Mentor
Editor's note: This is an unpublished manuscript found in the basement of the Yearling family winery in the Foalumbia River valley, where A. K. Yearling spent her summer before college recovering from unspecified health problems. It was intermixed with papers verified to be from her last semester of high school. Multiple experts conclude that the penmareship of the annotations on the typed copy is unquestionably hers. Despite that unimpeachable pedigree, Ms. Yearling has refused to confirm the authenticity of this manuscript.
The logical conclusion is that an eighteen-year-old Ms. Yearling tried her hoof at erotic writing but ultimately chose not to publish this novelette. However, it does provide an interesting backstory to the characters of Daring and Caballeron. In particular, this Daring Do attended the same private high school as Ms. Yearling, was similarly the child of a mixed working-class pegasus/unicorn aristocracy marriage, and, like Ms. Yearling, grew up among Baltimare's monied Old Families. These details were all left undefined in the canonical novels published later.
One can only wonder what real-life events inspired young Ms. Yearling to pen this erotic novelette.
"You're excited," Minor Scale said, flicking Daring Do's swishing tail with a hoof.
"Am not." Daring didn't turn around. She kept her nose pressed to the train's window, watching the piedmont zoom past them, all low hills and fields of corn or cotton. She crossed her forelegs on the windowsill and rested her chin on them. She considered hopping off the train and stretching her wings for a few miles, but the train would be arriving before long.
"Are you going to let him screw you?"
Daring jerked upward and whirled to stare at her friend. "No! This is an expedition. Doctoral Candidate Caballeron wanted me—me, not one of the other Ph.D. candidates, not one of the undergrads, me—as his assistant. I'm not here to get laid."
Minor Scale raised an eyebrow at that. "You've said he's cute."
"That's just a scientific fact."
"You've said he's packing a cannon under his barrel."
"Fact. Not passing judgement."
"I've never been with an earth pony," Minor Scale mused.
"I'm not going to sleep with him."
Minor Scale levitated Daring's left foreleg up and pointed her nose at the recently-healed incision in her armpit where, five weeks before, the school nurse had implanted the crystal. "Then why did you go to Nurse Onyxheart's clinic?"
Daring pressed her elbows together, yanking away from Minor Scale's aura. Daring's tail thrashed and her ears drooped. "Everypony else on this trip already had a birth control spell, I would have felt odd-pegasus out."
"That was before your birthday. You were still seventeen, so your parents had to sign off. What did they say?"
Daring looked at the floor. "They were happy I was going somewhere with others my own age, for a change, instead of hanging out at the university all spring break." What Daring thought, but didn't say, was: I was born four weeks after my parents' wedding. Mom looked like a zeppelin in a dress in the pictures. They just signed the form without a word.
"Ha, I bet. Do your parents know you're meeting him down here?"
"I... no. No, I just told them it was a beach week with you and the others from school. They don't like him very much. I've stopped telling them when I see him at Horsekins."
"One hour to Maretle Beach. You gonna screw any of the guys? Or gals?" Minor Scale smirked, brushed Daring's tail with a hoof again, and tilted her head towards the others, playing cards around a table on the far end of the train car.
Daring said, "Well, not Diopt, obviously."
"Obviously not." Diopt Do was one of the card players. Besides being classmates, she and Daring were second cousins and lived on different floors of the family mansion. "You need to pop that cherry, Daring."
"No comment." Daring looked back out the window. The corn and cotton were getting thinner as the piedmont faded into the swampy South Coltolina Lowcountry, marsh grass now growing up to the trackbed, Maretle Beach the train's last stop on the line.
That evening, Daring, Minor Scale, and nine other seniors from Horseshoe Bay Preparatory Academy found an oceanfront restaurant specializing in Coltolina Lowcountry Boil. Their home of Horseshoe Bay was world-famous for its crab, one of the few places where ponies considered shellfish a dietary staple, so they all wanted to try the famous Lowcountry Boil with its shrimp, crawfish, corn, potatoes, onions, seasonings, and who-knew-what else.
A waiter brought Daring a bib and a shellfish mallet to open the crawfish, whereas her friends all levitated steel shellfish crackers to get at the meat. Daring was accustomed to it, really. Of the forty students in her senior class, she was the only non-unicorn. Well, Baltimare's Old Families were unicorns and Daring had been the odd filly out in this little herd since kindergarten. She smashed a crawfish open and dug in.
An hour and a half later, they all drowsed at the table, bellies full, and chipped in bits from their purses. An unspoken competition always seemed to be there, between them, of who could spend more of their parents' money, and the gratuity for the wait staff grew prodigiously.
Minor Scale pulled a flask out from under her cape and passed it around the table, each of them taking a shot of the apple brandy they weren't old enough to legally possess. Except Daring. She waved a wing dismissively and yanked off the greasy bib. She was planning to be awake and on her wings an hour before dawn and she didn't like alcohol very much, anyway.
After they exited the restaurant, Goldenrod sidled up next to her, his muscular flank brushing her left wing, his cutie mark rubbing hers as they walked.
"What's on your agenda tonight, Daring?"
She turned away from him and covered a burp with her right wing, tasting red pepper and crawfish, then tucked her wing back to her flank. "Digest and sleep. Before dawn, I'm taking a day or two inland, doing... a thing I arranged."
