Fellowship is Madness

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Dragon's Peak, Part 2

“GET DOWN!”

Iron Hoof tackled Kajiik towards the inside of the trail as everypony else dove after him. Rocks ricocheted off the wall and the trail around them as a rockslide tumbled past. Ferrous spread his wings, creating an awning of a sort over his sister and Hammer Soot. Barkskin and Blueberry Jam had decided the safest place to be was beneath Thunderlane and Cheerilee. Thunderlane had also decided to drag Fleethoof with him.

The rocks settled into a rhythm, pounding away at the path for several minutes before finally stopping. Iron Hoof went to stand, but found himself buried beneath the stone. Tapping his hoof against the ground beside Kajiik, he sighed, “Anypony hurt?”

Kajiik grunted a Negative from underneath him, and he heard echoes that he hoped were from the others.
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Ferrous blinked in the dusty darkness, “Gilda, you ok?”

His sister let out a bit of a choked groan, “I’m fine. My wing feels like it’s stuck though.” His wings shifted slightly, an effort to maybe open up some more space to breathe. It had the opposite effect though, the weight of the rocks crushing down on his back. As strong as he was, a Griffon was meant to hold weight by pulling their wings down, not pushing them up, “F…Gilda, see if you can reach my saddlebag. I stuck a shovel in there.”

He felt her nodding, and tried to roll his bag lower so she could reach it.

“OW! Ferrous, get your ankle off my wing!”

He shifted his paw forward and set it gently down on something soft, “That’s my stomach.”

He tried to find a solid surface to put his paw on, and finally settled for setting it on Hammer’s spread wing, “Deal with it. I could drop the mountain on you.”
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Barkskin’s horn lit up, revealing an armored Pegasus standing over her. His legs were braced against the walls of the little cavern he had formed, and his head was tucked beneath his torso, while his wings were clearly locked in place by his armor, though the steel was beginning to warp under the weight.

“Thunderlane, are you ok?”

A warbled groan slipped out of his lips, and she quickly cast a scanning spell on his head. He had to have taken a pretty solid hit from one of these rocks.

Another groan from beside her made her look down. Fleethoof was lying on her side, but didn’t seem injured. Even after a scan.
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Cheerilee was overjoyed to see the sickly green glow of Blueberry Jam’s horn in the dark. She was less excited to see the black chitin on the ground beneath her. She knew what changelings were, of course. But she knew that they were effectively banned from Equestria, and any that the Guard found were, according to the regulations book, to be imprisoned for interrogation, or in the event that imprisonment was unfeasible, killed. Well, she wasn’t going anywhere for a while, “Alright, Changeling, what made you think taking over one of my close friends was a good idea?”

The changeling groaned, and blinked at Cheerilee’s armored face, “Really, Cheers? I have a green-card. Do you want to see it?”

“No. You don’t get to use that tone. You’re a changeling! I’m supposed to be asking the questions here!”

“Great. Ask away. I’ll be laying here slowly suffocating while you use up all our air.”

“You have magic! Can’t you just magic up some air? And how do I know you even need to breathe!”

The changeling lunged forward, slamming her hoof into Cheerilee’s ribs, “Cheerilee, I’ve known you since you were a filly. You’ve known me too. Now, if you could stop acting like a rules-lawyering book-worm, maybe we’ll survive this, and you can ask me about it later.”
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Kajiik’s cloak started glowing a dull white, enough for both stallions to see that the rocks around them were shifting more and more with every breath, as Iron’s armor crumpled under the pressure, “Iron, if you can hold out just a few minutes, I can get a bracing spell up.”

The runes were easy to draw, if a little tough because the surface wasn’t entirely level. He wasn’t sure exactly what radius he put on it, but it wasn’t sucking his mana, it didn’t matter right now, “Alright. I’m going to activate the runes now, Brace yourself.”

The cavern lit up like the surface of the sun for a split second, but the mountain stayed intact as Iron shifted off of the surface. Good.
“Ok, so we have a stable cave. Now what?”

“I fused the rock. Now we’ll need to dig our way out. So that will be this rune here…” The rock began to melt under Kajiik’s hoof, turning to dust that he scooped out of the way with his other hoof.
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Ferrous felt the rock climb away from his wing surfaces, and let them fall. The rock didn’t follow, and he rolled to the side, freeing Hammer from beneath his paw. It was still pitch black, but he had a better idea of how much space they had, “We still need to dig our way out. Gilda, do you have the shovel?”

Gilda clicked the shovel against the side of the cavity they were in, “Yeah. But this feels like stone, not loose gravel anymore. I don’t think the shovel will work.”

“My wing’s stuck. The rock fell on it. And I think I’ve got some of Gilda’s feathers pinned in there too.”

“Ok. Did any of us pack a chisel? Or a knife?”

Hammer let out a shout, “Tartarus, NO. YOU are NOT cutting off my wing! Gilda’s feathers maybe, but not my wing!”

“Hey, feathers itch when they’re growing back! Yours won’t itch!”

A tearing sound, almost immediately drowned out by an earsplitting scream, echoed in the cave, leaving Ferrous curled against the wall, talons over his ears. “…Fuck was that?”

