Chapter 17: Foalhardy Foray

Week 20, Day 1, Morning

“The ‘Ponest’ Dungeon?” Rainbow asked in an incredulous tone. “What in the Tartarus kind of name is that?”

“It’s the name Celestia gave to it in her letter,” Blueblood replied. “She also refers to it by that moniker in all of her notes. I have no idea why she calls it that, nor do I know what we can possibly expect from the place.” He steepled his hooves. “All we do know is the supposed location of the entrance. Any group we send is going to be blundering in blind. As such, for the initial incursion, I am going to ask for volunteers.”

“My team volunteers,” Moondancer said without hesitation.

“You are sure?” Blueblood asked. “All of you? You need to realize that this mission is to penetrate the source of the blight that has struck this land. Twilight and Starlight have both informed me that what lurks below those foundations is orders of magnitude more powerful than the necromancer we defeated. That fiend was capable of overrunning the countryside with their foul undead. You could be facing a tide of unending horrors once you enter that place.”

“All the more reason to send us,” slurred Lemon Hearts. “We will bring Celestia’s light to that darkest of dungeons.”

The other two members of Moondancer’s team nodded in assent.

Looking over his hooves at the four mares, Blueblood sighed. “Well, at least we’re sending in the best.”

Week 20, Day 2, Morning

“Last chance to back out,” Blueblood said as Moondancer shoved another hoofful of muffintack into her saddlebags.

Moondancer glared at him. “I swear Blueblood, if you insinuate that my team isn’t up for this one more time, I’m going to clock you!”

Taking a step back, Blueblood held up his hooves in a placating manner. “I’m not insinuating anything, Moony, I—”

“And stop calling me that!” Moondancer hissed. “If we’re going to have any kind of working relationship, you need to start treating me more like a soldier. It took me a long time to earn the respect of my peers. I don’t need you calling me childish nicknames and undermining that.”

“I’m sorry… Moondancer,” Blueblood said. “I didn’t realize… it’s just we were friends before, so I thought…”

Moondancer sighed. “I’m sorry, Blue. I just—” she sighed “—this is the real test, isn’t it? We cleaned house on our sweep through the weald, without any real resistance. But this place… it’s different. It’s more dangerous than anything any of your ponies have faced before… and I’m nervous. Confident, but nervous. But you constantly asking if we’re sure, not treating me like the dangerous mare I am… it undermines that confidence. Do you—”

“Officer Moondancer,” Blueblood interrupted. “I have every confidence in you and your team’s ability to successfully navigate the Ponest Dungeon. You are Canterlot’s best, and I look forward to your successful report when you return.”

“Thank you Sir,” Moondancer said with a smile. She reached over with a forehoof and drew Blueblood into a hug. “See you when we return, Blue.”

Week 20, Day 3, Dawn

Several of the company were gathered in the observatory, waiting for Ametrine to announce that Moondancer’s team was about to breach the entryway.

“Celestia’s notes don’t describe anything specific about the dungeon itself,” Blueblood said. “Just a lot of fevered scribblings about how it is a ‘realm of death and madness.’”

“That’s not very quantitative,” Twilight observed.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Thanks for that one, egghead—OW!” She looked over to Shining, who had just elbowed her in the side. “What? She is an egghead!”

Shining furrowed his brows. “That’s my sister you’re talking about, Dashie.”

“Oh,” Rainbow said. “Right.” She forced a few embarrassed chuckles.

“Soon the dungeon’s secrets we will know,” Zecora intoned. “Once Moondancer’s party travels below.”

“You are able to see them now,” Tempest said to Ametrine, ignoring the unnecessary drama unfolding around her.

“Yes,” Ametrine replied. “I can’t really explain it in terms of normal senses. The closest I can manage to say is that it’s like I’m watching the field team at the same time that I’m watching what is going on here.” She shrugged. “For example, they’re finishing breakfast right now: Moondancer is cleaning her mess kit, Lemon Hearts is praying to Celestia, Twinkleshine is polishing her armor, and Minuette is running some kind of twine through her teeth—that last tidbit is actually the most confusing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It sounds like she’s flossing,” Tempest replied. “Minuette is of the mind that dental health is paramount, and partakes in more tooth cleaning rituals than the average pony.”

“Ah,” Ametrine said in a nonplussed tone. “Oh!” She turned towards Blueblood. “Blue, they’re approaching the main castle ruins now!”

“Okay, everypony, moment of truth,” Blueblood said as he motioned for everypony to form a circle. “Ametrine? Whenever you’re ready.”

Ametrine responded by shrieking and morphing into the remote-viewing window. As her own features were torn asunder to swirl in the air, the image of Moondancer’s group swam into focus.

