Lingering Chaos

by nightelf37

Rapid Escape

A/N: Let's roll a few seconds back, shall we…

"That can't be good," Ashen said as one of the wolves howled, no doubt calling its pack. Looking around, she can see that the wounded group will probably not survive another encounter like this. "If more arrive we should flee! Jump into the river if there's no other options."

After hurling the last of the big burning branches and leaves over the edge, leaving only a few small cinders, Ashen saw Crinoline kill a wolf with a bunch of thrown nails as Tango hacked away at the wolf near them. Now why would she have those?

Before she can think of any possibilities, a loud howl drew Ashen's attention to the trees behind the smaller mare, which were forced apart to reveal a giant version of the ethereal wolves they'd been fighting. With a single swipe of its paw, it sent Crinoline flying as Mystic called out and fled from it, shaking like a leaf.

"Damn it! This is even worse!" Ashen called out as she ran towards the prone mare, her hood catching the air as she ran and getting pulled down by it. "Come on, get up! We need to get out of here, NOW!!' She helped Crinoline up on her hoove (or put her on her back if needed) and headed for the cliff. "Tango, grab Mystic and get over here!"

Looking down, she can't help but swallow in anxiety. "The only way…Buck, I must be crazy…' she spat out to herself.

"Yes, Miss Ashen," Tango replied dutifully. "Pardon me, Mystic. Looks like we're leaving." He lifted the rigid shield pony bodily over his back (the spear floating alongside in Mystic's aura) and charged to the cliffside with him, running off it ungracefully, though still looking incredibly handsome, his voluminous mane fluttering majestically as it was whipped up by the force of the fall.

The last survivor of the attacking pack (Wolf 6) ran for it, afraid either of the Canis Major or of getting in the crossfire.

Crinoline law on the ground, her eyes closed, the world spinning. She felt like she would fall off any second. She tried to stand up but there was no ground! She gasped and her eyes shot open. The forest around her looked twisted and she realized that she was lying on her back, her hooves helplessly hovering in the air. She struggled to keep her eyelids open but to no avail.

Shifting humming sounds was the next thing she noticed. Wait, was there sound before? Crinoline thought hard, trying to remember if there was, but she just can't focus. She opened her eyes again.

A bald scarred pony was carrying her. Am I dead? she thought as her eyes wandered down, noticing the attire the bald pony was wearing, Oh, Crinoline. It's just Ashen. Just Ashen, carrying me over to the cliff.

Oh no!

Crinoline rolled off the mare's back and fell to the ground. She saw Tango, his mane slowly moving, his frame emitting a radiating light as it was carried by two large celestial wings, carrying Mystic on his strong back and holding Ashen with his front hooves.

Ashen now wore a simple white dress with a olive wreath embroidery and Mystic's armor looked like it is made out of the sun itself, his spear punshing a hole through the dark cover of clouds, creating a path for them to escape.

Crinoline blinked and she was alone now, her senses begin to come back again and her vision normalized. She felt a great pain overshadowing the aches from her body. She reaches into her dress and took the explosive, throwing needles, and her strongest thread out.

She wrapped the throwing nails around the explosive, forming a spiked ball, then attached a thread to the pin of the explosive and bound the other end of the thread through a throwing needle's eye, which she pushed into the ground diagonally to secure it. She then threw it down to the Canis Major.

Her work done, she walked close the edge of the cliff.

The Canis Major walked up to Crine and roared in her face before swiping at her, sending her and Ashen off the cliff face.

In spite of his paralysis, Mystic Shield could see Tango pass through what was left of his force field (dissipating it in the process) to pick him up and carry him away. He managed to retain his 'grip' on his spear as the two of them approached the cliff, Tango looking ridiculously handsome he would've started hitting on him were he a mare. As it was, he didn't swing that way.

He also saw Ashen carry Crinoline, the former's hood was down. He could see that she was indeed bald, but the scars she had were worse than he first thought. He wasn't able to think more of it as they neared the water. He tried to focus and form two force fields around his and Tango's heads as they made impact with the river with a loud splash, which started carrying them away.

His focus on the barrier was weakened by having to focus on swimming to the shore, but it stayed up. The river was too much for him to swim against and he was pulled under. Thankfully, he can breathe due to his spell but he was still brought downstream.

Ashen's hesitation had cost her precious time as the Canis Major was now upon them and it swiped at her, the very air being pushed forwards by its paw pushing the mare back and over the edge of the cliff, sending her falling upside down.

With her vision blurred and her mind hazed from the vertigo of falling upside-down, Ashen mistook Crinoline for a younger pony due to her smaller size. Grabbing hold of the pale mare, she whispered, "It'll be alright." to her before her cloaked back hit the flowing waters. This was a bad idea!

