Chapter 38: A Horse with Two Names
At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Chapter 38: A Horse with Two Names
“Now that all of that is settled,” said Torn Deck, “let’s continue going around this ring and find the entrance.” Saying this, the earth pony walked right into the southern wall. “Oh, a dead end.”
Burnished Lore put away the silver circlet he had been examining. “Will you need me to continue on with you, or shall I wait here?” He didn’t seem to be showing any particular preference for or against either option, so used was he to being an accessory to other ponies’ adventures.
“Well...” Midnight put a hoof to her chin as she thought, staring at Bernie. “I would definitely prefer you come with us until you are, um...adventurized again?” She looked up to a corner of the ceiling and shrugged helplessly.
“Fine with me,” he said with a shrug of his wings.
“Where to next?” asked Facet.
“Well, I guess we have to go counter-clockwise if we can’t go clockwise,” said Torn Deck. He walked past Itty Bitty to exit the grotto.
Following him, the group walked past the dead end where they had heard voices, going northwest. Before too long, they faced the entrance to a branch passage that led southwest. “Third time’s the charm?” Torn asked rhetorically before heading down the passage, the others at his hooves.
The end of the twenty pony-length passage was blocked by a pair of riveted iron doors, each three pony-lengths wide and eleven pony-heights tall. From the look of the hinges set into the stone, each of these great doors must have been as least three hooves thick. On each door were many leering demonic visages in bronze. Weird symbols formed a crabbed tracery around the border of each great iron portal. In the center of each was a plaque with the following runes inscribed in Equine:
Eggwife’s treasure rests within.
Her curse on any who disturb it.
Seek no further to steal it, nor
to free she who is prisoned here,
for a fate worse than death is
sure to come to those foals who
violate this circumscribed place.
“I do not believe that ‘prisoned’ is being used properly,” Burnished complained. “Trying to make your poem scan is poor excuse for bad vocabulary use.”
Midnight laughed, and shook her head. “It’s fine, not like we’re the ones who wrote it or anything,” she joked.
“Wh...where’s the guard?” asked Itty Bitty. “That verse in the upper level said that ‘Many are the guards who wait / As you go to the middle hex.’”
“Well, it could imply Guards, as in safeguards, like traps,” the sun cleric replied. “The sort of thing we would definitely need a thief for.”
“Oh,” said Facet, dropping. “It’s too bad that she’s stone right now.”
“Yes,” said Torn with a knowing smile. “But realistically, there’s no way we would have waited.”
“Waited for what?” asked Bumble.
“Never mind,” said Torn. “Burnished, could you Detect Magic on these doors?”
Burnished Lore pulled out his Wand of Detect Magic, and then stopped. “These are iron doors, yes?” he asked. “I’m not sure how I am absolutely certain of that fact from merely a visual inspection, but somehow I am.”
“Well, supposing they are?” asked Torn Deck.
“Cold iron?”
Facet stepped forward, rapped loudly on the door with a hoof, and listened to the echo. “Yes, cold iron.”
“Then it can’t be enchanted,” said Burnished. “Of course, that also means that there is no way to detect what sort of magic is on the other side of those doors. That’s an entirely passive safeguard right there. The kind designed to make you really, really nervous.”
Torn Deck sighed. “I don’t suppose anypony answered Facet’s knock?” he asked.
“Are you asking the invisible voice?” asked Dragon Choss.
Burnished looked at the monster and screamed.
“It’s alright, little pony,” Lion Choss said. “In case you forgot, we’re on your side...for now.”
“Oh, uh yes,” Bernie said. “I thought I hallucinated you earlier.”
“Let me open the door,” said Dragon Choss with an evil smile. “If Eggwife or one of her lieutenants waits on the other side of that door, I want our faces to be first that she sees, so that she may know the doom that awaits her!”
Midnight laid a hoof on Choss’s foreleg. “Choss...Chossy, as much as that would be amusing, I think that rushing in recklessly might get us all hurt. Are we sure there is no further tunnel to explore?”
