Perquisition

by Diexna

Chapter 2

Perquisition

Chapter 2

The tower was quite a view to behold. Although most ponies living in the town had gone to see it from a closer perspective, few had actually dared to go inside. When actually up close, it was hard to imagine anything actually being that size if one weren’t looking at it directly. Any mountains that could be seen off in the distance across the fields felt like simple hills in comparison.

The duo was standing outside the entrance, which was easily several times the size of a normal doorway, usually only twice the height of a normal pony. They were going through their saddlebags to make sure the final preparations were finished for what would hopefully be last their last journey inside.

“So I should probably show you what this new thing I got from the main is,” Kickbolt said, almost giddy with anticipation.

Sketch could already feel the weight in the pit of her stomach. Whenever her pegasus partner had something new to show her, it always ended up with less than optimal results.

“Please just be careful,” she said. “I don’t want another automatic saddle-mounted-lantern again,” she continued while covering her mane. “When you took that thing out last time you almost ended up bald!”

“Don’t worry! I promise, I actually thought things through for once, just like you asked!” he responded with a smile on his face. Sketch said nothing, but gestured for him to go on.

Kickbolt started rummaging in his saddlebags and pulled out two boxes, and placed them on the grass between them. “You know how I never get any use out of my wings whenever we end up in a tunnel or tight area and we’re locked in combat? I think this might finally give me an edge in those situations,” the pegasus said, and started to open one of the boxes.

Sketch finally gave in, intrigued in whatever it was for once, knowing that Kickbolt would probably bring it out despite her warnings. While she couldn't deny the fact that they could use whatever help they needed, Kickbolt had a tendency to over-complicate the best solution with these things. “Fine, as long as it might actually help us... wait... are those blades?!” she bellowed. Staring down into the open box, she could see a set of fine golden blades molded into a metallic harness. “Seriously, what are you thinking?! You always end up hurting yourself in some way with everything you bring with you, and now you’re planning to do so with actual sharp objects?” the mare yelled at him, stomping furiously with her hooves for emphasis.

Kickbolt faced Sketch, wearing a stoic expression, having prepared several arguments in advance. “I know what it looks like, but let me just show it to you nice and calmly and then explain the purpose for it, before you make any quick assumptions about how I’ll end up cutting my own throat?” he asserted quickly.

She just focused on him with worried, angry eyes.

Kickbolt took this opportunity to take the harness out of the open box and started mounting it to his left wing. When done, it had effectively given his wing gold tinted knife-like feathers instead of his normal marine blue ones. “See, it’s pretty much a pegasus battle harness; with this, I’ll be able to use my wings in actual battle if needed! And look, the way the blades are placed I can also use them to deflect incoming attacks too!” he proceeded to strike a few poses and slashing an imaginary enemy by flapping his wing in a way to cut anything in front of him.

“So you think strapping sharp objects to your body is a good idea? I’m pretty sure you can figure out what my next question will be,” Sketch said while eyeing the blades carefully, wincing whenever he gave them a test-attack.

Kickbolt fixed his wings comfortably, easier said than done with the new harness. “I know, what if I cut myself?” he answered, having already seen that coming from a long way. “There are two reasons that won't happen, mainly because the blades are curved upwards away from my actual body, not to mention they’re not really pointy, they’re meant for slashing. Secondly, if you look closer, you’ll see that the harness also covers the vulnerable parts of my body that could end up getting cut by these blades!” he responded with a confident smirk on his face.

“While I have to admit it does seem more... well... useful than the other things you’ve brought... it also seems more dangerous. I just don’t know... oh alright, fine.” She sighed heavily. “But you have to swear that you won't let those things get near me!” Sketch ended while shaking her hoof at the knifes, as if to push them away without touching them.

Kickbolt looked amused. That went way better than I hoped! he thought. “You know as well as I do that I would never hurt you... intentionally at least,” he chuckled. “I’ll be careful,” he reassured her. “Now help me get the other harness on!” the blue stallion finally let out with glee on his face, pointing to the other unopened box between them.

