Dream Cycle - Applejack

“Hoo-wee,” Applejack said to herself, nodding. “Now that there's a fine abandoned ancient temple indeed.”

She picked up her big hammer, swinging it over her shoulder where it clanked against her armour, and cantered down the slope towards the door. Reaching it in seconds, the doughly Apple-family Adventurer pivoted on her forehooves and bucked the door.

It rang like a deep bell, but didn't open.

“Ah, consarn it,” she muttered. “Worth a try.”

Stepping back a few paces, she examined the temple front. If she was any judge – and she was, the Apple Family had been adventuring around temples since… a while? - there'd be a puzzle around here somewhere. And, sure enough, there were ancient but well-made chains linking to the top of the door through pulleys towards a set of water reservoirs.

It looked like she had to make it so the front two reservoirs were empty and the back two were full, and she could see at least one lever from here. Thus reassured she could get this on the road, the armoured Earth Pony began to trot briskly towards the stairs down to the reservoirs.

Who knew what kind of treasure there might be in here! This might even outdo old Granny Smith's finest spelunking expedition…

Applejack trotted up to the lever to wrap her hooves around it. She leaned into the metal, which creaked and strained as she forced it to the other side of the slot. As she did, she could see a separate wall in the reservoir starting to lower. Water began to flow out of the basin, along intricately carved stone aqueducts towards the front basin. The water in the basin she had just opened, however, was obviously not enough to open the front gate. Applejack pushed her hat down a bit further to shield her eyes from the sun as she gazed about for another lever. Following one of the aqueducts from the front basin, she quickly spotted another basin, with a lever resting beside it.

The earth pony eagerly trotted towards it, only to realize there was no good means of climbing up the short cliff the lever rested on top of.

She tapped her chin, looking about again, only to realize she was standing under a tree that looked to be more vine than leaves. She hoisted the hammer off of her back, stepping up the tree and lining up her swing carefully. Twisting herself about, she smacked the hammer into the trunk of the tree with a powerful crack!, causing the branches to shake and several vines to come loose. One dropped down from the branches, unfurling itself to form a makeshift rope dangling within easy reach of the clifftop.

Stepping up to it, Applejack twisted the vine around her front hooves before carefully shimmying her way upwards towards the next lever. The water from the first had already flowed out, leaving the lower basins half full and the door to the temple open just a few inches.

It took a minute or so to clamber to the top of the tree by vine, and by the time she reached the top Applejack was very carefully not feeling envious of ponies who could fly or teleport, like Rainbow Dash or Twilight. Or Pinkie, but what Pinkie did didn't bear thinking about too closely.

Shaking her head, Applejack made her way over to the lever and gave it a good hard shove. It moved with reluctance, creaking loudly before finally giving way, and the basin emptied itself into the one she'd already emptied before flowing on down into the ones which hauled the door open.

Even from here, Applejack could see the door opening further, just enough to let her make it inside. It didn't look like there were any more reservoirs within easy reach to drain, so she shrugged before heading back over to the tree she'd climbed. She slid down a vine to reach the bottom, cantered over to the door, and worked her way under the door with a shimmy and a wince.

Inside, she looked around before nodding to herself – this was clearly one of those high-end ancient abandoned temples, the ones with enchanted stones on the ceiling so you could see where you were going. It even had the name of the temple, picked out in light stone on the grey background – Applejack's ancient Maresopotamian was a bit rusty, but it looked like it was the 'high chair temple' of 'padda-mea-thicka'.

Applejack frowned, trying to remember that particular ancient god, then shrugged. It didn't really matter, anyway – she could see the way deeper into the temple, so off she went.

She tried to push away the tiny bit of her brain that seemed to take a cue from Twilight by chastising her from raiding tombs of ponies she had never heard of, figuring she could look it up later. Besides, temples no one has heard of have the best treasure, and she wasn’t going to let anypony get their hooves on it before she could! She trotted down the halls eagerly, though not so eagerly she forgot to check for raised platforms and holes in the wall. The last thing she needed was an arrow poking a hole into her hat or giant spinning blades to cut her fancy climbing gear to ribbons.

