Chapter 3
Twilight Sparkle paused for a second to take in the sight of the gigantic gold-plated dome after she emerged from the five-sided rotating room. Built upon a stone foundation, the dome itself, as well as the wooden bridge leading to it, stood a dizzying distance above the natural rock of the land, and the dome’s peak seemed to be as high above the unicorn’s head as a Canterlot tower. It appeared to be divided in half, with the gap as wide as the bridge Twilight stood upon, but about halfway up she could see that the halves were still joined by what could have been an upper walkway if a way to climb up to it existed. At her level, the gap served as a door to the dome’s interior. It was an awe-inspiring work of architecture, but Twilight didn’t have long to admire it before the cyan pegasus behind her started to become impatient. “I wonder how long it took to build this,” she wondered aloud as she trotted across the bridge.
“Probably a few months short of forever,” Rainbow said jokingly, “Assuming they built it all by hoof.” Her chuckles faded into impressed silence as they entered the building, finding themselves on a catwalk near the top of a deep, round, artificial cavern of a room with a pool of water that gave off a faint blue glow instead of a floor. The catwalk turned sharply left a short way inside and followed the curve of the wall for a quarter-turn before turning into a long set of stairs down to another catwalk just above the water and leading to another door on the opposite side. A second catwalk at their current level connected two other doorways, one directly across from them and one on the right, and then terminated a few yards short of connecting to the catwalk they were on. What drew Twilight and Rainbow’s attention was a large machine of some kind attached to the center of the roof. Five metal pipes sprouted from the domed bottom and went off in different directions passing beneath the catwalks and out through the walls. “What do you think that does?” Rainbow wondered.
“I’m not sure,” Twilight said, seeing a small sign attached to the railing where the catwalk turned to the left. On it was what seemed to be a simple map of the dome’s interior: a gold ring with a small gap in the bottom-right section and three short spurs jutting from the top, bottom, and right side. This was overlaid with five white lines radiating out from a smaller circle in the center. At the end of each line was a shape made up of small squares, each unique in the number and arrangement of components. Twilight pulled out a fresh sheet of note paper and started to copy the map. She only managed to sketch out the pipe-lines and the two-by-two square that went with the top pipe before she was interrupted by a gruff shout from across the room. She looked up to see a unicorn stallion dressed in the same style of armor as the guard from the trap-cage walking along the other catwalk toward her and Rainbow. He had a short sword strapped to his side.
“Ce go bhfuil tu?” he asked, “Cad e ata tu anseo? A labhairt!”
“Uh-oh,” Twilight said in a low tone, quickly stashing her stuff away, “Time to go.”
“Pah,” Rainbow said dismissively, “He’s only one pony Twilight, and he can’t even get to us.”
The guard paused upon hearing Rainbow’s voice and blinked in confusion. “Siad theanga a labhairt...” he said in a thoughtful tone, and then his gaze hardened and he ran to the end of his catwalk, shouting, “Stop a chur in ainm Aldro, strainseiri!”
“You telling us to stop?” Rainbow shouted back tauntingly, “Then come over here and make us!” The guard gave the robed pegasus a flat look as his horn began to glow, as did an extension to his catwalk as it slid out and connected to the one Twilight and Rainbow were standing on. “Oh… kay then,” Rainbow said, confidence waning.
“Let’s run now,” Twilight insisted, giving her friend a push toward the door they’d entered through.
“Fine,” Dash said with reluctance as she turned around. As the two mares broke into a gallop and exited the dome, the guard pulled his sword free and made chase. After crossing the bridge and passing through the rotating room, Twilight stopped and gave the rotation button a solid kick. The guard lost his balance as the floor started spinning beneath him, and he shot a cold but impressed look at the lavender unicorn before the doors moved completely out of alignment.
“That should slow him down,” Twilight said, relaxing a little.
“Now what?” Rainbow asked. Twilight pointed past her friend to the long wooden bridge right outside the tunnel they were in. Rainbow frowned at the sight of the cave entrance at the far end of the bridge, but led the way across, both mares picking up their pace a little as they heard the room start to rotate again. Rainbow hesitated at the end of the bridge as she saw that the cave was a staircase leading down into the depths. “He is only one pony,” she said.
“Keep going Rainbow,” Twilight said, “We’re not here to fight.” The pegasus grumbled but pressed on, moving down the stairs as fast she safely could. The stairs curved slightly to the right as they descended, and shortly after the top was completely lost from sight Twilight saw a door on left-side wall. Rainbow ran past it, but Twilight grabbed her tail and pulled her back up and through the door, saying, “In here, quick.” The unicorn shoved Rainbow past her into the room beyond and then slammed the door shut and leaned an ear up against it.
