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Daring Do and the Nightweavers

by Nexas

Chapter 1: An average day

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An average day

The sky was pitch black above the tiny village; the usual blazing sun replaced by the moon and stars which barely provided enough light to see.

It was enough for Quicksilver though. He loved the night; his black wings situated in front of the moon as he flew at high speeds silently towards an unsuspecting guard had often given the Ponies he robbed nightmares for weeks.

But no flying right now. Now was the time for extra-sneakiness, no showboating.

He couched low as he snuck into the small Zebra village. It was so small and insignificant with its mud huts and tribal ornaments, he felt almost insulted that he had to steal something from here but the contractors had paid especially well and had promised more if he retrieve this item for them. He giggled quite uncoltly at the remembrance of all of the bits this would earn him. He could give up crime for good, leave Equestria all together and move somewhere else where he would only steal part time.

But first this very important item.

He quickly crept low to the ground, avoiding the Zebra guards all throughout the village, his pure black coat providing even more cover in the night.

Remembering his contractor's instructions, Quicksilver quickly located the location; it was a massive temple in the center of the village, it dwarfed all of the hovels and huts around it with its size.

He fluttered up to one of the stone windows and risked a glance inside; Even though there was nopony in the room the entire temple was brightly illuminated by large candles that surrounded the room. In the center of the room, on a stone pedestal was a small wooden chest.

Quicksilver groaned, there wouldn't be anywhere for him to hide once he was in the hut but there was a lot of bits on the line so what could he do?

Lifting himself up as quietly as possible he dove through the window and into the hut, coming to a stop in front of the pedastel.

He picked himself off of the dirt floor and inspected the pedestal and chest; they were completely normal from what he could see, no traps or detection methods. Not even a guard inside to stand watch over it.

"Too easy." He proudly whispered, reaching for the chest. As he got closer he could read a inscription scratched into the wood.

For those who seek this mythic chest,
the container for a deadly quest,
the catalysts of this incidence,
must face the deadly consequence.

It might have been involuntary but Quicksilver shuddered as he read the words, a cold chill running down his spine. Whatever was in the chest must be really important.

He hesitated as he reached for it. Did he really want to do this? Was any amount of bits worth defiling a temple and taking something that had its own warning label?

He didn't know how long he had been standing there but suddenly a voice broke through his thoughts.

"Wewe ni nani?!"

Quicksilver spun around, a Zebra guard stood in the doorway, the Zebra's shocked face matching his own.

"Unafanya nini? Kupata mbali na hapo!" He shouted at the thief, drawing closer to the Pegasus.

Quicksilver, in a blind panic grabbed the chest and charged past the guard out of the room.

Forfeiting all stealth for blind speed, He barrlled out of the temple, his wings flapping erratically for more speed.

"Kuacha!" He heard the guard running after him shout. "Je, si basi, na kupata mbali!"

Quicksilver could hear all of the other guards coming now, that guard must have alerted them. He had to get out of here now.

He flapped his wings even harder, having to fly with another weight was not easy but slowly as he ran his feet lifted off the ground.

"So long suckers!" He tried to say but since he was holding the chest with his mouth it came out as. "Show 'onh huckeh!"

He was almost home free when something latched onto his leg and started pulling him down. It was the guard from earlier; he had jumped into the air and grabbed the Pegasus.

"Let go!" Quicksilver demanded, trying to shake him off.

"Please!" The guard suddenly spoke in heavily accented English, surprising the thief. "You mustn't take that chest, you will doom us all!" He pleaded.

Quicksilver briefly considered doing what he said but shook it off.

"Sorry but whatever's in this chest is worth more than everything in your village."

He raised his other leg over the guard and grinned.

"No hard feelings."

He brought his hoof down on the Zebra, particularly on his face, knocking him off and sending him falling a few feet to the ground. All of the other guards quickly surrounded the fallen Zebra and one by one the turned their attentions to him.

He Didn't want to have to look at them so he took the chest in his arms and flew off.

***

The meeting place was atop a distant hill; its once green grasses yellowed from lack of water and a single sparse tree stood at the top.

Quicksilver sat under the tree, the chest at his hooves. He watched the stars as they twinkle in and out of view as well as the moon as it crept slowly through the sky, its soft glow creating a glare off of his silver arrow cutiemark.

