Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair
Daring Do's hoof brushed across the ancient carvings as lightly as a feather, letting the pattern of grooves and ridges tell a story in a tongue the paint had long forgot.
Fourth century work, it told her. No, third. The edges weren't clean enough for iron tools. Had to be enchanted gold. She added this clue to the other evidence she'd collected.
A crumbling structure, not preserved by runes or magic. Relatively few traps, mostly mundane, all disabled. Little in the way of magical artifacts, though that wasn't uncommon. Not every ancient site was a vault for some terrible and great magic. Very few were, in fact, though those made for less publishable stories. Only her most dedicated readers would have wanted a copy of Daring Do and Petrified Substructure of an Old Fishing Village.
Still, the ruins told a story, though it was one she'd heard the likes of many times. A tomb. Given the era, probably some multi-tribe chieftain with aspirations of divinity and a unicorn/earth pony workforce. Not a particularly noteworthy find, but not all archeology was groundbreaking discoveries.
Doubtless Leo would be having a field day deeper in the structure.
Setting her sketchpad back into her saddlebag, she tapped a small gemstone set into her bracer. "This Alpha Leader to basecamp, come in basecamp."
The stone crackled for a moment with magical static. "Basecamp here," reported a tinny version of a cheery voice, "What's up, professor?"
While solo runs had been the highlight of her career (and her bestseller list), the game was different now. Ever since Ahuizotl and the other Guardian Beasts had stopped blindly fighting anypony who entered their territories and instead started working with them (specifically, the Royal Society for the Preservation of Antiquities) and by extension, Daring herself, to protect and catalogue the ancient heritage sites. That and Caballeron retiring. Studying ruins was so much easier when she didn't have to keep a constant eye out for him scheming in the shadows to snatch every artifact out from under her.
Far harder had been publicly merging the two halves of her life.
"Comms discipline, basecamp," Daring chided, "I've finished my study of the southwestern corridor. Returning to camp now to log my findings."
"Gotcha— I mean, roger Alpha Leader."
Comms discipline didn't really matter in this case since this wasn't a particularly dangerous ruin, without even a single labyrinth or puzzle. She could allow a little slack. This time. "It's fine Ruby. How are the other teams doing?"
There was a sound like shuffling papers. "Let me se, uhhh... ah! Delta team is working in the North tower. Sparky wanted permission to try and clear out the rubble."
"Denied," Daring said flatly. "I don't care how many generations he says his forefathers have been digging caves, the area's too unstable without a team of earthmovers and a unicorn for backup. If he doesn't like it, tell him he can take it up with me personally."
"I'll pass the message along. Gamma team is on their break. They brought back a few artifacts that CD and his crew are analyzing now. Early report says tool shards, but nothing's definitive yet."
"Gold?" Daring asked, testing the waters of her theory.
"Totally."
Excellent. Just as predicted. "Good, anything else?"
"Bravo team's about to head out." She hesitated. "But Bravo leader's holding back. Said she needed to talk with you first. She's waiting by your tent."
Out of all the creatures on this expedition, Daring's second-in-all-but-name was the only creature who could do such a thing and get away with it. A testament to their years spent working together. Daring knew she wouldn't waste her time on something trivial, and a meeting in her tent rather than the common area meant it was of particular importance.
"I'm on my way. Alpha Leader out." The gem went dark as the spell ended.
Taking up her torch and making sure her hat was secure, Daring Do left the way she'd come, her mind buzzing with curiosity as to what Leo had found so noteworthy of the generic tomb.
Camp was set up across several foothills far enough away from the half-buried structure that they wouldn't risk spearing a stake through an artifact. A half dozen tents of varying size with about four times as many occupants scurrying about.
The whole camp was a buzzing hive of activity, and not just because there were several changelings among their number. Even as the daylight dimmed, any creature not currently in the ruins was either cleaning up an artifact, comparing their findings to the literature, or coordinating an active team through crystal communicators and maps. They barely even noticed when she arrived; that was the kind of professional Daring hoof-picked to go on these trips out of the hundreds of grad students (and occasional overeager fancolt) who applied.
The space around her tent was quiet, set aside as it was from the main cluster, just as she liked it. The game may have changed but old habits died hard.
Quiet, but not empty.
A mare stood by the door, hoof beating out an impatient tattoo on the dirt. The torchlight danced in her eyes, bright and quick with the kind of barely-restrained youthful eagerness Daring herself hadn't felt in years. Daring knew that look. Whatever she'd found, it was good.
"Inside," was all the mare said before disappearing behind the tent flap. Daring raised an eyebrow and followed.
