Daring’s hoof falls echoed around her as she walked down the expansive antechamber. Intricately carved columns of dark stone lined the hall, amber and gold tiles inlayed in the floor reflected the flickering light of the burning torches across the hall, filling the deep corners with flickering shadows that played tricks on the eye and toyed with the mind. Daring’s eyes flicked from corner to corner, searching for danger, as she neared the entrance to the main chamber.

Daring stepped across the threshold and stopped, frozen in awe of what lay before her. A small skylight carved into the stone roof above allowed a single beam of light to shine down into the center of the chamber where it fell upon a lone alter that was the sole feature of the room. And on that alter…

Daring Do stood at the entrance to the central temple chamber. At last, she was face-to-face with the legendary sapphire statue!

Daring began her way across the hall to the altar, but she stopped herself a few steps later - All the traps, all of the effort up to this point to stop her and then, right at the end, nothing? Daring didn’t buy it. She began looking around for the trick, the hidden trap or whatever diabolical obstacle might be placed in between her had her ultimate goal. After a moment, she finds her eyes drifting to the decorative floor tiles.

On a hunch, Daring kicked a nearby rock onto the tiles, where it skipped and slid before coming to a rest on one tile. One tile which proceeded to sink into the floor followed a hail of darts that flew where the would-be intruder would have been standing and impaling on the far wall. So, more dart traps – lovely.

Daring carefully studied the tiles. There had to be some sort of clue hidden in them. They were all made of the same yellow-ish, brown stone, varying in shade from a gold-ish yellow to an almost brown shade. Each one had an engraving carved into its surface. A few designs kept recurring - A seated tiger, a snarling lion, the visage of a fearsome wolf…wait a minute…

Daring scanned the titles another time and grinned. “They’re all predators.” Daring thought out loud. Every one of them was a predator - except for one. “Except for sheep!” Daring carefully lowered her hoof onto the nearest tile bearing the design of a docile herbivore; slowly shifting her weight onto it as she kept an eye on the far wall, but no darts came.

Now with a clear idea of how to get across the floor, Daring began to jump from sheep tile to sheep tile. She leapt across the larger distances, hooves coming perilously close to triggering the neighboring tiles and unleashing a barrage of poisoned darts. Some of the tiles were annoyingly far apart from each other. Not for the first time on this accursed trip did Daring wish she still had a functional wing. Flying would have made this trap foals play, stupid plane crash.

With one final jump, Daring landed safely on the other side of the tiles, taking a moment to catch her breath. Finally, she turned her attention to the altar before her - and her ultimate prize.

Daring gradually made her way up the steps that led up to the altar itself, cautious of any further traps that might be hidden around the temple’s centerpiece. No traps spring themselves though, and soon Daring found herself eye to eye with the legendary Sapphire Statue.

It was exactly as the drawing in the cavern and shown it and the way the legends had described it. It was a brilliant shade of blue for the most part, seemingly carved out of a single piece of stone. Two intricately detailed Anubis heads sprouted from the top, small eyes glaring off at some unseen foe or unworthy subject. Lower on its body, inlayed right in its center, was easily the largest Sapphire Daring had ever seen. It was a sharply cut stone that seemed to radiate illumination like a torch. It was a brilliant shade of blue that made the stone around it look dull, and it was almost as big as a phoenix egg.

A quick scan showed that, however the precious stone was mounted in the statue, it seemed to be permanent - or, at least, mostly permanent. Either way, it didn’t look like Daring was going to be walking out with just the stone. She lacked any of the equipment to transport a relic like the statue properly, but she wasn’t going to leave this trip empty hoofed, and the statue was a lot easier to move in one piece at the moment then any of those scrolls.

That just meant moving the statue itself. Daring scanned over the altar, looking for anything out of place. A lever trigger, a counter weight switch, or some other linkage mechanism. But, as far as she could tell, the altar was trap free. Still, it couldn’t be that simple Daring thought as she weighed her option, sweat starting to bead on her brow. Her hooves rubbed together as she considered the most likely situation. The minute she removed the statue, it would trigger a defense response of some sort. On the other hoof, it was entirely possible that they had never expected an intruder to make it this far into the temple proper and thus the statue was not, in fact, rigged to anything. But the pressure-trigger floor hinted that the designers had thought otherwise. Still, if the statue was moved on a regular basis, then having some sort of trap attached to the altar would be impractical - unless the Temple had a mechanism to disable the various traps along the way to the statue, which would make sense. It was also something Daring had wish she had considered about a dozen or so near misses ago. If she could figure out the disabling mechanism then she could simply turn off any trap that might be attached. But that would require heading all the way back to the entrance to the temple most likely, which was not an appealing proposition.

