Coco wiped her eyes, still struggling to breathe normally. Roseluck and Spike had stopped crying long ago. Roseluck had moved several paces away to be alone while Spike was comforting the still sobbing Dinky.
Coco got to her hooves and was about to take a step forward when she realized what was under her hoof. She picked up "the Finder", smiling sadly as she made her way over to Dinky, who had stopped crying and was hugging Spike so tightly as of her life depended on it.
"D-dinky, I need you to put the Finder on so we can keep moving."
This caused Dinky to break down in tears, mumbling incoherently as she sobbed into Spike's shoulder.
After ten minutes, Dinky recovered enough to put the bronze contraption on her horn and fire it up with light lavender magic.
On the map, the spot of the next piece was close. Coco counted the parts left. Five after this next one. Then they could go home for good.
The quartet quickly moved through the forest, anxious to find the next piece. Spike lead, hacking branches of trees and fronds of ferns out of the groups way.
Finally, after an hour, they found an entrance to a underground chamber. Or Spike just accidently fell into it and the others followed.
When everypony got to their hooves, they could see they were in a circular room covered in a thick layer of dust and many cobwebs. Except that their landing had made all the dust fly up and it was almost impossible to breathe.
When the dust finally cleared, the quartet was amazed by the intricate drawings and carvings scribbled over the wall. Coco went to take a closer look.
The nearest picture illustrated a scene of a giant gray creature with two horns, one bigger than the other. He was knelt before a golden shrine, a small candle burning beside him. There was also a few shapes carved next to the picture, like letters or words. Almost like hieroglyphics.
Coco's eyes swept over all the other pictures on the crumbling wall. All depicted gray bulbous creatures with two horns on their noses.
Coco quickly opened her saddle bag and pulled out the book "The Beyond" Princess Celestia had given them. The book was tattered and barely held together. It had become defiled from their long journey. Spike curled his upper lip at the sight. Coco thought it must have been Twilight's impression on him.
She flipped through the book, making one of the pages fall out. It was carried by the wind into the corridor leading out of the room they were in.
Dinky began to move towards it while Coco kept flipping. She soon found the page she had been looking for. The creatures covering the walls were called "Rhinos."
Coco was about to announce this when Dinky stepped into the corridor. Suddenly a giant metal box fell from the ceiling. Dinky screamed as it dropped. She dove farther into the hallway, the metal block trapping her inside and away from the rest of the group.
Suddenly other corridors opened up around the room. Then the walls began to shimmer, and bursting from the walls rock statues came, moving jerkily towards the other three, backing them up into other hallways. Coco cringed at the sound of Dinky's scream coming from within her corridor.
Soon Coco was forced back into a hallway, and a metal block fell. She could hear two other clangs of metal against stone, signaling that her other friends were blocked in as well.
Her first step forward caused a barrage of darts to explode from the wall, forming a much larger shape than a pony, the shape of a rhino.
All that saved her was her clumsiness. She had tripped while trotting forward, and all the darts had flown over her. She quietly slipped under the now hole filled wall, taking a few more steps before the next trap was sprung.
A giant wooden hammer came out of the wall, smashing down where Coco was. But Coco propped the hammer up and away from her body with her lance, giving her enough time to wriggle under and away from the giant hammer.
She faced another swarm of darts before she reached the next obstacle. She stepped on a loose piece of stone on the floor, firing up a trap. Suddenly skeletons of several alligators sprung from the wall. Coco screamed as one of the dead creatures acute jaws clasped its sharp teeth around her foreleg.
She shook the skeletons off, nursing her bleeding foreleg as she hobbled forward.
She had to jump across a giant hole in the floor before reaching a grid covered in stones. She put her hoof against the nearest one. It broke off from the rest and plummeted, landing in a pool of burning hot lava.
She studied the pictures. Most were of jewels. Rubies, jades, sapphires, and topaz covered the floor. But a few were simple gray or brown rocks. Coco placed her hoof on the nearest non-precious metal, a coarse brown sandstone. It held under her weight.
She skipped and flipped onto the boring rocks, slowly making her way across. Soon she could see light ahead. the end of the tunnel.
She cartwheeled a last few times before reaching the end. She huffed as she collapsed on the floor. But soon she forced herself to get up and move out of the corridor.
When she got there, she was in a room filled to the brim with gold and gems as well as impressive weapons and cutlery.
The other three were already there. Dinky had a large cut across her forehead, and Roseluck sported a burn mark across her chest, but other than that they were all fine.
They waded through the piles of things. Coco couldn't help herself when she found a beautiful silver and jade necklace and had to throw it in her saddle bag along with a matching horn ring.
After a half hour, Roseluck shouted. They all gathered around her. She held up a pulsing white jewel. Coco was immediately sure that it was the next piece.
They soon realized that they were trapped. But Dinky quickly solved the problem by shooting a hole in the ceiling big enough for her to lift them all through. To bad it made the whole room start to fall apart and crumble.
As Dinky shot them out of the underground death trap, Coco could see several golden coffins spill their contents, which were century old corpses of what had probably once been great rhino royalty.
They landed on the hard ground, twenty feet away from the crumbling tomb. Soon, like a giant sinkhole, the ground fell, making the quartet get to their hooves to avoid falling in.
As the four trotted away to the ship, Coco remembered their deadline. They had had two weeks. After today they would have a week and a day. They could find all the parts and Amethyst and get back home by then. Right?
===
Amethyst's eyes fluttered open. She groaned loudly as she flipped onto her side. She could hear the clang of metal. She rubbed her eyes to see herself chained to the ground.
Suddenly a dark figure loomed above her. Amethyst slowly looked up.
"Hello pretty," he said.
Amethyst's screams echoed through the forest along with mad, cackling laughter.