The Trials of Shmarity: an Ogres and Oubliettes Story

by TheMessenger

37. The Lost Sanctum

37. The Lost Sanctum

“Great, another one,” grumbled Steel. He folded his arms across his chest. “So what‘s this one say?”

Their canine translator crouched down and squinted at the message. “She who controls the, uh. Hmm. Oh, tides! She who controls the tides of battle, grants victory over death. Her sanctum, belongs to we who, follow her path.”

Steel Nerves groaned. “Okay, what’s that supposed to even mean? Why is everything here so dang cryptic?”

“Here is crypt, should be cryptic,” Athkatla said with a quiet chortle, and as banal as the joke was, it still caught Rarity off guard and caused her lips to curl into a small smile.

“I don’t get it. What’s so funny?”

“It is nothing for you to worry about,” Biala dryly said, clearly not appreciating the attempt at humor. “Not when we have more important matters to concern ourselves with.” He gestured to the writing on the ground. “You are the only creature here who can comprehend Celestial. How do you interpret it?” he inquired of Athkatla. “Or are we so sure that these words have any meaning behind them at all? Could it simply be an exaltation to the goddess the ancients who made this temple once worshipped?”

Athkatla hummed to herself as she gave the hall another once-over, splitting her focus mostly between the mystifying missive before them and the confusing collage of images that was the ground. “Not meaningless,” she said after some thought. “Think message is clue, says how to cross, says where safe to go.”

“You mean, it’s a riddle, and the answer will tell us which of the tiles are safe to walk on?”

Athkatla Bones confirmed Rarity’s presented theory with a nod. “Yes. Figure out riddle, figure out way to cross room safely.”

“Oh boy, riddles. That’s, uh.” Steel groaned and let out a long, deep sigh. “That’s great. So, how did it go again?”

“She who controls, the tides of battle, grants victory over death. Her sanctum belongs, to we who follow her path,” Athkatla repeated slowly and in chunks in order to make it easier for everyone else to follow.

“Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah, I see,” said Steel, his eyes closed as he nodded and rubbed the front of his neck. “Yep, I’ve got nothing.” The minotaur shrugged. “Yeah, can’t say I’m much for puzzles and stuff, so I’ll just let you all figure this one out. You can probably handle it, no problem.“ A few seconds passed in thoughtful silence, then, “So, what’ve got so far?”

“Perhaps if you would give us a little peace and quiet to think, we might have an adequate answer to give you,” Biala snapped through gritted teeth. He released an irritated sigh. “The first part of the riddle, it describes of an individual who controls a battlefield. Perhaps it speaks a great warrior.” He walked over to the edge of the tiled floor and pointed to the picture of a curved sword similar to the one on his side. “And the path of a warrior lies within her weapons.”

“So we just step on all the spots with weapons on them? Easy enough.” Steel Nerved went to step down on the nearest image of a spear, but to everyone else’s surprise, Athkatla smacked his leg away, causing him to stumble back.

“Ow! Hey, what was that for?”

The diamond dog huffed as she brought out her collapsible rod and extended it to its full length. “Test first,” she said and pressed the pole down on the square Steel had been aiming for. The tile dropped a couple of inches with a click, and suddenly the entire space between them and the hall’s other end was filled with pillars of white hot flames. Rarity instinctively jumped back, but even with the extra space she had created, she could still feel the extreme scorching heat of the inferno in front of her.

The flames eventually died down and vanished, leaving the floor and its tiles completely untouched. The same could not be said about Biala Diyn’s now singed and uneven beard or the rod in Athkatla’s paws that had been melted to a mere fraction of its original length. Athkatla dropped what was left of the rod and shot Steel a smug little sideways glance as warped metal clacked against the ground. Steel in turn turned to glare accusingly at Biala.

“It would appear that my answer is not the correct one,” the stallion said calmly despite his still smoking beard. He waved away the smoke and tried to straighten it out.

“Uh, you think? You almost got me barbecued!” Steel exclaimed.

“A fate that obviously would not have been my intention,” Biala said, glaring back at the minotaur. “I have admitted my mistake, that is already more than you would have done.”

“Enough,” Athkatla growled, the low rumble from the back of her throat cutting Steel’s tirade off before it could initiate. “Trying to think here, so bicker somewhere else.”

