Teaching the Future to Recoup the Past

by TheDriderPony

Rating: everyone
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Daring Do, Petunia Paleo, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dr. Caballeron
Length: 7539

Most apprenticeships aren't nearly quite so dangerous.

The wild, unsettled lands of Equestria are littered with ruins. Ancient temples, tombs, and testaments to long dead groups of ponies who decided to pass on the whole "Unification" fad and lost that gamble in Ozymandian fashion.

Some are filled with powerful lost magic relics. Others are overflowing with gold and treasure. (If you believe the legends, at least.)

There exist only a rare selection of ponies who know how to safely delve these deathtraps to recover these lost pieces of history (and fewer still who would willingly accompany them).

But for these brave or foolish few, there is nothing more rewarding.

Written for the May 2024 Pairing Contest in the Original Pairings group.

Special thanks to Scream Queen for prereading and early feedback.

Published 2024-06-01 01:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-06-01 01:50:01 UTC

One Mare's Trash is Another Mare's Treasure

There were many parts of Daring Do’s adventures that never made it into her books.

Some details she omitted out of professional courtesy: changing the names of her contacts and the places she visited to protect their identities. Others were made out of narrative necessity; no one wanted to read about days spent hiking through wilderness or cross-referencing ancient texts in a dusty library.

But some things she left out due to sheer embarrassment.

This was certainly going to be one of those.

She wiggled in her bindings. Good knots, tight rope. They’d come prepared.

While it wasn’t unusual for someone to wind up captured, knocked out, and tied up like a Hearth's Warming present on one of her adventures, usually it happened to whomever she was traveling with. And if it did happen to her, it didn’t happen till much later in her adventure. But she’d been sloppy and Caballeron’s goons were unusually sharp. How was she supposed to know he’d left one behind to guard the temple’s entrance?

It was embarrassing, but not really a problem. Half her equipment was designed to pull double-duty as lockpicks and blades specifically for getting out of binds like this. All she needed was a little time, preferably unobserved.

But as Daring whiled away the minutes deciding which pocket would be the easiest to shimmy a knife out of, she had time to think about the whole confusing mess that this adventure was turning out to be.

It didn’t make any sense. She’d received a tip from an old friend about Caballeron’s movements and followed his trail deep into the Emerald Caldera. She’d found a temple, as expected, but it was… to put it in a way that offended her archaeological sensibilities, surprisingly worthless.

No doubt there was much to be learned from the ancient ruins themselves, the carvings within, and the scraps and relics left behind by ponies long dead. It was a find ripe with historical value.

But Caballeron had never been interested in history.

There were no unique legends about the place. No rumors of powerful artifacts from ancient times. She’d only managed to learn it even existed thanks to an off-hoof comment in the rambling story of a local village elder. As far as she could tell, there was none of the sort of thing that would draw the money-hungry treasure hunter away from more lucrative targets.

Which meant he knew something she didn’t, and that was dangerous.

As if summoned by her thoughts, she soon caught the unmistakable offbeat hoofsteps of the stallion himself emerging from the temple’s shadowy corridors.

“Ah, Miss Daring Do,” he said, swaggering in like he already owned the world, his accent as thick as his slicked-back mane. “I was wondering if we might run into each other. Your timing for intruding upon my private business at the most inconvenient moment is, as always, impeccable.”

“Doctor Caballeron,” she spat. “I should have known you had your hoof in this.” Whatever this was. It always paid off to pretend she knew more than she did. Her rival never missed a chance to monologue. “Don’t think for a second these ropes will hold me long. You won’t be stealing any treasure today.”

“Stealing?” he gasped, as though the idea had never crossed his mind. “How little you must think of me. Can’t a stallion go for an enthusiastic walk through nature without being accused of a crime? For shame, Daring Do.”

She raised an eyebrow and turned (as much as she could) to where his henchponies were idling with a small collection of tools and a large collection of gunny sacks. “And I bet those are just for picking up trash, right?”

Caballeron merely shrugged as her barbs rolled off him. “Who is to say? If we happen to find something interesting during our walk, we’ll be well prepared. Either way, you are in no position to stop us.”

“Just watch me, I could take all four of you with one wing tied behind my back!”

“Five,” one of the henchponies corrected.

“Quiet!” Caballeron snapped at him, but the damage was done.

Daring did a quick head count. One Caballeron. Three henchponies. Four enemies total. So then who was the fifth—

“I’m all done!” an unexpectedly chipper voice called out from a hallway deeper in the structure, followed by a very light and quick set of hoofsteps.

Whoever it was entered the room, but stayed too well cloaked in the shadows for Daring to make out any details beyond the vague shape of a pony.

“I finished mapping all the first floor and took some charcoal rubbings of the pictograms in the next room, just like you asked.”

