Demon Days
Chapter One: Venture
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Rainbow Dash cautiously picks her way through the myriad of towering trees laid out before her, careful as to avoid the spindly branches that reaches out like claws to greet her stealthy figure as it makes its way through the forest. She winces whenever one of them grazes her coat, and her rainbow-streaked mane is already lodged with burrs and pine needles. She sputters whenever a rogue fly gets wedged between her teeth, and she clenches her mouth whenever the brambles of the forest floor lick her hooves and the surrounding skin.
Usually, she wouldn’t be having these sort of problems when previously venturing through the Everfree, but the path to Zecora’s is particularly full of underbrush and lanky limbs – the cyan Pegasus pony can’t even take off into the air; the canopy of the ghostly forest is lined with those sort of pesky things. Her wings would catch on the branches, and then what could she do but hang there helplessly until somepony came to her aid?
The whole reason Rainbow Dash is making this trip is because Twilight Sparkle asked her to fetch some of Zecora’s special herbal tea, and the lavender unicorn claimed that she was too fixed on learning the new spells that Celestia assigned before to visit the zebra anytime soon. And, apparently, the rest of her friends are too busy as well to do what Twilight asked. Applejack is bucking apples, Rarity is making dresses, Fluttershy is taking care of a woodland patient, and Pinkie Pie is helping the Cakes deliver a special order to a Canterlot garden party – the day she had to finally be busy with something she had to pick today?
Too busy my hoof, Rainbow Dash thinks anyway, silently seething, rolling her eyes inwardly. Yeah, and I was busy taking a nice long nap on a particularly fluffy cloud!
Her wings itch to fly, the path is growing narrower. It occurs to Rainbow for a moment that she must have strayed off the path to Zecora’s a teensy bit – after all, she never did really learn the way by herself. But, she shakes the thought off, too sure she can’t get lost than to panic out of nowhere.
“Stupid brambles,” she hisses as the thicket continues to claw at her already-sore hooves and cyan coat. Blood begins to blossom through one long, raw slash etched on her thigh, but she hardly notices because the brambles persevere in jabbing at her ribs and other parts of her body, straying her mind from the pain of the cut. “Totally not awesome,” she mumbles, for the third time that day.
After a few more minutes of treading through the Everfree, she begins to wonder if she really is lost. She whips her head from side to side, but the irritating underbrush blocks any path her vision could come across. The Pegasus stamps her hoof into the soil out of annoyance, almost jumping out of her skin when a branch snaps obtrusively beneath it. Her breath hitches in her throat, and she freezes.
Beyond the horizon, the sun begins to set behind the hills, the cerulean sky blending into a nice aura of warm colors. The Everfree forest is soon cast into a shield of ghostly darkness, although some stray light manages to send beams through the leaves and bask the forest floor in its rays.
Rainbow’s wings buzz, her body growing antsy and her mind failing to comprehend as the forest loses its eerie glow. “Pfft. I’m not scared at all,” she reassures herself, picking up her hooves and making sure they’re carefully placed one in front of the other as she traipses steadily through the trees again.
Dash suddenly finds herself mumbling to herself under her breath, her lips quivering and her wings continuing to buzz anxiously. By now, she can’t contemplate herself. By now, she knows she’s scared.
“Ugh, if only Twilight could’ve done this herself. She’s way more comfortable in situations like this, it seems, and besides she’s got magic. The branches overhead are too thick to fly through… don’t want to get my throat torn out by those thorns.” She shivers at the thought.
Suddenly, she hears a loud hiss and a rustle come from a bush at her far left. Her gut clenches from immediate reflex, and her head slowly turns towards the sound.
At first, she notices that there are three red spokes prodding through the leaves of the bush, which seems out of place. Then, they begin to rise, and attached to those spokes is a white head, which are attached to glowing crimson eyes, which are attached to a writhing green, scaly body that swells menacingly out of the bush –
A shrill, crackling squawk rips from the creature’s yellow beak. Rainbow Dash feels herself rooted in place as the bizarre animal swivels its head around to face her.
“C-cockatrice,” Dash whispers to herself, barely able to control the trembling in her voice. She remembers Fluttershy saying something about these creatures, and to never look them in the –
The cockatrice’s eyes glow, and Rainbow Dash feels a suspicious hardness travel up her leg like biting claws, and she quickly whips her head away before revving her hooves to flee from the scene.
