A Journey Unthought Of

by Hustlin Tom

Chapter 44 REVISED

The Lieutenant glanced around cautiously as he stepped down into the river bed before him. Glancing back over his shoulder he motioned to his fellows to proceed further into the forest using the banks above. They hadn't yet encountered any resistance of any kind, but the possibility of a threat still remained, so their senses were on high alert, sharp for any danger, whether wildlife or something else. With that current state of mind their arboreal trek was going at a crawl, that is at least until one of the soldiers gave a sign for them all to halt. As one the unit stopped in their tracks.

"Contact at Three O'clock," he whispered just loud enough for them all to hear.

Silently the Lieutenant jumped out of the bank to the other side, his wings open to give him a near noiseless landing. Just to the northwest, loping along as quick as it could to the east was an enormous grizzly bear. Initially as it moved it looked back over its shoulder, but then it began lumbering along into a full on sprint away from that direction.

"What do you make of it sir," the spotter asked.

"Bears do retreat," he said softly before looking back in the direction in which the bear had come, "but only if there's a bigger threat than anything we’re able to fight. Pick up the pace, but remain quiet."

With a strong flap of his wings he was up in the air, gliding along until he touched down again a few yards away. He repeated this process again and again, even as his squad followed after him. An ominous pale light was coming out of the forest deeper in, its rays somehow feeling malevolent. What was going on here, he wondered. Then all of a sudden he heard a voice from behind the group, shouting in the distance, "Lieutenant!"

Surprised but still on high alert, the rest of the squad snapped around to the direction of the voice, war saddles preemptively armed and ready. "Hold your fire," he hissed, "and wait."

The ponies under his command stood stock still, waiting for the next order.

The voice repeated its cry, and then some, "Lieutenant, this is Twilight Sparkle. You're headed straight into danger. The Void hole is nearby!"

"Sir," a second pony said, but he hushed them silently, "They don't know we're here. Hold."

"We are headed towards the hole's location," he recognized this voice as that of the grey pegasus, "The device to seal it shut is ready. We came out here to save you from falling into it."

"So show some appreciation for us having to come out to save your flanks," another voice yelled more closely and from above.

"Rainbow," Twilight called out in shock.

"What," she retorted grumpily, even as she flew into view of the squadron from above, not looking where she was flying, "It's not like we had to." A great surge arose in the pale light behind the group of soldiers. Glancing back behind them the Lieutenant now saw a wall of repulsive white and black light, its patterns swirling around and crashing in on themselves. Seeing the light now for the first time, the multi-chromatic pegasus let out a loud but short 'Woah," before she arced her flight path upward out of the way of the event horizon. Flipping over in the air she looked down at the window into hell and noticed the terrible truth: the blasted thing was growing at a visible pace. "Ooooh, boy. This ain't good," she muttered before she flew down to regroup with the others.

"Clearly you were more right than we gave you credit for," the Lieutenant said sincerely to Ditzy Doo as the two groups gathered some distance away from the anomaly, "You said earlier that eventually this would cascade. How long do we have to evacuate Ponyville?"

"This isn't about evacuations," Ditzy said plainly as she helped Twilight guide the Space Cork down to the ground, before locking open the tripod it would rest on, "We either seal it for good, or the Void hole opens completely and we kiss everything on this planet goodbye. My biggest problem is I thought we had more time, but we had to come out and stop you from running headlong into this, and we don't have a dedicated power source yet."

Taking the new information in stride but, still agitated by the all-or-nothing situation they were faced with, Lieutenant Swiftfeet asked, "Well why'd you bring it out here then?"

"We can't stop it right now," she said as she mounted the device on its tripod, "but maybe we can buy ourselves some time. Besides we can use the ambient magic of the forest for now as our source of power. It's not much by any means, but we can maybe get a few minutes? I don't know for sure at this point."

"At this point anything will do," the Lieutenant agreed as the ensemble of ponies looked to the advancing wall, "Fire that thing up. Dazzling Point, Willow Wisp, give it every drop you can spare."

"Aye sir," the two unicorns said as they came next to the machine, "What do you need us to do?"

Ditzy Doo brought around a metal plate which she quickly attached to the Space Cork by two leads, "Just aim at the plate and give it what you've got. The machine can take care of the rest."

"Just so you know, that material is explicitly owned by the Equestrian Government, and reproducing it is a crime," one of the other soldiers said.

The Lieutenant turned to him calmly and simply said, "For now, screw the law."

"Add it to the list of other felonies we've committed in the last few hours if you want," Ditzy said casually with a shrug, and then she cranked the the dial on the machine to it's maximum setting, "Give it the juice!"

The two soldiers aimed their horns carefully and projected their magic onto the plate, their auras vibrant green and deep pink. Arcane power crackled with a rush up through the leads and straight into the machine's inner workings. The projector end began to turn rapidly, and then fired out a beam of molten magic straight into the Void hole. When the two lights met, the event horizon buckled against it, retreating back.

