Pieces

"So remind me again what we're looking for?" Rainbow asked. Her voice echoed off the crumbling courtyard walls of the abandoned castle. She flinched her ears, and shifted the heavy pack of tools between her wings.

"Evidence that this area was still occupied as recently as 400 AE," Twilight replied, jotting notes as they walked. "The Sisters' castle and surrounding villages were mostly abandoned after Luna was banished, but I think a small community of Ponies remained and would go on to found Ponyville unofficially before it was ever recognized by the crown."

They stopped in front of a collapsed pile of stone, and Twilight pointed at part of it. "See? This outbuilding here used a different style of mortar that didn't hold up to the elements as well, so it's in worse condition than the neighboring constructions."

"Kinda just looks like a pile of rocks to me," Rainbow huffed. "Like, I know you love this nerd stuff Twilight, but I gotta ask: Who really cares? I mean besides you of course."

"That's the problem, nopony does." Normally Twilight would be exasperated at Rainbow's lack of interest but she was too engrossed in sketching a facsimile of the alleged outbuilding. "I'm hoping to get enough material to write a paper on it, and maybe get some other scholars interested."

Satisfied with the rendition, she snapped the notebook closed and turned back to the weathered cobblestone path. "I do want to thank you again for helping me carry the equipment since Spike is visiting the dragonlands this week."

"No problem," Rainbow said, and yawned as she followed a few paces to the side. "I just gotta pretend like I'm Daring Do looking for an ancient temple or s— AHHH!"

She cried out in surprise as the ground under her hooves gave way, collapsing into darkness.

"Rainbow!" Twilight yelped, jumping sideways into the air. She spread her wings and hovered over the hole, yawning small and dark below. "Rainbow! Are you okay!?"

"I'm fine," Rainbow's voice echoed out of the dark. She coughed and her wings fluttered, sending a plume of dust into the air. "Just caught me off guard."

Twilight swooped down into the hole next to a flustered Rainbow Dash. She tried filtering the air with one wing over her snout, but the fine dust made her eyes water and her throat burn as she took in their new surroundings

They were in a corridor, stretching into the darkness perpendicular to the one above. Twilight cast a light spell, her horn glowing and illuminating the floor and walls, made of crudely carved stone.

"Did you know this was down here?" Rainbow shuddered her wings clean, slowly and gently to avoid stirring up more particles.

Twilight's magic gleamed as she quickly consulted several sheets of parchment, and decided her previous course of investigation could wait. "No… no, definitely not. This isn't on my reference maps." She turned and squinted at the rough-hewn walls. "It appears to be a different form of—"

They heard a faint scraping. Constant, growing louder.

"Twilight?"

Quicker than either of them had time to prepare, the noise was approaching from the darkness, a mixture between a hissing panther and a blade being dragged on stone. Unrelenting and uniform, it raced toward them.

And passed by on their side.

As quickly as it had come, the noise receded into the distance. Within moments, it was gone, leaving nothing but the sound of Twilight and Rainbow breathing.

"Did you see anything?" Twilight squinted into the darkness beyond her light spell.

"No, you?"

"Nothing."

They waited in silence for a moment. "Must have been an animal in a parallel tunnel, or something," Twilight muttered.

"So…." Rainbow looked up at the hole above them. Her wings fluttered. "What now?"

"Well," Twilight grinned, and pointed down the carved corridor. "I think you found what we're looking for."

For several minutes they walked in silence. Rainbow used one wing to hold a lantern gem aloft, augmenting Twilight's light spell. Occasionally they stopped while Twilight examined the construction of the tunnel and made notes.

It wasn't long before they started finding engravings on the walls. Crude and simplistic figures of ponies and other creatures, barely recognizable from age.

"Where do you think it leads?" Rainbow finally asked.

"If I knew that we wouldn't be here," Twilight replied without sarcasm, quickly sketching one of the sparse dioramas. "This art is different from the engravings in the Castle of the Two Sisters, but it's … almost prototypical."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I can see how the carvings we were looking at in the castle ruins are more developed versions of the same techniques and themes, which in turn means—"

"These are older," Rainbow finished. At Twilight's bemused look she grinned lopsidedly. "Hey, I've read enough stories of adventurers exploring old ruins, and they always find something older. Always."

