Daring Do slashed at the vines with the machete clenched firmly between her teeth, carving herself a path through the jungle. She once more cursed Ahuizotl’s latest choice of temple for plundering. It wasn't enough for him to go somewhere deep in the humid rainforest that was crawling with insects and wreaked havoc on her mane, oh no; he had to choose a temple of the Eohippus. These early ancestors of the earth ponies had temples that were intentionally hidden deep in the rainforest to protect themselves from the early ancestors of the pegasi. Temples that you couldn't see through the rainforest canopy. Being a modern pegasus, Daring Do’s wings were practically useless here.
They did help with the flies, though. There were many, many flies. And the occasional snake.
“Oh, I'm getting too old for this,” Daring grumbled as she clambered over a rock and absentmindedly nudged a snake off with the flat of her machete. “Should’ve retired when I had the chance.”
Still, rocks weren't bad. Better than quicksand, anyway.
She paused long enough to pull out her compass and confirm that she was going the right way. Of course, she was--her inborn ability for direction had not failed her yet--but it was a habit she had never been able to break. She stuck it back in her pocket and continued her journey.
Soon, the foliage thinned, and with one final slice, the vines fell away in front of her to reveal a hidden temple, made of sandstone. All things considered, it was fairly small; but what remained of the carvings was intricate. Surrounding it were little houses and a center square with the remains of the markings for some unknown sport on it, long since faded by time. Daring Do couldn’t help but smirk as she sheathed her machete. She cast a glance around, checking for any obvious traps, and then made her way towards the temple.
Of course, ponies might be hiding in the houses; but nopony ever seemed to think about things logically. It was like the promise of treasure dulled their senses and stunted their logic. If Ahuizotl had gotten here first, he’d be hiding somewhere inside, forcing Daring Do to make her way inside completely before confronting him.
Frankly, Daring Do liked it better that way. Nothing like dodging a few traps and jumping a few precarious precipices to work up a good sweat.
She flew over the stairs--too many experiences with crumbling stairs--and slid to a stop on the landing. “Perfect,” she said, trotting forward. She had to duck her head under the doorway lintel as she came in. As she passed, she slowed to a stop. The interior of the temple was large, with a high ceiling and a hole in the middle for the sun to peek through, and the center dipped down deeper like an arena.
But that wasn't quite all, was it? No, there was another passageway, up on the dais, behind where the acolyte would have stood. Yes. They would have been ceremonial protectors as well as leaders; anything that needed protecting or storing would have been placed there for safekeeping.
Daring Do flew over and landed on the dais, and as she did, she realized that she’d landed atop the crumbling remains of a stone altar. She paused for a moment to be grateful that curses weren’t real; Eohippus legend stated that death would come swiftly to any who stepped hoof upon the dais unworthily.
Or maybe she just had Eohippus acolyte somewhere in her ancestry.
Chuckling at the thought (and stretching her wings appreciatively), she began to walk forward. She paused as she stared down the passageway in front of her. She glanced up, confirming what she’d already guessed. There was a line of holes in the wall, right where a curtain would go. This would have been hidden from the average worshiper; therefore, this was where she needed to go.
She treaded forward carefully. These passageways would have also been filled with dangerous traps, likely to bolster the supernatural claims of the acolytes. These would definitely have been real.
The fact that there was blood on the ground from a previous failed attempt didn’t hurt, either.
Daring Do paused and squinted at the blood. From afar, it appeared relatively fresh. That was strange. And it got stranger: if she didn’t know any better, she’d say that that was the edge of a hoofprint in the blood. She looked up, wondering what had happened. She glanced down at the tiles, but saw nothing different. She looked along the wall, but didn’t see any panels covering arrowholes. She frowned. It must have been a good trap if she couldn’t see it.
She scanned through her mental list of common traps and was in the midst of mentally crossing out ‘lava pit’ when she noticed a thin strand of something, too thick to be a spiderweb, hanging in the air right next to the left wall, only a few paces in front of her.
