Cammie

by Jarvy Jared

15 - Crystal Chamber

Clip was, remarkably, coherent. Aside from the bruises stitched across his body, he spoke of no pain. Not even his horn throbbed. Yet it was clear he was in a daze—though his horn did not physically ache, the stunted stub had resulted in a fogginess that, according to Clip, made his head feel like it was partially submerged.

But dutifully he listened as they summed up everything that had happened. Chamomile was careful to keep her and Polar’s conversation to herself, figuring that it was a private matter. For her reticence, Polar seemed grateful, and while Gaea could tell that she left things out, she did not ask what had occurred between them.

“And that’s everything,” she finished, almost breathlessly. It occurred to her that all she had spoken about had happened only a few hours ago, yet she felt like she had recalled more than a month’s worth of horrific experience. Looking at her companions, she saw similar bewilderment on their faces. Time underground was a powerful spell. It melted reality and refashioned it into something that made recollection itself an ordeal.

Clip had spoken rarely throughout the explanation, and now she looked at him with concern. His head was bowed and his brow furrowed, showing that he was thinking, but with his head tilted this way, he could not help but point the stubby horn at them. Chamomile had to fight off her nausea, and next to her, Gaea and Polar were similarly fighting their own disgust.

“I see,” Clip said after a time. “And there’s no way for us to get out the way we came.”

“None,” Gaea said. “We fell too far. The opening’s sure to be sealed.”

“So traveling ahead—that’s our only option?” He glanced up, chewing his bottom lip. He was wrestling with a particularly uncomfortable thought, Chamomile realized, but seemed to be waiting for permission to share it.

“It… would appear to be,” Polar said, his discomfort with his friend’s condition very much apparent.

“I see,” Clip said again. “And yet, there’s no guarantee that up ahead… well, that there’s anything up ahead?”

“The lake,” Chamomile began to say, but Clip interrupted her: “Yes, the lake, but that could easily lead to another chamber, another cavern below us. It could lead to a mouth too small for us to navigate.”

They looked at each other. The possibility was there, and they had each thought of it, but only Clip had had the courage to bring to light what they all feared was true.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Chamomile ventured. “And… you being in this condition…”

He winced, glancing sharply up at his horn. “I… I am aware. I just don’t like the idea of having to wander through more caves.”

“None of us do,” Gaea said, “but… we’ll be together.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s right.” He looked, then, at the two mares. The look seemed to convey that he had sensed a difference in their behavior from how they’d acted before the fall. Chamomile wondered how he could tell. But before she could ask, he gave a self-satisfactory nod. “No choice but to go through, then. Well, that’s not so bad.”

“Was that a joke?” Polar asked.

“An attempt at it. Why? Was it distasteful?”

“No, it…” Polar blinked. “I didn’t think you joked, to be honest. Or even got the concept.” Next to her, Gaea coughed into her hoof, a poor attempt at concealing a surprised bout of laughter.

Clip pouted. “What? I do joke, from time to time. Ask Chamomile and Gaea. They heard me, right? You remember, back at the Badlands?”

Whether he had intended for it to happen or not, the resulting laughter at Clip’s fumbling brightened the somber mood. “All right, all right,” he grumbled at them. “If you’re done mocking me…”

Chamomile, once she had calmed, asked if he could stand. Clip tried to; he swayed a bit but remained relatively poised. When asked to walk, he did so in a circle, and seemed capable. “All right,” she said. “But if you feel any dizziness or weakness, you let us know so we can stop.”

“I will,” he replied. Then he tilted his head. “Actually, I had another question about everything you just told me. A quick one, I trust.”

“What is it?” Gaea prompted.

“You’ll recall that right now, we’re under those very same mountains we saw—the ones covered in snow. And we’re pretty far north, correct? And underground, too, with not much of a heat source besides those torches.”

“Yeah, and…?”

“So,” he said, punctuating the word by dragging a hoof over the ground, “if it’s cold up there, and, in theory, it should be cold down here—why aren’t any one of us shivering?”

None of them could answer him. Chamomile hadn’t even realized it. She had felt chills, yes, but actual drops in temperature? That hadn’t even occurred to her. But now that Clip brought it up…

Seeing their disquieting expressions made Clip whinny self-consciously. “Well, so much for an innocent question…”

“Maybe we’ll find out as we go along,” Gaea suggested. But it was really a prompt for them to get going, and none of them wanted to dwell on the matter any longer.

Their route was simple—they would follow the lake upstream as previously planned, to find out from where it originated. This plan, however, was now colored with Clip’s observation, though none wanted to point this out. They would use the torches as much as they could, but when they burned out, Chamomile’s magic would have to be substituted. If her magic failed, they would be reliant on Polar’s eyes. Doing so would make progress slow—hardly ideal. And should anything happen to Polar, then they would be left even more blind.

