Penumbra: Friendship Is Horror

The cold of the Crystal Empire paled in comparison to what lay beyond the Crystal Mountains. The true definition of a wasteland spread out in all directions. It was nothing but endless stretches of snow covered ice and blistering winds hurling the jagged pieces of frost at blazing speeds, capable of cutting into the flesh of the six ponies, if not for their thick winter attire.

They were like five colored dots in the snow, all walking in a row as the wind howled around them. Though, from what could be seen, a hole appeared in the middle, as all but Rarity stood out drastically in the snow due to their outfits being similarly colored to themselves. Their faces were masked by thick goggles, scarves, and a hood, covering up every inch so the hostile environment couldn’t get to them.

“How far are we!?” yelled Rainbow from the end of their line, staying back there to make sure she could help any of her friends if something was to happen.

“Not much further!” yelled Applejack back at her from the front, putting her full faith into the directions and coordinates they had deciphered from the few maps in the bundle of papers.

“Twilight, can’t you do something about this abysmal weather?” said Rarity with a shivering voice as she tried to somehow disappear more into the warm folds of her much larger and more extravagant outfit.

“Controlling weather like this isn’t as easy as you might think, Rarity!” groaned Twilight, barely being able to see Applejack in front of her through the sheer wall of snow hurling through the air. “The wasteland isn’t like Equestria. Here the weather moves on its own.”

“Well then, I believe we have to seek rescue from this terrible weather soon, or we’re bound to freeze!” whimpered Rarity.

“Hold on everypony, Ah’ think Ah’ see somethin’,” said Appeljack with her squinted eyes focused on a blurry gray object among the dunes of snow.

It wasn’t particularly elevated. Though still tall enough to make it obvious that somepony or something had carved into one of the larger ice dunes to make a tunnel, where some shelter from the storm could at least be achieved. It was at the very end that a metallic handle of sorts stuck out even through the frozen ground.

“Brrr! It’s gotten so cold that even my mane is frozen solid,” said Pinkie after having flipped her hood back down so she could hoofwarm her frozen hair.

“Mine too…” whimpered Fluttershy. “I don’t know what we’ll do if it gets much worse than this up here.”

“Oh come on. It’s not that bad, my mane is just fine,” scoffed Rainbow while grinning.

“That’s because ya barely got any mane to begin with,” retorted Applejack as she locked eyes with Rainbow, both of them finding a mutual understanding of fun with their jabs at each other.

“Okay, I think that’s enough kidding around you two,” added Twilight after having stepped up on a small pile of snow to keep herself elevated above the rest as she became the focal point. “It’ll get colder once night settles in. We won’t be able to survive if we get caught in a snowstorm at night out here. In there we can be safe from it. Applejack, what is it you saw?”

“Ah’ think it’s metal, Twilight,” answered Applejack, while the other four ponies gather around Twilight.

“Does it matter what it is?!” groaned Rainbow. “We gotta get into cover or the storm will get us! Let’s just go.”

Rainbow didn’t wait for the others. She did, however look, over her shoulder to make sure the others were following as she now led the way into the dunes, making talking a lot easier with the wind blocked out. Approaching the metallic object helped reveal it for what it was, a frozen hatch.

“Look! AJ was right! That is totally the kind of hatch I would use if I was to make a super-secret underground government lair,” chirped Pinkie as she bounced around the thing.

“It’s stuck!” groaned Rainbow as she futilely attempted to turn the metal wheel on the hatch. “Hhnng! Argh! It’s frozen solid… A little help?”

“Let me take care of that,” said Applejack before turning around to give the icy layer growing on the wheel a hard firm kick, shattering it into a million pieces. “Try it now.”

With only a little more elbow grease, the wheel turned with greater ease now that the ice had been broken. The screeching sound of the wheel was the only thing distracting Rainbow Dash from the overly smug smile on Applejack’s face, an expression she was very reluctant to look at, even if what was beneath the hatch was far less pleasant.

Mostly darkness awaited them. The hatch led to a rusty metal ladder which led down to what the six presumed to be earth. A mixture of metal and wood aligned the walls around the ladder, and it stretched far into the pitch black darkness outside of the ring of light seeping in through the hatch.

