//------------------------------// // Chapter 17 REVISED // Story: A Journey Unthought Of // by Hustlin Tom //------------------------------// The terrain in the Everfree Forest was treacherous and, just as Bon Bon had promised, untamed. I'd visited parks back home on Earth and thought I was decently prepared for what wilderness hardships would come our way, but it seemed I was sorely mistaken. Pits and dropoffs were common, some with only a few feet of a drop, some that seemed bottomless. Rainbow Dash was kind enough to survey the route just ahead of me, warning me of gaps and crossings before I would have even been aware of them. "We're still headed the right way, right," I asked as glanced up at her. "Positive," was her confident reply, "We're traveling by the sun. All we have to do is keep it to our right and a little in front of us, and we'll be there in no time." I crested a small hill; a dirt path petered down from the top to a gap about two feet wide. Leaning back as I walked forward I made my way down the hill and strode over the gap with a wince of pain from my bruised ankle, courtesy of Lyra saving my life. Out of curiosity I looked back behind and down: this gap seemed to have no bottom. I shivered to myself as I turned away from it, "Is the rest of the Everfree like this?" "What little I've seen, no, not really. It's mostly flat ground and easy paths. There's definitely more crevices here than any other part of the forest I've been in. My guess is the run-off from storms over the years eroded the ground here more than anywhere else. This area is a great watershed, and this is probably the flattest part of the region!" After a few minutes more we came back to flat, stable ground. Rainbow darted a ways ahead, just to be sure it all was uniform and without any obvious pitfalls, and then she rushed back to me, a giddy smile on her face, "We're almost there!" Remembering the simple description I'd been given of the place, I strained my ears to hear the sound of anything nearby. There was the ruffle of Rainbow's wings as she descended to walk by my side, the plodding of our feet and hooves, and our thundering breathing. That was it. No birds chirping, no rustling of the wind or breaking of twigs, nothing. Everything was shrouded in an impenetrable quiet. We stepped through some foliage and the small sproutlings near the clearings’ edge, and we had officially arrived. Spectre Howe. Tumulus of the Kings. We stood where we had entered for a moment, simply taking in the area around us: it was basically flat, no holes or disturbances in terrain. The only things of note besides the unnatural ambiance were a few mounds covered in grass. "This is so cool," Rainbow Dash whispered, her voice shattering the silence. I didn't really have a response. I was tense, sure, given the reputation this place supposedly had, but I wasn't afraid. I strode into the clearing, approaching the unnatural formations nearest me. When I realized I didn't have a companion at my side, I looked back from where I came. Rainbow Dash had taken flight again, and was eyeing the area around us as she slowly followed after me. "What's the problem," I asked in a whisper. I wasn't sure why, but it felt like saying anything louder was somehow insulting, like this place deserved respect somehow. "I dunno," she replied slowly, "If there's nothing around this place but us, why do I feel like we're being watched?" I glanced around, now a little more suspicious of our surroundings. With all the other strange things in this world, who knew if this place was really haunted? After everything else I'd seen and heard of in Equestria, I wasn't above chancing a belief in ghosts now. I now noticed Rainbow's legs were jittering as she landed next to me, and as she looked down in alarm it seemed to be against her will. "Don't you hear that," she asked with a hiss. "Hear what," I asked in confusion. Suddenly my anxiety was strangely put at peace. I felt something like a warm blanket drape down around me. I looked down at Rainbow Dash, bewildered by intense but out of place feelings welling up inside of me. She looked back at me. She wasn't jittering anymore, but from the looks of it we were very wary about this place now. "Are you okay," I asked now in a normal voice. "I...I'm fine," she said, "I didn't see anything, but just a second ago I was super afraid, and I don't even know why." She looked up at me, "Now it's like that fear is gone, and I can't tell if I'm more afraid now than I was before." I think I had an idea of what she meant. There was something here, and it was injecting emotions and ideas into our heads. It was trying to manipulate us; toy with us. I didn't like it one bit. "Alright," I said, my voice booming into the clearing, "I don't care what you are, but cut the theatrics! If you have something to say, say it to my face!" I probably sounded a lot more confident than I felt. "Yeah," Rainbow joined in, flapping her wings and splaying them wide, "Show yourself! Fight me if you're brave enough!" We unconsciously glanced at each other, both of us seeming pretty aware we had no idea what we were dealing with and feeling pretty unprepared for whatever it was. Even so, our bluff continued. All that answered us was silence. The feelings or visions didn't return. The apparent lack of a response was unnerving. Did whatever it was care? Was it still toying with us? The air felt a little thicker around us suddenly. "Hang on," Rainbow exclaimed, "That's ozone! I'd know that smell anywhere!" A faint light glimmered behind us. Our pupils shrank, and we stood stock still for a second. We then slowly turned our heads to look behind us. A greenish-yellow light hovered just around four feet above the ground, near my stomach height, and a couple inches above Rainbow's head. Startled, we jumped back a bit, each with a yelp, and we took aggressive stances instinctively, my fists at the ready, and her ready to soar into the skies for a divebomb. The ball didn't move beyond where it had appeared. Its light flickered somewhat, but it seemed to be waiting for us to do something. After about a minute of us awkwardly standing ready for it to attack, I slowly put my fists down. "Okay," I exclaimed, unsure what would happen next, "You don't want to hurt us, I guess. What do you want?" The light slowly circled around