The torch cast long shadows over their backs and painted their faces in a ghoulish orange light. Their expressions were vaguely ominous, as grave as fireflies at summer’s final evening. If this was the last leg of their journey, none knew how long it would be, or even if they would see it through. But between the four of them was sealed a mute covenant. They had started this journey together. Now they would end it just the same.

After they’d packed their supplies, and after Gaea cast one final look at the glittering pool, they formed a close-knit line and proceeded forward. Chamomile and Polar took the lead, the latter holding the torch in his working wing. The ground sloped a little as they trailed the edge of the lake, which they followed as it narrowed to a gently flowing stream that babbled and gurgled almost seductively. Not even here was the air remotely cool. There seemed something remarkably artificial about the temperate atmosphere, but Chamomile couldn’t figure out what.

They passed columns of dolomite, rows of flowstone, and walls of both those and limestone, while the river steadily curved up and up at a very slight angle. They ducked under needle-like stalactites and herded around oddly shaped pillars of salt and stone, hoofsteps echoing sonorously behind them. At points, the sense that they were climbing faded, and Chamomile worried that the river they followed was of infinite and unyielding length; then there would be a turn, a clear slope, a sound of water rushing from one higher plane to a lower one, and her perspective would re-adjust.

They traveled in quelled silence, agreeing, perhaps, that further conversation would waste both air and time. Their shadows followed like mocking, warped pageantry puppets that stretched and bent at every flicker of flame. The torch itself burned quicker than Chamomile had thought it would—and she couldn’t tell how far they’d come, if “far” was indeed a justified approximation.

Polar yelped just as the flame crawled down the stick and stung him on the tip of his feathers. The pain caused him to jerk back, instinctively loosening his hold on it. “Agh—no!” he cried, for the crosstie-torch, its flaming end up, bounced away with a skeletal clatter. He darted forward to grab it, but missed. The torch was sent over the edge and into the water, extinguished—and leaving them in total darkness.

Chamomile’s heart raced and a panicked whinny nearly escaped her lips.

“Your horn,” Gaea whispered to her. Chamomile felt foolish—she’d become so reliant on the torch so quickly, she completely forgot about her magic. After a grateful nod towards Gaea—whom she could not see—she lit her horn.

Immediately, however, she noticed something wrong. “It’s not as strong as before, is it?” she asked Gaea.

Gaea nodded. “You must have drained it quite a bit earlier.” Her eyes stared at the thin beam of light emanating from the tip.

“In that case, we should act quickly,” Clip said. “Gaea, you have the extra ties?”

“Yeah. And Polar, you have the flint?”

“I do. Move the ties up here.”

Gaea reached into the belt’s pocket and brought one of them out. She awkwardly attempted to move it up, but stumbled a bit. The stick slid out of her hooves and landed in front of Chamomile.

She was about to grab it, when Clip bent down and took it in his teeth. “Careful!” Polar said. “You don’t want to get any spit on it!”

“Dn’t wrry,” Clip said around the crosstie. He turned and deposited it into Polar’s outstretched wing. “P-too! Those things taste like battery acid.”

“I don’t think I want to know how you know what that tastes like.” Polar positioned the stake vertically, then, after he’d balanced it, he struck it three times with the flint. This time, the flame was quicker in catching, and he brought the torch back up. He let out a sigh of relief. “Okay. That’s that. Gaea, how many do we have left?”

She paused to count. “Not a whole lot. Maybe four left in total. We used the rest earlier.”

Polar shook his head. “My fault for dropping it. I’ll try to avoid doing that from now on.” He wrapped his wing around the bottom of the tie, making sure to keep the flame away from the feathers, and brought it up. “Now, let’s see where we are—”

His screech caught them unawares, sending Clip tumbling back into Gaea. “What is it?!” Chamomile exclaimed, rushing to Polar’s side.

His whole face, already pale, had lost even more color. “Look,” he said shakily, nodding at an area in front of them.

She did, and nearly screeched herself.

Like a grinning madmare, a skeleton—a pony’s skeleton—sat against the far wall. Dust coated its exposed shoulders, limbs, and ribcage. Some sort of tattered jacket remnant hung mournfully around its torso, so heavily aged that it was without color, and a cap rested on top of its head—blue with gold trimmings, like a mail carrier’s. A horn protruded out of the skull, providing a painful reminder of Clip’s condition.

“A unicorn?” Gaea said, coming up to them to look. “What’s a unicorn doing this far north?”

Empty sockets and unnaturally pristine teeth answered her question. Gaea shivered.

Clip came to the other side and inspected the headpiece. “That cap… doesn’t it remind you of something, Chamomile?”

She thought about it. “Now that you mention it… it’s kind of what the mail carriers back in Bridlewood wear.”

“So it’s a courier of some sort.” She looked at Polar, hoping for confirmation, but he refused to look at the skeleton.