A whimper escaped Hammer’s throat as she stood up, mane brushing the top of the enclosure, “I found my knife.”

“You just said we weren’t…”

“I said YOU weren’t. You don’t know anything about Thestral wings. I couldn’t be sure you’d cut in the right places…Dammit. Now it’s gonna bug me for a week.”

“Ok, so you’re free, and bleeding. How are we going to get through this stone then? Nobody has a chisel.”

Through gritted teeth, Hammer grinned, “I’ve got it under control. Cover your ears. Eyes too.” He heard the sound of steel grinding against stone, and, realizing that he hadn’t felt Hammer’s hammer anywhere on the floor, leapt over his sister once more.
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The mountain shook, and Thunderlane fell on Barkskin. She rolled him onto his back, not worried about the rocks falling at the immediate moment, because they looked stable. “Ok, now I’m stuck in a stone egg with a concussed Pegasus. My Canary spell tells me we have maybe half an hour of air if we don’t panic. Stoneshape says the rock is only a couple of feet thick, but I can’t drill through it. Any ideas, Thunderlane?”

The dazed Pegasus just moaned and his head lolled to the side.

“Wake up soldier. If you die on me, I’ll have to promote Derpy to your position!”

The Pegasus sat up and snickered before wincing, “You wouldn’t dare!”

Fleethoof poked Barkskin, “Stop talking. You’re wasting all our air.”
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“What’s all that crashing out there?”

“I don’t know. How would I know that?”

“You’re a changeling. Aren’t you supposed to be able to read minds?”

Blueberry sighed, “No. We eat excess emotion. That’s about all we can sense anyway. And I’m getting a lot of elation from the left of us. Some anger from the right. I’m still getting six other signatures though. Everypony’s still alive.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. I’m watching yo…” The wall of their stone prison collapsed towards the side Blueberry had sensed the elation, which quickly turned to disappointment as Hammer Soot spotted the Changeling and Earth Pony in the green glow and dust.

She turned and looked back into the cave behind her, “Wrong direction. Cover your ears again.”

Blueberry cast a sound-shroud into the hole just as the mountain rocked again with the force of Hammer’s blow, and suddenly light was streaming in through a hole in the stone.
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Light poked around Kajiik’s hoof as he scooped out the last inch of stone, and pushed his way through like a newborn rhinoceros, tumbling onto what was left of the pathway. Iron Hoof followed him out, and stopped, staring at the gaping hole in the stone façade where Hammer Soot stood, blood dripping from a ragged stump on the end of her wing, hammer clutched in her talons that had to weigh as much as her entire torso, “Hey, I’ve got Cheerilee, Ferrous, Gilda, and a changeling here! You?”

“Uh, me and Iron Hoof,” Kajiik started scrambling on the rock with his chalk, drawing a transparency spell, when the changeling poked her head out of the hole, “Kajiik, they’re over here. I can’t get to them, and I don’t think it would be safe for Hammer to break them out.”

Kajiik nodded, and moved to where the changeling was pointing, “Thanks Berry. Can you help get everypony up onto the trail on the other side of the rubble?”

Cheerilee just stared at the Zebra as she was lifted from behind and carried onto more level ground.
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“Hey, I think they’re coming for us! Hey! HEY! We’re HERE!” Barkskin was loud, for a moment, before Fleethoof’s hoof cupped over her muzzle.

“They know. Now let them get in here before you waste any more of our limited air,” the Party pony hissed.
Thunderlane just gurgled and lay on the floor like a sack of drooling potatoes.
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Kajiik’s hoof pushed through the rock, and he felt it press against a hoof on the other side. Quickly, he brushed his hoof to the side, pushing stone out of the way so he could see in. Three ponies were visible in the light, and he could see how big the gap was.

“I don’t have enough mana to cut you all the way out, so I’m going to need you to get behind Thunderlane’s armor and cover your ears and eyes.”

Fleethoof was already there, and Barkskin only took a moment to roll Thunderlane so he was facing the back wall, and his wing was covering her.

“Ok. Hammer away.”

Barkskin’s protest was drowned out by the thunderous crash as the hole became a doorway, “Alrighty then. Come on OUT! We’ve a dragon to slay.”
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Fleethoof was, once again, hesitant to go after the dragon, but having two Griffons threaten to chase her if she tried to run helped them climb up the mountain faster. Right up to the entrance of the cave. The black smoke was pouring out of the mouth, and black soot already covered the stony terrain thick enough that Kajiik was glad to have worn tall boots today.

He passed out the necklaces, “Ok, we should be able to call on the Elemental power to send the dragon packing. Uh, make a circle. Ok, now focus on your element.”

Several tense seconds later, Thunderlane rolled off Barkskin’s back and landed on the ground with a nerve-rattling thump. No magical rainbow of light.

“I think they’ve figured out that I was pulling that whole speech out of my ass.”

“So how are we supposed to get rid of the dragon now? It’s not like it’s made of stone, and it’s already immune to fire, so neither my hammer, not Hammer’s will work on it. And nopony else has anything that will scratch it, or even delay it for those five minutes we need for the cannon-fire to arrive.”