Chapter 4: How Daring closed in on the city, and what she found in the desert.
Daring’s trip across the desert was relatively uneventful. Apart from a few scorpions and some quicksand Daring made good time. After only three days she made it to the next town, and her final destination before the ruins. It was a good sized town, built around a large oasis. Daring checked into a local hotel. Her room was about the size of a double bed, but fortunately it had all the amenities; an oil lamp, a bed, a window overlooking the main road, and it even had a latch on the door. Daring looked out of the window and remembered what happened the last time she checked into a room. She decided this time to barricade the door as best she could. The view from her second story window was actually pretty good. Across the road from her was the town square.
“Wow, look at that,” said Daring to no pony unparticular, “they’ve got everything. Food, lamps, weapons, creepy mercenaries, pottery… Wait? Creepy mercenaries? It’s them, those ex-legionnaires. You’d think for an underground operation that they would at least wear less conspicuous uniforms. What am I saying?! This is my chance!”
Daring rushed out of the hotel and across to the square. As she got there she could see them leaving the square across from her. She fell in behind them.
“Come on you legion flunkies, take me to your leader.” Daring whispered to herself.
The 2 soldiers zig-zaged through a dozen alleys, over 3 bridges, and through a shanty town. Daring stuck to the shadows and alcoves. She was almost caught once when she accidentally kicked a tin can but apart from that was able to avoid further detection. At the end of their walk Daring saw the 2 ponies go into a building marked ‘Ponisian Embassy’.
“How stupid do they think I am. I mean, who ever heard of an embassy located in its own country? Of course it could be a trap. Actually it might as well have a flashing billboard that says ‘Trap’. Oh well, that just makes this more fun.”
There were no guards, but then again it was a small building. Daring waited about a half hour until it got dark. It was easy to see which rooms were occupied now, since the illuminated windows gave them away. There were only lights on the second floor. Daring snuck down an ally along side of the house until she found a basement window conveniently hidden next to a dumpster. She jimmied it open and crawled in.
The basement was dark. She pulled out a flashlight and took a look around. The basement was full of filing cabinets. Daring took a quick look but found them to be nothing but useless government documents.
“Hmm, nothing but expired patents. This must have been a federal building in the past.”
Fortunately she did fine something that was really interesting. It was a crate marked ‘Army’. Daring grabbed a nearby crowbar and pried open the crate. Inside she found a pile of shiny new swords.
“Just great. Not only is my enemy made up of war mongers but they’ve got swords sharp enough to cut steel.”
Then she noticed a box of something on the floor. It had what looked like black tin cans with wooden handles sticking out the bottom. And there were a dozen of them.
“As if the swords weren’t bad enough, they’ve also got grenades.”
Daring closed the crates and headed up to the first floor. It looked like a normal house. It had a sitting room, a dining room that could double as a meeting room, a kitchen, and two den offices. Daring walked around until she found herself at the bottom of a large staircase. At the top she could see a crack of light peeking out of a door. Daring snuck up the stairs and over to the door. She could hear voices from the other side.
“Commandant!” Said what sounded like one of the stallions she had followed. “We have just received word that Daring Do has escaped police custody and fled the city. It is believed that she is somewhere in this very town.”
“FOOLS!” Said a mysterious filly voice. “We cannot let Daring interfere with our plans. Report to the dig site and join the night patrol. We cannot let her discover the treasure before we do, The fate of our mission is at stake. Now go!”
Daring hid behind a curtain as the two stallions exited the room and went downstairs. Daring heard the front door slam, indicating that they had left. Daring went back to the door.
She couldn’t see anypony but could hear somepony enter an adjoining room. The light went out. Daring assumed the mysterious voice had gone to bed. She snuck into the office. Inside she found several clues to aid her in her little ‘investigation’. The first item was a large map of the desert. It showed the area where Daring believed the city to be. Across it were several pencil marks, suggesting that they has also discovered the approximate location of the city. She also found an old notebook. It was labeled ‘The Treasures of the Lost City of the Unicorns’. Inside were lots of notes invaluable to her dig. She took the book and map and stuck them in her saddlebag. She was about to leave when she realized that whoever was in the next room would notice immediately that these items were missing, so she decided to forgo subtly. She grabbed a marker and scrawled ‘I Know Everything –D.D.’ across a whiteboard.