Clip looked around the body and noticed a strange lump placed behind it. Apparently unfazed by the skeletal remains, he deftly stuck his hoof out to grab it. It was a small satchel. Across its flap was some sort of insignia: a blueish heart, faded, that seemed to resemble crystal, with gold trims holding it up. “If I had to guess, they were delivering something,” he said, the only sign of his perturbation being the quiver in his voice.

“Mail? Down here?” Chamomile asked.

“It seems more likely that she came here as a last resort. Why else would she have no signs of supplies?”

As a last resort… Did that mean that she hadn’t meant to fall down here? And if that was the case…

“She must have come in from wherever the lake originated,” Polar said. Fear quivered in his voice, but it was lined with confidence at the possibility. “That could be our way out!”

Clip brought the satchel up and flipped open the flap. He paused. “I’d ask if we could stop and read the contents, but… I sense we really ought to keep moving.” He looked to Chamomile and Polar for guidance.

“Can you read while we walk?” Polar asked.

He shook his head, then pointed to his missing horn. “The torchlight will help me see, but I can’t hold the letter and walk. If I had my magic…”

“Here,” Chamomile said, before any awkwardness could settle. “I’ll use mine.” She lit her horn and began to pull out whatever was inside.

“Are you sure?” Gaea asked. “You could burn yourself out.”

“A simple levitation shouldn’t result in that. Besides, this feels pretty light. It won’t tire me.” The truth was that she had no way of knowing her limits. But she did know that worrying would do them no good. She hoped that she sounded calm enough and that they wouldn’t question it.

“In any case, let’s get going.” She looked at the skeleton one last time, mostly out of an uncanny sense of courtesy. If her mind was not playing tricks on her, she might have sworn it seemed to nod in an urgent manner, trying to hurry them along.

A letter was revealed while they resumed their close-knit walk. After Chamomile unfurled it, Clip made a disappointed hum. “The ink has faded in areas,” he reported. “Some of the words are missing.”

“But you can still make them out, right?”

“A few. Let’s see here…” He cleared his throat and, as they walked, began to read out loud by the light of the torch.

Scouting Report: NC005F

Carrier: Lucky Break

Designation: Priority Alpha…

Dear Princess…

The numbers you sent have been confirmed on our end. No more thaumaturgical background presence in anything but the most central of sectors. Magic is… If Starswirl was still around, he might have been equally impressed and terrified…

[“A whole paragraph is missing,” said Clip. “But it doesn’t look like the result of time. It’s more like someone scraped it away, with some fine instrument.”]

But we’ve noticed activity coming from under the… impossible to pinpoint. There’s little doubt in my mind that it has to be… must not have finished him off properly last time, or otherwise he held onto something…

Oh, enough of the formal talk. Auntie, I still can’t understand why you thought…

[“Auntie?” Gaea asked. Clip shrugged. Polar asked him to continue.]

… I’ve dispatched six couriers with six copies of this report. But only one of them contains the true message. Please forgive my… have to account for growing dissent in… And the Houses are… I fear calamity may very well be at our doorstep.

Trust nopony. We don’t know who has and hasn’t been compromised… just last Tuesday one of my guards apprehended a maid who’d loitered outside of Dad’s… poison in the glass she’d been about to offer…

[The text, Clip noted, now had odd dark stains on it. Not ink, though—lighter. “Tears?” Gaea suggested. But that surprised Chamomile, who did not think tears could last for years on a page—not unless they were somehow special.]

… Mother sleeps little, and I haven’t gotten more than a few hours. Trying to keep the Kingdom from panicking is proving a monumental strain… if you are also having nightmares, then it seems what Princess… is true. Our governance over the realms is in peril.

I’m scared, Auntie. More scared than I’ve ever been. Sometimes I’ll awaken in the dead of night, turn on my lamp and—I swear—see a smoky shadow dart into a corner and vanish… Sunburst wrote and said the School is experiencing greater amounts of insomnia and paranoia, the likes of which haven’t been seen since that filly tried to…

… I trust your judgment, but I worry anyway. You’ve defeated him twice, yes, but that’s two times too many. And now with magic… Tyrants should stay dead, even forgotten. Otherwise their shadows will rise again. And I don’t speak metaphorically…

… write to you soon… hopefully we’ll have stopped him before he escapes… Mother says she may have to seal herself away as a final countermeasure…

The letter ended there. There was no signature attached and no other sign of the original writer. They paused for a moment to let Chamomile fold it into one of their bags, yet none of them appeared ready to move on.

“Six copies, six couriers,” Gaea eventually said. “That’s one heck of a safety measure.”

“But safety for whom?” Clip asked. “Or from whom, for that matter?”

“The carrier—I guess that’s Lucky Break back there—never arrived, so… were they holding the complete report?”

“And the stuff about magic…” Polar murmured. “The nightmares… tyrants…”

“Him,” Chamomile said. Even uttering that specific word seemed to draw a foul presence around them. “Whoever he was… he had ponies scared. Like that Princess this pony was writing to.”

