Cold sweat soaks into fluffy fabric as Rarity silently rises from her bed covers, stained frilly sleep mask coming askew. Her hooves shake as she wipes her brow, recoiling at her fur’s moisture. She stares at her sodden hoof while idly working the uncomfortable duvet off her with her hinds. Mumbling “Not again,” she squints in vain, both at her hoof and her recently started dream journal sitting upon her nightstand. A creative and welcome suggestion of Twilight’s, left woefully unattended for the past several nights.
Instead, she hops to her hooves and lights a lamp, walking over a moonlight-struck floor towards her chalkboard. Blue magic lifts a half-used stick of chalk and she smoothly draws out an overly complex array of curving lines without a single re-do. Once done, she completes the sectioned and detailed albeit unusual drawing with all the necessary measurements. It might not be obvious at first sight of the diagrams which part would serve as the waist, shoulder or hip, but the construction is sound.
Immediately upon dropping the chalk does her blue aura shift elsewhere- to fabrics and string and, unusually, leathers, all of which she had set aside from her last job. Scissors both small and bulky, thin and thick cut them into designated pieces with remarkable precision and place them upon the worktable. She would have no need for her pony mannequins, just as she had found out with prior morning jobs- instead, she would be using only the table and her well-armed natural judgment.
Thicker, stronger string is required for the leather straps, otherwise she makes use of plain grays and matching blues for the little denim used; This job wanted not of gems or colors, not of any sequins or diamonds and especially not of silver or light fabric. Utilitarian pieces seldom required frill nor overstated appearance, and although she would not picture the purpose or eventual user of this design, she could identify such features in its straightforward layering.
The design is assembled and she puts her hooves to her magical sewing machine, but her work is interrupted by her office’s door creaking open once the moonlight had left her floor.
“Rarity?” Blearily rubbing one of her eyes with a hoof, Sweetie Belle shuffles inside in her pajamas.
“Yes, Sweetie?” All that can be heard over her voice is the staccato of her sewing machines; The night outside remains silent, as befitting the early hour.
“Are you working late again?”
“No,” Rarity pauses in her sewing, forehooves resting on the sewing machine’s motor, ”I… have an urgent assignment.” She stares critically at what must be an oddly shaped shoulder strap.
“You have a lot of those recently.”
“… I know.”
“They must pay really well.” Sweetie Belle walks up to the table and closely squints at the loose fabric covered in a webbing of straps.
“…” Rarity’s glasses droop a little as she stares at the piece of leather. She tugs at a corner as if in disbelief.
“These don’t look like pony dresses or costumes.”
“They’re not my usual couture, no.” Rarity shakes her head clear and returns to her sewing.
“Have you finished my costume for Nightmare Night yet?” She tilts her head and blinks at Rarity wide-eyed.
“Yes, you can try it— Ah!” After Rarity looks Sweetie’s way, she accidentally misses a line and runs the needle off the strap’s edge. She winces as she jumps her hind off the starter, tut-tutting while she undoes the stitch, “… You can try it out tomorrow, but as you can see I’m busy right now, so you should go back to sleep.” Sweetie Belle waddles back to her room with a scoff as Rarity repairs the strap, though the left side of the neck line might look a little off after. For once, Rarity didn’t mind aiming for a little lower than sheer perfection.
Immediately upon finishing her latest project, Rarity trots down the stairs without even bothering to set aside some of her finishing tools. She sets the complete ensemble where she usually leaves the results of her recent assignments- on the floor of her salt-dried storage basement. Her basement is where she usually stores all her more valuable fabrics and gemstones longterm, including the recent rather convenient shipment of leather. But as she is about to leave, her tail accidentally snags on one of the scattered salt pillars, which topples over and breaks apart atop the clothes. Rarity gasps and turns around, haphazardly wiping the salt off the clothing. She is about to pick it up and shake it out proper when she hears a shrill scream from above.
“Sweetie Belle!?” She drops her string and needle and runs up the stairs.
“Oh, not again!” Somehow, Sweetie Belle has managed to set her bed-time cocoa on fire.
To Rarity, the early morning’s events are forgotten as easily as they came, or they would be were it not for one minor detail. As she is about to wipe the old chalk drawings away, she trips over a discarded piece of leather and, after recovering, picks it up with her magic. She closely examines it before gazing back at all her prior drawings.
“No, this is odd.” She sets it down and resolutely makes her way back to the basement.
As on the day prior, and the day before that, the clothes have gone. But this time, she had lost even her needle and string. She leans down where she had set them before, examining the mysterious dirt left behind amid fresh salt- she takes good care of her dry cellar, and wouldn’t track any herself. She scuffles her hoof across the dirty ground, tracing a few strange tracks before the tip of her hoof hitches against a rim. She digs the toe in a line around the indent until she finds a divot, which she lifts with a little magical help, and as she does, there she reveals a wooden trap door. Its covering of tiles blends nearly seamlessly with the rest of her cellar - and she certainly does not remember having such a door installed in her boutique. She magically lifts it and cranes her head over what awaits, but all she finds is… pitch darkness. A foreboding black with no ladder nor rope in sight.
