//------------------------------// // 18 The Invisible Fortress, Day Six (II) // Story: My Little Exalt // by Lithl //------------------------------// This chapter has not been edited yet My Little Exalt THE INVISIBLE FORTRESS, DAY SIX by: Lithl special thanks: Rhanite LordofRansei QuietEmily A long, straight stairway stretched out before the morose Rainbow Dash, penetrating deeper into the mountain and further underground. Each of the landings bore the now-familiar sunburst design, and the air practically hummed with energy. Twilight walked up behind the athlete, with Fluttershy and rarity in tow. The recently-minted sorceress cocked an eyebrow at the passage before them and said, "Well there's a magic spell, if I ever saw one." "Gee, ya think, bonehead?!" Rarity gasped. "Rainbow Dash! That is incredibly insensitive!" "What do you want me to say?" Rainbow shouted. Fluttershy cringed and flinched away from the volume. "Pinkie's gone axe-crazy, Zecora's lost her mind, and now the only pony who could push me to my limit is dead, all thanks to this stupid manse and its stupid traps and the stupid humans who built it! We're only here on the word of some sort of evil sex ghost, and the only reason we needed her help was because Miss I-Want-To-Cast-Magic-On-The-Multiverse over here screwed up!" Fluttershy drew in a calming breath and stepped forward. "Maybe... you should try to calm down a little—" "Calm down? Calm down?! We're lost on another world and even if we get home somehow, we can't use the Elements to protect Equestria because our Circle is broken!" Rainbow gave no indication that she noticed the emphasis she gave to the word "circle." "Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy's voice rang with the authority of the Sun, and the glow from her caste mark intensified. The declaration of her name, spoken with such authority, was alone enough to quiet the anxiety in Rainbow's heart, but Fluttershy was not done. "Don't worry about what went wrong. You can't change the past. You need – we all need – to focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward and finding the answers to our problems, because at this point, 'forward' is the only means we have of getting out of the thicket of thorns." The normally timid mare turned to the two unicorns in the group. "It is not for us to hope for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks. Ever since arriving at this manse – this 'fortress' – I've seen our friendships begin to fall apart. It was slow at first, and I admit to being swept up in the current, but I don't want to see a bad problem get any worse." As Fluttershy spoke, the others at least had the grace to look embarrassed. She shook her head, dismissing a stray thought. "We've learned a lot together over the years. As friends. If we can't hold onto that friendship in the face of adversity, then we haven't really learned anything at all. "Rainbow, I know you're distraught over what you've seen, but you're not alone. Applejack was part of our family, and we were a part of hers. We can't let that loss stop us; we're not just searching for a way to get ourselves home, but for everypony in Ponyville." Rainbow Dash straightened her neck, and gave Fluttershy a curt nod, a quick salute, and said, "Right!" Without further warning, she turned around and ran for the first platform. As she approached the sunburst pattern in the floor, the energy in the air noticeably peaked. A split-second after she touched the first landing, the area around her filled with fiery swords, each dancing through the air with a will of its own and slicing at Rainbow's unprotected hide. The magical fires cast an ominous orange light on the walls, mixing with the golden light of the ponies' glowing caste marks. The nimble pegasus dodged hither and yon, contorting her body to avoid the fires. She reached the next flight of stairs unscathed, and stopped for a breather. "Whew! That's some spell, Twilight!" "Indeed," Twilight replied, her eyes narrowing at the floor, walls, and ceiling of the landing. "Can you counter it?" Rarity asked hopefully. "Oh, not a chance in Tartarus. This is way beyond me." "Right!" Rainbow cried with another salute. "I'll check the far end of the hall for a disabling switch or something." Without waiting for a reply, Rainbow Dash continued to the next landing; once again, the ambient energy spiked and the air around the pegasus was filled with fiery blades, which she dodged with flair. Twilight continued to stare at the effects of the spell on the staircase, and while Rainbow took a short breather just past the second landing, Twilight calmly stepped forward onto the first. "Twilight!" "No!" "Wait!" The others cried out in alarm. Rather than taking the effort to dodge the sabers as Rainbow had, however, Twilight calmly stood in the center of their dance. Once after another, swords cut deep into Twilight's body... only to pass through, harmlessly. The other three ponies could only stare in shock, while Twilight studied the flames surrounding her. "Curious," she said, "I didn't expect them to tingle like this. It reminds me of the tickle fights my brother and I would sometimes have when we were foals." "I... what... I don't even... huh?" Rainbow