The journey to the temple was... awkward.
Most of the trip, Shining and the others were quite nervous with Fukkuteru, and the Kurosidae enjoyed teasing them; wherever they kept staring at him, he playfully told them he didn't bite... much. The black dragon always let out a hearty laugh when he saw the ponies' reaction, particularly when Spike fainted after hearing the word 'bite' come out of his fellow dragon's mouth. Besides this fact, Fukkuteru was often shrouded in mystery. Wherever the ponies asked him about his species or where he came from, the dragon would simply reply that he would rather not talk about it. Spike himself knew little about the Kurosidae species, since they were reclusive and hostile to other dragons (the baby dragon was surprised Fukkuteru was polite with him), and nopony had been capable of documenting any writings about the Kurosidae.
Fukkuteru knew the desert much more than the inhabitants themselves, like Stormfly had previously explained to the group. Apparently, he spent more time out at the desert than in the abandoned barn he lived in. The dragon would often fly away to scout the area every now and then, and return to the group afterwards. Apparently, the temple had some sort of defense mechanism, and was invisible to the naked eye until dawn, exactly six a.m. it would appear, like a mirage. However, after that, they only had ten minutes before it disappeared again.
After three days of traveling, the exhausted group finally came to the bottom of a canyon, the apparently vast desert stretching out to the horizon. There was not a tree on sight, not a single cloud on the sky, and the sky was still a little dark; but soon, the colors started changing from the deepest blue to a hot pink, then blood red and soon fiery orange was added into the sky's colorful display. Fukkuteru lied down on the sand, stretching out his wings and moving his tail right and left (the ponies figured Kurosidae did that when they were thinking). The black dragon pressed his open wings against the soft sand, then turned towards the group.
"Everypony, get on my back."
The entire group gave the dragon an incredulous look.
"On you back?" Applejack gulped, "Y-You mean... We're going to fly?"
"That's right, if we ran we wouldn't get to the temple in time and we would have to wait for next morning to see it again."
Rainbow Dash spoke, "What about me and Stormfly? We have wings too, I don't think we need to and besides," the pegasus dove into the air with a proud grin on her face, "I could get there before you could say 'Kurosidae!'"
Fukkuteru grinned teasingly, "Then you've yet to see how fast a Kuros can fly."
Applejack gulped as she and the non-flying ponies climbed on the black dragon's back, although Shining was not sure if Fukkuteru would be able to carry all of them at once. Spike trembled as he felt the dragon's scales on his belly, Screwball decided to climb on Fukkuteru's head, much to the dragon's annoyance, but he said nothing about it. But the ponies trembled when the dragon stood up; he was taller than he looked. Rainbow Dash elbowed the dragon's leg.
"How about a race to the temple?"
"NO!" Applejack, Shining and Spike fired out in dismay.
"Yeah! A race! Cool!" Screwball cheered from the Kuros's head, earning a few glares.
"Game on, girl," Fukkuteru gave the pegasus a toothy grin, "The last on getting there is a changeling," he quickly turned to look at Stormfly, "No offense, Stormy..."
Stormfly, who by then had taken off the coat and hat (he kept the scarf, deciding it looked cool in him) simply shrugged as he flew to the Kuros's back, "Just try not to be too rough on us, would you? The last time I rode on you, I almost lost my horn."
Fukkuteru laughed heartily, "Oh, come on, Stormie! You enjoyed it!"
Stormfly sighed in dismay and turned to look at the group, "Hang on, it's going to be the heck of a ride."
"Alright, everypony, it's almost time..." the Kuros announced as he extended his wings and prepared to take off, Rainbow Dash preparing to do so as well a few steps away from him. Shining and the others frenetically looked for something to hold on to, but Stormfly simply produced a little slime from the holes in his hooves to remain stuck to Fukkuteru's scales. The sun was finally rising from the horizon, and the first rays of sunlight illuminated the apparently empty space far from them, but after a few minutes, suddenly a mirage started to form, and to the incredulous eyes of the ponies, a temple appeared in the middle of the desert.
"NOW!"
