//------------------------------// // Chapter 69 // Story: Away and Afar // by PropsValroa //------------------------------// When Collapse returned to the others and explained what had happened, Magloria let out a loud sigh. "Well then, I suppose we better do this next bit quick and quietly. It didn't follow you, right? It doesn't know where we are at the moment?" she asked. "I do not think that it followed me, but we better be quick and quiet anyways." Collapse spoke to Magloria, and when they arrived in the room she would look around to see what was about the place. She put the flask containing the two sparks into her saddlebag. Within the room there was many shelves, that much she'd seen, but there was actually many many more than what they had already seen. It looked almost like a library, with every shelf holding tablets of rust coloured squareish rock. Unlike books however, each one laid down flat on the shelves. It didn't make much sense to do this with a storage of sorts, but maybe there was a reason. "Is that it? Just a heap of carved rocks?" Jump Start asked, a bit put off from searching any further. Collapse walked up to the carved rocks of some kind. "Well, perhaps these are tablets with some kind of inscriptions on them? Let's see." she spoke, walking up to one of them to see if she could make out any writing on them. It is unlikely that they'd be able to make out the language, if there was any writing on them - at least that is what Collapse thought. Jump Start looked at a few on some of the other shelves. "They look like carved rocks. Barely anything on them." And she was right. Aside from an etched outline, a few symbols that she couldn't understand and a circular hole along one of the edges, it seemed rather blank. The only difference between each of the lumps of stone were the symbols used. Each one had a different set, none of which had the same set of symbols as another. "What do you think is their purpose? Gravestones?" Magloria suggested. Collapse looked to the symbols on them and rose an eyebrow. "I have never seen anything like this." she commented and ran her hooves over the edges of them as if thinking. "I don't understand why one would carve symbols and leave most of it blank like that - wouldn't that just be wasting material? Perhaps they are for another purpose entirely." Collapse stated. They felt like a smooth stone over her hoof, as they probably should. Seemed a bit hard to shift so they were fairly dense, but there wasn't anything new to be discovered just by looking as it and touching the outside of it, from what Collapse could tell. "Think we should take one, just in case?" Jump Start suggested. A distant clack sound could be heard echoing from somewhere outside of the room. Collapse looks to Jump Start and unsummons one of them. One was enough. It vanished in a gold flash, but Collapse did not want to unsummon anything further as they had already taken a lot. Upon hearing the clack echoing outside of the room, she froze up nervously. "Something else is here." she spoke quietly, to them. Collapse's attempts to shift the object to a different dimension proved to be unsuccessful, the magic seemingly bouncing off of the tablet and scattering into a useless mess. Whatever it was made out of or filled with was obviously designed to not have something interfere with it. "Yeah. That's probably the centipede that is now searching for us, which means we really should go soon before it finds us." Magloria pointed out. Collapse was quite disappointed she couldn't unsummon the tablet and grunted somewhat in frustration. "Well, I guess we aren't taking that with us then. Unless if one of you wants to carry it, but I'm already carrying enough. Let's go." Collapse decided, ready to go. While Collapse was suggesting they leave, Jump Start ended up brushing her hoof over the face of a tablet with more dust than the rest. She yelped when a light had blinked for a split second. Something small was dropped out the hole in the tablet, falling to the floor and bouncing several times, much like a marble would, though unlike the ones they knew about, this one was not made out of fragile glass. Slowly the small orange and pale blue streaked ball rolled to a stop next to one of the shelves. Magloria looked back and forth between the marble and the doorway. "Think we should take that before we leave? It looks pretty important." she asked. Collapse looked over at the marble curiously and picked it up in her magic. "Yeah, let's take it with us. I'll inspect it more when we have the time." she spoke, slipping it into her saddlebag. Once the marble was safe and secure, Collapse would begin leading them towards the exit - provided if the centipedes hadn't found them first. As they left Jump Start couldn't help but look back at the room. If just that tablet had a marble, would all the others also have marbles? What did the marbles even do? As they made their way through the halls towards the exit they kept hearing the distant sounds of clacking metal on stones, telling them they were still being hunted for. It got