Chapter Two: Part Ten
Colgate opened her eyes to the sound of a dripping noise. Her senses tingled quite a bit and she found herself unsure for a moment which way was up. There was no light around her, save the diminutive light that her ex-torch gave off. She wasn't sure where the noise was coming from, as she could heard the noise from just about every direction. Perhaps she was hearing several drips at once? She cocked her head to the side, listening. No, it was one drip that echoed. She gathered that she must be in a cavern of some sort, though where she could only guess. She poked the ground cautiously before her, hoping to find some solid ground.
Well, despite the dripping noise, the floor seemed to be nice and dry. Level as well, as the ground where she poked was the same level as the ground she was standing on. She took a cautious step forward. Poking once more into the darkness, she found that the ground continued to be flat. She took another careful step. Looking down, she saw that the plank was nearly out. It glowed a very faint red as the last of the heat begun to fade away. She was suddenly reminded of that time her parents enrolled her into the Filly Scouts (They would have enrolled her in the proper organization, but a pair of questionable sales ponies convinced her parents to enroll her in their cheaper offshoot program). She always hated those camp outs. The stargazing was fantastic, and she showed an aptitude for astrological knowledge that always astounded the other ponies and fillies. So much so that she had stopped sharing her knowledge because it caused the ponies to ask her why her cutie mark wasn't a star or some such.
Gently pressing on the unburnt end of the plank, she lifted the smoldering part of the plank off the ground. Getting her face somewhat close, she began to blow gently into the little red coals that were fading. They flared for a moment with new life, then dimmed once more. Breathing in, she gently blew once more to give the fire a little more air. Once more they flared, this time slightly brighter then the last. A third time she blew, and a tiny flame kicked up and then vanished. Colgate was pleased. After a few more breaths, she finally got a lasting flame to appear. She waited a moment to ensure that it would last, and to see if it would spread. Success! Looking away from the fire, she closed her eyes a moment to adjust them to the dim light.
When she opened them, she could feel her pupils shrink just a little as they struggled to take in what little light there was. She let out a gasp. Near her was a desk of some kind. On it she could see several pieces of paper and what looked to be scrolls.
Scrolls with cutie marks.
She lifted her torch off the ground and looked left and right. She was surrounded by dozens upon dozens of barrels. They were stacked high, and following them with her eyes, she could see that they reached the ceiling. The ceiling itself was made of stone, and it looked to be just over three barrels high. Once again, not being well versed in geology, it was hard to tell if it was natural or not, particularly given the dim light she had.
In speaking of which, she caught a flame out of the corner of her eye. It seemed that the flames were climbing up the plank a bit faster then she had expected and were a bit too close to her face for comfort. Looking around, she hoped to spot something she could use to get more light. On the desk, she spotted two used candles. Moving quickly, she lit them then spit the plank onto the bare ground. Not a moment too soon either, as the flames began to surround the last of the plank and burn it black. In one final flare of light, the plank gave Colgate one last chance to get a good look around her, then died into a glowing mass of red embers. She turned her attention once more to the desk.
It was simple enough. Two levels, a few drawers, and covered with several ink wells and quite a few quills. She could see that the papers on the desk had writing on them, though she didn't know the script. However, she did recognize the drawings. Aside from what appeared to be doodles of angry faces chasing what appeared to be faces with hearts for eyes (which faces she noted were griffin faces), she recognized what appeared to be drawings of square patches of cloth. Most were in black in white, but a few were in color. The squares had what looked like lines coming off of them with more writing next to the lines. It was obvious to Colgate that these lines were pointing at and describing various parts of the cloth. She begun to flip through the pages, noticing that most of the pages had at least one drawing of a piece of cloth. The more papers she dug through, the older and more amateurish these drawings seemed to get. (This too accounted for the silly doodles, as almost every page had them. Though she noticed that there seemed to almost be a story being told, but backwards. It would seem that one face would drown the other in hearts, and the second would retaliate by producing all sorts of odd things to hit the other face with. This continued until she found what seemed to be the first doodle with both faces [at this point very crude and without any real defining traits], kissing one another.)