Before too long Applejack found herself stepping up to a set of large stone doors at the end of the hallway. After a quick glance to make sure there were no tripwires to disarm, Applejack pushed the door open. The doors led into a small stone room lit by more glowing bricks and the occasional torch. Most of the walls were rather bare, but the one opposite Applejack was an absolute marvel! What looked like hundreds of gems covered the wall, all dazzling in the light, the colors blending to culminate into a… a…

Applejack scratched her head, not entirely sure what to make of the image in front of her. It looked all wrong, with curves stopping and starting halfway across the canvas, gem colors placed seemingly haphazardly across the canvas. As Applejack’s eyes scanned the canvas, she suddenly realized there was a piece missing, and, now that she looked harder, some of the pieces seemed to go together better than others…

On the one hoof, she could just take all the gems and stuff here, and that would be a fairly nice haul. It looked like about a week's work for Rarity's gem-finding spell, and Rarity never did do a week's work with that spell in one go.

On the other hoof, there had to be more deeper into the temple, and it looked like this might be some sort of puzzle to open the way. That was a common thing in places like this – it wasn't really very convenient while the temple was being used, but it was pretty neat when they were abandoned like this.

Tongue sticking absently out, Applejack took a step back as she tried to work out the best set of moves to do. So that one had to go there, and that one there, and…

After a minute or so of looking at the pattern of the gems, absently noting how twinkly they were, Applejack trotted up to the picture and shoved part of the picture. It slid smoothly into the new position with a faint grinding noise, and the Earth Pony adventurer nodded to herself before moving the next one.

As they moved, the gems glittered and shone – drawing her eye, making it a little harder to remember the carefully-worked-out plan for how to get them into the right layout.

“Ah can just keep goin' until it looks right,” Applejack said to herself.

Her mind drifted as she began to slide the tiles around haphazardly. Every now and then she might be able to tear her mind away from its focus on the shimmering of the gemstones and try to formulate a plan once again, but it would soon drift away once she got a few moves into it, and leave her back to absentmindedly sliding pieces back and forth. If it wasn’t for the suddenly loud clunk and the refusal for the tile she had been about to slide to move, she may not have realized she had solved the puzzle at all. She took a step back, staring up at the image created. It was still a bit hard to make out what exactly it was supposed to be. The gems glittered so brilliantly that it was difficult not to simply get lost in their colors. It didn’t help that the first thing that popped into Applejack’s mind was an absolute absurd ideas as to what the picture was. After all, they didn't get that thick, how would anypony waddle around in them if they did?

The sound of stone grinding against itself met Applejack's ears as the mural began to open up, revealing yet another passage behind it. What caught Applejack’s attention more, however, was the treasure chest that lay on a small raised pedestal in the middle of the hall. She eagerly dashed over to it, her hooves scrambling at the lock for a moment before she managed to undo it and lift the heavy top of the chest open. Peering over the edge, Applejack could almost hear a few rising notes of anticipation as she reached down, hooves wrapping around her prize before turning about to hold the thing up in the bright light of the room.

Sitting in her hooves was, not some priceless ruby or mound of gold, but something thick, white, plush, and awfully… crinkly.

“What the...” she said, turning it over just in case she'd got the wrong impression.

No, this did seem to be just what it had originally appeared as – a plump white diaper, one so much bigger than normal that it looked like it might actually fit her!

Her mind went back to the picture, and she blushed slightly – it looked like she was right about what the picture had been – then she decided to have a look under the diaper, to see if there was anything else in the chest and whether the diaper had been just there as… as padding.

“Now ah'm doin' Pinkie's job for her,” Applejack groaned out loud, then looked. All there was was a folded piece of paper, which she opened to read – finding what looked like nothing more nor less than a shipping form. It was in Maresopotamian again, but she could get the basics.

It described the shipment of a chest with one (1) Padding of +2 Cold Resistance to the temple, and Applejack paused in her reading before looking at it again.

Now she thought about it, it was pretty common in ancient temples for the early parts of the temple to give tools needed deeper into it, and maybe that was what was going on here – so she might well have a lot more trouble trying to get through this without the diaper than just putting it on now and getting it over with.

As if on cue, a cool draught blew through the temple’s hallways, making Applejack shiver and bury her face into her chest. She looked down at the diaper again, before eventually giving a slightly reluctant shrug and laying the diaper out. Besides, it’s not like anypony was going to see her wearing it. She just needed the protection, the minute she was out of here she’d take it off and nopony would be the wiser. Setting her rear down on the diaper, she couldn’t help but notice that it was surprisingly soft and springy. Applejack bounced up and down a little bit, letting out a small giggle before she reached down to pull the front up. It took a bit of finagling to pull the two sides up and secure them to the front, not to mention threading her tail through the rear hole, but eventually Applejack stood up, her rear legs spread by the fluff around her waist.