Blinking, she overturns the trap door and reaches aside with her magic, bringing up an empty spool. She drops it within and listens for a response. After a few seconds, she hears a thin, muffled clack followed by a rolling clatter which slowly disappears into an echoing stillness. She peers at it for a long, long while, an uncomfortable feeling gradually creeping over her before she finally shuts it back. She’ll have to explore further, but until then- the leather.
The second oddest of all oddments. She had received an unchartered shipment of fresh leather from “The West Company” a week ago, of unknown origin and of unknown quality. Looking upon it now, not much of it had been left - perhaps one or two job’s worth on top. She hadn’t worked with leather before, and she likely wasted most of it- something she would be not too proud of were the leather welcome in the first place. She picks a piece of it and stretches it in the air with her magic. Examining it against the light. There could be no doubt about it being leather, but of what animal? She hadn’t even seen leather in her Boutique before, and neither was she particularly sure about its legality. The creeping thought occurs- but is summarily discarded as she looks immediately to the left: at her dwindling stockpile of precious gemstones, especially of the rather common clear crystals. She’ll need to restock.
Rarity encounters little if any resistance in the gemstone quarry outside Ponyville. She had to visit the quarry after daylight hours, since needed to extinguish her own Boutique and then attend a get-together with Applejack and Twilight. She made no mention to them of the morning’s proceedings, nor of the past few mornings before - It had simply escaped her mind. Now she digs with the tip of her hoof in the deeper reaches of the gemstone quarry, the waxing gibbous Moon shining the way from above. The Diamond Dogs have been lax as of recent, and in the past she had found their scurrying particularly silent around one particular cavern. It was too bad that it had lacked much of the gemstones she had wished for. But on this day, she explores it nonetheless - perhaps she had missed some on her prior visits?
Trotting down a gentle slope of ashen dust and rock, she makes her way into the dim dark, having to ignite her horn to make out the wide-set walls. Dust and crumble gives to plain rock soon enough, but she sees no tell-tale shimmer of gem, nor does her magic make tell of any - but what she finds is far beyond. What gives her unease at first is the distinct smell of copper coming from within the cave - perhaps there are some deposits inside? She could pawn them off, perhaps. But instead of gemstone or ore formation, her find blocked out in luminescent horn-light chills her down to the bone.
“Is that—?” Blood. A trail of blood, dragged out into the darkness with patches of brown fur scattered around its crimson path. She can hear how it drips into the darkness. The smell of iron is sickeningly palpable. Among the smooth rock, there’s a scatter of white salt crystals, with most of it thrown around a larger patch of white.
Rarity turns back to trot towards the cave’s mouth so she can tell somebody, anybody, but she - and all the blood inside her - freezes as she sees a figure standing at its mouth.
Etched against the scarred white moon is a figure, standing tall with two pointy lopsided ears and with its arms swinging back and forth off the ground. A diamond dog. Yet he had not called her out as she shone her magical light - as most Diamond Dogs would - only shuffled towards her awkwardly as she stood, frozen. She feels there to be something distinctly wrong about the figure, but Rarity dwells little on the crooked figure as she immediately shuts her light off and turns tail.
Hooves slip across ragged rock several times as she makes her way down, down- she slips, but recovers after little effort. She can no longer see the figure in the moonlight, but she knows it’s following her. She can hear the slow shuffle of its- legs. The smell of sticky iron follows her all the way to the bottom, where she blindly runs her forehooves across the walls. No horn light, barely any dark-sight left; she lets out several gasps whenever her fur snags across sharper rock. But eventually, and to her surprise, she finds an opening in the darkness. A breezy tunnel in the rock. She doesn’t hesitate a moment before running through.
What follows is an eternity of fleeing. The ground underhoof seems to slip almost at random - unidentifiable dark, wet streaks come and go through adjoining entries as the tunnel winds to and fro, its flow uninterrupted by rock nor soil. The shuffling sounds never leave her wake despite sounding slow and uncoordinated. The breeze she had felt at its opening guides her nowhere; it arrives from every direction, from every detour and side-tunnel she passes; distant voices and sounds of struggle echo all around, obscuring identification. Screams penetrate the darkness from either side - gut-wrenching are the guttural ponies’ voices as they the foreboding walls shape them into atrocious, heart-pulling forms.
But it is the smell that disorients most. Copper and iron co-mingle with yet more viscera, more aged ichors that suffuse every fiber and turn of Rarity’s escape and stick to her very coat in long, cloying strands. It is the overpowering stench of decay that blends seamlessly with the soil, - breathe it enough times, and you begin to question whether it is actually soil beneath your hooves - one so thick that it might as well be fluid. After all, it isn’t an airy breeze that she felt upon her coat at the mouth of the tunnel: it was the slow outpour of a hundred cubbyholes coalescing in that cavern.
