What's Under the Ground...

by Sorren

Part 1

The entrance to the temple gaped like an open maw, glaring like a hungry animal just waiting, hoping for another victim to swallow in its depths. Many ponies had entered the temple, none of which had ever left. Local word was that it was cursed. This temple was different from the others. For starters, almost all of it was underground. Nopony knew where it went, or how far it went down—it was too good to be true. It was dangerous; there was no doubt about it.

Many said that in the temple’s depths lay certain death—they could be right. Others said the temple would drive one mad—maybe.

Daring Do took a determined step forward. An unexplored temple—the thrill of her life. She plodded slowly towards the unsealed entrance, flanked on either side by weathered stone blocks. The birds seemed to stop chirping as she neared, and the flies fell back, following her no further. The jungle above became lost to the eye as she descended the narrow ramp towards the intimidating entrance.

Before she entered, the pegasus checked her supplies. She normally didn’t wear saddlebags, but this situation was different. She didn’t know where she was going, or how long she would be gone for. Daring had packed herself a lantern, some food and water, and medical supplies; nothing much. She was Daring Do after all. The supplies were more of a backup plan, in case she actually managed to get herself into trouble. She highly doubted she would actually have to use them. If this temple was anything like the others she had been in, this was going to be a cakewalk. Sure some of the other places didn’t have quite the notorious background this one possessed, but that was all part of the adventure.

She took a deep breath and entered, letting the semi-darkness of the underground passage swallow her whole. Daring took a deep breath, getting that familiar taste of musty air. It always felt like this when exploring a new place. That feeling of uneasiness and excitement mixed with that little rush of adrenaline upon entering the ruins, there was nothing better. This is why she did what she did.

Unlike the other temples, ruins, shrines, tombs, and everything in the middle she had explored, this one had no back-story. All of the other temples had names, history. Ponies knew who had been buried there or what lie within. But this temple, there was no name for it, no story, no understanding of why it was here. It was simply here, having never been explored, but attempted by many. The locals had come up with their own name for it, one that Daring scoffed at. They had called it, ‘the temple of death.’ Personally, she thought it lacked creativity. Nothing screamed cliche like ‘the temple of death.’ She imagined a ominous drumbeat in the background as she thought the name.

The luscious vegetation underhoof gave way to smoothed stone. Daring walked slowly down the passage, examining the path ahead for anything that could prove as a threat. The passage sloped downward at a slight angle. Slowly, she was swallowed deeper and deeper into the ground as she walked on.

Daring stopped, her hoof hovering over a discolored section of rock. This stone was lighter than the rest of the beige floor. It was more of a sandy beach color and separate from the floor itself. “Pressure pad,” Daring voiced aloud. She found this odd. Normally when ponies built these places they tried to hide the traps — this one could be seen clear as day. It was almost as if they wanted ponies to see it.

Inscribed in the ancient writing on the stone was a single word. Daring read it aloud “Trap.” She chuckled to herself. The ponies who built this place must have had a sense of humor.

Carefully, she stepped around it, making a mental note not to trip it on the way back. There was a corner just ahead; it turned to the right at a ninety degree angle and continued on downwards. Daring rounded the corner to be greeted by a strange sight, light. There was light up ahead. The tunnel went down for another hundred yards maybe. And ahead, in the distance, was a light that could only be cast by flame, the gentle flickering and oscillations in the color cast down the tunnel from the depths beyond proved so.

If there was a fire, there had to be another pony down here. “Hello?” she called hesitantly, not keen to raise her voice in the small space. As she had predicted, there was no response. She was nearing the source now. The tunnel fanned out into a square chamber roughly twenty feet square. A stone pillar stood in every corner, and one in the center. A single torch hung from a scone on the middle pillar. From the looks of the torch, it hadn’t been lit long ago. Daring looked around cautiously. There had to be somepony else down here. Torches didn’t light themselves. She unfurled her wings, the feathers slightly ruffled. She smoothed them and folded her wings back to her sides, but immediately received the urge to flare them again. She was letting something as stupid as a lit torch creep her out.

“Come on,” she taunted herself. “You’re Daring Do; you aren’t going to be scared of a torch are you?” She stared a moment longer at the dancing flame.

