Back in the world of archeology, Desert Dust splits off on her own adventure to retrieve a mysterious object lost in the mists of time: the Shroud of the First King - A quest which will take her to places more distant and dangerous than ever before.
After the rescue of her mother and their safe return to Manehattan, Desert Dust is once again sent on an expedition to secure funding for the aging and slowly-worsening Institute. Travelling across the world, from the crumbling city of Emilial to the faraway, accursed Isle of Bones, she recovers further pieces of the puzzle. What power does the Shroud hold? Where has it been hidden, and by whom? There's only one way to find out.
The central metro station beneath the regal and elderly city of Emilial bustled with activity as the delicately-crafted clock which hung from the vaulted ceiling struck nine. A metro train slowed to a halt with a low humming and screeching of wheels as the brakes stopped the vehicle completely. Amid the chaos, a single pony stepped out of the train. Clad in a scruffy old overcoat, shirt and battered bow-tie, Desert Dust had arrived. Trotting unassumingly along, she exited the station and stepped out onto the murky, mist-laden streets above. As she continued through town, she reflected on the events which had set her off on a journey here.
'It was most generous of you to make donations for the Institute’s upkeep, but tell me.. What's the catch?' Scrollwing raised a wrinkled old eyebrow. Sitting across the desk from him was a smartly-dressed mare, with a bewitching smile and eyes that seemed to glimmer like stars.
'As I’ve told you, all I want is to have an expedition funded for the Shroud’s retrieval.' She stated bluntly. Daring Do, who had been sitting with a silent scrutiny about her in the corner, now piped up.
'The Shroud of the First King is an old pony’s tale. It doesn’t exist.' The mare only smiled.
'It exists, trust me.' She handed over a report. On the top, her name was visible alongside the researchers whom had provided the information. Mrs Iris simply sat back, hooves tapping together on the table as she watched Daring’s expression change, with some marked amusement. 'Are you convinced, Miss Do?' Daring looked the document up and down. The report, written as a brief notation, went as follows:
'The Shroud of the First King has been known to many as a myth for years, but we may have found some evidence as to the Shroud’s existence. On a routine archaeological dig in a region East of Trottingham, we uncovered an ancient crypt belonging to a noble family who had lived in a house on that spot many years ago. In the crypt was a coffin, wherein we uncovered not only a well-preserved skeleton, but also a scrawled note on a wax tablet pertaining to some connection between Emilial and the Shroud. Something to do with trade routes and a historic conspiracy for the assassination of King Nanewulf in the Second Era. More information will be sent as it is received.’
Daring looked up from the report with obvious scrutiny. The mare simply looked back with an earnest, cold glare. The adventurer shook her head, sighing.
'I just don’t have time for this sort of thing. I’m in the middle of an excavation at Longtail Creek, and that’ll take months to finish up.' At this, Scrollwing looked over at Daring with disdain.
'Miss Do, the Institute is struggling in its funding at the present time. An expedition like this could secure our financial future for a long time yet. I urge you to reconsider.' He pleaded. Daring sat back in her chair, scratching at her chin for a moment. Then it came to her.
'I know someone who might be interested in your proposal.' Daring smirked. Ten minutes passed, and Dust entered the office, her mane beraggled from work and her bowtie quite lopsided. She sat beside her mother, and looked shyly at Mrs Ira. The mare smiled back.
'So.. What did you bring me in for, mother?' She asked, turning to look at Daring.
'Mrs Iris here has a proposition, and we were wondering if you’d take her up on it.' In the corner of the room, Mr Scrollwing smiled warmly at the turn of events. The report was passed over, and upon Dust’s scanning over it and her verification of the facts of the matter, she made a final decision. She gave a curt nod and a smile.
'I’ll do it.' At once, Scrollwing and Mrs Iris smiled in unison.
'Oh, Celestia bless you, Miss Dust.' He uttered. 'Finally, a new source of income for the Institute will be in place.' As Scrollwing celebrated in his own quiet little dance of sorts, Mrs Iris smirked and held out a hoof, which Dust took tentatively.
'It’s a pleasure to have you on the case, Miss Desert Dust.'
A week followed, in which the necessary data was gathered together and Dust packed her saddlebags, ready to be off to the city of Emilial. Emilial was an ancient city, lived in and built upon for centuries since its construction in the First Era, a period of simplistic living and feudal conquest which was overcome by an age of renaissance and scientific discovery in the Second Era. Since then, the city had become most well-known for its vast amount of libraries and colleges, not to mention its own world-famous Hoofstrike University, a building central to the city which was erected by King Nanewulf (Then the ruler of the city for a number of years). Still a capital city of culture and learning, Dust found herself looking forward to her stay in the city, wherein she would be authorised to utilise a spare study in Hoofstrike University itself as a living space. Taking the train, she settled down on her long ride into the heart of the old city.
Pulling herself back to the present, Dust continued onward down the murky street, trudging along as a light rain began to fall over the city. High, gothic facades loomed over her from either side of the street, ancient libraries intertwining with rustic housing and the occasional relatively-modern shop front. Out of the fog before her, out of the high curling mists, came the dark silouhette of the University at the centre of it all. The huge, round tower at its highest point tapered into a sharp spire, and further down, the building extended out into a mass of smaller buildings, each painstakingly and ornately constructed of ancient marble and granite-like stone, with stained glass windows and ironwork which swirled about the exterior of the facades. Dust, looking upon this crouched, beautiful shambles of a University, could do nothing but smile inwardly as she trotted up to its main entrance and proceeded inside. After signing in at the lobby, she was directed up to the study which would become her home. Located on a lower floor of that high tower she had seen on the way in, she made herself at home in the wide-open study area, placing research materials haphazardly across tables and chairs, and lashing her saddlebags into the corner by the door before throwing off her clothes and retiring to bed after the long journey there. The last thing she saw from her bed before closing her eyes was the moon, shining in through the opaque glass doors which led onto the stone balcony beyond. The moon rose silently over the ancient domes and spires of the city, and Dust fell into the warm embrace of sleep.
The next day, work began. Dust rose from her bed in the morning, pulling on a fresh outfit and tossing her old clothes into a pile to be washed. She pored over the material she’d been provided with, and determined her course of action. The research notes she’d been given specifically referenced Emilial’s history, along with a solid link between the assassination of King Nanewulf. Also enclosed in her notes was a copied print of the wax tablet which had been found in Trottingham. The tablet spoke of the Shroud, and how it had somehow been passed along through many families of wandering mercenaries, warlords, simple bandits and finally, a sheik who had bestowed it on King Nanewulf as a gift to show good faith during a time of war. Upon returning to Emilial to reside in the University once more and to plan his next move in the wartime, he was assassinated suddenly. The killer had been rumoured to be a sellsword who was under the employ of the Seabound – A sea-faring Traveller culture of sorts who sailed across Equestria, reclaiming what was supposedly theirs by right. But other than that, the Seabound lived peacefully out in the open ocean and rarely made contact with the ‘Landkind’, as they called outsiders. But soon after the claiming of the Shroud, the Seabound had disappeared completely from the oceans of Equestria forever. There were no traces of any Seabound ships; their longboats, galleys, rafts, junks and even the Barka (The flagship in which the King of the Seabound commanded the ruling families) had apparently gone off the map. Thus, there was no chance of retrieving the Shroud at that time. But the tablet spoke also of the previously unknown details of the assassin’s methods in the planning-out of the regicide. Although small, there was a footnote of sorts at the bottom of the tablet which pertained to a hidden chamber connected to the sewer system under the University through which the assassin had entered, and then exited with the Shroud via the sewers.
The very next day, Dust was led on a grand tour of sorts around the University - Around the various halls, the lecture areas, the little passageways and antechambers - before ending her journey at the recently discovered, walled-off section of the basement. Found only one month before (therefore prompting the investigation which Dust now undertook,) the new section comprised a lower area which was constructed of a rougher, less finely-crafted stonework, a large hall space which contained massive stone pillars upon which were inscribed murals and names from the University’s history. Setting her hooves over the roughly-drilled opening into the ancient space, Dust gazed around as her tour guide raised his horn and shed magical light around the cavernous old hall. His name was Leafshine, and he was a scholar of history – specifically that of the University itself. He seemed perfectly pleasant to Dust, and the two were already getting along well as they shared stories of archeological discoveries and adventures.
