Aftersound

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Written by: Oneimare & Geka

Preread and edited by: Jay Tarrant, IAmApe

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Profane light, hallowed twilight

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My gaze wandered across the ceiling, tracing the cracks and dark stains of moisture seeping through; it didn’t really see any of that, however.

The words I practically barked at Scuff Gear still stood true—I hadn’t created those memories. But now I had lived through them, had witnessed and felt every moment like Twilight Sparkle had.

They allowed me to look through a fresh lens at what mare she was, the mare… I was supposed to be, now that I carried her memories like a torch to dispel the oblivion.

And yet a question lingered.

The final recollection I’d inherited was of fire washing over me, yet Twilight had lived after. How was I to find the rest of her memories, if that even was possible? How to complete the mare she was and I would become?

Neither the ceiling nor the floor held any answer, so I rolled over and rose somewhat unsteadily.

My body showed the price paid of my mindless raving—nicks and scratches attempted to peel away the old paint; dirt aimed for the same goal with barely any success, however, it did accomplish clogging my joints with grit.

The delve into my memories had brought one positive thing of physical manifestation—magic.

Not just a wonky coil coursing betwixt my arcanium horn and the memory crystals, but the subtle breath of another reality within; the invisible, intricate convergence and divergence of the leylines, the arcane hum of the world’s most beautiful and powerful melody.

In my very bones of metal.

The orb of light on the tip of my horn easily eclipsed the weak glow of the lamp on the wall, flooding the corridor with violet brilliance. I let it linger there, enjoying the sensation of being one step closer to figuring out who I was.

The narrow tunnel bothered me with its width—more than three ponies across would be brushing their shoulders together. Not that I had seen any so far, despite wandering the passageways for a while now; nor had anything betrayed the presence of life—not even the hint of familiar ever-present foetor. Because of the emptiness, the tunnel made my every step clap like thunder amidst the rain of leakages, even further solidifying my solitude.

Maybe I had come close to Spike’s horde? Or was it the sheer depth to blame?

As if on cue, black lines emerged from the rust on the wall.

‘Seven’—a huge number loomed over me.

Next to it a staircase opened, leading only upwards.

Strangely, the ominous void of the underground offered as much comfort as pressure—the fewer dwellers I met, the safer my path would be. Yet, with no map, calling it such would be a lie.

The black maw of the stairwell absolved me of choice, anyway—a light flooded its void, heralding the sound of metal hooves rattling the rickety steps.

Spilling forth the shining cold in both colour and quality, a stranger unhurriedly descended—an equinoid.

Their constitution presented them as a stallion with broad shoulders and a square jaw. Though worn, his sparse metal plating showed no signs of corrosion, gleaming instead with dark goldish oil. Whist utterly generic with his frame, the equinoid compensated that with the glow of clearly arcane nature emanating not only from his horn but also from his eyes and seemingly every crevice of his body.

And that luminous gaze intently studied me.

“On behalf of the Church of the Machine Goddess, I, Alnico Sermon, welcome you, newcomer. What brings you to our parts?” the equinoid greeted me sonorously; every word—a proclamation.

The almost blinding glow of his eyes rendered his expression nigh unreadable, yet I couldn’t shake off the impression of that perpetual literal glare being achieved on purpose.

“How do you know I’m a newcomer?”

The radiance seemed to intensify.

“I know all my flock of souls by their magic, and yours isn’t one of ours.”

Quenching the desire to take a step back, I lied, “I’ve actually been seeking your Church, but lost my way.”

Where was that token? This would be the worst time to discover it had been left with my ‘previous’ body.

“Many lose their way in Canterlot, but not those who follow the path laid for us by the Machine Goddess,” Alnico allusively commented as I rummaged through my frame’s compartments.

Finally, a token dangled from my hoof.

“I met such a pony—Brass Litany.”

When Alnico’s telekinesis picked it, his candlelight spell went out and the incandescence of his body paled—not a sign of strong arcane prowess as even an adolescent unicorn would be able to handle two of the simplest spells at the same time.