Caballeron recovered from the interruption quickly. “Ah, there you are. Good work.” Turning back to her, he continued. “Daring Do, may I introduce to you my new assistant.”

The unknown pony stepped into the light. A blue coat. Earth pony. Short. Very short. No, not just short—

“Miss Petunia Paleo.”

“Hiya!” The child waved at her. “Nice to meet you!”

Daring’s mind stumbled at the starting block. Caballeron’s newest henchpony was a little filly? No, not a henchpony, he’d introduced her as his assistant. Something was wrong here. Very, very wrong and she couldn’t help but leap to the worst conclusions.

“Really? A kid? Is good help so hard to find in the criminal underworld that you’re recruiting from the Filly Scouts now? She can’t be more than ten!”

“Hey! I’m twelve!” the filly corrected with a pout that made her look even younger. Daring ignored her. She didn’t look under duress or magically compelled, but that didn’t mean something nefarious wasn’t going on.

“What’s your angle, Caballeron? It isn’t like you to take on some wet-behind-the-ears kid without an ulterior motive.” A dark thought flickered through her mind and her next accusation came out as a shocked whisper, for what little good it served in the cavernous chamber. “Don’t tell me the treasure chamber requires a virgin sacrifice?”

The rogue merely scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so macabre, Daring. These aren’t even Old Abyssian ruins.”

“What’s a virgin?” the filly asked innocently.

“It’s when you—”

“It’s a type of exotic fruit drink without alcohol,” Caballeron cut his henchpony off quickly with a pointed glare.

“But why would you have to sacrifice a drink? It doesn’t make sen—”

“An explanation for another time,” Caballeron said as he forcibly redirected the conversation. “As to why she is here, that has a much simpler answer. I am sure you recall my former associate, Crossed Saber.”

Daring nearly winced at the memory. Caballeron’s hired muscle came and went over the years, but there were a few which had made a lasting impression. The swords-stallion had proven a skilled and frustrating opponent often enough that, much to her chagrin, he had his own minor fan club among her readers. She had a particularly vivid memory of the stallion’s bombastic laughter and his gleaming epee as he’d tried to turn her jacket to confetti… while she was still wearing it.

It’d been a relief when he stopped showing up on expeditions.

“He asked me for a favor,” Caballeron continued. “Said he knew a passionate young archeologist in need of some practical field experience. And who was I to say no to an old friend?”

“I’m learning all kinds of neat stuff!” The filly—Petunia—cheered. “And I’m getting college credit!”

“You’re a child.”

“And he’s a professor, so it counts.”

In a strange way, Daring felt… insulted. She was supposed to be the one with a spunky young companion, not him! Sure, she was worried for the kid’s safety, but more than that this was going to make for a terrible development in her next book! The villain couldn’t have an adorable sidekick: it ruined their allegorical dynamic!

Doubly insulting was that the filly was definitely wearing a knock-off Daring Do Junior Adventurer’s uniform, just with the patches removed.

“Precocious, isn’t she?” Caballeron chuckled. “She’s been quite helpful. The villagers didn’t care much for me, but they were all too willing to share what they knew with a bright-eyed, innocent filly.” He glanced up at the sun through the chamber’s skylight. “But time grows short and we must hurry. Miss Paleo, see that our guest is properly disarmed of anything she might use to escape, then join us in the next chamber.”

“Can do, boss!” said the literal child with a cheery salute.

As Caballeron and his more mature minions moved on, Daring rallied herself. This was her chance. It was just her and the filly now.

And she was great with foals.

As Petunia started to pat her down (somehow, through the ropes) Daring whispered to her in a low voice. “Look kid, you gotta let me out of here.”

“Sorry, no can do,” the entirely-too-cheery child replied as she pulled out Daring’s knife and then her hidden back-up knife. “Doctor Cowbellgone… no, Candelabra? …Capybara? Doctor C says you’re gonna cause us a lot of trouble, so it’s important you stay here, out of the way. Ooh, neat. Keeping this.” She flicked open the trick compass to reveal the lockpick set inside before snapping it closed and stuffing it in her pocket.

Daring ignored the blatant theft (she could always get it back later) and pressed on. “Hey, Petunia was it? You shouldn’t listen to him. I don’t know what he told you or what promises he made, but it was probably all a pack of lies. That’s what he does: lies and steals. I’m sure he just wants to use you to get at whatever treasure’s in here so he can keep it for hims—hey! Don’t take my food!”

The filly barely glanced at her as she scarfed down one of Daring’s chocolate protein bars. One of the good ones with cranberries in it. She talked as she chewed (and as she removed the concealed chainsaw blade from her pith helmet’s rim. How was this filly so good at finding her hidden tools?). “Mph. Oh, I kno 'at.” She paused to swallow. “He talks a lot about treasure. Like, a lot. I wouldn’t mind some, but I’m not expecting to get any.”

