My Little Exalt

by Lithl


17 The Invisible Fortress, Day Six (I)

This chapter has not been edited yet


My Little Exalt
THE INVISIBLE FORTRESS, DAY SIX

by: Lithl

special thanks:
Rhanite


Dear Spike,
My leg is still a bit sore, thanks for asking. I obliterated the crenellation that dared break and drop a chunk of stone on me, but that doesn't fix a fractured metatarsal. Letting out some frustration felt pretty good, though. Fluttershy used her anesthetic power to dull the pain, but that's worn off. She told me not to put weight on it and that I should be fine in a day or so. Do you know how awkward it is to walk around on just three legs?!
Pinkie is still missing. The five of us have been able to find neither hide nor hair of her since she escaped, even with the Guardian's help, and we still haven't found the entrance to the Final Retreat. Maybe that nag found the entrance and closed it up behind her.
Rainbow got herself into a fight with a group of training dummies (don't ask) and she's sporting a black eye for her troubles. Personally I think she's holding one of her wings funny too, but if she's actually injured you'd think Fluttershy would help. Rarity has been whining day and night about everything from the dirt to the way Rainbow looks at her. Seriously! She really did complain about how Rainbow was staring at her last night at dinner!
We had a few demons break their way in just after dinner, through a hole in the attic. They found a route downstairs that bypassed any functional demonbane lights and trashed our food stores along with the summoning circle. I had to blow their flanks into next Tuesday and repair the circle – without help from any of my "friends," I might add! At least the Guardian is still helping me out; even if he couldn't help to vanquish the demons, he was an invaluable resource in repairing the circle, and his mirrors prevented those demons from sneaking up behind me. I didn't cast the spell to restock our supplies after fixing the circle; I'll do it when I'm hungry, and if those selfish nags get hungry in the mean-time, well tough. They should've helped me solve the food problem if they wanted extra food.
Who's there?
Rainbow Dash? I'm a little busy composing my message to Spike, what are you doing up here?
What do you mean, "good morning?" Did I really... I stayed up all night, didn't I?
You found the WHAT?! Come on, let's go!


A large oval sand-floored arena sat in the basement of the manse, directly underneath the grand salon on the ground floor. Stone stadium seating rose in tiers on each side of the room: enough seating for all of the mortal attendants to watch their Solar masters display martial prowess.

Three bronze human statues had been trashed and stacked in a heap at one end of the pit, the "culprits" of Rainbow Dash's very visible bruise. Rainbow Dash led Twilight towards the opposite end of the arena, where the other Solar ponies stood waiting. A trap door stood open near the wall, with a thin chain preventing the wood from falling to the sand.

There was an uncomfortable tension in the air, which only grew as Twilight and Rainbow drew closer to the rest of the group. Nonpony was willing to maintain eye contact with anypony else for more than a moment. There was awkward silence as everypony stood around the hole in the floor of the arena, staring at the stone steps leading into the dark abyss.

Fluttershy broke the silence and said, "Are you sure this is the Final Retreat? I mean, I'm sure you're right, I just... um... nevermind."

Rainbow bristled at the implication. "Of course I'm sure! I wouldn't have brought each and every one of you down here if I wasn't sure!"

"Who pissed on your breakfast, Rainbow?" Twilight asked. "We just want to be certain this is our destination before we go gallivanting off into some unknown dark space. Not like that's out of character for you, but we'd like a little more than just your word."

Rainbow whirled on Twilight and stalked towards the unicorn with a fire in her eyes. Twilight didn't even twitch an ear, but Rarity leaned away from the pegasus, almost imperceptibly. "Nopony 'pissed on my breakfast,' Twilight, because we didn't have any breakfast. I wonder whose fault that was, hmm?" Twilight turned up her nose and looked away. Rainbow backed off, but her mouth turned up in a prideful smirk. "I understand. I'm no Element of Honesty. How can you trust me at my word? But I did my research, Sparkle. The guardian can't see this trap door, even now."

