> Everfree Quest
>  by CartsBeforeHorses
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Into the Woods
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The unicorn Twilight Sparkle sat reading a history book in her treehouse library one day. She turned the page with her magic and saw a chapter called "The Everfree: Then and Now."

Curious, she read the passage.

"The city of Everfree, located in what is now the Everfree Forest, used to be the capital of Equestria instead of Canterlot. It still contains the ruins of the Palace of the Royal Pony Sisters on the south side of the Everfree River."

Ah, well I knew that already, Twilight thought, recalling her first-ever adventure. Two years ago, she had retrieved the Elements of Harmony from the old castle and stopped Nightmare Moon with her five friends.

"1,300 years ago, Princesses Celestia and Luna relocated their capital city to Canterlot, for reasons that historians aren't quite sure of. Legends tell of many treasures still hidden deep within the catacombs that the Princesses left behind in their hurried relocation: gold, silver, rubies, sapphires, and mystical artifacts such as idols and stones. 

"One such stone, the Nirucon stone, is said to contain mysterious magic-altering properties. Legends tell that unicorns wielding this stone could cast spells that they otherwise could not." 

Twilight's ears perked up. Magic enhancement? If she had that stone in her possession, she would be even better at magic than she already was! Though it was just an old legend and might not even be true, Twilight was feeling rather adventurous and decided to see if she could recruit any of her friends to go with her. It's not like she had anything better to do. All she had been doing that day was reading history books, anyway.

*****

Thankfully, all of Twilight's friends were also feeling adventurous. Other than Spike, who was taking a nap after eating five pounds of gemstones.

The six ponies stood outside the western entrance of the forest. The morning sun was just rising over the trees in the east, casting light into their eyes. 

“Are you guys sure you all want to come? I mean, the Everfree Forest is pretty dangerous," Twilight asked.

"There's a pretty stone to find, right?" Rarity asked.

"Yes."

"And adventure?" Rainbow Dash and Applejack asked.

"Yes."

"And fun?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"Yes. Well, hopefully."

"And animals?" Fluttershy asked.

"Well, yeah, the Forest is full of them."

"Then we'll do it!" the other five ponies exclaimed. With that, they all walked into the forest.

The Everfree Forest during the day was not nearly as imposing as it was at night, when all of the dangerous creatures came out to feed. However, the ponies still kept their wits about them as they followed the trail south towards the Everfree River.

They passed the time by chatting, singing, and playing road games until they were about halfway through the forest. By this point, it was well into the afternoon when Rainbow Dash pointed out what everypony had been thinking but nopony had been willing to say.

“Well that was a letdown. I was expecting to run into a manticore or a timberwolf or something!” she lamented.

“All the better we don’t,” Applejack said, “If we can just get the stone and leave, that's fine by me. And don’t jinx us, R.D.!”

Soon, they came upon the Everfree River. Weeping willow trees and ferns crowded its banks. The rapids wildly churned as they cut across rocks, and a repeating crashing sound could be heard as the water spilled off of a waterfall some three hundred feet away into the gulch below.

“Well, we can’t cross here, it’s too dangerous!” Rarity said. “Why don’t we try walking further upstream, we can find that nice river serpent who helped us out last time.”

“Oh, I think we’ll be fine…” Twilight started, “I’ve been working on a group teleportation spell. I’ve never used it before, but it should be able to get at least four of us across this river no problem. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy can fly across and meet the rest of us on the other side.”

Applejack said, “Well Twilight, if it’s all the same with you, I’d rather you test it on yourself and a few of these rocks first. I mean, seein’ as how you never used it before, and sometimes your magic's a bit... unpredictable.”

Applejack bucked a few pony-sized boulders towards the riverbank. They rolled for a few feet and stopped on the riverbank.

“That’s probably a good idea. I’ll know for sure after I’ve crossed this river, but I don’t think there will be a problem. Here goes…”

Twilight’s horn glowed a bright purple as she extended a magical aura around the three boulders. In a sudden flash of light, Twilight and the three boulders disappeared.

Suddenly a loud splashing sound rang through the air.

“AAAHHHH!” Twilight yelled. Her teleport had misfired and she had fallen into the river. She frantically shot off bursts of magic from her horn, teleporting in quick spurts and moving a few feet up the river at a time, but it was no use against the powerful current which was quickly carrying her towards the waterfall. She was unable to teleport back onto the bank.

“Hold on, Twi!” Applejack removed her lasso from under her hat and twirled it in the air. The coil wrapped around Twilight’s soaking torso.

Applejack pulled on the rope and dragged Twilight out of the river. She shivered, dripping wet with water and shaking, both from the cold and from her near-death experience.

“Thank you so much, Applejack! You saved my life!”

Applejack blushed. “Aw, it was nothin’. You woulda done the same for me. Shoot, you’da probably been fine anyway. I mean, you woulda just teleported back onto the bank in time.”

“That’s the weird part,” Twilight began, “I couldn’t. There was some powerful force blocking me from teleporting back to the bank. All I could do was try and teleport up the river, against the tide.”

“Now what on earth could that force have possibly been?” Rarity asked. The other ponies nodded in agreement.

Twilight’s jaw dropped.

“I think… I think it’s right behind you, Rarity.”

The other five ponies turned behind them to face the direction Twilight was facing. They directed their gazes upwards at a fifty-foot tall blue-skinned creature. The beast stood on all fours, with its front legs ending in four-fingered hands and its hind legs ending in paws. It had a massive tail which ended in another hand. The beast’s piercing fangs and pale eyes gazed down at them from the end of its long muzzle.

The beast spoke in a devilish, rumbling voice, with a thick Latin accent, “Hello, ponies. I am Ahuizotl. I do believe you have stumbled upon MY river.”
> Don't Cross the River...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The six were silent for almost a full minute. How could anypony possibly respond to… that? Rarity, Pinkie, Applejack and Fluttershy looked at each other and then at the beast in confusion. They had no idea who this monster was, and as the seconds passed, they had no idea why he had yet to gobble them up.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash, however, knowingly looked at each other with wide eyes. Ahuizotl was the name of the main villain in the Daring Do series of books that both of them enjoyed reading. This beast matched his description to a T.

Rainbow Dash rose into the air to meet Ahuizotl at eye level. She extended a hoof towards him.

“Ahuizotl, sir, it’s an honor to meet you! Next to the Wonderbolts and Daring Do herself, you are one of the celebrities I would most like to meet! We’re incredibly sorry that we’ve stumbled upon your piece of real estate here. We would certainly cross further upstream if that pleases you. But, uh, before we go… could I get your autograph?”

Ahuizotl rolled his eyes and let loose a small sigh from his massive nostrils, and the air current from this was enough to send Rainbow Dash careening back towards earth.

“AAAAAAHHH!” Dash screamed as she fell towards the ground, landing in some bushes. She was a bit scratched up but otherwise fine.

The beast lifted up his right hand and wiped his face. He let out another sigh.

He bellowed, “I am NOT the Ahuizotl from your Daring Do novels. Those works of FICTION have been misrepresenting me and patronizing me for far too long. I am the real Ahuizotl: ruler of the Everfree Forest, guardian of this river! Ponies had better start taking me seriously; I am not some campy young-adult action-adventure villain. I am a REAL force to be reckoned with! I cannot tell you how many travelers I have drowned for having the nerve to cross this river without MY permission, and how many I have drowned for having the absolute gall to ask for autographs!”

He took a few deep breaths and paused from his rant. Steam flowed from his nostrils as he heavily panted. Fluttershy took this opportunity to interrupt his stride, fluttering up to speak with him.

“So, uh, Mr. Ahuizotl, I understand you’re miffed, but we really need to cross this river. There's an artifact that we REALLY need to find. Is there any way you could pleeeeease let us cross? We’ll do whatever you want!” She batted her eyelashes and smiled as wide as she could.

“Uhhhh…. Well… um…” Ahuizotl stammered. In addition to Fluttershy’s uncanny ability to make creatures bend to her will by force through her stare ability, she also had the charm to convince all but the most dreadful of monsters to comply with her voluntarily.

Ahuizotl scratched his head. He began again, “Perhaps we got off on the wrong hoof. Let me re-introduce myself. My name is Ahuizotl. I am the king of the Everfree Forest! My job is to ensure that no one crosses this river without passing my test. But I am a fair judge. My standard is strict, but if you are lucky, you may meet it.

“Now, let’s see here. Two unicorns, two pegasi, and two earth ponies. A perfect ratio of magic, flight, and physical strength! I have been waiting for somepony to solve this particular riddle for a long time,” he said, trilling the ‘r’ in ‘riddle.’

He reached with his long prehensile tail into the trees along the river embankment and pulled out a long, slender wooden kayak with two seats. He set it down on the ground in front of the ponies.

“Now, if you can solve my riddle, then I will allow you to cross the Everfree River. But if you fail, then the current will take you over the falls, and I shall add your skulls to the heap of skulls that my throne sits atop! Here is my riddle:

“To pass my test, all six must cross
Or else your quest is at a loss.
I present you with this small canoe,
But it has only room for two.

Once a pony’s hooves have left this shore,
She may not return any more.
Moving north on the river is not allowed.
You may only progress towards the south.

Though you shall not use a teleport,
Levitation and flight are both fair sport.
Now see if you can find a way
as a team to reach the southern bank.”

"Wait a minute," Twilight Sparkle asked, "Why can't I use a teleport?"

"There's no fun in that," Ahuizotl responded. He leaped off of his hind legs into the air and landed hundreds of feet away, on the far side of the river. The earth rumbled as the gargantuan beast hit the ground.

He sat waiting, a wide grin on his face, twiddling his fingers together. It was obvious by the twinkle in his eyes that he fully anticipated them to fail.

Pinkie, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy, upon watching the huge monster, turned their gaze towards Rainbow Dash. 

It was Applejack who finally asked, “Rainbow Dash, who in the hay was HE, and how’d you know him?”

Dash, after getting up from her fall, candidly replied, “Oh, he’s Ahuizotl. He’s the main villain in the Daring Do novels. Twilight and I are huge fans.”

“I don’t understand. If he is a fictional character, how is he here in the Everfree Forest?” Rarity asked, looking at Rainbow puzzlingly.

Twilight interjected, “Well, if I recall correctly, the author of the series relied on old legends and myths for story ideas. Perhaps the myth of Ahuizotl was one legend which just so happened to be true.”

Rainbow Dash added, “Yeah. That Ahuizotl is a trickster, a lot like Discord, but his only powers are his intellect and his enormous size. He can also stop ponies from using magic, apparently, but he never does that in the books. He also deals in logic more than chaos. His riddles and puzzles usually have solutions, even though they’re always hare-brained. With our smarts and my agility, we can tackle this river crossing thing no problem!”