Twilight chuckled. "Well, it's not always that simple. Usually yes, but it could also mean that these craftsponies were less skilled, or from a different tribe, or simply lost the techniques…"

She trailed off. Rainbow had gone still, staring into the darkness down the tunnel. Twilight turned from the carvings and consciously pushed more magic into her horn, brightening the passive light spell into a focused beam that glimmered off something in the distance.

"You see that?"

"Yes."

The tunnel opened into a larger space ahead of them.

Pushing forward, they saw more clearly the small metal statue, placed on a carved stone altar in the center of the space. It was tarnished and dusty, but still bright enough to shimmer and reflect their lights.

"Is it… gold?" Rainbow asked, circling around the tiny metal figure. It was crude and primitive, but the presence of both wings and horn were unmistakable: An alicorn.

Twilight shook her head. "No, it's brass." She flipped pages and began scribbling more notes. "Which helps narrow down the age of this structure, since ponies weren't at this level of metallurgy until…" She paused sheepishly. "Gosh… I'll have to look it up."

"Twilight?"

She turned to see Rainbow wasn't staring at the statue anymore, but was instead standing near the sidewall of the chamber, looking into a small alcove.

"What is it?" she asked, trotting over to glance at the pile of cobwebbed rocks and dirt. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at.

Rainbow glanced at her sideways, and swallowed.

"Bones."

It didn't take long to make a circuit of the chamber and confirm what Twilight already suspected.

"Catacombs," she breathed, almost reverently. "I didn't think there were any in this area." Her quill flew over the parchment, a stream of unfiltered thoughts and observations.

"So… we discovered something?" Rainbow's voice had an air of hopeful glee and wonder.

"Yes!" Twilight fought the urge to dance, her hooves tapping almost of their own accord. "Twenty-three skeletons, probably from the pre-Celestial era. Undisturbed, with original artifacts and regalia preserved. Interred in a shrine to an alicorn, no less!" She barely suppressed a squeal of excitement. "Imagine the research! The papers!"

"Make that twenty-four," Rainbow called from across the chamber. "This one… huh." Her voice changed. "There's something wrong with this one."

Excitement tempered, Twilight trotted over to the last alcove. Her heart sank. "Oh no."

The skeleton was laid on its stomach like the rest. Decayed robes and arrayed funerary, a ceremonial dagger by the side, foreleges crossed in peaceful rest under the chin.

Peaceful, except for the brand new galvanized steel pipe punched clean through the skull.

"Well… that sucks." Rainbow said, glancing at Twilight's crestfallen expression. She leaned down and moved her light, examining the desecration.

The pipe was laid almost perfectly along the center of the alcove, traveling parallel to the chamber walls. It entered the alcove at the skeleton's back hooves, ran along the spine, punctured the base of the skull, and came through the forehead between the eye sockets to exit the alcove just above the skeleton's snout.

Twilight frowned. "This is wrong."

"I'll say," Rainbow muttered. "Poor guy basically got brained. Like that railway pony, remember?"

"Girl," Twilight corrected absently. "The pelvic cavity is shaped different and she doesn't have canine teeth."

"Huh." Rainbow's jaw worked. "Well now I'm uncomfortably aware of my skeleton, thank you very much."

Twilight groaned and shook her head. "No, that's not what I mean." She knelt next to Rainbow and moved her spell light over the bones. "Look at this. The pipe is brand new, and the ground around it is completely undisturbed. There's less than a shoenail of clearance in the stone surrounding. It's perfect."

"Boring tool?" Rainbow asked, then snickered to herself.

"Can't be. There's no tooling marks, no signs of cutting or grinding, no debris piles at either penetration." She frowned. "And look at the skull, the spine: These bones haven't been disturbed for centuries, maybe millenia. An auger or bore drill would have thrown them all over the room."