The two males of the group continued to glare and scowl at each other, but at least they did so quietly. It was certainly easier to think now that there was silence once more, but Rarity still struggled to make sense of the riddle. She couldn’t find anything blatantly wrong with Biala’s logic, but his solution clearly wasn’t what they were looking for. But if the path of warrior wasn’t in her weapons, what was it then? None of the other pictures fit, so maybe the she in the message was not a warrior like Biala had suggested. But then, who or what was being referred to?

In her frustration, Rarity nearly gasped out. If only Twilight was here, she would have come up with the right answer before the rest of them even finished reading. Or Pinkie Pie, with her love for jokes, endless creativity, and her out-of-the-box thinking. Rarity would have even settled for Rainbow Dash on the possibility that the pegasus had experienced something similar in one of those hackneyed adventure books she loved reading so much.

“She who controls, the tides of battle, grants victory over death,” Rarity muttered to herself. Maybe she just had to hear the riddle a few more times to get its meaning to finally sink in. “She who controls, tides of battle, victory over death. She, controls, tides, battle, victory, death. She, controls, tides, battle—“

The front paw of Athkatla Bones suddenly shot up in the air, and the wide-eyed stare she was giving Rarity startled her even more. “Repeat,” she ordered, pointing at Rarity.

“I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to bother you, I was just—“

“You! Repeat! Riddle Now!”

Rarity swallowed. “She who controls the tides of battle grants victory over—“

“Slower!”

“She. Who. Controls. The. Tides—“

“She controls tides!” Athkatla ran over to the tiled and scanned the available images. Her face lit up, and out came a happy howl as she found what she was searching for. She gestured wildly until everyone else gathered around her and stared at the crescent moon she was pointing them to.

“The moon?” Steel’s confusion was clearly expressed on his face. “Um, alright, what about it?”

“The moon is what controls the tides of the oceans!” Rarity exclaimed, her eyes growing wide with understanding and voice bubbly with same excitement that Athkatla had shown. It was one of those little facts, the kind school teachers would throw out to garner the interest of their impressionable students but never bothering to elaborate on the how. Who‘d have thought that such knowledge would be so instrumental outside a game of trivia?

“Then you believe the answer to be the moon?” Biala’s doubtful frown was like a splash of cold water. “Are you certain? I will admit, I do not have the knowledge to dispute your calm of the moon’s influence over the waters, but I find it odd that the riddle would mention of battles if it were simply speaking of an ocean’s movement.”

“Is riddle, supposed to be misleading.”

The response from Athkatla didn’t appear alleviate Biala’s skepticism all that much, and with all that was at stake, Rarity was now starting to feel less sure herself. If they were wrong, well, she didn’t think having a lifeline tied around her would do much good against all that fire. “You wouldn’t happen to have another way to test our theory, would you?” she asked Athkatla.

Athkatla rummaged through the many pockets of her jacket before producing, with a long reluctant sigh, one of the silver plates they had recently acquired. She tested its weight in her paw, then after giving the silver one last sad glance, she tossed the plate toward the tiles. Her aim was impeccable, and the silver circle landed dead center on the square with a thud, covering the most of the image of the waxing crescent moon. The group watched with held breaths, but the tile stayed still, and the room remained free of fire. Athkatla threw out another silver plate, this time at a tile with a full moon on it, and it also did not trigger the trap.

Those results were enough to satisfy Athkatla at least, and she quickly set forth to recollect the thrown silver. When Athkatla got to the end alive and completely unburned, she waved the others over. Rarity was next, moving slowly and cautiously to make sure that each step fell on the right tiles, and when she had gotten halfway through the hall, she could hear the taps of Biala and Steel Nerves’ heavier hooves trailing behind her. Every creature eventually made it across, though there was one heart stopping instance where Steel had nearly lost his balance and slipped, and after taking a moment to catch their breath and calm down, they filed into the room that was waiting for them at the end.

What they found inside was a line of seven stone basins the size of standard mixing bowls. Each one sat upon a thin marble pedestal, giving them the slight appearance of a birdbath. Behind those stone bowls was a pair of massive floral lavender curtain that covered the entire back wall while the surrounding side walls were lined with so many stacks of sealed jars and pots made out of dull and tinted crystal. At the base of the basins and their pedestals there was one last message, the gold of its foreign letters and symbols gleaming in light of the torches shining from their respective corners.

