//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10- The Scavenger Hunt [REBOOT] 
// Story: Sweetie's Mansion 
// by Moon Shooter 
//------------------------------//

	"Alright. Just find the cylinder thingy and get out. Easy."
Sweetie said this to herself aloud as she stood in front of a large circular stone. Moss had already begun growing all over it, as though it had been sitting there for ages. At least a couple of years, though this came to Sweetie as no surprise after witnessing enough the mansion's inability to choose an age for itself. The parts that weren't eroded by the mushy plant were cold and smooth to the touch. 
Though oddly enough, this chill didn't exactly feel as though it were from the temperature of her surroundings alone.
Its size compared to the filly, or any pony for that matter was greatly different. From just how awfully foreboding the spot was, and the sense of dread that she got just by standing at the entrance to the next part of this underground catacomb, Sweetie didn't know whether to be thankful or fearful there still existed a way to proceed. The stone wasn't completely blocking her path as it should have been. There was a small opening just large enough for someone her size to fit through. This was good because she doubted she would be able to budge the stone. Even if it was rounded, it seemed too dug into the ground already to be budged by her own muscles. 
But then again, this also meant that Scootaloo had been through here as well. And Sweetie doubted that if the way forward was closed off before-
But now wasn't the time to be thinking about even more things to frighten her. She was still trying to build up the bravery that must have shattered after she figured she was going to die, falling down that pit. Her confidence also needed some reconstruction from being saved by the types of creatures she was supposed to be fighting. 
Even if this one was nice.
As Sweetie stalled her progression, she checked her map. Sure enough, as Madame had said, it offered no helpful information. On the parchment, rather than displaying her location, it was stained with a large question mark. Sweetie assumed that it wouldn't be useful until she managed to get out of the crypt, and up to the church, as the ghost mare had instructed. But first, she'd have to find her GCD part, which could have been anywhere in that crypt. Sweetie tried to remain optimistic however, just so she could convince herself to head into the pitch black catacomb.
"Alright... for Rarity..." she said to herself, hoping the reminder to save her sister would convince her legs to move. "Let's do this."
Sweetie took a deep breath, and walked to the small opening around the round stone slab. She squeezed through, and was greeted on the other side by a breeze of chilling air. She shivered, almost dropping her flashlight out of her chattering teeth. The mansion was already chilly for this time of year, but it might as well have been winter down in this catacomb. The area smelled of deceased ponies and some preservatives, possibly to keep them from rotting too fast or smelling so bad. Though whatever was supposed to keep the smell down had probably long since kept doing it's job. It didn't matter however, because the sheer thought of being around dead ponies was terrifying to the small filly.
Sweetie toyed with the idea of going back to the other side with the torch light, and huddling in its warmth. The smell of whatever fuel was burning was probably better than this decaying smell. 
Or whatever was making such a stench.
She of course quickly through that idea away before the temptation grew any stronger. She knew that she had to keep pushing forward as long as there was still hope. She couldn't waste any time with weak thoughts. She had to remain strong for now. At least until she managed to get her GCD back and Twilight caught.
So, she went.
There were several things on Sweetie's mind that helped her move through the darkness of the catacombs, and ignoring the creeping graves she passed by. Once again, her first, was her friends. Sweetie knew she'd eventually need to figure out how to release Applebloom's spirit from whatever controlled her. And even more, she didn't even know the fate of her friend Scootaloo, only that she'd been through here at one point.
But that was good, wasn't it?
Scootaloo had been through here and passed Madame. She wasn't sure what Twilight had encountered earlier. Maybe it was Scootaloo at a point she had been "mentally manipulated" just like Sweetie. After all, Madame had implied talking to her. And being a ghost, she could probably tell if something was wrong with the orange filly. If she were possessed, wouldn't Madame have warned her instead of just mentioning her arrival? Then again, Sweetie didn't exactly ask if Scootaloo was someone to be warned of.
Madame wouldn't deceive her like that, would she? Wasn't she trying to help her?
Though she did say "if" she made it through. By now she could either be possessed or- 
Now wasn't the time. That was a negative thought. And in a depressing place as a catacomb that stunk of something dreadful, bypassing the chills that also entered her nostrils, negative thoughts were the last thing she needed. Sweetie needed to keep hopeful. Hope that Scootaloo was in fact, alive and out of this nightmare.
At least hopefully she would only be enduring one a little more pleasant.
Secondly, there was Twilight, who Sweetie felt guilty of her demise. She felt heavily responsible, given that she felt something was wrong with Applebloom the moment she laid eyes on her, yet never spoke up about it. 

