Amaranthine’s frock was covered in a thin layer of black, billowing coal dust, but she pulled her friend close.
The cave mouth was lit bright with evening light: the princess’ sun had yet to set. The miner was eternally grateful that she’d been able to make it so far in this time, and even more pleased with her mental notations: she’d navigated the more broken lampways with ease, bringing out no less than three of her fellow miners. The shift had not been on for long, but ponies were quick to delve deep into the earth. Especially earth ponies like the one by her side.
This wasn’t to say their stubborn traits worked against them. As a unicorn, she wouldn’t have the same respect for them if they’d gone in to prove a point. The very pony by her side had already struck hard into several veins of the seam, and she shared in their pain: the cartload they’d already accumulated would no doubt be irrecoverable.
“We’re almost out, Carbide. Watch your head.” Her warning was received: her friend’s ear twitched against her. As one, they strode together, navigating past the stalagmites and stalactites, the same ones her frock had been built to weather.
Into the light of the dying day, Amaranthine emerged to shouting and yelling.
How could they still be at it?
“Thank you, Ama,” the pony in her hold whispered. With a nod, Amaranthine let them go. They staggered off toward a waiting pair of ponies, who quickly took to work examining the earth-shaken miner.
Amaranthine dusted off the front of her smock, moreso out of habit than intent to clean. The cloud crept up and over her muzzle, adding to the soot strewn across her visage.
“That’s everypony!” she called out. In the crowd of dozens, heads turned, all belonging to ponies she knew well and dear. But where she expected smiles, the faces of her friends were scarred deep with scowls and frothing anger.
Her heart panged; what had she done wrong?
But as they turned away, it became clear that she’d done no wrong.
“But somepony had to have triggered the tremor! Those don’t just happen on their own!”
“What in Tartarus are you talking about? Of course they can!”
“But not to this degree, moron!”
Amaranthine folded her ears in. But as quick as her ears fell, her hooves went, too: her stomps reeled everypony’s attention back toward her. “Hey! Quit fighting! That’s not going to help anypony right now!”
“Nopony wants to take blame!”
The other stallion’s upper lip twitched at his ‘opponent’, but he gave Amaranthine a sullen frown. “Ama, stay out of this. You’ve done well enough getting everypony out.”
“Are you even listening to what I’m saying? There’s no point in getting out of there if we don’t have a life to live for after this!”
“Coke, shut your trap.”
Amaranthine stepped back. “What is wrong with you two?”
Coke sneered. “With us? Didn’t you hear the lunatic strumming along about the ‘integrity of the walls’?” He turned around, wheeling in on one of the few bat ponies among them.
The slur sank deep into all of the bat ponies gathered, and the crowd shifted like a vacuous storm prepared to rain fire. Bitter retorts rose up, and one too many hooves went with them.
“STOP!”
Amaranthine’s shrill yell sank the world into silence.
She breathed. A cough left her.
“Ama, you’re not looking so good...”
She snorted. “I’m fine.” After closing her eyes for a moment, she came back up, a little more calm than before. “Look up. What do you see?”
The crowd looked up into the evening sky.
The smoke pouring out of the various air-tunnels of the mine had drenched the wondrous Equestrian sky in a miserable coating of black. Some of the ponies lifted their makeshift rags back up to their muzzles. The shines in their eyes slipped away as the darkness shrouding them curled in.
“I see that we don’t have time. We need to get everypony somewhere safe.”
“Who died and made you boss?”
Amaranthine’s breath hitched, and she glared at the mare who’d raised her tone. She almost bit back. Almost. But she lowered her brows into calm. “I’m not. I’m just saying that... that...”
Her words fell short. Her mind was left reeling, grasping for straws.
“Where’s Canary?”
Silence.
Ponies looked around them. The tension between the crowd uncoiled at the mere thought of the missing piece. Of course everypony had been at each other’s throats. There had been nopony left to bring them together in an amiable way.
Because Chittering Canary was nowhere to be seen.
Amaranthine’s stomach twirled like a hydra caught in its own coils. “Has nopony seen him? Where is he?”
“He must’ve gone back in.”
“No, he made the call! He called the black-on-black, why would he go back in?”
“He was going in and out with the rest of us. Making sure we were all getting out.” The friend turned. “Ama, you didn’t see him on the way out?”
