Arcana's Wrath

by oop

Chapter 12: Labyrinth

Of all the ways this could’ve started, this wasn’t quite how he had envisioned it.

Mesa had staked out the night in the castle, not quite gaining the funds to pay off Bandwagon but at this point he was thinking he had gotten away free. What he hadn’t expected was to be roused, still hours before sunrise, by a smirking gray Pegasus telling him to get off the dining hall’s table and get outside.

Labyrinth tag, what a ridiculous game idea. He was trapped in the Canterlot Hedge maze now with the full moon’s glow shadowed by these damnable leaves. Somewhere along these hedges were half a dozen others competing in the game of darkness.

Right now, they were his prey. Early on he had been ambushed by a quick-footed unicorn who had tagged him ‘it’ and vanished into the darkness. ‘It’ was not a good thing to be, for when the sun rose and the game ended the one stuck in that position would be the last in line for Shadow’s birthday lunch, an event he was not interested in missing, except those pies he had been carried up the mountain with… he was sick of those…

Of course, on the subject of the sun, he missed it, as he felt like someone could walk right past him in these shadows and he wouldn’t even notice them. It was aggravating and he was getting tired of it. This wouldn’t be much of a game if he was the hunter throughout, and even now, ten minutes in, that’s what it seemed like.

That’s when he saw the bottle. It was a lucky glimpse, just a quick moonlight glint down the way towards a dead end. He paused, remembering something having been mentioned about pickup items, and made a grab for it. The thing was neither hot nor cold, glass, and the liquid inside seemed a tad thicker than water. Well, it was a birthday party right? They wouldn’t put anything harmful in a bottle out here would they?

Throwing caution safely to the wind, he downed the contents, flinching at the odd taste of pepper and carrots, closing his eyes against the tang. When he opened them again he almost did a double take. He could see, not just the dim idea of bushes from before, but full visual context of the whole of the path he was in, a T-intersection with his dead end at the bottom. As he stared, awed by the newfound sight, a blue furred unicorn crossed in front of him, squinting, oblivious to his presence.

Jackpot.

Among Mesas few and far between talents one might recognize speed, though that could be attributed to his mere species as much as anything else. Even so, he didn’t need it, as strength and surprise were working elements to throw him forward, slamming into the unicorn from the side with an exclamation of “Tag!”

He got out of there as quick as he could after that, there were no rules against tag-backs and he wasn’t interested in being easy prey this morning. The potion aided him again here, viewing tricky turns ahead of time and making them with the visual aid his pursuer lacked. When the unicorn dove forward down the entirely wrong direction Mesa felt safe, cautious, but safe. He turned back down his lucky route and continued on in that direction, trying to put distance between himself and the mystery filly as a magically amplified voice rose over the hedges.

“Charm Artifice has been tagged!”

Charm stamped impatiently at the announcement, turning about face in the darkness once, twice, three times, trying to catch the elusive motion that was all she could see of the previous tag-master. She hadn’t wanted to light her horn with luminescence magic to avoid being seen in the dark but now it was coming back to bite her. She had no idea how she had been so easily come upon but for now that was just fine.

After all, in this game the prey became the hunter once they were caught, and there were half a dozen targets to angle for. She paused, just to listen for the sounds of movement for a little while, but any sound of that was drowned out by the rustling of leaves. Damn, she still couldn’t use light to find the others as they would see her long before she saw them.

But maybe her light was the answer. An idle smirk played across her face as her horn lit up, burning her eyes slightly in the contrast to the dark. She focused, remembering the conjuring elements of the spell as the light moved off her horn, forming into a glowing orb in front of her. She squinted at the glow, and then concentrated again, forcing two more identical spheres into existence. The illusionist’s bread and butter, the will-o-wisp.

With another last burst she released the glowing orbs, sending them to ricochet off the hedges and down the rows in a pell-mell pattern. That was one of the fun points of illusions, they defied physics. She knew those orbs would keep bouncing until she cancelled the spell, hopefully sending unwary ponies right into her hooves.

Still, they wouldn’t run here. As the release point she was standing in the spot the orbs would push competitors away from. She got moving, picking a random direction she had sent a wisp and following it until she found a turn. It was a slight worry that she couldn’t still see the glow through the leaves, it meant the hedges were thicker than she thought.

Finally though, her ears picked something up, the sound of hooves on grass. Whoever it was they were running, probably from the wisps as she hadn’t really made much of an appearance yet. Charm altered her course, listening to try and stay on a path parallel to the runner, or mostly, the varied passages made that something of a tricky chore.

