//------------------------------// // Part V - Chapter 3: Whispers In The Trees // Story: Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky // by PortalJumper //------------------------------// Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky Part V - Chapter 3: Whispers In The Trees * * * The slight trickling of the water beneath Fluttershy's small dock was just the soothing balm she needed after the harrowing conversation she had had with Setting Sun, on top of the general chaos of the last few hours. Just herself, a fishing pole, and the anticipation of Scale-Tooth's dinner when she saw the bobber go under the waterline. In truth, though, her mind was whirling with thoughts; she'd told Sun to rest for a while, to let the patch set in and finish its work, but it was a tiny white lie just to give herself some space alone to think. She'd even shooed the animals away so that their chatter wouldn't distract her. "I can't let him leave," she thought to herself as she clenched her jaw. "Even if he could handle what's out there, I can't have his death on my conscience. He's just one pony, and nopony ever comes back from the Misty Vale." A tug on the line drew Fluttershy's attention, and with a mighty yank she hoisted the hook upward. A quick, intense struggle ensued as she fought with whatever was on the other end of the line, only to succeed with a splash of murky water as a catfish about the length of her own torso flew out of the swamp and landed on the dock with a wet thud. As if on cue, a low hiss rumbled out of Scale-Tooth from the other side of her hut, followed by a quick scrambling of claws and scales on wood and the crocodile scurried to his dinner. "Oh, you poor thing, you must be so hungry," Fluttershy cooed as she quickly kicked Scale-Tooth his dinner. The crocodile messily devoured the still writhing fish, biting down onto it with blood-squelching force before swallowing it back with a series of quick gulps. Scale-Tooth uttered a low, contented hiss as his big, yellow eyes focused onto Fluttershy. "Well, you are very welcome," Fluttershy replied. Another hiss, followed by a few growls and clattering of the jaw were Scale-Tooth's reply, followed by a slap of the tail towards the hut. "Him? He'll be fine, and could probably be fit to leave in an hour or so," Fluttershy answered, her gaze going back towards the hut and the problem that rested inside of it. Scale-Tooth waddled towards Fluttershy, knocking against her shin to try and get her to move towards the hut. A higher pitched hiss reverberated from his throat, followed by a quick stamp with one of his forelimbs. "I can't let him leave yet, the healing isn't finished yet." If a crocodile could sound incredulous, Scale-Tooth certainly was as he continued nudging Fluttershy towards the hut. "I know the moss doesn't take this long to work normally, but he was hurt really badly, and it needs more time," Fluttershy retorted to her increasingly irritating friend as she gently knocked his maw away. Fluttershy felt a knot of worry building up in her gut as she kept having to make excuses to Scale-Tooth, only to be knocked out of her own feelings by a quick, sharp, thwack from a thick, meaty tail against the backs of her hind legs. "Hey, no slaps!" Fluttershy reprimanded. Scale-Tooth replied with a sharp clattering of his jaws and a long, low hiss that was loud enough to practically be a roar, followed by a series of short, staccato croaks. "There's nothing going on, Scale-Tooth, and I would appreciate it if you didn't butt into my business! Now go back to your den and think about what you did." With a final, held back hiss, Scale-Tooth started to waddle away, claws clacking against the rough boards and tail swishing back and forth. Fluttershy tried her best to maintain a stern front, but Scale-Tooth always had a way of getting to her. He was brash, abrupt, and most of all honest with his feelings, and right now Fluttershy felt like she was being everything he wasn't. "Wait, come back," Fluttershy relented as her stoic facade crumbled away. Scale-Tooth stopped, slowly turning in place and keeping his intense gaze on Fluttershy the whole way. A high, inquisitive croak left the deep recesses of his throat. "I… I need an opinion on something," Fluttershy said as she sat down on the deck. Scale-Tooth replied with another inquisitive croak, this one slightly lower. He finished waddling back over to Fluttershy, who laid a hoof across the ridges of his scaled head and started to stroke him for comfort. "Yes, it's about the stranger," Fluttershy replied. "He told me some cockamamie story about how he came here, and a place called Equestria that I've never even heard of, and apparently the old Queen of the Vale has something to do with all of it. He wants to go into the Misty Vale, and he won't take no for an answer, and I just don't know what to do about any of this!" Fluttershy flopped her head down on top of Scale-Tooth's; the cold ridges of his scales combined with the low, ambient rumble of his breathing had always been a calming sensation for nights when her anxieties would get the better of her, and now was just such a night. "Ponies are so complicated, much more so than animals and plants," Fluttershy ruefully stated. "I don't want him to get himself killed on something I know will get him killed, but I don't want to just keep him trapped here either." Scale-Tooth let a low grumble build in his throat without opening his mouth, making a long, intricate series of vibrations rattle through his head and up into Fluttershy's jawbone. Her teeth shook gently from the vibrations, just one of the many