Previously:
>Thrown into a mine called The Pit by diamond dogs.
>Can barely see, even with the torch you were given.
>After a bit of exploring through a cavern that appears to have been mostly stripped of anything. valuable, you discovered FIVE tunnels.
>The one on the far left had a odd, faint scent to it. Like fresh water mingled with something else.
>The one next to it had a very light breeze wafting from deeper into the ground.
>The others seemed identical and unremarkable .
>Seeing a breeze as a good sign, you took the tunnel on the second left.
>After a while of walking, a sudden gust blew out your torch. When you relighted it, you discovered Pinkie had found her way down to you.
>But she was acting weird, making up strange stories and acting rather passive aggressively.
>You try to put it aside, thinking she's just angry and keep going with her to find a huge gem formation.
>Pinkie continues to act more aggressively, saying hurtful critical things.
>Then her head exploded and her headless body tried to kill you.
>And she did, but you woke up back at the start of the five tunnels.
>But the tunnel you went down is missing. There’s only a solid natural wall now.
You are Rusty Shackleford, a human who has no memory who has found himself lost in Equestria.
Currently, you are trekking down a long dark tunnel, deep underground. Ahead of you down the tunnel is the wafting scent and sound of running water, plus some other musky smells you cant identify.
You continue down the tunnel, hoping that the water will lead to something. Or at the very least, a much needed drink of water. The tunnel arches ever so gently downwards. The temperature drops even lower then already cool underground air of the other cavern and the walls glisten in the firelight with speckles of moisture.
Suddenly, the space opens into a vast blackness stretching before you in all directions. The light of your tiny torch reaches only so far, leaving the ceiling and walls of this new area well beyond your limited vision. On the floor, you see a trickle of water flowing gently downwards, into the blackness.
You can also hear something moving; rustling foot falls and the swish of movement, mysterious and hidden from where you stand.
The danger of walking into the unknown with a strange sound and too little light isnt lost on you. But what else are you going to do?
You follow the water as it snakes along the smooth stone. Gradually the floor becomes more and more steep and the little trickle of water becomes a small stream. From your pool of light, you can see massive natural pillars of stone rising up into the darkness above. There are little terraced pools of standing water in places and even a few small out standing formations of gems, shining their colors back at you.
The steam suddenly drops off a sharp edge. Leaning over below while keeping mindful of your footing on the slippery surface, you see and hear the water splashing down below into a huge pool of water. You see your distant shimmering reflection staring back up at you.
You can still hear noises besides the water, as well as that strange smell, but nothing has raveled itself to you.
Thirst getting the best of you, you take the time to slake your considerable thirst. Scooping a handful of water, you take a few sloppy slips of the stream water. Its so cold it numbs your fingers and makes your teeth hurt, but its fresh and clean. You drink your fill.
The noises seem to be all around you now, but even as you kneel and take a drink, nothing reveals itself to you or comes into the light.
Deciding to go on the side of caution, you head back the way you came and follow the water upstream.
As you make your way back, something catches your eye in the light no far off to the side. Just at the edge of whats visible is the slouched silhouette of some form. Its definitely not a rock and you are pretty sure it is not a pony. It does not seem to have noticed you or has chosen to ignore you.
Ready to run at the lightest provocation of danger, you step over the water towards the mysterious creature, trying to raise the light high and closer in its direction.
"Hello?"
The... thing quivers at the sound of your voice. Still half shrouded in darkness, the creature shifts position and skitters away, farther into the darkness. But not before you caught a glace of a number of long slender spider legs as they fled from the light.
This seems bad. You decide to go.
You turn to leave, keeping a weary eye where the creature disappeared, in case it hops out and decides to make a meal of your spine. Caught up in your paranoia, you weren’t paying full attention to the direction you were heading.
You step on what you originally thought was the little steam, making your battered shoe damp. But in the same instant, a odd sound called out from where your foot stepped; like a mix between shriek and a low gurgle. You nearly jump out of your skin.
Looking down, you see you are not far from the little steam, now only a trickle this far up. On bottom and sides of your shoe is some kind of light blue goo. By the light of the fire, you can see it wriggling around in on your shoe, parts of it crawling off and falling to the ground, forming into a little puddle of ick.
You do your best to scrape the....stuff off of you a little outcrop of rock. Most of it comes free easy. The rest of it seems to crawl off on its own. The various little bits of goop gather together in a little squirming puddle on the ground near you. It just sits there, wiggling, for a moment. You take the torch and wave it menacingly at the goop with and it darts away from you, following downstream.
You watch it go, your heart still pounding at the sudden fright and once again turn to leave. Not far from that incident, you catch sight of the tunnel and rush to it. You reach it without further surprise.
You stand there, half in the tunnel, looking back into this cave to see if anything tries to follow you. After what you guess is about five minutes, you see nothing, but the cavern's usual ambiance of life is still about. You head back up the tunnel with caution.
