Sophia was right, it was pretty much impossible to miss the lilypad fields. Right now Rainbow Dash was flying over a part of the swamp where not a single inch of water was left uncovered. It was lilypads everywhere. Lots of them even crowding and overlapping each other. She wondered how they all survived and grew like this.
And of course as expected in a place like this, the croaking was even worse.
Unbearably so. She wished Sophia had given her a warning about it, but to those who dwelled in this swamp the croaking was probably just white noise anyways.
She was considering going carnivorous when it came to frogs.
“Ugh,” Rainbow got green in the face when she thought about that. “Can’t even joke about it… gross.”
She hadn’t seen a single pony again since parting ways with Sophia either. And of course no homes, not even abandoned shacks. Now she probably was deep enough into the swamp where the usual ponies had fled. Until she came across the hunting party she doubted she would see any others. Not unless they were ones as brave as she was.
At least there was one positive about this field of lilypads despite the heavy croaking. Lots of the pads had flowers growing from them, yellow cores with white and pink petals, they were pretty nice to look at. They gave a lot of color to the swamp, which was mostly greens and browns otherwise. It was so odd though how she still barely saw any frogs even though their noise was now louder than ever. They must’ve been really good at hiding. Maybe they feared ponies? No one at Mile Moss Crannog had said they ate frogs or anything though.
She wanted to zoom up past the trees and take a nap in the clouds. Just for an hour or two to get away from the croaking and the gross smells of the swamp. But she didn’t want to delay things anymore than necessary. If only it was possible to see into the swamp better from above…
Rainbow figured she just had to get over it and keep flying like normal. She had to force that attitude onto herself quite often anyways.
Were there any alligators hidden under this forest of lilypads? Just hoping she would slow down and get a little bit closer to the surface of the water? Probably. If there weren’t any ponies around here to spread gator powder on the regular, the alligators were probably hording all over. Considering they and the frogs all liked to keep themselves hidden though, the only other living things she really saw right now were swarms of mosquitoes. A lot of them tried to swarm here and she had to repeatedly swat them away.
“Okay… I’m going to say deserts are the number one place I hate the most, then frozen mountains are number two, but right after those is swamps. Swamps are my third most hated place to fly through,” Rainbow Dash nodded. She snorted. “Can’t believe the snow isn’t number one...”
A few more mosquitoes had to be whipped away by her tail before she continued onward. “Dumb bugs.”
Rainbow Dash flew for almost another hour over the lilypad field, still heading pretty much directly south now. Maybe once or twice she caught a glimpse of a large frog jumping off a pad into the water before she passed by. Things were getting darker and foggier as she went as well, the already thick canopy overhead was getting thicker as the gnarled branches of the trees started to join together and create a criss-crossing mess over her head. The field of lilypads started to give way to mud banks and patches of reeds and grass. There was almost what could be called a steady amount of “ground” now.
For a moment she just flew on normally like that until she suddenly stopped in midair as sudden realization hit her.
There was something missing.
The croaking had stopped.
Is that a good sign or a bad one? Rainbow Dash thought to herself as she now slowly flew on. She kept her ears perked and her eyes searching about, but the fog was obscuring the surface of the water and most of the trees in the distance as well, she just couldn’t see much.
She came to a stop, hovering, over a mud bank that sit in the middle of a few trees and started to think about what she should do next. All she had to go on was traveling past the lilypad field and now she had done that. The hunting party and monster had to be close by. Wouldn’t that be a laugh if she flew out over open water only to have a giant alligator monster suddenly jump out from nowhere and try to swallow her whole?
Yeah, no, she didn’t exactly want that to happen.
Rainbow huffed and started to continue on-
“Shh, don’t yell, what are you doing here?” A quiet voice asked from beside her.
Rainbow Dash froze up and looked to her right at one of the trees to see a pair of eyes blinking back at her. “Uhh...”
A pony—completely covered in mud and leaves—detached itself from the tree and stepped onto the mud bank. Three other ponies from the other trees around the mud bank showed themselves as well.
“Well, that’s some decent camouflage,” Rainbow Dash said as she looked around at them and landed on the mud bank as well, tucking her wings in. “I guess Belle was right that you guys would see me first.”
The pony who had spoken to her looked at the mud on her face. “I see you visited our home and made acquaintance with our Elder.”
“Yep, name’s Rainbow Dash, you guys must be part of the hunting party? What are you guys doing here just pretending to be trees?” Rainbow asked.
“We’re on sentry duty. We’re trying to figure out the monster’s movements, if it’s come by here recently and things like that,” another one of the ponies said.
“And you really shouldn’t be here. Certainly our Elder and the others of Mile Moss Crannog warned you away?” A third hunter said.
“They did, but I thought you guys could use some help with your monster problem. I’m not from anywhere nearby just so you know, I’ve been traveling across the whole world and I’ve got a lot of experience dealing with monsters and other stuff. Your Elder eventually gave me her blessing and realized I wasn’t going to just fly away. So here I am,” she shrugged.
“You really want to help us hunt down this monster?” The first asked.