She shook her head. “No. He must’ve gone deeper... I had to go deep to get Miss Carbide out.”
“We all know he would go back in if it meant looking for another to save. He knows the mine better than anypony else.”
“Then wouldn’t he know that everypony would’ve already escaped?”
“Not unless I beat him there.” Eyes turned again on Amaranthine, and this time, she couldn’t help but feel like she deserved it. “L-like I said, I had to go deep... it’s possible that...”
“...He doesn’t know?”
The question sat on the smoke-riddled air for a deep, unsettling moment.
“Canary doesn’t get lost. Canary knows what he’s doing. We wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him!”
The ground-to-subterranean airways. The calculated excavation projects. The tunnel rigging and supports. The bellway warning system. The tests and drills. The evacuation plans.
The collection of like-minded ponies and cutie marks. The organizational hierarchy. The ‘ground rules of friendship and kindness’. The opening of the mine. The whole town’s existence.
It was all thanks to Canary.
A clamor of agreement wove up. Amaranthine almost felt her voice weave into that harmony, but the hesitation on her thoughts was too much. Especially too much to leave it unvoiced.
“Then maybe he’s still in there for a reason.”
The backlash was sharp, and immediate.
Now, everypony knew.
Among the agreement with her sentiment, and the vast wall of arguing against her, one pony reigned it all in. “And that’d be suicide! The fumes could go off at any second. Who knows how much damage that quake did to our infrastructure?” The pony looked around. “We shouldn’t even be this close to the mine. We should’ve been high-tailing it for Canterlot half an hour ago!”
“And maybe he knows that!”
“So what is he doing in there?”
An answer was all they wanted.
But nopony knew.
Amaranthine knew what her solution would be before the plan had even coalesced in her mind. “I can find him.” She could. “I’ve delved as deep as he has. I’ve strung up lampways just like him. I can find my way through the darkness. I can find Canary.”
“Ama...”
The multitude of voices swam slowly to her, but they all paled in comparison to the new purpose she held. She wasn’t going to fight her friends, and they wouldn’t fight her. There were no accusations of insanity. She received the plastered looks of ponies who knew there was no dissuading her.
“I’m going to find our friend.”
The earth rumbled still. Angry was the very nature of the world they’d worked their way into. The earth and soil beneath Equestria was in upset. Sections of the walls had cracked, severing many of the roped lamps and bells ponies had strung up over the last two years. Yes, their foray into their practices had been young, but it had been inspired: here at the start of the cave, all of the work had been led by their expedition leader.
With the stone like teeth around her, Amaranthine began her dive into the deep.
The warmth oozing from the cave went with the slow, gradual flow of coal dust. Amaranthine pulled her damp cloth mask back up over her muzzle. Nopony had gone deeper than Carbide, so deep as the first explosion had felt.
So she had to go deeper.
Soon enough, the light of the day fell away. Traveling through the first bend of the cave, Amaranthine hugged close to the wall, following in the path most cleared of coal dust. The light of the lamps were dim and orange, but this line had not shattered. She felt along each knot of the rope. It was taut, strong. She hoped it was as if it were the lifeline that would lead her to where she needed to be.
She spent minutes at her slow pace. For as unknown territory as this was, she had no worries of a second explosion. Canary had assured them that this would happen, that they just had to be ready. As far as she was concerned, they’d done well: everypony had cleared the mine, and the worst exposure had been from rescuers like her, and only from going back in again and again for a few minutes at most.
Amaranthine was strong, but she knew she couldn’t afford much time. Her lungs were already beginning to ache, even with the gentle breaths she forced herself to take. She moved slow, her barrel rising and falling with invisible arcs. Her hooves scratched at the bits of the hard coal seam beneath her, but still, she maintained her gait, determined to follow along the still-burning lamps.
Now, though, the first of the dead lamps appeared. Owing to the design ordained by Canary’s regulations, these ones had fallen and shattered in such a way that they safely burned out. It was increasingly warmer at this bend, and she stepped around the hot lamp-remains with ease and care. Her mind was sharp and focused. Everything was fine. She just needed to get a little deeper. Canary practically lived in these caves, and now she was certain he was this way.
She licked her lips, pausing on an incline leading down. Hooking her hoof through the rope on the wall, she used the latched hoof to lower her mask. “Canary! Where are you?”