“What the hay Twilight?” the pegasus exclaimed, “This is a dead-end. An underground-“
“Quiet down,” Twilight hissed, “We’re hiding until the guard gives up looking for us.”
“Seriously?” Dash asked, and then facehoofed and moaned when Twilight gave her a fierce glare. She turned away from the door to see if the room held anything that she could use to try and keep her mind off being trapped underground. The space opened up considerably a few feet past the door and was dominated by a spherical cage with rather thin bars and no apparent door. Inside the cage was a stone chair with a low cushioned back and wide arms on a raised dais that would put whoever sat in the chair at the center of the globe. As Rainbow approached the cage to get a closer look, it reacted to her presence by rising up and spreading the bars out. Curious but wary, the pegasus stepped up onto the dais and then eased herself into the chair, finding it difficult to sit on properly without propping herself upright with her front legs braced on the arms. “This obviously wasn’t built with ponies in mind,” she said.
“Shh,” Twilight whispered, “I think I hear him coming.” Rainbow went still, and then noticed that there was a small sliding lever on the left arm and a button in the right one. Her hooves started to itch as she tried to resist her curiosity. Finally, Twilight visibly relaxed and turned away from the door. “All clear,” she said, and Rainbow responded by sliding the lever back. Twilight gasped as the cage closed up around the chair, causing Rainbow to chuckle.
“Don’t worry,” she said, sliding the lever back to raise and open the cage again, “I’m in full control here.”
“What is it?” the unicorn wondered as Rainbow closed the cage up again. Rainbow shrugged and pressed the button on the right arm a few times, to no apparent effect.
“Nothing useful apparently,” she said in disappointment. She started to open the cage, but then spotted two thick metal rings on the wall across from her, one on either side of the passage leading to the door, which were framing images that she couldn’t quite make out from where she sat. “Go check those out for me, will ya?” she said, pointing them out to Twilight.
Twilight had to tilt her head up a little to see properly after she approached the viewer on the left. The image inside the ring was a high-angle view of a large brown stone door in an unfamiliar location. There were thick stone columns at the edges of the image, and what she could see of the floor seemed to be tiled. As she took this in, the guard that had been chasing them walked into the image from the right, looking around in apparent confusion. So whatever that place is, it’s farther down the stairs, Twilight thought. She opened her mouth to inform Rainbow of what she saw, but the pegasus spoke up first, holding down the button on the chair as she did so.
“See anything changing?” In the image, the guard gave a start and spun to face something past the bottom of the picture, his head angled up enough for Twilight to make out the shock, confusion, and then realization that crossed his face in sequence. He galloped back out of the view in the same direction he’d entered from.
“Feathers…” Twilight swore, “You just gave us away Rainbow Dash!”
“What? How?” the pegasus exclaimed, throwing the cage lever up and jumping out of the chair as soon as the bars were raised enough for her to slip out.
“I’d wager that chair is a device that projects something - voice at least, if not more – into the room the guard was just in. He’s probably beating himself up for not checking in here on his way down.”
“Well then,” Rainbow said, smacking her front hooves together with a manic smirk, “Guess we’ll have to add to that beating then.”
“Don’t do anything-” Twilight started to warn, only to be interrupted as the door slammed open and the guard stalked in, sword hovering dangerously beside him.
“Ta… Ta tu ag miuileanna truaillithe,” he said in a low, triumphant voice.
“Wait, wait,” Twilight said, backing away from him, “I’m sure we can talk-” She ducked as the guard took a warning swing at her and popped back up with a dangerous look in her eyes and a bright glow about her horn. “Buck this,” she said. She shot a bolt of magic at the guard and he went down like a sack of flour, his sword clattering to the ground a split-second later. After a second, Twilight leaned down and put her head near his and listened. “Sound asleep,” she said with satisfaction, wrapping him in her magic and dragging him to the side of the room, “He’ll be out for a good while, but let’s put some distance between us before he comes to.”
“Right,” Dash said with a nod, “So, back up to the dome then?”
“Well,” Twilight said conflicted, “I’d really like to finish sketching that sign we found, but when he wakes up he’ll probably expect us to have gone that way… On the other hoof, if we go down we’ll probably have to figure out how to get past the big door…” She waved a hoof at the image viewer and Rainbow went to look at it. She contemplated the imposing-looking stone door, and noticed that there was a lever on the wall next to the viewer. On a hunch, she slid it up and smiled broadly as the stone door in the picture started to rise as well. Twilight saw the smile, came over and looked at the image, and shook her head in amazement. “How do you notice these things?” she asked.