To her extreme annoyance she found that the path she was tracking to stay near her prey had led her right into a dead end. The sound of distant hooves carried on as she stamped the ground, turning to look for some alternate path, the hoof steps were getting closer…

That’s when her wisp appeared again, lighting up the outline of a pony running pell-mell right in her direction. She smirked, pressing herself into the corner of the dead end, tucked out of the way as the familiar red coat of Lightning came to a screeching halt at the wall and turned to face the wisp.

A look of confusion passed over Lightning’s face as the orb floated harmlessly over her head and bounced off the hedges, bouncing back the way it had come. “That wasn’t charm?” she said to herself, pacing in place, feeling confused and paranoid.

The touch of a hoof on her shoulder, followed by a maddening giggle shocked Lightning out of her temporary relief “Nope,” said Charm, making a dash past “It wasn’t!”

Lightning’s reaction time was slowed by shock, turning towards the tap, then towards charm running all in series before the announcement came on again.

“Lightning Strike has been tagged!”

She pawed at the ground in anger, starting a determined trot back down the way she came as one of the three errant wisps passed in front of her. She noticed in that second the curiosity of illusion, of how bright the wisp appeared without illuminating anything around it. For a short while she followed the glow, figuring if the others knew Charm wasn’t it they wouldn’t see magic light as any sort of a threat.

When this tactic didn’t work for several minutes Lightning broke course. It could be suspected at this point that the others had found darkened dead ends to bunker down in and would stay there unless flushed out. The full moon would’ve been enough to seek by but her night vision remnants had been taken by staring at the wisp for as long as she had. There was a brief ominous notion that the sun might rise before her eyes adjusted, but she did have a good twenty minutes before that.

Lightning didn’t notice she’d hit another dead end until she walked right into the hedge. Cursing, she got her bearings again, feeling along the hedge to try and reorient herself with the rest of the maze. One wandering hoof stumbled upon a small leather pouch tied to a branch and her heart skipped a beat, it was a pickup item.

Haste took over as she ripped leaves away to get the pouch out of the hedge and examine its contents, finding confusion and disappointment above other things. She knew there were potions of night vision out here, as well as a few obvious magic things, but the small green marbles in the pouch were completely alien. Still, they probably did something, so she tied the strap over her shoulder to keep it secure before taking one out to examine more closely. They didn’t glint in the moonlight, seeming to absorb the weak light in the maze and destroy it. Creepy? Yes, useful? Well that would have to be found out wouldn’t it?

Lightning gave the marble an experimental twirl, then tossed it from hoof to hoof, trying idly to produce some effect. She held it up to one eye, trying and failing to peer through. She shook it, producing no more effect than fumbling the thing and sending it flying down another route.

And in a flash of green she discovered what these things did. It had been sudden, inexplicable, and disorienting, but she somehow moved in physical space exactly to where the marble had landed. She shook off the dizzy sensation, feeling the space in front of her to confirm the lack of the marble. It had apparently vanished after its magic had been used up. A smirk crept slowly onto Lightning’s face, this was just the ace in the hole she had been after.

There was, of course, only one intelligent course of action in Light’s mind, and she wasted no time in acting on that impulse. She procured another marble, and gave it a powerful toss, high over the hedges. Seconds passed as the silence drew out, no others seeming to say anything or be near.

Warping was still a weird thing, so when she materialized at a four way intersection she didn’t at first know what to do about it. It took time for the disorientation to wear of and her senses to come back enough to hear a desperate and quiet breathing sound somewhere to the right. She smirked, turning that direction and walking towards the sound of her prey.

Iris waited at the end of the dead-end path, shocked, fortunately into silence, by the sound of vorpal magic followed by the stumbling hoofsteps as what was obviously an earth pony. Worse, it seemed that even in the dark her location was well known. The slight clatter of bottles from the pouch at her side could only be giving her position away further. She felt cornered, desperate, and ready to make a move.

The last sound Lightning caught of her quarry was that of drinking sounds. After that there was a wild rush of movement from somewhere above and the vague dark pony shape before her had moved to behind. Damn, that girl could leap, but it wouldn’t be enough to seal her escape. This was Iris, she was sure of it, she was the only other earth-pony-shaped person in the maze with her, and Celestia be damned if she was going to get outraced by a blind girl. She steeled herself mentally before grabbing at the marbles again. If she were able to pull of this catch she couldn’t afford to get dazed after a teleport.

