//------------------------------// // Tracking the Prey // Story: AtDD II: Cross Dimension Road Trip // by StrawberryGamer //------------------------------// I stood before the entrance to the Everfree Forest. Honestly, it was kinda disappointing. I’ve been in plenty of forests, and this one seems no different, if a bit darker. Looking up, the canopy was a lot thicker than I’d expect from trees this size. I’ve seen forests with much bigger trees have thinner canopies. Then again, they were pine trees, so why should I be surprised? Before coming here, I’d tried to look for my friends. Just to alleviate my worries. It was for naught though. I found them in the library, having a party with James and the others. Could’ve just been a Welcome to Ponyville party from Pinkie, but fuckit, I’m gonna be a pessimist today. So after that, I came here. If a human was gonna hide out away from ponies, it had to be here. Weaver wouldn’t want it any other way. Besides, it was the safest and most dangerous place to be anyway. Sure, there were plenty of things that could kill you here, but nature was rarely that vicious if you were a prepared survivalist. At least, I think. I’m not one, so I wouldn’t know. The human had to be in this forest somewhere. I just had to find her. Easy right? Pfft, yeah. Not really. Entering the forest, I set on down the main path. This path I was pretty sure led to the old castle, and by now seemed so well tread predators should avoid it. Of course, no way the human would be anywhere near this path, but I didn’t need to go running blind through the forest. The forest itself was rather peaceful. It was quiet, with only the distant sounds of small wildlife and my own hoofsteps keeping me company. The plan was to travel a decent distance, then take to the air and try to find signs of, well, anything. Admittedly, it was a weak plan, but I had nothing better. After about… I think half an hour, I stopped to rest briefly. My legs were starting to wear out. Considering everything I’ve been through, I’m surprised I hadn’t gotten tired sooner. As I sat there on the path, the sound of hoofsteps caught my attention. That was surprising. I wasn’t expecting to run across anyone while I was out here. Was someone following me? No, wait, the hoofsteps are coming from in front of me. Someone was heading towards Ponyville. No, multiple someones. There were more than one set of hoofsteps. As the ponies in question approached, I saw they were the Cutie Mark Crusaders. What the fuck were they doing here? Apple Bloom noticed me first and walked right up to me. “Hey Miss, you alright? Lost or something?” I stood up and shook my head. “I’m just going on a walk through nature. Maybe try and find that old castle. I only stopped here because I’ve had a rough week, and it’s finally caught up to my legs.” Scootaloo and Sweetie looked at each other nervously while Apple Bloom tried to cover for… something. “Oh, you don’t want to go there. It’s all old and dusty, and there’s nothing to see anyway.” Oh? Well, I actually wasn’t going to go, but methinks something be there anyway. “Any how would you know that unless you’ve been there?” “We weren’t there,” Scootaloo blurted out, “we were on our way back from Zecora’s.” “I didn’t say that you’ve been there, I implied that you had to have been there to know that it wasn’t worth visiting,” I shot back. “Oh.” Scootaloo received a slap on the back of the head from Sweetie for that outburst. “Ow, hey!” Apple Bloom cleared her throat to get attention. “Anyway, we could help you get there. We know the way, and it’s easy to get lost in the Everfree.” I raised an eyebrow suspiciously. She was being too negotiative. Too smart. Yet, also too obvious. Something was clearly up, and I was willing to bet they’d either lead me in circles until I gave up or they’d lead me right there, but run on in ahead to hide whatever it was they were hiding. Or whoever. “Thanks, but no thanks. I can find it myself. You three better run home before I catch flak from your folks for keeping you in here.” The fillies all looked at each other before a rustling from behind me made them scream suddenly. “AHHH! A MANTICORE!” I flinched and folded back my ears to protect my sensitive hearing from their verbal attack, before turning back to the source of the rustling. There was no manticore. The bushes rustled again, and rabbit hopped out. It took a look at me and hopped away. I just stood there, dumbfounded by the sheer wat. Then it hit me. “Those pricks! They ran back to the castle, didn’t they?” Hoofprints on the trail confirmed my suspicion that they ran further into the forest. Great, now I had to find them before they actually found a real manticore. Or they’d probably just be at the castle. I hoped for the latter. I still can’t fight. Still, why go through so much trouble to keep me from the castle? Well, it wasn’t that much. They just tried to convince me not to go, then distracted me with the oldest trick in the book while they booked it in the other direction. “Fine, I’ll play your game. Don’t expect me to give up easily though. I’ve got a lot riding on this.” With newfound resolve, I continued my trek into the forest, eager and curious to find out just what those fillies were hiding. Before long, I came across my first roadblock. And a classic one at that. There was a fork in the path, and I had no idea which way to go. “Well… Shit.” I had two options: either go left or right. Neither way looked promising, but I needed to track down those fillies to find the castle. Track down… That’s it! If I could find their hoofprints, I could track them that way. Looking at the two paths, one was clearly more disturbed than the other. Is that due to hooves or something else? Looking at the right path, I could make out hoofprints as well as… a drag mark? What would they need to drag like this? The mark was about three inches wide and seemed to start at the edge of the path, where… odd, there was a hold there. Wait… Odd hole? Drag mark? Did they really...? Following the drag mark to its end, there was a wooden signpost lying in the bushes, the sign clearly reading “Castle” on it. “So they pulled the second oldest trick in the book, but instead of swapping the sign around, they just removed it entirely. Clever.