One hoof in front of the other. Steady. Slow.
Careful.
Daring Do moved through the ancient temple as quiet as a ghost. Her steps made not the slightest sound as she advanced down the final corridor leading to Cinnabar the Mad’s forgotten tomb. She felt every grain of sand beneath her hooves, every stray gust of wind that blew through the ruins like a dying sigh. Brittle strands of grey moss hung in garlands from the stone walls and cast dancing shadows across the floor. Only the intermittent torches, hissing and sputtering, dared to break the sepulchral silence.
Less than thirty feet remained of the corridor. Ahead, beyond a stone archway that rained a constant stream of dust down to the floor, a wide chamber filled with light beckoned her. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to stop her from trotting right ahead and claiming her prize.
She smirked.
Her hoof paused a hair’s breadth above the floor. Something about the stone was wrong. The shade, the shape, the way loose grains of sand had accumulated along one side, as though rolling down the world’s shallowest hill. Her mulberry eyes danced across the stone and its neighbors, then to the walls around her. There, cleverly concealed in the shadows, an array of holes stared down at her.
Too easy. She leaned back and tapped the tip of her hoof on the edge of the stone. Massive axles creaked in the floor beneath her, the stone shuddered and sank into the floor, and a rough breaking sound emerged from the walls. This was followed, a few seconds later, by the sound of ancient gears grinding against each other. Something hidden snapped with a muffled, brittle crack, and a dozen ancient, rusted spearheads tumbled out of the walls to land with a clatter in front of her. Bits of rotten wood still clung to some of them.
She touched one of the spearheads with a hoof. It broke apart into a cloud of rust that left a reddish smear along the stone.
It was safe to say that Cinnabar the Mad’s tomb had not received regular maintenance over the centuries. Not a single trap had functioned so far – even the bottomless pit had filled with sand over the centuries, until she could walk across it without a care. The poison darts were less than dust. The falling spiked portcullis had rusted in place. Even the ceiling crocodiles, her old nemesis, were nothing more than mouldering skeletons strapped to the stones overhead. She almost felt sorry for them.
Almost.
Her eyes darted around the corridor again. Nothing seemed out of place – the spears were the last line of defense before the temple’s sanctum and the treasures within. The old rakish smile that frightened stallions and set mares to swooning twisted the corners of her mouth, and she clutched her wings close to her body to still their excited quivering.
This, this was the best part of every delve. She set her hoof across the threshold and passed through the dust raining from the arch above. Her ears flicked it away, and she lifted her head to behold the heart of the temple.
It was a small room, for all the care that had gone into guarding it. Light streamed in from small slit windows overhead, now choked almost completely by vines that dangled to the floor. Scenes etched in the stone walls told the story of Cinnabar the Mad, the last court wizard of Lith. She gave them a cursory glance, more to check for hidden traps than enjoy them as historical artifacts. That wasn’t really her thing.
Treasure, now, treasure was her thing. Her smile widened as her eyes fell upon the altar in the center of the room and the artifact resting atop it in a spot of honor.
It wasn’t much to look at. Just a simple brass lantern with glass walls and a stubby runt of a candle inside. A small hoop topped the whole affair, to hang it on a nail or a line. There were no decorations carved on it, or gems embedded in it. It was, to all appearances, as plain and simple as a lantern could be.
And yet, and yet. It was hidden here, in the center of this temple, guarded by a thousand traps. A dozen legends whispered of it. Cinnabar’s last words had been to cry out for its light. This modest little lantern was the most precious artifact still missing from Lith’s golden age.
And it would look perfect in her collection back at Cavelbridge. Right beneath her portrait, perhaps, next to the Sapphire Stone and the Golden Compass of Arlah. She’d need a nice write-up to go along with the display, of course, with a few tasteful oil paintings of her harrowing quest to the heart of Lith. Maybe with a few extra scenes from some past adventures? After all, the spirit of the display mattered more than the facts.
She shook her head. There would be time to fantasize about her new wing at the Cavelbridge history department later. For now, there was one more step…
She leaned over the altar, inspecting it from every possible angle. She flicked her wings around the lantern, testing for hidden wires. She sniffed at the air for the distinct, acrid scent of a salt acid trap.
Nothing. Huh. She frowned at the lantern.
“Well,” she mumbled. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained…”
She leaned as far away from the altar as she could, her legs tense and ready to bolt away at the slightest sign of danger. She held a leg across her face, screwed her eyes shut, and reached out with a wing to snag the lantern away from the alter.
It lifted away without a hitch, and swung from her feathers exactly like a dull, ordinary lantern ought to.
“Heh, you’re not so bad, are you?” She tapped at the glass pane with a hoof. Setting her foot down, she struck a pose. “All in all, it’s just another remarkable discovery for the world’s greatest adventurer, Daring—”
“Aha!” A loud stallion’s voice interrupted from the archway behind her. “At last, I have finally found Cinnabar the Mad’s lost tomb! All in all, it’s just another remarkable discovery for the world’s… Daring?”