“Dunno,” the pegasus said with a shrug, “Maybe I’m just lucky. Come on, let’s get going; this cave’s starting to get to me again.” She left the room and headed down the stairs, with Twilight trotting to keep up. The stairs ended in a masonry wall with a square stone door that stood half the height of a normal pony and held shut with a simple metal latch. Since she was in front, it fell to Rainbow to turn the latch handle and pull the heavy slab open, a task which was made only slightly easier by the smoothness of the floor and the properly greased hinges. The two ponies crawled through the opening and found themselves in the corner of a spacious, high-ceilinged building, partially hidden by one of several columns lined up along both of the lengthwise walls. While Twilight pulled the door closed, taking note that there was a latch handle on both sides, Rainbow stepped out into the open space in the middle of the room to get a better look around. They had entered near the impressively large door, which led outside to a short stone staircase. The columns were expertly carved from a tan rock and painted red around the bases and crowns and appeared to actually play a role in keeping the high vaulted ceiling from falling on their heads. The floor was tiled with irregularly shaped and sized slabs of stone colored mostly in shades of brownish red or off-white, but there was also the occasional dark blue stone. Some daylight flooded in from the open door, but the room’s primary illumination came from torches on the columns and a large circular yellow-stained glass window depicting the symbol of a bifurcated square inside a star at the opposite end of the room from the door. In front of the window stood a globe cage twice or three times the size of its counterpart from the previous room sitting on a stone base the height of a pony and as wide as the globe itself. On either side of the base sat statues of some sort of strange creature consisting almost entirely a large hunchbacked body with a head sporting predatory teeth and two long tusks attached to the bottom of the front end. Small fruits were piled up in front of each statue’s face. Rainbow lowered her head and sniffed one of the piles.
“What are you doing?” Twilight asked, coming over to join her friend.
“Just seeing how fresh this stuff is,” Rainbow answered, giving a relatively large red citrusy-looking fruit an experimental squeeze. It gave only slightly under the pressure and the rind remained intact. “I’m no expert on fruit,” she concluded, “but I’d say that this hasn’t been here for very long.”
“This room has the feel of an old temple about it,” Twilight said.
“Really?” Dash asked, looking thoughtful, “It doesn’t seem to have any death traps though. The ancient temples Daring Do explores always have death traps.”
“Not always,” Twilight said with a sigh, “and this isn’t a Daring Do book anyway. I’d bet Aldro uses this place as a way to keep the locals under control. He’d be up in that room controlling everything and making an impressive and intimidating show for anypony who doesn’t know better.” She walked across the room to the open door, and then turned to face the giant globe. “Imagine,” she said, pointing up at the wireframe structure, her voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space, “a local pony bearing tribute approaches this place from the outside, and as they do so the door opens of its own accord and then possibly closes behind them after they cross the threshold. As they begin to cross the room, a larger-than-life image of Aldro appears in the globe and speaks, demanding to know why he has been disturbed. The supplicant replies – and I bet if I could find a hidden microphone in here somewhere if I looked hard enough – and makes a request that the Great Aldro takes into consideration. After the audience is over, and possibly at Aldro’s explicit direction, the supplicant lays an offering by one of the statues, and then the door opens again so they can take their leave.” Silence fell like a stone as she finished her speech, and after a moment she put her hoof down, coughed awkwardly, and added, “Then he probably sends someone out to gather the offerings every so often so they don’t just sit there and rot…”
“Yeah, I… I think I can see that,” Rainbow said slowly, “we should probably get moving now though; you’re standing in full view of that image viewer.”
“Right,” Twilight said, her gaze going up toward the ceiling for a moment. She turned around and led the way outside and down the stairs. They found themselves on a large shelf of rock on which was built a docking station for something designed to run on overhead rails, a pair of which they could see winding over the sea to a large island in the distance. A set of stairs was built a short ways from the end of the rails, and at their feet was a metal post topped with a round blue button. Twilight pressed it, and after a second they could see the vehicle speeding its way toward them along the rails. It maintained its speed until reached the edge of the island, and then it slowed considerably as it pulled up even with the stairs, settling down slightly as it came to a stop. It vaguely resembled a fish in shape, with a rounded main body, a smaller cylinder sprouting near the top on the rear end, and it hung from two arms that reached out from the top and over the rails, and above it all was a thick metal disk nearly as big as the main body. After it came to rest, a hatch on the side dropped down into more stairs to allow for entry. “Shall we?” Twilight asked as she climbed the stairs and looked inside. At the front end of the car was a chair in front of simple-looking controls consisting of a dome with a handle-lever on it, presently pointed forward, and metal arm coming off the left side.
“Seems a bit small,” Rainbow said, looking in as Twilight worked her way into the seat, “I think I’ll just fly alongside if that’s all right.”
“Get in Rainbow,” Twilight said sternly, “there should be enough room for you to stand behind me. We don’t know when we’ll bump into more guards, or if Aldro has other places under magical surveillance. You being able to fly is something we should try to keep in reserve until it’s absolutely necessary.”