articulated her confusion. "They're completely illusory. Harmless, all of them." "Then what's the point, dear?" Fluttershy took a deep breath and stepped into the flames next to Twilight. "Fear," was all she said. At the bottom of the final staircase, a simple door barred the way. An engraved golden human hand encircled with the sunburst design dominated the center of the doorway. Twilight pressed a hoof to the center, and with a soft click, the door unlocked, unlatched, and swung open. The door opened into a white tile-covered hexagonal room, with a door on each wall. "So, do we split up, or...?" Rainbow trailed off, waiting for input from the others. Fluttershy shook her head. "No, I don't want us to split up again. We need to stick together." There was a chorus of agreement, and Rarity led the group to the door on the left. "We might as well start with door number one." Behind the first door was a small room, nearly full of heavy metal spikes that had fallen from the ceiling and dug deep into the tile floor. It was a squeeze, but the girls managed to move past the spikes into the hallway beyond. The hallway behind the room appeared identical to the hallway at the Retreat's entrance, save for the gaping pit partway along its length. "We found Pinkie's trail again," Rainbow muttered, noting the fragmented edges of what used to be the pit's trap door. At the end of the hall was a room showing more evidence of Pinkie's presence. The beige tiles and vaulted ceiling were nice enough, but the twisted wreckage on the right side was less so. To the left, a metal portcullis displayed a neat hole, large enough for a pony to fit through. Behind was a furnished sitting room – or the appearance of one, at any rate. Much like the frescoes in the artificial garden of the manse, this room presented the facsimile of more space. This particular fresco held a pony-shaped dent, destroying the illusion. On the right side, the damage was more apparent. Some sort of mechanical beast – a spider or some other insectoid creature – lay in ruin, apparently launched into another portcullis and causing the other gate to warp beyond repair. Another sitting room sat at the far end of a short hallway beyond, presumably another expertly-crafted optical illusion fresco. "I've got to admit, despite what's happened to Pinkie, her passage through this place has been really useful," Twilight remarked. "How may traps has she destroyed, now?" The other ponies mumbled agreement; that the pink monstrosity had laid waste to many of the Retreat's traps had proven exceptionally useful. The party squeezed back past the spikes and into the hexagonal room. Casual inspection of the next three doors following the first one clockwise proved about as fruitful as the first. In each, the far wall held a door blasted from its hinges, revealing nothing but stone wall beyond. In the first of the three, the white tiles and stone walls were pockmarked with thousands of tiny pits, and a few of the larger holes in the floor still held water, from whatever event had taken place within. In the second, every single tile on the floor had been smashed by some great weight, but there was no other indicator of what had occurred. In the third door past the first, many of the tiles had become rough, as though attacked by some corrosive agent. Rarity refused to even enter, worrying that some of the corrosive might still remain. The final room was different. While the door at the far end was also blasted off of its hinges, and it also revealed bare stone, and it also showed signs of some deadly trap – long crisscrossed gashes in the floor, this time – this room also had a heavy stone broken free from the wall and set very specifically on a certain tile near the far corner, which was clearly depressed by the stone's weight. The left wall had an opening, leading deeper into the Retreat. Past the not-so-hidden door was another cascade of stairs. This passage held no energy like the previous one. However, the entire second landing was missing, leading into another pit. The gap was a good six spans or so. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy cleared it without difficulty, by gliding down the stairs with their partially-functional wings. With a grimace and a shared look, the two unicorns galloped down the stairs, taking a running leap to clear the space. Rarity cleared the pit with grace, landing on the far edge and flicking her tail in pride. Twilight tripped over the final step on the way down. She pitched forward and slammed horn-first into the pit's far wall, landing at the bottom with a painful-sounding crunch. "Ow," the hapless unicorn called up from the base of the pit. "Twilight, are you all right?" Rarity turned and called down to the pit's bottom. "I've just got a bruised pride and a sensitive horn, nothing to worry about." "Um..." Rarity tapped a hoof to her lips and looked back at Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. "How do we get her out?" The three mares exchanged worried glances. "Did anypony think to bring a rope?" "Oh," Rarity beamed as an idea hit her, "what about this rock-yarn cloth?" She produced the folded material from her saddlebag, and carefully extracted the razor-sharp butterflies