us. Rainbow Dash was behind me, her wings still flared. She snorted and pawed the ground with her right hoof. She didn't trust it, and she was ready for any funny business it seemed. The ball now floated between us and the rest of the mounds in Spectre Howe. Without moving towards me, it floated to its side so it was directly in front of me. "Come," it said in an ominous female voice. It then moved to its left to just in front of Rainbow Dash, "Leave." "That's not going to happen," I said pointedly, "If you want to show or tell me something, you can do the same with her." "There's no way in Tartarus I'm leaving him with you," Rainbow Dash snapped at the wisp. It floated back and shrank, almost as if it were conveying hesitance. "Show, yes," it replied once again with a female voice, "but understand?" It floated away, amongst the mounds. When it noticed we weren't following, it flashed twice, then continued on more slowly. Looking at each other, in nonverbal agreement we walked after the wisp. As we journey further into the site, I noticed there wasn't any uniformity to the mounds locations or sizes. They were spread all over the place irregularly. My mind then wandered back to the names of this place on a whim. We'd now seen the spectre of Spectre Howe, but what about the other name? Tumulus of the Kings. Equestria had pretty much always been a matriarchy, at least from what I'd read. What if what we were dealing with wasn't equine in nature at all? What if it was some other species. There was a growing pit in my stomach I couldn't explain. What, if anything, did the sensations I'd received have to do with these other fragments of information I could recall? On the far side of the site we came to the largest mound where the wisp had finally stopped. It seemed to be rectangular in shape, and was about twenty feet wide, seven feet tall, and a whopping eighty feet deep. "Were you the one who put the thoughts in our heads," I asked the ball as we approached. "Yes," it replied. "Why," I asked. "To explain." It's stilted sentences were really starting to irritate me, as were the obscure replies, "Explain what?" "Why we are no longer here." There was a pause, and it's light grew brighter, "Why we are extinct." The emphasis it had used. There was still a part of me that was in denial, something that couldn't accept what I was hearing. The wisp paused and grew dimmer. It seemed to shake, as if it were uncertain of what it was about to do. It's particles slowly started to expand, stretching out into some kind of form. Its shape became more defined, until it became sharp, crystal clear. Rainbow Dash gasped, and I looked on, finally forced to accept and understand what I couldn't explain. A woman floated in front of me. A human woman. She looked down at me with a tragic, pained smile. Without realizing it, my right hand slowly reached out to her, searching for connection with her. Seeing my movement, she mirrored my gesture, her left hand stretching out to me. Our hands met. A soft, warm tickling feeling ran through my fingertips where we touched. She felt real; not an illusion. I had thought that human contact was something I'd never experience again after I accepted that Equestria was not a figment of my imagination, but here I was now, seeing another, albeit one deceased. Even across universes, amid all the strangeness of the land I now knew, seeing even this shade lit a sense of kinship in my heart. "Who are...were you," I asked her softly. "It doesn't matter," she replied softly, "Where are you from?" How could I explain it all? I tried, unsure how much shared knowledge we could possibly have with each other, "Somewhere else. From another place." She nodded, her eyes drifting to the side as she thought. Her image grew brighter before she spoke, "We're gone, but our secrets-" She slowly gestured to the mound in front of us, "-are below." "What kind of secrets?" She took a long glance at Rainbow Dash, who looked back at her in agitated confusion, then looked to me, "What's her deal?" "Earth shattering," the spectre replied, "Beyond anyone's wildest dreams." "Why tell me," I asked as I took a step closer, "I'm nobody. I was sent here because I'm a nobody. What's so special about me?" A small trite smile appeared on her face, "You're human. You're our legacy." It didn't matter how she tried to make me sound more important than I was, she was trying to make me into a pawn. For a long time I'd had so many people try and tell me what to do, forcing me to do what they wanted. The world, the scientists, and now this ghost who I had just met! "What if I don't really feel like 'being a legacy'," I snapped, "What if I'm not interested in being told what to do?" She took my words in silence, her eyes making her look like she was lost in thought. "You made it here because you have a purpose," she declared. Her form began to drift back into the mound, her substance passing through it, "One day you will see. One day you will set things right." "What do you mean," I raised my voice as I walked towards the mound, yelling down into the grass and dirt, "Do you know about how I got here? What do you mean, 'I'll set things right!?" The silence from before hung over the clearing again. Neither the ground nor the ghost gave me an answer. I began to look around the rest of the site, scouring the surface for any sign of human artifacts, anything out of place. There was nothing. Rainbow watched me roam around silently, puzzling over what the spectre had said, her face darkened: what could it mean by ‘earth shattering secrets’? In frustration I brought up my balled fists and threw them down again. Nothing! There was nothing here but the weird mounds and a cryptic, obstinate ghost! There was only one way to be sure that I would find something. I was legitimately about to get on my knees and start clawing the dirt away for answers, when I heard Rainbow say, “Adam, I think it’s time to go.” I whirled back to look at her. “Why,” I snapped. “By the time we get back near Ponyville it’s gonna be getting late. You don’t wanna be anywhere near here or anywhere in the Everfree after dark.” There was definitely wisdom in her words, but I couldn’t let go of my frustration so easily. Kicking a tuft of grass in front of me, I started walking back the way we had come, with a short, “Fine,” as a reply.