Stomping across the front yard, dust trailing in the wake of four hard, grey hooves, the lone mare blew a stream of air from between her clenched teeth. It was too early to be up. It was still five hours to five for crying out loud, but that boom had rattled the house too much for anypony’s liking, and the earth shaking that followed even less.
The whole family was circling the house, making sure there were no cracks in their home’s foundation and around the immediate property besides. The mine would need to be checked, but only in the morning when there was more than mere moon light to guide by.
Nopony had called out anything yet, and even the steely, lime green eyes Limestone Pie herself, the working boss of the Pie Family Rock Farm, couldn’t find anything even her own high standards counted as amiss. It seemed like everything was … fine. Well, at least outside the mine. And, with that worry edging into the front of her mind, now that the family’s home didn’t appear to be ready to fall apart or sink into the ground, she turned her gaze towards the patch of darkness deeper and darker than the rest.
It was a massive circle, hundreds of hooves wide with a thin, compared to the hole itself, strip carved into the walls of the pit that spiraled down into the near complete darkness but for the trail of crystal rocks she could see glimmering weakly in the moonlight. But rather than staring into that abyss and worrying herself into a fitful sleep for the next few hours, her gaze was taken, instead, by the family heirloom. A massive stone that stood halfway between the house and the mine. Egg shaped, grey, and pitted from years of exposure to the elements. It was at least five times her own size and could have been mistaken for a Roc’s egg in the dark. Holder’s Boulder. And, rather than standing tall and true, it was now leaning at a disrespectful eighty-eight-degree angle.
Whether it was somepony or something that had started all this, somepony was gonna get it.
***
“Hmmm,” he hummed experimentally, finding a large enough volume of gas to not only take into his body but excess enough around him to vibrate the simple tone clearly to his ears. Now reasonably certain he wasn’t in a vacuum, and with the air as still as it was, the unpleasant hardness pressing into his back was most likely due to some form of gravity and some sort of floor. Regardless, he needed to take things slowly. It was unwise to blindly plains jump, not that he had the power, let alone the skill to do such a feat himself. No, clearly, he was here at the call of the Elders, chosen to Hearken, and one of the more … interesting things about being chosen was that one was sent to one of the realms at random. At least, it was interesting to hear about after the fact.
Not that he wasn’t honored to be chosen. He was, or, at least he would be once he got over the shock of it at least a little. After all, he’d certainly never heard of someone being chosen to Hearken being also sent at a random time, but, then again, he hadn’t ever really looked into the whole thing in any great detail. Why would he? He was so ordinary. He wasn’t a Messenger, Guardian, or Teacher. He was just a cleaner. A good one to be sure, but just a simple cleaner.
Still, as much as he would have preferred to finish checking his cleaning equipment before going to rest, there really wasn’t anything he could do about it. At least not until this new assignment was over. So, raising himself up, back scraping against the ground with a slight hiss, he got to his feet.
Looking out, the dim light doing little to hinder his sight, he saw a great tunnel stretch out before him.
“Perfect,” he smiled. This tunnel was a made-thing, clearly, which meant an intelligence or some kind had been at work. True, he had to bend down a bit to fit into it, but it meant he was already getting closer to completing the first step: finding someone.
***
“Now remember, you just give this two quick tugs and we’ll start hauling you out. Give it three and we’ll come in after you.” Igneous stated to his precious daughter as he finished re-inspecting the knots securing the rope around her barrel. He’d much rather have done this task himself, his strength had only just begun to leave him last summer, and given how prodigious a lifetime of rock-farming had left that peak, there was many a city-folk who would have given their two left hooves for such flagging strength, but he just didn’t have the same agility he once had. His grey sideburns a glowing testament to such when matched to the rest of his dull brown coat. And with a mine that was potentially ready to give at a moment’s notice, it would have been more than just fool-hardy to even make the attempt.
“I’ll remember Dad.” Limestone said, the normal gruffness in her voice softening. She and her sisters might be doing the brunt of the physical labor on the farm now, but he would always be her Daddy.
Igneous Rock nodded solemnly, and trotted back to his wife and two remaining daughters, their grey shaded coats and manes making him stand out all the more from them as he let the rope feed through his forehooves, the rest standing ready to grab on and heave if, hopefully only if, necessary.
