Chapter Eleven
Ups and Downs

In which, several surprising discoveries are made,
and it is shown that poetry is not always pleasant.

May 6th, 1014, Morning
On the Labyrinthine Stairs

"Rainbow Dash, Rarity, keep looking at Applejack! Don't take your eyes off of her!"

"I don't think the stairs can shift if they're being observed. We need to keep Applejack's relative position stable until she can get to us." Our obvious way out was gone and I'd have to figure out how to find it again, but first we needed to get into one group and stay together. "Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, you two look around for anything that might look like an exit, or those spiral stairs we came down. If you see them, say something but don't look away. Try not to blink."

"Okie dokie lokie!" Of course Pinkie would sound cheerful about being caught in an ancient magical trap.

I figured out a path and tried to keep it all in my field of vision. "Applejack, take the wooden stairs to your left. Climb up to the third landing."

She stumbled half-way up the first flight and scrambled to her hooves with a frightened gasp, looking around frantically until she caught sight of us again.

"It's okay!" I called out to her. "Dash and Rarity are watching you all the time. You can look at the stairs if you need to."

It took nearly ten minutes for me to guide Applejack to the landing where the rest of us stood. She practically galloped down the last set of stairs and barreled into us, gasping in relief.

"It's okay, dear," Rarity said from somewhere inside the group hug. "You're back with us and everything is going to be fine."

"Oh, my!" Fluttershy said. "You're all scratched and bruised! You poor thing. Does it hurt a lot?"

Fluttershy insisted on giving her some painkillers and applying some ointments from her saddlebags. AJ made only a token protest.

"Applejack, didn't you say something about glowing writing when we were coming down?"

"Yeah, Twilight, that's right. Before Rares lit up the place, it was pretty dark in here. I could barely see my hoof in front of my face. There was these funny-lookin' letters on all of the steps. Not real bright, but glowin' sure as shoot. They weren't like any kind of writin' I ever seen before."

"That makes sense. If the Labyrinth is magically active, it would need a pattern to guide it. If my magic was back at full strength, I could make the runes glow. If I could read them, that might give me some idea how to find our way out of here."

"Shucks, Twilight! Just have Rarity turn off her horn for a bit. I could see them in the dark and I ain't the least bit magical."

I shook my head. "Not except as a last resort. In the dark we won't be able to see the stairs, and I don't know how far they might shift. We need to get out of here as soon as possible, because some of the crew are bound to come looking for us any time now."

We all turned to the search. It was Pinkie Pie who spotted the wrought iron spiral only a couple of minutes later. "Twilight, lookie, lookie! I found it!" she cried out pointing toward the stairs.

"Good work, Pinkie! Now, you, Rarity, and Applejack keep an eye on it while I figure out a way to get there."

The route I finally worked out was a convoluted one, and it was long enough that it took two of us working in tandem to nail it down at any one time. We leap-frogged our way along, alternately fixing each part of the way in our field of vision until one of the other girls could take over and let us move without worrying about losing sight of the exit.

It was nerve-wracking and took entirely too long, but we finally made it. The spiral stairs led up out of the optic canal just as it had when we first found it. We lost no time clambering up it.

"Well, that's a relief! Ain't nopony passed this way after we went down," Applejack said, pointing to the hoofprints in the sand. "Only six sets."

"Great! Okay, girls; new plan!" I said as we headed for the last steps and the tunnel through the rock slide. "In two days, my horn should be nearly healed and I should recover enough of my magic to come back for some serious exploring. The repairs on Nebula should be nearly complete by then, and that'll free up some of the crew to make a sort of visual chain that will make it a lot less risky."

"I dunno, Twi," Applejack objected. "Them zebras are still lookin' for us and are all hot to tan our hides. Maybe we ought to skedaddle and come back when things have cooled down a mite."

"Don't be silly!" I said, as I climbed out of the tunnel. "If they haven't found us by now, they're not likely to any time soon."

From below us, at the base of the rockslide, came a voice in thickly accented Equuish.

The scar-faced old mganga who had spoken was backed by two other witch-mares and over a dozen spear-carrying zebra stallions.

When I didn't reply or move immediately, Scar Face made a commanding motion and her two assistants unslung what appeared to be bandoleers of glass bulbs. Whatever those little spheres contained would surely be very unpleasant for us. It was well past time for me to shake off my surprise and do something.

"Protect the treasure!" I screamed as loud as I could, and shoved all my friends back into the tunnel with a rough burst of levitation. My head swam and I fell backwards, floundering with my wings to no effect. I didn't hit the ground because Applejack was quick-witted enough to get herself beneath me. It knocked the breath out of both of us, but at least I hadn't cracked my head open on the stone steps.

"What are you talking about, Twilight?" Rarity asked hurriedly, keeping one eye on the tunnel entrance. "What treasure?"

One of the little bulbs of nastiness arced into the tunnel and Rarity tried to stop it with her magic. She gave a little eep of surprise as her levitation field slid off of the sphere without getting a grip, and it smashed against the tunnel wall. There must have been some sort of thaumophobic coating on it. I hated it when my opponents were clever.