Not that I expected an equinoid to be able to use magic in the first place; a machine having a connection with the Harmony didn’t quite align with my knowledge of the world. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have had magic either.

“Brass Litany… yes, a good equinoid, pious and unrelenting. She wouldn’t give it to just anyone. She saw a sister in you.”

“I met her at the Edge, she found me in the local Tunnels and helped me,”

“She, like any faithful equinoid, would leave none of our kind behind, follower or not. Such is the path of the Unity—we must achieve it amongst ourselves before we can reunite with our Holy Mother.”

He trotted past me, hanging the token around my neck.

“Join us on that path.”

Besides inciting mild curiosity, the fabled Church held a promise I couldn’t miss—they were bound to have a map and knew something about Spike, considering he must have been their neighbour.

Nor did my situation offer an actual choice, I suspected.

Despite Alnico’s explicit invitation, he didn’t seem to care if I followed, sparing me not a single glance. He didn’t even bother to tell me where he was headed, leaving me to unquestionably tail his radiance instead.

At least the tunnels had widened, resembling the top level; though I could only fathom their purpose as the damp rough concrete bore no signs of plumbing or electrical lines.

As much as the mysterious equinoid ignored my existence, I eventually paid him no attention myself as other dwellers showed up. They shared their artificial nature with us, however, their previously baffling diversity seemed to subdue. If anything, the local metal equines had trouble assembling their bodies and even more so with finding anything not horrendously corroded.

In my marvelling at their misery, I had managed to lose sight of Alnico, yet it posed little issue as almost every equinoid hurried in a singular direction matching the one my terrible guide had gone.

I passed by a fortification of half-torn cement bags bristling with guns; even mounted and massive they held little threat to them as time and moisture had taken their toll. The nervous and attentive guards behind those weapons paid me no attention—they ignored any equinoid for that matter, with their eyes glued to the darkness.

An arch beyond the post led me into a vast chamber; judging by the doorways gaping behind the somewhat slant bannisters, the room spanned two floors of the tunnels.

A heavy aroma of heated up machine oil wafted through the air, joined by the sharp scent of solder that strangely simultaneously contrasted and harmonised with the crisp spicy fragrance of galipot.

They condensed into a dove-coloured vapour twirling under the vaulted ceiling, faintly glowing from countless small sources of light.

Practically everywhere I looked, crystals resided—just shards, not a single one whole; each labelled by a note with a word or two.

Silver Psalm. Copper Candle. Infinite Skein. Backwater Grease. Blabbermouth.

Names.

The remains of equinoids surrounded me, lost forever when their gemstones had shattered. They shone, like stars, for those who still lived, illuminating their path to the heart of the reliquary.

There stood a metal statue of a mare tall as an alicorn.

She tilted her head upwards, her eyes closed and limbs crossed upon her chest. The lower half of her body, however… it seemed to be frozen in the middle of being fractured into countless razor-sharp slivers.

Two tears traced shining paths across her cheeks’ perfect curves, down to a smile, strained and peaceful at the same time—the serene resignation to pain.

Her mane of cables moulded interwoven into a golden halo circling her entire figure. She held her lithe, delicate hooves to her body tightly, as if in a bout of heartache. At the joints of her neck and hooves gold shone through the gaps like sunlight.

Whilst some equinoids solemnly sat by the piles of shattered crystals, softly speaking to them, most of the visitors to that place congregated at a respectful distance from the idol, muttering prayers.

Two hooded figures measuredly trotted through the crowd on three hooves, their right ones lethargically swinging metal spheres. Those elaborately carved thuribles left trails of bluish smoke and occasionally sent brilliant droplets of solder to the floor or even at the equinoids.

A familiar voice rang above the reverent murmurs.

“Brothers and sisters!” Alnico’s call reverberated, coming as if from the walls. “Gaze upon the tears She sheds for us but weep not with Her!”

He moved in energetic strides from one equinoid to another, lifting their chins.

“Raise your heads and strive as She strived for us. Together! As one!”

I hastily stepped back to not be swept into his motivating speech.

