The Deep
The Depths
A vast expanse of endless blue. That was all Rarity could see—both above and below—shimmering in the unrelenting light of Celestia’s sun, static upon the horizon. Rarity had no idea how long she had been here, if she could comprehend the passage of time at all. All she knew was that she was here, flying across the ocean within an arcane bubble, where the sun never set. In fact, she was only conscious enough to maintain a vague awareness of the environment around her; a wispy, hypnotic state that left her simply drifting above the water’s surface.
Only it wasn’t a perfectly level flight path. Her bubble was descending, slowly but surely, towards the ocean below, sooner or later loosing enough altitude to skim across the gentle waves. Rarity watched on as they flanked her, the bubble forcing them liquid out to either side; a mild displacement in comparison to the incomprehensible volume that surrounded her. She could feel her heartbeat picking up. What was this she was feeling? It wasn’t fear, but it wasn’t exactly excitement either. Rarity had no real expectations as to what she would find below the surface. She knew she was diving, yet the impact against the sapphire cloak just continued to mesmerise her, leaving no room for any more complex thoughts beyond the simple admiration of physics.
It had a certain beauty to it. A symmetry and smoothness that elegantly rose and fell around her, like wide strips of silk fluttering in the breeze. This pleased Rarity. Perhaps her current emotions could best be described as intrigue; a curiosity as to the mechanics of world she was witnessing. She was along for the ride, a fact which she simply just accepted.
The sky had shimmered before—on the horizon, of course—a typical mirage caused by the refraction of light off of the planet’s curvature. She knew this, but couldn’t conjure any memories of where she had learned this fact. Perhaps she overheard it from Twilight? That seemed probable. All the same, she just knew.
The sky may have shimmered, but not in the same, dazzling manner that the sea did. Shafts of light pierced from above, like illuminating spires stretching down for miles on end. Rarity was still diving, but she was too captivated by the beauty of the sun’s architecture to care. A flash of silver caught her eye, a small fish swimming past her. It didn’t swim through the bubble, the outside of which remained firm, instead simply lead Rarity along until she met its whole family; a gigantic shoal of tightly packed swimmers, all moving as one. It was an incredible sight to behold. Rarity stared in awe, completely captivated by the grandiose spectacle of the natural world.
A sudden jolt to the back of her bubble knocked Rarity’s attention away from them. She flipped herself around to find the assailant, but whatever had hit her was already gone. Turning back, the shoal was still there, but there was something different about the way it was moving. Previously, all the fish had been swimming together in a wide, fluid motion, not unlike the parting of the waves Rarity witnessed earlier. Now? Now it had changed. There was no longer the same grace or elegance to their dance; instead, they all kept swimming closer to each other, zig-zagging in all different directions at lightning speed as they tried to recover the missing pieces of their shoal.
A streak of grey crashed through the centre. It happened fast – faster than Rarity could comprehend. She couldn’t focus her vision on the thing; all she knew was the colour, and the sharp angles of a basic outline. Suddenly, it shot up again, this time from below. Another bite of fish it took, leaving only traces of scales and assorted body parts to sink down, dead. Now there were two of them, hideous things. They had some similarities to the fish they attacked, but also many differences, beyond simply size. The thick, sweeping tails, the long horns protruding from their foreheads, jaws that shot out in the blink of an eye, almost separating from their body. Hideous monsters, there was no other word for it. More joined in the fray. Many more. There were more limbs now. More than they had any right to have. Thin, segmented legs… were they even legs? Or were they claws? Pincers of some kind? More importantly, did Rarity want to know?
She couldn’t answer that question, as she wasn’t given any time to do so. Something else answered it for her. Rising up from the depths below, came another creature. It was not a fish, nor a serpent, nor a dragon. It was… something else. Something so big, so long, that Rarity couldn’t tell where its neck ended and its body began. Did she see the body? Did it even have a body? It must have… mustn’t it? Yet again, impossible to tell. All she saw were those jaws; those massive, jagged jaws, engulfing her entire field of vision, snapping down on everything in front of it, sending a wave of water crashing outwards as it burst through the surface.