The tunnel continued clockwise past the corridor that led to this door. I mean, it’s a hexagon, and you’ve covered basically one of the six sides of said hexagon.
“Well, maybe we just got lucky?” speculated Bumble.
“Unless one of the other six doors is the real door,” Midnight said meaningfully.
As the group thought on these words, the sounds of ponies walking and talking could once again be heard in the distance, both approaching and receding at the same time.
Facet produced a piece of green chalk, and marked a numeral “1” on a demon’s forehead. “A complete circuit, then?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?” said Torn Deck.
The group turned around, and retraced their steps. When they exited the corridor, the sounds of other ponies vanished.
“Hey!” exclaimed a familiar voice. “Guess who’s back in the land of the animate?”
They turned to see three ponies, two familiar, one not. The most-welcome sight was Carry On, restored to normal. A little behind her was Hope Springs, and a bit behind her was a pink pegasus with faintly glowing cat eyes.
“You were successful in your mission for Celestia! Oh, Hope I am overjoyed to see you alright!” Midnight rushed forward to embrace her friend, as Carry On huffed.
“‘Mission’. Sure, we can call it that.” She waited a moment for her chance at a hug, and quickly grew impatient. “Well! I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m unwanted!” she said grumpily.
“Carry!” Torn exclaimed, racing forward to pull the thief into a tight embrace. “I missed having an unstable inventory!”
Facet, Itty Bitty and Bumble watched the reunion, faint smiles on their faces. Choss stepped cautiously forward.
“Oh, Carry, Hope, New Pony—this is Choss,” said Torn. “After freeing him from mind control, he agreed to join our party.”
Choss pushed past the others to stand before the strange new pony, looking her in the eye. “Why are you looking like that?” Dragon Choss finally asked.
The pony held up a foreleg, which was clad in a golden bracelet. “Because if I wasn’t, I’d probably collapse this tunnel.”
“Ah, makes sense,” said Dragon Choss. He used a wingtip to gesture at the silver circlet that was around the pony’s head, pointed at his own, and finally turned to the others and nodded. “I vouch for her. We dragons know our own.”
“And who is she?” asked Burnished. He seemed tremendously excited to be so close to a tame dragon. It was probable that this would be only the first of thousands of questions out of the researcher.
“Sofia,” the pony/dragon said with a toothy grin. Her teeth looked far too sharp for one’s comfort.
Hope rolled her eyes. “So, other than Choss here, have I missed much? Oh, hello, Choss.” She held out a hoof for a shake.
Lion Choss attempted to squeeze the life out of Hope’s hoof, but stopped almost immediately with a shocked expression and backed away.
“Choss...Hope here is my Good Friend,” Midnight said firmly. “Please be nice to her.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt her...much,” protested Lion. “And you’re sure right about good,” he muttered afterwards.
Torn stepped forward to fill the missing adventurer in. “Hope, we followed Celestia’s directions to make the most-direct path down to this level, and now we’re making a circuit of the central area before attempting to enter. Oh, and I suppose I have to ask: does Sofia here count as an adventurer, when it comes to treasure/experience?”
“No!” Sofia exclaimed. “I am done with adventuring! I just need to track down one pony, and then I’ll settle down in a cave and be a good dragon.”
“He’s not here,” Hope said quietly.
“How do you know? He could be any one of them!”
A very dark expression flitted across Hope’s face. “Believe me, I’d know.”
“Oh, right,” said Sofia. “He screwed you over too. I’m sorry I brushed that off in my earlier—”
“Firebelle?” asked Burnished Lore in a fearful voice.
Torn Deck at this point sat down. Although he had nothing in his hooves, he appeared to be miming the motion of eating popcorn.
“Hi, Unca Bernie,” Sofia said in an abashed voice.
“So it’s true. The story that…” Burnished’s eyes briefly looked at Midnight before returning to the disguised dragon. “You’re alive!”
Midnight just looked confused, looking between them nervously.
