-Turtle Toga ruins, Jacky-
To prove himself to me, Nefer has dragged me up to the ruins on Turtle Toga.
Nobody has been able to figure out how to get into them, but Nefer says he’s found a thing with writing that can tell us how to.
I was curious enough to follow Nefer here, not without a few complications.
“Wow, where did that pinecone come from? I’ve only been on this island for a year and a half and I’ve never seen a pinecone in all that time.” Nefer had forgotten the words that were written out here, but he’d know them when he saw them. “Just a lot of fruit.”
“This has happened to me a few times, I’m a cursed individual after all. Unlucky things happening is what is normal for me.” I tossed the pinecone, which had struck me in the head, over my shoulder. “It’s sometimes followed by a tree crushing me.”
“Oh you mean like that one.” Nefer pointed a paw straight above me and I immediately dove to the side and away from him as a tree slammed into the ground where I had been standing. The tinkling noise and the shattering of glass was not something I thought a tree would make. “Ooh… that tree is covered in pretty, colorful things!”
I just stared blankly at the slightly burnt hearths warming tree. I eventually got up to go inspect it, where I learned something important.
“If found return to the Sparkle family in Canterlot… yada, yada, yada… okay yeah.” I nodded to myself in understanding as I read the date on it. “Some unicorn apparently launched it into orbit during hearths warming last year. It’s finally decided to come down… almost right on top of me.”
“What’s hearths warming?” Nefer was the size of cat and it was relatively hard to take him seriously because of that, since I was a slightly more than four feet tall wingless avian. “It sounds colorful.”
“Don’t worry about it… now where are those words you mentioned you could read?” If he could actually read them, then he could be a worthwhile addition to the crew.
“Oh right, that thing I can do!” Nefer perked up even more, which was hard to tell when he was always rather perpetually perky already. “It’s around here somewhere.”
I’ve been all over Turtle Toga. The only place I could never get into was the mysterious ruins of Turtle Toga, so this was actually kind of exciting.
“Oh there, come on!” I was led to an archway with upside down turtle statues that would never open no matter what anyone has tried, no pirate has been able to get into the place. “There, you see, writing!”
Nefer was pointing to the writing on the wall next to the rather obvious entrance, but nobody could read it.
“So… what do you think it says?” I crossed my arms and waited for Nefer to look over the strange scrawling on the wall.
“It says ‘to enter the great and dangerous flipping turtle shrine, you need to sing the song of Sea Ponies that tells them to come save you in time’.” Did Nefer just say what I thought he said?
“Really?” I must have made Nefer misunderstand my look of disbelief as he looked upset for once.
“I’m telling the truth, I can actually…” I cut Nefer off.
“No… I’m actually quite sure that you can read it, but could it really be that simple?” I tried to remember what those words Jade has sung several times were, I knew she liked to hum them and she told us if we were ever stuck in the middle of deep water and needed help. We should sing… “Shoo-be-doo shoo-shoo-be-doo~!”
“That was nice sounding, but why did you sing that?” Nefer was answered when a clunking noise sounded out and the door dropped down into the ground leaving an open corridor behind it.
“I did that because it’s how you open the door.” I moved forward and took up an ancient torch and scraped it against the wall to light it up. “Also I completely believe you now, how do you know how to read ancient unknown languages anyway?”
“Wow you know a lot things, but are we really going in there?” Nefer seems to be a bit worried. “It looks dark and scary. I don’t know how I know how to read this stuff, it just comes to me. It’s my really cool ability.”
“Well you said you wanted to be useful, no better time than now if you want to set off traps for me or at least stop me from walking into them by reading the stuff on the walls.” I was much braver than he was, he pressed up against me with his petals shivering a bit. “Don’t worry, I’m sure with my luck we’ll die quickly and painlessly.”
“That doesn’t sound very comforting.” That’s the idea Nefer.
