Rainbow Dash and the Treasure of Canterlot

by Insert Pen Name


Part III: Into the Everfree

Rainbow Dash and the Treasure of Canterlot

Part III: Into the Everfree

A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)

        Outside the Ponyville library lay a purple sleeping bag. It had first arrived the previous night, well after the library’s inhabitants had gone to bed, and continued to lay there into the early hours of the morning. It was a small thing, puffy and warm, with a handy flap over the zipper to keep out the cold. There was also an orange filly asleep inside it.

        At around 5:45, the sleeping bag suddenly stirred, the filly inside having been roused by the a muffled ringing coming from within. There was a moment’s struggle, after which the alarming noise was graciously silenced, and a moment later, the filly emerged from the puffy purple tube with a tremendous yawn. After rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Scootaloo reached back into the sleeping bag, pulled out the alarm clock she had been using, and noted the time with a smile.

        “Nice try, Twilight,” she scoffed. “But nopony gets rid of me that easily.”

        Scootaloo quickly rolled up her sleeping bag, then hurried over to a nearby flower bed where she had stashed her school bag the previous night. After swapping one bag for the other, she then reached into her schoolbag and donned a blue baseball cap and a wrinkled grey jacket, both of which were really too big on her. Confident in her new ensemble, she then shouldered her schoolbag, and adopted a casual pose as she leaned against the frame of the library door to await her idol’s arrival.

        By the time Rainbow Dash arrived a few minutes later, clad once again in her Daring Do outfit, the little filly had fallen asleep again.

        “Ha, were you waiting out here all night or something?” laughed Dash as she shook Scootaloo back into the world of the living.

        “What, no, shut up,” replied Scootaloo groggily. “I was just resting my eyes is all.”

        “Heh, whatever. What are you wearing anyway?” asked Dash.

        “It’s my sidekick costume,” declared Scootaloo, now fully awake. “I was going to get a cool jacket and hat like yours, but I couldn’t find one, so I took the next-coolest thing I could find instead.”

        “Uh-huh. And does your big brother know you’re borrowing his clothes?” chuckled Dash.

        “I don’t have a brother.”

        “Whatever. You ready to go?”

        “You bet, Rainbow Dash! I’m ready for anything! I got my canteen, and my compass, and my first-aid kit, and some duct tape, and a spare roll of toilet paper, and everything!”

        “Cool,” nodded Dash. “Your parents give you any trouble, by the way?”

        Scootaloo merely shrugged. A moment later, the library door swung open, and out stepped Twilight Sparkle, dressed rather smartly in a green safari tunic and, to Dash’s dismay, a pith helmet of her own.

        “Oh no!” asserted Rainbow. “No, no, no, you are not wearing that!”

        “What, the shirt?” asked Twilight in surprise.

        “The hat!” barked Rainbow. “The shirt’s fine, but you are not wearing that hat. That’s my look!”

        “Have you been hanging out with Rarity recently?” deadpanned Twilight.

        “Just nix the hat,” said Rainbow.

        With a loud sigh, Twilight set to her magic, and the pith helmet promptly vanished in a cloud of sparks.

        “Better?” she asked.

“Much better,” nodded Rainbow.

“Glad I could be of help,” deadpanned Twilight. “You girls ready?”

“Oh yeah,” said Dash. “Scootaloo’s all packed up, and I got Pinkie Pie looking after Tank. So you know where we’re going?”

        “As near as I can tell,” said Twilight with a shrug. “I never did get a good chance to explore the ruins while we were there. Let’s just hope the forest is in a good mood today...”

* * *

        There is no place in Equestria quite like the Everfree forest. The residents of Ponyville had of course long grown accustomed to its foreboding presence, to the point where even the foals thought little of passing beneath its shaded boughs during the summer heat. But once one got beyond the treeline, and ventured past the point where the green fields were but a skip away, that’s when things got seriously weird. In the Everfree, plants thrived without plow or furrough, clouds slid freely across the sky, and all manner of strange and wonderful creatures ran wild, completely untended by pony hooves. It was, in a word, or two rather, simply unnatural.

        Many hypotheses have been advanced by the scientific community to explain this phenomenon, none of which, despite an abundance of scientific jargon, have been sufficiently able to account for this anomalous spontaneity of nature. The most radical theory of all was posited by a biologist named Leafy Green, who suggested that the Everfree was not actually anomalous at all, and that nature was in fact quite capable of handling itself all across Equestria, as anypony would be sure to notice if they were to actually sit back and watch it happen. Green was promptly ridiculed out of every major university in Equestria, and was subsequently committed to an insane asylum in Ritterberg where she has reportedly taken up growing chili peppers as a hobby.

