//------------------------------// // 5 - Hole in the Wall // Story: The Needle // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// The good news about the weird compass was that such a clear proof that they weren’t doing this for nothing provided motivation for everyone. They all went a little bit faster, pushed through the snow a little bit more easily, held their heads a little bit higher. And it was hard to deny the morale upswing, especially compared to before the wolf attack. It wasn’t much, but they all talked slightly more often and their words lacked any cynical bite. The bad news about the weird compass was that their compass wasn’t working. If they hadn’t been following the eastern edge of the valley, Daring wasn’t sure she’d know which direction they were going. And if the valley walls curved too shallowly, they could wind up walking south without knowing they were doing that. Hopefully, their cartographer was good at that sort of thing. “How good’s your sense of direction?” Daring asked Windrose. “Pretty good. We’re still heading north, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Windrose replied. “Maybe… I dunno, ten or twelve degrees to the west. We only started curving in the past fifteen, twenty minutes.” “Good, good,” Daring muttered, half to herself. “Tell me when our heading’s mostly west, okay?” “Will do.” And so they walked on, Daring paying extra attention to how the mountains to the right were behaving. It was hard to say what “straight” was in these conditions, but she managed. At first, it wasn’t much. Then she turned a little as the mountains seemed to hem them in. Then a little more, then a little more, then a little more- Windrose tapped her on the shoulder, saying, “About halfway between north and west.” “Thanks,” said Daring. She raised her voice and said to the rest of the team, “You’re probably noticed, but our path’s changing direction. We’re almost at the end of Needle Vale.” “Gotcha,” said Stalwart. Rangifera just nodded. Fallende didn’t even seem to be listening and was staring off into the distance. Daring rolled her eyes and kept walking. The rapid crunching of snow told her someone had picked up their pace, then Fallende was right next to her, holding up a leg to stop her. Fallende still wasn’t paying any attention to Daring. She pointed into the blizzard. “Hold on, look,” she said. “Is… that a rabbit?” Daring squinted through the snow to where Fallende was pointing, and her keen pegasus eyes picked it out. A white rabbit, almost invisible, nosing casually through the snow, looking for something to eat. In spite of the lack of obvious food sources, it didn’t look thin. Amazing, what species could do to survive, even without ponies to help them along. “Definitely a rabbit,” said Daring. “And there’s probably more we don’t see. The wolves have to eat something, right?” “That’s the first animal we’ve seen out here, besides the wolves,” said Fallende quietly. “And here at the end of this weird place…” She raised an eyebrow at Daring. “Bit of a coincidence, ain’t it? If I were superstitious, I’d say that meant something.” Rangifera lightly shoved Fallende in the rear. “Good thing you’re not superstitious and definitely stopped us for something as incredibly important as seeing a rabbit, my sudden stop sign,” she said. “Can we please keep moving?” When they kept walking, Daring found herself watching the rabbit. It always seemed a good dozen or so yards ahead of them, give or take. It’d poke around in the snow, hop forward a ways, and repeat. She tried to tell herself it was just a rabbit. Just like the blizzard was just a blizzard. Just like the faulty compass was just a faulty compass. But it didn’t behave strangely at all for a while. Eventually, Windrose nudged Daring again. “I figured you’d want to know,” she said, “we’re heading due west, so this is as far back as-” The rabbit stood up straight, ears twitching, like it’d heard something. It looked in one direction. Then another. Then it bolted and scampered up into the mountains. “-the valley goes,” continued Windrose. She definitely wasn’t paying attention to the rabbit. “When do you want to start crisscrossing the valley? And what’re you looking at?” “The rabbit,” Daring said. She twitched and quickly looked at her compass. The needle was going nuts, jiggling around so fast she could barely follow it. Just a rabbit. Like this was just a compass. At the furthest end of Needle Vale. “Change of plan, team,” Daring said. She turned and followed where the rabbit had gone. “We’re going to follow that rabbit.” “We’ve- We’ve been following that rabbit ever since you saw it?” sputtered Stalwart. “I stopped bothering the second after I saw it! I- I thought we were-” “Less ‘following’ and more ‘it happened to be going the same way we were’,” said Fallende, who was right behind Daring. Somehow, it didn’t surprise Daring that she’d also been watching the rabbit. “And it just ran off.” “Good thing you’re not superstitious,” said Rangifera, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “and you’re certainly not putting our job-” “First,” Fallende yelled over her shoulder, “I’m not, she is.” She pointed at Daring. “Second, you were the one who kept saying it didn’t matter what Daring did as long as you got paid. You still believe that?” Rangifera glared at Fallende. Fallende glared at Rangifera. “Take a look.” Daring tossed her compass over to Rangifera. “Worse than before. Right where that rabbit turned away. I’d bet my life that means something in here.” After a second of examination, Rangifera passed the compass back to