Iris was exhilarated, the potion had worked, rabbit’s foot had created her theorized potion of leaping and the results made it feel like she was flying, air rushing through her mane as she scaled each hedge, the paths and boundaries meaning nothing. She even dared release a whoop, suddenly sure of her success for the game, Lightning could never do something like this!

Or maybe she could, and as the vacuum sound occurred below again Iris cried out, landing in a mass of fur and hooves as her leap ended on top of Lightning. She was able to detach herself quickly, ears kept alert to monitor the earth pony now in the same corridor. There was no victory announcement saying she had been tagged meaning her graceless collapse must have passed for a tag-back. The bewildering question now was how her adversary had caught up so quickly.

Lightning, for her part, was having some conflicted feelings about that. The little warp hadn’t fazed her quite as much this time, but being fallen on had hurt, a lot. She and iris were now staring each other down from the opposite ends of the corridor and it felt like her only shot at this. She knew Iris could hear movement, but probably not notice the marbles, which could be her only way to get at her before she jumped again. The trick would be dodging the tag-back without surprise as an available element.

The epiphany came in seconds, shifting from side to side to make sure Iris knew the stalemate. Light carefully procured two marbles, tossing one behind her and pitching the second forward, catching the first with a back hoof as it fell and kicking it up over the hedges behind her. It felt very acrobatic of a thing to do, and if it worked…

The next thing Iris detected was the sudden, painful collision of a tiny, round object with her nose, prompting a squeak and a shuffle backwards, but she didn’t get to jump in time. Lightning materialized inches in front of her, tapping her snout, and before Iris could retaliate she was gone again. The poor little zebra was left dumbfounded by the action, searching for any sound of Lightning fleeing in the darkness, now totally quiet again. That dumb pony had gotten away…

“Iris Stripes has been tagged!”

Shadow heard the announcement seconds after Lightning had appeared in a flash of green light yards away from him, alleviating the fear of sudden attack. She was off down another path before he could even suggest alliance, but he felt it might be better to just get out of there now. After all, with Lightning so close Iris had to be nearby.

The game had been easy for him thus far, the darkness making a fantastic camouflage for his charcoal coat. Mesa had actually run past him twice during the first leg of the match and this made for the third time Lightning had missed him. Charm had caught him once when he had been fleeing a wisp, but she hadn’t been it at the time, so he was well enough off. Now, the game had been radically changed. If Iris were the seeker than his visual hideaway routine would be rendered useless. Now the whole of his focus was devoted to remaining quiet, moving little, and touching nothing.

One mild advantage he had over the others was his sight. It wasn’t so much an actual ability as much as it was how he was going about the challenge, ignoring light sources rather than focusing on them, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Now, with the game near to its end, he was gazing through the dark rather than at it. He couldn’t see quite as well as Mesa hyped on the night vision potion but it was holding him well.

His present route had carried him into the domed area of the maze housing the pool of desires, an intentional motion as it was the only spot he knew of within the maze where he could actually spread his wings. If the need presented itself he might even be able to fly. And when he realized he wasn’t alone he very nearly did.

“Hey flyboy!” Mesa hissed at him as his white coat leered out of the darkness “Haven’t seen anyone else all game, where’s stripes?”

“No idea,” said Shadow, forcing himself to not freak out in the surprise of the moment “Close though, Light was it before her and she just passed me. We don’t have to hold off much longer though, it’s only a few more minutes until sunrise.”

“I bet you’re here for the same reason I am,” said Mesa, smirking into the darkness “She’s blind, no way she could find anyone in a room this big. You just want to chill out here and take the win?”

“I don’t know,” said Shadow, trying not to let on his misgivings about just how able Iris might actually be “It doesn’t really seem that fair…”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Mesa “but you remember what the loser had to do? They have to be last in line for the lunch buffet!”

“I know!” said Shadow “Keep your voice down…” the punishment, he felt, was mostly geared towards him. That lineup would be serving food from the far-east, a rare delicacy even at the castle. The last thing he wanted was to be the last to have a chance at it.

“Dude, calm down,” said Mesa “The unicorn might be dumb enough to get caught by a blind girl but she’ll never find us here.”

“I might not have if you weren’t being so loud about it!” Iris’ voice came floating from one of the paths, sounding uncharacteristically smug.

“Buck…” Shadow muttered, his ears falling flat against his head “Damnit Mesa, now we’re some sort of cartoon cliché.”

