Chapters "Okay, that's good!" Azimuth Reference called. "Set it down!"
The team of pegasus lifters descended gently. Ropes went slack as the bundle of galvanized steel conduit settled on the wildgrass with a clatter.
Twilight Sparkle checked off another sub-item out of several dozen. She re-rolled the scroll and set it aside, consulting another. "And the digging team is on their way?"
Azy nodded. "Should be here in 10 minutes."
"Perfect", Twilight said. "They should have their work orders, but please make sure they stage in the marked area—" she motioned to a roped-off section of the ruins several paces away "— and that they only dig at the prescribed depths. I want to make sure the shoring and weight distribution are configured properly at each phase of the re-route."
"Will do, your highness." Azy scribbled a few notes on his own parchment. "By the way… thank you again, for trusting me to help with this."
Twilight smiled. "Of course; you're the pony most familiar with the technicalities. And you've proven I can trust you to pull me out of any holes I stumble into."
"Hopefully it won't be necessary again," he said, and they both chuckled.
Overhead a streak of cerulean blue split the sky. Rainbow Dash banked around, clouds swirling in her wake, and skidded to a dusty landing. "Sorry I'm late," she said, pulling off a pair of flying goggles. "Clearsky was slow on cloudbusting, again ."
"No trouble at all," Twilight said, checking off another item and setting the scroll aside. "Azy, can you hold down the fort for a few minutes? Rainbow Dash and I need to take care of something."
Rainbow raised her light gem and peered at the hoofprints on the tunnel floor. "Has anypony else been down here?"
"Not since us," Twilight replied, leading the way along the string. "I have a team of archeologists and equinologists scheduled for later this afternoon, once the construction team has done their part."
"That seems pretty fast," Rainbow said. "Usually you like to take your time with stuff like this."
"Usually yes, but…" Twilight pursed her lips. "I don't want to leave this any longer than I have to."
Rainbow nodded. "In your shoes, I wouldn't either," she said softly.
With that, they started forward, falling into silence.
Their trek down the tunnel seemed to go faster the second time around. The curves were already oddly familiar, the carvings on the walls expected instead of novel. Twilight kept waiting for the rattling, hissing sound to return, but only an occasional patter of scampering rodents disturbed the darkness.
The burial chamber soon opened ahead of them. The crude brass alicorn was where they'd left it, glimmering in the gemlight.
Twilight took a deep, calming breath. "Okay," she said, and carefully shrugged off her saddlebags. Two parchment pads levitated out, one for each of them. "Like we discussed, just a quick itemization of each alcove and anything else you notice."
"Got it," Rainbow said, moving down one side of the chamber, quill in mouth.
Twilight took the other side of the chamber, jotting rough notes as she went. A ceremonial dagger set differently than the rest. Bones facing a different direction. A partially collapsed alcove. An arrangement of decayed pottery at the base of the altar. An excess of runes over one set of remains, and a conspicuous lack of writing over another.
It was far from a thorough cataloging, but it didn't need to be. The following team would lay grids and go over the whole room with precise magical scans. She just wanted to capture an initial broad overview of the chamber for future reference.
Also a convenient excuse to gather her courage for a few extra minutes.
Soon though, the impromptu survey was exhausted, and she met with Rainbow at the far end of the chamber. Twilight gathered the parchment and tucked it neatly into her saddlebags again.
Then, magic quivering, she levitated out a small cloth pouch, closed with a drawstring.
"That's it?" Rainbow asked softly.
"Yes."
Together they turned and took the last few paces to the last alcove where the galvanized steel pipe lay, garish and obscene, through the skull of the long deceased mare.
After a short silent pause, Twilight levitated the pouch next to the remains and set it down gently.
"Is something supposed to happen?" Rainbow asked.
"I don't know," Twilight replied. She paused for a few breaths, then shook her head. "Apparently not."
"Probably for the best." Rainbow sighed and looked around the chamber. "Can we get out of here until the rest of the crew arrives?" she asked, wings fidgeting. "My feathers are getting itchy."
Twilight shook her own wings and nodded. "Yes, lets go."
They did one more pass of the chamber, and then followed the string back out to the tunnel. Rainbow trotted ahead, light gem held high, but Twilight paused at the entrance.
Already the nocturnal terror was fading into a distant memory. Looking back into the dark soon to be filled with survey lamps, construction coordinators, and other bustling activity, she wondered for a moment how much of it had been real, or just her imagination.
At that moment, she felt the faintest brush of air. A soft, cool sigh rustling her mane.
Then it was gone, and she was alone.
"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.
