CRISIS: Equestria - Divergence, Book 2

by GanonFLCL

Chapter Seventeen: Twist

Winter was growing impatient. She'd expected it to take some time to find a way into the old ruins of the gryphon city buried deep in the Goldridge Mountains, but hadn't expected it to take this long. She grew more frustrated with every cavern complex she, Hourglass, and Sunspire explored whilst moving through the mountain range, if only because the shifts in the terrain forced them to take roundabout routes.

Passing through the caverns was never an unpleasant experience, at least. The winds and dust of the Wastelands in recent years didn't reach down here, nor was there ever a threat of Gargantuans, so this was the only place where one could travel without worry. Most traveling parties, as far as Winter knew, would either take a leisurely pace through the cavernous tunnels to relax, or rush through quickly knowing they didn't have to worry about dangers. It was only a problem if you were claustrophobic or nyctophobic.

The walls of the caves were dotted with various gemstones of disparate sizes, ranging from rubies the size of a raisin to emeralds the size of a pony's hoof. Different parts of the caves tended to have higher concentrations of different gems—the portion she and her wards were moving though now had an abundance of topaz—so most ponies who frequented the region used that as a sort of mapping mechanism.

Supposedly, even high-quality magic-conducting gems could be found in the deepest parts of the caves, though they were rare and thus difficult to find. Nopony knew exactly why, but the general assumption is that whatever magic the gryphons used to turn the entire mountain range into solid gold had something to do with it.

The interior of the mountains weren't well lit, of course, so the group required a light source, which Winter provided with a simple illumination spell. She relaxed her magic in areas where light from outside the caves poured in, but these areas were few and far between. The most recent one they'd been through had been hours ago, a gigantic cavern occupied by an underground lake and dozens of twisting, turning paths.

Now, Winter had never actually been to the ruins herself, but she was aware of where they were and aware of which cavern complexes led to the accessible entry points. It had taken the trio several days from the Checkpoint to reach the closest, most feasible entryway, which now stood before them. The only problem was that there was something wrong with it:

"A bloody cave-in? Really?" Hourglass blurted as she strode up to the rocks that were blocking the way forward. She set her hoof upon one and tried to move it, but it didn't budge an inch. "Wonderful! Just fantastic, this is."

Sunspire tilted his head as he examined the structure, removing his goggles in the process. "The cave-in appears completely natural. It isn't an illusion, I mean, and it wasn't caused by any magical means, at least not recently enough to leave a residue."

"Fat lot of help that is." Hourglass looked to Winter. "What are we supposed to do? I don't think we're strong enough to move all this rock, at least not quickly or easily, not even if we worked together."

"No, I don't think so either," Winter said, setting her hoof on the rock as well and attempting to budge something loose; nothing happened, of course, but she could at least say she’d tried. "The rock's been here a long while if it's in there so tight. Had time to settle, eh? Got lots of dirt and such in all the nooks and crannies."

"So we need to find another entrance, is that it? Isn't the nearest one on the opposite side of the mountains?"

"And then some, yup." Winter glanced off towards the southern exit of the big cavern. "If my memory serves, we could take the southern exit here and then hike through the eastern side of the mountains back up north. Might take us a few days." She then turned north. "Or, we head through the northern exit and see if we can skirt around that way. Could save us half a day."

"That doesn't sound ideal," Sunspire said, tapping his chin. "We don't know if we're under any sort of urgent time limit, certainly, but the sooner we find the source of the troubles, the better. Right?"

"The only other option is diggin' through the rock, but I can't tell how deep this cave-in goes, so I don't know how long that'll take. Hours? Days? Longer?"

"Are you sure there isn't another entrance that's closer, maybe?"

Hourglass grunted and poked Sunspire lightly in the side. "Don't be a wanker, Sunsy. Winter knows these caverns inside and out. If there was another entrance, she'd have suggested it already." With a sidelong look to Winter, she asked, "Right?"

"Myself and my predecessors mapped these caverns out long before now," Winter said with a nod. "The only entrances I know of—that any of them knew of—are the ones I've mentioned."

Sunspire nervously cleared his throat. "Wh-what I meant is, since there was a cave-in here that blocked one of the entrances, maybe something similar has happened elsewhere in the caverns and opened up a new entrance?"

Winter tapped her chin in thought; the kid was always quick with alternative ideas. Just a reminder of—

"Hmm. I won't rule out the possibility,” she said, kicking those thoughts out, “but we'd have to search for evidence of a new passage. That could take time, more time than just headin' out along the known paths towards the other entrances." After a pause, she muttered, "Then again, who's to say the other entrances aren't blocked too, eh?"

"So we're just supposed to wander around the bloody caves until we find something, or hope that the other passages aren't blocked?" Hourglass scoffed. "Well, that's just peachy. This just keeps getting better and better. What's next, are the caverns gonna flood?"

"Don't tempt fate, Hourglass," Winter tutted, giving Hourglass a hard look. "Chronomancer luck tends not to be the most stellar thing in the world, so I’d rather not jinx it."

"I mean, if you’d like, I could help us find another entrance," Sunspire tepidly suggested.

Hourglass raised an eyebrow. "What? How?"

"I can see the source of the magic we're supposed to be searching for, remember? It's been getting clearer by the day."

"And you’re sure it still hasn't moved from where we detected it initially?" asked Winter.

He shook his head. "No, it's still in the ruins as far as I can tell. I can't tell if the reason it's clearer is just because we're getting closer, or if because the source is getting stronger, or maybe a combination of the two. But it's definitely still in the same place."

He then gestured towards the wall of rock. "More importantly, I can see traces of it filtering out through the cracks in the rock. They might be small traces because they’re small cracks, but I can still see them."

Hourglass blinked. "Huh. So you think you can find another route if we follow the source?"

"I believe so, yes."

Winter chuckled, then playfully tousled the colt's mane. "Well then, aren't we lucky to have you along? You're feelin' up to it, though? I know ya said usin' that vision of yours give ya headaches, so you’re sure your head's feelin' alright enough to move forward?"

Sunspire nodded, his expression determined. "I'll be fine."

"Well, if you're sure, then lead the way. Just watch your step, eh?"

It felt strange having somepony else leading her through the caves again. The last time that she'd been through here and not been in command of the situation had been when her predecessor, Early Riser, had been training her many, many years ago.

That old pegasus was long retired now, and had opted to move somewhere on the southern continent, like his predecessor before him, and so on. Winter planned on retiring to Hope's Point instead and getting good and drunk; southern alcohol was good, but boring, and the Hope’s Point folk knew how to get good and rotten better than anypony.

Anyway, it was even stranger to not just be following somepony else, but for that somepony else to be a colt less than half her age, a colt just barely going through the early stages of puberty at that. Sunspire was a diligent young pony, though, and learned quickly enough that he knew even without Winter's warning to watch his step so that he didn't topple off the edge of a cavernous pit while trying to follow the magical trail that only he could see.

They wandered for hours, taking a break for a late dinner at one point, before they found anything of note. Sunspire had led them along a path that Winter knew well enough, then pointed out a fractured section of wall off to the side, which Winter was certain had been solid the last time she'd been through here. Then again, that had been years ago, before she started training Hourglass, even before Twilight and her friends had tumbled into the world.

"I can see lots of the magic’s signature trailing out of cracks in the wall here," the colt said with a confident grin. "That means there's an open path on the other side that leads towards the source, most likely unobstructed."

Winter stepped up to the wall and tapped it with her hoof a few times in different places. "Good find, kid. This'll do."

The rock seemed solid, but the structural damage was sufficient enough that she was confident that she could break it apart. The cracks were so wide that she could feel air moving through and could tell that the wall was relatively thin here. They'd passed by a few such damaged chunks of rock, but this was the only one so far that Sunspire said was important. If he was confident, then so was she.

She gestured for the younger ponies to stand back, then took her canteen from her satchel, splashed it over the weak spots in the wall, then lit up her horn and froze the water solid for a few seconds before immediately melting it back to water, then instantly freezing it again. Cryomancy—ice magic—was just a specialty of hers, and had a variety of uses beyond just defending herself in a fight.