“Er, I don’t know about that.” Applejack walked over to the two-seater kayak and kicked it with her hind leg. The heavy two-seater barely gave an inch. Applejack gazed at the rushing currents of the river.

“Um, y’all. This canoe is so heavy that it’s gonna take a LOT of muscle-power just to paddle across the river. What with this current, I’m not sure even two of the fastest rowers in Equestria could make it across the river in time to not get carried over the falls!”

She removed the paddles from inside of the boat. They were about three feet in length.

“These are also some dinky paddles. Kinda wish he had given us somethin’ a bit longer to work with. It’s gonna be hard sailin’ getting across this river. Heck, I doubt you could move a canoe half this size with these darn things!” Applejack tossed the paddles to the side.

“Okay, well then Dashie, why don’t you just fly us all over?” Pinkie asked, “You could just take us one at a time, and then the joke will be on him! We can screw his canoe! He never said in his riddle that we had to use it.”

“I wouldn’t advise that at all,” Twilight cautioned. “If you’ll remember, he said that after any one of us has left this bank, we can’t come back. He also said we couldn’t travel north on the river. I’d imagine he would enforce that rule as strictly as he stopped me from teleporting earlier. So in order to be in compliance, Dash would have to carry four of us at once, and that’s assuming Fluttershy can even carry one of us.”

“Yeah. I could definitely carry Twilight and probably Rarity, but three ponies at once is kind of pushing it.”

“Oh, um, I wouldn’t be able to carry anypony at all. Sorry.” Fluttershy blushed and shrunk back.

“Fluttershy, darling, don’t be so self-deprecating. We shall find a way to get across this river well enough!” Rarity encouraged.

Applejack formulated a plan, “Yeah. Why, Pinkie and I could get in that canoe and paddle across with all of our best effort, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash can fly across, and Twilight and Rarity can… uh…”

“That’s the problem,” Twilight finished Applejack’s thought, “I can’t teleport, and this boat is only a two-seater. There's not room for Rarity and I to pile in, since it’s closed at the top except for the seats, which would technically make it a kayak, not a canoe."

"He probably just said 'canoe' so it would rhyme," Pinkie said.

“What about that flight spell you used to get me into Cloudsdale? You know, when you gave me those fabulous wings! Can you do that again?” Rarity pondered.

Twilight answered, “That would be a viable option, except that spell was a difficult incantation, and without the book with me I can’t remember the complex magic required. Even if I could, the spell is so difficult that I couldn’t cast it on both of us. That would still leave one pony behind.”

Applejack responded, “Well, maybe not. That Owie-zotle character said we could use both flyin’ and levitatin’. Twilight, maybe you could just levitate me, Pinkie and Rarity one at a time over the river? Then Rainbow Dash could carry you across, and Fluttershy could just fly herself.”

“That might be feasible if you were lighter, or if the river was less distance across. But this river is at least a hundred yards wide, and telekinetic magic weakens as distance increases. I could maybe levitate a small kitten across the river, for instance, but even that would be pushing it.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Pinkie said, “Magic is magic, and you’re the best there is!”

Twilight, astounded that Pinkie was eager to learn about the very laws of physics that she so frequently defied, explained,

“Well, Pinkie, it’s because of leverage. Imagine that telekinetic magic is like an extendable, invisible appendage with a hand attached at the end. Sort of like Ahuizotl’s tail, actually. The magical ‘hand’ could theoretically be extended for an infinite length, but for whatever object you are working with, it will eventually lose strength and fail to work due to leverage. Have you ever used a crowbar? You apply a smaller amount of force at one end, but the power of leverage works for you so you can lift a heavier weight. So for that reason, levitating any object gets harder as the distance increases.”

Pinkie blinked three times and exclaimed, “Ohhhh! That makes sense! So that’s the same reason that the paddles won’t be as useful, but instead of being too long, they’re too short!”

“Exactly, Pinkie. Ahuizotl knew this, and he gave us shorter paddles probably to make our crossing even more challenging. We have to overcome a leverage disadvantage.”

Applejack’s eyes lit up at this statement, “Hey Twilight. You just gave me an idea, and I think it might be crazy enough to work.”

*****

Upon the north shore of the river, Twilight sat down in the sand. She was busy performing some calculations on a piece of parchment. Her quill scribbled furiously at the paper.

“Okay gang, I think this is an entirely possible way to cross,” Twilight said, setting down her parchment and quill. “But according to my calculations, it will be a very close call. If we all give our best efforts, the six of us will probably end up on the other side of the bank mere seconds away from careening off the waterfall.”

“We… can… DO IT!” Fluttershy bellowed, using an encouragement tactic that Iron Will had taught her.

“I’m certainly ready. Though I really don’t understand why my talents are being wasted on sheer muscle in this venture,” Rarity complained.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, why dontcha pretty up the canoe or somethin’? That outta really help,” Applejack quipped, a smirk spreading across her face.

Rarity scowled at Applejack, “Why, the nerve! Just because Ahuizotl put us into a situation where your brawn is required does NOT mean that you are the superior pony! If I had half a mind…”

Pinkie jumped in-between the two ponies, “Oh Rarity, it’s OK. I mean, I didn’t get to throw a party, so in terms of not using our special talents, we’re in the same boat! Get it?” She chuckled.

“Girls!” Twilight interrupted. “Let’s get a move on. The wind is favorable to us right now.”

“Aye aye, captain!” Rainbow Dash offered up a salute and flew to the rear of the kayak, where she and Fluttershy pushed the heavy craft, sliding it across the sand towards the water. As they slowly skidded the craft along the sand, Rarity and Twilight jumped their seats and began to charge up their horns. Pinkie and Applejack grabbed the paddles in their mouths and walked alongside the kayak on the side away from the waterfall.

As the tip of the kayak entered the water, Ahuizotl leaned forward and sat on his haunches. His gaze intently fixed on the six ponies who had finally begun their attempt of his riddle.

“Ready on your end?” Twilight asked. 

“All set,” Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash said in unison.

Rainbow Dash flew two feet out over the water and gave the instruction, “Okay. Fluttershy. One, two, three...”

With a giant heave, Fluttershy pushed the craft fully into the water, Rainbow helping by pulling it forward. As the kayak made a splash in the river, it began to drift a few feet per second towards the falls. But the two pegasi quickly flew to the side of the kayak facing the waterfall, put their heads and front hooves against the side of the kayak and began rapidly flapping their wings, pushing back against the powerful force of the current. The craft continued to inch closer east to the waterfall, but the efforts of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash kept this deadly progression at a slower pace.

Rarity and Twilight cast their spells, slowly levitating Pinkie and Applejack into the air above and to the side of the craft. Twilight’s purple glow surrounded heavy-set Applejack while Rarity’s cyan glow surrounded the lighter-weight Pinkie Pie.

“Wheee!” Pinkie exclaimed as she floated into the air. Twilight and Rarity focused intently as they suspended the two earth ponies above the water, about four feet away from themselves on the side of the kayak opposite of Rainbow and Fluttershy. 

One lapse of concentration on the unicorns’ part and the earth ponies would fall into the river below, and the current would carry them towards the falls.

Once they were in place on the side of the kayak, Applejack and Pinkie Pie began rowing. Thanks to the transitive force property of levitation magic, this rowing force was transferred to the kayak as if Pinkie Pie and Applejack were sitting in the seats and rowing using paddles six feet in length instead of floating above the water using paddles of two feet in length.	


A diagram of the riddle's solution

The kayak inched across the river with these magically-enhanced efforts. Its wooden bow pushed on through the tumultuous currents quite faster than it would have otherwise, but to the six ponies whose lives were in danger it seemed to be a snail’s pace.

Pinkie and Applejack continued rowing for the next minute and soon the kayak was about two-fifths of the way across the river.

“Hah! This riddle is a cakewalk!” Rainbow Dash yelled, wings flapping vigorously. “The six of us can go anywhere, anytime!”

“Don’t speak too soon, Dashie,” Fluttershy strained to help the kayak stay in place as it nevertheless inched closer to the falls. Her brow was covered in sweat; she was not used to such physical exertion.

Rarity too, was straining under the requirements of casting the levitation spell. She grimaced and sparks began to fly from her horn, a sign that her magic was requiring more effort. Pinkie, seeing this, sang a short shanty of encouragement,

“Row, row, row your boat across the Everfree
Rarity, Rarity, Rarity, Rarity, don’t let go of me!”

Rarity giggled, the song easing her tension somewhat. Twilight, horn glowing bright with the effort of keeping Applejack aloft, briefly glanced behind herself to see the waterfall and eyeballed the distance. 

It was not good. At this rate they would careen over the falls before reaching the south shore!

“Girls, let’s step it up! Fluttershy and RD, push harder against those currents! AJ and Pinkie, keep rowing, but faster!”

They all redoubled their efforts. However, Rarity was clearly struggling under the strain of Pinkie’s weight. Suddenly, the cyan glow left Pinkie and she fell into the river below.

“AAAAAAH!” Hundreds of droplets of water misted into the air as Pinkie hit the river with a splash. She struggled against the currents as she was carried under the kayak towards the falls.

“Pinkie Pie!” Rainbow Dash yelled, dashing several feet behind her and scooping Pinkie up from the water. As she left the side of the kayak to rescue her friend, the kayak tilted towards the waterfall. Fluttershy quickly repositioned herself in the middle of the kayak's side. It now was pointed towards the south bank once again, but was moving towards the edge of the falls at three times its previous speed!

Rainbow Dash soared back towards the kayak, carrying Pinkie in her hooves. Rarity levitated Pinkie back towards her rowing position as Dash returned to the side of the boat. Dazed but not deterred, Pinkie re-equipped her oar and continued rowing at a breakneck speed.

“So dreadfully sorry, Pinkie!” Rarity yelled out.

“Don’t worry about apologies, just don’t let her fall again!” Twilight yelled out. She and Applejack were holding out reasonably well. Applejack, her hat soaked in sweat and mist, looked to her left and let out a warning.

“Y’all, we’re about to fall over!” She yelled. Indeed, the craft was a mere forty feet away from careening over the edge of the falls.

The two earth ponies and two unicorns glanced in horror at the impending drop. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were too busy pushing back against the relentless currents to look behind them. At this rate, the currents would carry them over the falls in less than a minute, and they still had hundreds of feet to cross!

“Come on girls, we have to do this!” Twilight yelled. She placed her own hooves into the water and began frantically pushing water out of the way in a desperate effort to add to the craft’s forward momentum. Veins had appeared in Rarity’s forehead and her horn was glowing with the intensity of a nova. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy began flapping their wings like hummingbirds. Pinkie and Applejack displaced three foot-tall waves of water way with their aggressive paddling.

