//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 - The Train // Story: Miracles // by awesomesauce4 //------------------------------// They found the pillows and blankets almost immediately, and Josh grinned at how adorably tiny they were. He stacked three of the pillows, and laid about five blankets over himself, while Ben contented himself with just one pillow and two blankets, his shoes sticking out one end and his neck out the other. “Anypony aboard? If there is, show me your tickets,” a voice called out, and Josh immediately sat up, brushing the blankets off of himself as he pulled out his ticket. “Ah, some passengers – whoa. You’re big fellas. You got tickets?” the conductor asked, dressed in a blue uniform with golden buttons. Josh nodded, pulling out and handing over the ticket, and Ben did the same. “Alrighty then… say, you’re not some kinda weird prank, are you? Only, Discord sent a bunch of animals over here with tickets once…” the conductor trailed off. Josh chuckled tiredly. “Not to my knowledge, no.” Say, there was a thought: He should’ve asked Discord what the chaos god might know about his popping into the Everfree. Ah well, maybe if Celestia and Luna couldn’t help him, he’d try Discord. Messing with chaos magic wasn’t exactly his most-preferred method of getting home – knowing Discord, he might return in the form of a carrot, or something equally silly. The conductor nodded and left, and Josh rearranged the blankets over himself. Staring up at the ceiling of the train car, he slowly dozed off into a stupor – not quite asleep, but not quite awake either. Meanwhile, far away, Princess Luna paced. She trotted to and fro, lost in thought as she normally was on this day. Her sister Celestia had already been and gone, reassuring platitudes falling on deaf ears as the solar diarch tried to placate her lunar sibling. Finally, Luna had sent her away. “Today is a day of miracles, of good will and sisterhood!” Celestia had pleaded. “There is only one miracle I desire, and he is not to be found,” Luna shot back, pointing an imperious hoof at the door. Reluctantly, Celestia had made her way back to court, to continue the festivities, while Captain Nightwing of the Lunar Guard poked his head around the door. “Is everything alright, Luna?” Only the Captain would dare address her without her title, and only then because he and she had developed a very close friendship. Luna, for her part, merely sighed. “A redundant question at best, Nightwing. You know why I am upset.” Nightwing nodded forlornly. “They never found the body, and alicorns are resistant to all but the most powerful attacks… there is still hope.” Luna shook her head. “After a thousand years? Nay, I think not. He is gone… thanks to that harlot.” Nightwing knew better than to argue the point further. “As you will, my lady.” He stepped just out of view beyond the door, leaving Luna alone with her thoughts once more. It had been one thousand years since she lost him. One thousand years since she went insane, attempting to banish her only sister in a desperate plea to turn the tables and make herself the best Princess. Her memory was so fuzzy… but one face she remembered all too clearly. She’d never forget those eyes, slanted in anger as they were… and it seemed that ever since her return, her memories had done nothing but unrelentingly haunt her. Princess Luna sighed. At this rate, she would make an indent in the floor with all her pacing. She slowly moved over to a book she had open – Interdimensional Summoning, by Star Swirl the Bearded. It contained all his notes on the rules for summoning demons and the like, as well as the beginning of his interdimensional exploits. This had been the book that had inspired her to become Nightmare Moon… and this had been the only book that might bring her Miracle back. She’d tried the summoning spell yesterday for both Miracle Matter and Clockwork Chronology, and nothing had happened – no tingle of magic, no appearance of anything in her room. Not even a demon to mock her. She put the book down on the table, and moved over to the window. Looking outside, she saw something that would have immensely pleased her on any other night. Foals and ponies alike were laughing, playing through the moonlit streets, inventing games, hoping, dreaming, having fun in her night. Luna went over to her bed, and wept bitterly. Josh, meanwhile, continued tossing and turning in his stupor. The rolling of the train couldn’t quite lull him to sleep, no matter how hard he tried. Occasionally, there was a slight thump on the roof, almost as if somebody had dropped