Daring. “Fine. Worse than before, right where that rabbit turned away. Yeah, maybe that means something in here. But what if those two are just coincidence, my maybe-misguided manager?” Daring looked over her shoulder to lock eyes with Rangifera. “If we don’t find anything in five minutes, we’ll turn around.” They found the cave one minute later. The rabbit’s tracks were still visible, if only barely, more as vague imprints than tracks. They ran right up to the cliff face and into the opening there. It wasn’t large, maybe five feet tall and just barely wide enough for the reindeer to slip through if they turned their heads in the right way to get their antlers in. The wind blowing past it howled extra-loudly, a massive version of the echo produced by blowing over an empty bottle. The cleft was like a wound on the cliff face, narrow and yawning and black. And Daring couldn’t possibly ignore it. Rangifera sounded less angry when she said, “See, now, a coincidental cave right where you turn off? That’s something, my lucky leader, not a random rabbit.” “The rabbit led us here,” said Daring, looking into the cave. “What makes you think it was random?” It was hard to see anything; the cave was too dark. She held up a light gem to illuminate the inside. Still nothing. “Anyway, all those in favor of exploring the cave-” “Only,” interrupted Stalwart, “if we keep sidetracking to a minimum. I’m sure I don’t have to go into detail about how easy it is to get lost in caves, what with their passages, and we don’t even know how big it is-” “You’re right,” snapped Fallende. “You don’t.” “How about this,” said Daring. She didn’t look away from the cave. “We turn back after we reach the first branch or going in fifteen minutes, whichever comes first.” The team agreed. Daring took a deep breath and entered the cave, her wings brushing rock on either side. It was like a tunnel, a little bit longer than she’d suspected, but nothing too bad. As Daring slid through the cleft, she felt odd. Overly still, somehow. It took her a moment to realize that she was feeling nothing; the winds had completely ceased, the cleft too narrow to let them get in. Even Stalwart’s bars didn’t block out the winds this much. After getting battered by the blizzard for over a day, it was a nice feeling. She popped out of the cleft like a cork from a bottle and held the light gem up to get a better view of the cavern. Nothing unusual; a lot of rocks, some echoes from the wind outside, and a continuation of the passage on the other side of the “room”. Every surface was smooth-ish, with no stalagmites or stalactites. There was no sign of the rabbit. “Yeegh,” Windrose muttered as she pulled herself from the entrance. “I didn’t think feeling something on both sides could be so creepy.” Her shivers weren’t related to the cold. Daring didn’t look at her. “Claustrophobic?” “I guess.” Windrose lit up her own gem. “I never knew I was before.” “First time for everything,” Daring said with a shrug. “You don’t know you’re afraid of something until you meet it for the first time.” “I have a friend,” Stalwart said as she entered the room, “who’s afraid of heights — downright terrified of them — but she didn’t know that until she decided she wanted to go mountain climbing. Well, hiking up a mountain, anyway. She got near the top, and we had to walk along this narrow ridge, with like eighty-degree slopes on either side, and she suddenly couldn’t go any further. She was terrified, shaking all over, and refused to take another step. Shame; she was so close, and to find out she couldn’t reach the summit at the worst possible moment…” She shook her head and sighed. “Shame.” Soon, Rangifera and Fallende had managed to pull themselves into the cave and the room was brightly lit. There was no sound except for the echoes of the wind and their own breathing. It might’ve been Daring’s imagination, but it felt like the temperature was climbing, with everyone in such a tight space. “Nice place,” Fallende said. “Really got that ashen chic style going.” “It’d be remiss of us to not check it all out,” said Daring. “Keep close and don’t wander off.” She rattled her light gem and set off into the cave. The passage she followed was about the size of a hallway, nothing particularly large or small. Every now and then, she glanced at the floor. No sign of the rabbit’s tracks. Ah, well. The cave was cold, but thankfully, it was mostly level and not very slick. It didn’t turn much, either, with zero branches. Lucky them. In fact, the smoothness of the walls and floor almost made her think it’d been carved out of the rock itself. Nobody said much, though, and that meant that the main sound was their echoing footsteps, amplified tenfold by the cave. Even if they wanted to make conversation, it’d be hard to make out the words. The cave stretched on. Daring wondered how the others were doing. She could handle the cave, with its complete lack of natural light, just fine (she’d been in plenty of caves before, after all), but she didn’t know anything about them. They could’ve been peachy, they could’ve been terrified. She glanced back for a second. No one seemed all that upset, not even Windrose. Some types of claustrophobe were scared of any enclosed space, but it didn’t look like she was one of them. Daring turned ahead again just as the tunnel widened. A ways ahead, there was a white spot on the rock, indistinct in the bad light. At first, she paid it no mind. It wasn’t moving. Then the thing came into full view and Daring sucked in a breath in surprise. A reindeer skull, still with antlers, was hanging from a spur