//------------------------------// // Spider's Web // Story: Certamen // by DarkBunny91 //------------------------------// I wandered around in the vicinity of the cave Lyra and I slept in for the better part of the morning. I had found a tattered piece of blue cloth with what appeared to be parts of stars on it and my "keen" tracking skills astutely determined that Trixie slept somewhere nearby if the minor detritus was to be believed. Vinyl, you are so full of horse apples, you don't know the first thing about tracking. You watch Lyra do it and you saw that movie Sherclop Pones: A Study in Scarlet and suddenly you think you are a master of deductive reasoning and pony tracking. As the morning progressed, I searched throughout the cave, watching as the water slowly waned to reveal a passage deeper into the cavern system. I decided to investigate that area once I finished scouting out the immediate outside for any more tatters of cloth, but came up empty hooved. I decided ponies have no business being in the wild; cities were our real natural habitats. The sun's progression marked its noontime zenith before the water drained enough that I dared traverse it. I waded into the water. It was barrel deep and murky but I wasted enough time and sitting around was getting me nowhere, and I was oh so curious as to the contents of the bowels of this cave that I just had to push further. I stumbled blindly through the dark, my horn, glasses, and enhanced eyesight combined just barely allowed me to identify wall and water. The drowned catacombs proved to be much more traitorous than the placid water would imply. I slipped several times, a nasty undercurrent invisible from the surface almost drowning me repeatedly. Multiple small holes in the floor stole my footing and damn near snapped the bones in my pastern, and I continuosly smashed those stalactawhoozits into my cannons. Stalactites, stalagmites, I never could remember which ones were which. Because you are a moron. Shut up brain. Bruised and bloody, I finally came to a rising point in the path that carried me above water. The path led into an eerie and green back-lit room. A hole in the wall allowed for ambient lighting from an adjacent room, which cast long spindly shadows from every little bump, ceiling and floor. To make matters worse, the familiar coppery smell of blood mixed with the mildew and mold that permeated the room. I realized that it was becoming way too common a smell for my tastes, though unfortunately not an uncomfortable smell. All pain ignored, I rushed through the hole, following the hazy blood scent to discover its source. Spattered all across the walls and floor, drops and splotches of red life were abundant, trailing and thickening before finally concluding at its origin. In the center of the room, surrounded by scrolls of vellum and a blood stained knife was a capeless Trixie, her hat covering her eyes and casting a shadow over her blood encrusted muzzle. Her barrel and all four legs were a patchwork of matted fur and dried blood. It hit me like a buck to the stomach: Trixie was hurt, maybe as bad as me. Panicking, I rushed over and leaned my ear right next to her mouth. Warmth pulsed rhythmically onto the soft flesh of my earlobe, making me flick it in annoyance. "Vinyl," Trixie moaned softly. "Yes, Trixie?" I whispered softly. "You smell awful. Please vacate the area of Trixie's face." I recoiled like I had been struck. Leave it to Trixie to insult her would-be savior. With a grin I muttered a rebuttal, "Yeah, well dude, you smell awful too." Nailed it. "What happened exactly?" Trixie pushed herself off of the blood-soaked ground and twisted her neck until a disgusting pop sounded out. Getting to see her entirety, I could see I overreacted; the cuts and abrasions covering her body were mostly superficial, save one particularly nasty groove running down her right eye. Nothing that wouldn't heal in time or with Lyra's care. "While you were away Trixie bested a creature of the night. A feat truly worthy of the Great and Powerful Trixie, if she does say so herself. Why, it was more impressive than beating the Ursa Minor." "What?" "Nothing, DJ, nothing." "Ok then? Lyra and I were searching for you all through the night, and honestly, I have something to say to you." Trixie rolled her eyes and annoyance as she prepared for me to say something demeaning to her. "Trixie, I'm sorry for being a total flankhole, it wasn't cool at all. I mean, just because I was under a lot of stress from almost being killed, then subsequently