//------------------------------// // 91- Cibola // Story: Changing Expectations // by KKSlider //------------------------------// After descending down the tunnel and following it along four separate bends, we came across a large room. Eight unlit braziers lined the path forward across the room, and at the far end was a massive statue. It was likely of a changeling, however several collapsed sections of the roof led to the destruction of the majority of the statue. At the moment, all that was left was the torso, which sprouted up from the ground, and the right foreleg, which a small segment of chain dangled from. There was a small pile of debris beneath the chain, and the remains of a large, circular piece of metal. The changeling statue was holding two more braziers when it was intact, I had guessed. Where the center of its torso met the path in front of us, a wide staircase descended three floors down before leveling out. As we entered the room and started traversing across the smooth path that cut through the center of it, the braziers lit up in blue flame as we passed them. A minuscule amount of rock dust fell from the ceiling near one of the caved-in sections, which had taken up a full third of the right side of the room. “Thousands of years of neglect seemed to have disagreed with the Temple,” I pointed out. We descended the staircase and came across a six way intersection. Ahead of us were five paths, making the intersection the first problem on our spelunking. Two of the hallways, the leftmost one and the second from the right, were completely blocked up by rubble from a cave in. Sitting in the center of the room was a pile of broken armor, weapons, remains of construction-gel crates, and bones. The weapons and armor seemed to be made of a rusty iron. The skeletons were mostly smashed to pieces, with very little left to identify what species they were. “What the hell happened here?” I asked out loud as we came upon the scene. The changelings scanned the pile using spells to detect anything magical, then organic, then concealed. There were no results for any, save for the bones lighting up during the organic detection spell. There was nothing living in the pile: no disease nor a monster waiting to ambush us. The One and Two stepped past me to start examining the rubble and remains. As Two picked over the weapons and armor, One held up a skull fragment in his magic. None of them actually touched anything physically, because that would have been stupid. “This shape suggests either a changeling or pony, sir. I think it’s obvious which one it is.” “The former inhabitants, then. What happened to them?” Two lifted the bottom half of a sword, the blade cut in two. “This didn’t happen naturally. The cut is too smooth, sir. Something, or someone, cut this sword in half.” He let the sword drop back down onto the ground, and it clanged noisily against the debris and tan stone flooring. “A fight, then. Any clues as to what they were fighting?” “I can’t find anything that doesn’t look like it belongs to anything other than the inhabitants,” One said, still sifting through the bones. “An internal fight, then?” I asked. “What could that have to do with sickness?” “Sickness of the mind?” One postulated. “Or maybe the inhabitants attempted to break quarantine, and had to be put down.” “Sickness of the mind is looking more likely. Still, we can’t rule out other possibilities just yet.” I looked between the three open paths ahead of us. “Any ideas as to where we head next?” “I imagine we should look for the throne room. There’s no telling where the Vault is, if this place even has one, but the throne room should have loot,” One suggested. “I agree. How do we find the throne room?” “It should be in the center of the complex,” Two offered. “And how do we find that?” He shrugged. “Anyone?” I sighed heavily and considered my options. ‘How did they usually figure it out in the movies? There’s usually some telltale sign of the direction that they need to head to, like the presence of a breeze. I guess I’ll need to look for something like that.’ I walked past the large pile of bone fragments and rotten metal and stopped at the mouth of the first tunnel. Then, I closed my eyes, and listened. Distant echoes of clattering metal. The sound of a distant drip of water. An almost cool ambient temperature coming from the tunnel. I moved onto the second tunnel. The lights in this one were broken. It was quiet. Utterly quiet, as in the complete and total absence of sound. Quickly, I moved on to check the third. Again, the fading, almost negligible echo of clanging. There was also a low rumble, like moving air, but I felt nothing. I went back to the group, “Alright, looks like we have our direction. The left tunnel has the sound of water, so it could be not much, or it could be a flooded dead end. The middle tunnel… a hard no. The right one seems like the last remaining choice, and a good one at that.” “We follow you, sir,” Five said. The rest of the changelings nodded. “Third tunnel it is. Three, mark it, and let’s move,” I ordered as I started to head towards the third tunnel. As Three began casting a Color Spray spell to make an arrow pointing to the third hallway, I froze in front of the doorway to the second tunnel. “Sir?” One asked. “I thought I heard something. Hold on….” The second tunnel was still quiet. There was nothing coming from there. No temperature. No sound. No light. No life. It was so damned quiet, as quiet as– “Death!” “Zero?” I jerked my head to the right and saw One standing next to me. ‘When did he walk up? I would have heard–’ One did not walk up to me. I had taken several steps back without realizing it. All the changelings were looking at me with deep concern. From their point of view, I must have zoned out then immediately backpedaled from the tunnel’s entrance “Sir? What’s… Are you alright?” I looked back at the tunnel. It was pure black. “Did anyone else hear it?” I asked. “Hear what?” “I felt a quiet vibration through your... connection, Sir,” Four said. “My…? Yeah. That. I heard someone say the word ‘death.’ I don’t think we’ll be heading down that direction anytime soon. In fact…” Casting Color Spray, I made an X at the start of the second tunnel, and quickly drew a skull beneath it. It took me a moment to remember the shape of an equine skull, but I was satisfied with my work in the end. “No one go down there, and hopefully anyone who follow us gets the idea. Right. Let’s, uh, let’s move on.” We stuck close together after that as we entered the third tunnel. The changeling in the back, Five, frequently looked back as we walked. And we walked. And walked. And walked. The tunnel was slowly turning to the right. After what was probably a sum total of a ninety degree turn, the tunnel began to widen. Ahead, darkness was chased away as each set of enchanted lights flicked to life. Sometimes lights would flicker and do no more. Sometimes, they wouldn’t even flicker at all. The ones after the broken lights turned on without issue, thankfully. First, the air got colder. Then, distant sounds made their way to us. Finally, we saw it. We emerged from the tunnel and stepped out onto a wide terrace, with gently sloping paths to our left and right, each heading downwards to the sides. Beyond our immediate platform, the room was dark. “Where are we now?” I asked. My voice didn’t echo. A small light slowly came into being ahead and above us. Like a heating coil warming up, an orange sphere gradually became bright and brighter, turning from a shade of orange to a shade of yellow, then ending on a white coloring very much similar to natural sunshine. As it grew in brightness and intensity, the sphere expanded in size to take up what revealed itself to be a support structure around it. The support structure was made of thin rings of what I assumed to be enchanted glass, and the sun halted its expansion when it touched the first of these concentric rings. The process was not silent; as it began to start growing in illumination and eventually size, A quiet, distant hum grew in intensity to loud whine, then a deafening roar. Finally, when the sun halted its expansion, the outermost concentric ring of glass flashed green and the noise quickly died away to an almost imperceptible hum. All the while as the sun brightened, the area illuminated by the sphere grew and grew. First was the ceiling it was mounted on. Thick coils snaked around a metal chain that connected the light to the ceiling. Second was more ceiling. And more. And more. And more and more and… Third was the space immediately beneath the light. A stone statue of a changeling royal was standing on their hindlegs, both looking and reaching up towards the swelling globe of light. It must have been painted once, but all that remained were metal and gemstone gilding, placements, and coverings that glittered in the artificial sun’s light. Fourth was the structure the statue was on. It was a pyramidal structure, and from the looks of it at least a hundred hooves tall. That was another thing. As the sun grew brighter and brighter, the vast distance between us and it became clearer and clearer. Around the temple, crumbling buildings slowly emerged from the receding darkness. Towers that must have stretched high up in this room now lay in piles of ruins and rubble around their own bases. A few stood standing, mostly the smaller buildings. Each one was rounded, with a dome at the top. Few domes were left intact but those that were reflected the growing sun’s light through several bands of reflective material, either metal, glass, or gems. It was impossible to tell at this distance. Secondary lighting systems made their struggles towards life as lights all around the buried city turned on, growing brighter and brighter and revealing more of the ravaged stone, metal, glass, and other material ruins that once made up the Third Hive. The place was massive. I couldn’t tell how far it was to the other end. Two miles? More? A mile wide? The only thing I could easily tell was that the tallest structure in the place was the statue, stretching up towards the sun. Despite the age and the wear and tear that the rest of the city fell victim to, the royal statue stood, nearly perfect. Flawless, save for the deteriorated surface. Moments after the sun had finished its startup, a rectangular gate at the base of the pyramid loudly ground open and water surged out, cascading down from the temple’s base and through perfectly smooth canals that ran through the city like streets of water. The water’s final destination turned out to be a waterfall straight ahead of us, where it flowed from three equidistant canals off a ledge