At the bottom of the pile she found what looked to be a list. Once more, the script was foreign, but at least it was neat. Glancing across it, she could tell that one column seemed to made up of numbers. One number would repeat row after row until about the 20th or so time, and then it would change. It was a long list, and heading to the bottom, she saw that it was still being made. She suddenly had a hunch. Looking around, she spotted a barrel that was not yet stacked tucked next to a full stack. Walking over to it, she pushed it over and rolled it to the desk. She looked carefully at the side of it. Nothing. She rolled it over slowly. Ah ha! There was a matching symbol! She quickly grabbed the list and began running through it looking for its match. It was in the column of numbers, and it was one of the numbers towards the bottom of the list. Perfect! Now to open it...
She paused. How does one open a barrel? Now, she'd opened plenty of barrels in her life before. For some odd reason, the ponies who delivered her anesthetics and her favorite mouthwash products always used barrels. Not that they would fill them with the bottles, but they would just pour the liquids directly into them. Colgate was very puzzled by this, and whenever she asked why they did as such, the delivery pony would simply shrug, brush her blond mane out her eyes, and be on her way. After about the 45th or 46th time, she had written to her suppliers demanding that they explain this silly practice to her. In typical corporate fashion, they sent her a letter consisting of 5 pages of lovely fluff and flowery language (literally you see, for componies often hired talking flowers [a recent addition to Equestrian society thanks to a small farmer filly that shall remain unnamed] into their Customer Service departments) that ultimately said something to the effect of: “What you talkin' 'bout? You be cray cray.” She simply shook her head at the memory.
So she knew how to open barrels … with magic. She stared blankly at it. She couldn't recall how pegasus ponies or earth ponies opened these blasted things. She looked it up and down. She set it up on end. She poked it. She tapped the top. She spun it in place. She knocked it over. She rolled it across the ground. She kicked it. She tripped over it. It rolled over her. She picked it up (it was a bit heavier then expected). She tossed it into a stack of stacked barrels. Then she ran for the far end of the room to avoid the tumbling tower.
With a loud crash and the sound of splintering wood, a few barrels burst open. Carefully making her way over to the crash site, she looked to see what lay inside (being thankful all the while for the fact that the candles managed to remain lit through all of that). The ones that burst, were filled with scrolls.
She didn't need to open them to know what was on them. Walking back over to the list on the desk, she began to get a quick count of each row, for she figured that each row must be the name, gender, and species of a pony. Sure enough, as she glanced it over, she saw that two of the columns used only two different words. Though which one was gender and which was race she could only guess. The last column was a mystery, as was the first. One she figured was the name, and the other one? Perhaps it was the pony's special talent.
There was well over a hundred, if not two hundred rows.
Colgate dropped the list as the number hit her. She took a few steps back, but then paused. An odd calm washed over her. An odd feeling of reassurance, if not confidence, that everything was going to turn out … interesting. Colgate paused. 'Interesting' wasn't usually what she would consider a reassuring word. Still, it calmed her down a bit and allowed her to think for a moment. What else was in this desk? And what did the cloth drawings mean?
Taking a second, and closer look, she realized that most of the earlier drawings were of the same cloth. However, it seemed that somewhat recently more then one cloth began to show up. She realized that some of the drawings were comparing two cloths. Finally, she came upon a drawing that showed a small tear in one of the cloths, with a line pointing to the cloth. Though she couldn't read it, the fact that the writing was thicker, and almost panicked looking, told her that ripping these things meant bad things. She begun to open the drawers to look inside. There, on the top of what looked to be a pile of papers, lie an extremely old looking piece of paper, that was covered with writing both old and new all along its edges. In the center, a dark red square with a dirty gold border.
