• Published 4th Jan 2021
  • 228 Views, 44 Comments

The Crystal Caves of Confuzzlation (Iota Force Issue #6) - The Iguana Man



Iota Force descend deep beneath the Crystal Empire and must find a way to escape, fight through a gauntlet of traps - illusory, deadly and both - to bring their captor to justice. There's no backup down there - they're all alone. Or are they?

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Chapter Seven: Fire and Thunder

As Icy and Truffle caught up to the group, Moonwing spoke up. “So, er... I hate to say it, guys, but we may have a problem.”

Truffle's face fell a little from the confidence he had displayed a moment ago at the idea of catching Conundra. “Oh?”

Moonwing nodded slowly as they were coming to the end of the corridor. “Yeah, we need another plan on how to tell which way to go. I don't think following the wind'll work with those swinging blades messing it all up.”

“Heh,” Archer increased her pace, pulling out to the front of the group, “is that all? Well, ask and ye shall receive. Look at this.”

Coming to a halt at the point where the passage turned a sharp corner, she waved a hoof above her to point out the arrow that she had fired from amid the pendulums.

At first, it looked like she had buried it into the wall. However, as she got closer, Icy could see that there weren't any cracks around it, like would happen if she had penetrated the crystal. Furthermore, once she was nearly caught up with Archer, she could see that the arrow in question didn't even have a sharpened head, nor the thin, faintly glowing head of an impact arrow.

Instead, attached to the head was a small, flat disc. It didn't look particularly solid or strong; in fact it looked like the sucker heads one would normally find on toy arrows. However, this one was attached to the arrow at an unusual angle, meaning that the arrow was held in place at a slant. Of course, it was always going to be at a slant to the general direction of the corridor, given how the walls consisted of so many angled surfaces, but this was held at an angle to the straight section of wall it was attached to.

After a moment, Moonwing said what Icy, and she assumed everyone else, was thinking. “So, how does that help?”

“One word,” Archer replied as she looked up at the arrows, her hoof tracing an invisible path from it, “trajectory!”

There was a pause as everyone looked to each other, hoping that someone else knew what she meant.

Archer sighed, looking back at them with a smile. “Okay, few more words. All the illusions that get sent our way go along beams, right? In straight lines that bounce off the walls. Which means, if I could get an arrow to match the trajectory hers came from – and I can and did – then... hey, Truffle, could I get a boost up?”

As Truffle came up to Archer, Icy heard a tap on the floor and turned around to see Zatrathan clopping a hoof on the ground as he realized what Archer meant.

“By seeing how the beam has ricocheted,
we follow how it came, toward its source.
That said, there can be zero errors made,” He gave Archer a sincere smile.
“But I have utmost faith in you, of course.”

“Heh, thanks, knew you had a brain on you,” Archer replied with a smirk. That said, Icy had known Archer long enough to know that that sort of brag wasn't entirely like her. However, looking closer, Icy thought she could just make out a slight smile at the Zebra’s praise.

Still, whatever she was feeling, she evidently didn't allow it to interfere with her actions as she nocked an arrow and hopped onto Truffle's hooves. Now that she was watching Archer, Icy could see that the arrow had a similar, sucker-like head, but one that was attached to the arrow straight on, the circular surface perpendicular to the shaft.

However, she didn't get a chance to dwell on this as Archer leapt up and fire the arrow down the corridor and out of sight. A loud, dull impact sound could be heard and, though Icy had nowhere the aiming skills of Archer, it did seem like she'd sent the arrow at the angle a beam would have bounced, given the placement of her initial arrow.

As she fell, Archer grabbed hold of said arrow and yanked, a dull light briefly flickering into existence on the arrow and the end of her costume's sleeve. As it did, the arrow detached and, as she came to earth, the head of the arrow shifted, returning to a straight position.

“Huh?” Icy looked at the arrow, a little confused.

“Marking arrow,” Archer explained. “Designed to stick to a target and only come off if I'm the one pulling.” As she explained, she started trotting around the corner, leaving the others to scramble a little to catch up. “The head shifts to stick to whatever it hits, otherwise it'd bounce off before it does. Anyway, come on guys, we've got us a trail to follow.”

“Well, I guess that works,” Moonwing observed as she came to the front of the group. “So, you thought of that as a backup to the wind method.”

“Nah, I was gonna use it as soon as I had a beam I could follow,” Archer shrugged. “Figured it'd be way faster.”

Moonwing huffed slightly, but said nothing.

The group proceeded on for a short distance before coming to the point Archer's last arrow had stuck.

“Well, it ain't exactly what I'd call a simple way o' findin' our way,” Caprice concluded as she watched Archer calculate her next shot, “but I guess I can't argue with results. Still, wish Aura was down here wit' us.”

“Aura?” Icy asked as Archer fired her next arrow, sending it flying far forward and impacting on the just-visible wall around a corner. “Is she another one of your group?”

“Yep,” Moonwing nodded languidly as she got up, apparently having taken the seconds-long period of Archer aiming and firing as the perfect opportunity for a quick rest. “She's our resident diviner and lookout. If something's there, chances are she can sense it somehow. She'd be able to tell the way out.”

“Really?” Archer asked as the group began moving again. “How's that?”

Moonwing shrugged. “I dunno and neither would she. She just knows these things – ask her how and she'll just explain the feeling she got.”

Caprice snorted a short laugh. “Either that or she'll just look at you... well, she'll give you a look like you've just asked what's the capital o' broccoli. Still, usually better to take 'er word for it. Even if some of us,” she gave a sharp look to Zatrathan, “could maybe stand to learn that a bit better.”

Zatrathan raised an eyebrow.

“You must admit, she's not the best at quite
convincing you her hunch is not a guess.
She courts your doubt, regardless if she's right.” He sighed as he looked around.
“And yet, it isn't she who's in this mess.”

Caprice nodded. “Got a point there – technically we coulda listened to her an' avoided this whole thing, but she didn't exactly give us much to go on.”

“How did you get sent down here, anyway?” Truffle asked. “I mean, we didn't see any signs that anyone else had gone through that hatch in the library, and you'd have seen us if you came in after.”

“Oh yeah,” Moonwing said after a moment. “Aura did say she found another panel there. Still, we figured it'd be easier to take the one she saw in the gardens – a little less sneaking around that way. Guess this filly made a few doors in here.”

“That makes sense – she'd probably want to have backups in case she couldn't get to some of them,” Icy pointed out.

“Ain't sure it mattered, though,” Caprice said, a slight sigh in her tone. “Ol' Smoke Eyes was pretty dang devious with his traps on the way in.”

“Tell me about it,” Archer said as they reached the next arrow. “We got sent down thanks to a double pit trap.” She turned around, only to see the three who hadn't been there at the time looking a little confused.

Sighing, Archer reared up onto her hind hooves. “See the main pit,” she held up a hoof vertically to represent it, “was obvious, so we gathered round it to figure out a way over.” She placed an arrow perpendicular to the top of her hoof, just touching it with the tip. “Now, the bit in front of it that dropped away – that was pretty much invisible.” She swung the arrow down to illustrate what happened before turning around to prepare for her next shot.

“Ooh, nasty.” Caprice said, a touch more appreciative than Icy would have liked, but understanding. “We got caught out by a kinda energy cage. See, we'd just come through a doorway when we saw...”

“Well, first off, Aura said something was off about that corridor,” Moonwing interjected.

“And that's all she said – nothin' specific, so I'm with Zat,” Caprice replied, rolling her eyes a little. “Couldn'ta known to stay out from that. Anyways, we saw a whole row o' thin red beams blockin' off the way forward.”

