Rainbow Dash and the Treasure of Canterlot

by Insert Pen Name

Part IV: The White Crest

        Daring Do stood before the great stone archway at the bottom of the pit, gazing intently into the gloom within. Somewhere, deep within, lay the legendary treasure she had journeyed so far to seek.

        “Rainbow?”

Only one question remained unanswered; what dangers still lay between Daring and her elusive goal? There was only one way to find out...

        “Hey! Rainbow! You still with us?”

        Dash blinked as the vision of her favoured heroine dissipated into nothing. In its place, both Twilight and Scootaloo stood staring at her with bemused looks.

        “You okay, Rainbow Dash?” asked Scootaloo.

        “Uh, yeah, just... just thinking,” said Dash.

        “Thinking about what?”

        “Oh, you know... stuff.”

        “Hmmm, stuff,” murmured Twilight with a knowing look in her eye. “Well that’s always important. Now if you’re done daydreaming...” Dash frowned in a slightly embarrassed sort of way. “...we need to figure out how to open this thing.”

        The three ponies stood at the bottom of the spiraling stairway. Before them stood a great stone arch, plain and unadorned as would befit an edifice that had been designed for the express purpose of being hidden underground for a thousand years. Unlike in Dash’s daydream however, the entrance was sealed by a large slab of smooth white stone. As far as doors went, this was a particularly resolute and imposing specimen, bereft of any apparent latch or keyhole. There were no inscription, no markings, or any sort of hint at all as to how it could be opened. As far as this door was concerned, the way was shut, and anypony who took issue with that fact could just bugger off.

        “Can’t you just magic it open?” Dash asked Twilight.

        “It doesn’t really work that way, Rainbow,” replied Twilight. “It’s not like I can just go ‘abracadabra, open door’, I have to actually know which way to push or pull it.”

        “Maybe we could blast it open!” suggested Scootaloo with unbridled enthusiasm.

        “Yeah, sure thing, kid,” laughed Dash with a shake of her head. “And just how are we going to do that? You bring any TNT with you?”

        Scootaloo responded by rummaging around in her schoolbag for a bit, then proudly presenting Dash with a large bundle of bottle rockets held together with a liberal amount of duct tape. The older pegasus merely shook her head with a smile.

        “I don’t think that’s going to make much of an impact, Scoots.”

        With a frown, Scootaloo returned the rockets to her schoolbag, then pulled out instead a slightly rusted tin can, upon which an “explosive” symbol had been crudely drawn in red crayon. The two adult ponies each raised an inquisitive brow.

        “Uh, what is that, exactly?” asked Twilight.

        “Red Buck, paint thinner, and powdered creamer,” answered Scootaloo brightly. “Me and Applebloom figured out how to make it.”

        “Does it work?” asked Dash.

        “What do you think she got grounded for?” asked Scootaloo with a wicked grin.

        Both Dash and Twilight exchanged concerned looks.

        “Right, moving on,” said Twilight rather quickly. “Any other ideas? Preferably one that does not involve irreparably damaging a national heritage site?”

        Alas, there were none. While Twilight pondered how best to open the door, and Scootaloo pondered alternative uses for her newfound knowledge of improvised explosives, Dash sauntered up to the smooth white slab and, at a loss for a more practical course of action, stared at it.

        The door stared back.

        She then tried making silly faces at it.

        The door remained resolute.

        Her momentary lapse in rationality concluded, Rainbow leaned forward and, at a loss for anything better to do, pressed her hoof against the stone.

        The door began to shift.

        It was not Twilight Sparkle’s brightest moment.

        With a sigh, Dash threw her weight against the door and nearly fell inwards as it swung open with minimal resistance. After fixing the purple unicorn with a humiliating smirk, Dash smugly adjusted her pith helmet and strode on inside.

        “No need to worry yourself, Twilight,” she said with mock reassurance. “We all have ‘off’ days. You just keep behind me and Scootaloo here, and we’ll all get through this easy as pie.”

        “That’s very noble of you, Rainbow,” answered Twilight sweetly, as the pegasus trotted smugly ahead. “By the way, did either of you happen to bring a flashlight?”

