The Nirucon Stone
The six ponies treaded lightly down the damp, dark passageway. The air was musty. Dim torches lit the halls, barely illuminating the stone floor below.
“Now who on earth comes by here and keeps these things lit?” Rarity wondered aloud.
“Maybe they’re magical,” Twilight suggested.
The hallway continued on but a doorway to the left led to a spiral staircase heading downward. However, they realized it was inadequately lit, so Twilight used a horn light spell to illuminate the stairwell. It continued downward for about 200 feet until reaching another opening in the wall.
As the ponies walked, they encountered a good number of cobwebs. A small brown recluse was dislodged as they walked, landing onto Fluttershy’s nose.
“Um, Fluttershy, you’ve got a visitor!” Applejack warned. Fluttershy glanced down her snout and eyeballed the spider.
“Oh goodness, you poor thing! I’m so sorry we disturbed you. Here, let me make it all better,” Fluttershy took the spider in her hoof placed it onto an unoccupied cobweb. Fluttershy’s friends looked at her incredulously. They had probably been expecting her to be startled.
“What? That spider was lost and away from home. I had to help it. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing?” Fluttershy smiled at her friends. They all nodded, and the group continued onward.
Eventually they reached the doorway at the bottom of the spiral staircase. They entered it and were surprised to find themselves in a massive, brightly lit chamber. A tall marble pedestal stood in the center of the room. Atop of it stood a glass dome inside of which was what Twilight and her friends assumed was the Nirucon stone. It was a teal, translucent, cone-shaped crystal about a foot tall.
The Nirucon Stone
Also inside the chamber stood Auhizotl. He began slowly pressing his hands together, and after a few seconds he was clapping.
“Bravo, bravo. I did not expect you to get past those timberwolves so easily. Congratulations, ponies, you have found the chamber. And wouldn't you know that the Nirucon stone which you seek is right atop a pedestal! Why, Celestia herself couldn't have planned it better. But to get to it… ah, how to get it out from under the glass dome?
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, clearly undaunted by the challenge. “I’ve got this.” She flapped her wings and took off to the top of the ten-foot-tall marble pedestal. She pounded on the glass, but it would not break. She tried to lift the dome up, but discovered that it was fastened in place by three locks.
“Yes, do you honestly think that such a valuable artifact would be without security? Now, you have to solve my riddle to get the keys to these locks. But this one is no cinch.
You’ve come so far; you’ve passed two tests
My riddles, I admit, were not the best
But one riddle still awaits,
And this, most challenging, will decide the stone's fate.
Brains and brawn are needed now,
Or else the stone will not come down.
It stands on one leg and lives in water;
Of all the birds, there’s not one odder.
In the winter comes the dusk of solstice;
The day is fast, the night came quick.
The priest’s cupboard is full of drinks
But yet is dry, at least probably.
You’ll see three doors around the room
Enter them correctly, or face your doom.
Once inside, you’ll find three trials
Finish them right and you’ll have smiles
Return triumphant, the dome lowers.
Both victory and the stone will be yours.”
So the mane six attempted to solve Ahuizotl’s final riddle.
“Now what do you suppose he meant by those words? The odd bird? The solstice? The priest?” Rarity asked.
“Well, the first one’s easy. The flamingo stands on one leg and lives in the water. I have a pet flamingo. He’s so cute!” Fluttershy answered.
“And the solstice… well, that one’s not really a riddle. That’s just a statement. It’s the longest night of the year, and the earliest sunset of the year. It comes in the winter. Not sure what to make of it,” Twilight noted.
“The third one is probably talking about alcohol. Priests don’t drink, do they? At least, they’re not supposed to,” Pinkie noted.
“Oh, I beg to differ. I know a holy man who’s quite the boozer; he hits the bottle all the time! In fact, he buys a whole lot of cider from Sweet Apple Acres,” Applejack observed.
“Well, OK, maybe some priests drink, but needless to say it’s a rarity,” Twilight conceded.
“Hey, rarity is Rarity’s name! Rarity, Rarity, Rarity! Rolls off the tongue!” Pinkie laughed. The others looked at her, grinning at her silliness.
“Well heck, Applejack’s my name. I suppose a priest with that type of liquor in his cabinet would have an applejack rarity,” Applejack chuckled.
