//------------------------------// // 30 - Heart of the Mountain // Story: Death Valley // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// When they’d first arrived, Amanita had thought Midwich Valley was the jaws of the earth. Now she knew that Midwich Mine was its gullet. They were going deeper and deeper and deeper, the miniscule scraps of light from the entrance getting swallowed up by the pitch darkness. The rays from their horns danced around the rock walls and the cart rails, occasionally glinting off a gem in the wall or a scrap of metal that was still smooth. Arrastra’s echolocative chirps and clicks started out piercing, but gradually simmered down to occasional white noise. There were occasional side drifts splitting off their shaft; Arrastra ignored these in favor of going straight. The earth itself was consuming them. With every step, Amanita felt the air around them grow thicker and thicker, ever so slightly; she had to push herself forward, leaving her at the back of the pack. The rough, rocky walls weren’t closing in, but they were ready to. According to the death certificates, no one had died in here in centuries, but death surrounded her all the same. Sounds were magnified, echoing back many times over. The tunnel’s wooden supports didn’t seem nearly strong enough to hold up the weight of the mountain above them. If there was a cave-in, the only way to see from the outside would be a blocked entrance. There weren’t even any lights besides their own. It looked an awful lot like the mine where Circe had attempted to rejuvenate her phylactery. “There’s a lot of gems in here,” Charcoal whispered to Amanita. “Hmm?” Amanita stalled, hoping the distraction would continue. “Gems! Look at them!” Charcoal pointed at one of the gems sticking out of the tunnel wall. “That’s a lot, even for Equestria!” Amanita couldn’t remember if she’d seen any gems in Circe’s mine. Probably not. “Related to the ley line?” “Probably not! Ley energies don’t always align in the right ways for gems to form more than usual.” Charcoal wrenched one of the gems from the stone and examined it. “Oh, and it’s a nice gem, too. Look at all the tacits. Facets.” She turned the gem around and it glinted oddly brightly in their horns’ light. “Good for mana reservoirs.” “Mmhmm.” Circe had told her to shun mana reservoirs most times. Said they were a crutch and she needed to rely only on herself for her pool of magic. If she ran out of reservoirs, she’d be screwed, but she’d always have a bit more magic. But then, Circe had been an earth pony, “boundless energy” was kinda their stereotype- “This would be so useful for magic experimentation,” Charcoal mused, examining the gem closely. “Look at the faces, it could store a whole lot of energy… And I bet its internal structure is really neat under a microscope…” She shrugged, tossed it over her shoulder, and kept walking and whistling. There went the distraction. The mine looked like Circe’s. That was pure coincidence, of course — there were only so many ways a mine could look — but that was where Amanita’s mind went. She remembered a march of thralls to the main chamber. She remembered her master doing things that would make most ponies vomit. She remembered how she’d set off a chain of events that had led to Circe’s capture. “You doing okay?” Bitterroot whispered. “I…” As bad as the things she’d seen had been, if anything, the last mine had been Amanita’s finest hour. The moment she’d fully taken back control of her life and decided to face the consequences. “I think so, yeah.” So if she could manage dropping a mountain on a lich when she was all alone, imagine what she could do with friends around her. (Hopefully not kill them.) “Are you?” It was just a place that dredged up memories. Three moons ago, necromancy had dredged up memories, and now she was fine with it. She could do this. And if she needed help, she had it. “Yeah. Really.” “Alright. Let me know if you’re not.” Almost on impulse, Amanita took the deepest breath she could, trying to feel it. The air in the last mine had been ugly and musty; this air was surprisingly clear. Or not so surprisingly. Divine patronage explained a lot of things. This definitely wasn’t Circe’s mine. Hopefully, its main inhabitant was more friendly, even if that was a low bar to clear. More and more tunnels branched off, but Arrastra’s route continued to take them straight in. The entrance wasn’t visible anymore and it was impossible to tell distance. For all Amanita knew, they could’ve been miles in, a tiny sliver of a tunnel in the vast bulk of rock that was the mountain. How far in was the Deormont? How far in had Pyrita run? …Had Pyrita run to the Deormont? Bits and pieces started fitting together and dominoes fell in Amanita’s mind. “Pyrita died in here,” she heard herself say. Vocalizing it helped make sure she was getting it right. “Over a week ago. The day the line shifted. She was running from something and her heart gave out.” She could feel the attention of their little party shift. Furtive glances, ears angled towards her, walking directions angled away. Arrastra