Daring Do and the Empire of the Dead

by CrackedInkWell

Chapter 3

For five minutes, Daring Do and Crawl Space walked over the hallway of bones. For every “pop”, “crunch”, “snap” and “creak”, Daring could hear Crawl making apologies as they walked over the bones beneath their hooves.

At the end of the hallway, their path was divided into two. “So what’ll be?” Daring asked. “Left or right?”

“The right I suppose-” Crawl Space was cut off by a sudden loud “Crack!” above their heads.

“Move!” Crawl Shouted. Daring ran to the right and Space followed. Behind them, the ceiling in front of the hallway of bones collapsed from old age. The crash echoed so loudly that it made Daring’s ears ring.

When there was silence, the two looked back to the rubble that has blocked the way they came in.

“Oh, this is bad. This is extremely bad.” Crawl Space was beginning to panic. Daring on the other hoof licked the tip of her hoof and hold it up in the air.

“Madame, what are you doing?”

“Do you feel that?” Daring asked, “Lick the tip of your hoof and tell me I’m not the only one who feels that.” He did, holding up for a moment, he commented. “There’s a small breeze in here.”

“This means, we can still breathe in here. And from the looks of it, there’s now only one way to go.”

Crawl Space followed behind Daring, they passed by more graphite and bones along the way. Every now and then the stone walls would be open up to tiny rooms that the only thing they have is bones.

“It’s kinda crazy how many bodies are down here,” Daring remarked.

“Most of them were from the plague Madame. While others have been exhumed during the last thousand years several times to be dumped here. Wait, look at this.” Daring turned her flashlight to where Crawl had his, on the floor going down another hallway was an arrow made out of bone. But near it, Daring found something else, she knelt to the ground to examine it. It was a button.

“Monsieur Space, is this the seal of the Prench military?” Daring asked, letting Crawl to take a look at it.

“It is. And it looks like it’s from the right time period too.”

“Which means we’re on the right track, so come on, let’s go this way.”

“Do you suppose they might have had made other arrows like this one?”

“I won’t be surprised. But that doesn't quite make sense though.”

“Why is that?”

“Think about it, these guys, by the looks of it, have already put a marked path right? So how come they went missing?”

“What if they ran out of light? By now that has to be the only explanation no? Down here, if you don’t have enough light to last long enough, it’ll become very easy to be disoriented. Never to find your way out. And to be honest, this is far too deep for even armatures to be down here.”

“Have you ever been this deep down?”

“It’s hard to say. When everything is pitch black, it’s difficult to tell if you’re under somepony’s basement or miles and miles down below.”

They walked on, crawled through, and stepped over for miles in the pitch, charcoal black dark. Every few miles or so, they would find a bony arrow pointing towards a tunnel.

And then, after hours of walking, they made a discovery. In a crossroad of darkness, they found another cave-in. But at the very base of the rubble, they found a skeleton whose hind legs have been trapped. But what made this particular skeleton unique was the hat he was the remains of the uniform he was wearing.

“Excuse me, buddy,” Daring said as she felt through the pockets and found a wallet therein. Opening it up, there was a black and white picture of a mare, and besides that was a card. It was a military identification card.

“This is one of them,” Daring said, handing the wallet over to Crawl Space. “Private Book Worm, he’s one of six who went down here.”

“But there are no paintings,” Crawl Space pointed out. “So what do you supposed have happened?”

Daring thought for a moment. “Okay, so this guy is trapped by his hind legs so… Okay how about this, these guys were either still looking for a hiding space or they still had them with them. Anyway, there was a cave in and this guy got caught in it. So if the guy had some of the paintings, he might have given them to them. Perhaps they might want to come back here, but as you said, somepony can get very disoriented and the last marker was about half a mile back. This means that those guys probably didn’t go back where we went to, nor did they go the other way which is full of bones since we've seen them. So there has to be one place they had to go.”

“Ah, interesting deduction there. It’s a wonder why you don’t solve crimes.”

Daring chuckled, “It’s part of a job as an archaeologist. When we find something, we have to play detective to find something else. Now come on, let’s go this way.”

After sometime later, Daring has made two more discoveries. In the hallway, they saw the brass cylinders they were looking for. Counting through them, they found a total of twenty-eight of these cylinders. Opening them up, they found that these were the paintings they were looking for.

“Moneigh! This is a Moneigh!” Crawl Space cried in joy. “And this one… it’s a Van Go! We did it, Madame! We found them!”

“Yeah, we… What’s that?” Daring Do shined her flashlight to the end of the end of the hallway, and there was a door. But was truly odd was this door was made out of rusted metal.

“Who cares?” Crawl asked, “We found the paintings, now let’s go.”

“Just a moment, I want to see what this is.”

Daring went up to the door. It was slightly taller than any doors she’s seen.

“Monsieur Space, help me out opening this.”