The First Descent
Late at night when Spike was put to bed and her ink pot had run dry, Twilight Sparkle pushed herself away from her desk and sighed. The soft sound bounced against the crystal. Echoing off the ceiling and the immaculate glittering glass that made her personal study sparkle before shouting right back into her ear as if another pony was behind her.
Twilight jumped to her hooves, her lips parting to shriek when she turned her head and saw nothing behind her. Of course, it was good that there was nothing behind her. She slammed her lips together, refusing to let a noise escape. That would mean that her castle, the Friendship Spire, was haunted and that wouldn't mean anything good at all. Not that Twilight had any thoughts the castle was haunted in the first place.
That would be unscientific to ascribe to supernatural phenomena without any proof.
'And there was no proof.' Twilight thought to herself. Not any that she could take into the day.
For these past couple of weeks, Twilight had gained herself a hobby. More of a habit if she had to explain this to anyone who was willing to listen to her... ramble about the castle. And no one would hear her ramble because this wasn't something you just talked about without... having enough information to form a opinion. As in Twilight wasn't ready to say whether or not this was something that she should mention to anyone or more specifically Princess Celestia. Not yet. Twilight was now a princess and this was her castle, her domain above all things.
This was something she alone had to... study.
Twilight swept her eyes over the desk, re-reading the last few lines she wrote of a report that could be pushed off to tomorrow. Using the last bit of ink dripping off the quill, Twilight wrote a note to herself. A simple page number and an abbreviation of the horribly inaccurate historical fiction, 23 Methods of Invoking Peace According To Queen-killer Chalice, was written on a pad and then sat aside.
She took a deep breath and then squealed a short, happy cry as she gave in to the bundle of energy rocking her restless hooves. It was time to study. Twilight opened her drawer and pulled up the false plank, taking out her most interesting creation of late. It was only a map. A map made of many maps. Created with simple parchment and standard ink she bought from Davenport's Quills and Sofas but it was a map of rooms and hallways... That did not exist...
Twilight levitated the map to the desktop and then rested her hoof in the center. “As scientific as I may be, I shall respect mysteries as they are seen,” she recited, her voice turning giddy.
In a sense, she was giving herself permission not to question the unknown. If Princess Celestia saw her now, Twilight shuddered and took a nervous glance. She was alone. No guests. No friends. Nothing needing her immediate attention. Twilight flipped the map over, gazing at her hasty and efficient work; the lines drawn, the places invisible during the day and the tunnels that went far, far into the dark.
And it still wasn't everything. Not yet. Twilight could tell that there had to be so much more.
Keeping the map open and floating by her side, Twilight moved around her desk and pulled out with her teeth a metal oil lamp. She wiped the sides of the dusty glass and opened the small hatchet, blowing her breath inside while she lit the candle wick. The lamp came to life, a roaring orange glow with splotches of yellow and purple magic inside.
Twilight sat the lamp down and had a thought to herself- something she indulged in the late hour -; what did she want to do tonight? With her lamp and her ever-expanding map, she could go off into the castle but she had to reasonable about this.
She didn't want to spend the whole night wandering.
But that is exactly would happen if she went to her room to gather her saddlebags. But she didn't want to go bare either; carrying her lamp with her magic or with her muzzle always made her get sluggish after a while. She would get distracted by walking instead of recording where she went. And it seemed, she would slowly began to walk in circles which was no fun way to spend a night she could have been doing anything else.
Ah, she just had the perfect idea.
Twilight walked to her tiny closet and opened the door. Clothing and books that she hadn't gotten around to organizing flew out, momentary burying her in a sea of her own idleness. She flexed her wings, knocking off the dictionaries and striped socks Pinkie Pie told her she would eventually find a use for.
Twilight shuffled through the pile until she came across it. A stylish belt and harness that was a part of a dress ensemble Rarity wanted her to try on a few weeks ago. Twilight remembered the dress but she couldn't find the custom-made harness, even with Rarity's help, to return.
She told Rarity the same thing her mother had told her at the ripe age of closet-destroying foal, “If it's not here now, it will be when it's done its use.” But that involved stomach pumping and Twilight chose not to tell Rarity that thanks to Spike's adamant nodding that she shut her mouth about that. Twilight listened but Spike couldn't tell her if Rarity would definitely have the same reaction as Moondancer. Turning green and hiding a face between hooves.
Twilight quickly attached the harness and tightened the notches on the belt until it felt snug. Then she stepped free of the pile, shoving all of the mess back into the closet with a quick spell. Twilight levitated the lamp over to her side. Hooked it to the harness. Her body tilted a little, unused to the weight but Twilight unfurled her wings and took off.
Twilight tried often not to fly indoors. She couldn't trust the ceilings to not end her night thanks to a well-placed thump to the back of the skull. Like the night before last. But technically, this wasn't flying. Rainbow Dash might call it cheating but gliding was Twilight's speed. Her wings lifted her off the ground with every other thump of her hooves pounding the floor, increasing the space reached than what she could claim running alone.