I filled the tunnel with a shield just below where the contents of the bulb were flaring to life. My vision went white as a spike of pain shot through my head, but I managed to maintain the shield long enough to stop the primary blast.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash caught me as I collapsed, and carried me away from the roiling foulness that snaked down toward us when my shield failed.

We made it to the head of the spiral stairs, whatever the bulb released having spent itself by then. But we could hear the echoing clatter of hooves on stone behind us.

"Twi," Applejack hissed at me, "there ain't room to carry you down the stairs! Can you…?"

"I ain't no kinda magical expert, but I'm pretty sure you're gonna kill yerself if'n you try another spell," she said, sternly. "You git down them stairs, Twilight!"

We got down to the first landing, Applejack coming last and actually walking backwards. "Now what, Twi?"

At that moment, Applejack cursed and I looked up in time to see Scar Face sling an entire bandoleer of the bulbs down the staircase and duck back into cover.

There was a second of darkness and then the bulbs detonated like flashes of chain lightning as they bounced and shattered on the iron steps. Multi-colored fire spewed from them and coated the landing and stairs below with hissing, burning destruction.

From where we all stood on a marble platform a furlong or so away, the conflagration was a terrifying sight, throwing a rippling pattern of light and shadow through the maze of stairs. If just one of us hadn't been brave enough to close her eyes on that onrushing doom, the magic of the labyrinth wouldn't have whisked us away in time. Heroes, those girls, every single one. Anypony who says different is a fool.

"Now what, Twilight?" Rarity asked, as the flames and crackling sparks began to die down.

"No, no, darling," Rarity said with a tight voice and wrinkled muzzle, daintily shaking each forehoof in turn. "I understand completely. You're not well."

I pulled a bandanna out of a pocket on my vest with my teeth and offered it to her. She wiped off her hooves as well as possible while I explained the plan in a halting voice.

"They're going to come down the stairs. To look for the 'treasure' if nothing else. The labyrinth will catch them. Maybe we'll get lucky and more of the sultan's troops will come looking for them. Get trapped as well."

Rarity wiped my mouth for me with a clean corner of the cloth. "What about Nebula and our crew?"

"Captured… had to be. Standing orders to surrender if discovered. No way they could win a fight against the fleet. Musta seen the avalanche dust. Bad luck."

"So, we're just going to hide in here and hope they go away?" asked Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow frowned and looked around at the confusion of stairs. "Hurry to where?"

I grinned. "I know something you don't know," I said in a soft, sing-song voice.

"We're, like, in a cave! There shouldn't be a breeze. And it's weird-feeling… sorta greasy."

"Greasy breeze! That's fun to say! Greasy breeze, greasy breeze, greasy breeze!"

"Oh! Uhmn… excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but I think Twilight is waking up."

I opened my eyes slowly. I felt awful. "Howrng wuh ayy…" I stopped and tried to work some saliva into my mouth. Rarity floated a canteen over to me and I took a couple of small sips. The water fully revived the taste of dried vomit in my mouth and I nearly gagged. I spat out the water and rinsed once more before drinking.

"Hard to tell, darling, but it probably hasn't been more than an a couple of hours. Fluttershy said you'd be okay if we let you rest for a while."

Rarity looked pretty awful herself, as did the rest of the gang. They were like fillies on Nightmare Night, holding red lanterns under their chins in an effort to appear ghoulish. I looked down at the floor and saw the ancient runes there, glowing like old coals. I looked past the girls and saw the spidery symbols on the stairs behind them, stretching up into darkness.

"Oh, Twilight," Fluttershy said, "I don't think you should try to stand up just yet."

Rainbow Dash and Applejack moved to my sides for support, and Rarity added her levitation to help get me standing.

"You said that about hurrying before you passed out, but you didn't explain before... you know... thunk!" Dash said.

"Mn," was my unhelpful reply as I began puzzling out the runes on the flight of ivory stairs in front of me.

"The crew," I said. "Sooner or later, the zebras will take them back to the city to be imprisoned, or worse. They may wait to see if they can catch us as well, but they won't wait forever. There's the Eye of Rushwa, as well."

"Maybe… hopefully, and I don't have time to explain. Move your hooves so I can see that rune."

Dash and the rest got the message and stood quietly at the side of the landing, so that I could examine the symbols.

The runes were ancient and complex. Written languages change over time to reflect the inevitable evolution of day-to-day speech. So do the sigils and runes used to embed and control magical energy. It seems a bit counter-intuitive because the mana used to construct spells doesn't change at all, but the attitude and philosophy of ponies toward magic does change, and thaumic symbology has to accurately model the mind-set of the mages who employ it.

Fortunately, I had made it a point to study psychothaumistics after I had been trapped in the Wheel of the World. Being unable to read most of the spells that surrounded me there had been unbelievably frustrating. My studies had the added benefit of introducing me to structural concepts that modern mages didn't even have descriptive words for any longer. All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that I could read the ancient symbols surrounding me.

"Hmn…" I muttered. "Yes… yes… that's fairly simple. So each step encodes a variable… yeah, makes sense. But doesn't… oh, wait!" I began to laugh out loud.

