Stairs
Trixie looked off into the distance at the magnificent structures that Gaia showed them as he walked across the Titan's land, amazed at just how huge these structures were. Beside her, Armora and Starshine looked over the land and buildings with the same amount of awe as she had, but Sombra sat alone in the center of the Titan's hand, not bothering to look around.
"These are incredible," Trixie said as Gaia walked by a giant tower the was held up by a carving of a Titan in the side of the mountain it rested on. Gaia scoffed at her words and shook his head.
"Yes, yet all we will be remembered for is our destruction and wrath, not how inventive we could be," he said with scorn in his voice that Trixie figured was at his own race, rather than the ponies. "Though I cannot judge them so harshly, as I too am guilty of the same sins that they have committed, I am no better than my fallen brethren."
"Nah, you're not that bad," Starshine said with a smile. "You didn't crush us after all, and that's what the other Titans would have done." Gaia stopped walking for a minute and looked down at the little colt, his stone face never changing expression, but Trixie could still feel the gratitude coming from him.
"You are wise for your age," he eventually said at last, this time causing Trixie to scoff.
"He's only wise until he decides to run off on his own," she said with a smirk as she pulled him into a headlock and ruffled his mane, causing him to shriek with laughter as he tried to escape. Gaia watched the two wrestle a bit with both happiness and sorrow inside of him. He shook his head slightly and continued to move on, being careful of the dog that held onto his index finger as it sniffed.
"Incredible! So many smells! I can't contain it all!" Bark said as he held out his tongue and let his nose control where he was looking. Armora was resting near Gaia's thumb while the Titan finally noticed Sombra sitting by himself, staring off into nothingness.
"Is something the matter, former king?" Gaia asked him, snapping Sombra out of his thoughts.
"How does everypony know that about me?" he grumbled loud enough so that Gaia could hear.
"Star-Swirl told me much about his land, including the tales of the evil king that enslaved his entire kingdom--and tried to take down the two princesses of harmony that tried to stop him," Gaia said with the underlining tone of distrust in his voice. "And I know that your name is Sombra, the same name of that dark pony."
"Leave it to Star-Swirl to mess up the facts and make the princesses seem like the benevolent rulers," Sombra scoffed as he glared up at the Titan, not aware that another pony was listening. "There are two sides to every story and he knew nothing of mine." Gaia would have raised an eyebrow at this, but then he looked up into the distance and nodded.
"We are here." Trixie and Starshine stopped wrestling with each other and Armora woke up from her nap, all of them heading to the edge of Gaia's hand to see the temple. Much to Trixie's relief, it was pony size and not Titan size. If it had been, she figured that it would have taken years to search the entire thing. It was made of a white stone and stood at the bottom of a mountain, which made Trixie suspect that the temple might be part of that mountain as well. Gaia knelt down next to the temple's entrance and placed his hand at the entrance, allowing the group to get off of his hand.
"Thank you for doing this for us," Trixie said with a bow once she had gotten off, everypony except Sombra following her lead. Gaia nodded as the group walked up the stairs to the massive gold doors in the front, looking around for some way in. A number of symbols that Trixie couldn't read were on the front and she looked at Sombra. "Alright Sombra, this is why I put up with you. Time to do your part." Sombra said nothing as he walked by her, but Trixie noticed that it seemed that he was trying to avoid her eyes as he did so. His eyes glanced over the symbols and he raised an eyebrow once or twice as he read.
"Seems that we forgot something important," Sombra said as he turned to look back at them. "It says that we need the key of the Titans if we want to get past the door. Minor issue."
"Minor?! That de-rails our plan completely," Trixie growled in frustration as she began to pace before looking up at Gaia. "Can you bust down the door?"
"I will try," Gaia said as he brought back his arm, waiting until everypony had gotten out of the way of the door before he slammed his fist into it. The ground shattered around the temple as the force of his impact shook the land and knocked all the group members over, but much to Trixie's dismay the door still remained standing. "It seems that Star-Swirl's magic still remains strong even after five hundred years. There is nothing I can do."