“Does… does this riddle have to do with our names?” Twilight asked. “That might make a bit of sense. I mean, it would be STUPID, but it would make sense. Twilight is part of the day, which occurs at the solstice. In fact, the twilight comes earliest at the solstice.”
“You could say it dashes there early,” said Rainbow Dash.
“And that leaves… oh, goodness! The flamingo is pink! And it flutters along, it doesn’t really fly,” Fluttershy squealed. “Girls, we’ve solved the riddle!”
Twilight brought her hoof to her forehead. She looked across the room back at Auhizotl and rolled her eyes. “Really? That’s all you could come up with? That’s the most contrived, cockamamie thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Other than your fish basket riddle from Daring Do and The Clandestine Apprentice. That book was so obviously ghostwritten that it’s not even funny.”
Auhizotl fumed, a scowl on his face, and bellowed, “Look, I had limited time to come up with this, okay? Don’t be so obtuse. Do you honestly think you could’ve done better?”
Twilight scratched her chin with her hoof. She paused for a few moments, deep in thought. Then, her face lit up with realization, “Aha! I know what else would have worked. You could have paired me with Pinkie, Rarity with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy with Applejack and gotten a gorgeous sunset, a double rainbow and a fruitfly.”
Auhizotl puzzled for a minute before replying, “The gorgeous sunset I see, because of the shades of pink at twilight. And double rainbows are quite uncommon, it’s true. A rarity rainbow. But a fruitfly? I guess it does flutter and I guess it does fly around fruit, apples in particular. So yes, those pairings might also have worked. But you have to remember that I made these pairings for a reason. And that’s for what’s behind these doors, which will require particular combinations of skill. Now solve the riddle already! Please quit speaking to me.”
“Fine, mister demandy-pants,” Twilight, finished with her pedantic display in the face of the gargantuan beast, walked over to the three doors with her friends.
She said, “So there’s three doors. I go into one with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy goes into another with Pinkie Pie, and Rarity and Applejack get the last one.”
The first door had a picture of a flamingo on it. The second door had a picture of a bottle on it, and the final door had a picture of a sunset on it. The ponies formed into pairs corresponding to the ones they had figured out.
“So do we do this all at once, or do we do this a pair at a time and the other four of us just stand out here and cheer on the two who are in?” Rarity asked.
“I say we do it all at once and get it over with! I can’t take the suspense!” Fluttershy said. The others agreed, and each pair walked into the door they were assigned.
Obviously, for the sake of this story each of the trials faced by the three pairs of ponies is accounted for separately, even though they all happened concurrently.
Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy walked through the door and down their hallway, which extended for about a hundred feet before leading to a spiral staircase, sparsely lit by torches. The stairs seemed to tower forever.
“Stairs? I laugh in the face of stairs!” Pinkie bounced up the stairs, skipping up them five at a time.
“Um… Pinkie, isn’t that… dangerous?” Fluttershy asked. She gasped as Pinkie appeared to almost trip over a loose brick, “Oh, watch out, you’re going to fall! No, wait, nevermind…”
Pinkie simply ignored her and hopped along. Fluttershy could not fathom how Pinkie could completely ignore the risk of plummeting to her death. Though she was a pegasus, Fluttershy opted to walk up the stairs. She didn’t want to risk falling, after all.
Pinkie was at the top of the staircase for about ten minutes before Fluttershy finally ascended to the top. She stood in wait, tapping her hoof against the ground.
“Wow, you’re really slow! I mean, I’ve seen faster snails than you!” Pinkie Pie playfully chided her friend.
“Um… sorry,” Fluttershy meekly apologized.
“Don’t be sorry! We all have our own pace! My pace is just really fast, that’s all!”
Though they each considered one other to be friends, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy had diametrically-opposed personalities. Pinkie was outgoing and energetic while Fluttershy was reserved and bashful. For this reason, the two ponies had an odd rapport and usually did not interact unless it was in the context of their larger circle of friends. This, in fact, was one of the only times they had ever been alone together for an extended period of time.
The two walked down the hallway at the top of the stairs until they reached a dark room. Pinkie and Fluttershy could not see a thing, for the room was entirely pitch black. It could have been the size of a closet or the size of a football field. They could see each other and the floor below for about a foot due to the light from a torch in the hall behind them, but no more than that.
