Twilight Sparkle heads to a dig site in the northern reaches of Equestria to investigate an ancient and powerful spell. With her are Rainbow, Applejack, Rarity, and a mysterious and ancient sphinx who always seems to know more than he says...
Twilight Sparkle travels north to an archaeological dig site to investigate an ancient and forgotten magic left behind by the ponies of old.
With her are Rainbow, Applejack, and Rarity, all interested in taking a well-deserved break from work to help Twilight. With them is also a sphinx, and ancient creature older than pony-kind and who is following the discovery with great interest.
Written for NaPoWriMo. Teen for some darker themes and elements.
“Oh, my gosh! It’s gonna be just like being Daring Do!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “We’re gonna go to a dig site, there could be treasure and traps and it’ll be so cool!”
Smoke billowed out from the train as it pulled up into the station. Twilight found herself as intrigued about their trip as Rainbow Dash, although likely not for the same reasons.
“I’m not really sure what to expect, girls,” she said. “Celestia doesn’t send us on trips like these for no reason, and she hasn’t told me what it even is we’re looking for.”
Applejack slung her saddlebags over her back. “Well, I’m just glad to get to travel a bit,” she said. “I ain’t never been to this region of Equestria.” She looked at her party. “Shame Flutters and Pinkie couldn’t come.”
“I’m sure Spike will keep them company,” Twilight said. The doors of the train opened, and ponies began to pour in. “He’ll keep everything in order whilst we’re gone.”
“I just hope Sassy Saddles can take care of my Canterlot Boutique whilst I’m gone from Ponyville,” Rarity said. “The princesses hardly ever give any notice for these sorts of things.”
The insides of the train were packed tighter than usual. It was the beginning of the holiday season, and many of the ponies were heading to sunny beaches and distant, colourful lands. Rainbow Dash was wearing a large pith helmet, which she described as ‘essential to any archeological dig’. Twilight squeezed through the crowd. She had somepony to meet on the train.
“Who’re we lookin’ for?” Applejack asked.
Twilight craned her neck above the crowd. “An old friend of Celestia’s, apparently.” She frowned. “I’ve never met him, though, and I’ve been around Celestia for, well, years.”
“How old is… hey! Watch it!” Rainbow grunted as she bustled past the ponies in the carriage. The train began to move, sending another, larger pony bumping into Rainbow’s side. She spluttered under the weight.
“We’ll never find seats like this,” Rarity said.
Twilight didn’t say anything. She hadn’t voiced her concerns to her friends, but she was definitely curious about this old friend of Celestia’s. Her old mentor had a bad habit of keeping secrets and being evasive. One of the many quirks she had developed over a thousand years, Twilight imagined.
She entered the next carriage. This one was as crowded as the last. Rainbow sighed.
“A four hour long train ride to a dig in the middle of nowhere, and we can’t even find someplace to sit,” she grumbled. “C’mon, let’s just sit on the floor or something. Better than standing.”
“I shan’t sit on the floor!” Rarity exclaimed. “It’s got things on it!”
“I could have been flying next to the train,” Rainbow muttered.
“We ain’t been travellin’ for five minutes and you’re already arguin’!” Applejack snapped. “Let’s just keep lookin’ for Twilight’s friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” Twilight replied.
“What are we going to be looking for?” Rainbow asked.
“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “Celestia said her friend would tell me.” She pulled a small note out of her saddlebags. “She said his name is… uh... “
Applejack craned her neck to see over Twilight’s shoulder. She whistled. “Jeez, that’s a long name.”
“That’s not a very pony-ish name,” Rarity commented.
The group moved into the next carriage. Twilight looked up at a large figure sitting alone at the back.
“That’s… probably because he isn’t a pony,” she said, folding the note away. “I think we’ve found him.”
Unlike the other carriages, this one was only half-packed. This was because the ponies here gave the creature at the back a wide berth. He wasn’t a pony, that was for sure. He was no griffon either, although there were some distinct similarities. Most of his body was cat-like, like the rear end of a griffon, and he had large, powerful wings. What was the most unique about him, though, was his face, which reminded Twilight very eerily of Tirek’s features.
“Uh… okay,” Rainbow muttered. “That’s a big cat-monkey-thing.”
There was another reason for the ponies here keeping their distances. His teeth, his claws, and his musculature… they all screamed of danger. Instincts from a time when ponies couldn’t talk were burning inside Twilight’s brain, telling her to run. Whatever this creature was, Twilight’s insides were telling her that it was a predator.
Its claws looked designed to shred meat from bones. Its teeth were too sharp to have been designed for a vegetarian diet. Its eyes appraised Twilight not as a pony, but as a potential meal.
Or rather, Twilight noticed, its eye. The creature’s left eye was blank, and stared off into space, lifeless. Only the right flickered from side to side like a hunter looking for its prey.
“Let’s say hello!” Rainbow declared, who evidently hadn’t been blessed with the same self-preservation instincts as Twilight.
As Rainbow approached the hulking monster, Twilight’s jaw dropped. Images from books she thought were mere legends flashed into the forefront of her mind. The knowledge she possessed about countless obscure animals and beings came to her aid, unbidden.
“You’re a… you’re a sphinx,” she said, trotting up to the animal, curiosity overriding the fear that stemmed from her very bones. “Hello,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m Twilight Sparkle. Celestia sent me.”
The sphinx slowly nodded. “Good afternoon,” it said, its voice scholarly and composed. “I am Zerephonzidas.”
There was little wonder in anypony’s mind why Zerephonzidas sounded nothing like a pony name, but Twilight knew more still. The books she had read claimed sphinxes had been extinct for millennia. Sphinxes hailed from a time before names, which, if the books were to be believed, this ancient race had invented.
Had the authors ever even met a sphinx? Oh, the things she could learn. Sphinxes were ancient. Sphinxes were mysterious. Sphinxes had…
“Sweet wings,” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “Bet you can get some serious speed with those, huh?”
Zerephonzidas being a sphinx answered yet more questions Twilight had. Namely, why she had never seen him in Canterlot before. Zerephonzidas, like all sphinxes, would live for a very, very long time. He could be a friend of Celestia’s from hundreds of years prior.
“I am not much of a flier,” Zerephonzidas said. He looked at Twilight with his one good eye. “I am pleased you decided to come and help me. I’ve been looking forwards to this dig for… well, longer than most.”
Twilight sat down opposite the sphinx. “Well, I suppose now is the time to have some questions answered.”
Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow all moved their saddlebags from their backs to behind the empty seats. Rarity and Applejack were still eyeing Zerephonzidas with considerable concern. Why shouldn’t they, Twilight wondered. Sphinxes had a long, long history, and like most things with a long history, it was not all pleasant.
Applejack leaned over to Rainbow’s ear. “You ain’t… uh… put off?” she asked.
“What, by the big guy?” Rainbow asked. “You forget, I was best buddies with a griffon for years.”
Applejack didn’t say anything. Despite the similarities between griffons and Zerephonzidas, the griffons Twilight had seen hadn’t had the same… aura of fear as the sphinx.
Applejack and Rainbow sat down opposite one another. Rarity sat next to Twilight. She was more interested in what Zerephonzidas had to say than the view. Applejack and Rainbow, by comparison, stopped paying the discussion about the dig any heed.
Zerephonzidas turned his full, considerable attention towards Twilight. “I apologise for the abrupt nature of our meeting,” he said. “I’m afraid I am quite an impatient member of my race.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Twilight said. “The books never said anything about sphinxes being impatient.”
Zerephonzidas smirked. “They wouldn’t, I imagine. Far too busy saying how extinct we are.” He put a paw on his chest. “As you can see, books are not always correct.”
“I can tell,” Twilight said.
“I’m afraid I know very little about sphinxes,” Rarity said. “Even less than Twilight, in fact.” She tilted her head. “You have a very pretty mane,” she said, evidently struggling to talk about something that wasn’t related to teeth, claws, or that stare.
“Thank you. I brush it.”
“Perhaps you could tell me more about what we’re looking for?” Twilight asked.
Zerephonzidas seemed to look like he was born to be serious, but at that, he became twice as stony-faced as before. “We’re looking for any sign of something called the Immortal King.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You wouldn’t have. The only mention of him was in the Great Eldritch Library, and that collection of books is long gone.” Zerephonzidas’s claws sank into the armrest like it was made of butter. “He was at the center of a very unique magical experiment. Over my considerable lifespan, I have witnessed many types of magic, but have yet to discover the results of the Immortal King’s spell.”
“This is about a spell?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “About a spell, and about knowledge. It is very important to me that I discover what he has done.” He scratched his lifeless eye with a lazy paw. “Living for many, many thousands of years tends to make one fascinated by what they don’t know.”
Rarity sighed. “Well, I’m not exactly an expert on ancient magic…”
Twilight smiled. “I am,” she said. “So, what do you expect to find?”
Zerephonzidas smiled, revealing his sharp teeth. “Why, the site of the experiment. It had disappeared into a desert many thousands of years ago, and was lost even further after, during, and before Discord’s reign.” Zerephonzidas’s smile turned to a scowl. “That irresponsible fool probably didn’t even realise what he had done. He set my investigations back over a thousand years.”
Twilight stroked her chin. So, Zerephonzidas wanted to find an ancient spell lost to time, and Celestia wanted Twilight to help him. Well, at least this was a problem right up her alley. It wasn’t exactly a friendship magic discovery, but it certainly did sound important to history.
“I have to ask,” Rarity said. “How old are you? I know that’s a very awkward question to ask…”
Zerephonzidas gave Rarity a shrug. “All sphinxes were made at the same time. We are magical beings, but have been disappearing ever since.” He looked beyond Twilight and Rarity for a moment. “There can only ever be less sphinxes, never more.”
“But sphinxes are said to have been around since before recorded history,” Twilight said, her heart pounding. “That means you’re older than…”
“I remember a time when your kind couldn’t speak or understand the written word,” he said. “I remember when continents were shaped differently, and when creatures long since extinct roamed the earth.” He stared straight through Twilight. “Sphinxes… my kind… we have had a long, long time on this sphere.”
Twilight swallowed.
“And here I thought Celestia was getting on a bit,” Rarity muttered.
Applejack only half-listened to the conversation happening next to her, and gave Rainbow a small nudge. “You hear that?” she asked.
Rainbow shrugged. “So the cat-monkey is a bit old. Big deal.” Her ears pricked up with excitement. “I’m more interested about this archeological dig.”
“Didn’t figure you for the archeological type.”
“Are you kidding? There’s a dig in, like, all of the Daring Do novels,” she said. “Come to think of it, Zereponlizad sounds super like Ahuizotl.”
“Zerephonzidas,” Applejack corrected.
“Whatever.” Rainbow leaned back, closing her eyes. “Too bad we’ll just be looking for some ancient magic.”
“I’d have thought ancient magic’d feature in Daring Do a fair bit,” Applejack commented.
“She’s more about artifacts,” Rainbow said. “And traps.”
“You think you’re gonna be bored?”
“Myeah, whatever. I’m still cool helping Twilight out, even if it does turn out to be boring.”
Applejack nodded. “Likewise,” she said. She looked out the window. “I thought it was gonna be real dull until an ancient sphinx thing showed up.”
“Yeah, well, Equestria’s full of weird things. Remember the bugbear?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“It was literally a bug mixed with a bear. What’s up with that?”
“Evolution at its finest,” Twilight chipped in.
“Yeah, that. Weird.” Rainbow tried to make herself comfortable. “Hey, I’m gonna take a nap. ‘Kay?”
The small town was surrounded on all sides by snow and mud. How far must North must they have come, Twilight wondered? Too far for comfort, that was for sure. Even Rainbow, with her thick pegasus coat designed for the cold of high altitude, was looking a bit chilly. Her cheeks had gone red and every time she breathed out, she exhaled a thick cloud of fog.
The air smelled salty. The ocean wasn’t far.
“This is where the dig is?” Applejack asked. “It don’t look like much.”
“No,” Zerephonzidas said. “The dig itself is a great deal away, but we must make it there on foot. The train doesn’t stop there.”
Rarity rubbed her sides, and pulled out a long, fashionable scarf from her bag. “Well, perhaps we should get going before we all catch our deaths of cold,” she said. A nearby cart kicked mud up from the soggy roads. “Or get covered in dirt.”
“We need to meet the rest of the team first,” Twilight said. “Do you know who it is we’ll be working with?”
“Locals, I imagine. As well as some more experienced diggers,” Zerephonzidas said. “We’re to meet them at the local hotel. They should be all ready to head out as soon as we’re ready.”
Rainbow pawed the ground. “Well, let’s get going. I can’t wait to actually do something instead of sit around in a train for four hours.”
Twilight noticed that even Zerephonzidas seemed to be eager to move. His wings, which were large enough to cover all four ponies, would flex in and out ever so slightly, working out the aches of travel.
Twilight wondered if the weather would improve at the dig site. As it stood, the sky was covered with unseemly clouds. Rainbow snorted.
“Some weather team they have here,” she said. “This place looks like a mess.”
Rarity didn’t say anything, but Twilight could see her scowl at the dirt and ugly sleet. Rarity was polite enough to not voice her displeasure at the rather ugly town, though she didn't have the discipline to hide it.
“Well, let’s get movin’. You know where this hotel is, Zereph’?”
Zerephonzidas bristled at his shortened name, but didn’t say anything about it. “Yes. I have the address.”
“Then lead the way,” Twilight said.
Twilight noticed the ponies in this dreary northern town step around the group, undoubtedly to avoid bumping into Zerephonzidas. Even if they didn’t know what he was, they could tell a predator when they saw it.
“Um, Mr. Zerephonzidas?”
“Just Zerephonzidas will do.”
“You don’t… um… eat ponies, do you?”
Zerephonzidas allowed Twilight to catch up with him, and lowered his voice.
“Not any more,” he said.
Twilight’s eyes widened in shock. Zerephonzidas caught the look and was quick to elaborate.
“Recall that a million years prior, your kind could neither talk nor speak. The context was quite different.” He sniffed. “I dislike eating smart creatures.”
Of course, Twilight thought. That must be where that frightful instinct kept surfacing from.
“Well, um, thanks for cutting us out of your diet.”
“You’re welcome.”
The hotel was large, considering the size and state of the village. It was also remarkably clean, which Rarity was very glad for. She brushed her hooves and moved close to a large fireplace to warm herself up.
Zerephonzidas moved up to the mare at the desk. The little pony was very clearly fighting the desire to back away. The sphinx sighed, for the first time showing discomfort at the caution ponies held towards him.
Twilight trotted up next to him. “It’s fine,” she said, flashing the mare a smile as genuine as she could make it. “We’re looking for… what’s the pony’s name, Zerephonzidas?”
“Digger Douglas,” the sphinx said. “We’re to meet him here for an expedition.”
The mare calmed down. “Ah, yes. I’ll give him a call.”
Zerephonzidas turned towards Twilight. “Perhaps I should let you handle the interactions with the other ponies.” He strode away towards the fireplace. “I shall stand in the corner and look intimidating.”
Twilight nodded. “Ah, yes, all right,” she said. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
Rainbow trotted up next to Twilight.
“Think he’ll scare off all the diggers?” she asked. “I mean, I don’t care, but that mare looked like she had seen a ghost. Not a friendly one, either.”
Twilight shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t think so.” She looked over at Zerephonzidas. “Not all of them, at least.”
It didn’t take long for a small pony to trot into the large room. He was a dusty looking stallion, and had stubble you could have used for sandpaper. His eyes, quite unlike Zerephonzidas’s, were big and friendly.
“Hello. You, uh, what’s the name? Zere…”
“No, I’m Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight said. “Zerephonzidas is over there.”
The stallion looked over Twilight’s shoulder and blanched.
“Big fellow, isn’t he?”
“Are you Digger Douglas?”
“That’s me. You can call me Doug, though.”
“Nice to meet you,” Twilight said. She gestured to her friends. “These are Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack.”
“Hey there.”
“Hello.”
“Howdy.”
Digger Douglas waved. “Evenin’.” He turned back to Twilight. “The boys will be ready to head out with a caravan headin’ out to the nearby towns,” he said. “We can’t leave right now, ‘cause it’s dark, and these parts ain’t safe at night.”
Twilight nodded. “When does the caravan leave?”
“Tomorrow morning. Thing is, it only goes once every two weeks. You guys picked a real bad time to go to a dig site.”
Twilight frowned. “Only once every two weeks?”
“Yeah. You can try’n get around without followin’ the ponies here, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” He cheered up. “Good news is we have food for months, and the caravan will keep us well stocked, so there isn’t anything to worry about.”
Twilight smiled. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“It’ll take us a good long while to get there, though,” Douglas said. “Here, you want I should show you a map?”
Rainbow looked excited at the mention of ‘map’. “Ooh, yeah. That’d be great.”
Douglas moved over to a small table in the center of the room surrounded with large, comfortable armchairs. He unfolded a large map of the area onto the table.
“You don’t mind if Zerephonzidas takes a look?”
Douglas looked up at the huge sphinx. He breathed out.
“Nope, not at all. He’s in charge, isn’t he?”
Zerephonzidas strode over to the table.
“Actually, I believe Celestia put Twilight in charge,” he said.
Twilight did not recall any such decision from Celestia’s part. Regardless, Zerephonzidas leaned over the map.
Digger Douglas pointed towards a small point on the map, trapped between two large rock faces. “This here is where we’re headin’. I don’t know how Princess Celestia was able to find the place, but that’s it. Popped out of a large pile of snow after Tirek went and nicked all the pegasus magic. Really messed up the weather here.”
“Ironic,” Zerephonzidas said. “Once, that site was hidden not under snow, but sand.”
“Sand?” Twilight asked. “Also, how could Celestia recognise this as the dig site we want?”
“I described the features to her,” Zerephonzidas said. “Given the proper description, somepony of Celestia’s intellect would have wanted to investigate further.”
Douglas shrugged. “I don’t know about all that, but there’s a small camp outside left behind by some earlier explorers. They ain’t there any more… left to go someplace warmer… but we can stay there until we carve us a better camp inside the caverns.”
“In the caverns?” Rarity asked, her face falling.
“Yup. We can make ‘em nice and warm. Better than tents outside, at least.”
Rarity scowled.
“I don’t like caverns.”
“Hey, don’t be like that. It’s just like camping,” Rainbow said. “It’ll be awesome.”
Zerephonzidas smiled, a faraway look on his face.
“It’s been too long since I’ve started looking for this place,” he said. “I almost can’t believe we’re this close.” He breathed in. “It’s overwhelming.”
“It’s exciting,” Rainbow added.
“Well,” Applejack butted in, “We’d better get some rest. Long day tomorrow, right?”
Twilight nodded. “I agree. But first, I could really use a meal.”
“Same here!” Rainbow exclaimed.
The journey the next day was long and tiring. The snow made it hard to see and the wind shoved the ponies to and fro. Only Zerephonzidas’s large frame could withstand the gale properly, but not even the sphinx could completely ignore the cold.
They travelled uphill for the most part, with a team of over twenty ponies, and a dozen more making up the caravan.
Applejack and Rainbow were having an animated discussion about the merits of adventure. Rainbow would say ‘Daring Do’ at least once every three sentences or so. She had a very particular vision of what constituted an adventure, and she was adamant that they were on one. Applejack, on the other hand, said that there was nothing exciting about walking in the cold.
Rarity had decided to shiver in silence.
Twilight tried to canter up to Zerephonzidas, leaving the three to their own devices. She wanted to know more about this magic he was investigating.
“Excuse me?” she asked, having to shout to be heard over the wind. “I wanted to ask about this thing you’re looking for!”
Zerephonzidas looked back, and slowly extended a huge wing to shield the little alicorn from the wind. Twilight found she didn’t have to shout any more.
“What did you want to know?”
“Well, for starters, how long have you been searching for it?”
Zerephonzidas sighed, exhaling enough fog to partially obscure his features. “A long, long time,” he said. “Five thousand years, if I remember rightly.”
Twilight breathed in. “That’s from before the founding of Equestria,” she said.
“Quite.”
“Why spend so much time searching for it?” she asked. “It seems excessive.”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “What else am I going to do with my time?”
Twilight didn’t have an answer to that. “Anything?” she asked. “You live forever, don’t you?”
The sphinx chuckled. “From your point of view, perhaps!” he said. “You like learning, don’t you?”
Twilight nodded.
“Well, there you go.”
“I can’t imagine spending five thousand years looking for one piece of information, though,” Twilight said.
“Neither did I, until I did it.” He grinned. “But now, it seems, my waiting is at an end.”
The caravan began to slow down. Shouts erupted across the crowd of ponies as they organised themselves. Twilight couldn’t see anything through the falling snow. Rainbow, Applejack, and Rarity all caught up with her.
“Have we arrived?” Rarity asked, uttering her first words in over a half hour.
Digger Douglas found the group amongst the bustle. “Nearly there. Going to set up a watch here for when the caravan comes back.” He turned to one of the ponies. “Oy! Scraper, Picker! Grab a tent and start setting it up. Make sure it’s out of the wind.”
“Why us, boss?”
“It’s freezin’ out ‘ere!”
Douglas groaned. “We’ll rotate! Now get to work!”
Zerephonzidas looked up, seemingly able to see through the blinding snow. “Ah, this brings me back,” he muttered.
Douglas moved to the leader of the caravan. “Thanks for gettin’ us here,” he said. “See you in two weeks, yeah?”
The other pony nodded. “Sure thing. Stay safe, eh?”
Twilight was led through the snow, and the wind died down. She looked around. The snow was thinner here, and she quickly realised why. They were in-between two large outcrops of ice-covered rock. Not far away, she could see the shapes of small tents near the face of a large, granite cliff.
“I guess we made it,” she said.
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Yes, we have,” he said, and flapped his wings. The wind he caused made Twilight’s mane whip across her face, but she was too absorbed by the sight of Zerephonzidas flying around the dig site. He was laughing. “Five thousand years!” he exclaimed. “Ha! Oh, it’s been too long, even for me!”
Rainbow pulled up behind Twilight.
“Wow. He’s nuts.”
“Oh, he’s just excited is all,” Rarity said. “After all, wouldn’t you be if you waited five, um, thousand years?”
“I suppose,” Rainbow said. “Still, he’d better calm down and help out. We still need to set up camp.”
“Already on it,” Digger Douglas said. “Come on, lads, let’s get to work.”
Above them, Zerephonzidas was still cackling, his eyes filled with juvenile excitement.
“It’s been so long since I’ve learned something new,” he said. He smiled, and flew back down to earth. “Pass me the heavy stuff. Let’s move as quickly as we can!”
The plains, which seemed to stretch on forever, rustled with wind. The sounds of faraway animals reached Zerephonzidas’s ears, crawling across the grass and bush and creating a symphony for him to listen to.
In the meantime, he stared intently at the solitary tree, standing in the middle of the flat grassland. His sphinx eyes never blinked. Never flinched. When they looked at something, really looked, there was no distraction.
Not far away, Salenorzabul yawned. The larger, more unkempt sphinx was less than interested in Zerephonzidas’s observations. He rolled onto his back, scratching his stomach.
“It’s just a tree,” he said.
Zerephonzidas never stopped staring at the tree. “You’ve been neglecting your sight, Salenorzabul,” he said. “Of course all you see is a tree.”
“Aren’t you bored?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Zerephonzidas finally blinked. He had seen all he wanted to today.
“Because it’s a magical tree.”
Salenorzabul groaned. “Again with that obsession of yours,” he said. “Come on, why don’t we find some food.”
It was times like these that Zerephonzidas remembered why his kind were loners. Sphinx didn’t have lifespans like the animals around them. They didn’t have any real objective in life other than what they set themselves. They weren’t a species that had goals, he thought. Rather, they had hobbies. Interests.
Salenorzabul’s hobby was napping and eating. Zerephonzidas’s was observing magical phenomenon. The pair did not get along.
“I’m not hungry yet,” Zerephonzidas said. “Why don’t you go get some food alone?”
Salenorzabul frowned.
“Safety in numbers,” he said. “Remember Alagonvorizad?”
Zerephonzidas remembered. He didn’t care. Alagonvorizad had been a fool for getting too close to those mammoths.
“Don’t be careless, then,” Zerephonzidas replied. “Go on. It’s the plains: we’re hardly in dangerous territory.”
Salenorzabul’s brow furrowed, but he got to his paws.
“Fine,” he said, visibly angered.
Why couldn’t Zerephonzidas have just been left alone? He didn’t care for company. Salenorzabul skulked off, disappearing into the grass.
Zerephonzidas was over three thousand years old at this point in history. He put his hoof on the bark of the tree.
“How curious,” he said. Sphinx eyes weren’t like normal eyes. They could see past the mere physical, if you trained them right. Zerephonzidas prided himself on having trained them very well. He could see the veins of magic course up and down the tree. He could see thoughts move through its trunk.
The tree was sentient.
Zerephonzidas wasn’t going to tell Salenorzabul. The other sphinx took sinister pleasure in ending lives and tormenting lesser beings. Zerephonzidas, however, was quite content to leave special things alone. He was by no means a nice creature, but he simply didn’t see the point of meaningless malice.
Sphinx were not nice animals. Zerephonzidas, having been exposed to Salenorzabul for a long period of time, knew this well. They were carnivores. Zerephonzidas knew that this self-awareness didn’t make him better than a more ignorant creature. It just meant he had more knowledge.
Zerephonzidas liked knowledge. He loved it, even. What else was he supposed to fill his head with?
A sphinx had as much time as they wanted to do anything at all. They were the sum of their wants and ambitions. Zerephonzidas had travelled miles and miles just to see a little magic in this wide open world of theirs.
He couldn’t wait to see how much it’d change.
He heard panicked bleating in the distance, and his expression darkened. If he was fortunate, he would witness the change without having to put up with Salenorzabul.
He turned his attention back to the tree. He put his paw on its bark, and slowly stroked it. Perhaps, if it was sentient, he could communicate with it? Now that would be fascinating indeed.
Zerephonzidas only had a small amount of magic he could use on his own. He had seen various creatures be able to tap into spells on their own, but not Zerephonzidas. It was a major irritation that he had to work much harder to influence magic than other animals in this world.
The bleating in the distance continued. Salenorzabul had caught something. It sounded like a pony.
Zerephonzidas did his best to ignore it. Salenorzabul was probably going to take his time with it. He was almost as savage as the animals living in the plains. It was a wonder he could talk at all. He had no ambitions higher than eating and sleeping and surviving.
What a waste.
Zerephonzidas sank his claws into the bark. Instantly, the magic in the tree went haywire.
Ah, so it could feel pain. Now, that was an interesting discovery. What else could it feel, Zerephonzidas wondered? He licked his lips, and retracted his claws. The currents of magic inside the tree had definitely been altered.
Oh well, Zerephonzidas thought. It had been worth the experiment.
In the distance, Salenorzabul continued to play with his captured prey. Zerephonzidas scowled.
He had been happy to entertain Salenorzabul’s savagery up until now, but now he was getting distracted.
“We’ll continue this later,” Zerephonzidas said, and stalked off.
He slid through the grass, silent and invisible. Sphinx were apex predators, and not even another sphinx could hear one who was trying to be quiet, and was good at it. Perhaps if Salenorzabul used his eyes, he could see Zerephonzidas through the grass, but the idiotic creature was too busy grinning over the damaged body of the quadruped he had caught.
To be fair, Zerephonzidas didn’t begrudge him for thinking little of the silly species of coloured equine. They were a dull species indeed, bereft of thought and magic. Their bright colours were supposed to frighten off predators, but all it made them was a target. They were a species evolution had ignored.
What Zerephonzidas begrudged was Salenorzabul making a mess.
Zerephonzidas crept up behind the larger sphinx.
Salenorzabul was chuckling as he brought his claws across the pony, slowly and with surgical precision. The little animal whined and moaned.
It took one swipe from Zerephonzidas to end its misery.
Salenorzabul froze. Not out of fear or shock, but anger. He slowly turned towards Zerephonzidas.
“Don’t play with your food,” Zerephonzidas told him. “It’s disgusting.”
Salenorzabul looked like a volcano about to erupt.
“Sometimes,” he began, “I wonder if you’re simply suicidal.”
Zerephonzidas growled. So, was this how their travels together was going to end?
It was a long time coming.
“Eat your dinner,” Zerephonzidas said. “Try not to disturb me whilst I’m thinking.”
Sphinx eyes could see past restrictions like the present, if they looked hard enough. It was for this reason that Zerephonzidas easily dodged the lightning fast attack. Salenorzabul was furious.
“I was just having some fun,” he snarled. “It makes such a stupid noise! And besides, all you do is look at stupid trees. Maybe if you actually did something entertaining for once in your life, I wouldn’t have to make my own fun!”
Zerephonzidas said nothing. The fool’s eyes weren’t nearly as evolved as Zerephonzidas’s, and he didn’t even realise it.
“I know,” Salenorzabul growled, “Since you broke my toy, how about I see what kind of noises you make?”
Their exchange lasted mere moments. Salenorzabul crumbled, clutching his eyes with both paws. He was screaming as blood flowed from his injuries.
Zerephonzidas retracted his claws.
“You’re right,” he said. “Apparently, sphinx do make entertaining noises.”
The stream made a pleasant rippling noise. Birds tweeted from the branches of trees. Zerephonzidas sunk his now crimson claws into the water, and began to wash away Salenorzabul’s blood.
Entertaining or not, Zerephonzidas had made sure it was quick. Even an animal like Salenorzabul deserved that much.
From across the stream, Zerephonzidas heard movement. His eyes shot up.
He saw the little quadruped, transfixed with fear. Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow.
Truly, ponies were a dull species. Too stupid to run from a predator when they saw one. Or perhaps smart enough to realise that there would be no point? Zerephonzidas wasn’t sure.
A question that time, perhaps, would answer. If there was one thing that living for a long time was good for, it was answering questions. It was too bad Salenorzabul hadn’t understood that. Now there was one less sphinx in the world.
There could only ever be less sphinxes, never more.
The pony across the stream was still staring at Zerephonzidas. The sphinx examined his claws. No, he thought, he had just cleaned them. No need to make them dirty for no reason. Besides, Salenorzabul had already found him a perfectly serviceable meal.
Zerephonzidas found himself intrigued by the prospect of ponies being smarter than they looked. Perhaps he ought to take a moment to study one. It wasn’t like he was going to run out of them, after all.
Besides, the way they lived in herds, quite unlike sphinx, was curious. How did they do it, Zerephonzidas wondered? So much to learn. So much to discover.
He made up his mind. He was going to keep a close eye on ponies for the foreseeable future. Besides, it was always good to keep a food source handy. Perhaps they could be tamed?
He shot towards the pony like an arrow. The dumb creature flinched, but still remained transfixed.
Zerephonzidas tilted his head.
“Hello,” he said. “I don’t suppose you know where the rest of your herd are?”
The pony, being nothing more than a dumb animal, whinnied.
Zerephonzidas frowned.
Whinnied, he wondered, or tried to communicate?
Zerephonzidas, now enjoying the tranquility of solitude, watched the herd of ponies from atop his hill. The few sphinx that had tried to meddle with his experiments had quickly learned the error of their ways.
He threw a skinned lizard into his mouth. His eyes tracked the colourful ponies with mild interest.
He really wanted to see what they’d do about the little mud hut he had made for them. He hummed to himself. He could spend years doing this. It was a nice change of pace from looking for magic all around the world.
Of course, he’d get back to that eventually. Perhaps in a decade or two.
His eyes widened with interest as the ponies went in and out of the hut. Ah-ha, he thought. So they were braver than he gave them credit for. He licked his lips. He looked forwards to seeing what they’d do in bad weather. Would they hide in the hut? Could they figure out how to repair it?
Oh, he hadn’t had this much fun since he found a waterfall that flowed backwards. He ate another lizard.
Sphinx, he thought, might not be a nice species, but he liked to think that his curiosity and thirst for knowledge redeemed him somewhat. After all, it was what he had chosen to do with his existence. He might as well feel good about it.
