The group of nine of us filed away from the sleeping quarters through the common room, the mirror room, and then into the passageway we had found.
Given my assigned role as the defacto leader of this weird expedition, I took point into the tight space, followed closely by Spritelight who wanted to be one of the first to figure out whether her idea of a tuning crystal was correct or not.
The hallway clearly tilted upward to a higher floor and seemed to have no end to it until I hit a turn leftways.
I turned the corner, then was almost immediately met with another turn leftways.
I turned the corner again to find another long passageway up.
There was nothing to it but to follow this further, leading us closer to the tip of this rough pyramid-shaped temple.
With it buried under the soil of Yellowstone Park, there was little I could say about its actual shape from the outside of it. It could be styled more like the Egyptian pyramids, or more like the Mesoamerican ones.
In either case, this passageway once again ended in a corner, this way bending to the right, and another corner like it following directly behind it.
If I could judge where we were in relation to the mirror room, we might be dead center above it now.
The remainder of the hallway ended when I walked up to a stone facade, a circular carving set in the middle of it. A thin support coming up from the bottom center of this circle led up to a diamond shape. A widening beam projected out from this diamond's right upper facet to the edges of the circle surrounding it again.
I moved to my left as much as possible in the cramped space, turning my head a bit to glance back at the unicorn following me.
"Another hidden switch for this door? Or how does it open?" I wondered.
Spritelight tried squeezing past me, and I had to press my legs together to give her enough room to do so until she had managed to pass me by.
She studied the logo on this facade blocking our way, then looked to the wall left and right of it with a pensive look on her face.
"I don't... honestly know. Let me try to sense what is going on," she offered.
Her horn glowed stronger as she tried to find a hidden mechanism in the stone surrounding us, her magic scanning the area in a slow but deliberate fashion.
Now having felt her magic at work twice before, I could actually feel the way she sent ripples of energy around her as if it was a form of echolocation, relying on the feedback from it reflecting back to her to give her an indication of what the state of things was.
I waited for her to conclude her investigation, and watched as she put her right forehoof up against the diamond shape in front of us.
"There's a very thin, barely noticeable split straight down the middle of this diamond. I'm pretty sure it's two doors closed up so tightly together that it appears to be a solid wall. If I just push here," she listed as she pushed her hoof forward.
The facade before us split in two, both sides swinging open as smoothly as if they were guided by electronic motors, until I could hear them 'click' in place when they met with the walls inside the space they had swung open into.
"And that's now locked open, huh..." Spritelight commented, daring to take the first steps into the room ahead.
I followed to find a square room, the ceiling of which was a stepped inside of a pyramid shape upward, leading to a single point in the center of the room. Directly below it, held in place by a circular harness suspended from the ceiling by two metal wires, was a large crystal.
Spritelight opted to turn clockwise around it, and I decided to go counter-clockwise to allow the others to file into the room as well.
As I rounded the crystal, I counted the facets on it; four triangular faces on top, four similar ones below. The metal ring held itself to the widest part of the crystal at the four tips there.
The crystal itself was almost fully clear, with a blue sheen to it like it was a type of glass which was expertly crafted to let through only a specific wavelength of light. I could tell it wasn't glass, or not any that we humans would consider such. This thing was something crafted with magic, using a technique long since lost to time.
I peered through one of the facets at the others filing into the room and staring up at it in as much awe as I must have. Their bodies appeared warped through the prismatic effect of the crystal, their colours different from how I knew them.
The blue coat of Rainbow Dash looked more purple, yet had a green shimmer to it. Pinkie Pie's pink coat appeared far more like a red tone, with a yellow sheen to it. It was a wild chromatic shift I had difficulty coming to terms with, so I turned my eyes downward in the hopes of finding the hole leading to the mausoleum and the mana well present there.
