Daring Do and the Cask of Undeath

Chapters

Chapter One: On the Trail of the Cask
Chapter Two: Preparing to Depart
Chapter Three: Aboard the Daring
Chapter Four: Ambushed
Chapter Five: Solum, Compass of the Old World
Chapter Six: Betrayal, and a Narrow Escape
Chapter Seven: The Battle for the Skies
Chapter Eight: Reunion and Regrets
Chapter Nine: The Deep
Chapter Ten: Morlyir Bae, Guardian of the Key
Chapter Eleven: Wet Work
Chapter Twelve: The Eye of the Timber Wolf, and the Opening of the Underworld
Chapter Thirteen: The Claiming of the Cask
Chapter Fourteen: The Chase
Chapter Fifteen: The Power of the Cask, and the Final Cataclysm

Chapter One: On the Trail of the Cask

It's true what they say - like father, like son. Or in this case, like mother, like daughter. Interests are often passed down through family lines, becoming an almost hereditary trait and continuing throughout whatever family tree that may hold them. This is certainly true for the family line of Miss Daring Do, probably the most eminent active historian and archeologist known by anyone in all Equestria. Her hereditary traits include a natural curiosity, a talent and affinity for adventuring, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge which borders on the unreasonable. All of these traits were passed down from the legendary adventurer on the day her daughter was born; A healthy female Earth Pony.

Desert Dust was Daring's crowning achievement. The daughter she had always wanted to pass her love of archeology on to. After the untimely death of her husband only two days before the birth of their daughter, Dust was the main reason for Daring to keep on going. The thought of having someone so close to her who might one day share her interests meant that she was obliged not to give up. Her daughter saved her from the loss of her love, and that love which she had was poured into caring for the foal. Dust was brought up with history prominent in her life. Daring would take her daughter to work in the Manehattan Institute of Archeology, sitting her down on her desk as she studied grimy old tomes and ancient amulets of rusted metal. The filly showed a natural love for her surroundings, always wanting to flip through the pages of old tomes and stare at the pictures though she could not read the text. Admittedly, she managed to knock over a few priceless artifacts on her explorations of the office in which her mother worked, though none were broken, and only some were damaged. However, this cozy atmosphere of parent and child was soon shattered when Desert reached the age of seventeen.

Daring Do had set out on a quest to retrieve a certain rare artifact known only as the Cask of Undeath, leaving Desert Dust in the care of Mr Scrollwing, the curator of the Institute and a close, trusted friend. Unfortunately, the heroic mare had not returned and, after a patient year of waiting, she was declared officially missing. Dust was affected deeply by the loss, and continued to wait for her mother's return while studying archeology. She waited for another two whole years - long after the others had given up on her and decided on her unfortunate demise. By that point, the near-adult young mare had become almost a replica of her mother; curious, headstrong, bold, but also excelling in academic studies and archeological expertise. The keys to her mother's personal collections and her office had been bestowed upon her by the Institute in the hope that she would continue her mother's work. Desert Dust accepted, reasoning that if her mother was truly lost to the world, she should make her proud by being the archeologist she had been raised as. However, Dust would soon find out that her mother's line of work was not the safe, sometimes dull life she had once thought. The first clue to this was an item she first set eyes on upon opening the top drawer of her mother's desk. Within the wooden container, there lay a multitude of ragged old research papers, some photographs of archeological digs, a framed photograph of herself and her mother together, and.. A small, thin-walled wooden box. Pulling the tiny iron latch away with a hoof, she swung the lid of the box open. Inside, was a slightly beaten but sleek, black metal instrument. A pistol. On that day, she swore not to use her mother's rash methods, finding them to be crude and wrong.

A year later, however, this vow would be broken entirely.

"Dust.. Do you have a minute?" Scrollwing spoke out, poking his head around the door to Desert Dust's office. "Someone here wants to see you." Dust rose from her chair, setting down a particularly decayed tome on ancient Equestrian cultures. Now matured into a young adult, the dark mustard-cloured mare was incredibly alike to her mother. Her short, dark grey mane which was streaked with a single line of silver, reflected the noonday sun which shone through the window behind her, and her magenta eyes blazed with fevered curiosity. She adjusted her bow-tie, which was tucked into a shirt and jacket, and trotted out into the hall, narrowly squeezing past a huge stone vase propped up near the door.

"Who is it, sir?" She asked politely, her voice low due to her slightly introverted nature.

"One of our expeditions came across a crashed vehicle in the desert to the East of Sul-Menthar.. The desert city far from here, as I'm sure you're aware." Dust nodded promptly.

"Sul-Menthar, sixteenth city to be founded in the desert region of Tan. Erected in the fourth century by King Sarl, AKA 'Sarl the Just'." She followed this expert recital with a nervous laugh and a slight blush at her outgoing show of knowledge. Scrollwing simply smiled.

"Your studies are paying off well, I must say. Well, there was a wreck found in the desert East of the city, and.. Well, I'll let the visitor tell you the rest." He said, a look of some concern on his face. The pair turned into a vacant office, and met with the figure inside. He was a bulky, heavy-set Griffin, dressed in a business suit which was quite obviously not his usual attire. Dust assumed that this Griffin would rather suit a garb of adventurer's gear or combat attire. He introduced himself politely.

"Hello, Miss Dust. I'm Roughneck, commander of the expedition to Sul-Menthar's local desert in order to search for buried artifacts in the sand. As you probably know, relics from the past can quite easily be hidden in a forgotten antechamber or suchlike, lying right beneath your talons. Or hooves, of course." He smirked. " However, en route to the next dig site, we came across the wreckage of a long-crashed helicopter. Filled with supplies and some equipment. Unfortunately, we found this." He pulled a small leather-bound journal from his pocket, handing it to Dust. As her eyes met it, she immediately recognised the grimy brown leather cover, the makeshift metal latch holding it closed, and the pasted-on label on the front: 'PROPERTY OF DARING DO'.

"Some of your mother's exploration gear was found in a crate, which we're having transported to your office as we speak. Spare clothing, some collected artifacts, spare rope, and one item I'm sure you'll be pleased to see, her helmet." He smiled as best he could.

"And.. My mother? Was there a body?" Dust asked quietly. Roughneck sighed.

"I'm afraid no bodies were recovered at the crash site, Miss Dust. There is a strong possibility that her remains were taken by the desert fauna, though." At this prospect, Desert Dust's eyes welled with tears. She turned away, staring out of the nearby window to avoid showing her face as she wept silently. "I'm so sorry." The Griffin offered.

"Don't worry about it." Dust whispered, choked up. "I just need to go and see to that stuff you sent." She gave a weak smile to the explorer in the ill-fitting attire. "Thank you, though. I'm in your debt for this." She concluded, taking her mother's diary in a hoof and leaving the room. Scrollwing followed after her, thanking Roughneck on the way out into the hall.

"Dust, we don't know for sure that-"

"I don't want to hold onto that hope, Mr Scrollwing." She cut him off, stopping in her tracks and turning to face him. "She's gone. All I can do is remember her and move on with my life. That's what she would want me to do." Scrollwing took this in slowly, and finally gave a solemn nod. He stepped forward, wrapping Dust in a warm hug. Though this was unexpected, as Scrollwing had always been more of a stern father figure to her than anything else, Dust returned the gesture tenfold, sobbing silently into her last surviving guardian's shoulder as he comforted her.

The pale moonlight of the night sky shone down through the window of Desert Dust's office that evening, illuminating her desk and battling with the soft orange glow from the front grate of the old boiler which quietly rattled in the corner of the room. Desert Dust sat at her mother's old desk, staring into space and lost in happy memories of family. The days which she had spent studying with Daring, or watching her crack a thousand year-old cipher on some forgotten old vase. Dust gazed down at the leather journal on her desk, and then to the unopened crate on the grimy floor near her desk. Taking this opportunity, she hopped off her chair and, grabbing a crowbar from the nearest toolbox in her hoof, cracked the wooden box open with a quick stomp of the hoof. Lifting the lid away, the contents were revealed. As Roughneck had said, there were unworn shirts and trousers and boots, enough gear to last a month-long expedition. There were also some pieces of equipment such as spare water canteens, coiled ropes, medical kits, and binoculars. But nestled among it all, stowed in a battered old wooden hat-box, was the most important piece of kit. Daring Do's pith helmet. The hard-shelled helm was wrapped safely in a cloth, which Desert Dust unwrapped, taking the helmet out of the box and inspecting it. After a moment's hesitation, she raised the helmet over her head, and pressed it down gently. It fit perfectly.

"We really were alike." She mused, a glimmer of a smile on her lips as she adjusted the headgear and then flipped open her mother's journal. Immediately, a pile of grimy and yellowed papers fell to the desk, though Dust ignored these and continued to read the journal.

As the night wore on, she noticed the distinctive amount of research that had gone into the expedition for the Cask of Undeath. It would seem that the search for the Cask had been an obsession of her mother's for at least a good few years. It was a single scrawled note on the very back page of the journal which led Dust to the reason for Daring's obsessive need to procure this ancient artifact above all others. In a florid muzzle-written scrawl on the very last, slightly yellowed page of the diary was scribbled this short message;

'My love, we will be together again soon. I don't know how long it will take, and It may take many years indeed, but you and I and our daughter will be together again, as a family.. That's how it should be. I will bring us together, I promise.'

Reading this, and regarding a small photograph of the father she never knew brought a terrible sorrow down on Dust. She could feel a sinking depression in the pit of her stomach, thinking about the fact that her mother, one of the greatest heroes in all Equestria, may have become consumed by an obsession over someone who was already lost. It was a terrible thing to imagine, as she had always percieved her mother to be too strong to fall victim to any problem such as this. But now, she may have even met her demise in just such an obsessive search. At that moment, Scrollwing re-entered the office. Dust hurriedly shut the book over, dropping it down to the desk as she tried to dry the tears that had been forming on the brims of her eyes. Scrollwing sat down in a rickety old wooden chair at the far corner of the room, and ran his hoof over the surface of a bookcase.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He finally uttered, his eyes still staring into space. Dust stayed silent, peeling open her mother's diary again with a hoof.

"She was searching for something that meant a lot to her, and to me." She replied.

"I won't ask what, don't worry.. Though I have my ideas about what that might be." Dust looked down at the diary. Scribbled notes, additions to old manuscripts and ancient maps looked back up at her silently. Scrollwing continued. "But if you're having any thoughts about going after her, I'd strongly suggest not following them. For all we know, she went missing for some important reason.. One we shouldn't tamper with." Dust looked up at him, staring intently.

"Do you know how much she means to me, Mr Scrollwing? You may have looked after me for many years now.. You've been like a second father to me, and for that I thank you, but.. She raised me, taught me, and she shaped me into the mare I am today. Without her, I'm nothing." She said. Scrollwing lowered his head.

"I'm not going to be able to stop you, am I?" He asked, a ghost of a smile on his face. She shook her head, and he lowered his again. "Then be careful, Dust. I've kept you safe for your mother up to now, and I don't want you throwing yourself into danger at every turn."

"I'll try to stay safe, sir." She replied, a tentative but genuine smile growing on her face.

Chapter Two: Preparing to Depart

The sun hung high in the air above Manehattan as the honest, hard-working ponies of the city went about their business. Bakers delivered goods, papercolts did their morning rounds, teachers made it to classrooms just on time, and construction workers slaved away on building sites to build the city higher toward the clouds. Among the crowds, below the high-reaching structures above, Desert Dust was making her way through the mass of working ponies. She wore her usual academic trappings, plus a set of saddlebags and a wide-brimmed hat to shield from the sun, which fluttered slightly in the occasional breeze as she moved. The mare made her way toward the establisment she had been pointed toward by Scrollwing, being buffeted by the other citizens in her timid nature. Eventually, she came to the doorway. Looking above, she noted the plaque:

'Roughneck Plumbing Ltd'.

Knocking on the door, she was unable to hold back a smirk. And when the griffin himself answered, he noticed right away, to her horror.

"What's so funny, huh?" He said, and then thought about the situation for a moment. The reason clicked in his mind. "Hey, we all gotta earn money some way, haven't we? We all have a day job." He glared indignantly, and Dust shrank back a little at his gaze.

"I know.. I just didn't expect you to have a job so.. Well.." She began, but he cut her off.

"Boring?" He interrupted, with a smirk of his own. She nodded silently. "Well, I'm not surprised. Anyway, I got Scrollwing's call from the Institute. Come on in." He returned back inside, and she followed as quietly as possible.

"I went through all my mother's papers on the matter, and I fully intend to follow her." Dust replied, with more courage than she had expected to show. She instantly shyed away as she trotted after him, through to the study at the back of the establishment.

"Well, I'm sure I can get a team together, with the help of a few friends." Roughneck smiled genuinely, sitting down at a table in the study. Dust sat across from him. "I've got my usual team. And I'm sure I can hire others to make up the numbers. There are always a few to spare if you ask around the right places.. Would you like a glass?" He asked, pouring himself out a glass of whisky and motioning to an empty glass beside it.

"Hmm? Oh, no thank you. I don't drink." Dust replied, smiling.

"Suit yourself." Roughneck shrugged, taking a swig of the liquid. "Anyway, the team should be ready within about a week. But this isn't going to be cheap." His voice took a sterner tone.

"You mean.. I'm going to be paying?" Dust uttered. She shrank back, quite terrified.

"Not exactly." Roughneck smirked. "We managed to get some funds through.. Unconventional means. As long as you tell ponies what they want to hear, you can get thousands upon thousands of bits for free." He relaxed his expression. "No, you won't be paying. I just ask you to bear in mind that the team and equipment you'll be working with didn't come cheap, that's all. Take care of that stuff, all right?" Dust nodded vigorously, and then hastened toward the door. "Oh, and Miss Dust?" Dust turned to face him.

"Yes?" She asked, quizzically raising an eyebrow.

"Good luck." Roughneck replied, nodding to her with a smile.

Once back at the Institute, Dust set to work planning out the expedition. At such short notice, she would have to work extra-hard to provide the necessary material to give as navigation for the team. Luckily, however, her mother had spent years meticulously researching the Cask and the path to its location, with a brief, scattered few gaps in her knowledge. But these things would have to be worked out on the way to the Cask, and hopefully, to Daring Do herself. Flipping through the journal, her mother had kindly begun expanding her notes on the specifics of locations. The first location listed, which she had disappeared on the way toward, was a ruin two kilometres East of Sul-Menthar. Daring had scribbled down the name of the ruin, declaring it to be 'Solum'. A few scattered notes around the name offered insights into links to the Cask and its whereabouts. As Dust's mother had believed, Solum held a map which would point the way toward another site. Though this site had not been located, it was known in mythology as Tali.

According to the myths of many ancient civilisations, whom all included the site in one way or another (though they gave it different names, of course), Tali was a fabled fortress which protected a key of some kind. This key, it was rumoured, would unlock the gateway to the underworld. Once inside, the myths said only that the Cask would be found 'in the hands of the Keeper of the Dead', obviously some deity representing death or a similar idea. From Solum, Dust had no idea how long it would take to reach the fortress of Tali, nor how she would reach the Underworld itself afterwards. But if this near-impossible journey had any possibility of uncovering her mother's whereabouts, then Dust would take charge of the expedition. She would find Daring Do, or die trying. Sliding open the drawer of her mother's desk, she looked down at the instrument she had held so much fear and disdain for. Inside that box, the sleek, vicious form of that gun lay in wait. Letting out a deep breath, Dust removed the weapon from the box and tried aiming it in a hoof. The gun was heavier than she had imagined, but its weight helped her keep it steady as she tried firing. Her hoof pulled back on the large trigger of the unloaded weapon. But to her shock, the weapon had not quite been empty. A loud pop of thuderous fire exploded from the barrel, tossing the weapon backward out of her hoof and onto the floor. In the next room, a shocked Scrollwing found a bullet hole in the wall behind him, in the newspaper he had been reading, and a bullet lodged in the opposite wall. Dust smiled sheepishly as Scrollwing stared through the bullet hole into her office, unamused.

"Sorry.." She murmured, blushing as she placed the pistol down on the desk.

A week or two passed, the expedition planned out in full and the necessary equipment and team brought together. Dust trotted onto the soil of the Manehattan airfield, and was met with a glorious sight. There, sitting on the grass before her, painted in rust-brown with shining steel trim and heavy bolts of iron, was an airship. A huge, heavy metallic body with a ribbed frame, attached with ropes and chains to the rigid balloon above. The name of the ship was spray-painted on the ballon in bold black paint, which had splotched and run in a few places; 'Daring'. Dust's face, which had been lit up with a smile already, became a picture of joy at reading the airship's name. She felt her heart fill with warmth as she cantered briskly toward the entryway into the huge machine. Small cars and trucks drove on up the gangplank before her and into the hold of the airship, carrying crates of supplies and pieces of larger equipment she had never even seen before. As she reached the lip of the ramp, the sound of wingbeats and a voice calling her name made her spin around. It was Roughneck, dressed up in a long, olive-green greatcoat and a smart officer's uniform, with a peaked cap.

"So, Miss Dust.. What do you think?" He asked, grinning. She couldn't even hold back the urge, and bounded forward, hugging him.

