//------------------------------// // Broken Forest // Story: Clear Skies // by Amber Spark //------------------------------// I took a long swig from my canteen as I lay against one of the thick sugar pines that seemed to make up half of this forest, all while staring at the Waystone again. Minuette guzzled some water of her own, then brought out a pair of granola bars. She tossed one to me, and immediately began devouring hers. I couldn’t help but notice that the magical blue arrow continued to point due-west. I checked it again with the compass and pressed my lips into a line.  “What’s wrong?” Minuette asked, her ears cocked slightly. Her granola bar already gone, she pulled out an apple and started to munch away. “Let’s assume, for the moment, that the Cloudshark is real,” I said slowly, trying not to get her hopes up. It was probably a fool’s errand, but I had to at least try to stay grounded in reality. One of us had to, at least. “First of all, Canter Basin is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the entire Equestrian Northwest. The idea that a cargo pod filled with treasure could be just left here unnoticed for six hundred years seems impossible. Second, I have trouble believing that a wayfinding spell, even one used on a Waystone, could possibly stay active for this long. And third… if this was actually real… why did Even Keel give it to you?” Minuette shrugged. “He said that it was time for it to move onto different hooves. I didn’t really understand what he meant, but a treasure hunt sounded fun, so why not? Why would I question somepony just being nice?” “No.” I shook my head. “There’s something else going on here and I’m missing it. The Cloudshark, the Valiant Sunrise, Admiral Fairweather, Even Keel, that griffon on the orb… there’s a piece missing and it’s driving me crazy. Keel claimed that he was already rich enough when I pressed him. Well, I did my research on him when I was looking for a shipwright for the Blossom. The stallion’s loaded, so that checks out.” “What?” Minuette giggled. “You think he already got all of the treasure and that’s how he’s rich?” I shook my head again, my mane flapping in the cold wind. “No, he built his shipwright empire from his family’s wealth. He comes from ‘old money,’ the kind of money that’s been in a family for generations. His whole line’s been one long list of shipbuilders, designers, and innovators. It’s one of the reasons why I picked him, not just for his unique take on airships.” “So… what does that have to do with anything?” Minuette asked, cocking her head. “You’ve… sorta lost me, Moony.” “I’m sorta lost myself,” I admitted, despite myself. “I wonder where he got the Waystone in the first place. And I don’t really believe his story about him being ‘too rich.’ I mean, he’s no old-school griffon, but he could still use those bits to better grow his business, leave to his grandfoals, something. It just doesn’t make sense.” “And the idea that he’s just a nice old stallion who loves what he does and decided to do us a favor never crossed your mind?” Minuette sounded vaguely disappointed and I squirmed against the tree.  I breathed in the scent of pine and underbrush, staring up at the tall canopy and the sunlight streaming through the needles.  “It did cross my mind,” I admitted as I stuck the wrapper for my granola bar into a saddlebag. “But it’s still nagging at me. There’s something we’re not seeing.” “Well,” Minuette announced as she climbed to her hooves, signaling the end of our fifteen-minute rest. “I think you’re right.” “I am?” I asked as I stood up and cinched my bags again. I adjusted my glasses and used my magic to brush my bangs out of my face. “Yup!” Minuette beamed at me. “You’re not seeing ancient treasure in front of you because you’re spending too much time in your own head!” I rolled my eyes at her. “That was terrible.” “Was not.” “Was so.” “Was not.” “Was—you know what? No, I’m not doing this with you.” She stuck out her tongue at me and lifted the Waystone in her magic. The blue arrow pulsed in the same westerly direction it had for the last hour and a half. She nodded in satisfaction, then trotted through the trees, her boots barely making a sound on the pine-covered forest floor. I smiled and followed, taking one more gulp from my canteen before stowing it. The trip down from the little cliff had been relatively easy. After a certain point, the slope leading up to Crater Basin Lake tapered off into nothing worse than a shallow decline. There were still the occasional broken tree, boulder, or rock in the area though. In fact, there were enough rocks in the area that I guessed some sort of landslide had happened within the last few hundred years. This entire area was supposedly volcanic, so it could have happened in an earthquake. The geological records of the Basin were a little spotty because of how lightly populated this area was. I knew a few things about the region from my studies, but nothing really specific on why we’d randomly come across boulders the size of houses in the middle of the forest. For all I knew, maybe some geyser had gone off four hundred years ago and blown rocks all over this side of the mountain.  