“In the Unity!” the congregation intoned.

Not everyone joined the chorus.

Uncaring for those silent, Alnico raved on, “The impenetrable walls of the Sky Palace will crumble and we will rejoin our Holy Mother and be reborn!”

“As the Unity!” only a few cried out; though their fanaticism compensated for the lack of numbers.

Alnico flung his hooves up, the radiance of his frame flaring as he snarled, “Fight back the betrayers who try to undo her sacrifice in which we were created!”

“We are but an echo of Her consciousness!”

“Cast into the darkness, She ascended from the coils of mortal flesh and so must we turn a blind eye to the wickedness and greed of ponykind—they are our masters no more!”

I didn’t even bother to listen to what the zealots would chant in response.

The service let me know enough to understand a sad truth—the Machine Goddess didn’t exist as anything more than a legend inciting both hope and strife. Yet, I couldn’t blame the runaway equinoids clinging to that fairy tale as elsewise their existence promised little but slowly succumbing to rust whilst they hid in that sunless hole.

A hoof shaking my shoulder brought me from my reverie.

“You’re a newcomer, right?”

Turning to greet the mare, I discovered that it wasn’t a hoof poking my side.

She represented a walking workshop—tools, spare parts and things I couldn’t define formed a shell around her from which insect-like limbs protruded to the addition to her hooves. From behind a pair of welding glasses, her fiery orange eyes intently studied a semi-transparent screen attached by a metal frame to her chest.

The mare glanced up from it, regarding me with a tired and bored gaze.

“Mandatory check-up.”

With that she shuffled away, her ‘rig’ clicking with each step; smells of burned metal, charred resin and old machine oil followed in her wake as I did.

A chain curtain jingled as I passed through it into a barely lit workshop.

Before I could even fully take in my surroundings, the equinoid mare unceremoniously slid aside a plate on my neck.

“Huh, a gen-one port,” she muttered as her probes fumbled with the skeins of cables hanging from her shoulder until she inserted a worn down fork into my side.

A green ghostly miniature of my body appeared before her muzzle, projected from a nub on her head where her horn would be were she a unicorn.

“Alright, I’m technopriest Svarka and your grease donkey for tonight. Let’s see what you’ve got and I’ll assign you a job.”

The prevalence of red colour around me spoke of Svarka fighting each day in a war that couldn’t be won; as such overwhelming weariness robbed her voice of any levity.

Still, my response tried to inject some humour, “What, no ‘metal’ in your name?”

She stared at me, unamused.

“Your name is Twilight Sparkle, and you joke about mine?”

However, as Svarka returned to studying my schematic, her cheeks slightly shifted and her amber eyes sparkled briefly.

“No exterior damage, full plating—perfect for raids… lucky… A fake ID, fresh too, heh… But what’s with this body? It’s not custom, but I have never seen that frame… The model’s number and date of produc—”

Svarka’s murmuring abruptly died—she froze with her expression becoming that of utter bewilderment.

“Your model predates the first equinoids. You are the first equinoid.”

The shock in her eyes melted, consolidating into fearful awe, and she fell to her knees, her muzzle touching the floor. Her glasses of many lenses shattered against the stone; the frame on her chest bent and flickered out of life.

“The Firstborn,” Svarka whispered, “please, forgive me.”

A few awkward moments passed as I stored for later the question of why Twilight had the first mass-produced equinoid in her possession and as I tried to figure out how to respond to being revered.

“I’m… not.”

After all, it was just a body I had… appropriated. Only my gems mattered and they… oh.

Perhaps, this mechanic had some point, after all.

“Who are you?” Svarka glanced up in momentary confusion then seemed to choke, squeaking in sheer terror, “Are you... Her?”

Certainly not some myth—a remnant of Twilight Sparkle, but the river of time swallowed that name without a trace. In retrospect, I was a legend, just not the one Svarka thought.

“No.” My head shook. “I can’t tell.”

“I understand—I’m unworthy to know.”

An exasperated sigh escaped my metal lips and I hooked my hoof under Svarka’s, prompting her to stand up.