Shining Armor and Applejack almost fell from the Kuros's back when he dashed into the air, but barely managed to get a hold of his tail, Screwball and Spike were grabbing on his horns on the top of his head, and Stormfly was still stuck to Fukkuteru's back. Rainbow Dash was hot on Fukkuteru's heels, and the black dragon gave her a taunting grin. Rainbow Dash accepted the challenge and flapped her wings as faster as she had never flapped them before. She was racing against one of the most fast creatures in all of Equestria (Twilight had commented once in the few notes she could find about the Kuros), and she wanted to prove to him that she was as fast, or even faster, than him.
The temple mirage was enlarging the more they got closer, and it's shape started to solidify, showing to the ponies' eyes that it was real and there. Soon, Fukkuteru were nose-to-snout, but they didn't notice the grounded ponies horrified looks, or that Shining Armor and Applejack were slipping off the dragon's tail. They got closer and closer and closer...
"Come on, Rainbow Dash!" Spike told the upset pegasus as she smashed her hooves against rocks, "It was not that bad!"
"Easy for you to say!" she yelled, smashing another rock into tiny fragments, "You didn't lose against an overgrown lizard!"
"Don't worry, Fukkuteru, she doesn't mean it," Applejack whispered into the dragon's ear, "She's just having a tantrum, she'll get over it in a few minutes. It's just that she has never liked to lose."
Fukkuteru nodded slowly, staring at Rainbow Dash nervously, "I can see that."
"So this is the temple?" Shining Armor commented as he took a look at the long-abandoned temple. Its pillars were reminiscent of those ground in the original castle of Princesses Celestia and Luna, but the city itself was like a city in ruins, "What's its history?"
"It's name was Hamuneightra, also known as the 'City of the Dead', and it held so much importance to the Ancient Ponyptians that none but the Coltjai, the personal guard of the Pharaoh, and the High Priest of Coltsiris could ever know its location. Any that found the city would be silence by the Coltjai warriors that guarded it so as not to divulge the location." Fukkuteru explained.
"Wow, you sure know a lot about Ponyptians," Screwball commented, looking up at the dragon's head, "How do you know so much about them?"
"Mostly reading scrolls and the hieroglyphs inside. The Ponyptians left lots of artifacts behind."
"So we need to go inside?" Rainbow Dash inquired, finally having calmed down, "How are we getting in?"
"Over here," Fukkuteru led the ponies to a small square-shaped opening on one side of the ruins, with a shining, circular mirror sending sunlight reflections inside the darkness below. Rainbow Dash soon grow nervous.
"We're going... Underground?"
"It's the only way to go in, the main entrance is blocked from the inside and my magic is not strong enough to unlock it." Fukkuteru explained as the let his long tail hang from the edge of the opening and into the apparent darkness, "So, who's going first?"
"Me," Shining Armor lifted his hooves, "i have to make sure it's not dangerous down there."
The white stallion descended down the Kuros's tail, and noticed that the reflected light of the mirror was pointing at another circular mirror, which pointed to another, and so on, illuminating the entire room. Stone and wooden tables long forgotten and covered in dust and spiderwebs were scattered across the chamber, with unknown tools across the floor.
"It's alright, everypony!" Shining called out, "You can come down now!"
One by one, Applejack, Spike, Screwball and Stormfly climbed down Fukkuteru's tail and looked around, amazed at the sight. Rainbow Dash hesitated at first until Fukkuteru lost his patience, wrapped his tail around her waist and placed her on the dusty ground below. Finally, the Kuros climbed down through the opening and joined the group.
"This is the preparation room, everypony," he announced.
"Preparation for what?" Spike inquired as the Kuros walked past them, giving the baby dragon a grin.
"To pass to the Other Life."
Stormfly rolled his eyes, "Mummies, Spike. This is where they made the mummies."
Shining Armor used an illumination spell, and his horn started to shine brightly, illuminating part of the tunnels Fukkuteru led them through, but Spike didn't notice when he stepped on a switch on one of the stones...
"So they opened ponies and took their organs out?" Spike spoke with repulsion as the other ponies had similar looks on their faces.
Fukkuteru nodded, "Indeed, and their brain was taken out from their head by first inserting a hot red iron in their noses, twisted it around inside and then they drained it through their nose."
