The cottage was a complete mess, but Carrot Top immediately noticed that the signs of struggle pointed out the backdoor and towards the Everfree Forest. “Of course the Everfree Forest” Carrot Top muttered to Angel, who was riding on her back as she followed the trail of stomped earth and broken blades of grass, “of course I’d have to track the her into the dark, dangerous forest rather than, for example through the safe, well-lit town full of ponies who I could ask for help.” But Angel only coughed impatiently to signal her to go faster.
For a moment Carrot Top considered running back and starting a search party. She thought of Rainbow Dash using her speed and flight to search the forest a hundred times faster than the farmer could on foot, and she thought of Trixie using one of her spells to effortlessly track Fluttershy and her captor, and in that moment Carrot Top realized she was the least qualified pony to be running into this situation alone. But in the very next moment she saw the strange moving vines of the Everfree coiling up to begin to cover the trail she had been following and she knew it *had* to be her, or it would be too late. There was nopony else.
**************************************
“Those selfish ponies wouldn’t have come to help anyway”, thought a dark part of Carrot Top’s mind half an hour later as she continued to trudge through the wild, wet and muddy ground of the forest. She quickly suppressed that thought, surprised at herself for having it.
“Trixie and Rainbow Dash may be lazy jerks,” Carrot Top said aloud, “and yeah sometimes they can be selfish and willing to take advantage of my stupid generosity, and make me do their jobs or keep their promises because they know I can’t say no... but for something as important as this I’m sure they would help out if they knew about it…”
But though Carrot Top knew in her mind that her words were true, they rang hollow even as she said them, their conviction swallowed up by the huge green loneliness around her. She decided to focus on the trail to distract herself. Up until now she had assumed the worst: that some giant predatory monster had come from the Everfree to drag Fluttershy away. But there were no clear tracks that Carrot Top could use to identify the beast. The trail seemed to consist of haphazard scratches on the trees and furrows dug into the ground, scattering mud everywhere as if from some kind of struggle. Once in a while she thought she would make out part of a hoofprint or a pawprint, but the forest’s muddy ground would be too smudged and distorted for her to be certain.
“What does it mean?” Carrot Top asked nopony in particular, “It looks like whatever took Fluttershy has been fighting ferociously the entire time as it went this way. But I can’t imagine poor Fluttershy fighting that hard for that long… she can’t even fight her own pets, judging by how spoiled rotten they are-”
Her not-so-internal monologue was interrupted by a swift rabbit-punch to the head from the rabbit riding her.
“Whatever Angel, you know its true” she said, craning her neck to fix her emerald eyes onto her passenger.
Angel continued to glare at her for a few seconds then reluctantly shrugged in agreement The Lady was many things for the rabbit, but he knew she was not a fighter.
Suddenly both of them realized something was missing. The sounds of the forest, the predatory bird calls and the slithering sounds of snakes and sea serpents and magical plants, had been so ever present that both of them had gradually tuned them out as they walked. But now they were suddenly gone. Carrot Top stopped walking and looked up only to see a canopy of crisscrossing tree branches, long and bare and skeletal. The trees reached their branches out as if to choke each other, and Carrot Top could not see a single bird perched amongst them. It seemed that all the trees in this section of the forest were dead and bore no leaves… well no actually that wasn't quite true. The trees bore no leaves on their own branches, but there were technically leaves on them: the leaves of the purple vines that coiled around each and every one of them, wrapped around each of their trunks loosely like a dress.
Carrot Top stared at the vines for a moment before recognizing them: “Miser weed” she said, calling upon her memory of a page in her book of plants. It was said that when Miser weed grew on a lone tree that tree would grow taller and wider as if it suddenly had the ambition to soak up every drop of sunlight it could catch. But when the weed infested a population of trees growing together then they would compete, wasting resources and nutrients by trying to grow their own leaves and branches over those of every other tree and take more than their needed share of sun and rain. It usually resulted in the trees overextending themselves and starving.
Carrot Top glanced behind her and a few paces back she could see where the creepy, infected trees gradually thinned out and were replaced with the “ordinary” trees of the everfree, still creepy but now somehow comforting to see.
As Carrot Top was deducing the plant’s identity, Angel’s had also been staring at the vines, his little eyes darting to and fro, and he was growing more and more nervous. Before the mare realized something was amiss, he leapt off of her back and sprinted back the way they had come as fast as his rabbit legs would carry him (which, if fables starring tortoises and hares are to be believed, is very very fast). It was certainly faster than an exhausted orange and yellow earth pony who had already trekked very far and undergone a ridiculous amount of hardship that day. She galloped after him and yelled at him to stop, but she had barely reached the living section of the Everfree when she slipped on a particularly wet puddle of mud and went sliding to crash head-first into a very familiar den. Before the scratching and screaming began the mare audibly sighed and said only four words: “Fine. do your worst.”
And the mommy badger did her worst.
*******************
Angel was hiding. There was something very wrong with that place, with the dead trees and strange vines. His instincts, dulled though they were by a life of luxury living with The Lady, were loudly and insistently blaring warnings at him, telling him to avoid that place. So he had ran, and as soon as he was far enough away that his instincts began to quiet down he dug a small hole into the ground and hid.
