Moondancer

Moondancer’s panicked response to the floor opening up underneath her had been to throw the pyramid high in the air. Twilight had a few precious seconds for reflexes she didn’t know she had to kick in, and just managed to catch the pyramid in her aura before it smashed onto the stairs below.

“Moondancer!” shouted Twilight desperately, but there was no reply.

Twilight tried to open the trapdoor with her aura, but couldn’t get a grip. She desperately pulled the ornament that had opened it under Moondancer’s feet, but nothing happened. She was about to smash the trapdoor to pieces when she realised that doing so might cause the wreckage to fall down and hit Moondancer.

With desperate haste Twilight blindly stuffed the pyramid into her backpack with her aura, and went back to pull on the baluster again, in the hope that it might work this time.

Twilight’s teachers had noticed her tendency to panic early on in her education, and Princess Celestia had insisted that time be spent giving Twilight the tools she would need to deal with it. When she wasn’t carried away by her imagination, Twilight could now take control in an emergency with ease. Unfortunately Twilight’s imagination had a massive carrying capacity.

Images ran through Twilight’s mind, showing all the possible terrible fates for Moondancer, and all the ways that Twilight’s inconsiderate actions directly lead to her tragic death. She could envisage all the recrimination and blame from Moondancer’s parents, Twilight’s parents, and Princess Celestia, and all the punishments that they would heap on her for her transgressions.

Twilight redoubled her efforts, pulling the treacherous baluster back and forth like a recalcitrant pump handle, to no effect. Twilight sobbed with desperation, adding her magic to the job. She only succeeded in wrenching the baluster from the railings, exposing a broken mechanism below.

Thrown off-balance by the sudden failure of the baluster, Twilight staggered backwards. Into the other baluster. Which activated a different trapdoor under her feet.

Twilight screamed in surprise as she fell, her rapid descent guided by a smooth metal chute. The closing trapdoor above her cut out what little moonlight there had been. The light of Twilight’s unfocused magic was only bright enough to show how little she could see, the darkness swallowing her sandalled feet.

Twilight sat, panting and wide-eyed, at the bottom of the chute. Her plummet had been harmlessly arrested by some ancient spell, depositing her not-ungently on a cold, hard floor.

Twilight summoned a light, to look around. She was in a small room. There was no sign of Moondancer.

Twilight’s backpack, which had fallen free during her fall, dropped onto her head with a thump. The light winked out.

Twilight crawled away from under the chute, and tried again. Her light illuminated a small, plain room, free of any decoration other than spiderwebs and an iron-barred door.

“Moondancer!” shouted Twilight. There was no reply.

“Okay, Twilight,” she said, “Let’s stop to think for a moment. This was a busy, inhabited castle. So that was clearly not a trap for thieves. It must have been a royal escape route, positioned so close to the princesses’ chambers! Two of them, one for each Princess. And they wouldn’t have come out in the same place, to prevent pursuers. Moondancer is probably fine, at the other drop point. We just need to meet up.”

Twilight stiffly rose to her feet, and donned her backpack.

“Moondancer! Don’t worry, I’m coming!” Twilight shouted, at the top of her lungs, and tried to open the door. It was locked.

The iron-barred door blasted outwards with a deafening roar. The wood from the door was reduced to splinters, and the crumpled remains of the iron banding punched through the opposite wall and kept on going.

There was a brief moment of silence, only punctuated by the tinkle of falling rubble.

Twilight coughed, expelling some of the stone dust that she had inadvertently breathed in. She looked down at Moondancer’s ancient siege wand in her hand with renewed respect. She carefully put it back in her pack. She checked to make sure it was secure. She checked again.

Twilight Sparkle stepped through what was left of the doorway, and set out to rescue her friend.

“Let’s see…” mused Twilight out loud, “Featureless corridor. Short. Turns at right angles at both ends, but has two joining corridors, forming T-sections. The nearest of which… Leads to another, similar, short corridor. With a plain door near one end. This… This is a maze!”

Twilight jumped up and down, clapping her hands in delight.

“A real maze! That I need to solve! Yay! Okay, Twilight, calm down. I really want to map the maze, but I don’t have an accurate measuring stick. Other than myself, and the floor’s dirty and these towels will just fall off. Okay, I need chalk.”

Twilight searched her backpack twice.

“I didn’t bring any chalk. I didn’t bring any chalk!. What kind of archaeologist doesn’t have any chalk with her? What was I thinking?! Okay, okay, I can do this. Um, um… …I’ve got it!”

Gingerly hefting the siege wand, Twilight held the tip to the floor and let a trickle of power flow through, as little as she could manage. The tip glowed. Just a little more… A steady flow of sparks erupted from the tip of the wand. Twilight traced the wand across the ground, leaving a light scratch on the hard stone.