        Dash stopped dead in her tracks. Ahead of her, the darkness of the sepulchre loomed large and absolute. With a sigh, the pegasus turned to see Twilight smiling smugly back at her, her horn enveloped in a brilliant aura of white light.

        Grumbling, Dash stepped aside to allow the unicorn past.

        “Lead the way.”

        Generally, being underground is not an ideal situation for a pegasus pony. It simply does not work for them. At best, they get irritable; at worst, they tend to panic and cause rather a lot of problems. Fortunately for Twilight, the passage that stretched out before them did not lack for headroom. The way was only just narrow enough for two to walk abreast, and yet the vaulted ceiling was so high that the light from her horn made only the faintest impression upon it. No pony had built this tunnel; it had been carved entirely from the living rock with masterful precision. Gently downward it sloped, and gently downward they plodded, Twilight illuminating the way, Scootaloo following close behind with wide eyes, and Dash resolutely taking up the rear.

After a short while the passage finally came to an end, and our motley heroines stared in wonderment at what lay beyond. The walls of the passage had given way to the seemingly endless expanse of a great chamber. The ceiling hung high above, supported by titanic stone columns that rose above the smooth floor like majestic trees. In the centre of the place, a single narrow beam of daylight streamed through a shaft in the ceiling, alighting on a faded mosaic on the floor below. And yet, for all its majesty, the chamber nonetheless bore the scars of time. The earthquakes that had felled the city above had left great cracks in the columns and vaults, and all around them the dry tinkle of crumbling rock echoed throughout the hall.

“Woah,” gasped Scootaloo.

“Awesome,” said Dash.

“It looks like it’s falling apart,” noted Twilight.

“You just have to take the fun out of everything, don’t you?” chided Dash.

“Not everything,” argued Twilight. “But seriously, this place has seen better days.”

“Well it’s not falling down yet, so let’s get going!” urged Scootaloo.

And so the intrepid trio continued across the chamber, their hooves echoing on the cold stone floor. Nopony said a word until they reached the mosaic in the centre of the chamber. It was a fairly simple design; a large violet diamond bordered by an intricate pattern in white.

“The personal seal of Princess Platinum,” explained Twilight. “The White Crest must be here!”

“I don’t get it, though,” frowned Rainbow. “Why would she go through all this trouble to hide it like this? Heck why hide it at all? It’s just a fancy chunk of silver, isn’t it?”

“Didn’t you say the Crest has powers or something, Twilight?” suggested Scootaloo.

“That is what some ponies used to think back then, yes,” answered Twilight. “But those are only rumours; there’s no evidence whatsoever that-”

“What kind of powers?” asked Scootaloo.

“Uh, a bunch of things,” said Twilight. “Controlling the Sun, turning clay into gold, reviving the dead, that sort of thing.”

“Cooooool,” cooed Scootaloo.

“It’s all complete nonsense of course,” added Twilight.

“Apparently Platinum thought it was real, though,” noted Rainbow.

“Huh, I guess that would explain it,” conceded Twilight. “Anyway, let’s keep moving.”

To the other end of the chamber they crossed, leaving behind the towering columns as they entered another passage. This one was wider than the one they had entered through, and Twilight was pleased to notice small sconces set into the walls at regular intervals.

“Hold on a moment...”

Twilight knelt forward and began focusing her magic. After a moment’s concentration, a flurry of white sparks erupted from her horn and bounced daintily down the passage, each one ending its journey in one of the empty sconces. All at once, a faint light began to fill the tunnel as each of the sparks flared up like a miniature star. With the passage now lit, Twilight was finally able to relax the light from her horn, and direct her attention to their surroundings.

The passage stretched on for about twenty metres before suddenly ending in darkness. It was the walls that really got her attention however. Both sides of the passage had been adorned in several sheets of carven black stone, fitted seamlessly together into a continuous whole, and completely covered with line after line of Eohippine text, not unlike the tablet they had examined at the ball.

“Incredible...” mused Twilight. “It’s like a whole library carved in stone. I just wish I could actually read it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dash. “You could read the other stuff just fine.”

“That was different,” answered Twilight “The other stuff was just using the runes; it was still written in Plain Equestrian. But this here is full-on Eohippine, and I just don’t know enough to read it.”

