Pinkie cried out as she burst from the surface of the river, “Seaweed! Seaweed on my leg!” She kicked wildly until she reached the shore and hauled herself up, trying to shake the tangled plant off her back leg. She flung it into the water and shuddered in revulsion. “Ugh, gross.”
She shook herself like a dog and wrung out her hair, mane poofing out to full volume immediately afterwards. She reached into it and drew out the Troll's Beard to inspect it. “Ah, glad you're okay, Beardy. Can't have you getting hurt.” She paused for a moment before pressing the plant against her chin and examining her reflection. “Hmm, don't know why they call you a beard though. You're more of a goatee or maybe mutton chops if we chopped you in half, but that would be bad.” She tucked the plant back in her mane for safekeeping and examined her surroundings.
Featherkeep was a distant blot over the river, the column of smoke the only detail that stuck out. She'd made a good deal of distance quickly. If the Bandersnatch hadn't come after her yet, then it likely wasn't going to at all.
“Well, I guess your plan worked, Rajy. Oops, sorry about that.” She giggled to herself and turned about then headed for the cliffs that led up to the forest. From there she would just need to head east to the train tracks and wait for the engine. She looked up at the distant rise and remembered the long trek getting down the other day. It had taken them most of the morning to find a path down the cliff that wouldn't trigger Rajrishi's acrophobia. They’d had to go so far afield to find one that it took them hours to find the river again. Pinkie rubbed her chin in thought and said to herself, “Hmm, maybe I can find a different way this time.”
She continued along the shore quickly, traveling the bank opposite the one she took the previous day. It was thanks to this different path that she found something curious on the shore. Far from the waterfall, she found blue-stained gouges in the ground. “Ohhh, this is where it woke up,” she said with a light shudder.
Confusion twisted her features, and she cocked her head. “But... wait, why did it take so long?” She looked eastward and saw the looming mega-tree-capped cliff miles away. It would have taken the Bandersnatch hours to drift this far. She remembered the thing regenerating from terrible wounds within minutes, seconds even.
She studied the river there. This was the first calm section of water, a flat pool that swirled lazily for a bit and then flowed down weakly over a cluster of rocks. Anything the size of the Bandersnatch wouldn't have been able to continue after that point.
Pinkie gasped, a shiver going up her back as she sprang into the air. “That's it! That's it, that's it, that's it! I know how to stop the Bandersnatch!” she cried out, running in a quick circle and laughing. “Now I just have to tell Rajy about it and—”
She cut herself off sharply, her eyes slowly rolling over the looming cliff and then to the distant city. “Ohh poop! Why couldn't I have figured this out last chapter?” She stomped the ground in frustration and ground her teeth together.
She fretted for a few minutes before calming herself down with a few hooffuls of cake. She sat on her haunches and said to herself, “Okay, don't panic. I just need to go forward, find the train and get back to Ponyville. I can come help Rajrishi afterward with a bunch of guards and stuff. Yeah, that's what I'll do!” She took a confident step forward and then deflated almost immediately “But... Rajrishi is back there fighting a big spiky monster all on his own. Who knows how long it would take for me to bring everypony to help. He could be long dead by then.”
She gasped at the thought and spun on a hoof, taking a few steps before halting again. “But, I was fine with the plan before. Nothing's changed, those ponies need this medicine.” She stared forward for a moment before her expression softened, “No, that's not right. Something has changed. Before, there was nothing I could do to help Rajrishi, now there is. If something happens to him now, it'll be all my fault! But if something happens to somepony back home, that'll be all my fault too! Gaaah!” She collapsed to the ground and clutched her head. “Where's a magic mirror pool when you need one?!” she shouted.
* * *
Raj shouldered through a pair of double doors and into the sunlit arcade on the south side of the keep. He stumbled from the hit but kept moving, panting and gasping for air. Behind him, the Bandersnatch’s claws scrabbled across the stone floor as it tore after him.
