Celestia Goes West

by DungeonMiner

Chapter 26

The dragon passage led down into a different temple section, but there were fewer traps than the coatl path. However, they quickly realized the reason why. On either side of the hallway, new rooms appeared, kitchens, bedrooms, ancient study rooms, and more all appeared down this path. Obviously, this is where the priests once lived, and as they snuck through the old rooms, they found the remnants of long-dead lives.

“So, what do you think we’re looking for?” Sunny asked.

Marble wasn’t sure. In his experience, these kinds of “keys” could be any number of things. He’d seen coins open doors, staves, even jewelry could be properly enchanted to open magical doors. These were rare in Lusitanpec territory. The gems needed for such enchantments had to be made by foreign unicorns and then traded for excess food that the Lusitanpec ponies produced in large quantities. “A magical item of some sort,” he answered, hoping that he didn’t sound like an idiot. “I have no idea what kind, though. My best guess would be a headdress or something. Anything that might deal with the Coatl himself.”

Sunny accepted that without any question or comment, which he hoped was a good sign that he still had some credibility with the mare that seemed so good with everything.

Less bitterly, he did concede that Sunny knew what she was talking about, more than he initially thought. The mare could easily be a leader in his field. She could go hoof-to-hoof against any of the ponies he knew back at the university and talk circles around them. Sunny could just walk straight into academia and metaphorically take the crown from the rulers as though she were a barbarian of old.

But, at the end of the day, she was out here. The mad mare could be making so much money at the university. Instead, she decided to move into the wilderness and apparently fight cults for a living.

A part of him thought it was crazy, another thought she made a perfect choice, and she probably didn’t belong anywhere else. Everything he saw about the unicorn revealed a mare made for adventure, and, well, she was very good at it.

“Trap here,” Marble said, avoiding the trigger he spotted before moving further down the hallway.

Sunny avoided the pressure plate he pointed out and followed after him. “I still find it weird that they’d trap the area they lived in.”

“This is where they wanted to catch thieves more than anything,” Marble explained, though he suspected that Sunny might catch on once he got through half of his sentence. “If a thief wanted to steal something, he might get away with taking some jewelry from a crooked priest rather than stealing an artifact from their actual gods. Stealing from mortals is a lesser crime compared to that. So the priests needed to protect themselves.”

Sunny nodded.

“Besides, if the priests know the rules well enough, they won’t have to worry about the traps nearly as much. There’s a tripwire above us. You should be fine, but watch your horn.”

Sunny ducked behind him just in case. “I suppose that makes some sense,” she replied. “Though I do wonder about the wisdom of keeping the key in the less-guarded area of the temple.”

Marble shrugged at that one. “Sometimes ponies aren’t the most logical beings in the world.”

Sunny nodded. “I can attest to that, at least.”

Marble turned back to the hallway in front of him and worked carefully but confidently as he slowly solidified the reverse-engineered rules of the traps of the temple. Despite the essential job of finding traps and making sure both of them survived, he couldn’t help but think about the mare following him.

How well-traveled was she? How much did she actually know? At this point, he’d already decided to look into her crazy theory about the monument once he made it back to civilization, but did she have any other secrets?

He tripped a pressure plate in front of him and watched as a blade dropped down like a guillotine. “Another one,” he noted.

“I did notice,” she replied.

Marble let the silence sit between them for a moment before he spoke up again. “You’re... you’re very good at this.”

“What? The traps?” Sunny asked, confused.

“No,” he said. “I mean everything...well, everything else. The whole adventuring thing. You...well, you handled an entire tower’s worth of ponies, and,” he glanced down at her scarred chest where the lightning bolt hit her, “and you mostly came out alright.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow. “You say, trying not to look at the lightning scar on my chest,” she said with a smirk.

“Well, I mean, you got hit, but you were saving my life when it happened, but you dealt with most of them before that. You could have probably done it alone.”

Sunny nodded slowly. “I suppose,” she said. “But really, it’s not that impressive. It’s mostly just training, confidence, and time. Anypony could do what I can if given enough education and training.”

“I don’t know about that,” Marble said, “and besides, you spent your time learning that. That matters.”

Sunny nodded. “I guess it does,” she replied.

They devolved into silence again.

Marble wanted to say something again, but everything he could think about just sounded like empty flattery. He kept working, moving forward, and heading down the hallway before he found a new trap.

“I don’t know, I just—”

“Hush, do you hear that?”

Marble froze as all of his instincts from his years of delving into ancient tombs stood on end as he began to sweat, leaning over a stone he just checked for triggers.

“I hear something,” she whispered.

Marble still didn’t move but strained his ears, listening for something, anything that Sunny might have heard.

“The side room, is it clear?” Sunny asked.

“The door’s not trapped,” he said. “I can’t speak for the rest of the room.”

Sunny whispered back. “The odds?”

Marble thought about it for a moment. The individual rooms were probably the quarters of the priests who lived here. The chances of any one of those rooms being trapped were low, but it could just as likely be a dummy room meant to lure a thief in. Those would most certainly be trapped and would have little other use than to kill somepony. Most had to be actual rooms, though.

“Decent,” Marble replied.

