//------------------------------// // Thieves // Story: The Vault // by Educated Guess //------------------------------// “Alright, I think we lost ‘em. We shouldn’t stay here for long, though.” “...” “What’s your name, kid?” “...My name?” “Yeah, your name.” “...Why?” “‘Cuz I wanna know the name of the pony that I just broke out of the most secure prison in Equestria.” “...Its Shift Key.” “Gaston. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” “...” “Alright, don’t shake my claw. What d’you do, Shift?” “...Do?” “Yeah. Why did Linch hire me to get you out, and not any of his ten-dozen other buddies he has locked up in there? What makes you special?” “I’m... I’m a locksmith.” “A locksmith.” “Yeah.” “...A unicorn locksmith.” “...Yeah.” “Huh... that is unique. How good are you?” “...What?” “Are you good enough that it’s gonna be worth pissing off Linch to keep you?” “Um... well, do you remember a few months back, when the crown jewels of the Duke of Trottingham went missing?” “Yeah, that was all over the newspapers. You did that?” “I did that on a hangover.” Gaston woke, as he often did, to the sound of cursing. It had become a very common noise in the last few years - Shift Key tended to be rather profane when he was embroiled in his work, and when he was working, ‘embroiled’ was one of the only words that could properly describe his state of mind. Groggily, the griffon rolled onto his feet and stretched, rearing his haunches like a cat, and flaring his wings out as wide as he could. Standing up straight, he filled his lungs with the fresh mountain air, and let out a long, slow sigh of contentment. Spring was ramping into full gear. The deep, hard-packed snow of the winter was giving way to jagged rocks and patches of moss, grass and flowers, forging bravely into the season ahead. The smell of cold was tinted with the scents of life, and perfumed with the heady, butterscotch scent of the evergreens. He didn’t know why he loved mountains so much. Perhaps it was his species’ natural proclivity for height and cold. Perhaps it was his professional preference for silence, privacy, and a good view of his surroundings. Whatever the reason, Gaston always felt strangely at peace when he was looking down on hills and valleys, still dark under the shadows of their high and mighty brethren - brethren on which he himself stood, soaking in the first bright rays of dawn. “Damn it all to the Cocytan Wastes!” a voice yelled from below, completely ruining the moment. Gaston padded over to the edge of the cliff, and peered down. From here, he couldn’t see Shift Key, or the door that was giving the unicorn so much grief, but he could picture them in his mind. The door was a towering slab of plain, gray stone, with no handles, or keyholes, or even discernible edges. The only reason they knew it was a door at all was that when Shift had tried to unlock it the first time, it had refused to open. Not just not done anything - refused, as in ‘fired a bolt of magic that had nearly killed them both.’ After that, Shift had been more careful, and the incident hadn’t repeated itself. “How’s it going down there?” Gaston called, as if he even needed to ask. “It would be going faster if you didn’t keep interrupting me,” a disembodied voice answered. “See, I’d believe you if you hadn’t said the exact same thing five days ago.” Shift Key finally backed out from under the overhang and looked up at the griffon, shielding his eyes with one hoof. A motley assortment of wiry tools, magical-looking rods, and various shapes and colors of rocks floated idly around him, glowing yellow in his hold. In the griffon’s opinion, Shift looked more like an earth pony than a unicorn, especially since his black hair was so spiky and disheveled that it almost completely obscured his horn. The dirty earth-brown of his coat and the bags under his eyes didn’t help - although those may have just been the years of rough living and days of missed sleep showing through. “Hey, this door is tougher than I thought, alright?” he said, in the understatement of the century. Gaston widened his eyes in mock surprise. “No! Really?” “Okay, look at it this way - if there’s a door that’s locked up so tight that it takes me - me, Shift Key, the best magical locksmith in all of Equestria - an entire week to crack it? There’s gotta be something inside it, right?” “Or, it could be another dead end, like the last dozen goose-chases you’ve led me on!” “Hey, those were not goose-chases. Just because you’re not strong enough to take on five pegasi -” “Five centurions of the Cloudsdale Elite Guard!” “Whatever. That doesn’t mean that the Lance wasn’t worth going for. Besides,” Shift Key said, holding up a small, wooden box with two gauges on it’s face - one of the few of the unicorn’s tools with which Gaston was familiar, since