Dreamwalker's Tale: The Descent

I woke up and a smile tugged at my lips. Not only because I could still hear Luna giggle about my silliness. I had tried to imitate what I thought a vanishing ghost sounded like and faintly whispered “goodbye” to her. But as happy as her laughter made me, the reason I currently smiled was familiarity. I knew these bed sheets. I knew that body in front of me. I knew that scent that filled my nostrils. I knew that breath that tickled my muzzle.

I was at home.

“Hey gorgeous,” I mumbled quietly.

Twilight shifted ever so slightly. Her embrace tightened for a second before she sighed in contentment. “Hi.”

I took a deep breath and felt… whole. It was easy to scooch just that tiny bit closer. I tilted my head a little forward and buried my muzzle on her chest. I had to be careful not to poke her throat with my horn of course, but after years of experience, I knew my way around. Even blind, as I refused to open my eyes just yet. “This is nice.”

Her body trembled a little bit. She giggled, I assumed, but I heard no sound leave her throat. “Mhm,” she instead replied shortly after.

We spent a couple of minutes in silent company. I had all the time in the world to wake up. And I eventually dared to open my eyes. Light filtered in through a small gap in the curtains. From the angle alone I could tell that it was about… early morning, still. I once again made a mental note about how weird time and the dreamscape interacted. I had not felt like I spent hours and hours and hours there. And yet here we were, cuddling after the entire night had passed us by.

I smirked a little and placed a kiss on her chest. But instead of retreating after, my lips lingered and I let the tip of my tongue part them to trace a circle on her coat. She sighed contentedly. So I nipped her and chuckled quietly as she gasped and then faintly giggled.

“I see you are well and awake now,” she whispered and her hoof stroked through my mane.

The feeling was so heavenly that I involuntarily closed my eyes again, just to trace that feeling with more focus. I placed my lips on her chest once more as she stopped and dared to let my mind run wild. My tongue play on her coat quickly grew more daring, more sensual. I would certainly not mind fooling around a little. It was such a nice morning. That would be the icing on the cake.

But she sighed. And I could hear that it was carried by both appreciation and regret. I was glad she could not see me pout and I already pondered if I could not sway her if I tried hard enough. “Are you alright?” she asked.

What I heard was genuine concern. Had she held back this entire time for my sake? Or had she remembered her troubles just now? Either way, it put quite a damper on my mood. I did not like it when she worried over… anything, really. The same way everypony kept telling me that I worried too much, I kept telling her. I sighed to myself and placed an innocent kiss on her chest, as a final goodbye to the idea of a morning filled with excitement and her sweet, sweet moans.

Her question deserved an honest answer. It would have been easy to blurt out ‘I’m fine!’, just to ease her worries. But it would not have worked, because she knew me. Despite my confrontation with the golem the day prior, I could not feel any overly dramatic aches or bruises. My armor had apparently managed to take the brunt of the hit when that thing barreled straight into me. And there had been little in regards to other exchanges of blows. The entire fight was over so quickly…

That left me to evaluate my state of mind. There was the usual mess waiting for me. Nothing too dramatic, but major flashes like this one always took their toll. I had slept long enough to circumvent the entire ‘goddess, I feel like I could sleep for an entire week – care to join me?’-phase. I was wide awake, filled with energy, ready to do something. But there was a nasty bit of diffuse pressure on my temples and behind my forehead. Again, nothing too bad. Just a minor case of headache. But it would accompany me throughout the entire day and I did not look forward to that.

“I’m alright,” I finally answered. “Little bit of a headache, but otherwise, I’m fine.” With that out of the way, one obvious question demanded an answer. “How’s Applejack?”

That was enough of a prompt for her to regale me with all the events and mishaps I had missed. “White Tip came by and informed me that something had gone awry.” I smiled proudly. My feathery buddy was a grace for his kind. I wondered for a moment how that might have looked. He could not talk as such, just caw and crow. So getting Twilight’s attention would have been easy, but how exactly did he make clear that we were in trouble? A few amusing images aside, it was not important enough to interrupt her. “I teleported to the farmhouse and asked Big Macintosh where you were.” She stumbled about his name. It was almost imperceptible. Maybe she had found him in a slightly unpresentable situation? The thought made me grin. “I followed his directions to the east orchard and heard Applejack yell. She had already put you in the rope sling and tried to lift you out. It proved difficult because she did not want to hurt you and you kept bashing against the rock ceiling.”

“She was already out?” I asked in surprise.

“Oh, yes. She jumped.”

“She—“ —what? That height? I knew Applejack was strong. I knew that. Her love tap from a front hoof had sent me wheezing and her hindquarters were a lot more powerful. But jumping that height was something I considered impossible, even for her. Maybe Pinkie could do that. But Pinkie ignored natural laws whenever they got in the way anyway, so it was not all that special for her.

Twilight shrugged. Apparently that was not a point of concern for her. “That is what she said, yes,” she confirmed before she continued on. “I was a little bit worried because of your unconsciousness, but my spell showed no immediate signs of damage. Then again, I am not a medical professional. She carried you and told me what happened on our way to the hospital.”

I grimaced. I would have loved to bite down on that stubborn mare’s ear and pull. Hard. So that it would hurt. Because apparently, pain was the only thing she even remotely understood sometimes. She had injured herself. She suspected a sprained ankle, of all things. And with that, she jumped out of a massive pit and carried my entire additional weight across the orchard, through the entirety of Ponyville and to the hospital.

I would have loved to hug her, and then kick her.

“Let me guess. She limped ever so slightly with her left foreleg.”

Twilight remained silent for a couple of seconds before she sighed. “She promised me that she was fine.”

“Sprained ankle?” I continued to guess.

“We were about to let her walk out of the hospital and back to the farm. She insisted she was fine. But she took the wrong step and failed to stifle a hiss. At that point, nurse Redheart switched into her usual ‘difficult patient’-mode that she always employs when dealing with an Apple. She examined Applejack and… yes, sprained ankle.” I growled a little. “I am sorry. I really hoped she would be—“

But I cut her off as I shook my head, pulled away from her and pressed my lips to hers. She relaxed a little and I felt a bit of my anger drain away. “It’s fine. You did nothing wrong. Considering she’s the freaking Element of Honesty, that crap happens way too often. I’m going to kick her flank later for lying about it. Somepony needs to do it.” I huffed and tried to calm down. I closed my eyes, focused on that feeling of peace and calm I had started this morning with. I tried to invoke this serenity. And it certainly helped that she gave me a quick peck. It made me chuckle and open my eyes again.

Gosh, she’s beautiful.

I smiled, leaned in and stole a proper kiss from her. “So I take it she got treatment? And a proper reprimand from Redheart?”

Twilight nodded. “She did. And from me as well, of course. But you know Applejack.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. Takes a charging buffalo to get through that thick head of hers. She’s at home, I presume?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. She should be on a train to Appleloosa right now. It was a good effort that you and the girls pitched in yesterday, but with Big Macintosh still a little wobbly on his legs and her being out of commission as well now, she needs help. I convinced her to ask her relatives over there if they can spare a few helping hooves.”

“Well, at least neither Big Mac nor her got any funny ideas about doing the entire harvest alone. Again. It’s always such a pain in the rump to deal with stubborn and unreasonable Apples. Except Apple Bloom, bless her heart.”

We smiled and fell silent for a minute or two. But Twilight eventually found her golden thread again. “The doctor could not find any injuries, just mental exhaustion. And I presumed that you would rather wake up at home than in a hospital bed, so I asked if it was okay if I took you back home.”

A playful grin tugged at my lips as I watched her. “So you scraped me out of my armor, hm? Did you like that? Pulling it off piece by piece?”

It was such a stupid tease, but she played along anyway. She rolled with her eyes and grinned. “I can assure you that I was most professional about getting you naked!”

