The Gray Dames

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

***

Far from downtown and away from the eyes of night-dwelling ponies of Manehattan, an unassuming metallic door hid under a bridge. No ponies pulled carts above it in the dead of night, and only a muddy trickle of water ran in the ditch under the bridge. In the past, the canal would gather excess water from the city’s many industries. Now, it gave the rain a quick way to the ocean and left the used water to the sewer system, accessible through the door.

The sun had just set and the grass, insistently growing through the cracks, danced in the chilly breeze. Only a trio of ponies disturbed the wafting whispers and trickle of water finding its way through the cracks. They busied themselves donning their protective gear under the bridge. Gas masks, impermeable overalls, and heavy boots. The most important, they were missing, though.

“Where the bubbles at?” A bulky, but short, brown earth pony with a thick beard rummaged through the supplies in their cart. The pony propped himself on the cart, supporting his weight with his hooves on it. His frown was not happy, nor his tone. “I ain’t going in without a bubble shield. I’ll see the union tonight!”

“Will you quit it, Shades?” His companion, a brick red unicorn in the process of magically tying his boots, groaned without looking at the other. “Sewergators are not and have never been real.”

“Yeah, you tell yourself that when there’s one chewing on your ass. No bubbles, no deal, boss.” He plopped back to the muddy concrete of the canal to glare at the white unicorn with the ‘Sewermaster’ hat glaring back at him.

The latter raised his hoof, but a flash of golden light cut him off. Night turned into day under their little bridge. Once their eyes recovered and they could uncover them from behind their legs, Princess Celestia stared at them. She cocked her head with a grim frown and pursed lips. Her words came out with little of the kindness they knew her for.

“Take leave tonight.” She ordered.

“But Princess.” The white unicorn raised his brows in a bratty frown. He hesitated and caused the alicorn princess to fold back her ears and knot her brow deeper. Still, he insisted, struggling with his words. “There is a… We’re scheduled to do maintenance in the…”

She didn’t allow him to finish. “I am not asking, and I do not wish to hurt you. I need you to leave. Now. Please.”

“We hear you, Princess.” The red unicorn shouldered the white one to move. “It’s all yours!”

“Beware of the sewergators, princess!” The brown pony warned, rushing past her to be followed by the unicorns. Their cart and equipment remained forgotten under the bridge.

Celestia watched them leave as her ears slowly returned to their resting position. Turning to the door, her magical telekinesis fidgeted with the padlock. Ponies not meant to go through that door knew better than to tamper with it, but any sufficiently motivated unicorn could unlock them. Even foals could cast ‘Thieves’ Friend’ and it would snap open. She still smiled softly that she wouldn’t have to force the door open. Inconspicuousness would be preferable. Not to mention someone would have to pay for a broken door.

She frowned at the thoughts swimming inside her head. Lifetimes of concern and warding the public property turned her into a strange creature. Who else would think of not damaging a door after all she had lost? She sighed.

“Don’t despair, Celestia.” She whispered to herself, staring at the open stairway, shadowy and damp, going down into the city’s sewer system.

Magical lamps provided a safe light source along the stairs. A sequence of crystals fixated on the arching walls and connected by thick cables hung from the right wall along the way. Not unlike the usual magical lighting inside many homes and public buildings, although older and less reliable.

A quick spell covered her in a golden shimmer for an instant, like an ephemeral magical protective suit, and she started on her way down the cramped stairs. Her large pony body couldn’t turn around, and looking over her shoulder was a bit of a chore, but she managed. The door banged behind her, and Celestia even managed to close the latch on the other side. Absconding with the padlock would probably have been preferable, or even locking it into place, but that would be time better invested moving forward already.

Forward meant down the slippery steps. Maintenance was indeed necessary, as the brick and plaster let too much silt accumulate. Her hooves often slipped, and she almost fell once and then twice, but careful steps would take her all the way down. The air became damper and fetid after a short while. None of that gave her pause. Celestia had been through worse situations. She knew dungeons and battlefields. The cramped, filthy bricks and blackening plaster wouldn’t stop her. Neither would the repulsive stink of sewage. At least, this one didn’t harbor the malice of some dungeons she had to explore in the past.

Broken crystal light fixtures forced her to feel her way down the steps through the dark areas of a winding staircase. Her shoed hooves clicked at the bricks, finding where each step ended and where the next one began. Careful she didn’t lose her balance. Careful her weight-supporting leg wouldn’t slip on the muck.