“Applejack, are you sure this is the place? It looks positively dreadful. I can’t imagine anypony working down there…” complained Rarity as she took a step away from the hatch.

“Yeah, Ah’m pretty sure it is,” answered Applejack as she once more looked over the map, and double checked the path which Twilight had helped plan. “This is actually the place they worked… But, Ah’ don’t understand… This looks like some kind of abandoned mine.”

“Abandoned mine or not, we need to get out of this cold weather!” snarled Rainbow as she pushed Applejack away from the hatch. “I’m not scared of the dark, and neither should any of you.”

“Rainbow, wait!” yelled Pinkie, but she was too late, Rainbow had already jumped into the hole.

“It’s perfectly safe down here, I can even see some stuff!” said Rainbow, her voice echoing through the room and out into the colder air outside.

“Dashie! Are you crazy?! That kind of behavior is really dangerous. There’s a safety ladder on the side of the wall to climb down on,” said Pinkie as she demonstrated it being there with a hoof. “Oh, and what kind of stuff is down there. No, no! Don’t tell me, I want to be surprised.”

With a little giggle and a snort, Pinkie grabbed onto the ladder as she climbed down to Rainbow Dash, not being even the slightest bit scared of whatever could be down there. The remaining four ponies gave each other tentative looks as they made up their minds to join Pinkie and Rainbow down in the hole. Surely, it was better than staying outside while the storm was picking up.

With another loud screech, the hatch was closed once again, leaving Twilight’s magic as the only source of light down there. With a light source scattering all around them, the room became a lot clearer. Wooden pillars supported the heavy ceiling of ice and rock above them. Along the wooden planks and metal chain fences were racks for mining pickaxes, wooden shelves with a fair bit of digging equipment stored away, mostly hardhats, boots, and ration packs, but there were a few flare potions.

“I really don’t think we should be here…” whimpered Fluttershy as she kept herself in the back of the group, staying as close to the ladder as physically possible. “It looks… haunted…”

“Oh silly, I thought I already taught you all about how to overcome your fears,” said Pinkie as she patted Fluttershy on the head. “I guess I need to sing the song once more! When I was a litte fi-“

Without warning, the entire room started to shake. The tremors were accompanied with a loud, yet strangely muffled roar echoing from far below their hooves. The minor earthquake only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to stop Pinkie from singing and for all of them to gather up in a pile of protective hugs.

“W-what was that!?” asked Rainbow.

“Whatever it was… it sounded very angry,” said Applejack.

“Would you all calm down…? There’s a natural explanation for everything here,” said Twilight. “What we just experienced was nothing more than a normal earthquake. This place has ice running through the rocks, and it goes far, far down where the friction makes it so hot that it becomes a gas, making the entire structure unstable. When it all shifts around, the gas is released and it’s what’s causing those weird sounds.”

“Oh… really? That does make a lot of sense,” mumbled Fluttershy hesitantly while still clinging to Pinkie’s side.

“Nothing to be scared of. It’s just a really dark and weird looking mining facility. What could possibly be wrong down here?” asked Pinkie as she at the same time made everypony feel more worried, and strangely enough, less worried.

“Right… Well, surely this can’t be the place,” said Rarity, pushing open a heavily worn-out wooden door to get a glimpse of what was on the other side. “It’s just so… plain and dreadful looking…”

The room Rarity looked into was filled with more wooden shelves with food and equipment stored away. Though, for all the shelves there in there, most of them were completely empty, and even some of the tall wooden frames had fallen over to stay slanted as they leaned on each other.

“This place looks like it’s been abandoned for decades!” exclaimed Rainbow as she dared to move further away from Twilight’s bright light. “And this place only has two rooms.”

The second door in the room was a bit further away from the group, and through the top part of the wooden door, Rainbow Dash was capable of scanning the room through the metal bars making up the top part of the door. Nothing but dark, cold ground and wooden crates appeared to be in the room. Well, with one exception: a large metallic thing protruding from the ground could just barely be made out in the darkness.

“Hey! I think I found a way further into this mine.” Rainbow’s excitement for adventure had once again found a hoofhold in her, despite the creepy atmosphere lingering all around them. “What the hay? it’s locked!”

