//------------------------------// // Chapter 18 - The Tower // Story: 10 Days, 3 Adventures - Part 1 - "In Dreams They Came" // by TP Night //------------------------------// As the three ponies approached the base of the mountain, the felt the heat from the lava lakes. Twilight took a closer look at the lava falls flowing from the mountain. “I thought this looked wrong somehow.. Now I see what it was.” She said, half to herself and half to the others. “What do you mean?” Luna inquired in a curious tone. “Look at those lava falls and tell me what you see.” “I see lava flowing... upwards, FROM the lakes... Okay, I see your point.” Luna allowed herself to smile. “Reversed lava falls. Quite the sight, wouldn’t you both agree?” Twilight nodded. “Yeah, feels like something Discord would do.” Applejack looked at the falls too. “Yeah, definitely has a ‘Discord’-y feel to it. Could it be something from one of his dreams? Does Discord even have dreams?” “He does, but I stay out of his head. His mind is... Unique, to say the least.” As they talked, they kept walking up the road toward the tower. At its base it was wide, but it gradually narrowed the higher up they reached. When they finally came to the top, it was just barely wide enough for two of them to stand side by side. Luna and Twilight moved up in front, with Applejack close behind. They started examining the door. “Need me to buck it open like the last one?” Applejack asked. “Maybe...” Twilight said, deep in thought. “But this one looks sturdier... I think this one we’ll need magic to open instead of brute force.” “I think I see a solution.” Luna said, pointing upwards. Applejack and Twilight both looked up, seeing a small window above the door. “If one of us were to move in through that window, the door could maybe be opened from the inside.” Luna said. “That window is rather small.. No offense Luna, but your body wouldn’t fit through that. Mine, however, would just barely fit.” Twilight said. “That decides that, then. Unless somepony has a better idea?” Luna said. “Nope, none here.” Applejack said. “Twi goes in and unlocks the door, you and I enter once she’s got it opened.” Twilight stretched her wings. “Very well, see you inside girls.” She leaped up and flapped her wings, gripping the window opening with her front hoofs. Once she had found her grip, she folded her wings back and dragged herself up, into the window. Just like she had suspected, she just barely fitted through it, with only a few centimeters to spare around her body as she crawled in. The wall was thick, so the window felt more like a short tunnel. She reached the inside and carefully leaned inside, looking around to see if there was any guards in the room. Next to the door, she saw a lonely skeleton guard, like the ones they had met in the castle earlier. She looked around and perked her ears to listen. That skeleton seemed to be the only one in the room. She decided to make a silent takedown. She made a careful, silent leap, extending her wings and hovering slowly without a sound. She slowly started descending toward the skeleton from above. When she was just over a meter above it, She folded her wings and dropped her entire body weight upon it, with her hoofs held together. She could feel the skeleton shattering into pieces beneath her hoofs as she made contact. When she landed on the ground, there was a pile of bones and armor around her. “Well, that worked out well...” she thought to herself, and then turned around to inspect the inside of the door. She found a lever, seemingly connected to the doors, and decided to pull it and hope for the best. As she did, the doors slowly started sliding apart. However, the sliding was noisy. Rusty gears and pulleys in the opening mechanisms made a loud sound. Luna and Applejack moved in as soon as the doors had slid far enough apart for them to pass through. “That noise will probably attract more guards...” Applejack said as they moved in. “We better keep moving!” “Agreed!” Luna and Twilight said at the same time, and they all started running toward a small side door. Just as they closed it, they heard hoofsteps in the room, lots of them. Twilight estimated it had to be at least ten skeletons, based on the sounds. Maybe more. “We’ll need to fight them.” Applejack said. “Yes, I agree. We need to get to the main door, which they came from. And the only way would be to fight our way through them to get there.” Luna nodded. “So, surprise attack? Just rush out and overwhelm them?” Applejack said, a small grin forming on her face. “Sounds as good as any other tactic.” Twilight said. “Then, I’ll count to three - on three, we swing this door open and just run in and start kicking their bony flanks!” Applejack said. “Okay!” Twilight said, a confident grin forming on her face too. “One... Two...” Applejack began. The three ponies all took their battle stances. “THREE!” * * * Ten minutes later, the battle was over. Piles of bones lined the walls of the room. Applejack kicked a skull away from under her hoof. “Well, that was easy..” Twilight said, looking around at the bones. “Yes, I admit I might have underestimated the effectiveness of the pulse wave spell...” Luna said with a sheepish