The repeated clang of metal into the gem seam was always going to alert trouble, but the immediacy of the hostile display by the twisted denizens of this cave and mine even took her by surprise. Carrara Marble, with pick in mouth, was already slamming away at the rockface with every savage swing of her neck rather than the usual carefulness and accuracy she would display. They needed to get out of here, sooner rather than later.
Her otherwise dull blue-grey coat, short black mane and tail, and an unromantic cutie mark of a chisel and hammer above a tradespony's wooden set square granted mystical green airs by the Everfree firefly lantern she wore on her iron armour's trace harnass. She felt exposed in the cramped small cavern chamber with the admittedly pretty gemstone seam sparkling in tandem with the light. She was bright like a solitary flame in a pitch black room, just waiting to be snuffed out.
They had been sent to gather fifty Equestrian carats worth of the valuable mineral for the production and magical fortification of the Crystal Guard barding, worn by Princess Amore's gendarmerie. This mine was once staked by the East Gorge Prospector's Co., now defunct and disbanded, and Carrara paid good money to a survivor of the company's disastrous expedition to tell them where they could find a seam of goldshimmer emerald. A ragtag group of thirty ponies who explored the surrounding cliff faces of the eastern reaches of the ravine, examining the layers of bedrock for signs of rare earths to plunder from these new lands discovered only some one and a half decades ago... now only two survivors remained of its last, fateful operation.
They started digging into the rock within a cave mouth and discovered a gem seam that would have made them rich, but they were soon forced to abandon it. Every mine attracts rodents, in this case voles, but something in the air itself had twisted them into large monstrosities. Ponies called it 'Chaos Magic', a fanciful, old Ponish term for anything that wasn't understood and highly unpredictable... and this new land of theirs was rife with it, particularly in recent years.
"I count four! No, five! Sixty yards and closing fast!" Sunny called from down a natural cavern tunnel. A side chamber beside the seam, where those monstrosities made their den.
"For Celestia's sake!" Iris Glow screamed, hot anger in her voice charging the air with vicious intentions emanated maliciously from within the same natural passage. Made all the more noticeable as a flash of ethereal blue light scattered about the cave walls, followed immediately by an ear piercing blast and a rush of stale air and dust flooding out of the depths ... as the sound of crumbling rock signals another part of the cave system had collapsed in the magical explosion. Yet another tunnel passage the vile creatures won't be using to assail them.
With three more strikes Carrara's pick shattered off a massive seam edge of precious stone, roughly seventy-nine Equestrian carats worth when polished whole she guessed at. She immediately pinched the jagged mound of crystal in her forehooves, flicking her head about with the pick still in her maw to catch the magnetic latch on her rucksack and fling it open, tossing the gemstone within with her right hoof. She spat out the bit of her tool upon her left forehoof and twirled its rope fastener about her phalanx joint and the digital cushion of her heel to pinch it in place.
"Got the prize! Change of plans, we ain't staying any longer!" Carrara screamed out to her comrades as the terrible screeches reached an all too frightening volume and proximity.
Spinning about on her three spare hooves, she leapt forward over a ledge, and half-galloped towards the rope bridge in the distance. Briefly illuminated by her trace-worn lantern, a twisted mockery of Chaos Magic drew aim and fired. Swiftly she lowered her head and felt the missile fly through her mane, sparing her hide by the skin of her teeth. These beasts looked as if twisted, rat-like bipeds, with scabby tails, protruding teeth, and matted black fur. Some of them clutching cruel-looking composite bows, with strings of animal sinew bearing fire-hardened arrows set with flint shard heads in leathery quivers. Their glowing red eyes in the firefly light glistening like orbs of hate.
Rather than nocking another arrow, the beast seemed set to sprint towards her, likely to try to tear her apart with its incisors as its mouth drew open and revealed a mottled red and brown maw complete with a long, whipping tongue. She did not want to have to deal with this now, and as fate would have it ... nor would she have to. Sunny emerged and viciously planted a right forehoof blow across its temple as he flew at speed from the tunnel cavern leading into the cave mouth. The monster's limp body hitting the ground with a stunned look painting its confused features, all before it went tumbling with a screech into the black pit crossed only by an old rope and wood plank bridge.
