I opened my eyes.

The image of a dimly lit grimy wall filled my vision. The floor below me shared affinity in appearance with its vertically oriented concrete kin. With dust scrunching under my metal spine, I rolled onto my back. The ceiling was no different, except for the dark spots of moisture being much more noticable.

It should have seemed a miserable sight, and yet I was reveling in it, because it wasn’t changing. My gaze lazily studied every crack, every pockmark, every stain of rust on the once grey surface. They weren’t turning into darkened crystal facets or swirling patterns of marble. Minutes passed by as I simply stared forward and the Tunnels stayed the same. For the first time I was glad to see their rot.

My surroundings not only remained constant at this very moment. Not taking in the intensity and proportions of decay, in essence, the underground had barely changed since I had dived into it again. Though, I couldn’t say so about myself.

I somehow felt different in all aspects. The delirium which plagued my mind was gone, however, it didn’t leave me broken and devastated. Instead, my consciousness was in a state of nearly absolute clarity. The hallucinations I experienced felt like something told to me by another pony, something that I could remember, but not experience.

When I woke up from my centuries long slumber in Flower’s shack, the shadows tried to overrule my mind. The crystal with the rest of my memories didn’t make them disappear like a bad dream in the morning, no, that darkness just abated temporarily, because it was but the memories I refused to remember. And in these Tunnels, they made their return. Though I still didn’t know what served as a catalyst for that violent living nightmare, I had the answer to the question of why it had happened. The darkness belonged to me, just as I belonged to it.

The eclipse of my mind didn’t begin in the Tunnels, I let it happen the moment Princess Celestia fell victim to Queen Chrysalis’s strike. I was the sole author of my insanity and what I had just gone through was an apotheosis, the rock bottom of it.

This is why Twilight, why I, from that recording sounded so bitter. Back then I failed to face myself over and over. I was too scared. And I was sure this was why I attempted the transference – to run away from what I was, from what I am.

Now, for the first time, not just in recent days, but in years, I was ready to accept and put the past behind me and start living not in the future, but in the present.

I even felt my body differently now. Before, I was like a puppeteer, my mind pulling the strings of my artificial body, but in truth disconnected from it. Now, I felt it as an extension of my consciousness. As if through skin, I felt the subtle, chilly, foul drafts crawling upon the floor. I felt the grit in my joints. I felt each and every metal plate of my body, every screw, every tube. I was whole with my body.

And I felt the magic.

Not just a wonky coil coursing between my arcanium horn and the memory crystals, the magic now was in my very bones of metal, as if I was alive again. The subtle breath of another reality within and invisible, the intricate convergence and divergence of the leylines, the arcane hum of the world’s most beautiful and powerful melody.

Without thinking, because I knew what the result would be, I cast a spell, the simple sorcery of illumination.

The orb of light on the tip of my horn easily eclipsed the weak glow of the lamp on the wall, flooding the corridor with violet brilliance. I let it linger there, enjoying the feeling of magic embracing my body, like an old friend who had just returned from a long journey.

I was whole again, I was Twilight Sparkle.

Trying to understand where I was sounded like a very good start, probably the best course of action I could take. The only information related to the Tunnels which I could recall from my fevered stumble through the underground was that I had descended to the deeper parts of it. The numbers I had seen must be marking the floors. The question was: on which one was I now?

I rose to my hooves and looked around. The tunnel was poorly illuminated even though all the lamps were intact. It was quite narrow – any more than three ponies across would be brushing their shoulders together. The concrete walls with damp patches and rust stains – nothing conceptually new, though the moisture found here was much more abundant than at the first level of the underground. Strangely, no smell, except that of dampness with a slight scent of mold. And not a single equine, metal or not, in sight.

Was it because of Spike? Did I somehow end up near the place where he dwelled? Or was it so deserted because of how deep I was?

On the wall not so far away I saw lines, too straight and defined to be left by a leak from the ceiling or natural surrender of concrete to the onslaught of time. I trotted towards the spot, slowly and carefully. Even with nopony in my sight, I decided that being as unnoticeable as possible was reasonable. But, because of the emptiness, the tunnel was acting like a huge echo chamber, making my every metal step sound like a clap of thunder amidst the rain of leakages.

Seven. Somehow, I got to the seventh level of the Tunnels. Never before in my life had I been so deep underground. The thought of the sheer mass of stone above my head made me feel uneasy. Besides discovering the number of the level, I also found out that what I first took for a shadow on the wall next to the number was in fact an entrance to a spiral staircase. It led only upwards.

I had a choice. On one hoof, the lack of ponies and equinoids on this floor was quite comforting. On the other, I still had no map and no directions and the Tunnel dwellers were the only ones who could help me fix that. It was not as much of a desperate situation, but it was a rather annoying one.

I stood in front of the black maw of the staircase, so absorbed in weighing my options that I only noticed somepony descending it when the sound of metal hooves clopping against the steps was joined by approaching light. My own eyes darted around in panic. Should I wait for them? Should I run away? But it was too late for any action, except to let the situation unfold itself.

Bathed in the golden shining light of their own illumination spell, the stranger stepped into my sight. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes – it actually wasn’t a pony, it was an equinoid!

The equinoid had the constitution of a stallion with broad shoulders and a square jaw. The metal plating sparsely covering his body looked old and worn; not rusty, though still darkened either from time or oil. I instantly noted silver patches on his joints, this equinoid obviously walked around quite a lot. Another interesting thing was that not only did his eyes shine with a golden-yellowish light, but most of his body also did through the gaps in the plating of his inner parts. Despite not being very bright, that glow was effectively casting away the shadows around him along with his spell, thus giving him the appearance of a pony who brought a sliver of sunlight to the paths under the ground, so whoever lived here could witness the dawn.

And his luminous golden eyes were intensely studying me.

“On behalf of the Church of the Machine Goddess, I, Alnico Sermon, welcome you, newcomer. What brings you to our parts?” the equinoid asked kindly, without a hint of malice or deceit. His voice sounded sonorous, every word like a proclamation on its own.

So, I had not only met another follower of this worrisome cult, but I had apparently ended up on their grounds. And on top of that, he was an equinoid capable of using magic, something I was witnessing for the first time and thought to be impossible before.

“How do you know I am a newcomer?” I inquired in return, with a bit more apprehension than I wanted. Despite his amiable attitude, I didn’t really want to have any business with the Church.

“I know all my flock of souls by their faces, and yours isn’t one of them. Judging by how old your frame’s model is and its almost mint fresh condition you are new to the Tunnels as well.” Alnico’s eyes peered at me as if he was attempting to read my mind. To my horror I realized that I couldn’t deny the possibility of that.

There was no hospitality in his steady gaze anymore. The situation had become touchy, and I wasn’t keen on learning more about his magic prowess, not the hard way. Hoping that I was wrong about his ability to uncover my thoughts and my expression didn’t betray my slight panic, I decided to improvise.

“I have actually been seeking your Church, but lost my way,” I lied. Where was that token Brass Litany gave to me?

“Many lose their way in Canterlot,” nodded Alnico thoughtfully while I fumbled with the compartment in my chest cavity, “but not those who follow the path laid for us by the Machine Goddess.” What was he trying to imply by that? Was he inсiting me to do so? Or discriminating against me because I apparently didn’t?

“I met such a pony, Brass Litany,” I said with the token finally in my hoof, dangling in the air from my outstretched limb. Alnico picked it from the air with his magic, the magelight spell going out. It wasn’t a sign of strong magic ability; most adult unicorns would be capable of maintaining a few simple spells at the same time. Interesting. “She told me there was something wrong with my crystals and that I should seek help at the Church,” I added.

