Hannah Hawes, Shop Assistant

by Admiral Biscuit

The Orrery of Antikythera

Hannah Hawes, Shop Assistant
The Orrery of Antikythera
Admiral Biscuit

Most temples have a pretty standard arrangement. If the Orrery of Antikythera wasn't in the room you’d been captured in, it would be higher up. Maybe it only works when it's outside, and would therefore be kept towards the top.

Odds are that if it was at a lower level, you or Dr. Caballeron and his henchponies would have found it before you got captured.

Daring, you trust, is racing through the access passageways. Pegasi are better at three-dimensional thinking than you are, so now that the back route has been identified, it shouldn't take her too long to reverse-navigate it.

You've got to move both cautiously and quickly—it's an interesting paradox. But you're gaining on them; you can hear their voices through the twisting corridors. Mostly short, barked orders from Dr. Caballeron and occasional grumbling from his henchponies.

You're not quite close enough to identify all that many actual words, but you can pick up the gist of the conversation.

You've lost count of how many passageways you've gone through. If it comes down to it, your final option will be to follow them out and then somehow wrest the Orrery away from Dr. Caballeron’s henchponies and affect your escape.

At the top of the umpteenth flight of stairs, you find your backpack. It's empty; apparently they decided to sort through it and take anything that might be useful or valuable while leaving it behind. You can't blame them, the straps would be awkward at best for a pony. The last you’d seen it, a brown stallion was carrying it in his mouth and he probably got tired of it. Maybe Dr. Caballeron ordered him to drop it. Whatever; you’re not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

You pick it up and slip it back on. It feels a little better to have it with you, even if there isn't anything to put in it yet.

•••

They trip the final trap.

You know it's the final trap, because even from a reasonably safe distance behind, you can see the bright flash of magic down the corridor, bright enough that you squeeze your eyes shut as you duck into a little alcove in the wall. The whole temple shakes slightly, and from above you can hear anguished screams and Dr. Caballeron shouting in an attempt to calm everypony down.

You're actually kind of happy they're the ones who found that ward and not you.

There's a distant, metallic squealing, and you focus as well as you can, wishing that you had sensitive pony ears instead of your dumb human ears. Something that sounds like scraping and hoofsteps across stone, and then a moment of silence . . . then the unmistakable noise of an axe being used on a wooden chest.

If the cultists were so paranoid about protecting their temple, I can only imagine what wards they might have put on that. You tense up and wait for the resulting explosion, but it doesn't come. The noise of the axe stops.

Huh. Maybe they forgot. Or maybe some hapless cultist couldn’t remember the spellwords and got blasted, and after that they perminantly disarmed the box.

Just then you realize that if they're coming back, it'll be this way, and you'd better find a hidey hole pretty quick.

The alcove you crowded in when the spell went off is as good as anything. They'll be coming out, they'll be a little bit relaxed because they have their prize, and they know where all the traps are—they won't be looking around as much. Not enough to spot a girl jammed up at the top of the alcove, her back against the ceiling.

That's the hope, anyway, and you wedge yourself into position. It's not terribly comfortable, but it'll do.

And then something happens that changes everything. You hear the rusty squeal of protesting hinges, and a draft of fresh air washes down the hallway, causing the torches that they've left behind to flicker and gutter in the breeze.

There is a roof hatch. The gears in your head are turning fast enough to smoke. You can clearly see the next few minutes playing out. They'll signal for the airship, Daring—if she managed to steal it—will swing down to pick them up and then try to get the Orrery from them by herself. She won't have any choice but to leave you behind, to leave you to your own devices.

That's not the end of the world; you made it here and without having to worry about Dr. Caballeron and his henchponies you shouldn't have too much difficulty getting back to civilization eventually.

On the other hand, he won't be expecting an assault from behind. Now’s your chance.

You drop out of your alcove and jog up the hallway. You know that there aren't any more traps; they would have triggered them if there had been.