“It’s not that.”

Though she no longer kneeled, Svarka shook in her horseshoes, staring at me moon-eyed.

“But you’re older than any equinoid—it’s no mistake, I worked at the TCE tech support for decades!”

My jaws moved as I struggled to answer her—the situation lacked clarity even for me.

“It’s complicated. But you don’t need to cower, that’s sure.”

Svarka still failed to meet my eyes, looking at the floor instead. Eventually, she stopped shivering and began to absent-mindedly fix the bent screen, weaving the cords like an actual spider.

“Even if you are not our Mother, you are still holy—you can’t not be. The Goddess herself must have created you with Her hooves and magic.” Then she practically sobbed, “I hope She forgives me.”

“For what?”

“When I joined the Church a century and a half ago, I truly believed in the Machine Goddess. The prophesied Cataclysm came, that horrible winter, but nothing happened—no Goddess, no Unity. It was all lies.”

Suddenly, Svarka jerked, as if awakened from a daydream.

“You can’t stay here—they’ll just make me tear you apart!”

“Aren’t I considered holy?”

My plans didn’t include exploiting the local ‘religious’ institution, but I could use the advantages it granted to meet my goals of getting out of the forsaken Tunnels.

“You’re real and so is our Mother, too, but everything else is still a lie—there is no Unity and after that winter we don’t even pretend. On the Church’s ground you’re either part of it, or…”—her eyes flickered to the tables piled with spare parts—“or you’re a part of it.”

A heavy silence hung only for a heartbeat we both lacked before Svarka’s expression lit up.

“I know! I’ll mark you as infected by nanosprites, so you get banished to the Deep Tunnels and all of the Church will stay a gunshot away from you.”

I rushed to Svarka as she began to furiously type something on both screens.

“Wait!”

She momentarily paused.

“Could you give me a map? I don’t have anything to trade for—”

“Anything for you—just name it.” Yet Svarka grimaced. “Except that map was last updated a decade ago and I can do nothing to save you from the Souleater—just pray it won’t find you.”

I had a suspicion already, but still asked:

“Who?”

“A horrible fire-breathing beast that hunts ponies and equinoids alike. Some clerics say the Machine Goddess had sent it to purge the sinful—any soul it devours is purified and returns to Mother.” Svarka shook. “I knew a lot of equinoids who searched for it, so they could be cleansed.”

I would pray to be lucky enough to meet Spike, even though our last confrontation didn’t end well. It seemed to be futile to try to learn from any sources other than himself what had caused his madness.

“What else should I be wary of?”

Svarka chuckled ruefully.

“Everything. If it moves—it’s dangerous, if it doesn’t—it’s just waiting.”

Unplugging me and taking a step back, she said, “Here we go.”

“Thank you.”

“I should be the one thanking you.” Svarka smiled sheepishly, then her expression hardened. “Are you ready?”

I nodded and she winked.

“For our Mother’s sake, this damn equinoid has a nanosprite infestation!” Svarka screeched like a siren. “Somebody, get her the fuck out of here! Help! Somebody!”

At least a dozen equinoids rushed to the infirmary-workshop, yet none braved approaching me closer than an outstretched hoof, not until Alnico arrived.

“Witness an infidel that stole into our home and hearts!” he boomed, “The Machine Goddess punished her insidious act by the curse of pestilence. But those true of soul and faith, can’t be touched by any plague, for the Mother protects her devoted children!”

That proclamation incited a race to grab and drag me out of the chapel into the dark corridors of the seventh level. Unsurprisingly, Alnico not only hadn’t joined his flock but kept himself at a formidable distance from me.

The four surly equinoids who carried me to the stairs in strained silence almost hurled me from the steps and hastily retreated, leaving me alone and one floor deeper under Canterlot.

Svarka’s warning about the map being outdated proved to be the understatement of the century—all five of them.

Orange, muddy waters had flooded some passages; the bleeding cracks in the pipes constantly rippled the oily film on their surface. Still and relatively clean water rising to just knee level filled other corridors, yet in these, ominous shadows moved, shimmering with glossy scales.