slowed her pace for a brief moment, quietly letting her catch up. “Then she came back out, but… she wasn’t like her. She said strange things and fell into a coma. She was healed eight days later, then she hanged herself the next day. But I couldn’t resurrect her. Because that wasn’t her. She’d been in Elysium for too long. So… what if the Deormont had taken her body out for some reason?” “Like… possessed her?” Bitterroot asked. She tilted her head and rustled her wings. “It’s a, it’s a god, puppeting a dead body’s not that much of a stretch, probably,” Amanita said. She wasn’t sure if she was responding to Bitterroot or continuing her own thoughts. “Assuming it has a reason. Tutelaries don’t- experience- things like us, right? So if Pyrita was the Deormont doing its best… Code, I… I think the Rite of Brave Spear might’ve pushed it towards a more mortal worldview. Do, do you remember your incantation?” Immediately, Code recited, “‘It is by these actions we may hold her all and drive out the fugue that doth hold her in thrall. This pony’s mind healed; this I humbly implore. May she speak to us as she did once before.’ Hmm. If I was focusing on Pyrita’s wellbeing, but casting the ritual on the Deormont… Tutelaries often work heavily in ideas, and the ritual may have pressed enough to push it into a physical perspective… which explains why she woke up. …Ha. I cast a healing ritual on a god.” “And, and the Deormont did something, so it didn’t need Pyrita anymore.” Amanita knew she was rambling by now. She couldn’t care less. “But it works on ideas, and the general idea is that ponies leave the world by dying, so it did that, and then I couldn’t resurrect Pyrita, and Arrastra-” Wait. Her light flickered. “Arrastra…” Amanita raised her head. Everyone was looking at her. Except for the pony at the very front of the pack. “You knew,” Amanita said quietly. Arrastra didn’t say anything and her pace didn’t change, but she lowered her head and her ears folded back. “When I told you that the resurrection failed. That Pyrita had died in the mine. You knew the Deormont was down here. You had an idea of what was going on. You knew.” Amanita’s words weren’t accusatory; they were too flat to be anything but factual statements. “…I… I didn’t fully ken in reason, but… I had me an inkling. And… I didnae like the inkling.” Arrastra swallowed. “Blamin’ youn was easier,” she said quietly. “Yeah,” said Amanita. “I know the feeling. Morals kinda fall away when it comes to somepony you love. I… didn’t become a necromancer on a lark.” The air grew strained as they walked. Arrastra kept looking forward, but Amanita didn’t know what to add. The walls were getting smooth — not like carved rock, but like modeling clay. Charcoal took a look and tapped it. Her hoof left trails in it. “This is telling. Tailings,” she muttered. She turned her hoof around to get a better look at what was on it. “Or something like it.” A long-ago conversation pinged Amanita’s brain. “Rock fertilizer,” she said. “One of the miners said they recycle the tailings into rock fertilizer.” “Wait, really?” The tunnel echoed with the jump in Charcoal’s voice. “But that’s-” “-probably done by the Deormont,” said Amanita, wiggling a hoof in her ear. “I had the same thought.” Charcoal tilted her head, wiggled her ears. She licked the mulch on her hoof. Then she called out, “Arrastra? Does the Deormont turn tailings into rock fertilizer?” Everyone gave her a look. Except Arrastra. “I- I presume so, aye,” she said. “I- nair worked with it.” Her voice was shaking. “Oh, that’s neat,” whispered Charcoal. She wiped her hoof down on the ground. “That’s really-” Arrastra suddenly stumbled to a stop and dropped onto her haunches. Hanging her head in a hoof, she gasped out, “Oh, stars above, I’m s-sorry. You’uns were such- such wheelhorses, an’ I never did nothin’ but cuss y’all out. I-” She sucked in a breath and turned around, her eye flashing in the light. “I’d like tae apologize tae you’uns proper-like when we’re out,” Arrastra said. “You’un especially, Amanita. Not now, it ain’t the time. But it’s a-weighing me down somethin’ fierce.” She set off again, deeper into the mines. Amanita lightly pushed past the others to trot up to Arrastra. “I get it,” she said. “Your, what you did, why, and now not being the best time. All of it. Just, just so you know.” “Thankee,” said Arrastra. Chirp. “I know I might not… look like knowing when something isn’t the best time, given- how I talked to you after Pyrita’s death-” “Y’were on the right path,” said Arrastra. “I reckon ye do look like that.” Her voice was a mixture of jokey and pained guilt. Amanita huffed out a small laugh. “Just- know that I do know, and we can talk about it when some mean things said in the past are the worst thing we have to worry about.” Now it was Arrastra’s turn to snort. “Thankee.” They walked on. It was getting warm; the deepest mines always were, even this far in the North. And not just warm for Tratonmane in the winter, but early-spring-day-in-Canterlot warm. If they stayed too long in here, they’d start sweating beneath their furs. There were fewer