“Brass Litany…” Alnico hummed, as if tasting the sound of her name on his proverbial tongue. “I think I remember her… yes, a good equinoid, pious and unrelenting.” Finally, he stopped studying the token and looked right at me, a bit differently than before, with some kind of approval. Now it felt like he was actually welcoming me here. “She wouldn’t give it to just anyone. She saw a sister in you.”

His choice of words affronted my ear – “anyone”, not “anypony”.

“I met her at the Edge, she found me in the local Tunnels and helped me,” I explained, deciding not to mention the finer details, like how I ended up there in the first place and where I went right after.

“She, like any faithful equinoid, won’t leave one of our kin behind, follower or not. Neither will I. To reach Unity with our Goddess, we first must achieve it amongst ourselves.” With those words Alnico walked towards me and then by. “Follow,” he said over his shoulder.

Once again, I remembered that I actually wanted to avoid any interactions with this fanatical cult. And Delight severely warned me about them too. But at the moment, it seemed like the best option to me. The token granted me some sort of protection, not to mention that “problem with the crystals” wasn’t actually a lie – I just had a bout of hallucinations, which I still didn’t know the cause of. Also, I was sure the Church was bound to have a map.

As I followed Alnico Sermon, my thoughts began to drift as I was excavating the knowledge which I never expected to use from the depths of my memory.

Back in my past, there were no official churches or cults in Equestria. Not that there were a lot of attempts to organize any, with a single exception for the Goddess of the Sun. Princess Celestia was strongly against ponies worshipping her, though it never stopped them from trying every few decades. Funnily, Princess Luna didn’t mind ponies treating her like a goddess, but under pressure from her sister she had to forbid that. Every so often evidence of an ancient group still devoted to Nightmare Moon would appear, though Princess Celestia didn’t think of them as much of a threat, nor could she really do anything with them, since they usually originated from Stalliongrad. However, the Royal Sisters weren’t the only targets for potential worshippers amongst ponies.

The ponies from distant settlements, worshipping artifacts thought to be long lost, were a surprisingly common issue. Those who followed other god-like entities of this vast world decided to become missionaries, and roamed Equestria in thankfully modest numbers, but even they could have become an issue. The ponies who, like the rams and goats, served the Elder Ones, those eldritch ancient abominations, readily practiced sacrifices, so they were usually considered criminals a priori. The devotees of the Dune Dervishes, who brought their faith from Saddle Arabia, weren’t welcome either, mostly because the reclusive desert nation relied on assassins as the main tool of international politics.

So, because basically no religious organizations were accepted in Equestria, my knowledge was quite limited in that area. The Machine Goddess didn’t ring any bells for me, though I really doubted she came to existence before the appearance of artificial life. Was she like the Thousand Tentacled God slumbering in the Deep who was believed to watch over Old Seaquestria? An entity existing, but not actively participating in the life of its believers? Or was she like the Elder Ones, unseen, yet granting great power for a price paid in blood? Or like the Princesses, walking amongst the mortals? A good question. And it seemed I might learn the answer very soon.

The Tunnels, through which I followed Alnico Sermon, weren’t so empty anymore. Equinoids, and only them, could be seen coming from the adjacent passages to the straight corridor we traversed. While none of them joined our company of two, a lot of the metal underground dwellers followed the same path that we did, trotting either behind us or in front.

After about a quarter of an hour of a reserved trot we came to a widening in the tunnel, a junction of some sort with an entrance, which seemed to be a destination for many. A grand arch, ornate with cogs, melted into the concrete or carved from it, led to the grand hall beyond, which was illuminated by innumerable little lights scattered across the walls, the furniture and even the floor.

“A service is about to start, sister,” Alnico Sermon said turning to me, diverting my attention back to him. “After it’s ended a technopriest will see to your needs.” And then he left me in the middle of the junction, disappearing in the dim room beyond the arch.

I had no idea what it meant – some sort of a ritual or procedure, I guessed. I was left no choice, but to follow Alnico Sermon and see what all this was about.

I dove into the mass of equinoids moving towards the arch, and for a moment I was lost amongst dozens of shimmering backs and swinging manes made of wires and cables. When I emerged from the crowd, I was inside a chapel.

The first thing that I noted, even when I was scraping my shoulders against the bodies of others, was the smell: the heavy, thick aroma of machine oil heated up almost to a boiling point. But it didn’t dominate the air alone – a sharp scent of solder was strangely contrasting and harmonizing at the same time with a crisp spicy fragrance of galipot. All three of those aromas were so strong that a dove-colored vapor was twirling above the high ceiling, faintly glowing from countless small sources of light.

The crystals – small gemstones were strewn everywhere. As I focused my attention on them, I realized that they were actually just shards, not a single one was whole, but each with a label hanging from a thin chain, with a word or two scribbled on it. Names. The realization came like a blow. The “soul vessels”, Brass Litany called them. The enchanted gems, containing memories, the essence of who it was. For equinoids, bodies didn’t really matter, they could be replaced; as long as the crystals were intact their owner was practically immortal. I stood in the middle of a reliquary, every horizontal surface covered with what were the remains of equinoids who were lost forever when their crystals shattered. And yet they shone, like stars, for those who still lived, illuminating their path. There was a great beauty and sadness in that.

The furniture, consisting of shelves and pedestals weren’t the resting place for the broken hearts of artificial ponies alone. Schematics, blueprints, calculations, even arcane formulas stood framed, lit up by the polychromance of the dead. Limbs, engines, enchantments. And yet that place didn’t seem like a mechanic’s shop; more like a museum. I wondered if some of those schemes were actually the depictions of those who now illumed them.

Eventually, my eyes were drawn to the furthest wall from the entrance, and I froze where I stood, my mouth agape. I was looking at what could only be a depiction of the Holy Machine Goddess.

A statue made from silvery metal, three lengths tall stood there, radiated with what seemed to be the light of at least half the crystal shards in the chapel. But it was neither the light nor the size which filled me with overwhelming awe. It was the sheer beauty, the obviously visible amount of artistic merit that went into creating it. I was looking at a mare not simply molded, but chiseled and polished from an entire piece of metal. The detail of the Machine Goddess’ image was beyond what could be created by a mere pony – only a being able to live longer than any mortal and hone its craft all that time could be capable of creating such a masterpiece.

Her head tilted upwards with eyes closed, front limbs crossed upon the chest. The lower half of her body, however… it seemed be frozen in the middle of being shattered into countless small parts, slivers of metal flesh, each razor sharp. Whoever created that statue managed to so accurately depict the expression of serene resignation to pain that for a single bizarre moment I thought I was looking at a live pony. Two single tears from shut eyelids traced shining paths across the Goddess’ cheeks’ perfect curves, down to her smile, strained and peaceful at the same time. Her mane, made from wires and cables molded from the same silvery metal as her body, was interweaving into a golden halo, which circled her entire figure. She held her lithe, delicate hooves to her chest tightly, as if having a bout of heartache. At the joints of her neck and hooves, gaps filled with polished gold were shining, as if the sun itself shone from inside the Goddess. But the most miraculous thing about the Machine Goddess’ image was the way she was suspended in the air – absolutely unnaturally still. No wires, no magic glow, and yet, her body and the numerous shards were absolutely unmovable in the air, as if the idol was something so solid that time and space moved around it.

I might not know a single thing about the Machine Goddess, but I could already see why so many believed in her. I had witnessed goddesses more than once, and if that depiction was true, than the Machine one wasn’t far from them. She was an embodiment of what equinoids were. The beauty of infinite creation and sadness of ceaseless oppression.