And who knows? Perhaps the ponies would benefit from it somewhat as well, although Zerephonzidas doubted it.
He rolled onto his side, still staring at his test subjects. He breathed in.
He hadn’t realised how much more pleasant exploring the wonders of the world was without Salenorzabul. The sphinx had a saying: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Zerephonzidas preferred to keep both at a comfortable distance of several hundred miles. Perhaps one day he’d find someone worth sticking around. Until then, he had his hobby.
The insides of the cavern looked to Twilight just like any old cave, although Zerephonzidas insisted it was where he wanted to be. The team had begun work on excavating whatever was within. Digger Douglas was making splendid progress.
Rarity bustled past Twilight, holding a basketful of lamps.
“I’m just trying to brighten the place up a bit,” she said. “It’s dreadfully dark in here.”
Twilight had to agree with her. She felt she had to go outside just to feel some fresh air, despite the cold. The caverns were oppressive. There were several that branched off into multiple smaller tunnels filled with strange rock formations. The stone inside was a strange green colour. Twilight had broken a piece off and examined it outside. It was very pretty.
Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow and herself had all set up their tents in the same branch of the caverns. The other diggers were spread out in various places. Fires and heating devices had been set up at various points, and a large cooking area had been set up. The diggers knew how to make the place feel as homely as they could.
“The rock,” Twilight told Applejack, “Is really quite special. I can’t place where it comes from.”
Applejack shrugged. “Didn’t Zereph say that this place used to be covered in sand? Maybe it’s a more desert-y kind of rock.”
Twilight nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been trying to think about what might have caused an entire cave network to move from a desert to a snowy tundra.” She stroked her chin. “I think that Zerephonzidas gave us the answer earlier.”
“Discord,” Applejack said.
Twilight nodded. If there was one thing that could shift continents and turn the world on its head, it would have been Discord’s reign.
The air in the caves was rather stale. Not much wind came in this far down. It was surprisingly eerie at times, but comforting at others. When with her friends, Twilight felt safe. Without them, she felt trapped.
She was even getting used to Zerephonzidas. He was actually rather pleasant to talk to. At the very least, he was the one she could talk about magic about the most.
It must be strange, she thought, to live for over a million years. To witness evolution as it happened. She found she enjoyed listening to him tell her about the development of ponies, and he seemed excited to talk about it.
“What really surprised me was the art,” he had said. “Sphinxes don’t make a lot of art, but I found it fascinating for such an inferior… at the time… species to create crude representations of animals on the walls of caves.” He frowned. “Of course, Discord destroyed most of those, in his stupidity. And naturally, other sphinxes were less than thrilled about your kind’s development.”
“But not you?” Twilight had asked.
“I was interested, shall we say, not thrilled or scared.”
Twilight made her way back to her tent. There, she found Rainbow Dash lying lazily on her bedroll. Twilight snickered.
“Archeology less exciting than you anticipated?”
“The guys here haven’t used a single stick of dynamite!” Rainbow complained. “How are you supposed to clear out whole tunnels in one go without explosions?!”
“Carefully,” Twilight replied.
Rainbow only grumbled in reply.
“Yeah, whatever. At least Applejack’s good for a card game when she’s not helping the others.”
“You could help too.”
“Help what? I’m not scraping rock away with a toothbrush, and I’m sure not going to cook or clean or act like a maid.” She rolled onto her side and picked up a Daring Do book. “Call me if you accidentally unearth an ancient evil or something, okay? Until then, I’m gonna read my book and maybe work out a bit.”
Twilight smiled.
“I don’t think there are any ancient evils here,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what they say at the beginning of every Daring Do book,” Rainbow replied. She gave Twilight an exasperated look. “Didn’t you read the entire series? You should know this by now.”
Twilight smiled. Rainbow had a point. She trotted away, leaving the pegasus to her own devices.
Applejack and Rarity, by comparison, were far more helpful. Applejack especially. She was stronger than even the largest stallions, and had been a great help in setting up some of the more sturdy supports.
Down in the deepest caverns sat Zerephonzidas. He preferred to keep an eye on the digger’s progress in person.
Twilight carefully navigated the at times slippery passage and found him hunched over a paper, a pen pinched between his claws. His eyes rolled up to meet Twilight’s.
“Hello,” he said.
Twilight gave him a curt nod. “What are you writing?” she asked. “Notes on our progress?”
“Not any more,” Zerephonzidas said, and gestured towards a large pile of diagrams. “A lot of those are based on my memory of previous investigations, but I’ve mapped out the more promising directions to dig.” He turned back to his current writings. “This is a letter to Celestia, if you must know. I intend to send it back with the caravan, if we’re still working here by then.”
“A letter to Celestia?” Twilight asked. “That takes me back.”
“Fond of correspondence?”
“She told me to send her a letter every week after I moved to Ponyville,” Twilight said. “They were, well, the highlight of my week at the time.”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Well, I don’t tend to send letters every week. More like every five years,” he said. “I think she enjoys keeping in touch more than I.”
“How long have you known Celestia?” Twilight asked.
“Eight hundred years,” Zerephonzidas replied. “It was just as Equestria was beginning to look like it does today,” he went on. “Ponies were replacing the grim and grey houses with colour, and the streets were filling with life. I was very interested in your development by this point. You had evolved from mere curiosity to a truly fascinating culture.”
“I always felt like Celestia was the oldest pony around, but talking to you about the evolution of pony-kind makes her sound practically young.”
“Compared to me, she is,” Zerephonzidas said. “There are many differences between myself and your mentor.” The sphinx grinned. “She’s kinder, for starters.”
“So, what are you writing to her about?”
Zerephonzidas put his pen aside. “The dig site. I’m trying to find the correct words to thank her for locating this place for me.”
“Why not thank her in person when you get back to Canterlot?”
Zerephonzidas’s expression turned dark. “I am not sure I will be returning to Canterlot after we get to the center of these caverns,” he said.
Twilight raised an eyebrow, a sinister feeling creeping up her spine. “Why would you say that?” She remembered her earlier discussion with Rainbow. “Do you think there’s anything… dangerous here?”
Zerephonzidas smiled. “Not to me,” he said. “I may have lost one of my eyes five thousand years ago, but I am still a sphinx, and these caves hold no fear for me.”
Twilight did not point out that unlike him, the rest of the ponies at the dig were not sphinxes and weren’t built like ancient, primordial killing machines.
Zerephonzidas was oblivious to Twilight’s growing worry. “Rather, I simply mean that after I find the answers I’m looking for, I’m… going to want to think about it for a time.” He ran a paw through his mane. “I like to take a long time to mull things over, and I believe that this trip will have given me much to think about. Either because it will be as life-changing as I hope it will be, or because I wasted five-thousand years chasing something that was never there.”
“What do you expect to be here?” Twilight asked. “You mentioned a magical experiment, but you kept things rather vague.” She narrowed her eyes. “It reminded me of Celestia a little.”
Zerephonzidas leaned back.
“Tell me, have you ever given any real thought to immortality?”
Twilight was taken aback. “Um, not really. I just know that Celestia is immortal, and I assume you are too.”
“Do you think you, as an alicorn, are also immortal?”
Twilight had researched this. “No,” she said. “All my studies point towards Celestia and Luna being outliers, unusual among the few recorded instances of alicorns.”
“Imagine you were Celestia for a moment,” Zerephonzidas said. “Humour me.”
Twilight frowned. “Then I’d be immortal,” she said.
“Then, perhaps you can answer this: how would you know?”
The cave fell into momentary silence as Twilight tumbled deep into thought.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she said, after a long time.
“Now pretend you’re me. You’ve lived for over a million years, you’ve seen the rise and fall of species, the shifting of continents. You’ve been there for all of it. Would you say I am immortal?”
Twilight was beginning to get an idea of where the discussion was going. “You don’t know how long you live either,” she said.
“I do not. No sphinx has died a truly natural death. We have died violently, or of poison and disease. Never of old age. Back when there were still enough sphinx around, we would compete to live the longest. As you can see, I won.” He tapped his claw on his table. “The point is, one cannot observe the limits of immortality. To do so, you’d have to spend all of time watching it play out, and time has a tendency to go on somewhat.”
“What experiment happened here?” Twilight asked, feeling very uncomfortable at all this talk of immortality, and time. “What are you looking for?”
Zerephonzidas smiled. “I believe that here, in these caverns, is some information to be had with regards to true immortality. Not the half-immortality myself and Celestia possess. I am looking for traces of the Immortal King, who is as far as I know the only creature to have succeeded in achieving the purest form of immortality, if he even did.”
“You mentioned him before.”
“I did,” Zerephonzidas said. “He was a pony, believe it or not. Yet another fascinating surprise from your species.” Zerephonzidas tapped his claw on the table again. “Tell you what. Despite my considerable knowledge, I would like to hear your findings on the matter.” He rumagged around in a bag, and pulled out a small device. Twilight immediately recognised it as being a thaumometer.
“You want me to perform a magical search?” Twilight asked. “Which one? Elderwood’s? Starswirl Method?”
“Whichever. You should find some magical resonance in the stones here,” Zerephonzidas said. “I have been unable to glean much information I haven’t already known. I’m given to understand you are an expert on magic, however…”
“It is my special talent,” Twilight declared.
“Perhaps you shall find something the old sphinx has not, then,” Zerephonzidas said. He handed the thaumometer to Twilight. “We should have a few days before we get really close to the center of the spell. It seems time and magic has blocked up most of the passageways that were once here.”
Twilight took the device. “Yes, I noticed that the stones were… odd,” she said. “Dark green-ish. I’ve not seen it before.”
“You wouldn’t,” Zerephonzidas said. “Very few spells are powerful enough to turn this amount of sand into glass,” he said.
Twilight’s eyes widened.
“What did you…?”
“If you don’t mind, I need to finish my letter,” Zerephonzidas said. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to put any ideas in your head that might bias your thinking more than I already have.”
Twilight slowly moved away from the sphinx, pushing past the diggers working nearby.
Applejack and Rarity were both standing a ways ahead. Rarity looked at Twilight’s thoughtful expression with some small amount of concern.
“What is it, darling?”
Twilight caught up to her friends.
“I think…” she began, frowning. “I think perhaps the Daring Do books were right after all.” She looked around at the caverns. “This is all much bigger than I expected.”
Rainbow Dash heard hoofsteps near her little corner of the cavern. She didn’t expect much excitement from anypony, so she didn’t bother looking up from her book. She didn’t understand. When she had met Daring Do, she had been on an adventure. Caballeron was there, and so was Ahuizotl. There were giant rings and epic stakes.
Twilight, or Celestia, or Zereph, or whoever had the idea for this journey had picked the most boring… and the coldest… adventure of all time. Then again, cold might help in that regard. Yetis were probably real. Rainbow’s eyes lit up a little as she kept on skimming. It’d be like that bugbear again! She still had a mark from where it had bitten here.
“Hey, RD?”
She should maybe get that looked at, actually…
“...Rainbow?”
Rainbow rolled onto her stomach. Applejack loomed over her like a stormcloud.
“Hey, AJ.”
Applejack ran a hoof through her mane. “Listen, I weren’t gonna say nothin’ ‘bout you not pullin’ your weight around here…”
“It’s their fault if they made archeology boring.”
“...but why’d you have to go and make Twilight all skittish? She’s been starin’ into that doo-hickey for over an hour now, mutterin’ ‘bout all kinds of dark magic.”
Rainbow’s eyebrow raised. “What’s that?”
“She’s all worked up, and I reckon it was these,” Applejack said, prodding Rainbow’s pile of Daring Do books, “That caused it.”
Rainbow snorted. “Don’t blame the Daring.” She turned back onto her back and made a point of mock reading. “Talk to the sphinx-thing. He’s the one that’s acting all manipulative like. Besides, even his name sounds like a Daring Do villain.”
Applejack grumbled and looked to her side. “I tried talkin’ to him. He just told me a bunch of things that didn’t make sense.”
“Classic villain.”
Applejack put her hoof on the top of Rainbow’s book and pulled it down. The pair now looked into each others eyes.
“This is what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. You sayin’ things like that is what puts ponies on edge.”
“I’m not on edge.”
“You’re… really thick skinned.”
“I’m not thick skinned.”
“You are to this.”
Rainbow folded her page and closed the book. “Hey, you guys don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I don’t care.” She put her hoof on her chest. “I can deal with anything that comes my way.”
Applejack sighed. “Well, we ain’ t you,” she said. “This place is really givin’ me the creeps.”
“Not you too,” Rainbow said.
“Yes, me too. And Rarity also,” Applejack said. “Rares’ has been spendin’ all day tryin’ to cosy the place up, make it less spooky, but just puttin’ some lamps up ain’t cuttin’ it. I can’t explain it.”
“We’re in a cave, AJ,” Rainbow deadpanned. “Ponies don’t like caves.”
“It ain’t the cold either,” Applejack went on. “It’s like there’s this… I dunno.”
“Noise?”
“I guess, when you put it like that?”
Rainbow grinned. “What a coincidence. There’s a noise here, too. A really annoying, vague one.”
Applejack snorted. “Well, har har,” she grumbled.
Rainbow giggled. “Wanna play cards? I’m bored reading.”
Applejack sighed. “Yeah, sure thing. You mind if I invite Twilight and Rares? They could use a break.”
Celestia trudged through the forest, her long legs leaving her guardsponies behind. Light flickered from her horn and lit up her way, shining through the bushes and leaves. The night had some reassuring element to it that she couldn’t place. It reminded her of better times, she thought.
She could hear the guards calling her name in the distance. She ignored them.
She knew they were just trying to protect her from Equestria’s many enemies. Celestia had taken a very aggressive attitude towards her neighbours. Oh, the griffons were peaceful enough, but the Yaks and Diamond Dogs needed a firm hand. She tolerated not even the slightest hint of aggression.
It was her country to protect. It was her country, and her sisters.
That sort of attitude made enemies. The kind of enemy that would stop at nothing to have her removed. Powerful alicorn or no, the guards were a necessity of life. But today… This was her journey, and hers alone. The guards and her advisors couldn’t understand.
Nopony could really understand.
The forest path sloped uphill, and the trees became more sparse. Moonlight shone down from above, reminding Celestia of the only pony who was anything like her.
Why was it the only things that were at all similar to her opposed her? Discord was trapped in stone, and Luna was trapped on the moon. Tirek was trapped in Tartarus, and Scorpan had long since left Equestria. Celestia was alone.
She pulled out a large book from her saddlebags, levitating it before her. She had found it a year prior, in the darkest depths of her library. It was heavy and mysterious. To Celestia’s trained eye, it seemed like it had come from another time.
She even speculated it had come from the Eldritch Library. Little else would explain it making its way into her library without her librarians recording its presence. Aside from, admittedly, equine error.
She perused its cover once again. Even its contents was unusual. Celestia could count the number of books that recorded the history of Equestria in this level of detail on two hooves. Even if most of it was made up, it was still extraordinary. It told of everything leading up to Discord’s reign, which was when the author must have either passed away or given up due to the madness of that time.
What was impressive was how far back it went. It told of the founding of Equestria, the individual tribe’s history, and further back still. It told of little huts on plains and tribes of savage ponies before the written word had even been conceived. It told of ponies as dull, braying animals that had no magic and no defence against the vicious predators that surrounded them.
It was the sort of book that reminded Celestia very eerily of her own point of view. Not quite on the same scale of magnitude, of course… Celestia had been alive for a mere three hundred years… but she too had seen the rise and fall of cities, the naming of nations, and the lives of ponies coming to abrupt ends.
It was a point of view alien to most ponies. It was the point of view of an immortal.
What fascinated Celestia the most was the words at the back of the book. A list of locations, and dates.
The third of which was today’s date, and a clearing in the Whitetail Woods.
It was a rendez-vous, and one Celestia found she couldn’t ignore.
She trotted into an open patch of forest. The stars shone overhead, illuminating the green grass and mossy rocks. The breeze rustled the leaves on the trees.
From inside the gloom of the forest, Celestia saw a single, yellow eye.
She sighed, and her horn flashed. “If you’re trying to ambush me, you perhaps should have closed that eye of yours,” she said. “I’ve seen less conspicuous flashlights.”
There was a chuckle. From the forest came a large, muscular, winged figure.
“I merely wanted to check if you were the pony I was waiting for,” said the titanic shape. “I didn’t want to go startling a guardspony by accident, now, would I?”
Celestia’s eyebrow raised. She fought back a sudden instinct that conjured fear in the very pit of her stomach.
“I recognise your kind,” Celestia said. “I believed there were no more sphinxes.”
The sphinx clambered onto a large rock and lazily sat himself down. “Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. I heard a very competent scholar once say that there was no such thing as an alicorn.”
“He was mistaken.”
“I know,” the sphinx said. “I had been watching ponies for quite some time, and whilst rare, I had recorded the birth of quite a few alicorns.” He smiled, and pointed to the book Celestia carried. “I hope you enjoyed my work. You didn’t find any mistakes, I hope?”
Celestia put the book away. “I had thought that it had been written by somepon… someone like me,” she said. “I see I was correct.”
The sphinx nodded. “Quite. My name is Zerephonzidas. I was hoping you’d come this way.”
Celestia was no fool. She knew very well of the reputation of sphinxes.
“Is this a trap?” she asked. “Are you going to try to kill me?”
Zerephonzidas laughed. It was not an unpleasant laugh.
“Oh, I’m quite friendly. At least, these days, I am.” He smirked. “One’s personality has a tendency to change after a few thousand years. I’ve found this new Equestria to be quite pleasant.” He grinned. “Good for the soul.”
Celestia frowned. “Is that so?”
“Indeed. Why, you yourself might change somewhat over a thousand years.”
Celestia snorted. “I do not expect to live that long.”
“Not with that attitude,” Zerephonzidas replied. “Look at yourself, picking fights with just about everypony who even looked like they might attack Equestria. You have quite the warlike attitude for a pony.”
“I learned to be strong from my time alone,” Celestia replied. “I don’t need your judgement.”
“Oh, I’m not judging you,” Zerephonzidas said. “I’m just here to tell you a story. Not about a pony, but a sphinx.”
Celestia narrowed her eyes.
“You set all this up over… who knows how long… to tell me a story?”
“There was a sphinx, a long, long time ago, who would live forever. He was big and strong. Nothing he met could even pose a threat to him,” Zerephonzidas said. “Unfortunately, he was an arrogant and unlikeable sphinx, and he’d keep on antagonising the world around him. Of course, he was big and strong, so he was safe and secure.” Zerephonzidas suddenly turned serious. “That is, until he wasn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Some savage named Salenorzabul. I’ve been thinking a lot about him. The moral of this story is that if you get on enough people’s bad sides, eventually one of them will beat you.”
“Perhaps, then, I am not meant to live forever.”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “Perhaps. But then again, why not?”
Celestia looked down. “I’m not trying to antagonise the world around me in the hopes of dying, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Zerephonzidas snorted. “If you say so,” he said. “But you are tired.”
Celestia narrowed her eyes.
“So what if I am?”
Zerephonzidas grinned. “Ah, you see, this is why I set up this little meeting,” he said, and jumped from the rock towards Celestia, his gargantuan wings flaring. “I’m not here to kill you,” he said. “I’m here to teach you.”
“You’ve got a very colourful country,” Zerephonzidas said as the sun rose over the city of Canterlot. “Lovely rooftops. It’s like looking at a painting.”
“We’re a happy nation,” Celestia said. “We like our architecture to reflect that.”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “And hopefully you shall remain happy for many, many more years,” he said. “Take it from me: living for thousands of years is much easier when you have someone your age to talk to. At least for the first hundred years.” He lifted his nose. “I suppose, in hindsight, that might be why I tolerated Salenorzabul.”
Celestia’s eyebrow raised.
“I take it you were the last thing he antagonised?”
“The very last, yes.” Zerephonzidas waved a large paw. “This was a long time ago, of course. I’m reformed.”
“Reformed. I’m not sure I believe in reform.”
“Oh, you should. Anything can change over one thousand years, if you get my meaning.”
Celestia’s eyebrow raised. She looked up at the setting moon, staring at it for what seemed like days.
“I… see.”
Zerephonzidas grinned a large, toothy grin. “The second thing that really does help when you live as long as you and I,” he said, “Is an objective. A hobby, so to speak. Preferably a better one than collecting stamps.”
Celestia nodded. “I see.”
“Of course,” Zerephonzidas went on, “There are some things that can only be completed with an unusually long lifespan,” he said. “Things that make dying a very bad idea indeed.”
Celestia sat down, spending a long time to think. All the while Zerephonzidas played with his mane, and rolled onto his back, yawning.
“You think away,” he said. “I’m going to sleep. I’m getting quite old, you know.”
Celestia slowly turned towards Zerephonzidas.
“If you help me plan for… her return… what do you want in exchange?”
“Hmm?”
“There must be a catch.”
“Well, I’d want a favour, naturally,” Zerephonzidas said. “We’d be friends. Friends help each other out. It’s not a one way street, as you ponies put it.”
Celestia smirked. “I can live with that arrangement.” She turned back to Canterlot. “Where do we begin?”
“Well, first, I take a well deserved nap,” the sphinx said. “As of today, you have, oh, I’d say around eight hundred years to prepare. No sense rushing things.”
Night had fallen outside the caverns the dig team had set up in, and everypony was spending the evening relaxing. Well, almost everypony. Twilight kept a wary eye on her thaumometer, hawkishly watching for any anomaly that she ought to take note of. Zerephonzidas was similarly absent from the crowd of ponies.
Food was simple, but warm. Rarity initially turned her nose up at it, but eventually hunger got the better of her, and she was now eating heartily, albeit far more daintily than most other ponies.
“And that’s a wrap,” Rainbow said, putting all the cards together and shuffling. “That’s two points for me, none for AJ, thirteen for Twilight, and nine for Rares’.”
Rarity scowled. “I still don’t understand why the goal is to get as few points as possible,” she said. “Surely more is better.”
“It’s Hearts. Those are the rules,” Rainbow said. She looked over at Twilight. “I can’t help but notice you’re only nine points away from one-hundred, Twi’. I thought you’d be better at counting than me.”
Twilight took a second to look away from her thaumometer. “Hmm?” she asked.
Rainbow groaned. “Jeez, are you even paying attention?”
“I’ll give it back, only if you promise to actually give it a rest tomorrow,” Rainbow said. “You’re obviously not gonna stop tonight, but you need to actually take a break from time to time, yeah?”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. Neither Applejack or Rarity got involved in the standoff, although by Rarity’s expression, she was siding with Rainbow.
“Fine,” Twilight said.
“Oh, and you need to get a new player to fill in for you,” Rainbow added. “If you’re not gonna play, that is.”
“I’ll play,” came Digger Douglas’s voice. “I think I get the rules.”
Rainbow lazily tossed the thaumometer back to Twilight. “Here. Go do science.”
Twilight sighed and got to her hooves, letting Douglas take her spot.
“Don’t stay up too late,” Rarity said.
Twilight nodded.
“I won’t,” she said, and moved away from the group.
Digger Douglas smiled.
“So, uh, she takes her magic a bit seriously then?”
Rarity nodded. “Well, we all have our hobbies, don’t we?”
“Fair enough. I have a snail collection at home.”
“No kidding,” Rainbow said, dealing the cards. “I have a tortoise. He’s called Tank.”
Douglas seemed to become more alive as the discussion went on. “My snails are called Hector, Archimedes, Versailles, and…”
“Who’s got the two of clubs?” Applejack asked.
“Wait a minute, I haven’t sorted my cards out yet…” Rarity muttered. “There. I have it.”
“There’s something I just like about snails.”
Now alone in the dimly lit caverns, Twilight sat down to take a proper look at her thaumometer. She felt bad about deserting the card game, but she had to admit she felt relief at being able to concentrate.
Zerephonzidas was right: there were magical spikes all around the cavern. Supposedly the sphinx had his own theories regarding why that was. All Twilight could tell with absolute certainty was that whatever they were looking for was powerful.
By comparison, Twilight had read up on the large rings in the temple they had visited with Daring Do, which were powerful enough to seriously mess up the surrounding weather, and they wouldn’t have even come close to this level of magical disturbance.
Perhaps, Twilight wondered, it wasn’t because the magic she was used to was weaker per se, but simply that the magic here was more chaotic. Like dropping an irregular object into a pool of water, it disturbed the pool far more than a smooth object.
The spell Zerephonzidas wanted to learn about might not be the kind of magic that could be controlled. Such magic wasn’t rare, exactly. The world of Equestria was filled with unstable magic. Storms not even a team of highly experienced unicorns could command.
Twilight examined the thaumometer. It wasn’t even as if the device was spiking erratically. It was more like it was always erratic, making conventional measurements unusable.
Twilight wondered if Zerephonzidas had thought of finding a different way to measure the magic around them.
Sphinxes saw magic differently to ponies. This was something that the books she had read had been very clear on. If that was the case, and Twilight was convinced it was, then sitting around this cave must be like relaxing in a sandstorm. Constantly pelleted with disorienting splinters of magic in a maelstrom of madness.
Perhaps there was a way of clearing the sand out of his eyes, so to speak. It certainly would be helpful to have a sphinx’s eyes when they finally started excavating parts of the experiment.
There were ways of creating a sort of magical well, Twilight thought as she moved up the caverns towards the entrance. The chill from outside crept into her bones.
A well was what it sounded like. A way for magic to amass and condense in the same way water formed puddles by flowing downhill.
Twilight stepped outside, and immediately regretted it. The cold and snow assaulted her like a battering ram. She began to shiver. It would be better to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.
She quickly scooped up a large hoofful of snow. Her horn began to flicker to life. She was worried this was going to be a rather crude example of the spell she wanted.
She closed her eyes, and with a flash of magic, she cast her spell. Good, she thought. Time to go back inside.
Still shivering, she trotted down the caverns, down into the deepest corner of the dig. She passed the sounds of her friends starting to play dominoes instead of cards, laughing all the while.
Just as the cold in her body subsided, she reached Zerephonzidas. His right eye was closed, but the left one still stared into nothingness.
She tiptoed towards his desk, and put the snowball she had made earlier there. She turned to leave.
Wait, no, she thought. If he woke up and found a snowball on his table, he’d wonder why it’d be there.
Twilight went back to the desk and rummaged around for a pen and paper. A pen was easy to find: Zerephonzidas kept one handy at all times. Paper was more difficult.
There were huge piles of paper, each covered in scribbles, symbols Twilight didn’t recognise, and sketches. It was the sketches that drew her attention the most, although a part of her wished she could spend more time to translate the symbols.
A snore escaped Zerephonzidas, causing Twilight to jump. After Zerephonzidas continued to sleep, she relaxed.
She didn’t want to wake the huge creature up. Not only because it was polite, but because she was worried if he might accidentally step on her if he was startled. Even unintentionally, those claws could rend right through Twilight’s bones and do permanent, even lethal damage.
The sketches continued to catch Twilight’s eye. They looked almost abstract, just dark lines on white paper. All were of the same thing. A dark, somber column that would often take up half the page, with indistinct shapes in the center. The shapes inside could represent anything. Magic, a pony, sunlight, a chocolate croissant… Twilight couldn’t tell.
Whatever it was, it was important. Zerephonzidas had drawn the exact same thing over a dozen times, each with varying degrees of detail.
Twilight looked back at Zerephonzidas. Even though his blank, open eye was disturbing, he was very definitely asleep. Must be the cat in him, Twilight thought.
The alicorn pulled out a few of the papers covered in symbols. Twilight wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about languages, but she could recognise over thirty different ancient dialects of equestrian. This, however, rang no bells. They didn’t even look like letters.
If they were equestrian, they must date back over four thousand years. Further, even. Could these be the original equestrian?
If that was the assumption to go on, then Twilight might be able to look for recurring sounds that remained popular across all forms of the language. Slowly decode the text…
Zerephonzidas snorted. Twilight held her breath.
She couldn’t imagine the sphinx would be happy she was going through his notes. She shouldn’t overstay her welcome.
Discarding the ancient text, she found a blank piece of paper and wrote ‘keep snowball with you: will absorb magic’ on it. After a moment’s thought, she added ‘if it turns to ice, apply more snow’.
Then she carefully put the papers away, and moved back up the cavern towards her friends.
“I’m out!” Rarity exclaimed. “Hurrah!”
Rainbow scowled, and held up her last remaining domino. “Well, shoot,” she muttered. “So close, yet so far.”
“That puts you in the lead, Rares’,” Applejack said. “Quite a turnaround from cards.”
Digger Douglas looked up at Twilight, who re-entered the small section of cavern. “Hello again,” he said.
Twilight smiled briefly, then went into her tent. “I’m going to call it a night,” she said. “I’ll see everypony tomorrow.”
“And everysphinx, right?” Rainbow quipped.
“I think I’m almost getting used to him,” Rarity said. “Although I do worry about those teeth sometimes.”
“Weird, considering you hang out with a dragon every day back in Ponyville,” Rainbow said. “You do know Spike can bite through crystal?”
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Well, yes, but that’s completely different. He’s not quite as… ah…”
“Threatening?” Applejack suggested.
“I was going to say big,” Rarity replied. “And muscular.”
Twilight popped her head out of the tent. “Um, you might want to abort that line of thinking,” she said. “Sphinxes, um, don’t.”
Rarity spluttered. “I never said anything of the sort.”
“What do you mean, they ‘don’t’?” Douglas asked.
“Just that. Sphinxes… don’t. They exist, they die, they stop existing. They don’t make more sphinxes,” Twilight explained. “There can only ever be less sphinx, never more. Technically speaking, he’s not even really a ‘he’. Just a sphinx.”
Rarity folded her hooves. “Well, I still didn’t say anything of the sort. And I’m not wrong, either.”
“To be fair, he is pretty big,” Applejack said. “I ain’t sure he’d fit in the farm without bumpin’ his head on the ceiling.”
Twilight returned to the inside of her tent. “Well, uh, just wanted to clear that up,” she said. “Good night.”
Rainbow stared at the dominoes for a moment.
“Sphinxes are weird,” she muttered. “Um, so, another round?”
“Sure,” Applejack said. She turned to Douglas. “Say, how close are you to the actual interesting bits?” she asked.
Douglas shrugged. “Dunno, to be honest. We’re relying on Zerephonzidas’s notes and diagrams, and I dunno where he gets those from. He’s been researching this for much longer than most of us have been alive.”
“All of us, in fact,” Rarity pointed out. “I overheard him talking with Twilight.” Rarity frowned. “Wait, am I supposed to say ‘he’ or ‘it’?”
“Just stick with ‘he’ until he calls you out on it,” Rainbow said. “It’s pretty scary to think that he’s been looking for a cave for thousands of years.”
“Weirder than snails?” Applejack said teasingly, eyeing Digger Douglas.
The digger pursed his lips.
“Don’t make fun of my snails,” he said. “I like ‘em.”
“Somepony has to.”
“Come on, get your dominoes already,” Rainbow said. “I’m waiting.”
Twilight’s eyes closed. The sleeping bag inside the tent kept her warm, but it was still less comfortable than her feather bed back in Ponyville. You could only make a cave so homely, no matter how hard Rarity tried.
She thought about the dark column Zerephonzidas had been drawing. The ink hadn’t been able to convey colour, but for some reason Twilight pictured it as dark green, like the rocks around. But blacker, somehow. Like if green was black, but still recognizably green.
As sleep began to grab ahold of her, she could see the column clearly in her minds eye. It would be tall, imposing. Like it had no end to it, yet was confined within physical space.
Her thoughts drifted back to whatever Zerephonzidas had been drawing inside the column. Given the vague nature of the drawings, Twilight wasn’t entirely certain even he knew what it was. Just that it was a shape. Amorphous and mysterious.
Twilight tried to picture what it might be. She tried picturing it as a spell, a tangled mess of magic. It didn’t fit. She tried picturing it as an ancient artifact or relic. That didn’t work either.
What was it, Twilight wondered? Was this some phenomenon Zerephonzidas had witnessed over his many, many years of life? Or was it just a dream?