even worse when they heard sounds coming from down a different hallway, and then even more as they passed them. They heard a different sound at one point. It wasn't the tinny click clack that they're used to hearing. This one sounded heavier, and slowly getting louder. Collapse was more than thankful they had managed to avoid the centipedes so far. They could defeat them, but that required significant effort that Collapse honestly didn't want to put forth to do so. When they head the other sound, it was concerning - perhaps there had been some thing else down here that they missed? Seemed the most likely case in her opinion. "Would suggest we perhaps find somewhere to hide, if we need to." Collapse spoke to them quietly. Magloria looked over her shoulder towards where the heavy sound was coming from. "Sounds like a good idea." she replied, moving down the corridor and to the first room that she found. Another set of living quarters, mostly barren like the rest of those they had seen. "This looks like the best we have. Hopefully these things will not deliberately wander into rooms like these, but just in case try to, stay low and out of sight." She pointed a hoof towards the room, offering the hiding space to them. Collapse would follow them into the living quarters and look around as they entered in, agreeing with Magloria. "Sounds like the best shot we have at staying hidden." she suggested, and would go into the room and put herself down in the corner. Hopefully they would huddle up against Collapse like they did before in the tunnel by the Luneshine forest, or that is at least what Collapse thought. The insides were nothing that they hadn't seen before. Ruined remnants of furniture, cabinets nearby, the usual. Unfortunately for Collapse, the wall next to the doorway was big enough that they could stay out of sight without being forced close to each other, which Magloria wasted no time in taking advantage of. It didn't take long before they felt the vibrations of the heavy clacking through the floor, as whatever it was that roamed the halls passed awfully close to where they had decided to hide. Thankfully, it had not decided to enter the room, and that's assuming it even could. Collapse stayed dead silent when the sound moved past the room. She didn't want to know what it was but felt like it was a larger centipede or something of the sort. All in all, she was very glad that they found this place to hide out in to escape the clutches of their pursuer. For a bit after it left she remained silent, until she could hear it pass by further. "It seems like we are clear now. Should we head towards the exit, and finally leave?" she asked Magloria. "At this point, leaving this entire place until things calm down sounds like an excellent idea." Magloria replied, now making sure to keep an eye on any potential hiding spots they later went past, in case they had to avoid whatever it was stalking the halls again. Outside of having to avoid a few more patrolling sparks now fully decked out in their centipede shells and on full alert, they suffered no problems. Even the initial plasma beam trap at the entrance could be shut off when they found an emergency lever of sorts that they had completely missed beforehand, due to the lack of proper lightning. Beyond the entrance to the ruins, the rain that had drawn them into this place still came down, and it appeared to be sometime in the middle of the night as well. Would probably be a good time to relax and go to sleep, given all the excitement they've had already. None of the centipedes seemed to patrol anything but the halls anyway. As they proceeded to the entrance, Collapse could hear the rain coming down upon the area outside. It was likely not a good idea to head outside into the rain - who knows what other predators could be out there, stalking the night. Collapse sits down near to one of the walls to the entrance, saying to the others that now was probably a good time to get some some sleep. Perhaps they could come back here later on, after the Sparks had calmed down. Collapse wondered how long they would remain activated, afterall. At the very least they got some things from the place. Collapse lays down to go to sleep, provided if Magloria and Jump Start wanted to - looking to Jump Start calmly. Magloria and Jump Start did plan on laying down for now, given they didn't have anywhere to go or much to do. Tinkering with what they had managed to collect from the ruin so far could wait until they had a well rested mind. Getting to sleep was a little bit harder than normal, given they hadn't exactly brought in anything to sleep on, aside from their saddlebags, and the ground was nothing but hard brick. Collapse moved a little closer to the two of them. The ground was hard and uncomfortable to lay on - and there were two soft ponies laying near to her that she wanted to lay on instead. But still, she did not push her luck and made do with what she could, and went off to sleep in due time. If she woke up first, she would have been preparing breakfast for them by the time Magloria and Jump