“No,” she replied to herself. “It’s just a torch. Why would I be scared?” Daring reached back and pulled a scroll from her saddlebag. She rolled it out on the ground and a stick of charcoal rolled away across the stone. She took it in her mouth and mapped the path of the tunnel she had just left, and the room she was in now. When she was done, a set of straight lines had been sketched in the corner of the large paper, and near the end of those lines was a bend, at the end of which she had sketched the room she was in now. Daring looked around at the room she was in. There were three passages leading off, one being the way she had come in. The larger of the remaining two led slightly down. The last one went up. She rolled the charcoal back up in the scroll and slid it back into her saddlebag.

Trying to make a decision, she looked to one tunnel, then the other; they were both equally tempting. Choosing a tunnel required an expert’s methods and a keen eye. Daring raised a hoof and pointed at the first one. “Eeney meeny miney mo.” Her hoof came to rest pointing at the one that led down. With a shrug, she trotted lightly forward and examined the entrance. The lack of markings set her off, but she tried to ignore the strange churning in her gut.

This tunnel was just the same as the other one. Daring’s mind wandered as she walked. She laughed quietly to herself at the trifles of her mind. If she was a pegasus, then why did she always spend so much time underground? The tunnel curved up ahead, this time to the left. She turned the corner and stopped just before the darkness ahead. The light from the torch was now almost out of range, and although she had excellent night vision, it wasn’t that good.

She pulled the lantern from her bag and lit with a striking stone, illuminating the dark passage with flickering firelight. Daring looked back the way she had come. The passage stretched away into darkness. She looked ahead again and immediately did a double take. Hadn’t she just rounded a corner? She balked, gazing back at the endless hall behind her. There was no corner, nothing at all. She was standing in a straight tunnel with beige-brown walls stretching away into darkness in either direction.

Daring sat down hard. She set the lantern down and felt along the walls. Her hooves slid against the gritty stone, but found no purchase. No cracks or edges where a stone could have possibly slid into place. She felt her breathing quicken. She had just turned a corner; she knew she had. The light from the previous passage couldn’t be seen anymore either.

“Hello?” she called meekly. Her voice traveled down the length of the tunnel and echoed back to her. “What are you doing?” she scolded herself quietly, not wanting to receive another echo. “Just go back the way you came, and re-map it.”

Daring shook her head, clearing it of any mind-hindering thoughts. “Right,” she breathed. “Go back the way you came, and re-map it. I probably just got turned around, that’s all.” She picked up the lantern and started back.

Ten minutes later, she was pretty sure she had not gone the right way. Nothing was adding up. She had only walked for a couple minutes down the tunnel. She had been walked up it--or so she believed--for ten. Doing the math, she concluded that the two did not add up.

Daring pulled out the scroll, intent to check it again. She rolled it out on the ground and her mind locked up all at once as her eyes skimmed the fresh parchment. There was no map drawn on the contents of the scroll. One big squiggly line weaved in and out, covering the entire page. A particularly happy looking smiley face beamed up at her from the parchment. In one corner was a stick figure doodle of a mummy pony chasing a bunch of earth ponies. Little cartoon-ish smiles were drawn on all the figures. One was missing a limb. Smudges of chalk smeared the page where the leg had been wiped away. Daring Do took a disbelieving step backwards. “No,” she whispered.

Still in shock, she rolled up the map and returned it to her bag. She stood staring at the pockmarked wall. This particular section faded to a darker beige than the rest, so that it almost looked brown. The stone block had suffered from age. Dust clung to it, conjured by many years of moisture, until a soft layer of crumbly rock resembling sandstone layered the normally smooth stone. It was as grit as sandpaper yet soft as wood. Daring remembered a random fact. This kind of conjuration of minerals used to drive archaeologists mad. It would cover up hairline seams or hide shallow glyphs. This was why secret passages stayed hidden. Because a thin layer of solidified dust would build up over the entrance, destroying any chances of knowing something was there.

Her mind remained padlocked. A foal had somehow gotten a hold of her scroll and colored all over it. That was the only explanation. “Yeah.” She laughed meekly to herself. A foal snuck into her bag and colored on her scroll while she was walking down the tunnel. “At least they’re smiley faces,” she reassured herself with mock-happiness.

