Sohndar

This is a fantastic start, Twilight thought sarcastically, trapped before I’ve even taken a step. The mechanics of the cage she’d appeared in were simple enough to understand. The cage was a metal tube with a tall doorway, and the floor was obviously a pressure plate that triggered the bars to close. Through the bars Twilight could see a large lever in the ground a short distance away. She began to focus her magic on gripping and pulling the lever, but just as the magenta glow began to form around her horn, she received a sudden, painful reminder that she wasn’t the only pony who had agreed to go to Sohndar.

The cage was tall enough to hold two ponies, but just barely so and not wide enough to allow for much movement. Rainbow Dash’s materializing on top of Twilight left the pair in a cramped, tangled heap of lavender and cyan fur, legs, wings, and rough-spun cloth. “Agh,” Rainbow exclaimed, finding her head slightly squashed against the side of the cage, “What the hay is going on here?”

“We’re trapped,” Twilight said, trying to free a leg to brush Rainbow’s tail out of her face before settling for using magic, “I’d say Star Swirl was right about Aldro wanting to catch him.”

“Can you get us out of here?” Rainbow asked.

“Maybe,” Twilight grunted as the pegasus’s squirming resulted in some painful jabbing to the ribcage, “If you’d just hold still I can concentrate on-”

“Cad e seo? Ta an gaiste curtha i ngniomh?” A pony, a unicorn of indeterminate coloring due to the brownish reinforced barding, helmet, and boots that he wore, walked into Twilight’s line of sight. He looked at the caged ponies in shocked bemusement for a moment, and then shook his head quickly and started muttering to himself, trying to remember something. After a moment he started to speak clearly, haltingly at first but with increasing confidence and cheerfulness as he continued, “Ta tu tar eis teacht ... Aois an Cuigiu. Anois, an ... ar n-aionna ... Aldros cheannaire. Agus ta siad a thabhairt suas aon leabhair le liom! Thuiscint?” His pleased grin faded when he saw Twilight’s uncomprehending stare and the distrustful glare Rainbow was shooting him out of the corner of her eye. The strange pony looked around nervously and then approached the cage, fixing his gaze on Twilight’s saddlebag, which had come open, leaving the trap book exposed to sight. “Sin an leabhar. Ta me e, ceart go leor?” he said, his horn starting to glow white. Twilight’s eyes went wide as she saw the book start to float between the bars and grabbed it with her own magic. “Ni dheanfaidh aon. Direach an leabhar,” the guard said, pulling against the resistance, “Direach… an… leabhar!” He kicked at a bar near Twilight’s face, startling her and letting him take full possession of the book. He stepped away from the cage and started flipping through the book, casting what he probably though were reassuring smiles at the mares every now and then.

“Let us out of here!” Rainbow demanded. The guard ignored her and quickly reached the back page. He blinked in amazement at the linking panel and then started to reach a hoof up to touch it. All of a sudden, he flinched and arched his neck, as if he’d been bitten by something, before collapsing in a senseless heap, the book landing a short distance away. Too surprised at the turn of events, Twilight forgot to take another grab for the book, merely watching as something out of sight dragged the guard away to the right. Shortly, another pony, beige in coat with a dark mane and dressed in a black coat with a large red collar, trotted into view, looking around furtively. It was wearing a mask that had large bulbous lenses in the eye sockets and a long narrow tube jutting out from the mouth area, giving it a vaguely insectoid appearance. It spotted the book, leaned down to look at it, and then closed it and tossed it into a bag strapped to its side with an expert flick of a hoof.

“Um, excuse me?” Twilight called out, “That’s ours. Can we have it back?” The newcomer looked at her and Rainbow, and then went over to the lever. Lifting the mask from its face, the pony grasped the lever and pulled it back. The bars slowly began retracting into the ground and as they did so the strange pony pulled something out of its pack, pounded it into the lever mechanism, and then replaced its mask and ran off.

