The two walked with much more haste on the way back to the camp. The diminishing light overhead was like a timer that clicked away with each passing glimmer of light. The colors of the forest gradually slipped away and became little more than dark gray outlines among a dark background. Glimmers of moonlight were able to pierce weakly through the now black leafed canopy, giving them clairvoyance enough to at least see one another.
"How much longer do you think we have?" Quills asked as he arched his back to give it a much-needed break. "It feels like we've been walking for hours."
"I don't know," Alistair admitted as placed the saddlebag he was carrying in his arms onto the ground. "It's hard to recognize anything from it being so dark. If I could just see properly..."
He stepped a few paces away from Quills and began to look around every which way from where he was standing. His eyes darted at an almost mathematical speed. His mind trying to remember just when and where they had passed through on their way to the camp. It was all so confusing and disorienting. Everything looked the same in the dark, which made any memory of the landscape useless.
Sighing, Alistair turned to Quills and gestured to where he'd set his saddlebag. "I'm gonna have to leave this here. Lugging that thing around makes it much harder to concentrate on where we need to get and I can't even cast spells with my hands full like that. Having some proper lighting would make getting back at least partially possible."
"What if I used my horn to light the way instead?" Quills suggested. "Then we wouldn't have to leave anything behind and have to make another trip out here to find it."
"Then you'd have to be in front, and I'd have to be behind you. Please don't take this as an insult but directing you while simultaneously figuring just where we're headed wouldn't make my job any easier. And trust me, this is a lot harder than it looks."
He bent down to where the bag was and summoned an aura of energy into his palm, briefly scorching an 'X' into the ground. "There, now we know where to find it later. I can guarantee Neuro will understand when we explain it to him back at camp."
"If we get back to camp," Quills corrected humorously. "I heard bears and serial killers have a particular palette for lost college students."
Alistair smirked as a beam of blue light grew out from his right hand and leveled it forwards like a flashlight. The way ahead was immediately baked in a crisp, almost white shadow of light that illuminated nearly fifty yards in front of them.
He looked surprised at the beam's strength and inspected his digits as if they were a foreign object instead of belonging to his arms. "That's...brighter than I thought it'd be. Interesting."
"You make that sound like a bad thing. But maybe we should keep going, who knows how long it's been since we left. The others might get worried."
"You're right. We shouldn't keep them waiting any longer than we have to."
They almost doubled their speed from last time around, trudging through the forest with an added confidence that seemed almost to give them wings. But the night's darkness still crept around the edges of the magical light's reach no matter how bright it was. Alistair was still aware of the fact that his senses in such a setting still weren't entirely intact which required holding a much more composed concentration as he guided them through the black woods.
Time began to flicker away for the both of them. It was hard to tell just how long they'd been walking, and it was hard to gauge just how much progress they'd made. A mile? A kilometer? Ten feet? It was all relative at this point, and Alistair chose not to think about it while Quills chose not to ask about it. They'd get there when they got was the unspoken rule between them.
It was some time later that the distant lights of the expedition's camp fire's began to glimmer in the distance, stopping them in their tracts to gaze at them.
"We made it!" Quills announced jubilantly. "I can't believe we made it! Geez, I bet it's practically dawn by now. But at least, we're here, right?" He looked to Alistair for confirmation, who was standing like a statue a few paces ahead.
His eyes trained in on the distant flames, inspecting the faraway image's minor details for some anomaly. The boy's arm was still raised to position the illumination from his hand, but he promptly dissipated it and turned back around to Quills.
"Do you feel that?" he asked with an icy whisper.
Quills blinked in confusion. "Feel what?"
"That," Alistair beckoned to the camp about a quarter mile away. "Do you feel anything when you look at that? Does your horn feel anything?"
"No...it doesn't. Should it?"
Alistair shook his head. "I'm not sure, but something doesn't feel right. We've been gone too long."
"And how does that imply that something happened?"
"I..." the young man struggled with his words for a moment, "just feel something from here. Like something bad has or is going to happen. I don't like it."
Quills felt the urge to puncture the sentiment with some objective fact throwing, all with an unintentional sardonicness that would make it come off as if he was rude. But he opted against the action, taking some restraint in not giving his two cents on the matter. This was a situation he'd never quite found himself in and maybe thought it was best left to the bipedal before him who more than likely had. So instead, he kept quiet, taking some pride along with it.
Alistair took a few more paces toward the distant light and crouched down just by the incline of a dried trench. He squinted as far as his vision would take him while simultaneously waving Quills over.
