T H E A W A K E N E D M O N O L I T H
"Stoutson, come here! I need your help!"
"Coming, boss."
Hooves trotted along the sand in reply to the call, leaving behind hoofprints with a lifespan that would be short lived, the dry winds ever shifting the golden dunes of the Saddle Arabian Desert. Grunts and heaving would ring out under the burning glare of the unforgiving sun above, watching an archeological team of twelve toil to try and unearth what had been lost to times forgotten. Stoutson, an earth pony by a name that matched his beefy stock of a build, trudged towards a smaller, slightly frail unicorn who was currently trying to push aside a rather large boulder that had been unearthed.
"What is it, Mr. Bones?" Stoutson asked despite noting how much the older pony was struggling. Best to actually see what he wanted first before automatically assuming something.
"Help me move this blasted boulder! The team unearthed it just this morning, there could be more underneath!" Bones replied in a raspy voice, obviously tired out from his futile pushing. Stoutson shrugged and pressed his shoulder against the boulder, and with gritted teeth and tensed muscles, shoved it aside in one heavy movement. Bones sighed contently, giving the burly pony a congratulatory pat on the back.
"Thank you my good man, thank you." An aura of magic wrapped around a canteen hanging by a strap around the older pony's neck, uncorking the bottle and almost guzzling down the contents inside. Bones let out a gasp after having his fill of water, throat satisfactorily quenched for now.
For the past several weeks a famed archaeologist by the name of Dry Bones had heard rumors of buried ruins somewhere in Saddle Arabia. A recent sandstorm had shifted the landscape enough to reveal tips of structures long forgotten, and he relished the thought of finding something so extraordinarily old. Setting out, he and his crew had worked tirelessly, digging for hours, day in and day out, only finding bits and pieces of broken off rock. Sand, sand, and more sand is what they seemed only to uncover, until just recently the enormous, out of place boulder nearly thirty feet below the surface. What it uncovered was something more than astounding.
Bones and Stoutson peered into a darkened tunnel, a flight of stairs leading down, down, down into whatever mysterious depths may lie just beneath them. The excitement could hardly even be contained by the elderly unicorn. Oh he had done big work in uncovering the fossils and skeletal remains of draconian ancestors in the Before Times, but this, this could be the highlight of his entire career. "Stoutson!" Bones' voice cracked, snapping his employee to attention. "Inform the crew of what we've found. You and I will be taking a trip down there very, very soon. Prep the torches, and make sure we have enough gear this time."
"Are you sure this is . . . safe, Mr. Bones?" His voice echoed further than he thought it would as they traveled down a earthen path of carved stone.
"Safe? Hardly. In fact, the roof could collapse on us at any time, burying us under hundreds of tons of rubble and sand, making this our tomb as well as whatever may be in here with us. Which is why we must do this delicately. No sudden movements, no stepping out of torchlight, and definitely no touching anything without prior examination."
"Y-yes sir." Stoutson gulped as he lugged a backpack of supplies while trailing behind his employer, who seemed to only be carrying the canteen still and a lit torch held aloft by telekinetic magic. The two had made their venture below, only finding that their tunnel lead deeper and deeper than they could imagine. Occasionally they would pass walls with runes and indiscernible text upon them, but they did not have a translator, and for his life as an expert on all things old, Bones could not pinpoint exactly what they were looking at. It wasn't like anything he knew of in Saddle Arabian history, dating back to when their civilization actually began to use writing and stonework in their culture. Perhaps it was older? Or, even foreign. The theories rattled around in his brain as the tunnel widened the further they went in.
Eventually it reached a point where they could not see a wall on either side of them, simply the path in front of and behind them and nothing but darkness beyond the glow and safety of their torch. "Whatever could this place have been? An ancient, underground civilization? We may need more ponies down here. Get lanterns and lights set up so we can-"
Bones was interrupted by Stoutson biting at the collar of his archaeologist's vest, halting him in his tracks and pulling him back. It was a last-minute save, for another step of his hoof and he would have plummeted down into an empty abyss. "Oh . . . oh. Thank you Stoutson." He coughed to dismiss the fact he had almost perished if not for his watchful companion. "Ahem. Yes. It appears we're in some form of . . . temple. With a very . . . very big hole in it." The torch lifted up, revealing they stood upon a precipice to a massively gaping circular pit, stretching farther around than their eyes could see.
"Is that your professional opinion, sir?" The earth pony asked in monotone, one eyebrow cocked. He better be getting a raise for this.
