Chapter 6: The Ruins of Trihornia

The carriage finally came to a rest. Dee was too excited to wait for his sweaty, foul-smelling servants to get the door. He opened it himself and stepped out into the light. His sudden motion caused Fyr’mond to awake with a start.

“Are we there?” she asked, confused.

Dee did not bother to answer, or to help her out. He jumped down and straightened his back. His whole body was sore from the journey. The ruins were a substantial distance from the Citadel, and he was an old stallion. The journey had taken nearly five days. He had slept little, in part because of his excitement and in part because even the luxurious, house-sized tent that he had kept compressed with him was still an uncomfortable and drafty tent.

Immediately outside the carriage, already waiting, were the representatives of the excavation crew. Their leader stepped forward and bowed. He was, like them all, superficially an earth pony. In terms of bloodline, however, he- -like all his associates- -were at least one quarter unicorn. Their crew had been assembled and served under the authority of Third Horn, but under the supervision and orders of the Magus Doctor Dee. Dee had chosen exactly who he wanted to assist in the process: no unicorns, who might carelessly ruin precious artifacts with their magic- -or worse, attempt to steal the magical knowledge of the ruin for themselves- -but also no dull, full-blooded earth ponies. Dee had no idea what such intellectually disadvantaged workers might attempt to do- -for all he knew, they might try to eat the artifacts instead of cataloging them.

“Lord Magus,” said the lead excavator, bowing his helmeted head slightly. Dee distantly remembered that he was called Dust Brush or had some other crudely conceived name. Brush’s eyes shifted toward the carriage, where Upkeep was assisting Fyr’mond step onto the dirt below. “And who might this be?”

“Oh,” said Dee, looking back. “My wife.”

“Wife?” said Dust Brush, raising an eyebrow. “Pardon me if I may be out of line, but you always seemed like one married to your work.” He looked at Fyr’mond, and then leaned close to Dee, “though, if I may, you have made an excellent choice.”

Dee just snorted in disgust. He did not much care for Dust Brush. Brush was indeed good at his job, but he was also a descendent of the old tribes and far more impudent than normal earth ponies.

“Greetings, milady,” he said to Fyr’mond. “My name is Dust Brush, supervisor of this archeological project by the Third Workpony’s Contingent of the Equestria Civil Legion. Might I be so bold as to ask you your name?”

“Oh, my,” said Fyr’mond, curtsying. “My name is Fyr’mond. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Fyr’mond?” said Dust Brush. “That is an unusual….” His eyes suddenly widened. “No…um, you would not happen to be Princess Fyr’mond, would you?”

“I am the same,” she said, blushing.

Every one of Brush’s assistants- -and Brush himself- -suddenly dropped to the ground on all four of their knees. “Please forgive our rudeness,” he begged. “I take full responsibility for being unaware that we were in the presence of royalty.”

“Oh my,” said Fyr’mond, looking terribly embarrassed. “I do not understand. Why are you doing this?”

“Because he is lazy,” said Dee, gently kicking Dust Brush in his side. “Stand up and get back to work!”

“Yes, right away, Magus,” said Dust Brush, backing away and conversing with his troops, delegating duties.

“I really do not understand,” said Fyr’mond, leaning close to her husband. “What was that? Why did they do that?”

“You are a princess,” said Dee, frustrated at how thick her skull seemed to be. Then, considering her situation for a moment longer. “Actually…you have been raised your entire life in the presence of nobility. Perhaps you never realized.”

“Realized what?”

“That your father is worshipped as a living god. By commoners, at least.”

“Oh,” said Fyr’mond, her eyes wide. “I had no idea.”

“Right,” said Dust Brush, returning to Dee as his associates split apart. “The path ahead is a bit rocky, and narrow in some places. I recommend that the princess stay down here.”

“I would rather like to see the ruin,” said Fyr’mond, sounding disappointed.

“Well then, your highness, you shall. If the path is gentle enough for an old stallion, a mare barely out of fillyhood should have no difficulty.”

He started to lead them up the path, and quickly proved to be correct. Dee rapidly became winded as he climbed the steep and rocky path. The soil- -if it could even be called that- -felt unpleasant against his hooves. Dee did not allow his weakness to show, however. Nor did he even much notice it. He was driven upward, as if the structures beyond were calling him.

The biome of the area was almost as inhospitable as the path. The whole of it was rocky, to the point where the soil was more gravel than anything else. What few trees grew were mostly sparse and heavily grizzled cedars that had somehow managed to make their home in the poor and dry soil.

