The Journey So Far...

A demon wearing the face of a princess and a forest burning with flames of life. With the Everfree cleansed Death and Silvia make haste to Canterlot.

The trip to Canterlot was an uneventful train ride, mostly due to Death and Silvia not giving the stares of the other passengers much thought and after rolling their eyes at the whispers and murmurs of the public, they walked around the city and soon found a tunnel leading down into the depths of the mountain that Canterlot was built upon.

Silvia's magic sight was in full effect as she walked ahead with Dust perched on her back, though the tunnel was dark the glow of magic present in the earth provided a trail for the all-sworn to follow as she tracked small traces of corruption further and further down. As she rounded a corner, a continuous, bright light shone from the tunnel ahead with enough intensity to cause her to yelp in pain as she was blinded and forced to return her vision to normal to recover..

"What is it?" Death asked.

"If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that I blinded myself by walking into very large concentration of crystallized magic," Silvia replied as she peered at the tunnel ahead that was made entirely out the aforementioned crystal. "On the bright side if we follow it we'll come across the source of corruption in this area."

"Very well," Death replied at motioned at the large crow still perched on the alicorn's back. "Dust, show us the way."

With a cry the bird took off and began to glow bright purple as he guided them through the caves. The tunnels twisted in almost every direction yet eventually, the adventurers were led into a clearing where the walls were covered in as much corruption as there was crystal. Two decorative stone pillars marked the entrance to something deeper in and above them a message was carved into the crystal.

"Can you read this?" The rider asked as Silvia flew up to inspect it.

"The writing looks as though it was carved in a panic or fear, enough emotion to make whoever wrote it unsteady with a blade for sure but yes I can read it," she analyzed. "It says Forgive me Ancestors, for I have sinned."

"Well isn't that charming," Death quipped and continued on. "Where to now?"

Dust landed on a crystal sticking out of the wall and cawed sadly. Death cursed under his breath and muttered something Silvia could barely hear as the reaper started taking a careful look at the tunnels that branched off in front of them.

I wonder what the Soul Arbiter's Maze is? She wondered and followed Death as he picked a direction to walk down.

"Damn this maze!" Death cursed in frustration. "This place makes no sense!"

Silvia sighed and moved past her annoyed travel companion to try and solve the issue. They had, for the fifth time, looped back to the entrance and with the crystals blocking her magic sight and Dust unable to guide them they were forced to make their way through trial and error unless they could figure out the logic behind the puzzle. As she looked around she found a carving on the walls of each tunnel and another by the entrance. A glance at the one by the entrance and a quick look at the ones on the tunnels led Silvia to a possible solution.

"Perhaps you can't figure it out due it requiring knowledge that you don't have?" she suggested. "It looks to me that this maze has a number of trails that are guided by symbols representing the different types of elemental magics that are commonplace in this realm."

"The carvings by the entrance act as a cipher for which series of tunnels go where, several lead to treasure or keys of some kind and one ends with a door, our way out," Silvia explained. "Follow me, I'll explain as we go."

"The elements, at least the ones that occur naturally are Fire, Ice, Earth, Lightning, Time, Space, Light and Darkness. All have their strengths, weaknesses and uses with our way out at the end of the Path of the Fool, a sequence of elements that correspond to the creation of life. These elements in order are light, fire, earth and time. if that we follow that pattern we'll have our exit."

"Why is it called the Path of the Fool?" Death asked.

"It's derived from the old way all-sworn cast spells, they gather the correct sequence of elements, enforce their will on it to get it to do what they want and then fuel it with enough raw magic to get it to work. Each Path is a specific school of magic, each with its own strengths, weaknesses and uses," Silvia replied. "Ever since the Runic Model was introduced very few even remembered the old way, only one noble house kept the tradition of learning the..."

"By the Ancestors, I'm an idiot," Silvia said. "Only one noble house knows those calculations inside and out and hopefully the clan head still lives. For if we can find him, his skill with machines could give us an advantage over Lillia."

"And who is this clan head?" Death asked.

"Thunder Stone is one of the youngest of us but he has great skill in inventing gadgets that run on pure elemental energy, he was inspired by The Makers and often tried to replicate their craft." Silvia replied. "I hope he's alright..."

As they walked, the presence of corruption grew more prominent and Silvia grew increasingly more worried. It was a struggle to keep her composure when she wanted nothing more to tear through the place in search of her friend. In an effort to remain calm she directed her attention inward and focused on the sensation to analyze it. The why was obvious, Thunder was her friend and it had been five thousand years since she last spoke to any of her friends or her brother but she knew that spiraling into a frenzy wouldn't do any good, not when corruption was involved.

Though her logic was sound, her emotions still ran wild with two conflicting even more despite the fact that she knew rushing in would only endanger her. She switched her focus back to her surroundings as another fork in the road appeared and concentration her efforts on navigation as a distraction.

