Two mares make their way through the howling snow and wind, Ice caked to their cloaks. They stop in the lee of a hill to catch their breath and the older mare turns to the younger. “How much further?” She had so many layers wrapped around her body that it seemed she could barely move. The thick scarf wrapped its way around her muzzled was so tattered that sections had been torn off to be used as stuffing for the parts that still held together. A pair of goggles fogged up at every breath.

The other mare was by comparison only lightly attired for the frigid climate, and it showed. Below her hood her cheeks were an angry red and damp with snow. The rags that wrapped her legs cracked and crunched with every move she made. Even her cloak shivered every few moments, wracked by the intermittent convulsions that traveled the length of her body. She reached up and grabbed the cloth sack hanging around her neck and pressed it to her blue lips. “Not far. We’re almost there.”

“That’s what you’ve been saying every day for the last three weeks. And you’re frozen. Wear the extra cloak, please.”

“No, I told you, I can’t feel it through all the layers.”

“Then let’s at least stop for the day. I’ll dig a hole in the side of this bank and we’ll make camp. There’s enough fuel for a few more days at least.”

“No, I told you, we’re almost there. I can feel it.” With that the younger mare pushed herself forward on stilted legs and crawled back out into the wind.

“You’re gonna get yourself killed like this,” she said, following, “and me with you. Think about how your sister feels for once.”

“You didn’t have to come with me.”

“And lose the only decent conversation partner who won’t shiv me over a can of fuel?” She scoffed and pushed her way through the drifts to the front. She tucked her chin deeper into her scarf and bore the brunt of the heavy winds with her face. “Besides, any place is as good as another is this wasteland. Not gonna make much difference in a few days anyway.”

“It’s not gonna come to that sis, you’ll see. It’s getting warmer.”

“Pol, we’ve been following that feeling in your gut for weeks now and as far as I can tell it’s only gotten colder.” As she stepped over the rim of the hill she was slapped by a flurry of ice crystals that tore her hood from her head and tossed her mane free. She grappled at it for a free moment, her hoof grasping blindly in the white blackness, and then yanked it down into place. Cinching it tight with a shiver she bowed her head and pushed forward.

Ahead of them the hill sloped gently upward into the darkness, the eternal white expanse unbroken save for where their own feet had trod. Slivers of ice skittered across the frozen tundra propelled by the eternal wind.

"Can you hear it?"

"It’s the wind, Pol, it’s always blowing."

"No, not that. It sounds lonely."

Sis poked an ear out from under the protective folds of her cloak and listened. There, below the constant howl of the wind, was a low moaning sound. It reminded her of when she was little and her sister had held the door open, gazing out into the snow. That same sort of moan had always floated in from the darkness, low and sad, before her mother had kicked the door shut and put another coal on the fire.

Her father had told her that it was the ghosts of travelers, trapped and freezing, miles from home. He said that, on cold nights, they would rise from their frozen graves as wendigos and search out the heat of little foals out after bed and drain the heat from their hooves.

Her grandfather had had a different story. “No child,” he would say, “the wendigos died a long time ago. This cold was too much for even them. No, what you hear are the moans of the Princesses, lost to the unending winter. My own grandmare told me once, how they died.”

“It all happened when she was but a foal. The sky fell. Rocks the size of mountains came down like rain all across the land. The legendary city of Canterlot was crushed in a single blow. And through it all they flew light rays of light shielding their ponies. Until at last the sky grew red and the stars themselves came to claim our land. The Princesses flew off the meet them. Like bolts from the heavens themselves they struck back with a force so bright it sundered the heavens themselves and the stars fled.

“But at great cost,” he would say as his eyes filled with tears, “because on that day the sun also vanished, and the moon with it, and the dust of our enemies choked the life out of the sky and left us with this endless winter.”

He could never get past that part. He would turn away and shed his tears for the fallen, real or imagined, before returning to his life underground, searching for enough coal to get the city through another month.

Sis missed her grandfather and father both, she missed their stories, but she had her own theories about the sounds of the tundra and what they meant.

“It’s probably just a rock somewhere.” She said, pushing forward and tucking her cold ear back inside her hood. “You’ve heard them before, it’s nothing special.”