The impact stung a bit, but was mostly cushioned by her cloak. The cold water surrounded her and weakly soothed her skin. However, the soothing feeling was dwarfed by the urgency of not drowning.

Seeing Mystic had himself handled to a degree, Tango tugged the rope out of his pack and threw one end across the path of the two mares so he may attempt to drag them to shore.

Crinoline panicked when Ashen plunged down into the water. In a desperate attempt, she jumps after her, trying to hold onto her. She then saw a rope floating, attached to the swimming Tango. If she could swim hard enough, she could grab onto it.

The giant spectral wolf above them roared at the four, but turned around stomping off in defeat.

KABLOOIE!!!

The explosion from Crinoline's hoofheld explosive drove a few needles and shrapnel into the rear of the Canis Major, making it roar in pain and loathing.

Mystic Shield continued to struggle to reach the shore, but he was left too weak to do so due to the skirmish with the Canis Minors. Dammit, I can't fail now. He still tried anyway. He succeeded in making it to the shore, but was so far down river that he can't see the others.

Floating, that's what it felt like to Ashen after hitting the water. It shook her mind and body, causing her to let go of Crinoline. With her cloak flowing and waving like a flag in the wind behind her half-conscious form, she was being carried away underneath the water's surface.

That is, until she hit a rock in the flow.

The shock from the sudden pain woke her up enough for her to understand she was in danger and tried to grab hold of something to escape the torrents. Some distance farther down, she managed to end up on a stone sticking out of the water's surface, drenched to the bone with thinned blood flowing from the bite marks on her limbs into the stream, leaving a thin red trail in the waters behind her.

Sputtering and coughing Ashen tried to get the water out of her lungs as she tried to hold on.

"Not…a good…idea…at all…" She was barely clinging to consciousness.

Crinoline wasn't too sure if everything was going to be alright. She wanted to believe Ashen, but the fact that Crinoline cannot swim and her clothes are soaked didn't help. She struggled to grab onto Tango's rope, using her magic to lead it to her.

This damn wolf, he should hope he never sees me again, she thought, gritting her teeth.

Once Crinoline had secured the rope, Tango pulled the small mare to his side and endeavored to deliver her to shore, neither speaking nor thinking of anything else as he focuses on the task at hand.

Tango successfully pulled the cold and wet Crinoline to shore and noticed that no one else was around, no wolves, or the other half of the party. The forest was too dense to follow the river downstream with fallen trees and low handing branches. Crinoline was doing pretty bad, she has trouble standing up and walking around even if she tried.

Crinoline breathed hard. This whole ordeal made her reach her limit, and now her clothes will cause her to freeze to death. She lay on her sides, her body trembling as she was rendered immobile.

"Listen Tango, y-you have to remove my clothes." Crinoline blushed, feeling uncomfortable with the situation at hand. "Ma-ke su-sure t-to re-move o-objects f-from the po-ckets be-f-fore h-hanging them uh-up to d-dry. Be-t-tter hu-urry I-I am r-realy fre-hezzing."

Anxiety over Crinoline's state and that of his other two new friends bubbled up against his usual confidence. Protecting other ponies was a more difficult job than he'd expected and he didn't feel he was doing it very well. "I'll take care of it, little miss. Try to rest yourself a while."

Tango followed the small mare's requests, dutifully removing the sodden garment and carefully collecting the variety of possessions of deadly or more mundane purpose into a separate section of his own pack.

"Not much to do about it. Hope Mystic and Miss Ashen are alright," Tango commented as he stared into the dense forest, "But they're both smarter than me. We'll start a fire here and wait for a bit. Might help them find us."

Once he was done setting Crinoline's clothing in order, Tango unbuckled his own armor, stripped off his own wet tunic underneath, and set about making a small campfire. He gently lifted the shivering Crinoline and placed her by the fire to warm. Tango stopped periodically during his work to listen into the sounds of the forests and kept a steady watch out for friends or any other unpleasantness once he had set everything in order.

The sky was stained red with the sunset, but where they were resting might as well be midnight since the trees blocked off any light directly from the sun.
"Thank you Tango, I never felt so secure before," Crinoline chimed happily before drifting off into sleep.

Once he was safe, Mystic Shield took a few seconds to compose himself, then turned around to the river…and saw Ashen clinging to a rock a ways downstream of his current location.

"Ashen!" he cried out as he made his way to the pyrokinetic unicorn, then looked around to see if there was anything he could do to help her. However, his search proved fruitless. None of them were long enough to reach her, and he was still too weak to try and conjure panel barriers to serve as a bridge, though not enough to…get back in the water.