She gave it a few tentative steps, her legs needing to lift high into the air as she waddled around. Despite how silly she was sure she looked, Applejack couldn’t help but grin as she moved to waddle further into the temple. No unwelcome breezes were going to stop her now! She was sure she’ll find the lost treasure in no time!

Crinkle-step, Crinkle-step,

Applejack waddled along the hallway, gazing up at the murals along the walls that depicted a few other ponies in similarly thick diapers, all looking rather pleased with herself. She was too busy watching them that she didn’t notice she’d reached the next room until she bumped rather suddenly into a wall with a puff of foal powder.

Shaking her head a little, trying to ignore how undignified that had been, Applejack looked around at the room.

There were a dozen or so large stone blocks – enormous ones, ones which would take all her strength to shift – around the room, and corresponding holes to put them in. It was, in other words, a fairly classic Sliding Block Puzzle.

The main challenge, it was already clear, would come from the low walls scattered around the room. They weren't high enough to completely stop Applejack from seeing over them, but it would mean some careful planning…

...though not as much as working out which block went in which hole. There were symbols on each block in groups of three – such as a bottle symbol, or a pacifier symbol, or a diaper symbol, but the last one in the set was always a complicated multicoloured spiral which almost seemed to move as Applejack looked at it.

It was all very confusing, and Applejack decided she could probably ignore it. The other two symbols were coloured, and surely there could only be one solution with those anyway?

Pondering that, she waddled over to the first and simplest of the blocks to shift. She took her stance, readying her hammer, then gave it a whack – and nearly fell over as the block moved with startling ease, almost rolling like a die across the room.

Foam! They were made of foam! That was just so silly… but it was also much easier to handle, admittedly...

The earth pony watched as the block bounced to a halt on top of one of the platforms. She hadn’t really seen what the symbol was on the platform, but the bottle block was glowing green, and green was a good color, right?

Waddling over to a block that sported a blue pacifier and diaper, Applejack decided to simply push it along with gentle nudges of her hammer. It rolled easily along the path, bouncing over to another platform, and the block fell into place with a bright blue glow.

Turning happily, Applejack swung her rear left and right as she waddled over to another block, deciding to bouncing this one along by smacking her padded rear into it. The spiral pattern spun as the block was thrown about the room, making Applejack’s head spin a bit as she watched it twirl around. She gave it an extra bump to keep it from falling into a small pit and onto yet another platform. The slot began to glow yellow, which only gave Applejack more confidence. She was probably just overthinking the whole puzzle, she just had to get these in the spots.

As she waddled over to the final one, she turned about, wiggling her rear before giving one strong buck. The block bounced away, careening off of another before flopping over the edge of one of the walls and into a final pit. It began to glow red, leaving Applejack standing a little confused. The blocks were all in place… was there something she was miss-

The rest of her thought was swept away as the ground dropped out from under her.

Applejack dropped through the air for a surprisingly long time. She kind-of remembered that you counted, when something dropped, to tell how far down it was when it landed… but she'd lost count some time before hitting the bottom.

Eventually, she hit something soft with a fwoomph and bounced – once, twice, three times, before finally coming to a halt on a springy surface with an odd feel to it.

It felt a bit like a trampoline, in that it was bouncy, and AJ experimentally bounced up and down once or twice to confirm – but why would there be a trampoline inside a temple?

She looked up, trying to see how far she'd fallen, but the ceiling offered no clues.

“Well… ah guess ah'm down here now,” she decided, and looked around for a door. One came to her attention almost immediately, and she trotted over to travel deeper into the temple.

After several minutes of wandering around corridors, Applejack was no closer to finding a way back up out of the presumably-very-deep hole she'd ended up in, but she did eventually find another of the kind of room she knew had to be a puzzle room.

The odd thing was, there was one wall, and that was completely blank. But the other wall was a mirror, and it was only when she looked in the mirror that she could see the sliding tiles she knew had to be there.

It was a bit odd that there were so many sliding puzzles in this temple, but maybe it was just how they did things here? AJ shrugged, and picked up the pile of foam blocks she was probably supposed to use to climb up to the higher parts of the wall.

