At the Mountains of Discord

by Glimmervoid

Rating: teen
Tags: Derpy Hooves, Crossover, Twilight Sparkle, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Spike, Adventure
Length: 40084

North of the bountiful Crystal Empire lies an icy land of cryptic mystery. Its inner reaches have never been explored, but a Canterlot University expedition is set to change this. Cthulhu Mythos crossover, inspired by At the Mountains of Madness.

North of bountiful Equestria and beyond the Crystal Empire lies an icy land of cryptic mystery. Its inner reaches have never been explored, but a Canterlot University expedition is set to change this. The plan is simple: penetrate the unknown depths of the Uncharted North and discover its most hidden secrets.

It's a noble undertaking, but a dark cloud looms on the horizon. Princess Luna's dreams have revealed a great but shadowy threat. To minimise the danger, Princess Celestia requests that her most loyal student, Twilight Sparkle, join the expedition and keep everypony safe. With the aid of her number one assistant, Spike, and mailmare Derpy Hooves, Twilight will attempt to do exactly that.

Cthulhu Mythos crossover, inspired by At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft.

Published 2013-08-24 15:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-09-02 08:38:29 UTC

I — Aboard the Aeolipyle

I — Aboard the Aeolipyle

I write this as a ward against future generations. Princess Celestia has heeded my advice and placed access restrictions on all uncensored copies of the expedition's report. She has bound them to the secure rooms of a select few libraries, such as the restricted stacks of Canterlot University. However, as my experiences during my youth prove, what lies in those dark halls is never entirely forgotten. Should another expedition to the Uncharted North be planned, take heed of my words: Do not go.

What follows is my personal account of the expedition. I hope its more emotive tones will find perches were the dryer words of technical reports fail. The facts as I relay them may seem outlandish or incredible, but I neither lie nor exaggerate here in. Photographs, taken both with my own hooves and by the many ponies of the expedition, provide independent corroboration for much of what I say, as do the writings and journals I was able to recover. To this last I append an additional warning. Many of the hoof-sketches within those pages are disquieting in subtle but profound ways. Do not dwell upon them too long or too closely.