"Yes. Yes it is." Bones huffed in reply, beginning to trail along the edge of the pit. "It appears this place could be some house of worship . . . there are pillars further back that denote the familiar architecture of such a place. But whatever could they have worshipped in such a place as this? The only records of such things are of the alicorns themselves, and maybe a few dragons, but that's it. Perhaps . . . ah!"
He interrupted his own musings to happen upon an altar that stood near the abyssal gape. Several pots and vases sat near a large erected obelisk that stood roughly the height of an oak tree. "This must have been one of the places where they gathered! The pots held offerings, and . . . and the monument must have been key."
They approached closer, noting a dry, sickly sweet scent wafting through the air. Upon further inspection in the pots, remains of dusty bodies and left behind rottings greeted them. "So they did practice burial remains and mummification, but to a much lesser, crude extent . . ." Bones continued to mumble aloud his thoughts, stepping up to to the stone structure before them.
More runes and scrawled carvings in the stone greeted them with an unknowable tone. Bones took in a huff of air and blew off a layer of dust that must have laid there for eons, either to sit there in silence for eternity, or for another to see what laid below. "I'm . . . actually recognizing something. Look, this symbol in the center. It looks newer than the rest. Might have been carved here . . . four hundred? five hundred years after the rest? Look, the rest of the stone is a lighter, older shade of grey. This is much darker, though not by much."
"What does it mean?" Stoutson asked, though he was unsure if he even wanted an answer. Just being here gave him chills, made his skin uncomfortable and his fur crawl.
"It's a magical activation system. Before magic and technology were properly integrated with one another, older cultures would either use primal tools, nothing at all, or magic alone. This seems to be the case of the latter. Hmm . . ."
"Boss?"
"Shush."
The archaeologist's horn lit up brighter, releasing a small burst of magic that touched the rune. A small 'hum' filled the air as the rune began to glow, the other writing on the obelisk's stone face beginning to glow as well, lighting up the surrounding area, and illuminating the enormity of the surroundings on which they stood. The hum built up into a small rumble, and from there, it only grew exponentially more powerful as time passed, enough so that the two ponies could hardly stand on their own hooves without being jerked about violently.
"What did you do Bones?!" Stout asked, furiously trying to stay still amidst the great rumbling.
"I don't know! Usually the rune activates some sort of contraption or something! I must've turned on some kind of booby trap or something!"
"oN."
A voice more powerful than any force, more booming and louder than a thunderstorm itself rose over the rumbling.
Far above on the desert's surface, the chaos was just as destructive. Fissures tore open the earth, the archaeological team and their dig site was torn asunder as an earthquake ripped apart the very landscape itself. Just as the disaster reached its penultimate climax, the voice spoke once more, now audible for those above on the surface to hear, miles away from any form of settlement but echoing all the same.
"Yuo vhae aaenwked em, tlpfiiuly asllm nsoe."
The rumbling increased to a fever pitch, as if the desert itself were alive, and so it seemed. The sand rose and fell as if it were breathing, bursting forth from the fissures as chunks of the scape began to rip upwards, a massive thing comparable to a mountain rising out of the ground. Eyes large enough to engulf a town open for the first time in eons, pierced by the sunlight that had forsaken it. A mouth breathed, unleashing a new sandstorm with its hurricane breath.
Higher and higher it rose, revealing the colossal body for what it actually was. A massive female pony, with a coat like the desert itself, and eyes like an oasis. Upon her was adorned regal jewelry, a crown atop her head, but upon closer inspection, the crown itself was like a massive, circular temple, built to house worshippers for the great goddess.
Still she rose, until soon, towering over all of Saddle Arabia, a true monument to her immensity, blotting out the sun and casting a long shadow that stretched for miles. "aAh . . ." She breathed, looking down with a small smirk. "Refe at tlsa. Rfee ta alst."
Another rumble, this one generated by her simply lifting her colossal foreleg. Countless tons of earth and debris fell from the bottom of her sky-filling undersole, the hoof itself raised miles in the air and hovering over a tiny city that just happened to catch her eye. "Ebaewr, tiny tomarsl eblow. I shall cneuorq dan ersi noce omer."
With her mysterious proclamation deafening the ears of every creature who gazed skywards, she lowered her hoof with an earth-rendering stomp, showing her might, her size, her power. What was left behind was nothing at all, only a barren imprint miles wide and deep, everything caught in it hardly going out with even the slightest crunch. Doom upon all the world, for the Awakened Monolith shall reign once again.