The creature lets out another ear-splitting shriek before careening after the Pegasus pony fighting her way through the thickets. They grapple and scrape at her cyan coat, some branches cutting so deep that hot, sticky blood emerges from the wounds. She hardly notices, though, because she knows the cockatrice is hot on her tail.
Above her, the canopy begins to thin out, but she knows that flying away would be pointless because the cockatrice bears wings on its body too. Her heart hammers against her chest, her mind racing, prompting her to press on as fast as she can. Her leg muscles scream in protest, but she ignores the pain for now.
Rainbow realizes that the creature’s screams are growing quieter, and she would sigh in relief if her breath wasn’t failing her quite so much. However, she dares herself to steal a quick glance over her shoulder.
The cockatrice is nowhere in sight, as far as she can tell. Sweat trickles down her forehead, and she begins to slow down. She lets a relieved breath escape her, creating fog in the chilly forest air.
“Phew, that was a close – “
Her sentence is immediately cut off when her hoof catches on an arched root that has protruded from the ground, and instantly her footing is lost. Dirt flies in her face as her chin digs into soft terrain, and she feels herself sliding down some kind of hill, but she can’t be sure since the cannonballs of soil blind her momentarily. She decides to spread her wings to act on the last second, but her snout crunches into solid, rocky ground, and her aimless sliding ceases.
Rainbow Dash grumbles, planting her hooves into the ground to hoist herself up on all fours. She spats some dirt, most impolitely, out of her mouth, followed by some desperate coughs as she struggles to dislodge some more soil that’s managed to make its way down her throat, too. She shakes herself off, her heartbeat and mind decreasing. Her magenta eyes flicker open, and it takes her a moment to reacquire her vision in the darkness before flitting them all over the place.
She is in a vast clearing, the barren ground stretching far, framed by numerous other lofty trees and thickets. It’s eerily quiet, the beginnings of Luna’s night reigning down upon the Everfree. Despite her findings of the clearing she’s standing in, she can barely see her own hoof in front of her face.
“Great, just great,” she groans, kicking a loose piece of soil with her hoof in frustration. “Now I have no idea where the buck I am!”
And it’s true. She’s never remembered treading into this part of the forest before, and with the night shrouding the land in darkness, it’s difficult to even accommodate herself here. The easiest thing would be to spread her wings and fly off, forgetting Twilight’s need of Zecora’s special herbal tea. The unicorn could live without it for a while.
“Pfft, why didn’t I think of this sooner?” Rainbow Dash says, cursing herself for being such a goof.
Thankfully, the branches obscuring the sky seem to be the thinnest here, so she extends her wings and gets ready to take off –
-but something stops her. Something she can’t quite place.
A mysterious sensation tickles the skin surrounding her hooves, and it’s not the kind of tickling that makes you laugh your tear canals out – it’s the kind that makes you scratch at your skin and causes you to be antsy to no end.
Rainbow Dash scrapes the tip of her hoof down one of her front legs before doing the same thing to the others, frantic to force the irritating sensation to oblivion. Pieces of her coat float to the ground as they’re nonchalantly torn off by her excessive scratching, her teeth grind together as the crawling, itchy sensation begins to travel like a snake up her legs before spreading through every inch of her body.
Dash’s eyes water with pain as the bothersome tingles grow stronger and cause her to dig her hooves deep into her flesh as her mind becomes clouded with the determination of ridding the annoying itch from her body. Her heart thuds in her chest, and nervous thoughts pry through her mind.
What is happening to her? Is she going insane, and it’s just her imagination? Are there invisible insects crawling across her skin? Is Pinkie Pie playing a prank on her again? What in the hayseed is going on?
Just then, her senses fill up with the strange sensation, as well. Her mouth, her nose, her eyes, her ears – they feel clogged, some sort of weird, forcible pressure protruding through her skin and building up like a swarm of parasprites in her belly.
She rears back on her hind legs, hooves rolling in the air, cries of pain and bewilderment escaping from her mouth. At least, they try to escape from her mouth. Her throat feels as obstructed as a beaver’s dam for some unknown reason, as well as her ears, nose, eyes and gut. Her head feels like somepony’s stuffed cotton balls around her brain.
