Ups and Downs
Chapter 9. - Ups and Downs
Lantern was lying in Archive’s embrace on the ground. He was conscious, but just barely. He was taking deep breaths.
Behind him, Archive was still sniffing. She started stirring and let go of him to get up. When she walked around Lantern, her eyes fell on the coughed up mushrooms and the puddle of stomach acid. Only one of the mushrooms Lantern ate was actually poisonous, and even that was only bit into two pieces before he swallowed it. That single mushroom was enough to color most of Lantern’s digestive fluids to a sickening green color that glowed in Archive’s night vision.
She took the mushrooms in her magical grip and threw them as far away into a ditch as she could. She looked around and found the little bowl that she made earlier. She tiredly walked over to it and picked it up, and then submerged it in the pool to scoop up some water. She then stepped up to the puddle of puke and splashed the water onto it and went back for more water. Archive brought the fresh water to Lantern.
She gently levitated the bowl to Lantern’s mouth, who took a mouthful of it, sloshed it around in his maw then turned away from her to spit it out. The rest of the water, he drank with gusto.
When Archive turned to get some more from the pool, Lantern stopped her by grabbing her hoof before she could move away.
Lantern sat up with a lopsided smile on his face.
“It was enough. Thank you.”
“You need to drink more to dilute the trace amounts of poison still in your stomach.”
Archive’s flat tone surprised Lantern and he let go of her. He watched as she walked to the pool with shaking legs. When she returned with the bowl her whole body was trembling and tears were welling up in her multifaceted eyes.
All of a sudden she splashed the water in Lantern’s face.
“You almost killed yourself!” she shouted through her tears. “If you had died, you would’ve killed me as well!” she stomped with her hoof in anger.
Lantern looked her in the eyes and took a step towards her. Archive clenched her eyes shut and turned her head away for him.
When she heard him taking another step, she pushed him out of the way and ran off into the darkness.
Lantern tried to call out after her, but the words just didn’t come. He hung his head in shame.
“Lantern, you dumbass!” he cursed himself, punching the ground with his good hoof.
After a minute of self-pity, he collected himself and decided he should go after her, but he had a small problem.
“How in Tartarus do I find a jet black changeling in the dark?”
“Maybe if I go back to the fire? No, that would take too long.”
“Luna damn this cursed darkness!” he exclaimed in his frustration.
When he almost conceded to the idea of having to light his way with his little sparks, his eyes wondered up to the glowing specks of little stones on the wall.
“The Princess of the Night provides...sorta. Sorry for the one before, Princess!” Lantern apologized for taking Her name in vain, while the idea he just got started to seem more and more viable in his head.
He grabbed the upturned bowl and waded into the water to the opposite side of the pool to reach the wall. He set the bowl into the water like a toy boat and it floated on the surface calmly. Lantern started picking up the glowing stones from the bottom of the shallow parts of the pool that fell into the water from the erosion. He filled the bowl to the rim and even stashed some of the stones under his wing, just to be safe.
Once he was out of the water, he put down the bowl and shook himself like a dog to get rid of most of the water that soaked into his coat. Picking up the bowl again, and balancing it on his head, he started down the path after Archive.
The little stones parted the darkness around Lantern with a soothing blue light, which wasn’t as strong as a torch would have been, but it was more than adequate to help the pegasus find his way around the cave.
It took Lantern a few minutes to get back to the hall where the small tunnels were, but when he arrived, he spotted Archive right away.
She was sitting in the center of the hall and was staring up in silence.
Lantern walked up to her and sat by her side. Making sure not to ruin his light source, he gently set it on the floor and sighed.
“Look, I’m really sorry for what happened. I know I should have been more careful. I messed up big time. If it wasn’t for you, I would be dead twice over so…”
“Lantern,” Archive cut into his apology, while still only staring up into the darkness. “I’ve been here before.”
Lantern’s mind screeched to a complete halt. For three whole seconds he even forgot to take a breath.
“W--w-what?”
“I’ve seen this place once a long time ago.”
“How is that possible?” Lantern asked.
“The hivemind. When Queen Teshya created the hivemind, she connected with Queen Arathea too and she must have shared her memories with her. Just like when I became an Archive Nymph and my predecessor shared hers with me. This used to be the old Hive. I didn’t recognize this place, because we were in a part of the cave that Queen Arathea has never seen.” she explained.
“Wait! Does that mean, what I think it means?”
“I know the way out!” said Archive calmly, with a hint of a smile on her face.
Lantern grabbed Archive in a bear hug and started spinning around.
“Oh, dear Celestia! I could kiss you right now. This is amazing! I can’t believe we can go home at last. I can’t wait to see Rusty’s face when I tell him all about this.”
Lantern was so happy, he didn’t realize what he just said. Archive blushed and tried to get out of his hooves, but he was way too strong for her to wrestle herself free.
“Lantern! Let go of me! You’re squeezing the air out of me!”
“Oh! Sorry! Hehe, I didn’t mean to.” Lantern said as he set Archive back on the ground.
When she was on the ground again, she collected herself and got ready to tell him the bad news too.