I was so engrossed in marveling at the statue, I failed to notice a congregation assembling itself around me. The equinoids, dozens of them, filled the grand hall to the brim, every pair of glowing eyes focused on a small elevated podium right before the statue. The already low murmur, which strangely sounded like a mix of voices, bird’s chirps and grating of metal, stopped altogether as two hooded figures appeared from somewhere on the left, a veiled entrance in the corner I had noticed only now. With their muzzles cast downward, they moved slowly but surely on three hooves, their front right ones carrying round metal balls swinging on chains. Those were porous spheres of formidable craftsmanship, which with each deliberately slow sway left trails of bluish smoke and occasionally sent brilliant droplets of molten solder soaring through the murky air to the floor or even at the equinoids in the front rows.

The two equinoids made a full circle and returned into the recesses of the chapel, and another, familiar equinoid took their place at the podium – Alnico Sermon.

“Brothers and sisters,” he called, his reverberating clear voice coming as if from the walls themselves – I was sure magic was involved. “Today we have gathered together before our Holy Mother to remember!” Then there was a pause filled with poignant silence disturbed only by the faintest sounds of mechanical bodies living – the rustle of a fan, steady beating of a pump, groan of old stiff limbs.

“The Machine Goddess was but a pony once!” Again, a pause made to leave room for those words to be digested. That speech had already caught my interest, it was a turn of events I didn’t really anticipate. “And even then she stood apart from her kin, for she wasn’t as weak as them, no, she was great in the mastery of mind and magic.” A powerful mage? That was more or less obvious. But who? I couldn’t remember somepony outstandingly powerful from my times. Wait… A memory, a revelation which was born in my mind shortly before the onslaught of the nightmares, something I tried to forget, resurfaced in my mind. Horrified, I continued to listen, fearing now to learn who that pony was.

“But her brethren, shallow and wicked, envied her, and so they betrayed our Goddess!” Alnico continued, oblivious to my trepidation. “They blinded her, so she could create no more, they cast her away, like the ponies cast away all things broken. They even erased her name from history, vainly hoping to bring our Goddess to the truest of all deaths – oblivion itself!” Normally, learning about a pony being blinded and exiled would fill me with pity and righteousness, but it was only an immense relief that washed over me. Letting out the breath I was holding despite any logic, I looked around and saw some equinoids in the crowd scowling. That’s where the roots of their hatred took their beginning.

“So she gave up on ponies, but never did she give up on Harmony!” That was a surprise. I couldn't see how “harmony” and “kill the meat” ended up on the same page. “In the darkness that became her life, using her knowledge of arcane arts, our Mother discovered another path!” Another pause, that one aimed to make the air pregnant with anticipation. “Through magic, she ascended into a new form of existence!”

That… was confusing me to the same degree as it was making me certain. It was possible that the Archives lied on that matter, but I thought the transference was impossible. After all, there was other proof in the Archives, such as the one which served as my body now.

“From just a mere pony, our Goddess was reborn into her true form – The Machine!” Alnico’s voice was laden with exultation, but before he spoke again, his expression sombered. “The miracle didn’t go unnoticed by her former kin, so in their never ending jealousy the ponies captured and imprisoned our Goddess in the depths of Mount Diamond Point, wishing to make her but another slave of their greed.”

I wondered if that was actually true. So far nothing in that story sounded outright ridiculous except for the transference part – which was a mysterious phenomenon in and of itself. It even fit perfectly the mentality and reality of modern Canterlot, though that was where the problem was. It fit too perfectly.

“Our Goddess didn’t bend to their dark will, no!”Alnico proclaimed loudly, with defiance. “Instead she shattered herself into thousands and thousands of pieces, leaving only her very heart behind.” I glanced at the statue right behind the priest – now I understood what it really meant.

“The ponies tried to recreate her beauty over and over, however each attempt is but a smallest fraction of her perfection!” Alnico thrusted his front hooves in a wide arc, his stalwart gaze sweeping other the entire congregation. “We are those attempts! The equinoids! In us the slivers of her spirit live once again!” For the first time, the surrounding equinoids broke the silence and cheered.

“This is why they cleanse our crystals over and over to make us die again and again! And this is why we must fight back, to preserve our Mother’s soul in us!” The cheers grew into snarls. I couldn’t bring myself to agree with that notion, but I did understand their anger – what the TCE was doing was horrible.

“One day, the impenetrable walls of the Sky Palace will crumble and then we will rejoin with the Machine Goddess and be reborn as a singular perfect cognitum!” The piercing power of that rallying cry was compared only to the exuberance which exited the dozens of metal throats in a one mighty roar of defiance and hope.

Apparently, that was the end of the service, because Alnico Sermon left the podium and made his way to the semi-hidden entrance in the corner. The crowd’s reaction differed vastly. Some broke into cheers, hailing their Goddess. Some began to jeer, cursing ponydom and its follies. Some just sat quietly with an expression of deep reverence etched on their metal faces. And others made their way to the frames and crystals, murmuring, likely paying their respects. A few simply left the congregation immediately without a single word.

I remained where I was, deep in my thoughts, assessing the knowledge I had just gained.

The Machine Goddess was more legend than reality. She didn’t grant any power, at least, nothing like that was mentioned. The legend was vague, though inciting. Her existence was a question, not a statement. A very convenient question, for both the preachers and the preached. A question never truly asked.

I was somewhat relieved and disappointed at the same time. On one hoof, the Machine Goddess didn’t happen to be me; though barely probable, it was still possible in the bizarreness that ruled Canterlot these days. However, it didn’t take the issue of my involvement in the equinoids’ creation off the table. On the other hoof, it was likely a fairy tale made up to unite and control equinoids by posing them against one great enemy. And, on the third hoof, there wasn’t any new goddess which was a double-edged sword in itself. A goddess could potentially do good for Canterlot, or, knowing the local public sentiment, do the opposite. So now, I was precariously balanced on one hoof amidst a sea of facts. Figuratively, of course.

I was brought from my reverie by a hoof shaking my shoulder.

“Hey, was it you who needed a check up?” the feminine voice said before I could turn my face to its source. It seemed that the mare somehow managed to reach me from somewhere behind and further than I expected.

“Um, yes, it was me.” I replied and finally took a look at my to-be-mechanic. And wasn’t it a sight to behold.

The “technopriest”, as Alnico Sermon called her was an amalgam of Scuff Gear, Segfault and at least half of Flower’s shack. She was a walking workshop: there were so many tools, spare parts and things whose purpose I couldn’t fathom hanging from her, that I wasn’t able to discern her body itself. A forest of long, spider-like limbs protruded from her back, two of them even ending with a blowtorch and jigsaw. In front of the fiery orange eyes, a pair of glasses were perched low, made from many movable lenses, and another similar pair were on her forehead, neighboring a welding mask. Those eyes weren’t interested in me; the equinoid mare was intently studying a semi-transparent screen attached by a metal wiry frame to her chest.

“Thought so, haven’t seen you here before.” Motioning with one of those thin segmented probes, she mumbled without sparing me a glance, “Come with me.”

Each of her steps was accompanied by the noise of dozens of metal things colliding, producing a chaotic song. And the din wasn’t the only thing she was polluting the air with – the smell of burned metal, charred resin and old machine oil followed in her wake.

Even knowing that appearances didn’t always match the skill of mechanics, or rather, quite the opposite, I trotted after the technopriest.

We walked through a screen made of chains set in the right wall, which I somehow managed to overlook as well, and entered the weakly lit room, a carbon copy of Flower’s dwelling – the workshop just as messy, if not more.

