Amethyst Star Isn't Prepared For This

by MagicS


Daring Do and the Useless Sidekick I

“That’s right. Now who are you?” Daring Do said as she continued to stand over Amethyst Star and hold her on the ground.

“I-I’m Amethyst Star! I’m from Ponyville!” Was her panicked response. The unreal situation making her mind a mess.

Daring Do seemed surprised by her answer but she temporarily backed off, letting Amethyst Star up. “You’re from Ponyville? What are you doing all the way out here?”

“I’m going on an adventure,” Amethyst answered, brushing some dirt off herself as she stood. The unicorn then gave a very perplexed look at Daring Do, scrunching up her face and examining every inch of the pegasus explorer. “You’re a real pony?”

The pegasus rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m real. Actually thought that was kind of common knowledge by now.”

“Well it’s news to me,” Amethyst Star frowned. “Hey why’d you tackle me anyways?”

“Because you were about to hurt yourself,” Daring Do explained as she walked over to the door Amethyst Star had just tried to open, the unicorn following her. The pegasus pointed up at the spokes on the wheel. “This is a trap.” She looked around on the ground before picking up a stick, holding it in her mouth she used it to push the wheel clockwise, and after only an inch of being moved razor sharp spikes shot out of the spokes.

Amethyst Star jumped back in fear. “Whoa!”

Daring Do spit out her stick and gestured to the spikes. “See? These would’ve cut up your hooves pretty badly if you tried turning the wheel.”

“Yeah, I see,” Amethyst Star grimaced at the thought.

“You have to look out for booby traps when you’re exploring ruins like this,” Daring Do admonished the unicorn. “You said you came out here on an adventure? Were you looking for this place specifically?”

“Uh, no, I just sort of found this place,” Amethyst Star looked away, it was kind of embarrassing to admit something like that.

“Well that explains it,” Daring Do said with a somewhat exasperated tone. She then turned her head to examine the door some more. “Glad I could stop you from getting hurt though, but now I’ve got a temple to check out so I can’t stay and talk, sorry.”

“Hey, wait!” Amethyst Star ran up beside her and grabbed her by the shoulder. “I still want to explore this place too you know?”

Daring Do gave her a not quite confident look and raised an appraising eyebrow at the unicorn. Amethyst Star was grinning back at her, her face filled with more than enough confidence, hope, and excitement to make up for what Daring Do lacked. But what she had just seen and, well, everything else about the mare didn’t make Daring Do particularly optimistic about this unicorn or how well she would do inside a potentially dangerous temple.

“You… don’t know a single thing about exploring ruins. Do you?” Daring Do finally asked.

Amethyst Star’s grin quickly turned into a frown and her hoof dropped from Daring Do’s shoulder. “I could!”

“But you don’t.”

“Uh, well… no,” Amethyst Star had to admit that. But she scowled at the pegasus and continued defending herself anyways. “But it’s not like you could really tell that!” If there was one thing she had really come to hate on this journey it was being underestimated or looked over. That feeling had just gotten worse and worse even before she left Ponyville. “I’m still plenty capable, I’ve been adventuring all throughout the Undiscovered West all on my own, got that?”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Daring Do placatingly held up her hooves. “You don’t have to get all upset. I just don’t like to be reckless and get others in danger.”

“Well I can hold my own against any danger, I’ve already faced plenty of it out here.”

It was half true. Amethyst Star now really just wanted to prove that she could do anything Daring Do could. She knew the stories, if those books were real then Daring Do was “special” just like Twilight Sparkle and her friends. And if Amethyst Star couldn’t explore and adventure on equal grounds with this pony then what was the point of any of this?

Daring Do seemed to be considering it. The pegasus adventurer furrowed her brow, looking at the stalwart unicorn, then chewing on her tongue as she weighed the possibilities in her head. Finally it seemed Amethyst Star’s stubbornness won out and Daring Do flashed her a friendly smile. “You know what? Alright, let’s do it. In the past I would’ve said no but nowadays I don’t mind having a companion along. And unicorn magic is always useful.”

“Yes!” Amethyst Star ecstatically pumped a hoof. “This is going to be amazing!”

“You can calm down juuust a little bit,” Daring Do chuckled.