'This area is rumoured to be more than a hundred years older than the rest of the University… Apparently it was constructed to house casks of beer for the town’s taverns by smugglers. That’s why the tunnel over there leads out into the sewer system, for travel.' Leafshine pointed a hoof, and the glare of his horn illuminated a roughly-hewn doorway which led down into the dark. The unclean water could be heard lapping at the sides of the sewer tunnel somewhere below.
'But what are all these pieces of art, then? Surely these aren’t that recent…' Dust concluded, looking up at the dark, grime-covered paintings and murals which adorned the pillars holding up the somewhat vaulted ceiling. Leafshine simply shrugged, staring all around.
'I suppose this chamber might be older than we though, and the smugglers might have simply stumbled across it when they were digging a tunnel to the surface from the sewers. Their plan may have originally been to dig up to another basement, but they accidentally strayed too far and dug up into this place.' Dust trotted over to one of the pillars, calling to Leaf. He illuminated it for her, so she could inspect the inscriptions further. Pulling a notebook from her saddlebag, she flipped through and took a closer look at the markings.
'It’s written in some kind of early Second Era text. Not too hard to crack, give me a moment.' And soon, the exact translation was reached with a satisfied nod from Dust. 'The texts on these pillars seem to document the time before the University’s construction… From what I can make out, this room was part of a small storage building. Apparently, the sewer beyond that tunnel over there was once a canal… As were the rest of the sewer tunnels under the city. Upon the university’s construction, this area was walled off as it connected the site to the illegal smuggling. I suppose the inscriptions were made here before the walling-off as a sort of explanation to future generations why the section of the basement was sealed off in the first place.' Dust then turned her attention to the roughly-cut doorway in the far wall, and toward the rotten stench of the sewer. 'I think we can safely assume that the thieves were not your average smugglers, though. I’m thinking this was all something to do with the Seabound – the assassin who killed King Nanewulf exited through here, and records show that they were under the employ of the Seabound… Perhaps even under the direct employ of their King.'
'But the Seabound disappeared completely during the Second Era, Miss Dust. However are we going to find them, if they were wiped off the maps during that time?' Leaf asked, an inquisitive expression etched on his face. Dust only gave a smug smile.
'I think I know how.'
The cold air blew all around as Dust and Leaf trotted cautiously down the cobbled backstreet toward the docks. Before them, on the downhill stretch, the housing became more ramshackle than inland; a few proud and ancient towers stood guard, while small, robust shacks and makeshift storehouses for fish were packed tightly together in a mishmash of corrugated metal, stone and wooden planks. Nestled among these low-built houses, perched on the pierhead, was a small tavern by the name of The Maneflow. Leaf stepped in slowly, followed by Dust. She cast a wary eye across the rowdy, packed interior, taking note of shifty-looking occupants and ushering Leaf onwards toward the bar. Tending bar in this establishment was an ancient-looking unicorn stallion with a nasty-looking scar running down over his muzzle. His mane was long, uncut and ragged, and he regarded the two new customers with a playful mock-scorn.
'So.. What’ve the waves chucked into my humble little place this time, eh?' He called in a thick sea-farer's drawl, motioning for the two to sit down. 'What’ll it be, kiddies? Milk, or water?' He chuckled a dry, raspy chuckle. Dust’s expression softened into one of mirth and she soon felt at ease with this old stallion, sitting at the stool before her. Leaf remained wary, eyes darting around, and then back to the barkeep. Dust turned a little, motioning for him to join her.
'Hey… This guy is okay. Don’t worry about him, just sit down.' She spoke softly. Leaf finally sat beside her, still a little shaken. Apparently, he’d never been in such a loud and dangerous tavern as this before.
'Your friend here is lookin’ a little pale, love.' The barkeep bellowed, turning around and grabbing a bottle and two glasses in the glowing red magical field emitted from his horn. He set the glasses down, pouring out what appeared – and smelled - to be something alcoholic. 'Here. Get this down you, lad. It’ll calm you. And you, girl. It’s on the house.' At this, Leaf nodded and took the glass in his own magical field, sipping at it. Dust politely declined, knowing better than to take drinks from absolute strangers. The old barkeep smirked. 'Smart lass, aren’t you? So, what’re you in for, then, if not a good drink?' Dust smiled warmly.
'I need information… And a ride.'
Dust and Leaf sat down opposite a lone old figure. Whoever this was, their head was hung low and only a scruffy, stringy brown mane protruded from beneath the brim of their downward-angled sailor’s cap. They were dressed in a ragged old mariner’s uniform.
'Muckboot? Mr Muckboot, sir… We need your help.' Dust called softly to the figure who was either sleeping or sobbing silently. Without movement came a reply.
'That’s Miss Muckboot to you.' Came a raspy female voice, and the mare’s head lifted. Muckboot reminded Dust of her old friend Cistern, had she been a naval officer - and cared not to cut her mane at all. Long, stringy brown strands of hair hung low across her face, parted only by her muzzle. If one were to concentrate, however, they might make out the aged but glimmering emerald eyes which stared out, sentry-like, from beneath. 'So what do you want with me, child? Come to poke fun at the crazy old sailor mare?' She barked.
'Not at all… We need your help, Miss Muckboot.' Dust asserted. Leaf nodded vigorously at her side. Somewhere beneath her mane, Muckboot’s eyebrow lifted a sliver. The old mare grabbed a bottle of ale in her hoof and took a hearty swig.
'How can I help, then?' She asked, word slurred a little, but a hint of genuine curiosity in her voice.
'We’ve been told you know something about the Seabound…' Leaf began.
'Seabound?' Muckboot piped up, leaning closer. Her voice became a low, conspiratorial whisper 'I know all sorts about them. All sorts, yes...'
'Can you tell us where they disappeared to, Miss?' Dust queried. 'The Seabound disappeared completely in the Second Era, they’ve never been-' In a sudden, unexpected movement, Muckboot pounced forward, grabbing Dust by the lapels of her coat and bringing their faces close together. Dust could smell the alcohol on the old mare’s breath.
'They never disappeared, child!' She hissed. 'They went home… Home, to the Isle…' Her weak voice tralied off into a coughing fit. Dust tried to move away, but the old mare’s gaze held her somehow. The brown locks had moved away slightly, and now those glittering green eyes held a sort of sway over her. Those eyes had seen something. Something terrible. 'The Isle of the Sunken… The Isle of the Damned… Isle of Bones, they call it, among a hundred other names in wand'ring tongues…' Muckboot continued on in her wandering way, but Dust cut her off.
'Can you get us there? Can you get us to the isle?' She asked, eyes wide and pleading. The old sailor-mare stared back, eyes wide with fear. But in a moment… She nodded.
The icy waves lapped at the sides of the boat as another night fell on their journey. Dust and Leaf had set out from Emilial ten days ago, catching a ride on Muckboot’s ancient, rickety sloop to head back to the fabled ‘Isle of the Damned’ – the home of the all-but-forgotten Seabound civilisation. Days passed, each day seeming longer and more bland than that which came before. The skies had been pale and empty, devoid of clouds and even devoid of birds, and the only thing which moved beside them was the sun as it made the daily trek across the sky, allowing its counterpart to take over this duty at night. The days had become endless silences, Dust and Leaf observing the maddened, broken mare who drove the sloop onward through the slowly-moving ocean waves, hell-bent on her quest to return to the place she seemed to fear and despise most in all Equestria.
But now, as they approached a mist-laden island which rose out of the darkness before them, Dust felt a pang of some unnatural fear rising in her heart. Having only awakened with a start moments before, she sleepily tried to get their pilot’s attention.
'Muckboot? Muckboot, is this the Isle?' She called, leaning forward and staring out at the fast-approaching shore. Muckboot’s reply came swiftly, loud enough to rouse Leaf from his slumber.
'This is it! This is the Isle, damned blacker than the smokes of the underworld!' She screeched, an unhinged, manic edge to her voice. 'We’re never going back home! Never going back!' Dust and Leaf exchanged worried glances, before turning back to look upon the island with silent horror, as events beyond anything imaginably true unfolded before their eyes. There was a titanic thunderclap which shook the heavens, and a burning red flare of lightning which forked downward viciously. The red blast punched straight through the heart of the boat, tearing it asunder in one fell swoop. Waves lapped all around the halved vessel, and as Dust scrambled onto one half with Leaf, Muckboot remained upon the aft. She screamed wildly as colossal waves rose up from nowhere, engulfing the boat and pulling that half of the sloop below the waves quickly. Clinging to their portion of the sloop, Dust and Leaf were dragged helplessly inland by the seemingly-intelligent waves, and in a short while, the front end of the vessel ran aground violently on the alien shores of the Isle of Bones. The sheer impact with the rocky coast and the ensuing fall onto the rock-laden sands of the shore knocked Dust into unconsciousness.