"I could arrange a thing for you to do," Goldenrod said. A soft hint of magic brushed the feathers on her right wing, then her left.
Daring closed her eyes for a moment, her ears perking straight up. His magic tickled her just so, right on her alulae, and his flank warmed hers against the chill evening breeze off the ocean. She had taught him that spot on her wings, the two of them horny pre-teens, making out way back in seventh grade, but they'd never gotten any further than deep kissing and a little wingplay. Daring smiled, remembering explaining the hickey on her neck to her parents.
That was about the same time Daring drew away from her classmates and friends and more and more into the world of the library and the outdoors, researching artifacts or exercising and defeating practice traps and obstacles, while Goldenrod and his rod cut a swathe through the fillies—and even a few of the other colts—in school.
Goldenrod was cute. Daring hmmmmmed deep in the back of her throat and the chill ocean breeze seemed to be chilling one part of her body more than the others, due to some sudden dampness...
"I'm going to sleep when we get back to the house," Daring said. Then she grinned at him. "I'll be back in a day or two, though."
His tail brushed against hers and he sidled off to hit on Diopt, apparently wanting one of the Do cousins that night but not caring too much which.
The eleven of them walked along the dark streets of Maretle Beach. Daring closed her eyes, enjoying the smell of the ocean and calls of the night birds. Six of their little herd peeled away, pulling out their fake IDs for access to a karaoke bar. Next to the karaoke bar was a sex shop. The dildos in the display window drew Daring's eyes for a split-second.
The remaining five of them returned to the rented beach house. Goldenrod and Diopt headed to his bedroom, Goldenrod already nibbling Diopt's ears and fully erect before they even closed the door. Minor Scale and Lime Light headed to Lime’s bedroom.
Daring brushed her teeth, set three alarm clocks, and climbed into bed.
As was Daring's long-standing bedtime routine—ever since puberty had hit her like a mallet between the hind legs seven years before—she pulled the blankets up over her head, reached down between her legs, found her clitoris, and rubbed herself off. She didn't date, didn't mess around, didn't get laid, but she was a healthy and hormonal eighteen-year-old who needed to get off in order to sleep, so she took care of her needs quickly and quietly.
With the sounds of her friends' rutting through the walls on two sides of her bedroom, she finished faster than usual. Her wings tightened to her flanks and her nipples hardened, her abdominal muscles clenching. A tiny squirt of her pleasure wet her left hoof. She sniffed the wetness deeply and sampled it with her tongue, rolling the strongly scented, slightly honey-like fluid around her mouth, and then fell asleep.
The alarm clocks weren't even necessary. About thirty minutes early, she woke up from a dream. The details faded as soon as her eyes opened, but her snout had been under another mare's tail, licking and sucking a stallion's seed from her channel, with a stallion rutting Daring as she squirted prodigiously across his balls. Her partners might have been Minor Scale and Goldenrod, but they might not have been, either. The dream faded too quickly.
Her inner thighs and upper tail were soaked. That hadn't happened in years. She couldn't remember ever having had a dream that wet. Daring sniffed and turned on the lamp, examining the bed. Ew. She pulled the sheets off the bed, crumpled them into a wad and dropped them on floor, and left a five-bit coin for the maids.
She headed down the hallway to the shower, shuffling awkwardly to keep her thighs closed and tail clamped over her vulva so she didn't drip on the carpet.
After showering, Daring smiled at the mare—no longer the filly, but the mare—in the mirror. Her mane and tail were still damp, double-shampooed and conditioned, and brushed exactly into place. She straightened her new olive-green vest and settled the new pith helmet precisely onto her mane. Her ears poked jauntily through the holes in the helmet's brim.
She'd mail-ordered the vest and helmet for this trip. Her old vest was too small, Daring having filled out, especially her flight muscles, over the last six months, reaching her adult body shape and leaving her filly's body behind.
The mail order delivery had been to the beach house, not home, so her parents didn't ask what expedition she was going on, or ask with whom.
Sniffing, she sampled the hints of rose and tangerine on herself. Besides the mane and tail, she'd double-washed under her tail. The wet dream had been strong. But now? Spotless and smelling of the best soaps and conditioners from Baltimare's finest boutiques, everything would be perfect for her first real expedition. Yeah, yeah, she'd spent last summer with Uncle Adventure at a dig site—but that was a dig, not a penetration.
A flash of charcoal-gray magic popped the lock and Minor Scale barged into the bathroom, hustled to the toilet, and plopped down.
"Hey!" Daring said, staring at her own reflection instead of the other mare. "I'm using the bathroom. I could have been on the toilet myself, for all you knew."
Minor Scale grunted, peed loudly and with a contented sigh, then said, "Someone has a hot date in the ancient temple."
"Do not."
"You're getting kinda spiffed up to go spelunking. By Celestia, Daring, that outfit looks good on you, and you've put on weight."
"What?"
"Not like that. Your chest and flanks are turning into solid muscle. How much have you been exercising?"
Daring looked at her forehooves, which leaned against the sink.
"Daring? Flap your wings."
Daring gave an impatient flick and glared at Minor Scale.
"No. Show off your wings. Slow. Majestic. Princess-y."
