//------------------------------// // Chapter forty-two, Situations Sandy: Genius. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Caves of Intrigue, Gene- “Look, there’s something you got to know before telling them to shoot me.” Jacky said as I pulled the spear from my back and dove down the steps. Aiming the spear I threw it to the left slightly and then crashed into the golem pony on the right to twist and rip its head off. Throwing the head off to the side I approached Teatime with a glare. “My boyfriend is still pretty angry that you targeted me with those mechanical beasts.” “That’s impossible! Why the strength alone needed to rip off the head off one of my golem ponies would require that he be strong enough to… oh dear.” Teatime took off his monocle and pulled out a wipe cloth, he wiped it down while sweating a lot and put it back in place. He then started galloping for the nearest exit. “Well cheerio, no sense in sticking around here when there’s treasure to get away with!” I went to go after him, but Jacky halted me and went to pick up the lamp. She held the glow lamp and looked at it and shrugged before stashing it away in her pack. “We stick together Generic, I don’t want anyone getting lost in here.” Listening to Jacky, I stayed at her side despite wanting to pummel that pony into next week. Apparently he’s not very brave or capable without his mechanical golems. “Captain we have a problem!” We turned to Nefer, who was trying to get our attention as Belfry came down for a landing next to us. “What is it Nefer?” Jacky looked to the panicked trident tail. “There were some warning inscriptions in the floor around the lamp, we have an hour to get out of the caves when the pyramid sinks!” Nefer was a little panicked and Flotsam huffed loudly as she finally got down all the stairs. “The old Saddle Arabian inscription said that will only happen if the lamp is moved.” “Maybe the mechanism isn’t working and it’s rusted up?” Well Jacky had a positive attitude, but… A loud clicking noise could be heard throughout the room and then the Caves of Intrigue began to rumble. We all turned to the pyramid and saw it slowly sinking into the ground. “Maybe it’s not too hard to get back to the stairs?” It was kind of hard to hear Jacky over the rumbling. Sand started pouring down into this cave from above. “Gene how do you feel about carrying Flotsam around?” “I can do it, but it’ll tire me out quickly." I turned to Flotsam sitting next to the sinking pyramid. "How do you feel about me carrying you Flotsam?” “That’s a trick question right? Of course I’ll let you carry me!” Flotsam would be a bit slow otherwise. I ripped the spear from the golem and placed it on my back. Taking flight I wrapped my claws around her waist and started to flap my wings as hard as I could to get her in the air, then I was assisted by Belfry. “Hope you know that this is making me feel like dead weight again.” “Hey, you took out two golems and saved me from getting shot earlier this morning, so that’s something pretty good going for you.” Jacky managed to cheer Flotsam up somewhat and she smiled a little. “Now let’s find Daring and get out of here while we still can. I may have a slight grudge against her, but I’m not going to leave her behind.” We made for one the other exits to this room and came to a left or right junction. “Gene?” Jacky looked to me. “We head left.” I remember hearing something about always sticking to the left or right wall to find the exit, here it might not be applicable given the magic going on in this place. We ended up going through a hallway filled with strangely colorful bubbles, upon touching one of them Jacky found out the hovering bubble was actually made of mineral crystals. Blue bubbles were, for instance, made of sapphire. The bubbles were filled with some strange gaseous substance that’s light enough to hold the heavy crystals in the air, I know this because Jacky accident caused a bubble to break and the gas immediately slammed into the ceiling causing a few rocks to fall down. We exited that into a cave full of cube shaped snow. The snow wasn’t in mounds, it was in cubes, rectangles and even rhombuses. We had three directions to go. “Look at all this white puffy cold stuff…!” It seemed Nefer has never seen snow before. “It’s called snow Nefer, but we don’t have the time to play with it.” I turned to Savannah who whined and dropped the snowball she scooped up and she kicked it off to the side, the ball of snow immediately turned into a cube shape after it finished tumbling. “Your turn Savannah, make a quick choice!” “I would never want to go just straight, so how about going right?” Savannah seemed a little unsure about this. It’s