“You can’t expect everything to work just fine when it’s this old and decayed, Rainbow,” said Twilight in a lecturing tone. “There could be a number of reasons for why the door isn’t working. Perhaps something is blocking it on the other side, or maybe the metal lock is broken from rust.”

“Ah’ sure it ain’t nothin’ that a bit of buckin’ can’t fix.” With a wide smirk, and heavy steps, Applejack approached the door to prepare one strong kick to break it open, but was stopped by Twilight.

“Wait! Wasn’t it clear before that this place is geologically unstable? We should be careful about kicking in doors or anything else that could cause a collapse of the cave. I say this requires a touch of magic.”

“Fine…” sighed Applejack as she lowered her hind-legs back onto the ground so she could step aside. “Have at it, Twilight.”

Twilight’s horn glowed softly as her magic inspected the door

“hhmm… something is on the other side,” mumbled Twilight before a loud scraping sound echoed through the room as she pulled the object to the side.

“Sounds like a wooden crate,” chirped Pinkie.

“Well, that’s because it IS a wooden crate, Pinkie,” said Rainbow, watching the dark figure being shoved away which allowed Rainbow to easily push open the creaking door.

Twilight was the first to enter the room, after her followed Rainbow, and then the rest in a tightly packed group. The light from Twilight’s horn allowed them a better view of the dark room, and it, like the one before it, was covered with metal and wood along the walls, dirty snow and soil on the ground, and a shelf with equipment on it. The only thing different about it was the rather large metal hatch in the floor.

“I have to say that this place is only getting more and more dreadful by each room. How could anypony have wanted to live or work in a place like this?” shuttered Rarity as she imagined herself working in the dark and damp environment of the mine.

“Didn’t ya already try that once with those diamond dogs?” asked Applejack while grinning faintly.

“Yeah, and if I remember right, you were pretty good at it,” chuckled Rainbow before hoofbumping Applejack.

“I thought we were to never speak of that again…” growled Rarity.

“Girls!” yelled Twilight. “We need to focus. I’m pretty sure that this hatch is the key to solving all the questions we had before coming up here. Nopony would make this kind of hole-in-the-ground mining facility all the way up here unless there was something very special hidden beneath the ice and snow. Also, there would need to be a lot more to survive up here than what we’ve seen. The only logical conclusion is that this hatch leads down to the real place, and this up here is just a distraction to keep intruders occupied.”

Twilight had gained the full attention of the other five as she sort of marched back and forth in front of the hatch during her lecture. All she said did make sense to them, but it only raised more questions than it actually answered. The newest and most prominent question on their minds was now: Why would anypony need to make a dummy mine above the real one, especially when built this far away from civilization.

“Erhm… maybe we should just leave this place alone and head back to where we came from,” suggested Fluttershy.

“We can’t, Fluttershy. There’s a strong storm brewing outside, and if we try to walk back we’ll definitely be in trouble. These big arctic storms can rage for days at a time, so we have no other choice than to stick it out down here,” said Twilight.

“Oh, okay…” sighed Fluttershy as her ears and head drooped from the thought of staying in that kind of place for days.

“Cheer up, darling. We’ll make the most of it,” chimed in Rarity as she wrapped a hoof around Fluttershy.

“If we are going to be here for ages, we might as well explore the mine!” Without waiting another second, Rainbow Dash flew down to the hatch to try to turn the wheel so she could open it. Though, it was even more difficult to open than the previous one, and it had no ice creeping up its wheel. “Nnnngg! It’s stuck!”

“Oh silly, you just gotta know the right way to handle these things,” said Pinkie as she darted up next to Rainbow, pressing an ear against the wheel. “ahah… mhm… really?”

“Pinkie, I don’t think that’ll work. Here, just let me use my magic and I should be able to force it open without any problems.”

Twilight was just about to cast a spell, but before she could, Pinkie had stood up straight and given the wheel a slight nudge with her elbow, making it spin rapidly to then pop right open. The other five stood in disbelief of what they had seen.

“Pinkie, how in tarnation did ya open that thing?” asked Applejack.

