Guest 1 - I'll get to the flower when I'm good and ready to get to the flower :P

PyraohXBlaze - Lol sure, I believe you ;)

DragonLovingBrony - Well, as exhausted as he was, is it really so hard to believe that he passed out without realizing it? And since the story is narrated from his perspective (most of the time)...

Guest 2 - Lol either that or Celestia just forgot to use it ;)

KillerWoW - Too much of a hassle to maintain it? (I've heard that about FIM Fiction) You probably don't want to know... though things are getting better

DarkwolfLord (Ch37) - Lol. Yeah, poor, delusional Spike...

D3mentedG0Ose - Thanks! I'm glad my story actually stands out from the crowd. And don't worry, I have no plans to abandon this; if it ever stops updating (before I officially finish at least), then it's safe to assume I probably died. Oh, and what do you mean 'best princess'?! Luna is best pony period! :P

Kyguy - Lol don't we all? Who knows? Maybe replicators will be a thing someday ;)

xel101 - We can hope... poor Blake's been through Hell in this temple already.

TurnupGrain43 - Yeah, magic can be weird like that sometimes

YvngMask - Lol right?

Ponified Bacon Boss - You know what they say about sufficiently advanced technology... and Lauren didn't get make all the calls when it comes to the show.

Zero the Warrior of Chaos - You'll just have to wait and see :P And thanks for catching that; you'd think after over a year and a half, I'd remember that the site doesn't transfer over my line breaks when I upload the file.

Mikalzilla - Not long enough...

A/N - Howdy everypony! Blake had a nice rest last time on A Second Chance, but it looks like it's right back into the thick of things for himself and Quickhoof! What new challenges wait for him further into the temple? In other news; I finally broke down and made myself a twitter account! I mostly did it to keep up on certain livestream times and sates, but if you want to follow me, I'll post more up-to-date news on the story so you don't have to wait and wonder for a week or two if I can't update. My Twitter handle is 0_BlazingSun_0. As always, don't forget to follow/favorite, review, and most importantly; enjoy!

Quickhoof and I were making good time through the temple now, thanks entirely to a certain, impossibly beautiful Princess of the Night. I looked down at the line-covered paper again, using it to make sure we were still on track. "My love, if this shrine can do what you say, why do you not simply ask it to make you a map of the temple that will lead you to your destination?"

It had been my turn to facepalm when she asked me that. "Because you apparently agreed to marry an idiot…" Luna hadn't been too happy with me for that remark, but her irritation didn't last long since we both felt me waking up at that time.

The first thing I had done when I actually had woken up was to ask the shrine for the map like Luna had suggested, only with on alteration; I had asked that the rooms with the defenses or trials or whatever they were to be marked on it so we could avoid them, as well as the room where the flower was at. I had actually had to ask for the map twice, since the first time, I had forgotten to specify that it needed to be made with the magic-absorbing ink that I could actually see. I was worried that the shrine wouldn't be able to recreate the ink, but fortunately, the ink itself seemed to be mundane and the shrine duplicated it with no problems.

If I had been reading the corrected map right when I had first picked it up off of the shrine, then we had only been a few rooms away from our destination. The map made it look like some sort of theater, or maybe a training room, and it was the only room in the entire temple with a skylight that allowed sunlight in. The map also indicated that there were several more floors both above and below us, but neither of us cared to explore them, having already spent more than enough time in the nightmarish structure.

I had felt my heart sink slightly as I examined the map further, however; the room that was marked as containing the flower was also marked according to the map's legend as being a challenge room, as was the art room we had passed on our way in. That meant that regardless of what route we took, we would have no less than two more fights ahead of us before we could get out of this place.

The two of us had sat down and combed over the map as we downed the platters of food I had asked the shrine to make us. I knew we would need plenty of energy today, so I had asked the shrine to make a calorie-rich breakfast of waffles and syrup, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and jam, and a big pile of hash browns for each of us. I had asked for another mug of cider to wash mine down with, while Quickhoof opted for plain water.

