Rainbow awoke to heavy prodding.
“Up you get!”
She grumbled, latching harder onto her pillow as she snuggled further into the blankets.
“Oh no you don’t,” Twilight growled beside her. “The sun’s nearly up! Let’s go! I want to be out of this inn within twenty.” She poked her one final time before stalking heavily off.
Rainbow groaned and stretched, her joints popping as she sat up in bed. They’d ended up just wandering around and window-shopping for the remainder of yesterday before heading back for an early bed – helpful, as from the looks of it the sun hadn’t even come close to rising yet. “Is the boat place even going to be open this early?” she wondered as she slid out from under the covers. “‘Cause I swear it’s still midnight.”
“Of course there’ll be someone there,” Twilight chided her from the other room. “It’s a fishing town – fisherfolk get up early.”
“Ugh.” She set about gathering up her things and getting her gear on while Squirrel lazed, fully dressed, by the door; they’d only gotten a one-bed, so Squirrel had drawn the short straw and slept on the wicker couch – presumably the less comfortable sleep was why she was already up and about, and tired-looking to boot.
It was only a few minutes later that saw them stepping out into the predawn light; despite the time, the town was indeed already stirring. “And we’re certain we’ve got everything?” Twilight fretted, her horn flaring as she poked at everyone’s panniers. “Nothing was left behind?”
“We’ve already triple-checked, Twi,” Rainbow said, lightly flicking her with a wing. “Seriously. I thought you were the one that wanted to get going early?”
“I do!”
“Well, time’s a-burning then!” Rainbow said, stepping jauntily down the alley and out of her friend’s range. “Let’s go!”
“Fine, fine,” Twilight muttered, still staring back worriedly as they kept a swift clip downhill.
They arrived at the boatshack to find its doors already open, its interior lit orange by lamp-glow. Leading the way, Squirrel cast her head about before stalking into the gloom towards the same stallion from yesterday. “Hello,” she said, getting his attention. “Boat?”
He snorted. “‘Boat’ indeed,” he said, getting up from his workbench to help them retrieve their canoe from the upper racks. A few minutes later and they were on their way.
“We going to the same place we came in at?” Rainbow asked, grunting as she shifted to get a comfier grip. “Or are we going south?”
“Same place,” Twilight replied. “Won’t save much time otherwise, and at least this way we won’t get lost or jammed in an alleyway.”
The streets and docks were picking up as they neared the little spot of land they’d beached up on yesterday; from here they could see a triplet of barges coming into the piers, their decks hives of activity. Scrambling clumsily down the slope, they set their canoe in the water and quickly cast off, hoping to get out of the growing bustle.
“Wonder which route they took?” Twilight mused, shuffling around for her oar as the three of them set about rowing away, southwards. “Must’ve been the main path? Unless they came from downriver...”
Squirrel shrugged. “They’ve the sails to have – so maybe. Going to be a bit annoyed if they did come from Nestle – we could’ve hitched a ride!”
“And missed out on the forest monsters?” Rainbow said with far too much excitement. “Where’d the fun be in that?”
“‘Fun,’ right,” Squirrel snorted. “Here’s hoping the next bit is nice and dull.”
“Hear, hear,” Twilight muttered. Passing around an anchored fishing boat – its outriggers spanning nearly as wide as its hull was long – they found themselves caught up in the South Whither’s current and pulled swiftly away.
The river would soon branch again, but they had a short ways to go yet before they needed to do anything but paddle onwards. “See the towers?” Squirrel said, jerking her head towards a pair of run-down stone-and-wood structures, some three-stories tall, straddling the river either side. “I mentioned them yesterday.”
Rainbow’d noticed them the day before, but with how much they’d blended in with the surrounding buildings she hadn’t realized what they were. Here though, on the river, she could clearly make a great rusty chain, each link as wide and long as her barrel, slinking out of their ground floors and disappearing into the silt. “Think it could still go up?”
Twilight hummed thoughtfully. “I suspect the weight of all the mud will’ve buried it beyond the strength of the mechanisms to heave. That, and I imagine the same forces that stopped the tolls would’ve also seen to it that they couldn’t’ve been easily reimplemented the moment they’d left, either.” They rowed between the towers, the canoe tilting as Rainbow leaned over the side for some glimpse of the chain in the muddy waters.
In very little time they drifted past the last of the hillside homes, leaving Autumn Beech behind them.
The sun had just risen in front of them when they neared the fork. “Main river’s straight ahead, of course,” Twilight chattered on as they kept themselves near the western bank. “The right path’s the one we want. It’s small and slow now, but the map says it’ll join up with another soon, so with a little luck it should pick up then.”
“I’ll scout once it does,” Rainbow said – she’d been neglecting to up til now, far preferring to just laze around and enjoy the canoe ride a little longer; still though – no sense going in blind.