Wheat toast and strawberry preserves sufficed for breakfast the next day. Rainbow was gone before Celestia's sun had peaked over the horizon, a cry of "stunt practice waits for nopony!" still lingering in the halls behind her.
Twilight took to the town not long after, crude survey maps and notes almost overflowing her saddlebags.
Town hall for permitsLocal construction union to look for day laborers Note: Crew boss says I need to get here a lot earlier. Note: write the letter ahead of time instead of holding up the line To File: Expand personal library. See new sublist "B" Lunchtime
The hayburger sat half-eaten on the table, the fries cold. Her regular comfort food wasn't sitting well, despite hunger from the flurry of morning activity.
She kept thinking about the catacombs. About the unidentified noises and ancient corpses. About the bizarre plumbing running straight through the ancient skull. How the vector of the pipe seemed to point straight toward Ponyville. Something about the pipe itself that just seemed wrong but she couldn't put a hoof on it.
The quiet knot of terror buried under long years.
She pushed it back down and forced herself to take another bite of the hayburger before standing up and leaving the appropriate amount of bits on the table. Halfheartedly she marked Lunchtime off her list. Then, saddlebags laden with even more paper than she'd had a few hours ago, she headed back toward home.
"No doubt about it," she said, tapping on the line extending across the map. "If that pipe doesn't deviate, it leads directly to Ponyville. Maybe even directly to my castle here."
"It could be a supplementary water line from the Westfoal treatment facility," the county surveyor suggested. "A lot of stuff like that only gets put in one set of records because a construction crew is lazy with their redlines, or a permit falls through the cracks."
Twilight's eye twitched and she took a calming breath through her nose. "Okay, so I'll need to go over to Westfoal and request their records as well. But I don't think it's a water line."
"Why not?"
"I couldn't hear any water running, it wasn't insulated, and it was too small to be anything but… I don't know, a sink line or something." she paused. "Also, I… think I heard something solid moving, very fast. The pipe vibrated as it passed through."
Azimuth Reference ("please, just call me Azy") pursed his lips and stared at the maps thoughtfully. "From that it almost sounds like a pneumatic messenger tube, but it can't be that either. Too small." He paused, then leaned over the map and traced the dotted line of the pipe again. "Princess, who installed your plumbing?"
Twilight opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, then opened again, wordlessly. "I… I don't know. It was just… here."
He nodded. "I figured as much. Your castle has been a source of much, uh… consternation in construction and surveying circles. Considering, you know, it just…"
"Grew itself out of the ground from a magical crystal tree hidden deep in a forgotten cave?"
"Yeah that." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Nopony even knows how or why but it just seems to have made things just work for it. There's a new water line from the town main, installed to code and everything, but completely unmarked, unbranded, no tool marks, no fittings, no deviations to account for bedrock or aquifers or root systems, just… perfectly integrated to the existing water system and local geography."
He leaned forward for emphasis and scoffed in long-suffering disbelief. "Your castle didn't even impact the water supply, because the flow mitigation interconnects and backup pressure systems just somehow had an extra 1% safety factor beyond what was designed on the original plans. We measured it ten times!"
Twilight sat in shock. "Why was I never told about this?"
Azy threw his hooves in the air and half-laughed maniacally. "Because it wasn't a problem and nopony wanted to bother you! It's just weird! " He slumped back and sighed. "Given all that, I can believe without a shred of skepticism that there's a magically-grown pipe from here to somewhere , doing something , and it just happens to have passed through some undiscovered ancient tomb that you just randomly fell into yesterday."
"Catacomb," Twilight corrected absently. "Tombs are usually a sealed chamber, not part of a tunnel system."
"Whatev— I mean, yeah, of course, thank you, your highness, sorry."
Twilight waved off the platitudes. "Anyway. What can we do from here?"
"Um…" Azy thought for a moment, and his eyes lit up. "If you know where your sump is, we can try and find where the pipe enters the foundation, maybe. No survey crews have ever mapped out what exactly is going on under your castle, Princess. I'd be honored to have a first look."
"Not quite the first," Twilight said, standing and motioning toward a side door. "I had a plumber in here a few years ago to check some knocking pipes. He turned off the main valve and drained the system overnight, and he didn't mention anything weird about the setup."
"Find any leaks?" Azy followed her into the hall toward the basement staircase.
"That was the strange thing;" She brushed off the sudden chill that went up her spine. "No leaks. But the knocking never came back after… after that."
Azy nodded. "No news is good news, I guess."
Their hooves echoed on the hardwood panels inlaid to the crystal staircase with supernatural precision. Even the basement was intricately beautiful, though most of it was hidden under piles of messy lab equipment, past experiments, and endless scrolls of readouts and notes still waiting to be collated and filed.