Week 20, Day 3, Morning

“Roger that Sir,” Moondancer said as the group stepped hoof through the shattered doors that fronted the monolithic castle of the Two Sisters. She gasped when she beheld the interior. While sundered stone had fallen in many places, the architecture of the structure was magnificent. The ceiling, which was mostly intact, was at least fifty hooves high. In abundance were marble columns, every last inch of which was covered with elaborate carvings depicting the sun, the moon, and representatives of all three pony races. “This place must have been replete in its own resplendence when it was fully intact,” she said to nopony in particular.

“Over here,” Lemon Hearts slurred. “The stairway down that he mentioned.”

“All right everypony,” Moondancer said, “down we go.”

Lemon Hearts took the lead, slinking slowly down the stairs with her massive cleaver of a sword held in her jaws.

Twinkleshine followed closely behind, levitating her drawn longsword in the air beside herself.

Next was Minuette, whose cudgel was still hanging from her saddle, though she had her holy book hovering at the ready next to her.

Moondancer brought up the rear, her magical censer floating nearby.

As they descended the steps, the worked stone showed significant signs of wear. The first basement was utterly devoid of any inhabitants or obstacles, much to everypony’s relief. Continuing downward, they observed as crumbling stone blocks and bricks gave way to worked rock passages, seemingly bored through the living earth itself. Even further down, all signs of craftsmareship vanished, leading into a series of completely natural looking tunnels.

Stepping hoof onto the base of the slope of one particularly steep descent, Lemon Hearts suddenly shuddered. “This place feels wrong,” she said.

“How often do you tell us you can’t ‘feel’ anything Lemon?” Twinkleshine larked.

“I’m telling you,” Lemon Hearts insisted, “I can actually feel something, and it feels wrong.”

Hold, Blueblood’s voice echoed through the darkened space, bringing the party to a halt. If Lemon Hearts is able to detect a disturbance, it might actually be because her sense of touch has been removed. Without the extra sensory input, she might be able to feel unseen things that the rest of you cannot. Lemon Hearts, what exactly do you feel?

“I can’t explain it,” came Lemon Hearts’ slurred reply. “It’s like a tingling on my skin… but it’s making me sick to my stomach.”

“I’m not detecting… anything,” Moondancer said in a confused tone. “Not even eldritch energy. That’s weird. I was almost overwhelmed by the flood of it when we were on the surface, so what gives?”

Remember, I told you we wouldn’t know what to expect, Blueblood replied. You are in uncharted territory. Everything you’re seeing for the first time, we’re also seeing for the first time. So be careful.

“Sweet mother of Celestia,” Twinkleshine blurted out.

Week 20, Day 3, Morning

“What in Tartarus is that?” Shining asked, a slight tremor in his voice.

“Only a horror of prodigious size,” Zecora breathed, “would need that door, which meets my eyes.”

“It’s unreal,” Rainbow whispered.

What was displayed in the viewing window consisted of two colossal pieces of unidentifiable stone. Each slab was of such size that the ponies approaching it appeared to be ants. The party’s torchlight illuminated only about a tenth of the way up the the massive door, and what was clearly visible was completely covered in bas-relief images depicting all manner of unspeakable horrors.

Tempest looked back and forth at the others; the sudden anxiety breeding between them was practically tangible. “Get ahold of yourselves,” she snapped, catching the attention of the gathered ponies. “It’s just a large door, and means nothing by itself other than that its makers had no forethought about having it open into a series of tunnels that are a mere fraction of its preposterous size.”

“Tempest is right,” Blueblood said. “It’s probably just ornamental. It’s at least a hundred hooves high, and the tunnels the party came through are maybe two ponies in height and width at the largest.”

Blueblood, Moondancer’s voice came across the connection, My eyeball measure puts the door at about a hundred and twenty hoofspans in height, about seventy wide. There was intense quiet as the party approached the damnable portal.

“I-impossible…” Twilight trailed off.

“What?” Blueblood waved a hoof in front of Twilight to get her attention. “What is it?”

Twilight continued to stare at the display. “I… know those symbols and designs,” she said in a shaky voice. “I read about them in an ancient text, the griffin pnakteric treatises. I… I discounted it at the time because so many esoteric texts claim to know the true origins of so many things, and so few actually deliver—”

“Damnit Twilight,” Blueblood said as he gripped her shoulders in his forehooves and turned her to face him. “What. Is. It?”

Shaking slightly, Twilight looked him in the eyes. “If what I read is to be believed, then behind that door... is the beginning, and the end… of all life.”

Blueblood, I don’t know how in Tartarus we’re supposed to open this thing. We’re looking at kilotonnes, maybe even megatonnes of stone here. It would take an entire Equestrian Corps of Engineers brigade weeks to set up the necessary machinery to try and breach this thing—Twinkleshine, get away from there!