He wove through the arches, ducking past ornately carved pillars and old debris. The roof was entirely gone, the glass having fallen through ages ago and left the floor covered in a glittering carpet that caught the day's dying light. That and a century’s worth of growth and decay threatened his footing with every step.
The great beast pursuing him had no care for the footing nor the dead splendor around them, as it only had eyes for the tired, fleeing human before it. The thing's massive frame bounced off the sturdy pillars, too big for the path Raj was following. It was not concerned with frivolities such as space however and muscled forward after him.
Raj started to gain ground, just as he had hoped to in these tight quarters. He skewed hard to the side and made for the exit he'd marked, praying for speed. He heard the Bandersnatch roar and stone crumble as it simply powered through the obstructions. As he neared the exit he leaped up and swung, slicing his ax through the beak-embossed keystone of the arch.
As soon as his blade passed through it the whole structure rumbled and shook, rock raining down. He landed and spun to see the Bandersnatch get pinned under a descending wall, letting out a pitiless shriek as it was crushed. A wave of dust washed over him, and he coughed and covered his face.
He stood poised for a minute, axes held at ready. When no movement or sound came from the rubble, he relaxed and stood up straight. “All right, that bought me some time.” He holstered his axes and set off for the main keep, hoping to find some food before the Bandersnatch extricated itself.
The flooded basement yielded a pair of frogs he found somewhat appetizing, especially when seared against a burning log. That, some water, and a short rest left him feeling refreshed, though a far cry from good. He crept up to the wall and looked across the bailey towards the now-collapsed arcade. Even in the low light, he could see the collapsed wall had been rolled off. He sighed, knowing the beast would be coming at him again shortly.
He looked at the sun just as its lower edge touched the horizon, and he let out a relieved sigh. It had been hours since Pinkie had left, enough time for her to get far enough away from the dangerous creature. From what the village pony had told him, the Bandersnatch wasn't active at night. Even if it were, he still intended to hunker down and wait for rescue rather than risk leading the thing somewhere it could do harm. There were a dozen or more places in Featherkeep the Bandersnatch couldn't reach, places he would be safe for a few days. He let out a breath and started to relax, secure in his success.
Then he saw a flash of color at the edge of the bailey. Squinting, he saw a cluster of balloons drift out of a window and hang there brightly.
“Oh god dammit.” Raj sprang down the steps to the courtyard, darted through the still-smoldering gatehouse, and took off across the lawn at a rapid pace. He managed to reach the window unmolested and scrabbled up the wall to roll through the open window.
A weak light flicked on in the chamber and he saw Pinkie's broad smile in the dark. She whispered, “Hi, Rajrishi. I came back.”
“I see that. What happened? Are you hurt? Did you get lost?” he whispered back.
She shook her head. “No, no, I'm fine.”
“Then why the hell did you come back!?” he hissed.
Pinkie grinned back harder. “I figured it out, Rajrishi. I know how to stop the Bandersnatch!” she chirped back.
“Okay. Why did you come back though?” he asked again.
She knit her brow at him. “Um, I just told you. We're gonna stop the Bandersnatch. Then we can go back together.”
“That was not the plan!” he shot back.
“Well the plan sucked. It was The Worst Plan. We went with it because it was the only option we had that could work. Well, now we have a better idea, one that doesn't involve you risking your life and one where I don't feel super guilty and scared my whole way back. This way a dangerous creature will be taken care of and we can save Ponyville. Everypony wins!” she said excitedly.
He stared at her for a long time before talking again. “Pinkie, I know it wasn't the best idea, but it would have worked. It would have saved Ponyville, that's the most important thing, the entire reason we're here. But you scrubbed the whole plan, because it wasn't a hundred-percent win. Do you have any idea how risky that is?”
“Oh don't be all dramatic and Rarity on me, Raj. I'm still doing what you told me, sorta,” she answered. “I gave half the beard to Gummy and sent him towards the train-tracks.”
Raj blinked. “What's a Gummy?”
