Nestled deep in a murky forest, the town of Hollow Shades was shrouded in perpetual gloom. The sun rarely shone here, and the largely batpony populace liked it that way just fine.
Twilight stepped past the entrance of the town, looking around eagerly. She hadn’t really had a chance to explore Hollow Shades the last time she’d been here, busy as she’d been with dealing with the Pony of Shadows.
She pulled a letter out of her saddlebags, scanning towards the bottom. The archaeologists that had invited her here had included a brief description of the estate where they conducted their research; she quickly identified it and headed across the main square to knock on the door.
After a brief moment, a light gray batpony mare opened the door. Her eyes widened slightly as she saw who was on the doorstep, and quickly bowed. “We are honored by your presence, Princess Twilight,” she told the floor.
Twilight shifted uncomfortably. “Just Twilight is fine. You don’t need to bow or anything.”
The batpony straightened. “Oh! My apologies. My name is Silver Wings—I’m the professors’ assistant. Please, come in. Can I get your bags?”
Twilight stepped inside, waving Silver away. “That’s alright. It’s mostly reference material, I’ll want it with me.” She turned as she examined the entrance hall she found herself in. It was expansive, the floor covered in soft carpet and intricate tapestries adorning the walls. Several display cases dotted the room, containing artifacts of all kinds—everything from ancient pottery and simple tools to clay tablets and works of art. “Wow,” Twilight murmured, stepping over to the nearest display. “This is Abyssinian, right? It’s fascinating the kinds of tools they come up with, isn’t it?”
Silver smiled, visibly relaxing as Twilight went from imposing princess to nerdy scientist. “Yes, that’s right. Professor Anneal has one of the largest collections of pre-unification artifacts in Equestria.”
Twilight nodded. “I’ll have to ask him about it later.” She visibly tore herself away from the display. “But I hear he has a new find to discuss?”
Silver nodded quickly. “Yes. Please, this way.” She led the way to the back of the hall and into a small corridor. “I admit, we weren’t really expecting you to respond when the professors wrote you. They’ll be so thrilled you’re here.”
The two mares soon arrived in a small office, and Silver paused, looking around the empty room. “Hmm. I thought Professor Anneal would be here. He must have just stepped out.” She ushered Twilight into the room. “Feel free to take a look at his notes while you wait, I’ll go find him.” She gave Twilight another small bow, and vanished before Twilight could tell her it wasn’t necessary.
Twilight stepped into the office, looking at the titles of some of the books that filled the shelves. Most were archaeology or geology books, but she spotted a few fiction titles nestled among the thick reference volumes.
She turned to the desk, and opened one of the folders lying atop it. It contained a collection of pictures. The first was of a vault. Runic letters were etched along walls laced with golden trim. In the middle of the room was what appeared to be a coffin on a raised stone pedestal. Behind it rose a massive obsidian statue of the Pony of Shadows, reared back and glaring down at anyone who approached the coffin.
Other pictures followed. The coffin was open in the next one, but it contained no remains. Instead, where the occupant’s head might normally be, there was an ornate golden chest. A half dozen pictures were of the chest itself, and what it contained: a large purple and black stone, curiously cut to have smooth faces and jagged corners. It, too, was covered in runic letters.
Twilight took another glance around the room, hoping she might have somehow missed the presence of an ancient—and hopefully magical—artifact, but was disappointed. Neither the chest nor the stone were in the room. But the next paper to catch her eye was almost as good—a series of runes, and a note that they were transcribed from the stone itself.
“Old Ponish,” she muttered to herself, tracing the runes and frowning. It was a strange dialect, and none of it seemed to parse quite right. “The cloak is hidden?” she murmured. “No, maybe… ‘the night is dark?’” She scanned the rest of it. Six short phrases, each not quite correct.
“The fallen are eternal. The... way is closed? The spider is… a lizard? No, a serpent. The... touch of your voice? And… the void is cold.” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then we are in agreement.”
Twilight looked up at the sound of a new voice, and found a dark gray earth pony standing in the doorway. He nodded to her, and extended a hoof. “Professor Obsidian Hoof,” he said. “I’m Professor Anneal’s partner. I’m glad you came.”