Daring let out a frustrated sigh at her own circular logic, so she simply gave up trying to figure out if the altar was trapped and just grabbed the statue with her teeth. With a few quick flicks of her hooves, Daring stowed the statue away safely, tucked into the recesses of her pith helmet. She idly took a moment to adjust her hat as she tried to take into account the new weight when she noticed that the altar had changed. Ever so slowly, a cylinder was rising out of the center of the altar where the statue had once stood. “Right” Daring muttered as she groused. “Trap - of course there’s a trap.”

The entire room began to rumble, the entire space beginning to collapse as whatever load-bearing mechanism the altar had been hooked into disengaged. Daring was a moment away from leaping of the altar and back to the floor below when a piece of falling debris crashed straight through the floor into the once hidden space below. A bellow of smoke belched out of the new hole shortly after, accompanied by a wave of heat. Soon, the rest of the floor began to crumble away as Daring’s eyes went wide over what was really below the temple floor.

Sweet Celestia, they had built their temple over an active volcano!

It also seemed that, whatever mechanism they had, it was agitating the lava below if the way it was rising was any indicator. Daring back stepped further up the altar, her rear soon bumping into the statue’s pedestal. Slowly, the lava began to climb closer as the entire room continued to collapse. Columns began to topple as the room disintegrated, the massive blocks of black stone that had been supporting the roof now floating on the lava. That gave Daring an idea - she just hoped it work.

The lava was now perilously close, the hairs on her forelegs starting to singe off of the radiant heat when she leapt. Her underside was pounded with searing heat before her hooves finally alighted on one of the fallen columns. Lave still rising behind her, Daring leapt to the next column. Then to the next. And the next.

Soon, Daring found herself nearing the roof of the temple, and the skylight that had once been far above her head. Now, it had become the one and only way for Daring to get out of the temple in one piece. It was still, however, an annoyingly long way off and the lava was growing closer by the second. With little other choice, Daring threw herself toward the skylight and her only hope for escape from the fiery heat below her. She neared the edge of the skylight, and reached out a hoof to grab it, but it slipped past her grasp. Desperate, Daring reached out and, in a last ditch attempt, grabbed hold of the edge with her teeth. Slowly, Daring pulled herself over the edge and onto the temple roof, tumbling out of the skylight with a huff. A quick glance behind her showed that the lava was still steadily rising, the stepped pyramid having turned into a massive artificial volcano. Ahead of her was the steep slopes of the pyramid itself, a series of pony-high steps save for the smoothed sections sloping down in two parallel lines down the middle of each side. Well, smooth was a relative term - she didn’t relish the idea of taking that particular route. The lava behind her, however, didn’t give her much choice in the matter.

So, with one final adjustment of her pith helmet, Daring jumped onto the sloping section of the pyramid’s side, dropping into a slide as gravity took over She quickly gained speed, the molten rock behind her finally spewing out of the top of the temple and smothering the spot she had been standing moments earlier before starting its lethargic decent in her direction. On either side of her the massive stone steps sped by, blurring into a strange oscillating wave of stone mere inches away on either side. Bumps and loose rocks along her haphazard route sent her bouncing around as Daring desperately tried to keep herself on the narrow ribbon of relative safety. She could feel the ground still rumbling below her as the larger temple complex seemed to be crumbling in on itself as if the statue had been the sole linchpin holding everything together. Perhaps, Daring thought, it had been.

Below her, she could see the base of the pyramid getting closer. Instead of terminating at the ground, the entire pyramid was surrounded by some sort of secondary structure forming a larger temple complex. Instead of landing her on terra firma, her improvised slide was hurtling her straight toward the stone roof of a crumbling building. “Oh boy.”