smile. “I did not expect them to all get thrown into the walls quite so.. violently.” “What did you expect?” Applejack asked. “Well, I intended to just push them away a bit, to give us some room for movement and a few moments to prepare attacks... However I think this was an acceptable outcome as well, do you not agree?” “Sure, makes it simpler for us. Now we now the skeletons are sensitive to being hurled 50 miles per hour into concrete walls.” Twilight joked. Luna and Applejack giggled a bit at the joke, and then they all regrouped in the middle of the room to plan their next move. “Okay, so.. They came from over there.” Twilight pointed at a door. “Can we assume that door leads to a staircase?” “Well, I can check.” Applejack offered. Before Twilight could answer she had already ran off to take a look. She waved her hoof to the others. “Staircase.” She said. Twilight and Luna walked over and entered the door just behind Applejack, who was already a few steps up. “I assume we’re going up, right?” She said and turned her head to the others. Luna nodded. “Yes, most likely the crystal ball would need to be far up, in order for its magic to spread wider across the realm.” “Makes sense.” Twilight agreed. “So it would be on the top floor.” “Which means a lot of walking.” Applejack said. “For all of us. Not enough room in these narrow stairs for flying.” “True. Based on the ceiling height in the room we were, and the approximate height of the tower as viewed from outside when we got here, I’d say... ten, maybe eleven floor, if all floors have the same height.” Twilight said. They kept on walking, mostly in silence, making their way further and further up the tower. A few floors up, the stairs ended. “Okay... There’s no way we’re on the top yet.” Twilight said. “I would guess, maybe halfway.” “Which means these stairs only went halfways, and there’s another set somewhere that goes from here to the top. It’s a common design in tall constructions to have separate staircases that each cover a few floors each instead of having one that covers the entire height. It’s a safety design, so that if a stair breaks or is blocked, only some floors get affected, not all of them.” Applejack said. Twilight looked at her with a surprised smile. “That sounded unusually egghead-y to come from you, A.J. I didn’t know you knew about architecture." “Well, It’s from back in my school days. I took a class in basic architecture to get some extra points I needed to pass. And, some of that stuff stuck in my memory, even though I don’t normally need it in my daily work.” “Well, in any case.. I’ve read the same things, and if my memory serves me right, the stairs usually get located on opposite sides of the building when using this design, which means we’ll probably find the second set of stairs across this hall we’re standing in.” Twilight said and pointed across the room. ”Yeah, that’s how I remember it too, so let’s get to the other side.” “Hmm...” Luna mumbled. “Something wrong?” Applejack asked. “I have a bad feeling about this hallway...” Luna responded, looking upwards. “For starters, I can barely see the ceiling at all, there’s some kind of darkness covering it.” She lowered her head, looking closer at the floor. “Secondly, this floor..” “What’s wrong with the floor?” Twilight asked, looking at it. “Downstairs, the floor was plain stone. Here, it has patterns and symbols carved in to each stone. I suspect only some of these are safe to walk on, and the others might trigger traps or do direct damage.” “Sounds like something from a Daring Do story.” Twilight said. “True... Nonetheless, I think we need to examine the floor a bit before we walk across, just in case.” “Any suggestions?” Applejack asked. “We could just use magic to ‘press’ the floortiles, and see if any of them are pressure sensitive traps.” Twilight suggested. “Luna can raise a shield in front of us, and you press the tiles. That way we’re safe if some tiles are in fact traps and stuff starts shooting. I’ve read Daring Do, I know about the rooms with arrows and spears launching from the floor and walls, and the room with poison darts from all directions, and the one where the floor splits open and there’s an acid pit below, and so on, and so on.” Applejack said. “I agree. I shall raise a shield, and Twilight can use a reversed levitation spell to press each tile, one by one. Thus we can see which ones are safe.” They all got in position, and Lunas horn glowed brightly. In front of them, a translucent blue panel appeared, almost like a sheet of faintly glowing blue glass. Standing behind the shield, Twilights horn started glowing too. One by one, the floor panels glowed for a few seconds each, and then the next started, in a basic grid pattern, moving from left to right and from the nearest row and away from them. No panels reacted to the pressure. “Okay, so... not pressure sensitive. Maybe they can distinguish between magic and actual hooves touching them?” Applejack suggested. “Is that sort of thing possible if you use magic?” “It is, yes.. advanced magic though, but then again.. Nightmare Moon has quite advanced magic, so she would most likely be able to cast spells like that.” Luna answered. “Wait, I have a