Dreamwalker's Tale: The Descent

It had been a long day. One that mostly consisted of walking around and staring at the architecture. The day had its ups and downs. Being chased by a golem was certainly part of the latter group. As was the discovery of an entire city layer being a graveyard. But I still found myself smiling whenever I remembered her fascinated, awestruck gaze gliding over the city blocks, houses and technical doodads. Despite the downs, her interest had not entirely lost its grip on her. And we continued to the next layer with her almost, almost skipping steps. She did not quite prance ahead, but her mood clearly recovered. Despite the golem probably being on our heels.

The revelation that this day would get a lot longer before we were finally allowed to rest coaxed little more than a tired, silent sigh at this point. It had been inevitable from the start, I figured. The apple, meager and sad snack that it was, had stemmed the tide against my hunger for now and my hooves only slightly burned, so I could go on for a while longer and I would. For her.

I looked ahead as I carefully walked down the stairs and saw her tail swish from side to side excitedly. It made me chuckle. The noise in turn made her stop and look back and there it was. That smile that made my heart melt and tell myself in earnest that all this would be worth it in the end.

She waited until I caught up to her and slowed down a little as we continued on. Her horn lit our way again, even though she was very, very cautious about how much light she allowed. We got rid of the golem a few minutes ago, we certainly did not need him to return right now or anytime soon.

We stopped when we got our first glimpse at a structure nearby.

The second layer had still been close by enough to spot a few details when Twilight initially sent her light sphere around. But standing before the buildings made perfectly clear that whoever had designed this place had no intention of impressing visitors. The first layer with its diorite houses was clearly meant to do just that, but these buildings were made from dark gray concrete. No fancy flourishes, no detailed work. Just plain concrete boxes stacked on top of each other, beside each other, connected with each other.

I had to admit, though: They were impressive in a different way. The structure looked very industrious. Very efficient and almost intimidating. There were new environmental clues adding to that impression as well. A constant, soft buzzing could be heard. It was faint, almost inaudible. It indicated that not the entire place was as dead as it looked. There was still electricity to be found here, some of the machinery still worked. The latter was obvious due to the soft swooshing we heard. Twilight allowed just a little bit more light and we saw the reason for the strange, recurring sound. Massive fans. They were hidden behind metal grates and seemed to be part of the concrete buildings. We saw two of them, but we heard a bunch more. Each seemed to be at least ten feet tall.

Twilight motioned towards a sign nearby, in front of the buildings’ entrance. We walked over and stared at it, but neither of us could read diamond dog language. However, the longer I stared, the more I felt something scratch in the back of my head. Like something wanted to get in…

I furrowed my brow and closed my eyes. “Second layer. Transformer stations and air conditioning units,” I quoted a strange voice from fuzzy memories. “There’s three ACCs. The first two are somehow different, but I can’t quite tell why.”

“What is an ACC?” Twilight asked while I still focused on my muddy puddle.

“Air Conditioning Complex. It describes an assortment of interconnected buildings all working together to fulfill the task. Housing units are included, a cantina, locker rooms and showers. They have their own transformer stations and emergency power grids. They sometimes posed a bottleneck for the power distribution and…” I stopped and looked up at the sign again. I could feel it. It was so close.

“It makes sense that they needed to worry about proper ventilation with an underground city of this size,” Twilight mused quietly.

“Twilight?”

“Hm?” She looked over, I could see that out of the corners of my eyes, but I could not stop staring at the sign. The letters glitched before my very eyes. They shifted and wobbled in place. I did not even dare to blink as my eyes started to burn.

“I think I might be able to remember more. It feels like there’s a flash right beneath the surface, but it doesn’t take over for some reason. Should I set it loose?” I was not a fan of these flashes. But I recognized their occasional usefulness. And especially in our current situation they could be incredibly valuable. Maybe I finally got enough information to stop the golem for good. Or maybe I could learn a few more tidbits for Twilight’s notes. It might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I could tell her decision even before she had made it. I was certain she agreed with that assessment. She wanted those memories and information. I was certain that she had utmost faith in her ability to defend me if something went wrong.

“Go ahead. I watch over you,” she reassured me.

I smiled and leaned over to lay my forehead against hers. I sighed quietly. “If I start having funny ideas, slap me. Should break the spell, hopefully.” She did not look thrilled with that particular prospect, but nodded anyway. And I returned my attention to that damn sign. And I stared at it. I started so hard and focused as if I tried to burn a hole in it. The letters wobbled more and more, until something happened. It felt like a knot suddenly burst in my head.

And reality as I knew it got a fancy new overlay.

I could read the sign. “Air Conditioning Complex One. There’s something written below it, smaller.” I could see it in a light-blue, almost ghostly glowing way. The writing was immaculate. That same glow made me realize that no, on the real sign was no such smaller writing to be found. It had been weathered away a long time ago. “Research Facility One.”

She snickered and looked back at me. “What? Are you going to stand there and wait outside now?”

I furrowed my brow. That was not Twilight’s voice. I slowly looked over to the entrance. The airlock, I realized. A diamond dog stood there. She was roughly my size. Whitish fur, but spotted with dark gray. Her colors were almost split down the middle on her face. She watched me with her playfully twinkling eyes. Excitement. Anticipation. Her bushy tail waggled. She looked forward to show me the inside. Why?

She wore a blue neckerchief. A gift from her brother. Red Nose, I remembered. My eyes were drawn to her muzzle. Whitish fur. Not white. Silvery. Silver Nose.

I felt a pull from my memories. I did not exactly know what they wanted, it was too vague. So I closed my eyes and tried to follow the flow. “Are you sure this is a smart idea, Silver?”

She punched a few numbers into the keypad beside the airlock. If I focused, I could see beyond the ghostly shimmer. I could see a destroyed something barely clinging to the wall. Ghostly Silver entered through the opening airlock door. The real door hung half-open in its hinges, the thick metal bent inwards.

“Dream, I’ve been through a lot of hassle to get the magistrate to change his mind on this. You get your weird-ass pony rump in here now or I’m gonna be very cross with you tonight.” She snickered again. Despite the threat, nothing was meant seriously.

And I did not mind playing along. “Oh no, whatever shall I do? Is it the couch again? Because honestly, you have a lovely couch.”

She stuck her tongue out and gestured for me to get a move on. So I followed her. I followed into the airlock. I had to duck under the real door. I did not understand how this memory and reality interacted. I had never had such a strange flash before. They were usually a lot less interactive and just fed me images and sounds and other bits and pieces.

We stood in the airlock for half a minute while strange devices lowered from the ceiling and sprayed us with some kind of gas. I would have been worried, but Silver did not seem to be alarmed. So I figured this had to be standard procedure. Once the air lock opened on the other side, we were finally allowed in.

A massive hall greeted us. A lot of tables were filled with technical looking machines, apparatuses and monitors. The entire room was abuzz. Dozens of diamond dogs followed strict patterns of movement like ants in a colony. Some wore the clothing of mechanics, others wore lab coats. Silver grabbed one of those from a nearby hanger and threw another one over to me.

“Silver, I can’t wear a lab coat, you doofus.” I grinned and wanted to throw the lab coat right back at her, but I realized too late that it was not real. I grabbed through nothing.

“Just put it over your back, you twerp. It’s just so the other workers leave you alone.” She shook her head with a wide grin and gestured for me to follow her deeper into the bowels of ACC1.

I shrugged and moved along. Past destroyed metal tables. Past the collapsed remains of wooden chairs. Whatever technical notes and diagrams and readings had been on these desks were long gone. But I could still see them. See the ghostly imprint of my memory. It was such a strange feeling to walk through these halls and have the direct contrast between how dead, silent and empty they were now and how alive everything had been back then. The strangest side effect of this overlay had to be the light, though. I should barely have been able to see anything ahead of me, but since the memory was so incredibly vivid and the entire complex was flooded by a massive array of luminescent tubes on the ceiling, I could navigate the building with relative ease. The only thing that made me stumble a few times was the occasional piece of debris that was not part of the memory. Or bones. Many of those to be found.