There was a cap on the floor beneath the crystal; a very clearly marked ring surrounding a small cylindrical stop which was cut in four sections. Each section was seated on a small shelf of sorts, itself embedded in a gutter in the floor. Nearer to me, and several of the others in the room with me now, was a small hoofhold mounted to this shelf as if it was a mechanism for pulling the four sections apart.
"It's an iris. A very old style, but an iris nonetheless," Spritelight commented, having snuck up to my right side again. "That ring can only be removed by magical means; there's a ward on it. Once it's removed, these sliding sections open up the passage below so the mana well's energy can project up into this crystal."
I gave a nod to her explanation.
"Yes, I can see how that works. So this thing has not loaded itself up with the souls of the dead below, then?" I queried, feeling a little more relaxed now I supposedly wouldn't have to fight the effects of such.
"Doesn't look like it, no. This crystal is pristine. It looks like it remained untouched from the day it was made and placed in this room. I'm not sure it has ever been put to use," she breathed with barely held back awe. "I have never seen anything so precious in my life. Any archeologist, or student of magic of yore, would give their left foreleg to find something like this."
"It's a virgin crystal," I realised from her words. "Left here by its creators in the hopes it would never have to be used?"
"Pretty much. But that gives us a new problem; it is an untested crystal. We don't know if it will do what it was created to do," Spritelight pointed out.
"It looks like some glass we use here on Earth; in our case it blocks out ultraviolet light, but this does something different? It's got a weird prism effect," I pointed out.
Spritelight stared into the crystal directly, and I could see others looking right back through it at her.
"Four sides, eight facets total. There are nine of us; two earthponies, two unicorns, two pegasi, two alicorns, and one Discord," spritelight listed. "Four of us can fly, four of us cannot. Discord is the odd one out, but we can each take a facet beside that."
"Oh, what, you're going to exclude your dear old teacher now we're getting to the fun stuff?" Discord whined.
"I don't know what this crystal is going to do, and that scares me to no end," Spritelight commented with great respect for the item before us. "There are only eight facets, unless you're seeing something we're not seeing?"
"No, no, you're right. Of course you're right," Discord sighed sadly. "I'm sure the ponies who built this place didn't take little old me into account when they built this."
"Did you even exist on Equestria when they ended up here? Were they aware of your existence?" I noted, recalling some things the Draconequus had let slip. "This was obviously meant to be a last stand sort of thing for them, here on a hostile world. You can't hold it against them that they forgot to include you."
Discord wandered around the room, taking great care to evade each of the ponies staring at the crystal and listening to Spritelight and myself trying to make sense of it. His shape warped and changed hue every time he moved from one facet to another, and I followed him with my eyes as he did.
"It sure is a work of art, isn't it? Each one of these facets bends the light in a slightly different way. Each facet aims the light at the center of the crystal so they all individually see what every other facet can see," Discord pointed out as he made a full circle around the room.
He finally finished his observation and decided to lean his feline paw on my back, in-between my wings, making a point to lean in forward so his face was inches away from mine.
"This crystal works much like those cute little elements of harmony, if you ask me," he whispered to me. "Each facet connects to the pony standing or hovering in front of it, and imbues them with a different frequency of mana from the well below. Using it will change you, and I cannot say in which way."
He seemed genuinely worried for a second, but then pulled away with a theatrical spin. "Oh, how exciting! I can't wait to see what you ponies can do with this little toy, but alas! Poor old Discord is not invited to this party!"
I turned to face him, but he poofed out of existence and re-appeared on the other side of the room, hugging his arms around Pinkie Pie and Patty Cannon's shoulders both. "I'll just have to rely on you both to fill me in after the fact, hmm? Make it the best party this world has seen in the entirety of its existence. I know you two are the best ponies for that job."
Discord gave them both a wry smile, then disappeared again and reappeared in the doorway, giving a bow in our direction. "And with that, I bid you all an adieu. But not before I leave you with a parting gift."