Week 20, Day 3, 11:59 am

“But look, Moondancer—” Twinkleshine pointed her forehoof to a horseshoe-shaped symbol “—it’s shaped just right; it’s even the exact same size as my hoof,” she said in a mesmerized voice. “Almost… almost as if it was made for me—”

“No!” Moondancer shouted. “Don’t touch it!”

But Twinkleshine’s hoof settled against the symbol, seeming to sink into it slightly. “It’s… warm,” she said, turning back to the others.

Week 20, Day 3, 12:00 pm

Twinkleshine! Moondancer’s scream filled the observatory.

The display went dark as the party’s torches were extinguished. Blueblood shoved his face up to Ametrine. “What is going on down there? Moondancer?! Celestia dammit, somepony answer me!” He felt a sudden pain in his left foreleg and clamped his right hoof down on it. He could feel whatever was in there moving; it felt like it was trying to rip itself free from his skin.

The room suddenly darkened as the sun outside the observatory turned blacker than the blackest pitch.

Rainbow looked up at the stygian sky. “What in Tartarus is happening?”

Crimson poured down from Twilight’s eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. She fell to the floor coughing blood out onto the wooden floorboards. “Something… is… awakening,” she managed between hacks and gags.

Zecora swiftly moved to attend to Twilight, while everypony simply watched.

Where’d she go?! Moondancer’s panicked voice sounded again, followed by another terrifying sound—one that caused a collective shudder to pass through everypony as they slowly turned to stare at the umbral display. Of the ponies present, only Rainbow Dash and Tempest had never heard that cadence of screech before.

“Not again,” Blueblood whispered. The writhing in his foreleg abated at the sound of that horrible keening ululation, almost as if hearing that noxious note soothed it into complacency.

“What is it?” Tempest demanded, her eyes boring into the blank viewing window. She turned and glared with great intensity at him. “Blueblood!”

“Ametrine was right,” Twilight said, still dribbling blood. “Shadow and death—you hear it Blueblood?”

“Yes,” he replied, still clutching his foreleg. “But… this one is different somehow.”

Shining leaned forward. “Yes, the other shambler had a more… stable shriek. This one sounds broken… cracking, corrupted.”

“Correct,” Twilight coughed. “Which… means there’s something down there giving off enough eldritch energy to corrupt an ancient being borne in the darkest reaches of the universe.”

“Moondancer,” Blueblood spoke mere inches from Ametrine, “Moondancer, can you—”

Week 20, Day 3, 12:01 pm

—hear me?

Spinning around in the pitch blackness, Moondancer tried to get her bearings amidst the cacophony of shouts, screams, and whatever horrific sound that creature was making. “Do you see it? Lemon? Minuette? Twinkleshine? Anypony?!”

A sudden flash of brilliance erupted from Minuette’s horn, illuminating the grisly scene: Twinkleshine was being pulled, hindquarters-first, into a circular fang-rimmed maw. She was struggling in vain against a series of fleshy rope-like appendages which pulled her further towards the pit of slavering doom. The only thing preventing her from being drawn in fully was that her hind hooves had found purchase around the edges of the mouth. Twinkleshine’s gaskins bulged with the strain in her effort to not be devoured.

Turning her head to face the abrupt illumination proved to be Twinkleshine’s downfall. As she twisted, one of her hooves slipped, causing her hind legs to fall into the terrifying toothy tunnel. She cried out in pain and terror as the fangs crunched down on her rear limbs.

Lemon Hearts tried to charge the monstrosity, only for a vermillion-tipped tentacle to slap her past the others.

Completely frozen, Moondancer could only watch on in petrified panic as Minuette struggled to maintain her lighting spell while raining down holy bolts of energy onto the massive creature that was chewing her friend.

Wordless screeches and whinnies of fear and anguish poured from Twinkleshine’s muzzle as the monstrous maw mangled her flesh. The stricken crusader screamed in agony as the creature pulled her further in and bit down again. Twinkleshine’s shriek descended into a wet gurgle as she sprayed blood across the chamber, showering Moondancer in crimson warmth. With her lungs and other vital organs well and truly punctured, Twinkleshine mercifully passed from both consciousness and life.

Week 20, Day 3, 12:02 pm

The ponies in the observation room could only watch on in horror as the scene unfolded. Shining pulled Rainbow’s frozen gaze away from the gruesome display and held her trembling form. While Zecora slowly poured a healing drought down Twilight’s throat, Tempest and Blueblood had their eyes glued to the massacre. They both watched the flashes of illuminated action in horrid fascination.

Lemon Hearts was back up on her hooves and hacked her meat-cleaver of a sword into the shambler’s thick hide, though to little effect.

Minuette continued to hurl bolts of holy light towards the shambler. But again, the damage was negligible.

“Moondancer! Answer me! Gah!” Blueblood turned to Twilight, away from the image of the petrified pony that was Moondancer. “They smashed through timberwolves and bandits without issue,” he said. “And Shining was able to kill that other shambler with a single sword strike.” He leaned closer. “Why in Tartarus are their weapons not working?”

