Author's Note
Another EqD writing challenge, this time featuring the esteemed Maud Pie. The prompt this time was 'In Equestria, there's no such thing as a "simple" rock farmer.' Hope you enjoy it!
Speak Your Mind
Daring Do was beginning to remember why she preferred to explore by herself.
Bring her along, they’d said. An expert in her field, they’d said.
“And quite possibly the creepiest pony I’ve ever had to deal with,”Daring muttered to herself. “Including Rainbow Dash in full-on ‘fan mode’.” She shot a glance back at Maud. “You doing okay back there?”
“Fine.”
There it was again! ‘Fine.’ Just ‘fine’. Most ponies would have managed a sentence, but all she’d been giving was monosyllabic answers and grunts, or even just blank stares. Daring hadn’t even bothered trying to start a conversation. Still, at least she probably wasn’t the sort of pony to go wandering off or stupidly set off a trap, unlike some of her previous expedition partners.
She raised her pith helmet and wiped her brow. The jungle air left her hot and sweaty, and having an earth pony tagging along meant she’d been forced to hike for a few hours along the ground, rather than soaring above the treetops. She wished there’d been a closer settlement to base their expedition out of, but the locals stayed well away from the Ancient Mareyans’ temples. Given the devious traps and automatons left inside the crumbling buildings, Daring couldn’t blame them. Naturally, Maud showed zero acknowledgement of her environment. Heck, hot air and trees weren’t rocks; why should she be interested?
Daring let out a little squee as they finally exited the trees and came upon a moss-laden ziggurat. Despite the jungle’s best efforts, the stone temple still stood proud, barely eroded by the passage of time. She grinned at the impassive Maud as she also came to a halt. “Pretty impressive, huh?” the pegasus asked.
“Hm.”
Do rolled her eyes. “Okay, so, let’s just go over the basics one more time. These temples are incredibly dangerous: full of traps left by the builders, not to mention the wildlife that’s moved in since the buildings were abandoned.” She allowed herself a self-indulgent grin. “Now, as a pony who’s made a career of going in and getting out of these sort of places, just stick by me, don’t touch anything I don’t tell you to, and you’ll come out just fine.”
Maud simply raised an eyebrow. Didn’t she believe her?
“Uh… I mean, you know who I am, right?”
“I don’t really keep track of celebrities.”
Daring bit her tongue. “You must have read some of my books, at least?”
Maud shrugged. “I sometimes read.”
Well, at least we’re getting somewhere… “Great! What was your favourite?”
“Mmm…” Maud stared into the middle distance for a moment. “I liked A Directory of Dolomites.”
Daring shook her head. “That isn’t one of mine.”
“You write books about rocks?”
“No!”
“Oh.”
The explorer let out a sigh and turned away. Why the hay was she even trying to connect with this mare? Just one rude, obtuse response after another. “Just… forget it.” She trotted up the staircase carved into the ziggurat’s side, before the thought struck her that, for all her huffing and puffing, she hardly knew what Maud did beyond ‘rock farming’, either. “So, um, I know you came with the rest of the expedition group to do your rock research and all, but how does that translate into wanting to explore a temple?”
“The temple’s made of rocks. Rocks that aren’t from here,” Maud said. “I wanted to study them as part of my research trip. Maybe grow samples on the farm if I can find rock seeds.”
Daring pursed her lips as they slowly made their way into the entrance passage from the top of the stepped pyramid, eyes scanning the walls and downward-sloping floor for any pressure plates or tripwires. “How does that work? Rock seeds?” She frowned. “I thought rocks came from underground?”
Maud shrugged. “Some do. But you can grow them on a farm, too.” She gazed up at the wall of the passage. “Nopony’s tried farming exotic rock like this before. I’m sure I can find a way.”
“Uh huh.” Daring held out a foreleg to stop Maud as they happened across a chamber. The ceiling was low, with spiked chains dangling down from it. There was just enough space for a pony to walk across the tiled floor. Each tile was a different colour, each hue decorated with a symbol. “Ah. Classic trap for would-be raiders. See the tiles on the floor? All but one type are balanced to set off a trap—chains too, so don’t touch ‘em. Need to work out which symbol is the safe one; there’s usually a word puzzle around to solve for that… Don’t move until I’ve found it.”
