Adventuring Archeology

by Braininthejar

What Daring Do does best

In the beginning there was Chaos and Order, a sea of endless possibilities and the force to give them structure. Out of the Chaos, two beings emerged, Mother Earth and Father Sky. For eons they danced with each other among everything and nothing. There was nothing that mattered to them but each other, for there was nothing else that could matter.

Daring Do examined the tablet with surprise. She hadn’t seen anything like this for a long time.

“Hmm… that’s unusual,” she said, scratching her chin. “This inscription is old, but the alphabet is an archaic form of Equestrian. I expected only glyphs here… Perhaps it’s newer than the rest of the ruins?”

She turned around and gave the tablet a good kick. There was no echo to indicate a secret passage behind the stone. Disappointed, Daring Do took another look at the inscription. A stream of moonlight was shining through a collapsed wall, illuminating the letters.

“I can’t light a fire here to get more light,” thought Daring Do aloud. “Auhizotl’s servants will find me here in seconds.”

She had spent the last three weeks searching the Unicorn Range mountains. This area had long been considered cleared of all the treasures of the past, but the brave archeologist knew better. A long search through the archives of Vanhoover university (followed by a frantic chase after a masked robber who tried to run away with the files) uncovered a long forgotten story of a hidden temple located in one of the valleys. According to the tale, the valley had been hidden by powerful magic, which might explain why it remained undiscovered despite all the air traffic from Cloudsdale.

So, here she was now, having used her knowledge of air currents to find the valley where her eyes would see only rocks, flown blind to bypass the illusions and dodged a series of nasty traps that had somehow withstood the test of time. And now it turned out Auhizotl's servants had followed her in. He had clearly hired a better class of help.

Daring Do shook a bit. “Ah, I wish I could light a fire,” she sighed. The first snow had just fallen and even for a pegasus the night was getting uncomfortably cold. The brave archeologist silently snuck towards the hole in the wall and peered outside. There were lights below that indicated her opponents set up camp. In the morning they would be all over the ruins.

Now, should I resume my search at first dawn and hope I locate the tiara before they do, or hide while they search the temple and snatch the artifact from under their noses once they find it?

Either way she had to wait till morning and with her enemies so close she couldn’t afford the luxury of sleep. The night was almost over anyway. She bent forward, digging her muzzle into the front pocket of her jacket, until she managed to find a small bag of coffee pills. Not her first choice of a night snack, but it would help her stay awake. Having done all she could for the moment, she turned her attention back at the tablet. The language was an archaic pegasi dialect, but she had enough knowledge to translate it as she went. Ancient languages were, after all, a large part of her work.

Until it happened that something appeared in the endless space, where Chaos and Order met, something that did not wash away into nothing. It was just a piece of stone, the idea of a crystal made real. But it was there to stay and Mother Earth was fascinated. She willed more to exist and it was so, the Order keeping the Chaos contained.

Mother Earth lost herself in the joy of creation. Before long a whole world had come into being, a vast sculpture of earth, water and air, a fiery furnace burning in its core. And yet she was not satisfied. The world was there, but it had no life to it and after a time, something so unchanging felt alien to the Chaos-born goddess.

She approached Father Sky and from their union two more beings emerged, the Sun and the Moon. The two sisters saw the world and set to run around it, imbuing it with the rhythm of day and night. And yet it was not enough.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that myth before. So, that’s what they worshipped here. That might explain all the alicorn murals,” said Daring Do to herself. “Unless it wasn’t the original purpose of the temple and the tablet was made by somepony who came here later.”

She looked around the room. There were strange pictograms on the walls, tablet after tablet covered with writing nopony could decipher anymore. Above them there were alicorns: three mares and a stallion looking down on the room with regal majesty. For a moment Daring Do wished the stylisation were not that angular. It made for a beautiful picture, but had the pictures been more realistic, she could learn more from them.

“The two smaller ones… might look like Celestia and Luna. Does it mean they used to be worshipped as gods once? If only I could learn more.”

As Father Sky watched, Mother Earth filled the world with plants and animals, their diversity a tribute to Chaos that brought her into being. But as Order made her creations permanent, it robbed them of the spark of change. They were like lifeless puppets, only moving when their creator commanded it.

And so Mother Earth realised, that there was only one thing she could do to make her creation perfect. She descended upon the world and dispersed her being, becoming the souls of all that lived. And as the creatures opened their eyes on their own for the first time and marvelled upon the world, Father Sky wept in sorrow, for he had now lost the love that was older than the world itself. He returned to the void alone and as his parting gift he blessed the children of Earth with his power. They would now be able to draw upon the powers of Chaos and shape them through the strength of their hearts, the gift of magic.

So, that was all. Daring Do looked at the doorframe to the left of the tablet, then to the wall to the right, covered with ancient writing.

It looks like the very beginning of the story. If that is so, then it should naturally go around the room. But why would a newer writing be here at the beginning? Unless…

Daring Do jumped up from her prone position. “Wait… transitional period. The last inhabitants of the temple must have used both the old and the new alphabet. This tablet must have been broken somehow and they made the new one with the more popular new writing. This proves the old glyphs used old Equestrian dialects… and if we used the context of this tablet and compare it to the other ones, we could find the key to decipher them!”