Perhaps it was linked to whatever they were uncovering right now. Twilight suspected this to be the case. After all, if something was worth drawing a dozen times, it might be linked to a similar obsession. An obsession that might have lasted five thousand years.
Twilight rolled onto her side. She felt the magic in this place prickle her skin under her coat. It was like a bed of needles. She rolled onto her other side, trying to ease the momentary discomfort.
Sleeping had been easier when she hadn’t been as painfully aware of the magical phenomenon in this place. Magic had a tendency to affect those more knowledgeable about it, and Twilight was very knowledgeable indeed.
She opened her eyes.
She unzipped the tent, and poked her head out again.
“Hey, Rainbow, can I borrow one of your Daring Do books?” she asked.
Morning came silently. Only a dim light that emanated from the cavern entrance served as a clue that it was time to wake up, and even then, that light was watered down by snow and clouds.
Twilight rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t been able to escape the dreams of the big, black column she had seen in Zerephonzidas’s drawings. This wasn’t a new phenomenon for her. Usually before a test she would go to sleep dreaming of numbers and spells, but the black column had an eerie, uncomfortable quality to it that leaked into her mind like a bad smell.
Her neck felt stiff and disjointed, as if her bones had crystallized and become brittle in the night. She stretched and slid out of the sleeping bag.
Zerephonzidas would probably have found the snowball by now.
She unzipped the entrance to her tent and poked her head out. Already she could hear the sound of boiling water for coffee, and the pitter-patter of hooves as the diggers slowly got around to the business of waking up.
Twilight could even see movement inside Rainbow’s tent, which was rare. Rarity was already up and waking herself up with a glass of juice and breakfast. She was wearing a scarf speckled with snow. She must have gone outside to get some fresh air.
Twilight couldn’t blame her. The cave was rather stuffy.
“Good morning, Rarity,” Twilight said, getting out of the tent. “How was your night?”
“Dreadful. Rainbow insisted we stay up until midnight to play snakes and ladders,” Rarity replied, and took a long sip of juice. “I didn’t even know she liked board games that much.”
“I think she rather just dislikes being bored,” Twilight replied.
“Well, I tried convincing her to help clean up this dreary cave, but she had none of it.”
“Maybe she dislikes not being able to fly as much,” Twilight suggested, and rummaged around her bags for breakfast. “Outside isn’t really an option.”
“It is rather chilly,” Rarity said. She finished her juice. “I need to go and wash myself. The tent is a rather humid environment.”
Twilight nodded, and pulled out a small hoof-mirror to examine her mane. It was an absolute mess. “No problem. I think I need to brush my mane too,” she said. She looked over at Applejack’s tent. “Is Applejack already up?”
“No,” Rarity said. “She was tossing and turning a fair bit last night. I don’t think she got a very good night’s sleep.”
“I guess that makes two of us,” came Rainbow’s voice from her tent. Unlike Rarity and Twilight, her mane looked about the same as usual. “I think I slept on a rock or something. And I have a headache.” She trotted over to Rarity. “Hey, this your juice?”
“Yes, it’s mine…”
“Awesome,” Rainbow said, and began pouring herself a glass. “Wouldn’t want to take some poor digger’s juice.”
Rarity sighed. “I’m going to wash behind a rock, now,” she said, and walked away. “At least we have plenty of water from all that snow.”
Rainbow looked over at Applejack’s tent. There was still no sound from inside.
“Pfft, it must be real cold in Tartarus for me to have woken up before AJ,” Rainbow said. She turned towards Twilight. “You want I should wake her?”
“No, might as well let her get some rest.”
Rainbow shrugged. “She won’t be happy she overslept.”
There was a clinking sound from the entrance to their section of the cave. Twilight and Rainbow turned towards the entryway. “Hello?”
“It’s just me,” came Zerephonzidas’s voice. “Might I come in?”
“Sure,” Rainbow said. “It’s not like we have a door to lock.”
“No coming behind my rock!” came Rarity’s voice, higher pitched than usual.
Zerephonzidas stepped into their ‘room’, taking up most of the space. He held Twilight’s snowball in one paw.
“A magic well?” he asked.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Guys, I just woke up, don’t send me back to sleep already,” she groaned. She trotted past the sphinx. “I’m going to get some food. See you boring magic guys later.”
Zerephonzidas stepped aside to give Rainbow space, then examined the snowball. “I’ve seen magic wells before, but this is a new one. Explain.”
Twilight quelled a momentary burst of satisfaction that she had provided some kind of magic Zerephonzidas, the million year old sphinx, hadn’t seen yet.
“It’s a snowball,” she explained. “I’ve made it absorb magic. The more magic it absorbs, the colder it becomes. It’s a really simple spell, I’ve just put it on something that’s easy to find.”
“I once saw a well in the shape of a beanstalk,” Zerephonzidas said. “It kept on growing the more magic it absorbed. A snowball is rather more… well, practical, I suppose.” He looked back up from the little white sphere in his paw. “I imagine this is to clear my vision?”
“Yes,” Twilight said. “Assuming I’m not wrong about you being able to see magic.”
“You aren’t, although my ability has been somewhat compromised over the years,” he said, gesturing at his lifeless eye. “Still, this should be helpful, once it’s absorbed enough that is.”
“It should take some time,” Twilight said. “And it’s only a small well. It’ll only work around you.”
“I gathered,” Zerephonzidas said. “Still, I appreciate the thought. And the ingenuity.”
“Are we any closer to the, ah, experiment site?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Yes. I believe, if memory serves, we shall be finding the first signs of the spell.”
“Should I be worried,” Twilight asked.
“Perhaps. If there are any problems, though I believe an alicorn princess and a sphinx should be able to handle them.”
Twilight said nothing at that. Instead, she simply looked away, unsure whether to be reassured by Zerephonzidas, or scared.
The sphinx turned to leave, lumbering out of the makeshift room.
“Thank you for the, ah, snowball,” he said. “I’ll be sure to call you once we find anything of interest.”
Twilight nodded, but still couldn’t find anything to say. Images of the column still swam in her mind.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to find whatever was down in the depths of the dig site any more. Not if it came with danger.
Applejack slid outside her tent. Large grey bags hung under her eyes, and her mane was a mess.
“Rough night?” Twilight asked.
Applejack nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be fine,” she said, and pulled an apple from her saddlebags. “Just need coffee.”
Work proceeded as normal. Digger Douglas oversaw the excavation with a watchful eye, sometimes glancing back behind him, as if he was being watched.
He invariably was. Zerephonzidas was quite a distance away, recording their progress, but he’d regularly look up at Digger Douglas to check that everything was going smoothly. He tapped his claw against the now ice-hard snowball, getting impatient.
There was a loud ‘clink’. The entire digging crew froze. Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow.
“What was that?” he asked. “Did one of your tools break?”
“Snapped in half!” came a voice. Digger Douglas trotted over to the pony who had shouted.
The stallion was standing over a snapped trowel.
“You use it wrong?” Douglas asked.
Zerephonzidas appeared behind the chief digger like a phantom. Douglas froze. How something so big could move so quietly was a mystery to him.
“We have found something,” Zerephonzidas said, looking towards a small patch of rock. “Your stallion broke it on this.”
His claw tapped a patch of incredibly shiny, almost mirror-like stone. Or was it crystal? It looked too smooth to be part of the soft stone they had been cutting through, Douglas thought.
The digger who broke his tool touched the patch of mysterious stone. “It’s real smooth,” he said, tilting his head to the side.
Zerephonzidas frowned, and examined the claw he had tapped against the stone. As he did so, blood began to trickle from the digger’s hoof.
“Don’t touch it,” Zerephonzidas said, as the digger shouted in pain.
Rarity tightened the bandages around the digger’s hoof, who was still wincing. Twilight watched as the team carefully began excavating whatever it was that had caused the injury.
Zerephonzidas filed his claw on a nearby stone. His claw had been severely dented by the strange material. Rather, it hadn’t been dented so much as cut, like cheese on a grater.
“It looks smooth,” he explained to Twilight, “But there are ridges so small the eye can’t see them that sliced right through that stallion’s skin.” He examined his claw. “I hadn’t noticed in time, unfortunately.”
Twilight wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the thing Digger Douglas was excavating. It wasn’t natural, that was for sure. It seemed to be made out of some sort of glass. Not normal glass, though. It was almost the same colour as bottles, a shade of green that could be mistaken for emerald, but infinitely darker.
The team were careful not to touch it.
“We have to dig around it then levitate it out of the way if we want to proceed,” Douglas said. “It’s dangerous to just leave it here.”
So far, about a third had been uncovered.
“Do you know what it is?” Twilight asked, trying to peer through the gloom.
Zerephonzidas picked up a lamp and shone it on the reflective surface. “I have my suspicions,” he said, “But right now I’d hazard a guess and say it’s a statue of sorts.”
The light did strange things to the glass, Twilight noticed. If she looked closely, she could see through it. It wasn’t solid. It had… tubes and strange shapes inside. Twilight narrowed her eyes. It looked suspiciously like…
“Are those… organs?”
Zerephonzidas didn’t reply.
More of the rock surrounding the glass fell away. Twilight swallowed. One of the other diggers took a step back.
It was made of solid glass, but there was no mistaking it. The statue was that of a pony. An eerily lifelike pony, complete with glass organs, bones, and veins.
“Please tell me that’s just an example of ancient art from five-thousand years ago,” Rarity said, wincing. “Artists do the strangest things, sometimes. I once saw a piece of art that was made completely out of old banana peel.”
A sinister smile spread across Zerephonzidas’s face. “Fascinating,” he said.
“Zerephonzidas…” Twilight began.
“This isn’t art,” he said. “It’s a corpse.” He pointed towards the side of the statue. “I suspect whoever this was was turned to glass during a magical blast. Those invisible ridges are all oriented from the center of the blast, I reckon.”
Twilight felt her stomach churn. The statue continued to stare with lifeless glass eyes.
Many of the diggers had stopped working. Twilight noticed that Rarity was no longer around.
“If it makes you feel better, it would have been instantaneous,” Zerephonzidas said. “Alive one moment, glass the next.” His one good eye looked into Twilight’s. “There are worse ways to go.”
“It’s still horrible,” Twilight said. “You can see inside… him? Is it a him?”
Zerephonzidas examined the statue closer. “No, it’s a her.” He turned towards Digger Douglas. “Come on. The faster you get this thing out of the rock the sooner Twilight and Rarity can levitate it to safety.”
“We’ve found something else,” came another voice. “We’re not in natural caverns any more.”
Zerephonzidas and Twilight both moved towards where the digger was pointing.
“Ah,” Zerephonzidas said. “We’ve reached the ruins.”
“There’s no more rock here,” the digger said. “Just… sand.”
“It poured in after the blast, no doubt, and was preserved by the hardened rock on the outside. Like water inside a balloon.” Zerephonzidas smiled. “It should be an easy dig from here on out, but be wary of cave-ins.”
“I don’t like this,” Twilight said. “What kind of magic turns a pony to glass?” She looked at the statue. Douglas had almost gotten it out. “We don’t even know her name.”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “It’s just glass now,” he said.
Twilight flashed him a look. “You can’t just…”
“Can’t I? I don’t have the luxury to agonise over every dead member of your species, Twilight. I wouldn’t have a minute for myself if I did,” he snapped. “She’s dead. Like everyone else from five-thousand years ago. She’s probably not the only one, either.”
“Not the only…”
“I’ve got her out,” Douglas said. “Um, we can’t touch this thing without it hurting us. We need unicorns to levitate it out.”
Zerephonzidas stared at Twilight. “You should go and find Rarity,” he said, his expression as icy as the landscape outside the cave. “She should be throwing up behind that rock over there.”
“Uh, what the hay did you guys do to Rarity?” Rainbow asked, gesturing towards a small white shape hunched over in the corner.
Twilight sighed. “We found a glass pony,” she said. “Rarity… didn’t like it.”
“Whoa, a glass pony? That’s pretty weird. Who’d make something like that?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, Rainbow. I mean, it used to be a pony, and got turned to glass,” she explained, as Rainbow’s face fell. “Some kind of magical blast did it, Zerephonzidas thinks.”
“You serious?” Rainbow asked.
Twilight nodded. “Yes. I need Rarity’s help to levitate it safely. If I accidentally drop it or get distracted, it might really hurt somepony.” Twilight pointed towards the injured digger. “It’s got… sharp ridges on it that pretty much shredded that stallion’s skin.”
Rainbow let out a whistle, and ran her hoof through her mane. “Jeez. That’s pretty awful.”
Rarity was still hunched in the corner. She wasn’t looking so good.
“I think maybe you should give Rarity a minute, though,” Rainbow said. “The last time I’ve seen her this bad was when Sweetie Belle mixed up sugar and salt when they were making cakes.” Rainbow craned her neck. “I want to see this glass pony.”
The pegasus hopped around Twilight.
“Don’t touch it,” Twilight warned.
“Yeah, sure. Don’t want to peel my skin off, do we?”
Twilight trotted towards Rarity. The unicorn retched.
“You okay?”
“You could see… inside it,” she said. “That’s just… revolting…”
Twilight put her hoof on Rarity’s back. “I know,” she said.
Rarity tried to slow her breathing. “I really don’t like seeing dead things,” she said.
“I know,” Twilight repeated.
Rarity straightened, breathing out. “All right,” she said. “I just need water.”
“Good,” Twilight said. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“Do you know what I really don’t like?” Rarity said as she walked to a large bottle of water taken from melted snow. “It’s the way Zerephonzidas smiled. Like all it was is some kind of curiosity.” Rarity took a sip of water. “That pony had a name, once. Now it’s just glass. Ugly, transparent glass.”
Twilight looked at the statue out the corner of her eye. “There’s something else I don’t like,” she said. “It’s like there’s a... prickly feeling.” She rubbed the side of her leg, shifting her gaze to the side. “I felt it whilst trying to sleep last night. It’s like walking through needles.”
“I feel strange too,” Rarity said. “I’m not exactly attuned to magic as much as you, but I can certainly feel something.” She took another gulp of water. “Although that might just be sick.”
“Well,” Twilight said, “Whatever it is, we need to get that statue out of the way. Apparently we’ve found some ruins. It might be easier to explore this place, now.”
“That will be nice,” Rarity said. “Although there might be more of those… ponies.”
Twilight couldn’t say she liked the prospect of finding more glass statues. “Probably. I doubt the pony was here alone.” A thought struck her. “Let’s go. We need to work.”
The glass statue looked even more eerie completely uncovered. Twilight had hoped that it would be less unsettling once it was no longer trapped in rubble, but instead it just highlighted how like a regular pony it was. Had it not been, well, glass, she might have mistaken the statue for a real, live mare. Even details like the inside of her mouth were perfectly replicated. Her irises were still visible. Twilight could make out the individual hairs, which likely would splinter off and get stuck under her skin if she made the mistake of carelessly touching them.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s try moving it over to the corner, out of the way.” She looked over at Digger Douglas. “Will that do?”
“Yes, that will be fine. Although, if more show up, we might have to move them outside. Don’t want to run out of space.”
Twilight nodded. “Okay. Ready, Rarity?”
Rarity kept staring at the statue. She shuddered, but nodded. “Yes.”
“Okay, then. Three, two, one, heave!”
Both unicorns levitated at once. The statue barely budged. Rarity gasped.
“It’s really heavy!” she exclaimed.
Twilight grunted. She was struggling to lift it, despite her prodigious magical ability. There must be something interfering with the magic in this place, she thought. Or perhaps the statue itself.
Some things were so full of spite that magic failed to work properly on them.
The statue slowly lifted itself off the ground, and Twilight grit her teeth. She just needed to move it a little.
Zerephonzidas watched the display of magic, his good eye narrowing. Whatever was going on in his ancient brain was a mystery to everypony.
“I can barely budge it,” Rarity grunted. “I’m sweating already.”
The statue slowly, gradually, made its way to the far side of the work site. Once Twilight finally put it down, some of the diggers clapped.
“Good job,” Douglas said. “That didn’t look easy.”
“It wasn’t,” Twilight said, staring at the statue. “I need to think.”
A dead pony turned to glass, twitches in the magic currents around the cavern, indications of a powerful magical ‘blast’... Twilight was not reassured by the new discovery. She was not reassured in the slightest.
Oh, Celestia, what have you gotten me into now, she wondered, staring straight into the glass statue’s eyes.
Celestia folded her hooves, listening to the droning reports of more trouble along the border with Yakyakistan. Of course there was more trouble. There was always more trouble. Over the years, Celestia had come to believe in something called the ‘trouble constant’, a level of disorder that would never change. As soon as one problem was resolved, the trouble constant would create another.
As Celestia became stronger, the trouble constant would ensure her problems became worse.
Zerephonzidas seemed to back this theory up.
“Life,” he said, “Has a way of making sure it stays interesting.”
Celestia felt occasionally unnerved by Zerephonzidas often using the words ‘interesting’, ‘dangerous’, and ‘troublesome’ interchangeably. It spoke volumes of his character.
Over the recent years, she had come to discover much of the sphinx’s personality. It turned out he could be rather charming, in a ‘I might eat you alive’ sort of way… when he wanted something.
Celestia was convinced his wisdom came at a price. She wasn’t sure how high it would be just yet. Whenever he visited the castle, he’d always visit the library. He’d even bring books Celestia had thought long lost to add to her collection.
Whatever it was he wanted, he hadn’t told Celestia what it was yet.
“The yaks are now sending fighters into our land,” the pony before Celestia said. “We’re, well, pretty worried about the whole mess.”
Celestia tapped her hoof. Not two years ago, she would have personally gone to demonstrate exactly why it was she had lived for three hundred years, but now… Celestia found she had a compelling reason to keep herself out of danger.
She still hadn’t finished her plan to reform her sister.
Zerephonzidas was right. You could do much more alive than dead. Celestia was determined to not risk herself so casually any more.
What would she do instead, then?
“Guard?” she asked. The stallion stood to attention. “Bring Zerephonzidas down from the library. I want his counsel.”
Celestia looked over the frozen wasteland in front of her. As her scout had indicated, there were small numbers of yaks trundling up and down the border.
On her side.
“Hmprmf,” she grunted. “At least they’re brave.”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Yes, they are,” he said. “They will not stop being a problem if all you do is hit them harder.”
“You know this from experience?”
“Yaks are strong animals,” Zerephonzidas said. “There is very little they cannot make yield with determination.”
“Is that so?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “They see a wall, they push through it.”
Celestia sat down. “I learned that the hard way,” she said. “I would like to resolve this diplomatically, if possible.”
Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow. “Quite a departure from the Celestia who used to rule this country.”
“Things have changed,” Celestia said.
Zerephonzidas grinned, his teeth reflecting the morning sunlight.
“Good,” he said.
Celestia frowned. She felt she had played right into Zerephonzidas’s paws, and she didn’t know how or why. The sphinx was still a mystery.
At least he was on her side for now. Still, she never forgot the old pony wisdom: never trust a sphinx.
Celestia continued to stare at the yaks. “I think I should like to provide a wall for them to push through.”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Simple creatures are easy to steer.” He looked over to Celestia. “What wall were you thinking of? Dragons? Ogres?”
Celestia smiled. “Yaks.”
Zerephonzidas raised his eyebrow. “Ah.” He stroked his chin. “How do you intend to make that happen.”
“I am going to do nothing at all.”
“Your highness,” the guard said, “The yaks are still there, and they’re not going away!”
“That is fine,” Celestia said. “They shall soon go home.”
“When?”
Zerephonzidas’s ear twiched. “I think most are already gone.”
Celestia smiled. “I suspect many of them have found they have a million better things to do.”
“The big one is coming here,” Zerephonzidas said.
“Hmm,” Celestia muttered. “He probably won’t be happy we didn’t rise to his little challenge.”
“Not in the slightest,” Zerephonzidas said.
Celestia looked over at the sphinx, then back to her guard.
“Summon the other guards,” she said. “Just in case. Zerephonzidas…”
The sphinx was gone. Celestia sighed.
“Nevermind.”
A yak, it was said, could grow to be three times the size of a pony and ten times as strong. They were bred to survive the cold, unforgiving climate of the north. They were tough, grim, and very, very violent.
The leader of the yak warband was not happy. Without a good fight on the horizon, his underlings had all decided the trip wasn’t worth it. What a waste.
The leader was going to make sure the pony princess knew exactly how unhappy he was at being abandoned by his warriors.
“Celestia!” he roared. A yak, it was said, could grow to be three times the size of a pony and ten times as strong. This one looked as big as a house. He could tear trees up using just his horns. He was less a yak and more a monster. His roar alone caused windows to rattle.
He heard the sound of snow crunching behind him. He grinned. Silly ponies, trying to ambush him. Yaks were born in the snow. There was no outwitting him here.
He spun around, his bulk sending a wave of snow around him like a tsunami.
“Come and get some, you…” he growled.
Then he found himself frozen in place. Aeon old instincts paralysed him, made his blood go colder than the deepest winter. Something he couldn’t control took ahold of him as he recognized the shape in front of him.
It was primeval, raw fear.
Yaks were born to survive the cold, unforgiving harshness of the north. They had defeated countless grim adversaries. They could stand toe-to-toe with ogres, and only the magical might of the ponies had kept them from advancing south. They were vicious and violent.
They were insignificant before the sphinx. They were pale imitations of the real, original apex predator.
“I remember,” Zerephonzidas said, “When I would eat your kind roasted with thyme.” He looked down on the mammoth sized yak. “It isn’t wise to make a sphinx miss how you taste…”
The yak leader unfroze himself and backed away. “What are you?” he growled. “That’s one ugly face you have…”
“Herbivores shouldn’t act like they’re dangerous,” Zerephonzidas said.
Yaks were brave. Yaks could break through the mist of fear and charge regardless. There was no wall they couldn’t push through if only they tried hard enough…
Brave was to Zerephonzidas one of stupidity’s many synonyms.
Celestia was still sat down in the small village hut, surrounded by guards. There was only the sound of snow being gently crushed. It was not a yak’s hoofsteps, but rather the quiet, smooth gait of the sphinx.
Many guards couldn’t help flinching as Zerephonzidas opened the door. His paws were drenched in red.
“What happened?” Celestia asked, although she already knew the answer.
“He encountered a wall he could not push through,” Zerephonzidas said. He sat down, and smiled. “As you can see,” he went on, “No matter how strong you are, there’s always something out there that will get you anyway. That’s why caution is the way of the wise. The wise survive.”
Celestia nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
Zerephonzidas smiled. “Excellent. I’d hate for you to face a premature end. Truly.”
The dig site was quiet that evening. Not many ponies really felt the same enthusiasm they had for their work as before. Of course, it was hardly a rare occurrence to find old bodies at archeological digs, but most bodies weren’t turned to completely hard glass.
Dinner was a sober affair. Rainbow hadn’t the courage to start up a friendly card game that night. Rarity didn’t even have the heart to comment on the unfashionable decor.
Applejack drifted in-between sleep and consciousness, blinking fatigue away. She leaned against one of the bigger stalagmites, picking at her food.
“Tired?” Rainbow asked, the first words spoken in a while.
Applejack shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just didn’t get a good night’s sleep is all.”
Twilight couldn’t imagine the thought of the glass pony below them would make the night any easier.
“Well, at least this trip will make for an interesting discovery,” she said.
Nopony seemed to care much.
“How’s your hoof?” Douglas asked the digger who had injured himself on the statue.
“All right, I guess,” the stallion replied. “Can’t exactly pick up tools with it, though.”
Douglas nodded. “I’ll move you to keeping watch outside then for a while. No heavy lifting.”
“Thanks, boss.”
Rarity’s fork clattered on her empty plate as she put it to the side. “Twilight, a word?”
Twilight got to her hooves. Rarity was beckoning to the side, indicating Twilight follow her. The alicorn trotted after her, away from the others.
“How good is sphinx hearing?” Rarity asked.
Twilight tapped her chin. “I’m not sure. About average? I think they’re more attuned to high pitched sounds.”
Rarity sighed, and made a conscious effort towards deepening her voice. “Um, all right. How is this?”
“He’s down near the dig site. I’m pretty sure he can’t hear you,” Twilight said. “What is this about?”
Rarity’s voice returned to normal. “Frankly put, darling, I don’t trust Zerehponzidas.”
Twilight sighed.
“I understand the feeling,” she said.
The frown on Rarity’s face deepened. “No, darling, I don’t think you do,” she said. “You’re, well, rather similar to him in some ways. You’re both curious, intelligent, and honestly, prone to obsession.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “I’m not that bad,” she said.
“When you want to know something, or can’t figure something out, you’ll go to great lengths to sort things out your way.” Rarity waved her hoof around. “I can name plenty of examples, if you want…”
Twilight winced. “No need.”
“My point is that I’m really quite worried,” Rarity said. “Zerephonzidas has been looking for whatever answers he wants for thousands of years. He doesn’t care about ponies, not really. To him, we’ll be gone in no time. We’re a dime a dozen.”
“I understand, but he’s not that bad,” Twilight went on. “He’s just… a bit creepy.”
“Twilight, dear, I don’t want him to make you as obsessed as he is. I don’t know much about magic, but I’m not uninformed enough to know that if something can turn a pony into solid glass, it may not be something to be trifled with.” Rarity put her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “If things start to go… wrong… then we need to leave it be. Whatever is down there isn’t worth being turned to glass.”
“I don’t think that the blast will occur again,” Twilight said. “It would be highly unlikely…”
“If something happened once, dear, expect it to happen again.”
Twilight went quiet.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, dear? Zerephonzidas will not hesitate to take great risks in the pursuit of knowledge. We have more to live for.” She gave Twilight a wan smile. “It comes with not living for millions of years.”
“I understand,” Twilight said. “I know the difference between obsession and curiosity.” She took a breath. “But I do want to know what it is Zerephonzidas is looking for.”
Rarity nodded. “All right. Just… know when to stop.” She looked around the cave. “The longer I’m here, the less I like it.”
“I can agree with you there,” Twilight said. “Come on, let’s get back to the others.” She yawned. “I don’t know about you, but today was pretty tiring.”
“I can only imagine how tired Applejack is,” Rarity said. “The poor thing has been yawning all day long.”
As the pair returned to their friends, they noticed that many of the diggers, including Douglas, had begun to leave. Applejack and Rainbow were the only two who remained, and Applejack looked like she was already halfway asleep.
“Hey, so, Twi’, remember when I said this trip was boring?” Rainbow said. “I guess I take that back.”
“Well, now we’ve actually reached some ruins and aren’t just digging through rocks and caves, I imagine we’ll be finding a lot of old things,” Twilight said. “This is becoming more and more like a Daring Do story the deeper we go.”
“Yeah. Except Daring Do didn’t have ponies turned to glass under mysterious circumstances,” Rainbow said. “Mostly just Ahuizotl trying to take over the world with ancient artifacts and stuff. I kinda wish Ahuizotl was here, actually. At least you know where you stand with an insane blue freaky money-thing. Not… digging and secrets.” Rainbow leaned back. “There’s this weird pressure here. I didn’t pay much attention before, but it’s like… uh, I dunno how to explain it. Needles, I guess.”
Odd, Twilight thought. Usually, pegasi and Earth ponies weren’t able to sense magical auras. For Rainbow to point it out was just one more bad sign to pile onto all the others.
Broken snoring came from Applejack. Rainbow looked over towards the sleeping farmpony. Applejack’s breathing was irregular and heavy. She was not having a good sleep.
“Hey, I’m gonna move AJ to her tent,” Rainbow said. “She’s been having bad dreams.”
“She told you that?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “Whilst you were off talking to Rarity about Zerephonzidas.”
Twilight bit her lip. Rarity sucked air in through her teeth. Rainbow rolled her eyes.
“Like, why else would you guys want to talk to you in private? I’ve seen you tiptoe around Zereph’.” Rainbow’s expression darkened. “Don’t think he hasn’t noticed, either. He’s almost as keen-eyed as I am.”
Rarity ran her hoof through her mane and breathed out. “I’ll… keep that in mind.”
“If it helps, I don’t think he cares. I don’t think he expects to be trusted, in my opinion.”
Rarity frowned. “Well, if neither of us trust the other…”
“Yeah,” Rainbow muttered. “Then it’s just a game of ‘who knows what’.” She shrugged. “Like a game of dominoes, I guess. Except with way higher stakes.”
“You’re worried about him too?” Twilight asked.
“What, the big guy? Nah. I get that he gives you the creeps, but he doesn’t scare me,” Rainbow said, relaxing against the cavern wall. “He’s big and can’t move that well in here. Out there, I can fly rings around him. I’m more on edge about that statue.”
“Why is that?”
“Because, in my experience, when something looks as lifelike as that,” Rainbow said, finally getting off her flank and walking to pick up Applejack, “it tends to be alive.”
A shiver went up Twilight’s spine. Rainbow sniggered, slinging Applejack’s sleeping body over her back.
“Jeez, I just meant that it makes me uncomfortable,” she added. “I mean, you guys said it yourselves: solid glass. Dead as a doornail.” She gestured at Applejack. “I’m gonna put this one to bed and then hit the hay myself. Night, guys.”
“Good night,” Twilight said. “See you tomorrow.”
Twilight’s ears flicked. Her eyes opened. She felt a pounding in her head, and she sat up, brushing her mane out of her eyes.
What was that noise?
She could hear a slow, odd sound. It was like a siren, fluctuating gently,only existing on the very edges of perception. Twilight was reminded of the feeling when a mosquito would buzz close to her ear before flying away, except there were no mosquitos in this cave.
She tried to flatten her pillow over her head, hoping the noise would go away. Instead, it seemed to pass through the pillow. Sticking her hooves in her ears didn’t work either.
Perhaps it was just in her head?
She heard a rustling from the tent next to her. Applejack was squirming like she was on a bed of porcupines.
Twilight wondered if she might wake her friends up, but she decided to speak anyway.
“Applejack? Do you hear that?”
She heard a groan from the other tent. Twilight stuck her head out and trotted over to Applejack, now worried.
Applejack had both hooves on her ears. She was sweating through her coat and her teeth were grinding against one another.
“Get it out!” came the words, sliding in-between her teeth like razor knives.
Twilight bit her lip. “Oh, dear,” she muttered. She cantered to Rainbow’s tent. “Rainbow! Rarity!”
Twilight unzipped Rainbow’s tent open. Rainbow was splayed out inside like a puddle, snoring contently. Twilight could hear movement from Rarity’s tent.
“Rainbow!”
Rainbow shot up like a bullet. “Eh? What? Hey!”
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear… what, are there bugs in here?”
“Do you hear that noise?” Twilight asked again.
Rainbow cleaned her ear out with her hoof. “Uh… I hear something…”
“What is it, darling?” Rarity asked, yawning as she stepped out her tent. She looked over at Applejack. “What’s wrong with… Goodness, what is that sound?”
Twilight felt that bad feeling she had since discovering the glass statue get worse and worse, like a bad meal in the very pit of her stomach.
“Rainbow, take care of Applejack,” she said. “Rarity, come with me. I need another unicorn.”
Rainbow trotted over to Applejack. “Oh, jeez. AJ?”
“Get it out!”
“Okay, we’re waking you up,” Rainbow said, starting to shake Applejack awake. “Come on, none of that.”
Twilight and Rarity left to go into the rest of the cave. Already some of the workers were milling around, scratching their ears. There was no sign of Zerephonzidas.
“Where is that coming from?” Rarity asked.
Twilight was not a gambling pony, but she had a good idea of where to start. “Let’s go see that statue.”
Twilight’s horn lit up, bathing the caves in a bright white light. The noise continued to burrow into her ears, ringing away like it would never stop.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Rarity muttered as she followed Twilight.
As the pair descended towards where they had left the statue, Twilight noticed a large shadow detach itself from the rest. Rarity screeched.
“Don’t panic,” Zerephonzidas said. “It’s me.”
“You hear that?”
“Yes,” Zerephonzidas said, his face twisting into a scowl. “It’s rather irritating.”
“Do you know what it is?”