“Easy enough, you just have to listen to what the wheel wants and then do it!” in a way she answered the question, but in another way she only added on another one.

“Right… good job, Pinkie.” Applejack didn’t feel like finding out how one would go about speaking ‘wheel’ but she was glad that such a skill could come in handy.

The hatch revealed a large staircase stretching far into the deepest darkness of the mine, confirming their suspicion of there being much more to the place than what they initially could see. And although the staircase reflected what they had already gotten used to seeing in terms of environment, there was something very different about the place down there. An ominous sensation lingered in the air as the six of them made their way down with still only Twilight being their only source of light in the place.

“Everypony stick together… We have to be ready for anything,” said Twilight. “Also, make sure you all have your emergency packs intact.”

The five could still keep close to Twilight despite checking if they had said emergency packs ready for use, and they all did have them. They were filled with a week’s rations, lighting utensils, enchanted heat blankets, and few tools for digging and climbing.

“I think we all got ‘em ready, Twilight,” said Applejack, taking the lead of the five behind Twilight, being rather curious for the answers the place could reveal to her.

Their single path spread out into several at the bottom of the stairs, and all of them were as cold, hollow, and dark as the stairs themselves. Though, now they had the choice of which way they should go as a group, or if they should part up into two or three teams to make their search faster.

“I think we should take that way,” said Rainbow as she pointed towards the right path.

“Erhm, why that one?” asked Twilight confusedly, as each tunnel looked almost identical.

“Because it just feels like the right one. When you get to be as awesome as me, you learn that going with your gut instincts is what leads you to the best choice in life. Feel free to quote me on that nugget of wisdom, Twilight.”

“I’ll try my best to remember it…” groaned Twilight before taking another look at the different tunnels. “Well, they’re all pitch black and I can’t see more than a hoof in front of me without using my horn. It could probably take us several hours to look through each one of them.”

“Are ya suggestin’ what Ah’ think ya are?” asked Applejack, nervously staring into the darkness of the tunnel in front of her.

“I think you are. We might have to split up to cover ground faster. Before you say anything, hear me out. We only have so many rations to eat, and it would be very prudent of us to find someplace to sleep for the night. There should be a room dedicated to sleeping somewhere down here, and the sooner we find it, the sooner we can make a little base for ourselves.”

“T-Twilight, I really don’t think that’s a good idea. A-also, I don’t want to go anywhere without my friends,” whimpered Fluttershy.

“Don’t worry, none of us are going to go alone!” proclaimed Twilight with a wide smirk on her face. “We’re going to split into three groups. Rarity and I are going to be on different teams, that way we can both use our horns to light the way. The team of two non-unicorn ponies are going to get our spare light sources.”

Twilight eyed the five ponies in front of her for several seconds before making her decision. “Okay, I think it would be best if Rarity teams up with Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash teams up with Applejack, and I’ll go with Pinkie Pie.”

“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll be in great hooves,” mumbled Rarity to Fluttershy.

“Aaaww yeah, this suits me just fine. How about we make a competition out of it, AJ?” asked Rainbow while smirking widely.

“What ya got in mind?” asked Applejack with a raised brow.

“It’s totally going to be way more scary in these mines for the pony who isn’t holding a light source, and no way are we both going to be using one. That would just be a waste. So whoever can go the longest without holding it will be the winner!”

“Oh yeah, how are we gonna decide which pony must hold it?” asked Applejack with an eyebrow raised as she gave Rainbow a deadpan stare.

“Erhm, I didn’t think about that. Well, how about you hold it first, and if I ever need to, I’ll take it?” Rainbow smirked cockily while taking the first steps into the darker area of the tunnel furthest to the right.

With her eyes rolling, Applejack stepped up next to Rainbow, lighting up a flare to lead the way. “If you say so, Darin’ Do.” She quickly glanced over her shoulder to look at Twilight. “Are the rest of y’all good to go?”

“Well, almost. I think we should figure out what to do if somepony gets into trouble. How about everypony heads back to this place in exactly one hour, if somepony isn’t there, we’ll head into the tunnel they disappeared into?” suggested Twilight.

The other five ponies all nodded in agreement and off they went, three groups of two, exploring the dark depths of the mine.