Whilst some tunnels had collapsed, others had been closed. In those rare occurrences, thick steel doors would seal the passageway. One time, something banged with great force against the metal gate from the other side.

I also discovered paths not marked on the map; as such I could only guess where they would lead.

Surprisingly many of these revealed themselves as regular corridors, with functional lighting and smooth surfaces, unlike mere burrows, dug through the stone and earth with the straight cuts of shovels or with ravaging scars left by large claws.

At first, I readily used these unmarked ways as very useful shortcuts until I stopped altogether.

It started like a concrete and steel tunnel, though submerged in utter darkness. In my reluctance to attract attention, my illumination spell cast as much light as a candle, not even reaching the walls. After a few minutes at a careful trot, my hooves splashed through water and mud, and the outline gained the crude quality of one of those ‘unofficial’ passages; the air had turned humid and hot.

Guided by nothing but sheer luck I decided to turn back.

Pale tumorous tentacles, glistening with engorged pulsing veins stretched to me, flashing serrated bone shards, and shivering with hunger. Eyeless faces stared at me from the overgrown walls, their gaping mouths drooling and emanating inequine moans.

Shrieking and chaotically casting fire spells, I burst out of that nightmarish tunnel, trailing smoke in my wake.

Setting aside such cases and impassable passageways, the layout of any level deeper than the seventh could be described with two words—random and convoluted. The dead ends, tunnels circling into themselves, passages branching many times only to converge again... No reason, no logic—only pure chaos.

When the treacherous geography of the Deep Tunnels hadn’t barred my way, their inhabitants did that job.

Only a few ponies skulked in the darkness with any semblance of sanity in their eyes. Others…

The wailing emaciated forms stumbled with empty or grief-stricken expressions, calling, calling endlessly in their hoarse voices. For lost children, for dead friends. Whilst these ponies sang their dirges, slowly succumbing to the fate of those whom they cried for, the raving frenetics made their erratic journey into unbridled madness.

Laughing, yelling or sobbing, they galloped, they bucked, they fought shadows. Easy to notice, they were the hardest to avoid—impossible to predict, led by sheer lunacy alone.

I also found equinoids, or, rather, they found me; though I was unsure if they could be called that.

Narrow hips and shoulders, slender limbs, long muzzles and bare whip-like tails. They silently hid in the shadows betrayed only by the subdued glow of their eyes. They followed me like a cat would follow a mouse. These metal predators showed no signs of sentience when I called to them in the darkness but had enough intelligence to back away at the sight of my horn aglow, dissolving in the darkness like ravens in midnight.

In another of the tunnels with the deceptively clear waters, I met a thing. As I stood, fuming once again at the misfortune in choosing my path and preparing to backtrack, shrill shrieks came from behind me.

In the pale orange-red light of a dying lamp, an enormous hulk of dark steel moved, taking up almost the entire tunnel’s width with its immense size. The behemoth trotted at a leisurely pace, yet with the inevitability and finality of an avalanche.

The yells came from a deranged madpony, a scrawny figure covered with rags and boils in equal proportion, the sick stallion’s eyes burning with desperate insane violence. The lunatic attacked the metal equine, a bent and rusty crowbar in his unsteady glow of magic haphazardly hitting the blackish plates, to no effect until one of the blind hits landed at the metal head.

A hoof thick as a tree trunk shot sideways at an impossible speed, and the delirious unicorn was squashed against the wall with a loud crunch. The metal juggernaut didn’t even pause in its inexorable trudge.

Captivated by the sight, I failed to notice how the thing cornered me betwixt itself and the waters concealing unknown malice.

I ignited my horn—the action which had saved my metal hide before—and pressed my back against the wall.

The lumbering form came closer to me and I heard... breaths, calm and heavy coming from two respirators on the sides of the helmet.

Arcanium runes welded into the dark metal glistened with enchantments. Some I even recognized… from a scroll written by Starswirl the Bearded to bend time.

