• Published 2nd Jul 2020
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Daring Do and the Iron Pyramid - Unwhole Hole



Young Daring Do is dispatched to Southern Equestria to oversee the excavation of an anomalous pyramid.

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Chapter 12: Daughter of the Death Flower

The sun sat far on the horizon, casting strange orange light through the silent dust storms overhead. Even at its oblique angle, the heat beat down upon the desert beyond the range of mountains and spires that surrounded the Pyramid. Little remained out there except the Red Desert, and the endless and treacherous sands.

Parts of it, though, were dotted with the remnants of sunken, old things. Many faded square outlines could bee seen in the sand. One still functioned. In the center of the oasis, the last place for the thestrals to take their water, there stood a perfectly square lake filled with deep, pure water. The substance that formed its walls had grown porous, and water seeping into the desert had allowed for various plants to cling to life, forming their own society around the well. Several anemic palm trees and various sorts of shrubs and grasses stood among tall black stones. A small, verdant area in a land that had otherwise died long before any living pony had existed.

It was at this location that Wun had taken her station. She stood in the shadow of a gently blowing palm tree, waiting, and not thinking about anything in particular at all. The task she was about to engage in was of the sort that did not require thought. Thought, in fact, invariably led to failure for the sake of its distraction. Thought meant hesitation.

As she stared out across the desert, she saw a figure approaching her—and she smiled. The time had come.

The creature slowly approached, moving at a walking speed. Its shield still surrounded its body, the swirling red light casting deep shadows around the equine shape as it moved across the Red Desert. It was barely visible through the heat lines rising from the sand, but Wun felt it before her eyes truly saw it. It seemed to vibrate deeply within the marrow of her horn. It was not a pleasant sensation, nor was it a familiar one. Few creatures were left in the world that still possessed that level of raw power.

Raw power, of course, was exactly that: raw, and consequently largely pointless. Wun’s horn ignited and magic swirled around her, cutting its way through the delicate grasses of the oasis. She cast the protection spells in a lotus configuration, spreading them outward in a way that was perfectly symmetrical but devoid of fractal features. Within them, she constructed her seals and protections, and designed her offensive spells. It was the nature of dueling, something that had been taught to her since the first month she had existed.

The creature seemed to perceive this, but did not stop moving. Instead, its shield collapsed and a rune of its own assembled in the sand around it. It was a horrid angular thing, devoid of clear symmetry. Most disturbingly, though, it was apparently mobile.

“Do you understand my language?” asked Wun. She repeated it in something more ancient, although the creature seemed to react to neither mode of speech. “As a superior being, I am obligated to offer you a chance to surrender. I do not like violence. That is the purview of lesser, hornless beings." She paused. "Especially violence against something as valuable as you are. I would hate to damage you.”

The creature did not stop. Instead, crimson magic arced around it, not defined by any particular spell but a pure discharge. Wun smiled. That spell had revealed and confirmed her advantage. In her mind, victory had already been decided.

The violent surge of uncontrolled magic was directed at Wun. Wun shifted her weight, drawing a piece of her shield spell and redirecting the incoming surge outward, deflecting it into a stone column that promptly vaporized from the blast. She turned, spinning gracefully and casting her own spell, manifesting as a trio of bright green orbs.

Then, in what seemed to be an instant, the creature was inches from her, and Wun only barely managed to dodge a hoof directed at her throat. She did not think and did not hesitate. In a single, elegant motion, she had wrapped her own front leg around the creature’s front, twisting it and throwing it off balance. A swift blow to the gut caused it to stumble. It struck at her, but she twisted and landed another blow to where one of its kidneys was most likely located. As she came behind it, she swept one of the rear legs and threw it to the ground. The force was substantial, and the creature landed hard against the rocky ground.

“You have fought unicorns before,” mused Wun, resuming her stance and composure. “Of the Western sort I surmice. Their duelists usually stand still, do they not?” She smiled as the creature stood. “Earth ponies developed ways, you see. To defeat my kind.”