Then, almost unconsciously, they looked behind them. An immense darkness had spilled out over the walls and floor and had devoured the river flowing in the opposite direction. By now, they should have been comfortable with that darkness, having walked out of it. But at present this shadowy oblivion seemed supernaturally enhanced, made of shadows darker than void-full black, promising some hideous, macabre display of horrors to seize a pony’s wild and fear-driven imagination. This seemed like true darkness, the utter absence of anything not fit to that mold.

“We need to keep moving,” said Chamomile, unable to contain her unease.

They pressed on. All the while, Chamomile thought back to that unicorn, Lucky Break. What were they doing down here? If Clip was right, that they didn’t originally mean to, then that must mean they’d been forced into these caverns. They could not have failed to deliver the letter otherwise.

But if that was true, who, or what, had forced them?

---

They’d burned through two more of the crossties when Polar stopped without warning, and Chamomile, watching the water as it traveled behind a funnel-like column of rock and out of view, bumped into him. “Polar?”

“Do you see it?” he whispered.

“See… what?”

“There.” With a hoof he pointed down the tunnel. “There’s something glowing.”

“I don’t see anything,” Gaea said, and Clip concurred. Polar let out a troubled hum.

“No, I’m sure there’s something glowing up there…”

Chamomile wondered if his eyes were simply fatigued, or if they were constructing a visual hallucination as a result of their mindless wanderings. “Well, let’s keep going,” she said placatingly.

They didn’t have to travel much farther. Within a few minutes after Polar had noted it, Gaea said, “Wait, now I think I see something. It’s like… purplish?”

“I see it, too,” Clip muttered. And so had Chamomile. They glanced at each other, before curiosity hurried them forward.

After ducking around the corner—which led away from the flow of water they’d been following—they skidded to a stop. An imposingly tall, hefty chamber, rising an uncountable number of feet into the ceiling, was home to equally imposing crystals. Each one glowed a variant of the violet spectrum, but unlike the artificial glow from most other light sources, they seemed far livelier, like purple suns captured in rectangular prism. Some were small, grouped together in plate-sized nodes along the ground and twinkling like mauve stars, while others were as large as a pony, protruding out of the ground defiantly. Some were even larger and seemed to make up sizable portions of the wall, cutting through bits of stone and rock and coating every surface in that hue.

In the center of the chamber was a different crystal. Smaller than most others, it was a bright ruby red and glowed with a quieter luminosity. But it seemed to vibrate dangerously with power and life, as though the energy that flowed through it was only just barely contained by its crystalline structure. Something about it, more than its exquisite complexion, drew Chamomile’s eye. A quick glance at Clip revealed that he, too, was intently focusing on it.

But also written on his face was hesitation. It was something that Chamomile felt, as well. Something didn’t sit right with either of them, but that feeling of uncertainty seemed to exist only on the periphery.

Gaea was the first to speak. “Goodness,” she breathed. Throwing caution to the wind, she trotted past the others and up to one of the crystals embedded in the wall. Before Chamomile could call out to her, she reached a hoof out and touched it. “It’s warm!” Her hoof traveled to one of the pony-sized ones. “So’s this one!”

Polar was the next to move. He touched one of the nodes in the ground with the tip of his good wing. “Huh. So are these. They must all be warm.”

Curiosity persuaded him to also forgo all caution. He joined Gaea as she darted from crystal to crystal. “This must be why the whole cave isn’t a freezing hole for us!” she exclaimed. Her reflection jumped from crystal to crystal as she did, growing either longer or shorter, thinner or thicker, depending on which one.

Chamomile and Clip exchanged looks. He shrugged. “Well, we might as well take a look.”

Chamomile nodded. But she’d distinctly heard the note of trepidation in Clip’s voice. Yet surely there was nothing amiss. Sure, a chamber full of crystals wasn’t exactly natural, but as far as she could tell, they weren’t in any danger. Perhaps it was just a strange natural place under the earth, much as these tunnels were.

She trotted forward, glancing at each geode. She noted that the shimmer coming from them seemed to ebb like how a flame does, reminding her again of the star analogy. Intense and unyielding, it made her squint and look away, and she was surprised that neither Polar nor Gaea appeared affected. In fact, as she observed them, they seemed to grow a bit calmer. Gaea’s exclamations grew less frequent until she was hardly making any sound. The two moved between the crystals, watching their reflections stare mutely back at them.

Chamomile found herself approaching the red crystal. So was Clip. They looked up at one another, blinking, and that familiar peripheral sense of uncertainty flashed at the corners of conscious feeling. But it was only a flash—not enough to stop her from entertaining her own curiosity. She figured it was just her exhaustion talking.

Clip looked at the red crystal, and Chamomile joined him at his side. Their reflections appeared slightly warped, like a prank mirror. “These crystals,” he said, “they’re… familiar, aren’t they?”

“They look a little like the ones in Bridlewood. But I thought those ones grew out of the ground.”

