Hidden Castle
“This looks familiar,” Hitch commented as the group rounded a corner and faced a long hallway illuminated by electric LED lights that gleamed off the walls.
“It certainly wasn’t here last I knew,” Flurry added. She ran her hoof along the wall. “Whoever was here made some… renovations.”
“Including dungeons!” Izzy said spiritedly, pushing open a door and sticking her head inside. “Guys, take a look at this!” She moved to the side as the other ponies joined her at the door and peeked inside.
“Oh my stars,” Pipp whispered.
“Nope. I’m leaving,” Zipp announced, spreading her wings as if she was making sure she could still do that. She rubbed her ankles as if experiencing a painful memory.
“Why?” Flurry asked, using her magic to push the door open more. “What happened here?” Even she could see that something was wrong - the room was full of small rooms made of metal with bars in front of them like prison cells. Chains and cuffs were bolted to the floor, but there was hardly enough room to take a step if you were wearing them. One of the cells looked like a fight had happened there, with scratch marks on the floor and drops of something that looked like… Flurry swallowed the bile in her throat, looking away.
“This is where we were captured,” Zipp growled, her eyes full of anger. “And had our memories wiped.” She accidentally nudged one of the cuffs as they walked further into the room and hissed at the rustle it made.
“Who would do something like this?” Flurry demanded, making her horn glow brighter so that they could see the whole room.
“Somepony very evil,” Zipp snapped, hovering by the door like she was anxious to get out.
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything here,” Sprout supplied, looking as bewildered about this place as Flurry was. “There doesn’t seem to be anything… recently.” He turned to Hitch, who was uncharacteristically silent, his eyes downcast. “You okay?”
“Hm?” The stallion lifted his head and blinked, mentally rewinding the conversation. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just… remembering.”
“If this is the Castle of the Two Sisters,” Flurry murmured to herself, “then that means that the throne room is…” She spread her wings and flew to the door, poking her head out and looking to the right. “This way.” The other five ponies followed the alicorn as she led the way through doors and down corridors, each one seemed to have been modernized and industrialized. Nevertheless, the layout of the fortress seemed to be about the same. They were doing well until they reached the cave-in.
“Aaand we’re trapped,” Zipp muttered unhappily, wrapping her arms around herself as she hovered over the group. Her sister spread her own wings and put her hoof on Zipp’s shoulder.
“No, we’re not,” Izzy contradicted, seeing Flurry’s horn grow brighter.
The rocks, rubble, and stone slabs were surrounded by a sunny yellow glow before disappearing in a bright flash of light, leaving a large opening that the alicorn stepped into without hesitation. The others exchanged a look before following.
“Where do you think we are?” Pipp whispered.
Zipp shuddered uncomfortably. “Probably miles under the earth with tons of dirt and rock pressing in on us at every turn, just waiting to collapse on us,” she said with a voice that was a tad bit too high-pitched for her liking. Her sister noticed and nudged her.
“It’ll be fine,” she comforted her. “Flurry can protect us.”
For some reason, that made both Zipp, Hitch, and Sprout a bit more grumpy, and Sprout muttered under his breath, “She couldn’t protect Sunny.”
“Sh!” Izzy shushed him, noticing that the light from Flurry’s horn dimmed slightly.
“Uh, we’re here!” the alicorn said instead with forced cheerfulness. She stepped into a large chamber and moved aside so the others could come inside. The remnants of the throne room were surrounded by a huge dome of earth and rock that didn’t look natural…
“This is amazing,” Izzy said, lighting her own horn for more light. Zipp flew up to the roof and gently rapped her hoof against it, looking doubtful of its ability to hold itself up.
“This is strange,” Flurry whispered, turning to look back at the tunnel they had just come through. “This should be completely buried by now… Random pockets of air don’t just appear in random places under the earth.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but was distracted by something. “What’s that?”
They all listened. “It sounds like… crying?” Izzy supplied, turning to look at the cracked stairs leading up to the raised platform that held the two thrones, barely held together.
“Careful,” Flurry called as the unicorn approached the stairs. “This place is riddled with traps.”
Izzy nodded and carefully peered around the throne with a sun on the top. She gasped, making the others jump and immediately resort to worst case scenarios.
“Sunny?”