Should an expedition be planned while I still live, I beg you to contact me immediately so that I may speak against it. In the end, though, I am no immortal alicorn and must rely on the good sense of ponies to come. Weigh my evidence. Consider my reputation. I have stood against Nightmare Moon, Discord and the Changeling Queen. I am Twilight Sparkle. What lies beyond the Mountains of Discord speaks ill to the very soul of ponykind and should never be roused.

~~~

The nature of our enterprise is vital to a proper understanding, so I will relay it here. The Canterlot University Expedition was tasked with penetrating the deepest reaches of the Uncharted North and investigating what lay there. Our primary aim was the taking of deep level rock and soil samples, to improve our understanding of that most distant of regions. Some hoped that with knowledge gleaned from such study we could finally solve the mystery of the unnatural winter which persists year round north of the Stormwalds. This last was the chief goal of Professor Rock Watcher, an earth pony of unparalleled intellect and one of the chief forces driving the expedition.

Part of the geology department, he devised a lightweight mechanical drill for the boring of rock. While such devices have existed for some time, his demonstrated an extraordinary degree of reliability and portability, making it perfect for operation in the Uncharted North. Furthermore, he linked it with a simple thaumatrope engine, such that any unicorn could power it. He also worked to design the flying karts we would use, five of them, fashioned to withstand the extreme cold and possible windigo attacks. They were set with fire rubies and used an ingenious air-lock style door to allow teams of pegasi to enter and leave without the need to land. Perhaps even more important, complex enchantments extended an invisible weather shield over the otherwise exposed draft pegasi, protecting them from rain and snow. I had no doubt they'd prove able to transport the expedition from our base at the Storm Horn to deep in the interior.

The initial plan was simple, and I now say overly optimistic. The Uncharted North is called such for good reason, but it is not entirely un-delved. Using information brought back by the Farwalker, Glory Hooves and Longsight expeditions, we planned to pass through the Stormwalds at Chill Withers Pass and press on some seventy miles. That would take us to the Storm Horn, a tall but solitary mountain, and we'd make our main camp in its lea. From there, we would use the flying karts to penetrate deeper and take rock samples from as great a range of geological areas as possible. Once done, the expedition teams would fall back to the Storm Horn and then return to Equestria proper, hopefully all within a single season.

I should perhaps mention my place on the expedition. I am no geographer or geologist, and though I have some experience as an adventurer, such things are seldom highly weighted in academic circles.

My own education began with my acceptance into Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns as the Princess' personal student. There I excelled — save for a regrettable period in magical kindergarten — and graduated with high honours. Next I attended Canterlot University as an undergraduate and obtained my Bachelor's degree in Applied Magic in only two years, finishing top of my class.

With such results, I immediately began post-graduate work in various elements of magical research, though I was unable to settle. Seeing this, the Princess intervened and sent me to Ponyville, charging me with investigating the magic of friendship. This I did and four years later I submitted my thesis. The award of my D.Thau was swift and met with much interest. It also served at a legitimising fig leaf, and I was soon inundated with offers of professorships and other academic accolades.

You must understand, by this time I had already made quite a name for myself — mastering the Elements of Harmony and saving Equestria numerous times with the help of my friends. Combined with my personal relationship with the Princesses, I must have seemed quite the prize. I was disinclined to leave Ponyville, however; my heart said to stay with my friends and continue my research, but not all the offers required such. On the advice of my mentor I accepted a number of honorary degrees and sinecural posts.

Within another three years, I was a Doctor of Letters five times over and held chairs on many faculty councils and affiliated bodies. This last is of most relevance to the Canterlot University Expedition, for in the spring of year seven of the renewed co-regnum, Princess Celestia contacted me with her worries. Dark portents troubled Princess Luna's dreams, which are well-known to contain elements of prophecy. She saw the expedition traveling north, into the maw of a great darkness. Fearing to do nothing but not wishing to bar such a noble academic enterprise, Princess Celestia requested that I attach myself to the expedition and do my best to keep it safe.

I of course agreed at once. Using my chair on the Cruel and Unusual Geography Funding Board, I secured a place on the expedition for myself and my loyal assistant Spike, who insisted on coming with not a moment's hesitation. As with many such initiatives undertaken by the old universities, leadership was split among a council of three: myself, the earth pony Professor Rock Watcher and Bingo, a pegasus cartographer of known skill. We met at the Chambers Inn to set our plans in motion and agreed the leave date of the expedition: the 3rd of June.

The expedition left Canterlot with much fanfare. We'd hired the airship Aeolipyle for the duration of our trip, a majestic craft shaped like a great whale but painted in the deep, vibrant colours of pony life. I waved to my friends as the crew cast the ropes loose from the sky docks. They waved back, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Rarity. Applejack raised her filly high to see, and Rarity blew Spike a kiss. As the Aeolipyle pulled away, Rainbow Dash whooshed passed and sent me a cocky salute before looping back. It was the last I'd see of my friends for some time, though I'd think of them often.

Not including the expedition leaders and Spike, we numbered twenty-five ponies. Five of those were academics of various scientific disciplines, fifteen were graduate students and the remainder were specialists hired from outside, ranging from a doctor to a cook. In addition, the Aeolipyle came complete with a crew of thirty pegasi and three unicorns, experienced sky ponies all able to sail the ship and manage its cloud bag.

We headed north at an easy 50 knots, the Aeolipyle's cruising speed. Not fast by the standards of a pegasus on the wing, perhaps, but more than fit for our purposes. We covered the some 600 miles to the Crystal Mountains in just over half a day, the rolling countryside of Equestria below us. The sun had just begun to fade as we passed over the mountains and into the Crystal Empire, the northernmost of Equestria's provinces. The sun provided quite a sight, red-gold light running along the mountains like a stream. I'd need to compliment Princess Celestia on her good work when I returned.

As we moved onwards, I looked down at the ground. The Crystal Empire stretched as far as I could see — a fertile strip of land some 200 miles north to south and 500 east to west, sandwiched between two gigantic mountain ranges. As little as five years ago, snow covered the land, the unending winter of the Uncharted North breaking through the Stormwalds to freeze everything north of the Crystal Mountains. It was nothing like that now. Thanks to the magic of the Crystal Heart and Princess Cadance, such malignant forces were kept permanently at bay.

Small farms peppered the ground, covered with fruit trees and crops. The crystal ponies who tended them were a hard-working sort, which was to be expected. The current scientific consensus lists them as an earth pony sub-breed, identical save for the crystal silicates which grow from their coats.

From my elevated perch, I could just make out the lights of the Crystal Citadel, the empire's capital. My brother would be there. It had been three months since I'd last seen him. I truly wanted too, but our schedule did not call for a stop. I turned back towards Equestria proper and saw the strangest sight. A dot waved and jinked about the sky, getting closer with each passing second. It was heading right for us.

With a crash, Derpy Hooves landed on the shielded deck before me, her eyes wobbling even more than normal. "Mail for you, Doctor Twilight," she said and held it up with a shaking hoof.

"Thank you, Derpy," I said and took the letter. It was from my brother, wishing me a safe trip. The letter must have travelled all the way from the Crystal Empire, to the main Canterlot sorting office, onto Ponyville and then almost all the way back in the hooves of my local mailmare. It spoke of an impressive dedication.

Spike helped Derpy upright, and she said, "Doctor Twilight, ma'am, I'd like to join the expedition. I've always wanted to see the north."

That hadn't been what I'd expected. I gave Derpy a good look. She had more body fat and a thicker coat than most of the pegasi I knew, well suited for the chilly conditions we'd face. And she'd already demonstrated her commitment, traveling over six hundred miles to deliver my letter.

"Very well," I said. "Spike, find our expedition mailmare a bunk."

"Aye aye, mon Capitán," said Spike and sent me a sarcastic salute. He led the smiling Derpy away.

Captain Longarrow slowed the airship as full night hit us and lit the running lamps. It gave me a chance to get some sleep, and come the dawn of the 4th of May, the foothills of the Stormwalds were upon us. Everypony on board felt invigorated by the sight. Beyond those sharp black peaks lay the Uncharted North and our goal. But we had one important stop to make first.

Three cities lie upon the Stormwalds' southern faces, pegasi towns known as rookeries for their colour and shape. They are forbidding black towers, heated by volcanic hot springs such that they survived even the thousand-year cold which followed the disappearance of the Crystal Empire. From those towers, a hearty breed of dark feathered pegasi venture north to capture the most potent of snow-clouds for export south. They are the best cold weather fliers in Equestria, and we'd need to hire one and a half score if our expedition was to succeed.

The Aeolipyle dropped anchor at the largest of the three cities — Svalbarding — and Professor Rock Watcher, Bingo and I descended to negotiate employment. There we met our local factor, a truculent old pegasus with only one working wing, the other lost to frostbite years ago. He either wasn't impressed by my reputation or didn't know and haggled hard. It took us some three hours and more funds that I liked, but we got what we required: 30 able-bodied pegasi fit to pull flying karts and work in the icy grip of eternal winter. Even this far north, there were plenty of young stallions and mares whose blood ran hot with the need for adventure.

In order to enjoy our last sight of civilisation for quite some time, we spent the remainder of the day and the whole of the night at Svalbarding. I cannot say I truly relished the strange berry wines sold in the drinking houses of the upper city, but some of the younger ponies did. Come the 5th and with our party thus expanded, we resumed our journey.

Chill Withers Pass, when we reached it, was a great break in the mountains, and the airship sailed through, towering dark peaks on both sides. As the dagger-like shards passed by, Spike spoke:

"Who dares open the door of his mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?
"Who dares cross the spikes of his back, rows of black spears?
"Who dares break the armour of his scales, a wall of shields under which fire burns?"

"We do," I muttered, Spike's words bringing Celestia's warning to the fore. "We do."

We left Chill Withers Pass and reached the Uncharted North proper. At once, the winds increased. The airship shook and snow battered against the windows. Beyond those glassy planes was a cryptic world of frozen death. The wood of the deck creaked under my hooves, strange sounds that spoke in a mesmeric fashion directly to my nerves. The trilling notes of a gale added to the unnatural symphony, and half heard music played in its depths, as if winter itself sang the hymns of the dead but undying.

A moment later the blood chilling howls of windigos joined the orchestra, and my mind went unbidden to the mad zebra Abdul Alhaizum's October Codex. Spawn of Ithaqua, it named the windigos, children of the Wind-Walker who travels the cold roads between stars. I was suddenly rather sorry that I had ever sought out that dread tome in the restricted stacks of Canterlot University during my early post-graduate days. As the hours wore on, other regrets joined the first, such as my long conversations with that most erudite and mordant professor of folklore Heart-make.

With the wind against us, the Aeolipyle reduced speed to a crawl. Teams of pegasi flew alongside, bearing heavy ropes and clutching obese cloud outriggers to keep us level. As Captain Longarrow informed me, the wind could ruin us in moments without such precautions. The night was hard and long, and the windigos did not quiet. What I'd read in the October Codex kept playing through my mind: blood rites of appeasement, rituals of sacrifice and cannibalism. Did ponies really propitiate dark forces in this way? As all ponies of Equestria knew, the fire of friendship could drive windigos back, but what of their father and what of when such methods failed?

Sunrise on May 6th did something to ease my mind, but the night had put the expedition on edge. Tight Screw, a young earth pony post-graduate in the Engineering Department, almost came to blows with one of the newly hired pegasi, a middle-aged mare with aviator goggles for her cutie mark. Professor Rock Watcher broke it up with a no-nonsense bark of command, but we wouldn't survive long without harmony and unity.

As the day wore on, restlessness caused me to risk the deck. Even through my cold weather clothing, the cold bit deep, sinking through my coat like icy knives. I lit my horn and cast a simple heating spell. The magic stole away the worst of the chill but some remained. Thus protected, I looked around. Dense clouds hid the sun, creating a diffuse wall of white illumination. Falling snow hid everything else, and I could only just make out our pegasus escorts, holding their taut ropes. There wasn't much to see, and I wondered how much further our destination could possibly be?

My answer came at just after 3pm, when one of our black winged pegasus scouts returned. He reported spotting the Storm Horn and had placed the beacon. The Aeolipyle's navigation unicorn locked on, and we changed direction to intercept. At midday, I returned to the deck accompanied by Derpy and Spike and saw it too, the snow having weakened for a time. The Storm Horn shot almost two miles straight up, a solitary black cone of jagged rock. It was a volcanic mountain, and smoke rose from the ragged maw that marked its tip. Hopefully its primal fire would help to keep back windigos. The analytical part of my mind pointed out it would take greater magic than the expedition had available to truly bar them entry, to say nothing of the other horrors which might stalk this aberrant frozen tundra.

Green moss and lichen grew in a thick band around the Storm Horn's middle, and a number of fast, darting birds swooped and contorted over it. No doubt they hunted some smaller creature I couldn't see. Fluttershy would be horrified to see so many animals living wild with nopony to care for them, but I felt something else. I felt a stirring wonder at the ability of nature to survive even this harsh, untamed wilderness.

To my surprise Derpy pointed and named the birds — gyrfalcons, ivory gulls, kittiwakes and more. It seemed she knew far more about the Uncharted North than many a pony. That was for the best. As the expedition's mailmare, she would soon be charged with flying letters from the base camp at the Storm Horn to the small telegraph station at Svalbarding. It wasn't a long trip, but the conditions could make it a dangerous one. Over any lesser distance, Spike's dragon magic would have let me send letters directly to Princess Celestia, but even he could not send a missive 900 miles.

Over the course of three tense hours, Captain Longarrow and his crew lowered the Aeolipyle to the ground and secured the great craft with many long chains and ropes. Once the deck stopped shifting under my hooves, I gave orders, and the unpacking commenced. From the Aeolipyle's crammed cargo hold, teams of earth ponies retrieved the five customised flying karts. Professor Rock Watcher spent an anxious hour carefully examining every inch of wood and each of the glittering fire rubies for damage, but at last pronounced them intact. While he did that, the rest of the expedition unloaded the bulk of the supplies.

I will not bore you with the mundane details of setting up camp. Thanks to Derpy, every newspaper in Equestria carried minute-by-minute reports of this stage of our mission. There's a quite famous photo of Professor Rock Watcher, Bingo and I, standing on the black, volcanic rocks of the Storm Horn, the Equestrian flag flying behind us. I do not advise you search it out over any special vanity, you understand, but it may help you comprehend that fundamental optimism that yet pervaded our venture, though as I have said, the cracks were showing. There's a second less published picture I also recommend. It shows the Aeolipyle chained to the ground, like a captured marauding dragon, defeated and broken. Within its faded colours lurks a hint of the truth yet to come.

It took our company almost two days to fully set in, but we worked hard, and the volcanic energies of the Storm Horn proved a great help. I contrived to magically connect a number of surplus fire rubies to that awe-inspiring source of heat and surrounded the camp with a protective fence. This proved fortuitous thinking on my part, for at nights great wails woke the camp, as creatures unknown and unnamed were driven back. A number of rapidly constructed buildings provided habitation, their walls made from layered plastic. They weren't as homely as the dwellings of my adopted Ponyville but kept off the cold.

With the camp established our mission proper began on the 9th, one full week after we left Canterlot. Professor Watcher, Doctor Rodinia and Professor Cambrian each took a flying kart and departed in three different directions to take samples. A collection of graduate students and six of the powerful Svalbarding pegasi accompanied each team. Bingo left the following day to perform cartographic study, taking with him a further dozen pegasi, comprising a mixture of both students and hirelings. This left me to manage the main camp, a task I took to with alacrity. I established shift rosters and watch patrols, as much to keep everypony occupied as to perform a truly useful function. Some of the work was important, however, and I made sure to have a rescue team always on standby. We had two spare flying karts for just such a purpose, and I wanted to act immediately if trouble brewed.

My able assistant Spike made communication between our disparate groups possible. Each team carried with them ten jars of his emerald dragon fire. Burn a letter and it would be instantly transported to Spike at the main camp. Although single use, I felt confident in this security precaution. Each group sent a letter at the end of each day, covering their accomplishments to date. I would then copy out these reports, synthesise a summation for popular consumption and send both packages south with Derpy.

During this time, I came to know some of the other expedition members. Steelheart was the expedition's medical doctor, an iron coated unicorn mare who proved as strict with her health regime as I was with my timetables. No one was exempt from regular check-ups, and woe betide the foalish stallion who refused his lime juice. More surprisingly, I attracted an admirer in the form of a young mare from among the Svalbarding pegasi. Mountain Flower dreamed of traveling south to study at a Cloudsdale university and saw me as something of an ideal. I promised her a letter of reference if she continued to perform well. Spike, as always, was my truest companion, taking letters, filing papers, and being my eyes, ears and hooves in the camp. His dragon constitution proved as unbothered by cold as it was by heat, and I think part of him enjoyed the return to the old days — just him and me against the world.

Author's Note

Google Docs Version

II — Mysteries of the Uncharted North

II — Mysteries of the Uncharted North

As I've said, one of my tasks in those early weeks was to collect and collate the daily reports. As such, I came to have a unique insight into the workings of the expedition. Doctor Rodinia was the first to report progress, her message arriving on the evening of the 10th.

"All ponies well. Drill working above specifications. Have taken first core samples. Fossil ferns found at level provisionally dated between three hundred million and six hundred million years old."

A picture accompanied the short report; it showed the distinctive frond pattern of a proto-fern, trapped within a disc of stone. Even the note's terse style could not prevent a stir. This was our first evidence that the Uncharted North had ever been something other than an icy wasteland and was the first step on the road to discovering why. It also rekindled the same debate which had raged even before we left Canterlot.

"It has to be the windigos," said Doctor Nimbus over the carrot and potato stew that evening.

"Impossible," replied Professor Arc Ane and harrumphed around the frost laden tips of his long moustache. "Windigos feed on pony discord, and there are no ponies here to feed on. They are symptom not cause."

No matter the reason, we knew one thing for sure: the Uncharted North defied all atmospheric, climatological and magical reason.

Of the three teams sent north, Professor Rock Watcher's drove by far the hardest. His reports from the first two days were simple travel logs: flying karts working well; heading north again tomorrow. Only on the third day did he make camp, and it was the fourth before he took his first sample. The newspapers viewed this as exploratory zeal to be admired. I just worried how long a rescue team would take to reach him. The results were undeniable, however.

From his camp beside the rocky walls of a rising plateau, he sent back photographs of some truly remarkable finds. A veritable cascade of photographs depicted the fossilised remains of equisetales, scale trees and what may have been a partial scorpion. As the first animal life, this was important news and more than demonstrated that his geologist's hammer cutie mark was well-earned. Furthermore, he was surer in his dating, locking his discoveries down to five hundred million years ago. This placed them directly on top of the Hoof-Hammer Event, a massive geological disturbance discovered by digs throughout Equestria and even beyond. That he'd found unambiguously complex life so close to Hoof-Hammer was a momentous discovery, though much misinterpreted and sensationalised by the popular press at the time.

The days wore on, and the exploratory teams moved camp a number of times. More discoveries poured in, showing a dense layer of fossils across a wide area of the Uncharted North. By the 16th the teams' supplies were running low, and they had only two bottles of dragon fire remaining each. Cambrian and Rodinia reported that they were returning on the 17th, their flying carts filled with finds but light on food.

I don't know if Professor Rock Watcher would have followed them under the normal course of events, but a single discovery removed the possibility completely. His note that day was short and to the point. The first line read:

"Delaying return. Massively important find. Request immediate resupply."

What followed was scarcely better. Professor Watcher had found something, hidden in a rock layer just before the fossils. The attached photo showed a bent piece of silver metal, around the size of a pony's torso. The edges were deformed and discoloured, as if melted, but the centre glittered silver.

This raised the greatest rumblings yet.

"Clearly artificial," said Professor Arc Ane at the emergency meeting I called.

"I find that very hard to believe," said Doctor Life Tree. "That's far too early for the development of sophant life or even near-sophant."

"I quite agree," said Doctor Nimbus. "Quite an unworkable hypothesis. Not that deep. Unusual meteoric iron, perhaps."

"Moon ponies," said Mountain Flower with a wicked grin. I tried to smile but couldn't. My mind once again went to the October Codex. Within its withered pages hid forbidden secret histories, and those histories spoke of ancient alien terrors older than the oldest sophants and worse than any moon pony. That those mad ramblings might hold a kernel of truth was a disquieting thought.

With some effort I brought the meeting back to its proper course. I reminded everypony that our purpose was not to discuss Watcher's find, no matter how incredible, but to debate his request. As succinctly as I could, I set out our position.

Our expedition had thirty Svalbarding pegasi total, and they were the only available pegasi I trusted to endure prolonged cold weather flight. Of those, eighteen had left with the three digging teams and a further four had gone with Bingo. That left just eight at the main camp. Our large, custom flying karts took a minimum of four pegasi to pull but could harness six for increased speed. Having a full eight meant any rescue flight could move at full speed without rest or break, pegasi swapping in and out on a shift system using the airlock style doors. If I dispatched four to work resupply, any rescue attempt would be that much slower.

The response was swift and definite: send the resupply. As they noted, with Rodinia and Cambrian soon to return, our numbers would shortly be supplemented. As the sole member of the expedition council in the main camp, it was technically my decision alone, but I let myself be swayed. In truth, the mystery burnt at my mind as keenly as it did the other academics. Looking back I have to ask myself: would events have tacked a different course had I resisted? Like many things, I'll probably never know.

The resupply kart left that very evening, the sun low but still bright in the sky. It was pulled by four strong Svalbarding pegasi, captained by one of Longarrow's officers and navigated by Keen Wit, a post-graduate unicorn practiced in the beacon locating spell. I watched it disappear into the Uncharted North, deep into the forbidding fastnesses of that icy charnel waste, populated only by horrors out of nightmare and the cold places between stars. A heavy weight hung in my gut as it finally vanished.

Rodinia and Cambrian returned late the next day and were much interested in the news. Cambrian was all for flying out at once, to assist Watcher, but Rodinia and I counselled patience. Let him investigate, we said, then we will know where best to apply our efforts. That night Watcher used his last bottle of dragon fire to report more discoveries: smaller fragments of the silver metal scattered in an impact pattern. He also sent back the first metallurgical analysis.

"Harder than steel. All attempts to mark, break or bend samples have failed. Extreme heat tolerance. Metal does not soften even under multiple fire spells. No signs of rust or corrosion. Slight magnetic signature. No overt magical resonance. Suggest send sample south for immediate examination."

Rather than a photo this message came with a small sample bag, holding a bent silver chip around the size of a one bit coin. Feeling only slightly guilty, I slipped the seal and levitated the chip free with my telekinesis. It glittered in the light of the oil lamp. Queer colours hung just below the surface, anomalous spectral bands which seemed wrong or impossible out of the corner of my eye but almost-normal when examined directly. Gritting my teeth and setting my hooves square, I set my prodigious magical might against the chip. Vivid magenta light spilled from my horn, and the chip rocked as waves of magic beat against it. It deformed not at all, and after a few minutes I dropped the venture, my head down and breathing heavy.

Watcher's letter arrived too late for the sample to be sent south immediately, Derpy having already departed, but the expedition viewed this as a great boon. One by one the doctors and professors tried their hooves and horns against the chip. Life Tree applied alchemical reagents to no effect. Professor Arc Ane opened a gem studded spell compendium and cast every identification spell he knew. All returned null results. Doctor Rodinia and Professor Cambrian worked together to apply their extensive geological experience but did no better. Even the graduate students tried their luck, though circumstances forced me to confiscate the chip after one rather over eager pegasi tried to blast it with lightning. I had no fear it would suffer damage in the attack, but the risk that it would become lost in the aftermath was too great.

As the expedition settled in for the night, Spike asked the obvious question the rest of us had missed. "If it's so unbreakable, what or who broke it?" To that I had no answer at all, but shapeless monsters who might accomplish just such a feat filled my dreams.

I was rather rudely awoken at first light of the 19th by a banging on my door. It was a unicorn graduate student, blue of coat and silver of mane which made her almost fade into the snowy background. She pointed with a hoof towards the wall of shimmering heat which surrounded the camp. "Bingo," she gasped, out of breath. "Hurt."

That put any other thoughts out of my mind. Not even stopping to don my cold weather clothes, I galloped out the door. Bingo's team of pegasi stood panting and steaming on the flight ground. Their exertion was obvious, and spiralling hoar-frost grew from the exposed sections of their coats, anomalous overly geometric patterns. Bingo lay on a flight stretcher at the centre of the group, his left-wing and hind leg bound in crude splints. His breathing was shallow and pallor poor. Since no one else looked competent, I took command. With a few snapped orders, I sent the rapidly cooling pegasi indoors to avoid a death of exposure and lifted Bingo into the air with my telekinesis. Once I had a firm grip, I gathered my power and teleported to the medical tent.

Doctor Steelheart's horn glowed a queer green as she fought to stabilize Bingo. I stood nearby, ready to give any aid I could. Every few minutes his lips would open and he would mumble words. In fleeting phrases he spoke of treacherous fell winds, impossibly high mountains and unnatural blizzards. For ten long minutes he lay silent, body twitching in quavering spasms. Then he started to speak again. His lips moved but it was Heart-make's lurid tones which filled my ears, echoing out from those long years ago at Canterlot University.

Bingo spoke the names of Discord, each terrible in its own right but which caused abnormal susurrations in the wind when spoken together. He whispered of the Ring of Hue'min'I'tep, which the Eohippus Fragments says the Elder Things set around the world when the stars were young, and of the living fungi who cast it down. He muttered of the mythical sea ponies, who legend say live in the deepest oceans and worship Malkart, star spawn of the alien god Cthulhu who lies dead but dreaming on a far distant world. And lastly his broken words revealed the secrets of Yeb-Ineat. Eternal Hive, he named her. Flesh Spinner. Dark Daughter of Shub-Niggurath. She who lies broken yet yearning in the forgotten places of the world.

At the time I just stood and listened with sick fascination as words unto rotting flesh filled my ears. Looking back I have to wonder: Did he catch some glimpse of what lies beyond the Mountains of Discord? Did he see the plateau and its monoliths? The spire? Some other dark, lurking power? Perhaps even the far hills and their abominable secret? I will never know. They are abhorrent places all.

After almost an hour of solid work, Steelheart let out a breath and dropped her horn. The prognosis wasn't good. The broken wing and leg had rendered Bingo immobile, and without the ability to move, the otherwise powerful pegasus metabolism had weakened. This resulted in severe hypothermia, despite his team's best efforts to keep him warm. His system thus compromised, other illnesses had taken hold. It was only through the time-tested knowledge of the Svalbarding pegasi that he'd survived to reach us at all.

"If he survives the day he'll make it," said Steelheart. "I'll do what I can."

It was time to get some answers.

I found Bingo's team in the expedition's main hall, the large building in which we served meals. They stood around the heating stove, water on their coats and feathers. A graduate student named Birdseye was the senior academic so I accosted him. He told me the story better than Bingo's short reports had.

As I've previously reported, the Bingo sub-expedition left the main camp on the 10th of May, a day after the Watcher, Rodinia and Cambrian teams. It was an all pegasi group and carried their supplies on a number of small flight sledges. This allowed them to move fast and in a greater range of weathers, but did necessitate the construction of a small cloud camp at the end of each day rather than simply hunkering down within a grounded flying kart. For the first four days, all went well. They scouted vast swathes of frozen land — hills, plateaus, river beds and more. Birdseye showed me the maps they'd made, neat ink sketches on rolls of parchment, covered in cartographers notation and distance measures. Across the top was Bingo's proposed name: Princess Celestia Land. While the land was an arctic wilderness cursed with windigos and perhaps fouler things, the team suffered only everyday maladies during this stage.

Things took a turn for the worse on the 14th. Bingo elected to push north and map a narrow but deep path to the centre of the Uncharted North. It wasn't an unreasonable decision given the expedition's aims, but his dragon fire reports mentioned none of it. He probably knew I would argue. At once the wind turned sour. Birdseye described it as hoofs against a chalkboard, an off-key note heard by the weather senses. The winds grew stronger, too, and wilder. They sped down from the north, carrying devilish cold air along twisting paths which only made sense to the mad gods of eldritch primal myth.

The maps corresponding to this stage of the journey were different. Without the wide-ranging expeditions, there were less geographic details. Just hints showed up: hills with no end and the frozen corpses of rivers which ran to nowhere. Birdseye grew evasive, but I forced him on. After three days and some four hundred miles, they reached the foothills of a gigantic range of mountains.

"Bigger than the Macintosh Hills," he said. "Bigger than the Unicorn Ranges. Bigger than the Crystal Mountains. Bigger than the Stormwalds."

I nodded slowly. While geology wasn't my field of study, it made sense. Equestria is characterised by its East-West mountain ranges, which grow bigger and taller the further north you went. This was just the newest piece in the pattern.

"There was something queer about those mountains," he said, voice hushed but cut with an aberrant mixture of fatalism and fanaticism. As he described it, most of the expedition wished to turn back. The Svalbarding pegasi were especially forceful. They said that to go further would break ancient taboo, a commandment found carved into the oldest stones of their rookery cities. Bingo, though, insisted he at least would proceed.

Along with three graduate students Bingo flew into the mountains, climbing high to reach their peaks and see what lay beyond. They returned only a few hours later, Bingo visibly shaken and refusing to speak of what he saw. He said only one thing on the matter: "These are the Mountains of Discord is he has any." In was a strained company which turned back south. They were grateful to put the newly named mountains behind them, yes, but those very same mountains pulled at them, much as a gibbering madpony might demand and receive attention. The devilish winds harried and plagued them. They threw more than one pegasi twisting from the sky, but all survived with only minor injuries. Scrapes and the occasional minor strain. All that was until Bingo.

"It was midday of the 18th," said Birdseye, his eyes refusing to meet mine. "We were back in Princess Celestia Land, but the winds continued to harry us. I know winds, and there was some unnatural force behind these. The first I heard was a windigo scream. It cut my blood like glass. Then a torrent of air screeched down from behind. It looked light a tidal wave, except it carried black cloud rather than water. We had just enough time to reach the ground and take cover, but Bingo didn't run. He turned to face it. There was a lunatic light in his eyes as he opened his hooves and wings. Slammed him into the ground. Broke a leg and a wing. When we reached him, he was mumbling. Strange words. I didn't listen closely and told the others not to either. We set the limbs as best we could — first aid, some basic medical supplies — and then made for the main camp at top speed. We've been flying non-stop since, right through the night."

It was a strange story and one which would take some careful management if any hint of it was to be passed to Derpy for popular consumption.

Bingo survived the day and began the long trek towards recovery. Steelheart advised sending him south to convalesce, but by the time he was safe to move, he was alert enough to veto any such motion. He eventually left the medical tent, but was courteous enough not to interfere with my management of the camp.

The resupply kart reached Professor Rock Watcher on the 20th and re-established contact. According to his reports, Watcher had found more of the silver metal, the location and dispersion of which confirmed his impact crater hypothesis. Despite this discovery, the metal's nature remained as elusive as ever. We passed a brief storm of messages back and forth — enough to give poor Spike a sore throat — but we set up our game plan. Professor Cambrian left to reinforce Watcher at dawn of the 21st, along with his cart and students. Doctor Rodinia stayed in the main camp, to begin work on our ever expanding collection of finds.

All in all, Watcher spent a day under two weeks excavating the silver metal site, but on the 1st of July he decided the place's investigative possibilities were exhausted. He ordered the camp packed up and headed back to the main base. Two additional major discoveries had been made in that time. First, Professor Cambrian's team had attempted to assemble the fractured pieces into a unified whole. That had proved impossible — many pieces were just too distorted — but analysis of the curvature had yielded some results. The model he produced was of a large silver egg, twenty meters long by four wide at the thickest point. The second major result came from one of Watcher's own students. Little Ken developed a spell able to detect the presence of silver metal, much as my friend Rarity had the ability to locate gemstones. He used it to great effect in the closing days of the dig, locating dozens of smaller pieces which would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Watcher and Cambrian's karts arrived on the 4th of July. For the first time since the 9th of June, the entire expedition gathered together in the main camp. After offloading hundreds of carefully labelled silver metal samples, Rock Watcher, Bingo and I met in executive council. It had come time to decide on the next stage of our expedition.

As our discussions began, I grew once again conflicted. The Princesses' warning hung heavy in my heart, and the unsettling events surrounding Bingo's ill-fortuned trip compounded that feeling. I won't deny the tantalizing nature of the slowly unfolding mystery tugged upon me too. So it was that I didn't argue beyond playing Discord's advocate when Watcher gave his proposal. He suggested a grand ranging, three flying karts and a dedicated supply chain. This proposed sub-expedition would push north and use Little Ken's spell to search for further silver metal. The grand prize would be an intact egg. Perhaps then we could derive their purpose, their connection to Hoof-Hammer and what link, if any, they had with the unnatural cold which clung to the land. By a vote of 3-0, we decided to do exactly that.

III — The Cosmic Egg

III — The Cosmic Egg

If the ponies of Equestria responded well to our earlier reports, Professor Rock Watcher was lauded as a hero when the news of his sub-expedition reached their ears. They looked upon it as if the very spirit of Equestria was manifest in the venture. The sub-expedition would take pony hooves in strength where they'd never before been. Over the years I've become somewhat blasé concerning the wild places of the world, but most ponies look upon them as alien and frightening locales. To conquer them is to make the world a safer, better and more harmonious place. There can be no greater achievement.

While the public's reaction might have been driven by fear, the ponies resident at the main camp felt only excitement. They competed intensely for the limited number of places. Rock Watcher's stern presence stopped any physical fights breaking out, but for most of the 5th, the camp more resembled a crucible of cats.

Professor Rock Watcher's participation was never in doubt, but the other academics argued virulently for their own involvement, as did most of the graduate students. In the end Cambrian, Nimbus, Life Tree and Arc Ane earned their places and took with them their choice of students. The remainder stayed behind with me in the main camp, to continue work on our existing finds and manage supply runs. Bingo of course wanted to go, but Steelheart was firm. He might stay in the relative warmth and safety of the main base if he insisted, but gallivanting into the icy yonder would kill him.

It took a day to gather the needed supplies and carefully examine the flying karts for damage. Apart from a few cracked and easily replaced fire rubies everything proved perfect. Spike ate the discards and pronounced them 'spicy'. The sub-expedition left on the 6th — three flying karts, a number of small flight sledges, five academics, ten students, six experienced skyponies from the Aeolipyle and eighteen Svalbarding pegasi. They carried a large number of dragon fire bottles with them, drawing from the stockpile Spike added to as time allowed each day. As such they were in frequent contact.

According to their regular reports, they followed a zigzagging path north, out through Princess Celestia Land and then onto the narrow trail Bingo had mapped. Not including Little Ken, three students and Professor Arc Ane had succeeded in learning the silver metal detection spell. They took shifts scanning the icy fields which stretched to infinity in all directions. Each day saw a hooffull of minor blips, but Rock Watcher simply marked them on the map and moved on. He quested for a bigger prize.

As the second day of their voyage began, the wind awoke and arose. Much as it had during Bingo's expedition, it howled down from the north, a malignant force which carried knives of cold. The flying karts were built to withstand such weather, but the journey was surely harrowing and much slowed. The package of notes sent back that day spoke of shaking and creaking wood, a rising tension felt in the back teeth, a strange psychic cold which seemed to penetrate even the protective fire rubies and a peculiar cast to the light which made the eyes water. By my count they were some 1200 miles from Canterlot by this point, a frightening distance to the pony mind. Who knew what lay that far from the orderly world of our home?

It took five days for Rock Watcher to find what he was looking for, but when he did, he wrote immediately.

"11th July, 1pm. Little Ken found massive silver metal signal. Setting down karts to investigate. At foothills of Mountains of Discord. Huge things. May be largest in world. No time for proper measurements myself. Have set pegasi to do so while I set up camp. Svalbarding ponies refuse to go near. Need speak with factor."

Those of us who remained in camp listened with bated breath as Spike read the letter aloud. I think most were imagining themselves standing beside those trailblazing ponies. When the next letter arrived, work virtually halted.

"11th July, 3.30pm. Basic camp set up. Have arranged flying karts in triangle around drilling equipment. Set Svalbarding pegasi to build supplementary cloud wall since they still refuse to scout the nearby mountains. Judging from our current altitude, highest peaks at nine thousand five hundred meters."

On the reverse was a second letter, penned by Professor Arc Ane.

"The silver metal signature is incredibly strong. Little Ken is truly a genius in this regard. I can only dream of what lies below the ice and rock. A hidden mystery from the very dawn of the world. Still, there is some queer power to this place. I feel as if I'm standing on the edge of something big, a precipice perhaps. It pushes upon me. And the light. My most distinguished colleague Professor Rock Watcher does not feel it, but I do. My eyes water whenever I am outdoors. Night almost seems preferable."

The remainder of that day's messages were depressingly routine. The ponies of the sub-expedition set up and tested the drill, erected plastic shelters, moved food stores to where they could be better accessed and completed a hundred other mundane tasks. I did my best to move loitering ponies away from Spike's office and back to their assigned tasks. As the hours passed with little in the way of substantive news, I mostly succeeded.