ways that Scale-Tooth would try to comfort her. This time, though, his advice was more confrontational, catching Fluttershy off-guard. "Go with him?!" Fluttershy retorted, lifting her head to stare down at the crocodile's yellow eyes. "Are you crazy?!" A soft, but firm hiss echoed out of Scale-Tooth's throat, followed with a series of heavy slaps from his front limbs against the rough wooden deck and a clattering of his teeth together. "Scale-Tooth, even if I wanted him to go, why would you want me to go with him? He might have a death wish, but I have all of you to take care of here! What would happen to the possums and bats and bugs and fish and frogs and you if I abandon you all here?" Fluttershy swore that Scale-Tooth rolled an eye at her before slapping down a foreleg on the deck and shuffling his torso back and forth rhythmically. "I know that you can take care of yourselves, bu—" Fluttershy found herself cut off by a loud roar from Scale-Tooth, one that made her skitter back reflexively as the crocodile settle back down. His gleaming yellow eyes were locked to Fluttershy's own before slowly rolling towards the hut. He let out one last low growl before turning around and waddling back to his den. As she watched the crocodile sashay away, Fluttershy found herself in a worse state of mind than she had been before. She was still overcome with worry for the unicorn whose life she had just saved but now it was mixing with the guilt that Scale-Tooth had just lain in her for something that she knew he was right about. "Ponies are complicated," Fluttershy muttered to herself, before standing up and walking back to the hut. She had a decision to make. * * * Sun tried to busy himself with whatever he could inside of Fluttershy's hut, examining a few jars with some pungent smelling fluids and pastes inside of them, while every so often being reminded of his ongoing healing process by the odd spurt of blood from his side or low, pulsating sensation as the plaster on his side continued to seep into him. "If she'd let me I'd love to pick her brain over some of these things," Sun said to himself as he took a whiff from one of the jars, "but maybe that'd be improper since I'm both her guest and something of a prisoner." Sun, to his credit, had done what he could to try and convince Fluttershy of the truth that he had become oh-so-painfully aware of over the last few months, but his words had fallen in deaf ears; most of his time had been spent just trying to explain the basic underlying concepts of everything outside of her little bubble of existence, and by the time he was starting to get into the tale proper she said she needed to go feed her crocodile, whatever that was. "Silence, I could really use some help right about now," Sun thought with all of the mental might he could muster. "A hint, a clue, a spell to convince Fluttershy to let me go, anything would be preferable to sitting here with my horn in one hoof and nothing in the other." The low level pulsing in Sun's head hadn't abated, still thrumming away like an ache he couldn't get rid of. It didn't hurt in the strictest sense, but it's constant presence was wearing heavily on his patience. Only when it sharply intensified did he feel something akin to pain, but it was more like the sensation that pain should be happening but wasn't, which to him was the worse of the two feelings. "Setting Sun, a moment of your time, if I may?" asked a voice, one that didn't belong to Silence. It was deeper, more sensuous in tone, and layered like multiple voices speaking in perfect unison, but carried with it a grandiosity that was unmistakeable. "Who are you? Are you Chrysalis?" Sun asked, gritting his teeth as the pulsing intensified in his head. "An astute observation, indeed. To answer your question, I am indeed the Chrysalis, the Changeling Queen, Keeper of Fate's Heart, the Dreamwalker, and a dozen other titles and sobriquets that I have been referred to over the ages," the voice replied. "The pony that saved your life would know me better, perhaps, as the Witch of the Misty Vale or the Mother of Shifters, alongside other less delicate names." "Then what do you want?! Where is Silence?! And what the hell are you doing to my head?!" Sun asked as quickly as the words could form in his head. He felt like his skull was about to crack open, and at this point he'd welcome the relief of death compared to whatever this pain was. "The one you named Silence has returned to her home in the Heart of Fate, and she is at peace within it. Your pain is merely a side-effect of Twilight Sparkle's predations upon your kind, and an unfortunate one at that. And as for what I want, I simply want an end to the line of alicorn rulers. We will speak more on this when we meet in flesh, so I will spare you any more pain by communicating in this method. Just know that I am watching you. Always watching you." With the final word, the pain in Sun's head abated as quickly as it had come on, leaving behind only a dull ache and soft pulse in the back of his head. He could feel sweat dripping off of his forehead and back as he let out a massive gasp, all of the tension bundled up in his wiry frame releasing in one massive burst. Sun lay flat on the floor, gasping for breath and trying to make any sort of sense of what had just happened to him. A thousand thoughts all swirled through his mind, particularly about what could have happened to Silence to sever their connection, but every time he thought of one question, the line of his thoughts always came back to one stone cold fact; he had to get out of here, and he had to do it soon. He slowly