The Secrets of Nightholde

by Bookpony579

Chapter 5

The morning brought the sun and, with it, a much brighter atmosphere at the castle.

Sunset rubbed her eyes at the breakfast table. Though she eventually returned to sleep, it had been light and unsteady due to the disturbance.

"You ok Sunset?" Aj asked, pouring herself some apple juice.

"I'm fine, just heard some weird noises last night."

"I'm sure it was just the wind darling. Old castles like these are sure to have a noise draft or two."

Sunset shook her head. "I don't think it was the wind. It sounded like....people were talking or chanting."

"Are you sure you weren't just dreaming?"

"Yeah," Rainbow agreed, stacking up some pancakes, "I know we kinda joked about this place being out of a horror story."

Sunset stared down at her food for a minute, thinking it over before sighing. "You're probably right. I'm sure I'm just letting my imagination run away from me."

"My imagination runs away from me all the time!" Pinkie said. "But it always comes back....with cake!"

---

After breakfast, the girls (sans Twilight) were in the great hall, looking it over.

"You know, during the daytime, it's a lot less creepy." Rainbow admitted, admiring a suit of armor.

Fluttershy nodded as she looked around, admiring the paintings.

"Huh.."

"What's wrong?" AJ turned to Sunset.

"Something's wrong with these pillars. Look here..." She pointed to a column with the sea goddess on it. "Thalassa's usually shown with a trident, right? But it's not here, even though it looks like she should be holding something." Indeed the image on the pillar was of a woman rising from the sea with her arm in the air, but her hand was grasping nothing. "And there, the Sun Goddess's crown is gone. And Mictlan's scythe!" Indeed, in several of the pillars, there appeared to be something missing.

"This is an old castle Sunset." Rarity pointed out. "They were probably taken off for repairs."

"This place is HUGE!" Pinkie shouted. "I bet you could invite a ton of people to party in this room alone!" With that she pulled her party cannon out from...somewhere....and fired it. Unfortunately, it was in Rainbow's direction which caused her to jump back and hit the armor, which began to lean forward.

"WOAH!" Rainbow stumbled as she tried to catch the falling armor, to no avail as she was pushed back into-

"AH!"

-Fluttershy which pushed her into the painting she was currently admiring: the portrait of Velvet from last night. The sudden tumble caused the painting to be knocked to the floor.

"PINKIE!" The girls exclaimed, glaring at their friend.

"...Oops." Pinkie admitted with an embarrassed smile.

"Come on," Sunset said, picking up the painting, "Let's try to clean everything up before Vespera finds out."

The very mention of the housekeeper's name caused a shiver down everyone's spines.

Fluttershy and Sunset continued to hang the painting back up until-

"Huh?" Sunset noted a piece of paper falling from the back of the portrait.

"What is it?" Rarity asked, using her magic to put the armor back up.

After securing the portrait, Sunset picked up the note and read it:

"'If Ancient trEasure is what you sEek

then BehinD sagittarius, tAke a peek."

"Ancient treasure!?" Rainbow exclaimed, eye's widening in excitement.

"Right here in the castle!?" Rarity continued, just as excited.

"That's odd....Scorpius or anybody else didn't mention anything about treasure..." Sunset said, looking the note over.

"Maybe they forgot or something." Rainbow shrugged.

"Or maybe they didn't want us to know..." Fluttershy offered.

"Who cares? You all heard them talking about 'secrets' and that the castle has a tone of them. We've gotta check this out!"

"I'm with Rainbow on this one, this is way too good to pass up!" Sunset said.

"Alright then..." AJ nodded slowly while the rest agreed eagerly. "So, where do we start?"

"The note says to 'look behind Sagittarius' so maybe behind a picture of it, maybe?"

"Girls!" They turned and saw Twilight waving as she entered the hall. "What's going on?"

"Twilight, do you know anything about a 'secret treasure' that might be here in the castle?" Sunset asked.

"Sunset!" Rainbow turned to her. "Why would you tell her that!?"

"Her family's castle. She knows more about it than us."

"You mean that old legend?" Twilight rolled her eyes. "Supposedly a great treasure is hidden somewhere in the castle and my family's guarded it for centuries, or something like that. Nobody's ever found it though, not even me and I searched this place top to bottom when I was a kid."

"Oh..." Sunset's and the other's faces went downcast. "Can you at least tell us if there's a picture of Sagittarius around here somewhere?"

"Sure." Without asking further questions, Twilight led them up the stairs and down a few hallways before...

"Hello? Is anyone there?" An electronic voice called out.

Fluttershy jumped. "W-what was that!?" Everyone turned and saw a table with a white sheet covering something.

"Oh!" Twilight ran over and lifted it off, revealing one of those cute, old robot toys with a continuous track for movement, a square body with buttons and a screen and claw arms poking out of it and a square head with blue light eyes a speaker mouse and a light bulb sticking out of it's head.

"Girl's, meet Word-Bot!" Twilight said as Word-Bot waved. "My Grandad made him decades ago. He made a designed a lot of computers and programs, see? He's programmed him with all sorts of word games where you say a word and he'll say something else back. He's also a translator."

"Hello! I am Word-Bot! How may I be of assistance?"

"Shiny and I used to love playing around with him when we were little. I'll leave the tarp off for now, so he doesn't scare you later."

