//------------------------------// // Trapped in a Box // Story: Pathfinder Ponies // by terrycloth //------------------------------// Before locking themselves in the vault, the party sent Applejack – with an invisibility infusion from Pinkie Pie, for extra stealth – to see whether it would be safe to bring down the regenerating skeletal dragons. Unfortunately, the answer was ‘no’ – there were enough kobolds still moving around that it would almost certainly lead to a fight, and worse, several of them were in the hallway repairing the traps that Applejack had disabled, which meant there was a good chance that more flaming undead would be unleashed. Since their fire resistance had already worn off, they decided to stick with the original plan, and retrieve the dragons in the morning. They pulled the vault door firmly closed, and the mechanism engaged, locking it securely. From inside the vault, there was no way to even attempt to enter the combination, but they had planned for Rarity’s Knock spell to do the unlocking, once they managed to free her. Since it had been nearing nightfall when the party had entered the dungeon, they were tired enough to sleep. Despite their secure location, they still kept watch. This was fortunate, since it was Rainbow Dash and Applejack, on second watch, who noticed that the air was going bad. The vault was sealed, and apparently air-tight – and while the vault was huge, they had six breathing creatures inside, one of whom was exceptionally large. With the air running out and no obvious escape, the threat of slow suffocation loomed. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Rainbow,” Twilight said, yawning a bit as she woke up. “I have a backup plan.” “We all die, and awake as undead?” Pinkie Pie asked. “No,” Twilight said. Pinkie Pie rubbed her chin with a hoof. “We all read from the book and get put in suspended animation like Rarity?” “That wouldn’t actually help, since the spell eventually wears off,” Twilight noted. “But Rarity would be awake,” Rainbow Dash said. “Oh right, she didn’t have Knock memorized, so we’d still be trapped,” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! But she wouldn’t die from the suffocation, so she could take all our heads and make her skull swarm even stronger!” “And that’s a good thing?” Applejack asked, perking one of her ears. “Well, not for us,” Pinkie admitted. Twilight sighed, and lit her horn, levitating one of the elemental summoning books from the wizard’s table, and dropping it in Pinkie Pie’s hooves. “Ooooh,” Pinkie Pie said. “We can summon a bunch of mephits, and let them kill us quickly before we have to die a slow, agonizing death from asphyxiation!” “That’s the air book,” Twilight said. “It’ll open a small portal to the Plane of Air. The smoke portal in the inn filled the basement with smoke, so I figure an air portal will fill the vault with air.” “And mephits,” Applejack noted. “We can deal with the mephits,” Twilight replied. The ritual in the book was extremely easy for Pinkie Pie. It had been written with much less experienced students of the arcane in mind, and she was able to power through it in about a half hour. That was enough time for the rest of the adventurers to start feeling slightly woozy, but nopony was anywhere near passing out by the time the circle was drawn and the candles were arranged. Pinkie Pie tapped one of her infusion vials carefully with a hoof, making a ringing noise, and the portal opened, the blue light from a sunlit sky shining into the dimly lit vault. As they’d hoped, fresh air rushed through as well. It took a few minutes for the mephits to show up, but sure enough, half a dozen of the curious creatures eventually emerged, looking around the vault in wonder, staring at the walls, the tables and books, the pile of equipment, and of course all the living and unliving creatures. “Hey, get away from that!” Applejack said, as one of them started poking at the saddlebag where she’d stashed the hybrid eggs. “Shoo!” The mephit swatted back at her half-heartedly. “What’s in there? Who are you? Where is this?” The others soon joined in with a chorus of questions. “What is this? What are you? Is there anything in here? Why are those bones moving?” “Shhhh!” Fluttershy said. “Shh, quiet down, little ones, and we’ll explain everything.” The mephits immediately landed on the floor in front of her, staring expectantly. Fluttershy opened her mouth to talk, and then closed it again, shrinking back from the mass of staring eyes. “Um… Twilight, can you explain everything?” The mephits turned to follow Fluttershy’s gaze, and Twilight sighed. “Right. Let me start at the beginning. Thousands of years ago, the ponies and other fey races of this world escaped from a hellish dimension of magic and trickery to the Prime Material Plane. There, they were greeted by the goblins…” Twilight’s story went on for a while, and while Pinkie Pie (and her headband) had to continually correct the innacuracies in her story (the goblins, for example, were the ones who had opened the portal