"It's fantastic, I can't even.." She unwrapped her hooves from around him awkwardly, giggling a little. "Ahem.. It's wonderful, Mr Roughneck, Sir." Roughneck chuckled.

"Well, it's all yours for now.. Try not to break it. Well, I'll be along for the ride to make sure of that, anyhow." He explained.

"You're coming too?" She asked, eyes alight.

"Well, look at me." He grinned, looking down at the officer's uniform and the greatcoat, then up at the cap. "I'm a qualified officer on this mission, since I've been on quite a few before."

"Dust!" A voice called from behind her, and she turned again. It was Scrollwing, in his little suit and bowtie, hobbling towards them.

"Mr Scrollwing? Are you along for the ride too?!" She asked, grinning.

"Oh, dear Celestia, no.." He chuckled hoarsely, handing over a familiar wooden box. "Here, you left this." Dust looked down at herself. Shirt, bowtie, trousers, tweed jacket, saddlebags.. What could she have missed? She flipped open the box, and smiled. The pith helmet sat inside, just waiting. "I thought you'd want it along for the trip." Scrollwing smiled.

"Oh, thank you, Mr Scrollwing.." Dust smiled broadly, running up and giving her mentor a huge, unrestrained hug, tears brimming in her eyes. "I'm going to miss you, Sir."

"You'll be back before you know it.. That's always the way with field work." He chuckled, peeling her off. She gave a final wave, and then turned to follow Roughneck on-board.

Chapter Three: Aboard the Daring

"Welcome aboard the Daring, Miss Dust." A smartly-dressed mare called out as Desert Dust entered out of the labyrinth of corridors and engine rooms and onto the bridge, escorted by Roughneck. Computers bleeped quietly to themselves, and somewhat stern-looking engineers surveyed their workstations, hooves ready to pull levers and turn valves. The mare which had greeted her stood up from her seat. She was dressed in full uniform, a dark coat and tricorn hat to match. Both with icy-white trim."I am your Captain on this voyage, Miss. I trust you've met my Number One, Mr Roughneck here. A fine specimen you are, darling." She shot a smirk at Roughneck, who smiled bashfully and bowed. " I'm sure most will agree I'm up to the job, besides a few of these boys back here." She waved a hoof over her shoulder, and a few engineers chuckled heartily. "Anyhow, my ship is yours, and I'm at your beck and call." She smirked. Dust smiled warmly, taking the captain by the hoof in a good, strong shake. Dust noted the medals pinned to her coat and hat, gazing in wonderment at the glittering prizes.

"You must be very proud of those. How did you get them?" Dust asked curiously, motioning to the medals. The captain grinned, adjusting her tricorn a little bashfully.

"Oh, just working in the Air Force. Obviously, I've collected a few bits and pieces in our Celestia's service. But anyway.. You should get settled into your quarters. They're up on Deck 21. Corridor F, and door Number 43. In about an hour, you'll be called for and report to the bridge again. There, we'll set a course and get going." The Captain bowed, as Dust retreated past Roughneck, smiling brightly at him. He winked in return.

"Oh, Captain?" Dust called, turning slightly and stopping at the door.

"Aye?" She returned, looking back and raising an eyebrow in question.

"What's your name?" Dust asked with genuine curiosity. The Captain became irritable.

"My mother and father had the cruelty to call me.. They called me.." She sighed, rolling her eyes. "They called me Rhodedendrum." She finished, in a low, septic tone, but returned Dust's grin of silent mirth, waving a hoof as she exited the bridge.

After a wander through the dim, barely-lit corridors and tunnels of the airship, Dust found her room. She was just about to swing open the door when it slammed open, barely missing her by an inch. A grubby, wrinkled old mare wandered out, pulling behind her a bucket of water and a mop on a trolley. She regarded Dust with a grim nod.

"Cistern." The old, scruffy mare grunted out in a raspy voice.

"I beg your pardon?" Dust asked politely, raising an eyebrow. The old mare rolled her eyes.

"Cistern.. My name is Cistern. I'm the cleanin' mare around the ship. You got dust in the corners of your ceiling? I sweep it away. You spilled food on the floor? I mop that crud right up. You blocked your toiled with a bad case of-" Dust cut her off, chuckling.

"I think I got it. Anyway, my name's Desert Dust, pleased to meet you!" She smiled, putting out a hoof to shake. Cistern shook it weakly, then set back to work pulling her trolley down the hall.

"I cleaned up that room, so don't go messying it up." She called out, adding quietly, "I don't get paid enough for this.." Dust giggled, closing over the door and inspecting her quarters. Small, but comfortable. There was a small bathroom set into the back, a kitchen area, some storage space in a large cabinet, and a bunk which could be folded into the wall. Dust swung the bunk down, sitting on the edge and throwing down her saddlebags, along with the hat-box. She took out her mother's journal, flipping to the notes she had written up on the ancient ruin of Solum. The ruin was located within a desert region, but the main portion of the ruin was located beneath the surface. Besides the small section which protruded above-ground, the majority of the actual structure had been swallowed up by the desert due to the gradual erosion of nearby rock formations by the wind, and the subsequent influx of sand. Legends of the ancient civilisations spoke of the ruin being swallowed by the world in an attempt to save all life from the temptations of the Cask of Undeath, a mere story which had no real proof to back it up, only superstition. However, to the older civilisations, these sorts of myths were accepted and passed around as if they were fact. According to Daring Do's notes on the structure, other explorers on-site had mapped out the underground section to a limited extent. It was comprised of a huge octagonal building, with towers protruding outwards in the directions North, East, South and West respectively. It was thought that, before its later purpose of leading the way to the site of Tali, this structure served as both a waypoint and a giant compass to travellers. (Though research into the site had revealed at least two of the buried towers to have collapsed under the weight of the sand and the effects of erosion.) The interior of the central building was described by on-site archeologists to contain a large, age-worn statue of a pony, armoured in what was believed to be the armour of some lost civilisation. The armour's style had still not been encountered anywhere else in the world. All accounts of the site had concluded that there was no map to be found anywhere in the structure, and therefore that it could not contain any clue to the location of Tali. However, Daring Do had quite obviously believed without a doubt that the way to Tali could be found through this ruin, and that other explorers had missed the map; that it must be hidden somewhere inside.

"Miss Dust?" A voice came from outside her door, followed by a knock. Dust answered it, opening the door to reveal an officer. "You're requested on the bridge." He announced.

"I hope I'm not late.." Dust murmured, trotting onto the bridge. The Captain sat in her seat, stern and businesslike. She did manage give a curt nod and a smirk as Dust entered, however.

"Not at all, Miss Dust. Well, now that we're all present and accounted for, we can get this show on the road. Helmsman, we're ready for takeoff. Get this thing off the ground." The stallion at the helm nodded, pulling a lever and asjusting switches as he went.

"Aye, ma'am.. With pleasure." There was an almighty rumbling of engines, and looking out through the wide forward-facing windows, Dust watched the airship slowly begin to drift off the ground, picking up speed in its flight upwards. "Twenty feet.. Thirty feet.. Forty feet.." The helmsman read from a small dial, checking the computer screen beside it for other readings.

"All systems functional, Milady." Roughneck called from the other side of the bridge as he patrolled around, checking the settings and readouts on the various control stations across the bridge. "We're good." Dust relaxed, seeing that the airship was now safely high in the sky. The Captain nodded, contented.

"Straight ahead, then. Engines set to full." She ordered.

Engineers turned valves, yanked down on levers, and soon, pistons and gears and boilers began working at full pelt. The airship belched out steam and gas as it thundered ahead steadily through the clouds, toward the dust-beaten Tan region. The Captain, at ease now the journey was begun, stood from her chair and rejoined Dust and Roughneck, who had finished his patrol. "So, Miss Dust. We have the coordinates set out, and we're on our way. We'll alight at Sul-Menthar, and take a convoy of trucks and cars down to this site to begin the excavation. And talking of the site.." She raised an eyebrow. "What are we looking for when we get there? We roughly know the coordinates, but isn't this thing underground?"

"Actually, there's a small portion of the ruin above-ground." Dust explained, opening her mother's journal from her pocket and showing a sketch of the small, slanted and weather-beaten roof of the original structure poking out of the sand. "We'll have to be careful on entry though. Lower the team in on ropes or something, since we'll be coming in through the roof." The Captain nodded slowly.

"Right. We can arrange that, don't worry. But how far down does the ruin go? How far will a team need to be dropped?" She asked. Dust looked over the notes.

"From my mother's notes.. About a hundred feet. But the structure is slanted and unstable due to pressure from the surrounding sand, so we'll want to be careful getting in and back out again." The Captain looked on, nodding in agreement.

"Right. Well, get back to your quarters for now, and rest up. At this speed we should hit Sul-Menthar by morning, and I'll have you called to the hangar then. From there, we'll board transports and ride to the site." Dust nodded, and turned to leave for her room.

"Dust in the wind. Pitiful." A cold voice spoke out in the dark. Dust looked around, desperately trying to find the source of the voice. The last moment she could remember, she had set her head down on the pillow of her bunk. "She's going the way of your father." A howling wind accompanied the voice, swirling around and bringing with it the scent of long-settled stone dust. Ancient tombs, sealed for a hundred thousand years. Death, if there ever was a smell for it. Ceremonial drums began to beat, heavy and slow. They boomed dully in the back of her mind, making her feel weak and ill. Voices floated on the air, and chanting echoed around whatever huge hall she found herself. A dim light throbbed from somewhere before her, and she stared blankly at it as her eyes adjusted. "The Cask will be her undoing." The voice whispered again. Now, a deep, warped, undulating tone called out to her ears as the object before her came into focus. She had seen this object in her mother's journal, sketched over and over from ancient depictions in carvings, engravings, cave paintings. The Cask of Undeath. A medium-sized box, oblong and standing upright on carven legs. It had two doors set into its front, and in all depictions, it was sealed somehow. Chains, ropes, ceremonial candle wax, nails, even iron boards bolted over the doors. But now, it was unhindered by these. As Dust watched with a mixed sense of curiosity and dread, the doors slowly began to open. A sickening, icy-cold black fog spilled slowly out of the doors, drizzling to the floor like liquid smoke. It stank of decay and malice, and flashes of horrifying blue energy crackled around the dark interior of the cask like miniature lightning. Dust watched in terror as the interior of the unnatural box began to glow with that same bright blue energy. Suddenly, in the flashing of the box, she saw a vision right before her eyes; a split-second image, like a single frame of film. An image of her mother, dead and decayed, standing beside her long-dead father. The two deceased parents were staring at her with empty, eyeless sockets. "Join us." The cold, malicious voice uttered.

Dust sat up in her bunk, staring blindly around her dark quarters as her heart rate returned to normal after its thunderous, terrified beating. Just a nightmare. And a horrible one, at that. Her sheets, as she realised, were soaked with sweat and tears. Sniffling, she slinked out of bed and threw on a simple shirt, and dried her eyes before leaving the room to take a walk. She trotted quietly through the empty metal halls, checking the time on a clock as she passed. Two o'clock in the morning. Dust wandered the halls, taking in the cool, humid air of the ship's corridors as the steam hissed a calming melody through the pipes.

"Nice time for a walk." Came a raspy little voice from somewhere to her left. Dust jumped, her eyes darting to meet the speaker. It was Cistern, sitting in a cramped little broom-closet on a bench, mop in its bucket to her side. Apparently, this closet was her room, as a lot of personal belongings lined the shelf space along the walls. She raised a wrinkled eyebrow slightly, then dropped it again. Too much effort on her part. "Well, what are you doin' up at this hour, huh?" She quizzed, coughing loudly and clearing her throat.

"I, um.. I had a nightmare." Dust explained quietly, still standing in the hall.

"C'mon in, sweetie. Take a seat." Cistern muttered, shuffling aside and patting the now-empty bench space to the side of her. Dust obliged, sitting softly down. "I used to have a lil' filly that would get nightmares real bad. Annoying little foal, she'd never stop cryin'.. But I'd always manage to calm her down." Cistern explained in her dry, grating voice. "She'd smile again if I made my special cocoa." Dust smiled, her cheeks warming.

"Special?" She questioned, kicking her hooves around gently under the bench.

"Oh yeah. Family recipe." Cistern turned to her slowly. "You want some?" Dust looked down at the floor, a big smile on her face, and replied quietly,

"Yes please, Ma'am." Cistern hobbled to her feet, fiddling with a kettle in the corner.

"It's just Cistern. No 'Ma'am' here, just me." She wheezed. Dust giggled softly to herself. Within a few minutes, the little cleaning-mare had brewed some cocoa, and she served it to Dust in a battered old mug. "Careful. Hot." Dust sipped at the warm cocoa, and felt her troubles melt away like ice in a volcanic lake.

"This is.. This is wonderful." She smiled broadly, drinking down the mug in one go.

"Glad someone likes it beside me. My little filly grew up and moved away from home."

"Don't you see her sometimes?" Dust asked, looking over at the old mare.

"Eh.. She wrote to me once. Never again. I guess she found someone more interesting than me. More important." Cistern cackled quietly. "More wealthy." Dust looked down at the empty mug, deep in thought.

"It must be horrible to think that your family don't want to be with you." Cistern stared into space, her eyes dead-looking. Her pursed lips drooped in a permanent frown.

"You get used to it. Besides.. Look at me, kid. No-one wants some old bag like me in their life. I live in the frickin' broom closet here." She sighed heavily.

"Well.. I think you're a lovely person to be around." Dust murmured. Cistern turned slowly to face her again, raising an eyebrow once more. Dust smiled, handing back the empty mug to the aged mare. "Thanks for the cocoa. It really helped me calm down."

"I knew it'd work. It always did for her." Cistern nodded solemnly, taking the mug and sliding it onto an empty spot on the shelf. She looked down at her withered hooves. "So, you think I'm worth something. Guess that makes a change." Dust nodded, smiling again.

"You're a great person. Ponies just don't know it because they don't get to know you."

"I guess that's the curse of bein' at the bottom of the staff food chain." She chuckled. For the first time, Dust saw Cistern smile. "Thanks, kid. You damn well cheered me up." Dust nodded gently. "Anyway, you'd better get back to bed. You're up in a few hours, I overheard from some officers. Diggin' in the sand for some old thing or other." Dust giggled.

"It's a ruin, Cistern." She corrected. Cistern shrugged, still smiling.

"Eh.. Just old things to me. And that's sayin' something." Dust shook her head, still giggling as she went out into the hall. "Oh, and sweetie? Come back anytime you like. Cocoa's on the house." Cistern called. Dust nodded silently, smiling and giving the cleaning mare a wave as she trotted back to her room. The old mare shook her head, sitting alone in the broom closet. "Well I'll be damned." She uttered. "First person to talk to me kindly on this rust-bucket."

Chapter Four: Ambushed

The entry ramp to the airship lowered with a grinding creak, hitting the dusty ground of Sul-Menthar. The ship had been landed down on the desert dunes outside the city walls, close to a dirt road which led around its walled perimiter. Small armoured cars, trucks with covered backs and large vans transporting equipment rolled down the heavy gangplank, roving out onto the desert sands and lining up in rows. Finally, the front car of the convoy rolled out, bearing Roughneck and another senior officer. Dust rode in the back of one of the armoured cars, sitting among some lower-ranking officers. She had dressed well for the occasion, wearing her thin but protective duster coat, dull brown pants, a battered khaki shirt, a dark bow-tie and of course, her mother's pith helmet. One in particular took her interest, though. A scrawny, gruff-looking stallion. While the others wore standard khaki uniforms, he wore khaki pants on his hind legs, a pale shirt with a brown necktie which looked rather too short, and what looked to be belts of ammunition wrapped around his torso.

"Nice hard-hat, lady." He commented, barking with laughter as the car they were on set off, rumbling along the dirt road as part of the convoy. "So, what are you here for, anyway? What, are you the mascot or somethin'? I could swear you aren't part of this team. Bein' totally and absolutely serious there." He rambled on. Dust raised her eyebrow at him.

"Thanks.. But I'm here because I was the one who called for this expedition. We're off to find an ancient artefact and, hopefully, my mother. So there." She huffed.

"Hey.." The officer put his hooves up in the air, grinning. "I was just messin' with you, lady. Name's Short Fuse, I'm the excavation expert and uh.. Chief joker around these parts. As you should so rightly know." He winked.

"I see.." Dust nodded slowly, smirking. "I'm Desert Dust. Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise." He nodded, and then turned his attention to the road. "You got any idea how far this place we're goin' to is, Dusty?" He asked.

"Dust.." She corrected, haughtily. "And it's around two kilometres." Fuse sighed.

"This is gonna be a long road trip.. I'm hungry, I'm already sweatin' like a pig, and the dehydration means I got problems takin' a-" He was cut off, thankfully, by the unmistakable cracking and banging of gunfire. The officer to the left of Fuse dropped over the side of the car, a bullet smashed through his head. The officers, Fuse and Dust all ducked down, trying to hide from the gunners. The convoy rolled faster, breaking formation and attempting to locate the attackers en-route. Officers loaded up rifles, leaning out of the trucks and spotting the attackers on the sandy ridges to the sides of the trail. Sand-coloured figures, barely visible against the landscape. They clutched rifles, which had been stained cream-coloured to blend in with the sand. The aggressors melted into view as their skins faded back to jet-black.