“Fossil?” she blurted. She spun around to face a grizzled grey unicorn dressed in a set of dusty fatigues similar to her own. He stared at her, mouth gaping, eyes wide with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m searching for Cinnabar’s lantern.” His head turned fractionally, and his eyes narrowed at the sight of the lantern dangling from her wing. “That lantern, in fact.”
She drew it close to her chest. “Well, sorry to say, old man, but you’re too late! I had to trudge through a temple full of traps to get this thing, and it’s going on display at Cavelbridge!”
He snorted. “Cavelbridge? While I admire your charitable willingness to display such a wonderful artifact to such… mediocre students…” he drew the pronouncement out. “Don’t you think a treasure like that deserves to be displayed at Hocksford? Besides, I had to pass through all those same traps as you.”
“Yeah, after I disarmed them!”
He waved a hoof. “Details. And where did you get the information pinpointing this particular temple, out of the thousands of unexplored ruins in Lith, hm?”
“Uh…” Her ears wilted, and she glanced around the room for something important other than the stallion in front of her. “Well, you know, I did a lot of open source research.”
“Right. Let me guess: A Survey of Lith and its Burial Chambers, by one Doctor Fossil? Were you even planning on crediting me in your paper?”
“Hey, you published that in a public journal! Anyone could have read it!”
“Yes, and I’m sure many more ponies will read it after I return with this.” His horn glowed with a mulberry light, and she felt the lantern in her grip start to wander away.
“No!” She clamped down on the brass ring with her teeth and dug her hooves into the ground. He wasn’t very fast, she knew, and with a bit of a distraction she could zip around him and fly for the temple entrance.
“Stop acting like a child and give that here!” He took a step forward. “Honestly, I don’t know where you got such a stubborn streak—”
Click.
They both froze, their eyes fixed on the stone beneath his hoof. It had sunk an inch into the floor.
There was a long silence.
When at last their hearts stopped racing, Fossil broke it with a whisper. “You said you got all the traps.”
“I never said that,” she hissed back. “I didn’t. I said I got past them.”
“That implies the same thing!” His voice never grew louder than the rustle of leaves in a spring breeze. “Can you tell what it is?”
Her eyes danced around the room. No suspicious holes, no suspended boulders, no buckets of acid hanging from ropes. Nothing.
“No,” she whispered. “Maybe it doesn’t work anymore? A lot of the traps I found were broken—”
A terrible roar, louder than anything she had ever heard, so loud she couldn’t think beyond it, filled the room. The light went out, and the stones beneath her hooves suddenly went away, followed by a brief feeling of weightlessness.
After that, nothing.
* * *
Daring Do woke in complete darkness. The air was thick with dust. It choked her, coated her lungs. She coughed violently and retched up what felt like a pound of sand and grit, until her throat burned and her ribs threatened to crack.
Eventually, the dust settled, and a profound stillness took its place. The inky black air was like a solid blanket all around her. Only the scrabble of her hooves on stone and the frantic working of her lungs filled the crypt.
This was bad. Not the worst situation she’d ever been in, certainly, but still bad. She felt at the air around her with her hooves, then carefully assessed her own body for injuries. Aside from her throat, which felt like she’d just swallowed a brick, her right wing was missing some feathers.
And she might be blind. She shoved that thought into the back of her head and stomped on it until it was quiet.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded like a rusty gate. “Fossil? Anypony?”
Something coughed in the darkness to her left, and she felt the stones underfoot shift. “Daring?”
A weight she hadn’t realized was there lifted from her shoulders, and she slumped with relief. “Yeah, I’m here. Are you okay?”
“I seem to have hit my head on something.” She heard a grunt, followed by the sound of hooves on stone. “Nothing’s broken, though. Yourself?”
“Fine, just sore.” She stretched her wings and was rewarded with a metallic clang as Cinnabar’s lantern smacked against the stone. Hooray for small victories.
“Right. I’m going to try to get some light going. Cover your eyes.” There was a pause barely long enough for Daring to comply, and then a purplish light flooded the room. For a moment the glare was like the sun, until her eyes adjusted and it resolved into a weak, flickering glow centered around Fossil’s horn.
He didn’t look so good. Half his head was slick with blood, appearing like a dark sheen in the mulberry light. There was a nasty tear in one of his ears, and a cut ran along one eyebrow up to the base of his horn. His eyes were tight with pain.
Daring let out a low whistle. “You took a bit of a hit, old man. Headache?”
He started to nod, but stopped with sudden, anguished flinch. “That’s putting it mildly. I’d say I’ve probably sustained a concussion. I don’t suppose you have a torch in there, somewhere? I can’t keep channeling this light.”
“Uh…” She nosed open her left saddlebag and dug through them for her flint and steel. Something had torn the right saddlebag open, and only a few tatters of paper and water stains remained. “I have tinder, but no torches. They’re probably buried under here somewhere.”
“Well, light a bandage or something. Maybe we can find a torch.” He peered around the tiny, cramped space. The movement set the shadows all around them twirling madly.
“Okay, hold still a sec.” She tore loose a piece of gauze and wrapped it tightly around a spare pencil. After a few shaky strikes with her hooves, she managed to land a spark upon it, and with a few generous breaths the bandage caught the flame and filled the air with a warm, bright light. Beside her, Fossil released the magic from his horn and settled down with a grunt.