Sunny espied for a moment the nature of his victory just to make sure it fell far from reach before setting eyes on Carrara to make sure she was okay. He was bedecked in the standard kit of one of Commander Hurricane’s soldiers in the Equestrian Expeditionary Force. That black and grey trimmed leather getup commanded a certain level of fear or respect on any other Pegasus, but on him it seemed like a child playing soldier when strapped to that violet coat and against that long blue mane and braided tail. He was laden with two saddlebags bearing his crest, and cutie mark, of three clustered lily flowers.
"We can't hold this place down!" He stated the obvious, but he wasn't saying it for either of their sake.
Those words of his was for the daffodil yellow-coated unicorn mare with the flowing mustard mane and lime green stripes, illuminated in electric blue flashes from the magical discharges of bolts she fired into the depths as she backpeddled up from the side cavern. A matching baleful blue flame cutie mark on her flank, dotted above by three differently-sized, four-pointed crimson stars. Those pale red eyes of hers bristled with inherent malevolence as her aim is true twice over.
"Cowardice!" Iris growled in regards to the suggestion of retreat, she soon smirked as she espied her designs of pain and injury as a pair of monsters crawled away from her in terror. Her stout horn still wearing a fading magic haze as she turned to her companions. "This mine could be ours, we can flush these beasts out of this cave ... and you want to surrender it to them!?" She protested in a weird ambivalence of battle fervor, naked greed and disillusionment, her left forehoof battle horseshoe stamped noisily into the rock floor in frustration.
"Their numbers are too great and this is their home ground! We got what was asked of us, so we take our spoils and live to fight another day!" Carrara barked and swept her pick armed left hoof over the cave mouth ravine and the old rope bridge. "If they manage to cut us off from this exit, by nightfall we're dead!"
Sunny nudged Iris softly, flying by her side and placing his right hoof on her shoulder blade as if to steady her emotions. She let loose a snort of disapproval as she relinquished from her thoughts the imagined gifts this cave may have bestowed upon them, and began to speed towards the rope bridge to traverse the chasm. Sunny sighed in relief before flying across the cavern, and Carrara took a moment to grab her pick with her mouth so that she may no longer be hobbled as she retreated in tow.
The 60' length of bridge was already ricketty, and Carrara initially did not wish to test two ponies on it at ones ... but to complicate matters, three giant vole monsters immediately beelined towards her. She either started cross now, or not at all, and with that even as Iris had yet to cross the far threshold of its expanse, she started barreling down its length. The voles did not follow, however ... in a display of intelligence she didn't think them capable of, they instead plunged their wicked teeth into its attached coils that kept it aloft.
She could hear the tension of the ropes slowly giving way as each coiled thread separated from the triple braid cotton fasteners, snapping like large harp strings. Miraculously she kept balance as she began to dart at reckless speed to safety, caution thrown to the wind with the occasional plank snapping underhoof. Iris dare not fire for sake of hitting what left of the footings and expediting her companion's fall as she finally crossed the the gap and sought new targets in vain.
As Carrara felt the strain on the last aged fibres of the bottom guiders about to give way, she leapt onto the steep incline of the rockface. Slamming into the hard, granite surface and grinding down its stony face as she struggled to find something, anything, to latch onto as her hooves bashed into its surface and tried to dig in. Her mouth wielded pick bounced across its pocked surface as she began to slide faster down its face.
The clatter of wood of the old rope bridge collapsing was deafening, its echo drowned out momentarily the the beastial, frenzied chitterings of their foes. With a resounding, dull clunk Carrara’s miner's pick gained purchase against the rock face at the edge of the precipice, and with a vicious jolt that on its own almost defeated her efforts not to fall, the slate blue-grey coated mare dangled over the cave pit. Her polished iron barding saving her fur from being grated on its rough edge. Teeth clenched for dear life around the bit of her tool that planted a sharp kiss into the pocked granite walls of the mouth into the abyssal depths.
“I know I packed just the thing, hold on for one moment!” Sunny cried, momentarily flitting over the edge and retreating back after espying her predicament.