He watched as the moon rose to the midpoint in the sky and looked down at the chest anxiously.

"They should be here by now." He muttered under his breath.

"But we are, Quicksilver." A voice answered him.

Quicksilver shot up in fright. A figure in a dark brown cloak had appeared right in front of him without him even noticing.

"It-it took you long enough." He stammered.

The figure nodded; the cloak it wore seemed to consume the figure until nothing could be seen.

"Do you have the chest?" It spoke in a whispery, hollow voice that he couldn't decide was male or female..

"Don't do that!" Quicksilver gasped, holding his heaving chest.

"Do you have it." It repeated monotonously.

Quicksilver calmed himself down quickly. "It wasn't easy." He admitted. "But I managed to get my hooves on it."

He picked the small chest up and held it out to show it to the figure. The figure leaned forward and a light golden aura surrounded the chest, lifting it out of Quicksilver's grip and over to the figure.

"A unicorn." He remarked, watching the figure inspect the chest that floated around it. The unicorn's horn glowed brightly from underneath the cloak and the lock on the chest softly clicked open.

Quicksilver stepped towards the unicorn, trying to get a look at what was inside the chest. Slowly the unicorn reached into the chest and pulled out a small rolled up paper.

The figure unrolled the paper and after noticing his curiousness showed it to Quicksilver.

"A map?!" He cried, looking over the ancient paper; it was pretty simple with bare instructions for something.

"A map." The figure replied calmly tucking the map away in the cloaks folds, Quicksilver couldn't say for sure but he thought that he could have seen the figure smiling under the heavy hood.

Quicksilver was outraged. "You sent me; a master thief, into a crummy village to get a dumb map for you?!" He screamed.

The figure lifted its hood slightly revealing a wide smile.

"Yes, you snuck into that 'crummy' village to get a 'dumb' map." The figure grinned.

Quicksilver was about to give this unicorn a piece of his mind when it held up a hoof for silence.

"But." The figure continued. "This map will lead me and my group to the most powerful treasure that this world can muster up." The unicorn let lose a bout of cackling.

Quicksilver chuckled awkwardly along with the unicorn. "So this treasure; is it valuable?"

"Oh yes, more valuable than anything on this horrible rock."

He grinned happily, draping an arm over the figure. "This, I can stand behind, what do you need me for?"

The figure took one look at the thief next to it, hanging on it's shoulder. "Yes, about that..."

A white hot pain suddenly shot through Quicksilver's side, bringing him to his knees. He looked down at his side and found a deep gash sliced into his side bleeding painfully.

The figure stepped in front of him, a small dagger levitated around the cloaked pony; its silver blade shining in the moonlight and dripping Pegasus blood.

"Your services are no longer required mister Quicksilver."

Quicksilver struggled backwards, away from the unicorn but his legs just wouldn't listen to him.

"Ok, alright my job is done here." He stammered. "I'll just take the other half of my bits and get out of your mane."

Another stab into his side silenced any more talking and replaced it with screams of pain.

"Ah..." He groaned clutching his side.

"You see; I cannot do that either. That many bits can be so hard to acquire and besides, we've already stolen the other half back from you."

Quicksilver was frightened for his life by this point. "Ok, ok, ok no bits, you don't have to pay me at all just let me go." He pleaded.

His pleading unfortunately fell on deaf ears. "I can't let you leave, mister Quicksilver. You know too much."

The figure raised its knife one last time above the Pegasus and grinned wickedly.

"No hard feelings."

"No!" The Pegasus screamed for the last time.

"NO!"

***

"Alright, the treasure should be through here."

"That's what you said about the two other trap rooms."

The ancient stone doors of the temple were pushed aside and two figures walked in.

One, a female Pegasus with fur the color of sand and a mane in varying scales of gray. She was clad in an adventurer's jacket and matching safari hat. He cutiemark a compass rose.

The Pony alongside her was an ordinary Earth Pony; also female with light yellow fur and a purple mane. He cutiemark was a blooming red flower.

The two stepped into a circular room, the walls, cracked and crumbling with age were lined with grotesque monster statues, the floor was bare save for a simple long rug that had been mostly eaten by moths long ago and everything was covered in an inch of cobwebs and dust.

The Pegasus took a step forward and drew in a breath.

