“Vinyl! Do you hear me?!” Octavia shouted, slapping Vinyl once more. “We’ve reached the pyramid!” Vinyl showed no outwards response. A wave of dizziness hit Octavia as she thought to herself, Isn’t it odd how in fiction unconscious characters always wake up the moment they hear an important word? Real life is nothing like that at all.
Octavia put two hooves to Vinyl’s body and was going to try to shake her awake, but instead was hit by another wave of dizziness which instead made her pause and put her hooves to her head. Oh my, the poison seems to be affecting me now, Octavia realised. She had to wake Vinyl up now, or the two of them might never leave this jungle.
Although Octavia tried her best to shake Vinyl awake, the poison was draining the strength from her body. The jungle inexplicably darkened as Octavia continued to try to shake Vinyl. Was she even shaking Vinyl? Octavia certainly couldn’t feel her hooves any more. Maybe I’ll have a quick lie-down, Octavia thought, her head starting to feel light. I shall surely feel up to full strength once I am up. Lowering her body to the ground, Octavia’s last thought was that she needed to talk to Vinyl before falling unconscious.
Half an hour passed. There was little movement in the sunny area the two mares were lying unconscious in. Each mare was breathing slowly yet steadily. As time continued to pass, a visitor entered the area, although neither mare was aware of this.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Vinyl stirred. She slowly opened her eyes only to quickly shut them again – she had woken up with the sun’s glare directly in her face. “Urgh… my stomach,” Vinyl quietly muttered to herself as she registered burning pain. She could feel something fairly heavy and cold lying across her stomach, but was still too weak from the poison to bother seeing what it was.
After another moment of resting, Vinyl tried opening her eyes again, much more cautiously this time. Looking forwards, past the tree tops, she took note of a large pointy shape. What does that remind me of? she wondered. A moment later, she realised. “It’s the pyramid!” Vinyl said as loudly as she could. She started to get up, but was hindered by the heavy object lying across her stomach.
“What the hay is thAAARGH!” Vinyl shouted as she tilted her head to identify the mysterious object. Greeting her was a large brown snake with mottled black patterns. Not bothering to deal with the proper protocol for what to do upon waking up to find a snake basking across you and your friend, Vinyl kicked herself backwards, managing to get her body out from under the snake’s. It turned to face Vinyl and flicked its tongue at her, seemingly more out of curiosity than malice.
“Get the buck away from me!” Vinyl screamed, grabbing the snake in a telekinetic field and hurling it as far away as she could. It hissed angrily as it hit a tree, before slithering slowly away. As she started to calm down, Vinyl realised how fast her heart was beating – waking up with a snake on your chest tends to give you an adrenaline rush.
Vinyl’s panicked flailing seemed to have stirred Octavia back into some mild form of consciousness. Still lying on the ground, Octavia murmured quietly, “Vinyl…”, and moved one of her hooves forwards slightly. Other than that, there was no sign of Octavia waking up.
“Lucky Octavia,” Vinyl said, looking at her friend still lying on the ground. The adrenaline seemed to have worked most of the poison out of Vinyl’s body, and she was in pretty good condition at the moment. “You don’t have to wake up to a giant snake using your body for warmth.”
Looking closely at Octavia’s position, Vinyl suddenly got a weird thought. “Heh, if I was lying right there, it’d almost look as if you’re trying to cuddle me, Octavia.” This thought circled her head for another few moments before she noticed the flattened grass in the exact position she had just been examining. “Wait a minute… was I lying there?” she wondered out loud, trying to remember. “Was Octavia…?”
Vinyl shook her head. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter,” she said, trying to eliminate the thoughts that were cropping up in her mind. “The important thing is that I wake up Octavia so that she’ll be impressed when she realises that I’ve gotten us to the pyramid already! Plus, I noticed it first!” Vinyl moved closer to Octavia and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Yo! Octavia! Time to get up!” she said loudly, shaking her as she did so.