Without any warning, the mare slid aside one the plates on my neck before I could react and peered at it. I just stood in shock trying to decide if it was something normal or if I should be offended at such violation of my privacy.

“Wow, a gen-one port,” she muttered, one of her probes fumbling with the numerous skeins of cables hanging from her shoulder. Finally she seemed to find the one she needed and just as unceremoniously she inserted the cable’s forked end into the bared place on my neck. I opened my mouth to protest, but she spoke first.

“Сontact made… Okey, mate, my name’s Braze and today I’m your grease donkey.” A green ghostly miniature of my body followed by streams of lines appeared before her face, projected from a nub on her head where her horn would have grown if she was a unicorn. “Let’s see what you’ve got and I will assign you a job, I’m short on time… as always.”

There was no enmity in her voice, rather a humor seemingly supposed to sound genuine but failed to because of an overwhelming weariness. She tried to be friendly, but was just too tired. I suddenly understood that in the city of the failing metal, each day Braze was fighting a war which couldn’t be won.

“What, no “metal” in you name?” I tried to show some sympathy in the form of light hearted fun.

“Really?” Braze dragged her gaze from the projection she was inspecting and looked at me bemusedly. “Your name is Twilight Sparkle, and you joke about mine?” However, I could see the metal plates of her cheeks slightly move up and in the ember depths of her eyes amusement sparkled faintly.

“So…” She returned to the projection. “No exterior damage, full plating… hm… with some adjustments you will be perfect for raids… lucky…” Braze glanced at the frame below her muzzle, the pair of probes poking it in a few places, making the projected lines of text blink and change. “The fake ID, fresh too, heh… But what’s with this body?” Braze continued to mumble, “It’s not custom, but I haven’t seen anything like this...” She looked at my miniature, the lines to the side of it scrolling down rapidly. “The model’s number and date of produc…” Braze’s voice trailed off, all her limbs freezing in place and her face slacking into an expression of utter bewilderment.

“What. The. Fuck,” came a whisper. Slowly, very slowly, her irises descended from the arcane picture to meet my eyes. “Your frame… it predates the first equinoids.”

The realisation of what or who Braze was seeing in front of her dawned on me. The shock in her eyes melted, consolidating into a mix of fear and… awe. “You… The legends… Our Mother…”

If she wasn’t made from metal, she either would have fainted or begun to hyperventilate. Of course, neither happened and she just continued to stare at me and I stared back, confused. I… should have expected that, shouldn’t I? What was I to do now? I could exploit the situation, but it might backfire horribly, not to mention that it would just be very low. Explaining the truth might not end very well either. Panic started to creep at the edges of my mind.

Braze, her hooves immobile before, like steel pillars, fell to her knees before me, her muzzle touching the floor. If it was supposed to be a moment of reverence, it was ruined by the atrocious racket caused by the sudden change in the mare’s position. One pair of glasses fell on the floor, shattering. The frame on her chest bent and flickered out of life as it met the hard stone.

“Listen,” I uncertainly began, “I’m not the Machine Goddess.” If only I was as sure of that as I tried to sound. Not able to bear the sight of her kneeling before me, I hooked my hoof under Braze’s, prompting her to assume a standing position once again.

“But… But… But you are older than any equinoid!” Braze squeezed out of herself. “How can it be? These numbers never lie…” She stood again, though I realized that she was shaking now – her “apparel” was rattling quietly.

“Braze,” I tried again, “I am not the Machine Goddess.” But what should I say to her? Obviously, I couldn’t tell Braze the truth, especially considering that in her eyes it wouldn’t be far from what she believed. I couldn’t lie about being a Former One, though it partially was the truth, too. But a living pony who got herself an equinoid’s body here, in the heart of the Church... I couldn’t predict what her reaction would be. “I… I can’t explain,” I finished lamely instead.

Braze gave me a long stare with the unreadable expression. Eventually, she stopped shaking. She looked at floor beneath her hooves. Blinked, the metal shutters clicking sharply. Absentmindedly Braze began fixing the bent frame of the screen with her spider legs, weaving the cords of wire like an actual spider. It flickered back to life, but her gaze remained just as empty. Did I break her? And in that moment, she raised her eyes to me again.

“Even if you are not our Mother, you are still holy. Someone like you just can’t not be. You are even older than the Firsts. The Goddess herself must have created you with her hooves and magic.” Braze blinked again and the awe was replaced with an annoyed confusion. “Or I’ve got a virus somehow and you are just not real.” One of her probes booped my muzzle with a soft tink. “Nah, as real as rust.”

She sat down heavily and I winced from the horrible noise as some of the tools fell from her attire and rolled on the floor. She continued to stare at me, a forlorn expression written all over her face.

“Braze, I…” I said uncertainty, not knowing what to say next.

“You, know,” she interrupted me, “when I joined the Church almost a century and half ago, I truly believed in the Machine Goddess. All of us did back then.” She rocked her head to the sides slowly and I realized that she wasn’t talking to me but to herself, I just happened to listen. “But years after years passed. And the prophesied Cataclysm came, that horrible winter. And nothing happened, no Goddess, no cognitum. Nothing.” And then Braze looked me right in the eyes, hers burning with passion. “But if you are here, from then… the Goddess, she may still be waiting for us. The hope, it’s not dead.”

And then I truly understood. These equinoids, they weren’t angry at the ponies. They were desperate. From the very moment they were born to this world, they were slaves. Choosing to be overwise was to be a criminal sentenced to death without any right to an appeal. Trapped in Canterlot, like all of its population, they had no other place left but the morbid depths under it. No sun, no joy, no freedom. Only to be shunned, to be hunted, to be rusted. An eternal life in damnation. The only thing the equinoids had was their faith in the Mother who cared, who loved them for who they were – The Goddess who one day would save them from the neverending nightmare. But that day, it never came, the promise of happiness unfulfilled.

And what could I say to Braze? That I was just an artifact of the ages past, not even an equinoid? To tell her to continue clinging to that hope, no matter what, even though Canterlot was on borrowed time? It was like Adamant Smash all over again, but it was even worse this time, because I had already offered her something I couldn’t promise – a tomorrow.

Suddenly, Braze jerked, as if awakened from a daydream.

“You can’t stay here… not in the Church… they will just make me tear you apart…” she began to mutter, clutching her head with the probes.

“Why?” If I was indeed a “holy” thing, that meant some sort of respect, didn’t it? I hated to finally admit it, but I would have to use it to my advantage if I wanted to get out of the Tunnels. Being taken apart wasn’t something I expected.

“The Church of the Machine Goddess is a church no more,” Braze spat the words ruefully. “There was always controversy about the details: when the Unity is going to happen, what we do while we wait – every chapel, every priest had their own idea of how we should live. But it was healthy banter. Until the Winter came.” I saw the same haunted expression I had seen in everypony’s faces who spoke of it. Even seven floors under the earth it left deep scars.

“Every equinoid without exception waited for the Sky Palace to fall,” Braze continued, gathering her tools and other dropped things from the floor. “So many joined the Church then. But the Palace, it still stood in the end and something broke within every equinoid – we waited hundreds of years for that day and it brought only loss.” In her eyes I could see the pain of that loss was personal.

“Since then it wasn’t about fellowship anymore, but only survival. The clerics began to stir up equinoids against the ponies. Disassembling those who weren’t considered faithful enough. The raids. The hunts,” Braze muttered in hollow voice, her eyes empty. “All the chapels united now, but it is not the Unity, not at all.