In this case, the rapid freezing and thawing of the ice eroded the rock far faster than was natural, and expended far less magical energy than blasting it apart with brute force would. As such, though it took several minutes, the stone weakened enough that Winter was able to chip away at it with her hoof and a little bit of effort, using her magic in light bursts to clear away larger frozen chunks.

On the other side of the wall, it was clear that Sunspire's theory had been correct: another cave-in had occurred here, ripping out portions of rock and dumping them into another cavern below. Winter cast out a light to see that the cavern went on for quite a long way, and could see that the rest of the nearby rock had stabilized enough that there was no imminent danger of subsequent cave-ins.

"This cavern is new to me," Winter muttered, tilting her head to get a better viewpoint. "It doesn't lead in from any route that I know of, at any rate. Looks completely natural too, meanin' nopony's been through here often enough to make a proper passage."

She took out her Timekeeper and twisted the dials just so, displaying a three-dimensional image of her map, specifically of the Goldridge Mountains. She was able to find their current location and trace the path of the passage they were currently in as it twisted about from the central cavern complex and made its way up towards one of the smaller northern hubs. The path below them, though, was not included on the map whatsoever.

She turned to the younger ponies. "This entire cavern complex has been mapped out extensively over hundreds of years, but this passage isn't on it. That means nopony's been in it before, which means it's either new or has been completely undiscovered for centuries."

"But we’re sure it leads into the ruins?" asked Hourglass, looking a bit more curious than Winter ever remembered her being.

"If Sunspire's magic sight is accurate, it should," Winter replied. She glanced at her map, then gave a satisfied nod. "And we're not too far from our destination, either. Maybe another few hours or so of walkin' through, hopefully. If it's a straight shot through, which it probably isn't. Probably better than the alternatives in any case, though, eh?"

"Huh." Hourglass nudged Sunspire and gave him a friendly grin. "Good show, chap. Bravo."

Sunspire, having replaced his goggles now that they'd found the way forward, was practically beaming. "I'm glad I could help."

Winter lit up her horn to keep the light around the group, then gestured for them to follow. "Stay close to me goin' forward, yeah? If this cavern's new, we don't know what might be further in, and I don't want ya fallin' into some hole."

The two younger ponies gathered close, staying just a step behind Winter as she led them forward.

This new cavern was indeed not a straight shot through. It twisted about in ungainly curves and wasn't terribly easy to navigate through. Some parts of the path were narrower than the rest of the cave, and the group needed to squeeze or crawl through to move forward. Winter was never so glad that she was so small until now. Thankfully Hourglass and Sunspire, despite being half her age and younger, were also able to fit through, a benefit of their youth.

They had to skirt around pits on occasion, some wide enough to force them to shimmy along the walls at a snail's pace to avoid falling. Times like these were when Winter wished she were a pegasus instead of a unicorn, or that at least somepony in the group was. Shimmying along wasn't terribly difficult for her, but she was worried about Hourglass and Sunspire making it across safely. There weren't exactly any good anchors for a rope.

One thing Winter noticed about this part of the caves was that the amount of gemstones studding the walls was significantly lower. If not for the otherwise high concentration elsewhere, even just outside where they'd first entered, she'd have never given it much attention. There was hardly a topaz in sight, and not a single specimen of any other type of gem for that matter.

As the trio approached what appeared to be a larger section of the cavern, they all saw something very odd: a light source. It was faint, whatever it was, far dimmer than Winter's own light spell. She even dimmed her magic down to nothing just to make sure the light source ahead was actually generating its own light, not just reflecting hers; it wasn’t, so, it couldn't be water or crystal or anything of that sort.

As they drew closer, Winter found that the light source was some sort of bioluminescent… stuff. It certainly didn't resemble any type of moss or fungi that Winter knew of, and those sorts of things almost universally couldn’t survive in the Wastelands or elsewhere anyway; maybe here because of the moisture? It more closely resembled slime or mucus, at any rate.

"Gross," Hourglass muttered, making a visible gagging motion as she looked upon their discovery. "What the bloody hell is this stuff?"

"Can't say for sure,” Winter replied. “I've never encountered anythin' like it in all my years of travelin' these parts.”

She scooped a clump of the stuff off of the nearest wall with her magic to examine it more closely. The goop was certainly viscous, not unlike a particularly thick paste, and it was translucent like gelatin. Little particles inside it were the actual source the glow, it seemed. It smelled unpleasant, akin to the musk of a moldy old locker room shower that hadn't been cleaned in days.

"Eww!" Hourglass blanched as she watched Winter's examination. "Winter, gross! What are you doing? Don't touch it!"

Winter snorted in amusement, giving Hourglass a cheeky grin. "Oh don't be such a wuss, ya wuss. Can't exactly find out what this stuff is without given' it a little look-see, eh?"

"Empirical information is the foremost method for learning about an unfamiliar substance," Sunglass said in his most Dawn-like statement to date, though his wary, nauseous expression horribly contrasted with the sage wisdom of his words.

"So she can use her eyes! She doesn't need to touch it!" Hourglass sputtered, looking more and more like she was about to throw up.

Winter slopped the glob of goo she'd been examining back onto the wall, then gestured for the others to follow her forward. "Whatever it is, I’ll have to catalogue it as a new substance, but we'll worry about that after we deal with our little anomalous issue, eh? Let's get movin' on."

Hourglass shuddered. "Please and thank you." She then glanced down at the path ahead, eyes wide with terror. "Oh gross! It's all over the bloody floor too! Eww eww eww! Do we have to go this way?"

"Yes, we have to. Sometimes our line of work gets pretty gross, y'know? But ya can't wuss out just because ya don't want ta put your hoof in somethin' nasty." Winter shrugged, a cheeky grin on her lips. "If ya can't handle waded through a bit of grimey goo, then I don't know how ya expect to deal with everythin' else this job throws at ya."

"Look, there're some things that I can put with, yeah? I can stomach a bit of blood, I can handle pain and stress and exhaustion, and I'll put up with having to get violent sometimes. But this? This is nasty. It smells like rancid mold and looks like somepony didn't digest their gelatin dessert quite right."

"Does describing it make it better somehow?" Sunspire asked, grimacing at a nearby wall of slop. "Because you're just putting images in my head that aren't exactly pleasant, and now I’m grossed out. I was fine until you said that."

"This is our only way through the caves, you two," Winter grunted, losing patience by the second for these inexperienced youths and their aversions. "So put on your big pony pants and follow me. I know it's nasty and gross and disgustin', but sometimes ya gotta do things ya don't want to do in order to put things right, no matter how unpleasant-but-necessary those things might be."

Hourglass paused, clearly mulling this over for a second, then sighed and nodded. "Ugh, fine. But I'm using what's left of your canteen to wash my hooves after we're out of this mess."

"Can… can I share?" Sunspire asked.

"And Sunsy gets to share," Hourglass added.

Winter rolled her eyes. "Deal."

The trio proceeded to move cautiously through the goop, and Hourglass's little whines with every few steps let Winter know her apprentice was right behind her. Sunspire, despite his own misgivings, was quiet throughout, a fact that Winter found amusing. The tables certainly did have a way of turning at times, and she made a mental note that this was going to be something she'd rib Hourglass about as she grew older and took over the Chronomancer position. She could see it now:

"Hey remember that time you whined about having to walk through smelly goo, Little Miss Prissy-Pants?”

Yes, the goop was nasty and felt absolutely disgusting underneath her hooves, and yes everypony's short heights just put them that much closer to the source of that horrid odor, but all-in-all it wasn't the absolute nastiest thing in the world Winter had ever done for the sake of work. She'd waded through fresh, roach-infested garbage before when a Void rift had opened in the city dump, for example. This was cake compared to that. At least there weren’t any bugs.

When they rounded the corner, Winter immediately stopped the two younger ponies, because now Winter was concerned, and a little bit angry at herself for jinxing the situation. Concerned enough that she couldn't contain her typical colorful vocabulary from reasserting itself:

"What the fuck?"

The passage opened up into a much larger chamber, which had a noticeably higher ceiling. That wasn't terribly important, though, not compared to what was contained within the cavern:

Eggs.