She was awoken to the bright light of the following morning by a weak howl of pain from her companion. Pulling her exhausted eyes open, Dust looked around for the source of the call, and her eyes quickly fell upon the form of Leaf, lying a few metres away on a piece of broken deck – with a thin, shattered piece of planking protruding from his side. Her eyes widened in shock.
'Oh, Celestia… Leaf!' She scrambled over to him, having to limp slightly due to a twisted rear leg and wincing slightly at a long scratch across her abdomen. She crouched down at his side, inspecting the wound.
'Am I gonna make it? Am I…' He uttered breathlessly, looking down at the dried blood on his side, and the jagged piece of wood piercing his stomach. Dust breathed heavily, looking over the damage and gravely assessing his chances at survival.
'There’s a chance… But it’s slim.' She answered grimly. 'You’re going to want to bite down on something.' She added, throwing off her coat and tearing a strip of fabric from her shirt to fashion a bandage. Leaf looked around, grabbing another sodden, wet plank in his mouth, taking a deep breath, and nodding to signal his readiness. Taking a moment to ready herself, Dust grabbed the offending shard of wood, and pulled with all her might. There was a muffled screaming, a fleck of dark liquid covering her muzzle as the shard pulled free of Leaf’s abdomen. He was wincing, and soon, he submitted to unconsciousness. Acting quickly, Dust pulled a box of matches from her saddlebag. Striking one and lighting the shard of wood to create a fire, she pulled out another tool from her saddlebag; a sturdy combat knife. Heating the blade for a few moments over the now-dwindling fire, she used the red-hot blade to cauterise Leaf’s wound. He jolted in his unconscious state, but upon checking his heartbeat, Dust was assured of his survival. Taking off his coat and shirt, she wrapped his abdomen in the makeshift bandage, packed any supplies the two had into her saddlebags, and then proceeded to drag his unconscious body inland with her a short way.
Finding a cave on the Isle of Bones had not been much of a challenge; merely a tenth of a kilometre inland, a sea cave opened onto the open coastal waters, and exploring inside, Dust had found a passage to an upper chamber therein which would safely remain above sea level. Dragging Leaf inside and stowing him gently in a sheltered, dry corner of the upper cavern, piling makeshift blankets on his sleeping form, Dust had then spent a good half-hour collecting supplies from outside: stones, branches and driftwood for a campfire, and a few crates of food which had survived the wreck. The weather outside had taken an unexpected turn for the worse, with pouring rain and thunderstorms with more unnatural flashes of red lightning – but surviving through it all, Dust returned in good time, arriving just as the tides rolled in and began to submerge the lower section of the sea cave. Safe and dry in the upper chamber, the campfire was constructed. The golden glow of the fire was pale on the old stone walls, flickering light illuminating the bare walls and reflecting off the surfaces of stalactites and stalagmites all around. Presently, Leaf awoke again.
'Leaf! Leaf, are you all right?' Dust called out.
'Urgh… What happened? It hurts…' He managed, obviously wincing as he tried to sit up.
'Stay there! Don’t move… You’re healing.' Dust demanded, a harsh kindness in her voice. Leaf did as he was told, lying back down and looking down at the slightly blood-flecked bandage tied tightly around his mid-section. He cringed as the memories of the previous day returned. Dust stood again, throwing off her rain-soaked coat and ripping the remaining sleeve from her shirt so not to obstruct her forelegs. 'I’m going back out there… Stay here, and don’t move a muscle.' She smirked at him, pulling a pair of walkie-talkies from her saddlebags before setting those down too. She tossed one to Leaf, clipping the other to her belt before heading out into the stormy outside again.
Having had to dive down and swim through the lower portion of the sea cave to exit, Dust was soaked by the time she emerged on the shoreline of the isle again, in the open air once again. Turning her attention inland, she proceeded inward and toward the heart of the island, taking care to remember the way back, following a small, winding river as a guide. But turning a sharp bend in the river and traversing around the side of a large boulder, she came upon something immensely worrying.
'Sweet Celestia…' Dust uttered, horrified. 'What happened?!' Before her lay the site of an apparent massacre. Skulls lay all around in small piles, all crowded around a small shrine of some kind. Dark, dried blood coated the once-pale stone skin of some kind of statue in the shrine’s centre, and by the looks of it, some of the viscera was still virtually fresh. For certain, the torches sitting in the braziers to either side of the statue were lit, and must have been lit recently. The most disturbing sight of all was the freshest victim of the apparent sacrifices; the pale, thin, sickly-looking corpse of a colt, dangling upside-down from a wooden frame standing over the statue, dark blood staining the slice made directly across his neck. Inspecting closer, Dust noted that the statue below the body was holding a bowl – in which the blood had collected and overflowed onto the soil around.
'Some kind of ritual sacrifice…' Dust noted, looking about the scene with some understandable disgust. 'But who or what does this statue represent?' She queried. The bowl-holding statue was that of a mare, with long and slender, almost skeletal limbs. Her head was held down as if in shame or anger, and a bloodstained cloth had been draped over the statue’s head, obscuring its face. A shroud. Dust instantly made the connection. 'The Shroud of the First King… There must be a connection. But who was the first king?' She mused to herself, lifting her hoof to the statue’s head and withdrawing the veil. She almost gagged at the sight beneath. The face of the statue had been worn away badly, and over it was… A mask of sorts, made up of dried skin and small, interlocked, tied-together bones. She shuddered to think at what depraved acts had rendered such a mask into being.
There was a rustling in the foliage behind her. Dust’s eyes widened, and she whipped around, withdrawing her battered pistol from her saddlebag and readying to take a shot. With ruthless precision, someone within the undergrowth fired off a shot. Dust was too late, the shot hitting her in her hind leg. She doubled over in agony, her leg burning in pain as she finally caught a glimpse of her attacker – and his allies. A group of ragged natives, clad in what looked like ancient robes, tatters of military uniforms, and various pieces of armour, emerged from the foliage at once. They maintained an unnerving silence, approaching deftly on their hind legs and holding a mismatched armory of weapons between them; knives, axes, and some First Era matchlock rifles – one of which she had taken a shot from. The tribe halted their advance as she aimed the pistol, but continued it as she tried to fire off a shot – and the firing mechanism jammed, a bullet stuck somewhere inside the weapon. The weapon must have suffered damage during the shipwreck. One of the natives called out.
'Bind the outsider! Bring her to the Citadel!' he roared. The others also began whooping and yelling out obscenities, some of them forming proper words and others simply screaming incoherently. Quickly, many members of the tribe tossed weighted ropes over Dust, tying the ropes tightly around her form. The final thing she saw was a hooded figure looming over her, swinging a club down on her head.
The journey to the Citadel was a broken affair for Dust. Her consciousness returned in fits and bursts, revealing portions of the journey as she was carried along by the throng of mumbling, chanting natives, passing out over and over due to lack of oxygen from her tight bindings and simply due to recovery from the blunt force trauma caused by the clubbing. Jungle passed her by, with low-hanging vines and tall, shadowy trees. Then, the world faded again. It returned, and she observed a rickety, broken old bridge spanning some great chasm, as the tribe carried her across the creaking wooden planking. Blackness returned again, then replaced by views of a narrow stone staircase which extended upwards through a cavern, breaking out into the light of day to reveal… A huge, ancient fortress, constructed of rough stone bricks and ancient rotten wood planks, nestled in the belly of a great canyon. Presumably, she reasoned later, the fortress had remained buried in that gulch since the First Era or before, but she had no way of knowing. The next time she awoke, the natives around her were gone, and in their place were the rough, dark stone walls of a pitch-black cave which extended upwards to meet a flat roof littered with bodies – and with a large circular grate of some kind set into it which extended beyond into darkness. It took Dust merely a few minutes to realise that she was not in a vertically-reversed chamber, but hanging upside down. Looking down, she was unnerved to find that she had been tightly locked in a rusted, barred cage of some kind which enveloped her body rigidly. Her hair was matted to her scalp, and her wide eyes stared all about the chamber as she searched for an escape, the blood starting to rush uncomfortably to her head. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light level, she observed something moving around in the grate on the floor below. She presumed that the grate must lead to a lower level of the cavern; a basement area, or a tunnel system below. Squinting, she could just about make out another figure as it passed below in the dark recess below the grate in the floor. It was the undeniable form of a pony, emaciated and quickly shuffling past.