“I’m more dangerous than most pirates to be around because I’m a blackcap Nefer, you’ll learn to understand that that is not a good thing.” I stopped to look at the writing on the wall beyond the stairs we just walked down, further along was a corridor full of randomly colored tiles on the floor. “You really shouldn’t be around me if you wanted to stay safe, as I’m always unsafe to be near. Now what does this say?”
“Step on the red squares only, unless you want to leave all your loved ones lonely.” Nefer read out and then turned to me. “What does that mean?”
I inched a toe forward and tapped a black squared on the tiled floor. Hundreds of zipping noises could be heard coming from the holes in front of us and going into other holes for a few seconds.
I held the torch aloft to the other wall and didn’t see the hundreds of darts stuck in the wall, I only saw more holes. Only all the holes on the left had fired. I carefully tapped the tile again and all the darts fired from the right this time.
“That Nefer, that’s what it means… perforating poison dart trap.” I looked to the left and the right, then held my torch up high to look at the ceiling and saw even more holes up there. No more whooshing sounds, so that means the darts had stopped firing. “One that can reset itself with whatever misses the first time, quite a few of these darts on some pretty genius trajectories. Get on my shoulders and don’t move too much.”
I crouched down and Nefer carefully clambered up onto me.
“Um… this doesn’t seem very safe.” Ignoring all of Nefer’s worries, I calmly walked forward while holding the torch low down in front of me and started to slowly step across the red tiles through the hallway. I stopped when I saw two tiles, one was pink and the other was white with a pink tint. “The left one.”
I followed Nefer’s advice and continued on stepping on tiles that were closer to red or were loosely related to red until we passed all the entire trap. One of the necessary tiles to step on had been purple. I came to another staircase leading up into a wide open area full of tall walls and three entrances.
“A maze full of traps, this could take a while.” I still had to go map shopping and recruit more crew, but I was way too curious to turn back now.
“Unless we follow the left wall.” Turning to see Nefer reading off the wall again, I blinked and raised the torch in my left hand so he could look at it better. “Also it says we are here!”
He pointed at the map like structure designed into the wall and I scrutinized it for a bit.
“Well okay then, let’s find out what’s all the way inside of this place.” I wondered how Gene was doing back with the boat, he had plenty of food.
This adventure shouldn’t take too long right?
-Three hours later-
I was nearly sliced in half by a well-oiled swinging axe and Nefer pushed me out of the way in time with his tiny body, I was still in one piece and finally remembered that I had had my magical alchemy bow on me all this time. I could have used it three traps ago… I think we were almost at the end.
I lifted the torch to some writing on the wall and Nefer climbed up to my right shoulder to read it.
“If you made it this far, congratulations, for the way out is soon, but there is also a cursed treasure of the flipping turtles that can bring fortune or ruin in the next room. Leave the cursed artifact in place, for if you take it you must make for the open exit with haste.” I lowered the torch to writing below that. We weren’t going to miss any writing this time, that’s what almost got me cleaved in half by a quick swinging axe. “The boulder of increasing danger, will follow whoever takes the treasure that is a stranger. To survive its wrath, jump in the ocean and… take a bath? That’s rather oddly specific, don’t you think so Ms. La Perm?”
“Please, call me Captain Blackcap or just Jacky, you’ve earned it five traps ago.” The polite little cat was helpful in getting through this place, though I still nearly got squished by smashing wall traps and had been battered by the swinging levitating brick blocks trap. “Ms. La Perm is my mother.”
“Yippee, I’m going to be a pirate with an amazing captain!” Not having the heart to tell Nefer I wasn’t exactly a captain yet, we just continued on up the spiraling stairs until we came to a room… with someone else already here. “Hey, who are you, we worked hard to get up here to the treasure!”
“Why I’m Teatime Clockwork my strange lad, I’m an inventor, explorer and mystical artifact hunter extraordinaire!” The brown haired white furred unicorn tipped his pith hat to us as he was sitting next to a pedestal with a single object on it, a coin. He adjusted his explorer’s jacket and monocle to take a better look at us. “Wait a moment… by crumpets, you two came in through one of the other entrances? Are you quite daft? How did you even make it here alive?! It took me hours of preparation just to get through the exit door being as thick and heavy as it was!”