The coolness of the shadows enveloped Limestone as she stepped out of the noon-day sun and into the main tunnel. The morning had been busy with filling out orders, moving surface rocks, and shipping those that had already been prepped the day before, with inspections given to air-shafts and the mine entrance itself throughout the morning. All had appeared to be fully intact, but with the chance that some of the enchanted and even naturally growing glowing crystals that littered the mine possibly having been crushed or covered by a cave-in, the glowing height of noon was required to most safely navigate the mine. Not that the mining light on her helmet was for nothing, but every precaution needed to be taken.
Three hundred hooves in, and still everything appeared to be in order, it almost made her painstakingly slow progress feel worthless. Every structural support both natural and pony-made, upon inspection, was perfectly fine, with no major cracks in the ceiling either. If her life hadn’t been at stake, she would have freely let the rising feelings of relief and annoyance war within her until annoyance won out. But now wasn’t the time for such indulgences, she was at the first major intersection, and things were only getting more dangerous the further underground she got.
Of course, it didn’t really matter which way she went first. Personally, she’d rather check on the veins from most profitable to least, but, on the other hoof, she could check on the agate vein first, her mother’s favorite stone, even though it wasn’t a particularly big seller at the moment. But, what ultimately pushed her into the far-right tunnel was that nopony would ever know she had indulged in the sentimentality.
The flat lined grimace that sufficed for her average, non-hostile smile, however, was quickly replaced by an inquisitive frown. Yawning, stretching out her jaw, and trying to blow out air as she clamped her hoof over her nostrils and mouth did nothing. No, there was definitely a ringing in the air. There was no mistaking the pitch.
Moving further down the tunnel, still careful to observe the roof and supports, Limestone got to the next intersection. The ringing was getting louder now, and, surprisingly, in complexity too. It sounded like somepony was playing a melody, though not one she’d ever heard before, but the tones themselves reminded her of the time her sister Pinkamena had come home for a visit a few summers ago. She’d swiped every glass and crystal cup they’d had in the house and in storage, filled them with water to varying degrees, and then ran a wetted hoof over the rims. It was, nice.
Still, if this pony was capable of making such ~~music~~ a racket, one, they weren’t passed out, and two, was likely the cause of this whole mess, everypony else being outside, and three, meant they weren’t likely suffering from any mental trauma or defect outside of the one that had caused her to get out of bed so early last night. Though, of course, she was more than willing to remedy that with a few loving, neighborly taps to the skull once they were both safely back outside. Nothing permanent, she’d have that trespasser working off their debt to the farm from lost labor with hard labor, and too much head trauma made them tend to faint after pushing boulders for a few measly hours.
Coming to the next intersection, the noise brought her to the quartz vein. A good seller, especially with the number of colors that wrapped themselves into it, but at a cost of no one particular color able to be mined out in anything larger than a ten-hoof cubed chunk. The sun always reflected nicely through it from the light-shaft a few dozen hooves in, so she’d have a good look at whoever was responsible for all this.
“Alright,” she scowled, moving into the center of the chamber passed a larger spike of pink quartz, veins of purple lacing through it, “just who do you think you-” but the rest of the words died in her throat with the ringing melody when she saw it.
A massive beast, it stood on two hind legs partially hidden by a few mined chunks of quartz, and was at least two if not three times taller than herself. It’s two forelimbs extended out, one, long, thin, gray haired, and tipped with three wickedly long spikes was held, frozen in place upon a small spike of green quartz while the other was shorter and white, but with such bulk that the five shorter claws at the end of its paw wouldn’t even be needed to kill her. The thing was so large she had no doubt it could crush her head like a grape outright with room to spare. Luckily, this too was currently clutching another spike of quartz, yellow. The plates of large, brown scales that covered its back and over its head rattled upon themselves as it turned two large, violet eyes to bear upon her.
It was a chimera. Not a kind that she’d ever heard of, not that it mattered when she was face to face with it. It was real. It was here. And they were pony-eaters.
Then, opening its sickeningly pony-shaped maw, it licked its lips and said, “Pardon my boldness, but you don’t look very steady. Are you al-”
But Limestone was already disappearing from the cavern, tail-end first, having tugged her harness twice.