She twisted in the air, leaping into a kick and landing it against the creature’s front leg, where the elbow joint was the weakest. Except that although the blow landed, it was like kicking concrete. The flesh did not give, not even slightly. Something had changed.

Which meant nothing. Wun smiled, and the three spheres she had projected ignited, firing their beams directly at the creature. It erupted in a plume of green light.

Wun fell backward, flipping out of its grasp and engaging a detection spell. She had anticipated that it would try to be mobile, but she had underestimated its speed. For something so large, it was fast—and there were spells afoot that she did not fully understand. Although she did not have the mental capacity to analyze the theoretical basis for its spells, she could at least know where it was.

It had not moved. As the vapor from Wun’s spells dissipated, she saw that it had cast part of its shield, a solid, transparent piece of red light. It had fully absorbed the impact and seemed to have received no damage or feedback.

It was only because of her years training with earth pony monks that Wun was able to dodge as the sand around her suddenly liquefied, forming into lethal spikes that penetrated through her shield spell, ignoring it completely and coming up from below. Wun dodged them, leaping into the air and severing several with a cutting spell before she landed. Her hooves met grass. She engaged a secondary part of her lower rune, detonating one petal of her lotus. The feedback ripped through her mind, but the explosion landed on target, detonating below the creature.

Then, without even a pause, two arcs of pure, unrefined red magic erupted from its position. Wun twirled, casting a shield system around herself. She deflected the beams, but they arced around her, doubling in strength before returning, only to be deflected again and repeat the process, doubling in strength with every rebound.

Her spell was complex and efficient, and she withstood the impact better than a lesser unicorn might have—but her magic could not withstand the prolonged onslaught. As the dust from her own spell cleared, she saw the creature standing impassive, its red mechanical eyes staring at her.

Wun smiled at it, even as her shield spells were beginning to deplete.

“Who was it, I wonder? Who you met before? A classical unicorn, one of the Westerners? With their mathematics and calculations? Is that why you do not understand?”

The creature did not respond. Wun doubted it could talk.

“I am not them. I am from the East. My cutie mark is a flower, and that is for a reason.”

Wun took a breath and engaged her spell. Immediately, the ground illuminated with the image of her mark, a tacca bloom ,its outlines and tendrils spreading and expanding as it unfurled across the ground, burning through the entirety of the oasis. Her shield spells suddenly began to expand rather than retracting.

Wun began to laugh as power flowed through her—at the expense of all life her magic touched. The grass began to curl and wilt, changing from green to diseased, spotted brown. The palms tilted, then lost their fronds before their trunks rotted away and fell apart, collapsing to dust. The pure, clear water of the oasis changed as well, darkening and bubbling as all life was taken from it and it was left tainted and depleted, toxic to all life that might ever sip from it.

“We have an inerrant connection to the land,” said Wun, her internal wellspring of magical energy overflowing with the life force she had drained. Life force that rightfully belonged to her, the pony who had dared to claim it. “To plants, to living things. By right we have permission to take what truly belongs to us. To take ownership of what is MINE.”

She summoned her full strength, simultaneously destroying every ounce of life the oasis contained and pulling it into herself. As it ought to be—as it all belonged to HER, by the very definition of her being. As did all things.

Wun’s shields ignited with internal force, and the red light rebounding from them shattered, vaporized by her sudden surge in magic. With her entire body radiating with life, Wun cast a new system, surrounding herself with numerous white-hot cutting spells, all of them orbiting her in the form of a great flower.

Her mind cleared and, with only a moment to take a single breath, she sent her force outward and forward. To take what was rightfully hers.

The creature dodged. It was indeed fast, but Wun was faster and controlled more spells. She directed them to change position, and as the creature charged her she used the rest to defend herself, the whirling of her magic slicing through the air.

The creature cast its own spells as it moved, deflecting the blades as they came near but not having the formulations necessary to truly dispel them. When it cast a shield, Wun would simply direct her force on the opposite side with a different unit of her cutting spell.