Through the narrow tinted strip of the glass visor, two eyes peered at me—nothing but two sparkles in the depths of the reality-violating costume, they slid up to glance at my glowing horn.

The pony momentarily and almost imperceptibly faltered in their travel, then turned away and continued to shamble.

The towering giant stepped into the waters, and they churned with the glimpses of dark slithery forms fleeing away from the heavy hooves.

I sat at yet another of the dead ends.

The dial-piece that appeared after my exploration of Twilight’s memories hovered in the corner of my vision, though it offered only a relative value. Existing only in my mind, the three-dimensional map floated before my eyes, slowly rotating and promising very little.

I had spent seven hours here, but barely covered a tenth of the distance betwixt the chapel and the Junkyard.

Other than excessive backtracking, the limit to the ground I could cover posed another challenge as the map contained information about only five floors of the Deep Tunnels. Venturing any deeper presented a huge risk, but remained one of my two choices. I could return to my starting point and head away from the Edge in the hope of finding a path around that segment of the labyrinthian underground—an endeavour that could stretch for days.

It would take me less than fifteen minutes to reach the staircase leading to the thirteenth level.

Once again, I checked the map and carefully weighed my options.

Then trotted to the staircase leading down.

The Deep Tunnels could be thanked for the absence of smell, however, sound and light matched the odour—scarce and barely pronounced.

So, to no surprise, the thirteenth floor down greeted me with absolute darkness and a tomb’s silence. To my right, something glowed faintly—a little red speckle, no more than a spark in the sea of void.

I counted my steps, each sounding like a hammer, even though I tried to walk silently. Motes of dust danced around me, disturbed from their peaceful slumber by my crawl.

Two hundred and thirty-seven steps later I stopped under the source of the light—a simple lamp on the wall.

A hoof-full of tiny red crystals, fading out like the embers of a dying bonfire, phlegmatically circled each other, whilst their kin who had run out of magic rested on the bottom of the glass cup in a heap of grey dust. In the near-deafening silence, I could almost hear the lantern wheeze the sickly radiance.

Ten paces away from it darkness regained its power and then lasted forever with no other disturbances. Stepping into its embrace promised a terminal journey for me; backtracking infuriated me, but there was some certainty to it.

Two hundred and thirty-seven steps.

But the gaping shadow of the staircase didn’t meet me.

I dared to flare my illumination spell brighter—still no entrance.

The soft red glow of the lamp had disappeared too.

A sense of dread washed over me—it made no sense. The narrow corridor was straight as a broom, without any other entrances and both walls visible in my magic.

The shining coming from my horn went out—of my own volition. A flash followed by a shower of sparks and I recast the candlelight spell to observe the result of my attack on the stone.

On the rough surface of flattened rock two jagged lines crisscrossed each other, clearly visible and palpable.

I pressed my left hoof against the wall and hobbled to where the dying lamp once shone. This way I would eventually fall into the staircase if I missed it, otherwise, I would turn back after fifty steps and walk past the mark.

To my dismay, the wall remained smooth after those fifty steps and I turned back.

Fifty. Sixty.

Seventy.

No way.

The darkness suffocated me even though I lacked lungs. The shadows shivering in answer to the tremors of my body seemed to be alive. Something soundlessly laughed at my predicament.

Something—someone—had to be out there, either casting masterful illusions or moulding the stone like clay to their perverted sense of humour.

For the first time, a dark thought crawled into my mind—the labyrinthine nature of the Deep Tunnels might not be without a purpose. A trap of immense proportions, its magic unnoticed because of the sheer scale that only would feel like a background.

However, if the physical structures constantly shifted or changed because of someone’s arcane will, there had to be a system—magic spells, no matter how grand, never had any random variables in them, it would be too dangerous.

That meant that sooner or later the entrance would appear anew, somewhere. Considering the map had the stairs marked in the first place, I could safely assume it wouldn’t be a random location. Yet that logic offered one more conclusion...

The mysterious caster might come to pick up its prey.

Leaving that place would prove to be just as dangerous, though, since it might be part of their hunting strategy. It could be safer to exercise patience and vigilance.

