A Lesson from the Dead

Chapter 2:

Twilight once again found herself looking down the flight of stairs into the dark void below, a sight made even more eerie from the early morning fog hovering close to the ground. Twilight gulped, while she may be confident, there was no hiding the fact that she was slightly scared. She shook her head slightly to clear away her moment of fear, she wanted to do this. It was like a dream come true and Twilight planned to enjoy it. There was nothing to worry about, right?

Ensuring her hat was firmly on her head, the unicorn placed a hoof on the top step and began her slow decent. The steps were covered in dirt and spider webs and Twilight saw the bugs fleeing from the sudden light and noise as she continued further downward. The light pouring in from the entrance was having less and less impact on the impeding darkness as the unicorn moved further. Twilight lit the surrounding area with magic and saw that the stairs ended a few feet further, at a small landing. The rest of the route was blocked off by a solid stone wall. The wall held more symbols similar to those at the entrance to the stairs except these were written in a circular pattern around a large round stone. It was the door to this ancient building.

Horn glowing brighter, Twilight’s magic surrounded the stone which was rolled aside a moment later. Where the stone had been was now a large opening through which the purple pony could see the interior of the ruin. Taking a quick moment to psych herself up, Twilight ventured forth into the unknown. The air that met her nose was dry and dusty; nopony had been inside here for a long time. The light cast by Twilight’s horn fell upon a torch bracket that was connected the stone wall. With a little encouragement from a fire spell cast by Twilight, the torch that resided in the wall mount came to life, casting it’s golden light on the nearby stone. As Twilight moved onward, she lit torches she walked by. Not only was their light comforting to the unicorn, but, she thought to herself, they would be an excellent means for finding her way out if she got lost, because just then Twilight was faced with an intersection of two corridors.

Twilight looked to her left and right in the + shaped intersection. Those corridors looked identical to the one straight ahead. Deciding to have a logical approach to her exploration, Twilight chose the left path. If that path turned out to be a dud, she would retrace her steps, and pick the path second to left, and so on. Moving down this corridor, Twilight felt some of her initial excitement ebb away. This ruin had so far been boring, yielding nothing but more stone corridors. It was as if it was all just a big maze. The only interesting things that happened was a wall might have a few more symbols on it, or a spider would scurry away from the sudden light.

It was only down a path sprouting from Twilight’s third intersection where that all changed. The unicorn stood facing yet another stone door, just like the one at the entrance. The only difference was that somepony had chiseled a picture in this one. The picture depicted a strange looking creature that Twilight though looked like a cross between a dog and a monkey. Pushing the stone aside, she stepped into a large, square room. The room was relatively empty, with just a random assortment of pots and containers standing by the far wall. Twilight’s attention was focused, not on those, but on the stone pedestal positioned behind them. Perched on top was a small, ornate, ruby statue that gleamed in the light cast by Twilights magic.

The feeling of excitement that had been wavering inside Twilight for the past half-hour now returned back to its full strength. Suddenly all her wandering was worth it. Twilight took a step forward, but as she put weight on her hoof, the stone underneath it sunk into the ground slightly. To her left and right came a small clicking sound. Twilight ducked instinctively using a hoof to keep her hat on. Heart pounding, she heard two objects speeding through the air toward her. Removing her hoof from the stone, Twilight took a step back. She focused more magic into her horn so she could see the room properly. As the light spread further across the floor, Twilight noticed two arrows, one on each side of the room, lying near the walls. She would have to tread more carefully if she didn’t want to have any more arrows fired at her.

Twilight took a deep breath to calm herself, and took that moment to think. It was clear that the ground in front of her was rigged up to traps that would shoot arrows at her if she tried to approach the pedestal. But who said she would have to walk across the floor. Concentrating hard on the statue across the room, Twilight used her levitation magic to pick it up from across the room. That had, at least, been the plan. Yet no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t make the idol budge. It appeared that the ruby figure was surrounded by some sort of anti-magic field that was resisting her levitation spell. This was not going to be as easy as Twilight originally thought.

After her failed attempt to levitate the statue, Twilight directed her attention down at the stone that she had triggered the trap with earlier. Having been so transfixed with the ruby idol across the room, Twilight had failed to notice that the tiles that covered the floor in front of it were arranged in an 8x8 grid, and each had a symbol etched on them. Many of the symbols appeared more than once, but there seemed to be no specific pattern. Twilight examined the symbol on the stone she knew triggered the arrows. It looked a lot like this: µ. She figured, therefore, that any of the stones bearing the symbol were also not safe. That ruled out about ten stones, but that still left a large majority that Twilight couldn’t be sure about. How was she supposed to figure out the correct path across?