"Oh!" Fluttershy, Rarity and even Pinkie Pie gushed over him. "He's so cute!" Fluttershy squealed with Pinkie and Rarity nodding.

"Yup....definitely genetic." Rainbow whispered to Sunset.

They continued a little further on before stopping at a door with the constellation pictured on it in tiles. "Here you go, I don't know why you want to find it though, there's nothing much in here except some old junk. Oh! There is a secret passage though!"

"Really!?" Pinkie asked as everyone leaned in.

"Yeah, there are several around the castle. I don't remember how to open this one though. All I remember is that I was playing around in there as a kid when it opened. I've got to take Spike for a walk, have fun though!" With that, she was off.

"So...do we still want to look?" AJ asked. "Ah mean...she did say she looked for it herself..."

"I know, but c'mon!" Sunset shrugged. "A secret passage? Tell me you don't want to at least check it out?"

With that they opened the door and it was indeed as Twilight said: just a few random items stored in here from what looked like old journeys.

"Um...what do we do now?" Fluttershy asked.

"I don't know." Sunset said, looking the note over. "It doesn't say."

"Looks like Twilight's ancestors did a bit of traveling." Rarity said, looking an old cheignese vase.

"Maybe there's another clue in the room!" Pinkie suggested.

With that, they got to searching, but seeing as the room wasn't all that big and there weren't that many items in the first place, they came up dry.

"Ugh!" Rainbow slammed the dresser door shut. "There's nothing in here! Not even a secret lever or a button or something!"

"I don't know about that Dashie!" Pinkie said, "This longbow's kinda interesting! It's so big and stringy!" She tried to pick it up, but it appeared attached to the wall where it hung.

"Wait a minute...." Sunset's eyes brightened. "I have an idea! The picture on the door is of Sagittarius, right?"

"I think that's the constellation, yes..." Fluttershy nodded.

"Well Sagittarius is the archer! What if that's a clue to look at the longbow!"

"But there's not much to it." AJ pointed out. "It looks pretty strong, but I don't think it's even been used much."

Sunset looked at the note. "Look over here! Notice how some of the letters are capitalized? I think their music notes! I think we have to play it!" She went over and began to pluck the string, manipulating it to get the right notes. "Let's see....A...E...E..." She continued until the last note was struck.

Suddenly, the back wall lifted up, revealing a new hallway!

"Yes!" Sunset exclaimed. "This must be the secret passage! Let's go check it out!"

"A-Are you sure?" Fluttershy asked nervously. "It looks dark, and old...maybe we should wait for someone..."

"C'mon!" Rainbow grabbed her hand. "It'll be fun! Besides, we've faced worse."

"Well...I guess...."

"Good! Let's get moving!" Rainbow announced, dragging Fluttershy forward with a slight yelp."

---

Fluttershy did have a point: the hall was carved from old stone. And it was dark. VERY dark. Luckily Sunset used her magic to light thew way.

"What were these for?" AJ asked.

"Probably to hide from intruders, to hide valuable or just as quick shortcuts from one part of the castle to another." Sunset explained. "We had a few at my family's home."

They continued down the old, dark passage in single file line for a few minutes before walking down a few staircases and continuing on.

"You gotta admit," Rainbow said as they walked down the stairs. "Twilight's family didn't do things by half measure."

"Yeah." Sunset nodded. "It looks like when they wanted to hide something, they hid it really well."

Eventually, their journey came to an end as they reached a metal door...

"It's locked!" Rainbow stomped her foot after pulling on the door handle.

"Somehow that actually makes sense down here..."AJ noted.

"What's this?" Sunset looked over an image on the door. The image was of Word-Bot with a word bubble with letter slots. Above it was the word: 'bakery'.

"Looks we'll need to talk to Word-Bot and see what he has to say about this."

Carefully, they made their way out of the secret passage and back to the room before retracing their path back to the small robot.

"Hello!" It repeated again. "I am Word-Bot! How may I be of assistance?"

"Word-Bot....does the word 'bakery' make any sense to you?" Sunset asked.

"Computing....I'm sorry. But I cannot continue without the password to begin?"

"What password?" Rainbow asked, frustrated.

"Password required to begin word games. Please come back when you have the correct password."

"Well this was a bust." Rainbow groaned.

"How in the world are we supposed to find the password to that thing?" Rarity wondered.

"Why don't we just ask someone?" AJ suggested. "Twilight said her granddaddy designed the thing and she and her brother used to play with it. Why don't we just ask one of them for the password?"

"Sounds good to me." Sunset nodded. "C'mon girls, time to explore this place!"

Author's Note:

Sorry for that wait, but I'm trying to write my chapters longer now.

...See any references?

Comments

[Comickook]

REALLY good job on the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up in all the right places as usual. Well, the girls' curiosity has officially gotten the better of them and they picked up on a couple of clues, only to hit a (thankfully only figurative and probably temporary) dead end. The gang's encountering Word Bot (especially Fluttershy's reaction) was great too.

As for references, well, the teen-led treasure hunt COULD be a reference to "the Goonies" and/or Scooby Doo, while the Word Bot scenes might include references to Tron and/or War Games. Right now, though, those are the only POSSIBLE ones I can catch immediately.

Anyway, again, took a while, but well worth the wait and I will certainly be looking forward to more of this.