“Totem!” Applebaum shrieks as the colt stumbles into her, knocking her down and onto the hard ground of the cave. It’s nearly pitch black inside, and she can’t see where her hooves end and the warm floor begins except by feel. “What’re ya doin’ in here?”

“You said to follow you,” Totem answers readily, confusion in his voice. He nervously shifts, the gear on his back rustling. Applebaum can only tell his ears fold flat because the silhouette against the yellow shield changes. He says again, quieter, frightened as he tries to keep close, “You told me to follow you.”

“Well, stop it!” Applebaum growls as she gets up, angrily headbutting the colt away from her. “Go stand over there!”

“No,” Totem pleads, stifling a sob, even as he complies by standing close to the wall and out of the way. “You’re going to leave me here.”

Applebaum sighs, the distressed colt more than she wants to deal with. “Ah’m not gonna leave ya here. Okay? You’re gonna be safe.”

“You don’t know that,” Totem counters. “You don’t believe that.”

“Just… just stay there, okay?” Applebaum grunts as she grabs the torch from her saddlebags. She had shed the bulkiest, most cumbersome ones, leaving her only a few coils of rope and a hammer, flint, spare torches, and one of the glowsticks. Plus the two dynamite sticks Dig Root gave her in case the bell needs ‘loosening’. She lights the torch with the flint, wincing at the bright light, but also the worried ping her cutie mark gives her.

The light of the flickering flame only extends a few feet in front of her, leaving the center of the cave a darkened mystery. Dust has settled on the floor, two furrows where the orbs pierced through the shield and rolled only a foot before coming to a stop. The air has a musty taste to it, dry and dead. The heat helps warm her from standing outside, and without the wind she feels almost hot. Even so, she doesn’t want to shed her jacket; a little sweat won’t hurt her.

“That can’t be right,” she mutters to herself as she starts walking the perimeter of the cave, keeping a stone wall on her left. The cave feels too small, at least given the contour of the shield. Either it isn’t spherical, or the barrier extends into the rock. She pulls the hammer from her pack, wishing she had a pickaxe, and takes an experimental swing against the wall.

*Clang!*

“What was that?” Totem asks, still standing at his spot but shifting back and forth, ready to come if called. “Are you okay?”

“Just testin’ somethin’,” Applebaum answers, kicking herself for not warning him. The last thing she needs is him disobeying her orders. She takes another swing, the rock chipping away far easier than if it was a solid wall. The reason becomes obvious quickly: the shield has sliced through the cave wall, leaving a thin portion only supported by the connection it has to the rest of the rock.

She trots around the edges, surprised by how quickly she returns to Totem. His wide eyes reflect the light of her torch back at her, never blinking. “You okay?” she asks, concerned.

“T-the torch helps,” he stammers, breath coming in short pants. He offers a smile, but it’s shaking too much to give her any reassurance. “O-otherwise, I don’t know how to get to you if you call.”

“I’ll be quick,” Applebaum promises, returning the smile. She hopes it helps.

The cave lowers as she gets to the center, a depression she suspects tracks the lower bound of the shield. In the center of the cave, atop a cylindrical pedestal, lies a large green bell. A loop comes off the top, perhaps big enough to snag a hoof through, but it looks like a tight fit. Scratches mar the dull green finish where red rust hasn’t eaten away. A large chip is missing from one of the corners.

Her cutie mark doesn’t care for it, not at all. She warily regards the bell, the climax of far too many Daring Do books coming to mind. But those are all fictional, right? How many chambers actually collapse when the artifact is taken from the pedestal? That’s just silly, right? Unless the artifact is, for whatever reason, powering the protections around it.

She stops her outstretched hoof before it can touch the bell. No. She shakes her head, trying to clear whatever impulse would cause her to do such an ill-considered action. Just because there is a super-powerful artifact sitting right next to her, in easy reach, doesn’t mean she should go around touching it at random. Actually, she should especially not go around touching it at random.

She holds the torch up as high as she can. A frown slowly crosses her face as she sees a large pillar of stone, the world’s largest stalactite if she has any guess, in a precarious position above the pedestal. Her cutie mark screams at her to back up, that above her is instant death should it come loose, the whole thing liable to come crashing down. She tries to calm herself down, ignore her mark; after all, the ceiling has held for a thousand years, right? It’s just a trap against anypony who tries to touch the bell. The bell they are trying to get.

The thought of grabbing the bell and the roof falling fills her with dread.

She…

She doesn’t believe Celestia would make a trap like that. Right? Not the Celestia she knows, and she feels like she knows the alicorn better than the vast majority of ponies.