Rainbow sighed, puffing her cheeks as she thought. "Magic?"

"Possibly. I've heard of teleporting equipment into place instead of digging space out for it, but it's so limited. For something like this, you'd have a pipe full of miles of dirt and stone that would need to be augered out and then purged and relined… " Twilight sighed. "Double the work for no benefit. It doesn't make sense."

The pipe rattled.

They both jumped and screamed in unison. Rainbow pumped her wings and shot up into the air, knocking her head on the ceiling. Twilight fell backwards on her haunches, wings and legs flailing as she scrambled.

The rattle of the pipe against the tight stone surrounding it turned into a vibrating thrum. Then something hissed past in the darkness. The scraping echoed loudly for just a moment in the small cavern, then it was gone. The pipe knocked once, and fell silent. A faint cloud of dust settled from the alcove.

"Okay what is that?" Rainbow nearly yelled, rubbing her mane and looking around wildly.

"I don't know." Somewhere deep in the pit of Twilight's stomach, an old fear started to clench on her insides. "But I think it's time for us to leave."

Leaving took longer than either of them would have liked.

At Twilight's last minute insistence, they tied a string around the base of the stone altar. Rainbow Dash trotted on a short distance ahead, keeping the string taut with a folded wing. Trailing behind, Twilight marked the angle and distance each time the string touched the wall at a bend or curve.

By the time they reached the initial cave-in, the sun was touching the horizon. Twilight correlated the tunnel direction with the already-surveyed castle walls above, while Rainbow repacked their bags and equipment for travel. Finally, as night was falling, they took to the skies and soared toward Ponyville, both having fallen silent a long time ago.

When they reached Twilight's crystal castle on the outskirts, the crickets were chirping and candles in the windows of nearby cottages were starting to snuff out. They set down wordlessly in the courtyard and trudged inside. They shed their bags in the mudroom, then glanced at each other and headed toward the kitchen. With barely a thought, Twilight's magic touched each switch as they passed, filling the glittering crystalline halls with soft gemlight.

"Coffee?"

"No, thanks." Rainbow slumped onto a seating pad, head lolling as she leaned on the table. "How can you drink that stuff at night?"

Twilight shrugged. "A single cup doesn't really do much. In fact it kinda makes me sleepy."

"It makes my heart race and I get all j-j-j-jittery," Rainbow said, shaking her whole body for emphasis. "I mean, I burn it off fast with my crazy high metabolism and stuff, but it'd keep me up half the night."

The coffeepot gurgled.

"Not sure I even want to sleep tonight," Twilight mumbled.

"What's that?"

She shook her head. "Nothing, just old nightmares."

The single serving was ready a few moments later. She took the hot mug to the table with Rainbow and breathed in the aroma. "Why don't you…"

"Stay here tonight?" Rainbow finished. "I was just about to ask. I'd probably crash through my wall if I tried to fly home now."

Twilight breathed a subtle sigh of relief, though she wasn't sure why. "I figured as much. There's a guest room down the hall from my suite, it should be all made up."

"As long as it's not Spike's room." Rainbow yawned and stretched.

"I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy."

As they wandered out of the kitchen, sleep guiding their steps through bleary eyes, Twilight flicked off the light. Then she paused on the threshold for a moment and looked back into the dark. The quiet, still, very much empty dark.

She woke only once that night. It was a calm waking, the intermission between dreams. Without startle or fear she glanced around the room, lit soft and warm by a crack of light from the door to the hallway.

Rainbow had said it was "totally cool" to turn off in case it might keep Twilight awake, and Twilight in turn said she was "perfectly fine" to leave it on if Rainbow wanted. In the end, neither prevailed, and the light stayed on despite both their insistence that they didn't care if it was off.

Finding nothing amiss, Twilight rolled to her other side, fluffed her pillow and started to drift back to dreaming. A pipe knocked in the distance, accompanied by the gentle gurgle of running water. A shadow passed over her eyelids from the crack in the door as Rainbow Dash returned to her own room, and a moment later Twilight was asleep again.