46 - The Blighted Town of Hammerhoof
As we traveled, Dinky explained our course.
Canterlot was, of course, a city built halfway up the Canterhorn mountain, for which the rest of the range was named. Originally it had been a small mining town, with a monastery to the two sisters close to the peak; after the destruction of Castle Everfree, the kingdom followed Princess Celestia as she grieved, and expanded that small mining town into the modern-day capital of the nation.
Speaking generally, there were four ways to reach Canterlot. Flight wouldn't work; my wings still couldn't manage even a glide on demand, and Dinky was a unicorn. Gilda could have flown in, were it not for the city's interdiction field, which protected it from the aerial attacks of the demons. According to Dinky, a second field had been put into place within the first, to protect the palace specifically.
There had been a train line that ran up the range and into the city, and Dinky spoke of it fondly. It was the only way she'd personally visited Canterlot, long ago, but it too was unavailable. As Maud had explained before, the train lines across Equestria had been shut down because of the demons—aside from the most essential lines to and from Fillydelphia. Magnus had told Dinky that the tunnels had been blockaded in the meantime, which thoroughly eliminated the option.
By hoof, there were two roads up the mountain. The overland highway ran along the train tracks, and had been similarly blockaded, as Trixie had confirmed back in the jail cell. No carts, no wagons, and nopony on hoof could get into the city that way. While it was perhaps possible to reach the city by careful mountaineering, that was extraordinarily dangerous. The cliffs and slopes of the Canterhorn range were steep and erratic, and there was—perhaps intentionally—no known path, besides that which the road took.
That left the underground path, which began in Hammerhoof, and wound upwards through the interior of the mountain—so to Hammerhoof we went.
* * *
The fog cleared as we approached the base of the Canterhorn, but only that; the clouds were still too thick to see Canterlot itself higher up the mountain.
The mountain itself was plenty interesting, however. While the edges had been worn by wind, rain, and time, one could still see that the mountain had been suddenly cleaved by a great force a very, very long time ago—maybe all the way back in Equestria’s founding years. The sheer rock wall was too smooth, and yet it was riddled with hundreds of bore-holes, evidence of mining deep within the mountain that had been suddenly exposed by that great force.
The caves should have never seen sunlight, but it had been forced inside at the expense of the mines themselves. Even now, I could see the glitter of distant crystals left in the exposed cavities, and the water that ran out of the holes and stained the sheer mountain face as it formed a lake below. Some of the water flowed pure and clean, while others were tainted by industrial runoff from the mines deeper within the mountain, and from the grand city above.
It all washed down here, to this lake at the base of the mountain, which itself seemed to have been sliced in half; the lake simply ended in that sheer rock wall, while the other shores were much more natural and gradual. The lake’s water gleamed oddly in the dim sunlight, with rainbow patterns playing across its surface, and obscuring my view of the water itself.
On the shores of that lake, and adjacent to the mountain, a town had been built around the largest of the mining bore-holes. The town of Hammerhoof had been based around mining, just like its sister town of Canterlot above, but the gleaming city had buried that past when the Royal Palace was built. Now, only Hammerhoof remained to show what Canterlot had looked like, a thousand years past.
It wasn’t much to look at; the refineries and rock mills had long gone silent. Their smokestacks would never belch smoke again, without Cloudsdale to provide them with the liquid fuel needed, and with Fillydelphia now focused on producing munitions rather than exporting coal. Instead, it seemed as though the old buildings had been left to rot, while the town shrunk down around that bore-hole, which was plugged with a massive steel gate adorned with brass.
Like the train tunnels we had traveled through to reach Baltimare—I suppressed a shudder at the thought—Equestria’s engineers had cleaned up the oldest and largest mining tunnels to create a highway, which spiraled up through the stone of the mountain to connect Canterlot to the world below. This was to be our path up to the city itself, since the path through the mountain range was supposedly blocked, and the trains no longer ran, for the same reason as the refineries here.
But other ponies had similar ambitions, it seemed. From the town, and back over the lake, a baffling edifice of scaffolding and catwalks had been erected from mouldering wood and rusted steel. It started from the shores of the lake, and extended over the water a good distance, but the lake itself seemed to be filled with broken metal and floating driftwood. From there, it went up, up, up, so far up the sheer mountain wall that I could see the scaffolding rocking in the wind even from here, a mile away. The thought of actually climbing that rickety nightmare made me sick, and I wondered for only a moment why they had built such a shrine to unsound structural concepts and poor materials.
