“Okay,” Minuette said, shutting the motel room’s door behind them. “What the heck was that?”
Moondancer let out a long breath and flopped down onto one of the beds. Her chest felt tight—like she’d just run a marathon. Or at least, what she thought it would feel like after running a marathon. Running had never been Moondancer’s strong suit.
“Moonie!” Minuette snapped. “Answers! Right now!”
“Would you believe that this is all a huge misunderstanding?” Moondancer said, wincing.
“Those dogs looked like they wanted to eat us for lunch, Moondancer!” Minuette said. “If I hadn’t taken over—”
“That was really cool, by the way. How did you—”
“Not important right now!” Minuette said. “I’m not joking around right now, Moondancer. You’ve been acting really weird about this trip since yesterday, and I’ve been okay with it. But if you’ve gotten yourself into something dangerous, I need to know. As your friend. Before you do anything stupid without me.”
Moondancer considered lying... but quickly realized that, in this case, the truth was so much stranger than fiction that any lie she might have come up with would be completely unbelievable. And, frankly, at this point, she could use all the help she could get.
“You know who A.K. Yearling is, right?” she said.
“Of course,” Minuette scoffed. “She wrote the Daring Doo books. You and Twilight never stopped talking about them when we were kids.”
“Right,” Moondancer said. “Well, it turns out those books are less fictional, and more... auto-biographical.”
Minuette raised an eyebrow.
“They’re based on A.K. Yearling’s actual adventures,” Moondancer continued. “Because A.K.... is actually Daring Do.”
“Daring Do... is real?”
“Yes.”
“Wait wait wait, hang on,” Minuette said. “Sandy pegasus... so this ‘friend’ you came down to meet was Daring Do?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Minuette snorted, and leaned up against the wall. “Well, that’s pretty cool. Does Twilight know?”
“No idea.”
“Okay,” Minuette said. “Alright. Okay. So then who’s this Caballeron guy?”
“He’s—” Moondancer blinked. “Wait, have you never read the Daring Do books?”
“I read the first one!” Minuette said. “Like, once! When I was a kid! I didn’t know there was going to be a test!”
“Alright, first of all, we’re fixing that once we get home,” Moondancer said. “Secondly, Dr. Caballeron is a tomb-raider. He steals ancient treasures and artefacts and sells them to the highest bidder, no matter how important—or dangerous—they might be.”
“So he’s, like, Daring’s nemesis then?”
“No, that’s Ahuizotal.”
“Who’s—”
“That’s not important right now,” Moondancer said. She swallowed. “I hope.”
“Okay, so if Dr. Caballeron hunts relics, and he’s coming here, and Daring hunts relics, and she was supposed to be here, then does that mean that there’s a relic here that they’re both after?”
“Pretty much,” Moondancer said. “Except it’s not here, on this island. Hang on a second.”
Her horn lit. The flap of her suitcase undid itself, and she began rummaging around inside.
“Oh, here we go.”
She pulled out a book. Pages flipped themselves under her magic’s guidance until she found what she was looking for. She held the book out so Minuette could see.
“This,” she said, pointing, “is the Crown of Cthonia.”
An illustration of a crown sat on the page—but it was no ordinary creation of gold or silver, no; this was delicately moulded in the shape of a wreath of coral and seaweed, with jewels not so much inset as being held on to by the tendrils of the thing itself. Strange inscriptions encircled the crown’s base.
“The Crown of Cthonia is a legendary artefact created by the ancient Hippocampian civilization,” Moondancer explained. “The precursor to the modern Hippogriff/Seapony kingdom of today. It belonged to one of their Queens, Cthonia the Sea-Mither, who used it to defeat the Nuckelavee. Make sense so far?”
Minuette nodded. “All the important bits. What’s a Nuckelavee?”
“It’s an ancient demon, sort of like a centaur. Body of a horse, torso of a monkey. No skin.”
“That seems like it would get uncomfortable after a while.”
“I don’t think it cared, Minnie,” Moondancer said. “It was a plague-demon. Pestilence and death followed in its footsteps. So, to stop it from destroying all life as we know it, Queen Cthonia used her crown as a vessel to seal away its power. Which would have been fine, except according to the legends, anyone who wears the crown inherits the Nuckelavee’s magic.”
“Thaaat sounds bad.”
“It is,” Moondancer said. “It’s incredibly dangerous. If it got into the wrong hooves—”
“I think I get the picture,” Minuette said. “So where is it now?”