Daring braced herself for the inevitable collision with stone, but it seemed her luck was finally starting to improve. An instant before Daring would have collided with the roof, the rolling wave of destruction reached the ancient building and the entire structure crumbled. Daring found herself plunging through darkened space as clouds of dust and debris billowed around her. For a brief moment she flew through the dark void, no concept of distance as she seemed to hang in the inky blackness. Then, an instant later, she felt a jolt as she landed again and continued her downward slide. Unlike the stone from before, this time the surface underneath her felt softer and wetter - less like stone and more like soil. What little light did manage to pierce the veil of dust quickly disappeared as the tunnel - for that’s what it was, Daring realized - curved as it descended. The soft glow of luminescent mushrooms cut through the darkness at random intervals. Daring simply tried to keep hall of her hooves close to her body, not wanting to risk catching them on something in such a cramp space or at such speeds. The tunnel twisted and turned sometimes seeming to curve upward for a short while, but always invariably curving back downward. Daring tried to guess at how deep underground she was, but the speed of her decent and the curving tunnel made any sort of reasonable guess impossible. At the very least, she was likely below the river line at this point - possibly even below sea level.

Suddenly, the tunnel leveled out and a short distance later Daring found herself flung out of tunnel by sheer momentum and sent tumbling over an earthen floor. Daring laid there for a moment, head still spinning like she had just been caught in a cyclone, until her eyes stopped rolling in their sockets and she managed to sum up her current feelings. “Ow”

Shakily, Daring got to her hooves as the room seemed to keep spinning as shapes began to take form in the darkness. Narrow columns covered in more of those glowing fungi lined the hall, alcoves in between adorning with a varied collection of statuettes casting strange shadows in the dim organic light. Daring drew closer to one of the statuettes to get a better look. It was a manticore of some sort, a snarl frozen across its features as it reared back. The alcove around it was unadorned, a simple nook of carved stone built to hold the statue. The columns around it were made out of the same stone, but seemed to be more decorated. Daring leaned closer, trying to get a better angle in the low light, and gasped when she got a look at what was on the columns.

The history of Equestria had produced numerous cultures, each with their own mythologies and cosmologies - including stories of the underworld. Realms of monsters and darker, stranger things that nopony was meant to ever see. Places nopony was meant to go into or out of. Places that were the homes of a pony’s nightmares and darkest fears. All of these things seemed to have been drawn on by the artist who had carved the column with twisted figures adorning its surface. She gave her surroundings another look and began to notice other details. The other columns were adorned in a fashion similar to the first column, decorated in an array of imagery straight out of Tartarus. The statuettes in between each alcove followed a similar pattern - Dragon’s, Manticores, Hydras, and other such things were represented, arrayed in their nooks in no apparent order. Even the floor seemed sinister upon a second look, its tiling stones etched with swirling patterns of sharp angles spanning out across the floor. Daring had found herself in an underground city of shadows - a recreation of the Hayan underworld. A small shiver ran down her spine as she considered what else might be down here if she was right.

Daring started down the hall, the only illumination the soft glow of mushrooms, until she reached an intersection. A hallway branched off to the left and right while a third continued forward. Sitting in alcoves between each hall, nestled into the corners, were sitting four over-sized Anubis statues, all four of them the same basic design as the one she had seen back inside the temple proper, each one glaring down at the center of the juncture with piercing glares. Daring watched them wearily as she continued on. The next hallway was much like the last one; in fact it was almost identical to the last - The same columns, the same statues, the same intricate geometrics on the floor tiles. Like the last, it ended in an intersection, this one also featuring four of the imposing Anubis statues. Idly, Daring decided to try taking a left, but the same result. Every turn simply led her down more identical halls, through more identical intersections, as she quickly became hopelessly lost. This was some sort of insane labyrinth - for what purpose, Daring didn’t have the time to figure out, nor did she have the interest at the moment. Right now, all she was interesting in figuring out was the way out.

After taking a few random turns, Daring simply started off in a straight line in hopes of running into a new feature, or simply a perimeter wall of some sort. Some sort of feature that she could orient off of and start trying to work out a way out. However, for hallway after repetitive hallway, she saw no sign of any change in scenery. Around her, she could see where the labyrinth had fallen into disrepair, showing the dark soil behind the stones that made up the entire place, a slow trickle of dirt falling through the cracks in the masonry.

After a further half-dozen or so hallways with nothing but the sound of her hoof steps for company, Daring’s ears twitched at a sudden change in the monotony. She came to a stop and listened intently, only to realize that she could still hear the sounds of hoof steps. But there was something off about them, like they were padded or…

Daring jerked her head in the direction of the sound, suddenly realizing what the sound she was hearing was. Trying to be as quiet as she could, Daring gingerly made her way down another hallway, slowly drawing closer to the sound. Sure enough, the sound began to grow louder - the sure sound of steps, and as she drew closer she started to make out other details. From the sounds of it, there was more than one of them. Other sounds began to make themselves known as well - low growls, guttural snarls, and sharp hisses that tended to come before or after the sound of somepony walking straight into a piece of solid stone followed by a sudden yowl. Daring pressed herself against the nearest wall before scooting along the wall as quietly as she could until she could peer around the corner at whoever her company was - but she had an idea who it might be.