it had originally been his. “You saw the reading on the thaumometer just as clearly as I did. You were pretty gung-ho about it then!” “Yeah, because I didn’t know that all it was pointing towards was a thrice-damned door that was gonna blow my head off!” “It’s gonna be worth it, alright? Trust me.” Gaston rubbed his temples with his claw. “You are nothing but trouble. One of these days, I’m gonna put you back in the cell where I found you.” “Go ahead,” the unicorn said with sudden seriousness. “I would have escaped eventually, even without your help.” The griffon laughed. “You? You have about as much chance of escaping Alcatrot alone as you have of walking into Tartarus!” “Hey,” Shift said, pointing a hoof warningly. “I could open the Adamantine Door, if I had enough time.” Gaston rolled his eyes. “And if someone killed the watchdog for you, first.” “Exactly!” Shift Key winked devilishly. “That’s what I keep you around for!” Before Gaston could get in the last word, Shift trotted back under the overhang and out of sight. The griffon groaned, and launched himself into the air. They would still need breakfast, no matter how much longer that idiot wanted to bang his head against that door. He returned an hour later, with three fish wriggling in his claws, to find ‘that idiot’ lying next to the dead campfire, with his hindlegs folded over each other and his back against a tree. A stalk of grass hung out of his mouth, which Gaston knew was not something that Shift actually enjoyed doing - it was simply for effect, to spite him. Despite himself, Gaston felt his heart race. “Given up?” he asked flatly, dumping the fish into his saddlebags. He had tried to shatter Shift’s ego before, but had found that it was usually much easier just to play along with his power trips. The unicorn grinned and looked up at him from under the brim of his hair. “Nope. Got it open.” “Oh yeah? How’d you do it?” Shift began to explain. “Well, first, it turned out that the fifth pin was actually the third pin, and the third pin was actually the seventeenth pin. Then I figured out that pins two, eight, and sixteen needed to be activated by an earth-pony energy signature, while pins six, seven, and nine needed a pegasus energy signature, so I rigged up some false sources, and -” “How’d you do it?” Gaston asked again, in exactly the same tone as before. He knew from experience that these descriptions could go on for hours longer than the operation had taken, and his impatience was getting the better of him. Shift scowled. “I did some magic and stuff,” he said, slowly, with venom in every word. “That’s what I like to hear,” said Gaston, completely unfazed. “Let’s go have a look.” They walked down the sloped path on the side of the cliff and stepped into the shadow of the overhang. The door had sunk down into the ground, leaving a large, perfectly rectangular hole nearly four times their height in the rock face. They peered in apprehensively. The tunnel that lay beyond was the same size, with smooth sides and clean-cut corners, sloping gently downward into the darkness. A cool breeze blew gently past them, like the breath of some sleeping behemoth. “Have you been inside yet?” Gaston asked. “Nah. I was waiting for you.” Gaston looked at him skeptically. “You should have gone in and hidden all the best stuff from me so you could come back to get it later, after turning me in for the bounty.” Shift smiled innocently. “What, and miss the chance to send you through first, to check for traps?” The griffon shook his head sadly. “One of these days, you’re gonna trust someone too much, and they’re gonna burn you.” “Yeah, but it’s not gonna be you, is it? Come on, in you get.” “Gimme some light, poker-face.” Shift lit his horn, illuminating a few more feet of the floor ahead. Gaston took a deep breath to steel himself, and gingerly set one claw over the threshold. Nothing happened. The griffon sighed in relief, and started down the path. Seeing that there were no traps, Shift quickly gathered his jumbles of tools and gizmos, shoved them hastily into his saddlebags, and trotted after his partner. