Chapter 15-
A deep rumbling issuing from somewhere outside the caverns caused the trio of ponies to pause. Daring Do frowned.
“Avalanche,” she said. “Let’s hope it didn’t block any of the passage.”
They continued on after the rumbling had stopped, deeper and further into the caverns. Rainbow Dash wondered just how far they went for – it seemed like they were descending into the depths of the earth itself, directed only by Oracle’s infrequent instructions on which way to turn. The stallion had fallen back now, so that both Daring Do and Rainbow Dash were walking in front of him. If Daring found this behavior strange, she didn’t show it. The shaman had spent most of the journey walking ahead of them, steering them in the direction they needed to go. Now it seemed that he wanted to be as far from the front of the line as possible. Was it because the booby trap they’d come across earlier had spooked him?
As the ponies moved further in, Rainbow began to notice that the ceiling was becoming lower and lower, until the three ponies were crawling almost on their bellies through the tunnels. Rainbow Dash felt trapped, and tried to force herself to remain calm even as the narrow passageways closed in on her.
Finally, Daring stopped.
“Drop your saddlebags here, Rainbow,” she told the blue pegasus. The tan pegasus was already beginning to pull on the knots that were holding her own burden down.
“Are you sure?” Rainbow asked, though she wasn’t complaining – the bags weren’t helping their descent into these narrow tunnels.
“I’m sure,” Daring said, decidedly. “We won’t need them from here on out. Just leave them here. If we don’t find them again, maybe they’ll be some use to somepony else who finds themselves – unfortunately – trapped down here.”
From her words, Rainbow Dash concluded that she wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with such tight surroundings.
They left their bags shoved up against the side of the tunnel. Oracle, however, refused to take off his saddlebag and leave it behind. Daring tried reasoning with him, but the shaman would hear nothing of it, and his bag stayed firmly on his back. Daring eventually gave up and let him keep it.
Rainbow, on the other hand, was relieved to have hers gone. Her wings were finally free; though that didn’t matter much with the way things were going. The passage continued to grow narrower, until Rainbow had a growing fear that eventually they’d get stuck. Daring continued to hold the torch out before her, but it was starting to flicker. They could tell it wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Daring….if the walls get any closer, we’ll be pancakes,” Rainbow Dash said as she slid awkwardly through the narrow tunnel. She felt the rocks pressing against her body all around her, and the feeling made her anxious. Sweat beaded up on her forehead.
“Keep going,” Daring urged her. “It should widen soon.”
Rainbow bit her lip and continued on, hoping Daring was right.
And she was right, eventually. The tunnels did widen, but only marginally. Enough for Rainbow to almost straighten herself, though her head still hit the ceiling if she wasn’t careful. At least it didn’t feel like they were being squeezed through a tube of toothpaste.
And with this widening, came something else. A soft, distant sound, echoing through the rocks. Daring’s ears flicked forward as she listened hard to it.
“You hear that?” she asked. Rainbow Dash nodded.
“What is it?”
“Water,” Daring answered. “We’re coming up to a river.”
They moved forward until the passage widened again, but only sideways. They were still forced to crouch as they moved along. However, their forward progress was eventually stopped.
“There it is,” Daring observed. The three ponies had come to stand at the edge of a deep crevice, a long, twisting scar in the rock that stretched out in either direction. Rainbow Dash peered down into the depths, and could see the reflection of the torch off the water far below. The river was running swiftly towards their left, and the crevice it ran through was deep.
“It’s an underground river,” Daring explained. “Probably stretches all through these mountains before coming out in the jungle. It could be…ooh..hundreds of feet deep.”
“How’re we supposed to get across it?” Rainbow Dash demanded, still staring down at the black gouge in the rocks. “The ceiling’s too close – we can’t fly across. Is there a bridge?”
“There has to be,” Daring replied. “I’ll go down for a ways and see if I can find a way across. You two stay here. I’ll be taking the torch with me, so you’ll be in complete darkness. Don’t wander off. You could get lost here too easily.”
Rainbow Dash couldn’t resist shuddering at the thought of wandering through these tunnels forever, without sunlight. She didn’t have to be told twice.
Daring nodded firmly, then started off down the passage in one direction, the torch held out in front of her as she began her scan of the river. Rainbow sat down on the cold stone, watching the flickering flame of Daring’s torch disappear as the mare walked off. Soon, the light was gone completely, swallowed by the dark. She and Oracle were left alone.