--She was cold, she thought.
--She was tired, she thought.
--She's fine, relax, she thought.

But what happened, happened. Sweetie needed to save her friend, not only for every pony else, but to relieve her guilt. 

Finally, there was Rarity. Sweetie missed her sister for obvious reasons, yet there was another side of it. Something in the back of Sweetie's mind that wanted Rarity for a different reason. Sweetie wasn't sure what it was, but one word came to her. 
Doubt.
Sweetie continued on her way down the catacombs, passing by countless rows of coffins. 
Exactly how many ponies were down here? And exactly how long? Because it went without saying these things had been down here for much longer than a week.
Just like the coffins, Sweetie had lost count of how many blind turns and random decisions she took. It wasn't as though she had much of a choice at the time. All of the coffins and cubbyholes that also happened to hold coffins looked the same. And the ones with names were so worn that it would take too long for Sweetie to discern the difference between two. And the last thing she wanted to do was try marking the graves and have to touch the things. 
Sweetie could see the mist coming from her breath, indicating that the temperature was dropping even more significantly. This cold was different from the normal temperature the place held. She had enough experience by then to know that usually meant a ghost or two were nearby. 
But that was the only thing. Sweetie had yet to have any encounters with ghosts, or even hear so much as a giggle. The feeling was less comforting than it should have been. That sense of dread. That sense that told her they were watching her.
Or perhaps not a ghost. But someone was watching her stumble through the morbid darkness.
Sweetie felt an urge to call out to her spy, if it happened to exist. She held her tongue, knowing that any unnecessary sounds she made would be to her disadvantage. Sweetie still remained cautious and paranoid as she continued through the catacomb.
Everything was looking the same to the filly. Every pathway she took underground seemed to lead to the same dead end. She was almost positive that she'd seen each coffin before, in the way that they were arranged. Sweetie must have been walking in circles for the time that she'd been down there. 30 minutes must had passed since she entered the crypt. 
It felt longer to her, but that shorter wander time was the only thing that kept her from thinking she wouldn't ever leave this place of death. That this place would be her tomb. Frankly, it was almost maddening to the filly. She felt a similar claustrophobia that she'd felt when she first chased Pinkie Pie. She had yet to see an exit anywhere, let alone the cylindrical ghost processor. Though again, Sweetie was becoming less concerned about reconstructing her GCD and more about when she'd eventually start rotting like the corpses around her. 
Had Madame lied to her? Was this just another one of the mansion's devious traps? It was becoming more obvious the ghosts weren't against messing with her before eventually dooming her to something, or more directly trying to kill her. At least Pinkie wasn't, but playing with ponies was in her personality. Still, Madame was an unknown to Sweetie though, so it was still something she was well capable of.
Sweetie was a step away in her growing despair from cursing the mare. Just a step. But that's when in the darkness, Sweetie noticed something small glowing in the dark. Faintly, it glowed red. Sweetie wondered. Could it be the thing that just so happened to come to mind? In a way, she hoped it was as much as she didn't. She headed over to the cubbyhole where the open coffin holding the glowing red thing was. It was a bitter sweet feeling, but it looked like she was right. In the hooves of the skeleton of a pony long dead wasn't exactly a piece of the GCD, but it was still something the filly found useful. 
It was a candy heart. A vital consumable in the hooves of a decayed stallion.
Sweetie hesitated at the thought of touching the dead body, disturbing it for something so valuable. Ultimately, she pushed the thought away. As disgusting as it, the thought of taking and-
Sweetie shuddered slightly.
-eating the healing item, she couldn't look past that it was an item would probably help Sweetie somewhere down the line. Especially in the absence of her GCD. Besides, it looked like any coat, muscle or any other swishy bits had long since gone. The skeleton looked clean enough. 
But still.
Sweetie grabbed the candy heart with her hooves, and pulled on it. It didn't budge. It was as if the pony were still holding it with all of its might. 
"Nice death grip you've got mister..." Sweetie mumbled, trying to lighten the mood on her little tomb raider escapade. Sweetie tried to use both hooves to force the skeleton release its grasp on the heart. Suddenly, something green and glowing popped out from underneath the coffin, grabbing the filly to show her what a real death grip was like.
In her panic, Sweetie found the strength (or maybe the flinch force) to release the candy heart, along with her fore leg, from the skeleton and ghost pony. The ghost pony rose from the coffin, with the skeleton inside of it. It was one of the first ghosts Sweetie had seen in the mansion. A butler ghost. 
Sweetie staggered back, and remembered her flashlight. She couldn't fight it, but maybe she could scare it away. She shone her light on the ghost.
"Go-" she said through the flashlight.
Ding!
"...away?"