Being a princess sometimes left precious little time for anything else, Twilight mused.
"Here," she said, opening an access door to the main water valve.
Azy frowned and looked around the closet. "No, this isn't right. There should be like, a cistern around here that collects ground water running under the building and pumps it out so you don't sink."
Twilight shrugged. "I have no idea where that might be."
"Hmm." He followed the pipe with his eyes, tracing backwards through valves and junctions to where a larger one came up through the floor. He leaned down and pulled a light gem out of his satchel bag with his teeth, shining it downward along the pipe. "If we could get under the floor here," he said out the side of his mouth, "that would help."
Twilight stepped forward. With a burst of magical energy, she sliced a thick section of crystal out of the floor and lifted it behind them. They looked down, into a maze of pipes and conduits, at a small clearance just large enough for an average-sized pony to walk through.
"Sisters-blasted son of a rutting mule—"
Twilight cut herself off and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. One hoof at a time, she stepped out from the tangle of flex conduit, untangled her mane from the valve stem behind her head, ducked her head under the support beam, folded one wing backward, stretched the other forward and shimmied slowly into the next space.
Since her ascension she was, definitively, no longer an average-sized pony.
Azy was courteous enough not to say anything, making a show of inspecting the next bundle of pipe. "No steel here," he said. "I think this is some kind of heat pump."
"Fascinating," Twilight seethed. "Still no sump?"
"Well…" Azy cast the light gem around. Shadows played from the maze of pipes. The path behind them had fallen into shadow. Only a faint colorful glow from the thick crystal floor above indicated they hadn't left the boundary of the castle walls. "I thought this was the sump, but…" he tapped his hoof. It knocked hollow on the concrete. "I think this is just the sub-basement."
"Lovely." She rubbed her horn, which thankfully didn't feel cracked from the last three times she'd bumped her head. It was longer now, and she still hadn't gotten used to it. "Look away."
Without waiting, she rose up as high as she could and summoned a spell near the ceiling. Searing cold light diffused and bounced through the maze of metal, stone, and crystal. "Can you see anything from here?"
"Got it!" Azy dropped to his belly and shimmied under the nearest bundle of pipes. "That trapdoor. Pump is just past it. I think…" He sat up and glanced around. "To your left, five paces forward. I think you can get here through that gap."
"Thanks," Twilight replied under her breath with sarcastic enthusiasm. "Just what every mare loves to hear." She dimmed the light spell to a more manageable level and followed Azy's directions, tucking her wings and slouching her shoulders to squeeze through.
Moments later, the trapdoor appeared under her hooves. closed with a simple rotating latch. A thick iron pipe descended cleanly through the floor next to it.
With a burst of magic, she twisted the latch and lifted the trapdoor.
The heady smell of stagnant water rose into her nostrils and she coughed. Stepping around the hatch she peered inside with her light spell. There was no ladder, just a large void, partially filled with sickly moss, spiderwebs, and murky gray water of indeterminate depth.
"Azy, I found it," she called. Briefly she wondered how she'd gotten here before him. "What am I looking for?"
She leaned toward the hatch and angled her head to see further into the void space. It was huge, and broken up by vertical concrete columns that receded into the darkness. On one angle she could see a foundation wall, with a dozen pipes coming through it horizontally and angling out to various parts of the floor.
One of them was bright steel, barely the diameter of her horn, running along the foundation wall into the distance.
"Gotcha!" she exclaimed, standing up from the trapdoor. "Azy!"
Silence.
Twilight glanced around. Her light spell, bright as it was, cast more shadows than it dispersed. With a thought, she canceled the spell, plunging the space into darkness.
She couldn't see his light gem.
"Azy?" she called again, turning slowly. Her ears twitched, listening for a reply. "Where'd you go?"
Then she realized what was wrong.
The sub-basement had been filled with the gentle hum and pulse of equipment. Some magical, some mechanical, circulating and regulating the rhythms of her castle with modern conveniences.
She couldn't hear any of it now.
Her heart quickened and she recast her light spell. "Azimuth Reference!" she shouted, turning on the spot. "I am your Princess and you will answer me! Azimuth—"
Her rear right hoof stepped into empty space, and she fell backwards. Reflexively she twisted to try and catch herself, just in time to see a pipe coming up to meet her face.
She wasn't sure how long it was before she came to. The first thing she felt was the floor moving under her, concrete scraping her flank. She felt a pipe move past her, cool metal brushing against her leg. Something pinched at her stomach, a sharp pain moving forward up her belly.