I chuckled and barely managed to keep the lid on it. “Right, right, of course. What a shame then. I doubt I would have minded you being a bit unprofessional.”

“There’s nothing I have not seen already!” she insisted.

And I put extra effort into my pout. “Aw. So you don’t want to see it again?”

Gotcha, I hollered in my head as I saw the faintest tint rise to her cheeks. “I did not say that,” she quietly replied. I leaned in once more and we met halfway for another kiss. And once again my mind drifted down that well-trodden path and I played with the idea of escalating this. I could easily pull her closer, could let my hoof trail over her barrel down to her flank, I could deepen our kiss with my tongue tracing along her lips, asking her for a dance.

But I knew that there was still something on her plate. Something she wanted to know. Maybe even needed to know. So I remained patient. And she did not make me wait for long.

“Do you remember anything?”

The question as such was harmless enough. The consequences… less so. But I knew that her curiosity burned a hole in her analytical mind right now. My headache surged and got a bit worse as I turned my attention inwards and towards the mess of barely sorted, newly arrived information. She did not ask if I remembered anything-anything, but if there was anything concrete that I could tell her. Ever the student, the scholar, the researcher. My initial findings were less than spectacular. It once again felt like I stood in a muddy puddle and tried to grasp stones from the very bottom and every time I put a hoof into the water, I lost sight of my target.

“There’s a lot,” I could at least already tell, “but it’s all fuzzy. Diamond dogs used to have a buzzing civilization. It was an incredible marvel to witness at its peak. But something went wrong. It went so horribly, terribly wrong that I get goosebumps thinking about it.” And indeed I got them. “Their technology uses gemstones. I don’t… I don’t know how that works. But it’s the sole reason they are so obsessed with them these days. After everything broke apart, their machines stopped working. Few remember these glory days. They have… tales. Myths and legends they carry down from generation to generation. And they yearn for these better days. A pack that manages to reactivate one of the old machines is praised and showered with respect and renown. Even if that machine falls apart seconds later. Because they did it once, surely they can do it again. But it's all just luck. They dig endless tunnels for gemstones and test each and every one and it’s all just luck. They don’t understand their old ways anymore.”

She remained silent for a while and mulled over what I could present her with so far. She eventually reached the obvious first conclusion. “That sounds terribly sad. And desperate.”

I nodded. “It is and they are. Their kingdom was massive. Endless hallways of impressive size stretched out over thousands of miles. Below ocean floors and our own cities. They connected dozens, if not hundreds of settlements and cities.” But this one was different, was it not? I could not explain why. But I felt it. “I think there’s an entire abandoned city down there.” One of many. Many, many, many. But this one’s different. Different how? I tried not to let myself get too frustrated.

“How do you know it is abandoned?” she asked.

I shot her a wry smile and shrugged. “No lights. When I was down there in my stupid attempt to be a brave hero for Applejack, I saw a gaping black maw of nothingness. I will admit that things went out of hoof quickly and I was not exactly all that attentive, but I think even a single pack would still require a campfire or something. Diamond Dogs live underground, their eyes have adapted somewhat, but they are not blind and they can’t see in absolute darkness either.”

Which would mean that they had been another surface-dwelling race at some point, right? Maybe the entire diamond dog kingdom was just a fad. A short-lived thing of a couple of decades before everything crumbled? If so, what had led them underground in the first place?

I did not mind and smirked slightly as Twilight summoned her writing supplies and started to make notes. Her feather scratched over the parchment, occasionally dipped back into the inkwell and after a few more lines, another page was turned or sorted away to the windowsill. I doubted that I had really given her enough material to fill three pages, backside included. She probably took notes on her own thoughts and theories as well.

Her writing supplies vanished once she was done, but her notes remained on the windowsill. Her attention returned to me and there it was. That studious gaze. I was a source of information. And she was eager.

And I could not shake the impression that I knew what came next. So I sighed and addressed this head-on. Maybe Applejack would be proud. “You want to go down there, don’t you?” I asked her.

I might have phrased it as one, but it had admittedly not truly been a question. I knew my little peanut well enough to know how this would play out. I was not surprised when she hesitantly nodded. She tried to read me, tried to find any traces of approval or disapproval. She certainly found no enthusiasm, that was for sure. I knew that it was dangerous down there. I did not know why it was dangerous, but what did that matter?

I was a scaredy-cat. I knew that some of her friendship-missions could be dangerous. That was the reason why I always had to battle my anxieties when she went on another one. Why several of my friends had developed ‘tactics’ for how to deal with me when she was gone. I worried much in the same way when my other friends went on these missions as well, but it was less severe. And I was grateful that nopony took offense to that.

I knew my peanut. There was no chance that I could successfully convince her not to go. But I had to try, at least. As a matter of principle. “Wouldn’t it be better to leave the exploration of ancient cities to professional archeologists? Or maybe some diplomat or something? Just in case the diamond dogs actually want their city back, undisturbed?”

She saw right through me. She smiled patiently and I made a stupid face as I tried to both smile in reply and grimace. And she pulled my head forward and gave my forehead a kiss, right at the base of my horn. A tiny, pleasant shiver ran down my spine. “But I am a diplomat, am I not? Who better to negotiate with a foreign nation than me?” I did not dare to object to that one. It was true, after all. In these past years, none had made so much progress in international relationships than her. Problem was: There was no ‘diamond dog kingdom’ left to address. Their entire society had crumbled in the aftermath of whatever catastrophe had brought their nation to its knees. There were packs now. Packs of various sizes, squabbling over remains of a better time. A ‘village’ was just a collection of packs that got along with each other for whatever reason, but each pack had its own alpha and a strict internal hierarchy. Negotiations with diamond dogs meant negotiating with a pack. Maybe a couple of packs. But to address all of them meant addressing hundreds, if not thousands of packs.

Twilight watched me. Searched for something. “From what Applejack could tell me, that creature that attacked you two was made from stone and magic. I doubt that a fall would destroy it. Maybe if it fell from such a height that the stone pieces shattered, but with magic being involved, everything is possible. And there could be other dangers lurking down there too. I agree that professionals should be given free reign over this discovery. As soon as I have made sure that nothing will jump from the shadows and eat them.”

I had already inhaled to cut in, but she slightly raised her voice and continued and took all the wind out of my sails again. I knew that I could not succeed. Yet it was still a little depressing.

She was a powerhouse of raw magical talent and ingenuity, coupled with the durability of earth ponies, their natural resistance to magic, poisons, diseases, pain and wounds and other ailments. And on top of that, she could fly as well. She was no Rainbow Dash, sure. But it was good enough for a quick getaway or a swift swoop-in.

It was Ponyville, I told myself. There was a dangerous area right beneath Sweet Apple Acres. All my friends lived here. My sister in spirit lived right on top of that area. And her adorable little sister. And her almost deaf grandma. And her brother. Twilight was a princess and felt responsible for this town in a way I could probably barely understand. But even I felt responsible for it. This was my home. These were my friends. They were my family.

And as understanding dawned on me, I saw that empathic look in her eyes. “I’m coming along, aren’t I?” I asked without asking again.

“You do not have to,” she offered the obvious. But I did. I did have to. And we both knew it. “We barely know anything about diamond dogs. Rarity’s run-in with Rover’s pack aside, we had maybe half a dozen sightings across all of Equestria in the last half decade. They live right under our hooves and we know almost nothing about them.”

“But here I am and I remember stuff,” I interjected with a sigh and a wry smile.

She leaned in and we crossed our horns. It was a pleasant sensation. Her mane tickled my forehead as strands of it fell across. “You managed to stop that golem once. Maybe you can talk to it next time. Or at least stop it again if it attacks us.”