got up off the floor after a few minutes, taking a moment to get his wobbly legs underneath him. Using a small spark of magic he lifted his gear from where Fluttershy had stashed it in her hut; thankfully nothing inside had been too terribly damaged by the water in the swamp, as he hadn't brought any books and all of the food he brought was fairly easy to clean off. As Sun tottered towards the door it opened with a quick creak, giving both Sun and Fluttershy a start as they found themselves nearly nose-to-nose. "Sun, what're you doi—" Sun didn't stop, instead gently shoving past her and illuminating his horn as he walked towards the small steps that led off of her dock and into the swamp. The lines of teal shone up out of the water as he sloshed his way back into it, only to be swiftly stopped by a sharp tug on his cloak. Turning back Sun saw a beast that looked like one of the lizards from back home, only it was easily over ten feet long, far more flat, much more heavily scaled, and had a wide, triangular head with a massive mouth full of sharp teeth, a few of which were holding his cloak as Fluttershy looked on from the door with a worried expression. "Fluttershy, you're not going to stop me from leaving," Sun stated. "You should know, if you believe any part of what I told you, that I have dealt with a lot worse than an overgrown lizard." "I know that you have," Fluttershy replied, "or at least you believe that you have, but I'm not trying to stop you. I'm coming with you." "What?" "I'm coming with you," Fluttershy reiterated, a slight tremble edging into her voice. "You don't know where you're going or what you're getting into, and I've been living here long enough that I can get you where you need to go. I know the plants and animals too, so I can help you avoid any of the really dangerous things out there." Before Sun could answer she turned on her heel and went back inside, leaving Sun with the massive lizard that still refused to let go of his cloak. It stared at him with big, beady, yellow eyes, and suddenly the sweat running off of his forehead wasn't just from his conversation with Chrysalis. "Don't suppose you know what suddenly gave her a spine," Sun asked the lizard. It only let out a low, staccato series of growls that Sun could feel vibrate through his cloak and into his neck. A few minutes later Fluttershy came back out; she had an array of pouches and bags strapped all over her body, and had taken the time to tie her very long mane and tail back into a much more manageable length. She turned to the lizard creature, making an odd, deep hissing sound that seemingly prompted it to let go of Sun's cloak. With a sure step she sidled past Sun, taking the lead. "Better get moving now, time's wasting," Fluttershy stated as she sloshed forward. Despite being blindsided by the last ten minutes and with so many more questions in his head than he had answers for, Sun hurried to catch up with Fluttershy. * * * The day's trek, or possibly night's, was made in more or less abject Silence, save for Fluttershy giving the odd direction or admonishment against touching a specific plant or approaching a specific creature. Sun was also starting to lose track of time, as he so far hadn't been able to see the sun in the sky and the entire swamp was bathed in a perpetual night that made time management nearly impossible. The only thing he could use for mental stimulation was swatting at the bugs in the air and waiting for Fluttershy to say that they were going to be stopping. "Have you always lived out here?" Sun asked, trying for the third time to try and engage his guide in conversation. "Doesn't seem like the sort of place to raise a family, although I'm probably not one to talk." "No, my family lives in a small village just in the edge of the swamp, about three days walk north west," Fluttershy answered. She motioned for him to move out of the water and into a small outcropping of stable land. "Then why'd you come out here? It can't have been for your health, if the local wildlife is any indication," Sun said as he sat down and rested his aching hooves. "It was a personal choice," Fluttershy answered tersely as she too sat down and started rooting through her pack. "I like the wildlife more than I do civilization." "Do you ever miss your folks?" "You ask a lot of questions, don't you?" Fluttershy snapped back, before putting a hoof to her mouth with a guilty look. She tried to get a hasty apology out before Sun raised a hoof. "No, no, I get it," Sun said. "I won't pry. I get that you probably don't want to be out here any more than I do, so I'll just drop it. Is there anything you want to ask me?" Fluttershy slowly lowered her hoof, looking down with a pensive expression. Sun took the time to slide his bags off and unroll his bedroll in preparation for something akin to sleep, not that he expected to get much of it in this humid, bug-infested pit. "Has your magic always been that color?" Sun perked up as Fluttershy asked the question; he'd made some omissions to what he told Fluttershy, mostly excising everything relating to Starlit and Silence since the former wasn't really pertinent to what he was doing and the latter might not have the best connotations given Fluttershy's mistrust of the Misty Vale, but now he didn't have a choice. "So, I might have made some omissions in what I told you about how I got here," Sun said nervously as he turned to face his guide. "Like?" Fluttershy replied, her voice edging more towards fear than anger. "So, a few weeks ago when me and my former companion started this whole quest, I had green magic, and it was about as weak