“Kinda like the beams Conundra guides her spells along?” Icy asked as the group set off again.

Caprice nodded. “That kinda thing, yeah, but they was bein' projected from little holes in the floor. 'Course, Griz was in favour o' just smashin' the floor up and hopin' that got rid of 'em.”

“Grizelda – Griz for short – is a Griffon,” Moonwing added. “A very big Griffon... for her age, at least.”

Truffle lowered his eyebrows, thumping the ground beneath his hooves experimentally. “Doesn't seem that fragile to me. You think she could do that?”

Moonwing shook her head. “I don't know, but I don't think I'd want to tell her that – she'd probably take it as a challenge. Plus, she's got a very big hammer. Anyway, I convinced her it'd be better to test what they did to my shield first – throw and retrieve, that whole thing.”

“Gettin' in the way o' danger's kinda the whole point of 'em, after all,” Caprice noted with a smirk. “Still, didn't help.”

“It did a little,” Moonwing said, not putting much offence into her contradiction. “It means we triggered them from a distance and didn't get hit when the force beams came down... and were close enough to the beams that came down behind us to do something about it.

“Well, you, Aura and Runt were, the rest of us ain't as flash-quick as you guys,” Caprice said, sounding a touch annoyed at this fact.

However, Icy's attention was drawn to a single word in that sentence. “Runt?” She asked, hoping it was a nickname and that a pony wasn't cruel enough to name their child that.

However, Zatrathan soon assuaged her fears.

“A minotaur with pistols fueled by air,
a quick-draw deadshot... almost close to you.” He looked at Archer respectfully, his face making clear just how high a compliment that was.
“And though his name's well chosen, have a care:
One glance from him, that fact won't seem so true.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Icy certainly believed that such a gun-minotaur could be a part of their team, but she wasn't sure she understood what that last bit meant.

“Just hope you never have to find out,” Caprice said, her tone entirely sincere. After a moment, though, she shook her head. “Anyways, he was quick enough to dodge under the beams behind us and Aura saw 'em just before they fired, so they got out. An' Wing was able block the beams for long enough for Griz to slip under 'em.”

Moonwing gulped. “Well, I don't know if I can really take credit for that – I only held them off for a second. She was the one quick enough to get under the shield... and considering how much she had to squeeze, I think she deserves the kudos for that one.”

“Well, in any case, we got trapped in and hit wit' a teleport beam,” Caprice finished, shaking her head. “Guess it just goes to show – don't mess wit' bright red magic beams if ya can help it.”

“Er, yeah, about that,” Archer said as she turned a corner. “Those beams? That wouldn't happen to have looked anything like that, would they?” She pointed forward down the corridor.

Sure enough, about twenty metres in front of them was a thin red beam of magical light, stretching across the corridor in a horizontal line at about a filly's chest height. It was somewhat faint, or at least translucent, and it didn't look particularly dangerous on its own, but there was a slightly ominous sense to it. Of course, Icy thought, that was probably due to the fact that they knew such beams to be precursors or triggers to more dangerous effects.

However, it was exacerbated by the fact that it was the only such beam in the entire space before them. Had it been in any way hidden, it might have been simple to accept it as something meant to take intruders by surprise, so it would have been understandable. Similarly, if they were dealing with a lair designed by someone completely incompetent – as opposed to just being operated by someone like that, Icy could practically hear Archer add in her head, even if she didn't agree – it might not have seemed so incongruous.

However, this was, presumably, one of Sombra's traps and, even if they were designed primarily to scare ponies rather than kill them, they had so far been far more impressive. For that matter, they'd also been a lot more scary and imposing – this was only worrying because it was obvious there should have been more to it.

Icy pondered that for a moment. It was possible that that was the point – a sort of intimidation double-bluff designed to get intruders frightened of what else might be there by putting conspicuously little into this area, but that seemed a touch too convoluted and intellectual for Sombra's brand of terror. Besides, even if that were the case, she was sure that Conundra would have added something to it – she seemed like the sort of pony who would insist on being involved in each measure she took against her opponents, refusing to allow someone else's efforts to do all the work and take all the credit.

Whatever the case, there was a tangible hesitation in the air as the group waited for the other shoe to drop.

After about ten seconds, however, Truffle spoke up. “Another one of those sensors, do you think?”

“Indeed, though who knows what it brings about
when triggered? Well,” Zatrathan pulled out his sword, “I can, at least, find out!”

He started forward before Moonwing's hoof stopped him. “Yeah, that didn't work out too well last time we saw one of these did it?”

“Or didja forget what happened in the story we just finished tellin'?” Caprice added with a smirk.

Zatrathan withered a little as she stopped, opening his mouth to speak before Archer interrupted him, nocking an arrow.

“Hey, no worries, you had the right idea. We just need to trigger it from back here,” she said, aiming for a split second before firing and retreating around the corner – able to see the edge of the beam but out of the line of fire of anything coming down the corridor. Not that she needed to – one didn't need to look at the result directly to know what happened next.

With a roar that echoed down the tunnels behind them, fire burst into being in the area just beyond the beam. Peeking around along with the others, Icy could see that it was coming from nozzles embedded into the walls, but that was really only a technical detail – they were powerful and numerous enough that, after each jet got only an inch or two from the wall, it mixed with the others to create one continuous wall of flame.

From the distance they were at, it was difficult to tell the exact temperature of the flames, but Icy had her doubts that it mattered. If nothing else, the amount of distortion that came over the air in front of it suggested that it was considerable.

“Ah, sounds like you've found the next barrier,” Conundra's voice came down the corridor as her image faded into view on the wall just before the beam. “And maybe you've been progressing faster than I thought, but you won't... huh?” She stopped as she saw that the group wasn't in front of her.

She looked up and down the corridor for a moment before catching sight of them around the corner. “Oh, there you are! Well, come on, come on, you can get closer,” she told them with a condescendingly reassuring tone, “it won't bite. It might burn, but it won't bite. And it won't do that unless you try and get past it.

Despite an instinctive desire to defy her sarcastic encouragement, Icy looked to the others, who all nodded. Turning back down the corridor, they proceeded cautiously down towards the beam, their eyes darting around in search of any other hidden beams or nozzles. Eventually, they got to around three metres from the start of the trap, with nothing either found or triggered.

“Theeeere we are!” Conundra clapped her hooves together like a pre-school teacher watching a child use paints without eating them. “Now we can talk like big ponies do.”

“Ain't much reason to talk, way I see it,” Caprice said, looking at the beam. “I mean, sure the whole wall o' fire thing's a great jump scare, but if it's just got the one trigger, it ain't too much of an obstacle, know what I'm sayin'?” She smiled up at Conundra, just a little too wide considering how cautious she'd been only a moment ago. It was pretty clear to Icy that she was playing dumb to get information; she just hoped it wasn't that clear to Conundra.

Fortunately, it seemed the masked filly was far too assured of her superiority to question things. “Hah, as if I'd rely on just that, even against such pitiful opposition as you. Please observe!” She pointed down towards the area beyond the beam as a thin blue beam emerged from the top of her crystal helmet.

As Icy turned towards the corridor in front of them, she saw the beam come around the corner and expected, as before, for it to stop for a moment before the spell Conundra was sending along it could be heard.

However, she was caught totally off-guard when, the moment the beam passed a certain point near the ceiling, the flames sprang to life again. Icy stepped back in shock as the heat washed over her, making her hooves and head uncomfortably warm, even at that distance. She silently thanked À La Mode once again for her costume's heat-resistant qualities.