Dozens upon dozens of large eggs. Egg sacs, more precisely, resembling those that belonged to spiders, though each sac appeared to only contain a single egg. The eggs themselves were translucent, like the goo upon which the trio currently walked upon, colored a sickly green that dimly glowed due to small particles of stuff that floated in the gel. They were attached firmly to the floor via the goo that covered the entire chamber from top to bottom, solidified at the base of the egg to prevent it from wobbling and potentially rupturing.

Because the eggs were translucent, the trio was given a clear view at what was inside each of the eggs as well. Winter was fairly certain they were Gargantuans developing into the first stage of their nymph cycle; once they hatched, these young creatures would slowly grow larger and moult their exoskeletons as they did so, until they reached their full adult stage in roughly ten years.

But there was something… off about them. The lifecycle of a Gargantuan, even at this stage of their lives, had been thoroughly documented, especially in the past twenty years when Hope's Point started getting involved in the studies. She'd seen the scientific journals and studied them intently, since she encountered the creatures frequently enough that she wanted all the information she could have.

What was off about these Gargantuans was their shape. For one thing, they were smaller than she expected; a Gargantuan at this stage was typically as large as an average adult pony, so that when they transitioned to their second nymph stage and started hunting, they were twice that size. The ones in the eggs here were a bit smaller, roughly the size of a teenage pony, maybe younger, which was easy to measure with Hourglass and Sunspire present.

Not only that, their limb arrangement was different. Only four legs? That definitely wasn't right. With only the four, they completely lacked the dangerous mantis-like scythes they normally possessed. The legs were also located directly underneath their bodies in a standard sort of quadrupedal arrangement, eerily close to a pony's, though they still possessed arachnid joints and shapes.

They otherwise were arranged with relatively familiar anatomy, though their stingers were much shorter than they should have been, just barely longer than the average pony's tail; there was no way they'd be able to use that as an effective weapon. Not only that, but the head was no longer hidden inside the thick carapace, but extended outwards just slightly at the end of a sort of stringy "neck". The heads also only had four eyes instead of the usual arrangement of eight, located on the sides of the head where a pony's would be.

"Um… Winter?" Hourglass whispered, no longer sounding grossed out but legitimately scared. "Are those Gargantuans? Is this a nest?"

"Crikey, it certainly seems that way, doesn't it?" Winter whispered back.

"But that should be impossible, right? The Gargantuans stay away from the Goldridge Mountains. Right? Right?"

"That should be the case, yeah, and I'd call ya crazy for sayin' otherwise, but if ya tell me ya don't see the same thing I'm seein' I'd definitely still call ya crazy, or at least blind."

She looked about the chamber, easy enough to do with the lighting present, and saw what was left of an adult male Gargantuan in the far corner of the room, looking like nothing more than just a shell. It was a little larger than the average male, sure, but there was nothing else a carapace that large could belong to; queens were even bigger so it wasn't a queen's remains.

"The nest’s queen must've dragged one of the males in here to mate with and then feed off of," Winter pointed out. "Looks like she's storin' what's left of it for the young when they hatch. Which is… new, actually. Usually the young just fend for themselves."

"Speaking of the young, they don't look like they're developing properly," Sunspire said, his voice tinged with curiosity and wonder, and maybe a little bit of fear. "Is this some sort of mutation?"

Winter nodded. "If it affected the entire batch like this, it's a pretty serious mutation, the first one anypony's seen in one of these things in over a century or so. It’s a smaller brood, too, by the looks of it. Most clutches number in the hundreds, but this one here has only a few dozen. Consequence of the mutation?"

"Can we not talk about this here and now?" Hourglass hissed desperately. "We've gotta get out of here, fast."

"There's no worry about them hatching, Hourglass," Sunspire said matter-of-factly, not even the slightest bit unsure. "At their current size, they likely have weeks left of development before hatching."

"That's all well and good, but where there's a clutch and a nest, there's a queen, like Winter said. Gargantuan queens are the worst of the worst sort of news, and you'll pardon me if I don't want firsthoof experience dealing with one."

"Which reminds me," Winter noted, "I'll have to let Pewter know about this nest when we get back to the Checkpoint. I don't know if it'll be a threat to him directly, but other travelers should at least be aware of it. He mentioned the little kerfuffle goin' on out east, so this seems like a result of all that, eh?"

Winter then tapped her chin in thought. "Hmm. There are five known queens, two of which are dead, two of which were last seen waging a huge territorial war in the eastern Wastelands. That would mean…" Her eyes widened, her mouth curling in a little grin. "Well now, how about that, eh? We can tell Hope's Point we found where the missing Aculeata went."

"Wonderful, yes, but we can only do that if we get out of here."

"Right, yeah, let's get movin'." Winter glanced about, then pointed off towards the nearby wall, where the egg sacs weren't as numerous. "We can shimmy along here and find our way through." She turned to Sunspire. "Ya still got a bead on where we're goin', mate?"

Sunspire lifted off his goggles briefly, then nodded and replaced them. "The magic trail is coming from the opposite side of the room, so there's an opening in that direction of some sort."

"Good enough for me."

She gestured for the two to follow behind her, then made her way along the wall, squeezing herself as close to the slime-covered rock as she could. The smell was worse than ever; she had to keep her head practically touching the goo in order to maneuver herself, which meant her nostrils were right next to the stuff. Breathing with her mouth didn't help any; she wasn't sure it was possible to taste smells, but she found she'd rather smell it than taste it.

As they made their way around the room, the trio eventually began snaking their way past the egg sacs further from the wall once it became clear they couldn't keep along that path, since several of the sacs were fastened to the walls as well. Winter could hear Hourglass whimpering as they moved along, mostly because they had to get close enough to the eggs to touch them, and not only did they smell worse than the rest of the goo did, but they were sticky.

Roughly halfway through the room, just when Winter was ready to breathe a sigh of relief, she felt a slight tremble in the floor. She immediately froze, as did the two younger ponies behind her.

"What was that?" asked Hourglass in a panicked whisper.

In answer to her question, the room trembled again slightly, this time from a more certain direction: behind them. The trio turned to see a section of wall move, turning slightly in place until there was no doubt whatsoever that it wasn't the wall that was moving, but something that had been resting against it, something very, very big.

Winter had never seen a Gargantuan queen up close before, but she knew they were huge, even compared to the adult males. An adult male was roughly the size of a large house, and the queens were nearly twice that size. Well, typically they were, anyway. The queen that Winter was looking at now was smaller than that, roughly the same size as an adult male, but there was no mistaking it as anything other than a queen Gargantuan.

This was because queens had two distinct features that the males did not:

First were the wings, which folded inside their back carapace similarly to a ladybug or beetle, and yet typically resembled that of a wasp. This queen was no different in that regard, only that parts of her carapace seemed to be missing, allowing the wings to be freely visible once she'd turned around. They reflected the light of the glowing slime just barely, giving a clear indication where they and the queen were even in the relative darkness of the room.

Second was the protrusion just above her head, from which a queen could "spew" the acidic venom that she contained within her body rather than utilizing her stinger to administer it directly. The general placement was similar to a stag beetle's, though its shape was more comparable to a rhinoceros. Or actually, a unicorn, come to think of it. A twisted, sharp unicorn horn.

Winter was terrified at first that the queen had felt her, Hourglass, and Sunspire moving through the nest, since Gargantuans had a potent capability for sensing vibrations in the earth. However, the way the queen was moving gave Winter no indication that she had noticed anything of the sort. Winter glanced down at the goo coating her hoof and wondered if it was dulling the vibrations caused by their steps.

The queen moved awkwardly away from the wall and into a section of the room where there were no eggs and very little slime yet, whereupon the first thing she did was open up her huge mandibles and gave a sort of heaving motion. She then proceeded to vomit up a tremendous volume of translucent goo all over the floor and the nearby walls, the exact same sort of goo that the pony trio had been moving through this whole time.

Hourglass retched behind Winter, quietly enough that hopefully the queen couldn't hear her. Winter couldn't blame the young mare, really, and had to suppress the urge to emulate her. It wasn't every day you were gifted with the unique opportunity to wade through Gargantuan queen vomit; for generations, ponies had wondered what the slimy substance found in Gargantuan nests was, and now, Winter had the answer.

