//------------------------------// // Chapter 18 // Story: Away and Afar // by PropsValroa //------------------------------// Collapse moves to Magloria with a wide smile. "Such a pretty blue mare. Come on up Maggy!" Collapse smirks as she gently lifts Magloria onto her back and steadies her with her magic so she wouldn't fall off. Under normal circumstances what Collapse said would likely weird Jump Start out, but this wasn't under normal circumstances, clearly. Collapse looks to the strange air, finding herself amazed by how pretty it all was. "We should probably leave before the pretty air makes us *Collapse*! Hehehe!" she giggles as she began to lead the way out from where they came, the bulb still being held in her magic. "Yeah, let's go see how pretty the rest of the cave is! It's going to look so amazing!" Jump Start agreed as she followed after Collapse, casually glancing at the balls of mist in awe. The mist clouds seemed to follow after them, but they were quickly left behind as they weaved through the mushrooms and ferns. Other clouds of mist approached them as they passed, but were easily walked past as well. Soon they had reached the edge of the mushroom forest. The darkness of the cave ahead looked so glorious, like a calm abyss, swirling full of possibility and mystery. Magloria groaned, an eye opening as she looked around as well. "Mmm... pretty blackness... I wonder... if I add some to it..." she mumbled as her horn lit up, suddenly releasing a dazzling blast of light blue colour that formed into a small ice sculpture. It seemed to resemble... something, but it was brilliant all the same. "Magnificent ice... Goes well with the dark." Magloria sighed blissfully. Collapse kept note of the mist clouds. Her more rational mind would have remarked upon the mist clouds but under the effects of them she didn't say much other than looking at them in awe as they proceeded to the edge of the mushroom forest. Collapse looks on ahead into the blackness of the cave ahead. Using the bulb she took she would illuminate their way out. She felt Magloria shift a bit and listened to her, giggling at her words calmly. "Yes, very pretty blackness..." upon her creating the ice sculpture she would find herself amazed by how blue Magloria's light was and looks to the sculpture, in awe of how brilliant it all was. Collapse made no move to take Magloria off her back, in fact she adjusted her manner of walking so it was more comfortable for her. Collapse's fur was soft and warm. At least, it would have been more so should they not had been in the water earlier. A minute or so after waking up again, Magloria moved off of Collapse's back, preferring to admire her surroundings at her own pace. They reached the river again, but by this point they started to realize that the world was... not as beautiful as they thought it was. It was still nice, but not amazing. "Huh?" Jump Start blinked, rubbing her eyes as she looked around at the rushing water. "Why isn't everything pretty anymore?" she questioned. "I don't know... maybe it had something to do with the pretty mushroom forest. Something, wonderful there? It made us think thinks were nice, when it may be too nice?" Magloria said, sounding clearly like she was still under it's effects more than the others. Collapse allowed Magloria to move off of her back, she was disappointed she no longer felt the warm weight of Magloria on her back. Collapse smiles to Magloria and nods. "Probably the clouds of mist in there. Whatever is contained within that wind...I couldn't see where it came from. Whatever it is I don't really want to go back in there or else we may not be coming back out due to how...nice it was." she spoke and shook her head a bit, looking at the place a bit more and noticing how the beauty was likely fading away. Collapse liked the sense of beauty everything had before but now with her senses returning to what they originally are she realized that it was too good to be true. After shaking her head, the remaining effects disappeared, leaving the cold, bleak darkness around them, the river and the pale blue light of the forest they had just visited. Jump Start whined. "I don't want to go back in there either. We had enough sense left to want to get out, but we didn't even come across anything dangerous and it was already bad. Poor Magloria-" Magloria interrupted her. "I could hear it whispering to me." she said, looking into the river as she talked. "It wanted to talk, the mist. It felt like it could talk to us, so it approached us, and I approached it. The dream I had..." she let out a groan, putting a hoof to her head to settle a headache. "I can't remember it now, maybe it was just a figment of my addled mind, and maybe nothing was whispering after all, but it felt surreal. Like it would last forever even though I knew it wouldn't, and had an importance that I didn't know of." Collapse looked to Magloria with an intrigued look. She didn’t really have that experience with what was in the forest and found that very strange yet fascinating. “Well I can say that in my case everything just suddenly looked more…pretty. Even the cave, everything just looked so pretty. I didn’t have any voices or anything talking to me, so in your case I would say it was unique. Definitely a psychological manipulation factor. Probably a biological reaction of our bodies to whatever was in that mist.” Collapse spoke, noticing the visual changes going back to normal. “Whatever it is, it has a manipulative factor to it. It was too good to be true and I don’t really believe it was for benign reasons. Maybe that is how it lures others in so it can keep them there or something. It was also interesting how the mushrooms there looked different and we hadn’t seen those ferns previously. Question is, where was that wind coming from? I didn’t see any