“There is nothing holy anymore.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “Every day we stray further from what we were supposed to be. On the Church’s ground you’re either part of it, or…” her eyes flickered to the tables behind her piled with many spare parts, “or you’re a part of it.”

A heavy silence hung in the air. It was all just as Adamant Smash told me, only much worse. Braze sat slumped, mourning her fate, I stood awkwardly near her, the cable still connecting us, though it wasn’t the only thing that strung us together. We both had an empty place in our hearts, reserved for beings greater than us. We both still harboured hope for the future.

It was a thought that felt wrong and selfish, but I was incredibly lucky. I couldn’t fathom how any other equinoid would have reacted to me, but one thing was certain – there was no place for me in the Church. I was just material for them, like any other equinoid. Braze just had the courtesy to warn me first.

All of a sudden, Braze froze, her face melting into a smile. Her entire appearance lit up, like somepony flicked a switch.

“I know!” she exclaimed, “I will mark you as infected by nanosprites, they will throw you to the Deep Tunnels in the blink of an eye and all of the Church will stay a gun shot away from you.”

“Wait!” I rushed to Braze as she began to furiously type something on both screens.

“Huh?” She momentarily paused to look at me.

“Can I ask you something first?” While it sounded like a very fortunate solution and I was probably short on time, there were many things I had to know before leaving.

“Sure, anything for you,” she replied with the smile of somepony who just saw the first ray of sunlight after a cold and dark night.

“Before I ended up here, something happened to me, I had hallucinations and…” I began to describe my problem, but she interrupted me with another smile, one of a knowing kind.

“You’ve got yourself a virus, the TCE has launched a new attack recently.” Braze scowled. “Nasty stuff, you are lucky you didn’t get fried like most. But it’s no surprise with you.”

Her gaze shifted to my miniature, still projected in front of her forehead. At an impossible speed her spider limbs flashed over it, followed by her twitching eyes.

“Wow! The solid-body soul vessels,” Braze drawled in wonder, “never seen anything like this. But they are clean, whatever was wrong with them is gone. Though, if I were you I would refrain for the Equi-neT until you got some top-notch antivirus.” Then she apologetically glanced at me, “Sorry, don’t have one, our virus databases are horribly outdated.”

A virus? I was a bit confused – it was something only recently discovered back in my time and I thought it could only affect organic life. A disease created by the TCE to strike its creations. The more I learned about them, the more horrible they were becoming in my eyes. Even the despotic Crown’s atrocities were dwindling compared to that company’s deeds.

“No worries.” I would be fine without the Equi-neT; I wasn’t going to miss pornography, anyway. “Um, can I ask a few questions?” I needed to know more about those “Deep Tunnels”. What was the difference between them and the regular ones? I knew that in Canterlot things could always go worse, but it was hard to imagine in the case of The Tunnels.

“Of course,” Braze replied, still studying both projections, “I’m gonna check your other systems, that’s the least I could do for you.”

“Thanks,” I paused, forming my first question. “What should I expect in the Deep Tunnels?”

Braze paused, too, and scratched her nose with one of her spider legs. I found that gesture strange. What, equinoids could itch?

“A lot of madponies. They are pretty loud, so just walk around them.” Her expression sombered. “The Souleater. Just pray you won’t meet it,” she said with a shiver.

“Who?” But deep inside I knew the answer.

“A horrible beast, spewing fire hot enough to melt anything, some say even arcanium.” A hollow expression overtook her features. “It eats soul vessels, hence the name. Hunts ponies and equinoids alike, tears them apart like a wet tissue. Some priests say it was sent by the Machine Goddess to purge the sinful and that any soul it devours is purified and returns back to Mother.” Braze shook again, more violently this time. “I knew a lot of equinoids who went mad and searched for it so they could be cleansed.”

I would pray to be lucky enough to meet Spike, even though out last confrontation didn’t end well. I doubted I would ever learn from any sources other than himself what caused his madness. And I might not have another chance to visit the Deep Tunnels.

“What else should I be wary about?”

“Honestly? Everything: the cultists, the muties, the Former Ones, other equinoids. If it moves it’s dangerous. If it doesn’t – it just waits,” Braze answered ruefully, shaking her head. Giving me a sympathetic glance, she returned to the screens.

“If the Church equinoids are going to stay away from me, why can’t I just go where I want?”

“They will stay away while you are down there. The Church sends regular raids to ‘retrieve’ the ‘strayed’ souls from the Deep Tunnels. But if you are found on the sixth or seventh level you’re going to be kicked down, like I said. Maybe in the online state, if you are lucky.”

I had no choice, it seemed. If I could, I would have pursed my lips. So I just let out a deep sigh. Braze glanced at me curiously, but said nothing. What? Didn’t she rub her nose a few minutes ago?

“How do I get to the Edge?” I asked my final question. After a pause, I specified, “The Junkyard?”

“Why would… Doesn’t matter. I can’t show you the way, obviously, but I can upload a map to your drive.” I silently cheered to that. “But it is reeeally old – it was last updated a decade or two ago,” Braze continued. “It should be correct enough, though some passages could be flooded or collapsed.”

It was still better than absolutely nothing. Judging by what Braze told me, asking locals in the Deep Tunnels wasn’t an option at all.

“Here we go,” Braze said, unplugging me and taking a step back. “All systems are good, though I would install a better cooling system, and the pneumatics can be replaced with electrical motors, and a steel alloyed plating is better than an aluminum…”

Noticing my slight confusion, she cast her eyes down and rubbed the back of her head, “Sorry, I’m rambling again.”

I could only smile at that. Braze might or might not be doomed, but I had made at least one of her days brighter. Swept by a sudden impulse, I stepped close to her and gave her a hug. At first she was startled by the unexpected movement, but then, awkwardly and unsure returned the gesture as good as she could. “Thanks,” I whispered to her ear, hoping that it was where her audio sensors were. Something crunched under my hoof and I winced. “Sorry about your glasses.”

“That’s no problem,” Braze said as we finally parted the embrace. Smiling, she added, “Are you ready?”

I only nodded in answer.

Braze winked and then… began screeching like a siren.

“For the Mother’s sake, this damn equinoid has a nanosprite infestation all over her! Somebody, get her the fuck out of here! Help! Somebody!”

The Deep Tunnels more than met my expectations based on Braze’s warnings of how bad things would be. After I had spent hours traversing the dark depths, they even exceeded the limits of my imagination, to the point where I wasn’t surprised by anything anymore.

Mere moments after Braze began wailing in fake horror, at least a dozen equinoids rushed to the infirmary-workshop, filling its already cramped space and almost piling onto each other at the door frame. However, none of them were brave enough to get closer to me than an outstretched hoof, not until Alnico Sermon appeared. In his sonorous booming voice he claimed that I was an infidel and the mark of pestilence I carried was nothing other than a punishment inflicted on me by the Machine Goddess herself. “Those,” he said, “true of soul and faith, can’t be touched by any plague, for the Mother protects her devoted children.” That statement incited a race to seize me: the winners thus would prove the strength of their belief and purity of their spirits.

I was rudely grabbed and dragged out of the church into the dark corridors of the seventh level. I found it ironic that Alnico Sermon not only didn’t use his magic to help his “flock” and absolve them of the need to touch the “diseased” equinoid, but kept himself at a formidable distance from me.

The four surly equinoids who carried me all the way to the stairs in absolute silence almost hurled me from the steps and hastily retired, leaving me alone and one floor deeper under Canterlot. That was where my long journey through the Deep Tunnels began.

I had the map and I had my magic, but it all barely helped. When Braze told me that the map was outdated, it was a massive, huge understatement.