        All of this mattered little to the three ponies who now trod the narrow pathway that wound its way deep into the forest. Twilight and Rainbow had been in the Everfree many times before, and they soldiered on steadily, if with caution. Scootaloo however, had never been so deep into the forest, and so reacted to every sight and sound with an eclectic combination of anxiety and wonderment. She would hear a twig snap some distance away and immediately hide herself between Rainbow’s legs, or she would spot a gnarled branch like something out of a horror story and bound right up to it, as if hoping it might come alive and try to eat her at any moment. This behavior continued for about an hour until the little filly finally got bored of snapping twigs and gnarly branches, and focused her interest instead on matters of relative geography.

        “Are we there yet?” asked Scootaloo.

        Twilight and Rainbow reacted to this development with utter horror.

        Fortunately, they were spared an immediate repeat incident by the timely arrival of something interesting. The path they were treading had been taking them along the edge of a broad plateau overlooking the greater Everfree valley, but now they emerged into an open area where the path came to an abrupt stop. Here, a massive chunk had been torn from the cliff before them, leaving exposed earth and bare rock in its wake. Down below, the valley floor was littered with the aftermath of the devastation. Only a narrow ledge remained to allow passage around the break. To the two adult mares, the whole scene was quite familiar.

        “Woah, what happened here?” asked Scootaloo, peering dangerously over the scrubby precipice.

        “Oh nothing much,” said Rainbow with a reminiscent grin. “That’s just where Nightmare Moon went and dropped a cliff out from under us a couple years back. No biggie.”

        Scootaloo’s eyes widened in awe.

        “Really?”

        “Oh yeah,” continued Rainbow. “First we were all like, ‘we gotta find the Elements, yadda, yadda’, and then next thing you know, ‘crack!’, and then it was all-”

        Rainbow proceeded to perform a fairly accurate rendition of what a landslide would sound like if it were being heard over a poorly-tuned radio set during a sandstorm.

        “Wow, awesome!” squealed Scootaloo when Dash had concluded her tale.

        “Yeah, just don’t mention it to Princess Luna,” said Twilight idly. “I don’t think she’d share that opinion. Now let’s see about crossing this thing...”

        Scootaloo eyed the narrow ledge ahead with growing unease, but Twilight and Rainbow merely exchanged glances and shrugged.

        A second later, Rainbow ignored the ledge completely and merely flew across the divide.

        A second after that, Twilight magically materialized right beside her with Scootaloo in tow.

        And another second after that, Scootaloo collapsed to her knees and vomited all over a patch of moss.

        “Yeah, I remember my first teleport...” said Dash nostalgically.

* * *

        And so the journey continued. On and on they trod past endless trees and shrubs, with naught but the twittering of birds to dispel their sense of isolation. It was nearly midday when Twilight suddenly signalled for a stop. Up ahead, a large slab of stone lay strewn across the path, the carved image of a great horseshoe still visible beneath the layers of dirt and lichen. On either side of the path itself, great mounds of crumbling rock stretched far into the trees.

        “The walls of Old Canterlot,” explained Twilight. “The castle should be up ahead.”

        Past the shattered gates they went and into the forsaken grave of the lost city. A thousand years of neglect had clearly taken their toll, and signs of the old city were few. Trees and bushes had grown thick over the ruined houses and shops, and the cobblestone streets had long been buried beneath the mounting topsoil. Every so often, the ruined stump of some stone structure peeked out from the undergrowth, but beyond that, the forest had almost completely swallowed the city’s remains.

It just after noon when the intrepid trio finally came to the end of the buried road. Before them, the great stone shell of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters loomed ominously over the surrounding treetops. Even in the broad daylight, the ruined castle had a dark and sinister air to it, and Dash and Twilight were both silently grateful that their destination lay elsewhere in this forsaken city.

“Right, where to next, Twilight?” asked Rainbow.

“I’m not sure,” admitted Twilight. “The artist’s notes said that the Royal Guard Cemetery was somewhere near the castle, but beyond that I really have nothing else to go on.”

        “Why don’t I just fly up and scout the place out?” suggested Rainbow.

        “Wouldn’t work; the forest canopy is too thick,” said Twilight. “Besides, I’d rather not have to split up if I can help it.”

        “Maybe we could get directions?” suggested Scootaloo.