"Changelings!" Roughneck roared from somewhere up ahead. "Everyone, get down and get shooting, I want these scum put down!" The armed officers aboard the convoy began firing, the hammering of heavy gunfire echoing out across the ridges and surrounding desert. Two changelings fell back, fatally wounded and bleeding, bullets puncturing their bodies. Black blood sprayed out onto the sand.

"I hate these things." Fuse muttered. The officer to his right, turning to face him and aiming his rifle, melted away into an unmistakable black figure. "Oh, for the love of.." Fuse began, as the changeling went to fire. There was a loud, popping gunshot, and the changeling stumbled aside, falling off the armoured car. Dust lowered her mother's pistol, whose barrel was smoking softly. She felt sick in the pit of her stomach. But now was not the time.

"Get a rifle, and start shooting." She muttered to Fuse, who nodded silently.

"Th.. Thanks, lady.." He stuttered, aiming the rifle and firing at a changeling as it kicked off into the sky, zooming down and heading straight for him. It fell down, limbs flailing as a bullet cut through its wing. The helpless attacker dropped into the space between vehicles, and was promptly flattened by a truck.

"About half of them down.. Good work, everypony! Keep it up, we're almost at the end of the road!" Roughneck's voice barked again. The gunfight continued, more of the officers turning out to be changeling impostors that had somehow snuck on-board at some point and sought to sabotage the expedition. Dust began to question their motives in her head, while keeping her wits about her and firing off shot after shot at the changelings. Bullets flew through the desert air, richocheting and bouncing off the armour of the convoy vehicles. A lucky changeling gunner managed to hit the gas tank of one of the smaller cars to the outside layer of the convoy, which erupted into a horrific fireball. Only one of the officers on-board survived, though with major burns and missing a foreleg. He was pulled onto a truck to the side of the wreck as it skidded to a halt in a ditch to the side of the trail. Soon, all of the changelings appeared to be gunned down, and the convoy began to resume a smart formation and begin toward Solum. However, this illusion was broken as a main supply truck swerved dangerously, veering out of formation. There was a gunshot, and the officer who had been driving the truck was shoved out of his door, dropping limply to the desert floor as the vehicle sped onward. Obviously, one changeling had managed to remain hidden, picking the most vital of the supply vehicles and remaining well-disguised throughout the firefight. As the supply truck roved forward and beyond the front of the convoy, Dust realised what had happened. Determined to keep the expedition going, she made her move.

"Driver.. Follow that truck, I'm gonna stop it. Step on the gas, if you please." She spoke sternly but with the usual grace and sincerity she displayed. The armoured car raced forward, speeding up to catch the truck.

"Oh, this isn't a good idea.." Fuse muttered, seeing the road ahead. The trail headed around a canyon in the heart of the desert, with sharp corners and roads which had no fences to stop vehicles from dropping to a grisly end far below.

"Well, it's the best one I have." Dust replied, yelling over the racket of the howling wind and rumbling engines. The car caught up to the truck, rolling up alongside it. In the wing-mirror of the truck, Dust could see the charcoal-dark face of the changeling driver who had hijacked the vehicle. Its glowing blue eyes stared back at her as it noticed the car pulling closer alongside. Being on the inside edge of the road, the armoured car was luckily unable to be rammed off into the cliff. However, the changeling driving the car grinned a sadistic smile as he brewed up an idea on the spot.

"I'm not liking this.. Uh, Dusty?" Fuse whinnied as the supply truck began to drive closer in, squeezing the car against the canyon wall. Sandwiched between the truck and the wall which it scraped badly against, the car's sides began to spark and buckle, dents forming in the metal.

"Here goes nothing!" Dust yelped, pulling the pith helmet down onto her head as she leapt from the armoured car onto the side of the truck. She grabbed onto the canvas cover with her teeth until she could get balanced with her hooves, and began to shimmy along the running-board of the truck toward the back. Once around, she shuffled along the opposite side. Since the driver was admiring his handiwork periodically through the opposite wing-mirror, he had no idea that Dust was now moving slowly along the driver's side of the car. There was a mere split-second as he registered the pain when she gave a good solid hoof-punch through the driver's side window, knocking him into the passanger seat, unconscious. Now, the truck began to swerve dangerously along the cliffside road, teetering toward the edge without a driver at the wheel. Thinking fast, Dust yanked the driver's door open and hopped inside, grabbing hold of the wheel and slamming a hoof down on the brake. The vehicle skidded to a halt, stopping just short of a sharp turn. Pebbles crumbled off the ledge as the wheels ground to a halt in the dirt. Heart still beating furiously, Dust relaxed and let out a breath, smiling.

"Well.. That was a close-" A black, cold hoof slammed into her face, mimicing the punch she had thrown. She dropped back out of the driver's door of the now-stopped truck, falling toward the edge of the cliffside road. Trying desperately to find a hoofhold, she managed to grab onto the edge of the cliff, hanging over the hundred-foot drop into the canyon. Her heart sank as the changeling, bruised across its face and enraged, stepped triumphantly up to the cliff's edge. It stomped on her hoof once, crushing down on it in an attempt to get her to let go. Dust whinnied in pain as the changeling's hoof came down again, a second time. It cackled a chittering, insect-like laugh of mania as it raised the hoof a third time.

Bang.

The changeling stopped, dropping its hoof down. It stood for a moment, a wave of cold numbness passing over it. Then the pain hit, and the thing screeched as it flailed around, dropping over the cliff's edge with a bullet lodged in its stomach. There was a quiet thud from somewhere below, as Dust looked up to see Fuse. He held a smoking rifle in one hoof, and outstretched the other to help her up. A smile washed over her face.

"You can thank me later, lady." He uttered, chuckling.

Finally, the convoy reached Solum. As the sun burned down on the desert sands, Dust and the rest of the expedition force beheld the unremarkable but all-too-odd sight of the mostly buried structure's top, poking out of the dirt at an unstable angle like the limb of some long-dead cadaver. Sandy dustclouds swirled around as the troop of officers, led by Roughneck, made their way to the site. Dust climbed onto the slanted stone first, trotting slowly along the surface. The ancient stone was worn and faded, but strong enough to have stood the test of time. As the rest of the officers climbed onto the top of the ruin, she managed to find the entryway into the interior; a huge, thick slab of stone, roughly a foot across either way, laid into the floor like a trapdoor. The thickness of the stone and its weight meant that it took at least ten minutes of easing the heavy slab away with crowbars and brute strength. But when the slab was lifted away and slid to the side, a cloud of acrid, dead dust floated from within the ruin. Peering down into the ruin, Roughneck squinted.

"Get us some torches.. Light the place up." He ordered. Officers carrying large electric lamps shone them down into the open hatch, and Dust stared down into the abyss. It was as she had feared. Around a hundred feet down to the floor of the ruin below. But, at least they had made it this far. She forced a smile, even as she noticed the portable motors, the kilometres of rope, and the harnesses being brought up onto the structure.

"Well.. This should be fun." She murmured.

Chapter Five: Solum, Compass of the Old World

"Careful.. I said careful!" Roughneck yelled at the machine operator, as he used the motor to lower Dust down on a harness via a rope. Dust herself said nothing, but her shaking legs and pale look said it all. She dropped down foot-by-foot, toward the cracked, slanted floor of the interior. It was a good thing that she had brought down a torch of her own, or the ruin would not be visible at all. And extra batteries for said torch had not gone unpacked in her saddlebags, so that helped things. "Can you see the bottom yet?" Roughneck's voice called from somewhere above. Dust looked down. There, coming up to meet her hooves in the pool of torch-light, was the dry, dusty old floor. She looked up at the square patch of sky.

"Yes! I'm just hitting ground level now!" She shouted up to him.

"Right.. We're sending some officers down with the floodlights, so the place will be lit up properly in a few minutes.. Don't worry!" He replied, and his silhouette disappeared from the lit-up patch above. Dust looked around, aiming her torch randomly in the hopes of locating something of worth other than the uneven flooring and bare stone brick walls. With a random swing of the torch, the beam illuminated the huge statue that her mother's journal had spoken of. Dust was awe-struck. "Oh, you are beautiful.." She whispered, trotting up and stroking a hoof across the rough surface of the statue's base. It was an intricately-carven masterpiece, stone hewn in the perfect representation of a stallion, minus a few eroded portions and some cracks in the rock. It wore odd armour, as her mother had also noted; The helmet and body plating was of some alien design, as-of-yet unseen in any of Dust's vast collections of historical texts back at the Institiute. The statue also stood in the not-oft used standing position, using only its hind legs to stand and its forelegs to hold a massive sword of some kind. The blade of the sword seemed to stab into an opening in the statue's base, imitating the image of a sword kept in the soft earth while its bearer uses it to lean on. Behind her, a troop of officers landed down on the stone floor, and began setting up the floodlights. Huge pools of light illuminated the odd statue, and one light was moved around, roaming across the dark walls to reveal the masses of smashed-open brickwork and the four doorways which led to the four compass-point towers on the outside edges of the structure. Dust, being the defacto commander of the officers in the ruin, sent a team of four off down a corridor each, to search the intact towers and try to search for ways into the collapsed ones. She kept a pair of the officers in the central structure to stand guard and keep contact with Roughneck while she worked.

An hour passed by as Dust began translating the carven passages which lined the base of the statue, using a translation table she had drawn up while back at the Institute. Apparently, the race that constructed Solum must have been an early deviation of Tan's central desert cultures. The carven inscriptions in the stone spoke thusly;

'The secret of the Casket of Undead-Bringing lies hid at Tali,

The Unholy Temple at the bottom of the Seas of Unrest,

Guarded by Morlyir Bae, the Many Limbed One,

He who may smite down unwary visitors with many a barbed arm,

The map to the Temple Tali rests here,

Only the Guardian may decide the worthy.'

Looking up at the stone statue, Dust took a wild guess that it represented the 'Guardian' that the inscription spoke of. After all, the statue certainly seemed to be standing guard over something. She noted down the inscription on the statue's base, scribbling it into her mother's journal. Taking a step back from the monument, Dust turned to the officers.

"Right, you two.. Search around that statue. Let me know if you find anything odd, I'm off to check up on the others." And with that, she took off down the West corridor. Upon reaching the end of the tunnel, she found that the officer had begun trying to burrow beneath the collapsed portion of the tower, and she had managed to dig into the lower portion. The tower had only collapsed at the uppermost level, and so the lower chambers remained intact and untouched since many hundreds of years prior. Climbing down into the excavated chamber, Dust waved her torch around, calling out to the officer.

"Hello? Um.. Hello?" Her voice echoed around. No reply. Dust travelled inward, entering the chamber and looking around. There were dusty old sarcophogi propped up in alcoves all around the chamber, and pulling open one, Dust found it to be occupied. Standing at full height on its hind hoooves within, forehooves crossed over its chest, was a semi-mummified pony. Well, it appeared to be a pony, in some respects. Its stomach area had been extended, as if the poor creature had been put on a rack and stretched to double its length. The legs were thin and bony, and grey flesh peeled off and hung from between the bandages in places. The head was the oddest though. The shape of the skull was different, as some ancient ritual head-binding of some kind had crushed the muzzle against the head, giving it a stunted, almost reptilian look, as the facial features were pressed into the skull. The eyes, no longer there, would have been recessed into the skull. However, now the eyes were nothing more than empty, misshapen sockets. Dust shuddered to think what kind of pain the binding rituals of the old culture must have brought, and she quickly closed over the sarcophagus again. As it thudded shut, she could have sworn she heard a rattling, crusty noise - like ancient bones moving almost imperceptably inside the decrepit tomb. She shook off her irrational fears, and pressed onward, down to the bottom level of the West tower. There, she found the officer she had sent. The poor mare lay dead, crushed by a sarcophagus which had toppled onto her. Dust theorised that she must have been trying to move it, and it had lost balance and crushed her. With a heavy heart, she returned to the central chamber.

"Ah, Miss Dust. We've found something you might be interested in." One of the officers in the central room called to Dust as she re-entered the octagonal chamber. "See, here.." He led her to one of the wider cracks in the statue's torso. Within, illuminated by torchlight, Dust could see gears, chains and other intricate, ancient machinery. It did not move, but Dust had enough sense to know that, with such an amount of machinery inside it, a statue of this size must be the key to finding the map to Tali. Looking over her options, she took a chance.

"Pass me a rope." She ordered. One of the officers handed over a coiled length of rope. Tying a lasso and throwing it up as far as possible, Dust managed to coil the loop around one of the stone barbs on the statue's helmet. Taking a deep breath, she leapt upward and began climbing. The statue, being at least thirty feet tall, took a while to scale by rope, but soon, she was clambering up the topmost portion of the chestplate and onto the statue's face. She reached the top of the helmet, and immediately came across the soloution she had been looking for. An opening in the back of the statue's helmet opened into the inside of its head. Clambering down inside, she shone her torch around. Inside, there was only one object. A rotting wooden lever, mounted on a dusty, rust-eaten iron mounting. Grabbing hold of it, she yanked the wooden pole back. Quickly, a grinding noise erupted from within the statue itself, and Dust leapt out onto the head to see what was going on. The collossal sword that the statue held was slowly raised up by its stone arms, and the tip of the sword's blade slid out of the rectangular opening in the statue's base. Soon, Dust lowered herself down on the rope, dropping down into the hole opened by the lifting sword.

"Well.. This is it.." She uttered. Now standing inside the base of the statue, she had located the map room.

It was a small enough chamber, circular and ornately covered with inscriptions and grand sarcophogi which surrounded the centre - but the centrepiece made it an incredible sight. A huge globe, set halfway into the stone floor, made of rusty, but still recognisably shimmering, gold. Prodding at the globe with a hoof, Dust realised that it lay in a moving pit, capable of rolling around freely to offer a view of any part of the globe. A mechanism of some sort hung from the ceiling, a needle hanging down further toward the globe on a chain. The cogs and gears of the machine also appeared to link in to the floor-mounted globe. Dust quickly realised that the machine on the ceiling operated the globe, pointing the exact location of the ruin Tali. But the machine lay dormant, unmoving at this moment in time.

"How am I gonna make this thing work?.. I'm not a mechanic, by any means.." She murmured to herself, looking over what appeared to be the control panel for the machine which stood on a stone pedestal in front of the globe. An age-worn stone podium, with a golden panel at its summit. The panel bore only a small, dark opening. A hole, not unlike a keyhole, though wide enough for a pony's hoof. Inspecting the inscription around the hole, her heart sank.

'Tei'Solu, Guardian of Solum, demands a sacrifice of flesh and blood to reveal the location of the forsaken Tali. Put forth your hoof, if you are sure of heart and steely of resolve, and take the location of Tali for your own.'

Now she noticed the black residue which lined the hole's rim. Dry, cracked blood. "No.. No, I can't do this, I.. Wait a minute." She suddenly thought hard, staring around the room. The sarcophogi.. She could use the bodies. Peeling one open, she held back from retching at the smell of age-long decay as the air was polluted with rot. Grabbing at the bandage-wrapped body inside, she yanked at its hoof. "I'm so sorry about this, Sir. Or Miss. I can't really tell." She apologised profusely, as the rotten old body tumbled out of the sarcophogus, almost on top of her. She dragged it over to the stone podium with its golden panel, and tried jamming the mummified cadaver's hoof into the keyhole. There was an altogether disturbing noise, the popping, crunching and tearing of bone and flesh as a stone block inside the keyhole slowly crushed the hoof to dust and flakes of dead skin. Had that been her own hoof, it would have been horrifyingly crushed to a bloody pulp. However, as it was, the cruel mechanism accepted the gift of long-dead flesh and bone, and the machine began to grind into action. Slowly, the golden globe in the floor began to swirl around on its axis, and as it came to a resting-place, the needle of the machine on the ceiling lowered down to touch it gently, revealing the location of Tali; The Olenian Ocean, a few kilometres from the Crystal Empire. Dust's face lit up with joy as she scribbled down the exact location in her mother's journal, giddy with excitement.

Chapter Six: Betrayal, and a Narrow Escape

As she clambered back out of the square hatch in the ceiling of the ruin, Desert Dust was met face-to-face with a rifle barrel. Or rather, quite a few of them. Looking up, she saw a group of the officers she had been working with, aiming directly at her. They sneered, rifles cocked and ready to fire. Laying on the ground around them, were the rest of the officers. She couldn't tell if they were unconscious, or worse. Among them was Fuse, slumped over a rifle. Staring around, she saw Roughneck. He looked solemnly on, a glimmer of malice in his eye.

"Um.. A little help here?" Dust hissed to him. He smirked a little, shaking his head.

"Sorry, Miss Dust. We're blowing off the expedition. My boys and I want to make off with that Casket of yours, and you'll be leading us to it." He explained, quite matter-of-factly. Dust gaped, shocked at this sudden turn of alliegences. She snarled indignantly.

"Why?.. Why, Roughneck? After we come all this way together?" Roughneck shrugged.

