It Sleeps Beneath Foal Mountain

by the7Saviors

Was there still a pony left beneath the surface?

A distant but melodious parade of musical notes reached my ears, pulling my subconscious mind from the black void of a dreamless sleep and causing me to stir, but not fully awaken. It was a strange sound to be sure, but not entirely unpleasant I found, and, now curious to discover the source, my eyes slid slowly open.

The first sight to greet my eyes was a vast cavern carved of black stone. There was no entrance or exit to be found, making me feel as though I'd awoken in a massive earthen tomb rather than a cavern. There was a certain weight to my movement as I tried to rise—a heaviness that shouldn't have been but nevertheless was. I felt like a stranger in my own skin, each and every shift of my body feeling wrong in a way that I couldn't fathom in my groggy state. The second thing I noticed as I tried to regain my bearings was the much smaller form of a pony standing before me. Bemused, I lowered myself to get a better look, only to realize that the pony I was looking at was a lavender alicorn mare.

She looked back up at me with eyes of glimmering amethyst—eyes that would've been beautiful had it not been for the terrible emptiness within. The mare's form was semi-transparent, glowing with an ethereal light; a shining beacon in the darkness. Her smile was wide and friendly at first glance, but as with her eyes, there was nothing beneath the outward expression. I'd seen this mare somewhere before, and though her name escaped me, there was an air of something about her that made me uneasy. The longer I observed this apparition the more I felt as if I was forgetting something... something important. I began to feel as if there was something I was supposed to be doing, some task I was meant to accomplish.

Try as I might to find the source of this sensation, nothing came to mind. As tired as I was, I could barely muster the energy or desire to care. It wasn't long before I began to lose interest in the mare and I found myself once again lowering back to the ground, eager to return to my slumber. My eyelids had only just started to slip shut when the smiling apparition stirred. I opened my eyes fully and watched as her smile vanished, leaving her features blank. She raised an upturned hoof and, where there was once nothing, a small white writhing mass appeared. Though it was no larger than her hoof, there was an indescribable hideousness about the thing that restlessly squelched and squirmed in the mare's grasp. Still, it had caught my interest, and so I once again rose to my full height and waited to see what would happen next.

The mare eyed me for another few seconds before looking down at the squirming mass in her hoof. Without any sort of preamble whatsoever, she dropped it on the ground at her hooves and stepped back as it quickly burrowed itself into the rough patch of dark dirt. For a long moment, all that could be heard was the sonorous music that continued to play somewhere in the distance, but then, before my very eyes, something began to grow from where the thing had buried itself. It was only then that I understood that the small writhing mass was a 'seed' from which a new 'tree' was being born.

In a matter of minutes, the 'seed' had grown from a tiny bright blue 'sapling' to a full-sized tree whose twisted branches flared out in every direction. Its strange jagged crystalline structure cast a radiant light within the tomb of black stone and from each branch hung several small white orbs that were more akin to ornaments than actual leaves. Seemingly as if by some instinct, I recoiled from the light, emitting a sound utterly alien to my own ears in my initial displeasure—a sound loud enough to drown out the distant music and set the earth quaking slightly.

Said displeasure didn't last long and was quickly replaced by further interest as I lowered myself back down to eye the 'tree' more closely. Embedded within the center, pulsing with its own eerie black light, was a strange gem shaped like a six-pointed star. Upon five of the branches were five more gems, each resonating with a dark glow that drew me in, causing something in my memory to nearly shake itself loose. Even as I struggled to understand what it all meant, I felt a hunger grow within me—a hunger for something immaterial. I drank in the sight of that star-shaped crystal as if that alone would sate this strange and powerful hunger. I slowly reached out to touch it, and as I did, I could hear the distant music gradually grow louder in pitch, filling my ears with its increasingly discordant tone.

My thoughts grew confused as several writhing black limbs began to envelop the tree, slowly—almost languidly—curling their way around its glowing branches. The eerie anti-light emanating from the gem in the center seemed to grow in intensity and an instant later I found myself assaulted by countless white tendrils that had emerged from the tree. The limbs were ghostlike in appearance but far from intangible, and before I could react, I was pulled towards the tree. My entire body was wracked with a sudden pain so intense that all thoughts fled from my mind. The last thing I saw before my vision went white was the face of that ethereal mare, her empty smile once more spread across her face as she looked on.

