"Actually, I'm going to say Discord's plan isn't that far-fetched," Spritelight spoke, turning her attention to the ceiling above the mana well. "If you look at the brickwork up there, there's a larger gap between the middle four panels than the surrounding ones."
I took a step closer after ensuring Cadance could take the force of the mana pouring into her, looking up as well.
She was right in her statement; directly above the mana well was a noticeable gap in the brickwork.
"My senses are too overwhelmed by the mana in this room, but I'm sure that leads up to somewhere else. Somewhat like the traces leading up here from the temple's entrance," Spritelight mused.
"Perhaps there's a room above this one?" Cadance supposed, daring a step closer to the orb of energy in the center of the room. "This reminds me of the Crystal Heart in the Crystal Empire; a place for energy to gather so it can be used to protect the kingdom. It won't do anything on its own unless the energy is tapped into somehow."
"Of course! Why didn't I think of that? The murals in the hallway leading up to this temple showed us a portal, right? They had created a portal to Equestria, and the mirror from the other room was used for communication?" I recalled.
"Right, but it took them a lot of powerful unicorns to create the portal in the first place. The murals showed the unicorns died from a disease and only the earthponies were left," Spritelight realised. "Maybe there could be a device in a room adjacent to this one to allow them to siphon the energy so earthponies could use it as well?"
"Well now," Discord chuckled. "We'll just have to have a look, won't we? Do we do this the easy way or the boring way?"
"Boring way," I decided. "There's bound to be a hallway leading up to it. We might just have to go back to the communal room to find the right door. Perhaps it is hidden."
Discord rolled his eyes and took on an annoyed stance. "It's your party, but I'll have you know we'd be done so much quicker if only you'd let me do my thing."
"Your thing entails pulling this temple apart just to see its inner workings. We might break something in the process. This temple has stood for millennia without anypony interfering with it," Spritelight scoffed.
"You're talking about this place as if it's an ancient clockwork," Discord chuckled, a large wind-up key appearing on his back and rotating slowly.
"We won't find out unless we get a move on," I suggested, turning back for the entry into the room and stepping past Cadance to head into the cramped passage. I had to charge energy into my horn to light my way as it was a deep dark chasm compared to the brightly lit room I was leaving.
As I walked away from the mana well through the hallway leading up to it, I noticed how well the brickwork dampened the energy to prevent it from leaking into the communal room beyond.
Each step deeper into the hallway felt like something was taken away from me as the ambient energy dropped away to ever lower levels.
Once I reached the room with the pedestal in it, I could barely feel the surge of energy which had initially revealed the existence of the hidden passageway to me. It had only been a short amount of time since then, but I had been at a much lower energy level when I had uncovered it.
Now, I was buzzing with energy myself. I had a full tank of mana stored within myself, so to speak. In comparison, the leakage from the passage was barely anything of note.
Cadance soon popped into view, her own horn glowing as brightly as mine did, and I stepped aside to allow her to walk out into the room proper.
"You weren't here when we found this passage, but it was actually hidden away behind a fake wall," I revealed to her. "I'm thinking the same might hold true for this other room we're looking for."
Cadance briefly glanced back at the wall surrounding the passage she had just left, then gave a thoughtful nod.
"More than likely," she said. "I believe most ancient structures have hidden doors like it. It is certainly true for the Crystal Palace I reside in, and for the Royal Palace in Canterlot."
"The Palace of the Two Sisters has them too," I knew. "It's like these ancient architects all loved their hidden doors."
"It is likely another hidden door would have a similar mechanism as this one. How did you come upon this?" Cadance asked. "We might be able to use the same method to find the other door."
I drooped my head a little at the thought. "No, I only found this one because it was radiating mana through the cracks. I doubt the room we are looking for has as much energy behind it. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall otherwise."
"Maybe I can detect it?" Spritelight offered as she stepped out of the passageway. "After all, I did attune myself to the mechanism which opened this one? We're just looking for a wall with holes in it."
I smiled at her. "That sounds like a plan. We'll go through this room first, then meet up with the others and check the rooms they're in."
"How methodical of you ponies," Discord chuckled as he came up behind Spritelight.
He clambered out of the small passageway as if he had walked through it on all fours, his long body stretching up again now there was more space in this room we were all in.
"How would you do it?" I asked him pointedly.
"Ah, it would be so much easier to see the rooms if we did away with the ceiling so we could peer over the walls, wouldn't it?" Discord suggested.
He opened the palm of his feline paw and a hologram of a three-dimensional mockup of the room we were in appeared floating above it. He then took the ceiling off it and crumpled it up as if it was a wad of paper before throwing the holographic crumpled paper beind him where it disappeared into nothingness.
"Or just remove the walls altogether," the draconequus continued.
He picked at the individual walls of his little scale model until there were none left, then closed his claw around the pieces he had picked up in this fashion. When it opened anew, there was an open doorframe instead of a crumpled wad of holographic walls on his palm. He then promptly placed this in a seemingly random position on the scale model.
I realised the location where he placed the door was where one of the walls had been just before, and turned around to face that way in the room properly.