They soon reached the wide, stony mesa around which the river branched, and took the languid, shaded waters of the rightmost path. The dull susurrus of the Whither faded behind them, leaving them with nothing but the splash of oars and faint buzzing of insects for company. “At least they’re not nearly as bad here as in the swamps,” Rainbow muttered, wing lashing out to swat away a particularly large beetle. “Not like we have the smoke anymore, anyways.”
“These’re harmless enough,” Squirrel said, her ears flicking every time one tried to land on it. “The only even remotely-dangerous ones can’t bite through our fur. They are annoying, though.”
At this point the river turned to face the very edge of the mountain range they looked to pierce; from what Rainbow could remember of the maps, they’d be heading more-or-less straight south once they reached this bit of it, and wouldn’t stop until they got to Hurricanum. “Hey guys – the rivers are going to meet up soon, right? So I should probably get airborne about now.”
Twilight gave her head a little shake to clear it before looking around at their surroundings. “Might be rapids ahead, yeah. Need us to get ashore? Don’t really like the idea of you rocking the boat over on takeoff.”
“Umm...” Rainbow set aside her oar and stood up as best she could. The canoe bobbed unsteadily as she shifted her weight around. “Yeah, might be best.”
What with the abundance of pebbly beaches either side, it took little time at all to get near enough to land for Rainbow to leap out into the chilly, fetlock-deep water. Splashing quickly away from them, she called back over her withers. “I’ll poke around and let you know what’s up before you get to the merge!”
“Yep!” Twilight called back as the two of them paddled back out and downstream.
Stepping on shore, Rainbow shook the water from her legs, stretching her wings and giving them a few warmup flaps as she did. Once content with that she bounded into the air to coast low over the river, hooves just stroking the surface. Cruising lazily past the canoe, she angled up to grab some height and get a proper look around.
Not half a minute later she’d gotten above the squat mesa bordering the river’s eastern bank, and got a good look at the far side.
It was... surprisingly unthreatening. Once the two rivers merged together they simply flowed across a rather mundane-looking grassy plain. While one path branched back to what looked like the main river, the one they were interested in seemed to just fade into the mountains some dozen or so miles away. She couldn’t make out the mines from here, but a shiver of anticipation ran through her all the same; she’d passed by more mine shafts than she could count back home, but she’d never actually gone more than a few paces into them – she’d wanted to, but some annoyingly sensible part of her insisted she not do so alone, and she’d never managed to convince anyone to come along with.
But not this time!
Double-checking that the river seemed more-or-less calm – no churning eddies or perilously-rocky sections – she took to circling again for height; seeing as she was about to be stuck underground for who-knows how long, how could she not have some fun first?
Twilight glanced up at the slowly-dwindling form of Rainbow before turning back to the river. “I imagine it’s all good up ahead,” she said, as the river turned sharply south around the mesa and joined up with its sister. “Seeing as it looks like she’s more interested in goofing around than coming down to warn us about anything.”
“Mmhmm,” Squirrel agreed as the waters picked up pace. “Burning off some energy, perhaps? Though I doubt we’ll be underground for too long at any one stretch – the longest part is only supposed to be a few hours long.”
“Does she know that, though?” Twilight wondered – Rainbow had a habit of just letting Twilight take care of all the planning, even before their ship went down; she’d be little surprised if she’d zoned out during all their talks on the matter yesterday.
As the river straightened out due south again, they got their first look at the range ahead. “One way or the other, we’ll find out soon.”
Rainbow landed deftly beside the others on a little beach but a few stone-throws shy of the tunnel entrance. Rotten shacks lay on carved terraces around the face, with more besides half-drowned in the river pooling about the cliff. The waters here were shallow enough to see rusted rails and stoney roadways below.
The tunnel itself was blessedly tall despite the flooding, granting them enough room that they needn’t duck or stoop. “I guess this is it?” Rainbow said, suddenly feeling rather skeptical about the whole affair. “There’s nothing else around?”
“You’d know better than us,” Squirrel snorted, gesturing at the otherwise deadend they were in. “But as this is the only river going in this direction, it must be.” The river had flowed with the scree immediately against its western shores, leaving little room for some alternative path hidden away.
Rainbow grumbled, still feeling uneasy. “Alright, alright,” she groused. “We doing this then?”
Twilight gave her a little nuzzle. “Hey – you feeling alright, Dash?”
Rainbow’s wings fluttered as she lashed her tail. “Yeah, I guess,” she muttered, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, Twi, I’m fine – really. It’s only for a couple of hours anyways, right?”
“This section is supposed to be straight and easy,” Squirrel said, interrupting her pacing. “A couple of hours – no more.”
“Good,” Rainbow rolled her shoulders. “Right. Good.”
“Probably best we get going, then,” Twilight said, bobbing her head back towards the canoe while keeping a worried eye on Rainbow. “Sooner done the better.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow said, pushing the canoe a little ways out before hopping in, one hoof braced against a jutting stone to keep it from floating away. “In we go.”
The other two clambered in before, with a push of their oars, they floated out slowly towards the yawning, black mouth of the Seven Mines.