Away and Afar

by PropsValroa

Chapter 16

Collapse also listened but didn't hear a sound and stepped away from the hole. "I guess it truly is bottomless or is just so deep that we couldn't hear it." she stated and watched as Magloria trapped the fish into the bubbles of water. "Hey, that's a *bright* idea!" Collapse replied in an excited fashion. "I got something for that." Collapse stated and summoned in her water bottles that Magloria had made before and took off the makeshift harnesses they made for them and took one of the harnesses and tied the 3 fish together.

Moving the water bottle over she looks to see if she could fit the 3 fish inside of the water bottle to carry around like a portable lantern. If the bottle couldn't fit the fish she would say, "I could carry them around in an orb of my shield." she suggested.

Unfortunately the fish were simply too big to fit into the small water bottles. Even one fish wouldn't fit in all of them.

Despite this, Magloria waved off Collapse's suggestion and shifted her magic, causing the water to peel away from the fish and flow back into the river. The fish didn't seem affected, and Jump Start knew why.

"Oh! It's those walking fish! I thought I recognized the colour! I do hope they don't mind being so close to each other though." she said.

Magloria pointed over the hole, sweeping her hoof across it and the river ahead. "And now we can easily tell where exactly the holes are, and hopefully avoid them." she said.

Collapse rose an eyebrow at them fish, and went ahead and unsummoned the water bottles which vanished in a gold flash. "Walking fish, huh? Well when we get our use out of them we'll untie them and put them back to normal." she moved along the shore and followed the others forward. "I wonder how these holes formed, it seems highly unusual...maybe magma tubes or something? I don't know." Collapse shrugged.

With the new super light, they could see far further ahead than they could before. It was strong enough that they could see the cave wall on the other side of the crag they were next to, barely. This showed that the gap was at least 100 meters across.

Even despite the light's power, they still could not see the bottom.

"They could've been magma tubes, maybe, but maybe it used to also be filled with water?" Jump Start suggested.

"Then where did the water go? Did it just sink even further?" Magloria said, making Jump Start shrug in response.

As they kept going, the shoreline between the river and the drop below got thinner, down to only several meters in width. Still enough for them to safely walk, but those who weren't brave or foolish couldn't help but want to stick to the river's side, in fear of falling off.

Collapse looks across at how the surroundings were. It was both impressive, yet also terrifying. She would stick to the edge of the river being careful to stay as far from the edge. Yet at the same time she was worried of what could also be in the water and pays close attention to that as well. If she saw anything out of the realm of the ordinary she would inform Magloria and Jump Start.

"You know maybe this realm of the world is very cavernous for whatever reason. Who knows what could be down there, there could be hundreds of levels so to speak. Maybe there are other seaponies or creatures down there at the bottom. Maybe this area of the world is not entirely solid and has large open areas like we've just seen." she ponders as they walked along.

"And besides, whatever happens down here will never be known by those on the surface. That is the enigma of this place, and...whatever is down below. For as advanced as we are on the surface, we really don't know a lot about the world. Also another thing, I wonder what it would have been like if we had taken an airship instead of a regular ship. I know that airships are expensive to build and maintain and likely couldn't fare too well in sea weather though." Collapse adds.

"Yeah, sure..." Magloria sighed, just letting Collapse monologue for a bit. Jump Start didn't know what to say about all of Collapse's theories, since she was too busy concentrating on the floor below them so that she didn't fall off the edge or into the river.

From what Collapse could see within the waters, using the light to see better, there were still the aggressive little fish, but they made no attempt to jump out at them. In fact, they swam away from the bright light pointed at them.

Partway through the crags they came across their first obstacle, or technically second if you count the crags in the first place. The sound of water rushing up ahead could be heard. "You remember how the seaponies told us that there were gaps that created waterfalls here? I think that's one." Jump Start said.

Upon inspection, they could see that there was a large gap in the ground, with water spilling over and down the side of the crag.

Collapse went silent upon noticing that neither of them were really engaging with her discussions. She didn't want to annoy them and stayed weary as they heard the sound of rushing water.

"That is quite something to look at. I wonder where the water goes..." Collapse mused. "You know what? How about we find out." Collapse said but didn't move any closer to the edge. Her horn glowed a bit brighter and a small sparkling gold orb was launched from it and began to fall. Much like a flare, her horn returned to normal brightness after that. Collapse watches to see if her small sparkling orb would reach anywhere before it would inevitably fade out. She was actually a bit terrified of these void crags, they were huge, and deep with no end in sight.