'Hey... Hey you!' Dust managed to wheeze out, the cage around her restricting her breathing. 'Please, help… I’m… I’m stuck!' She cried out painfully. Below, another couple of figures passed by without taking heed. But finally, one of the pale, gaunt figures looked up at Dust through the grate above him. A colt, barely any older than nine years old, with matted hair, scars across his face and wide, darkness-blinded eyes stared up, holding a pickaxe in his mouth and mumbling some incoherent and unintelligible gibberish before shuffling along and going about his business. “What is going on here?” Dust hissed in a horrified stupor, letting herself go as limp as she could considering the cage around her sweat-soaked, dirt-covered body. The discomfort of her situation had not hit her quite so badly before. But now, she felt every piece of clothing sticking to her coldly and wetly, her hair dangling in stringy clumps when it was not clinging to her head, and her aching joints screaming out to be allowed some form of movement, some form of release from the cage binding her.
All at once, she was shocked by a multitude of events. There was a loud creaking of wood above her on the roof of the cavern somewhere, and a great creaking and grinding of some ancient mechanism. The cage she hung inside began to ascend out of the cavern through a narrow, natural stone vent, lifted by a heavy metal chain. The narrow rock walls scraped against the cage, some ragged patches of rock grazing her limbs and abdomen on the way upward through the small opening in the rock. Spiders and other insects scuttled along the walls around her, some dropping onto her skin and causing her to shudder in revulsion. The narrow walls of the cavern widened out again then, and she found herself being pulled upwards and out into a small stone room with a large mechanism in the corner which wound the chain to pull her cage upward. A hunched, beaten figure turned a crank on the machine slowly, and finally came to a stop as the cage was lifted by hand onto the solid floor beside the opening from which it had just ascended. The cage was lay down on its side, and Dust was roughly pulled out onto the floor of the chamber by a dark figure which loomed over her - presumably one of the natives, by the look of the armoured, beraggled tunic she wore. The mare gave the now-empty cage a swift kick, sending it sliding across the floor of the room toward the hole. The cage dropped quickly through the narrow opening, presumably back down into that prison cavern below which Dust had so recently spent time in. There was a scuffing sound as the emaciated figure trying to hold the mechanism’s crank in place was thrown across the floor by the sheer force as the cage reached the end of its tether, the chain connecting to the machine pulling taut and spinning the crank unexpectedly. The unfortunate, battered slave lay wheezing on the floor. Dust could do nothing but watch in horror, exhausted physically, as events unfolded. The native mare strode toward the fallen worker, shouting incoherently at him. The worker babbled what sounded like maddened apologies as the mare grasped him by the throat in her jaws, and then tossed him through the opening in the floor. Dust heard the sound of his screams dying away, then the heavy clang as he hit the hanging cage – and then the eventual thud as his near-dead, broken body hit the stone floor in that dank, dark cavern below. The native mare turned back to Dust with a cold expression in her eyes, and opened her mouth, straining to make her words clear.
'You follow. You follow… Or you die.' And with that, she led Dust slowly out of the stone room and into a maze of corridors beyond, into the heart of the Citadel.
The path into the heart of the Citadel was, to say the least, strange. The interior of the once-great fortress had collapsed in on itself in places; what had once been small, separated rooms became large halls full of broken planks and fallen wood pillars, held together in places by makeshift scaffolds. Dust noted on her way inward that there were no fireplaces of any sort for heating. Instead, what looked to be rusted iron grates in the floor of a majority of rooms led downward through the ground, all of these twisted stone shafts apparently tapping into some kind of volcanic vents beneath the fortress to provide warmth in the otherwise freezing-cold interior of the Citadel. Dust mused on the fact that this entire site may be sitting on top of an active volcano, remembering the fact that the fortress was hidden away in a chasm of some kind. Was the Citadel built on top of a volcano for some specific purpose other than to channel heat? Only time would tell, she reasoned.
'You… In there, now.' The mare who had been her escort barked, pointing a hoof at a huge pair of splintered wooden doors at the end of the corridor they now stood on. 'Do not… Make King wait.' She spoke again, straining to talk. Apparently, speech impediments and bodily deformity were the norm among these islanders. Dust shuddered to think of the genetic reasons for such problems as she pushed open the doors, and slowly shuffled inside.
The hall beyond was massive, the vaulted wooden roof held up by a mixture of ancient, carven pillars and new scaffolding constructed from rotting wooden planks and tree limbs. A sort of reverent hum could be heard in here, mixed with unnerving whispers and grunts from the rooms beyond, and the occasional rumbling of the volcanic vents which could be heard through the metal grids set about the hall. Metal sheets covered holes in the walls, and rusty nails covered almost every surface. Hanging all around were torn, darkly stained stained sacks made up of different materials stitched together crudely. Seeing a leg hanging out of a hole in one of them, Dust did not particularly want to open the others, or even look at them. At the back of the hall, on a pedestal of smashed stone and boulders, sat a throne made of wooden planks and what appeared to be driftwood – with bones interspersed throughout, the entire throne held together with rope and nails. On the throne sat a skeletal figure, rotten skin on its face and teeth protruding around its peeling lips. It wore an old sailor’s uniform; tattered, yellowed shirt and a huge overcoat covered with barnacles and dry, dead seaweed. A tattered, wide-brimmed sea captain’s hat sat upon its head, with what looked to be a crown of small bones constructed around the brim, and tied down with something dark and sinewy which Dust shuddered to observe. The figure did not move at all, its dusty eye sockets empty and dead.
'Hello?' Dust called out, moving toward the seated figure. 'Where is the ruler of this place? The King?' She looked all around the room, then back to the figure on the throne. She spotted the pale, blinded eyes of more emaciated workers spying down at her from holes in the walls. It looked as though these workers were moving about in small crawlspaces and tunnels built into the walls and ceilings of the place… Were they being confined to these small spaces all their lives? Forced to work endlessly like animals and trapped inside the infrastructure of the Citadel, never seeing the light of day?
Dust’s train of thought was broken by the sound of bones crackling and popping ahead of her. To her horror, the figure sitting on the throne was raising its head. Slowly and surely, the disgusting, wretched corpse lifted its rotten face to look upon her.
'I am the King of the Seabound, outsider.' It hissed, in a voice which sounded nothing louder than a whisper, but was still deafening as it reverberated around the hall. Dust moved back, horrified.
'But… How…?' She stuttered, as the corpse’s head weakly lowered back to its resting state.
'Do not question, outsider. Only know that I am the King of this place, and as such, you answer to me.' The corpse spoke again, its hushed tones mixed with a hint of heated rage. 'My children have brought you here to my throne, and now you will serve me.'
'If I refuse?' Dust asked, putting on an act of stubborn defiance. The corpse merely raised a rotting, pallid hoof and gestured. From two antechambers to his side, a guard of eight fully-armored warriors emerged, their armor based on that of the ancient Seabound mariners. They appeared in two groups of four, moving slowly in a militaristic march, with long ceremonial swords held in their teeth. They came to a halt at either side of the King, standing perfectly still beside him.
'If you do not follow my orders, I will have you executed.' A sickly grin wrinkled his ancient cheeks. 'Now, outsider. Your task is simple. You will aid my armies in their search for my Shroud of the First King of the Seabound – my great ancestor. The Shroud was lost to me long ago; taken by a storm which swept away my Barka, the flagship of my people, and left me stranded on this island. The Barka was taken by a great tempest, and the ship thrown all around by the four winds. I believe the Barka to survive somewhere on this island, whether wrecked against the bank of some inland river, fallen into a chasm, or torn to pieces in the bowels of the sea caves. But the Shroud lies in my cabin, wherever it is now.' Dust listened as the undead Seabound King sat remembering the ancient disaster. 'With the Shroud, I can again sail the seas as their rightful King, laying waste to all who stand in my way. I will take revenge for my years of imprisonment on this wretched isle, unable to die.'
'Why were you not able to die?' Dust asked meekly, confusion etched on her face.
'The curse of the Shroud, outsider.' The King hissed. 'Only when a King of the Seabound holds the Shroud in his possession may he choose to die… And he may only die by his own hand, at the chosen end of his reign, by giving the Shroud to his successor… And giving himself to the sea.'