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he tripped over his own hooves, and fell flat on his face. Gaston jumped at the clatter of bags and hooves on stone, and spun around to look at the unicorn incredulously. “What’s the matter with you? The unicorn grimaced in pain. “Sorry, I just...” He slowly lifted himself into a sitting position, holding one hoof against the top of his head. “Ow, geez. It’s this place, there’s - ah, that’s thick. I wish you could feel it, it’s like... it’s like I’m underwater, like... butter.” He shook his head vigorously to clear it, then opened his saddlebag and floated out the thaumometer. Both gauges were completely unreadable. The needle that indicated the strength of the local thaum field had apparently broken out of its casing and crashed back in on the other side, while the gyroscopic compass, which was supposed to point towards the nearest concentration of magic power, was spinning uncontrollably. “...Wow.” Shift turned to look at the doorway. “There must be some kind of dampening field built in.” He glanced back at Gaston, and his patent ‘I-told-you-so’ smirk started to spread across his face. “Well,” said Gaston, stretching his beak into a forced grin. “Shall we go see what it is that’ll be paying for a new five-gauge thaumometer?” But Shift would not be so easily distracted, not even by the thought of new toys. “Only if you admit that I was right.” The griffon let his smile drop, and rolled his eyes. “Fine. You win. Let’s go.” They walked on into the darkness, the bright shape of the door growing smaller and smaller behind them. When it was no more than a white speck in the distance, the pair came to a flat, square landing, where the tunnel turned sharply to the left. They glanced at each other, then started downwards once more. Their last connection to the outside world winked out of sight, leaving them with nothing but a solitary circle of floor and wall, and the wavering ghost of a ceiling far above. They turned another such corner. And another. And another. The walls continued, cold and seamless. Shift shivered. “Geez, when I said to damn it to Cocytos, I didn’t actually want to go there.” As they came to the fifteenth landing, the tunnel stretching, as always, left and down into nothingness, Gaston suddenly stopped. Shift crashed into him, and fell backwards onto his tail. “Ow!” Shift rubbed his flank gingerly. “What was that for?” “Do you have any chalk?” Gaston asked, looking back at him. Shift blinked a few times at the question. “Any what?” “Chalk. Charcoal. Quill ink. Anything to write with.” “Oh. Um...” Shift flipped open his saddlebag and rummaged around. He produced a short, stubby cylinder of green chalk, and held it out. Gaston snatched it with a whip of his tail, tossed it forward into his claw, and put it against the wall. He wrote, in large, spindly letters, “HERE”. Shift eyed the word curiously. “What’s that for?” “Just checking something,” Gaston said, passing the stub back. “Come on, let’s go.” One, two, three more corners they turned, spiraling down into the depths. But then, something different happened. They came to a landing not like the others. The tunnel continued, as always, down and to the left, but where the walls of the other landings - and, in fact, the rest of the tunnel - had been smooth and blank, this one had a single word, written in large, spindly green letters, with what looked like chalk. It said, simply, “HERE”. “Wait...” said Shift, putting the pieces together. “We’re going around in circles?” “I knew it. I thrice-damned, feather-flipping knew it.” Gaston flicked his tail in annoyance. “But... but that’s impossible! We’ve been going down the whole time!” The griffon looked at his partner in disbelief. “Oh, come on - I thought you were the one that was supposed to figure out all the weird magic stuff.” “I do locks, not... whatever this is!” Gaston sighed, and pinched the bridge of his beak. “Just... think of it as a really big lock, or something.” Shift looked anxiously back and forth between the way ahead, and the way they had come. He wasn’t quite sure which was which anymore. “Alright,” he said, with more than a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “Alright, let’s... let’s see if we can get out, first.” They retraced their steps, walking up the slopes instead of down, turning corners back to the right. But one, two, three, four landings later, the word “HERE” loomed up out of the darkness. They picked up speed, but four landings after that, “HERE” appeared again, like a ghost that would haunt them for the rest of their accursed days. “Oh no,” Shift said, his voice breaking in panic. His hooves began to tremble up and down. “Oh no, oh no, oh no...” Gaston smacked the unicorn in the back of the head. “Don’t start freaking out now!” he yelled. “There has to be a way out of here. This is just another door.” Shift flinched, and rubbed his neck gingerly, but didn’t fight back. “Ok,” he said. “Ok, um...” He lifted off his saddlebags with a yellow glow and dumped the contents unceremoniously onto the floor. Rummaging through the piles with his hooves, he eventually floated out a single object - a short, plain-looking wooden rod, topped with a single quartz crystal. “Ok. Ok, let’s, uh...” He trailed off, forgetting to finish his sentence. Gaston watched as Shift began to inch forward along the inside wall. The rod floated with him, its wooden end resting firmly against the side of his horn, and the quartz tip hovering millimeters from the