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “This may fool any random pony, but I can’t be stopped by just meager tricks.” The sign was not double-sided, and it was pointing right. So the right path was correct. More hoofprints on the path confirmed it. “These kids really don’t want me finding the castle. What’s next, breaking the rope bridge?” … “I can’t believe they broke the rope bridge…” I mumbled incredulously as I looked upon the ravine that separated me from the old castle. The rope bridge was lying on the side of the ravine, just like it was in the series premiere. Maybe they didn’t notice, or forgot, or whatever, but I have wings. I won’t fault them for trying though. They tried damn hard to keep me away. But I won, so ha. A casual flyover brought me to the front door of the castle. I tried to be as quiet as I could, but I’m going to assume they noticed me anyway, or at least have one more trick up their furry sleeves. A quick look up showed that the sun was starting to go down. I probably still had a couple hours of light left. Hopefully I could make it back by then. I’d rather camp near Ponyville than in the middle of the forest. I slowly opened the front door, peeking in just a bit. The old and crumbling hall of the castle was certainly occupied recently. A firepit sat in the middle of the floor, very recently and half-assedly extinguished. Some of the logs in the firepit were still lit, too. The ground around it was wet, suggesting a bucket of water had been dumped rather inaccurately on it. Dousing a campfire and just abandoning it? Kinda careless… If it wasn’t for the stone floor and walls surrounding the campfire, I’d call that a pretty bad fire hazard. I stepped into the castle hall and gave the campfire a closer look. There wasn’t anything I could use to put the fire out, and I wasn’t keen to stomp it out. A quick glance up at the nonexistent ceiling showed no clouds in the sky either, so that was out. I guess I’ll just have to leave it. I turned away from the campfire and inspected the rest of the hall, looking for any other sign of habitation. Something that did stand out to me was the floor. Most of it was covered in a thin layer of dust and dirt. I would expect such an old structure to have a much thicker layer of dirt covering the floor. Maybe someone came by and did a little cleaning, I dunno. But near the firepit, there were drag marks in the dirt, leading towards one of the corridors before stopping. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but it felt like an ambush. Like, I would go in there and those fillies would pound me with a peanut butter-filled water balloon or something stupid like that. Odd paranoia aside, I was already out here. There was no point in not looking around, especially since this room had no ceiling and there were some very gray clouds rolling in. It even smelled like rain was imminent. So like any normal person, which I was not, I decided to seek the safety of a ceiling. That meant following the non-trail into the corridor. But of course, I’m an idiot, and I also decided to alert the peanut butter-wielding enemy to my presence. “Hey, anybody home?” Now, in my defense, I wasn’t expecting an actual answer. I certainly wasn’t expecting a big-ass rat to jump at my face from the shadows. So if anyone heard a girly shriek, that totally wasn’t me. Luckily at least one of my hooves was paying attention and punched (read: swatted pitifully) the rat away from my face while did a tactical retreat back towards the main hall. As I caught my breath, my ear flicked at the sound of retreating hooves. Those pricks threw that rat at me, didn’t they? And I bet it was fake too. Dammit, I’ve been smeckledorfed. Those girls will do anything to keep me away. Fine, time to play dirty. I have no idea if I can use these new light powers like this, but nothing ventured… Feeling the warmth inside me, I closed my eyes and tried to focus it outwards, slowly. I’d rather not accidentally explode. Channeling the energy was the tricky part, but I’ve done this a few times already. Okay weird solar magic, give me a beam of light. No explosive solarbeam this time, just a simple light beam. I opened my eyes and released the energy, and I could see the beam travel from me to the far end of the corridor, lighting it up for about a second before dissipating. I could barely hear the yelps of the fillies echo from the other side. “Heh, that got their attention.” Grinning, I went back into the corridor, pausing briefly to kick the discarded fake rat. It wasn’t so dark in here I couldn’t see, but it wasn’t bright enough for me to see clearly. The visor was pretty good at utilizing the light that was there though, and was a big help. Of course, then it started getting darker as I rounded a corner, soon turning pitch black. “Damn, how does someone navigate this place?” Remembering what the others said about my cutie mark, I tried focusing the inner warmth outward again, this time just to see if I could get a glow going. True enough, my wings and butt both started giving off a nice yellow glow, letting me get a sense of my surroundings once more. I had entered a small room, where it looked like someone ripped a teenager’s bedroom out of their house and just planted it in the middle of an abandoned castle. There was a bed, dresser, bookshelf, television, desk, safe, and a few other things. Everything had a starry night sort of theme to it, and the thought of that made me miss my other friends who were once again left behind. Looking around the room, I stopped at the bookshelf which was fully stocked with all sorts of books. Books on guns and hunting, some non-fiction books of a variety of subjects, some fiction books, a high school yearbook, and even some Equestrian books on cooking, magic, and creatures. Even an atlas for both Earth and Equestria. “Wow, this is almost as many books as I have.” I mused. “Comes in handy when you’re stuck in a world that wants you dead.” Came a girl’s voice from behind. I turned around. Then I looked up. The human from the poster was standing right in front of me, crossbow in her hands and pointed right at my face. Instinctively, I backed up, right against the bookshelf. She grinned at my reaction. “Dunno how you made it this far pony, but you’ve seen too much. Do it.” I was so focused on the weapon in front of me, I couldn’t react properly to what she said, and something struck me in the back of my head. “Ow, dammit! That… hurt…” I suddenly felt very dizzy, and the glow faded from my body as my world spun. I think I fell over, but I couldn’t be sure since everything was so fuzzy. “Sorry dear, I had to.” A vaguely familiar voice said, and I noticed an orange-ish blur come into view. “Should we restrain her for now?” The blur came closer, both of them, and I felt them lift me up before I finally lost consciousness.