Then, the feelings begin to fade slightly, leaving the cyan Pegasus breathless. A powerful whoosh flies across her body, then nothing, just the cold night air whipping against her flank. She stumbles before collapsing to the ground, panting in heavy efforts to gather the breath back into her lungs.
Her heart continues to pound effortlessly, except it has jumped to her throat during the process of – whatever the hay that was. The cloudiness in her mind and eyes vanish, leaving her befuddled and astonished at the same time.
“What the buck just happened,” she murmurs to herself, staring out in front of her as though she’s recently seen a ghost.
She shakes her head, trying to clear the rest of her mind as she hoists herself up onto all fours, her legs still trembling slightly. The feeling still lingers in her body, however, as if it never left.
Rainbow always knew the Everfree held deep secrets and unfathomable creatures, but, she never thought it holds something as awful as what happened several moments ago. Of course, the Everfree always makes ponies feel uncomfortable and spooked, even her. Although she would never admit it. But is there a reason nopony’s ever set hoof as far into the forest as she is now?
Heh, she thinks, her usual self-gloating acting up again. I must be the first one. A pretty imaginable feat, if I do say so myself!
“Rainbow Dash!” a faint call issues from beyond the wavering trees, slicing Rainbow away from her thoughts. It was vague, but she heard it, and she immediately recognizes the owner of the voice, ears pricking.
“Twilight?”
A dark figure bursts out of a nearby thicket, followed by four more figures shrouded in the dark of the damp night. Rainbow Dash nearly leaps out of her skin as they barrel toward her, but catches herself and quickly regains her solid composition.
“Rainbow Dash! Thank goodness you’re okay!” Twilight says, her voice flooded with relief. She gently nuzzles Rainbow Dash before the serious expression she wore a few moments earlier returns.
“Of course, why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“W-well, um, I was gathering my song bird choir from the edge of the, um, forest,” Fluttershy begins, crouching low, her turquoise eyes darting every which-way around the forest. “and, well – I heard your screams, and – “
“Then Fluttershy ran to me and well at first I didn’t really notice her because I was eating cupcakes and like why wouldn’t I be eating cupcakes right like that’s silly and so then I was about to indulge myself in another brightly colored cupcake when she finally got my attention and – “
“Ah heard yer screams, too, Dash, and Ah got worried ‘bout ya so Ah decided to run and see if you were okay when Ah saw Fluttershy and Pinkie at the edge of the forest – “
“I was at the library, borrowing a book on regal ensembles in the early years when Twilight and myself heard your shrieks, too, so we decided to see if you were okay. I wasn’t much of a fan of the trip because I kept getting my hooves all muddy, and I recently had one of the most delicious hooficures at the spa earlier that day – wouldn’t you believe it, darling, it was simply devine! - and I wasn’t ready to have them caked in unnecessary mud – “
Twilight sticks a hoof in the ivory unicorn’s mouth. “What we’re all trying to say is that we were all worried about you! You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No, not really,” Rainbow reassures, keeping the ‘not really’ part low under her breath. “Thanks for worrying about me, though. But this Pegasus doesn’t need to be worried about, everything’s all cool!”
Each of her friends smile in turn, but they suddenly droop when Rainbow releases a few hacking coughs, the sudden impact causing her body to quake. Her hooves kick at the ground, taking up clumps of dirt and rocks during the process.
“Oh, dear. Are you okay?” Fluttershy asks, perturbed at the sudden fit of coughing issuing from one of her closest friends.
“Yeah, fine,” Rainbow Dash croaks, thumping her hoof against her chest for a few beats. Speaking of, she does seem to be feeling a bit nauseous… “Just got some dust lodged in my throat – ain’t nothing I can’t handle.”
The corners of Twilight’s mouth curl up into a smile that is half worried, and half relieved that her friend is alright. She lights her horn up, the luminous glow radiating traverse the clearing. “Come on, everypony,” she says, feeling a giant yawn prodding her maw. “I think it’s all time we got some shut-eye.”
The ponies nod solemnly, seemingly worn out themselves. Rainbow Dash trots between Applejack and Pinkie Pie, the two of them nattering to her about who-knows-what. Dash isn’t paying much attention to their conversation, though, because of the distracting itchiness of her skin and the abnormal queasiness of her stomach. But, she doesn’t let herself worry about it too much. Everything will be alright in the morning. She’s sure of it.
Absolutely, one-hundred percent positive.