Pieces

She woke with a jerk. Forelegs flailed for purchase. Eyes darting, lungs gasping, panicking, falling—

"Huh? What?"

Rainbow Dash smirked. "I asked if you were falling asleep again," she said with a friendly chuckle. But the smile didn't reach her eyes. "Seriously Twilight, are you okay?"

Adrenaline fading. Pulse throbbing but calming. She reached for her drink and took a long swig on the straw.

"I'm… fine," she said, finally catching her breath and recentering. "I just didn't get very good sleep last night."

"Uh-huh." Rainbow sipped her own drink.

The paltry excuse for a conversation slid back into silence. The bustle of the soda shop at lunchtime was paradoxically energizing and soothing. A mother and colt, holding up the line with indecision. The cashier tapping a bored and impatient hoof. Three fillies, bobbing heads in time with the popular song playing on a nearby jukebox.

Twilight felt herself fading into the background noise again. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. "Sorry, I was uh…"

"Telling me what the county surveyor was saying, yeah." Rainbow swirled her dirty soda and leaned back, tilting the seat on two legs. "I mean it kinda makes sense that your magical castle would have magical pipes right? But that means they gotta do something."

"Right. I have an appointment with the Westfoal utility office next week, they're getting a crew scheduled to go out and figure out if the pipe meets up with their systems anywhere. Maybe that'll give us a clue."

Rainbow teetered precariously, one wing hovered open for balance. "What about the, y'know…?"

It took a moment for Twilight's brain to catch on. "Oh, the catacombs, uh…" She rubbed her forehead, dragging the information out of fatigued memory. "I have permits issued on rush, workers scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and some equipment rented. I want to get the site cataloged as soon as possible —"

"Mmhmm..."

"— and once that's done, I can start on the research in earnest. I've requested some records from the Canterlot Archives and Princess Celestia even said she'd look through her personal files, but until I know precisely what kind of artifacts and evidence we have to work with it'd be a lot of guesswork."

"Yeah…" Rainbow flexed her middle and the seat tipped forward, thumping loudly on the tile floor. "Look, Twilight, don't take this the wrong way, but have you thought about, you know…" her voice lowered, "...disturbing the dead?"

Twilight gawked for a moment. In the bright light of day and the peppy atmosphere of the soda shop, it seemed patently absurd. "Seriously?" she laughed, "It's just old bones."

"Exactly!" Rainbow hissed. "Old bones always come with old curses! I had a nightmare last night that I was being chased through tunnels by a skeleton. It had a sharpened pipe for a horn, and it was trying to impale me!" She jabbed a forehoof into her chest dramatically.

Putting her own hoof to her mouth to suppress another chuckle, Twilight remembered that not everypony was as data-driven as herself. "No," she said. "Archeologists do this all the time, and it's not nearly as exciting as a Daring Do novel, I promise. It'll just be a bunch of dusty artifacts and bones, being cataloged by a bunch of us so-called eggheads."

"I just don't want to end up haunted," Rainbow said. She swirled her drink once more and gulped down the last swallows.

"You won't, I promise." Twilight looked at her own drink, still half unfinished. It didn't seem quite so appealing for some reason. "After all, you didn't disturb the bones."

Rainbow cocked her head at Twilight's inflection. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing." She stood up from the table and started gathering her saddlebags, ignoring the tightness in her stomach. "Let's go. I've still got a few stops to make."

They arrived back at the castle while the afternoon sun was just barely starting to lower in the sky. Extra research material bulged the sides of Twilight's saddlebags, more than enough to keep her occupied until bedtime.

"Are you sure you can't stay?" Twilight asked, turned on the front porch.

"Honestly I wish I could," Rainbow replied. She huffed and looked up at the sky. "I promised Clearsky I would cover his cold front shift tonight."

"Any weather I need to be concerned about?"

Rainbow waved a hoof. "Nah. I just need to make sure the pattern stays in check until our next scheduled thunderstorm. At most you might get a light drizzle."

Twilight nodded and opened the front door. "Well, that's good to know. Goodnight Rainbow; see you tomorrow."

"Laters!" Rainbow waved and launched into the sky in one smooth motion, leaving colors in her wake across the faded pink and orange clouds, and Twilight was left alone in front of the dark doorway.

She looked inside for a few minutes without moving. Her eyes adjusted until she could see the gentle facets of the foyer, shimmering with thousands of tiny diffuse reflections. Some from the same room, some from unknown angles deep within the castle that could never be traced back to their source, ephemeral and infinite.

Thousands of places to watch, and be watched from.

For what seemed like the hundredth time, she rattled herself to disperse off the morbid paranoia, and stepped confidently into the dark. For a moment she basked in it, challenging it. Then when it was clear she was the master of her domain, she magically flipped the light gem on, chasing the shadows away.

In the map room, she unloaded her saddlebags and set everything in order. A few strokes of a quill, and the morning's checklist was prepped. The map itself was gently orbiting around the planned excavation site, gridlines drawn, disciplines coordinated, and phases crosshatched in three dimensions.

In the kitchen the coffeepot gulped and puffed, dispensing a hot and bitter nightcap. She mixed in a fourth of milk and sipped it at the table. Her hoof casually turned the page of a romance novel she wasn't really reading.

In the bathroom, she carefully pulled back tufts of fur and checked her cuts. Thankfully, even the worst of them were mild enough that she hadn't needed to wear any obvious bandages while running errands. The few that still looked angry and red, she disinfected again and salved with ointment.