Soon enough, he was wearing two golden wings on top of his normal ones dark blue ones, giving them a few test flaps until he finally took a short experimental flight. “These things are really light too! While they’re making it a little uncomfortable to fly, they’re not really making it harder,” he said while landing with a light step next to Sketch, his final wing flaps causing a slight breeze in her mane.

“Well, I checked the list, and I think we got all the provisions we need, among other things,” the mare added. “You finally ready to do this?” Kickbolt nodded eagerly, ready to give his new harness a field test.

The two of them finally started walking into the massive entrance of the tower.

ö~ö~Ö~ö~ö

The inside of the tower was a huge circular and bright room, but only a small part of daylight was getting in through the main entrance.

Sketch and Kickbolt walked further into the room, they exited the last of the daylight they would see for a few days, while instead entering the green glow given off by the many emeralds adorning the elaborate insides of the tower. “This lighting never gets old. It makes the entire tower feel so much more... more... more-” Sketch slowed down while trying to come up with a fitting description.

“Mystical?” Kickbolt interrupted as he walked past her.

Sketch’s eyebrows furrowed as she trotted up to speed with Kickbolt. “I was going to say mysterious, but mystical will do.”

Along the wall opposite of the entrance there were three smaller entrances, still larger than the usual door openings they’re used to, but compared to the main entrance they looked normal enough. Next to the third opening there was a red ribbon hanging. Without saying anything the duo walked straight into the third passage. After only a short moment of walking they came upon a split, with a red ribbon conveniently hanging on the left side of it. Kickbolt glanced at the second ribbon while walking by and let a question float out into the air, “Who was it again that came up with this ribbon system? I never got to use something so simple back in in the Main City.”

Sketch felt partially insulted by not having been faced directly when asked the question. “I’ll have you know it was the original explorers that came to Fourtow that started using it!” she quickly retorted. “And don’t you dare call it simple! This method has been invaluable to the original masters, the masters taking their place and all other explorers that have ever been in the area!” she said while kicking up more dust than she should have been. “It’s not our fault we don’t have an unlimited supply of magic stones...”

Kickbolt replied nonchalantly, “Well, I always did enjoy the marker stones. Both effective and simple!”

“And what do you call the ribbons then?” she spat out. Kickbolt chuckled. “So how did those marker stones work, anyway?” she asked, curious about this other method that was preferred in the Main City.

“Easy! You leave a magical marker that activates whenever anypony walks close, showing the desired message.” Kickbolt’s teeth showed with a smile as he was happy to lecture Sketch not once, but twice the same day. “You could either just leave a short message, or verbal messages in some cases - though that would use up the magic stones more quickly. That and simple arrows pointing the way.”

Sketch blinked a few times in the green glow while staring at the pegasus before following him again with her head lower than usually. “Stupid ribbons...” was all she muttered under her breath. I wish we had more magic stones, she thought.

After following the paths of the red ribbons for a short while, past a few turns and twists, they finally came to long set of stairs circling its way up the tower. Just as they were about to start walking up them, there was a low growl came from somewhere behind them.

Kickbolt’s ears twitched in response to this and quickly paced back again to place himself closer to Sketch. “Did you hear that?” he asked with a low voice.

Sketch waved a dismissing hoof, as careless as ever. “Relax, it’s probably just some stray animal that wandered in here. You always assume the worst at the first sign of anything bigger than a field mouse,” she replied jokingly.

“Yeah, silly me,” he muttered. “At least I consider anything smaller than a dragon a possible threat as well,” he countered with an annoyed look on his face.

The stairs had big flat steps, the height difference between each one was only a few centimeters; they assumed it circled all the way to the top. Kickbolt was finally relaxed again. “Did we end up putting up anything other than yellow ribbons last time? I only remember almost walking into traps all the time,” he laughed nervously as he recalled their last visit, making Sketch wary.

“Well we did find that one thing that might open the door if we can figure out how to make it do anything, so there was a blue ribbon for that... let me check the book,” she answered while pulling out her map book for consulting.