not like we had any idea where we were going, so we were just taking turns making wild guesses. We went along a warped twisted rectangular hallway and our bodies turned with the twist of the floor, we made one full rotation before we came out the other side and into an open cavern full of mirrors. They were spaced apart from one another pretty well and we just slowly walked through looking at our reflections change and shift like fun house mirrors. Only the reflections seemed to be wearing different clothing, were missing limbs, seemed to be moving in directions we weren’t, some had monstrous glowing red eyed versions of us in them and others had us with little rings of light floating above our heads. “A room of magic mirrors, how novel. If we find a staircase before we find Daring, we’re taking it.” Everyone was behind you with that Jacky. “I might not like the idea of leaving Daring behind, but we will since I’ve got you guys to think about.” “If only someone could tell us where she is.” I looked at the mirrors around Nefer and he didn’t seem to have a reflection at all… in fact none of the mirrors were reflecting him and were only reflecting Belfry. “Oh I know where she is, take that tunnel!” We all turned towards a mirror to see a mirror copy of Daring Do wearing a sailor outfit and pointing off towards the tunnel forward and slightly to the right of the one we all had been facing coming in. “Some guy named Caballeron caught her after he looted the golden animal crackers room… don’t eat them, gold is not exactly healthy for your appetite and the only thing you’ll crack is your teeth! He tossed her into the room with the gem encrusted pillows thinking it was full of monsters or something.” “Uh… thanks?” Jacky just went with it, so we might as well too. “Don’t mention it, since my reflection really needs the help!” We were almost out of earshot of the mirror Daring Do as we continued on into the suggested tunnel. Things quickly became dark in the tunnel and it seemed as if the tunnel were filled with malicious looking red eyes ahead of us. “I could use some help right about now, when did Caballeron teach his goons to tie knots like that?” That sounded like Daring ahead of us. “I’d even take some of Ahuizotl’s ferocious felines!” There was no noise coming from the malevolent looking red eyes. They didn’t blink, make noise or anything. Moving forward we came out of whatever was causing the unnatural darkness into a room full of ruby encrusted pillows, all of said rubies looked like eyes. A lot of the rooms in this place were lit up with magic orbs of light, the light from the orbs didn’t reach into the darkness behind us which seemed to stretch on forever. “Would you accept help from an old friend?” Walking forward Jacky looked at the mare who was tightly bound, she had only managed to get the gag off of herself to even talk. “What are you doing here?” Daring sat up and stared at Jacky with trepidation. “My crew and I are here looking for a magic lamp, we found it and it glows in the dark.” Jacky seemed to be tipping between congenial and hostile. “So, do you want our help or not?” “I work alone for a good reason now, but in this instance I’m willing to make an exception.” Did Daring really have to bring Jade up? It just made Jacky less likely to help her. “It’s not you working with me, it’s me working for you.” “Don’t squirm too much; we need to leave real fast!” Before Jacky could be questioned by what she meant, Daring’s eyes widened when Jacky pulled the saber out from behind her and even being behind her I didn’t know where she pulled it from, even though the logical answer is 'party cannon'. She slashed the saber downwards cutting the rope. “Apparently taking the lamp from its pedestal causes this whole place to go into shut down mode in an hour and it’s been about twenty minutes since that happened.” “It happens a lot in my line of work, deadlines becoming a literal dead line.” Daring grunted and stretched out, I took this opportunity to get some rest and Belfry let go of Flotsam as soon as I did. “I’ll give you a minute to rest, but we really need to get moving if we’re on time crunch.” Jacky, Savannah and I picked some jewels out of the nearby pillows, I even kept one of the pillows for later. Once we were ready to go I lifted Flotsam into the air with Belfry’s help and we were on our way following Daring’s lead. -Savannah- “Do you even know where you’re going?” These caves were neat and I was having plenty of fun seeing what would come up next. There was walking on walls, everything turning several shades of yellow, a room that smells like your favorite food constantly and the room where anyone can fly would have been more fun if