being turned into a monster, doesn't mean I can act like a monster. Please, I’m begging from the bottom of my heart, I need you to forgive me.” She looked at me almost as if I had grown a second head. Slowly she approached me and I felt my body shrink down, every part of me ready to accept whatever judgment she would mete out. I closed my eyes, tears forming in the corners as she raised one hoof high into the air. I actually started to cry as she wrapped her arms around me, the warmth of her body surrounding me. She lightly tousled my mane and whispered into my ear. “Trixie forgives you, and you aren't a monster.” We hugged for a few more minutes before she pulled back and spoke. “A total ‘flankhole’ these past few days to be sure, but Trixie doesn’t think you are a monster, Vinyl. Trixie fought a monster, and that was not you. Trixie feels that you are a good pony who has a lot of issues in your life at the moment.” I looked down, ashamed, and mumbled under my breath. Trixie looked at me, confused, so I looked up and repeated myself, a slight quiver to my voice. “I bit Lyra.” “So, is she alive?” “Yes, when I left her she was as healthy as a horse.” “Well Trixie does not see what the problem is then.” “Isn’t she going to be changed like I was?” “How would Trixie know? She is not an expert on vamponies.” “Heh, right," I sighed. “However, Trixie does know that you need to stop angsting and focus. You may have be cursed to drink blood, but Trixie has seen you move faster, and your muscle tone has improved as well. It sickens Trixie when somepony becomes a vampony in a movie or a book and then just whines about how they are no longer Equestrian. As long as you control yourself and don't eat anypony, this is really a boon for you. She continued talking, going off on a lecture about the consequences of our actions, and our responsibilities to our fellow ponies. But I rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses, the faint glow they produced proving to be very distracting as I started trying to focus on anything that wasn't her, she seemed to be back to her old long-winded self. After Trixie concluded her rant she snorted irritably. Clearly by the look of annoyance she shot my way, I was busted. Trying my best to salvage my innocence, I listed my eyes around the room we were in, trying to find out what the room was. The runes covering the wall may as well have been Zebrican for all I knew, but there was presumably another way out. All in all it looked like a small war-zone had broke out in here, but if Trixie fought the monster that changed me then it made sense, I supposed. “Trixie, did you explore down the other tunnel at all?” I asked. “Trixie started to after gathering some rubbings of the symbols on the walls, but after about ten minutes fatigue got the better of her and it was a veritable maze beyond the hole. Trixie decided to head back to familiar ground since the tunnel she came in flooded over.” “I assume you mean the tunnel I came through?” “Did you come through a maze?” I shook my head vigorously. “Then yes, the tunnel you entered through.” “It’s not flooded as much now, dude. I mean, I made it through, but it was still pretty treacherous,” I stated, pointing down to my banged up legs. “Trixie thinks we should try the maze. Trixie has enough scrapes and bruises for the time being. Speaking of which, where is the bard? Trixie could use some healing.” “Umm yeah, after my little episode Lyra and I split up to, I guess, cover more ground.” “So the bard got scared because the vampony she was going to sic on Trixie had a midnight snack?” Trixie questioningly snarked. “Presumably," I deadpanned. “Seems like karma got the best of her," Trixie muttered. I gave her a ‘shut up’ stare as she pushed absent mindedly on the metaphorical knife in my gut. “Lets just get out of here and find her.” I sighed. “Trixie agrees, that would be for the best.” A half hour passed as we blundered around the labyrinthine cave system seeking an exit, coming to several dead ends and eventually becoming hopelessly lost. Aggravated, I turned to Trixie to see if she knew how to teleport us out. “Trixie can teleport, but it is not going to do us much good.” “Why not?” “How far are we below ground?” I shrugged. “How far into the maze are we?” Still nothing. “Where is the room we were in? How thick are the cave walls? Do you get the picture, DJ? There are too many unknowns for Trixie to just ‘poof’ magic us out, as painful as it is for Trixie to admit. We are going to have to find our way out the