She'd have to do the whole puzzle looking at the mirror, it seemed…

Applejack waddled over to the blank wall, placing the block down as she looked back over her shoulder to get her bearings. There was some bright red colored tile she was standing in front of, with a prominent spiral painted on it as well. A similar looking colored symbol could be seen on the opposite side of the wall, about half-way up. Applejack shrugged, wondering a bit why this temple seemed to have matching puzzles and nothing else, but figured she shouldn’t complain if it meant an easier time reaching treasure. Besides, she did fail that last one, she was quick to remind herself.

It took a little while to get her bearings by following her actions in the mirror to make sure she was pushing things in the right direction, but the tiles slid along surprisingly easily, and never threatened to slip back down a notch when pushed upwards, so the physical task was actually quite simple.

At least, it would be if it weren’t for the diaper around her waist.

Applejack let out a small sigh of effort, feeling as if her waddling had become wider as she worked on the puzzle. She looked herself up and down in the mirror, but it offered no clues to her predicament. Her diaper had always reached to her knees… right?

With a satisfying clunk, the last tile slid into place, but, rather than the door to the next room opening, there was the sound of stones grinding against each other as a few more mirrors on pedestals rose up from the ground. A small shaft of light suddenly cut down from the ceiling, though Applejack had now idea how it managed to pierce so deeply into the dungeon. Instead, she grumbled, trying to figure out what this second part of the puzzle was for…

Jumping down from her pile of blocks, Applejack waddled around the mirrors to see if they had any differences to them. She did notice something a bit odd, which was that they were like the funny magic mirrors in fun houses – this one made her diaper look big, that one made her look small – but the main thing she noticed was that one of them could be slid across to interrupt the beam of sunlight.

She did so, and the beam reflected off in a sparkly rainbow dazzle. Applejack was amazed by how beautiful it was, and sort of lost track of time for a moment, then shook her head and twisted the mirror around.

As she moved it, the dazzle faded a bit, until there was a single beam of light bouncing off to hit the side of another mirror. It seemed obvious what she should do, so the mare waddled over to that one – twisting it, producing another dazzle of bright colours which slowly focused down to a single sunbeam.

Applejack wasn't sure how many mirrors there had originally been, but it seemed like she'd moved an awful lot – and seen an awful lot of shimmers of rainbow light – by the time she was down to the last one.

She pressed her hooves against the stone base of the final mirror, giving it a heave to move it towards the beam of light. Her hips swayed from side to side, her diaper’s crinkling echoing through the room as she worked. The mirror thudded into place, and once again another beam of dazzling light was produced. Rather than fly off to hit the wall, the beam landed in the middle of the room, providing a soft glow of light. Applejack found herself moving towards it, not really thinking why, other than that it seemed like a good idea.

With a pomf, she sat down in the dazzling beam, staring up at the lights dancing around her. Her eyes widened as she stared up. Not only was her vision filled with the brilliant rainbow patterns, but from where she sat, she could see every mirror she had placed around the room, and her reflection in them. She stared at the one to her right, watching as it almost seemed to move on its own, giggling and squeezing its diaper between its legs. Slowly, almost unnoticeably, her reflection’s diaper began to swell. The reflection took notice, only to grin wider and squeeze her padding again as her eyes shifted and spun in a wide array of colors.

Applejack looked to another, only to see her reflection bouncing happily on its rear, its own diaper ballooning as well.

She wasn't sure how long she sat, bouncing and shifting and even giggling, but eventually something caught her eye that wasn't the funny shiny colours or the bouncy reflections.

It was lots of dust motes, dancing around her in different colours as the beam of light lit them up. The adventure-pony turned her head, following them, and more motes came – thicker and faster, and bringing with them an oddly floral smell.

She sneezed, shook her head, and really looked around for the first time in a while. The mirrors were all dusty, now, and she didn't think she'd been sitting here for that long… except, now she looked, there was a lot of dust pouring down from the ceiling.

Applejack jolted to her hooves as she realized – there was some kind of sweet-smelling powder coming down in such an amount it was starting to fill up the room!

She then nearly fell over as the unexpected bulk of her diaper almost made her unbalance, and she gave it a confused look – wasn't she used to waddling with it by now? How could it be a surprise?

But the memory of the shiny colours made her think again, deciding to focus instead on getting out of the room – however she could do that – before the foal powder became a real problem.

The explorer spun in place, trying to spot some way out. Already the door she had entered was completely covered in powder, and still rising higher. She gulped, taking a few deep breaths to try and calm herself, only to cough a bit from the powder.