“No,” her sister said, pushing against her sister with all her meager strength, “that’s it. I’m sure of it. Come on.”

With a huff the elder sister veered left, breaking a track through the drifts in the direction of the sound. As they walked the sound grew more distinct, rising out of the darkness like a mournful choir. It grew louder and louder until it seemed to surround them with a chorus of frozen angels, crying tears that could never fall.

She was about call out to her sister for a halt before the noise deafened them, when a patch of not-so-shifting snow caught her eye and she ground to a halt inches from a frozen monolith.

The spire was massive. It curved around in a perfect circle for nearly a dozen pony lengths in either direction with a frosted stone that blended into the background perfectly. Above them it slanted ever so slightly inward, reaching up nearly out of sight in the gloom only to to be sheared off in a field of jagged spikes and shattered stone.

From this close the moans almost sounded like a song. A requiem for the lost echoing through the bones of the old world. It ebbed and flowed with the wind, rising and falling with tones that pierced her more surely than any the storm’s icy claws had yet managed. She was stunned. Transfixed by the broken, towering glory that even her sister could not rouse her for a time.

“Sis? Sis. Come on!” She was tugging at her cloak, the heavy fabric nearly muting the weak attempts. “We’re here, now we have to get inside!”

Sis snapped back to herself with a shake of her head. Her sister was clutching to her with one hoof and at the bag at her neck with the other. She hadn’t noticed, standing so close to the wall, but the wind reaching further out and tossing her cloak around. With one hoof she reached out and grabbed her sister around the middle and dragged her into the relative shelter of the wall.

Even at a hoof’s length she still had to yell to be heard over the moaning of the stones. “How are we supposed to get inside that thing?”

“I don’t know!” Pol yelled through chattering teeth, “Maybe we’re supposed to go up? But we have to get inside!”

Sis looked at her sister for a moment, and then nodded. Reaching back with her teeth she pulled a spare cloak from her bag and wrapped the heavy garment around Pol. When she began to protest she pressed her ice covered leg wrap to her lips. “I’m gonna go look around the edges for a way in, and I don’t need you freezing to death while I’m gone. You won’t be moving so your feeling shouldn’t be a problem, and if you don’t rest now you won’t be able to walk in a few minutes.”

“But what if you get hurt like on Shiver Ridge?”

“I’ve got my ice axe this time and I’ll crawl back if I have to. And even if I can’t I don’t want you coming after me for at least twenty minutes. The last thing I need is you wandering after me and getting lost in the snow.”

Pol opened her mouth, ready to argue, but another shiver caused her to suck down deeper into the depths of the cloak. “Fine. Ten minutes. But then I am coming after you.”

Sis grinned under her scarf and pulled her hood down tighter. “You’re the boss.” With a flick of her neck she retrieved the ice axe from her saddle harness and plowed into the drifts once more.

As soon as she rounded the corner the wind whipped at her again and she bit down on the cloth wrapped handle of her axe. The addition of the monolith made the journey even more unnerving than usual in the dark tundra. Eddies of air created swirling shapes that seemed to reach out or gallop past her under cover of the moaning tower above, and the constant distractions were making it difficult to concentrate on the unremarkable surface beside her. Every few steps she would take a swing at the stone, waiting for the metal axe to sink through the crusted snow and ricochet off the surface below before moving on.

Crossing back into the lee side of the wind yielded the same monotonous white curtain of stone. There were no holes, no dents, no foundation, no discernible markings on the structure at all other than the gaping scar that whistled incessantly above her head. It seemed that the entire building had been carved out of one continuous piece of stone right from the bones of the mountain itself.

Abandoning her task, Sis quick stepped through the remaining drifts back to her original position to find the other mare with her ear pressed to the smooth stone.

“No luck around the sides. Might as well try going over.”

Extracting a length of chord from her pack she swiftly fastened it to the middle of the axe. She looked up and began twirling the instrument over her head for a half dozen rotations until, with a slight grunt of effort, she sent it hurtling skywards to land among the jagged spires atop the monolith. A few swift tugs set the improvised grapple and she swiftly began hauling herself up the structure’s face.

