TANTIBUS

CHAPTER NINE

Admira grew up in a rich and noble family. They lived in a fairly big and luxurious mansion in the Eastern ends of Canterlot. She grew up with both her father and mother. Her father was a highly ranked general, from which most of the family’s riches came from, and her mother used to sew decorative banner-patches, clothing and sometimes even stitch soft plush dolls.  She owned a small embroidery boutique where she would sell the products of her hobby for a small and reasonable price.

Since coming from a rich family, Admira never truly learnt the harsh, and sometimes cruel nature, of the outside world; the world outside the safety of the walls in Canterlot.

Her father wanted her to grow up to be a very nice and kind role-model for her own children someday. But it was a difficult task to hide some of the decisions a general has to make.

Whenever she was in need of something, he would be sure to let her have it, because he just couldn’t stand seeing anypony sad, especially his own offspring… and hoped to raise her to feel the same. He somewhat succeeded. Even though she lived in a sort of false security through-out her life, her kind behavior surely made both her father and mother proud.

Perhaps Tantibus was what she needed to wake her up and realize that reality wasn’t always a fairy-tale.

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It was merely a second ago that she had been in the massive hall, but now she was in a way different room. It was as if she was just snapped out of existence and put somewhere completely different. She was still in Tantibus though, she could tell. It was that distinctive cold and empty atmosphere again.

She looked around. She was in a long and rectangle shaped office. There was a desk standing in the middle of her half of the room, it was right in front of her actually. She was standing right next to the chair behind the desk. Several bookshelves were lined up on the three walls surrounding the desk. They were filled with multiple books of various colors, but it was quite strange as not a single book was labeled on its spine.

On top of the desk, in the middle, was a skull. She could tell just by looking at it that it was very old and used to belong to a pony of rather small size. She gave out a quick shout as the skull was the first thing she saw. Its empty eye-sockets were facing the wall behind the desk, straight into the book shelves. Or it could be staring at the old, creaky chair that was also behind the desk. She then noticed the door, which was located across the room on the wall opposing the desk’s front.

She gave a run for it, almost shouting at first glance. Upon knocking into the wooden door she began furiously twisting its knob. It was obviously locked with a key-hole in the middle of the gold-coated knob that was meant to be used.

“What is this?!” she shouted and felt a small sense of insecurity and panic shower over her.

Admira looked back at the desk and noticed that it has a few built in departments, the number one spot most preferred to put the key in. Admira ran back and rounded the desk to reach its rear where she would begin opening its six departments.

In the final and bottom department she found a book. That was all she found, just the book. The book was covered in a red, matte finish and felt cold. There was no title or any text whatsoever, just the color red. Admira was a bit confused with the unnecessary, and simple, design and turned around to compare it to the covers of the rest of the books in the bookshelves. They were the same but in other various colors, no text on the exterior.

She opened the red book. On the very first page she was met with a simple message which looked to be typed by a typewriter. All other pages were blank.

It read: “NOPE, THERE IS NOTHING IN HERE.”

She turned around and looked at the all of the other books of various colors, neatly stacked in the three bookshelves. Deep inside, she thought: Am I supposed to look through all of these?! She picked out a book from the shelf behind her. It was blue, maybe because that was her favorite color.

When she opened it, it looked exactly the same only with a different message.

“NOT HERE EITHER.” Just like before, all other pages were empty.

She continued, but the results were the same. Whichever book she took, it was the same. The first page read NOT HERE EITHER and then the rest were empty. But she refused to give up and a pile of books began to form on the floor as she went through book after book.

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Apollo quickly flashed back into reality and immediately analyzed his new surroundings. He was in a tiny room, a bit smaller than Admira’s but unlike her rectangular office, this room was a perfect square. There weren’t many objects in the room. All he could see was a bureau and a few paintings on the otherwise empty walls. The paintings were portraits, but the faces of the participants had been cut out.

The bureau had a decorative, white cloth with a glass fishbowl on top of it. The fishbowl was filled up with water, but there were no living creatures whatsoever in it, just pure water. The bureau also had three departments.

Apollo began to carefully look through the tiny room to check if it was safe. It seemed so, unless the fishbowl spontaneously explodes or something. Not very likely, but with Tantibus, who knows who is in charge of the odds?