They’d already passed quite a few openings as she consulted her book; the doorways were decorated with varying colored ribbons like green or yellow ornamented ribbons outside, most doors had simply nothing but a lone passage leading further in.

Sketch had gotten up the page for floor twenty-eight and started counting yellow markers. “One... two... three... four... five... yeah, you were able to ‘find’ six different traps, I’m still surprised you managed not to actually get hurt by any of them,” she remarked. “One spike trap door, two spikes in the wall traps, two trap doors leading down to the floor below and one of the oh-so-classic ‘wind breaker traps’,” she pointed out, the last words making Kickbolt blush, as he was the one that usually ended up activating the traps by accident.

“Why would anyone ever consider making such a pointless trap anyway? All they do is blow old smelly air through those weird pipes!” the blue stallion exclaimed while covering his face, trying to abstain from getting any redder.

Sketch snickered a while before replying. “Beats me. My current theory is that they used to be filled with some sort of deadly gas, but over the years the gas must have leaked out and been replaced with air. The smell they leave really makes for awkward situations though,” she giggled while trying to hide it by covering her mouth with a hoof. “Anyway, I don’t think we usually end up running into any more traps than that, so you might have just cleared them all for us on this floor, besides that we only found that weird box with the levers. Since we couldn't get it to do anything I think we should see if we can find any clues as to how to get to the next floor,” the green earth pony finally ended.

Kickbolt nodded.

“Well then, lead on!” she uttered.

The last time they had explored the tower, they had managed to get to the twenty-eighth floor and rather far into it. They’d had to finally give up for the time being, forced to return to town to rest and restock their supplies after finding what looked like a huge rectangular shaped stone placed in the middle of a giant circular room. Besides the topside of the stone, all the sides had two levers pointing out. Finally, the top side of the box had a, what Kickbolt had explained, as after flying above it to get a better look, ‘a thingy,’ Much to Sketch’s frustration, as she herself was unable to see what was on the top side. They had spent some time considering what to do, until they had decided they would need more supplies, and needed to continue exploring the floor until anything could be done.

As they finally reached the top of the stairs circling all the way up, they found themselves facing a stone wall, placed in the middle of the stairs, blocking anyone ascending any further. Instead they turned to the final door opening available to their left, and walked in.

Having already explored most of this floor already, Sketch took the lead. By using her sense of direction along with the maps she had drawn, she eventually brought them further than they had ever been before. “Okay, your turn,” she said while grabbing her canister of water for a drink after all the stairs and walking.

Kickbolt quickly took the lead, shrugging his newly bladed wings in preparation for whatever they could end up encountering. He slowly started walking forward, cautiously making sure to check all the surfaces for any unnatural markings, such as holes or odd lines, which would be dead giveaways for traps.

Behind him, Sketch had her book out. In the emerald glow she was slowly making notes of the passage they were taking, making a rather crude map compared to her other work that she would later on improve to fit with the rest of her work.

Kickbolt suddenly stopped. Sketch wasn’t ready for that, resulting in her bumping into his flank, dropping the pen she had in her mouth to the floor.

“Ow, what’s going on? You can at least say something before you just stop like that!” she growled while picking the pen back up.

He ignored her, his ears started twitching while listening. He was turning his head back and forth as if looking for something. Sketch recognized this behavior and quietly stepped to the side.

Kickbolt suddenly jumped to the flank-side of Sketch, now certain of which the direction the threat he had detected was coming from.

After staring down the hallway for a moment, he seemed to lighten up a little until he finally said, “Not much, I think there’s only one. Follow me closely.” Sketch said nothing, knowing her companion would easily be able to take care of the minor threat. After all, he always did.

After going back a short distance it finally came into view, a short stubby creature with two arms reaching down to the floor, standing upright and being an almost sickly dark green color, was standing near one of the corners they had passed earlier. There was a yellow ribbon indicating a trap further in. In one of its hands, the goblin was holding a small grey object.

Kickbolt let his wings relax when he saw it. “Good, it’s one of the dumb ones! I could actually use this for some testing!” he exclaimed with a content voice. He flexed his wings, readying the blades.