Not even the nightly howls of windigos could stifle our spirits, and everypony returned to their bad habits come the morning. Letters continued to arrive every few hours, but they were weak missives, not fit to fuel the fire of our intellectual hunger. Drilling proceeded slowly. We'd chosen past dig sites for their readily accessible seams of rock, located where the stone ribs of the Uncharted North broke through its icy flesh. Thick snow-ice and hard rock covered this new site, however. It made for difficult digging, but I had no doubt that Rock Watcher's drill was up for the task. The pony was a genius, with doctorates in engineering, biology, geology and even thaumaturgy. It isn't rare for an earth pony to be granted a D.Thau (by tradition older than memory, most higher mathematics awards are granted with the wand), but his concerned true magic, and that was impressive. Earth ponies tended to struggled with even theoretical work due to their inability to cast spells.

It wasn't until July 13th that something truly noteworthy happen. Spike burst into my office, panting as if all the monsters of Tartars were on his heels. He waved a letter in his hand. "They found it."

"Drill has reached the silver metal. Level congruent with previous samples: approx. five hundred million years. Complete egg. Exact size and shape Cambrian theorised."

The letter was barely an untidy scrawl, but its news was undeniable. I galloped to my door and corralled the first pony I saw. It was Mountain Flower. After a few excited words, she left to spread the news.

The next letter came an hour later.

"Professor Arc Ane and students have performed successful spatial shift. Silver egg now on surface. Metal shimmers with colours. They are mesmerising — deeper, more vibrant than before. Something in the light? Others say light is abnormal, but I do not see it. Have had to tell three ponies so far to stop staring. Egg not perfect whole as expected. Slight lines form rectangle on side, six by 2 meters by 0.9 meters. Some speculate door. Attempting to open now."

That message brushed aside any pretence at work for the day. Two dozen ponies gathered in the main hall. I had the cook put on a large stew pot, and we waited with bated breath. Bingo stood at the group's edge, wings and head hung heavy. His feathers and coat were dull and ashen, but a spark of feverish light burnt in his eyes. Every time Spike so much as twitched, he'd tense and stop breathing for a moment.

The next letter came.

"Door remains closed. Am convinced speculation was right. Is entrance of some kind. Just need the key. Attempts have revealed additional details. Silver metal forms complete barrier against telekinesis. All attempts to reach through and manipulate the inside have failed. Silver metal maintains resistance to all forms of attack. Students who stared into reflections report strange visions. One — Keen Wit — saw alien plaza populated by incomprehensible creatures. Fanciful nonsense. Have told them to draw what they see if they won't stop wasting time. Find enclosed photographs of silver egg."

Our expedition made much use of self-developing cameras, expensive devices but most assuredly worth the extra bits. Spike held up the pictures one by one.

The first depicted a gigantic silver egg, larger than any I'd seen. It outsized even those laid by the gargantua strain of mega-dodo native to the Maneritius Archipelago. Watcher, Cambrian, Nimbus, Life Tree and Arc Ane stood in front of it. It towered over them and held their warped reflections in cages fashioned from twisted mirror.

The next showed no ponies, just the egg and two distance sticks, connected at right angles. Strange alien colours swirled over the egg's surface, so fluid they almost seemed to move. I'd observed similar spectral bands on smaller silver metal pieces, but they'd become concentrated and less elusive on the larger egg.

The third photo displayed a fearsome wall of towering, cyclopean mountains. They swept forever in both directions, the proof of their infinity spoiled only by the diffuse mist which hung in the air. These, I realised, must be the so named 'Mountains of Discord'. Even trapped by chemical reaction, their size and power remained immense. Looking at the photograph, I felt very insignificant.

The final picture showed the entire sub-expedition arrayed before the egg, the first row sitting on the ground so everypony could fit. Thirty nine pony faces smiled out — earth, pegasus and unicorn united in this venture. I couldn't help but notice that two-thirds of the ponies present squinted, eyes half-shut. Was this the strange light previous letters had mentioned? It seemed so minor a malady, but something within their slitted gazes worried me all the same.

We passed the photographs from hoof to hoof as we waited for the next letter. When it came it wasn't the news we'd been hoping for, but Professor Arc Ane had interesting things to say all the same.

"I have examined Keen Wit's sketches. They bear a remarkable similarity to the mythological Plateau of Leng, described in Abdul Alhaizum's October Codex. I believe the silver egg is displaying images to its watchers, much as a unicorn skilled in illusion might do. If I am correct, where is the 'Plateau of Leng', and how did Alhaizum come to hear of it? The egg is impossibly ancient. Surely not even ancestral memory could carry legends over such a time."

The next letter came just as the clock struck one.

"Door is open. Some internal mechanism responded to harmonic key. Keen Wit's idea. Advice see if other silver metal samples respond to harmonics.

"Hatch swung outwards. Egg is hollow. Filled with strange blue fluid. Seems to have non-standard properties. Properties different to those observed in silver metal but may be linked. Highly non-Newtonian. Possibly some form of crash absorber. Previous silver metal site bore marks of impact crater. If silver eggs crashed to the ground, blue fluid possibly used to absorb impact for occupants. High intensity light spells reveal shapes within egg. Too dense to see what. Blue fluid has resisted physical removal. Team attempting to find alternate methods."

A deathly silence filled the hall as Spike read the last word. I felt my heart beat three times. Walls of eternal cold pushed in on me. The very universe hung in the balance. Then everypony started to speak at once. Doctor Rodinia walked out to me and nodded her head. "We've made history here." Yes, we had, but of what kind?

After that the news just kept on coming.

"3pm. Have drained blue liquid. Stored samples for transport and placed remainder in sealed pit. Liquid loses consistency when exposed to air. Used air spells to increase process. Beginning investigation of interior."

"4pm. Egg contains eight cushioned seats. Six seats filled with strange creatures. Average approx. 180 centimetres from feet to head. Uses four limb structure common to mammals. Two appear to have mammaries. Possibly female. Remainder male? Flesh dried and mummified by long exposure to blue fluid. Condition still beyond remarkable. Nothing should remain after five hundred million years. Blue fluid's non-standard properties must be extraordinary. Removing creatures to prepared examination point now."

"6pm. Preliminary examination complete. Arc Ane says creatures bear extraordinary resemblance to beings described as 'Elder Things' in 'October Codex'. Name will serve for now.

"Subjects named ET 1 through 6. ETs 5 and 6 are creatures preliminarily identified as female. ETs 2 and 6 show significant damage to neck and skull region. Spine broken on impact? May have other damage too. Am focusing investigation on intact specimens.

"Speculation by Life Tree that Elder Things used bipedal locomotion. Form and placement of hips supports idea, as does limb ratio. Decidedly simian cast to body. No supplementary tail as observed in Equestria local bipeds however.

"Creatures have four limbs, connected to a central torso. Head connected to torso by a neck. Lower two limbs identified as 'legs', upper limbs as 'arms', per standard biped nomenclature. Arms end in 'hands'. Legs end in 'feet'. Hands have five 'fingers' each. Feet have five 'toes' each.

"ET-1 uses as primary sample for measurement. 185 cm tall. Head approx. 23 cm long, 17 wide. Chin to shoulder line approx. 8 cm. Shoulder to hips approx. 61 cm long. Legs to flat of feet approx. 93 cm long. Arms approx. 81 cm from shoulder to end of hand. Shoulders approx. 46 cm wide. See attached diagram for further measurements.

"Limb locomotion appears similar to pony and other mammalian life. Arms able to move at shoulder joint. Legs able to move at hip-joint. Limbs have second point of motion, approx. half way along length. 'Elbow' and 'Knee'. Limbs then connect to hands/feet, using a wrist/ankle equivalent joint. Fingers connected to hand, with added joint. Fingers then have two joints, equivalent to knuckles. Toes similar. These joints allow for excellent dexterity and fine manipulation. Fingers seem better formed than toes. Toes residual? Similar structure observed in infant dragons, though Elder Things possess additional finger on each extremity. Both fingers and toes end in hard horn like plates. Possibly residual claws? ETs 1 and 6 wear metal bands on the second from left finger on righthoof hand. Rings appear to be made of gold. Some form of ornamentation? Possible decorative, ritual or religious meaning.

"Skin pale in colouration. Partial mummification makes judging original state hard. Life Tree thinks dark. Sparse body hair on some samples. Extensive head hair on all samples. Original colour impossible to judge. No sign of cutie mark on body.

"Elder Things appear to have similar sensory organs to modern life. Two small eyes on head. Eyes perfectly preserved on ET1, 3 and 5. Eyes completely decayed on all other subjects. Reason unknown. Eyes forward facing and unusually small. Approx. 3.4 cm wide. Nose situated below and between eyes. Presumably used for breathing and scent. Ears on side of head. Mouth below nose. Lips thin and highly withered. Teeth inside mouth. 32 total. Some sharp like predators. Others flatter like herbivore. Suspect Elder Things were omnivores of some kind. Withered tongue in mouth. Similar but proportionally smaller than pony. Likely had sense of taste. Mummified like flesh."

After Spike finished his stentorian recitation, he handed out the extras. There were photographs and hoof-sketches. The first photo showed an 'Elder Thing' lying on a flat slab of stone. It wore coveralls, which hid its mummified body from ankles to neck. Only its arms, neck and head showed visible skin, and it appeared emaciated. The skin looked like grotesque sun bleached paper, and brought to mind whispers concerning forbidden grimoires written on the flayed skins of ponies. Even setting that aside, something about the creature's form struck a note of wrongness within me. Perhaps it was the shape — both similar to what I knew but also utterly different and alien. I could see hints of pony in its structure. Its eyes glittered with the light of intellect but were unlike any sophant I knew. Its four limb structure mimicked mine, but this creature would never walk on all fours. Perhaps some of my recalcitrance stemmed from it's obviously post-mortem appearance. An aversion to dead things is written deep within the pony psyche.

I thought again of the name Rock Watcher had given the creatures: Elder Things. I too had read the October Codex and knew of the great reluctance exhibited by the mad zebra Abdul Alhaizum when he touched upon the subject. Primordial masters of the world, he named them, beings who came from the stars and created life using technology and magic beyond even the dreams of ponykind. They were said to have warred with Yeb-Ineat and shattered her at the height of their power. The Mi-go were listed as their most ancient and dangerous foes, likely the same fungoid beings who ripped the Ring of Hue'min'I'tep from the sky. Even in their twilight they held back Malkart, spawn of Cthulhu, and performed the great working needed to banish the Kingdom of Carcosa when its borders pushed forth.

While reading the October Codex those long years ago, I'd dismissed such things as the disturbed delusions of an ill mind, but Arc Ane was right. The creatures from the egg and the Elder Things of primal myth were one and the same. I could almost see the crude sketch which filled a full-page in Canterlot University's copy of the October Codex. It showed a male Elder Thing standing naked and bipedal within an interlocked circle and square, limbs shown twice to demonstrate the range of movements. Some past pony had added a label, the writing crablike: Vitruvian Man.

With so many weighty matters on my mind, I barely glanced at the other pictures. They were broadly similar: one of each Elder Thing, a few of the camp and more of the silver egg. Only the last caught my attention. It showed the inside of the egg, open and bereft of blue fluid and passengers. Its cavernous, sepulchral interior hung with dense umber light. Decrepit seats sat in epoch old lines down a central corridor. Nauseous blue mist skulked in the corners, as if afraid of the air and light. It was an unsettling sight and reminded me that the Elder Things weren't the only discovery we'd named that day. 'Egg' described more than just a shape. It promised birth and a new beginning. What would hatch from this one?

Two letters arrived at 9pm, just as the evening grew old. The first was from Doctor Life Tree, the expedition's biology expert.

"Truly fascinating news. Have performed tests on Elder Thing flesh samples. Elder Things lack alchemical base-structures common to all native life, plant and animal. This is not the result of extreme age. Flesh shows anomalous chemical responses, indicative of analogous but different biology. Elder Things may appear mammalian but their underlying biology is utterly different. There is talk of an extraterrestrial origin. My experiments do not contradict this theory. Find results on reverse."

The reverse contained dense notation only an expert could understand, so Spike didn't read it aloud. Instead he moved onto the next letter, penned by Rock Watcher.

"Mystery of eyes solved. ETs 1, 3 and 5 have mechanical eyes of incredible complexity. Spell analysis shows a massive amount of technological augmentation across multiple subjects. Flesh fused with devices of inconceivable advancement. Bones augmented with ceramic composites for increased strength. Web of mechanical control runs parallel to biological nerves. Full mapping could take life time. Nodes secreted throughout body. Too complex to even guess at function. Nodes seem damaged in ETs 2 and 6.

"Have elected to fully dissect ET-6. ET-6 already damaged, so use as a whole specimen compromised. More can be learned through internal study. Will perform procedure tomorrow. Will wrap specimens and store in snow pit to minimise decay overnight. Will devise long-term solution tomorrow. Recommend detailed account of day's discoveries be sent south as soon as possible."

Rock Watcher's was the final message we received, and over the following hours, everypony slowly drifted away to bed. I can't speak for the others, but I didn't sleep easily that night. The discovery was immense. Within my mind, I wrote and rewrote the summation I'd send south with Derpy a dozen times. Should I downplay the discovery until we knew more or stake my reputation on a massive blitz? We'd quite possibly found the originators of all life — five hundred million year old sophant aliens. Every newspaper in Equestria and beyond would publish it as front page news. My thoughts would likely have been different if I'd known I would never hear from the sub-expedition again.

IV — In Death's Lea

IV — In Death's Lea

Perhaps sensing impending events, the windigos howled long and hard throughout the night, their screams pulsating gales which spoke directly to my hindbrain. The fire ruby fence made me very glad in the long, dark hours before the dawn. When dawn did come, we were overrun by beating snows. Snows came and went in the Uncharted North, but this storm attacked with a particular savagery. It came down from the north upon overgrown clouds which boiled in the sky. The Watcher sub-expedition's safety came to mind at once. Our camp provided a robust shield against even the harshest of nature's furies, but the sub-expedition had less hardened defences.

Upon the completion of breakfast, I sought out Spike and had him send a message north. The dragon fire bottles could receive messages as easily as send, and the sub-expedition was meant to keep a careful watch for any such communications. How Spike knew which bottle to send to, I cannot say, but he did. Some facet of dragon magic perhaps.

The message I sent wasn't overly complicated or alarmist — merely enquiring as to the sub-expedition's health, their experiences in the recent storm and requesting a response. When no reply came by 10am I grew worried. When the storm broke at 12 noon with still no word, my unease grew worse. When 1pm passed with no contact, either in reference to my letter or general information, I called a meeting.

Doctor Rodinia, Bingo, Steelheart, Captain Longarrow of the Aeolipyle, a Svalbarding pegasus by the name of Storm Chaser, Spike and I met in the main hall, at a none too sturdy table off to one side. I set out my position, and this time my concerns were given greater weight. Longarrow especially respected my apprehension, knowing well the power of storms from plying the skies outside weather tamed Equestria. Rodinia thought we should wait, perhaps to after the day's end message would normally arrive. During the earlier parts of the expedition, the teams did indeed report in only once a day, but Rock Watcher carried sufficient dragon fire bottles to make frequent contact both desirable and practical. Part of me wanted to agree with her — mostly so I could maintain my perilous grip on nothing being wrong — but I shook my head. Waiting for late evening would push back the arrival of any rescue party, possibly by as much as a day if conditions made a night take off too hazardous to attempt.

Nods came from around the table, including the fallow Bingo. His was the only vote which truly mattered besides my own, and I breathed a little easier to see it. I had other options available to me, but I didn't want to use them if I could avoid it. I had Spike send one final message (warning of dire consequences if a reply was not immediately forthcoming) and began planning my departure.

There was no doubt that I would lead the rescue attempt. It was why Princess Celestia had assigned me this mission, and the expedition knew I'd planned for just such an eventuality, almost excessively so. I proposed to use a single flying kart, rather than the two we had available. This would give me maximum speed, by allowing me to concentrate flight teams. There'd be just enough room to lift everypony back in a worst case scenario, though it would involve leaving all equipment behind and squeezing tight. To further maximise speed, I planned to take eleven of the twelve remaining Svalbarding pegasi. This would give me almost two full crews and allow for constant high-speed travel, day and night. Barring catastrophe, we needn't slow once the entire trip. The odd pony out would stay at the main camp, to lead the Aeolipyle south should some unthinkable catastrophe occur.

The assembled council agreed the plan with a nodding of heads, and I moved onto whom to bring. Spike was a must, forming the linchpin to our communication web as he did, as was Doctor Steelheart. Bingo put his own name forward, citing his previous experience with the Mountains of Discord and the route to get there. Strangest of all, Doctor Steelheart agreed. "If I'm going, and I surely must, then Bingo needs to go with me. This never would have happened if he'd gone south like I ordered, but as is, he needs my care." Finally I co-opted one of the Aeolipyle's navigation unicorns. He'd be essential in locating the beacon deployed at Rock Watcher's camp.

In Bingo and my absence, I left Captain Longarrow in charge. "If you think you need to leave," I told him, "do so. Tie everypony else up if you need too."

The final member of the rescue party came in the form of Derpy Hooves, expedition mailmare. In the panic over lost contact, I'd quite forgotten to report yesterday's discoveries to the wider world, and recent events made caution advisable.

Derpy Hooves, wall-eyed as always, spoke forcefully concerning her desire to help ponies, pointing out that she was a strong flyer and had much experience in the cold weather from her trips south. Moved by her passion, I agreed that she might accompany me. Secretly I had a second reason. With Derpy at my side, less information would leak to the outside world. Run away rumour could do great damage to our enterprise if the loss of contact yet proved benign. Even in the event of disaster, misinformation could easily eclipse the truth.

One hour after Spike sent his second message, we left in the flying kart. Although I'd been in similar karts many times, this was my first experience of the expedition's modifications. The fire rubies glowed like a field of stellar embers on the hull and formed a shimmering barrier of heat around the kart. It helped the draft pegasi stand the cold and provided a shield against the nastier inhabitants of the Uncharted North.

It took Watcher five days to reach his dig sight, along a zigzagging route. I did it in under two. We flew day and night, using a rolling shift system. Every hour, two pegasi would come off and two well rested ponies would go on. Mountain Flower volunteered to take up the slack caused by our uneven numbers, but Derpy insisted on doing her part, making it unnecessary.

In order to take my mind off my anxious nerves, I had the navigation unicorn teach me the beacon locating spell. He expressed shocked at the speed I picked it up, but magic is my special talent; it's a rare piece of spellcraft I need demonstrated more than once. The result wasn't what I expected. When I'd imagined the spell at all, I'd thought of a mental arrow or a magical pull in a specific direction. The truth was stranger. Beacons sung songs, filling the luminous aether with their harmonious music. To locate one, you listened to it, coaxed it, and made it sing true and strong so it alone filled the universe. Once you did that, you followed the music of the crystal spheres to your destination.

Over the final six hours of the journey, a pressure built within me. Apprehension formed an important part, but there were other components. The further north we travelled, the more 'off' the world seemed. Much as the letters described, the light made my eyes water. It was as if some malignant eldritch god had cut the sun's rays, leaving only a ragged edged half for me to see. As metaphors go it is rather nonsensical, but I intend this as an emotive piece, not a technical report. The Mountains of Discord were just as titanic as described, and that formed part of it too. They towered into the sky, peaks fit to stab the clouds and, Luna forbid, the moon. When the sky cleared and I looked especially hard, I could sometimes see a shape beyond even them — a cyclopean spire of incomprehensible vastness. It wavered in a reverse heat haze, born from ice not fire. Mirage or truth: neither sat well with me.

We arrived at the dig site at 9am on the 16th of July. The flying kart swooped down and landed on the snow fields outside the camp. A wall of shaped cloud surrounded it, and the sub-expedition's three karts hunkered inside like injured beasts. Electricity sparked intermittently through the wall, as whatever defence the residents had wrought wound down. The draft pegasi stood panting in the kart's heat bubble, and I motioned for them to take a rest. The remainder of the party moved towards the camp. Mountain Flower and Derpy made a hole in the cloud wall, and we carefully moved through. I have previously labelled the Uncharted North a charnel waste. Now it was that in truth.

It is only with reluctance that I relate what I found within that camp. It would be far too easy to speak in generalities and let implication take the place of fact. Perhaps it might even be more effective in my stated goal of deterring a return to those most perilous of mountains (the fear of the unknown being a powerful thing), but I shall not play with words in such a way. This work is my shield against future generations, and only truth will keep it strong.

Ponies covered the ground within the cloud barrier — dead ponies, their bodies preserved by the cold. Pegasi lay on the ground, as if struck down mid-flight. Earth ponies filled the doorways, crumpled like puppets with their strings cut. If any of the unicorns had managed a defensive spell, I saw no evidence for it.

We moved slowly through the field of dead. Nopony said a word, the weight too much. Equestria is a tame land. Nature, weather, even life-and-death are tightly controlled. Sights such as these... It was enough to give even the strongest pony pause. 1500 miles away within her glittering Canterlot palace I could picture Princess Celestia, her eyes so full of hurt and sorrow that my knees almost buckled. She didn't know yet but she would. I'd tell her personally and accept the weight of her pain.

The navigation unicorn stared with horror filled eyes all his own, then dashed into a corner to be violently sick. When he returned, I said, "First we search the camp for whatever did this. If it's gone, we then check for survivors. After that, we search for other evidence. Understand?" The assembled ponies nodded their heads, and I returned the motion. Inside, though, I could only wish it was my friends beside me and not these other ponies. "Now, stay together and keep alert."

Over the following thirty minutes we swept the camp, looking into each flying kart, around every corner and delving the mysteries of all the dark, shadowy crooks. There was no sign of the attacker, only dead pony after dead pony. The effort of keeping a defensive spell always on the tip of my horn grew exhausting. Our search for attackers also proved there were no survivors hiding in forgotten corners, so I motioned for everypony to spread out. I wanted a count of all the dead and their names if possible. If anypony was missing I needed to know. Aware that whatever slaughtered the expedition might yet come back, I also assigned six of the Svalbarding pegasi to guard duty, stationed atop the cloud wall. If anything approached, they were to sound the alarm immediately.

This part of the investigation took three long hours. Decay festered within the karts, a noxious emanation born from rot and necrosis. The fire rubies had kept the cold at bay and blocked its preservative effects. The scent clawed at my nose and throat. Each breath made me want to flee, but I am a pony — a creature of logic and wisdom — and kept such base instincts in check. Mountain Flower trembled each time she looked at a body, feathery black wings making tiny nervous motions. She persevered, though. Spike took the task stoically, face locked hard. Unsurprisingly given her medical training, Doctor Steelhard examined the scene with professional detachment. She looked at each body, made a note on a paper pad and moved onto the next.

Half way through the three hours, she called me over and motioned down at the limp corpse of a peppermint coloured earth pony. It took me a moment to remember his name: Good Herb, a medical student here under Doctor Life Tree. He had two cauterised holes in his head, in one side and out the other. The wounds were common on all the casualties, only their locations shifting.

"They were all killed in the same way," said Doctor Steelhard, under her breath.

"Two attacks to the head," I said. "Some kind of magic. A very focused heat spell, perhaps. Windigos have ice magic, but if there are physical inhabitants of these wastes, they may have developed the reverse to stay warm."

"Not just the head," she said. "The entry points are different on each victim, but all the holes pass through two common points." She touched the top hole with a hoof. "Medulla Thaumus Major." She touched the bottom hole. "Medulla Thaumus Minor. They control conscious and autonomic magic respectively."

A chill passed through my bones at the thought, a psychic cold which bypassed all my protections. Whatever attacked the camp, it knew enough neuroscience to attack a specific place. That spoke of intelligence and not of the base cunning variety either. It meant intellect and learning. The October Codex described dark intelligences which slept in the void between stars and around dying charnel suns. Great Old Ones, it named them, alien gods of such incredible complexity that organic life was like bacteria to them. If the mad zebra was to be believed, the universe was a cold, uncaring place, and I desperately wished him wrong. Looking at the evidence, however, I found it a difficult fear to banish.

The sub-expedition left the main base with thirty-nine ponies aboard its three flying karts. We found thirty-seven. After comparing lists of names we identified the missing ponies: Keen Wit, a unicorn post-graduate, and Professor Rock Watcher himself. I set the rescue team on a renewed search of the base. It revealed naught and left me with only two options. Either they'd managed to escape from the camp or the attacker had taken them. Neither was a thought I wished to dwell on. Ponies wouldn't survive long alone in the Uncharted North.

At the end of the failed search, we gathered in the centre of the camp. The drilling array towered on one side, and the silver egg lurked on the other. Nopony wished to be near the flying karts and their sickly pungent odour. Peculiar colours shimmered over the egg's unbroken surface, and they held a mesmeric power which was hard to deny. The colours swirled and danced and merged and split, iridescent and full of hidden meaning. Derpy was particularly taken with the display, her eyes following the fractal patterns quite independently of each other, rendering her even more wall-eyed than normal.

The newly deceased have a strange necromancy to enforce a deathly quiet, as if some of the grave's dirgeful power passes into the living world with their crossing. I had observed the phenomenon before, and I observed it then. In hushed voices, we discussed what to do next. Search the surrounding area for our missing ponies? Attempt to hunt the attacker? Recover what research we could and head back? All were put forward as options. As we talked, Mountain Flower kept glancing at the silver egg, blinking and looking away. Finally, she raised a hoof. In a quavering voice she put forth an observation: hadn't Rock Watcher described opening the silver egg?

I stared in shock, and Spike cursed under his breath. The egg was closed. Looking closely, I could just see the faint lines of the door. I could also see why we'd missed that fact: the colours stole thought. The egg took the watcher deep into strange aeons, where the waking and un-waking minds were one and wholly focused on the shifting patterns. It was hard to notice even important details in such a state.

As I have previously indicated, Rock Watcher gained entrance into the egg through the use of a harmonic key devised by the unicorn Keen Wit. Unfortunately, Watcher's letter gave no details as to the frequency or amplitude of the sound waves used. I set the rescue party searching for notebooks or writings, belonging to either Rock Watcher or Keen Wit. While they did so, I reached out with my own magic. The silver egg felt like an invisible curved wall of zero resistance; my power slipped off it like water from an oilcloth or the most unnatural of plastics. It was a decidedly queer sensation; magically, I could only feel the egg by its absence.

Ten minutes later, Mountain Flower reappeared, a notebook clutched in her mouth. The cover bore the legend: "Expedition Notes — Professor Rock Watcher." It took me ten minutes more to find and decipher his notes on the harmonic key. They were complicated and written in the abbreviated short-hoof used by many earth ponies, but I persisted and broke the code. I had the key; the only remaining question was how to use it.

Something lurked within the egg, an embryonic unseen terror. I could feel its presence with the back of my teeth. It could be the as yet unmasked attacker, lying in wait for returning ponies. But it could equally well be Keen Wit and Rock Watcher, availing themselves of the egg's preternatural toughness as a shield against that very same attacker. If the latter, though, why not leave long since? I had to prepare for the worst but hope for the best; that was the pony way.

The first and most important thing was to ensure the safety of the rescue party, myself excluded of course. I sent them back to the flying kart, beyond the cloud wall. If they did not hear from me in fifteen minutes, they were to assume the worst and leave. Spike sent me a pained look, but he knew there were some things I had to do alone. My next action was to conjure a powerful barrier shield around the silver egg. It hung invisible in the air, save for where the cold wind caused it to luminesce. That luminescence shimmered in unearthly patterns almost as strange as the colours of the silver egg, but the shield was a necessary precaution. It would keep any unwanted foes contained, much as it had the Cutie Mark Crusader News Reporters those long years ago.

In the centre of a slaughter field, surrounded by wastes which were icy fields of death when the world was young, I reached out with my horn and sent the pulsing sonic key into the silver egg. Xanthous coloured light swirled, and the great enigma opened like a yonic flower. I stepped inside.

The first thing to assault my senses was the smell: urine and faeces, the latter cut with the harsh reek of diarrhoea. A sickly unicorn lay curled in the nearest chair. He looked up at my entrance, and his eyes were the colour of milk. His lips were hard and chaffed. A single hole burnt red in his head. It was Keen Wit.

Not waiting a second I grabbed him with my telekinesis and teleported us both to the rescue team's flying kart. Ponies jumped at my arrival, and several pegasi squawked as they flapped half way into the air. There was no time for that. Doctor Steelheart took one look at Keen Wit and motioned inside the kart. I moved him quickly.

An hour later the news wasn't good, and Steelheart slowly shook her head. "He's dying," she said. "Massive infection and dehydration. More than I can do. And that's only part of it." Her horn glowed, and motes of light gathered around the hole in Keen Wit's head. "This goes right through his Medulla Thaumus Major. That in itself wouldn't be fatal. He'd lose the ability to use magic but live. But the spell scored a path through much of his brainstem. He shouldn't be alive at all."

"I've read papers on ponies surviving massive cranial injuries," I said, "and he is alive. He survived for three days."

"Yes, those cases do exist. Most would be earth ponies, though. Their autonomic magic is the most developed of any pony breed, and their healing can be remarkable at times. But his injuries should have killed him within moments. His breathing should have failed. His heart should have stopped beating. It shouldn't be beating now."

Some power had preserved him. I looked at Keen Wit. Medical equipment clung to his body like plastic leeches, and I could feel the pulsing glow of Steelheart's healing magic at work. Despite all that, death stalked him, its ghoulish breath against his neck. Even over the last hour, he'd deteriorated. Hair fell from his coat in bloody clumps, and rheumy liquid filled his eyes.

Cold preserved but this was no mundane preservation. I thought of the October Codex. Within its time harrowed pages Abdul Alhaizum spoke of the degenerate and detestable Yeb-Ineat. He wrote that to be taken by the Flesh Spinner was to survive for all eternity, your mind subsumed into the Eternal Hive. I thought of the Eohippus Fragments. They spoke of a war between the Mi-go and the Elder Things at the dawn of time, even before the Elder Things arrived at this world in their ships of ice. Its archaic glyphs wrote blood libel against the fungoid invaders, claiming murderous mental foalnap and the use of 'brain cylinders'. Both could sustain life, but neither's hoof was at work here. Only two candidates came to mind: either the attacker had left Keen Wit as some kind of message or the silver egg had preservative properties beyond the blue fluid. I needed to know which.

Keen Wit shifted as I approached and his mouth moved. I leaned closer, and he repeated himself. His words were barely spoken, a hair's breadth above sub vocalized. Still I heard.

"I saw you come," he said, voice withered and worm-eaten. "It showed me you come."

"Keen Wit," I said, in as soft a tone as possible. "I need you to tell me what happened. What attacked you? How did you get in the egg?"

He blinked his milky eyes, and maggot-like masses shifted beneath the lids. "The Elder Things," he said finally. "They came alive. Four of them. Destroyed ETs 5 and 6, burnt them to ash. No heart, no breathing. Just moved. Didn't know what to do. They had weapons. Invisible but flickered red in the falling snow. Two shots to each pony. Dead. Some tried to run. Shot down. I made it to the egg. Tried to close the door. One shot missed. The other hit. But the door closed." He lay silent for a long minute; his breathing rasped like a clattering bone charm. "The egg showed me things. It spoke to me, in my mind. I saw it fall to earth when the ring fell. I saw it damaged and abandoned for countless years. I saw the Elder Things kill the camp. I saw them leave."

"Where?" I said, voice harsher than I intended. "Where did they go? Did they have Professor Rock Watcher with them?"

He looked at me with his sightless eyes. His lips parted, and the flesh broke. Black blood akin to ichorous magma glistened in the gaps. "North... Great spire... Beyond the mountains..."

"And Rock Watcher?"

He didn't respond; within the hour he was dead.

Upon hearing Keen Wit's revelation, I took Spike and searched out the place Professor Rock Watcher had stored the Elder Thing specimens. It was easy to find. During our earlier searches of the camp, we'd remarked upon the place but not unduly. It was something to investigate when the more important task of saving pony lives was complete. Now I looked upon it with new eyes. Ripped apart waterproof canvas lay half buried in the snow. At the bottom I found the charred remains of ETs 5 and 6. There mummified flesh was gone, as were whatever had remained of their internal organs and most of their bones. Only their mechanical augmentations remained, reduced to technological slag by the heat.

The discovery lent credence to Keen Wit's words. While I did not take him for a prevaricator, the hardships of deprivation and injury are well known to unbalance the chemicals of the mind. Such circumstances could birth speaking phantasms and delusions of such detail that only a dispassionate observer could separate them from truth.

But this theory of events did raise new questions. The Elder Things were creatures of unthinkable age. These particular specimens dated to the Hoof-Hammer Event, five hundred million years ago. How could they possibly know the locations of the Medulla Thaumus Major and Medulla Thaumus Minor? While they are among the oldest parts of the brain (with primitive versions existing even in living fossils like the horseshoe crab ) surely the Elder Things could not have targeted them across a half billion year gap.

Furthermore, how could they have possibly performed such a feat at all? I'd seen the photos, read Rock Watcher's letters and deciphered his expedition notebook. The Elder Things were dead. Their hearts did not beat, their brains showed no activity, and despite their remarkable preservation, their internal organs must surely be non-functional after uncounted dark aeons within their silver prison. Had some magic or technology re-animated their corpses? Such things were the stock of unicorn horror stories: forbidden necromantic spells, diabolical zebra potions and chthonic rites performed by earth ponies in the wild places of the world, such as the Everfree Forest. I looked at the burnt remains of the Elder Things and nodded my head.

I gathered the rescue team once more and set out our next step. They muttered and cast fearful glances at the silver egg as I related Keen Wit's story and the horror of the Elder Things. Above storm clouds swirled, dark and morbid. Our time ran short. We would split the team. I'd go north to track the Elder Things and recover Rock Watcher. The others would photograph each dead pony, gather all research notes, and then burn the bodies. The Svalbarding pegasi shifted their wings at this. Cremations are rare among earth ponies and pegasi, who prefer to return their dead to the ground and sky respectively. But there could be no choice, not while the threat of necromancy hung over the camp.

"Spike," I said to my number one assistant. "I need you to do this for me. You're the only one I trust to see it done right."

"Of course, Twilight," he said and made a face. "You can count on me."

The sub-expedition's flying karts would take too long to prepare for a northward journey, and I wanted to take as few ponies into the Mountains of Discord as possible. To avoid the need, I used my magic to retrieve the largest flight sledge from the sub-expedition's equipment store. It wasn't particularly heavy, and I had no problem carrying it to the hard snow field outside the base. Even fully loaded, it required only two pegasi to pull. I made a list of everything I'd need and gave it to Spike. He looked it over, crossed off half the items and passed it back. He was probably quite correct that a seismograph was unnecessary, but some of the other items could have proved useful.

Before I even had a chance to ask for volunteers, Derpy and Mountain Flower trotted forward and began examining the sledge for flight worthiness. Clearly the bond I'd developed with Mountain Flower was worth more than her cultural taboo. Bingo moved forward too, walking slowly due to his recent illness. "I will accompany you."

"I really don't think that's a good idea," I said, temporizing. "You're still injured and will slow us down." That was true but was only half the reason. His eyes glinted with a fanatical light when he looked towards the mountains, and his coat appeared sallow rather than its natural healthy gold. Something deep in my gut said bringing him would be a bad idea.

Bingo narrowed his eyes, and the fanaticism in his gaze turned decidedly feverish, like a focused furnace. "We are both members of the expedition council, Doctor Sparkle," he said. "I have as much say as you."

I met his gaze. "Spike," I said, "the documents." There was no question to what I referred, and he held them up for my magic to grasp. I levitated the topmost so Bingo could see. "This bull is signed by Princess Celestia in her role as Chancellor of Canterlot University. It allows me to assume sole command of this expedition in the event of an emergency. I have a second signed by both Princesses, granting me complete plenipotentiary authority in all matters pertaining to the Uncharted North. Don't make me use it."

The muscles in Bingo's face twitched, and he muttered under his breath. The words were strange and sounded like no language I knew or understood. After that there was nothing more to say. Over the next forty minutes, everypony loaded supplies onto the flight sledge. I helped with my magic and supervised, checking each needed item off my amended list. By the time we were done, the sky had blackened to the colour of an old bruise, and it boiled like molten tar. "Time to go," I said. "Let's make some headway on this weather."

As Derpy Hooves and Mountain Flower hitched themselves to the sledge's harness straps, I turned to Spike. "Your job's to keep everypony alive, Spike. If you can, wait two days here for me. If I'm not back, return to the main base and order the expedition home. Use the documents if you need to. You may act with my full authority in this matter and any other you deem required."

He nodded; I climbed aboard the sledge and set off into the sky.

V — Beyond the Mountains of Discord

V — Beyond the Mountains of Discord

At this point I feel I must break with my narrative to discuss a subject intimately intertwined with this tale: that of the October Codex. This dread tome has gone by many names over the centuries. Some call it the 'Black Book', other 'Al Azif', and still more the 'Necronomicon'. I use the name October Codex for it is by that epithet I was introduced to its forbidden secrets. It is an old tome, predating the founding of Equestria in the Classical Era and even noted visionaries of preceding ages, such as Star Swirl the Bearded. Indeed, it is said that Star Swirl had all copies in the land collected and burnt save his own, while serving as court magician to Unicorn King Regal II.

On its author volumes could be written. The certain candidate is Abdul Alhaizum, a zebra who wandered the deserts of Saddle Arabia approximately three thousand years ago. Some others pertain to the prize, but their claims are questionable at best. Alhaizum is known to have visited the desert princes and spoken to many of their astrologer-sages, horses learned in the wisdom of sun, moon and stars. According to local legend, he also treated with the tribes of the deep desert and from them gleaned the making of mind altering potions and philtres. Under the influences of heat, dehydration, unsettling knowledge and alkaloidal plants, he delved the hidden mysteries of the universe and wrote his book — part mad rambling, part hideous insight, part secret history and part black grimoire.

On first reading the October Codex I dismissed it as the deluded ramblings of a broken mind. Naturally, I took a certain moreish delight in devouring knowledge so obscure and illicit but no more than that. Only after I journeyed into the dark places of the world did the memory of its age worn pages begin to bother me, and only in the Uncharted North did I understand its greatest secret: the blasphemous lies it tells of Old Ones, Elder Things, Outer Gods and Cosmic Horrors are true. I shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss it those long years ago. Perhaps then I would have been better prepared.