The creature charged, deflecting several of her spells with surprising force using its own magic. Wun stood firmly, as if she were one of the Western unicorns, only to tilt and flow over its’s back as it pushed past her. As she performed the graceful motion of her dance, a secondary spell activated, blasting the monstrosity with enough force to level an entire battalion of earth ponies. The creature activated a shield, but the dome cracked and splintered under the force and it was knocked back.

It landed on its hooves, off-balance but quickly charging a rebounding spell. In that single instant, Wun saw her chance. A single opening, and a chance to end the fight. It was an unfortunate thing, she supposed, but hesitation was not in her nature. She supposed taxidermy would have to suffice.

She redirected all of her spells, pulling them back into herself. The energy flowed through her like water, the force of life itself, a source of energy meant for limitless exploitation. As quickly as it entered her, Wun was able to redirect it, assembling the force into a single blade.

And with it, she thrust. The creature did not have a chance to dodge or cast a shield. Instead, all of Wun’s force was directed at its unprotected chest.

The creature was thrown back as the magical blade pushed through its flesh—or what Wun took to be flesh. It did not feel like it.

It stepped back, its mechanical eyes looking down that the luminescent construct of green-tinged white magic now shoved through its chest and emerging from its back, just to the left of its iron spine. Wun watched, expecting it to fall dramatically. Except it took too long. Too much time passed, and the creature did not fall.

Instead, the base of her blade construct began to spark with red light, red slowly spreading through the green and blackness replacing its white glow. Wun winced, keeping the blade-spell on target—but the force applied to it was too strong.

The creature tore it out. The resulting wound released several drops of a thick black fluid, like ink or molten bitumen, and then its surface began to knit. In seconds, the wound sealed and vanished. Wun stared aghast, not understanding.

Then its magic tightened. Wun cried out from the feedback surge as her spell snapped and shattered in its grasp. She fell to her knees in the sand, reeling from having the entirety of her contained magic severed in an instant. She had linked too much of herself to the spell, expecting a conclusion. She had stretched herself too far.

The shattered fragments of her magic, corrupted and broken, flowed back toward the creature, toward its head. Wun heard it take a single ragged breath. She realized it was the first she had heard it take.

The sand around the creature ignited, and its body erupted in red light. It lifted itself, tearing its sealing spells free with it. Then, as Wun watched, the spells were reconfigured, rising from a two-dimensional figure to a three-dimensional one. New runes and constructions appeared on its surface, and the ghastly asymmetry of it was enhanced and expanded until the very depths of Wun’s mind could almost perceive some manner of logical, mathematically described origin to it. An origin that was vastly beyond her and unfathomably depraved.

Then the surface collapsed, forming a rotating cube around the creature. A cube inscribed with forms and letters similar to those in the Iron Pyramid—and others reminiscent of the strange things Wun had only witnessed in ancient, forgotten tomes.

The spell-cube shifted, casting another over it, and the two began to move inside each other, seeking mathmatical alignment. It only took a fraction of a second, but Wun felt as though hours were passing. She had begun to reevaluate her position. She had been confident before, when her nature as a pureblood unicorn had left her a supreme advantage. She now understood that her advantage had never existed in the first place. She had been given the option to surrender—and she had refused it.

The cubes suddenly aligned, and the symbols reconfigured. Hundreds, or even thousands, of single bolts of magic erupted from its surface, arcing through the air toward Wun. She watched in awe, for the first time in her life unsure what to do. Never before had she witnessed so much beauty, or been so proud of one of her possessions.

Her body moved before her mind did. She dodged, running swiftly out of the way of the strike. The first of the barrage struck, each spell detonating with the force of a small bomb, sending sand and fragments of dead vegetation flying in every direction. Some of them struck the ground, like a random barrage, but others did not. They changed course, pursuing their target.