cold gray stone. It seemed to vibrate and twitch as he progressed, like a record needle following grooves in the air. One minute and fifteen feet later, Shift stopped. He took a small step backwards, then forwards again, as if feeling the air with his head. “There’s... there’s something...” He turned and waved his hoof beckoningly. “Chalk.” Gaston quickly found the stub in the mess on the floor, and tossed it to Shift. Shift caught it with a yellow shimmer, and made two marks on the wall: a short, vertical line, and an arrow pointing to the right. Then, he turned around, flipped the rod to his other side, and started back towards the landing. “What are you doing?” Gaston asked, genuinely curious. “I have an idea,” Shift replied as he came around the corner. Gaston watched the unicorn retreat slowly up the hallway, the circle of light travelling with him. He paused, and made a second set of marks, then continued. As he rounded the corner of the next landing, the light disappeared altogether. The seconds ticked by like molasses. There was no sound except for his own breathing, and no color except for black. He began to see shapes wavering in the darkness - dancing, taunting, prowling. Even though he knew they were only in his imagination, his pulse quickened, and he felt his chest grow tight. Minutes later, Shift came back around the corner, and Gaston let out an involuntary sigh of relief. The unicorn was still maintaining his slow, methodical pace along the wall, feeling with the rod for some unseen details. About halfway down the hall, he stopped, and turned to face the sheer grey stone. A puzzled look passed over his face. He jumped slightly to his left, and then took a large, purposeful sideways step to the right. Two large, straight cracks appeared in the wall, and the hidden door slid silently down into the floor. “Ha!” Gaston exclaimed, running up to meet the unicorn. “See? I knew you could do it.” “You were right,” Shift said, smiling. “It was a really big lock - a combination lock, just without numbers. Counter, clockwise, counter.” Together, they walked inside. The chamber was not very impressive. It was a small, confining rotunda - well, small by the standards of the hallway outside, anyway. Four torch sconces, all long empty, ringed the wall. The only other feature was a tall, sheer stone door, directly opposite the one through which they had entered. There were, again, no handles, but unlike the other two, this one had a clearly defined border. A long line of runes was inscribed around its edge, though what they meant, Gaston could only begin to guess. “What does it say?” Shift furrowed his brow. “These... I haven’t seen runes like these since I was expelled from the Academy. Uh...” He began to mutter incoherently under his breath, eyes running over the symbols. Occasionally, he would interrupt himself with a small shake of his head, and a “No...” or “That’s not right” or “Damn it” would slip from between his teeth. “...I think,” he began after a few minutes of this, “that it says ‘Let they who opened the door open themselves.’” Gaston stared at him blankly. “...Or, it says that aloe vera tastes great on pickles. But, that’s probably not it.” “‘Let they who...’” Gaston began to repeat, them shook his head vigorously. “What in the world is that even supposed to mean?” “Well... I’m the one who opened the door,” Shift said, thinking. “And... it probably doesn’t want me to cut myself open - at least, I hope not - so... I guess it wants me to... open up to it? Like, tell it about myself?” Gaston rolled his eyes. “Riiiight. Go ahead and tell the magical door your life story.” “Do you have any better ideas?” Gaston opened his beak to speak, then shut it again grudgingly. “...No.” “Well, alright then.” Shift faced back to the door, and cleared his throat. “Um... hello. Door.” Gaston sighed heavily, and sat back on his haunches. “Um... My name is Shift Key. I’m a unicorn. Locksmith. My cutie mark is a... well, you can see it right here.” He turned his flank towards the door, and looked it over. “Sort of a... keyring, except the ring is a... skull.” He paused. “It’s always seemed a bit morbid to me, to be honest.” Gaston planted his face in his claws. There was no way this was going to work. “Anyway,” Shift continued, straightening. “Um... I grew up in New Unicornia. I never knew my parents, because they’d dropped me off in an orphanage before I’d even opened my eyes. I, uh... I never had many friends. I spent most of my time... tinkering with things. Finding things that were broken, and figuring out why they were broken, and... fixing them, sometimes. “I must have been pretty good at it, I suppose, because the ponies that ran the orphanage noticed, and when I was eight, they managed to get me a preliminary scholarship to Central University. ...Never