~~~

The flight sledge lacked the extensive cold weather protections of the larger flying karts. As such, I took up those duties which would normally fall to another unicorn's enchantments. It wasn't hard work, and I'd become highly proficient at heat spells since arriving in the Uncharted North. That did not make casting the same basic spells for hours on end enjoyable, however.

Surrounded in a combination heat-bubble-precipitation-shield of my own casting, we pushed forward through the first fleeting flakes of snow, beneath a sky which now resembled the maw of some humongous star beast born of and on the trans-solarwinds. As we flew on, the foothills turned into rocky walls, and the Mountains of Discord towered above us like a barrier constructed to bifurcate a continent. The foothills entirely disappeared by 5pm.

Assuming Watcher's camp perished during the night of the 13th, our Elder Thing quarries had a lead of some 65 hours. While I didn't want to speculate on how fast such strange creatures might travel, a flight sledge just had to be faster. Keen Wit had said they aimed for a spire beyond the mountains. My best chance was to intercept them on the way, but it was by no means a certain prospect.

I shall not speak overly on our crossing of the Mountains of Discord save to say it was perilous, and I would not attempt such again during the hours of dark. Winds gusted along strange paths and seemed almost malicious in their desire to wrench us from the sky. Only through harmony and unity did we prevail, and we all owed each other our lives when we at last passed between the jagged peaks and began our downward climb.

By the time daylight returned we were in the foothills on the opposite side. The character of the ground seemed markedly different. It was a wide plateau, a flat snow plain broken only by queer-shaped monoliths that rose hundreds of meters into the air every dozen or so miles. Their twisted forms spoke of subtle wrongness, and if they were the product of wind and environment, it was of a kind I never wished to meet. By far the plateau's greatest feature was the spire. It rose three miles straight into the air in the shape of a great cone, base against the ground and apex piercing the sky. It appeared a truly unnatural structure, as if formed by the purest of mathematical formulae rather than the muted hoof of natural forces. No erosion or glaciation marked its immense flanks, and only its coat of snow gave it any softness at all. The sun's muted light sparked off its tip, as if sliced by a knife. It made my eyes bead with tears and turn red.

Snow continued to fall, but the full storm remained crouched above us, like an indrawn breath. The snowflakes that did descend hung as a gauzy haze in the sky, obscuring anything much beyond the spire.

"Do you see them," I said as I scanned the ground for the Elder Things. Both Derpy and Mountain Flower responded in the negative, though Mountain Flower had a quavering edge to her tone. I once again returned to an earlier question: how fast could they travel? Were they already at the spire or still ascending the southern slopes of the Mountains of Discord? I muttered my thoughts under my breath, and winds howled towards us, as if summoned by the fell names I spoke. My spell blocked the temperature, but the sounds chilled my blood almost as efficiently.

High above the storm broke in earnest, and frozen water fell in a near solid wave. Windigos screamed in the storm, and for the first time I saw them — great horse shaped spirits with blue corpse flames burning in their eyes. They were a horror to behold, and yet beyond them lurked something larger still, greater still. I only caught a barest glimpse, but what I saw utterly terrified me. I saw a grotesque hybrid of horse and storm, disfigured and disgusting yet also mesmeric in the fashion of crystals. It called and repelled — sacchariferous poison.

The windigos beat their spectral hooves against the air, and murderous winds contorted towards us. The sledge shook and twisted in the sky. My makeshift harness bit deep into my flesh, and I let out an involuntary cry of pain. At once my heat spell vanished. Cold, sleet and snow slashed down and chilled me to my core, passing through my cold weather clothing like it wasn't there.

"Down," I screamed at the top of my breath, teeth already chattering. Even so, the storm stole most of my voice. "We have to find shelter."

If either Derpy or Mountain Flower gave a reply, I didn't hear it, but they heard me. We angled down, both pegasi beating their wings with all their remaining strength. Snow filled my eyes, nose and mouth. It moved as if animated by a dark purpose and a compulsion to drown me. A cocktail of panic-born chemicals worked their baleful magic on my body and mind, but I mastered myself and recast my heat shell. It shimmered around us, but the damage was already wrought. My bones felt as if replaced with permafrost ice, and still the storm raged.

"Shelter," I shouted again, already weakening. The cold clung to my core like a demonic leech. It stole my strength, and still the windigos howled above. The October Codex spoke of blood rites of cannibalistic appeasement; I could almost see how some ponies might be driven to such extremes.

The flight sledge hit the ground with a jarring thud which rattled my teeth, but that wasn't the end of our journey. The runners cut up wedges of snow as we flew forward — half flying, half skiing. Ahead rose one of the queer monoliths, a warped abnormal thing like a candle left too long near a fire. Just the sight sent my heart racing with primordial panic, but it was the only hope of shelter for miles.

"That way," I screamed. "Make for the monolith."

Derpy and Mountain Flower gave it their all. Frothing spittle flew from their mouths only to freeze into scintillas projectiles moments later. They worked their legs and wings both to give us every iota of speed. Around us broke the full fury of a wild storm. It was weather run wild, untamed by pony hooves and driven by dark forces born on worlds never blessed by Celestia's sun. It clawed at us with the lunatic fury of the alien god Ithaqua, and yet somehow we endured.

The closer our careening flight took us, the larger the monolith grew. Two hundred meters of rock towered into the air, a twisting, turning construct that almost appeared an organic extrusion. I'd hoped to hide in its lea, but then I saw something better: a deep crack, about two ponies wide. "There," I shouted, and we rushed towards it.

Passing into the cave mouth was akin to passing into another world. The snow and near-psychic force of the storm disappeared, and we stood panting. The surrounding rock was dark and showed odd, crystalline growths within its rent open structure. Slimy algae bred in the cracks, and some kind of moss grew in scattered tufts across the rock strewn floor. The latter possessed dozens of tiny tendrils, like the suction cups of an octopus. The cave extended onwards, but I couldn't see how far; the little light which penetrated the storm dissipated before it could plumb the stygian depths. "We'll weather the storm here," I said. I put on a brave face, but inside I frowned. How much time could we possibly afford to lose?

The near depths of the cave proved shelter enough that I could end my spells. Instead I heated a selection of large round rocks until near glowing, and set them in the middle of our group. The air still carried the icy touch of eternal winter, but between the glowing stones and our cold weather clothes, we were able to deal with such mundane temperatures.

It had been a very long day — filled with horrors for all, constant spell casting for me, and unending physical activity for my companions. The wind howled as it cut across the cave mouth, and further out, the windigos threw their fury against the earth. None of that mattered at all right then. Within the womb of rock, I nestled close to Derpy and Mountain Flower and settled down to sleep.

My dreams were strange and bore with them the terror of the abstract. I stood before something bigger than I could imagine. It shone like a great rotating eye, inside which stars lived and died and unthinking cosmic aeons passed in moments. A sickening pattern hung at its core, born of ordered entropy and shackled gods. This horrifyingly great construct spun light like thread and wove a tapestry of terrible portent. Unseen voices cried out in rapturous orchestra to 'The Dweller on the Threshold', 'The Key and the Gate', 'The Beyond One', 'The Opener of the Way', 'The All-in-One' and 'The One-in-All'. As I watched the great eye blinked and broke. The order disappeared, the stars spun in discordant patterns, and their light arced along broken paths. Through all this I cowered and stared, less than an ant before a god, less than bacteria, less than the smallest particle. I awoke screaming but recovered before the other mares did more than stir. I have long known the power of dreams, ever since Princess Celestia showed me the wonder of the Dreamlands. Partly because of this, my vision weighed heavy on my mind.

The storm still blew six hours later when the balance of our bodies shifted from fatigue to restlessness. Something dark hung at its heart, and I began to worry: had the Elder Things summoned it to block our pursuit? At their height, they wielded unimaginable power. If the pegasi of Equestria could tame the weather, what might these ancient beings of primal myth and eldritch legend do? I put my theory to my companions, but neither could provide an answer. Derpy was a mailmare by trade, no weather worker. Mountain Flower knew something of the craft, but her reply focused on the Mountains of Discord. "We have broken taboo to come here," she said, voice carrying a strange undercurrent I'd not heard before. "Dark and evil things dwell this far north." To her, at least, malevolent storms were the least we could expect.

With our exit yet blocked by the storm, I turned my attention to the cave. It ran deep into the monolith and seemed to lead down. A wisp of light hanging from my horn, I followed its path. The walls grew tighter the further I went and at places dragged against my coat like witch's teeth, no matter how I contorted my body. It was like the oesophagus of some great beast, formed of living primal stone. If that was the case, I walked willingly to the cauldron of its stomach, and there I found the jewel.

The final rocky gap was too narrow to safely squeeze through, so I teleported instead. In a flash of magenta light I appeared in a tunnel. It shot away in two directions, arrow straight save for where unseen tectonic forces caused the walls to buckle and twist. Dark metal sheeting covered said walls, reinforced by silver metal braces every twenty or so meters. I turned one way, and made my light as bright as I could; the tunnel disappeared into infinity. I turned the other and saw the same: a passage of unimaginable age hewed and sealed before the first pony took her first breath. A thought occurred to me, and I performed a compass spell. It confirmed everything I needed to know. This was no random tunnel; it led straight towards the spire.

My companions greeted my news with much squawking and flapping of wings; nopony wished to brave a wild storm if there was another choice. We quickly agreed to attempt the tunnel and set to work unpacking the sledge. Food, water and other vital equipment would need to be carried on packs, the sledge being too big for me to teleport. Everything else would be left behind for retrieval later. For breakfast, Mountain Flower and I had a protein bar each. Derpy produced and ate a muffin with obvious relish, though from where she got it I can only guess. Thus prepared and sated, we set off.

"It's wet," said Mountain Flower as we walked along the abandoned tunnel. She was quite correct. Moisture hung in the air, a cold humidity that carried the scents of stone and ice filled mountain streams. "But why aren't there any plants?"

That was a good question. The walls, floor and ceiling were smooth and bare — no mosses, lichen, algae or stranger things. It was sterile, as if the ripples born of abiogenesis and panspermia had never reached these epoch forgotten caves.

By my count, we had to travel some 125 miles to reach the spire. Such a distance could take multiple days walking, but the long, straight tunnel provided me with a better option. With an unobstructed line of sight and no threats to complicate our passage, I could teleport freely. I did so in dozen mile leaps, carrying Derpy and Mountain Flower alongside. After nine such jumps, Derpy spotted something in the tunnel ahead, and we approached with caution. What we found answered the plant mystery.

The creature oozed slowly forward, an organic protoplasmic mass, like a giant amoeba or misshapen jellyfish. It filled the tunnel from wall to wall and floor to ceiling and belonged to no kingdom I could identify, let alone genus or species. Its colouration tended towards an opaque greenish-brown, and it self-luminesced in reaction to the light from my horn. It appeared phlegmatic in character, showing no reaction to our presence save the aforementioned fluorescence. Its mind (if it indeed had such a thing) stayed completely focused on its task.

Curious, I levitated a grass wafer from my pack and touched it to the creature's body. The wafer hissed and dissolved before my eyes. "What extraordinary adaption," I said. While no biologist, anypony of academic mind would be equally fascinated. "It must sweep the tunnel, feeding off the biological matter which grows on the walls. That's why there are no plants. It's a cleaner."

Derpy and Mountain Flower did not share my enthusiasm and watched the cleaner with worried eyes. It moved away from us at a constant speed — a little faster than an average walk. I proposed teleporting passed, but Mountain Flower demurred. She did not want it coming up behind us, and I suppose there's wisdom to such thoughts.

The cleaner slowed our pursuit but not unduly. My teleport leaps had disposed of most of the distance, and our enforced pace provided me a magical rest bit. Four hours later we left the tunnel and entered a massive hall. By my very rough calculations, we were directly under the spire, and I stood frozen as I gazed around. Our tunnel and a hundred others ran into a massive circular room. Hunks of machinery lay on the floor, great things which resembled trains but with large parts decayed or oxidised into oblivion. Cyclopean pillars shot high into the sky, joining with a roof thirty meters overhead. It was larger than life. Hundreds of Golden Oak Libraries could've fit in the available space. In terms of sheer volume, even the royal palace would've been a rounding error.

Derpy flapped into the sky, while Mountain Flower stayed close to my side. Standing here I truly began to comprehend that this spire was no natural edifice. Nor was it erected by unicorn magic, pegasi artistry, earth pony strength or the directed aims of any extant sophant race. This was the work of the Elder Things — beings of such immense age that when they proclaimed their dominion, no counter-voice existed to oppose them.

In stunned awe, I levitated my camera from my pack and took a number of pictures. The device buzzed, and the photographs fell from the back. Even captured in chemical reaction, the chamber persisted in its otherworldly oddness. Looking closer, I saw a cleaner frozen in movement at the far side of the room. Glancing up, I saw its opaque bulk just disappear into a new tunnel. For such odd shaped beasts, they could move with disquieting speed.

"I've found a staircase going up," said Derpy as she fluttered back down. Her eyes wandered independently around the room — taking it in, perhaps, but given that such movement was more or less her normal state I couldn't be sure.

As we walked, my thoughts congregated on the Elder Things. The silver egg and its occupants dated to the Hoof-Hammer Event, five hundred million years ago. Did the spire pre or post date that geological episode? How long had the Elder Things clung to life within its walls? A thousand years, a million? However long, they were long gone now — everything not made from impossible materials like the silver metal reduced to dust.

The stairs Derpy found were odd and clearly sized for the Elder Things' long, bipedal legs. To ascend them as a pony required an uncomfortable gate, at once stilted and hurried. My pegasi companions hovered in the air and left me to climb. The stairs led to an empty door frame, which in turn led to a dense labyrinthine network of corridors. Subtle details on the walls spoke of long decayed fittings, possibly pipes or wiring. Even the longest lived plastic will not last a millennium, and normal metals will suffer their own corrosive or ablative decay. No doubt the cleaners removed the resulting scrap. The walls were of a lighter colour than those found in the underground tunnels but not quite as bright as the surface of the silver egg.

Since the corridors represented a maze in all but name, I laid down a path of coloured magic as we travelled. While not the most energy-efficient method to mark our route, experiments showed the walls could not be marked through simple effort, which should come as no surprise. If they were vulnerable to mundane harm, they would not have survived unending ages in this frozen waste as they did. Furthermore, any physical token I might leave to mark our path — such as torn paper — would become food for the cleaners. Possible thaumavoric inclinations weighed heavy on my mind as we travelled.

Looking back, I think it likely those corridors represented some kind of service back ways, through which the needed nourishments of civilised industrial life could be pumped. From what little we know of the Elder Things, they breathed, ate and drank. And while they could clearly go without shelter and heat if needs must, I feel evidence shows they desired these things too. The spire would need to provide all that to its alien inhabitants.

Through much wandering, we at last broke from our sepulchral prison and exited into a half circle chamber. The room was colossal, and the light from my horn scarcely touched the other side. I paced the long edge, counting steps, and used geometry to calculate the length of the curved wall. It sketched an arc, fully half a mile along the curving edge. Across it ran a crystal mural, into which the Elder Things had written their history.

I moved to the closest point and shone my horn light at full strength. The pictures weren't simply carved into the crystal but rather stood inside it — empty voids below a perfectly flat surface. Suspended underneath the pictures were symbols of some kind, repeated glyphs I couldn't begin to translate. The Elder Thing language perhaps? Certainly, the same glyphs repeated time and again, in different orders and combinations. The pictures showed scenes from this forbidden prehistory: cities which touched the sky, great marvels of magic, technology as blasphemous as it was wonderful, ships which sailed the aether on tongues of fire and the Elder Things about their alien activities. One stylized image appeared to show an athletics competition; did the Elder Things enjoy and value such physical contests, much as ponies do? I took pictures of what appeared important and notes on the rest; I would have done more, but my film supply wasn't unlimited and would deplete entirely if I attempted to capture even a tenth of the mural.

And then there came a carving which chilled my blood: Discord. He stared out from the crystal wall, his image trapped here as surely as the Elements of Harmony trapped him in stone. Below it were more of the Elder Thing glyphs. Could this be one of his names, recorded here for others to see? If so, might it be the key to the Elder Thing language? At the time, I did not think a return trip to the Uncharted North impossible, and visions filled my head of unlocking the greatest secret the world had ever known.

The names of Discord ran through my head, and I compared each against the glyphs. Heart-make, the mordant professor of folklore at Canterlot University, had whispered them to me a decade ago, a single word a day, spoken at the height of true noon when Princess Celestia's power is at its zenith.