We'd analyzed the map for what felt like an hour, but neither of us could come up with a way to circumnavigate either of the trapped rooms and avoid the inevitable fights therein. When we finally finished our breakfasts, we packed up what little we needed to and set off back down the same hallways and rooms we had gone through the day before.

It was strange, but the areas we had already passed through felt less oppressive than they had the first time we had gone through them, almost as if clearing out the various challenge rooms was draining the magic out of the temple itself.

The thought of the temple's magic lessening should have been comforting, but knowing that magic was a type of energy, and knowing what physics had to say about the creation and destruction of energy, the thought was more disturbing and raised more questions than anything else.

We entered the room where we had fought the demonic, acid-blooded creatures the night before, and I looked around the area for their bodies, half expecting them to have regenerated and be waiting in ambush for us. Quickhoof joined my search, not wanting to be surprised, but neither of us could find a trace for the creatures; even the pit they had crawled out of had vanished without a trace.

The only traces of combat at all were the half-melted remains of Quickhoof's knife, spent shell casings from my gun, and a few patches of melted stone where the monsters' blood had splattered. When we were sure that we wouldn't be ambushed by what had proven to so far be the greatest enemy the temple had thrown at us, we moved on through the next rooms and towards our destination.

When we finally did reach the room the map indicated, it proved to be a sight that neither of us had prepared for; the ceiling of the sprawling room was completely open, save for a latticework of support structures that seemed to be designed to interfere with the sun as little as possible, allowing sunlight to pour through like no place else in the Everfree. The place had been almost completely overrun by wild flora, from trees and bushes to flowers and even a few fruit-bearing shrubs.

The sight that caught our attention though, wasn't the vibrant greens, pinks, and browns of the plants… it was the stark white of the bones that were intermingled with them that caught our attention. The entire place looked like it had been some kind of battleground for some ancient war between the ponies, griffons… and humans that had owned these skeletons.

"You were warned to leave! Now you must be destroyed!" Quickhoof and I dropped into defensive stances on reflex as the familiar voices shot out from everywhere at once around us.

I turned my attention to my left as the skull of a human that had been partially embedded in a tree suddenly jerked towards me, it's the remains of its jaw floating up from the ground and setting into place while the rest of it twisted and tore itself from the bark of the tree. I unholstered my gun and called my armor, aiming for the skull of the forming skeleton and squeezing the trigger.

The round zipped through the air, striking true right between the thing's eyes, though it hardly seemed to notice the clean hole through the strangely well-preserved bone of its forehead.

Quickhoof grunted behind me, and I turned in time to see him dodge out of the way of a griffon's skeletal claws. I wasn't fast enough though, and the claws struck my armor, catching in one of the joints of my cuirass and snapping clean off of the bony fingers.

I grunted and staggered back as the skeleton that had been forming in front of me hit me with something heavy, knocking me off balance, but otherwise not harming me. I looked forward again and saw that the thing had some sort of cudgel in its hand, probably a fallen branch by the look of it.

I ducked a second blow and chanced a look around; the entire place was filling up with bony soldiers, probably hundreds all told, and they all seemed to be converging on us. "What can we do? If the dead are rising to fight us, how can we prevail?" Quickhoof made a valid point; how were we supposed to beat these things?

I lunged forward without answering, a thought forming in my head even as I did. The human skeleton in front of me swung the cudgel again, but I had been waiting for that. I grabbed the chunk of wood and wrenched it out of the skeleton's surprisingly weak grasp, splintering its forearm bones in the process. I used the momentum of grabbing the club to my advantage, moving with the flow to create even more force as I swung its own weapon against it.

The heavy knot at the end of the improvised weapon connected with the side of my adversary's skull, shattering it and scattering the remains across the ground. I was about to turn and tell Quickhoof of my success, but I stopped dead as I watched the stumbling body find its footing again.

A harsh laughter rang out through the brush. "You cannot kill that which is already dead!"

