Marks of History
Chapter 2
The Crystal Ruins
Rising Dawn stared intently into the dark of night lingering just outside the mouth of her cave. From the light of her shield she could just barely make out the trees closest to the entrance, stoic and unmoving in the calm air. She was shrouded in an atmosphere of anticipation and fear as the night wore on longer and longer with still no sign of Thunder Blitz returning.
Her mind taunted her relentlessly with images of her pegasus friend lying in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by a pack of timberwolves. The sound of his screams rang in her ears along with the howl of the wolves as they tore the flesh from his bones. All the while a voice called from within the images, Thunder Blitz's voice, cursing her, blaming her for his fate. Worst of all, she knew he was right; if anything happened to her, the blame rested solely on her shoulders. The images played out on the black wall of the cave, the sounds and voices echoing around the cavern.
“You did this,” he yelled as he flew into a low-hanging branch in the blinding darkness. Falling to the ground in a heap the three timber wolves surrounded him instantly. The wooden monsters growled angrily, slowly approaching Blitz as he struggled to his hooves.
“It's your fault!” Thunder Blitz called again, jumping into the air and flapping his wings to get away. However, before he could get any height on his pursuers, one of the wolves jumped up, catching his tail in its mouth. Blitz was dragged back down, the wolf slamming him harshly against the earth.
“You did this to me, Rising Dawn!” Blitz's scream rang in Dawn's ears as all three wolves pounced on his prone form at once. His cries turned pained and wordless, echoing around the forest and damning Dawn to her fate.
Shaking herself from her fears Rising Dawn felt tears streaming down her cheeks. With a hoof she wiped them away, turning towards the shimmering pink shield she’d conjured nearly an hour earlier. Any number of things could have happened out in that forest, and that last imagined situation was far from the worst she'd had.
“Get a hold of yourself, Dawn,” she muttered to herself, blinking a few final tears from her eyes. “He'll be fine. Any second now he'll be back, and he'll be just fine.”
She blinked, the darkness seaming to grow darker as she waited.
“Any second,” she repeated, looking eagerly into the bushes she could just barely make out, expecting Thunder Blitz to pop out.
Time passed, and still there was no sign of a deep grey pegasus with a spiky blue mane. Nothing moved in the darkness.
“He has to come back...” Dawn whimpered, tears blurring her vision.
Suddenly – finally – the barest hint of movement rustled a bush deep in the overgrown jungle. The sound was muted by the shielding spell, but the motion was unmistakable; there was something trying to push through the leaves. Rising Dawn's eyes grew wide as the branches were parted and a large figure emerged, shaped vaguely like a pony, with bulges on either side of its torso.
“Dawn?” The figured whispered, sounding muffled through the shield as though heard through a pane of glass. Its voice was easily identifiable.
“Blitz!” Dawn cried happily, bolting up from the floor and rushing towards the mouth of the cave as Thunder Blitz entered the small ring of pinkish light. With a flash of magic the barrier was lowered and the pegasus was forcefully pulled inside before the shield was raised once more. “What took you so long?” she demanded, leading them deeper into the cave and back towards their camp.
Thunder Blitz chuckled nervously. “Well... I had to lose those wolves...”
“That took you over an hour!?” She asked incredulously as the rounded the final corner, entering the circular cavern, still lit brightly from her glowing glass sphere.
“Well... I kind of... got lost...” he admitted sheepishly, cringing away from the incoming barrage of ribbing and laughter.
“Got lost...” Dawn deadpanned, whirling around and facing him.
He laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. “I couldn't find the cave again after I lost them.”
“Oh never mind,” she sighed, shaking the thought from her mind and lunging forward, throwing her hooves around the pegasus before her. “You're back now and you're safe.”
“Really?” Blitz asked dubiously, not quite ready to accept the offered hug. “Not even gonna crack a joke that I got lost? No snarky comment? No snide remark?”