I knew things got interesting when Silver’s usually floppy right ear stood up straight. “There he is, the little bugger!” Silver ran ahead and literally jumped onto one of the other lab coat-wearing diamond dogs. As he yelped in surprise and whirled around with a growl, I could catch a first glimpse of his face. It only confirmed what I had suspected already due to his statue. Red Nose, Silver’s brother. He worked here.

They exchanged a few barks both to get rid of the tension and in happiness about seeing each other. “Red, this is Dreamwalker. Dreamwalker, this is Red.” She leaned over to me ever so slightly and whispered. “My brother. Just in case you’ve forgotten.” She treated this like our first meeting. And I had to admit, it was a little bit funny. I had lived with both of them for how long now? Months. Maybe even years?

Red rolled with his eyes as he witnessed the antics of his sister. I grinned a little and we regarded each other with an appraising look. His build was slightly broader. His nose was indeed red. And his fur colors were inverted compared to those of his sister. I offered him a hoof. “Pleasure to meet you. Silver told me a lot about you already.” I played along. And why would I not? Some of the other workers sure seemed confused. Maybe that alone was worth it.

“Only good stuff, I hope,” he replied with a chuckle and a threatening side-eye to Silver.

I chuckled as well and shrugged. “Mostly embarrassing foalhood stories. And something about the two of you trying to build a construct, which ended in you accidentally burning down half your room?”

He growled in displeasure and turned to Silver — who was long gone, of course. He sighed and returned his attention to me. “I’ll get her back for that later.”

I grinned. “I sure hope so. She’s extra-hyper today, isn’t she?”

He shrugged with a good-natured smile. “Sure is. Though to be fair, she looked forward to getting you in here for weeks.”

I did not know how to react to that. My memories gave me no indication. No pull in any direction. So I simply looked around the room we currently stood in. It seemed to be some sort of assembly line? Or maybe a repair station. One of the fans lay on the floor. It was massive. A single blade on it was as long as I was, from head to tail. Four workers carried a missing blade to one of the tables while three more seemed busy using blowtorches to disconnect another blade.

“Pst. Pssst!”

I looked over to yet another passage. Silver waited at the half-opened door. She apparently still tried to avoid her brother after my revelation, but her face did not speak of misgivings. Even if she was cross with me, what was the worst she could do? She was not even real. Another week on the couch? She would hang on for two days, maybe three before she would wait for me to fall asleep and crawl next to me anyway.

It was such a weird arrangement. We were not in a relationship. But we were not not in a relationship either. Everything was up in the air.

I shook my head slightly to dislodge the unwelcome musings of another me. This was apparently the first time that I had been allowed inside these buildings. My maybe-love interest was eager to show me her workplace. And I had nothing better to do than stroll around the place thinking about what we were to each other. Then again, that did sound a lot like me, so at least it was in line with what was to be expected.

I walked over to ghostly Silver and followed her down the hallway into what looked like an archive. The reality was sobering. Empty shelves and the smell of stale air and decay. But once I took the glowing overlay into account, this place was a treasure trove of knowledge. And data. Oh so much data. This room stored all the protocols about overhauls and maintenance work, all reports of work incidents and injuries. All the readings from the different machines. Twilight would have loved to dig into this place.

I followed Silver through most of the room to a back corner. “You work here?” I asked her.

“No, you ninny. I’m not an archivist! I don’t crunch numbers, do I?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

I sat down to properly gesture with my hooves and held them up in defense. “You don’t. But you do spout a lot of numbers once you really get going about what you actually do, and this place looks very, uh, numbery.”

She snickered and nodded. “Right. Sorry ‘bout that. I don’t know, math gets me going.”

I smirked. “I noticed.”

She grinned and winked at me before she turned around and lifted a bunch of books and sheets of paper onto the table. “So, here’s what I wanted to show you. What I’m currently working on. Read that.”

I was relieved that she merely slid a bunch of the sheets over instead of hoofing them to me. After all, I could not actually hold them. I stared at the desk and tried to ignore the claw marks on the metal table. I tried to ignore the bones I could see out of the corner of my eyes, a small pile nearby. And I focused intently on the ghostly document in front of me. And just as before with the street sign, the letters wobbled and shifted until I could read at least parts of it.

I was surprised, to say the least. Not by my ability to understand what was written on it, but by my understanding of the topic. This was a level of chemistry Twilight sometimes spoke about. And whenever she did, she quickly lost me. Because it was just too much for my puny little brain.

Twilight.

We had crossed half the complex and only now did I remember her even being there. Here. With me. Not once had I wasted a single thought where the faint light had come from. I panicked a little and looked behind me and even though my heart still ran a mile a minute, I felt relief wash over me to see her standing there.

“Hey there,” she greeted me with a warm smile. “I am still here, don’t worry. Is it over? You seemed quite lost when you wandered around this place, but you appear to have a clearer mind now?”

I wanted to hug her so badly, but my hooves felt frozen in place. And the longer I ignored it, the stronger the pull of the memory became. I shot Twilight a wry smile. “Sadly no.”

She nodded. “It is fine. It is a little bit strange to only hear one side of a conversation, but I—“

“So, what do you think?” Silver excitedly asked.

I looked down at the sheet once more. If those numbers were correct, I was worried. I looked back up at her and how her tail quickly swung from side to side. She was so proud of her work. And I could see why. I could. It was incredible. What she and her research had done here was astonishing. But at the same time, I could not help but ask: Just because one could… did that mean one should?

“Silver… you’re researching chemical additives for the air circulation system. I’m not—…” I stared at the faintly glowing sheets again. “So you figured the neurochemistry behind it out. That’s great. It is.”

“There’s a but coming,” she noted and her tail stopped wagging. Her right ear flopped down again.

I sighed. “You could do so much good with this knowledge. Think about all the medical applications. Can’t sleep? Take a pill. Can’t focus? Take a pill. Too aggressive and conventional behavior therapy doesn’t work? Take a pill. You could name that last one a chill pill.”

She laughed and grimaced at the same time. “Oof, that one was bad enough to actually hurt. You should be ashamed of yourself!” And despite that, she grinned from ear to ear. But then her gaze dropped to the documents she had so proudly presented to me and her paw came to a rest on top of them. “You don’t approve.” It was not a question, but a mere observation.

“I know you. I know that you mean well,” I started and raised a hoof. I initially wanted to recoil slightly as a tingling sensation ran up my leg as my hoof actually made contact with something, but my memories froze my leg in place. Silver looked up at me with hope. “You have every reason to be proud of yourself. What you guys figured out here is incredible. But I’m worried. Don’t you see the risk this entails? Let’s say you add…” I scanned the documents again and quickly found a prime candidate. “Let’s say you add number eleven. And you make the entire population docile. That might be great on paper. Yay, workers squabble less. They don’t accidentally cause work incidents anymore. The neighbors finally get along. It’s artificial peace and harmony. But at the same time, it’s so easy to misuse. Somepony will be in control of this entire system. And that won’t be you. Because you are just a researcher. You just provide these tools. Nothing stops the magistrate from adding number seven and sending the entire city to sleep. He could take a look into every house. There’s no privacy anymore. And even with that all put aside, you manipulate how everypony thinks. You chemically manipulate their thoughts. You make them sleepy. You make them hungry. You make them focused. Aren’t you worried that you sacrifice individuality and free will in exchange for a swarm of efficient drones?”