That got Twilight's attention. The one thing she'd been unable to learn from the spirit of the manse was the location of the Final Retreat. Based on her conversations with him, it seemed the original Solars had either built the Final Retreat in such a way as to conceal its presence from him, even today, or else they had edited his perceptions and memories after the fact, making him actually incapable of perceiving the addition to the manse.

The Guardian knew of the Final Retreat's existence, of course. That knowledge was simply a matter of deduction, as the Guardian could see anyone coming and going from the manse. Beyond knowing that the Final Retreat was real, however, the Guardian was of little help in discovering it. If what Rainbow said was true and the Guardian could not see the trap door that was now in plain sight rather than buried under a layer of sand, then chances were good that the goal was near. Soon, they'd be able to return to Equestria. Perhaps Princess Celestia would even tell Twilight she'd completed her assignment in Ponyville, and she could return to the princess's side in Canterlot.

Applejack took the first step towards the darkness. "Well, what are we waitin' for, y'all? Let's get this over with and get out of here!" Just before she disappeared into the inky black, she flared her caste mark and the sunburst on her forehead illuminated the stairs as she descended. The other ponies present did not waste much time before following her below, single-file.


The stairs soon gave way to a slightly sloping tunnel. The tunnel opened up from the initial narrow stairway into something where the five ponies could easily walk side-by-side and not feel crowded. Unvoiced tension from the girls at the front of the line slowly turned the procession from single file to five abreast.

The tunnel was a perfect square in cross-section, save for the fact that the stone was very rough, rather than the smooth – and in some cases, polished – stonework in the manse above. Paired columns supported the ceiling along the walls, and the walls also sported familiar engraved sunburst designs as well as ceramics in relief at irregular intervals. Many of the decorations surrounded glass orbs similar to the demonbane lights located throughout the manse, although after a brief investigation Twilight declared that while they would produce light given power, these orbs had no power over demons.

Arcane glyphs also dotted the walls. Twilight identified some of them as passive wards, but none seemed designed to be traps. Certainly, none would explode as you looked at them.

After several minutes of walking, the girls spied the end of the tunnel, blocked by a stone door. The ponies broke into a canter to reach the door, but as they passed the second-to-last pair of columns a sound startled each of the Solars; skidding to a stop, they looked back in tandem to see a series of wickedly curved blades spinning up from between the stone tiles, slashing through the space they had occupied only a moment before. Had they maintained their single-file march, everypony but Applejack would have been in grievous trouble. Each Bearer looked to another and gulped: the Final Retreat was no freer of traps than the manse itself, and might be even more dangerous. They would have to proceed with caution if they wished to survive the quest for the artifact.

The other Solars stood some distance away while Rainbow Dash tried the door. With muscles tensed and ready to leap away at the first sign of a trap, she tried the lever next to it, and nothing happened. She gave the door an experimental push, and it glided open on perfectly balanced hinges with nary a squeak.

On the other side of the room directly opposite the door, two giant stone human arms protruded from the wall. The hands at the end of each arm were missing, as was the door between the two arms – the large volume of stone debris told a story of what had happened.

"Looks like we've found what happened to Pinkie," Twilight whispered.

"What d'ya mean, Twilight?"

"Look at the scorch marks on the stone, Applejack. If that isn't the result of Pinkie's cannon, I'll eat your hat."

"Um... I don't think that's how the expression goes," Fluttershy whispered.

"Why are we whispering?" Rainbow asked, also keeping her voice down.

Without answering the chromatic pegasus, Twilight ventured toward the two arms slowly, cautiously. When they didn't react to her presence, she stepped through the doorway and picked her way through the stone debris.

On the other side of the devastated door, a short flight of stairs led down into a hexagonal room. Some of the stone debris had found its way into this room as well, but the room was mostly carpeted with butterfly-shaped shards of glass. Fluttershy stepped into the room behind Twilight and gasped at the sight. She picked up one of the glass butterflies and asked, "Can I keep one?"

