First knob: Three notches from the left.
Second knob: Two from the right.
First button: Pressed.
Third knob: 2.3.
Fourth knob: 4.0.
Fifth knob: 0.5.
Second button: Pressed.
Third button: pressed.
The dials now read 20, 45, and 90. Whatever that meant. All Tempo could glean from the journal was that those were the numbers necessary for the cage mechanism to be set for teleportation to the Crystal Empire. The notes also alluded to other teleportation locations but the stallion didn't feel like tempting fate to discover them. Now, he simply waited for his mare to return with the items they needed. He trusted her to be able to pull it off and she trusted him to read the journal correctly and set the machine right.
He stood there quietly and turned to face the gaping darkness that was the rest of the main hall. He stared into it sadly and knew what it all meant. He knew that Gleaming Shield was racing through it. Perhaps the whole ordeal had forced them to meld ever more as a team. But then again, if Tempo didn't already trust the mare then he probably wouldn't have married her. He felt something in that moment and knew it was more than trust. There was always that feeling of love that he had for her, but this was something more furious than that. He wanted to be everything that she needed...everything that she wanted...
Shaking his head, he reminded himself not to get lost in thought.
He did what he was supposed to and so did she. He waited for what he assumed to be a good five minutes before he could make out her light fade in from the mass of black that was the massive dark hall. Whatever length of time it had really been had definitely seemed fast. The hall was huge and she hadn't even known where the last two crystals were. He, of course, assumed she had them with her.
Once she was close enough to call out to, he did so. "How did it go?!"
Gleaming Shield appeared to quicken her pace for some reason and she was soon within the light of the alicorn's glowing horn. Her own light extinguished and she walked briskly to him. Tempo noticed four crystals levitating behind her, glowing in her magical grip, just before the mare hugged him. "Welcome back," he felt obligated to say. "Something wrong?"
"Nothing new," she replied as she slipped away from the embrace. "This place is still creepy and I still want out."
"Ditto. But I think we can actually do that now," the pink pony commented as he took in the four crystals that levitated towards him. Gleaming Shield kept them in her grip and waited until Tempo started giving her instructions before she moved them into position. "Alright. Emerald," he trotted over to the socket on the far left wall of the alcove.
"Here," he pointed to the empty spot. The mare nodded and stuck the crystal into place. A green magical light started to emanate softly from cracks in the wall that neither had noticed before. "I hope that means it's working right," Tempo chuckled darkly.
The mare shot him a mean look. "Do not tell me that you're winging this."
The prince giggled like a foal. "Well of course I am, honey. I'm an alicorn, remember?"
He stretched his wings out and fluttered them playfully. The opal that the mare threw at him would probably leave a mark for a few days. At least it didn't knock him out, which is surprising when considering the fact that it hit him between the eyes. He did, however, had to pick himself back up off the stone floor. "Alright..." he moaned. "Sapphire...here..." he weakly pointed to a socket after the next empty one.
Gleaming Shield's magical aura faded from the stone once it clicked into place. The light from the cracks glowed brighter and took on a mixed hue. It wasn't a color one would expect from matching the colors of the crystals. The green glow had simply taken on a nasty brownish sickness. She could only hope that's how it was supposed to be and that the contraption wasn't broken. Oh Solaris, if it was broken...
Prince Tempo stuttered painfully over to a lever on the opposite side of the alcove. "Fifth...here."
He flipped the lever before returning the the sockets near Gleaming Shield. "Opal."
The unicorn levitated the third stone in front of him and he noted, slightly upset, that it was indeed an opal and that it was what had violently kissed his skull. He mentally swore revenge on the stone (and by no means the mare). "Hard to find?" he asked his wife.
"Actually," she started. "Not at all. I found this one first in a random pile. The onyx was the trouble child."
The alicorn nodded and pointed to the second wall socket, which the female used to house the offensive opal.
"Hidden?" he inquired again as he winced once again from the sting of pain emanating from his face.
"Not really. But it was hard to distinguish from the regular black crystals that are all over the place. I don't know what they are but they're not onyx. Can't be. I wouldn't have known the difference though if it wasn't for my brother's friend. He had one...what was him name again..."