Finally in her bedroom, she stretched and yawned. A gentle patter of rain speckled the window and cast a moving pattern of light and shadow as it slowly ran down the polished crystal behind sheer curtains.

Her eyes drooped as she turned down the covers and slid between the cool sheets. With a subconscious flick of magic the lamp gem winked out, and she drifted off to the reassuring white noise of the evening rain.

She wasn't sure what time she awoke, but the rain had stopped. Silver moonlight fell into the room across her bed.

It felt familiar.

Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she sat up and looked slowly around the room. Every shadow, every corner. She'd left her door open, the hallway yawning black.

Something blocked the light from the window.

Twilight didn't flinch or scream, but her breathing slowed to nothing. Ever so carefully, she turned her head.

The window was clear.

She glanced down. The shadow of a pony's head in profile darkened the bedsheets. Even as she watched, it tilted. Curiously.

Twilight blew out a short, quiet breath, and a whisper escaped with it. "What do you want?"

The shadow shifted almost imperceptibly. Twilight glanced up to the window again. It could have been her eyes playing tricks in the dark, but she could swear the sheer curtains were draped over something that wasn't there.

She blinked, and somewhere in that blink, the curtains settled. When she looked down, the shadow on her bedsheets was gone.

In the distance, she heard the knocking of pipes. Soft, rhythmic. Growing louder. Distinct.

"Oh no…" she whimpered, gathering her blankets to herself.

The knocking came closer, refining into a slow four-beat walk. In moments it would reach her door, would come inside, and—

The knocking stopped short, just outside the doorway. Then a chill shuddered down Twilight's spine, almost like a soft breath.

She bolted.

Throwing the covers behind her, she lurched off the end of the bed in a tangle of legs and wings. She scrambled to her hooves and galloped into the hallway. With a blast of magic, she grabbed every switch she could reach and filled the hallway with blazing gemlight as she fled.

Behind her, the knocking started again. Faster. Purposeful.

The castle she'd called home for years suddenly seemed wrong to her. Where she expected to go left, the hallway curved right. Where a door should be, a crystal wall stood firm. She kept trying to find the exit, but at every turn the knocking was on her left, then on her right. A hallway she knew led out, shrouded in darkness so deep her brain slid off it in terror. A staircase down, brightly lit and inviting.

She knew where that staircase led.

Then suddenly she was there, at the hole she'd sliced in the basement floor. It yawned before her, black and empty. She skidded to a halt, hooves squeaking on crystal. A gasp caught in her throat.

The knocking skipped a beat, and something pushed on her haunches, tipping her forward into the blackness.

She landed hard. The impact knocked the air from her lungs and she wheezed, vision going fuzzy.

It took only a moment to gather herself, adrenaline pounding through her veins. Breath or no breath, she would beat this. She spread her wings and looked up to the hole in the floor above her.

In the micro-moment, the saccade between the movement of her eyes and when her brain caught up, she saw it standing above her.

The section of crystal dropped into the hole.

"NO!" She screamed. Her voice echoed

Above her, a shadow moved across the crystal. A hollow knocking, pacing.

Twilight panted. Her breath was raw in her throat. A coppery tang on her tongue with each breath. "What do you want!?" she shouted at the ceiling.

No answer came, and she forced herself to slow down. Think. She was smarter than this. Stronger. A blast of magic would open the ceiling to the sky, then a half-thought would teleport her a mile into the clouds. She was a crown princess of Equestria, protegé of an elemental goddess, with armies and fortunes at her beck and call. She would make a plan, and escape whatever demon was tormenting her.

Then behind her, something glowed.

She turned, and all her grand thoughts paused. Past a few sparse pipes and bits of machinery, a simple light gem glowed next to the trapdoor.

Her breathing barely controlled, she stepped toward it, drawn inexplicably. She unlatched the trapdoor and lifted it to peer inside. The water had receded, leaving only soggy moss and puddles on the grimy concrete pad. In the distance, she was faintly aware of the sump pump thrumming and gurgling.

Above her, the shadow shifted. Impatient. Agitated. But it remained there.

For the first time, she felt the inkling that something else was going on here. Something that needed not the strength and glory of a princess, but her heart.

Twilight looked down again, and shook her head. "This can't be real, it has to be a dream," she muttered, shuffling to her knees and putting her back legs into the hole.

The steel against her thighs felt solid enough, and the musty air rising from the sump smelled real.

A moment later, her hooves splashed on the concrete pad and she illuminated her horn.

It wasn't as deep as she thought, only a few shoulder-heights. She glanced around. To her left, the large iron pipe slurped at a puddle in time with the distant vibration of the pump. To her right and back, rows of slimy pillars supporting the floor above.

Ahead of her was the thin steel pipe coming in through the foundation, and curving across the ceiling, but only a short distance away, the pipe ended just above a large puddle.

She walked over and looked up. A clean end, no tool marks, no damage, bending or tearing. A few more paces away, she saw another end of pipe directly in line, of the same material and size.

She started to follow it, and her hoof brushed the puddle. On instinct, she looked down.

Directly under the break in the pipe, just under the surface of the shallow water, were five small objects.

She bent down to look closer and gathered the objects in her magic. Pulling them out of murk, she gently wiped away some grime. Two perfect, slightly curved disks of the same diameter as the pipe. Two small indistinct nubs. Half of one vertebrae, cleanly sliced by a semicircle.

"Oh," she breathed. "Oh my."

Behind her, a single hollow knock sounded on the concrete, and echoed into silence.