Silver pouted. And it was not the usual pout I knew from her. The playful one that usually ended with us relentlessly teasing each other or a tickle fight. And maybe some cuddling later on. No, it was a serious pout. “You sound a lot like Red right now.”

“I’m sorry. I will back you up, you know that. But maybe your brother has a point. If this falls into the wrong hooves, paws, whatever… it could cause a lot of damage. And I know that you will feel responsible once that happens. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to see you get hurt by something you were rightfully proud of. I don’t want to see your achievements turn into regret.” I pulled her in for a hug. A tingling sensation filled my chest as her ghostly form pressed against me.

“Can’t you just be proud of me?” she timidly asked. I hated how meek and insecure her voice suddenly sounded. She had worked her bony little rump off to get me in here. To show me her work. And as usual, I had nothing but worries to offer. Why was it so hard to just be happy for her?

“I am proud of you,” I insisted. But the ethics of this research was questionable. And I had a hard time understanding why she did not see it. Or why she chose not to see it. She nestled against my chest for a few minutes and I did not mind letting her. I held her tight and remained silent.

She eventually sighed. “This didn’t go as I had hoped,” she admitted, “but… it actually went better than I had feared, so… there’s that, I guess.”

I stroked her back. Diamond dog fur was so different to a pony’s coat. “I hope I did not disappoint you too much. If you don’t mind, I would still like to see your workplace. Like… your proper workplace, not just some numbers representing your achievements on paper. That is why we came here after all, right?”

It was a part of her life she wanted to share with me. She still wanted that, despite my reservations. “Right. But we need to switch over to ACC two for that. I’m mostly working in the testing chamber these days and that was built over there for security reasons. Own power grid and a couple of emergency batteries, no blowtorches anywhere near it, all the good stuff. And less anthill-vibes because of the severely restricted access.”

“Severely restricted? And I’m still allowed in?”

She grinned deviously. “Well… let’s not discuss that in detail, yes?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Fine, fine. I won’t ask.”

The flash glitched. Silver had pulled away from me ever so slightly to let me see her grin. And she still looked up at me with nothing but trust and warmth. But she did not move. She did not even blink. The memory seemed frozen. Or maybe idling.

With no further pull in any direction, I was free to take a step back and breathe. I refocused on myself, my surroundings and on my actual reality. Twilight stepped up to my side when she noticed my ‘return’. “Are you okay?” she quietly asked.

I smiled and was immensely grateful when she leaned down and nuzzled my neck before she placed a kiss on my ear. It tickled. I grinned as I flicked it. This felt real. “I’m fine,” I answered. “This is just very, very weird. I never had a flash like this.”

“It sounds like she was really smart. And close to you,” Twilight remarked.

I nodded and smirked a little at her. “She was. Did I never tell you that I’m hopelessly attracted to intelligence like a moth to the flame? Same reason why I can never resist you, peanut.” I loved to see that faint tint color her cheeks as she bashfully averted her eyes. I raised her muzzle with a hoof, leaned in and we shared a nice, long kiss. We smiled at each other when I pulled away. But my awareness of our surroundings eventually returned. Twilight might not have been able to see Silver, but I still could. I looked over to her and furrowed my brow. “Honestly, I have no idea what we were. She and her brother allowed me to live with them. I managed to give her something her brother could not. But we never went beyond cuddling and we never gave ‘it’ a name. But I suppose she was close to me, yes. I cared a lot about her.”

“Do you think her research could have been responsible for this?” Twilight’s gaze wandered around the empty archives. I followed her gaze around and took a more conscious note of the desolate state of everything. And now I saw even more bones scattered around. Whatever had brought devastation to the first layer of the city, it had rampaged in the lower ones as well. I had known so before we got her. Yet it still hurt to see it. Maybe because of the ongoing flash. It closed the distance between here and there, between now and then. And made emotional ties I did not have more relevant.

“Maybe,” I answered belatedly. “I honestly don’t know. I hope not, to be honest.” Making terrible mistakes was one thing. Dying with a broken heart full of regret, that was another league entirely.

I watched Silver for another brief moment before I turned to Twilight. “The complex is a long stretch. I don’t really remember how far we walked already. Following the flash made things a bit blurry. But it should allow us to travel a good distance before we need to exit the complex. And best of all, windows aren’t really a thing with these buildings. We should be able to cross the street separating the two structures and slip into the second unit. Rinse and repeat until we reach the end of the third one, where the way further down should be. And yes, each unit is roughly built the same way, they all have two entrances. One left, one right.”

Twilight mulled the proposal over and nodded. “Sounds fine to me. And knowing that I can employ more light is a good thing. I am honestly growing tired of stumbling around in the dark.”

I smiled lopsided. “Thanks for lighting my way, by the way. You are my Sparkle in the dark.”

She smiled back and rolled her eyes. “You are welcome. Shall we? Do you still know where the exits are?”

I dusted myself off and nodded. “I think I can still navigate the building, yes.” I walked out of the archive with Twilight by my side, back through the hallway and into the factory hall where Red stood still, frozen in place in much the same way his sister was. And every other worker. “Over there.” I turned to our right and led us through several other halls, rooms and corridors. Without knowledge of the internal structure or at least a floor plan, one could easily get lost in here. There had been emergency exit signs and floor plans in regular intervals at one point, but again: Time had reduced most of that to dust.

Twilight poured more energy into her horn and her light illuminated more of the rooms we passed through. She stopped every now and then and drew a few quick, rough sketches in her journal or wrote down another couple of notes. I told her what I knew about the rooms we passed by, especially about the differences I saw between my idle flash and the reality in front of my eyes. We even passed by another archive on our way to the exit and I tried to decipher some of the notes I could read for her. She eagerly lapped everything up and transcribed it into her journal. I had no idea if any of that was of any use and she openly admitted that right now, neither did she. But having it and not requiring it was still better and requiring it and not having it.

We inevitably started our own little discussion about the ethics of this kind of research. It was a funny idea to gas Canterlot and make the elitist nobles docile. As a joke. And only as a joke. But what they had done here in this very building went way beyond jokes. They had made it a reality. And it was no surprise at all that we quickly agreed: This kind of manipulation sacrificed free will. Something we as individuals and Equestria as a whole held in high regard.

It led to us theorizing about the kind of society that not only encouraged such research, but also did not hesitate to employ it. A discussion I was admittedly less useful for, I felt.

I had to wonder about that figure of speech. A ‘dog-eat-dog society’ was a term we ponies used. But I had my doubts that it was the result of some ponies observing Winona’s ancestors. Maybe there had been more cultural exchange between our species at some point? Maybe today’s political climate between diamond dogs and ponies was nonexistent because we knew a thing or two about their way of life back then? But that begged the question then: If this was ancient history, ancient pony history, why did Celestia not know of any of this? Diamond dogs and ponies had never truly interacted all that much according to her. Had this maybe happened in a time before even her appearance?

We exited the first ACC carefully through yet another airlock that was disabled due to missing power and half broken apart by something that clearly wished to get inside and had the means to rip its way in as well. Even through solid metal.

Twilight dimmed her light spell down again, since we did not wish to light a beacon for the golem to find us. Not any more than we needed to to make our way across the street. “Ready?” I asked her. She shifted a little uncomfortably, but nodded anyway. “Alright. We should stay silent if possible.” She agreed again and we stepped outside. The andesite street was right in front of us, with a wide sidewalk between the airlock and the street itself. And the wooden railing was missing in parts here and there. Probably due to time gnawing away at it. We walked very slowly and placed every hoof carefully to make as little noise as possible while simultaneously training our ears for each and every sound. Yet the massive city cavern was once again deathly silent apart from the soft buzzing of the few running fans.

Then I heard something scuttle around to my left.