She began looking up at the walls of the chamber. The enchanted crystals set into the stone gave some illumination, but Daring found herself squinting, trying to work out what was ranting about whatever deity this temple served and what was the puzzle she actually sought. Fortunately, her companion knew better than to disturb her, staying quiet as a mouse as she searched. Eventually, her gaze happened upon a poem carved near the floor. She crouched down to read it, slowly translating from the ancient script into Modern Equestrian. “Right… let’s see: ‘One head in beginning, two in meeting place, three in new home’?” she read aloud. “What? Is that a clumsy hydra?”
For several minutes, Daring grumbled in confusion, trying to match the various symbols on the floor available to her. What kind of crummy puzzle was this? “It’s not ‘tiger’, it’s not ‘snake’, it’s not ‘sun’...” she muttered to herself. “And it’s not ‘family’, so—wait a minute!” Her face lit up as the bit finally dropped. “One head is one pony, ‘two heads’ is when they meet their partner’, and ‘three heads’ when they get their own house and have a foal! Boom!” She smacked a hoof against the nearest ‘family’ tile, grinning as the stone stayed solid. “And that is how you do it, Maud. Just gotta keep your wits about you and think around a riddle…” Her stomach dropped as she realised she was talking to empty air. “Maud?”
The earth pony gazed across the chamber at her from the far side of the tile puzzle. “Did it already.”
“Fffffff!” Daring dashed across the safe tiles as quickly as she dared, skidding to a halt in front of Maud. “What the hay did you think you were doing?!” she hissed.
“I was crossing the room.”
“You could have gotten us both killed!” Daring cried. “Didn’t I tell you not to move?”
“Until you found the puzzle, yes,” Maud said. She looked back at the tiles. “There were some made of a lighter grade of basalt. I could tell they were different. It was safe to cross on those.”
The explorer groaned and rubbed her face. “You didn’t think to tell me?”
“You seemed happy with your method.” She paused for a moment. “It’s important to let other ponies have their way of doing things.”
“Well, if you’d let the expert temple explorer do things the way she knows are safe from now on, I’d really appreciate that,” Daring growled.
“Mhm.”
Daring rolled her eyes and began trotting further down into the temple. As they descended into the underground section of the ancient building, she began to shiver slightly from the plummeting temperature. Much as she’d hated the humidity of the jungle, she was beginning to miss its warmth. “All these light crystals… you’d think they’d have found a way to keep a bit of heat circulating too, huh?” she quipped.
“Thermal cracking would occur. It would weaken the rocks,” Maud intoned. “Cold is better than broken rocks.”
“That’s... a fair point. Guess you wouldn’t want your whole temple collapsing from your heating system, huh?”
“No. That would damage the rocks, too.”
Daring tried not to scream in frustration. How could somepony be so single-minded?! Hobbies were one thing, as were jobs, but to base your whole life and being around one thing and relate all your interactions back to that? How could you stand to be so focused on a single subject—wait, that was an artifact and a half! Her eyes widened as they came across what had to be the main worship chamber of the temple. “Oh, hello…”
The chamber was a half-hemisphere, with the flat wall facing the entrance. Against it was a huge stone shrine, depicting some sort of jaguar-like deity with multiple limbs, each one reaching out to hold up some form of idol or platter to place sacrifices on. A corridor marked by short granite pillars led from the doorway to the shrine itself, each topped with a glowing crystal. And as for what lay at the end of the path… a plinth sat beneath the legs of the god statue, illuminated by a beam of sunlight emanating from a hole in the ceiling. There, basking in the light, was a beautiful quartz statuette of a snake. Daring drooled slightly as she looked at it. Why couldn’t all temples present their riches so beautifully?
“Well, it looks like this is as far as we need to go,” she breathed. “Collect your rock samples if you need them; I’m just gonna get acquainted with that statue.” Daring walked along the corridor, mesmerised. A small part of her mind still looked out for the telltale signs of traps; one could never be too careful, after all. She even felt mildly disappointed as she noticed no sign of the good old-fashioned weighted plinth trap—what kind of self-respecting temple builder wouldn’t try to kill you as soon as you made off with their idol?