Oh, what a day, what a lovely day, today was turning out to be.

The way the queen walked as she spewed slime on the floor was, again, quite awkward. Though it sounded nonsensical in her head, the only way Winter could think to describe it was somepony—a very young colt or filly, perhaps—wearing clothes belonging to a much larger adult. The steps were wide and plodding, and two of her legs barely even seemed to be moving. Her carapace seemed to be colored oddly as well, as if in the process of moulting, which queens didn't do anymore once they reached maturity.

A quick glance towards the carcass in the other corner of the room, then back to the queen, made Winter's mind race. That wasn't a carcass in the corner at all; that was the queen's moulted carapace. It was the only explanation for the size. And the queen before her now was smaller even than that carapace and still in the process of moulting further. Was the queen… getting smaller? That didn’t make—

Then, to Winter's horror, the queen started moving towards them. She swiftly gestured for the other two to crouch down to avoid being seen.

The queen lumbered over the nest, and despite the awkwardness of her movements there was an inexplicable grace to how accurately she placed her limbs so that she didn't step on any of her eggs. She actually seemed to be testing the floor gently with the tips of her legs before firmly setting them down as she went. The ground trembled slightly with every step, causing the eggs' contents to jiggle slightly.

As the queen moved, she would occasionally stop, heave a little, then vomit more slime onto barren patches within the nest, even those that were close to the egg sacs. It didn't seem to disturb the eggs at all, and in fact the spillover coated them and gave them all a healthier glow, causing the room to illuminate just a little brighter with every dumping of goo.

The trio watched as the queen stepped over them, apparently not noticing them at all. Come to think of it, she didn't even seem to be looking around, especially since she was using her legs to test where she was walking rather than watching with her eyes. It was like watching somepony feel their way around in the dark, despite the fact that the room was lit well enough that Winter didn't even need her illumination spell to see.

Was the queen blind?

Winter wasn't sure whether she should panic or laugh when the queen stopped just above them and let a rather large upheaving of goo spew out just a few feet away from them; Hourglass's hooves on her tail and flank indicated the young mare was revolted more than ever. Thankfully, not too much of the stuff splashed in their direction, and Winter was glad the queen had taken that extra step; a little closer and they’d have all been slathered in the stuff.

The slime smelled worse fresh than it did stagnant; there was nothing Winter could compare it to, and this was as somepony who had literally waded through—and tripped in!—hot, wet garbage at one point in her life. By the time the queen reached the other side of the room, Winter was fairly certain that her nose wasn't going to work right for weeks.

And then, to Winter's surprise, the queen started making an odd chattering noise, clicking her mandibles, and even vibrating her wings, all in a pattern that sounded almost… soothing? Musical, maybe? Whatever it was, Winter had never heard anything like it before, but the circumstances reminded her of a mother singing a lullaby after feeding her foal. Was the Gargantuan queen singing a lullaby to her clutch?

What in the hell was going on?

Since the queen seemed distracted for now, and since she didn't want to risk being noticed when the queen returned to the other side of the nest to rest in her alcove, Winter decided this was as opportune a time as any to move. She turned to Hourglass and Sunspire, gestured for them to keep quiet and stay low, then motioned for them to follow.

The trio now literally crawled their way along the slime-coated floor towards their original destination, moving slowly, carefully, but with purpose. The only indication they had that they were safe was the queen's "song" filling the air and a lack of tremors from her movements; so long as the queen was staying where she was and doing whatever it was she was doing, it meant she hadn't noticed intruders in her nest.

This lasted until Winter could actually physically see the exit passage that Sunspire had indicated, which led up and out of the cavern and to freedom at last. She was ready to practically leap for joy—this had been the most grueling, disgusting, uncomfortable four minutes and twenty-seven seconds of her life—but naturally didn't out of fear of altering the queen to her presence.

Then, she and the others stopped moving when they felt the queen's movement tremors start up again.

The queen did not stop her song, though, just continued singing as she made her way back across the nest. This was mostly fine, at least until the queen's steps took her in the direction of the trio of ponies. Winter wanted to move to get out of the way, but wasn't sure they could do quickly enough or quietly enough to avoid detection, so despite Hourglass pushing her gently to try and move her forward, Winter stayed put and gestured for Hourglass to remain calm.

Winter froze up as the queen's gigantic limb made its way directly over not her, not Hourglass, but Sunspire, who froze in terror at the approach with nowhere to move to. Even with the queen's slightly smaller size, one of her legs was longer than a streetlamp and as wide as a couch at its thickest points. It was easily enough that it wouldn't take any effort at all to crush the young colt, so naturally Winter was in full panic mode as the tip gently touched his back, feeling about to make sure it didn't crush an egg sac.

The queen's leg then deftly lifted away, obviously surprised that her leg had touched something other than solid rock—slime-covered or not—or one of her eggs. She even stopped her song momentarily. Sunspire's expression, until this point relatively calm considering everything happening, was a picture perfect depiction of what fear looked like.

Winter was more surprised when the queen reached her leg back down to test again, poking Sunspire gently once, twice, three times, in different areas before lifting her leg away once more. Adding onto the surprise and confusion was that the queen's "horn" protrusion glowed a sickly black for a moment, not entirely unlike how a unicorn's horn did when using their magic.

The queen's next action was to let out an odd chattering sound that wasn't quite singing but more resembled speech, then to shudder in… disgust? Her whole body just sort of shook like she had felt something unpleasant. Her limb then came back down and, for some reason, tapped Sunspire's rear end as if she were a parent ushering him along like the young colt he was, then, she just kept walking, resuming her song as if nothing had happened at all.

Winter didn't know what to make of it, and from Hourglass and Sunspire's terrified, baffled expressions, neither did they.

So they just kept moving, confused—

No, confused wasn't the right word. Dawn would've been able to give the precise word that would be appropriate here, but Winter took a crack at it in her head and came up with "bewildered".

When they reached the other side of the nest and made their way into the passage beyond, the trio just kept moving and didn't stop doing so for several long, uncomfortable, quiet minutes to make sure they were completely safe, at least as far as they knew. When Winter finally stopped and gestured for the others to do the same, they all let out sighs of relief.

It was here that Hourglass then let out another heave that she'd clearly been holding in for some time, all over the floor and herself. The poor young mare needed a change of clothes immediately—they all did—so it was lucky they'd packed spares.

"What just happened?" Sunspire asked succinctly, staring right at Winter with wide, pleading eyes, looking so very desperate for answers.

Answers that Winter could not give. "I've got no clue, mate," she said just as succinctly. "Everything I've ever read, heard, and seen regardin' Gargantuans just completely got turned on its head, because that was nothing like anythin' that I know about 'em. There is somethin' definitely wrong with that queen and her clutch, though."

"I should tell Miss Dawn about this when we get back," he replied with a firm nod. "If there are important changes to the ecosystem of the Wastelands, she'll want to know about it. It might make a difference when the cities start expanding and cultivating the land eventually, right?"

"That it would. Hmm. I wonder if this has anythin' to do with the anomaly…" Winter shook her head. "No, no way these changes came about this fast. Bah, we'll figure that out another time. There are too many questions to consider and not enough information to answer them, and I sure as hell ain't goin' back there to find out, yeah? Not now, anyway. We've got bigger problems."

Hourglass, who'd finally finished puking, rose up and let out an exhausted groan. "That was the worst experience of my entire bloody life, Winter, and I hate you for making me go through it, and I hate that I'm gonna have to do this for a living in a couple of years. This job is utter shite."

Winter tapped Hourglass's ear hard enough to jostle the young mare. "Language, young lady. Not in front of the kid, eh?"

"You swore earlier!"

"That was in the heat of the moment and just sort of tumbled out," Winter said, nose in the air. "It's different. Besides, I'm an adult."

Hourglass threw her hooves in the air. "That's not fair! I'm supposed to be older than you!"

"Well, thanks to good old timey-wimey shenanigans, you're not, so tough luck. Listen to your elders like a good filly."

"You two don't need to worry about swearing in front of me, you know?" Sunspire interjected, puffing his chest out just a little. "I hear that sort of language on Botch-O-Rama all the time. There are swears in the end credits theme, for example. Even the F-word."