Her horn could have provided her with magical light, but sewers held pockets of dangerous gases. Could they explode in contact with live magic? They didn’t because of the artificial light magic of the crystals, but what of her complex and heavily elemental magic? Testing it would be imprudent when she lacked the understanding of the ponies who worked there. Even if she didn’t fear any damage, an explosion or flash fire could cause her. It would still damage the infrastructure and harm several little critters which lived in the sewers.

“Stop worrying about everyone else except for you, old nag.” She whispered to herself, letting her ears flop.

But then, what was she to do? Cause a fire just because she could, and knew it to be detrimental to the sewer system and all the critters which lived there? She continued her way down, ignoring the stray thoughts skittering every which way inside her head, like the black bugs on the wall.

She gasped and took a step back, almost tripping on the steps behind. She controlled herself so her wings wouldn’t flare open in the cramped corridor, but she was no longer in the sewers. Her royal suite in Canterlot Palace had replaced the grimy walls filled with black bugs.

Sitting in the middle of her enormous bed, surrounded with red, gold, and white silks and linen, she closed her wings around herself. Her forelegs beat the mattress like a furious drummer hit his instruments. White walls and a rich decoration of shades of blue and silver stars covered the walls in her spacious bedchambers. A censer filled the cool night air with the smell of rosewood. But not all was perfect. A shower of sparks flew from behind her opulent blue and gold-painted dresser.

She shrieked and pointed with a shaking hoof. “It’s there! Chocolate! It’s there, behind the dresser!”

“I got it! I got it!” Chocolate Velvet rushed past her bed, holding a folded newspaper in his telekinetic magic, flapping his wings like an overexcited colt about to deliver righteous justice upon his foe.

“Wait!” Celestia shrieked again. “Don’t kill it!”

“What?” He stopped on his hooves and turned to look at her over his shoulder, disbelieving brown eyes frowning. “For real?”

“It did nothing wrong! It’s just… Disgusting. Please, don’t hurt it!”

Ridiculous didn’t even begin to describe the scene, really. It was just a small bug with a penchant for lightning elemental magic. Celestia had toppled empires, conquered the entire world, and made friends out of her enemies. But she couldn’t negotiate her squeamish panic over a little bug. It was the lightning magic. It interacted weirdly with the components of her own magic, and she couldn’t stand it. Also… Lightning and thunder.

Chocolate Velvet stared at her for a couple of heartbeats before rolling his brown eyes. “Ah, alright. I’ll just grab it then.”

He scooted against the wall and looked down behind the dresser, straining and squinting before his horn ignited with amber magic.

“Wait! Don’t!” She yelled too late.

Already the magic had exploded out of his horn and sent him sitting on his haunches. He coughed with smoke evanescing from his dark chocolate mane and wide, scared eyes. Leaving no time for reprise, the brave little bug charged at him, and Celestia shrieked like her life was in danger.

A sizable bug like the mother of all cockroaches. Its carapace was dark blue with cyan streaks and shining in the dark. Carrying an aura of lightning magic around it that fizzled in the air. Celestia’s consort thought fast. He trapped the bug with a unique Kirin flowerpot upside down on the carpet. The white flowers it held, he unceremoniously tossed to the floor.

“Got it!” The chocolate brown alicorn declared after covering the shockroach’s escape with a book. An ancient, limited edition of Eternal Return’s ‘Pony, All Too Pony’ copied just for her before Canterlot even existed. Still, Chocolate had a huge, goofy smile, despite the burnt mane. “Uh… Do you want me to throw it out the window, or something?”

“Can you let it free in the garden?” Celestia begged, knowing full well she had crossed the line into abusing his goodwill. It would be a long, awkward walk through the palace’s halls, carrying an expensive vase and a book with a trapped bug. But she held her hooves together with a pleading frown. “Please?”

“Sure!” He laughed, jovial and vibrant as always. “I’ll be right back!”

A sharp pain pierced through Celestia’s temple. She squealed and shook her head, but it tortured for several minutes more. It forced her to stand still and just breathe with a pained grimace. The cramped stairs into Manehattan’s sewers returned, and she stared at the scuttering bugs pretending she wasn’t there.

She exhaled and closed her eyes. It controlled the pain in her head to a degree. It did little regarding the grasping sting in her throat. Like talons, squeezing the air out of her until a sob escaped her. Her weakened limbs forced her to lie on the grimy steps, but she barely registered the disgust or discomfort. Images of the wet, red-stained white sheet covering a broken body haunted her from the back of her thoughts. Celestia invested all of her willpower to distract her inner eye from such images, but it had little effect.

It could be an aftereffect of the Harpy’s magic, still torturing her with vivid memories. Or maybe Celestia would rather be back in those happier times before everything had begun. Before Cadance found that accursed letter and took it to Twilight. Before her best friends had turned into enemies and while her consort still lived. Perhaps a combination of both.