I froze mid-step and quickly looked over my shoulder to see that Twilight had done the same. And I noticed how White Tip dug his claws into my back nervously. We all held our breath and remained frozen. I turned my attention to the byroad again, but I could not see anything in the dark. Twilight’s light was barely the strength of a match, just enough to let us see the vague shape of the building ahead of us.

There it is again. My ears swiveled around. It moved quickly. And it sounded big. But not as big as the golem. More importantly, it moved with a certain grace the golem decidedly lacked. “More light,” I whispered faintly.

Twilight doubled the brightness and we saw it being reflected in something. I had difficulties to make out what it was at first, but then recoiled quickly as my mind put one and one together and White Tip cawed in genuine fear. “Shield!” I half-yelled as I hastily retreated two steps until I was at Twilight’s side.

The very moment Twilight encased us with a dome-shaped shield of raspberry magic, a massive — and I mean massive — spider lunged forward. That thing was easily my size. Legs not included.

“Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew,” Twilight mumbled at my side as she tried to focus her gaze on the andesite beneath our hooves. White Tip flapped his wings and dug his claws in further as he battled his own instincts to flee.

The spider crawled all over the shield and searched for any opening, any weakness in the hemisphere. It searched with its legs and by biting down on the shield with its massive fangs. I saw its black exoskeleton reflect the faint glow of the shield the same way its creepy multiple eyes did and even I shuddered a little. I knew Twilight had issues with snakes, but that did not mean that she was an avid fan of spiders or other creepy-crawlies.

“It’s okay, it can’t get in,” I tried to calm her down despite the pain my pet's talons caused on my back. I stepped close enough to her side that our coats laid against each other. She leaned into me, but I could see that she still pressed her eyes firmly shut.

How did this thing get this big?, I wondered. More important was the question of what we were supposed to do now. The shield was immobile. The spider would not get in, I knew that. A dome of this size did not draw a lot of energy from Twilight and she would most likely be able to keep it up basically forever, even with the constant attacks from our foe. But those attacks made noise. The spider itself was silent, but its legs constantly clattered on the stone street as it moved across the sphere. And if the noise would not attract the golem, the soft glow of the sphere surely would. And if that somehow failed, well — White Tip made a ruckus in his attempts to scare the massive pest away.

She would not want to kill it. But maybe she did not have to. “Twilight?” I tried to get her attention, but she still silently mumbled ‘ew’ repeatedly. I nuzzled her neck and worked my way to her ear. “Peanut, come on. Focus. Focus on my voice. We’re fine. We’re safe. You are in control. There is a very reliable shield between us and it. It can’t do anything. You don’t have to look at it.” It seemed to work. It seemed to help her get out of that loop. It somehow even seemed to help White Tip calm down.

Twilight still stared at the stone and cringed every so often when the spider got more aggressive again or scuttled closer to her side, but she had her eyes open again and did not silently mouth any ‘ew’s. “Your brother taught you this spell, right?” She confirmed as much. “When he used it to repel the invasion in Canterlot, he supercharged a shield spell. Like this one. No idea if it was the same spell.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Can you do that? Can you let the shield grow outwards to push the spider away? If we get enough distance, we can make it to the airlock and maybe we can close it.” I saw her gears turn quickly.

I was about to offer her my energy. The only thing that had allowed Shining Armor to expand the shield to such a ridiculous size was Cadance’s support. As an alicorn, she had vastly deeper pockets when it came to magic. She had transfused her magic to him and had connected their reserves.

And I was so caught up in my idea that I had almost embarrassed myself. I knew that Twilight would not care. Maybe she would even consider it a nice gesture at some point later on. But the fact of the matter was that I had barely anything to give to begin with, being a weak unicorn in general, while Twilight was the Element of Magic. A puddle and an ocean. The ocean did not need the puddle.

So I bit down on my lip and simply waited for her to make some quick calculations. And I tried to position myself a little differently to make it harder for her to spot the bloody claw marks on my back. I did not blame White Tip for his panicked reaction. But I did not want Twilight to worry right now.

“A short burst should reduce the risk of the golem seeing this,” she announced shortly after. “Get ready.”

“I’m going to be right behind you,” I answered.

The brightness of her horn increased threefold in the span of a second and the shield expanded rapidly. The spider was surprised and Twilight had waited for a moment when it had barely any contact to the ground. The shield shot outwards and propelled the spider away. It was flung through the air and landed somewhere in the dark, down that byroad. Not knowing how far away it was exactly was less than ideal, but we had to balance multiple issues at hoof and as soon as the shield collapsed, we ran.

I could already hear a very angry sounding scuttle from our left, but we crossed the street and quickly slipped through the partially destroyed door of the airlock. As soon as I saw its exact condition, I already knew that we would not be able to close that thing. We hastily stumbled through the little waiting area and past the second airlock door. This one was in better shape and we tried to close it with telekinesis. It was already closed for three quarters anyway, but we barely managed to get it to budge. A rusty creaking was all we got for our effort. And multiple legs slipped past the remaining gap.

“Screw it, run,” I hissed in Twilight’s direction.

Now back inside, she did not hesitate to light her horn properly again. It almost burned in my eyes at this point. White Tip took to the air and flew ahead of us in an attempt to guide us through the building. And boy was I glad that he did. I stumbled after them like a headless chicken and constantly looked back to see where that damn thing was. Unsurprisingly, it got through the second airlock door quite easily. It scuttled along the floor at a nauseating speed and would probably have caught up to me within seconds, had it not tried to be clever. We needed to run up a metal stairway to get to the next room and the spider, upon noticing White Tip and Twilight moving up and out, tried to climb the wall to separate me from them by quickly cutting me off.

Problem was that it apparently misjudged how easy these walls were to climb. It lost grip and crashed to the ground from a solid height of ten, maybe twelve feet. Seeing its legs twist and turn as it landed on its back and tried to turn over was even more reason to run a little bit faster.

We crossed another couple of rooms. I had no time to make out any details. Some sort of technical work stations, some monitors, I merely ran past and tried not to fall too far back. And I could hear it quickly catching up again. So I tried something probably very stupid. I grabbed with my telekinesis whatever I could lift in those rooms we ran through and blindly flung it behind me. Just judging by the sounds of it, I must have hit it a couple of times with what I suspected were calculators, pieces of chairs and the remains of a broken crate. Oh and some tools. Metal tools. Those hurt, hopefully.

But it mattered little if the spider felt pain. It was not discouraged by my barrage of random items. I needed something better. So I dared to turn around just as I passed into another room and heard the spider be hit by another flung thingy. I threw the door shut. It was a thin door, but made out of metal. And before I could think about further securing that barricade, a lovely, familiar, always-nice-to-see raspberry glow encased a nearby metal cabinet and effortlessly flipped it on its side, right in front of the door.

I turned to see Twilight grin at me. She was a little out of breath and White Tip sat on her back and looked like a popped pillow. “That should buy us some time,” I wheezed and looked back at the door. There was a noticeable bang as the spider smashed into the door and much to my dismay, the metal cabinet slid away an inch. Because of the stupid smooth floor. “Oh come on,” I complained and looked around the room. Where the heck were we even? It seemed to be yet another assembly work hall. An impressive robotic arm with four joints hung limply from the ceiling. At some point, it might have served to help put the now rusted and useless parts together that these conveyor belts once moved around. At this point, even the scattered piles of bones were little more than just another feature of the city.

But my vague understanding of their written language allowed me to ‘read’ one of the signs that gave directions to employees. “The test chamber!” I exclaimed and pointed down one of the several doors leading out of this room.

Twilight looked like she was very much in favor of making our stand here. She had tried to spare this creature to the best of her abilities, but its tenacity proved exceptional. Maybe she would try to teleport it out of the building, but if push came to shove… well.