Something was wrong. Despite being in such a bright light the ghost, did not disappear. It simply grinned at Sweetie at her futile attempt to drive it away. Sweetie didn't understand. It should have worked, making the ghost disappear just like the others! Was the skeleton acting like some kind of anchor, or perhaps that allowed it to stay with such confidence? Or was it just that Sweetie didn't have a weapon to fight it now to compliment her flashlight threat? Sweetie didn't ponder it long, as she tossed the heart into her saddlebags and ran. Sweetie wasn't sure where she was going, but as long as she couldn't use her map, would she ever?
She heard the ghostly laughter echoing through the catacomb. She knew this would happen. In the back of her mind she knew. She was in a place surrounded by death. Surrounded by the essence that spirits were made of, of course there would be ghosts here. And a lot of them for that matter. 
Stupid.
She was stupid. Sure she didn't have much choice, but she was stupid to not be more prepared for something like this. After all, in a mansion where ponies rise from the dead, she just accomplished the equivalent of walking into a hornets nest. And to seal her fate, kicking the nest by grabbing at one of their bodies. 
But it didn't matter anymore. Right now, Sweetie felt- no, she was surrounded. She knew that she had to escape somehow. She didn't know where to go. She was just as lost as she had been before. 
Sweetie ran, she skidded on her hooves at corners, and ran some more, knowing to stop for even a moment would mean her death. She didn't look behind her, but she knew that more than one ghost had to be on her flank. And who knew how many more were behind the walls, just waiting to pounce on her? 
Sweetie ran.
Sweetie ran.
Sweetie ran.
The maze of coffins and cubbyholes seemed endless. She would be running until she ran out of breath, collapsed, or by some horror found herself at-
Sweetie stopped.
Dead end.
Sweetie eventually found herself at a wall. 
"No way... no way, no way, no way!" Sweetie whispered angrily out loud. She looked back. They weren't there, but she was sure they were around the corner. She could feel the chills growing more and more. They were coming. Those ghosts would catch her and-
"Wait..." She stared at the wall for a moment. She wondered. Was she really cornered? After all, of all the turns she came to, this was the only wall she'd come into. And the way the wall was shaped looked odd as well. Like it bulged.
Sweetie felt around the stone wall frantically to find something. Something to prove her hopes were true.
"Yes!" she quietly cheered. It wasn't just a bulge. It was rounded, like the slab she'd found ajar when she first entered the catacomb. But there was still a slight problem. 
It was sealed. Sweetie would have to figure out how to get it open before the ghosts were upon her again. She tried to move the stone, pushing its side. 
"C'mon... c'mon...! Budge!" She had to be strong. She had to be strong to move this thing-
To her amazement, after a moment of pushing, the stone moved over easily. It was a little louder for something that seemed so much lighter than she expected but it moved. She managed to move it to the side, just enough to quickly slip through the opening. As she made it through, the stone fell back into its original position.
Sweetie backed from the stone. She heard the ghostly laughter outside of the stone, but it didn't try to phase through the door. Did she loose the ghosts? As Sweetie heard the laughter fade away, she slumped down against a wall. 
"Phew... too close."
She was safe for now. Sweetie knew she had to find the cylinder soon, but going outside now was next to suicide. She would wait in here for a few minutes before going out to continue her search.
"Wait...where am I?"
But that was when Sweetie began to take notice to the change in her surroundings.
Sweetie shinned her flashlight around the new room. There didn't seem to be any other exits, but that wasn't what Sweetie noticed first. It was different. The stones, unlike the ones in the previous network of tunnels were a wildly different tint than the ones in this room. It was as though she had stepped into an entirely new crypt!
"Weird... what's up with the change?"
This new room seemed to be some kind of special burial chamber, as four coffins were lined with flowers and etchings of names. The first names of each pony seemed to be buffed out, only to leave the last name Yield.
"Yield... are these..."
No doubt about it, they had to be the coffins of the four family members of the Yield family. Specter Yield, Madame Yield and apparently two others. 
Kids maybe?
Another strange detail about them were just how recent they looked. The coffins looked newer, and much more freshly placed than any other coffin Sweetie had come across thusfar. 
"I... wonder what's inside?" A morbid question of curiosity came to her. She tried to justify what she said by considering that the last one she checked had a candy heart. It wasn't out of the question that something this "different" might hold something important. 
Sweetie checked each of them to find they were locked. 
"Of course..."
Now she was really curious. What was inside?
In the middle of the room seemed to be a drain. Sweetie, given it was the only other thing that stood out, went over to investigate. She shined her light down its hole. At the bottom, something glistened against her flashlight.
What the... what could that be? Sweetie wondered. She was sure it was important. The problem however that was it was just out of her reach, as she tried to reach down into the hole to get it. Suddenly, an idea came to Sweetie. 