Start woke up. When she woke up from her slumber she found that they had all gotten a bit closer together sometime in the night, due to instinctually wanting the nearby comfort and warmth. It was mostly Collapse herself who had moved, though. Outside the entrance she could see that it was now sometime in the early morning, and most of the clouds had moved away. Everything still looked wet, but it was still better than also being wet. There wasn't really much to prepare for breakfast. Just slicing some fruits to make them easier to eat, and removing any annoying seeds that would taste bad. The others eventually woke up as well, thanked her for getting breakfast ready for them and began to eat their meal. As Collapse ate she would open up her saddlebag and take out the various items they had got from the place and laid them out. Now that it was light, and they weren't running from anything - they could take the time to just observe their items after they were done eating. Collapse would savor her food, and would let the others look at the things while she ate, but when she was done, she'd look over what they managed to snag. The cracked shiny stone that they had picked up turned out to be awfully similar to an opal, except it felt denser and lost its iridescent shimmer within the broken part itself. It's strange that a simple stone could retain such an appearance, and given what they had seen before when the ring started to work, it also seemed like it held a lot of power, and did so in a very stable way as well. It was impressive that they hadn't blown up the room when it broke. The tiny marble on the other hand was a completely different mystery. Constructed out of what looked to be orange metal and blue stone, with tiny bands of metal reinforcing the structure. Strangely enough, it sounded like it contained a liquid when shaken next to her ear, and there even was what looked like it could be a sealed opening at one end. Direct attempts to get the seal open were met with failure, the metal holding it in place too tightly. "Well... this thing is a puzzling curiosity for sure... how do you suppose we get whatever is inside out?" Jump Start asked quizzically as she peered down at the marble. Did Collapse happen to snatch anything else that she wanted to take a look at? Collapse looks to the opal stone in her hooves as she turns it over in her grasp. "This stone is really interesting. Such a tiny little stone, yet it could contain such power within it...I wonder how that could be. Imagine what we could do with such stones to store power back home, perhaps new power storage systems with them instead of batteries - and hold larger charges. Or maybe I am just shooting in the dark, at that." Collapse said idly. The tiny marble was also interesting as well. She didn't expect there to be some sort of liquid inside of it. While she did attempt to open it up, she didn't want to break it. "I don't know really," Collapse said to Jump Start, "But I don't wanna break it to find out." she said to Jump Start. It was such a fascinating little marble, really. Collapse did manage to snag one other thing, though. The ring piece where the stone was inserted into. "Couldn't forget this, it made sense because we have the stone, why not the piece where it inserted into?" she grinned, showing them the piece. Magloria looked down at the stone as well. "Well if we ever get back we can say that this expedition would be a resounding success. Mining ships would be dispatched to extract whatever they could find of these." she stated. Jump Start brought the marble closer, now trying to examine it from all different directions in case she could find... anything. A little button, a bit of inscription, even trying to find some spot that might be weak enough that they could carefully get through. "I don't see a way to get inside yet." she said. Maybe she just couldn't see deep enough into it. The ring piece that Collapse had brought with them was, aside from being the 'central' piece of the ring, the most boring part of it. There were no engravings, only smooth rock and the slot for the opal stone. Whatever was important was probably on the inside of it, but breaking it in half to see how it worked would be an astronomically stupid idea. Collapse rubs her hooves over the smooth rock but knew that she wasn't willing to break it. It was going to remain intact. Collapse proceeds to unsummon the items once they were done looking over them in order to keep them safe within her pocket dimension. "Yeah, hopefully one day there will be an official team sent out here and we could have a whole archaeological team analyze the ruins and whatever else is out here." Collapse agreed. Looking to Jump Start she'd smile. "Maybe it's a good thing we didn't get inside it, so we wouldn't accidentally break it. But we should probably look around and see what else we can find around here, before heading back to our shelter and proceeding to get our materials together for the ship." Collapse spoke calmly. Magloria seemed a little bit miffed at Collapse for unsummoning the items