“You made the beams invisible. Of course!” Zatrathan said as his eyes widened.
“To break our stride through caution, not by force.”

“They're not just invisible,” Archer added, pointing to where Conundra's ray had hit the trigger. “It vanished a moment before the flames got turned on. There must be a small stealth field around them.” Icy hadn't seen that herself, but she trusted Archer enough to believe her eyes on that.

“Top of the class, both of you!” Even through the magical connection, Icy could almost feel the smarm dripping off Conundra. “Not that it matters. As you can see, I'm in a whole different class altogether. There's a whole web of sensors along this corridor and, if you can't see them, you can't avoid them, so you can't risk going past them. An elegant solution, don't you think?”

“Yeah, woulda been,” Caprice nodded, feigning being impressed for a moment before smiling up at the image, “except for you tellin' us that. Cause now we know there is a way through it and it's just a question o' finding it. Nice goin', class president!” She gave a mocking bow.

Conundra jerked back, spluttering for a second; all the smug self-assurance she'd displayed a moment ago was gone from her tone and posture. “What... I didn't... you don't know... shut up!” she snarled. “Even if there is, it's not like you losers'll find it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got more important things to deal with.”

She turned away, the sound of her hoofsteps getting cut off suddenly, suggesting that she had muted the connection again.

After a second, Icy gave voice to the thought that had been percolating for a while. “Is it just me or is anyone else getting some serious Diamond Tiara vibes from this filly.”

“Little bit, yeah,” Archer replied before noticing the confusion on the faces of Caprice, Zatrathan and Moonwing. “Rich jerk from school, you know the type.”

There was a collective “Ah!” from the three Manehattanites – evidently, such classmates were a common feature of schools.

“Well, that's certainly somethin' to lift the spirits – not that a filly who wears a glass lampshade over her head ain't a gold mine o' joke material already, but it don't hurt. Still, don't really help us wit' this little problem.” She turned back down the corridor, her eyes darting around as if to find the beams they couldn't see.

“Well, first thing's first,” Archer said before promptly turning and walking back the way they came.

Icy blinked for a moment in confusion – it wasn't like Archer to just give up like that. She thought about turning and following her, but shook herself out of the thought – it wasn't like they had much of a choice in which way to go. Even if there was another way out of the labyrinthine complex, it would be impossible to distinguish from passages that went deeper or went nowhere.

That left the invisible gauntlet before them. She stared intently down the corridor, hoping she might be able to see something – a slight distortion in the air, a marking on the wall where a beam started or ended, even just a hint that the illusion was a phantasm she could penetrate with her own disbelief. However, there were absolutely no signs of anything but empty air. She might have almost doubted there was anything if she couldn't still feel the last remnants of the heat that had rolled off the flames.

Of course, it was theoretically possible that the second gout of flames was another illusion – she didn’t think the first batch could have been triggered in the same way. However, she had her doubts. For one thing, while it might have been possible to create such heat in an illusion, it was almost certainly incredibly difficult. It would also take a lot of power, even with the amplification of the cave walls, due to the second fact – unless the feeling of the temperature was entirely in their minds, which it couldn't be without them being targeted directly by a beam, then heat created for an illusion... was still heat. As such, even if the flames weren't real, they might as well be and would incinerate them just as surely.

Plus, she could still smell the sharp, oily after-scent of the flames. Even she knew that the more senses an illusion had to fool, the more difficult it was to create. This wasn't just because you had to create each individual sensation, but because each one interacted with each other in complex ways. For the most part, illusionists stuck to sight and sound, though even those two things could interfere with each other if you weren't careful.

Icy's eyes shot open as she thought of something: Or maybe if you were.

“Hey, Caprice?” she asked. “Do you think-”

She was cut off when an arrow flew past her face, making her jerk back, stumbling over onto her haunch as if it had struck her a glancing blow. It hadn't, but she had felt the wind of it rushing by uncomfortably sharply.

She didn't have much of a chance to get her bearing either, as the flamethrowers roared to life a moment later, sending her scurrying to the side, startled but thankful that she hadn't been sent towards the flames by the arrow.

“Huh, wouldja look at that?” Archer called from the other end of the corridor. “Guess her magic musta set 'em off every time she sent a spell at us before.” She began trotting back towards the group.

“I'm sorry!” Icy called back. “Maybe you can do something once we figure out a way through it.”

Archer shrugged as she approached. “Why are you sorry and why'd you need to?” she asked, though her smirk suggested that she knew why Icy had said that, but also knew something she didn't. “Take a look!” She pointed past the lasers.

Turning her head, Icy had to suppress a slight gasp as she saw what Archer meant. As it turned out, the arrow Archer had fired wasn't made of wood, so hadn't been incinerated as Icy had assumed. Instead, it had come out the other side of the flames and embedded itself in the wall, cracking the crystal around it.

“Well, congrats, Archer,” Caprice waved a hoof in the direction of the arrow, “ya damaged a historic site – sure yer folks'll love payin' fer that.” She smirked, clearly remembering how she'd done something similar earlier.

Archer raised an eyebrow, looking happy to play along. “Kinda making an assumption about my ‘folks’ there, aren't you? But, yeah, you're right. I mean, it's not like ponies in the Crystal Empire'll know how to repair crystal, right?”

Caprice shrugged. “Fair point, I guess. Plus, least we'll be outta here so's ya can pay. Anyways, what was that you was sayin', Icy?”

Icy shrugged the conversation off. “Your music... sound... magic energy thing. Could it, like, mess with the invisibility fields or something?”

Caprice hummed for a second, her mouth going to the side in thought. “Hmm... Well, technically, maybe, but not enough to really solve anythin'.”

Icy deflated slightly. “Oh, I see.”

Caprice shrugged. “Hey, it ain't a bad idea and it could help a little. Heck, if this place wasn't givin' ol' shardface's magic a boost, mighta been able to show 'em all a little. But, well, given what we're dealin' with...” She put her violin to her chin and played a few notes experimentally. As she did, a slight energy washed out over the corridor beyond them. This particular effect didn't have the distinct colours Icy had seen previously, instead being just visible as a rippling in the air.

The magic flowed along the corridor, spreading out thinly and going entirely unimpeded, as far as Icy could see. After a few seconds, she heard Caprice hum slightly over the music, which then shifted to a higher key. As it did, the wave of energy narrowed, the distortion in the air becoming more pronounced as it did.

At first, it didn't seem to help. However, after a few seconds, Icy could just about make out a few points where the distortion seemed to change. It was hard to tell, given the entire effect was transparent, but it seemed like those were points where it conspicuously stopped. However, at this point, the beam had become extremely narrow, so it was difficult to tell both where those points were and what, if anything, each one meant.

Of course it didn't help that Icy only got a fraction of a second to look as, once the effect had narrowed a little more, the flame jets burst into action, startling her again.

“Well, looks like I can do somethin' but it's real delicate and don't help much.” Caprice concluded.

“Hey, it's something,” Archer added, unfazed by the flames as they died down. “Plus, we know there is a way through.”

“Indeed,” Truffle said, looking skeptically at her, “but I'd rather not go in there searching for it – I could maybe keep the worst of it off me,” he picked up his cape and held it up to his head, indicating that he could wrap it around himself to protect the exposed areas of his face, “but I don't know if I want to try and that doesn't help the rest of you. So, if there is a way through, how do we find it?”

“Simple,” Archer replied, smirking a little, “we look for it!”

Icy turned to Archer, tilting her head sharply at her statement. “But... it's kind of... it's all invisible.”