Zerephonzidas seemed to take an age to say ‘“No, I do not.”
Twilight continued cantering in the direction of the statue. Light flashed from her horn, scanning the statue from top to bottom.
“Zerephonzidas, do you have the snowball?”
The sphinx nodded. “Yes. I’ll try taking a look,” he said. He then went very still, like a statue himself. His good eye became lost in the statue, seeing through it, beyond what pony eyes could see. “It’s not the source of the sound,” he said eventually.
Twilight’s horn stopped scanning the statue. “That’s what I can tell as well,” she said. “Anything I might have missed?”
“It may not be the source,” Zerephonzidas said, “But it is reflecting it. Passing it along, so to speak.”
Twilight frowned. “Where is it coming from, then?”
Zerephonzidas looked towards the ruins, still partially buried under rubble. Twilight narrowed her eyes. She decided to take a wild stab in the dark.
“Is it coming from the column?” she asked, referring to the drawings on Zerephonzidas’s desk.
The sphinx narrowed his eye. “You’ve been snooping.”
“That’s not a no,” Rarity pointed out. “What is this ‘column’?”
“It was here last time,” Zerephonzidas said. “When I was here five-thousand years ago.” He stared at Twilight. “It did not make this noise when last I was here.”
“Could it be making this noise now?”
“I… do not know. I could not see through the column.”
Twilight rasied her eyebrows, her gaze focussing. “You couldn’t see through it? Not even using your… um, special sight?”
“No. It was as if it was not there,” he said. “I will discuss this later. For now, it would be advantageous to silence that noise, yes?”
Twilight wasn’t stupid. “Are you bargaining with me?”
“Silence for silence,” Zerephonzidas said. “I do not want to talk about the column right now.”
“When will you?”
“Later.”
“I was right not to trust you,” Rarity hissed. “What are you hiding?”
“A long and bloody past,” Zerephonzidas said. Noises came from above them. The diggers were getting restless.
Rainbow peered down into the gloom. “Hey, if you can make that noise stop, that’d be great,” she said. “Applejack isn’t… she isn’t doing so good.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Tomorrow, you start talking. For real.”
Zerephonzidas bristled. “Fine.” He looked towards the glass statue. “The sound is, as you might have guessed, magical.”
“Yes, but I can’t counter it without the…”
“I can tell you the frequency of the frequency,” Zerephonzidas said. “I can see it in the glass statue.”
Twilight nodded. “Very well. I’ll ready my spell. Tell me when I reach the right frequency.”
“What are you doing?”
“Negating the magic that’s making that noise,” Twilight said. “It will only work up in the caves. As we get closer to the source, it will weaken and the noise will return.”
“Begin,” Zerephonzidas said.
Up by Applejack and the others, Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief when the noise was silenced. The farmpony was still panting heavily, but at least she seemed somewhat coherent.
“You all right?” Rainbow asked.
Applejack opened her eyes at last. They were red and bloodshot.
“No,” she murmured. “Can’t sleep.”
“Because of the noise?”
“No. Because of the nightmares,” Applejack replied. “I can’t go to sleep,” she said. “I can’t go to sleep.”
Rainbow bit her lip.
“So, uh, I’m not exactly good at this sort of stuff,” she said.
Applejack held her head in her hooves, still panting. Rainbow patted her on the back.
With the uncomfortable noise gone, the diggers managed to (mostly) get back to sleep, with the exception of Applejack, who drifted in and out of consciousness, often punctuating the night with heavy breathing and startles yelps. Most of the diggers, sequestered to other parts of the cave, hardly noticed, but for Twilight, Rainbow, and Rarity, Applejack’s nightmares were all too present a problem.
Twilight could barely stand to try and rest whilst her friend was in such discomfort. Applejack would likely not be good for much the following day, no matter how much coffee she drank.
Twilight hardly got any sleep herself, and when she heard movement outside, indicating the diggers getting up and half-heartedly returning to work, she realised she must have only slept for maybe three hours that night. Fatigue wouldn’t be a problem only Applejack would face.
Twilight decided that the sooner she made coffee, the sooner she’d be able to get to finding out all about what Zerephonzidas knew. The sphinx had been hoarding his secrets for far too long.
There was also the matter of Applejack’s nightmares. No way they were just a coincidence.
She slid out of her tent, somehow feeling awake and energised. She went to the kettle and began to boil the water.
The sound of bubbles and steam apparently woke Rainbow up.
“Morning,” came Rainbow croaky voice. “Had a good night?”
“Not really,” Twilight replied.
Rainbow emerged from her tent, more a mess than usual. “Yeah, me neither. AJ keep you up as well?”
The boiling water met the ground coffee beans and a bitter aroma filled the cave. “Yes,” Twilight said. “Somepony needs to take care of her. I’ll get Rarity to…”
“No,” Rainbow replied. “Let me do it. AJ doesn’t like feeling coddled. She’ll be happier this way.”
“I thought you hated taking care of other ponies.”
“I do,” Rainbow said. “That’s why AJ’ll be better off with me.” The pegasus darkened. “This is getting real serious, you know. Not like in Daring Do.”
“No? I thought this sort of thing was what Daring was all about.”
“Daring Do is about danger, not… nightmares and noises and glass ponies,” Rainbow said.
“I thought Daring was about discovery.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Of course you’d think that. Egghead. She’s all about fighting! And action!”
“... and uncovering the past,” Twilight said. “Speaking of, I have a conversation to have with Zerephonzidas…”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. You do.” She folded her hooves as Twilight poured her a coffee. “I’m fed up with his secrets.”
“Me too.”
“If he knows what’s giving AJ those nightmares, he needs to come clean,” Rainbow said. “Or I’ll knock his teeth in.”
Twilight smiled. “I’m sure.”
“I’m not kidding. This is serious stuff. What if those nightmares are because of… I dunno, a brain bug or something?” Rainbow brought her hooves to her ears. “Like a little thing that burrows through your ears and into your skull and… does stuff. Bad stuff!”
“Who knows?” Twilight frowned. “What really worries me isn’t what Zerephonzidas knows, though, but rather what he doesn’t.”
“How so? The less he knows, the better, right? He’s evil.”
Twilight was taken aback. “Evil?”
Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah. Can’t you tell? Good guys don’t keep secrets and lead ponies on expeditions they know nothing about.”
Twilight frowned, and was reminded of many of her interactions with Celestia. Rainbow caught the look, and sighed.
“Look, I don’t mean like the Princess, okay? This is different. Celestia was doing all that for you and Luna, right? Zerephonzidas is out for himself, and whatever is in those ruins.”
“I guess…”
“I know,” Rainbow said. She gestured towards the cave network outside. “Go on. If Rares wakes up, I’ll tell her to catch up, ‘kay?”
“All right. You’ll take care of Applejack right?”
“Yeah. Best I can. Holler if you need awesome.”
The excavation of the ruins was continuing at a quick pace. Digger Douglas knew his business, and already a significant amount of the ruins had been revealed. The walls were smooth and weathered, and clearing away the sand and rocks was easy. Any paint that had once been on the walls had long since peeled away, however.
All that had been uncovered so far was just a long, empty corridor. The sand was being taken to the surface in buckets, dumped outside for inspection.
Zerephonzidas observed everything with a critical eye.
“Rainbow thinks you’re evil, by the way,” Twilight said.
Zerephonzidas chuckled. “That’s a rather simplistic way of thinking.”
“Depends if she’s right,” Twilight said. “So, you sorted your story out?”
“I suppose I have. A deal is a deal,” he said. “Now is a much better time to discuss the matter of my long and… interesting past. Shall we move to my desk?”
Twilight nodded. “I don’t see why not.”
Both of them went away from the excavation, and Zerephonzidas sat down on a large rock, folding his forelegs in front of him like a lion watching an antelope. Twilight sat down on a small stool opposite him.
“So? Tell me everything you know about these caves.”
Zerephonzidas scratched his claw against the rock, sharpening it. It was still dented from tapping the glass statue.
“Very well. Perhaps I should begin with me, though.” He smiled. “My interest in magic predates these caverns by millenia.”
“Does it now?”
“Yes,” Zerephonzidas said. “A sphinx lives for a very long time. It is up to us to find something to pass the long centuries. We are not compelled to find mates, and we are not compelled to survive for the sake of our species. We merely exist to fulfil our own desires.” Zerephonzidas scratched his chin. “We are magical creatures, but we could never explain the mystery of how we came to be. We were not alive to see it happen, after all. This is why I want to see as much as I can. It made up my reason to exist. To keep going.”
Twilight frowned. “This doesn’t sound like it has much to do with these ruins,” Twilight said. “Or, for that matter, the column.”
“I did say it was a long story,” Zerephonzidas said. “Over time, I discovered a very fascinating species that, like the sphinx, were very magical in nature, but unlike us, had short lifespans. They would evolve at a breakneck pace, going from dumb animals to perhaps the greatest power on this sphere.”
“You mean us.”
“That is correct. You were everything I could have wanted, Twilight. You provided magic and wonder every single day for me to observe. I was enthralled. Your tribal rituals, your ‘alicorns’, your spells and books and pegasus magic… It was all amazing. It was my golden age.”
“Not any more?”
Zerephonzidas darkened. “Well, the problem with having more of something is that it becomes cheap. So many mysteries of magic had been revealed to me that I began to take them for granted. I suppose you could say I became bored.” The sphinx looked back at the ruins as he kept talking. “It was an alien feeling for me. I had always had purpose, and then I felt like I was losing interest.”
“And then?”
“I found myself in a desert kingdom, one of the most powerful nations across all of ponykind. For context, there were only a few places where ponies thrived. North, which is quite close to the original site of Equestria, and down south.”
“I’ve never heard of a southern origin for ponies.”
“You have now,” Zerephonzidas said with a grin. “How history is forgotten is almost as fascinating as the history itself, in my opinion.”
“What were you doing down south?”
“I was working with… temporarily… a king. Their nation thrived around oases, and for that reason, he called himself the ‘Emerald King’. It was supposed to represent his dominion over life itself, believe it or not. He had quite an ego.”
“He sounds it.”
“Of course, his kingdom was the most advanced nation of magic at the time, so I was naturally drawn to it, and he was drawn to my long life and knowledge. I enjoyed a rather cosy existence for a few decades. The king was, I should mention, a tyrant, but then again, it was a less friendly time.”
“What then?”
“He… or rather, we… found something. Deep in the desert. A huge black column that no magic could explain.” Zerephonzidas peered into Twilight’s eyes. “Consider that for me, this was extraordinary. My eyes can see through something’s physical shape and gaze at the magic within, but this column… I could not see through. Additionally, I was so accustomed to things revealing all their secrets to me that I, well, was rather surprised by the feeling of not being able to understand something. This location became the center of magical experimentation. The king had things he wanted to find out, and so did I. Of course, we had vastly different objectives.”
“How different?”
“Significantly. I was just there to find out the truth. The Emerald King, on the other hand, wanted to use the column, and derived an interesting little spell without my knowledge.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “How did you find out?”
“I found out when he lured me away from the site to be assassinated. The plan failed, and I managed to learn what the King was planning from his highest ranking magician. The King was attempting to become a true immortal. I believe I have touched on this matter before.”
“You did.”
“I was shocked that the King had managed to both outwit me but also unravel the power of the column before me. Furious, I rushed back to the ruins, but by then, he had already cast the spell. I was just fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the magic before a powerful blast erupted through the ruins. I barely made it out alive, and I suffered… injuries,” Zerephonzidas said, raising a paw to his blank eye. “I was driven momentarily mad by the spell and the visions that leaked into my mind. When I finished wandering aimlessly through the desert, the ruins were gone… disappeared, and I had nowhere to go.”
Twilight frowned. “So you still have no idea what the column is?”
“No. But… I feel something is different here. Whatever it was and whatever it does, I feel I am close to finding it out.”
“Why might it be causing nightmares? Noises? Did it do that before?”
“No, it did not. I am afraid that the Emerald King’s spell must have had significant side-effects, such as the blast. Perhaps that noise is a similar unwanted phenomenon.”
Twilight rubbed the bridge of her nose. “That’s not as helpful as I wished it would be.”
“The reason this place fascinates me is precisely the fact that I don’t know so much about it,” Zerephonzidas said. “But think about it, Twilight. We could discover so much! Mysteries nopony in the entire world knows about! If the Emerald King got his wish and became the Immortal King… think about the changes this would bring for history! Magical knowledge.”
Twilight had to admit, it sounded appealing.
“I understand you are afraid, but true knowledge comes with risks. Please, let’s keep going. Let’s uncover the mysteries together. I promise I will do everything in my power to keep you and your friends safe.”
“You promise?” Twilight asked.
“Yes. I revealed my past just now, did I not?” Zerephonzidas sighed. “No more secrets. I shall be completely honest with you from now on.”
“If that’s the case, I need to know one more thing,” Twilight said.
“Go on.”
“What do you intend to do once you find out the secrets of your ‘Immortal King’?”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “Just know them. I suspect I will move on after that,” he said. “I’m not interested in achieving ‘true immortality’. The watered down variety I currently have is quite satisfactory to me.”
Twilight stroked her chin. “Very well. But if you don’t live up to your promise…”
“I feel I shall have ample opportunity to keep my word.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It will be. You have not yet seen a sphinx in action. We are quite deadly, I assure you.”
“Again, not reassuring.”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “Well, nothing I can do about that,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
“No,” Twilight said. “That will be all for now.”
“Good. Do pop by if you have any other questions.”
Twilight found Applejack slumped against the cavern wall. Her eyes were grey, but she was past nodding off every few minutes. Her internal clock had broken completely, and now she was properly awake, but barely functioning.
On the other side of the cavern, Twilight could see Rainbow keep careful watch with eyes that would make an eagle jealous. Instead of talking to Applejack, she instead trotted over to the pegasus.
“How’s she doing?”
“She tried working to stay awake, but Douglas had none of it,” Rainbow said. “I made her four cups of coffee. I think she’s feeling a bit sick now.”
“Four cups?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow ran her hoof over her face. She seemed sleepy too. “Did you learn what you wanted from Zerephonzidas.”
“Not as much as I had hoped,” Twilight said. “Turns out he’s in the dark about these nightmares and that noise as we are.”
“Huh. Did you believe him?”
“Maybe.”
Rainbow folded her hooves. “Maybe that’s the bit that worries me,” she muttered.
Before Twilight had a chance to reply, she heard a sudden, loud noise. It was the sound of a digger dropping a large bucket of rubble, followed by shouting. Even Applejack lifted her head, startled, although she could barely muster the energy to get up.
Twilight trotted down to the excavation site. The shouts were getting louder. They were panicked, and scared. Twilight’s heart beat faster and faster. What now? What else could possibly have gone wrong?
When she rounded the corner and saw the source of the disturbance, she froze.
“Get away from it!” Douglas shouted, sweat beading on his forehead. “Remember, it’s sharp enough to seriously hurt anypony it touches!”
Slowly ambling towards the diggers, the glass pony Twilight had helped excavate shifted its hooves and began to walk. Cracks formed along its surface as it broke and snapped, creaked and splintered. Little shards of glass were spat from its body.
At this rate, it’d crumble to smithereens… but would that happen before it cornered somepony?
“Back away!” Twilight ordered. “Up to the entrance. Don’t let it trap you!”
The glass pony turned its lifeless head towards Twilight. The alicorn could see her own terrified expression in its reflective eyes. Her horn flashed.
“I’m not afraid to—”
A small stone shot through the glass pony’s skull like a bullet, spraying splinters and broken pieces of glass from the exit point. The cracks propagated through its body like a spiderweb, and in an instant, the statue rumbled to dust, leaving nothing more than a pile of broken glass.
Twilight found she had been holding her breath. She looked towards the origin of the stone.
Zerephonzidas gave Twilight a curt nod.
“I did promise to keep you and your friends safe, didn’t I?” he said. “You’ll want to be careful. Bits of that thing have gone everywhere. Be careful where you step until it’s all been cleaned up.”
Twilight breathed in. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, and her heart throbbed inside her chest.
“What was—”
“A rare phenomenon. I’ve seen it happen before,” Zerephonzidas said, leaning over the broken glass pony. “Not with… not with glass ponies, though. It happens for quick deaths. So quick they might as well be instantaneous. I thought because it was a statue we would be safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When things die quickly… so quickly that their spirits don’t realise they died… they don’t really stop living. If you can call it that, that is,” Zerephonzidas explained. “I imagine the blast turned the ponies here to glass so fast, their spirits didn’t leave.” He turned away from the mess. “Spirits degrade, of course. Trapped in rubble, they’re little more than mindless automatons. Don’t feel bad for putting them down.”
Twiligt grit her teeth against one another. “There are more of those?”
“Probably. Of course, we can simply break them when we find them in the future. Risk free,” Zerephonzidas said. “Besides, this one couldn’t even harm us.” He smiled at Twilight. “I promised, remember?”
Twilight remembered. “I know,” she said, and turned to leave. “I’m going to hold you to it. Somepony gets hurt, and we leave.”
Books lined the walls as far as the eye could see. Zerephonzidas could hear the sound of hoofsteps echo throughout the seemingly infinite corridors. He could hear the rustling of pages and the sound of book covers on tables.
The sphinx stalked the aisles, his good eye scanning the titles and the names of the authors. If there was one major issue with the eldritch library, it was how the books were organised. Most libraries would be organised by category and type. Here, they were organised by time.
A long time ago, Zerephonzidas might have been awe-struck by a place that could conjure words from across space and time and collect them into one, singular spot, but nowadays, Zerephonzidas only cared to find information about the Immortal King.
“Hello again,” came a voice from behind him.
Zerephonzidas turned. The little unicorn stallion who had spoken was carrying a large pile of books, each larger than the next.
“That’s a lot of books,” Zerephonzidas said. “I imagine you’re intending to spend a lot of time here.”
“Oh, not today,” the stallion said. “I’m a fast reader, and besides, most of these are based on my work.” He put the pile of books down on a table. “I’ve seen you here a lot.”
Zerephonzidas looked away, his eyes perusing yet another shelf. “Yes.”
“For at least ten years, I reckon.”
Zerephonzidas frowned. “Your point?”
“Having trouble finding a particular book?” the pony asked. “Was it a cliffhanger? I’ll be honest, they always get me, too…”
“A cliffhanger? Yes, in a sense.”
“”What’s the book about?”
“You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
The stallion smirked. “Try me.”
“I’m looking for any information about the Immortal King,” Zerephonzidas said. “There won’t be any record of him from four thousand years ago, mind.”
“Immortal King? I’ve got a lot of immortals kicking around,” the stallion said. “Maybe one of them?”
“The King I’m looking for achieved ‘true’ immortality. Perhaps.”
The stallion chuckled. “Ah, there are degrees of immortality, now? How immortal am I, do you think?”
“Sub-average,” Zerephonzidas replied.
“Ooh, biting.”
“He was once called the Emerald King, if that helps.”
“Ah, now, I’ve heard of him,” the stallion said, his face darkening. “Why’d a sphinx like you be looking for the last ruler of the sand realms? Unless…” The stallion smirked. “You wouldn’t happen to be Zerephonzidas, would you?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “I am he, yes.”
The stallion grinned. “Fascinating.”
“Most ponies are rather interested in sphinxes, yes,” Zerephonzidas said. He was beginning to be somewhat off-put by the stallion’s complete indifference to him. If Zerephonzidas had wanted, he could squash this little unicorn with a single swipe of his paw. Instead, the pony seemed to treat him like a curiosity.
Some ponies had no survival instinct.
“No,” the stallion went on, “I meant, if you’re Zerephonzidas, then why on earth would you be looking for information on your ‘Immortal King’? You were there, weren’t you?”
Zerephonzidas grit his teeth. “Yes, I was. However, I was distracted at the time.”
“That doesn’t sound very sphinx-y.”
“It was a difficult day. I had to deal with an assassination and going blind in one eye. Not to mention almost being caught in a giant earthquake and nearly being blasted away by magic.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“I want to know what the King did that day. I hoped perhaps that someone might have found a lead somewhere in this whole library…”
The stallion looked across the endless rows of shelves, standing upright like the ranks of some stern army.
“Perhaps. The eldritch library contains many books, both from the past, like traditional libraries, but also the future. Stories and research yet to be written has been collected here, the words bleeding through the fabric of space and time. It is entirely possible that somepony might have found some small discovery and written it down,” the stallion explained. “However… you’re probably wasting your time.”
“I have time to waste.”
“If somepony did not know what they had found, they could have given it any number of names. Instead of labelling their discovery ‘the Immortal King’, it could be ‘the surprisingly long-lived king’, or the ‘ancient one’...”
Zerephonzidas frowned. “What, then, would you suggest?”
“Actually look for it?” the stallion suggested.
“I cannot. There is too much ground to cover. I spent three thousand years scouring a desert that spans thousands of miles, nearly dying of thirst on hundreds of occasions and drowning in sand. Alone, I cannot, and there is no united body of ponies to help me either. Your Earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi have proved more interested in squabbling than in helping me.”
“I see. Quite the pickle.”
Zerephonzidas sighed. “That certainly is one way of putting it.”
“Well, I’ll certainly keep a look out,” the stallion said, and sat down at his table and opened the first book. “I suspect you will be here for a long while, though.”
“Perhaps,” Zerephonzidas said. “You didn’t say what you were doing here.”
“Me? I’m the librarian. I made this place,” the stallion said. “I’m Starswirl. The Shaven.”
Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of you.”
“Well, that’s not my problem.”
Zerephonzidas had to admit he had a point.
Zerephonzidas put the book down. Whoever had written that evidently had no idea about how immortality worked. It was about as misinformative as they came.
How long had it been, now? Twenty years, perhaps? Time didn’t work quite right in the library, no doubt as a result of Starswirl tampering with how it was supposed to work. Zerephonzidas found it was far more efficient to judge the passing of time by observing how Starswirl’s facial hair had changed.
The stallion had started clean shaven. Then he had become Starswirl the Mustachioed, then Starswirl the Muttonchopped, Starswirl the Goateed, and many others, becoming increasingly hairy as the years went by.
Zerephonzidas had played around with the concept of developing a calendar based on his facial hair, but he always had better things to do.
Zerephonzidas had browsed through thousands of books over his time there. More than a normal creature would read in their entire life. The best he had found were accounts detailing excavations of the old desert realms, but no mention of the Immortal King. They’d refer to the Emerald King from murals and statues, but they couldn’t figure out where he had gone, or what he had become.
And of course, there was no mention of the column. Zerephonzidas found that most troubling of all. It indicated that, as far as he knew, nopony would ever discover the place where the King had cast his spell for at least five-hundred years.
“My spells only do so much,” Starswirl had explained. “They can’t pull words too far through time… the magic here is simply not powerful enough. I’d say the furtherst forward they can come from is, say, five hundred years. Six, tops.”
Zerephonzidas tapped his claw against the top of the book he had closed. Perhaps Starswirl had been right. Perhaps looking for answers in a library was not the most effective means of finding his answers.
“Zerephonzidas?”
The sphinx sat up. “Yes?”
“Found your King yet?” the unicorn magician asked.
“No.”
Starswirl frowned. “I see. Listen, I’ve been finding indications of… instability through the library.”
Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yes. I was hoping I could borrow that sphinx eye of yours.”
Zerephonzidas sat up. “Very well.”
Zerephonzidas bit his lip. Starswirl’s frown deepened.
“Well?”
“I’m afraid the magic in the library is degrading,” Zerephonzidas said. “Eventually, it will break down entirely.”
Starswirl sighed. “The library is going to crumble, then.”
“Yes.”
Zerephonzidas was livid. He had thought he had infinite time, but the world, unlike him, was subject to entropy. It degraded and broke. The library he had once thought was full of answers was going to close its doors before he could find any indication of the Immortal King.
“I think it would be best if you looked for your answers a little faster,” Starswirl said.
“It will take longer than I can afford,” Zerephonzidas said. “I need to rethink my strategy.”
What to do? There had to be a way out of this, he thought.
“Perhaps it is your attitude that you need to change,” Starswirl said.
“I am a sphinx. We are not famous for our manners.”
“I meant,” Starswirl said, “That you are spending all your time working alone. You don’t accept help because nopony is in a position to help you properly.”
“Your point?” Zerephonzidas asked.
“Perhaps you should try helping us help you,” Starswirl said. “Give some to get some, so to speak.”
“Bargain, you mean?”
“More like put ponies in a position to help,” Starswirl said. “I hear there’s something of a crises happening across the three tribes at present. Perhaps you could manipulate the scenario to your advantage.”
Zerephonzidas rolled his eyes. “There is no pony lifespan long enough to be my partner,” he said. “It would be a wasted effort.”
“Perhaps,” Starswirl said. “Perhaps not. Look in the library, while it lasts. Maybe you will find something.”
Zerephonzidas read through books and books and books. He managed to double his reading speed just to absorb as much knowledge as he could. It was a wasted effort. The references to the Emerald King were few and far between as it was, and no matter how far forward he went, he wasn’t able to find any mention of the column.
He suspected this was at least in part due to a being named Discord, who was scheduled to wreak significant havoc in the near future. Zerephonzidas tapped his claw against the cover of the book. If, perhaps, Discord had been more stable, more approachable, and more reliable, Zerephonzidas might have taken Starswirl’s advice and tried to use him. A being with the ability to reshape reality, and long-lived to boot? He would have been very helpful indeed, if he was any more advanced than a toddler.
Of course…
An idea struck Zerephonzidas. He flicked through the pages and found the entry referring to Discord’s defeat.
He raised an eyebrow.
“How interesting.”
Starswirl packed up what books he could as the library around him began to shudder. He was an old pony by this point, his long, impressive beard nearly reaching the floor. Zerephonzidas flexed his wings as both of them left the library.
“Sixty years, that library stood,” Starswirl muttered. “It’s a shame to see it go.”
“Yes,” Zerephonzidas said. “It was helpful, though. A worthwhile endeavor.”
Starswirl sighed. “What do you count as ‘worthwhile’?” he asked. “After all, sixty years must seem rather short for a creature of your age and lifespan.”
“I like to judge things objectively,” Zerephonzidas said. “If something is rare, then it has value. That library was unique.”
Starswirl sighed. “Yes, it was.” He put a pile of books on the ground, and looked back at where the once proud building had stood. There was no nothing more than an empty patch of grass. “I would have imagined a sphinx to be far more cold-hearted.”
“How so?”
“Well, you must have seen many ponies in your life. But if you judge things by how rare they are… I’d imagine you find many ponies to be quite special.”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “Ponies are a dime a dozen.”
“Ah,” Starswirl said. “Perhaps I was mistaken.”
“A library like that will perhaps not surface for hundreds, thousands of years. Ponies are being born every single minute.” Zerephonzidas fluffed his feathers, preparing to fly. “Of course, there are a few exceptions. Ponies of exceptional mental ability, exceptional strength… and exceptional lifespan.”
Starswirl raised an eyebrow, and stroked his beard. “Oh?”
“Just something I found in your library,” the sphinx said. “I believe I might have found a partner to help me locate my dig site.”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve taken my advice.”
“She should be born in only a few years, too,” Zerephonzidas said. “Of course, she will be quite busy for the first few centuries.” The sphinx grinned. “Oh, it has been a truly long time since I’ve actually partnered up with someone before. The last one was… oh, it must have been old Salenorzabul.”
“I think you might be confusing partner with tool,” Starswirl said.
“What’s the difference, in the end?” Zerephonzidas said. “I will get what I want, and perhaps along the way I will help her out too. A knife is of no use blunt, after all. It’s in my best interests to sharpen it.”
Starswirl sighed. “It’s discussions like these that remind me why we didn’t talk much over sixty years.”
“Yes, well, my kind are not known for being sociable.”
“Here’s some more advice, then,” Starswirl said. “Learn. I’m no expert on friendship myself, but you won’t ever be able to get your… ‘partner’ to help you if she thinks she’s just a tool. Or, as the case seems to be, knows she’s just a tool.”
Zerephonzidas sighed. “Well, I have a century or two to practise,” he said. “Farewell, Starswirl the Bearded.”
“It’s ‘the plaited’,” Starswirl replied as Zerephonzidas took to the skies. “As you can see, I’ve plaited the beard.”
“That’s not what history will remember,” the sphinx said, plotting his next move.
He would be watching Celestia’s development with great interest indeed.
“We’ve got more of the ruins clear!” came Digger Douglas’s clear voice echoing through the caverns. “You guys’ll want to see this!”
Twilight and Rarity looked over at Applejack, then Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow nodded, and gestured for them to go.
The two mares trotted down to the dig, where most of the other diggers were waiting. They had cleared away the broken shards of glass, rendering the place as safe as they could make it.
Creeping alongside Douglas was Zerephonzidas.
“It looks like we’ve uncovered a great deal of clear, unburied corridors,” he said. “We’re going to have to explore to go further. I’m convinced that there will be more excavating to do, but for now, we need to examine what’s been buried and what hasn’t.”
Twilight didn’t reply. She was still livid at Zerephonzidas for everything. She was livid at the glass statues walking, and at Applejack being reduced to a wreck.
Everything had gone wrong, and Twilight was determined to get to the bottom of it. If she gave up now, then everything they had gone through would have been for nothing.
“Here,” Douglas said. “Take this flashlight.”
Both Twilight and Rarity’s horns lit up. Twilight managed a smile despite her foul mood.
“I think we’ll be fine.”
Douglas shrugged. “Well, you’ll still need these,” he said, handing them two hardhats. “I’m still worried about the ruins being unstable. I don’t care if you’re a unicorn, an alicorn, or a sphinx, if you get caught in a cave in you’re in trouble.”
Douglas had a point. Twilight and Rarity both strapped on their hardhats. Douglas looked at Zerephonzidas awkwardly.
“I, uh, know I said ‘sphinx’ as well, but I don’t have one your size?”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “I’ll take the risk,” he said. “Sphinxes don’t wear hardhats anyway. Let’s go.”
The group began their journey into the dark. Douglas turned on his flashlight, illuminating the smooth walls they had uncovered. They escaped the residual pebbles and sand from the excavation site, and became immersed in the sinister, claustrophobic ruins.
“Just like I remember,” Zerephonzidas said. “Well, minus the murals dedicated to the Emerald King, of course.”
“Paint would have peeled off,” Douglas said. “Must have been shoddy paint to not last. I’ve seen some real old paintings in caves that lasted longer…”
“Time didn’t do this,” Zerephonzidas said. “The blast did.”
“I suppose the paint didn’t get turned to glass, then,” Twilight said.
“No.”
The four ponies dove deeper and deeper, until the diggers left outside could no longer hear them.
Rainbow flicked open her Daring Do book. She found that getting to the exciting parts was harder and harder these days. She just got too caught up in the build-up.
There were likely too many parallels to the real Equestria, she thought. On some level, she really didn’t want to get to the end of her own tunnel. Not because it was dark, but on the off-chance that there was actually a light at the end and she hadn’t noticed.
Never walk towards the light. That was a lesson a lifetime’s worth of crashing into things had told her. She had an instinct for when she was cantering headlong into danger.
She looked over at Applejack. Alone, sure, why not take a few risks? But Rainbow was surrounded by friends. They didn’t have the same instincts as her. The same survivability. Rainbow knew she was terrible at personal stuff, with ‘feelings’ and things she simply didn’t like talking about, but the real dangers, like hitting the ground too hard, she lived with every day.
Twilight didn’t know what she was getting into, and that put her in way more danger than Rainbow was.
Rainbow heard snoring. She tilted her head, her eyes turning towards Applejack.
Uncomfortable though she looked, at least she was sleeping. Nightmares or no, the body could only stay awake for so long before collapsing under fatigue. That was good. Rainbow didn’t really care about Applejack having a few bad dreams so long as she didn’t, you know, have to go to hospital for them.
Everypony had bad dreams. Applejack could have as many bad dreams as she wanted, but she could only die of sleep-deprivation once.
Rainbow closed her book. She wasn’t going to finish it anyway. She tiptoed over to Applajck, and quickly looked around, checking her surroundings.