and down into a pitch black abyss. The city as a whole was sitting in an excavated cavern, shaped like a coffin. We were standing at the head of the place, and the cavern shrunk in width as it went farther away from us. Massive support struts extended from halfway up the walls to meet the ceiling far above. The buildings, walls, ceilings, and floors were all made of a blackish brick, with the yellow one that we had seen up till now ending at the first steps down from our platform. Now that the lights around us, reminiscent of street lamps, had begun to glow soft white light and illuminate our surroundings, I noticed that the terrace we were on was once ringed with statues. At each post that the stone railing ahead of us went through, statues of drones in various states of deterioration sat on their haunches, heads bowed behind steepled forehooves. Most statues ceased to exist above the waist. Our group stood in awestruck silence at the sight of the awakening city. That was when I noticed the skeleton corpse of an armored changeling, sitting beneath the most destroyed statue. There was nothing left of it but a barely-identifiable pile of rubble. The skeleton was propped up against the base of the statue, armor torn to metal shards along the belly. Around it, the fragments of bone, too much to solely belong to the changeling, lay scattered. Or… was it the skeleton who noticed me? Dr. Dazzle’s hiding spot was a distance away from the temple’s entrance, so when the masked ponies began speaking with each other, a number of the words in the conversation didn't quite carry over the distance between Dazzle and the masked marauders, but she had a pretty good idea of what they were saying despite that fact. She did, however, catch the glare of what had to be the leader of the anonymous assailants when he first arrived. His eyes hovered over her hiding spot just long enough to make Dazzle wonder if he had spotted her. She had focused on getting her breathing under control and finding her nerves, thinking the unicorn might have had an enhanced hearing spell enchanted into his mask and was hearing her breathe heavily. Thankfully, his gaze moved on. Things only got stranger from there. From deciphering the language to proximity-created symbols to a strange blood ritual, Dr. Dazzle could only watch with quiet fascination and confusion. Talks of sickness, strange books and ascending, to finally calling dibs, strangely enough. ‘These ponies are no mere looters. They knew about the ruins, knew about the language, knew how to open it, and were overall better informed than we were after weeks of study. There’s some deeper connection between this group and the temple…. Perhaps they are followers of the same cult or religion? Surely, they are a part of the same organization as the temple-builders, be it a civilization, cult, or who knows!’ One of the masked ponies glanced backwards and scanned the area around Dr. Dazzle. He or she lifted a hoof and was about to turn to walk in her direction when the leader performed the blood ritual and somehow unsealed the temple. With all of their attention away from Dazzle’s hiding spot, she decided to make a quiet exit. ‘Definitely going to need my things for this!’ Dazzle picked her way across the rest of the camp quietly and carefully, keeping an ear on the swivel for more of the masked cultists. Thankfully, she encountered none on her way to her stash and she darted between the small tents and out into the jungle's edge without issue. Hidden away in an alcove at the bottom of a tree at the edge of the clearing was her bag. She pulled it free from its hiding hole, dislodging a great deal of dirt that she had covered it up. The white canvas material was stained brown, but Dazzle couldn’t exactly recall if that was from the dirt, or if it was an old stain. Regardless, she opened the bag and started rifling through it. She began pulling items out, items that she knew she would need. She didn't risk turning on a lamp or anything, so she went through her things mostly by memory and by the dim moonlight. A smaller, durable satchel bag for transporting things. An arcane flashlight, so that she wouldn’t be left in the dark. A small medical kit, which she always brought with. A pair of binoculars, for its very obscure but useful applications. A mana-sensor, to detect magically hidden traps. A small sack of grain, because she actually needed it that one time, and who knows if it'll come in handy again? A whip, which she often used to reach switches when she inevitably falls into a snake pit or two. And finally, her pith helmet, because no other would do. She flipped it up with a flick of her wing and it landed squarely on the top of her head. With a smile, Daring Do closed the bag back up and stuffed it back into its hiding hold, and went back to the temple’s entrance. They were gone by now, descending into the temple’s bowels. She paused briefly at the doorway, looking back towards where the main tent was. ‘They’ll be fine, I’m sure.’ She stretched out her wings, hopped off the ground, and silently glided down the tunnel, slowing to a halt whenever she reached a bend. She would have to slowly check around each corner before coming out. Daring Do learned the hard way about checking doors and corners in the past, and had no intention of forgetting that lesson.