"It's the principle of the thing, yeah?" Winter chuckled as Hourglass gave her one hell of a stink-eye.

She then set down her saddlebag and fished out her spare clothes. "Come on, kids, find a rock to hide behind and get out of your filthy clothes. Just leave 'em where ya drop 'em, too, we're not gonna get those things cleaned up anytime soon. And grab a canteen, 'cause ya need to wash up your hooves and such too."

After getting changed into some fresh clothes and washing up, the trio made their way forward through the passage for another hour, thankfully not encountering any further troubles as they went. Winter took stock of the situation, though, and came to realize as they moved forward why this cavern was undiscovered: it was new.

Judging from the way the walls moving forward barely curved at all and how smooth and uniform parts of them were, Winter figured that Aculeata, the missing queen they'd found, had burrowed her way here with a combination of her claws and acid spit. It was difficult to tell how long ago it had been that the queen had made her way through, but Winter didn't imagine it was more than two weeks judging by the condition of those eggs.

This meant that the Gargantuan queen had dug through here fairly quickly, which, given her size and power, likely caused cave-ins throughout the mountains. Not likely the one that had blocked off the gryphon ruins, though, unless the queen had been through here earlier at some point, maybe to find a safe place to make a nest. Which also made a lot of sense given the state of her moutling.

But why? Because of the mutations in her young? Because of whatever was happening to her? Again, too many questions, not enough time to get answers. Winter wished she'd known about this situation before the anomaly; the amount of study she'd need to dedicate to the changes in this single brood would take weeks, weeks she just didn't have.

So it would have to wait for another time.

*****

Eventually, after a few more hours or so of travel and a long nap—everypony was too anxious and excited to get a full night's rest—the trio found their way to an entrance into the gryphon ruins. It wasn't a typical entrance, though, not like the one that had been blocked or the ones on the detour paths. No, this one had been made accidentally, no doubt by the Gargantuan queen's passage through the area, as an entire path had been dug right though a part of the ruined city's foundation.

Part of whatever building or structure had been above the cavern here had collapsed into the cavern itself and onto what was left of the foundation below it, stone walls crumbling apart with holes large enough for a pony to crawl into. Winter poked her head in through what was left of one of the walls and saw the floor above was mostly intact, but had fractured enough to let them in from below.

"Looks to me like we've got our way in, unorthodox as it is," Winter said as she pulled her head out to look at the younger ponies. "I'll head in first and make sure it's safe and that nothin' falls and hurts anypony, yeah? Stay here and wait for me to call ya."

The two nodded and sat in place, while Winter clamored through one of the holes and squeezed her way into the ruined structure beyond.

There was no telling what this establishment had once been, if anything, because it was all busted apart from the fall and crushed under the weight of at least one floor's worth of rubble from above. Winter climbed the piles of debris to reach a good perch from which to leap to a section of floor that was still intact, then made sure it would support her weight before leaping to another.

She repeated this a few times, nearly slipping on the next-to-last one as it gave way beneath her just as she was leaping away. She caught the final bit of flooring with just her hooves, then desperately scrambled her way up, taking a breath as soon as she was back on solid stone. The drop wasn't far, but that didn't mean it would seriously injure her or worse if she landed wrong.

Once satisfied with her position, she fished a long nylon rope out of her saddlebag and searched for the heaviest object in the room she was in. Her attention was drawn to what looked like a stone statue that was apparently built into the floor. It was definitely a gryphon, since it had the telltale beak, talons on its front legs, and a lion's hindquarters, hindlegs, and body. She threw the rope around its midsection and fastened it as tight as could be.

"Okay kids!" she shouted down, giving the rope a test tug. "I got the rope set up! One at a time! Hop to it!"

Hourglass squeezed into the chamber below first, followed by Sunspire, who she then helped tie the rope around. Winter then used her magic and her hooves together to haul Sunspire up one tug at a time, slow and steady so that he didn't swing about and bump into the walls. Once he was at the top, he untied himself, threw the rope down, and then they worked together to repeat the process with Hourglass.

Once the trio were back together, Winter put away her rope and took a moment to glance about to get some kind of idea as to where they were. Her original look around had just been to find something heavy, but now she gave everything a little more attention.

The room was loaded with statues, though apart from the stone one built into the floor, none of them were particularly large or heavy, and in fact all of them were broken. This establishment might have been a statuemaker's business, perhaps, but anything of value had long since been looted by "archaeologists" in the past several centuries. All that remained were vaguely recognizable chunks that didn't belong to anything in particular.

There was a large stone door that led out of the room which had been busted open from the outside in, no doubt by whoever had raided this place before. Some of the damage here was likely not even the result of the Gargantuan queen's passage through, ironically. Winter was frankly amazed the stone statue was even still here, but then getting it out in one piece was assuredly impossible.

Winter gestured to the door, giving a look to Sunspire. "Well, I think you can take it from here, kid. You've got the magic eyes and all."

"Right," Sunspire replied, removing his goggles again. He winced as he did so, blinking away as though he'd just looked directly at the sun. "Oof! I was expecting the magical signature to be brighter and stronger once we got closer, but this is really bright.”

“Everything alright, though?” asked Hourglass, looking mildly concerned.

“Mmhmm. I've never seen a magical power like this before, even from Miss Dawn," he continued. "It's roughly the same kind of strength that I recognize from the light of the Beacon, the one at the center of Pandora Tower. Not the same kind of Dark magic, though. Like a… a different shade of the same color? Whatever it is, it's totally new to me."

"It would have to be extraordinarily powerful to have created that spike in the balance," Winter agreed. "Are you good to lead us towards it? Last thing I wanna do is 'cause ya any pain."

"I'm fine, Winter, thanks," he said with a confident smile, though he was squinting as he said it.

"Well then, what are we waiting for, a bloody invitation?" huffed Hourglass, throwing her hooves up as her prior concern evaporated. "Let's go!"

*****

Winter was actually more than a little glad to have Sunspire around to lead the way through the ruins. Her Timekeeper wasn’t precise with directions unless Void rifts were concerned—in which case it was astoundingly accurate—so it was nice having somepony that knew where they were going.

The old gryphon city was built in such a way that she was astounded that anypony could find their way around. Though, come to think of it, that made a certain amount of sense, since the gryphon architects likely didn't have ponies in mind when they built the place. But even a pegasus surely would've had trouble, though.

For one thing, there was a huge central hub area that led to all of the different locales within the city, most of which Winter had trouble identifying; she only had a rudimentary understanding of the gryphon written language, and honestly not enough to be of much use. As a trio of unicorns, reaching some of the pathways and tunnels would have been extraordinarily difficult if not outright impossible since they lacked wings with which to fly.

For another thing, because she didn't know what any of the signs or directories meant to any kind of meaningful degree, she was positive that she'd have gotten her and Hourglass alone lost by now. She certainly gave it her best attempt, but she decided it best not to waste their time trying to figure out what everything meant. There would be time enough for that eventually, just not now.

It truly sucked being in a rush and not having the ability to take her time to study all of this new information. Twilight would be chastising her—

Nope, she shut that thought out right quick.

Anyway, the ruins weren't as creepy as some ponies would lead others to believe, though. They were certainly eerily quiet and dark, but there was just something about the place that made Winter feel at peace. Maybe it was the knowledge that there was literally nothing here to be a threat anymore? Not that the gryphons were a threat, but what was left after them might be.

The gryphons were utterly wiped out thanks to Silvertongue—sorry, Lord Silvertongue, as Dawn would insist—hundreds of years ago, and whatever means he'd done it with had left no trace of life in the entire city. Looters had then raided the ruins over the next few centuries, to the point that anything of value or importance was long gone, and it was clear that no security system was in place to stop them. This wasn’t some ancient, booby-trapped tomb.

Without any signs of life in the Wastelands, the ruins hadn't even been taken over by vermin, insects, or mold. It was more than a tomb, more than just ruins; it was a derelict monument to the extent one pony would go to in order to triumph over Nihila. Ironically, that meant it was now probably the safest place in the entirety of the northern continent to be.

