At the edge of his vision, Tarnish saw something in one of the two rooms, the one on the left. In the otherwise empty room, he saw what he thought was a pile of trash, but after one of Vinyl’s magical globes of light floated over to it, Tarnish saw that it was some mummified, freeze-dried remains.

Shield up, he crept closer, with Rainbow Dash pressed up against his backside, moving with him, matching his every step. In the faint light he saw a shriveled up pegasus pony, and beside him was a cracked, almost disintegrated leather sack, a sort of crude looking satchel, perhaps. Tarnish crossed through the doorway into the room and shivered, but not from the cold.

The body appeared to have been frozen for a very long time and it was rather well preserved. Both wings were broken, it was unmistakable, each of them were crooked and bent in terrible ways. Tarnish could hear Rainbow hissing, and he suspected that just looking at the ruined wings was causing her pain.

It was Vinyl that looked into the old, decaying leather bag. She pulled out a key made of centaur steel, it was strange and twisted looking, and she pocketed it right away. Other things inside the bag were crumbling or decaying, except for a length of crystal rod that had visible glowing glyphs. The light was faint, weak, and flickering.

When Vinyl picked up the crystal in her magic, the glyphs flared to life, throbbing a bit, and a speaking voice filled the room.

“I wish I had never come to Skyreach,” the voice said, and it was obvious that the voice was in pain. “We’ve all gone mad here, and everything has gone wrong. Spear Breaker has activated the defenses and nopony can fly in or out. Those… automatons… they’re killing everypony. Somepony, I’m not sure who, has altered their instructions to process everypony, even the purebloods.”

There was a long pause, and each of the companions listened, ears straining to hear every scratchy word.

“There’s no escaping, no flying away. The fog has been activated too. Caesulla… she... she mangled my wings… she cut me… she tore bites out of me and ate my flesh. She’s gone mad like the others… my beloved wife has gone mad. We’ve all gone mad. Eating meat was a bad idea, I think it’s made us sick. I had to kill Caesulla, but there is no escaping Skyreach. Nowhere for me to go. If by some chance some sane pony finds this, flee this place. There is nothing but madness here in Skyreach. Leave now before—”

The voice, captured in crystal, came to an abrupt end. The crystal rod flared one final time, then began to crumble, breaking apart into purple-blue flakes. Tarnish, horrified, felt his sphincter puckering up, and his balls drew deep into his groin as well. The message, the voice left in the crystal, sounded as though it was all kinds of fronked up, and Tarnish didn’t like the implications, not at all.

“Why do I feel like I’m in a horror movie?” Rainbow Dash asked of her companions, summing up their collective thoughts with a single succinct question. “His wings… do you know what it takes to do that? I can’t even look at them, it makes my filly parts clench up so tight that it hurts.”

“So… the warlike pegasus pony tribe stumbled across an old centaur research facility.” Tarnish shivered again, and then shuddered so hard that his sheath gave his penis a painful, cringe-inducing squeeze.

“And then began figuring out how things worked?” Daring Do suffered a shudder similar to Tarnish’s, and then she backed away from the dried out remains on the floor. “It has been said that the curiousity of pegasus ponies will be our undoing.”

“If those things can be turned on, that means they can also be turned off.” Rainbow, who had turned away from the sight of the mangled wings, focused upon Vinyl instead, not knowing what else to look at. “If we can turn them off—”

“We might be able to escape, but how?” Daring Do glanced at Tarnish, then at Rainbow.

Tarnish, who was turning over other thoughts in his mind, had a very different conclusion. “The door has to be close by,” he stated in a low voice. “This pegasus crawled here, no doubt. This is an office building, which meant that workers came to work here. I’m guessing that Skyreach was built inside of a mountain, and the door has to be near this location. There is a ridge off to our west, we should start looking there.”

“That seems logical,” Daring Do replied, her head moving up and down in agreement.

Shaking her head, Rainbow let out a whine, then said, “But going inside doesn’t seem logical. Still, what choice do we have?”

Tarnish did not reply, but looked at the flaky remains of the crystal rod. It was a priceless relic of history, now gone, just so much dust. He looked down at the pegasus with mangled wings one final time, then turned away, unable to bear the sight. The story of Skyreach needed to be told… or maybe, it was so awful, maybe, perhaps, perhaps it might be better left forgotten.

Either way, Tarnish was certain that he and his companions would bear witness to the horrors of Skyreach.

The walk back to the cave was mostly silent, and Tarnish was certain that his friends had a lot on their minds. The pegasus ponies had a long history of war, of fighting, and many pegasus ponies considered this to be a proud history. They invaded, they burned, they pillaged and looted, they were the terrors of the sky.

At some point in the distant history of the old world ponies, a treaty was struck. The earth ponies would pay for peace with food, giving the pegasus ponies a tribute in exchange for being left unmolested. In time, the unicorns were drawn into this treaty, but the details were nebulous, lost to the mists of time, forgotten.

A part of that treaty still existed in the modern age, in Equestria. Food was given to the pegasus ponies of Cloudsdale in exchange for managing the weather, except for the city of Canterlot. The unicorns and pegasus ponies of Canterlot managed their own weather, free of outside influence. The ‘gift’ of food was known as the weather tax, and Tarnish only knew a little bit about it.

He wished that he had paid more attention in school.

To Tarnish, it sounded like a classical protection racket, and he wondered why Princess Celestia allowed it to happen. The city of Cloudsdale floated around Equestria, packed full of an army of martial—some might even say fascist pegasus ponies—offering ‘protection’ from feral storms, droughts, and the chaotic imbalance that was nature in its raw, uncontrolled state.

Even to this day, Cloudsdale has an obsession with purebloods, with the various clans and families all trying to claim the purest, most undiluted blood. Tarnish knew this to be a pile of meadow muffins, because Rainbow Dash was ‘polluted’ and she was the fastest pegasus pony alive. It could be argued that she was the very pinnacle of pegasus pony perfection.

Tribalism was stupid, Tarnish had decided, except for those bits about earth ponies. Those were true. Maud was an intensely sexual creature, and her desires held true to the stereotypes whispered about earth ponies in hushed tones. But everything else? Absolute and utter garbage, not even worth a moment of consideration.

At the moment, Tarnish missed his wife a great deal, and while he loved and respected her, a conversation between the two of them was the furthest thing from his mind. There was nothing that could be done about his needs right now, and Tarnish reminded himself that all of his companions were suffering right along with him.

It didn’t make it any easier to accept though.

Author's Notes:

Beyond the door, there's peace I'm sure...