Daring raised her wings and gave a single, slow wingbeat, like a condor riding a thermal high above the desert. Her flight muscles strained against the fresh fabric of her new vest. She smiled at herself in the mirror and gave a second, stronger wingbeat. The gust of air shook the soap dishes on the countertop.
Minor Scale whistled. "You really are something else, Daring. He's a lucky stallion."
"I'm not going there to get laid."
"Riiiiiight."
Daring raised her nose an inch, taking a deep sniff. "What's that smell?"
Minor Scale, still sitting on the toilet, raised an eyebrow at Daring. "You literally don't know what cum even smells like? You've never even given a wingjob?"
Daring swished her tail and looked over her shoulder to stare at Minor Scale's vulva, which was matted and sticky. Daring's mind flashed back to her dream, where she had licked a stallion's cum from a mare's channel. Her tongue licked her lips before she forced it back in and clamped her jaw shut. "No comment."
Minor Scale levitated a wad of toilet paper to wipe herself. A long white string of what Daring assumed was Lime Light's cum stretched between Minor's labia and the paper before she dropped it into the bowl. She gestured a hoof at her sticky mess. "Sex is really, really good, by the way. You need to try it."
Daring turned back to the mirror and tilted the pith helmet to a jauntier angle. She simultaneously pulled her tail low, covering the sudden warmth in her own vulva.
"You know you're the only virgin in the senior class, Daring? Probably the only one in the school past seventh grade, to be honest."
"I never said I was a virgin," Daring countered.
"You don't need to say it. You know, you're also the only pegasus in the senior class..."
"I'd noticed that, actually."
"You could get anypony you wanted. I've wondered what feathers feel like, myself. And those flight muscles... very sexy."
"I'm a busy pony."
"You need to relax."
"For all you know, I screwed all of Cloudsdale at Flight Camp."
Minor Scale laughed. "You're a terrible liar."
Daring glared at herself in the mirror. "See you tomorrow or the next day, Minor. Cover for me if my parents telegram, please."
"You got it. Don't come back a virgin."
Daring sighed, blew a kiss at Minor, grabbed her kit bag, and headed upstairs to the fourth-floor porch overlooking the beach. The sea was still dark, although the first hints of nautical twilight should be visible any minute. A stiff breeze blew in from the sea, which would make her takeoff easier, a not inconsiderable help with such heavy bags slung over her slim hips. She faced into the wind. Flaring her wings, she took a step to prepare her leap into the air—
And stepped in a puddle of mixed cum and marejuice.
"Oh, for Celestia's sake!" Daring shook her hoof, trying to fling off the mixture. Then she raised her hoof to her nose and sniffed. "Now I know what cum smells like."
Daring shivered, flapping in a hover in the thin air a mile or so up. She compared Caballeron’s hoof-drawn map to the landscape below her, squinting against the low morning sun.
There. The lone line of hills that led down from the Smoky Mountains into the Lowcountry. As the hills faded into the swampy plains of grass, a single last hill towered above the others, its long shadow in the rising sun stretching across the landscape.
Flapping to turn in place, she looked east. The ocean was a film of sunrise-flamed red on the horizon. Miles and miles of swampy Lowcountry stretched between her and the beach, the pools of standing water near the mountains glittering with rainbow sheens in the sun.
Despite being miles inland, the billiard-table flat landscape had allowed a hurricane to roll over this stretch of landscape last autumn. She and Doctoral Candidate Caballeron speculated the wind and flash flooding probably uncovered the entrance to the temple that all the mainline archeologists said was just a myth.
Daring circled down toward the swampy plain east of the hill. She flared wings and landed softly, hooves sinking into the sandy muck.
She swished her forehoof around in a deeper pool, making sure all the cum from the porch was washed off.
All right. Where was she? Daring pushed the pith helmet back on her head and turned a full circle in place. She paced back and forth, flicking her wings and whipping her tail, a deep frown on her face. This hill was big, bigger than it had seemed from altitude. Well, everything looked small from a mile up.
Sawgrass and low pine trees swayed in the stiff breeze and her legs were soaked to the knees with swampwater. Where was he? Where was the entrance? Did she have the right hill at all?
Celestia, what a horrible thought! She was trying to impress him, what if she never found the correct hill and he had to do everything himself? He'd invited her, her of all the ponies he could have, and what if she showed herself to be a useless—
Tracks. He was an earth pony, had she seen tracks?
Her ears tucked and her breath turned ragged and fast. Cantering, she started a circuit around the hill's eastern face, mud kicking up behind her and splashing her vest and legs. Where, where, search the hill and if there's no entrance, no Caballeron, no tracks, take off again and re-check the map—
After about a half-mile run, she found a taller-than-usual lobe of stone... and it was penetrated through with a low granite archway leading into a deep black cavern, sloping sharply downward.
The breeze stiffened, ruffling her feathers and whipping her mane and tail. Cold bit deep into her, setting her to shivering. She had chosen to wear her summer-weight vest. The pith helmet did nothing to protect a pony from a chill. Wet mud splattered her legs and vest and belly after all the trouble she'd gone to getting spiffed up, and wasn't that a stupid thing? She got muddier than this on a weekly basis: the family mansion was right on the water of Horseshoe Bay, the maids having to hose her down before the head maid allowed her back in the house, Diopt—the prissy cousin—laughing her head off the whole time, Daring soaked to the bone, feathers matted and tail bedraggled, just smiling back at her.