Archer shook her head. “No, the sensors are surrounded by invisibility.”

“And that makes a difference?” Moonwing asked, leaning against the wall.

“Well, makes 'em easier to see if ye can show 'em,” Caprice pointed out as she moved her bow lightly against her violin's strings, practising playing the precise notes she could use to reveal the fields. “Trouble is, we ain't got a good way o' doin' that yet.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that,” Archer replied. “There's a way to reveal 'em all, it's just not one you'd wanna rely on.”

“What you mea-” Icy began as she turned to Archer, just in time for an arrow to fly in front of her face, zipping into the danger area and setting off the flames again.

Icy leapt back, whirling around on Archer. “What the... What did you do that for?!” She asked, searching Archer's unbothered expression for answers she doubted she would find.

Archer smiled good-naturedly at her. “Like I said, to reveal where the sensors are. Look!” She indicated forward with her head as she loaded and fired another shot.

Raising an eyebrow, Icy kept her eyes trained on the corridor before them as the fire engulfed it. For a second, she didn't see what Archer meant. However, as she looked it up and down, she saw it – a couple of areas where the flames didn't seem to go. These gaps in the flame were in thin cylinders that stretched across the corridor and, though she couldn't see much beyond the very front of the inferno, she thought she could maybe see some more gaps within it.

As the jets died down again, she turned to Archer. “How...”

Archer shrugged. “Didn't you see 'em before? Think about it, the fields around the beams hide everything inside 'em...”

Icy's eyes widened as she understood what Archer was getting at. “...including the fire!”

Caprice sighed as she rested her bow. “Well, that's neat 'n' all, but from what I saw, the fire we could see blocked most o' the bits we couldn't. I ain't seein' how it helps too much.”

Archer rolled her eyes. “Maybe not, but it's something. Plus, that was just the first thing we could see. We look a bit closer, we can probably find a heck of a lot more.”

“Indeed, forgive Caprice's dour view,” Zatrathan assured her, glaring at Caprice for a moment.
She doesn't like to see the brighter side.
But pessimism has its uses, too.
I've faith she won't affect your skill or pride.”

“Hey, relax,” Archer waved off the whole thing, “I work with Alula – that's a filly who can see everything in the world and not be happy with any of it. Trust me, I'm used to negative nags. Of course, Dinky being around kinda helps with that.”

“Alula's a shape-shifter and Dinky's a time wizard and can kinda...” Icy wiggled her hoof in vague explanation, “cute ponies into doing stuff.”

Caprice sighed and nodded. “Yeah, okay, I get it. Just tryin' to think things through. So, we know we can show up the front ones, what now?”

“Now? We keep looking,” Archer stated before putting a hoof to her chin. “Still, turning 'em on for a couple of seconds'll make it pretty hard to notice anything. Hey, Zat?” She turned to the pondering zebra and indicated his sword. “You reckon you could hold that in the beam for a while, give us longer to look?”

Zatrathan shook his head slightly as he refocused on the situation.

“Oh, huh? Of course I can, if that is all.
The flames will rise until I bid them fall!”

With a dramatic wind-up, he thrust his sword into the one visible beam, bringing the flames to life once again.

Chuckling at his over-dramatics, Archer trained her eyes on the gaps in the fire, with Icy and the rest following a moment afterwards.

The group stared for a few seconds, no one saying anything until Archer pointed at one of the gaps. “Hey, look at that!”

Truffle raised an eyebrow as he looked at her from the corner of his eye. “I assure you, we are. What about it?”

Archer raised a hoof and indicated the height of the gap. “Look at the way the fire's flickering around the edges of the field. Like it's interacting with something.”

Frowning a little in concentration, Icy narrowed her eyes a little to focus on the small area. Now that it had been pointed out, she could just about make out the way the fires beat against the gap, lightly lapping around it as if there was an object there.

“I see what you mean,” Caprice said after a moment, “but that don't make sense – an invisibility field ain't a physical thing. It'd just make any fire that goes into it invisible, there'd just be a gap, it wouldn't be interactin' with nothin'.”

Icy thought for a moment. “Maybe there's a barrier around it as well?”

“No, that'd have stopped half the things we've seen set it off,” Caprice pointed out as she put a hoof on Zatrathan's, lowering his sword and stopping the flames.

Icy hummed, her eyes lowering briefly as she thought. “Well, maybe it's designed to only block fire from... hey, wait a minute!” She clopped a hoof on the ground in realization. “If your energy is enough to set them off, how come the fire isn't?” She indicated Zatrathan's sword, still just below the frontmost beam. “Once the fire starts, then it should cross the beams and keep the jet going. There must be something to stop the fire and only the fire from crossing the beams.”

Zatrathan nodded for a second. “Indeed, there must be something in the way
of such a self-perpetuating storm.” However, he then shook his head.
“Alas, to keep the fire alone at bay
is something no one spell could so perform.
For fire is not any form of matter,
but merely a release of heat and light.
So blocking off the former and the latter
would be the only way to thwart its bite.”

“Well, the invisibility field could deal with the light,” Archer concluded after a moment's thought. “So, you think there's also something around them to block off heat?”

A smile blossomed onto Zatrathan's face. “A possibility – I am impressed –
and one there is a simple way to test!”

He darted forward, ducking under the beam and placing a hoof against his sword.

“Hey, what in Equestria do you think you're doing?!” Truffle roared, ducking down to go after him before he stopped a short distance from where the flames would come out.

“Relax, I'll keep outside the fire's flow.” He ran his hoof along the flat of his blade, flashing white energy through it that made it start to extend. After a couple of seconds, he took his hoof of the now-much-longer sword.
“There is no danger testing it like so!”

He thrust his blade up, catching one of the sensors and making the tip of his blade vanish. Of course, it didn't matter since much of the rest of it was soon engulfed by fire.

After a couple of seconds, he withdrew it once more and slipped back under the visible beam, holding the tip of the sword close to his hoof. After a moment, he nodded and, with a smile, placed his hoof against the tip.

“You see,” he grinned at the group, “the tip did not the fire feel
and so, right here, the metal stayed quite cool.
S- AH!”

He jerked his hoof away and let go of the sword, sending it clattering across the floor. With a pained hiss, he shook his hoof hard.

“Until the heat conducts throughout the steel.” He sighed, his eyes briefly flicking to Archer before lowering in shame.
“It seems, today, I am an utter fool.”

“Today?” Caprice rolled her eyes as she began playing, a faint pulse of healing energy flowing over his hoof.

“Hey, don't worry about it,” Archer said, an amused smile tugging at her mouth. “At least now we know for sure. And that means we have a way through!”

“We do?” Truffle asked, still wincing in sympathy for Zatrathan's pain.

Archer nodded. “Think about it. If there's something around the beams that's blocking out heat, what else'll it be blocking out?” She looked directly at Icy as she spoke.

“Um,” Icy hesitated, assuming that Archer was expecting her to answer, “er... uh!” She shrugged, not quite getting at it.

Archer raised an eyebrow. “Well, if it blocks off heat, chances are it'll block off any change in temperature, meaning it'll block off cold as well. Now, do you know anypony who might be good with cold?”

Icy looked around for who Archer meant for a moment before what she said fully registered. “Oh! Right! Yeah, I can...” She flared her wings before trailing off. “Wait, how does that help?”

Archer grinned at her. “Well, if you can freeze everything around the beams, but not the beams themselves...” She rolled a hoof in the air, encouraging the others to make the connection.

“I can show where the beams are!” She smiled as she saw the logic of it.

