X - As the Paths Confuse
To everyone’s shock, they made it to the other side of the lake without incident. No wyrd attacked them, be they cat, pegasus, or otherwise. The jungle itself was filled with the sounds of tropical birds and the occasional jaguar call.
Rook let out a harsh growl to grab the attention of Granite, Sparkler, and Lob.
“I know, I know,” Granite said, refusing to look at her—his gaze was planted firmly forward on the temple glistening in the brilliant sun. “We’ll find a way for you… or…”
“That is a lot of gold,” Sparkler observed. “That is a lot of gold.”
“Who makes temples out of gold?!”
“Anyone with enough gold. And it’s probably just a gold coating.”
“That is still a lot of gold.”
Rook let out a gurgle again.
Sparkler turned away from the temple, frowning. “You need water. We need to get into the temple. This is a problem, Rook.”
Rook nodded—registering for the first time that she was thinking of herself as Rook now—and started gesturing frantically for Sparkler to find some kind of way for her to go along.
“I don’t know exactly how we would do that…”
Oh, so I could have been Cozy all this time?
Not right now, Rook thought, I mean, yeah, sure whatever, you win, be Cozy.
It’s been a thousand years! I’m used to Glow already! And you just decide that, ooooooooh, they’re calling me Rook, that sounds GREAT!
Would you be quiet? I’m trying to listen to her.
She’s useless.
We already had this conversation.
Not in general. I agree that she has many qualities worthy of our purpose, she’s just blabbering about nothing right now.
She is not.
“—and, basically, the rivers flowing through here all have some kind of diversion quotient to them…”
“What on Equis are you talking about?” Granite asked.
Sparkler binked. “Uh…”
Lob coughed. “She’s stalling. She just doesn't want to tell Rook we have to leave her here.”
Surprise, surprise, Rook thought, grinding her teeth. Any chance you can get those vocal cords back so I can chew them out?
Not as of now. And it’s better if we can’t speak.
It would be more cathartic…
It most definitely would, and the devastation on their faces would be absolutely delicious, but we have bigger purposes. We cannot answer all questions.
I hate it when you’re right.
The feeling is mutual.
“...Rook? You in there?” Sparkler asked.
Rook splashed Sparkler. With a hiss, she pointed dismissively at the temple, telling them to just go already before disappearing beneath the waves. If she wasn’t going to be able to follow them, she was going to explore this lake she was in.
To her shock, she found a stone passageway built into the lake edge, absolutely waterlogged, but stable.
Convenient.
Yeah. I swear, this entire trip is just convenience marred with coincidence.
Maybe those magic theories aren’t completely bogus...
Rook didn’t respond, instead swimming deeper into the tunnel. It was devoid of any carving or decoration and went on for quite some time. Onward she swam, having no difficulty seeing in the darkness. She’d lived at the bottom of the ocean for centuries; this was nothing.
Eventually, the tunnel turned sharply upward in a perfect corner. Following along, she soon surfaced in a large room made to look like a sphere despite being built out of massive hard-edged bricks. There were massive stores of gold artifacts, precious gems, weapons, armor, and even a few magic artifacts dotted around the treasury.
However, what drew most of her attention wasn’t in any of the treasure piles. It was an orb of silver floating in the center of the room. Numerous rings of the bizarre liquid she had seen in the cat’s third eye orbited the orb. After squinting, she found that the orb wasn’t featureless—rather it looked like an eyeball with a clock instead of an iris. The clock wasn’t ticking, but it did have a purple, jagged crack across it.
It didn’t look at her. Rook wasn’t even sure it could see, it might have just been an inert magic artifact.
The third eyes.
Yes, but what do the third eyes DO?
Something to wyrds, perhaps indirectly. That cat was not standard.
No, really?
Indeed… The running of its fluids was… curious.