That threw Daring for enough of a loop that she went silent for a minute as she reassessed the situation (meanwhile she lost two bobby pins, a multitool, half her canteen, and her collapsible loupe). She glanced at Petunia’s cutie mark: some kind of fossilized skull and a couple of bones. Maybe Caballeron hadn’t been completely lying. Maybe she really was a budding archeologist whom he’d deceived into working for him only to try and corrupt her with his own devious worldview.

Maybe if she made an appeal on an intellectual level…

“If you know he’s using you, then why are you helping him? A good archeologist is supposed to study and protect history: relics belong in a museum, not on an auction block or in some eccentric’s private collection.”

That was a good line. She’d have to remember to use it in a book sometime. But the derisive snort it elicited from her captor made her wonder if she’d taken the wrong track.

“Ugh, you sound just like that stuffy museum curator.” Petunia hunched her shoulders and put on a gruff, quavering voice. “‘What are you doing? Put those down! This isn’t the gift shop! Those belong in the museum! Security!’” The filly finished with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Turned out they weren’t even real sleipnir-saurus bones anyway; just plaster replicas. What a ripoff!”

Daring winced as the not-so-innocent filly pried off her fake horseshoe with the secret compartment of piranha repellent inside. Though she was more concerned with the growing feeling of unease that she may have misjudged Petunia’s situation.

“Look, now’s not the time or place for an argument about ethics. Can’t you just trust me that Caballeron’s up to no good and that I need to stop him?”

“And why should I?”

“Why should you what?”

“Trust you.”

Out of everything, that surprised her the most. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Daring Do!”

“And I’m Petunia Paleo.” She grinned. “Doctor C just introduced us, but it’s good to know that your brain’s okay and Delver didn’t bonk you too hard.”

“No, I mean I’m famous! I’m an adventurer! A hero! Haven’t you read my books?”

Petunia shrugged as she tossed the last of Daring’s tools into her bag. “Nah. Probably not. I was never really big on reading. More of an outdoors kind of filly. Anyway, you just sit tight and I guess we’ll let you go after we get whatever we came for. Probably. Maybe. I dunno all of Doctor C’s plans.”

Daring could feel her window of freedom shrinking as the earth pony turned and started to head down the corridor. Desperate, she tried one last gambit. “Wait! If he takes the treasure, what are you even getting out of this?”

The filly stopped, turned back, and gave her a smile. “Just like Doctor C said, I’m getting on-the-job experience.” She paused, then her grin grew so wide it was nearly manic. “Plus, he just wants the gold and junk. He promised me that any bones we find are mine to keep! Buh-bye now! Sit tight!”

Daring quickly found herself alone, restrained, and both physically and mentally disarmed.

She tried the ropes again. Despite the filly’s fiddling, there was still no give.

A cloud passed over the aperture of the chamber’s dome, letting in a brief but intense drizzle of hot jungle rain exactly and exclusively on the spot where she was sitting.

Daring Do grunted and sighed. There was no way she could use any of this in her next book.

Caballeron dabbed at his forehead with the hem of his ascot, wiping away the beading sweat. One would expect the depths of a ruined temple to be cool, or at least insulated from the jungle heat outside. They were not. If anything the stones seemed to carry the heat inside, keeping the whole place balmy and unusually well lit. Maybe there was some kind of enchantment worked into the stones. A rudimentary form of runes within the pictograms that lined the walls.

It was an amusing thought experiment, but little more. Pre-industrial central heating was not what he’d come for.

Still, would it have killed the ancient villagers to install a way to cool the place as well? He could already tell he’d be wringing out his ascot when they eventually set up camp.

A flicker of light glinted off something ahead. He stopped, holding up a hoof for the rest to do as well.

“Something wrong, boss?”

“Not wrong, as you say, but… different.” And a fine time for a test. “Miss Paleo? If you please.”

The by far youngest member of the crew trotted forward. He could hear her saddlebags jingling with all the nasty tricks she’d confiscated from that insufferable pegasus. He’d have to make a point to instruct her on proper pack management, but that was a matter for later. For the time being, he merely gestured forward. “Before we continue, what can you tell me about this passage?”

The filly scrunched up her nose in concentration as she glared at every stone and tile as though they held the secrets of the universe and refused to share. It made her look like she had stomach trouble. Behind them, Caballeron heard the rustle of bags and the uncorking of waterskins: telltale signs that his hired help was settling down for a brief break. In his magnanimity, he elected not to chew them out for slacking off. This time. There was no immediate danger and the meddling nuisance had already been accounted for.

“It’s a trap!” young Miss Paleo declared suddenly. An obvious observation, but she was still green. Experience would come with time, but he was curious how far pure intuition could take her.

“Well spotted. What else?”