“Just don’t mess with it too much.” Sketch sounded annoyed, getting distracted from what she wanted to do was a mood killer.

Kickbolt slowly started approaching the stocky creature, now clearly being able to see that the object in its hand was a sharpened stone.

“Wow, I think it actually got a rock as a weapon, I’m surprised, normally these ones just charge in bare handed.” He chuckled to himself, but then he noticed something dripping from the creature’s palm. “Wait, it’s bleeding already?”

By now he was close enough to give the goblin reason enough to attack, giving of a low growl while attempting to hit Kickbolt, by swinging its rock-wielding arm in an incredibly awkward angle.

The pony quickly moved one of his new bladed wings in between his face and the attacker, deflecting the rock with ease.

“I think it actually sharpened that rock, must explain why it’s bleeding from its hand.” Sketch said, standing next the stallion by now.

“How does a sharpened weapon explain why it would be bleeding?” he asked.

“I think the rock is basically a sharpened blade, except it never had the foresight to stop sharpening the blade to actually give it a hilt,” she explained to him with a flat voice.

“I told you they were stupid.”

Sketch groaned. “Can you at least hurry? We have work to do!”

The goblin was clutching the bladed rock harder now, wounding itself further, more blood dripping even faster on the rock floor. It growled and tried to stab the stallion once more, who just as easily as last time was able to deflect the blow.

He turned his head to Sketch after pushing the goblin away with one of his wings. “Hey Sketch, what trap is down there?” he asked, pointing his hoof to somewhere behind the goblin.

“Oh, I think it’s a trap door leading down a floor. Why?” she responded while taking a few steps back, guessing what’s about to happen.

Kickbolt slowly started to grin as the goblin was moving in to attack once again. “You’ll see in a second.” He turned around, leaving his rear open to the goblin, but before it had time to react he had already bucked it in face, shooting it down to around halfway into the hall. It landed on its back but quickly got up again and growled at them.

“Their resistance to injuries always surprises me. Or they just don’t care about getting hurt,” she noted. “Also, good idea with the trap.” She gave an amused look to her partner, having been right with her assumption.

Kickbolt grinned.

The goblin, now furious for getting kicked in the face, started running as fast as its stubby legs would let it. It only got a few steps until something beneath it clicked, opening a trap door. It started falling down to the floor maze below while shrieking, and what oddly enough sounded like cursing, until the trap door finally reset itself with a heavy clunk.

“What, so no ‘slashing’ with your awesome new weapon?” Sketch queried her friend with a smirk.

Kickbolt looked away, trying to avoid eye contact. “I thought it had already bled enough, with that sharpened rock and all,” he said. His face was actually turning slightly pale at the thought.

Sketch sighed. “Right well, let’s keep going then. Come on.” They turned back around to return to the path they were already working on. After walking back to where they had left, they took their original formation with Kickbolt in the front, slowly walking forward and checking for potential traps, and Sketch in the rear, mapping the area as they covered it.

Whenever they got to an intersection, they would first put up a red ribbon to show the path they took. In case they would end up circling back, Sketch would look at the map-in-progress and deduce the most probable route they should be going in order to find something. After having circled around a few times, putting up ribbons wherever needed. Slowly but surely Sketch was able to put together the paths taken into a map they could use to easily check where they would need to go.

“Still no traps, huh?” Kickbolt said to break the silence from having circled around a few times, both of them working on routine. “I guess that means you were right about already having found them on this floor,” the pegasus said in a slightly cheery voice.

“Maybe, but we could just be lucky,” she replied. “For all we know the next corridor we take could have ten traps in it,” she mocked, trying to scare him.with a voice trying to instill fear.

Kickbolt immediately turned around and whimpered, “Don’t! Please don’t jinx anything! Things were going so well!” he cried out.

Sketch pretended to be slightly shocked by her partner's sudden reaction. “Wait, really? You’re superstitious about that sort of thing?” the earth pony asked with a sly grin on her face.

The stallion cringed. “Why do we have to do this every time?” he said with a depressive tone. “All I’m asking of you is to not mention anything about possible bad things happening.”