Tragically, the silly event with the shockroach caused the Equestrian Chivalric Society to make fun of him. Even Twilight later jested at him for his valiant defense of the solar princess’ bedchambers.

Celestia shook her head, but it did little to ease the echoes of Chocolate’s laugher going back and forth, weaving amid her thoughts. Much less the insistent dripping of rainwater in the ruined library where she had left him to die. Those slowly became the noise of tricking water coming from deeper down the stairs. Memories seemed to cling to the forefront of her mind. The deafening silence sprinkled with eerie noises of that place assaulted mental composure. Celestia forced her legs to move her forward.

“Get a hold of yourself, Celestia.” She complained and pressed forward.

Finally, the light from the opening to the collecting gallery up ahead reached her after a subtle curve. The smell became more pungent, and Chocolate’s voice reminded her they needed to update their sewer systems in large cities. That they should disconnect the pluvial and wastewater systems and effect a higher grade of magical waste removal to the water out of the homes. Of course, ponies were not barbarians. They knew the water out of their homes, and businesses, was perhaps more dangerous than the one out of their industries, but nature took care of it as it always did. It would be prohibitively expensive, so they took it slowly. It was hard enough convincing city administrations to listen to the Consort.

In the end, they settled with a hybrid system which aggressively treated the combined water through septic and decantation and enchanted tanks, and finally a magical purifying plant by the shore. Most of the rainwater found its way by the canals, but not all of it yet. The water she stepped into was not as toxic as it used to be before ponies finally understood that used water carried diseases. It still reeked of sewer water, though. Fortunately, the lack of scheduled rain kept the flow to a minimum, and it barely reached her knees once she entered the gallery.

It wouldn’t make her give up. She’s been through worse. Neither would the insects on the walls or swimming rats. It was all Life in its myriad forms and shapes as much as the smells and putrid appearance were also part of it. None of them carried lightning magic in their wake, at least.

Step after step, Celestia plodded her way through the filthy, cold water. After a couple of minutes of weaving her way through the sinuous tunnel, she reached an entire section plunged into absolute darkness. The culprit was easy to see. Chewed on cables, cut and each half hanging from the wall. No matter, that wouldn’t stop her, either. She probed the edges of the central ditch with her hooves, following the turns. She almost tripped once or twice, and it forced her to slow her pace and be more careful. After a few minutes of exhausting feeling around in the noxious environment, she could see light coming from the next lit section. Far down the collector tunnel.

The magical shield she had covered herself with suddenly covered her with sparkling little golden stars. She had entered an area filled with the dangerous gasses and she resisted the urge to shine some magical light. Something brushed against her hind leg and the chittering of the insects, emboldened by the lack of light, unnerved her. Still, she reminded herself, they couldn’t help being disgusting, and they too were little cogs which kept Harmony alive.

After a minute, her coughing worried her, and she pressed her step as much as she dared. Falling water, distant, echoed around the cramped walls. She was reaching her destination. The faraway light beckoned to her. Her steps quickened further, and the noise became louder as she pressed onward. The echoes bouncing in the dark became extremely disorienting, and she wanted to leave that place as soon as she could. One step became ten, which became one hundred and then countless. The next step never hit the floor, and she screamed in the near complete darkness.

The world spun around her, but Celestia resisted the desperate urge to open her wings. A second or so later, she splashed into the filthy water in the dark. She kept her lips pursed as her shield spell undid itself, overwhelmed with the surrounding foulness. Despite her outburst, she kept from panicking and flailing her legs. She shuddered but let her body’s natural buoyancy return her to the surface. She broke the surface, and a gasp filled her nostrils with the stink of sewage. A vile taste slipped into her mouth. She coughed, and a sob escaped her, but she controlled her outburst again.

She had reached the first stop in her journey, at least. The entire section lacked lighting, though, and she could not even see the references which would take her in the right direction from it. It was not like she couldn’t teleport out of the sewer system, but things were harder than they needed to be. Teleportation spells were energy intensive. What if she caused an explosion? Or even worse, what if someone tracked her position because of it? If she didn’t know better, she’d think destiny was picking on her. A tired sigh later, she reined her thoughts in a more productive and less paranoid direction.

Ignoring the filth clinging to her and shaking her head to rid her face of it, she looked to one side and the other. It turned out pointless, with barely any light to see. What little there was came from a higher connection, and it didn’t seem to be the one she needed, much less lighted the way for her. At least, she remembered the connection she needed to find was to the right of the one she had come out of. On a gantry, two levels above the side of the sedimentation pool, she found herself in. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure the light in the ceiling came from the right connection.