Rook rolled her eyes. She poked herself out of the water, intending to start harvesting some treasure and magic artifacts. She was here, why not get started? Maybe she’d even find something that could mess with the floating eye, stop this whole fiasco with the mysterious moving island…
An invisible magic barrier blocked her path.
Oh, come ON! She gave the barrier a death glare and screeched with the hatred of an Ambrosian Savage Weasel.
And you say I’m the violent one.
I swear I will find a way to devour whoever did this and crush them to DEATH an…
Just absorb it, moron.
Oh. Right… Focus…
Rook closed her eyes and tapped into her inert, oft-ignored pegasus magic. Even after all these years at the bottom of the ocean, it was still there, ready to be used. And with all this time, she had gotten at least some use out of it. She tapped her fins to the invisible barrier and let out a sharp breath of water.
With a shimmer and a pop, the barrier vanished, flooding into her body. Success!
The silver eye was looking right at her now.
...I think we tripped the security measures.
FACE THE EYE! REFUSE TO BACK D—
Whatever senseless act of violent power was about to be suggested, it died in the divided brain of the seapony when a monster rose from the gold. With fur as black as night and blank eyes where nostrils should be, it might have been mistaken for one of the cats if it weren’t so massive. It’s third eye occupied most of its forehead, far larger than any other feature on its face. As it neared Rook, drooling blood, she saw its tail.
It was a hand burning a deep, blood red flame.
I like the idea of running better.
Cozy didn’t object as Rook swam back down the tunnel.
The eye shot a beam of silver energy at her.
Ponyfeathers.
~~~
The entrance to the temple was wide open, which was to say it had no doors and likely had never had any doors. Right in the center of the golden steps was a square portal leading directly into the glittering maw that promised both treasure and danger.
They hoped there was more of the former.
Sparkler ran her hair across the smooth gold finish of the temple. “This should have been tarnished long ago. At least a little bit.”
“Almost no sign of damage at all,” Lob agreed.
“Unnatural.”
“Good news for us, it means there’s more gold!” Granite chuckled.
“It means there’s something mysterious and we should be on guard.”
“I’m always on guard,” Granite said, trotting into the temple.
“GRANITE, N—”
Granite shot her a look. “Yes, I see the trap, geez, what do you take me for, a rookie?”
Lob blinked. “...Trap?”
Granite pressed his hoof down on a stone slightly to his left, prompting a wall further in the temple to open up and shoot several dozen arrows at the opposite wall. Granite released his hoof, allowing the trap to close back up. “That trap.”
Sparkler pursed her lips. “You know you could have told me you saw that…”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, to keep me from stepping on it!?”
“You clearly saw it, so I don—”
“‘At’s not ‘e point ye daft loon!” Sparkler forced herself to take a long breath. “The point is that I thought you were going to get yourself killed!”
“Aww, I didn’t know you cared!”
“I swear, I don’t know why you’re in charge of exploration…”
Granite smirked. “There’s a fire trap activated by that brick over there, a pitfall triggered by a tripwire I presume is hidden by magic since I can only see where it attaches, and a tack coated with lethal poison on that wall.”
Sparkler stared at him.
“I make my keep, Sparkler.”
“...Right… Sorry.”
“No harm, no foul. Now, let’s enter this temple!”
They carefully made their way past the traps Granite had pointed out, triggering none of them thanks to his careful adventuring eye. It would not have been wrong to call Granite an idiot, but it would have been wrong to say that was all he was. The Admiral chose her ponies well.
After they passed the initial traps, Granite stopped short and laughed. “Oh, this is a fun one.”
“What?” Sparkler asked.
Carefully, Granite touched a brick ahead of them with his hoof. A few seconds later, the ceiling itself crashed from above and slammed into the hall in front of them with a force powerful enough to crush skulls.
“...Fun…” Sparkler breathed.
“Very fun,” Granite chuckled, pressing the brick a few more times, playing with the smashing hall as if it were some kind of large drum. “Heh.”