But my eyes wandered back to the bore-holes, punched through the stone, and the scaffolding which had been anchored—poorly—to those crystalline openings. They had been erecting a tower up to Canterlot, or at least as close as they could get. Once they entered the caves, they could spelunk their way up into the sewers of the capital, and from there to the actual streets and city above. My eyes fell back to the lake, and the jagged scrap that pierced the mud’s surface. These structures must have collapsed a hundred times over, and been rebuilt to be stronger, to go higher, every time. The ponies that were determined enough to keep trying, to rebuild their towers to Canterlot, must have been stubbornly determined to reach the city by any means...or perhaps the better description was “desperate.”
“What a scat-hole.” Gilda said, with a derisive snort. Both Dinky and I nodded in silent agreement.
After a moment, Dinky pointed towards that steel gate with her hoof. “They should let us through. Magnus gave us that seal, so they’ll know we’re working for the Golden Guard.”
“It’s never that easy.” Gilda was already looking at the mess of scaffolding, and I could see her eagle-like eyes darting as she followed the stairs like she was reading lines of text on a page. She was already trying to work out a route up to the top, though I hoped it wasn’t needed.
Well, she had time. We still had a mile to go.
* * *
The streets of Hammerhoof weren’t much better, but we didn’t need to linger in the town. The main boulevard had existed since the town’s founding, and led from a nearby highway connection directly to the gates of the tunnel, with factories and mining company buildings constructed on either side. When the carts stopped running, ponies had built houses on the large street, and it reminded me of flies buzzing around a stinking corpse.
Hollows shouted about their wares laid on moth-eaten blankets on the asphalt, while more wandered from stall to stall, carrying clinking bags of junk and scrap, looted from the town, taken from the trash, or pulled from the buildings directly. Anything they could take and sell, so that tarnished bits could change hooves. There were hunters here too, and we jumped as a dead chaos-tainted panther—how had a panther gotten into the Everchaos?—swung in front of us, slung limply over a large Hollow stallion’s back.
We passed a caravan on the way into town; a dozen carts just like what we’d guarded on our way back from Baton Verte, but in significantly worse condition. Hollows bartered with each other there too, trying to buy seats on the wagons. They wanted to get out of Hammerhoof, and traveling by caravan in large groups offered more safety than going it alone through the fog.
Even here, nearly everypony and everyone was in some middling stage of Hollowing, including members of species I hadn't seen since my awakening. I spotted a few diamond dogs, an armored quartet of gryphons—Gilda avoided their eyes, and they avoided hers—and a warband of yaks wearing fur plates, and bellowing in confusion when nopony wanted to buy the broken weapons they’d hauled back to civilization to sell. Every unliving creature we saw was Hollow, but not so far gone that they were feral. Not yet, at least.
We passed through it all unmolested—mostly we just saw more ponies leaving Hammerhoof. Maybe the news that Ponyville was being evacuated had spread fast; ponies were scouring the continent for anywhere that might be safe from the demons, and the mad Hollows that still inhabited the cities.
Would the residents of Ponyville be turned away at the gates too? Or would they receive special treatment from the crown, for holding back the tides of chaos for as long as they did? Somehow, neither answer sat right with me.
The steel gates came into focus as we approached, and I could see just how large they were; they covered the entire tunnel mouth so that even pegasi couldn’t slip in through the top, and they had steel catwalks of their own, high up off the ground, from which the Golden Guard could watch the ponies milling around beneath. The gate itself had two large doors, and smaller doors of several sizes set within that; they could be opened only as far as they needed to be, to accommodate heavy machinery on mechanical carts, the smaller vehicles of Baltimare, or ponies on hoof, without allowing for anyone or anything unwanted to slip past.
“Hold!” A Golden Guard mare shouted, her voice tired and resigned. None of the others even glanced our way; this must have been a frequent occurrence. The mare—I couldn’t see her rank from here, but she wore ceremonial armor—spread her wings, then hopped down from a higher railing down to one slightly closer to us, and leaned over to look over the side, while the three of us had to crane our necks to look up at her. “Turn around. Canterlot’s on lockdown—nopony in, nopony out.” She looked at all of us cagily, though I wondered if it was most directed at me, the shambling Hollow, or at Gilda.
“I’m not a pony, can I come in?” Gilda asked, her voice laden with sarcasm.
The guardsmare rolled her Hollow eyes. “No. Buzz off.”
“Rude,” Gilda declared with a snort.
Dinky stepped forward instead and held up the seal that Magnus had given us. “We’re here on behalf of Ponyville and Commander Magnus of the Golden Guard! We have business in Canterlot!”