'The tempest which wrecked the Barka on the Isle of Bones… Was it a normal storm?' Dust asked, beginning to piece together what may have happened. 'Or was this storm something supernatural?' The King of the Seabound merely shook his head, neck cracking loudly.
'This island itself is protected by its own ancient curse.' He explained, raising a hoof to point to something behind Dust. She turned, looking upon a huge tapestry of some kind, rotten now with age, which hung over the doorway of the great hall. It depicted an ancient goddess of some kind, holding a bowl in her hooves – a bowl filled with a dark liquid.
'Just like the statue I found earlier…' Dust muttered to herself.
'Statues and likenesses of this Goddess litter the Isle of Bones, outsider. She is the Goddess to whom the original inhabitants of this island prayed.' The King motioned all around him. 'We did not build the Citadel ourselves, outsider. It was built before our time, merely used and repaired by my children and I after we found ourselves lost on this Isle of damnation. We do not know the name of the Goddess, but we have come to realize that she protects this island against all intruders, seeking to destroy any who would desecrate her land.' The King again motioned, this time calling forth his Seabound guard. 'Now… My guard will lead you down into the mines. You will assume your new life serving us, and you will help me find my Shroud. Work hard, and you will be rewarded. Underachieve or resist, and you will meet your end on this Isle.' And with that, the guard of armored troops seized Dust, carrying her roughly out of the throne room and back out into the Citadel beyond.
The mines of the Citadel were located deep in its bowels, down narrow passages and winding, half-broken sections of walkways which led down through chasms in the solid rock. The caves were constantly warm, steam and hazy heat rising from the volcanic vents below the various layers of rock. Molten lava even bubbled in some exposed pits around the mines, covered over haphazardly by metal meshes and battered old bridges made of wooden planking and rusted metal supports. Walkways had been cut into the rock by years of slave labor, along which hundreds of pale, emaciated workers shuffled, pickaxes and shovels in their mouths. Observed only briefly before, Dust now saw the enslaved ponies from close range; the Unicorns’ horns had been sawed off, and the same had been done to the Pegasii’s wings. Their fur had peeled away from the bad conditions in the mines, and the skin beneath had become pallid and sweaty from the lack of natural light and the intense, unending volcanic heat. Dust regarded the unnaturally bad treatment of the slaves with disgust and horror as she was dragged onward into the dark, dank underworld to which she was now to become accustomed. On their way down, Dust was granted a moment’s audience in a public execution of one of the slaves; a scrawny filly, barely an adult, was bound in chains by three slave drivers. The three then dragged her over to one of the open volcanic vents, pulling the grate aside to reveal the glowing inferno below. The confused, dim-eyed filly was then kicked over the side into the fiery vent below. There was a loud screaming for a few seconds as a smoky haze rose from the vent, and then silence. The horrifying odor of roasting flesh began to spread as the metal grate was shoved back into place, and the terrified slaves were sent back to work with whips and beatings from their drivers.
'This your home now, outsider.' One of the Seabound spat, shoving Dust down a small gap in the rocks. She slid inside, falling into a small cavern within. The cave contained a battered pile of straw for a bed, and nothing else at all which might be considered any kind of furnishing besides a small, grate-covered volcanic vent in the corner which provided a dull glow to light the chamber. 'You collect pick from workstation up ahead soon. Work hard, or you go into the fire.' The Seabound roared, and the group disappeared off to return up to the Citadel above. Dust was left alone, in the stinking, smoky hole in the ground. She collapsed onto the bed of straw, the events of the past few hours performing their terrible dance in her head. She buried her head in the disgusting straw and rags, and cried and cried until sleep took her.
The next day, Dust was awoken by a cold splash of water. Writhing around in her makeshift room, she peeled open her sleep-clogged eyes to see one of the other worker ponies shuffling away with a now-empty bucket. She was unsure whether to be angry at him or be thankful that he had woken her rather than one of the slave drivers, and as such she simply shook off the water and prepared to work. She stripped off her battered coat and shoes before heading out, keeping only her sweat-stained shirt and torn pants on. Clambering out of the narrow opening of her cavern space, she looked around. Down the tunnel she spied a crate full of pickaxes and other tools and, remembering the order she had been given by the slave driver the night before, she trotted slowly over and picked one up in her muzzle.
‘I guess I may as well get to work… While I find a way outta here.’ Dust muttered under her breath, making her way back up the tunnel and out into the mine area. She followed a group of other workers up one of the narrow stone walkways, where they all stopped and began picking away at the wall. Pulling her own axe back, Dust smacked it forth into the rock. She pulled it out again, and then forward. Back. Forward. Back. She didn't seem to be getting very far, but the slave drivers seemed happy with her contribution to the workforce. ‘Psst… Hey, you!’ Dust hissed to the worker beside her. The worker, an emaciated and pale mare, turned her head lazily to the size as she continued to hack into the stone. ‘How long have you been working here? How do we get out?’ The mare simply shook her head.
‘No escape… No escape. So many years, always working. Work and sleep. This is life.’ She mumbled in a toneless voice, collapsing forward to continue mining. Dust remained hopeful. Somehow, she would find somepony in this mine who wasn't brain-deadened by the working conditions and endless hours of toil and torture.
Hours passed, or so it seemed. Boiling heat and stinking fumes assaulted Dust for the entire time, her hair and clothes becoming matted with sweat. She continued to dig into the rock slowly, swinging her pick back and forth with unsteady rhythm. At one point she had ducked out of sight behind a pile of barrels and crates to take a break from the work, tearing a strip from her shirt to first use as a rag to mop away the sweat, then wrap around her head as a bandanna before getting back to work. But the relief she felt was short lived, as a slave driver had marched past as she was clambering out from her hiding place, and as she feared, he had punished her by kicking her to the ground and whipping her viciously. Three deep, blood-flecked marks now lined her back as she continued to dig into the solid rock unendingly. Two more executions were performed that day; one of a stallion unknown to her who was tossed into the volcanic vents… And the mare she had worked alongside. She was hanged from a section of scaffolding further up the mine, dangling from a noose now for all to see. The moment that she had been thrown down and resigned to die, Dust had pledged to herself to escape before a similar fate befell her. She would escape, and she would save these tortured, work-maddened slaves or die trying.
The next day was much the same, and the day after that. Dust’s sense of hope began to falter a little as she explored further into the mines, hoping to find some unused tunnel or hidden passage which led outside or dropped down into the sea caves which the undead king in the Citadel above had spoken of. If she could find her way into those sea caves, surely she could follow the flow of the ocean’s tides and quickly escape outside, to the cliffs surrounding the island and to the coast to get back to Leaf and their camp. If only she could find a way out, they could make their way off this island and come back armed with better equipment and backup. But the only things close to escape routes that Dust had found were the entrance she had been brought through, and a small crevice down one of the lesser-used tunnels of the mine. She might be able to find an escape route through that crevice if she could widen it to allow her to fit through, but the chances of being able to widen it, escape inside unnoticed and find a way through the endless caves beneath the island were so slim that she gave up hope on the plan. Dust had almost lost all hope when something unexpected occurred. While mining one day (or night, she couldn't tell), a new set of prisoners was brought down to work. Among them was a familiar face, though it was now bruised and sported a nasty whip-mark across the cheek. Leaf was shoved down into the central mining pit, tumbling down the shallow rock pit and coming to a stop in a breathless, battered heap. Dust immediately rushed to his side, helping him to his hooves. He was weary, having been beaten by the Seabound beforehand and then sentenced to work in the mine. He looked up at Dust, and a weak smile crossed his face. Dust smiled for the first time in days; she was no longer alone.
‘Dust, they… They…’ He winced, motioning up to his head. Where his horn had once been there was only a cracked stump, barely wrapped with bandages made up of rags.
‘Oh Celestia…’ Dust wheezed. The volcanic heat and days of work had dried her throat, and her voice was now raspy. ‘Come here, let’s get you to bed… You need to rest.’ She ordered, and dragged the limping unicorn over to her tiny room set into the cave. She slid him in through the aperture in the rock, climbing in after him to set him down gently on her straw bed. Dust was about to turn and leave when she felt his hoof reach out to her weakly, nudging her. His voice drifted upward from his slumped form.
‘Thank you… Thank you so much.’ He managed. She merely turned back and, leaning close, kissed him gently on the cheek before returning to work, with a warm glow in her heart.