There were literally tons of such writings around the world, stone and metal tablets of ages past set in museum exhibitions all over Equestria. So far nopony had been able to decipher them. Even the princesses said those were older than either of them and the attempts by various archeologists to break the code proved unsuccessful; any rule they tried to apply only came out as gibberish. The symbols didn’t seem to follow any common grammar, to the point that some theorized that the alphabet must have been forgotten at some point and then re-used for purely decorative purposes. Once or twice somepony managed to decode a tablet or two, only to make further research and discover that the writing in question was a fake. This usually ruined the careers of those researchers.

But this? This could be a direct proof that the old glyph system was used alongside Equestrian. This place was built to be secret. That’s why Dr Dowsing Rod used it to hide the tiara of the kelpie queen. There is no reason for this to be a hoax. If one could extrapolate from the first tablet and find just a couple key words on the others…

She looked at the wall again, but found it too dark to read. The moon was setting. That meant the sun would go up soon.

Daring Do came to the hole in the wall and looked outside. “Well, I’d like to sit here and solve ancient puzzles, but there are more important things now. I have to stop Auhizotl from getting his claws on the tiara of the kelpie queen.”

***

A.K.Yearling knocked on the office door.

“Enter,” said a raspy voice from the inside. The mare pushed the door and went it. An elderly earth pony was sitting at the desk, a bubble pipe in his teeth.

“Ah, miss Yearling,” he smiled. “I take it, you’ve returned from your latest adventure.”

The mare dug through her bag before pulling out an aged silver tiara. She put it on his desk. “There you go, Great Find,” she said. “You can ‘discover’ it whenever you want to.”

The stallion leaned over his desk for a closer look. “You will be compensated as usual. Though I still think you should just make your discoveries under your own name. I don’t feel comfortable with this.”

“Believe me,” said miss Yearling with a smirk, “It’s better if Daring Do remains a fictional character.”

Great Find shrugged. “Well, It’s your choice, I guess. I see your latest find is a bit damaged? I take it wasn’t as magical as the legend said?”

“On the contrary,” said miss Yearling. “It was as magical and more. That’s why the biggest gem is missing. You’ll have to replace it with something, but if it was still there, the tiara would have been too dangerous to put on display.”

“I see,” said Great Find, picking the tiara and putting it under a stationary magnifying glass. “I take it I’ll read the rest of the story in your next book? Or can you tell me now?”

Miss Yearling smiled. “Oh, just the usual. Dug for some clues, found a hidden temple, got captured and put in a death trap, escaped by the skin of my teeth and foiled the villains. I’ll have to color it a bit when I write it down.”

Great FInd raised an eyebrow. “So, Auhizotl again? You sure are lucky he’s so obsessed with death traps. And what about the temple? Should I get my boys ready to work?”

Miss Yearling turned slightly red. In her mind’s eye she saw once again her last second plan to disrupt the attunement ritual, then her daring escape as the ancient magic of the tiara was unleashed, shaking the walls apart around her. She remembered Auhizotl’s claw sticking out angrily from under the smoking pile of rubble.

“Nah,” she said. “Badly preserved pre-classical pegasi stuff. Nothing you don’t already have in your collection.”

Author's Note:

Comments welcome. (unless I made a typo somewhere - then better write me a PM instead )

Part of the Tales of a Hidden World continuity.

Comments

[Bugsydor]

Dangit, Doo! That tablet belonged in a museum!

Out of curiosity, what was the purpose of the Tiara of the Kelpie Queen? Did it grant dominion over the rivers or something?

[Braininthejar]

5512392 It was made for a queen - it mostly had a power to command. (who makes all those cursed items anyway?)

[Bugsydor]

5512425
If D&D lore is to be believed, incompetent craftsmen with bad dice.

[EchoWing]

...this feels like a tiny hint of so much more. I want to know the full story!

[Braininthejar]

5514255 Hinting of so much more is what I do nowadays. What exactly do you mean?

[EchoWing]

5515009 Well, it would've been nice to know exactly why the crown was so dangerous and how she got it out of Ahuizotl's clutches. Don't get me wrong, hinting at it is awesome and all, but some kinds of stories call for the 'Nothing is Scarier' trope more than others. Just my opinion.

[Braininthejar]

5515572 A funny thing. When I first started writing this, Daring Do was supposed to be looking for the spear of windigos. Then I realized that it had already been written and had to come up with another magical trinket on the spot. Barely anything changed.

Of course, I could write the confrontation in the temple in great detail, as many before me undoubtedly had when writing Daring Do adventures. But that would shift the dynamic of the story dramatically. The focus would be moved elsewhere. In effect it would be a completely different piece.

In short, I skipped that part entirely on purpose, because that's not what this story is really about.

[EchoWing]

5515693 Eh, true enough.

[Rakaziel]

Daring Do and the Wrecking Ball of History