"It's working," Ditzy called out excitedly, "Everypony else not a unicorn get back to Ponyville and gather up every foal, filly, and colt who can squeeze out a spark!"

A crackling sound began to fill the air, and as the group looked up at where the lights met they could see wisps of ozone forming, some of which was sucked up by the event horizon, but most of which broke off into small, highly concentrated packets of cloud that flew in all directions at random. The hole stopped its retreat and began to advance again, gaining back the ground it had previously lost.

"What's happening," the Lieutenant asked.

"The air around the hole is becoming ionized when it comes in contact with our magic," Twilight said worriedly, "The ozone created must be sapping away some of our energy to make these rogue storms clouds."

The Lieutenant pointed to the hole and looked to his fellow winged soldiers, "Keep your distance, but get that ozone out of here; we can't risk it building it up into full-fledged clouds and turning the place into a storm hazard on top of everything else."

"Sir," they both shouted, and immediately took flight, Rainbow Dash immediately after them with a comment of, "Never thought I'd have to kick clouds to save the world!"

"Let's make up for what we lost, everypony," Twilight called out as she came next to Dazzling Point and Willow Wisp and joined them in their magical transfusion. Quickly joining their fellow unicorns, Rarity and Vinyl Scratch offered up theirs as well, making a veritable rainbow of colors go in and come out of the Space Cork.

"How much more of this can your machine take," the Lieutenant asked as he looked back at the Void hole with a worried eyes.

"She can take the punishment," Ditzy said with sweet smile, "It was built to withstand worse!"

Everything seemed to be going well, and they were at least holding their ground with the system they had in place: the magic was slowly forcing the hole back towards where it came, and the ozone was being successfully siphoned off. Out of nowhere the Void hole's light grew brighter and it surged forward rapidly. One of the RSD pegasi was too close and caught off guard by the sudden expansion. She was trying to escape, but her back legs and tail were already past the event horizon, and she screamed in shock and fright. Her wingmate flew up to her, as did Rainbow Dash, and they held onto her hoof as they tried to pry her loose.

"Come on, Sunny," her wingmate snarled, "Flap as hard as you can!"

"It's eating me! I can feel it eating me," was all she could shout in terror.

"Somepony work with us here," Rainbow Dash screamed in frustration as she looked back to her friends.

Twilight reached out with her magic for the three of them and yanked them away from the hole as hard as she could. The three pegasi tumbled into the forest, each landing in separate spots. The Lieutenant immediately was on priority as he jumped over to his potentially wounded subordinate. He galloped over to her side to assess the damage. Sunny's wingmate was in the act of joining when she saw her condition as well. With a sigh of relief the Lieutenant was able to shout out to the others, "She's okay."

While physically that was mostly the case, the only damage having been done to her being that her tail hair was now considerably shorter than it had previously been, she was hyperventilating and clearly scared for her life.

"That's it," Dazzling Point said wearily as she stopped her flow of magic to the device, "I've given all I can give; any more and I'll collapse."

"What caused the hole to expand do you think? Was it something we did," Rarity asked as Ditzy Doo shooed the others away while she began to pack the Space Cork back up.

"I don't think so," was her reply, "The hole only ever seems to grow when there's something causing dimensional instability, like the Tardis in full flight, but this close to the hole cascading he wouldn't risk something like." Offering up the components for Twilight to once again carry, she looked to the others, "We did what we came to do, and even learned a bit about some of the Void hole's behavior, and that's a net positive."

"We should go back to Ponyville now," Twilight declared, "We have new data, and perhaps the Doctor's found a power source that can work for this. We can all regroup and revise our plan," she rolled her eyes a little, "Maybe even add a few bullet points under how we're going to 'save the world.'"

"My squad and I can work on organizing Ponyville," the Lieutenant offered as he came closer, "It looks like we're also going to need several care units while both the unicorns and pegasi are working; the earth ponies, the old and the young can help out where they can there. There is a possibility of a wildlife outbreak in the town since they're being driven forward by this hellhole."

"I can manage them," Fluttershy said with normally uncharacteristic confidence, "Just leave them to me."

"Sounds like we all have a plan," he said confidently, "Now let's move out."

With that the ponies galloped off towards the forest edge and back into town, even as the Void's reach grew greater and greater by the second.

Comments

[Hustlin Tom]

And it's live. Fresh from the editing table! One hot steaming pile of p- pages. The next round should be 4-5 chapters and an epilogue. I'd expect it'll be ready around the end of the year, but if I finish it early it will be published early too!

[tk4]

I'm very much enjoying this story, but why does it seem so underrated? o.o

I think I'll pass on reading the unrevised version though so I can experience your revisioning without any "spoilers", considering the large word count difference per chapter compared to the revised version :)

Can't wait for the next chapters to be released, you have my +1!

[Luckyfanisaac]

and then she cranked the the dial on the machine to it's maximum setting, "Give it the juice!"

"The ozone created must be sapping away some of our energy to make these rogue storm clouds."

like the Tardis in full flight, but this close to the hole cascading he wouldn't risk something like this.