Truffle thumped a hoof against the ground, his own grin growing. “For that matter, you could block them off entirely!”

“Neat idea,” Caprice spoke up as her song faded, “but how exactly do we do it? Just makin' an ice block around 'em ain't gonna do much 'cept make 'em fall through the beams and set 'em off.”

Icy nodded, her smile dimming slightly as she looked at the beam in front of them. She stared at it for a moment, looking above it, looking below it...

Wait, that's it!

She snapped her wings out as she realized what she could do.

Turning to her left, she flapped lightly, aiming her wings at the ground, about a foot from the wall. A thin stream of freezing energy flowed down and created a block of ice about a foot tall. Smiling, Icy flapped again, angling her wings up to build upon the block, making the ice rise up until it reached just under the beam.

Swallowing hard and bracing herself, Icy sent one more burst of energy at the top of the pillar. She knew she was in no danger, but if this didn't work, it would still set off the flamethrowers, which she'd already found could be incredibly startling.

However, as the energy reached the pillar, the ice that formed quickly split into two forks as it rose up, the space in the centre moving apart in a circle before, as they rose past the sensor beam, they moved together again. After a second, they joined up once more, resulting in a pillar of ice with a circular hole in the top, through which the sensor passed without coming within a centimetre of the sides.

Turning back to the others, Icy gave them a smile. “How's that?

Caprice gave her a genuine smile. “Lookin' good, Ice-Mare.”

Archer nodded. “Yeah. Think you could do that for a whole lot more of those?”

Icy shrugged. “Without my suit, that'd be a hard no, but that didn't take up all that much energy, so... yeah, I should be fine unless I need to freeze the whole corridor.”

“Ah, well... I don't think the whole corridor will be needed,” Truffle said, sounding a little uncomfortable. As Icy turned to him, he gave a slightly wan smile and waved a hoof down the corridor. “I just thought... It might be an idea to freeze the walls as far as you can. That'd tell us where all the beams start and, if you do it thick enough, show us where they're pointed.”

Icy nodded, looking along the walls and sizing them up. She flexed a wing experimentally, thinking about if and how she could do that.

“That's all well and good,” Archer said, tearing Icy away from her calculations, “but what if there are beams coming from the floor? We'd need to find them and I don't much like the idea of freezing the floor before we have to go through it without slipping and getting roasted.

Caprice chuckled once, a little harshly. “Now who's bein' a negative nag? If it's goin' along the floor, I reckon I can make 'em show up. Pressin' the flow o' music against the floor'll widen it out enough that we should be able to see anythin' weird down there. Providin', course,” she shot Archer a smirk, “we got someone wit' eyes sharp enough to catch it.”

Archer returned her smirk in full force. “Let's do it, then!”

Caprice nodded, rearing up and bringing her bow to her violin once again. As she began playing a gentle tune, keeping the melody within a very narrow range of notes, Icy closed her eyes. She knew that this music didn't have the same strengthening or healing effect Caprice had put in her music before, but she still felt a little comforted and loosened up by it. She called up her energy and, though she was fairly sure it was just her perceptions being shaped by the music, it still felt as though it came a lot more smoothly than normal.

Opening her eyes, she started flapping her wings, spreading the freezing energy out in a thin haze through the wind. It took a moment for anything to happen, but soon ice began to form in a thin layer over the left wall, spreading up and forward as she kept flapping.

Soon, it had reached almost to the ceiling, whereupon Icy turned and sent her gusts further down the corridor, flapping her wings harder to send the gusts further. As she did, she saw that there were large, perfectly circular holes in the ice at seemingly random points on the wall. Nodding to herself that the plan seemed like it would work, she kept turning the gusts, flapping harder and spreading the ice further until the gaps stopped appearing for a couple of metres.

She relaxed her wings, breathing a little heavily. In terms of her cold energy, she had, as she had predicted, not been massively drained. However, keeping her wings flapping for as long as she had had used up plenty of physical energy and she panted for a few moments, trying to get as much oxygen into her as she could.

Meanwhile, Caprice's music came to an end with a slight flourish.

“Floor's all clear!” Archer declared, not a trace of doubt in her voice. “Looks like it's all coming from the walls and it looks like you got that covered, Icy.” She gave a quiet chuckle. “Literally.”

Icy nodded. “Yeah, I, er...” She screwed her eyes shut for a moment as she breathed. “Just give me a minute and I'll do the other one.”

“Pft, yeah, sure,” Caprice snorted as Icy heard her bow make contact with her strings once more. Icy opened her eyes to see what she was doing, only to hear her begin a livelier tune and see green energy flowing towards her. However, this energy was brighter than the strengthening energy Icy had previously seen, bright white mixed into the green.

As the energy washed over her, Icy not only felt her fatigue totally melt away, but a surge of energy flow through her body. It wasn't nearly the same energy as the kind she normally wielded, but it certainly brought that energy to life and made it feel all the more pressurized.

Icy flapped her wings and felt the energy rush out as if from a shaken-up bottle. After a moment, she got a handle on the flow of it and spread it out once more, making a much thicker sheet of ice form over the right wall and forcing her to turn the beam all the faster.

After only ten seconds or so, the ice had reached the end of the gauntlet. Thinking quickly, however, Icy halted her wings for a second before whirling around, back to the left wall. Flapping once more, she sent more energy over it, thickening it until it came out a good few inches from the wall.

That done, she folded her wings up again sharply, visibly declaring that she was finished.

Seeing this, Caprice brought her tune to a halt and, while Icy did almost immediately miss the feeling of strength, she was just happy that she wasn't feeling that same level of fatigue.

“Thanks, Caprice,” she said, looking along the two frozen walls. “Now I should be able to block off anything in our way.”

“Only if it's low enough we can't go under it,” Archer replied, indicating the gaps in the ice. “Better not to have to climb over a big, slippy block of ice if we can avoid it.”

Icy nodded, beginning to turn her head back down the corridor before Truffle's voice interrupted her. “By the way, Icy, can I borrow one of your feathers?”

Icy blinked, nonplussed by the apparent non-sequitur. “Huh? Why?”

“And some of those dye arrows, Archer.” He brought out a small bottle of water from his suit as he continued. “Even from here, I can see a few sensor beams going along the floor, but there are a lot more that are slanted and go from low on one wall to high on another. Freezing them'd be difficult, so I thought it'd be better to mark the point where we could walk through them – paint a line at the point where we shouldn't get too close to the wall.”

“Well, I've only got a few left, but sure,” Archer said as she pulled out several such arrows from her quiver and tossed them to Truffle, who caught them in one hoof as the other held the bottle to his mouth as he guzzled it.

Meanwhile, Icy turned to her wings, looking for a loose feather even as she said, “Well, okay, I guess that makes sense, but it'll take me a while if I have to freeze and mark the floor.”

Truffle swallowed the last of the water before giving a massive belch. “Oh, of course. That's why you won't be. You just focus on blocking off the horizontal beams, I'll find and mark the slanted ones.”

Icy turned to him in surprise, pulling out the feather she'd been grasping a little harsher than she'd intended. It wasn't a problem – every pegasus learned to preen at an early age and part of that was removing any broken feathers – but it did startle her. “You're coming in with me?”

Truffle nodded, giving her a hard look as he jammed the arrows into the bottle, bursting their tips and making the colours mix together into a dark, muddy brown. “I am indeed,” he said, his tone making it clear he wouldn't be persuaded. “If something happens in there, then I don't know if I'll be able to protect you, but I'll be damned if I don't try!”