She squinted and followed with her eyes where it would have gone. Near the left wall was a small metal hook, and on the right wall was a small metal ring, also with a small piece of that same strand next to it.
Tripwire. It was a tripwire. Whoever had attempted this last had tripped over the wire and smacked their face into the ground.
She laughed. Whoever was here, clearly had no idea what they were doing. Confidently, she stepped forward, heading deeper down the corridor.
Daring Do stepped cautiously, slowing to a crawl. Something was wrong. It was too quiet down here. Either whoever had come through here before her had managed to avoid setting off any more traps (unlikely, seeing as how they had missed a simple tripwire), or she was-
The sound of a twanging arrow made her duck nearly to the ground, but she was not fast enough; she suddenly felt a stabbing pain in her shoulder.
“Ow!” Daring hissed, scampering back while still crouched to safety before reaching up to examine the injury. It was a tiny arrow, and it had hit her in the shoulder. Strange place to aim for.
On second thought, that would make sense. This would have hit an Eohippus pony’s head; Daring, being taller, would have been hit elsewhere. Ironically, she probably would have been hit in the head if she had dropped to the ground in time.
Making a mental note to downgrade this event to ‘dodged with barely a scratch’ in the novelization, Daring Do broke the shaft off the arrow and examined the arrowhead still embedded in her shoulder. It was metal and not stone, thankfully; but in the dim light she couldn't tell if there were rust on it or not. Either way, she would still go in for a tetanus shot after this. She reached into a pocket of her vest and pulled out some gauze. After a little examination, she determined that the arrow had not penetrated deeply enough to pose a bleeding out hazard, so instead of just wrapping it in place, she bit down on the arrowhead and yanked it out, quickly slapping the gauze on to stop the bleeding.
“At least it’s not the wings this time,” she grumbled through gritted teeth as she finished covering the injury. She flexed her foreleg and was pleasantly surprised to note that aside from a little soreness, she had not lost functionality.
Now more cautiously, she examined the walls. She was impressed against her will. The Eohippus acolytes had done a good job; the arrow slots were hidden in the artwork and murals so well she hadn’t seen them the first time she’d looked.
And as she looked, she realized that most of them looked to be angled downward.
She shrugged and stretched her wings. Keeping close to the ceiling, she flew past the section without even setting off another arrow. She chuckled to herself as she flew. “Forget it. I'm still as skilled as I ever was!” She threw a few triumphant punches into the air, and continued on her way.
Then she had to stop; the ceiling suddenly dropped a few paces as the passageway narrowed into a thin corridor. She dropped to the ground and peered inside.
It appeared to be a maze. Daring Do grinned. She had plenty of experiences with mazes! She did a quick check for any obvious traps, lifted her left hoof, placed it on the wall…
And began walking. With her hoof against the left wall, she made her way through the dark maze, ducking spiderwebs, avoiding lizards, and absentmindedly flicking away flies with her tail.
Suddenly, the ground crumbled from beneath her. Instinctively, she flapped her wings and remained aloft even as the stones crumbled into a dark abyss below. She waited until she heard them hit the ground below.
“Huh,” she said, mentally roughly estimating the time it took the rocks to fall and from there extrapolating the distance to the bottom. “They did have digging implements deep enough for wells. Who knew?”
She placed her hoof back on the wall and continued onward, hovering a few inches above the ground.
At the next fork, she took another left. Her hoof brushed over what felt like a bump on the wall, and to her horror, she realized it was another arrow port. She froze, but as she glanced around, she realized that the trigger was in the panels below. She exhaled in relief. Score another point for pegasus wings.
At another fork, she this time changed her strategy and went down the path on her right.
It was almost a night and day difference. The images painted on the walls suddenly got brighter, as if they had had more attention placed on them.
“Looks like left is sinister in this culture, too,” Daring Do grumbled as she placed her right hoof this time on the wall. She hated it when she guessed wrong. She continued walking, making her way through the corridor, following its twists and turns and always taking the right at any opportunity.