The force of the breach sent Rarity’s bubble tumbling back, end over end, plummeting downwards. Down, down, and further down she sank. The light from above gradually began to dim, fading away the further down she went. Now she was panicking. Rarity pounded against the bubble, trying with all her might to get it moving anywhere but the direction it was travelling in. The bubble didn’t respond. It just kept sinking, and in no time at all, it had dropped to a level where all light left her.
At last, as the bubble gradually slowed to a gentle stop not long after it had started, Rarity felt some relief as the gigantic thing was nowhere to be seen. In fact, nothing was to be seen, nor heard. There was only dead silence and pitch blackness. Rarity continued to pound on the bubble, still trying in vain to get it moving. Alas, it wouldn’t budge. She was trapped down here, in this arcane contraption, under the crushing weight of the ocean depths. She began to shiver, suddenly feeling cold; so, so cold. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t belong here. She belonged back home, in Ponyville, making dresses and having tea with her best friends, before spending the evenings with her little sister. Everything about her existence right now just felt wrong. At least the sudden panic attack helped clear her mind a bit; enough to fire up a lighting spell on her horn.
Now she could see. And she could see everything. All the creatures that hid in the blackest depths, so far from prying pony eyes; the stuff of nightmares. Creatures great and small, with hideous teeth so long they could hardly keep their mouth closed. Creatures with long antenna, dangling bioluminescent lights out in front of their heads. And those eyes, oh, Celestia those eyes! They were looking at her, staring at her. All reflecting the light of her horn, swimming around her bubble, glaring at the pony intruding on their realm. This should not be. I should not be. That was all she could think about. She had to get out of there, she had to—
Something swam behind her. A deep rumbling sound rippled through the bubble, briefly reflecting a creature along its surface; a creature that was even bigger than she ever thought possible. It swam around her, constantly sliding between the darkness and the light. It was everything the other things were and more. More teeth, more claws, more tentacles, all in different segments that shifted between fluid and solid. It had noticed her, the intruder to where she should not be. It was looking at Rarity, staring blankly with an unreadable expression. It was opening its jaws, forcing her to gaze into its hideous mouth.
And Rarity screamed.
Sirens wailed throughout the hospital halls, an emergency alarm calling for the doctors to rush to the critical patient’s side. Nurse Readheart wasted no time in tightening the restraints around Rarity’s hooves, allowing several other nurses to hold her down as the doctor jabbed a syringe into her neck with his magic. Rarity’s friends stood by her, watching with utter shock at the sudden outburst of their friend. After over a week of nothing but lying in a catatonic state, it surprised even the Doctors to see her suddenly break into such a violent screaming fit.
“What's happening to Rarity?!” Twilight cried, unable to hide the fear in her voice.
“Don’t worry, Miss Sparkle. It’s likely a simple case of Night Terrors,” Redheart said as Rarity finally began to calm down. “Typical symptoms for someone so delirious with desert fever. Although it’s rarely this extreme.”
“I still don't understand,” Twilight rubbed her aching forehead. She had lost many nights of sleep trying to research Rarity’s condition – a task which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. “We all drank from the same lake back in Saddle Arabia. How is it possible that only Rarity got infected?”
“I can't say for certain, but my best guess would be a poorly timed parasite that swam towards her. Though we have yet to find any traces within Rarity’s bloodstream.”
“That certainly does sound plausible,” Twilight concluded. The logic was sound, given all the nasty creatures that could cultivate in the unfiltered water ways out in the unpopulated desert. Even so, she couldn't shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, she was looking in the wrong place for answers. Twilight recalled the temple and her friends had found, particularly the disturbing murals depicting delirious ponies surrounded by the most horrific monsters she had ever seen. Perhaps the artist had been on to something? Twilight had dismissed it at the time as nothing more than local superstition. But now, after witnessing how volatile Rarity had become? She had to go back investigate further. Perhaps she could start by finding out one simple fact; was Saddle Arabia really an ocean that had dried up over ten millennia ago, like her textbooks claimed?