It seemed the scaffold connecting the tunnel she had exited from and the gantries on the walls had collapsed, else she would have stopped upon stepping on metal. Celestia could lose hours looking for the right passage, and that was after she first found the stairs to the gantry. She resisted the almost panicked pleas from her less rational side to just light the way with magic.

She didn’t even have the luxury of time. She couldn’t raise the sun from there, afraid that any use of her magic could cause an explosion.

Celestia closed her eyes in the dark and resisted another sob. Then she forced herself to swim. She was past disgust at the chunky filth brushing past her or any diseases she might have exposed herself to. She could deal with all that later, after she found her destination. Instead, she found solace in the fact it was not raining. The quickly pouring and draining water would make the sewers dangerous.

Not an excellent swimmer, Celestia knew she would take a while to reach the edge. But then it occurred to her she’d need to find the metallic stairs out of the pool first. The squeaking of the resident rats, filtering through the noise of water, gave her an idea. She stopped swimming and let herself drift. Closing her eyes, she paid attention to her ears. They gave her a direction to follow, but more than that, squeaks filled with distress reached her, and did so through means ordinary ponies would never understand.

Any run-of-the-mill unicorn could feel the arcane energies stirring when others cast spells, or how it poured out of powerful magical creatures. It was a subjective sensation akin to a sixth sense. But Celestia had the privilege of sensing the very life-force of creatures. It was a sense unlike any other. She couldn’t see it, as one could see the little rats scurrying around the pool. She couldn’t feel it, like one might feel the wind brushing their coats. Not even sense their location as a unicorn paying attention to their magical senses would. The ancient magic of the Sun filled creatures with life, stirring the flesh as a soul. And if she just tried to ‘see’ it, it would reveal itself to her.

It had been so long ago since she actively experienced it, she couldn’t remember. With ponies surrounding her all the time, only the most mundane of her senses mattered. She needed none of that to sign papers and listen to boring speeches. Information coming from inside, a mental map only her inner eye could see formed. Countless faint drops of Life adrift in the water, or chunks of Life scurrying along the edges, or skittering on the walls. It was everywhere.

But it went deeper than that. Countless little minds touched hers, their thoughts rubbed at her own. Unsophisticated, but so very real, vibrant with Life. They seemed to drink from the pool in their unending routine of seeking nourishment, shelter, and reproduction, but her racket disturbed their usual peace.

At first, feeling sorry, she simply followed them to the stairs out of the pool, but something in them recognized something in her. They stopped and watched as she swam to the edge. They gave her space to climb out. Little rats standing on their hindlegs, watching her curiously instead of scurrying away. Expectantly. Insects on the wall, stopping and feeling the air with their antennas. They no longer disgusted the alicorn. Little friends surrounded her everywhere, watching her. Ready and waiting for her to tell them something or to see what she would do.

Maybe it was her vulnerable situation, but her eyes welled with tears at the overwhelming humbleness the connection implied. They recognized something important in her, that Celestia herself had forgotten in the sea of papers to sign and endless meetings in the Hall of Friendship. She had lost something in the throng of representatives and rulers she mingled with daily. Stripped of all that, Harmony surrounded her in its simplest form. It waited for her even in the shiest of places, even after so long its power still filled her with the same amazement as it always did countless eons ago.

“I must find a specific place; thus, I must locate a passage.” Had she thought about it more, she might not have talked to them. They understood none of her words, only barely the emotion her voice implied. But their minds understood the idea hers presented. Much like the story in a foal’s book, she followed them to the stairs into the gantries and up the levels until she found the right entrance. A minute stream of water filled with the life of unseen creatures flowed from it as little rats leaped ahead of her and bugs scurried on the walls.

Again, following a narrow path in a confined space, she let the magical energies of insects on the walls help her avoid walking into it. If anything, it was easier than focusing on the edges of the ditch and almost tripping on it at every step. She followed twists and turns, even avoiding a lowered section she would have cracked her horn against in the dark. Vibrant lumps of life magic scurried ahead, jumping over each other, and she followed them. They seemed to know the path when they came into a bifurcation, or maybe her thoughts guided them. The specifics of it mattered little, and the fact made her smile, taking away the hurt in her every muscle.

Celestia lost track of time, thoughtlessly making her way through the narrow passageway, sticking her hooves in filthy mud with every step. Even the smell barely registered with her anymore for what felt like at least a couple of hours. A mild anger got at her, however. At finding an entire section of Manehattan’s sewer system completely abandoned to the dark. She supposed it didn’t matter that much, as the ponies working in there would have sealed magical lights and gas masks. But they were supposed to be lit! Maybe that was the section they meant to fix, after all.