“That’s what we were told. But we were also told that magic just went away one day, remember?”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Maybe. It might explain that unicorn skeleton from before.” He tilted his head, examining his reflection, but his focus was on that thought. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious to me that we unicorns didn’t all come from Bridlewood. We just live there now. And according to what we know now, all ponies used to live together all across Equestria. So maybe some of us—us unicorns, I mean—came from the north, too.”

It seemed not an entirely unlikely idea. But it didn’t explain the unknown, heart-shaped insignia on the skeleton’s belongings, nor, in fact, what it was doing down here in the first place.

While he stared at the crystal, Chamomile looked at their other companions. She saw that their mouths were moving, but, for some reason, she couldn’t hear them make any sound.

That peripheral uncertainty took a step towards conscious feeling again. She watched their mouths, deeply troubled, but unsure why.

Something’s not right.

She nearly started. Who’d said that? It sounded vaguely male, vaguely familiar. She looked at Clip, but he had a troubled expression on his face. He paced around the giant crystal, glanced up at the ceiling, looked back at the crystal, and hummed inquisitively to himself.

Yet she couldn’t hear his humming. Why couldn’t she…

Something’s not right, Chamomile.

That was… Astral? Why did it sound like him? Why did it sound so certain, too?

Trying to understand why she thought she heard him, she looked back at Gaea and Polar. Gaea had picked up a small gem of her own and was tossing it between her hooves happily. Polar had approached one of the taller crystals again to check out his reflection, but he seemed to be chanting something—something that she couldn’t hear. Which was strange, she figured, because it wasn’t as though he was that far away. By all accounts she should have been able to hear whatever he was saying, let alone understand it… right?

She then thought: where was the water? They should have still been able to hear it through the walls, since even though they’d veered away from it, it had to be somewhere close by.

Something’s not…

Why? She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop that thought—that imitation of Astral—from droning on and on. Another sound had to take its place—it was the only way to drown it out. She strained her ears, trying to focus on anything but the thought, anything that the others were saying, doing, anything—

Her eyes snapped open when she realized it.

She felt, suddenly, Clip back into her. He was shaking. They both were. “Chamomile,” he said—did he say it, or did he whisper? It was like his voice was being pulled out of him, one octave at a time. “This might sound crazy, but… I think something’s wrong.”

“It’s not crazy.” She forced herself to swallow. It hurt, or seemed to hurt, straining her ears just to hear his voice, just to hear her own. “I… I just noticed something.”

“Me, too.” He paused. “You go first.”

She sucked in a breath. “Clip… You can hear me, right?”

“Yeah… Barely.”

“Can you hear Gaea and Polar talking?”

“… No…”

“Do me a favor. Hit the ground. As hard as you can.”

He shuffled, confused. But then she felt him rear up and bring a hoof down. She closed her eyes, hoping she was wrong.

A moment passed. Then another.

“Chamomile.” Clip’s voice was hoarse. She, unable to speak, nodded. “I stomped, but… I didn’t make a noise.”

She let out a breath, and yet not even that elicited a sound—it was more like her mind supplied her with the memory of what sudden exhalation sounded like. “Yeah. That’s what I noticed.” She looked at him, catching how his eyes simultaneously revealed both his attempts at solving this, and the wild, undulating panic that she felt building inside of her.

“I can’t hear any movements,” she continued. “I can’t hear Gaea tossing that gemstone, or Polar chanting, or any sign of water. Or you stomping. Clip, there’s… there’s no sound here, except for our voices, when we’re close to one another.”

He nodded, agreeing with the assessment. “That… is certainly strange. And it makes no sense. We’re not in a vacuum—we can still breathe—so…”

She gulped. “What did you notice?”

She watched the bob in his throat go down, then up. “It… may be related to this… auditory phenomenon.”

He pointed at the red crystal. His hoof was trembling. “At first, I thought it was because of my head injury”—he said this with clinical detachment, making her shiver—“but now I am not so sure. Would you be so kind as to lean forward a bit and… listen to the crystal?”

She didn’t want to. She had a vague premonition that she would regret it. But the fear in his voice and eyes appealed to a perverted intrigue. With a nod, she leaned forward, her horn but a breath away from the crystal’s surface. She closed her eyes and listened.

There was nothing at first, and, combined with the dumb-hole they were in, the lack of sound seemed to drive her mind in circles, desperate to find the needed auditory stimulation. Then, however, she heard something—or perhaps felt was more accurate, yet it bordered so close to something she could hear, that it was maddening. The best way she could describe it was as a buzzing sensation, not unlike one she might feel were she to cast her magic—and like that, it seemed to come from inside her head. Yet she dimly sensed that it was also coming from the crystal. It was echoing—no, that wasn’t the right word. It was resonating. Like two magnetic poles calling out to one another.