She cautiously gazed around the larger jaguar statue, just in case some other form of trickery was at work. Daring couldn’t help but notice the complex array of mirrors around the hole in the ceiling; evidently, somepony had wanted keep the sunlight beam fixated upon the plinth all day. “Incredible engineering,” she muttered to herself.
Daring’s eye caught Maud, wrapped up in her own work. She poked her hoof at the soft sand scattered on the floor, sniffed, felt and even tasted the various rock chips she took, with each one carefully examined in the light before either being cast aside or carefully placed in a saddlebag. The explorer’s mouth twisted as watched. Sure, it was weird to her, but she’d be damned if Maud wasn’t placing exactly the same care and attention into her research as she did into her own, if not more. Maybe she shouldn’t have given her such a hard time for her diligence… Shaking herself from her musing, she performed one final check for traps, before picking up the sun-drenched idol.
Which abruptly crumbled into dust.
Daring stared at her hooves in horror for a moment, dessicated quartz sprinkling gently onto the ground. “Wh… what?” she breathed. “No! No no no no NO!” She let out the scream she’d been holding on since the start of her trek. “Whhhyyyyy?”
“It’s sun quartz.” Daring’s head snapped around. Somehow, Maud had managed to walk behind her without her noticing.
“What?”
“Sun quartz,” Maud repeated. “It crumbles if you take it out of direct sunlight before sunset.” She paused. “Which you just did.”
“And you only tell me this now?” Daring let out a quiet sob, letting the remains of the idol fall to the ground.
“I was taking my samples.” Maud pointed to the far side of the chamber. “I thought I shouldn’t disturb you.”
Daring let out a shuddering sigh, before taking out her anger by kicking the plinth. “Stupid trickster god!” she yelled. “What kind of idiotic worshippers make an idol that breaks as soon as you take it away?!”
Maud stared dispassionately at her. “Ones who didn’t want it stolen.” Before Daring could splutter a reply, she continued, “The rock is strained here.”
“That’s not the only thing that’s strained around here,” Daring growled. “What do you even mean by that?”
Without replying, Maud walked past her to the plinth, murmured something, and brought her hoof down upon it. Daring yelped as the blow split the stone platform in half, and again as the tiles of the corridor dropped down abruptly, forming a new staircase leading even deeper underground. To her chagrin, the earth pony said nothing, instead simply walking to the opening and then standing motionless.
Something broke inside Daring. Who did Maud think she was, coming in here, casually trotting across puzzles it took a certified explorer to solve, identifying minerals she’d never heard of, opening up passageways she didn’t even know were there?! That deadpan silence had to be some sort of act; Maud had to know how much she was humiliating Do. Whatever manuscript for a new book she was sketching out about this tour was going on the Luna-damned fire when she got back to camp.
But enough was enough. She was the protagonist, not Maud! Daring snorted and walked straight past her companion, stomping grumpily down the staircase. A set of hoofsteps rang out behind her. Evidently, Maud wasn’t done with trying to out-do her knowledge of ruin exploring just yet.
She tried to keep her darker thoughts at bay as they continued downward. The ornately carved walls gradually degraded to roughly-cut rock as the pair progressed, and Daring began to feel a little uneasy. Perhaps this was a spur of the temple that was never finished? As beautiful as the shrine room had been, she would be bitterly disappointed if they reached a dead end and had to leave with no relics.
Daring hopped up and hovered as the tunnel abruptly ended, intersecting with a sloped soil pathway that ran perpendicular to it. The floor of the new passage was slightly curved, forming a trough shape. “Looks like some kinda slide.” She held a hoof up to Maud and gasped as she saw the earth pony pick up some sort of rocky rod from the ground and look at a socket in the wall. “Don’t touch that! That could set anything off!”
