//------------------------------// // 89 // Story: Twilights Mane Passion // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// A loud smashing sound was heard, a crooked circular portion of the roof caved in and a cloud of dust shot up. Once the dust cleared it revealed a very surprised looking Tress who looked back up at the shaft of light coming from the hole she just created. “Well I didn’t find an entrance, but I certainly made one!” Tress spotted Daring and Ballad looking down on her and she waved up at them. “This is exactly how you step into it, isn’t that right Daring?” Seconds later Daring with her green shirt, a brown satchel and a pith helmet was in tunnel leading down into the catacombs holding a lit torch. Ballad Din was wearing puffy white pants held up by a red sash and a small purple vest; he also had a fez on top of his dark mane. The entrance was the first obstacle, which they circumvented entirely because Tress had to stomp in just the right place in frustration. “So what did you have against Ballad coming with us? You didn’t have a problem with me.” It wasn’t that Tress didn’t know Daring tended to prefer doing things solo; this newly shown resentment was a bit off. “You didn’t have a problem when he was with us for finding the information to where the vizier stashed the lamp.” “Yes, because we needed that information and it was necessary that I tolerated his presence.” Daring didn’t want to tip off Ballad that she was a still angry with him and kept her tone even. “I do not like the idea of him being anywhere near the lamp after the scuffle he dragged me into and what that led too. I was the one getting the princess and her bodyguard to safety while he was being hunted down by the vizier; he started this whole mess you know.” “I can clearly see the resentment then. Do you have anything to help us communicate? I don’t want to do the whole back and forth thing with you as the translator, especially if you’re going to continue being angry about that.” Having read the mares books, Tress remembered some of the less dangerous artifacts that Daring tends the carry around that could be of use. Daring never knew what could be useful in different ways. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have Lady Llama’s Linguistic Lace Leggings on you by chance?” “If you read my books, you likely already know why they don’t come up very much as they’re situational at best. They need someone willing to wear one and be given the knowledge of what they do for it to work.” Daring had only mentioned them once or twice in passing in her books. The one who speaks the language or languages needed to be wearing one of the two leggings, they’d magically fit any hoof which was a useful side feature. “Quick question Ballad, would you wear a legging that would let Tress understand what you’re saying?” The leggings weren’t anywhere as nearly as apocalyptic as some of the other things Daring has seen or touched in the name of saving the world, they were boring if impractical in function. The irony of the fact that you’d need a translator for the leggings to explain how they work in the first place was not lost on Daring, the leggings were only useful to a third party who couldn’t speak the language and required someone that did to explain the function of the leggings. She didn’t think Ballad would wear one on the principle of the matter that they were lady stockings. Several minutes and a few circumnavigated deadly traps later, Tress and Ballad were having an interesting conversation about how the thief grew up on the streets and they were speaking fluently in Saddle Arabian. Daring had silently seethed for a while; she stopped and held up her hooves stopping the two ponies from moving any further. She narrowed her eyes at the warning marks in the corridor and the empty stone coffins in the room ahead of them. Sniffing the air Daring narrowed her eyes. “I smell animated skeletons, I can hear them too.” The creaking sounds of bones grinding against bones without sinew or muscle between them, Daring passed her torch to Ballad and carefully uncoiled her whip. They couldn’t slow their progress for too long or else things above ground could go bad for their allies on the surface. “Keep me at the edge of the light at all times, depending on what type of skeletons they are we might have some trouble.” Creeping forward she kept her eyes on the shadows as they entered the tomb of empty coffins, looking at the ground Daring picked up a dagger. It looked to be left behind by one of the thieves that came through here previously, she silently stowed it away in her satchel. Her eyes darted about at movements in the shadows as she kept moving forward. Within the span of a second she leapt back as the skeleton of a large camel slammed a broadsword down with an overhead swing. Daring retaliated by ripping out a vertebrae from the skeleton with her whip causing it to fall into a pile of bones. The creaking sounds started getting louder and Daring backed up towards Ballad whose eyes were warily taking in the surrounding glints of metal in the shadows; metallic scraping sounds were heard amongst the sound of clacking hooves. The downed skeleton started shaking a bit and its bones started to pull together. “Well darn, it’s that type of skeleton. Stay near me and knock them down, the only thing that will stop them is explosives.” Daring reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a small blue bomb, which she held out to Ballad who paused for a second before lighting it. She tossed it into the pile of bones as it was reforming itself. Flapping her wings she took to the air staying within range of the light. “Now move!” Daring hovered above them readying her whip as, Tress and Ballad started to swiftly move through the room look for an exit. The skeleton behind them exploded and a blast of vile purple smoke was released into the air. “Well at least that’s one down right?” Tress said uneasily and stopped just short of having a mace take her head off. She spun around and bucked out shredding a Saddle Arabian Skeleton's ribcage with her hooves. A lit bomb was chucked at that one as well as Daring flicked her whip at the shadows with several sharp cracks. “Moving faster seems like a good idea." Ballad sped up heeding his own words as the noises started to get closer. The room seemed to darken unnaturally to the point that the light of the torch was barely filling the room at all. He quickly leapt forward dodging the battleaxe that was aimed at the back of his neck; he kept a strong grip on the torch as he swung it around and knocked the head off a skeleton and looked