The Strange and Secret Life of Lumen Sky

Chapter 2- What Lay Beyond the Threshold

-Twilight-

     As we descended into the darkness the door shut at the top and all light was lost. Our horns glowed with light and he shot a large orb of light to the bottom of the stairs.

"I don't remember any spell like that, where did you find it," I asked, wondering if there were books somewhere that I didn't know about.

"I found it," he answered casually.

"Really, where," we had reached the bottom where the concrete floor clicked eerily under our hooves.

"That will be a story for next time," he walked over to a large burlap lump under the stairs and pulled the sheet of revealing a mannequin with strange looking armor on and a shield leaning against it.

"Is that the armor and shield you told me about?"

"Yes, it took me about eight months of on and off work to make it," he said as I looked at the small steel loops that made the armor and shimmered in the light we cast around the room.

"It is steel mail and can stand up to a ton of things and is a great deal lighter than what the Royal Guard wear."

"How do you know that?"

"I was doing a job for Celestia and the guards were teasing me about how I was wearing an apron and evidently made me wear their armor. It was so heavy that I almost fell forwards."

"Well, may we proceed?"

"Why of course," he said as he tossed the burlap sheet over the armor and shield. He turned towards a small steel panel set into the wall. He lowered his horn to the level of the panel. He raced forwards, driving his horn into the panel so his head touched the steel.

"What are you doing?" I said as I strained not to run over too him to pull him out and slap him for being stupid.

"Don't worry, horns are hard enough to handle it," he grunted as he shifted his horn around behind the panel, where clicks and thumps were heard.

"What about the hole in that plate?"

"Don't worry, it is enchanted to repair itself- nhh- when it takes damage." There was a very loud click and a crack split the wall and opened to reveal an elevator car.

"Well then, no turning back," he pulled his horn from the wall and turned, walked into the car, and said, "Are you coming?"

"Yes," with that I got into the elevator with a pony I had just met about ten minutes ago. The car started down and the air became very cold and cave-like.

"Below us is a secret compound thirty stories below the surface and nopony knows about it except my, acquaintance. All this is the product of two years of behind the scenes work. At the top is a compound for miscellaneous activities and the lower you get the more dangerous and amazing the labs get. That is where my dangerous experiments go on and we are going to visit them all." He said as the car came to a stop and the doors opened with a comical ding and warm air drifted out. "Here is the top floor, there are four floors below us. This is where living quarters are and other facilities are. Below us is a horticulture lab, a biology lab, an astronomy center, and a jet propulsion and flight center with more labs at the bottom. Between that and here are nine flights of stairs and a ventilation shaft." I looked around and noted that this floor looked very creepy. I turned and saw a sign with arrows pointing to different areas and one of them was an amphitheater.

"Why do you have an amphitheater down here?"

"Oh, um, well, stuff like, umm. I really don't know, I haven't found a use for it yet." He was definitely hiding something there.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," his face was straight and he really looked like he was telling the truth but I knew better. I would probably wait until later to investigate. He led me to a steel door and we descended down the stairs to the horticulture lab.

     He took a card out of the pocket in his apron and slid it through the reader and its light turned green with a click. He opened the door and a hot, humid draft came out and rows and rows of sand covered fields lay before us. In the center was a room with windows on every side except a section of one side.

"Please stay on the path, the sand here is sterile for a microbe free environment in which to grow plants." I looked around and saw no plants or anything growing or alive.

"Have you used it before," I pondered aloud.

"Not yet, I haven't had a reason to use it," he said as he opened the door to the lab using his card again. Inside everything was very new looking and in order just like his kitchen except everything was made for running tests on plants. He flipped a switch and the lights came on and buzzed for a fraction of a second. The lights were like the ones upstairs but were longer and cylindrical. There was a fume hood in the corner and outlets and plugs for gas and electricity. There were all kinds of glass and plastic containers for containing specimens.

"Wow, this is amazing. Is the plastic synthetic or natural?" I asked as he wandered around scanning everything.

"Oh, yes. It can also be broken down into biological material to keep from harming the environment. Just so you know it does not break down in water, that would be impractical for lab ware." He said that with just a tinge of resent.

"Cool. Does the fume hood have its own duct separate from the ventilation shaft."

"Oh yeah. That would be very silly." I started "nerding" out at the sight of all the lab equipment that I had back at my castle. Most of the other machines I had never seen before and had no idea of what they did. There was a panel on the wall near the door with dials, small LCD screens, and buttons on it.

"What is that for?" I asked, nodding in the direction of the panel.

"That is where everything for this floor is controlled. Temperature, humidity, you name it. It can also lock down this floor if the need comes. The only thing you need is the authorization card and the password." He started looking out the door and sighed. "I really want some more ponies to know about this place so it is not just a waste of time and energy."

"Don't worry it will just be a matter of time before this place will be used more than it ever has. I can guarantee it."

"Okay. Oh, I almost forgot to put my mask away," he said. The mask lifted off his head and a dark blue bubble enveloped it and popped with an audible sound.

"Where did it go," I asked.

"Back upstairs, I also turned off the torches too. That would have been a disaster if something caught fire," he said as he walked to the door. I looked around and followed him out the door. When we walked back into the stair well I started to feel like this was a pony to be reckoned with. He had a lab and a whole complex where he could make dangerous things. I shuddered, just the thought of that made me uncomfortable.

     It took almost an hour to get through the next three labs. After finishing the astronomy center I asked, "I almost forgot, what is your name?"

"Hmmm. My name is Lumen, Lumen Sky," he said as as we descended the stairs to the bottom floor of the complex.