“Well, because it was so powerful, the Hippocampians hid it,” Moondancer said. She turned the page, revealing an illustration of a massive stone door. “In the Labyrinth of Li’xsh.”
Just saying the name sent shudders down her spine.
“The location of the Labyrinth has been a mystery for centuries,” she said, shutting the book. “Until now. Daring thinks she’s found it. And it’s Daring, so she’s probably right.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Roughly. Daring talked me through it before she asked me to come out here with her.”
“Why did she want you to come with her?” Minuette asked. “Do you two, like, normally go on adventures together? Is this a regular thing?”
“No, she wanted me to come along because I can read the Xiu’biehian, the language of the Hippocampian empire,” Moondancer said. “She thought it would help her get through the Labyrinth.”
“Okay,” Minuette said. Then she repeated herself. “Okay.”
She walked over flopped onto the bed beside her. They were both silent for a few moments.
“So... where’s Daring?” Minuette asked.
Moondancer bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “She was supposed to meet me at the train station.”
“Do you think something happened to her?”
“I’m trying not to think about that.”
More silence for a while.
“Alright,” Minuette said. “So what are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we have to do something!” she said. “What about the Hippogriffs? They’ve gotta have a guard, or a police force, or something, right?”
“They have a navy.”
Minuette blinked. “Why do they need a—alright, then we’ll tell the navy!”
“Caballeron’s probably already paid off some of them to keep things under wraps,” Moondancer explained. “He’s good at that. It’s why Daring usually has to go on her adventures alone.”
“Well... do we have an embassy here?”
“Still under construction.”
“What if we go directly to Queen Novo?”
“Good luck with that,” Moondancer said. “The Hippogriffs don’t have an open court system like we do. It could take weeks to even get anywhere near her.”
“Alright,” Minuette declared, pounding one hoof into the other. “Then it’s up to us!”
Moondancer snorted. “Us? Minuette, no offence, but we’re not exactly ‘save the world’ material, here.”
“Well, what else are we supposed to do?”
“Maybe we can go get someone who can do something,” Moondancer said. “Like Twilight.”
“What are we going to do, send her a letter? We can’t go back to the train station, not while big, fanged and ugly are there.”
“Well, I don’t know!” Moondancer said, throwing her hooves towards the ceiling. “It’s better than nothing!”
“Moondancer, we have to do something, now. if this crown is as dangerous as you say it is, then we don’t have a choice!”
“But if we do something, we’re going to get killed. Or worse!”
“No, look, Caballeron and his lackeys don’t know we’re here yet, right?” Minuette said. “So we have the advantage! We’ll sneak out to wherever the Labyrinth is, grab the crown while no one’s looking, and hide it until Daring gets here! Or, heck, maybe we can smuggle it back to Equestria somehow. Either way, it’s better than just sitting around and waiting!”
“It’s not that simple,” Moondancer said. She rolled off the bed and started pacing. “Even if we managed to find the Labyrinth—which is not a guarantee!—we’d still have to make it through the Labyrinth of Li’xsh. Which, in case you haven’t guessed by now, is not going to be a walk in the park!”
“But that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” Minuette said, nudging her in the ribs. “Getting through the Labyrinth safely? That’s the whole reason Daring asked you to come here!”
“Well... yeah,” Moondancer said. “But knowing the language only gives us an edge. The Labyrinth of Li’xsh isn’t just some children’s hedge maze! It was designed to keep out anyone who went after the crown. Who knows how many people just like us have gotten trapped in there over the centuries?”
“But how many of them knew Xiu’biehian?” Minuette asked. She was grinning again.
Moondancer sighed.
“Why do I let you talk me into things?”
“Because I’m a good influence on you.”
Moondancer rolled her eyes, but her heart was still hammering away in her chest. This was a bad idea. She knew it was a bad idea.
“Alright,” she said. “We’ll need a boat.”
Compared to boats, Moondancer decided, trains really weren’t all that bad.
“So where are we going?” Minuette shouted, over the sound of the waves. She had elected to row.
“There’s a rock formation called the Seafall Spire, not far from here!” Moondancer shouted back, trying to keep as still as possible so she wouldn’t lose her lunch. “It should be just a little bit farther to the west! If Daring’s right, the entrance to the Labyrinth will be somewhere near its base!”
They’d managed to rent a boat off of one of the locals, under the pretence of being tourists looking to go on a trip around the island. One might wonder why a race that could turn aquatic at the drop of a hat would need boats, but apparently not all hippogriffs liked being half-fish.