“That ought to get their dander up.” Whispered Daring to herself.
She went downstairs and left by the front door. She snuck back through the alleyways to her hotel room, always watching to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She went to bed that night, dreaming of the look on the mysterious mare’s face when she would see her ‘message’.
Daring spent the next day in her hotel room going over the stolen notes. From what she could figure there was some sort of treasure hidden in the high priestess temple in the main palace of the city, and that whoever possessed that treasure would have the secret to eternal happiness.
“It must be the treasure that I read about. I wonder if it’s related to what the Sheik told me?”
Next to it was scrawled the words ‘secret to immortality’. Daring doubted that it could grant you that, but whoever owned this book definantly thought so. Daring checked the inside of the cover. It said ‘Property of P.D-O.’
“A hyphenated last name. You don’t see that too often.”
Daring read on and discovered several clues that would help her get through all the booby traps in the temple. She memorized the entire book. That evening she fell asleep, dreaming of her adventure up to that point.
The next day Daring woke up bright and early. She ate breakfast and loaded up on supplies for her desert trek. She caught a cab and took it to the city limits. After that she had a 20 kilometers walk to the dig site. It was slow going since Daring had to duck off the road several times to avoid running into anypony. She didn’t know who was working for whom. It was evening when she capped a dune and caught her first glimpse of the lost city of the unicorns dig.
It was a large expanse of sand, illuminated by a hundred lanterns. There were rows and rows of white canvas tents along with rows and rows of digging equipment. There were trenches dug through the land along with surveyor’s stakes.
The workers were just finishing up for the day and turning in. The night shift guards were coming out and starting their patrols. Daring snuck past them into the camp. She grabbed one of the workers outfits so as not to seem out of place. She found an empty bunk and settled in for the night. The next morning daring explored the camp under the guise of a watermare. She discovered that the ponies were mostly uneducated locals working for food. They were digging trenches in search for an opening to the city. In the notes she had ‘liberated’ she had discovered that the city had extensive underground cisterns, and if you could find any building, you could follow its lead drainage pipes down to the tunnels. From there you could traverse the entire city with ease. And then Daring saw her.
She was up on a hill top barking orders. There standing in front of a half-dozen X.L.D. mercs was… herself! She moved a little closer so she could overhear.
“…and I want her found now! We’re so close to discovering the path to the treasure and I don’t want her messing anything up. I know she’s here, I can feel her do-gooder presence. I want Daring Do found and I want it done NOW! Why are you still standing here. Go!”
“Time to step up my game.” Thought Daring.
She started going around the camp from group to group, putting her ‘2 cents’ into every conversation she found.
“Let us hope the curse does not effect us…I hope we aren’t the ones to discover the cursed treasure or our eyes might melt…They say that whoever lays eyes on the treasure will be cursed for all eternity…they are slowly poisoning our food…Our leader is secretly a cross-dressing nazi!”
Daring spread the seeds of rumor here and there and they spread like wildfire. Soon the camp was filled with nervous workers. One by one they snuck off, running for the hills. Daring’s plan had worked, and by that evening half the workers had been scarred off. This gave her just the opportunity she needed. She grabbed her notes and settled in an outhouse for some privacy. She compared her notes with the stolen ones and discovered the location of a hollow obelisk. The tip of the obelisk had already been found, but it was nearly two hundred feet tall and only the top 5 feet was exposed. This made digging it out almost impossible. However Daring was the only one who knew it was hollow. If she could get into it she could make her way into the hidden city 20 stories below the ocean of sand. She decided that it was safest for here in the outhouse, so she decide to fall asleep right there.
Daring woke up. It was 2:30 in the morning. Daring grabbed a rope and some picks and snuck out of her tent. The guards were only securing the perimeter, and since Daring was already within it she was able to move around freely. Daring stole her way over to the obelisk and started chipping away at the bricks. She hated to destroy a priceless treasure but she knew that it would be easy enough to repair a dozen missing bricks. Daring shone a light in. It revealed a staircase going down into an inky darkness filled with stale air. Daring stepped in and started descending under the sands. She didn’t see the shadows near her new entrance nor their owners staring at her, waiting for their chance to strike.