Yet despite this, the craft tilted upwards as it capsized over the waterfall. The four wingless ponies fell towards the ground below.

> Timber!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        As she fell, Applejack removed her lasso from her bag and flung it towards a rocky outcropping about fifteen feet down from the top of the falls. There, it secured around a small brush oak. Applejack bit into the end of the rope as it became taut, and she was saved.

Pinkie Pie, ever the resilient pony even in the face of the impossible, removed several dozen balloons from her bag and rapidly inflated them as she fell, tying each one to herself as she filled it. Somehow, the balloons rose as if they were filled with helium rather than air. The dozen or so balloons somehow managed to support Pinkie’s weight. She floated into the air, eventually reaching Applejack’s rocky outcropping and grabbing onto the same tree so she wouldn't float away.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash sped downwards and caught Rarity and Twilight, respectively. They carried them up to the level of the rocky outcropping. Now all six ponies were safe from falling.

“That was a close one!” Fluttershy exclaimed.

“Yeah, we just barely made it down there to save you two!” Rainbow Dash said.

“It’s a good thing that I brought my super-duper flight-tastic balloons! Otherwise I would’ve been toast, and then a ghost!” Pinkie giggled at her own rhyme.

“Pinkie Pie! You had balloons that could help you fly this whole time and you never told nobody!? That could’ve saved us the trouble of even having to row in the first place!” Applejack scolded.

“No, silly, these balloons only move in one direction, and that’s up! I would’ve just floated away; I could never have crossed the river like this!”

“Well, okay, I guess that’s point taken.” Applejack conceded.

“Well you could have at least made yourself lighter for MY sake!” Rarity scoffed.

“Sorry, Rarity, these balloons are for emergencies only. I’m sorry that I couldn’t use them to help you,” Pinkie said.

“Well, alright, I guess. And I’m sorry that I dropped you into the river, earlier. Moving heavy things with my telekinesis has never been my strong suit. I guess I need to practice.”

“Okay girls, let’s figure out a plan to get back up to the top and cross this river,” Twilight glanced over at the south bank of the river, now only about thirty feet from their present location.

“How about I just carry you four to the opposite bank one by one?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“That probably won’t work,” said Twilight. “Remember, Fluttershy can’t carry any of us, and you can’t carry three of us. Ahuizotl said that we couldn’t move north along the river, we could only move south.”

Rainbow murmured to herself. “Once a pony has… hmm…” She paused for a moment, “Wait a minute… that’s it!” Rainbow’s face lit up. “He said, and I quote, ‘Moving north on the river is not allowed. You may only progress towards the south.’ But we’re not ON the river anymore; we’re past it since we’re on the falls!

"When he said on the river, he only meant on the river! This is just like in Daring Do #18, The Endgame Stratagem, where Auhizotl told Daring Do that nopony on earth could pull the sword of Xenos from the stone. Daring Do just flew into the air and lifted the sword up while hovering, because she was no longer on earth while lifting it. Ahuizotl is always literal!”

“Well I should think he’s literal, Dashie, he is from a book after all!" Pinkie joked.

Rainbow Dash grabbed Twilight first, picking her up and flying towards the south bank, tossing her over the cliff to the grass above. She repeated this process for the other four, and Fluttershy flew herself over.

The five walked half a mile north to where Auhizotl had left them. As they had expected, he had a scowl upon his face.

“AAARRRGGGH!! I did not intend for that to be a way to solve my riddle!” Auhizotl slammed his paw into the ground, leaving a large indent. The six ponies shuddered. Dash, however, was stern with the azure behemoth.

“How is THAT? You gave us only one way to solve the riddle! That whole levitated rowing thing was the only way to do it!” Dash flew up to the monster’s face, pointing at him with her hoof.

“No, no, no, I did intend for the riddle to be solved with the rowing. That was my plan. You had the right idea, but you simply failed in its execution. What was NOT my plan was for you to fall off the waterfall but still get over here alive! Going over the edge is a failure, in my mind. I should have been more specific and said that any northern movement at ALL would not be allowed. A deal is a deal however, and I am a man of my word. But from now on, you can expect my riddles to have no loopholes in them whatsoever!”

“Wait, from… now on?” Fluttershy shuddered. A grin spread over the blue giant’s face. He cackled and twiddled his fingers together.

“Oh, yes. There are more riddles. You think I would just let you come into MY forest and take MY stone without MY permission? Absolutely not! To get the Nirucon stone, you must pass ALL of my trials!”

“Well sir, if you must put us through more of your ghastly tortures, you might as well do it now and get it over and done with!” Rarity scoffed.

“In good time, my fair lady," he said, and then ran off into the forest.

Twilight Sparkle got out her map and examined it.

"Alright, here we are," she said, motioning with her hoof towards the falls, "and here is the entrance to the Palace of the Royal Pony Sisters," she said, motioning towards the gorge in front of the palace.

"Let's get a move on; the sun's about to set!" Applejack said. The six ponies headed south for another two hours. Thankfully, they didn't run into any beasts. Finally, they reached a the gulch in front of the Palace, and found the rope bridge they crossed last time. However, the rope bridge had been destroyed. There were no planks left on the bridge, just two ropes which were tied to the near side of the bridge.

"Who did this? This bridge was in order the last time that we were here," said Twilight.

"Probably Ahuizotl," said Rainbow Dash.

"Correct," the six turned to face behind themselves, and they saw Ahuizotl.

"Let me guess: we can't teleport across here, either," said Twilight Sparkle.

"You're very perceptive. Yes, there is another riddle you must solve in order to cross this gulch."

Twilight Sparkle groaned, and said, "Can you at least be original with these? I mean, the last riddle involved us crossing something, too."

"Oh, you don't want crossing? Fine, the next riddle after this one will not involve crossing anything. But as I have already spent time designing this particular riddle, let it commence!

The rope bridge is out, it's fallen down.
How can you cross when your hooves can't leave the ground?
When crossing the gulch you may not fly;
You must walk on your hooves to the other side.

But be careful, do you hear their howls?
The beasts of the forest with hungry mouths,
Animated from wood, the beasts of timber
Stay out of their way; you best be limber!"

Ahuizotl jumped across the bridge to the front steps of the palace where he stood. A howl rang out as the ponies saw a pack of eerie, wooden beasts emerge from the trees, growling at them. The beasts' green eyes pierced the very soul of any who looked at them.

It was three timberwolves.



"Alright, gang, let's take 'em on!" Twilight said, charging up her horn.

One of the wolves rushed towards Pinkie Pie and Rarity. Pinkie Pie, thinking quickly, removed her party cannon and fired a burst of confetti at the beast, which stopped in confusion. Rarity bucked the beast square in its wooden jaw.

"Awoo!" It yelled in pain, before getting back up and taking a swipe at Rarity with its claws.

"AAAH!" Rarity exclaimed as it left a scratch in her side.

"Meanie pants!" Pinkie said as she gave the beast a left hook. Surprisingly, this was enough to take it down. Rarity used her magic to tear apart the beast so that it would not re-animate.

Another wolf lunged towards Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Fluttershy took two steps back and then stared the beast straight in the eyes, and it pasued in its tracks.

Rainbow Dash hovered in the air, remembering that she could fly, as Ahuizotl's riddle merely said no flying over the gorge specifcally. She soared a hundred feet into the air and then crashed back down to earth, shattering the paralyzed beast into hundreds of pieces.

The remaining timberwolf was a bit more cunning, sneaking up behind Applejack and grabbing her in its claws. Twilight, seeing this, used her telekinesis to free Applejack. The earth pony gave a powerful buck to the timberwolf, knocking it backwards several feet. Twilight ran over to it and used her magic to rip apart the animated beast.

With the three wolves defeated, the six ponies sat down to catch their breath.

"Rarity, are you okay?" Pinkie asked.

"I think so, it's just a surface cut. It still hurts, though."

"Ah, well let's get something on that. Good thing I brought my Super-Fun Disinfectant!" Pinkie reached into her saddlebag and removed a pink bottle with a picture of a microbe wearing a party hat on it. She dabbed some of it on Rarity's cut. The unicorn grimaced in pain, but the antiseptic did its job as it bubbled up, killing any potential germs.

"You know, I do feel kind of bad about killing these things," said Fluttershy.

"Don't feel bad," Twilight said, "They're not really alive; they're just magically-animated logs and sticks. It would be like if I used my magic to make a marionette dance around. The marionette is still just dead wood."

"So now we can try our hooves at crossin' this gulch," Applejack said, "Got any of those balloons left, Pinkie?"

"Yeah, but I think that counts as flight," said Pinkie. 

"Well, shoot. Let's see what we got here," said Applejack. She walked over to the two posts which the rope was tied to, and then lifted the rope from out of the gulch. It was about 25 feet long, which was enough to span the 20-foot-wide gulch. 

"Ah, well all the planks are gone. But I reckon I could at least get these ropes back across to the other side. They're still long enough."

Applejack tied the end of one of the ropes into a lasso, which she threw across the gulch and landed on the post where it had originally been tied to before Ahuizotl cut it loose. She pulled the rope taut and secured it in place, and then repeated the process for the other rope.

"Well, now we have two ropes but no planks to cross them. And I don't feel like balancing on two ropes above a thousand-foot-tall gulch!" Fluttershy gulped.

"What? Of course we have planks. We have all of this timber here to work with!" Rarity said, pointing to the scrap wood pile which once constituted three timberwolves.

"Yeah, that's not really planks, though. Those are just logs and sticks and twigs," said Rainbow Dash.

"But with a touch of magic..." said Rarity as she charged up her horn. The logs glowed for a brief moment, and then they instantly transformed into planks.

"I didn't know you could do that!" said Applejack.

"Of course, Applejack. Remember at the slumber party when I turned that tree into carved statues? Well, that spell can be used for more than just ornate carvings! Or, rather, used for less than ornate carvings."

"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle," she responded.

"Okay, but how will we fasten the ropes to the planks?" asked Fluttershy.

"With more rope, of course!" Applejack said as she removed a long, thin coil of rope from her saddlebag.

"Allow me," said Twilight Sparkle. She levitated the planks and rope with her magic and connected the planks to the bridge all the way to the other side of the gulch. Since the gulch was only about twenty feet wide, her magic was able to reach all the way across.

"Alright, let's cross this bridge!" Rainbow said. The six ponies walked across the bridge in a single-file line. Thankfully, it was enough to support their weight.

Fluttershy was the last pony to cross, as she was walking rather slow. By the time all of the others had reached the other side, she was still on the bridge about five feet from the other side.

"Come on, Fluttershy, you're almost there!" said Twilight.

"Yeah, but..." Fluttershy looked down below her and saw the gulch. She shuddered at the height.