“What would that bring us?” she asked.

“The test chamber was built even studier than the rest of the entire complex. And it has its own emergency power grid. There’s a good chance the airlocks are intact.” I pleaded with her. I did not try to hide that. And I truly felt like this was our best shot to escape this fight entirely. She gave in and we once again ran, guided by White Tip and her light, while we heard a few more bangs behind us until the nasty screeching sound followed that the cabinet made as it was shoved over stone flooring.

We reached the airlock, slipped past the completely intact, but half-opened door, past the second one and into a new room. Silver worked here, I remembered. But Silver was not here, I reminded myself and got to work. The entire room was maybe forty by forty feet, with a cylindrical glass tube in the room's middle. I was more focused on one of the working stations. The electrical humming was louder in here, indicating a power source nearby, indicating that several of these machines might still work. I saw a bunch of buttons and levers before me, some lights flickered while others did not. I had no idea if they were meant to flicker.

“It is coming,” Twilight warned me.

The implication was obvious. Whatever you do, do it now. I tried to let the fuzzy memories guide me once again, but there was no pull. So I did the next best thing. I pushed a few of the flickering buttons.

Twilight could have easily decided the encounter all by herself. Her shield spell had saved us once. She could have cast it again and secured the entry. She could have vaporized the spider. Or teleport it out. Endless options. Maybe she just gave me an option to make myself feel useful. That was a sobering thought.

I got lucky and the airlock creaked and shrieked, but moved and closed after a second. The spider smashed into the outer airlock door, but we barely even heard the bang of the impact this time. It would certainly not get through that one. And the little window was secured by something far sturdier than glass. The spider tried to pierce through it with a leg, but nothing happened. Not even a scratch.

We stood side by side and watched the creature bash its head in on the other side of the airlock. Only after we watched that for around a minute or two did we finally allow ourselves a relieved sigh. We were safe for now.

“Are you alright, buddy?” I asked White Tip. He hopped off of Twilight’s back and I cringed a little as I saw claw marks on her back as well. He cawed so quietly that I had almost missed it. It sounded strangely ashamed. And miserable. “Don’t worry,” I told him and petted his little feathery head, “I know you didn’t mean anything by it. I was scared as well.” I put the saddlebags down, lifted Twilight’s off her back as well and rummaged through them until I found the first aid kit. “Sit down please,” I asked her. She obliged but I realized that the light situation was less than ideal before I could even attempt anything. I could ask her for even more light, but that would not solve the problem in the easiest way.

Not when there was supposedly an easier option.

I looked back over to the control panel. “I’ll be right back,” I announced and walked over to it once more. “Come on,” I mumbled to myself, “I know it’s in there somewhere. Remember. What do these do?” I stared at the buttons and levers. After half a minute, I had something. Not exactly a memory as such, nothing even remotely that precise. But a vague feeling. A vague understanding of how diamond dogs used to sort things. I pushed one button, but nothing happened. I pushed the one right next to it and the luminescent tubes on the ceiling flickered to life. “Yes!” I grinned happily and returned to Twilight. She looked a little worn out as she stretched out on the dusty but otherwise immaculate white floor. “Are you alright there?”

She sighed and nodded. “I am fine. I just… I did not expect a chase. Or a fight. Or maybe I am just tired.”

I sat down beside her and smiled as I prepared the disinfectant. “Don’t worry. I feel spent as well. I think it might just be the fright. Or the sleep deprivation, yes. That’s going to sting a little.” I was as cautious as I could. Sunny had told me how adorable she found that after our return from our jungle cruise. ‘As if your foal scraped its knee’, he had said. Sunny was not made out of glass and neither was Twilight. But why should I employ any less caution or tenderness than I could? Did they not deserve the best I could do? It took longer, sure. But we had time.

A few minutes later, her wounds were cared for. They were neither serious nor deep. Less so than mine anyway, but even those were barely worth mentioning. Even though I could not not hiss a little as she cleaned them, despite how careful she was. And all throughout, the spider did not cease its assault on the door. Like a mindless machine, it banged and banged against it. Maybe less a mindless machine and more like a starving predator, I mused. But what difference did it make?

Once the first aid kit was stored away safely again, we looked around with a little more eye for detail. More work stations with more buttons and levers. A few glitchy monitors displayed numbers, formulas, graphs and diagrams. The walls were solid concrete, reinforced with some kind of thin metal plating. And the airlock was the only exit. Because of course it was.

Twilight tried to teleport us, but her magic still got dispersed. So either the diamond dog golem was close by, or teleportation really was hampered in this place. To be fair, that would have been a smart move on their part. A city that demonstrated this much wealth surely had to develop a few tricks to deal with thieves. Not that diamond dogs were inherently capable of teleportation. Not that I knew, anyway. But the more I remembered about their technology and their understanding of magic, the less it would surprise me to learn that they had built some kind of machine that was capable of doing it.

I walked over to that glass tube in the middle and sat down in front of it while Twilight mumbled to herself and argued with herself what options we had or did not have and White Tip rested on one of the nearby tables to recover from his panic. There was a small, vertical crack along the tube, with a tiny piece of glass missing in the middle. Probably no glass. It seemed to be the same sturdy material that was used for the airlock door windows.

A thin metal pedestal stood in the middle of the tube. On top of it lay what looked like a bar of soap. At the bottom of the tube was a fan, right below a grate. And another one in the ceiling at the top. My eyes trailed an imaginary line along the ceiling. I could almost see the vents.

I walked over to one of the stations with a monitor. Most of the controls I did not understand. But I had a fairly decent understanding of a few of them. I pressed one and the display on the monitor switched. The display was glitchy as all Tartarus, seeing as it had displayed the same thing for who knew how long. It was actually a miracle that any of this tech still worked at all.

I pressed the button again. And again. And then another one. The more I toyed around with the controls and saw the results on the monitor, the less alien it felt to sit here and press these buttons. I wondered if maybe I had worked here at some point. Alongside Silver, possibly?

“Twilight?”

She looked up, her brow still furrowed. “Yes?”

“I, uh… I might have a solution for how we can get out of here.” Her curiosity was piqued and she came over and sat down beside me. She looked at the controls and the monitor with the exact same lack of understanding I felt. “See this square? That’s this room, I think. And these rectangles are the rooms we’ve run through.”

“The dimensions would fit. It is a floor plan, then?” she asked and quickly whipped her journal out to copy the plan.

“Not just that. See these marks here, here and here? I think those are ventilation grates.” I pointed at a few markers on the slightly glitchy display.

Twilight’s gaze wandered to the glass tube, up to the ceiling and along the same trail I had seen earlier. Her eyes returned to the monitor, then to the bar of soap in the test chamber and finally back to the monitor again. “What are those?”

I cringed a little as she pointed a hoof at a couple of blinking markers. “I believe those indicate damages to the vent system. See, there’s a couple of buttons here that would allow me to close certain sections off, or open others up. They have been testing their stuff on their own workers. That’s why the work hall right before this room is mostly operated by machines.” She looked at me. She was a smart cookie, she could read a plan. And she could read me. We could activate the fans, open the vents and gas that spider. Issue was… due to the extensive damages, the same gas would fill up this room. But she knew I would not make such a stupid proposal without knowing what I wanted to gas us with.

So she merely raised an eyebrow. What does it do?

I read the display again. It said what was currently loaded at the left bottom of the screen. Twilight could obviously not read it. I could even barely translate it myself. Number nine, procreation. “It should be harmless,” I offered.

“What does it do?” she insisted.

I sighed. “It’s an aphrodisiac.” It was not unexpected to see her grimace immediately. It’s meant for diamond dogs. It probably won’t affect us anyway. I blinked and shrugged. That was worth a shot. “Listen, pony neurochemistry is probably vastly different to that of diamond dogs. The likelihood of it affecting us at all should be tiny, right? On the upside though, that spider might scuttle off to search for a mate.”