She immediately recognized this as the cloth the griffin used to remove cutie marks. This paper was free of the romantic hijinks of face one and face two, but still had what looked to be little ponies drawn here and there. Then something caught her eye. Near the top, there was a line pointing to what looked like a tear that the artist had drawn onto the square. On the line it showed what looked like ghostly form of a cutie mark flying out of it, with a repeated symbol she didn't recognize next to it. It was repeated three times, with one last but different symbol at the end (that is, assuming this script read in the same direction that Equestrian did). This was an old drawing, if she had to guess.
Further digging yielded nothing else save what appeared to be a full blown comic of face one and face two engaging in what seemed to be a love story of some kind, though in this comic they had actual bodies to accompany their faces (which, given the artist's skill, was a shame. The faces had been quite charming, and rather cute, but the poorly drawn bodies kinda killed the magic).
Her ear twitched. Drip. She had managed to more or less ignore the dripping sound to this point, but now that her barrel fun time was over, she could clearly hear it once more. Drip. She winced. Drip. She looked at the candle holders. Sadly, these ones were not made for ponies to hold, for they were simple candlesticks. Still, seeing the world sideways seemed like a small price for Colgate to be able to travel with some light.
As she opened her mouth and went to reach for the candle, there was a sudden noise behind her. It was a loud pop noise that startled her, followed by the sound of something hitting the floor. The whole room lit up for a moment, then as quickly as it all happened, the noise and light all vanished. She turned around, and saw in the middle of the floor what looked to be a burning plank of wood. How the...?
She ran over to it. It looked like any other plank of wood that was partly on fire. As least to her. She didn't major into Pyro-Flora Forensics like her university roommate did. Still, it had teleported to here, or at least Colgate was sure of such. Had it come from the campsite? She looked around. If this is where she came in, then perhaps she could use this way to get out!
Drip. She twitched once more at the sound. Drip. WHAT WAS THAT? She looked around, trying desperately to locate the source. Then something suddenly dawned on her. She had no idea if this place even had a way out. If she couldn't teleport back, how would she get out? Perhaps there was a path between all of these barrels she missed, or perhaps a ladder or trap door. She began walking along the side of the neatly stacked barrels, hoping to see an opening or a gap.
After nearly walking in a complete circle, she finally found what looked to be a path. Sad thing it was however, that she had accidentally collapsed part of it when she had begun her career as a barrel tosser (said sport was surprisingly popular among farmer ponies, with Applejack and Big Mac often in the top two slots for their region). Her heart sank as she looked at the blocked pathway and the many barrels that now lay at dangerous angles, or lie broken and splintered upon the ground. She figured that she could try and clear it out, but a lot of those things looked as though they would fall right upon her head if she even so much as breathed on them.
So, turning her att-drip. She froze. Her eyes shrank to almost pin points, and her left eye began twitching madly. WHERE WAS IT COMING FROM? She turned back to the blocked path. Was it worth it? No, if she could somehow figure out how the teleportation spell worked, then she wouldn't have to deal with this horrible-
Then, all at once, her ears will filled with the sounds of hundreds of drips, all at once. Wait, drips don't happen in the hundreds, it just sounds like rain at that point. So why did it sound like hundreds of individual drips? Tilting her head, she closed her eyes, focused on listening for more.
Drip.
No, not a drip. It was close, but it wasn't quite the same. She waited for a second one...
Tink.
Ha! There! It wasn't a drip at all! It was the sound of something metal! Then she paused. The tinking sounds had been steady, almost rhythmic. Dripping water she could see doing that, but how could something metallic be keeping up such a steady rhythm? Well, for all she knew, somepony could just be hiding somewhere in this room hitting a pipe on the floor. Though, for some odd reason, she doubted that. Whatever. It wasn't important. Once she got out of here, then she wouldn't have to deal with that anymore.