She chuckled. “Sorry, guess it’s just routine that we do this every time we go into this tower.”

“But it’s actually happened a few times, and you know it...” he finally ended, his voice quivering.

She said nothing, but only smiled slightly to herself, recalling how the pegasus would always panic at the thought of anything unusual regarding traps.

Afterwards, Kickbolt was going at a considerably slower pace. Sketch used this opportunity to make a few extra notes in her map book, taking some extra time to adjust some of the more shaky lines she’d accidentally made from simultaneously walking and drawing, and from occasions, stumbling across some of the uneven rock surface.

Eventually, after walking down a corridor from one of the hallways, they finally reached what looked like a dead end, but instead of just another of the emerald studded walls, it had no gems at all to give off any light.

“That’s weird, let’s take a closer look,” Sketch remarked, as they slowly approached the curious dead end.

Kickbolt, hesitant after their last conversation, said nothing and slowly approached the last wall in the corridor while simultaneously checking for any final traps.

“Let’s see... it’s a bit dusty, but I think I can make out some markings?” The mare tried to lean up to what she thought was the markings to blow off the dust, but she was barely too short to actually get close enough to do so, ending up just blowing until her face turned red. “Do you mind?” she asked with an annoyed voice, panting.

Kickbolt had been looking at her, chuckling for a moment. Then he cleared his throat, trying to get serious. “Stand back then, I’ll flap my wings to blow it away,” he requested of Sketch, trying to make sure she wouldn’t be in close vicinity of his blade-mounted wings while flapping them.

She took a few steps behind as requested and took out her book to check for something; she wanted to confirm one of her suspicions. After a few seconds of analyzing her current map she noted, “I think there might be another room behind this wall, looking at the map I’ve made so far. There’s still a big empty space that we haven’t been able to find a way to yet that should be just in front of us,” she said while pointing at the void space on her map in progress.

Kickbolt wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he reared up on his hind legs and started flapping his wings hard a few times to blow off the dust from the markings. The resulting dust cloud took a few minutes of angry waving from Sketch to settle, not liking the fact of getting dust all over her notes. After several apologies and coughing fits from Kickbolt, he leaned in a bit closer to see more clearly in the green light. “It looks like... some symbols? No, wait... are those huge buttons maybe?” he asked, while pointing at the lines surrounding each of the four symbols in a square shape.

Sketch walked back up to get a closer look at the markings, “Maybe, I guess,” she replied while writing something down in her book, only to stop to get rid of any dust still residing in it before continuing. She raised her head to take another look at the wall. “So, what do these look like to you? This one looks like three spikes, doesn’t it?” she said, referring to the symbol on the far right. “Oh and this one next to it looks like... more spikes, but sideways?” Sketch said with a quiet voice, turning her head while thinking.

Kickbolt looked at the two left symbols. “This first one looks like, I think... a door?” He moved his head on to the second one. “Hey, can you tell what that is? I can't make it out.”

Sketch leaned in closer to Kickbolt to get a better look, “It looks like a cloud or something?” she frowned while thinking.

“I don’t get it, what are we supposed to do here? We have four weird symbols stuck on giant buttons on a huge weird wall,” he sighed, trying to understand.

Sketch thought back to the original box they had found in one of their earlier visits. “I don’t think this is related to the box with those levers attached to it, and I don’t remember seeing anything like this over there, so I think this is a puzzle on its own,” she discerned. “What if... these are the traps we’ve seen on the floor?”

“You mean... the trap doors and the spikes?” he said with a puzzling look on his face.

“Right! I think it actually fits, we’ve seen four types of traps on this floor, and these 4 symbols could each be meant for one of them! The three spiked picture could be the spiked trap door, and the other one with the spikes sideways could be the wall-spike traps!” she cried out with excitement.

Kickbolt was catching on, leaning in closer. “I get it! So then this one must be the trap door, and this last one with the cloud must symbolize... gas? For those ones that don't work anymore I guess?” he assumed.