“Hunt it down, capture it, stop it, make it go away, bring peace back to your swamp. Whatever needs to be done,” Rainbow nodded.
The hunters shared a look with each other before the first one shrugged.
“To be completely honest, we need all the help we can get. Already we’ve been trying to get others to join us from elsewhere in the swamp. This monster just won’t stop. All of our traps and attempts to kill it have failed so far,” he said.
“Our sentry duty ends at midnight. If you’re willing to wait here with us until then, we can take you back to where the rest of the hunting party is. Because of the monster we have to be hidden and mobile at the same time. We never stay in the same spot for more than a night or two,” the second one said.
Rainbow nodded. “That works for me.”
The small group of sentries had a canoe hidden in some of the nearby reeds, they used that while Rainbow Dash flew alongside them. It was incredibly dark out, almost pitch black, but the sentries only used the smallest flame from a match-lit stick to see. Saying it was a necessary precaution to not draw unwanted attention to themselves.
They slowly drifted through the waters of the swamp in the dead of night so as not to make much noise or send any big ripples through the water. Rainbow Dash kept quiet for this as well even though she had a few questions to ask. Could the giant alligator monster really sneak up on them like this? Maybe they were worried about regular alligators as well.
After about thirty minutes of them navigating the swamp water and the half-sunken trees, Rainbow Dash could see small candlelights peaking out to her. No brighter than a few fireflies, the flames flickered in the soft night wind. They passed a tree and out of the reeds next to it a small canoe with a pony sitting on it came, he nodded in greeting to them. More canoes made themselves visible, all of them seeming to come from nowhere. These ponies definitely knew how to hide in the swamp.
But it wasn’t until they reached the flames that Rainbow Dash got a look at their “base”. At first she thought it was a tree sitting on top of a grassy mud bank, but then she realized the tree was actually a wooden shack with branches stuck on top of it for disguise, and the mud bank was several barrels and logs floating in the water with mud and grass over them. Surrounding it were several rafts and boats as well, some tied together while others were moored to trees. It wasn’t much, but it was probably the biggest and best kind of “structure” you could build in a heavy swamp like this with barely any room. The lights had come from it, weak lanterns hanging from the tree branches and others sitting in the boats.
There were several ponies on the small floating island as well. Camouflaged the same as the sentries but these ones were holding spears as well. Pretty primitive ones, not even tipped with steel but with sharpened rocks.
One pony, an older looking one with a bushy white mustache underneath the mud covering the rest of his features, stepped towards the group of sentries and Rainbow Dash as they came to a stop at the island. His eyes briefly held on Rainbow Dash before he raised an eyebrow at the sentries. “Any sign of it in your spot?”
“Nope, we didn’t see it all day,” the first sentry responded.
“Seems you found something though?” The mustachioed stallion said as he looked to Rainbow.
“Yeah,” Rainbow said as she dropped down and landed on the island. “My name is Rainbow Dash, I heard about what you guys were doing from the Elder at Mile Moss Crannog and I wanted to help you to hunt the monster. Are you Claude?”
“I am,” Claude nodded.
“Sweet, nice to meet you,” Rainbow stuck out her hoof.
He didn’t take it and she slowly lowered it back to the ground.
“Okay...” Rainbow Dash frowned.
“I’m not one for pleasantries. There’s nothing nice going on right now, this monster still hounds us so if you want to help then make yourself useful or leave. I don’t have time to waste entertaining some random nobody who isn’t even from our swamp,” Claude said.
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “You know what helping means right? I could have just flown on but I’m not that type of pony. You’ve been asking around for all the help you can get in the swamp but you want to act like this to me?”
“Why would an outsider want to help? This is swamp business, friend of Mile Moss Crannog or not don’t expect me to care about whatever it is you’re looking to do here,” Claude told her off. “None of you know what it’s like to live here… you don’t have respect for our way of life or our troubles. If you’re really so sincere you can carry bags of food and help feed the party.”
“You’re a lot different than I expected...” Rainbow said.
“I can’t afford to be anything less with this monster here,” Claude said.
“Come on, Claude, we need as many hooves as we can get,” the first sentry said again.
“Bah!” He waved his hoof dismissively. “Look out for her yourself then, too many troubles in this swamp… too many troubles even before the monster...” He turned around and started to walk into the disguised shack. “We’ve got a hunt to go on tomorrow, if you think you’re up for it then come along and try not to get eaten. Or at the very least don’t let a pony from the swamp get eaten, outsider.”
The first sentry sighed, tying his canoe to the island before he and the others walked out onto it and joined Rainbow Dash. “Sorry about that… he’s just under a lot of stress.”
“It’s whatever,” Rainbow shrugged. “There are bigger things to worry about anyways… but it seemed like he was stressed out before the monster too.” She looked around at the other hunters as they receded to their own boats and other hideaways. “I guess if there’s a hunt tomorrow I should get some sleep?”
“We all should,” the first sentry nodded.
“Alright then...” Rainbow frowned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Er, sorry, but what’s your name?”
“Jules.”
“See you bright and early then.”