He quickly noticed something. There was a lack of a certain item that was absolutely necessary for any room to even be considered a room… an opening. There were no windows and not even a door in sight, just the walls covered in white-beige wallpaper. Very confused, Apollo set to action.

He began with what made most sense to him, to look in the bureau. After seeing that the top department was empty, he really had no hope for the rest containing anything either, which, in turn, they didn’t. Out of frustration, he kicked one of the walls, only to find out that they were hollow.

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Ebony heard a thump coming from one of the walls which snapped her into focus. Not paying much attention to the actual wake-up call, she was surprised to find that she was lying on the bottom of a big, glass cube. The glass cube was located in the middle of a much bigger, rectangle room. The glass was thick and would not even as much as budge, no matter how hard Ebony knocked into them.

On top of the glass box she could see a transparent compartment with maze-like walls inside it. It was like making a maze for a rat in a shoe-box, now make the walls and outer casing for that maze out of robust and transparent glass and you’ve got what Ebony was facing above her. On the inside of the glass cube, in the ceiling, was a door-knob that she could, with her hoof, lead through the maze on the roof. But here is the tricky part, the glass-ceiling was out of reach for her and in order for her to as much as touch the knob, she would have to jump and nudge the knob inch by inch. Punch too hard and the knob would break off. She also noticed that at what seemed to be the end of the maze was a button and when pressed… she could only hope that it would help her out of the cube.

She also noticed four small metallic tubes leading out from the glass box in each of the four top corners. No escape there though, as they were too small for Ebony to even fit her hooves in them.

Outside of the glass box she found herself in a pretty big, empty room. There was no furniture or decorations at all, only one door leading out of the room. Unfortunately, she was stuck in the box, unable to reach that door.

There was only one thing for her to do in her situation, to try and solve the maze-like puzzle.

“Here we go.” She spoke silently to herself before jumping up and touching the knob for the first time, it moved about half an inch but triggered something way bigger. As the knob was moved, the trap was triggered and water starting pouring down from all of the four tubes instantly. It was now a matter of having enough time to solve the maze, before the glass cube were to be filled up completely, drowning Ebony…

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She found it. Finally, after having looked through 46 books, she found the right one. Instead of the text “NOT HERE EITHER” she found that the book was hollowed out, with a key in its secret space of cut out pages. The key was just as golden as the door-knob itself.

As she turned her focus from the key to the door, she noticed something. She could now hear a silent sizzling noise. It seemed to come from the area around the door, but it was too silent to make out its position accurately. She slowly walked closer to the door, hoping to figure out where the noise came from.

Having a mother working at an embroidery, she couldn’t help but to find herself spending hours on sewing and stitching as well. Having that as a hobby for years of her youth had trained her in having a keen eye for detail which was something that certainly came in handy at this moment. Her eyes caught the glimpse of thousands of tiny, tiny needles poking out from the floor between her and the door. It was like a laid out carpet of needles, stretching from the wall to her left to the wall to her right, sealing off the door. They weren’t big at all, only about a third of an inch poked out, but the sizzling noise that came out from them made her nervous.

She turned around, grabbed one of the books and ripped out an empty page. She then crumbled it up into a paper-ball and threw it onto the needled area. Almost instantly, the ball began turning into a yellowish green and decomposing in a final, scorched color. The needles were spewing out acid.

She looked closer and noticed a blank spot just next to the door without any needles. She could probably make the jump if she got a bit of momentum on her side. So she put the key in her mouth, backed up a few feet and began charging forward. In a swift and graceful motion, she flew up and over the tiny but poisonous needles. Although it was an unsteady landing, she was unharmed with the key still in her mouth.

She put it in and twisted the knob. After hearing a click from inside the door, she could push it open. She had done it; she could finally exit this room.

Admira turned around and took a look at the office one last time.

With a loud and disturbing crackling noise, the skull began slowly turning so that the empty and expressionless eye-sockets were looking straight into the eyes of Admira. Before the skull could do anything else, Admira jumped out the door and locked it behind herself in fear.

She leaned over, listened closely and could hear the sound of creaking floorboards and moving furniture coming from inside the office. She put her hoof on the door knob, prepared to unlock it to unravel what was happening inside, but decided it was best to leave it be. Her business with that room was finished, and besides, that skull gave her the creeps.