"If I don't make it out of here, don't sign me up for mummification," Rainbow dash commented while looking around at the hieroglyphics in the walls.
Screwball stuck her tongue out, "Me neither."
Applejack inquired, "Only Pharaohs were buried here?"
"Yes. When a burial took place inside the Hamuneightra, only the High Priest of Coltsiris an his priests, accompanied by soldiers and slaves, could be present. The slaves were made to do the hardest work, digging graves, then they were murdered by the soldiers that were in turn murdered in turn by the priest so the tone might ever reveal the exact location. It eventually replaced the pyramids of old as the resting place of the pharaohs and their possessions. But the only bad thing is that it hosts different booby traps and deterrents of grave robbers, plunderers or, in our case, a exploration team."
"Discord is supposed to be here?" Applejack inquired.
Shining nodded, "The zebra we met on the crystal mountains told us to come here, so he must be here."
"Shouldn't we split up to explore the temple? We'll have more chances of finding Discord that way," Spike suggested
"No, it's dangerous to split in trap-filled ruins, it will be best if we stick together."
Unbetsknown to them, Screwball was examining some strange hieroglyphs on the walls which bore some resemblance to the Changelings, but suddenly a trap wall opened and she fell inside, the wall closing behind her. Similarly, Rainbow Dash and Spike were walking side by side when another trap wall in the other end activated and they were dragged inside. The others just kept walking, not noticing three members of their party had disappeared.
"Hello?! Somepony!" Screwball cried out as she smashed her hooves against the trap wall, trying to activate it again, "Uncle Shiny! Stormfly! Fukkuteru! I'm trapped in here!"
The pink pony smashed her hooves against the brick wall for a while before realizing it would not open; Screwball looked around the darkness in the secret passage, wondering what to do next. Her ears started twitching to a faint sound, coming from the depths of the tunnel. After a while, Screwball decided to follow the source of the sound, perhaps it was Spike or Applejack. As she blindly advanced through the dark passage, the sound became clearer the further she went and identified as baby sobbing.
After a while, Screwball used her magic to lighten up the place, and noticed she had come to a secret tomb. There were no hieroglyphs in the walls, and there were unlit torches scattered across the floor. What caught the pony's attention was a small bundle of blankets in the end of the, which was letting out sobs almost every few seconds. Screwball gulped the lump in her throat as she warily walked closer to the bundle. When she finally came close enough to the bundle to take a look at the abandoned infant, she let out a small gasp.
It was a baby Changeling.
It was tiny, slightly smaller than Pumpkin Cake and Pound Cake, and she had two tiny fangs on her mouth, which would grow longer as she grew. After a while, Changeling opened her eyes, which turned out to be a shade of gray, like Stormfly's...
Just then, realization came into her.
This was Stormfly's daughter.
This was Misty Wing.
The Changeling infant stare up at the pony in curiosity, as if asking 'who are you?'. After a while, Misty Wing let out a giggle and held up her tiny hole.filled hooves to Screwball, who couldn't help but smile. Lifting up the Changeling and placing her on her back, Screwball walked down a tunnel on the side of the chamber.
She couldn't wait to see Stormfly's face.
"I can't believe it!" Rainbow Dash smashed her hooves against the wall in frustration, "We separated from the others! Again!"
"Come on, Rainbow Dash! it's not that bad!" Spike tried to calm her down, "All we need to do is to follow this passage, surely we'll find a way out and we'll reunite with the others."
"Easy for you to say! You're not a pegasus underground! I don't like it! It's horrible, I can't fly in here without crashing against something!"
"Instead of complaining, we should concentrate on finding the way out! The sooner we find the others, the sooner we'll get out of here!"
Rainbow Dash sighed in dismay and followed Spike through the tunnel, her ears drooped and her nerves pricked.
"This is the place?"
"It's the sacrificial chamber, it's where the worst blasphemer Ponyptians attempted to rise from the dead, but it was a forbidden art and the punishment was to be mummified alive with meat-eating scarabs," Fukkuteru explained as the group descended a flight of stair into a large chamber, with moats of black liquified pony remains within the chamber. Unlit torches were scattered across the walls, and the sacrificial shrine was covered in both hieroglyphs and dust.
