It was no light leavetaking we did that night, too much like in that little town of Twilight’s afore we went into the Everfree after Thorne. I held onto Evadare as if I’d nair see her again.
“John, you be careful now, you hear me?” she ended as she released me. “I don’t even want to be thinking what I’d do if you didn’t air come back, or these young ladies here.”
“We’ll watch out for him like a rooster watchin’ the dawn, Miz Evadare.” Applejack bespoke from behind me. “You’ll be seeing us again. Y’all can rely on that.”
“We Pinkie Pie promise it!”
What more was there to say after that? I pulled that stick of ash out of the cab and went over to where Fluttershy still leaned against the driver’s door holding Chief Manco inside.
“You heard them. But just in case we’re not back by dawn, you remember what we talked about back at the cabin?”
“Like Wolter Mountain.” I returned him and ran my fingers around the silver strings of my guitar. The music they made was quiet as Fluttershy, but it comforted me the least little bit. I spoke again to Chief Manco where he stood, and to Evadare and Twilight and the rest too. “I just hope we don’t run into airy other thing we saw on that night.”
“Like what?” Twilight turned big and curious eyes on me. I hesitated, wanting to find a way not to answer that question, but she said “Nightmare Moon has the power to bring fears to life, and if she can restore the Shonokin’s Nightmares, she can restore other things as well.”
“Ah agree with Twi, John,” Applejack nodded. “Afore we get goin’, might as well know what we might end up seein’.” The rest said their yes to that.
I looked at Chief Manco, and he just nodded too.
“They ought to know, Brother John, what they might end up facing. The people and other – things – we faced on Wolter Mountain, and that might be here, came from my people’s legends about the ansigina, the monsters and devils and goblins that threatened the Tsalagi.” His voice grew deeper as he spoke, like he told a sermon. “Things like the Raven Mockers that fly the night sky and thirst for the blood and flesh of sickly mortals; Tlanusi’yi the giant leech, that washed men down into his waters to drink their blood. Spearfinger the Hag who no weapon could harm, and Dakwa, the water monster that lured foolish people into the deepest and most dangerous waters. The old giants John’s people call Bigfoot and the hairy devils that lurked in caves and killed the unwary. Yuh.” He nodded, solemn as a preacher in church. “I am a medicine worker of my people, and I have to know how to drive off all of them.”
“Okay,” Twilight said. I saw her gulp.” How?”
“Many things,” Chief Manco responded her. “The sacred songs. The sacred tobacco. Silver. The good clean cedar.”
“Chief,” I bespoke him, “I want you to be getting yourself and Evadare out of here and back to Sky Notch. Nair mind the cabin; that’s the first place they’d go a-looking for you all.”
“I know the rest, Brother John,” the Chief nodded. “I make some phone calls. Judge Pursuviant, Thunstone in New York, those two young men who have done some studying under you…”
“Hal Stryker.” I stooped and made sure of the laces on my boots. “Lee Cobbett and his wife. Jackson Warren if you can find him, maybe one-two others. You’ll most likely be a-needing all the help you can be finding. I reckon I’ll be a-leaving it to you to figure on just what-all you should be saying. You’d know better than me.”
“I’m afraid I do. I may not be able to do much right now, but let me give you whatever blessings I can. I suspect you’ll be needing all the ones you can get.” He seemed to sniff the air, looked into the forest behind me.
“I smell some cedar. Good medicine for men, bad medicine for ansigina. If you and Evadare could bring me some of the needles? And you, Miss Fluttershy?” He looked at Fluttershy still holding the door shut, and his eyes twinkled. “Will you let me open the door?”
Evadare and I gathered two double handfuls of cedar and returned to the truck. The Chief sat in the open driver’s door turned to face outwards, wearing my spare shirt.
“Come, gather round, all of you. It won’t be much, but this will help.”
We all did what Chief Manco said. He took the handful of cedar needles and crushed them between his fingers. They smelled sharp and clear and took some of the nasty musty odor of that forest out of our noses. He sang a brief song in Cherokee. I’d heard it aforetimes from him, but when I asked what the words were he only said he couldn’t tell me. As he did he took the crushed needles and rubbed them against my face and on my hands. Then I stepped back and the ponies stepped up like one of those communion lines in a fancy big-city church, and he rubbed it along their faces and necks. I saw how Applejack and Rainbow Dash winced the least bit when the juice from those needles got into their cuts from afore. I remembered me how it stung me the one time afore Wolter Mountain.
“There,” he said, looking grave. “Those were some of the strongest prayers I know.”