You exit back to the main cave of the pit. From here, you can see the remaining three tunnels, each as menacing and unremarkable as the next.
Deciding to keep going in (rough) order, you take the next left most tunnel, which was originally the middle tunnel. But now its second left. Or maybe....no, you'd rather just not think about it.
You take the left tunnel.
Unlike the last two (or one, you're still not sure about it) this one is sloping steadily upwards, almost making you climb in a few places. As you proceed it becomes very obvious the cave is brightening up with some light source the tunnel is leading to, almost to the point where you dont even need the torch. Its.....pinkish.
You continue, the steepness of the slop and the ambiance of the light both increasing as you go. Eventually, after what feels like an eternity of rough walking/climbing, it levels offs a bit to a point in the tunnel where it widens slightly in a little natural gap. You can now look straight down the tunnel.
Beyond, what must be at least another half mile away, you can see the source of the mysterious light. Its a considerable distance away from you, but it kinds looks like a lightly glowing wall spread across the height and with of the tunnel.
You follow the tunnel the remainder of the way at a more easy pace on the much more manageable terrain. As you approach, you make doubly sure to keep an eye out for anything besides this weird pink thing, as well as looking over your shoulder to make sure nothing is sneaking up behind you. By your best guess, you think you are alone.
Finally, you reach the source of the light. It turns out its not a solid wall, but some kind of gently curved, semi transparent wall, glittering gently with pink sparkles in places. From here in its light, you dont need the torch to see and can see that beyond the wall is more snaking tunnel, much like the way you came.
You examine the immediate area around the wall. All you can see in the pinkish light is that the glowing structure melds seamlessly with the surrounding rock, like perfect fitted glass or a sliver of projected light. With some hesitation, you give it a little tap with your free hand.
You meet resistance and your hand makes a little thud when it hit, like hitting a gigantic drum, sending a low base note up and town the tunnel. But you had the weirdest sensation; it doesnt feel.....you're not sure. Substantial. It its not completely there. And you also noticed you hand did not hit surface of the wall, but kinda skimmed it a little.
Feeling the desire to press on and getting a crazy idea, you push your hand against the wall. Theres momentary resistance, but like tearing through thin piece silk it gives and you hand passes through to the other side, sending a ticklish electrical sensation up your arm. Feeling confident, you force your entire body against the wall and emerge on the other end, no worse for wear.
Though you think your hair is standing on end now.
After doing a quick check of yourself, the immediate area and finding both satisfactory, you keep on trucking down the tunnel. However, the tunnel's nice flat surface gives way to cramp, winding shifts in the tunnel's dimensions and you lose sight of the pink light as you turn a few corners. Things become steadily more haphazard as end up having to crawl on all fours in places to pass through. For a few terrifying moments, you become wedge in a some particularly tight squeezes, but are able to free yourself and emerge out on the other side.
Then you fell down a hole.
Luckily not a particularly deep one, but sliding down and landing on bare rock without even a shirt isnt a favorable experience. Coughing the dirt out of your lungs, you crawl over to where the torch fell and lift it up.
As you raise it up, its light is reflected back in a disco of bouncing reflections, seemingly from everywhere. The rocky walls, the ceiling and even places of the floor are crusted with a cornucopia of glittering purple-pink gems all around you. You are completely dazzled by the natural wonder.
You think you might have just hit the jackpot.
This new cavern is huge. Rock and crystal climb to a high, almost vaulted ceiling far above you. But unlike the last cave, the gems seems to reflect the light of your little torch in every direction, increasing the overall illumination substantially. You try to fin where you fell from, but you cant seem to find any noticeable drop offs or holes from above. Plus, all the reflectivity from the gems is giving you a strange sense of implied space, confusing your sense of direction a bit.
You explore the cavern and find that your original observation of 'huge' doesn’t do it justice. In front of you, it continues in a spectacular display of glimmering jewels in the rock, casting the dancing light of the torch on everything. There’s more gems then there can be counted. More then could be collected in a life time. A hundred lifetimes.
You're almost lost in all of the wealth, but something catches your eye not far away, something that doesn’t meld with the rest of the landscape of light; a mine cart and track. Its dull metal sits there dull in comparison to the sparkling gems all around. The track looks to twist and turn far beyond your field of vision.
You go over to the mine cart. It and the track seem in good shape, though you're hardly an expert. At least you don't think you are. If you gave it enough of a push on way or the other, you think it would be enough momentum to get to where its sloping downward and can travel on its own inertia. But where either the left or right way go, you could only guess.
The jeweled cavern stretches out in seemingly all direction. Using the track as a reference point, you guess you could probably explore without getting lost, though you don’t see any other landmarks down here with the ocean of jewels. That area seems to slop down, that area seems to be more jagged looking with the jewels, over there they're in a spiral pattern. It seems like it would be pretty easy to get lost.