“Sorry, didn’t exactly expect this to happen for many, many, reasons,” a light blush lit up Amethyst Star’s cheeks. She then looked up at the big door. “Now how do we get in here though?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part,” Daring Do said and floated up till she was above the wheel and parallel to the top right corner of the door. She pushed on one of the triangle designs and it depressed in like a button. A grinding noise came from inside the door and the spiked wheel now turned on its own, revolving multiple times before it finally stopped with a click.

A previously impossible to see seam then opened up on the right side of the door and it slowly swung inwards, scraping across the ground before coming to a stop flush up against the wall of the temple.

“How’d you know about that?” Amethyst Star asked as she took a step forward to look into the temple.

“I found information about this temple from another to the south, I’ve been searching for this one for a while now,” Daring Do told her as she floated back down to the ground.

The two ponies then took their first steps into the temple. The inside looked fairly well kept even though it must’ve been ages since anybody else had been in here, there was a fair amount of dust and cobwebs but the stone that made up the walls and floor was mostly bare of cracks. Some weeds shot up between the individual bricks though. The hall slightly angled down too, which confused Amethyst Star. Why would the entrance go down first when there was so much above? Was that all for show and the real meat of the temple was underground? Maybe there were other passages that Amethyst Star didn’t know about. But she figured Daring Do would know.

“Hey Dari—oh! I almost forgot!” Amethyst Star started but suddenly changed pace as she darted in front of the pegasus and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Can I have your autograph?”

“Uh, what?” Daring Do shrugged out of her grip.

“Your autograph! My little sister loves your books. Er, I mean, not your books you know but, you know?”

“Yeeeahhh...” Daring Do looked away and rubbed the back of her neck.

“Anyways, my little sis would go crazy if I came back with Daring Do’s autograph. Can I please have it?” She begged.

“Yeah sure, just give me some space?” Daring Do pushed her away. “And can it wait until later? We’ve kind of got other stuff to do right now.”

Amethyst Star eagerly nodded. “Right, right, that’s fine by me.”

The veteran explorer sighed, already kind of regretting letting this unicorn come along. “Okay. Now before we go any deeper, however, I want to make sure you understand some things. First off: Don’t touch anything. Seriously, unless I say it’s okay, don’t touch anything. There are probably all sorts of booby traps in here and some of the ruins could be unstable too. Don’t. Touch. Anything.” Daring Do wanted to be sure that was drilled into Amethyst Star’s head.

“I got it,” Amethyst Star frowned. “You only needed to say it once.”

“I’m sure I did,” Daring Do frowned right back. “Second though, just stay behind me and let me check things out first. That also factors into the possibility of booby traps. I’ve got an eye for this kind of thing and I don’t want you accidentally walking over any trip wires. And lastly, there’s something I’m looking for in here and I’m going to take it back with me. That’s why I came out here in the first place. So if you were thinking you could plunder this temple or get some sort of reward you’re mistaken.”

Amethyst Star puffed out her cheeks to pout. “Hey, I don’t care about any of that. I just want a cool adventure. Sure it might have been nice to have found some kind of treasure or something but I never planned to make money off of this or anything. I just thought this temple looked like an exciting opportunity.”

“More like a dangerous opportunity,” Daring Do rebuked.

“An adventure has to have danger. I wanted some of that too,” Amethyst Star blew a dismissive breath of air our of her mouth.

“Well fine, I’d be a hypocrite if I said I didn’t enjoy some danger every now and then too, so as long as you understand what I’m telling you we’re good. Let’s head on in now,” Daring Do shrugged and began to lead the way, Amethyst Star following close behind her.

Naturally Amethyst Star’s curiosity instantly got the better of her. “So what are you looking for?”

“The Amulet of Cinnabaron,” the pegasus said to her without looking back.

“Who?”

Daring Do sighed once more before deciding it would be better to just explain in detail to the unicorn right now. “Cinnabaron was the ancient ruler of these lands. This jungle used to be covered in numerous gemstone mines, and Cinnabaron hoarded them all. This was her temple and if what I read was accurate her amulet should be somewhere inside. Supposedly it has some sort of magical property to it as well, instead of just being some kind of jewelry. I read that it seemed to cause sickness in other ponies.”

“Oh. And what are you going to do with it?” Amethyst Star asked.

“Well I’m going to see if it’s safe for me to hold first of all and then I’m going to take it somewhere safe where it can be preserved and studied. I wouldn’t want it falling into the hooves of someone who just wants to sell it, or worse, someone who might want to try seeing if it actually can cause harm,” Daring Do frowned.