“And I have some more,” I responded. I put one arm around Evadare and the other around Twilight. The rest of the ponies pressed up, craning their necks around each other like horses do. Fluttershy and Twilight put their wings around us; so did Rainbow Dash with her one good wing. Then I spoke another prayer or charm from The Long Lost Friend, with Evadare following me.
“We, John, Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Pinkie, go on a journey tonight. We walk upon God’s way, and walk where God Himself walks. I pray that no wolf bite us, no beast tear us, and no murderers secretly approach us…”
Then I added “Beneath Thy guardianship we are safe against all tempests and all enemies,” then the three Holy Names you mustn’t write down or it’ll nair work for you again. Pinkie Pie repeated the three Names like she’d known it all her life.
Chief Manco looked up at the stars twinkling through the trees. “I think that every good power my people know is looking down on you all now, giving whatever blessings they possess. Your God too, John. May they be enough.”
“I imagine they will,” I responded. “They’re as much as most folks ever have.”
“You come back safe, John,” Evadare bespoke. “You too, Twilight. You and your friends bring John and your own selves back safe.”
“We will,” Twilight responded her. “With Princess Luna, and John, and with everything safe. I give you and everypony else my word as the Element of Magic and a Princess of Equestria.”
“Please be careful, Miss Twilight,” Chief Manco said. “I’d hate to have to be the one to explain to your Celestia what became of her dearest student and her sister.”
Well, there wasn’t much to say after that, so into those woods we went.
# # #
Twilight’s ears twitched at the sound of Mister Manco’s wagon starting up behind her, then the sound of its engine faded into the distance. She looked back to see its headlamps, then its red tail-lanterns disappear into the forest
This was the second time in less than a day she found herself under the pine trees that surrounded Chorazin. She originally thought that this trip would go easier than the first. After all, this time they knew what to expect.
She realized differently within moments. The trees seemed to press around them as they passed under them. A bare thin patch of naked dirt underhoof made enough of a trail to pass along. It felt vaguely disturbing to her that it was all bare earth, packed down from however many years of passage by humans and other beings.
Applejack went in the lead with a wing-bandaged Rainbow Dash, the pegasus grumbling over having to walk. Rarity behind them both, then came John, and then her; and after her Fluttershy gingerly trotted. Last in line came Pinkie Pie, bouncing along. Not as high as she usually did, but at least Pinkie was as optimistic as ever.
As they walked Twilight kept her eyes open on the forest around her, ears pivoting for any sound that might be Shonokin. The trees seemed to be walls at the edge of her eyesight, rising straight and tall like the palings of a fence. It also seemed unusually bright under them, even given the exceptionally bright moon in that cloudless sky. But not a healthy light, more a sort of pale glow like the foxfire in swamps back home. She glanced back the way they'd come. Even though it'd only been a few minutes since setting out, the trail behind them looked to fade into the trees like they'd been marching for days.
“Be awful easy to get lost in here.” Twilight whispered. Something told her she didn't want to draw attention in here, not this night of all nights.
“It rightly is,” John answered her. She noticed how he kept notice of everything around them without especially trying to. “Air few years, rangers and police and other folks have to go tramping the hills and hollers to find some gone gump who thought they didn't need a map to find their way in these mountains. We find them afore anything can happen. Usually.”
Those words didn't reassure Twilight very much. She looked down at the first again and felt relief to see something normal. Little split hoofprints, the marks of a deer.
“See, Fluttershy?” She pointed her horn at the tracks as they walked. “They have deer here too, just like back home. Maybe we'll see some.”
“Don't remind me,” Dash grumped from in front. “I remember the time they attacked Ponyville with trees.”
Twilight noticed how Fluttershy eyed the tracks as they walked along. She gave a little shiver.
“Um, Twilight, I'm sorry to say this, but those aren't deer prints. They're from something that walked on two legs.” She pointed at one as they passed it. It and the rest were sunk almost five lines into the dirt beneath. “And deer aren't that heavy.”
Twilight wondered what had split hooves in this world and walked on two feet, then gulped as she remembered something Sunset Shimmer once showed her in the supposedly real magic books of the Canterlot High world, illustrations from ones titled Lemegeton and the Dictionnaire Infernale. She also felt quite sure that she didn't want to see what had made those tracks.
Even as that thought crossed her mind, she heard something moving in the brush under the trees, just far enough away not to be seen. Whatever it was, it was heavy. She heard the brush breaking and snapping as it moved through them, not around.
“What was that?” Rarity spoke up in front of John. Twilight saw her ears pin back, and she scraped one forehoof against the ground, but she kept going.