Wun ducked and dodged, her svelte body winding through the bursts of magic as quickly as she could—until she could not. The barrage was not random. It had been meant to contain her, directing her toward a point from which she could not escape.

She shifted, turning herself as she leapt, casting a shield sphere around herself. As anticipated, several of the projectiles came from below, aiming for her soft underbelly. Wun felt them strike the shield, and felt as on contact they simply disassembled the construction of her spell, their own nature reacting and adapting in real time. She also understood that their nature was inherrantly deceptive. They were not projectiles, but threads.

They reached her body, ingraining into her—and suddenly, there was pain. Every nerve in her body seemed to fire at once, resulting in horrific agony. A lesser pony would surely have passed out quickly, but Wun had grown accustomed to spells not unlike this one. That, too, had been part of her training, cast by her father until she learned to cast them on herself. To ensure her superiority over all other ponies and to prepare her for her responsibilities as a pureblood scion.

She cast her magic back onto herself, severing some of the attachments and barely managing to parry another exploding projectile—only to be suddenly yanked toward the creature by its connection to her. She could see that it was no longer floating; rather, it had projected a construct below its hooves to support itself. It was standing still, and did not seemed especially amused. As if this was all a terribly mundane task.

Wun could not help but wonder if it was all a ploy.

She cast a shield spell, and it was once again disassembled, although slowly enough that she could retreat through its ashes. She had fully lost her advantage. She was not mage. Her cutie mark had been obtained by her first venture, a project to develop new import routes of rare flowers to Equestria. Her dueling practice had been ceremonial, a remnant passed down from more violent times. What she was fighting now, though, was something entirely different. Something that had not learned magic out of obligation, but had been born for the express purpose of controlling it. A creature born to a violent age—or perhaps one born long before it.

Wun jumped backward, trying to put space between herself and the creature—only to have the sand around her suddenly leap through the burnt and blackened grass, grasping her legs and reaching for her horn. With a cry, she cast a cutting spell, wildly striking at the tendrils and claws, driving them back only for them to form again from the dust.

It was only by luck that she looked up in time to realize she had been tricked. The sand had moved to direct her into a path backed by a vast black stone, sealing off every route of escape. And now the creature was moving, charging toward her at impossible speed. It pulled its hoof back, and Wun saw the luminescent marks of the spell through its thin gray coat, lining every muscle and joint. The reason she had not been able to strike it twice.

The creature struck, its hoof slamming against stone, its iron bones transferring the force of its magically enhanced strength into the rock with deadly accuracy, shattering the entirety of it in a single impact. Despite the blow, though, it did not strike Wun’s flesh; instead, its hoof passed harmlessly through a plume of mossy-green mist.

The mist drifted around the creature, swirling through the empty remnants of what had once been a beautiful oasis. Then it reformed, returning Wun to her normal form. With a cry of pain, she immediately dropped to her knees, retching out copious quantities of a silvery opaque substance that looked curiously similar to mercury.

It had been her last resort, but no mortal had ever been able to perform the spell adequately. She had managed to pull her body back from the brink of disincorporation, but her organs had materialized in the wrong places. She was sure that the internal damage was horrific.

The creature’s head slowly turned, its eyes focusing on her. It stared for a moment, as if expecting something from her. Perhaps to bow, or to surrender.

“I cannot,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You cannot understand me, but I cannot. What would my sister think of me?”

The creature did not understand, but started walking toward her, casting a simple cutting spell. A spell identical to Wun’s, but exponentially greater in strength and organization. As if to insult her.

The spell dissipated, though, as it suddenly cast a shield spell. Wun saw it move before she heard the sound of the explosion, and saw the creature slide back on its hooves across the sand as it caught a solid ball of iron in its magic, absorbing the force of a cannon shot.

She looked up and saw her skiff cresting the rocky dunes, its rudder point deep in the sand and its structure held aloft by what seemed like hundreds of griffons lashed to the deck.