Sure enough, right around the corner she saw the tiger from yesterday, glaring up at the nearest Anubis statue as the Lynx and the Panther padded in behind it. The Cheetah was already poking its head down another hallway, the glower across its face showing its displeasure at finding yet another identical hallway. Apparently the cats were not enjoying the maze.

Daring slowly began to edge her way away from the intersection, once again careful to make as little sound as possible. Those cats had sharp ears and with their eyes they would have a much easier time seeing her before she could see them. She could only hope to try and maintain as much distance between her and them as possible. With luck, she would be able to find her way out of this place while those cats kept running themselves around the place in circles as the try and find what was no longer there. Daring waited until she had a good half dozen hallways between her and them before starting to move at a normal pace again. If she had taken her turns right, she should have moved in a roughly diagonal direction - not that there was any real basis for her orientation, since she had long since lost track of which way north was.

It was while aimlessly moving through the tunnels as she continued to try and put as much space between her and those cats as possible that Daring came across what she had been looking for in the first place.

Daring was glancing over her shoulder yet again, making sure that she hadn’t been followed, when she walked straight into a wall. Daring stumbled backward, landing on her rump with an unmarelike grunt as one hoof rose up to rub at her now sore nose. Daring sat there on the ground for a moment as she studied the offending wall. It was the ‘top’ portion of a T-intersection Daring now found herself sitting in the middle off, and its entire surface was covered in the same sort of strange geometries as the patterns covering the floor below her. To either side where the same Anubis statues as before, still glowering down at some invisible foe. Or maybe they just didn’t like her.

Daring tapped a hoof against her chin as she considered her choices - left or right? Carefully, she retraced her steps in her head, trying to figure which way she had come from. She thought it was the left - probably. Well, probably was good enough for her. So, without a second thought, Daring started down the right-hoof tunnel. The new pattern was almost the same as the last, save for the wall in place of another hallway. There was, however, one other difference starting to become apparent.

She was going uphill.

Slowly but surely the slope beneath her hooves was getting steeper as it arced upward. Soon, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel - quite literally, in this case. The tunnel leveled out slightly before opening out into a wide open space. Daring stepped through the final archway and found herself up on a wide stone ledge. Out beyond it the space opened up into a massive natural cavern. A waterfall tumbled over A distant rock face as an underground river flowed through. The entire cave was lit an eerie twilight glow cast by the thousands upon thousands of luminescent fungi that were growing from the roof and the floor. Massive spires of crystal jutted out of the ground in groups that looked like bizarre groves of trees. Interspersed in between and around the cave floor were dozens of little ponds and pools, small ripples echoing across the surface as droplets of moisture fell from the ceiling above - and those droplets had quite a ways to fall. The entire cavern looked like you could stick Canterlot Castle inside and none of the spires would have scraped the roof. There was another open space that you could probably fit most of the royal gardens down here as well. She doubted that would be very good for the plants though. It would make the hedge maze more interesting however.

Her gawking was cut short as the faintest echo of movement emanated from somewhere deep in the tunnels behind her. Daring cursed as she started looking around the edge of her ledge for a way down. Of course, nopony had remembered to put any stairs up to here. Perhaps the actual way into the cavern proper had been down a different tunnel - or maybe the stairs had just collapsed long ago. The pile of rubble could have been their ruinous remains, but they could just as easily be from a rock face collapse. Grumbling at how much of a disaster this entire trip had become - and briefly wondering why it had taken her until this point to come to that conclusion, given the hoof chases through the jungle, the death traps and the lava she had encountered so far - Daring started picking her way down the insanely steep slope of loose stones as she laboriously worked her way toward the cavern floor. Stones skidded underneath her hooves, threating to send her tumbling down the steep slope if she had a misstep or simply got unlucky. The sound of falling rocks clattered loudly through the cavern, and up above Daring could hear the pace of her pursues getting faster as they drew closer to the ledge.

Daring managed to make it to the bottom of the hill in one piece just as the first cat burst out onto the ledge. It swept its gaze across the cave before zeroing in on the tan pegasus down below. It let out a deep growl before signaling its compatriots to move forward, the three of them beginning to pick their way down the slope after Daring. Daring didn’t bother waiting for them, speeding off into the maze of crystalline spires as the sound of tumbling rocks and angry snarls echoed behind her.