“The creature’s dermal density must be significantly higher than that of the other shambler,” Twilight replied haltingly from Zecora’s grasp. “From the brief flashes we’re seeing, it appears to be covered in tumors and other cancerous growths. For all its departure from the natural order we all know, a shambler is still a sleek, graceful creature. This… thing is but a mere mockery of the eons-old predator we faced last time. It has lost a great deal of agility, but seems to have made up for it with sheer durability.” She finally met her bloodied eyes with Blueblood’s. “They can’t win; they need to get out of there.”

I know,” Blueblood grumbled. “Moondancer! Damnit Moondancer, snap out of it or you’re going—”

Week 20, Day 3, 12:03 pm

—to die down there!

Her body still refusing to move, Moondancer stared numbly as two hook-covered tentacles wrapped themselves around Lemon Hearts.

Lemon Hearts roared in anger as one of the ropy appendages wrapped around her barrel just behind her front legs, whilst another snaked around her barrel just in front of her hind legs. She thrust her sword into one of the creature’s eyes, eliciting a pained screech.

All hope that the creature had been injured was quickly dispelled as the tentacles pulled taut. With a sickeningly wet tearing sound, Lemon Hearts was ripped in two, her front half thrown to land at Moondancer’s hooves, trailing glistening viscera through the air as it traveled. Her flank was shoved into the waiting monstrous maw.

“Moony—” Lemon Hearts sputtered blood as she reached a shaking forehoof towards her friend and leader. “Get… get out… of—” The light faded from her eyes and she lay still, blood pooling beneath where her muzzle had landed.

Moondancer stared numbly at her deceased friend as comprehension and denial warred within her.

“No!” Minuette yelled as a hooked tentacle wrapped around one of her legs and began to draw her in. She looked at the lamprey-like mouth, the fangs coated in the blood and gore of the shambler’s previous two victims. “Not like this!” she screamed as another ropy tendril wrapped around her neck. “The teeth!” Her vocalizations elevated to a keening shriek as she gazed into the monster’s fang-fest of a digestive tract.

Suddenly, a violent tremor ran through Minuette’s body. As she shook, a manic grin spread across her countenance. “Such dirty teeth!” She stopped struggling to escape and actually started trying to crawl towards the creature faster, head-first. “Let me in there and I’ll clean them for you!” She cackled as she levitated a rope from her saddlebags and moved it in front of her. She ran it along and around several of the fangs, managing to remove a small bit of the gore that had caked on them before they clamped down on her head and permanently ceased her efforts.

Moondancer shut her tear-filled eyes tightly, blocking out the sight of the carnage, but not the ghastly sounds of crunching and slurping.

Moony, Blueblood’s voice dripped with sadness, Moony, please—

Moondancer drew her dagger, leaving her magical censer discarded and forgotten. “I’m sorry Blue,” she said. “Please, tell Fancy that I’m sorry.”

No! Blueblood shouted. No, you get out of there! Run now! You can still—

The wretched reverberation of the shambler’s breathing echoed in Moondancer’s ears. She dragged the dagger across her own throat.

Week 20, Day 3, 12:05 pm

The display cut out, no longer showing anything, not even darkness. As if in response, the sky outside the observatory began to lighten.

“What happened?” Blueblood demanded. “Why did the picture go away?”

Sickening squelches and the cracking of bones heralded Ametrine’s reversion to pony form. The noises she made were all too reminiscent of the butchery that had just occurred. “They’re all dead.”

Blueblood blinked. “What?”

“They’re dead,” Ametrine reiterated. “Everypony is dead, Blueblood.” Upon seeing his nonplussed expression, she continued; “I can only tether myself to living creatures. Once the last of the party was gone, I lost connection.”

“Our best team,” Tempest said as she glanced towards a grandfather clock, in a tone as serious as the death they had just witnessed, “all massacred in less than five minutes.” She turned to Blueblood. “Unless we can find a way to counter this creature, our situation will quickly become untenable. And this isn’t the first time one of our ponies has lost their composure in the face of the more grotesque of these monstrosities. We will need to temper the resolve of our force if we want to continue this campaign.”

“Do we?” Blueblood’s voice was filled with the weariness that he was beginning to feel in his bones. His foreleg began to squirm again, though he paid it no heed.

“Do we… what?” Shining asked.

Blueblood looked towards Shining, unable to disguise the look of utter exhaustion covering his face. He turned to all of the ponies he had gathered into the observatory, seeing the looks of sorrow, despair, and worry.

“Do we want… to continue this campaign?”

End of Arc 1: The Recombinant Rictus

Author's Note

Ok everypony:

Arc One: The Recombinant Rictus is complete.

There will be a pause in posting as I get Arc Two ready for consumption. I’ll blog as updates happen to keep everypony in the know.