“So where’re we headed?” Sehn says, running to keep up with Rainbow who’s flying close to the road.
“Sugar Cube Corner, we’re going to borrow Pinkie’s balloon!”
“To get me up there?”
“That and I’ll be more certain about getting up there without being shoved back by the sonic booms happening overhead. 22 seconds is a long time, but I’d be majorly slowed down carrying you, and you can’t fly up there yourself.” Rainbow says with a slight grimace, “You’re sure you can’t create those wings you had earlier?”
“I could, but I can’t be certain about their stability, or mine.”
“Your stability?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it later on. Let’s just say creating the wings now would not be in our best interests.” Sehn says, as Rainbow turns her head to her saddle bag, a familiar noise coming from it. She immediately hits the ground and skids to a halt, looking around. Sehn skids to a stop next to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“You hear that buzzing, right?”
“What bu- oh…yeah, I do. That thing was going off during the attack.” Sehn replies.
“See anything in the fog?”
“…I do. Reference to us, 10 o’clock, 20 feet.” Sehn says, as both Rainbow and him focus in that direction, a faint shadow in the distance. “…It’s pretty far off. What’s that radio supposed to do?”
“If it’s anything like Fluttershy’s music box, it starts buzzing whenever anything dangerous is nearby…and I think that’s what it’s doing right now.” Rainbow lowers herself so she can jump more quickly, and draws the knife off her leg holster. “Alright, keep close. We’ll try and go around it.” She starts heading into the fog, looking behind herself to see Sehn following, also in a crouched position.
As they approach, the shadow becomes more defined, and low growling enters the pair’s ears. A quiet growl, a stomping of metal, and the one shadow becomes two.
“…Two of them?” Sehn whispers, now right next to Rainbow.
“Yeah…I don’t think they’ve noticed us yet.” Rainbow whispers back through the knife in her mouth, as the fog lifts slightly to reveal the two shadows.
One of the things seems to resemble Sehn, but shorter. The face is without eyes, and the spikes leading off the back of its head seem to be made of bone instead of any form of hair or fur, and they’re colored white with strips of red like war paint. It is dressed in mangled army fatigues, torn cargo pants, and very old boots. One gloved hand holds a rusty long sword, much like a katana, but the guard is in shambles, the rust having eaten away at the blade’s edge until it more resembled a saw than anything.
The other shadow resembles an Equestrian, wearing the Royal Guard uniform, golden armor, centurion helmet, and it has a short sword in its mouth. It too is without eyes, but both of the creatures seem completely focused on each other. They exchange grunts and growls, sometimes swinging their blades weakly at each other.
“Yep…just as freaky as before…” Rainbow whispers, moving away from the two corpses, and she bumps into Sehn who was walking on her right.
“Watch where you’re walking, kid!” Sehn whispers, stumbling a bit. He grabs Rainbow’s wing, which she immediately pulls in and yanks Sehn back into a stable stand.
“NEVER grab my wings like that!” Rainbow growls at Sehn, who holds up his hands in an apologetic stance.
“Sorry, sorry! Had to grab something…anyway, let’s keep going.” Sehn looks behind the pair, the two creatures seeming to have vanished into thin air. The walkie talkie continues buzzing however.
“Is…is that buzzing getting louder?” Sehn asks, looking around, while Rainbow checks her bag to see if it is. Sure enough, it is getting louder, and at quite a high rate as well.
“Oh no, something’s coming! Find a place to hide, quick!” Rainbow says through the knife to Sehn, frantically looking around before spotting a house on the other side of the street, “Perfect! C’mon, we’ll kick the door in if we have to!” Rainbow says to Sehn, sprinting off across the street for the house. Something catches her eye off to the left, and she jumps to the right as a blade comes sweeping through the air and impaling itself into the ground.
“Holy! Jeeze that was close!” Rainbow shouts, skidding to a stop from her jump, and she stares at the monster who just tried to kill her. It was that Hemoran…corpse thing, but where was the pony fighting with it?
“RAINBOW! BEHIND YOU!” Sehn shouts, and Rainbow spins around to see a blade swinging at her from the right, the handle stuck in the mouth of the Royal Guard corpse. She quickly ducks under the blade, some of her mane being sliced off by the surprisingly sharp edge. She spots Sehn leaping over the guard from the back, grabbing the sword in its mouth by the flats of the blade, and rolling in the air to yank it upwards, a satisfying ‘snap’ coming from the guard’s neck; its head rotated a good 90 degrees as it collapses to the ground, not moving. The sword gets pulled from the mouth of the dead monster, and Sehn completes his front flip by landing next to Rainbow, sword at the ready.