“Right! Let’s get going!”

Twilight squared her shoulders, shouldered her pack, set her light to hover over her head, and set off.

The maze solving algorithm was good. Twilight needed to focus a little, to keep it in mind, and that helped keep other things from her mind. Like what Moondancer was doing. And where she was. And all the hazards that could be found in an ancient, abandoned ruin. And how long it would take to get back to the surface. And what people would think about all the damage she was doing to a historic ruin.

Unfortunately the algorithm was simple, so those other thoughts got into Twilight’s mind anyway.

She sometimes thought she could hear something out at the edge of her hearing, alone in the dark. Maybe it was a voice, or laughter. She thought she might be able to hear Moondancer calling her name, but she couldn’t be sure. She called out herself, of course, but her only reply was a mocking echo of her voice.

Twilight’s small purple light was really rather dim. It shed enough light that Twilight could see the way she was going, and not step on any of the star-spiders that scuttered around in the dark, but not much more than that. It seemed to more define the shadows, rather than dispel them, and Twilight’s active imagination was only too happy to speculate about what she couldn’t see.

The air in the maze was cool, far from the summer heat outside. Anyone would shiver in these circumstances.

The decor changed as she progressed. Suits of armour started to appear in places, standing guard over cobwebs and dust. Normally she’d gladly spend hours examining them in detail, but she forced herself to move on. Moondancer needed her.

That she felt that the suits of armour were watching her had nothing to do with it. Twilight’s pack was heavy. Too much water, and other items. That was why she was sweating a little.

Something in the darkness skittered away, spooked by the slapping noise of her jury-rigged sandals made on the flagstones. Twilight tightened her towels.

When one of the suits of armour fell apart behind her, Twilight nearly jumped high enough to touch the ceiling. The blast from the wand knocked the pieces of armour through two walls, the failing protective enchantments on the armour adding their own sparks and flares to the explosion.

Twilight put the siege wand back in her pack.

She picked up a thin dagger from the suit of armour as an alternative, and tested it against the stone. The enchantments on it were still strong, and the dagger left a mark on the stone. It wasn’t as clear a mark as the wand could make, but at least there was less of a danger of Twilight accidentally bringing the ceiling down on top of her.

Twilight retraced her steps back to the new passageway that the blast had created, and started again. If she kept making new branches in the maze, this would take forever.

“Slow and steady wins the race,” whispered Twilight, carefully drawing her next line.

Moondancer was probably lost like Twilight, but Moondancer didn’t panic, and even walking randomly they should have no trouble getting out before hunger or thirst became an issue. Everything was fine, and once they were reunited the maze-solving would go twice as fast. There was no need to hurry.

Twilight just needed to remind herself of that every now and then.

Maybe twice a minute, tops.

Twilight finished the line she was drawing, walked five paces to find that the corridor ended with a dead end. A now-automatic check showed that the walls were solid. Twilight stepped back to the line she had just drawn, and set about drawing another next to it.

Her work was interrupted by a light coming out of a corridor that caught the corner of her eye.

“Moondancer!”

Twilight hurried to look down the corridor, but the light was gone. There was a light just around the corner at the end of that corridor though. Blue. Definitely not a hallucination brought about by too much stress. Or dodgy energy drinks. Or too much sex. Twilight ran to the end of the corridor.

The blue light she was chasing had moved on to the next junction. Fast. No sound of footsteps. Twilight was pretty sure that there was no such thing as ‘too much sex’.

“Moondancer! Stop playing! It isn’t funny.”

No response.

Twilight chased after the light that was patiently waiting for her. Each time she got close to the light source, it blinked out and a new one appeared, always further out of sight. Around a corner, under a door, always leading her on.

The blue light disappeared for good when Twilight came around the last corner. Her heart leapt when she saw where it had been leading her – there was a room up ahead with natural lamp-light pouring out of a half-opened door.

She rushed to the doorway. Her towels were slipping, but she held them in place with her free hand as she ran.

“Moondancer!” she shouted, just in time to hear Moondancer’s orgasmic yell in response.

Twilight burst through the door and pulled to a halt.

Moondancer looked up from the sawhorse which she was strapped to, tried to blow away a lock of her hair that was stuck to her face with her sweat, and said breathlessly, “Oh, hi, Twilight.”

Twilight stared at the demoness standing behind Moondancer, grinning from ear to ear.

Twilight could look at everything but Moondancer.

The room was in great condition for it’s age. Two rows of caryatids, depicting men and women entwined in imaginative embrace, stretched down the room, supporting the high, vaulted ceiling. Lamps hanging from the ceiling were the primary source of light in the room, the braziers scattered about the room were responsible for the heat.

