The Key and the Gate
Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.
—H. P. Lovecraft, The Festival
Forty-nine steps. Twilight Sparkle picked up the marker she left on the frozen ground before she began circling the gaping hole in the ground. She squinted her eyes in frustration and levitated her journal from her saddlebag, jotting down the unlikely number next to the three others she recorded on her previous revolutions that day. The hole appeared to silently judge her actions, taking stock of the newest bright mind seeking to pry its secrets from its grasp. But above all else, the hole remained still; that was its chief mystery, unrivaled even by its strange permanence.
For although there are many untamed places in the world exhibiting fabulous and otherworldly magic through arcane means not yet understood, most of them have roots that can be traced in histories or fables, and all but a scant few appear to serve some function regardless of ponykind’s comprehension of them. With regard to this—and so many other things—the hole was unique. It was already there when the trailblazers of legend traced the outlines of this land on their maps, and in all of the recorded time, nopony could find proof of it performing any malicious action. Perhaps in those most ancient of days some primitive culture worshiped it as a sign of divine intervention, but many millennia must have passed since then, for in the present day the only ponies making pilgrimages to it were the disciples of knowledge, bearing on their backs complex scientific apparatuses in place of offerings.
Twilight Sparkle was the latest of such acolytes. Reassured by her recent successes, the scholarly mare recently embarked on the journey to the frozen North, following in the hoofsteps of Starswirl the Bearded and the Princesses themselves. Where none of them had found any success, she resolved to prove herself—such was the ambition of the genius young unicorn, matched equally by her desire to explain the elusive mystery of the place.
But now she was stuck, making very limited progress in the three days she had spent in the desolate cold thus far. Twilight retreated to the cozy wooden cabin one of her predecessors built a short distance away from the hole itself. She lit up the candles and proceeded to reheat her rations for the day. This took considerable effort as fires seemed to suffocate quickly and produce little heat in the vicinity of the hole, as was first proven by the great scholar Morari the Maneless during her stay in this forlorn place. It wasn’t just the temperature of the research site, either; the flames sputtered and died under the pressure of an invisible hoof gradually dousing them even when one blew on the crackling fire to provide it with more oxygen.
At the same time, Twilight thanked the weird inertia of the location for making her stay moderately tolerable as she took her meal in silence. Cold winds typical of places in the North were absent here, and no soul witnessed the sky ever snowing near the hole in the earth. The frozen earth surrounding the stone shaft was far preferable to the meters of snow covering every inch of the ground in every direction. At first, Twilight was feeling mildly claustrophobic—walls of snowdrift caging her in like a cell in a jail—but the anomalous weather made for an almost ideal testing environment.
Twilight left her house before she finished chewing the last bite of her lukewarm sandwich, trotting briskly to the hole’s edge. She circled the mouth of the well again, dropping a short stick to the ground at her hooves at the twenty-fifth step. Though she could clearly see it from the opposite side, all of her attempts at telekinetically moving it amounted to nothing; something was stopping her magic from ever reaching its target, silencing it swiftly and without a trace she could follow. Having realized that, she opted for a different approach, closing off her magic circuit and letting a powerful charge build in her horn. When the spell was strong enough to crack the walls of Canterlot Castle, she let it out in the direction of the brittle stick.
The sparkling ball of condensed magic crackled and thundered violently for the shortest moment before sputtering out and fizzling mid-flight. Twilight merely scrunched up her muzzle in mild frustration; the powerful field of passive anti-magic spreading over the hole had been known for generations. She tore a page out of her journal and rolled into a ball for her last test. Grabbing it with her magic, she willed it to appear next to the stick. Although very few ponies could attempt teleportation, Twilight was among the more capable practitioners of this spell, and transporting a small object would have been trivial under most circumstances.
With a flash of light, the paper ball was gone. But it hadn’t appeared on the other side of the pit; no, a quiet pop announced its reappearance to the side and high in the air. It fell down gently and stopped a hoof’s reach away from Twilight, who recorded the result in her journal. “Absolutely no teleportation!” said the warning in capital letters she hastily added to her growing list of her observations, most already having been made by other ponies in the past. Feeling disappointed with herself for yet another unproductive day, she retreated to her cabin and the warm room upstairs where she made her bedroom.
Twilight woke up refreshed but no less frustrated, this time by the vision she had so vividly observed during the night. It was the same dream she kept on having since she arrived, something no scholar warned her against in their notes. In the dream, she would wake up and approach the hole to peek over its edge, but just as she was about to take a look, the dream would end and she would wake up. It didn’t matter if, in the dream world, she hurried to the hole immediately or stopped to prepare breakfast; the vision always shattered right as she was about to peer into the abyss.