“I'm not rightly sure,” John answered, his voice low and wary. Twilight noticed how he took a firm grip on his ash stick. “Let's be right careful now.”
“The trees are thinnin' out a little ahead,” Applejack called back. “Looks like a clearing.” She might have said more, but the sounds of something large pushing its way through the shrubbery came again, louder this time. Now it was joined with a hungry slobbery grunt, and then a growl.
Six mares and one human stepped out into the small clearing, and as they did, the source of those growls and grunts entered it from the other end about a score of feet away.
Twilight had seen bigger beasts, but few more frightening than the one before her, when her magic was so weakened. It looked at first like a piece of the shadows all around them came to life, the size of Mister Manco's powered wagon as it shambled out into the moonlight. Then as that pale light picked out the thick shaggy coat of hair, played over a snuffling nose and small mean eyes and the hump of muscle behind the shoulders, as it grunted and rose on its hind legs, Twilight realized what she was seeing.
It was a bear, bigger than Fluttershy's friend Harry from back home, but equipped with the same kind of claws and fangs and muscles. But the eyes, the eyes were terrible. She didn't expect to see the reason of a pony or human in them, but neither did she think to see a sort of hungry hate behind them. Twilight backed up until her rump stopped at a tree trunk behind her. She risked a glance. No chance to run that way. She'd have to force her way through, and what slowed her wouldn't even stop this giant. Or she could fly, but what about Dash and John and everyone else?
“Ladies, you listen,” John was saying as he hefted the ash club. It looked like a schoolteacher's switch against that monstrous bear. The animal dropped back down, watching them intently. John said, “I'll a-try keeping his attention with this, and when I do, you all run around him and --”
More he never said. The bear gave a roar that made the air shudder and charged.
And Fluttershy darted out before it.
“NOW YOU HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, MISTER!”
The bear stopped, stood up on its hind legs and grunted. Fluttershy just glared fiercely into its eyes, her vision unswerving. The beast bellowed and shuffled a step forward, another. It waved one paw in the air before the pegasus. Twilight gulped at the sight of those claws. They looked like a blockful of butcher knives.
She began lighting her horn, wishing that she could gather enough magic here to simply teleport the animal away. Beside her she saw Applejack getting her lasso ready, and Rarity hefting a heavy branch with her magic.
“Okay, everypony,” Applejack whispered. “When that their bear charges again, we're gonna pull 'Shy out and...”
Fluttershy's tail lashed once, sharply. Twilight felt more than saw her friends freeze. She heard John shifting beside her, but relaxed when he did nothing else. He must have realized that if they weren't moving, he should stand still too.
The bear roared again, its cry filling the clearing. Five ponies and one human all tensed. Fluttershy just reached out and firmly rapped the massive ursine on his nosepad.
“Look at me!” The bear grunted, trying to turn away. Fluttershy snapped at it like a mare calling her foals to heel. “I said! Look! At! Me!”
Twilight held her breath as the bear grunted, made one or two more paw swipes that fell short, and then just sat down, watching Fluttershy.
“Please listen, Mister Bear,” Fluttershy sounded more like her usual self now. “I know we're strange to you, but I know there's nowhere near here where you could have a den, so we're not a threat. You know that, don't you?” The bear almost seemed to nod,but hesitantly. Like Fluttershy's influence struggled against another laid on it. Fluttershy stepped off to one side, going further along the trail while keeping well clear of the bear. “Now, you just go back to your nice warm den and we'll leave you alone. Alright?”
The bear snuffled, shook itself, and turned to shamble off into the woods. The heavy brush around the clearing parted before it like a curtain, and the animal was gone. A fading crashing noise came back to them and no more sounds from the bear.
Twilight felt herself start breathing again.
“Thank you, Fluttershy,” she said. Twilight trotted over to nuzzle her friend as Fluttershy dropped back to the earth. “If I had my magic here I would have used it to teleport him away, and – wait,” Twilight looked at her friend in confusion. “How did you get him to leave? Or use The Stare? I thought animals here weren't, well, smart like they are back home?”
“He wasn't,” Fluttershy said, soft as a breeze through grass. “That's why I spoke so harshly to him, to make sure he paid attention. The animals of John's world make me feel – unsettled. Their eyes are, are empty. Oh, Mister John, I'm so sorry.”
“Nair thing you have to be sorry for, Miss Fluttershy,” John answered her. He relaxed, working his fingers where he held the ash club. “It's only the truth, though some beasts have more sense than some folks.”
“Ah know some ponies that ain't got the sense o' some critters,” Applejack walked up beside Twilight and Fluttershy. “Like us right now. Shouldn't we get goin' before something else happens along?”