“Well THIS is a letdown! How are we supposed to face a trial if we can’t even SEE a trial!” Pinkie Pie complained.
“Maybe we could go and grab a torch from the staircase and bring it in here,” Fluttershy suggested. Pinkie agreed that was a good idea. They turned back and walked into the hallway. Pinkie attempted to wrench a torch from the wall. It wouldn’t budge.
“Fluttershy, could you help me with this?” Pinkie asked.
“Um, I guess. I’m not that strong, but okay.” Fluttershy got behind Pinkie and grabbed the torch, pulling with Pinkie. They pulled for about a minute until Pinkie lost her grip and flew backwards, slamming both herself and Fluttershy into the wall behind them.
“Ouch!” Fluttershy yelped in pain.
“That thing’s bolted in there! I bet all the other ones are, too. We’ll have to face this room in the dark,” Pinkie said.
They returned to the pitch-black room.
“I guess we should inspect the room as best we can. For all we know this room continues on into a bottomless pit!” Fluttershy suggested.
“Good idea. Party cannon, away!” Pinkie Pie removed her Party Cannon and fired off a blast of hard candy. The duo waited for about ten seconds before hearing echoes off of the far wall and off of the floor.
“Pit is right! Good thinking, Fluttershy. If we had just walked into this room blindly, we would have been dead meat!”
“I guess I could fly over the pit and see, or feel I guess, what’s on the other side. That way we know what's in there.” Fluttershy flapped her wings and was airborne. She cautiously flew in the direction of the far side of the room.
As she was about ten feet out from the light, a rumbling sound suddenly broke the silence. It was followed by a shattering sound about ten seconds later.
“AAH!” Fluttershy zipped back and into the light. She examined her wing to find that a few feathers were missing from the tip. Though she was still able to fly, she was shaken.
“There was something that fell on me! It grazed my wing and just barely missed hitting the bone!”
“That’s crazy!” Pinkie exclaimed, “This whole room is probably booby-trapped! And we can’t even see anything.”
Fluttershy glowered, incensed at the situation. “That meanie Auhizotl! How dare he booby trap this room, we can’t even see! Oh, I’m so mad, I could just stomp!”
She slammed her hooves down in a fit of rage. Her tantrum appeared to disturb the fragile room, as a low rumbling once again sounded. Pinkie’s tail twitched.
“TWITCHY TAIL!” Pinkie yelled and jumped, pounding into Fluttershy, knocking both her and her friend out of the way of a falling ceiling tile.
The antique ceramic tile broke with a clang shattered in a dozen pieces on the floor. Pinkie and Fluttershy cautiously walked back over and examined it.
“That must have been what fell onto me when I was flying!” Fluttershy realized. “Pinkie, you’re a genius! All we have to do to cross is for you to use your Pinkie sense. Then, we can know when these tiles will fall.”
“That’s a great idea, Fluttershy! But you’ll have to carry me over, because there’s a pit, remember?”
Fluttershy gulped. She didn’t know if she could carry Pinkie Pie at all, let alone across a room of this size. She asked, “Do you still have those balloons? I think I can carry you without them, but I would like some help.”
“Nope. They floated away when I landed on the rocky outcropping with Applejack back at the waterfall. You’ll have to rely on your own strength!”
Fluttershy looked down at the ground for a few seconds, and then chuckled. “Eh, no problem. I can do it.”
“That’s the spirit!”
Fluttershy grabbed Pinkie Pie’s hooves and flapped her wings vigorously, slowly lifting them both into the air.
“Okay Pinkie, hold on tight!” Fluttershy inched forward across the pit. They hadn’t gotten twenty feet before Pinkie’s tail twitched once again.
“Get out of the way, Fluttershy, there’s a tile about to fall!” Fluttershy veered to the right. They heard the whoosh of a tile falling and the clang ten seconds later of it shattering in the pit below.
“Now to your left! Now to your right! Now up ahead! Oh Fluttershy, there’s tiles everywhere!”
The yellow pegasus zipped about with remarkable speed, avoiding the tiles in a frenzy. Had she been in a more timid state, she would not have believed herself capable of it.