“Well…” She looked around the tiny space they were in. It was barely large enough for two ponies to turn around. A large pile of rubble grew from the floor to arch over their heads, cutting off any hope of simply flying back up to the temple level. “Shit.”
“Language,” Fossil said. “Even in the worst of conditions, a lady must—”
“Oh, stuff it, Fern,” she snapped right back. “This is your fault, you know.”
He scowled at her, followed by a flinch. A fresh runnel of blood ran down his muzzle to drip onto the stones. She fished out an extra bandage and handed to him to press against the wound.
“Thank you,” he grumbled. “And that’s Doctor Fossil Fern, to you. Kids these days…”
“Right, right, kids these days, exploring tombs all by themselves without setting off traps.” She huffed and pulled her wing around to inspect the damage. The major primaries had all sheared off near the roots, leaving blood-flecked ratty barbs protruding from her limb. She bit her lip at the sight. After a few moments of silence, she noticed him staring at the injury. Their eyes met, then darted away.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, I’ve seen you take worse. Besides, no flying down here, right?”
“Still hurts.” She tucked the wing back against her side. The feathers would start to regrow within days, but it would be weeks before she could even think of getting off the ground.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, whatever.” She let out a long breath. “So, now what?”
“Now? We remember our training. Come on, I taught you better than this. What’s the first step?”
Just like old times. She licked her lips and turned back to the room around them. “Right. Observe. We’ve fallen into a small pit beneath the sanctum of Cinnabar’s tomb. The fall was initiated by a trap, and based on the rocks around us, was probably meant to kill us as well. The floor is flagstones. The walls appear to be some kind of worked stone, probably a dolomite marble, which is different from the granite in the temple up above. There is no apparent exit, and our supplies are limited to what the two of us have in our packs.”
He nodded. “Good. Next?”
“Orient.” She closed her eyes and imagined the room around her, seeing it with her mind rather than her senses. “It’s obviously a single-use trap, so whoever built it didn’t expect us to survive, so they wouldn’t waste time with secondary traps down here. The flagstones and different stone structure suggest this room existed before the temple above, and only later was it turned into a pit for the trap. If that’s true, it may be part of a larger network of hallways that will eventually lead us out.”
“Very good. And?”
“Decide.” She opened her eyes to see him smiling at her. “We need to find how this room connects with the rest of the temple, and use it to move.”
“Yes, the decision part’s always easy when you only have one choice.” He stood with a grunt. “So, see anything like a door?”
She bent down to inspect the flagstones beneath them. They were cut into squares, which suggested the room had four walls, at least one of which needed a door. All around her, though, were only blanks walls and rubble. She scowled and looked up to see Fossil giving the walls the same close inspection.
He sighed. “Behind the rubble, maybe?”
“Must be,” she said. She poked at one of the larger boulders with her hoof. It didn’t budge. “This might take a while.”
“Fortunately, we have the rest of our lives to do it. And do you have anything else to burn? This thing is dying.”
She glanced at the makeshift torch they’d jammed into rocks. Not much remained of the bandage wrapped around its head, and already the light was beginning to dim.
“Not enough, and I’d rather conserve what I have,” she said. “Can’t you use your horn?”
“Not with this injury…” he trailed off with a sigh. “Say, how about the lantern?”
“Uh…” For a moment she was lost. “Wait. Cinnabar’s lantern? This thing is a precious, legendary artifact, and you want to set it on fire?”
“That’s what lanterns are for, Daring.”
“Yeah, but… ugh, I can’t believe this.” She grabbed the dying torch in her mouth, popped the lantern open, and set the flame to the wick. It caught instantly, but instead of filling the room with the warm glow of a candle, the flame it produced was a cold, eerie blue that sucked the colors from their surroundings, replacing them with light and shadow.
“Well, that’s… odd.” Fossil leaned away from the lantern. In the bluish light, his grizzled coat appeared silver, and the blood on it a solid black stain.
“Yeah… well, hay, light is light, right?” She looked up with a grin. “This’ll make a great story for the display in… the display in…” The words drifted away from her as she took in the sight behind him.
“Hm? The display where?” He peered at her, then turned to follow her gaze. His body jerked as soon as his eyes touched the wall.
A large wood door stood before them. Its arched top brushed the ceiling, and a copper ring crusted with centuries of verdigris beckoned them. The faint scent of ancient wood teased at her nose, drifting from the wall.
The rational, educated portion of Daring’s mind quickly took over. “Uh…”
Fossil’s jaw worked, and eventually he managed to form actual words. “That… I didn’t see that earlier.”
“It wasn’t there earlier!” She took a careful step toward the door and reached out a hoof. It felt rough but not rotten, not like everything else in the tomb.
“Maybe we missed it?”
“Missed it? Fern, there are three things in this room: you, me, and this fucking door. We did not just miss it.” She turned back to the cold blue flame. “It’s obviously the lantern.”
“Right.” A pause. “So you admit my brilliant suggestion to use the lantern led to the discovery of the door?”
“That’s a joint discovery!” She felt her feathers starting to ruffle, and she shifted her wings to settle them back down. “Anyway, we don’t even know if it will open.”