Burnished and Sofia raced together into a tearful embrace.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your warnings, Uncle!” Sofia cried.
“That’s perfectly fine, Child,” said Burnished. “You just needed to prove yourself worthy of your family’s deeds.”
“It was so awful!” Sofia exclaimed. “I was so stupid during my first fight, and then...an adventurer stole me, away from the Inn! And traded me in for a better model!” She broke down in sobs for a minute.
“There, there, cry it out,” said Burnished. “Uncle Bernie is there for you.”
Carry On glared furiously at the same spot in the ceiling that Midnight had addressed earlier, while Midnight scooted closer to Hope.
“But...but it’s pretty neat being a dragon,” Sofia said, pushing Burnished a short distance away. “Look at this!” From her mouth, she produced a thin stream of acid, which defied gravity by looping around to join itself. With some visible concentration on her part, the standing liquid contorted some more and then with a toss of her head she sent the stream into the nearest wall, where it outlined the first initial of her dragon name.
“Bravo!” Dragon Choss cried. “Being a dragon is the best.”
“Hey!” protested Lion Choss and Gorgon Choss in chorus. They were ignored.
“But that’s in Equine,” Dragon Choss continued. “In Draconic, it would look like this…” He blew a narrow stream of fire into the rock wall and formed a different shape.
“Ooh!” exclaimed Sofia. “I’ll have a whole new language to learn! Will you teach me, Choss?”
“Well, I dunno,” Dragon Choss said, suddenly bashful. “I was going to inflict massively overcompensating property damage before returning to Tartarus.” He looked over at Midnight. “Just property damage.”
“Darn right, Mister,” Midnight chuckled. “But really, you could have an entirely different life, a helpful and constructive one, if you wanted... You know...maybe an alignment shift...?” She grinned wider than a pony should be able to.
“I dunno…” Dragon Choss pondered. “Is it true what they say about an all-dragon kingdom to the east?”
“Yup!” exclaimed Sofia. “I was thinking of flying over there when this is all done. Wanna come?” She swished her tail in a manner that caused it to go flying in all directions. On a dragon, the move probably would have looked much more seductive.
Dragon Choss swallowed uncomfortably.
“Hey, what about us?” Lion Choss protested. “If you turn good, does that mean I have to become a vegetarian?”
“Dragons don’t really care one way or the other,” pronounced Burnished Lore. “And of course they have all kinds of interesting rocks to eat.” This last part got Gorgon Choss’ attention.
“Going good would allow you to champion for less of the whole... ‘adventurer wrecks the place and takes everything’ trend too,” Midnight added.
Carry On pouted again. “That’s my favorite part!”
Sofia looked over at Midnight, seeming to see her for the first time. After gesturing Choss to stay where he was, she walked over to the unicorn, in that odd gait that made it even more clear that she was a dragon in a pony’s body. “Nice eyes,” she said, “they suit you. Too bad that silly cloak of yours didn’t work. I never thought it would.”
“It could have worked!” said Hope.
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage here...” Midnight said nervously, appearing to scan some paper in front of her that noone else could see. “Um...my Cloak of Resistance—zero charges left?”
“I wasn’t really paying attention, sorry,” said Sofia, not really looking very sorry with that creepy grin of hers. “You and Hope were my minions back then, before I came to my senses.”
“Sofia,” said Hope with a wide smile. “You do know who she is, right?”
Sofia lunged forward, putting her eye right up to Midnight’s. “Bri…?” She just as quickly backed away. “No, he’s got blue eyes.”
“Dragons have no sense of personal space,” Burnished commented.
“Noooo,” said Hope. “Someone a bit older.”
“Hey! I am not old,” Midnight huffed. “In either world. Now, I think we should get moving, we have a bunch of doors to check!”
She turned around, and started walking confidently around a slight curve to the corner between two sides of the hexagon, where yet another passage led inward.
Behind her, she heard Hope whisper something in Sofia’s ear, and the disguised dragon trilling.
“And they do that when they’re excited. Or when they win a bet,” said Burnished, catching up with the others.