As she looked up, she noticed one of the spouts of foal powder in the wall seemed to be empty. She hurried over to it, jumping up to try and reach it while cascades of powder continued to rain around her, clouds billowing out as they hit the still rising pile. Applejack grumbled, forced to wait as the powder rose ever higher to get a better chance at reaching the spout.

After several minutes of a bit more sneezing and worrying, Applejack began to waddle backwards, quite the feat considering the size of her diaper, before she rushed (or at least, waddled in a manner that was similar to rushing) to the spout. With a leap, her front hooves managed to catch the lip of the wide spout, her hind legs kicking as she pulled herself up. As she did, however, there was a soft thud, and Applejack looked over her shoulder to see her hammer had slipped free from her back and was now being buried in powder. Unwilling to launch a recovery mission, she was forced to hoist herself up.

The spout was surprisingly big, allowing her to crawl through the passageway as the room continued to fill behind her. Her padding was large enough to press into the floor and ceiling of the passage, but miraculously didn’t impede her progress beyond that. Several minutes of crawling finally brought Applejack tumbling out of a hole in another wall, into a room with a treasure chest probably meant as a reward for some other puzzle. Well, she probably earned it either way.

It was the work of only a moment to open the chest, as it didn't have a lock – maybe it was never meant to be locked in the first place – and Applejack's first reaction as she saw what was inside was a confused frown, then a snort.

Lying in the chest, on a little cushion with a multi-coloured pattern, was a large hammer – but one not a lot like the one she'd lost perhaps ten minutes ago. Instead of a hardy wooden hammer with iron reinforcement, this one was a brightly coloured one made of what looked a lot like plastic. In fact, the hammer as a whole looked like it was just a toy hammer, upscaled to the size of the one she normally used.

After thinking about it a bit, though, Applejack decided not to get too bothered about the cutesy depiction. It was a hammer, after all, and she was in need of one of those – and wasn't there some kind of tendency for enchanted stuff to look a bit odd?

She reached in, picking it up, and gave it a few practice swings. It felt a bit light, but not overly so, so she adjusted her grip slightly before swinging it against the wall.

There was a squeaky sound, and it bounced off. Applejack was about to groan about her luck when she noticed something odd – the wall had creaked slowly open, revealing that there was a secret door there.

She glanced between the hammer and the wall for a moment before deciding whatever it was she had done, it had helped. So maybe the hammer wasn’t all bad.

She slung it over her back, making sure to keep it more tightly secured this time, before pushing the door open and trotting down the secret passageway. It was pretty similar to all the other passages she had been down so far. Dark, musty brick, the occasional bit of moss clinging to the walls, and carvings depicting ponies in rather puffy garments along it. What was slightly more surprising was coming to a fork in the path. It shouldn’t have, but it took Applejack off guard for a moment as she tried to decide which way to head. She peered down the left passage, only to see that it looked like a rather short hallway to a dead end.

Trotting a bit closer, she was sure it was a dead end. Or, at least, something that she couldn’t open. A large picture of a pony with… something in its mouth was carved on it, but otherwise nothing could be gleaned as to how she would proceed. Turning about, Applejack simply headed down the other direction.

This hallway quickly lead to a door into yet another puzzle room. Weren’t these temples supposed to have monsters in them too? The room was filled with drawings and inscriptions, much more than any others had been, which only drew Applejack in out of curiosity. Unfortunately, her intrigue was momentarily halted when she felt the ground shift beneath her as she stepped on a pressure plate.

The door behind her ground shut, and something else came sliding down in front of her, too quick for her to react before it was done – a glass wall, cutting her off from the rest of the room in a kind of little glass cage.

Applejack unlimbered her squeaky hammer, ready to try and break through, but before she could put any effort behind it something else started to happen. A hose with a nozzle came slithering down, trembled for a moment, then began to pour out a fizzy, sweet-smelling liquid.

The smell was one Applejack was very familiar with. Cider! The temple was trying to cover her in cider!

It pooled on the floor, slowly rising, and Applejack realized that if it reached her diaper and all soaked in she'd be stuck dragging around some extremely heavy padding for the whole rest of the time in the temple! That would be a problem.

But what should she do instead…

As she thought, she noticed something on one of the wall murals. It looked a bit like a barrel… a barrel of cider…

Suddenly the idea popped into her head. She needed to sort out the cider problem by drinking it! That would prevent her padding getting all soggy!