hard way.” “So are we stuck?” “No, simply displaced, but we will find our way eventually. Trixie has read about things like this before, we just need to pick a wall and hug it until we come across something. We have just been wandering up until this point, but now Trixie is feeling claustrophobic - what is that?” Trixie ended her little tirade with a horrified expression, gesturing behind me. I turned for a look and settled my eyes on an old dessicated cadaver. “Well, that’s going to be us if we don’t find our way out of here." “Trixie is starting to be wary of her situation.” “Vinyl agrees,” I replied. Realizing what I said, I mockingly jabbed Trixie’s ribs. She grunted in annoyance and flicked her tail at me as if I were a fly. “I’m going to check the body for any kind of identifications,” I informed Trixie as I started towards the corpse. I inspected the cadaver with general disgust, especially when I had to move the body, and found a fifteen by fifteen centimeter patch of stone that was the wrong color. With my hoof, I pressed my hoof firmly down upon it and the button depressed instantly, sinking down about two centimeters before a soft click pierced the air. A large portion of the cave wall descended into the floor, revealing an artificially lit hallway. The fluorescent lights were bright, cutting through the darkness and causing both Trixie and I to look away. It was your typical office or warehouse type deal, concrete walls and laminate floor with a paneled ceiling with hanging fluorescent lights. The whole hall was almost surgically white with a marble patterned floor, almost sterile in the way that no dust floated in the air or seemed to settle on anything. Hesitantly, I stepped one hoof in the entryway. No alarms triggered, and I wasn’t immediately vaporized, so I assumed that either nopony knew or cared that I was here. I waved for Trixie to follow me, and while at first she shook her head she sighed and followed after me. We walked down the barren hallway, taking a few turns here and there when there was no other choice, before coming across a metal door with some sort of arcano-tech locking system. Intrigued, I started playing with the lock, punching buttons in a random sequence until the lights on it shifted from the warm yellow color to an angry red and a buzzer went off. Undeterred, I looked at Trixie and asked if she still had that knife, which she promptly handed to me with a raised eyebrow. Wedging the knife into the small seam where the lock and the door met I began pulling until the facing and interface fell, hanging by a few wires. Trixie piped up behind me. “Vinyl, Trixie is curious. Do you actually know what you are doing?” “All electronics run on a similar principle, magical or otherwise. A signal leads into the components and runs through various channels before hitting the motor or board that creates the effects that you want. My intent is to bypass the locking mechanism and just power the motor in hopes of opening the door.” “That may be the dumbest thing Trixie has ever heard,” Trixie said as I began cutting wires and splicing them together. “Trixie thinks that the ponies who design locks like that would expect somepony to figure that out and therefore make it impos…” Her stunned silence and gaping mouth were the cherry on top as the door slid open to reveal the continued hallway on the other side. Prancing like a filly with a special somepony, I bopped Trixie on the nose to bring her back into reality. “Vinyl Scratch one, Trixie whatever her name is zero.” “Lulamoon,” Trixie answered. I think my heart stopped when I heard her name. Trixie was a Lulamoon? Her family were arch magisters and wizards of the highest order. It was an ancient line dating back to Starswirl the Bearded in the age of Princess Platinum. For all I knew Trixie might be the most powerful unicorn alive since Twilight grew wings. I backed away slowly like Trixie was a ticking bomb before realizing I had never seen her do anything impressive, though, she did say she defeated the monster that attacked me. Trixie waved her hoof in my face, snapping me back to the situation we were in. I forced myself to stop hyperventilating and calmed down, feeling my heart ease down a little. “Trixie doesn’t like talking about her family for exactly that reason. She wants ponies to know The Great and Powerful Trixie for her own merits.” “Alright well, I will respect that, and request that you don't disintavaporate me or whatever, Miss Lulamoon.” "Miss Lulamoon is Trixie’s mother. Trixie is just