"Elusive?" the pink stallion guessed.
"Yes! You have a good memory..." Gleaming commented in praise.
Tempo just sighed, however. "Names. I was always expected to remember everypony's name. Still am."
Gleaming Shield had noted in the back of her mind that nothing obvious had happened when the opal had been placed. Now, she followed Tempo as he walked slowly over to the alcove console as he related his woes. "Over half the ponies I meet, I never see again. But I'm required to remember all of their names. And they're all a bunch of nobles that don't even give a feather about me - let alone Equestria. But if I don't remember their names then 'oh no I'm not good at my job.'"
The mare let him vent. She had her own complaints about being a guard captain and, besides, it lightened the mood that the dark room was forcing on them with the nasty colored glow. The prince changed the subject to read the dials on the console aloud. "15, 37, 122."
Gleaming Shield was about to ask the meaning when her husband nodded to himself and punched one of the console buttons with his right fore hoof. There was a grinding sound from somewhere below their hooves and the glow lines on the walls turned a solid purple. A forth slot appeared on the wall near the third slot.
The unicorn looked to him again to confirm and he nodded. "Onyx goes there."
She steeled herself and hoped to Artemis's moon that it all worked. The onyx levitated towards the indention in the wall and almost seemed to get sucked into it in the last second. There was a click and the glowing lines began pulsating.
"We're all set. Now we just get in the cage and see what happens," Tempo tried to say as happily as possible.
Gleaming Shield could not be more nervous than she was at that moment. "See what happens?!"
"Well, I'm not sure about the trustworthiness of anything on this rock and certainly not a journal written by the late Queen Oscura. It's a risk we have to take," he reassured her in his own way.
She gulped one last time and accepted it. As a guard, she knew that some risks could be fatal but were required all the same. "Either we get our vacation or we-"
"Get our vacation," he interrupted her. "As burn marks on the floor."
She started to smile at his first remark than frowned at his second. "You want to keep quiet now, prince charming?"
He nodded in a goofy manner and let the mare lead him by her light out of the alcove and up to the cage device. She had to admit to herself that it was hard to make herself open the cage and step in. But Tempo, ever the loving spouse, came up beside her and curled a wing over her back. One glance between them was enough for her to know that he was with her. Even if they died, he was with her.
It was two steps after they had entered the cage side-by-side that the door triggered. It clanged loudly behind them and made the pair jump if only by a molecule. The inscriptions in the floor ignited and their vision blurred. The floor seemed to drop out from beneath their hooves. The event ended quickly with no ceremony or hype. It was just the kind of emotionless and cold feeling one would expect from one of Oscura's inventions.
· · · · ·
Tempo laid flatly on the cold floor, his hooves splayed outwards in exhaustion. His wife fared no better with her hair a tad frazzled and her spirit in dire need of rejuvenation. Needless to say, she was sprawled out in the same manner of the stallion beside her. Neither spoke for a long moment. When they did, it was not with as much cheer as they thought they would have.
The alicorn breathed a loud sigh as he turned over to lay on his back. He raised his hooves to the tall crystal ceiling of the hall that they had been gracelessly dumped back into. "From now on I'm using a detailed trap analysis spell on every building we go into," the husband finally voiced.
"I'll double check for you," the wife replied.
"Starting here!" the stallion wasted no time or breath in lieu of impending exhaustion - if he didn't already have it.
The unicorn knew what he was beginning to do. Some spells (typically mass-scale ones) were prohibited from use due to their severely draining effects on the user. Neither of them cared about migraines or strains at this point, however. Nothing was going to take them on another messed up adventure like the one they had just gone through.
She could see Tempo wince significantly as he completed the mass magical analysis. He proceeded to groan in an obviously painful fashion and then zapped her with a beam of light from his horn. "You should be able to see all the traps with that mental map," he forced from clenched teeth.
Gleaming Shield gave her acknowledgement and wearily got onto her hooves to begin her task. Tempo was now wiped out from heavy use of magic. His eyes once again held the defeat that they had during the crystal heart incident. She had the same look during their wedding - a result of using the mass shield. She would wear it again after disarming the thirty other traps she now knew were scattered in the royal palace.