Sparkler swatted his hoof. “Let’s just remember where that is and keep moving.”
“Geez, fine…”
They walked forward. After the crusher, there were no more traps—apparently the designers had decided that was enough. Instead, the hall began to transform. Gone was the darkness lit only by Sparkler’s horn, in its place a hall lit by torches alight with a magical red fire. The walls now bore art instead of simple gold, ranging from ponies to dragons to impossible multi-headed creatures that snaked around the frames of other images. Most everything was carved out of precious metal, stone, or gemstones.
“Jackpot…” Granite grinned, peeling some of the precious gems off the wall. “Magic island that’s never been looted…”
“Too good to be true if you ask me,” Sparkler commented.
“I’m still taking them; there aren’t any traps attached.”
They continued to walk along the abandoned hall, finding no sign of habitation whatsoever. It was sparkling clean and perfect, but devoid of life. Who was here to clean such a place?
They eventually came to a large, black curtain blocking their way forward. Carefully, Granite pulled it aside with the tip of his harpoon, looking through to the other side.
The room was massive and perfectly cubical. Ruby dust was on every surface, enhancing the eerie light that came from the blood red torches. Multiple layers of balconies swirled around the cube’s edge, the railing carved from some kind of black marble, providing a place for an audience.
The stage in the center was empty. The audience was not.
Hundreds of wyrd cats sat at the railing, their silver eyes staring right at Granite and his friends. It was almost like there was only one cat looking at them through hundreds of bodies.
“...Run,” Granite whispered.
Lob, Sparkler, and the cats broke into a sprint at the same time. Granite took a second to fire a warning harpoon before joining them in the flight.
What had seemed like a comforting hall of treasure before looked like the run of death now. The monsters on the walls glared at them with intent to kill, their empty gem-less eyes seeking revenge for what had been done to them.
The three ponies didn’t care. They ran as fast as their hooves would carry them, stealing only occasional glances at the cats behind them. Not all of them had followed, merely a dozen, but none of them were under the illusion that they could take a dozen of those monstrous wyrd cats.
One of them was on fire, somehow. Granite didn’t want to figure out what that meant.
It was very fortunate for the ponies that they were ponies: creatures naturally designed for running for extended periods of time at high speeds. The cats had longer legs, for sure, but their mutated claws and soft paws made it difficult to keep up with the ponies.
“Suck it!” Granite called back to them. “You ain’t got nothing on u—”
The fiery one shot a fireball at them. It was a horrible shot, but the message was clear: the cats were still a threat, even back like this.
However, they were nearing the edge of the tunnel. The torches were behind them and they could see a light in the distance.
“Watch out for the traps!” Sparkler called.
“I plan on it,” Granite said.
“What?”
Granite slid to a stop and turned to face the cats.
“Granite what’re ya doing!?”
“This.” Granite pushed his foot down on a particular brick.
Several of the cats stopped short, realizing exactly what he was doing. But it was too late—the ceiling dropped on them like judgement from on high, shattering all their skulls to dust. The eyes that housed their unusual power were squished, spraying the silvery liquid everywhere. The cat with flames dissipated into nothing but ash as its body was pulverized.
Just to be sure, Grantie crushed them three or four more times.
“...Wow.” Sparkler blinked. “...Good work, Granite.”
“I aim to please. Now, we need a new plan for getting in here. Those cats clearly don’t use this entrance, there must be an alternative.”
~~~
The Admiral discovered that it was really easy to follow the pegasus around. Just follow the sound of screaming wyrd cats. It was almost comical how the outlandish wyrd dove from the sky, letting out a call not unlike a falcon before sinking its wings into a poor cat’s third eye.
All the wyrds on this island had that third eye. The Admiral still had no idea what it meant, but she knew it was important. It was clearly some kind of bizarre magic, perhaps related to the island itself…
These thoughts were pushed out of her mind when she saw the Hex tied around a tree, dented in a few places, but otherwise fine. She swooped down from the tree and tapped the door with her hoof.