“My pet alligator that lives in my mane. He doesn't have any teeth,” she replied like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“He lives in your mane?”
“Yeah, he's only this big.” She held up her hooves a short distance apart.
Raj stared at her for a minute before sputtering “That is not... how could—why?” He stepped away and ran a hand down his face with a weak glare. He wanted to yell at her, but that would have accomplished nothing. Deal with the problem in front of me, he thought. There's no use grousing about it. He asked back as levelly as he could, “Okay, what is it? What's the silver bullet that's going to kill the thing?”
“It's the water. It can't handle the water!”
Raj was still and quiet for a moment before saying back flatly, “Pinkie, we saw it swim before.”
She shook her head. “No, not like that. Water doesn't make it melt or anything like that. It can't heal when it's under water. I think it needs air to heal itself. If we force it under water, it won't be able to get back up.”
Raj paused, thinking. “How did you figure this out?”
“I found where it dragged itself out of the river. It was in a shallow part really far from the waterfall, somewhere it would have surfaced. It didn't start moving until it reached there.”
“Flimsy evidence.” It made sense as anything in Equestria did. Pinkie also had a strange knowledge and intuition of these creatures. “Can't hurt to try though. Don't really have any other option at this point. Big question though, how do you propose we do that, huh? We can't just pop its water wings.”
“Well of course we can't, it's super sharp. They would be pre-popped. Trust me, I know all about inflatable rubber things.” She hopped up on the window sill. “We need something to drag it into the water, like an anchor.”
“We don't have an anchor Pinkie.”
“No, but we do have that.” She pointed a hoof and smiled.
Raj looked out the window and saw what she was indicating. A stone tower, thin but tall, on the northwest corner of the castle that was slumping towards the river. It had decayed with the rest of the castle and had crumbled sections all along its length. So badly had it decayed that the heavy mooring chains hooked to the turret had long since snapped, leaving lengths of heavy iron dangling off the side of it.
He looked at it for a little bit and nodded. “Yeah, that could work.”
* * *
The run to the tower was a quick one, but it did not go unnoticed. They heard the creature coming before they saw it, but hopefully, it was the last series of terrible shrieks that the two would ever hear.
The two of them ducked against the side of the tower and stared up at the dangling chains, the longest of which hung just a few feet over their heads. He noticed a fallen link near the wall and bent down to inspect it. It was as corroded as you would expect a centuries-old iron chain to be, but it felt sturdy. Pinkie nudged close and inspected the metal. “Will it work? Will it work?”
He replied, “Those links are pretty thick, near an inch I'd say, probably heavy enough to weigh the thing down. May not be strong enough to hold it though. Iron can rust a shell over itself if it's thick enough that will protect it from further damage, but I don't know if what's here will be strong enough to—” he was cut off when Pinkie dove into his chest and knocked him to the ground. An instant later a crack sounded and a spray of needles bounced off the stone and scattered over them.
They were back up in a second and then the Bandersnatch was on them again. It swiped at him, bouncing forward on its back legs to press the advantage. Raj backed up to get his bearings and sidestepped in, swinging his axes at its swiping paws. His blades cleaved through its flesh and it backpedaled, holding its sliced legs close to itself as it let out a warning growl.
Raj shuffled closer to the entrance to the tower and glanced over at Pinkie. He dropped an ax to the ground in front of her and said, “You go chop the chain down, I'll keep it busy.”
“Okey dokey, be careful.” She bit the handle and started up the spiraling stairs. Raj didn't spare her a second's glance before the Bandersnatch rushed in at him again.
Raj dove and rolled to the side, coming up in a bounce that took him out of the thing's reach. Down an ax, he couldn't risk going in for a strike, all he had to do was avoid taking a hit and keep it occupied. He did just that, leaping and rolling and always keeping his ax up to deflect errant strikes.