As it stood, Sunspire led her and Hourglass along through tunnel after tunnel, passage after passage, his eyes glued to the magical residue that only he could see. It took over an hour of walking along through old, abandoned stone pathways before anything interesting happened, if only because they had taken so many twists and turns to find their way to the levels that Sunspire needed to go.

Sunspire led the two mares to a massive door deep within the bowels of the city. The signs marking the tunnel were, from Winter's best understanding, meant as a warning of sorts. Not of danger, but there was definitely a "keep out!" vibe to how they were portrayed. A few of the words she recognized seemed to indicate that only certain gryphons were allowed down here, probably those with proper permissions or authority.

"This is it," Sunspire said, replacing his goggles and rubbing his temples. "Whatever the source of the magic is, it's somewhere beyond this doorway. I can see it leaking out through the cracks in the frame, so it's not air tight at least."

Winter eyed the door curiously. "The writin' on the door itself isn't in the standard gryphon written script. It's runic language, meanin' the door has enchantments on it. I haven't seen anythin' like it on any other doors we've moved past so far." She turned to Hourglass and Sunspire. "Have you?"

"Sorry, I've been paying more attention to the trail of magic," Sunspire admitted sheepishly.

"All of the doors I've seen have been pretty normal-looking," Hourglass said with a shrug. "Just big slabs of stone, nothing too fancy. Definitely nothing like this, and not this big either."

"Well then, that makes this door unique," Winter said, tilting her head as she glanced over the runes. "What's more, these runic symbols are designed for protection, or more specifically, designed to protect whatever's inside from anythin' outside." She tilted her head the other way. "Or maybe the other way around, actually."

Hourglass grunted, annoyed. "Which is it? That seems like an important distinction."

"Hmm. See the way this spiral loops counterclockwise?" Winter pointed out the marking in question. "That means it's designed to prevent things from passin' through it. But I forget if counterclockwise keeps things from passin' through from the other side this way, or from this side to the other. Runes are very precise."

"If it's designed to keep things inside from getting out, it's not doing a very good job, then," Sunspire noted, adjusting his goggles. "After all, I can see the magic flowing out through the door."

"Maybe the magic's strong enough to overpower the rune?" Hourglass suggested.

"Or maybe it's just designed to keep gryphons who aren't allowed in from gettin' through," Winter said. To demonstrate, she pushed against the door with all her might, but it didn't budge. In fact, she felt as though it were pushing back, and the rune markings gave off a barely-noticeable glow. "See?"

"Maybe somepony stronger could force the door open?" Sunspire said, tapping his chin.

"Possibly. The runes are hundreds of years old and haven't been maintained, obviously. It should be easy for us to break through it, eh?"

"How do we do that?" asked Hourglass.

Winter tapped on the door with her hoof. "The door's made of the same kind of stone as the rest of the place, and like the rest of the place it certainly used to be cleaned and polished so that it looked presentable, yeah? I mean, unless anypony wants to suggest that the gryphons just lived in a dark, dusty city at the height of their civilization.

"Anyway, runes are usually applied with one of two methods: applyin' some sort of paint, or carvin' 'em directly into the material. Carvin' the rune has the advantage of makin' it more permanent, or rather more difficult to damage and disrupt. Takes a lot more effort to chip stone than to chip paint, eh?"

Hourglass nodded in understanding. "So this stone is so old and worn that it'll be easier to chip."

"Exactly." Winter then meaningfully pointed at the floor in front of the door. "And if I'm not mistaken, it looks like somepony else has already passed through here."

"What?" Hourglass and Sunspire said in unison.

They saw the same thing that Winter had noticed: a disturbance in the dust that suggested that the door had been opened within the past few days, a week at best, judging by the sheer disparity in the amount of dust. Not only that, but whoever had opened it had been wearing something on their hooves to make their hoofprints appear oddly-shaped. If Winter didn't know better, she'd say they were paw prints.

"But how'd they get through without breaking the seals?" Hourglass asked.

"Beats me. Maybe they're an expert in runes and know how to deactivate the magic temporarily. It's not exactly a common field to have expertise in, but I've seen stranger things."

Winter grabbed her canteen again, and as she'd done before with the rock wall back in the caverns, she splashed some water on one of the runic markings.

"No sense in waitin' around out here, though," she said as she worked. "Whoever's been through here never came back out through the doorway, so they're either still in there or they teleported out, meanin' we've gotta find out what's goin' on more than ever. Last thing we need is somepony messin' with things they don't understand, eh?"

She froze, thawed, and froze the water over and over again in rapid succession to weaken the stone around the rune, which didn't take long at all to do. From there, she was able to just chip away at the edge of the marking with her hoof, taking a large chunk out of it in the process.

Once that was done, she pushed on the door again with all her might. Though the runic glow was significantly weaker, the door still did not budge, so she repeated the process on another rune, and another, and another, until finally the door gave way when she, Hourglass, and Sunspire all worked together to push open one of the heavy slabs.

Stone ground against stone as the door slid open, revealing another dark, quiet, empty corridor beyond. Winter shuddered briefly as a feeling of cold dread washed over her; Hourglass and Sunspire did the same. The air beyond the doorway was so frigid that it chilled them to the bone, even before they started walking. Winter found herself tightening her scarf to keep out the cold.

The two younger ponies followed behind Winter as she moved through the doorway, guided only by the light of her horn. Sunspire again removed his goggles to keep his eyes out for the source of the magic, as there were a few doors strewn throughout the hall that could have led to their quarry, but so far didn't. Like the large door leading in, they each had their own runic seals that would take effort to break through, but they weren't what the trio was looking for.

Eventually, the hall took them to another large door, this one too marked with a runic seal, and like the main doorway into the corridor, there was evidence that the door had been opened by somepony else within the past week. Winter was beginning to mull over the facts she had thus far, and was fairly certain at this point that somepony had caused the anomaly somehow, though she didn't know who or why just yet.

Winter splashed a little water on the seal and damaged it as she had done before, allowing her to open the door by herself with just a bit of physical effort. The chamber on the other side of the door was much larger than she thought it had any right to be. The center of the room was dominated by a large obelisk made of some sort of black metal, which she recognized instantly.

"Crikey, would ya look at that?" she muttered with a grin as she approached the obelisk. "This thing's made of the same material and structured the same way as the northern Beacon is. This must be where the gryphons first developed it, and this must be the original prototype."

"Are you sure?" Hourglass asked, also approaching and studying the structure. "Looks a lot smaller than I thought it'd be."

"Trust me, I spent enough time studyin' the damn thing with Twilight and Dawn that I haven't got a doubt in my mind as to what it is." Winter nodded confidently. "Things are finally startin' to make a little more sense, eh? If there was a huge spike in Dark magic, then this must've been the source. Whoever wandered in here must've accidentally turned it on."

"It doesn't look like it's on," said Hourglass, tilting her head. "The real deal up north generates that huge magical field that everypony can see, not just Sunspire."

"Sunspire's just seeing what's left of the magic that was expelled, most likely. And since this Beacon wasn't powered by Nihila, that would explain why the magical signature is different." Winter clapped her hooves together in thought. "Now, we just have to figure out why the balance remained shifted and how to fix it."

"Um, I hate to break it to you, Winter, but that thing isn't the source of the magic I'm seeing," gulped Sunspire.

Winter blinked. "What? It's not? But you said the magic was comin' from this room?"

"It is. But not from that obelisk." He pointed over into a darkened corner of the room that neither Winter nor Hourglass had glanced at yet. "It's coming from that pony over there."

Winter's eyes widened in shock when she saw the pony in question. "What the fuck?"

The unconscious mare in the corner was tall, taller than almost any pony Winter had ever seen, her body thin and elegant. Her coat was a ghastly color, not quite purple but not quite black, and shimmered with luster under the layer of dust. Her mane and tail gleamed a brilliant, metallic silver, their shape and rigidity resembling blades. She was nude, making it easy to see her that her body's tone was incredibly lithe, leanly muscled and physically intimidating. Her long, sharp horn was longer than any unicorn's, and her great, long wings were of a greater wingspan than any pegasus.

"Does that mare have wings and a horn?" Hourglass asked in awe, stepping towards the mare in question.