“So what’s this spire look like?” Minuette asked, keeping her rowing steady.
Moondancer looked up from her map.
“That!”
She pointed over Minuette’s shoulder. Out of the waters jutted a vertical needle of rock, reaching up as if to pierce the sky. Its shadow swallowed their boat as they approached it, completely encompassing the craft with room to spare.
Minuette whistled. “That’s a big boulder.”
“Technically not a boulder,” Moondancer said. “But, y’know, definitely big.”
Minuette brought them up alongside it, careful not to let the waves dash their ship against the stones. Moondancer took a moment to survey the horizon, then consulted her map.
“Okay,” she said. “Daring’s hypothesis was that the Spire was meant to be a sort of natural ‘marker’ for the Labyrinth—it might even have been created by the Hippocampians. Either way, the entrance should be nearby, so we’re looking for some kind of sign, or—”
“Hey, Moon, you might want to take a look at this!”
Moondancer glanced up from her map to see Minuette leaning out over the railing of the boat. She was pointing at a section of rock—no, cleaning it, wiping away decades of sea-deposited grime with the side of her hoof, revealing...
Moondancer scrambled over and adjusted her glasses as she peered at what Minuette had found.
“Celestia,” she gasped. “That—that’s Xiu’biehian!”
Indeed, strange characters had been carved into the rock, although their edges had been smoothed slightly by time and the endless lashings of the ocean. Moondancer traced them with a hoof.
“This is incredible,” she said. “I can’t believe how well preserved these are! There must be some kind of primitive preservation spell on them—ponies didn’t invent preservation spells until two centuries after the fall of the Hippocampian empire! The implications for magical historia alone—”
“Alright, I appreciate how excited you are about this,” Minuette said. “But we’re kind of in a hurry here, right?”
“Uh, yeah, sorry.” Moondancer adjusted her glasses again, hoping to hide the touch of red in her cheeks. “Let me see if I can translate this...”
“Deep beneath the ocean waves
Cave at Spire’s base
Let those who seek its power
Disappear without a trace.”
“Huh,” Moondancer remarked. “It rhymes in Equish, too. Clever.”
“Well, that isn’t ominous at all,” Minuette said. “Wait, the Labyrinth’s underwater? I thought the hippogriffs only became seaponies after the Storm King invaded?”
“Actually, they’ve been flipping back and forth for millennia,” Moondancer said. “Let’s just say that the ‘swap species when in danger’ thing has historical precedent.”
“So which came first, the seapony or the hippogriff?”
“Archaeologists have been fighting over that for centuries. Either way, looks like we need to go diving.”
Minuette set about affixing the boat to the spire with a rope. Moondancer, meanwhile, turned to the bag she’d packed. From it, she withdrew a small, velvet-lined case, and from that she retrieved what at first glance might have looked like a shell necklace, but was in fact, quite a bit more.
“What’s that?” Minuette asked.
“It’s a fragment of the Pearl of the Seas, the artefact that lets hippogriffs transform into Seaponies,” Moondancer explained. “Queen Novo sent a fragment to the university for study as a sign of good faith. I may have, erm... borrowed it without asking. Just a little bit.”
She draped the thing around her neck. “I thought it might come in handy.”
“You didn’t know how right you were,” Minuette said. “So... that thing can turn us into seaponies?”
“I really hope so,” Moondancer replied. She placed her hoof over the thing and shut her eyes, drawing all her focus on the pearl fragment.
“Here goes nothing!”
A tingle ran over Moondancer’s body, and when she opened her eyes, she’d changed completely. Gone was her fuzzy coat, now replaced with a shimmering layer of scales. Small fins protruded from the ends of her hooves, and her vision seemed distorted, even with her glasses still resting on the bridge of her snout.
She tried to take a step forward, but was overcome by the sensation that her hindlegs had been tied together—and, glancing back at the singular tail that had taken their place, that descriptor wasn’t far off.
“Whoa!” Minuette said, grinning. “It worked! Way to go, Moondancer!”
She blinked. “Uh... you can still breathe up here, though, right?”
“Feels like it,” Moondancer said, experimenting with her new limbs. “Probably shouldn’t stay out of water too long, though—I don’t know if I can dry out or not.”
Bracing herself, she coiled her tail and leapt over the side of the boat. The water was cold, but refreshing. It felt good.