Trixie, or The Great and Powerful Trixie if you aren't into the whole brevity thing.” I nodded, dumbfounded. “Now if you don’t mind, can we move on now?” I nodded again and started down the hall, Trixie in step, our hooffalls echoing in unison. After a while, we came across a placard, which had arrows pointing both left and right with brief descriptions of what was down each adjacent hall. “To the right is the exit,” Trixie announced. “Dude, don’t you want to see what this complex is?” I asked her. “Trixie wants to get out of here and for things to get back to normal.” “In case you haven't noticed, this whole place reeks of cod.” “Trixie smells no fish,” Trixie stated flatly. “I,” I saw her arch her brow and I face hooved, hard. “I want to know what in Tartarus this whole place is about.” “As does Trixie, but this,” she gestured toward the left hall, “this can wait until we find Lyra. It’s really not going to go anywhere.” I pouted in defeat, but Trixie's logic was sound. For all we knew Lyra could sitting in the stomach of a giant snake, being slowly digested or something, an image I was desperately trying to suppress. But just as Trixie took top priority, so did Lyra; my friends before my curiosity. I trudged down the path to the exit, but not without glancing back at the direction that potentially held answers. Wistfully, I saw what I thought was a flicker of movement, but after staring for a moment I rationalized that it must have been my imagination. We emerged through a trapdoor into a pretty devastated room. The wooden walls had holes all throughout and debris littered the floor. Broken furniture and books were more prevalent than the dusty floor space. A low moan from the other room signaled someone’s presence, so I crept to the door and pressed my ear to it. Unable to hear anything I twisted the handle with my magic. The door inched open to reveal a pretty similar scene, differing primarily by the seafoam green lump sprawled out over the floor. “Lyra!” Vinyl shrieked, vaulting past me to the motionless body. I walked over to investigate, noting the massive amounts of bruising and swelling across Lyra’s face and forelegs. Her sides were moving rhythmically, so she was breathing at least, but she looked really bad off. I for one was glad that I wasn't in her shoes right now. Suddenly, one of her eyes shot open, the other one far too swollen over to move well. She looked around the room before settling her gaze upon me and moaned out a single word, a name we all knew, “Octavia,” before slumping back into unconsciousness. Vinny and I shared a look as we tried to process what she said. If Octavia was in fact here, worse if she did this, it did indeed smell of fish. “Trixie,” Vinyl began, “we need to save Octavia, she—” “Probably did this to Lyra,” I finished cutting her off. “How could you say that?” Vinyl gasped, ” Octavia is a good pony, she could never do this.” “Lets look at the facts shall we, she gathered each of us here, we were all desperate for something so we were quick to grasp onto a chance to do anything without thinking twice, bad stuff has happened to us since we got here, Lyra appears to have seen her, and now she has been brutalized by what could only have been an earth pony’s strength. You tell me how this looks.” “Not good.” “Damn straight not good, this is enough for an indictment by Equestrian law.” “I just don’t want to believe it, but you're probably right.” “Well then, we need to get Lyra to safety, and then if you're still being a Celestia damned fool, you, and I mean you, can look for Octavia.” Vinyl looked to be on the edge of tears, and I’ll admit that was over the top on the harshness scale, but we needed to look after our own right now and Vinyl was not thinking straight. I looked around and upon spotting the door scooped Lyra up with my magic. Not even bothering with the handle, I pivoted on my hind legs and bucked the door open. With a resounding crack that sounded almost like an explosion, the door burst into pieces ranging from splinters to chunks the size of my head. With a ferocious battle cry I charged for a few seconds before sliding to a stop and sheepishly turning around. “Vinyl, Trixie must confess, she was out here because she got lost. Do you know how to get back?” with a sigh Vinyl gestured for me to follow and led us, hopefully back to camp. Our camp was in a pretty sorry state when we got back; hoofprints everywhere, our bags tossed aside and looking pilfered, and our fire pit completely out. I set Lyra down on the mat she made for