And she felt herself being called, being pulled, like she was falling into the crystal itself. She heard her voice describe the buzzing to Clip, heard him agree, but everything seemed dulled and fading, like her head was submerged in a thick, viscous liquid. Deeper and deeper did that sensation bore into her mind, and louder and heavier did that buzzing rain, until it was all she could hear, feel, taste, touch, smell, until it was her, it was everything, all of existence condensed into the one throbbing note of buzzing eternal—

All at once, it stopped. A vast emptiness consumed her, like all had been wiped out.

Then—she heard it.

A voice, formless, shapeless, yet unmistakably male, shattered and scattered into infinite shards of nothing, reeking of unhinged, unrestrained malice.

I. SEE. YOU.

Chamomile threw herself backwards away from the crystal. When she landed, the lack of a sound to accompany her resulted in dizzying disorientation. She was hyperventilating but could hardly make out her breath over the sound of blood beating like sinister timpani drums in her head.

Clip ran to her. “Chamomile? What—”

She seized his outstretched hoof. She didn’t bother trying to hide her shaking, in either her body or her voice—shaking which she was grateful for, for it meant that her voice was still working. “We need to leave. Now.”

He nodded, fear freshly bursting in his eyes. “I’ll gather our supplies and start looking for a way out. You round up the others.”

She didn’t like the idea of him being any distance away, but there was no other option. She stood, legs about to give under her, and ran for the rest of their group, trying to ignore how her hoofsteps refused to thud.

Gaea was playing with her crystal gem, muttering something about how “This is sure to buy back the farm.” And Polar, over by another crystal, seemed utterly hypnotized by it. Chamomile didn’t bother being polite. She knocked the gem out of Gaea’s hoof, and when the earth pony was about to argue, she pushed her face into hers and said, “We’re going!”

Something in her voice must have pierced whatever compulsion had so effectively enraptured Gaea, for she blinked, as though seeing for the first time. “Going…?”

“Yes! Now!” Chamomile declared. She pulled Gaea to her hooves and, not bothering to explain further, ran over to Polar. “Let’s go!”

But he did not seem to hear her. He tilted his head, staring at the crystal, at the warped reflection therein. Chamomile tried to pull him away, but it was like something had nailed him to the ground. He would not—or could not—budge. Frantic, she tried to appeal to Gaea for help, but saw her instead draw closer to that same crystal, like a moth to a flame. Her eyes seemed to gloss over like she was falling asleep.

“Come on, you two!”

The way they’d come was shrouded in darkness—yet Chamomile’s eyes were drawn to it, like they sensed, before her brain did, that something about that darkness was wrong. Like it was a darkness that could not exist on this earth. She stared without comprehending, fear and loathing building to a shrieking symphony inside of her.

Then the darkness seemed to collect itself together, shaped by some external, invisible force. She couldn’t tell what shape, but somehow she knew it was some evil formation—like a part of her, left over from eons-gone days, when ponies were simpler, fearful, instinct-driven creatures, remembered what shape the first instance of absolute terror had taken.

The thing she heard in the crystal echoed—if it was memory or real, she didn’t know.

I. SEE. YOU.

Chamomile didn’t think. Instinct and terror guided her next action. In a sweeping motion that would have put even the strongest of ponies to shame, she twisted around and bucked the crystal holding Polar and Gaea captive as hard as she could.

It shattered—and seemed to do so a million times over, because sound rushed back in at an impossible volume. Her head throbbed and her ears seemed to be filled with a horrific screeching. It might have been the crystal; it might have been herself; it might have been Gaea and Polar, who collapsed and covered their ears with their hooves. In her peripheral vision, Chamomile saw the darkness coalesce and take on a pursuing stance.

She activated her horn and pulled the other ponies to their hooves; then, knowing that it might burn herself out, turned and threw them forward with all her might. They yelled, landing on their hooves just as she raced towards them.

“Move!”

This time, Gaea and Polar did listen.

Clip had made it to the other side of the chamber, their meager supplies dragged along behind him by way of the makeshift bag that he had slung over his shoulder. He was holding the torch in one hoof. “I think we can get out this way,” he said. “And I think the crystals are illuminating the passage for us, so—”

He looked behind them and his eyes bulged. “What’s—” He dropped the torch with a soundless clatter. Gaea and Polar began to turn around.

“It doesn’t matter!” Chamomile was nearly crying, the way she screamed. “We’ve got to get away—now, come on—”

Frightened galloping at last returned actual sounds. Racing past more crystals that shimmered and buzzed maliciously, they kicked up loose stones and rocks, their breathing quickly becoming labored. That impossible screeching noise seemed to pursue them with every step, though it was not as intense as before. Chamomile only looked back a few times, and each time she regretted—for while their way was lit by the crystals, behind them, like some massive, Tartarus-cursed beast, the darkness consumed the light left behind them. And it also seemed to be gaining on them no matter how fast they ran.

“Through here!” Clip shouted, sighting another path leading into a narrower section of the cave.

They cut through a claustrophobic corridor no less illuminated as before, fleeing as quickly as they could. Gaea, however, stopped midway, nearly leading to Chamomile colliding into her. “Gaea!” she shouted. “What are you doing?!”