Her voice echoed on the walls, bouncing down into the mine. She cocked her ears forward, listening through the heavy sifting of the earth and dust for even the slightest crumb of a whisper. Her heart winced on the beat of each passing second; in the end, silence was her only reply.
But she kept going. She pushed her recollection of the stubborn yellow-black stallion into her mind. It had only been an hour at most since she’d seen him. And she was going to see him again.
Despite the careful extent of their work, the design of the cave still prompted thoughts of ‘final turns’ and a lack of true safety. Standing at another crossroads, Amaranthine was left to decide: one path lay unstrung by lamps, and the other as crushed as the line she presently clung to.
Perhaps she had time for both. It all led down into the same cave. But she couldn’t be in here forever. Surely Canary knew that: if he had purposefully gone this deep, then he would have known his most capable pony would know her limits.
Her body shook. It was as if something had reached out to her.
She looked to the unroped path. Her heart leapt right into her throat.
“Oh, Canary...”
Despite her care with the presence of coal dust, she knew better than to blindly feel her way through the dark. She wasn’t blessed with the sight that Canary had. She was just a unicorn, and just too much of a spell could invoke further disaster.
Amaranthine’s horn brewed to life. The ground croaked again, as if warning her against the action she was about to take.
With the small orb of purple light on the tip of her horn, Amaranthine stepped into the cavern’s unknown.
Just around the bend in the darkness, she passed another set of jutting stalagmites and stalactites. She had dug many of the tunnels this deep, but this hallmark was one that belonged to no ordinary miner. The corridors Canary dug were filled with natural warnings. For a pony who had brought so many of them together, Amaranthine had always found it peculiar in the way that he opted to work alone. Leaving the standing formations of the cave was something only he did, and it was one of the few aspects of his work that he had left unexplained. The message was different now, but it was still a sign from the same pony who’d left it.
The feral growl and shake of the earth told her she was getting closer. She didn’t call out again, but she strained her eyes into the darkness.
Without warning, the tunnel changed. As she paced along into the depths, the corridor shrank in. Tighter and tighter, the walls crushed in, coming down on her from all sides. She very nearly had to crawl, and with no small level of pain, she did: the rough-hewn nature of the rock told her that this was no hoof-excavated zone. No little ponies were meant to be here. The natural pipe funneled her in, leaving little room for her to back-out. This was the point of no return. And she worked her way through it without complaint.
The air was the next element to face corruption. Amaranthine’s breath thickened, and she coughed once to adjust. A sickeningly sour smell licked at her nostrils. She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head downward as much as she could. She slugged through the crushing atmosphere, pulling herself hard enough for her sturdy smock to tear through to her coat beneath. Now, she regret bringing it with her, worried she might find herself unable to reach further. But through her desperation, she steadied her breath, and found resolve.
The neck of the tunnel released her, and she breathed more easily as the cave opened back into freedom. The heat that had shrouded her descent finally pulled back.
Standing at the end of the unknown, and fathoms deep into the earth, she stood her ground, and looked into the void before her.
But it was not without light.
Hunched over a hoofheld lamp, a black, vaguely equine creature sat. Its hooves propped itself up, but it seemed impossible: even in the dim lamplight, the holes gouged through its legs and body appeared like mortal wounds. But it did not bleed, and it did not immediately acknowledge her presence. It made a sickly gagging sound, and the jagged, but active horn on its head flickered a pale, bioluminescent green.
Fearing the horror before her, the miner squeaked.
It did not flinch. It surprised her instead: one word came through as its body fluttered apart. “Amaranthine...”
Its torn, featherless wings split across the shell that was its back, husking limply like a dying beetle. The eldritch creature turned slowly, revealing a muzzle dribbling with black, viscous fluid.
All she could do was reply to the squelching noise it’d made. “C-Canary?”
The air before the creature shimmered, and as Amaranthine forced herself closer to the weak little thing, she saw why: coated in the same hue, a transparent wall of green had wrapped around the air above her head, and toward the back wall of the dead-end cavern.
“You...” ‘He’ hacked, and spat an anomalous orb of the black goo to the floor. Amaranthine instantly recognized it for what it really was: coal dust, and saliva. “...came for me.”
Her fears gave way to tears. Collapsing, she let her horn’s magic seep back into her, leaving the cave to be lit by the creature and its lamp.
“I-is it really you?”