Vinyl. That seemed like years ago now, but the sad truth was, only a week or so had truly progressed. I filled the cooking pot full of water to wash up her wounds, and set to tending her. While I was washing away the blood I noticed she had an amulet around her neck, and so I asked Vinyl if she knew what it was. She glanced over and took a look at it before saying, “That’s the amulet she pulled from the bottom of the spring.” “Was she wearing it before?” “Not as far as I know.” Concerned, I tried to pull it off of her neck but to no avail. Annoyed, I went for it with my magic, but I couldn't even catch hold of the damn thing. I realized it must be similar to the Alicorn Amulet in that only the wearer can remove it or some such nonsense. After finishing up I looked over Lyra, still concerned. Admittedly she didn't look half as bad without all that blood covering her coat, so to help the swelling I grabbed a few pieces of cloth and doused them with water. I cast the simple cantrip I use to make ice on the soaking wet rags to freeze them. I pushed away, satisfied with Lyra’s health for the time being, though unfortunately not having her medical skill I could not be certain of her exact state. I wandered over to the fire to get some sleep. I watched in horror as the Ursa Minor smashed my wagon. It was just my stage for shows but my home as well, it held all my wordly possessions, a lot of which were irreplaceable for just sentimental value. I turned to run, my hooves impacting on cobble stone down the vacant night time Ponyville streets. I screamed and ran, feeling myself wear down. Each step I took propelled me forward, but every time I looked back, the Ursa just appeared closer, each step of its worth at least twenty of mine. I realized with dread that it was going to catch me. even now I could feel its breath in short bursts hitting my back. Up ahead I saw a cul-de-sac trapping me in the path of the monster’s wrath. In a panic, I glanced left and right to look for a way out, but there appeared to be no room between the houses for me to squeeze through and no side streets for me to run down. The great beast’s warm breath beat down on my back, and the oppressive odor seared my eyes and my nose. This was it. I silently bid farewell to everyone I knew and loved, wished I could have made it with the pony I liked, prayed to make it to Elysium, and closed my eyes, the warmth of my tears wiping down my face in great torrents. “Trixie of clan Lulamoon, you need not fear any longer,” I heard a voice say. “Yes, death has a certain finality,” I stated flatly, my eyes clenched tight to avoid looking at the reaper. “Trixie, you are a silly pony.” I opened my eyes to gaze upon the face of Princess Luna mere centimeters from my own. Neither going to confirm nor deny having shrieked a little. “ Princess? If there is a puddle on the ground, can we assume it is just the rain?” I stammered out. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s not raining.” “Oh.” “Our secret, Trixie, I promise.” “Thank you, Princess. But if I may, why are you here?” “Besides your nightmare? Lyra asked us to find you.” “That isn't a big deal anymore, and I’m afraid I have dire news.” “Yes?” Luna asked leaning forward. “Lyra has been attacked by someone we trusted and we are afraid she may have a concussion,” I informed her. “That is dire indeed. Worse yet is that unconsciousness is usually dreamless, so we can't even contact her via our dream walking.” “Do you have any healing magic that I could observe? If I see it, most likely I can cast it.” “Alas, Trixie, even if we could cast proper healing spells, in the world of dreams magic is so drastically different that there is no way to translate it to the physical plane. Here, the aether is everything and bends to the will of the ponies who inhabit it - literally anything you think of you can do - but it only affects the dreamscape.” “Well, buck.” “We apologize, we will think about what we can do. As soon as we have something we will render our assistance. Lyra is quickly becoming my favorite pony.” I blinked and nodded. Quickly I realized I had no idea what was going to happen, so I looked towards the departing princess and tried to shout for her, but she blinked out before I could get her attention. Looking around, I realized I was having a lucid dream at this point so. I just lay back and thought about being in the embrace of a certain lavender alicorn. I chuckled to myself as the scenery shifted to what I assumed the inside of her bedroom, inside of Golden Oak Library.