Athkatla didn’t wait to be prompted. She immediately strolled up to the message and started to read. “Ahead lies the holy of holies. Only those who have cleansed their hands appropriately may pass.”

“Hands?” Rarity repeated.

Athkatla wiggled her own front paws. “Paws, hooves, claws. Not perfect translation. Just mean end of forelimb.”

“So, is that another riddle or something?” Steel Nerves called over from his side of the room. He had picked up one of the glass containers and was shaking it like a foal would with their Hearth’s Warming gift as a way of figuring out what was hidden inside.

“Put that down before you break it,” commanded Biala, but Rarity noted that his tone was more exasperated than authoritative. The day and all it’s incidents must have left him drained. Rarity was honestly feeling pretty exhausted herself, a state made worse by the discouragement that came from the lack of noticeable progress. All this time and effort and Rarity hadn’t a hint to where the magic she needed to save Spike and Discord could be, if it even existed. She shook those heavy thoughts from her head. No, it had to be here, she just needed to persist.

“Aw, quit your worrying,” Steel Nerves said, rolling his eyes. As if to prove the stallion wrong, he shook the jar even harder. “I’ve got this, no—“

The jar slipped out of his hand and shattered against the floor. Shards of crystal slid across the floor as the contents stored inside were violently released, filling the air around Steel with ash and sending him into a fit of coughs.

Biala shook his head and sighed. He watched Steel try to forcefully expel the ash out of his lungs for a few seconds with an eyebrow cocked before turning to Athkatla and to the words written on the floor. “The second part of the message, it seems to imply that there is more of the temple to see, that there is a way to continue on, but I see no further path to take.” He motioned to the three solid walls around them. “This room is a complete dead end.”

“Maybe there a secret door,” Athkatla proposed. “Or way forward behind big curtains.”

Rarity followed the diamond dog’s gesture toward the drapes. They were of a thick material that was impossible to see through, and they were too tightly drawn to peek past. A passageway being behind all that purple cloth was definitely a possibility, but from her current position, Rarity had no way of telling, and after seeing what the last area had prepared, she was hesitant in approaching the curtains for a closer examination.

Perhaps, just like the last area, the means to proceed was hidden within the provided message. How had it gone again? Only those who have cleansed their hands appropriately may pass, it had said, and as she considered those words, Rarity’s gaze skimmed over the seven bowls of stone and paused. It had just been a fleeting thought at first, just a passing observation, but the more Rarity mulled over the thought and stared at the bowls, the more they reminded her of the one left in her room each morning full of warm water and with fresh washcloths and soap.

Athkatla may have come to the same conclusion as Rarity did as she too walked over to the bowls and checked their interiors. Despite the sweltering desert above and all the dust that had accumulated over the centuries around them, each and every one of them was topped with the clearest water Rarity had ever seen, the type of quality one might find being served at the most posh of Canterlot eateries. The two shared a look.

“Could it be that they want us to—“

“—wash paws,” Athkatla finished.

“Wait, that’s it?” Steel Nerves exclaimed. “We just have to wash our hands first? I mean, mine could use a wash.” He raised his front appendages that were still coated in gray ash. “But I don’t know. That’s seems awfully straightforward, especially after that whole thing about the moon and tides and stuff.”

“It may simply be instructions or a reminder for a particular ritual that must be done prior to entering this holy of holies.” Biala joined Rarity and Athkatla in examining the basins and their contents. “Did either of you see anything peculiar about these bowls?” he asked.

“Besides them having such oddly clean water?” Rarity shook her head. “No, I can’t really say that I did.” She turned to Athkatla. “Did you happen to notice anything?”

The adventuring archeologist didn’t answer right away. Instead, she drew a dagger and stuck its tip into the water, breaking its surface. After swirling it around for a bit, creating little ripples, and lowering it until half of the blade was submerged, Athkatla slowly pulled the dagger out, and once she finished examining it, she passed it on to Biala who then gave it Rarity.

“I don’t get it,” said Steel a few moments into his turn with the weapon. “Why does everyone look so surprised? Nothing seems off to me.”

“It is completely dry.”

Biala’s terse explanation caused Steel’s eyes to go wide. He stared at the blade and gingerly brought his finger along its flat side. “It’s not wet!” he proclaimed. “I mean, like at all. But, but I saw you put it in the water, and, but, how?” He returned the dagger to its owner. “You didn’t, dry it off or anything before giving to me, did you?”