to bring the ponies through), the mephits seemed equally fascinated by any version of the story, and remained docile for the hours and hours it took for the party to finish their rest. As Fluttershy began her prayers to the forces of nature, and Pinkie Pie started mixing up her day’s allotment of catalysts and infusions, Twilight let the lecture wind down, bringing it in to the present day. “Oh!” One of the mephits said. “This is mixworld!” She looked around. “I thought it would be bigger.” “The rest of it is through there,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing to the massive vault door. “We’ll be closing the portal soon, so if you want to go home you might, um, want to go home,” Twilight said. “I hope you found your stay educational, and can pass the knowledge on to your friends and family.” “But we just got here!” one of the other mephits said. “We want to see the rest!” “They aren’t hurting anypony,” Applejack said, as Twilight frowned. “Let ‘em stay.” “We also can’t close the portal until Rarity rests,” Pinkie Pie pointed out. “Since she’s going to cast Knock for us.” “Fine,” Twilight said, and the mephits cheered and danced around her, hugging her legs and tugging on her ears and tail. Fortune was on the party’s side, and Pinkie Pie’s first attempt to free Rarity from the amber stasis field was successful. It also only took three more doses of Lesser Restoration to restore Applejack’s strength. Rarity, as an undead, did not need to sleep to regain spells – merely to rest – so she spent the next few hours studying the book on portals, careful to avoid the trapped section in the preface. The mephits, and Pinkie Pie, occasionally tried to read over Rarity’s shoulder, but the text was dense and the few pictures were complicated and heavily annotated diagrams, so they found little to interest them. Twilight tried to start another lecture, but the mephits had had their fill. Rainbow Dash tried to challenge them to an arm wrestling contest, and after nearly tearing one of their arms off, only Fluttershy’s quick intervention – with words and a healing spell – kept a fight from breaking out. After countless hours of reading, during which the entire party (not just the mephits) started to get increasingly antsy and stir crazy from being cooped up in a large but rather sparsely furnished room, Rarity closed the Tome and sighed. “I have good news, and bad news,” she said. “What’s the good news?” Pinkie Pie asked. “I know how to close the portal, permanently.” “Do we really care?” Twilight asked. “If we can chase off the kobolds here, the orcs can keep the controls under guard, and just make sure it stays closed.” Rarity shook her head. “The bad news is that we need to close the portal, permanently, or Rally is doomed.” “Explain,” Twilight said. “The portal is a prototype,” Rarity said. “It has, let us say, ‘quirks’. One of its quirks is that it weakens the dimensional barrier any time any sort of portal or teleportation magic is used in the general vicinity. The general vicinity is interpreted very, very loosely. Rally, for example, is easily within range.” “And it’s chock full of wizards, teleporting willy-nilly,” Applejack said. “Not to mention the crazy people who keep opening smoke portals,” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! And the blink dog couriers. They’re blinking all the time!” Twilight winced. “I didn’t even think about the blink dogs.” Rarity continued. “The text indicates that the effect is minor and ignorable, but given what we’ve seen happening in the world lately, I think we can all agree that the author was being a little bit optimistic.” “So how do we close it, then?” Applejack asked. Rarity reopened the book, and flipped it to a certain page, with an intricate illustration of a portal stabilizer. “Since the controls are on this side, the stabilizers will be on the far side, and we need to go through and destroy them.” “Right,” Twilight said. “Like knocking over the candles for the little portals.” “Except that these candles are thirty six foot tall stone obelisks,” Applejack said, examining the illustration. “Inches, Applejack,” Rarity corrected. “Thirty six inches. Still not completely trivial, but it should at least be within our power.” “Assuming we can even get to them,” Twilight said. “The kobolds seemed very scared of whatever it was that’s on the other side of that portal.” “Oh no,” Rainbow Dash said. “We’ll have to face something that even kobolds fear. I’m quaking in my boots.” “You’re not wearing boots,” Pinkie Pie said. “In the weird alternate universe where ‘scares kobolds’ means ‘scares Rainbow Dash’, I am,” she said. “Oh! Are you a kobold there?” Pinkie Pie asked. Rainbow stared at her for a few seconds, then rolled her eyes. “So, right. We fight our way to the portal controls, open the portal, kill whatever’s on the other side, then knock over a few obelisks. Easy peasy, and the world is saved forever. No more stupid undead, no more smoke portals, just sunshine and rainbows.” “Mmm,” Rarity said. “Perhaps.” Twilight