Impossible Mission - Sealing Tartarus

The remaining ponies’ quest led them to a dark tucked away section of Tartarus, they had no idea where they were, but seeing as though they had already passed three of the four protectors of Tartarus, Twilight Sparkle deduced that they must be heading to the core, none of the ponies had seen a torch or any other light source for what seemed like hours, the only lighting they had was a warm glow that came from various small pools of lava.  As they walked, Diamodozen took scenic routes, digging around the lava pools collecting obsidian for Rarity.  Obsidian was the most sought after jewel in Equestria, lava was extremely hard to come by in the peaceful land, and thus Obsidian was uncommon on the best of days.  Diamodozen would give some to Rarity for her next ensemble, and keep the rest for his traveling shop, which seemed to be doing significantly less “traveling” since he settled down in Ponyville with his friends.

“Maybe with these I can afford to get an actual shop, maybe something with two stories and next to Rarity’s boutique.”

“Diamodozen, what’s the hold up?” The colt looked up to see that the others had gotten a pretty large amount of distance past him while he was distracted.

“Coming, I’m coming, sorry about that.”  Diamodozen trotted up to the rest of the group, Rarity let out a quiet laugh as the group carried on, there were only four of them left now: Rarity, Diamodozen, Twilight Sparkle, and Monochrome, who was leading the way, keeping an eye on every little detail of Tartarus with an almost paranoid glare; waiting for the next trap to spring.

Reaching the end of the cavern they found themselves at a strange pass.  A small but wide open area separated the last cave they were in from another directly in front of it.  The pass was so vast the ponies almost couldn’t tell they were still in a cave, in fact the only way they knew was that it was still dark and the floor was still the same ancient crimson stone they had been walking on for hours, or maybe even days at this point, the ponies had absolutely no way to maintain a sense of time.

“The core is in there!” Twilight exclaimed as she pointed to the other cave

Monochrome looked at Twilight skeptically.  “How can you tell?”

Twilight frowned, “It has to be, after all we’ve been through, after we left everyone else behind, it just has to be in there, where else could it be?”

“I see Mono’s point” after giving it some thought Diamodozen realized what Monochrome meant.  “Ever since we got here we’ve been jumping into the first doorway we could find every time, for all we know the protectors of Tartarus have been leading us on a wild pony chase.”

Diamodozen let out a grunt as Rarity smacked him on the back of the neck.  “Don’t be absurd darling, of course Twilight is correct, sure we’ve been jumping through any door we could find, but it’s not like there were any other doors to take at those times.  I trust Twilight’s instincts and if she says the core is this way, then it’s this way.”

The two colts shrug and the four of them head off towards the cave.  Inside the cave was pitch black, not a single thing was visible.

“Hang on, I can fix this.” Rarity’s horn glowed and suddenly the glow began to expand exponentially.  “Wha-what is going on?”  There was a bright burst of light from her horn and suddenly the entire room was visible, remnants of Rarity’s magic sparkled off of various gems of all different shapes and sizes that covered the room.  The ponies eyes were bewitched at the sight of so many; in the center of the cave was one massive gem that reached from the floor to the ceiling, the gem was sealed into the ground by a massive stone wall that stretched around the entire length of the marvelous stone.  The rest of the gems seemed to spread out from this center gem and up the walls.

“This is absolutely astonishing!”  Rarity called out, hypnotized by the sights.

“I agree” added Diamodozen “I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.”

As the two stood mouth a-gape, Twilight Sparkle and Monochrome searched around.  Suddenly the ponies began to hear high pitched giggles.  Every pony looked around frantically for the source, Monochrome caught something out of the corner of his eye, but it was gone just as soon as he saw it.  Everyone looked towards the main crystal as it began to glow, then strangely enough; the glow it emitted began to move.  It appeared almost like steam in nature it circled around the gem multiple times then appeared before the ponies.

“I do hope you like my gems.”  The creature was an apparition, a ghost of some kind and it spoke with a voice that even Pinkie Pie would find high pitched.

“Your gems?” Rarity repeated to the spirit, with an almost disappointed sound in her voice.