The inside of the tent wad comfortable, if spartan. A cot sat against one wall with a collapsible stool next to it and a haversack of supplies next to that. On the other side was a small table weighed down with maps, notes, and minor pieces of equipment. A lantern dangled from the center pole. The rest of the space was occupied by Petunia Paleo—Leo to her close colleagues—already pacing with impatience. Waiting for permission to speak. Her flowing aqua ponytail was streaked slate-grey from dust, as were her beige coveralls. Unwashed of tomb dust. She'd come straight there from the dig site.
Daring Do took her time. Leo was a fine student, one of her best. Good head on her shoulders, smart as a whip, with an eye for detail that exceeded her years. Still, the mare had her faults, impatience being a prime example. But archeology was rarely kind to those who rushed, so she took the opportunities when she saw them to force the mare to slow down.
She sat down gingerly onto the chair, feeling the familiar twinge in her hip. One bad fall from a swinging vine nearly seventeen years ago and her body just refused to let her forget.
Her canteen was hanging off the bed, and she snagged it with a wing. Another twinge, but the medicinal tea within quickly soothed it. Only when her thirst was quenched did she finally turn to her guest. The mare was practically vibrating on the spot. "Okay. What do you have?"
Finally free to speak, Leo took a deep shuddering breath. "I think we might have stumbled onto something really big here."
Daring kept her face blank even as mild disappointment bubbled in the back of her mind. Another of Leo's faults: over-eagerness. She was from the generation that had grown up on Daring Do novels and still believed that every ruin, every old temple would have the next Alicorn Amulet or Oatsetta Stone if she just looked a little harder, dug a little deeper. For all the mare's talents, this would not be the first time she'd seen the ghosts of kings in the footprints of farmers. It was a tomb; perhaps one of a formerly undocumented ruler, but nothing so grand as she was making it out to be. But the transition from adventurer to educator had taught Daring that any experience could be a learning one, so she nodded for her to continue, already preparing her counterarguments.
She paced as she continued, bleeding off nervous energy to keep her mind and words clear. "Okay, so, hear me out. I was with my team in the central chamber, doing a study of the sepulcher. Urn and Idol were making sketches of the architecture while Tempy provided light so I could study the corpse."
Naturally. Bones were her specialty, after all. "Something strange about it?"
"No. Hip and skull structure looks like an earth pony stallion, maybe about forty years old based on his teeth. Lack of stress fractures or any damage at all to the cannons looks like an easy, even sedentary lifestyle, implying a non-labor class. Magical degradation placed time of death around the early fourth century."
That fit with her evidence of the structure. "Cause of death?"
"My money's on the shattered ribs. Something blunt. War hammers were just becoming popular then. Probably a rival tribe."
Unsupported speculation. Another habit the mare still needed to break. "That matches what I was seeing; the stonework fits that timeline."
"Yeah, but it doesn't." Daring froze at the interruption. The stonework didn't match? What did she mean?
"Go on."
"I noticed it when I was nose-deep in his pelvis, checking for fracture patterns. The carvings and murals don't line up with the edges of the bricks."
That... no, that would mean—
"So I decided to follow my hunch. I ignored the pictograms and followed the original lines. And they led me..." she paused, intentionally, a vulpine grin spreading across her features, "To a false wall."
Daring felt her breath hitch in her throat. She hadn't noticed the fault in the walls. Would she have found the false wall? Would it have slipped by her? "Did you...?"
Leo shook her head. "Not me. I found the hidden seams and had Tempy excise it with her magic. But behind it, I found more skeletons."
That was a relief. More skeletons was certainly a find, but it didn't change anything greatly. Just that whoever was buried at the head had been powerful enough for slaves or servants to be buried with him. It'd have been no great loss if she'd missed it. They were-
"That's when things got weird." Daring's train of thought screeched to a halt. She hadn't even gotten to the important part yet?
Petunia pulled a hexagonal gemstone prism from her pocket. The expedition didn't have many of these, expensive as they were, but they were so valuable when a finding was too delicate to move. With a simple pulse of magic it activated. Cloth walls hardened into stone, the table and bed fading away as a large plinth faded into being. It was a top tier illusion. It needed to be to catch the kind of detail their line of work required.
Daring's heart skipped a beat as the skeleton came into being. Followed by another, then a third, and a fourth. She didn't needed a cutie mark in bones to know what she was looking at. Petunia provided an explanation anyway.
"Enlarged craniums and muzzles, but with drastically smaller orbital sockets. Horns are stubby by modern standards and lack a mana-channeling spiral. You'll notice how the ulnas and radii are unusually short and wide, suggesting the torsos were particularly dense and compact. Wings on the third specimen are significantly undersized, yet are complete and show no signs of malformation or stunted growth. In short—"
"Unarans," Daring finished, the word leaving her like a ghost.
"The precursor ponies," the grinning cerulean mare agreed, "To the best of my knowledge, these are both the most intact sets of remains ever found and the furthest south any traces have ever been located by almost two hundred miles."