safer idea.. We could just fly across, and carry Applejack with a levitation spell again.” Twilight said. She flapped her wings and left the ground, slowly moving in over the tiles. But as she did, she suddenly felt ten times heavier, and was forced to land. She took ground on the tiles, but nothing more happened. “Okay, scratch that, we can’t fly here. the tiles makes our bodies feel several times more dense, it’s impossible to fly. We’ll have to walk if we’re gonna get across.” Twilight said. She walked back to the others, moving slowly until she got off the tiles, at which point she moved normally again. “Okay, so now what?” Applejack said. “I think I have an idea...” Luna said, examining the room. * * * Applejack looked across the tiles, measuring the distance with her trained eyes. “I could probably toss you across, Twilight.” She joked. “You know, like in that movie, ‘Lord of the Horse shoe’.” “I already told you. When we’re on or above those tiles, gravity increases by roughly tenfold.” “Yeah well.. can’t we just walk across then? I mean, even with increased weight, it’s just a matter of getting across.” Applejack asked. “It would be very exhausting, and we might not even make it all the way before it gets too tiresome and quite literally painful.” Twilight explained. “Any chance you or Luna can do some kind of spell to lower our weights to match the increase and make us feel normal-weighted?” Applejack suggested “That was actually similar to what I had in mind.” Luna said. “So what’s the plan here?” Applejack continued. “A bridge.” Luna replied shortly. “Hmm.. I think I see what you’re thinking.” Twilight said with a thoughtful tone. “Care to explain?” Applejack asked with a small smirk. “You know I’m not that good with magic stuff.” Twilight pointed at the tiles. “See these symbols?” “Yeah.” Applejack said, looking where Twilight pointed. “They work a bit like vents. From them, magic energy flows upwards, all the way to the ceiling. Up in the darkness there, I’m guessing there are similar tiles to which the energy flows. Like those reverse lava falls outside. And within the magic stream, gravity increases.” “...And a bridge would...?” “Effectively block the magic flow, making it so that on the bridge, no gravity-magic would flow, and we could walk normally across while the magic flows up on the sides around us. Like a reversed umbrella repelling rain.” “Oh, now I see.. That actually sounds like it would work!” Applejack said with sudden clarity noticeable in her tone. “That IS what you plan, right?” Twilight asked, turning to Luna. “Indeed.” Luna said. Her horn started shining, and a bridge appeared. It looked like the shield she had raised earlier, but horizontal and longer. It spanned across the entire tiled part of the floor. “You two go across first. It is easier for me to keep the bridge stable that way. While you to cross, I need to keep very focused and maintain the entire length of the room. When I cross myself, I only need to keep it stable in front of me, I can disperse the bridge behind me as I walk.” “I’ll go first, and when I reach the other side I can help stabilize it from the other side.” Twilight said. “Good idea. That way I can preserve some of my magic. We will probably need it when we reach the top. The crystal is most likely guarded.” Twilight stepped up on the bridge, and started walking across. “Hm.. some traces of the magic still sips through, but not nearly the same amount. I feel.. maybe a few kilos heavier, at most.” “Understood.” Luna nodded. “A few kilos more or less is nothing.” Applejack said with a confident smile. “At least not enough to be a problem.” Twilight made it across within a minute, after which she took position and her horn started glowing. The blue magic in the bridge was infused with a few strands of a dark purple glow. Applejack jumped up and quickly jogged across. Luna walked at a moderate pace, making it across in a couple of minutes. After they were all safely across, the bridge vanished. They walked out through a door, and found the staircase, leading upwards. After a few floors, the reached the end of the staircase. “This must be the top floor.” Twilight said, entering a large hallway. “Indeed. Look.” Luna said, pointing across the room. At the far end they saw a black pillar rising up from the ground, looking like twisted metal. And on top of that - or rather, a few centimeters above it, hovering in the air - was a black crystal ball, like the one they had used to enter the Dreamscape. They all ran up toward it, but just as Luna was about to grab it, it became surrounded by a wall of fire. They heard a booming, female voice echoing through the entire room. “YOUR LITTLE ADVENTURE ENDS NOW! YOU HAVE COME FAR ENOUGH, YOU WORTHLESS EXCUSES FOR PRINCESSES! THAT CRYSTAL SPHERE BELONGS TO ME!” They all turned toward the end of the room, where the voice seemed to originate. It was covered in darkness. The darkness slowly moved back, revealing a black alicorn, with dark blue flowing mane and darker blue armor covering parts of her body. Luna stood in front of Twilight and Applejack, spreading her wings to protect them. “So it was you, just like we suspected...” Luna said. “Nightmare Moon!”