Why was Daring suddenly worried about how she looked?
Because I'm meeting him, said a tiny voice in her head.
Daring paced, staring at the black entrance of the cavern under the hill, her hoofsteps now delicate to avoid splashing anymore mud on herself.
No hoofprints. No Caballeron.
She was early, is what had happened. He wasn't here yet.
The sun was creeping up, the morning well begun. Daring wasn't the fastest pegasus in the world, her wing shape being more conducive to darting and tight turns. It had taken almost two hours to get from Maretle Beach to here, following the compass in her vest pocket.
She recognized the runes carved in the lintel: The Temple of the Fire Maidens. It was real, after all! Uncle Adventure was going to owe Daring an apology when she got home with the Wand.
Pacing, pacing, pacing. She kept checking the watch that shared the vest pocket with her compass. An hour passed and the cold wind billowed her vest and mussed her mane and tail. She shivered more violently.
After an hour, with Caballeron nowhere in sight, Daring decided she could start the expedition.
("Don't enter that cavern without me," Caballeron had chided her when they planned the expedition in a private reading room in the subbasement of Horsekins University Library over the last several weeks, "or you will die.")
With steady flaps, bringing herself to a hover, she pulled her legs tight to the underside of her barrel, making herself as small as possible. She advanced and poked her head into the cavern, the opening being about five pony-heights in diameter.
Torches flickered dimly, starting about fifty paces in. Warm air met her, a steady rush of wind. The cavern was downright hot but the air smelled damp and stale, like the still, hazy air under the swampy mangroves of Horseshoe Bay in high summer. The torches were probably eternal flames, gas jets tapped into an underground reservoir. Petroleum deposits would explain the rainbow sheen on the swampy water around the hills.
Something twanged down her spine, raising the hairs between her shoulder blades. Her eyes narrowed and she took a deep breath to calm herself. She flapped, shifting her hover down, then up, then back down. And... there. The sunlight caught it just right. A thin tripwire, about knee-height for a pony coming in on hoof. Whatever sense it was that allowed a pegasus to instinctively dodge branches or vines that might clothesline them while flying in tight country had also alerted her to the tripwire.
How it had survived the rush of water when the hurricane uncovered the opening was more than Daring could guess. Magic, presumably. Eyes straining, pegasus magic reaching out to seek any other tripwires, she slowly flew over the trap and down the entrance corridor.
The stone corridor widened as it drove deeper under the hill, almost funneling down toward Daring's location at the entrance. And... there. A high shelf of stone. The kirin who presumably built this temple were hoof-bound, no equivalent of pegasi in their race. That high shelf would be a safe enough place to rest and look around.
Warm air rushed from the depths of the temple and she had to flap harder just to hover against the stiff breeze. Sweat broke out across her face and back, under her wings and under her tail. The temple must sit on a volcanic vent or a geyser, some sort of geothermal phenomenon, and the ancients tapped the heat to keep it warm.
It was a nice change from the cool spring wind outside. She flapped and landed on the outcropping, ducking her head to miss the curving roof of the corridor.
Her weight settled on her hooves and she folded her wings.
The hidden pressure plate under her left-rear hoof clicked and her eyes were just starting to widen when the booby trap fired. She dropped to her belly. Most of the arrows missed her, but one clipped her left ear, punching clean through the flesh, the fletching ripping her ear down the middle. Pain flared and she thrashed, and the hissing sound of gas at her hooves as billowing yellow vapor spilled from the cracks in the stonework above her.
She rolled off the stone shelf and fell to the hard floor, a drop of a good four pony-heights. The impact stunned her, knocking all her air out and leaving her head fuzzy. Her nose burned with the sharp smell of fresh-mown grass and her lungs heaved, her chest spasming as she coughed.
The yellow cloud billowed over the edge of the outcropping, lazily rolling down the wall toward her. She stood and collapsed again, coughs racking her body and eyes watering, she tried to crawl towards daylight—
"¡Celestia mía!" shouted a deep voice. Hooves pounded on stone and Daring was lifted, slung over muscular withers, she was coughing still and now her nose and mouth watering as violently as her eyes, she bounced as she was carried deeper into the temple—
"No!" she gasped. "Air! Fresh air!"
"The breeze blows that direction, we go deeper in, let it carry the gas away."
A few dozen galloping steps, two leaps over other booby traps, and she was gently lowered to the cold stone. He uncapped a canteen and poured water over her face, washing out her eyes, the water sweet as it cleared the flaming pain. Her wracking coughs slowly subsided.
"Hold still, hold still, my little assistant."
"Partner," she gasped, then dissolved into coughing again. The heat billowing from the depths of the temple was even stronger, sweat dripping along her back and chest and under her wings and under her tail as her body struggled for air.
"Hold still," he commanded and pulled off her pith helmet, tossing it to the side. Even blinking through tears and in the weak light of the temple's sconces, she saw the helmet was soaked, absolutely soaked, with blood, especially around the left ear hole. He continued, more quietly, "Ear wounds bleed nastily, but it is nothing I can't stitch up. Let me light my lantern."
She stared for another few seconds at the bloody mess of the new pith helmet, tossed onto the stone floor. What had that arrow done to her ear? Mom and Dad were going to freak when she got home, never mind what Uncle Adventure would say!