‘So you think… We can break through that tiny gap in the rock?’ Leaf murmured, sitting up in bed some time later. Dust had returned from her shift of hard labour for a rest period, and now the pair planned their escape from the mine – via the tiny crevice in the lower mine. ‘It seems risky.’
‘What other chance do we have, Leaf?’ Dust pleaded. ‘We can’t stay down here forever, can we?’
‘Okay, okay… But how do we break through without having the guards notice?’ He questioned back at her. Dust sighed, slumping down beside him. The oppressive heat boiled all around, and sweat dripped down from her bandanna-covered forehead as she looked him in the eye.
‘I have a plan.’ She uttered, before standing up and motioning for Leaf to follow her. The plan was set out, and after another hour or so of work and preparation, the two were ready. Meager supplies had been bundled hastily into ragged sacks, along with tools and anything else that might prove useful. Having thrown the sacks down beside the tiny opening in the disused tunnel, Dust and Leaf prepared themselves, and swung into action.
As practiced, Leaf made his way up onto one of the higher walkways in the rock. Taking a deep breath, he looked around, and spied the objective he was searching for; a makeshift crane and pulley system which was being used to transport ores up and down between levels of the mine. Taking decisive action, he pulled out his pickaxe… And swung the sharp pick as hard as he could into the rope which was currently hoisting a crate of ore higher up the mine. The rope split instantly, and the crate of ore dropped down to the mine floor, smashing into a slave driver as it landed. The driver was crushed to death instantly, blood flecking across the floor in a dark mess. With his distraction set in motion, Dust’s work began. Having already positioned herself up on the central crane mechanism itself, she set to work using her own pickaxe to hack at the wooden frame of the machine. She smacked her pick into the wooden planks and rusted metal bars, destabilizing the entire structure. It began to falter, shaking violently as she dashed along the support beams and back down to the dusty bottom of the mine. The supports began to creak unbearably and snap in places, the huge makeshift crane swaying and crumbling as it tried to cling onto the mine walls with its rapidly deteriorating wooden supports. Taking cover in one of the alcoves to the side of the main area, Dust could only watch as the crane’s supports finally gave way, and the entire crane toppled down to the mine floor. As she had planned, the heaviest parts of the crane went rolling and tumbling down into the lower tunnels – and hurtling straight toward the thin cavern wall through which she and Leaf intended to escape. A loud crashing of rock and debris heralded the opening of their escape route, and Dust turned to dash toward it. But she was halted by the sound of whip-cracks and heavy, loud beatings of hoof on flesh. Turning back, she saw Leaf. He was perched on the edge of a carved walkway, trying to fight back a pair of slave drivers who continued to pummel him mercilessly with their hooves. All around the mine, in fact, fights had broken out. The stronger-willed slaves (and those who retained some sense of intelligence) had taken the opportunity to rebel against their oppressors. Amid the chaos, Dust dashed back upward to come to Leaf’s aid.
For Leaf, the situation was looking ever more grim as time passed. He dragged himself backward onto a smashed wooden support which had recently held up the mine’s crane, taking another hoof to the face and swinging his pickaxe blindly forward. Luckily for him, it managed to find its mark – and dig into the side of one of the slave drivers’ skulls. The now profusely bleeding driver fell sideways, dropping off the ledge and crashing painfully down onto a pile of sharp, rough rocks below. Leaf wiped the blood from his face, and tried to make out what was happening as he swung again with his pickaxe. This time, the remaining slave driver dodged the attack, and knocked his pick out of his hoof. The makeshift weapon fell into the mining pit below, clattering to the dusty ground. Leaf looked up at the scarred, deformed slave driver, then bowed his head and waited for the killing blow.
There was a loud smack, the sound of metal on flesh… And then a thud.
Leaf dared to open his eyes, and was overjoyed to see the driver lying face-down on the walkway, with a pickaxe blade slammed into the back of his head. Standing triumphantly over the body was the blood-splattered, emaciated figure of Dust. She reached out a hoof, helping Leaf to his hooves. As he breathlessly thanked her over and over, the two ran back down into the pit, and dashed down the lower tunnel. Escaping the chaotic fight in the Citadel’s mine, the pair clambered down further. As expected, the heavier parts of the crane had smashed straight through the solid rock around the small opening which Dust had found, hitting the rock with enough force to open up a sizeable hole into the cave system beyond. Grabbing their scrounged-together supply bags and a holding up a lantern Dust had managed to swipe on the way down, the two proceeded inside the cave system beyond.
The caves stank of rot and stagnant water, along with the pungent odor of volcanic smoke that wafted through the tunnels every so often from the vents below.
‘So do we know… Where we’re going?’ uttered Leaf, limping along and trying his best to nurse his bleeding wounds and not wince in pain. Dust pressed onward, forcing him to follow.
‘Do you hear that?’ She murmured, ignoring his question. ‘Water. I hear water.’ Her voice carried with it a strong sense of hope as she pressed onward through the cave before them, with Leaf in tow. Stalactites and stalagmites were dotted all around, and irregular rock formations made for impractical conditions as the two continued forward. Dust continued to follow the sound of dripping and rushing water until, miraculously, the two came upon an incredible sight; a small cavern, with a deep basin of clear water leading down a natural tunnel and multiple waterfalls of sorts that rushed inward through apertures in the upper walls – presumably leading straight out into the waters surrounding the island. ‘Leaf, this is it… We’re free.’ Dust gasped.
‘Free? How are we free? We’re trapped in a cave underneath a fortress owned by a civilisation of insane freaks!’ He yelled. His voice echoed all around the caverns. Dust simply huffed, rolling her eyes as she readied herself, and clambered up the rock face toward the sources of the waterfalls. She turned back to him, waving her hoof.
‘Follow my lead.’ She called, and without a moment’s hesitation, she took a deep breath and scrambled inside the opening in the rock, fighting against the current of the water with all her strength as she began to push upward… Up, through the narrow tunnel that had been eroded by rushing water… Up, and out, into the open water above. She swam upward, and in a moment, she broke the surface of the water with a titanic splash, taking a deep breath of fresh, cold air. Leaf broke the surface moments later, and the two looked around blearily. Unfortunately, they had not emerged in the ocean – rather, in a narrow lake or river of some kind which lay inland. Gazing up at the night sky above, the two dragged themselves onto dry land and, wrapping themselves in rags and unpacking their supplies beneath the canopy of a lakeside tree, they collapsed into an exhausted sleep.
Dust opened her eyes blearily, the early morning glow of sunlight filtering through the treetops as she tried to lift her exhausted, aching body into a sitting position. The lake nearby sloshed a calming melody, and the smell of freshly-cooked fish wafted into her nostrils as she finally laid eyes on a campfire which Leaf must have made recently. Two fish were roasting over the open flame, and Leaf lay beside the fire, scribbling away in an old notebook. Dust’s scarred, bruised lips curled upward into a smile as she watched the young stallion at work.
‘What are you doing?’ She finally asked, her voice cracked and quiet. Leaf tucked away the notebook hastily, throwing down a pencil into one of his bags.
‘Nothing, nothing… Here, let me get you some water.’ He uttered, clambering to his hooves and dashing down to the lake’s bank to fill up a canteen with water. In his absence, Dust crawled forward and checked his book. Inside were a collection of notes, interspersed with intricate sketches and paintings of flora and fauna from exotic places – with plentiful new additions made while on the Isle of Bones. She was about to flip to a new painting which he seemed to have just sketched out in pencil, one of a mare, when she heard him coming back up to the camp through the undergrowth. She replaced the book, and returned back to her resting position just in time. Leaf wandered over, giving her the canteen. ‘Here, drink some. It’s clean.’
‘Thanks.’ Dust wheezed, taking a sip of the water. After the torturous conditions in the Citadel’s mine, this drink of cool water in such beautiful surroundings seemed unreal.
‘So where to next?’ Leaf asked, pulling a cooked fish from the campfire and taking a bite, while handing the other fish to Dust, who took it gratefully and began to eat too.
‘If we’re ever going to get off this island…’ Said Dust, taking a bite, ‘We’re going to need to stop the curse that prevents anyone coming or going.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Leaf asked. ‘Do we know how?’
‘Well, the curse has something to do with that Goddess who keeps appearing on statues and tapestries all over this forsaken place, so naturally, we need to find wherever her presence is strongest here… A monastery, or temple, or something like that.’ Dust reasoned. ‘So we’ll just have to do some searching.’ At this, Leaf sighed.