Rainbow Dash remembered that, when she was a filly, she had been afraid of the dark. All kids were. But she hadn’t been scared of it since she was little. But when Daring’s light finally vanished from her view, and Rainbow Dash and Oracle were plunged in to real, palpable darkness, she began to remember those fears.
This was beyond the darkness of her bedroom she’d been scared of as a filly, though. Rainbow Dash had never in all her life experienced something like this. The darkness in the jungle the night before seemed like a sunny day compared to the absolute blackness that wrapped around her now. A feeling of absolute nothingness. There was no light. None at all. She felt it pressing in on her, and she kept having to feel her eyes with her hooves to make sure they were still open. She just couldn’t tell anymore. Everything was so black.
And so quiet. There was no sound, except the rushing water far below, and the sound of her own breathing which now sounded so loud in her own ears. She swallowed.
“Oracle?” she whispered, though not sure why she was keeping her voice down. It was almost as though she feared the dark would attack her if she spoke too loudly. “Are you still there?”
The shaman chuckled softly, the only friendly sound she’d heard him make since they’d entered the caverns.
“Yes,” he replied calmly. “I am still here.”
Rainbow nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see her.
They waited a long time in the blackness, until Rainbow Dash felt certain that Daring wasn’t coming back. Just as the pegasus was beginning to wonder how they’d manage if the mare didn’t return, and if they were stuck down here without light forever, a pinprick of light, so faint Rainbow Dash almost thought she was imagining it, appeared in the distance. It slowly grew brighter and bigger, and she could finally see Daring coming back towards them. Her face was emotionless.
“You alright?” Daring asked as she came up to them. Rainbow Dash nodded, just glad to be able to see something again.
“Did you find a way across?” she asked, anxious to get out of this labyrinth. But Daring shook her head.
“No,” she replied. “I’m going to check down the other way. Stay here.”
Rainbow Dash sighed and watched as once more, Daring and the torch disappeared the other way. This time, the blue pegasus just lay down and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the darkness. If she just pretended she was asleep in her own bed, everything would be fine….
She didn’t have to pretend for long. Daring came back much faster this time.
“Kid, Oracle, you gotta come see this!” the tan pegasus said, sounding excited. Without thinking twice, Rainbow Dash rose quickly and raced after the adventurer, Oracle tagging along a short distance behind. They followed Daring for a short while, but it wasn’t long before they realized what had intrigued her.
The cavern opened up, the ceiling rising back upwards to a fairly reasonable and less-claustrophobic height. Rainbow could stand fully straight again, a wonderful feeling in and of itself.
But it wasn’t the height of the chamber that had made the adventurer to excited. It was what was in it.
The river was still there, with its deep crevice, but there was something else. It looked like a large, stone bridge that was laid across the ravine, though it was tipped upwards like an unbalanced seesaw. The side closest to them sloped down into the river’s canyon, the other was suspended in the air.
“There’s something written on the wall here,” Daring said, and Rainbow turned her attention from the strange bridge to where the tan pegasus was staring intently on a series of white markings on the cavern’s stone. Rainbow Dash trotted over to where Daring was standing, Oracle a few paces behind, and leaned forward to read the inscription which had been written neatly on the wall with some sort of white chalk or pencil.
It was surprisingly in Common Equestrian, and had been inscribed by somepony with excellent penmanship. It read:
If you have come so far, then I congratulate your progress, though I pity your ambition.
I am not fool enough to think that nopony will ever find the Stone, though I can
take the care to ensure it is not easy. It must not fall into the wrong hooves,
especially those of the two foolish Princesses.
Time is short, but here is a hint:
I unbalanced the magical order with my precious Stone. Look at the bridge I made for
you. Restore what it lost, and you will find more.
Rainbow hadn’t noticed before, but there was a pile of what looked like large, loose boulders sitting under the inscription. She ignored them and focused on the words written on the wall.
“Was that written by the sorcerer?” Rainbow asked, frowning. She didn’t like how he had called the two Princesses “foolish”.
“Yes,” Oracle said, his eyes sparkling. “We are close now, I can feel it.”
“Maybe,” Daring said. “But first we have to figure out what this means.” She gestured to the inscription. Rainbow looked at her as if she was crazy.
“Why?” she asked. “Come on, Daring! We can just fly across!”
At her words, she took to the air, enjoying the ability to stretch her wings again. In a mere four wing beats, she was over the crevice and safely on the other side.
“Kid, be careful!” Daring yelled over to her. “Remember what happened last time!”
Rainbow Dash snorted proudly.
“Please,” she said, haughtily. “I know what I’m doing.”