Carrara's dark grey eyes snapped to Sunny Side, and his retreat, with furrowed irritation in her glare, wordless as her mouth was securely wrapped about her pick.
She spared an eye to the cave pit below her and the time-honed stalagmites and flowstones awaiting her flesh if she fell. Their deadly points irradiated in a dull emerald sheen bouncing off the calcite surface from the Everfree Firefly lantern she wore on her trace harnass, as if mineral teeth wrapped in shadowy gums of a more distant cave floor like some gigantic dragon's mouth. Ire grew to impatient growls through clenched teeth as his retreated form felt an eternity of absence as she dangled there, but in truth had been a mere 18 seconds. Fell thoughts of fear and impatience combined that was finally dispelled as a flicker of his muzzle flashed just above the edge, his teeth wrapped about a coiled rope ladder that he tossed down. It bounced and unravelled 4 inches from her face harmlessly, and with a precision of deployment she gave silent respect for. Secured in ways unseen, and thus left only with faith to test she pushed off the rockface in a daring skip with her hooves and released the steel pick from its temporary lodgings.
Wrapping a hoof and foreleg successfully about a rung, she flicked the improvised climbing tool still in her maw so that its rope fastener would slip over her short black mane upon her neck to fall upon her stout wither and clang against her tormented armour plating on her torso. ‘About time!’ she was going to scream, before she saw pale blue bolts of eldritch energy explode into the dark recesses of the tunnel they just exited before, when attempting the perilous rope bridge crossing.
"Incoming volley!" Iris screamed. Her long, sharp horn glowing an ethereal electric blue once more as she lined another shot. As in the distance, more rodent archers made their appearances. A sudden din of arrows flitting from tight bowstrings and dinging harmlessly against the rock shelf, and more returned fire from her horn as horrid squeals erupted in response.
“Hoof it!” The dangling Earth pony barked as both the Pegasus and unicorn then pulled and levitated the oak-rung rope ladder to assist in their compatriot’s exfiltration from the surly bonds of gravity over the pit. And under intensifying arrow fire, spared no time in galloping in the near pitch towards the ever blooming flower of seeping light that signposted the entrance of the cave… leaving behind the chittering Volekin archers of twisted dark magic designs to their impotent rage.
Just another week on the Equestrian Frontier...
After a thousand hoof falls and wing flaps, their gallop through the surrounding forest turned to a slow canter and then trot, and finally a full stop as they rounded a creek and took shelter against an overgrown willow threatening to turn a small chortling creek channel into a puddle-like pond with its roots. An unspoken repose that would have been awkward if not for the adrenaline transforming into audible soft pants of fatigue. A quiet welcome of their growing safety as they felt that tingle of flowing blood cool in the veins. The tension fading into barely-restrained jubilation that needed no words as they looked at each other to see that they were, miraculously, unharmed.
As the bright glory of Celestia’s morning graces filtered through dangling branches of the occulting tree cover, the Earth pony checked her saddlebag rucksack. Retrieving their prize ‘requisitioned’ from a gemstone seam within the depths of that hellish place they almost called their tomb. The small melon-sized green and gold-flecked gemstone, damn near humming with magic as beams of morning light shot through it and burst into magical rainbows, their light dancing against her grey coat and battered armour as she held it up for them all to see.
About time they had a solid win…
She looked to her partners in plunder. All of them having caught their breath, stifled immediately as they saw the majestic gem in her hoof glimmer with arcane forces in its crystalline matrices when caressed by Celestia’s gifted light. A smile creeping across their faces. Despite being a slip of a pony compared to the stockier Carrara and the much taller, elegant form of Iris, the near-colt Sunny athletically zipped above and past the presented gem to Carrara's left flank with an alacrity that suggested speed and agility despite his saddlebags. His repositioning allowing himself to look at the sun through the gemstone itself and watch as the magical potential of the arcane bounty resonate and shimmer within, and cooed at the awe inspiring treasure.
“Three rounds of cider, my shout.” Carrara beamed as she gently tossed the gem up and down in her steady right hoof.