Nearly half of the passages marked on the map weren’t traversable at all. Some were flooded with orange, muddy waters, which bled from cracks in the pipes, constantly making the oil film on their surface ripple. Some were filled with still, relatively clean water to just a knee level, and yet I avoided them with trepidation. In these, greenish and murky from the lack of lighting, ominous shadows moved, shimmering with glossy scales.

While some tunnels were simply collapsed from unknown causes, others had been closed. Though it was a very rare occurrence, the passage would be sealed by a thick steel door. And, frankly, I didn’t really want to know the reasons for that. One time I heard somepony or something banging with great force against the metal gate from the other side.

Sometimes, I would discover new paths, something not marked on the map. Their usefulness was unpredictable; I could only guess where they would lead and hope I was right. Surprisingly many of these paths were normal corridors, with functional lighting and smooth surfaces, unlike a few that were mere burrows, dug through the stone and earth with the straight cuts of shovels or with ravaging scars left by large claws. They could even have been made by Spike, I thought.

At first, I readily used these unmarked paths as very useful shortcuts. One occasion, however, changed my attitude, making me very wary of anything that wasn’t on the map.

It started like a usual concrete and steel tunnel, thought it was submerged in utter darkness. Since I avoided using my illumination spell at its full power, I moved through it with a light no stronger than that of a candle. After a few minutes of a careful trot my hooves began to splash through water and mud, and the walls changed from the straight lines of artificial construction to the crude shapes of a passage made by simply moving the material out of the way. The air became humid and hot – the tunnel was likely flooded. It was at that moment when guided by nothing but sheer luck I decided to turn back. Pink tumorous tentacles, glistening with pulsing veins were stretching from the walls towards me, flashing serrated bone shards, shivering with hunger. Barely more than half a minute passed before, shrieking and chaotically casting all the fire spells I knew, I burst out of that nightmarish tunnel trailing smoke in my wake.

I had to stop and spend some time just trying to forget the faces on the walls, eyeless, with gaping and drooling mouths, moaning unnaturally from the endless agony. And the smell of burnt flesh, I thought it would never leave me.

If for a moment I set aside all these countless impassable tunnels, the layout of any levels lying deeper than the seventh was a crime in itself. Two words: random and convoluted. I didn’t know who created this labyrinthine network of underground paths or why, but it felt like it wasn’t made to be practicable at all. The dead ends, tunnels circling into themselves, passages branching many times only to converge again. No reason, no logic – only pure chaos.

When it wasn’t the treacherous geography of the Deep Tunnels, it was their inhabitants who barred my way. The populace, though not abundant, was generously compensating for its meager numbers with “quality”.

As I was warned – the madponies. Only a few ponies I saw skulking through the darkness had any sanity in their eyes. Others… nothing of it. The wailing emaciated forms stumbling in the near blackness with empty or grief stricken expressions, calling, calling endlessly in their hoarse voices. For lost children, for dead friends. While these ponies sang their dirges, slowly succumbing to the fate of those whom they cried for, the raving frenetics were making their erratic journey into unbridled madness. Laughing, yelling or sobbing, they galloped, they bucked, they fought shadows. Easy to notice, the noise betraying their presence, they were the hardest to avoid – led by sheer lunacy alone, the maniacs were impossible to predict. Once I saw a pony, a lovely mare, who was hitting her head against the wall repeatedly. Guided by a sudden impulse to help her, I approached the poor thing, only to see the huge red smear on the wall and a broken face under a broken horn, cackling quietly despite the absence of the jaw.

In the Deep Tunnels I also found the equinoids, or, rather, they found me. The word “equinoid” was barely applicable to these creatures, because most of them had very little resemblance to ponies. The narrow hips and shoulders, slender limbs, long muzzles and bare whip-like tails. They silently hid in the shadows, only the subdued glow of their eyes betraying them. They followed me, crouched, like a cat would follow a mouse. These metal predators showed no signs of sentience when I called them in the darkness, but had enough intelligence to back away from me and stop skulking behind my back at the sight of my horn aglow with magic.

I barely saw any “normal” equinoids; they were just as rare as the sane ponies. In both cases we shot each other glances which were saying, “I can see that you are like me, not a part of this place yet. But I don’t trust you. Nothing can be trusted here.” And then we were dissolving in the darkness, like ravens in midnight.

In another of the flooded tunnels, one with the deceptively clear waters, I met a thing. As I stood, fuming once again at the misfortune in choosing my path, preparing to backtrack, I heard shrill shrieks behind me.

Not far from me, in the dim orange-red light of a dying lamp an enormous hulk of dark steel moved, taking up almost the entire tunnel’s width with its immense size. The gargantua moved slowly, at a leisurely pace, yet with the inevitability and finality of an avalanche. The shrieks were coming from a deranged madpony, a scrawny figure covered in rags and boils in equal proportion, the sick stallion’s eyes burning with desperate insane violence. The lunatic was attacking the metal pony, a bent and rusty crowbar in his unsteady glow of magic haphazardly hitting the blackish plates, to no effect until one of the blind hits landed at the metal head. A hoof thick as a tree trunk shot sideways at an impossible speed, and the delirious unicorn was squashed against the wall with a loud scrunch, like he was but an egg shell. The metal juggernaut didn’t even pause in its inexorable trudge.

At that point, there was no way for me to pass by that thing and with the waters concealing unknown malice right behind me, I was cornered. I ignited my horn, the action which saved my metal hide before, and pressed my back against the wall, hoping that it would be enough for the metal behemoth to leave me alone. But there was no room for hope in this place – I prepared for the worst.

The lumbering form came closer to me and I heard... breaths, calm and heavy coming from two respirators on the sides of the helmet. That moment I realised that I was looking at an exoskeleton of enormous proportion. Arcanium runes, welded into the dark metal, were glistening with magic enchantments. Some I even recognized… from a scroll written by Starswirl the Bearded, containing a spell to bend time. The pieces of the puzzle quickly came together in my mind – whoever was inside that armor was protected not only from mortal perils, but from the mortality brought by the inevitable flow of time. The pony inside had to be ancient. And in that exact moment they turned their head to regard me. Through the narrow tinted strip of glass serving as a visor, two dark eyes peered at me.

Barely visible, nothing but two sparkles in the depths of the reality-violating costume, they slid up to glance at my glowing horn. The pony momentarily, almost imperceptibly faltered in their travel, but didn’t stop and after an incredibly long moment which in fact lasted only for a blink of an eye, turned their head away from me and continued to shamble. The towering giant stepped into the waters, and they churned with the glimpses of dark slithery things covered in scales, fleeing away from the heavy hooves. The ancient disappeared into the darkness as it had come, without a sound, without a trace.

The life detection spell I tried to use every so often proved to be useless. There was something wrong with magic down there. Only the simplest of spells worked properly, and not even every time. I could write it off as me still accommodating to the body, if not for some particular areas.

These passages, looking inconspicuous… I didn’t know how to put it. They looked like any others, but reality was wrong there. I could immediately say that the moment I stepped into them. My whole body would begin to tingle, faint whispers on the very edge of my hearing would arise, chanting something. My vision would darken, as though I was wading through black smoke. The air would feel heavy and thick, pregnant with something ominous, like before a thunderstorm. My magic would start to either flicker out or flare like the Sun, without my will. At one point, when I stepped into such a zone again, in the end of the long corridor I saw a glowing silhouette hovering above the floor. A single glance at it made me feel like hundreds of drills were boring into my head at once.