“There IS a little problem though.”
“Problem!?”
Lantern was so pumped, that when his brain parsed the meaning of ‘problem’, he looked like a confused dog.
Archive turned away and looked back at him “How fast of a flyer are you?”
“Why?”
Archive looked at the tunnels on the lower level of the hall and pointed at one of them.
“I assume that’s the tunnel where you’ve found the mushrooms.”
“Correct! How did you know!?”
“The entrance to that tunnel shines just like the green fire that our changeling magic produces.”
“I can’t see a thing!”
“That’s expected, but believe me, I can see it. You have unsettled the poisonous spores in there, and now the air is filled with them. The problem is, as far as I know that’s the only way out of here. We have to get through that tunnel and reach the end of the hall on the other side to get to the old hive as fast as possible, without breathing in the spores.”
“I’m no Wonderbolt, but they’re the ones training the pegasi of the Guard. I reckon I can do it.”
“The cave is about a hundred and twenty meters long, full of randomly positioned pillars, it’s pitch black, you have to hold your breath and also have to carry me. Are you sure?”
“Hmm...if you take off this thing and give me some time to warm up, I can carry you without any problem. I’m worried about accidentally breathing in the spores.”
Lantern was thinking hard on how to prevent inhaling the toxic air for a few minutes, but he eventually came up with a stupidly fantastic idea.
“Wait! Could you seal up my mouth and nose with your resin?”
“Yeah, I guess I could do it, but would you be able to last that long without air?”
“I may not look like it, but I have completed the archery training in the academy. Some of the classes only consisted of breathing excercises. I might be pushing my limits a little, but it’s doable.”
“Okay, but how will you know where to go?”
Lantern’s mouth turned into a confident, shit-eating grin,“You’ll be my compass!”
“What? If I call out the directions for you, I’ll inhale the poison you idiot!” Archive shouted at him.
“I never said you have to talk. Give me your hoof!”
Archive lifted her hoof in front of Lantern uncertainly. The pegasus grabbed onto the offered hoof and picked up a bunch of glowing stones from the bowl. He tried to insert them into the holes on Archive’s front left hoof, but when the first stone slipped into a hole, Archive moaned out loud. Lantern froze from the surprise, but before he could look up she slapped him across the face so hard that he stumbled to the ground.
Archive’s face was completely green from equal parts embarrassment and anger.
“Never EVER do that again! Those holes are very sensitive, and it’s rude to just put stuff into a changeling’s holes!”
“Ouch! You should’ve warned me!” Lantern looked up from the ground, but when the hilarity of the situation hit him, he started laughing.
“Stop it! If you say a word of this, I swear I’ll suck your soul dry and leave you in a ditch. Ancient Law be damned!”
Archive kept huffing and puffing, but she actually put the stones into the holes herself, and sealed them in with a thin layer of resin, lest they fall out while flying.
Lantern was still snickering on the ground. He thought that Archive looked very cute at that moment!
Once she was done with her hoof, she got up and walked over to the pegasus on the ground and raised her hoof to strike. Lantern reflexively shielded his face, but the hit never came. When he looked up again, his wing was free of it’s resin cast.
Archive leaned over him threateningly and growled “Get your wings moving!”, then she retreated to let the guardspony get up and start his warmup.
While Lantern exercised his flight muscles, Archive made two masks that would keep them from accidentally breathing.
Once Lantern was ready, and Archive has finished her task too, she calmly said to the pegasus “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Lantern smiled at her and said “That makes two of us.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.033 seconds
Total duration
1,086 users online
2,107,014 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Yay! A update!
Life breathes again!
Surely there must be multiple paths in the Hive? Maybe the structural failings is why it was abandoned...
Keep going! ;)
Hahahaha, this is awesome!
and funny, nicely done, nicely done! 
I wonder what will they find in the hive. I think it will be the twist mentationed in the description of the story. Ussually the changeling character would find a way to ubgrade himself into a Royal Changeling in such place, and here it will be something else. I want to say it will be some kind of artifact Archive will wamt to take with her and that propably will trigged the self-destruction of the hive itself to keep the things intresting.
7118798
I struggled reading this comment, not gonna lie.
*snicker* I could find so many things hilarious right now...
Yay for the magic of a good, cute update... with near death experience to boot.
7118942 Walls of text are a thing, people too often forget that.
7118691 Archive tells Lantern the story of why the old hive was abandoned in Chapter 3. - A Mother's Words.
7118798 Indiana Jones much?
7119544 oh derp on me, we thought it was mentioned but I forgot.
7119551 Finally someone got it. I wanted to mentation a gigant rolling stone, but that would be too obvious.
This'll be harrowing and fun to watch at the same time. Good chapter and looking forward to the next
she feels off character in this chapter.
Finally.
nicely done anOTHER GREAT CHAPTER TO A VERY FINE STORY! well done!
7121406 That's pretty much the most NSFW stuff in the whole thing, but I tried to play it off so it wouldn't come off as lewd. xD
7121406 Bow chika wow wow!
7183557 Not now, Tucker!