“We have to slow it down somehow, right?” she yelled right back. Before Chamomile could push her forward, she planted her forehooves in the ground and grunted. Green sparks of magic traveled from her hooves into the ground, and a moment later, the earth around them shook with tremendous strain. It seemed to fight the sound of screeching in a battle neither could win.

Looking back, Chamomile could see the darkness gaining. “Gaea, seriously, we can’t stay here—”

“Give me a second!”

She wasn’t even sure they had one. But Gaea didn’t seem to care. She grit her teeth and, with a shout of her own, brought her hooves back up, before stomping the earth again.

Behind them, from the walls of the narrow corridor and the ground underneath, thick roots shot out and crisscrossed the path separating them from the darkness. That terrible thing crashed into the roots, shrieking in in-equine frustration. The whole corridor shook, but the roots had done the job—they’d stopped it.

Flower power, Chamomile remembered. “You did it!”

But there wasn’t any time to celebrate. The whole corridor was shaking, like the entity was trying to ram itself through. The roots trembled. Dirt and dust flew up. A squelching sound, like a raw vegetable being cut, noisily filled the thin space. The roots would not last forever.

But how? If that thing is just darkness, it shouldn’t be able to hit anything like that! Unless it was physical… unless it had form…

“Come on, you two!” Polar shouted back at them. They bolted out of the corridor and back into a wider tunnel.

Soon after, they came across a startling discovery: minecart rails. “These have to lead to a way out,” Polar said, panting. “But darn it all—if only there was an actual minecart!”

With no time to lose, the group followed the rails. They flew under creaking wooden posts covered by so many cobwebs it was like someone had thrown them everywhere. Abandoned mining equipment—pickaxes, empty gas lanterns, a few hard hats—blew past them. Everything was condensed into a taught package of fear, so tightly that they could hardly register what they saw, but a tiny sliver of Chamomile’s sane mind did: for not only did signs of previous evacuation activity stick out here and there, but—unless her eyes deceived her, which she hoped they did—so did grotesquely white fragments, segments, and other grisly remains of the excavators and miners themselves.

The rail was, thankfully, a straight path, and the occasional crystal—white, now, as opposed to the previous violet and red—illuminated the way. Then it seemed to grow brighter without the need for crystals—were they, at last, drawing nearer to the surface?

The earth suddenly shook, causing them all to trip and fall. A groan—impossibly guttural and filled with hatred—paralyzed them. Then there was a roar, a baritone, all-powerful roar that sealed doom in their hearts. Chamomile chanced a look backwards. Thin tendrils of shadow clawed and scraped at the walls, and began to thicken into nefarious limbs.

I. SEE. YOU.

“I hear something,” Gaea gasped. “It’s… in my head? How can that—”

Chamomile forced herself to stand. “Don’t think—just run!”

They all rose and resumed their flight. The corridor curved, slanted upwards, twisted, turned, teased at escape—all the while, Chamomile thought the darkness was just a breath away, no, less than that. Her fear hurried her steps to the point where she nearly overtook the others.

It was for this reason she saw before they did the corridor widen into another maw. She also saw the rails suddenly end, like they’d been chopped off, and she dragged her hooves to avoid careening over. Peering over the ledge, she was surprised that water churned below them into a terrific vortex, emptying out into more unseen chambers.

She looked up. A rickety wooden bridge protruded partly across the chasm. Many of its legs looked like they were close to rotting away. On top of it were the twisted remains of the tracks, bent at painful, impossible angles. And beyond that, glimmering like a halo, was some kind of whiteness—it could only be the surface.

The others reached her and saw what she did. “We need to cross this,” Clip said. “But how?”

“Rope?” Gaea suggested, trying to catch her breath. She stumbled around them to hastily check the bag that Clip carried. “We might have some…”

“Even if we did,” Polar said, his breathing the least labored of theirs, “assuming we could latch it onto something up there, any weight could drag that whole bridge down with us.”

The earth rumbled. The darkness was growing closer.

“We can’t stay here!” Gaea exclaimed. “Should we take our chances with the water?”

Clip was grim. “It’s as likely to kill us as it is to sweep us into some deeper part of the cave. With that thing still following us.”

“If only both my wings worked,” Polar groaned. “Then I could fly us up there!”

The ground rumbled again. Another sound—laughter, hazy and discordant, poured out of the rocks and shook everything around them. It was impossible to tell how far or how close it was.

They all began to speak at once, all except Chamomile. Her mind raced. No rope, no wings… was there truly nothing left? She looked helplessly at the others, at Gaea, at Polar, at Clip, whose broken horn jutted depressingly out of his head—

“That’s it!” she exclaimed, making them all jump. “I can levitate you all up there!”

“What?!” Polar looked at her. “Are you serious?”