Twilight shrugged, "It's no fur off my flank. Knock yourself out."

Rarity entered next, and she scrutinized the glass with her craftsmare's eyes. "This is the same crystal-glass material used in the gates to that Yu-Shan place Pinkie took us to." The fashionista drew out a piece of spare cloth from her saddlebag and ran it along the edge of the butterfly's wing. With nothing more than the aid of gravity, the cloth was neatly sliced in two. "And against the grainline, no less," she muttered to herself. Rarity turned back to her saddlebag and eventually produced another piece of cloth – this one made from rock-yarn. Rarity wrapped several of the most intact butterflies in her swath of rock-yarn fabric before stowing them in her saddlebags for later use.

"I don't think there's anything here for us, girls. The room's a dead end," Twilight sighed with frustration. Her trot around the room revealed five doors, each of which opened easily but revealed nothing but solid stone.

"Girls, y'all better come back up here," called Applejack from the broken door at the top of the stairs. "Pinkie left us another trail of destruction."

More scorch marks marked a corner of the 'arm room,' along the same wall as the entrance. Again, a rubble-strewn hole in the wall led further into the Final Retreat, although this hole was much smaller – barely wide enough for a single pony.

On the other side, a hallway similar to the entrance led to a door. Rather, it led to the remains of a door. More of Pinkie's hoofwork: the door at the end of the hall was pulverized, as well as a portion of the wall it opened into – the door was false, just like the ones in the 'butterfly room.' Some mechanism next to the door had also been mangled, although it appeared to have been bucked into oblivion rather than destroyed by Pinkie's cannon. A few short spans in front of the false door, a gaping pit lay open – another trap apparently destroyed during Pinkie's romp through the Final Retreat.

Rarity began thinking aloud, "I wonder if Zecora's with Pinkie?" One of the walls of the hallway had been knocked through by Pinkie's cannon – another secret door revealed. The party of ponies ducked into the new hallway. "I can't say this is exactly the most elegant way to travel around secret passages."

Rainbow scoffed, "Like anypony but you cares about traveling through secret tunnels 'elegantly.'"

"Ya gotta admit, though, Pinkie's wake of destruction is makin' it a might bit easier on us. Ah'd rather not fall into pits an' such, and she's clearly marked 'em all," Applejack drawled. Indeed, the new corridor the girls found themselves in was littered with multiple pits burst open with the same destructive force they had been trailing since the start. Each pit left only a small ledge on one side of the hall on which a pony could pass.

The third such pit had a ladder leading into the bottom, and another "door" formed through the pit's wall. Pinkie had certainly taken the brute-force approach to trailblazing. "Which way do we go?" Fluttershy asked; though Pinkie had clearly taken a route down through the pit, the hallway continued onwards to another door.

"I'm going to follow Pinkie. She escaped confinement, but continued our mission – on her own – rather than continuing her rampage or talking to us. I want answers," Twilight said as she began to lower herself into the pit, awkwardly climbing down the ladder designed for human bodies.

"Buck that!" Rainbow Dash cried. "We should check out that room first—"

"—I'm with Twilight!" Rarity squeaked a little too enthusiastically before Rainbow could finish her thought.

"—We need to at least check it for the artifact we're here to get," Rainbow finished.

"Rainbow's right. We need ta check every room fer the artifact."

The two unicorns made their way into the pit. The two athletes advanced on the closed door. Fluttershy stood at the edge of the pit, looking back and forth between her two pairs of friends, indecisive.

Fluttershy closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. She thought back to something she'd heard Shining Armor say once.

"You never split the squad! Put the medics in the back to render aid quickly. The mage goes in the middle, where she can easily direct her magic in any direction. And never let that Tartarus-damned merc out of your sight!"

Fluttershy shook her head. She didn't think most of the guard-captain's overheard strategy advice would apply, but "never split the party" sounded like good advice to her. When she opened her eyes again, though, the door had just shut behind Applejack and Rainbow Dash, and Rarity and Twilight Sparkle had both disappeared into the next section of the Final Retreat in their pursuit of Pinkie Pie.


