The Song Of Death Is Sweet And Endless

by AnchorsAway

Prelude

Like every tragic tale, mine begins here, in darkness. —S.

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The darkness was absolute.

It shifted in the nothingness, a trembling blanket of black that swallowed all around it. Patiently, it waited — waited for someone to pierce the veil of shadows.

And from the void came a sound, rising from the depths of the emptiness.

Rap! Tap! Tap!

It echoed, the distant reverberations slithering through the perpetual black that consumed all, growing closer.

Tap! Rap!

The darkness swirled, disturbed from its eternal slumber. Blackness yawned, and shade shifted and stretched, awakened by the arrival of their unannounced visitor.

Suddenly, a crack pierced the eclipse, the darkness rent by a gushing, alien entity that burst into the twilight realm.

Light!

The beam pierced the darkness, the tip the flashlight poking through the hole in the cavern.

"It's here, Maud!" an excited voice proclaimed, wide eyes painted with the reflected light peering inside. The clatter of a steel pickaxe rang through the walls of coarse rock. "Sweet stars, this is it! Quick! Help me move these rocks."

The dark cavern reverberated with the scraping of rocks and exertive grunts. Piece by piece, the barrier of stone pulled away, the grey mare that accompanied shifting them aside as if they were light as pillows. In short time a passage widened enough for the two intruders to pass.

The older stallion took the lead, his worn helmet, marked by years of scrapes and dents, brushing the overhang as he stepped into the chamber. "Watch your step, Maud," he warned cautiously. "We don't need a twisted hoof this deep down."

"I was more concerned with you, Professor," the mare acclaimed in a perpetual monotone that matched her spelunking attire. She ducked inside, stopping to shine the light atop her helmet upward.

The paltry beam which had struggled to cut through the darkness radiated off the enormous crystals and filled the cavern with brilliant light. The space was awash with prismatic reflections of deep purple and amethyst.

"It's very — bright," the monotonous mare said with a slight upturn, her eyelids lifting ever so higher. "This is what you were searching for, Professor?" she wondered, transfixed by the enormous crystal that snaked through the rock as if it were a massive burrowing root.

It was enormous, the main trunk of the crystal greater in diameter than the tallest trees. It protruded from the rocky face of the cavern, smaller vines of dark glass erupting from the main body and stabbing into the walls. Maud followed the formation with her headlamp, the structure disappearing into impenetrable bedrock on the far side of the cavern.

"It's exactly like the other sites," the grey stallion remarked, quickly brushing dust from his spectacles and whipping out a dirty notebook. He flipped open the stained pages, unfurling a map and tracing lines with a stubby pencil. "First Fillydelphia, and then the site discovered past Appleousa." He tapped the page feverously, pointing for his female apprentice. "Manehattan, Rainbow Falls, even the Canterlot mountain range. The formations dot the entire continent."

He shifted his glasses on his muzzle, angling his headlamp up at the colossal formation, his eyes taking in the crystalline beauty. "And now another site to add to the map. Right where I predicted!" he exclaimed with a sharp laugh. "There is a pattern," he then drew in and whispered.

"I've never seen a mineral formation like this." Maud stepped toward one of the croppings of crystal, laying a hoof against its cold surface. It was delicately smooth, its surface a mirror. Kneeling, she gazed into the mysterious mineral, probing its depths.

She closed her eyes, calmly meditating against the crystal instead. Her lips rubbed.

"It feels — alive," she murmured.

"It's a junction. One of many." The Professor continued to furiously scribble in his tattered notebook, the withered pencil in his teeth growing shorter with each line. "Not alive," he corrected, talking around the piece of timber and graphite. "Only dormant."

"How far do they go?" the mare wondered.

"Based off the other sites—" the Professor muttered, only pausing to start a new page. "—they stretch near across the entirety of the Equestrian continent. Crystal connections that predate the arrival of ponies to the continent. Each one a tight interlace of linear crystalline formations."

"Professor," Maud shook her head, "there's not a geological process that could explain the formation of these structures. They're too perfect, even for crystal."

"Not formed, Maud," the Professor corrected on a whim. "Grown." He rustled the offending dust from his mane. "Or laid, or built; I'm still not entirely sure. But definitely artificial in design."

"You said these were old, Professor: dormant. Who would have made these? And so long ago?"

The Professor drew the last line in his notebook, revealing the answer. "Every one of these sites, all leading back to one place."

Maud glanced at the crudely drawn map of Equestria, the sites pinpointed, each line converging. "They all lead north," Maud claimed. "Each junction leading back to—"

The Professor tapped the convergence of the tracks. "The Crystal Empire."

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