Octavia moved slightly, squinting up at the unicorn standing over her. “Vinyl…?” she asked confusedly.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” Vinyl said cheerfully. “The pyramid’s just over there! You ready to get going, or do you still need to recover?”
“No… if you want to get to the pyramid, I’d better not slow you down,” Octavia said quietly. She rolled slowly onto her stomach, wincing as her muscles, still sore from the crash the previous night, tensed. She got up onto her hooves. “Well, shall we depart?”
“You sure you’re good to enter the pyramid?” Vinyl asked, concerned. “You look pretty damn sick.”
“It’s nothing,” Octavia said, hoping that Vinyl didn’t notice her gripping her stomach in pain as she spoke. “The poison should hopefully wear off soon, judging by your health.”
“If you insist, filly,” Vinyl agreed, shrugging. “Now, follow me! Like I said before, the pyramid’s just over there!”
Octavia began speaking as they walked. “Do you know how long we were out f-”
SNAP!
A small shower of leaves from one of the nearby trees slowly floated to the ground as a moderate-sized stick sped past them. Octavia stopped speaking and looked upwards to the trees.
“What is it, Octavia?” Vinyl asked, not noticing anything.
“I think that there is somepony in that tree,” Octavia said simply, trying to see where the stick had fallen from. Unfortunately, the uppermost branches of the tree were too thick and darkened to see anything clearly from the ground.
“Pfft. Who’d follow us all the way here?” Vinyl scoffed. “We’re in the middle of the Amarezon, for buck’s sake! Plus, how many ponies could even get up there?”
“Darkhoof and Stumblefeather could,” Octavia pointed out, not taking her eyes off from the branches. “They could just fly up there.”
“Yeah, except you forget that they were captured by primitive tribesponies,” Vinyl pointed out. “They probably flew back to Cloudsdale in embarrassment after that!”
“I’m not so sure,” Octavia said cautiously.
“Don’t take everything so seriously,” Vinyl said dismissively, resuming walking to the pyramid. Octavia reluctantly followed. “Don’t forget, we’re gonna be inside a pyramid in a little while. Even if they are trying to follow us, they won’t be able to do that so sneakily inside the pyramid!”
“I suppose that is a valid point,” Octavia admitted. Although her condition wasn’t as great as Vinyl’s, she had already begun to sweat out some of the poison in the humid mid-day sun and was slowly recovering. “And there is no evidence to suggest that the branch couldn’t have simply been knocked down by the breeze or something similar.”
“Exactly!” Vinyl agreed. “Now, let’s get going to this pyramid! It’s gonna be -”
“We’re here,” Octavia interrupted, pointing a hoof to a set of stairs leading up to what seemed to be the pyramid entrance.
“…Oh,” Vinyl said, dejected. “That was faster than I thought.” She started heading up the stairs, followed closely by Octavia.
“Shouldn’t we be keeping an eye out for traps?” Octavia asked when they were around halfway up the stairs. “Considering that the temple we visited earlier was littered with traps, one would assume that this pyramid is as well.”
“Octavia, you’ve gotta stop being so suspicious of everything,” Vinyl said dismissively. As she placed a hoof onto the next step, there was a loud cracking noise. Instinctively, Vinyl jumped backwards. “Oh buck!” she shouted, somehow flinching mid-air. It was a moment before she realised that nothing was happening.
“Vinyl…” Octavia began after a moment of silence.
“Uh, yeah?”
“Could you please get down?” It was only now that Vinyl realised that Octavia had somehow caught her mid-air.
“Oh. Sorry,” Vinyl said, jumping back to the stairs. Looking at the spot she had stepped on, Vinyl realised that the ancient stone had merely cracked as a result of her stepping onto it, not as part of some elaborate trap. The two mares continued up the stairs, and within minutes were facing the entrance to the pyramid. Unlike the temple they had previously visited, the entrance to the pyramid was a simple doorway.
“I’m not so sure that I like the looks of this,” Octavia admitted.
