Alpha Centauri

by StLeibowitz

Chapter 22: The Hollow Mountain

“They are heading for the mountain,” said Burrfang as the pack loped swiftly through the woods, staying in the underbrush to either side of the wide road the bugganes had cut through the thin trees. He was at the front of their formation; Streamwalker was close behind him, with Rainbow Dash and Greenwatch following just after Streamwalker. Two other wolves – a male and a female, Longclaw and White-Eye – came after them, and the seventh member of their merry band, a wolf called Lameleg who managed somehow to limp as fast as Dash could run, brought up the rear.

Dash glanced up from the forest floor at the sound of Burrfang's voice, her eyes unconsciously drawn to the mountain he spoke of. They'd all known where the bugganes were heading since at least a week ago. There was nothing else of note in the direction they were heading. Just the thing she'd started thinking of as The Mountain.

It was tall and isolated, but what made it stand out more even than it being the tallest thing for about a hundred miles in all directions was the constant, thin plume of smoke that rose from its jagged top. It had to be a volcano. There was no way it was anything else. But why would bugganes be running towards a volcano?

“They are heading in the mountain's direction,” Lameleg muttered. “This does not mean the mountain is their destination.”

“And where else would they be going?” Burrfang growled back. “There's nothing beyond that mountain for a thousand miles. Do you think they're simply wandering off into the wilderness to die, Lameleg?”

“I think we should send the Great One out to scout again,” he replied. “They may have changed direction again.”

“To throw us off their scent?” Burrfang chuckled. “They are bugganes.”

“I am not so inclined to dismiss the thinking of bugganes as I once was,” said Streamwalker before Lameleg could respond again. “Burrfang, be silent. You as well, Lameleg.”

“Afraid they will hear us, Streamwalker?” Burrfang asked under his breath.

In three great bounds, Streamwalker had caught up to Burrfang and swatted him across the side of his face with a heavy blow from his forepaw. The blow knocked Burrfang's head into the trunk of a tree he was passing, and he yelped in pain. Everyone else came up short, backing quickly away from the two wolves – even Rainbow Dash.

“Do you want to lead this pack, Burrfang?” asked Streamwalker. His voice was almost a growl – a savage, threatening growl, not just a tone of irritation. He set a paw on Burrfang's neck before the other wolf could rise to his feet again, and pressed down. “Before you answer, ask another question. Do you think you could defeat me in a duel right now, with my claw on your throat and my teeth inches from your ear? Would it be worth trying?”

“No, alpha.”

“You are hot-headed but capable of wisdom, it seems.” Streamwalker lifted his paw and let Burrfang scramble back to his feet. “Be silent. Not another word unless it is related to our mission.” He turned to glare at Lameleg. “Nothing from you, either.”

Lameleg arched his back slightly and tucked his tail between his legs. “Yes, alpha.”

Streamwalker nodded and addressed the rest of them. “I know we have been pursuing these bugganes for almost a week. We are tired from the chase and hungry. None of that will be helped by turning on each other. There will be no arguments, and no fights. Am I understood?”

A chorus of “Yes, alpha,” from the rest of the wolves, and the same submissive display that Lameleg had put on. Satisfied, Streamwalker began trotting ahead again. “Burrfang, back to point,” he growled. “Longclaw, hang further back with Lameleg. Keep an eye out for ambushes. Remember that we are facing bugganes. Keep alert for things moving beneath the ground.”

There was no argument, and the pack started moving forwards again. Rainbow Dash put a bit more distance between herself and Streamwalker. He couldn't – and wouldn't – harm her, but something about the alpha wolf put the part of her that was still a pony on edge. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a wolf.

“He can maintain control of his pack, but he seems to be rather less capable at maintaining order,” Midnight remarked, materializing alongside Rainbow Dash. “Burrfang doesn't appear to be a team player. His presence on this mission is a mistake.”

“Maybe,” Dash whispered, trying not to let the wolves hear – that would utterly destroy anything Streamwalker had just accomplished, hearing their physical deity debating their leader's weaknesses. “Streamwalker has to have a good reason for bringing him.”