"Do you know where the key is?" Bark asked Gaia, who shook his head with a sigh.
"The key could have been on any of my brethren, and some of us were erased completely from this world. It would take a long time to search every one of them and I cannot recall where all of them fell. I am sorry." Trixie bit her bottom lip as she looked back up at the door, trying to figure out what to do. Sombra, meanwhile, was knocking his hoof against the wall next to the door, gaining him the attention of Trixie and the others.
"Will you stop that knocking?" Bark asked him as Sombra backed away from the wall with a smirk.
"I have no idea why you ponies worship Star-Swirl so much," he said. "He had no imagination nor did he ever think 'outside the box.' For example...UPT ER!" Trixie shielded the others as Sombra blew a hole in the wall, and when she lowered her shield she saw that the hole led into the same chamber that the doors did. "You think he would have thought of something like this," Sombra said with a smug smile as he walked inside. Armora and Bark followed him inside while Trixie looked up at Gaia.
"If you do not mind, I would like you to wait here. We will be out soon." she turned to head inside, but Gaia placed his hand in front of her to stop her.
"Before you go, beware of the creature that this temple has locked up deep inside of it," Gaia said with both concern and fear in his voice. "It was a being that was feared in our land for its ability to kill Titans. We called it...I cannot remember, but it is one of the most dangerous creatures I know of." Trixie nodded to show that she understood, before motioning for Starshine to follow her as they both ran inside after the rest of the group.
"THE HELL!?" was the first thing Trixie heard when she entered into the main chamber with Sombra and the others, joining them next to a staircase that led up to another staircase that led...sideways?
"What is this?" Trixie asked as she looked around at the room, if she could call it that, that rested before their eyes. There were hundreds of stairs that went in every direction and angle, some of them went in ways that she wasn't sure stairs could go. Trixie also saw just as many doors that were weirdly placed all over the chamber, and she could only guess which way was the right way. "Sombra, do you have any idea how to get through here?"
"I take back what I said about Star-Swirl," Sombra grumbled as he looked around the room. "He was bucking nuts. I like stairs as much as the next stallion, but this is crazy." The others looked to Trixie for instructions and she placed her hoof in her nose, trying to think.
"I guess that we need to just get walking," she said with a shrug as she walked by them. "Starshine, stay with me. Bark with Armora. We'll split up and look around the entire temple if we have to, but if you find the horn of the Titans, make sure that you alert the rest of us. There is evil magic here." The group walked together until they came to the first place where the stairs split and they each took a path, Bark and Armora headed down while Sombra headed up, leaving Trixie and Starshine to follow the straight path.
"I'm getting dizzy just looking at all these stairs," Starshine said as he held his stomach a bit and averted his eyes from the stairs. "How did he manage to do all of this?"
"There are many things unknown about Star-Swirl," Trixie responded. "He was one of the most mysterious wizards in Equestrian history. But just one of them," she said as she looked over to where Sombra was trying his first door. He went through the door and it shut behind him while Trixie began to look around the room to see where he would come out.
"Okay, this is just confusing." Trixie looked up to see Sombra standing on a staircase above them, but he was completely upside down. "I'm going to try another door. After I throw up." Trixie walked up to her first door and placed a hoof on the handle, bracing herself for whatever was on the other side. She opened it to find...a room completely filled with darkness, but she could just barely see the outline of something sitting on the ground in the center of the room.
"I'm not going in there," Trixie said as she closed the door, hearing a massive roar on the other side.
"Good call," Starshine said as he walked up another staircase that led up. Trixie followed him while looking at the others in the room. Sombra had somehow ended up on the wall now and by the way he was cursing, he was getting frustrated. Armora and Bark seemed to be having no luck as well. Armora constantly kept opening doors that led to a stone wall, but Bark was sniffing the air and looking around the room. "How about this door?" Starshine asked as Trixie caught up with him. She opened it with a shrug and found herself looking over a massive pool of lava where multiple snake-like creatures slithered around in the lava.