Amethyst Star nodded. Made sense to her. “So what’s it look like then? Maybe I can keep an eye out for it.”

“A drawing I saw on the wall of the place that led me here showed it as some kind of orange-red jewel inside of a gold circle with six silver wings coming out of the sides. Pretty attention grabbing in my opinion, I don’t think we’ll miss it or any drawings of it in here,” Daring Do told her.

“Got it!” Amethyst Star saluted and smiled, checking out their surroundings just in case there was something to see.

So far there wasn’t though, the entryway turned into a long hallway that had plenty of light for the both of them to see thanks to the open door, and the unadorned walls and all their bricks continued to bleed into one another. Daring Do stayed silent so she could focus on the task at hand as much as possible… or possibly because she didn’t want to talk to Amethyst Star anymore. But there didn’t look to be any booby traps or hidden doors or anything else cliché here yet. That still didn’t get Daring Do to lower her guard though, she was far too experienced with this kind of thing to do that. On the other side of things, Amethyst Star’s short attention span and lack of awareness over how serious being in here could be was already starting to drain on her proficiency and interest.

“Stairs up ahead, stay sharp.”

The words from Daring Do temporarily jolted her back to peak enthusiasm. Hopefully stairs led to a real chamber or something cool. Amethyst Star’s tail was swishing back and forth as she followed along, wishing Daring Do would pick up the pace a little.

To her surprise the stairs actually went up. Thanks to the hallway angling slightly downwards Amethyst Star thought for sure that’s where they were going, but apparently Cinnabaron had something different in mind when she made her temple. Daring Do stopped at the foot of the stairs to examine them for traps so Amethyst Star peaked past her head to look up the steps. The staircase seemed normal to her but then again she wasn’t the expert here. There was also some light coming from up above, probably from holes in the walls of the temple. Either way it looked like things would be well illuminated for the both of them the whole way.

“Looks alright, but be careful,” Daring Do finally said when she was done looking at the stairs and the two of them started climbing up.

The staircase was longer and steeper than Amethyst Star would’ve liked and much to her dismay her poor physical conditioning was already getting to her. She’d been walking through the jungle all day without rest, carrying her bag and everything, and now she had gone straight to doing this. It would be really embarrassing to mention this to Daring Do though, she might get it in her head that Amethyst Star shouldn’t be adventuring at all if this made her tired. So the unicorn had to just continue on. It was kind of hot inside this temple too, it really trapped the heat and made Amethyst sweat.

Daring Do hopped up the last step into the new chamber while Amethyst Star shakily came up right after her, the two mares standing beside each other. Looking around they saw that they were in a larger, rectangular room with paintings and carvings on the wall. But as far as Amethyst could see it was more of just the same triangle and square design pattern that she had seen on the door. Some light spilled in from cracks on the ceiling and the roots of trees and plants that had been growing on the roof of the temple broke in as well.

“Hold on for one second,” Daring Do put a hoof in front of Amethyst Star. “This room is giving me a bad feeling.”

Amethyst Star was fine with that if it meant she could catch her breath, while Daring Do stepped forward to look for any sort of trap, Amethyst Star let out a deep sigh and leaned up against the wall right next to the stairs.

Unfortunately when she did that she happened to hit a certain camouflaged panel, pressing it into the wall.

All of the triangles and squares on the walls flipped and spikes shot out from underneath them, extending into and filling up the middle of the room at lightning speed. Daring Do had to suck in her stomach and play Twister in the middle of the air to avoid being skewered, luckily she was fast enough and limber enough to stay in the gaps between the spears, balancing on one leg with the rest of her body in an awkward position. One of them jostled her hat and another rubbed her tail but the pegasus was thankfully unharmed.

“Woah!” Amethyst Star said and stopped leaning against the panel, making it return to normal and the spears retract.

Daring Do breathed out in relief and dropped back down to all fours. Wiping the sweat from her brow she glared at Amethyst Star. “I said not to touch anything!”

“It was an accident! I didn’t mean to lean up against this thing-” Amethyst Star frowned and pushed in the panel for emphasis. “Oops.”

“You-?!” Daring Do didn’t have the chance to finish as the spears came back out, she jumped away from the middle of the room at the last second, rolling across the floor and coming to a stop right at Amethyst Star’s hooves.