"The changelings are paying big for the Cask. Apparently Queen Chrysalis is gonna use it for some big plan of hers. Bring back her soldiers to fight over and over, or something." He replied. Looking around, Dust noticed the odd look to some of the officers, and noticed that some of them had shed their disguises and reverted to changeling form. "But anyway.. You're going to leave that snooty little captain behind, leave the airship where it is, and come with us." He declared, grasping a pistol in his talons and aiming it at her. "We have aircraft to get us to Tali, now that you've seen the map.. So we're on our way." Some of the changelings chittered and giggled, waving their rifles over the victory. Dust grudgingly followed the troop of traitors and changelings toward the parked convoy, passing inbetween the long rows of parked vehicles.

In a lightning-quick moment, Dust leapt out of line and dove behind an armoured car. Her captors called out in alarm, and began firing. Bullets ricocheted off the car's plating, as some of the changelings hovered unsurely into the air to peer over the top of the vehicle. Dust crouched up, firing off a few shots from her pistol. One changeling dropped dead.

"Come on, Miss Dust! You won't win, there are at least twenty of us and only one of-" Roughneck was cut off as Dust fired off a shot which missed him by an inch or so. The bullet punched a hole in a barrel which was loaded on the supply truck behind the griffin. Shaken, he just laughed. "Ya missed me!" He called out. Dust shook her head.

"No.. I hit what I aimed for!" She yelled back. A split-second later, the barrel of explosives on the truck behind Roughneck ignited, exploding outward in a spectacular explosion of sparks, fire, and plumes of thick black smoke. Roughneck was wrapped in the smoke and flames, screaming for a good few minutes as Dust stood, watching for any armed survivors of the blast before hopping into the bullet-riddled car and turning the ignition to fire up the engine. From somewhere behind her, she heard a familiar voice.

"Dusty! Hey, Dusty, wait up!" Out of the plumes of drifting smoke, Fuse shambled into view. He hobbled slowly, one hoof clutched over his shirt, which was soaked with crimson blood. Taking a chance, but still weilding her pistol, Dust reversed the car toward him.

"Hop in, and tell me what happened on the way!" Dust called. A grateful Fuse clambered into the back of the car, and settled down uncomfortably as Dust hit the accelerator, powering back down the road toward the airship. Fuse began to explain.

"So I'm just standing guard there, up next to the hole in the ground, and then half of the other guys around me turn their guns on us. Some of them are changelings, some of 'em just ponies.. They shot us all down. Most of us were killed, I reckon. Anyway, it was all Roughneck. He must have planned it out, so that some of the team would go mutineering on us and knock us all out of the picture, so he could get his hands on the Cask, and-"

"And sell it off to Chrysalis for a stupidly high price. I'm up to speed now, thank you." Dust cut him off, smiling. He collapsed back into his seat, convulsing with pain and holding his hoof tightly over the gunshot wound in his stomach.

"So what happened there? I came to after being shot, and there was a load of smoke, and-"

"I took care of the traitors, I think. Roughneck probably didn't survive." Dust stated coldly.

"That was you?!" Fuse asked, awe-struck. His eyes lit up. "Remind me to buy you a drink sometime, okay?" He joked, despite his injury. Dust simply smirked as the car drove on.

By the time they had raced back on-board the Daring, the sun was setting in the sky. The golden, fiery light reflected off the dark metallic surface of the ship's outer plating as the armoured car powered up the gangplank. Soon, Fuse and Dust burst onto the bridge.

"What is the meaning of this, Miss Dust?" The Captain asked, a little startled.

"We need to get into the air, now." Dust urged her. "Roughneck was a traitor, and we've just escaped an ambush, ma'am." The Captain looked from Dust to Fuse, who nodded vigorously, confirming Dust's view of events. Seeing Fuse's gunshot wound was enough proof.

"Right.. Raise the entry ramp, and get us into the air, helmsman. Someone get this officer seen to, he's bleeding badly. Miss Dust, with me." The Captain ordered, marching out and off the bridge, leaving the helmsman as de facto Bridge Captain. She and Dust entered the Captain's quarters, where she had Dust sit and talk over the situation. After a good ten minutes of explanation, she sat back and let out a long, weary sigh.

"Well, Roughneck had seemed like a dependable sort. But nopony is ever quite as they seem, really. Especially when money is involved." To this, Dust only nodded grimly. "Well, that's a bit of a shock to the system, I must say. Anyhow, that's enough complaining. We have work to do."

"Yes ma'am." Dust replied, nodding. "To business."

"You say that Tali is located in the Olenian Ocean, yes? And you noted its exact location in your mother's journal, I assume." The Captain queried, and Dust confirmed the fact. "Good. Then we shall travel toward the Crystal Empire, and disembark on the coastline of the Olenian, to continue onward toward Tali by watercraft." At this news, Dust could only grin.

"Yes, ma'am." She replied.

Hours later, Dust trotted slowly back toward her quarters. Passing Cistern's room, she knocked on the doorframe. Cistern's voice came, crackly as ever, from within.

"Go away, I'm busy here." Dust shied away, but called out.

"It's me, Dust.. Are you okay?"

"Oh, it's you.. Sure, come on in.." The old cleaning-mare replied. "I'm fine, just having a bad day, as all." Dust slipped into the closet, dropping down and sitting on the bench beside Cistern, who sipped at a mug of cocoa. She stared into space grimly.

"What's so bad about today?" Dust asked. Cistern sighed.

"Eh.. It wouldn't matter too much to you. You won't know what I feel like."

"Come on, Cistern.. Tell me." Dust smirked then. "If it's bad enough that you're drinking that much cocoa, your problem needs help getting rid of." There was a silence for some five minutes or so. Finally, looking down into her mug, Cistern spoke again.

"I been thinking. Thinking about my age." She let out a shuddering sigh, as if tired and a little afraid. "My sister, Dewshine.. She died ten years ago, as of today. It's been so long, and it feels like only yesterday I was face-to-face with her in that hospital room, smiling and laughing and sharing fond old memories." Dust shuffled a little in her seat, pity washing over her. "Dew was a great old gal. We'd sit for hours in the hospital room, and we'd.." A smile cracked across Cistern's face, and she laughed a dry laugh. "We'd try catching a look at one of the doctors when he had his back to us. Take turns tryin' to chat him up for a bet." her eyes grew wistful again. "Dew was very sick. She died suddenly in the night. They say her heart just stopped beating as she slept." By now, tears prickled at Dust's eyes. She turned away, wiping them from her cheeks. "So call it an irrational fear if you want, but.. I'm afraid I don't have much time left." Cistern concluded. Dust took it all in.

"Don't worry." She finally replied, after collecting herself for a while. A ghost of a smile now lay on her face. "You might be getting older, but you're not alone." She extended a hoof, taking Cistern's in her own and holding it warmly. "I'll be here when you need a friend, and I promise not to disappear like Dew, or your daughter." Cistern, at Dust's touch, raised her head and turned to look at her. Fresh tears rolled down the old mare's face. Crystal-clear, and shimmering. Like dewdrops.

"You know, having someone to talk to like you really takes the edge off things. Friends are what makes life worthwhile." Cistern smiled softly, almost tentatively. "Without friends, what's the point of it all?" Dust's eyes lit up, as she remembered. Fuse.

"You're right.. You're right, Cistern. I have a friend down in the infirmary, who was badly injured on the expedition. I'll have to see you later.. He's critically wounded, and I need to see if he's okay." Dust leapt to her hooves, and Cistern simply nodded.

"Thanks for the help, sweetie. I hope your friend's okay.. Give him my sympathy, won't ya?" Dust smiled, waved, and with that, she raced down toward the infirmary.

There was a tense twenty-minute wait outside the emergency room before the heavy door opened, and an orderly stepped out slowly, pushing a tray of instruments. Behind him, a doctor emerged. The doctor trotted toward her, stern look on his face.

"Mr Fuse is resting, but the operation was a success. The bullet was removed, and his heartrate and breathing are back to normal. You can visit, but make it quick." He stated, before heading down the corridor. Dust hurried in, looking around and finding Fuse alone, sitting up in his hospital bunk. He sipped at a cup of water, and smiled brightly as she entered.

"Dusty!" He called out, practically tossing his cup aside. "How are ya?"

"I think I should be asking you that. You were the one with a bullet put through your chest." Dust replied, chuckling. Fuse only shrugged it off, looking down at his bandaged abdomen.

"It'll take more than that to knock me down." He said simply, winking.

"Well, I'm glad to see you alive and looking well, anyway." Dust smirked. "I wasn't sure if you'd make it, after all. So, did you hear the good news?"

"What good news? Am I allowed cider instead of water now?" Fuse chuckled.

"No, no.. I found Tali. Under the Olenian Ocean.. I'm getting so close to finding my mother, Fuse. I'm rather excited." She grinned. Fuse smiled warmly, nodding his head in agreement.

"Olenian Ocean, huh? I sailed across that puddle once. Me and.. Well, that doesn't matter. It's a lovely place, anyway. The water's amazingly clear." He noted. Dust was curious as to who Fuse had shared his cruise with, but didn't want to go prying any further, so said nothing.

"Anyway.. you'd better get some rest if you want to heal soon." She ordered, turning to leave. "I'll see you soon, anyway." She smiled, waving. Fuse merely waved back, winking.

"See ya soon, Dusty." He called as she left the infirmary, shutting over the door.

Chapter Seven: The Battle for the Skies

Two days later, after a long journey over land and sea, the huge bulky form of the Daring drifted toward the coastline of the Olenian Ocean, with only a kilometre or so to go before a landing-place could be chosen. The spires and rooftops of buildings on the outskirts of the Crystal Empire below were shrouded in shadow as the airship cruised over them. Thunder boomed across the sky, and heavy rainfall assaulted the rigid frame of the balloon. On the Bridge, Dust and the Captain were talking over the location of the ruin and how it would be reached, being under sea level. Dust listened intently to the Captain's proposal.

"I assume that we have sufficient scuba gear to survive beneath the ocean waves, do we not? Well, our task is made easier then. We may be able to spare sonar equipment on a small scale to aid you in locating the ruin, but the technology is costly." Dust nodded.

"I understand. We'll only need the minimal equipment anyway, my mother's notes coupled with the location we recovered at Solum should give us most of the information needed." At this, the Captain smiled and nodded, then turned to speak with the officers on the bridge.

"How far until the drop zone, Number One?" She called. Another officer cut in.

"Captain.. We have incoming aircraft." The officer's panicked voice broke out. "They are on an intercepting course, heading straight for us."

"How many of their number?" The Captain asked calmly, sitting at the control seat.

"Multiple units. Very small, very fast. Highly manoeuvrable." The officer returned, her voice becoming more shrill. "They're gaining on us rapidly, Captain.." The Captain replied quickly.

"Understood, officer. Kindly return to your duties. All hands, man your battle stations.. I feel a confrontation brewing." She smirked a little, overseeing the officers on-deck. Klaxons began blaring across the airship on all decks and ponies scrambled through the corridors, ready to do battle and win, or die trying. In the broom cupboard, Cistern poured herself another mug of cocoa nonchalantly and grunted to herself.

"Crud-buckets." She uttered, taking a sip.

Dust grabbed onto the railings of the bridge as best she could, hooves grasping the cold grey lifelines as the airship banked sharply. Through the thick windows spaced about the Bridge, she managed to catch a glimpse of the attackers as they finally caught up with the Daring. Small, extremely fast black shapes, flying on insect-like wings and wearing what appeared to be saddle-mounted machine guns darted past the portholes.

"Those aren't aircraft." Dust managed to utter, as the muffled sound of gunfire and bullets ricocheting off the hull sounded loudly. The Captain took note of Dust's observation.

"Number One, I want all gunners to open fire. If we have additional aircraft or Pegasus troops, send them out now." The officer in question nodded sternly, and gave the order across the speaker system. On the underbelly of the Daring, the entry ramp slid open shakily to allow a troop of Pegasii, clad in armour and carrying weapons of their own, to dive out into the air and engage the changelings. After the Pegasii, came the Unicorn and Earth Pony combatants, piloting small, armed one-pony aircraft. The planes soared across the sky around the airship as the battle began. Rain made navigation difficult for those in the planes and for the Pegasii, though the changelings were more adapted to harsh flying conditions. Gunfire lit up the sky, and the first casualty occurred. A Pegasus pony, cut down by a hail of changeling gunfire. The second casualty, one of the aircraft. The small plane crashed headfirst into a dazed changeling, the unfortunate rival being mangled in the rotors as the engine stalled, the plane dropping out of the sky and plummeting out of sight. A rumbling boom from below echoed all around as the savagery continued. On the Bridge, the Captain remained calm and resolute despite the bloodshed and danger surrounding her.

"Keep us on-course toward the Olenian Ocean, Number One. Make evasive manoeuvres as needed. I will be in my quarters, keep me informed via personal radio." She ordered, to which Number One only nodded. Dust stared out of the window, watching the battle rage further as the Captain disappeared into her quarters. After a tense few moments of battle, in which the airship shook and rattled in the heat of conflict, she made her way back toward her own quarters to get her mother's pistol.

The Daring shook violently as Dust proceeded along the corridors, and a worrying announcement was made over the speakers.

"We have sustained a direct hit, puncturing the gas supply.. Try to remain calm, everypony." All it took was another shudder of the craft, and Dust's maddest ideas were thrown to the forefront of her mind. Dashing back down the corridors, she headed for the hangar. If another direct hit or two managed to hit the engine or rupture the gas supply properly, the Daring would surely crash - or worse. And she couldn't let that happen. Before she even began to question what she was doing, Dust had clambered inside one of the aircraft in the hangar. Firing up the engine, she drove the plane forward and dropped out of the airship, into the stormy sky. The rotors blasted into a rapid spin, and the engine roared into life as Dust soared out into the murky aerial battlefield.

Visibility was horrendous, and Dust found herself quite lost among the darting shadows which leapt in and out of the clouds. But as she was losing hope, the clouds began to shift on the wind. The sun shone through cracks in the grim sky, and she could just make out the shape of the Daring - As the gas-bag ruptured, the glorious airship began leaning downward and drifted toward the ground. There was still a good kilometre and a half to go before the airship would have hit the coast of the Olenian, and Dust felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach at the possibility that this could be the end of the expedition altogether - let alone the end of her life.

Aboard the ship, Captain Rhododendron galloped across her now-vertical room and scrambled through the doorway, climbing onto the bridge. Inside, some of the engineers lay injured and unconscious on the far wall - which had now become the floor, far below. Taking a leap, the Captain landed nimbly on the handrail by the command seat, and scurried down to tend to the wounded. Through the window below her, she observed as the ground drifted closer. Though the descent was reasonably slow due to the fact that gas still remained in the airship, impact with the ground below could mean the total destruction of the craft, and its crew. As she spotted Dust blazing beneath the descending airship in a plane, the Captain darted over to a control panel and began working on a plan.

There was a clatter of gunfire, and bullets began ricocheting off the wings and body of her aircraft. Dust pulled up hard, soaring skywards and rolling to avoid the shots. Feeling nauseous from the motion of acrobatic flight, the events which had just occurred and not knowing exactly what she was doing, she hazarded a glance down at the multitude of controls. To her relief, this model of aircraft had an easily-accessible firing mechanism set into a simple panel of controls right in front of her. She slammed a loose hoof down on the button, and the machine-guns built into the plane's bodywork blazed with crackling explosions of gunfire. bullets ripped through the air, and managed to hack down one of the changelings. With no specific formations planned beforehand, the aircraft battle grew incredibly hectic. As Dust pulled around to fire again, the radio on the dashboard began emitting an incessant beeping. Grabbing the headset and fitting the headphones over her ears, she flipped the switch and answered the call.

"Dust! Desert Dust, do you read me?" The Captain's voice came crackling over the radio.

"I read you loud and clear, Captain!" Dust replied, swerving around to avoid a burning plane wreck which darted past her toward the ground. "What's the plan?"

"I know this is near-impossible, but I need you to try and find a way to slow our descent. Without help, the Daring will crash and burn. I know I can count on you." And with that, the signal broke up and fizzled away. But as Dust felt panic rising in her breast, a familiar voice came over from another plane's radio.

"Come on, Dusty.. We got a job to do." Came Fuse's voice. Apparently, his wounds must have healed enough to permit him to fly a plane. Or, more likely, he had piloted one anyway.

"How are we going to-" Dust began, but fuse cut her off.

"Follow my lead, and cover me!" He yelled, and with that, she spotted his aircraft soaring across the sky in front of her.

As the battle began to die down and changeling numbers began to dwindle, the job became easier for Dust and Fuse. But now, a near-suicidal plan had to be put into action. Knowing full well the consequences of a possible failure, Fuse dropped his plane into a nose-dive and blazed downward, catching up to the descending airship. In an incredibly risky move, he flipped a switch on the dashboard, and lowered his landing gear. The sturdy frame lowered from the underside of his plane, and a second later, Dust realised his plan. Her heart pounded in her chest as he flew the plane as close as he dared to the rigid frame of the balloon - maintaining a steady speed as he attempted to tangle the landing gear around the restraining ropes which snaked across the balloon's surface. Retracting the landing gear again, she could only watch in awe as Fuse pulled up hard, managing to help slow the airship's descent and begin angling it horizontally for landing. Over the radio, Dust heard Fuse's triumphant laughter loud and clear.