“What is the condition of the ruin?” asked Dee, timing his words with his breath so that neither Dust Brush, his wife, or the two worker mares that followed behind them would notice that his advanced age was affecting his ascension up the hill.

“Remarkably good, considering its age,” said Dust Brush. “Several outer regions have been buried, but the inner area has mostly survived.”

“Do you have predictions of the extent?”

Dust Brush laughed. “Huge. Simply huge. Larger than any city I have ever seen. You’ll see.”

“And you were the ones who unburied it?” asked Fyr’mond.

“Oh, no, princess. Much of it was already exposed.”

“It’s hard to believe that nopony saw it, then, if it really is so large as you say.”

“Well…”

“Well what?” asked Dee, his gaze sharpening.

“The city is not entirly isolated. There is a nearby earth pony village.”

“They haven’t damaged the site, have they?” said Dee, suddenly nervous. “Please do not tell me that they are living in it.”

“No…but they have been using the stone from some of it as building materials for several hundred years.”

Dee groaned loudly. “Those ignorant fools! Do they have any idea the value of what they are so carelessly destroying? They surely have more than enough stone already!”

“Only a few of the outer structures were damaged, and only partially.”

“And if one of those structures were a tomb, or a library? A single tablet would be worth more than ten times their village!”

“Trust me, Lord Magus,” said Dust Brush. “When you see this place, you will understand. To be honest…I can’t help but wonder if the stories the villagers tell are true.”

“Stories?” asked Fyr’mond.

Dust Brush nodded as he continued his upward trek. “They say this is a bad place. Evil, cursed, even.”

“Curses are not real,” said Dee, dismissing the notion. “They are nothing more than false images posing as true magic. But…considering who built this city…”

“Who?” asked Fyr’mond.

As she asked, they reached the end of the path and the question went unanswered. Before them was the city, and words seemed to have escaped them all. Stretching out across the distance was a preponderance of towers emerging from the ground, each one of them higher and wider than anything anypony had ever constructed, seemingly carved out of monoliths of a strange, tan-gray stone that was resembled none of the rocks they had seen around them.

“After all these years,” whispered Dee, stepping forward toward the array of structures. “I finally see it…with my own eyes.”

The group walked into the city, down its wide streets, and Fyr’mond could not help but keep looking upward. All around them were the strange towers, arches, and aqueducts, all built from the same substance. The buildings were incredibly old, but at the same time, they seemed to hardly have aged. Though thousands of years must have passed, they looked almost as though they were a new in construction, ready for ponies to begin moving in.

Only a few features betrayed their true age. Where there might once have been windows, there were now gaping holes into the black hollowness of the structures. Their surface, likewise, was stained by ages of rain, discoloring the gray stone and watering the vines and moss that grew upward from the base. Some of the vines had stems as wide as tree trunks, and were laden in spiny, toxic fruit.

All of it felt wrong. Fyr’mond knew that it was a beautiful city, a marvel to behold, a privilege to witness- -but she hated those buildings. She did not know exactly why, and the more she thought about it, the more she only grew more confused and more nervous. They had an unnerving strangeness, as if they were designed by minds that were so vastly different from those of ponies that what had come out was incomprehensible and alien- -and threatening.

Fyr’mond recalled the story of Longquest, the ancient pony king-hero that she had read long ago. In one part, he had discovered the City of Chimneys, a scene that Fyr’mond had always found unnerving in the same way. In the City of Chimneys, it was said, there were no houses, no buildings. Every pony worked endlessly at a forge, toiling by day and sleeping in the open before the fires at night. The buildings of the city were nothing more than endless chimneys, some large and some small, all perpetually belching smoke and flame into the sky.

Though Longquest was a fictional character, Fyr’mond got the same feeling from these tall, empty towers. It was as if they were built for other purposes, strange purposes that were nonsensical and bizarre. Worse, they gave her a strange feeling, as if she were being watched. As if this place were haunted by spirits of unparalleled malevolence whose primary manifestation was absolute silence.

She clung close to her husband for security. She looked up at him, and saw that he was smiling broadly. It was not the smile that he often gave her, the subdued and manicured one which usually accompanied honeyed words- -this was a true smile, one filled with love, directed entirely toward the city.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, princess,” said Dust Brush ahead. “Nothing has lived here for millennia. Not a soul. But I still know how you feel.”

“What…what is this place?” asked Fyr’mond, nervously.

“It doesn’t have a name,” said Dust Brush.

“Yes, it does,” corrected Doctor Dee. “But it is in a tongue that no pony can do justice.”