In the tower, Pinkie was at the halfway mark, running up the spiraling stairs as fast as possible. She ran past an exposed portion of the stair in time to see Raj slide underneath the Bandersnatch’s pounce. The creature slid and spun into another charge, but Raj was already running. Distracted, she didn't notice a patch of lichen growing on the step and she slipped, hitting her chin on the step. She let out a sharp cry of pain that drew the attention of both the fighters in the yard.
The Bandersnatch looked up and went wide around Raj to spring onto the tower, claws scrabbling for the gap.
“Hey!” Raj shouted after it, “I'm not done with you.” He leaped up after it and gained purchase on a loose brick. He was just about to dive at it, but the thing's tail whipped him across the stomach. He let out a cry of pain and lost his grip, falling ten feet to the ground to land flat on his back. Air rushed out of him, and he rolled on his side, clutching his gut and groaning. He looked up just in time to see the thing's snaking tail draw into the hole in the building.
Raj rose up, ignoring the pain in his midsection and shouted “Pinkie! It's coming!”
He heard a warbling cry from inside the tower, and a moment later Pinkie called out, “I know!” He could track the Bandersnatch's progress as its bulk bulged out the eroded bricks of the tower in a spiraling line. An explosion of popping balloons and bursting confetti was followed an instant later by a roar of frustration and a patch of bricks pushing free of the wall.
Knowing that the party cannon would have bought her time, Raj unwrapped his uniform jacket to see how bad his wound was. He immediately noted that his intestines were not hanging out, which was always a good thing, but his stomach was covered in abrasions and scratches from the creature's spiny tail. Knowing how powerfully it could snap that tail, it was likely that it hadn’t even struck him on purpose. If it had been a determined strike, the thing would have sliced him in half.
Shelving that sobering thought, he struggled to his feet and started towards the door. He halted when he heard a voice cry out from overhead, “Rajy!”
He looked up to see Pinkie's head poking over the edge of the tower with a panicked grimace. He shouted back, “Pinkie, jump down I'll catch you.”
“Don't worry about me. Knock the tower down!”
“What?” he asked.
“Knock it into the river!” She looked behind herself and then sprang off the tower, falling only a few feet before catching onto one of the dangling chains. The Bandersnatch leaned off the turret and snarled down at her, clawing and scratching futilely at her. She pushed off the tower and swung around, kicking the dangling chains up at the Bandersnatch as it clung to the stone and swiped at her.
Raj was not in a questioning mood and rushed to the far side of the tower. The central pillar had compressed its foundation bricks, warping and bulging them out like overcrowded teeth. He swung his axe, slicing through them easily and washing the wall in dust. He gripped the ax in both hands and swung again and again, each time cleaving away more brick and mortar.
After fifteen swings, the whole tower lurched towards him and the yawning cavity he'd cut into the pillar closed slightly. Not yet satisfied, he took two more swings to open it up more and the whole structure pitched hard as shaken bricks crumbled against the floor. Raj covered his head and dashed out the low door.
He slid to a halt and looked back to see the whole building tipping away from him. As it crumbled, Pinkie stood up on her hooves and let go of the chain, sliding down the stone face. The Bandersnatch scrabbled over the crenelated turret after her, but jolted to a halt and its body twisted around its foreleg. Squinting, Raj saw that one of the broken chains was tangled around its leg, kicked onto it by Pinkie while she had been hanging from the tower.
The creature let out a pitiless howl as the tower lost its remaining structure and pitched towards the river. It hit with an almighty splash and the gunshot-loud crack of fracturing stone. Raj hurried to the vine webbed fence and cut through it to look down at the rapidly sinking building and the struggling beast on top of it. The Bandersnatch pulled and struggled against the chain, creaking the metal enough that Raj feared it would free itself.
However, the water rose past the thing's hackles and it was still restrained. The last he saw of the thing was it starting to gnaw on its restrained limb as the tower tilted and sank into the river. Then it was just a white blur in bubbling water that disappeared after a second. There was a moment of quiet before he felt a dull impact through his boots.