"Nope," she said as she closed the door, turning down another staircase that led her to where Armora and Bark were standing in front of another door, breathing heavily as they pressed their backs against it.
"Swarm of parasprites," Bark panted, once Trixie had asked. "And no, we've had no better luck. However..." Bark was interrupted at that moment by the sound of a door opening at the appearance of Sombra, as he fell from the ceiling and the image of him landing face first in front of them.
"None of these damn doors work," he snarled as he wiped the dirt off of his face. "I've checked six of them and all that happens is I either land on my face or I end up on the wrong part of the room. We're wasting our time here. If there's a pattern, I'm not seeing it."
"As much as I hate to agree with you, we've been having similar problems," Trixie agreed, Armora buzzed agreement as well. "The doors I keep getting have monsters in them. And there are hundreds of these doors. It will take far too long to search them all until we find the right one. What would Star-Swirl do?" Trixie stopped talking and both she and Sombra looked at Bark, who was sniffing the air relentlessly.
"And what are you doing?" Sombra asked.
"I smell something," he replied as he began to walk forward. "It smells like...the sea. And there's a trail! Follow me!" Armora and Starshine took off after the Diamond Dog who ran up a flight of stairs. Trixie started to follow, but stopped when she realized that Sombra hadn't moved. She looked back at him to see that his eyes were both wide open and his pupils had shrunk, and he looked like he was no longer there.
"Sombra, what's the matter?" she asked him with slight concern, wondering why he was acting like this. Sombra snapped out of it at the sound of her voice and shook his head with a groan.
"Nothing. Just...remembered something," he said as he walked past her. "Come on, we're going to lose them and I do not want to get lost in here." Trixie raised an eyebrow as he ran ahead before she followed after him, a bit amused but also worried by his tone. She had heard hints of fear in his voice, and while it was always amusing to see Sombra's ego take a hit, it also made her wonder what could make a pony like him, that had come back from the dead, so afraid.
/T\
The group followed Bark, as he led them with his nose through multiple doors and across more staircases than Trixie believed could fit in one temple, no matter the side. Bark led them through areas that were lit with blue lanterns that cast an eerie glow across them, but that didn't stop Starshine from almost touching one of them. Despite how confusing the area was, Trixie couldn't help but admire the work that went into this temple and what a genius Star-Swirl had to be to create something like this. But she was also keeping an eye on Sombra, who stayed near the back of the group and was constantly looking around every time there was a noise.
"We are almost there! The smell is getting stronger!" Bark yelled as he ran ahead into the next room, making the rest of the group run after him. Trixie came to a stop in a room that was a dark blue color and filled with symbols that looked like ponies, but with gills and tails with fins on them in place of tails. "Here it is!" The group came out of the hallway into a room the was familiar to Trixie since it looked like the other temples that she had been in. And just like the other temples, there was another door at the end of the room, but in the center of this one was a single weapon that confused Trixie.
"Why is a trident in here?" she asked as she walked up to the trident in the center of a pool of water, not noticing Sombra back away to the other side of the room.
"That is where the smell is coming from," Bark confirmed for her. She nodded and looked from the rusty trident to the door, figuring that this was the test to get into the room.
'Let's do this,' she thought to herself as she grabbed the trident. The moment she did a swarm of darkness blasted her aside, swirling around the trident as a form began to take shape in the center of the darkness. Armora and Starshine helped Trixie up as the darkness finished taking its form. It looked like a strong pony, but instead of ears it had fins on its head and along its back, as well as a tail with fins instead of a tail.
"Is that...an Atlantian?" Starshine asked as the seapony grabbed the trident and spun it once, its purple eyes scanning the group before its eyes rested on Sombra in the back. The pony let out a roar and charged at the group. Trixie got a shield ready for its attack, but to her and the others' surprise, it ran right by her and the other three and tried to impale Sombra on the end of its weapon.
"ISH VAN!" Sombra roared as he disappeared in a swarm of darkness, causing the seapony to roar in rage as it looked around the room for him, until it received a blast of magic in the back of its head. It slowly turned to face Trixie, who's horn glowed as she glared at the creature.