Well the golden orb of light definitely reached somewhere. The problem was it didn't stop going. It became a small light, then a distant small light, then a tiny light, and then nothing. Looks like wherever the bottom was, they couldn't reach it.

Once that was over, Magloria returned her attention to the water gap in front of them. "I could freeze this over, but it would risk collapsing with all the moving water. I could make it stronger, but it might be a just a big waste of magic when there's a better option. Any ideas?" she asked the others.

Jump Start was thinking, but didn't get anywhere yet.

Collapse watched how it fell and vanished. It seemed to be for all intensive purposes to be bottomless. That was both captivating, yet also terrifying at the same time. Watching how it vanished was mystifying. "No end in sight." she commented.

Collapse was thinking. "Well, what we could do is freeze it over and just run over it fast before it breaks? I do have an anti gravitational spell but I don't have a way to really control it. Could maybe like, contain the two of you inside a barrier around myself and use my telekinesis to guide us over the water. Or I could try parting the water with my barrier magic but it may be moving too strong for that." Collapse suggested.

Magloria thought over Collapse's suggestions. "Trying to quickly cross it is just asking for something to go wrong. Not only is the ice slippery, but the water will make it doubly so, plus the added force from the running will break the ice faster."

"Using barrier magic is just asking to be pushed off the side, to never be seen again. Think about it, what's going to have more water pushing against you? Yourself, or a large barrier? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical."

She then gave a nod. "Telekinesis however could work. As long as you can concentrate well enough, one of us can easily allow the others to cross *over* the gap, then once we're on the other side, we can levitate the rest across." she said.

"So, Jump Start, you're first." Magloria began channeling her magic. Jump Start gave a mild squeak as the magic encased her, slowly bringing her over the water, until she was on the other side.

Magloria let out a huff from the effort. "Alright Collapse, you can do me now. It'll give me time to recharge for when I do you."

Collapse nodded to Magloria's statements and was satisfied with her explanations. No objections were made to Magloria's statement and she looks to Magloria and nods. She was nervous of that suggestion but Collapse knew very well she was capable of doing it. Besides, she's moved large machines and parts before so she would be able to do it. Magloria was a mysterious mare, one that Collapse wanted to some day call her friend - and perhaps more. Knowing that, she would be very careful.

"Yup. I'll be very careful with you." Collapse smiled warmly as her golden glow swirled around Magloria and gently lifted her up. Something about Collapse's telekinesis was calming, maybe it was the color or just how Collapse was herself. She gently levitates Magloria over the water slowly, carefully. Magloria is set down gently and the glow vanishes.

Collapse smiles sweetly. "There you go." she said, lifting up a hoof slightly.

Magloria turned around and addressed Collapse. "Alright, now it's your turn." she stated, letting her magic take hold.

It was a little shaky at first due to the distance, but it soon stabilized when she began to move over the water and closer to Magloria.

Once she was on the other side, Magloria let go. "Alright, that's going to be a pain to cross when we return, but we can't do much better." Magloria shrugged as she began walking again.

A hollow sounding wind started blowing through the massive cavern. It was a light wind that only lasted for a few second, yet it was still surprising considering a cave doesn't normally have wind at all.

Collapse thanks Magloria for picking her up across the water and then proceeded to follow Magloria. "Indeed." she stated as she notices the wind that blew through the cavern. "You think we might be nearing the exit? I've never felt wind in this place until now. Or it could be something else, maybe there is some sort of air vent that vents air up from below." Collapse suggested, looking back to Jump Start.

"It could be anything. Even... a massive dragon!" Magloria said, moving closer suddenly as she shouted the last part. She let out a brief laugh as Jump Start tried to calm herself down from the sudden fright.

"I'd rather it just be the exit, thanks..." Jump Start mumbled.

They had to pass by several more watery gaps along the way. Some as large as the one they needed to levitate across, and others being small enough that they could simply jump over or walk through.

Up further ahead the river still went on, but they could see that it suddenly split into two lanes, divided by what appeared to be a large rock. Somehow the rock didn't look like a regular rock. It wasn't smooth enough.

Collapse grew nervous upon Magloria's shout there. She grinned in nervousness at her loudness, she was hoping nothing was in here to hear that. It may attract unwanted attention. Collapse was sure to remain on high alert going forward.