“No. Water just very strange.” Athkatla took out a small sack, and from it she dumped a good amount of colorfully dyed sand into the water. The group huddled around the bowl and watched as the all of sand dissipated to its last grain without any of it reaching the bowl’s bottom. A couple of lead marbles soon followed, and they too eventually vanished from view after a few seconds of sinking.

“Is it, dangerous?” Rarity asked. It seemed pretty obvious that the bowls here were part of the cleansing procedure mention in the message, but as confident as she was in that assessment, Rarity wasn’t fully ready to stick her hooves in this strange mystery water.

Athkatla shrugged. “Knife fine, not damaged. Not acid. Maybe safe.”

“Well, guess there’s only one way to be sure.” Steel clasped his hands and rubbed his palms together. “So the riddle or message or whatever it was, it said we just have to wash up to keep going, right? Easy enough.” He walked over to one of the less crowded bowls and raised his hands over it. He stopped short of lowering them into the bowl, and Rarity saw that he had on an apprehensive look, his grin wavering and eyes darting to the rest of the group as his hands shook. “So, uh, maybe we should, I don’t know, do this together? You know, as a group? I mean, we’ve got all of these here.” Steel waved to the other basins. “No reason to, uh, wait. Might as well get it all done at once, save some time, am I right?”

Everyone else stared back at Steel with varying expressions of amusement, but when it became clear that he was not going to proceed by himself, Athkatla sighed and broke from Rarity and Biala to a free basin. Rarity let out her own sigh. “If this is what it takes,” she muttered as she positioned her hooves over the next bowl of incredibly pristine water.

“Very well then. On my count,” Biala said with his own hooves out and above his own primitive sink. “Three. Two. One. Now!”

Paws, hands, and hooves were dunked into the water at Biala Diyn’s command. The liquid, Rarity noted as she immersed her hooves in it, was at a comfortably cool temperature. She might have even thought it pleasant and refreshing if it weren’t for her anxiety over the possible terrible effects the liquid was having on her. Granted, it didn’t feel any different from your typical tap or spring water. There were no additional textures, no sliminess or stickiness or any feeling of congealment, no sensations of pain or burning. If it had been based on touch alone, Rarity would have suspected nothing abnormal about it.

Of course, any sense of normalcy disappeared when Rarity pulled out her hooves and discovered that they had turned light blue. Yells of shock drew her eyes to the others, and she saw that something similar had happened to Athkatla and Steel Nerves, though theirs were different degrees of red instead of blue. Only the color of Biala’s hooves were unchanged.

“What’s going on here? What is this?” Steel griped as he scratched at his wrists and palms and groaned. “Grr, it’s not coming off.”

Athkatla looked down at her own paws and sniffed. “Not dye,” she said. She then walked to Rarity and lifted up her hoof, and when Athkatla had finished examine it, she went over to Biala and grabbed his foreleg as well.

“How come hers are blue? And why didn’t his change at all?” Steel demanded.

Biala snatched his hoof away, leaving the diamond dog to hum thoughtfully to herself. She turned to the basin Biala had used, the one in the very middle of the line, and stuck her front paws into it. When she had pulled them out, the red color was gone, and they had returned to their original appearance.

“Maybe, different bowls, different colors?” Athkatla said, looking back at Rarity’s blue forelegs.

“Do you suppose that what the message meant about having to be cleansed appropriately?” Rarity asked. “That we need to use the right water?”

Biala stroked his still uneven and disheveled beard. “I see. And using any of the other waters would leave you stained and thus unable to continue forward. So this was indeed a puzzle.”

“Then, all we have to do is use that one, and we’ll be clean. Is that it?” Steel moved past the others and dipped his hands into the bowl they had all gathered around, and like with Athkatla, they were back to normal when he had removed them from the water. “Huh. Pretty easy puzzle. I could’ve figured it out myself.”

“Hm, yes. Easy,” Rarity heard Athkatla mumble as she walked by to rid her own hooves of their blue discoloring.

“Is something the matter?” she asked, noting the uncertainty in Miss Bones’s voice. Athkatla opened her mouth to speak, but after a short second of silence, she shook her head.

“Is nothing. Just overthinking. Hurry and clean hooves.”