"Forget about him. Now you face-" She yelped as the pony threw itself at her faster than her eyes could follow and once again was saved thanks to Armora intercepting the blow with her blade. "Starshine, take Bark off the battlefield. The three of us will handle this!" Starshine did as she asked just as Armora pushed the seapony back, deflecting its next two trident stabs with her blade. "Sombra! We need assistance!" With a growl she realized that Sombra wasn't coming to help, so she turned to see Armora fighting off the pony on her own. The sea pony knocked the blade out of Armora's grasp and tried to impale her, but Trixie stopped the trident with a barrier of magic. The sea pony then spun towards her and began swinging and stabbing faster than Trixie could hope to see, forcing her to throw up her strongest barrier to deflect the attacks.
'Damn, this thing is strong!' she thought as her barrier began to crack from the relentless assault. The sea pony could sense this and with one more powerful blow, it shattered her barrier and threw Trixie to the ground. She grunted as she looked up to see the trident pointed right at her throat, the seapony narrowing its eyes as it went in for the killing strike.
"HHHHIIIIISSSSSS!" Armora screamed as she tackled the sea pony from the side, knocking the both of them over. The sea pony was the first to recover and it picked up its trident before hurling it at Armora, who got up just in time to get hit in the side by the weapon.
"Armora!" Trixie cried as Armora staggered back, hissing in pain. Her armor had prevented the spear points from dealing any fatal injuries, but she was still bleeding. The sea pony charged her again, but Armora ripped the trident out of her armor and threw it at the pony, who caught it out of the air. Trixie prepared to fire a spell at the pony, but she was beaten to the punch by Starshine.
"RE FI!" he cried, causing the pony to go up in flames. It roared in anger and pain as it began to try and put itself out by throwing itself into the pool. The sea pony then turned its attention to Starshine, but this time Trixie dealt with it.
"Don't even consider it!" she yelled as she threw the pony into the door at the end of the room with such force that the seapony's body knocked the doors slightly open despite the locks. But despite the blow, the sea pony picked its trident back up and stalked towards the three, while a shadow slipped through the door.
"There is no way in hell that I'm fighting that thing," Sombra muttered to himself as he took back his physical form, having been hiding in the shadows while the group fought. "Especially since he recognizes me. I can't believe he made it to the Diamond Dogs' home; and how the hell did he get here? And how did Star-Swirl trap him?" Sombra shook his head free of these questions as he walked up to the only object in the small room that garnered his attention, a red horn on the center of a pedestal, never noticing the demonic seal that rested on the ceiling above him. "So this is the horn of the Titans huh? Thought it would be bigger." The horn seemed to glow the closer he got to it and he found, much to his confusion, that the horn was the same size as his used to be.
"That can't be a coincidence, can it?" he asked himself before turning around as he heard Trixie cry out in the other room. He growled as he tried to figure out what to do. He didn't want to fight Aquarius, but at the same time...he looked down at the horn with a snarl before snatching it off the pedestal and placing it over where his horn used to be.
"GE REM!" he roared, the magic fused the horn to his head and he closed his eyes as he felt the power of this horn coursing through his whole being. He opened his eyes again; he was in a room that overlooked the universe with a certain bearded pony standing across from him with his back turned.
"You have found the horn of power," Star-Swirl said as he looked into the galaxy in front of him. "That means that you now have one of the most powerful weapons of justice that can be found. So I task you, wielder of this horn, to..." Star-Swirl turned as he said this and his voice died in his throat when he saw that he was standing across from Somba. "You?" he asked in fear.
"Me," Sombra said with a smile as he looked up at the red horn on his head. "So, this is where the horn of power went. I wondered."
"No, it cannot be you, you were imprisoned!" Star-Swirl cried in fear as he began to back away.
"No prison can hold me, fool," Sombra said as he began to channel his magic through his horn. "Just as no amount of 'try' on your part can keep me away from what I want. For soon, I will be in your secret temple and I will have power...well, more power than what I have now."