“I’m out!” Mesa exclaimed, screwing silence for raw speed as he took off around the lakeside. Shadow had his own takeoff to do, specifically upwards. He may pity Iris if she lost, but it wasn’t worth losing for her. At least no one could catch him in the air…

The hooves wrapped around his neck a second later proved him very, very wrong. Whatever was in that leaping potion had been potent enough for Iris to jump after him and make the catch at the apex of his flight. As Shadow struggled to remain airborne, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek and made a quick statement “You’re it!” Giggling, she detached herself and dropped, making a quick spring down an alternate pathway before Shadow could even react.

“Shadow Chaser has been tagged!”

Shadow had to rub off his embarrassment quickly, he might have less than a minute before he was declared the loser. Iris may have gotten out of his potential capture radius, but Mesa, stuck running around the full circumference of the lake, was still in range, providing one idle hope of not losing this game.

Mesa himself had caught onto the desperation, the effects of the night vision letting him see the next events in stunning detail, the leap and then later the dive. He had turned to a full gallop as his friend in the challenge became an adversary, locking onto the nearest exit and making a beeline for it. The sensation of moving air came before the Pegasus struck, sending is fur into a windswept frenzy as Shadow approached at diving speed. It happened in less than an instant, the quiet, impervious tap on the head before Shadow angled again, upwards and away from the conquered quarry.

“Black Mesa has been tagged!”

“Get back here!” Mesa exclaimed, leaping after Shadow’s flight path “I swear I will-“ he landed in the water with a mighty splash as Shadow took safely to the air, glad Mesa wasn’t able to leap nearly as high as Iris’ potion allowed.

And in that moment the first beam of dawn light crept over the tops of the hedges, filtering green through the mesh plantae roof. Shadow punched the air, whooping while a very wet Mesa crawled out of the water, looking utterly devastated.

“And the loser of the game is, Black Mesa!”

“Buck you!” Mesa cursed to the wind while Shadow just kept laughing, dancing on air.

Author's Note:

Oh yeah, I was supposed to write something this week. Yeah... so I guess that's that. You know i Isn't here right now so I can't help but feel that when I'm in a particularly weak state of mind my characters are sort of a weaker presence there? I know this is already some avante-garde bull**** right here and I'm only making it worse but hey, that's a thing. I'm sorry that there isn't any coherence going on here in the notes, it is very late, I haven't had much sleep over the past few days, but I have actually been good on keeping the writing going. The chapter you just went over has been complete for about three weeks now, I usually get zero to two chapters a week done, right now I'm actually ahead of the game by a good four, but due to the one-chapter-a-week policy which I use so as not to leave you all waiting or stress myself out about deadlines, this is when you're getting it. So sorry. Anyway yes, you got me, total filler chapter right here, but I wasn't interested in having the party pull the old team together without giving some insight onto the party itself. i probably wouldn't have done that, so thank me for being too tired to let him stop stuff like that.

Okay, seriously, author's notes, not an intermission here... yeah, just kind of let me know what you thought, as per the usual, whether you think that it IS actually time for another intermission or if you like/dislike characters or interactions I LOVE to hear from you guys. And never be afraid to ask questions because I love to respond to that too, I mean, not much of a famous person here guys... very approachable, have a lot of time, just do your thing. I'll catch you all later, hopefully next week, probably with i in tow.

Also, new author name, I like it better but I need a new signature... dont think it really changes much but, there it is?

-NU

No that's dumb...

-N

Too pokemon reference...

-NUmb

You see, I can get behind that... yeah, I'll keep that for now, play on words. Now get out of here you crazies, wasted enough time just reading up to this point, come back next week! I'll have lotsa stuff waiting for you.

Comments

[megabyte97]

Alright I liked how Iris seems to be able to hold her own (in light and shadow she seemed just like the typical princess in distress) I mean she might not win in a fight but she doesn't seem helpless anymore. I really like Lightning's ingenuity with the ender pearls, but the best thing I've read so far... was the random toaster ovens.... I don't know why but when those came up I laughed so hard. I mean 'I' has the God of Chaos, the Goddess of Eternal Night, and a pony who's special talent is pretty much calling in a stone age air strike, and the thing that (metaphorically) catches him with his pants down... is a toaster oven. Charm seems pretty good but is she limited to only illusions, or does she have a few more spells in her arsenal? Black Mesa... I got nothing to say he's got luck, one good 'connection' if you even call it that, and possibly strength (not 100% sure since there hasn't been anything where he's had to show his). Anyways with that out of the way I like where this is going good job and I can't wait for the next chapter.