The creature chittered its wings, vibrating them in a quick burst. The effort left it sagging deeper into the rock below them. It was a pitiful move, hardly anything that could have invoked any further emotion. But in the world above, Amaranthine could see her friend again, the one who could move his wings like nopony else, and the one who would move mountains for everypony else.
“Y-you... Canary... what happened to you?” Amaranthine’s movement wavered as she drew crawled closer to Canary. “Your wings... and you have a horn. A-and... oh, sweet Celestia...”
The sound that sept out of the crack of his mouth was just enough to be a laugh. “Yes... disgust... I know. This is... my naked form.” Canary grinned, flashing her with the side of his fanged muzzle. It was just as uncanny as the unfamiliar, droning voice he spoke with.
Amaranthine lifted a hoof, and gently pressed it to one of Canary’s splayed hindlegs. It was cold, hairless, and felt as if it were shorn of all weight. “What are you?”
“Something which does not exist.” He closed his eyes, breathing easily.
Amaranthine joined him in that. She breathed, and relished in how clean the air suddenly felt. “But... you do.” She shook her head, and tapped his leg with purpose. “Why are you down here?”
“Always willing to learn... of the world I know... that is why I liked you most, Amaranthine.” He turned his full body, eyes still shut, and lowered his head to the floor. “The day you wandered in... I knew it would be you.”
“That’s not an answer!” Huffing, she cautiously—and with great care—raised a hoof, and ran it across his head. It was smooth, chitinous. She cupped his muzzle gently. “Canary, what are you saying?”
For a moment, his voice shifted from its pained, aching buzz, to the one that belonged to the pegasus Chittering Canary. “I’m saying you’d be the one strong enough to save my sorry flank.”
They shared a laugh. Neither of them coughed.
His voice degenerated again. “No. I am... sorry, that will not come to pass.”
Amaranthine lifted his muzzle, and gave him a furrowed look. “What are you talking about?”
“I cannot leave.”
She looked him over. “Yes you can. If this is about what you look like, you know I’ll stand up for you. I can just... feel you.”
“I know. Your emotions are high.”
“W-what’s that supposed to mean?!” She tried to feel indignant, but her curiosity and worry minced the intent behind her words.
“I had... a mission.” Canary opened his eyes. A soft glaze had been born to cover them. “My kind... we feed on love. Understand emotive states. My hive pursued all the knowledge... feasible. For this new world. This new... Equestria. Modernity. Industry.”
“You know so much.”
“I was made to know much.” He buzzed his wings again, and his horn pulsed.
“What are you doing with that spell?"
“It is not so much a spell, as it is a barricade.” He paused, then nodded numbly. “Yes. A barricade.”
Amaranthine looked up at the ceiling above them. The air shimmered. Beyond, she swore she could see swirls of mist. “...What are you protecting us from, Canary?”
“Firedamp,” he replied, his voice dropping an octave. “This natural orifice holds the cavern’s remaining... explosive potential. It will devastate the land around here... when it escapes, and makes contact with the coal dust. And air.”
Amaranthine’s eyes were wide. She peeled back, looking at the way she’d come. It was dark again, but... she’d just barely managed her way in. How was she going to get Canary out?
She knew the answer. She knew it was the only one.
She turned back to Canary. This time, he turned away, and hacked again. Amaranthine felt her emotions well up again, and Canary certainly felt it: he shuddered from head to hoof.
“Yes... I am glad... you ponies cared for me. It did not feel... stolen.”
“You brought us all together. How could we not?”
“We thrive on a... parasitic exchange. For the price of your emotions, your love, we sustain. Feed. Survive.”
“And that’s why Horseshoe Haven has been the best place all of us have ever lived?”
He smiled weakly. “Yes, this... thriving. I did not expect such a response to my... methods. And one that extends... to both our kind. The Hive would have... loved, to see emotions as I do now. Of this, I am sure.”
“Stop talking like that.” Amaranthine frowned. “Can’t you keep that barrier up while we leave?” Even as she spoke, she knew the answer had already been staked out. She couldn’t help but keep trying to pretend.
Canary wheezed, his sigh throbbing with fatigue, and evident effort. “I... I fear for your safety, Amaranthine. I have led you too deep.” He rapped his hoof against the floor in quick succession. It rang hollow through the cave. “I have given you my knowledge. You know my methods... best. For you to perish, would be... a loss, immeasurable.”