Now underwater, her sight, which had seemed so off on the boat, became clearer, sharper. She fought her mammalian instincts and forced herself to take a breath—and had no issue, as the gills on the sides of her neck filtered oxygen from the water. With an experimental flick of her tail, she was off, soaring underwater as easily as a pegasus might through the air.
Of all the foreign means of transport she’d experienced today, Moondancer decided, this was by far the strangest... and absolutely her favourite.
Then she remembered that there was something else that she needed to do, and, reluctantly, made her way back up to the surface.
“What, did you forget about me?” Minuette pouted, as she emerged from beneath the water. “That thing can transform both of us, right?”
“Sorry!”
One more seapony transformation later, and they were both on their way to the ocean’s floor.
“Whoa!” Minuette cried out, flailing as she tumbled through the water. “Ahh!”
“You alright?” Moondancer asked.
“No! This is weird!” Minuette said, now drifting along upside-down beside her. “How did you get the hang of this so fast!?”
Moondancer giggled.
Soon enough, they’d made their way to the seafloor. The light had dimmed as they’d descended; with a bit of concentration, however, Moondancer had managed to get the lure hanging off her head to glow softly. Guided by its light, she made a full circle of the base of the spire, which was even wider down here.
However...
“I don’t see a cave,” Moondancer said, circling back around. Apart from where various bits of aquatic life had made their homes in the rock, the surface of the spire was smooth, flush, and descended directly into a thick rug of seaweed that covered the seafloor.
“Well, if it was that easy, someone would have found it by now, right?” Minuette said.
“You’d think...”
Moondancer circled the spire again, but to no avail.
“Was there anything in your books about this?”
“Not that I can remember,” Moondancer said. She frowned. “Maybe I translated wrong?”
“Or maybe there’s some kind of trick to it,” Minuette said, swimming along the seafloor. “Like a secret door or something.”
“That’d make sense,” Moondancer said. “The Labyrinth of Li’xsh is supposed to be full of tricks and traps—what’s one more at the entrance?”
“So if that’s what it is, then how do we open it?”
“Well, in Daring’s books, usually when there’s a secret door, there’s a riddle not far away,” Moondancer said. “So...”
“That’s gotta be an embellishment, though, right?” Minuette said. “I mean, really? Leaving the trick to open the door around where anyone could find it? That just seems silly.”
“Daring doesn’t embellish. If anything, I think she cuts the really weird stuff out. Apparently future-proofing was a near-universal practice in the pre-historia days.”
“It’s almost like all these ancient civilizations knew they would all disappear one day and left a bunch of clues behind just in case.”
“Almost.”
“Alright, so, riddle,” Minuette said. “What about the message on the spire? It rhymed, didn’t it? Aren’t ancient riddles supposed to rhyme?”
“It’s possible,” Moondancer said. She swam lazily around the spire as she thought: the aquatic equivalent of pacing.
“The first two lines pointed us here,” she murmured. “So we can probably ignore them. The other two...”
“Weren’t those just a warning?” Minuette asked, as Moondancer circled past her.
“They definitely sound like it,” Moondancer said. “Let those who seek its power... Disappear without a trace...”
She frowned.
“Well, we’re definitely seeking it,” she said. “Disappearing without a trace... How do we...”
She gasped. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“Let those who seek its power disappear without a trace! It’s not a warning— it’s instructions!” Moondancer explained. “Underwater, the light doesn’t travel as far—when it’s dark out, it becomes almost pitch black! Everything disappears!”
“So, what, we have to wait until nighttime?” Minuette asked. “Sundown isn’t for another three hours...”
“I think we’d have to wait for a new moon, specifically,” Moondancer said. “Or maybe even an eclipse. Luckily, I know a shortcut.”
She lit her lure. Apparently the thing acted more like a horn than she’d first thought. Seizing hold of the ambient leylines like she had been ever since casting her fist spell, she began to weave together an old favourite.
Her lure flashed—but it flashed dark. Darkness, typically, is characterized as the absence of light, but what emerged from Moondancer’s horn was something different—a malleable, tangible darkness ,which spread across the water and bathed them in shadow.
“Lucky Lux’s Secret Shadow Spell,” Moondancer said, pride in her voice, as the last of the sunlight was snuffed out. “Learned it when I was five so my parents wouldn’t catch me up reading past my bedtime. Never fails.”
“Alright, Moondancer!” Minuette cheered. “Hey, look, I see something!”
She pointed towards the base of the spire. Moondancer, of course, couldn’t see her doing so, it was too dark—but she could see what she was pointing at.