on the cave wall. Windrose hiccuped, but she was the only other one with an audible reaction. Rangifera and Stalwart looked at each other and shrugged, while Fallende became very still. Daring frowned and climbed up to the skull. It looked normal, any flesh long since eaten or rotted away. She wanted to touch it, but being an adventurous archaeologist in Equestria, she knew that there were certain things you didn’t touch without being careful, and this was definitely one of those things. “Stalwart? Can you probe this for magic? Just in case.” “Sure. Give me just a second…” Stalwart’s horn and the skull glowed alike for a second. Once the light had faded, Stalwart said, “Absolutely nothing. Perfectly normal, as far as I can tell.” “Hmm.” Daring delicately pulled the skull from the wall, careful not to crush it by accident. But it felt like the bone was still strong. A thin, uncarved protrusion was sticking from the cavern wall where the skull had been hung. She turned the skull over and over. Each surface was examined for some sort of clue, but there was nothing. “Hmm,” Daring said again. By all accounts, an ordinary skull. Nothing to even indicate how the deer had died. She stared into its eye sockets. What sort of reindeer had its owner been? Obviously an adventurer of some kind, but that covered a wide swath of personalities. Warrior? Trailblazer? Gatherer? Adrenaline junkie? “Did you know something?” she asked quietly. “Something about Needle Vale?” The skull didn’t respond. “You must’ve. Why else would you be here?” She shrugged, hung it back up, and dropped back down to the cave floor. “Unless someone else wants to take a look, let’s move on.” “Whoa, whoa, wait, what?” blurted Windrose. “I, I’m sorry, should we really keep going?” Daring tilted her head. “Why?” “…Dude. There’s a skull on the wall,” Windrose responded flatly. “That’s like ‘don’t go here’ warning sign number one.” “And that’s exactly why we’re going!” Daring said, flaring her wings. “Do you think they’d put a warning like that if there was nothing out there? And since no one else has said anything about it, that means we’ve gone farther into the Needle than anyone else before!” And after only two days, too! “Than anyone who’s come out. This?” Windrose jabbed repeatedly at the skull. “This is a sunblasted omen. How could it last out here for so long? Someone put this up. Recently, even.” “Windrose, come on!” Stalwart said cheerfully. “If tired clichés like this are the best somebody can do, they really need to step up their game! It’s not even bloody.” She tutted. “If you’re not going to be creative, the least you can do is-” “One single skull, we don’t need to worry about, my apprehensive ally,” said Rangifera. “There could just be a hermit living in there-” She nodded down the cave. “-trying to keep people away. It’s not like there are materials for ‘Keep Out’ signs.” Windrose stared at Rangifera, at Stalwart, at Daring, them repeated the cycle twice more. “You. All. Are. Crazy!” she yelled. “It’s-! There’s a-! I can’t believe-!” She groaned and hung her head. “Whatever,” she mumbled. “Let’s- Let’s just keep moving.” “Fine,” said Daring. “We’re going. Fallend-” She stopped and blinked. Fallende had retrieved the skull from the wall and was staring deeply at it. Her antlers were glowing as threads of magic twined around each other and twisted in and out of holes in the skull. She was muttering something, but Daring couldn’t make out what. But before anyone said a word, Fallende twitched. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I just wanted to take a closer look at it.” She quickly hung it back up on the wall. She looked everyone in the eye once. “Well, let’s move,” she said gruffly. She stepped around Daring and set off deeper into the cave. Daring looked at everyone else, shrugged, and trotted off. She caught up to Fallende in a few moments. “You looked pretty interested in that skull,” she said. “Any idea what could’ve killed that reindeer?” Fallende scoffed. “No clue. Who do you think I am? A forensic scientist? Aurora?” “…Who’s Aurora?” Daring asked. “…You know, Aurora,” Fallende said, tilting her head at Daring. “The- oldest Gift Giver?” “The oldest what?” “Uffh. Never mind.” Fallende shook her head, and Daring only barely caught a muttered, “Ponies.” Daring opened her mouth to say something, then froze. She stopped walking and lowered her hood. “Do you feel a breeze?” she asked Fallende. Fallende stopped walking. After a second of feeling the air, she raised her head up. “Coming from deeper inside the cave?” she asked. “Yeah.” Daring raised her head and sniffed. It certainly didn’t smell like the inside of a cave. It smelled like… a forest? Fallende nudged Daring and pointed. “Look at that,” she said. “Light.” And indeed there was; just beyond another jink in the tunnel, the cave wall was illuminated. “There must be another entrance.” She picked up her pace. Another entrance? Back into Needle Vale? Daring thought herself to have a good sense of direction, and they hadn’t gotten turned around that much in the cave, had they? …No, they hadn’t. But the light was still there. Not only that, Daring realized, but the light was steady, with nothing breaking it up. No blizzard. Maybe they hadn’t gotten turned around at all and instead burrowed straight through the mountains to come out north of Needle Vale. In unexplored territory. A prime spot the unexplained, the weird, the unknowable. Exactly what she was looking for. Daring couldn’t help grinning to herself as she ran after Fallende. She turned the corner, and sunlight blasted her eyes.