I softly shook my head. “That’s not how it works, peanut. Golems aren’t sentient. They are automatons. Constructs. They are programmed to follow a very simple, very short set of given orders. Defend this place from intruders. Let no creature aside from diamond dogs pass. Smash everything that moves and does not present this symbol. Stuff like that.”

She accepted my objection, but we both knew that the other point still stood. I had gleaned a command word from the initial first waves of the flash. It would hopefully work again if needed. But Twilight was not done. Of course she was not done. “Luna tried for years before you showed up. She tried for years to convince me to accept a part of her guard to ‘keep me safe’. And now I have you. And she does not bother me with it, because she trusts you to keep me safe.” Ouch. That was a bit of a low blow, was it not? “You are a trained guard, even though you might not see yourself as one. They drilled certain skill sets into your head for five years. Some of those might come in handy down there.”

It would have been easy to put up more resistance. My training had concluded more than one and a half years ago. I rarely had any need for any of those ‘skills’. Maybe I was a little rusty or had simply forgotten half of it? But despite my desire to resist, despite the urge to object, I could see her point. I might be able to help. “What about the girls?” I asked before thinking this through. Rarity was in Canterlot. Rainbow toured Equestria. Applejack had a sprained ankle and was on her way to Appleloosa. Fluttershy was pregnant. Maybe—

“Pinkie is at the hospital,” Twilight answered. “Apparently there is some sort of complication with Fluttershy. Nurse Redheart assured me that there was no reason to worry, but Pinkie is with her anyway.”

I smiled. “Of course.” After all, all the doctors and nurses in the world could tell me I was overdoing it and had no reason to worry, but if Twilight were pregnant and something went wrong — anything, no matter how miniscule — I would do the same. They would need several crowbars and a couple of minotaurs to pry me from her side.

So her usual ‘let’s fight baddies’-retinue was out for the count. I sighed and finally gave in. “I already hate it.”

What I said was less important than how I said it though. I smiled wryly. And those few inches that separated us were quickly reduced to nothing by my very, very excited and overjoyed peanut. “Thank you,” she whispered as she peppered my muzzle with tiny pecks. “I had so hoped you would agree!”

I chuckled as she continued her assault. “I am noticing that, yes,” I replied and fixed her cheek in place with a hoof so that I could share a proper kiss with her. I closed my eyes and sank into that warm, soft feeling of her lips against mine. I had no idea how many times we had kissed this morning alone, but I never felt like I had enough of this. We pulled apart again and I gazed into her eyes and I felt so much love for her. And a rising desire the longer she returned my gaze and stayed silent.

I was mere seconds away from lunging when my stomach decided that enough was enough. It made its displeasure known with a loud rumble and I grimaced as the spell was broken. “I swear, everything conspires against me,” I whined quietly.

Twilight giggled and placed a final peck on my muzzle. “Another time then.”

I pouted as she exited the bed. I pouted harder as she opened the curtains and the windows beyond those. And I pouted hardest as she shamelessly levitated the blanket off of me, only to blush and put it back down. At that point, my pout inevitably morphed into an amused grin. “Nothing you’ve never seen before, I’ve been told,” I remarked smugly.

She stuck her tongue out at me and in retaliation, I sent a wisp of my magic across the room and smacked her lightly on her rump. She yelped a little and stared at me in disbelief before we both broke out into laughter. “I was so close,” I muttered as I climbed out of bed as well, “So close.” I tried to play it cool. To remain innocent looking. But once again, she was smarter than me. Or maybe better at reading me and anticipating my thoughts than I gave her credit for. She noticed how I walked between her and the door and she did not risk it.

“Yes. You were,” she announced with a smile. She blew me a kiss and vanished in a fizzle of light, sound and the scent of ozone.

“Aw come on,” I complained to an empty room. “That’s so unfair!”

“So we meet again, you wily temptress!” I growled towards Twilight as I entered the kitchen.

She giggled merrily and levitated a glass of grape juice in front of my muzzle. “Don’t be glum.” And she shot me such an adorable, pleading look that I found it hard indeed to stay mad at her. It really was unfair.

“Please warn me if you want to go any further,” Spike interjected, “so I can flee in time.”

I chuckled, walked over with my glass lazily trailing behind me and ruffled his head a little. “Don’t worry, buddy. No torture incoming. Good morning, by the way. How was your night?”

“You mean other than Twilight dragging your seemingly lifeless body home in the middle of it? Actually, it was really decent. You need to stop that, though. Gave me half a heart attack.” We both chuckled and I hugged him for a moment. He had grown fond of me. Enough so that these recurring mishaps worried him each and every time. It was flattering, in a way.

“Sorry that I disrupted your beauty sleep,” I teased and gave his shoulder a little shove. He grinned and put the coffee pot onto the table. Twilight already sat down and inhaled the vile vapors with a deep, satisfied hum before she gulped down her fist pot in one continuous go. I sat down next to her and as usual, tried to ignore the pungent stench. I focused on my grape juice instead and on a lovely looking plate full of pancakes with a smiley face drawn on top. “And who’s artistic expression might that be?”

Spike shrugged with a grin. “Isn’t that obvious?”

I took a closer look. The smiley had been painted in strawberry jam and in haste. But I still managed to make out that it stuck its tongue out at me. I raised an eyebrow and looked to the side and sure enough, Twilight was transfixed on her coffee and tried to ignore the slight tint in her cheeks or the restrained laughter that shook her. I knew her ticklish spots though, so I had no remorse about the inevitable retribution. “Twilight darling,” I started in my best Rarity-impression. Something that, according to Spike — and he ought to know a thing or two about that, right? — was actually half-way decent. “Would you mind terribly putting that mug down for a moment? It shan’t be long, I promise.”

Like the good little filly that she was, she put her mug down. And that was the moment I struck. I tickled her with both hooves and my magic for good measure and despite my little prelude, she apparently had not seen that one coming. She laughed and I caught her as she fell from her chair to the floor, but as soon as she landed safe and sound, I continued my assault. She tried to squirm away from me, she even tried to string a couple of words together for a coherent plea, but I was relentless.

I only showed mercy at some point because I felt that her breathing grew a little bit too erratic for my tastes. She stayed down for a solid minute or so and I sat down beside her with the smuggest grin plastered on my face. Only once I raised a hoof, set it down on her chest and let it idly, tenderly trail along her barrel did Spike make his presence known again by coughing ever so quietly.

I was about to look over my shoulder in his direction when Twilight raised her head and looked at me with such an intense, smoldering gaze that I wished so desperately she would teleport both of us back to her room right this instant.

I sighed heavily. She had a lot more self-restraint than I did. But at the same time, I could not help but grin. “You good?”

She grinned as well and nodded. “I think so. Am I allowed to get up from the floor now?”

My eyes trailed along her lithe yet powerful form. I knew every inch of her body. And as I followed that trail, memories sparked to life before my mind’s eye like an adventurer’s map. “I don’t know,” I mused, “I actually quite like seeing you sprawled out like that…”

Spike coughed a little bit louder.

“I mean, come on, buddy,” I addressed him as I half-turned in his direction, “you had plenty of opportunity to flee by now.”

But he merely crossed his arms before his chest and raised a scaly eyebrow at me. “While you two were busy doing whatever in her room this morning, I mopped that floor. You make a mess, you clean it! Got it?”

The absurdity of this conversation struck me with a sudden realization and I broke out into laughter. I just loved them. I loved that we could clown around like this. I helped Twilight up and we sat down at the table again and Spike seemed satisfied with our decision not to ruin his hard work immediately. We shared our breakfast. And I devoured the entire stack of pancakes. I had involuntarily skipped dinner, so it only made sense to eat for two meals, I told myself. However, the fact of the matter was that Spike’s cooking was just as great as it usually was and he spoiled us rotten with these treats.