“This place…how can a place like this exist?” Fyr’mond just did not know. By ‘ruin’, she had been expecting something ancient, crumbling, and primitive. Instead, she found herself in a city whose architecture and technology dwarfed the abilities of modern ponies. The backwardness made her shiver- -the idea that technology did not advance, as would be logical, but had actually decayed from a far more lofty state.

“This city is one of many,” said Dee, his tone reverential. “The remnants of the great empire that once ruled this land, long before there was an Equestria.”

“Before? What manner of ponies existed before Equestria?”

“Trihorns.”

Fyr’mond froze, stopping in the middle of the street. She recognized the word, if only distantly. She had, at her husband’s suggestion, been reading Primary Source’s first-hoof account of the life of her great grandmother, Single Horn. The language was different and hard to read, but Fyr’mond remembered the references to trihorns. They were never explained clearly, or completely, just simply mentioned. It was not the descriptions, though, that gave her pause. It was the way Primary Source had spoken of them. They were mentioned simply as “the bearers of three horns”, but never in good ways. Primary Source had been afraid of them, treating them like the numerous other monsters that roamed through modern Equestria as well as the many that had become extinct since his writing.

“But…they are a myth,” said Fyr’mond.

“Oh, no,” said Dee. “They most certainly were real.” He laughed, almost manically. “They were the first to use magic, and their understanding of it was beyond what even I can conceive. They knew the nature of the universe, and it brought them unlimited power. It is said that even children among them could perform miracles that are now thought wholly impossible.”

“Like what?”

“That they could cross Panbios instantly, with a thought, or turn lead into gold. They could fly, not just through the air but through the void to the distant spheres beyond. That they could resurrect the dead.”

Fyr’mond looked around her. “And that they could build this city…”

“Can’t you feel it?” he lifted his hoof to the air. “The sensation in the air? The tingle of long-forgotten magic, forbidden to us by nature and the short sight of the ignorant? Our birthright, the energy of our fathers?”

“Fathers?”

Dee smiled widely and nodded slowly. “It was the trihorns who created us. They built the first monohorns. In their infinite wisdom and generosity, they imbued simple ponies with magic, sharing their gift to children meant to carry on their legacy. Both of us, we are descended from creatures born into trihorn hooves.”

“But…if they were so powerful…where did they go?”

Dee’s smile faded. “I do not know,” he said, softly. “Nopony does. It’s as if they existed one second and were gone the next. They simply vanished, all at once. No stallion, mare, or filly survived some great catastrophe. Not even bodies remain. Even I do not even know what a trihorn looked like, aside from having three glorious horns.”

Fyr’mond did not know what her husband was picturing in his mind, but she knew that she was seeing something far different. She saw creatures that were as strange as the buildings that surrounded her: tall, wraithlike, with taught, sickly skin and oversized, piercing eyes, each with three long, curved, bladed horns protruding from their heads. The thought of these creatures wandering through the streets of this city, speaking in their unspeakable language about things beyond pony comprehension, was too much for her. Her apprehension of the city suddenly broke into fear, and the nameless thing that was watching her suddenly seemed to have a long-dead face peering down from every ancient, broken window.

“I don’t like this place,” she said, backing away, trying to resist the atavistic instinct to run. “Please. Can we leave, now?”

Dee sighed and turned away from her. “I knew you would disappoint me. Brush, take her back to the camp. I would like to be alone.”

Once they had gone, Dee walked slowly through the ruin, listening to the deafening silence. Not a single bird called, or a single creature stirred. This city had been empty so long- -far too long.

Not for long, though, he thought with excitement. His mission was ostentatiously to excavate, to attempt to salvage what his ancestors had left behind- -but there was more to it than that. Simply salvaging the ruins was not enough. He wanted to rebuild them.

The trihorn city, and those like it, would be the perfect sight for his glorious plan. In time, he would succeed, and the Frozen Queen would rise from her icy tomb. Restored to the world of the living, she would need a home, and empire to rule. Not just any empire, though. She was the rightful leader of the trihorns, their purest descendent. The only empire worthy of the rule of Single Horn was that of the trihorns who had in their divine benevolence given her the gift of magic.

Dee began to laugh, and to dance through the empty street. This place, these towers, it would be the new site of a grand new nation, one populated by only the purest of unicorns, dedicated to ascending to the ranks of their creators. There would be no foolish nobles, ruling simply because they had horns that they did not even know how to use, or earth ponies cluttering the streets with crime and squalor. There would only be seekers of the truth, of understanding.

With their power, they would slay the griffon menace and chain the centaurs as their slaves. Their power would last a thousand ages, and continue to grow, and throughout that eternal history, one name would be remembered, the name of he who had been first to understand what had to be done: the Eternal Magus, Doctor Dee.