Amethyst Star pulled her hoof away from the panel with an awkward grin as the spears went back into the wall yet again. “Ehehe, sorry?”

Daring Do grit her teeth and grumbled at the unicorn, standing back up. “Don’t. Touch. Anything.” Not waiting for her response the pegasus turned around and started walking towards the end of the spear chamber.

“It was an accident...” Amethyst Star whispered as she followed along.

The next room they came to was a very narrow passage that the two of them would barely have been able to pass through if they were walking side by side. Unlike previous parts of the temple the ceiling was nearly totally falling apart, Amethyst Star could clearly see the sky outside through holes in it and a number of trees dropped vines and branches down into this chamber. As Amethyst Star was looking at all of it she accidentally bumped into Daring Do, who had stopped.

“What’s the hold up?” Amethyst Star asked the mare on point.

“Look,” Daring Do replied and pointed at the floor right in front of her.

Or to be more exact the lack of a floor. Because Amethyst Star had been so focused on the ceiling she didn’t notice the dark pit that stretched for more than half the chamber in front of them, if Daring Do wasn’t there she probably would’ve walked right into it.

“Oh,” Amethyst Star looked down and could only see darkness. Whether there was anything else down there or not she knew she didn’t want to fall in.

Daring Do looked over her shoulder at Amethyst. “Can you teleport or levitate yourself?”

“No way, that’s way out of the league of what most unicorns can do,” Amethyst Star fervently shook her head. Although she knew a unicorn and former-unicorn who were easily capable of both.

“Figured, hold on a second,” Daring Do sighed in disappointment and flew up to some of the creeping vines and branches.

As Amethyst Star watched she pulled on some of the vines to test their strength, figuring they were good enough she then looped one around a branch a little more than midway over the pit and flew the end back over to Amethyst Star, hoofing it over to her and then flying across to the other end of the pit.

“Alright, that’ll hold your weight just fine so you can swing on over whenever you’re ready,” Daring Do called out to her.

Amethyst Star looked at the vine in her hoof. Then at the seemingly bottomless pit. Then to Daring Do.

She did ask for danger, didn’t she?

The out of her element unicorn did her best to not seem nervous or scared at all as she held on tighter to the vine, getting ready to swing across. She could feel the sweat already making her grip slick. And when was she supposed to release and jump off? What if her timing was wrong? Maybe she could somehow use her magic to strengthen her grip or propel herself off the vine… but she didn’t really know how to do that. Her hooves were trembling but she edged up closer to the pit, getting ready for the big swing.

She could totally do this. It was a classic thing for adventurers to do. And she was just as amazing as any adventurer! Even Daring Do. Amethyst Star was going to prove she could do anything.

“O-Okay! Here I come!” She gulped and almost jumped from the ledge when-

“Stop!” Daring Do yelled and quickly flew over to her with a rather reproachful look on her face. “I’m just going to carry you, geez.”

Amethyst Star looked at her in surprise and confusion and dropped the vine. “But why-”

“I wanted to see if you actually knew what you were doing at all, or if you’d swallow your pride and ask for help, or if you’d realize that I could just carry you myself. I didn’t think you’d actually try doing something so dumb and dangerous without any experience,” Daring Do frowned at her.

“O-Oh...” Amethyst Star looked at the ground to try and hide her embarrassment.

“I said it’s not wrong to want a little danger or excitement in your life or whatever, but there’s a difference between that and recklessness,” the veteran continued to berate her. “It’s obvious you’re not nearly as capable as you said.” Amethyst Star’s head lowered even further to the ground after hearing that, seeing her sullenness Daring Do rolled her eyes and sighed. “But with me around you’ll still be fine, I’ll make sure of it. I’m not gonna say you can’t keep tagging along or exploring this temple with me, okay?”

Amethyst Star perked up a bit at that but she was still pretty upset. She chewed on her lip as she mulled over what Daring Do had said and finally raised her eyes to answer the pegasus. “Okay, let’s keep going then.”

Daring Do hovered over Amethyst Star and put her hooves around her body. With a grunt, the pegasus was able to lift her up and carry the unicorn over the pit to the other side. Even after being set down though, Amethyst Star fumed. “Tagging along”? “Not nearly as capable”? Amethyst Star kept quiet for now because the mare was still helping her but that really pushed her buttons. It was clear that Daring Do didn’t think much of her and expected the worst by now. Amethyst Star was gonna have to show her she’s wrong to think that way.