I looked around, and noticed three pony skeletons that seemed to be standing off to the side, just watching us. I looked closer, and it quickly became apparent that these skeletons were different from the others; they seemed to be exuding magic of some sort, and that magic was staining their bones black. There was something else though; there was a lump of some sort in each of their chests, and that seemed to be giving off another type of magic. I couldn't see any color to this magic like I could with any other I had encountered, but I could still feel its pressure.

"Hey Quickhoof! Are those those shadow-bones things?"

I dodged the griffon skeletons claws as I waited for him to respond. "Yes! But, did we not defeat them already?"

I planted my foot squarely into the griffons ribcage as it lunged again, scattering it everywhere. Using the temporary lull, I brought my gun to bear, aiming for the center skeleton, who I noticed bore a hole in its forehead, marking it as the one I had shot the first time we had encountered them. I aimed lower, for the lump of material putting off all the magical pressure, and squeezed the trigger back.

The lump of what was apparently flesh practically exploded when the bullet struck it, spraying chunks of flesh and fluids everywhere behind it as the hollowpoint tore through it and burst from the other side.

I never got the chance to tell Quickhoof about the apparent weakness though, as the matter that had been ejected from the wound stopped in midair, suddenly flying back towards the fleshy lump, which I assumed to be the heart that Twilight had described to me, and reformed it. "You cannot win, human… we have been absorbing the magic of every temple guardian you have defeated, and it has made us stronger…"

Well… shit… "You catch all that Quickhoof?"

The stallion ducked a rather clumsily swung tree branch before literally bucking his attacker to pieces. "I did. I believe it is safe to assume that these shadow-bones will not be harmed by anything we have used to defeat the other guardians."

I agreed with the assessment, but that didn't mean that I was happy about it; we had used nearly every trick either of us had just to get this far, so finding something that worked would be no walk in the park for us. I lurched forward as something struck me from behind. I looked back to see Quickhoof lying on the ground at my feet, shaking his head as a rather large human skeleton trudged towards us.

Something odd caught my attention as I watched it get closer; I could almost make out what looked like a tendril of magic flowing into the skeletal golem, and when I looked back in the direction it seemed to have been flowing from, I realized that I was looking at the three shadow-bones. "These plotholes are the ones animating these damned skeletons! If we take them out, that should end this thing!"

I shoulder-checked another griffon skeleton as it lunged at me, scattering it everywhere and breaking several of its frail bones. "How will we defeat them?" The stallion didn't even break his stride in attacking the skeletal warriors as he spoke.

I looked around. "We need to move first, we won't get anywhere standing in one spot while they come to us." As I was talking, I noticed a large statue near the trio; it was mostly obscured by foliage, but it was there. "I have an idea, follow me!"

I didn't even wait for the Kokello warrior to respond before I took off into the underbrush at the opposite side of the overgrown room. I made a bee-line to the nearest big tree I spotted, and jumped up to grab a low-hanging branch. I had forgotten one crucial detail though; my armor enhanced my strength, and I nearly went flying up into the tree headfirst.

It didn't take long for Quickhoof to join me, seeing as how it seemed that all Kokello warriors were expert climbers, at least if their greeting when we had first arrived at the temple was any indication. "Ok, what is your idea? Do you have some spell you have yet to reveal?"

I shook my head. "No; unfortunately, I've used every single spell I know since we've been here…" I pointed off in the direction of the statue, which I could no longer see. "You see that statue over there? Well, what I'm thinking is that we need to lure them under it and knock it over on them."

"That will be no easy feat. I doubt they will just stand there and allow it to fall on them…"

I watched as several of the skeletons gathered around the base of our tree, trying and failing to find purchase so they could climb up after us. "I know, but what other choice do we have?" One of the griffon skeletons managed to sink its claws into the soft bark of the wood, only for them to snap off as it tried to pull them out again to climb higher. "Well, we could always try to beat them to death with their own minions…"

I didn't need to look back at the stallion to know he was giving me a deadpan stare. "I do not think that is a good idea…"

I chuckled and shrugged. "Hey, if you've got something better, I'm all ears…"

"I do not think your plan is going to work…" I jerked my aurasight to the right and saw that one of the shadow-bones had appeared out of nowhere and was perched in the tree right next to ours. "You see, this is our realm, andyou are intruding." This creature's voice was different from its brethren; it was soft, melodic, almost… feminine…

"Why is it you want to kill us so badly? All I came here for was something that wasn't originally a part of the temple in the first place."