The climb was as uneventful as any could be on the side of a snow covered cliff. Gusts of wind and snow attempted to pry her from the wall but the slight slant and her wide stance kept her firmly rooted while a combination of hooves and teeth saw her quickly to the top.

From her perch a dozen a half dozen yards in the air the wind was noticeably fiercer, forcing her to cling to one of the many shattered spikes to maintain her footing. Viewed from the top the surface gave more of an impression of a broken tree than a stone roof. Thick spikes of shattered stone extended from the roof like fingers all around an enormous hole that left a full two thirds of the roof as empty space.

Sis wasted no time in tying a loop onto the rope along with axe, and fed the weighted line back over the edge until it went slack. She felt two swift jerks in the line and set about reeling it in. She looped the rope around a particularly thick spike and, after testing it with a buck, tossed the remainder over the edge and started pulling the main line up hoof over hoof.

For a moment nothing happened, the slack line waving in the wind, and then both lines tightened and began sliding over the spike. From below Pol emerged from the snow climbing on one line with the other tied firmly around her waist. The two didn’t try to speak as Pol was hauled onto the roof. They simply gestured to the hole, nodded, and then proceeded to descend into it.

By the time the rope went slack Sis’s ears felt like they were going to vibrate out of her skull from all the noise. She gave a double tug on the rope and, upon receiving on in return, anchored it to the spike and jumped into the hole.

The difference was so stark that she almost let go. The incessant moaning from above cut down to a dim whistle just past the rim and the wind died entirely. In sudden void she slipped through the blackness hesitantly, trying to catch the faintest whisper through the ringing in her head.

Finally, below her, a pale blue globe sprang up, blinding in the darkness. She squinted her eyes at it and slipped another length down towards a dimly illuminated snow pile.

“Almost there, it’s not as deep as you’d think.” Pol appeared out of the gloom, hood thrown back and horn alight. She had shed the second cloak and fastened it neatly under a saddle strap where it gamely tried to escape its confines.

Touching down on the surprisingly thin crust that coated the chamber floor, Sis took a moment to cast about in the darkness for any sort or markings and was rewarded with dim sparkles of pattern on the walls. They were in some sort of circular chamber with curved arches reaching up towards the roof that framed sort of pale white panel that glistened in the light.

“It’s amazing in here,” Sis said, “I never knew stone could sparkle like that.”

“It’s not stone,” Pol said, an excited grin eating up her face, “It’s crystal. Like what they would find in the mines. It’s everywhere.”

“Really?” Sis said, trotting over to investigate, “I’ve never seen like it! And I can’t even find the seams.

“Can you imagine how long it took to carve it?”

“Things are a lot easier when you don’t have to worry about freezing to death.”

The two mares giggled and marveled as the walls sparkled in the magelight. Sis put a hoof against one of the panels, drawing it across the glassy surface, only to flinch back a moment later. Her ears lay flat as she retreated from the wall. “I don’t think that part’s crystal.”

“Why not?”

“It’s cold. I think it’s ice.”

Pol’s eyes widened and and she backed away slowly. “You think it might..?”

“Better not risk it. Hooves to yourself. Is that feeling of yours telling you anything?”

“Only that we need to go down.”

“Then let’s hurry it up. I don’t want to find out how much snow’s above our heads.”

Pol clutched at the sack at her neck and then pointed to a dark rectangle on the far side of the chamber floor. “Over there,” she said, “I think there might be some stairs.”

“Hopefully it’s better than the rope climb.”

---

“This is worse than the rope climb.”

“At least we’re not in the snow.”

“In the snow I know what I’m dealing with. This is just creepy.”

The pair found themselves trudging down yet another flight through the deserted structure. Their hoofseteps reverberated eerily through the crystalline corridors they passed at each intersection. Pol ignored each one and pressed continuously downward, passing more than a dozen windows on the continuous winding stair. Each one blocked by the same ice sheet as the other rooms.

“How much farther are we going? I feel like we have the whole mountain over our heads by now.”

“I think we’re getting close.”

“Did the walls tell you that?”