Rarity did exactly that, and once she had finished and stepped away from the wash basin, the waiting commenced. The seconds came and went, slowly paving the way to the eventual passing minutes, and still nothing happened. As the end of the fifth minute drew near, Steel tossed his horned head back and groaned.

“Now what?”

“Check curtains,” Athkatla instructed. “Maybe something behind.”

Biala cautiously stepped over the message in gold and crossed the line of raised stone. Seeing that the room had done nothing to dissuade or punish him, he continued to the purple curtains and grabbed the fabric at the point where the two separate parts met. Every creature watched as Biala tugged and pulled, but the curtains refused to separate, as if they were glued directly to the wall. Steel Nerves snorted after letting Biala toil ineffectually for a bit and went to the struggling stallion’s side.

“Move over,” he said, punching his fists into his palms and popping the joints in his knuckles. “Let me show you how it’s done.” He brushed Biala aside and took hold of the drapes. Those massive muscles in his arms swelled and tightened as he roared and tried to wrench apart the curtains. Tried to, but as the seconds passed and his might yell tapered into a weakened moan, his arms glistering with sweat, everyone could see that the curtains failed to budge even an inch.

“Perhaps we should—“ Rarity began, but Steel interrupted her.

“No, I’ve almost got it,” he insisted through a clenched jaw. “Just, sit tight. Almost got it. I just need another—“

”Solnsih!”

One by one, the torches went out, darkening the area. Steel was suddenly thrown back as the sudden choir of voices chimed in unison throughout the room. “Ugh, what was that?” Steel groaned over the reverberations while massaging his sore posterior.

“Something wrong. Had feeling, too—“ Athkatla gasped and pointed. “Look!”

The rest of them turned and watched as ash trickled up out of the crystal containers and slowly formed into full sized silhouettes of equines. Their dark faceless heads jerked towards the intruders, and one raised a shadowy hoof and pointed it at them. The whole room seemed shake as splits began to formed in the side walls and floor. From the newly created fissures and cracks crawled out nearly a dozen equine bodies all stripped of their fur, skin, and flesh and armed with rusty swords, daggers, and spears. A low hiss came from the skeletal guard as the first wave began their advance, their weapons out and directed at Rarity and her companions.

Biala Diyn brandished his own blade and stepped forward. “Solving this puzzle will have to wait. We must deal with this threat first.”

“Heh. Fine by me.” Steel readied his club, gripping the great bludgeon in both hands. “I was getting sick of all that thinking anyways.”

A sharp snap caused Rarity to fumble her own weapon, and she nearly dropped it in surprise as Athkatla unfurled her whip and cracked it against the ground. The diamond dog regarded the approaching skeletons with a grim, calculative look up, and a low, feral growl rumbled out of her mouth as she bared her teeth. Rarity quickly fixed her grasp on her dagger, keeping the obsidian tip steady as the first of the skeletons lunged forward.

Biala met his adversary first, knocking aside the thrusted spearhead with his curved blade before stepping up and swinging it down the exposed sternum. It wasn’t a clean cut, and the bone gave a respectable resistance, but the strike staggered the osseous opposition, leaving the construct open to Athkatla’s whip. Her lash of leather wrapped around a hind leg, and with a might pull, she tore the limb off and away. The lopsided skeleton stumbled back before collapsing, but there was no time to relish in the victory as already the fallen foe’s comrades were stepping over the heap of unmoving bones, the yellow glint in their sockets fixated upon those still among the living.

Battle bellows resounded from the other side of the room as Steel swung his club with abandon. Left and right the massive stick went, sending any skeleton in its path soaring into the air and scattering them into pieces across the floor. The minotaur finally paused to raise the club over his head before bringing it down with a great yell. The blow pulverized its intended target and showered its surrounding allies with shards and bits of broken bone. He let out a sneering laugh as he immediately pulled the club up into an uppercut strike that smacked the skull of the next skeleton clean off, shattering it against the wall.

“Ha ha! Hey, you like that, you bony freaks? Come on, I’ve got plenty for all of, whoa!”