Maud simply nodded, placing the rod back down.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Daring fluttered out into the new passage. Both uphill and downhill faded into the gloom as she peered in either direction. “Okay, looks clear,” she said, before gingerly poking a hoof into the soil. “Doesn’t look like you could embed pressure plates under this, either. It should be safe to walk on.”
As soon as she placed her hooves on the ground, the entire trough groaned and fell down a whole foot, knocking Daring to the ground and causing her to slide down, away from the passage. “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she yelled. “The whole thing was a pressure plate?! And what… oh…” Her diatribe ended in a whimper as she looked uphill. With a rumble, a gigantic round boulder fell down and began to roll, picking up speed at an alarming rate. She let out a moan of terror. How could she be killed by the most cliche temple trap the world knew?! She picked herself up and prepared to run.
Maud leapt down into the passage and skidded down to stand directly in front of Daring, facing down the orb of death rolling toward her. “Sedimentary. Poor choice.”
Any intention Daring had of moving melted away from the shock seeing such a suicidal action from her companion. She stared as Maud tensed up, and gasped as the earth pony leapt at the boulder, hooves blasting away at a rate the explorer would have sworn was physically impossible. As she realised that a crater just large enough to accommodate two ponies had been carved from the rock, Maud jumped back down, wrapping herself and Daring into a tight ball.
There was a moment of silence, before an almighty crash rang out as the boulder met the end of the tunnel. Daring stayed in her curled-up state, trembling, as Maud stood up and dusted herself off as if she had simply stopped for a break. “It was a deadbolt,” the earth pony said.
“What was?”
“The rod. There was a socket for it,” Maud explained. “I could smell sedimentary rock—I knew something was wrong.”
Daring refused to look at her companion. “Right. Guess I told you to put it down before you said anything, huh?” Embarrassed tears sprung in her eyes as she stood up. Great. Now she’d not only led them into a deathtrap with her short temper, but also completely overlooked the disarming device. Which Maud had seen. Of course. “Let’s just go.”
They trotted carefully down the soil slope. As they reached the shattered remnants of the boulder, Daring’s heart sank as she saw the exit from the passage cut into one wall. It was barely wider than her shoulders; no matter how fast she’d ran, she wouldn’t have been able to squeeze through there before the rock crushed her. So the ‘expert temple explorer’ owed the rock farmer another favour. Fantastic.
However, upon squeezing through the passage, Daring found her mood improved immeasurably. The shrine upstairs was nothing compared to this treasure room! A vast dome scattered with riches awaited her. Offerings of gold and silver were scattered about the chamber, and in the centre was another quartz idol that put the disintegrated one to shame. Even better, no sunlight was present—this idol wasn’t going to crumble on her watch!
Something stayed her hoof, despite her normal tendency to greed. Not having a clear head had nearly gotten her killed once already. Daring took to the air, carefully scanning for any trigger whatsoever that might set off a trap. “Weird. You’d think there might be something in here… Guess they figured no intruder would make it past the boulder slide,” she muttered to herself, landing by the idol. Once again, there was no sign of a weight-loss mechanism that might detect the artifact being removed. She carefully picked up the figurine, admiring it. “I mean, there’s usually darts or snakes or a—” She yelped as suddenly the plinth erupted upwards, knocking her to the ground. Daring screamed as a giant rocky figure climbed out of the chamber’s floor.
It fixated two glowing red eyes upon her. The alien bipedal figure flexed, knocking the plinth atop its head to the floor with a crash, slowly advancing toward her.
“G-g-g-golem!” Daring cried. She delved sideways as the golem smashed a fist down where she’d been lying. “Run!” She galloped away from the centre of the chamber, mind working in overdrive as she tried to work out how to keep the automaton distracted long enough for both her and Maud to escape through the tiny entrance passage. All too late, she realised what the Mareyans’ plan had been for intruders to the main chamber: forego traps and simply leave them to be killed by one of their magical constructs. She skidded through a sea of golden coins as she desperately dodged another blow.
She saw Maud on the other side of the chamber, the earth pony fixated upon the golem. Daring saw her mouth the words ‘living rock’, before gradually walking toward the centre of the chamber.