so suddenly. She didn't speak up about it, but it would be nice to have been able to access those items if she needed to. "Wait, what do you mean by that? What if whatever is inside is important?" Jump Start asked, confused at what Collapse could've meant by that. Why wouldn't they try and find out what's inside? It didn't look like it served much purpose otherwise, outside of being a child's toy. "What else would there be to find anyway?" Magloria questioned, "We're already at one of the biggest places we could find out here, and I don't feel like travelling to any of the other places on our map at the moment. We're better off heading back." Collapse didn't appear to notice Magloria's annoyance with her unsummoning the items away like that as she was focused on what Jump Start was saying. "Well, it may be important but I don't wanna break it open or anything like that. You can continue trying if you want" Collapse said to Jump Start before giving her the tiny marble back. Then Collapse turned to Magloria. "Good point. Let's get going then, since we have more important things to do anyways." she spoke. "I hope that nothing happened to our shelter since we've been gone for a while." Collapse added. Jump Start took back the marble and slipped it into her saddlebags. "Thanks." she replied gratefully. Magloria began to lead them back outside, climbing the rubble mound and out back into the sunlight. After a little bit of studying the map and checking the position of the sun to work out where they should head, she started them off back towards their current home. The first little break they had to rest their legs after hours of walking and eat something, Magloria decided to take the time to examine the crystal eye they had, just looking through it at the various trees and nearby wildlife and seeing what patterns she could find. Collapse would stretch her legs in her boots as if showing off her bodily form in subtle ways to Jump Start. Whenever Jump Start or Magloria weren't looking, you can be sure Collapse was taking quick glances at their bodies. Collapse wanted to know them inside and out, ideally. She glanced over to Magloria. "Do you see anything?" she asked, stepping near to her. "Point it at me and you'll see me shimmer and be orange?" she grinned calmly. As there was nothing much to do during the break, Jump Start idly watched what the others did, occasionally blinking at what Collapse was doing. The mare was just getting rid of the tightness in her muscles, wasn't she? She couldn't be showing off... Jump Start quickly looked away when her mind started wandering in a direction she didn't expect it to, a mild blush appearing across her cheeks. She looked over to what Magloria was doing to distract herself from further thoughts. "Nah, nothing special we haven't already seen." Magloria replied as she directed the eye at Collapse. "Yes, you're definitely shimmering orange. I wonder if this thing is capable of detecting certain special ores and rocks underground? Perhaps even other ruins." She lowered the crystal eye as she pondered. Collapse smiled widely as the eye was pointed at her. She was trying to be funny with that wide smile across her face. Maybe Magloria would have seen something within those pearly whites of hers? "Well, try pointing it straight down at the ground. Maybe you'll be able to detect something under the ground. The next time we walk by a cave we should look within the cave with this eye as well." she stated, and continued to stretch a bit. Then Collapse would slide her boots back on after stretching her bare hooves on the ground. She occasionally glanced over to Jump Start, and smirked slightly at remembering her reactions to being called 'Jumpy'. She wanted to make that a regular nickname for her. Perhaps she could even get Magloria to call her that! Collapse could only dream. Magloria turned the eye down at the ground and looked through it again. "Nah, I just see a lot of glimmering from everything nearby. I think the plants and bug life around us is interfering. Might have more luck if we found a cave instead." Jump Start still avoided looking at Collapse for the moment. The redness to her face hadn't faded completely, so it might be a little bit before she was back to normal again. "Hold on a minute, why have we not used this thing on what we've just collected?" Magloria asked. "Yeah that's a good idea, let's try it." Collapse spoke and summoned the items they had collected onto the ground in front of them. That was probably for the best, as Magloria likely still wanted to carry them with her. Collapse noticed Jump Start not looking at her, and didn't know what was up - and so she didn't comment on that. The moment that the eye was pointed toward the rematerialized objects, Magloria flinched, grimacing in pain as she stopped looking through it, her eye she had been using now closed shut. "Ow." she said in a very blunt manner. "I don't think we should look at that opal stone again. Whatever it has going on made a very bright light. That has the potential to blind someone if looked at for too long."