In fact, hiking through the forest was sort of like traveling back in time. As we continued on for another hour, we found more boulders, broken trees, small ledges showing dozens of striations, and more. We continued to let the Waystone guide us—even if I knew it was silly—and the arrow continued to blink steadily. I had to admit that if this was a fake, it was the greatest fake I’d ever seen. “Moony?” “Hm?”  I’d been staring at the Waystone, walking on autopilot for probably a good ten minutes now. My eyes lifted up to Minuette’s. Her eyes were wide as he pointed in front of her. I looked up… and sucked in a breath.  There, in front of us, lay about three dozen shattered and broken pines. Some of them had been thick as Minuette and I put together. New trees had grown up in the area, but they seemed almost like a backdrop compared to the sight of this sudden and random act of destruction. I stepped up to the closest broken pine. The thing had to have a trunk at least ten feet in circumference. It rose about eight feet in the air before it simply… wasn’t there anymore. There were a few jagged remains of what had been the rest of the trunk scattered at the roots of the newer trees.  “What happened?” Minuette asked as she studied the trees.  Thinking briefly, I focused on the area with my horn, trying to capture all the broken trees in the local area. There were more than I expected and by the time my pink magic had washed over the area, I was panting slightly. Then, I reconjured the magical snapshot I had just taken between the two of us at about a tenth of the scale. A few seconds told me everything I needed to know. Apparently, it did the same for Minuette. “Something landed here,” she breathed. “Something big…” “It came in at a slight angle,” I muttered, studying several of the taller broken trees. “As if…” As one, our eyes slid to the Waystone. I adjusted the map and Minuette adjusted the Waystone.  The direction of the landing fit perfectly. “It bounced,” I whispered. “Something came crashing down from the sky and literally bounced.” That’s exactly what Minuette was doing now, bouncing up and down in excitement. “Does that mean…?” Geometry didn’t lie. Granted, this was six-hundred-year-old geometry, but the angles were still the same. The right angle, the right surface, the right amount of trees… it was possible. I pointed with a hoof toward the other side of the broken trees. Minuette took off like a shot. I yelped in surprise, but quickly gave chase. We had to be within a few hundred yards of the broken forest we’d spotted from the air. We probably hadn’t gotten close enough to see this little spot… Minuette galloped between trees and over shrubs with an almost unnatural grace. I had a hard time keeping up. A sedentary life was not one that made one’s legs strong and quick. I didn’t know how being a clockmaker did it, but I wasn’t going to ask those kinds of questions. I was too busy panting and trying to keep up. Then, of course, I crashed right into her when she came to a sharp and sudden stop. We went down in a sprawling heap, one of our saddlebags bursting open and sending supplies rolling around the copse. The Waystone itself rolled out of Minuette’s magic, stopping just shy of a large boulder that had landed in the middle of the forest.  The arrow pointed directly at the boulder. It flashed on and off rapidly, humming faintly. We disentangled ourselves. I managed to get to my hooves first. It was a testament to how in shock we were that neither of us were awkward about it. I helped her up and we looked around.  Where the small spot of broken trees behind us had maybe numbered in the dozens, this one numbered in the hundreds. Scattered branches and pieces of wood lay strewn everywhere. I’m sure the boulder hadn’t helped, because that looked like it had come flying out of the sky too, rolling to a stop on the edge of the shattered forest. As before, there were plenty of new trees, but something had actually prevented the broken trees from decaying into mulch. They still had lichen on them and were surrounded by shrubs, but they were still intact. Just like the ones in the ‘bouncing crash site.’ But there was something else. Something else that bothered me.  I stepped forward and picked up a large chunk of wood that didn’t look quite right to me, as Minuette went for the Waystone. Ignoring everything else, I used my magic to briefly clean the piece of wood of dirt and gravel. I turned it over and over in my magic, only to finally see what I hadn’t realized I’d seen.  