Double Dare

by Wordplay42

Chapter 14

Chapter 14-

It seemed as though they were trapped inside the earth itself, doomed to wander forever with only the light of a dim torch held out before them. Rainbow Dash had never realized just how much she loved seeing the sky, or being outside in the sunlight until she was trapped in these endlessly winding tunnels a long way from the open air.

Oracle had fallen back behind Daring, and Rainbow was now bringing up the rear. The party had hardly talked since entering the cave, unless Oracle was giving directions. Daring’s ears were pricked forward, and her face was tense with concentration. She seemed to be looking everywhere at all times, and Rainbow assumed it was for booby traps. Danger could be anywhere and everywhere down here. It made the blue pegasus shudder to think about it.

The three ponies mostly were relegated to walking in a single-file line, as the passageways were too narrow for anything else. They’d been walking like this for a while when the cavern opened up into a large room. Rainbow Dash sighed inwardly with relief. Finally, a break from the narrow passageways.

But Daring stopped short, forcing Rainbow to avoid running into the pegasus’ back.

“What?” Rainbow Dash asked, glancing around. “What is it?”

“This room,” Daring said, keeping her voice down as if it could cause a trap to suddenly spring. “It doesn’t feel right.”

Carefully, the tan mare edged out into the open chamber, her fuchsia eyes jumping from place to place. Rainbow Dash copied the adventurer, edging out after her. Oracle stayed back in the shadows of the passageway.

“Stay back with Oracle, kid,” Daring shot over her shoulder at Rainbow, but the blue pony shook her head.

“No way,” she replied. “I can help.”

Daring grunted.

“Fine. But step only where I step. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash agreed with a firm nod. Daring turned her attention back to the chamber. She moved a few more steps forward, then paused. Her face became thoughtful, and Rainbow Dash glanced around the rocks trying to see what she had noticed. The adventurer’s eyes seemed to be trained on something near the ceiling, and the blue pegasus took a few steps forward to see. A gentle breeze ruffled her mane –

“Rainbow, NO!” Daring’s voice was like a canon, echoing through the cavern. “Freeze, right there! Do. Not. Move.”

Rainbow Dash froze where she stood, anchored to the spot.

“What?” she asked, trying not to panic. “What happened?”

“You’ve stepped on a mine,” the tan pegasus said slowly. “Look down at your front right hoof.”

Rainbow Dash looked down at her leg, to find that the section of the floor she’d stepped on had sunken a half an inch into the rest of the rock. She made a move to step away, but Daring yelled at her once more to stay where she was. Rainbow Dash froze again.

“That switch is part of a mechanism,” Daring told the blue mare. “Look at the walls of the cave.”

Rainbow Dash did as she was told, and in the dim light of Daring’s torch, she could see very slight crevices bored into the rock walls.

“Those are for darts, or arrows, possibly poisoned, definitely dangerous,” Daring told her. “And you’ve just triggered one of them. Take your hoof off that switch, and there’ll be a boatload of arrows coming right at you.”

Rainbow Dash swallowed.

“What do we do?” she asked, her voice cracking a little. She cleared her throat. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t scared….

“We’ll have to move fast,” Daring replied. “It’ll take about a second for the mechanism to push the arrows out into the cave. The designers were obviously thinking the victim wouldn’t realize they’d hit the trigger until it was too late. But if you’re fast enough, you should be able to get out of the way in time.”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed with determination.

“Fast?” she said, calmly. “I can do fast.”

“Good,” Daring said. “On my count, then. One….”

Rainbow Dash’s muscles tensed, though she was careful to keep the same amount of weight on the switch.

“Two…”

Her ears pressed against her skull as she concentrated.

“Three!”

On Daring’s count, Rainbow Dash threw herself to the side, and hit the ground hard. She opened her eyes in time to see a barrage of darts peppering the far cave wall, and then fall uselessly to the ground.
Rainbow Dash let out a long breath and slumped, relief flooding her body.

“Good job, kid,” Daring said, giving her an approving smile. “You move pretty quick.”

Rainbow Dash smirked.

“Thanks,” she said, and gathered herself back to her hooves.