The guardsmare’s eyes flicked to a nearby unicorn, who had been in the middle of checking his rifle. “Bouncer!”
The corona of magic holding the seal turned from Dinky’s golden color to the stallion’s green, and lifted up to the mare’s eye level for her to inspect. After a moment, she nodded, and the magic winked out, which allowed it to drop back down to Dinky. “That’s Commander Magnus’ seal, but I still can’t let you through. When I said lockdown, I meant it—the Palace gave me orders not to let anypony in, not even other Golden Guards.”
“What?” Dinky shook her head. “Why? And why hasn’t anypony told us?”
The mare leaned on the railing, just a little more casually. “Word from the tunnel is, there’s been a change in orders. Celestia went out somewhere, then came back, and the orders being sent out since then have been a lot harsher in tone. And apparently a lot of the palace staff have been kicked to the street; it’s all Royal Guard in the castle, nothing and nopony else except top-ranked Golden Guard. Even if Magnus himself showed up, I’m not sure he could get in.”
Dinky looked between the two of us. “...That’s weird. That’s weird, right?”
“I don’t like it either; we’re stuck on this side of the gate, after all we’ve done to keep Canterlot safe.” The mare ground her teeth together in a seething frown. “One of the royal guards came to take our keys, just to make sure. I can’t open this gate for you—nopony can, without those keys, and only Celestia knows where they are now.”
Gilda huffed air through her beak. “I need to get into Canterlot.”
“We all do,” Dinky added. “Again, royal business.”
“Hopefully, the kind of business that lets us open the damn gate,” the mare agreed. She rubbed her chin for a moment. “Alright, well...you didn’t hear this from me, but part of our duties out here is patrolling that scatheap of a shantytown on the lake. We’re supposed to cut the tall poppies, which is to say, any structures that get too close to the tunnel entrances need to be demolished.”
I winced. These ponies had been responsible for some of those collapses—and it was hard to imagine that they’d cared to make sure the ponies building them were safe on the ground before they did so.
“Stands to reason,” she continued, “that ponies getting into Canterlot that way must be a serious enough concern that they had us keeping watch for it. And now that we’re stuck sitting on this gate, we haven’t exactly had time to do that patrol, understand? Gotta keep all our forces here on the gate, to make sure it stays shut.”
“Right, I get it.” Gilda nodded. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” the mare said, as she spread her wings to flutter back up to the higher catwalk. “All I told you was my current posting, after all. Hope you figure something out.”
So, we were destined to climb the rickety nightmare of scaffolding, then. It was possible that yet other options existed to get to Canterlot, but it was extremely unlikely—and even if we found them, it was likely that they had been blocked off as well.
"N-never that easy," I echoed, as I turned to look at Gilda. "S-saw how you looked at the sc-scaffolding. Did you s-see a good path up?"
Dinky groaned in dread at the thought, but didn't object.
"Sort of," Gilda said, as she looked over the rooftops. "Some sections are more straightforward, others looked like a complete mess. It's not gonna be a fun time climbing up. I could fly up to the top, of course, but you two…"
"That c-could still be useful," Dinky said, hesitantly. "Getting a b-bird's-eye perspective on the maze c-can't hurt, at least."
"Right. I'll fly ahead and do some scouting, then meet you at the base of the structure."
* * *
We'd made one other assumption about Hammerhoof that quickly proved inaccurate: because the Hollows we'd seen on main street had still retained their equinity, we had thought that Hammerhoof as a whole was still sane. This was proven false the further away we got from the tunnel entrance, as the Hollows we passed grew more and more unkempt and disheveled, and polite nods and quiet greetings started turning into frightened avoidance, feral snarls, and whinnies of warning.
We were lucky enough that nopony attacked us, until we reached the base of the scaffolding proper. As we turned a corner and the lake came into view, so too did a group that had been shambling around the largest and most accessible ramp up into the vertical wooden labyrinth, a trio of feral Hollows accompanied by a dog that looked to have been twisted by the Everchaos. They spotted us as soon as we spotted them, and Dinky gave a few shouts of warning as her horn began to glow. I was neither as diplomatic nor as optimistic as the filly, and so I simply drew my new shortspear.
As soon as it extended to its full length with a mechanical snap, they began staggering towards us as quickly as they could, with hunger in their Hollow eyes. The demon dog reached us first, but Dinky easily blasted it back with a missile loosed from her horn; it fell back while it let out a series of warped yelps, and Dinky winced at the sound of an animal in pain. Then the first of the Hollows were upon us, and I stepped forward to strike while Dinky charged her next shot.