You grab a near by gem that’s outstretched quite a bit and try to force it from its facet in the wall. It snaps free with a bit of elbow grease, rewarding you with nearly palm sized, almost perfectly cut purplish jewel. Seeing how easy that was and hatching a plan, you harvest a bunch more, stuffing your arms and pockets as much as you can. Treasure in hand, you set off in a random direction, following alongside the mine cart track and setting down a gem or two ever few feet like a trail of bed crumbs.
The track doesn’t seem to want to follow along with your good idea and spirals away past an incline that you cant follow. But seeing as you still have a considerable amount of gems to work with you keep going, setting down more gems to follow as you. Turning around a particularly impressive looking outcropping of glittering beauty, you notice something. Light. Gold. Movement.
A few dozen meters away, a bit above you on a terraced incline are two ponies in gold armor. They have some kind of light source with them, which is what made you notice them. On each of their sides are resting some rather menacing looking spears. Luckily, they seem to have their backs to you and are chatting with each other.
You'd rather not have to go through this whole song and dance with pony guards again and decide to act all sneaky. You want to put out your torch, but... its a torch. You don’t have any water with you and there isn’t really much to help put it out with. So you try stamping it against some gems, which kinda burnt your hand a little and getting the gems all sooty, but did eventually managed to put out the flame, leaving the torch smoking lightly. You leave it here.
You climb up the first few terraces of stone, getting closer to the ponies in he midst of conversation. Ducking behind a gem formation about as big as you just a bit below and behind the ponies, you are able to hear what they are saying.
"And then what happened?"
"Well, I just stood my ground, looked Celestia right in the eyes and said....hey, do you smell that?"
"You said what?!"
"No no no, I mean now. Do you smell that? It's like... smoke or something."
From your hiding place, you hear the clink of their armor and weapons as they shift position, you presume to look around.
You keep yourself pressed against your little bejeweled hiding spot, wishing you were smaller and easier to hide as you hear the clop clop clop of hooves and the chinc chinc chinc of armor as the ponies getting closer. The waiting kills you with dread, but chances only a few seconds have passed.
Both guard ponies appear on opposite sides of your hiding spot at the same time, not facing you and heading in the very rough direction of where you came from. Or at least you think they are. All the gems look the same and where you came from has blended in with the rest of the area.
Wordlessly, the two guards trot along, spears held at the ready in their mouths and looking around for something. In just a few moments, they are roughly as far from you now as when you first saw them.
Taking the opportunity, you get up and move as quickly and as quietly as you can under the circumstances, climbing up the last few terraces. At the top level, you see they have a little camp here. There’s a little camp fire, which must be the light source you saw. There’s a little cast iron pot with something that smells really good cooking over the fire. There’s also a bunch of miscellaneous things strewn about; some bits of armor, a saddle bag, a bed roll.
But you ignore all that, noticing that the rock and gems have given way on the opposite wall to what looks like stone that has been paved over, with a rough shewn staircase spiraling upwards. You chance a quick glance back down the cavern. You cant see the guards from here.
Wasting no time, you book it to the stairs and ascend. Finally, you can be out from underground! Fresh air! The sunlight (or moonlight, whatever). Maybe something to eat, but at this point you'd be happy just to be outside.
But instead, the stairs lead up to what can only be called a dank, reeking sewer. There’s some small paved stone pathways on either side of a flowing river of... nasty water. But there’s light! Every few places along the wall you can see ladders set in the walls, with a few rays of light shining down from above them. There’s one only a few feet from you.
Not wanting to risk jumping into... you know what, you decide to take the time to look for a bridge or crossing across. Much less risky.
The sewer seems to snake around as bad as the tunnels did, and it certainly doesn't smell any better. You wander around lost for a good five minutes or so until you eventually just find a ladder on your side of the moat.
From the bowels of the earth to the slightly more literal bowels of.....wherever you are, you have finally reached the surface. You steadily climb the rungs of the ladder and with great heft, lift the manhole cover. Struggling under the weight, you try to make a discreet peek out from under it. You don’t see any hooves standing around you and take that as good enough reason to stop holding the heavy metal lid and push it all the way off. You are greeted by the smell of relatively fresh air (you're next to a sewer after all) and in hale deeply, happy to be out.
Then you smell the smoke.
Coming to you senses you see you are in another pony town. Or rather, a city. It has considerably larger, more ornate looking buildings then the humble straw houses of Ponyville. Though like Ponyville, they both have a their own share of partially burnt out buildings. From your limited view half in the ground, you can see the street your on appears to be deserted and littered in places with rubble and garbage. Beyond the buildings and directly above, you see a familiar sight; that strange glimmering pink wall. It seems to be covering the entire area, like a city in a snow globe. You're not sure what to make of this, but you see the sun shining through the pink wall, which you take as a good sign.
You climb the rest of the way out of the sewer and on to the street, brushing yourself off as best you can, though you're shirtless. While brushing yourself off, you turn around and see a little foal with a lollipop in its mouth, looking at you from next to the manhole, not five feet away from you. You pause.