"Your turn, kid!" He yelled, and with that, Dust gulped down her fears and tried the same stunt. Powering downward and angling her aircraft to match the diagonal sloping of the airship, she drifted closer to the ropes and slowed to a steady glide. Flipping the switch, the rattling metal landing gear extended below. In a heart-stopping moment, she shakily managed to tangle the ropes around the gear's frame. No sooner had she done this, she retracted the gear. But with a juddering snap and a screech of metal, the landing gear broke away. As she watched in horror, the wheels, frame and all fell away, bouncing down the side of the balloon and dropping toward the steadily-nearing ground below. "There was too much strain on the gear!" Fuse's voice came, panicked, over the radio. "You tried pulling up too fast.." Dust formulated a new plan in her head and, with more confidence than she had ever shown before or thought possible of herself, replied simply over the radio with,

"It's not over yet." She pulled up and away from the descending balloon. Though the Daring's velocity toward the ground was indeed slowed considerably, without her help it would certainly not survive without a high level of damage - and a high death toll. As the plan finalised within her head, Dust breathed a beg of mercy to Celestia, and nose-dived below the slowly-falling airship.

Once she had descended beneath the underbelly of the ship, she blazed forward along the ribbed underside of the cabin section itself and, as she neared the front end, slid the cockpit of the plane open. Steeling herself, she cautiously leaned upward and out of the plane. Using a hind hoof to slow the plane, she readied herself. As the underside of the airship continued to dip toward her head, she grabbed hold of one of the support ropes which hung loosely along the underside of the craft (having been severed from the balloon by enemy gunfire) with a hoof and, with lightning-quick reflexes, wrapped the rope around the metal frame of the cockpit, double-tying it tightly. Swiftly dropping back inside the plane, she revved the engine up and flew straight forward, pulling upward. The rope held fast, and the mixture of Fuse's upward pulling from above and her 'towing' the airship in front slowed it to a safe speed.

On the Bridge, the Captain beamed with admiration as she spied Dust out in front through the forward window. The usually-timid young mare turned and saluted to her before setting back to the task at hand. The airship had levelled out, and now drifted slowly, safely down.

"Maintaining a safe landing speed, Captain. Impact will cause some damage, but no estimated casualties beyond a few bruises and scrapes." One of the Bridge crew called out.

"I'll be damned." The Captain spoke aloud, staring at the plane which towed the airship to safety. "What a remarkable filly."

Author's Note

I'm going to be honest here. The part about 'towing' the Daring to a safe landing in an upright position via ropes and rather dangerous use of landing gear is probably physically impossible. But I ask you to suspend your belief, for the sake of the story. I tend to write ever-so-slightly silly action scenes, but bear with me.

Chapter Eight: Reunion and Regrets

After the insane rescue plan and its unlikely success, Dust and Fuse had detached themselves from the Daring as it impacted with the ground. While Fuse had retained landing gear, and managed to land safely on the desolate field beside the crash-landed airship, Dust had been required to find a more suitable mode of landing. Circling in the air, she had spotted a nearby river in which she could crash-land safely. Upon making her way back across the empty fields and dense clumps of forest to the landed Daring, she regrouped with the Captain and crew, all of whom were setting up in tents and trucks around the crashed airship. The balloon itself was apparently being dismantled, used as tent material and sheets to cover equipment from the rain which had returned in force. The body of the crashed airship was still mostly intact, save for some hull damage and sections of plating which had fallen away on impact. The Captain smiled as Dust approached, a noticable bruise on her head and blood trickling from her lip.

"Welcome back, Miss Dust." The Captain smirked. "I knew you could be trusted to save the day." Dust simply looked down at the floor, kicking the dirt with a hoof.

"It was actually Mr Fuse that had the idea for it.." She mumbled. The Captain nodded.

"I see. Well, he will also be rewarded for this, as I reward you now. Miss Desert Dust, I promote you to the rank of Senior Expedition Commander." She chuckled. "I would have given you the place of number one after Roughneck's little fiasco, but seeing as the ship is down.." She looked mournfully back at the Daring, which somewhat resembled a beached metallic whale. A collosal spectacle, and quite dead.

"I must go and check on some things.. I'll be out soon, Captain." Dust respectfully stated, before dashing off toward the wreck and climbing up into the now-sideways entry bay.

Inside, it was quite chaotic. The walls had become the floor and ceiling, while the former had switched jobs. Some broken pipes spewed steam, and a majority of the electric lighting inside was flickering or completely broken. Crew members were transporting crates of supplies and equipment off the ship through the now-vertical corridors, having to step over doorframes and avoid pitfalls into rooms below. Dust dodged past a unicorn trooper carrying a huge ammunition box, and darted down the corridor beyond. She stopped at the doorway to the storeroom, and peered down into the dimly-lit room below. Cistern was nowhere to be seen.

"I'm up here." Came a familiar, grating voice. Dust looked up, and spotted Cistern staring down at her through the doorway on the ceiling. The old mare gave a smirk. "What, did ya think I was dead or somethin'? Wouldn't blame ya." She chuckled a dry chuckle, and Dust merely shifted uncomfortably at the thought. Looking back up, she inquired,

"So why are you up there? Your room's down here." Cistern shrugged.

"I got shook around a bit when we crashed down. Fell onto the floor and rolled across to the room opposite. When I woke up, the whole damn world was sideways." Dust couldn't help but giggle a little. "Anyway, I've been stuck up here for a while.. Little help?" She reached up, grabbing hold of Cistern and helping her down onto the floor. She nursed her head with a hoof.

"Are you okay?" Dust asked. "Your head.." Cistern shrugged it off instantly.

"Naa, I'm fine.. Say, could you get something from my room? It's, ah.. My photo. The frame's probably broke, but I need it. Got a lotta value." She grunted. Dust nodded, clambering down into the cleaning-mare's room. Crushed under a pile of mugs and a kettle, was a smashed picture frame. Slipping the photo out, Dust examined it for a moment before starting the climb back up onto the corridor. A faded, sepia-toned photograph of Cistern in her younger years, with a little filly sat next to her, wrapped in an embrace. Both were smiling at the camera. A ghost of a smile fell over Dust's face as she clambered out onto the corridor, handing Cistern the photo.

Climbing down into her sideways room, Dust began sorting through the pile of fallen belongings on the floor. Rooting around, she found her saddlebags and began packing equipment into them. Pistol, maps, notes, and her mother's journal. Some clothes were stuffed into a large leather case; thin vests, rugged pants, thick fur coats, waterproof cloaks.. Anything that might be of use, or have value. Last but not least, Dust changed into a clean outfit - khaki shirt and matching trousers, a dark blue bow-tie, a rough duster coat.. And her mother's pith helmet, battered and dented as it was from the crash. Clambering back out of her room, she rejoined the Captain and the team. But, upon reaching the entry bay, she was met with a problem. Outside, the changelings had caught up with them.

"State your intention, or we will open fire!" The Captain's voice called out. All around, the noise of chittering and wingbeats saturated the air, and changelings zoomed about, relaying messages as some readied themselves for battle. At the edge of the encampment, some armoured cars and trucks had pulled up, driven by yet more changelings. A familiar voice replied.

"Game's over, Captain. We'll be taking the Cask, once you lead us to it." Dust crept across the ground, laying low in a tent and peering out. The voice that had replied.. Was impossible. But there he stood, scorched and battered, beak curled into a grim smirk. Roughneck. "We outnumber you ten to one, Captain. And as if that wasn't enough.." He clicked his talons together. "We have an ace up our sleeve." There was movement from one of the trucks. A shuffling, the sound of hoof on flesh, and a thud.

"Get off me, you scumbag.." A voice came from behind the truck. Dust's heart leapt up, caught in her throat. That voice was even more familiar. Aged, but still recognizable. Her eyes widened as she realised its source. Half-led, half-dragged from behind the truck and into view was a battered, scruffy specimen of a mare. Wearing somewhat torn and slightly blood-stained adventurer's attire, her greyscale mane was stringy and matted with sweat. Magenta eyes burned out proudly as she swept the hair from her face with a flourish.

Daring Do, in the flesh.

"Mother.." Dust mouthed silently, feeling her heart sink again as she realised what was happening. Daring was shoved down into the dirt, and held down as Roughneck withdrew a pistol from his combat gear casually. He aimed the gun at her head.

"You give in to our demands, or I put this mare down." He gave a wicked smile. "And I know there's a kid somewhere around here who would hate to have to bring her mom back home in a box." Dust bit her lip, rage and fear and despair welling up inside as she tried to form some coherent plan of action. Giving up, she stood up and walked slowly out into the open to join the rest of the crew and the Captain, who was now realising the hopelessness of the situation.

"Fine.. Fine. Just don't shoot." She finally concluded, upon seeing Dust pushing toward the front of the crowd. Roughneck nodded, holstering his gun.

"Mount up, we're heading for the coast in two hours." As the crowd dispersed and loaded up supplies onto their vehicles under the watchful eyes of the changelings, Dust galloped over and reunited with her mother. The mare raised her face up out of the dirt, and for the first time in years, the mother's magenta eyes locked with those of her child's. Daring sighed shakily.

An hour later, Dust sat across from her mother in the back of an otherwise-empty supply truck. The noise of the crew outside had died down, and the interior of the truck was in an almost-reverent hush. Dust raised her head, looking over at her mother.

"I understand why you left. I read your journal." Dust stated tonelessly. Daring did not look up, but stayed silent for a good few minutes before Dust began again. "I dont blame.."

"You're my daughter, and I should have been there for you when you needed me most. I was naive to run away and leave." Daring finally spoke up, raising her head to meet Dust's gaze.

"You were doing it to try and find a way to bring dad back, you needn't apolo-"

"It wasn't just that." Daring cut her off again. Dust felt a pang of some imperceptible, sad emotion rise inside her as her mother explained. "It wasn't only because I wanted to bring him back. Without him, looking after you was hard. Life was moving so fast, and I felt like I wasn't ready to keep going like this." She hung her head again. "The search for the Cask was an escape from my life. Another getaway from what really mattered." Tears had begun to well up in Dust's eyes and, looking up, Daring noticed the shimmering drops as they fell from Dust's face.

"You didn't want me." Her daughter concluded. "You couldn't handle being a mother, and you didn't want to take care of me.. You just wanted to go off on another adventure."

"It's not like that, I.." Daring's apology died away as Dust climbed to her hooves and trotted silently to the back of the truck, hopping out and disappearing outside. Daring was left alone inside the truck, head hung low. "I don't know what it was like." She whispered to nobody.

As soon as all had been made ready, the convoy of trucks and cars set off from the crashed airship, down toward the coast. Sitting in the back of an armoured car with Fuse for the second time on the expedition, now under the cold gaze of an armed changeling, she stared wistfully out across the landscape as the convoy reached the desolate sands of the beach. The sun had begun to set, and a fiery haze lit the sky.

"Are you okay, Dust?" Fuse asked with genuine concern.

"I'm fine." She responded, not turning to face him for fear that he might notice her pained eyes and question further. She simply pulled the pith helmet down lower on her head and stared at the darkening sky. Fuse silently raised a hoof up, patting her gently.

"You tell me if you wanna talk about anything, 'kay?" He offered. Turning to him, she smiled.

"Thanks." She replied, as the convoy came to a grinding halt. Having been looking the other way, Dust had not noticed the relatively small cargo ship pulled up near the water's edge, ready to transport the expedition team to deeper waters, and to Tali.

Chapter Nine: The Deep

The cargo ship had sailed for two days after that, continuing on despite bad weather and storm-driven waves on the Olenian Ocean. Hurled around on the ravaging tide, it had taken this long just to reach the area marked on the map in Daring's journal. But now, weighing anchor in what appeared to be the middle of a rain-drenched nowhere, Tali was directly beneath the ship. Led from their waiting-places in the ship's makeshift brig within the hull, a group of the original expedition team were led on-deck: Daring Do, Desert Dust, the Captain and finally Cistern were shoved toward their destination. Waiting for them there was a small, bulky submarine of some kind. Oblong-ish in shape and made up of interlocking plates of thick, gunmetal grey iron, the watercraft's top hatch was screwed open by a pair of changelings as Roughneck marched into view. He gave a grim smile.

"All right kids, listen up." He began, climbing onto the hull of the craft. "I and a small troop of changelings will accompany you on-board this vessel." He tapped the metal hull of the sub with a talon. "You will not be given weapons, so any stepping out of line will be met with swift and quite merciless force. We will proceed down however far is needed, retrieve what we need with the help of Miss Daring Do's notes, and return promptly to continue on toward the final site. Any questions?" The group of adventurers simply glowered at him. With the exception of Cistern, who simply looked quite bored and unimpressed. "Good. Board the vessel then, and we'll be off." He concluded with a nod.

After the initial lowering of the submarine into the stormy ocean via the ship's crane, it was quite a while before the sub even came close to the bottom of the Olenian. The inside of the craft was dim, claustrophobic and smelled of machine oil. Steam periodically hissed from pipes along the thick walls, and the only illumination in the sub's single compartment came from the control panels; a calm array of golden lights cut apart by bright reds and sickly greens. Through the windscreen, nothing much could be made out of the surroundings. The occasional fish flitted past, a slimy eel coiled this way and that. The team sat hunched over on uncomfortable bench areas near the aft of the vessel, some staring at the floor and others looking to the side to try and see any change through the windscreen toward the front. Dust refused to look at her mother, though Daring threw occasional, reproachful glances at her estranged daughter before looking back to her hooves below. Cistern stared out through the windscreen, curiously observing as the ocean floor began to materialise into view. Fuse stared into space, feeling quite helpless and vulnerable. He did not feel this way often, and it was starting to get to him. The Captain was probably the calmest of the group. Sitting with upright, proud posture and occasionally checking over to the windscreen, she remained dutifully silent. Even as a gun-toting changeling stared her down with its cold blue gaze, she returned the emotionless gaze with the stern monotony that she had shown command of time after time.

The changeling helmsman turned to Roughneck and chittered out something. Grinning, the griffin turned and relayed the message to the crew.

"We're approaching the ocean floor, ladies and gentlecolts. Tali should be just-" He was cut off as something huge swiped past the submarine, smacking into it and throwing it a little off-course with a juddering slam. The hull had buckled in a few places, and warning lights began blinking on the control panels. "What in the wide world of Equestria was that?!" Roughneck yelled, clearly trying hard to keep his cool. Dust tried to get a good view out of the windscreen. The atmosphere became tenser still as the power began to fail, the lights in the cabin flickering and cutting out. The sub drifted downward.

"I don't like this.." Fuse uttered, shaking a little. "I don't like this one little bit.."

"Well, we're dead." concluded Cistern, looking quite calm and as cynical as ever.

There was a buzzing, and the roving spotlight to the aft of the sub flickered into life, illuminating the dark waters in front of them. Something else flitted past; a horrifying, stringy mass of flesh, torn, rotting and pale, writing about as if sniffing around for any life. It disappeared from view once again, and the crew were left dumbstruck and terrified. Even Cistern and the Captain looked shaken. The only one who seemed a little prepared was Dust. She had remembered the inscription on the statue's base at Solum, and reciting it, she began to panic.

"The secret of the Casket of Undead-Bringing lies hid at Tali, the Unholy Temple at the bottom of the Seas of Unrest.. Guarded by Morlyir Bae, the Many Limbed One, he who may smite down unwary visitors with many a barbed arm.." She recalled the cryptic inscription, now making sense of the oddly-described 'Morlyir Bae'. "It's a guardian. A huge, age-old animal of some kind.." She uttered, and the rest of the crew began to make sense of the situation on their own. There was an uncomfortable moment as the ocean around them became thick with the sound of writing flesh and the crumbling of rocks, and then all went silent. Roughneck scanned the area with the spotlight as the sub reached the location of Tali. Huge pillars of stone emerged from the dark, coiled in thick lengths of what were apparently the tentacles of the fabled Morlyir Bae. Broken buildings also rose out of the dark, covered in coral and broken in parts by tentacles or smoke-belching volcanic vents. Finally, the remains of the central structure came into view. A colossal structure of eroded, pale stone. It resembled an angular, blocky fortress, with high towers of rotten, decrepit bricks greened with slimy seaweed. The colossal doorway set into the front of the structure spilled forth a few thin, slowly-writhing coils of decomposing tentacles, but was otherwise empty of blockage. Roughneck steeled himself.

"Helmsman, take us inside the ruin. Avoid those.. Things.. At all cost. And arm torpedoes, in case this thing tries to stop us." The changeling at the helm simply nodded, lowering the sub toward the dark recess that was Tali's entrance.

Inside, the ruin was pitch-black. Only the relatively narrow cone of light from the aft spotlight could illuminate the consuming dark as the small sub slowly drove onward, swerving at intervals to avoid another disconcerting strand of rotten but still-living tissue.