“You found her?” Hitch interrupted, racing up to the unicorn’s side followed by Sprout, Zipp, Pipp, and Flurry. “Sunny? Are you okay?”
Flurry squinted into the darkness and brightened her own horn - Izzy’s had gone out from shock.
Huddled in a heap behind the throne was the shape of an earth pony with her head buried under her hooves. Flurry’s light caught off the glossy pink mane streaked with red, yellow, and blue and an orange coat. The figure lifted her head, and her blue-green eyes glimmered with tears.
“Hitch?” she whispered, her voice cracking as it dared to hope. “Izzy? You - you came for me?”
“Of course we came for you,” Zipp butted in, grinning. “Why wouldn’t we?” She started forward, but her sister threw an arm across her path.
“Zipp, wait,” Pipp started, but the older pegasus easily brushed her off.
“What?” she snapped. “It’s Sunny! We found her, and now we can go back and show everypony that she’s not dangerous.” She tried to fly towards her friend, but Pipp once again stopped her.
“I-I think it might be a trick,” she said. “Just… let me try this. Please.”
The pegasus landed on the ground and picked up a small rock from the cracked stone and gently rolled it towards Sunny. As soon as the pebble made contact with the earth pony mare, it vanished in a bright flash of pink light. The chamber suddenly lit up with a bright red light, and a wailing siren echoed throughout the underground dome.
“We have to get out of here!” Pipp shouted over the noise. She turned and ran through a dark doorway leading away from the throne room and away from the rest of the fortress, the others following in a daze. This new tunnel was riddled with cracked stone slabs and vines curling along the walls, and soon they were only making their way by the light of Pipp’s phone - Izzy and Flurry were still looking like their minds were back with the Sunny trap. They all were.
Pipp skidded to a stop at an intersection and turned to their resident Ancient Equestrian expert. “Which way, Flurry?” The alicorn didn’t answer. Pipp grabbed her shoulders and forcefully shook her. “Which way?”
Flurry blinked and looked around. She spotted a rotting tapestry on the wall and turned to the tunnel on the left. “That one will take us to the library,” she murmured. “That’s where we need to go.”
Pipp nodded and Flurry lit her horn so they had more light. The two led the rest of the group through a labyrinth of buried hallways and cracked corridors until they finally - finally - entered into another large room, this one full of books. Like the throne room, it was mostly uncovered, but Flurry discovered the source of this - as the ruins had been buried, a large slab of rock had settled over the library and kept it from being buried.
The six ponies collapsed to the ground, exhausted.
“I can’t believe it,” Zipp murmured. “They… Sunny…” She choked back tears and turned to her sister. “How did you know?”
“Flurry said this place was riddled with traps,” Pipp said modestly, shrugging. “And it’s not like giant pockets of air form under the earth everywhere. And the fact that Sunny was there, unguarded… it just seemed like too much of a coincidence.”
“You saved us,” Flurry said defeatedly. “They knew exactly how to mess with us.”
They were silent for a little bit until Pipp reached into her bag. “Before I forget… I got these for you guys.”
“Seriously?” Zipp snorted. “A cell phone?”
“For communication,” Pipp retorted, passing them out. “If we ever get lost or seperated, then we’ll have these to let the others know where we are.” She hefted the last phone in her hoof before putting it back in her bag. “I was going to give them to you guys earlier, but then Sunny…” She paused and took a deep breath.
“It’s okay,” Izzy said encouragingly. “Thanks, Pipp.”
She smiled and noticed Flurry was gone at the same time everypony else did. They whipped their heads around to see the alicorn fussing over a chair, trying to pull it back but unable to because of rocks trapped in the mechanism.
“Um, Flurry?” Hitch ventured, standing up. “What are you doing?”
“Trying…to…get…this…open,” the alicorn gasped, wrapping her magic around the chair and giving it a good tug. It flew backwards and cuffed her in the lip, but it didn’t fall all the way to the floor. A clunk reverberated through the room, and a section of the wall slowly slid to one side, the stone rubbing against stone and making dust fly into the room.
“Woah.” Zipp spread her wings and flew over to inspect the new room with Flurry. “What is this?”
“A secret room,” Flurry said, rolling her eyes and smirking, “obviously. And if there’s any place in this castle where there would be an entrance to the Hall of Princesses, this would be it.” She trotted inside and started looking around. Zipp and Hitch exchanged a look before they all followed in suit.