But she had different plans for today. Equipped with a large shovel she held in her magic and wearing especially warm winter clothes, she trotted away from the silent void, wearing a determined expression on her face. Buried in the snow near the border of the hole’s strange weatherless zone were traces of older buildings that were only mentioned in the oldest oral reports—the kind predating Equestria and any organized form of magic study by hundreds of years.
Twilight tried to melt the snow with magical fire, and to her surprise found that it was not very difficult to do so—the dousing grip that hindered her attempts earlier manifested here as a barely-felt breeze at the back of her mind; nothing like the oppressive stillness that could be felt closer to the hole. As more of the structure revealed itself, she noticed that all of the water from the melted snow flowed back into the surrounding glaciers rather than towards the hole, and so although the land seemed perfectly flat to her, she reasoned that it ought to have a slight tilt responsible for this peculiarity.
The building was fully uncovered before noon, its unpainted wooden walls giving it the undignified appearance of a particularly large shack. It had the shape of a vaguely rectangular lump, made of sturdy, darkened logs with no gaps left for windows, but with a single towering stone door and a roof standing at twice the height of a typical Equestrian single-story house. Nothing else about it could be discerned under the dimmed light of the northern Sun, for the weather was perpetually cloudy in a large radius surrounding the hole, and even the noon was grayer and dimmer than the evening in the wholesome parts of the land where the skies were managed by the pegasi.
Giving the walls a light push with her magic first and her hoof second, Twilight confirmed that the logs held firmly in place, the frigid temperature preserving them through the centuries in this abandoned corner of the world. She adjusted her saddlebags and produced some light from her horn, excitedly making hurried notes describing the mysterious building of which there was no mention in any of the reports from the last millennium. Not for the first time she felt her heart tighten at the lack of company with which she could share this new discovery, but she quickly quelled the painful longing; her friends had no business with some ancient ruins lying lifeless in the deep North, and the success of her mission required her utmost concentration. When she finished a rough sketch and a short description of the shack, she tentatively pushed the stone door—wanting to get a look at the secrets its architects sought to protect, but at the same time disbelieving her monumental discovery.
Instead of opening smoothly, the heavy slab came crashing down into the building, and Twilight found herself unable to discern whether it was because the hinges suffered more greatly from the cold and the passage of time than the rest of the ancient construction or if the primitive structure lacked them altogether, depending on its former masters to move the colossal stone. She trotted over the door, which had broken in half from the impact like a shattered seal, and wove a variety of subtle spells into her surroundings in the hopes of detecting any signs of disguised traps or other dangers. Although it was not the first time her adventures had taken her to a long-lost place, she still had to constantly force herself to act more carefully; yet it was not possible for her to remain entirely calm in the face of such momentous a discovery.
The spells she had cast returned no warnings aside from revealing the existence of a staircase hidden beneath the floor, so Twilight lit up her horn brighter and boldly entered the forgotten ruins whose existence eluded even geniuses like Starswirl the Bearded. But her enthusiasm quickly waned as her hopes threatened to be misplaced, for the lone room contained nary a magical artifact nor a tablet explaining its purpose; only enormous gray bowls and stone knives the length of swords lined up against the walls. It was an important find, no doubt, but not of the magnitude she was hoping for, leaving her to focus only on the shoddy trapdoor covering a part of the floor opposite the entrance. Looking at it more closely greatly disappointed the until-then-excited mare, as the trapdoor was made from thin planks and evidently constructed much later than the rest of the building, proving that she was not truly the first to uncover it.
Not yet relinquishing the hope that a clue might be found that would shed much-needed light on the mystery of the hole in the world, Twilight slowly approached the trapdoor with her horn’s glow dying on the darkened logs of the colossal edifice. The obsidian-black walls, reminiscent of a chapel raised to honor some nameless deity from the antewindigian era of the world, bore a cracked texture and a glossy gleam which marked them as charred by a flame that consumed the building in ancient times; not a sliver of unburned wood could be found in sight, and at once a great irrational fear of being entombed in solitude under these primeval ruins overcame Twilight’s body, freezing her on the spot. Yet the mare reasoned with herself that she’d made sure of the firmness of the building’s construction before entering it and that whoever tried to destroy it had clearly failed to do so, never returning to finish the task. With those thoughts to bolster her shaken spirit and the light of her horn to illuminate her path, she steeled herself and resolved to descend into the unknown.
The trapdoor swung open with a loud creak that reverberated through the open space of the building, revealing a flight of huge stairs fading into the pitch-black darkness where they wound deeper into the ground. They were crudely hewn from great stone slabs that resembled the door to this ancient dwelling, but their surface was polished by the countless pilgrimages they must have witnessed over the ages. It was an uncomfortable descent for the mare, with the steps too high for her to traverse normally and yet too short to make her determined progress feel anything other than glacially slow. She was briefly tempted by the notion of utilizing teleportation to expedite her progress, but she quickly dismissed the idea as irresponsibly reckless. The creatures that built this forsaken place couldn’t have been ponies, and though it appeared that they entirely abandoned it long ago, using powerful magic in their domain could very well trip warding charms or even awaken the long-asleep protectors, if any lay dormant in the ruin; and in any case, saving her strength was the most judicious course of action. Quietly she continued scaling the stone surface, and the deeper she went, the more jagged and menacing the features on the tunnel’s walls became, morphing into twisted spikes that seemed to hungrily reach out to slake their thirst were she to ever slip.
