Daring Do struggled against the tight rope that bound her to the pillar at the center of the chamber, but her bindings refused to budge. Growling in frustration, she looked around for some method of escape.
"Stop struggling," came a gruff, heavily accented, response from the other side of the pillar, a hoof stomping indignantly on the stone floor, "You're going to give me rope burn!"
Daring groaned. "Shut up, Caballeron. You're the reason we even got caught!"
"Me?" Doctor Caballeron scoffed. "I recall it was YOU who set off the alarm."
"Only because YOU shoved me into it!" Daring spat back. "I knew I never should've trusted you."
"Oh?" Though she couldn't quite see him even with her neck turned to the side, Daring could practically feel Caballeron's grin. "The great Daring Do, little miss 'I work alone', refusing to trust other ponies? How shocking."
Daring sighed. "Look, Cabelleron, I'm not like that anymore. I already learned that lesson years ago."
"Years too late, then." Caballeron fell silent.
Daring Do's mind wandered as she surveyed the room, and she couldn't help but think back to when she and Caballeron first met. She was staying the night at the Get On Inn, on her way to the Southern reaches of Equestria, and eventually the Tenochtitlan Basin. Ahuizotl, her former enemy, was yet again after control of the basin and was now after an ancient artifact called the Amulet of Atonement. With it, he could use the dark powers of the ancient Ketztwctl Empress to exert his influence over the area.
At the time, the whole thing seemed explicitly evil, but knowing what she knew now, Daring realized the guardian spirit was just desperately attempting to protect the area from old-school treasure-hunting archaeologists like her. Daring still thought Ahuizotl could've explained himself better or acted less evil, though Daring understood the guardian spirit schtick was just how he was meant to act to deter would-be grave-robbers.
While she was at the Get On Inn, she ran into a much younger Caballeron, fresh off his doctorate in archaeology. Apparently, the fresh graduate was a big fan of hers, and wanted to be her adventuring partner. At the time, though, Daring was... less than welcoming, to say the least. She had trust issues for... personal reasons, and declined his offer. Though she embellished the event in her written version of that adventure, in truth her rebuttal was far from polite.
Though she didn't see him for the rest of that excursion, the confrontation clearly had a huge effect on the young pony. The next time Daring saw Caballeron, he had henchmen, was making his bits doing Ahuizotl's dirty work, and had declared himself her rival. Over time, Caballeron only got worse, until...
Daring Do looked back, glimpsing the side of Caballeron's body. She wondered if he could still be turned back to the light. Thinking to her friends, the new Princess of Equestria and her five closest friends, she remembered the lessons she'd learned from them and the other lessons she'd read once she had gotten around to reading the Friendship Journal they had published a few years back. Maybe, just maybe...
"Ugh," Caballeron groaned, "It's useless. There's no way out of this without help, and my henchmen are all in jail. Thanks for that, by the way."
Daring Do sighed. "Look, Caballeron, the things you're doing are illegal, and-"
"What, and what you're doing isn't? Stealing artifacts from their historical resting place and dumping them in a museum in a country that doesn't rightfully own them? Please. We're more alike than you'd like to admit."
Daring Do had nothing to say to that. Though the quest given to her by the Magical Counsel of the Ancients had driven her forward for a few years now, and she only had one of the twenty-two Enchanted Artifacts remaining to find, her last encounter with Ahuizotl, where she had learned of his true motivations, had thrown into question her actions since the beginning of her career as a treasure-hunting archaeologist. Sure, some of her actions were justified, since on several of her journeys she had successfully stopped ponies from getting hurt by powerful ancient artifacts. But on the other hand, she'd done quite a bit of damage. Not just to ancient temples and ruins, but also to the communities she carelessly left behind after causing damage, and to archaeology as a whole.
More modern archaeology wasn't about crusading through native lands and taking treasures. It was about preservation, and learning about the past. By failing to keep up with the times, Daring Do had betrayed her own field of study. How much of the past was gone forever now thanks to some of Daring's escapades? Daring could never be sure. Still, that wasn't the priority right now. Right now, the two needed to escape.
Thinking quick on her hooves, she looked up, noticing the pillar only went above her head by a few feet. "Caballeron... look, we can betray each other later if that's what you really want, but right now, we need to escape."
"You think I don't know that?"
"No, it's just..." Daring took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "Look, let's work together for a bit. See how the pillar isn't very tall?"
"Yes, why?"
"These ropes are pretty tight, but there's just enough give... If we can work together and slowly climb our way up the pillar..."
"Then we can get to the top and untie ourselves? Good thinking."
Then a brick fell from the ceiling and clattered onto the floor several feet in front of Daring Do. A second brick clattered in front of Caballeron. Slowly at first, then faster, sand began pouring down through the new openings, slowly filling the room.
"Ugh, of course." Daring groaned.
"We should work fast before the trap gets any worse."
"Agreed."
Then the trap immediately got worse as the walls closest to Daring and Caballeron began to slowly move inwards.
"Go, go, go!"
"You don't have to ask me more than once!"