Nopony was there.
“Don’t tell anypony I did this,” Rainbow whispered, and folded a blanket and put it under Applejack’s head, making her more comfortable. “I’d lose all my cool-pony cred if they found out.”
Applejack still looked like she was wrestling a bear internally, but at least she wouldn’t wake up to aches and pains the next day. Well. Any more than usual.
Rainbow trotted back to her book, and kept reading. She was determined to finish it, even if it killed…
Well, no.
But she was still pretty determined.
Another corner, Twilight thought. The ponies of old sure did like their winding, labyrinthian mazes.
She stopped in her tracks. “Oh,” she said.
This was no corridor. It was, in fact, a rather large room, although certainly nothing impressive. Darkness blanketed it, smothering the light from her horn.
“Ah, yes,” Zerephonzidas said. “This was, I think, used as a mess room.”
“It certainly looks like a mess,” Rarity said, kicking up a small pile of dust. “But if this is a mess hall, then where are all the…”
Douglas’s light flickered from side to side. The stallion was soaked with sweat.
“P-princess?” he muttered. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”
Twilight took a sharp intake of breath. She was definitely seeing what Douglas was seeing.
It was like looking at row upon row of shelves in a library, except instead of books and journals, there was row upon row of ponies, each turned to glass. Each had different expressions on their frozen faces. Some were happy, some were sad, and a few looked angry. One or two looked like they were telling jokes, and perhaps most creepily of all, there were ones that were laughing, their mouths hanging open, forever petrified in time.
Twilight backed away. “Stay back!” she said. “If they can move…”
“They will,” Zerephonzidas said. “But not right now.”
“How do you…”
“The other statue took a day to move. I suspect their reactions are delayed,” he said. “We’re safe for the time being.”
Rarity grit her teeth. “Plenty of time to smash them before they’re a problem,” she said.
Twilight bit her lip. “Rather pragmatic of you,” she said.
“I don’t like them.”
“I agree,” Zerephonzidas said. “No sense leaving them to become a problem later.” He turned towards Douglas. “Can we move the diggers in here to help clean up the smashed glass?”
Douglas nodded. “Yes, but only a few. I don’t want large numbers in here in case we disrupt the fragile stonework,” he said. “Six ponies, tops.”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Well, that should be enough,” he said. “However, in the interests of me keeping everypony safe…”
“What do you want, Zerephonzidas?” Twilight asked.
“I want to keep one,” he said. “Just to observe it in a controlled environment. My chamber back in the caves should be adequate.”
Rarity spluttered. “Of course not! We can’t leave those dreadful things to shamble about and hurt anypony! We don’t even know what they’d have done if they caught one of us! Maybe turn us into glass ourselves!”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “I don’t know, and I’ll never be able to find out unless I can study one.” He looked at Twilight. “You too. If I miss anything, I’ll need you to be a second pair of eyes.”
“Don’t tell me you agree to this?” Rarity said.
Twilight sighed. “The more we know, the better we can protect ourselves,” she said.
Rarity folded her hooves. “Well, I won’t help.”
“Rarity, I need you to help me levitate it,” Twilight said. “I can’t do it safely alone.”
“Then you can’t do it.”
Zerephonzidas coughed. “I have been thinking of an alternative,” he said. “Twilight, cast a shield spell on my paws.”
Twilight nodded. “Good idea,” she said. “I imagine you’re strong enough to carry it alone.”
“Quite.”
Rarity snorted, and looked away.
“Rainbow won’t be happy about this.”
“I have to admit, I’m not too keen on the idea either,” Douglas said.
“Well, tough,” Twilight grunted. “If these things have a hidden ability, we need to know about it sooner rather than later.”
“And if they don’t, then we can rest easy,” Zerephonzidas said.
Twilight cast her spell. Zerephonzidas gingerely tested his paws on the nearest statue, then with a smile, easily picked the heavy statue up with one paw.
“Excellent,” he said, and quickly put it down again. “Give me just a minute to dispose of the rest.”
“How long do you…” Twilight began, but Zerephonzidas had already disappeared in a flash of golden feathers and fur. The noise from the smashing glass was deafening, and Rarity had to cover her ears.
It took less than a minute for the crowd of glass ponies to be reduced to pieces. Zerephonzidas examined his shielded paw.
“Quite a good spell, that,” he said. “Solid.”
Twilight blinked. If Zerephonzidas turned against them, she wasn’t sure even she’d be able to stop him.
She tapped her hoof.
“Not quite,” she said. “I think there’s a crack in the shield. Let me fix it.”
Sphinxes could see magic, so Twilight could have to be careful. That was the interesting thing about shields, she thought. They could work both ways.
“Ah? It looks fine to me.”
“I imagine it would,” Twilight said. “The lines are all aligned, but it’s a case of some of them weakening. Just trust me.”
Zerephonzidas, eyebrow raised, extended his paws. Twilight’s horn flashed.
“I’m not sure I see a difference,” Zerephonzidas said.
“It’s subtle. I’ll explain it later,” Twilight replied.
Hopefully, Zerephonzidas would never notice that his claws would never be able to cut through a live pony whilst the shield was active. Glass he could cut to his heart’s content, but hopefully this would provide a momentary advantage if ever Zerephonzidas became a threat.
It just needed to be enough time for Twilight to cast a spell. No matter how strong, Zerephonzidas couldn’t hurt them if he was levitated into the air.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Zerephonzidas said. “I’m genuinely quite curious.”
“Pick up your statue and lets go,” Twilight instructed. “I don’t want to see the others faces when they realise we’ve brought one of these back to the camp.”
Rainbow Dash frowned as she saw Zerephonzidas carry the glass statue past her and into his little section of cavern. She eyed Twilight with an accusatory glare. It said ‘you let him do this?’
Twilight nodded.
“How’s Applejack?” she asked.
“Better, but not great. She’s healthy enough to move and do stuff again, though,” Rainbow said. “She’s upstairs cooking.”
Twilight ran her hoof through her mane. “That’s good,” she said. “One less thing to worry about.”
“And one more thing, apparently,” Rainbow grunted. “Another statue?”
“There were lots more down in the ruins,” Twilight said. “There are probably even more.”
Rainbow rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“What?” Twilight asked.
“Now we have to keep watch over the ruin entrance in case more come out.”
Twilight bit her lip. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“‘Course you didn’t. Now we’re keeping watch over things outside the camp and inside it. Great. This is awesome.”
“It’s for a good reason,” Twilight said.
“I know you think that, but come on. We’ve hung around Zereph for long enough. Why do you trust him?”
“I don’t,” Twilight said. “I’ve… taken measures.”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask any further questions. Zerephonzidas could be anywhere: he was deathly quiet.
“What now?” she asked.
“We wait for tomorrow to come,” Twilight said. “And we see what Applejack’s been cooking.”
Evening fell over the camp. Snow continued to fall outside, a bitter reminded that leaving was a foolhardy prospect until the next caravan came around. Applejack had made stew, which was far from gourmet eating, but a nice change of pace from what the diggers kept making, day after day.
Twilight trotted down to Zerephonzidas’s cave. The glass statue stared at her like a gargoyle.
“Good evening,” Zerephonzidas said. “Come to take a look at our friend?”
Twilight nodded.
Like the previous glass statue they had examined, you could see the insides of the pony, perfectly preserved as if frozen in time. Cracks had begun to form across its surface, evidence that it was beginning to try and move.
“Last time I had no opportunity to observe the statue as it tried to move,” Zerephonzidas said. “This time around, I’m taking notes.”
Twilight looked at the glass pony’s expression. It used to have a somewhat peaceful look on its face. Now, cracks had formed around the mouth and eyes, turning its face into a grimace.
“I believe they are awakened by the sound of life resonating through their bodies,” Zerephonzidas said. “Their eyes, ears, and other senses are, naturally, all gone, but the vibrations around them seem to cause them to react.”
Twilight felt inexplicably empty looking into the pony’s eyes.
“It looks sad,” she said.
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “Well, it is dead. It hardly has cause for celebration.” He beckoned to Twilight to come closer. “Here, listen.”
Twilight leaned in towards the statue, as close as she could get without cutting herself: the statue was still incredibly sharp.
She could hear a faint ringing noise, very like the one they had heard earlier.
“It’s been getting fainter and fainter over time,” Zerephonzidas said. “It’s carried the sound from within the ruins to here. Now cut off from the true source of the sound, its beginning to die out.”
“What happens when it dies?”
“I suspect nothing. Perhaps the statue will become truly lifeless? Perhaps the noise is part of what’s preserving their life, such as it is? Perhaps it has nothing to do with anything and is a mere coincidence. I don’t know. I merely thought it interesting.”
Interesting, Twilight thought, but also horrifying. The statue looked like it was trying to convey pain, and each new crack that formed to express agony only brought it closer to its doom.
“What do they want?” Twilight asked.
“If I were a guessing sort,” Zerephonzidas said, “I’d guess that they want to be helped. They don’t understand what happened to them five thousand years ago and want to be saved.”
Twilight swallowed. “Can we?”
“No. We cannot undo this. I do not have the ability or knowledge, and neither do you.”
Twilight frowned. “I’d have thought over your time alive you’d have seen some instances of…”
Zerephonzidas snorted. “I have seen pale imitations. The walking dead are exactly that: dead.” He leaned back. “It takes considerable power to reverse that kind of entropy, and even more difficult is having the knowledge to do so. Anyone can just find a big power source. Nopony has yet managed to wield it to undo death. Not completely, at least.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
Zerephonzidas grinned. “That is a dark line of thought,” he said. “Celestia would not be comfortable with you asking such questions.”
Twilight was in a foul mood. “Celestia is not here.”
“Indeed she is not.” Zerephonzidas leaned back. “I believe it could be done. Just not by myself. I do not believe in ‘impossible’ any more. Only improbable.”
Twilight looked over at the glass statue.
“Can we at least put it out of its misery?”
“Not yet. Tomorrow, I promise,” Zerephonzidas said. “I have more tests to do.”
Twilight found she didn’t want to watch. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good night,” Zerephonzidas said. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
Driven uneasy by the prospect of another glass statue in their camp as well as the possibility of an even larger horde waiting inside the ruins, the ponies did not sleep easy that night. Two of the diggers kept a watchful eye on the ruins entrance, taking in turns to keep a lookout.
Morning couldn’t come fast enough for them. Sleep felt more like a risk at this point.
When Twilight emerged from her tent, Applejack was already up, drinking coffee in large quantities.
“Still not sleeping well?” Twilight asked.
Applejack’s answer was curt and to the point.
“No.”
That was where their conversation ended. Applejack handed Twilight a coffee and then returned to silence. Applejack had gone from orange to almost grey, her coat having lost most of its luster. Her eyelids were sagging.
Twilight didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t much she could do about nightmares. Hopefully Rainbow Dash knew what she was doing when she said she was taking care of her.
After all, she hadn’t starved Tank to death yet.
“Morning,” Rainbow grunted as she rubbed her eyes, snatching up a cup of coffee. “Hey, look, that statue hasn’t killed us all yet. I call that a win.”
“Yeah,” Applejack grunted.
“So, how much sleep, AJ?”
“Couple of hours,” Applejack replied.
“Neat. Good coffee.”
“Yeah.”
Once Rarity joined them, Twilight got down to business.
“We’ll be delving deeper into the ruins today,” she said, “As soon as the room full of statues is cleared of glass.”
“We expecting more statues?”
“Yes, I think we should.”
Rainbow sighed. “Great. Those things give me the creeps. They didn’t use to, until they started walking, by the way.”
“We can whack ‘em, though, right?” Applejack asked.
“Not with our hooves. I can shield your hooves using magic, but I’m already shielding Zerephonzidas’s. I can only manage one more.”
“Do it on me, then,” Rainbow said. “I’m fastest, anyway. You and Rarity can use magic, and sorry to say this AJ, but the best you can do is fall asleep on them.”
Applejack grunted, but didn’t argue.
Twilight’s horn flashed. “There. It’s slightly different from Zerephonzidas’s, though.”
“How so?”
“If you wanted, you could also hurt ponies,” Twilight said.
Rainbow grinned. “Heh. Let me guess, Zereph’ doesn’t know about that little caveat?”
“No.”
“Devious,” Rainbow said, and chuckled. “I bet that’ll take him by surprise if he goes psycho on us.”
“Hopefully he won’t,” Twilight said. “But if he does, hopefully it will.”
Applejack got to her hooves. “Well, sooner we head to the ruins, sooner this’ll be over and done with and I can go home,” she said. “To my nice, soft bed where I can sleep properly for a week straight.”
The ponies stood up with her and trotted down to the dig site.
It would be a long day.
Zerephonzidas looked like he ought to be bumping into things left and right given his size, but even in the tight confines of the ruins, he seemed to slide through as if the walls were coated in oil. Rainbow held a small flashlight in her teeth, peering left and right.
Applejack followed Rarity closely, preferring to stay close to the brighter, more uniform unicorn light. Zerephonzidas guarded the rear, his eye able to see perfectly well in the dark anyway.
“What are we looking for?” Rarity asked.
“Blockages we need to clear out,” Twilight said. “We find a place to keep digging, and we go back. Douglas’s team put up some safety beams, and we move forwards.”
Rarity nodded. “Very well.”
“I need to make sure it’s safe before I send my ponies in here,” Douglas said, who was right in front of Zerephonzidas. “As in, no glass statues to trap us and do whatever it is they want to do to us.”
Rainbow flexed her hooves. She was still getting used to the feel of having a magic shield around them. She was also excited to try them out.
“Glass statues won’t be a problem,” she said. “I’ve got it covered.”
“We both do,” Zerephonzidas said.
The team reached a fork in the corridors. Twilight stopped.
“Which way?” she asked Zerephonzidas. “You’ve been here before.”
“There are likely statues in both directions,” he said. “We should split up and deal with them before we continue exploring.”
“I don’t like the sound of splitting up…” Rarity said.
“To be fair,” Rainbow said, “The statues won’t be a problem for me, the fastest pony alive, a giant monkey-lion with super-sharp claws, an alicorn princess, and… um… you guys.”
“We’ll split up for now,” Twilight said. “We don’t want statues from the other corridor to get past this spot and get us from behind.”
“Teams?”
“Myself and Rainbow should each be on different teams,” Zerephonzidas said. “That way we’ll spread out the ponies with shields on their hooves.”
“Good point,” Twilight said.
Rainbow was less than happy about the prospect. She folded her hooves.
“Douglas, can you come with me?” Zerephonzidas said.
The digger nodded. “Sure. Why not?”
“I could also use…”
“I’m going with Twilight,” Rarity said.
Applejack also sided with the princess. Zerephonzidas shrugged.
“Well, I suppose the friends can stick together. It’ll just be you and I, Douglas.”
The digger was evidently not thrilled by the prospect, given by the expression on his face. “Are you sure we can’t convince at least Applejack to come?”
Twilight was already beckoning her friends to follow her down the left passage. “We’ll meet up here in an hour. All right?”
Zerephonzidas moved towards Twilight, and leaned over to her ear. The others looked at him suspiciously.
“If ever you do get close to the column,” he said, “Come back and find me.”
“Trust me,” he said. “There may be much that is dangerous about it that a sphinx could help you handle. Help me help you.”
“I’ll consider it,” Twilight said.
Zerephonzidas drew up to his full height, dwarfing Twilight completely. The alicorn felt a sudden twinge of fear. She reminded herself of the shields on Zerephonzidas’s paws.
“Whatever information you think you can glean on me is not worth your life,” he said. “Remember that.”
Douglas seemed less enthusiastic than ever. He turned to Rarity.
“If something happens to me, take care of my snails,” he muttered half-jokingly.
Once Zerephonzidas and Douglas were out of earshot, Rainbow caught up with Twilight.
“You should let me go with them,” she said. “Keep an eye on the big guy, you know?”
“We need somepony with shields on…”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Listen, you’re an awsome magic princess and I’m incredibly fast. You send a signal, I’ll be right over, promise.”
Applejack rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Guys, we shouldn’t let our mistrust of Zereph’ make us less able to handle danger.”
“Zereph is the danger!” Rainbow said. “Don’t you guys get it? He’s like Caballeron from Cloak of Destiny. Working with Daring so he can steal it for himself and leave Daring stuck in the dark! And I’m Daring Do in this scenario.”
“He did just threaten you,” Rarity said. “It might be helpful to have somepony who isn’t Digger Douglas watching him. Somepony fast enough to go toe-to-toe with him, even.”
“Somepony like me,” Rainbow said. “Come on, let me do it. It’s for the best.”
Applejack folded her hooves. “I don’t like it.”
Rainbow grinned. “What, sorry to see me go?”
“Please don’t say it like that,” Applejack said.
“What, like I’m going to kick flank?”
“No. Like you’re going to d…”
“That’s quite enough of that,” Twilight said. “Rainbow, go. I’ll use magic to contact you if we need help. Don’t get spotted.”
Rainbow nodded. “I won’t. I promise.”
With a flash or rainbow coloured light, the pegasus disappeared. Applejack ran her hoof through her mane.
“Ponyfeathers, Twi’,” she muttered. “If you’re so worried ‘bout Zerephonzidas, why’re you sending Rainbow to go spy on him? What if he…”
“Rainbow will be fine,” Rarity said. “She’s…”
“Not a good spy,” Applejack finished.
“Let’s just focus on moving forwards,” Twilight said. “Come on.”
The ruins seemed to get darker the deeper they went. Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity hadn’t seen any signs of glass statues yet. Just empty rooms filled with ancient furniture. Some appeared to be half blasted apart, burned to a crisp. The blast, Twilight suspected.
“Pretty quiet,” Applejack commented.
“Like a grave,” Rarity added.
Twilight ran her hoof over a broken table. It looked like a desk, she thought. She had seen plenty like it in her time. Funny thing was, she thought, this one was far too high for a pony. There were no chairs, either.
“Girls,” she muttered, “I think this is where Zerephonzidas used to work.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
The disposition of the room reminded her eerily of Zerephonzidas’s own little desk back in the cave. “It feels like him,” she said. “Except… older.” Twilight began rummaging around the room. “Maybe he left something behind.”
“Like what, darling?”
Twilight saw something in the corner of the room, hiding in her peripheral vision. She trotted over to it.
“What do you see?” Applejack asked.
Twilight picked it up. It was a lens.
“A magnifyin’ glass?”
Twilight peered through it. “No,” she said. “It’s special.” She handed it over to Rarity. “I have a theory, but I need you to tell me what you see.”
Rarity raised her eyebrow. “I see lines,” she said. “Very strange lines. They almost look like…”
“Magic?” Twilight asked.
“Lemme see,” Applejack said. She peered through the lens. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a sphinx eye,” Twilight explained. “Or at least, works like one.” She took the lens back. “I wonder how it was made. Or what from.”
“How’s that make a difference?”
“Because sphinxes can’t do magic the same way we do,” Twilight said. “They don’t just make magic. They have to take it.” She fiddled with the lens. “Oh. Here it is.”
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing what this eye has seen.”
Twilight looked through the lens. She saw a prairie. Red. She flinched when she realised that the grass was stained with blood.
“What is it?”
“The sphinx this eye belonged to,” Twilight said, “Just killed a pony.” She kept watching. “Oh, dear… It didn’t kill a pony, it’s just… playing with it.”
Rarity frowned. “That’s disgusting.”
“The pony doesn’t look right,” Twilight said. “It’s… ah, it’s not developed. It can’t speak.”
“That don’t make it better,” Applejack said. “You still shouldn’t play with your food.”
Twilight saw a second shape appear from the grass, and quickly kill the pony. As the eye focussed, she recognized Zerephonzidas.
“Oh, this is a sphinx Zerephonzidas knew,” she said. “This must be millions of years ago… Oh.”
“What?”
“Zerephonzidas just killed the owner of this eye,” Twilight said. “There’s nothing left now.”
“What could Zerephonzidas want with a sphinx eye?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a reminder?” Twilight asked. “It must be lonely, being one of maybe a handful of your kind. Perhaps it’s a trophy?”
“Maybe he was selling… sphinx parts to the ponies here?” Rarity asked.
“We’ll likely never know,” Twilight said, storing the lens away for safekeeping. “It’s still… disturbing, seeing the sphinxes of old.”
“Even worse when you remember that they’re the same sphinxes we have today,” Rarity said.
“Let’s not think about that,” Applejack said. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”
The trio continued walking, and eventually found what they were afraid of finding.
Glass statues.
“Now,” Applejack said, “Would be a good time to call Rainbow.”
Something beyond the statues caught Twilight’s eye. A deep sense of unease took her over, and she backed away.
“We need… ugh…” she pulled the lens out of her bags and brought it to her eye. “What is that?”
Applejack rubbed her forehead. “Come to think of it, I don’t feel so good…”
Twilight looked through the lens, and blanched. “Oh, dear…”
“What is it?”
“We need to go,” Twilight said. “We need Zerephonzidas, now.”
“Why?”
“We’re near the column,” Twilight said. She heard the clinking of breaking glass.
“The what now?” Applejack asked.
Rarity was already backing away. “Girls? Do you hear that?”
Twilight became aware of a persistent ringing in her ears. “I hear it…”
“I mean the sound of a…” Rarity continued, her ears flattening against her head. “Oh, no…”
“Sound of a what?” Applejack asked.
“Of a cave in,” Rarity said.
Twilight could hear it too. Under the ringing and the sound of the glass statues awakening, she heard the rumble of rock on rock.
The snow fell slowly, as if gravity was an afterthought this deep in Winter. Clover wrapped herself in her cloak, staving off the chill as she searched. She had been following rumours for weeks. In fact, when she had first gained tangible information about a pony with the wings of a pegasus and horn of a unicorn.
The mountains of Equestria were tall and jagged, like a row a knives, or teeth. Clover pulled out a small map to try and find her way. What she would have given to travel with Smart Cookie. The Earth pony always had a strong sense of direction.
Clover felt a shiver travel up and down her spine, and it wasn’t due to the cold. She turned around, trying to see what it was sending alarm bells ring in her mind. The mountains were as empty as ever.
She breathed out. Probably a mountain lion. Nothing she couldn’t handle with a well-placed spell. She was nowhere near as experienced as her master, but she could manage a decent fireball in a pinch.
She continued up the winding mountain track, getting closer and closer to the peak.
Whatever was following her had better like the cold.
Rising above the clouds, Clover emerged onto the pristine white snow of the summit. She allowed herself a moment to breathe. It had been a long climb, filled with furtive glances behind her.
But that ascent was over now. Her destination had been achieved.
She ploughed through the snow, knee deep in white. There were no hoofprints around her, either because the previous snowfall had been recent, or because whatever lived up here didn’t bother walking. Clover hoped it was the latter, and since snow rarely fell on the very top of the mountain, she doubted it was the former.
The sun hung in the sky above her, but it didn’t seem to provide much warmth. Only light.
“What brings you here?”
Clover froze. The voice was big and clear. It commanded respect. A large shadow fell over her, blocking out the sun.
Clover’s eyes widened. Yes, she thought. She could make out huge, magnificent wings. She could see a long, elegant horn. The white coat of the pony hovering above her was as white as the snow she stood on.
“My name is Clover,” Clover said. “I’m actually here to say hello.”
“Mine is Celestia,” the huge alicorn said. “This is our home.”
Clover smiled, letting her success wash over her like a calming wave. She removed her hood, and beamed at Celestia.
“I don’t suppose you have someplace a little warmer you live in? I’m afraid I can’t feel my hooves.”
Not one alicorn, Clover thought as she warmed herself next to the fire, but two. This was exceptional. Clover had, of course, heard of alicorns, but they were a rarity. Starswirl had done plenty of research on them whilst his library still stood.
“Who are you?” said the darker alicorn, named Luna.
Clover smiled, the wrinkles under her eyes creasing. “I’m a magician,” she said. “And a scholar. I come from Equestria.”
“As do we.”
“Yet you haven’t made yourself known to Equestria or its ponies,” Clover pointed out, rubbing her hooves together. “You seem to like the solitude.”
Celestia nodded. “We like being close to the sun and stars.”
“There’s a bigger mountain near the small town of Canterlot.”
“We also prefer the quiet.”
Clover chuckled. “A wise choice. Ponies can make a fair amount of noise.”
“How did you hear of us?” Luna asked, eyeing Clover suspiciously. “We have not been careless.”
“Oh, you haven’t. Still, all it takes are a few rumours, when you have an idea of what you’re looking for,” Clover said. “To somepony who didn’t know she was looking for an alicorn who could command the sun, stories of blinding lights and large hoofprints would sound like a mountainclimber got snowblinded and thought he saw a yeti. To me, however…” Clover smiled. “My master told me of you.”
“Your master?”
“Former master, I suppose. I’m quite old myself, now, as you can see. His name was Starswirl.”
“We have heard of that name.”
“He’s still kicking around somewhere, although I reckon he likes the solitude even more than you do,” Clover said. She became serious. “He spent many years waiting for you.”
Celestia raised her eyebrow.
“Waiting?” Luna asked.
“Starswirl has the uncanny ability to know when things happen before they do,” Clover said. “He heard of you before you two were born, believe it or not.”
“I’m sceptical.”
“There is, however, something out there that is also out looking for you,” Clover said. “That’s actually why I’m here. Starswirl wants to give you a warning.”
Celestia and Luna smirked. “We do not take kindly to threats.”
“It’s not a threat. Just a precaution you should take,” Clover said. The two alicorns were more untrusting than she had expected, but then again, why else would they live on the very peak of a mountain? “There’s something that seeks to use you for its own ends. Starswirl… he never made it clear exactly what it was it wanted… I don’t think he liked remembering it… but he always wished he could talk to you about a monster, older than anything he had ever seen, that wanted nothing more than to find you, Celestia.”
Celestia’s wings twitched.
“Whatever it is is welcome to try,” she said.
Clover frowned.
“I should mention that Starswirl was never intimidated by much,” she said. “If he took this monster seriously, you should too.”
“Well, tell us about this ‘monster’,” Luna said. “What can it do?”
“It has thousands of years worth of magical knowledge, for starters.”
Celestia’s horn flashed.
“That may be so,” she said, as the heat began to rise inside the little house. “But what, exactly, can it do against two alicorns who can command the power of the sun, the stars, and the moon?”
Clover began to sweat. The snow that was accumulating on the windows began to melt. Luna put her hoof on Celestia’s shoulder.
“It is unseemly to show off,” Luna said.
The heat died down.
“My point is,” Celestia said, “I’m not afraid of any ‘monster’.”
Clover breathed out. She was getting too old for this.
“Be that as it may,” she said, “I wanted to tell you my master’s warning. I think it’s rather up to you whether you believe me or not.” She became quickly serious. “I’m the sort who would rather make friends than enemies, but still: don’t trust him.”
Celestia, thoughtful, looked out the window. “I will keep your warning in mind,” she said. “And I will remember it.”
Days later, when Clover had the heart to face the cold and snow once again, she left the little house on the mountaintop and began her long descent back into civilized lands.
The icy peak was unforgiving, but thankfully Clover had what little magic she knew to keep her warm. She pulled her cloak in close to stave off the wind, but it seemed to pass straight through the threads as if they weren’t even there.
She couldn’t wait to get back home.
A shiver ran up her spine. Clover’s mouth curled into a scowl.
Her horn flashed.
“Who’s there?” she growled. “I don’t want to fight, but I will melt this mountain down if I have to!”
She looked around. She couldn’t see anything through the snow.
“Rather quick to anger, aren’t we?” came a voice.
Clover grit her teeth.
“I know of you well,” she growled. “Starswirl mentioned you many times.”
“I know. I thought we were friends.”
“He said you didn’t know what ‘friends’ were,” Clover said. “Only tools and obstacles.”
“Semantics.”
Clover’s horn lit up, and a wave of fire lit up the snowy mountainside. “They are not semantics! They are why you cannot and must not be trusted!”
A shadow flashed on Clover’s peripheral vision. The fire cascaded into the snow, kicking up a rising steamcloud.
“Did your master mention how fast I was?” Zerephonzidas said, now inches away from Clover’s face. His one good eye bored into her skull like a drill. His presence made every instinct Clover had scream and bawl.
Pop.
“He did,” Clover said, now twenty yards away. “That’s why I made a point of learning teleportation.”
Zerephonzidas rose to his full height.
What a monster, Clover thought. He was bigger than the alicorns and faster than a cheetah. He was as strong as a dragon and as smart as a scholar. He could run rings around a regular pony whilst lecturing them on what they were doing wrong.
Starswirl had only realised the danger he had been in around the sphinx only after he had given him the knowledge he had needed. Starswirl had never regretted his time in the library. He only accepted that now, Zerephonzidas was a force to stop.
As Starswirl’s student, that responsibility fell to Clover.
A snowflake landed in Clover’s eye.
In a flash, Zerephonzidas was on her.
Pop.
“Goodness, what an irritating skill to have learned,” Zerephonzidas muttered.
“You won’t get Celestia today,” Clover growled, and fired a large ball of fire straight at Zerephonzidas.
The sphinx ducked as if it were a lazily tossed tennis ball.
“I’m not after them today,” he said. “I’m not after them tomorrow. I’m a very patient sphinx. In the end, you can throw all the fireballs you want, but the weapon that will kill you isn’t my claws or my teeth, but time itself.”
Pop.
Another fireball. Clover knew Zerephonzidas would dodge it, but it was more to make a point anyhow.
“Stay away from them. They’re not yours.”
“They’re not ready for me yet,” Zerephonzidas said. “I need to wait until, oh, eighty-something years?”
“Get off this mountain.”
“After you.”
Celestia sat on top of her mountain, pondering a map Clover had given her before leaving. A tool, the old magician had said.
Luna looked over the horizon.
“It’s fitting Clover arrived when she did,” Luna said. “I was looking into the stars and saw… oddities.”
“Oh?” Celestia asked.
“Yes. They spoke of an ancient being sowing disharmony where he went,” Luna went on. “It seems Clover’s villain was closer than she anticipated. He will be arriving in Equestria soon, and we are perhaps the only ponies strong enough to defeat him.”
Celestia frowned. “Almost too convenient,” she said. “What is his name?”
“His name, the stars say, is Discord. If he vanquishes us, his reign will be long and terrible.”
Celestia held up the map. “Isn’t it helpful, then,” she said, “That Clover has given us directions to a tool that can stop him?”
Luna looked over at the map. “Where does this lead to?”
“Something called a ‘tree of Harmony,” Celestia said. She looked at Luna. “Perhaps it is time we descended our mountain, sister.”
Stumbling from the snow, Clover held her side. Zerephonzidas had a mean swipe to him, and Clover pondered that the cold had perhaps saved her life, stopping the bleeding from being too profuse.
Where the sphinx was now, Clover didn’t know. It would take more than mere teleportation to defeat him, she thought. It would take far more bravery than she could muster.
She examined her injury. It was monstrous. Her coat was torn and bruised by the trauma. She grit her teeth. Teleportation was good for an escape, at least.
She felt a familiar sensation of dread. She looked behind her.
Although his body was hidden by the falling snow, Clover could make out the single yellow eye that stared at her.
Fighting was no longer an option. Truth be told, it never had been.
Rarity coughed, expelling dust from her lungs. Blackness surrounded her, although she could tell if that was because she could see from the particles of stone clogging up her eyes or because her horn-light had gone out.
“Twilight? Applejack?”
There was no answer. Rarity scrambled to her hooves, tripping and wobbling on the pieces of debris.
They had ran as fast as they could. Rarity remembered passing Zerephonzidas’s old office, but not much else. Twilight and Applejack had been the ponies in front, so when they ran…
Had they been left behind under the rubble?
Paying no heed to her breaking hooves and her tattered mane, Rarity tore at the rocks and dirt. All that happened was more and more pieces fell onto her, caking her forelegs and burying her progress.
“Twilight!”
She concentrated on the light spell, and her horn flickered to life.
The corridor had completely collapsed. Pieces of the ceiling were strewn around the ruins behind her, too. A long crack ran down the top of her hard hat. It had likely saved her life.