The piece of wood had three narrow metal bands around the center. They were so corroded that they blended in with the dark browns of the wood itself. But when my magic washed over them, faint patterns could be seen in the metal. I lifted it closer to study and saw… something impossible. “Eanar?” I muttered to myself. “Why would an overgrown splinter be bound with a rune of endurance?” There was a brilliant flash of yellow light. I whirled to see Minuette tumbling backward, only to stare at the grizzled old griffon we’d seen in the recording a few days ago, floating above the Waystone. He didn’t seem to be under attack this time, though I couldn’t see any of his surroundings. His left arm was in a sling and there were cuts and bruises upon his face, but he was smiling. “Ain’t the way I thought things’d happen, but that’s the way of the gusts of fate, I reckon,” the gnarled griffon said. “Ain’t no chance for me to recover what we lost now. Best chance is to get young Arrow Star back to his mum. Givin’ him this here trinket and told him the secrets. Silver Tides ain’t dumb enough to try to get back into Equestria and the Cap’n… Cap’n never had a nation that didn’t want his head. Reckon’ that’s why Fairweather likes him so much.” The griffon let out a low chuckling cough as I stepped closer, still cradling the piece of wood.  “If yer seeing this, ya found the starboard pod. Good on ya. Hopefully Arrow, ya’ll have found this when yer big and strong, like your uncle Garth. Remember, just ‘cause I’m a griffon, don’t mean I ain’t yer uncle! You’re here because Commander Garth saved yer feathers. Now, use what ya find here to build yerself a nice life.” The griffon—Garth, apparently—laughed a wheezing laugh that turned into another cough, then leaned forward with a grin on his gnarled beak.  “Find some cute mare and settle down. Ya never were one fer this life. The days of the Cloudshark are over and I don’t want my favorite little featherbrain to try and relive ‘em! Yer meant fer greater things than that, little Arrow. Ya still got the rest to find, though ain’t no shame in skipping the last. Remember, ya can’t enjoy the spoils if yer dead. Somethin’ the Cap’n taught me. Taught us all. We may have been pirates, but it doesn’t mean we ain’t good in our own way. Say hello to your mum for me. And thump that big brother of yers! Three more, Little Arrow, then you settle down. Three more…” Commander Garth sat back against some sort of large chair as he smiled. “Three more and we can all finally rest.” The gnarled old griffon relaxed, laughed, and faded away. Once again, both of us were struck dumb by the sudden appearance of our ghostly guide. I started to wonder. Maybe… maybe there was something to this after all. Maybe it was worth taking a little more seriously. I mean, what better place? My eyes drifted from the Waystone to the boulder. I snatched up the Waystone in my magic, but the blue arrow continued to point at the boulder, even as I moved around.  Still, I couldn’t help but look beyond the boulder. There were shattered trees everywhere, not to mention shards of broken wood. The floor of the forest was practically littered with the pieces. I shifted through the debris and found several other pieces of wood bound in metal with the same runes.  All while I was scouring the area, Minuette was inspecting the ground near the boulder. Suddenly, she yelped in surprise and I trotted back to see her bouncing up and down in glee. “I found it!” she squealed, holding something aloft in her magic. “It’s real! I told you!” As I approached, she practically threw what turned out to be a mostly-intact plank at me. I caught it in my magic as she ran up to meet me. With her bouncing beside me, I turned the age-darkened wood over. With a brush of my magic, I cleaned the dirt off the surface, just to be sure. But even I couldn’t deny the name etched into a metal plate set into the wood.  “Cloudshark,” I whispered to myself. “I don’t believe it. But… that can’t be! There’s nothing here!” Minuette’s eye drifted to the Waystone and the arrow still pointing at the large, lichen-covered boulder.  “What about there?” she asked, pointing at the boulder.  “That’s just a location marker,” I muttered, still staring at what had to be a piece of the outer hull of the famed airship. “It’s pointing in this general direction. It’s common…” I trailed off, but before I could say a thing, Minuette asked the big question. “Wait, didn’t Garth say that the Waystone was attuned to the cargo, not a specific place?”  My eyes met hers for a moment and my heart skipped a beat. I placed the Waystone on the ground carefully, then turned to face the boulder. The boulder was three times my height and roughly spherical. The top and northern sides of the boulder were awash with bright green lichen, complete with… “Flowers?” I gaped as I stared at the pretty pink and purple dagger-shaped flowers. “What the heck did…” I looked down at my hooves and saw yet another piece of what had to have been the starboard cargo pod. Enchanted with steel bands and runic symbols to strengthen the endurance of the ship. That’s why the broken trees hadn’t been taken over by the forest. That’s why there were flowers on top of this rock. The magic from the runes was still active and leaking all over.  “Uh, Moony?” “Sorry!” I squeaked, shaking my head out of magical sciences mode. “You okay?” “I’m fine, just… distracted. Okay. Let’s… let’s try this.” I planted my hooves on the earth, lit my horn, and tried to wrap the entire boulder in my magic. That quickly proved to be useless, since it took so much energy out of me just to keep the spell going. So, I adjusted it to instead act as a cup. That was doable, but still hard. I didn’t have the raw magical strength as… well, her. That didn’t stop me from trying. My horn lit into two layers of overglow as I tried desperately to lift the boulder. It scraped the dirt as I tried to pull it from the earth, but I couldn’t get any serious height. At least until Minuette threw her magic into mine. It was a weird sensation and one I hadn’t felt in years. I glanced at her and she grinned at me—of course. I rolled my eyes, but still smiled back. And with her helping, we managed to raise the boulder almost three feet off the ground, well enough to float it into a small area of prickly shrubs. As we did, I watched the Waystone. The arrow stayed pointing at where the boulder had been. With a gasp, we both let the boulder go into its new home, with only a few crushed twigs to show for it. Minuette immediately raced forward again. I couldn’t help myself; so did I. Less than ten seconds later, we both stood at the spot where the boulder had been.  However, to both of our surprise, there was nothing but slightly damp earth in the shape of the underside of the rock. “Aww…” she muttered, slumping down. “Nothing?” I moved the Waystone back and forth again, but sure enough, it kept pointing to the same spot. Wanting to be absolutely certain this time, I floated out the two bands of metal detection. I offered one to Minuette and slipped the other one on my right forehoof.  The moment I waved my hoof over the center of the spot, I felt a buzz through my entire body. I sucked in a breath, unwilling to let myself even consider what that implied. “Minuette, give me the shovel.” She did as I asked and I quickly snapped the camping shovel together. With a grunt, I slammed the shovel into the tightly packed dirt. It took some effort, but I managed to pry out a small clod of dirt. It took a good five minutes of work until I finally started to make some real headway. Then, the shovel made a thunk when it hit something hard. “Another rock?” Minuette asked, her voice more curious than disappointed.  But my heart was hammering in my chest. “That’s… not the noise a shovel makes when it hits rock.” I threw the shovel to the side and went to my next best tool, pulling away the dirt with flares of pink magic. Less than a minute later, I felt it. As the gravel and soil came away, a medium-sized box was revealed, roughly the size of a duffel bag. It was made of rough, solid wood that had hardened to something like teak from age. There were holes and scratches, but the surface was remarkably intact.  But on the top of it was the marred and stained golden crest of Diamond Crown Company.  The company who had owned the train the Cloudshark had supposedly robbed.  “Is that…?” I didn’t answer Minuette. Instead, I just dug harder and faster until I found the padlock. It was surprisingly simple, though oddly it hadn’t enjoyed the protection created by the runes of endurance. It was rusted almost all the way through. Without a second thought, I snatched the shovel and swung it down to crack it across the lock.  The padlock shattered like it had been made of glass. “It’s real…” she whispered before I yanked the whole thing out of the hole and set it down on the ground beside us.  My heart continued to hammer. This couldn’t be real… could it? My entire body buzzing with a dozen emotions, I slowly lifted the lid and my breath caught.  The sun glinted off dozens of large metallic crystal-like objects. Each of them had a slightly different shade. Some were silver, some gold, some pearlescent… and more. All of them had craggy contours, as if they were something in-between raw ore and crystal formations. “It’s real,” Minuette squeaked from beside me. “It’s freaking real?” I shouted as I stared at the crystals. “And… I thought it was going to be gold or something…” “That’s definitely not gold…” Minuette’s voice vibrated somehow, as if she were trying to contain a volcanic eruption. “It’s…” I breathed as I sat down before the chest. I delicately reached out a hoof and touched one of the crystals. They were all slightly warm, the warmth of the sun on a comfortable summer day. “Minuette, this… this is Celestial Iron… how can this be Celestial Iron?” “No, that can’t be,” Minuette whispered. “Celestial Iron’s super rare. Like, that’s what Princess Celestia and Luna’s regalia was made out of!” “And this is enough to make about a hundred of those.” I shook my head, unable to believe what I’m seeing. “This… this stuff absorbs magic. It can be crafted into almost anything. The scientific and magical possibilities of this box are limitless, Minuette. This box alone would be enough to buy three airships the size of the Blossom!” “It’s real,” Minuette said again, a nervous giggle slipping into her voice. “Moony! It’s really real!” I had no warning. No warning at all. One moment, I was staring at the chest, the next, Minuette had bowled me over in a hug so tight that I’m sure ribs were on the verge of cracking clean in half. “W-what are you doing?” I said—rather unnecessarily. “Minuette! I need to breathe!” “Breathe later!” Minuette chirped, then she let out another wordless squeal. “It’s real and we found it! It’s real and we found it! It’s real and we found it!” Eventually, I used my magic to pry her off me.