“And here, I thought you knew everything, Twilight,” joked Dash. “Some egghead you turned out to be.”

“Hey, dead languages aren’t exactly my top priority,” retorted Twilight. “And I’ll have you know that I’m still twice the egghead you’ll ever be!”

“Twilight, you have no idea how much that means to me,” laughed Dash.

Continuing onwards, the three ponies came to the end of the passage where a long flight of stairs descended steeply into the abyss below. Lighting up her horn once more, Twilight wasted no time in leading her companions downwards. Dash walked alongside her, driven on by the thrill of anticipated discovery, her excitement growing with each descending step. The only pony who did not share in her enthusiasm was Scootaloo, who had yet to develop a sense of literary tension, and was instead growing quite bored with the endless plodding through stone corridors.

“Hey, think we’ll see a mummy?” she asked hopefully.

“I doubt it,” said Twilight. “Ponies haven’t practised mummification for nearly three-thousand years.”

“What about booby-traps, or hot lava, or maybe a snake pit?” continued Scootaloo.

Twilight shuddered at the thought of that last one.

“I... sincerely doubt it,” she said tersely.

“Hmph,” snorted Scootaloo.

“Having fun, kid?” teased Dash.

“No! This treasure hunt sucks!” whined Scootaloo. “It’s been nothing but stupid puzzles and historical landmarks and boring stuff like that! Where are all the skulls and snakes and scorpions and spikey walls and stuff?”

“I take it you’ve introduced her to Daring Do?” Twilight murmured to Rainbow.

“I might have mentioned it to her on the side...”

“Way to get the poor filly’s hopes up,” chuckled Twilight.

“Hey, I’m holding out for a spikey wall too,” said Dash. “Though I think I’ll pass on the scorpions,” she added with a shudder. “You ever have those nightmares, where you wake up and you’re just covered in those things?”

Twilight grimly declined to comment. A short while later, they came upon a brief landing where the stairway leveled out somewhat. Still further down they could just make out a curious faint light at the bottom. Not a word was exchanged as the three ponies descended down this final flight of steps, each unsure as to the source of this strange luminescence. After what felt like hours, the intrepid explorers finally reached the bottom.

Before them lay a wide hallway, arched in a graceful curve from wall to wall. The floor was segmented into a series of elaborately patterned tiles, and the walls were lined with sheets of marble. The entire hall was bathed in a soft bluish light, the source of which was now revealed to be a large glowing crystal suspended from the centre of the ceiling in an iron ring.

“Ooooh...” fawned Scootaloo. “Pretty light.”

        “Meh, I’ve seen bigger,” said Twilight dismissively.

        “Can I keep it?” asked Scootaloo.

        “No.”

        “Aw, why not?”

        “This is an important historical site, Scootaloo,” admonished Twilight. “You can’t just go around taking things just because they’re pretty.”

        “But isn’t that why we’re here in the first place?” asked Scootaloo.

        “...uh...”

        “Just let her have the big glowy rock, Twilight,” said Dash impatiently. “We got fatter hay to fry.”

        The khaki-clad pegasus gestured to the end of the hall, several dozen metres ahead, where two unicorn statues stood on either side of a white stone altar draped with a faded purple cloth. Twilight’s eyes widened in anticipation.

        “Oh my gosh... is that it?”

        “I dunno, why don’t we go look?” said Dash, barely suppressing her own excitement.

        “Race you there!” shouted Scootaloo.

        Without hesitation, the little orange filly bounded merrily off into the hall, whereupon she tripped on a crack, and plowed gracelessly into a large black floor tile. Her situation was further degraded by the resulting emergence of several long iron spikes that fired out from the span of arch overhead to converge upon the hapless filly.

“SCOOTALOO!!!” cried Dash in horror.

Fortunately, this nefarious trap had been designed with intruders of a more mature stature in mind, and so the spikes came to a sudden stop just short of Scootaloo’s orange fur, then slowly retracted into their previously unseen sockets. Trembling, the little filly scurried back from the pressure plate and hurried trembling back to a very relieved Dash and Twilight.

“That... was so... awesome!” she squealed.