around for more attacks as Daring dealt with that one. “Come on, this way!” Daring led them towards a wall that slowly became visible and pulled out the thieves’ map quickly looking it over before stowing it away. The explorer started frantically checking the wall with her hooves as several glowing red eyes were coming out of the darkness wielding more large weapons. “You might want to hurry up with whatever it is your doing.” Tress was ready for a fight until a click sound was heard. She turned to see a smile on Daring’s face as the entire wall spun around before the skeletons could get to them. “That is one of the reasons why I like doing things like this alone. A room designed to weaken light and with reanimating skeletons that don’t stay down for long unless you destroy their bones.” Turning away from her two companions, Daring looked down the hallway they were in. It was pretty well lit already which was an oddity for the corridor, the musty smell was quite bad and they all took a moment to peruse what the thieves had managed to put down on the map. They made sure of their location while getting their bearings; they went down the lit hallway after putting out their torch. The winding narrow passageways were leading them closer to their goal or so they hoped. They bypassed a rolling boulder trap, avoided a ceiling smasher room and a hallway of spring loaded spears. Daring and Ballad were proving themselves to be equally good at avoiding death at every new obstacle. Daring had more experience having dealt with these kinds of traps before whereas Ballad had a preternatural ability for seeing things coming before they actually happened and was very agile. The thieves that had come through here before obviously hadn’t figured out how to deactivate the traps, but Daring did so as they passed each one. “So what else do you think we’ll run into? The thieves really didn’t get too far beyond that Slumbergath thing and they really didn’t have too much beyond the animated skeletons as dangerous.” Tress felt like she was actually in one of the books Daring wrote, things were dangerous considering their general haste to reach the lamp. The walls slowly started getting further apart as they entered a well lit room where the floor was made entirely of sand. “At a guess, I’d say whatever happens to be in the sand here.” Daring flew above the sand and looked down, it was obviously a trap, but it wasn’t quicksand at least. “The thieves must have had dessert boots or camel hooves; otherwise whatever is in the sand would have attacked them.” “Look we don’t have time for this, my friends could be in real trouble!” Tress darted out and two explosions of sand shot into the air once she got halfway across. A few seconds after the sand had settled Tress could be seen with her eyes closed, straining all four of her hooves against the two large red pincers that had burst out of the sand where a pit was slowly forming. “Okay Ballad, go while I’ve got it distracted. I feel I now understand Fluttershy and her fear of scissors better.” “What about you? The fact that you even survived the initial attack of an ant-lion of such a size is miraculous!” Ballad galloped around the edge of the sand pit, he looked worried about his new friend. To watch her struggle to keep the pincers from snapping closed was tearing at his heart. He could imagine Jasmine in a similar state. “Don’t worry I’ve got her! Get ready to relax you’re grip when I yell.” With a flick of her hoof, Daring had her whip wrapped around Tress’s mid-section. She yelled out and pulled with all her might using both hooves. Pushing out of the pincers, Tress flew forward unharmed and Daring swung her towards the open pathway on the other side of the wide open sand trap, she let go of her whip so that Tress fell to safety and continued into the hallway. The ant-lion wasn’t too happy and reared up to snap at Daring who swiftly flew out of the way of its snapping pincers and down the hallway around the corner where Ballad and Tress had stopped. The ant-lion was too big to follow them and slowly sunk back into the sand growling angrily like a real lion would. What had stopped them was another room that was larger than the last and on the other side there was a short corridor to a smaller room where they could see a black lamp that gave off a sick looking yellow glow. The large room was apparently directly under the palace, there were twelve pillars to the ceiling around this large circular two hundred yards in diameter room with a high ceiling. There didn’t seem to be anything between them and the lamp. It looked to be so easy, except they hadn’t seen what was called the Slumbergath yet. They entered the room and they heard a strange noise the three of them looked up as what appear to be a large dark green slimy monster with glowing green eyes slammed to the floor in front of them and narrowed its eyes on them. Behind it a gate slammed shut preventing them from just going around the creature to get at the lamp while one of them distracted it. “I take it that’s the Slumbergath? Doesn’t look like much.” Daring approached it with her whip only for its eyes to glow and it transformed to look like Ahuizotl holding a little filly that was very familiar to her and then he did something to the filly while smiling. Daring dropped the whip and backed away quickly as fear rose up in her body at the image, she had her back to the wall near the entryway shivering in horror and reduced to tears. “No, NO… PLEASE NO!” “Well that was an interesting reaction. Okay blob bring it on!” Moving forward preparing her transformation, Tress watched as the blobs eyes glowed and then it shot towards the ceiling. It quickly became murky sticky looking mess. Tress backed away with her tail between her legs and reverted much to the same state that Daring was on the other side of the entryway to the corridor. “So… so sticky… so unclean… it’s coming closer… impossible to escape… Twilight… I never meant to stay a little while… you brought me here… what is even real anymore!” From Ballad’s position he had only saw the Slumbergath’s eyes flash once for each mare when approached and then they became quivering emotional wrecks. They were suddenly very afraid of the creature and it seemed to be feeding off their fear given its unnatural increase in size. He looked at the nearby skeletons that lined the walls including ones that looked to be the remains of brave warriors. Ballad Din turned back to the blob and narrowed his eyes at the creature. He stepped forward; it was doing to them what it had done to all others before them. He stared into the eyes of fear itself.