And to make of point of it, she landed on the other side, then tucked her wings back against her body. Nothing happened, and she smiled broadly back towards Daring.
“See?” she called. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”
“Hmmm…” Daring said, rubbing her chin as she looked back at the words written across the stone wall. “This has to mean something….”
“Do you believe now, Miss Do, that the Alicorn’s Stone is real?” Oracle asked the tan mare calmly. Daring glanced back at him and frowned.
“Well,” she replied. “I believe something’s been destroying pieces of your jungle. But let’s not call it the subject of that old lore just yet.”
She turned back to see Rainbow Dash waving at them, then sighed. Maybe the blue mare was right….
“Hold on, Oracle,” she said, and took to wing, lifting the shaman pony off the ground with her. Rainbow Dash watched from the other side as Daring struggled with her burden. He was heavy, and she was tired…
The stallion’s hooves caught the edge of the bridge, and tipped it forward. As it leveled, a strange, scraping sound, like the sound of rock grinding against rock, filled the chamber. Rainbow swung around, her magenta eyes wide. Immediately across from the bridge, in the rock wall, a carved stone door slid upwards, leading to a darkened shaft leading further in. A gust of old, dusty cave air belched from within it: this door had obviously not been opened since it had been created many years ago.
Rainbow Dash was about to call Daring’s attention to the door, but as the stone bridge passed its balancing point and began to tip back down into the ravine, the door slid back downward with the ear-splitting sound of churning rock. It slammed closed.
“Daring!” Rainbow gasped as the tan mare landed and released Oracle. “Did you see that?”
Daring came forward to inspect the door, which was barely visible as it was so flush with the wall. She slid her hoof back and forth across it, but frowned.
“I can’t find a handle,” she said. “Or any way to open it.”
“It opened when the bridge was level,” Rainbow Dash told her, looking back at the stone bridge which was now tipped up onto its side, completely vertical. Daring looked over her shoulder as well at the bridge, and stepped towards the ravine. She looked thoughtful.
“’Restore what it lost, and you will find more,’” she quoted. “I don’t know what that last bit means, but I think what he’s trying to tell us it that to open the door, we have to restore balance to the bridge.”
“Makes sense,” Rainbow Dash agreed. “But with what?”
Daring looked across the dark tunnel back towards the ravine, the way they had come. Rainbow Dash glanced over her shoulder down the tunnel, and, in the dim light of the torch, her eyes came to rest on what appeared to be a pile of boulders in various sizes, stacked together. Realization came to her mind.
“Daring!” she said, flying over to the boulders. The adventurer turned around, regarding her.
“These boulders,” she said. “They’re like the ones on the other side, under the inscription!”
She grabbed the largest of the rocks and turned it around. White pencil had marked out a number “100” on it. Upon closer inspection, the other rocks had numbers sketched in the same pencil as well, ranging from “70” to “10” and even as small as “5”. She was willing to bet that the boulders on the other side were similarly marked.
Daring was at her side in a flash, looking over the rocks, too.
“I bet you’re right,” she said. “These must be weights, and we have to balance the bridge to open the door. Good thinking, kid.”
She punched Rainbow gently in the shoulder with her hoof, and the blue pegasus swelled with pride. That’s right. She could solve these problems, just like Daring Do could.
“We have to balance the bridge,” Daring said. “But I’m going to guess it won’t be that easy. One side is probably heavier than the other, which is why it’s tipping like that. We’ll just have to start trying some until we can find a combination that works.”
Since Oracle couldn’t fly, which Rainbow Dash and Daring Do were using to expedite the work, he remained on the side of the ravine closest to the door, and watched the two pegasi’s progress in solemn silence. Rainbow and Daring had to keep flying back and forth between the two sides, both to help each other carry the rocks and since there was only one torch to share between them. While one was heaving a boulder towards the bridge, the other held up the torch so she could see, and vice-versa.
They spent a while mixing rocks, testing theories, and experimenting with sizes and weights. The side nearest the door was heavier than the opposite side, and Rainbow Dash had to be constantly careful that it didn’t tip too far over that her rocks would fall into the river far below.
“We’re getting close,” Daring assured her, panting as she moved the boulder marked “100” onto her side, replacing the one marked “70”, which they deemed to be not heavy enough. Rainbow Dash moved a boulder marked “20” onto hers, changing it out for the “30” one. The bridge tilted a little further towards Daring. It was almost balanced now. Rainbow Dash looked over at the stone door, but it remained stubbornly closed. She supposed it would have to be exactly balanced for the door to open again.
