The Magic of Animosity

Trixie sighed hard.  “Yes, yes, just add it to the pile, please.”

The colt tossed his personal lucky horseshoe onto the ever-growing pile of gifts and supplies.  The poor little wagon Trixie was given to carry it all in was now bending in at the middle.  Trixie had to use her magic plus a little muscle just to get the wagon’s wheels to move.  In only one hour, well over half of Appleloosa came by Trixie to give her and Twilight their regards and to pray for a safe journey down into the dark pit still in the Sheriff’s office.  Twilight had said she’s be ready to go in an hour, so Trixie was slowly making her way back to the hospital; honestly, it was more of a wooden house with some basic medical supplies in it than it was a hospital.

The hospitality of these ponies was starting to get on Trixie’s nerves, not to mention the rumor that spread like wildfire that she and Twilight were going to brave the odds and venture down into the deep pit created by those ‘Odium’ creatures.  What are they, nuts?  Trixie had never considered even attempting to go down there, but the more and more gifts she received, the more and more it appeared inevitable she and Twilight were going to have to do so.  Going down a black pit is one thing, but to go down accompanied by only Twilight Sparkle?  It wasn’t a pretty thought for Trixie.

By the time Trixie reached the front door of the hospital, the pile on the wagon was twice as high as she was, excluding the hat.  Half a dozen ponies had followed behind her, cheering her on and putting back anything that fell out the wagon behind her.  Trixie was just about to open the door before the handle glowed a purplish-pink, turned, and opened up to show one battered Twilight Sparkle.  She looked no better than she did an hour ago.

Twilight was surprised to be greeted with Trixie lugging a wagon full of miscellaneous objects.  “What’s with all the stuff?” Twilight asked the magician.

“We haven’t even done anything yet, and we’re local heroes,” Trixie sighed.

Twilight glanced behind the wagon and saw several ponies cheering for her and Trixie.  The purple pony smiled.  “How have you been enjoying yourself?  Everypony here is pretty kind, aren’t they?”

“Pft,” Trixie replied snidely; she lowered her voice a level before saying, “Nopony will leave me alone!  This is getting really annoying!  I’d tell you to pull the wagon for a bit, but…” she looked Twilight up and down, “you look simply awful.  I wouldn’t want you to get any worse than you are right now.”

Twilight couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a nasty comment or a generous act.  Considering Trixie, perhaps it was a little of both; or maybe she was trying to be snide, but ended up accidentally generous because of it.  “Did anything happen while I was in bed?”

“Nothing interesting.  Although, everypony here is apparently under the impression that we’re going to brave that lightless hole-in-the-ground at the Sheriff’s office.”

“What?  They think we’re going to go in there?  You couldn’t even see the bottom!”

“Glad to hear you share my opinion,” Trixie replied.  “I was worried you were actually going to take a liking to the idea.”

“Well…” Twilight began, putting a hoof to her chin.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie will NOT, I repeat, NOT, be going down there!  It’d be suicide!”

“You don’t know that.”

“Look at yourself!”  Trixie waved a hoof at Twilight’s battered body.  “That was only from four of those creatures, and you had two other ponies with you!  I lucked out with the one that attacked me, but we have absolutely no idea how to fight these things, what they’re capable of, or just how many lurk deep underground!”

Twilight’s plain expression curled into a smile.  “You just acknowledged that you lucked out with the Odium you fought.”

Trixie jolted upright, but immediately collected herself and became calm again.  “It was just an expression, Twilight Sparkle—a figure of speech.  Besides, there’s no such thing as ‘luck’.  There is only skill, which I have plenty of.”

“Yeah, sure.”  Twilight shoved the matter aside to discuss more important topics.  “If we aren’t going down the hole, what are we going to do?  The most we can do for this town aboveground is protect it from another attack, not that anything else is actually attacking anyways.  Trixie, we need to get that black box back; I know it has something to do with everything going on, and if we want to solve this mess, we have to get it back!”

Trixie knew that Twilight was right, but she didn’t want to admit it.  Nor did she want to venture into a pitch-black, unknown cave with no one except Twilight Sparkle for company, but it wasn’t as if Trixie really had a choice in the matter.  “If we’re going to do so, we need to make a plan.”

Twilight perked up a bit after seeing that Trixie was actually being cooperative.  “Yes, a plan…a plan…um, how many Odium do you think may be down there?”

“I’d rather not think about it,” Trixie replied dryly.  The potential of sheer numbers really was their largest concern, but again, it wasn’t like there were any other options besides pursuing their perpetrators.  “I think we should just assume that we’ll have enough ability to keep out of sight.  Besides, we’re unicorns—magic is commonplace to us, and there are certainly a large amount of stealth spells out there!”

The two unicorns began to walk towards the Sheriff’s office, which had by now been boarded up to keep any curious onlookers from entering.  Trixie was still lugging the wagon behind her.  “There are probably one or two useful things in this heap of junk,” Trixie said while looking behind her at the load, scolding it with her eyes; she didn’t enjoy all the kindness and generosity of this town’s ponies.  “We should shuffle through all of this and leave behind all we don’t need—I have no idea how long we may be down there, so…”

Another problem that hadn’t really been considered until now.  Twilight looked down at the ground.  “There’s no telling what lies beneath this town.  If I were to take a guess, based on the sounds of their movements underground that I heard earlier, it’s most likely a complex of random tunnels—like what you’d find in an ant farm, or something.”