“Keep talking and I might change my mind,” Dawn muttered, squeezing a bit tighter and banishing her imaginings to the farthest depths of her memory. None of that was real; Blitz was fine, and he was right there in her hooves.
“Who are you, and what have you done with Rising Dawn?” Blitz asked with a chuckle, getting a grumble out of the mare.
“Either hug me or you're sleeping outside the cave!” she barked, getting an instant reaction from him as he wrapped his own two hooves around her shoulders.
Smiling somewhat smugly, Blitz asked, “happy?”
“Shut up, Thunder Dunce,” Dawn growled, releasing her iron tight embrace. “Come on; let's get some sleep. It's going to be an early morning tomorrow!”
Blitz groaned, looking towards the sleeping bag and noting that it, unlike a certain bed in his house, was not made of cloud. He also noted the two bowls of cold instant-mashed potatoes left on the floor. Before he could even mention them they were gone in a puff of pink smoke to parts unknown. “Er... do I want to know where you send dirty dishes?”
“I'm not going to waste perfectly good bowls,” Dawn quipped sarcastically. “They're over there. We can clean them when we find some fresh water – hopefully tomorrow,” she explained, motioning to the two bowls stacked against the wall of the cave.
“Right.” Nodding slowly, Blitz trudged over to his sleeping bag, grabbing the zipper in his teeth and opening it before slipping inside. “Wait,” he said suddenly, sitting upright and dragging his bag with him. “What happens if those wolves come back? Can't they still smell us?”
Dawn shuddered imperceptibly at the memory of the timber wolves. “Not this time; I've added another enchantment on top of the shield to block out anything except pure air. We're pretty much undetectable now.”
“Are you sure?” Blitz asked uneasily, throwing a glance down the tunnel towards the shield. “I don't need to wake up surrounded by those things.”
“You could always stay up all night and make sure the shield holds, but I won't be carrying you through the jungle tomorrow while you get the sleep you should have gotten tonight.” Dawn said, rolling over and putting her back towards Thunder Blitz. “Now go to sleep!” With that, she lit her horn briefly and snuffed out the light from the glass orb, bathing the cavern in darkness.
The sound of ruffling material filled the air as Blitz shifted to the most comfortable position he could find on the rocky ground beneath him. “'Night, Dawn,” he muttered as his body settled into a groove in the rock.
“Goodnight, Thunder Dunce,” Rising Dawn replied quietly, staring off into the infinite blackness around her. “I'm glad you're alright,” she added in a hushed whisper.
“What was that?”
“Nothing... Goodnight.”
“Rise and shine!”
Thunder Blitz groaned, rolling away from the noise that was far too cheery.
“C'mon; the sun's gonna be up in twenty minutes, and we still need to eat!” Rising Dawn insisted, jabbing a hoof into the lump huddled deep inside the blue sleeping bag.
“It's not even morning yet!” He barked, swatting a uncommitted hoof at the one prodding his shoulder.
“Oh come on; nopony's ever discovered ancient ruins by sleeping in!” When no response came, Dawn sighed, taking a step back. “Either get up now or I'll bring you outside and drop you in a lake.”
Blitz snorted. “You don't even know where a lake is around here,” he replied sleepily, yawning and curling further into himself.
“I'll find one,” Dawn said flatly.
“I'll take the risk.”
Rising Dawn huffed, rolling her eyes as the pegasus started letting out overly-loud fake snores. “Fine, have it your way,” she deadpanned before lighting her horn. In a pink glow Blitz's sleeping bag was lifted from the floor with the pegasus still inside.
Thunder Blitz yelped in surprise as he was turned upside down. His wings tried to snap open on instinct, only to be caught by the bag still holding him. “Dawn!” He snapped as he slipped out of the end of the bag, falling the short distance to the ground in a grey-feathered pile.
“Oh good, you're awake,” Dawn said sweetly, tossing the bag to the side. “Help me pack up camp; we'll be leaving as soon as the jungle is bright enough.”