as any other unicorn you've probably met." "I've met plenty of unicorns, and none of them were what I would call weak," Fluttershy interjected. "What do you mean? Do you not have the Wasting here?" Sun asked, train of thought now thoroughly redirected. "What's that?" "The Wasting! That awful disease that strips ponies of their strength, robs pegasi of their wings and unicorns of their magic, and eventually devolves them into bloodthirsty monsters that only want to kill anything that isn't them? Do you seriously not know what that is, it's omnipresent back in Equestria." "That sounds horrific!" Fluttershy replied, horrified but sounding far more confused than terrified. "No, I've never heard of anything like that in my life!" "Can you fly?" Sun asked, his brain going into full experimentation mode as he tried to reconcile what he was being told. "Not super well, but yes," Fluttershy answered as she flipped her wings open. With a strong pump she came up into a short hover off of the ground, flapping her wings strongly enough to hold her entire body aloft with seemingly no issue. "Can you do more?!" Sun demanded. "Can you glide, or ascend?" "What does this have to do with your magic?" Fluttershy asked. "That's what this was about at first, remember?" "If you can actually fly unaided and unimpeded, then that might give us both an answer to that question! Please, can you just humor me here." With a few more solid pumps of her wigs, Fluttershy started to soar around the swamp, deftly moving in between the trees and gliding down from their boughs with graceful arcs and swoops. Sun's heart started to race in his chest as the pulsing in the back of head began to speed up in time, an idea fomenting in his head. "Was that good enough? That kind of took it out of me," Fluttershy asked as she alighted back down on the ground. "That was fantastic!" Sun exclaimed, a smile as broad as he'd ever made plastered on his face. "The only time I've seen flying anywhere near that good came from a pegasus in the far north that had magic crystals embedded in her wings, and you did that with nothing but your wings!" "But what about you, and this disease?" Fluttershy asked, a nervous smile crossing her face. "How does all of this connect." "Back in Equestria, there is no ambient magic anywhere. The lights in the water here are magical, your flying is magical, but we don't have anything like this in Equestria. According to the legends and from what I've seen, magic went away from Equestria when the Princesses all left, but if there's natural magic here then they aren't the source of all magic!" "Natural magic is like my healing, right?" Fluttershy asked. "My mosses and plants and my ability to speak to the animals, you don't have things like that in Equestria?" "You can talk to animals?" Sun asked back, a quick shot of confusion ripping through his euphoria. "Yeah, didn't you hear me talking Scale-Tooth?" "I heard you hiss at the lizard and then it let me go, if that's what you're saying." "Huh, I've never heard it described like that," Fluttershy said, bringing a hoof to her chin. "I just always knew what they were saying when they talked to me, but I guess speaking back would sound odd to an outside observer." "Either way, that just confirms it more and more!" Sun interjected, holding his head in his hooves as he came to grips with everything he was unraveling. "Before i came here my magic used to be green, and then I was contacted by a… pony, I'm going to say, that has some connections to this place, and when she and I were connected together I could draw from her power to fuel my magic. I get it now!" "What do you mean contacted? Who was it?" "Best way I can describe it is like having another consciousness in my head," Sun explained. "I took to calling her Silence, and she told me to come find her in the Glowing Wastes, which is what I'm pretty sure you call the Misty Vale, and this must be what she was trying to show me. There are places where magic never went away, and if places like this exist then there has to be a reason why Equestria lost its natural magic." "And you think the answer is in the Misty Vale," Fluttershy finished. "That seems a little far fetched, don't you think?" "Oh, completely! This is all just conjecture, but it all makes sense when looking at everything that I've been through over the last month and everything that I know now. The answer to saving Equestria is here, it has to be!" "And that means having to deal with the Queen of the Vale," Fluttershy said, bringing Sun back down from the cloud he was riding on with a solid reminder of whose domain he was about to wander into. "Right, it does," Sun replied. "I don't really know what to expect when we meet her, but she's been in touch with me through the same method that Silence used." "What?!" Fluttershy yelped. "Do you know how dangerous she is, and you just let her into your head?!" "To be fair, I didn't really have a choice in the matter, Chrysalis just kind of strolled on through," Sun explained. "But yes, she did speak with me briefly, and she's expecting me in some fashion." Fluttershy was about to reply before being cut off by a horrific buzzing noise, one that Sun recognized almost immediately. Leaping to his hooves and illuminating his horn as bright as he could, he saw a trio of Shifters, or Changelings as he knew them, hovering overhead, slobber dripping from their fanged maws and mandibles as they eyed up their prey. "Are you sure she doesn't want you as a corpse?!" Fluttershy asked as she backed up behind Sun, who couldn't rule out the possibility of his terrified guide being correct. * * *