I have a Scrivener file dedicated to this. It's a scene I'll probably use when Daring Do and the Seven-Starred Jewel (working title) is finished. To solve its mystery, Daring has to travel down memory lane, to a place that she doesn't remember fondly: the ancient Neighgyptian ruins of Saddle Arabia.

There was sand. Cold sand, in my mane, and down my shirt, and in my tail, nose, ears, parts –

– so obviously I wasn't dead. I opened sand-covered eyes and naturally couldn't see a thing in the pitch blackness. I went to rise to my hooves and that was when I discovered my hindlegs were tied together. Experimental groping with my forelegs revealed loops of rope draped over myself and another –

"Sifting Sand!" I patted over her sand-encrusted shape, changing direction as I identified her flank, finally patting her cheek and shaking her withers. "Sifting Sand, wake up!"

My voice echoed ominously, and my ears suggested we were at one end of some long hallway. Finally, my mentor groaned, but nothing more. So I gently reached up her neck, over one ear which twitched at my touch, then gently prodded her horn.

She cried out in shock, then struggled to her hooves, spitting out sand. "Daring? What happened? Why are my hindlegs tied? Where..."

"I – I think we're at the bottom of that shaft we found," I interrupted, "I think somepony knocked us out before lowering us in!"

This deduction was received in silence. "That would certainly explain the rope and the darkness," a dry response that lifted my spirits. "Let me try a little light..."

I freely admit I screamed in fear when Sifting's hornlight illuminated a hideous creature – head of a crocodile, forepaws and body of a lion, and rear of a hippopotamus – scowling sideways where it clutched a great feather-shaped sword above us. Then my sense caught up with me – it was just a painting of a guardian of the underworld, and its compatriot stood on the other side of a painted portal, where a royal-looking personage, his ka flying overhead, sailed on a boat towards a painted, glowing sun.

It was glowing. The glow was dim at first, spreading from the disc down its many rays. Some of those rays intersected with those of other sun-discs, and the luminescence spread. With a minute, we were bathed in that promising light of dawn. Sure enough, we were at the end of a long, tall hall, and above us a long and terrible shaft rose into darkness. The far end was another doorway, this one an empty square of darkness flanked by more of those dreadful, accusing guardians.

"I've never seen tomb paintings so well preserved," Sifting marvelled, horn still aglow, the suns brightening into early morning.

"Neither have I," I agreed, then tripped when I attempted to approach one wall. A matching yelp from Sifting reminded us both about the rope around our legs.

Sifting's magic and a few tugs – along with some rude words – soon had us freed, and we looked at the rope and ourselves in the bright hot light. It seemed that we and the sand were atop a large raised platform at this end of the hallway, the rope beginning to smoulder in the heat.

I was still pretty naive then, so it took me a while to catch on. The sun-discs on the wall were continuing to brighten – and heat up!

"We have to get out of here!" I cried out, "Or the suns will cook us alive!"

Nowadays, I would be looking for some sort of switch to defuse the trap. There probably was one, but I didn't know then what I know now, and to be honest I flat out refuse to return to Saddle Arabia as I have said earlier.