The first thing that Rainbow and Applejack noticed as they entered the next room was that the lights were functioning; although the light was dim, the room was fully lit. To the left and right were two more stone doors.

Without hesitation, Rainbow Dash walked up to the left door, turned the handle, and pulled. She leapt back to avoid any trap that might have been laid on the door, but no trap was sprung. The door, however, opened into more stone wall – a fake. "Are you feathering kidding?! Every other door in this place is a fake! A waste of time!" The pegasus galloped to the opposite side of the empty square room and yanked the other door open without caution. Again, the door was a fake. Rainbow growled in frustration.

Applejack, much calmer than her prismatic partner, coughed to get Rainbow's attention. Applejack pointed to a gap along the floor of the wall opposite the entrance: a secret door had failed to close properly, jammed by a small pebble. "Could y'all give me a hoof?" she asked. Grumbling under her breath, Rainbow joined Applejack at the secret door and the pair began to lift the heavy stone.

When the door was halfway open, it seemed to catch on its mechanism and lift the rest of the way on its own. On the other side of the door was a small alcove filled with piles of gold and silver, along with a few closed chests. A wall of steel bars blocked the path to the treasure trove.

Applejack removed her hat and pressed it against her chest. "Well ain't that somethin'?" Her eyes glistened in the light reflected off the precious metals.

"We should check those chests. Who knows whether the artifact is in one of them?" Rainbow seemed to have control of her faculties, but her eyes were glistening as much as Applejack's.

The wall held a locked gate to one side, which would grant access to the piles of treasure. Rainbow considered the lock for a moment before plucking a feather from one of her wings and inserting it into the keyhole. After a minute of manipulating the feather in the lock, a soft click sounded from the gate, and it began to swing loose.

At the same time, Rainbow heard a deep rumbling from the room's entrance. Her pegasi instincts forced her to scan upwards when she turned and that split-second decision granted her a view of a block of stone just above the entrance start shifting. Rainbow would later claim that her extensive experience reading the Daring Do novels gave her the impetus to run, but the truth was much more primal: a deep-seated instinctual fear of being trapped under ground that every pegasus shares to one degree or another.

With a wordless shout, Rainbow Dash ran for the entrance of the treasure room. Her exclamation prompted Applejack to turn and pay attention, but by the time the farmer had processed what was going on, it was far too late for her to escape, even at top speed. Rainbow Dash was underneath the heavy stone block as it was falling, and she was jerked to a sudden stop just outside the room when the block landed on the tip of her tail.

Inside the treasure room, Applejack began pounding on the stone block with her hooves. "Rainbow! Are ya out there?! Get me outta here!"

Applejack stopped shouting when she heard a popping noise behind her, near the treasure pile. When she turned around, she saw one of the chests had opened of its own accord, and some sort of nozzle had extended from within. A feeling of dread washed over the earth pony.

Outside, Rainbow hadn't been able to understand exactly what Applejack was shouting, merely that she was shouting. The shouting stopped for a moment. "AJ?" Rainbow whispered. Before she could open her mouth to speak again, Applejack's shouting began again in earnest. This time, there was no need to interpret the words – there were none.

Pain. Agony. Torment. Suffering. The emotions in Applejack's wordless cries carried through the stone exceptionally well. Rainbow Dash's throat tightened up and tears began to form in the corners of her eyes. Her reaction could have been emotion... or it could have been a physical reaction to the smoke seeping through the crack between stone block and doorway. Distracted as she was, Rainbow Dash didn't notice when her tail came free of the stone block, shorter than before, the end singed black.

Applejack's screams did stop, eventually. Ten seconds after the screams began, the massive stone returned to the ceiling of its own accord. Rainbow was greeted with a pony-shaped pile of charcoal. Around the room, small puddles of oil still burned with a green flame. Rainbow Dash evacuated her stomach – what little it contained – before fleeing the scene as fast as possible. No good could come from that treasure.