Twilight groaned.

“Well, I guess you got your spike trap,” she said flatly. “Happy now?”

“Yeah, I guess,” chuckled Rainbow. “Now let’s see here...”

Chuckling boldly to herself, Dash stepped up to the trap and noted now the row of sockets that lined the curvature of the arch above. Further down, she could see similar spike traps set at regular intervals along the length of the hall. Glancing back at her feet, Dash reached out and gently pushed against the black tile with predictable results. Dash gave an appraising nod at the iron skewers, then stepped a bit to the side.

“Right, so don’t step on the black tiles, and we’ll all beAAAHHH!!!”

Dash leapt back into the air as the ring of spikes fired out again to meet her lateral advance. Her heart pounding, the pegasus hovered in place for a moment before turning to her companions.

“Okay, white tiles are also bad.”

Twilight received this knowledge with a pensive nod. After a moment’s deliberation on how best to proceed, she locked eyes with her still airborne friend and declared:

“To heck with it, we’ll take the coward’s way out.”

“Roger that,” nodded Dash, and she flew off down the hall.

The altar, fortunately enough, was set upon a larger stage of solid stone, free of any apparent triggers. After a cursory landing, Rainbow turned back down the hall and called for her friends to join her. A second later, Twilight and Scootaloo materialised beside her in a flash of light, the younger pegasus swaying dangerously on the spot.

“You okay there, Scootaloo?” asked Twilight.

“Oh yeah, I’m okay, I’m okay,” gasped Scootaloo. “Or maybe not.”

While Scootaloo emptied her stomach into a convenient crack in the wall, Twilight approached the altar with trembling steps. The royal violet cloth shrouded most of the altar, but in the centre was the clear impression of something underneath. Something flat and irregular in shape, about the size of a large book.

Dash prayed to fate that it was not an irregularly-shaped book.

Taking a deep breath, Twilight ignited her horn, and the cloth was enveloped in the glow of her magic.

“Ready?” she said quietly with a sideways glance at her two companions.

Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo nodded breathlessly.

With a clumsy flourish, the cloth was removed, and the White Crest lay bare before them.

It certainly lived up to its name. Its immaculate white gold surface glinted in the soft light, its edges masterfully wrought into beautiful floral designs. For two-thousand years this artifact had lay unseen and forgotten, and now three pairs of eyes gazed upon it in abject captivation.

“Wow,” said Rainbow.

“It’s beautiful!” gasped Twilight.

“What’s it supposed to be?” asked Scootaloo.

And so the moment came to a crashing end. The White Crest was indeed an impressive piece, of that there could be no doubt. However, to call it a statuette as it had so often been described would be to use the term in a ludicrously broad sense.

“I thought you said this was supposed to be a statue of something?” asked Dash with a frown.

“Yes, well... obviously it’s highly stylised,” said Twilight.

“But what is it?” asked Scootaloo again.

Twilight narrowed her eyes at the Crest. For all its intricate metalwork, its basic shape was underwhelmingly plain; four narrow arms, set at right angles, with one arm longer than the other three.

“Maybe it’s... a... whale!” suggested Twilight. “See, there’re his fins, and that long bit is the tail-”

“So a whale made this?” interrupted Dash.

“Ah, well, maybe not, but-”

“Maybe it’s some freaky bird,” piped Scootaloo. “With like, really stubby wings!”

“Oh, like you?” teased Dash.

“Hey!”

“Heh, sorry.”

“Okay, so maybe it’s not actually anything in particular,” admitted Twilight reluctantly.

“Who cares? It’s still really pretty,” said Scootaloo.

On this point there was consensus.

“Right, so we just found a legendary artifact that nopony’s seen in two-thousand years,” recounted Twilight with a smile. “So now what?”

“How ‘bout we bag it?” chimed Scootaloo, offering up her open schoolbag.

“Works for me,” nodded Twilight. “Only, I think I’ll be the one carrying it. Now, if you’d be so kind as to give me some space...”

In her usual magical fashion, Twilight carefully opened her saddlebag and held it to the edge of the altar. However, as soon as her purple glow enveloped the Crest, she suddenly felt a restraining hoof on her shoulder.