Sketch nodded. “Right, one for each type of the traps on this floor. And remember what you said about these symbols looking like buttons with the squares around them? I think we’re supposed to press them. Question is, what are the ‘rules’ for pressing them?” She examined the wall closer, looking for any further clues. She scowled as she was unable to find anything.

“By rules you mean what order or whatever to get this working? The only thing I can think of is that there’re six traps on the floor, you even noted down how many of each, didn't you?” he asked her.

“Hmm...” Sketch thought for a moment, alternating between looking at the wall and in her book. “We’ve already been to most of this floor already by now, the only places we haven’t checked out are the occasional corridor in the end of a few hallways, by looking at the current mapped progress, and it looks like they’d just lead to dead ends either way.” She closed the book and looked up again. “I think I know what we can try.”

Kickbolt froze. “Try? You want to just try something?” he blurted out. “You do know what could happen if we do something wrong here!” he said with a firm voice.

“W-Well...” she stuttered. Her explorer nature wasn’t a careful one, but adventurous. She felt no reason as to having to clear out every single detail before proceeding, if she saw a way to do so.

“Exactly, you have absolutely no idea HOW many things could go wrong!” he almost shouted in her face. “I say we go back and check out those last areas for further clues, maybe even go back to the box, before we do anything.”With this he turned around and started trotting back the corridor back into the hallway, as if only to get away from the wall. He started rummaging in his saddlebag to pull out a blue ribbon to place at the corner to indicate a point of interest.

Sketch however, used this window of opportunity to attempt to push the buttons. But with her small body she couldn’t quite reach up to them. It pained her to have to abuse her book this way, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. She really didn’t want to go back and check what she knew would be dead ends, when it was possible that a whole room lay behind this wall! She grabbed one end of the book with her teeth, leaned up against the wall with her fore hooves, and finally slammed it into the first symbol, the one with the trap door, twice. She quickly followed that by proceeding to slam it into the next button once, the symbol with the gas cloud.

By now, Kickbolt had finally noticed what she was doing, and started galloping back into the corridor. “What are you doing?!” he shouted, trying to hurry back to stop her from getting herself killed.

He was only halfway down the corridor when Sketch had repositioned herself to reach the last two symbols, using her book to start slamming into the buttons again. The one with the spikes coming from the sides twice, and then finally, once into the spiked trap door symbol.

Just as she slammed it into the final button once, Kickbolt had bit her tail and quickly pulled her back, flapping his wings to get her away from the wall as quickly as possible.

Click.

He had only managed to pull her a short distance when the wall started tumbling towards them; Kickbolt reacted to this and started pumping his wings to the point of his new battle harness almost falling off.

THUD.

They had only barely gotten far away enough from it to avoid getting crushed by the huge ornamented stone wall. As the dust was settling around them, the pegasus finally let go of the mare’s yellow tail, only to slump down to the ground with exhaustion, breathing heavily.

Sketch grinned. “See? Nothing to it,” she giggled.

Kickbolt was too busy wheezing and panting to reply properly. “I hate it... when you do... stuff like that...” was all he managed to squeeze out of his tired lungs.

“Works, though,” she said with a content voice. “Now come on, there’s a big room up ahead!” she sang out with delight.

Kickbolt tried to groan, but was too busy panting for it to be noticed.

Sketch was hopping her way into the newly discovered room, always happy to find places not meant to be found easily. “This looks like the box room we found before, doesn’t it?” she noted with excitement. “There’s even a similar box in the middle, see?”

Kickbolt, not being as frisky as the mare, after having to overexert himself just a moment ago, sagged behind her. “I don’t know... it looks the same, but aren’t those levers pointing into different directions?” he pointed out. “That other one looked as if no pony had actually touched it.”

Compared to the other stone they had encountered in their earlier visit, this one did look the same, but instead of all the levers being neutrally aligned, this one had them pointing either up, down or in neutral position. The green emerald light seemed slightly stronger in this room, if only to make it easier to look upon the stone.

“I guess, yeah. Could you take a closer look at the topside of this thing? And please give me an actual description of what is it this time, and not just a ‘thingy’!” Sketch demanded while leaning in her head closer to the pegasus, if only to make it clear that is was she wanted.