The nearest Hollow was armed with little more than a splintered length of wood, with a few rusty nails hammered through the end. She might well have yanked it out of the scaffolding itself. She swung it sloppily in a wide horizontal arc that I stepped backwards to avoid, before leaping forward with my own spear, which I stabbed forward through her breast. It skewered her with sickeningly little resistance, and she tumbled to the ground, gurgling as black blood spurted out from the wound.
As the second Hollow bore down on me, I realized a problem with the spear; it was still jammed in the body of the first, and I wouldn't have time to properly extract the tip. Instead, I twisted the spear inside her body to swing the other end of the shaft at my new attacker, and it connected with a stunning thump that made him stagger—just enough of a window that Dinky could fire another missile into his side, which blasted him backwards to sprawl across the ground.
But that left Dinky exposed. The third and final Hollow bore down on her, with a fire axe held in his shaking magic field, and Dinky couldn't recover fast enough to do more than throw her hoof up to shield her head. The axe slammed into her leg all the way to the bone, and she gasped in pain as her dark red blood gushed across the Hollow.
As the Hollow wrestled with the axe to try and pull it out of Dinky's leg for another swing, I finally dislodged my spear from the first Hollow. Instead of stabbing at him, I swung the whole spear around as though it were a hammer, and it smacked against the Hollow’s forehead with enough force that he dropped to his knees, and released his magical grip on the fire axe. Dinky gasped again as she stumbled away, and I stepped between them as he started to rise once again to attack.
There was a whistling noise, then a feather-fletched arrow buried itself in the back of his skull, and he collapsed with a wet thump onto the muddy shoreline. A moment later, Gilda swooped low above us, but didn't land; she was still watching for other attackers. "Making friends, I see! That's all of them?"
"F-for now," I said, as I twisted my spear to collapse it—thankfully, it looked as though I hadn’t broken it already with my improvised melee tactics, but I’d need to be more careful about how I used the weapon. Gilda didn't seem convinced, so while she glanced around, I moved to help Dinky pull the axe out of her leg. It came loose easily enough after a moment of yanking on the grip, but it left a jagged, sucking wound in its wake.
After a moment, Gilda landed next to the Hollow she'd shot, and started to explain. "There's some sort of elevator at the top, but I couldn't get it working—it's got some sort of enchanted runes on it that I think keep it locked in place. The filly could probably—" She grunted while she yanked her arrow back out of the Hollow's skull, and began to inspect the tip to see if it could be reused. "—probably get it working, since she has a horn and all. But we gotta get up there first to tinker with it, so it's not much use."
"St-still, it's—ah!" Dinky groaned in pain as she pressed the gaping wound in her foreleg shut, and I splashed a bit of liquid sunlight over the wound. One of the Hollows had been wearing a thin cloth jacket; the torn sleeve made for a decent, if grimy, bandage. As I worked, Dinky continued, "It's a g-good idea. If we ever n-need to come back here, it'll s-save us a lot of t-time."
"Gotta get up there first, though," Gilda reminded us. "And it's not an easy climb. Can you walk?"
"We'll s-see in a little while, I g-guess. What else did you sp-spot?"
Gilda flicked a thumb-claw over her shoulder. "That lake? Don't fall in it. I got a whiff when the wind changed as I was flying overhead, and it's nasty. Reckon it's run-off from waste running down the mountain. Hope this stupid town isn't drinking that, ahh, 'water,’ I don't want to think about how many toxins are in there."
"T-toxins?" I asked, after I tightened the makeshift bandage with my teeth. "W-what does that mean?"
Dinky responded first, with a dictionary definition. "A s-substance that causes damage to the b-body, usually p-produced via industrial means as a b-byproduct—"
"It's like poison but faster," Gilda interrupted.
"I—basically, sure." Dinky agreed with a scoff. "It might p-paralyze you, it m-might blind you, it might just k-kill you. Whichever it is, it's b-bad. Gilda's right, b-best to keep our distance and w-watch where we step."
Gilda glanced at my armor, and nodded as she saw my wings were uncovered now. “Try to glide, if you fall. And try to land on the scaffolding, instead of that muck. You might smash through a few layers of rotting wood, but that water’s too shallow to use to soften your impact. Even if it wasn’t, you might as well be hitting a stone road once we start climbing to any kind of serious height. I don’t know how well Hollows regenerate from splattering like that.”