“I am. I should be able to… or push myself to, at least.” She cringed at how uncertain she sounded. “It shouldn’t be that hard, though, right? I’m pretty sure you guys don’t weigh as much as those steel beams.”

“But with those,” said Clip, worried, “you had another unicorn to help.”

“Your magic’s already on the fritz,” Gaea pointed out. “What if it stops working in the middle of—”

Chamomile shook her head. “We don’t have a choice. We have to try, or else we’ll…” She had no idea how to finish that sentence, but by her friends’ expression, they knew well enough.

And they knew she was right. They had no other choice.

They quickly figured out their weights and set up an order, doing their best to ignore the tremors all around them. Polar was to go first. Chamomile lit her horn and concentrated, feeling her magic surround him in a bubble. When it didn’t dissipate, she tried to lift him, and found success. Then she carefully levitated him across the chasm and onto the platform.

Her head was throbbing after that, but it worked—he was across.

“Quickly!” he hissed, gesturing for Clip to go next.

She tried to go quicker this time, but her magic momentarily popped out of existence while she experimented with lifting him. “Just concentrate,” Gaea murmured. Chamomile nodded and tried again. This time she was able to carry him up there.

Then she groaned, falling to her knees. Her head felt like somepony was whacking her horn over and over again.

“Chamomile!” Gaea came to her side, helping her stand. “Gosh, you’ve gone pale—you might not be able to—”

“Never mind that, Gaea.”

“But you—”

“Never mind!” Chamomile shot her a scared yet determined look. “You’re going up there, one way or another!”

She tried to ignore the plain worry on Gaea’s face. Wrapping her in her magic, she was about to lift her. Then—she gasped. The throbbing became too much, and her magic sparked out once more.

“Chamomile!”

Gaea made to rush to her side, but Chamomile, fighting through her pain, forced her magic through her horn. A somewhat sickly glow swept over Gaea, stopping her in her tracks. Then Chamomile began to lift. The throbbing in her head was matched by the sheer desire to succeed, but she had to lift Gaea painfully slowly, afraid that pushing herself anymore would cut the magic short.

But she did it. With a gasp, Gaea leaped out of the hold and landed on the rails above. The wooden bridge creaked and moaned, and they all stood still, afraid it would fall.

In that moment of stillness, they heard the roar again. Chamomile looked behind her. Far off in the distance, behind all those railroad tracks, the darkness had triumphed against the roots, and had formed into a somewhat recognizable shape. Vaguely equine, with a twisted extension resembling a horn protruding out of its smoky head, it glared at her without need for eyes. More darkness gathered under it to form a massive, tenebrous body.

Chamomile felt spent. She could barely summon the strength to stand, let alone cast her magic. The others were calling out to her, imploring, begging her, but she could only stare at the creature of darkness that advanced towards her, advanced without need of hooves or wings.

I. SEE. YOU. LITTLE. PONY. THERE. IS. NO. ESCAPE.

She believed it. She was tired, so very tired… she would be trapped down here, by that thing, for all time… she would never see anypony else again, not Zipp, or Clip, or Polar… or Gaea… Gaea, whose lips had come so impossibly close to her own…

(That she remembered wanting to know filled her with a mad glee …)

YOU. ARE. MINE.

… she would never see Bridlewood again… never make tea again… hear poetry… see her son—

Juniper.

YOU. CAN. RUN. BUT. YOU. CAN’T. HIDE—

Juniper!

She seized his name, his face, his essence, seized it with her mind, then her heart. She struggled to her hooves.

Behind her, as if sensing the change, the figure began to advance even quicker, gathering more shadows into itself until it resembled an enormous, caliginous cloud, exuding malice with every turn of its mane, every throb of its body, every tremor of the earth.

Chamomile lit her horn. She felt her magic fall upon her, felt the throbbing so intensely that she nearly passed out. She forced herself to be lifted—the effort of a few inches seemed to suck her newfound energy dry.

NO. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME. I WILL HAVE YOUR BODY—

Juniper!

Chamomile was screaming incoherently, aware of everything and nothing at all. Her vision collapsed into a singularity. The cave vanished. Her friends vanished. Blind, desperate, on the brink of insanity, she rose higher and higher and guided herself by instinct alone to the other side.

NO! I HAVE WAITED TOO LONG! I WILL BE FREE!

Juniper! Juniper! Juniper—

The throbbing burst, like an engorged blood vessel. Her magic cut out before she even registered her horn exploding with agony. Momentarily, her vision returned, and she saw her friends in front of her. They were reaching out to grab her.

At the same time, the darkness shot forward, surrounding her with a tyrannical hold. Something screamed blasphemies inside her head.

She knew, then, it was too late.

She found Gaea’s face, her lovely, terrified, tear-stricken face. She smiled at her.

Juniper… Gaea… everyone…

Then the darkness stole forth, stole her vision, stole everything she had left in her.

Comments

[SirCarrot]

What just happened?

[Thought Prism]

Never mind, death may well have been a better fate than being puppeted around by Sombra.