Twilight and Rarity walked together into a pentagonal room. Directly opposite of the entrance was a corner formed by two of the five walls. To the left of the far corner was a door sporting a smiling porcelain face. To the right was an identical door with an identical face, save that the face was frowning. Between the two, suspended from the corner itself, was a third face with a neutral expression.

When the two ponies approached, the center face began moving and said, "One face tells truth and one face always lies, but both say only 'Yes' or 'No.' One question you may ask, to find the fortunate path." As the face finished its speech, Fluttershy walked in the room behind the unicorns, unnoticed.

Twilight scoffed, "The Liar's Puzzle? Seriously? This is foal's play." Twilight stepped up to the smiling face and said, "Would the other face tell me that your door was the safe one?"

The smiling face spoke with the same voice as the neutral one, "No."

"Excellent," Twilight said as she reached to open the door with the smiling face.

"Wait!" Rarity cried out. Twilight sighed and stopped. "The face just said it was the wrong door! We need to go through the other one."

Twilight wheeled on Rarity. "Let's assume the smiling face tells the truth and the frowning face lies. If the smiling face covers the safe door, the frowning face would lie and say 'no' to the question 'is the smiling face's door safe?' So, the smiling face – the truther – answered 'no' to my question. If the roles are reversed and the smiling one lies while the frowning one tells the truth, the smiling face would lie and say the opposite of what the frowning face would say. Either way, an answer of 'no' means I was asking the face in front of the safe door.

"If, instead, the smiling face covered the trapped door, the answers would be flipped, and I would have gotten a 'yes' whichever face was lying or telling the truth. It's a foal's puzzle, Rarity, really, you ought to know this one." Twilight finally noticed Fluttershy in the back of the room, raising a hoof to get the "teacher's" attention. "Yes, what is it, Fluttershy?"

"Um... I was just wondering... why would the Solars who built the manse need clues to avoid their own traps?"

"Who cares?! I solved the puzzle, and now we're going through this door and we're going to go find Pinkie and we're going to get some answers out of her! Then we're going to find the artifact, we're going to find the corpses of Larquen Quen and Meherrin, and we're going to GO HOME TO EQUESTRIA!" Twilight yanked on the smiling door's handle.

Rather than opening, the smiling face's eyes lit up like a Hearth's Warming tree. Without giving the three ponies any time to react, bolts of lightning lanced forth from the glowing eyes. Twilight was struck squarely in the chest and launched halfway across the room. Fluttershy's myotonia forced her legs to lock into position, and the lightning strike bowled her over, head over hocks.

Fluttershy, who had moved up closer to Rarity, would have knocked the fashionista over, had the unicorn not had the presence of mind to leap onto the forehead of the frowning mask. Though she had the narrowest of ledges to cling to – and one that curved smoothly downwards, at that – Rarity stood as though she had an entire stage to herself.

The miniature lightning storm did not last long, and eventually Rarity let herself back down to the floor to check on her companions. Fluttershy's pride was injured more than her body, and Twilight was able to move under her own power, despite complaining about a massive headache. Anticipating further aches, Fluttershy applied her anesthetic power and localized it to the black burn on Twilight's chest.

"Okay," Twilight wheezed, "I think perhaps the original Solars didn't need clues to the location of their traps, and designed this Liar's Puzzle to trick smart ponies."

Rarity pulled on the handle for the other door with her telekinesis... and the door opened without incident. She pulled the door all the way open, revealing another hallway with a cascade of stairs leading down, deeper into the mountain.

Four hooves dropped onto the stone tiles at the bottom of the pit forming the entrance to the Liar's Puzzle room. Everypony turned to see Rainbow Dash, alone. Her eyes were red and puffy, and as she walked into the room, she wiped at the edges of her mouth.

"Rainbow? Where's Applejack?" Fluttershy asked.

Rainbow shook her head, but said nothing. She walked onwards towards the open door and didn't look back.