The final chamber is open, and there's a cluster of ponies around the trapdoor. They're having some trouble boosting themselves up to the edge, which is too bad. Here's where your monkey hands come into play.

They're not properly guarding the door, so you catch them off-guard as you charge through. You're halfway across the room before they realize you’re there, and only one of them has time to take a shot. You're zig-zagging, not making it easy on him at all, but he's actually pretty good with a bow and the arrow rakes across your bicep before bouncing off the stone walls.

One disadvantage to being human is that you kind of tower over the ponies, and that should make you an easy target, but the henchponies are apparently worried about hitting their companions, because there aren't any further shots from them before you get to the hatchway.

You vault off one of the henchponies who's trying to block you and get your hands around the edge of the coaming. Hooves from below grab at you and you kick one of them in the face, and then you're boosting yourself up.

Dr. Caballeron somehow hasn't heard the commotion. He's got his eyes trained to the sky.

There's a burlap sack which you are absolutely certain contains the Orrery of Antikythera. You can also see a mooring line dangling off the airship and as it closes the distance you sieze the opportunity.

The time for finesse, if ever there was a time, is long gone. You bowl over two of his henchponies and grab the sack, punching the unfortunate stallion who's carrying it square in the muzzle. He drops to his haunches and puts his hooves up over his wounded nose and you actually feel kind of bad for the poor guy. It's tragically adorable.

You're running full-tilt when you leave the roof, roughly angling towards the dangling mooring line.

You shouldn’t have looked down. Being pyramid-shaped, the temple itself slopes away from you rather dramatically, and you have a brief moment to think about what would happen if you missed the rope: would you clear the temple completely, or land partway down the side and tumble all the way to the bottom?

The rope’s right in front of you and you grab onto it.

Your arm feels like it’s being torn out of its socket and when you hit the entire airship jerks a little bit. That bit of springiness in the rope and in the airship itself is what saves you.

You hook the dangling end of the rope with your feet and get it pinched between your thighs, granting you a bit of extra security, and then you breathe a sigh of relief. You’re safe at last.

You’d forgotten that some of them have bows, and the Orrery will probably survive if you drop it. Even worse, you're hanging on to a rope, completely vulnerable to archers.

This occurs to them, too.

Holding a priceless cursed magical artifact while climbing up a rope to an airship is something you've never done before, and in hindsight you wouldn't consider trying it again. Your swinging combined with Daring's jukes cause most of the arrows to miss, but you don't escape unscathed. One of them grazes your cheek and just when you were thinking how worryingly close that was, you feel a rather uncomfortable stinging in your leg.

Some people would undoubtedly be concerned about having an arrow stuck in them but you ignore it in favor of hasting the rest of the way up the rope before any more join it.

You finally get a chance to look around when you reach the envelope of the airship. Henchponies are spilling down the side of the temple, presumably with the idea of following the airship on the ground. It's not a bad plan; you can hear the hiss of escaping gas from various punctures, and the engines aren't going very fast. Probably Daring had to incapacitate the engine crews and so there's nopony to reply to commands from the helm.

The rope you've climbed leads to the nose of the airship, and there's no way to get inside from your position, so now that you're reasonably safe from arrows, you pull up enough of the rope to tie a bowline on a bight.

You hadn't anticipated this trip ending by becoming an airship hood ornament.

Comments

[Conflicting views]

Dr. Caballeronand

need more space

[Admiral Biscuit]

8895347
Fixed, thank you!

[Nyerguds]

The time for finesse, if ever there was a time, is long gone. You bowl over two of his henchponies and grab the sack, punching the unfortunate stallion who's carrying it square in the muzzle.

High-octane edge-of-my-seat action!

Remarks and Corrections:
> The rope’s right in front of you and you grab onto it
missing period at the end.

[Admiral Biscuit]

8896733

High-octane edge-of-my-seat action!

Remarks and Corrections:
> The rope’s right in front of you and you grab onto it
missing period at the end.

Fixed! Thank you!

[Bugsydor]

The adorableness of your adversaries is not a problem I'd anticipated in this sort of situation.