"Fluttershy, darling, don't be so frightened. It's not like these planks have been here for years and will snap under your hoof or something. I just made them a few minutes ago!" Rarity said.

Fluttershy took another step forward. However, she accidentally placed her hoof in a gap between two planks. This caused her to trip, and she fell into the gulch.

"FLUTTERSHY!" The other five ponies yelled.

"What?"

They looked over at her and saw her fluttering back on to the bridge.

"Bu-but... how did you FLY? Ahuizotl said no flyin'!" Applejack asked.

"Weren't you paying attention? He said we couldn't fly to CROSS the gulf. He didn't say anything about flying straight up," Fluttershy responded.

"Now you're getting the hang of it!" Rainbow said.

Fluttershy crossed over the remaining part of the bridge with no issue. Now the mane six were at the front steps of the palace. They looked up to where Ahuizotl had stood watching them, but the blue beast was gone.

"Where'd he go?" asked Applejack.

"I don't know, I wasn't watching," said Twilight, "Were any of you?" The other four shook their heads.

The six ponies walked up the cobblestone steps and through the arch where the door used to be, and they were inside of the grand foyer of the castle.

"Now, be careful, girls," Twilight warned, "Ahuizotl might still send more timberwolves to attack us."

"We aren't out of the woods yet," said Fluttershy.

“Yes we are, Fluttershy, because now we’re in the palace,” Pinkie said. 

They entered the chamber where Celestia and Luna had sat upon their thrones hundreds of years ago, and where Nightmare Moon had returned a little over a year ago.

“Ah, remember when we defeated Nightmare Moon here? That was awesome!” Rainbow Dash recalled gleefully.

Rarity said, “Never thought I’d lay eyes on this dreadful place again. It could use an interior redecoration for sure. The feng shui in this room is completely off, for one. For two--”

“Um, y’all… where’s the rest of the palace? All that's left is just this room. Unless there's a basement or somethin' like that," Applejack said.

Fluttershy sighed and leaned against a wall, “Girls, I don’t know if we’ll ever find it in this…” She jumped back, startled, as the brick her wing was touching embedded itself further into the wall, and a door-shaped segment of the wall fell away. Behind it was a secret staircase leading down.

“Fluttershy, you’re a genius! That brick was a button opening a hidden tunnel!” Rarity exclaimed.

Twilight said, "The books mentioned treasure hidden below the palace. If it's anywhere, it's probably through here."

“Then let’s get a move on!” Pinkie yelled, running into the dark of the opening in the wall. The other five quickly followed.
> Blind Flight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The six ponies treaded lightly down the damp, dark passageway. The air was musty. Dim torches lit the halls, barely illuminating the stone floor below.

“Now who on earth comes by here and keeps these things lit?” Rarity wondered aloud.

“Maybe they’re magical,” Twilight suggested.

The hallway continued on but a doorway to the left led to a spiral staircase heading downward. However, they realized it was inadequately lit, so Twilight used a horn light spell to illuminate the stairwell. It continued downward for about 200 feet until reaching another opening in the wall.

As the ponies walked, they encountered a good number of cobwebs. A small brown recluse was dislodged as they walked, landing onto Fluttershy’s nose.

“Um, Fluttershy, you’ve got a visitor!” Applejack warned. Fluttershy glanced down her snout and eyeballed the spider.

“Oh goodness, you poor thing! I’m so sorry we disturbed you. Here, let me make it all better,” Fluttershy took the spider in her hoof placed it onto an unoccupied cobweb. Fluttershy’s friends looked at her incredulously. They had probably been expecting her to be startled.

“What? That spider was lost and away from home. I had to help it. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing?” Fluttershy smiled at her friends. They all nodded, and the group continued onward.

Eventually they reached the doorway at the bottom of the spiral staircase. They entered it and were surprised to find themselves in a massive, brightly lit chamber. A tall marble pedestal stood in the center of the room. Atop of it stood a glass dome inside of which was what Twilight and her friends assumed was the Nirucon stone. It was a teal, translucent, cone-shaped crystal about a foot tall.


The Nirucon Stone

Also inside the chamber stood Auhizotl. He began slowly pressing his hands together, and after a few seconds he was clapping.

“Bravo, bravo. I did not expect you to get past those timberwolves so easily. Congratulations, ponies, you have found the chamber. And wouldn't you know that the Nirucon stone which you seek is right atop a pedestal! Why, Celestia herself couldn't have planned it better. But to get to it… ah, how to get it out from under the glass dome?

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, clearly undaunted by the challenge. “I’ve got this.” She flapped her wings and took off to the top of the ten-foot-tall marble pedestal. She pounded on the glass, but it would not break. She tried to lift the dome up, but discovered that it was fastened in place by three locks.

“Yes, do you honestly think that such a valuable artifact would be without security? Now, you have to solve my riddle to get the keys to these locks. But this one is no cinch.

You’ve come so far; you’ve passed two tests
My riddles, I admit, were not the best
But one riddle still awaits,
And this, most challenging, will decide the stone's fate.
Brains and brawn are needed now,
Or else the stone will not come down.

It stands on one leg and lives in water;
Of all the birds, there’s not one odder.
In the winter comes the dusk of solstice;
The day is fast, the night came quick. 
The priest’s cupboard is full of drinks
But yet is dry, at least probably.

You’ll see three doors around the room
Enter them correctly, or face your doom.
Once inside, you’ll find three trials
Finish them right and you’ll have smiles
Return triumphant, the dome lowers.
Both victory and the stone will be yours.”

So the mane six attempted to solve Ahuizotl’s final riddle.

“Now what do you suppose he meant by those words? The odd bird? The solstice? The priest?” Rarity asked.

“Well, the first one’s easy. The flamingo stands on one leg and lives in the water. I have a pet flamingo. He’s so cute!” Fluttershy answered.

“And the solstice… well, that one’s not really a riddle. That’s just a statement. It’s the longest night of the year, and the earliest sunset of the year. It comes in the winter. Not sure what to make of it,” Twilight noted.

“The third one is probably talking about alcohol. Priests don’t drink, do they? At least, they’re not supposed to,” Pinkie noted.

“Oh, I beg to differ. I know a holy man who’s quite the boozer; he hits the bottle all the time! In fact, he buys a whole lot of cider from Sweet Apple Acres,” Applejack observed.

“Well, OK, maybe some priests drink, but needless to say it’s a rarity,” Twilight conceded.

“Hey, rarity is Rarity’s name! Rarity, Rarity, Rarity! Rolls off the tongue!” Pinkie laughed. The others looked at her, grinning at her silliness.

“Well heck, Applejack’s my name. I suppose a priest with that type of liquor in his cabinet would have an applejack rarity,” Applejack chuckled.

“Does… does this riddle have to do with our names?” Twilight asked. “That might make a bit of sense. I mean, it would be STUPID, but it would make sense. Twilight is part of the day, which occurs at the solstice. In fact, the twilight comes earliest at the solstice.”

“You could say it dashes there early,” said Rainbow Dash.

“And that leaves… oh, goodness! The flamingo is pink! And it flutters along, it doesn’t really fly,” Fluttershy squealed. “Girls, we’ve solved the riddle!”

Twilight brought her hoof to her forehead. She looked across the room back at Auhizotl and rolled her eyes. “Really? That’s all you could come up with? That’s the most contrived, cockamamie thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Other than your fish basket riddle from Daring Do and The Clandestine Apprentice. That book was so obviously ghostwritten that it’s not even funny.”

Auhizotl fumed, a scowl on his face, and bellowed, “Look, I had limited time to come up with this, okay? Don’t be so obtuse. Do you honestly think you could’ve done better?”

Twilight scratched her chin with her hoof. She paused for a few moments, deep in thought. Then, her face lit up with realization, “Aha! I know what else would have worked. You could have paired me with Pinkie, Rarity with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy with Applejack and gotten a gorgeous sunset, a double rainbow and a fruitfly.”

Auhizotl puzzled for a minute before replying, “The gorgeous sunset I see, because of the shades of pink at twilight. And double rainbows are quite uncommon, it’s true. A rarity rainbow. But a fruitfly? I guess it does flutter and I guess it does fly around fruit, apples in particular. So yes, those pairings might also have worked. But you have to remember that I made these pairings for a reason. And that’s for what’s behind these doors, which will require particular combinations of skill. Now solve the riddle already! Please quit speaking to me.”

“Fine, mister demandy-pants,” Twilight, finished with her pedantic display in the face of the gargantuan beast, walked over to the three doors with her friends.

She said, “So there’s three doors. I go into one with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy goes into another with Pinkie Pie, and Rarity and Applejack get the last one.”

The first door had a picture of a flamingo on it. The second door had a picture of a bottle on it, and the final door had a picture of a sunset on it. The ponies formed into pairs corresponding to the ones they had figured out.

“So do we do this all at once, or do we do this a pair at a time and the other four of us just stand out here and cheer on the two who are in?” Rarity asked.

“I say we do it all at once and get it over with! I can’t take the suspense!” Fluttershy said. The others agreed, and each pair walked into the door they were assigned.

Obviously, for the sake of this story each of the trials faced by the three pairs of ponies is accounted for separately, even though they all happened concurrently.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy walked through the door and down their hallway, which extended for about a hundred feet before leading to a spiral staircase, sparsely lit by torches. The stairs seemed to tower forever.

“Stairs? I laugh in the face of stairs!” Pinkie bounced up the stairs, skipping up them five at a time.

“Um… Pinkie, isn’t that… dangerous?” Fluttershy asked. She gasped as Pinkie appeared to almost trip over a loose brick, “Oh, watch out, you’re going to fall! No, wait, nevermind…”

Pinkie simply ignored her and hopped along. Fluttershy could not fathom how Pinkie could completely ignore the risk of plummeting to her death. Though she was a pegasus, Fluttershy opted to walk up the stairs. She didn’t want to risk falling, after all.

Pinkie was at the top of the staircase for about ten minutes before Fluttershy finally ascended to the top. She stood in wait, tapping her hoof against the ground.

“Wow, you’re really slow! I mean, I’ve seen faster snails than you!” Pinkie Pie playfully chided her friend.

“Um… sorry,” Fluttershy meekly apologized.

“Don’t be sorry! We all have our own pace! My pace is just really fast, that’s all!”

Though they each considered one other to be friends, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy had diametrically-opposed personalities. Pinkie was outgoing and energetic while Fluttershy was reserved and bashful. For this reason, the two ponies had an odd rapport and usually did not interact unless it was in the context of their larger circle of friends. This, in fact, was one of the only times they had ever been alone together for an extended period of time.

The two walked down the hallway at the top of the stairs until they reached a dark room. Pinkie and Fluttershy could not see a thing, for the room was entirely pitch black. It could have been the size of a closet or the size of a football field. They could see each other and the floor below for about a foot due to the light from a torch in the hall behind them, but no more than that.