But it wasn’t just Celestia who put the bell here. It was also Gusty the Great. And from what she saw of the Kirin, with their ambushes and ‘I’m-right-you’re-not’ arguing and extreme measures…

She can absolutely see them putting in a trap that crushes first and asks questions later.

Her cutie mark quiets down once she gets a few body lengths away from the center. Her legs feel like jelly as she trots back to the entrance, but she doesn’t get the direction right at first and has to circle around until she nearly bumps into Totem. She can only make out the entrance when she is standing nearly on top of it: the translucent, semi-glowing barrier is dark and opaque from more than five feet away. She can barely make out Radiant Hope on the other side, a hoof pressed against the surface as the unicorn peers inside.

Nuanced communication through the barrier is nearly impossible. No sound goes through, there is too much distortion for any sort of writing, and all she can make out are yes and no head nods. She shakes her head when Radiant Hope holds up one of the orbs. She’s not going to give up, not yet, not when they’re so close.

“Alright, what are we going to do?” Applebaum asks herself, pacing back and forth.

“Well, I’ve got lots of food over here,” Totem answers, like the question wasn’t rhetorical, “enough for a few weeks, but I don’t see how that is going to help.”

“Starvin’s the least of our problems,” Applebaum counters. “Water, that’s what we’d run outta first if we got trapped. Or air…”

Her eyes go wide as she stares at the lit torch in her hoof. WIth a furious scream she throws it to the ground, stomping out the embers as quickly as she can.

“What was that for?” Totem asks over several plopping sounds, a panicked jitter to his voice.

Applebaum doesn’t answer. Instead she presses her muzzle against the shield, forms as good a seal as she can and then tries to breathe through.

Nothing.

“Why’d you put out the light?” Totem asks again.

“Because that shield ain’t stoppin’ just us from walkin’ through,” Applebaum explains, hoping she is wrong but dreading if she is right. She knew it was too warm in this death-trap of a cave. “It’s also stoppin’ cold, and light, and air.”

“Oh.” Totem waits a beat. “That’s bad, right?”

Applebaum takes a deep breath, even if that does waste their precious supply of oxygen. “No. We’ll make it work.” She looks back at the bell, or at least a vague direction of where the bell should be. “But how…?”

“Well,” Totem says, trying to stay positive, “I’ve got lots of rope over here. And some pitons, and a jacket, and I don’t need to go to the bathroom any more, and-”

“That’s it!” Applebaum rushes over to rummage through Totem’s packed bags.

“...It is?” Totem says, even more confused than normal. He awkwardly shuffles away from where he was standing before.

Applebaum rolls her eyes. “No, silly. The rope! If Ah can lasso the bell from over here?” She frowns at the near impossibility of doing that in the dark. Breaking the glowstick would help, and she does that, but she remains doubtful of the bell’s ability to be dragged. “Or, if Ah can tie it around the loop at the top?”

“Y-you know what to do,” Totem murmurs.

It’s tough to pull out the rope from the rest of the belongings Totem brought inside. Actually... It’d be a pain to take all those things back through the portal. And a lot of them are redundant anyway, right? They don’t need all the food and tents and whatnot if they’re heading straight back to the Crystal Empire.

“Totem, take all your saddlebags off,” Applebaum orders, the colt immediately and gratefully complying. “Then wait here until Ah tell ya to follow me. Got it?”

“Got it,” Totem answers, and she doesn’t need to see the grin plastered on his face to know it’s there. He’s always happiest when there’s a plan.

Applebaum takes one end of the rope in her mouth and walks the perimeter, letting the rest drag along behind her. Once she gets back to Totem she follows the rope to the center where it has looped around the cylinder the bell is resting on. Her cutie mark doesn’t care for getting close to the pillar again, not at all, the mere knowledge of its existence enough to set her hair on end. But she forces through, gritting her teeth around the rope. She delicately places two front hooves on the pedestal, ready to bolt in an instant.

Nothing happens.

She spits out the rope with a huge sigh of relief. She balances against the pedestal, slips one end of the rope through the hole at the top, and ties a knot to keep the bell from sliding around. Satisfied it is secure she carefully walks back to Totem, following the rope and not putting any force on it.

Radiant Hope seems to grasp their plan when she mimes pulling on the rope as hard as she can. It would be an extremely tight window; it was difficult enough getting herself through with Totem hot on her heels, but trying to bring the bell along with them? She has no idea how much it weighs. If it’s solid metal she likely would barely be able to drag it around. She has to assume it is hollow and she can at least move it. Otherwise, it would take too long. There just isn’t enough space!

Applebaum has an idea. A few throwing motions get Radiant Hope to hold up an obsidian orb. It takes longer to get her to hold up both, but once she does Radiant Hope has Tempest Shadow to stand next to her, each holding an orb and ready to go.