“Oh, c’mon, Octavia,” Vinyl moaned. “What’s the problem this time?”
“Don’t you think that it’s a little suspicious that the entrance is so… simple?” Octavia asked. “The other temple we visited had those heavy doors sealing it. If the pyramid is so easy to get into, then don’t you suppose that somepony else might have gotten to the treasure already? No… this is too suspicious.”
“Whatever, Octavia,” Vinyl said, trotting casually up through the entrance. Octavia flinched, certain that Vinyl was going to suddenly be shot with thousands of arrows, but nothing of the sort happened. “They’ve obviously built the entranceway open to be friendly!” Vinyl said.
“I’m still not convinced,” Octavia said. She was hanging back a little way before the entrance, eyeing it cautiously. Or at least, she was, until Vinyl enveloped her in a telekinetic field and dragged her through the doorway, ignoring her complaints.
“You’ve gotta be more trusting, Octavia,” Vinyl said.
==============
After passing through several labyrinthine corridors, made of stone and littered with hieroglyphs as the walls of the temple had been, Vinyl and Octavia emerged into a large room. There were some slits in the walls, allowing plenty of light into the room. Opposite from where the two mares entered was a large stone door, which inexplicably had a gigantic stone panel on the ground in front of it.
Octavia opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Vinyl. “Don’t you dare say something about how careful we need to be and look for traps, or I’ll steal your hat from you.”
“You do realise that I am only being cautious, do you not?” Octavia grumbled. The two ponies headed across to the room and began examining the door. “How do you suppose it opens?” Octavia wondered.
“Dunno; I sure won’t be able to open it with my telekinesis,” Vinyl said. “It looks way too heavy… hey!” She was now examining the large panel in front of the door. “Maybe if we weigh this down with something, it’ll open the door!”
“…You are kidding, aren’t you?” Octavia asked. “Why would the tribesponies build such an elaborate opening mechanism and then put it right in front of the door? How would they build it, for that matter?”
“I dunno, but there’s some sorta block up there that looks heavy enough to weigh down this panel,” Vinyl pointed out. There was a ledge above the doorway the duo had entered, and on it was a large stone block.
“What in Eque- now you’re getting silly, Vinyl!” Octavia protested. Vinyl had enveloped the block with her telekinesis and was trying to move it enough that its weight would bring it crashing to the ground. “Why would they leave the block to weigh down the panel in the same room as the panel? What is the point of it, for that matter?”
“No idea,” Vinyl admitted. “It could be – ” she temporarily stopped talking as the block tilted over the edge of the ledge and fell loudly to the ground “- it could be a test. So, y’know, if you’re smart enough to get through the pyramid you deserve the treasure.”
“You are crazy, Vinyl Scratch,” Octavia said, shaking her head. She was watching Vinyl trying to physically push the block onto the panel, but it was too heavy for her to move on her own. “If that were the case, how would the tribesponies make their way to the treasure if they wanted to check up on it?”
“I have no bucking idea, Octavia,” Vinyl grunted, still trying to push the block. “But I’m just throwing around ideas. Can you give me some help here?”
Reluctantly, Octavia assisted Vinyl, and the two ponies were able to push the block onto the panel. Surprisingly, Vinyl turned out to be completely correct, and as its weight pushed down the panel, the door slid open easily.
“Told ya,” Vinyl said, grinning.
“But… how could that-?” Octavia said, stunned. “The mechanics could not have been built by – the tribesponies would not have been able to reach the block because – and how is pushing a Celestia-damned block onto a panel a challenging puzzle?!”
Vinyl shrugged and walked through the doorway into the next corridor. “Beats me, but it’s probably better not to think about it too much, Octavia. Coming?”
Sighing, Octavia followed her unicorn friend through the corridor and into another large room. As they entered, the door behind them slid shut loudly. “Now there’s another thing,” Octavia pointed out. “How come the door only shuts when we enter the –”
“Just don’t think about it, Octavia,” Vinyl reminded her. This room was similar to the last one, although rather than a doorway opposite the entrance to the room, there was a large wall which nearly covered the entire opposite end of the room. There was a gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling, but the wall was so large that if there was anything above the gap it was impossible to tell. Finally, there were two large spouts emerging from the wall.