With a last cough, she said, "Uggh. Maretle Beach. I'll claim, hmm, I'll tell Mom and Dad somepony got drunk and threw a glass bottle off a balcony and clipped my ear. I hate lying to them, but... "
"Of course, Daring." He pulled a first aid kit from his saddlebags and set about pulling out what he needed. "This is going to hurt rather a lot, I'm afraid. Ears are very sensitive and I have no anesthetic."
She couldn't help but stare at the needle and thread, so focused that she barely flinched when he poured antiseptic over her ear. Scrunching her eyes closed, Daring tried instinctively to pull her ear away from the sizzling pain—only for Caballeron to maintain his grip on it.
He wiped the ripped ear clean with gauze and poured more disinfectant over it, the cold liquid running down the left side of her head and dribbling on the floor. Then Caballeron stitched the torn ear.
She bit her lips as he stitched, tears rolling down her nose no matter how hard she fought them. Every push of the needle through her skin burned like another arrow strike and then settled into a sharp ache as he pulled the needle and string through. Her breaths sharpened, fighting not to sob. Even her tail couldn't hold still, thrashing as her right forehoof tap-tap-tapped on the stone floor. But, she was pleased at herself: Daring didn't utter a sound.
"All done," he said. "Head wounds are very bloody, but I don't have enough spare water to wash your coat off. How was Maretle beach?"
"I liked the crawfish," Daring replied.
He snorted. "Rich ponies and their shellfish. Tell me, young Daring Do. Why didn't you wait outside like I commanded you to?"
She stood, facing him and raised her wings and flagged her tail. She was still sweaty from the hot wind and the pain of getting stitched up without a local anesthetic had just made her sweat even worse. Under her tail was particularly uncomfortable, she felt really soaked down there, and shifted her position to point her rump at the breeze.
"I... I..."
"Thought you would impress me by meeting me inside the temple?"
She lowered her head.
"You nearly died," Caballeron said. "Your parents have already threatened me, through the University's Chancellor, to stay away from you. That's why we had to plan this little expedition in the basement of the library, in the room next to the furnaces."
"Threatened?"
"Your family donates ludicrous amounts of money to Horsekins. Threats were... implied. But most clear."
"I'm... hmmm. Sorry. I've told Mom and Dad you never... uh... have been inappropriate."
"Imagine if I return to Baltimare with your dead body, hmmm?"
Daring's shakes hit. She looked up-cavern at the clout of arrows stuck into the stone wall, where they had just barely missed her. "It-it-it was close, huh?"
Caballeron put a forehoof on her shoulder. "I like you, Daring Do. You're the most dedicated of all the students and you're not even in the University. I would miss you. I would never forgive myself if you died."
Daring opened her mouth, realized she had no words, and closed her mouth.
"Come, come," he said. "I wish to be a professor and you are my most dedicated student. I will teach you. Why was there a trap higher than anycreature can reach on their four hooves?"
Daring tapped a forehoof. "They were worried about pegasi?"
"Indeed. These kirin are long gone, extinct I suspect, but centuries ago they lived in close contact with ponies. They knew flight was something to defend against and laid that trap at ceiling-height to lure and kill arrogant pegasi who weren't thinking."
Daring hung her head and her wings and tail drooped.
"We are not far from Cloudanooga, so the kirin interacted with pegasi more than the other two tribes. This temple is far safer to navigate on four hooves than two wings. Not that it is... safe, generally speaking."
Daring flicked her ears in annoyance. Pain lanced down into her skull and she gasped.
"Body language really depends on the ears, indeed, Daring Do?"
Wiping another tear from her snout, Daring said, "Are we going to go find an artifact, or what?
"You lost a lot of blood. Eat something." He rummaged into his pack and pulled out a hard biscuit wrapped in old newspaper.
She recognized the writing as Espoñol but wasn't fluent enough to read more than the headlines. It took her quite a while to chew the dry biscuit, along with several swigs from her own canteen, but she did feel better after eating it.
"Come, Daring Do. I will teach you how to live through a trap-infested temple."
It was five hours later when Daring screwed up and nearly killed them both.
She was tired, she was dehydrated, and she didn't want to ask Caballeron for a rest break when the earth stallion was obviously having a good time at her inexperienced expense.
Daring frowned and dried blood crinkled in the fur of her left cheek.
This stretch of corridor was narrow enough that Daring's wings brushed the walls. Caballeron, behind her, brushed the walls with his broad shoulders.
Daring found herself swishing and flagging her tail unconsciously, her body trying to fidget to keep herself awake and focused, and she kept having to remind herself there was a stallion right behind her butt. Daring sniffed. She hoped she didn't smell as sweaty as she felt. At least she was a good two weeks past the end of her last estrus and her pheromones were gone. A new birth-control implant immediately kicked off a particularly strong cycle as the magic took hold of your hormones. It had been so humiliating to sit at school and see every colt within a three-desk radius pop a boner, bah!
She watched every step, as Caballeron had been teaching her for the last several hours. Her pegasus magic was actually far better attuned to catching tripwires than she had previously realized. The pegasus instincts that helped avoid flying into vines, branches, or other flying animals rang down her spine whenever she approached any tripwire.