He let out a shuddering breath and leaned his head against the fence, shoulders slumping. Pinkie gently nudged him with the axe she had borrowed. She slid it back in his harness and asked, “Did it work? I didn't see.”
“It did. Thing's at the bottom of the river,” he responded flatly.
She sighed in relief. “Alright, finally.” She nudged his side again. “Told you it would work. That thing won't be a problem for anypony for a long, long time,” she replied rather smugly. They both stood there for a minute, watching the last bubbles rise to the surface.
Once the river was nothing more than smoothly flowing water, they were gone.
* * *
The train was supposed to arrive at noon of the next day. They made it there just as the sun was going down.
Neither were in good shape. Pinkie was stained with dirt and mud, her coat thick with burrs, twigs, and sap. Her mane was so mussed that her alligator was forced to ride on her back, his share of the Troll's Beard clamped in his toothless maw. They'd found him not even an hour's walk from where Pinkie had sent him out. Raj was in an even sorrier state. The bandages wrapped around his midsection had dried into a crusty mess, and he clutched at them constantly. Neither of them had slept in more than thirty hours.
Raj ignored the insistent jabs of agony from his bruised muscles and scanned up and down the tracks for their train, or any train for that matter. He saw none, just blank tracks curving out of view behind a wall of trees. Without a sound, he collapsed into the grass next to the tracks, staring up at the band of sky between the trees.
Pinkie sidled up and nudged him. “Rajrishi, come on. Get up.”
“Why?” he shot back.
“Because we need to get back to Ponyville. If the train isn't here, we’ll need to get to the next station ourselves.”
He chuckled. “Do you mean the one that's a hundred miles away? Or the one that's even further than that?”
“The first one,” she answered with confusion.
“Oh, well yeah. Of course.” He sat up “Let's just jaunt over there and catch a rail home. Why, it should only take us until noon tomorrow to show up. What's another fourteen hours of traveling without rest? Trivial at this point!”
She grinned at him. “Great! Come on.” She pulled at his shirt.
“Wait, I have a better idea Pinkie.” He stood up fully, voice rising in volume. “Why don't I shove the beard clear up my ass and I'll just fart it into town! Load some confetti in there for ballast, cause if I'm going to colon-cannon this stuff anywhere, I want it to be festive!” he shouted at her.
Pinkie stepped back, looking back and forth in bewilderment. “I don't... can humans do that?”
“No! We can't!” he screamed at her hard enough that his voice echoed through the trees.
Pinkie simpered and hoofed at the ground meekly. “Oh... you're mad.”
“You're Goddamn right I'm mad.” He growled at her. “This shouldn't have happened. You should have come straight here and met the damn train. You'd be in Ponyville by now, curing ponies and planning on how to come back for me. Instead, we're out here, stuck hundreds of miles from where we need to be with no real way of getting back.”
She stuttered back, “B-But I found out how the stop the Bandersnatch. What would you have done if I didn't—”
“I would have followed the plan,” he shot back with a vicious glare “I would have figured it out. I don't care if you found a railgun or something that would kill it dead. That was not our primary concern. Our job was to save Ponyville, to get this plant to the sick ponies it could help. Now, because you lost your nerve, those ponies are not going to get help, and that will be on you, Pinkie.”
Pinkie grimaced and bit her lip, eyes going watery and mane dropping flat. She started to say something, but it was lost to a burst of tears as she collapsed to the ground, sobbing and wailing. Raj continued to glare at her through her fit, anger shining through the fatigue. He turned sharply and started down the track, intent on the only option that was left to him.
A steam whistle sounded from further up the tracks.
The two of them froze, looked at each other and started bolting down the tracks, screaming their heads off. After a minute they saw the burning headlight of the engine come into view, and they shouted louder to be heard over the machine. As they neared, it squealed to a halt and the door to the driver's compartment slid open. Their driver, Piston, looked out at them and said, “Well, look who it is. You two still need that ride back to Ponyville?”
The two laughed with relief as they climbed into the train.