Winter instantly leapt forward and put herself between the two. "Stay back!" she hissed. "Don't get any closer." She turned to Sunspire and gestured with her head for him to move behind her. "You too, kid. Stay close behind me."

"Um… sure thing?" Sunspire said, confused, as he did as he was asked.

"What's got you so worried?" Hourglass scoffed. "She's not even conscious, whoever she is. Maybe she's just asleep or in a coma or something?"

"You don't know who that is, kiddo, but I do. That's Nihila. As in the alicorn and former Goddess of Disparity? I know I told ya all about that story, eh? So just stay behind me while I try to figure out what to do."

Hourglass's eyes widened. "What? That's Nihila?" She glanced over at the mare, then back to Winter. "Are you having a giggle, Winter? That can't be Nihila. You told me she was destroyed like seven years ago. You saw it with your own eyes and everything."

"Hey, Miss Dawn told us that same story, about her father and her and her sisters and her friends defeating her," Sunspire chimed in with a knowing, confident grin. "Miss Dawn likes to talk about it a lot, actually. She says it was the proudest moment of her life."

Winter rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know, I was there and I saw the whole thing happen, but we're here now and I'm seein' with my own two eyes that Nihila is right there! And she's the source of the Dark anomaly that we've been followin' after all week! Now, if ya want to tell me that ain't a coincidence, please do so that I can know that you're either a nutter or an idiot."

"Well, it does make a certain degree of sense," Sunspire said, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. "Miss Dawn said that Nihila's Darkness was used to empower the northern Beacon in equal measure to the southern Beacon, which is empowered by her counterpart, Harmonia. That's what you say supposedly keeps this world's Light and Darkness in perfect balance, right?"

"Exactly. And it would be right up Nihila's alley to create a surge of Darkness to screw up that balance and cause destruction throughout the world."

"The only problem though is that the energy radiating off of her isn't the same signature as the magic that's radiating from the Beacon."

"Why is that a problem?" asked Hourglass.

Sunspire shook his head. "A pony can't just change their magical signature. I know we only ever think of it in terms of unicorns, but every pony has an innate, inner magic, typically tied to their special talents. Even ponies without cutie marks, like me, have a unique inner magic that eventually manifests when they get their marks. And I don't mean magic like the 'gift' I have, either."

"Similar to how every individual pony has their own unique DNA," Winter said. "Still, a bein’ as powerful as Nihila might have the capability of rewritin’ her own magical code, so to speak, so don’t go thinkin’ you’ve got all the answers yet."

Hourglass gawked at Winter. "Can she really do that?"

Winter shrugged. "Hell if I know, but as an alicorn her power is supposedly limitless. It might be possible. It's the only explanation for how she's here right now that makes any sense. Her physical body reformed after it was destroyed, and she attempted to empower this prototype Beacon with her new magical signature."

"And what, it was too much for her and she's been unconscious or dead ever since?" scoffed Hourglass. "So much for 'limitless' power, huh?"

"Then what's your idea for what's goin' on, eh? Seriously, I'd like to hear it, because the more ideas we have the better. Might help us figure out a solution here."

"I'm of the opinion that this isn't Nihila at all, even if it looks just like her," Hourglass suggested. "Maybe this is just some new alicorn that we've never seen before?"

Winter's eyes drooped. "That just happens to look exactly like Nihila?"

"Exactly. I know, it sounds outlandish, but unless we know for sure that Nihila can change her magical signature, we have to assume that that isn't Nihila, even if it looks just like her."

"Another possibility is that Nihila's body and spirit were separated," suggested Sunspire. "Her body is here but can't move or act, but her spirit is still trying to use her magic? I don't know why her body and spirit would have different magical signatures, but that's what I've got."

"Oh now you're just makin' stuff up," Winter huffed. With a sigh, she continued, "Look, whatever the situation is, there's no sense in arguin' about it here and now, eh? We've gotta address this situation, and fast. Maybe we should call—"

"I couldn't agree more," came a slightly metallic voice from the darkened opposite corner.

Winter's horn ignited in surprise, bright enough to illuminate the entire room. Her jaw, and those of Hourglass and Sunspire, dropped. "What. The. Fuck?"

There was an honest-to-goodness gryphon standing there!

He was much larger than them, easily twice their size. He was also incredibly old; his beard and hair were thin and they, along with his fur and feathers, were drained of color. While his natural body was frail, his… unnatural body was not. His wings, left talon, both hind legs, and his tail were composed of complex metallic parts. A large portion of his chest was covered in similar mechanisms, a yellow light resting over his heart. The left side of his face was similarly covered, with a green telescoping lens in place of his eye. His other, natural eye was glassy and white.

He also wore a purple robe made of silk; the robe, at least, looked brand new.

"Is that a bloody gryphon?!" Hourglass exclaimed, grabbing Winter's side and shaking her enthusiastically. "I thought you said they were extinct?!"

The gryphon solemnly shook his head. "I think you'll find, my dear young lady, that you're both absolutely correct, and sadly mistaken. I am the last of my kind, but there is only so much left to me that could be considered 'gryphon' anymore, hmm? I lack the means to propagate the species, shall we say?"

"Either that or you're full of shit and this is an incredibly fancy illusion spell," Winter snorted, keeping herself ready to defend herself and her wards from the new, very much awake intruder.

"It's not illusion magic, Winter," Sunspire said quickly, taking a tentative step towards the gryphon. "There's a lot of magic in all of those mechanical parts, but he's otherwise completely corporeal."

"Aptly put, young one, aptly put," the gryphon muttered. He then gave a heaving cough, and the yellow light on his chest blinked red. He pounded his good talon against his heart briefly, and the light flickered back to green. "Though the magic in these old parts isn't quite as proficient these days."

"So you're a real gryphon?" Winter asked, skeptical but willing to go along with it for now. "If that's true, then how come nopony's ever seen you before? These ruins have been explored and looted from top to bottom over the centuries, and nopony's ever come back saying they've seen ya before."

"Maybe he's been hiding in here?" Hourglass suggested as she gestured around the room. "We had to break a seal to get in—"

"Wait a tick, those were your prints comin' into the corridor!" Winter blurted, pointing an accusing hoof at the gryphon. She looked to Hourglass. "He wasn't hidin' out in here at all, so don't let him tell you otherwise. He'd have had to be here for centuries."

"Yeah, what would he have to eat if he did?" Sunspire asked sincerely.

"Exactly, there's no food or water down here, so there's no way this guy's been hidin' out in the ruins." Winter turned on the gryphon, preparing to cast a defensive spell at any second. "Start talkin', mate, 'cause my friend here might say you're the real deal but I ain't buyin' it."

The gryphon tilted his head, a little grin on his beak. "You seem well-versed in magic, my dear, so perhaps you are aware of the concept of 'pocket' dimensions?"

Winter blinked; the question came out of nowhere. "Yeah, I'm aware." She didn't need to tell him it was because she used one for her job, but she'd humor him a little bit.

"Well, the gryphon city of Aeropolis—that was our city's name, you see—contains within it one such pocket dimension, called the Sanctuary of Knowledge, in which I have resided for many, many years, for it is reserved for use by Lorekeepers like myself."

With a sad smile, he added, "By chance, I was within the Sanctuary when tragedy struck Aeropolis. When the Red Death swept through our halls and reduced the rest of my kind down to dust. Within the Sanctuary, I was safe, and it was there that I remained. Time's effects upon living tissue slows within the Sanctuary, hence why I still live to stand before you… though I regrettably do so alone."

Winter scoffed. "So by sheer luck you were spared from the fate of the rest of the gryphons? Heh, likely story."

"What's your name, Mister Gryphon?" asked Hourglass, stepping forward, apparently more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The gryphon bowed slightly. "Ah, forgive me, I meant no offense by my lack of introduction. I am Lorekeeper Gilderoy, caretaker of all gryphon knowledge, be it our history, our discoveries and creations in the fields of magic and technomagic, or our developments in the various more mundane scientific fields."

"I'm Hourglass," the young mare said with a polite curtsy.

"I'm Sunspire!" greeted the colt with a little wave. "I must say it's an incredible experience to meet a real gryphon, even though the circumstances aren't exactly pleasant."