Apparently he had not hidden himself well enough though, for suddenly he felt himself being grabbed by his lucky feet and plucked out of his hole like a carrot. He shook and struggled for a bit before opening his eyes and, upon seeing who it was that held him, went limp. Harry the Bear, another of The Lady’s favored guests, growled at Angel in greeting before lowering him to the ground. Brushing himself off, Angel looked around to see Mr. Boarisson (the boar) Mr. Beaverton Beaverteeth (the beaver), and Mrs. Eaglerus Eaglebeak (the alligator). Toby the fruit bat was also there for some reason that Angel could not comprehend, because everybunny knew he was useless.
Angel nodded at each of them (except Toby) and like a general commanding his army asked each of them to report their status. From their reports he learned that a strange pegasus had broken into The Lady’s house earlier that day and bunnynapped her, tying her up and trying to run away with her. All The Lady’s guests and guardians had of course leapt to her defense, attacking the stranger, but he managed to flee into the forest. They pursued him, but when he fled into this strange area of the forest they were all overcome by an instinctual urge to retreat to behind the perimeter of dead trees and could not pursue him any further.
Angel frowned and tried to think of a plan.
*******************
Carrot Top simply could not imagine how her day could possibly get any worse. And yeah, she knew that whenever anypony, herself included, thought something like that it inevitably did get much worse, but honestly at this point she was beyond caring.
“That stupid rabbit!” she yelled, rubbing at her sore face, “I’m doing this for him and his owner but he still runs away to save himself and gets me stuck in yet another sun-blasted badger den!” The hood of her cloak had been absolutely shredded, which meant that her bald, scratched up head and her glare of death were on full display, and together they were a very frightening sight to behold.
Carrot Top had finally managed to wrestle her way out of the badger den (the fifth time this week, and the third individual den, she noted, which only served to make her even angrier). She was now wandering around the deadzone again, trying to pick the trail back up, but either the fall had disoriented her or the trail had ended back in the living portion of the forest. She couldn’t know for sure, and this was extremely frustrating.
“This is what always happens when I stick my neck out for others! I give it everything I’ve got, risking myself and sacrificing my own time and effort and well-being, not to mention MY MANE, but then nopony else ever helps! In the end… in the end its everypony for herself!!”
“Agreed” said a voice behind her.
Carrot Top hastily tried to turn around, but suddenly a rope trap burst out of the mud beneath her, wrapping around her legs and pulling her upside down and into the air. She bounced twice then hung limply there by her legs, slowly rotating while her captor spoke:
“I’m sorry miss, I was expecting… well, a horde of angry animals… so I set up some traps. But now that you’ve found me I’m afraid I can’t let you leave.
I suppose that may seem a bit selfish… but its like you said: Its everypony for himself. And soon I’m going to get for myself everything I ever wanted, everything that was denied me! All the money and all the power that should have been mine, but went instead to those brown nosing, self-righteous Poseys!”
Carrot Top struggled in her bonds, trying to get free or at least to turn herself around to see who was talking. She heard a shuffling noise behind her, and then a very familiar whimpering voice… “Fluttershy!”
“Oh Carrot Top, I’m so sorry you got involved in this…” it was reassuring to hear Fluttershy’s voice and know she was alive and well, but at the same time the fear in that voice made Carrot Top narrow her eyes in anger.
“Did you just call her ‘Carrot Top’? Hah!” her captor’s voice shook with arrogant laughter, “And here I had only hoped to capture you Fluttering Posey, to ransom you off for a small fortune and get revenge on Thunderous Posey while at it… but I expect the Element of Generosity will fetch an even greater ransom!”
And he laughed and laughed until Carrot Top managed to turn herself to face him and what she saw made her want to scream...
*******************
A thought suddenly occurred to Angel, and he wiggled his whiskers at Harry the Bear in a questioning manner. Angel wanted to know how it was that a single pegasus had managed to take The Lady captive and carry her all the way to the Everfree when there were dozens and dozens of her stalwart friends and guests there to stop him?
Harry growled and snorted, saying that the stranger was a crafty and cowardly one and had used The Lady as a shield, preventing any of them from decisively stopping him for fear of hitting her.
Angel frowned and twitched his ear in just such a way as to communicate that this still should not have been enough to prevent them all from landing a single hit on the evil pegasus.
In reply Harry only looked over at Eeaglerus Eaglebeak, who grinned to reveal several grey pegasus feathers and many tufts of dark blue mane stuck in her alligator teeth.
*******************
Carrot Top screamed… in laughter.
The pegasus who had them captive was bruised and battered, his clearly expensive clothes were in tattered and covered with what looked like animal droppings, and perhaps funniest of all was his mane, half of which seemed to have been chewed off. The other half looked like it had been expertly groomed once, but it too seemed to be barely hanging on. It seemed by the scowl on his face that the pegasus had cared as much about his mane as Carrot Top had cared about hers.
“Ahaha! You lo -haha- you look ridiculous!!” Carrot Top’s uncontrollable laughter was was beginning to make her sway back and forth in the air.
“Stop laughing! STOP LAUGHING! You two are my CAPTIVES!! You will FEAR me, and soon ALL will know my name: WEATHER MANE… I mean WEATHER VANE!”
But it was too late to fix his slipup and soon even Fluttershy was joining in with her little giggles, and Carrot Top’s laughter drowned out the sound of Weather Vane’s continued curses and threats.