“Y-you matter, too. Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”
“And without you... this knowledge, now found... then lost.”
“Couldn’t we combine our magic?”
“No... we are... incompatible. Please, calm your mind.”
Amaranthine’s heart was racing. How long had she been like this?
Evidently, long enough that he’d been feeling it. And if what he was saying was true, then he understood exactly what she felt.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Bowing down in the darkness, buried so deep and away from anypony else, Amaranthine felt the cavern closing in. “Please, Canary...”
“It is well to cry, Amaranthine. I admit... since... developing—no, discovering, my own emotions... I have longed to share them. My mission required... a separation from the hivemind... for new knowledge.” A soft warmth bound itself around her as he spoke. “Share your pain. Here, we can breathe as one.”
The black-on-black, the coal dust, the firedamp above them. Amaranthine cast her worldly fears aside. And she felt Canary catch them. The weight slid from her withers, and she curled closer to the stallion.
“...Do you feel love for me, too?”
A shaking breath ran through Canary. He didn’t reply. But Amaranthine could wait. She could feel him growing stronger. Perhaps, the longer they laid like this... they could find a way.
“Yes... but... My love... this... connection. I fear what may come of allowing it.”
She gave him a moment to collect his thoughts. He needed it.
“...But I care deeply for you. It is a connection... my kind thought impossible.”
“But it’s love?”
“More. Beyond love. Immaterial. Beyond the knowledge I once held.”
“I’m happy to have it, Canary.”
“You braved the black-on-black for this. Your life. For mine. Hundreds of tunnels I have dug... hundreds of minds I have seen lost to it. And in return, I give you this... strangeness.”
Amaranthine opened her mouth—but coughed. She lowered her mask, and smiled. “I’d do it all over again.”
Canary shuddered again, and Amaranthine feared he might keel over completely. But he laid his head, and without another word, closed his eyes.
She felt his emotions come through before she heard his humming.
Sweetly, his heartsong strummed through the cavern. It was an ethereal sound, distant, but not bleak. It swung from ear-to-ear with color and bravado. Amaranthine tilted her head toward his, laying her horn across his. Nothing physical came of it: there was only an increase in his murmured song. It babbled along, breathing freely in the face of a desolate end. All of Canary’s loneliness, welled-up regrets, and innately selfish needs, they came to her for her appraisal.
His song ended so soon. It was too soon.
But this was his sorrow. Sorrow for this love beyond love that he could never share again. At least, not in this form.
Amaranthine reached out, and squeezed Canary’s cold foreleg.
He buzzed with warmth in an instant. “Yes... I think... you would wish to try this. Not simply for my sake... but it would help you... find peace, all the same.”
“I feel it. I can see it.”
“I see... you. It is good to... no longer be alone. Feel alone. Life... is best shared with another.”
“I’ll stay for as long as I can to make this happen, Canary. You can teach me everything I need to know. I’ll remember it all.”
He knocked his horn against hers—it forced her to open her eyes. He kept his own shut. “This knowledge... friendship is what brought it to me. And I am willing to try, if you are.”
“Then I think this is the start of a wonderful friendship.”
The mare wore a tattered working mare’s frock. It had been red, once. Now, it was black. Purple coat hairs stuck out from her shredded clothing’s sides, but they’d been worn down and rubbed in from some kind of physical pressure. The rest of her coat was covered in an equal layer of black.
Amaranthine lowered the rag from her muzzle, and breathed in deep.
As she continued back out into the world, she took in her surroundings. Lamps had been erected; the moonlight could not penetrate the smoke, and the night had grown long. The crowd had distanced themselves even further from the cave, but she could feel the attention of everypony as she approached. Nopony stood to meet her, but the worry was caught in their voices and movements.
“Was Canary in there?”
“Yes. And it’s not safe to stay here.”
“Wait, he’s down there still?”
“He’s buying us time. Every moment we stay here, we risk losing everything.”
“...Time?”
“There’s going to be a second explosion. He’s stopping it from happening.”
“So we’re just going to leave him?”
“We’re not leaving him. We’re leaving together.”
Amaranthine closed her eyes. Faintly, she could feel his presence: distantly in the earth, but not buried out of reach.
And in one corner of her mind, there was one new section, sojourned off from herself, but not too far off. One built for knowledge. One constructed for emotions. One settled for a friend.
And their life waiting beyond the black.
