They Remember

“Take as much help as you want, go to Horseshall Island and start digging.”

Twilight Sparkle had a lot more “help” than she wanted. With crystal ponies from the north and royal guards from Canterlot, Equestria’s newest princess suddenly found herself in command of the largest army in the whole kingdom.

She arrived on the windswept northern island in October accompanying a resupply shipment, three weeks after the first tent of the field camp was pitched. By December the pit was as deep as Canterlot Castle was tall. What Twilight had first assumed to be stone turned out to be part of the permafrost. Beneath it there was ice; chunks as big as houses with inclusions of limestone and sand. Shovels had to be sharpened at least daily, and even then sledgehammers were needed to make any headway.

Twilight had known about the ice since the beginning, of course. She had known ever since the geologist took the first cores before excavation began. Yet she had strict orders from Princess Celestia: do not melt any ice found deeper than two metres. Treat it like rock. Twilight could have believed that her old mentor was trying to save fuel, had she not been so consistently and generously supplied with everything imaginable.

On New Year’s Day Twilight crawled out of her sleeping bag and flopped down on top of it, letting the near-zero air of her tent cool her a little before she put on the rest of her gear. If she wasn’t a little cold before squirming into her armored snowsuit, she would be uncomfortable all day. Ever since the last sunset on November 14 she had been trapped inside two layers of heavy fleece jumpsuits. And that was only her underwear. It itched incessantly and smelled worse and worse as the project wore on. While the dig teams only stayed three weeks each, Twilight had to be on site in case a discovery was made.

When she was first summoned to Canterlot in August, she had assumed the worst. Princess Celestia did not often send letters so late at night, and her letters had never been signed by all the other princesses before. Twilight arrived the very next morning, leaving Spike in Ponyville to look after the castle.

“Hello Twilight Sparkle,” Princess Celestia said as soon as the last princess entered the throne room. Princess Luna and Cadence sat on either side of the white alicorn. There was no one else at all in the cavernous chamber. No guards or attendants or advisors.

“What happened, Princess Celestia?” Twilight asked, stopping just short of the steps to the throne. “Is King Sombra back?”

“In a way, yes,” Cadence said, getting up from her seat. Her horn lit up, and a bright orb grew out of nothing in front of Twilight. “Twilight, do you remember King Sombra’s journal? The part where he meets his ‘mother’?”

“Yes,” Twilight replied, excited despite her anxiety. “Did you find out something about these umbra? Did you find another umbrum? Did you find the spot where King Sombra was digging?”

“Not quite,” Cadence said. “Twilight, for the last month ponies have been disappearing from the Crystal Empire. It started with one filly wandering onto the tundra late at night. Now many crystal ponies are leaving their homes in a trance. They will climb fences, walk through barricades… they have even started fighting the guards. Whatever is influencing them, it is getting stronger.”

“But how do you know it’s the umbra?” Twilight asked. “King Sombra is gone! All the others have been buried for millennia! And they've never done anything like this before!”

“We don't know what they did in the past, Twilight,” Cadence said grimly. “Even the crystal ponies know almost nothing about them. Nopony knew what they called themselves until we found Sombra’s journal. But I have reasons to believe that the umbra or something similar to them is behind recent events.” She nodded to the magical orb, which had reached a stable size about as big as a pony. “Look at this. This is a dream that Luna extracted from a crystal pony colt last week as he left the city.”

Twilight squinted and leaned into the light, until she passed entirely through its crackling boundary and saw that there was no light at all. She could hear something moving around her, and even felt it brushing against her sometimes. It did not breathe and she heard no footsteps, but she knew that it was circling her. The sound was like dead grass rustling in a cold wind. She could almost feel that wind…

Suddenly a pair of eyes stared into her face. They were not especially ugly or evil-looking eyes. She could not recall even a vague image of them afterwards, not their shape or color, but they frightened her like nothing else she had ever seen. Twilight jumped and opened her mouth to scream, but found herself sitting once again in the sunny throne room.

Twilight lit the lantern and looked over the mess in her tent. Several large volumes from Princess Celestia’s personal library sat open beside her sleeping mat. The contents of her ink bottle glistened with ice crystals, and her quill was white with puffy frost.

This must be really serious, she thought for the umpteenth time as she scrubbed her face with a dry towel and combed the knots out of her mane.