It is only with greatest caution that I relate my thoughts here, but I feel it must be done. Let it stand as a measure of my commitment to the purpose of this document. Discord was the first name I thought, the title and mask he wears most frequently. Others followed: Draconequus, Spirit of Disharmony, The Faceless God, Howler in the Dark, the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos, more, a dozen, and finally the most dangerous name of all — Nyarlathotep, soul and messenger of the Outer Gods, whoever or whatever those dread beings might be.

Spurred by this discovery, I set to a proper accounting of the history laid before me, forgetting for the moment my rescue mission of life-and-death import. There are a number of ways I might justify my actions. This mural contained the history of the beings I hunted. It might well contain information vital to finding them or a weakness I might exploit. The truth, though, is a bitterer pill. As have many scientists before me, my curiosity overcame my better judgment.

VI — An Elder History

VI — An Elder History

From the crystal mural, other information found later and clues derived from the October Codex and similar forbidden literature, I have concocted the following history. Be warned, much is supposition on my part, and while I feel it fits the information available, that information is scarce to the point of uselessness. Much of it I deduced at the time but the finer details came later, when I returned to Equestria and could consult my sources.

The story of the Elder Things began on a far off world, in a solar-system utterly unlike our own. The mural showed nine planets in orbit around a star, of which the third appeared to be their place of origin. The earliest pictures were incomprehensible to me. One showed an unknown alien, even stranger than the Elder Things. It looked like a large, oval-shaped cask with starfish-like appendages at both ends. Other bizarre beings were depicted next to it: something like a mutated octopus, a huge polyp, an eyeless toad covered in twitching tentacles and further, still stranger things which I cannot adequately put into words.

The narrative became increasingly coherent as it moved forwards from the Elder Things own eldritch prehistory. A brief diagram exhibited their evolution, from animal simians of some kind, to upright, intelligent tool users. They built great cities of metal, wood and stone on their home planet and finally reached for the stars. They did so in great ships, which flew the aether on jets of flame. They reached distant worlds and built great cities there too. Their empire was bountiful, their technology a wonder to behold and their magic just as advanced, though as creatures of developed intellect they did not overly differentiate the two.

This empire was not unchallenged, however. In their outwards expansion they encountered the Mi-go, a fungoid race of fearsome and terrible power. If the mural conveyed the cause of the war, I couldn't recognise it for what it was. The Eohippus Fragments give some hints but only in their typical way of tiresome rambling words. The Fragments name the ninth planet in the Elder Things' home system 'Yuggoth' and vouch it sacred to the Mi-go. Perhaps the Mi-go fought to reclaim it, but such an idea is well beyond the realms of reasonable hypothesis. How, after all, can any pony properly interpret the interactions of two alien species, who may think in utterly alien ways both in comparison to ponykind and each other?

Whatever the cause, the war they fought is a terror to even contemplate. In a prehistory before prehistory, these two powers ripped open the hearts of stars, shattered planets, birthed new gods using forbidden experiments and loosed old upon their enemies.

The Elder Things fought using two technological paths. At the war's start, the mechanical held dominance. They created terrible machine weapons and pushed the boundaries of material science to craft substances that shocked even them.

As the war continued, however, the biological rose to prominence. On this path the Elder Things created the dreaded 'Shoggoths', protoplasmic beings whose very cells were encoded with deadly secrets harvested from the hidden structure of the universe and the Great Old Ones which lie sleeping within it. The mad zebra Abdul Alhaizum speaks of shoggoths with even greater reluctance than he does the Elder Things. He claims they were biologically immortal ('eternal save for mortal wounds from weapons perilous') and metamorphic of form. As evidence for this last, he cites a case where the Elder Things modified a shoggoth to tower over mountains and a second they made smaller than an insect.

Even the Elder Things feared what they created and restricted the shoggoths' ability to reproduce. From what I can interpret, shoggoths completely lacked the ability to self-propagate. Instead, they were transformed from suitable base stock — specially engineered life forms, encoded with genomic potential. The transformation process seems complicated and technologically rigorous, using infusions of strange chemicals and secret genetic keys, known only to the Elder Things. These life forms also served as the shoggoths principle food stock. While anthropophagic at first glance, the shoggoths were aliens among aliens. Only creatures such as themselves could contain the full range of needed nutrients. In emergencies they could eat any organic or even inorganic matter, but this resulted in a wasting sickness.

It is also around this point that the Elder Things abandoned internal reproduction. External wombs took the place of native biology, which I can only imagine proved better for all concerned. The competing interests of foalbirth, the large heads common to sophant species and hips fit for bipedal motion couldn't have made for a pleasant experience. Extensive technological augmentation also appeared in their records — at first crude but growing quickly in complexity and maturity until invisible.

How long the war lasted I cannot say. The mural portrayed a continuous narrative from left to right but gave no hint as to passing time. Presumably the alien writing I couldn't read contained that information. The October Codex gives no clues at all, and the Eohippus Fragments speak in poetic terms — 'the spring, summer, autumn and winter of stars'; 'uncounted generations'; and 'time enough that even dreaded Yog-Sothoth took note of its passing'.

However long it raged, at last a group of Elder Things grew tired of the unending bloodshed. They took a fleet of ships and sailed across the galaxy, far beyond the reach of either belligerent empire.

How, or indeed if, the war ended is unknown, for all history I have access to follows this disparate group of starborne wanderers. On these 'ships of ice' they travelled the cold paths between stars, until they found the world that would become their home: ours.

There they set to building a great civilisation. Their cities covered the planet, and they filled the orbitals with artificial satellites, whose purposes I can scarcely imagine. This, I believe, is the origin of the mythical Ring of Hue'min'I'tep. Conventional folklorist wisdom relates it to the earth pony marriage custom of exchanging necklaces — a symbolic legend representing the Elder Things' union to and mastery of the planet — but based upon what I learnt in the Uncharted North, the truth is far more literal than that. Some images even suggested that they set the sun and moon in the sky, but perhaps I am interpreting these wrong. Such an extraordinary claim surely requires extraordinary proof, which I most assuredly lack. Perhaps the carvings merely indicated that they raised and lowered those celestial bodies in that distant and forgotten epoch of history, much as the unicorn tribe did in the past and the Princesses do to this very day?

Those early days represented a golden age for the Elder Things. Their culture flourished in the peace of their exile. Contrary to Abdul Alhaizum's assertions in the October Codex, they did not forsake their shoggoth servants. Instead, they repurposed and modified their warriors for gentler duties. It was these altered shoggoths who built the cities, mined for materials and preformed the diverse drudge work required to maintain a high quality of life for their masters, beyond that experienced even in cornucopian modern Equestria. The Elder Things controlled the shoggoths through some invisible means, possibly telepathic or perhaps something even more exotic. I have read a number of interesting papers out of the Tottingham colleges, concerning the use of electromagnetic waves to transmit messages. While the work is far from proven, it is a possible avenue the Elder Things could have exploited.

On the subject of governance, I can only guess. The mural depicted occasional figures giving impassioned speeches before cheering crowds, but whether they represented a series of powerful demagogues or were the by-product of some other system, such as earth pony democracy, I do not know. Certainly there was some system of government, for I cannot imagine their great and ordered cities arising through spontaneous anarchistic cooperation. While the abnormal minds of alien beings might allow for such a polity, evidence suggests that Elder Things were conventional in this regard. One thing I will say for certain however: there were no immortal princesses like figures, such as our own Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. They were not so blessed.

The subject of diet is an important one for it touches upon one of the central pieces of the Elder Things' legend: that they created all life on this planet. This I can categorically say is not true. The mural clearly depicted rudimentary life already in place when the Elder Things arrived, but it was basic, barely multi-cellular. Having said that, it would not be an exaggeration to name the Elder Things as life's architect. During the war with the Mi-go, they'd become masters of biological science and had lost little of that skill since.

They engineered and adapted the native life, granting it increased complexity and many other useful attributes. I have reason to believe they also crossbred it with their shoggoth servants. As I remarked earlier, shoggoths can only survive in the long-term by eating life infused with their own alien nature. If modified in such a way, the native life would serve as a ready food source and could be used as base stock for the creation of new shoggoths. A number of quite prominent carvings towards the middle of the mural depict shoggoths eating large ferns. While not definitive, I have other reasons for my belief too, detailed elsewhere.

Before long, proto-trees and other plants covered the planet, alongside basic animal life. These the Elder Things farmed, ate and hunted. Professor Rock Watcher was correct in his earlier dietary assessment: they were omnivores, eating both plant and animal matter.

For an indeterminate time, the Elder Things dwelt unified and at peace, but that wasn't to say there were no threats. It was during this stage of their history that they first encountered Discord and likely other creatures of foreign and vexatious power. Still, to the best of my information, these events did not disrupt their civilisation to any great degree. It was only a matter of time until one did, however.

Abdul Alhaizum names that disruption Yeb-Ineat. The Elder Things depicted her as a voluminous cloud of cancerous growths, chitinous appendages, pseudopodial extremities and bug like eyes — a gibbering horror from the depths of space. She came on the solar winds and smashed into the southernmost continent, which even today is accursed and inhabited by monsters though tectonic forces have moved it to a quite different position.

Yeb-Ineat made war on the Elder Things, pushing steadily north towards the core of their civilisation — what today is the Uncharted North. The Elder Things had lost much of their former war making skill but not all. From their laboratories returned mechanical weapons of great power and the feared war shoggoths, though whether they modified their existing stock or bred them anew I do not know. They met and halted Yeb-Ineat, but they did not know her greatest power. Abdul Alhaizum bestows two titles upon Yeb-Ineat, reflecting his understandable if superstitious reluctance to repeat the names of such creatures: Eternal Hive and Flesh Spinner. Hers were the powers of psychic subornation, absorption and adaption. She took the Elder Things and shoggoths who sought to oppose her and welcomed them to the hive.

The carvings depicting that time showed two mirrored forces, identical front lines supported by shining cities on one side and organic abominations on the other. Mirrored they might be, but Yeb-Ineat's forces were stronger, better. She improved what she took, sculpting their bodies until their former comrades could not hope to stand against them. Using these tactics, Yeb-Ineat again pushed forward, driving the Elder Things into retreat. In a desperate attempt to arrest her advance, the Elder Things used their advanced grasp of science to raise great mountain ranges in her path. Today these bastions and redoubts of elder time form the great east-west ranges which run through Equestria and beyond. I can only speculate as to what chthonic power has let them survive the intervening eon.

How effective these defences were I can only speculate. Certainly they did not stop Yeb-Ineat's advance, but they might well have slowed her, perhaps even critically for the Elder Thing artisans who created the mural gave them much attention. She broke through the Macintosh Hills, shattered the Unicorn Ranges, blasted Gem Stone Gap in the Crystal Mountains and bored Chill Withers Pass through the Stormwalds. Soon all that stood between the frightful invader and the very heart of Elder Thing civilisation were the Mountains of Discord, but they were well defended and the highest barrier yet. Yeb-Ineat threw her forces at those rocky walls, and, though she killed many defenders, they pushed her back. Again she tried and again the Elder Things repulsed her, though at even greater cost to their dwindling resources. The Elder Things might yet hold, but Yeb-Ineat's success was only a matter of time.

Desperate, the Elder Things conducted a great working. They created a wonder weapon in the natural hills north of their capital. Why they did not do so earlier I can only guess. Perhaps the attempt was difficult, dangerous or by no means certain — something only endeavoured as a last resort. Alternately, the weapon may have relied upon new technology — a recently discovered spell, for example, or advancements in mathematical theory driven by the needs of the war. Whatever the weapon's genesis, it turned the tide of the conflict. The Elder Things used it to shatter Yeb-Ineat, breaking her utterly and sending the fragments scuttling to the dark places of the world.

With the war over, the Elder Things reclaimed their world and did so with remarkable speed — or so the carvings seemed to indicate. As I've said before, time was hard to judge. They rebuilt their cities and planted anew their forests. One crystal carving showed a forest of gigantic equisetales, scaled up versions of what we'd found trapped in rock during the early stages of the expedition. Hunting parties composed of Elder Things and shoggoths roamed the land, wiping out the remaining spawn of Yeb-Ineat. This could have been the start of a second golden age, but disaster struck another time.

The precipitating cause of this second disaster is unclear. According to the anonymous author or authors of the Eohippus Fragments, the Elder Things' own wonder weapon doomed them. It 'sung to the night the music of crystal spheres of the Beyond-One, and frightful things heard its call.' Whatever the reason, the Mi-go came to the isolated Elder Thing world and brought with them a war the Elder Things must surely have thought long gone.

The Mi-go arrived in abominable ships, able to sail the cold aether between stars and equipped with powerful armaments. Their first act was to disable the Elder Things' wonder weapon. Their second was to rip the Ring of Hue'min'I'tep from the sky. Their third was to bombard the planet with such force that evidence for it exists in the geological record. This attack, I believe, is what we today call the Hoof-Hammer Event. The silver eggs also date to this period. If not for the Elder Thing occupants, I'd label them Mi-go weapons, but that is clearly not the case. Possibly they served as lifeboats of some kind, used to evacuate the Ring when the Mi-go attacked. If so, I doubt their occupants lived much longer for their salvation.

The Mi-go destroyed the Elder Things' cities once more, ruined their infrastructure and killed their population. The attack was sudden, swift and deadly but also short. Perhaps thinking their task done (assuming in their alien minds it truly was not), they left, but some few Elder Things survived in deep bunkers and similar armoured places. In time, these survivors emerged and sought to rebuild, but the damage was done.

Whereas Yeb-Ineat had left the core of Elder Thing power relatively unscathed, the Mi-go did no such thing, and this event marks the downward turn in their power. They did not go silently into the night, however. These surviving Elder Things rebuilt a single great city, located at the heart of their old civilisation. It filled the plateau north of the Mountains of Discord, huge buildings of incredible architectural achievement. At the heart of this city they built a cyclopean spire, miles high and made from their strongest and most enduring materials. Perhaps I am projecting my own mentality but it seemed almost a challenge to the Mi-go: destroy us and we'll rebuild stronger than before. The rise of the spire marked the exact centre of the crystal mural, and I believe also its creation. The carvings before that point held a unity of style and purpose, while those after were more discordant, as if the product of a thousand hooves and as many artistic philosophies. Those surviving Elder Things left the second half of that great crystal arc for those to come.

Despite the seeming magnitude of these early achievements, such measures were fundamentally hollow. The Elder Things had lost the ability to design and create their most advanced technologies. The spire and other such creations were the products of scavenged machines they could no longer make or properly repair.

This decline is obvious in a number of ways. One was the mural itself. Over the entire first half and the early second, the carvings were projected into the heart of the crystal, voids covered by a flat skin of transparent stone. As time moved on, this technique was lost, and the carvings became more mundane — dung into the surface of the wall like the engravings made today throughout Equestria. Over the final stretch even this was lost and the degenerate descendants of the Elder Things turned to ink and other pigments.

The Elder Things' self-portraits provide more evidence. As I've remarked elsewhere, the Elder Things fused their bodies with technological devices of incredible complexity. During most of their history, these augmentations were invisible — the technology advanced and refined to be small and discreet. As their civilisation fell, it became cruder, bulkier. Some depicted late era Elder Things appeared almost more machine than living creature. Others abandoned augmentation all together.

It would be a mistake to label even these waning Elder Things weak, however. Their most potent tools were their shoggoths, and they took steps to preserve this vital resource against their industrial decline. Using their waning technology, they modified the few shoggoths who'd survived the Mi-go attack to create a number of useful breeds. Some were specialised for war, others for labour, a few for medicine and still more were cemented as generalists — jacks of all trades, masters of none. They also removed one of the oldest safeguards built within the shoggoths: the complex restrictions governing their reproduction. Probably fearing that the needed techniques would be lost, they enabled the shoggoths to breed through budding, gifting them with twisted fecundity. Technicians would remove specialised nodes from adult shoggoths and place said nodes in baths of rich nutrients. Given time, a new shoggoth would arise, a perfect clone of its parent. They used this to quickly raise a large and powerful force.

These shoggoths proved vital to their survival. When Malkart, star spawn of Cthulhu, came from a distance world, shoggoth legions drove him into exile in the deepest seas. When a shattered fragment of Yeb-Ineat arose and proclaimed the Kingdom of Corcosa, warrior shoggoths defeated the kingdom in battle and labourer shoggoths carved queer five-pointed stars into every surviving block of stone. They even fought a civil war when an insidious foreign influence caused a number of shoggoths to lose bodily cohesion. These monsters became ever-expanding waves of protoplasmic matter, their growth fuelled by the absorption of local life forms. I've seen parasprite spawns and out-of-control von Neustallion spells; what those ancient artists depicted was worse in every way, and yet the Elder Things and their shoggoths prevailed. They celebrated each of these victories and a dozen more on the crystal mural, as if each and every one represented the defining moment of their civilisation. It tasted of propaganda to me.

Their history proves the Elder Things cunning and resourceful. Given time, I truly believe they would have stabilised their failing technology and begun again their climb to greatness. This was not to be. Their technology continued to fail in a cascade like effect. Machines faltered, were repaired with cannibalised parts and then faltered again. Finally something absolutely vital was lost: the external wombs the Elder Things used to grow their young.

You must understand: the Elder Things had abandoned biological reproduction even before they came to our world. After so great a time without a positive selection criterion, the ability had degraded. The carvings depicting this time were morbid affairs. Despite all their remaining medical science, mothers died in childbirth and miscarried. Even the surviving children were sickly and disabled. Few lived to adulthood. Problems increased with each subsequent generation.

At the same time, temperatures around their capital and only major city began to drop. Snow appeared in some early pictures for the first time, with the winters becoming harder and harsher as time advanced. Pressed by so many other problems, the Elder Things were slow to investigate. When at last they did, it was already too late. Some decaying process in their once-wonder weapon had reached a critical state. It became a great entropy sink, pulling in energy and warping the weather. I can only conclude that this process continues even to this day and causes the unnatural cold which covers the Uncharted North.

Assailed on so many sides, the Elder Things faced their doom. The carvings on the crystal wall stop. Using a number of spells more commonly employed to analyse the providence of famous paintings, I found the remains of painted images, but they were too decayed to interpret. Elder Things undoubtedly continued to live in the spire for some time, but their end had truly come.

VII — Notes on Shoggoth Ecology

VII — Notes on Shoggoth Ecology

The world-shattering implications of the crystal mural continued to tumble through my mind as Derpy, Mountain Flower and I left the semi-circular room to continue our search for Professor Rock Watcher. A cleaner moved in a corridor ahead, and I watched it with new eyes. There could be no doubt as to its providence now, not after what I'd read. It was a shoggoth, of a labourer sub strain most likely. If they had survived the fall of the Elder Things, had others? What of the warriors?

We crept forward through the alien world. The walls of the spire glittered silver but differently than either Rock Watcher's egg or the plating which lined the underground tunnels. It was a matter colour, a metallic slate grey. In places oleaginous discolorations hung like mould patches. Such marks seemed almost effervescent when viewed from an oblique angle but more resembled tarnished copper when looked upon from straight ahead.

"This place is huge," said Mountain Flower softly. Even so, distorted echoes of her voice ran up and down the corridor. Tortured ghosts of her words. "How can we find them?"

I didn't know but couldn't say that. "We keep moving and searching. Keep your ears open and look for signs of recent passage." The cleaners were deathly quiet; any noise we heard would be a clue.

We passed gaping abysses where doors once stood. They hung like the maws of great gluttonous beasts, but we braved each in turn. Some rooms were as large as lecture theatres, while others were small, closer to janitorial closets. Few had surviving furnishings, but the gross structure could give some hints. One room was formed of descending concentric rings, centred on a large dais. An auditorium of some kind perhaps? My mind went to the crystal mural and its carven demagogues.

Without my horn's light, the corridors would have been pitch-black. Even with such illumination, darkness lurked just around the next bend. Our path sloped up and to the left. My instinct is to name it a great spiral around the spire, but I lack the proof to make such an assertion. After three hours of walking, we reached something new: a door which still stood. Half seen colours danced over its slate grey face, haunting spectra which hung just under the surface of the metal. Warped reflections of Derpy, Mountain Flower and I hovered there too, the strange properties of the metal rendering us deformed and devilish. Mountain Flower looked particularly obscene — her image transformed to melted wax and corrupted with a shoggoth's debased organic essence.

Derpy placed her ear against it, then jerked back. "Noise," she mouthed.

The twisting colours pulled at my eyes and mind as I gazed at the door, but I managed to ask the questions which needed to be asked. Why did this door alone still stand? Why was it special? I voiced my thoughts, and Mountain Flower provided the obvious answer. "Because whatever's on the other side is important?" Part of me wanted to argue and pontificate on other options, but she was probably correct.

As a unicorn trained by Princess Celestia herself, I had many ways to bypass a door — from teleportation, to ripping it from the frame with brute force. In this instance most of my options proved useless. It resisted a phase spell, which would have enabled me to step through the no-longer-solid matter. It ignored transformative magic. All my attempts to cut or melt the metal failed. It even resisted a spatial shift, which I'd been quietly confident about, Professor Arc Ane having successfully applied the technique against the silver egg. None of this should have surprised me; it was a product of Elder Thing material science, after all, a fruit of the same tree which birthed mountain sized spires able to stand five hundred million years and eggs that fell from space.

A click came from the door, and it swung open. Derpy smiled, her eyes as random as pedesis as they roamed quite independently of each other. "Not locked."

The door led into a new corridor, off which split five lesser passages like the branches of a crude tree. Strange sounds wafted from the open door. They were small and muted and brought to mind sulphurous bubbles vomited forth from a primeval tar pit.

We advanced with utmost care. Derpy and Mountain Flower light stepped, wings beating whisper soft to take most of their weight. I used my telekinesis to produce a similar effect. The magenta glow of my magic cast a particularly sanguine light across the floor and birthed grim visages within the otherworldly walls. The side corridors branched off at obtuse angles to the plane of the corridor, angling forward and to the sides. Three headed left and two right. The central trunk ended in an ornamental crystal tree. My magic turned the leaves into drops of blood, and the bark looked utterly realistic, as if a true tree transformed to crystal. Only in retrospect does another oddity appear to me: the statue depicted a clearly modern tree, while the Elder Things grew only the primitive ancestors of the same.

The sounds came from the last passage on the left. We moved down it, and I did my best to dim my glow while maintaining my quiet hooves. Something moved ahead, and I froze in place, using my telekinesis to stop my companions too. A cleaner plopped from a hole in the wall, possibly a ventilation duct of some kind. Its body went from square to obese in a moment, and it hurried on its way. It was a big thing, its amoeba-like body bulbous and quivering. We followed after it and came upon a scene out of nightmare.

An immense shoggoth sat in a pool of organic ooze, from which the occasional bubble burst. Dozens of tentacles writhed around its overly smooth barrel of a central body, some small and sharp like scalpels, others large, flat manipulator limbs. Its form brought to mind the medical shoggoths of the waning Elder Things, but this beast had mutated far beyond that.