Pressure plates, however, she needed to really watch for. No magic helped her there, so it was all vision and attentiveness. She slid her left forehoof along the stones, feeling for the raised edge or wobble that indicated such a trap.
She stopped, feeling a stone move as the edge of her hoof touched it. Her tail flagged itself up again as she halted and Caballeron stopped his own forward momentum just a second before he would have crashed his face under her tail.
"What do you find, Daring Do?" he asked. When he spoke, his breath tickled her—
She slapped her tail down, covering herself and bopping his nose.
Taking two deep breaths, she centered herself on the problem of the moment. She'd—she spent every free minute of her last five years either out in the woods near her home or in the library. She never even had been on a date and she certainly hadn't ever had somepony breathe on her... treasure chest... before. Focus.
"The stone... it moved a little when I touched it. It might have... might have clicked."
Caballeron exhaled, rustling the long hairs of her tail. "Don't move."
"Okay." Daring's stomach twisted and she was suddenly glad it was empty. More sweat broke out, across her brow, and she missed the pith helmet she'd left behind after bleeding all over it. It would have kept the sweat out of her eyes.
"I need to see the pressure plate," Caballeron said. "Brace yourself."
"What?"
"I'm heavy." He leaped up, mounting her, his forelegs on her back and his hips just above hers.
"Hey, now!" Daring said.
"Shush, do you wish to kill us both?" He leaned down, his right ear brushing her left cheek, glaring at her forehoof and the stone tile in the poor light of the gas sconces. The hallway was so narrow that his forelegs scraped the walls and pressed sharply in on her ribs.
Her legs trembled as she supported his weight—this was a muscular pony, here! "This—awkward—you—" she felt his weight across her back and what she feared were his gonads pressing against the base of her tail.
"Quiet!" His ear brushed the dried blood on her cheek and her wings tried to flare, flight-or-fight instinct grabbing her hindbrain. Breathing fast, she fought to keep her legs straight and her tail unmoving, but her tail kept swishing, rubbing against his... his... his balls and her wings were trying to flare upward but his forelegs were holding them down to her side and she felt something stiff along her spine and—
"You've triggered it," Caballeron said. "When you lift your weight, it will fire."
"Celestia..." she breathed.
"Go ahead and put your full weight on the plate, so you don't accidentally release it when I... dismount you."
She felt an odd throbbing along her lower spine. He... oh dear.
With a deep breath, she clenched her eyes shut and pressed firmly down on the plate. It clicked, it definitely clicked.
"Okay," Caballeron said. "I will get off... you now."
He wriggled down her back, forelegs brushing her feathers, and her eyes bugged as what could only have been the tip of his cock brushed the top of her tail. She'd noticed his cock before—she'd noticed every colt or stallions' cock, since almost nopony ever wore pants—and her teenage hormones has mentally filed him away as 'gifted' some time ago, but she'd also considered him a friend and a teacher and never really thought about his cock... oh, who was she kidding. But she really didn't want his cock touching her rump when she was about to die.
Daring stared straight down at her hoof. The pressure plate was noticeably recessed, now, with her full weight on it. Her breathing rasped through gritted teeth and a single tear blurred the vision of her left eye.
She blinked it away.
"I shall grab you by the tail. On three, I will yank as hard as I can and you will leap backwards. We both then drop flat to our bellies and hope the trap is aimed at head level."
"Oh... okay." Daring gave a jerky nod. Her whole body dripped sweat, her coat sopping wet and the reek of her own terror surrounding her and filling her nose. "You should—you should get out, get clear, and then I try to avoid it on my own."
There were a few seconds of silence. Then, Caballeron said, "I should, yes. That would be the smart thing. But you are my... partner. And I shall not leave you."
"T-thanks."
Caballeron bit her tail—not down low, but right on the dock, his stubbly chin brushing her labia.
"Hey, now!"
He spit her tail out. "I need a good grip. Do you wish to have your tail dislocated, instead of me pulling you away from the blast radius?"
"No..."
"The underside of your tail is soaking wet. I shall have to bite hard to get a solid grip, please do not complain."
"I pissed myself in terror."
Caballeron chuckled. "The taste of what is under your tail is not tinkle."
"Oh, shush." Her vision seemed to dim with every heartbeat and her pulse filled her own ears.
He bit down on her dock again and his chin brushed her clitoris. Her clit was engorged by her raging blood pressure and poking out of its hood, so the stubbly beard against its hypersensitive nub actually hurt. Daring bit the inside of her cheek.
"One," Caballeron mumbled around her tail.
She bowed her forequarters, getting a spring ready in her front legs.
"Two," Caballeron said.
Daring took a deep breath and scrunched her eyes shut. Goodness, she thought, what if I actually do piss in terror with his face right under my—
"Three!"
Many things happened at once.
Caballeron yanked on her tail, up-and-back, with all his earth pony strength, and pain lanced up Daring's back, from dock to skull, and she saw stars. She pushed off with her front legs as he yanked, a leap like trying to take off with the wind to your rump while carrying a heavy saddlebag, throwing herself backwards with as much force as she could. Her wings flapped instinctively, but the narrow walls fouled the wingbeat and they just ended up adding drag, not thrust, to her leap.
A series of sharpened wooden stakes exploded from the left wall, smashing just through the space she had occupied a fraction of a second before, smiting into the right-side wall.