With my plate empty, the coffee pot empty as well and us just sitting at the table to deal with the post-meal food coma, my aimless gaze roamed the kitchen and I finally noticed my new archnemesis: Saddlebags. Both Twilight’s and mine. Stuffed to the brim.

It did not really surprise me to see mine as well. She had intended to go back to the hole even before I woke up and she knew me well enough to know that I would not let her go alone. Still, it was a rather unwelcome callback to ‘adventure time’. “So mind telling me what’s in there?” I asked Twilight.

She furrowed her brow as she stared at the saddlebags as well. Almost as if she had issues remembering. And then I realized: She did have those issues. Because she made a mental list of all their contents. She inhaled and I put a hoof to her muzzle. “I think the inventory checklist will do, peanut,” I offered with a lopsided smile.

She replied with a smile of her own, nodded and quickly levitated said checklist out of one of the saddlebags. She gave it to me and I quickly skimmed through what we brought along. She was the expert on friendship missions and some of those led to unusual places far-off from civilization. She occasionally went camping with our friends and did not beg Rarity to be allowed into her pompous tent. That said, I simply hoped that my recent experiences coupled with my fuzzy memories might help me spot missing stuff if there even was such to begin with.

Most of the content was — or at least sounded like — Twilight’s sciency gear. Test tubes and flasks and whatnot. Another section sounded like gear Maud would pack. Two miner’s helmets, a small pickaxe, a lantern, a small canister of lantern oil, fifty feet of rope, a journal, writing supplies, a neverend bottle, a—

Hey, wait.

“Didn’t I bring the bottles back to Zecora?” I asked.

Twilight’s eyes grew wide as she quickly snatched the list from my grasp, scanned the content and grimaced. “Shoot. That was not meant to—… aw.” I was not entirely sure what was going on, but seeing her shoulders slump in disappointment made me feel incredibly guilty.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry or anything.”

She sighed and shook her head. “No, it is fine. I did not think about it when I gave you the checklist.” A section that was noticeably missing on the list was ‘general camping gear’. She had packed two regular waterskins, but no source. No tent either, and no food. And why would we need any of that. Ponyville was right there, above our heads. If this exploration took longer — something I was inclined to assume —, then we could easily retreat for breakfast and dinner and sleep in our own beds at night. We had all the luxuries in the world.

She sighed. “It was meant as a surprise. After you brought them back to Zecora, I went to visit her and bought one. I wanted to fill it with juice as a surprise. A little memento of your first adventures. But when this came up, I thought it would be a decent backup in case something went awry.”

Oh my goodness, that is so sweet. While I squeaked internally, I beamed at her and quickly pulled her in for a tight hug. “I love it,” I whispered into her ear and kissed her neck. It was such a lovely gesture. And I hoped I managed to smooth over her disappointment about revealing her plan too early. She had probably hoped that she would not need to reveal the presence of the bottle at all. It was just an emergency backup, after all. I wondered what juice she had chosen to fill it with…

My friends usually went for the cherry flavor. Because I liked cherries a lot. But that was in a similar vein as Spike eating loads of sapphires, even though he preferred rubies. He just did not wish to get accustomed to ruby. It was meant to be special.

I shook my head and mentally shrugged the idle musing off. “And I love you,” I quietly added before I pulled away from her and placed a quick peck on her nose. She wrinkled her muzzle, but she smiled. And that was the important part. She smiled again.

“Are you really already up for another adventure?” Spike hesitantly asked.

“This is not an adventure,” Twilight quickly insisted with a side glance in my direction that admittedly amused me a lot. “This is a danger assessment mission. A reconnaissance. A scientific field study.”

She looked over, probably to check if her attempt yielded any success. I chuckled and shook my head. Ever since I returned with Luna, my friends treated that word like I was allergic to it. I still considered that quite funny, even though I was aware that this joke would grow old fast. “Oh, please, don’t let me stop you,” I asked Twilight, “Do go on. I’m curious how many more versions you got.”

She proudly puffed her chest out and shot me a challenging look. “I am a walking, breathing thesaurus. So I got lots.”

I saw that playful tinkle in her eyes and laughed even harder. “Right, right. Lots. Sounds very scientific. Right, Spike?”

My scaly buddy chuckled alongside me and nodded. “Yupp, totally sciency.”

“Also, thesaurus sounds lizardy and wild. Rawr!” And I waggled my eyebrows at Twilight for good measure.

We all had a good laugh. Only after we calmed down did we get back to the tasks at hoof. Spike stacked the dirty dishes and cleaned them, I dried them off and put them back into their respective cabinets and drawers and Twilight took her list back and triple-checked our gear.

Once we were all done, I walked over into the library. Owlicious was fast asleep on the left side of his perch as per usual and White Tip was dozing on the right side. “Psst.” It was all it took for him to wake up. He looked over and with a careful wingbeat glided through the room to settle on my back shortly after. “Good morning, buddy. Are you ready for a little trip? This time I might actually be able to take you along for once. I’m sorry I’ve been off for so long again.” He cawed quietly. I liked to think that he did not hold any grudges. So I picked up the small satchel that lay in one of the bookshelves and put it around my neck. It still contained an assortment of nuts and seeds, little treats for my pet.

I returned to the kitchen with him on my back. Spike was in the middle of accepting the probably third repeat of his daily chores from Twilight and I silently waited a couple of steps away. We should be back by sundown, she said. I hoped so. But thinking about it made my stomach twist and turn, so I tried to focus on something else.

Once Twilight was done, we bid our goodbyes and Spike ran off do get his stuff done. The quicker his chores were out of the way, the sooner he had the rest of the day off. Twilight smiled fondly as she watched him go and then turned to me, only to furrow her brow as she spotted White Tip. “Do you think that is a good idea?” she asked.

I looked over my shoulder and saw White Tip inspect the saddlebags with curiosity. “Yes, actually,” I replied with a smile and turned to her. “See, you can fly because of magic. He can fly without it. He’s small, smart, quick and unassuming. I sent him to get help and he fetched you, didn’t he? If things get dicey, I will send him home. I don’t intend to risk his health, of course. But I do think an additional set of eyes can’t hurt.”

She mulled my pitch over and accepted it. So we put our saddlebags on, I joked about her packing too many bricks and we made our way over to Sweet Apple Acres. It was yet another sunny and warm early autumn day, but I could already see a few clouds the weather team assembled. It was supposed to rain in two days, if I remembered correctly and tomorrow was supposed to be cloudy. Not that it would matter much, with us being stuck in a hole.

I hoped we would run into Big Mac, but the red giant was nowhere to be seen until we reached the east orchard and the section within it that contained the hole. And while I knew the orchard quite well myself, it was still a good help that White Tip flew ahead of us and guided us to our destination. Even though it made me think of a dead body first when I saw him circle above the spot.

He’s not a vulture, what is wrong with me?!

“I’m going to kill her,” I growled when we reached our target. A set of barriers was placed in a circle around the hole. I recognized them from the barn. Whenever a family reunion came around, they fetched them from there and built an obstacle course with them for the teenagers to jump over and for the fillies and colts to duck under. And to top it all off, somepony had fashioned some kind of improvised wooden plug from planks and rope to seal the hole off. An entire tool shed worth of planks, maybe more. Probably more.

“Maybe it was Big Macintosh?” Twilight meekly offered.

I shook my head, despite the fact that I could not disprove her attempt. “Maybe.”

The important thing was: Whoever built this plug had crafted a very crude trapdoor into it, smack dab in the middle. And some of the rope used to keep the planks in position and bound led over to the trapdoor and laid there in a neat little pile. The entire wooden construction, despite its improvised nature, looked sturdy enough to support our weight and the rope was secured on it, ready to carry whoever down and allow climbing back up again as well.