The steam suddenly grew two light blue eyes and two hands, each with 5 thin looking claws at the end.

“Yes, my gems, they are very precious to me.”  The spirit whisked back up to the center gem and hugged it.  Twilight approached the gem and confronted whatever it was that was talking to them.

“Who…what exactly are you?”

“I am Phantom” explained the creature.  “Before the arrival of ponies to this land, back when I was alive, my people ruled over this land, but we were a greedy malicious people, we were separated into many great tribes and governments, each wanting all the world’s riches for their own.  Eventually our greed got the better of us, and we began to fight one another.”

As Phantom spoke it sat atop the massive center gem with a depressed look on the closest thing it had to a face, the spirit was lost in thought and the thoughts clearly upset it.

“That’s just horrible” exclaimed Rarity.

“What happened to the rest of your people?”  Diamodozen asked immediately after Rarity’s outburst.

Phantom only shrugged and continued its story.  “A few of our people, myself included were gifted in the ways of magic, magic now used by the ones you call unicorn.  Combining our efforts we unleashed a powerful spell that washed over our lands, we hoped to cleanse away the greed in our hearts, but in the end, we washed away our entire race, greed and all.”

Twilight Gasped and Monochrome looked away.

“Afterwards my people roamed the land as Remnants, ghost of what we once were, we faded one by one, but I did not.  I found my way to Tartarus, instead of accepting my fate; I became a protector of this place.  On my watch, no evil creature; greedy or otherwise, shall ever escape from here.”

Twilight approached the spirit yet again.  “We’re on a mission to the core of Tartarus, an ancient foe of our ruler has made his way there, and we think he’s trying to unleash all the evil in Tartarus.  We’re trying to seal this place away for good before he can.  If you let us pass, I know a spell that can put you to rest where you belong.”

Phantom waved off the gesture.  “It’s too late for me, I don’t need pity, and if I let you into the core I wouldn’t be doing my job as a protector of Tartarus.”

“There must be some way you’ll let us in.” Rarity pleaded.

Phantom thought to itself then nodded.  “Alright, since you and your friend seem to have an eye for jewels, we’ll play a game.”

“A…game?” Repeated Diamodozen there was a hint of hesitation on the colt’s breath.

“Yes, a game, think of it as hide and seek, I will pick a gem to hide in and you’ll have to find me, if you find me you win and I let you pass.”  After saying this Phantom began to glow a bright white shade, and rushed to the center gem.  After a brief explosion of light he was nowhere to be found.

“What do we do now? Why there must be over a hundred jewels in here.” Rarity looked around in a panic.  Diamodozen looked around a bit slower as he scanned the wall something caught his eye.

“Rarity, give me a hand full of gems from over there.” Diamodozen pointed at the segment of wall, and Rarity using her magic ripped several gems from it.  Diamodozen looked over each gem one at a time; examining shape, size, hue, and anything else he could for the slightest change or defect, grabbing the last of the gems he noticed something.  He quickly picked up the last gem he held, and then the one before that to make sure his hypothesis was correct.

“He’s in here! This gem weighs more than any of the others!”  As Diamodozen said this the Phantom emerged in full view from the gem.

“Congratulations my little ponies that was fun we should play again!”

“We…really should be going” Rarity hesitated but before she could finish her full sentence Phantom had already gone and hid.  Both Rarity and her colt counterpart let out moans Diamodozen began scanning the room again and Rarity pulled more gems from the walls.

“This is going to take a while…”Monochrome spat out rather bluntly.

“Look!” Twilight pointed to the end of the cave the entrance to the core of Tartarus had opened up, Phantom must have kept to his word after all.

“Rarity, we have to go.”

“You go on ahead, don’t worry about us darling we’ll keep Phantom preoccupied.”

Diamodozen tapped on a gem with his hoof; Phantom appeared from it and stuck out what the ponies figured was a tongue then disappeared again.  Diamodozen could only sigh and return to searching.

“Good luck you two” called out Monochrome as they left.

“You two as well” replied Diamodozen.