It did, as it turned out. A slight push from one of her hooves was enough to set it swinging outward, creaking and groaning the whole way. Flakes of rust fell from the hinges in a shower. Beyond, a dark corridor extended as straight as an arrow into the black distance.
Daring licked her lips again. She heard Fossil move, and then felt his warm presence at her side.
“Ladies first,” he whispered.
“Age before beauty,” she shot back, a slight smile appearing on her face.
He chuckled. “Very well, then. Into the tomb, the two explorers trod!” He took the first step into the corridor with the lantern dangling from his mouth. She fell into position a few steps behind him.
Just like old times.
* * *
The corridor was long.
Really long.
Daring Do gave up counting her steps after the first hundred. The flat stones still extended beyond the reach of the lantern ahead of them, and she could no longer see any sign of the door behind them. For all she could tell, the corridor might end in another fifty paces, or another fifty miles.
“We’re well outside the bounds of the temple,” she said. There was no reason to whisper, but she kept her voice low. “This must be part of a network connecting the city. Sewers, maybe?”
“No, there’d be a channel in the floor. This is clearly designed for ponies to travel. See the torches?” He flicked an ear toward the wall. There were no torches, but metal sconces were fastened to the stone at regular intervals. The rock above them was streaked with soot.
“Alright. So what is it, then?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Catacomb would be my guess. Keep an eye out for bones.”
She could do that. Nothing like a nice stroll through an underground tunnel looking for bones to lift the spirit. She blew her forelock out of her eyes and turned her attention back to the walls as they walked.
For a time, only the clop of their hooves on stone broke the silence. Fossil seemed to be steadier than before, but whenever she looked down, shining spots of blood decorated the floor. She frowned at them.
“You okay, old man?”
“Been better. I’ll survive.”
That wasn’t very encouraging, but she bit back any further concerns. Head wounds always bled a lot, right? It was probably nothing to worry about.
They walked in silence after that. She found herself drifting to the side of the corridor in a nearly unconscious attempt to avoid stepping on the spatters of blood. They couldn’t hurt her, of course, and she’d seen Fossil’s blood plenty of times before, but there was something almost insulting, almost sacrilegious about stepping in somepony else’s blood. Almost like you were stepping on them. The unpleasant mental image of having to wash her hooves clean of him was still playing through her mind when Fossil spoke.
“Hang on, there’s something written here,” he said. He raced ahead a few dozen steps and paused beneath a wide plaque mounted on the corridor wall. She took her time catching up to him.
“Old Equuish?” she hazarded. The angular cuneiform wedges of the oldest pony script filled the plaque. The edges were soft and artfully drawn, suggesting the choice of language was decorative, rather than for ease of reading. Besides, Middle Equuish was already in use by the time Lith was founded.
“Mhm. Ceremonial, I’d guess,” Fossil said, confirming her guess. “Can you read it?”
“Uh…” She gave the script another look. It might as well have been ancient Zebraic; she couldn’t even tell the letters apart. “Isn’t that more your thing?”
“I distinctly recall sending your mother a primer on Equuish tongues for your twelfth birthday.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that. Tossed it away.”
He spluttered, and from the look on his face Daring could tell they’d be discussing that some more later. She smirked and turned back to the plaque while he mumbled something about good bits.
“Anyway, let’s see.” He leaned forward and blew out a long breath, his eyes darting back and forth across the lines.
She waited.
She waited some more.
And… that was enough. “Well?”
“It’s, uh…” He cleared his throat, then raised a hoof to point at one of the words. “That says ‘Cinnabar.’ I think.”
“You think? What about the rest of it?”
“Look, Old Equuish is a very difficult script—”
“Celestia help us.” She rubbed her forehead with the sole of her hoof. “We’re going to die down here because you don’t remember the language you got your doctorate in!”
“First of all, that was only one of my doctorates. Second, it was in Old Equuish Literature, not the language itself.”
“Oh, that’s a nice detail. Hopefully they’ll include it on our tombstones.”
He sighed. “We’re going to be fine, Daring. Now, just give me a minute to remember what I can, and—”
The lantern went out. Complete darkness returned to the corridor, as thick and suffocating as in the pit. Daring’s throat suddenly closed in panic, and she resisted the urge to bolt blindly down the passageway.
“Daring?” She heard Fossil’s voice from just a few feet away.
“Yeah. Still here.” Her voice came out as a humiliating squeak, and she felt her face flush.
“I think it’s just the wick. Hang on.” There was a weak flash, and Fossil’s horn lit back up with its faint mulberry light. “Can you relight it?”
“Yeah, lemme just grab this...” She fumbled for her flint and steel and stepped over to the lantern. Enough wax had melted from the wide candle to drown the wick. She tilted it to drain the liquid away, and started knocking her tools together for a spark.
Fossil’s light flickered. She looked up to see a tight expression on his face. The cut beneath his horn had reopened, and a few trickles of blood dribbled down his snout to the floor. She swallowed soundlessly and tried to work faster.
He must’ve noticed. “I’m fine. Don’t rush. Remember, slow is fast.”