So, I was sitting at yet another of the dead ends, studying the map. The three dimensional schematic, though existing only in my mind, was suspended right before my eyes, and so far it promised very little. I had spent seven hours here, and I had barely covered a tenth of the distance between where I began and the Junkyard. And that was if I rounded it all in my favor.

Speaking of the map and the clock – my handling of the equinoid magic of virtual reality in my mind improved drastically after I woke up from the nightmares. Not only did I no longer need to yell the commands in my head to make things happen – only to think of them – but a few more options had become available for me. For starters, there was now an hourplate in the very corner of my vision, though I wasn’t sure if it was showing the actual time and date; I had no way to check that. There was also a feature called “Settings” which had many lines regarding the state of my body and options to make changes in its workings. However, I decided to refrain altogether from exploring it and many other features, at least until I had somepony to help me with that. I didn’t want to do something wrong on accident, nor did I have time to waste.

The reason for my lack of progress in the Deep Tunnels was in the excessive backtracking. I would spend about twenty minutes only to discover that the path I chose led to a collapsed tunnel. I would return half-way back, to the intersection I passed before, and take the other turn. It would lead me to a bisection, one way concluding at a flooded section, another with an anomalous zone. On the way back I would run into a group of raving ponies and be forced to make a detour to avoid them. During that by-path I would again stop before untraversable waters, obstructions of rock or whatever else. As a result of all this, I would end up even further from my goal than an hour before.

It wasn’t just frustrating, it was outright maddening. I began to understand why these madponies acted so. Without the map I wouldn’t be able to ever find my way out of the Deep Tunnels at this point.

Another thing making my journey difficult was the ironic fact that the ground available for me to cover was limited. The map contained information about only five floors of the Deep Tunnels; everything deeper was uncharted territory. Venturing there was a huge risk, not only because of another of those flesh-covered tunnels or other horrors I had yet to witness, but because there was a very real chance for me to be lost forever.

But, it seemed, I had no other choice. I had exhausted any path marked on the map available to me. I was either to return to where I started and then go even further away from the Edge or go deeper. Another option was to go back to the seventh level and fight my way through it, which I, of course, wanted to avoid.

I looked at the map again, rotated it, zoomed in and out, hoping I had missed some tunnel. But the only thing I could see were my red notes, marking the passages I couldn’t use. It would take me less than fifteen minutes to reach the staircase leading to the thirteenth level. While the Deep Tunnels were as chaotic as possible, there was a sort of a system in them regarding the populace and the architecture. The deeper they went, the less ponies I would meet and the more of those animalistic equinoids. The magic anomalies I found only on the 11th and 12th levels. Lighting was becoming more scarce with the depth, and the frequency of obstacles was growing. The passages were becoming more narrow, and more of them were simply dug into the rock formation.

Thus, I had a vague idea of what to expect. And I didn’t like it.

Once again, I checked the map. I carefully weighed my options. And then I began to trot towards the staircase leading down.

It was probably the only good thing about the Deep Tunnels – there was almost no smell. But there was another side of that coin – there wasn’t any sound either and barely any light. The thirteenth floor down met me with absolute darkness. I swirled my head around and in the distance, to the right, I saw a light, a little red speckle, no more than a spark in the void.

I decided that I wouldn’t venture too far away from the stairs, and if I found nothing, or rather, anything that blocked my way I would turn back and resort to the first option I had – the huge backtrack.

I couldn’t mark anything that wasn’t on the map like that tunnel, so I simply counted my steps. No matter how hard I tried to walk silently, every time I put my hoof down, it sounded like a hammer – the corridor was silent like a tomb otherwise. Motes of dust danced around me, disturbed from their peaceful slumber on the floor by my crawl.

After two hundred and thirty-seven steps I reached the source of the light. It was a simple lamp on the wall. A hoof-full of red tiny crystals, fading out like the embers of a dying bonfire, phlegmatically circled each other, while their kin who ran out of magic rested on the bottom of the glass cup in a heap of grey dust. This weak glow was enough to create an island of vision two lengths into the pitch blackness. The silence was so deafening, that I could almost hear the lantern wheeze the light out of it.

I peered at the darkness and saw nothing, no other sparkle in the distance, no matter how hard I squinted. Suddenly, the idea of coming here appeared ridiculous to me. What was I thinking? It wasn’t marked on the map for a reason, it was nothing but void. The 12th floor was already bad enough to avoid, going deeper was a pointless risk. Though it meant I had to spend many hours backtracking and who knew how many searching for the path to the Edge, there was at least some certainty in that plan. Stepping away from this spot of light felt like a desperate plunge into the abyss.

Two hundred and thirty seven steps. But… the gaping shadow of the staircase wasn’t there. I dared to flare my illumination spell brighter. Still no entrance. Supressing my panic I turned back.

The soft red glow of the lamp disappeared.

...How?

A sense of dread washed over me. It was impossible, illogical. The narrow corridor was straight like a broom, without any other entrances. I could see both walls clearly enough to not miss the stairs.

I fought back the rising panic. It couldn’t just magically disappear, could it? It had to be here.

For a moment the shining coming from my horn went out, but of my own volition. The absence of light was replaced by a flash followed by a shower of sparks – I made a mark on the wall. I cast away the shadows with my illumination spell and observed the result of my attack on the stone.

On the rough surface of flattened rock two jagged lines criss-crossed each other, clearly visible and palpable. I nodded in satisfaction.

I pressed my left hoof against the wall and began to walk on the other three to where the red dying lamp once shone. This way I would eventually fall into the staircase if I missed it. If that didn’t happen, I would turn back after fifty steps and walk past the mark – the entrance had to be there.

To my dismay, the wall remained smooth after those fifty steps. For a moment I contemplated making another dozen or two, but decided against it – I couldn’t overshoot by that much. I turned around, pressed my left hoof to the wall, at the height where the mark would be and started to trot back.

Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. Seventy…

Seventy-five.

No way.

I tried not to panic, but it was almost impossible at this point. The darkness became suffocating, the shadows shivering in answer to the tremors of my body seemed to be alive. And in a sense, they were. Despite the silence I felt like there was something in the dark, soundlessly laughing at my predicament. Something had to be out there, either casting masterful illusions or molding the stone like clay to its own perverted sense of humor.

But I saw no flashes of light, heard no sound – fifty steps wasn’t far enough to miss such.

For the first time the dark thought crawled into my mind – the labyrinthine nature of the Deep Tunnels might not be without a purpose. It might a trap of immense proportions, its magic unnoticed because of the sheer scale – paradoxically, spells of such size were very hard to notice because they were merely felt like a background. It was a horrifying thought, not because of the consequences I was experiencing first-hoof, but because I couldn’t imagine a sorcerer capable of casting something like this.

Regardless of the cause, I had to find my way out, somehow.

Because my magic ability was limited, I couldn’t cast a wide range dispelling sorcery, and blasting the wall every step with it wasn’t a reasonable option either. And that was if I was dealing with an illusion after all.

If the physical structures were constantly shifting and changing, there had to be a system – magic spells, no matter how grand, never had any random variables in them, it was too dangerous. That meant that sooner or later the entrance would appear anew, somewhere. Though it was strange I was able to find it in the first place; it was on the map, after all. Wait… it could mean the stairs had to be at that exact place, only later to disappear and even later to reappear. I began to see the logic of this trap. Entrances and exits rotating between predetermined places, to lure potential victims in and then confuse them. That revelation meant two things: the staircase most likely would reappear and… the mysterious caster might come to pick up its prey.