“Well, let’s hope her excited nature isn’t going to cause us trouble,” Carry said, slipping into the tunnel and checking it carefully for traps.
It was a short passage, and quickly led to a dead end. On the floor of the passage was a small wooden tube.
Facet used her magic to pick it up and shake it a few times, before opening it. “Come on, Cleric spells, come on, Cleric spells...oh. It’s just text: ‘Going north takes you southeast’.” She put the scroll back in the tube and dropped it where she found it.
“Well, anyone know what that means?” Carry asked, as Midnight thought on it.
“Maybe...what if all the directions we’ve received point out an end goal. Like...north goes southeast, southeast goes somewhere else, etcetera, until we get to one that doesn’t redirect somewhere else?” She asked, pulling out the scroll they had found between Choss and the stairs downward. “Going south takes you southwest,” she read.
“Noted,” Torn Deck said with a sigh, adding a couple of notations to the corner of his map. “I hate when the gods pull something like this.”
# # #
The group backtracked, and walked along the second “face” of the hexagon to reach another passage, leading to an even shorter dead end. Nothing was found in this one.
Continuing on brought them to a spot due north of where the suspected treasure/monster chamber lay. The passage before them went south for some distance, before turning southeast. It dead-ended as well.
“If we dug through that wall, we’d reach our last dead end,” commented Torn, pointing in one direction. Pivoting a bit, he added, “And if we dug through that wall, we’d reach the dead end that had that scroll in it. Somepony is trying to use every possible square in her graph paper, isn’t she?”
Hey, there are real cave systems like this!
Midnight had been sitting, staring at the wall, eyes squinted, for a while. “Hey...what if we are already between realities? What if these walls are...the edges?” She got up as close as she could to the wall, and tried to lift her bag with her telekinesis, to see if she and it were on different planes. She found that they were on the same plane.
Hope rested a hoof on the wall and frowned. “We’re definitely in a different space than the rest of the caverns,” she said. “But the boundary is not here.”
Behind them they heard the phantom ponies once again, but this time they continued to approach, closer and closer, until…
“Um, surprise?” said Chestnut as she walked into view. Behind her were three more adventurers.
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The groups have finally met! I've been looking forward to seeing how that goes.
Firebelle's reaction to Hope presumably telling her which adventurer was controlling Midnight was interesting. Was Ellen the adventurer she was hoping to get, maybe? She must have heard enough stories about her from her relations...
Since it's a hex, it seems possible you could refer to the sides as "North, Northeast, Southeast, South, Southwest, and Northwest". So, if you entered the door on the southside, you'd be going north, and probably come out the door on the southeast side, and likewise, if you entered the door on the northside, you'd be going south and coming out on the southwest side.
Taking the hint from the poem that "a seventh time and you may stay", I wonder if the six doors will turn out to be linked in series, so that entering any door, going out the other side, then re-entering the door you've just exited six times in a row would bring you right back to where you started, and then entering again a seventh time will enter the hex?
The levels and levels of cross-world interaction grow ever more complex and ever more joyously convoluted. Sort of like this entire story being a joyously convoluted tale to read. I'm not even attempting to solve the Hex puzzle because it makes my brain hurt a bit.
Though I do have one query!
What is this line meant to mean? The wording feels a little clumsy/hard to parse
This party just keeps getting more and more powerful. An incarnate goddess, a pony/dragon shapeshifter, a dragon/lion/gorgon headed chimera, and a host of pony adventurers with a variety of talents. Those players who want dragons in the game must be salivating over what's going on on stage.
That's a nice trick, and easily combat applicable too if it comes down to that.
Pack up everyone, we're going shipping. Sofia X Choss? Why not.
Ooo, Sofia is up to three letters of Brian's name, this could get interesting once she reveals another letter or two.
Speaking of things getting interesting, looks like we're due.
I think the explaination in the real world might be it was all an elaborate ploy to show everyone that being a powergamer is dumb, and should have consequences. That presupposes nothing magical occurring, though.