I felt myself pulled in every direction at once. The music had grown so loud that it drowned out everything else. It was all I could hear, it and the pain had both become my entire existence and for the briefest of moments, there was nothing else. Then, all at once, everything snapped back into place and I found I was once again back in the cold void of space, now fully cognizant of who and what I was as I floated among the endless myriad of stars. Though this place had once filled me with an unfathomable sense of terror, I now felt a strange sort of calm—a peace that I couldn't quite describe. The music continued to fill the universe around me and somewhere far below me, I could see two celestial bodies both familiar in their appearance.

One could be mistaken for a rusty red moon had it not been for the blazing red eye at its center and the neverending 'song' it emitted as it wandered the cosmos, the other I knew was once my home. I watched with a dispassionate gaze as the moon-like creature slowly passed over the much larger planet, casting a shadow that gradually spread across the entire world until it was fully engulfed in a darkness so absolute that there was little distinction between it and the rest of the pitch-black void surrounding me. Both the sun and moon quickly followed suit, blackening as if infected by the same necrotic disease that had claimed the planet the other two celestial bodies encircled.

Even as the creature moved on, its task seemingly done, the shadow remained, and in the wake of the fading song, I could hear them... those horrid screams—the wails of those whose fates had been sealed by forces they could never hope to understand or prepare for. Among those screams, was the alien wail of once such force, something that had awakened from its long slumber to once more reign over a world devoid of light. I watched it all, feeling a touch of pity... but nothing more. Eventually, the screams died out and all returned to silence save for another sound that, amidst the deafening screams and wails of the damned, had escaped my notice until now.

As I was suddenly and violently yanked away from the scene and forced into true consciousness, I could just make out the dying echo of bells ringing a somber yet beautiful tone across the void.

---

I awoke with a start, my body feeling terribly out of sorts as I scrambled to my hooves. In an instant, I'd gone from deep sleep to full awareness, and it took me a moment to mentally recover from the rather jarring experience. The dream, the nightmare, the vision flooded my mind with confusion and understanding in equal measure. There was much about what I saw that I didn't fully comprehend, but that was only because I hadn't the context for it. One thing I now knew for certain, however, was that the Harbinger was coming and that its song would signal the end of the world as we knew it. The thought that I had somehow drawn its attention to our humble little planet crossed my mind, but I dismissed the notion as ridiculous.

After all, what was I but an insignificant speck in the nigh endless expanse of the cosmos? No, what undoubtedly drew Ghroth to my world was the thing that had most likely been sleeping beneath Foal Mountain for countless millennia—an ancient, eldritch creature for whom I had no name. This was, of course, all speculation for the moment based on mine and Daring Do's research, but I was convinced that this was the case, and thanks in no small part to Sound Mind, I may have had a way to find a concrete answer to many of the questions my latest vision had added to the others that continued to haunt me.

An excitement I hadn't felt since my initial study of the nameless tome overwhelmed me as I pulled my saddlebags from where I'd dropped them before. Whatever I hadn't been able to find in that nameless tone may very well have been in the Book of Iod, and I could hardly suppress my curiosity as I reached into the pouch that contained the book in question. Unfortunately, any sense of wonder or excitement I felt at that moment was washed away in a sea of confusion and concern as my front leg came into view. I remembered feeling odd upon waking but had pushed that aside in favor of the vision, but now, as I stood there in the damp cavern I'd woken in staring at my leg, I began to get a sense of just how much I'd changed over the last few days.

My coat had once again shifted in hue, this time from a royal purple to a darker violet, but that was far from the worst of it. The dark violet fur that covered the limb looked strangely glossy in the dim light of the cave, almost fake in a sense—like a changeling's chitin if it were a different shade and covered in fur. As off-putting as the sight was, far more unsettling were the many small, but clearly visible cracks spread across the entire length of my leg. It all brought to mind the image of an ill-treated porcelain doll, and that only served to drive home the idea that my coat and the skin beneath were somehow fake in their appearance. In a way, it made sense given how oddly... constrained I'd felt since waking only moments ago, like I'd been squeezed into a suit made far too small for my frame.

"You feel as though your skin is not your own, but rather a shell that hides what you're becoming, a hollow vessel to be cast aside once the true 'you' has been fully realized. Make no mistake, Miss Sparkle, there is a price to be paid for the kind of truths you wish to uncover, one that you pay even as we speak."

At the familiar voice, I turned to see the stallion who'd spoken those portentous words standing just a short distance away next to a small twisting rivulet that led deeper into the cavern. Sound Mind inclined his head in greeting and spoke again once he had my attention, his voice pleasant but his charming smile devoid of any real emotion.