“Just a little more!” Daring called over. “Try switching the ‘10’ for the ‘5’!”
Rainbow Dash called back her agreement, then swooped down to pick up the “10” marked boulder. She flew it back to the pile with the other unused rocks, then picked up the “5” and came quickly back. Holding her breath, and hoping this was the right combination, she placed the “5” rock gently down on her end of the stone bridge.
The bridge creaked and shifted downward. Rainbow Dash flew back and landed back on the ground, then looked back, her heart pounding in her throat. The bridge tilted, creaking as it shifted, then, came to a stop.
Rainbow Dash let out a deep breath. It was level.
Behind her, the groaning of stone on stone heralded the opening of the chamber door, and the blue pegasus looked back to see that it had, indeed opened.
“Yes!” she said, jumping up into the air. “We did it!”
“Good job, kid,” Daring said, as she swooped back over the other side, and landed on the ground. Rainbow Dash landed beside her, feeling her faith in this mission restored. For a little while, she had wondered if they should have just turned back. But now….now it seemed they were getting somewhere.
“After you?” Daring asked Oracle, who had remained silent and watchful during their entire time with the bridge. Only now did he speak again.
“No, no,” he replied, coolly. “Ladies first, I insist.”
“Very well,” Daring said, with a shrug, and started into the passageway which the door opened up for them. Rainbow Dash and Oracle were close behind.
“Now, remember,” Daring said as they walked forward. “Be very careful of where you step. There could be – “
She didn’t get to finish the sentence. Rainbow’s hoof hit something in the ground, which sunk into the stone with a soft “chunk” sound.
“Oops,” she said, awkwardly. “My bad, heh.”
“Here we go,” she heard Daring mutter.
It was like the adventurer knew what was going to happen (though, that wouldn’t be too outlandish, taking into consideration all that Daring had been through). Rainbow Dash felt the floor literally drop out from under her, and the three ponies fell straight down. Rainbow Dash considered opening her wings, in case they had been sent falling into some bottomless abyss. But before she even spread them out, they hit something hard, and were sent sliding downwards along something like a stone slide. Daring’s torch had been snuffed out by the wind, so they were left sliding downward through darkness.
The slide twisted alarmingly around, then arched upward, sending the trio of ponies soaring through the air. Rainbow shut her eyes, waiting for the inevitable pain of being thrown against a cave wall. However, it never came, and she opened one eye long enough to see an opening, very similar to the door they’d opened with the bridge, come flying towards them. It seemed to be glowing.
The three ponies flew ungracefully through the air before shooting through the opening, and sliding to a halt on the floor.
However, this was no time to celebrate their stop. Because Rainbow Dash found out very quickly why the room had appeared to be glowing.
Jets of green flame shot out from the floor all around them, arching upwards into the air. Without a moment to rest, all three ponies leaped back to their hooves.
“Run!” Daring commanded, and Rainbow Dash and Oracle didn’t need to be told twice. They threw themselves into full gallops, charging towards another opening on the far side of the room. The jets didn’t stay in one place, though, and continually appeared and disappeared, causing the ponies to have to swerve, come to sudden halts, and switch direction to avoid being charbroiled. Rainbow Dash just missed running head-first into one. Daring’s tail was singed by the time they reached the far side of the chamber.
“Move!” Daring yelled, and the ponies threw themselves forward and out of the room of fire.
As soon as they were through, a door of stone slid shut, blocking them in and cutting them off from the green flames. Not that Rainbow Dash was complaining.
“Everypony okay?” Daring asked, as they gathered themselves back to their hooves. Oracle and Rainbow Dash both confirmed that they were unharmed.
“What’s in here?” Rainbow Dash asked, as she looked around the new chamber they were in. Unlike the passageways they’d been following for the last several hours, this area was very different. The walls were smooth and shaped, more like the inside of a building than a cave. Rainbow Dash supposed the fire chamber had looked like that as well, though they hadn’t spent enough time in it to see what it look like.
It was also lit with an eerie green light, which Rainbow Dash assumed was from the fire next door.
“I don’t know,” Daring replied in answer to Rainbow’s question. As she spoke, the blue pegasus had noticed something on the far side of the room’s far side, lying on the ground in the corner. It appeared to be some sort of a scroll. Daring had obviously seen it as well.
“Stay here,” she told Rainbow Dash firmly, and the pegasus drooped a little. After all, she had been the one to trigger the trap door that had brought them down here.