Had it saved the others lives as well?
Rarity rubbed dirt out of her eyes. She looked a mess.
She needed the other diggers. Where was Douglas when she needed him?
Her blood went cold. Was Zerephonzidas behind all this? Where was the sphinx?
Where was Rainbow?
Where was anypony?
Rarity stumbled away from the collapsed corridor and trotted, then cantered back to the dig site. She needed help. She needed to get to Twilight: she would know what to do.
“Please don’t be squashed,” Rarity prayed as she ran.
“Hello?”
The voice echoed in the collapsed ruin, bouncing off the still intact stone walls in an eerie fashion. Twilight’s horn lit up. “Anypony there?”
“I’m here,” came Applejack’s voice.
Twilight climbed over the broken rocks towards her friend. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Applejack grunted, prying herself loose of a stone. “Hard hat took a beatin’, though.”
“Mine too,” Twilight said. “And I think I twisted my wing.”
Applejack dusted herself off. “Well, that’s one way to wake up, I guess. I’ve got bruises everywhere, now.”
“Where’s Rarity?” Twilight asked. She looked around. “She was right in front of us.”
Applejack swallowed. “Yeah. Right where those rocks are.”
Twilight went cold. “You don’t think she…”
Applejack tried to lift up the stones, but even her considerable strength wasn’t enough to shift them. “Rarity’s tougher than she looks,” she said. “If we made it, so could she.”
Twilight took a few steps back. “I don’t think we can dig through that,” she said.
“Can’t you blast through it with magic?”
Twilight bit her lip. “I might bring more down on top of us.”
Applejack grit her teeth. “We don’t know if anypony will come and rescue us,” she counterargued.
“Yes, we do,” Twilight said, sitting down. “The cave in wouldn’t have reached the caves. Douglas always said they were too solid. The other diggers will come and find us eventually.”
Sweat was beginning to form on Applejack’s brow. “How long will that take?”
“I don’t know.”
Applejack’s back was against the rubble. Her pupils contracted as she began to assess the situation.
“I can’t stay here,” Applejack said. “I need to get out.”
“We just need to wait,” Twilight said. “Once the diggers get through enough, they can tell us how to help.”
“I can’t be near that thing back there!” Applejack said. “Whatever it was… it ain’t right.” She went back to trying to claw through the rubble. “I just… I need some fresh air.”
Twilight bit her lip. She also wanted out, but clawing through rubble wasn’t going to help anypony.
“Applejack, I need you to remain calm.”
“Calm? I can’t be calm in here. There’s who knows what behind us, in that room, out to get us! Remember that noise?” Applejack’s hooves went to her ears. “I don’t want to hear that ever again! It claws into your head… like screws diggin’ through wood. It wriggles around like snakes in the sand, and I need to get out…”
“It’s exactly because there are things behind us that I need you to be calm,” Twilight said. “Please. We need to escape, but wasting your energy isn’t helping.”
Applejack rested her head against the stone. She breathed in.
“I don’t want to be here any more, Twi’.”
“Neither do I,” Twilight said.
Applejack shook her head. “I mean here. The dig. This snowy cave. Even before this, I’ve not wanted to be here for a while.”
“Because of the nightmares?”
Applejack nodded. “That, and everythin’ else. I hate the dark, I hate the noise, the statues, and Zerephonzidas.” She lifted her head, trying to dispel the shadows in her mind. “I want to go home.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “Let me help you.”
“You better,” Applejack said. “You got us into this mess. I want you to get us out.”
Twilight bit her lip. She hated it, but she agreed with Applejack. She could have refused to help Zerephonzidas as soon as things became grim, she had ample opportunity to tell the diggers to stop… but her own curiosity had pushed her onwards.
She had to apologise to Rarity, if ever they met again. She had failed, and let her own quest for knowledge lead them into a trap they might never be able to escape.
Twilight turned her head back towards the corridor. She grit her teeth.
“We need to keep an eye out. There are glass statues down there and they might stop moving.” She looked at the blocked passage. “And Rainbow won’t be able to make it to us any more…”
“Zerephonzidas’s study,” Applejack said. “It’s more defensible than here. We can shore up the corridor with old furniture.”
Twilight nodded. “That’s a good idea. Come on, let’s go.”
Douglas bit his lip, and closed his eyes. He knew that sound all too well. He heard it in his dreams, and had it drummed into him every time he made a mistake. It was the sound of a ceiling collapsing.
“Cave-in,” he said. “Zereph’, cover your head.”
The large sphinx frowned, and lifted a paw over his head. “Something the others did, perhaps?”
“Maybe,” Douglas said. “Or it could just be a side-effect from our digging. Or something completely unrelated.” He rubbed his eyes. “Come on, we need to head back. We might be trapped in here.”
Douglas turned to leave, but Zerephonzidas held him back.
“Don’t,” he said.
Digger Douglas looked up at the sphinx, worry in his eyes.
“Why?” he asked. “Glass statues?”
Zerephonzidas didn’t move. “Maybe. Something has been following us for at least a minute.”
Digger Douglas remained very still. “What do we do?”
“You go behind me,” Zerephonzidas said.
There was a coughing sound from down the corridor.
“Eh, hey guys!” came Rainbow’s voice. “So, uh, this just in, there’s been a cave in.”
Zerephonzidas sighed. “Oh. It’s just you.”
“Yeah. The bad news is, I think we’re trapped,” Rainbow said, putting on her best winning smile. It was the smile she felt had just the right amount of obnoxiousness and charm. In reality, it mostly made her look like an idiot. “The good news is, I’m here now!”
“Hooray,” Douglas said. He sighed. “Let’s go look at the cave-in. We might be able to dig through if we’re lucky.”
Rarity burst into the dig site, covered in dirt. Bits of rock were caught in her twisted and matted mane. Now into the relative light, she realised she had cuts all over her body, most notably her back and flanks. She also had a large stone sticking into her rear leg, which she must have landed on when she fell.
The other diggers surrounded her.
“What happened?”
“Where’s Digger Douglas?”
“Was there a cave-in? We heard a noise…”
“Was it the statues?”
One of the diggers, a unicorn stallion by the name of Pick, pushed past the others. “Give ‘er some space! Lass is injured. Get ‘er some bandages!”
“You need to dig the others out,” Rarity exclaimed. “They’re… I don’t know where the others are!”
Pick led Rarity to a stretcher. “We’ll get to that once you’re not bleedin’ all over the carpet. Lie down.”
“You need to get to my…”
“You need to do as you’re told, lass. It’s gonna take more than a few plasters to heal up those cuts.” He shook his head as he examined the stone lodged in Rarity’s rear leg. “You’ve right done yourself in.”
Rarity grasped his hoof hard enough to crush the blood out of Pick’s foreleg. Her eyes were as hard as diamonds and twice as cold.
“If you don’t go and get my friends out of there this instant, I will lose my temper,” she said.
Pick swallowed.
“Right then,” he said. “Vec’, Cutter, go in there and check out what needs doin’. Wear ‘ard hats, no risks, don’t be silly billies, right?”
“Right.”
“Right!”
Pick sighed. “And someone get this lass a plaster and some antisceptic cream! Also a bloke who knows what he’s doing!”
Zerephonzidas’s old desk made its way into the decrepit corridor and was lain on its side. Several chairs were quick to join it, as were any rocks light enough to carry. It took twenty minutes to make an acceptable barricade, twenty more to shore it up so it was moderately solid.
Twilight spent the whole time hoping, wishing, praying that the glass ponies wouldn’t wake up and find them.
Applejack was already starting to feel the effects of fatigue again. This close to… whatever it was, Twilight wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t feeling at least some side-effects. The farmpony seemed more sensitive to it than her, but if Twilight was a betting pony, she’d have said that the feeling of dread and claustrophobia that was creeping up on her wasn’t entirely due to their situation.
There was a palatable feeling of wrong-ness in the air. An alien feel that slid into Twilight’s mind like a slug would slide under a door. Like worms crawling through dirt. It ran across the outsides of her brain like a centipede. It was toxic, radioactive, and stomach-churning. Twilight wanted nothing more than to be gone from this place.
She’d even be glad to see Zereponsidas, if only so the larger, powerful sphinx could provide some measure of protection.
Applejack shifted the heavy pieces of furniture silently.
“I hate to ask…” Twilight began, “But what are the nightmares about?”
Applejack shoved another half-burned chair into place behind Zerephonzidas’s old desk. “I dunno how to describe ‘em. I thought about talkin’ to Rainbow ‘bout them, but… well, there always seemed to be somethin’ better to do.” She put her shoulder into the barricade with a mighty shove. “‘Sides, I was real tired. Still am.”
“If they’re to do with this place, I think I need to hear what they’re about.”
Applejack breathed out, and leaned against the barricade. “They’re less nightmares, and more like… I dunno. Like somepony is talkin’ to me without usin’ my ears. Like I’m being held up against a wall with wires ran through each ear. I see flashes that make my head hurt worse than after hard cider and my ears feel like somepony’s drillin’ them with a spoon.”
“A spoon?”
“I reckon it hurts more’n a knife,” Applejack explained. “They’re bad nightmares, Twi’. I ain’t had none like ‘em. I’ve had nightmares where I’m runnin’ from dressers tryin’ to eat me, nightmares ‘bout old ponies without eyes, and nightmares ‘bout… personal things, but they ain’t like these.” Applejack looked Twilight in the eye. “These are just painful, and loud, and they never go away no matter how tired I am.”
“You don’t see anything at all?” Twilight asked.
“Nothin’ that makes sense,” Applejack said. “Sometimes I see hundreds of… ponies, just flickering, like they’re not there half the time I look. I see white, like static, or real thick fog. I see this… thing, like a great big tree trunk made of blackness, and somethin’s in there, wrigglin’...”
Twilight went very quiet.
“A tree trunk made of blackness?”
Applejack shrugged. “Somethin’ like that.”
“Zerephonzidas has been drawing that. And… whatever was in that room, before the cave in…”
Applejack looked away.
“I know.”
“Is that why you want to leave?”
“Yes,” Applejack said, without even an instant’s worth of hesitation. “I want to get away from that thing as fast as I can and never look back. You should want the same thing.”
“But…”
“If it talked to you the same way it talks to me, you wouldn’t want to be here. You would want to be back home in your castle with Spike, reading a book about ponies who have… ‘adventures’ like these.” Applejack rubbed her eyes. “Everypony wants adventures like these until they actually happen.”
Twilight turned to the dark corridor beyond the barricade. “Maybe.”
Applejack blinked twice. She was evidently trying to stave off sleep.
“You can take a nap if you…”
“No,” Applejack replied. “Not until I can’t manage bein’ awake one more moment. The more I’m awake, the less that thing can get in my head.”
“No way through,” Douglas said. “We’re completely trapped.” He sighed. “We’ll have to wait for rescue. I can’t get through this safely without tools.”
“We’re lucky we didn’t get caught in the landslide, then,” Rainbow said.
“Quite,” Zerephonzidas said. He eyed Rainbow. “You never mentioned why you were coming to see us. I thought you were to stick with Twilight and the others.”
“Twi’ wanted to know if you had found anything,” Rainbow said. “Applejack was getting super-sleepy, so we weren’t making much progress. We thought it’d be okay.” She looked down. “I hope they’re alright.”
Douglas sighed, and beckoned to Rainbow to follow him. “Come on, there might be a passageway further along.”
“I’m not familiar with these parts of the ruins,” Zerephonzidas said. “These were the servants quarters.”
“Didn’t mingle with the lowlifes, then?” Rainbow joked.
“No, I didn’t.”
Rainbow snorted. “Would it kill you to make a joke now and then?”
“I’m not in the mood,” Zerephonzidas said. “I feel what I’ve been looking for. It’s so close I can almost taste it.”
“Speaking of taste, I don’t suppose there’s any food down here that’d have lasted for five-thousand years? We’re going to start getting rather hungry rather quickly.”
“Encouragement to find an exit, I guess,” Rainbow said. “Pity we don’t have more than one flashlight.”
“You could have brought one,” Douglas pointed out.
“Well, you had one and Twi’ and Rarity were there too, so I never really needed one.”
“I feel wind,” Zerephonzidas said.
“Well, it wasn’t me,” Rainbow replied.
“He means a draught,” Douglas said. “Which means an exit!” He caught up to Zerephonzidas. “Where?”
“Down here,” the sphinx said. “It’s just a faint breeze. Cold.”
The trio went down into the dark. There, they found a portion of the ruin wall that had crumbled away, either in the recent cave-in or centuries earlier. A small tunnel, made of jagged, dangerous rocks, led somewhere.
“It’s too small for me,” Zerephonzidas said.
“Me too,” Douglas admitted. “I’d cut my belly open trying to crawl through there.”
“I can make it,” Rainbow said. “It’s a tight fit, but I’m smaller than both of you. I can climb through and see what’s there.”
“What if you get stuck?”
“Well, we’re all stuck anyway. Might as well see what’s up there. If I get stuck, well, I guess we’re back to waiting for rescue, right?”
“I suppose,” Douglas said. “Stay, safe, yeah?”
Rainbow nodded, and poked her head into the tunnel. “Yeah, sure. Because safe is totally an option when you’re stuck in a ruin full of killer glass statues and cave-ins.” She began to climb inside. “See you guys around.”
Twilight heard the sound of clinking. It was the sound of glass on stone, but to her it sounded like the very bells of hell had begun to ring.
“Stay behind me, Applejack,” Twilight instructed. “If you can, throw debris at them. If they shatter, they won’t get up.”
Applejack grunted. “My aim might be a bit off,” she said. “It’s mighty dark in here.”
Twilight bit her lip.
“Yes, it is.”
Oh, please hurry and get us out of here, she thought. Anypony…
The sounds of ponies drummed into Zerephonzidas’s head as he stroked his chin, looking out over the vast sandy landscape beyond his balcony. Despite the heat, the air was humid, as the warmth carried the steam and water vapour from the swampy oasis below up to the higher rooms in the temple.
Zerephonzidas had seen many kings and queens in his long life. They tended to have palaces and castles. This one was different. The Emerald King has a temple, a site dedicated to his glory. In the eyes of himself and his nation, he was more than a mere ruler: he was a god. Ruler of water. Having posession over the oases in the desert made him custodian of life itself.
Zerephonzidas smirked. If the Emerald King was a god, then the sphinx was creation itself. Owning a few water holes didn’t make him any more powerful, or long lived. Give him fifty, sixty years and he’d be underground and his successor would be ranting about how omnipotent he was minutes later.
Life was a fickle thing. It could be taken away at any moment.
It could also provide many wonders. It was what convinced Zerephonzidas to stick around, unlike many of his more disillusioned brethren. It was common for sphinxes these days to actively seek an end, convinced that after millions of years, the world held no more surprises for them.
It was a lack of vision that had cost the sphinxes more dearly than the rise of the alicorns. Oh, that had been a fun little century. Ponies had, at last, evolved a method of dealing with the apex predator. Ponies that could fly and rain down magic from above, larger and stronger than an average pony. Moreover, they would be strengthened by proximity to their herd.
If sphinxes were the apex predator, then alicorns were the apex prey that sphinxes were no longer able to stalk without consequence. It had taken a century for his kind to learn that they simply weren’t worth the bother to exterminate.
Besides, with the sphinxes gone, the alicorns number would dwindle, slowly but surely. That was the beauty of a long life. If you had a problem, just wait long enough and it’ll end itself on its own.
Zerephonzidas heard hoofsteps behind him. He rolled his eyes. If the magic in this kingdom weren’t so interesting, he’d have been very tempted to leave for twenty years so that the current captain of the guard, some upstart named Grass, would be replaced.
“Sphinx,” came the loud, commanding voice.
Some ponies were simply born without a survival instinct. They were the most pesky of all. They never seemed to treat him with the respect a million year old lifeform was due.
“Little pony,” Zerephonzidas replied. “Does your king require my counsel?”
Grass nodded. “He does. I shall escort you to…”
“You will trot off and I will go there myself, alone, unsupervised,” Zerephonzidas said.
“That is not what I said,” Grass replied, his expression darkening.
“...Or I might kill you,” Zerephonzidas warned. “After all, only one of us is replaceable, no?”
Grass tightened his grip on his spear. The little fool was wearing armour made out of emeralds. Emeralds! As if they would help him at all. Steel would have been a wiser choice, although it occurred to Zerephonzidas that the ponies here didn’t know how to make steel. Brass or copper then, perhaps?
Zerephonzidas rolled his eyes, and got to his paws. He towered over the stallion, who was not a small pony by any stretch of the imagination. Delicately, he pushed past him, sliding the heavy guardpony across the stone floor.
“I’m on my way,” Zerephonzidas taunted. “Don’t get your tail in a twist.”
Grass moved to follow him, but if there was one place the unicorn guard could not follow Zerephonzidas, it was out the window.
Zerephonzidas escaped the escort by soaring over the temple. The sandy rock seemed to glitter like gold as it jutted from the swampy oasis dotted with colourful flowers and palm trees. The sound of lapping water was ever-present, as was the sound of pony life. To think that millenia ago the thought of ponies wandering outside mud huts was little more than fantasy. Even the smallest of creatures could surprise, Zerephonzidas thought.
Statues dedicated to the masters of magic of the era guarded the entryways to the temple and watched over the deep, dark passages of this utopian masterpiece. It was a dedication to opulence and awe. Murals coloured blue, gold, and above all, green, marked an age of art and beauty.
Other creatures than ponies dotted the temple. Minotaur workers were some of the only creatures stronger than even a sphinx, and dragons flew above the temple like crows. Neither was as advanced as the pinnacle of pony society, and showed the Emerald King due respect.
Zerephonzidas was perhaps the only animal in the entire temple to not treat the King like some kind of god sent down from the heavens to deliver upon ponies water. They said his blood ran with water, as if he was a fountain. They also said grass and greenery sprouted up wherever he walked. The King even believed it himself.
Oh, there were spells that could conjure up plants and water, but Zerephonzidas could see that it was no divine gift. Living through everything had given Zerephonzidas a somewhat anti-religious viewpoint. After all, he was older than most ‘gods’. Ancient temples ponies thought had been dedicated to the ‘true ruler in the sky’ Zerephonzidas knew to have been built by ponies with too much imagination and time on their hooves.
The trick, of course, was to keep quiet. Let them believe what they wanted. If you proved useful enough, religion could be amended and bent.
He landed in the courtyard. The temple doors towered many stories above him, and the steps crawled up the sides of the building like a spiderweb caught on a wall. Zerephonzidas slid towards the doors, his heavy coat running across the stone like a cloak.
The doors opened. The corridor beyond could have contained a cathedral, and was built as such. Long, dominating windows let in only slivers of green light. Columns loomed over him, stretching up as if they could reach the clouds themselves. The floor was a mosaic dedicated to the glory of the Emerald King.
Zerephonzidas passed yet another door, this one smaller, but adorned with gold and diamonds.
“The King is anxious to see you,” came a small voice, but one used to respect.
Zerephonzidas paused.
“Then perhaps you should stop interrupting me and let me see him,” he told the mare standing next to a column covered in mosaics. “Or aren’t I fashionably late enough?”
The mare looked left and right. “Where is Grass?”
“Why, in the temple.”
The mare frowned. “He was to escort you.”
“He cannot fly, unfortunately.”
A shadow of fear passed over the mare’s face. Zerephonzidas stored that little memory in the corners of his mind for further use.
“He is likely struggling his way down the stairs as we speak,” Zerephonzidas said. “Now, I shall be off, Queen Flowing Water.”
The Queen glowered at Zerephonzidas. There was little love between the pair.
“Unless, of course, you have anything useful to say?”
The queen folded her hooves.
“Nothing you can’t hear from the King.”
“He dislikes explaining things.”
“That doesn’t sound like any concern of mine.”
Zerephonzidas tilted his head. “How caring.”
Flowing Water brushed the comment aside and strode past Zerephonzidas towards the end of the corridor. “Like king, like queen,” she muttered.
The pair made their way through the increasingly ornate forest of pillars. Plants and flowers of every colour sprouted from pots and from holes in the walls. Fountains bled water like they were gushing wounds. Zerephonzidas dipped his paw in one of them to cool down. It was fresh and clear.
Then the sphinx and the queen passed the third, and most ornate, door.
A mountain of steps led to the throne, which was flanked on either side by a trickling font of water. Greenery grew all around it, and a small battalion of ponies held large fans to keep the king cool.
As for the king himself, he was invisible behind an emerald and jade mask, and a full suit of armour made completely out of green. He was less pony and more golem. Even his eyes were invisible. No stallion alive could shift that armour without assistance, which explained why he needed to be carried and assisted by a small contingent of slaves every second of every day. Supposedly he removed it to sleep, but Zerephonzidas hadn’t bothered to check.
“Your highness,” Flowing Water said, bowing.
Zerephonzidas gave a small bow as well. His personal feelings aside, he still needed to coexist with the Emerald King.
The king, on the other hand, said and did nothing. His first magician, a robed unicorn named Reed, stepped forwards.
“Our scouts have found something of great import,” Reed said. “The king wishes to know whether the long lived sphinx has ever seen its like before.”
Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps. What is it?”
“Deep in the desert, there is a ruin. It is old, and we cannot discern its origin. Inside is a strange column.”
“A column?” Zerephonzidas asked.
“Yes. Here is our scouts impression of it,” the wizard said, handing Zerephonzidas a sketch.
“I daresay your pony doesn’t have much career potential as an artist,” Zerephonzidas said. “This is little more than a scribble.”
“It was made of a material unknown to us,” Reed said. “It has been in those ruins for an indeterminate amount of time, although we believe it to predate the ruins by many thousands of years.” The magician raised his eyebrow. “The fact you have not heard of it or seen it is concerning in and of itself.”
“Hardly. I cannot have been everywhere at once,” Zerephonzidas said. He looked at the sketch. Despite the poor quality of the drawing, he felt the cold touch of destiny up his spine. “Regardless, I should like to examine this column.”
“As would I. The scouts were in quite a state when we found them,” Reed said. He looked up at the Emerald King. “This column could be of use to your highness.”
Likely as a weapon, Zerephonzidas thought. He stroked his chin. It was a very curious looking thing, regardless. Well worth investigating. It might perhaps be the most interesting thing to see this century.
Or it could be little more than inane scribbles on a piece of parchment. Zerephonzidas didn’t know for sure.
Zerephonzidas bowed to the king. “With your leave,” he said.
Slowly, the heavy emerald mask lowered in a curt nod.
The sphinx smiled. Good. At long last, more to see. More to do.
He left the throne room. Reed followed him.
“I trust you will prepare quickly?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I can hardly wait to get going.”
There was little wonder the scouts had found this place, Zerephonzidas thought. The rock jutted out of the sand like the prow of a sinking ship. It was practically begging to be investigated.
The small batallion of scholars and guards trotted in front of Zerephonzidas, entering the small gateway to the ruins. Zerephonzidas had to admit, he didn’t recognise the architecture. It was old, though. Not quite as old as a sphinx, but it was certainly doing its best.
Zerephonzidas stepped into the darkness. The horns of the unicorns, including Reed, lit up the stone walls.
“We’ll have to paint murals in the glory of the Emerald King, of course,” Reed said to one of his colleagues. “Just in case he visits.”
Zerephonzidas walked through the small army. The ruins were labyrinthian. It occurred to him that he had seen similar ruins in Minos, where the minotaurs lived. The minotaurs hadn’t built their labyrinths either.
“Very interesting,” Zerephonzidas muttered. But where was the column?
The group continued exploring, splitting up where there were forks in the passages. Zerephonzidas trusted his eyes to guide him towards his true goal. He could almost see the strings of magic tendril out from the true center of the ruins.
Almost. It was like trying to see a ghost. There was only the faintest of outlines. Less than that, even. More just the sensation that something was there, without any of his actual senses detecting anything worthwhile.
It was a frustrating thing to see, but it filled Zerephonzidas with hope and anticipation. This was something he had never seen before. He was excited.
When he finally reached the black column, stretching above him like a mountain, seemingly with no end, he was frozen to the spot.
It was midday in the city of Canterlot, and quite unlike the weather up in the north, where Twilight and her friends were trapped underground, it was pleasantly warm. Celestia sat at her desk, blissfully unaware of the troubles her prize pupil was being subject to.
She had something interesting to read, after all.
If there was one thing that never ceased to surprise her in her long, long life, it was how much you missed from your own tiny little perspective. Things that were ancient, even more ancient than Celestia, could go completely unnoticed simply due to the sheer size of the world you lived in. It would take an eternity to truly see everything, to experience everything.
In the depths of her library, a certain book had surfaced. What it could change for history couldn’t be properly imagined. Perhaps there would be no grand revelation from the information trapped inside those ancient pages. Perhaps it would change everything.
The only way to really know would be to open the book and begin reading. She adjusted a pair of spectacles on the bridge of her nose. Unlike other seemingly immortal beings, Celestia had found that staring at the sun every day (which was part of the job) had taken a toll on her eyesight.
“What might you have there?”
Celestia opened the book, not giving Discord so much as a glance. Whilst she didn’t mind him that much, she wasn’t about to outwardly show her surprise at his sudden appearances. That would only encourage him.
“It’s Starswirl’s journal,” Celestia said. “One of them, at least.”
Discord twisted and floated onto his back like a snake caught in honey. “Oh, that old fart,” he muttered. “Was quite a thorn in my side back in the day.” Discord changed his appearance to look half burned, like he had been on the wrong end of an explosive kitchen accident. “He also had a mean fireball spell.”
“So did his student,” Celestia said. “I remember meeting Clover once.”
“I’m afraid I never had the dubious pleasure,” Discord said. “I hear she was an absolute bore. All about ‘co-operation’ and ‘tolerance’. Ugh. Really got under my skin back then.”
“Foiled your plans, however,” Celestia pointed out.
“Hardly. She spent all that time trying to make Equestria ‘united’, but inject a bit of chaos, and what good was it for? Ten years of mayhem is what happened. Oh, those were the days.” Discord sighed. “I couldn’t go a single week-end without some ‘hero’ or whatnot trying to end my ‘tyranny’. It was their own fault for making life so boring, is what I told them. Then they’d try to hit me with pointy metal sticks.”
“I wonder why.”
“Spoilsports, I think.”
“If you say so.”
Discord leaned in towards Celestia. “So, do tell, how exactly did Clover foil my plans?”
Celestia flicked through the pages of the journal, only half paying attention to Discord. “She warned me of you, for starters. She met us on top of our mountain.”
“Oh, I remember that mountain.”
“I remember you turned it into Saddle Bay.”
“And the tourism business there should be thanking me for it!”
Celestia turned another page. “In any case, she gave us a map to the elements of harmony.” Celestia smiled. “You know, the things that defeated you?”
Discord frowned. “Oh, yes. Those.” He crossed his arms. “Hrmph.”
“She warned us of you well before you began to exert your influence. Luna and myself were able to plan for your rule before you could really solidify your power.”
Discord sighed. “Well, I suppose it all worked out in the end.”
“Yes. One thousand years later.”
“I suppose after one thousand years most things work themselves out.”
Celestia nodded. “I suppose.” She held her hoof up. “Hold on, this bit is interesting.”
“What?”
“It’s about the eldritch library.”
Discord shrugged. “I never heard of such a place.”
“It was the single greatest collection of knowledge in history,” Celestia said. “It had books from across the ages. It was a true marvel.” Celestia leaned back. “I remember Clover talking about that, too, whilst she was visiting. I was too proud at the time to really take her seriously.”
“As opposed to now, when everypony calls you ‘your highness’.”
“Well, it is my job,” Celestia pointed out. “It seems Starswirl spent decades taking care of that place. Wait a minute…”
“Hmm?”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Well, isn’t it a small world after all?”
“Explain?”
“Zerephonzidas,” Celestia said, passing the journal to Discord. “Have you ever heard of him?”
“Hmm? No, not me.”
“He’s a sphinx.”
Discord became very serious. “Oh, I’ve heard of those, however. Pesky creatures if ever I saw them. Back when I was just a little draconequus only this high, one of them tried to study me. Put me in a jar and filled me full of magic.” Discord shuddered. “It was very distressing. It’s name was Edgaraslinar.” The embodiment of chaos shrugged, snapped his fingers and conjured up a small cloud to relax on. “He blew up.”
“Ah.”
“Why? Who was your sphinx?”
“He met me eight hundred years ago to teach me how to… be an immortal, I suppose. He was an interesting character.”
“Yes, aren’t all million year old demented monsters.”
“You don’t seem to like sphinxes.”
“You should never trust a sphinx is what I sometimes say. And this is me talking! Mark my words, sphinxes are bad news. One of them had the gall to ask me riddles when I was just going for a pleasant stroll!” Discord sighed. “He blew up too.”
“Seems like a recurring theme.”
“Well, only after he cut me into little pieces! It took me a hundred years to reform after that.”
“How troublesome for you.”
“You can bet your ‘Zerepohonzidas’ had some ulterior motive. Sphinxes aren’t made to be nice.”
Celestia kept on reading. “Oh…”
“What now?” Discord asked. “You could just lean back a bit and let me read too, if you’re going to make such a fuss about it…”
Celestia swallowed. “It seems… ah, it seems Clover hadn’t been referring to you when she came to warn us on the mountain…”
“Why? Wasn’t I good enough?”
“No. Starswirl had been watching Zerephonzidas after the eldritch library closed. Apparently… he had been planning to meet me. All along....”
“Surprised?”
“Not terribly. The way he got me to find him was somewhat… manipulative.” Celestia looked out the window. “I can’t help but feel somewhat worried for Twilight now…”
“Why? Where did you send her off to?”
Celestia bit the inside of her mouth, thinking. “Discord, could you do me a favour and go to a dig site up north and make sure everything is… fine?”
“Where exactly?” Discord asked. He raised a bushy eyebrow. “If you’re thinking of the place I’m thinking…”
“Perhaps. There are some really old ruins that were once hidden in a desert.”
Discord became, for once, serious. “I put that place up in the middle of a glacier for a reason, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because it was dangerous. To me, specifically.” He put a claw on his chest. “I’m sensitive to magic, see? That place tried rewiring my brain into pudding. I barely survived just tossing it thousands of miles into the least popular part of the world!” He darkened. “And I’m not as powerful as I once was. Being turned to stone a few times takes a toll, you know…”
“You thought it was dangerous?”
“Whatever was in there has a mind of its own,” Discord said. “A mind far older than mine. Far older than a sphinx, too. I daresay if you thought we were long-lived, then whatever that is… is most certainly immortal.”
Celestia frowned. She was very quiet for a few moments. Discord twisted around to get a good look at her face.
“Well?”
“I need to summon my guard,” Celestia said, getting to her hooves and snapping the journal closed. “I’m going north.” She looked out towards the horizon. “Hopefully I’m not too late.”
If there was one thing to be thankful for, it was that the statues didn’t have much in the way of strategy. There was no overwhelming rush to force through the barricade, no attempts to flank them or try anything more than slowly walk towards Twilight and Applejack in ones and twos. Some of them fell to pieces all on their own, the cracks generated by their movement shattering them before Twilight could even fire a magical blast at them.
The bad news was that magic rolled over them and had little effect on their hard, reflective surface. It was a far safer bet to try and hit them with rocks and debris, and smash them physically. Unfortunately, levitation, even on small objects, was more tiring than a little blast, and Applejack was getting too tired to keep throwing. Not to mention, the broken glass was creating a carpet of dangerous, razor sharp spikes, trapping the pair behind the barricade. Worse still, some would fly over to their side. Twilight already had two small cuts on her hooves, and Applejack had gone from throwing stones to cleaning up the mess, halving their efficiency.
Twilight would throw anxious glances towards the collapsed corridor, hoping that somewhere on the other side, somepony was trying to dig through.
Applejack’s eyes were drifting closed. Twilight gave her a forceful shake.
“No time for sleeping,” she snapped. “Go listen at the collapsed end, see if you can hear anypony.”