"While I would like to think you had a restful sleep, Miss Sparkle, it would appear I'd be mistaken given your reaction upon waking. Ah, but that aside, I'm sure you're eager to see the full extent of your... transformation. I trust it'll come as quite a shock, but rest assured, as your guide, I will not allow this unfortunate circumstance to hinder your path to the secrets that remain yet hidden beyond the veil. So come, take a look for yourself..."

With that proclamation, Sound Mind stepped aside and gestured to the murky water silently trickling through the cavern near where he stood. I looked from Sound Mind to the rivulet, pondering my changes and the lack of horror on my part. There was a fair amount of worry, but even that was gradually reduced at Sound Mind's words and the only other strong emotion that came to mind was my immense curiosity. With that being the case, I made my way over to the small stream and, with one last look at Sound Mind, peered into the grimy water. One spell later and the water's surface became as reflective as a mirror.

Just as Sound Mind had predicted, I couldn't help but let out a small gasp of shock at what stared back at me. I was quite literally a broken creature, my face and chest area a mess of deep fractures that varied in size and severity. In some cases, I could even see small black tendrils slipping in and out of the larger cracks in my glossy violet coat. My face it seemed had suffered the worst of whatever foul curse had befallen me. My visage—while riddled with the same jagged, crisscrossing lines that covered my forelegs—remained intact for the most part, as did my horn and half of my mane.

Again I was reminded of the porcelain doll as I took in my crumbling veneer. The left side of my face, just below my horn and reaching down to just right above the jawbone, had completely broken away along with the entirety of my left eye. What was revealed beneath the surface was not bone or muscle or anything of the sort one would expect to see past the skin, but something that, in my opinion, might've been far worse. What lay beneath was something wholly inequine—a writhing mass of living shadow, twisted umbral matter that bled into my mane and left one half of it whipping and thrashing about like a mess of miniature cephalopodic limbs.

It was a ghastly sight and upon witnessing it for myself—if it had been half as bad as this before I'd fallen asleep—I couldn't blame Luna for her reaction. A small shudder passed through me as I thought back to the winged shadow beasts below the temple and wondered if they had once been normal ponies like me. That I would become just another one of their number was not an idea I wanted to entertain, but as things stood there was nothing I could do. I turned to check the rest of my body and found that the cracks in my coat stopped just before my wings, leaving the rest of my body unblemished save for the strange gloss and dark violet color. I half expected my cutie mark to have changed along with the rest of me, and it had somewhat.

For the most part, it was the same as it ever was, but the six-pointed magenta star in the middle now pulsed with an eerie black light. That it was the same sort of unnerving anti-light I'd seen in my vision did not escape my notice, but rather than worry me, it only further stoked the blazing fire of my curiosity. Looking over myself once more, I turned back to Sound Mind with a look of grim acceptance, any anxiety I had left draining away with the knowledge that nothing could be done except to push forward. Sound Mind nodded and smiled back at me as if to reassure me that everything would turn out just the way it was meant to. Whether that was good or bad I had no idea, but I chose to set that aside and focus on my study of the book.

If the latter half of my vision meant what I thought it did, then it was that much more important that I solve this mystery, and quickly. There was no time to fret over my appearance or the ramifications of revealing myself to my friends, not when there was research to be done. With that in mind, I returned to my saddlebags, pulled both my journal and the Book of Iod from their resting place, and let the rest of the world fall away as I lost myself in the pages of yet another tome that should have never seen the light of day.

Comments

[Alondro]

*Alondro shrugs* FUBAR.... *holds up hand* FINAL FLASH!!

And another Darkquestria is erased.

[Blood Rarity]

[Aether Spark]

She has to be mind-controlled at this point, she’s gradually becoming less and less pony and more... whatever and yet her only solution is to solve this mystery sooner instead of fleeing to Celestia and getting fixed.

[Dr Freaky]

Chapter name: Was there still a pony beneath the surface?
Haha, nope

[Not A Watermelon]

I wonder if we will get to see Luna’s perspective?

Sorta fitting image:
https://images.app.goo.gl/qxcXtyTrBho6qJXq9

[Yosh-E-O]

ipes! The transformation is definitely getting more-and-more incorporeal. I'd imagine, in time, even sombra and Chrysalis would fear what Twilight is becoming.

The vision of the one who'd bring darkness to all was certainly ominous. It provided a most interesting mental image.

Speaking of, I wonder if the 'white tendrils' will turn out to be some sort of possible salvation? I suppose only time will tell.

[FanficReader920]

Did Twilight just experience what her clone went through in The Mean 6?