‘I was afraid you’d say we’d be trekking across an accursed isle full of bloodthirsty throwbacks.’ Leaf murmured.
‘What do you mean to say, Captain? That my mining operation is gone to ruin? Nothing can be done? We must continue our great task with mere shreds of our previous workforce?’ The cold, unnatural, rage-filled voice of the Seabound King echoed around his throne room. He remained motionless throughout, though the very walls shook with his pent-up anger.
‘Sir, we have recaptured a great many workers… Many still scour the mines.’ The Captain standing before his king explained as best he could. ‘Do not worry, my King, we will continue to search for the Barka. We will lay down our lives if necessary for the cause.’
‘It will indeed be necessary.’ The skeletal King murmured, his grim voice spreading throughout the chamber like a low growling. ‘As I will have you suffer for your failure… Just as I did the last Captain of the Guard who failed me.’ His skeletal hoof lifted, pointing weakly over to an alcove in the wall opposite. Within the recess stood a battered and restricting iron cage, in which was crushed the bloated, rotten corpse of the former Captain. The current holder of this post could only remember in half-forgotten nightmares what he and the rest of the Citadel Guard had been ordered to inflict upon that unfortunate stallion; how they had hacked at him with blades and sealed him in his cage… How they had scalded him with burning spears to the point of death, he unable to move or escape… And then left him hanging outside from the citadel walls to be pecked at by the birds until all life left him. The current Captain of the Guard, though not usually known to show fear, visibly shuddered at the prospect of going through such an agonising fate – or worse, knowing the King’s unexpected and violent temper.
‘I will never again fail you, my King… I swear!’ He replied in a stammering, terrified voice. The King sat up slowly, turning to one of his Guard beside the throne and giving an order.
‘You and your brother beside you.. Take the captain and lower him into the fires of the magma below.’ The King hissed maliciously, and the Captain’s eyes widened with horror as he began to beg.
‘Oh my Gracious King, you cannot, I beg you! Please! Do not-‘
‘Silence! You burn for your foolishness, and you are a to be a reminder to the next Captain not to fail me!’ The Seabound King roared, cutting through his Captain’s begging. The stallion simply slumped to the dusty floor, weeping quietly as two of the guard took him by the hooves, dragging him over to one of the grates in the floor and pulling it open. The captain was bound tightly with chains, and then lowered slowly down into the vent below. Steam hissed and the vent glowed brighter with fire as he descended into the boiling abyss, screaming until the last. His charred form was pulled back up out of the vent once the execution was done, and the chained corpse was hanged from the throne room ceiling. The Seabound King merely stared up and nodded, settling back into his throne. ‘A reminder indeed.’
‘How much further, Dust? I’m getting tired of this climbing..’ Leaf gasped out, as the pair shimmied along a narrow rock ledge, following it around the mountainside below a ruined old bridge. They were continuing around the side of the mountainous region that hid the Citadel, catching odd glimpses of ramshackle turrets and plumes of smoke here and there, nestled away in the sunken basin beyond the cliffs.
‘Not much further, I should think.’ Dust called out, clambering along the ledge and then climbing up onto a small plateau, holding out a hoof to help leaf up.
‘Thanks.’ He managed, scrambling up onto the small bit of flat ground as they carried on up a beaten, grassy slope. The canopy above kept the path ahead dim even in the morning sun, and the sounds of exotic animals echoed all around as the two ponies trampled onward. The air reeked of damp soil, moss and the occasional odour of thick smoke, presumably drifting over the mountaintops from the Citadel somewhere below. They passed over a small, babbling river which ran across their path, draining off down a waterfall to their side. A fleshless skeleton lay in the river, clad in rotting, tattered garments of some brown sackcloth. A pendant hung around its neck.
‘What’s this?’ Dust murmured, stopping off to inspect the withered remains. She peered at the pendant as Leaf sat down in a patch of undergrowth, resting.
‘Thank goodness we escaped that place…’ Leaf sighed. Dust wasn’t listening – she had more important matters to attend to. The pendant hanging about the skeleton’s neck was a sizeable likeness of none other than the Goddess; the religious figure which seemed to hold some considerable power on the Isle of Bones.
‘Leaf, look at this.’ She called to him, pulling the idol from the corpse and holding it up. ‘A pendant… It’s a sign of worship. Whoever this was, they worshipped the Goddess.’
‘Do you think that they worshipped nearby? At a monastery, or a shrine, or something like that?’ Leaf asked. Dust nodded, nestling the pendant back between the old folds of clothing reverently.
‘We need to press on. My guess is that this path must lead to some place of worship… If we can find the source of the Goddess' power, we can find a way to get off this island.’ She concluded.
‘But what about the Shroud of the First King?’ Leaf asked, his eyes wide. Dust halted her thoughts. In all the time she had spent surviving on the Isle, and planning their escape from it, their original mission had seemed irrelevant. Finally, she nodded.
‘We’ll find a way to get it. We just need more time.’ And with that, they carried on the upward path, deeper into the jungle which wound its way up between the mountains of the remote island.
The trek up to the very pinnacle of the Isle’s highest mountain had been a long and arduous one; many days of slow progress up the barely-navigable paths and winding, rickety wooden walkways set into the cliffsides had been fought through, with minimal supplies. Food was scarce, and Leaf and Dust had been required to scavenge for food among the sparse outcrops of jungle nearing the mountain’s peak. It was on the final day of their exploration, as they began nearing the bitingly cold and barren mountain peak that they found what they had been searching for. Set into the side of the mountain and clawing its way over onto the top lay a battered, broken-looking old monastery. Loose planks hung off in many places, and some swayed as the winds blew harshly around. The sound of the howling wind running through the great wounds in the structure was broken by its low groaning and creaking, and the sound of chimes and ancient, rusted bells which chimed with the changing winds.
‘Come on… We need to go in.’ Dust uttered, trotting toward the structure. Leaf tried to come up with some way of wriggling his way out of the situation, but realised all too late that it would be no use. Defeated, he trod along behind her as she approached the towering, forgotten monastery.
Just accessing the ruined structure was a difficult task; the upper, less damaged section of the monastery was perched on the very peak of the mountain. It was accessible only by an unstable-looking wooden staircase that wound up to the colossal doors of the building through the barren, dangerous crags of rock. The pair began clambering up the broken staircase carefully, avoiding the midsections of the planks which made it up. As they clambered higher, some sections of the staircase began to falter, sections of the ancient wood splitting and creaking violently. The chimes and bells within the monastery above began to rattle and call out frantically as a forceful wind swept across the mountaintop, pushing the ancient staircase to its limits. As could be expected, the lower sections of the stairway began keeling over, collapsing into piles of broken wood that were pulled off the mountainside by the high, vicious winds.
‘Run!’ Leaf cried out to Dust, trying to yell over the sound of the wind as she continued a little while ahead of her. He began sprinting as the wind picked up again, whirling around and assaulting the foundations of the staircase. Dust turned, spotting the fast-approaching Leaf. The pair began sprinting at top speed upward, avoiding parts of the staircase which began to collapse beneath their hooves. A few stray planks of wood fell from the monastery above and crashed into the stairs before them, knocking great holes in their path. Forced to jump over the wide chasm, they continued onward and upward as the wind died down. Ahead of them, the main doors of the monastery appeared out of the fog. They slowed their pace, catching their breath.
‘Sweet Celestia… It’s beautiful.’ Dust managed to gasp out, as the clambered up onto the wooden decking before the front door. Stepping closer, there was a horrifying crunch of splintering wood. She dropped downward through the thin floor, down into the dark abyss below. Leaf was left dumbstruck, leaping to the edge of the gaping hole and yelling down into it.
‘Dust! Dust, are you okay?!’ He called down into the all-encompassing blackness. No reply. ‘Oh no, oh no…’ he began muttering to himself, turning over the possibilities in his mind. Had she fallen through into a cavern full of jagged rocks? Into a spike pit of some kind? Down a network of tunnels, never to see the light of day again? ‘Okay… Okay, I can do this.’ He repeated to himself a few times, before calling down into the pit again. ‘Dust! If you can hear me, I’m going to get you out! Just wait there!’ And with that, he clambered to his feet and, sidestepping the hole in the floor tentatively, wandered inside the ancient monastery.