“Wait, don’t move it just yet,” said Dash urgently.

“Uh, why not?” asked Twilight impatiently.

“It could be booby-trapped.”

“Booby-trapped?”

“Yeah, like in Sapphire Stone, remember? Pressure plate underneath, whole place comes crashing down...”

“That was just a story,” said Twilight.

“That’s what you’ve been saying about everything else on this trip,” retorted Dash.

“And I’m bound to be right eventually,” declared Twilight. “Besides, this altar’s solid stone. So unless the whole thing is one giant pressure plate, I think we’re in the clear.”

With Rainbow’s fears placated, Twilight again engulfed the White Crest in her magical grasp. Slowly, gently, she lifted the artifact from the altar, floating it carefully towards her waiting saddlebag.

“Why are you taking so long?” inquired Scootaloo.

“I... don’t know,” said Twilight with some embarrassment. “Guess I was just trying to be dramatic.”

“Well hurry it up, Twilight. I’d like to get out of here,” said Dash. “This place is starting to stink.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Twilight annoyedly as she finally deposited the Crest into her bag. “Right, let’s get moving. If we hustle, we can make the evening train for Canterlot and-”

Twilight was rather rudely interrupted by the sound of grating stone behind her. In horror, the three ponies watched as the stone altar slowly rose up, freed of its hallowed burden, and then suddenly stopped with an ominous *click*.

“Oh you have got to be k-”

The frustrated unicorn was interrupted again by the sound of breaking stone, followed by a loud, low rumbling noise. A second later, a tiny crack suddenly formed in the wall above the altar, followed by another.

“That can’t be good,” said Dash.

A spray of water suddenly forced its way through one of the cracks. The rumbling grew even louder.

“Definitely not good!”

“Run!” cried Scootaloo.

And they did. Without delay, Twilight disappeared in a flash and reappeared back at the end of the hall, while Rainbow hastily swept Scootaloo onto her back and tore off down the passage. No sooner had they reunited when the wall above the altar finally burst open, and a frothing torrent of water surged out with a roar.

Up the darkened stairs they fled, the water rising steadily behind them. The ground shook beneath their hooves, and the walls trembled as sharp cracks bloomed across the ceiling above. Into the great chamber they ran, past the towering columns as showers of rubble sprinkled around them.

“Hurry!” cried Twilight. “We’re almost there!”

The rising water had just begun to seep into the chamber by the time they reached the opposite side. Without looking back, the three ponies hurried up the passage, the glow of daylight growing ever stronger as they neared the exit. At last they rounded the final corner and hurled themselves out into the open air, landing splayed out on the warm stone. For a long moment, the only sound Dash heard was the pounding of her own beating heart, as the adrenaline of their flight slowly died away.

“Wow,” she said finally. “That was pretty intense. And you thought this would be just a boring old treasure hunt, huh Twilight?”

…

“Twilight?”

        There was no response from the unicorn. Instead, Dash was answered by the sudden sensation of a spade colliding with the back of her head.

With a groan, Dash’s eyes fluttered open, and her pounding head did everything in its power to force them back shut. She had only been out a few seconds, but to her it seemed like hours had passed. Dash tried to get up, but found herself strangely unable to do so. She tried again, and failed. Odd, she thought. It wasn’t like she felt overly tired or hurt. In fact it was almost as though somepony were simply holding her down.

It was about this time that Dash suddenly realised that there was a steel-shod hoof pressed against her neck.

From her rather unnegotiable position, Dash could just barely see the back of Twilight’s head. She too was lying on the ground, groaning groggily. Again, Dash tried to move herself to aid her friend, and again her unseen captor restrained her. She was about to cry out in defiance when a familiar voice suddenly struck her ears.

        “Well, well, well... Twilight Sparkle...” said the haughty female voice as two haughty pairs of powder-blue legs stepped haughtily into view beside the unconscious unicorn. “Fancy meeting you here.”

        The blue pony knelt down next to Twilight, giving Dash a partial view of a sleek silver mane as Twilight’s saddlebag was engulfed in a soft blue glow.

        “Today you learn something...” said the blue pony. “There is nothing you can possess that The Great and Powerful Trixie cannot take away...”