“I’m getting dizzy!” Pinkie turned a shade of green that would have been visible if it were not for the pitch darkness.
“Come on Pinkie, you’ve gotta stay alert and warn me about those tiles!” Fluttershy encouraged her friend.
“Okay, there’s one coming up now! Right ahead!” Fluttershy braked, narrowly avoiding being clonked on the head by a falling tile. She paused for a moment and when she heard the clank, and then continued forward.
“Now there’s one about to fall on you, move to your left! No, wait, your ri—“ Thonk! It was too late! Fluttershy had been hit in the head with a tile and began falling, rapidly losing air.
“Aaaah! Fluttershy! Keep it together!” Pinkie held onto Fluttershy with one hoof and with her spare hoof, shook her friend’s head.
“Wait, what? Oh, I’m falling. AAAH!” Fluttershy regained her composure and flapped vigorously, regaining altitude.
The rest of the way was mostly smooth sailing. The two developed a decent system that prevented Fluttershy from being hit by any more tiles. Eventually Fluttershy bumped into the far wall, just in time as she was becoming incredibly worn out.
“Okay, I’m going to slowly descend. Watch your hooves, Pinkie, so you can get down when I land.” Fluttershy slowly returned to the ground below. She reached it and returned to her hooves, standing beside Pinkie.
“We DID IT!” Pinkie screamed in delight. Fluttershy felt several light bits of things land on her back. She thought it might have been another spider, or dust from an impending tile.
“Uh, Pinkie, what was that?” She wondered if her friend had felt the same thing.
“Oh, that was confetti. I just threw some in the air because WE DID IT,” Pinkie repeated. She sang a celebratory song, one which closely matched the melody of a nursery rhyme in our own world about a trio of visually impaired rodents.
“Two blind friends, two blind friends
We reached the end; we reached the end
The tiles fell from the left and right
And even though it was dark as night
We had my tail and we had your flight
We’re Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie.”
Fluttershy giggled at Pinkie’s song, and the two hoof-bumped in congratulatory manner.
“Now let’s find a light switch or something,” Pinkie said. They both blindly felt along the back wall until Fluttershy found a small alcove. She reached in and felt what she figured to be a key. She removed it.
“Pinkie, look what I found! Or, I guess, come feel what I fou—“ As the words left her mouth, there was a loud rumbling sound. Suddenly, a small ray of light appeared through the ceiling. Then another ray of light. Soon thousands of tiles came crashing down and thousands of rays of light appeared, revealing the sky above. The room was illuminated, and the girls looked down into the pit below.
Fluttershy immediately jumped back. The edge of the chasm was a mere foot from where they stood. It was a good two hundred feet deep, and thousands of spikes stuck out of the ground. Several skeletons of ponies were impaled upon the many spikes.
“AAAH!” Both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie screamed at the top of their lungs for a full ten seconds before regaining their composure. They then stopped to look at the key.
The key was gorgeous. It appeared to be gold, or at least gold-plated. It was encrusted with hundreds of small pink topaz gems. Oddly, the key floated in the air as if levitated by unicorn magic, without either pony touching it. It appeared to simply be drawn towards them.
“This key must be worth a fortune,” Fluttershy noted. Pinkie nodded her head in agreement.
“That riddle was odd. I was kind of expecting to use The Stare or my skill with animals or something. I mean, Auhizotl said that this required our specific skills. Flight isn’t really my strong suit; I barely made it over. Flight is more Rainbow Dash’s skill.”
Pinkie paused for a moment and then explained, “Yes, flight isn’t your strong suit, but caution is. If you didn’t stop to worry about there being a pit, we would’ve just blindly walked along and plummeted to our doom! I don’t think anypony else would’ve done that. I know Dashie wouldn’t have. And even if she did know there was a pit, she probably would have just flown across the room full speed ahead and hit a tile or the back wall, tumbling back down into the pit. Being fast and a great flyer doesn’t mean that much when you’re dead!”
“True,” Fluttershy acknowledged.
They both headed back, the floating key following behind them. The two entered into the large atrium with the Nirucon stone on the pedestal to find that they were the only ones there, save for Auhizotl. They wondered how their other four friends were doing.