Trixie gave Twilight an amused look.  “Oh really?  ‘Based on the sounds of their movements’?  You seriously overdo the whole ‘brainiac’ routine, Twilight Sparkle.”

“It’s not a ‘routine’,” Twilight snapped back.  “It’s called logic, Trixie; perhaps you could try it out sometime instead of having me do all the thinking between the two of us.”

Reaching the sealed-up door of the Sheriff’s office, Trixie stopped pulling the wagon and collapsed onto the ground with a large sigh.  After giving herself a minute to rest, both she and Twilight began to go through the small mountain of gifts.  Unfortunately for the girls, just about nine out of every ten items were all but useless—many items were good luck charms, novelties, or even the exact same item that they just looked at.  If they had a bit for every length of rope or crowbar they found in that pile of junk…

Twilight cocked an eyebrow at some of the things she and Trixie were pulling out from the pile.  “Exactly whose idea was it to give us a stained-glass mug?”

Trixie looked up from the poem she was reading to look at it.  “It, ah, certainly is…uh, hm.”

“Do they think we have an actual use for any of these novelties?” Twilight asked aloud.  Trixie only shrugged and went back to the small poem written for her and Twilight, though Trixie read it as if it were just for her.  Twilight gave the mug another once-over before placing it in the rather large ‘don’t bring’ pile.  “Do half these ponies even know what we’re even doing?  Then again, I suppose it’s best that everypony doesn’t freak out.  That would only make things worse.”

Trixie picked up a fuzzy pink quill from the junk pile and scribbled out a certain unicorn’s name several times throughout the poem before folding it up and stuffing it into one of her saddlebags; she was carrying the two bags given to her by the soft-spoken mare earlier, the one that had started this whole ‘gift-giving’ business.  “I’m surprised that these ponies have taken the fact that they’re sectioned off from the rest of the world with no more than a grain of salt.  Just look around.”  The two glanced up from the little fortress of junk they’d created to look at the passersby.  Most citizens looked no more than a tad bit fearful; most looked a little annoyed.

“I think they don’t realize how deep of a situation we’re all in,” Twilight replied.  “But ignorance is bliss, and I don’t see any reason to snap them out of their delusion.”

“Hmph,” Trixie huffed.  “What annoys me is that they all expect us to fix everything.  They're taking us for granted, probably because we’re ‘all-powerful unicorns’ or some dumb thing like that.”

A few more minutes passed without any conversation, and the two unicorns had all but a very small assortment of useful items to bring with them, half of it being food.  Twilight slipped on her own saddlebags from when she came to Appleloosa, and she and Trixie split the load into their respective bags.

It was only this morning that I entered Appleloosa, Twilight realized, and now it feels as though days have gone by.

Trixie tossed aside the ‘DO NOT ENTER’ sign tacked to the planks covering the front door of the Sheriff’s office.  Encasing the nailed-in wood with her magic, Trixie slowly yanked the planks off from the wall.  She removed the last plank and opened the door.  The lights inside were off, and there was no natural light coming in through the windows, which were boarded up as well.  The main reason this had been done was to prevent anything that may come out of the hole from getting out of the Sheriff’s office.

Trixie dipped her head past the doorframe and looked around inside.  Seeing a light switch inside right next to the door, Trixie flipped it on, but nothing happened. I suppose that fight destroyed all the lights in here.  It certainly looks like a brawl went down.  Trixie had seen the room earlier, but had only gotten a quick glimpse of it.  Now that she had a better look at the room, plus the darkness it was shrouded in, made Trixie uneasy.

She turned back to Twilight.  “Are you positive you want to go through with this?”

“Of course I am,” the scratched-up purple pony replied.  “I made a promise to Braeburn—to Appleloosa, to Princess Celestia!  We have no other choice, Trixie.  We’re GETTING that box BACK.”

Trixie looked back into the dark room uneasily, then she turned back to Twilight, and then back to the room.  “Very well, let’s go!  We’re not making any progress sitting here!”

Trixie lit her horn as she walked inside, sidestepping large splinters of wood and a shard of glass here and there.  Not far behind was Twilight, who also lit her horn upon entering.  Trixie was walking around the room, taking in all there was to see.  Twilight, on the other hand, didn’t look like she wanted to familiarize herself with the sight.

“Can we please continue down?” Twilight asked to Trixie, who was on the other side of the hole.  There was a slight pain in her tone of voice.

Trixie looked over to Twilight, then down the hole.  “I doubt we can simply jump down—who knows how deep that hole is?”  Glancing around, Trixie noticed a piece of wood about the size of her hoof and picked it up with her magic, then moved it over the large hole and let it go.  Both she and Twilight gave a small sigh of relief when they heard the clunk of wood on rock not two seconds after it had dropped down.