and fewer hoofprints on the ground as they passed into more unused tunnels. Arrastra’s path started to zig and zag into narrower passages with rougher walls. And Amanita felt something in the air. Nothing major. The scent of air just before rain. The slightest breeze on a humid day. The hum of a levitation spell cast a few yards away. She knew they were getting close. Bitterroot had been to one of the Canterlot-hosted Summer Sun Celebrations, back when those were still a thing. She hadn’t expected anything all that special: Celestia being graceful and the sun rising. The usual, really. She’d just thought she needed to go to it once in her life. But when she was actually there… She’d felt the magic that hauled up the immense mass of arcane energy that was the sun and moved it through miles across the aether, all the way to her bones. Sheer power had suffused her. It was awesome in the original, Classical sense, before it’d been diluted down to “kinda neato”. It was unforgettable, even though it had only lasted for a few seconds. This was like that, nonstop. The deeper they moved into the mine, the more she felt the power spreading throughout it. The mountain was practically dripping with it, to the point that licking salt from the wall was probably a potion by itself. Any gems dug up would be saturated through with magic. Her wings twitched. Ley line. What was she expecting? Before them, Arrastra came to a stop at the edge of a cliff. Bitterroot knew there was a cliff there before she had any evidence. As she moved forward, she began picking out the slightly echoic sounds of a cavern. Amanita sent out a ball of light for more illumination. They were standing at the edge of a pit boring above them and below them into the mountain. It was large, just large enough to have a small house dropped down without touching the sides. Above, it vanished into darkness; below, Bitterroot knew there was a floor fifty or sixty feet down. If she squinted, she could almost see it. Arrastra gestured down into the pit. “The Deormont’s down there. Ye dinnae have nae flames, do ye? There’s coal dust aplenty down there.” Bitterroot’s wings reflexively tightened. Even she knew that coal dust and an open flame could have explosive results. Her coat tingled. Arrastra set off down a path that spiraled down the pit wall. Bitterroot swallowed and followed her. Each step she took felt familiar, one she’d tread dozens of times before. She walked with the surety of descending the stairs at home as the energy around her grew more palpable. And when they were nearly at the bottom, Bitterroot realized that they were walking down an unfamiliar rough-hewn path in the dark, yet nobody else had stumbled, either. The ground was even more familiar. Unlike the path, she’d seen it in Amanita’s memory projection. She could place crags, tunnels- “Pyrita died down here,” Amanita said. Arrastra stiffened and turned around. “W-what?” she asked. “Pyrita collapsed right there when her heart gave out,” said Amanita, pointing at a nondescript patch of rock. “That’s where she died.” Slowly, apparently unconsciously, Arrastra walked up to the patch and pawed at it. She set her muzzle to the ground and closed her eye, sniffling. “Least she was close,” she said, rubbing her eye. “Close tae that,” she added, heading off the obvious question. She pointed to the center of the room. It was nothing special, just a stalagmite standing in a puddle of water. But as they got closer, Bitterroot could see that it was closer to a channel, filled with water. It was flat and had neither entrance nor exit, yet the water flowed, around and around and around. “This here’s where we looked us out the Deormont.” Arrastra’s voice was quiet with reverence. “This is where we can speak with it.” She bowed deeply to the stalagmite. “What’s with the…” Charcoal gestured at the channel. “Why’s there water here?” “Because water always finds its way,” said Code. “And it has worlds on all sides of it, above the surface, below the surface, in the reflection.” She craned her neck to look up the pit. “There’s probably a stalactite up there, dripping down onto the stalagmite here. With each drip, it hangs a little lower and the stalagmite stands a little higher. And one day, they’ll be connected. Everything about this place is bringing two worlds together. This is absolutely where you’d contact a god.” As if the pit wasn’t dramatic enough. Bitterroot paced around the stalagmite. Given something to look at… the notion of the Deormont wasn’t quite so scary. It had a thing she could focus on. And all the power around her? She’d just compared it to Celestia, hadn’t she? She’d seen Celestia all the time. The idea was big, imposing, borderline ominous. But “visions from a god of the land” was more reassuring than “my mind is falling to pieces and I don’t know why”. It almost felt like she had a connection. Like she was about to peek beyond the veil. And hey. She’d been beyond the veil twice, so she had experience. “So here we are,” said Arrastra. “What’re ye plannin’ tae do?” Code took a seat on her haunches, staring at the channel. “One