“I d-don’t think even a Hollow c-could survive that f-fall.” Dinky agreed, with a shudder. After a moment, she started to try and get to her hooves, though I could see that she had barely begun to recover from her leg wound. Her dark blood had already soaked the makeshift bandage, but she could walk, at least. “G-Gilda, you should st-start explaining what our p-path is going to be. I’ll be g-good to move in a moment.”
“Sure, yeah,” Gilda turned to point with her talons as she explained. “There’s two entrances, one here on the shore, and one further out, which is probably the lower elevator landing. We’re here already, so we might as well use this one. Keep your head on a swivel, because these lower levels have the highest population of undead rumpholes…”
* * *
We only encountered dogs a few more times as we climbed, but they were always the worst enemy to fight. The twisted canines were fast, small, and agile, and they hunted in packs. A common encounter was one or two dogs amidst a group of hollows, and it seemed as though they retained enough of their training to be used as hunting animals by the maddened undead. Rarely, we encountered packs of just dogs, somehow surviving here in the scaffolding, perhaps after turning on their trainers and eating them.
Also, the hounds could breathe fire, somehow. That was an unpleasant surprise, the first time that it happened.
“What in rutting tartarus?!” Gilda screamed, as she leapt off the side of the scaffolding to avoid the stream of fire that the hound breathed out in a burning cloud. They moved like dragons in canine form, but their hunting instincts were undeniably canine. Another dog leapt through the inferno to give chase—which meant they didn’t seem too bothered by the flames themselves—and found his prey could remain airborne, while he could not. Gilda watched it plummet, as she nocked her bow and yelled, “What kind of dog breathes fire?!”
“It m-must be some kind of c-corruption from the Everchaos!” Dinky yelped, as she fired off three magical darts in quick succession. The first two missed, but the third struck the red-furred hound in the head, and it stumbled backwards, still coughing flames, before it slipped between the boards of the platform. The last we heard of it was a yelp as it struck a support beam on the way down, and then it was gone.
Two more instantly took that hound’s place, and I stepped in front of Dinky, with my wings shakily spread to keep them from leaping past me. I’d kept the spear extended and mounted it to my side, so as the dogs slowed to growl at me, I leapt forward to match them. My spear didn’t strike them, but I didn’t intend to do so; instead, I turned my body so that the speartip swept them both off the side. Gravity, and the thin walkways of this elaborate structure, were our best weapons up here.
The last two dogs behind them saw that trick, and pressed their advantage as I was still reeling, off-balance. One leapt for me, and latched onto my wing with his jaws. The other darted past me, intent on attacking Dinky, but an arrow from Gilda staggered it. Dinky grabbed the dog with her magic as it stumbled, and threw it off the side towards the distant rock wall. It fell far enough before it hit that we never even heard the impact.
That left the dog chewing on my wing, and lacking any other option, I started punching at it with my forehooves as I rolled around on the platform, as I tried to dislodge the hound without breaking my own wing.
“Careful!” Dinky shouted, and I felt her magic grab me as I rolled too far. I was too heavy for her to carry, but she pulled me back so I fell onto the platform below her, instead of tumbling off entirely. I fell directly atop the dog, and the end of my wing made a crunching noise as the hound’s grip slackened. After a moment, I struggled to my hooves, ready to stomp on the canine if it started to move again, but it seemed as though my weight and the steel of my armor had been enough to crush something vital. I winced as I tried to wipe blood off my armor yet again, and started to look for a ramp that would allow me to regroup with Dinky.
* * *
“Once we get past the stupid ones, we’ll get into really dangerous territory,” Gilda explained to us while she counted her arrows. “The structure gets more rickety, and the path looks like it’s been intentionally destroyed in some places. I guess some Hollows are sane enough to remember how to use guns and magic, and they’re funneling anything that climbs up into a couple of kill-corridors on the scaffolding. I’ll cover you as best as I can, and keep their attention, but they don’t want to let us pass…”
* * *
The wooden boards barely served as cover, and the topmost part of the fence exploded into moldering splinters as a magic missile aimed for me blew it apart instead. Dinky was already tracking the unicorn that had launched it, and after a moment, she fell howling off the side. But successfully eliminating one made Dinky a priority target amongst the others, and more followed the first, blasting boards and support beams around us as the structure groaned ominously. The best Dinky could do was create a magic shield, not only for us, but for the structural stability of our cover, and it was almost certainly already too late. We needed to move to another platform, before this one collapsed out from underneath us.