Applejack, glad for something to focus her waning attention, trotted over to the rubble. Twilight looked over the barricade. Another target. She levitated a small stone and took aim.
She tried not to think about the glass statues having been living, breathing ponies. She tried not to even think of them as ‘undead’. In Twilight’s mind, undead wasn’t very different from ‘alive’, and she didn’t like the idea of killing.
It helped to think of them as just mindless pieces of glass. That happened to be shaped like ponies. Who looked like they were screaming.
Twilight closed her eyes as she shot the stone, throwing off her aim. It bounced off the side of the lumbering statue, ricocheting off to the side. A small crack had appeared on its surface, but little more than that.
Twilight grit her teeth. Why couldn’t she be as cold as Zerephonzidas, or as strong as Rainbow Dash? Why did she always have to think?
“I can hear scrapin’!” Applejack exclaimed.
Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. Her magic fluctuated briefly before she regained control and levitated another stone.
“They’re coming?”
“They’re on their way,” Applejack confirmed. “Twi, that one’s gettin’ awful close…”
“I know!” Twilight snapped. She blinked. She needed to focus.
She tried to pretend she didn’t care about smashing yet another pony. No, she thought. Not a pony. Just glass.
It was like smashing a window.
The stone shot towards the statue like a bullet, and went right through. The statue crumbled to pieces.
Applejack let out a relieved sigh.
“I was worried you were losin’ your grip,” she admitted.
Twilight still was worried. She didn’t like that all it took to put aside thoughts of wrongdoing was a moment’s hesitation and a little resolve.
“We’ll be out soon,” she muttered. “We’ll be out soon.”
“How long until we can get them out?” Rarity asked. All of her wounds had been bandaged up and treated appropriately, but even the unbandaged places showed bruises and bumps that would take a few days to disappear completely. Even so, she insisted on being with the diggers who were trying to get Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow, Douglas and Zerephonzidas out of there safely. Assuming they hadn’t been…
Rarity swallowed. It didn’t help her to think that any of her friends had been crushed by falling rock. Hopefully, Rarity had been injured the worst. Hopefully. Even if they had survived, though, there were still glass statues on the other side, and then there was the… thing…
Rarity could feel its pressure on her skull. It was both inside and out. It was like the kind of music colts these days liked, except much, much worse. It had a frequency to it that bored through bone and soft tissue and caused her brain to throb painfully.
Some of the other diggers were complaining about migraines. Rarity thought it best not to reveal what might be truly getting inside their heads. Frankly, Rarity herself didn’t want to think about it. It made her feel uncomfortable.
“It’ll take a few hours to dig through this bit,” Pick said. “Thing is, lass, the other corridor is a lot worse.”
“The one with Rainbow, Douglas, and Zerephonzidas?”
“Yup. If they’re in there like you said, then it’ll take at least a day to get ‘em out,” Pick said. “Bloody cave-in did a number on the ceiling. We’ve gotta set up supports or it’ll just get worse as we dig.”
Rarity bit her lip. “Will they last that long?”
“If they don’t starve to death, sure,” Pick said. “Sphinx is pretty tough, right? And that pegasus, you said she was the fastest pony in Equestria.”
“Yes, but if they were injured…”
“Then they’re probably gonna die,” Pick said.
Rarity thought of Rainbow Dash, and bit her lip. It wasn’t fair, she thought, to lose a friend to something like a cave-in.
“Just… please keep digging.”
“We could dig through and save Twilight and Applejack faster if we focus our efforts here,” Pick said.
Rarity flinched. “Are you asking me to choose?”
Pick shrugged. “Well, we can get through both in time, but Rainbow’s chances are pretty small as it is. We can make sure Twilight and Applejack get out in half the time, but only if we move the ponies setting up the supports to excavate the rubble. Then we can focus on getting Rainbow out, but we’ll be starting from scratch.”
Rarity grit her teeth. This was not a decision she cared to make. Was there even a right answer? Or were there just several wrong ones?
She hung her head. “Just… get Twilight and Applejack out,” she muttered. “Once they’re here, they can help… probably.”
Pick nodded. “I’ll get it done.” He put a hoof on Rarity’s shoulder. “You should take a break, lass. Still not looking great, if you don’t mind me saying.”
On a normal day, Rarity would. Today, she just rubbed her eyes. “Just get Twilight and Applejack out,” she repeated.
“Got it.”
There was the sound of smashing glass, and Douglas covered his ears with his hooves. The agonising noise of claws tearing through glass was deafening. Zerephonzidas watched with an emotionless eye as more statues lumbered towards him.
One face in particular he recognised. Zerephonzidas grinned.
“Ha,” he chuckled. “Long time, no see, Grass.”
Douglas removed one hoof. “What?”
Zerephonzidas pointed towards one of the shambling glass statues. Despite the cracks, Grass’s face was still recogniseable. Zerephonzidas slid in-between the broken glass and examined the former captain of the guard.
“I used to know him,” he said, examining the statue. “He was a very irritating pony. Quite a stickler for protocol. He loved worshipping the Emerald King.” Zerephonzidas dodged the statue, who tried to put its hooves on the sphinx’s coat. “If I recall, the queen had a bit of a thing for him.”
Douglas’s eyes were wide open. “Just kill it, for Celestia’s sake!”
Zerephonzidas looked from the statue, to Douglas, and shrugged.
“Very well,” he said, and swiped the glass to pieces. “I was caught up reminiscing. It’s very hard not to remember the past when you reach my age. There’s so much of it swimming around your head.” Zerephonzidas leaned over the broken statue of Grass. “Funny. He always irritated me, but I confess I’m rather happy to see him again after all this time. It’s nice to revisit old times.”
Douglas shuddered. Nothing about this situation was ‘nice’.
“Can we just… move away from the broken glass? It’s getting dangerous here.”
“Hmm,” Zerephonzidas muttered. “The more we get pushed back, the more the glass will corner us,” he said. “With our backs against the wall, these things will finally start to be a tangible threat.”
“I’m more worried about hunger,” Douglas said. “I took a look at that cave-in, and frankly, it’ll take the others a long time to get through.”
Zerephonzidas frowned. “We’ll have to find a way to survive.”
“Well, there’s nothing for me down here,” Douglas said. “I checked. No plants, no edible mushrooms, nothing. No life at all.”
Zerephonzidas didn’t reply. He merely stared down the corridor, looking at the broken glass. He spread his wings and, with a powerful flap, blew the small shards down the corridor.
“See if you can pick up the big ones I couldn’t shift,” Zerephonzidas said. “I’ll keep watch. If we keep this corridor clear, we won’t get cornered.” He looked over at Douglas. “And try not to think about starving. It’d be in our best interests if we try and push the thoughts of hunger to the back of our minds.”
Douglas nodded. “Sure thing, boss.”
Zerephonzidas’s eye scanned the corridor. More than once he glanced over at Douglas. “Would you consider yourself a friend of Twilight’s?”
Douglas tried to pick up the bigger pieces of glass without hurting himself, and was failing. “Uh, we’re probably more colleagues. Or acquaintances, or something. Hey, I can’t pick these up without cutting myself. We should switch jobs. I’ll keep watch, yeah?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Very well.”
“What about yourself?”
“Hmm? Well, by my standards, yes, but I suspect Twilight has different expectations of her ‘friends’.”
“What are yours?”
“I like to see friendship as a give and take relationship. Twilight helps me explore these ruins, and in exchange, I’ll keep her and her friends safe.”
“That’s… more like a business exchange than friendship.”
“Is it?” Zerephonzidas asked. “Well, perhaps I’m a business minded friend.”
Douglas said nothing, and kept on staring down the corridor. “If you say so. I think trust is a big part of it, though.” Douglas looked over at Zerephonzidas. “I mean, I’m a pretty trusting stallion, but you do make it a bit hard sometimes.”
“If I spent all my time telling everyone I met everything I’ve seen and done, I’d never have a minute free.”
“Just the relevant stuff, then?”
“If Twilight knew nothing about what’s in these ruins… less than I, even… we would be in exactly this same situation. If you knew nothing more than where to dig, you would still be here, right now.” Zerephonzidas brushed some of the larger pieces of glass away with his shielded paw. “My telling you all my little secrets seems like a rather petty luxury, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not really.”
“Hmm. Perhaps you and I simply have different mindsets.”
Douglas did not reply. There wasn’t really anything to add to a ‘let’s agree to disagree’ comment. It felt like a defeat, somehow. Douglas wasn’t sure if he had hoped to convince Zerephonzidas to become a more open and approachable sphinx, but whatever he had wanted to show him, Douglas had failed.
“Let’s just focus on getting out of here alive. We still haven’t heard back from Rainbow,” Douglas said.
Zerephonzidas darkened. “She might be trapped.”
“Or dead.”
“Or escaped to somewhere,” Zerephonzidas added. “Slim though her chances are, we cannot ignore that possibility.”
“She might be able to help the diggers from the other side.”
“Do you really think that?” Zerephonzidas asked.
Douglas sighed. “Not… really. She wasn’t really a very helpful pony.”
Zerephonzidas brushed away the last of the glass. “Watch out. I see more statues. Get behind me.”
“Applejack! Please stay awake!”
Applejack jolted herself awake. Twilight bit her lip. There were two more glass statues marching towards their makeshift barricade. She levitated two more pebbles and took aim. She was beginning to get really tired, and all the small injuries she had sustained from the cave-in had begin to really hurt. Her head throbbed from the constant use of magic as well as the bruises on her neck.
Applejack was in an even worse state. Lack of sleep had made her stumble and slip at every turn, and she was barely aware of where the statues were. She had developed countless small cuts from stepping on shards of glass that had flown past the barricade. Twilight herself was getting tired.
They likely couldn’t last for much longer. If Twilight had to guess, most of the glass statues had been concentrated around the column. They had poked a hornets nest, and likely wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.
What Twilight would have given to have Rainbow, Rarity, or even Zerephonzidas with her right about now. Anypony who could just relieve the pressure a little bit. Even something as small as making sure Applejack was going to be all right.
The pebbles shot into each glass statue. Both crumbled.
How many more would come walking down the corridor? Beyond Twilight’s makeshift barricade was nothing but a sea of broken glass. Trying to charge past the glass statues was suicide now. Their hooves would get cut to shreds.
Well, Twilight could fly… but that would leave Applejack alone. In these tight corridors, Twilight couldn’t carry Applejack whilst flying. She could barely carry another pony even when fully rested and out in the open.
Maybe if she tried to bring down the ceiling, she could cut the glass statues off… and maybe make life harder on the ponies trying to dig them out, or even crush her and Applejack flat.
Could she clear the glass and try to get Applejack to follow her past the statues?
Could she…
What could she do?
Twilight rested her head on the barricade. She was sweating, even though it was hardly warm in these ruins.
“I know it’s hard, but I’m sure the others will get to us soon,” Twilight said. “We just need to hang on a little longer.”
“You said that half an hour ago.”
“You said yourself you heard scraping,” Twilight said. “That means they can’t be far.”
Another glass statue came into view. Twilight grit her teeth, and levitated another pebble. Her aim was off, and her vision was beginning to blur. Her breath was ragged.
Who knew simply tossing rocks about would be so tiring?
How many statues had been shattered whilst they had been trapped down here?
When would this all end?
And how?
Twilight fired the pebble. Not for the first time, she missed. She spat, and levitated another.
The sound of rocks falling behind her caused her to drop it. She grit her teeth together and levitated it again, and let it hover right in front of her. She couldn’t miss this time.
“Twi’!”
The pebble fired at the glass statue. It glanced off.
“Twi’!” Applejack repeated, and grabbed Twilight by the shoulder.
Twilight turned towards the collapsed tunnel, and widened her eyes. A small hole had been made, and on the other side, Twilight could make out the shapes of the other diggers.
They had made it.
Making the hole wider had been a straightforward issue for the experienced diggers. Applejack had been the first to make it to safety, and was pulled through by Pick and one of the more medically minded ponies. Twilight scrambled through next, glad to get away from the glass statues.
“We need to plug that hole,” Rarity said. “We can open it again later when we’re ready.”
Pick nodded, and quickly used wooden planks they had been using for supports to cover the small, pony-sized hole. It was unlikely that the clumsy glass statues could clamber over the rubble and through the uneven entrance, but it paid to be more safe than required than not enough.
“Twilight! Are you all right?” Rarity asked.
Twilight breathed out, exhausted. “I’m fine, I think,” she said. “Where’s Rainbow? Douglas?”
Rarity bit her lip.
“If they’re alive, they’re still trapped down another corridor,” Rarity said. “It’ll take much longer to get them out…”
Twilight rubbed her eyes. “How long?”
“At least a day,” Pick said, carrying Applejack, now asleep, towards the exit. “I’ll get on working as soon as we get these lasses to the camp…”
“You’ll start working now,” Rarity said, and took Applejack from him. “The sooner you start, the better their chances are.”
Twilight could imagine how slim those chances would be. Twilight herself had been on the edge of falling unconscious. Admittedly, perhaps Zerephonzidas and Rainbow combined could hold the glass statues off for much longer, but there was still things like hunger to consider…
She got to her hooves, her joints shaking. “I need to rest,” she said. “Then I can help…”
Pick nodded. “Right you are,” he said. “Come on, lads, let’s get back to work. We’ll work shifts around the clock, all right?” He pointed towards the wooden planks they had used to block the hole. “Grab some more wood and get the supports up, pronto.”
Twilight trotted away, Trying to help Rarity carry Applejack. She examined Rarity’s many injuries.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m doing fine, darling,” Rarity said. “I’m just a bit bruised is all.”
Twilight examined Rarity’s many bandages and cuts. She must have been hit the worst by the cave-in.
“You don’t look fine,” Twilight said. “You shouldn’t be moving so much with those cuts…”
“No, I shouldn’t,” Rarity admitted. “Life is tough, though.”
Twilight didn’t reply. The pair found themselves in the camp, and gently put Applejack down.
“How is she?” Rarity asked, examining the sleeping farmpony. Even after everything she had been through, Applejack still couldn’t sleep comfortably. She would shake every now and then, her eyes closed tight.
“She’s not doing very well,” Twilight said. “She described her nightmares to me. They’re worse than I thought. I think the column is trying to ‘talk’ to her.”
“Column?”
“The… thing we saw in that chamber.”
Rarity scratched the side of her head. “I didn’t get a good look.”
“Neither did I, but I recognise it all right. I think it might have a mind of its own, and for whatever reason Applejack is sensitive to it.”
“Perhaps because she’s closer to nature than us,” Rarity suggested. “She always has to listen to her trees to get a good harvest. Perhaps that talent at ‘listening’ is backfiring somewhat?”
Twilight shrugged. “There’s a lot I don’t understand. Too much I don’t understand.”
Rarity sat down, and put her head in her hooves. “I really want Rainbow back,” she said. “I had to tell Pick to focus on getting you out first. I never want to have to make that choice again.”
Twilight put her hoof on Rarity’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “Rainbow’s tough. She can make it.”
Rarity sighed. “If you say so,” she muttered. “I wish I were as confident. After all, Applejack is at least as tough as her, and you’re… an alicorn princess, but look at you! You barely made it.”
Twilight bit her lip. “That’s true, but don’t forget that Rainbow is with…”
“I’m well aware,” Rarity said, cutting Twilight off, “And that doesn’t exactly make me feel much better, now, does it?”
“How long has it been?”
Zerephonzidas’s bright eye shone in the dark. “Twelve hours,” he said. “I suspect our ‘rescuers’ have had to focus on getting the others out.”
Douglas ran his hoof through his mane. “We really will starve,” he said. He looked at the broken mess of glass. “At least those are easily dealt with.”
Zerephonzidas scratched the ground.
“Please don’t remind me of food,” he said. “Sphinxes don’t handle hunger well.”
“I suppose you guys need more nutrition to feed that big body of yours,” Douglas said. “What do you normally eat?”
“I can eat pretty much anything that was alive. Plants, bread, animals, leaves… We’re the ultimate omnivores.”
Douglas sighed. “We eat mostly plants, but also some proteins. Eggs and milk, mostly.”
“Yes, when you evolved to think and use more magic, your diet went from pure vegetarianism to what it is now,” Zerephonzidas said. “Quite a strange transition to watch.”
“I bet,” Douglas said. “Y’know, I kinda wish I could have seen that kind of thing.”
“I suspect you wouldn’t find it as interesting. It takes a very long time. Most other sphinxes got bored and went to go find something else.”
“I suppose.”
Zerephonzidas clutched his stomach. “I would rather not starve to death,” he said. “It would be a cruel irony to be so close and die like a common short-lived animal.”
Douglas swallowed. His throat felt dry.
Zerephonzidas sighed. “Well, we can only hope they get here in time.”
“Damn it!” Pick roared.
Rarity and Twilight trotted over towards the digger. “What’s wrong?”
Pick pointed up towards the ceiling. “Supports are buckling,” he said. “We need to replace and reinforce ‘em.” He ran his hoof through his mane, sweating. “We only just got ‘em up, too.”
Twilight bit her lip. “What about Rainbow?”
“I don’t know!” Pick exclaimed. “She’s… I dunno, all right? She’ll have to last even longer, now.” Pick rubbed his forehead, and turned to shout at his diggers. “Come on, lads, take them down. We’ll have to change the orientation, all right?”
“Right, boss!”
Twilight bit her lip. “Please hold on, Rainbow,” she muttered.
Douglas rested his head against the wall. His stomach was killing him.
“How… long?”
Zerephonzidas was invisible now. The flashlight had run out of battery hours ago.
“Thirty-six hours.”
Douglas closed his eyes.
“I wish I just had something to eat…” he muttered.
In the darkness, Zerephonzidas’s eye flashed.
“I told you to not remind me of food,” came his voice, which was cracking due to thirst.
It had been over forty-eight hours since the diggers had started work on clearing the tunnel, and finally they had dug through. Pick leaned inside the hole, sticking a flashlight through and seeing what was on the other side.
“Careful,” he said. “Might be glass statues in here, lads.”
“Rainbow? Douglas?” Twilight shouted.
Pick swivelled the flashlight around. Eventually he determine the outlines of Zerephonzidas, slumped against the wall.
“Zereph’!” Pick shouted. “You all right, mate?”
Zerephonzidas lifted his head.
“I’m… I think I’m fine,” he said, and tried to lift himself up.
“Where’s Rainbow? Douglas?”
Zerephonzidas walked over to the hole. His eyes, even his good eye, were sunken and grey.
“Rainbow Dash disappeared into a hole,” he said. “We didn’t see her again.”
“What about Douglas?” Twilight asked, as Rarity backed away, her hoof over her mouth. Twilight couldn’t concentrate on Rainbow’s disappearance. She simply couldn’t.
“There was a second cave-in shortly before you broke through,” Zerephonzidas said. “Douglas didn’t make it.”
Twilight looked down.
“You’re all that’s left?”
Zerephonzidas nodded slowly.
“I need… water,” he said. His voice sounded like it was coming from across a desert. “Please,” he said, an unfamiliar sensation of powerlessness in his words.
Twilight, her mind blank from the discovery, handed Zerephonzidas a bottle of water.
“Just hang on,” Pick said. “We’ll make this hole bigger for you.” He looked over at Twilight and Rarity. “You girls should head back,” he said. “I think this has been a long two days.”
Zerephonzidas sat by the entrance to the ruins, feeding on a seemingly endless stream of supplies. The diggers around him were in poor spirits after learning of Digger Douglas’s fate.
They had sent a small team of ponies to look into the hole Rainbow had tried to escape through, but not only were there only a few stallions who could fit in, but there was no sign of Rainbow Dash. Even the cold breeze Zerephonzidas had claimed had come from it was gone, leaving nothing but stale air and empty echoes. Eventually they had to turn back. Fatigue was clawing at everypony, from Applejack to the diggers who had worked for nearly three days straight to rescue the team of ponies. Besides, the odds of Rainbow surviving for this long without food, and more importantly, water, were close to zero.
Twilight sat above the entrance to the ruins, staring at them with a blank expression. Rarity hadn’t spoken to her since they had found Zerephonzidas, and all Applejack hadn’t even seen Twilight since learning the news. Twilight knew that on some level they blamed her, and frankly, Twilight was of a mind to agree with them.
The team had found Douglas’s remains, partially squashed under a large slab of stone. Twilight hadn’t the heart to examine the body, and besides, it was too damaged by the cave-in to recognise beyond Douglas’s cutie mark.
Twilight picked at her meal, still regaining her strength. She had lost count of how many glass statues she had smashed, but it was enough for her horn to ache from the effort. She rubbed her forehead.
Two lives was two too many, Twilight thought. She got to her hooves and trotted to the entrance, where Zerephonzidas was still recovering his energy. He looked like a zombie version of himself, gaunt and pale.
“I thought you promised,” Twilight muttered.
“I apologise for losing sight of Rainbow,” Zerephonzidas said, still eating. “It was careless of me.”
Twilight sighed, feeling like a large hole inside of her had opened up.
“I imagine you want to leave this place immediately,” Zerephonzidas said.
Twilight frowned.
“No,” she muttered. “I want everypony else to leave, then I want to know exactly what it is that’s so important we lost Rainbow and Douglas.”
Zerephonzidas managed a small smile.
“That’s a very sphinx way of thinking,” he said. “I can’t promise you any kind of satisfaction after what’s happened, but I can promise we will get answers.”
Twilight stared into the ruins.
“I just don’t think I could leave with everything unfinished. You know?”
Zerephonzidas nodded.
“All too well.” He continued eating his meal. “When I’m back to full strength, we shall go back into the tunnel, just you and I. Now you’ve found the column, there is no sense risking anyone else’s life.”
Twilight nodded.
“Good,” she said. “That will have to do.”
“How’re you holdin’ up?”
Rarity turned to face Applejack, who was still rubbing her eyes from lack of sleep. Recent events had likely not made sleep come any easier to the farmpony.
“I feel awful,” Rarity said. “I feel like I’m going to be sick.”
Applejack nodded.
“So do I,” she said. “How ‘bout Twilight?”
Rarity looked towards where Twilight used to have been, only to find she had gone. “I’m really worried,” she admitted. “I’m scared she’ll do something… rash.”
“How rash?”
“Very.” Rarity sighed. “How are we supposed to tell Pinkie and Fluttershy?”
“Or Scootaloo,” Applejack muttered. “I guess I’ll have to take care of Tank, too.”
“Oh, right. Douglas told me to look after his snails,” Rarity said. “I’m not sure I know what it is snails eat, though.”
“Leaves ‘n plants, I think. They just eat some of our cabbages back at the farm.”
“I suppose they have to eat something,” Rarity said.
Pick came down from the upper levels, frowning. “Speaking of eating,” he said, “Somepony’s been getting into our supplies we left up by the entrance to stay cool. You wouldn’t have seen anypony nicking anything?”
Applejack shook her head. “No.”
“It’s revolting,” Rarity muttered. “After everything, somepony is stealing food?”
Pick grumbled. “I know,” he said. “I’ll give whoever it is a stern talking to.”
Rarity scowled, and turned to leave. “I’m going to make us a drink. Do you want one, Applejack?”
Applejack nodded. “Coffee.”
Rarity shrugged. “It’s all we have left, anyway.”
Zerephonzidas rolled his neck. “Well?” he asked.
Twilight levitated a small pebble to see if her magic had returned to normal. Apparently, it had. She nodded.
“I’m ready,” she said, and looked back up at the camp, where Rarity and Applejack were no doubt waiting. She breathed out. It was better they didn’t come with her this time. After all, she knew where she was going, and she had Zerephonzidas with her this time. Together, they were as safe as they were going to be anyway.
“Good,” Zerephonzidas said. “This ends today.”
Twilight put a hard hat on. Zerephonzidas gestured towards the entrance to the ruins, which opened up like the jaw of a giant snake.
“Let’s go,” Twilight said, and stepped inside the ruins once again.
Hopefully this would be the last time.
Applejack nursed her coffee, the images from her latest nightmare fresh in her mind. The column was clear in her mind’s eye, now, its outline contrasting starkly against the army of glass statues that cowered in its shadow.
Whatever words it had been whispering in Applejack’s ear, she couldn’t make sense of them. It was like listening to an amalgamation of a thousand languages pouring into her at once. She rubbed her eyes. She could still hear the odd noises and…
She frowned, her ears flicking to the side. She could hear the sound of eating. Not normal eating, either. It was animalistic and savage, like somepony had a grudge against an apple pie.
She trotted towards the source of the noise. Perhaps a rabid animal had entered the camp. As if Applejack needed any additional trouble. Whatever it was, it had caught Applejack in the foulest mood she had ever been in, and would likely regret it.
She rounded a corner, and widened her eyes.
One of the large sacks full of food had been torn open, the strands frayed as if they had been bitten through. Bits of food and wrappers surrounded it, crumbs and sauces staining the stones. In the middle, practically inhaling the food, was a very familiar pony.
“Oi! We just found the pony watching over the food!” came Pick’s voice. “He’s been knocked out!”
Applejack’s heart raced.
“I found the food,” she shouted. “You’ll never guess who our thief was!”
Zerephonzidas and Twilight reached the boarded up entrance to the last hallway, where Twilight and Applejack had been trapped for hours. A quick swipe with his paw was all Zerephonzidas needed to undo their work, and make a hole big enough for both himself and Twilight to pass through.
“Careful, there might be glass on the other side,” Twilight said.
“I have a way of dealing with that,” Zerephonzidas said, and once he got to the other side, he spread his wings and blew the small bits and pieces away. “There. Mind some of the larger pieces, though.”
Twilight clambered through after him. Zerephonzidas admired Twilight’s handiwork.
“You got through a good number,” he said. “It seems there were more here than there were in my corridor.”
“There are more inside,” Twilight said. “You’ll likely need to cut through a few more.”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I need to pass by my former study, though. I left something important there.”
Twilight rummaged around her bags and pulled out the lens she had found there earlier. “You mean this?”
Zerephonzidas raised his eyebrow. “Why, yes. Thank you,” he said, and took the lens from Twilight. “I made this five-thousand years ago to help me investigate the column. It didn’t work, but at least now it has a use to me.” He popped the casing off the lens, revealing the sphinx eye within. “I took this from a sphinx named Salenorzabul. He never trained his eyes to see as well as me, but after he passed away, I improved it somewhat.”
“I know you killed him,” Twilight said. “I looked through the eye.”
“Ah. Well, no pretenses then. Yes, I killed Salenorzabul. He was a pest.”
“You don’t feel bad about killing a fellow sphinx?”
“No. Why? Would you?”
“Yes.”
“Ponies tend to just come and go, but a problematic sphinx is worth dealing with,” Zerephonzidas said. “I decided it was better to be rid of him than curse myself for millions of years.”
He brought the eye to his bad eye, and blinked. Twilight raised her eyebrow.
“Wow,” she muttered.
Zerephonzidas smiled, both his eyes creasing as he did so. “There we go. All better.”
“I’ve never heard of that trick,” Twilight said.
“Sphinx magic is brutal and cruel. If I want to fix myself, I need to break someone else.” He looked down the corridor. “Do you know that for five-thousand years, all I could see out of my bad eye was the column? It was as if it was always with me, every day. When I slept, I would still see it. When I tried to run away from it, it followed me. It’s a vision I could never escape, until now.”
Twilight swallowed. “And now that you can escape?”
Zerephonzidas breathed in. “Yes, I could leave, couldn’t I?” He stroked his chin, and then narrowed his eyes. “But I won’t. Nothing has changed: I need to finish this, more than I need food or oxygen.” He bared his teeth. “I will not have wasted five-thousand years of my life, and tormented myself for no reason. I will do anything to get to the column. Anything at all.”
“But… how?” Rarity asked as Rainbow Dash continued to gorge herself on food.
“Got out of the tunnel,” Rainbow said, her face covered in crumbs. Her mane was a mess and she was shivering. Applejack had draped a blanket over her. Spent a day trying to find the cave. Almost froze.”
Rarity couldn’t describe how happy she was to see her friend alive. “We thought we lost you,” she said.
“Well, you did,” Rainbow said, swallowing down a sandwich in one go. “I had no idea where I was. Good thing pegasus fur is thicker than Earth pony or unicorn coats, otherwise I’d be an icicle somewhere in the snow.” She began gulping down water. “Jeez, I feel awful.”
“Have you found Twilight?” Applejack asked Pick. “She’ll want to know…”
Pick shook his head. “No sign of her,” he said. “Sorry. She might be outside.”
“Well, go find her!” Rarity said. “This is great news!”
“What happened to Zereph and Douglas?” Rainbow asked. “Did they make it?”
“Zerephonzidas did,” Applejack said, looking down. “Douglas was killed.”
Rainbow’s eyes widened. “What? How? He was doing fine when I left.”
“There was another cave-in,” Rarity said. “We found him crushed under a rock.”
Rainbow frowned. “Yeah, right.”
“Hmm?”
Rainbow stood up, swaying slightly. “Ugh, I think I feel sick. Where’d you put him?”
“You don’t want to see him,” Applejack said, putting her hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder. “It ain’t pretty.”
“I really do,” Rainbow said, taking another sip of water to settle her stomach. “Douglas was a top notch digger. It’d be like saying I was killed by a cloud.”
Rarity pointed towards the top levels. “We put him up there until we could take him home,” she said.
Rainbow nodded, and flew up to the entrance to the cave. Douglas’s remains had been put in a bag. Rainbow unzipped it, and gagged.
“Ugh. You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t want to see this.” She breathed out. “Is this it?”
“This is all we could find.”
Rainbow frowned.
“Yeah, something smells real fishy,” she said. “Now, I’m no smart pony, right, but I think that when somepony gets crushed, half their body doesn’t magically disappear, right?”
Rarity and Applejack caught up with Rainbow. “Well, where else would it have gone?”
Rainbow looked closer at the body. “Well, look at it this way: if you were starving in a tunnel next to a snack-bar on legs, how hungry would you have to be before you wanted to eat the snack-bar?” She pointed at some markings on Douglas’s body. “Call me crazy, but those kind of look like teeth marks, don’t you think?”
Rainbow, Applejack and Rarity trotted around the caves, looking for Twilight. By this point, Rarity was starting to sweat huge drops. Rainbow, still pale and tired from her recent experience, was worried.
“Don’t tell me Zerephonzidas ate her too,” she said, only half jokingly.
Rarity went cold. “Zerephonzidas…” she muttered, and looked towards the entrance to the ruins. “Oh, dear… She wouldn’t have…”
“She weren’t thinkin’ straight after we thought RD bought it,” Applejack said. “Maybe she thought she was keepin’ us safe…”
“Well, we’re not safe now, are we?” Rarity pointed out. “Come on, let’s go get her out of there.”
“I don’t mean to play devils advocate, but… maybe Zerephonzidas only did what he had to to survive?” Applejack said, biting her lip. “Not that it makes me feel much better…”
“Hey, I really like cider, okay?” Rainbow said. “You know that, AJ, right? Right before cider season, I’m usually fine. I just know I really like cider. When I get it, though, I can only down it in huge gulps it tastes so good.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Your point?”
“My point is, I don’t care if Zerephonzidas ate Douglas to survive or not. I’m worried that he’s got a taste for pony now.”
The trio put on their hardhats.
Twilight watched as Zerephonzidas carved through the remaining glass statues, his claws dancing through them like swords. Twilight preferred to use her shields to protect Zerephonzidas’s rear, and leave the actual violence itself to the sphinx.
He seemed to revel in it much more than before. Before it had been businesslike. Now, it was… Twilight wasn’t sure how to describe it. Bloodthirsty, perhaps.
“Are you all right?” Twilight asked.
“Yes,” Zerephonzidas said. “It’s just that the column is taking a toll on me. I suspect in a very similar fashion to the farmpony.”
Twilight bit her lip. The last thing she wanted was a rogue sphinx. If he went berserk, it might spell the end of the entire expedition.
Zerephonzidas licked his lips. “To be honest, I’m still a bit hungry after I was trapped,” he said. “Pony food doesn’t quite cut it any more.”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “Perhaps we work differently.”