She turned her focus back to the tiles before them. To a laypony, it would seem an innocuous stretch of corridor, indistinguishable from the rest, but he could see a dozen subtle warning signs as if they’d been painted a glaring yellow.

“I think…” she started slowly, unsure of her words, “I think it has to do with the floor. All of the tiles here have pictograms carved on them, but none of the ones before us did and they stop about sixty hooves ahead.” She looked up to the side of the hall not covered in vines. “And some of them match bits of the mural on the wall. So there’s probably some connection there. Maybe the matching ones are safe to step on and the rest will trigger the trap…” she trailed off as she ran out of steam, “…whatever it is.”

“She’s pretty good,” he heard somepony whisper, possibly Delver, and he agreed. It was a better analysis than he’d expected for someone with no formal training.

“A very good start,” he stated as indifferently as he could. Still she beamed at his praise, sending an odd feeling through him. “You are broadly correct, though you are missing the context to make the final connection. See here:” He took a careful step towards the mural, keeping his hooves clear of any marked tiles. She followed, eager and puppy-like, already with a notebook and pencil at the ready. “This mural is not just some random art; it depicts an important fable from the mythology of those who built this place. As you read each line it tells the tale of a brave hero who ventures into the Underworld to retrieve a stolen godly artifact. This is an important clue to how we should proceed.”

“Wow!” Her eyes were practically sparkling. “You can really read all that?”

He chuckled. “Of course. You must be capable of at least this much to safely delve into dangerous ruins like these.” Though he knew from years of experience that cleverness was the second half of knowledge. She didn’t need to know that the pictograms were largely interpretative, or that versions of the same legend were common among the tribes of the region.

Still, it was oddly pleasant to have someone else interested in the ruins that ensconced his yet-to-be-claimed treasures. His hired help only cared about being paid (and, if he was being honest, so did he these days) but it was still… nice to have someone respect him for his genius and skill rather than merely his checkbook.

“So in order to cross,” young Miss Paleo thought aloud, “we need to copy the hero’s journey.”

“Correct.”

“And only step on the tiles marked with pictograms related to the Underworld!”

“That’s right, except when—wait, no—!”

But she was already off, having jumped ahead to a tile engraved with the symbol for ‘death’. He watched, as if in slow motion, as it sunk beneath her weight.

Gears clicked in the wall. A counterweight shifted. An alcove slid open and—

He moved.

An obsidian-tipped spear thunked deep into the vines of the opposite wall. Gears clicked once more as the spear retracted and the tile ascended to again be flush with the rest. Behind him, both Petunia and Pickpocket groaned from their spot where he’d thrown one into the other.

“Ehehe… oops?” she offered with an awkward half-laugh.

He fixed her with a glare, but the weight of it was lost on her.

“Except when sometimes,” he continued, “they reverse it on purpose. Which is why we test it first with a weighted bag.”

“Oh,” she said as Pickpocket helped her to her hooves. She had the decency to look properly embarrassed now. “That makes sense.”

Caballeron sighed and turned away. As he’d expected, cleverness and intuition could only get you so far. “Now that the trap has served its purpose, we might as well cheat it to save a bit of time.”

She blinked and seemed to use his words to center herself. “Cheat it?”

“As I said.” Time for a bit more history lesson. “You see, all the tribes of the Emerald Caldera were both earth ponies and combatively isolationist. Thus, they built all their traps with rival earth ponies in mind.” He made eye contact with Pickpocket and tilted his head toward the hall. “If you would.”

With a few swift beats of his wings, the pegasus launched up and then landed clear on the other side of the trap without having touched the ground once. “As you can see, they aren’t exactly pegasus proof. Pick: the lever to deactivate it would be on the left, I should think.”

A solid clunk from down the hall confirmed his guess, and Caballeron strode across the trapped floor with a confident disregard for where he stepped. Once they saw it was safe, the rest of his entourage quickly hurried behind him, young Miss Paleo at the head.

“Do most traps have weaknesses like that?”

“It depends on many factors, especially location and the tribe who built it. If we were in the pyramids of Al-Khamsa or Somnambula, we’d have a much harder time of it as their temples are guarded with curses and beasts instead of ancient engineering.”

That was partially why he’d chosen such a relatively obscure location for her first expedition. Easy traps, no curses, and far enough removed from the Tenochtitlan Basin that they were outside Ahuizotl’s territory. The chance of finding valuable magical artifacts in a temple built by earth ponies was slim, but ancient gold was still gold. Honestly he’d been surprised that Daring had shown up at all to such a low risk, low reward site.

But he owed it to Saber to put at least that much effort into making things ‘safe’.

The next part of the temple was a long and winding corridor. Not a maze, as he’d first thought, but just a very, very long hall that doubled back on itself enough times that he lost track. Perhaps some kind of test of endurance for the priests of its day? Or maybe just an attempt to deter thieves through sheer attrition. Either way, it was long enough that he eventually called for a break so the team could rest and rehydrate.