        “From who? You see anypony else around?” asked Rainbow.

        “Maybe there’s a street sign or something,” said Scootaloo hopefully.

        “Scootaloo, this city has been abandoned for over a thousand years,” groaned Twilight. “It’s been leveled by earthquakes and grown over by the wildest forest in Equestria. The roads haven’t even survived, so I highly doubt there’ll be any sort of-”

        “Street sign!”

        Twilight wheeled around to see Dash standing further down the path next to a large upright stone with the word CEMETERY carved over a large arrow. Twilight’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

        “Ha! Told you! Who’s Miss Smarty-Pants now, huh?” jeered Scootaloo smugly.

        Twilight shook herself back to her senses.

        “So what? That could be any cemetery,” she retorted, secretly hoping that it wasn’t.

        Fortunately, it wasn’t; that is to say it wasn’t any cemetery, but was indeed the cemetery they sought. Just a short distance down the path, still in view of the castle, stood the two winged statues from Twilight’s book. The skillful illustrations had done them only partial justice. Their cold stone eyes stared endlessly forward, and their mouths were set in determined grimaces. Their raised hoofs seemed poised to strike for great justice with the utmost zeal, and their outstretched wings seemed to rival the treetops in their height. There could be no doubt that these were indeed the unblinking sentries of which the stone inscription had told.

        Without a word, the three explorers passed beneath their sheltering wings and into the overgrown cemetery. The graves of the honoured dead had long disappeared beneath the undergrowth, with only the occasional shattered gravestone to mark their eternal resting place. The trees grew thicker here than in the rest of the ruins, their low hanging branches hung with creepers so that it was only possible to see a few metres ahead of them. Finding their next clue in this cemetery would be an onerous task to say the least. Stumbling upon it however, was as simple as rounding the next bend.

        There in front of them, towering high into the forest canopy, was a single megalithic white column, once an exquisitely carved monument that had since been rendered almost barren by centuries of erosion. The ground around it was paved by great stone slabs that radiated from the column in a perfect spiral, which came to an end several metres from the column’s base. Spaced evenly around this border were six smaller monoliths.

        “The seventh column,” whispered Twilight excitedly. “Everything’s coming up Twilight!”

        Without hesitation, the purple unicorn bounded up to the column and began a cursory examination. The bas-relief carvings were now little more than vague ridges, but at the base of the column, something dark and solid stood out from the white stone. With a flash of magic, Twilight swept aside a swath of ivy, revealing a bronze plaque etched with two lines of runic text.

        “More Eohippine,” murmured Twilight.

        “What’s it say?” asked Rainbow.

        Twilight read the lines over a few times, then spoke aloud:

        “The guardians neglect their vigil; return them to their rightful duty.

        “What does that mean?” asked Scootaloo.

        “Well obviously it’s a riddle or a puzzle of some sort,” answered Twilight.

        “No, I mean ‘neglect’, what does that mean?” asked Scootaloo again.

“It’s like when your mom says you have to clean your room once a week, but you never do it,” explained Dash, speaking from prior experience.

“Oh. Okay, now I get it.”

        Twilight, meanwhile, now cast her eye around the cemetery in search of some clue to the riddle. Her gaze fell on one of the six surrounding columns.

        “Maybe it’s got to do with these,” she suggested. “This is the ‘seventh’ column after all, so these six must be important somehow.”

        The three ponies approached one of the columns. It was a solid thing, evenly cut, but largely unadorned save for a curious pattern at the top; a long series of chevrons that pointed downwards from the peak of the stone.

        “Curious... it almost looks like an arrow,” Twilight thought aloud.

        The tree ponies simultaneously flipped their gaze downward to the base of the column, where they were surprised to notice absolutely nothing in particular.

        “Or not,” muttered Twilight.

        She regarded the megalith with a thoughtful frown, then turned her gaze to the other columns. They too bore the same chevron pattern. On a whim, she trotted over to investigate the next one over. She had not been gone long when Scootaloo suddenly started dancing daintily on the spot.

        “What’s your problem?” asked Dash, fighting back a giggle at the filly’s adorable display.

        “Need to use... the little fillies’ room,” grunted Scootaloo.

        The aforementioned fight increased exponentially in its intensity.

        “Number-one or number-two?” Dash managed to ask.

        “Number-one.”

        “Well, just go on the other side of the stone, I won’t look.”

A moment later, Twilight returned to find Rainbow standing idly by herself in front of the column.

“Where’s Scootaloo?” she asked warily.

“Around back,” said Dash, casually gesturing at the column.