The headless enemy pounced and grabbed onto Steel’s arm, forcing him to lower his weapon. His smirk turned into an enraged snarl as he tried to peel off the undead nuisance with his free hand. “Get off me, you lousy—“

Steel Nerves’s eyes widened with panic as he watched the next skeleton in line drive the bottom half of a longsword into his face. Frantically, he held up a hand in a desperate, futile attempt to block the attack, but it did not matter. Rarity reached her mark first, and she jammed Elder Woods’s dagger into the empty socket of Steel’s assailant. The silver runes running down the black blade seemed to shine as Rarity pushed on, plunging the dagger down until it was hilt deep into the skull. Then, as the light glaring out of the socket flickered and died, with the mightiest shout she could muster, Rarity ripped the blade free. The skull started to crumble apart, and she shoved the rest of the bony body away.

“Nice one!” Steel cheered. He lifted his arm and slammed it against the floor, turning the skeleton grappled to it into a broken mess and freeing him to go back to swinging away wildly. The battle raged on as skeletons continued to fall to blade, whip, and club, but for every one they had slain, another seemed to take its place. Their strikes grew sluggish as they tired, becoming easier to avoid or withstand. So far the worst any of them had suffered were a few shallow cuts and small bruises, mostly on Steel, though everyone had gotten their share of licks, including Rarity who took a passing glance from a dulled lance and now sported an ugly red mark on her left shoulder, but that number of minor injuries was gradually growing, and it was only a matter of time before something more severe would be inflicted.

Morale surged when it appeared as though the endless waves of enemy combatants were finally starting to run dry, but just as they started to catch their breath, the silhouettes that first appeared stirred and raised their black hooves. Right in front of their horror filled eyes, the defeated bones began to reassemble and stand, the fractures mended and cracks sealed by ash flowing out of the shadowy figures.

“Focus on the specters in the back!” Biala shouted, but already a wall of skeletons had formed in their way. While Steel charged head first in an attempt to carve open a path, vines suddenly sprouted from the cracks in the ground, and at Biala’s direction they reached for the shadows. The ash dispersed as the shining vines swept through the bodies, like a tail swatting away flies, and after finding nothing to cling to, the vines swiftly vanished.

A flask crashed into the wall and exploded, raining glass and colorful embers down upon the shadows. One ashy swarm ignited, and its equine shape was lost as it writhed and shook until those orange and green flames went out, taking with them a good chunk of the figure’s mass. More flasks of fire followed from Athkatla while Rarity, Biala, and Steel did their best to fend off the hordes. Progress was visible as one of the shadows continued to shrink until its form could no long be maintained, but it had just been one to many still remaining, and the relentless skeletal onslaught showed little sign of slowing.

Rarity’s weapon slipped out of her grasp and she let out a cry as a rust encrusted blade found its way into her foreleg and left a huge gash right above her knee. She stumbled back, trying to make some distance between herself and her attacker, and as the skeleton went for another swing, Biala pulled her out of the sword’s path.

“Stay behind me,” he instructed before moving up to engage his new opponent. Rarity tried to take a step after him but winced from the pain in her leg. She still had the other dagger that she had bought from the Cowdim-La market, but with her wound Rarity wasn’t sure how much good she’d be as a fighter. She looked to Athkatla to see if she could assist her in any way or capacity when her gaze stopped at the line of stone bowls. Failing the puzzle was what got them all in this mess. Maybe, if she could determine where they went wrong and figure out how to go about this correctly, the assault would end.

Rarity quickly reviewed the facts. Seven bowls, seven waters. The one she used had turned her hooves blue while those that Steel and Athkatla dipped in resulted in reds. The center bowl, the one Biala had chosen, only seemed to remove any colorings caused by the other basins, but washing in that one hadn’t worked. Then, were they supposed to discolor their appendages? Is that the message really meant about being cleansed appropriately, that they had to be the appropriate color? Rarity ran over to the bowl on the right end and threw her hooves inside. They were a dark blue when she withdrew them, much darker than the color her hoof had been earlier, but was this the right color? She searched the room, hoping to find a hint of sorts somewhere, but the chaos of battle made it impossible for her to scan the walls for markings or pictures. All she had to work with were the bowls that seemed to turn her red or blue and the purple curtains that refused to open.

Wait. Purple, curtains?

Rarity looked down at her hooves then glanced back up to the curtains attached to the wall ahead. She hurried to the opposite end of the row, ignoring her wound as inspiration spurred her on, and practically dove into the basin furthest on the left. She took out her hooves, and lo and behold, they were no longer blue but instead a deep dark violet. Rarity looked back to the drapes, her jaw dropping as she shook in her excitement.

