Gallopocus Island The Lost Library - Unfair Trade

[Bramble Rose]

Doctor Whooves played a quick little ditty with her bad recorder playing, and the magic flowed freely.  Her hat lifted up into the air, giving her horn freedom to work.  It glowed that soft blue glow, and the place the horn touched the statue glowed the same blue, as Whooves sealed the break and set it back in place with a bright blue flash.  She smiled contentedly around the mouthpiece of the recorder, then swapped her mental attention towards the detection of magic.  Sure enough, magic flowed aplenty, not from the statue, but from the jungle just behind the statue.  Whooves lowered her recorder, the music stopping and the floppy hat falling back onto her head.

 

"No, no, this statue wouldn't do this.  Didn't know it was here, really.  I can think of three different places it might have been, not sure just yet - but look at the hearts on its cutie mark.  I don't think she has much to do with Equestria at all - this is a representative of the founder of the Crystal Empire, Princess Agape, creator of the crystal heart.  Interesting story there - sadly my predecessor at the time, Doctor Whooves, was busy elsewhere, so we don't have a good memory of the actual events, but from what he heard at the time, she fell into darkness much like Nightmare Moon - but for her, she ended up devouring instead of creating love.  Big scandal, terrible catastrophe.  Not sure what happened to her, though.  One of the past's big mysteries."

 

Doctor Whooves walked past the sttaue.  "This was the greeting statue - this far south, though.  Nowhere near the Crystal Empire.  Must be the greeting statue out front of the embassy of whatever city this used to be.  And from my magic sight, the powerful magic aura drawing us here is behind this statue, back here in the embassy."  She reached out with her hooves, grabbed hold of a curtain of vines, and pulled it aside, standing there smugly to show off the amazing discovery of ancient ruins.

 

At a lack of proper gasps of amazement, she peeked an eye open at their confused faces.  Then turned to look at ...

 

A blank cliff-face.

 

...

 

Huh.

 

"That ... wasn't in the script.  Wait, Where's the embassy?  How is magic coming out of a stone wall?"  She kicked savagely at a rock, sending it bouncing off the cliff face in her anger, giving a hollow little retort.  "I hate not having my timing!"  Her hat flew from her head as her horn flashed with a bright blue, and a shower of candy exploded from her horn, spraying the rest of the group - brightly colored little chewy candies shaped like plump little foals.  "Wait, what?  What is this blasted appendage doing now?!"

 

[brianblackberry]

The Great and Powerful Trixie was torn between amusement and frustration.  On one hoof, she had been expecting them to wrap this up nice and neat, especially with her incredible help in getting them to this place, and in putting the horn where it was supposed to be.  On the other hoof, the look on Doctor Whooves' face!  She compromised and was both amused and frustrated to a level of snark only attainable by the observant and pointed Trixie.

 

"That's it?  That's IT?  You and all your vaunted 'Knowledge of the Doctors' and your claims of observational skills and your logic and cleverness - and this is what you give us?  A blank cliff face that echoes?  This is your secret, isn't it?  You just dive in head first, and do entirely random things?  Sure!  Let's just pull aside some vines and hope there's some ancient Crystal Empire Embassy behind them!?"  She swept aside another curtain of vines in demonstration, but didn't bother looking behind her at the edifice she'd just uncovered, with stone carved into crystalline-shaped columns and a carved crystal heart over the massive double doors, not even noticing it was there.  "And you just hope you'll get lucky!  And you keep doing random things until you get lucky!  That's your special ability, stupid, dumb luck!  There's no Embassy!  There's no clues!  And you ran out of luck!  And now we're stuck in the middle of this jungle, and the patient and suffering  Trixie is never going to get her precious horn and magic back!"
 

[Bellosh]

 

Derpy Hooves might have been slightly incorrect about the significance of the statue, but the mare still smelled a clue ahoof. It was deja vu all over again for the former assistant of Doctor Whooves; there had been quite a few times during previous adventures when he endlessly agonized over a mystery only for the answer to have been in everypony's faces all along. Maybe this would turn out to be one of those cases, again?

 

But first, they needed to know where to start looking. Stumped for initial ideas herself, the thinking mare figured that there was no harm checking behind the vines Trixie cleared, even if it was incredibly obvious even to Derpy that the dehorned magician's words were fueled by bitter sarcasm. A first cursory glance by the calm grey mare didn't appear promising; the only things visible were crystal-shaped columns and a crystal heart carved into double doors. It took a whole straight minute of staring dumbly before Derpy's mind finally worked things out.

 

"Hey everypony," she remained mesmerized by the doors; "You might call me a madmare, but I do believe we've just found an ancient Crystal Empire Embassy behind the vines." Derpy excitedly turned to Trixie with all the genuineness of an innocent foal. "You're an absolute genius Trixie, using your stupid dumb luck to solve our riddle!"