The obese cleaner approached the pool and stopped in place. Half seen colours swirled over its membranous skin, shades of red and blue similar to that exhibited by the ichthyic life of the abyssal depths. At once the medical shoggoth slashed out with scalpel-tentacles and sliced the cleaner a dozen times. Steaming slabs of protoplasmic matter fell to the ground. The butchery reduced the cleaner to a tiny cube, perhaps thirty centimetres to a side. A diffuse mass of neural tissue hung inside, not quite a brain but something eerily similar. Its body quivered, colours flaring, but even such grievous wounds weren't lethal, and it backed away. As it did, the medical shoggoth scooped up the offered flesh and added it to the pool. It ushered the larger pieces towards bulbous lumps that hung suspended in the liquid. I looked closer and saw them for what they were: embryonic shoggoths. This was no mere grotto of horrors; it was a nursery of abominations. Strange sounds emanated from the medical shoggoth, almost crooning cries. Tentacles slithered, and it stroked its unborn charges, obscenely maternal.

"Back," I mouthed, and we moved back the way we'd come. Derpy's eyes flickered from point to point, never alighting for more than a heartbeat; I read it as near-panic. Mountain Flower huddled close to my side, feathers spread in an instinctive fight-or-flight reaction.

Fleet of hoof, we reached the central corridor unmolested but could go no farther. A shoggoth stood in the doorway back to the spire proper. We'd left it open to facilitate fast egress, but our action had been notice. Its monstrous form bore closest resemblance to the ancient labourer type. From its body extruded two long tentacles as thick as my neck and six finer manipulator limbs, with which it could handle tools. Hard boils covered its opaque skin; they leaked a rheumy, xanthous coloured liquid which gave it an unearthly eldritch shimmer in my horn's light. Small sensor stalks twitched atop its body.

My eyes opened wide. "Teleport," I said in a hushed whisper and gathered my composure. In a crack of violet light I translocated through the open door and to the corridor on the other side. Given the slate metal's ability to resist magic, no other path was safe. At once the labourer shoggoth whirled, a writhing mass of tentacles. I telekinetically reached out and slammed the door shut. It closed with an oddly muted clang — solid for now but I couldn't see a lock.

An immense battering ram of force slammed into the door from the other side, but I held on with all my magical strength and kept it closed. Even so, it cried out like a struck gong, and my teeth vibrated with discordant tones. The shoggoth wasn't one to attempt a failed strategy twice and slashed out with its manipulator tentacles. They slice through the door, and the metal glowed red around them. With an eerie screeching sound, it drew its tentacles in two great curving arcs, cutting a circle through a substance I couldn't even scratch.

"Run!" I shouted and galloped up the corridor. Derpy and Mountain Flower flew beside, wings beating the air. The clang of falling metal sounded from behind, and I knew the shoggoth was on our tail. Its loping gait resonated with the terror of clockwork — thump, squelch, thump, squelch. Each repetition grew faster; each repetition grew closer.

Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch.

Every facet of my mind, body and soul screamed at me to flee, and I did exactly that, not thinking, not planning. From a logical perspective I should have led the retreat along our path of entrance. That way I would have known the lay of the land and been able to retreat to the flight sledge under the worst case scenario. It is a mark of the primal terror which so infused my being that the thought never occurred to me.

Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch.

With a horror without compare behind, I galloped deeper into the dread spire's hidden depths. Dark voids in the unnatural walls hid cryptic rooms and corridors now ruled by undying monsters. Mountain Flower put on speed and shot ahead. My friend Rainbow Dash can break the sound barrier; Mountain Flower wasn't that fast, but few things can beat even a slow pegasus on the wing. A second later she was back. "This way."

Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch.

I followed, down a side corridor and then up to a second slate grey door. She wanted us to hide? I didn't have time to argue. With a wrench I pulled it open and stepped inside. The room was empty, bare, but an unfilled doorway led to other chambers further in. Once we were all inside, I eased the door shut and cut my magic. That killed our only light. We stood in darkness, ears pricked for any sign of our nightmarish pursuer.

The silence deafened in the singular fashion of the susurration. It spoke of beings not seemingly present which nonetheless might be. Heart-make had spoken of it. He said the things from the spaces between spaces sought out such voids, to feast upon and breed in. 'It's in our blood to seek to fill them', he'd told me those long years ago. Perhaps that's why I focused on the sounds that did exist. My heart thumped like the mad drums of a cannibal sect inside my chest, and my exhaled breaths hung like whispering phantasms in the cold, stagnant air. Further away, feathers sounded against coat, that uniquely pegasus sound that spoke to their dual natures. And beyond that...

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Stone sounded against stone from within the unseen depths of our bolthole. My blood chilled; I turned. Now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see a faint glow from the room beyond the doorway. There was a shadow too: the head, neck and arms of an Elder Thing, cast twisted and slightly green along the floor. I shared a look with Derpy, and we advanced.

The light cast more shadows as we neared, and they struck out like the teeth of some great monster. Spike's words from so long ago came back to me: "Who dares open the door of his mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?" It was a part of a poem, using the metaphor a dragon to comment on the nature of fear. It seemed very apt right then.

A spell at the tip of my horn, I darted into the room and cast about for threats. At once I saw the Elder Thing. It hung suspended in a glass tube. There were two dozen such tubes, filled with queer green liquid and arranged in a ring. Each contained an adult Elder Thing, but these weren't the whole, healthy creatures discovered by Rock Watcher in the silver egg. They were twisted, deformed — legs, arms and even heads misshapen. Some were partially dissected, their chests split open to reveal a butcher's board of preserved organs. They were unmoving, long dead, but some otherworldly property of the liquid preserved them against even the entropic ravages of eon scale time.

In the centre of the ring crouched a shoggoth unlike any I'd seen before. Its protoplasmic body followed the pattern of an Elder Thing — four limbs, torso and defined head. Its lines were soft, however, making it almost a parody of its long gone creators. It more resembled a gingerbread pony or cast jelly than a true, living creature. It wore 'clothes' too, if its morbid garments could be termed such. Bones so old they'd turned to stone hung over its body. They mimicked a skeleton in exterior — femurs along the front of its legs, spine along its back, skull atop its crown. Some analytical part of my mind set to counting and came to the number 206. The bones were undoubtedly Elder Thing but weren't twisted like those in the tanks. They looked straight and properly formed. Older perhaps, taken from before the rot set in?

The debased creature sat cross-legged before a large block of black stone and slowly chipped into it, using what looked like a sharpened leg bone. The markings it made were strange, undecipherable. Geometric circles interlocked with crude pictograms and what could almost be mathematical equations, the style and underlying logic recognisable even while the notation was not. This was the source of the light, for the symbols burnt, as if removing the topmost stone had revealed a balefire core of sickly green flames. The pictograms were simplistic in the extreme, but within their barbaric primitivism hid sketches of pure horror. I saw stickfigure Elder Things bent in perverted supplication to a huge, globular shoggoth — a nameless terror from the world's hidden, eldritch past. I saw Elder Things butchered — their organs, skins and bones removed to create adornments. I saw visions of murder and betrayal. I saw the alien other the Elder Things had brought to this world, and I saw it turn upon them.

Clink. Clink. Clink, went the monster as it marked out another line. More balefire burnt.

The horrifying shock of the room held me insensate for long seconds, but I took a gasping breath and backed up. I forced Derpy and Mountain Flower out before they could properly see. The room was evil, a grotesque trophy chamber for a derange servant run amuck. It is only with reluctance that I relate it here at all, and I had no intention of letting my friends see such a sight.

As Derpy and Mountain Flower looked at me with confused eyes, I thought again of the crystal mural. It did not relate the final fate of the world's ancient masters, but I could imagine it now. Those twilight day Elder Things were betrayed by their shoggoth servants and slaughtered, their bodies preserved using advanced preservation technologies or vivisected for wanted materials. Perhaps they'd turned to their shoggoths in their infirmity and removed one too many safe guards. Alternatively, the rebellion may have been shoggoth instigated, the result of cumulative error build up through mutation and breeding. The shoggoths I'd seen were different from those on the crystal mural, and fecundity meant the capacity to change. Or maybe I was letting the shock of the room cloud my judgment. Even now, looking back, I am unsure of the answer.

In as few words as possible I outlined the horrors of the room. Derpy looked green and so did Mountain Flower, but she tried to hide it. We desperately wanted to leave as quickly as possible, but the lumbering labourer shoggoth might yet lurk beyond the outer chamber's door. Unheard mental echoes sounded in my ears. Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch. The dread noises played counterpoint to the sound of rock upon rock. Clink. Clink. Clink.

So it was we set to waiting, no light, no movement, no speech. In that unworldly void my mind turned to the shoggoths and their queer community.

My thoughts painted a resplendent horror, something which at once fascinated and terrified me. The cleaners were gatherers of some sort. They roamed the spire and the outlying tunnels, eating the small life which grew there. From this they grew, and when they reached sufficient size, they returned to their home and offered up their flesh. The medical shoggoths took that flesh and fed it to the young, though I imagine some must also go to other groups to keep them nourished. Why did the cleaners do this? What possible logic could drive them to offer themselves up for cannibalistic mutilation? I did not know.

And then there was the Elder Thing shaped shoggoth in the room so close by. I could feel its malignant presence — a wound gone gangrenous in my mental sphere. What of him? What was his role in this protoplasmic polity? A shaman who spoke the will of the ancestors, a leader, even a madpony locked away for the good of all?

My mind went next to the question of population. The greatest limitation must be food. The Uncharted North was a barren place, and I'd read no reports of shoggoths raiding the lands beyond. A second thought occurred to me, and it made my stomach churn with leaden weights of primal myth. Shoggoths required their food to be encoded with their own hideous genomic potential. This was the final proof of my most perilous theory: the Elder Things had crossbred their shoggoths with that early native life. Every living creature had a shoggoth's power lurking at its core, no matter its species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom or domain. I had a shoggoth within my chest, just waiting for the Elder Things' secret genetic keys to break free.

I shook and shivered, the cold of the spire sinking through my clothes and coat to leech my heat. The October Codex depicted the shoggoths as horrors without compare, the leashed warrior-monsters of a war which shook the foundations of space-time. The crystal mural presented them as great tools and assets, but it was biased towards a positive representation. A labourer shoggoth, not even a warrior, had cut through a slate metal door like it was nothing. What might one bred for murder accomplish, and could even great Equestria be safe if they turned their eyeless gazes south?

With wide eyes I looked around the dark room, imagining what lay beyond. How many shoggoths nested in the spire and the surrounding tunnels? They surely didn't have the resources to support many. Movement meant energy and energy meant food. That was in very short supply. But then there was the birthing pool. It had contained many embryonic shoggoths. I thought back and counted eight. The shoggoths had ruled the Elder Things' fallen realm for millions of years. Combine that time scale with their biological immortality and even if those foetal monsters took decades to gestate, they'd soon overrun the world. Was something killing them? Had mutation shortened their eternal life spans? Did their cannibalism extend even further than I'd seen? I did not know and feared to find out.

VIII — A Spire Out of Time

VIII — A Spire Out of Time

We waited in that deathly room for almost an hour before venturing out. Of our pursuer there was no sign. With greater caution than before, we continued upwards. The corridor took us to a vaulted hall, held up by tall pillars which the mathematician in me noted conformed to the golden ratio. Natural philosophers have long pointed to the ratio within nature. This hall proved even the aberrant minds of alien beings saw its aesthetic appeal. Statues, strange sculptures and uncanny crystal windows decorated the walls. The windows looked out upon static alien vistas, displayed to onlookers through some trick of holographic light.

The first showed an Elder Thing city. From the architecture I dated it to that peaceful interregnum between the defeat of Yeb-Ineat and the coming of the Mi-go. Towers of glass shot into the sky and around them twisted roads of foreign construction. Along those roads moved sleek, self-propelled vehicles, almost aerodynamic for all they did not fly. For the first time I saw colour too. However those ancient artisans had trapped this frozen image, it had survived undimmed even to the present day. By squinting I could just see the pinprick sized forms of Elder Things. Theirs skins range from medium to light brown — coffee on one end, milk coffee on the other. Their hair mirrored these dusky colours, blacks and dark browns. Breaking the trend, their clothes came in a hundred different hues, as if to make up for their otherwise dull appearance.

Other windows showed different sights. One depicted a forest of gargantuan ferns, large fronded leaves which reached for the sun. The green was intensely vivid, and I almost felt able to lean forward and touch the nearest plants.

Another displayed one of my purported demagogues, standing with a too-long shovel in hand before a cleared section of ground. Up close I could see wrinkles on his skin, around his small brown eyes especially. Apart from the hair on the very top of his head, he had no coat at all, just weathered skin covered by clothes. Said skin fell towards the dark end of the spectrum but lay well within the range I'd observed in the first picture.

The sixth I examined showed a spread of the night's sky. The stars and constellations were those of the alien past. I looked at the moon and remarked at its strangeness. There were fewer craters on its surface, and it shone almost too bright. Had the Elder Things truly set it in the sky, and if so, why? In front of it all hung a celestial ribbon. A hundred thousand sparks shone against the black infinity, as numerous as grains of sand upon a beech. This, I realised, must be the Ring of Hue'min'I'tep, seen now in its heyday.

The thirteenth showed a dozen shoggoths standing before a female Elder Thing. The shoggoths were less overtly monstrous than the current inhabitants of the spire, bodies smoother and more uniform in colour. The twelve in the window were almost transparent — slightly opaque raindrops arrayed in formation. The peculiar discolouration of their brains hung just visible at their cores. I knew the Elder Things controlled their shoggoth servitors through some invisible means, and this window appeared to show exactly that. Their order was perfect. Not a tentacle lay out of place, and not a gram of protoplasmic flesh extruded where it should not. If the Elder Things had this degree of control over their creations, I wondered, how did the shoggoths rebel? Why not just give an order and send every active shoggoth into a deep coma? The answer came back to fecundity, and the insidious creep of change.

Of the statues and sculptures I have little to say. Most showed Elder Things, wearing a range of different clothing. Some had the regimented appearance of uniforms, formalised versions of what the silver egg Elder Things wore. Many of these also wore what looked like medals, shaped discs and stars hung on ribbons. The gender divide was slightly biased towards males but still mostly even. Looking at the women, I couldn't help but think their bulbous mammaries must get in the way. The men appeared queer, too. Hints of breast and nipple showed on their chests. Despite being no expert in biology, I knew the males of most mammalian species have rudimentary mammary glands, but ponies are an exception to this rule, as are most sophant species. Seeing it here struck me as eerily disturbing. I took pictures of typical samples of both genders, knowing such images could be useful for future study.

One thing I will comment on is the prominence of clothes. The Elder Things wore them all the time, and I saw only a hooffull of naked artistic depictions during my entire time in the spire. Needless to say I found this very strange, though I imagine my friend Rarity would rub her hooves with glee at how much more everypony would spend on garments.

Onwards we went, checking each window and examining each sculpture for significant details. Derpy seemed especially taken with the crystal windows. To me they were portals to alien wonder and primal terror both, but she saw only the former. We exited through a high, arched doorframe engraved with twisting vines and arrived at a crossroads. Three arrow straight hallways shot off at right angles to each other, with no ancient markings or oddities of architecture to let me choose between.

Before I could put the question to my companions, I caught a flash of movement. A cleaner dashed across the corridor straight ahead. It moved faster than any I'd seen, which just wasn't energy efficient. The only other time I'd seen a shoggoth gallop was to chase us. Since it wasn't headed toward us, I could imagine only one other thing to produce such a reaction: the Elder Things.

"Come on," I shouted as I set off straight ahead. When I reached the needed cross corridor, I veered to the side, my hooves skittering on the slate metal floor. My haste was such that I didn't even mark the turn with magical paint, but that scarcely seemed to matter at that point. The green-brown blur jinked around the next corner. I teleport-jumped so as not to be left behind, and my pegasus companions put on speed to keep up.

The precise details of the chase are lost to memory, but after many twists and turns through that metallic maze of otherworldly construction we arrived at a large circular room, beneath a geodesic dome. Seven cleaners gathered in the centre of the chamber, around the slowly dissolving body of one of their kin. Of what breed or strain this shoggoth belonged, I cannot say, for the forces of putrefaction worked with great haste on the alien protoplasm of its body. Only the discoloured remains of its neural core remained semi-intact, and even it was not uninjured. Two cauterised holes bore through it, a mirror of the slaughtered ponies at the sub-expedition's camp.

"Medulla Thaumus Major," I muttered under my breath. "Medulla Thaumus Minor." I had no proof, then or now, but I'd lay money on being correct. The Elder Things targeted those to places for a reason. What better way, after all, to kill a creature with the power of a shoggoth than to remove the very control mechanism for that power? It made cold, logical sense.

The geodesic dome was made from interlocked silver metal plates, carved with stars and constellations. They matched what I'd seen through the crystal window. The sheer age of those markings bore down on me, as did the wealth of meaning they held. Elder hands had fashioned them in aeons past, shaping the plates much as they shaped all life on the planet. The Elder Things were utterly alien beings of fiendish eldritch myth but contained a spark of pony all the same. That slight connection, that glimmer of light within the dark, dark void, terrified me all the more. They gazed at the stars much as a pony might and noted what they saw. They saw patterns. They projected their culture. They painted pictures with thought, metaphor and an eye for form. Of course, they had a more intimate connection to the stars than we ponies. They came from those distant orbs. Was their home system up there, with its nine planets around a sun? Had they still cared or did they come to see my world as their home?

The chamber had only two entrances: the one Derpy, Mountain Flower and I used, and a small portal on the far wall. With a glance at my companions, I teleported us passed the assembled shoggoths and on with the chase. Stairs lay beyond the portal, cold metal things arranged in an ascending square around the ruined remains of what might have once been an elevator. They led up as far as I could see and down just as far. On instinct I chose up.

Before long my legs ached. If the Elder Things had built the stairs to reach the roof of the world, they were fiendishly proficient in their task. As before, they were ill sized for pony legs, and I couldn't imagine shoggoths finding them easy, either. Finally I took to teleporting, leaping in violet flashes from landing to landing. It left my horn numb, but a numb horn was better than liquid legs.

In the pauses between jumps, I considered what I knew. The Elder Things from the silver egg came from five hundred million years ago, the same time as the Mi-go attack. The spire dated to slightly after that, when the survivors rebuilt. That meant they couldn't know its layout; they couldn't even have known it existed. They'd headed north, towards where their capital had stood, and found only one surviving structure. What would they look for? What could they look for? Their civilisation was millions of years dead.

After an hour we reached the top. A slate metal door guarded the exit. It swung open under the push of my magic, and the sounds of combat both fierce and repugnant washed out. Steeling myself, I stuck my head through the perfidious opening, looked left, looked right and jerked back. It took me a few seconds of blinking to process everything I'd seen, but it painted a grim picture. I'll explain it here just as I explained it to Derpy and Mountain Flower.

The corridor spilled out for a long way, left and right. High pillars lined each side, in the style of the old Pegasus Tribe. The Elder Things battled towards the right-hoof end. Opposing them was a degenerate war shoggoth, its obscene body more nightmarish than even the abominable monsters depicted in the crystal mural.

In writing this and delving so deeply into hellish memory, an additional detail has come to me. It concerns the walls. In places, slate metal doors had been fused together and used as patches, as if to seal ancient structural wounds. These seals were old, very old. A battle had been fought there, millions of years ago. When the shoggoths betrayed the Elder Things, those two powers had clashed in the nearby corridor. And during my expedition to the spire they did so again. It can't be a coincidence. There has to be some nearby prize worth fighting over.

Taking a deep breath, I extended my head as if under the guillotine and took another look. There were four Elder Things, three male and one female. Their skin remained mummified and fallow, but they moved all the same. It was jilted, unnatural movement, sudden bursts of speed separated by split second pauses. They didn't carry weapons but instead attacked using miniature armaments built into their longest fingers. Those fingers ended in glittering ruby eyes — the flesh, skin and horn plates discarded or burnt away. The eyes spat invisible beams, which invoked fire wherever they hit. Even in the midst of life and death struggle, my mind marvelled at the stupendous engineering. How advanced must Elder Thing technology have been that their weapons still functioned after so much time?

The Elder Things used the pillars for cover, only leaning out far enough to aim and fire their weapons. Their style and coordination bore the marks of military training, almost robotic in precision and character. Indeed, something within their movements reminded me strongly of Wolf Troupe's Automaton Chess Player. When one pair advanced, the other would lay down covering fire. Invisible beams slammed into the war shoggoth, but it wasn't as weak as the others.

The war shoggoth's gargantuan bulk filled the corridor with seething, protoplasmic flesh. A hundred thrashing limbs issued from its teeming body, and proto-eyes bubbled out from some debased internal store. Its skin was rubbery, opaque and membranous. Fractal, crystalline patterns hung just beneath the surface, interspaced with strange signs and glyphs of ancient and elder power. From a dozen gash-like slits issued jabbering sounds, almost painful notes that shifted from above to below hearing range according to some diabolical pattern beyond my ability to decrypt. When the Elder Things' invisible beams struck its main body or the primary tentacles, the attacks fizzled in puffs of smoke. Comprehending this, they aimed primarily for secondary targets: small sensor stalks, eyes which boiled up only to disappear and thinner, weaker limbs.

With an unnatural call the shoggoth struck forward. Two tentacles uncurled like striking elapid whips and shattered an eon old pillar. The Elder Thing behind it vaulted back as razor-sharp shards of masonry showered the corridor. He hit the ground, rolled and started to rise, but his left leg bent at a strange angle for all its supposed ceramic reinforcements. He never made a sound. The three remaining Elder Things ducked out and laid down heavy fire. Burn marks bit into the shoggoth's slimy flesh, and an eye exploded as the optical liquid flash boiled. Using the opportunity, the injured Elder Thing rolled into cover. He never once so much as grimaced at the pain. The moment he was behind cover, the other Elder Things returned to their sheltered firing positions. And then I saw Rock Watcher.

They Elder Things had bound him to a crude sledge, set well back from the battle lines. Ropes bit into his flesh, and canvas scraps covered most of his body. The tattered remains of cold weather clothes hung like forlorn rags — a dilapidated woollen scarf around his neck, a red sock on one hoof. His eyes were closed, and if his chest rose, it was by too small a degree for me to see. So cocooned, he might have been anypony or anything, but his cutie mark was just visible: a geologist's hammer.

With a gasped breath, I jerked my head back. "Rock Watcher." The name repeated in my head even as I spoke it aloud. His foalnap drove us to this spire out of forgotten time. So close to my goal, I again faced the initiating question: why had the Elder Things done so? Why take him alone? Was he a hostage? A biological curiosity? Or did they have a darker purpose? Was he naught but feeder stock for their dread experiments? Would they use their secret genetic keys and special chemicals to awaken the genomic potential locked within his cells? Would they transform him into a shoggoth to fight shoggoths?

A raw primal force boiled up through me as I contemplated the Elder Things. They'd murdered and abducted. They'd killed ponies I liked and knew. Despite that, it wasn't a desire for justice which drove me. It was all the horrors I'd seen. It was the windigos, shoggoths and aeonian constructions. It was the never ending cold, the constant death, and the forbidden secret histories. It was the blasphemous law contained in the October Codex, the crystal mural, the Eohippus Fragments and a dozen more obscure sources. It was the Princesses' warning and my failure. The Elder Things' actions condensed all that down and gave it form: vengeance.

"Give him back!" I screamed as I leapt into the corridor and whipped out with my telekinesis. In a single great spell, I seized the Elder Things and locked them in place. They glowed the magenta of my magic, and the resulting light twisted through strange angles as it reflected off the walls, ceiling and floor. "Give him back!"

The war shoggoth let loose a rumbling roar like a reverse susurration and slashed out with a striking tentacle. It smashed into the nearest Elder Thing and ripped that alien other from my grip. Such was that shoggoth's primeval power that the Elder Thing cracked apart, body going one way and head another. They thudded and clunked to the ground respectively.

