Everfree Quest

by CartsBeforeHorses

Palace of Doom

Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash emerged from their door, triumphant, their prize floating behind them. They met their friends back in the main room.

“Hey, you guys got a key too! What took you so long?” Pinkie Pie welcomed them back.

“What took us so long? I thought we were going pretty fast,” Rainbow Dash bragged, “In fact, I pulled off another sonic rainboom! Indoors with only a thousand feet to work with, no less. And then I zipped through a forest of obstacles.”

“Ahem,” Twilight nudged her friend.

“With the help of Twilight Sparkle’s teleports, of course,“ Rainbow admitted.

Pinkie Pie grinned, “Oh yeah, well that’s pretty impressive, but Fluttershy and I managed to find our way through a dark, collapsing room with booby traps and everything! All without being able to see a thing!”

Applejack bragged, “Well, I got drunk and set fire to a tree with Rarity!”

The other four ponies looked at Applejack and Rarity puzzlingly.

“Um, it’s a long story. Best be told on the journey home,” Rarity chuckled.

“Alright, Auhizotl. We’ve solved your riddles, now give us the Nirucon stone!” Twilight looked up at him and commanded.

“You have the keys, simply put them into place,” Auhizotl instructed.

The six ponies walked over to the pedestal and noticed that it had three keyholes on its side, and above the keyholes were the same markings from the doors. They inserted the three keys into the keyholes and turned them. The locks clicked and the keys crumbled to dust.

“No! All of those gorgeous gems!” Rarity ran over and grabbed the dust in her hooves, sobbing tears at the elegance which had been lost.

The dome lifted, and Twilight Sparkle grabbed the Nirucon stone with her magic. However, it soon fell out of her magical field.

“Hmm, that’s odd,” said Twilight, attempting to pick the stone back up. However, she could not lift it.

“My magic doesn’t seem to work on this stone,” she said, and simply grabbed it in her mouth.

“Of course you can’t pick up the stone with magic! It’s a magical inhibitor!” said Ahuizotl.

“Wait...” Twilight mumbled as the rumbling intensified.

“Yes! How do you think I was stopping you from teleporting across the river and the bridge? The stone enables whoever commands it to enhance or nullify any unicorn’s magic that they wish. Only one at a time, though. Thankfully Rarity didn’t know how to teleport, or I wouldn’t have been able to enforce my ‘no teleports’ rule.”

“What? But that’s absolutely worthless!” said Twilight Sparkle, removing the stone from her mouth with her hoof.

“For you, maybe. But this used to be Princess Celestia’s stone. How do you think that she banished Princess Luna to the moon? She used this stone, and then locked it up so that nopony would be able to use it against her.”

“So wait, yer sayin’ that we just made this journey and went through all them traps and puzzles for NOTHIN’?” Applejack said, fuming.

“Well, not for nothing. You see, while it is in this dome, the stone only works within the confines of the Everfree Forest. I can use its magic to stop your magic, but I can’t move the stone, since it was under this impenetrable dome. I would have gotten the keys myself, but as you could tell from the traps that Celestia put in this dungeon, only a pony could have made it through. I’m not even small enough to fit through any of those hallways!

“But since you six have so helpfully retrieved the keys for me, I can now use the stone wherever I want! I shall be a one man army, invade Canterlot, and use the stone on Celestia, holding the whole world hostage since I shall stop her from raising the sun! I will only return her powers if she agrees to let ME rule all of Equestria. And she will have to say yes, because she will be powerless to stop me!”

“But if you wanted us to get the stones all along, why did you try and stop us from crossing the river and the bridge?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Stop you? Nonsense, I was simply testing you with MY riddles and traps to see if you had what it takes to pass CELESTIA’S riddles and traps! The river crossing and bridge crossing were my tests. But by the time you got to the three doors with the keys, I was actively helping you to pass Celestia’s tests. I told you which doors to go in, didn’t I? I even used the stone’s powers to enhance Twilight’s magic when she was teleporting Rainbow Dash. Yes, all so that you would helpfully retrieve the stone for me! Now, you shall give it to me, or I will take it by force.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” said Twilight Sparkle, “Come on, girls!”

Twilight sparkle tossed the stone to Applejack, who put it in her saddlebag.

Auhizotl slammed his massive fist into a column holding up the ceiling. The column broke, and he broke several more columns. A loud rumbling sounded as the ceiling began to collapse.

“See if you can make it out of here NOW!” he called out as the six ponies went towards the long stairway that they had entered the dungeon from.

“Aah!” Rainbow Dash said as she zipped out of the way of a falling ceiling tile.

Rarity looked up to glance a tile falling towards her, but Applejack pushed her out of the way.

“Thanks, darling, you saved--”

“No time! Keep movin!”

The six ascended the stairs, but the steps were collapsing. Fluttershy, who was in the rear of the pack, did a double-take as some steps collapsed in front of her, separating her and her friends. But she fluttered over the collapsed section of the stairwell and kept climbing.

Pinkie bounced over falling debris, as her tail madly twitched. She pushed her friends out of the way of a falling section of tile the size of a carriage.

“Look out!” she said, as another giant block fell in front of them. This one, however, blocked their path.

“What do we do? We’re trapped!” said Applejack.

“Wait a minute... no we’re not! We control the stone now! I can teleport us all out!” said Twilight Sparkle.

She charged up her horn as white lights enveloped all of her friends. In a split second, they were outside and across the rope bridge that they had rebuilt and crossed earlier.

“Hey, you finally got to use that group teleport spell,” said Fluttershy.

“Yeah, good job, Twilight!” Pinkie said.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Twilight Sparkle, “Let’s hurry home before Ahuizotl discovers that we didn’t actually die in there.”

“Mm-hm!” the other five agreed.

*****

Back in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle and her friends sat in her library. She examined the stone in her hooves.

“Well, from what I can tell, this stone won’t enhance any of my magic,” she said.

“But how did Ahuizotl use it to enhance your magic in the dungeon?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Well, he probably used the stone to transfer some of his own magic to me,” said Twilight. “That or he transferred some of Rarity’s, since they came out of their hallway before we did.”

“Now that you mention it, I did feel rather weakened when I emerged from that hallway,” said Rarity, “I thought it might have been the smoke that I inhaled, but it very well could have been Ahuizotl.”

"But this stone will probably be useless to me," said Twilight Sparkle.

"Eh, it's the journey that counts, right?" said Rainbow Dash.

Twilight Sparkle smiled. Giggling, she said, "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Author's Note:

Hope you guys enjoyed the ride. Thanks for reading!

Comments

[CartsBeforeHorses]

2976345 I think you misunderstood. The objective is to find out where I got the image from, not the link. So for instance, where did I get the image? Was it from a TV show, movie, video game, and if so, which one?

[NuclearLime]

I love your depiction of Ahuzotl.

[Starlight Nova]

What's with the Daring Do and other tags?

[Themaskedferret]

Intriguingly done.