She sprinted down a few hallways, passed a corridor and fell over her hooves. She slid along the glossy floor, her derriere perched in the air as she groaned to herself. Maybe gliding was cheating because flying never made her feel so bad. When her body met carpet, Twilight rested. Huffing to catch her breath as she saw the sky through one of her wide arching windows.
The moon had yet to reach the middle of the sky.
Twilight relaxed. She had plenty of time to explore and get some shut-eye when she was done. Twilight got back on her hooves and then she was gone, strutting briskly through doors and hallways until she reached the threshold... The place that shouldn't exist.
Finally through a hallway through a door through a corridor and now to a room which should lead nowhere, she had found what shouldn't be. Twilight brought out her map, checking it and what was in front of her eyes. It was the same impossible structure that appeared for every night Twilight decided to check. Twilight put her map away into the harness strap and approached, slowly bending forward until her snout was inches from kissing it. It being a pair of stairs, leading down into the darkness.
Twilight brushed her hoof against the cold marble, expecting to feel something. She ran through the possibilities: the warm touch of someone who must have discovered this long before her or magic pulsating within the stones or something sinister hiding in these walls. All she felt was marble and stone and she giggled because ah, she didn't expect anything different.
Of course, these stairs couldn't lead anywhere logically speaking. They shouldn't lead anywhere based off their size and length of the room they sat in. They would make sense had Twilight's castle came with a basement and some tunnels deep in the ground. And of course, these stairs and this room according to Twilight's personal and thorough measurements and mapping during the day, rested right over the throne room. The stairs should have ended in space or made a hole in where a large chandelier hung in the throne room. But it didn't.
It went somewhere else entirely.
Twilight stood up and ran her hoof along the wall, watching as dirt crumbled and cracked. Her castle was made of crystal and yet this was of soil and stone that wouldn't expect outside of a cave. Twilight allowed herself a moment of reverie.
Yes, this was a mystery. A anomaly. Should she say a unexplained phenomena?
Then with that ritual done, she strutted down the staircase. Her head held high with a swagger that had her smiling. The further she went, the more dense that darkness became. First like steam and then becoming like fog, splitting apart as she passed through. Her oil lamp clattered against her side, swinging into the metal buckles and ringing out. The temperature grew colder. Twilight saw her breath and wiggled her nose at it. A brisk chill ran down her spine but not enough to make her wish for a scarf. Or even stop. Ever stop.
Today, she had to go further than before. And then tomorrow, beyond that.
The tunnel went on and on, stretching out before her as the walls grew narrower and more jagged. Twilight bit her lip and ducked her head as her hooves began to step on things that creaked and moaned. The stairs were up to its old tricks again. Her wings gradually was being pushed to the center of her back as the space grew small and the stairs went on. Twilight's steps slowed, her trot becoming a struggling hoof after another. She pushed herself through as far as she could, praying that she made it even farther than last night. Twilight threw out a limb and found herself stuck, her wings held in place.
The darkness was everywhere, blinding her. Her little lamp was nothing more but a flicking ember, so distant and far. She too was so distant and far. Twilight tried to touch her chest and found only space. Her legs fought against the walls holding her but yet never met each other. There was a light beyond. That light twinkled out.
Twilight quickly pulled out her scraps of paper, quickly sketching and writing how far she made it. Satisfied, she packed her materials away and allowed herself to slump. Twilight closed her eyes, aware of her body being caught and her limbs fighting against air with every twitch.
And then it was over with a blink.
Her hooves were firmly planted on ground, wings free and she was left standing in a decrepit room. She blinked, she did make it further. What now? Twilight stretched her wings and took a look behind her.
There was the end of the staircase, expanding out into broken steps and crooked tiles. The way back up was now lit. Familiar crystal torches glowed the way back. But it certainly didn't look like the way she came. The walls were no longer of soil but of thin and rotting sheets of wallpaper. Huh? Did she finally make it to another floor? Or was this a dream and the staircase was playing with her again?
Twilight pulled out a piece of paper. Wrote quick notes on her progress and the sight of the stairs behind her with her wings arched for flight. This place was interesting. Perhaps too interesting. For all of her nightly strolls, she had yet to run into someone or something else and with phenomena like this, it should be happening all too soon. But still she kept to her notes, repeating them over and over her head.
'Still marble. But wooden walls and wallpaper. Possibly the staircase of a mansion?'
Her eyes wandered to the rest of the room. Aged furniture were turned upside down. Possessions thrown to the floor and broken into little pieces and a faint smell of the fire that must have ate up everything else. Twilight wanted to come up with a clever name for this floor. She did so with the others but reluctantly had to name it 'Fourth Floor: Mansion' until something else sparked a idea.
With her lamp shining bright, Twilight crossed the room and made her way to the barricaded doors. Furniture that must have made up the bulk of this room, possibly a drawing room with all lounge chairs and sofas littered around, was piled as high as it could against the burnt out exit. The room was a shadow of its former self, literally with ash and cinders covering everything. Twilight touched a cushion, feeling it crinkle under the weight of her hoof before it dissolved into dust.
She wasn't sure what to make of this floor yet. It was the first time she seen proof of there have being others that were here.