And just as suddenly as she had started, she arrived. The passageway opened up into what appeared to be an ancient warehouse, carved out of the ground. Old torches, burned out somewhere along the centuries, were placed into intricate brass holders along each wall.
She paused and looked at everything. It was definitely a repository; maybe full of secrets, maybe full of mundane things the Eohippus wanted to keep safe. She'd definitely come back with a team to translate these records. Really, this was the best Eohippus discovery in history, and a little shiver of excitement ran up her back.
But her real goal was in the center of the room. Standing on a pedestal was a large silver statue of a snake, coiled, head raised as if ready to strike.
She grinned and trotted over, feeling secure in her safety in this place. She glanced down and squinted at the inscription. Translation was always a toss-up with ancient languages, what with words and meanings changing over time and even between villages. That one word could have meant rain. It could also have been a metaphor for the ancient equivalent of a bathroom break.
Long story short, she didn't know how to use it. Then again, neither did Ahuizotl; but that wouldn't stop him from trying. She couldn't help but shudder as she thought back to the time she walked in on him trying to open the Box of Pandorii. As much as she didn't like Ahuizotl, she did like not having four extra legs attached to her body, and imagined that Ahuizotl would feel similarly. Already he had too many digits to work with. More would likely have driven him insane.
More so than he already was, anyway.
She shook her head, bringing herself back to the present. She grabbed the statue and stuffed it into her hat.
As she left, though, she found herself wondering. Who had the blood at the beginning of the passageway come from? It was possible that somepony had come in and simply fallen prey to another trap that Daring hadn't tripped. But more likely…
Daring Do stepped outside onto the dais, and was completely unsurprised to see Ahuitzotl standing back in the shadows.
She was, however, surprised to see ponies there, also surrounding her. And, sure enough, one had a bit of bloody gauze over his nose. She smirked.
As she lowered herself into a defensive stance, she heard a familiar voice, and her ears pricked up.
“Ah, Daring Do. How nice of you to join us,” Ahuizotl said, dramatically emerging from the shadows. This effect was ruined somewhat as Daring Do had seen him right away, but it had been a passable effort.
She looked up at Ahuizotl, and cocked her head as she gestured towards the ponies that surrounded her. “No cats this time?” she asked.
Ahuizotl shrugged. “They don’t do so well with the humidity.”
Daring Do’s eyes narrowed. “They’re jungle cats. They thrive in humidity.” Even as her mind worked furiously to try and figure out what Ahuizotl had up his sleeve, Daring’s eyes flicked back and forth among the ponies that were prancing in place, just waiting to be given the order to attack.
“Well, perhaps it is not the humidity; but they are… otherwise occupied.”
It suddenly struck Daring. “It’s their mating season, isn’t it?”
“Irrelevant!” Ahuizotl shouted.
Daring Do snorted and let the matter drop. “So what's your game, Ahuizotl?”
Ahuizotl chuckled, suddenly back in control of his emotions. “Oh, Miss Do. Really, now. Must everything I do have an ulterior motive?”
“Yes,” Daring Do deadpanned.
Ahuizotl snorted, and then glanced around at his henchponies. When he realized that nopony was going to back him up, he exhaled. “Daring Do, you wound me; but, of course, you are right. The Fertility Snake is a most wondrous artifact, used to help-”
“I really don’t want to hear about your love life,” Daring Do broke in. “Sorry.”
Ahuizotl glared as a few of the henchponies chuckled, and they quickly stopped. He turned his glare on Daring Do. “As I was saying… the Fertility Snake was used for good harvests. Plants exposed to the Fertility Snake are taller, stronger, and as the name implies, more fertile than their unexposed brethren.”
“I… see…” Daring Do said. “So what are you going to grow? Poppies? Poison Joke? Some other poisonous plant?”
“Catnip, actually,” Ahuizotl said proudly. “The finest catnip you've ever seen, Daring Do.”