“Hey!” Rainbow cried out, struggling to free herself from the nearly-opened cage, “Get back here you thiieee!” She came loose and tumbled out onto the rocky ground, bringing Twilight out with her. After some fussing and kicking, the two mares untangled themselves from each other and their robes and got to their feet. Rainbow glared in the direction the masked pony had fled, but there was no sign of him. “What they hay was all that?” she exclaimed in frustration, “Where’d he go? And what kind of moon language was that first guy speaking?”

“Moon language?” Twilight asked flatly, giving her companion an askance glance. “To answer all three questions,” she said, growing serious, “I don’t know. I’m glad we’re not trapped anymore, but now we have a new priority, right below exploring and getting information. That second one’s not going to be easy if the locals don’t speak Equestrian…”

“No kidding,” Rainbow said, starting to wiggle her way out of her robe.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked chidingly.

“Getting rid of this thing,” the cyan pegasus said, her voice muffled slightly as her head disappeared inside the cloak, “Our cover’s basically been blown, hasn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” Twilight said, firmly gripping Rainbow’s cloak in her magic and pulling it back into place, “If I had to guess, which frankly is all I can do at the moment, I’d say that first pony was working for Aldro, and the second one represents some sort of opposing group. He did let us out of the cage after all.”

“Yeah, after stealing our book,” Rainbow pointed out, “If I flew, I might be able to catch up with him.”

“Perhaps,” Twilight admitted, “but, you saw that tube in the mask? Judging by how the guard just fell over, I’d wager that was a blow dart gun of some sort.”

“Oh,” Rainbow said, perking up, “Like in Daring Do! She often has encounters with natives who use knock-out darts from…” She faltered, deflated a little, and then finished, “from ambush. You never see them or realize they’re there until it’s too late. All right, I’ll let him get away for now, but I’m keeping my eye out.”

“Good for you,” Twilight said, patting her friend on the back, “Now let’s get to work. Clover’s not going to come to us.”

The location of the trapped booth could be described in three simple words: barren grey rock. The topography seemed to favor sudden and extreme changes in elevation. The booth was situated near the lip of a sheer cliff that dropped into the sea below and close to another cliff that rose up to the left and ran for a short distance to the north before terminating. Along the base of this cliff a large sheet of metal took the place of the rock, widening as it went away from the sea-cliff. At the narrow terminus of the metal, a giant stone sculpture that looked like a strange triangular double-edged knife with a large ring bisected by a vertical line and another line resting on top in place of a hilt stood with its point buried into the rock. At the other end of the metal plate, near its widest point, was a structure built of from a brownish copper-like metal and shaped like an inverted raindrop, with the rounded end pointed upwards, held up by two metal supports attached to a circular railing welded on to the metal ground. The cage control lever, which now had a smaller replica of the giant knife jammed into it courtesy of the masked pony, was located at the base of another cliff that ran in a mostly north-east direction, growing taller as it went. The ground wrapped around the end of this cliff, providing a way to leave the immediate area. Heading around the bend, Twilight and Rainbow found a staircase carved into the side of the cliff that climbed up to a wooden bridge reaching across to another ridge to the south.

Arriving at the top of the stairs, the ponies were treated to a view of an island in the distance and the first sign of plant life. What seemed to be short scrubby trees grew on a few points of the distant, hill-shaped island, and a couple of tough-looking plants with broad, spiny leaves were visible on the small plain below, which another set of stairs allowed access to. To their right was the bridge, which they now could see lead to a doorway in the distant ridge. To their left, a tunnel slightly longer than a pony length led into a brightly lit room that looked like it belonged to a palace. “That looks to be worth investigating, don’t you think?” Twilight asked flippantly as she looked over at Dash, only to see that the pegasus’s attention was on something up above. “What’s up?” Twilight asked.

“Check it out,” Rainbow said, walking backward across the bridge to get a better look. Intrigued, Twilight stepped onto the bridge, turned around, and looked up. Her jaw threatened to unhinge as she saw a golden dome of monumental proportions behind the ridge. More accurately, it looked like two halves of a dome with a slight gap between them, but it was still obviously a single structure.

“What do you think it is?” Rainbow asked.