So, turning her attention once more to where she teleported in, she made her way over to one of the candles. Turning her head sideways, she grabbed the candlestick with her teeth, then (head still sideways) made her way over to the spot. Bringing her head low, she looked carefully at the ground. Nothing unusual here (save the scorch marks from two pitiful pony-made plank-torches). She looked up at the ceiling. The dim light did little to illuminate it, but from what she could see it looked perfectly normal as well. There were no walls to look at, for all around the spot were walls of barrels. She let out a sigh (well, one through clenched teeth, as she had no wish to drop the candle). Looks like she had no choice in the matter. She would have to dig her way out. She was no Princess Twilight, or even a minor in Unicorn Magic. Such spells were beyond her. If you wanted to know about the 435 most common gum-related illnesses and injuries, she could tell you about that. If you wanted to know about brush sizes and firmness, she could advise you on that. If you wanted to know how many visible celestial bodies there were in the visible sky (she often liked to joke that there was only one), she, at one time could have told you. But when it came to matters of advanced magic, she knew very little.
After replacing the candlestick on the desk, she stared once more at the partly caved-in pathway. Well, it's not gonna clear itself. So, rolling up her sleeves (she didn't actually have any sleeves on at the moment, but you can bet your rusty horseshoes that if she did they would be very much rolled up!), she set to work.
In the course of a few hours, she managed two notable things. First, she managed to have her poor noggin knocked about by no less then 5 heavy barrels. 3 of which had landed directly onto her, 1 of which had sideswiped her skull, and the last she had managed to ram when she slipped off the top of another barrel she was standing on. Now, her stumbling was not entirely her fault. The barrel she had stood on had turned out (despite its appearance) to be rather rotted. This caused the other notable thing to occur. When her head violently struck the poor barrel, her horn had managed to impale itself directly into the wood.
Now, unicorn horns are known to be three things. One, is surprisingly durable. Thus, it is never wise to get into a headbutting match with one. Two, magical. There is little doubt that a unicorn's horn is an important part of their magic. Three, incredibly sensitive. This fact is not as widely known, but it doesn't change the fact it's very, very true. And in Colgate's current situation, rather painfully so.
You see, unicorn horns hold within them a natural resilience to pain. If the horn should get struck, hit, or otherwise be inflicted with pain, the unicorn's body automatically activates various magics to not only kill the pain, but to support the horn to ensure that there is no major harm done. So, normally, a unicorn only feels a quick flash of pain, and then all is relevantly well.
For poor magic-less Colgate, there was only pain. As her horn pierced the side of the barrel, she let out a mighty yelp. All of a sudden, she could only think of one thing: Get my horn out! Bracing her front and rear legs against the barrel, she pushed as hard as she could. More pain greeted her as it felt as though her horn was going to get pulled right off. Gritting her teeth, she yanked again, though even harder. She felt the wood lighten its grip slightly. Pausing for a moment to gather her courage for one final heave, she gave it her all.
And wound up stuck into another barrel. She had freed herself alright, but she had been careless and had accidentally launched herself from one barrel, right into another. She let out a roar of frustration and anger, and then quite suddenly (and literally) the barrel exploded. She lay there, very confused for several moments. Then, all at once, her head felt as though somepony had stuck several water hoses into it and turned them on full blast. However, rather then feeling like her head was going to explode, it felt as though her head was going from empty to full. It was incredible. She had never felt such a rush before in her life. It was as though something that had been rightfully hers all along was being given back, all at once. She felt giddy, happy, dizzy, elated, and a bit nauseous. Getting to her hooves, she surveyed the scene. Sure enough. The barrel her horn had just been stuck in was nothing more then shrapnel. Looking at the barrel she had first been stuck in, she paused, then let out a mighty cheer.
The cloth was stuck in the hole her horn had made.
To say she was elated was a very mild understatement indeed. So giddy was she that she began hopping up and down right there on the spot. Even more giddy yapping noises began escaping her mouth as she began dancing about with glee. If there was a hall-of-fame for happiness moments in all of pony history, this wouldn't quite make it (but that's mostly because most of the slots would be taken up by Twilight and her friends), but it would come pretty darn close.
So happy was she with herself that she simply had no idea how to even control her own actions. It took great effort to avoid ramming into things as she darted hither and thither. Finally, after some time, she finally managed to calm herself (though she still had a massive grin stamped on her face). Now that her magic was back, she felt much better about things. First order of business: Getting out of here.