she'd stored within, setting them aside on the floor. "Will this do?" "There's only one way to find out!" Rainbow grabbed one end of the sturdy bolt of cloth and tossed the other down to Twilight, who grabbed a hold. Together, Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Rarity slowly pulled their friend out of the pit trap and back onto sturdy footing. Once Twilight was back on the stairs, Rarity gathered up the cloth once again, remarking on the surprising lack of creasing despite the torture it had just gone through. She carefully re-wrapped the glass butterflies and stored the collection in her saddlebags once again. The group progressed to the base of the stairs without further incident. Past the door at the bottom was a great circular room, whose most outstanding feature was the proportionally great pit in the center. The room was at least as large as any other previously encountered, if not larger, but there was only a small ledge around the edge on which a human or pony could walk. The pit in the center of the room was at least three stories deep, and the domed ceiling was at least three stories above the ledge at the center. The pit was also filled with hundreds of crystalline spikes glistening in the light of everypony's caste mark. To drive the point home further, there was a bare human skeleton in tattered armor impaled upon a few of them near the center. "How'd a human get all the way out in the center of the pit?" Rainbow asked. "If I had to guess, I'd say it had something to do with that," Twilight pointed to the top of the dome, where a polished opalescent stone poked out of the ceiling, easily as large as a pony's head. With a glance, each of the exalted ponies could feel the stone radiating power. With a low hum, the stone in the ceiling began to glow softly. Everypony braced herself for another trap, but nothing seemed to happen. With a clatter, the sword lying by the skeleton in the center flew to the roof of the dome, and stuck pommel-first to the glowing orb. "Um." There was no further reaction from the orb, and Rainbow Dash cautiously began to walk along the ledge encircling the room, hugging the wall tightly. The other three ponies followed. A minute later, when Rainbow reached the halfway point, the ambient hum and the glow from the stone both stopped, and the sword instantly fell into the giant pit. The pegasus halted her motion when the sounds changed, which nearly caused a collision with Rarity right behind her. In just a few short heartbeats, the stone began to hum and glow again, pulling the sword up out of the pit to hang from its pommel once again. Rainbow cocked her head, "I don't get it." "Perhaps it's meant to disarm intruders. None of us have any weapons," Rarity suggested. "Are you kidding? My hoof is a weapon!" Rainbow bragged. She paused, and then continued more quietly, "But yeah, that sounds like as good an explanation as any..." "But what about the other weapons that human has – had – on him? Or her?" Fluttershy asked, pointing to the skeleton. Sure enough, the corpse had several knives sheathed along its belt and an unstrung bow on its back, which had been sliced in twain by the crystal blades. "Maybe it's something unique about that particular sword?" Twilight suggested. "I notice that the sword is always hanging from its pommel, regardless of its orientation at the bottom of the pit." Rainbow continued her trek around the room's perimeter. "Now that you mention it, that blade looks like it's made of wood. The grip is made of some green... stone?" Twilight nodded absently as she walked. "Jade, at a guess. Remember the Yu-Shan gateways? They were made of all of the 'magical' materials, and one of those was jade." The party reached the far end of the room, and the touch of Rainbow's hoof on the golden palm print opened the door. As Fluttershy brought up the rear and exited the room, the orb once again died down and dropped the blade into the pit. After a short passage and another door, the girls found themselves in a funnel-shaped room, directing them towards a door at the far end. Above the door was another porcelain mask, similar to the ones that challenged Twilight to the Liar's Puzzle previously. As soon as all four ponies had entered the room, the door behind them slammed shut, and the mask above the door shouted, "Halt! Give the password or die! You have thirty seconds!" Rainbow edged closer to her companions and changed a glance backward. "Twilight?" Twilight was, understandably, on edge. "I don't know! How should I know what the password is?!" Rainbow gave a few attempts of her own. "Open sesame! Abracadabra! Shazam!" When none of them worked, she wove her way past the other ponies to try and force the door they'd entered from back open so they could escape, but was unsuccessful. "Twenty seconds!" The mask shouted. Rarity moved forward to the far door underneath the mask, and mimicked Rainbow's idea, trying to create an escape route. Twilight was frozen with indecision. "Ten seconds!" Fluttershy began listing the names of the original Solars, from their portraits on the second floor of the manse. "Kal Bax, Larquen Quen, Meherrin, Surin of Justice, Iatrixian the Weaver, Vaznia," Rarity's eye twitched at the mention