I could not argue that this thing did look useful. Problem was: We had a Twilight. We did not need climbing aids. Plugging the hole was probably a good idea though. Nopony wanted a golem roaming the orchard. And the barriers, while not effective as such, would hopefully warn away anypony with too much curiosity. Like Apple Bloom.

Due to its makeshift construction, there were still more than enough holes in the plug for rain water to get in. Something I tried to keep in mind. We did not know how large whatever we would find down there was. And a flooded something might be a problem later on.

“White Tip?” I called and he quickly swooped down to land on my back. “Take a look if you can get in and out of some of these holes. I’d rather not leave the trapdoor open if we don’t have to.” He nodded, cawed and glided over. It looked funny how he hopped around and inspected the different sections of the plug.

Twilight meanwhile stepped up to my side and watched the spectacle with me. “You are not really angry with her, are you?”

I sighed, leaned over and nuzzled her mane. “No. But I want her to take more care and it’s frustrating when she gets like this.”

She smiled and replied in almost a whisper. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

I chuckled meekly. “I like you. Don’t test my resolve.”

She nuzzled me back and White Tip returned. He cawed to get our attention, flew over to a specific spot and slipped between planks as a demonstration. Getting in was no problem, then. But I had been more worried about him getting out anyway. Luckily he managed just that a moment later. It looked a little bit weird how he did it. As if he clung to the ceiling with his talons like a bat and then wiggled his body through the gap. The only important thing for me was: He could make it.

“Alright. I think we’re ready to go?” A nod, a caw and a teleport.

“Every. Single. Time,” I wheezed as my stomach twisted itself into knots. Half a minute passed by and I finally managed to stem the tide of my nausea and push it back down. I gratefully accepted a sip of water from the waterskin Twilight offered me and got rid of the acrid taste in my mouth.

“I tried,” she offered and stroked a hoof along my back.

“I know. Don’t worry, I’m fine,” I tried to ease her concerns. After yet another minute, I took a deep breath and raised my head again. Twilight had already sparked her horn to life to give us more light than what the plug above our heads allowed through. Andshe had already levitated a bunch of rubble to the side while I fought my usual queasiness. “What are you searching for?” I asked in hopes of making myself useful.

“When Applejack retold the events, she mentioned a black vine being the initial reason for this sinkhole. I hoped that I could maybe find and study it.”

Made sense. So I helped her dig through the pile Applejack had landed on. Or in. And yet even before we finished our search, I already had that nagging feeling that we would not find anything. The way that thing had moved indicated that it was alive. Maybe even aware, somehow. I assumed it had simply fled the moment the ceiling came down.

After our first failure, she poured more light into the chamber. We searched the walls and the ceiling and for the most part found nothing but a nondescript cavern. That is, except for one side I had not noticed prior. There was some sort of cave-in blocking a passage that seemed to lead somewhere. Twilight plunged us into darkness as she canceled her light spell and cast another one. “It is a tunnel that leads down. Hundreds of feet of it, but it is blocked for almost the entire length I can currently perceive.”

I nodded, even though I could not see my own muzzle. “That will require an actual excavation team then. Right? We’re not starting to dig here, right?” We had a pickaxe. A single one. One she had marked down as a small pickaxe.

Light returned to her horn and she smiled wryly. “Although I would love to let my curiosity run wild, that is not what we are here for.”

I sighed in relief. And with that, we turned ninety degrees and walked over to the ancient wooden railing. Now with a hole in it where the diamond dog golem had taken a tumble down. Twilight’s light was enough to see that there was a solid floor maybe sixty feet below us. This floor did not look like natural, unworked stone though.

And my headaches got worse again. I hated these aftershocks. It had been hours since the flash. Almost half a day. I shook my head to clear it and when I looked up, I saw worry on her face. “Don’t,” I asked. I’m fine, I wordlessly reassured her. She nodded curtly and I turned my attention to the nearby path that led out of this entrance cave. “I think I got something. Do you have… I remember from other times that you had, like, a ball. A ball of light. It was some kind of light spell. The size of a filly, really bright. You could control it over long ranges and make it explode like a firework.”

She furrowed her brow and after a moment of consideration merely shrugged. “I do not have such a spell, but it should not be hard to replicate.”

I smirked. Sure, let’s make new spells on the fly, what could go wrong. “Are you sure you’re up to the task?”

She replied to my challenge with a cocky, Dash-worthy grin. “Watch me.” It took maybe a minute or two. She closed her eyes and furrowed her brow and I could almost see all the complex calculations she did, the careful consideration of energy exchange and arcane theory, until she dimmed her light down again, only to bring it back to life in a first attempt to cast a new spell in her repertoire.

It was absurd how easy she could do stuff like this. And I felt no small amount of pride as I saw her create a very familiar looking spell. Familiar, but not identical. The light spell I vaguely remembered hummed a little and rotated clockwise. This sphere of light rotated counter-clockwise and was absolutely silent. And for a brief moment, I felt a burning curiosity. Where did these differences come from? Maybe one Twilight had made a miscalculation? Or maybe both spells differed because they were created with different purposes in mind? But I kept a lid on it and remained silent about it.

“Impressive,” I praised and she grinned bashfully.

“Thank you.”

I looked over to the side, where the path led down into what I presumed was a city. And with the most recent aftershock, I was decently sure that I even knew a few things about its structure. “You see the path over there?” I asked and directed her attention by pointing a hoof there. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s the main street. It should curve in a wide arc. And I mean wide arc. It describes a circle, and at some point should drop down to a lower level. That should repeat a couple of times, with the circles growing more and more narrow the further down we get. I don’t know if you have enough reach, but maybe it would be a good start to get a decent impression of the size of things if you could follow that path as best as you can? And in the end, raise it back up to our level and let it go boom. Should be quite a spectacular sight.”

She listened intently and then sent the sphere on its merry way. We sat down right in front of the railing, without touching it of course. It did look like it would break away if we so much as sneezed at it. And we could watch the sphere illuminate parts of a city from our little overhang. Light reflected off of speckled, whitish houses. So many of them. Twilight let her sphere follow the street as best as she could even though it seemed to be miles away at one point and it eventually reached a spot at which a long set of stairs flanked the now steeply downwards angled street into a lower layer. It became harder to make out details with the sphere growing smaller and getting further away, but we saw layer after layer after layer, packed with houses in vastly different build styles, fashioned from different materials and in different sizes. These were the districts, I vaguely remembered. Different city districts. Everything had been very orderly.

The first layer was the residential quarter.

At the very bottom of the city, more than six hundred feet below us, was a single structure right in the middle, surrounded by several concentric circles of what appeared to be water. Twilight then lifted her sphere up and just as I had asked, let it explode into a shower of light. I saw the pure awe in her face as she took in the grandeur this city once presented. Its inverted cone-shape gave it a vastly distinct feeling than say Ponyville, where everything was even and on the same level. Maybe Canterlot was a decent comparison, as some districts there were on a higher elevation as well. But this was still different. Everything went down to the middle. Every weary traveler. Every gaze thrown into this hole. Every resource delivered to this city. Everything was designed to be drawn downwards.

“This really is a city,” Twilight whispered breathlessly. “There must have been hundreds of residents here…”

“Thousands,” I corrected with a strange feeling of weight bearing down on my shoulders.

“I wonder what happened here,” she mused. I knew that she merely talked aloud. Gave voice to her thoughts. She probably had not listened to me, which was fine. By all means, I had not contributed anything worth hearing. But her non-question still sent a shiver down my spine.

“I can’t tell,” I replied. And in those last remnants of light, I tried to make out any details. I tried to see any movement in reaction to the sudden light intrusion. But the entire city continued to lie dark and dead. Our ‘friend’ the golem was probably roaming around somewhere down there. We had not seen him lying beneath our ledge. Not even pieces of him. And I could not shake the foreboding feeling that something else was down here as well.