"No, I can still stop you," Star-Swirl said as his horn began to glow.
"Bmot Ne," Sombra whispered, watching with a smile as the same stars that the old stallion had been watching wrapped him tightly.
"Y-you can use...?" Star-Swirl whispered in fear as Sombra walked up to him.
"There is nothing I can't do. Now begone!" Sombra roared as his horn flashed and blew apart the image of Star-Swirl, returning the world to normal. He shook his head as the images cleared before he heard another cry, smiling as he turned himself back into shadows to sneak back out through the door. In the other room, Trixie was firing multiple fireballs at the sea pony, but was having no luck as the pony swatted each attack away with his trident. She tried another spell only to have her hooves swept out from under her by the trident.
"Back, demon," she snarled as she fired a spell from the ground, growling again as the sea pony flipped over her and came down trident first, hoping to impale her. But at the moment before impact, a bolt of darkness struck the creature in the side and knocked it to the ground; when it tried to get back to its hooves, Armora came up from behind.
"HISS!" she snarled before slicing the sea pony's head clean off, panting heavily as the creature fell over and dissolved into the ground, its trident following suit. Armora shook her head at where it had vanished and walked over to Trixie to help her up, both of them looking up at the ceiling from which the bolt of shadows had come.
"I thought that you had run away," Trixie said with a smirk as she turned to face Sombra...only to gasp when she saw the red horn that was on his head, illuminating his smiling face. "You have..."
"Yup, and it fits like a saddle," he said with a smirk as he looked up at it. "The least you could do is thank me, I did just find the horn and save your life in under a minute."
"T-thanks," Trixie muttered as she stopped leaning against Armora, while Starshine and Bark walked over to Sombra.
"Cool, you got your horn back!" Starshine said as he looked at the red horn.
"Actually, this is the horn from the temple. Mine flew off to whoever knows where, when I blew up," Sombra said with a shrug while Trixie looked at him with both relief and suspicion. She knew that he had just saved her life and she should be grateful, but now that he had his horn back he would be more powerful than ever, especially since he could use spoken magic. But she didn't have long to think about this as the entire temple began to shake and the roof started to cave in. "We need to get out of here!" Sombra yelled as he began a teleportation spell, covering all the members of the group with darkness. The moment before the spell went off, Sombra looked to the side to see the sea pony staring at him.
'I will reclaim her,' it said in his mind.
"You're already too late," Sombra muttered back as they teleported.
/T\
"That was a lot more stressful than I wanted it to be," Trixie panted, as she and the others all lay on the ground outside of the temple with Gaia looking over them.
"I see that you were all able to reclaim the horn. I am glad that you were able to finish your mission without any losses," he said with a nod. "I am also glad that you did not awaken the beast that was said to be trapped under this temple. It would be disastrous if it managed to make its way into your world."
"Speaking of our world, how are we supposed to get back?" Starshine asked Gaia. "We used a portal to get here, but we didn't see one in the place we came in." Gaia lowered his head as he thought about what Starshine had said, before he placed his hand on the ground.
"Get on. I think I have an idea as to where to take you." The group did as he suggested, with Trixie helping the wounded Armora onto the hand with her magic, trying a few spells to try to slow down the bleeding as best she could. Gaia once again walked off into the land, heading for a mountain that was taller than all the other ones they had seen. Once at the base, it only took Gaia a few seconds to climb to the top, where he placed them at a stone arch that had a number of mystic carvings on it.
"This is where we say goodbye," he said once all of the group had gotten off. "This is the portal I remember Star-Swirl used to return to his world, when he last visited us. This will take you home."
"Alright then," Sombra said as he looked to Trixie. "Just do what you did back when we entered and we're good to go." Trixie nodded and used the same spell she did last time, but she also remembered to put her hoof against the arch once she had cast the spell. And just like before, a massive vortex of magic appeared before the group that hummed with power.