Left with very little alternative, Mystic Shield put away the armor and—taking the current into account—took another dip and made his way to Ashen. He then grabbed her and rested for a while before contemplating on whether he could swim back to shore with her.

"...took your...time...didn't you?" Ashen weakly said at his arrival.

"Snarky, aren't we?" he quipped back."Just like my co-teacher." He was still unsure on whether or not to swim back. Maybe Ashen has an idea.

Ashen tried to growl at Mystic for being so dumb as to ask her to do seeing as she'd hit a rock, is soaked to the bone, bleeding, and most importantly, hanging on for her dear fleeting life! "some hero...you turn out...to be..."

All of a sudden, an explosion drew their attention (and awoke Crine and Tango) as they saw what can only be described as a shock-wave of chaos from deeper in the forest. The trees changed colors with more variety than their manes and coats as flowers turned into mouths and snapped at flies and bugs.

The rock Ashen and Mystic were on turned into a living animal and desperately tried to shake the two off and swim to shore itself. Though it didn't need to as the water turned red and slowed down. At first, the river running red seemed concerning and disturbing (Blood!) but the flow slowing was caused by the water becoming more solid. They were now swimming in strawberry jelly with a terrified rock.

Mystic Shield's reaction to the entire change was instant. And snarky. "Oh no, not again," he complained as he fought to stay on the now-living rock. He had no idea how Ashen was faring at this moment. Some of the transformed water entered his mouth and he ended up licking some. Tasty.

"By Celestia's mane, what's going on!?" Ashen called out as adrenaline started rushing through her body now that she was in a flash rodeo with a rock that suddenly came alive. The rock's thrashing knocked both of them off fairly quickly, launching them into the sticky jelly.

Mystic landed on the jelly, bouncing a bit before landing on it horn first, stopping his bounce. He was a bit woozy from the landing and couldn't see clearly, although he thought he could see Ashen.

Ashen however landed on solid ground after a bounce or two where she lay still until her eyes stopped spinning in opposite directions.

Mystic recovered soon enough and struggled to wiggle out, but couldn't. Trying something else, he took a bite out of the jelly that was in reach of his mouth and the resulting hole made him fall over. He got up, only to fall again from the wobbling jelly. He looked around to see Ashen on the shore, her eyes spinning.

Am I the lucky one or is she? he thought as he struggled to keep himself balanced and made his way to her.

After recovering from their experience, Ashen and Mystic found themselves in the forest. There was no obvious path and no way to tell which way was which, other than, of course, the jelly river and the cliff-face. They were both also covered in jelly and cold.

Crinoline's head shot up from the sudden noise and soon she found an insulting display of colour combinations in front of her. "What do you think we should do, Tango?" she asked. "Should we investigate the place where that noise came from?"

The fire suddenly exploded in a burst of black flames that cast darker shadows than the night had rather than the warm light, almost like a terrible omen as it died out quickly.

As he stood on guard peering into the forest, Tango regarded the explosion and the changes around him with interest, but not surprise. The latter was an emotion reserved for those who have their sense of how the world should work betrayed. To Tango, the forest was full of things he didn't quite understand that were frequently attempting to hurt him. Par for the course.

"If you think so, little miss," Tango replied pleasantly to Crinoline. "Miss Ashen and Mystic are probably well on their way there already."

Tango donned his gardener's tunic and saddlebags again, but decided to leave his armor. It pained him a little to discard a gift from his siblings, but all-in-all it only weighed him down and he'd want all the mobility he could get.

"I don't think I can protect you too well without the others, little miss," he continued with concern. "If it's alright with you, I think you ought to just hang on tight this time and be ready for us to run."

Crinoline blushed at Tango's request to hold on tight, her eyes wandering from him to the ground and back. "I would like that," she responded with a smile. She began to dress herself and ready up for the journey ahead, lastly climbing back onto Tango's back. She motioned for him to move, but still holding tightly onto him, her head snuggled against his luscious mane.

At Crinoline's urging, Tango moved carefully into the forest towards the center of the chaos explosion, keeping a hopeful eye and ear out for any signs of his lost companions while he did.

A few of the plants snapped at Tango and Crinoline, but nothing reached them if they were careful. Before too long, they broke out into a path perpendicular to the direction they were going.

Working herself up on her legs, Ashen tried to stand, but the pain in her leg made it difficult so when she can she keeps it lifted up, standing on the remaining three. Using her telekinesis, she removed her robe, revealing all of the scarred and burnt flesh underneath and took her belongings out of it, purring them aside on the ground. Though her vision was still a bit blurry from the wild ride, she opened up the medical bag Grace had given her to try and patch up her leg.