Kickbolt ignored the last part and started flapping his wings, using the massive space in the room to actually fly freely for a moment. “Nothing, there’s nothing on the top of this thing!” he exclaimed. “And these levers don’t look the same either; they’re actually part of this stone, instead of looking like they’re sticking out of it.”

Sketch was already scribbling notes in her book, having brought up the ones regarding the other box they had found earlier, to compare the information, quickly coming to a conclusion. “I think this stone is the answer for what to do with the other box,” she explained. “I think all we have to do is use this as a reference as to how we need to move the levers on the first box.” She continued to write notes, making a simple drawing showing which lever would be either up, down or in neutral position, until done with all eight of them.

When she finished, she gave out a long yawn after letting out her breath she didn’t even realize she had been holding while drawing the figure.

Kickbolt landed next to her took notice of this. And he suggested, “Maybe it’s time we take a break? I think it might already be nighttime.”

Sketch knew he was probably right, and complied, knowing well enough about the problems they’ve ran into before simply because of pushing themselves too far. She rummaged in her saddlebag until she finally pulled out a simple mattress to lie on, and some carrots to nibble on while she could fine-tune the map so far.

Kickbolt quietly walked back to the fallen wall entrance of the room and stood there for a while, listening for any possible creatures out in the hallways. His eyes slowly tracing the path down back to the hallway they had been in earlier. After standing there a few moments he deemed it safe, and came back to joined Sketch on his own mattress he pulled out. He took out some apples to eat. After munching the last of his first apple, he started taking off his battle harness to examine it after the test run with the goblin earlier, bringing out a piece of cloth to polish it.

“I have to admit, you might actually be right for once with those wing shields,” she said while chewing on a carrot.

Kickbolt turned his head around to face Sketch. “They’re blades, not shields. They just happen to also be good at defense and not only offense.” Inside, he was almost crying from happiness, finally having gotten a gadget that Sketch for once approved of.

“Well, either way, sorry I yelled at you earlier today about it.” Her head turned away in remorse. “But you know why I did.” She turned back to face him. “By now, you usually would have lost at least half of your feathers!”

Kickbolt took out a bite out of another apple while polishing the blades. “No worries, it’s not like you didn’t have every right in the world to assume what would happen,” he said sarcastically, some apple juice dripping out of his mouth as he spoke.

“Don’t expect me to always apologize to you about that sort of thing,” she laughed, which quickly turned into another yawn. “I think we should get some rest.”

“Right, go to sleep then.”

Sketch raised her head to eye her friend with a concerned look. "You should really try and sleep some, too. I could stay watch once in a while."

Kickbolt furrowed his eyebrows. "I can't let you do that, we both have our parts to do here, and this is one is mine." Sketch wondered for a moment how she could convince him otherwise, just once, until her attention was brought back to her book. She knew Kickbolt refused to ever rest properly while they were out of town; he would always force himself to half-sleep if anything just to make sure nothing would happen. They’d talked about it before, but she knew this was one of the things she probably would never get him to listen to.

She put away her book and ate the last of the carrots, getting ready for some rest.

Kickbolt alternated between looking at her and the passage past the fallen wall. This went on for a few hours until his eyelids got too heavy for him in the dark green glow. Being the one that had to do all the physical work wasn't helping either. You know I can't let you get hurt, was his final thought as he drifted into uneasy sleep against his will.

ö~ö~Ö~ö~ö

“Okay, that lever should be pulled up!”

Sketch was directing how Kickbolt was supposed to move the levers in the original box room. She had tried to herself, but her light body couldn’t even get them to be pulled down, much less push them upwards, which took the larger pegasus a lot of force to actually get it moving.

Kickbolt was sitting on top one of the huge stone levers and grabbed it with his hooves, and then started to beat his wings furiously to pull it up. He grunted and groaned as he tried to force the lever to move as Sketch cheered him on from below.

“Come on! You almost got it!” she yelled with a cheery voice. “A little more!”