Finally she could not put it off for any longer. She was hungry, and sore from slouching. The little brass clock beside her pillow said it was 7:14 a.m. Any later and the good food would all be gone.

Twilight parted the entrance to her stiff snowsuit with some difficulty. It was custom made to matched the purple of her coat (besides the reflective plates), and even her cutie mark was duplicated on the flank plates. It was quite comfortable once everything was in place, but the suit was also put together with no room to spare.

The collar was a tube that went all the way to her chin, and ended with a hood that was really a helmet. Taking one last breath of natural air, she fastened the mask over her muzzle. Now only her eyes were exposed, and she was determined not to put on her goggles until after breakfast.

A rustling at the entrance of her tent startled her. The shape of a hoof was momentarily visible on the soft door, searching for something to knock on.

“Come in,” she said, already opening the inside zipper.

A stallion in a yellow snowsuit stood in the darkness, steam billowing around him. His goggles fogged up and froze as soon as the humid air inside the tent hit his face, so that no sign remained of the living pony beneath the suit.

“Princess Twilight,” he said. “We have found the Nest.”

The mask around her muzzle was elastic; otherwise Twilight’s mouth would have fallen open. She had done as much research as she could, but Cadence had been absolutely right about the lack of previous knowledge. She had read every last account of the umbra from the Crystal Empire as well as Canterlot, and if she had not delve into the dangerous waters of speculation and folklore she at least waded it. Still, Twilight felt utterly unprepared.

Nopony has ever seen a nest before, she thought. Most ponies don’t even know what an umbrum is, let alone a nest. Who is this guy?

The messenger reached up and cleared his goggles. His eyes and even his face glittered like diamond, casting little flecks of light all over the inside of Twilight’s tent.

Of course.

She followed him along the path of packed snow, carrying her lantern with her levitation spell. She could have used her light spell, but most sources agreed that umbra could drain magic. Even though this nest had been buried for at least five thousand years, Twilight knew from personal experience that magic became less reliable deeper in the pit.

There was a kind of elevator for the first twenty metres of the descent. It was little more than a plank held up by ropes and a winch. Despite her working wings, Twilight was nervous every time she had to make the descent. With two ponies going at the same time, she had to stand with her hooves gathered close together and her neck sticking out past the edge. Below her the pit glittered with hundreds of lanterns that seemed to illuminate nothing.

Fortunately the operators on top gave her a smooth ride. Twilight hopped off as soon as the platform came to a stop, and took the yarn-wrapped handle of the lantern in her mouth. From this point on she would use no magic at all.

“Stay behind me, Princess,” the crystal pony said. His own lantern was hanging from his left hoof. “These umbra are… unpleasant to look at. You will know what I mean when you see them.”

The ice looked like walls of glass. Wind moaned across the opening of the pit, though the air around Twilight was still and smoky. About two dozen ponies stood in a loose group further down the steeply-sloped path, their headlamps and lanterns pointed at a black crack in the wall just wide enough to admit one pony.

Her guide rubbed away the new frost to the right of the crack and peered into the ice as one would check on a dark room. Twilight looked back at the other ponies in the group. Beneath a few of the goggles she saw glints of crystal.

“Here he is,” he said, backing away from the wall and pointing his lantern at the glistening patch of smooth ice that he created.

Twilight now felt the cold from within as well as without.

At first glance it could have passed for an ordinary pony that had been put through a pasta machine. The weight of the ice had distorted it, but its shape was still distinguishable. Twilight could make out four black legs in the crushed and torn mass. The torso opened up along jagged tears, cracking along with the ice as it flowed and changed over the long years.

Thankfully it had no eyes or sockets; everything above its nostrils had been ground to paste. But the horror that was its gaping mouth was more than enough. Long jagged fangs floated in the matrix. The biggest ones were broken to pieces. Overall it looked like its mouth had exploded.

“There are more in the nest,” said her guide, shrugging at the crack. “Thousands more.”

“Are they all dead?” Twilight asked, backing away as she shone her lantern down the long passageway.

“Umbra never die, Princess,” he said grimly. “As long as the bodies remain, they exist. They can wait. They are patient.”

“Five thousand years,” she said, raising a hoof to her mouth. “I wonder if they’re conscious.”

“They are,” he said. “All of them. But it’s not as bad as you imagine. Umbra aren't trapped in their bodies like you are. In fact, the one you see here is already free.”