She estimates it would take two seconds to drag the bell from the center to their position on the edge. About as long as it takes the orbs to burrow through the shield. Muscles tensed, hooves dug in, she gives a testing pull on the rope. There isn’t enough rope for stretching to be much of an issue, and she can feel the bell just start to tip over when she puts her back into it.

She takes a deep breath. It’s going to be easy, like a game of rope pull. Just pull, grab more rope, repeat. She’s got this!

“Totem, you ready?”

“Ready.”

She nods to Radiant Hope, and as soon as she sees the hoof rear back she yanks as hard as she can.

The weight on the other end of rope flops onto the ground with a hearty *CLANG!!*, the reverberations echoing in the shielded room. It’s heavier than she hoped, but lighter than she feared, taking a lot of effort to move with the single rope. The first orb impacts the shield, spraying bright sparks in every direction. She doesn’t know if any of them hit her, her heart is pounding in her ears, a little pain nothing to her straining hooves. She pulls, and pulls, and the tumbling, clanging bell nearly smashes into her fetlock.

The second orb hits the shield, with a second spray of sparks, and her cutie mark goes insane.

From outside, Radiant Hope watches with wide eyes as the second orb hits the shield. The sparks hurt, but she doesn’t care, intent on seeing the two out.

But, instead of creating a larger hole, the shield collapses entirely.

Left with nothing supporting it the roof of the cave crumples inward. It pauses for a brief moment as a loud rumble shakes the mountain they are standing on. Something shatters inside; the pause gives her a fleeting glimpse of Applebaum tackling Totem further inward, while the bell - tossed by the earth pony as her final, desperate action - lands in the snow outside.

A split second later and rock crushes where Applebaum was standing. Radiant Hope rushes forward, only for an orchid hoof to yank her back. She fights Tempest Shadow, but only for a moment: the loud, shrieking wail isn’t coming from her, but from the top of the mountain. The north face is collapsing, rock and snow and boulders crashing toward them. She stares, slack-jawed, unable to comprehend what just happened and is about to happen to her.

A word, shouted in her ear, spurs her to action. She teleports to the other side of the mountain, the safe side, taking Tempest Shadow with her. Even before the rocks stop tumbling - the avalanche proceeding downward is the least of her concerns - Radiant Hope is on top of the pile of rubble, furiously shifting stones. She can’t lose those two, not now, not when they were so close!

One rock after another moves, but she seems no closer to her goal. She can’t tell if she is even digging in the right spot, but dig she continues, flinging snow and stones alike down the mountain.

“Hope.”

Radiant Hope isn’t sure how many times Tempest Shadow has called her, but she ignores it.

“Hope.”

It’s firmer that time, an itch of frustration laced in the words.

“Hope.”

Radiant Hope spins around, knocking Tempest’s hoof off her withers. “What?” she screams, hooves shaking even as she tries and fails to dislodge a boulder buried under a mountain of rubble. She hates, hates, Tempest’s callous exterior, her harsh tone, her unflinching stare.

“Can you detect them?” Tempest Shadow asks, cold and calculated. There is a firmness to her voice, an authoritative bent that demands compliance above all else. It’s enough to snap Radiant Hope out of her rage, her innate instinct to obey taking precedence.

She bites her lip as her horn flares. Tears well in her eyes, shimmering against the setting sun. “No,” she admits, dancing from one drift of snow to another. She has no reference, no idea where they are buried. “The range isn’t that far, it doesn’t go through material well, all I need to do is find the right spot and then-”

“Hope.” Tempest Shadow again gets Radiant Hope to snap out of her despondence. She motions to their bleak surroundings. Yet this time, there is a sense of desperation. “If you can’t find them, then we need to go. It will be night soon. We lost our packs, our food, our tents. Unless you want four ponies to perish on this forsaken rock, we need shelter.”

Radiant Hope’s head bows, her tears freezing against her face. “N-no. It can’t be. Harmony wouldn’t have led us here, all this distance, just for us to fail now.”

Tempest’s eyes close, but she doesn’t rebut Hope’s faith in Harmony, much as she might disagree. “Can you feel anything? Anything at all?”

Radiant Hope stills her breathing, their surroundings eerily quiet. “Yes,” she says, rushing to a nondescript pile of snow. She digs, frantic, flinging snow and rocks every which direction in her haste.

Her hoof hits something metallic, a muffled *clang* reverberating. She cries as she pulls out the ancient bell, marred and scratched.

She stares at it for a long time before an orchid hoof prompts her to rise. She does, slowly making her way down the mountain.

Next Chapter: Ch. 115 - First Snow, Part Five Estimated time remaining: 13 Hours, 50 Minutes