Sunny moved, tugging at Marble as she disappeared into the next room, pulling in the pegasus after her. Spinning blades didn’t jump out of the floor to tear them to shreds, which Marble took as a good sign. Sunny moved carefully, nearly closing the door behind her as she pressed herself up against the wall.

Now Marble could hear it. The unmistakable slapping sound of flesh against the stone floor got louder and louder with each passing second. Something moved toward them, something without hooves, but what—

The mandrill.

Marble’s eyes went wide as he pressed himself against the door as well, hovering over Sunny as she stared into the hallway from the door.

The mandrill came into view, stopping right up next to where they stood a second ago, just visible through the crack between the ancient stone door and the frame.

The mandrill sniffed the air deeply, moving his head carefully as though searching for a scent in the air. “The scent dies here,” he muttered in a deep, resonating voice that Marble felt in his bones. “Why? Why stop here?”

The mandrill glanced around carefully, and for a brief moment, Marble looked into the monster’s eyes. Marble stared into the bright yellow but somehow terribly dark eyes, with pupils wide and searching. The pegasus felt that cruelty that didn’t even bother to hide in the thing’s eyes, and the shiver that ran down his spine nearly had him falling to the ground.

The mandrill began to move forward with a sharp exhale, only for another guillotine blade to drop from the ceiling.

In a move that Marble couldn’t believe he saw, the giant primate did nothing but raise an arm and bring it down on the falling blade like a hammer blow. The glass blade shattered in two, falling forward in an explosion of a thousand crystal shards that scattered down the hallway, leaving the mandrill entirely unscathed.

Mable’s breath caught in his throat. The thing moved so fast, with such terrible strength, that it broke the trap while it was deploying.

There was no way that could have actually happened. He must have imagined that or something because there was just no way—

The mandrill moved around the corner, and the moment it did, Sunny moved. “We need to go.”

“What?” Marble asked.

“We can’t stay still,” Sunny replied. “If that thing catches us, I don’t think he’ll just let us go with a warning. We need to get out.”

“But what about the feather?” Marble asked.

“We can get another one somewhere else,” Sunny replied. “Right now, I’m more worried about you getting out alive.”

Marble blinked, and a part of him noted her word choice. He shook his head. “Sunny, these black-vested ponies are willing to throw so many ponies at the temples. At this rate, I don’t know if there are any other feathers. We know that the vault here is untouched. This is our best chance. We’ve got to make this work.”

Sunny blinked. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that, but are you sure?”

He was. Ever since the tower, the thought had been burrowing at the back of his mind. If these ponies were being forced to die, then either the feathers were such a limited resource, or they probably managed to brute force their way to enough that neither Sunny nor him could count on it.

Marble nodded. “I don’t think we have the time we thought we had.”

Sunny nodded slowly. “Alright. Okay, here’s the plan, we need to go through these rooms to try and find the key. The faster, the better. We need to be careful of both traps and the mandrill. The moment things get too dangerous, we leave and maybe try to regroup, no arguments, alright?”

Marble nodded.

Sunny sighed. “For the record, I don’t like this, but we’ll make it work.” She glanced back over at the door. “The monster seems to be smelling us somehow. We’ll need a way to mask our scent.”

“There’s not a lot we can do with that, I think.”

Sunny nodded. “Then our other option is to get our scent everywhere, and we’ll have to be fast too. I don’t like the chance of him turning around to follow after us once he knows the scent trail ended.”

“I thought it did end?”

“He said he’s not sure, and we need to capitalize on that. If we can flood the room with pony-smell before he gets back here, that’s our best bet to remain hidden.”

“How do we do that?”

Sunny checked the door one last time before pushing it open. “Start rubbing your body against all the doors and walls. If the monkey’s sense of smell is strong enough to follow us anyway, then it won’t matter.”

Marble wondered why he should bother then but moved nonetheless, finding every non-trapped surface and brushing against it. He ran down the hallway, rubbing against everything he could while Sunny did the same.

“What next?” Marble asked as he pressed against a wooden door.

“Then we need to hide,” Sunny said. “Leave that to me.”

Marble watched as she disappeared into a side room as the pegasus kept rubbing against every surface he could reach.

“That’s enough. We can’t waste more time,” Sunny said, calling him into the room she ducked into. Marble quickly joined her, and he blinked when he saw an open hole in the wall held up by magic.

“Wha—?”

“Get in, quick!” Sunny called.

Marble moved, though he was wondering if it was a good idea or not to move into the hole in the wall. Sunny moved in behind him and used her magic to close the open gap, sealing them in.

Marble waited for a moment before he whispered. “Is...is this safe?”

Sunny shushed him. Then, a moment later, the unicorn answered. “Probably, just don’t break my concentration. I don’t know if this is a load-bearing wall or not.”

Marble glanced around the small pocket in the stone and wondered how well this would work.

“Marble,” Sunny hissed.

“What?”

“I’m going to make a peephole in the stone. If you see the mandrill, let me know because that will be our chance to move.”

Marble nodded and watched as a small hole opened in the wall.

The mandrill stood in the room. The monkey’s breathing was deep, and his eyes scanned the room as it searched around for something, anything that might give away his prey.

