The bolder stood there, like an unmovable sentry, looking out over the landscape that sprawled out under the ledge. The moonlight shone over its rough, jagged exterior, making it shine slightly as bits of light bounced off of more polished bits of its rocky skin. Silver was patting the rock lightly, as if it were a prized gem that needed to be handled with extreme care.
"It's a rock…" Earthroot was laughing as he spoke. He was trying to lighten up the situation, even just a little bit.
"…It's a bolder…but that does not matter!" Silver was getting annoyed by all the joking about how he had brought all of them there just to see a rock. "What DOES matter is what is BEHIND this bolder!" Silver pointed out that there was an indent in the mountain wall behind the bolder that stood there.
Quill stepped forward and examined the wall closely. He nodded as he saw that the bolder did, in fact, block an opening in the mountain, affirming Silver's claim.
Silver looked back at the others. "SEE! Quill sees it! So…who is going to help me move it?" He looked at Pyroneus and Earthroot expectantly.
"Ok…let's move your glorious rock." Earthroot chuckled as he stepped and positioned himself to push the rock. Pyroneus just nodded and stood next to the bolder, ready to push it whenever the others were ready. Silver smiled and put his fore hooves on the bolder, ready to push.
"On the count of three…" Silver instructed the other two stallions. "One…two…THREE!"
All three stallions pushed the rock with all their strength. The bolder refused to move at first, but after a moment, the bolder shifted, rocking at first, and then eventually rolling slowly away from its original place of rest. As the bolder moved, a small amount of light began to shine out of the hole which the bolder had been guarding. Once the opening was completely uncovered, the three stallions stopped pushing the bolder and sat back, catching their breaths.
After a minute of heavy breathing, Silver spoke up, "This is what I wanted to show everypony." He motioned toward the opening that was now sucking in air, creating a low howling sound. "And no, I do not mean the opening; I mean what is at the end of this tunnel." He finished in a slightly annoyed tone while looking at Earthroot, who chuckled lightly in response.
The walk through the cave had been long and tedious, but surprisingly well lit. Two lines of magically lit gems followed the cave further into the mountain, giving off a soft white glow as they traveled deeper into the cave. Every now and then they would see one or two gems that were no longer giving off light, as if they had either been skipped, had the magic sucked out of them, or had finally used up all their magic and returned to their normal, non-lit state of being.
It was obvious to all of them that the tunnel, at least in the past, had been well traveled, considering the number of light-producing gems and the smoothness of the cave walls. The wind was still blowing past them as they walked deeper into the mountain, as if there would be no end to the amount of air the mountain needed to inhale to fill its lungs. Silver was trotting happily through the tunnel, humming a soft, yet joyful tune to himself as they went. Ocean kept examining the gems, noting the intensity of magic that filled the gems that lined the walls. Pyroneus just kept walking, silent and observant, as he always was. Crescent Quill was making mental notes of everything he saw so that he could later write it down in his notebook. Earthroot was also looking around, but seemed to tense up the further they got into the cave, as if something were bothering him.
After about fifteen minutes of traveling, the wind seemed to die down as a slightly brighter light began to grow closer to the group of friends. Silver immediately quickened his pace out of sheer excitement, while the others sped up to keep up with their leader in this adventure. As they got closer to the light source, Silver sped up into a gallop, and through Silver, the rest of the group began to gallop as well.
They all stopped as they reached the end of the tunnel. There, shining magnificently before them was a large chamber. The chamber was a large, half-sphere room with elegant patterns made of different colored magical gems flowing across the rock walls. None of the patterns made any sense, however, because portions of the designs had gone blank from the gems losing their light. In the center of the chamber hung a large orb that was constantly changing colors, as if it were alive. But the most magnificent thing they saw was what filled the chamber. Along the floor of the giant half-sphere was a city. Smaller buildings lined the outside edge, by the walls of the chamber, and steadily grew larger towards the center of the room. At the very heart of the city stood a tower, higher than the rest of the buildings, which touched the glowing, multi-colored orb.
The group stood on the ledge that over-looked the city for several minutes, most of which trying to comprehend what they were seeing. Silver just stood there, looking between his open-mouthed and amazed friends, and the underground city they were so amazed by, a large grin across his muzzle. This was exactly the reaction he had been hoping for.
Their amazement was soon replaced by horror as they reached the edge of the city. Corpses lay everywhere. Some ponies had been ripped apart, some blown apart, and some, none of them even wanted to imagine what happened to some of the poor souls who had once lived down in the underground city.
The first body they came across had its legs ripped off and one hoof shoved through its skull. The next had its head imbedded in a wall not far from what remained of the rest of its body. Some looked as if they had simply exploded; bits of bones and body parts scattered across large areas. The whole scene disturbed each of them. "WHY WOULD YOU WANT US TO SEE THIS!?" Ocean yelled at Silver after the first few bodies.
