After Equestria (RP)

Octavia gulped, them blushed beet-red and made a face, steeling herself as she tentatively stepped onto the ledge. She wobbled a bit, and let out the most adorable and embarrassing squeak as she overcompensated and found herself hugging Asterian as tightly as a wedded wife. Despite feeling embarrassed enough to just let gravity take her, she held onto the stallion for dear life.

"I, *squee*, d-don't..."

The noise she made was reminiscent of Fluttershy's odd vocalization after being asked her name for the third time by Twilight.

*****

The ponies stepped past the barracks... and beheld the awesome vastness of the underground realm of Duchy Fancy.

This cavern alone was vaster than most minds could dream, deep enough that cirrus clouds formed near the roof and the Sun-Crystals' light refracts into a blue sky that covers the ceiling, wide enough that an entire city complete with suburbs and skyscrapers and parks and forests fit comfortably within, branching out into vaster and vaster caverns, each lit with blazing light as bright as the Sun and Moon at different times of the day.

It's mid-morning on a mild summer day down here in the stone cities, and somepony over at weather control decided to turn up the temperature and let the warm air from the Hall of Fire fill up the rest of the place. It's pleasant, and there wasn't such a thing as "too warm" unless you were right next to a forge or kiln, or a magma river. Birds were singing in the parks and gardens, little chicks, kids and foals going to and fro, playing hide-and-seek among the grand columns of the Merchant's Hall and trying to keep their mind off the fact that school starts again in a month.

Morning actually does shimmer, seeing as that the stored sunlight from the Sun-Crystals up in the far reaches of the massive cavern light up all the polished angles of the stone and crystal buildings, and the tiles underhoof. In smaller places like Gemton and Rockton, you might see the mayor giving a speech, and everywhere you went you could always find merchants and artisans, street hawkers, street cleaners and errand-colts rushing past with "very important" messages. The occasional odd pet.

Nobles were likely relaxing in their grand marble mansions, or surveying their vast estates while having tea and crumpets served to them on platinum platters. Most other ponies had "real jobs" to do, but life was actually rather relaxed around here, with plenty of spare time for hobbies and the odd "adventure" through a park-forest.

Many citizens had completely forgotten that there ever was such a thing as "above-ground". The foals, kids and chicks certainly had no comprehension of that place, only rumors of some sort of death world if you dug or wandered too far up or down, filled with either ice or magma. The magma, at least, they could understand and see. Nopony WANTED to see the Ice. To them, this was the universe, an endless series of tunnels and caverns to explore, work, and live in, and occasionally discover and colonize when they grew up. Equestria was an ancient civilization from what for all they knew was a million years ago, the sort of thing you read about in a boring history book and forgot. Oceans, stars, grassland, beaches, deserts, all these were pretty pictures on a wall, or strange and exotic places you heard about in old stories and sad songs that always seemed to make the adults cry when they listened or sang.

There were more blacksmith shops than even Aldorn knew what to do with, going all up and down Smith Street and smiths of different metals branching out to the sides - goldsmiths, silversmiths, ironsmiths, steelworkers, mithril workers, and more, all specializing in various intricacies in the fine art of smithing. There were sword shops, helmet shops, horseshoe shops, shops for silverware and nuts and bolts, department stores with all sorts of metal pieces for sale, even supercenters that sold everything from instant noodles to bicycles.

As for baths, there were thousands along Spa Street, massage parlors, steam rooms, bubble baths, hair salons, hoof salons, mud baths, and more. Just a block over were feminine care products, beauty stores, boutiques, fashion stores, everything a mare or beauty-minded stallion could ask for. And indeed, the denizens of the city did ask indeed, in large quantities - despite the sheer number of stores, there was an even larger number of customers. After all, Duke Fancy had essentially welcomed ALL creatures willing to follow the law into the insanely vast premade cities, no matter what race or background, and all meant ALL. Ponies, deer, goats, zebras, diamond dogs and more trotted and pranced here and there, some with children, others alone. It was an entire world in itself, held up by ingenious architectural techniques pioneered by Duke Fancy's great-grandfather, grandfather and father, as well as their enormous Pants Foundations and Triple Crown Industries.

And all this was just the business and living spaces of Orod Khazad; even more chambers could be seen to all sides, from mines and factories and refineries deep below to gardens and orchards, to parklands and forests, all created through the seemingly infinite wealth that had belonged to the Pants family and generously spent by the possibly paranoid and possibly insane Fancy the Second in an attempt to build a sort of "ark" large enough to house all of Canterlot and the surrounding lands.

From what the ponies heard, there were even MORE underground cities now, after the population boom that occurred a few years ago. Each of these enormous population centers were linked by grand tunnels and hallways with multiple levels of roads and walkways and rails for quick transportation. Of course, since this still was underground and enclosed, the Duchy could not afford to burn coal for all its energy needs, and so most of the factories and trains down here were ingeniously fitted with electrically driven engines that could be connected to the Duchy's electrical grid, powered by the great geothermal generators that fed on the heat of the planet itself deep below the foundations of the settlement.