“Right.” She paused to take a long breath. When she started again, her hooves were more sure, and the sparks larger and brighter. She was about to soak a bit of cotton in the wax for some help when Fossil spoke.
“Daring, could you stop a moment?”
“Huh? Why?” She looked up. He was staring at the wall again.
“The writing is gone.”
She followed his gaze to the plaque. It was as blank and featureless as the empty walls around them.
* * *
The writing had reappeared once the lantern was lit. Not that it did them any good – Fossil couldn’t read any more than before. They bickered over that some more, until by mutual agreement they started back down the hallway.
The corridor continued for nearly a kilometer beneath the earth before the next door appeared. It was far larger than the door at the corridor’s other end, and it towered above them. After a quick check for traps, Daring leaned her weight against it, and the whole affair creaked inward on ancient hinges in desperate need of oil.
“Ahh… Now we’re getting somewhere.” Fossil raised the lantern over his head to illuminate the new room. “Burial chamber, lesser nobility, I’d guess. Perhaps a family mausoleum? Look for a crest or mark on the sarcophagi, Daring.”
Daring followed him into the chamber. It was taller than the corridor, almost high enough for her to take to the air, if her wings were working. The rest of the room was squarish, about fifty paces on a side, constructed from the same pale grey marble as the rest of the catacombs. Near the center of the chamber, a dozen biers rose from the floor. Some were topped with stone lids carved in the shapes of reclining ponies; others were flat-topped, and held the wrapped remains of what she assumed were bodies. The air was filled with the stale scent of stone and dry bones.
Fossil made a beeline for the biers. Daring took the long route, opting to circle the room’s exterior first. A decorative frieze was carved along the wall near the ceiling, taking the shape of an ivy vine in relief. The stem had no beginning or end – it wrapped fully around the room, returning to itself to start over again.
It was interesting but not relevant to their situation. She gave the vines another moment of her time, then turned back to the center of the room where Doctor Fossil was leaning over one of the sarcophagi, his eyes wide as he scuffed some away some mark or other with his hoof. She was about to go help when something else caught her eye.
A few feet behind Fossil, a white form, like a sheet caught in the wind, rose out of the darkness. It fluttered there for a moment, then settled into something like the shape of a pony and began drifting toward the stallion.
Crap! She broke into a run. “Behind you!”
Time may have grizzled his coat and mane, but it apparently hadn’t slowed Fossil down. She hadn’t even finished her shout and he was already moving, vaulting over the bier in front of him while whipping his head around to send the lantern streaking behind him like a flaming missile. Its light went out instantly and plunged the room into darkness. Only the scuff of their hooves and the clatter of the lantern as it bounced against the stones filled the room.
The darkness didn’t last. A brilliant purple flare exploded from Fossils’ horn toward the ceiling, where it burst like a firework. Magical flames licked out from it, chasing away the shadows.
“What? What’d you see?” Fossil’s head jerked around. His hooves were wide-set and his head lowered in a unicorn threat posture, ready to kick or gore anything that came too close.
She took a moment to catch her breath. Whatever apparition it was had fled. “Not sure. White, shaped like a pony. Floating.”
“Where’d it go?”
“I lost it when the lantern went out. How long can you keep that light going?” She edged along the wall, peering down the rows of biers for the lantern.
“Not too long. I’m already getting a bit nauseous. Can you grab the lantern?”
“Yeah, hang on.” Daring saw it leaning on its side against one of the stone biers. Molten wax from the candle had spilled out onto the stones, instantly solidifying at their cold touch. She darted forward to snag it in her teeth, and raced the rest of the way to the edge of the room with Fossil.
“Hurry.” He licked at his lips. She could see a sheen of sweat all across his coat.
Her flint and steel were already out, ready to strike, when she suddenly froze. He noticed and turned to raise an eyebrow.
“Problem?” he asked.
“Maybe.” She realized her hooves were shaking, and placed them against the floor for support. “Look, the lantern reveals things, right? The door, those words.”
“Yeah.” His eyes danced around the room again. “We need it lit. Now.”
“Right.” She grabbed the flint and steel again and started bashing them together, sending a shower of sparks down onto the candle. Was it her imagination, or was the air stirring around her? She felt something like a cobweb brush against the tufts of her ears just as the sparks caught on the wick, and once again a pale blue light poured from the lantern to fill the room.
The room was empty. Burial rags fluttered atop some of the biers, but nothing else moved. Nothing waited for them. Daring let out a long, shaking breath.
“I don’t suppose you could’ve imagined it?” Fossil asked. His tone wasn’t very hopeful.
She shook her head. “Haven’t done that since I was a filly.”
“Okay, then.” He turned toward the opposite wall, where an empty archway led out of the chamber. “I suggest we leave this room in an expeditious manner.”
“Way ahead of you.” Daring slunk toward the archway, head and body low to the ground like a cat stalking its prey. It yawned open at them, inviting them into its depths. She imagined she could feel a faint breeze, drawing them toward it.
Fossil held the lantern through the archway. Another corridor lay beyond it, wide, but with a gentle downward slope that led deeper into the crypt.
He exhaled quietly. “Sometimes the only way out is down.”