really made many friends there, either. The teachers were great, though. I studied math, and history, and basic magic theory. I was especially interested in magical mechanization - the creation and operation of magic-powered machines. I got to be pretty famous in the inter-dormitory prank wars. I don’t think the faculty will ever forget the incident with the self-replicating bottle openers.” He smiled a sad, remembering smile. Gaston watched his partner curiously. Shift had never told him about this part of his life before, and now, he was telling it to a door. “A few years passed, though, and it was coming to a time where my scholarship was going to run out. I would either need to become a part-time student and get a job, drop out completely, or find a sponsor. Someone who believed in me enough to pay my way through the rest of college, in exchange for a few years of service afterwards. It’s a pretty common practice, among the... less affluent. “Well, amazingly, I got a sponsor. Her name was Diamond Mist, and uh... she was my first real crush.” He chuckled, and blushed slightly. “Of course, at the time, I didn’t know that that wasn’t her real name, or that I wouldn’t actually be working for her. I was just infatuated with the idea of... what would I have even been doing for her? Fixing her pipes? Adjusting her chandeliers? Helping her live out her romantic fantasies?” Shift thought for a moment. “Looking back on it, I was pretty stupid when I was young. No, scratch that - I’m still pretty stupid.” “You got that right,” Gaston wanted to interject, but found that he couldn’t bring himself to. Shift forged on. “Anyway. I finished school, graduated with a few honors that nopony who actually pays attention to honors would give a flying feather about, and got ready to be Diamond Mist’s personal mechanic for a few years. Then I found out that she was just a lackey - a recruiter, as it were -  and that she had officially transferred ownership of my indentured servitude to a stallion that... well, to be honest, I had only ever heard stories about. “Linch Pin - King of the Equestrian Underworld. A pony that dresses so sharply that he cuts his bread with his cufflinks. He has a hoof in every shadow, and a shadow in every house. And he had a very... different idea about how to utilize my skills. “My ‘test run’ was cracking the safe-box of a small-town grocer. He hadn’t been paying his dues, and needed to be ‘taught a lesson’. I got my cutie mark a week later, breaking open the vault of a branch of the Central Equestrian Bank in Whinnyapolis. I’ll be honest - when that mark appeared, it really made me believe that that was what I was supposed to be doing. Thieving, robbing - opening doors that weren’t supposed to be opened. “A year or so later, there was a... jewelry store in Manehattan. They were supposedly holding on to a collection of priceless Saddle Arabian artifacts for the Manetropolitan Museum. Turned out the whole thing was a setup by the Royal Guard, just to catch me. Which is... flattering, I guess. It worked. I got carted off to Alcatrot, smacked with a life sentence. A few weeks of rotting later, they came back and offered me a deal: I could stay in prison for the rest of my days, or I could give them every scrap of information I had on Linch Pin and his networks, in exchange for a commuted sentence - possibly even a job, if my info was good enough. “I accepted, of course. I was young, I was scared - I hadn’t even wanted to be a criminal in the first place. But then...” Shift turned to look at Gaston, chuckling slightly, a strange, goofy grin plastered across his face. “But then, the day before my hearing, this... thrice-damned, galavanting griffon comes in, busts my flank out of jail, and ruins... everything!” He burst out laughing, forcing the rest of his words out between bouts of giggles. “So - so now, Linch hates Gaston because he didn’t bring me back, and the Guard hates Gaston because he broke a prisoner out of their top joint like taking candy from a foal, and Linch hates me because his moles in the Guard found out I was gonna squeal, and the Guard hates me because they think I’m back with Linch!” His laughter escalated maniacally, echoing down the dark stone corridors. His head bucked backwards with every gasp of breath, threatening to topple the unicorn like a tower of blocks. The light from his horn flickered like a flame in the wind. Gaston watched with a mixture of shared amusement and extreme worry. He had never really thought about their situation that way, but, in his opinion, Shift was finding it far funnier than seemed healthy. Slowly, the unicorn petered out, his last few guffaws spluttering like an engine out of oil. He wiped the mirthful tears from his eyes with one hoof, and took a deep, blissful breath. “Yup,” he