Groaning quietly, Blitz rubbed his head tenderly as he regained his orientation after being flipped upside-down. The cave was exactly the same as it had been the previous night, once again well-lit with the aid of Dawn's lighting orb. “How can you be so cruel?” he asked rhetorically, trotting groggily over to where his sleeping bag had been thrown and beginning the surprisingly difficult task of rolling it up.
Dawn smiled at him, magically packing up her own, red sleeping bag and shoving it into one of her saddlebags. “Aw, I wouldn't be me if I wasn't cruel, now would I?”
“Heh, maybe that's what your 'cutie mark' should be,” he noted snidely. “If they even exist.”
“If that's mine then yours would be being a pain in the flank, Thunder Dunce,” she shot back, giving a smug smirk as Blitz struggled to get his sleeping bag small enough to fit into his own pack. “You can't even fold a sleeping bag right.”
“Hey!” He snapped, taking his eyes off his work, currently half-way into his saddlebag. “It's a lot easier with magic! You try doing it with hooves.” He turned back just in time to see the sleeping bag pop free, unravelling completely and lying across the top of his bag.
Dawn gave an over-exaggerated sigh as she went over. “Here, since you're such a pain in the flank,” she quipped, easily compacting the sleeping bag down and fitting it neatly inside the pack. “Now let's get some breakfast before we have to go.”
Grumbling quietly to himself, Blitz strapped his bags closed and dragged them over to where Dawn's strawberry bags were before joining the mare in the center of the cave where a bowl filled with more unidentifiable white slop waited.
“Seriously?” he asked, raising an eyebrow toward the goop. “More mashed potatoes?”
“Scrambled eggs, actually,” Dawn muttered. “Though if the potatoes last night are any indication, these aren't going to taste anything like eggs...”
With a begrudging look, Thunder Blitz sniffed at the bowl. “Well the potatoes weren't so bad; how bad could these be?” he asked, sticking out his tongue and taking a tentative lick. His head shot back up away from the bowl, his face going a greenish-pale. “Bad...” he gagged, much to Rising Dawn's amusement.
“I don't get it,” he cried, throwing the bowl to the ground and watching the “eggs” jiggle. “These are supposed to be magically-dried food, made from the things they're supposed to taste like, right? Add a bit of water, and instant meal! How can they taste so bad?”
“Because most of the flavor is sucked out along with the water,” Dawn answered with a shrug, taking a taste of her own breakfast. Her eyes lit up in surprise. “Oh, that's not so bad.”
Blitz stared at her bemusedly. “Of course you'd think that.”
The rest of breakfast passed in silence, bathed in the light from their false sun. Before long bowls were emptied and stacked with the dishes from the previous night before being sealed in a bag and shoved into Dawn's saddlebags. The last thing to be packed away was the orb holding their miniature sun, the light being snuffed before it was placed in Blitz's bags, padded by his sleeping bag.
“Big day today,” Dawn announced as their cavern was bathed in darkness, lighting her horn and guiding the duo to towards the exit.
Blitz yawned widely, blinking blearily into the dim light provided by his friend's magic. “How are you so chipper? Do you have coffee or something that you're not telling me about?”
“You know I don't drink coffee,” Dawn said as they came to the entrance, the pinkish shield holding strong as the first rays of light began to pierce to jungle. In a flash of magic the barrier dissolved into pink trails of magic before scattering in the gentle breeze rolling through the trees. Light fell in beams through the thick canopy, illuminating a layer of fog resting on the ground of the overgrown jungle, thick enough to hide the forest floor from view.
“You also don't seem to understand that a pony needs a certain amount of sleep to function properly,” the pegasus grumbled, passing through the mouth of the cave and glancing around the surroundings. “Do you even know where we're going?”
Rolling her eyes, Dawn fished around in her saddlebags until she pulled out a small compass on a loop of string. “Home is north of here, and there's a river to the south. The first set of ruins that we know of are about five miles downstream,” she explained, checking the compass briefly before dropping the string around her neck.