The unicorn reluctantly followed. His patience was wearing thin the more his back moaned under the saddlebags he carried and any more shenanigans of the night just made it all the worse. They could see the campsite in front of them. Why was there any need to be cautious about it? The two had been walking for ages and Alistair was more than likely jumping at things that weren't there.
"Take the bags off," Alistair whispered. Quills immediately obliged without argument. "Follow me as I move up and try to stay at a crouch. Okay?"
Quills, with the load off his back, nodded with a bit more energy and less of a concealed frown. Alright, maybe he could play Alistair's game a little bit. He didn't have the pack on his back anymore after all.
They crept forwards to the camp and its bastion of orange fire that came brighter the closer they approached. Alistair made sure to avoid stepping on any leaves, twigs, or other such noise makers as they approached and shushed Quills whenever he accidentally did. Their heads were down as they moved, preventing much of a perspective as they approached, the only notifier being the growing light from the several camp fires.
Eventually, Alistair motioned for them to stop behind a deadfall just a hundred yards from the camp. He poked his head up over the downed tree to get a full picture of what he had felt earlier. He instinctively gasped at what he saw.
The camp had been ransacked. Sample crates had been split open and their contents scattered all over the site. Tents had been torn through with an animalistic tenacity and left in shreds. Small carts had been flipped over, documents of all sorts were strewn every which way, and it seemed that most personal effects from the professors had been tossed into a great big pile close to one of the fires.
But as for the professors, they lied in fixed lines by the main tent, bound and gagged by their hooves. Some sat while others lay, all looking forlorn to their hopeless predicament. None of them appeared injured, but a few were sobbing under the cloths that had been tied over their mouths. No one struggled against their bindings and nobody showed a sign of defiance against their captors.
Several different ponies, perhaps fifteen, walked among the prisoners. They looked gruff and dangerous, possibly bandits of a sort. The mares and stallions among them were all earth ponies, dressed in black-blue combat vests and promptly displaying swords or daggers in sheaths. They looked cocky, sure of themselves, knowing they were in control of the situation.
Their uniforms looked familiar to Alistair for some reason, and he focused his gaze on just what it was. It took a few seconds for him to recall, but once it finally clicked in his head, a rush of panic came over him.
"No!" he screamed while hopping over the deadfall and charging straight into the camp, summoning magic into both of his hands. “NOOOO!”
The ponies in blue-black looked surprised for a moment at just what was going on, neglecting to draw their weapons at the first sound of trouble. It was when Alistair blasted the first bandit in the chest, throwing it backward a good twenty feet, did the rest alert themselves to the present danger that had just come running in.
They rushed him all at once. The nearest to him swung with her blade at his head at a pace that was faster than he would have imagined. But he was still faster. Ducking underneath the blade, he rolled to his left and hopped back to his feet, firing another blast of energy that slammed into the mare and sent her tumbling to the ground.
Two more came into his range. One charged while the other hung back, waiting for a window to be made by his companion. With effortless grace, Alistair picked up the sprinting pony with the telekinetics of his magic and tossed him backward into his unsuspecting partner, sending them both into the dirt.
The rest came at him like a storm, moving and sliding around him in a flurry of blades. He dodged the first few strikes but felt a few steel points graze against his chest subsequently ripping parts of his shirt. The strikes had initially felt like scratches as he continued to evade their attacks to the best of his abilities, but he could begin to feel a warm trickle of blood from under his shirt.
A pony bounded into him with its head and front legs, grabbing his arms and trying to throw him to the ground. The pony's hold was firm against his own, and he could see another two ponies just a few feet away with their blades mid swing. With all his might (and a little help from his magic), he dragged the stallion around into his comrades direction and blasted him forwards, crashing into the other two with an overwhelming amount of force.
Alistair saw another blade flash out of the corner of his eye. He turned instinctively towards it, ready to counter another attack from the gang of bandits. But instead of another daring maneuver on his part, he felt the blunt end of a pommel smack against the top of his head, throwing his vision into a tailspin and sending him collapsing to ground in a confused stupor.
The world spin in front of his eyes and a throbbing pain sounded out from his skull. It took a moment for his vision to refocus finally from where he lay and when it did, he wasn't very confident from what he saw.
The bandits stood over him on all sides, each looking less than happy to his dispatching of them. A sword point was positioned by the edge of his throat, just shy of poking against his sensitive jugular vein. His eyes trailed the edge of the sword, looking up from the tip all the way to the pommel and into the eyes of the pony holding it.
His face paled, immediate realization coming back to him like a rushing wave. He tried to speak but found that his mouth just couldn't form the words, leaving him speechless and helpless on the ground.
"You know, there's other ways to say hello," Shale Press said with a smirk, continuing to hold the blade toward him.