Twilight smiled, putting down the papers and shaking Obsidian’s hoof. “Nice to meet you,” she said, before gesturing to the folder. “Is this all you have? It doesn’t seem to make much sense.”
Obsidian nodded. “That’s all the writing on the stone itself. We’ve been looking for references to such a stone and what it might be for since we retrieved it. There’s more writing in the vault we found it in, but we haven’t had a chance to look at it.”
Twilight frowned. “You haven’t? But, I thought you said you found this several days ago?”
Obsidian took a moment to respond. “We were… going to document the writing more thoroughly, but while we were examining the stone, one of the supports collapsed. We feared there might be a cave-in, so we took the chest and evacuated the site. We haven’t returned since.”
Twilight nodded. “And where is the chest now? I’d like to take a look at the stone.”
Obsidian frowned. “Anneal had the chest last. I would expect it to be here.” He did his own scan of the room. “Perhaps he took it to the lab for something? We could—”
He was cut off as Silver returned to the room, slightly out of breath. “I can’t find Professor Anneal anywhere!” she cried. “He was right here before you arrived, and now he’s gone!”
Twilight quickly moved to Silver’s side, putting one hoof on her withers. “Right. It seems we need to find Anneal first. Is there anywhere else he spends his time?”
Obsidian spoke up. “The bar, sometimes, though I’ve never seen him go there this early. And the dig site, of course, but not recently, with the safety concerns.”
Twilight nodded. “Well, that’s as good a place to start as any.”
When they stepped into the bar, it was practically empty. The bartender was attending to a lone batpony mare, the rest of the seats unoccupied. Anneal wasn’t here.
The barpony spotted them walking in, and dropped his jaw and almost the glass he was cleaning. “P-Princess!” he stammered, before hastily putting the glass down. “What can I get for you? Do for you?”
Twilight resisted the urge to sigh. “It’s fine,” she said easily. “We’re just looking for somepony. Professor Anneal?”
The lone customer had by this point turned around, though she was still cradling a bottle. “What’d’ya want with my brother?” she slurred, apparently unconcerned that she was addressing a princess. Her gaze moved to Obsidian, and she frowned. “He’s not here. And even’f he were, wouldn’t need to go huntin’ for’im. He’s been workin’ too hard as’t is.”
Obsidian did sigh. “We’re not here to force him back to work, Moonshine,” he said flatly. “He is missing, and we thought he might be here. Since he is not, we will take our leave.”
“Wait,” Twilight said, even as he turned to leave. She turned to the mare. “You said Anneal was your brother?”
“M’yea.”
“Have you seen him recently? Or even talked to him recently? We’re trying to find out where he might have gone.”
Moonshine frowned again, before looking at Obsidian. “Yeah, I talked to him. If you could call it that. Yesterday. He was actin’ real weird. Mutterin’ about that thing you found. He seemed… like he was afraid of me. Claimin’ I was gonna steal it, or somethin’. Hardly talking neither. What is it y’all found down in that pit? If somethin’ happened to my brother, I’m blamin’ you.”
Obsidian’s gaze turned stony. “Given your track record, I can hardly blame him for being cautious.”
Moonshine was up and out of her seat in an instant, surprisingly stable given how much it appeared she’d been drinking. “Y’wanna run that by me again?” she growled.
Obsidian held his ground. “I merely note that you have a reputation—”
“Everypony, please,” Twilight cut in. “Can we not do this? We all want to find Anneal. There’s no need to fight.”
Moonshine continued to glare. “I’m not gonna sit here and listen to ‘im slander me. I’d never steal from my brother. Never.” She turned to Twilight. “You find him, alrigh’? Make sure he’s safe.”
Twilight nodded. “We will.” She turned to Obsidian. “Come on, let’s check the Well.”
“The supports—”
“I can hold the whole thing up if I have to. Let’s find your partner.”
The dim light from the entrance to the Well had long since been left behind by the time Twilight and Obsidian reached the vault. Torches lined the walls, left behind by the archaeologists on their last visit, but even with those lit, it only provided a small bastion against the gloom, barely illuminating the empty coffin in the middle of the room.