Carefully, moving painfully slowly, Daring Do made her way across the small, rectangular room towards the scroll which sat so innocently on the ground. Rainbow Dash felt her heart beat faster, waiting with bated breath to see what hidden traps were here for them. Her muscles tensed. What was going to happen this time? Walls and ceiling closing in maybe? That had to be it. Yes, any minute the ceiling and the walls were going to start moving together, ready to trap them….
But Daring Do reached the scroll without a hitch. The adventurer looked confused and still wary as she carefully lifted the parchment off the floor, sweeping her hoof around to make sure it wasn’t attached to any hidden ropes or wires that were ready to set off something else.
But there wasn’t anything. She looked back over her shoulder at Rainbow Dash and shrugged.
“Come on over, I guess,” she replied. “But step only where I stepped. Got it?”
“Got it,” Rainbow Dash replied seriously, and made her way across the room in the same way Daring had. Oracle followed carefully after her.
“Where’s the door?” she asked, once she had crossed to the other side, with still no signs of any triggered traps. It was really starting to worry her.
“Here, I think,” Daring said, gesturing to the far wall. “But we need some sort of a key for it.”
Rainbow Dash peered closely at the far wall. There was the outline of a door, like the others they had come through – she could see the crack in the wall. But in the center there was a large carved circle, and in the center of the circle was an indentation, which appeared to be in the shape of a star inside a diamond.
“Hold on,” Daring said. “Let’s see what this says…”
She pulled the ribbon tied around the scroll off, then unrolled it and held it up, letting the room’s ambient green light illuminate the script for her.
“’Congratulations, my friends,’” Daring read from the letter parchment.
“I once more tell you that while I congratulate you progress I pity your ambition. I am an old stallion now, and I am at the last of my strength. I therefore have decided to leave you, whoever may be searching for my Stone, this note. I did build these traps you have gone through, though I promise you that you are safe here. The Stone lies beyond the wall you are staring out now. Congratulations. In a short amount of time, you will have in your hooves the very artifact that I so nearly used to destroy the whole of Equestria, though I feel no guilt for that.
Be warned, though I am not sorry for the havoc I wreaked, nor am I sorry that the Princesses were ever able to find this place. The Stone is more powerful than you, then the Princesses, can understand. Only I understood its true potential, though I was stopped before I was able to use it fully. Therefore, the Stone itself will be your last test. And be alert: the only place of safety is the place you least expect to find it.
Place the key into the lock and move forward, travelers. And may the Stone’s power show you as much as it did me.”
Rainbow Dash shuddered at the words. She didn’t like how he kept speaking of the Princesses as though they couldn’t understand, but the very way he spoke of the Alicorn’s Stone made her cringe. Like it was alive, and it was more powerful than either Celestia or Luna. That wasn’t something she wanted to think about.
“The key?” Daring said, reading back through the scroll. “What key? There was never any mention of a key before! And he didn’t leave us one!”
Daring read back through the scroll and looked around the ground, but there was no sign of any such key. For the first time, the tan pegasus looked truly annoyed. Rainbow Dash couldn’t blame her. Had they come all this way for a dead end?
Oracle had been silent since they’d left the bridge, but when Rainbow Dash and Daring Do began to frantically search for this “key” that the sorcerer had mentioned, he began to laugh softly. Daring immediately straightened and looked at him, her eyebrows knit together in confusion.
“What’s so funny?” she asked. Oracle smirked.
“You seek so hard,” he said calmly. “For what is right under your nose.”
“Wha – “ she started, but was cut off as Oracle thrust his nose into his saddlebag and brought it forth once more. From his teeth, Rainbow Dash was amazed to see, was a necklace, from which hung the very star-and-diamond etched into the door.
Daring Do stared at him first with shock and then with suspicion.
“Where did you get that?” she asked, slowly. He flicked his tail.
“Family heirloom,” he replied simply, and stepped forward. Rainbow Dash saw Daring’s eyes narrow as she watched him cross in front of her towards the door.
Gently, he placed the amulet in its carved niche and stepped back. It fit perfectly, and the moment it was centered, it began to glow. The amulet sunk back into the stone, twisting as if turning in a lock. The door shuddered, and Rainbow Dash watched with awe as the ancient stone moved upwards, into the ceiling. Dust spewed forth from the other chamber, and Rainbow’s heart leaped forward in her chest.
A light shone brightly from the other side of the door, and the three ponies stood, for the first time in a while, side by side as they looked, unbelieving into the next room.
There, sitting on a carved pedestal, shining as brightly as a star in the night, was what they had searched for, what they had spent the last several days chasing, what they had almost given their lives several times to find.
The Alicorn’s Stone.