Wiffle opened the door. “...Admiral? Admiral!”
“Yes, it’s me. Report?”
“Island rose out of ocean, Hex grounded, they went to investigate temple, Rook’s okay, as are all the others.”
“All right…” The Admiral scratched her chin. “Temple?”
“Massive golden stepped pyramid, we think it’s the center of the island.”
“I know where I’m going…” The Admiral frowned. “You’re injured.”
“Cat.”
“Weird things…” The Admiral pushed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, thinking. She wanted armor, but Wiffle’s was far too large for her, and she already had her harpoon gun. She’d have to do this the hard way.
“What are they thinking, running into some random temple…?” The Admiral grumbled.
“A way to get off the island and stop the magic from jamming Sparkler’s senses?”
“...I see. Wiffle, rest up, I’m going to the temple.”
“It’s that direction. ...You’re alone, aren’t you, Admiral?”
“Yes.” The word came with an unspoken command not to ask for details. Wiffle nodded in understanding and sat down, attempting to relax in the confines of the Hex as his superior left.
The Admiral jumped back into the trees and swung in the direction Wiffle had indicated. It was a surprisingly short time later that she saw the lake and the temple, the latter before the former. How beautiful the golden steps were to her.
Now THAT is a big payday. Silver won’t be able to say no to the treasures in there!
Before she could fully begin her journey to the temple, however, she noticed a pink form at the edge of the lake: Rook. She was driving a sharp rock carefully into her forehead, drawing copious amounts of sludge-blood from herself.
What in…?
The Admiral set down upon the ground, trotting up to Rook. Just as she arrived, Rook completed her task. With a powerful screech she stuck the rock into her flesh once more and tore away quickly. There was a burst of dark magic sparks from her fins and an un-equine shriek from her throat as she removed a tiny, silver object from her skull. The Admiral could make out holes in her now-exposed bone where silvery threads had once been.
The small, marble-sized object itself landed on the shore at the Admiral’s hooves.
It was a silver eye, quickly dissolving into nothing more than liquid.
The Admiral stared at the seapony with a massive hole in her head. The wyrd sludge was doing its best to reshape the wound, but for now the seapony was debilitated. Had she not been a wyrd, such a wound would ensure death from blood loss in less than an hour. Even with her nature, Rook was still barely able to stay conscious—she wasn’t even floating in the water, she had latched herself to the shore with a few rocks to ensure she wouldn’t move.
“What…?”
Rook let out a pitiful hiss and laid her head down, breathing water through her gills rapidly. She made no attempt to communicate anything further.
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Ooh, Cozy POV. And indeed, the little hellion is able to work with her wyrd in a way that few other Equestrian ponies could.
And hello, Ahuizotl. The years have not been kind.
Gold doesn't tarnish. Well, it doesn't when dark magic isn't involved. Who knows what that can do to the stuff? Though if it's gold leaf, then yeah, it definitely should've worn off.
As for the traps, Ahuizotl is a guardian spirit. It makes sense that he'd maintain the things. Assuming the silver fluid creates a hivemind, he may be doing it through the cats. Though Daring having an eye complicates matters...
Definitely a good thing that hydras didn't adapt to the oceans. The heads presumably all ate each other once infected with the wyrd.
I do like pegasi doing bird things, though this is a rather unusual example.
And Rook performing some brutal psychic surgery. Nopony puts Cozy in a corner. (Glow doesn't count; they're partners.)
Fascinating stuff all around. Looking forward to more.
The title made think that the fic's a Sunless Sea crossover, but I guess not. Still gonna read it though.
Thats a heck of a pyramid of traps, so I wonder if the gold structure is intact because of the silver eye, which might be an artifact triggered or used by Auitzotl to survive the Flood, or maybe even a cause, given the Rings Of Scorchio?
I love The Edge Chronicles.