“You think this leads out, then?”
A pause. “Well, it must lead somewhere. Come on.”
With the lantern held high, he lead them down into the earth.
* * *
“So, what were you doing in Lith, anyway?” Daring asked. The corridor had leveled out, thankfully, after only a few dozen yards, though it still extended endlessly before them. Faintly, in the distance, they heard the drip-drop of water on stone.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “I’ve been writing about Lith for years. A field trip seemed like a natural next step.”
“Mhm. A field trip that brought you to the same crypt as me, at almost exactly the same time?”
He took his time answering. “Alright, maybe I heard you were reading some of my research. The lantern’s the only treasure you could’ve been going for.”
She raised an eyebrow in his direction. If he noticed, he hid it well. “You know, if you missed me, you could’ve just sent a letter.”
He snorted. “And how long do you plan on doing this for a living? This is a young mare’s game, Daring. Isn’t it about time you accepted that professorship?”
“A young mare’s game, says the old man.”
“Well.” He paused. “There are always opportunities for field trips.”
“Right.” She let a smile drift across her face. For the first time since the pit, an emotion of other than desperation or frustration filled her heart.
They walked in silence for a while again, until the corridor began to widen around them. It was gradual, but after a few hundred paces they noticed that the walls were further apart. After a few hundred more paces, they could no longer even see the walls; the light of the lantern was not enough to reach them.
“Well, this is lovely,” Daring finally whispered. “What do you think is holding the ceiling up?”
Fossil glanced around the depthless space. There were no pillars in sight. Above them, they could only imagine how many tons of rock and earth pressed down upon their little hollow space.
“My default answer is usually magic,” he said. “How’s the candle?”
Daring peered into the lantern. Inside, the candle appeared no shorter than when she had first lit its flame, all those hours ago. The bright blue light burned into her vision, and she spent long seconds blinking away its afterimage.
“Looks fine. I think it will last a while.”
“That’s good. Nice to have one thing we don’t have to worry—stop.”
Daring froze in place, her hoof held just above the floor. Had he seen a trap? She blinked at the nagging afterimages of the flame and peered closer at the stones before her.
“Don’t move,” Fossil whispered. “Left. You see it?”
Her eyes lifted and drifted to her left. At first, only the inky blackness looked back, but as her eyes adjusted again to the lantern’s dim light, another form took shape. A pale mockery of a pony, indistinct and featureless, stood frozen a dozen yard away. Its blank face stared in their direction.
“I see it.”
“There’s another to the right, as well. Further out.”
She checked, again moving only her eyes. Another ephemeral shape gazed at them from the darkness to the right. Beyond it, she imagined she could see other pale shapes forming.
“What do we do?” She could hear the rising fear in Fossil’s voice. This really wasn’t his line of work.
“We keep moving. Avoid them. Don’t run.” She set a careful hoof down, then another. The pale faces tracked her, but made no other movement toward them. Behind her, she heard the hesitant sound of Fossil’s hooves on the stone.
“I see another. Left. There’s… at least five.”
“Yeah, I know. Keep moving.” The primal half of her brain begged her to burst into a gallop, to run as far and as fast as she could, until she and the herd were safe. But such thoughts were death when exploring a crypt, and she shoved them away before they could set her hooves to moving.
Ahead of them, a pale shape resolved in their path. It stared at them like the others, and turned in place as she led them in a careful path around it.
“I think the corridor is getting narrower.” Fossil’s voice was right behind her. She could practically feel his breath on her back.
She glanced to the sides. There were at least a dozen of the pale apparitions now, but at the edge of the lantern’s circle of light she could make out the stone walls. With any luck, the end of the corridor wasn’t far ahead.
Of course, it also meant there was less room to step around the ghostly pony forms. Three in a row stood before them, and she took a long detour to avoid them. As she passed, one of them took a step closer.
“Faster,” she whispered. Her feet picked up their pace, and the walls began to speed by.
“They’re following us.” Fossil’s voice was remarkably calm. She barely heard the quaver in it.
“Yeah, keep going. We’re almost there.”
More of the spectres appeared beside them, some materializing before her very eyes. They were like a wisp of smoke that suddenly decided to take a real form. One appeared less than a yard from her side, and she shied away from its reaching leg. A terrible cold brushed against her coat.
It was time to go. Ahead, she thought she could see the corridor’s end, and a large wooden door waiting for them. Hopefully it was unlocked. “Run!”
They burst into a gallop, racing toward the door. She thought, for a brief moment, that they might make it, when another spirit appeared just feet in front of her. She shrieked and tried to swerve away, but her side brushed against its chest.
Daring Do was no stranger to pain. During her years of exploration, she’d suffered nearly every bodily injury available to a pegasus, and every time she bounced back ready for more. Pain was, after all, merely the body’s way of saying something had gone wrong. Pain could be managed, suppressed. Conquered.
There was no defeating the agony that tore across her flank. A thousand icy hooks stabbed into her and ripped, tearing the heat and life away from her body. Her rear right leg went instantly numb, and she spun to the ground in a heap. A desperate wail poured out of her throat, and a few feet away she heard Fossil begin to scream.