Rainbow turns back around to face her opponent, the Hemoran’s sword raised over its ugly head. It comes down swift and true, Rainbow stuck staring at the gleaming rusty steel now racing towards her doom. She forces herself to move to the left, to get out of the way of her impending death, heart pounding and her mind screaming “Move!”, but the flash of rust moving towards her was too fast.
A sudden blur of rust moving up through her vision, sparks flying from the impact of blade against blade, both blades shattering from the strike, and a muffled shout from beside her were the only things that entered Rainbow’s senses, before the adrenaline in her blood dulled and the world returned to normal. Skidding along the ground from her sharp jump, she looks to the side to see Sehn and the soldier in a grapple, pushing against each other’s hands, sometimes exchanging headbutts or knees into the gut.
“Sehn!”
“Chill, kid, I’ve got it!” Sehn grunts through gritted teeth as he takes another knee to the gut, winded a bit. The monster roars at him, the jaw cracking as it moves. “Ugly prick, aren’t ya?!” Sehn shouts as he brings his own knee into the monster’s chin, jumping and pulling down on the monster’s arms in order to give himself more power.
The monster’s head recoils back, and the grip is lost between the two, Sehn jumping back. He coughs, holding his stomach while staring his opponent down, the monster seemingly unphased by the assault it just went through.
“Not just ugly, but pretty tough as well. You work out?” Sehn chuckles with a weak grin, the only response being received is a low growl from the monster as it begins running towards Sehn. “And no stamina problems either…great…”, he growls as he braces himself for another impact. A flash of blue crosses his vision as the monster disappears from sight, and he quickly looks to the right to see Rainbow tackling it straight into a wall.
She leaps back, letting the monster collapse, twitching and growling in pain. “Alright, kid, it’s down! Time to go!” Sehn shouts to her, as they both run down the street, away from their assailants. “Which way to your friend’s place?” Sehn says between pants, sprinting down the road with Rainbow slightly in front, flying near the ground.
“Not sure, the fight messed up my sense of direction!” Rainbow shouts back, the ripping air filling their hearing. “GAH! STOP!!!” She screams as she throws herself back with as much power as she can muster from her wings, Sehn just beginning to skid off in front of her…
Before he runs straight into a wall. He bounces off, dazed, stumbling a bit before shaking his head and looking at whatever solid structure he just ran into. “What in the world did I just…awww my head…” He grunts, squinting his eyes at the wall.
“Jackpot!” Rainbow exclaims, looking over the large wooden walls of Sugar Cube Corner. “We’ll find what we need in here!” She shouts over to Sehn, who’s still holding his nose, staring at the good imprint he made on the aging wood with his face. Rainbow checks her bag for any noise, letting out a sigh of relief when no ominous buzzing comes from it.
“All clear then…” she sighs to herself, and drops to the ground. “All that’s left is to get the balloon and head for my house.”
“Anything we should be expecting?” Sehn asks, Rainbow turning to see Sehn’s face badly bruised from the impact, a thin stream of blood coming from his nose.
“Nothing that could mess up your face more, that’s for sure.” Rainbow stifles a chuckle, Sehn rolling his eyes at the comment. “Well, this place has a problem with surprising ponies…we’ll just have to be on guard.”
“Aye aye.” Sehn nods, walking over to the front door. Rainbow follows behind him, and they both simply tilt their heads and raise an eyebrow staring at what’s before them.
An iron gate has been placed in front of the door, the door itself seeming to better belong in a high-security prison, rather than a bakery that Pinkie Pie helps to run. The frame, door and gate all seem brand new compared to the aged wood and cracked, foggy glass of the bakery walls. “Well…can’t say I wasn’t expecting this.” Rainbow mutters in annoyance.
“You did say this place had a problem with surprising you. It loses all its effect when you’re expecting it though…” Sehn mutters as well, still staring at the door.
He moves his attention to the cracked window, walking over to it and staring inside. Rainbow moves over to the gate, standing at the bottom of the steps, looking around.
“Nothing inside…” Sehn says, Rainbow looking over to see him walk over to her, and they both shift their gaze to the gate. “So how do we get this open?”
“Hmmm…” Rainbow rubs her chin, before raising her eyebrows and turning to her bag. She reaches inside and pulls out the note from the library, placing it on the ground to read. “The gates of Destiny don’t open for all, for some they are a grand iron wall…” Rainbow looks up from the note at the gate filling the door frame.
“You think the note has something to do with this?” Sehn asks.
“I do. Grand iron wall pretty well describes this. Only those of us who are of sufficient worth, are allowed beyond the gateway’s berth…only those of sufficient worth…” Rainbow furrows her brow, repeating the lines to herself several times, trying to understand the meaning of it.