Left. Right. Left. Straight. Up. Right. Up. Up. The passage picks up and keeps on climbing, climbing, climbing- the revolting miasma gives way to actual air. Soon thereafter do wispy reflections light up the tunnels’ slimy walls - and sooner still does a light make itself shewn through some constricting wooden boards surrounded by thick oaken roots.
Panting, bruised and sticky all over, Rarity dry heaves in the comparative light of a wooded basement with only the light of a neglected lamp to give her quarter. She tries breathing in deep. All it results is in her dry heaves threatening to become quite wet, after which she resorts back to more shallow breaths.
She hears hoofsteps coming from up above, then downstairs. She hurriedly looks around for a hiding spot, but soon shakes her head and instead shakily brushes back her hair and straightens her posture. It takes a few moments for her to recollect herself, by which time she sees a pair of purple hooves show from beyond the wooden entrance.
“Who… Rarity?!” Twilight Sparkle’s magic lowers her lantern until she can better see Rarity, who recoils away from the light. “What are you- Are… are you okay?” Confusion immediately gets replaced by concern as she examines Rarity’s pale coat. Somehow even paler than near white and unkempt in all the unusual ways. Her mane is in an even sorrier state, and despite her calming herself, her eyes continue to dart around as if in mortal danger. Rarity’s every movement is shaky and uneven.
“… No, I’m not, actually.” Rarity says, relieved after seeing Twilight.
Spike hops on down behind Twilight, mirroring Twilight’s sentiment, though with added eagerness. “Rarity? Are you alright? Want me to comb your head or brush your coat or-”
“Can I use your bathroom, Twilight?”
After covering up her improper hurling sounds by running the water, Rarity comes out a new mare- almost. All that told of her previous encounters were her sagging eyes; otherwise as prim and proper as on any day. When encountered with Twilight and Spike’s concerned looks, she lilts a little- not for guilt, but for the weight of all that has happened to her in the past few days.
“… Well, what is it, Rarity?”
“I think I need to sit down.”
“I’ll, uh, make some tea!” Spike follows up immediately after.
“Tea sounds nice.”
Rarity sips on her hot cup of green tea while watching the moon’s light across the floorboards.
“… Rarity?” Twilight repeats from the other side of the table, rousing Rarity from her quiet collection.
“Oh, yes. Well. It is… difficult to describe what I have been through, Twilight. Let me… let me start from the beginning, or what I think is the beginning.
“About three weeks ago I had begun having these… dreams. I can’t remember them now, and I couldn’t remember them then, but I distinctly remember what I did after. Each time did I wake up in the middle of the night, completely refreshed, and each time did I immediately start work on a little project that had popped into my mind out of nowhere. All the details and design had come to me naturally, all the measurements I knew by heart. I did not hesitate for a single second, and neither have I found any of it odd… until now.
“Several hours work on strange designs, strange both for their look as well as how I imagined its suitors. Common were waists far too thin for any pony, with legs too long and, at times, a few limbs more. I could only guess and… now that I look back, maybe I should have investigated further. After all, every time I finished my work, I had delivered it - and I don’t know why - to my own cellar, and every time I would return hours later, the clothing would be gone.
“Every other night would I undertake another project like this, deposit it in the cellar and carry on as if nothing odd had happened, never once considering the oddity of my actions. But I had done this before, when a muse arrives in my sleep and tugs my hooves to work as if possessed. Maybe that is all it is - a persistent muse.
“Yet, I could not help but wonder: where did a large shipment of leather - yes, real leather - arrive from? Where do all my clothes go? Well, I was missing my gems, so I decided to visit the Quarry outside Ponyville to replenish my stocks, when I had the unthinkable happen to me—”
Rarity pauses to have a prolonged sip when, out of the darkness, an earthy thud sounds out from below. All three at seize up and listen, and more detail emerges in the agonizing interlude: Scratching, tapping noises, followed by a noise as if someone was slowly dragging an iron across the wooden floor; all from below. From Twilight’s basement.
Twilight descends first, followed by her horn’s light and a readied defensive spell. She casts a bright light all across her basement. No-one. She descends lower, Spike shortly in tow with Rarity, now once again a-shake, making up the back. Twilight sniffs at the air- an unpleasant odor, not unlike a sewer’s winds about the place. She directs her light towards a hatch - the same that Rarity had entered through, one otherwise incredibly inconspicuous and hidden among machinery and bookcase in a little shadowed cubbyhole. Nothing there. But after taking a few steps, Twilight trips over something.
“Huh.” Twilight lifts a gem-studded leather collar into the air, suspended on her purple magic, “How did this get here?” But Rarity has a far more incessant curiosity to sate than a dog’s collar- the hole.
Rarity gazes into the deep darkness of the descending hatch for a long while.
A glowing amber pair stares back.