Icy gulped at the intensity in his expression, but passed him the feather anyway. “Well... okay then. Let's go!” She finished, trying to infuse her voice with enthusiasm she didn't feel.

Truffle took the lead, ducking down beneath the one visible beam and scooting slowly underneath it. Once he was safely on the other side, he turned to Icy, silently encouraging her to join him.

Nodding, Icy took a deep breath and dived down, hoping that enough motion might counteract or dispel her nervousness. It didn't, but it did allow her to use the motivational momentum to crawl under the beam.

Once she was past that beam, she got to her hooves and looked forward along the walls. The first gap in the ice she could see was a foot in front of them on the right, just above floor level. However, the hole in the ice was at an angle, so she took a step to the left and looked further, seeing another hole about half a foot beyond that, running along the ground.

Taking a slightly shaking step forward, she was momentarily surprised to see, in her peripheral vision, that Truffle wasn't moving. She halted totally before turning her head – going through this passage without looking where she was going was the last thing she wanted to do and, for that matter, would probably be the last thing she did.

Fortunately, it seemed that Truffle was simply preparing to mark the slanted beam, dipping Icy's feather into the dye as a makeshift paintbrush. After a moment, he caught Icy looking at him and looked up, giving her a silent smile.

Icy's mouth began rising in a mirror, only faltering when it got halfway to full and requiring her to ram the corners of her mouth up sharply. Turning back, she took another small step forward before focusing inwards, calling up her energy to her wingtips. Once they were charged up, she flapped once, putting more force into her left wing than her right, making the resulting wind come in at an angle. As she did, she let loose the energy in a thin stream and moved it to the side, freezing a line along the ground that coated the invisible beam, enclosing it completely for a several-feet-wide area in the centre of the corridor.

Taking a moment to look over the ice block, she saw that there was enough room behind it for her to stand without triggering the next beam... just.

Not wanting to take chances, she stepped her front hooves over the low block and stood astride it as she prepared another blast. This next horizontal beam was higher, coming up to just below her belly. As such, rather than sending the ice out in a line, she simply sent a single freezing gust at a section to the middle-left of the corridor, angling her wings down to make sure the resulting ice would be much taller than it was deep.

Once the energy hit the ground, it formed a block of ice over about a foot of the beam's length, short and shallow enough that a young pony would be able to step over it without too much trouble. Once that was done, Icy took a step to her right and repeated the process, lengthening the block another foot.

After two more extensions, Icy was satisfied that it was safe to cross and stepped forward, poking her head carefully past the block to see past it.

As she did, she gulped. There was another horizontal beam a short distance beyond it, but the height it was at made things tricky. It came up to her upper chest, meaning it would be tricky to step over it and, while she was fairly confident she could slip underneath it, it would be a much more delicate prospect than she was entirely comfortable with.

She gulped as she pulled her wings close to her sides and stepped over the block, twisting to her side so she'd have room to stand between the two beams. She felt as if she was aware of every feather she had – how they lay along her wings, how far they extended out and how close they came to brushing up against the next beam.

As she pulled her final hoof over the last block, she whipped her head round slowly, careful not to send her hair flying into the beam. As she locked her eyes on the hole in the ice on the wall, she let out a small sigh of relief that it wasn't quite as fur-raisingly close she'd worried it was... which was good, since if it was, that raising fur could have triggered the flames.

Still, she didn't relax. Instead, she started lowering herself down, pressing herself lightly against the ice she'd just crossed to keep her balance. She was briefly caught off guard by not being able to feel the cold of the block before remembering her suit's temperature-proof properties and then, a moment later, remembering to be thankful for the fact this meant her body heat was in no danger of melting or cracking the ice.

After a couple of seconds, she had lowered herself fully onto her belly. Looking up to where she knew the beam above and to her side ran, she extended a hoof out to the side before jerking it back again, horrified by having forgotten to look at what lay past it.

Looking just beyond the nearest beam and then twisting her head to look at the wall behind her, she allowed herself to relax a little – there was enough room past it to stand fully. She wouldn't like to take her chances doing the pony pokey in the space provided, but at least she would be able to catch her breath a little.

Chuckling to herself a little over the imagery she'd just conjured up, she put her right hooves out to the side again, pressing them against the ground as she dragged her body to the side. It was an odd-feeling movement. In fact, now that Icy thought of it, it was an odd movement in general – more akin to a crab than a pony. Then again, even crabs kept their bodies lifted off the ground when they moved, so maybe a small spider or some sort of sideways moving lobster? Icy wasn't sure and, as she passed under the invisible beam, she felt the thought thankfully vanish from her head.

It took a good twenty seconds for her to sidle past the beam – she knew she could have done it more quickly if she was willing to take a chance, but she wasn't exactly feeling in a gambling mood. Still, once she was fully past it, she stood up, happy to have the room to do so quickly, and shook her hooves out to get them feeling natural again.

She turned back to the beam, one eye pointed behind her to make sure her tail didn't accidentally back into the next one. She raised a hoof in front of the area she had just passed, silently sizing up the beam to be avoided. Looking closer, its height wasn't as hard to deal with as she'd thought, but it was still tricky. She was sure that any one of them could pass beneath it, but it would need to be a slow, careful process since they couldn't see the beam in question. Nor could they feel it, a fact that had caused Icy no end of terror as she had gone underneath it, never knowing whether or not she'd just triggered it despite her care and whether she was just about to get roasted. If there was something she could have simply felt to give her an idea of where it was...

A slight smile, more genuine that any she'd felt since she'd come into the field of sensors, came onto her face as she understood what she could do.

She called up her energy once again, but this time she didn't flap. Instead, she crouched down a little and placed her wing against the ground beneath the beam, letting the energy flow directly onto the crystal floor and form a thick, round patch of ice.

Moving slowly, Icy moved her wing up along the side of the patch, forming more ice as she did and making it extend upward. She moved slowly, careful to make sure each new growth upwards was neither too narrow to build further upon nor too wide for the underlying ice to support it.

It took a short while, but she soon had a thick, slightly conical pillar of ice reaching up to just below the beam. Once she reached this point, she slowed down even further, mindful not to let her wing stray too near the trigger that would ruin all of her hard work, as well as her everything else. Still, she pushed the energy out into the area the beam intersected, forming a block around it.

Nodding to herself, she then began the next phase of her plan by placing a wing on the side of the pillar, below the beam, and slowly drawing it out, creating a jutting section of ice parallel to the sensor. After getting the section a few inches out from the pillar, she placed her other wing beneath it and drew it back and forth along the length of the protrusion, thickening the ice beneath it to form a sort of solid scaffold.

After a short while, she was confident that the extension was stable and began once again moving her wing upwards, forming an icy tube around the beam. She was, she admitted to herself, a little unsure this was a good idea, as it did add more ice to potentially set off the trigger, but she figured it would be more risky to forgo the addition, given how she planned to use it.

Eventually, she pulled her wing away, satisfied with what she'd made.

“Ah, I see what you're doing!” Truffle spoke up, making Icy start slightly as she looked and realized he had been waiting patiently throughout her entire impromptu ice-sculpting demonstration. “Making a limbo pole so we know where to keep below.”

Icy nodded. “Kinda, yeah. I figured it'd be easier to go under the beam if you could feel if you were about to break it.”

“Good thought!” Truffle replied, a touch of humour in his smile. “Especially when I'm your travelling companion.”

Icy tilted her head as she moved to the side, ready to let him through. “What do you mean?”