motioned for her to continue. “This isn’t Rendrax the Magnificent’s original manuscript,” Rarity said, tapping the tome. “It’s a first edition, quite valuable, but it was printed in Bright Valley. There’s no telling how many other copies of it are out there.” For a few seconds, there was silence. Twilight broke it, turning towards the mephits with a terrifying grin on her face, her mane starting to look frazzled under her helmet. “Sooo… friends… we’re friends, right?” She lunged towards them, one eye twitching. “How’s the Plane of Air this time of year? Temperate? Breathable atmosphere? Plenty of ground for ponies without wings to stand on?” The mephits backed away from her, and hid behind Fluttershy, shivering. Eventually, the party managed to convince Twilight that they didn’t need to abandon the world to its inevitable fate quite yet – there would be plenty of time to jump ship later, after things got really bad. Rarity sat down to meditate and memorize her day’s spells. “Remember to memorize a Knock,” Pinkie Pie said. “Otherwise we’re stuck down here.” Rarity frowned. “Knock?” “I helped you write it into your book,” Pinkie Pie said. “It opens doors. Even locked ones!” “You want me to use Knock to open that door,” she said, gesturing at the massive vault door that had them trapped. “A modern, admantium-reinforced vault door with a mechanism that likely weighs several tons.” “Uh huh,” Pinkie said. She frowned. “Is it going to be hard? Will you need to memorize two?” Rarity shook her head. “Pinkie, I can’t Knock that door. An arch-wizard might manage to pull it off, but I’m not nearly powerful enough to even have a chance! Applejack would have better luck picking the lock.” “Uh, don’t know if you noticed, but there’s no lock to pick on this side,” Applejack said. “Precisely,” Rarity hissed. “We’re going to need another way out.” “Um…” Fluttershy said. “I might have a way out. The forces of nature are pleased with the amount of fighting we’ve been doing, and I’ve got a few new spells. One of them lets me shape stone?” “Yeah, and I worked up a new formula,” Pinkie Pie said. “It’ll let you burrow through solid stone, and leave a tunnel behind too.” Twilight tapped her hammer against the back wall. There was a loud clang of metal on metal. “I don’t suppose any of you learned ‘shape metal’?” “Oh,” Fluttershy said. “Sorry.” “Never fear,” Rarity said. “If it’s up to me to save the day, then save the day I shall. Pinkie Pie, prepare the burrowing infusing – we’ll need that as well.” “As well as what?” Pinkie Pie asked. “I could leave it as a surprise,” Rarity said, smirking. “But fine, since you’re twisting my leg. Diamond Spray was never intended as an attack spell. It’s meant for breaching walls.” After an hour of spell preparation, the party was finally ready to leave the vault. Twilight closed the portal, and packed up the books and candles to take with them, in case they needed them later. The party put up their long-ish term defensive spells, including a communal ‘delay poison’ from Pinkie Pie that would keep everypony from suffering the effects of any poison they ran into until it wore off. “One sip each,” Pinkie said, as she passed the infusion around. “Save enough for everypony!” Rarity handed the metamagic rod of reach spell back to Fluttershy. “Sorry, dear, I forgot I still had this. I memorized my communal resistance with reach spell natively, this time, so I don’t require it any longer.” “Thank you,” Fluttershy said, “for giving me back my own property, which I paid for and everything,” she added, in a mumble. “Any time, dear,” Rarity said sweetly. “Now if we’re all ready…” At the party’s general assent, Rarity aimed at the ceiling, and sprayed a cone of diamond shards at the metal there. The noise was terrible, and metal dust and debris flew everywhere, but when the smoke cleared, there was a half-inch crater in the ceiling, revealing more metal behind it. “Um…” Applejack said. "You memorized two, right?" Pinkie Pie said, giggling nervously. Rarity frowned. “Not as such, no. I could try a fireball…” “Okay, stop right there,” Twilight said, lifting her hammer. “Let me handle this.” “You’re fixing to hammer through the metal?” Sergeant Macintosh asked, looking skeptical. Twilight spun the hammer around, to show him the pointy end. “It’s a Lucerne Hammer. It’s designed to puncture armor plating and tear away chunks of it to expose the pony inside. I don’t usually do that because armor is expensive and we can sell it, but this is basically the same thing.” She swung at the thinned section of ceiling, and with a ‘chunk’, the hammer hooked itself into place. “Trust me, I’m a professional. Now I just need to pull…” There was an ear-peircing screech, and the section of ceiling peeled downwards, revealing bare stone. “Wooooow,” said one of the mephits, staring at the flap of jagged, torn metal in amazement. He poked at it, but it didn’t budge, being solid iron. “It’s just a simple application of leverage,” Twilight said. “Now let’s get out of here. We have a portal to close.”