"We are aware of your reasons for being here. Had you been worthy, you would have been allowed to roam these halls freely."

I groaned; again with this 'I'm not worthy' nonsense. "And just what is it that makes me 'unworthy' to be here?"

The shadow-bones shifted, looking like she was about to jump out of the tree. "No human who is friend to pony-kind can ever be worthy ofthis place."

"But… you were a pony at one point…"

The mare, if that was what one called such a being, sprang forward, vanishing into thin air as soon as her hooves left the tree. "The time for talk is over… now you must die…" Her voice echoed from everywhere around us, and if I hadn't known better, I would have thought that I'd heard sadness in her voice as she spoke those words.

"It would seem as though our plan will manta racata let…"

I paused and looked at the stallion. "Come again?"

Quickhoof's head cocked to the side. "Sera luante pico'lo, Negara."

Aw, come on! Of all the freaking times for the amulets to give out! I grabbed my amulet and pointed to it, making a slashing motion with my hand, trying to indicate to Quickhoof that they were useless. Quickhoof seemed to get the gesture, grabbing his amulet and pulling it off of his neck and tossing it out of the tree.

I had no idea how we were going to pull off any sort of plan now that Quickhoof and I couldn't effectively communicate, but I did know that we would have to figure something out, and quick. I looked around us, but as high up in the tree as we were, I couldn't see much besides the surrounding trees. I looked down as I heard a strange scraping sound, and saw that the skeletons were starting to work together, climbing over one another in an attempt to get to us.

It was clear that we couldn't stay in this tree, so I motioned to Quickhoof for us to jump down and head off to our right to find new shelter. The stallion nodded and we made the jump at the same time, managing to clear the growing pile of animated bones at the base of the tree and hopefully buying ourselves a few extra seconds as they untangled themselves from one another.

My companion dashed off to our left, and I followed close behind him, knowing that if I lost sight of him, I might never be able to find him again in this huge place, at least not without alerting the shadow-bones to our locations. I stopped short as I noticed an odd magical presence off to my left. I turned and sprinted off towards the presence, unsure of what it was, but feeling that it was somehow important.

I skidded to a halt when the wall of the room came into view, but it wasn't the wall that caused me to stop; rather, it was the flower with blade-like petals that caught my attention. An idea sprang into my head at almost the same moment as the words of warning Starswirl had given me about the plant had. Not wasting a second, I reached out and plucked several of the leaves from the stem of the plant and held on tight once I had a fistful of them.

I suddenly lurched forward as something struck me from behind, and I realized that in my haste, I had forgotten to spread my aurasight to watch my own back. I looked behind me and saw nothing; no skeleton wielding a tree branch, no shadow-bones whirling around from having bucked me, and no magical aura that would have been left behind whether by them teleporting or by any sort of magic they could have cast.

Instinct told me to keep searching with my aurasight as it was, but I pushed the feeling aside and forced the spell into its spherical iteration. I had almost immediately wished I hadn't, as it revealed that I was surrounded by unnaturally swaying foliage, from trees to vines and even some sort of thorned flowers.

I heard Quickhoof yelp somewhere off in the distance, and I could only guess he was in the same situation I was in. I rolled to the side as a tree suddenly swung one of its branches down on top of where I was, and I guessed that that was what had hit me before.

I realized as I came up from the roll that I still somehow had the leaves of the deadly plant clenched in my fist, and my idea from before came back to me; I only hoped that it would work on fellow plants.

Before I could react, one of the vines whipped out and wrapped itself around my wrist, holding me fast with a grip that I couldn't break even with the enhanced strength the armor lent me. I move to grab some of the leaves from the ensnared hand with the other, but a second vine wrapped itself around that wrist as well, binding me in place and effectively rendering me helpless.