Eventually, she reached the illuminated portion again. As her eyes were useful again, she stopped relying on her magical senses. A small horde of little black rodents stood before her, and countless insects swarmed the walls. “Thank you very much, little friends.”

“Please refrain from chewing on the dangling cables.” She couldn’t turn around in the confined space but seeing the group of rats scurrying in between her legs and running at the edges of the muddy waterway satisfied her. They were going back the way they had come now that she could manage on her own.

Then she glared at the black insects on the walls. “I supposed you don’t have anywhere else to be, do you?”

Unsurprisingly receiving no answer, Celestia shook her head and resumed her path. The red bricks and plaster remained as slimy and dirty as they were before. Supposedly, the little bugs had their job cut out for them. The sewer hallway still extended for as far as her eyes could see, but such was the point of hiding something in there. Reaching it was not supposed to be easy.

Her steps, clopping and splashing, echoed on the walls and she focused on their sound so her mind would not wander. It was mentally exhausting, but she feared getting lost in another memory. Even more if it would be one to bring her sorrow. When it became overbearing, she thought of her students. The silly things they did. The exams she had to grade, events to plan and parents to assuage. Not all students were as brilliant as they thought, after all.

Eventually, she sighted the end of the hallway. It opened into another pool, exactly as she remembered. She truly was on the right path. With a renewed happiness in her steps, she trotted into the opening. The thin stream running down the way she had come from poured over the edge of a pool of smelly water. A collection of trash covered it, and the edge had plenty of space for her to walk around the pool. The surrounding room raised several levels above, with gantry walkways skimming the walls all the way to the arched ceiling. Old and dirty magical crystals provided a dim but sufficient light. Many other tunnels connected to it on different levels. Some dribbling water, others waiting to drain the room if necessary.

Celestia gave the pool covered in trash a lingering stare, but then she pressed onward. Her hooves clopped at the brick floor and echoed in the enclosed space. She stopped and looked at the pool again. It took most of the ground floor and it had stirred. Celestia frowned at the water and all the trash that almost covered it. It was alive, and not in the same way as the water before, but she ignored the Life magic in it and moved on.

The water stirred again. A double line of bony protuberances breached the surface, moving in sequence. Celestia turned on her hooves and watched as a bulky monster climbed onto the edge of the pool. Made of slime and assorted trash, it was a long, heavy, and powerful reptile fac-simile. Pieces of broken plastic made the bone-looking spines on its back and black balls made its eyes. Its tail, thick and strong, covered in leathery muck, rapped against the wall with a thunderous crash, which shook the metal scaffolds and made them screech. Teeth made of broken bones, dripping foul slime, smelled even worse than the water.

The sewergator roared at Celestia, like a deep belch, long and unappealing, spraying gunk on the floor before it. Several more surfaced surrounding the gargantuan version of themselves that emerged from the water. It trashed at the surface and snapped its mighty jaw at the waterline, splashing like a foal at a pool.

“I am not in the mood.” Celestia spoke sternly, turning on her hooves to face the larger creature.

“You have not visited in hundreds of years and when you do, you will not even let me indulge in a little fun?” The beast’s guttural voice echoed amid her thoughts rather than the cavernous gallery. Thick, rich, and deep, like a gentlemanly dragon might sound. “Still, you would not be here, were it not for grave matters. Greetings, High-Queen of Equestria. Your presence honors these putrescent halls beyond their deserving.”

“I must access the vault.” Celestia nodded up. “I will not be bothering you further.”

“Then my children and I will return to our duty of protecting it. Farewell, o Radiance Eternal.” The creature’s voice resounded on Celestia’s mind, as it allowed itself to sink into the water and undo itself, returning the trash to float aimlessly.

Celestia watched for a couple of seconds as its children did the same, but then the alicorn turned to the stairs on the walls. Rickety things, made of rusted metal they were. Their support beams vacillated but should support her weight. She climbed the steps and walked along the walls to the next stairs over several rounds of going back and forth until she reached the ceiling of the gallery, past several connecting hallways which poured slimy sewer into the room.

On the far side of the highest walkway, where the ceiling bent above the open space, she walked into one of the connecting waterways. Someone who didn’t know its secrets would think it to be a common connection. Closer inspection would show it to be a short tunnel connected to nothing at all, with a brick wall at the back. Celestia counted the protruding bricks in the shade until she found the second from the floor, the fourth from the left, and pushed it vigorously. She used her hoof; magic would lock the mechanism. It released with a noisy click and the back wall started retracting into the floor. Its rumble echoed in the hall behind Celestia. But there was no one other than herself, her little friends, and the pool’s guardians to hear.