--You're a unicorn right? You can use magic.

Until the ghost mare mentioned it, Sweetie had near completely forgotten about the magical bone sticking out of her fore head. Then again, she didn't recall an instance in particular it wouldn't have been that useful. Her magic was weak. She could barely pick up the lightest fabric back at Rarity's Boutique. Her inability to stabilize her telekinesis magic had usually resulted in accidents with Rarity.
Arguments among the ones they already had. Arguments and yelling-
She shook her head. That wasn't important right now. Sweetie had a good feeling that the shiny thing was still vital in some way. She needed whatever was down there, and that had to be her main focus.
Sweetie stood firmly over the drain and closed her eyes. 
"Visualize..." she mumbled. "Cast..."
She visualized the object in her head. She saw it glistening at the bottom of the well against her flashlight and the thought of lifting it. Her horn glowed a faint white light. 
She visualized it slowly rising up out of the drain. She did it slowly, as keeping hold of the item was like balancing it on a pin. One wrong move, one careless release of magic and it would go tumbling down. Energy wise, it wasn't exactly easy on her either. Her legs felt weak as the little magic inside of her was drained into the telekinesis spell. She felt faint, and tired as the magic was depleted. 
Just a little more...
When she felt as though she were at her limit, she let go. Following her sigh of exhaustion, the next sound she heard was a clink against the stone floor, as though something was dropped there.
She opened her eyes to see a key, lying on the outside of the drain. Sweetie picked up the key, and looked at it. Just like the coffins in the room, the key was new looking. She wondered if the key could possibly be to the them. Finally, the curiosity of the their contents gave into the dread of them. Whether or not there was something good in one, she was sure she wouldn't like what was inside.
Though while she was stuck in here, she didn't have a good excuse to not check them. It wasn't as though anything she needed would be easily accessible or quite frankly "pleasant" to obtain.
Sweetie gulped, not expecting to be as lucky to find a completely decayed pony in such new looking containers of the dead. With that, she proceed to check the coffins. 
The first one she tried at the corner closest to the stone slab didn't fit. She then tried the second next to it. No dice. The third one wasn't any different from the last two. Each time a sense of relief came to her with a wave of disappointment. 
Sweetie wondered if perhaps this key wasn't even to these coffins, and instead to something else. When the prospect of having to sperlunk the catacombs even longer for one tiny keyhole to this one tiny key, suddenly any rotting, decaying, worm infested body that smelled like Celestia knows what didn't seem like such a bad thing.
Finally, she stuck the key into the lock of the fourth coffin, the farthest one back to the left. As she turned it, it clicked open. She gave a bitter-sweet smile satisfied of her success as well as dreading to see what was inside.
With another deep breath, Sweetie went over to the side of the coffin and began trying to push the cover off.
It was heavy. It was really heavy. Either that or it was stuck. Either way, even when Sweetie put all of her muscle and weight on it, the thing wouldn't move.
"C'mon, you've gotta be kidding. This has gotta be lighter that that dumb stone door!" Sweetie said through her teeth as she continued to push. "I can do this, I can push this- woah!"
Sweetie slipped as the coffin cover suddenly became movable.
CRASH!
The stone cover fell off the other side of the, causing it to make a loud sound, and break the covering. Sweetie was sure that if the ghosts didn't know she was in there before, they knew now. She wouldn't have much more time before she either had to get out of there, or hide. 
Inside of the coffin was probably one of the most disturbing things Sweetie had come across yet. Inside of it was-