Suddenly, a possible answer popped into the unicorn’s mind. If she was looking for a path, then she should look for a continuous line of symbols that links one side of the room to the other. Sure enough, there was a twisting line of stones that all shared the symbol: ψ. Twilight assumed that was the path she would need to take in order to cross the room. Moving over to the first stone in the line, Twilight tenderly stretched out a leg and pressed down with her outstretched hoof. The stone sank in, but nothing flew through the air this time. Stepping all the way on top of this stone, Twilight directed her attention to the next one in line. Each time she gingerly placed her hoof on to ensure it was safe to move on, and each time the stone sank down but nothing happened. Moving this way across the length of the room, Twilight finally found herself standing next to the elevated ruby figure. Tempted as she was to remove the statue from its perch, Twilight was hesitant of doing so. She had come across this scenario many times in stories, and was sure that the pedestal was trapped, just like the floor.

Twilight racked her brains to remember precisely how the ponies in her stories had outsmarted the trap. She seemed to recall that in several, the trap had be activated because once the weight of the object was removed, the center of the pedestal was able to rise and activate the trap. That meant all she needed was an object to take the place of the statue. She looked over at the nearby wall and all the containers and pots that stood against it. Trotting over to the nearest container, an oddly shaped box, Twilight eased open the lid and peaked inside for an object that looked to be roughly the weight of the idol. What she saw however, made her gag. Inside laid the dried remains of one of the dog-monkey creatures. Its body had been preserved and then stored in this ancient ruin. No this ancient tomb.

Twilight stepped slowly back from this horrific sight as she felt her weak stomach squirming inside her. She glanced at the many other containers and began wondering just how many were buried in this room. She didn’t have long to dwell on that however as she felt something touch her flank. Twilight turned in time to watch the ruby idol tumble in the air and smash on the stone floor. She looked in horror as the stone pedestal began to sink away into the floor; the trap had been triggered. Twilight felt a strange sensation wash over her body, as though she was being coated in some foreign energy. She didn’t have time to dwell on the strange feeling because just then Twilights ears picked up a low rumbling sound. The sound seemed to emanating from the surrounding walls themselves.

Twilight jumped as, from behind her came a loud crash. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that a stone had fallen out of the ceiling and hit the floor. The tomb was collapsing, and Twilight was inside. Without a second thought, the unicorn ran toward the door, still remembering to run the special path past the arrow traps. As she emerged into the corridor several more stones loosened and fell from the ceiling. Twilight was glad she had the torches to follow, because all the corridors looked the same. Before she knew it she had turned one last corner and found herself at the bottom of the long staircase. As she began to climb, the corridor at the bottom completely collapsed, and now the staircase began to crumble. With a final burst of speed, Twilight reached the end of stone steps and leaped out onto the solid ground outside the ancient tomb, safe.

Heart still pounding, Twilight looked back at the staircase to find that it had completely caved in. That had been way too close, Twilight thought to herself. That had been plenty of adventuring for one day, and now Twilight was just looking forward to her lunch.

The walk home from the Everfree forest had given Twilight plenty of time to let her heart-rate settle down once again. It had also given her time to think about all that had happened, during which she determined that, while it may have ended badly, it had still been an excellent experience. She did remorse the fact that the ruby idol had smashed, not because she was one to steal, but because it would have made a wonderful memento for her to keep, showing that she had accomplished one of her childhood dreams.

As Twilight approached Ponyville’s library, the door opened, and she saw Spike standing there with a look on his face that was a mixture of being both happy to see her, and angry with her.

“Twilight, there you are! Where have you been,” the dragon demanded. Twilight had not thought about what she would tell Spike. She had left him a note, but it had said she wouldn’t be out for too long. Admittedly, however, she had been gone for longer than she had intended.

“I was in the Everfree forest,” Twilight said simply, being both truthful yet purposely unspecific.

“You were gone all morning, what were you doing?” Spike asked.

“I’ll give you the details in a bit, but right now I want to wash up. We’ll talk about it over lunch.” A bath would give Twilight plenty of time to decide exactly what she wanted to tell Spike, he didn’t want him reporting her actions to Princess Celestia in case it made her seem irrational. She also simply needed a bath.

“Alright, I’ll start on lunch while I wait.”

Twilight smiled at this, and headed inside and upstairs. She opened the bathroom door with her magic and headed inside. Pain shot through Twilight’s body as she staggered backward, blinking stars out of her eyes her hat falling to the floor. In her exhaustion she hadn’t noticed that the bathroom door had remained closed, and she had walked headlong into it. Rubbing her nose and blinking away a few tears, Twilight opened the door with her hoof. That was the second time today that her magic had failed her, she had assumed that the ruby statue had resisted her magic. That didn’t explain why her magic had done nothing to the door. Twilight stepped over to the mirror to examine her nose, there was thankfully no blood. A bruise was blossoming on her check but it wasn’t a bad one. Other than that her face looked perfectly fine other than some dirt on her face and in her mane. Twilight suddenly put a hoof to her head to see if her eyes had merely played a trick on her. She began rubbing her head franticly.

Twilight screamed, her eyes hadn’t played a trick on her, her horn really was gone.