“Amazing display,” Oracle said, coming forward from his hiding place. “But now can we move on?”

“I wouldn’t be so quick if I was you,” Daring said, shooting a glance back at the old stallion. He seemed to be growing more anxious. “Unless you want to end up looking like Swiss cheese. This chamber’s probably full of those triggers.”

“How do we tell where they are?” Rainbow Dash asked, scanning the cave floor.

“The sorcerer probably marked the switches somehow, in case he came back through here,” Daring said.

“It’d be pretty dumb to get killed by your own trap,” Rainbow Dash agreed. She looked down at the switch that she’d triggered. “Look, there’s something written on here, or something.”

She raised a hoof to touch the stone, but stopped and thought better of it. Daring Do looked down at the switch, and squinted. A small, shallow symbol had been carved into the rock. It looked like an arrow.

“Yes, that should be it,” Daring said. “Look through the cavern. Check everything for this symbol, and once you’ve found it, mark it.”

She pulled a few pieces of charcoal from her saddle bag and handed one each to Rainbow Dash and Oracle.

“I feel like this is a waste of time,” Oracle said, his voice tinged with an impatience that Rainbow Dash hadn’t heard before. He always seemed so understanding. “We should continue on, not spend time dallying around this cavern.”

“Well, unless you want to end up with a bunch of holes punched in you,” Daring said. “Be my guest. But, if you want, you can move on and check for other traps along the way, and Rainbow Dash and I will catch up with you.”

Rainbow Dash saw something almost like anger in the stallion’s eyes as he and Daring faced off. But he seemed to gather himself, returning to his typical nonchalance.

“Very well,” he said, calmly. “I will do what you wish.”

He took the charcoal in his mouth and started off into the cavern. Rainbow cast a confused glance after the shaman pony, and looked back at Daring, the pegasus shook her head, taking her own charcoal in her mouth, and started the search.
It took them about twenty minutes to find all the switches. After finding the first few, they were able to find a pattern in their placement, and marking went much quicker. With the three of them working, they made their way to the far side of the chamber.

Daring stuck her charcoal back into her saddle bag, and Rainbow Dash and Oracle returned theirs as well.

“That should do it,” the tan pony said. “If we come back through here, we’ll be able to find the switches and avoid them.”

“We have wasted quite a bit of time,” Oracle said, sounding impatient once again. “We should move on.”

“My thoughts as well,” Daring said bluntly. She nodded to Rainbow Dash, and moved off into the darkness of the cavern. Rainbow Dash followed after the adventurer. Oracle brought up the rear, and when Rainbow Dash glanced back at him, his face was dark, his eyes hard and determined. She wondered if he was simply anxious about moving on, or if there was something more on his mind.

~**~

“Twilight, how much farther?” Applejack’s voice was a strained whisper. Twilight had warned them multiple times about how dangerous these mountain passes were. Even Pinkie Pie was staying quiet to avoid the possibility of causing an avalanche. They weren’t strangers to falling rock dangers – when the six had confronted a dragon a while back, Fluttershy had accidentally spooked and caused half the mountain to rain down on them. They’d learned their lesion since then, though it didn’t mean that Applejack wasn’t having to force Fluttershy to move up the mountain. The yellow pegasus was petrified with fear.

“I think we still have a long way to go, sorry,” the unicorn apologized. Rarity sighed noisily, and Twilight glared at her. The white unicorn looked away innocently.

They continued on in silence for a long time, winding steadily around the seemingly unending mountain trails. Several times the paths became so narrow that the five ponies were forced to walk in a single file line. Fluttershy mis-stepped once, causing a small shower of rocks to fall from the path. The yellow pegasus watched them fall – down, down, down – and immediately pressed herself against the ground, refusing to budge. Applejack had to come behind her and shove her forward until they found steadier ground.

Twilight couldn’t blame her friends for wanting to know how close they were to their goal. She was tired too. Her hooves were sore and throbbing, and there had been several times when the height had almost gotten the best of her, as it had to Fluttershy. But the unicorn focused her mind, forcing herself not to look down and just keep thinking of Rainbow Dash, and finding her.

