“I’m sorry.” Quibble’s lone words come out stunted and regretful
Rainbow Dash stands perfectly still as she stares down Caballeron; the sight of Quibble cowering beneath, eyes welled up, fills her with anger and disgust. “Let him go!” she demands, causing the latter to chuckle.
“You are in no position to make demands, Miss Dash. Now turn around, nice and slow.”
Rainbow complies, turning away from Caballeron and Quibble and towards the passageway adorned with the yellow arrow. “Where’s Daring Do?” she asks while peering at him through the corner of her eye. “What did you do to her?”
“I assure you that Miss Do is perfectly all right … or at least she will be, once she wakes up and adjusts to her ropes. I’m an opportunist, Miss Dash, not a murderer; I do not wish to harm anypony, but I certainly cannot have one such as Miss Do interfering with my business.”
“And what is your business, Caballeron?”
“The same as yours, no doubt: the Chalice of Rhinyorgrun. So nice of you to locate the hidden entrance to the Spectrum Catacombs for me; saves me a lot of time. Why shouldn’t this partnership continue for a bit longer?”
Rainbow turns her head towards Caballeron in confusion.
“Turn back, Miss Dash! I do not wish to become a murderer, but I will use this dart on your friend if I must.”
She quickly turns away, once again facing towards the central corridor out of the chamber. “What do you mean by ‘partnership’?”
“You and your quivering friend here have made it this far, I suspect you know how to continue on. Now I am not completely hard-hearted: help me retrieve the Chalice, and I can make it most worth your while.”
“Why would I help you?”
“I’ve done my research on you, Miss Dash … Miss ‘Element of Loyalty’, am I correct? With that title, I highly doubt you would let any harm come to a friend of yours.”
“And yet you ask me to betray Daring Do? Betray all of ponykind???”
“My dear, I won’t pretend to understand where that came from.”
“Cut the horseapples, Caballeron; we know you’re working for Garble and his cronies!”
“I don’t know who or what you’re talking about, Miss Dash, but my clients are none of your concern! Now enough talk. Which way do we go from here?”
At this request, Rainbow now laughs. “See, that’s the thing, Cabs. I don’t have the foggiest clue which way to go.”
“Well,” Caballeron calmly continues, “then it’s time for Plan B: you’ll go down a path, and if you are so fortunate as to have nothing horrific happen to you, then we shall follow. And to prove that chivalry is not dead, I’ll let you choose which path to take.”
Rainbow looks to each passageway, taking in the three upward-pointing arrows that each indicate a way onward. She looks down the left-hand corridor with its red arrow, then turns towards the right-hand corridor with its green arrow, then back to facing the central corridor with its yellow arrow. Her mind turns to the parchment she had observed on the train, symbols and colors flying around in her mind.
“We haven’t got all day, Miss Dash! Choose a path, or I’ll choose one for you!”
“Oh … oh … okay,” she stutters in response. “Then … I choose …”
“WAIT!” Quibble finally screams out. “I … I know which path to take.” Rainbow turns to face the pair as Caballeron stares down at his prisoner.
“So, you are some use after all,” Caballeron suavely asserts. “OK then, ‘Quibble’, which way?”
Quibble gulps. “It’s … it’s the middle path. With the yellow arrow.”
Caballeron maintains his position atop Quibble as he addresses him. “And you’re certain about this.”
“As sure as my love for all of Daring Do’s adventures.” Quibble’s answer angers his captor.
“Yes, yes, everypony LOVES all things Daring Do!” he sarcastically states. “You fanponies really make me ill, with your undying loyalty to the printed page. Very well then … you first, Miss Dash.”
Rainbow turns back towards the corridor across from the entrance, gulps, and takes a step ahead. Her leg buckles as she cries out in pain and crashes to the ground.
“Get up!” Caballeron orders the pegasus.
“I can’t!” she wails in return, wrapping her left foreleg around her right as she lets off another cry of anguish. “I took a nasty fall down the staircase; I must’ve damaged my leg. I … I heard a crack as I took a step, and now …” She buries her head in between her crossed legs. “I don’t wanna be put down!”
Exhaling in exasperation, Caballeron shoves Quibble’s head aside and trots over to the broken pony. He moves his left forehoof so that the dart clenched in its claw points directly at the back of her neck. “You think I’ll fall for an act like that??? Get up now, or so help me-”
*OOF*
Caballeron is suddenly thrown forward into the corridor as Quibble’s head-down charge into the former’s flank catches him by surprise. Quibble falls to the floor, still shaking, as Rainbow looks up at her tormentor’s plight.
Caballeron stumbles head-first into the sinewy spider web strands, which stick to his face and forelegs like superglue. In an instant, hundreds of spiders in all colors of the spectrum emerge from cracks in each of the corridor’s stone walls, spinning more webbing around their victim as a dizzying rate. Within seconds, his backlegs are spun together as well as his frontlegs; from back to front, his body becomes wrapped up amidst the freshly-spun webbing. He attempts one final scream, but the spiders quickly move from his torso to his neck and head, wrapping him deeper within the megaweb. Moments later, the spiders scurry back to the cracks in the corridor. An eerie silence pervades.