“This is lame,” Rainbow whined, “how would you like it if you weren’t allowed to use your magic?”
“I’d cope,” the unicorn said simply, “Now come on. I don’t want to leave you behind.”
Still grumbling about the unfairness of it all, Rainbow Dash climbed into the car and sat down behind the chair, facing the back. Meanwhile, Twilight experimented with the controls and found that the lever in the dome refused to move. Moving her grip to the arm, she was able to turn it clockwise, spinning the dome so that the lever was now pointed toward her. Once it clicked into place, the hatch closed up and the cabin spun slowly around to face the way it had come. “Ok,” Twilight said, grasping the lever in her magic and pushing it forward, “here we go.” The grav-car rose slightly and then leaned forward before shooting out of the docking station and along the rails toward the distant island.
1st entry
It has been a long time since I last looked to the original Sohndar Linking Book. Several months, no more likely years by Aitran time, and certainly centuries by Equestria’s. I had applied several patches of my own devising to Aldro’s original formula, and those have held up against the strain while I sought out other, less taxing means of viewing Aldro’s prison. Until recently that is. It is serendipitous that Clover and Nyx were forced into Sohndar when they were, as it has allowed me to see just how close the world is to collapsing once again.
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Yay for adventure.
294463
This series is based off of the games, rather than the books. As such, this could very well be a five part story.
Now if you'll excuse me, I still need to read the first part. Tootles!
.
386028
five? if he used Uru as well, it could easily be a 6 book series... heck maybe it could even give Uru something better than what it can out to be as a game.
No matter... I can't wait for more of these.
386615
Uru was an MMO, so I'm not sure it counts. Admittedly, it DID have a SP component, but I am fairly sure that it is a different person than the main persona from the numbered entries in the franchise.
386634
True, but I only played the SP part, and I particularly loved the flowing of the game instead of the stop-frame animation. That gave me something a bit more to interact with you know?
What's more... the bookworlds of that game we fun. I loved the security realm.
386028
386615
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I still have to get through this adventure first.
Right now, I can easily see stretching this out to the events of Myst IV. Myst V and Uru deal more with the ancient D'Ni civilization, and Star Swirl's family has no direct connections to its "pony" counterpart and thus not much to gain from delving into its history. Besides, I've played Uru's single player a total of one time, not counting the expansions, and Myst V not at all.
Of course, who knows what I'll discover about Aldro's past and people as I write this story...
386737
Hey it's at those points that you get to have fun and twist the story to your own form. I know what you mean by not playing End of Ages though... I haven't played it and I admit my memories of Uru are a bit foggy... but much less so than Riven. Myst and Exile are ingrained into my mind though.
What I mean to say is... I'm reading blind of the history. Not the best thing for a crossover... but then again not the worst.
Just write what you want Vulpin... I suppose we readers can't ask for anything more can we?
386750
Indeed
386615
URU was an unrelated spin-off from the series. The only thing it did was create a slight bridge between Myst 4 and 5, describing how the Bahro came to be, how the DRC tried to restore D'ni and eventually quit when they considered it pointless, and how Yeesha came into power. Other than that, it was unrelated to the main storyline.
Also, nice work on giving Aldro's followers more roles in your story. I hope Twilight and Dash confront more of them, since I imagine Aldro having his own army, (Well...army of sorts,) throughout this Illusion, and they really needed more emphasis of their existence than what the original game gave them.
I wonder what kind of experience Riven would become if some people were randomly messing up the switches behind the protagonist. If the matrix was reset after the domes had become powered, it would be absolutely bad. Someone removing the ladders and driving the submarine away? Really bad. Great that the guards weren't so evil.
So here, the guards are more threatening. This is realistic. On the other hoof, this can effectively prevent the outsiders from enjoying the scenery (because some guards are working against them)... Which can be bad if links to Sohndar get destroyed later. Just why can't Star Swirl make a backup copy
>>ConsciousHaze196
Remember, Star Swirl is using this realm as Aldro's prison. He deliberately removed all external departure points from the realm too keep Aldro there, and went so far as to purge the realm of the materials needed to write a linking book as well.
Don't get me wrong... if the Aldro problem gets resolved then I can bet that Star Swirl will be making more copies of the linking books too it... it's not a bad place scenery wise (though I wouldn't say it can match up to the later realms... that's graphics for you).
Twilight saw the smile, came over and looked at the image, and shook her head in amazement. “How do you notice these things?” she asked.
“Dunno,” the pegasus said with a shrug, “Maybe I’m just lucky.
This is my whole damn Riven experience.
oh my god, Myst and ponies?? Definitely checking this one out.
Riven was my favorite game growing up, even if i had no idea what do do
386028
Dear "past me", 2016 calling. While you did indeed make good on reading chapter one, it would seem you stopped there. What the buck, man!