Truffle chuckled as he climbed carefully over the ice block previous to the one Icy had just made. He hopped over it slightly, making sure his weight was always supported by his hooves on one side or the other rather than by the ice. Once there, he put his bottle and paint-feather on the ground just in front of the beam, in the corner of the room opposite to the side Icy had made the boundary.

“Well, that's the other reason I wanted to be one of the first through – I'm the ultimate test subject!” He lowered himself to the ground and began moving slowly beneath the enclosed beam, careful to keep both his senses of sight and touch focused on the ice above him. “If I can get under or over a beam, anypony can.”

Icy giggled slightly. “Well, anypony our age.”

Truffle smirked. “At least.”

Icy's giggles tapered off gently as she focused on Truffle's progress; he'd managed to get the front of his barrel through without issue but, as he'd be the first to admit, his stomach was where the issue would be. It did come up to a fair height, even from the ground, so she wasn't sure...

His stomach bumped up gently against the bottom of the protrusion, cutting off Icy's thoughts and sending a panicking tension through her legs, priming them to sprint off if things kicked off. The ice shook slightly, making her hooves shake as if synchronized to it. There was a moment of silence as the vibrations slowed... before finally coming to a stop.

Icy relaxed, thankful that the temperature-blocking field wasn't closer to the actual sensor, else things might have gotten very bad very quickly.

Truffle let out a sigh, evidently also relieved by the lack of fire. That said, he was either less scared or simply better at hiding it – Icy couldn't say which. Looking down over himself, he let out a further breath and sucked in his stomach. It... didn't really reduce in volume that much, but it did just about lower enough that he could fit himself underneath the beam and the ice.

He scooted forward quickly, holding his breath to make sure that his stomach didn't move any more than necessary. The increased speed did give Icy a couple more heart palpitations, but they were blessedly short lived as his stomach cleared the beam. That just left his legs to pass through and, unless Truffle decided to do a cartwheel out of nowhere, it was unlikely that they would be in danger of setting off the flamethrowers.

Admittedly, in any other circumstances, Icy wouldn't have put it past Truffle to do some minor acrobatics – such as he was able – just because he felt like it, but she was pretty certain that his self-preservation instincts were strong enough to suppress any such impulses.

After a few more seconds, Truffle was able to rise to his feet, giving a little hop as he did so as if to prove Icy's thought accurate. “Right, I'd say that's a success. Shall we continue?”

Icy turned to face forward again, already flaring her wings and gathering her energy for the next beam. “Fine by me!” She said cheerfully as she froze a line over the low beam in front of her.

The two continued on through the corridor. Thankfully, there weren't any more beams at that particularly awkward height – there was one that was close to it, but a few inches higher, meaning Icy and Truffle agreed another barrier wasn't necessary, just a pillar to show the height to be avoided.

It was just as they were passing this pillar that a voice rang out from behind them. “What the...? What are you...?”

“Oh, just out for a little stroll,” Truffle called back, not looking up from marking one of the last areas to avoid. “Don't mind us!”

“Ooh, real clever,” Conundra sneered, her voice carrying across the crystal corridor. “I see what you're doing.”

“Then why'd you ask?” Moonwing said, a lethargic tone in her voice as she rose to her feet.

Conundra let out something between a sigh and a growl. “I was just surprised, that's all. Surprised you'd use ice to show the way through a gauntlet of fire. Seems to me like you didn't think this through.”

“Well, the whole point of this thing is to stop us from setting the fire off,” Icy pointed out, raising her voice a little to be heard. “If we don't set it off, the ice won't melt. And if we do, well...” she gave a macabre chuckle as she froze over the next low beam, “I think we'll have other things to worry about.”

Conundra burst into a haughty chuckle. “Oh, please! Who said I was talking about you setting it off. All I have to do is send one bolt of magic through there and your precious ice goes bye-bye. And if you're in there, so do you.”

She continued laughing for a second before a second laugh joined her, making her trail off.

Zatrathan shook his head as he chuckled at her.

“A bluff that would be dangerous to call,
had you not stated you don't want us dead.
So tell me, do you really have the gall
to have our deaths directly on your head?

There was a moment of tense silence. Despite not facing them, Icy could imagine the staredown between the confident smirk of Zatrathan, shared by at least Caprice and Archer, opposed by Conundra's expressionless helmet.

As Icy finished icing over the last of the ground-based beams, the silence broke. “Well, maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't,” Conundra said, irritation heavy in her tone.

“Ye wouldn't,” Caprice interjected. “Ain't got the ladyballs!”

“But it doesn't matter,” Conundra finished sharply. “Cause it looks like you're through, and that means...”

Icy's eyes widened as she came to a stop past the last beam and whirled around, just in time to see Conundra turn away from whatever was projecting her image and sending a thick, slow bolt of magic out from her horn.

“...I can do that, and I know you're not dumb enough to... what are you doing?!” she cried out, not bothering to hide the blind panic in her voice as she looked down.

Icy followed her eyeline, shifting her focus from the filly's massive image to something far more impressive: Moonwing was dashing down the corridor, leaping over the ice barriers Icy had made and darting around the lines Truffle had painted with blinding speed and precision, her shields shifting rapidly around her back to prevent them from getting too close to the sensor beams.

“What does it look like?” she called back as she leapt over the second barrier. She tossed her shields over the first tall pillar, making the spin in the air for a moment as she ducked down and tumbled under the beam enclosed by a suspended tube, before leaping up and plucking the shields out of the air.

“Get out of there, idiot!” Conundra cried, both out of terror and surprise that her bluff could have been unintentionally true. “You'll get roasted!” Icy could hear the magic of her spell bouncing round a corner behind her.

“Not if I can help it!” Moonwing said as she threw one of her shields forward, flicking her wing to give it a heavy spin as it flew.

The disc sailed forward, the angular momentum carrying it over the beams in front of Moonwing before curving downwards towards the ground. It ricocheted off the lower part of the left wall before bouncing off the ground, the impacts knocking it into a more vertical alignment.

Icy's head followed the shield up as it bounced up, almost reaching the ceiling before gravity halted its momentum, making it hang in the air for a second.

However, a second was all it needed as Icy saw the spell come streaming towards it. It impacted the surface of the shield, bouncing off it and back down the corridor while knocking the shield back down.

“Catch it catch it catch it!” Moonwing yelled as she neared Icy and Truffle.

Icy was just about registering the command when she felt Truffle's hooves wrap around her, barely giving her time to understand what was going on before she was hurled up into the air into the path of the flying disc.

Fortunately, as was often the case, her body was quicker to understand the situation than her mind as her hooves wrapped around the disc and her wings spread out, arresting the momentum given by the shield and allowing her to glide into a curve, narrowly avoiding the area filled with the sensor beams.

As she skidded to a halt, she looked up at Moonwing, her mouth dropping open as the featherless filly took her shield back. “Are you sure you're not Captain Equestria?” she asked.

Moonwing thought for a moment, apparently giving the idea serious consideration before shaking her head. “Pretty sure, yeah. If nothing else, well...” she rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. “I... wasn't actually sure that would work. I mean, I thought it probably would, but... yeah.”

“You... you know what?” Conundra shrugged, forcefully injecting relaxation into her tone. “I'm not even mad. So you got through all the traps so far. Doesn't matter – the best's saved for last. The next trap's only a short way away and, well...” she chuckled nastily, “that one's just straight impossible to get past. I know you won't believe it until you see it, but yeah,” Icy could just picture the smug grin beneath her helmet, “your two-bit tour of the caves ends there.”