Daring weaved through the crystals, the jagged translucent blue stones seeming to glow along with the mushrooms around them. Strange, pale insects scuttled about, watching Daring with blind eyes before crawling back toward the nearest pool, where cave fish lurked just under the pools edge in wait to grab any cave denizen that strayed to close. Her hoof steps echoed off of the crystals as she began to near the bottom of the cave terrace. Above her the worn stone towered overhead, the low roar of a waterfall off to one side rang in her ears as she considered her next move. Behind her, she could hear the sounds of falling stone fading. Either they had given up, or they had reached the bottom. Given her luck, she was guessing it was the latter.

A sudden burst of sound from somewhere above her caught her attention. She looked up to see a plume of what looked like smoke drifting across the cavern above her. Smoke - or steam.

Daring began running along the base of the terrace, looking for a way up as she could hear the sounds of her pursuers grow closer. She could hear there growls echoing off of the crystal as they spread out, slowly but surely closing in on her position. After a few minutes she found a point where the slope turned into a gentler gradient and she started up it to the plateau above. Behind her, she heard an angry roar as she guessed the tiger and its friends finally caught sight of her half-way up the slope. Daring increased her pace as she neared the top and finally cresting the top.

At the top she found herself in the middle of a truly alien landscape. Across the barren, reddish-brown ground were dozens of small mounds, each one slowly leaking steam before occasionally burping out massive pale clouds as the geothermal activity below them slowly churned. It was in fact a massive geyser field, buried under the surface of the island. Further above, she could just make out the bright light of what she guessed was what would have looked like another sink hole on the surface, though this one simply opened straight into the expansive cavern below it. She began to weave her way around the geysers, the rumble of steam below her hooves sounding like the bellyache of an angry beast. Suddenly, as one of the geysers nearby erupted, something peculiar happened at another. Suddenly, the geyser seemed to inhale as Daring could feel the massive and strange intake of air into the geologic feature. Then, suddenly, the geyser’s airflow seemed to suddenly reverse as it proceeded to let out its collected air in a massive burst as the system reversed. A warm, damp breeze that was much cooler than the usual steam of a geyser wafted over Daring. She could only stare at the geyser in confusion as she tried to figure just how that had worked. Admittedly, Daring’s knowledge of geology was somewhat limited in regards to geysers, but she was fairly sure geysers weren’t supposed to work like that, right?

Her questions on questionable geyser mechanics would have to wait, however, as a nearby growl alerted her to the fact that her feline pursuers had finally managed to catch up with her. Daring began to weave through the geyser field again, trying to work out an escape plan. Around her, the geysers continued to belch out steam. Around them, their neighbors reacted in sympathy as they sucked in air before coughing it back out. Which geyser reacted to an eruption seemed random.

Daring dodged around another geyser and came face to face with an angry cheetah. Daring back pedaled rapidly, leaping over one of the geysers as the cat gave chase. The cheetah leapt after her, but its timing ended poorly for the cat. It was mid-leap when the geyser let out a massive burst of steam. The cheetah recoiled, leaping off to one side as it yowled in pain from coming within inches of the super-heated water vapor. The cat likely didn't realize its luck – a normal geyser would have left it thoroughly cooked. Daring sped off into the geyser field, confident now in her escape, when she was sideswiped.

Daring rolled with her assailants tackle, both of them tumbling across the geyser field in a flurry of fur and hooves and claws as Daring realized that she was entangled once again with the tiger that seemed to be the leader of their little outfit. Razor sharp teeth snapped uncomfortably close to Daring’s face as they continued to roll along until they finally came to a stop with the big cat on top.

The cat stared down at Daring with a predatory grin, savoring the moment. It was so engrossed that it failed to notice the slight rumble building beneath them. Daring, however, did notice. Daring bucked with all the might she could muster, flipping the two of them over so that now the tiger was on the bottom. The Rumbling built to a crescendo as Daring flashed a smug grin at the tiger. “Going up.”

A truly massive burst of steam shot the pair of them skyward toward the sinkhole Daring had seen earlier, the force of it peeling the two of them apart as Daring flew clear though the hole and beyond, arcing through the air before tumbling back toward the earth.

The thick jungle canopy slowed her fall so that, when she finally hit the ground, all it did was rattle her marbles. Daring shook her head to try and clear it before she looked up - and straight into the eyes of a grinning, utterly bizarre creature.