“Well THIS is a letdown! How are we supposed to face a trial if we can’t even SEE a trial!” Pinkie Pie complained.

“Maybe we could go and grab a torch from the staircase and bring it in here,” Fluttershy suggested. Pinkie agreed that was a good idea. They turned back and walked into the hallway. Pinkie attempted to wrench a torch from the wall. It wouldn’t budge.

“Fluttershy, could you help me with this?” Pinkie asked.

“Um, I guess. I’m not that strong, but okay.” Fluttershy got behind Pinkie and grabbed the torch, pulling with Pinkie. They pulled for about a minute until Pinkie lost her grip and flew backwards, slamming both herself and Fluttershy into the wall behind them.

“Ouch!” Fluttershy yelped in pain.

“That thing’s bolted in there! I bet all the other ones are, too. We’ll have to face this room in the dark,” Pinkie said.

They returned to the pitch-black room.

“I guess we should inspect the room as best we can. For all we know this room continues on into a bottomless pit!” Fluttershy suggested.

“Good idea. Party cannon, away!” Pinkie Pie removed her Party Cannon and fired off a blast of hard candy. The duo waited for about ten seconds before hearing echoes off of the far wall and off of the floor.

“Pit is right! Good thinking, Fluttershy. If we had just walked into this room blindly, we would have been dead meat!”

“I guess I could fly over the pit and see, or feel I guess, what’s on the other side. That way we know what's in there.” Fluttershy flapped her wings and was airborne. She cautiously flew in the direction of the far side of the room.

As she was about ten feet out from the light, a rumbling sound suddenly broke the silence. It was followed by a shattering sound about ten seconds later.

“AAH!” Fluttershy zipped back and into the light. She examined her wing to find that a few feathers were missing from the tip. Though she was still able to fly, she was shaken.

“There was something that fell on me! It grazed my wing and just barely missed hitting the bone!”

“That’s crazy!” Pinkie exclaimed, “This whole room is probably booby-trapped! And we can’t even see anything.”

Fluttershy glowered, incensed at the situation. “That meanie Auhizotl! How dare he booby trap this room, we can’t even see! Oh, I’m so mad, I could just stomp!”

She slammed her hooves down in a fit of rage. Her tantrum appeared to disturb the fragile room, as a low rumbling once again sounded. Pinkie’s tail twitched.

“TWITCHY TAIL!” Pinkie yelled and jumped, pounding into Fluttershy, knocking both her and her friend out of the way of a falling ceiling tile.

The antique ceramic tile broke with a clang shattered in a dozen pieces on the floor. Pinkie and Fluttershy cautiously walked back over and examined it.

“That must have been what fell onto me when I was flying!” Fluttershy realized. “Pinkie, you’re a genius! All we have to do to cross is for you to use your Pinkie sense. Then, we can know when these tiles will fall.”

“That’s a great idea, Fluttershy! But you’ll have to carry me over, because there’s a pit, remember?”

Fluttershy gulped. She didn’t know if she could carry Pinkie Pie at all, let alone across a room of this size. She asked, “Do you still have those balloons? I think I can carry you without them, but I would like some help.”

“Nope. They floated away when I landed on the rocky outcropping with Applejack back at the waterfall. You’ll have to rely on your own strength!”

Fluttershy looked down at the ground for a few seconds, and then chuckled. “Eh, no problem. I can do it.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Fluttershy grabbed Pinkie Pie’s hooves and flapped her wings vigorously, slowly lifting them both into the air.

“Okay Pinkie, hold on tight!” Fluttershy inched forward across the pit. They hadn’t gotten twenty feet before Pinkie’s tail twitched once again.

“Get out of the way, Fluttershy, there’s a tile about to fall!” Fluttershy veered to the right. They heard the whoosh of a tile falling and the clang ten seconds later of it shattering in the pit below.

“Now to your left! Now to your right! Now up ahead! Oh Fluttershy, there’s tiles everywhere!”

The yellow pegasus zipped about with remarkable speed, avoiding the tiles in a frenzy. Had she been in a more timid state, she would not have believed herself capable of it.

“I’m getting dizzy!” Pinkie turned a shade of green that would have been visible if it were not for the pitch darkness.

“Come on Pinkie, you’ve gotta stay alert and warn me about those tiles!” Fluttershy encouraged her friend.

“Okay, there’s one coming up now! Right ahead!” Fluttershy braked, narrowly avoiding being clonked on the head by a falling tile. She paused for a moment and when she heard the clank, and then continued forward.

“Now there’s one about to fall on you, move to your left! No, wait, your ri—“ Thonk! It was too late! Fluttershy had been hit in the head with a tile and began falling, rapidly losing air.

“Aaaah! Fluttershy! Keep it together!” Pinkie held onto Fluttershy with one hoof and with her spare hoof, shook her friend’s head.

“Wait, what? Oh, I’m falling. AAAH!” Fluttershy regained her composure and flapped vigorously, regaining altitude.

The rest of the way was mostly smooth sailing. The two developed a decent system that prevented Fluttershy from being hit by any more tiles. Eventually Fluttershy bumped into the far wall, just in time as she was becoming incredibly worn out.

“Okay, I’m going to slowly descend. Watch your hooves, Pinkie, so you can get down when I land.” Fluttershy slowly returned to the ground below. She reached it and returned to her hooves, standing beside Pinkie.

“We DID IT!” Pinkie screamed in delight. Fluttershy felt several light bits of things land on her back. She thought it might have been another spider, or dust from an impending tile.

“Uh, Pinkie, what was that?” She wondered if her friend had felt the same thing.

“Oh, that was confetti. I just threw some in the air because WE DID IT,” Pinkie repeated. She sang a celebratory song, one which closely matched the melody of a nursery rhyme in our own world about a trio of visually impaired rodents.

“Two blind friends, two blind friends
We reached the end; we reached the end
The tiles fell from the left and right
And even though it was dark as night
We had my tail and we had your flight
We’re Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie.”

Fluttershy giggled at Pinkie’s song, and the two hoof-bumped in congratulatory manner.

“Now let’s find a light switch or something,” Pinkie said. They both blindly felt along the back wall until Fluttershy found a small alcove. She reached in and felt what she figured to be a key. She removed it.

“Pinkie, look what I found! Or, I guess, come feel what I fou—“ As the words left her mouth, there was a loud rumbling sound. Suddenly, a small ray of light appeared through the ceiling. Then another ray of light. Soon thousands of tiles came crashing down and thousands of rays of light appeared, revealing the sky above. The room was illuminated, and the girls looked down into the pit below.

Fluttershy immediately jumped back. The edge of the chasm was a mere foot from where they stood.  It was a good two hundred feet deep, and thousands of spikes stuck out of the ground. Several skeletons of ponies were impaled upon the many spikes.

“AAAH!” Both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie screamed at the top of their lungs for a full ten seconds before regaining their composure.  They then stopped to look at the key.

The key was gorgeous. It appeared to be gold, or at least gold-plated. It was encrusted with hundreds of small pink topaz gems. Oddly, the key floated in the air as if levitated by unicorn magic, without either pony touching it. It appeared to simply be drawn towards them.

“This key must be worth a fortune,” Fluttershy noted. Pinkie nodded her head in agreement.

“That riddle was odd. I was kind of expecting to use The Stare or my skill with animals or something. I mean, Auhizotl said that this required our specific skills. Flight isn’t really my strong suit; I barely made it over. Flight is more Rainbow Dash’s skill.”

Pinkie paused for a moment and then explained, “Yes, flight isn’t your strong suit, but caution is. If you didn’t stop to worry about there being a pit, we would’ve just blindly walked along and plummeted to our doom! I don’t think anypony else would’ve done that. I know Dashie wouldn’t have. And even if she did know there was a pit, she probably would have just flown across the room full speed ahead and hit a tile or the back wall, tumbling back down into the pit. Being fast and a great flyer doesn’t mean that much when you’re dead!”

“True,” Fluttershy acknowledged.

They both headed back, the floating key following behind them. The two entered into the large atrium with the Nirucon stone on the pedestal to find that they were the only ones there, save for Auhizotl. They wondered how their other four friends were doing.
> Fruit of the Wilted Tree
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	At the same time that Pinkie and Fluttershy were entering their room, Rarity and Applejack walked into the bottle door. They walked down a long, dimly-lit stairwell for seemingly hundreds of feet. Finally, they reached an underground hallway.

“Are we supposed to each go together, or go separate? Should I take the left and you take the right?” Rarity wondered.

“Naw, I think that blue feller, Owie-what’s-his-face paired the two of us together for a reason. We shouldn’t separate because we’re liable to get lost. We just need to stick together like white on rice!” Applejack insisted.

“I guess you are correct,” Rarity acknowledged. The two chose to go down the left path. However, they were soon faced with the same dilemma: a path which split off into two different directions.

“Left again. I figure we reach another fork and go left, that way we end up back where we started in the worst case,” Rarity reasoned.

“Yup,” Applejack said. They both went left once again. This time, they did not reach a fork, but the hallway turned right and then another leftward fork presented itself, along with another rightward fork. They continued on for a dozen more forks until they were entirely lost.

“Wow, this is almost as bad as that maze that Discord put us into,” Rarity observed. “Why, at least that maze was outside and I could see the sun in that maze.”

“Yeah, this maze is underground. Not much under here but minerals and gems and such.”

“Speaking of…” Rarity lit up her horn.

“Are you really tryin’ to find gems at a time like this?” Applejack scolded.

“Well, there is never an incorrect time for fashion. And… wait, I actually have something! I’m picking up some gems as we speak! It’s over… here! Rarity indicated right and Applejack followed. Her horn continued to glow progressively stronger as they walked along.

“Maybe gems are what we are supposed to be looking for,” Rarity said.

“Then why in tarnation am I here?” Applejack questioned.

“I don’t know, maybe you are supposed to help me dig or something,” Rarity joked. She illuminated a brick in the wall and gems shone through. It appeared to be a solid gemstone brick, made of quartz.

“Well I’ll be darned,” Applejack said, “You’ve found a brick that was cut from a gemstone. Congratulations. Now can we PLEASE get on with this maze?”

Rarity pried the gem brick out of the wall with her magic and stored it in her saddlebag. She looked at her friend with a slightly irritated look.

“Oh come now, Applejack. If you had smelled apples with that nose of yours then I guarantee that you would be all…”

“Come to say it, you’re not gonna believe this but…” Applejack started.

“What, you smell apples right now?” Rarity joked condescendingly.