She arced up and back down, doing a flip over Caballeron, every instinct screaming at her that she was falling not flying, and slammed chest-first onto the stone floor behind him.
Caballeron twisted and dove, landing on her and crushing her flat to the stone. He pressed her skull flat to the floor with his chin and covered both their heads with his forelegs, his large body shielding her smaller one.
Daring was just pushing up against his tackle when the fireball blasted down the corridor. The rush of air feeding the conflagration quenched the sconces. Heat rushed over them—how much worse must be for him, if Daring could feel it past his tackle?— as Caballeron's weight smashed the air from her lungs and she fought to breathe but the rushing flames above the heads stole all the air and her head spun, her chest and diaphragm straining as dizziness hit her.
The fireball receded, leaving her ears ringing. Her eyes were open, staring into the stygian blackness. The air rushing from up-cavern filled her eyes with grit. She blinked, eyes watering, and rubbed at them with a fetlock.
All right. Any pain? Any injuries? Daring took stock of herself.
Ears: ringing. Eyes: watering. Spine: stinging, from Caballeron's yank on her tail. Wings: sore. He was heavily on top of them, but no pain, just pressure. Legs: fine. Tail:
...oh. Oh, dear. "Cab—Caballeron..." she whispered.
"Shush, be still," he said and started squirming on top of her. "I must find my lantern."
"But, Caballeron—"
"Quiet, we have no idea what new traps or tripwires were put in play by your little... oopsie."
"Your—your—your—"
"Quiet, Daring Do!"
"Can you move your hips? Your penis is touching my vulva."
Silence. Then, "When I get the lantern lit and I can look for traps, I will... dismount you, Daring Do. Until then, be still and quiet."
"Can you do something about the erection, at least?"
"...no."
"Draw your hips back?" Daring covered her eyes and fought back a sob. His cock throbbed with his heartbeat, pressing against her opening.
Caballeron shifted his hips, drawing back, and his cock moved from making contact with her vulva to touching the underside of her dock.
"Better?" Caballeron asked.
"Slightly."
He rummaged his shoulder bag, his body rubbing against her back and wings, and then she heard the snck-snck sound of a flint striker. A soft whoosh was accompanied by a flickering light as he got the lantern lit.
Caballeron twisted his spine, looking behind him—back in the direction they had been traveling before Daring set off the trap—and the motion pressed the tip of his cock against her anus. Daring gasped and stuck her hooves in her mouth, eyes wide.
He stood, finally pulling away from her, reared up to shimming around in the narrow corridor and took a step. "I think I shall lead us to the next gallery, Daring Do. You're getting fatigued and likely to miss another trap."
Daring twisted herself around and stood behind him. She lowered herself to the floor, folding her legs underneath her, knees too shaky to stand.
"Are you okay, Daring Do?"
"I, I need a minute."
"Take all the time you need."
Eyes still clenched, she waited out her trembles. The swirling lava in her guts subsided and the pain that ran up her spine from Caballeron's yank on her tail decreased from sharp agony to a minor ache. She tucked her tail low, over her privates, and felt the long black-and-gray hairs get instantly soaked. She told herself the wetness was sweat, and maybe terror-piss, even though she knew better.
"Okay," Daring said, opening her eyes. "Okay, I'm ready."
As they walked, he carried his tail flagged high and she found her eyes bouncing between the tiles of the floor and his massive, pendulous balls.
Deep under the temple, the breezes fed by the geothermal vents no longer brought in hot air, and the cool dampness of any deep cavern surrounded them. Dew dripped off Daring's coat and olive vest and she shivered in the clammy air. Caballeron flipped up the collar of his shirt.
They stood where the stone-paved tunnel met a large underground gallery. Daring concentrated, closing her eyes and drawing on her personal magic. Her compass rose-shaped cutie marks tingled and her wings went limp, her tail swishing slowly...
... the hill. They'd passed clean through the hill and were deep underground now, perhaps two hundred pony-heights beneath ground level.
Well, this surely wasn't an artificial construction. The gallery—a cave, really—was lined on its ceiling and walls with long sword-like shards of greenish-white crystal, sticking out at every possible angle, all dripping with humidity. The floor was rough-hewn from the same crystals, bumpy and irregular. It must have taken millions of years for the crystals to grow, atom by atom, and mere months for the kirin to destroy three-quarters of the beauty to hack out this gallery.
"How do they keep these galleries dry?" Daring asked. "We're far below the water table."
"Magic. We must not set hoof into the gallery, Daring Do," Caballeron said. "There's no hope to spot pressure plates amongst that jumble."
"How were you planning to get the artifact?"
"I did not know it would be this bad. The tomes I studied were—" he twirled a hoof "—incomplete."
With a flick of her wings, Daring said, "Good thing we're working as a team." She bumped her shoulder into his. He barely moved and she bounced right off his muscular side. Very muscular.
Across perhaps four hundred hoofs of floor was a large altar, carved from the raw crystals, its once-polished top now dingy with hundreds of years of condensing humidity. Eternal flames in sconces splashed weak patches of light amongst the gallery's shadows, soot-blackened reflectors behind the flames no longer providing their spotlight effect.
"I wish we had a unicorn," Caballeron said.
Daring smacked him on the back of his head with a wing. "Hey."