In numb horror I realised I'd ignored the greatest threat. A pustule opened on the shoggoth's oozing plastic front, and a disintegrator beam of abominable power blasted forth. My ears rang at its passing, a discordant cacophony of energy unheard since the days of primal myth. Two Elder Things vaporised in my grip. The slate metal of the walls bubbled and warped at the close contact. The bulk of the blast missed Rock Watcher, but its outer edges caught his rear left leg. The impacted section simply vanished, leaving a bizarrely warped stump behind.

"No!" I shouted and threw the last Elder Thing. She hit the wall, bounced and rolled along the ground. "No!" Light blasted from my horn as I lashed out with my magic. A raw telekinetic shove slammed into the war shoggoth, and it staggered back a pace. "No!" I did it again. Pain shot through my horn, but I didn't care. "No!" Again; more pain. "No!" Again. More.

Four of its tentacles shot into the nearby walls to anchor it against my next assault. I struck anyway, and a truculent but futile wave passed through its protoplasmic body. The slate metal ran in red-hot rivulets around its tentacles, and crystal geometries flexed under its skin. The patterns held mesmeric influence, as if they possessed the power to render the rigid rules of mathematics amorphous. Its many mouths warbled, and its proto-eyes swum to the surface, phosphorus orbs of many colours. Without thinking, I gathered up everything I'd learned about heat magic since arriving in the Uncharted North and struck out with a focused beam of near solar intensity. One of the shoggoth's eyes exploded in gory violence, and the beast released a queer cry of verminous insistence. I did it again, and a second vanished. The light from my horn flickered and wavered; I was doing too much, too quickly.

"Twilight!" screamed Mountain Flower, and I turned. One of the Elder Things stood and staggered towards me, killing finger trying to rise. It wasn't the female I'd thrown aside. It was the male without a head. Part of his spine gleamed purple in the light of my horn, and the exposed flesh was black. Over the course of five hundred million years it had reached some plateau of stability beyond mere necrosis.

My options limited and magic dwindling, I used telekinesis to wrench his finger to one side. It fired its murderous beam at the same moment, and the wall erupted in an explosion of out-of-place colours — cerulean, indigo and azure tinted silver. Whatever the finger weapons were, they projected more than just heat. No mundane force could harm the walls.

He tried to raise his other hand, but I wrenched his arm about, so the finger pointed right at his centre of mass. He fought me, some unseen force animating his aeonian body with unholy power, but I fought back with even more strength. Pain stabbed through my horn and into my brain, but I just gritted my teeth.

The war shoggoth let loose a warbling cry, and I glanced back. A pustule opened on its abominable face, a festering wound leading directly to a cosmic cauldron of primal chaos. Immeasurable energy boiled with, enough to vaporise me and all my friends. Pieces fell into place within my mind, like a complex jigsaw of menacing character. The disintegrator beam was a powerful ability. If deployed earlier it could have wiped the Elder Things from the corridor, but the shoggoth had held back. It had only used the attack when I'd locked its opponents down and again now, when nopony stood ready to oppose it. That only made sense if there was a flaw, and looking into that great pustule of grotesque, hateful energy I knew what it was.

In a single swift movement I stepped to one side and forced both of the Elder Thing's killing fingers into position. He fired at once, and invisible beams of singular power struck the disintegrator pustule. It exploded like a pressurized steam tank. Energy backlashed into the shoggoth, doing unbelievable damage to its protoplasmic flesh. Most of its voluminous body simply vanished, and the remainder dissolved into organic slop. The energy wasn't done. It rolled out in an expanding ring of screaming fire.

I frantically threw up a protective barrier, but the fire howled with unspeakable power. It shattered my magic into a field of falling fractal shards, but I'd absorbed enough that it merely threw me off my hooves and into a wall. The impact was hard and fast. The slate metal had no give at all. A sharp pain stabbed through my side and renewed with each gasping breath. My ribs hurt, possibly broken. I tried to reach out with my magic but my power fizzled and gave out.

The slate metal of the floor and walls cracked at the screaming fires passing. Flakes formed. A piece fell away. Under the fire's infernal influence the once inviolate material became as brittle as rotten bone. The floor under me groaned. Before I could do anything it gave way, and I fell into the long dark.

IX — Monsters Within

IX — Monsters Within

The waves of disintegration ripped open the nearby stairwell, and I fell into its clawing embrace. All around me metal bent, buckled and wrenched free of its moorings. There was nothing I could do. My earlier rage had left me and took with it my remaining strength. My horn ached, and I couldn't even conjure a spark. My stomach twisted as the force of gravity worked the magic I could not. I flailed as I tumbled through the air.

"Twilight," screamed Mountain Flower as she streaked towards me. Her hooves caught me around the neck, and pain shot through my side. Her wings beat against the air, and we slowed but not enough.

We hit the rocky earth with a crunch, but Mountain Flower had removed enough of my momentum that I was bruised, not dead.

"Run!" shouted Derpy as she swooped down from a hole in the roof. She clutched the crippled Rock Watcher in her hooves, but that didn't stop her body checking Mountain Flower and I out of the way. It was a Daring Do-esk move and just in time. Behind her slate metal rained from the sky. Warped sheets, still glowing girders and blocks half turned to dust slammed into the ground like the hammer of some cosmic god. The very ground shook at the impact, and baleful waves of displaced air and noise sent me rolling across the floor.

Even in retrospect, I don't know how long I lay there on the cold floor of that cave of deepest nightmare. My side burnt, a diffuse pain throughout half my body spiced with a sharp spike of agony at its core. My legs were numb, and even breathing took undue effort. Without my magic it was dark, black. Even in the unknowable depths of space there is light. Stars shine like tiny diamonds, and the dreams of far off alien gods are written across the heavens for those with eyes to see. Here, though, in the chthonic bowels of the earth, there was none of that.

Finally light came, and I released a cry that surely must have resurrected fearful memories of animalistic howls in any with the ears to hear. Thinking back, I'm put to mind of the nocturnal terrors which dwell in only the deepest and most light forsaken jungles of Urd. Derpy held the trailing end of a string net in her mouth. The other contained a glow orb — a simple glass sphere enchanted to self-luminesce. Its diffuse light revealed a rocky tunnel of some sort, lined with silver metal buttresses and dark metallic plates. While there were differences, it bore a remarkable resemblance to the path we'd used to enter the spire. To my left, the tunnel disappeared into dank darkness. To my right, an immense fall of partially rotted slate metal blocked the way. Of the Elder Things, there was no sign.

"Everypony okay?" asked Derpy around the net. She shook her body and wings to remove the dust as her wandering eyes searched the room.

"Ouch," said Mountain Flower.

I didn't even manage that much.

Once recovered sufficiently to move, I hobbled to Rock Watcher's side. Against all probability he yet lived. Every three seconds he took a shallow breath. It barely seemed enough to sustain a pony even half his size. The disintegration beam — that terrifying weapon of molecular and atomic disruption — had worked its baleful magic on his rear left leg. Most was simply gone, and the remainder was unsettling to behold. The flesh, bone, skin and coat melded into each other, as if merged by the most horrific and forbidden of magical experiments. It did not bleed, however, and Rock Watcher showed no signs of shock. In fact, there was a disquieting aura to his passivity, as if he was an un-living thing just imitating life. He gave no response to outside stimulus, reacting neither to his name nor a careful application of pain.

As soon as I'd ascertained his continued health, Mountain Flower dragged me away. She retrieved a roll of bandages from our medical kit and rapped my ribs. It helped some, but I still felt sharp pain whenever I breathed deep. She also cleaned and covered a few minor scrapes on Derpy, who then returned the favour. I giggled as Derpy acted the medic, which earned me a stab of agony and a dirty look, but it wasn't my fault. The combination of fierce concentration, walleyes and a bottle of sterile wound wash held in her mouth was downright comical. After that we passed out drinking water and food. I partook of the former with some effort but demurred on the latter, even when Derpy offered one of her prized and hoarded muffins.

As the others ate, I looked at Rock Watcher. He showed no signs of malnourishment or dehydration that I could see. Had the Elder Things fed him? They must have, and I'd need to work out how to do so myself.

During this break, my horn went from numb to aching, which was an improvement magically speaking. I probably could cast a spell if I really needed to, but it would cost me in migraine like pain. On weak hooves I staggered upright again and took a good look around. Derpy held the netted glow orb in her mouth, but its light shone only weakly, almost wilted next to the primal dark of the tunnel.

The wall of metal to the right had fallen from above, crashing down the stair shaft until it reached this tunnel. It looked quite impassable, formed from contorted pieces of slate grey metal mixed with furfuraceous dust that shimmered like an insidious poison. How much of the spire had the war shoggoth's morbid death cry destroyed?

To the left the tunnel shot away arrow straight, but as before the walls buckled and wavered around that perfect central plum line. The dark metallic plates which lined the wall lacked much of the phenomenal strength afforded other materials of Elder Thing manufacture. While those structures fashioned from silver and slate metal survived the corrupting ravages of time completely unscathed, entropy found some hold upon the dark metal. Why this should be so, I do not know. Perhaps the tunnels and their coverings dated to later in the Elder Things' history, when the need to conserve valuable and dwindling resources became keener. Indeed, in places the dark metallic plates were missing entirely, either removed or never affixed in the first place.

"Twilight," said Derpy, voice cut with worry. I walked slowly to her and froze in place. There was a hole in the wall, cut through the plate and into the rock beyond; a shoggoth filled it, curled within the rocky egg like an abominable organic geode.

The default appearance of an adult shoggoth is a slimy organic mass, covered with throbbing tentacles and cancerous clusters. This shoggoth broke the trend. Its body was tight, compact. It formed a perfect sphere, extremities pulled inwards to shelter within the protection of its thick, membranous skin. It appeared alive but showed no sign of movement or awareness, as if hibernating. It lacked the mottled grey-green colour of the cleaners and instead bore a purer hue: a deep red. In colour, transparency and consistency, it resembled nothing as much as one of Pinkie Pies' famed cherry jellies. Within the obscene sphere hung hazy shapes — tentacles I realised, rolled up tight like wire on a shelf. It took me a moment to mentally disassemble what I saw, but I have a good mind for spatial problems. Like a horrific flower from the depths of time, the monster unfurled in my mind and became a classic labourer shoggoth as depicted on the crystal mural, without any of the later mutations.

"There's another," said Mountain Flower, from four meters up the corridor. My side hurt; I hobbled to her and saw. Within a second hole lay a second shoggoth. It was near identical to the first, save for a few tiny mutations. Its colour appeared marginally more natural, and its two main tentacles were a slightly shorter. Beyond it was another and another.

In a deathly quiet we walked the tunnel through the earth's womb. Mountain Flower stayed close to my side and lent me what aid she could, but I'm ashamed to say my mind was on other things. Derpy carried Rock Watcher across her back. Every four meters was a hole in the rock, and every hole contained a shoggoth, balled tight for hibernation. Each was a little different from the one before, a little more mutated, a little more turbid. By number 523, I recognised the coming end state. As we pushed on, labourer type shoggoths transformed before our eyes into the cleaner sub-strain. They lost their tentacles and gained body mass. The formerly vibrant pigmentation of their protoplasmic flesh succumbed to the organic colours of mould and decay. I can only guess what changes occurred to their internal biology. The final shoggoth was number 1024. With it the change was complete.

"Why?" said Mountain Flower as she shivered against me. I couldn't blame her. The shoggoths slept in their legions, over a thousand in this tunnel alone — a genetic record of their race and an army out of the stygian depths of time.

"It's a backup," I said, voice hollow in the gloom. "When the Elder Things gave the shoggoths fecundity, they gave them the ability to change. Each generation brings mutations, and a patient sculptor can breed for desired traits. Whatever passes for leadership among the shoggoths wanted a cleaner, and this is how they did it."

"They're parents and children," said Derpy, horror in her voice.

"I'm no expert in shoggoth biology," I said as I took refuge in the uncaring sepulchre of scientific fact, "but the changes seem more indicative of multi-generational gaps. I imagine we're seeing a snap shot every ten or twenty generations." Shoggoth reproduction was asexual; that slowed the process down.

"But why!"

"A record. This is evolution. The scale of time is immense. An unwanted or destructive mutation may only become apparent a thousand years later. In such a case, they'd want the ability to go back."

"But what of the rest?" asked Mountain Flower.

Cannibalised for resources, I thought but didn't say. Food was scarce in the icy wastes beyond the Stormwalds, and after producing suitable offspring, a parent's role would be superfluous. That could well be a secondary purpose of the record. In times of great hunger, less vital specimens could be repurposed as food. But that wasn't the only secondary use. In times of war, they could be awoken to form an army. An army which would need to expand beyond the Uncharted North to feed itself. An army at Equestria's very throat. What else slept beneath the shoggoths' frozen realm? Were there other tunnels like this? Where there halls filled with sleeping warrior shoggoths, the immense infernos of their constitutions too hungry to light save in direst need? Were there aberrant strains so deadly even the shoggoths feared to wake them? I shivered into Mountain Flower, suddenly very glad for her support.

It was then I truly decided that a return to the Uncharted North by a future expedition was impossible. Our singular purpose must be never to awaken this sleeping behemoth. To do so would be to lose the sleeping horrors of the Elder Things upon the world. To do so would be to usher in our own deaths.

We walked in silence along the long dead corridor, not discussing our purpose, never needing to. We had recovered Rock Watcher, though I hesitate to apply the term rescued. That meant we needed to head back to the sub-expedition camp. The collapse had blocked the way we'd come, which meant we could only go forward and hope an exit presented itself.

After a few hours I risked a compass spell. My horn twisted like an unoiled screw, but I got a direction. The tunnel headed a few degrees west of true north. It was the wrong direction for home, but with each step away from the shoggoths' realm I cared less and less. The road stretched seemingly forever, and without teleportation the miles weighed heavily upon me. We stopped to rest every four hours and had enjoyed three such spells by the time the character of the rock changed.

This seemed a reasonable omen, and we stopped for the night. By this point I'd quite lost track of time and felt a start of shocked as I looked at the traveling clock. The display read 3pm of the 18th of July. It took some concerted mental effort, but I located all the shattered fragments of my internal chronology. We'd left the sub-expedition camp in mid-afternoon of the 16th. Crossing the Mountains of Discord proved a challenged, and we didn't make its far foothills until dawn of the 17th. We'd then rested for approximately six hours before finding the underground tunnel. Within the ancient, artificial world of the Elder Things there was no day and night, no passing hours. That said, we must have spent over a day wandering its unearthly halls and labyrinthine corridors. I'd told Spike to wait two days before returning to the main camp at the Storm Horn. That meant he'd be setting of right then.

From my pack I retrieved the lone bottle of dragon fire I'd brought, along with paper and ink. The bottle flickered green and combined strangely with the gentler glow of Derpy's orb. It took an hour, but I wrote out a moderately detailed summary of what we'd found and the warnings he must deliver. Spike would take the letter south with him and make sure it reached the hooves of the right ponies. He was my number one assistant, and if I could trust anypony (or dragon) with such an important task it was him. I dearly wanted to tell him to wait for us but couldn't do so in good conscience. His task was too important to delay. Derpy, Mountain Flower, Rock Watcher and I would have to make our own way back to the main camp.

That night the dreams returned. I stood between two competing pantheons, one terrible and fair, the other fair and terrible. They were Ultimate Gods, creatures beyond mere aliens, beyond mere gods. They came from twisted spaces and altered universes, where all is blight and confusion; they were those twisted spaces and altered universes and were that blight and confusion.

Half danced and piped around the boundless daemon sultan, that Blind Idiot God who sits unthinking at the epicentre of all infinity. Half stood apart and cried out in ascetic supplication to the Beyond-One, who is at once all of space and time and yet locked beyond it.

Their joined music was all enveloping. It filled the universe. It defined the universe. It was the universe. Its interaction's birthed complex dimensions, which neither poet's words nor mathematician's notation yet exist to properly describe. It was the foundation, tower and sky. It was everything and nothing, and I was less than that when considered before it.

Patterns existed within that cosmic music of crystal spheres and Ultimate Gods. To grasp even the smallest part was to known madness. To hear it was to be torn asunder. No individual could shape or known it. No single being could cause its cosmic scope to shift. Its authors were uncaring towards all but their masters and songs. Equestria was but the smallest grain of sand on the most insignificant atoll within a universal ocean beneath even their least member's notice. And yet...

From the worshipers of the Nuclear Chaos came a message. Within the deranged beat of abominable drums and the irrational whine of malformed flutes, I heard it. Turn back, it said. Turn back.

From the priests of the Key and the Gate came a second message, encoded in gravity waves and the shape of stars, within the prime number line and the depths of pie. Go on, it said. Go on.

This time I didn't awake screaming. I couldn't have even if I wanted to. For long minutes I lay in terrifying paralysis, my muscles locked motionless, eyes staring unblinking into the long primal dark of the tunnel. In my hindbrain where perhaps the Elder Things' engineering yet lurked, I could still hear the music of the Ultimate Gods. It called and warned as one.

Our sleep cycles were highly distorted, and it wasn't until 11pm that we again set off. The rest had done me good, and my magic had recovered sufficiently to teleport again, though not to take the entire group without strain. This proved no great hindrance, and we soon devised a system of speedy travel. Derpy and Mountain Flower would fly ahead, scanning the walls for caves which might lead to the surface. Once they'd gone three or four miles, they'd use their glow orb to signal me, and I'd teleport with Rock Watcher to them. In this way I received the frequent rest I still required but also travelled with greatly enhanced swiftness.

Distance was hard to judge. In retrospect I know we travelled some 150 miles along that chthonic road, but all I knew at the time was my growing fatigue as the day wore on. 7am of the 19th found me staring ahead into the dark, watching a pinprick of light swing back and forth as Derpy and Mountain Flower raced onwards. They used much of their speed and all of their skill. The tight walls of the tunnel pressed down upon the available space like the grasping coils of a constrictor snake. It made for difficult, claustrophobic flying. At places, they could barely stretch their wings.

Suddenly they stopped. I focused, judging distance. They'd gone only two or so miles, not that far. Something queer twisted in my chest. A way out? I waited with bated breath for the signal, then it came. Long flash. Long flash. Long flash. I teleported without a second's pause.

My companions stood before a narrow gash in the wall, formed of jagged rock. It resembled hag's teeth or possibly dragon fangs. Either way, it dripped brackish water and glittered with promised menace.

"We can't squeeze through," said Mountain Flower. "But it looks to go a long way." Derpy nodded, a wide smile on her face. Her eyes did a happy dance all their own.

Again I reach a point in my tale were further detail would only distract from the message I intend to impart. Sufficient to say this: I gathered my strength and teleported Derpy, Mountain Flower, Rock Watcher and myself through the gap. After much wandering through that witch's rock and many dead ends, we found our way to the surface.

True sunlight seemed strange and alien as I stepped back into eternal winter. The cold hit me next. The eon old realm of the deathless shoggoths lacked even the pretence of a lit hearth's welcome, but it also lacked the deadly edge of the icy knives I encountered now. Aware of Rock Watcher's condition, I floated him back into the cave. My eyes watered and not just from the cold. The light felt foul, as if split, mangled and debased to some obscene purpose. I turned a slow circle, taking a panoramic view of the local area. The multi-mile high spire speared into the sky 150 miles away and beyond that were the black, cyclopean Mountains of Discord. We'd exited through a gargantuan monolith with a surface like melted wax, and it blocked my view to the north. To the sides were endless snow fields, populated by more of the queer monoliths. I knew from our flight in that they filled the cryptic plain.

"Mountain Flower," I said as I continued to scan the environment, "fly up and have a look around. Check for dangers."

"On it," she said with a happy smile and leapt into the air. Pegasi are creatures of the sky; being trapped within the Elder Things' crypt couldn't have been a pleasant experience for her. Within seconds, she became a dwindling dot against the all-encompassing white of the sky.

I followed her path for a few moments before returning to my survey, not that there was much to see. Ice and snow more ancient than ponykind filled the world. Something like a bird hung just below the cloud layer, far above even Mountain Flower. Assuming it wasn't just an odd shaped cloud, it was the first such animal I'd seen.

"Some kind of low hills north of here," Mountain Flower shouted down. "Some kind of strange ligh—"

There was no warning, no moment's grace in which I might have acted. Midway through her last word she fell from the sky like a rock, and I only just caught her with my magic in time. Even so, she bit deep into the ground, and powdered snow erupted into the air. It hung in a hazy, voluminous cloud. The shadowed outline of Mountain Flower stood inside it. She opened her mouth, and sound like the aeonian winds of deepest space wailed out. The painful notes felt like the blackest of hymns to my ears, but there was nothing I could do. The snow settled, and she stood revealed. Her wings curved up and over her back, an instinctive animal gesture to increase apparent size. Her eyes flashed back and forth, as if reading some terrible but invisible tome, and her every muscle shook. Her voice changed, the shapes of words forming in the scream.

"Error, error," she said in a voice too fast to be natural. "Mi-go attack incoming. Attempting closed time loop calculations. Error. Error. Engaging countermeasures. Launching Hounds of Tindalos protocols. Launching Gate protocols. Launching Key protocols. All protocols engaged. Error, error. Faults found in Yog-Sothoth interface. Error. Error. Mi-go attack incoming. Attempting closed time loop calculations..." It went on and on, again and again. And with each repetition she changed.

Her flesh melted like a candle left too near the fire. It ran in rivulets and gathered in gnarled lumps. It shimmered and liquefied before my horror filled eyes. It became thick and rubbery, almost plastic. Its membranous outer coating came to resemble opaque black slime. A hundred writhing tentacles rose from her, and her eyes rotted to nothing. Her cutie mark was the last to go, dissolving as if under potent acid. Within moments she became a thing out of nightmare and primal myth. She became a shoggoth and attacked.

Even with unlimited time to contemplate and unrestricted access to all our nation's great centres of learning, I still do not completely understand what happened. Some things are obvious to deduction. The low hills spied by Mountain Flower were the low hills depicted on the crystal mural, where the Elder Things built their wonder weapon in a time even ancestral memory fails to reach. Through some method of decayed industry, it reached out to Mountain Flower when she looked upon it. Using that connection, it infiltrated and suborned her mind. The Mountain Flower I knew — the brave and loyal Svalbarding pegasi who dreamed of attending a Cloudsdale university — died at the first glance. What fell to the ground was a monster; not her — never her.

Things become more complicated when explaining her transformation. The crystal mural depicts shoggoth conversion as an involved process, using special chemicals and secret genetic keys. That last I can believe the desperate Elder Things gave to their weapon, but what of the first? I have several theories but no proof.

Perhaps contrary to my initial understanding of the process, the special chemicals are not essential but rather serve a secondary role. If this is the case, they might fill any number of useful though not vital purposes, from increasing the potency of the resulting shoggoth to rendering it more susceptible to control.

Alternatively, the Elder Things' wonder weapon might simply be a construct of such immense power that it can bypass an otherwise vital step. There is precedent for such thinking. A unicorn skilled in alchemy might use her magic to remove the need for an otherwise key catalytic ingredient, for example.

A third possibility occurs to me, but it is one I am reluctant to consider. If I am correct and the Elder Things locked secret genomic potential within our cells, who is to say that potential has gone completely untapped? Evolution is a powerful force. It is perfectly conceivable that over millions of generations some of that waiting power broke loose, joining with our minds, souls and magic. If all living creatures in Equestria are already half-shoggoth, might part of an otherwise inviolate process become superfluous? Might that half-realised potential be why the Elder Things foalnapped Rock Watcher?