The long wall on one side was unworked stone, decorated only with tethering rings and chains along its length. The other side was dotted with alcoves; each alcove had its own black iron bar door, each door had a lock, and each lock had a key on a nearby hook. The cells were barely big enough for one person, and were completely free of fittings.

The sawhorse Moondancer was tied to was typical of the furniture in the room. Elsewhere a large wooden X-shaped cross festooned with straps reclined slightly on its own stand; pulleys hung from the ceiling near where one of the caryatids helpfully held coils of rope; a table was laid out with a selection of sex toys. Twilight could see a well-padded rack further back, and other forms of restraint.

The robe and hat that Moondancer had pilfered were hanging from a hook on one of the walls.

There was a demoness standing behind Moondancer.

She was a pitch black silhouette of a tall, shapely, horned, bat-winged woman. The lights in the room couldn’t make out any features at all, except blazing white teeth and gold, serpentine, eyes. Twilight could have mistaken her for a shape cut out of plain black silk were it not for the eyes, the teeth, or the soaked dildo that she held in one light-absorbing hand. Twilight unconsciously gripped her dagger harder.

Moondancer noticed Twilight’s stare.

“Uh, Twilight, this is, uh–”

“Entice,” said the demoness in a deep and musical voice, putting the dildo down on the table.

“Uh, yeah. Um, could you let me up, please, Entice?”

“Of course, my friend.”

The patch of darkness moved about the sawhorse, releasing the straps that restrained Moondancer, until she could climb off it and onto shaky legs. She soon found her balance and walked toward to Twilight.

“Are you okay, Twily? My fall must have given you quite a shock. It certainly did me.”

“What?! Moony, I spent hours looking for you! I was worried sick! And here I find you, fucking a demon in an actual sex dungeon! I– Wait. Wait a moment, I just need to do this–”

Twilight summoned a shield around them, cutting out the outside world. The only light inside the bubble came from Twilight’s hands. She raised her free hand to Moondancer’s forehead, and cast a number of spells in quick succession. Moondancer stood very still, suddenly noticing the dagger gripped tight in Twilight’s other hand.

“Okay, so you still have your soul, you haven’t been possessed, mind controlled, brainwashed (I think), or ensorcelled, it is really you, and you aren’t pregnant with its unholy spawn. That means that I have one question: What in Tartarus were you thinking?!”

“Uh, that you couldn’t find me, I couldn’t find you, and I couldn’t find a way out. Entice was really friendly, and she offered to help, in return for a little sex. Seemed like a good deal at the time. Oh, and risk-free, hot-as-Tartarus, succubus sex, Twily. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance if there ever was one.”

“‘Risk-free’? Its a demon! It wants your soul, you ninny!”

Moondancer smiled at Twilight.

“Uh, doesn’t it? All demons want to drag our souls to Tartarus. It’s what they want. The demonology textbooks are all very clear on the topic.”

“Twilight, I’m sure she’d love to drag my soul to Tartarus, but she can’t even leave the castle. She’s trapped here.”

“Um, what?”

“She’s sealed in. Stuck. Imprisoned. From since around the time the castle was erected, she says. So if she actually got your soul, she couldn’t actually do anything with it. Apparently she’s not even allowed to grab it anyway. Some binding or other from when she was summoned, from what she said.”

“And you believe her?” asked Twilight, with a cocked eyebrow.

“Yup. She’s a demon, so she can be bound with infernal contracts. We knocked up a quick one: she has to be honest with me, I had to give her a kiss. Which I have done. So she can’t lie to me. See?”

“You kissed her? It?”

“Yeah, I kissed her. She feeds on sexual energy, and she was really hungry. Been mostly dormant since the castle was abandoned. Turns out that Ethereal Thought-eaters don’t get it on quite as often as people. Our happy fun times woke her up.”

“So the ‘sex for help’ deal was–”

“My idea, but she was very happy to help. She suggested we use this room. So many fun toys. I’m kinda annoyed at you Twilight, by the way. You found us before we got to do anything. I thought we’d have a few more hours before going to find you, but nooo. It wasn’t to be.” Moondancer did look mildly disappointed.

Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her grip on the dagger relaxed.

“Twily, you okay?”

“Sorry, yeah. Just processing everything. I understood that we weren’t exclusive, after our conversation earlier, but seeing you with her hurt a little. It’s okay, I just liked to pretend.”

“Aww, sorry, Twily. I’ve been having so much fun with you that I didn’t think how it must look like from your perspective. I was being inconsiderate. I am sorry. I really was completely lost, though.”

Moondancer opened her arms for a reconciliatory hug, which Twilight gave after some hesitation.

“I know, and I know you’re never going to just sit around and wait to be rescued… Okay. I want to talk to Entice. I’m going to drop the shield. Ready?”

As the shield dissolved around Moondancer and Twilight, it revealed to Entice the two women kissing.