Nothing.





No, that wasn't correct. There was something but what Sweetie found inside wasn't what she was expecting at all. Inside was nothing more than the cylindrical processor Madame had mentioned.
Sweetie was glad that she had finally come across the piece of her GCD after such a horribly long time, but there was something vital missing here.
"W...here's the body?"
There should have been a body here. Sweetie was sure that there were some bodies in the room, dead and rotting. She could smell them. She wished she couldn't desperately, but she did smell them. The other ones, she was sure had something in them, but why was this body gone.
After staring at the empty casket for who knows how long, she shook her head and finally put the GCD part in her saddlebags. She wouldn't get her questions answered if she just stood here. Despite how quiet it was, it was still cold. She was still in danger, and now that she had the item she was looking for, she could finally look for a way to escape this place. 
Either way, Sweetie deduced that the one who put her GCD part here intentionally wanted to make it difficult to obtain without some ghostly, or stronger magical help. Thankfully, this one didn't do that good of a job. But that didn't mean that the other ones would be as simple.
She could only hope-
"Sweets, are you being weird again?"
Sweetie turned around at the sound of the voice. It was familiar. It was a friend's voice. Sweetie turned around, she gasped. Whether it was out of surprise or fear one wouldn't be able to immediately tell.
"Heh... but really. Glad to see you got out of that crash alright." Scootaloo said, smiling at her friend. "You... are alright, right?"
The heavy slab of stone Sweetie saw from the light of her flashlight was completely tossed to its side. Sweetie didn't say anything in response. 
"Hey Sweetie. Somethin' wrong?" Scootaloo asked in concern, taking a step closer to her friend. "You okay?"
That was wrong. Sweetie might have been able to move it by some miracle, but that was only barely. It was impossible for Scootaloo to do such a thing. Not without some help. 
Sweetie took a step back. 
Scootaloo laughed. "Oh come on. Don't tell me you're scared of me now. I got through here easy peasy. If you want to save our friends, you gotta be brave like me."
That was wrong. The more she stared at her, the less she sounded like Scootaloo.
--Just like Applebloom
The more she stared at her the less she looked like Scootaloo.
--Just like Applebloom
From a glance one wouldn't be able to tell something was wrong, but the more she looked in this increasingly tense atmosphere, she could tell that this was not Scootaloo.
No matter how much she wished it was. She wished that this was Scootaloo, and if she hadn't been hunted and nearly killed by Applebloom, she might have tackled to her to the ground, kissing her continuously out of sheer relief.
But that wasn't the worst part. No, the worst part was how little she would move. For some odd reason, she couldn't move. But she had to. She had to move now, or else she would die.

Sweetie-





O[tries talking to her. Confirm whether or not this is her friend.]
O[has to get away now. This isn't her friend anymore, she's just like Applebloom.]