"I-I didn't come down here when I found it…I didn't know this was what we would find…" Silver was in a state of shock and disbelief when he answered, having only seen the city from the opening and then gone and sealed it so that he could explore it with his friends later.
The further they went into the city, the worse it got. Bodies chopped in half by swords, heads hacked off with knives. Not even the newborns were spared the nightmarish deaths; a baby Pegasus had its wings ripped off and seemed to have been thrown approximately 3 stories down to its demise. The deaths seemed to get worse the closer they got to the tower, which they all seemed determined to reach so they could find out what had caused all of this death and devastation.
The dead were not the only things that greeted them as they moved towards the tower. Dark black mushrooms sprouted from seemingly random places throughout the city; the middle of the road, off the side of buildings, and they filled the occasional alleyway. The fungus seemed to pop up all over the place, in various sizes, ranging from as big as a pony, to as small as a bottle cap.
"I-is it possible that the spores could have caused these ponies to go so homicidally insane?" Quill was actually the pony who spoke up, asking the question on almost all their minds.
"No, this is just your average mushroom that grows in caves, especially caves with magically enhanced gems for light." Earthroot answered, his voice filled with confidence, yet shaking from the horrors that lay on the ground around them.
The group breathed a collective sigh of relief at Earthroot's answer, knowing that he knew his plant life better than almost any pony in Equestria. With that worry gone from their minds, the group continued towards the tower in the middle of the city.
The tower had only one entrance; a set of double doors that seemed untouched by the madness of the city around them. Inside, the lobby of the tower was a dull, dark gray color. Only a single reception desk sat at the end of the narrow, hallway-like lobby. There were no chairs or benches for ponies to sit on, which allowed the group to assume that it was not a very welcoming place to begin with, before the gruesome deaths began outside. What surprised them all the most was the lack of dead bodies in the lobby; there was only a layer of dust from years of being untouched.
Other than the desk, the only other object in the room was a door to the right of the desk. Through the door was another gray colored room, except, this room was a stair-well. The stairs wound upwards in a box-like spiral, stopping at a small platform in each corner of the room. There were no other doors to go into the other floors of the building, leaving only one other direction for the group to go; up.
The accent was long and boring; the only thing that kept the group going was the thought of what waited for them at the top of the tower. As they grew closer to the end of the stairs, colors began to dance in the air, turning the dull gray of the stair well into a welcomed prismatic display.
The door at the top of the stairs was wide open; with a small, wedge-shaped rock stuffed under it to keep it open. The roof of the tower was rather bare except for the middle, where the orb sat between the tower and the stone column that connected it to the ceiling. The group gazed at it in wonder; it's changing patterns, swirls of color, how it shone brightly, like a sun for the underground city.
Silver and Pyroneus were the first to step forward, towards the orb. They both walked up to the orb.
"It seems to be emitting heat." Silver called back to Quill, who was jotting down notes and recording observations in his notebook. "I'm going to touch it now." Silver looks at Pyroneus, "You ready in case something happens?" Pyroneus nods in response. Silver reaches his hoof out towards the orb and touches it gently.
It was smooth, and felt even warmer to the touch. The heat even seemed to fluctuate with the colors as they swirled and changed. Red gave off the most heat, while purple gave off the least. Silver made note to tell Quill that once he was done inspecting the orb. Pyroneus kept a careful eye on both the orb and Silver, watching for anything to change in either of them.
Earthroot and Ocean just sat back and watched as the others examined the orb. Earthroot, after a few minutes, decided to look out over the city. The view was even more terrifying than the walk through the city had been. Bodies lay in all directions, like white ants lying motionless across the ground. Several buildings were collapsed; covering Celestia knows how many other dead bodies in rubble. There were even mushrooms as big as buildings that could be seen from the top of the tower. Earthroot shuddered and stepped back, not wanting to see anymore.
After a few more minutes, Silver took his hoof off of the orb and walked to Quill. "It is smooth and warm to the touch. The heat fluctuates with the color; red is the warmest and purple is the coolest. And there's…something else in there…I can't tell what."
Silver looked over at Ocean. Her colors from the orb danced beautifully off of his marefriend's smooth white coat. He smiled and walked over to her, and placed a hoof on her back, gently rubbing her smooth coat. "Babe? Do you think you could use your magic on that orb and see if there is something in it?"
Ocean looked back at Silver, puzzled slightly, and then nodded. "Yes, dear. I'll see if I can find anything." With that, she moved towards the orb and sat down about five feet away. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, her horn beginning to glow a royal blue.