“Avast, you fat COCKS!” screamed the one griffon not tied to the ship and out of breath. “That means pull harder! HARDER, what am I paying you for, you penguins? You EMUS! The next round'll surely stove her in! You, horse, swab faster! Swab like the WIND!”

In the front of the ship, Caballeron, sweating and terrified, was attempting to swab and reload the forward gun.

“Not like that!” screamed Gruff. “You’ll blow your fingers clean off!”

“I’m a pony! I do not have fingers!”

“Then what are you even doing!? Get out of my way!”

Gruff shoved him out of the way and nearly overboard, loading the cannon himself. Two griffons on the axial cranks redirected it, and Gruff took the seat, pressing his blind eye against the crosshairs, even as red magic surrounded the cannon and twisted it closed as if it were made of wet paper.

He fired, and the entirety of it exploded, taking out the front of the skiff. Griffons squawked as they were pulled down.

Wun groaned. It was not the rescue she was expecting.

The creature seemed to largely ignore the griffons, instead flattening the cannonball to a thin sheet of iron foil, and then twisting it into a red-hot spike. A spike that Wun supposed was meant to give her the poke.

It took another step before suddenly being knocked back by a profound blast of red light. The surge pierced its shoulder, leaving only a dark hole that quickly began to regenerate. Wun stared, dumbfounded, sure that what she had seen was some kind of magic—but not understanding how.

Through the dust behind the falling skiff, their distraction, the forces of the thestrals suddenly appeared. Some flew in the air, clad in strange black armor, but others rode on camel spiders twice the size of a pony, two riders to a mount. The rear riders seemed to be the ones armed with whatever kind of device had produced the laser.

The creature seemed to recognize this, and it once again cast a spell. The sand below it suddenly shifted, raising a platform. From this sprung a set of massive, tube-like legs, their surfaces flexing as the grains of sand were bound into stone and into a great machine. Then, with impossible speed and the creature sitting atop its creation, the device made of sand and magic began to sprint across the desert, escaping at impossible speed.

Wun felt a familiar presence land beside her.

“Wun! Are you--”

“I am fine,” snapped Wun. She stood up, shaking badly, and Daring Do stabilized her. “We cannot allow it to escape!”

“But it’s too fast! The spiders are quick, but they don’t go--”

“No, they will not. But you can.”

Daring Do gasped, realizing that Wun was right. She felt an armor-plated hoof on her shoulder.

“I will attend as well,” said Honor, spreading his armor-clad wings. “I am our strongest flier, but we must hurry!”

“But you’re hurt! Wun--”

“I will find a way to catch up. It cannot reach the city. Go!”

Daring looked into her sister’s eyes. She had never seen Wun so excited. It terrified her.

“She is not wrong,” said Honor. “Depart or stay.”

He took to the air, and Daring spread her wings, taking flight and attaining altitude quickly. She looked back at her sister. Something still did not feel right, but she supposed she would find out what exactly was wrong soon enough.

Author's Note:

A note on wizard duels:

As one can probably tell, magical duels are one of my favorite things to write. Although it is alluded to in this chapter, I envision that there are multiple schools of unicorn dueling. I imagine that the Classic (Western) unicorns largely stand still, performing complicated spells to reinforce their position while occasionally shouting witty banter or using flashy spells to distract their opponent from his or her own spells (Twilight Luciferian in "Penumbra Heartbreak" does this). Eastern unicorns, meanwhile, are much more mobile and actively dodge, creating their spells organically in accordance with their motion and position rather than with brute-force mathematics (Scarlet Mist in "Penumbra" as an example, and Penumbra by extension). A Classic unicorn would consider motion during combat at best uncouth and at worse cheating. Wun, in this case, relies on motion (among other things) heavily due to her inherent weakness at magic.

A note on peculiar flowers of southeast Asia:

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Wun's cutie mark is a tacca flower with the "%" sign in it. Tacca is a species of yam native to southern Asia, commonly called the batflower. The large, black flowers are rare and beutiful, but also alien in appearance and an omen of death.