“Now, I ain't sayin' that ain't possible,” Caprice replied as she started moving carefully through the gauntlet, just behind Archer and ahead of Zatrathan, “but, well, let's just say I'm waitin' to be convinced. An' if it's anythin' like these other traps, then I gotta say: Bring it on, pane-brain!”

Conundra tilted her head a little. “What does that even mean? Oh, doesn't matter! See you in a minute, morons!” She flicked a hoof forward as she scoffed, dismissing the image.

Icy thought for a moment, also trying to understand Caprice's insult. “Pain-brain? Pain... like her feeling pain or giving it? Cause I don't think she really does either, unless you count...”

“No, Pane!” Caprice corrected as she approached the end of the hazardous area. “P-A-N-E, like glass pane, window pane... cause she wears that helmet over her...” She sighed and shook her head. “I'm runnin' outta ways to say she looks stupid,” she muttered, just loudly enough for Icy to hear.

“Well, anyway,” Archer interjected as, at the rear of the group, Zatrathan hopped over the final ice barrier, “we heading off? Dunno about you guys, but I'm curious what this “impossible” trap's all about.”

“Indeed,” Zatrathan began, not stopping as he came out of the beams but continuing on and making everyone scramble to catch up with him, “we'll see what final trap we meet –
what apparition we, she thinks, can't beat!”

The group galloped onward, stopping only for Archer to retrieve her arrow and send the next one along the path they needed to follow.

They turned the corner, Archer heading slightly ahead to where her arrow had adhered itself, such that she had fired the next one by the time the group had caught up. The process then repeated a number of times, taking the group on a chaotic, winding journey through the confusing crystal passageways.

Eventually, though, Icy started to hear something – a continual crackling coming from the end of the corridor they were in, around the corner. The group slowed a little, Icy presuming that they heard it too, and they approached the bend carefully, the sound increasing to a considerable volume as they did. Eventually, they reached the end of the corridor and halted for a second, curious what trap, real or imagined, would be waiting for them.

As it turned out, they didn't need to actually turn the corner to get a clearer sense of what was there, as bright light spilled out along the walls at seemingly random intervals and intensities. Archer carefully stuck an arrow around the corner, holding it still for a second before nodding and gradually poking her head around the corner to see what was going on. Her eyes widened a little, but she nevertheless stepped around the corner and beckoned for the others to join her, her eyes never leaving whatever she was looking at.

The group filed out into the intersection. Icy, being among the last through, saw all of their expressions shift slightly as they caught sight of whatever it was, until she joined them. Turning down the corridor, she saw what was so arresting their attention and couldn't help a nervous swallow herself.

Floating in midair, suspended by an almost-invisible field of magic, was a row of small, metal coils. There seemed to be absolutely nothing else to the physical objects – they were simply vertical spirals of metal, like springs except that the metal they were made from was thick and looked stiff and solid. They were all connected to each other through rods of metal coming off the top and bottom of each coil, all ending quite a distance from the floor, walls and ceiling. However, what was so intimidating about the sight were the bolts of white lightning continually running through the metal and hopping across the air within the coils. There didn't seem to be a single fraction of a second that didn't have several sparks leaping from point to point, making clear even getting near the apparatus, let alone touching it, would be the last thing one would ever do.

And on the wall just before it was the image of Conundra, looking down on the group with a tremendous amount of smugness in her posture. “Well, look who finally decided to show up!” she jeered, despite the fact that Icy knew they had come here almost as fast as they could have and she was pretty sure Conundra knew that too. “Unfortunately for you, I'm almost through the final barrier to Sombra's inner sanctum. I only need a few more minutes and I think you'll agree this will hold you up a lot longer than that.”

“Let me guess,” Archer said after a moment, sounding more interested than worried, “we gotta figure out if this is an illusion or not?”

Conundra laughed. “Oh, but that's the beauty of this final trap – it doesn't matter. The coils are real, but the lightning? Maybe it's real, maybe it's not but the only way to find out... is to risk getting killed by it! You can do what you like – shoot it, freeze it, play music at it... it won't make a scrap of difference to the electricity. The only thing to do is either avoid getting near it... or get zapped by it. Maybe it is all a trick. But would you bet your life on that?”

There was a pause as the group looked intently at the sparking coils, trying to see some way around what she was saying.

Conundra let loose a single, harrumphing laugh. “Didn't think s-”

“The magic there,” Zatrathan interrupted her, indicating the field holding it in place, “must make the lightning, true?
If so, there may be something we can do!”

Conundra scoffed. “Shows what you know – the magic's just holding it all up, the lightning's all contained in the coils. You can get rid of the magic if you like, but all it'll do is bring it down to the ground and make it even more impossible to get past without being zapped.” She began turning away from the group.

Zatrathan shot her a genuinely friendly smile. “We could, yes, bring it down, but there's no need.
There's other ways electrons can be freed!”

Conundra stopped before turning back. “Electrons? What are you talking ab- huh?” She aborted her question as she saw Zatrathan draw his sword and whirl it round a couple of times, his magic flowing through it to lengthen it again. Before anyone, friend or foe, could ask what he was doing, he twirled it so that he was holding it in the middle of the shaft. He pulled his hoof back for a second before hurling it forward like a javelin.

The sword sailed through the air before flying through two turns of one of the central spirals, its hilt catching on the solid metal. Once this happened, the blade turned downwards, the lightning now flowing through it as well, until it touched the ground.

“Well, least now we know it's probably real,” Archer observed, turning to Zatrathan with a smile. However, Zatrathan's eyes remained fixed on the blade.

“Oh, yeah, real helpful,” Conundra snorted as she swept her head up, looking down on the group. “Too bad you still can't...get... past...” she trailed off, her posture slouching again as she looked at what was happening to the coils.

The electricity that had been coursing through the metal and leaping through the air at every opportunity had already been reduced to a few small sparks and was still diminishing. It was hard to tell with the chaotic nature of the lightning, but Icy could have sworn it was being drained out through the sword.

“Wha... how...? GAH!” Conundra shouted, whirling around in both anger and panic and shutting off the image.

Smiling, Zatrathan strolled casually up to the area beneath the coils, soon followed by Archer, who drew her bow and fired her next trajectory arrow without taking her eyes off him. “Okay, Zat,” she said after a few seconds of astonished silence from everyone, “that was awesome, but I'm with her – how?”

Zatrathan hovered a hoof just over the surface of his sword's metal for a moment, checking for any remaining electricity before picking it up and sheathing it once more. He indicated the coils with a hoof.

“With no electric source to fuel its thunder,
the coils must work by holding in a charge.
And such a trap is quite a snap to sunder,
just drain the lightning into something large.” He jerked his head forward and started moving on, leading the group past the coils as he continued explaining.
“A conduit, like what my sword creates,
would draw excess electrons to the floor.
The path now opened, physics then dictates,
the charge will equalize and zap no more.” He turned to Archer with a smirk.
“A little 'lectric knowledge, I would say,
can go a truly monumental way!”

Archer smiled back at him for a moment before sprinting ahead to the next arrow. However, Icy did notice her flick her tail along Zatrathan's side as she did, though she wasn't sure if Archer was aware and why she would do that if she was.

Still, it didn't seem to bother either of them and, after a moment of consideration, Icy shrugged it off too. There were, after all, more important things to worry about - they were on the home stretch now and a reckoning with a certain young illusionist seemed imminent.


The cloaked figure walked into the lobby of the Tourmaline Hotel. Not even glancing at the staff or the odd looks they were receiving as a grown pony in a hotel mostly full of kids, they walked over to a small lounge area and sat down.

“Soon, Icy Flight. Soon!”