“They are close,” the mandrill muttered to himself. “They must be. But where? And why hide? Have ponies decided to betray Lady Dusk? I must kill them if they have. Can’t have traitors to the Lady, no-no.”

Marble glanced up at Sunny, but her eyes were closed, concentrating on the spell that kept everything up around her.

He turned back to his peephole.

The mandrill took another deep breath before he roared and slammed his powerful arms into the ground in a fit of rage before rushing out of the room.

Marble waited a moment, checking to see if the monster didn’t run back in before he whispered. “I think we’re good.”

Sunny opened the wall again before her magic began picking up rocks from around the room and slipping them back into place. A minute later, the stones looked basically correct, though a bow that wasn’t there before started to develop.

“I hope that holds,” Marble said as Sunny panted slightly.

“I hope so too,” Sunny said. “Come on, we can’t waste any more time.”

Sunny galloped out of the room, and Marble followed after her, running down the hallway he hadn’t explored yet. Marble took the lead here, using every secret he pried from this temple to avoid the traps that lay in front of them, those that weren’t shattered by the mandrill, of course.

Another turn and they found themselves staring at the entrance of a singular but strangely opulent room.

Marble took one look at it and recognized it as the quarters of the High Priest. “Grab anything that looks important,” Marble said as he flew into the room.

Sunny followed after him and began searching wildly through the cabinets and containers around the room.

Marble tore up a basket and saw a pristine feather headdress staring back at him. The superb condition of the brightly-colored plumage, untouched by time or dust, gave away the thing as magical, and the pegasus pulled it out. “I think I found it,” he said.

Sunny took one look at it and nodded. “We need to head back to the vault.”

“But won’t the Mandrill be in the way?”

Sunny bit her lip before she turned to look at the wall. “Well, I have a terrible idea.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll head back, and if we run into the thing, just worry about getting around the thing, I’ll distract him and then catch up.”

“Are you sure?”

She smirked. “I can teleport short distances. I’ll be fine.”

Marble sighed and nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.”

With the headdress in his hooves, he took to the air and began flying back up the hallway. Sunny followed close behind, using the same path Marble showed her on the way in. They passed the room they hid in and heard stone grinding as the bowing wall began to bend more.

“That’s going to collapse,” Marble said.

“And I don’t want to be here when it does,” Sunny said. “Keep going.”

They pushed forward, heading back upward toward the split pathways, with Marble flying—

The massive form of the mandrill smashed through a door and barked in a terrible laugh. It fell in behind Marble, roaring as he chased the pegasus. “There you are! There are the traitors!”

The beast raised one of its arms to bring down onto Marble’s back before the primate was enveloped in golden light.

Sunny pulled the monkey off his feet with a mighty magical heave and threw him back behind them both. The mandrill tumbled but regained his feet quickly and laughed. “Strong traitors, eh? Most disappointing.”

“Keep going, Marble!” Sunny said. “Get to the vault! I’ll keep him distracted.”

“How?” Marble asked.

Sunny answered by pulling one of the stones in the walls free.

Rock groaned as the wall began shaking, but none of the stones from the ceiling fell on top as they moved.

“Are you crazy?” Marble called. “You’ll bring the whole place down on us!”

“Not yet,” she said with a smirk before she threw the stone behind her. It crashed into the hall, followed by a cry of surprise from the monkey. “Hopefully, you’ll be out of the temple by the time it actually starts collapsing.”

“You want to bring it down?”

“If it stops that thing?” Sunny asked before they both heard the sound of the boulder that she pried from the wall whistle through the air before it flew past them and smashed into the corner. They turned around. “Yeah, I think that would be a fair trade.”

They turned another corner and appeared in the room with the differently marked passages. Sunny nearly screeched to a halt and made her way to the snake passage. “Head down to the vault, and grab whatever’s in there. I’ll try to hold off the monkey while you get it. Grab it, and then head back up as fast as you can. I’m only able to give you five minutes. Can you do that?”

He glanced down the hall. He might be able to make that. It’d be close, though. He turned back to Sunny.

“I can do that.”

She smiled. “Then get going.”

He nodded and took to the air again, rushing down the way.

And all he heard was Sunny yelling behind him. “Hey ugly! I bet you can’t follow me!”

Marble hoped to Celestia that she’d be okay.

Comments

[djthomp]

Less bitterly, he did concede that Sunny knew what she was talking about, more than he initially thought. The mare could easily be a leader in his field. She could go hoof-to-hoof against any of the ponies he knew back at the university and talk circles around them. Sunny could just walk straight into academia and metaphorically take the crown from the rulers as though she were a barbarian of old.

Very appropriate wording given that she is a barbarian of old.

“We can get another one somewhere else,” Sunny replied. “Right now, I’m more worried about you getting out alive.”

Celestia does not appear to be personally intimidated by the murder monkey.

Marble hoped to Celestia that she’d be okay.

Lol

[MoonlightRift]

Marble hoped to Celestia that she’d be okay.

lmao

[sunr4y]

Marble hoped to Celestia that she’d be okay.

*inhale*
so, actually-