Twilight hoped the shields on Zerephonzidas’s paws still worked. “Perhaps we do.”
“Well, they definitely came this way,” Applejack said, rubbing her eyes. “They opened up the hole.”
Rainbow looked over at Applejack. “How are you holding up?”
Applejack shrugged. “If I slow down, just go on without me, ‘kay?” she said. “I’ll catch up.”
“With Zerephonzidas about, that really isn’t an option,” Rainbow said. “Who knows? He might give a whole new meaning to the word ‘Apple pie’.”
Applejack shuddered. “He don’t seem like the pie type.”
“No. More the ‘eat you alive’ type.”
“As delightful as this discussion is, we should keep moving.” Rarity sighed. “I doubt us alone can handle him anyway, so we need to find Twilight. Perhaps together we can manage.”
“We can handle him,” Rainbow said as she climbed through the hole.
“Yes, I, injured, and you, exhausted and nearly starved, and Applejack, who can barely stand, can stand up to one of the greatest predators the world has ever seen,” Rarity said. “It will truly be a grand battle.”
“You forget he ain’t doin’ so great either,” Applejack said.
“And how much of that was just an act? Unlike Rainbow, he had a… snack whilst trapped.”
Rainbow didn’t reply.
“Well, the sooner we find him and Twilight, the sooner we’ll find out.” Her brow furrowed. “Besides, I’m not leaving here without finding him, no matter what he’s done to Twilight. I kinda liked Douglas.”
Applejack swallowed as she followed the pair. “I’m as worried about Zerephonzidas as I am the column at the end of the tunnel.”
“Column?” Rainbow asked.
“Y-yeah. Whatever it is.”
“Well, I’m not afraid of fancy architecture,” Rainbow said. “Let’s just go.”
“This is is,” Twilight said.
Zerephonzidas nodded. “Yes. I remember.”
“What happened here?”
“This is where I came back after a magician tried to assassinate me. Reed, his name was. He died quickly, and I took some of his magic to protect myself as I came back here.”
“Why did he try to kill you?”
Zerephonzidas chuckled. “I found out the truth about the ‘Emerald King’. Truth that the magician didn’t want me to know.” He examined his claws. “Reed wanted me to be away from the King when the spell was attempted. He failed. I saw the experiment just as I rounded the bend… this one, to be precise.” He tapped his once damaged eye. “I closed the other one when the blast happened, and Reed’s magic protected me from the blast, but the power was still enough to drive me mad for weeks. I woke up in the desert, many days later, having survived only on scorpions and snakes and what little water I could suck from the mud under the sand. It was a humiliating few weeks for me.”
“How’d you cope with the loss of your eye?”
“Not well. Sight is one of a sphinx’s greatest powers. Losing half was… painful.”
Twilight looked at the corner. “At least we’re close.”
“We are. It’s intoxicating.”
“Will you be all right?”
Zerephonzidas grit his teeth. “I worry that I won’t be strong enough to resist it in my current state,” he said. “Last time it took all of Reed’s life energy to save me.”
“Well, this time I’ll be there to shield us.”
Zerephonzidas looked at Twilight.
“I suppose you could be a solution to that little problem.”
Twilight nodded. “Good. Then we can…”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the beginnings of Zerephonzidas’s lunge. Time slowed to a crawl as she took in every detail of the deadly predator’s expression.
Questions swirled inside her head. Why? Zerephonzidas must think that Twilight was a liability, or perhaps that she’d try to stop him. How? He was lunging with his mouth, going in to bite Twilight in the neck, snapping it in two. Even though his paws were closer, and faster…
Twilight felt horror creep around her heart. Did he know about her shields? Was it when he took Salenorzabul’s eye? Or was it…
Pop.
Zerephonzidas spun on the spot, his speed far exceeding the delay in-between Twilight’s teleports. Twilight could only buy time.
She needed a game plan.
She was going to die.
Zerephonzidas could only have learned about the shields on his paws by testing them…
He closed in on her with the inevitability of the grim reaper.
Douglas hadn’t been killed by a cave-in.
No doubt about it: Zerephonzidas was going to kill her.
She was going to die.
Her horn flickered to life. She needed to teleport again. Faster, further… She needed more time… Zerephonzidas could seemingly react as if he could see the future…
Salenorzabul’s eye…
She was going to die. Every thought Twilight had led her to that single conclusion.
She summoned a shield in-between her and Zerephonzidas.
One swipe from Zerephonzidas’s paws was all it took to create a massive crack in the light purple energy shield.
“You remind me of Starswirl’s apprentice,” Zerephonzidas said. “Except she had more space.”
The shield crumbled. It would have taken a powerful blast to smash through Twilight’s energy barriers, but Zerephonzidas’s claws were sharp enough to generate the pressure needed to snap it like glass.
She felt like a mouse standing in front of a cat. A sparrow behind a hawk.
One million years of evolution, and ponies were still just prey to the sphinx.
In a flash of blue, Zerephonzidas was knocked off course, landing to the side of Twilight. Twilight took the opportunity to teleport and fire as powerful a blast as she could at Zerephonzidas, throwing him back.
“Looks like we got here in the nick of time,” Rainbow said.
Twilight looked at Rainbow, from hoof to forelock. “You’re alive?”
“It takes more than two days lost in the freezing cold to kill a Rainbow Dash, Twi’. I thought you were smart.”
Behind her came Applejack and Rarity. “Twilight, he ate…”
Twilight swallowed. “I know. I just figured it out.”
“He’s not eaten a pony for thousands of years,” Rarity said. “He’s gotten a taste for it again.”
“No,” Twilight muttered. “He just has a taste for power.” She looked at her hoof. “If he kills me, he can use my power to resist the column. Or… do whatever he wants.”
Two eyes flashed in the dark.
“It’s not over yet, Twi. Game plan?”
Twilight swallowed. “I don’t…”
“Hit him,” Applejack said, pawing the ground. “Until he don’t want to be hit no more.”
“Twilight, you can teleport all of us, yes?” Rarity asked.
Twilight bit her lip. “I can try.”
“Good. Keep that spell ready in case we need to get out of here very quickly.”
Zerephonzidas emerged from the darkness like a phantom. He looked at Rainbow.
“You’re a survivable specimen, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Interesting. I was sure Twilight was the only pony worth meeting here.”
“You know what else is cool about me?”
Zerephonzidas raised an eyebrow. His jaw then shook, and his entire head rippled to the side.
“I’m pretty fast, too,” Rainbow said, shaking her hoof. “How’d you like that punch?”
Zerephonzidas appeared in front of her, his mouth opening to swallow Rainbow’s entire head.
Pop.
Rainbow squeaked as Zerephonzidas’s teeth chomped onto thin air. The team of ponies were panting.
“You okay, RD?” Applejack asked.
“I think I might have peed a little,” she said. “I didn’t know he was that fast.”
“He’s faster than a normal pony, stronger than a normal pony, and can predict what we’ll do better than a normal pony,” Twilight said. “I need to think of an angle…”
“You know, Rainbow, you really ought to consider that you have much bigger things to worry about than just hitting me,” Zerephonzidas said, and lowered his body.
“He’s going to sprint…” Twilight warned.
Like a bullet, Zerephonzidas surged forwards, tearing through the corridor. Rainbow darted to the side, but the sphinx hadn’t been aiming for her.
“AJ!” Rainbow exclaimed.
Exhausted by the lack of sleep, Applejack could barely even flinch as Zerephonzidas closed in mere inches away from her.
Pop.
Zerephonzidas turned, barely wasting any time, his rear paws flying towards where the ponies now were.
His rear paws weren’t shielded.
Twilight widened her eyes. Rarity tried backing away, but the claws began to carve through her shoulder, reopening her cuts and shredding her bandages. Blood shot out of her woulds like water from a fountain.
“Horseapples!” Rainbow exclaimed.
The sight of Rarity’s blood put Twilight’s mind into overdrive.
In the split second before Zerephonzidas’s claws hit a vital organ, she realised that there was one spell that Zerephonzidas couldn’t dodge.
The shields on his paws.
Her horn flashed.
The shields began to shrink.
Zerephonzidas’s eyes widened a the shields stopped protecting him and instead began crushing his paws. The shields rippled his skin and bent the delicate bones in his paws. His claws snapped and broke. He roared so loudly that Twilight’s eyes rang.
Too late Twilight realised that Zerephonzidas wasn’t the only one to have those shields.
Rainbow Dash crumpled, her forehooves bent and misshapen. She screamed in pain, blood trying to leak out of the shield, but the magic didn’t allow it, and the space inside the shield turned into a red mess.
Twilight stopped the spell as soon as she realised Rainbow was suffering the effects as well.
Zerephonzidas’s paws had been turned into a messy goo. He stumbled back, using his wings to avoid putting any weight on his stumps. Rainbow was hurt less, but even so she couldn’t stand on her forehooves, and crumpled onto her side.
Zerephonzidas retreated into the darkness.
“RD!” Applejack exclaimed, and rushed towards Rainbow, who was still screaming, staring at her bloody and broken hooves.
“I’m sorry!” Twilight exclaimed. “I didn’t mean…”
Rarity shook Twilight out of her panic, cluching her bleeding wound. “Don’t,” she said. “You saved us. Zerephonzidas is gone.” She looked at Rainbow. “We need to get her back to the camp.”
Tears were streaming down Rainbow’s face, unbidden. Applejack picked her friend up.
“We need to hurry,” she said.
Twilight helped Rarity walk as Applejack did her best to carry the injured Rainbow back down the corridor. Twilight made sure to keep a careful eye out in case Zerephonzidas wasn’t as badly hurt as she thought.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. Zerephonzidas must have escaped towards the column, away from the ponies and into the darkness.
Twilight wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The remaining diggers clustered around Rainbow and Rarity. Of the two, it was Rainbow who was in the most pain. Rarity merely clutched her side and waited for her wound to be treated. Rainbow, on the other hand, could only stare at her forehooves as the doctor tried to adjust the splintered appendages back into something resembling a normal hoof.
“This is gonna hurt,” he said, “But if I don’t, it won’t heal right.”
Rainbow grit her teeth.
“Just give me something to bite,” she muttered in-between panicked breaths.
Pick rushed down from the upper levels. “Twilight,” he said, unable to look away from the two injured mares. “We, uh, got visitors.”
Twilight wiped her hoof over her forehead. “What now?” she asked.
“Twilight,” came a stern yet reassuring voice, “I came as fast as I could.”
Twilight looked up Princess Celestia. The older alicorn looked at Rainbow and Rarity, and sighed. “It seems I am too late,” she said.
Twilight took a deep breath, trying to collect herself, then finally burst into tears.
Five Thousand Years Ago: The Pony in the Emerald Cage
The ponies scurried outside Zerephonzidas’s study as the sphinx tapped his paws on the surface of his desk. He was staring at Salenorzabul’s eye.
He had thought that it might take more than the sight he currently had to examine the column properly, but not even the eye he had taken from the long dead sphinx could pierce through whatever it was getting in the way.
Well, he thought, it wasn’t as if something was in the way. It was like trying to see something that wasn’t there. Futile.
Outside his office, he saw the Emerald King be carried through the tight corridors. He scowled. Things would be trickier now he had to share the ruins with that big green waste of space. At least Reed had the common decency to stay out of his way.
“Zerephonzidas.”
The sphinx looked up. His face fell.
“Oh, good. It’s you,” he muttered.
Grass tightened his grip on his spear. “I’m here to…”
“What, warn me?” Zerephonzidas put the eye out of Grass’s sight. “Don’t try anything around the King, perhaps?”
Grass frowned.
“If I wanted to act against him, I would have done so long ago,” Zerephonzidas said. “Contrarily to what you seem to think, our goals are aligned.” He smiled. “Have I betrayed you yet?”
“That’s what a traitor would say.”
“Well, you have a point there,” Zerephonzidas said. He gestured towards his door. “Don’t let me keep you busy. I’m sure you have someone else to try to threaten.”
“I’m not threatening…”
“Yes, I know,” Zerephonzidas said. “Go away, little pony. I’m busy.”
“The King wants to see you as soon as he’s settled near the column.”
“And who told you that?”
“Reed.”
“Of course he did,” the sphinx muttered. He imagined the King’s little voice couldn’t even escape the armour.
Grass turned to leave. Zerephonzidas didn’t stop him. He flexed his paws. He picked Salenorzabul’s eye back up, and held it up to his eye. The sight of both his own eye and the dead sphinx’s doubled his ability to see magic. He could see even the little fluctuations in magic, the tiny bits of turbulence that he could never have seen on his own.
He scratched his chin. He smiled.
The Emerald King was sat on the ground, positioned towards the column. Reed stood guard over the King like a sentry. When Zerephonzidas rounded the final corner, Reed’s eyes swung towards him.
“Zerephonzidas,” Reed said. “You’ve arrived.”
The sphinx rolled his neck. “Yes, I’ve come to see his highness,” he said. He stared at Reed. “At your request, of course.”
Reed narrowed his eyes. “Yed, good,” he said. “I wanted to discuss our schedule…”
Zerephonzidas pulled Salenorzabul’s eye out of the feathers of his wings. He lifted it up to his eye, and stared through it at Reed.
“What are you doing?”
“You know about sphinx sight, yes?”
“Yes, of course I do. It’s well documented.”
“Did you know that some sphinxes could take other sphinx’s eyes to improve their own sight?” Zerephonzidas asked. “Looking at you like this, it’s like watching every ripple in a whole ocean. It’s impressive, really. I should have tried this millennia ago.”
“Are you playing?”
Zerephonzidas smiled, and turned his gaze towards the King. “Just checking something.”
Reed’s brow furrowed, and he took two steps towards Zerephonzidas. “What are you…”
As Zerephonzidas suspected, the armour the King wore was no simple lump of gaudy green rock. No… upon closer, more detailed inspection, he could see the flow of life itself within the metal cage. The King was a weak specimen, for sure… but perhaps that was through no fault of his own. Zerephonzidas could see his life energy trickle, piece by piece, down the sides of the armour. Drop by drop, it flowed down into the ground, leaving the pony inside so helpless and weak he couldn’t even talk.
Zerephonzidas’s smile turned into a grin. “Ah, fascinating. It really is quite a subtle enchantment, isn’t it?”
Reed’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s just that the King so rarely issues orders himself. It’s always been you… or another magician.” He put Salenorzabul’s eye down. “You can stop pretending.”
Reed grit his teeth. “It was to stop the draught.”
Zerephonzidas raised his eyebrow. “Oh, is that a justification? Don’t misunderstand, I’m merely fascinated.” He stepped towards the Emerald King and tapped the armour twice with his claw. “It’s a very delicate enchantment. Tell me, how does it work?”
Reed turned to the nearby guards. “Leave, now.”
The guards looked at each other, then backed away. Reed sighed.
“You realise they’ll have to be put to death now?”
“Tell me about the enchantment. I only care about magic.”
Reed sighed. “It takes his life energy. To keep the land healthy.”
“Ah, so the oasis under the temple… That’s not natural, is it?”
“It once was, but the water dried up.”
“Fascinating,” Zerephonzidas muttered. “So those legends about grass sprouting up where he walks… it’s not a lie after all.” He leaned in towards the Emerald King. “So, the pony inside is the battery, and the armour takes it and makes the sands green and liveable.”
“Yes.”
“Why pretend he’s the one really in charge?”
“Because we were cornered,” Reed said. “The previous king pretended to be some kind of god. Without a king, we wouldn’t have been able to survive. So now, we rule in his stead.”
“How long has the pony been in that armour?”
“Since he was three.”
“Ooh, how cold of you. No sympathy for the young?” Zerephonzidas looked up towards Reed. “And the queen?”
“She knows nothing.”
“Goodness, so he really doesn’t take the armour off when he goes to bed.”
“You didn’t check?”
“No, although I confess I probably should have, in hindsight.”
Reed stepped towards the sphinx. “You will not reveal this to anypony.”
“Why bring him here?”
Reed bit his lip. Zerephonzidas smiled.
“Ah, another secret for me today?”
“We are interested in securing our nation’s power. The ‘King’ grows weak,” Reed said. “Now leave.”
“I don’t think you can afford to order me around like that any more.”
“You might die if you prove yourself a problem.”
“And if you try, I might, well, ‘prove myself a problem’.” Zerephonzidas looked up at the column. “I can guess, though. You want to make sure that your battery doesn’t run out, yes?” Zerephonzidas chuckled. “Goodness me, and some of my kind thought living out millions of years in the vast wondrous land we have was boring. Imagine millions of years, trapped inside armour, forced to feed a dying desert forever and ever. By comparison, our lives truly are full of wonder. Or perhaps that measly excuse for an ‘existence’ is simply hell.”
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“No. I’m just impressed at how far ponies have come,” Zerephonzidas said. “It’s always good to be reminded that although I am the one with the most experience, you new species can be devious indeed.”
Zerephonzidas turned to face the King, and peered through the slots in the helmet. For the first time, he saw the King’s eyes. They were wide and fearful. Zerephonzidas chuckled.
“Are you even aware? Or was your mind sucked dry long ago?” he asked. He held up Salenorzabul’s eye. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
The magic across Zerephonzidas’s eyes crackled, and the sphinx took a step back. He grunted, shaking his head.
“What?” Reed asked.
“Just taken aback,” Zerephonzidas muttered. He looked over at Reed. “Impressed though I am… well, at least Salenorzabul eventually killed his toys,” he said, and turned to leave. “I’ll be seeing you soon. Have fun trying to make your ‘Immortal King’.”
“It isn’t about fun, Zerephonzidas. It’s about saving our land.”
“You could always move North.”
“No.”
“Then you’ll have to make do tormenting this empty shell some more, then, won’t you?”
Zerephonzidas tapped his claw against the wall of the corridor some more. Truly, ponies could be surprising creatures.
So long as they keeped surprising, then he wouldn’t have a problem with them. Oh, the things he would give up to keep on tasting the sweet nectar of surprise. Anything short of his life, perhaps. Without discovery, what was the point of living for thousands of years.
He heard noises nearby. He raised his eyebrows.
“I suspected this would happen,” he muttered. “How many have you brought?”
Reed’s horn flickered to life. “Enough for one lone sphinx,” he said. “I wouldn’t be taking this so seriously if you didn’t have the potential to ruin everything for us.”
“I guessed,” Zerephonzidas said, and turned to face the dozen unicorn guards. “That certainly is a lot.”
“I did say…”
“How many have survival instincts, though?” Zerephonzidas asked. “It’s perhaps the biggest weakness I’ve seen in ponies. It paralyses and traps. A pony with no sense of self-preservation, now, that I find dangerous. These magicians of yours? I suspect they have far too much to live for.”
Reed swallowed. “We’re all prepared to die for our country,” he said.
“Sure you are. It’s a nice last thought to have, after all.” Zerephonzidas flexed his claws. “But you can’t help but flinch.”
“I’m very sorry,” Celestia said. “I didn’t realise that Zerephonzidas would go as far as he has just to find his ‘column’.” She rubbed her forehead. “When he asked for me to find this place, I thought it would be as innocent a favour as he could have asked.”
Twilight felt nothing but relief as her mentor took control of the situation. Guards secured the entrance to the ruins, guarding it watchfully in case Zerephonzidas or any glass statues escaped.
“I thought it was just going to be an excavation,” she said. “I didn’t realise any of this would happen.”
Celestia strode through the caves. “Neither did I. If I did, I would never have helped Zerephonzidas find this place.” She sighed. “I thought it would be just repayment for services rendered. He helped me a long time ago, you know.”
Twilight frowned. “It’s possible the column has been affecting him in the same way it’s been affecting Applejack. Or… something similar, at least.” She shuddered. “And now he’s gotten to the column… Who knows what he’ll do now.”
Celestia nodded. “In any case, he’s dangerous and needs to be brought in.”
Twilight looked into the ruins. Yes, Zerephonzidas was dangerous… but more than that, she still needed to see the column herself.
“The good news is, he’s injured,” Twilight said. “Badly.”
“I know. I imagine he’s in a similar condition as Rainbow Dash, yes?”
Twilight looked at her hooves. “Y-yes.”
“I think that, given the circumstances, it’s forgivable to forget that what affects one spell, affects any of the other same spells, unless you’ve made a conscious effort to separate them.”
“I didn’t… I thought it would be easier to just piggyback Rainbow’s spell on Zerephonzidas’s. I didn’t know I’d do what I did.”
Celestia nodded. “I know, Twilight. At least she’ll heal, in time.” She trotted to the ruin entrance. “If you’re ready, I would rather be done with this sooner rather than later.”
Twilight shook her fear off and trotted after her. “Yes. I’m sure that together, we can take him.”
“And just in case…” Celestia said, and beckoned to four of her guards. “I’m sure my soldiers will help.”
“I can’t imagine what could overcome two alicorn princesses,” Twilight said.
“Well, I am over one thousand years old, Twilight,” Celestia said. “There are some things that even pilates can’t fix, and I don’t seem to… preserve as well as a sphinx.”
Twilight felt a hoof on her shoulder. She turned to face Rarity, who was freshly bandaged up.
“Twilight,” Rarity said, “I know that after everything, you want to know what the column is as much as Zerephonzidas does…”
“I don’t…”
“Just don’t let it consume you. Not like him,” she said. “You have more to live for than just satisfying curiosity.”
Twilight nodded. “All right.”
Celestia put a hoof to her head. “You put up a spell to dampen the noises from the column, yes?”
Twilight nodded. “Yes.”
“Turn it off for a second,”
Twilight obliged.
The ringing in everypony’s ears was deafening. Celestia covered her ears, gritting her teeth. Where the noise had once been little more than an uncomfortable irritation that drilled through into ponies sleep, now it was more like a foghorn.
It had gotten worse.
Twilight put the spell back up again.
“What was that?” Rarity asked, breathing heavily.
“It’s like it’s trying to take control of us,” Twilight said.
“No,” Celestia said. “I’ve heard plenty of screams in my time. That was nothing more than a cry for help. You can hear the desperation.”
“Help? What could possibly be calling for help down here?” Rarity asked.
Twilight bit her lip.
“The statues, for starters.”
“Something here isn’t as dead inside as you thought,” Celestia said. “Come on. Let’s go and find Zerephonzidas.”
The light from Celestia’s horn was blinding. The alicorn seemed determined to exterminate the darkness in an apocalypse of brightness. Twilight trotted in front, keeping a shield ready. Celestia’s keen senses kept her alert.
“Have you ever seen another sphinx, other than Zerephonzidas?” Twilight asked.
“No,” Celestia said. “I think Zerephonzidas may well be the last of his kind. I tried searching for more, but without luck. Perhaps far away from Equestria, some yet survive.”
Twilight bit her lip. “That’d be nice.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t really like the idea of Zerephonzidas being the last of his race. It’d be nice for the last sphinx to be… I don’t know. Nobler, perhaps. Less obsessed.”
“From what I understand, Zerephonzidas is one of the nobler examples,” Celestia said. “Sphinx are not nice creatures. They are predators, and they evolved to look down on short lived species.” She frowned. “The longer you give somepony, the more likely they are to… break.”
“I suppose it’s impressive then that Zerephonzidas lasted this long.”
“Hmm.”
The team reached the point where they had fought the sphinx the first time. The blood still stained the floor. Twilight could see the splatter where Zerephonzidas had cut through Rarity, and the dark red paw-prints where Zerephonzidas had stepped to escape Twilight and her friends. She could even see the small puddle due to Rainbow’s injury.
“If he hadn’t had to try biting us instead of just using his claws, I might never have had time to react,” Twilight said. “He’s unnaturally fast.”
“Hopefully slower now,” Celestia said. “Come on. Keep a teleport spell ready in case he tried to ambush us.”
The six ponies entered the large room beyond the corridor. Celestia’s guards flanked them, raising spears to fend off any attack.
There were no glass statues left. They must have all gone down the corridor to be smashed by Twilight and Zerephonzidas earlier. Sitting on the ground was Zerephonzidas. His bloody and twisted paws had stopped bleeding. His eyes stared at the team of ponies with cold malevolence.
“Celestia,” he said. His voice sounded weaker, but somehow more composed.
Twilight realised he was compensating. Zerephonzidas had been used to being in a commanding, powerful position. Even when he was trapped alone, he must still have felt superior to Douglas. Now, though, he was like a cornered animal, trying to convince them he was the one who had trapped them.
Twilight had worried that despite his injuries, he would still be a danger, but Zerephonzidas could barely walk.
“It’s been a long time, Zerephonzidas,” Celestia said. “I found Starswirl’s journal.”
“I liked Starswirl. He became paranoid in his old age, though.”
“He wasn’t paranoid. He was right.”
Zerephonzidas snorted. “Ponies always break eventually. His mind was rattling long before he was convinced to turn against me.”
Celestia looked over Zerephonzidas’s shoulder. “What is…”
The column absorbed all of Twilight’s attention. It was like looking at something that was omnipresent. It looked black, but not because that was it’s colour… It was more like it was dense, concentrated space trying to occupy one small area. Words that Twilight didn’t think could apply to appearance sprung into her mind. The column was… It was infinity. Eternity. A tower of foreverness, standing against a changing, entropic universe.
“That,” Zerephonzidas said, “Is my column.” He closed his eyes. “You can take a closer look. I’m not going to fight today.”
Twilight’s horn flashed anyway. “Do you think you can manipulate us any more?”
Zerephonzidas shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I surrender.”
Zerephonzidas sounded drained of energy. His last sentence crushed him, physically and mentally. It was as if a mountain had turned into a valley, bent by time.
Celestia examined the column. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.
“You won’t see anything like it elsewhere,” Zerephonzidas said. “Things this unique… they only happen once. They have to happen somewhere. This world is too full of possibility that something can fail to exist somewhere, somewhen. But twice? No, that is too much, even for this sphere.”
“Yes, there is,” Zerephonzidas replied. “Can you tell what it is?”
Twilight peered closer. Inside the column of… everythingness, something wriggled… Or tried to. It was immobile, stuck like a fly in amber, trapped. Caged.
On the floor in front of the column was a suit of armour. It was dark green, and blackened by time.
“It’s a pony,” Twilight said, growing pale. “That’s a live pony, Zerephonzidas.” She turned on the sphinx, passion flashing in her eyes. “What have you done?”
“I didn’t do this,” Zerephonzidas said. “I couldn’t have.”
Celestia blanched. “That pony is alive?”
Zerephonzidas nodded. “He’s a true immortal. I wondered where he might have ended up. It turns out he was here all along.” Zerephonzidas began to laugh. “I used to wonder why I couldn’t see what was in the column, five-thousand years ago. I couldn’t have guessed that it was because it wasn’t there yet.”
“Explain.”
“The Emerald King… or rather, the pony powering the desert kingdoms… That’s him. The magicians wanted to make him immortal. They wanted him to live forever.” Zerephonzidas caught Celestia and Twilight’s look. “Not like me or you, Celestia. I mean true immortality. The purest form of it. No uncertainty. The Emerald King will live forever.” Zerephonzidas darkened. “From the beginning of time right until the end.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when the ponies arrived here many years ago, they found the Emerald King. I simply couldn’t see him because he was both inside the column and outside it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Over a million years, you learn that impossible things often become possible over time.”
Twilight swallowed. She looked into the Emerald King’s eyes. She had never seen such helplessness, such unadulterated horror in a ponies eyes.
“Can we get him out?”
Zerephonzidas shrugged. “If it’s possible, I don’t know how.” He sighed. “You see, he’s already lived forever. Forwards and back. He’s outside time, now.” Zerephonzidas managed a small smile. “That’s the difference between me and him. I don’t know that I’ll forever. I can’t observe myself living forever, because forever keeps on going. But him? For him, it’s different.”
Twilight bit her lip. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes. True immortality. What a joke.” He chuckled. “When the stars die and all life goes away, he will be here. When the universe dies by heat death, he’ll be watching. When the next cycle begins, he’ll be here, ready to go again. And he’s already seen all of that and more.”
Twilight rubbed her forehead. “We have to be able to get him out.”
Celestia put her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “It’s already been done, Twilight.”
“No, you’re talking about things that haven’t happened yet. He hasn’t lived forever yet. We can stop…”
“Time is broken here. That’s what the spell was for. Within that column, eternity has already happened.”
Twilight took a step back.
“That’s…”
Celestia sighed. “I’m sorry, Twilight, but we need to…”
“...fascinating.” Twilight swallowed. “Horrifying, but… I’ve never seen magic like this before.”
Zerephonzidas grinned. “You see now why I live only to see magic? It’s exploring the limits of possibility itself. It’s incredible.”
“This isn’t worth it,” Celestia said. “If there’s nothing to be done here, we need to leave. This should stay buried.”
“I expected more of you, Celestia,” Zerephonzidas said. “Perhaps after ten-thousand years, you’ll come around to my way of thinking.”
Zerephonzidas’s read legs snapped together, bound by a glowing, magical chain. His broken forelegs were next, causing the sphinx to shout in pain.
“You’re going to jail,” Celestia said. “For a long, long time.”
“I’ll wait. Eventually, your prison will fail.”
Twilight turned away from the column. “I don’t know what to think about all this.”
“There’s nothing to think,” Celestia said. “It’s just a problem to fix. We’ve already lost one life here, and that’s one too many.”
“Oh, another pony will show up eventually. Honestly, why even bother keeping them alive?” Zerephonzidas asked.
“Because they’re mine,” Celestia replied. “They’re why I live, now.”
Zerephonzidas paused for a minute, then shrugged.
“Fair enough.”
Celestia turned to Twilight. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Twilight slowly nodded. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
Trapped inside eternity, the Immortal King stared out endlessly.
Twilight hesitated.
“Can we at least move it to the surface?”
Celestia looked back at her student.
“What good will that do?”
“I don’t know. Give him something to look at, at least. For a while, at least.”
Celestia looked back at the Immortal King. “Yes, perhaps that would be best. It’s better than nothing, at least.”
“Anything is possible,” Twilight replied. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I never want to see the inside of a cave again.”
When Twilight, Celestia and the guards emerged from the ruins, a lot of the diggers were looking anxiously at the entrance. Many expected a wrathful sphinx, not a tired team of ponies assisting an injured prisoner.
The silence was deafening. Rainbow had stopped moaning in pain and had become docile, at times examining her injured hooves, wrapped in bandages and attached to a splint. More work would need to be done upon her return to Ponyville, but for now, it would have to do.
Rarity was sitting down, unwilling to pull out her brand new set of stitches from Zerephonzidas’s attack. She watched the sphinx closely, never taking her eyes off him for a moment.
Applejack was nowhere to be found. Later, Twilight found her by the entrance to the caves, as far away from the ruins, and the column, as possible. It helped her head.
Zerephonzidas, for his part, stared straight ahead. Now distanced from the column, he had entered a sort of catatonia. He didn’t even show any display of pain when he knocked his broken paws against stray rocks as he was assisted by the team of guards. He was set down away from the other ponies, in chains not even a powerful sphinx could break.
“What happened to him? He seemed almost fine back in the ruins,” Twilight asked.
“I suspect him focussing on the column was the only thing keeping him sane,” Celestia said. “I honestly don’t know what to do with him. I could put him away, and by rights, I should, but…”
Twilight kept an eye on their prisoner. What could he even be thinking? Not even Twilight really knew what to think. So much effort, and even a lost life, just to discover that a pony was trapped inside a spell she couldn’t break.
It was hard to justify.
“I think that, if he’s really dangerous, he needs to be put away. If he’s… broken… he still needs to be put away, for our safety… and his.”
Celestia pondered, then nodded. “Yes. I think that’s wise.” She sighed. “For a long time, he was the only thing that could really talk to me as an equal. We both saw the world in a different way than normal ponies.”
“Is it bad? Living that long, I mean.”
“No, it’s just… I don’t know.” She sighed. “It’s only bad if you stop caring, I think.”
Twilight looked at Zerephonzidas’s empty expression once again.
“I see,” she said.
Celestia sighed. “Come on. Let’s pack up and get your friends to a real hospital.”