Spritelight opened her mouth to speak, her eyebrows lowering in a frown, but she was interrupted as a shudder went through the foundation of the structure we were in and our stomachs sank with the feeling of a sudden application of G-forces applied to them.
We all instinctively sought to widen our stance, to keep from falling, and then the feeling subsided again.
Discord chuckled darkly and gave a look around the room.
"Always the bridesmaid, never the bride," he spoke with a sad undertone to his voice, then tapped both doors on either side of him with the palms of his oddly-shapen hands.
The stone slabs broke away again from where they had been sat against the walls, then closed up the doorway with the Draconequus on the outside of it.
Now it was just the eight of us inside this awkward room, left with a crystal and no idea what that weird feeling in our stomachs had been about.
"That was... awkward. That was awkward, right? Wasn't that awkward?" Turkey asked out loud, looking around.
"No, that was a bit too much like a last farewell. You're absolutely right about it being awkward. Kind of sad, too. I'm not sure he liked having to leave," April responded.
"Yeah, well, I'm sure we can do this without him. Twilight and us have saved Equestria from certain doom before, and I'm sure we can do something like that here, today, for your world," Rainbow Dash professed in an attempt to bolster our spirits.
I could sense a slight quiver in her voice as she spoke. Discord acted very much against what I knew him to be like. He had been all over the place, emotionally, since we met again here in Yellowstone.
This temple was a far bigger deal than he let on, and being unable to sit in on this final stage of our fight had very clearly hurt him.
"So, one facet for each of us... maybe we should take up positions," I spoke, trying to take on my role as a leader. "Let's spread around a bit; earthpony, unicorn, earthpony, unicorn to start us off with. None of you can fly so you're taking the lower facets."
There was some shuffling of positions as Pinkie Pie moved to swap out her position with April, leaving the group to be Patty Cannon, Spritelight, Pinkie Pie, and April in a clockwise fashion.
I considered how to best connect the next group. "Okay, so... we two Alicorns should take up position above the earthponies. Rhonda, sorry, Patty Cannon and me are very much connected but I feel like I should be on the opposite side of the room from her. That way our facets directly face one another."
Cadance gave a thoughtful nod to that. "I agree. I will hover over Patty Cannon to be opposite Pinkie Pie then."
"Thank you," I answered to her. "Turkey, you have a connection to Spritelight. Get up above April so your two facets link up opposite in a similar fashion. Then Rainbow can come here over Spritelight to match with April."
Some more shuffling around as the pegasi in question moved to their initial positions and took flight.
I gave a quick flap of my wings to get airborne and took up my own position over Pinkie Pie while Cadance took flight on the other side of the room as instructed.
"Okay, you four on the ground should open up the iris once we get started for real. I'm not sure what will happen once we get to that point, but this room was very obviously designed for this. Spritelight, I'll have to ask you to remove the ring since you have an idea of what kind of magic is holding it in place."
"As you wish, Josey. Good luck everypony," Spritelight spoke out loud.
The nervous tension in the room grew as she let her magic flood to the ring before her. I had to peer past the crystal and its support ring to see what was going on, but it looked as if the ring disintegrated as her magic hit it, leaving no trace of it behind.
"Put your hooves in these grooves here," Spritelight told the others on the ground with her. "When Josey says go, we'll pull the sliders toward us and open up the iris."
I glanced around the room, wondering just what would happen to us all once the mana from below poured into the crystal and, through it, into us.
I felt extremely hesitant to give the order, sick to my stomach actually, but I had come this far and there was no going back now.
Whatever was going to happen, was planned centuries ago by the ponies who built this place. Whatever was going to happen, had been meticulously guided by fate to get us all in this place, at this time.
I had to bury these feelings of trepidation, bury the doubts, put up a masque to give strength to the others looking to me for guidance.
As an Alicorn princess, they needed me to be the regal figure to rely on. The one to make the decisions and take the responsibility.
"Go," I commanded.