“You’re going soft, Marble…” Iris grinned. “What were you saying about unicorns only a few months ago?” She stared at the Earth pony at least 20 winters her elder, leaning closer and with her left fore hoof almost pushing her wickedly indented battle horseshoe into her armoured chest as if an accusatory jab. Using her menacing footwear, close proximity, and her five inches of superior height over the Earth pony to sinister effect as the words crawled from her maw with an edge of feigned danger. “As I recall, it wasn’t very flattering...” She said with a mockery of a threatening tone.
“You misjudge. I said now you lot are actually doing something for Equestria given that a pair of ponies has managed to take over your entire tribe’s responsibilities.” Carrara said with a biting, practiced lack of charm. “That’s somewhat of a compliment, Iris…” She emphasised with a smile that could only be described as ‘asking for trouble’, tilting her muzzle to the morning sun as if punctuate her point.
“Oh …? I don’t seem to recall you doing much more than picking out that lovely hunk of bits out of the cave wall... or should I say carrots or carrot juice?" Her tone low and maligning, before levelling her head to stare at Carrara dead in the eyes. "All before running like a scared foal...” She said with a slow drawl that oozed contempt. In the late autumn air, a soft plume of vapour escaping her maw to match that dragonesque bearing and posture.
“I'll have you know, Chancellor Puddinghead turned out to be ten times the leader than that King Bullion and that foal of his. It's just that the Chancellor's laws required ... 'creative solutions'. In comparison, how's that near destitute royal family of yours? Sudden depreciation of once rare stones is a curse, is it not?" Carrara chortled, weathering the insult against her Earth pony culture with a tribalist barb of her own.
Despite the barding’s imposition, with a dancer’s grace Carrara tossed the gem up and shuffles with a skip and elegant trot, and caught the mineral within her rucksack. Eyes never betraying the surety of her motions and where the precious stone would fall. A flick of her flank closing the flap as an audible *clink* of magnetized plates ensured the securing of the gem in the bag that covered her right flank. She relished in the visual metaphor of an Earth pony artfully sealing away a precious stone afore the unicorn's eyes, it was the cherry on the cake!
Even though Iris was behind her, she took pleasure in somehow imagining the sincere daggers of her companion’s eyes squared at the back of her neck. It was almost too easy riling Iris up … The victory for Carrara Marble was short lived, however. The now ever present soft flap of Sunny that had shadowed her for the last 5 of Luna’s cycles made itself known as it flittered down to her right side and all too eye level as to Carrara's capacity to ignore.
“We barely escaped with our lives … and you want to kill each other now? You know, you could have just left it at the gracious offer of the cider and bit your tongue.” A soft, yet somehow still chastising peep emanating from his throat. His words drew a roll of the eyes from Carrara and Iris, both. At least in this they shared an opinion. The Pegasus was nothing if not a picture of congeniality. Sunny was training his gaze on the growingly irritated Carrara attempted to train her focus in front of her, but it was impossible to ignore his gaze. Those light blue eyes boring into her as if demanding she respond. Naturally she relented … the winged slip of a pony had a way of dispelling animosity.
“Iris, I’m so--…” Carrara bit her tongue, maybe there was a better way to frame it that didn’t play into Iris’ critique. “You know what, Sunny? – You’re right. We did good back there. Why spoil the moment?” As she turned to Iris, happy with the warm tone and approach that needn’t include a real apology. “Offer still stands…” She provided an uncharacteristically soft smile. Stopping her stride to allow Iris to catch up at her own pace as they journeyed back towards the path that would lead them north and then east back to the Crystal Empire.
To her surprise Iris didn’t stop, merely passed both the Pegasus and Earth pony by. The way she brushed them off, head held so damn high, a vague yet audible huff of disregard emitting from her throat. This cut deep to the darkest parts of Carrara’s psyche, but before she could summon a scathing retort Iris spoke. Clear as crystal, dispelling the angst and anger both Carrara and Sunny felt in spades.
“Make it four, and I’ll forget it ever happened…” Her words as if a soft shower to cool hot tempers, enough that the journey back to the Great Yakyakistan Trail was almost pleasant.