hardened rock on the outside. Like water inside a balloon.” Zerephonzidas smiled. “It should be an easy dig from here on out, but be wary of cave-ins.”

“I don’t like this,” Twilight said. “What kind of magic turns a pony to glass?” She looked at the statue. Douglas had almost gotten it out. “We don’t even know her name.”

Zerephonzidas shrugged. “It’s just glass now,” he said.

Twilight flashed him a look. “You can’t just…”

“Can’t I? I don’t have the luxury to agonise over every dead member of your species, Twilight. I wouldn’t have a minute for myself if I did,” he snapped. “She’s dead. Like everyone else from five-thousand years ago. She’s probably not the only one, either.”

“Not the only…”

“I’ve got her out,” Douglas said. “Um, we can’t touch this thing without it hurting us. We need unicorns to levitate it out.”

Zerephonzidas stared at Twilight. “You should go and find Rarity,” he said, his expression as icy as the landscape outside the cave. “She should be throwing up behind that rock over there.”

---

“Uh, what the hay did you guys do to Rarity?” Rainbow asked, gesturing towards a small white shape hunched over in the corner.

Twilight sighed. “We found a glass pony,” she said. “Rarity… didn’t like it.”

“Whoa, a glass pony? That’s pretty weird. Who’d make something like that?”

Twilight shook her head. “No, Rainbow. I mean, it used to be a pony, and got turned to glass,” she explained, as Rainbow’s face fell. “Some kind of magical blast did it, Zerephonzidas thinks.”

“You serious?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight nodded. “Yes. I need Rarity’s help to levitate it safely. If I accidentally drop it or get distracted, it might really hurt somepony.” Twilight pointed towards the injured digger. “It’s got… sharp ridges on it that pretty much shredded that stallion’s skin.”

Rainbow let out a whistle, and ran her hoof through her mane. “Jeez. That’s pretty awful.”

Rarity was still hunched in the corner. She wasn’t looking so good.

“I think maybe you should give Rarity a minute, though,” Rainbow said. “The last time I’ve seen her this bad was when Sweetie Belle mixed up sugar and salt when they were making cakes.” Rainbow craned her neck. “I want to see this glass pony.”

The pegasus hopped around Twilight.

“Don’t touch it,” Twilight warned.

“Yeah, sure. Don’t want to peel my skin off, do we?”

Twilight trotted towards Rarity. The unicorn retched.

“You okay?”

“You could see… inside it,” she said. “That’s just… revolting…”

Twilight put her hoof on Rarity’s back. “I know,” she said.

Rarity tried to slow her breathing. “I really don’t like seeing dead things,” she said.

“I know,” Twilight repeated.

Rarity straightened, breathing out. “All right,” she said. “I just need water.”

“Good,” Twilight said. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“Do you know what I really don’t like?” Rarity said as she walked to a large bottle of water taken from melted snow. “It’s the way Zerephonzidas smiled. Like all it was is some kind of curiosity.” Rarity took a sip of water. “That pony had a name, once. Now it’s just glass. Ugly, transparent glass.”

Twilight looked at the statue out the corner of her eye. “There’s something else I don’t like,” she said. “It’s like there’s a... prickly feeling.” She rubbed the side of her leg, shifting her gaze to the side. “I felt it whilst trying to sleep last night. It’s like walking through needles.”

“I feel strange too,” Rarity said. “I’m not exactly attuned to magic as much as you, but I can certainly feel something.” She took another gulp of water. “Although that might just be sick.”

“Well,” Twilight said, “Whatever it is, we need to get that statue out of the way. Apparently we’ve found some ruins. It might be easier to explore this place, now.”

“That will be nice,” Rarity said. “Although there might be more of those… ponies.”

Twilight couldn’t say she liked the prospect of finding more glass statues. “Probably. I doubt the pony was here alone.” A thought struck her. “Let’s go. We need to work.”

---

The glass statue looked even more eerie completely uncovered. Twilight had hoped that it would be less unsettling once it was no longer trapped in rubble, but instead it just highlighted how like a regular pony it was. Had it not been, well, glass, she might have mistaken the statue for a real, live mare. Even details like the inside of her mouth were perfectly replicated. Her irises were still visible. Twilight could make out the individual hairs, which likely would splinter off and get stuck under her skin if she made the mistake of carelessly touching them.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s try moving it over to the corner, out of the way.” She looked over at Digger Douglas. “Will that do?”

“Yes, that will be fine. Although, if more show up, we might have to move them outside. Don’t want to run out of space.”

Twilight nodded. “Okay. Ready, Rarity?”

Rarity kept staring at the statue. She shuddered, but nodded. “Yes.”

“Okay, then. Three, two, one, heave!”

Both unicorns levitated at once. The statue barely budged. Rarity gasped.

“It’s really heavy!” she exclaimed.

Twilight grunted. She was struggling to lift it, despite her prodigious magical ability. There must be something interfering with the magic in this place, she thought. Or perhaps the statue itself.

Some things were so full of spite that magic failed to work properly on them.

The statue slowly lifted itself off the ground, and Twilight grit her teeth. She just needed to move it a little.

Zerephonzidas watched the display of magic, his good eye narrowing. Whatever was going on in his ancient brain was a mystery to everypony.

“I can barely budge it,” Rarity grunted. “I’m sweating already.”

The statue slowly, gradually, made its way to the far side of the work site. Once Twilight finally put it down, some of the diggers clapped.

“Good job,” Douglas said. “That didn’t look easy.”

“It wasn’t,” Twilight said, staring at the statue. “I need to think.”

A dead pony turned to glass, twitches in the magic currents around the cavern, indications of a powerful magical ‘blast’... Twilight was not reassured by the new discovery. She was not reassured in the slightest.

Oh, Celestia, what have you gotten me into now, she wondered, staring straight into the glass statue’s eyes.

They seemed to stare right back.

---

Author's Note:

16K words in! That's just over 2K a day.

Not bad, in my opinion. This thing is like a marathon. Starting to get fatigued.