BridgeWorld

[994AB Day 13]
Being careful to not disturb any of the treasures here, Daring Do finished inscribing the glyphs from the ancient temple's treasure room for a later in-depth deciphering. The items of this temple were not her goal, but rather the information which spoke of a much richer prize which wasn't even in the temple or within the abandoned and jungle-reclaimed city surrounding it which was bordering the Dragonlands.

Putting her notebook back inside her pocket, she carefully watched her footing as she began retracing her route back out. She had only gone three steps before she felt the vibrations and heard the rumble of stone sliding against stone. She was at first fearful she had inadvertently triggered a tripwire she had missed and set off a trap that would entomb her. But as she quickly looked around for where the danger was coming from, she felt more and more of those vibrations, louder and louder rumblings.

Something else is causing that! she realized. Somepony else must have entered the temple!

Quickly running toward the exit, focusing on making sure her haste to leave didn't trigger a trap at her location, even as it was very likely that whatever had blundered into the temple had already blocked her only route out, she zigzagged through the maze of safe tiles.

Her worse fears were not only realized when she looked out into the passageway leading to the treasure room but was exceeded by what she saw barreling down the passage. A dragon!

"Kill Celestia! Kill Luna! Kill Twilight Sparkle! Kill Equestria! BURN IT ALL DOWN!" the female dragon was muttering, oblivious to and clearly unimpressed by all the hundreds of poisoned tipped arrows raining down upon her from top, bottom, and both sides, nor the numerous wrecking balls of stones swinging to impact its head, neck, shoulders, wings, or sides.

"DRAGON! STOP!! YOU'LL BRING THE WHOLE TEMPLE DOWN UPON US BOTH!!" Daring Do screamed out.

"DRAGON!?" the dragon roared. Just then, a heavy wall of stone slammed down upon the base of the dragon's neck as it screamed and was driven to the stone floor.

Daring gasped with her hoof going to her mouth in horror at the sight of the crushed dragoness. She was still screaming, her body was flailing about in a vain struggle to deal with the tons of dead weight that had come down upon her.

But then, something happened that was perhaps even more horrific that seeing a creature getting crushed by tons of granite. That was watching the creature lift those tons of solid granite. It didn't stop there, either. The dragon was still screaming, and then she twisted about to bring her limbs into play and began using her claws to tear at and knock chunks of solid granite apart like it was balsawood.

The impacts the dragon delivered to the wall that had tried to crush her was starting to shake apart the entire temple and Daring Do had to dodge a large chunk of the ceiling in the treasure room that came loose. Fortunately, the missing piece of the ceiling exposed a new route to the outside!

"PONY!" the dragon screamed, having caught sight of Daring Do. Daring looked and saw that the dragon had finished freeing herself from the drop trap. And the dragon was clearly pissed!

Screaming in rage, the dragon blasted a massive torrent of flame at her.

Screeching in terror, Daring Do did the only thing she could do: fly!

The problem, she knew, was that the treasure room had been rigged to slice off the wings of any pegasi foolish enough to take to the air in the chamber. However, with that large chuck having fallen and nearly crushing her, it had inadvertently swept away any of the microfine wire traps, leaving a clear path straight up and out of the temple.

So that was the path she took.

She was nearly clear of the rock roof when the dragon burst out from the passageway and saw her. Screaming, the dragon quickly grabbed the huge chunk of debris and flung it as hard as she could at Daring Do.

Not being a perfect fit, the flying missile impacted the edges of the opening and blasted through like being hit by cannon fire, causing the roof of the temple to explode outward. One of the pieces of shrapnel clipped Daring Do's right wing as she desperately tried to evade.

Flailing about as she fell over the side of the collapsing temple, Daring Do was saved from a fatal landing on the street's cobblestones at the last second when she went through the branches of a mangrove tree.

Daring Do could still hear the dragon screaming, even as the temple continued to collapse, and she saw large chunks of stone being thrown out that clearly had nothing to do with gravity pulling them down. Jumping back to her hooves, she ran as fast as she could, northward, out of the city and away from a very, very pissed dragon.

[994AB Day 14]
Fortunately, her wing wasn't broken. But Daring Do couldn't afford to stop until she had left that dragon far behind, so she ran all night. When the sun finally rose the next day, she stopped to check just how badly she was hurt.

"Bruised, battered, and sprained," she grumbled as she carefully and gingerly stretched out her limb, hissing at the sharp stabs of fire when she stretched out less than halfway on her normal wingspan. "It almost sounds like a recipe that belongs in a griffon cookbook," she added, using her hooves to massage her sore joints.

"Still, it could've been worse," she sighed as she pulled a roll of athletic compression bandage from her pouch and got to work wrapping her wing up so as to keep her from risk making things worse. She still had a long way to go before she could recover the Sapphire Stone she sought.

Having to spend the rest of the day and all night digging herself out of the rubble and frustrated that the pony that had caused her such unbearable agony had gotten away, the dragon slowly trudged in the direction she had last seen it running and resumed her constant muttering "Kill Celestia! Kill Luna! Kill Twilight Sparkle! Kill Equestria! BURN IT ALL DOWN!"

Finally confident that she managed to evade the dragon who injured her wing, Daring Do made her way through the tropical jungle, eventually founding herself surrounded by a tiger, a black panther, a lynx, a cheetah, and a white house cat….