"I can only theorise.." Daring spoke out to the group, watching the disgusting spectacle outside. "That the long life of this creature.. Of this Morlyir Bae.. Must have something to do with the Cask of Undeath. The tentacles appear to have decomposed long ago, but they're still quite alive." Dust pulled out her mother's journal and flicked through to some of the notes on the Cask itself and its properties. Apparently, according to the account of an Inquisitor from an old Celestian religious order, the Cask used 'many dark magicks, calling on the spirits of worlds beyond ours' to aid in a ritual which could resurrect the dead. The dark history of the Cask had not been widely published, and references to the artefact were few and far between. Scraps of reports, notices of trade and fragments of diaries made up the majority of the Cask of Undeath's written history. But what was described by some was bad enough. Maddened accounts of unnatural forces and horrific ritual sacrifice to appease the Cask featured in some, and in others, accounts of accidental mishaps during impromptu rituals which caused the most disturbing of results;

'From the personal log of Captain Rightwind of the Good Ship Oakheart,

Today we found some of those wild folk we picked up from the island dead in the hold. The circumstance of their death is a mystery to me and my crew. The corpses, lying on the wooden boards of the hold, were in such a terrible state that I scarcely dare recall what my senses imparted to me that woeful day. One of the ponies, seemingly the victim of some sacrifice, had merely been bound with ropes and had his heart removed. The others, however, were in a far worse state.. Their charred bodies were torn asunder, innards spread all around in a display of mindless violence. And in the area between them, laid down in the centre of a chalk-drawn triangular symbol of some kind, was that thing. The box. The one that the islanders called the Cask of the Rising Flesh. My crew had been implored by the islanders to have the accursed thing brought with them upon their capture and, knowing not of the wrongness of this instrument of darkness, we obliged. The Cask lay inert, the little rotten doors at its front closed over. But from the cracks in the small doors a thick, acrid smoke spilled to the planks of the floor, and all around the thing lay a heavy aura of evil. I had the crew seal the thing shut by any means necessary. We sealed the doors with boiling pitch, and had the entire box bound in lengths of heavy iron chains before we attached the accursed object to a cannonball and, praying to Celestia, tossed the foul thing into the sea.'

Shuddering to think over the details of the horrendous history of the Cask, Dust tucked away the journal again. Peering out of the submarine's windscreen, she observed as the craft drifted out into a wide-open chamber and, ascending through the water, surfaced in the air pocket. All aboard the sub felt uneasy as the entry hatch was opened, the craft driven over to a stop at the lip of a rotting stone ledge.

"Right.. Follow my lead. Anypony steps out of line, my guard are cleared to shoot on sight.. Understand?" Roughneck issued his ultimatum as the changeling troops looked on with wicked grins, cocking their guns. The selected team begrudgingly accepted, and all dismounted onto the stone ledge outside. The smell inside the submerged ruin was horrific. Musky scents of aged, worn stone mixed with the putrescent odour of rotting flesh and some sickly stench alike to excrement. Even Cistern, who had cleaned toilets for her whole career, saw fit to pull a handkerchief from her saddlebags and wrap it around her head to shield her nostrils from the smell. The group proceeded inward, through a half-collapsed doorway and down a crumbling stone staircase. Trailing along the side of the steps, to Dust's horror, she noticed one of the pale, rotten tentacles quivering silently like a drowned worm. Apparently, these appendages had an extremely far reach, and were not limited to being submerged in liquid. As they continued downward, Fuse piped up.

"Hey, what are we lookin' for down here again?" He queried. "I just hope we ain't gonna find too many more of those ugly things.." He motioned to the tentacle as it slithered back, retreating blindly down a dark corridor and out of sight.

"We're entering its home.. Walking right into the lair of the beast." Daring whispered, reverent. Apparently, she must have been reciting another account of the fabled Morlyir Bae. "And he that enter under the battlements of Morlyir Bae shalt know true fear, should the many-limbed guardian find him unworthy.."

"We're looking for some kind of key to unlock the final resting place of the Cask." Dust replied Fuse's question, shooting a concerned glance at her mother who seemed rapt and lost in thought. But nothing that Daring's compiled accounts and notation had uncovered could possibly prepare Dust and the team for what lay in the next chamber.

Chapter Ten: Morlyir Bae, Guardian of the Key

"Oh, Celestia.." The Captain uttered, retching as the group reached the end of a dim corridor which opened out into the collosal central chamber. The room was massive, with engraved walls that stretched up into a dark recess above. Pillars lay around the room in different states of disrepair; some holding up stone balconies and floors, others collapsed and smashed to pieces across the floor. Having said that, the floor was now submerged in at least a metre of foul, murky, unclean water which held the sole occupant of the room. Sitting upon a raised, beautifully-carven stone dais and surrounded by sentinel-like statues, was Morlyir Bae itself. It was possibly the foulest sight ever to be witnessed by Desert Dust; It lay, a sagging mass of thick, cold pale flesh which seemed to have once been some creature alike to an octopus or squid. Grey veins coursed across the blubbery, pulsating surface like age-worn cobwebs. Decomposed tentacles branched off in every direction, wrapping around pillars, splayed out lazily across floors, slithering around the forgotten corridors of Tali like blind serpents. All across the creature, rusted metal rings and collars were closed tightly around key joints, and it was chained up - presumably to prevent escape - to some kind of support fitted into the ceiling high above. Staring out from age-wizened sockets, half-blind eyes rolled disconcertingly in their sockets, trying in vain to see again. Dust noted the odd, unnatural night-blue haze which glowed from the eyeballs as they roved.

"Well.. Any ideas of where to go from here, people?" Roughneck asked, looking around. Dust answered, eyes still locked in horror on the thing sitting before them.

"All accounts speak of Morlyir Bae as a guardian, or gatekeeper of some kind. I assume that it must be the one guarding the key to the Cask." Daring nodded silently, eyes darting this way and that in an attempt to find the key, wherever it might be.

"Anyone else thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Cistern piped up, sitting on a crumbled section of pillar beside a tentacle. The others turned in curiosity. "Take a look." She pointed a hoof down at the foul thing sitting before them. Or rather, she was pointing at the raised dais it sat upon.

"You mean.." The Captain uttered, the soloution clicking uncomfortably into place.

"So the key is under this thing?!" Roughneck yelped, clearly disconcerted by the idea. "How in Celestia's name are we gonna get under that huge stinkin'-"

"We're going to lift it off." Dust concluded, confidently pointing upward. Looking hard enough, some kind of ancient equipment not unlike a crane was fitted into the ceiling, connected to the chains which kept the monstrosity leashed. "Unless anyone has any better ideas." After a good few minutes' looking around the place in small teams, with most of the work owing to the changelings and Roughneck, those being winged, the controls to the crane were found in an antechamber to the side of Morlyir Bae's chamber. But with a yank of a rotting wooden lever from Roughneck, the entire plan was undermined.

There was a creaking and grinding from somewhere in the ceiling as huge stone gears began to turn - but this turning motion had been designed only to be effective if the structure was in good shape. Instead, the turning of the gears managed to dislodge fallen pieces of the ruin which had been smashed away along with tonnes of stone particles and dust. Ultimately, the gears became jammed as all the debris from the levels above rushed down through the now-clear aperture in the ruin's upper level, and the pressure immediately hit critical levels. There was a rending crumble, and cracks began to arc across the ceiling as the crane continued to weakly attempt to lift Morlyir Bae from its millenia-long seating. The beast howled and gave out guttural bellows which burbled with stale water as the chains began to hoist it unsteadily skyward. Fortunately, the decomposition of organs and fleshy tissue had rendered Morlyir Bae tonnes lighter than it had been during natural life, and so the crane had less weight to lift. But no sooner had the monster been lifted off of its seat and was hanging limply in the air like a disgusting, fleshy puppet, then the crane fell apart above it. Huge stone gears and rotten wooden crossbars fell away, collapsing on top of the creature as it screeched in agony and shock and rage. All at once, the tentacles writhed around wildly, chunks of rotten skin smacking into the pillars and walls of the room, smashing huge dents into anything and everything in a violent rage. Diving forward, Dust pushed Cistern out of the way as a huge rock dropped from the ceiling, narrowly missing her. Instead, the hunk of stone smacked into Dust's side, and she collapsed sideways only to crumple into a heap on the floor. The world all around went hazy, and she became aware of a vague sound of gunfire as she blacked out for a moment.

Dragged back to consciousness, she opened her eyes to see her mother leaning over her, pulling her to safety behind a fallen pillar.

"M.. Mother? What ha-" Daring cut her off.

"Hush now.. Wait here, sweetheart." She darted off, re-joining the battle against the creature. Gunshots rang out across the stone chamber, and huge decomposed tentacles whipped around viciously. Fortunately the monster’s blindness had prevented it from being able to combat the intruders by sight. But despite some patches of sense-deadened skin, Morlyir Bae could still feel around for these inconvenient visitors. There was an insectoid screech as one of the changeling troopers was wrapped up in a slimy tentacle which squeezed it in a death-grip. The poor ashen-black form was swung around like a ragdoll, squealing in terror and agony as the tentacle slammed it into the walls and finally squeezed the very life from it. There was a sickening cracking and crunching, the spraying of some dark fluid and then the limp, broken body was tossed into the foul water below. Dust managed to clamber to her feet, and observed the action for a moment while formulating a plan. Roughneck flew about the cavernous room, ducking and weaving to avoid the flailing tentacles. Morlyir Bae let out a guttural, wailing screech as one of its limbs smashed into a pillar, exploding it into millions of stone pieces. The tentacle was torn in two, the blubbery flesh smacking wetly across the room. The creature roared, the sound reverberating about the chamber as Dust sped off, disappearing into the dark corridors beyond.

Daring soon called out to her, worried for her daughter's safety.

"Dust! Dust, where are y-" The adventurer was cut off by the sound of a dull cracking and smashing. Dust had returned, and brought with her a soloution. The sturdy form of the small submarine smashed through a wall to the side of the chamber, drifting to a stop in the murky water right to the side of Morlyir Bae. Dust had piloted the small sub through a set of half-submerged side-tunnels from the chamber in which they had originally left it, moving around and eventually reaching a room adjacent to this one. From there, she had rammed into this chamber and brought with her not only more water, but the firepower of the submarine. Before Morlyir Bae had time to react, Dust slammed a hoof down on the controls, launching a torpedo directly into the heart of the writhing, rotten monster. It screamed as it flailed around helplessly, chunks of clammy flesh blown all over the room along with shattered pieces of carven statue and pillar. It took three further torpedoes to stop the undead thing moving, and even then, a few tentacles forebodingly twitched. Hopping out of the sub, Dust grinned sheepishly as her mother looked on with more pride than she had ever shown her daughter. “That’s my girl.” She uttered. Dust beamed.

As soon as the group had recovered, and essential supplies had been scavenged from the fallen changelings, they proceeded over to the great dais upon which Morlyir Bae had so recently sat. Thick with mucus, flesh and other foul substances, it was not enjoyable to uncover the dais’ secret. But soon, a happy accident by Fuse led to the discovery of some kind of mechanical handle affixed to a section of the stone disc. Pulling this handle out of its place and pushing the mechanism around in a rotary motion turned the huge circular seal like a corkscrew, until with a final thud, the supporting mechanisms below slid the dais out of sight to reveal the chamber below. It was tiny compared to the one above; a small circular room, which was accessible via circular stone steps leading down into the centre like an arena. And in the middle, the group found what they had been searching for, the Key to the Underworld. It was a dagger; an athame forged from some odd metal that seemed to glow with a grim marine hue, and was cold to the touch at any given time. But picking up the weapon in her hoof and examining the inscriptions along the curved blade (which gave references to the location of the Underworld), Dust knew that this was the Key.

Chapter Eleven: Wet Work

“When we reach the surface, you will take your orders directly from me.” Roughneck ordered, flipping switches on the control panels as the submarine drifted down half-drowned corridors and back toward the ruined entrance of Tali. A short submarine ride later, the battered hull of the sub re-emerged from the icy waters of the Olenian Ocean. Rain hammered down from an inky sky, and waves smashed the sides of the cargo ship. The ship’s crane was lowered down, the chains attached, and the sub was lifted on-deck. But as the metal hull collided with the deck, Dust and the group were planning their insurrection. As they were led out onto the deck, they took note of two armed changeling guards assisting the transportation of the Key. The dagger had since been wrapped in a cloth and kept in a small sealed metal container, and it was now handed over to a changeling officer. As it was being carried off toward the senior officer’s quarters, Dust saw her chance. She dove sideways, rolling behind a cargo container. Immediately, a firefight broke out on-deck. Fortunately for Dust, the terrible weather conditions meant that the changelings couldn’t fly above to ambush her. But that didn’t stop them from fighting her. Automatic gunfire ricocheted across the metal crates, smashing holes and dents in anything and everything. Pulling her mother’s pistol from her saddlebags, she readied herself and then jumped out into the open. A crack of gunfire, and the first changeling dropped dead. A machine-gun rattled across the floor toward her, dropped by the deceased enemy.

“Get to somewhere safe.. I’ll be back.” She uttered to the group, dashing off.

Soon, Dust was fighting her way across the deck of the ship as it rocked and heaved in the storm. Foam and brine sprayed over the sides, drenching all in its path. Having grabbed the machine-gun, she fired off round after round at her rivals while running the length of the ship. Caught up in the heat of battle, she seemed to have succumbed to a bloodlust, cutting down every changeling in her way. The combat high waned as she reached her goal. Stooping down, she plucked the boxed artefact from the saddlebags of the changeling officer. A strange feeling washed over her as she prised the small box open, looking upon the strange dagger once again. Some near-imperceptible warmth radiated from the slightly curved weapon, and it glowed gently with that weird, dull blue light. Grasping the hilt in her hoof, she swung it curiously. Dust had not guessed at the odd power that the thing possessed, for she jumped at the next moment. The blade had been angled toward one of the cargo containers when she swung it tentatively. But now, as she leapt in shock, she saw a glistening, glowing gash slice its way down the container’s side, ripped open without so much as a touch from the blade of the Key.

“Put it down.” Roughneck’s voice called out from somewhere. Dust whipped around. She could hardly see in the weather conditions. In all honesty, her success in the insurrection of the cargo ship so far had been down to sheer luck and a constant stream of hot lead. But now, even with a machine-gun, a pistol and a strangely powerful dagger, she felt helpless before the unseen foe. In a flash, Roughneck swooped down from somewhere above. Discarding safety, he grabbed the Key in a talon and turned, dropping to the deck before her. Dust cocked the machine-gun, but Roughneck raised the dagger. “You try anything funny, and I slash your head off with this thing.” Apparently, he had seen the demonstration of the Key’s power. Undeterred, Dust raised the weapon, readying to fire.

“If I die here, mother and our friends will still win.” She spoke with conviction.

“As you wish.” Roughneck smirked, raising the dagger up.

There was a loud bang.

Roughneck stopped, looking down at his chest. A burning sensation, mixed with a cold, clammy grasping at his heart. Blood trickled from his breast, and soon, it dribbled from his beak too. He turned, and Dust’s eyes lit up. Behind him, holding a smoking pistol, was Daring Do. She grabbed the dying villain, pulling him close.

“No-one threatens my daughter.” She uttered coldly, grabbing the Key from his talons and then shoving him away. Dripping blood across the deck, Roughneck stumbled backward toward the edge. But as he was about to drop into the Olenian.. Something emerged from the water. A long, pale, quivering tentacle. It wrapped around the dying griffin, pulling him slowly down into the stormy waves.

“Something tells me that we didn’t quite destroy Morlyir Bae.” Dust concluded, before turning and reaching out her arms in a tentative hug. Daring welcomed the unexpected action. Her daughter actually loved her. Despite the problems that had arisen, the events of the last day or so had brought mother and daughter back together. And that was a fantastic feeling.

“So, we have the Key back.” Captain Rhododendron stated, once the group had rejoined each other. Huddled together in an engine room, they planned their next move as the remainders of the changeling crew began an extensive search of the entire ship. “I suggest we take the ship through stealthy tactics, we pick off the crew piece by piece, and then we set sail back to the mainland and hole up in the Crystal Empire while we transl-” She was cut off as the engine room door slammed open, a handful of changeling officers rushing in holding guns. Dust pulled the pistol, hitting the trigger. There was a click, and no blaze of gunfire. Out of ammunition. Not only that, but the glowing form of the Key lay over in the far corner, in its crate.

“Oh, for the love of..” She uttered, dropping it to the floor as the changelings surrounded the group, smirking and chattering with insectoid laughter.

The ship sailed across the Olenian then, with the team returned to their comrades in the brig as the voyage continued toward an island port off the mainland known as Linlam Bay. The cargo ship pulled into dock, and transport of crew and vehicles onto land began immediately. The original crew of the Daring were taken via cargo truck to a costal fort on the cliffs; Fort Fallen Moon. The huge wooden gates were pushed open, guns trained on the trucks and armoured cars as they rolled into the courtyard and halted. Eventually, the crew were escorted to the prisons – or dungeons, to use a more accurate term – of the fort. It took two days of interrogations and forced translation to ascertain the location of the Underworld and its entrance.

“There.. I’ve got it!” Dust called out, turning the final turn of the makeshift translation wheel she had made. “It says, ‘The Gate into the Underworld is shrouded in the Eye of the Timber Wolf. Within the eye, you will find the Pit, and in the Pit, the Source of Undeath.’ The Eye of the Timber Wolf.. That’s a lake on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest, just outside of Ponyville..” With this observation taken by the changeling commanders, transportation was arranged to the mainland. Dust, however, was transferred back to the dungeons. Sitting in a wide, large barred cell, she conversed with the remaining survivors about their predicament.

“So what do we do when we find the lake?” One of the crew asked, stepping forward.