“So I guess we’ve gotta get over that wall somehow,” Vinyl speculated, craning her neck upwards. “Do you reckon we could climb using the hieroglyphs, Octavia?”
“I don’t think so,” Octavia answered, moving closer to the wall to examine it. “None of them really jut out far enough to make decent hoof-holds.” As she stepped back from the wall, her hoof pressed a tile which began to depress. Before it could depress in its entirety, however, Vinyl grabbed Octavia in a telekinetic field and pushed her away.
“Careful, Octavia,” she warned. “Wouldn’t wanna activate some traps now, would you?”
“Thanks,” Octavia said. “The last thing we need is for another trap – say, what’s that noise?” A splashing noise had begun sounding. It took the two ponies a few moments of looking around before they identified the source - water had begun to flow at a steady rate from each spout.
“Oh buck!” Vinyl swore. “You accidentally did activate a trap!”
“Oh no,” Octavia said, feeling embarrassed and ashamed now. “What shall we do?”
“We, um… we…” Vinyl Scratch paced back and forth slightly, trying to think of something. The water was flowing fast enough that despite the fairly large size of the room, it was already halfway up each pony’s leg. Vinyl looked upwards to the wall. “Damn, if only we could work out a way to get up there!”
Octavia’s mind started working in overdrive as she tried to work out a way up the wall. Finally, she saw the solution. “Vinyl, I’ve got it!” she said happily. By now, the ponies were neck-deep in the water.
“What is it?!” Vinyl said hastily. She was starting to panic now.
“The water isn’t here as a trap – it’s the solution to the puzzle!” Octavia said triumphantly. Vinyl gave her an odd look which was interrupted by her coughing and spluttering as some water went up her nose. “We just have to use the water to float over the wall!” Octavia explained.
“You sure?” Vinyl asked hesitantly. Both ponies now had to tread the water to keep from sinking below the surface.
“Well, it is a little odd that the switch wasn’t fully depressed yet the water began filling the room,” Octavia admitted. “But nevertheless, I am sure that this is the solution to get out of this room!"
“Alright, let’s try it your way then!” Vinyl agreed. The two mares spent the next few minutes treading water, staying silent lest they accidentally swallow some water. However, it wasn’t long before they encountered a new problem.
“Octavia! Look!” Vinyl said, quickly pointing a hoof before resuming paddling.
“Oh no,” Octavia moaned despairingly. “What in Equestria is that doing there?” The grey Earth Pony had made a fatal mistake – she had assumed that the top of the wall was going to have room for the two ponies to climb over. Instead, what they found was a set of stone bars, giving them literally no room to manoeuvre.
“What do we do now?” Vinyl asked, flailing in the water as she started to sink slightly. The two ponies were still a good ten metres or so below the top of the wall, but, at the rate they were rising, it would only be a few more minutes before they reached it. “The water will just flow out over the wall, right? We can just float up top and wait for it to stop!”
“No, Vinyl –” Octavia paused as she struggled to bring her head back up onto the surface of the water “ - we can’t. What if the water keeps flowing for another hour? We’d be exhausted long before then and drown.” Octavia was already starting to feel sore from her earlier injuries, and really wanted to just get out of this room. Or better yet, the entire jungle – to return to Canterlot, have a nice, long, shower, and then collapse into bed for the next week.
“I might have an idea,” Vinyl said. Whilst Octavia had been daydreaming, Vinyl had apparently been thinking up of a solution to their situation.
“What is it?” Octavia asked. Truth be told, she couldn’t see any way out of their situation, unless Vinyl suddenly revealed that her telekinesis had grown strong enough to destroy the bars preventing their escape, or opened her saddlebag and brought out snorkels and goggles.
