Rainbow Dash descended past the final layer of silk...
And it was so dark that—at first—she felt that her pendant wasn't piercing anything. All she saw was the needle-thin limbs of the orb-weavers clinging to her gondola, but beyond that was utter blackness. An absurd fear gripped her heart: that if her escorts were to drop her, she might fall forever into an unfathomable abyss.
There was no sign of her friends—but she knew that they were dangling out there somewhere in the great everlasting dark.
There was no sign of Merula either. She had vanished a seemly century above, riding her tunnel-weaver into the chaotic unknown. Perhaps this place was too holy for an All-Singer to present herself.
The silence was deaffening. For the throneroom of a God Tier Songstress, it was alarmingly quiet. In theory, the cushions of silk that capped-off the chamber above must have acted as a sound-proof buffer. Rainbow became grotesquely aware of the slimy sounds of her own swallowing throat—and the shifts and groans of her inner organs between each heartbeat.
She didn't dare speak—and yet she did so anyway. Each murmur resembled a gunshot, echoing outward into the blackness with sonic intensity:
"Rarity...?" Rainbow tried whispering quieter, but even that didn't help that much. "Rarity, what's... what is out there?"
In her peripheral, the shape of a pensive unicorn materialized. Her pale muzzle moved: "It... it is beautiful... delicate... complex—yet majestic."
Applejack's voice drawled across the shadows, comforting Rainbow Dash. "Reckon you could be a mite bit less poetic, Rares?"
"It is not unlike a cathedral building," Rarity declared. "With silken beams for rafters... looming inward at sharp degrees." She swallowed. "There are... constructs dangling from each lattice, hanging low from the domed ceiling."
"Constructs?" Rainbow Dash asked.
Rarity's blue eyes reflected her ruby pendant. "Not unlike the artifice that Merula used to communicate with you, darling." She gestured. "Albeit... now there are dozens of them... hundreds of them... all facing inward from where we're suspended."
Twilight Sparkle's voice pierced the ghostly moment: "She was prepared for us."
"She was prepared for something alright!" Pinkie added.
Rainbow tilted forward, hesitantly peering into the great dark. "Uhhh... Fluttershy...?"
"She's here, Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy said.
"Okay..." Rainbow's eyes narrowed. "Where?"
"Beneath," was all Fluttershy said.
Rainbow blinked curiously at that. It was then that she noticed something... or felt something. There was a warm current to the room, circling and billowing ever so slowly. What's more, Rainbow felt a flutter to her bangs—rhythmically repeating itself in flouncing motions. She leaned back slightly, and the hairs on the back of her neck felt the same rush of air, cycling in perfect cadence throughout the blacker-than-black chamber.
"Uhhhh... Fluttershy?" she rasped. "Do spiders breathe?"
Fluttershy gave her a dumb look. "Do you breathe?"
Rainbow merely bit her lip. Soon after, her ears tickled with something. It sounded at first like a hiss... then mutated into a slur. She realized it was circling around her, echoing with great intensity. And yet—due to the soundproof nature of that innermost chamber—it sounded just as quiet as a lone moth breathing down her neck. She remembered Rarity's description of the constructs, and she suspected that every silken "voice box" suspended above was working to produce the same discernible sound with triangulated precision. Slowly—one syllable at a time—the reverberations came together, solidifying into phonetic clarity.
"Aust... trae... oh..."
Rainbow Dash took a bold breath... then produced an even bolder voice.
"I am here, Abaddon," she proclaimed to the darkness. "My name is Rainbow Dash... and I am the Austraeoh."
Her mane flounced more heavily. She felt her bangs being pulled forward, then being pushed right back before repeating. The hissing sound deepened, centering upon a raspy core.
"The Austraeoh comes in darkest winter. In great labor have we pulled the strings taut so that the shattering of the circles could come to a glorious recompense."
Twilight and Applejack looked all around, seeking the source of the voice. As the words swirled onward they increased in volume, although there was a persistent sense of fatigue and weakness clinging to every refrain.
"In soundless dreams I've sampled symphonies, sporadic glimpses of the sonic shades. The spectrum has preserved the codex clean, and Ilrifa's cyclical gift made true."
Rainbow breathed evenly. It had been a full three minutes since she first descended into that darkest dome, and at last her eyes were adjusting to the degree to which her ruby light pierced the otherwise impermeable shadow. She leaned forward, staring downward from the edge of her gondola. It was then that she discerned lines... and those lines formed dappled textures. They stretched outward from a nebulous center below in eight directions, although Rainbow could not tell where they ended. She could see where they began, and that was where Rainbow Dash made out the dirty shades of an incalculably large surface of hair—with patches of leprotic imperfections at random intervals. The joints between limbs were as big as houses, and towards the front of an ice-still cranium there lingered pronounced pedipalps—like those belonging to a titanic brown recluse. The hulking body sat like stone at the bottom of a well, occupying the entire foundation and maintaining a modicum of ballet grace while the voice kept spinning cyclonically across the constructs above.
"Now as the legions of chaos battle for the sarcophagus' harmonic gem, a true seed of order makes its way here, a blessing of yore, blessed by Penumbra."
Rainbow Dash couldn't help but pivot the angle of her pendant's glow. She caught eight glistening spots across the length of a football field—anterior and posterior eyes, glossed blind from years of lingering in the dark foundation of the forsaken city.
"Many ballads have been sung but only one remains unfinished, and it beckons."
Rainbow lingered still, her breath thin.
"The Spectral symphony is near an end. Ilrifa's contribution: a solo."