“No, but I really do! This-a-way!” Applejack ran off further down the path. Another fork came and she ran off to the left. Rarity followed and eventually the hallway led to a 500-square-foot room in the maze with an apple tree growing in the center. The room had no roof and the sun shone through from hundreds of feet above.

“Why, if it isn’t a grand ol’ apple tree! Snack break!” Applejack ran over to the tree, bucked the side of it and several apples fell. She picked one up and bit into it.

“Tht’s gud fod rght thare!” Applejack mumbled through a mouthful of apple. She wolfed down several more over the course of a few more minutes.

“That’s disgusting!” Rarity reproached, “Those have probably been in this dungeon for years. There’s nopony around to buck them, after all. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if these apples have fermented.”

“Now see here. I’m not gettin’ drunk off no apples. These are only slightly maybe possibly alcoholic,” Applejack defended, stumbling to the other side of the tree and bucking it again.

“You really must stop,” Rarity said, levitating an apple out of Applejack’s grasp that she was about to imbibe, “You look as if you actually are inebriated.”

“Why of courshe nawt, Rarity. Y’all are the naggerest nag I ever done laid eyes on. You know I never did liked you at all. Pretentious city folk, good fer nuttin.’”

“You reside in the same town as I!” Rarity corrected, “And as I recall we made amends at Twilight’s slumber party many months ago,” 

(Rarity was referring to the duo’s long-standing rivalry and differences, which though amounting to nothing more serious than good-natured teasing during most times, got a bit heated at Twilight’s sleepover.)

“Sorry Rarity, that’s jus’ the alcoholic apples talkin.’ I didn’t mean any of it. I’m… so sorry!” Applejack bawled.

“Why Applejack, you simply must quit being a drama queen. And I would know what one looks like, after all,” Rarity said, “Now let’s finish the rest of this maze. Get up off the ground, stop crying, and let’s get to work. We have a key to find.”

“Ah suppose yer right,” Applejack conceded. She got to her feet, stumbling a bit, before shaking her head rapidly, “Boy howdy! Those are some mighty—hiccup—strong apples!”

“I’ll say,” Rarity agreed. “Perhaps, on second thought, you should lie down for a moment. I’ll explore the room alone and come back.”

Rarity left her friend lying under the shade of the apple tree and searched the rest of the room. She found that there were no other entrances or exits from the room besides the one which they had entered from. However, one wall contained a large inscription carved into the stone bricks,

“This tree is old and wilted.
Please, oh please, get rid of it.”

“Applejack, I believe I have found our next clue,” Rarity called out to her friend.

“Eeeeyup,” Applejack hiccupped, “And what might that be?”

“It says that we have to remove this tree from the room. Now I’m no lumberjack, Applejack. Sober up a bit more and get to work!”

“It don’t take a sober-minded pony to know that’s not gonna work. I’ve got mighty powerful legs but not powerful enough to level a full-grown apple tree. Unless there’s an axe or somethin’ ‘round here that I can use.”

Rarity continued searching the room, but to no avail. 

She returned to her friend and reported the disappointing result, “Applejack, there’s no tools here that I can find. Unless you propose burning the tree to the ground.” 

“That’s actually a mighty fine idea, Rarity,” Applejack jumped to her feet. She shuffled over to the apple tree and bucked it a few more times until some twigs fell out. She took one in each hoof and rubbed them together, but soon discovered it would be difficult to start a fire.

“These twigs are damp. It must’ve rained here recently. I can’t start a fire with this, and even if I could, this ol’ rotten tree ain’t gonna burn very easily.”

“Hmm…” Rarity pondered. Then, “Aha!” She removed her quartz brick from her saddlebag and held it up to the sun. After a few moments she managed to focus the sun’s rays on a patch of grass. A thin whisp of smoke briefly rose from it, but no flames arose.

“Y’all are never gonna start a fire like that. Not without some fuel. Here, lemme show you,” Applejack picked up some apples from the floor and mashed them on the ground all around the tree. She bucked the tree several more times and continued to pound the apples into more mush, a process which took about twenty minutes. Soon, the entire base and trunk of the tree was covered in an apple mush.

“Now, the alcohol in these here apples will make startin’ a fire much easier,” Applejack assured.

“Ah, I see!” Rarity beamed. She focused her lens once again at the base of the tree. This time, flames rose until the entire tree was engulfed. The two stood back from the massive conflagration.

“Now that’s what I call teamwork!” Rarity exclaimed. As she said this, the back wall with the inscription fell away to reveal a hidden cubby hole.

“In there!” Applejack and Rarity ran towards the wall, skirting the edge of the flaming tree. Inside the small hole, they discovered a key was hidden. Rarity reached in and grabbed it. It was a silver key encrusted with garnets. (Had Rarity not been using her own levitation magic to grab the key, she would have noticed that it was drawn to her by its own accord as with the key that Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie had found.)

“How pretty!” Rarity stored the key in her saddlebag. As she did this, Applejack coughed.

“Oh, no need to be so passive-aggressive, Applejack. If you want the key, you needn’t use the ‘ahem’ trick. Just ask politely and I shall simply give it to you—ah-choo! ”

Applejack and Rarity coughed and wheezed. They looked back and discovered that the previously open-air room had been enclosed by a roof, which seemed to have fallen into place when they grabbed the key. They were going to suffocate from smoke!

“Let’s *wheeze* get outta here!” Applejack urged. They both ran back towards the exit. They continued down the hallway at a breakneck speed.

“Which way did we *hack* come in here from,” Rarity asked, her eyes blurry with tears from the stinging particulate smoke.

“I don’t know! I don’t remember!” Applejack yelled.

“Well, maybe…” Rarity’s horn lit up as she sensed for gems and realized there were some in the area.

“The others must have found similar keys to ours! I’m picking up more gems this way!” Rarity led the way and Applejack followed. They continued for several minutes until they reached a fork in the road that appeared familiar, and figured they were near the exit as Rarity’s horn glowed brighter. However, they soon reached an obstacle.

“There’s a… *wheeze* pile of rubble in the way! It must’ve fallen when we picked up the key!” Applejack said.

“Well *gasp* why don’t you REMOVE IT!” Rarity gasped for air and began to black out, her vision patchy.

“Hold on now, I got this!” Applejack heaved rubble out of the way, bucking it behind her with her powerful legs. She stumbled a bit, still slightly buzzed from the apples.

“HURRY!” Rarity urged. Soon, Applejack had formed a clearing in the top that they could see the main room from. She crawled through and reached the other side. She gasped for breath.

“I… can’t… make… it…” Rarity meekly cried, asphyxiated by the smoke. She fell to the floor.

“Hold on now, I gotcha!” Applejack threw her lasso around Rarity and pulled her up the pile of rubble and back through into the main room.

“Hey, where have you guys been?” Pinkie Pie inquired.

“Oh, you’re safe! We were so worried!” Fluttershy flew over and gave hugs to Applejack and Rarity.  The two friends sat for a moment, catching their breath. They had completed their challenge.

Now, the only ones left who had yet to return were Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.
> Pop Quiz, Hotshot
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Twilight and Rainbow Dash continued down a long torch-lit hallway. As they walked, they reached another door, which they opened and entered another, larger hallway. This hall was about 50 feet tall and 20 feet wide. However, unlike Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie’s room, this one was well-lit and the two could see about two thousand feet off into the distance. However, they could not see anything beyond that. For all they knew, the grand corridor went on forever.

They looked behind them and noticed there were three giant fans above the doorway they had just entered. The giant metal blades lazily churned along, not producing anything more than a slight breeze.

“I wonder why that fan is here. I can’t imagine it ever gets very hot in here,” Twilight wondered aloud. Rainbow nodded her head in agreement.

The two walked down the hallway for about a mile until they began to grow tired.

“Man, all this walking! Who in Equestria even built this place? It’s huge!” Rainbow Dash lamented, “Why would princess Celestia need such a long and huge hallway in her palace?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t built during her time. You know Auhizotl; he’s big enough to fill this whole hallway. I’ll bet he could probably have built it himself over time. That or maybe he used his magic to do it. That or he enslaved some woodland creatures to do it for him,” Twilight hypothesized.

“You mean like in Daring Do and The Somnambulist, where he uses his army of monkeys to construct a maze for Daring Do?” Rainbow recalled.

“Exactly. But then again, we have no idea how closely the character from the book matches the character in real life. But needless to say, both the real and fictional Auhizotl would have no trouble building a giant structure if he needed one built.”

“Well either way, we need to reach the end sometime this year,” Rainbow complained.

“I agree. We will never reach the end of this hallway by just walking. We need an alternative mode of transport. So, how do you want to approach this? We can fly, or I can try and teleport us as far as I can,” Twilight offered.

“Let’s fly. Who knows how long this passageway is? Also, knowing Ahuizotl, you 
might end up teleporting off above a pit or something. Or it might not even work. Best stick with what we know he won’t mess with, and that’s flight,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Very well, that makes sense,” Twilight agreed. Rainbow hovered in the air and locked hooves with Twilight, lifting her gradually into the air until they were twenty feet above the floor.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash, like the other two pairs of ponies earlier discussed, were decent friends but not especially close. Though the duo did share two traits exclusively among the mane six. One, of course, was their shared love of the Daring Do novels earlier mentioned. Though Dash had previously spurned Twilight’s love of the books as an ‘egghead pursuit,’ she had come to love reading them as a guilty pleasure.

The two also were unique in that each was the undisputed master of her race’s natural ability. Rainbow was, bar none, the best flyer in all of Equestria. No other pegasus in living memory had managed to break the sound barrier and perform a Sonic Rainboom but her. Though she always wanted to join the Wonderbolts, she had saved three of the Wonderbolts and her friend Rarity from plummeting to the ground in a tailspin.

Twilight Sparkle was acknowledged by the princess herself as the most magically gifted unicorn that she had ever seen. In fact, she was the personal protégé of the princess. She was also one of the only ponies who was capable of performing the advanced spells in the Canterlot Archive such as time travel or mind control. Needless to say, both ponies were at the peak of their respective disciplines.

“Hold on!” Dash sped up, propelling forward at twenty miles an hour. The hallway continued seemingly endlessly. Twilight glanced down below her. Though she was at first afraid of the height, she shook it off and soon came to enjoy zipping through the air.

“You know, this is the first time I think I’ve ever actually flown before. I mean, I’ve been in my hot air balloon, and I’ve gone on a slow ride in the Princess’s chariot when I first came to Ponyville but that was nothing compared to this!” Twilight squealed in delight.

“Pretty exhilarating! The freedom, the wind in my mane, I wouldn’t trade it for anything!” Rainbow grinned. She sped up by about ten miles an hour.

“Yeah, magic can do a lot of things, but not anything like this. unicorns have never mastered flight, though Celestia knows they’ve tried. The closest thing I can think of is the temporary butterfly wing spell, but that’s not even close to this,” Twilight said.