“Or it might attract one here,” she countered and shook her head. “If the additive does not affect us, then it should in theory not affect the spider either. And if it affects the spider, it will most likely affect us as well.”

I sighed. “Right. Fair point. But: We can’t teleport. We have only one exit. There’s nothing in this room I could use as a weapon. Well except if you want me to fight that thing with a rotten piece of wood. I know you have a million and one spells to get rid of it, but you don’t want to hurt it if you don’t have to. You know as well as I do that most spiders are ambush predators. They are used to waiting. That thing can go without food for days, weeks, probably months. We can’t.”

She softly nestled against me and sighed. “I don’t like this.”

I snorted quietly. “Neither do I, Twilight. I know you could just blast us another exit. But you don’t want to destroy the wall of this building, because the archeologists might give you a hard time because of that. You don’t want to destroy that golem either, even though it is clearly a threat and we are here to make the place safe for the professionals. You will have to make concessions at some point, peanut.” She grumbled something into the crook of my neck and I was utterly convinced that it was the most adorable thing ever. I smiled, put a hoof around her and gave her forehead a kiss. “That stuff has been in that chamber for who knows how long. Maybe it's inactive or whatever. Maybe it doesn’t even do anything. But I think this option still beats ‘thrashing a giant spider’, don’t you think?”

She gave a discontent little noise and groaned quietly. “Fine. Flick your lever, Igor.”

I laughed as I remembered the last book we had read together a few days ago. A griffon folktale about a mad scientist and his equally mad assistant and how they tried to create life. It was a surprisingly grisly affair. But we had not finished the book yet. “It’s actually a bunch of buttons,” I replied and tried to intone how I imagined the assistant would sound. She pulled away just far enough so that I could see her glare at me. I smiled apologetically and then opened certain sections of the ventilation system and closed others. I finally pushed the one button that activated the test chamber. Both fans started whirring louder and spun faster and faster.

I stood up, much to Twilight’s dismay who I thought got a little bit too comfortable. This was not exactly the ideal room to take a nap in. She followed me over to the airlock and we both looked through the thick windows to see if we could catch glimpses of the spider. Of course that creature was somehow still busy slamming against the door. Its stubbornness might have even rivaled that of Applejack.

Watching that spider was apparently strangely hypnotic. I somehow lost track of time to the point where I suddenly became aware of my surroundings again and had no idea how long I stood there. The spider seemed to be gone. But I found it difficult to focus on that as my nostrils flared and I took in a new scent. It was nice. I liked it. A lot. It was… intoxicating. “Do you smell that?” I asked Twilight. I looked to my right, but she was gone. I subconsciously lifted my left rear leg and felt her presence on my left, felt her mane tickle my barrel as her muzzle wandered along my side.

“Mhm,” she merely mumbled. I heard her sniff as her nose lightly touched my sheath. And a second later, her tongue trailed along my eagerly emerging member.

Goddess, that’s so hot…

But that scent…! That scent. It was great. It was the best thing I had ever smelled. I lowered my leg and turned around and completely ignored that dismayed whine she gave. I followed my nose and buried my muzzle in her mane. I inhaled as deeply as my lungs would let me. “It’s you!” I mumbled and felt like I was caught in a fever dream. I nuzzled and huffed and licked and kissed along her back, her barrel, ever closer to its source. “You smell so great,” I mumbled in my haze right before I pressed my muzzle against her tail. “This is sooo good,” I told her. She lifted her tail just a little bit and her scent alone made me moan. “I need this,” was all the warning I gave her before I sparked my horn to life and ungraciously pressed her head down to the floor. Her rear was still up in the air, my hooves made sure of that. I opened her up a little and gazed in amazement at what I had seen a fair few times before and yet I felt like I had found a treasure nothing else I had ever witnessed could compare to. I hesitated no longer and buried my muzzle as deep between her folds as I could before my lips parted and I eagerly licked every inch of her insides that I could reach. Her eagerness only enticed me to go further and lap more greedily, her moans were the sweetest melodies to my ears and I did not question how quickly I managed to reduce her to a quivering, sopping wet mess. But I could not stop. I did not wish to stop. I grabbed her flanks as tight as I could, I swallowed whatever got into my muzzle and continued my assault unimpeded.

“I need you,” she moaned. Long, drawn-out words full of need and distress.

While it made a part of me twitch in relentless, bottomless hunger, my mind managed to wiggle its way out of the deepest fog it was stuck in. That is not Twilight. My little peanut doesn’t sound like that. Come on, wake up! It clearly affects us! We need to get out of here!

I withdrew from her and stumbled a few steps back in a daze. Everything seemed to spin a little. It made me feel dizzy. I sat down on my haunches and blankly stared ahead. Maybe I should have come up for air more often. What was I supposed to do now?

I had not even heard her whine this time. She turned around and stalked towards me. I did not see. Did not realize. Only when the telltale glow of her magic encased her horn did I wake up again. Don’t! Magic was unreliable when used under the influence. Under the influence of alcohol, sleep-deprivation or just about any other drug. Casting had to be done with a clear, focused, conscious mind. I quickly leaned forward and took the entire length of her horn in my mouth.

It seemed like a very reasonable response at the time. Casting while under the influence was dangerous. And I did not want her to get hurt. This was a quick way to ensure that. I saw no issue with any of it. I eagerly let my tongue trail along the entire length, trail along each groove. Magic tasted funny. I tickled the roof of my mouth, it made my entire tongue tingle and it was such a delight. She moaned beneath me and I kept her head low with my hooves so that she would not accidentally jab me with any jerky motion. I even grinned like an idiot as I mimicked the quick bobbing motion I saw whenever she cared for my length.

She only lasted a few seconds before I heard her climax again, before my entire muzzle started to tingle and I felt heady and feathery and every scrap of control threatened to fade again. I released her horn and gave her head free and the very second I did, she swallowed almost my entire length in one go. It came as such a surprise that I did not have a single second to brace for it. She moaned in pleasure as I came down her throat, the vibrations only further increased the satisfaction I felt.

When she released me, I was dazed again. That had been quick. Way too quick. I wanted more. So much more.

“I wanted to try this for so long,” Twilight growled as she lit her horn again.

Don’t. I tried to lunge for her, but she saw that coming. A tendril of her magic split off and effortlessly pushed me onto my back. The rest formed a spell that enveloped me and focused on my nethers. I could instantly tell that it was some kind of transmutation spell, as those were always associated with at least a bit of pain as the body shifted and warped into the new, desired form.

I was decently sure I was drunk when her magic faded. I did see double, after all. But they both twitched out of sync, so that was weird. “What?” I demonstrated my eloquence yet again, but Twilight saw no reason to explain anything. Maybe she was not able to any longer. And why would she if she could just show me. She stood over me, grabbed both of my erections, aligned them and lowered herself with a careful thrust down. My eyes shot open wide, I moaned in pleasure and lost any hope of regaining even a shred of composure. This was just too good. Simply too good.

I gave up. And I gave in.

Everything from that moment forward became a bit hazy. She mounted me. Used me. And I loved every second of her taking what she wanted. Until I flipped our roles. Until I put her down on the floor, down on her belly, and pressed both my members between her folds. Her cry of ecstasy was laced with small traces of pain that quickly vanished as her body stretched and adapted to accommodate for the effect of her own spell.

There were no breaks. There was no need for any. I felt like I could go on forever. And how I would have loved that. And she was right there with me. Under me, on top of me, beside me, always close. Her scent was everything I needed to continue. Her warmth. Her taste. To see that desire in her eyes, that undying flame. Nothing about this felt wrong or alien or even artificial.