I need to stay focused on the task at hoof she thought. Stay focused and I'll stay determined.

At the end of the maze was a large metal door locked by a series of six pressure plates at the end of a tunnel. The plates themselves each had an indentation to fit something in them.

"We might need to go back and find the keys, unless you have another idea?" Silvia asked.

Death hummed in confirmation as he looked over the plates and stepped on one, it went down and a satisfying click was heard and rune lit up on the door. Much to Silvia's surprise, he suddenly turned into a stone statue of a large figure obscured by a hooded robe with skeletal arms, wings and wielding scythe as large as it was and two clones of Death, one green and one purple, appeared beside his petrified form.

"This technique doesn't use magic," The purple death clone explained. "Is it possible for you to try and copy it?"

"...I'll have to use my magic sight to do so..." Silvia replied once she found her voice and cleared her throat. "My magic sight allows me to see how magic flows in a world as well as view a person's soul, my eyes will glow blue to signify it's use and you will feel slightly uncomfortable but it is completely harmless."

"Do what you must, if you can use Soul Splitter then we have a way to progress without finding those keys." Death replied.

Silvia activated her magic and looked on in fascination as a complicated stream of Soul energy linked the clones back to Death's stone form. She could instantly see how the technique worked and began to vocalize her findings.

"This is incredible, by petrifying your physical form the energy you would naturally generate to simply exist is instead directed at your soul to form to fully functioning copies of you and everything you perceive as being needed on your person at any given time. Furthermore these copies have the strength to exist on the physical or 'living' plane instead of appearing in a spiritual plane that overlaps with this one. Finally you can send your consciousness between the two clones due to your physical form acting as the anchor for the technique, however that does give you limited range." She explained brightly.

"Are you done?" Death asked flatly. "It feels as if someone is walking on my grave."

"In a minute, I need to be sure I don't end up damaging anything when I perform the split." Silvia replied

"Fine, then look at the clone I'm not using!" he insisted.

True to her word, a minute passed and Silvia deactivated her magic and Death sighed in relief. As the horseman maneuvered his clones onto the pressure plates as his physical form rested on a third, the alicorn moved to stand on a plate and put her own effort into the technique. Everything blurred in a sea of colours and she heard the loud crack of stone as her body hardened. Her first instinct was to blink in confusion as she found herself staring down at her original body and two soul clones, one of which was a silver alicorn and the other, much to her surprise and Death's if his expression was anything to go by, was a gold, humanoid, honest-to-goodness Angel.

The angel had long hair tied back in a loose ponytail and instead of the long robes or golden armor that the winged inhabitants of The White City usually wore, this one was dressed in a simple long sleeved top and leather gloves, long pants with the end of the pant legs tucked into the pair of combat boots on her feet as well as having a belt with several pouches attached to it alongside the sheaths for her two swords.

Silvia also noticed that both clones had a long black scar that oozed black mist on their chests. With a thought she found herself in full control of the alicorn clone as if she was back in her real body.

"Well that was unexpected," She mused. "I've always wondered what I'd look like as an Angel."

"It's certainly different," Death agreed. "But can we get a move on?"

"If you insist," She replied. "Just don't laugh if I fall over when I move to my other copy."

"I think that lock was designed to keep out the local ponies as opposed to you or I," Silvia commented as the duo returned to their real bodies and walked through the unlocked door. "We're larger and heavier than ponies, so it would stand to reason that any other traps or puzzles we encounter wouldn't intentionally be there to impede our progress."

The alicorn and the horseman had walked into an underground building with pillars, pipes and important pylons for structural integrity made out some sort of golden metal with rune stones fitted into all of them and connected by glowing blue wires. The gold metal contrasted with the natural crystal the building was carved out of. The areas of the floor not covered in corruption were paved with stone and the entire interior of the place appeared half done with the different materials it was comprised of.

As Silvia looked around she noticed a slab of metal hung up a wall like a plaque, with something written on it.

"Yet more evidence this place was defended against ponies," she said and walked over to it. "It's written in Angelic."

You would think the several centuries our ancestors spent guiding the three pony tribes would amount to something. As of writing the world is frozen over and I'm certain that if anypony were to find me, they would sooner use anything I could teach them to destroy each other.

My research has been delayed due needing to renovate my workshop, a simple series of puzzles that require the three tribes to work together should keep them out, for it is my goal to create a tool immune to corruption in the hopes of saving those we've lost.

Ancestors willing, I'll see my sister again..

"Thunder was hit hard when a group of angels herded the foals at his sister's school to one of their camps and by the time we found them, every single one had been killed to expose their cores so the Hellguard could use them as batteries," Silvia explained sadly. "We recovered the cores but we could never get the children to wake up..."

They fell silent as they moved on. The path was fairly straight forward with doors locked by a combination of pressure plates, wind turbines and torches. While the plates and turbines were easily solved, the presence of torches resulted in quite the conundrum.