"Ah..." She exhaled dreamily. "Nothing like a temple full of treasure, right Poppy?"

The Earth Pony also drew in a breath but coughed and hacked in response.

"I think I prefer fresh air, if that's alright with you Daring." Poppy coughed.

Daring Do; explorer extraodinaire as she called herself, stepped briskly towards the middle of the room. A miniature golden idol sat on a stone podium.

"Ok..." Daring said to her friend. "I'm pretty sure that this is the actual treasure!"

Poppy looked up at the imposing statues; all of them facing the middle of the room. "I hope it is." She meekly replied. "I'm getting really tired of pit traps."

"Don't be so negative." Daring grinned optimistically back at her. "This kind of stuff is what adventurers live for!"

She pointed back and forth at her and Poppy. "And as adventures we are supposed to uphold that fact."

Poppy sighed; there was no getting through to her sometimes.

Daring turned back to the podium, sweating with anticipation, the idol gleaming in the few sun rays that peeked through the rock. She reached towards the idol almost painfully slowly and lightly took it in her teeth, pulling it carefully off the podium.

Daring took the idol in her hooves and inspected it over.

"I think this one is actual gold!" She held it up for her friend to see, unaware of the podium sinking into the ground behind her.

The room began to shake; dust falling from the ceiling, rocks crumbling and large cracks forming in the floor but just as quickly as it started the rumbling stopped.

The two stared at each other in panic.

"The trap must be stuck!" Daring whispered harshly. "If we move quietly we should be able to get out of here without setting it off!"

Daring and Poppy slowly turned around and crept for the entrance. They were about to make it when Poppy accidentally ran into a cobweb.

"Ahh....ahh..."

"Poppy!" Daring pleaded. "Do. Not. Sneeze."

She was just about to sneeze when the sensation died down.

Poppy sighed in relief. "Don't worry Daring, I'm oka-"

She suddenly felt something crawling on her face and looked down. A large black spider was crawling up her cheek.

"Oh no..." Daring groaned, she knew what was next.

"Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!" The Earth Pony shriek, flailing her arms attempting to shake the spider off her face.

Unfortunately Poppy's shrieking started up the trap again; bringing the mechanisms up to life and causing the ceiling to start caving in.

"Time to go!" Daring shouted over the rumbling, tucking the idol under her hat she grabbed Poppy and sprinted out of the collapsing room.

Once in the hallway, the two looked back at the collapsing room behind them.

"Was that it?" Poppy panted, recovering from her shrieking episode.

"Guess so." Daring laughed. "I guess they used all of their good traps earlier."

Suddenly another rumbling shook the room and to the surprise of the duo the ceiling opened above them and a boulder was lowered down.

"Why is it always boulders?" Daring groaned again.

The duo took off again, the boulder close behind them. As they ran through the hallways the whole temple had begun to fall down around them.

"There!" Poppy shouted. "The exit!"

The entrance to the temple was 30 meters away and was closing.

"Slide!"

They dove for the door with everything they had. They manage to just slip through the door, the boulder crashing into it and everything crumbling to rubble. When the dust cleared, the two slowly stirred.

"Ugh..." Daring and Poppy groaned as one, their muscles screaming in protest from being used anymore. Slowly they opened their eyes.

The two were on the ground, Poppy on top of Daring. Slowly comprehending what was going on they met each other in the eyes.

"Um..." Poppy stammered, her face quickly becoming dark yellow. "I..."

"Well, that could have been a lot worse." Daring laughed but stopped when she noticed Poppy's face.

"Poppy?"

She squeaked, her face so close to Daring's.

"Y-yes?"

"Are you okay?" She asked, putting her hoof to Poppy's forehead. "You're burning up."

"Um...well..."

Suddenly she gasped. "Oh no! You must have inhaled some kind of toxin from the ruins!"

Poppy's heart dropped down into her stomach. "Yeah...that's what it is." She rose to her hooves.

"Don't worry girl." Daring jumped to her hooves, walking over to her hat, lying on the ground and containing the idol. She picked it up and put it safely on her head, giving it an affectionate pat.

"Once we get back to the HQ We'll get you all better."

Poppy watched as she walked into the lush jungle brush and sighed.

"Yeah, all better."

Next Chapter: Overhearing Estimated time remaining: 16 Minutes
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