“Ughhh, did I party too hard again?” A drowsy Vinyl sat up, cringing at the pain emanating from her head.
Redheart moved to her side and promptly pushed her back down with a frown. “You need a little more time to recover after the way you pushed yourself back there. Not that I don’t appreciate you saving our lives, but you also sealed off our entrance back to our friends.”
“No sweat,” Lyra appeared in Vinyl’s field of vision, “There are several more tunnels out there and one of them has to lead back to where we last saw them.”
“How long was I out?” Vinyl asked, now noticing that the sun was completely gone and had been replaced by an enormous, blue-tinted moon. She raised up again and shook her head of the drowsiness and pain.
“Vinyl, you’ve only been out just over an hour or so now and there’s no way you can cast any spells in your current condition,” a stern Redheart shoved her back into the cool sands. “And no offense, but you won’t be much use without them.”
“She’s right, Vi.” Lyra held her head low and placed a hand on Vinyl’s side. “I want to go help Bonnie just as bad as you want to go help Tavi, and you know it’s true, but we need you at full power to do that successfully.
“I get it, okay,” she said as tears streamed from her eyes. “I’ll rest for one more hour, but that’s it! After that, we go save them together or I go alone.” The other two looked to each other then back to her and nodded.
“So what now?” Bon Bon sat up straight and cast a worried glance to Octavia.
“Well, normally I would suggest that we stay put so that we’re easier to locate by the others or future rescue parties.” A small, sarcastic chuckle escaped her lips. “But under the circumstances, I think we should make our way to the surface before we run into any more of those nasty creatures.” She shuddered slightly at the thought. “The others will surely do the same eventually.”
“Right. With Redheart with them, they should be fine in the logical thinking department. Celestia knows what trouble Lyra or Vinyl would get themselves into looking for us.”
“Yeah,” Octavia let out a small, dreamy sigh. “But you can’t fault them their dedication." Both mares drifted off for a moment, each picturing their significant other battling the odds themselves to come to their rescue. “But I believe we've shown here today that we are no simple damsels in distress, so why don't we switch it up a bit and go save their sorry flanks."
Bon Bon smiled cheerily and nodded her head. "Right, let's kick some flank and save our marefriends!"
With that, the two exited the spider’s den and began walking up a narrow slope to what they hoped would be freedom.
“So, Lyra,” Redheart sat up straight and looked her companion up and down, taking in all of her different features. “Care to tell me more about this ‘human’ thing that you chose to be and why you picked it over being a unicorn?”
Lyra lit up a bit and took a deep breath. “Humans are a really versatile race that use ingenuity and technology to make up for their lack of wings or magic. They’re sort of like earth ponies, but instead of physical strength and endurance, they learn things really quickly and can create all kinds of neat tools to make their life easier. Plus they can walk using only two of their legs while using their hands to do pretty much anything else.”
“I see,” Redheart nodded to her while mulling over what she had said. “So you think you could make some of these tools to help out with our current predicament?”
“Well, I probably could if I had some materials to work with, but I don’t think I could do much with just sand.” She laughed a bit despite herself. “I tried building all sorts of things I believed humans may have used back at my place in Ponyville, but I could never quite get them working properly.”
“Well, perhaps your new form will aid you... if you get the chance to try again that is,” Red said with a hint of despair.
“Trying to rest here,” a very disgruntled and drowsy Vinyl said upon being woken up for the last time.
“Sorry about that,” Redheart said, blushing a little at the irony of the situation. “Lyra and I will try to keep our voices down while you rest.”
“Don’t sweat it, Red. I can’t sleep right now anyway, so we’re just wasting precious time by sitting around. We’re going to go rescue them now and I won’t take no for an anwser!” Vinyl stomped her hoof into the sand and dared the other two to say otherwise.
“Fine, you win,” Redheart let out an exasperated sigh and closed her eyes. “But we should at least take it slowly this time so we don’t end up walking into another trap ourselves.”
The other two nodded and they made for the entrance nearest to the collapsed tunnel. The eerie stones were slightly more sporadic throughout this tunnel, making visibility much more difficult.
“No worries, guys, I got this covered,” Vinyl announced as she saw the concerned looks her comrades were giving. She cast a basic light spell on one of the bracers around her forehoof and used it as a makeshift flashlight.
The group proceeded slowly, as planned, downward through the tunnel for what seemed like miles until it finally opened up into a fairly large cavern. The walls and ceiling were lined with precious-looking gemstones of every color and several carts were strewn about with varying amounts of the different gems inside. Several kobolds with pickaxes were spread along the walls, furiously swinging at and around the embedded gems. A larger, armor-clad kobold stood behind them barking what must have been insults as he swung a whip through the air, nearly catching them several times.
“Great, how are we supposed to get by all of them,” Vinyl quietly said as she counted eight of them total, including the leader.
“Well, the smaller ones look as though they’re about ready to collapse as it is, so they shouldn’t be a big threat even if they join the fight, but the larger one could be a problem.” Red took a moment to study him. “He looks to be warrior-class and I don’t envy anypony on the other side of that whip.”
Lyra pulled out her harp and whispered, “I may be able to fascinate him with a song long enough for us to slip by him, but I can’t be sure what the others will do. We could always go back out and try another tunnel, I guess.”
“No way,” Vinyl shot her a glare, “we’ve come too far and wasted too much time already. You do your thing with the big guy and let me deal with the small fries.” Red sighed again and said a short prayer before motioning Lyra to go ahead.
Lyra took a deep breath and begun to play a few chords of an upbeat song she remembered from her early foalhood. She walked through the entrance of the cavern and began dancing in time with music as all the kobolds turned to look at the commotion. The smaller ones immediately ran from the room, but the larger made the mistake of looking the lyrist directly in the eyes. As he did, he found that as she moved her left arm up, his own was doing the same. In fact, he was now mimicking every motion she did, and he couldn’t seem to stop for some reason.
Vinyl and Red stepped in and, upon seeing the grand scene unfolding, both burst out laughing. The kobold’s entire face turned a bright shade of red, partially due to anger, but more-so out of sheer embarrassment.
The three continued laughing at his expense until a large, bulky figure suddenly stood behind him, glaring with unbridled rage. Lyra immediately stopped playing and stood looking dumbfounded at at the easily-twelve-foot-tall minotaur raising his arm in the air, and then quickly raining down on the unsuspecting dance star. The three of them grimaced and turned away at the gruesome sight before locking eyes again with their newest obstacle.
For a full minute he just stood there staring at them, daring any of them to challenge him with his glare. Vinyl and Lyra were too scared to think at the moment as Redheart ran several scenarios through her head at breakneck speeds, though they all ended the same way. Badly.
Sighing for what she believed to be the last time, Red threw her hooves in the air to surrender and advised the others to do the same. A small smirk played on the minotaur’s face as he signalled for the kobolds that had been waiting behind him to come take his new prisoners away.