But she would not trigger any of them. None would see the light of day this time.
Prince Tempo vaguely knew that the white unicorn had run off down the corridor. His whole body hurt and little more than pain was capable of going through his mind. So he laid on the cold floor for what seemed like hours while mere minutes past. More than thirty slipped by before a very haggard looking Gleaming Shield ran back into the hallway. "Done!" she tried to exclaim but failed as it merely eked out of her mouth in a wheeze. Her head hurt as much as the legs that had carried her like lightning through the palace.
Tempo tried once to get to his hooves but failed. "Ugh..." was all he could say.
"...I agree," the mare joked as she fought fiercely to stay on her hooves.
"I don't think we can pack for our vacation right away," the stallion finally managed to say.
"You know what?" the tough mare decided as she finally hit her second wind and regathered her strength. "I don't want to go anywhere! And I for sure don't want to think about Oscura's little bit of Tartarus we got to experience. Can we agree not to talk about it?"
The prince tried to laugh and stopped when his head throbbed sharply. "...uh-huh..." he settled to say.
Gleaming Shield stepped closer to him and tried to activate her magic. It failed since it was too drained from her vigorous trap extermination activities. The spark from her horn even hurt a bit. She sighed and resolved to accomplish her job via brute strength alone. She was still a guard captain even if her magic was temporarily gone.
Tempo tried to discourage her when she started moving him onto her back but quieted when it had no effect. "Where are you taking me?"
"The bath. We both need to take one before getting some sleep," she replied flatly.
The pink alicorn grinned weakly in his reduced state. "Still a mare under all those layers of tough hide..."
She gave him a rough shove in return. It wasn't easy getting him onto her back and she would have to drag him somewhat since he was simply too large for her body size. "I'm too...tired...to answer that right now..."
Tempo closed his eyes as a gesture of "ditto" and didn't realize that he fell unconscious until he was later forcefully awoke by his completely drained spouse. "Bath," was all that came out of her mouth as her face disappeared once again from his view. When he turned his head to follow her, she was limping a few hooves distance away to get into a hot pool of water that was nestled nicely into the floor of their massive royal bathroom.
He waged a war of will to keep himself conscious and get his lead-weight legs to move him to the water. "Is this really a good idea?" his raspy voice surprised him. His body was apparently spent in every possible way.
"Yes," Gleaming Shield breathed smoothly. But the alicorn didn't know if it was a response or merely an exclamation as the mare slipped into the warm water. She disappeared for only a second before resurfacing her head, which was the only visible thing above the water's surface.
"I don't want to pass out and drown," Tempo found the energy to whine as he got to the the edge of the bath. He could just fall right in...
"You're...not going to drown...you big baby..." the mare slowly countered as she sighed herself away with closed eyes.
"We're back. Isn't that enough?" he prodded the water with a front hoof.
"Hey, you want to get some shut eye or not?" she asked more roughly as she opened her eyes. It was just as difficult for her as it was for him to keep from falling asleep. In and out, she tried to keep herself in line. "You're not going to bed like that."
"I feel like expiring," Tempo moaned again.
The Captain of the Guard had just about enough. "Then wash and expire in bed."
He would have nodded off again right there if she hadn't reached over and pulled him unceremoniously into the water. It was warm and soothing but surprising all the same at first. What came next was a quick but entirely sufficient scrubbing. The stallion accomplished none of it, as the mare had to do it all for him. He was a royal do-nothing and she stated as much. It was good-hearted though, because she knew that he had done just as much as she had. They were both exhausted and in pain.
She tried to quickly conclude the washing and drying and the trip to the bedroom was short, as it was nearby. But she had to grit her teeth as her second wind left her and she was racked with exhaustion nearly to the point of nausea. She made it, though, and so did her husband. He dragged his hooves for sure but he shambled to the bedroom on his own.
It didn't take the pair five seconds to slip under the covers and embrace slumber. Sweet, delicious twelve-hour slumber.