“We follow the instructions set for us.” Daring cut in, interrupting her daughter before she managed to answer. “In my journal, there is a section of a translated manuscript written by a Sir Finstream of the Redblood Order, back in the Second Solar Empire. He and his comrades followed the same quest we follow today; they searched for the Cask to revive the Baron of their territory before the war was lost. Sir Finstream left precise instructions for how to reach the underworld once at the Eye of the Timber Wolf. But according to their manuscript, they turned back and fled the Underworld when they saw what lay inside.” The group watched, wide-eyed in fear.

Another day, and the team were back on dry land after transportation by ship. Another storm had kicked up, the epicentre strangely drifting above the ship for a good few hours before the storm had fizzled out. When the expedition vehicles reached the outskirts of the forest, the team continued on foot toward the lake known as the Eye of the Timber Wolf.

Chapter Twelve: The Eye of the Timber Wolf, and the Opening of the Underworld

“Here we are.. Eye of the Timber Wolf.” Daring murmured as the group trundled to a stop, leaving the forest behind and stepping out into a huge clearing which enclosed the lake. Dust let out a gasp upon laying eyes on the place. Twisted, gnarled roots spilled forth from the forest, coiling viciously across rocks and soil to vie for a place near the water’s edge. The lake itself was relatively small in comparison to other bodies of water, but it was large enough. Opaque, inky water sat still and stagnant in the pool, the sky reflected on its unmoving surface. In the centre of the lake lay the pupil to the Eye; the torn and age-weathered remains of a stone obelisk of some kind, straddled by moss, weeds and one lone tree whose roots crept down the sides of the stone pillar and into the murky depths of the pool. No creatures moved about the lake, but beneath the surface, one could sense some indistinct, discordant movement.

The changelings and their officers had become agitated, some flying circles around the small island of sorts in the middle of the lake. Grim mutterings between the changeling troops prompted the changeling Commander to order the adventurers to get to work. Flipping open her mother’s journal, Dust leafed through the dry old pages and eventually reached the pages concerning the Eye of the Timber Wolf, as copied and researched from Sir Finstream’s manuscript.

“The manuscript says.. ‘To unlock the Lower Way, approach the water’s spire and brandish the Key-blade. Then, with the Key-blade, unlock the mechanisms of the Gateway to proceed below. Beware the Guardians of the lake.’ Guardians..?” She queried, raising an eyebrow and staring toward the inky surface of the lake.

“Sounds like danger. Well, that ain’t surprising.” Cistern grumbled, sitting down on a stubby little boulder next to a changeling. The insectoid trooper looked at her quizzically as Fuse stepped forward. He picked up a stone.

“Only one way to find out.” He shrugged. The Captain went to stop him, but he chucked the rock into the water. There was a burbling, guttural groan from somewhere beneath the liquid. Before anyone had time to react, something broke the surface. Bony, near-skinless and blind, some undead mockery of a pony slid silently out of the water. It peered around with sightless, glowing blue pinprick eyes, and then sank back beneath the dark waters. The smell of bloated rot drifted around, causing all present to gag.

“Well, that answers that question.” Captain Rhododendron uttered, looking quite shaken. The changeling troopers cocked their guns, ready to take on any more of these undead Guardians.

After some convincing and compromise, Dust was allowed to catch a lift on the back of one changeling troop. The black creature crouched low as she yanked the pith helmet low on her head, straightened her bow-tie, and clambered on-board. Cautiously, the changeling hovered quietly over the dark water below and came to a halt in mid-air just above the island. Dust dropped down, hooves sliding immediately on the moss and slime coating the half-submerged tower. But as she clambered to its summit and reached a small podium into which was cut a slit for the Key, the Guardians awoke. The changeling whom had escorted her across to the island was horrified as one broken-bodied, pale mass of bones and bloated flesh leapt with the grace of an athlete from the water, slamming into it and enwrapping it in pallid limbs. The changeling screeched in agony as the undead thing began to devour it. Luckily, the grisly spectacle only lasted a moment before the thing and its prey dove back under the lake’s surface with a splash of inky water. In a few moments, the liquid darkened considerably and took on a grim, hazy claret colour. A moment more, and the Guardians began to rise. It began with a nearly silent gurgling, and the discordant rattling of bones and ruptured lungs. The ugly things pulled themselves from the deep waters of the lake one after the other, proceeding inward and beginning to climb the stone tower toward Dust. The firing began. Changelings zoomed around the spire, firing off round after round of bullets at the undead horde which continued climbing unless their heads or limbs were exploded completely.

Dust herself was in a full panic.

Surveying her mother’s notes was no easy feat. Luckily, Daring had made a detailed diagram of the opening mechanism based on Sir Finstream’s manuscript, which made the job much easier. She read aloud as she worked.

“Insert the Key’s blade, and turn clockwise 90 degrees.. Slide the first section inward.. The ring around the section will unlock.” She tested the ring, turning the Key. The circular section of stone around the podium turned in unison, driven by some ancient stone gears within. “Turn the ring around three times, counter-clockwise.. So that the symbols are aligned, and the top section of the lock lifts away.” She did so, turning the ring until all of the inscriptions on the stone mechanism matched. There was a click from within, and Dust found that the top of the podium lifted off. She tossed the stone section aside, slamming it into the nearest undead creature who climbed up to catch her. As another reached the tower’s summit, Dust viciously swiped at it with the Key. The blade’s unearthly power slashed the rotten thing clean in half; battered skin and bones splashing back into the lake below. Reinserting the Key, she continued the unlocking. Unbeknownst to the undead and the adventurers and changelings above, Dust’s unlocking of the Underworld’s entrance was fast approaching. The turns and slides of the mechanism at the summit of the tower above likewise turned colossal gears and slid huge stone pistons aside below. As Dust made the final turn of the mechanism and took back the Key, the podium slid down into the tower. The unlocking mechanism ground into its final stage. Gears below-ground began turning with a horrific screeching, the bones of decomposed animals and piles of centuries-old detritus being pushed aside as long-forgotten machines moved once again. Six huge stone hatches were slid away at the base of the submerged section of the tower, opening drains for the lake. The inky water began to lower quickly, draining away into some ancient reservoir beneath ground. The Guardians of the lake dove back into the waters, scuttling away and escaping down the old drainage chambers below. Soon, all that was left was the stinking pit which had been the lake, in the centre of which stood the tower – now revealed in its grimy fullness.

“Huh.. Wonder how long it would take to clean off all that slime.” Cistern commented. Dust giggled as Daring flew up to the top of the tower, lifting her daughter down to safety in the dried-up lake.

The group proceeded down into the dry lake, finding another slit made to receive the Key. Inserting the blade again, Dust turned once. The tower shuddered, and then began to descend slowly with the grinding sound of stone against stone. The group clambered onto this ancient elevator, riding it down into the depths, and into the Underworld.

Chapter Thirteen: The Claiming of the Cask

It went on for a good ten minutes. The old stone elevator ground downward, screeching against the sides of the shaft as it lowered toward the very bottom. As it descended, Dust consulted her mother’s journal once more.

“These notes pretty much cut off at this point..” She murmured. Daring trotted up beside her, nodding solemnly. She sighed.

“I hadn’t included it in my journal, but Sir Finstream actually topped himself soon after his exploration of this place. Other contemporary sources seem to point to the fact that he was going to write about what’s down here, but he changed his mind.. And fell on his sword instead.” Dust’s eyes went wide.

“I.. I see.” She uttered, looking down at the unfinished notes. “So, we have no instruction on what lies down here.. No help, no guidance?” Daring shook her head.

“’Fraid not. Well, besides mythological accounts. I did write up a section on the mythological view of the Underworld throughout early civilisations, but there was nothing too specific in there. Descriptions of the place were pretty vague.”

“Let me see.. ‘The halls of the Lower World are as ice; cold and dim, opaque and covered in pale mist. High pillars hold up the world above, and empty halls do keep the demons locked away from mortal eye’. That doesn’t sound good.” Dust muttered. The elevator reached the bottom, hitting the ancient, dusty floor with a crunch as something was crushed beneath it. Upon inspection, Fuse determined the foreign object to be a centuries-old skeleton, at which Dust shuddered. Somepony had been trapped down here. Had died of starvation and lethargy, only to be ground to dust by some huge machine centuries later. No remembrance, no reverence, no redemption.

The group of explorers followed their changeling captors down a network of icy-cold hallways, which bore remarkable resemblance to those described in the early text that Dust had read over. High pillars bore carven images of ghoulish countenances, and smooth stone serpents coiled around the pylons, looking down on these new intruders with unmoving gaze. The explorers continued onward and down many hundreds of crumbling stone steps into the heart of the Underworld. As she passed a great many standing stones of some kind, Captain Rhododendron made an unpleasant discovery.

“Those oblong constructions, standing against the walls, they’re..”

“Sarcophagi.” Daring finished her shaky observation with an emotionless affirmative.

“If they’re sarcophagi, then where are the bodies?” Cistern droned from somewhere at the back of the group. Indeed, only about a quarter of these stone coffins were sealed shut. The majority seemed to have been forced open from the inside, and lay derelict of their contents. The group exchanged worried glances, and the changelings hurriedly checked their weapons to make sure they were loaded and primed to fire. After the battle with those rotted things on the lake, the insectoid troops weren’t taking any chances.

Reaching the bottom of another staircase and entering into a cavernous hall, they were met with a hideous sight. The undead stood to attention – hundreds of them. The chamber was illuminated by strange, glowing stones set into cages upon the rows of pillars. Most of the undead were wrapped in burial shrouds and rusted old armour, having been buried down here in the early stages of civilisation, wherein society had been little more than squabbling barbarian tribes at constant war with one another before any mention of Harmony whatsoever. These undead barbarians stood motionless on their hind hooves, holding ancient rusted swords and spears to their sides as if falling into line under the watchful eye of a commanding officer. These ponies were alike to those Dust had studied all the way back at Solum – Ceremonial head-binding had led to reptilian, stunted facial growth and the body structure seemed to have been altered for upright movement by some painful procedure much like the head-binding. Icy blue light glowed from the empty sockets which once bore eyes, and opaque, cold liquid drizzled from the sockets like ancient tears. As the explorers drew closer, each row of undead bowed down in an odd-looking, disjointed show of reverence and respect. Soon, they reached the centre of the room. A huge stone container stood there on a great stone dais, cylindrical in shape and covered in forgotten and unutterable inscriptions. Presently, one of the undead stepped shakily forward and blocked their path to the container, raising his sword. This zombie wore intricately forged metal armour swathed in decayed blood and linen wrapping, and a heavy, horned metal helm sat upon his head. He spoke then, his voice sounding like a whispering echo in the chamber which was silent beside the rattling of ancient bones as the assembled undead looked on.

“You seek the Casket of Undeath, do you not?” He uttered. The group nodded and agreed. “I am Karn-Lochtum, Seventh King of the Holrum Clan. I stand as Champion for my brothers..” He motioned around, and the masses of undead standing about him let out a great cheering and whooping from their rotten throats and empty skulls. “And who is your Champion? We shall fight to the death, and he who is victorious will be granted passage to the Casket, without harm or hassle from my brothers.” The group looked among themselves.

“I stand as Champion.” Captain Rhododendron called out, throwing off her Captain’s overcoat and standing on her hind hooves defiantly. The undead all around burst into hoarse, rattling laughter.

Karn-Lochtum grinned sadistically, shaking his skinless head.

“A mare? Champions are to be stallion-folk.” At this, the ancient warriors nodded. The Captain could only smirk, grabbing a sword from the rotten hoof of the nearest warrior and swinging it around like a professional.

“Afraid to challenge a mare? So cowardly..” She laughed, standing on guard. The undead Champion seethed, drawing his own rusted and stained blade.

“So be it, mare. You will fall to my blade!” And with that, it began. The Champions fought very differently; the ancient warrior used brute force with many heavy swings and sheer blows intended to knock back the opposition. The Captain, on the other hand, used her nimble agility and almost dance-like fencing skill to put up a sharp defence and make quick and precise assaults on the opposing Champion. For every strong swing of his blade, she ducked and leapt to avoid his movements, diving around him and levelling blow after blow against her rival. He grew more and more enraged as her blade dug into his joints and what little flesh he had left, his attacks growing frenzied and unpredictable. Eventually, his efforts paid off. One heavy-handed hack of the blade landed right on target, smacking the Captain’s sword out of her hoof. It clanked across the floor, smashing in half as it ground to a halt. The undead Champion merely grinned, stepping forward as the Captain retreated a few steps. This was a fight to the death – whether one opponent was disarmed or not.

“Captain!” Dust called. All turned to see her as she produced the Key from her saddlebag. The little dagger glowed with a strange aura as Dust held it aloft. “Catch!” And with that, she tossed the knife to Captain Rhododendron, who caught it deftly in her muzzle. Upon realising what his opponent now wielded, Karn-Lochtum could only manage a strangled cry of resistance before the Captain swiped the blade diagonally through the air in his direction. He was cleaved in two, rotten innards and brittle bones dropping to the floor in a mess. The undead warriors all around could only look on in shock at what had happened.

“I won your challenge, now you open this thing.” Rhododendron called out. The warriors, bound supernaturally by duty and honour as they had been in life, acquiesced to the Captain’s request. Ten of the horde trudged forward on cold, skeletal hooves and took up places around the cylinder. Digging their hooves into carven indentations around it, they walked around the container in a circle, unscrewing some mechanism within. After a few moments, there was a clunk. The front of the container slid downward, revealing the contents.

There, sitting on a small pedestal, was the object of their search. Dust felt a wave of cold nausea wash over her at the sight of it, remembering that dark, malformed nightmare image of it. The Cask of Undeath was as she remembered it in her dream, but now in frightening clarity. It was a small, squat box of rotting old wood, standing on four tiny carven legs. Two doors adorned its face, sealed shut with once-boiling tar. The box itself was bound shut with chains, locks and ropes. One could only begin to imagine what horror lay within that demanded the Cask be sealed in this thorough, frenzied manner. Now, the changelings took over the operation proper. The Cask was to be sealed in a crate and transported to Queen Chrysalis herself for some nefarious purpose or other, so the transit began now.

There was a myriad of clicking noises. Turning to look, the adventurers and the remainders of the crew were being held at gunpoint once again. This time, the changelings were backing away – to leave them to their fate within the Underworld. Four changeling troopers carried the Cask in their hooves, retreating out of the chamber. As the rest backed outside, something was tossed back in, and the changelings ran. A grenade clinked to the floor, rolling to a stop next to one of the pillars beside the entrance. The earth-rending explosion knocked the ancient pillar down across the doorway, effectively sealing the way out.

“What do I always say? We’re dead. Properly this time.” Cistern droned. Dust facehooved, and instantly began trying to formulate an escape plan. Turning around to ask the others, she realised that the undead warriors all around were looking quite lost and distant. The glow in their eyes was fading, and their arms hung limp at their skinless sides. Fuse and a few other crewmembers trotted around the chamber, weaving between pillars and searching for some other exit.

“Captain!” One of the crew called out eventually. Some undead turned to look blankly. Captain Rhododendron galloped over to see the discovery.

A cold wind whirled down through a worn-looking aperture in one wall; a funnel through which the drainage chambers above could be emptied. It was a long shot. However, it could work. Daring inspected the opening.

“It’s wide enough for one pony at a time. Slow, but effective.” And with that, it began. Under the ever-watching gaze of the undead, the adventurers began clambering into the drainage pipe. It was cramped, and icy-cold water trickled down from somewhere further up the diagonally slanting tube. The sides of the tunnel were worn but sharp, and pieces crumbled away as the crew crawled upward into the drainage system. But as they crawled further, there was a rumble. Pieces of rubble dropped from the tunnel’s roof as Dust crawled out into the wide-open drainage chamber above. Turning back, she realised that the tunnel had collapsed behind her.

“I think we lost somepony.” An officer called out, coughing loudly due to the dust and fumes. Apparently, a now-dead adventurer lay in the tunnel to their rear, and Dust felt a pang of sadness and guilt at having not been able to get the entire team out. Lighting up their torches, the remaining group looked around. The drainage chamber was a high-walled, blank cavern of sorts, though which drained and stagnant water trickled down through tunnels carved into the solid rock. The group proceeded onward and upward, clambering up through forgotten tunnels and pipes until, finally..

The glowing light of day pierced the shroud of darkness as Dust and the crew emerged from a winding cave tunnel. Brushing slimy weeds and vines aside, they stepped out onto a rocky cliff and into the bright light that filtered down through the trees of the Everfree Forest. Climbing around the cliff side and onto the flat ground of the forest, they were just in time to see a cargo helicopter raise above the trees and fly off, tailed by a troop of changeling officers.

“Damn.” Rhododendron uttered. Daring stepped up beside her, smirking.

“We’ll get ‘em yet, don’t worry.”

Chapter Fourteen: The Chase

“Remember.. You lot get down to Ponyville on-hoof. It isn’t too far from here, and I hear Zecora lives out this way, so you can stop off at hers for a bit. You two, you’re with me.” Daring ordered. All nodded, and with that, the two selected Pegasii troops kicked off from the murky ground alongside Daring, and all dashed into the air after the cargo helicopter. Dust could only sigh, watching her mother disappear again. She could only trust her to return swiftly this time.