"What would be the chances Discord accidentally-on-purpose showed us where the other hidden door was?" I mused out loud.
Spritelight walked up to my left side and looked sideways up at me. "I hate how we're thinking the same thing."
"Oh, you ponies know me so well, it's adorable," Discord cooed as he wrapped his arms around Spritelight and my own necks, sticking his head between ours.
"Unfortunately," Spritelight grumbled. She then used her magic to stab at the holes in the wall before us like she had done before. All the metaphysical hooves she manifested to test for the possible location of a switch disappeared, except for one.
I looked sideways down at her. "He's your teacher."
The unicorn looked back up at me. "He's somehow infatuated with you."
Discord just gloated as he hovered between us. "Oh, stop it. You're making me blush."
I watched as Spritelight used her magic to feel out at the door lock embedded in the wall. "Similar to the other door. Different settings, but the same mechanism. If I do this... and got it."
The wall opened up to reveal a similar passage to the one on the other side of the room, with the floor very clearly leading upward.
"Okay, that clearly leads to the room we want to go to," I noted. "Let's wake the others up so we can tell them about our findings and do this properly."
"Do you really want an audience for this?" Spritelight wondered with a raised eyebrow.
"Not an audience; support," I pointed out. "There's a reason we ended up having two of every pony race in our group. We're going to need the combined efforts of all of us considering this temple was built to unite them all here. This won't work if it all rests on my shoulders and the magic I can call forth."
"Given what I know of fate's workings, Josey's right," Cadance agreed.
"We're putting the band back together," Discord added, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and a pork pie hat. He had somehow managed to squeeze his lanky body in a black suit with tie, completing the look.
"We're on a mission from God," I quoted back at him.
"Let's not tell April that," Spritelight warned. "Religion means a lot to humans, I've found."
"It's from a movie," I told Spritelight flatly. "I'm fairly sure Discord doesn't care where he gets his material from. I know he deflected it earlier, but he very much reminds me of another kind of creature from popular media on my world."
"Oh, and here I thought you knew me so well; a joke only lands if the audience knows what the references are," Discord felt the need to teach us. "Pinkie Pie suggested that there's a lovely amount of discord in the art of entertainment."
"Don't go full Pinkie Pie, please. We already have two of them and that's one too many," I warned the Draconequus. "Let's wake the others up so you can bother them instead of attaching yourself to my metaphysical hip."
I felt a weight land on my right hip and turned my head to look in that direction. Discord was now seated across my back, legs on one side, and part of his snake like body used as a counterweight on the other.
"That wasn't an invitation," I told him flatly.
"Oh, but you're ever-so-comfortable to rest on," he protested, not moving from where he sat.
I moved my wings to flap at him and he begrudgingly disappeared into thin air.
"Fine, be that way. Cadance is more comfortable anyway," he spoke, now seated across Cadance's back in much the same way.
The princess looked befuddled at being used at furniture as well, but then recovered and narrowed her eyes at the draconequus.
"Three weeks of foal-sitting," she simply stated.
"Bah, you're no fun," Discord huffed, popping up next to Cadance in as full an upright position as the room allowed him.
"So, princess Cadance, you left Pinkie Pie and Patty Cannon after they joined up with April, Turkey and Rainbow Dash?" I remembered, "So we'd find them all in the sleeping quarters, then?"
"Unless something happened to part them, yes," Cadance responded. "But do call me Cadance. We're both princesses, or do you keep forgetting that?"
"Kinda," I answered truthfully. "I'm going to need to talk to a therapist after all this is over. Too much has happened in too short amount of time."
"Ah, quite. If you have a chance to come visit the Crystal Empire, I have just the pony for the job," Cadance suggested as she led the way toward the entrance of the temple and the sleeping quarters not far off from it.
"If the walls between worlds won't break over it, and if this pony thing sticks, I might have to hold you up on that," I chuckled weakly, following directly after her.
Upon passing Discord, I gave the draconequus a sideglance but he feigned ignorance for his antics, and I turned my attention to Spritelight as she joined me to my right side instead.
"All signs point to there being a tuning crystal in that room," she offered her thoughts on the situation. "You're about as much in control of your magic as I am, which is honestly a little bothersome given how much I have had to train to get where I am today."
"I'm having the worst trial by fire in that regard, I'll tell you," I chuckled. "Zero out of ten, can't recommend it."
"Zero out of ten?" Spritelight repeated with a rise of her left eyebrow.
"Internet lingo; rating life's situations as if they were products. Sometimes using five stars, or just an ambiguous number like ten, where the larger number is usually the better," I explained quickly to this student of magic. "I honestly feel like I might prefer your way of getting used to it over a longer period of time. It's much less potentially world-ending."
"Ah," Spritelight spoke, but clearly didn't quite grasp what the use of my statement was.
Her bland reaction made me realise the dissonance between her experiences on Earth and mine in Equestria; where I was helped by ponies at every step, she had to figure out how my world worked all by herself. The experiences, like our rightful homes, were worlds apart.