We rutted each other’s brains out and everything was fine. Past every reasonable barrier and we loved it.

Her spell fizzled out at some point. I did not mind. I did not care. Neither did she. I grunted as I came again and grinned from ear to ear to hear her cry out beneath me at the same time. In a chaotic, raging sea, one thought stuck out for a couple of seconds before it inevitably drowned: Doing it at the same time did feel special.

How long had we been at it?

I did not feel tired even though I knew I was. Much the same way I knew that I was sore. I could feel the slight discomfort, the slight pain, but I could not stop. It still felt too much like bliss. I still wanted more, so much more. Twilight mewled beneath me and every time I hesitated, every time I thought that it might be time to stop, she bucked her hips back against mine and dispersed all doubts, all hesitation.

But everything changed when the golem attacked.

Instead of assaulting the airlock doors, it crashed through the wall right beside it.

It came through a wall. Just like that. A solid concrete wall. Reinforced with metal plating.

I could not hope to understand how our situation had changed or why it had changed but I could suddenly think straight. Or at least a lot straighter than I had been able to before. I quickly pulled out of Twilight, grabbed White Tip from the table with my telekinesis, grabbed our saddlebags, smacked Twilight on her rear with a hoof and ran after her.

I was pretty sure that our adrenaline was the only thing that kept us running.

The golem had tripped right after smashing through the wall and tumbled to the ground in a pile of debris. We reacted quick enough to use those very few, very precious seconds. We ran straight out of the very hole he had opened up for us. Out into the hall. Twilight’s horn illuminated the path for us. I was wary of the spider, but we found no trace of it. White Tip clawed into my back again. I could feel the old wounds bleed again, most likely due to our vigorous activity, and focusing on the pain in my back and the pain in my sore, burning hooves and the pain in my no less sore, no less burning nethers helped keep my head focused. We reached the other exit and left immediately.

“The third building is mostly a collection of transformer stations,” I half-yelled as we sprinted down the road.. Twilight swerved towards the airlock. She had tried to run straight past it. Further down. Away from the lab. I could perfectly understand why.

She turned around the very moment she was in and as soon as I ran through after her, her magic came to life, gripped the partially rusted, wedged door and ripped it straight out of its bracing. She placed the door in a closed position and we continued into the building. The constant humming and buzzing was a lot louder in here. Louder even than it had been over in ACC2. We fled a few rooms further into the complex, rushed past all kinds of quirky machinery until we barreled down a longer hallway and into what appeared to be yet another archive. It had a metal door. One that was undamaged. Twilight slammed it shut and closed the deadbolt.

Seconds passed by.

Neither of us spoke. Neither of us dared to breathe in an audible fashion, even though we were completely out of breath. Only a minute later, when no noise aside from the crackling electricity could be heard, did we finally allow ourselves to relax. No golem barreled through walls towards us. No spider scuttled along the ceiling vents to get us from above.

My head started to hurt. I quickly realized that I still held all our gear aloft. I put the damn saddlebags down. I put a very fluffed up White Tip on the ground. He reeled a little and decided that it would be best to sit down. I had no idea what that gas had done to him. Goddess, he watched everything, didn’t he?

But I was simply too tired and too exhausted and way too worried to be embarrassed right now.

I looked over to Twilight. She still stared at the door. But I saw her legs tremble. I slowly walked over to her and pulled her against me.

“Why did it end?” she asked in a quiet voice. She sounded as tired and exhausted as I did. Even despite her alicorn stamina and earth pony endurance. “Did the duration expire?”

“No,” I replied. Honestly, I was quite sure that we still had a good deal of that stuff in our system, even now. “I think it’s about the FFS.” Fight or flight syndrome. Silver was a smart scientist. Even she knew the dangers of messing with that. Of course I did not know any of that for certain. But it was my best guess. “Doesn’t matter. It’s only the second complex that’s contaminated. We should be safe here.” What a stupid idea that had been. That little bar of soap was meant to be diluted with air. It was meant to affect an entire city, not just two small, stuffy rooms. I had exposed us to a massive overdose. Why? Why had that idea seemed so reasonable at the time…? My head hurt the longer I tried to think.

Twilight slowly nodded and finally let me usher her away from the door and over to our saddlebags. I carefully prodded them with a hoof and quickly reestablished what I had known already. Due to all the sciency gear, three of them were hard and uncomfortable. One was… slightly less so. “Lie down,” I asked her.

She hesitated, but ultimately did so. And she hissed quietly. “My jaw hurts. My entire back half is sore…”

And your voice is almost gone, I added with a weak smile. But then again, so was mine. Never had I heard her like that. Even despite the memories being hazy, I could still hear her cry out and moan. Maybe that was what it sounded like if all inhibitions were truly lifted. “I feel like my entire general pelvis area is held together by sinews and good will at this point,” I joked.

She appreciated the effort. Her smile told me as much. But even something as a chuckle or giggle was too much to ask right now. I looked behind me and noticed that White Tip was already fast asleep. He had the right idea, of course. We had spent the entire day searching that first city layer. And I suspected that we had spent most of the night sneaking through the second layer and, well, being busy. And that was just one factor. No proper meal. Rigorous exercise. And drugs in our system.

I really hoped we would be able to sleep most of it off.

The floor was cold and uncomfortably hard. But we had little choice and right now, neither of us cared much. I laid down behind her, scooched closer to her back and held her. “So you wanted to try this for so long, hm?” I whispered near her ear and kissed her neck. Just a harmless little tease.

She tilted her head enough to look at me. She smiled and sighed. “Nevermind. It is just a stupid fantasy.”

I nodded. “Sure. That’s why you had a spell ready and prepared, right?” She grimaced ever so slightly. I leaned down and gave her a quick, chaste kiss. After everything else, it felt relieving to do that, and just that. It felt like regaining control. “Maybe Luna, you and I need to have a talk about that at some point. I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea.”

She softly shook her head. “Not now.”

I smiled and nodded. A topic for some other time. I could more than understand that. She turned her head back, I laid mine down behind hers and tried to ignore how my shoulder was losing a poking contest against the stone floor. Or how my pelvis did the same, just worse.

I vaguely wondered why I woke up again.

It took a few moments to realize what had been strange about that. I had slept. No dreamwalking. Just regular old sleep. I usually had a choice there. Maybe it was a late consequence of the gas affecting my mind. Maybe my body had simply decided that enough was enough. Either way, I was awake before Twilight.

I stood up and tried not to groan too loudly as every single inch of my body seemed to hurt. Sleeping on this stone floor was comparable to sleeping in a sleeping bag while camping. But worse. And I was decently sure that I needed another can of this miracle ointment for my sore lower region if that was supposed to heal within the next week or so. Plus, I could still feel that headache from earlier and I was not a fan of that. But at least my carnal desires were in check. Beaten dead by what happened last night.

Maybe it was a dumb idea, but I wanted to take a look around. I lit my horn, unlocked the deadbolt, cautiously opened the door and closed it behind me. And I walked around the building for a few minutes. The strange idling sequence in which my flash had gotten stuck yesterday seemed to be entirely gone, along with the flash itself. I assumed that meant that my ability to read diamond dog script was gone as well. Not that there was much to read anyway, considering everything was either stone, metal or dust.

Funnily enough, I found a control center. Just out of the hallway, across the workshop, up a flight of stairs and into a room that was built into a little overhang. A wide glass front allowed me to look down into the city pit and onto the streets. It was actually a good vantage point. I saw no glow of the golem’s collar anywhere, so that was hopefully a good thing. I ignored the many piles of bones and especially the fact that quite a few of them were less neat piles and more scattered around the room. I did not want to know. I did not want to speculate about what had happened here. Even though my guard training screamed for me to do just that. To inspect the crime scene and search for clues about the victims, culprits and the progression of events. But this entire city was depressing enough as was, I did not need to know of every massacre and every sad fate that had happened here.