“Maud! What are you doing?! Run!” Daring yelled. “I’ll distract it—just get out of here!” She jumped into the air and swooped toward the golem. Behind its eyes, there would be the crystal that drove its motions—if she could shatter it, the automaton would break down. The animated figure waved its hands threateningly, trying to swat the aggressive pegasus away from its face. She fluttered back and grabbed a golden sceptre from the floor, holding it in her hooves. “Come at me, rock.”
A particularly vicious blow swept the pith helmet from her head. Daring tried to stab the golden rod through one of the golem’s eyes, only for its other hand to sweep around and shear the sceptre clean in half. Not to be deterred, the pegasus flipped around, delivering a vicious buck to the face. The golem staggered back, the glow of its life crystal now visible through the cracks Daring had left. It let out a rumble and began to lumber toward her, arms swinging.
Daring despaired as she saw Maud hacking away at a stone tablet with a piece of flint. Had she been driven insane by the sight of rock walking? She was already beginning to feel the tug of exhaustion from her fight with the golem; sooner or later, it was going to wear her down and destroy her. Her life was going to end in this chamber. Not that that wasn’t something she wasn’t prepared for—it just felt unfair it was going to be to an opponent that never tired, after having dodged so many other traps in so many other temples.
She dodged left and right as the golem tried to pluck her out of the air. As it swung wildly, Daring pushed forward, delivering a shove to its head and kicking once more. She beat her hooves against it, desperately trying to crack the clay exterior and expose the crystal. A cry came from her lips as the golem finally grabbed her, yanking her away and holding her at arm’s length. The explorer closed her eyes as she was squeezed in its merciless grip, second hand raising to crush her flat.
“Clay. You were once rock.” Both pegasus and golem froze as the words rang out. The automaton turned around, facing Maud. She was stood with stone tablet in hoof, slowly walking toward them.
“M-Maud?” Daring breathed. “What are you doing?”
“Rock made humble,
Rock made soft.
Hardened by fire,
Hardened by greed.
Animated, you arose,” Maud read. She cast the tablet to the ground and picked up another.
“Once you slumbered,
But you were pulled awake.
When you were formed,
You slept once more.
Why do you walk, rock?”
The golem tilted its head slightly.
“You are not like other rocks.
They live, they breathe, they die,
But they do not walk.
You are different,
You are special,
You stand out.
But to stand out is to be eroded.”
Maud collected another tablet as the golem began to kneel.
“A place for everything,
And everything has its place.
You hurt because you do not belong,
Anger at being out of place.
Be still, rock, and know your home.
To the earth you return,
Slumber once more.”
The golem slumped to the ground and released Daring. Its eyes faded away as Maud reached its head. She placed a hoof upon the clay for a moment, before nodding in satisfaction.
Daring stared at her for a moment. “How… how did you do that?!” she gasped.
“I write poems about rocks,” Maud said with a shrug. “Words have power, sometimes.”
“No..” Daring shook her head. “That’s not all the answer though! You’re a rock farmer, fine, but—”
Maud gazed at her coolly. “Rocks don’t grow like plants. And farming them is not simple. They need to be encouraged. I read to them. They like it.”
“I figured you just rolled them in the dirt or something…” Daring rubbed the back of her neck. “So I guess you must write a lot of poems, huh? You learn something new every day.” She turned away, slightly ashamed. All that petulance about nothing… Of course, when you knew your words had that sort of effect, you’d pick them carefully. “I’m sorry for snapping at you. You’ve saved my flank more than once this expedition. I understand you didn’t mean to upset me.”
Maud simply nodded.
Daring cleared her throat, before gingerly picking up the idol from the ground and holding it up. “Did you want to take this? Or maybe some other treasure? All of this was down to me losing my temper. We can stick around for as long as you like to get your rock seeds too.”
“No.” Maud looked back at her saddlebags. “I have all the samples I need already. And you deserve what you came here for too.” She looked down and placed a hoof on one of the tablets. “And I now have some of my seeds. Thank you for giving me the inspiration for them. Maybe I can finish my research earlier now, and see my sister sooner than expected.” The tiniest trace of a smile crossed her lips as she looked at Daring. “And that is all the treasure I need.”