Swooping through the air between the ragged trees of the Everfree Forest, the winged ponies dove up over the treeline and surfaced into the open air. Where their travelling below the canopy had disguised them, the changelings who escorted the helicopter could now clearly spot their pursuers. With a myriad of chittering cries from within the cockpit of the craft before them, the chopper ramped up its engines and powered into the lead. In pairs, the changeling escort broke off and doubled back to provide covering fire. Bullets tore across the sky, hot lead punching the air relentlessly as the adventurers had only a split-second to dodge. Her partners were taken down quickly, spiralling to the forest floor below. Daring snarled, blazing ahead and pulling a weapon from her saddlebags; a rifle. The thing cracked with juddering fire, cutting down a changeling. The remaining insects swooped around in evasive manoeuvres, outflying even Daring Do with their agile wings and light bodies. One darted directly beneath her, spiralling upward and firing off a few rounds. She managed to dodge, a bullet clipping her wing as she dropped forward. It took a moment to regain her composure. Biting down on her lip, she tried to ignore the searing pain in her wing as she darted upward again, flying back on-course. The chopper was now only a few metres before her. Turning to let off another two shots, she cut down a pair of the aerobatic rivals before ducking down and flying beneath the helicopter. But as she tore upward alongside it, hoping to leap inside, she was met with the terrifying sight of a changeling officer standing in the cargo bay of the chopper, aiming the dual barrels of a mounted machine gun at her. Behind him, secured to the inside of the open bay by chains and clamps, was the hastily-constructed crate which held the Cask inside.. She was so close. As the weapon thundered at her, she swooped down and beneath the chopper again. Making sure that her saddlebags were securely shut over, she flipped upside-down and wrapped her hooves around the undercarriage of the aircraft, holding on. Giving her injured wing a rest, she began climbing along in the hope of ambushing the gunner who guarded the cargo bay.

The changeling didn’t know what hit him. A bullet through the skull, and he was free to be dropped out of the side. However, the gunshot had alerted the three co-pilots who sat in the cockpit with the pilot. In earnest to catch this pest, they began climbing along the outside of the craft and into the bay. Daring, who was now checking the supports which held the Cask safely in place, was taken unaware as the first changeling co-pilot leapt into the bay to her side, landing a heavy blow against her skull with the butt of a shotgun. As he turned it down to aim at the dazed Daring, she gave a half-bored kick with a hind hoof, which hit him straight in a tender place. The first was dealt with, flailing backwards in agony and falling out of the chopper. The two remaining aggressors entered simultaneously, both holding pistols. Looking to one and then the other, Daring’s heart sank. She staggered to her hooves.

“Two of you against one of me.. Seems a little unfair..” She uttered, ducking to avoid one pistol shot. The bullet sailed across the bay, flying out into the air via the door opposite – And narrowly missing the opposite changeling. Grabbing hold of the mounted machine gun, Daring had enough time to swivel it around and hack down one changeling in a hail of burning, explosive gunfire. But alas, she was not quick enough to turn and fire on the other, who tackled her away and out of the bay door to her side. She dropped out, only just managing to wrap a hoof around a metal support on the outside hull of the chopper. She climbed onto the wing, crouching low to avoid both being sucked off and vomiting from the sight of the Everfree Forest (And indeed, the majority of Equestria) swaying in a disorienting movement below the moving helicopter. The changeling climbed out onto the wing, edging closer. He aimed the pistol directly at her head, smirking as he clicked and chirped some changeling profanity at her. Taking advantage of his confidence in a perceived victory, she lunged forward, knocking the gun out of his hand and kicking him as hard as she could. The changeling, realising only too late that he was falling sideways and away from the chopper, kicked his wings into overtime. But his last-ditch attempt to prolong the fight was in vain – By a gross miscalculation of just how fast he would need to move in order to catch up to the chopper, he sailed upward diagonally. He could only let out a horrified, alien screech as he hit the cold, spinning blades of the helicopter. Daring winced as dark liquid splattered everywhere. Gritting her teeth, she climbed back onto the side of the chopper and began onward to finish the job. Clambering into the cockpit, she grabbed the pilot and rammed him through the windscreen. The hapless changeling dropped down through the sky, squealing as he attempted to open his wings despite his shock. Grabbing the controls, Daring turned the helicopter around, sailing back through the air toward Ponyville.

Dust sat in the town square as the helicopter swooped down, landing gently on a patch of grass. The stained blades above slowed to a steady rotation, and then to a full stop.

“Mother!” She called as the bruised and battered-looking Daring clambered out. The adventurer was smirking. “Mother, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.. And we have the Cask.” A crowd of the local residents had gathered, and looked on with interest at the proceedings. However, the calm atmosphere was cut short by the sound of engines, and the sharp buzzing of wings which drew ever closer.

“You may wanna retract that last statement.” Cistern coughed, raising a wrinkled eyebrow. Three armoured cars turned corners around the shops and houses, skidding to a halt as they reached the square. Battalions of changelings dismounted, joining the groups which flew down from the skies. In a moment, the adventurers were surrounded. From the corner drove a different model of armoured car, with dark windows and regal-looking insignia spray-painted on its bonnet. Slowing to a stop alongside the square, the driver swung open the door and stepped into the light. It was a high-ranking changeling officer who, in turn, opened the back door to the car. From that door arose the villain of the piece. Dressed in a black garb with a belted greatcoat to match, was the Queen herself. Chrysalis stood, regarding the scene with cold, taunting eyes and a malicious smirk.

“So.. You’ve brought the Cask to me. Thank you ever so much.”

Chapter Fifteen: The Power of the Cask, and the Final Cataclysm

Loaded onto a truck once again the Cask was taken, along with the adventurers, out of Ponyville. Leaving the shocked and scrambling citizenship behind, the convoy of trucks and armoured cars trundled along through the forests and around the mountains until it began climbing a steep hill. Night was falling as the cars the crest of the incline, and the wilderness opened out before them. Desert, miles of barren desert. Or it should have merely been desert. But in the distance, a large, temporary settlement lay waiting. Nearing it, the imprisoned team could see the sole occupants of this newly erected camp to be nothing but hordes of changelings, armed and uniform in their malicious attitudes. A storm seemed to be brewing overhead, and the adventurers huddled together for warmth as a chilling wind whipped all around, tossing sand up into the air in great spirals. Chrysalis’ car drove on, speeding ahead that she might reach the centre of the settlement first, and the other vehicles followed suit. Soon, the entire convoy came to a halt at the centre. The adventurers were tossed out onto the dusty ground. The tents which were pitched about the camp bustled with activity as Chrysalis stepped from her car. The team watched Chrysalis as she stepped out from her car, greeted by reverent bows from her changelings. She retreated to a main tent near the centre of the outpost, and had the Cask taken inside to study for a brief period. The team were rounded up, and sat down at gunpoint nearby. The mood of the camp became more placid as the changelings returned to their business for the meanwhile.
“Well I’m out of ideas, for once.” Daring muttered darkly, slicking back her now-stringy and tattered grey mane. Dust looked about her at the rest of her assembled friends. Cistern stared sombrely into the sky, Fuse down at the dust below his hooves.
“Let’s try to remain calm. There must be some way out of this.” The Captain piped up, raising her head defiantly. Dust smiled, appreciating her show of spirit.
“It would be nice if there was, Rhododendron, but.. They have us at gunpoint with no means of escape whatsoever.” She corrected the Captain, who still sat thinking of a plan to somehow prevent the opening of the Cask. Dust moved over to Fuse. “Hey.. Don’t worry about it. We did our best.” She said, in a voice that bordered on pleading. “I.. I’m really grateful for that time you saved me.. On the cliff?” She smiled.
“And I’m thankful for the time you saved me from havin’ my head shot off by one o’ these clowns, Dusty.” He smirked, looking up. “I woulda died back there in Sul-Menthar if it wasn’t for you.” Tentatively, Dust reached out and wrapped her hooves around him in a gentle hug. A little surprised, he returned it.
“Maybe.. If we get out of this alive..” She blushed a little. “I, um.. I’d love to see you again sometime. Like, for a coffee or a cup of cider, or..” Fuse cut her off.
“A coffee sounds fine. When we get out of here, we’ll go and get some, okay? Just you and me.” He grinned. She could only sit there with a fluttering heart for a moment, though the grim realisation that they could die here managed to eat away at her spirit. She made a silent prayer to Celestia that they would not.
“So I’m guessing we’re all gonna die now, right?” Cistern grumbled. “Well, at least I can tell my friend Agatha that I’m sorry for spilling coffee on her diary now.”

About half an hour later, Chrysalis emerged from her tent. Behind her, a pair of changeling troops lifted the Cask carefully along. She gave the orders to have the accursed thing placed before her. The small box sat down with a thud on the sand, its legs sinking into the ground Looking over it, she called a changeling troop over at random, asking for a gun in her native, chattering tongue. The trooper obliged, giving her a pistol carefully. She turned the weapon back on him, blowing a hole in his head without even watching the action.

“The Cask, as I’m sure you’re aware, is rumoured to contain the secret to restoring life to the dead.” Chrysalis remarked, regarding the bleeding and deceased soldier crumpled on the desert sand beside her with an emotionless glance. As dark liquid soaked into the dust around his skull, the sky seemed to darken. “And now..” She motioned to a couple of other changelings, who attended each side of the unhallowed object, “We shall test this myth.” The order was given, and the changelings stooped to open the latches, cast off the chains and cut away the tar. Once these were removed, the pair grasped the handles of the doors. As they crumbled open, a thunderclap rent the sky asunder. Dark smoke drifted down, spilling slowly to the floor like oil. Imperceptible, black power glowed from somewhere within, a deep hazy colour alike to the dark hue of night shining out of the crack between doors as they slowly swung outwards, and sourceless whispers drifted around on the air like wraiths. As they opened fully, the stars in the twilight sky above began to disappear, blotted out by great, thick black clouds that billowed out from nowhere. Chrysalis gave another order, and the recently deceased trooper was lifted from his place. The quickly stiffening corpse, plagued by rigor mortis, was dumped in front of the oncoming smoke which slithered from the doorframe of the Cask. Dust felt a strange, uncontrollable mixture of terror and inability to move or think clearly. The feeling poured over her, nauseating her until she felt sick to the pit of her stomach. The dark smoke of the Cask drifted closer, and in an unexpected and disconcerting movement, the thick ashen steam enshrouded the body almost instantly. Dark colours glowed from within the body-shaped cloud on the floor, and there were occasional glimpses of flashing energy and flailing limbs. The body could be heard clearly as it shuddered, stiffened up unbearably, and then..

The Captain was the first to jump back, letting out a gasp of horror. The changeling sat up stiffly, bones snapping and cracking as they were forced back into movement. The air of the camp became humid and unclean as the mockery of life stood on its hooves awkwardly, staring about. It opened its mouth to speak, but a pale and glowing blue substance like the clearest water gushed from the mouth uncontrollably, only matched in colour by the disturbing blue light which now glowed from the changeling’s glazed, blind eyes. As the watery, cold liquid continued to dribble from its jaws, the changeling looked around blindly at Chrysalis. Dark blood still stained its head, dripping from the hole which punctured its skull. It mouthed a word, though only a quiet burbling of water and rasping of a convulsing throat escaped its maw.

“Murderer.”

Chrysalis’ eyes widened, and she raised the pistol she held, firing again. The undead changeling shambled back a step, a new hole smashed through its abdomen. But it recovered instantly and continued onward, moving closer and closer. Eventually, the changeling Queen used her last resort, lowering her horn and firing off a powerful spell. A flash of green energy hit the thing directly, slamming into its form and shattering it to pieces in a disturbing explosion of broken bones, black flesh and glowing liquid. Dust and the others could only watch then, as horrified as the changelings around them, as the dark smoke from the Cask and the liquid from the reanimated corpse soaked into the sand, creeping under the earth and rock and burrowing downward. A moment passed in reverent, terrified silence as thunder crackled powerfully across the sky. There was a rumbling, but not from above. The sound of shaking, cracking and scratching began to draw louder from the soil and sand below. The entire assembly, changeling and pony, jumped uncontrollably as the first bony hoof broke the surface. Within a few moments, dry and cracked skulls began to emerge from the sands, hooves wriggled free of the earth, and glowing blue eyes glared out of the dark all around. Breathless gurgles and throatless rattles penetrated the air as the dead looked upon the living, and began advancing on them. The changelings slammed the Cask shut, binding it with chains frantically in hopes of preventing the apparitions all around the camp. But there was no effect. The undead continued their slow assault, shuddering and crackling as they stomped forward to meet the changelings. Many picked up rifles and pistols, charged up spells and fired them off.. Some even grabbed grenades and started lobbing them. Explosions, gunshots and insectoid chatter cut through the noise as the battle began. Amid the confusion, there was a single crack of lightning. The bolt struck the Cask, the unstable relic letting off a shower of sparks in unison with a discordant, unearthly wailing cacophony. The accursed thing cracked, hairline apertures splitting across the surface noisily and emitting hissing black smoke and a dim glow. The ground below the box cracked also, a ravine tearing open in the ground. The Cask began to shake and teeter on the edge of the widening abyss, threatening to fall into the darkness below along with the gushes of sand which now toppled into the pit.

“Mother?! Mother, where are you?” Dust called out in a panic. The battle for survival raged, but for every undead creature destroyed by bullets, magic and fire, ten other creatures continued to spring from the sand, eager for blood. Chrysalis stood in the centre of all this, only able to watch the hellish proceedings around her with wide, panicked eyes. A good half of the changeling troops deserted the battlefield, leaving their Queen to escape by the air. But many were thrown about in the wind, and some were shot down by lightning bolts, dropping to the sand in burnt husks. Dust galloped about the camp, and finally set eyes on her mother. Daring sprinted toward the Cask, screaming out as it tipped over the edge and dropped into the gaping abyss below. It smacked into the sides of the ravine, splintering to pieces and smashing apart as it fell, letting out an unbearable, haunting screech as it was swallowed up by the dark void. Daring skidded to a stop at the lip of the aperture, leaning down to look into the pit. Dust stopped a few steps behind her. Daring made ready to jump, but stopped upon hearing her daughter’s cry. “Mother, what are you doing?!” Daring turned, tears brimming in her eyes. Emotion wracked her, despite the carnage all around.
“I.. I need it. I need the Cask, don’t you understand that?” She turned back, screaming into the dark hole below her. “I didn’t just want it for fame, or glory, or some stupid bits! I wanted to.. I wanted to bring him back.” Her voice dropped to a shuddering whimper. She tensed, ready to jump again. Dust stepped up behind her, the assault all around seeming to fade for this moment as she stood beside her mother.
“Mother, please..” She felt her heart sinking. “Mother..” Daring was ready to leap.
“I just want your father back. I want my love back.” She whispered, stepping back to take a running jump. But a warm hoof found itself on her shoulder.
“Daring.. Let him go.” Dust spoke soothingly. Daring turned to her daughter, memories of her husband flashing through her mind. Memories of him, and then.. Memories of Dust began to emerge. Her first cry at birth had been deafening. Her first word had been ‘Rock’, which she must have overheard her mother say when discussing archaeology with Scrollwing at the Institute.. A smile crept across Daring’s face as she felt her eyes connect properly with Dust’s – perhaps properly for the first time ever. She realised it then. She didn’t need the Cask to bring back her husband, she never had. All she needed to do was to see him in her daughter, to live life with her as he would have wanted.

The moment was cut short as the pit widened, struck over again with lightning. Sand poured in with a tremendous rumbling and sifting, and the bodies of the dead, dying and undead dropped into it alike as it stretched wider to swallow the camp. Daring and Dust, along with the rest of the adventurers, dashed out to the outskirts of the settlement. Commandeering an armoured car, they turned and fled the place. The last thing that Dust saw as she looked back at the sandstorm-ridden, thunderstruck settlement, was the silhouette of Chrysalis. Lightning struck a final time, and she could see the insectoid Queen as she was grasped by a thousand flailing, dead hooves, and pulled silently below the ground. As the car crested the hill and left it all behind, the supernatural hurricane surrounding the camp subsided, leaving no trace of its existence. The Cask, the changelings and their Queen were swallowed up ravenously by the sand, never to be seen or heard from again.

One month later, Dust sat across the desk from Daring at the Institute. Both leafed through pages of their respective books, and both occasionally made notes – Daring’s notes scrawled and barely legible, and Dust’s flowing and remarkably neat.
“I’m glad I have you.” Daring said, cutting into the silence. Dust lowered her book, but Daring continued reading. She smiled, watching her mother’s eyes flick across each word in her book in quick, unrelenting succession.
“And I feel the same way about you, mother.” She returned. But scarcely a moment passed before Daring shut over her book, looking her daughter in the eye and slipping a hoof across the table to take hers.
“Can you honestly forgive me? All those years I neglected you? The fact that I was willing to leave you behind and chase the Cask down into that pit, all to find..” She choked up a little, but Dust just smiled a warm, knowing smile.
“I forgive you. I will always forgive you. We’re sometimes so set on our path that we get blinded to what we already have. But now you remember that you have me, and that makes me happiest of all.” She spoke softly, as the golden sunset filtered through the murky panes of the office window, the day dying away into peaceful slumber.