After an amount of time that Twilight couldn’t discern as minutes or hours long, the stairs began to widen until they opened to an underground chamber. For all that the scale of the passage and the room above inspired awe, this final chamber dwarfed them in size manyfold, its cyclopean columns supporting a roof stretching too high for Twilight’s light to reach. Princess Celestia’s throne room could fit inside the cave without removing its massive pillars, yet unlike the crude corridor that led her here, every inch of the walls was precisely chiseled and polished with meticulous care. Perfectly spotless as it was, illuminating the massive chamber cast Twilight’s reflections on every nearby surface, some seeming to watch her with anxious excitement while in the expressions of others she swore she could read subtle contempt or outright disgust.
The unicorn was unperturbed by this, however, and dismissed the fancy before it could cast venomous doubts over her mind; since she was by now quite certain that the hidden place contained ancient mysteries that had never been recorded or witnessed by any of ponykind. She strode briskly between the mirror-like columns and their multitude of errant reflections, keeping her sight ever forward—away from the inquisitive gazes of the other Twilights that accompanied her journey and which appeared to lean in closer the farther she went. Arriving at last at the end of the monumental chamber, a set of thrones emerged from the shadows in front of her—three on each side, all carved from obsidian so dark that it swallowed nearly all the light of Twilight’s horn. They were grander than the seat of any ruler known to her, and their backrests were profiled such that the dark mirror images followed her movements in obeisance as she approached the dais presiding over the six.
Yet what she found on the dais unsettled her greatly, for instead of a throne she saw an ornamented bronze cauldron, and behind it a great bas-relief diptych was carved into the wall. The cauldron stood out amidst the thrones chiefly because of its size, but in the way opposite of what Twilight would guess even a moment earlier—it was small, barely larger than her, though with its rim styled to look like a crown and the legs shaped after a pony’s hooves it appeared greatly ominous. She walked around it to better observe the scenes it obstructed, suppressing the shuddering building at the back of her spine at the sight of the stone panels. Both of the bas-reliefs depicted the hole and seven gaunt creatures with sprawling antlers on their heads; six were wearing long robes and carrying knives identical to those she found above, while the seventh was much shorter than the rest and had only a bronze crown that it proudly wore on its temples. Six bowls were placed at equal distances around the hole, their shapes sharp and angular, and six piles of wood burned crudely below the bowls birthing six pillars of thin smoke that fed the suffocating clouds above.
In the first panel, the robed pilgrims were gathered closely around the kingly figure; their blades were bloodstained and eagerly outstretched, and an unpleasant symbol that made Twilight’s eyes water was marked in several spots on the seventh’s body. In all of this, the hole was depicted as larger and more imposing than it was in reality, with the added teeth-like protrusions giving it the appearance of an insatiably hungry maw. The second panel showed the hole small and asleep in the wasteland and a quiet procession of seven departing from the place. The contours of their ruler were lumpen and its proportions were off; without the crown on its head, its gait was that of a young foal unaccustomed to walking on their own. But there seemed to be much greater detail in its second depiction, and when Twilight leaned in closer to look at the creature’s vague expression she found herself captivated by the sight. Its vacant gaze bore an uncanny resemblance that encouraged her to shine more light on the wall as she took the journal out of her saddlebag to write down her first impressions. It was often prudent to commit these early ideas to paper, before pervasive complacency and academic expectations would grind them down to the more easily understood, simplified theories.
Quickly she realized her error and shut off the light of her horn as she fell back on her haunches with a gasp; her eyes went wide with terror when the carved monarch took on facial features that were indeed very familiar to her. She tried to convince her distressed mind that it was merely a trick of the light reflected off of the primeval bas-relief, that she was seeing resemblance where there couldn’t have been any; yet even when she finally calmed herself down and collected her thoughts, she couldn’t muster the courage to illuminate her horn and risk catching another glimpse of the terrible panel that had filled her with stark dread. Having stumbled over a protrusion in the complete darkness of the underground chamber, Twilight tumbled down from the dais and stopped only at the base of one of the towering obsidian thrones. Though the threat of attracting the attention of some unnameable thing loomed large in her still-shaken mind, the dull stinging above her left forehoof convinced her to pierce the black veil of shadows with a small light spell as she gathered her bearings.