Much to his surprise, young Miss Paleo had brought snacks. Not just travel rations, but cookies, apples, and bottles of sparkling water. The small gesture was enough to sway his help’s opinion of her from ‘indifferent acceptance’ to ‘their new best friend’ and it wasn’t long before they all began plying her with stories of their previous adventures mixed with advice for her future ones.

“...And that’s why I always bring a box of matches and a can of manespray with me on every job.”

“Matches… and… manespray. Got it!” She jotted down his words in her book of notes as Delver slaked his thirst with one of her sparkling waters. “Any more advice?”

“Get some cardio in between dives,” Pickpocket said. “You’ll end up doing a lot more running in this job than you’d think.”

“Oh! I got anudder important thing:'' Rapscallion added around a mouthful of crumbs. “If dere's ever somethin’ fallin’ down at you fast like a tower or a pillar—”

“Or a giant rolling boulder?”

“—dose are just myths. But if anythin’ is falling at you don't run directly away from it. Whatchu wanna do is juke left or right from where it's falling. Much better odds." He took his hat off and held it to his chest. "My buddy Fire Bringer learned dat one da hard way.”

Pickpocket nodded solemnly. “Fire Bringer was a real lad. Whatever happened to him?”

“He quit. After dey let him outta da full-body cast. Got a desk job in Manehattan. Consultancy or somethin’.”

Delver finished off his bottle with a satisfied gasp. “Ah! That hits the spot! Remember when Fire did that trick and the rope bridge collapsed? In the Sorraian mountains?”

Rapscallion threw an apple core at him. “Dat wasn’t Fire, dat was Crossed Saber! He cut the rope tryin’ to impress the local mare guidin’ us. Write dat one down too, kid. Never try to show off on a bridge dat’s older den you can count.”

She started to write, but stopped a few words in. “Wait, Crossed Saber? You know my dad?”

A visible ripple of shock went through the group.

“Your dad?”

“Saber had a kid?”

“Boss! Is this really Saber’s kid?”

Caballeron rolled his eyes. It hadn’t exactly been a secret, but he’d avoided speaking about it directly in order to keep them from finding out. It shouldn't change anything. They were supposed to be professionals. But he knew them better than that. Now they were going to get attached. “Yes, she is.”

“Ha!” Rapscallion’s burst of laughter nearly bowled him over. “So dat’s why he got outta da game! He and Bounty actually tied da knot!”

“You knew my mom too?”

“Sure thing!” Delver added with a throaty chuckle. “Any time we needed a boat and no questions asked, Ocean’s Bounty was the mare to see. Always wondered what happened to her.”

Pickpocket moved as if to clasp a foreleg around Caballeron’s shoulders, but a sharply raised eyebrow made him abort the motion. He was still the boss, after all. “Gee, boss, I always knew you and Saber were tight, but to think he even trusts you with his kid. That’s real loyalty right there.”

Caballeron rolled his eyes as he dodged the sentimentality. It was just business. Nothing more and nothing less. He owed Saber a favor, and Saber knew he was the best in the world at what he did (besides, who else could he send his daughter to? Daring? Not likely!). “Alright, alright, enough of this. Break time is over. Let us keep going. Unless you want to try and walk back through the jungle in the dark of night.”

They broke camp quickly and continued on, if somewhat more chatty than before.

A few more switchbacks and they arrived at a much more promising chamber. No treasure yet, but the room had all the hallmarks of an antechamber to somewhere important. The carvings were more abundant, the artistry more refined, and the large sealed door were all good signs.

At the center of the room was a two-tiered raised plinth with a set of five small carved idols on the lower shelf and five empty depressions in the top.

“Miss Paleo.” She was at his side instantly. “It appears you have another challenge.”

“I’m ready!” she declared.

“Excellent. This is a classic logic puzzle that you can find variations of in temples across Equestria. These five idols must be arranged in their order of Celestial ranking. When done correctly, they will activate a mechanism that will open the door. This section here is a series of psalms that will provide clues to the solution. You have your pencil? Good. Write this down because I am only going to translate it once.”

After a brief dictation, he left her to figure it out on her own. It was a simple enough puzzle: one that could be solved even if you had no prior knowledge of the pantheon being ranked. Some theorized the riddles were a manner of shortcut for ancient priests with poor memories. Perhaps they were considered challenging in their heyday, but he’d seen harder puzzles in the Sunday paper.

In the meantime, he took a moment to consider the idols themselves. They were carved of local stone, but inlaid with varying amounts of gold. Enough to alter their weights so they’d act like teeth on a key, but still not that much gold. Not enough to be worth the effort of stripping and melting them down. Nor were they unique enough to bother hunting down a niche collector to sell them to. At best they might make nice souvenirs of the expedition. One for his study, one for his intern, and three for Pickpocket, Delver, and Rapscallion for spotting and subduing Daring so promptly. It paid to reward loyalty and talent in his line of work.