exit points where it came from. I didn’t see any of the mushrooms or ferns emitting it. And whatever it is, it was powerful enough to sweep through the cave with that breeze. What is causing that?” She asked, finding herself to be rather perplexed by that specific point. “We were lucky to get you out of there before we fully fell sway to it. What did you dream about?” she asked Magloria. "But I did. Didn't you hear it Collapse? The wind was whispering to us." Jump Start stated, looking back over at the forest as she did. "It wasn't normal wind, whatever it was." "Or maybe it was normal wind and we were just too out of it to notice." Magloria said, looking at Collapse. "Everything looked prettier for me too, so we didn't suffer from different symptoms. You likely didn't progress enough through what we were experiencing to consider what I did." Another hollow sounding wind blew through the cavern. Magloria paused as she listened and felt where it came from, both down the river and from over the mushroom forest. There was no whispering though, just the wind blowing. When it stopped, she continued, a hint of annoyance in her tone. "I already told you that I don't remember what I dreamed about. It's fuzzy, and I get a headache when I try to remember too hard." Collapse glanced back over to the mushroom forest after nodding to their statements in agreement. "Well whatever it is, I suppose it will just remain a mystery as I really don't want to go back in there." Collapse turned away and looked forward into the cave. "It is interesting to me that there are mushroom forests down here, since on the surface mushrooms only appear when there is rotting plant material. I haven't seen any of that, but yet these down here are larger. I wonder how they all formed. They don't seem to take up a lot of area compared to the forests on the surface either, too." she remarked as she looked forward. "Well, I think its time to get moving again." she smiled somewhat. Magloria's magic lit up and began constructing a new ice raft, now that it seemed as though the nasty fish are in a different place. "If we could find a way so that we are unaffected by whatever is over there, then maybe we'd be able to search around. But I doubt anyone here wants to try to find out how, so..." she said, hopping onto the raft as she finished. Jump Start shrugged at Collapse's thoughts on the mushrooms. "Maybe they prefer it being moist down here? Sea mushrooms that like salty water maybe?" she suggested before jumping onto their latest transport as well. "Only idea I have for that was to raise a barrier around us as we walked in that would keep the mist out. If you would like to do that we could, unless you wanna get going. I don't mind either way, but it seems like we are going now." she said. "I should have said that earlier before you made the raft." Collapse sighs in disappointment in herself and gets in the raft, sitting next to Jump Start. "It seems like that could very well be the case. I don't remember the seaponies talking about that particular forest." she added. "Yeaaaah... no... no." Magloria's face twisted into one of anxiety at the thought. "While I appreciate your... enthusiasm, I don't exactly trust the idea of entering that place with only protection being a unicorn's magic that could fail at any time. Not to mention the potential things that could waste or shorten that time." she said. Now that they were all in the raft again, she let the current take it further down once more. Another few boring hours of watching the darkness awaited them. Some of it was spent with Jump Start examining the bulb of light they collected. "How do you think it's doing that at such intensity? And what would happen if we ate it? Would we glow too?" she pondered, lightly poking at the bulb, gently squishing it as she did. Collapse accepted Magloria's comment and largely was silent admist all the darkness. Sometimes she would chat with the others, mainly about largely unimportant things. She closed her eyes, thinking back on the various things that have happened on their journey so far. It was enough for a lifetime, and there was much more to come. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Upon Jump Start's comment she looks at the bulb closely and smiles. "Well, I don't really want to find out what would happen if we did. It could be poisonous." Collapse remarked as she took the bulb into her hooves. "Probably some kind of bioluminescence if not magical. It is surprising to me that the bulb didn't go out after we took it off the plant." she rose an eyebrow. "Well the mushrooms didn't stop glowing when we picked them either. I'm not even sure that cooking them removed all of the glow. They just glow a lot dimmer than this regardless." Jump Start said, before coming up with an idea. "I wonder... what would happen if we were to cook it? Would it go dimmer, or get brighter?" she pondered. The raft at that point came across a new lake, however there didn't seem to be anything around them. Just a whole lot of rocks, stalagmites, stalactites and the water. Not even the glowing fish could be seen swimming about below the water. Despite this, the river continued on the other side. "Strange... the lakes are usually filled with life, but this one..." Magloria questioned. "Well when we find a place to stop or rest, I think we could go about trying that out. Maybe it will give us superpowers or something." Collapse giggled. "Probably not though, if anything it seems like some natural light source in that cave. At least that would be my guess. It seems as though without the sun, everything around here came to create its own light source." Collapse suggested. Upon the arrival into the seemingly lifeless lake Collapse would look around at the surroundings carefully. It seemed suspicious. "Could maybe be something in