Gilderoy looked to Winter, who was remaining pointedly silent. "And you, Miss?"

Winter glanced at her two young wards, who looked to her expectantly, then rolled her eyes. "Winter Glow. I'd say it's a pleasure, but I'm stressin' out a bit on account of there not only bein' a livin', breathin' gryphon right in front of me, but I've got the Goddess of Evil right behind me too. So y'know. Big day."

"Oh, I can imagine," the gryphon said with a light nod. "Forgive me for the sudden intrusion, incidentally. I shrouded myself within the corner when I heard you coming, and then you and your young companions here got right into the midst of discussing the ramifications of your discovery. I didn't want to interrupt such lovely discourse."

"I'm not particularly fond of eavesdroppers," Winter grunted.

"My apologies, Miss Glow. I meant no offense, of course. But I will admit that your debate was simply fascinating, for I have spent the past few days coming to much the same conclusions as you.

"You see, like yourselves I detected a strange anomaly within the ruins of Aeropolis. While I studied it as best as I could within the confines of my Sanctuary, there soon reached a point where I realized that I couldn't make an accurate hypothesis without further empirical evidence; whatever was the cause of the sudden shift in our world's balance was perplexing, and troubling."

He gestured at the body of Nihila across the room from him. "You can imagine my surprise when I came across the body of a pony within this chamber, where I traced the magic's origin to. Not just any pony, but an alicorn, a living, breathing alicorn, with a physical form that I could see and touch."

Winter gestured at the alicorn behind her. "You've been touchin' her? A little intrusive, don't you think?" She then paused, blinked, and shook her head. "Wait, why do I care? She's a goddess of evil and all that shit, she'd probably want you to get intrusive."

"Perhaps," he chuckled. "At first I believed that my body couldn't take the stress of leaving the Sanctuary and that I had died, and in my last moments I dreamed of a remarkable discovery. Naturally I needed to sate my curiosity, and it soon became clear to me that what I was seeing was genuine. I was truly seeing a real alicorn, in the flesh.

"Of course, I knew nothing of this creature that I saw before me. There was no record of an alicorn ever possessing a physical body before now, though a scholar of old once theorized on a potential method of summoning the alicorns Harmonia or Nihila to our material plane." He shook his head, disgusted. "Galdorhoff's methods were deplorable and he was exiled for his experiments, so I will say no more."

Winter recalled that name from somewhere. Galdorhoff. Didn't Silvertongue use that name when bragging to Nihila about the ritual he'd used to manifest her physically in the world? This story was starting to sound extremely—and frighteningly—legitimate.

"At any rate, I studied this alicorn mare's body and innate magical aura, but could come to no concrete conclusion." Gilderoy shrugged. "She is physically healthy as far as a typical pony is concerned, and yet she sleeps, comatose perhaps? Her magic is also unlike any on record, and certainly does not match with Nihila's, which is simple and easy to measure.

"So, like you three, I came to several conclusions. And I've since settled on the only one that makes sense in my mind, the only logical conclusion that could possibly be reached given the information I have, and this includes the new information that you've given me via your discussion."

"And that is?" Winter asked.

Gilderoy smiled. "That all three theories are both correct, and also incorrect."

Winter narrowed her eyes. "For fuck's sake."

"Oh, I understand the consternation," he laughed. "Believe me, nobody is more agitated by my hypothesis than myself."

"Try me, mate."

"You claim that Nihila's physical body was destroyed. First off, that implies to me that Galdorhoff's work ended up being successful, a fact that neither pleases me nor disgusts me presently, for it is an incredible feat of magic that deserves to be studied now that it's come to pass." He then gestured towards the alicorn. "And yet there she is in the flesh, healthy and whole.

"However, as has been noted, her magical signature is indeed different from that of the Nihila I know of, then one that powered the northern Beacon. I originally assumed that that meant Nihila still resided within the Dreaming and this was some new, as of yet undiscovered alicorn, and that theory could still potentially be true.

"But then again, it could be the possibility that Nihila's power is great enough that she could alter her magical signature. If she was still within the Dreaming, then that act could have potentially been so impactful that it shunted her into the material realm; if instead she was thought destroyed but somehow survived, then she is attempting to hide and recuperate, and what better place than the ruins of my once great city?"

"And while she's still asleep, we have no idea which of these theories is true or false, or if they all are or aren't, is that it?" Winter asked.

"Precisely. A real Grödinger's paradox."

Hourglass tilted her head, baffled. "A what?"

"Hmm? Oh." Gilderoy chuckled and shook his head. "Forgive me, I doubt many ponies know of him. Grödinger was a gryphon scholar who proposed a thought experiment that relies on some complicated quantum mechanics that I feel might be a touch too complicated for a quick and easy summary. Most gryphons simply boiled it down to the conclusion of the experiment, wherein a cat inside of a box was both simultaneously alive and dead so long as the box was closed."

Winter rolled her eyes. "Okay, well, if we're done talking about zombie cats—"

"Oh no, not a zombie, not undead. Simultaneously—”

"If we're done talking about zombie cats!" Winter interjected. "We have a serious situation here! Either this is or isn't Nihila who either did or didn't survive her supposed destruction seven years ago and who either can or cannot change her magical signature and who may or may not be doing so to avoid detection! Did I get all that right?"

Gilderoy nodded appreciatively. "That's a pretty succinct summary of the excessively complex situation, yes. Now, I have been devising a number of potential experiments that might lead to a conclusion, but sadly I require resources that I simply no longer possess, even within my Sanctuary. Fortuitous that you would arrive here when you did."

"Eh?"

"Well, perhaps you can aid me? I've come to understand that ponies have vastly improved on many of our old techomagic constructs, and I would require a great deal of such resources."

"I'm afraid that we don't have the precise means to do anythin' about this, either. We're just as stuck as you," Winter grunted. She then turned to Sunspire with a knowing grin. "But we know somepony who can help."

Comments

[RoboRed]

Nearly forgotten that the Mane Six never encountered Gilderoy in this timeline. This is probably his first time encountering with ponies in many years. At least he encountered a good group.

Nihlia re-manifesting is physical form is definitely concerning. Have her followers already completed whatever ritual it was that she set them out on? It's been quite while. Maybe it's a multi-part ritual and something is needed to re-bind soul with body or something.

Maybe this is all an elaborate trap.

Also the group is definitely encountering that Gargantuan queen again later (wonder what's up with that anyways).

[My name is R]

"Oh gross! It's all over the bloody floor too! Eww eww eww! Do we have to go this way?"
"Yes, we have to. Sometimes our line of work gets pretty gross, y'know? But ya can't wuss out just because ya don't want ta put your hoof in somethin' nasty." Winter shrugged, a cheeky grin on her lips. "If ya can't handle waded through a bit of grimey goo, then I don't know how ya expect to deal with everythin' else this job throws at ya."

I would suggest making a path with your magic.

The unconscious mare in the corner was tall, taller than almost any pony Winter had ever seen, her body thin and elegant. Her coat was a ghastly color, not quite purple but not quite black, and shimmered with luster under the layer of dust. Her mane and tail gleamed a brilliant, metallic silver, their shape and rigidity resembling blades. She was nude, making it easy to see her that her body's tone was incredibly lithe, leanly muscled and physically intimidating. Her long, sharp horn was longer than any unicorn's, and her great, long wings were of a greater wingspan than any pegasus.

Nihilia. Quick, somepony stab 'er while she's down!

Gilderoy nodded appreciatively. "That's a pretty succinct summary of the excessively complex situation, yes. Now, I have been devising a number of potential experiments that might lead to a conclusion, but sadly I require resources that I simply no longer possess, even within my Sanctuary. Fortuitous that you would arrive here when you did."
"Eh?"
"Well, perhaps you can aid me? I've come to understand that ponies have vastly improved on many of our old techomagic constructs, and I would require a great deal of such resources."
"I'm afraid that we don't have the precise means to do anythin' about this, either. We're just as stuck as you," Winter grunted. She then turned to Sunspire with a knowing grin. "But we know somepony who can help."

Or we could stab her, then bring the corpse for experiments. Just sayin'.

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Oh, tha queen is elaborated on somewhat in New World Order, the sequel to the original Crisis.