In the bag were some cheap, mundane, non magic items like bandages, rubbing alcohol, adhesive medical strips, and a small packet of painkillers. Below those were a few magic healing items for emergencies, including three weak potions, and one book of weak healing. With Ashen's expertise, she can tell that a bandage will help heal it a bit if she stayed off it and painkillers will help her bear through the wound. However, a weak potion would heal her a lot quicker. That is, if she were to trust a magic item after what had just happened.

"Grace..." Ashen said to herself with half a smile on her face as she saw the liberal amount of supplies the pegasus somehow managed to cram into it. After examining the contents of the bag and her injury, she wrapped a healthy amount of bandages around it to stop the bleeding, but didn't use any of the painkillers. I'll save these for when they are actually needed. She decided to just bear through it, but still she kept her wrapped up leg off of the ground to prevent it from getting any worse.

"You okay, Mystic?' she then asked, breathing heavily as she was still recovering from their ordeal.

"I'm fine, Ashen," he responded as he approached her. He then cast a barrier somewhere inside his body and expanded it from there, his expertise in them through training and as advertized by his cutie mark ensuring that his insides weren't affected. As it was, he had done this before with Chronicle when he asked him to do so after suspecting that there were a few parasprites in his mane.

In this case, Mystic managed to remove all the jelly on him, leaving his coat dry. He then turned to face Ashen, re-acquired his armor he left at the shore, then asked, "Could you analyze my injuries, please? I know how to wrap and tie a bandage, as well as apply antiseptic, but that's as far as my medical skills go."

Using her professional skill, Ashen ignored the awkwardness of the situation with both of them bare and did as she was asked. "Okay, sit down and show me where they got you," she told the stallion as she limped up to him on her three good legs. The tensor bandage clung to her skin and squeezed her bad one.

She inspected the bitten leg and the bite on his shoulder, ignoring how close this put her to him. "So, cynophobia I'm guessing? Judging from the way you freaked out at those things back there," Ashen bluntly asked as she motioned back down the 'river' during her examination, trying to make small talk.

There are a few puncture wounds in his legs, mostly in the shape of dogs teeth. They may be infected if the wounds were left open in the forest, although this new landscape looked more like a foals daycare than a forest. Ashen doesn't have much experience in the physical effects of the chaos, so she wouldn't know.

His legs sting slightly from the bites as she examined it. "Yeah. You got me there," he admitted. "It also happened to help me reach first place during the last Running of the Leaves." It was then that he noticed the scars on Ashen, now that her cloak was off. His guesses were true; she had suffered burns, but took pity instead of fearing them.

Hovering a bottle of the rubbing alcohol and a new length of bandages from the bag, Ashen turned back to her patient, Looking around for a moment, she spied his spear and 'took hold' of it, levitating it with its shaft to its owner face as she screwed off the top of the bottle.

"Okay, this will sting so you might want to bite down on something," she told Mystic as she carefully brought the bottle closer to his leg.

Not wanting to bite down on the ornamental spear, even though it suffered some wear from the Canis skirmish, he looked around for a branch to bite on, saw that it had turned into a licorice stick, 'took' it, and bit down on it before giving the go signal.

Ashen carefully applied a few drops to each of the punctures in his skin. Letting the fluid evaporate by itself, she put the bottle on the ground and applied the bandages. Having experienced this sort of pain before in his younger days, Mystic didn't yell.

"First place, you? Haha, yeah right." Ashen can't help but laugh at Mystic's trying to act tough as she bound his wounds, but she could see the way he looked at her now that her scars were open for all to see.

"I advise you to take me seriously mister Mystic," she said, feeling somewhat offended. An individual's eyes can be read like an open book by those that know how to. Though Ashen may not be one of these, there are two things that she can read with ease; fear and pity. "I don't need your or anypony's pity so I advise you not to look down on me." She looked hi dead in the eyes. "Yes, I know how I look and yes, I'm not the strongest out there and rather frail but that doesn't make me weak." she says as she looks him dead in the eyes. Survival of the fittest, only the strong survive. Well, I'm alive, I survived what I've been through and it hasn't made me weak, only stronger."

Ashen paused for a moment before she turned her right side to face Mystic, revealing a lengthy and wide scar on her side near her back. "Do you see this scar, Mystic? Notice how it looks different than the others, and if you'll look you'll see others like it." She turned back to face the stallion as she repeated the process on his shoulder wound. "Those aren't burns; They're stretch marks where my skin was pulled and torn. But why are there no signs of it having been clawed or torn by some beast's talons? Because there's another reason behind those scars and I'll tell you why." She leaned in closer as she twisted the cap back on and returned the bottle to the bag, and whispered the answer into his ear. "The same reason why a snake sheds its skin."