We went through all of that… for a coin… and it might be taken by this pony. Okay, where’s the traumatizing bad luck on this one?
Teatime wasn’t the only one here, there were also two pony shaped golems full of clockwork gears looking at us with their mouths wide open with what looked to be small cannons in them.
“Yes we did… what exactly is so important here that you had to cut your way through the exit door?” I tapped my toes idly and silently noted that the two golems were aiming at us. I could possibly take one of them, but both of them? They looked really dangerous and I had my doubts I can dodge small fast flying cannonballs, even in a room this spacious.
“I thought there would be mounds of treasure in here being a pirate island, only to find this! A single coin, beyond all the doors I have been vexed by! I seriously doubt GODLESS, my wonderful backers you see, could make any use of this paltry pointless coin.” Okay, Mr. Clockwork just immediately set me on edge as his purple eyes glanced at the coin in disdain. He was part of the same crazy nut-job loaded organization that sent those assassins after Jade. “I’m contemplating whether I should take it or not for myself, I’m quite certain that it is highly booby trapped though. Why would a single worthless coin like this be worth so much effort to be kept hidden here? Well you’ll never find out unless...”
He hit the coin’s edge flipping it into the air and he caught it, he looked at it and then to me. I saw a faint purple glint surround he coin and it glowed for a second, what did it just do? It’s a cursed artifact right?
Also from what Nefer read not too long ago, it brings fortune or ruin… so judging by the purple glow… ruin?
“Hmm… tails, oh well, too bad. Musket Mouths, shoot them.” In response to Teatime’s words the two clockwork golems immediately made some clacking noises and two tiny explosions erupted in their mouths firing towards us.
It was then that something miraculous happened, the two sphere’s collided in the air in front of us and then started to ricochet all over the room.
The two fast moving solid iron spheres eventually struck the two golems in very odd places, gumming up their inner workings and within seconds they both exploded sending Teatime hurtling backwards violently into a wall.
Upon hitting the wall the coin went flying out of his grasp and flipping towards me, I almost caught it and fumbled with it a bit and accidentally sent it spinning upwards.
It landed in my palm showing the image of a smiling turtle holding a scepter on a regal throne. A gold glowing glint surrounded the coin and it started glowing that color for a few seconds, was this the fortune side?
I turned the coin over and saw that tails was a turtle with the front half of its body buried in the sand upside down with its poor belly exposed and about to be devoured by a bird. Graphic imagery that.
“A coin that can grant someone good or bad luck by how it lands after someone sends it flipping into the air?” Yeah, that was… bad… I want to go with bad. Even if it just gave me good luck, I’m sure that wouldn’t last very long.
I don’t think I’d ever use this cursed coin very much, but if something ever came up to a coin toss I’d always make someone else use it and would always declare heads no matter what. If it landed tails then whoever tossed it was going to have a lot of bad luck afterwards.
If it was cursed like I think it was, then it was predisposed to landing tails side up. Thus giving you bad luck and would rarely, if ever, give you good luck. I just received good luck because Teatime just got bad luck, this was going to be a rare opportunity for me to enjoy my cursed luck becoming at least neutral.
“Yeah, that’s awesome captain, but... maybe we should go before the guy that tried to kill us over nothing wakes up!” Nefer brought me back to the present as he pointed in a given direction while tugging at my pants leg, I looked down a long tunnel he was pointing out to see a light at the end of it.
We both heard a loud crashing noise, ever so slowly we looked behind us. We saw a boulder sitting there behind the pedestal the coin had been sitting on, said pedestal slowly lowered into the floor.
I believe that that was the boulder we were warned about, the only thing currently holding it back was the pedestal it was pressing against urgently.
"Run."