"Y-yeah I was going to say, massive dragon but if that was the case...a dragon would have to even crawl down here in the first place which would mean that there would be a massive exit somewhere..." Collapse mused in nervousness. She shook a little bit in the fear of imagining that.

Moving over the other gaps Collapse would have moved Magloria and Jump Start across them with her magic gently as she did before. Upon arriving at the split she looks at the rock.

"I bet you that is some kind of creature disguising as a rock. Maybe another lobster or something like that. We shouldn't go near it until we are sure." Collapse stated quietly upon seeing it.

"You say that like massive exits aren't a possibility. There's every possibility that the exit is as large as the cavern that we walk through, and there's every possibility that we'll encounter a creature like that, however small the chance is." Magloria casually stated as she looked to the rock.

"That doesn't look like a lobster rock to me. It's at least triple the size, and they were good at pretending to be rocks. This... isn't. Doesn't even look like a rock." she said as she got closer to it.

There were a surprisingly large number of... sharp edges. As if someone had cut the stone. They didn't even know how large it really was, since some of it was sunken into the river.

"That could definitely be the case, thinking about it. The exit wouldn't be under an ocean floor, I would figure that much or else everything down here would have been flooded. I didn't think about that earlier." Collapse replied as they got closer to the rock. Her mind began to fill with ideas upon Magloria's statement.

"I have an idea of what this could be. It definitely looks artificial and it looks so out of place to me. I have an idea, what if there was a civilization down here that died out thousands of years ago and they made this? Or it could be something else entirely. I wouldn't be surprised if something from space ended up down here, honestly." she ponders, putting a hoof to her chin.

Both Magloria and Jump Start looked bewildered at Collapse's suggestion about where the stone came from. "A civilization I can understand, the seaponies down here are proof of that, but *space?*" Magloria responded, shaking her head.

"We're under several kilometres of water and rock, and you think it came from space?"

She scoffed, looking at the rock again. "Though I'm not sure if this is seapony work or not. Why would they want to split the river?"

"Maybe the river used to be higher? Or it could just be decoration?" Jump Start suggested.

"If it was seapony work than it would be likely that they would have living areas in this part of the cavern. I haven't seen any. Unless they once lived here a really really long time ago." she suggested, looking to Jump Start.

Looking back to Magloria she rose an eyebrow. "Hey, you said there is every possibility no matter how small the chance is. But I get your point." she nodded, but was a bit disappointed at the instant rejection to her idea, as unlikely as it may be. Collapse would look to the rock closer, maybe it was some type of hidden machine or a statue?

"Yeah, but there's a difference between a small chance, and a chance that's so low that it defies all logic, unless it was somehow *teleported* down here." Magloria pointed out.

The rock didn't look like a statue or machine, at least from what they could see of it. Parts of it were stuck out slightly further, like odd decorations around something or pillars.

What was interesting was that most of the rock still seemed to have it's edge and details to it, and hadn't been smoothed down by time. Algae however had accumulated on the wet parts.

"Well that is what I was imagining. It's not like it crashed down from above, but whatever it is or wherever it came from it certainly is out of place here." she looks at the parts that stuck out. "Hmm, definitely took a lot of effort to make this. I wonder who made it. It was probably carved into shape." Collapse said in wonder and then stepped back.

"So, left or right? What do you think?" she asks Magloria and Jump Start, she wasn't sure.

Jump Start moved a bit closer to see where the rivers led. Turns out, they didn't split for very long at all. Only a short distance away in the darkness did the rivers merge back together again.

"That's odd... why would the rivers split then join together again? It's like they moved around the rock thing, or something." she said, curious about why the rock was even there in the first place.

"We should probably think about this later, unless you want to jump into the river and get a closer look. I'd rather keep going, but..." Magloria said.

Magloria nods. "Alright, fair enough. First though we need to make sure that the water isn't filled with fish that want to eat us." she said, thinking about how they could test the water without using themselves as bait.

"Ah, I've got an idea." She took out a few of the blue mushrooms that they hadn't eaten yet and levitated them over to the water, letting them rest atop the current, but without letting them float away.

5 minutes passed, but there was no sudden lunging or grabbing of the mushrooms. She pulled them out, revealing only marks where some other fish must've found them instead, no teeth marks.