After adjusting to her initial shock, Rainbow notices a piece of Caballeron’s tail jutting out from the now-entangled body of her assailant. Careful to avoid any stray strands, she hovers over and carefully grips his tail with her teeth. She pulls, but the corridor web holds firm to the rest of Caballeron’s body. She increases her wing speed and tugs harder, as the stickiness of the corridor web starts to give way. In an instant, Caballeron’s body gets ripped from its position; Rainbow crashes backwards back into the chamber as the body lands nearby in a dull thud.
Quibble gapes at Caballeron’s wrapped, motionless body in shock for several seconds. He then sheepishly turns to Rainbow, still sweating and catching her own breath from the ordeal. “What did we just do?”
“Quibble … you … you got us out of … that jam,” she explains between gasps.
“Did I … did I kill a pony just now?”
Finding her second wind, Rainbow gets on her hooves and walks over to Caballeron’s head. She places her head low to the ground and listens intently for several seconds. “He’s breathing … I think he’ll be OK, now that he’s out of that corridor.”
“… You saved his life, Rainbow Dash. After he threatened both of us.”
“Nopony deserves a fate like what he nearly experienced,” Rainbow flatly asserts. “I couldn’t just let him stay there for those spiders to make a meal out of. Now come on. We gotta figure out which way to go.”
Quibble shudders at the thought. “I don’t … think I can continue.”
Rainbow turns to Quibble in surprise. “What do you mean you can’t go on?”
“Rainbow Dash,” he starts, finding his nerves once again, “I nearly killed a pony just now. Before that, I was threatened with a dart to my neck. I mean, I enjoy reading about adventure, not living it. This … this is all just too much for me.”
Rainbow addresses Quibble’s concerns in a soft tone. “I know you’re outside your comfort zone here. And I’m sorry you’ve had to go through so much already. But think about it: Caballeron told us he wasn’t working for Garble; that means Daring was wrong in her assumption. There’s somepony else trying to get the Chalice, so we can’t afford to just sit by and watch that happen. It’s up to us to complete this challenge … and I can’t do it without you. So please … let’s get through this, together.”
“And besides,” she continues as she turns towards the left-hand corridor, “I still owe you for saving my life.”
“You’ve already saved my life, remember?” Quibble mentions as he gets back on his hooves. “But OK … we’ll finish this, together.”
Rainbow smiles. “All right! So … you seemed to know that the yellow-arrow corridor was a trap. Mind explaining to me how?”
“Well …” Quibble pulls out the parchment from a shirt pocket and unfurls it. “I think I figured out what these symbols represent.”
“Take a look at the top,” he continues. “I think that tells us that we want to go down corridors marked with up arrows … and avoid those with down arrows.”
“But Quibble, all three corridors have up arrows on them. And we both saw what happened to Caballeron.”
“That’s where the colors come in. See those checkmarks and exes?”
Rainbow inspects the parchment. “Yeah … but what do they mean?”
“I think they stand for ‘true’ and ‘false’. The checkmarks are meant to represent true symbols, and the exes stand for false symbols. In particular,” he continues as he points to the left-most portion of the parchment, “all red symbols are false and all green symbols are true”.
Rainbow looks up, eyeing the two egresses on opposite sides. “So … that means that the red arrow is lying to us. It’s pointing up, but its true direction should be down.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Quibble states. “We need to go down the corridor with the green arrow.”
“But what about the yellow arrow?” Rainbow looks back to the parchment, pointing at the right-most portion. “How did you know that path was a trap?”
“Honestly … I didn’t.”
Rainbow turns to Quibble. “WHAT?”
“I have a theory … and after what just happened, I think my theory is correct … but I wasn’t certain.”
“But what if you were wrong and Caballeron attacked us?”
Quibble’s eyes reach for corners. “Well … I don’t know, really …”
Sensing apprehension and self-doubt creeping back into her companion, Rainbow quickly consoles Quibble. “Hey, your instincts were correct. So c’mon, share. What do you make of those symbols?”
Quibble refocuses on the parchment. “OK, see those two smaller boxes next to the yellow? I think those signify the other two corridors. The symbols next to them indicate that, between the three passageways, either all three are truthful, or exactly one is. Since we already had one truthful symbol and one false symbol, that meant the yellow arrow had to be false as well. And apparently … it was.”
“So, I guess any purple symbol we come across with have a similar property … but what about the blue and orange symbols?”
“I’m not sure. I can speculate better once we come across them, I guess.”
“Good enough for me.” Rainbow quickly takes to the air and points herself towards the right-hand corridor with the green arrow. “Follow me!”
“WAIT!!!” Quibble’s cry causes Rainbow to turn suddenly back to him.
“What is it?”
Quibble stumbles through his response: “I … I should be the one to go first.” His suggestion takes his companion by surprise.
“You? Mr. ‘I’m not here for the adventure’? Why?”
“Because if I’m wrong about any of this … I can’t save you. You can … hopefully … save me if the same thing happens to me that happened to …” Quibble indicates the web-entangled body of Caballeron.
Rainbow considers Quibble’s suggestion. “Are you sure about this?”
“No … but it’s the rational thing to do. Just be … ready, just in case.”
“OK then. ‘Dashspeed’, Quibble.”
Quibble gives one final eyeroll to Rainbow’s comment, then gulps as he approaches the web-obscured corridor. He shakes his head one last time, puts his head down, and enters the corridor …