“Oh yes! Yes, yes, yes!”

The sudden outburst made him glance up at Paleo. Rather than having solved the riddle, she was slowly extracting something white and very faded green from beneath one of the idols.

“I found a lizard!” She cheered. “Looks like one in the Teiidae family. Oh, and look how nice and dry he is! It won’t be hard at all to clean off all the old skin.”

“Focus, Miss Paleo.”

“Right! Sorry!” she said, though she still paused to carefully wrap up the skeleton and place it tenderly in her bag.

That was perhaps the most surprising thing he’d learned about her. For as much as their passions intersected when it came to history, archeology, and temple delving… she couldn’t care less about the treasure. All she wanted was the bones to be found there. In a way, it made her the perfect protégée: one who was willing to work just as hard as him, but didn’t want a share of the bounty.

“I’ve got it!” she declared as she set the final idol in place. Counterweights shifted within the walls as ancient mechanisms that had lain dormant for hundreds of years creaked into motion. As if to reward her success, the massive door rose into the ceiling with ponderous slowness to reveal what they’d been searching for all along.

The treasure chamber.

It was, as he’d expected, unimpressive. More like a glorified walk-in closet than the kind of vaults and reliquaries he was used to. No artifacts, unfortunately, but there were a few pedestals and fonts with a respectable amount of gold coins and trinkets. At least some of it probably pig gold. A meager prize, but better than nothing.

Occupying the center was a massive, intricately carved throne that still bore the skeletal remains of its final occupant.

Young Miss Paleo was on it before he could even finish appraising the treasure.

“Oh gosh, oh geez, oh-oh-Oh!” She clambered up onto the throne’s armrests like a spider monkey, her hooves ghosting over the bones, trembling with visible excitement yet hesitant to make the leap to actually touch it. “He’s perfect! So well preserved! Not a bit of fur left on him! Oh wow! Just look at those ribs! Those cannons! A little stout, probably from a fruit-heavy diet when he was young.” She pulled out one of Daring’s knives and delicately pried up its patinated copper crown. “And there’s how he died! Blow to the head, right on the soft spot. Such a clean fracture, but I bet it really rattled him around.”

She sidled around the scepter still clutched in its grip, hopped onto the seat, and embraced it in a delicate hug. “And he’s mine, all mine! I’ll put him in my study—once I get him rearticulated—maybe with some stiff wires so he can pose! Oh boy, oh boy, and then I’m going to absolutely crush the next show-and-tell at school, and no one will care about Diamond Tiara’s boring Prench tea set anymore and we’ll see how she likes it when everyone says her thing is boring and weird and gross! Ha haha! Ha hahaha!”

Caballeron watched on as he nodded in approval. It was like watching a memory of his own first discovery back in grad school. He could applaud the spirit even if the reasoning behind her bone fascination was beyond his comprehension.

“Pick, Rap. Start bagging the gold. Delver, make sure she doesn’t choke on a femur.”

“What are you gonna do, boss?”

“I will be checking the walls for secrets. There may be a secondary reliquary.” Not likely, but it was a small effort and would pass the time while they completed the grunt labor.

They fell into the steady rhythm of long-practiced activity. The clinking of gold and the tapping of tools played a familiar song, now accompanied by a filly’s stream of thought as she sang praises for her new skeleton. Praise she never seemed to run out of.

“...probably broken when he was a teenager. It healed well but they didn’t set it perfectly so you can see a little bit of asymmetry from him favoring the other leg for a long time. Must have been really important to get such good medical care: a chieftain or a high priest or something, but I’d need more than just bones to tell.” She glanced over to Pickpocket who was filling his pack with the trinkets around the throne. “Huh. Hey, aren’t we supposed to leave stuff in place so we can study how they lived?”

Caballeron waved her off as he continued tapping the walls for hollows and hidden switches. “That’s what graduate students are for. Once the department heads get off their lazy flanks, they’ll be swarming the place and picking over every last scrap. That is why we, as the discoverers, get our first pick of the bounty.”

“Ah. That makes sense,” she said and returned to her bones.

“Hey boss, can I keep dis one? I think da missus’ll love it.”

Rapscallion held up a necklace. Woven copper and bronze with a few semi-precious stones. Well preserved, but basically worthless to any serious collector.

“It’ll come out of your pay.”

“Dat’s fine.” He stuffed it in his bag. “Dis whole job was a milk run anyway.”

Caballeron paused. It had been easy. Suspiciously so. Usually this would be around the time when Daring would—

“Grk!”

Delver collapsed as something hit him from behind. A figure stepped out of the shadows of the door.

“Hello boys.” Daring grinned. “Miss me?”