It was slowly moving into place, the rasping of the stones moving against each others could clearly be heard as Kickbolt did his best to fight against both gravity and friction at the same time.

Thunk.

The lever finally pulled into position, letting the pegasus slump back down to the floor for a moment of rest, landing next to the harness he had taken off prior to starting to move the levers.

“How many... more?” he asked while collapsing to the ground.

“Only one, and it needs to go down... unless I’ve accidentally been reading the drawing I made upside down, then all the levers are supposed to be in reversed position,” she said while turning around her book for emphasis.

Kickbolt let his head land face first into the ground, and gave out a quiet sob.

“Relax, I’m kidding, I’m pretty sure that’s the last one and that I’m reading my book right,” she comforted him with a forgiving voice.

Kickbolt rolled over to face her. “How come I always have to do all the heavy work? It’s not fair!” he wheezed while wiggling his legs in the air at the same time.

Sketch looked up from her book and snorted. “Stop acting like a foal, you’re bigger than me. So you get to do all the fun stuff!” the mare laughed jokingly. “Now get that last lever in place already, we’re on a roll here!”

As he finally regained his breath, he took flight to get above the final lever. He kept going as high as the ceiling let him, until he quickly dived and landed on it hooves first to put as much weight as possible on it.

Thunk.

Kickbolt smiled as the final one was in place, realizing he was finally done, gliding back down to the ground in a wobbly path.

Sketch looked around the room, expecting something to happen, after a few moments she turned back to her friend. “Sorry, but gonna need you to fly back on that thing. I think whatever is on the top of it is the final key to getting done with this floor.

He moaned loudly, clearly showing what he thought about her idea, but flew back up as asked in an even shakier pattern due to exhaustion.

“So, what do you want me to do with this... thingy? I have no idea what it is,” Kickbolt panted down to Sketch, being too exhausted to bother thinking clearly.

Sketch frowned. “How do you expect me to know? I don’t even know what it looks like! Can’t you press or activate something? she yelled back up, eager for something to happen.

Kickbolt took a hard look at the apparatus. “It’s not a button or anything, but more like a lever sticking out, except part of it is hollow. But it doesn’t look like it’ll bend anywhere either; it also has like a ball on top of it... I have no clue what to do with it!” he yelled down again.

Sketch couldn’t grasp his explanation. “Did you try touching it?” she asked with a curious tone.

The pegasus hesitated, but slowly reached out one hoof to poke it. “Well, here goes...” he quietly reassured himself as he gave it a very light prod.

It slowly started humming, tip of the apparatus started glowing red, the new light conflicting with the usual green glow inside the tower. Kickbolt flew back down as quickly as he could with his already tired wings to the mare he was supposed to protect, getting ready for any movements.

After a moment, a familiar rumbling started in the distance. After a few minutes it stopped again. The two ponies sighed with relief.

They were done with this floor.

(Author’s note: I’d like to thank ARBPW and LysanderasD for helping me with editing and making my story readable. If you liked it, please leave a comment, they’re probably the biggest source of encouragement I’ve yet to encounter. Don’t forget to rate!)

Comments

[MeTaLGuArD]

For some reason it makes me think of Mayan ruins in a rainforest. I'm no expert on pacing and stuff like that, but I enjoyed these chapters. If I were to rate right now, I'd give it a 4,5/5.

[Diexna]

89323

The idea in my head is that it's pretty much just a bunch of fields with scattered ruins, havent even thought about a forest.

I was planing on working more on that later (explaining surrounding areas), but the point of reading (rather than watching) is that you end up imagining the world in your head.

And for the 4,5/5... THANK YOU!

While of course I would be hoping for all 5 stars (who wouldn't? lol), I was honestly expecting 2 or 3's, lol.

Although I should mention that the second chapter ended up getting rushed at the end, and I never ended up looking it over before posting it here (grammar mistakes a-hoy). I should take things slower.

[PonyPonyX]

Looking good! I'll be following this.

[Mist]

Perhaps you should skim these chapters over for a few more mistakes in grammar and such, but other than that this looks like a great story.