“Why’re you running it over in your head so much? It’s not just some random message Twilight left behind?” Sehn asks.
“This isn’t something she’d write. It’s cryptic, something you need to dig into to get the meaning out of.”
“So a riddle.”
“Yeah, pretty much. Any ideas?”
“Well, it does say ‘those of sufficient worth’, is there any way to prove that we are?”
“Nothing comes to mind. It’s an iron gate, it doesn’t have eyes or ears...” Rainbow replies, running her eyes over the aged walls, before settling on a small statue by the steps. “That does though.” She points to the statue, Sehn walking over to it and crouching down to look it over.
The small statue appears to be that of an Equestrian, a hoof held out as if to take something. The design of it is strange though, instead of having the feathery wings of a Pegasus, it has small dragon’s wings, stretched out in full length to its sides, and on its forehead are two sharp looking horns, though they don’t have the usual spiral design of a unicorn’s horn. Its eyes are closed, and there is no mouth carved into the statue.
“Kind of creepy…” Rainbow squints her eyes at the small statue, about half the size of her, then looks at the hoof. “Why does it have that pose?”
“Maybe it wants something.” Sehn says, turning around to face her. “Have anything that it might want?”
“What do you give to a random statue in this world?” Rainbow twists up her face and sits down, slightly confused. “All we have is the note, the walkie talkie, and…wait hang on.” She turns around to her bag again, popping the top open, and looks inside.
In the bag is the walkie talkie, and the five small bits of gold, gleaming in the weak light shining through the fog. They look immaculate, a shine that would even take Rarity by surprise. “I do have those bits of gold from the library…”
“Well, anything’s worth a shot here. Lemme get em.” Sehn says, his hand reaching into the bag and taking out the small bits of gold. He also pulls out the walkie talkie, listening to it. “Did you and your friends run into monsters often here, last time you came?”
“Not really, though I was on my own for most of it. After Fluttershy fell through that trap door, me and Pinkie went out to look for her for a while, before I snapped and went off on my own…I still regret doing that.” Rainbow closes her eyes, facing the ground, and feels a pat on the shoulder from Sehn.
“All in the past, right? Didn’t they forgive you? You Equestrians don’t seem like the kind of race to hold a grudge with each other.” Sehn says, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, yeah they did…but it just says I did it. I betrayed a friend and went off on my own.”
“Buck up, kiddo. You haven’t got a reason to get depressed right now, all that’s in the past.” Sehn says, taking one last look at the walkie talkie, no sound whatsoever coming from it, and he puts it back into the bag, moving his gaze to the gold bits in his other hand. “’Sufficient worth’…worth does have multiple meanings.” He mutters, just loud enough to be audible, and he walks over to the statue. “Here goes everything.”
He kneels down and places each of the bits into the hoof of the statue, and stares at it for a bit. He grimaces, no reaction seeming to come from it. “Well ain’t that a bust…”
“Give it some time. Maybe it just takes a while to do something?” Sehn turns to look at Rainbow, the statue exiting both their views, and as they turn back…
The hoof is empty. “Wh- hey! It ate my money!” Sehn shouts at the statue, getting to his feet. He stares at the statue, and it begins to move, causing him to step back a bit. It begins to speak in an evil tone, deep and gritty.
The gates of Destiny don’t open for all,
But for some they are a passable wall.
You have paid the keeper of the Gate,
No longer will you have to wait.
Two payments, and one remains,
The other isn’t so readily made.
Pass through the door, your tests await,
Three proofs remain; do you have what it takes?
It stops its small poem, and lowers the hoof, the stone in its joint grinding as it moves. With it, the iron gate begins to grind and squeal, rusty chains and pulleys working behind the scenes in the walls of the library, and the gate slowly rises to reveal the imposing doorway.
“…Ominous, and really friggin creepy.” Sehn says in his usual matter-of-fact tone.
“Words can’t cover the half of it.” Rainbow replies, both of their views locked on the door. “Well…anywhere is better than out he-“ A buzzing sound cuts her off, faint though growing in volume very quickly. The banging of boots can be heard behind them. “Oh shoot!”
“Well, there’s our notice! C’mon kid!” Sehn shouts, both of them running for the door, Sehn opening the door with Rainbow quickly running through, and Sehn runs in behind her and slams the door. Out in the fog stands a shadow, though it holds a much straighter form than the monster the pair encountered before. Another shadow appears beside it, much shorter, and their eyes shine through the fog with a soul-piercing blood red. “Let the games begin…” the tall shadow says, his voice deep and strong. The short shadow beside it simply giggles, and they both back away and disappear into the fog.