Get up. Get up. Get up get up get up getupgetupgetup— she rolled onto her legs and pushed herself up. The lantern had spilled onto its side, but she could see the pale shapes drawing closer. One already stood above Fossil, and more were only seconds away. The one she had brushed — brushed — was already moving toward her.
“Get away from him!” She snatched up the lantern in her teeth and leapt toward Fossil. The air around her face cracked with their chill, and she swung the lantern wildly. The candle inside flickered and nearly went out.
“Daring!” The scream was nothing like Fossil’s voice. It was the sound of a pony being tortured. “Run!”
She flung the lantern behind her. The dim ember on the wick flared briefly, revealing the door just yards away. All around her, more of the pale spectres appeared.
“Get up!” Daring lashed out with a hoof at the pale shape closest to Fossil. It stepped away, and her hoof went instantly numb. She half-crouched, half-collapsed atop him, grabbed his mane in her teeth, and pulled toward the door. Enough strength remained in his legs to stand and stumble with her, and together they toppled into the door. It swung open under their weight, and the fell through it into the room beyond. The spectres moved to follow.
“Close it!” she shouted. Her wing darted across the threshold to snag the lantern, and she yanked it back just as Fossil’s leg kicked the door shut with a bang that echoed through the catacombs like thunder. The poor candle, finally abused beyond its limits, went out, plunging them again into complete darkness.
Daring didn’t notice. A different kind of darkness welled over her, and the world went away.
* * *
A loud clattering sound slowly dragged Daring back into the world of the waking. She pondered it for awhile, in that half-living fog between states. The ground beneath her seemed to be shaking in time with the noise, and she wondered if perhaps there was an earthquake in progress.
No, it turned out. It was just her teeth. Her entire body shook with cold, and when she rolled onto her stomach, the stone beneath her seemed warm in comparison.
“F-Fossil?” Her hooves beat a tattoo against the flagstones, and she tucked them against her body for warmth. “Fff… Ff… F-Fossil?! If you c-can hear m-me, s-s-ssay something. D-da—”
“Daring?” Fossil’s voice, as weak as the stars fading before the dawn, was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. “Where are you?”
“I’m here.” She set her hooves on the stone and dragged herself toward his voice. Eventually, her muzzle found the lanky hair of his mane, and she buried her face in it. His scent – of books and candles and the ash he used to make ink – brought back, just for a moment, the sense of safety she’d left behind long ago. She felt a hoof brush against her own mane, and a sob escaped her.
“It’s okay. We’re okay.” He didn’t sound okay, but that wasn’t important.
Eventually, her sniffles subsided. “Can you light your horn?”
In reply, a faint mulberry light built around them, filling the air with a weak glow. The massive door leading to the horrid corridor was just feet away. She imagined she could feel the chill emanating from it.
They appeared to be in another corridor, though this one ran at angles to the first. It stretched off to the left and right as far as she could see. A faint breeze flowed across them, leading down one of the ancient paths. It might have just been her imagination, desperate for some hope, but it seemed to carry the scent of grass with it.
“Did you get the lantern?”
Daring looked back at the door. The lantern was lying just a few feet from them. A humble piece of brass and glass, hardly worth their suffering. She closed her eyes and wished, prayed, that she was like the unicorns of old, able to step back in time and warn their past selves of disaster. She never would have come to Lith. She wouldn’t be trapped here, dying a thousand feet below the sun’s touch, for another stupid artifact to add to the shrine she built for herself.
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” She hooked it with a wing and dragged it across the stone floor toward them.
“Can you light it?”
She paused before replying. The silence stretched out, and from the corner of her eye she saw Fossil waiting for her answer. A fan of blood, black in the light of his horn, spread out on the stones beneath him.
“Do we really want to?” she asked. “What if those things are like moths, and this is their flame? What if it draws them?”
“We need it to see them, Daring. If we don’t have it, we’re blind. And I can’t keep this light going for very long.”
“Yeah, but, I don’t… I can’t…” She stopped to take a breath. Then another. And another. “We can’t do that again. We won’t get away from them in this shape.”
“I know. But we’ll just have to hope.” The light from his horn was already fading. Its reflection in his eyes was the last thing she saw before it went out.
Fortunately, she knew where her flint and steel were. The intermittent light of the sparks was enough to find the candle’s wick, and in minutes they were bathed again in its pale eldritch light. With a sickening sense of dread in her stomach, she looked up at the corridor.
It was empty. Just them. She let out a relieved sigh and pushed herself onto her feet.
“Come on. We can do this.” She placed her nose under Fossil’s barrel and pushed until he grumbled and stood. His left foreleg hung awkwardly, and he simply grimaced when she touched it.
It was cold as ice. Frost covered the hoof.
“It’s just frostbite,” he said. He looked away from her, down the corridor. “I’ve had worse.”
She stared at the hoof for a long moment, and then closed her eyes. Time passed in silence.
“Yeah, it actually doesn’t look that bad,” she finally said. “I think it’ll be fine once it warms up.” Without waiting for an answer, she draped his leg over her shoulders, and together they stumbled down the corridor, toward the imagined scent of grass and sun.