“Well, what if –” Vinyl started before sinking under the surface of the water. The water had nearly risen to its maximum height by now. “What if the sw-” Vinyl tried again, before being swallowed up once more. Octavia continued to tread water furiously, waiting for her friend to break the surface of the water. A moment later, her wish was granted. “Oh, buck it,” Vinyl spluttered, trying to cough up water as she spoke. “Just follow me.” With that, Vinyl sunk below the water, voluntarily this time.
Octavia only hesitated for a brief moment before slipping under the water. If whatever Vinyl’s plan was didn’t work, then what other options did they have? Squinting in the water, Octavia spotted Vinyl headed for the bottom of the room. How come it is always in novels that the protagonists can see perfectly underwater? Octavia wondered as she swam towards the white blur she assumed was Vinyl. And what’s more, they never seem to mind getting so much water in their eyes.
Within a few moments, Octavia had reached the bottom of the room. Vinyl had surrounded the tile Octavia had accidentally stepped on earlier with a telekinetic field, and was depressing it. In the name of Celestia, what are you trying? Octavia wondered. She could feel her chest starting to tighten – she probably had half a minute’s worth of air left at best.
The tile depressed completely, and to Octavia’s surprise, a tile to the side of it slid to the side, revealing a hidden underwater passageway. How did Vinyl know about that?! Octavia wondered. Vinyl swam through the passageway first, her lungs presumably as close to bursting as Octavia’s, with the grey mare following as soon as she could.
Fortunately, the path was a short one – it seemed to just lead underneath the large wall, where the only water was that slowly spilling out of the underwater passageway. Octavia and Vinyl Scratch pulled themselves out of the passageway, gasping for air as they did so. For several minutes, they were content to simply lay there, happy that they were still alive.
“How did you know about that passageway?” Octavia asked. Her breathing was still fairly heavy.
“I figured that since the water started flowing without you stepping on the tile, it might have another purpose,” Vinyl answered. “I was pretty much just having a wild stab in the dark though.”
“Well, good guess, Vinyl,” Octavia answered. “I’d take my hat off to you, but it is still in my bag and is likely soaking wet.”
“It’s cool, Octavia,” Vinyl answered, slowly getting up. “It’s the thought that counts, after all. Now, are we ready to keep going?”
==============
“Oh my gosh,” Vinyl said as she and Octavia entered the next room. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh!!” Inexplicably, she ran across the room, which, unlike the previous two, was simply a large, plain room, and to the door.
“Vinyl, wait a moment!” Octavia called after her. “What if there’s a tr-” Her voice died mid-sentence, and Octavia sighed as she realised how futile it was to try to stop Vinyl when she was excited about something.
“Look at this!” Vinyl said excitedly. She was pointing a hoof at the exit doors, which were gigantic and made out of some sort of black stone. They had a series of elaborate carvings and symbols carved into them, and towards the bottom there were two rectangular slots. “It’s the door to the treasure!” Vinyl claimed, bouncing up and down slightly in joy.
“Are you sure?” Octavia asked. “We’ve only really passed two rooms full of traps and a hoofful of corridors… is that really all that is between foalish treasure hunters and the treasure?”
“’Course it is,” Vinyl said. “See these two slots here? I bet that they’re for the tablets, so that’s why there’s not that many traps!” She took out the tablets and levitated them for Octavia to see. With the tablets being held up next to the doors, it was obvious to see that they were made out of the same sort of stone.
“Fair enough then,” Octavia agreed. “Although, I would hold off on putting those tablets in too soon if I were you, though.”
“Huh? What makes you say that?” Vinyl asked. She had already been halfway through slotting in the tablets when Octavia spoke, but she stopped now to listen to the grey Earth Pony.