“I have no idea,” Twilight said, walking toward the cavern between her and the dome, “but I intend to find out, if possible.” Rainbow followed at a distance and stopped just inside the tunnel as Twilight entered the room and looked around. It was a perfect pentagon in shape, big enough to fit three ponies comfortably. In each corner stood a thick round column on which hung a large golden scarab, and the black marble floor was decorated with a large five-pointed star made of golden leaves pointing at each column and with a bisected square in the center. The only other doorway was to the left of the column opposite the entrance, and was blocked by a metal grate marked with the leaf-star and square. Through the grate Twilight could see a wooden bridge leading to the gold dome. “We’ll need to get this open somehow,” she said, giving the grate a light kick before turning around to leave.

“There’s a button here,” Rainbow said, pressing the round, hoof-sized button she’d spotted on the tunnel wall as she spoke. The distinctive sound of a mechanism unlatching and starting up rose from beneath the floor of the room, and then with a groan and the scraping of rock across rock the room began to rotate, taking the door with it from Dash’s perspective.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight screamed in annoyance over the noise as the room re-aligned to a new position.

“Oops…” the cyan pegasus said, pulling her hoof away from the button quickly. She eyed it warily for a second, and then looked to where the door had been. In it place was a round niche with a peep-hole placed high enough to require Rainbow to rear up and brace against the wall in order to look through. She could see Twilight in sitting in the middle of the room, looking around with trepidation. The door which had been to the left of the back column was now on the right side, but once again passage was blocked by a fancy-looking grate. “Twilight, can you hear me?” she shouted through the tiny hole. The unicorn glanced in her direction, looking unsure. “Sit tight,” Rainbow yelled, and then stepped out of the niche and pressed the button. The room rotated again and Rainbow found herself looking at another peep-hole niche. “Does that Aldro guy put spies in these things or something?” she wondered aloud, and then shook her head quickly and pressed the button again. “If the room lines up the same way every time, I should get a door this time,” she said as the room rotated once more. She grinned as she saw an open door slide into position in front of her, and then frowned when she noticed a lack of cloaked lavender unicorns inside. “Twi?” she called as she crossed the threshold and looked around. She noted that the grate to the right of the back column was visible again, but Twilight was nowhere to be seen. “Twilight! Where’d you go?” Rainbow shouted, whirling around in a panic, “you didn’t try going through a door and get caught inside the wall, did you? If you can hear me, give me a sign or… just teleport!”

“That won’t be necessary Rainbow,” Twilight’s voice said from the entrance. Dash spun around and heaved a sigh of relief as Twilight walked in to join her.

“Where’d you go?” Rainbow asked, “that freaked me out.”

“There’s a back door of sorts there,” Twilight said, pointing to the wall between the doorways, “In fact, each wall has a door or passageway, but obviously only two can be used at a time.” She looked at the position of the doorways, tapped a couple of spots on the floor with a hoof as she thought, and then nodded and said, “Sit tight, I’m going to spin the room again.”

“I’ll wait outside if it’s all the same,” Rainbow insisted, pushing past Twilight to get out into the sunlight, “This place may not be a cave, but it still gives me with shivers.”

“We’ll have to go through here to reach the dome,” Twilight pointed out, “assuming we can get the gate open that is.”

“Passing through’s fine,” Rainbow said as Twilight hit the button and then walked past the pegasus to take the stairs to the left of the bridge. Rainbow followed her down and around the side of the mountain to another tunnel opening. The entrance seemed to be blocked by a wooden gate held closed with a padlock and chain, but as Twilight quickly demonstrated, there was a large enough gap at the bottom for a little pony to crawl through. As Rainbow dropped down to follow, she noticed a little triangle-bladed knife with a circle for a hilt stuck in the ground next to one of the gate posts. “Do you think there’s some reason behind the shape of those knives?” she asked after she cleared the gate and got back to her feet.