Dust could not hear him, in fact. Her fall had left her with a broken hind leg and a concussion, and soon, she had slipped into icy-cold unconsciousness. But before the blackness enveloped her, she had gotten one good look at the room now surrounding her – and the sights she had seen had turned her stomach.
‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ Leaf called, wandering through the antechamber at the front of the structure. The wind howled around the halls, banging and scratching at the old wooden planks which made up the building. In the distance, doors and window-shutters banged of their own accord. The smell of rot was pungent in the air, along with the barely-perceptible, musky odour of aged parchment and other ancient materials. Leaf passed into the main hall carefully, and the interior took his breath away for a few moments. The blinding-white, bare sky shone through huge tears in the roof far above, the crumbling wooden rafters swaying slightly and creaking agonisingly in the battering wind. The planked walls bore carvings of nameless figures, great creatures of strange appearance, and all manner of imagery. And in the centre of the hall, towering above him, stood a colossal figure. Rusted and discoloured with age, stood a huge bronze statue of the Goddess figure which had been seen all across the island. Leaf felt a sense of dread looking upon that statue; its dark expression, its titanic size and its skeletal limbs that bore the ever-present, sacrificial bowl made him tremble. Leaf carried on through the ancient wooden halls of the monastery, deeper down into the lower levels of the building – unaware of the multitude of eyes that watched him as he passed.
Corpses lay everywhere. In various stages of decay, strewn across the floor. Dust stared in horror all around at the subterranean storehouse she now found herself in, and began taking in the sights and smells. The entire chamber was carved into the solid rock upon which the monastery stood, with ancient wooden panelling and pillars to support the weight of the cracked, rotten ceiling above. Some of the dead who lay about the place were wrapped in tattered linen cocoons, and some cocoons hung from the ceiling like flies caught in some horrific spider’s web.
‘Celestia…’ Dust wheezed, trying hard not to gag at the stench of rot as she clambered to her hooves painfully. Her badly twisted hind leg became evident almost immediately, and she found herself limping slowly and blindly around the dingy cavern she now occupied, eventually finding a huge set of double-doors and, with considerable effort, pushing them open to slip inside.
Navigating back upward through the underbelly of the monastery was relatively easy despite her wound, Dust thought. It was simply a battered spiral stairwell dug out of the solid rock beneath the structure which wound back upward into the lower hall of the building. Finally, with some effort and quite a lot of pain, Dust clambered upward through a collapsed pile of rubble at the top of the stairwell and into the hall. Limping out into the wide open area, she collapsed to the ground and nursed her leg.
'Leaf had better be nearby, or I'm going to be lost in here forever...' She winced, catching her breath before standing up, intent on continuing onward. A loud, echoing scream punctuated the dust-choked silence. Leaf was near... And he was in trouble.
'I swear, one of these days I'm going to settle down and have a quiet life...' Dust muttered to herself, and with that, she bit down on her lip and limped as quickly as she could toward the source of the scream.
There were at least a dozen of them, if not more. Hooded, robed monks, pale and decrepit in appearance. They wore the same pendants around their necks that had been found on the corpse by the river, now crowded around Leaf. They had appeared almost silently, climbing out of hollow sections of wall or dropping down from the ancient wooden rafters above. They each drew curved, rusted blades from scabbards beneath their cloaks, holding them in their jaws silently.
‘Hey… Uh, can we talk about this? I didn’t mean to intru-’ Leaf stuttered, trying to retreat slowly as the monks stepped forward silently. The closest lunged forward, swinging its sword in an arc toward his throat. Leaf closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
There was a loud smack.
When Leaf opened his eyes, the attacking monk had crumpled to the floor, a large rock having smacked into its head. Leaf turned his head back in shock. Dust stepped up beside him quickly, picking up the incapacitated monk’s blade in her teeth and lowering into an aggressive crouch.
‘Get moving, Leaf. Find a weapon.’ She snarled, moving painfully but steadily forward. Leaf staggered around, picking up a rock in his hoof and tossing it at another of the monks. It was stunned, staggering back. Quickly, the skirmish began. Dust swung the blade in her jaw at the first row of monks, hacking into their robed torsos and tearing off the head of one. Leaf dove forward, ducking under one of the attacking monks and grabbing a sword of his own and stabbing upward into the abdomen of one monk. Dark, almost black blood sprayed over him.
‘They… Are they undead?’ He yelped to Dust, shoving the gutted monk off of him before steadying himself again.
‘I’m not sure…’ She called back, stabbing her blade into the skull of one monk and head-butting it away. ‘They’ve survived this long, but they appear to be as mortal as us! There must have been some force keeping them alive indefinitely!’ She turned and grabbed Leaf by the hoof, retreating slowly down the hallway into the entrance hall and glancing up at the titanic statue of the Goddess in the centre as they entered. ‘Keep them busy while I search for some way to stop all this!’ She passed her sword over to Leaf, turning and dashing over to the huge statue as fast as her wounded leg would allow.
‘Make it quick! I don’t know if I can hold them off for long!’ Leaf fumbled with his sword, swinging it this way and that, lopping off a monk’s foreleg by sheer luck as it closed in for a killing blow.
Dust quickly surveyed the statue, moving around it and searching for inscriptions, occasionally having to lean on its pedestal and turn to smack approaching monks in the face with her hooves, knocking them back. Left with no other option, she began to climb the skeletal form of the statue. It was a painful, slow ascent. A handful of monks followed up after her, blades in their jaws. She kicked down at them, knocking one back down to the floor with a loud thud and a crack of broken bones. Reaching the upper back of the statue, Dust began to climb by grabbing onto the vertebrae of the skeletal figure, moving upward faster. Another kick, another monk sent flying. This unfortunate monk dropped down onto a hanging torch, knocking it off the wall and setting the wooden floor ablaze. The fire began to spread at an alarming rate, licking all around at the mostly wooden structure of the monastery. Dust climbed ever higher, hanging onto one of the skeletal arms of the statue and calling down to Leaf.
‘Climb, Leaf! Up here!’ She yelled down to Leaf as his sword was knocked out of his mouth by a significantly more skilled monk. He turned, one of the monks managing to carve a wicked gash in his back as he leapt up onto the sacrificial bowl of the statue before beginning to clamber up the front of the statue. As his blood flecked the bowl below him, there was a slight tremor from all around. Dust stared down at the spattered blood in the bowl as it dissolved away, the tremor coming to a stop.
‘Of course… Making sacrifices to the Goddess must strengthen her power on this island.’ She murmured to herself before leaning down to help Leaf up. Pulled onto the skeletal arm of the statue, Leaf collapsed in pain and weariness, shaking with shock and adrenalin pumping through his body.
‘Th… Thanks…’ He managed to utter. But their sense of calm was short-lived as the monastery began to collapse. Fire scaled the wooden walls, blasted through the halls, and scalded the near-immortal monks below. Burning planks and sections of roof began to collapse downward, the freezing wind blasting in through the rapidly-collapsing roof.
‘Hold on tight!’ Dust yelled. She and leaf wrapped their hooves around the limb of the statue just in time – as the entire, fragile structure of the monastery began to crumble and fracture, splitting down the middle. The walls began to fall away, fiery planks blown away on the wind. The huge bronze statue of the Goddess teetered on the remaining frame of the monastery before tipping over and falling over the edge of the mountaintop. The statue went speeding downward, smashing down from the frozen mountain’s peak into the lush green of the mountainside forest, levelling trees as it tumbled down, falling on its side to continue to roll. At the last moment, in a last-ditch attempt at survival, Dust leapt into action. Grabbing Leaf by the hoof, she dove off the falling bronze titan, smacking into the undergrowth of the forest before rolling to a halt. Bruised, battered, bloodied but alive, the two lay holding onto each other tightly, still shuddering in shock and breathing quickly.
‘We’re… Alive?’ Leaf gasped, staring into Dust’s eyes in surprise. Before he could say another word, Dust pulled him down roughly and kissed him deeply. Finally letting him go again and grinning, she sat up.
‘Very much alive.’ She nursed a bruise on the side of her head, and then gazed down toward the valley below. The bronze statue continued to topple and roll downward before flying off a plateau and crashing violently through the roof of the Citadel. A thunderclap exploded overhead, the sky slowly turning a shade of dark blood-red. ‘I’d say that’s the Goddess taken care of…’ Dust muttered, smirking. Aching all over but relieved, she staggered to her hooves and began wandering down the tree-laden slope toward the coast. ‘Come on, Leaf!’