Gilda, thankfully, gave us a window. She swooped and dove through the fan of magic darts and missiles, and the occasional report of a firearm, to fire three arrows in quick succession. There came two howls of pain in response, and the barrage assaulting us ceased for a few moments, long enough for Dinky to drop the glowing shield. I galloped forward over the shifting planks, with the younger mare hot on my hooves, and we ducked into a makeshift stairwell as the section behind us fell, twisting and cracking as it plummeted hundreds of feet below.
“I r-really hope we’re not kn-knocking out the supports f-for this whole structure w-whenever we knock a s-section loose like that…'' Dinky mumbled, as she scanned the platforms above us.
I could only shrug; we weren’t dead yet, and this section felt stable enough, so long as they didn’t keep blasting it apart trying to kill us.
We heard Gilda squawk from above us, “Gimme that!” before another screaming Hollow plummeted past our little bit of cover. Then came a series of gunshots from a rifle, interspersed with the clacking of that rifle’s lever to work the action. After a moment, she swooped back down to our level, now holding a dirty gun in her claws with her bow looped securely around her breast. “Keep moving! I’ve got ‘em spooked for a moment, I don’t think they like having prey that can shoot back!”
* * *
Gilda couldn’t continue tracing our path as she explained, because she was basically pointing straight upwards, so she explained in the abstract instead. “After we get past that section, we get to what’s probably the worst part. The scaffolding gets weird, because I think that’s the level that they started building off of towards individual holes in the mountain. Lots of dead ends, lots of really unsafe towers with really short switchbacks. I can save us some time, but some of these, you’re just gonna have to try on hoof, and hope that it actually does connect.”
* * *
Gilda hadn't mentioned the ladders. Which was probably a good thing, because if she had, I think I would have given up and gone to live the rest of my unlife in Hammerhoof.
One of the potential entrances to the caves above seemed to be only accessible by climbing a rickety-looking ladder that hadn’t been built or attached properly to the scaffolding. Gilda was already sitting above me, holding the top of the ladder, while Dinky used her hooves and magic to hold the bottom steady. This wasn’t the first time we had to progress this way, so the method wasn’t entirely new to our little group, but it never got any more pleasant for any of us as quadrupeds. Ponies (or gyphons) simply didn’t do ladders, they were much more of an abyssinian or minotaur concept, and even our slow magical apocalypse couldn’t do much to change that.
It also didn’t help that it seemed as though I was developing a rather-justified fear of heights.
The ladder suddenly shifted, and my stomach dropped out from under me as the whole ladder dropped a leg-length under. The rungs under my hooves squeaked from my weight, and I heard both Gilda and Dinky swearing loudly. I glanced up, and noticed Gilda was slapping her claws against her shoulder in pain, as the ladder had dropped out of reach of the platform. Below me, Dinky had grabbed even more of the ladder as her horn blazed with magic, though her attention was split between holding it steady and avoiding the broken boards under her hooves; it seemed as though the ladder had smashed right through the platform on which she was standing.
Then the ladder began to slowly tip backwards, and my stomach lurched once more as I clung to the rotten wood for dear life. Soon, I could see the lake far below by looking over my shoulder, and I was hanging upside-down from the ladder in a way that made me feel more like a spider, or a monkey, than any kind of respectable pegasus.
“Hold on, H-Holly!” Dinky squealed, and her horn burned just a bit bright as she changed where she was holding the ladder in a dozen different fields. Above me, Gilda dove off the side of the platform to catch the top rungs, and she started to hover in place as it dragged her downwards. She was already flapping as hard as she could to drag it back towards the mountain, but had enough breath left to squawk, “Rutting tartarus! Holly! Start climbing down, now, before we lose it!”
I swallowed, my throat all too dry, before I forced my head to turn. I had to look almost entirely behind myself to look down at the jagged planks and rusted nails of the nightmare structure that we’d decided to climb for some insane reason. The ground far beneath blurred and swam in my vision. For some reason, my hooves refused to loosen from the rungs of the makeshift ladder, which were the only things between me and a very long drop, ending in what would doubtlessly be a sudden and messy stop.
Then the length of the ladder squeaked again in a way that wooden structures shouldn’t, and I suddenly found that I could actually move my hooves just enough to awkwardly crawl, backwards and upside-down, towards Dinky. I just wished the ladder would stop shaking as I shuffled down the length.
* * *
“And if we manage to somehow get past all of that, there’s one platform, connected to one tunnel entrance, which seems halfway viable. That’s where the elevator is rigged up. So presumably someone else managed to do all of that, and left themselves a nice shortcut up and down this whole mess, and then saw fit to lock it so nopony else could use it without their permission. I swear to King Grover, if I ever find who set this up I’m gonna throw them off the mountain myself.”