Daring realized she was standing in mid-darkness. She looked towards the source of her light. The lantern was about fifty feet down the passage. She just stared at it. She hadn’t moved more than a few feet; but her lantern was way over there. “Somepony is messing with me.” Daring looked around at the abandoned passage. The only thing here was dust. She trotted back to retrieve her lantern. Things were just plain weird. With a little shake of her head, she pushed up her hat and rubbed the sweat from her brow with a forehoof. She had been in creepy temples before, but this wasn’t right. Things were moving on their own. She no longer wished to explore the ruin. Now she wanted to do nothing more than get the hay out of here. The explorer in her mind wished to stay, but her instincts were screaming every warning in the book.

She looked around at her options. She could either go straight back the way she came, or down the tunnel to the left... The tunnel to the left?

A tunnel split off diagonally from the rest. Cobwebs lined the ceiling and dust clung like carpet to the stone floor. Now she knew for sure, that the tunnel had not been there a minute ago. Daring considered the possibility that she may be dreaming. None of this was really possible.

She grasped the lantern’s handle in her mouth and slowly approached the mouth of the new passage. She had no idea why, but every nerve in her body was screaming for her to go down it. She didn’t want to go down it, but at the same time she did. “Are you crazy?” she scolded herself. “A creepy tunnel just appears and all of a sudden you want to go prancing down it?” She nodded to herself. “I’m going to regret this.” She started down the tunnel, not wanting to, but feeling she had to.

Ten minutes of walking brought her to a small chamber. This room was also square. The ceiling was low and it resembled the previous one she had been in, but without the pillars. Never in her life had she come across such an eccentric maze of tunnels. This place seemed nothing but tunnels.

Daring set down the lantern and flopped down on her back. There was something wrong with this place. While she walked, she could imagine hearing grating stone, masked by the sound of her hoof falls. Letting her eyelids drift halfway shut, she yawned. Who knew that walking around in creepy underground tunnels could take it out of a pony. Letting the overwhelming wave of drowsiness overcome her, she closed her eyes. Something struck her and she gave a little groan. She cracked one eye open so she could see well enough to blow out the lantern. Once again, she let herself go lax, then opened her eyes a second time. Thinking twice, she wrapped her hoof through the handle and lay back. She didn’t want it walking off again. It was all she had for light.

Mildly, she wondered of sleeping here was the best idea. Now, without the lantern light, she couldn’t see her hoof in front of her own face. Say, she woke up in a panic; it could be an issue.

“Don’t worry,” she said aloud. “You’ll be fine.” She was used to speaking to herself. Any time she was exploring tombs or ruins, talking to herself helped her concentrate. “Maybe you’ll be able to make sense of things when you wake up. You might just be imagining all of this.” That seemed to set her mind at ease. She closed her eyes and rolled over on her belly, resting her head on a forehoof, the lantern cradled in the other. Something in her mind was telling her not to fall asleep, but right now, the ground was more comfortable than the softest cloud.

Daring tensed. Her eyes shot open, looking around uselessly in the darkness. She had heard hoofsteps. She tried to remain as still as possible, breathing levelly, listening for the slightest noise. She could definitely hear hoofsteps, the quiet yet echoing clop of hooves on stone. There was a pony in here with her. She was certain of it. As slowly and quietly as she could, Daring pushed herself up to a sitting position and dug in her pocket for a match. There was the sparking stone, but matches were faster. She emerged from the small pocket, a match in her teeth, and pulled the lantern up next to her.

She waited, listening as the echoing hoofsteps drew closer. They were rugged and irregular. One second the sounds would be in close proximity of each other, then the next it would take almost a second until the next followed the previous. She didn’t want to light the lantern until she was sure the pony wouldn’t be able to get away without her getting a good look at it. The hoofsteps echoed louder. They no longer sounded muffled, a sign that the pony was now in the room. She struck the match on the ground and held it to the wick of the oil lantern.

The entire room was bathed with the yellow glow of the flame. A stunned looking earth pony mare stood blinking in the light. Her blue coat was dull and matted. Dust clung to every inch of her. Her darker blue mane was ratty and unkempt, soaked in places with what Daring could only guess was blood. The mare scrambled backwards away from the light. She collided with the wall and fell back on her rump. Her irises were as large as bits. This pony had been in the dark for a long time.

“What are you doing here?” she croaked. Her voice was dry and cracked, but still held the softness of a once gentle-toned mare.

