Daring Do trekked through the dangerous jungle, her head held low and ears splayed against her skull as she looked back and forth with a cautious gaze. She had already avoided two quicksand traps and an angry lion, and she hadn’t even used her wings! Her right wing was bound in a bandage. Not because it was hurt or anything, no, she was just that hardcore. Normal treasure hunting wasn’t dangerous enough, so she was going to do it with a bound wing!
But being totally badass didn’t mean that she was stupid and not cautious. Oh no. She was careful and alert, creeping her way through the forest and making sure to watch out for spike traps. It would be a really short story if she managed to get one of those spike traps in her right at the beginning, right?!
Her target was the temple ahead, hidden in the foliage and surrounded by crumbling old moss-wreathed brick walls. Pillars lined the inner courtyard, presumably holding up a long-gone roof.
A younger adventurer would have gone straight through the courtyard, right between the pillars, but Daring Do wasn’t the best treasure hunter in the entire world for nothing! No, Daring Do instead bounded over to one of the crumbling walls, and launched herself up onto the wall, dancing across until she could begin bounding from one pillar to the next, using the flat surface on top as stepping stones.
Daring Do landed triumphantly on the far side of the courtyard, on the steps leading up to the large entrance doors of the temple. The doors were huge; giant monoliths of stone polished until they gleamed.
The young pegasus stared up and up at the large doors, before taking a step forward and pushing at them. They were perfectly balanced, slowly swinging inwards on their unseen hinges with a faint grating sound of accumulated dust and dirt being crushed between precise angles.
The torches inside the room revealed the long elevated walkway leading towards the central staircase, which descended into the ground to an unknown depth.
Daring Do stepped carefully across the walkway, peering over the side and into the gloom. White points glimmered in the darkness far below. Spikes of some kind; not something she wanted to fall into.
The pegasus swallowed, and then moved to the centre of the walkway, stepping across it lightly until she reached the stairs, beginning to carefully walk down them.
As she descended the stairs, she skipped every fifth step, because she knew, instinctively, that those were the trapped stairs. She didn’t want boulders rolling down the stairs behind her. Oh no.
Daring Do reached the bottom of the stairs, and looked around. A long hallway led off towards what she assumed was the centre of the temple, where her treasure would be waiting for her. The walls of the hallway were lined with small depression where Daring Do guessed arrows or blades would fire from them.
The young pegasus hummed uncertainly as she looked left and right, looking for a way past the traps that wouldn’t involve pain and bodily injury. Not finding a secret switch or the like to help her, Daring Do bit her bottom lip and looked behind her. A slow smile formed on her face.
Turning around, Daring Do bounded up a few stairs, and then deliberately stepped on a trapped stair. There was a click, and then a low rumbling, as a large boulder began to roll down the stairs.
The boulder careened out of the tunnel, and Daring Do watched it calmly as it rolled by underneath her. She was standing above it, all four hooves extended to support her weight on the walls, letting the boulder pass between her hindlegs.
The pegasus just watched calmly as the boulder rolled down the hallway, tripping traps as it went. Spikes drove up underneath it, arrows bounced off it, and hidden blades thudded into it.
Once the boulder had passed, Daring Do dropped back down onto the floor, and then strolled down the hallway calmly. She triggered one or two traps, but they just wheezed pathetically at her as she passed, their ammunition exhausted, or their blades and spikes snapped by the boulder. And the pegasus just strutted through as though she owned the place.
Absolutely badass.
Daring Do strutted into the central chamber, pushing aside the boulder, careful of the embedded blades in it. She cast her gaze upwards to where there stood a massive, shiny red ruby sitting on a stand, elevated above the rest of the room. Of course there was no ‘Golden Muffin’. It was a ruby! Which was good, too, because rubies are stunning.
Daring Do looked about carefully, casting her gaze up towards the ceiling. Unslinging the bandages from around her wing, she began to braid them into a rope, wrinkling her nose.
“This is so cheating,” Daring Do said with a huff, as she took a blade from the boulder for a weight, and then attached it to the end of her makeshift rope. She threw the entire thing up over a stone gargoyle near the ceiling, and then climbed up the rope to hand by the red ruby, ignoring the steps completely. It was common sense to know that the stairs were trapped!
The pegasus stared at the ruby, leaning in close and scanning the words inscribed on its surface, eyes slowly widening. She hung there from the rope for several minutes, just staring, before reaching out and plucking the ruby from its pedestal.
The metal arms holding the ruby in place dropped suddenly, thudding against the pedestal, and the stairs around the pedestal all just fell away, crashing to the floor loudly.
Daring Do grinned in triumph, before she suddenly dropped, the gargoyle above her coming to life and swooping down at her!
The pegasus covered her head with her hooves and wings as the gargoyle swiped at her again and again, forcing her to back away, and then sprint towards the rear entrance of the temple. She bounded as fast as she could down the long hallway, pursued by the stone gargoyle, which was spitting and hissing at her angrily, swiping at her tail. Blades and spikes thudded from the walls, but Daring Do was moving so fast that she didn’t even get hit by any of them!
The hallway she was bounding down quickly terminated in a sudden drop, and Daring Do scowled as she was forced to use her wings, spreading them wide and launching herself out into open air. Sunshine assaulted her senses as the roar of a waterfall crashed all around her, and her wings got wet as she exploded through the centre of the waterfall in a magnificent spray.
The gargoyle soon followed, keeping after her doggedly, swiping at her tail and haunches as she dove down to the deep lake at the base of the river, letting herself dive through the surface of it hard, swimming hard and fast for the far bank. The waterlogged pony dragged herself out of the water with a gasp, her mane and tail matted down with moisture.
Even though she was wet and panting, she still looked utterly stunning. She was just that cool!
The gargoyle hissed at her as it landed on a rock nearby, red eyes narrowing evilly.
Daring Do lifted the ruby in one hoof, raising a brow. “You want this?”
The gargoyle nodded emphatically. Smiling, the pegasus stepped over closer to him, offering the ruby to him. The gargoyle swiped for it with a clawed hand.
“Psych!” Daring Do quickly brought her hoof back so that the swipe missed, and when the gargoyle's mouth opened in surprise and outrage, she stuffed the ruby into it.
The gargoyle glowered at her, mouth full of ruby, and Daring Do calmly turned around, and then kicked him in the jaw with both hooves, shattering the ruby in his rocky mouth and sending the gargoyle, spraying chips of broken ruby, falling backwards to the ground, twitching helplessly.
Daring Do tossed her mane and strode off into the sunset.
Even though Daring Do lost the Golden Muffin Ruby that day, she still memorized the secret words etched into its surface; the secret recipe to the Golden Muffin! The most divine muffin ever made fit for a king to eat and with the ability to even calm angry dragons!
And Daring Do lived happily ever after, baking the best muffins the world had ever seen.
The End.
Derpy Hooves smiled as she penned the last line of her Daring Do fanfiction, and rolled up the scroll she had been writing, carefully sealing it for later perusal.
It was going to be the best fanfiction ever!