The feeble purple glow illuminated her surroundings again, and Twilight watched the trickle of blood on her hoof in disbelief—each of the thrones had a previously unseen matching obsidian bowl laid in front of it, with spitefully-cut edges so sharp they could cleave a pony in two; during her fall, her neck stopped only a hoof’s reach away from a jagged, guillotine-like rim. But unlike the bowls she recorded in the room upstairs, the ones near the thrones weren’t empty. They held a waxy gold substance whose oily scent seemed to pierce through the endless mass of rock above Twilight’s head and evoked images of the world’s most distant shores; but of its true nature Twilight could tell no more at a glance. She hastily scrubbed the surface with her pen, peeling off a few thin and brittle flakes to analyze in the safety of her provisional cottage.
Twilight left behind her the malignant thrones and the unsettling bas-relief, urged by the growing feeling of not belonging that was starting to take root in her conscience. Through the tenebrous chamber with its unseen ceiling and cyclopean columns she half-trotted and half-galloped, and at more than one point did she look behind her to dispel her worries and stay her beating heart. But although no creature real or imagined followed her steps, the visages of her reflections glared at her from every surface; their heads bobbing in rhythm with Twilight’s galloping conveyed such disapproval that she felt at once helpless and ashamed. The cut burned whenever she put her weight on her hurt foreleg, but she dared not make any other sounds, for interrupting the hallowed peace of the primeval chamber suddenly seemed greatly disrespectful to her. Even the clopping of her hooves made her uneasy, those very hoofsteps returned to her as an echo accompanied by a far-off whining of lutes unlike any she’d ever heard.
It was only the stillness of the grand stone corridor that somewhat abated Twilight’s fears and let her catch her breath. She stopped not a moment too soon, a long spike aimed right at her neck where the passage took a sharp right turn. Having escaped the unknown threats lurking in the void of the ancient depths of the earth, the rest of her return journey proved trivial in comparison. Twilight paid barely any attention to the barbed walls and the colossal shack that led her to these great and terrible halls, taking a break only to confirm that the bowls she found upstairs were made of the same black stone; a layer of soot kept the dark volcanic glass opaque and unassuming. The latch to the basement locked in place with a loud clang of its iron lock, and Twilight dragged some of the discarded tools on top of it to make sure nothing would escape behind her back. Her nerves were frayed and her hoof still hurt whenever she inadvertently put too much weight on it, but as Twilight safely closed the door of her cottage, she couldn’t be more excited—she’d found secrets nopony else had, and she’d taken the proof of her adventure with her.
In the night her sleep was troubled, disturbed by the same dream she had dreamed since her arrival at the site of the mysterious hole. The gray sky was clouded and let no rays of light pierce it, coating the world in a drab aura that failed to resemble either the hopeful sunshine of Princess Celestia’s day or the calming moonglow which the Princess of the Night attended to since her return. She eventually proceeded on stiff hooves closer to the gaping edge of the world’s most ancient maw, but stopped when she spotted an easily overlooked detail out of the corner of her eye. Six equidistant spots along the rim of the hole were blackened, and when she tried to focus her sight on the spots’ nearest surroundings, a cold shiver ran down her spine as if she were being watched. In that nighttime clarity, Twilight understood that something had been missing for a long time, and that she herself held the key to a puzzle waiting for somepony exactly like her—to a puzzle waiting for her. A sense of sudden urgency overcame her as she trotted to the hole’s edge and solemnly promised in her mind to help whoever was asking for assistance in this strange way. There in the depths lay the mystery, its beating heart pulsing like a drum, calling out to anyone and anything with a keen mind. As Twilight leaned in to peer into the hole, a cold wind blew and whispered an unearthly sound like a great chorus of voices wailing in desperation. She looked inside… and woke up.
With a heavy hoof did Twilight pen the message in which she asked the Princess to be retrieved from the North, even when something deep inside begged her to stay as long as she needed to finish her inquiries. But she pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind where they wouldn’t bother her any, and walked outside of the hole’s anomalous magic radius to send the letter without further delay; a day or two still awaited her in the cold and forgotten part of the world before the Royal Guard’s extraction party would arrive. Yet the fragments of the previous night’s dream still lingered fresh in her mind, guiding her to bolder decisions. She trotted to the oversized, charred shack with its ancient basement. The knives and bowls she piled up on the entrance to the tunnel were untouched, and the spells she wove into the ground reported that nothing aside from her crossed them the previous night. Swiftly the makeshift barricade was disassembled, for the tools seemed to have a mind of their own and gladly slid aside to reveal the awful wooden hatch.