“Have you taken notice of those carvings on the door?” Octavia asked, pointing a hoof. Vinyl looked to where she was pointing, where there were several images in succession: one of a pony placing a crude tablet into the doors only to be set on fire, and another in which a pony placed a tablet and the doors opened. “I’m fairly sure that those are supposed to be warnings,” Octavia said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
“Yeah, but those’d just be to scare off paranoid ponies,” Vinyl said confidently. “We’re past the hard stuff and we’ve got the tablets here – I’ll bet you anything that we’ll be fine if I put the tablets into these slots now.”
“You don’t have anything to bet with,” Octavia reminded Vinyl cheekily. Her voice immediately snapped back to serious a moment later, as she pointed out something else which she hadn’t noticed when she first entered the room. “What about those slots there?” she asked. “If fire were to spout from them, we’d undoubtedly be in trouble.”
“C’mon, Octavia!” Vinyl whined. “Why do you have to complicate everything? It’s pretty darn obvious that this door is safe.”
“I ‘complicate everything’, as you put it, because I am merely trying to be cautious,” Octavia snapped. “Or have you forgotten the number of times I have saved the two of us on this little expedition?"
“Yeah, and what about me?” Vinyl countered. “I’ve been just as useful as you – heck, if it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t have the tablets to get through the door right now!”
“Oh, and who is the one who wishes to get through the door?” Octavia argued, getting frustrated now. They were nearly at their journey’s end; couldn’t Vinyl listen to her for just five more minutes? “Because if it were up to me, we would leave this pyramid right now and light a signal fire in the hope that some rescue pegasi would find us.”
“Yeah? Well it’s not up to you, is it, Octavia?” Vinyl asked. “And I say there’s no trap, so I’m gonna put the tablets in.”
“No, Vinyl!” Octavia protested. “It might not be safe!” She jumped forwards and made a weak attempt to prevent at least one of the tablets from being slotted into the door. As she grabbed one of them, Vinyl tried to telekinetically move it out of the way, resulting in an odd struggle between the two. It lasted a few moments, until…
CLICK!
The two mares stopped their fighting as they took in what had happened during the struggle: somehow, both tablets had been knocked about as they were being fitted in and been slotted in upside-down. A loud rumbling started to erupt from the doors, and the slots Octavia had noticed started to shake.
“Oh, buck,” Vinyl said, taking several steps back from the door.
“I warned you!” Octavia said, also backing away. The rumbling suddenly subsided and, to the two ponies’ surprise, the doors swung open silently. “…What in the name of Celestia’s mane just happened?” Octavia asked.
“…I was right about there being no trap?” Vinyl suggested half-heartedly. Octavia walked around to one side of one of the doors.
“How about that?!” She laughed as she examined it. “We were both right!”
“Really?... You’re making that up,” Vinyl said, trotting over to her to see what she was on about.
“No, really, it’s true!” Octavia said. She pointed a hoof at the carvings she had been so cautious of before. “I didn’t notice it then, but there’s a small arrow next to the tablet on each of the carvings. It looks as though inserting the tablets upside-down prevents the trap from being activated!”
“Huh,” Vinyl said, examining the carving for herself. “So if we hadn’t gotten into that squabble…”
“…We would be out of the picture, as it were,” Octavia finished.
“Well then, it looks like I owe you an apology,” both mares said at the same time, before bursting out into laughter as they realised that they’d both been thinking exactly the same thing.
“C’mon, Octavia,” Vinyl said, still chuckling slightly. “Let’s go get that treasure!”
“Not so fast!” a vaguely familiar voice barked out from behind the two ponies. They spun around to see Baron von Darkhoof and Stumblefeather emerging from the corridor. “Don’t you dare enter that room! That treasure is mine!” Darkhoof shouted.
“Darkhoof!” Octavia gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“I am taking my rightful inheritance, of course,” he said. With a sneer on his face, he added, “By the way, thank you for opening that door for me and solving all of the puzzles in the rest of the pyramid. It made it much easier for Stumblefeather and I to make our way through here.” For emphasis, he stomped on the ground slowly, sarcastically thanking them.
“Oh my Celestia,” Vinyl breathed as he did so, “that looks so stupid.”