“What if you had to choose between your magic and the ability to fly as well as me?” Rainbow inquired. Twilight thought about it for a moment, her mane blowing in her hair distracting her slightly from her pondering.

“I’d stick with magic. I mean flight is cool and all, but it’s just a single skill. I can do a lot of neat stuff with my magic. None of them individually might be as impressive as flight or as a sonic rainboom, but together I think it’s a package deal that’s slightly above and beyond even your aerial mastery. I mean: I can teleport, levitate large objects, turn rocks into clothes, the list goes on. I can do over two dozen tricks at last count,” Twilight answered.

“Ah, no way! Flight wins, hooves down. Or should I say, hooves out in front of you as you zip through the air at two hundred miles an hour!”

“Two hundred miles an hour? That’s how fast you can go!? That’s amazing!” Twilight’s pupils dilated.

“I’ll have to take you flying that fast sometime. And that’s not the fastest I can go, that’s just standard. The fastest I’ve ever been is EIGHT hundred miles an hour, when I was doing the sonic rainboom, and it’s absolutely radical! Though I wouldn’t go above a hundred in here, we might run into the end of this hall and into a wall at any minute. This is about as fast as I feel safe flying right now. But yeah, anytime you want to go flying just hit me up.”

“Definitely!” Twilight responded.

Twilight looked around and saw that they were going faster than before. “Hey Rainbow, how fast do you think we’re going right now?” she inquired.           	

Rainbow glanced in front of her and noticed that the corridor was no longer empty. The two were in fact approaching a row of columns.

“Uh, I don’t know. Probably too fast, and we’re about to hit some obstacles. I’d say we’re going about fifty. Let’s slow down.” Rainbow flapped her wings against the air in an attempt to brake. But it did no good! There was some sort of air current which kept her going at her current speed.

“Twilight, do you feel that wind blowing from behind us? I can’t stop!” Rainbow informed Twilight.

Twilight darted her eyes, and then cried, “The fans behind us… they must’ve been turned on! This entire hallway is a giant wind tunnel!”

Twilight, now panicked, eyed the fast-approaching columns ahead of them.“AAAAH! We’ll crash into those columns!” Twilight screamed.

“No we won’t. There’s room for us. Hold on tight!” Rainbow yelled. She zipped through a gap in the columns and continued on for a hundred more feet, only to find that there were more columns up ahead, and she was about to crash into one!

She veered off to the left, passing through the gap between columns. More columns were zipping towards them.

“Okay, hang on, we’re about to have to do some crazy maneuvers. Good thing I practiced this!” Rainbow zipped through the columns with expert accuracy, never so much as letting a feather touch the edge of one. Soon they got through the forest of columns and continued into open space.

“Man, is this all Auhizotl can throw at us? Bring it!” Rainbow egged on to no one. As if in response, (though it was entirely coincidence) a row of columns approached with gaps of only a foot wide each in between them. They would almost certainly crash.

“Okay, now I’m the one who’s scared!” Rainbow desperately flapped to attempt to brake, but lost no speed.

“Hang on, I’m going to try to teleport us further back,” Twilight’s horn glowed and the two disappeared in a flash of light. They re-appeared a thousand feet further back than they were before. Twilight’s teleport had simply delayed the inevitable.

“Is Auhizotl messing with your teleports again?” Rainbow yelled.

“No, he’s not; it’s very difficult to teleport an object moving as fast as we are over any appreciable distance,” Twilight noted, firing off another teleport in desperation. They moved back, but this time only another five hundred feet.

“Well you gotta figure something out in the next ten seconds or so!” Rainbow despaired.

“Okay, how about this!” Twilight charged up her horn and aa beam of light extended from it, moving ahead of them and blasting a column in front of them to pieces. A loud shattering sound pierced the air as shards of the ceramic column fell to the floor.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” Rainbow awed as she squeezed through the gap that Twilight had created mere moments ago.

“Yeah, I’ve been practicing magical energy beams.” The two reached another set of impassable columns but were prepared this time as Twilight blasted an opening through them. Beyond those columns, the hallway began to curve gradually to the right.

“Okay, hang on, and don’t lose your lunch!” Rainbow advised. She leaned into the turn, her mane rapidly whipping back and forth into her eyes. She could hardly see through her hair. Twilight, glancing up at her friend, used her magic to move Rainbow’s hair out of the way.

“Thanks!” Rainbow shouted, and continued around the curve until the hallway had fully made a U-turn. Rainbow tried to brake again.

“I think I can slow down now!” She gradually lowered her speed and descended towards the floor, reaching a full stop just in time to reach a back brick wall and the dead end of the miles-long, cane-shaped hallway. The roof in this section of the hallway was significantly taller, as if it were at the bottom of a pit. Rainbow Dash could see the ceiling, but it was over a thousand feet in the air at least.

At the end of the wall was nothing more than a giant boulder. It measured about five feet in diameter, about the size of a pony.


A diagram of the hallway

“Well THIS is a letdown,” Rainbow Dash lamented, “I was expecting that we would use your super powerful magic and my incredible flight skills to fight some bad guys at the end of this or something!

“Yes, that is odd. I would have expected the same thing. All that is here is just a giant boulder. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with this.”

“I know, right?“ Rainbow responded, “Aren’t boulders in these temples and tombs supposed to roll towards us, and then we have to get out of the way? They aren’t just supposed to sit there!”

The two stared at the boulder. “Well, maybe we’re supposed to lift up this boulder to find something,” Rainbow figured, “I mean, the boulder must be here for a reason.”

“I got this,” Twilight reassured. She strained with her telekinesis a bit, her glowing aura around her horn extending out farther into space than normal. However, with a bit of applied effort, the boulder levitated a foot off the ground. Rainbow leaned under it and checked the floor. It was barren.

“Well that option’s no good. Maybe there’s something inside the boulder,” Rainbow guessed.

“That’s an idea. Let me see if I can find out,” Twilight said. She cast several different types of spells at the boulder until one of her spells found something.

“There are gems in this rock! I tried Rarity’s gem-finding spell and I can sense some gems. They’re sort of shaped like a key, so I’m guessing it’s a gem-encrusted key of some variety. We’re probably supposed to get it out somehow.

“See if you can smash it, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash suggested.

“Already on it!” Twilight, groaning under the incredible effort required, slammed the boulder back down onto the floor. A few chunks of an inch in diameter fell off but for the most part it was intact. Twilight then fired more magical energy beams at the boulder. However, this only managed to dislodge a few more chunks.

“You can blast through a column but not a boulder?” Rainbow asked incredulously.

“I think those columns were ceramic or something, since they shattered easily,” Twilight noted. “That or this boulder is solid iron!” Twilight attempted a few more tricks, including teleporting the boulder up to the ceiling and dropping it from a height, but it did not break.

“That… was… exhausting,” Twilight panted, “I don’t… think I can do that… too many more times… ugh,” Twilight fainted to the floor.

“You can’t just teleport whatever key there might be inside the boulder to the outside of the boulder?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight leaned up and responded, “Nope. It’s solid matter. You can’t teleport through solid matter. Teleportation involves matter moving from one point in space to another. But there has to be a path for it to go; it can’t move through other matter. To get the key from this rock, we’d need an explosion of some kind to fracture the rock open.”

“Well, I guess I can do a sonic rainboom. Except…” Rainbow eyed the ceiling. There was not nearly enough room. “I’m going to need more space to work with, Twilight. If I tried a rainboom in an enclosed room like this, it wouldn’t work. I’d just hit the boulder and break my neck and my wings! Usually I have to be a few miles in the air at least before I can build up enough speed.”

“Well, hmm…” Twilight thought about it for a minute, “I suppose that you could fly down towards the boulder, then I could teleport you back up so you could keep gaining speed, and we could repeat the process until you have enough speed to break the boulder.”

“Then how will I stop?” Rainbow Dash asked. Twilight thought about it for a moment before replying, “Well, after you’ve done the rainboom, I’ll teleport you back facing towards that fan in the long part of the hallway. That way you can work off your excess velocity and you don’t crash.”

“Sounds dangerous. I like it!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“Well, it’s dangerous to me, too. In fact, I will have to fly with you. In order to teleport another pony who’s moving as fast as you will be, I will simply have to be in direct contact or else it wouldn’t work. That’s the only way I was able to teleport both of us earlier, because you and I were touching.”

“Looks like you’ll get to go on that eight hundred mile an hour flight with me sooner than you thought,” Rainbow remarked.

The two ponies stood in front of the boulder as Twilight scribbled some calculations down on parchment.

“Rainbow Dash, can you fly up to the ceiling and tell me how tall it is?”

Rainbow looked at her friend puzzlingly. “How in Equestria am I supposed to know? I don’t have a measuring tape. Can’t we just get to doing this rainboom already?”

Twilight sighed at her friend’s ignorance, but answered, “We have to calculate how many times I am going to have to teleport you, and where I am going to have to teleport you to in order for this to work. Just approximate the height of one of these bricks used in the wall’s construction, fly up to the ceiling, and count the number of bricks as you’re flying. Then multiply the number of bricks by the average height of a brick.”

“These blocks are different heights, Twilight. Some of them are as tall as me, some are twice as tall as me.”

“Ugh! Come on, Rainbow Dash. You know how tall you are, just measure it in terms of your own height. Do I have to explain everything to you?”

Rainbow blushed, “Oh, I guess that would work too.” She flew up to the back wall and measured the height of it, which took about five minutes.

“It’s as tall as I am, times three hundred seventy five. I’m four feet tall,” Rainbow said.

Twilight Sparkle thought about this for a minute. She did some calculations on parchment and then her mouth dropped.

“This isn’t good. To break the sound barrier, you’ll have to travel 1,126 feet per second, approximately. If the roof is only 1,500 feet in the air, I’ll have to teleport you nearly once per second by the time you get to go that fast! And, I’ll have to teleport you over a thousand feet away! I could barely teleport you a thousand feet when you were going a fraction of that speed down the wind tunnel earlier!”

Rainbow assured her friend, “It will be easier than you think. Also, remember that the sonic rainboom makes magic more powerful. Remember your entrance exam to Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns? The Rainboom that I did back then helped supercharge your magic. When I do my Rainboom this time, it could help your magic be stronger now, too.”

“Very good, but the spells I cast then only happened after the rainboom. Not before it. Before it, I was not doing a good job and I was about to fail the exam.”

Rainbow refused to back down. “Well, what about Rarity? Her magic guided her towards the rock that my rainboom shattered open. But she was guided to the rock before it was shattered. You were compelled to take the exam before the rainboom. Maybe the magic-rainboom effect isn’t bound by time. You have to be a bit more confident, Twilight. Never say that you CAN’T do anything. I learned that the hard way. Never doubt yourself. Just have faith and confidence and nothing will stop you!”