Daring Do squinted. “Seriously?” she deadpanned. “You are getting too old for this. And why bother stealing a mystical artifact to grow it? You couldn't, oh, I don't know, hire an earth pony?” One corner of her mouth twitched up. “I hear Caballeron is looking for a day job.”
Ahuizotl snorted derisively. “The ‘good doctor’-” here his tail hand made air quotes, “-is otherwise occupied. He's searching for the Jade Stallion of Shirah in Saddle Arabia.”
Daring Do paused, and she raised a hoof as she mentally drew a map of the area. “He does know that the tribe that originally made the Jade Stallion valued water over daylight and that the word erroneously translated ‘east’ really means ‘towards the river’, right? He's going the completely wrong way.”
“That's what I told him!” Ahuizotl groused. “I swear, if he hadn't found the Snow Amulet I would have kicked his flank to the curb long ago.”
Daring’s heart skipped a beat. “You have the Snow Amulet?”
Ahuizotl’s voice took on a patronizing tone. “Didn't I tell you? Oh, I guess I didn't. Poor Daring Do, so adorable in her ignorance.”
Silently thanking the fates that it was still summer, Daring Do made a mental note to come back and kick Cabelleron in the head before the next winter solstice. That amulet was a defensive weapon from the pre-unification era when unicorns were trying to control the weather and their strategy boiled down to ‘throw magic at the sky and see what sticks’. Some of what stuck was firmly in the realm of offensive magic, and she was not about to spend the next winter hiding from hailstones the size of watermelons.
“But as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me: catnip. With my more powerful catnip, I’ll enslave all the cats in the world and form my own personal cat army!”
Daring Do blinked. She glanced around, and then blinked again. “I don’t know what’s worse, that that’s your plan, or that it actually is better than most of your plans.” She looked around at the henchponies. “Doesn’t it bother you that you’re going to be replaced by cats?”
The nearest pony shrugged. “I’m a temp,” he said.
Daring pursed her lips. “Point,” she conceded. She looked back towards Ahuizotl. “But seriously? A cat army? What are you going to do with all those cats, invade the temple of the Rat King Kiore?” Daring Do froze, and then slammed her hoof into her forehead. “You’re going to invade the temple of the Rat King Kiore, aren’t you? Do you want rat plagues? Because that’s how you get rat plagues!”
Ahuizotl grinned, baring his sharp teeth. “Some prizes are worth the cost,” he said.
Daring Do snarled. “It doesn’t matter. Cats or no cats, you’ll never get the Snake,” she said.
Ahuizotl laughed. “Oh, but Daring Do, I have it already,” he said.
Daring paused and cocked her head. “No, I definitely have it here-”
Pain exploded on the side of her head, and she slumped to the ground.
Daring Do came to slowly. She heard Ahuizotl’s voice, fading in through the haze.
“It really was a good idea to have a random henchpony throw a rock at her while she wasn’t paying attention. Good job, Savvy.”
Another pony, likely Savvy, answered. “No problem, boss.” His voice dropped a few decibels. “Knew I was overqualified for this job…”
Daring Do slowly felt her body recover. She felt pressure around her hooves, and she looked down. She was tied to an iron ring driven into the ground, ropes tying her hooves together.
“Ah, Miss Do. Welcome back to the land of the living… but not for long! Do you like it?” Ahuizotl asked gleefully.
Daring blinked. “Is there a reason you’ve just tied me up?” she asked.
“Tied you up? Oh, no, Daring Do. Welcome… to your doom!” He threw his hands up and laughed.
Daring Do raised an eyebrow as absolutely nothing happened.
Ahuizotl’s laughter slowly trailed off, and he turned and glared up through the skylight. “‘Doom’, I said ‘doom’! That’s your cue!”
“Oh, right! Sorry!” came a mare’s voice from above, and then there was the sound of squeaking, as if an old wheel was being turned, and then the sound of rumbling.
“Doom!” Ahuizotl repeated, resuming his laughter.
“What?” Daring gasped.