The two scrambled up the pillar, their hooves occasionally slipping as the walls inched closer and closer, the sand right on their flanks as they reached the top of the pillar and the ropes fell away.
"Over there!" Daring pointed toward an opening at one end of the chamber, on one of the walls that wasn't closing in.
"What? We'll never make it over there, it's too high up and too far!"
"So? I can fly."
Caballeron raised an eyebrow and pointed back at his wingless earth pony back. "I can't."
"Oh. Right." Daring Do grabbed Caballeron around his barrel and flapped her wings, lifting him up slightly.
"W-wait, what's the big idea?"
Daring could barely wheeze out her reply. "H-heavy." Caballeron snorted in response and tried not to look down as Daring slowly but surely carried him over to the apparent alcove, but it looked like the walls were closing in faster than Daring Do could fly. Gritting her teeth, she mumbled, "B-brace yourself..."
"W-what for?" Caballeron barely had time to react as Daring Do swung around and flung Caballeron toward the opening, landing him square on his side as he slid into the passageway. Getting to his hooves, he looked into the chamber expecting to see Daring flying his way, only to see no such thing.
Daring was laying at the bottom of the chamber atop a layer of rising sand, her wing sprained. She tried to fly back up, but the pain caused her wings to snap back inwards instinctively, just plummeting her back to the ground. This was it. Her final adventure.
Caballeron looked down on his rival. He'd been in this position many times, but this was the first time he'd looked down on Daring Do in such a situation after she'd saved him from certain death. He could just walk away right now, be done with her forever... but...
Daring closed her eyes and accepted her fate when an unexpected object smacked her in the face from above. Blinking in confusion, she saw a length of rope leading up to the passageway. "Well?" Caballeron yelled down. "Do you want to die, or are you coming?" Daring gawked for a moment and then smiled, grabbing the rope and climbing. Just before the walls completely closed, Daring squeezed her way onto the passageway's ledge, huffing for breath.
"You... saved me."
Caballeron avoided his gaze. "Out of necessity. The Wild Bunch Gang might be small potatoes, but I'll need you if we're to stop the revived Ketztwctl Empress's scheme."
"Right..." Daring couldn't help but be a bit disappointed. For a moment, she'd thought Caballeron had a change of heart, but perhaps not.
As the two galloped away from the chamber and towards the chamber of the empress, Caballeron couldn't help but feel conflicted.
Half an hour later...
The Empress was trapped in a magical forcefield even her dark powers couldn't break thanks to the now-reactivated Radiant Shield of Razdon. The dark empress growled and slammed her hooves into the curtain of light surrounding her. "You! Imbeciles! Do something about these cretins!" She shouted at the Wild Bunch Gang.
Slingshot turned to look at North Star and Spaghetti Slim, and the others turned to look at each other, before they all nodded and Slingshot stepped forward. "Look, uh... miss... Kettle Cutter?"
"Ketztwctl," the empress growled back at the gang for what felt like the millionth time since her accidental revival by these three buffoons.
"Right, right." Slingshot didn't seem to give her much attention. "See, thing is, our boss, Old Tex, he really just wanted that stone you were trapped in." He pulled the gem in question from his rucksack. "And, uh, we did follow ya since you're kinda powerful and whatnot, but since you're kinda defeated now, and we have the stone and all..." The trio backed up a bit, preparing to skedaddle.
The empress narrowed her glowing green eyes at the trio. "You... TRAITORS!" The unicorn let out a blast of arcane dark power, only for it to splash harmlessly against the magical shield and dissipate. "How DARE you cowards! Get back here and serve your mistress!" But the gang had already fled the chamber, and soon the entire temple.
Daring Do didn't really sit right with letting the trio escape, but the Empress was the more pressing matter at the moment, and she couldn't help but chuckle a little at the bandits' inevitable betrayal. "All right, I think we can go ahead and wrap this up." Daring Do held up an ornate silver mirror. "Recognize this?"
The Empress went pale. "The Looking Glass of Xilati? You wouldn't dare..."
"Hm, true... but I'm not the one you wronged. I think I'll let someone else do the honors." Daring turned to her side. "Caballeron?"
Caballeron took the mirror in hand, looking at it for several moments. Since the beginning, he had planned to use it on the Empress and Daring Do at the same time, trapping them both and finally ridding himself of her meddling. But after adventuring with her and being saved by her, the whole plan started to seem... wrong. Was there something wrong with him, to not go through with the revenge he'd wanted for so long?
Caballeron thought back to his first meeting with Daring Do. The words she spat at him. The betrayal of his beloved idol. Was it really bad enough for Caballeron to do something like this to her in revenge? Taking a deep breath, Caballeron held up the mirror and spoke the magic phrase, bathing the chamber in a deluge of light.
As the light faded away, the Empress was gone, leaving the two former rivals as the only ponies left in the room. Handing the mirror back to Daring, Caballeron sighed. "I forgive you."
Daring Do froze. "You... what?" But Caballeron was already trotting out of the chamber. "W-wait, come back. Caballeron!" Daring Do galloped after her old rival, leaving the chamber silent. Or, perhaps, she was galloping after a pony who could be, in time, a new friend and colleague.