Such vexatious thoughts have weighed heavily upon me since my return to Equestria, but at the time I had neither the opportunity nor inclination to consider them. Mountain Flower's transformation continued as she charged towards me. Warped tentacles grew from her once head, thick rubbery things which twisted together to form a spiralling horn. From her back splayed a fan of translucent webbing, a mockery of her once wings. In that moment she resembled a blasphemous alicorn, a debased idol formed to ridicule those most harmonious of beings. She had a measure of an alicorn's power, too.

Light the colour of a fallow bruise flashed, and a titanic telekinetic wave blasted me off my hooves. I slammed into the snow and rolled to a stop, my injured ribs screaming at me. Derpy cried out in shock and threw her glow orb with a flick of her neck. It shot at Mountain Flower, the netting trailing like the tail of a comet, and exploded in pyrotechnic fury. White aetheric flames ran over Mountain Flower's debased body, but they did not burn and disappeared in moments. It did provide a distraction, however.

In a thud of displaced air, Derpy took to the sky, though not to flee. She spun as she rose, hooves stretched to gather clouds. Mere seconds after take-off, a heavy black storm cloud brooded around her. She twisted in mid-air and bucked. In an almighty crack, a lightning bolt arced towards Mountain Flower. Once again bruise-light flashed, and the lightning bolt deflected into the nearby monolith. Stone exploded where it hit, sending hundreds of razor-sharp fragments scything out. Many slashed into Mountain Flower's body. Ripples passed through her protoplasmic flesh, but she barely noticed.

Mountain Flower beat her horrific wings with a sound like howling windigos and shot into the sky. Derpy let out a panicked cried and dodged like a deranged jackrabbit, but Mountain Flower stayed on her tail. With a pained shudder that left me feeling sick to my bones, I forced myself upright and lashed out with my magic. I caught Mountain Flower in a telekinetic grip, but it felt like holding a greased eel. Her abominable body slipped and slithered, and she shot free in a shower of oily droplets.

Her amorphous form writhed against the sky as she turned her attention towards me. Bruise-light glowed from within the opaque black amoeba of her central mass, and she struck out with a second magical hammer blow. This time I was ready. Solidified wind whirled about me in a half sphere. Her spell struck, and I deflected the force. Snow for a dozen meters in each direction jumped into the air and hung as a vast vaporous mist. While unintentional on my part, it did lend me perfect cover. I dropped my shield and struck back with a colossal blow of my own. Raw telekinetic force threw her from the sky, and no oleaginous power saved her this time. She struck the ground and dug a meters deep furrow, but even that did not keep her down.

She rose from the permafrost grave, membranous wings spread wide, twisted horn glistening like a parasitic leech in the diffuse light of the sun. I gathered my power and focused it into a beam of heat. It shot from my horn, raising a column of steam as it flash vaporised the snow. Bruise-light glittered and space warped before her. My attack twisted, as if bent, and shot back towards me. Steam scolded my eyes, and I only just teleported away in time.

I reappeared to the side, panting for breath. The skill and power displayed by the transformed Mountain Flower was incredible. It was as if she wielded the abominable Alicorn Amulet, a terrible artefact whose power I can personally attest.

High above, Derpy had gathered a second storm cloud and jumped up and down on it, causing a blizzard of lightning bolts to shoot towards the earth. They struck stone and snow, but Mountain Flower stood unharmed amid the chaos.

"Please," I shouted at the top of my lungs. "Mountain Flower, don't do this." She didn't answer. Of course she didn't. As I've previously attested, the pony I knew died as soon as her eyes fell upon that fearsome weapon of a bygone aeon.

With a sweep of her horn, she took control of Derpy's storm cloud and set it slithering towards me in the shape of a gigantic serpent. Venomous fangs dripped vaporous cloud poison, and the ashen forms of long dead stars burnt in its eyes. I turned towards it, a spell at the tip of my horn, but it exploded before I could act. The bird shaped dot I'd seen earlier shot from the sky like a missile. It passed straight through the snake and angled towards Mountain Flower. She turned towards this new threat but reacted too late. It hit her in a fury of wings, hooves and feathers. It took me a long second to recognise the attacker for a pegasus and longer still to recognise it for Bingo — cartographer and member of the expedition council.

Blasphemous words of elder ages dropped from Bingo's lips. They spilled out in an unceasing tide — twisted things, ill-suited for pony throats — and few were distinct enough for me to repeat here. "Tekeli-li," was the first and regurgitated often. Stranger sounds of decidedly different character filled the gaps between its repetitions. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh", he cried as he smashed a hoof into Mountain Flower. "Tsath kai'yoth," followed as he bit at her protoplasmic body. Prior learning and subsequent research has let me recognise the providence of a scant few phrases, if not their meaning. He cursed in the abysmal tongue of the Hadopelagic Exiles and half chirped the song language of the Morrow Mountains. He spoke with some fluency the dead tongue of bygone Yadith and the Piper's Humgonian. From his lips ushered the aetheric wails of the byakhee, strange trans-solar sailors mentioned by Abdul Alhaizum, and the chitterling speech of the insectoid horrors from farthest Shaggai. In that moment he was discord personified, and Mountain Flower fell back before him, for all her power.

I can no more explain his actions than I can peer into the mind of a madpony. All I can say is this: while the dark powers of the Uncharted North stole Mountain Flower's mind, they merely twisted his. Some aberrant force drove him; it whispered knowledge necromantic and debase into his mind. It sickened his soul, and his eyes showed the damage clearly, becoming wild things. Whatever power backed him, it set him against Mountain Flower. It set him against the decaying Elder Thing wonder weapon and whatever malicious machinations it might have.

With a screeching wail, Mountain Flower took to the air, and Bingo went with her. They fought as they flew. Her shoggoth strength should have won the fight in moments, but somehow he hung on. There is strength in insanity, in the casting off of civilised restraint and welcoming the animal within. But I am not sure even that would be enough, and there are darker paths to power. In the hidden places of the cosmos exist waiting horrors — merchants perilous willing to lend strength and might for a price but always one too dear for the sound of mind to pay. They reached the cloud layer so high above, and it began to boil. Whether from conscious action of one party or some unforeseen consequence of both, a morbid storm grew around them. Rain-come-hail pelted down. Lightning flashed. Thunder struck so hard the very sky seemed to shake. A scream rang out, loud enough to be heard even over the summoned storm. There was silence.

As quick as it begun, the storm faded. It died in a bass rumble of thunder, and the clouds returned to normal. Mountain Flower did not return. Neither did Bingo. Hung with sorrow, Derpy dropped to the ground and stood silently by my side. Once again, the esoteric powers of death stole the words anypony might say.

X — Once More Beneath Equestria's Sun

X — Once More Beneath Equestria's Sun

I will admit to being sullen company as Derpy, Rock Watcher and I travelled south. The air was deathly cold and burnt my lungs with each breath. We made the journey in long translocational hops, marked only by flashes of magenta light. Derpy stayed close to my side, unwilling to risk the sky without utmost cause after the fate which befell poor Mountain Flower. I gave Rock Watcher most of my cold weather clothes and kept him close too, in order to share body heat.

The spire of the Elder Things stood as tall and true as ever as we passed by, a perfect cyclopean structure born of sophant minds of an eon past. However much damage the exploding war shoggoth wrought, that damage did not reach the outside. It had already survived five hundred million years. Looking at it, I did not doubt it would see as much again.

After some searching we located the monolith where we had stashed our flight sledge, and I dragged it out of the cave using telekinesis. It was laden down with the heavy equipment we'd been unable to take with us, and again we'd be leaving it behind. With only a single draft pegasi, weight would be critical. I piled anything not directly related to our survival into the cave, taking only a day's food and water and lightweight things such as my photographs and notes. We'd be able to resupply our consumables at the sub-expedition camp.

Derpy hitched herself without a word, I tied Rock Watcher securely down and we set off towards the towering dagger peaks of the Mountains of Discord. She never looked north once, a sensible precaution in my mind. Our return crossing was by no means easy but proceeded better than our outbound flight. The winds resumed their malicious attacks, but the light of day enabled us to endure their onslaught with greater resistance. Part of that resistance involved cutting our speed, and, in one place, dragging the sledge along a skeletal path beneath a razor-sharp gale. It was late afternoon by the time we reached their southern foothills. After the alien strangeness of the northern plateau, the relative mundanity of the southern geography came as something of a relief. As we flew, I called up the beacon locating spell, and listened to its crystalline melody. It danced and contorted through my mind, resonating with the strange music from my dream. Guided by the notes, I directed Derpy straight the sub-expedition camp.

We swooped down from the sky just as the day's light faded. Four flying karts lay quiescent on the snow, like sleeping dragons. That might have been enough to worry me, but I saw ponies moving about, bundled tight in protective garments.

As soon as we landed, I levitated Rock Watcher, and went to find Spike. He sat with Steelheart by a large communal cook pot, slowly stirring with a spoon.

"Twilight!" he said as he saw me and jumped to his feet.

"You're meant to be a day and a half gone," I said as I limped up, ribs hurting. Rock Watcher bobbed behind me, as warm and steady as my magic allowed.

"It's the strangest thing," he said with an impish grin. "I've misplaced my lucky quill, and I couldn't possibly leave without it."

I gave him a long, level look. "It's behind your ear, Spike."

He raised a hand and mimed shock. "So it is. What a fortuitous discovery. That means we can all leave in the morning. Together."

I rolled my eyes and muttered under my breath. Damn number one assistants. If you couldn't trust them to abandon you in an icy charnel wasteland, what could you trust them to do?

Doctor Steelheart saw Rock Watcher's unconscious form and frowned. "Get him to the kart, quickly." We set off together at a hurried pace. The examination lasted a tense twenty minutes. Steelheart set up an IV for fluids, and I looked away as she pushed the needle into his flesh. When done, she turned back to me and said, "He's in a coma of some kind — not responding to anything I can do. I can't do much more without a hospital.

"We'll leave first thing tomorrow," I said. "How critical is time?"

"He's stable, but we should make best speed. Now let me have a look at you."

Steelheart had of course noticed my limp straight away but practiced prioritisation. After examining my ribs she ordered me to bed at once. Since we lacked beds, she settled for a flat bench next to Rock Watcher. Her medical magic did make me feel alot better, though.

As I lay in a pleasant numbness, Spike came to see me. "Mountain Flower?" he said. There was no accusation in his voice, just sympathy. He tousled my mane with his long claws. I told him the tale as succinctly as I could. When I'd finished he said, "Bingo disappeared from the camp two nights ago. I sent ponies to look, but there was no sign, and the Svalbarding pegasi wouldn't get near the Mountains of Discord." Given the fate which befell Mountain Flower, I felt they were wise in this regard.

We left the sub-expedition camp around 10am of the 20th. It was strange to fly without constant magical effort on my part but tranquillizing too. We pushed a steady pace, not as frenzied as our northwards journey but by no means slow. Princess Celestia Land appeared below on the second day, Derpy sighted the Storm Horn at 12am of the 22nd and we made the main base by 1pm. The ponies of the camp greeted our news with sombre dismay, though some of it had already reached them by dragon fire bottle. I could barely stand to look at them. Whenever I did, I saw their cutie marks dissolve as if under acid. I saw their bodies melt like wax. I saw the shoggoths who lurked within their hearts break free. Most of all I saw Mountain Flower's eyes, shimmering with the hate she never had the chance to show me in life.

Striking the main camp was a lengthy affair. We'd arrived in the Uncharted North on the 6th of June, 46 days ago. Ponies had settled in. Still, most of the expedition was eager to leave after learning of the slaughter, and I had my documents, granting me authority to order them to do so. That was excuse enough for even a stubborn pony.

We left on the 24th, taking virtually the entire base with us. With the equipment left abandoned at the sub-expedition camp and all the food we'd eaten, the Aeolipyle's holds were empty voids, stomachs just waiting to be filled. As before we spent the night at Svalbarding, and I dug deep into expedition funds to pay death benefits to the families of our deceased pegasi hirelings. The truculent one winged factor gave me a hard look as I handed over the bits, and I didn't know what to say. After that I went personally to the telegraph station and sent the messages which needed to be sent. The berry wine began to taste better as I started on my second bottle in the small hours of the morning; it let me forget. We left with the dawn and sailed hard south. Without the wind and hazards of the Uncharted North, we travelled fast and made Canterlot by 9pm the same day. I left Spike to supervise the unloading of the airship, ordered Doctor Steelheart to see Rock Watcher to the hospital and went straight to the royal palace. Some things I couldn't let myself avoid.

Despite the hour, the major-domo ushered me past the guards and to the reception room of Celestia's chambers. At other times I've been glad for this privilege, but right then I cursed it with all my soul. A minute after I sat down on the plush sofa, Princess Celestia entered the room. I rose and bowed my head.

Even with my eyes averted, I could feel her golden warmth against my coat and other, more fundamental things. Anypony who's been in her presence knows of what I speak; it's a divine radiance that makes ponies want to do better, that makes ponies think they can do better. "I," I said and choked to silence, but muteness wasn't an option; I had to tell her, even if my heart burst from doing so, from causing so pure a creature pain.

"Dead," I said looking up. "Forty ponies. I couldn't, didn't save them. I was stupid and not good enough." My body shook, sobs and terror racking my form.

For a single brief moment I saw an infinite deep well of sorrow behind Celestia's eyes, then she locked it away. She swept forward and drew me close, cocooning me with hooves and wings. Slowly, in the words of a mother, she soothed my pain. "Shoo," she said. "You tried your hardest. I'm sure it wasn't your fault." Her touch spread the warmth of the sun through my flesh. I felt like warm clay after a hot day, but this paradoxically made me shake all the harder. I was meant to help Celestia — accept her pain and condemnation — but she helped me instead. She'd pushed aside her own pain to ameliorate mine. "Everything's going to be okay."

Once I stopped shaking, I told Princess Celestia the full story, leaving nothing out. No detail was too minor and no mistake glossed over. In retrospect, I accepted more blame than was rightly mine, but she didn't judge.

The following week proved very busy. I slept at my parents' house, in my old room, with its old bed and decorations from a long-gone time of my life. The palace staff would have gladly prepared me an apartment, but I needed the comfort of family right them. First thing the next morning I checked in with Spike to make sure the unloading preceded well and everypony was well. Once done, I headed to the Canterlot Constabulary offices and spent the rest of the day filling out death reports. They took my gathered evidence and conclusions with a solemn stoicism, and I promised to be available if they had any further questions. Come the 27th, I laid the same evidence before Canterlot University's own court of enquiry. As tradition demanded, they would carry out their own review of the fatalities. As of writing, they are still weighing the evidence. Over the following days I bounced between these three duties and a dozen more. The administrative burden of winding down the expedition seemed almost more than setting it up, but of course I was shouldering it alone this time. Whenever the burden seemed too much I needed only think of Bingo's insane eyes or Rock Watcher's infirmity.

Right away I realised the full truth of the expedition must be kept as close as possible. The slaughter of the sub-expedition had already run like wildfire through the newspapers, but only a few discreet individuals knew the cause and even fewer knew what I found on the far side of the Mountains of Discord. Nothing must wake the sleeping shoggoths. Among those I told were my friends. Applejack and Rarity arrived the evening of the 27th, and though I had little time to spend with them, I appreciated their presence greatly. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie trickled in over the following days.

On August 1st, I went to Princess Celestia again and outlined what I thought we should do. She listened, considered carefully and agreed. There would be a royal ban on all travel north of the Mountains of Discord. Furthermore, we'd work to discourage further geological or archaeological expeditions to even the southern portions of the Uncharted North. Opening the silver egg had loosed four monsters on the world, and, worse, their first act had been to invade the shoggoths' realm; what else might lie waiting, locked in ice and rock? We must weigh all our actions with greatest care. Move too swiftly or forcefully and foalish ponies would wonder what great secret we hid. Reveal all to those not equipped to deal with such knowledge and the shoggoths' realm might become a treasure to be tapped or raided. Too many among Equestria's elite would poke a hornets' nest to see what happened.

The full details of the expedition would be locked within the university's restricted stacks, with further copies stored in the Royal Archives and Canterlot Library under similar access constraints. I also agreed to write this document to preface those reports, as a ward and warning. To destroy any knowledge absolutely is impossible and ill-advised. Ponies yet to come would read the reports and would learn the terrible secret of the plateau beyond the Mountains of Discord. This document exists to stop ponies of science looking passed the risks and seeing only reward.

In preparation I once more dove into volumes of forbidden law and eldritch providence. I researched, crosschecked, made lists and constructed spider web diagrams. In the weeks it took me, I came to understand more of what I'd found in those eon old tunnels and corridors. The knowledge did not sit easily with me, but I had no choice.

Some questions remain, and I will do my best to answer them here.

The actions and revival of the Elder Things from the silver egg is the greatest remaining mystery. How did they survive their five hundred million year imprisonment? How did the male live without a head? Heart-make — a professor in the folklore department and glutton of knowledge disquieting — pointed me towards a possible explanation within the logbooks of Wayward Leaf, a underappreciated scholar of sophant races the world over. While visiting the far off Morrow Hills he recorded and provided translations for many of their songs. Within a chapter titled 'Black Hymns of the Discordian Sect' I made a most interesting discovery.

The hymn had a poetic rhythm, even in the crude translation. It spoke of 'Old Ones' who created all life as an accident or joke. These Old Ones were creatures of flesh and spirit but longed for the sweet song of the machine. To achieve this, they bound 'mechanical daemons' to their bodies. This, I believe, refers to the Elder Things' practice of technological augmentation. The hymn went on to extol the greatness of these daemons. It claimed that when an Old One died, his daemon awoke from its slumber and became a god, to be worshiped by the still living Old Ones. My study of the Elder Things' history does not support a group of semi-divine machine spirits, but I can see kernels of truth in the idea.

What if the Elder Things' augmentations contained a form of artificial intelligence? In times of danger, such as great injury or apparent death, this intelligence would take over control of the body. It would defend that body from threats and then travel towards the nearest source of help. Elder Thing medical science was as incredible as all their technology. Even medically dead, revival may have been possible.

This explains the almost robot like behaviour of the Elder Things — simultaneously very simple and very advanced. They saw the ponies of the sub-expedition as a threat, so killed them. They had to go home, so they headed north and fought passed shoggoths to get there. Rock Watcher's foalnap is the only complicating factor. It speaks of forward planning and complex directives. In the end, though, I understand only the barest aspect of the Elder Thing psyche. Perhaps they were programed to capture a single attacker for intelligence purposes? The Elder Things in question date from the interregnum between Yeb-Ineat and the Mi-go. The residents of that forgotten era were hardened by their near extinction and yet retained the full might of their technology, a puissant combination.

If I am correct in my thinking, what does it mean for the two Elder Things yet intact? The male without a head and the female I threw aside both existed when last I saw them. Did they fall to the war shoggoth's death cry or subsequent attacks? Or had they survived and found whatever prize lay at the end of the corridor? I do not know and doubt I ever will. The knowledge that those two elder beings might yet live is no comfort at all when exhaustion drives me from my work and to the hungry grip of my bed.

My dreams represent a second mystery — less vital, perhaps, but all the more confusing in the lurid fashion of the unconscious. Strange visions plagued me in the Uncharted North and have continued to do so intermittently since my return. I saw eldritch metaphors of stellar engineering and pantheons of mad gods. At times those cosmic deities spoke to me. At other points, part of me spoke to them. Is it the height of arrogance to think that such beings would deign to touch one lone pony, even the wielder of an Element of Harmony such as myself? Perhaps my slumbering mind saw patterns in chaos and attached meaning? That is the logical, rational inspiration, but still I wonder.

Of all the dreams the longest and most vivid was the vision I experienced upon the chthonic road shortly before Mountain Flower met her fate. In it, two groups of unlimited power treated with me. One commanded I turn back, the other that I go on. Even in the wallowed depths of my conceited arrogance I do not believe my alleged benefactors cared for my personal fate. That leaves only something I might accomplish — a boon, task, ritual or action. The most likely candidate in this regard is the Elder Things' wonder weapon, but how either group wished me to interact with that fearsome construct of a bygone age I do not know. Despite my readings in dreams, prophecy and clairvoyance, my nightmares remain as incomprehensible today as they did in the numbing grip of sleep.

Rock Watcher's fate is not a happy one. For all that Mountain Flower died saving him, he has not recovered. The hospital staff preformed every test and treatment they could think of, but not a one produced appreciable results. I'm informed he's not in a coma, but rather some form of deep meditative hibernation. The patterns formed by his autonomic magic mimic those of hibernating animals — focused inwards like an inverted sun. In this state his body needs far less water, food and even air. Indeed, the hospital needed to massively scale back his fluid drip after he near hyper-hydrated.

The leading theory postulates some near-miraculous response of autonomic magic, of the kind occasionally exhibited by earth ponies in response to extreme trauma. They say to survive his foalnap by unthinking captors, he did it to himself. While I would like to believe in this theory, I have my doubts. The Elder Things and their strange sciences seem a more likely culprit to me. And, as I've said before, hellish Elder Thing science lurks within the heart of every pony. Might that not include ancient leashes and shackles?

After a few weeks the university had him transferred to a long-term care facility. I visited him once but did not linger. He just lies there, on his institutional bed, dead yet also alive. No one speaks loudly near his room for reasons they cannot name.

Pinkie Pie kept me sane through my work, dragging me to bars, night-stables, art galleries and museums. I don't think the last two agreed with her overly much, but she went for my sake. I solved another mystery during a visit to Longhorn Museum. In their modern collection, I found an exhibit on Glory Hooves. If you'll recall, Glory Hooves headed one of the major past Uncharted North expeditions. Next to her favourite hat, a loop of rope and a whip was a small black-and-white photograph, depicting her return from the North. Glory was a tall and powerful mare. Next to her stood a smaller, younger pegasus, wall-eyed and with a bubbles cutie mark. Glory Hooves. Derpy Hooves. The resemblance was obvious. Mother and daughter. It explained why Derpy joined the expedition; she wanted to follow in her mother's hoofsteps.

I met with Derpy for my work a few days later, and she happily confirmed my hypothesis. As it turned out, she'd assumed I knew. We talked through our journey together, with particular focus on the terrifying fight against the transformed Mountain Flower. I think we both benefited from the experience, though me more than her. While immediate horrors fazed Derpy as they did anypony, she possessed some remarkable quality of character which let her return to normal with alacrity. I envied her easy smile and happy eyes. When I awoke gasping from fevered dreams, I barely felt a pony.

On the final fate of Mountain Flower and Bingo I can only speculate. The dark powers of the Uncharted North warped them and stole thought and reason. It would be best for all concerned if they died, either in the storm or by subsequent exposure, but I fear I may be influenced by Elpis of pegasi mythology in this regard. No bodies fell to earth where we could see them, though Rock Watcher's condition meant we did not linger to search. It is possible that one or both survived. If so, they should be considered highly dangerous. Bingo saved my life, but he didn't do so because of moral character or altruism. He serves a new master now — a conductor of cosmic horror beholden to no moral code recognised by the great philosophers of history. I doubt even the most advanced medical science could return him to sanity now. Mountain Flower is no longer pony at all.

And so I will end as I began. Should another expedition to the Uncharted North be planned, take heed of my words: Do not go. Do not ignore Princess Celestia's edict or attempt to work around its restrictions. Look to its spirit and my warning. The sleeping terrors beyond the Mountains of Discord must never be awoken, and the insidious power of those icy planes will turn even well-intentioned actions towards their dark ends. Study this document. Weight my reputation. I have glimpsed the monsters of the north and would wish them upon no pony. Do not go.

Author's Note

The end