"Meat-eating... Scarabs?" Applejack gulped, "I wouldn't want to meet those things..."
Stormfly sniffed the air, catching a familiar scent, "I think Discord is near, I can smell the Queen's royal jelly."
"Royal Jelly?" All the group repeated in confusion, which made Stormfly sigh in frustration.
"The green slime we use for making cocoons."
When the group was done descending, they saw that, indeed, there were... two cocoons hanging from the ceiling. One was much larger than the other, and the group managed to identify one of the shapes...
"DISCORD!"
Discord twitched his ears when familiar voices reached his ears. A stallion, mares, and two voices unknown to him, but at least that mean he was going to be rescued at last.
Shining Armor shot a ray from his horn at the cocoons and they fell to the ground with a loud thud, making its hosts grunt in pain. Fukkuteru immediately used his claws to cut the largest cocoon open, and everypony helped the Kuros bring the Draconequus out of the cocoon.
"What...? Discord squinted his eyes, but his vision was still blurry, "Is it only me, or there's a Kuros in front of me?"
"Discord!" Applejack grabbed the Draconequus by the shoulders, "Do you know where Twilight and the others are?!"
"A-Applejack...?" Discord whispered, his vision clearing, "Is that you? But to answer your question, no, I don't. I was about to ask you!"
"But who's in the other cocoon, then?"
The group remained silent for a while, then after a few seconds rushed to the other cocoon and started to claw it open. A pink pony lay inside, unconscious.
"Pinkie Pie!"
The mare let out a yawn, and suddenly stood up abruptly, her eyes snapping open, "Everypony! I had the weirdest dream ever! I dreamt the Changelings attacked and I was taken into a dark and scary temple with Discord and put inside green slime!" the Earth Pony noticed Fukkuteru and Stormfly, "And then I saw a big black dragon and a Changeling!"
"Pinkie Pie!" Applejack wrapped her hooves around Pinkie Pie's neck, "I'm so glad you're okay!"
Discord finally managed to stand up, having recovered his sight completely, and looked around searching for certain a pony, "Speaking of which, where's my little Screwball?"
Stormfly looked back, "She's right-", he froze in place when he realized she was missing, "... I don't know where."
"WHAT?!" Discord grabbed the Changeling violently and shook him, "What did you do to my daughter, you love-sucking monster?!"
Stormfly was trembling nervously and didn't have the courage to reply, and was thankful when Shining Armor lifted him from Discord's grasp and placed him on the ground.
"It's alright, he's on our side," he explained, "But we don't know where Screwball is, she was right behind us."
"Screwball's lost!" Pinkie Pie yelped in shock, "Oh, no! She must be all lonely and cold and sad because she's on her own out there!"
Applejack then noticed somepony else was missing, "Rainbow Dash and Spike are not here neither."
Fukkuteru stared at the pink pony with a look that the others read as 'she's-completely-mad-or-what?', and winced when she started hopping in front of him to look him at the eyes, "Do you know where to find her, Mr. dragon?"
"I... I..." Fukkuteru grew nervous, and he started to sweat.
"Fukkute, are you alright?" Stormfly inquired, "You look... Well, nervous."
"Nervous?! Hahaha!" Fukkuteru spoke with a loud tone, "I'm not nervous! It's not that I don't like ponies with that type of character!"
Applejack narrowed her eyes, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"We'll deal with that later!" Shining raised his voice to call everypony's attention, "We have to find Screwball, Rainbow Dash and Spike! We can't leave them in here!"
"I-I agree c-completely..." Fukkuteru gulped the lump in his throat and stepped away from Pinkie Pie, but shuddered when she gave him an over-friendly smile and stepped towards him, thinking it was a game, "Do what you do, do not step on any block traps."
"What's a block trap?" Discord asked in confusion before stepping on a stone which sunk into the ground.
The group became alarmed when everything started to shake and tremble, like an earthquake, and stalactites started to fall from the ceiling. What scared the ponies the most was to notice that the ceiling was slowly caving into them. Discord gulped the lump in his throat.
"Uh oh."