Forbidden Land

"THEY ARE CATCHING UP!!!" Pinkamena screamed.

"Do NOT give up!"

"I can feel the breath of their snouts!" She panicked.

"FOR REAL?!" Mane yelled, thinking they were that close.

"NO IDIOT! That was an expression!"

They ran and ran in adrenaline, up and down the hills heading to the mountains. After some more minutes, by the top of a hill the noise behind them ceased. They stopped running and looked back breathing heavily and very tired.
The pachyderms stopped while looking at them, gave a few steps back and for some reason they ran away.

"My legs..!" Mane complained taking his hand to the side of his thorax. "My body hurts."

"No shit... what the fuck is wrong with these animals?!" Pinkamena complained as well. "It's like some evil force is controlling them. Elephants don't hunt! Do they?"

"No. They are herbivores, but these ones are far too aggressive for such diet."

"Why did they gave up?" Pinka wondered while catching her breath.

"I think I see why..." Mane was looking at the other side of the hill, some meters away from Diane.

"Why? Woa..." Pinkamena walked next to him, gazing at the landscape if she could It a landscape.

Down the hill, a fading road of cobblestone leading to a bridge on top a channel of a nonexistent river. Beyond that, a land of dirt and ashes clustered together in the ground, where plants didn't grow anymore and the trees were just burned stumps of coal. The place had bones and skeletons all laying around. Most of them were from elephants reduced to bones and ashes, and others clearly from earth ponies and some unicorns, but most of the ones that weren't from wild animals were from griffins.
The air reeked with sulphur and carbon even if the air there was supposed to be clean one thousand years ago. In the distance, carved in the mountains was an entrance with some fortifications in both sides with the rock charred black in the white grayish rock , and It's gates open.

"What the..." Mane baffled.

"So this is why they ran off." Pinkamena stated. "Looks like hell was here and It changed the address without cleaning the place."

"Word..." Mane was lost in thoughts. "Let's go."

"Right behind you."

They walked down the hill and crossed the bridge taking a look in the bottom of the channel with fish bones. An unsettling feeling washed their minds and bodies while they walked down the road, with the unicorn skulls making Mane shiver even more. Paying closer attention,the griffin skeletons or what was left of them had armor and weapons around them, some mangled and others barely changed only by rust.

The duo approached the rock gates wide open to them, and on a rock slab with fading letters, a word in dwarf language. Mane pulled out the book of ancient languages and alphabets and searched in.

"Nil...Lam..." He roughly translated. "LamNil." He repeated, correcting and making sure that was It.

"What does It mean?" Pinkamena asked.

"Uhr..." Mane turned the pages to the dictionary section of the language. "HammerStone."

"What kind of name is that?" Pinkamena grabbed the ancient civilizations book, guessing It would be the next thing checking. "Take It." She passed the book.

"So..." Mane flashed through the pages. "Dwarf ponies used to name their fortresses and locations according to what was related to them, most of cases war, mountains, craftdwarfship and sometimes other things. The mixture of words could make a rather funny name, something normal or something menacing."

"I think It's lame..." Pinkamena sighed. "It's really dark inside."

"Grab this." Mane picked a charred stick with a part of It's wood still intact for some surprise. He lit up It's carbonized end on fire with his magic and gave to Pinkamena. "I can't be the only one, if something happens."

"Right." She nodded.

"Let's stick together. We don't know this place, there's no maps from the inside and what else is inside."

"I hope It's no more fucking elephants..." Pinka snarled between her teeth, looking in the distance behind them. "Son of a bitch." She grumbled again.

"What?" Mane looked back too and he saw the pack of elephants peeking over the hill, just observing them. "Speaking of the devil."

"Let's go. Hope It's safer inside." She walked ahead with a tight grip in the torch and her empty hand closed tight.

"Don't jinx us." Mane prayed.

They ventured inside the fortress, under the light of the torch and Mane's magic. The smooth raw stone floor covered in bits of moss and sometimes small puddles of water, littered with bones and sometimes the small skeleton of a dwarf pony next to a sword, pickaxe or a piece of clothing, with their beards and hair still stuck to their skulls. Occasionally they saw strange black spots in the floor as if the place was on fire.

"Look down." Said Pinka.

"What?" Mane pointed the magic light beam to the floor, revealing an engraving.

"It's a... cheese??" She was extremely confused.

"Don't ask me... and It's seems It's the walls aren't the only thing engraved." Mane moved the the light beam to the walls revealing something really different.

"Is that... a unicorn burning..?" Pinkamena asked impressed by the detail of the flames and the expression of the character engraved.

"Looks like..." Mane whispered slowly. "Sick..."

"Sick indeed. Why would somepony engrave this?" Pinkamena touched the sculpture. "I mean, fuck! Ponies used to walk in this hall all day!"

"Let's keep moving..." Mane requested trying to look away.

They kept walking down in silence while looking around in the engravings, mostly being ponies and griffins burning... and sometimes a random cheese for some reason they couldn't understand. A door with an image of a pony dwarf called their attention and they opened with precaution. A rock table and throne got illuminated by Pinkamena's torch, and by their side an ancient book shelve with what looked like scrolls and books. They entered in silence and checked the room entirely made of rock.

"Look at this..." Pinkamena whispered with a smile. She pulled out a book made of leather and adorned with metal strands and some jewels.

"It's a book." Said Mane. "Looks like the paper is made of plant fibers and animal leather. Open It."

"It's all... in dwarf." Pinkamena looked confused at the writing. She passed the book to Mane while sitting in the hard chair. "Only Maud would enjoy this..." She grumbled.

"Don't distract me, please." Mane opened the book of ancient civilizations next to the ancient book and focused all his mental energy in both of them while turning and translating every words on It to a notebook he had brought with him.

"Cool." Whispered Diane sitting in the rock throne with her hooves in the table, while enjoying the magic aura in the half dark room.

"Got It." Mane finished his spell, ending with some pages of his notebook written in readable english.

"Already?!" Pinkamena baffled impressed.

"I used to study in the Canterlot Palace, remember? I got this spell really early in my student life." Mane reminded her.

"Oh well. Let's read!" She passed her eyes in the first words. "It's look like a diary."

"From who?"

"An overseer. The first one." Pinkamena looked at Mane. "Mind if I read for both of us?"

"Sure." Mane smiled and squatted until he has by the low table's perfect height. "I'll gladly reload and clean your flintlock pistols if you don't mind. You haven't reload them since you wasted two bullets in a pack of elephants, that didn't even stop them."