“Five miles isn't so ba-”
“The river is about twenty miles that way,” Dawn announced, pointing off into the jungle briefly before marching into the trees. “If we hurry we can get there before it starts getting dark.”
“Twenty five miles!?” Blitz exclaimed, watching as his companion was swallowed by the thick fog, the mist crawling up to just below her flanks.
“Yep. Should only take six to seven hours if we don't stop too often,” she called back. “Of course, you could always turn back and go home; it's a straight shot north to get out of Everfree.”
Blitz groaned, kicking his hoof into the dirt. “I really should just go home,” he told himself. However, he was unable to convince himself, as before long he was racing to catch up with the mare who had disappeared into the trees.
Dawn smiled at him as he fell into step beside her. “See; you can't resist this stuff.”
“Yeah yeah, I'm just here in case you attract any more attention. Do I need to remind you about the timberwolves last night?”
“You're never going to let me forget that, are you?”
Smiling wickedly, Blitz shook his head. “I'll take what I can get. Now we have the radioactive toast incident and the fact that you lead a pack of timberwolves straight to us.”
“Shut up, Thunder Dunce, or do I need to remind you that somepony got lost?”
“Hey, getting lost is totally understandable; it was pitch black out there and I didn't exactly have a compass or a map to go off,” Blitz shot back defensively.
“Actually that's a good point... how did you even find the cave again? This place isn't exactly easy to navigate.”
Blitz shrugged casually. “Good sense of direction and a little luck I guess. Once I lost the wolves I started flying back where I came from, but I kept going in circles. Eventually I just went up above the trees and flew around until I spotted the glow of your shield. It was pretty easy to spot when the rest of the jungle is pitch black.”
“Huh... guess you're not as dumb as you look,” Dawn quipped, continuing before Blitz had the chance to offer a response. “Come on; we're losing daylight and if we don't make it to the ruins today we might not be lucky enough to find another cave like that.”
“Just how much food did you bring anyway?” Thunder Blitz asked breathlessly, stepping over a root as he struggled to keep up with the endlessly energized mare in front of him.
“Enough,” Dawn replied, stopping for only a second to check her compass before resuming her seemingly endless trek into the dense foliage. Bushes and shrubs surrounded them on all sides, with the massive branches of the impossibly old trees hanging just overhead and blocking out the sky from high above. “Unless you eat it all.”
“How can I eat it if you never give me a chance to!?” he exclaimed, frustration mixing with fatigue in his voice. “Excuse me for being a normal pony with normal needs, like food and water.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, clambering through a thick bush and glancing around. The bush had lead to a large, circular clearing. The circumference was lined by tall trees and thick shrubs, but the sun was sitting directly above the gap in the canopy, allowing the clearing to be as bright as an open field. “We can stop here for lunch,” she announced as Blitz stumbled clumsily through the bush after her.
“Thank Libra,” he moaned, taking a few more steps before collapsing onto the soft grass covering the ground.
“Don't be such a baby,” Dawn scolded, taking her saddlebags from her back and setting them down. “It's only noon.”
Blitz groaned, crawling a little further into the warm sunlight streaming through the clearing. “It feels like I've been walking for days. My hooves are killing me.”
Rolling her eyes at the exaggeration, Dawn sighed and rummaged around in her saddlebags for a second before pulling out two bars wrapped in plastic. “Here,” she said, tossing one onto the sprawled out pegasus's back. “Eat this.”
“What is it?” He asked, craning his neck and looking at the suspect object on his back.
“Granola bar.” Dawn answered as she continued digging in her bag. She gave a cry of success as she pulled out two sports bottles, one blue and one pink. “And some water.” The blue bottle was rolled across the ground, coming to a rest next to one of Blitz's hooves. When the pegasus failed to respond, Dawn added, “We have fifteen minutes before we start walking again. We should have less than ten miles to go for the river, and we can stop there to fill up on water and rest.”