said eventually. “Everyone hates us, and we only have each other. But you know what?” He looked back up at the door. “I don’t mind.” Gaston’s eyes widened in surprise. What? Shift didn’t seem to notice, and continued. “Sure, he can be a bit of a bastard, sometimes - but so can I. I know that. And sometimes, he makes me feel like less than a fly on a cow patty, but... sometimes I need that. Besides -” He turned to look at the griffon once again, smiling peacefully, his eyes shimmering. “I can always get back at him.” Gaston sat speechless and open-beaked, staring in amazement. “We try to stay on the straight and narrow - well, on the less-curved and thinner, anyway. But the truth is, I would do anything for him. And... maybe it’s naive, but... I like to think he’d do the same for me. He’s like the... brother... father... uncle-thing that I never had. And... I don’t know what I’d do without him.” There was awkward silence as Shift and Gaston stared at each other, and it seemed like something else should really have been happening - like, for instance, a nearby door opening dramatically - but nothing did. Eventually, Shift turned back to the door, and cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about it.” A few more seconds ticked past, but the door remained obstinately inactive. Shift let out a deep breath, and plopped down onto the floor. “Well,” he said. “That was therapeutic.” “No bucking kidding!” Gaston exclaimed, speaking for the first time in minutes. “Hey!” Shift frowned at him. “Language!” “I’ll curse at you all I want, you sad sack of dingo-dung! What am I, your secret lover, or something?” Shift opened his mouth to retort, but found himself chuckling instead. “It did sound like that, didn’t it?” he asked, covering his mouth with the back of one hoof, an embarrassed smile coloring his cheeks. “You’re bucking right, it did!” Gaston said, his own grin widening. For a few moments, they both just laughed at each other - and it was the happiest either of them had ever been. “You know what?” Shift asked. “I don’t even care about what’s behind there anymore. This - just this was worth coming for.” “Oh, stuff it, you sappy mule-wife.” Suddenly, the runes around the door glowed bright blue. Unicorn and griffon watched as a single, large symbol appeared, etched in light in the center of the door. Then, the stone split in two, and the halves slid to the sides, revealing the darkness beyond. “...What did that say?” Gaston asked. “Um... ‘Pure’, I think.” “Huh. A door that you have to not want to open to open.” “Tricky bastards,” Shift murmured, rising to his hooves. The door led into a large, circular room - at least, they assumed it was circular, because what they could see of the walls curved slightly before leaving their pool of light. They stood on a platform, about ten feet square, that jutted out from the wall. Below them was nothing but a dark and empty void. “How deep is that?” Gaston wondered aloud. Shift looked around for loose rocks or rubble, but there were none to be found. Wordlessly, he tossed his quartz-tipped rod out over the edge. They both twisted their heads to listen for it hitting the bottom. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... “Damn,” Gaston said, impressed. Shift turned around, and noticed small, crystalline shapes - half-spheres - jutting out of the wall every few feet. They looked very similar to the sort of prismatic lighting used in the more high-end mansions of Unicornia. Light wasn’t his specialty, but he charged up a feeble bolt anyway, and fired it at the nearest crystal. The bolt bounced into the sphere, and to his amazement, it stuck inside. A feeble glow began to emanate from it, supplementing his horn’s own light. A few more feet of wall became visible, and with it, a few more of the spheres. He fired another bolt, and another, working his way along the wall. Then, about a dozen spheres later, they began to light themselves. Slowly, at first, like a fuse or a candle wick - but soon, light was spreading like wildfire. The orbs winked into life all along the wall, circling back around to the other side of the platform. The chamber looked to be fifty paces across, at least. Then, orbs began to light on the levels below. Gaston and Shift Key watched as the room came to life. Pathways began to flicker into existence - one, then three, then twenty - circle upon circle upon circle, extending down into the depths. Along each pathway, spaced between the orbs of light, were dozens and dozens of doors, each one open to a room. Through the closer archways, they could see things - things on pedestals, platforms, and floors - dark things, shiny things, large things, small things - but unquestionably, valuable things. They looked and each other, and smiled. “Shift,” Gaston said. “Go get the rope.”