“I think I’ve solved it! I know what to do,” she declared with a bit of pride and a whole lot of relief.

“That’s, ngh, great,” Steel managed to say as he struggled to push back his current attacker. “Real happy for you here.”

“Be quick about it then,” Biala snapped, being far more direct with his impatience. “We cannot hold them off for much longer.”

Rarity gave a short nod that she wasn’t sure Biala or anyone else would notice before returning to wall covered in lavender. The purple currently on her hooves was too dark, and she hastily washed it off in the center basin. She tried again with a different red and a different blue. Iris this time, still too dark. Next was lilac, then fuchsia blue. Again and again Rarity wetted her hooves, adding and mixing shades of red and then blue then red again until slowly the color slowly started to match that of the curtains.

“Out of fire!” Athkatla suddenly shouted, going back to her whip. Another two of the ash equines had been vanquished, but the figures alone still outnumbered them, never mind the bony guardians they kept bringing back. She allowed herself a short glance at Rarity, and in that short second, Athkatla noticed the color of Rarity’s hooves, compared them to the veil in the back, and made the connection as her eyes doubled in size. “Hurry!”

The cue had been unnecessary as Rarity was already racing as fast as her injury would allow toward the back of the room, her teeth clenched hard as she ignored the pain in her leg and reached out for the curtains. Lavender hooves caught hold of lavender cloth, and after seeing both Biala and Steel struggle so profusely, she expect to meet some resistance. Instead, Rarity almost tripped and fell forward onto her face due to all the excessive force she put into flinging the drapery out of her way, and she braced for impact with the wall ahead of her. That crash never came, and when Rarity opened her eyes, she discovered to her surprise that she had staggered into a completely new room.

This new area was a fairly modest one in size, only about maybe a fourth of the room with the bowls, but it was unquestionably the most extravagant part of the temple Rarity had visited as of yet. The walls, the ceiling above, even the floor at Rarity’s feet were of a sleek black material, tourmaline if Rarity had to guess based on the mineral’s luster, and embedded inside the dark, shiny surfaces were stars of sparkling platinum. Within the wall straight across from Rarity, amidst all the silver specks, was a pair of giant eyes made out of the same precious metal as the surrounding stars. The eyes stared back at Rarity, glaring down as it looked over a throne of gold and a rainbow of gems that was in the room’s center.

The throne was not empty. Seated in that decorative chair was the emaciated form of a mare. Golden shackles strapped to the mare’s ankles, shoulders, and neck held her up in place, but being forced in such an upright position had caused the bandages around her limbs to loosen over time, revealing the shriveled, hairless skin underneath. She wore a set of clean silk robes over her body that were same color as the curtains Rarity had passed through and were currently fluttering on the wall behind her. Like the mummies they had seen earlier, the lifeless equine wore an incredibly lifelike mask over her face though hers was made of that rare platinum instead of gold.

The scene was as regal as it was macabre, and despite the atmosphere of calm quietness the room seemed to produce, like looking up into the night sky on a cool summer evening, the body in the center left Rarity with a feeling of unease and uncertainty. She was alone with the corpse with her companions nowhere in sight, and she couldn’t hear the sounds of combat anymore. Should she wait to see if Biala, Steel, and Athkatla could find their way to her, or would it be a better idea for Rarity to try and return to the group? Before she could finishing deliberating, a powerful voice rang out.

“Don fawh msiht yresol?”

The voice was that of a mare’s, matriarchal and authoritative without sounding aged. It was also demanding an answer that Rarity, not being able to comprehend the question, did not know how to give. “I-I’m sorry,” she said, looking around for the source of the disembodied voice. “I don’t understand you.”

Rarity received a loud sigh in response, and she had to shield her eyes as the throne and the mare upon it suddenly began to glow with an overwhelming brightness. The light soon abated, and when Rarity put down her hooves, she found the somewhat translucent form of a alicorn mare towering over her. Her dark blue wings were extended to the fullness of their span, their tips almost brushing the walls, and that spiraling horn coming out of her head was a good four to five times the length of a typical unicorn’s. Beneath what could best be described as a cross between a sovereign’s crown and a warrior’s open-faced helmet, the alicorn’s mane, a moderate sapphire outlined by bluish gray, appeared to wave and flow by some undetectable breeze as the motes of light inside it sparkled.