Now that she could stand a safe distance away from the blocking barrel-cade, she made much quicker work of clearing the pathway. It felt so good to have her magic back. Granted, it hadn't been that long since it had gone, but it had been long enough. She supposed that a pegasus who'd lost flight and gained it back, or an earth pony losing their ability to grow food, would have felt the same.
As she placed the last barrel out of the way, she appraised the pathway. It seemed straight forward, though she couldn't quite tell where it lead to. She squinted, then suddenly got a bright idea. Closing her eyes for a moment, her horn filled the room with light. Opening them once more, she took in the room once more.
Well, it was still full of barrels. Though now she could seem them better then ever. However, the area where she teleported in from was very different. For one, she noticed a glowing circle on both the floor and the ceiling directly above it, both of which were the color of her magic. Secondly, she saw under those circles what appeared to be very, very faint black lines. She thought for a moment. It was probably safe to assume that if she stepped into that circle, that she would end up back at the camp.
Tink.
However, her curiosity got the better of her. While it's true that the wiser option would have been to (presumably) teleport back, tell her friends, report this place to the authorities, and then proceed onto Hayseed swamp, there was a terrible 'tinking' noise that she that she needed to investigate. Besides, it seemed as though the teleportation spell was activated by her magic, or this side of it at least. As she thought of it, her idea to explore suddenly seemed more like a good one. What if she couldn't get the camp side of the spell to work, thus not allowing her to return to this room? She had no idea where this place was, so perhaps the best idea was to try and figure out where 'here' was, and then head back.
Clearly, this was the wis-
Tink.
That's it! She had just about enough of that! Turning away from the circle, she went down the pathway. It turned abruptly, and just around the bend she saw a stairway that led up. Deciding that some measure of stealth was wise (never mind all the massive amounts of noise she had made earlier), she dimmed her horn a bit as she begun climbing the stairs.
The stairs themselves were rather boring. Simple stairs cut from stone, they were functional and simple, and she could see the top from the bottom. Was it mentioned that the stairs were simple? At the top of them was was looked to be a door. Making her way somewhat quietly to the door, she turned off her light as she gave the door a gentle push. Somewhat to her surprise, it opened. Stepping in, she took a look around. It was dark in this chamber, but she knew she was not the only one here. The first thing that hit her was heat. Then, she could hear the sounds of heavy breathing. Low, steady, and massive, and after each exhale, she heard a loud 'tink'. Curiosity getting the better of her, she closed her eyes once more, and her horn glowed.
It took roughly 0.83173 seconds for her to realize that was a bad idea. For, you see, she suddenly discovered what was making the horrible tinking sound. The door lead to what looked like a massive chamber, and taking up most of it, was a massive dragon. Well, the dragon itself wasn't making the tinking noise. Rather, it was partly covered in a massive pile of gold, and every time it breathed out, a coin would slide off of it and land on the ground. So startled by this sight was Colgate that she took a step back, tripped, and tumbled down the stairs. She hit the bottom of the stairs with a hard thud, got to her hooves, and stumbled into the barrel room. A dragon … She was under a massive dragon! She staggered towards the circle, but fell short. Oh yeah, she suddenly remembered what her poor body remembered: That she hadn't had any rest for the past long while. Not to mention the experience of losing and regaining one's magic. Add to that the 6 knocks to her noggin (she swore to herself that if this continued, she was going to get a helmet and never take it off), and the small number of hours she spent heaving heavy barrels, and you get one very, very exhausted pony.
She raised a hoof in an attempt to reach for the circle, but found that she didn't even quite have the energy for that. Well, at least a cold hard stone floor didn't make for that bad of a bed … right?
The last thing she saw before she passed into the world of sleep was the soft glow of the candles as they softly burnt themselves out.
What she didn't know however, was that the circle had gone dark when she left, and had stayed that way when she came back. Nor did she see that some hours after she had fallen asleep, that they had lit once more, and that something had come through...