It took only a glance to determine that the pony they were looking for was not present. Twilight frowned, before taking a torch in her magic and holding it up to the writing on the wall. It was in the same strange dialect, but there was more to work with here, and she took a moment puzzling it out. “All who come before the… I think that’s a title… uh… there’s a bunch here that’s just talking about how great the Pony of Shadows was, I think. Let me see… Oh, here. It’s talking about the… lapimutus? I think that’s the stone. With this power… something something… ponies will fall beneath my hooves, yeah yeah… come on, just tell me what it does. Ah!” Twilight’s face lit up. “Out of the darkness—”
Her torch went out. A moment later, so did every other torch along the passage, leaving them in pitch darkness. Twilight yelped and dropped the torch, falling to the ground and feeling around for it in the darkness. A skittering sound reached her ears, followed by vicious hissing. Her heart pounded in her chest as something moved in the darkness and she desperately cast about for the torch. The sounds were right behind her and she still couldn’t find it—
Her hoof bumped the fallen torch and she leapt upon it, lighting it with a quick spark from her horn and whirling around to face what was behind her, only to find… nothing. The room was empty. “Obsidian?” she called out, her voice trembling.
She received no answer.
Slowly, her breathing calmed and her heartbeat subsided. Belatedly, it occurred to her that she didn’t actually need a torch to produce light, but in her panic, it had been the only thing her mind fixated on. Carefully, she turned back to the writing on the wall, this time keeping one eye on the room behind her. She found where she’d left off, and kept reading, to herself this time.
“Oh,” she finally whispered. “Oh no. Oh, that’s really really bad.”
At the bottom of the wall were six short lines, now in their proper context: Enclosed spaces. Social contact. Darkness. Spiders and snakes. Falling. And finally, death.
“Fear. It amplifies fear,” Twilight whispered. She scanned the rest of the passage, hoping it would offer some clue as to what the stone might have done to the professors, but there was nothing else.
Frustrated, she turned away, and paused, looking out at the room, empty save for the coffin. Something was nagging at her.
Her eyes widened. Where was the statue? There had been a statue of the Pony of Shadows in the pictures on Anneal’s desk. She went back to the writing. Ponies will fall beneath my hooves. She’d thought it was just a metaphor, but what if…
She strode to where the statue had stood, and now she saw slightly darkened spots where it had rested on the floor. She stepped carefully into place.
In the blink of an eye, she was in midair, plummeting through darkness. She lit her horn and spread her wings, illuminating a large, stone chamber. She tried not to think about the dark, discolored stain on the stones below where she’d appeared. On the ground below were two ponies. One was Obsidian, flat against the ground, straining against some magical binding that held him fast. The other was a batpony with a piece of heated glass as a cutie mark. He was standing in front of an altar, his eyes completely blank as he held a jagged knife aloft and chanted in Old Ponish. Floating in the air above him was the Lapimutus, the rune-marked stone spinning in place and giving off a sickly purple glow.
The batpony slowly turned his head towards Twilight, but Twilight was faster. She lowered her head and a bolt of energy lanced out into the stone. A chill ran through her, icy claws wrapping around her heart, but she pushed through it, pumping more energy into the stone. Cracks appeared across its face, even as spikes of pain shot through her. The cracks spread rapidly, and then finally the stone exploded, vaporized into nothing. The pain faded, and Twilight landed, panting for breath.
The batpony stopped chanting, and lowered the knife, looking confused. “What… where am I?” he murmured, looking around. “P-princess Twilight? What is going on?”
Obsidian stood, his bindings gone, and stepped forward. “That was quick thinking, Princess. I thought I was done for.”
Twilight smiled. “Professor Anneal, I presume?” At his nod, she smiled. “Your sister is very worried about you. I think it’s high time we left this place well enough alone.”
Anneal looked around dubiously. “If you say so, Princess.”
Twilight laughed, the sound relieved. “Don’t worry, Professor. We’ll fill you in. But I think we could all use a drink, first.”