of us needs to commune with the Deormont so we can communicate with it.” Bitterroot’s wings twitched. That… sounded like something she could do. Maybe. She was seeing the Deormont’s sigil everywhere already, she was used to it. And if she could keep someone else from going what she’d gone through? Sure. Yeah. “Ah.” Arrastra pawed at the ground. “If’n… ye reckon that’s needed.” “I’m not taking this lightly. This could be dangerous. Contacting a god from another realm of existence.” “Aye.” Arrastra bit her lip. “As fer… whoever’s steppin’ up, I-” “I should do it,” said Code. “I have the most experience with alternate planes.” “I should do it,” said Bitterroot. “I have the most experience with the Deormont.” “I should do it,” said Charcoal. “I have the most experience with land magic.” A pause. Everyone looked at Amanita expectantly. Her ears twitched and she shrank a little. “I, I already know it shouldn’t be me,” she said in a smaller-than-usual voice. “You all have really good reasons for this and I, I’m just a necromancer. Just a necromancer. If you, uh, want me to do this, I can, it’s just… If we’re all volunteering, I’m the least qualified.” Immediately, Code started talking. “I mean no offense to anyone,” she said, “but I have experience with these sorts of beings-” “You said I was having a divine revelation less than an hour earlier!” said Bitterroot. “Doesn’t that mean something?” “Perhaps, but you said it was-” “I have, I have experime- experience with the land!” Charcoal said, waving a hoof in the air. “The Deormont’s a god of the land, so-” “You don’t know spirits,” said Code. “There’s more to-” “And you don’t know the land! You didn’t even know how to work the-” “But you didn’t see the Deormont’s symbol everywhere,” said Bitterroot, “you don’t know how-” “AI!” Arrastra’s yell practically roared through the pit and everyone jumped. Echos kept leaving and returning for nearly a minute. Once actual silence returned, she said, “Bitterroot’ll do it.” “Why?” asked Code, nearly demanding it. “I’ve seen-” “The Deormont chose her,” Arrastra said matter-of-factly. “Did she tell you’uns about her- brand?” “Yeah.” Bitterroot rubbed her neck. “I told them.” “If’n- If’n Pyrita was the Deormont, then it marked ye wi’ its own sign an’ left once it had. Ye were chosened by it. I didnae ken why. Mebbe ’twas fer this.” Arrastra gestured at the channel with a wing. Chosen. Huh. Bitterroot hadn’t started noticing the crossed circle until after that brand, had she? She tried to remember what Pyrita- what the Deormont had said to her, but words escaped her. Yet a god had marked her, even if that marking was… troubling. Did all this make her a Chosen One? Not in the usual sense, but it was funny to think about. Still… even if she wasn’t the best person for the job, the Deormont had picked her. Code seemed to be coming to the same conclusions. One of her rear legs twitched. She hung her head and groaned. “I could’ve talked to a tutelary,” she mumbled. “Flippin’ rickin’…” “I…” Arrastra shook her head. “I ought tae have told ye, the firs’ day. ’Twas plainer’n day an’…” “A lot of stuff happened in the next ten minutes,” said Bitterroot. “I forgot to tell everyone else about it for a while.” Arrastra’s sigh was laced with frustration and regret. “Ach, ain’t nae good frettin’ about now.” She raised her head. “So how’re ye goin’ tae dae this?” “Just drink some of the water,” said Code. Bitterroot flexed her wings. “Really? That’s it?” She glanced at the channel. Aside from the way it kept flowing, it didn’t seem magical. “Well, what you’re really doing is imbibing some of the Deormont’s cross-reality border into yourself, thereby drawing yourself closer to it, but just drinking the water is sufficient, yes.” “Alright then. Here I go.” Bitterroot swallowed. She’d died. Twice. Surely she could drink some holy water. She walked towards the channel, acutely aware of all the eyes on her. The energy of the place thrummed around her. It didn’t seem to be coming from the channel; it didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere. It was just… there. Midwich Valley wasn’t coming from anything. There wasn’t anything special about the water besides the symbolism. Right? She looked down into the channel. The light from her lamp reflected off it like it would any other flowing current. She could see down to the bottom, just a few inches. She could see her rippling reflection, unsure and anxious. It was just water. Muscles tense, she bent down and lapped at the channel. It was tasty and cool, but that was it. Bitterroot raised her head and the water trickled down her throat. Nothing more. She didn’t feel any burst of magic or any other unusual sensation. It was just water. Or was it? She waited. Nothing. It was refreshing, though. Bitterroot awkwardly turned around to face the others. The Canterlotians were all looking at her anxiously, while Arrastra looked like someone who was watching someone else commune with their god would look like. Bitterroot really didn’t feel like she was communing. “So, uh…” She nervously licked her lips. “What happens-” She went limp.