Chapter 2
Daring woke to the morning's calls of the jungle birds, hidden deep within the canopy. She soon sat up and noticed that the sun wasn't up.
"Hmm" she said "I guess the birds here wake up earlier then everyone else."
After putting the remaining firewood she had into the embers from her bonfire, she quickly started a small fire and made some coffee. She made a little room in the fire to also make some eggs and toast.
While everything was cooking, she cleaned up her little campsite. She started by taking her leaf bed, and began to scatter them around. She then went to fluffing up the grass underneath the spot where she slept, followed by getting rid of any hoof prints. She knew that someone had been watching her yesterday when she went to the river, and she didn't want them to be able to follow her.
The coffee pot began to whistle. Taking the coffee, eggs and toast off the fire, she quickly ate, cleaned, packed and took off towards the canopy.
Almost immediately following her rise to the upper forest, Daring was challenged with the massive amount of the vines, branches and leaves. But the plant life here seemed to be aware of her presence. The vines would grow out in her path. While the branches would seem to always grab her hooves, or latch onto her wings. All followed by the leaves getting themselves lost in her wing, mouth or eyes.
Finally she broke free, bursting out blindly at the open space above all of the jungle life. The sun was beginning to rise. And the air up here was less moist than the damp jungle floor. Taking a moment to collect herself, she instantly began to take out all of the twigs, leaves and other plant life, noticing the scratches and cuts all over her legs, wings and flank.
"Wow" she said out loud. "This jungle is a lot more aggressive than I thought."
But she knew that there was no time for worrying about her wounds. She went through her canvas bag and retrieved a map and a compass. She turned so that she was facing north, took one last look at the map, returned them to their rightful place in her bag, and left.
Daring Do was not the fastest flyer, but she had stamina. When she was young, and still is flight school, she could always place first or second in the longer distance tests. She could fly for hours without going out of pace or breath. This was one of the main reasons she choose to be an adventurer. So within 30 minutes of flying, she had detected the faint outline of the ruins.
When she reached the ruins, the sun was already a good distance from the horizon. Landing was always hard for Daring; she could never actually stop without hitting something. So she quickly spotted a partly flat piece of treetop, and began to slowly decline, but not slow enough. She soon found herself, yet again, tangled in the branches, with a ringing in her ears. Only this time, she wasn't being grasped.
The first thing that came into her senses was the calling of all the jungle life. She could make out birds, monkeys and some insects. But there was also a sound that she had never heard before. It was like that of the lion mixed with a wolf. It startled Daring.
"Was that the monster from last night?" She whispered.
But she could not stay and find out, she knew that this forest had unknown creatures inside, and the sooner she got in, the sooner she would be able to get out. So immediately she began her descent to the ruins, but upon seeing the half crumbled, moss covered, stone building, she realized that there was no entrance. She quickly pulled out an old, damp book, and began to read.
"How am I supposed to get in?" she muttered to herself, flipping the pages in her book.
But to no avail could she find a page with the answer. But this also isn't the first time that she has encountered a closed ruin. She went on studying the walls and fallen pillars, deciphering the ancient pony pictograms, they were written in a multiple lingual form, and there was language from every corner of Equestria.
"How did all of this get here, and why would they have written this is all of these languages?"
Most of the texts were about the rules of the old king. But hidden behind a wall was a small sentence, so Daring took out one of her knifes, and reflected some light onto the ancient words. They said to go under the floor.
Daring immediately removed one of the tiles but as soon as she lifted it snapped into two pieces, and under was a bunch of wooden frames, she had to remove a couple more before she could fit under it, but as soon as she went down, so did the wooden scaffolding. She had to quickly dodge falling tile, plant life, and rock. Her wings were pelted with all the debris. She started to search for a place to land, but she couldn't find anything, all she could see was falling plants and tile. She began to panic, her breath quickened, and she didn't notice the pillar that was coming directly at her. But luckily when she began to breathe to fast she had to tilt her head up. And she did that just in time to see the pillar, she tried to dart from the path, but she had taken too long and her wing was clipped with the ancient stone, and she began her fall to the unknown.