the water that wards away life or just how it happened. I would have expected life in the lakes down here though." she suggested. The only thing that Collapse could see was rocks, water and blackness. It didn't seem like there was anything here at all, not even in the water. Magloria seemed to disagree though. As she was looking about the stalagmites her eyes widened. With a shove of magic, the raft moved several meters away, just enough that something nicked the side of the raft, creating a big cracking sound as the ice broke, causing a chunk to fall away. "We need to get to the shore, now!" Magloria said, quickly propelling them over to the edge of the water. There was no graceful landing. The speed that they were going threw them all off the raft upon hitting the edge. Jump Start groaned from the new bruises, but Magloria ignored this as she forced her to her hooves. "Behind the rocks!" Magloria ordered as something flew past them, creating a loud clanging sound when it struck a rock somewhere else. Collapse quickly abandoned her previous thoughts as she landed roughly on the shore, it all happened so fast. She too was bruised but didn't really care about the bruises given the situation and quickly ran behind the rocks where Magloria wanted them to be. Her adrenaline instantly kicked in. She figured that whatever was flying past them was probably the reason why there was no life within this cave. As she ran behind the rocks, she made sure Jump Start was doing so and would have forced her along if she wasn't going fast enough. They all managed to get behind the rocks safely. The assault from the shadows stopped, seeing as there was no point in continuing while they had a meter of stone between them. "I'd like to know who exactly is shooting us so I can get them back, but somehow I don't think they're going to show themselves that easily." Magloria growled, taking a second to quickly peek around the rock then come back into hiding. She still failed to see anything. "Where did it even come from!?" Jump Start cried. "Not the water, and not above us. The angle wasn't steep enough and the attack wasn't wet, so our opponent is hiding somewhere beyond the rocks." Magloria replied. "Not much we can do but keep moving and sticking to the shadows. Speaking of-" She grabbed the bound fish, undid the knots tying them together and throw the fish over towards the water. They lost their light, but were harder to find now. Collapse huffed. "Whatever it is, we may have finally reached the point where the seaponies were referencing. The hidden dangers..." Collapse said and held her spear firm. She looks to Jump Start. "You should get prepared to fight. I know that you have it in you with what you did to that mushroom. Just saying." she said in a hopeful manner to Jump Start. "Whatever it is, it is probably behind the rocks on the other side. We could try sneaking behind the rocks to get closer to the water and then make a break for it?" Collapse asked. "I would suggest us laying low for a while, too." Collapse added. Her heart racing from what just happened, but she managed to remain mostly calm. Jump Start whined, shaking her head at Collapse's suggestion. She obviously was very unwilling to actually fight. Sure she can hit things, but actually doing so in a battle is very unlikely. "If this is where it lives, I doubt making a break for it towards the river is going to end very well for us. We'd just be exposing ourselves." Magloria said, then pointed off into the darkness. "Hiding somewhere until it gives up would be a better option. But we can also stick close to the river as we hide behind the rocks. That was it won't have a good shot at us and we'll constantly be moving." "Alright, than that is what we will do." Collapse spoke in agreement spoke and looked to Magloria to lead the way along the rocks. She looks to Jump Start and understood her feelings. She felt sorry for Jump Start, knowing this was all terrifying for her. In truth it was also terrifying for Collapse as well. "How about we hide for like, 20 minutes and then hide behind the rocks as we move to the river?" Collapse suggested, combining those two ideas. Upon looking at Magloria, there seemed to be something off about her, but in the extremely low light (with the 3 glowing fish in the lake and the usual patches of glowing moss being the only real sources) she couldn't quite tell what it was. "If we're hiding, we're doing it further away from the lake. We can always come back after. Try to be quiet." Magloria said and began to lead them in the opposite direction of the lake, shifting her hoofsteps in a way that reduced the noise she made. Collapse stayed silent about what she had seen about Magloria but couldn't help but wonder what it was. Was it her magic, or the way she looked? She couldn't really tell and began to follow after her. She also shifted her hoofsteps to reduce the noise she made. What burned in her mind was what was off about Magloria. It made her feel uneasy since she didn't say anything of what it was. She had to ask later. Collapse knew that it definitely wasn't Magloria's magic. That was as blue as ever. It was something about her coat that seemed different. It looked darker in a particular place. Once they had moved deep enough between the rocks surrounding them, with only brief pulses of light from Magloria's horn to show the way, they eventually came to a spot that seemed safe enough, which looked like a miniature cave surrounded by stalagmites. It was a good distance from their previous position, and it didn't sound or smell like anything was nearby. "Alright, we can wait here for now." Magloria sighed, sitting down against one of the pillars of rock. "We forgot the light bulb..." Jump Start sighed, realizing that it's probably floating in the lake or been swept away by the river by now.