"Sombra, Starshine; I want the both of you to help Armora through," Trixie said. Both of them nodded and helped the changeling onto their backs, with Bark following them as they headed for the exit. Trixie then turned to face Gaia, who looked down at her with his blue eyes. "Thank you for all your help. We would not have been able to do this without you."
"And it was my pleasure to meet one such as yourself," Gaia responded. "'Til we meet again."
"What will you do now?" Trixie asked him.
"I suppose that I will stay here and keep the beast sealed," Gaia said sadly. "It is all I can do now. I will remain lost in time, where I belong. You should go, your friends are waiting." Trixie nodded sadly as she turned and entered the portal, feeling the energies consume her like they had before. When she opened her eyes, she was standing next to the rest of her group in a field outside of Manehatten.
"How did we end up in Manehatten?" Starshine asked her once she had walked over to them. "I thought the portal would take us back the Diamond Dogs?"
"My biggest concern is where will we stay tonight," Trixie muttered as she looked up at the darkening sky, knowing that her wagon was miles away. "We can't go into a hotel due to...who's in our group, so I guess...we'll..." The rest of the group looked to where she was staring to find, to their disbelief, that the wagon was sitting right in front of them. After taking a few minutes to process that fact, they went inside to find that everything was exactly the same as when they had left it.
"She did a really good job looking after it," Starshine muttered while one of Sombra's ears pointed in his direction. Trixie helped Armora to her bed, and brought out some bandages that she used to wrap up the changeling's wounds, looking around the wagon out of the corner of her eyes to notice that the silver mare wasn't there.
"These aren't going to work for long," Trixie muttered. "I'll have to go into the city tomorrow and see if I can find a healing potion for you. I used the last of mine on Sombra before we went into the dogs' caverns. Also, Bark, would you like to go back to your pack? I can't guarantee when we'll be back down there, but..."
"No Trixie, if you wouldn't mind having me, I would like to travel around with you," he said with a yawn as he curled up in the corner. "There is nothing left for me at my home, but I would love for the chance to explore the world." His snores told Trixie that he had fallen off, and the yawn she gave told her that she was tired as well. With one last look at Armora she walked over to Sombra, who sat in his usual spot pretending to be asleep.
"What do you want?" he eventually asked.
"I want to know if I can trust you tonight," she asked him, getting him to open an eye in response. "Up until now, I had the feeling that the only reason that you didn't kill me was because you were afraid of me, but now that you have your horn back..."
"Trixie, if I wanted you dead, I could have done it in any of the temples when you were in danger, or when you were weakened," Sombra replied with a sigh. "Like I said, I'm only after the princesses...not you or anypony else in this wagon. Now stop bothering me and let me go to sleep." She sighed as he rolled over before walking over to her bed, lying down in it as she used her magic to turn the lights out. She tried to fall asleep, but found that the words of Gaia kept coming back to her.
'I will remain lost in time, where I belong.'
'How many creatures or places have I come across in my travels that have been in the same boat as him?' she thought to herself as she watched Starshine "sneak" a book on magic back to his bed. 'How many places have been forgotten to time? I should write down a log of those places and creatures that I come across.' She closed her eyes and rolled over before a small smile crossed her face.
'Hell, I should write a book on my adventures. Be a hell of a read.'
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When I saw the email, I was like: yay update!
Then 2 more came in and I was like: wait wha? Triple update?! SWEET! But nope, only 1 new chapter and fimfiction being glitchy.
Blow up the wall to bypass a sealed door? Someone sure knows how to play D&D...
3999796
Ah, so it wasn't just me, then.
Nice chapter. I was kind of hoping to see a Sea Pony queen, Sombra appears to have a talent for pissing off female royalty and I wanted to see what he did the last time he was in Atlantis.
3999829 It's that kind of thinking that makes a DM want to rip out their hair.
Soon it will be revealed the King Sombra is actually the father of Celestia and Luna, since they're royalty, he's royalty, it makes sense okay SHUT UP.
Achievement earned: Lost to Titan (escape the temple alive)
Wow, that’s a magic trick in its own. I didn’t know Trixie could put her hoof in her nose.