The room had been spared the worst of the decay, but it was still very dusty. Pipp gently prodded a faded pillow and sent up a cloud of dust that had them all hacking.
“Sorry,” the pegasus whispered sheepishly.
“Found it!” Izzy said enthusiastically, pushing a book aside to reveal a horseshoe in the wall with seven cutie marks carved into the stone around it. Flurry stepped forward and placed her hoof on the horseshoe, her cutie mark on the wall glowing as it recognized her touch. She turned the shoe, and the wall slid away, revealing a tunnel into which she stepped without hesitation. Zipp lifted her hoof, about to take a step forward, when she spotted the book that Izzy had pushed away. The faded brown leather cover depicted an image of two ponies in slightly rusted gold.
Curious, the pegasus flipped open the cover and saw that it was all hoofwritten, meaning it must be a journal of some kind.
“Zipp!” called her sister, just inside the doorway. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah,” she answered, picking up the book and sliding it into her bag. Sunny had found a journal that turned out to be very useful - perhaps this one would as well. She spread her wings and ran into the Hall after her friends.
“Stupid blasted rock!” Cozy Glow yelled, hurling the tiny pebble across the room, where it shattered upon impact with the wall.
“You said they would fall for that,” Chrysalis snapped. “You said that would work!”
“It should have!” the filly retorted. “Believe me, I know how friendship works, and they would have done anything to get her back! If they found her just waiting here, why wouldn’t they fall for it?” She growled and kicked another rock at the wall.
“Perhaps they knew it was a trick?” the unicorn suggested, cowering under the glare that the exiled queen sent his way. “M-maybe they had a spy or something…”
“This was a meaningless detour,” Chrysalis hissed. “It took us a day and a half to get here, and now we have to make sure he doesn’t run off and stab us in the back, and what do we have to say for it all?” She whirled around to face Cozy Glow. “That these ponies are somehow managing to sneak past us at every turn!”
The filly bristled. “They have no idea what we’re up to,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “They might as well be going blindfolded. We have their friend, and the most powerful pony of the age, in our clutches. We have a powerful weapon and we will use it.”
“You’re forgetting Flurry Heart,” the queen contradicted, hissing as she said the name. “That pony’s the offspring of Shining Armor and Cadance, and she’s as related to Twilight Sparkle as Sunny Starscout. Furthermore, she is an alicorn - a real one. If you ask me, she’s more of a threat. We should focus our efforts on kidnapping her.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Cozy seethed. “The same strategy won’t work again - you of all ponies should know that.” She turned to look at the place where they had set a fake Sunny Starscout to lure her friends in. “Look, these ponies like Flurry Heart well enough, but there’s a kind of bond that they had with Sunny Starscout - something that they don’t have with the princess. Taking Sunny Starscout was the logical option - she’s even more powerful than Flurry Heart. She just doesn’t know it, and we want to make sure she never does - not until we need her abilities for our own purposes.” She faced the seething Chrysalis again. “Or do you have a better idea?”
The changeling growled and snapped, “Fine. They’ll have been long gone by now - and we do still have the upper hoof so far.” She whirled around to face Permafrost, who took a fearful step back. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
After the two had left, Cozy lingered a bit longer. She spread her wings and hopped onto one of the decaying thrones. Though these were far from the kind of chair she imagined for herself (she would appreciate it if hers was new and not a thousand years old), there was still a kind of elating feeling that she got when she sat in a throne - like the whole world was laid out before her, waiting for her decisions and carrying out her wants and needs.
Not much longer, she told herself. Soon the world will be mine.
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Ohh ouch
Yeah I figured that would be too easy
So it looks like they are traveling through the castle of the two sister so far nothing out of the ordinary which surprisingly this Castle is still standing a little as I said before but then they heard a noise and what they found was sunny but unfortunately pipp it's a trap because that would be too easy and it looks like there was like a huge cave in luckily all the ponies are safe and they continue on through the castle meanwhile cozy glow and chrysalis and permafrost are nearby and it looks like they set up the traps and right now they are not too happy they past the traps and now they're worried about flurry heart so they need another plan to get them and cozy glow is really messed up kid