Twilight felt her cheeks redden. “Oh! Uh, yes, that would be wisest. Heh.” She waited for John and the rest to get back in their line and start walking down the trail. As they did she made sure to stay back by Fluttershy. “So how did you do it?” She asked quietly as Pinkie Pie hopped along in front of them. “Our magic is limited here.”
“I don't know. I guess I just, well, just reacted.” Fluttershy just blinked at her. “But you remember how it felt around Mister John's cabin? How the air felt so lifeless compared to back home?” As Twilight nodded, wondering what her friend was getting at, Fluttershy said, “Just try and feel it here, Twilight. Isn't it more like Equestria, or at least the Everfree?”
Twilight opened her alicorn senses and winced.
“Ow!”
Immediately everypony and one turned to look at her.
“Twilight? You a-feeling right back there?”
“Ugh! Yeah, I'm – fine.” Twilight looked at Rarity and Rainbow Dash and all the rest. “Girls? Have you tried comparing how the background flux feels now in comparison to the one around John's home?” All of them, even Rarity, just looked at her wide-eyed. Twilight facehoofed. “Sorry. I mean, doesn't this forest feel a lot more like Equestria than it did before?”
“Huh! Maybe.” Applejack trotted over to a nearby pine, one almost as thick through the middle as she was tall, planted her forehooves and gave it a mighty buck. The tree shivered and showed a pair of hoofmarks. “Well, now that's better!” She folded one foreleg over the other and stood proudly.
Past her Twilight saw Rarity furrow her brow in concentration. Half a dozen pine cones flew up into the air and were put through the paces of what Twilight recognized as an elegant court dance. Fluttershy spread her wings, lifted half a length off the ground for a moment before falling back. A few paces away Pinkie closed her eyes, and, tongue-tip hanging from the side of her muzzle, gave a mighty leap. She vanished, and a moment later Twilight felt a hoof in her mane. She looked up and saw a smiling Pinkie Pie standing on one forehoof there.
“Great for you guys.” Dash tried to move her wings and winced. “I'm still stuck here!”
“I could help you fly, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy trotted over to her friend and held out a hoof.
“Thanks, but better not, Flutts,” Dash shuddered. “I'd be too much of a basket flier.” She must have noticed John's confusion at her words, for she said, “Er, ya know, sometimes pegasi take other ponies up in chariots or baskets and they try and tell us how ta fly.”
“Back seat driver,” John nodded. “I'm rightly glad you ladies have your magic back, but how?”
“I'm not sure,” Twilight 'tugged' lightly at her Element. It responded, bringing a flare of light to her horn, but she felt no different. “It's not our Elements.”
“It's Queen Meany and her new friends, silly! Well, they're not friends, really, but they're both after us.”
“What?” Twilight felt some relief that everypony else stared at Pinkie Pie in just as much confusion as she felt. “Pinkie? What do you mean?”
“Well, it's gotta be her. Duh.” Pinkie just rolled her eyes. “Black Snooty wants to make everything be eternal night again, right? And she has Princess Luna with her too? And the Show-whatevers want to use her to make all of John and Evadare and Mister Manco's friends and families go away forever so they can have everything they said is supposed to be theirs again without having to share it with anypony.”
“Well, yes,” Twilight said, wondering where this was all going.
“And you,” Pinkie hopped over and bopped Twilight's nose with her hoof, “said that Nightmare Loon can't work Equestrian magic here, like we couldn't. So she's gonna cheat.” She finished as though that explained everything.
“I think I rightly know what she means,” John said, sweeping his hand out to take in the woods. “You said this place was a-starting to feel like the Everfree back home for you all, right? Remember how it got to looking when Thorn changed it with the Letters of Cold Fire?”
“She's using Luna,” Twilight said, her eyes widening as she finally figured it out. “Nightmare Moon is trying to make John's world more like Equestria, so she can use all her magic here.”
“Except no Princesses to stop her,” Rarity looked worried. “And nopony of John's people would believe what was happening until it was too late.”
“Well, that ain't gonna happen.” Rainbow Dash reared upright and boxed with her forehooves before she went to John and said directly to him, “'Cause we're gonna help John and save Luna and make those guys that hurt my wing sorry they ever even heard of Equestria!” She held her hoof out. “That's a promise.”
“I knew you'd all be doing that,” John took her hoof and shook it. “But it feels pure down good to hear it.”
“We will,” Twilight said as they restarted their trip to Nightmare Moon's lair in the Shonokin Town, all the while wondering just how they would.
As well as what would happen to both their worlds if they failed.