Even though she could barely see it through Kevin's faint green hornlight, Scootaloo could feel the dust lifting from the floor with each kick of her hoof. Unfortunately for her, the little puffs of dust floated upward in small bursts into her nose once more. Scootaloo started hacking and coughing up a storm.

"You okay?" Kevin asked from next to her.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Scootaloo managed. "I'm just not that great with... dust."

"I think I found something," Flight called from ahead. She stood by one of the rectangular protrusions from the floor ahead of them. As Scootaloo walked alongside Kevin to get a closer look, she noticed that the protrusion had an inclined surface on top with a slight lip on the edge, and a second, smaller rectangle sat on top.

"What is it?" Kevin asked.

"A book," Flight replied and, as Kevin neared, the light from his horn illuminated the distinct shape of a leather book cover. Rather than writing, however, the cover's centre was embossed in a square with three metallic stripes. Kevin couldn't quite make out the colours because of the tint from his horn, but they almost looked—

"Gold, silver, and bronze," Flight stated, running a hoof over the cover.

Scootaloo had been lagging behind Kevin but, at the mention of the metallic colours, the filly's ears perked up. "What did you say?"

"The bars on the cover of this book—they're gold, silver, and bronze. Just like the regal colours of Kinded Court."

Scootaloo stepped forward and leaned in to get a closer look. "Oh, Celestia..."

Kevin cocked his head. "Something wrong?"

Scootaloo looked up and her eyes swept the room, attempting to make out the forms in the darkness. With her prior experiences in mind, though, it was fairly easy to guess what lay before them. "Out there, on the level below us... those are pews, aren't they?"

Flight leaned forward, squinting through the darkness. "You know, now that you mention it..."

"I've been in a room almost exactly like this," Scootaloo continued. "It was back when I was escaping from the South Pen, back in one of the tunnels between there and Umberlight. The room was a little smaller, but"—the filly spun around, coming face to face with a large metallic square on the back wall with three bars of the same metallic colours as on the book's cover—"the details are pretty much the same. This metal square was there too. It's actually kind of starting to creep me out."

"Flight, I've been out of school for, like, a while. You guys talked about anything like this?" Kevin asked.

"Hmm..." Flight hmm'd, looking around. "You know, I think we actually might've. Mr. Merriweather—that's my history teacher—talked about how ponies on the Kindred planet used to build these underground places of worship, back before the system unified and the Bureau was founded. That was actually back before any of the cities were built underground, so they were really the first places ponies built underground."

"How come they built them underground?" Scootaloo asked. She had opened the cover of the book and was looking at the words on the page.

"Not sure," Flight replied. "I think it had something to do with their religion... it was a lot more planet- and community-based. The planet name even comes from the fact that we're all 'kindred souls' or something like that."

"Oh, wow," Kevin said. "I didn't even know that."

Flight scoffed. "Since when do you know anything, dorkwad?"

"Hey, I know some things! Area of a circle is... uh... the stuff inside!"

Flight rolled her eyes. "So, uh, what are you looking at, Scootaloo?"

"This book," Scootaloo replied. "I was just checking and yep, it's the same words as the book I saw in the other one of these places."

"Lemme take a look," Flight said, leaning in. Her face curled up in confusion. "Hmm... I thought this would be the Asterismos or something, but it's not at all. Looks like it's some sort of... alternate history. Like, this beginning kind of has the gist of the Kindred section of the Histories, but it seems... different."

"You sure?" Scootaloo asked. "Maybe it's just a different version..."

"No, I'm pretty sure. Heh... we spent quite a while in school learning about the Asterismos. No, if I had to guess, I'd say this book is a mix of the history and the pagan religion. It'd be pretty cool to read, actually," Flight finished.

"Well, do that, then," Scootaloo said. "Tell us all about it. Just grab it and let's go."

"You sure?" Flight asked. "I feel weird, stealing from a... holy place like this."

Kevin raised an eyebrow. "You don't even believe in their religion, though."

"Well, no... but it still seems disrespectful."

"We can apologise later if any ghosts come to haunt us or anything," Scootaloo said. "I just wanna get out of here now... the sooner we can get aboveground, the better."

"That's for sure," Flight agreed. Sighing, she pushed the book along the wooden surface of the pulpit and let it drop slowly into her saddlebag which lay open below. "Oof! This is pretty darn heavy..."

"Heh... at least it's not eleven inches thick," Scootaloo muttered.

With that, the three young ponies stepped down off the raised platform and trotted between the rows of benches in the green-hued near-darkness.