-Caves of Intrigue, Jacky-
They say the first step is often the hardest, well I took one step and nothing happened aside from the cave being lit up with more magical lights. Still, I was curious as to what was in these caves that made them so intriguing. We had entered through the unicorn headed statue, the three entrances were somewhat close together, but I think they all likely came out at different places in these caves.
“Nefer, Belfry, come with me. The rest of you go wait for the Gene at the top of the stair then come back down, we’re just going to check the right most tunnel.” I motioned to said tunnel. “We’re not going to go far and we’ll be right back.”
Nothing could possibly go wrong. Oh who am I kidding? We’re going to get lost in here.
Nefer and Belfry were behind me a respectable distance as we exited the far right tunnel into the most bizarre looking room ever. It kind of looked like a chapel that you’d see in a church.
We approached the thing standing at the altar wearing a nun’s habit.
“Captain what is all this?” Nefer mewled curiously.
“I think we just found religion.” Muttering that with a hint of humor in my voice, I looked at the large green creature behind the altar. “At least we don’t have to follow it if we don’t want to.”
Belfry took Nefer off of himself and set him off to the side, then he moved up to the nun at the altar and put his front to legs up in prayer. The nun patted gently him on the head with a scythe like limb and he came back to us chittering somewhat merrily.
This dead end wasn’t really that interesting, but it was intriguing nonetheless. I mean, what wasn’t interesting about the nun being a really large praying mantis. I had thought the Floating Continent was the only place that had giant bugs and then I had to remember that large things like a hydra did exist off of it.
“Quick question if I may?” I started out politely and the female mantis creature nodded to me. “I know that your species tend to eat to your mates. Since you’re a nun, does that mean you’ll never have a mate to consume?”
The mantis shakes her head sadly and then made several gestures that I barely understood, but I got the gist well enough.
“Yeah, I’m sorry that I asked about something so controversial for you.” The mantis just made a gentle shooing motion and probably said that it was okay that I had asked, we turned to go back down the tunnel we came from. “She seemed kind of nice about things and us just barging into her room.”
Belfry made a few happy sounding squealing noises, the more things I learned about giant bugs the more weirded out I felt about it.
Exiting the tunnel we came back to an open space that was far different than we had left it, considering we saw Gene, Savannah and Flotsam all above us… on the floor. We came out of the tunnel we explored on the ceiling.
“I can already tell that the ‘Caves of Intrigue’ are going to live up their name.” I stated blandly as I looked up at them and they did the same for us. I had to say something sarcastically here. “Hey guys, guess what? The caves are apparently magical!”
“Yeah, we kind of figured that out when we saw you on the ceiling. So what was in that direction?” Gene asked.
I knew there were the threats of Caballeron, Teatime and Ahuizotl around, but I was less worried about them and more worried about what the word ‘Intrigue’ meant at the moment.
“A really friendly giant praying mantis nun, I’m talking bigger than Belfry sized here. Go halfway down that tunnel and come on back.” We walked along the ceiling until we were at the center of the room. The three on the floor shrugged and did as I asked, seconds later they came back on the ceiling as well.
“That’s disorienting, we didn’t even move to the left or right and now we’re on the ceiling too!” Flotsam said rubbing a hoof against her head as she came slithering out with the others on the ceiling with us.
“It’s important that we stick together guys, we do not want to get separated or stuck down here.” I randomly chose a tunnel to go into.
We came out on stone bridge crossing over a bottomless void above and below. It even still felt like we were still upside down. We could cross the stone bridge across the void to another tunnel or turn back. “I feel like I’m actively playing a game of Ogre’s and Oubliettes right now.”
“Yeah, I’m getting those vibes as well Jacky.” Gene flew down… up? Well he flew up in our current orientation into one void and came up from below blinking confusedly at us on the right. Then we saw another Gene that had inverse colors to him on the other side as he also few up coming from below on the left.
“Excuse me, but you wouldn’t have happened to see someone that looks like that female parrot there would you? Except she haves white feathers and black around her eyes. We call her Captain Whitecap and she accidentally fell off one of these bridges.” I shook my head no to the inverse colored Gene. “Would it help if I said we’re from dimension forty three B?”
“No, not really, that’d probably just make things even more confusing. Given I’m from dimension twenty six Z.” The one that looked like our Gene stated and then a third Gene flew down which had to be ours. “This doesn’t look like my captain either, for one she’s much smaller and cuter looking.”
“Captain there’s nothing up there except another empty stone bri… er… why are there two more of me?” I sighed and slapped my face as Gene, our Gene, was the one that came back down from above.
Ten minutes later, we were leaving the two confused Gene’s from different possible realities behind, the third Gene that looked similar to ours had a major difference from ours that we hadn’t initially noticed. He was about two inches smaller all around than our Gene was.
We were quickly on our way before things got even more complicated and our last look at the void room had multiple Generic’s flying out of the void and talking to one another. I shivered at the thought of there being so many Gene’s, one bland soft spoken Viking griffon with muscles was more than enough for me thank you!
I even saw a pink and blue Belfry before we turned the corner of the tunnel ahead of us, another giant butterfly was more than enough for me to get moving faster.
“So everything in here is intriguing in its own given way?” Gene muttered as he tried not to look back towards the stone bridge we crossed, he was a little bit freaked out to see more than two of himself.
“That one is going to give me some nightmares, can you imagine there being more than one of me?” Savannah looked really shaken by the idea that she might not be original in her wild behavior. “If I’m not ‘The Wild Savannah’, then who am I?”
“Don’t worry or think too much about it Savannah.” I hoped she heeded my words. We came out of the tunnel we were currently in into another cave full of different paths, to be exact we exited the third from the left of another staircase. This cave was full of strange plants. “Don’t touch any of those plants, you don’t know what they’ll do.”