"Yes, yes," he said, then looked into her eyes. "You call yourself a mare rather than a filly, and perhaps by the calendar, that is true. But you are still very inexperienced in the art of the artifact. I shall feel most distraught if you kill yourself. Especially because I shall make no attempt to retrieve your body if it falls among traps."
Daring swallowed again and flicked her ears. The stitches in her left ear twinged with pain.
"Do not attempt to retrieve my body, should the situation reverse itself, Daring Do," he continued. "It is a safe bet that the rough floor is seeded with traps, but also there will be traps meant for those who fly."
Daring closed her eyes and let her pegasus magic reach out. "Tripwires. Gossamer-thin ones and close together."
"The legends imply that a few, a very few, kirin self-levitated, so they can pass through a narrower opening than a pegasus and her wings. Even wings as... sleek... as yours."
Daring opened her eyes and saw Caballeron was ogling her wings. "Do you mind?"
He smiled, deliberately moved his gaze to her rump, and then turned back to look at the gallery.
Now that she knew where to look, Daring could see the tripwires. It was a safe bet her vision was far sharper than Caballeron's. Even by pegasus standards, Daring was eagle-eyed and agile. She wasn't a particularly fast flier, nor a distance flier, but her status as the only pegasus in the upper grades meant she could pick her event for the school team, and she had placed ninth in the province sky slalom finals. Between the school team, Uncle Adventure's treasure-hunting games for her as a filly, and the real expeditions he'd taken her on as a teen, Daring's muscles were toned and her instincts sharpened. Uncle Adventure, after all, was a unicorn and depended on Daring's wings quite often.
She took a deep breath, filled her chest, held it, exhaled, deep breath, held, exhaled. Her pounding heartbeat slowed, her eyes narrowed, Caballeron was talking, yammering about something-something, tripwires and pressure plates and spring traps and poison gas, and Daring took one last deep breath.
"...so that is our plan, which you don't appear to have been listening to, so how about I suggest we just sit here and start a kumquat plantation?" Cabelleron concluded his speech with an expansive wave of his left forehoof. "Any questions?"
Daring leapt into the air, rolled on her long axis, inverting herself, and pushed off with all four legs from a crystal stalactite. She tucked her wings and arched her back, arrowing through a narrow gap in the tripwires about halfway up from the rough floor, between two of the largest stalactites. Flaring wings, deep breath, land and balance on one hoof, hope there's not a pressure plate right there, push off, arc up like a buckball, flap flap flap, limbo under a tripwire, tuck wings again, and through another gap.
She landed, four hooves spread, on the altar.
Daring looked across the gallery at Caballeron. He gaped, eyes wide and jaw slack.
"Daring Do!" he shouted. "Are you quite suicidal?"
She bowed and flared her wings in salute.
A saluting pinion brushed a stalactite. The crystal's tip fell off, landing on a pressure plate in the floor.
Things began to happen quite quickly. A deep rumble sounded in the bones of the earth above her. Daring looked down, staring at the artifact. It was polished diamond or moissanite, about the length of her foreleg but narrower, a perfect cylinder and rounded on one end. She leaned down and bit on it, grabbing the middle of its shaft like a dog retrieving a stick.
A glance up-grotto told her several of the passages between stalactites or tripwires were too narrow for her to make it through with the artifact gripped sideways in her jaws. She flipped it end-on and bit down on it, like a giant, heavy cigar between her teeth.
A blob of lava dripped from the ceiling and splattered onto the altar next to her. She turned her head away from its incandescent heat.
She leapt airborne. Caballeron was screaming and pacing back-and-forth at the entrance to the grotto. Her eyes focused forward, on the first web of tripwires to dodge, but the greenish-white stalactites in front of her turned bloody red with the glowing incandescence of the lava dripping from the ceiling behind her, the red burgeoning as a wave of lava flowed. Even as she accelerated, it warmed her bottom and dried the seemingly permanent moistness she'd felt back there since entering the temple.
Flap, tuck wings, arch back, dive, bounce, flap—
A stalactite fell and she rammed hard into it while it was dropping, the back-end of the artifact smacking hard into the crystal. The impact drove the smooth artifact two hooves-widths down her throat. Daring's eyes bugged out as it filled her throat, squeezing her windpipe, but she flapped, flapped, dodged, rolled, and skidded to a belly-landing on the stone tiles outside the grotto, next to Caballeron.
"Come on, Daring Do!" he shouted.
Eyes wide, face twisted in panic, she pointed a hoof at the huge diamond cylinder crammed into her mouth.
It took perhaps two seconds as he stared at her, evaluating the situation. During those two seconds the lava's heat on her rear intensified to the point it felt like she was sunburning her labia, the deep rumbling and crackling of the flowing lava reaching the point she tucked her ears tight to her head against the sound.
Caballeron stomped on her withers with a forehoof. Pain lanced down her shoulder into her right leg. He bit down on the artifact's butt end, his lips brushing hers with a warm tickle. He pulled forward on the diamond while pushing down and back on her shoulder blade.
The pain in her throat, mouth, and shoulder flared, but he yanked the massive weight from her airway. She gasped for breath as he galloped back up-cavern, waving a hoof for her to follow.
She stood and her right foreleg collapsed, the muscles in the shoulder spasming. She flapped after him, legs tucked tight to her barrel.