And, honestly, though she didn’t want to admit it to her friends, she wasn’t entirely certain where they’d find their missing friend. Living in the book had jogged Twilight’s memory, but it had been a long time since she’d read this particular story. She knew that there was something in there about caves, which was why she’d chosen to take the over-the-mountains path, hoping to save time in finding Rainbow’s location. After all, they weren’t looking for the Alicorn Stone. They just needed to find Rainbow Dash, and Twilight had theorized that if they only got in the area where the Stone was hidden, they’d find their friend eventually.

But…exactly where that was? The unicorn didn’t know.

Oh, if only she’d thought to bring along her Reference Guide to Mythical and Fictional Maps of Equestria! There must have been something in there about these mountains! Or maybe if she’d just read the book again she’d know. Perhaps when she got back home, she’d make it a point to read every book in her library every year and take notes on the most important parts, in case this ever happened again….

The unicorn was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she was shocked when one of her hooves slipped off the side of the narrow path they were walking down. Twilight gasped as she fell forward, several layers of dirt and rock crumbling away under her weight. Without even thinking, Twilight cried out instinctively as she plummeted down the side of the mountain. She bounced off a few rocks and finally came to rest on a ledge several feet below where her friends were walking.

They were immediately all gathered around the edge of the path, looking down at her.

“Twilight?” Pinkie Pie called. “Are you okay?”

Twilight didn’t answer. Her ears pricked forward and she looked wildly around. The sound of their voices were bouncing off the rocks all around them, and a low, rumbling sound was beginning build, like distant thunder. Twilight swallowed hard.

“Oh, no….” she whispered. She looked up desperately at the worried faces. They hadn’t missed the sounds, either.

“Everypony run!” Twilight yelled desperately up at them, but her words were drowned out by the harsh, ear-splitting sound of hundreds of pounds of rock and dirt cascading down the side of the mountain, set loose by Twilight’s cries.

The unicorn had no choice – she couldn’t rejoin her friends like this. Rocks and dust were rolling down the mountain all around her, though she was shielded from their rain as the cascade mostly shot off the side of the mountain, missing her ledge. Still, she huddled as far against the rocky face as she could, her hooves pressed over her head. It literally felt like the world was crumbling around her, as though the mountains were falling apart and down onto her friends just because of the one careless sound she’d made. How could she have been so stupid?

She couldn’t hear her friends over the sound of the avalanche, and she hoped to heaven that they were all right. The crushing sound of rocks sliding and dirt raining down filled her senses for a long time, taking her to some nightmare realm where she didn’t know if she was dreaming or awake. She felt separated from everything, blocked from her friends and hoping that her position would be enough to save herself from falling debris.

Finally, after a long time, the rocks stopped.

Twilight’s ears were ringing with the sounds of the avalanche, and at first when the unicorn opened one purple eye, she couldn’t tell where she was. The air around her was so thick with dust, she could hardly see two feet in front of her own nose. She coughed, and slowly stood up, moving towards the ledge’s edge. She looked up to where she’d last seen her friends, but didn’t expect to see them anymore. She bit her lip, knowing she shouldn’t yell their names – she could start another avalanche.

Twilight used a teleportation spell to wink out from where she’d fallen back up to the path where she’d originally been. She appeared atop a pile of boulders, and looked quickly around, in search of her friends.

“Applejack?” she called quietly, trying to see through the dust. She coughed, as she breathed it into her lungs. She moved forward scanning the fallen rocks, searching for any sign of the ponies who had been here only moments before.

“Pinkie Pie? Rarity?” she asked, hoarsely, the dust coating her throat. She jumped from rock to rock, teleported from place to place. Soon, she was searching frantically through the debris for her friends.

“…Fluttershy? Where are you? Girls?”

The unicorn felt tears well up in her eyes, and she knew it wasn’t just from the dust. She stood amongst the debris and looked back over her shoulder, hoping to spot any sign of movement.

But she was all alone.

Comments

[Kitty Creeper]

Alllll alooone!

... Forevver Alone. *shot*

[OmniFox]

At least she didn't go crazy seeing a singing frog.