One quick trip up the staircase revealed that we were at the earth pony statue entrance, the two ponies were still tied up and the ships were still in the same disabled state as we left them in. I went back down.
“Okay, so we’re at the earth pony statue entrance… someone else pick a tunnel this time and hopefully we’ll find Ahuizotl, Teatime, Caballeron or even possibly Daring somewhere in here.” Because I wanted something to make some sense about all this. We didn’t necessarily move in the right direction to have been at the earth pony statue’s steps.
You know, I would have thought we’d have at least walked into a trap made by one of the three guys we followed into this, but nothing has occurred yet.
“How about that one.” Flotsam pointed to a tunnel that was second from the right. We immediately set out for that tunnel.
At the end of the tunnel we came out on the ceiling far above a situation already in progress below us in another system of caves, only there was no staircase leading out of this series of tunnels. The room was large enough that there were two separate tunnel systems in it. There were the ones where we could walk into the tunnels and the ones down, or up, where Daring Do currently was
Daring was flying above a cheetah and a panther just out of the reach of their swiping claws, didn’t honestly know why she was taunting them while letting them get that close to getting a debilitating injury on her. Ahuizotl didn’t seem too happy about the current situation either as he charged out of a tunnel towards her.
Unless we could fly, we weren’t going to be able to do anything about it from here and I wanted us all to stick together. Even Belfry was not to go off on his own.
“You’re just as lost as I am Ahuizotl, but you better believe I’ll get out of here with that Ring of Scorchero before you can find it!” It sounded like Daring’s bravado was not dented by what happened to Jade at least, she quickly flew off into another tunnel.
“Get back here!” Ahuizotl chased after her with the panther and cheetah. What we didn’t see were the lynx, house cat and tiger. Must have gotten lost somewhere in the random magical tunnels.
“Belfry, you choose next.” At my command Belfry did so and we ended up coming out into a room with four entrances and a pyramid as the center piece that had a glowing lamp sitting all the way at the top of it.
We all just came to a stop and simply stared at it.
“Really?!” I couldn’t believe it was just sitting right there, just ripe for the taking and all I had to do was run up a flight of stairs. “No seriously, that looks exactly like the one we’re looking for!”
I pulled out the map to the genie lamp, the one that said it was generally in Saddle Arabia and looked at the drawing. Yep it was same angular design, but what was the catch here? I continued to look between the two for a minute before putting it away.
“Jacky are you feeling alright, I thought you’d be running for it immediately if it was the item we’re looking and why we came to Saddle Arabia in the first place.” Gene pointed out.
“I don’t know, it just seems almost too good to be true...” Even as I said this, I started up the stairs with everyone following me. My climbing must have started to look quite frantic, but I really wanted that lamp! “Hopefully it isn’t!”
I looked back and noted Flotsam was having a slight issue with the stairs. There was an understandable reason that Flotsam hated stairs, it was always rough going up or down them on her tail fin
I tripped several times climbing the steps and even tumbled up five of them, I still didn’t know how I did that sometimes. I could care less about my stair problems in this instance, since I was getting closer to the lamp at the top.
My eyes filled with trepidation once I reached the flat topped portion of the pyramid and took several uneasy steps towards the lamp while slowly reaching out for it. Just when I was about to grab the green glowing lamp, a white furred hoof swiped it away from me by the handle before my eyes, I blinked and stared at Teatime in utter disbelief.
“Well now, if it isn’t my rival… you can just simply just look at this beautiful lamp I just acquired.” The smug Teatime couldn’t help but grin at my hardening glare.
“You don’t even know my name Tee-a-shirt-timmy-yeah, how can we be rivals!” I screeched in his face, he gave me a perplexed look.
“Well isn’t it obvious, we were destined to be at each other’s throats from the moment our eyes met!” He stated as if it were meant to be. “Quite frankly I don’t need to know your name when I can just remember your face, I’m definitely going to remember the look on it when I get away with this...”
I leapt for the lamp and he quickly started backpedaled towards the stairs, my second lunge actually caused me to bodily slam into him sending us tumbling down the stairs.
I was trying to strangle the annoying stallion, just like he was trying to keep the lamp from being damaged and away from me as he slapped at my face with a single hoof.
“My name…” I started as his back slammed against the stairs, with my grasp tightening around his neck. “Is…”
My back slammed into the steps next.
“Jacky Blackcap…” Another bounce occurred and we both went flipping into the air after he took a particularly brutal hit to the spine. “Chickadee La Perm!”
I slammed him into the stairs again, a bit more harshly this time, then we landed at the bottom of the steps with him on top of me. My talons were still digging into his throat, until one of his rear legs hit me in the chin making me let him go.
He quickly staggered off and away from me quickly, but it looked like he was still going to stop to gloat at me.
“Well now, it seems like I have the upper hoof here.” He held up the lamp and smiled grimly, his two arriving golems approached us. “Let me see if this is what I think it is so I can be rid of you, golems shoot her if she approaches us.”
I glared at Teatime as he held the lamp up in his right hoof and rubbed his left one greedily against the lamp.
The resultant action of this was not what either of us expected… because what happened is exactly nothing.
“Is it a dud?” Muttered Teatime and he tossed the glowing lamp off to the side. “What good is a magic lamp that only glows in the dark? Magic nightlights have been around for centuries and I wouldn’t get any money for this useless thing!”
He just carelessly tossed the glowing angular lamp to the side without a second thought, but I still believed it held a genie.
If the genie of that lamp wasn’t activated by rubbing the object it was in, but by something else, then I would definitely still want it.
“I guess I’ll have to deal with you in a more mundane manner.” Teatime was obviously about to order his golems to attack me.