//------------------------------// // Alone in the Dragon's Den // Story: Berry Punch's Last Drink // by Ranak //------------------------------// Two days have passed since Pinkie Pie left. Berry remains pacing around the large pool, searching her brain for anyway to cross. Berry does a cursory look around the room again, the moss on the stone just the same as it was yesterday, the stones just as worn down. No progress is being made, except the unrelenting progress of time. Time it seems, is Berry’s greatest enemy, and best friend. “AGHHHHH,” the scream echoes off the walls as Berry releases all of her frustration, “There must be some way to cross this pool!” Berry kicks the nearest ball of moss, sending it into the pool. The red moss flots there, no flames, no damage. The… moss? It doesn’t burn, not even in magma. I could build a raft! I can still do this! I can still save Pinchy! Quickly gathering all the nearby moss, packing it tightly and tying it with more moss, Berry puts one of the crumbling stones on her makeshift raft. Keeping her hoof on one corner of the raft she pushes her bed of moss into the pool, the center sinks slightly under the weight of the rock. I looks like I should be able to cross, better spread my weight as evenly as possible, don’t want something unexpected to happen. Bringing her raft back and removing the stone, the burns on her mouth and her cries of pain as the stone falls into the pool reveals a flaw in her plan. Cursing, she takes more moss growing on the rocks and adds them to the raft, and she repeats the process of placing a rock onto the raft, burning her mouth as she removes it, and adding another layer. By the time she has made a raft that will at least allow her to cross safely, if a little uncomfortably, almost all the moss on her side of the cave is gone. I should make another raft on the other side, and push this one back, for Pinkie. Incase she changed her mind… Why would she change her mind? You yelled at her and told her making friends with her was a mistake! You told her to leave! I know, but I mean… she wouldn’t leave me would she? Obviously she has, it has been two days since you told to leave, she should be halfway back to Ponyville by now, knowing Pinkie not only has she made it back already, but probably is throwing a “Welcome Back Pinkie Pie” party. No one will notice you are gone, no one will care when you get back, and you have no one to get back to. I have my Pinchy… HA what pony in their right mind would want to call you there mother? She is probably talking to nice prospective adoptees, in a years time, she will pick her favorite, and by the time she gets her cutie mark! NO! You heard Spiral! Berry Pinch loves me, she adores me! She called me the best mommy in the world! I will NOT let you ruin my life any longer, I will never… allow you… to ruin my family… again! Berry pushes off from the edge of the floor, laying as flat as she can against the raft, she begins floating across. Hot, tired, and tense, ever so slowly she drifts on the sea of liquid rock, begging the princesses for it to work. Her chest heaves with heavy breaths, and her chest becomes warmer, and slowly unbearably hot. She shifts revealing the slowly opening hole in her raft, she sits up, hoping to move the remaining moss around to fix the hole, and keep her safe. The change in weight brought on by her change of position causes the half she is sitting on to dip into the lava, increasing the heat she feels on her body, swiftly she plugs the hole and resets her position, only to notice the side she was sitting on only moments before completely detach and float away, lost forever in the middle of a pool of lava. At last, Berry arrives on the other side of the temple. The moss on this side is deceptively thin, allowing for the construction of Berry’s original design, the one too thin to avoid being burned. There isn’t enough moss for another raft! How am I going to get back if I make one for Pinkie? You won’t, and she won’t need one, because she won’t be coming. Quit lieing to yourself. Just build the raft, and come back later. Hopefully there be more moss somewhere else. But what if there isn’t. You’ll have to get back somehow, so what if you get a little burned? What if I can push this raft into the half that fell of the other? Then when Pinkie comes back, she’ll be able to bring all of the moss back, allowing for us to build two rafts that will protect us from the worst of the heat! You assume she will be coming back, what if she doesn’t? If she doesn’t, then I don’t deserve Pinchy, and I don’t deserve to live. Anyone that can take the Element of Laughter, and have her hate you… doesn’t deserve anything, let alone the love of her daughter. Berry sends the raft sailing, hitting the center island of moss, and forcing both to beach on the other side. Satisfied with her decision, Berry continues on. Many more traps blocked Berry’s way, large javelins which, on further inspection, were tipped in diamond to allow for them to bring down full grown dragons, let alone a small earth pony, were launched down a hallway. A dart trap in few walls, laced with a strong smelling substance, making Berry drowsy just being in the same room, and more all littered the path to a large central room. The floor was decorated with gemstones embedded into the floor, amethyst, emerald, sapphire, diamond, and topaz sparkle in the light cast by blue torches. Interesting, why would there be gems set into the floor? Wouldn’t they be put into the hoard? Maybe with the statue? Berry moves forward, stepping on a blue gem. A small square panel drop, a pressure pad. Berry, looking for any sign of another trap, leaps away. Silence. Nothing moves, not even the air, as Berry scans for signs of anything that might cause her harm. Nothing. Berry moves back the the sapphire, the plate still locked into the ground. She steps on a gem two tiles away, another blue one, hoping that all sapphires won’t try and kill her, as soon as she steps on the tile, a brief shock goes up her leg, startling and sending jumping back. She looks back at the depressed plate. I don’t think it is a straight line across this floor… but it couldn’t hurt to try. Berry steps on the emerald just in front of the sapphire. Right before Berry’s eyes, the emerald changed to a sapphire. Berry looked behind her in time to see the stone behind change color, matching the two next to it, and having all three of the now in a row emeralds change color. This time to the ones right above her, and a wave of changing gems rose up, ending at the top of the room. The gems up there simply faded from existence, only the blank panels remain. Does this mean that I need to clear the floor of the gems by making rows of three? As she creates more and more sets, the board gets cleaner and cleaner, occasionally she would match four, or get two pairs at once. With the board almost completely clear Berry makes a misstep, no match is formed, and those two panels collapse, revealing a yawning abyss, and all other panels are re-filled with gems, startling Berry. She stumbles back away from the hole she nearly fell into and pushed an amethyst. Looking around Berry finds no way for a set to be made, she sighs. Okay, just gotta step on a platform that I think I can still solve the puzzle without… She steps to her left, sending the amethyst and a diamond into the abyss. Quickly she jumps to a topaz, and continues matching the panels, whenever a gem reached a hole it would fall to the next nearest panel beneath, and once a column was completely empty, they column to the left slid into that row, causing some gems to go missing if there was a hole in the way of a gem. After many hours, and a few more missteps, the board is cleared, and the holes start to fill with lava, the ceiling opening up only over the open panels. Clearly, the less mistakes you made during this section of the puzzle, the longer it took for the hole to fill. With ten of the multiple hundreds of panels gone, Berry had quite a bit of time to figure out how to proceed. Gazing around the ruined temple, no odd stones, or lines that didn’t match up to those neighboring revealed any way for Berry to get out. Gazing down the hole she realized the lava still wasn’t visible in the hole. I have plenty of time, but how am I going to continue, the path so far has been linear, so there wasn’t a way this was a dead end. There must be something here. Taking one of the torches from the wall, Berry inspects closely each segment of wall, looking for anything that could divulge what she needed to do in order to proceed. Nothing. Not a single brick was out of place, no floor tile revealed anything. This simply was it, no more. This wasn’t the Volcano she needed. This isn’t fair! I worked so hard to get here. With a shout, Berry Punch hammered on the walls, “Open up! You have to open up! This isn’t funny anymore! Open up!” Slumping to the ground, lightly tapping on the wall now, mumbling the same two words over and over, “Open up… open up…” She lay there. Tears started to flow, and she closed her eyes.