Polished plate armor covered her chest, back, and barrel, and the eyes of cyan looking down on Rarity shared the same structure as the set on the wall. The rest of the alicorn’s stern face, which had not even a single line or wrinkle or any other signs of aging despite the several lifetimes of wisdom in her eyes, was identical to the mask the mummy on the throne was wearing, but as she stared up in awe, Rarity slowly realized that the mask wasn’t the only place she recognized those features from.

“Princess Luna?”

“I am Selune. There are those who call me the Moonmaiden, to others I am Their Lady of Silver,” the figure spoke. The words in their original, foreign tongue could be heard like an echo under the translated version that Rarity could actually follow. “It has been some centuries since any creature had attempted communing with me through this channel. Tell me, mortal mare, who are you and what brings you to this temple, to the final resting place of my dear granddaughter and servant Valmeyjar?”

Rarity swallowed. “M-my name is R-er, Shmarity. Princess Shmarity of Spiketopia. My friends are in trouble, and I was told that there may be magic in this temple that can save them. I’m looking for a spell that can bring the dead back to life. Please, can you help me?”

“So you, like so many others before you, wish to conquer death.” The alicorn sighed and shook her head. “I see that despite the passage of time, the desires of mortals have not changed.”

“Then, does such a spell exists here?”

“Perhaps. Whether you are worthy of such a boon however, well, let us see.” The projection swooped down to Rarity’s eye level, causing her to flinch. The alicorn clasped her cold hooves over Rarity’s cheek and held her still as she forced their eyes to meet. It was like looking into a dark bottomless pool, and when Rarity was finally released, she had to shake her head a couple times to allay her lightheadedness.

“W-what was, what did you do?”

“Just one last test to determine your motivations,” the alicorn answered as she stood back up to her full height. “And though you are not one of mine, I have deemed your intentions to be pure and will provide what assistance I can. You said you seek a way to revive the dead, did you not?”

“Yes. Yes! There are two of them, and they’ve been, ahem, deceased for about a month now,” said Rarity, both body and voice trembling slightly out of her growing elation.

“And the cause of death was not old age, was it?”

“Oh no, most definitely not. Their lives were stolen by a cruel, horrible villain known as the Squid Wizard.”

“Ah. Then yes, I do have something here that should be able to help you.” The alicorn’s horn lit up as did a section of the floor. The ground quaked as the glowing tourmaline split apart, and out of the opening rose a moderately sized chest that was perhaps a little larger than the typical travel suitcase. The box set itself down in front of Rarity, and the hasp keeping the lid closed was undone. Rarity hesitated for a moment, but once she had received a permitting nod from the Moonmaiden, she tossed the lid up and reached into the opened chest.

All she found inside were three scrolls tied shut by ribbons of red upon which there was a line of that Celestial writing in gold font. “The magic contained within just one of these scrolls will be sufficient to save your two friends, as long as their souls are willing and you have at least a piece of their remains nearby,” the alicorn explained. “Valmeyjar herself had these prepared long ago.”

Rarity picked up one of the scrolls. “And, I can just take this with me?”

“You may take them all if you so wish,” Selune said with a small smile and a nod. “It was never my desire for Valmeyjar to keep these spells from the rest of the world, and now that she and hers are gone from this world, I have no one else to share my gifts with. Perhaps, if the world relearns of the power I possess, my influence over this world will be restored, and I shall be Their Silver Lady once more.” The Luna-lookalike gestured to the scrolls. “To that end, I bestow onto you the miracle you so need, and all I ask in return is that you let others know of its source.“

Well, that was all the convincing Rarity needed. She bent her knee and dropped into a low bow, her forehead less than an inch off the ground. “Thank you, thank you, thank you Miss, er, Your Holiness, ma’am, for everything. I assure you, as Celestia is my witness, when I am done, there won’t be a single creature that hasn’t heard of Selune the Moonmaiden!”

There was no reply. When Rarity lifted her head, the projection of the great alicorn was gone. Both the chest and the hole in the floor had disappeared as well, but the three magic scrolls remained before Rarity’s feet. She carefully packed them away in her saddlebags, and once she was finally confident that they were secure, she headed back through the lavender curtains where she hoped to find her allies still alive and well. Rarity didn’t want to have to test her new found spell without having von Zarovich and the school of necromancy take a look at it first.