The unexpected ease with which Twilight was able to continue her journey didn’t stop when she descended from the bulding; the writhing stone corridor appeared to be less hostile as well—its turns less numerous and the spikes not so close to the traveler. Not even that ageless chamber of prodigious size would slow her down, and its walls were covered by a thin layer of silky golden dew that both made it shine splendidly and hid the reflections that taunted her on her last journey to this place. Although the small cut on her forehoof pulsed with dull pain from the moment she set hoof inside the underground chamber, Twilight reached the six obsidian thrones in less than a passing moment, but before them she stopped for a longer while. The terrible stone diptych she still dared not approach, unsettled by the unpleasant memory of seeing it for the first time, yet she held no such wariness for the towering mighty seats whose shapely peaks painted gold by the dew looked almost pleasing to the eye. From their bases she took one of the filled bowls, and a warm and comforting feeling spread through her body as soon as she grabbed hold of it with her magic; she understood that carrying it to its destination was, without a doubt, the right thing to do. The bowl was light as a feather, letting her levitate all six of them at once. Turning around with them in her magical grasp, Twilight promised the empty throne room that she'd bring the offerings back as soon as she finished testing her hypothesis.
Of the return journey she remembered even less, save for the overpowering nostalgic smell that the golden substance exuded even in the open air. Carefully she put the bowls in the same places that were marked in her dream, and though there was no trace of the scorch marks in reality, a queer premonition struck her when she was done; at once she saw the six ghastly figures from the bas-relief approach the bowls to stand watch over the hole. But the vision was gone as soon as it came to her, and she was alone in the cold and desolate wasteland once more. The overpowering fragrant smell did not abate, however, and Twilight found that it had a profound effect on her senses; the hole was suddenly less indomitable and unapproachable in her eyes. She saw that a masterfully crafted spell from the primordial ages obscured it from view, dulling the onlookers greatly and driving their thoughts away from any ideas that could lead them towards a greater understanding of its secrets. She carefully took a small chisel from her saddlebag and struck the stone mouth of the hole with it, gathering a few small chunks that split off. Not knowing what the other effects of the golden incense could be—and suspecting that it was some form of an ancient drug—Twilight retreated to her cottage to better study both it and the rock chunks from the hole’s entrance.
The stone held its secrets firmly, refusing to relinquish any scrap of lore under even the most scrutinizing of Twilight Sparkle’s examinations; years spent in academia with the brightest minds of the world failed to prepare her adequately for the study of a rock that expressed an extraordinary intrinsic desire of not wanting to be studied. No definite conclusions could be drawn, for every time Twilight came close to understanding something more about it, she found herself inexplicably and persistently distracted by some other matter; and when she returned to her studies, the epiphany was long gone from her mind. In all of the remaining hours of the day, her sole success turned out to be dating the elusive stone—it was as old as the oldest minerals unearthed in Equestria, and perhaps even more ancient than that. Although every geologist living in the civilized world would consider that an impossibility given the inexorable drift of the tectonic plates, Twilight was not surprised in the slightest; even the world’s very foundations had to respect the hole and the spell binding it from time immemorial. It had been there when the first hooved leg made its shaky steps under the old stars, and it will be there long after all traces of ponydom are erased by the implacable passage of time.
Twilight sighed heavily. The final whole day of her scholarly seclusion was over. By the same time next day she’d be leaving in a comfortable chariot, bound for the homely warmth of Equestria with the news of the largest discovery of the century. Yet she couldn’t shake off the feeling that her quest was a failure and that she was on the precipice of revealing to the world some deeper truth that lay buried since the dawn of time and might never be found if she were to give up now. With those thoughts at the forefront of her mind and pitted against her better judgment, she took in her magic one of the golden flakes peeled from the inside of an obsidian bowl, levitating it to her face. Its pleasant, aromatic scent filled her cottage quickly, her sole candle cackling eagerly as it was allowed to burn bright for the first time; but Twilight was the most surprised by the candle flame’s appearance, in which bright hues of Equestrian sunrise could be seen as clearly as the far-off shores she smelled earlier. When she put the thin flake on her hoof, it began to melt into a warm liquid that resembled molten gold in its consistency—quickly did Twilight gather it with a spoon and, without daring to hesitate or think her actions through, drank the spoonful of the magnificent substance.
At once her consciousness left her body and traveled far through time and space, granting many visions overlapping each other so that she could only remember a scant few scraps of each. One moment she was leading a charge of tall deer with sparkling antlers whispering terrible magic and cold, desperate faces whose fearsome gazes were locked on a deep darkness ahead; then in another second she sailed an impeccable white ship towards the shore that would become Baltimare in time but was devoid of civilization yet. Somewhere far behind her burned the ashes of the last silver city. She tried to get a better look at her spindly limbs when a vista of the Crystal Empire flickered in and out of existence in the red glow of her horn all around her, tiring her out; then a white hoof in gold armor helped her rise to her hooves in the midst of utter chaos. She smiled back and reached out towards the Princess, but was instead met with a quiet, sinking darkness and a sensation of the Elements’ magic being conducted through her divine being. She adjusted her hat and left the ruins of the Everfree Castle, the chiming of her bells piercing the night.