That wiggly black vine had to come from somewhere, after all.

“Do you still think this is a good idea?” I asked her. I would not mind her suddenly having second thoughts. But her scholarly enthusiasm returned in full force and she grinned like an excited little filly.

“Absolutely!”

I sighed and tried to put up a brave façade. “Well, would the tourists please follow me then? Keep your hooves inside the vehicle at all times, inform our employees about any funny smells aside from the to be expected stale air and please refrain from suing us if your action-adventure experience turns out to be boring.”

She rewarded my effort with a quiet giggle and followed me. I hesitated briefly before I stepped onto the street. It was a distinctly different feel and sound. Enough so that Twilight increased the light again to take a look at what exactly we walked on. “Is that andesite?”

I turned around and nodded. “I think so, yes. Honestly, I’m not Maud. But it would fit.”

She furrowed her brow and looked at me. “Why?”

I pointed with a hoof over to the first house. “Because they built a lot with volcanic stone. The reason these houses looked so fancy when your light sphere passed them by is because they are built entirely out of diorite.” She walked a little bit closer and inspected the speckled, whitish wall. Parts of it seemed to almost reflect the light. Which gave the entire building a little sparkle. “I believe it was a sign of wealth or something. It’s hard to get large quantities of that stuff and they build their largest district out of it.”

We continued down the main street, but every time a byroad split off, she stopped and looked down that path almost longingly. The residential quarter was huge. It housed most of the population, after all. If we would poke our noses into every nook and cranny up here, we would be here for weeks, minimum. And no matter how much her curiosity burned, this was not what we were here for.

Right?

Then why is she walking down to that plaza?

I blinked. What? As soon as I turned around, I saw her walk off. That probably explained the slight back pain — White Tip dug his claws into my coat to make me aware of it without needing to caw down my ear. The latter could attract unwanted attention, after all.

I sighed and walked after Twilight. “Come on, peanut, you can’t be serious. If we start here, we’re not going to stop!”

Twilight stopped in front of a street lantern and inspected it. “I’m not… I mean…” She looked back at me with those big, pleading eyes. “Just a little peek? Please?”

I sighed in defeat and as soon as I nodded, she grinned and got her journal and writing supplies out. A quick sketch of the entire thing, a few more of one of the buildings, a bunch of notes on materials and suspected building techniques. She eventually noticed the little hatch at the bottom of the street lantern. “You mentioned they used gemstones to power their technology, right?”

I grinned and sidled up to her. “Yes, but that’s not a gemstone slot. That’s a slot for a fuse. I’ve seen a bunch of these missing in the other lanterns we passed by already. My best guess is that whatever happened here overloaded their electrical systems.”

“So these street lights were all powered by electricity?”

I was about to blurt my answer out, but stopped. It was so easy to just say ‘yes’. She had no way of checking. And much to my dismay: Neither had I. Because even though that answer felt right, the evidence was less conclusive than I would have liked. That slot could have been used for other means. I was guesstimating a lot on the basis of fuzzy memories from who knew how many cycles ago. “I think so, yes,” I hesitantly answered.

It was that hesitation that made her pause and she watched me for a brief moment. “You don’t have to, you know?”

She tried to be nice and accommodating. And I sighed in reply. “I know. It’s just… it’s difficult. I wish I could give you all the answers. But I don’t have them. Take everything I tell you about this place with a grain of salt. I don’t entirely trust these memories. And neither should you. Just because I knew a place like this in a different life doesn’t mean that I know this place. There’s always been variations. Some minor, others… less so. If you promise me to keep that in mind, I promise you to stop worrying.”

She grinned slightly lopsided. “I don’t think you can stop. But I like that deal anyway.” She took down a couple of notes and once done, she looked down the byroad. “There seems to be some kind of plaza in that direction.”

I snorted and hung my head. She was impossible. “Fine.”

When I looked back up, I saw her grin with that unbridled joy again and found it quite difficult not to smile in return. So we went down the byroad and entered the little plaza. It was surrounded by houses, each house entrance led directly to it. The houses themselves usually had two stories, only a few were smaller. We saw windows with glass, additional wooden shutters on the outside and even small stripes of dirt in front of the houses, to the sides of the entrances. Strangely enough, we saw no doors.

Before we concerned ourselves with that, we walked around the plaza for a moment. A fountain was the centerpiece of it, but it had long since dried up. It was crafted from marble, as far as I could tell, and the figurine on top was probably some notable diamond dog of ages long past. Above his head was a whitish ball the size of a head, roughly five feet higher. It was suspended in midair by a steel cable that was anchored to two of the buildings. I knew the question before I even looked in Twilight’s direction and yet I had a difficult time giving a proper answer. I looked around for clues and once again noticed the dirt patches. The andesite street went all the way down through all the layers. Even these byroads that split off every so often left no room for something as simple as…

A flowerbed.

“I think this was some sort of artificial sun,” I explained while I furrowed my brow and stared at one of the dirt patches. “Plants need a certain light to grow. The theory should be easy enough to test. If we find these strange contraptions whenever we find more dirt patches, that should be a good indicator.”

White Tip hopped off my back, over to one of the patches and returned to me after he picked at the dirt with his beak. Twilight came closer and lowered her horn to look at what he presented me with right before he hopped back onto my back. A few seeds. Dried out and long dead, but indisputable proof that something had grown in those dirt patches sometime. “Good find,” I praised him and levitated a few seeds out of my satchel. Those were a lot more appealing to him and he happily accepted the treat.

Twilight meanwhile took one of her test tubes and secured the retrieved samples in them. She scraped a bit of diorite from a wall and scraped a sample of dried out, long-dead mucus from the bottom of the former fountain. And everything went back into her saddlebags as soon as it was properly secured, of course. I could not help but chuckle quietly. I felt a little bit like a moving lab.

“Have you seen the cable shafts near the rooftops?” Twilight asked and looked up with almost the same fascination in her eyes as if she were to marvel at Luna’s glorious night sky. “They are easily accessible from the roof, I bet. That would ease maintenance access. And they seem to lead into each and every house.”

I nodded, even though she would not see it. “They do. It’s like… half of their stuff was powered by electricity, and half of it by magic. The latter being gemstones, somehow.”

“With a city of this size, they must have had an enormous demand.” While she calculated on the basis of what we had seen so far, I thought about the hydroelectric dam upriver from Ponyville. I knew that Ponyville’s hospital used electricity to power some of the advanced apparatuses and machines. But most of the town still relied on more conventional, ‘old-fashioned’ means. Firefly lanterns, for example. Or simple light spells to power a street light. They were not that hard to learn and cast. Even a weak unicorn, given they could learn light spells to begin with, could power a couple of street lights for a night without exhausting themselves.

While I still pondered why Ponyville even had a hydroelectric dam, Twilight noticed something else. Her light was caught and briefly reflected by something that was not a diorite wall or a glass window. “What is that…?” she mumbled in curiosity. I quickly shook myself free from my thoughts and followed her gaze to one of the doors. And I grimaced.

There is still a good chance she won’t enter.

I sidled up to her side and followed her over to the entrance. A thick metal bolt stuck out of a piece of machinery beside the entrance, right on the inside. “It’s an electric door lock,” I explained. “See that switch there? The latch would be drawn back and the door is open, or it sticks out and blocks it from being opened.”

She nodded, but I could already see the gears turning. “It is just that… there is no door…”

I remembered the ancient wooden railing. There was only so long wood could survive until it vanished. But just as Twilight did seconds later, I noticed the few scraps of it lying on the floor. Spread out in a way that only left one reasonable conclusion: Something had smashed its way in. Which explained another very uncomfortable detail.