I watched as the tree reeled back, winding up for what would likely be a killing blow, and decided to try something desperate. I twisted my wrist and opened my hand, allowing the leaves to fall from it, raining down on the vine ensnaring that wrist. The vine almost instantly reacted, shuddering and loosening its grip on me. I yanked my hand away, and the vine snapped with little effort.

A strange whooshing sound reminded me of the imminent danger of the tree, and I ducked out of the way as best I could with my other wrist still bound in place. I jerked to the side as some of the trees smaller branched smacked against me as the larger main branch went sailing by, barely missing crushing me into jelly.

I grabbed the remaining vine with my now free hand, hoping that there might still be some residue from the leaves coating the gauntlet's palm. It seemed that luck was with me, however, as this vine reacted much the same as the other had; essentially withering in a matter of seconds at the touch from the deadly toxin contained in the leaves of the plant that was supposed to restore my sight to me.

The tree wound up for another swing, but I dashed out of its reach, and away from any plants that I could. Another yelp drew my attention, and I took off in the direction it had come from, forgetting about the flower for the moment; it wouldn't be any use at all if we both died here, at the hooves of these thrice-cursed shadow-bones and their armies of skeletons and plants and who knew what else.

Quickhoof came into view quicker than I would have thought, and it looked like he wasn't much better off than I had been, though he had managed to pull his knife and was using it to relatively good effect, slashing at a vine as it tried to snare his hind leg. The troublesome plant hardly seemed to notice as nearly a meter of its end was suddenly severed, and simply continued the assault on my friend. I decided that keeping my distance for now would be a wise course of action, and instead focused on using my shield spell to thwart the various attempts the vines made at grabbing ahold of him.

I cursed myself a moment later as I felt the tugging sensation of one of the steely-gripped vines latching itself onto my ankle. I looked down and confirmed my suspicion, drawing my own pocket knife and following Quickhoof's example before my situation became any worse than it already was.

The two of us regrouped, and Quickhoof started to say something before he realized we couldn't understand one another anymore, turning what had sounded like a question into a frustrated grunt. I dodged to the side as another pesky vine lashed out at me, and Quickhoof did the same, but we both failed to notice the second set of vines that had been sneaking up behind us, snaring us and pulling the knives from our grips before we even had time to recover from dodging the first set of ensnaring foliage.

I grunted and pulled at the binding around my wrist, but I already knew it was no use; these vines cut easily enough, but they were practically unbreakable by brute force. Quickhoof struggled in vain as well, doing his level best to tear himself free from the wretched things, even going so far as to bite them. The two of us were all but helpless as we were wrapped up in the demonic foliage and our arms and legs were pulled apart, hanging us spread-eagled several centimeters above the ground.

I tried to grab the vine holding my poison-coated gauntlet, but the thing was out of my reach. "You look quite foolish, wrapped in a web of vines…" I turned my aurasight in the direction of the voice and saw the shadow-bones I had shot previously standing before us. "It wasn't very nice of you to put this hole here you know; this is going to take the better part of a decade to regenerate."

I let out a dry laugh. "Well I'm sorry, but it's your own fault you know; all you had to do was let us come in here, grab the flower we needed, and leave again. No muss, no fuss, and no one gets hurt… but nooo… you plotholes just couldn't let us do that, now could you?"

The shadow-bones sneered at me, a truly disturbing sight on a skeletal face, especially a pony's. "We would be poor guardians indeed if we allowed just any foolish human and his worthless pony-kin companion to wander these halls, now wouldn't we?" I had wanted to give a witty retort, but I never got the chance. "Now, human, it's time for you to die!" I watched as the shadow-bones walked calmly up to me, reaching up with a bony hoof to touch me.

A sudden flash of movement whizzed in front of me, and the shadow-bones shrieked and stumbled back as his hoof fell away from his body, cleanly severed at the wrist. I watched in awe as a sword floated up in front of me, though this wasn't just any sword; this was my sword…