Twilight bolted upright. The memories were fading fast, but nowhere could she find her journal; instead, she saw that the door to her cottage was open and that the hole was extending its appalling call towards her again, quiet as a whisper but irresistible nonetheless. She proceeded outside in a dreamlike daze, forgoing winter clothing but not her research saddlebags, and in her addled state, she witnessed the six bowls of gold memories tilt to her with the movements of invisible hooves. They were silently yearning for somepony they could divulge their greatest secrets to, sharing with her the lore of forgotten aeons and the ones who moved the world in those times. There were no trees nearby to be harvested for timber to fuel the fires, but in a moment of supernatural clarity Twilight was made aware that regular fuel wouldn’t work in the first place; only the tribute of her own memories could burn bright enough to stoke ancestral flames. She pulled the pages of her journal, one after another, and piled them below the ancient bowls; one spark set them all aflame. The fires burst with a disquieting eagerness, devouring her notes as the crackling wind whined their secrets.
Yet none of those secrets reached the brilliant Twilight Sparkle, who in that very moment saw in the fumes a series of crude rungs forming a spiral staircase into the hole. They were raised directly from the stone wall, each bearing traces of old magic with the casters’ distinct spell signatures that marked their creators as true masters of their craft, and touching them, Twilight could do no more than wonder at the cunning patterns by which the comparatively simple spells were woven into the magic-resistant structure of the hole. She marveled at their forms in their undiminished state and looked around for the source of their enchantment’s magic. Above every step, a separate niche was dug or chiseled into the stone, later covered to fully entomb some manner of artifact; her magic quickly sensed yellowed hunting horns as large as her head and bronze spearheads owing to violent cultures of pre-Equestrian origin. She adjusted the tiara holding the Element of Magic atop her head before she began the slow descent.
As she passed farther into the black chasm of the hole, the steps and the nature of magical artifacts began to change. Though there were still many implements of war, basalt tablets replaced them as the most common kind of item, soaked in primordial creation magic from being used to conduct newly-discovered spells thousands of times. The air grew thick with resonant reverberations that the nearly savage magic spread everywhere around her, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that Twilight was able to move at all. The descent became harder still as the distances between individual steps continued to grow to almost pony-sized heights, though the rungs themselves were getting more ornate by the second, with the unmistakable flourish left on their creations by those whose pride demanded their extraordinary skill to be remembered. An incessant whisper at the back of her mind insisted she ought to leave immediately, but its pleas were drowned out by the golden haze hanging over the hole and seeping into it, trailing the steps behind and in front of Twilight like a spectral procession. Great drumbeats of war—grim heralds of doom—sounded out in her ears whenever she brushed her hoof against the wall; vicious knife blades thrummed hungrily in the walls next to every step, neither calmed nor sated despite their millennia-old interment.
It could not have been much later that the hole fell silent all of a sudden. Darkness so deep it devoured the light of her horn surged like a tidal wave, and in its caress Twilight felt the grief and longing of a civilization ended. Yet still she pushed on, all alone in the depths of the frozen wasteland, crawling lower through the dark on uncertain hooves, for the one walking beside her urged her to seek the truth hidden at the very bottom of all things, and Twilight knew she’d never come to this place again. The steps were replaced by simple and roughly raised outcrops of rock held in place by artifacts made of flawed gemstones and tree branches soaked in old magic. Though the simple spells they were imbued with were of distinctly Equestrian origin, Twilight could feel no reprieve at this change, such was the intensity of their ominous auras and their single-minded intention. Down they seemed to guide her with familiar words, bringing her closer to the stilled heart of the aeon-old mystery; she followed their counsel, unable to discard the notion of being caught exposed in the peripheral vision of something far greater than her.
The yellowish, waxy mist that had followed her thus far enveloped her like a blanket, and the feeling of being watched passed as quickly as it came. But even then, she could no more bring herself to peer over the edge of the stairs than turn around immediately, and she kept her eyes peeled to the wall of the hole as she descended semi-involuntarily towards its greatest depths. It was, perhaps, the reason why she recognized the antique regalia of the unicorn royalty, carelessly lying among all the other artifacts, entombed in the stone in their slumber; and she paused to take a better look at the amethyst brooch of Clover the Clever, long thought to be lost to the ages, though a sense of urgency still prodded her onward. She reached out to the enchanted gemstone with an inquisitive wave of her magic, where it crashed against a protective spell unlike any she’d seen in her life, tugging wildly at her magical reserves before she managed to interrupt the connection.
Yet the irresistible pull of disquieting magic wasn’t gone. It sang to her sweetly in wordless pleas, enticing her with mystery and promising illicit knowledge, and like a close friend, it warned her of the dangers lying deeper still. Eagerly did Twilight listen to its tempting whispers, having journeyed too far to turn back or risk failure, and with a swift hoof she took a small and shining pocket knife out of her saddlebags. The golden wind whistled sweet assurances in her ears, softly guiding her magic to trace six strange sigils across her coat; never deep enough to draw blood, for the ephemeral companion hinted at the disastrous consequences of spilling it in the lifeless abyss.