we weren’t currently under time constraints. I felt like we were lost and that wasn’t good when we had less than thirty minutes to get out of these caves. “All we need to do is find some stairs right? Well there’s some right now!” We went up the stairs following Daring and didn’t end up outside, instead we ended up in dead end with a sign. “Sorry, alicorn statue has yet to be implemented into the ‘Caves of Intrigue’, please return to one of the other statue entrances to get out? Why do alicorns always come up more often than they should in these kinds of places with detrimental connotations?!” Turning around we saw said horned and winged pony statue we came out of. It was not one of the three ponies you could enter the caves through. We went back down the stairs we came up. We then went through a room full of silver peanuts, moderately interesting but we couldn’t stop to find out what was in the silver colored shells. There was a room full of totem pole statues with strange eyes that follow you… it was exceedingly creepy. The room where there was absolutely no sound whatsoever, no matter what you did it was dead silent. The following room was worse after the previous two rooms, since this room had you paranoid that something was just right behind you and you never saw it when you looked back. We were about down to five minutes as we entered a cavernous room filled to the brim with empty glass bottles. Who actually designed this crazy place? Exiting that room on the ceiling into the next, Jacky and I suddenly fell to the floor. Thankfully my fall was cushioned by Jacky’s body. From here we could see Ahuizotl and his cats heading for some stairs leading up and outside. “It seems you’ve failed to stop me from achieving my goal Daring Do.” Ahuizotl gloated as he held up a solid golden ring, he blew a whistle his tail hand was holding and his five cat minions gathered. “Attack!” “Belfry remember those plants you ate earlier…” Jacky stated blithely and our giant butterfly leapt forward spray of chemicals all over the charging cats. The four large cats and the average looking house cat started to stagger around dizzily. They then blushed, turned around and started to physically assault Ahuizotl. “Stop! What are you doing? Attack them, not me!” The cats all started to assault Ahuizotl affectionately as he turned away to run up the stairs. His five cats became rather clingy and were chasing him. “Come on, after him!” We followed Daring Do up the stairs. All things said this whole trip went pretty well and I even got a souvenir bejeweled pillow! -Daring- We were just about to exit the 'Caves of Intrigue' and it seemed to be a little after noon judging by the position of the sun. We had to quickly back down the steps when a wave of fire blasted the entrance. “You’re not getting away that easily, my associates really don’t like you Daring Do and I’m getting a share of the profits even if I didn’t find much in the way of riches on my own.” That Clockwork guy had a flamethrower trained on our ticket out of here and we didn’t have much time left. “I also don’t want my rival getting out and I see her behind you… what was your name again? Oh right, it doesn’t matter if you get stuck in the ‘Caves of Intrigue’ and die of hunger, thirst or old age!” The stairs leading out started to rumble and the magical lights along the staircase started winking out one after another starting from the bottom heading to the top. “Flotsam, eat a banana peel!” I wondered why anyone would want to eat a banana peel at a time like this. I turned to see the sea pony start consuming said peel. After some vigorous chewing Flotsam swallowed it, Jade’s sister then said something that made my blood freeze. “Grab Daring and kick her through the entrance as hard as you can.” “Wha…” I tried to ask what was going to happen, only to find myself lifted off the ground by a single hoof on my butt. I tried to fly away and or fall from the iron grip the sea pony had on me, she simply just placed her other hoof on the other cheek of my rear end. “What about us Captain?” The one called Flotsam asked as she focused on the entrance. “We’ll just have to find another way out, now get her out of here!” What did she mean by…? I suddenly rocketed forward at an incredible speed and blurred through the entrance. Catching myself with my wings, I turned around to see the top of the winged statue pony’s head clamp shut. The other two pony statues soon followed. The three pieces of the scorpion key exploded away from the pedestal into the distance in three different directions. “No…” They had all been sealed inside. “Ha, let’s see Daring Do get out of that one!” That’s the sad thing Caballeron, I already did.