of the name, but nopony was able to see the reaction. "Kotor Varos... um..." Twilight shook herself from her stupor and continued where Fluttershy left off. "Crinis Proles, Ozandus Pal, Arvika Chas, Aure Orchester, Surin of—" "Fluttershy already used that one!" Rainbow Dash shouted from the back door. "Now you die!" The mask bellowed. Fluttershy hid her face beneath her hooves and tried to protect her body with her wings. Rarity and Rainbow Dash both pressed themselves against their respective doors. Twilight squeezed her eyes shut. Everypony waited for the end. The end never came. Twilight cautiously opened her eyes. Four arrow slits had opened in the walls of the room, but no arrows were coming out. Rarity and Rainbow both relaxed. Fluttershy peeked out from under one of her hooves, confused. The room was silent. A moment later, Fluttershy squeaked. "I remember! Daveg Chlurion! That's the name we missed!" She beamed as the mask spoke once more. "Pass." The door Rarity was leaning on swung open, dropping the fashionista to the stone floor. Beyond the door was a narrow passage in each direction, curving around the room they had just exited. Below each of the four arrow slits was the wreckage of an automaton, a broken bow, and a quiver stocked with several dozen arrows. "I suppose that answers that question, then," Rainbow said. "I suppose," Rarity agreed, "but where do we go from here?" Nopony had an answer. They had penetrated deep into the Solars' Final Retreat, but there was nowhere else to go. Surely, this was not the end? The narrow passage surrounding the previous room on three sides had no apparent exit other than the door leading backwards. "Okay, everypony," Twilight clapped her hooves together. "Let's start searching for a hidden door." "But every 'hidden door' we've come across so far was destroyed by Pinkie..." Rainbow whined. "She must not have come here." "Rainbow, dear, did you see anywhere else Pinkie might have gone? For that matter, if Pinkie wasn't here, what happened to the archers that were supposed to kill us just now?" Rainbow grudgingly conceded that Rarity had a point. "We've simply gotten complacent – we're too used to the aftereffects of Pinkie's rampage. From here on out, we'll have to depend on our own cunning and skill." The four ponies, at Twilight's direction, began to systematically search the corridor for some trigger or switch or pressure plate that might open a hidden door, or at least indicate its presence. thud "Did anypony hear that?" Twilight asked. "Hear what?" Rainbow walked up behind the sorceress. Thud "That!" Twilight pointed to the wall directly opposite the door they'd entered the passage through. "I certainly heard it that time, Twilight," Rarity joined Rainbow and her fellow unicorn. THUD "What is it?" Fluttershy asked. All the ponies gathered at the wall, and Twilight put one ear up against it. THUD "It's getting louder!" Twilight backed away from the wall just in time for it to burst outward, showering the corridor with stone and dust. Some kind of silvery light mixed with the golden light from the girls' caste marks; combined with the dust-filled air, it was impossible to see anything. There was the sound of some kind of creature panting. The two pegasi worked their wings to try and disperse the dust, while the unicorns braced themselves for whatever was hiding in the dark. Soon, a silhouette was visible through the cloud: a large, blocky quadruped. Then, it became apparent that the source of the silvery light was the creature standing before them, as swirling patterns became distinguishable on its body. Twilight, who was the closest, was the first to see that the creature was a large zebra stallion, easily more massive than Big Mac. Twilight's heart began to race, and her breathing became heavy. Sweat drops formed on her brow and mixed with tears as her eyes were forced wide open and were irritated by the remaining dust cloud. "No... No, stop!" Twilight cried. She backed into Fluttershy, but didn't seem to notice. "What are you doing, stop it!" The beast looked directly at her and cocked its head. The slight motion set Twilight off further, and she gave a wordless cry of terror. She began galloping as fast as she could down the corridor, despite knowing intellectually that it was a dead end. As fortune – or, perhaps, misfortune – would have it, her panic-stricken flight caused her to run over a floor switch which opened exactly the secret door the group had been looking for. Without a care for the possible repercussions, she turned left and fled down the corridor behind, screaming the entire way. The huge zebra stallion stepped forward and shrank, becoming a normal-sized zebra mare. "Was it something I said?" Zecora asked innocently. cough cough The puddles of burning oil died out. The pile of charcoal spasmed, causing flakes of soot to shake free of its bulk. Slowly, shakily, one leg moved, and then another. The legs gathered together underneath the body, and the motions began to tear the blackened outer layer away, revealing a fresh orange coat. With the inevitability of a glacier, the creature rose to its feet. At her side, a black hat lay upturned, serene. With a swish of her tail, the hat crumbled to dust.