Blitz sat up sluggishly, the granola bar sliding from his back into the grass. “I swear you're going to be the death of me one of these days,” he grumbled, blindly searching behind himself with a wing until he found the bar. Pulling it in front of him, he eyed the rather small snack. “This is it?”
“I'm not letting you eat all the food on the second day in this place. I know you, and I've made the mistake of letting you raid my fridge before; it's not happening again, and certainly not out here,” Dawn explained around a mouthful of granola bar.
“Hey! I didn't eat all your food,” Blitz protested. “Just... most of it...” he added quietly.
“Which is exactly why you're not allowed in my kitchen anymore. Now hurry up; we don't have all day.”
Sighing, Blitz nodded complacently, unwrapping his measly bar and munching on it. It wasn't the greatest food he'd ever eaten, but at the very least it was better than most of the instant-meals Dawn had brought with her. As the last little bit of the bar disappeared Blitz sighed quietly, holding a hoof over his empty-feeling stomach. “How long do you plan to be out here anyway?”
“Hopefully it'll only be a week,” Dawn replied, only half way through her own granola bar. “The place we're looking for is supposed to be built into the side of a mountain, about three days in if the reports are anything to go by. We get up there, take a few pictures, then return home with enough proof to get a real expedition out here funded. If all goes well, we should find the place tomorrow.”
“Great... a week of nothing but terrible food and measly snacks... I think you're finally going to kill me,” Blitz muttered, uncapping and guzzling down a quarter of his water before pausing to take a breath.
Dawn chuckled, finally finishing her snack and taking up her own bottle of water. “Aw, I think you're a little more resistant than that.”
Sighing, Blitz capped his water bottle and set it down in the grass before flopping down onto his back, staring up into the bright blue sky between the thick green canopy. “I wouldn't be so sure...”
“Come on, even you have to admit it's an exciting prospect to be the first ponies to officially discover these ruins. We'll probably get to lead the full-scale expedition too, and then we'd be published in a whole bunch of fancy journals, we could do interviews, maybe even-”
“You're seeing stars again, Dawn. Let's just find the place first, alright?”
Dawn's lips twisted into a pout. “Hey, it doesn't hurt to think of the future.”
“No, but it does hurt to think of the future when we're not even sure these ruins exist,” Blitz shot back, folding his hooves behind his head and closing his eyes in the bright light shining through the clearing.
“How could they not!?” Dawn exclaimed, throwing her hooves out widely. “Do you know how many other ponies have reported seeing them? Not to mention everything the dragon says! He couldn't just make those things up!”
“Of course he could; you were hardly even paying attention to him. You were so lost imagining things I doubt you even remember his name.”
“Hey! I do too remember his name!” Dawn snapped defensively.
Blitz smirked up to the sky. “Then what's his name?”
Dawn faltered, biting her lip. “It's... uh... ummm... well, he had these... spike-things so... Spiky?”
“Ha! That's a stupid name!” Blitz laughed, flipping over onto his stomach and looking up to his companion.
“Sh-shut up! You couldn't do any better!”
Blitz raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“His name's Vetus,” Blitz deadpanned with a victorious smile.
Dawn's jaw dropped for a split second before she quickly recovered. “Yeah right, you just made that up!”
Blitz rolled his eyes. “He said, and I quote, “I have been known by many names over the years, much like Libra, but most of your kind know me simply as Vetus”. Ring any bells?”
“Well... shut up!” Dawn muttered, turning her head away. “So what if I forgot his name? I've always been bad with names; do you remember how long it took me to remember yours?”
Blitz snorted. “You didn't call me anything but Thunder Dunce for nearly two months, and that was after a month of awkwardly avoiding using my name.”
Looking up to the sky, Dawn packed away her water bottle and stood up. “Well, it's time we get moving again; we can take another break when we get to the river.”