“You!” Caballeron gasped. “How did you escape?” Then to Miss Paleo. “I told you to secure her!”

“I did!”

“I have my ways.” Daring reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace. Dangling from the end was an obsidian arrowhead. “But this escape was all thanks to a token of friendship given to me by a small foal in the village.”

“Oh you got one of those too?” Petunia fiddled with her collar and pulled out her own identical pendant. “The hotel gift shop gives them away free with any purchase.”

Meanwhile, while Daring was distracted, Pickpocket began to slowly skirt around the edge of the room. Once he was safely out of her field of view, he pounced.

Despite his speed, Daring still managed a perfect counter. She moved like lightning, grabbing his foreleg mid-flight and redirecting the momentum from his leap into an over-the-shoulder throw. He wheezed as he slammed into the ground, the wind thoroughly knocked out of him, but uninjured.

“That’s two down, “ Daring challenged, turning her attention to Rapscallion. “Are you going to try your luck or should we just cut to the chase?”

“I… uh…” he wavered.

“Double overtime,” Caballeron whisper-hissed in his direction, “plus hazard pay.”

“You’ll never take me alive!” he roared as he charged the pegasus, swinging his bag of loot like a flail.

He put up a decent fight, but he hadn’t been hired for his fighting ability. Plus Daring was quicker, could fly, and didn’t have fifty pounds of gold throwing off her center of balance. In less than a minute he was groaning on the ground and Daring hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“And now we’re down to one,” she mused, that insufferable grin mocking him without words. “Just like always.”

“S-stop it!”

Both she and Caballeron flinched at the sudden outburst. In the few moments of chaos, they’d both managed to forget that they weren’t the only ones left standing.

The little filly stood atop the throne, an angry frown stretched across her lips even as tears brimmed at the edges of her eyes. “J-just leave us alone! Why do you have to be so mean? W-we were having a great day until you came along and ruined it!”

Daring winced. “Look, I’m sorry, kid, but this is the way things go. They’re the bad guys. Crooks and thieves.”

“No they’re not! Pickpocket took me for a flight down the long tunnel and Rapscallion showed me how to throw knives and Delver taught me all about molotovs! And Doc—Doctor—Doctor Caballeron taught me so much stuff! Stuff about traps and history and monsters and he doesn’t think I’m weird for liking skeletons and bones!” She reared up and fixed Daring with the most piercing accusatory hoof point she could muster. “They’re not the bad guy, you’re the bad guy!”

In a moment that Caballeron knew he would remember for years to come, Daring was at a complete loss for words, her mouth hanging open like a hooked fish. A warm feeling swelled within his chest. Was this the way Daring felt all the time? To be so earnestly idolized and admired? To have their complete respect and confidence? It was a heady feeling that filled him like a geyser. It felt almost as good as being rich.

“I-I’m not the bad guy!”

“Yes you are! You meanie! You villain! You-you-you plothole!”

“What!?” The warm feeling in his chest was shaken loose by sudden shock. “What was that?! Who taught you that word?” His glare snapped to his semi-recovered crew. “Rapscallion!”

“Not me, boss! You said ta keep it clean 'round the kid!”

“Sneak attack!” Paleo cried as she wrenched the scepter from the skeleton’s grip and lobbed it at Daring with an overhead throw.

It clanged to the floor before it covered half the distance.

“Ah. Oops?” she offered.

And then the entire temple began to rumble as the throne sunk halfway into the floor.

“Double oops!”

Dust rained from the ceiling, quickly joined by pebbles and then larger chunks of masonry.

“Booby trap!” Delver cried as he turned tail and ran. “Every pony for themselves!”

Caballeron was no stranger to structural collapse; it was a particularly spiteful trick that all too many ancient architects liked to employ. With practised ease he grabbed a sack of loot in his teeth and headed for the door, dodging falling debris when he sensed their shadows above him. Off to one side he saw Pickpocket helping Rapscallion along as the stallion returned to his senses.

Daring was already gone. Disappeared through one of the holes in the ceiling or down a side corridor at speeds only a pegasus could achieve.

He turned back to take one last look at the treasure he’d have to leave behind and—

Miss Paleo wasn’t running. She hadn’t even moved.

Instead of fleeing, the fool filly had dumped out her saddlebags and was trying to stuff the skeleton inside even as the walls came down around her.

A chunk of rock the size of an apple cart fell less than twenty hooflengths from where she stood.

“Leave it!” he shouted around the edges of the loot sack. “We have to go!”

“I can make him fit!” She yelled back, then flinched as a rock bigger than she was landed far too close for comfort.

Ropes in the walls started to snap as they were overwhelmed, each one sounding off like a firecracker as the massive door started to fall in fits and jerks. “There’s no time!”

“I’m not leaving him! He’s mine!”