“What’s she doing back there?”

“Number-one.”

“Number-one? What’s number- Aw, seriously?! In the cemetery?!

        “Sorry,” called Scootaloo weakly.

        “Why didn’t you take her back outside?!” Twilight yelled at Dash.

        “Why, what’d be the point? She had to go, so...”

        “But we’re in a cemetery!” cried Twilight.

        “So, it’s not like there’s anypony around to complain anymore, is there?”

        With a sigh, Twilight buried her face in her hooves and began counting to twenty. Meanwhile, Scootaloo quickly concluded her unfortunate business behind the column. On impulse she cast an upward glance at the top of the column, and let out a sudden shriek of alarm.

        Forgetting all precautions of decency, Twilight and Rainbow swept around the column to the aid of the cringing filly.

        “I’m sorry,” quavered Scootaloo. “I didn’t mean to make him mad, I swear!”

        “Make who mad?” asked Twilight.

        “Him!”

        Scootaloo gestured to the top of the column, where instead of the chevron pattern from the other side, the carved face of a hideously imposing stallion leered dangerously out at the three ponies below. Twilight recoiled slightly, but Dash stood her ground and exchanged a good hard stare with the petrous visage before turning to the others with a firm appraisal.

        “Wow. That guy is ugly.”

        Twilight took a cautious step forward, her initial fears drowned out by the churning of cogs in her head. Though flat against the side of the column, the face was remarkably expressive, and it truly seemed as though the cold stone eyes were actively regarding their every move.

        Deep in Twilight’s mind, a gear suddenly slid into alignment, a circuit was connected, a tiny bell tolled in its belfry, and various other mental metaphors came to hyperbolic fruition.

        “Of course, those markings on the other side aren’t an arrow, they’re a mane!” she exclaimed. “They’ve got their backs to the main column!”

        Dash and Scootaloo were quick to share in Twilight’s realisation, but having figured out the meaning of the riddle, the issue now arose of how to execute it.

        “Return them to their rightful duty...” muttered Twilight. “But how...”

        “Maybe we can turn them around?” suggested Scootaloo.

        “Don’t be silly, Scootaloo, this isn’t an arcade game,” dismissed Twilight as she absent-mindedly placed a hoof upon the side of the column. “Besides, these things haven’t moved in over a thousand years, so I seriously doubt we’d be able to just-”

        The column budged.

        Twilight was permitted only the briefest moment of incredulous reaction before Dash quickly shoved her aside and threw her weight against the stone. Scootaloo was next to join her, followed finally by Twilight, having concluded that if she were resigned to a hopelessly cliched paperback adventure, she might as well give it her all. Little by little, the column slowly ground on its unseen axis until at last the unsightly face was directed at the central monolith.

        Almost immediately, there was a loud resounding *clunk* that echoed across the trees as some buried mechanism slid freely into place, like a massive tumbler in a great stone lock.

A smug grin spread across Scootaloo’s face.

        “Sheesh, Twilight, this filly’s really showing you up!” snickered Dash.

        “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” grumbled Twilight. “Let’s just get this over with.”

        The obvious next step would have been to move on to each of the other columns in turn, but that would have been dull and boring, and a general waste of narrative. So Twilight used her magic instead. After a few seconds of visually spectacular spellwork, each of the extant columns had been repositioned to face the centre, and the effects were immediate. The ground trembled as if violently alive, and the echoing crash of falling stone reverberated from deep below as unseen cogs and buried tumblers slid reluctantly into place after centuries of inactivity. Finally, at the apex of this cacophony, a great crack rent the air, and the mighty seventh column quivered in its place.

        And then it fell.

        It did not collapse nor topple; it merely fell, sliding straight down into its socket until all that remained was the singular black hole where once it stood. For a long moment, the three ponies looked on in mixed awe and alarm until a loud crash signalled the end of the column’s descent.

        Silence ensued. Nopony moved.

        “I think we broke it,” whispered Dash.

        As if on cue, one of the spiraling flagstones dropped suddenly into the ground to join its master, followed swiftly by another, and then another. One by one, the stones fell, each stopping sooner than the last, until finally the three ponies found themselves standing at the crest of a great spiral stairway that plunged into the maw of the earth below.

        Rainbow Dash took one hard look down the stairs into the abyss. This was it, she thought, they had come this far, there would be no turning back now. With a determined nod, she shook her shoulders, adjusted her helmet, and politely stepped aside.

        “After you,” she said to Twilight.

To be continued...