a rock on the roof of the train somehow. Or was it his imagination? Josh didn’t know, but he was too distracted by the thought of this ‘Miracle Matter’ to care. Had he landed in an Equestria of his own creation, then? But he’d never made up a story about Miracle Matter, or even gotten as far as a Cutie Mark or official design. Perhaps it was just coincidence… Josh stifled a chuckle as he looked up at the moonlit train cabin. Coincidence, yeah right. That didn’t exist in this place. So, maybe he and Ben were supposed to embark on an epic quest to find this ‘Miracle Matter’ and his brother? That would seem to be the case, as he’d discovered clues suggesting such in the Castle of the Two Sisters and Ponyville. But where was the next clue? Josh was stumped – had he missed something while in Ponyville? Maybe he shouldn’t have stopped to talk to those changelings – he might have skipped some key part of whatever speech Mayor Mare had been giving. Well, the Princesses wrote the speech. They’d be able to give me the full version, he mused. Satisfied, he drifted off into a trance once more. A short while later, he felt the train slowing, and sat up, concerned. It was pitch black outside the windows, so he didn’t think the train had arrived in Canterlot quite yet. He still felt very tired, and now his neck was sore from trying to rest on a train. By now, the train had stopped completely, and he could see the conductor making his way towards the pair of them, a lamp between his teeth. Josh noted by the lamplight that Ben was still asleep, and turned to the conductor expectantly. “Sorry for the delay, but there’s been an… um… ‘incident,’ and we’ll have to stop for a while,” the conductor informed him. “Okay… what incident?” Josh asked. The conductor tugged at his fancy uniform. “I, uh… well, I spotted something alarming, and… I hit the emergency brakes. This caused the train to partially derail from the track somehow, so… I have to go move it back into place.” Josh nodded. Others might have been annoyed by such a delay, or at the very least questioned its necessity, but Josh accepted it as a fact of life. This was normal for him – he was immune to road rage, annoying customers, and overbearing superiors alike, which unnerved most others. Ben, thankfully, understood his apathy in a way few others did, which was probably why Josh felt so protective of him. That, or maybe the “zombie video game character” jokes hadn’t stopped being funny yet. He stepped out of the train to where the conductor had already set up a lamp, poking around for the issue. “Lessee’ here…” the earth pony muttered, peeking around each wheel. “What’s that?” Josh pointed out, noticing a small scrap of what appeared to be dark fabric tied up in the wheel. “That… Oh no,” the conductor moaned. “They’re not supposed to be here!” Josh raised an eyebrow. “What’s not supposed to be here?” he demanded – if they were in danger, he wanted to know from what. “Changelings,” the conductor whispered. “Love-sucking monsters. We heard rumors that they were in the caves, but the Guard never found any…” Josh rolled his eyes. Changelings again? “I’ll go see if they’re blocking the way,” he asserted, grabbing the lamp. “Stay here, and keep Ben safe.” The pony looked like he was about to argue, but then nodded reluctantly. “Don’t go too far!” the conductor warned. Josh smirked. He was used to wandering far. A few minutes later, he was feeling pretty good about himself. He was on an adventure! The train tracks made the tunnel easy to move through, and the lamp reflected brightly off the cave walls, stalactites and indents in the rock casting soft shadows over the walls as he passed by. Dripping noises were all around him, and occasionally his shoe scuffed against a loose stone, sending it skittering into the darkness. Josh was enthralled by how cool it was that he was in Equestria, specifically in the tunnels of the Canterlot mountain. What might he encounter? Gems? Monsters? More stalactites? The possibilities were truly endless. The tunnel itself looked beautiful, almost picturesque and untouched enough to pass for a protected natural habitat back home. Except Josh really could touch the stalactites now, and not get arrested or something. He did just that, reaching down to brush a stalagmite, and was slightly surprised at just how wet it was. Josh stifled a guilty chuckle at the thrill of doing something so illegal, and promptly ventured onward. As he traveled along the pitch-black tunnel, Josh began to feel less adventurous and more spooked by the silence and shadows. More than once, he caught himself whirling around to stare at the cavern wall, looking for an enemy that wasn’t there. “I’m getting too tired for this,” he muttered after the fifth such time. Finally, he decided to head back – no obstacles had presented themselves, nor had any changelings revealed themselves. He was halfway back when a flash of green flickered up ahead. Sleep-deprived as he was, it took Josh a moment to process the threat, but when he did, he held the lamp out suspiciously, trying to quell his fears. “Hello?” he called out. Nothing. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just… look, there’s a train coming through, you might want to get out of the way…” Josh explained to the dripping cave, finding it hard to string his thoughts together. Once again, nothing but silence greeted him. “O… kay… I’m just going to assume you’ve been properly warned, uh… bye…” he mumbled, shuffling forward again. As he shuffled past, he failed to notice that there was a new stalagmite, completely dry despite everything around it being damp. As he walked back along the length of the tunnel, Josh slowly became aware of something being different. He couldn’t tell if it was just from viewing things from the opposite direction, or his own addled mind, but things were suddenly looking a lot less ‘beautiful’ and a lot more ‘sinister.’ It took him five solid minutes of walking before he realized what had happened: It was his lamp. It was running out of fuel, and giving off less light. Josh quickened his pace, his leg bumping against the lamp accidentally as he began to take longer strides forward. His breath caught in his throat as the candle lamp immediately snuffed out, plunging the entire tunnel into darkness and causing him to jerk backward, the lamp slipping out of his grasp and falling onto the floor. Josh broke out in a cold sweat – he couldn’t see. “Oh, no, no, no…” he whispered, feeling around to try and find the lamp and relight it. But there was nothing there – simply an empty patch of floor. After spending a few minutes trying to find the lamp, Josh became aware that he had been walking for far too long – he needed to continue back to the train, as fast as he could. No telling what might attack him now that the light no longer safeguarded his presence. He began edging across the tunnel wall, stepping in puddles left and right as he tried to avoid tripping over the many stalagmites in his way. His heart pounded as he began imagining shapeless horrors watching him, waiting for the moment when he would fall so they could descend upon his helpless, blind form. A sharp flare of light occurred to his right, a hiss sounding through the tunnel wall. Josh looked over in shock, and found what should have been impossible: The lamp, sitting on a relatively dry patch of wall as though it had been there the whole time. The candle inside had been relit somehow, and in the split second that Josh’s eyes took to adjust to the sudden light, he could have sworn he saw something escaping into the shadows. He hesitantly took a step toward the lamp, then another, then snatched it up before anything could steal it away from him again. That done, he looked awkwardly around at the room. “…Thank you,” he whispered. Unsure of what else to say, he made his way back towards the train, careful not to disturb his lamp again. Unbeknownst to the slowly retreating human, a pair of eyes had been watching him from the shadows. For a moment, their forest-green gaze lingered on him, a hint of some unspecified want flickering. Then, they turned away, heading back into the shadows. Had Josh been listening closely, he might have caught the drip of a few drops of liquid hitting the floor. Had he listened more closely still, he might have been able to discern that these sounded quite different than the usual dripping noises of cave water and runoff. Josh returned to find the conductor anxiously waiting for him, Ben still sound asleep. “I didn’t find anything,” he shrugged, giving the lamp back to the stallion. “Right… you… you are you, right?” the conductor falteringly asked, sounding terrified. “Still not one of Discord’s pranks, if that helps,” Josh joked, cracking a tired smile as he stepped back onto the train. The conductor relaxed at the familiar reference, and followed him on board before heading back towards the front of the train. “Okay, well… I got everything fixed, so we should be ready to start back up again. Thanks for the help, mister!” Josh nodded, already going back to sleep. Well, that was a waste of time, he thought in relief as he drifted off again. Oh well… at least it’ll make a cool story for Ben.