Pol shot a glare back at her sister and pushed open the next door. “They feel warmer than usual. We’re almost there.”

Sis rolled her eyes but kept walking, muttering under her breath. “Who’s crazier? The mare who listenes to trash, or the mare who follows her?”

The door spilled into an enormous chamber with the puny magelight only illuminating the smallest section next to the wall. Off in the distance they could see an object sparkling in the gloom and below them stairs ended in a purple stone floor that was polished to a mirror finish.

“That’s it!” Pol yelled, and dashed forwards with a speed and suddenness that surprised the other mare.

“Pol, wait!” Sis cried. She reached out to grab hold of her sister, but stumbled coming off the steps. Cursing, she watched as her sister’s magelight bobbed to a stop in the center of the the room before following at a more sedate pace, glancing left and right as she advanced through the inky blackness.

Encircled by the small pool of light were two statues and pair of crystalline spikes that protruded from the ceiling and floor to stop a few hooflenghts away from each other. The spikes were unremarkable, other than being slate gray and impossibly smooth, but the statues were intricately carved.

The statues depicted a unicorn stallion and another pony, one with both horns and wings, leaning against one another with their heads bowed. The pair were beautiful, almost lifelike. Every detail was was embossed in stone right down to the individual hairs and tiny shards of ice on their cheeks. And below them on the ground was a crystal heart, broken in two.

Sis looked to her sister, who stood transfixed by the sight, and back to the statues. “I wonder who they were.”

“Are.”

“Pol, they’re just statues.”

“Maybe now, but they feel like they were alive once.”

“Whatever. Are we here for the statues?”

“No,” she said, gesturing to the heart, “I think we’re here for that.”

“The rock? Okay, well, what do we do with it?”

“We take it back up.”

“To the top?!” sis whined, her hooves already aching, “But we just got here.”

Pol gave her sister a grin. “We can stay here if you’d rather. I’m sure the tonnes of ice and snow above our heads won’t mind.”

“Fine!” she said, grabbing the spare cloak from her sister and scooping up the stone, “Fine. But you get the cold side of the sleeping bag tonight.”

The trek back up the stairs felt longer than the decent, if only because of the large rock they now carried. They had to stop three times before they reached the top and both were panting hard by the time they heaved it over the final step.

“I hope,” Sis gasped, “you’re happy.”

“Yes,” Pol replied from face down on the floor, “I am.”

The two lay there for a few moments, snickering between breaths, before Sis asked the question. “Now what?”

“Push it into the center.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Not gonna make me drag it all the way back to Warm Springs?” Sis asked, rising to her hooves.

“You just wanna see that colt again.”

“He was cute!”

With the stone’s two halves situated in the center of the room Sis took the opportunity to relax. She stumbled over towards the edge of the room and lay down, watching as her sister pushed the two of stone halves together. Then Pol reached up to the bag tied around her neck and, pulling it open, upended its contents over the heart.

Out of the bag came tens of shards of multicolored pieces of glass. Shards of blue, green, yellow, and red fell all over the stone and once the bag was empty Pol turned to face the gray opening into the sky.

She sat there staring up for several minutes before Sis finally asked. “What you looking for?”

“Light.”

“In the sky? Now I know you’re crazy.”

“It’s there. You just have to ask.” As she spoke a single bright point of light broke through swirling snows above. The tiny speck flickered for a few moments but then strengthened to a shining gem in the dark.

“Okey, I’m impressed, but what’s that supposed to do?”

“Everything.”

On top of the rock heart the glass shards began to glow, faintly at first, but more and more as time passed. It was almost as if they were capturing the wisps of light and collecting them within themselves. Then they started to move.

First they trembled, then wiggled. Then, little by little, they rose into the air, carrying the heart with them. They spun around the heart in rainbow waves, coalescing into concrete points of light. Red, blue, pink, orange, yellow, violet. They spun faster and faster, passing their light into the heart.

Then the light started to seep into the crack in the heart, filling it up like silver water until it spilled out the top in a rainbow wave the crashed against the clouds, filling the room with the light of a million candles.

It sat there, humming slightly. It felt warm.