Blitz groaned, refusing to stand up. “Five more minutes?”
“Nope!” Dawn called cheerily, a devious smile adorning her lips. “Let's get going, Thunder Dunce.”
“This is because of the name thing, isn't it?”
“Call it divine punishment.”
“Be honest with me, Dawn,” Blitz deadpanned, looking over the unicorn's shoulder at the compass held in her magical grasp. “We're lost, aren't we?”
“No!” Rising Dawn snapped quickly, staring intently at her compass. “We're just... a little off course...”
“And how, pray-tell, did that happen?”
Dawn's muzzle scrunched up into a frown. The compass needle kept spinning, refusing to sit still. And even when it did stop for a few moments, it was always in what should have been the wrong direction. “Agh! This stupid thing doesn't work!”
Thunder Blitz lifted a hoof, delicately rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You're telling me that for the past two hours we've been following a broken compass?”
“Hey, it's not my fault the stupid thing broke!” Dawn shot back defensively. “I don't see you doing anything to help!”
“What would you have me do?” Blitz asked, throwing his hooves up in the air and motioning to the canopy. “Fly up above the trees and look for something? Do I need to remind you how thick this jungle is? Even if I managed to get through the leaves up there, and even if there was a clearing large enough for me to find something, I'd never find my way back to you. So either you find a way to fix that compass, or we're stuck wandering around until we get lucky or die.”
Dawn sighed, tapping the faulty compass with a hoof as the needle continued to spin. “If I could...” she paused, ears perked up and swivelling. “Can... can you hear that?”
“Hear what, the sound of us being hopelessly lost?” Blitz spat sarcastically, looking around in the thick jungle surrounding him for some kind of landmark.
“No.. it's more like...” Dawn turned her head, trying to hone in on the sound. Eventually her eyes fell on a large fern resting between two trees. “Water... this way!”
“Water? What are you- hey! Wait for me!” Blitz cried, sprinting after the unicorn as she was swallowed by the jungle. “Dawn? Dawn!” He called, scanning the dense foliage around him, struggling to catch a glimpse of his companion's strawberry coat.
A rustling somewhere ahead of him was his only clue as Blitz hesitantly moved forward, ears standing on end and tracing the sound of stomping hooves. Within seconds of searching he started to hear the distinct but faded sound of rushing water, just barely audible over the sound of his rustling as he forced his way through the resistant underbrush. The sound of Dawn's own push through the jungle began to fade as the rushing water grew louder and louder until all that could be heard was the violent turbulence. The noise echoed around him, filling the forest and masking any other sounds.
Finally, he saw it; between the trees and bushes and vines lay rapids, with a current stronger than anything he'd ever seen before. A couple more bushes later and he forced his way out onto the bank of the raging river, just a meter wide with deadly waters on one side and just as deadly jungle on the other.
“Dawn!” Blitz hissed angrily, spotting the unicorn kneeling next to the edge of the heavily-eroded river bank. “What the hay was that! You just left me back there!”
Rising Dawn glanced up from the water, rolling her eyes. “You're not lost, are you? I don't see what your problem is; you seemed to find me easy enough. It wasn't exactly hard.”
“That's not the point! I-” Thunder Blitz trailed off, eyes growing wide and staring off into the distance.
“Whatever; at least we're here. The ruins should only be a little farther away, depending on how far we strayed off course because of the compass. If we can find them, I should be able to make a new one... Blitz?” Dawn asked, noticing the pegasus' slack-jawed expression. “Hey, you listening to me Thunder Dunce?”
Blitz swallowed, raising a hoof and pointing down the river. “I... think we're pretty far off course...”
Dawn raised an eyebrow, slowly turning her head towards where Blitz was pointing. Her eyes grew just as wide as his as they fell on a large, light-blue tree made of pure crystal with darker blue crystal leaves. Instead of dropping, her jaw stretched into a wide grin. “We found it! The Crystal Ruins!”