Luna scuffed at the ground, inwardly fuming. She was outwardly fuming as well, but none of her guards were especially keen on highlighting that fact.
"It makes no sense!" she complained for the third time this morning, breathing over her head trackers shoulder. Said tracker would have uttered a complaint of her own, save for the grace that in her irritation Princess Luna had dropped her rote of speaking with the 'ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE. She wasn't about to raise a fuss and remind her to adopt it once more..."This is the third time we've been back this way! Are you certain we are following the correct tracks?"
"Yes, my princess," Rough Brush reiterated for the third time in recent moments, "The trail is clear, the foals tracks stick out in the forest worse than Prince Blueblood would. As for its meandering route... well you do have us tracking a foal, Princess. There is little chance that they know how to properly navigate these woods..."
"Then why have we not caught up?" Luna demanded, a huff of irritation passing her lips. "You said the tracks were fresh, did you not?"
"Yes Princess, but we can only move so quickly without risking that we ourselves lose track of the foals passage..."
Luna groaned in frustration, her wings fidgeting tensely. If only the tracks had were going in an obvious direction. She could simply fly above the canopy and head off in a straight line. But no, the tracks backtracked, meandered off in odd directions, and pretty much did anything besides going in a straight line. So she was forced to blithely follow after her tracker, a pegasus enlisted in the royal guard.
Upon bringing her concerns to her sister, Celestia had suggested trying to track whomever had raided the secluded grove. It was understandably not unfindable, for she and her sister had found the cave centuries previously. Verily, all one had to do was simply tromp into the cave, Celestia really should have put up some warding in her absence. Bringing Rough Brush to the underground grove had prompted a discovery all of its own.
The memorial had only been disturbed recently. A day or two at the most!
More surprising than that, was the fact that the lid had been moved... from the inside.
Luna was initially ecstatic. Had her sons' eternal sleep simply been that of the Nightmares' influence? Would she finally be able to share her joy at the raising of the moon with her own brood? The little kings death truly was a tragedy, but if he had given his life to save her son? Luna knew she would fondly remember the little kings sacrifice ever eternally.
"Princess," Rough Bush called out, drawing Luna's attention. "Look."
Luna looked onward, and found a strange sight before her. A cragodile corpse, freshly picked clean of its meat. All that was left were its blood stained bones, which stuck upwards towards the sky in a futile attempt to mark it.
"This is..." Luna muttered, taking in the scene. It looked like... A magic surge. The cragodile had obviously tried to attack the foal -Luna felt a perverse trill of pleasure rush through her at the knowledge that the cragodile had perished, if it had killed her foal... she never would have let the dumb creature die. It would have lived in eternal torment-, leading to the foal... overcharging an unfocused levitation spell. It had grabbed the cragodile, thrusting it away with such force its spine had snapped on contact with the tree it now lay against.
"The foal escaped," Rough Brush stated, "But I'm afraid this is as far as we're going to get, my princess."
"What foalishness passes thine lips?" Luna snarled, standing over the belligerent tracker, "We hath the trail in our sights, what impudence do you speak these words with?"
Rough Brush sniffed, even though the princess had fallen back into the olde dialect, at least she wasn't blasting her backward with the royal Canterlot voice. She didn't deign to say anything for a moment, simply pointing upwards towards the sky.
"You forget, princess. This is the Everfree forest."
Lunas' eyes grew wide in panic, peering at the obscured sky above them. Her eyes saw, but she refused to acknowledge the shapes coalescing above them. "No. No, no no no no! The rain... We..." she stuttered, her gaze frantically tracking back and forth from the sky back to Rough Brush.
"There's nothing we can do, princess," Rough Brush admitted, shaking her head in defeat. "The forest knows we're here, and I'd wager it also knows what we're trying to do. Those rain clouds look heavy, this is probably going to be strong storm," she stated, a few quicker raindrops escaping from the cloud overhead to patter in the forest around them.
"I can't... I wont just abandon him, not when I'm this close," Luna uttered, fixing Rough Brush with a pleading glance.
"We're going to lose the trail in mere minutes, princess. The best thing we could do now... we should check the town closest to here. Its very likely he managed to exit the forest, seeing as his tracks have been heading in a nearly straight line for Ponyville for the past hour or so..."
Luna nodded, hoping beyond hope. The bearers lived in Ponyville, perhaps they would assist in her search?