Twilight thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know. If I mess up, we both could end up splattered and dead on the floor.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Come on, now. It’s Auhizotl. Has he ever designed a riddle or temple for Daring Do that was unsolvable? No. He put her life into danger, yes. But all of his riddles have been solvable thus far. You’re a smart pony. Just think, the six of us have made it through everything he’s thrown at us up until this point. There’s no reason to think we won’t make it through again.”

Twilight smiled. “Thanks, Rainbow. I appreciate it. You’re right. Let’s make this explosion!”

“That’s the spirit!” Rainbow grabbed Twilight once again and lifted her up into the air. They ascended towards the ceiling.

“This is more stressful than a roller-coaster. At least on those, I’m not the one responsible to ensure its safe operation!” Twilight shuddered as they approached the brick ceiling.

“Remember what I told you to do, Twi? It’s simple. Just be brave and have no doubt. Alright, we’re at the ceiling. We’re going to dive in three… two…”

Twilight gulped.

“One… NOW!”

Rainbow locked up her wings and entered a nosedive. She held onto Twilight, who was flailing in the air.

“AAAAH!”

“Don’t worry Twi, I’m not letting you go! I’ve done this before while carrying three ponies!” Rainbow flapped her wings vigorously as she picked up speed. The air was absolutely blistering on the descent as they accelerated. Soon, they were a mere hundred feet from the boulder. Twilight fired a spell from her horn.

The duo was back up at the ceiling again, their momentum preserved. They continued to pick up speed as gravity and Rainbow’s flapping propelled them faster and faster. Twilight fired off another teleport.

This time, they did not reach the ceiling again. They only teleported five hundred feet up into the air.

“FOCUS!” Rainbow Dash yelled as she picked up more speed.

At this point, a white cone appeared around the two ponies, indicating they were close to the sound barrier. Rainbow’s hooves were turning white from the effort to hold onto Twilight Sparkle, whose heart was beating so fast that she was visibly trembling. She teleported them again and again without thinking about it.

Twilight gathered all of the strength that she could muster and charged her penultimate teleport. If this one did not take them all the way up to the ceiling, they would hit the ground before performing a sonic rainboom! Her horn glowed immensely as she teleported them up to the ceiling a final time.

It was a success, and the two found themselves back up, nearly touching the ceiling for a brief moment as they continued their rapid descent. Twilight barely had a fraction of a second to think before she instinctively fired off another teleport.

The two were suddenly back in the long part of the hall with the fans. A mere moment later, an explosion of every color conceivable graced the hall as it was lit up like a disco. A deafening crack exploded through the air from behind them. The Sonic Rainboom had worked, and they had been spared death.

“Hang on, I’ve gotta work off some of this speed!” Rainbow called out to Twilight.

Twilight felt an immense sense of relief. She had done it! Then, she realized how fast she was going. Holy Celestia!

“Woohoo! We did it!” Twilight called out in excitement, her mane whipping her eyes.

“We’re not out of the woods yet! Hang on!”

Rainbow zipped through the rows of columns at a breakneck pace. Twilight felt light-headed and thought she was going to faint. All she could see was wall after wall of white as Rainbow navigated the columns.

About a minute later, the duo found themselves back at the entrance to the great hall. They lost speed as the rapidly churning fans from the front entrance worked against Rainbow’s momentum. When she had slowed to a crawl, she descended, letting Twilight down and then herself onto the ground.  	

“WE DID IT!” The friends both yelled out. They bumped hooves in excitement.

“Omigosh omigosh omigosh! Twilight, you were amazing! How in Equestria did you know exactly when to use that last teleport before the sonic rainboom? I didn’t even realize I was doing it!”

“That was nothing, how did you navigate those columns so quickly? I hardly saw them! That was incredible, Rainbow Dash!”

In their excitement, the two ponies barely noticed the key which was floating behind them. It was a platinum key coated in amethyst gems.

“Hey Twi, did you grab that at the last second? What amazing reflexes!” Rainbow noted.

“Actually, I didn’t do a thing. I’m not even using my magic right now. I have no idea where that key came from or why it’s floating behind us right now.”

“Well, either way, it’s following us, so it must be important. Let’s go back to the main room,” Rainbow suggested. Twilight nodded in agreement and they ran back to their friends in excitement, with quite a story to tell.

> Palace of Doom
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash emerged from their door, triumphant, their prize floating behind them. They met their friends back in the main room.

“Hey, you guys got a key too! What took you so long?” Pinkie Pie welcomed them back.

“What took us so long? I thought we were going pretty fast,” Rainbow Dash bragged, “In fact, I pulled off another sonic rainboom! Indoors with only a thousand feet to work with, no less. And then I zipped through a forest of obstacles.”

“Ahem,” Twilight nudged her friend.

“With the help of Twilight Sparkle’s teleports, of course,“ Rainbow admitted.

Pinkie Pie grinned, “Oh yeah, well that’s pretty impressive, but Fluttershy and I managed to find our way through a dark, collapsing room with booby traps and everything! All without being able to see a thing!”

Applejack bragged, “Well, I got drunk and set fire to a tree with Rarity!”

The other four ponies looked at Applejack and Rarity puzzlingly.

“Um, it’s a long story. Best be told on the journey home,” Rarity chuckled.       	

“Alright, Auhizotl. We’ve solved your riddles, now give us the Nirucon stone!” Twilight looked up at him and commanded.

“You have the keys, simply put them into place,” Auhizotl instructed.

The six ponies walked over to the pedestal and noticed that it had three keyholes on its side, and above the keyholes were the same markings from the doors. They inserted the three keys into the keyholes and turned them. The locks clicked and the keys crumbled to dust.

“No! All of those gorgeous gems!” Rarity ran over and grabbed the dust in her hooves, sobbing tears at the elegance which had been lost.

The dome lifted, and Twilight Sparkle grabbed the Nirucon stone with her magic. However, it soon fell out of her magical field.

“Hmm, that’s odd,” said Twilight, attempting to pick the stone back up. However, she could not lift it.

“My magic doesn’t seem to work on this stone,” she said, and simply grabbed it in her mouth.

“Of course you can’t pick up the stone with magic! It’s a magical inhibitor!” said Ahuizotl.

“Wait...” Twilight mumbled as the rumbling intensified.

“Yes! How do you think I was stopping you from teleporting across the river and the bridge? The stone enables whoever commands it to enhance or nullify any unicorn’s magic that they wish. Only one at a time, though. Thankfully Rarity didn’t know how to teleport, or I wouldn’t have been able to enforce my ‘no teleports’ rule.”

“What? But that’s absolutely worthless!” said Twilight Sparkle, removing the stone from her mouth with her hoof.

“For you, maybe. But this used to be Princess Celestia’s stone. How do you think that she banished Princess Luna to the moon? She used this stone, and then locked it up so that nopony would be able to use it against her.”

“So wait, yer sayin’ that we just made this journey and went through all them traps and puzzles for NOTHIN’?” Applejack said, fuming.

“Well, not for nothing. You see, while it is in this dome, the stone only works within the confines of the Everfree Forest. I can use its magic to stop your magic, but I can’t move the stone, since it was under this impenetrable dome. I would have gotten the keys myself, but as you could tell from the traps that Celestia put in this dungeon, only a pony could have made it through. I’m not even small enough to fit through any of those hallways!

“But since you six have so helpfully retrieved the keys for me, I can now use the stone wherever I want! I shall be a one man army, invade Canterlot, and use the stone on Celestia, holding the whole world hostage since I shall stop her from raising the sun! I will only return her powers if she agrees to let ME rule all of Equestria. And she will have to say yes, because she will be powerless to stop me!”

“But if you wanted us to get the stones all along, why did you try and stop us from crossing the river and the bridge?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Stop you? Nonsense, I was simply testing you with MY riddles and traps to see if you had what it takes to pass CELESTIA’S riddles and traps! The river crossing and bridge crossing were my tests. But by the time you got to the three doors with the keys, I was actively helping you to pass Celestia’s tests. I told you which doors to go in, didn’t I? I even used the stone’s powers to enhance Twilight’s magic when she was teleporting Rainbow Dash. Yes, all so that you would helpfully retrieve the stone for me! Now, you shall give it to me, or I will take it by force.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” said Twilight Sparkle, “Come on, girls!”

Twilight sparkle tossed the stone to Applejack, who put it in her saddlebag.

Auhizotl slammed his massive fist into a column holding up the ceiling. The column broke, and he broke several more columns. A loud rumbling sounded as the ceiling began to collapse.

“See if you can make it out of here NOW!” he called out as the six ponies went towards the long stairway that they had entered the dungeon from.

“Aah!” Rainbow Dash said as she zipped out of the way of a falling ceiling tile. 

Rarity looked up to glance a tile falling towards her, but Applejack pushed her out of the way.

“Thanks, darling, you saved--”

“No time! Keep movin!”

The six ascended the stairs, but the steps were collapsing. Fluttershy, who was in the rear of the pack, did a double-take as some steps collapsed in front of her, separating her and her friends. But she fluttered over the collapsed section of the stairwell and kept climbing.

Pinkie bounced over falling debris, as her tail madly twitched. She pushed her friends out of the way of a falling section of tile the size of a carriage.

“Look out!” she said, as another giant block fell in front of them. This one, however, blocked their path.

“What do we do? We’re trapped!” said Applejack.

“Wait a minute... no we’re not! We control the stone now! I can teleport us all out!” said Twilight Sparkle.

She charged up her horn as white lights enveloped all of her friends. In a split second, they were outside and across the rope bridge that they had rebuilt and crossed earlier.

“Hey, you finally got to use that group teleport spell,” said Fluttershy.

“Yeah, good job, Twilight!” Pinkie said.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Twilight Sparkle, “Let’s hurry home before Ahuizotl discovers that we didn’t actually die in there.”

“Mm-hm!” the other five agreed.

*****

Back in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle and her friends sat in her library. She examined the stone in her hooves.

“Well, from what I can tell, this stone won’t enhance any of my magic,” she said.

“But how did Ahuizotl use it to enhance your magic in the dungeon?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Well, he probably used the stone to transfer some of his own magic to me,” said Twilight. “That or he transferred some of Rarity’s, since they came out of their hallway before we did.”

“Now that you mention it, I did feel rather weakened when I emerged from that hallway,” said Rarity, “I thought it might have been the smoke that I inhaled, but it very well could have been Ahuizotl.”

"But this stone will probably be useless to me," said Twilight Sparkle.

"Eh, it's the journey that counts, right?" said Rainbow Dash.

Twilight Sparkle smiled. Giggling, she said, "Yeah, I guess you're right."