The metal latch was broken off in the middle. And the missing piece was probably somewhere inside the room. Something had smashed the barred door open, with enough force to break a metal bolt clean off. It was not bent. It was broken off.

“Twilight, please don’t—“ —enter. I sighed. Too late.

Her muzzle wrinkled as her nostrils flared. “Urgh… do you smell that?”

Yes, peanut. That is what old death smells like.

I sighed and stepped in after her. I could not spare her any longer, it seemed. So maybe it was better to just get it over with. I took a deep breath, despite the stale, dead air and refocused. “The stench comes from upstairs,” I told her. She nevertheless looked around curiously and took note — figuratively and quite literally — of all the little doodads and unidentified household objects. And only then did we carefully make our way up the stone stairs. Whatever carpet had once muffled the steps of those on their way up was long gone. As were any and all curtains, tablecloths, rotten food. It was a small miracle that even parts of the shelves, tables and chairs remained.

We followed our noses to one of the bedrooms. Another broken down door. This time, it was more noticeable what had happened. Parts of the surrounding wall were broken off, scattered pieces of diorite lined the floor into the room. Something had crashed through here. And a single piece of metal still clung to the wall. One hinge of the door.

Twilight grimaced. First because of the stench that got a little worse when we entered the bedroom. And then because of the scene we discovered within.

They never stood a chance.

Bones were scattered in the far corner of the room behind the broken down remains of the bed. Some of these bones were broken. Three skulls. Two considerably smaller than the other one. The larger skull had a clear piercing wound right in the middle. And the diorite wall behind those piles of bones had a dozen holes. Whatever smashed through that door was after them. After him or her and their two children. They tried to keep it out and failed. They hid in this room and it found them. It pierced their bodies with enough force and speed to punch a clean whole into a solid skull. Enough force to penetrate the very stone behind their bodies. Twelve times. Twelve attacks for three probably very helpless targets. That was not efficient. That was overkill. It spoke volumes about resentment, about anger and hatred, maybe even about satisfaction and joy.

Whatever had killed them was retrieved after the attack had been finished. Either that, or the weapon of choice had been organic in nature and long since rotted away. There was no trace of it left. No spearhead embedded in the wall. No pieces of a wooden lance on the floor.

Twilight’s analytical mind figured out what I gathered. Probably quicker than I did. Maybe in more detail. “They were children,” she almost inaudibly whispered as her gaze was drawn back to the pile of bones. Back from all the details telling the story of this room and their last few seconds.

Life’s not fair.

I shook my head slightly to dislodge the thought and walked over to her side. And I leaned a little bit against her. To comfort her. To distract her. “There’s nothing we can do.” They had been dead for a long, long time.

I managed to slowly, carefully usher her out of the house again. And on my way down, I noticed the disturbing, single-minded focus of the intruder. It was hard to tell with table legs eventually giving out and with drawers breaking down over decades. But most of the furniture were now neat little piles of rotten wood. Right where they stood. No table was flipped across the room. No pottery was smashed on the ground. I even saw a half-intact door that probably led to a kitchen or bathroom or any other room that had not housed any escapees at the time of the collapse.

We both took a deep breath once we were back outside. The air down in this cave was still stale, but it was bearable. Bearable compared to the inside of that house, anyway. I sighed as I realized that this, this one instance, was not enough. Not enough to make her aware of the issue at hoof. “White Tip?” He pressed his claws into my back to let me know that I had his full attention. “Would you kindly make a round? Fly up to the windows of the other houses, into the entrances if necessary? See if you can find similar scenes.” While my feathery friend flapped his wings and was off and quickly flew from window to window here in the plaza where he had light to see inside, I turned to Twilight and saw the dreaded realization dawn on her. Up to this point, she had not even considered that this grisly sight might not have been an isolated incident. But all the doors were missing. All the entrance doors, anyway.

White Tip quickly returned and landed on the andesite street before us. “More like that?” I asked. And he confirmed. “In every house?” And he confirmed. I nodded and gestured for him to hop onto my back again while I turned to Twilight. “I’m sorry. But… this place is a graveyard.”

She had to wrangle with this revelation for a bit. It was alright. I gave her as much time as she needed. But I did not like the uneasy look with which she regarded me at the end of it. “You knew.” It was not a question. A statement, at best. An accusation at worst.

I sighed and shook my head. “No.” And she tried to argue in my favor, I could see that. She patiently waited for more, so I tried. After all, I did that a lot. “I knew something bad had happened down here. I told you, it’s all fuzzy. I did not know we would find street lanterns, but once I saw one, it was like… yeah, of course they would be here, they are all over the place. And there was this… hazy sense of foreboding when we veered into the byroad. And again when we entered the house.”

“Why did you not say anything?” she asked quietly.

I had to swallow that lump as I heard regret lace her voice. “I tried.” I sighed and brushed a hoof over my muzzle. “You wanted to see that lantern and study it and while I felt uneasy, I thought: Hey, why not. It’s just a lantern after all, right? What’s the worst that could happen? And then we entered that plaza and you were just so… I love seeing that side of you. I should have put up more resistance then I had, I’ll admit that. But you were so happy. And when you entered that house, I was… too late. Too slow.”

“You could have told me before we went up the stairs,” she answered. Despite her phrasing, it was not an accusation. Which already relieved me a little bit.

“Would that really have stopped you? ‘Hey peanut, sorry, but we really shouldn’t be here. We would find something that isn’t easy to shake off again. Let’s turn around and just go.’ Like that? Would that really have worked?” And neither did I accuse her. It was an honest question. I knew her. I knew her well. But with my headache merrily thumping away, with hazy memories mingling in that foggy mess up there, I found it difficult to gauge how she would have reacted to something like that. She would have wanted answers. I could not give those.

“I trust you,” she replied.

I nodded. I knew that. “You would have followed me out again. But would that really be the end of it? Maybe I made a mistake by thinking you would react the same way I would. You do show better self-control than I have, time and time again. With some vague mystery left dangling in the open like that… I don’t know. I would probably not go against your wishes. But I would not be able to stop myself from thinking about it either.”

She remained silent for a while. She even closed her eyes. And eventually, she opened them again and sighed. “It was just… it was a shock,” she told me. “I did not expect to find something like that. I would prefer it if you tell me sooner when you remember something. Even if it is vague and hazy. And I will try to listen.”

I nodded. “Okay.” We both sighed and walked back to the main street. Close to each other. Close enough for our coats to brush. “I can’t guarantee you that we won’t find more grisly stuff lower down. Whatever happened here started lower down.”

“I know,” she replied. It seemed like it really had been just unexpected. Now that she knew that this city was dead-dead, it was a different story. That should probably not have surprised me as much as it did. She had faced mystical beings and overpowered villains before. She had seen entire timelines erased and witnessed war. “You don’t happen to remember what exactly broke through those doors, do you? Or maybe if it might still be alive and around?”

I answered her wry smile in kind. “Sadly no.” That diamond dog golem had claws. And that black vine was too small and too wiggly. Whatever had massacred an entire city population was either long gone, or still somewhere below us. But that was the reason we were here for, right? Danger assessment and reconnaissance.

At this point, we refrained from checking more houses. Twilight instead settled for drawing a crude map of the highest city layer. All the little byroads and plazas. The more her map took shape, the more it reminded me of the veins on a leaf. If somepony had cut the leaf in half along the middle vein. A little spider’s web of plazas and byroads that was rarely deeper than seven houses. That obviously still amounted to a lot of houses.

“It is artificial, you know,” Twilight concluded when she returned with her measuring tape. She quickly took down a couple more notes and left me bewildered for the time being, until she was done and smiled. I was just glad she smiled again, even if it was a considerably subdued one compared to her initial enthusiasm. “The city.”