The illusion faded, returning them to the inside of the tent. Petunia placed the crystal on the table and turned to her mentor with a grin. "So, my theory: what we have here is a structure built some time before recorded history by the Unarans. At some point after their disappearance it was discovered by a tribe of modern ponies, relatively speaking, who turned was I theorize to be a fort or battlement into a place of reverence. They're the ones who added the carvings. At some point in the third to fourth century, one particular king decided to use it as his personal entombment chambers. After he passed, knowledge of it mostly died with him until it was forgotten entirely and eventually buried by erosion from the Mustang mountains. I know most of it's just a theory and we'll need to do a lot of studying to confirm anything but, like I said, I think this could be something really big."
Daring Do said nothing. Everything was oddly muted, like all her senses were covered by a thick sheet of wool. Moving through memory, she reached into her pack and pulled out a slim silver flask. The sharp smell of hard liquor helped pull her back to reality enough to take a sip. A longer pull cleared her up the rest of the way. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the polished metal as she lowered it, now empty. Where had all the black in her mane gone? She could barely make out the stripes these days.
She turned to her apprentice— no, more then that, her protégé. The earth pony's eyes radiated a strange mix of caution and hopefulness; the glee had been supplaced by her lack of a response. Even now, a mare as old as Daring had been in her first trilogy, Petunia still was looking up at her for approval. That ended now.
"I think it's about time I retired."
The sudden change in topic caught Petunia off guard, leaving her briefly speechless. "What? Retire? Now? At the cusp of your biggest discovery since the ruins of Marechu Pichu?"
"It's not my discovery." Daring's voice was low, calm yet steady. "It's yours. I didn't notice the brickwork. I would have passed right over it. I was all ready to write this site off as another nameless tomb for a forgotten chieftain."
"But... but.. but you're Daring Do!" she insisted.
"And you're Petunia Paleo," Daring countered. When had her wings gotten so heavy? When had the ache after flying through a dozen traps turned into the ache after flying down a hallway? "The mare who just discovered the most influential historical find since the Crystal Empire showed up lock, stock, and barrel."
She leaned back and took off her hat, staring down at the worn-out old thing. It looked new enough; the outer fabric had been replaced recently, but the inside told a different story. The stitching was coming apart again, rubbed threadbare around the ear holes. The color of the lining was long lost to time, so thoroughly dyed it had been with sweat and blood and swamp water. There was no fixing the holes in the metal lining where arrows or worse had punched through. Despite her best efforts to keep her original gear in shape, the material just couldn't handle the abuse she put it through anymore.
"There's no sense mincing words; I'm old. I should have retired years ago." She held up a hoof to cut off the incoming protests. "I know, I know, age is just a number, you're only as old as you feel, all that junk. But it's true. I am old. I feel old. I've been playing this game so long that the ponies my adventures once inspired as foals now show up at signings with their own kids. But still I kept going. There was still something I hadn't found, but until now I don't think I knew what it was."
"Daring..."
"Leo, just shut up a minute and listen to me," she snapped and her friend's mouth snapped shut. Daring sighed. "Petunia, you're impatient. You're rash and you make leaps of logic and jump into things without thinking. You also have a passion for history and preserving it in all its forms. You're headstrong and reckless and absolutely the exact same as I was at your age. When I retire, somepony's going to have to keep running these expeditions while I'm burning through my nest egg at some fancy-schmancy resort where they wait on you hoof and tail. Somepony's going to have to go out and do reckless things and inspire the next generation of ponies that history isn't all dusty books and moldy old bones." Daring held out her pith helmet, old and weathered through countless trials. "And I can't think of anyone I'd be more satisfied with taking my place."
Petunia Paleo took the helmet with shaking hooves. "I... I don't know if I... can I?"
"You can and you will," Daring insisted. She grinned wolfishly. "Or so help me I'll go find Tambelon and dig up some relic of Grogar's that'll revive those Unarans and make them make you take the credit you deserve."
Petunia snorted and a small smile worked its way into place. "Not if I find it first."
"Ohoho, you challenging me?" Daring chuckled. She stood and stretched, joints popping and cracking in wonderful catharsis. "I guess I was never much one for fancy resorts anyhow. Maybe I got a few adventures left in me. Old school solo-runs outside of the limelight."
"I thought you were retiring?"
"I am. Doesn't mean I can't have a hobby."
Petunia shook her head, the small smile never leaving her lips. "You're crazy."
"And yet you're the one who decided I'd be a good role model to take after, so who does that make crazy?"
The tension broke, and the pair fell into good natured laughter. No longer as teacher and student, but as friends standing as equals.
"Come on," Petunia said at last, "Let's go rally the teams before somepony else finds my secret hole freaks out."
Daring winced. "Word of advice: If you're going to be in the public eye, you have got to work on your phrasing."
"Hey, I need a gimmick. Writing self-insert fanfictions of my own life was already taken."