“Well, that’s not too deep; think we can jump down?” Trixie asked her studious associate.

Twilight didn’t like that idea, especially considering how she was already pretty banged up as it was.  Looking around the scraps on the floor, Twilight eventually laid eyes on the planks that Trixie had removed just outside the entrance.  Picking them up with her magic and placing them edge-to-edge, Twilight effectively made a floating platform.  Jumping on the platform while supporting it with her own magic, Twilight then moved it over to Trixie.  “We don’t have all day,” Twilight replied, beckoning the magician to get on board.

Hesitating at first, Trixie eventually made a leap for the platform, almost knocking Twilight off when she landed.  “Whoops,” Trixie plainly apologized.

After giving Trixie the stink-eye for a moment, Twilight began to descend their support to the floor of the tunnel below.  Thankfully, the attackers from earlier had apparently escaped the same way they had come, so there was only one way to go deeper into the tunnel.  Twilight continued forward using her magic stand to transport her and Trixie onward.  The tunnel was slanted downward, and the deeper they went, the colder and damper it seemed to become.  Trixie got a slight shiver; “In hindsight, I suppose we shouldn’t have tossed that knitted blanket…” the azure pony complained.

The tunnel itself was a winding tubular hole, the sides of the cave being round and rather smooth, as if it had gone through years of erosion, but it also had a fair amount of bumps and waves to it.  How on Earth did they dig a hole in this way? Twilight thought.  Condensation built up on the ceiling and the walls, and every so often a stray cold drip of groundwater hit one of the ponies’ faces.

Five minutes after they had initially entered the hole, Twilight stopped suddenly.  There was no longer only one way to go; the unicorns had found themselves in a four-way junction between tunnels, none of them looking any different from the other.

“Great,” Trixie immediately began to grumble, “now what do we do?”

“Perhaps if we just stay here for a bit,” Twilight began, “we’ll hear or see something at the end of one of the tunnels that’ll hint towards where the black box is.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Trixie replied crudely.

Twilight glared at Trixie, then dispersed her magic on the platform, causing the two to fall a yard onto the ground.  “Fine, then—YOU take control, and choose which way we go.”

“Erm…”  Trixie began to stutter, but was immediately interrupted by a massive groaning, coming from deep within the tunnel on their left.  It was a very haunting sound, a mix between a cry of pain and bark of malice.  The very sides of the tunnel shuddered with the long noise.  After it stopped, Twilight and Trixie paused and looked back at each other, wide-eyed.  “…Let’s NOT go there.”

“Oh-ho,” Twilight replied amused, as she re-took control of the platform and turned to the left tunnel, “we’re DEFINITELY going there.”

“Twilight Sparkle, you are insane.”

“We’re here to investigate, Trixie, and there’s no better place to look than towards the big creepy groaning noise!”

“You’re testing fate with every passing minute!”  Trixie lowered her voice as sounds of industry in the distance hit her ears.  “Do you hear that?  How are we supposed to blend in there?  By the sounds of it, there must be hundreds of those creatures working down there!”

With a roll of her eyes, Twilight’s horn became engulfed in another layer of her magic, and her body and the platform’s visibility was instantly halved.  Trixie looked slightly astonished, and Twilight looked over to her from the corner of her eyes.  “Do you want me to do you, too?”

“Trixie can take care of HERSELF, thank you.”  Turning away from Twilight, Trixie looked up at the ceiling as she tried to remember how exactly an invisibility spell was produced.  Guessing on a random choice, her horn glowed bright blue and she too became only half-opaque.  Trying to one-up Twilight, though, Trixie was noticeably…less noticeable.

The sounds of breaking of rock became louder and louder as Twilight and Trixie neared the source.  They both turned off the light from their horns so as to not draw attention, and they put more effort into their invisibility spells, turning completely invisible by the time they reached the tunnel’s exit.

What little the two unicorns could see made their jaws drop.

Not a single thing could be seen amongst the pitch-black of the cave, save for the hundreds of thousands of pairs of white, pupil-less eyes moving amongst the apparently massive cave.  In the distance, behind the multiple small, pony-sized eyes was a single pair of enormous ones, staring emotionless at the activity going on around it.

To get a better look, Twilight and Trixie gave their eyes a night-vision enchantment.  The cave was huge, and thousands of black, pony-shaped Odium were moving, marching, and digging.  There was a lot of digging going on, all done by the bare hooves of the black beasts.  At the other end of the cave, donning the massive white eyes was an equally massive sphere of pure black spite.  It was one huge ball, its surface completely smooth and flawless.  There were only three protrusions on it—a wavy, tail-like base, which flowed into the ground below it like smoke; and two twig-like arms, which on the end of each set a gigantic, four-fingered claw.  Despite its massive size—from top of the sphere to the bottom, at least five stories—it appeared weightless, and hovered twenty feet above the ground, only supported by the wisp of smoke tipped on the very surface of the stone floor.  There was a considerable space surrounding it, and the walls by its left and right appeared scratched up to the point of collapse.

“Trixie…” Twilight whispered, at awe at what she was viewing, “I think this is going to be much harder than we ever imagined.”