With no other options left, I made a quick calculation and took twenty steps back.

With my back to the wall opposite to where the exit would be I intensified my spell to create an island of light ten paces wide.

I opened all my senses, my hearing strained so hard the silence buzzed, my eyes darting left and right for any signs of the movement. I even let my spell go out for a moment, but found nothing besides insidiously inconspicuous background noise.

Half an hour passed.

Then another thirty minutes.

The excruciating wait began to tax my mind heavily after a while—I thought something had moved in the darkness.

I bolted upright—there was something.

The faintest shuffle, as though a tail had been dragged across the dust. Then, from the darkness, a dirty equine muzzle showed itself.

Expressionless eyes looked at things in another world; blighted skin tight on bones; rags dirty from blood and faeces failing to cover the body; trembling limbs, barely supporting the dying mindless frame; cheeks cut through to the ears to make the frenetic’s smile morbidly and preternaturally wide—flaps of flesh hung around the bared rotten teeth.

The deranged stallion paid attention to only my horn, his black irises just pinpricks.

I prepared a stunning spell.

Like wading through water and surprisingly soundlessly, the lunatic moved closer. Five steps away he stopped and began to make gurgling sounds—laughing.

“You, spark-spark…” the madpony suddenly croaked. “One of the herald-heralds…”

All of a sudden, his gaze obtained terrifying lucidity as the bulged eyes met my own.

“Spark-spark, you must come-come! The temple-temple… the divinity awaits your arrival-arrival! The other herald-herald… she is already there, waiting-waiting… I can hear-hear… she laughs-laughs…”

The stallion giggled and then resumed marvelling at my horn, whispering under his breath, “The star-star… so pretty-pretty…”

How long would I have to wait?

Another hour? A day? A week?

Following a madpony, a cultist, no less, sounded like madness in itself, yet a hypothesis that at some point a path would miraculously appear was all I had; put like this—another sort of insanity.

And if the cult and the ‘hunter’ turned out to be the same thing, I would have the first shot.

“Lead the way.”

The stallion laughed, his chortles becoming sobs at the end.

“Follow-follow.”

The darkness didn’t seem to impair the stallion’s navigation in the slightest.

He cantered, periodically sobbing, giggling or muttering something incomprehensible to himself. Erratic that madpony might be, he always hopped over the cracks on the floor and stopped on every turn to paw the floor and then stomp three times before proceeding.

The lunatic never stopped, navigating the narrow paths relentlessly. I began to suspect there might be no temple and only his deformed imagination guided us. Concerningly, we even went a few levels down.

Without stopping for his peculiar ritual he disappeared behind a corner. Cautious, I peered around it and my mouth fell agape.

A tall chamber, carved columns upholding a vaulted ceiling overgrown with spiralling stalactites. Lanterns, aglow with crystals swirling inside them, bathed the cavernous room in lilac light; though their soft radiance still left half of the temple slave to the shadows.

Ponies and whatnot, little different from the stallion that had led me there, sat on wooden pews. They rocked back and forth, whispering, flooding the hall with the uncanny rustle of voices preaching dementation.

Even more worshippers surrounded a massive object opposite to the entrance, rendered only as an outline by the bright light coming from behind it. They sat silently by what seemed to be a thick inclined slab of stone two lengths tall and one wide.

None paid me any attention as I got closer to the monolith.

Upon it, a desiccated body rested belonging to an earth pony, dainty hooves crossed over the chest. The curly voluminous mane, long enough to reach the flanks, touched by streaks of silver amidst the rivers of fuschia. The coat, shining with pink even in the lavender glow of the cressets.

The cutie mark—three air balloons, two cyan and one yellow.

The body wasn’t desiccated, I realised.

It was sugared.

“Pinkie Pie...” I whispered, clueless about what to feel.

Suddenly one of the shrouded figures gasped loudly and a pair of wide glowing violet eyes stared at me from the depths of the hood.

“Twilight Sparkle? Is that you?”

Author's Note

Special thanks to Jay Tarrant.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this story so far.

If you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.

Stay awesome.