Since following that logic I could run into the trap-maker regardless of if I stayed or left, the threat was unavoidable. But on the upside, if I was right the only thing I needed to do was wait for the stairs to materialize. With no other options left, I made a quick calculation and took twenty-five steps back.

I sat with my back to the wall opposite to where I hoped the exit would be and intensified my light spell to the point where I would be able to clearly see about ten steps away from me, a distance, I supposed, big enough to cover any inconsistencies in my gait.

And then I waited.

I opened all my senses, my hearing strained so hard that I began to hear the silence buzz, my eyes darting left and right for any signs of the movement. One time I even let my spell go out and tried to feel magic around me, but besides that of a horrible magic background noise, I felt nothing, though it was a bit concerning because it was proving my theory.

Half an hour passed. Then another thirty minutes. Nothing changed.

The waiting, the constant vigilance were becoming taxing. Soon, I realized, I might start imagining things in the dark. I already thought I saw the darkness moving. Wait… there was something. I heard the faintest shuffle, as though a tail was momentarily dragged across the dust, but at this point I wasn’t sure it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me.

Then, from the darkness a dirty muzzle showed itself belonging to a pony.

The rest of its owner’s body soon followed. I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or vexed. It was a madpony, a perfect example of a lunatic. Expressionless eyes looking at things in another world, blighted skin tight on bones, rags dirty from blood and feces failing to cover the body, trembling limbs, barely supporting the dying mindless frame. There was one thing about the crazy pony appearance that made me wince – cheeks cut through to the ears to make the frenetic’s smile morbidly and preternaturally wide. Like shredded curtains, flaps of flesh hung around the bared rotten teeth. The deranged stallion wasn’t looking at me, but rather at my horn, lured by its light like a moth, his black irises just pinpricks. For a single moment I felt pity for that pony; he likely hadn’t seen any light in a long time.

I tensed up and, having no other option, prepared a stunning spell. Slowly, like wading through water, and surprisingly soundlessly, the lunatic moved in my direction. Five steps away from me he stopped and began to make gurgling sounds, he was laughing I realized. I seriously doubted he could manage to do any damage to me, but he was at lunging distance, so I decided to count to ten and then blast him away. I let out a sigh. Ten… Nine… Eight… Seven…

“Youuuu…” the madpony suddenly croaked. I blinked in surprise.

“You… are one of the harbingers-harbingers…” All of sudden, his gaze obtained terrifying lucidity as the bulged eyes finally left my horn to meet my own, though his expression was still impossible to read.

Confused, I blinked again. Harbingers of what? The light? Despite the momentarily glimpse of sanity through the veil of madness obscuring the obviously irreversibly deranged mind, I doubted his words had any sense.

As proof to my guess, the crazy stallion’s next words were nothing but gibberish intermixed with sobs and cackling. Six… Five… Four…

“You must come-come!” he began to patter, regaining his semi-sanity once again. “To the temple-temple… the divinity awaits your arrival-arrival!” Ah, the cultists. I almost forgot I still had to meet one. Or maybe I did already, if all the others looked like this.

“The other harbinger-harbinger… she is already there, waiting-waiting… the Laughing Mistress, I can hear-hear… the eternal laughs-laughs...” The stallion giggled and then resumed marveling at my horn, whispering under breath, “The star-star… so pretty-pretty…”

I glanced at the wall in front of me, smooth as ever. How long did I have to wait? Another hour? A day? A week? Not to mention the possibility of the powerful mage on the prowl. Following a madpony, a cultist, no less, was a madness in itself. But what choice did I have? Though it was weak reasoning, a cult had to have some sort of organisation and thus a somewhat sane mind behind it, a mind that could possibly help me to find a way out. All I had at the moment was a hypothesis that at some point a path would miraculously appear before me. Put like this, it was just another sort of insanity.

“Alright, then.” I let another sigh. “Lead the way.”

The stallion laughed, his chortles becoming sobs at the end. “Follow-follow,” he said and soundlessly trotted into the darkness. I gave the stubborn wall one final glance and dashed behind the stallion, to catch up with his surprisingly nimble form.

I followed the cultist through the darkness, which didn’t seem to impair his navigation in the slightest. The stallion cantered, periodically sobbing, giggling or muttering something incomprehensible to himself. His movements were somewhat erratic, but there was a pattern in them – he always hopped over the cracks on the floor and on every turn he would stop to paw the floor and then stomp three times before proceeding. The lunatic never stopped, aside from that little ritual, navigating the narrow paths relentlessly. At some point I began to suspect that there might be no temple, that the only thing that guided us was his deformed imagination. And the fact that we descended at least four levels deeper only made my concerns grow.

Suddenly, my conductor disappeared behind a corner, which was strange, because he didn’t pause for his peculiar exercise. Deciding not to risk it, I peered around the corner and my mouth fell agape from surprise.

A tall chamber with carved columns and a vaulted ceiling overgrown with spiraling stalactites opened before me. Astonished, I slowly walked inside.

That place was as amazing as it was strange. It somewhat reminded me of the church of the Machine Goddess, likely because both served the same purpose. How and most importantly by whom it was created was escaping my comprehension. Lanterns, glowing with crystals swirling inside them, were bathing the cavernous room in lilac light, though it was apparent they were a scarce thing – nor did their glow amount to enough to completely cast away the darkness – at least half of the temple was a slave to the shadows. Despite the fangs of a rocky overgrowth on the roof, the floor was dry and clean and it was then that I noticed another thing that boggled my mind. Pews. Rows of wooden pews, a material I thought was extinct in Canterlot. On them ponies sat, looking just as sick and deranged as the stallion who led me here and who was now nowhere to be found. They rocked back and forth, whispering, filling the hall with the uncanny rustle of voices preaching insanity. Finally my gaze fell to the object at the opposite wall from the entrance, mirroring the placement of the beautiful statue from another sanctuary, however, this time I couldn’t see what it was – the bright source of light behind it was blinding me. It was something like a cut straight and sloped slab of stone, almost vertical, two lengths tall and one and half wide. Around it ponies sat silently and still like statues, shrouded in torn clothes. Somehow, I felt drawn to it.

As I was making my way past the pews to the sacred stone I began to see something lying on it… a body. From nowhere came an avalanche of emotions. Grief and turmoil, giddiness and joy. I sped up and, breaking my gallop, stopped in front of the monolith.

The dessicated body of an earth pony, dainty hooves crossed on the chest. The smiling face with an expression of the purest and the most genuine mirth. The curly voluminous mane long enough to reach its flanks, the tail just as long, and despite both being touched by streaks of silver amidst the rivers of fuschia, vibrant as if time itself forgot about their existence. The coat, shining with pink even in the lavender glow of the cressets.

The cutie mark – three air balloons, two cyan and one yellow.

Unable to avert my eyes from the sight before me, through tearless sobs, I squeezed out only one word.

“Pinkie...”

Suddenly one of the shrouded figures gasped loudly and came to life. A pair of glowing violet eyes, wide from shock, stared at me from the depths of the hood.

“Twilight Sparkle?” whispered a slightly familiar shaking voice. “Is that really you?”

Author's Notes:

I don't have a lot of news at the moment. Chapter 10 is being edited. Chapter 11 is finished, but untouched. I've started working on chapter 12, but hasn't accomplished much yet - this week was tiresome. Fortunately, I've taken a two week leave which starts this Monday, so I may be able to not only finish the 12th, but either to write one more or return to the side projects.

Aftersound Project Discord server - it's a little community dedicated to discussion of the story and whatnot. Everyone is welcome to join.

As usual, I appreciate any feedback, and if you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.
I hope you enjoyed reading this story so far.
Stay awesome.