* * *
“I’ve never seen a magical lock like this…” Dinky mumbled, her horn aglow as she examined the glowing seal over the mechanical crane controls.
“So, what? You think you can’t get it working?” Gilda clicked her beak in annoyance as she looked up from checking the lever-action she’d taken off one of the unfortunate riflemares below. She only had a light pouch of cartridges remaining for the weapon, and she clearly favored her bow, but the gun had proven handy and accurate so far. Especially for firing through the thin wooden walls of the scaffolding, which had caught more than a few Hollows by surprise, when they had been planning to take us by surprise instead.
“I d-didn’t say that—I recognize the f-fundamental principles, but it’s much m-more advanced than anything I’ve ever p-practiced on. Give me a f-few minutes.”
Myself, I was just happy to finally get a chance to rest. Time was convoluted here in Equestria, but it felt as though we had been climbing this awful mockery of construction for days, moons, maybe even the better part of a year. Here, in the mouth of the tunnel, I felt as though I were finally on solid ground. Not for the first time, I remembered how Magnus had guessed at my lineage; I certainly felt more like an earth pony than a pegasus, at these heights.
Gilda wasn’t content to let me rest, however. She stood, shaking out her feathers as she slid the rifle into a mouldering holster that didn’t really fit across her back. “Alright, whatever. While you tinker with that, me and Holly are gonna check out this tunnel, and make sure it actually goes somewhere. Gonna be really annoyed if this one’s another dead end.”
“Uh. O-okay, just don’t go t-too far, okay?” Dinky glanced back over the side of the catwalk, nervously scanning the ladder back down to the level below. Thankfully, none of the Hollows we had fought past had seemed interested in chasing us up here. Perhaps it was too much of a gauntlet for their cursed brains to manage, or perhaps we’d proven ourselves to be too much trouble to deal with.
“Yeah yeah, whatever, mom.” Gilda cackled quietly as she walked towards the tunnel. She paused next to me, and her expression softened. “How ya holding up?”
I wasn’t good. Maybe I never really would be. But I wasn’t far below my undead baseline at the moment, just winded from the long climb up here. We had to be nearly a mile up the side of the mountain by this point, and the wind that would normally be soothing in flight was only nerve-wracking when I was clinging to a rickety wooden catwalk.
I shrugged to Gilda, and my head turned towards the depths of the tunnel. We were on the wrong side of the mountain for any light from the sunset to penetrate deeper than a few dozen feet, and the jagged walls of black amethyst felt like broken teeth in a twisted mouth. It made my flesh crawl to peer into that abyss, and I knew the Dark was here too, just like the lake above Cloudsdale, like the train tunnel to Baltimare.
Gilda felt it too, though it took her a moment to catch on. I saw her fur stand on end as she peered into the tunnel beside me, and after a moment, she tilted her head. “Holly. There’s something moving in there.”
That got me moving. My bones ached as I shakily stood, and slapped the shortspear at my side. With a clack that echoed through the tunnel before us, it extended back to its full length, and we stood together as we peered into the darkness, waiting for our eyes to adjust.
GIlda didn’t like waiting. “Dinky! You know a light spell?”
“Ahhhh…En-enchantment, projected, or f-free-floating?”
“Free-floating sounds good, just toss that into the tunnel. Can’t see a damned thing in there.”
Dinky’s magic coalesced into a glowing orb at the tip of her horn, about a hoof-width across, which she gently lobbed into the tunnel ahead of us. As it flew, it emitted a ghostly, pale light, which reflected and refracted through the crystals all around us and made the tunnel walls dance with shimmering, erratic patterns. As it neared a natural bend in the tunnel, something within defied the light, and remained dark even as the light source passed directly overhead, bounced off of the glassy wall, and bobbed to a stop.
It was a pony shape, but too tall to be another mere Hollow. And I recognized the twin horns spiraling upwards from their head, like the horns of a demon. Those red eyes never moved, but they were focused on us. How long had this creature, this dark knight—this Blackguard—been standing there, in the abyssal darkness of the tunnel? Had they been waiting for us?
“What in Tartarus?” Gilda mumbled, as she grabbed the rifle off her back again, and took to the air to hover above me. She glanced back down a moment later, and I must have looked terrified, because the bravado she normally had when we entered a fight was missing. “Holly? You’re wheezing. What’s wrong? Who is that?”
My vision was beginning to distort. I wanted to look away, I wanted to look at anything else, but all I could see was the black knight in the tunnel ahead. At those glowing red eyes of theirs, and the hatred that I could feel, even from fifty leg-lengths away.