“Summoning water at will was one of the tricks of the acolytes here,” Ahuizotl explained. “Turns out it was just a reservoir that collected rain, dispensed at opportune times. They would release it in front of the assembly. And, of course, there’s a release switch, a kind of… last resort. It'll flood the whole complex, including where you’re tied; but I suppose that can’t be helped.”
Daring struggled against the ropes as water began to flow from hidden ports along the walls. The level rose quickly, covering her hooves. She looked up at Ahuizotl.
“Oh, dear, Daring Do. Looks like your time is up!” He laughed again at his own terrible pun.
Daring Do frowned. “You’re staying?”
“Another of Savvy’s suggestions,” Ahuizotl admitted, pointing a thumb at the named pony. “If I don’t, you’ll probably find a way to escape and steal the Fertility Snake back at my climaxing moment of triumph.”
Daring Do scowled. She pulled harder against the ropes, but the knots held tightly. For all his flaws, Ahuizotl did know his way around ropes. The water level continued rising, rising faster now, climbing above her knees and above her shoulders.
Ahuizotl laughed once more. “And now! My revenge will be complete! Good bye, Daring… huh?”
For the water, though it had been rushing furiously, suddenly dropped off to a trickle, as if the reservoir had suddenly run dry. This would not have been a bad thing… except the water level had risen only up to Daring Do’s neck. It wasn’t even touching her chin.
Daring Do looked up at Ahuizotl and smirked. “The Eohippus were a lot shorter than today's ponies,” she explained. “This much water would have easily drowned them all. But me?” She looked down and then looked back up, and her smirk grew wider. “Well, I needed a bath, anyway. Thanks, big guy!” She flashed him her winningest smile.
Ahuizotl fumed. He snarled. He roared. His sharp claws raked against the stone flagstones and he gnashed his terrible teeth…
And then he straightened up and exhaled calmly. “Oh, well. Next time, Daring Do; next time. Come, henchponies!” he ordered as he turned to leave, the statue still clenched firmly in his tail. “It’s time for me to go home and legally cheat you out of part of your daily pay by some obscure law you’ve never heard of.”
Savvy raised a hoof. “You aren't going to kill her?
“No,” Ahuizotl said bitterly. “She survived my trap. Next time, though…” He clenched a fist. “We shall see who has the last laugh.”
“Seriously?” Savvy asked incredulously. “You're just going to let her go? You could just, I don’t know, shoot an arrow at her, or…?”
“Imbecile!” Ahuizotl's tail whipped out, forcing the hapless henchpony to duck as the snake statue narrowly clocked him. “That's not how this works! Daring Do will die by my hand in a way befitting my genius and cunning! If my trap fails, and I cheat, I look like a fool! I can't have my greatest enemy Daring Do die thinking I am a fool!” He muttered angrily under his breath as he stomped away. “The incompetence! I’m surrounded by idiots! This is why I work with cats!”
Savvy followed, and then hesitated at the door. “So should we get her out, since we're being all ethical and stuff?” he asked.
Ahuizotl paused for a moment, and then smirked. “Leave her. I'm sure the lovely lady will think of something.”
“You bet I will. This won't hold me forever, Ahuizotl,” Daring warned, beginning once more to work on her bonds. “If I were you, I'd start running.”
“And if I were you, I'd be all… washed up!” Ahuizotl barked a triumphant laugh. “Ta ta! Curse you, Daring Do!” he finished cheerfully. And with that, he strutted out of the temple, his laughter still echoing off the stone walls as he departed, the Fertility Snake still held proudly in his tail hand.
Daring Do grumbled under her breath as she finally managed to free one hoof. He'd had the final joke! She pulled her helmet off and retrieved a small notebook from inside, along with a small pencil tied to the spiral by a string. Scowling, she flipped the inside cover open to a rudimentary scoretable and drew another tally mark under Ahuizotl’s face.
“I'm still winning,” she grumbled as she spat out the pencil and stuffed the notebook back into her hat. “You’d better watch your back, Ahuizotl.”