* * *
“Why was Cinnabar called ‘The Mad,’ anyway?”
Hours had passed since they started moving. Or, at least, she assumed hours had passed. There was no way to keep track of time down here.
His eyes flicked between her and the lantern. “He was always a bit odd. You know how unicorn wizards are.” He started to laugh, but ended up coughing. Flecks of blood decorated his lips. “But toward the end, he started seeing things. Things that didn’t exist.”
“What kind of things?”
“Nopony’s sure. He wasn’t very articulate by that point.”
“I don’t blame him, I guess.” Daring said. She raised the lantern higher above her head and peered down the corridor, hoping for some sign of its end.
Nothing. She sighed and lowered it again. More time passed as they limped through the long tunnel beneath the earth. The rest of the world seemed to drift away, and all she could remember was the feel of stone, the scent of dust. The only color was the pale blue of the lantern light. The only sound was their hooves echoing in the darkness all around. That was her world.
“Daring?” Fossil’s voice was soft, softer than she could ever remember hearing.
“Yeah?”
“There’s one behind us.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Okay.”
More time passed. She felt Fossil’s shoulders twist as he peered behind them.
“Two now.”
She started stepping faster. Fossil stumbled, and she wrapped a wing around his numb leg, holding him closer. She heard the breath wheezing in his lungs.
“Come on, I think we’re almost there.” She blinked away the tears that blurred her vision. Ahead, she saw only darkness.
“There’s more now.” He paused to cough. “Daring.”
“We’re almost there. I think I can see something.”
“Daring—”
“I can see something!” The corridor ahead of her was nothing but a smear. “Come on!”
“I’m slowing you down.”
“You are not!” She tried to speed up, but Fossil stumbled to his knees. She yanked him to his hooves and dragged him along until he got his hooves working. A faint chill teased at her tail. “I can feel something up ahead!”
“It’s just the wind, Daring. Listen to me.”
“No! Come on!”
“Daring…” He paused. “There’s too many. You can get away, but not with me.”
“I can! I can!” Her voice broke, but when she blinked away the tears, there really was something up ahead. Not a spectre, but the honest glow of real moonlight. Her heart nearly leapt from her chest at the sight, and she dragged Fossil with her wings toward it. “Look! Look! Look, Fossil, there’s a way…”
She came to the circle of moonlight and stopped. Above, a ragged natural chimney rose from the ceiling through a hundred feet of wet moss and rocks and vines, to a tiny hole far above. She stopped, and she stared, and the tears began to flow again.
“Can you make it?”
Could she? For the first time since entering the catacombs, Daring spread her wings. The broken pinions complained, and the air felt raw against her exposed skin, but she knew she could do it. It wouldn’t be pretty, but if she used the vines and rocks for support, she could get all the way up there. She could reach the moonlight. She could escape.
She tried to say so, but her throat refused to work. She gave a jerky nod instead.
“Good. That’s good.” Fossil turned back down the corridor. The spectres had stopped at the edge of the moonlight, as though it were a physical barrier to them.
“I’ll get help for you,” she said. “I’ll get help, and we’ll come back for you.”
What might have been a smile teased the corner of his mouth. “Go, Daring. Go.” He leaned forward to place a light kiss on her forehead. She inhaled his scent – books and candles and ash – one last time.
“Go,” he whispered.
She set the lantern down – she did not want it any more – and crouched, her wings outspread. As she leapt, her wings flapped as hard as they could, and she made it just high enough to snag one of the chimney’s jagged rocks with a hoof. She pulled herself up onto it, and with her wings beating to lighten her weight, she began to climb.
Higher and higher she climbed, and as she rose through the earth, all the sounds and sensations of the world returned. Color – green moss, brown dirt, tiny red flowers on the vines. The scent of grass and trees and a distant river. Insects chirping, bats chittering. She climbed higher and higher, and rose up from death into life.
At last she reached the top of the chimney, a hole barely wide enough for her to slip through. She stuck her leg through it, ready to pull herself out, when a chance turn of her body set her gaze back down the rocks, to the circle of moonlight far below. A grey shape slouched on the rock. A mane flickered in the faint breeze. Fossil’s sides slowly rose and fell as he waited to die.
For her.
He was willing to die for her.
She pondered that fact, her body halfway between the open sky and the sepulchral depths. Only moments away from escape, she pondered that fact.
* * *
Fossil groaned when she pressed her muzzle against his side. He wheezed, and pushed her away ineffectually, but she was not to be deterred. She pushed him up and slid beneath him until almost all his weight rested on her back. It was awkward, but she was a strong pony. He had carried her before – now she could carry him.
Behind them, a line of spectres waited at the edge of the moonlight. On the other side of the circle, the corridor extended as far as she could see. She kicked the lantern toward the spirits, turned, and walked with slow steps into the darkness.
“Daring…” Fossil’s voice stirred the hairs of her ear. She flicked it against his nose.
“I know, dad. I know. Come on, we’re leaving.”
His head slumped against her shoulders, but she could feel his breath, weak but steady. It gave her the courage for that next step.
One hoof in front of the other. Steady. Slow.
Toward the darkness. Ever forward.
Into the light.