There was no time to waste, so she took the nozzle in both hooves and stuck it in her mouth to start drinking. It tasted just like her best-quality cider from down on the farm… which was a bit odd, but also nice enough she didn't feel like complaining.

gulp

gulp

gulp

Applejack continued to guzzle away at the cider, her eyelids lowering a little as the warm drink soothed her. Her padding pressed into the glass behind her before sloooowly sliding down into the shallow pool of cider below. Her thirsty padding quickly began to soak up the drink, Applejack having completely forgotten the whole reason she was drinking the cider to begin with.

Her belly bulged a bit as she drank, every little shift and movement she made eliciting a few sloshes from her gut. It wasn’t too long before she found herself giving a soft whine as the cider’s flow slowed, then stopped, leaving her suckling on an empty hose. It quickly retracted and the glass doors lowered, leaving Applejack in a slightly soggy diaper and with a rather sloshy belly.

She tried to rock to her hooves, only for the movement to shake her belly up. Her cheeks puffed up for a moment before she let out a loud belch, sinking into her padding as she gave a sigh of relief.

She managed to return to her hooves and waddle over to the wall to try and decipher the various pictures and texts adorning it. Some looked straightforward, with ponies pushing blocks and pulling levers, but others were a bit more… complicated.

After staring for several minutes, Applejack thought she was starting to see the patterns. There were lots of spirals, of course, which was what the actual puzzle seemed to revolve around, and the rest of it seemed sort of irrelevant.

Perhaps.

So she focused on the spirals, which seemed to swim in front of her eyes. They were arranged into odd patterns, odd shapes, and they were all different colours – but, after a lot of careful concentration, Applejack could see three shapes, each in a single colour.

The red one was sort of a shape like a circle on top of another circle, with the top of the first circle touching the bottom of the second circle.

The blue one was a kind of cross shape, made from a line going up-and-down and another line going side-to-side.

And the green one, which Applejack stared at for the longest, was a line near the top of the wall and then a diagonal line down from the top right to the bottom left.

Applejack wasn't sure what those meant, but she was pretty sure it had something to do with those. And there was a circle of ten symbols on the floor in front of the wall, and two of them were the red and the green symbol from the wall!

There wasn't the blue symbol, though. There were some numbers, 0-1-2-3-4-5, then a curly symbol, the green one, the red one, and something else like the curly symbol upside down.

Applejack sat back on her squishy padding, thinking about what the answer could be.

She racked her brain, staring at these odd, non-sensical symbols for what felt like an hour. If that symbol went there, and those symbols went here, then that would mean… what would that mean? She knew she should’ve brought Twilight along, she’d probably have figured out this puzzle in no time! Though, then Applejack might’ve had to share the treasure too. Then, suddenly, after even more seemingly fruitless staring, something clicked. Of course! It was so obvious! The curly symbol and the green symbol had to be combined with the purple symbol and the number 5 to get the petunia symbol, which, when flipped around and counting the number of angles present gave the red symbol and the number 28, which multiplied by the color red gave…

Applejack followed this completely coherent and sensible train of thought, punching in the code on the buttons in the ring around her. Sitting atop the last one proudly, she looked up at the mural expectantly.

It was at least a minute before Applejack realized nothing was happening. Her ears lowered as she pouted a bit, standing up to try and figure this out again. Only for a panel to suddenly open in the mural, revealing a rather anti-climactically tiny box. She stepped up to the panel and opened it, revealing a red pacifier sitting inside the cloth lined box.

Applejack beamed upon finding the treasure. A Pacifier of Eternal Suckling! This was her lucky day! Immediately she popped the pacifier in her mouth, grinning as she gave it a few suckles.

Sucking on the pacifier several times, Applejack wondered what to do from here. There didn't seem to be any other way out of this bit, and the other route had a dead end… with only a picture of a-!

Aha!

Applejack smirked, glad to have worked out this puzzle. “Ah'm not such a slow-poke after all,” she said, turning to waddle her way back to the dead end. If there was a picture of a pony with a pacifier blocking the dead end, and she was sure there was, then coming to the dead end with a pacifier would be the solution!

That made perfect sense.

She retraced her hoof-steps, proud of herself for managing to remember the confusing route through the corridors of the temple (follow the hallway), and within only a few minutes was stood in front of the picture.