I snorted. “Well duh.”

She rolled with her eyes, but her smile grew a little in strength. “No, I mean, the entire city. I cannot tell why just yet, but even the supposed cave ceiling was hewn to look the way it does. The andesite road describes a perfect curvature. The layout of the byroads, plazas, houses, even the direction their entrances are aligned to, everything about this city was meticulously planned ahead of time. I can even calculate the diameter of the first layer.”

I grimaced as she proudly announced that. She clearly hoped I would ask, but the thing was… I did not know if I wanted to know. I looked over and saw her smile. And I imagined it faltering a little. Just a little. Ever so slightly. That mental image was already enough to sigh internally and give in. Maybe I was just weak-willed. “Hit me. How much is it?”

“Two miles. Exactly on the inch.”

I grimaced hard. Admittedly, most of that distance was a big hole right in the middle. But the residential district was still roughly four hundred feet ‘thick’. On either side obviously, because circles. “You know I love to join you for a stroll. But I don’t think I agree with your choice of scenery this time,” I joked and felt quite happy as her smile grew into a grin.

“You knew what you were getting yourself into before we came down here. And yet you came down with me anyway. And that is why I love you.”

She giggled quietly and I chimed in and shook my head. “And that’s obviously the only thing as well, right?”

She nodded vigorously. “Right.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. She was so surprised that she immediately scanned our surroundings for any potential threat I might have noticed, but that was just a good distraction for me to walk up to her and smooch her. “Love you too, peanut.”

And she had that particular smile that I loved. Well admittedly, I loved all of them. But this one I loved the most, right now anyway. We continued on our way and after what felt like hours — and probably was hours — we reached the section of the road we spotted earlier today when Twilight had sent her light sphere ahead on the road. A long section of stairs that flanked the downwards angled road and led to the next layer.

“I did not see a clock on that check list,” I half-asked and Twilight confirmed as much. “So we don’t really know how late it is. But seeing as White Tip is both wide awake and half-asleep, I guess being underground messes with his usual sleeping schedule a little bit. It leads me to believe that it might be evening. That and the fact that my hooves start to burn a little which, speaking from experience with Luna, they tended to do after numerous hours of walking.”

Twilight grinned sheepishly. “We did not really take any breaks, did we?”

I chuckled quietly and shrugged. “It’s fine. I could’ve complained if I really wanted to. You were just very, uh… focused. But I think this is a good point to let it be for today, right? First layer done, next one tomorrow. Let’s get home, grab some food, settle by the fireplace with a nice book and fall asleep while cuddling. Sounds good?”

She smiled at me tenderly. “Yes please. That does sound lovely.”

We turned around and walked maybe a couple dozen steps before I abruptly stopped and gestured for her to do the same. “Light,” I whispered and she immediately canceled her spell. I wished I could have said that my own attentiveness had saved our hides. But credit where credit was due: White Tips claws dug into my coat in an immediately painful manner. Meaning that whatever was up was nothing that had a second to spare. And sure enough, we heard something scratch. Stone on stone. And then, despite the absolute darkness that had swallowed us whole, we saw the diamond dog golem return.

It climbed up the side of the andesite road less than a hundred feet in front of us and carefully, sneakily crawled over the ancient wooden fence. It had not noticed us yet, it seemed. The only reason we could see it was that weird glowing collar it now wore. Several glyphs or runes that seemed to be forged onto a metal band, which itself floated around the collection of stones that represented the creature’s neck. And they emanated an ominous faint red light.

Great. Upgrades.

Maybe the golems master was still around? Someone had to make these changes, after all. I cautiously poked Twilight on her shoulder and gestured for her to slowly and quietly walk over to the nearest house. Hiding seemed like a very reasonable decision right now. After all, that thing might be gone in a minute or two. With Twilight’s light spell permanently active, it was reasonable to assume that we had attracted it. But why did it come only after hours and hours of us passing through the city? Maybe it required some kind of recharge? Or repairs? We still knew too little to even make educated guesses.

Once we were inside the house, I sneakily looked outside. The glow the golem now emitted was a good warning sign when it came in our direction and how far away it still was. I deemed it safe enough for a little discussion if we were quiet. “What’s the plan?” I asked her. I knew that she probably had a thousand and one options to get rid of that thing. But I also knew Twilight well enough to realize that she would not want to destroy it if it was not utterly unavoidable.

She smiled and shrugged. “I should be able to teleport us back home.”

I nodded and tried to brace for nausea. “Do it.”

Her horn glowed. I could feel the familiar sensation of strong magic nearby. She strained.

And the spell fizzled out.

“What…?” we both managed to utter in surprise. And I noticed that the red shimmer of light grew stronger outside the house. With basically all the doors missing from each and every building, there was not a lot of room to hide. We could retreat further back into another room, of course. But that golem was too large to get inside these houses anyway. Except by breaking walls. That was always an option, of course.

“Get down and stay silent,” I ordered her and pressed myself against the ground as flat as I could. Twilight had the advantage of lying on the other side of the entrance right in the corner of the house, while I, the idiot that I was, laid right beneath a freaking window. I grabbed White Tip with my hooves and pressed him to the ground as well, close to myself to keep him as safe as possible.

And we heard that thing stalk around outside. We heard how careful it placed its stony claws on the ground to avoid making too much noise. But something of that size could not hope to be silent. Quiet, yes. But not silent. We sat tight and played the long game. It rounded the house we hid in twice and every time it came even remotely close to the entrance, both Twilight and I held our breaths. We did not know if it could hear, after all.

It felt like ages until the steps of the golem finally receded.

We both sighed in relief, albeit as quietly as we could.

“What was that?” I asked.

Twilight grimaced. “I am not sure. My magic was dispersed somehow.”

“Try your light spell. But with a low output,” I asked her. Her horn began to glow, but there was an unsteady flicker in it. Maybe that collar interfered with her magic. Maybe it was an effect related to how far into the city we were. Either way, we wordlessly agreed that her magic was unreliable right now. Teleportation was not an immediate option. We could probably fly over to the side of the city where the plug was situated, but if that effect also affected her pegasus magic, then we would simply plummet out of the sky. Not a prospect I looked forward to. “Is this dire enough to convince you to get rid of that thing?” I asked hopefully, even though I knew better.

“That golem is a priceless, still functioning artifact of a bygone civilization! We could learn so much if we could manage to study it! Not to mention the repercussions on diplomatic endeavors it could have if the diamond dogs would learn that I destroyed it. A-And—“

I sighed and held up my hoof. Despite the severity of the situation, I could not shake that smile. “A simple ‘heck no’ would have sufficed, peanut.” She sighed and we both fell silent for a moment as we analyzed our situation and tried to come up with something. It was a smart move to wait for a few minutes anyway. Maybe that thing got bored and crawled back under that rock it had emerged from.

Twilight was the first one to reach any sort of coherent conclusion, unsurprisingly. “Well we still have water and we do not need to worry about shelter from the elements.” I decidedly did not like the direction this headed in. I saw how she looked at her journal. All the sketches and notes. How she chewed her bottom lip. A gesture that made me want to do things to her under normal circumstances. But now it only served to make me aware just how tightly her scholarly pursuit had gripped her.

“Twilight. I’m hungry. Up there is food. I like food.” I quietly chuckled despite my dissatisfaction with her upcoming decision.

She rummaged through one of her saddlebags, placed an apple on the floor and booped it with her nose so that it rolled over to my side. I stared at the apple and then at her. You can’t be serious. “And what are you going to eat? Because if you tell me that you’re not hungry, I will—“

She put down a second apple.

I stared at her for a long, long time. I hate you so much right now, I let her know despite my goofy smile.

Love you too, was all I got back.

I sighed and took my damn apple. “The things we do for love…”