My black blood turned solid in my veins, as the Blackguard began to walk forward, away from the gloom of the tunnel, towards us—and they drew their sword, with magic unseen, to float by their side. I recognized that sword instantly; it was the same sword that had kept my body pinned to a wall for an eternity.
I could hear myself now, wheezing in panic, even if I barely understood why. Gilda didn’t bother warning the Blackguard, and just cocked the rifle to chamber a round, before she drew a bead on the black knight’s form. As they approached, her rifle rang out a report that echoed through the tunnel once again, and sparks flew from the helmet as the rifle’s round struck true.
Slowly, the black knight’s helmet turned upwards to look at her, completely unharmed. Those burning eyes focused on Gilda, and she faltered under their gaze as well. Was it marking her for death, like it seemed the creature had marked me?
Dinky’s voice came from behind us, a question that was lost as she gasped. She recognized the Blackguard as well. She began charging another spell, and as soon as her horn ignited, the knight’s burning eyes focused on her.
But I was standing between them. And I was terrified of the knight, but I couldn’t let it attack Dinky. With a shudder, I dropped into a defensive stance, with my spear readied, but began backing towards the catwalks. Had Dinky gotten the elevator working? Was that what she was telling us about? It might not matter any more.
The Blackguard was still ten body-lengths away when I felt the burning heat of an inferno rolling over me, as if the creature before us radiated some sort of cursed fire. The blood staining my armor dried and cracked as though I were in an oven. It was almost akin to the warmth Pinkie and Celestia exuded, but…twisted, somehow. It was just as powerful, but wrong in some way that I couldn’t describe. It inhabited the armor, even though the pony within must have been nothing but cinders. And yet, it continued to advance towards us.
I backed out onto the platform as Gilda began firing again, and sparks ricocheted off of the helmet. But none of that was important, not when my attention was focused on the black longsword floating around the knight. It orbited slowly, the tip always pointed towards me, and I waited for the Blackguard to make a move.
Dinky moved first. Her spell finished charging, and she released a set of three magic missiles, which were fired up into the air, past a squawking Gilda, and slammed back down onto the Blackguard. One hit the head, another struck it in the middle of their back, and the last barely missed, and slammed into the worn stone floor of the cave, which blasted me with a shower of crystalline pebbles.
If the missiles hurt, or even inconvenienced the Blackguard, it didn’t show it. It barely shuddered when struck twice by some of the most powerful magic that Dinky could conjure, and it continued to draw closer. The black longsword completed one last orbit, paused at the knight’s side as though awaiting a command—and then they lunged forward towards me, knight and sword alike.
Everything burned, just by proximity to the creature, and my side exploded in pain as the longsword swooped in to attack my side, while I was transfixed on the knight’s eyes. It missed my wing by a hair and stabbed deep into my belly, but by the time I gasped in pain, it had already been wickedly withdrawn, leaving a sucking wound in its wake. I staggered back, as it advanced onto the wooden catwalk.
I couldn’t let it reach Dinky. I couldn’t let it kill both of us. She could find what was left of me at the bottom, once she got the elevator working.
The Blackguard continued forward, barely even slowed by the uneven wooden boards, and I could see my own black blood steaming off the hot blade held in its magic. But it needed room to swing the blade, and so long as it was held to the side of the knight, that gave me an advantage, however minor.
I feinted forwards, as though I were going to try and dart around the black knight on the same side as it held the sword, and for the first time, I think I caught it off guard. The sword was raised out of reach, just in case I was trying to grab at it, and that gave it the room the Blackguard would need to swing the blade back down towards me. But I never gave it the chance; instead of continuing around the knight, I threw myself to the side, shoulder-checking the black knight with all my weight.
It staggered, off-balance, and this time I tackled it intentionally. Touching the hot metal armor of my personal demon burned, like my flesh was boiling, but I held on as I shoved it against the railing. It worked better than I could have imagined; the wood burst into flame as the blackguard’s armor touched it, and the shoddy wooden railing buckled under only the slightest pressure.
Together, we tumbled off the wooden scaffolding, and plummeted down the mountainside towards the levels below, and the toxic lake at the base of the Canterhorn.
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Gilda is best teammate. Right by Holly's side since Baltimare, unlike some cowardly illusionist. Though I don't know what she'll do after arriving in Canterlot. After all, that was her destination.
Crap, Holly better start to think fast. Gliding is one as Gilda mentioned. At least if Holly's wings aren't banged up to the point of being unable to glide.
And would you like fries with that?
The Black knight makes his glorious return!!!!