It took another moment for her to realize there was nothing under her back hooves, just something pulling on her legs, dragging. Her bottom rib popped over the edge of the trapdoor as the world under her haunches disappeared.
"PRINCESS!"
A pair of forelegs wrapped around her shoulders and heaved. But the force pulling her hips into the void was stronger.
"PRINCESS, WAKE UP!"
The voice finally cut through the foggy pain, and Twilight's eyes snapped open. She gasped, wrapped her own forelegs around his trunk, and kicked as hard as she could.
The pull on her lower half released.
Azy groaned through gritted teeth with effort, hauling her up. She held onto him for dear life, swimming her back legs until one hoof found purchase on a pipe bracket. Pushing upward, her hips finally cleared the edge of the trapdoor, and she flopped gracelessly onto the concrete.
"Princess! Princess, are you okay!?" Azy gasped, chest and flanks heaving with effort, drenched in sweat. "We've got to get you out of here. Can you walk?"
"I… I think so." Twilight blinked at him through blurry eyes, only barely able to see his face in the dim light of the dropped gem.
He looked terrified.
With monumental effort, she struggled to her hooves and Azy supported her with one shoulder. Each step felt like a marathon. Every few lengths, he would scout their next path through the pipes, making sure there was enough room while Twilight leaned against a bundle of equipment.
Finally, they reached the cutout section of crystal flooring. Two shoulders above them the cool, bright light of the basement lab looked like freedom, simultaneously within reach and yet still a mile away.
"What now?" Azy said, panting. His forelegs were trembling and sweat beaded his forehead and snout.
Twilight stared at the gap. It would have to be close enough. She wrapped one wing around Azy's shoulders and took a deep breath. "Hang on."
She blinked, and purple magic popped like a bubble around them.
It wasn't a clean teleport; groggy and unable to make a precise calculation without line-of-sight, she decided that shoulder height above the floor would be a better choice than ending up partially inside it.
Still, it hurt more than she'd expected. At least she hadn't landed on top of Azy.
The poor surveyor spent the next several minutes curled in a ball as the adrenaline dump faded. He hugged his knees, mumbling over and over "I almost killed the princess… I almost killed the princess…"
Twilight focused on her breathing, touching one hoof to her chest on the inhale, and sending it toward the ceiling on the exhale. The pain gradually turned from sharp agony into a dull ache, even as her brain sharpened and the world stopped spinning.
Finally she stood up. Her knees wobbled a little.
"Princess, you're bleeding."
She glanced down. Dull red oozed from several lacerations on her stomach, hip, and back legs. None of them were particularly serious, but in aggregate it looked like a murder.
"I'll be fine," she said, pushing down the woozyness in her chest. "I saw… I saw the pipe, under the subfloor in the cistern. I couldn't see where it went…" Then she looked at his wide eyes. "Where were you?"
He gulped and broke her gaze. "I was right there," he said, "just on the other side of the pipes. I knew it was possible the pipes came in under the foundation, so I started the sump pump."
When she didn't reply, he looked back up. In a moment she could see it was shame in his eyes, not deceit.
"I heard you calling, and I came as fast as I could. I saw you hit your head, but I was still under the pipes, and I…"
She held his gaze for a moment longer, then nodded. "I believe you," she said, forcing her voice to be steady. Royal. "What happened was an accident. It wasn't your fault."
Azy gulped. "Um… I think I want to table this for now," he said, getting to his hooves. "I need to go home. Do you… Will you…?"
"I'll contact my friends," Twilight replied, voice more soothing than she felt. "Go home. This can wait."
She didn't call her friends.
With Azimuth Reference on his way home, Twilight drew a bath. Easing herself into the hot water was agony. Washing her wounds was even worse. Several times she had to stop and just breathe through the pain so she wouldn't faint.
Thankfully most were minor. Scrapes and cuts from sliding across the floor and metal doorframe.
From being dragged .
She pushed the thought away, but the sensation of something grabbing her legs lingered.
"You just tripped," she said to herself through gritted teeth. "You stepped into the hole, hit your head, and gravity did the rest. That's it."
Where was Azimuth? Why didn't he call out? Why was everything so quiet? Why—
"Stop," she said, squeezing her skull between her forehooves until it ached. "Just … stop."
The thoughts stopped.
By the time she'd drained the first bath, drawn a second, and washed the residual dirt and blood out of her coat, the sun was touching the mountains. Faint orange light suffused down the hallway as she shuffled to her room.
With a groan, she dragged herself onto the bed, not even bothering to turn down the covers or close the curtains against the late afternoon sunset. In moments, her eyes drooped, and she fell into an uneasy rest.
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.