I waved a hoof at her. "'The body's natural response to delight,' right? I'm just starting to appreciate the deviousness of the pony who made this place! What a cunning, clever mind!"

"Now that I've figured out her little trick, it's great! The runes change when you walk over them! Look." I tapped the first of the ivory stairs and the symbol's transverse component changed from exothaumic to endothaumic. "See? Just walking along randomizes the effect of the spells! But now that I've noticed, it means I can set the runes to carry us to the other end of the maze… and back out again!"

"So, how is finding the treasure gonna help us to rescue the crew?" Applejack asked.

"Ah, that's the thing!" I said, as I tapped away at the rune components on the surrounding stairs. "What the labyrinth is protecting isn't mere gold and gems. I'm pretty sure it's magical items, maybe even… oh, darn… how did that happen?"

"That central symbol changed and I didn't… wait." I checked the relationship conduits between the mandala and the peripheral nodes on the landing, and then laughed again. "Oh, that deceptive, brilliant pony! There are reflexive controls between disparate components of separate runes. But… get this: They only activate on a set but unknown number of hooftaps! I'm going to have to figure out each number and the common denominator of all of the links from each staircase attached to this landing!"

There were sighs. There were eye-rolls. Rarity said, "I think you got hit on the head a few too many times, darling," almost too quietly for me to hear. But they stood silently after that and let me work.

"There!" I said at last, using a couple of precise taps to spin the delimiter of the mandala into its correct position. "Now, all we have to do is close our eyes!"

The ancient magic operated so smoothly, that I wasn't even sure anything had happened until I opened my eyes again. Then, the cavern echoed with our collective gasps and cries of surprise.

There was no gold. There were no gems, jewels, books, or piles of money. There was only a single gigantic structure. The mass of thaumically sensitive crystal in front of us must have been nearly twice the mass of the Crystal Empire Palace.

"Well… yes.[1] It's a motor that drives a set of spells with nearly unimaginable strength," I replied as I walked toward the curving panel of obsidian near the base of the engine.
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[1] No. The analogy is deeply flawed, and in that context, the word engine only came into use after the more appropriate term, michaní, had fallen into disuse in the late third century. But for Rainbow Dash, it was good enough.
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"Can you control it, Twilight? Even without being able to use your magic? Will it be able to rescue the crew, or…?"

I ran my hoof over my vest, feeling the reassuring lump of the Talisman of Night in the secret pocket just over my heart. "Yes, I think I can control it. One way or another."

"Well, that's a relief to hear, darling." Rarity paused and frowned slightly in puzzlement. "But if it's so magically powerful, why isn't it…. Well, I'm sure you're much more knowledgeable than I am, but it doesn't feel alive."

"No, you're right. It's been deactivated," I said, peering at the golden knobs and levers set into the obsidian slab. "Something like this is very dangerous except when under direct control, believe me." I paused, debating whether or not to continue. "In fact, I'm pretty sure this thing is what killed that dragon." I waved a hoof in the general direction of up.

I continued to study the controls, and a growing sense of familiarity began to build in my mind. "There should be a connector, a focus. With it in place there," I pointed to twin vertical needles of crystal that had a conspicuous gap between them, "the engine should become active."

"Like this?" Pinkie Pie asked, holding up an ebony case about the size of her head.

Wild magic, I told myself. Just don't ask. "Thank you, Pinkie," I said, taking the box from her.

"Good 'oh,' or bad 'oh,' Twi?" Applejack asked, with only a tiny hint of panic in her voice.

"'Oh,' as in, 'Oh, it looks like I was right all along and I don't quite know how to feel about it.'" I said, and held up the focus, a beautifully carved crystal sun.

"That's because she built this place, and the labyrinth that guards it," I said.

"Wait a minute!" Dash snapped. "We spent moons looking for this place last year, and you coulda just asked the Princess where it was? Are you kidding me?"

It was time to come clean. "I did ask her. Way back when I first found the old scroll that put me on the trail." I held the crystal sun up and pushed it between the two needles. It floated into place and slowly began to spin.

"She lied to me," I said. The sun focus spun faster and faster and the facets of the huge engine began to glow softly. "She told me that the Labyrinth was just a legend."

"For the good of Equestria… and the world. Because this engine is incredibly dangerous, and she intended that it never be used again."

"But… that's exactly what you're fixin' to do!" Applejack's frown deepened. "Were you plannin' on usin' this here thingamajig even before we got ourselves in this pickle?"

The sun began to emit soft rays of light and the gigantic mass of crystal beyond brightened until the entire cavern glowed with the gentle colors of a summer dawn.

"Darling," Rarity said, stepping between AJ and I. "Perhaps we should discuss this before you take any hasty action?"

I gave her a sickly smile. "I always intended to tell you girls everything, and talk it all out with you when—if we found this place," I said, as I surreptitiously slipped the Talisman of Night out of my vest. "But there's no time, now."

I turned toward the obsidian control console to mask my movements. I wanted to make sure they wouldn't see me flip the chain of the Talisman over my head until it was too late to stop me.

The Twilight Enigma

by iisaw

11 Ups and Downs