He knew that tone of voice. He’d heard it come out of his own mouth, saying much the same words as a temple collapsed around him and an ancient artifact he’d spent weeks hunting down.

The door sank to nearly half shut before something caught and halted it again with a painful grinding noise. He looked to the door, then back to her, then down to the sack of treasure in his mouth. He did the math.

“Ah, to Tartarus with it!”

He let the gold fall.

The filly yelped as he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck. Kicking off a fallen bit of ceiling, he made an explosive reversal towards freedom. The final rope strained, failing in increments as the weight of the door fought against it, lowering it by dangerous inches. He threw her under first, her small frame crashing into the idol pedestal on the other side. He turned back, eyes darting to find where he’d dropped his treasure.

The door dropped another inch.

The sack was halfway across the room. He could make it! Maybe…

“The door!” he heard her cry from the other side, fear finally bleeding through her mania. “Hurry! Doctor!”

…it was poor quality gold anyway.

He jerked back and leaped, sliding under the door just as the rope finally split and sent the multi-ton rock crashing to the ground.

When he stood, there was a small figure clutching his leg. “You-you came back for me.”

“...Of course, Petunia.” He cleared his throat. Some of the dust was getting in his eye. “Your father would skin me alive if I let his daughter become one of her precious skeletons prematurely.”

“He wouldn’t…” she sniffled, “yeah, he probably would.”

The temple rumbled again. “We are not out of the woods yet. Run!”

They ran. When she got too tired, he put her on his back and kept running. Holes in the walls made dangerous new shortcuts, sunlight cutting through the dust in teasing beams that beckoned freedom down dangerous paths, but he trusted his intuition to guide him to choose the ones that wouldn’t collapse while they were halfway through.

When they finally made it through an outer wall and returned to the relative safety of the jungle, even the thick, muggy air tasted as sweet as spring water.

“Boss!” “Boss!” “Kid!”

They reconnected with his crew soon enough, the three of them having had a simpler escape due to not lingering overlong. When the dust settled amongst the much-more-ruined ruins, they reconvened by what had once been the front entrance.

“I’m sorry,” was Petunia’s opening statement. “I should have known the scepter would be trapped. All the treasure is gone now and it’s all my fault.” She bowed her head, ready and braced for recriminations.

“Eh, it happens to all of us,” Delver said.

“It is frustrating, but what can you do?” Pickpocket added as he picked pebbles out of his feathers. “If you wanna blame someone, blame the pl—the jerks who built the place to self-destruct.”

Rapscallion reached out and ruffled her mane. “And it’s not like da gold is gone, ya’know. It’s just under a buncha rocks and junk.”

He was correct, Caballeron could admit, though the cost to excavate it would vastly exceed the profit they’d make even if they recovered every single coin and bauble. “We will consider this a learning experience, then. Because I certainly hope you learned something from this mess.” Petunia nodded eagerly at that. He glanced up at the sun as it began to dip beneath the peak of the pile of rubble. “We should make haste back to the town. Did anyone see which way Daring went?” They all shook their heads. “Then she is still a potential threat. Though I doubt she will follow us since we did not acquire any treasures for her to confiscate.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”

Caballeron looked back down to see a familiar crowned skull being worn as a hat. In her hoof, Petunia held the same scepter that had kickstarted the demolition. Five familiar idols peeked out of the lip of her bag.

“I may have saved a couple trinkets too,” Delver added as he pulled a few gold coins from his vest. Pickpocket and Rapscallion likewise revealed a few odd pieces of jewelry and pocket-sized souvenirs.

None of it would be worth anything at an auction house, yet somehow he felt like they had a value he couldn’t quite put a number on.

“Then let us get back to civilization even quicker. We’ll have to properly celebrate our youngest member’s first successful expedition!”

They all cheered and began the long trek through the jungle towards the town, chatting excitedly about their adventure, all fear and panic from the rapid exodus forgotten. Caballeron stayed back, waving them along to continue without him. Once he was alone, he looked upward into one of the nearby trees. There. Nestled amongst the leaves. A pair of vibrant ruby eyes, watching intently.

He and Daring locked eyes, neither moving, neither speaking, for a long and silent minute.

In that time, something unspoken seemed to pass between them.

Then, with a rustle of leaves, the eyes disappeared into the brush, followed by the sound of wingbeats fading into the distance.

Doctor Caballeron shook himself as the moment passed. He adjusted his ascot (filthy though it was). He slicked back his mane (though the dust had turned his grey streaks into the primary color). He fixed his collar and cuffs (despite the rips and tears).

He turned and walked down the jungle path, following the sound of excited voices. His apprentice was about to celebrate her first acquisition, and he’d have to be the world’s worst treasure hunter if he allowed himself to miss out on a rare and valuable treasure like that.

Author's Note

Hey, they said mentor"ships" were valid entries!