A weight was at once lifted from her mind, and an unexpected lightness possessed her; a faint gust carrying her downwards until there were no more steps left. They ended suddenly and without warning, leaving ahead of her only the unpenetrable void that not even the golden mist could enter, but that Twilight knew obscured the answers she and all the other explorers before her so desperately desired to unearth. Digging in her hooves, she opened her mind, and gold, gold, six times the opalescent gold heeded her call. Defiant and triumphant in its glory, her blazing purple magic striated with gold as it struck the gaping nonexistence ahead, grasping the eternal boundary and forcing it to relinquish control of the stone for an instant. But an instant was all she needed to bend the primeval magic and form six even steps in the place where nothing was allowed to change. The golden-eyed unicorn proudly descended to examine her creation, with her head held high as the wind clung to her like an opulent robe or a gown, and the silent fluttering of its creases sounded louder than a thunderstorm.
Her confidence turned to folly as soon as she set her last hoof on the stairs she had created in her display of mastery; the stone groaned and began to crumble beneath her hooves as the vast nothingness bore down unswerving on her from every direction and every forgotten point in time, her heart stilling beat by beat against her will, her hooves frozen solid to the cold ground, her mind filling with dreadful vistas of an immediate oblivion and an eternity of overwhelming loneliness. Almost too late did Twilight realize her mistake, for although the steps leading down were indeed there, the protective embrace of the golden wind dissipated, and nothing was guarding her against the ancient spell she violated with her magic. Before her mind shut down from the horrifying onslaught, she tore the tiara from her head and flung it at the silent wall, where it smoothly slid into the rock, stopping before it could sink too far. The stairs stabilized at once and freed Twilight from the torment that the spell had subjected her to. Bereft of both the wondrous guiding gold and the precious artifact that had protected Equestria many times before it came to be sacrificed in exchange for her safe return, Twilight ran. She ascended hundreds of steps in silence so deep that it devoured even the noise of her frantic escape, and, when she could run no more, she ignored all caution, teleporting herself through the final stretch of cyclopean steps. At that moment the dingy wooden shack appeared to her more welcoming than her own library home in Ponyville.
Muted daybreak found the unicorn stirring uneasily in her bed and awoke her from yet another ominous dream that she found far too realistic for a mere vision after her terrifying encounter of the previous night. In a futile attempt to keep her mind from wandering back to that frightful memory, she busied herself with opening a letter bound in a red ribbon and the seal of the Royal Guard that had arrived overnight. Making her way downstairs, she picked up her torn notebook and considered what to write in it; for although her inquiries had brought a staggering number of revelations regarding the nature of ancient magic and the mysterious hole in the abandoned wasteland, she could not find the right words to explain any one of her strange discoveries. Carried by an idle curiosity, she wandered again to the edge of that gaping wound in the land and was not surprised when the steps she used to descend weren’t there anymore.
Were it not for the slight itchiness of her skin in places where the guiding influence of the golden wind urged her to draw the strange sigils, and for the naked absence of the Element of Magic in her saddlebags, Twilight could believe that it, too, had been nothing more than a dream; she was still subconsciously trying to convince herself of that despite the proof at hoof. But regardless of the true nature of her journey, a stray thought wormed itself into her mind; suddenly, it occurred to her that her research could be finished within moments. No longer did she feel that overwhelming desire to turn around and leave the hole alone, and furthermore, she was certain she could finally do what her dreams had been showing her since her first night at the site. Twilight looked around guiltily and moved closer to investigate the hole. A mighty gust of wind hit her from the side, but the six markings glowed and amortized the impact with a keening shrill of a broken spell before the unicorn’s head poked over the abyss’s edge. Just as she looked into the inscrutable blackness below, a hoof pushed her with surprising force. A sharp and disquieting sound of tearing split the air like a thunderbolt, and Twilight slid over the edge into the maw, feeling much lighter all of a sudden.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, but no sound followed her into the hole. The magic died on her horn like a snuffed out candle, and her hooves froze to her sides, frail and weak with age as she felt herself falling into timeless depths—but her mind remained awake, imprisoned in her skull and set ablaze by the faintest implications relayed to her in that brief moment where she felt the touch of the hideous hoof on her skin. Like a burning purple comet she tumbled downwards and downwards, a pinprick in the fabric of the enchantment woven into the hole, leaving behind her both time and the comforting confines of that which ponies believe to be reality, but in truth is merely an ephemeral caprice of boundless cosmic blasphemies. Many more fell beside her in this timeless procession; hundreds that came before her time, and hundreds that were yet to be born—all united in their singular purpose. Together they burned and wept and reveled, a hidden torch raised in a nameless prayer beyond their comprehension.