What I noticed was the massive array of plugs nearby an equally massive array of sockets. It fit. I did not put it back in just yet. It looked like somepony had pulled hard at the cables and then left the thing on the ground, but this entire building was dedicated to the regulation of power distribution throughout the city.

It would be hilarious if bringing the city back to live would require nothing more than to put a plug back in.

I returned downstairs. The clearer my head became, the more I realized how Twilight would freak out if she were to wake up with me missing. I snuck back into the room and sighed in relief to find her still asleep. Even though it took less than a minute for her to wake up after that, so I had probably disrupted her slumber.

“Sorry,” I apologized as she turned over, lit her own horn and looked at me blearily.

I rummaged through the saddlebags. Which finally woke White Tip up as well. “Hey buddy. Had a good sleep?” He nodded. Well. At least one of us, then. I found the Neverend bottle and gave it to her. Our waterskins had not survived yesterday. We should have drunk a lot more than we actually had. Maybe it was worth arguing over that. So when she took a sip and tried to give the bottle back, I shook my head. “More.”

She looked at the bottle, then at me. But she simply complied after a moment. She was in no state to argue, much to my relief. Missing your morning coffee, peanut? Only when she had drunk a decent amount did I take it for myself and did the same. The first sip was special though.

I did not know what she had filled the bottle with. It was the emergency backup, after all. A gift. And she had done a great job. Plum juice, with hints of cherry, gingerbread and cinnamon. The most festive combination I could imagine. And it tasted great. I hummed in appreciation, closed my eyes and sighed happily. And for a precious few moments, my body ached a little bit less as I remembered our first Hearth’s Warming Eve together. I opened my eyes again and smiled back at her. “It’s great,” I announced my verdict before I drank more. Once the bottle was closed and safely secured again, I leaned down to her and kissed her. “Thank you.”

But Twilight shook her head. “Don’t. You are supposed to thank me once you get your gift.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Alright.” She sat up and groaned with just about every movement of every limb. So she felt just as miserable as I did. I was not sure if I should be glad about that or not. “I would have offered you breakfast, but somepony insisted we move on without proper food supplies. And I don’t think you have more apples in there, do you?”

She grimaced slightly as her belly rumbled and growled just because she thought of a meal. She shook her head and sighed. “Maybe it is time we turn back.”

Yes. Maybe. We have been a little bit reckless lately, have we not?

She looked defeated. Her shoulders slumped a little, her eyes dull and without that excited sparkle I had seen yesterday. It broke my heart to see her like this.

Don’t. Don’t be an idiot. Just turn back and—

“Let me show you something,” I offered. I mentally groaned, but smiled anyway. We stood up and the so far worst experience waited for us: Putting those heavy saddlebags back on. We took the first aid kit out again and cared for each other’s injuries before we did so. “White Tip, is it alright if you sit on one of the saddlebags instead of my back?” I felt bad for even asking, even though he did not seem to have any problem with it. But he belonged on my back, I felt. But my back was scratched up a little and the straps of the saddlebags would certainly not help much. I could not afford to risk further injuries, as superficial as they might seem. Last thing I needed now was some kind of infection.

When we felt ready enough, we exited our little camp and I guided them up the stairs and into the control room. I closed the door just to be safe, even though the deadbolt of this one was broken off. Twilight took a gander around the room and out of the windows, from one side all the way to the other. She was careful to dim her light down before she got too close to the windows though. The sights outside were not exactly impressive, pitch black as everything out there was.

“I know that you still want to go on. You hope to find whoever or whatever controls that golem. You hope to find that spider’s den or nest or whatever. So that you can get rid of these threats in a manner that befits you. Turning back now could mean losing progress. Am I right so far?”

She sighed. “Yes. But that does not mean that we should risk it. I underestimated what we would find down here and I should have listened when you wanted to return after the first layer. We could have had a nice, quiet evening. We could have returned with proper supplies. I feel every bone in my body and they all ache.”

I smiled wryly. “Yeah, I know that feeling. Well, so far everything has worked against us. So I propose we change that.”

“What do you mean? How?”

I pointed towards the collection of plugs. “Take everything with a pinch of salt,” I reiterated, “but if I’m not mistaken, plugging those back in would reactivate the city’s emergency power grid. I have no idea how much power they still have stored. Could be that we see a few lights blink once and that’s it. Or we manage to light up the city. That would be useful, right? Because so far, that golem has either tracked us because of your magic, or because we are the only light source in this entire pitch-black hole. And before you ask: I am fairly certain that in an underground city where the residents can’t see in absolute darkness, street lights and such should fall under ‘emergency power grid access’.”

Twilight stared at the collection of plugs for a good moment. Caution versus curiosity, I suspected. She eventually sighed. “We are here anyway. Let us try that and if it does not work, we turn back. And if it works, we can still turn back anyway. I feel like maybe we should.”

But it would be progress. The kind of progress that would hopefully be long-lasting. I nodded, grabbed the plugs and looked at her. “Ready?” Only after she confirmed did I put them back in.

“Wow,” she mumbled as she looked out of the window. I quickly trotted up to her side and watched the spectacle with her.

The city did light up. And I snorted. Because quite frankly, that was ridiculous.

With the power reestablished, district after district was reconnected to the power grid. The street lights in the residential area above us were the first and once they were back on, we had an impressive look at the ceiling of the city. It sparkled. I had no idea how they had done that, but it sparkled. And it looked almost blueish, with white patches here and there. Even more intriguing was the dome in the ceiling’s center. They had simply crafted their own sky, probably with their own sun. Had they managed to establish an entire day-night-cycle down here as well?

Then the few street lights illuminating the second layer came back on. What had previously been a vague impression was now further reinforced and confirmed. The dark gray concrete buildings looked industrious, like they had been taken from an entirely different city. And despite the absurd size of the three complexes, they seemed to almost shyly tuck themselves away at the sidelines, not drawing too much attention to themselves. As if the entire second layer was just a nice little walkway to get to the third layer.

When that third layer came into view, my stomach grumbled loudly. I saw dirt patches. Lots of them. Their size, their array, everything about it screamed: Farms. Farms and pastures, considering the rotten wooden fences along some of those patches. “I’m hallucinating, right?” I quietly asked Twilight.

She stood right beside me and shook her head. “I am seeing it as well.”

“Then we’re both hallucinating,” I concluded. It seemed a lot more reasonable than believing what was right in front of my eyes. Some of these dirt patches down there were brown and empty, sure. But not all of them. I saw trees and bushes and completely overgrown rows of fields. Those were admittedly the strangest plants I had seen in a long, long while — and I had seen some of Pinkie’s and Fluttershy’s dream creations. Many were whitish or otherwise strangely discolored. Some seemed to sparkle or otherwise reflect or absorb the street lantern light. But maybe they were edible? There was a good chance for that. After all, diamond dogs were omnivores and most of their vegetarian diet was suitable for ponies. We knew as much thanks to Rarity.

I still had a hard time believing our luck when the issue was lit up. The fourth layer, and those beneath. We could still see the andesite street and buildings down there. But we saw something else as well. Some kind of black, gooey growth that seemed to cling to certain structures and patches of road like an infection. It got worse the lower I looked. The bottom layer seemed strangely bereft of that stuff though.

I tried to focus on the positives for once. Because I really felt like we needed some of those for a change. “So about my earlier breakfast invitation… you wouldn’t happen to have a spell that can test produce for its toxicity, do you?”

Twilight grinned and draped her wing over my withers as best as our saddlebags allowed. “My treat.”