"I can light them." Silvia suggested.

"With your own life force?" Death replied. "No, we'll find another way."

"I thought you would appreciate getting this done quickly but if you wish to take the long way around...." Silvia said slyly.

"What do you have in mind?" he asked.

"What magic isn't corrupted or sealed in crystal flows in the pipes throughout this area, said pipes are also heavily warded to prevent unicorns from tapping into them to boost their own power," Silvia explained. "I however am no unicorn, given enough time I should be able to hijack the mana flow and use it for whatever we need as long as we're down here."

"How long will it take?" Death asked.

"A few minutes if I focus, however that will leave me vulnerable to attack and once I begin the workshops defenses will surely activate to stop me...." she replied. "You'll have to do what you can to protect me as I'll only be aware of threats that have managed to get close."

"Fair enough." Death replied.

Silvia walked over to a nearby pipe and activated her magic sight, the flow of magic and the runes guarding it flared into view. She sat down and focused, she pushed her sense out around her and felt a rush as sight, sound, touch and magic sense expanded past the limits of her physical form. With her sensory field acting as a defense she concentrated on the runes before her.

"Starting now." she said and enforced her will upon the runes.

Alarms were triggered as the alicorn began her work. The structure of the rune circle expanded into a block of symbols that she looked over with a critical eye, the metaphorical gears in her brain moving at a fast pace to figure the logic behind the ward. a crystal golem had slipped past Death and entered her sensory field and was quick destroyed as her wing flicked out and her sword was driven through its head by sheer strength alone.

The short distraction of a threat compelled her to work at a faster rate and she grew excited as she cracked the logic behind the ward, a simple game of matching pairs of runes. Silvia felt the familiar rush of a new challenge to sink her mind into and started solving the puzzle of the ward as fast as she could manage. She moved at a steady rhythm and used the sounds of combat as her beat while she worked, her progress paused every now and then to stab a stray enemy that got too close.

She found herself feeling satisfied and yet wanting more as she finished breaking the ward and tapped into the flow of magic. With magic back in her system she felt lighter, more alert and more capable than ever. A few corruption fueled golems still roamed the area as Death moved from one to the next to cut them down. Silvia grinned impishly, she had magic and she might as well use it.

A simple spell came to mind and she cast it with a single thought. Orbs of golden light appeared around her as her horn glowed in a silver aura. With a mental command the orbs flew towards the remaining enemies and destroyed them with bright bursts of magical energy while the torch that barred their way was lit and the door unlocked.

With the danger passed the all-sworn and the horseman headed into the next room. The place had broken pipes and snapped wires on the ground with shapes marked out on the floor and walls by an absence of dust to show that something had once stood in the room connected to the equipment. Light streamed down from holes in ceiling, bent at strange angles as it reflected off the crystals above it.

Silvia stood frozen in horror at the rooms occupants. The corpses of ponies with leathery skin pulled tight over bones faded patches of fur and strands of hair in lieu of a mane or tail shambled around the room with blank stares. The majority were unicorns of the upper classes of society based on the tattered rags some still had clinging to their frame but some pegasi, still garbed in royal guard armor that long since rusted shuffled around as well, their wings hanging limp at their sides.

Silvia tried to form words but none would come, she felt a strong need to help the walking dead, to find a cause and give them their last rites but even those instincts were pushed aside by what she was seeing and the memories that came with it. In a bid to keep her sanity, Silvia forced herself to back into the previous room and stared at a wall as she tried to put her gradually panicking mind back into a state of calm.

"Are you alright?" Death asked. "We need to keep moving."

"I know, Death just give me a moment," Silvia replied and found herself explaining her situation. "Every all-sworn is driven to protect and preserve life no matter where we find it. It's simply what we do, we find a world and guide it's inhabitants to a better, brighter future..."

"Though we are Immortal the permanent death of one of our kind can still happen," she continued. "For instance foals of a certain age don't have fully developed cores and not only does it mean they are incapable of reincarnation but those cores can be broken. Should a fully grown all-sworn suffer enough emotional trauma that will impact their core and damage it to the point where they are left crippled, such as myself."

"Those corpses, it's wrong," she stated. "They shouldn't be like that and my very soul is screaming at me to fix it, to help them but I can't. There's only so much magic I can tap into before we trigger another alarm and eventually there will be a point where I can't draw anymore from it without damaging something and bringing the place down on our heads...."

"Then the most we can do is give a swift end." Death stated.

"I'll let you handle that horseman, I'll follow on once the room has been cleared." Silvia stated.

Author's Note

That's the first part of this dungeon done, the journey will resume next chapter!

Originally the entire dungeon and dungeon boss was going to be one chapter, but after i worked out what I wanted to show and do for this part of the story I realized it might be best to tackle it one portion at a time.

Let me know if you spot any typos!