With the greatest of efforts Twilight dared to break out of that voiceless chorus, looking onward to where all of them have been heading since the creation of the hole. The fall was not without an end, and ahead of them many things waited, piled up in an offering; though in this greatest of shadows where light could not reach it was difficult to make sense of any details, and many of the items she wouldn’t recognize even in direct sunlight. A tip of a familiar dark blue hat adorned with bells caught her attention, lying on top of an indistinct off-white pile. Twilight followed its outline, discovering in the process a pointed, alabaster object that was even more recognizable, but that her mind refused to comprehend at first. Then the realization washed over her and Twilight screamed into the void again, wishing to forget the sight of the huddled remains and the horn that used to fill her with awe all her life.
She frantically scrambled and pulled at her body to at least turn around and spare herself the terrifying vistas of bones and garments hoarded at the bottom. To her surprise, she was partially successful, leaving her to stare at the infinitely shrinking single point of light an indiscernible distance above. With supernatural clarity she saw a lone, misshapen figure looking to its sides in complete confusion as it donned a thick lavender coat split in six spots. The shambling creature hurried away from the hole on its ungainly hooves, leaving Twilight to notice her own—shiny and deathly white, exposed bone with no skin or muscle to cover them. She had no air in her empty lungs to scream with.
Then a new thought formed in her mind. As the last vestiges of light disappeared, she couldn’t shake off the sensation of being idly watched in a way that no one should be capable of seeing. Her mind was laid bare with the almost playful curiosity of a foal following the movements of an industrious ant. Before her sanity collapsed at last, a new epiphany emerged from the chaotic confusion: the hole was not a maw, but a keyhole; and she wasn’t falling in, she was falling out.
Twilight rose from her bed and groggily shambled downstairs, though the persisting itching under her skin would not leave her at any point. Still half asleep, she put on winter clothes to protect herself from an intense snowstorm raging outside and left the cottage, motivated in part by the unsettling dream that woke her up and by the certainty that everything would go back to normal once she’d finished her sacred duties. It was still morning when the six bowls had been carried back to the grand cave chamber, and the fireplace had already been built in her absence. She lit it up and undressed swiftly, leaving clothes and skin alike on the black volcanic glass and letting the fire warm her bare form. Six foreign voices whispered to her in their shrill language—her advisors, her friends—and though not a single word reached her ears, she blushed at their honest gratitude and congratulations. The crackling fire reflected off of her head, adorning it with an illusion much like a grotesque crown, or perhaps an outlandish halo with spikes and jagged edges.
She scooped up her skin and reverently placed it into the cauldron, leaving it to let the fat gently melt and simmer on the low heat. When the rendering was finished, she strained the solids and evenly poured the rest into the six bowls of golden memories. By the time she had finished, her head was spinning, and her memories were weighing heavily on her in the thick mist that arose. Her skin snapped in place with a comfortable sensation of wholeness, every curve fitting just as it was supposed to. Satisfied with a mission fulfilled, Twilight smiled and waved to the empty room and its inhabitants, leaving it for good.
The very first thing Twilight did after coming back to her provisional cottage was take a long, thorough bath. The pegasi who would escort her to Canterlot could arrive at any time now, and for some reason her entire coat was slick with something disgusting and repulsive—black and charred residue that smelled like death. The entire expedition to the North had proven to be a massive waste of her time; she was about to head home with no new contributions to the study of the cryptic hole in the world and nothing else to show for it. She grunted and stepped out of the bathroom. Her journal was of no use, either; all of the recent pages were removed or scribbled out in black ink, and whatever she could read looked like delirious nonsense unrelated to her research. She could trace it back to the time when she experimented with ingesting some of the strange substance, although she couldn’t recall what it was or where she got it from. Twilight reasoned that it must have been something she brought with herself, perhaps gone bad from the proximity of some of the artifacts she took as tools.
There was something else, too. Once she packed everything for the return trip, her saddlebags were lighter than she remembered, causing her to go through the list of her possessions two more times to ensure that she wasn’t forgetting anything. Promising to never come back to this forgotten corner of the world, she left the only shelter for miles near the site and embarked towards the assigned meeting point. Though rain or snow were never observed anywhere near the hole, the sky was gray and the air strange, and no pegasus wanted to fly anywhere near it. With an annoyed shrug, Twilight rolled her eyes. If she couldn’t discover anything in two weeks, then surely staying nearby for two hours wouldn’t put them in any danger, and the snow under her hooves made the trip unpleasant. There was nothing she wanted more than to leave that place and eagerly forget it, returning to her friends in Ponyville.
And in the endless depths, separated by an insurmountable distance in both space and time, something stirred, its bridge six steps closer to completion.