There, some twelve meters below them, was a ring of faint electric-blue light in the thick seaweed below. Moondancer swam towards it, keeping one forelimb outstretched so she wouldn’t hit anything in the darkness. She could feel Minuette moving through the water behind her.
As it turned out, the unnatural blue glow had a very natural source.
“Is that... seaweed?” Minuette said.
“Bioluminescent seaweed,” Moondancer remarked. “That’s one way to hide an entrance.” She pressed her hoof into the marked spot—and it sank in to her shoulder. “I think there’s a tunnel back here!”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
It was a tight squeeze, through the tunnel; Moondancer could just barely wriggle through, the tips of the seaweed brushing against her skin. The tunnel continued downwards at a steep slope for a time, and then, abruptly, made a sharp turn upwards.
As Moondancer swam up, she thought she saw a break in the water—and a moment later, she was proven right, as the tunnel widened into a pool and her head broke through the surface. Minuette’s head emerged beside her a moment later.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Looks like some kind of undersea cavern,” Moondancer replied, peering around. She couldn’t see far—the only illumination was that of the seaweed, behind them. “I wonder how long this air pocket’s been trapped down here...”
“Well, I, for one, am glad it decided to stick around!” Minuette said. With a splash, she dragged herself out of the water and onto the floor of the cave. “Can we go back to being ponies again now? Pretty please?”
“Alright, give me a second.” Moondancer dragged her own body onto the shore, then wrapped a flipper around the pearl fragment hanging from her neck. A moment’s concentration, a flash, and they were once more creatures of the land.
“Ohhh, I love having four hooves,” Minuette said.
“Well, don’t get too used too it,” Moondancer said, standing up. She lit her horn, illuminating the rest of the cavern with the pale glow of her magic. “We’re still going to have to swim back out of here, assuming we... make... it...”
Moondancer trailed off.
Before them lay a massive stone door, but this one was not like the one in the illustrations. Ostensibly, they were similar; it was an elaborately carved thing, with various sea-themed elements dancing around its edges, and it had been inset cleanly in the stone at the back of the cavern.
What the illustrations had failed to convey was the sheer sense of intimidation it emitted. That, and the two words engraved upon the centre of the door, in the same bizarre script that had adorned the spire above.
“Turn back,” Moondancer murmured. “Just what I was thinking.”
“So...” Minuette said. “How do we open it?”
Moondancer frowned. “I guess we just...” She lit her horn, wrapped her magic around the two halves of the door, and pulled.
A gush of stale air rushed into her face, jostling her mane and sending a shiver down her spine. Dust rained down from above as the doors ground open.
“Well,” Minuette said. “That was easy.”
The two of them stepped forward and peered at what lay through the doorway. A corridor, cut cleanly from the surrounding stone, descended at a shallow angle into the darkness of the depths below.
Moondancer swallowed. Minuette took a step towards the opening, but she remained stock still.
“Well?” Minuette asked, noticing her reluctance. “Are we going, or...?”
“Minnie, wait,” Moondancer said. “ I—I’m sorry, but I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
“What?” Minuette stammered. “But Caballeron—”
“I know,” Moondancer said. “I know, but hear me out. Going in there? By ourselves, without a plan? Without even telling anyone we’re down here? That’s just reckless. There has to be a smarter way to do this.”
“But we’ve already made it this far, and—”
“And that’s amazing!” Moondancer said. “I never thought we would get this far—heck, I wasn’t even convinced we could find this place! But now that we know this is here—now that we can prove the Labyrinth exists—we might be able to convince someone to help us. Or at least, come up with a better plan than walking right into what might be the world’s oldest trap. We need to be logical, here.”
Minuette stared down into the dark abyss beyond the open doors. Suddenly, now faced by the actual prospect of willingly entering that darkness, her previous unrelenting bravado seemed finally to falter.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. You know what?” she said. “Maybe I have been a bit too, uh...”
“Eager?”
“Yeah, sure, something like that.” Minuette looked down into the Labyrinth again. “Maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t mean—”
“We hate to interrupt interesting pony conversation,” said a scratchy voice, from the entrance to the cavern. “But Dogs wait too much today already!”
The two of them whirled around.
There, standing just at the edge of the waters, their fur dripping, claws and teeth glinting in the light of Moondancer’s magic, stood the three diamond dogs from the train station.
Scrapper grinned, and pointed at Minuette.
“Pony should listen to pony friend more often!”