Once there, the crinkle-butted adventurer suckled her pacifier a bit uncertainly. Was there something she was supposed to do, or would she just need to get close enough?

She simply stood looking at the wall for a short while, still occasionally suckling at her pacifier. As she did, she noticed a few of the symbols on the wall glowing ever so slightly. She stopped suckling in surprise, and the glow quickly faded away. She suckled again, and the glow returned. She continued suckling, picking up the pace a bit as the glow grew brighter and brighter, spreading to other symbols on the wall. Soon the whole wall was aglow, and with a loud rumbling, the stone began to slide downwards. Applejack trotted forward as the passage revealed itself, still suckling instinctively on the pacifier.

Standing in the room were two statues of ponies, one of which looked like it was sporting several thick diapers. A circle sat beside the other statues, as if there was meant to be one more that had long given way to the years the temple had sat abandoned. Applejack found herself waddling up to them, looking them over. She scratched her head, a bit unsure of what to do, until she noticed some writing on the floor that looked an awful lot like foalish scribbles. A picture of a diaper and an arrow pointing from the first pony statue to the space where the third was meant to be, along with some kind of drawing that looked like a pony failing to squeeze a smaller diaper over a larger one… but… what did that mean?

Sitting down on her rump, Applejack gave it some careful thought.

So there was a statue with lots of thick diapers, and there was another statue with no diapers, and there was a third statue – or there had been – which had no diapers, but which was supposed to have lots of diapers on.

Well, surely she'd have to get the diapers from statue one to statue three, but since there was no statue three she'd have to find something else to take its place. Or maybe she could try moving statue two into place.

She took the first diaper off the first statue, easily untaping it, then went to do the second one – only for the tabs holding it closed to flash, showing a briefly-there icon of a padlock before the symbol disappeared again.

Confused, Applejack inspected the one – very large – diaper she'd taken off so far, then put it on the middle statue. It was way too big, and sort of hung there, but as soon as she finished taping it on the tabs flashed and the padlock symbol faded.

So… there could only be one diaper off the statues at any time. But she couldn't put a smaller diaper on top of a larger one, that was just logic.

Applejack decided this one would need a lot of thinking, and sat back on her own padding to consider it.

It really was inconvenient that the third statue was missing. How in Equestria was she supposed to get all the diapers from one statue to another if there were only two to work with? Not to mention all these silly rules she had to listen to. Rules were dumb, any good adventuring pony knows that!

She shifted on her rump, crinkles filling the air and causing her to glance down at her rear… and she only just managing to stop herself from slapping her own forehead.

Applejack shook her head and chuckled to herself. Of course, how could she have been so silly, she could be the third statue! She eagerly waddled over to the first statue, undoing the second diaper and quickly plonking her own rear down into it and securing it to her own padding. It was a bit loose, but the diaper she was already wearing helped alleviate that somewhat.

She went to remove the third diaper, only to pause as she thought. If she took the third diaper off, it wouldn’t fit anywhere if the thicker diapers were already on the other statues! But if she moved the thickest one… She quickly did just that, securing the thickest diaper around her rear, and freeing the second statue to take the third diaper. Now, what would the next move be…? She thought, waddling back and forth with her legs spread even further by the extra padding between them.

After a bit more careful thought, Applejack realized there was really only one possible move that didn't just mean undoing what she'd done. She took the third diaper off the first statue and put it on the second, then began moving the first and second diapers off her padded rump and back onto the first statue.

That took a bit of careful doing, as she got them mixed up at one point and had to 'undo' what she'd just done, but after a minute or two she was set with three of the diapers on her and only two more left on the first statue.

The next step was harder to remember, and it wasn't until she was most of the way through moving the first four diapers that Applejack realized how to do it.

She had to do the biggest one every other move, the next biggest every other move she wasn't doing the biggest, and so on. It meant a lot of taping and untaping diapers, and when it came time to assemble the whole set on her crinkly rear she felt all five diapers plus the one she was already wearing fitting very snugly indeed.

But she did it, and after checking to make sure they were all on she stood in the position the third statue should have been.

There was a brief moment during which nothing happened, save for a bit of shifting in place from Applejack as she adjusted to her new wide stance.

Eventually, though, there was the familiar sound of stone grinding against stone as another door opened for her to proceed through. She gave a little cheer before waddling forward, her hips swinging left and right cutely as she continued on through the temple.