“There might be,” Twilight said, walking down the tunnel, which sloped steeply upward until terminating at an open doorway into the rotating room, “It’s probably a symbol for whatever group that masked pony belongs to.” The pair trotted through to the other door, but Rainbow balked when she saw that it currently led to another cavern passage. “It’s ok Rainbow,” Twilight said when she noticed her friend’s hesitancy, “I’m right here with you.”

“I-I’m fine,” Rainbow said, putting on a brave front, “I can do this.” However, she stuck close by Twilight as they moved down the rough, natural-looking tunnel. It curved slightly to the right and came to a dead-end after only a few feet. A hole in the roof admitted natural light, and also allowed for the venting of steam hissing out from the tall metal pipe rising from the cave floor. Partway up the pipe was a valve junction to another pipe that ran parallel to the ground and into the back wall, and the valve lever was currently pointed upward. A square sign with the picture of an upside-down teardrop shape hung below the valve.

“So, that thing is a machine of some sort,” Twilight mused as she turned the valve toward the branching pipe, “I’ll make a note to check it out if we ever end back in this area again.” She proceeded to do so, levitating a pencil and a piece of paper out of her bags as she turned to leave.

“What, not curious about it?” Rainbow asked in a teasing manner.

“Oh, I am,” Twilight said as she finished her note, “but we have more important things to do than play with everything we come across. I’ll strive to stay focused on those things that look like they’ll help us progress or reveal some useful information. Like this for example.” She stopped short of the tunnel exit and pointed a hoof at a sliding handle-lever on the wall to the left of the doorway. “And there’s this as well,” she continued, pointing to a familiar-looking round button on the right-side wall, “Care to guess what that’s for?”

“If you’re going to keep playing around in here, I’ll just wait outside until you’ve got the gate opened,” Rainbow said, brushing past the unicorn and heading for the exit, “Don’t get yourself trapped.”

“I won’t,” Twilight said sardonically, “So long as you keep out of trouble. No flying, ok?”

“Yes, mom,” Rainbow shouted back before disappearing through the other doorway.

Twilight rolled her eyes and pushed the handle-switch up with her magic. Besides a faint sound of metal moving along something, which reverberated through the rock in such a way as to prevent Twilight from pinpointing its source, nothing seemed to happen. Pressing the round button made the room rotate like she expected it would, so she spun the room again to provide herself with an open door and looked inside. The other doorway was ahead and to her left, where the second gated door had been. That gate was now gone, so Twilight pranced through the room to see what lay beyond. She found herself in a small square room with a dark stone door, engraved with the star and square symbol, preventing her from even seeing what lay beyond. Turning back toward the rotating room, she saw another handle-switch on the left wall and a rotation button on the right near the door. “I hope this opens the other gate,” she said as she raised the switch. Her door’s gate remained open and she heard the sliding sound again. Two more rotations of the room placed the doors so she could leave through the original entrance, and from there she went down to what she chose to think of as the “back door” tunnel to find Rainbow Dash laying on the ground and toying with the odd knife in boredom.

“You done?” Dash asked, glancing up at Twilight.

“We just need to re-align the room properly and we should be able to get to the dome,” the unicorn reported with a smile.

“Finally,” Rainbow said, standing up. She picked up and balanced the knife on one hoof, and then gripped it with her mouth, eying it critically as she did so. After a moment of deliberation, she reached over to open Twilight’s saddlebag and slipped the knife into it. “You never know, it might come in handy,” she said when Twilight gave her a quizzical look.

“Let’s just get moving,” Twilight replied, rolling her eyes as she led the way back up to the room.

3rd Entry

I did not create the world of Sohndar. It was Aldro who established the original link. Although I remain steadfast in my belief that the magical art of Writing Linking Books simply creates a connection to pre-existing realities, I can’t deny the fact that there is an intrinsic link between the original Linking Book and the fundamental foundations of its destination. As such, I am able to apply “patches” to attempt to stabilize the world by adjusting or adding to the book’s text. It is an extremely delicate process; one mistake and I could irrevocably change the link’s destination or sever it completely. I must take the risk if I am to have enough time to stage a rescue for Clover and Nyx before Sohndar dies.