Daring leveled her gaze with the tattered mare. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she replied fearfully. Every rib showed beneath her ragged coat. Sores had formed around her mouth and nose. Even now, Daring could tell that her breathing was labored. She had seen this before, this pony was starving.

“Why not?” Daring asked skeptically. She feared she already knew the answer.

“Because,” the blue mare whispered. “Once you come in, you can’t leave.”

“That’s nonsense.” Daring Do dug through her saddlebags. She pulled out the scroll which she had used as a map, and set it on the ground.

“That’s what I said too,” she replied glumly. “Just some old ponytale to keep snoopy ponies out of the ruins, right? How wrong I was.” The mare froze, staring a blank patch of wall slightly to the left of Daring’s head. “What were you doing before I got here?” she asked urgently, never taking her eyes from the wall.

“Trying to get some sleep,” Daring replied curiously.

Pure terror reflected in the blue mare’s face. “What?” she gasped. “Are you insane?”

Daring was finding this all very hard to believe. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told the mare, putting as much kindness in her voice as she could muster.

“You don’t sleep here!” she reprimanded in a loud whisper. “That’s how they find you?”

“They?” Daring asked skeptically. This mare was dehydrated and hungry — she was probably suffering from hallucinations.

“I don’t know who they are.” The blue mare scooted closer to Daring, dropping her voice to a barely audible whisper. “If you go to sleep here, you don’t wake up.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” she answered even more quietly. “I fell asleep, and I woke up. I was never supposed to wake up.”

Daring held up a hoof. “I shouldn’t believe a word you say. You don’t look too good.”

The mare made an urgent shushing noise. “Keep your voice down.”

“Okay,” Daring replied compliantly. The mare may have been hungry and part crazy, but there was a certain urgency in her voice that was striking the explorer with fear. “Are you hungry?” she asked the belly-shrunken mare.

Her dull eyes seemed to light up for a second. “You have food?” she asked hopefully.

Daring nodded. “Here.” She dug in her bag and passed the hungry pony a paper wrapped celery and oats sandwich.

In four seconds the mare had the paper off the sandwich and had gulped it down, practically in one bite. “How long have you been down here?” Daring awed.

The mare burped quietly and looked up at her. “I’m not sure. Maybe four days. There’s no way to tell time down here.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

The blue mare looked up at her. “At least three days.”

Daring held out a hoof. “I’m Daring Do.”

“Rivers,” she replied, without taking the gesture.

Daring looked at the blue pony with a frown, then lowered her hoof. Rivers looked tired, really tired. “Do you think you’d be able to sleep if I stayed awake?” Daring asked thoughtfully.

Rivers looked at her. “That would work,” she said. The mare spoke as if she were reassuring herself. “But only if you sit right next to me. I want you to keep your hoof on me.”

Daring cocked an eyebrow but nodded. “You also need to stay awake,” Rivers forcibly insisted.

“I can do that.” Daring wasn’t too keen about being around this mare. She seemed a little crazy. But it sounded like Rivers needed her help.

“No I’m serious,” she pressed. “Whatever you do, you need to stay awake.” She spoke every syllable clearly and slowly, forcing emphasis upon her words.

“I will,” Daring reassured.

Rivers sagged to her belly and let out a sigh of relief, and slowly, her eyes fluttered closed. Daring sat next to her and put a hoof against the mare’s flank, as she was told. She was unnerved at how cold Rivers was.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Rivers murmured. “They’ll find you.” The mare exhaled deeply and let out a soft groan. In mere seconds, she was asleep.

Daring turned down the lantern looked around the near-dark chamber. She was starting to believe that this was a little more than just a strange occurrence. Something here wasn’t right. And she was scared.

Comments

[Chaos_Azeroth]

Wow.
Can't wait to read what comes next!

So this is really why Rainbow Dash loves the Daring Do stories.

[Silver Sea]

Purty good.
Never ending caverns, half-dead explorers, and a mysterious "them"
hunting everypony down. Why am I reminded of Half-Life?

[TwinkieSpy]

I need more immediately. Like, I legitimately got creeped out while reading this. Reminds me a bit of Silent Hill. If Silent Hill were underground.

Keep writing this, you magnificent bastard!

[ExtraSoap]

sadanduseless.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/681.jpg

Moar please