“I can't see one,” said Midnight. “Nepotism?”

“I don't think their packs work like that.”

Midnight laughed. “Everyone has a little nepotism in their governments, unless they don't have families. Ponies do it all the time. I bet wolves have the same attitude about it.”

“They don't like it?”

“They discourage it but don't correct it when it happens,” she said. Her eyes got a faraway look. “I...I think it's happened to me. I remember being promoted oddly fast once I was out of the Academy, when my grandsire was the head of the Guard...”

“I don't think they're related,” said Dash. She looked more closely at the two wolves – white-furred Streamwalker and the much darker Burrfang. She couldn't pick out any similarities in appearance between them. “They don't look alike at least. I guess they could be, maybe?”

“Perhaps Burrfang merely has useful skills. Were I to lead a squad, I wouldn't allow personal opinion of a highly skilled flier to interfere with getting them into my squad.” Midnight's face turned thoughtful. “I suppose Streamwalker is competent enough at keeping him in check. If Burrfang is useful, perhaps the lack of order is a tradeoff he was willing to make.”

Rainbow Dash went silent after that too as they drew closer to the mountain in pursuit of the buggane. It definitely did look like the mole-beast had the mountain as its destination, and Dash's certainty only increased the longer they trotted without a serious change in direction. The trees grew less thick, the ground rockier, the burnt ruins of long-dead oaks littering the ground more and more numerous – and still the buggane kept its path.

They paused near an easily-scalable outcrop of rock and let Lameleg – surprisingly a nimble climber despite the limp he moved with – scramble up to the top of it to get a better look at the buggane. The trees – living ones at least – were long behind them now, and Dash's wings made her too great a liability to use for scouting. Even a buggane would be able to spot the sun glinting off her shining feathers if she took to the skies now. Ordinarily, she could have asked Ghealach to release a bit of magic for an invisibility spell, but Ghealach was worryingly silent, and worryingly absent. Now that Dash thought about, she realized Cloud Ferry was gone as well.

Why does that bother me so much? She wondered. Who knows when they'll show up again? I should enjoy the quiet while I've got it!

But she couldn't. Something in the back of her mind – she really, really hoped it wasn't another phantom – refused to let her let the matter slide. They had to be planning something, plotting against her somehow. But what could they do?

“There is a cave mouth ahead,” Lameleg declared when he slid back down the white boulder. “The buggane has vanished into it - just one, its companions seem to have left it. There's smoke seeping out of it too, but I can't get a good whiff of it. Everything smells like smoke here.”

“Is this another buggane encampment?” White-Eye wondered aloud. He didn't sound exactly thrilled by the prospect. “How many of these are there?”

“It can't be,” Burrfang growled. “There can't be enough bugganes in this forest to fill a rock spire and a mountain! There wouldn't be a pup left by its mother's side from here to Caisleanard for their want of food!”

“If it isn't an encampment, then what could it be?” Streamwalker asked.

“Maybe these bugganes went rogue,” Longclaw suggested. “Perhaps they simply abandoned their brethren to find a new cave, and we've been chasing after crows for the last few days!”

“Well, there's one sure way to find out,” Greenwatch said uncertainly. She glanced at Dash as if she was looking for backup. “We'll have to send someone in after it.”

“Sending one alone into that mountain is foolishness,” said White-Eye. “The great one might have escaped the spire with her hide intact, but I don't like the look of this mountain. One wolf, or one great one, would be suicide.”

“I agree with White-Eye,” Midnight said. “Something about that mountain seems familiar to me. I cannot place my hoof on exactly what, though. Whatever it is, it's dangerous.”

“A group will follow it in,” decided Streamwalker. “Great one, it would honor me if you were to accompany me inside.”

“Sure.”

Streamclaw nodded and almost visibly relaxed. “Burrfang, Greenwatch, you will come too. White-Eye, Longclaw, and Lameleg, remain out here. If we have not emerged by tomorrow morning, return to the pack and – and inform them they will have to select a new alpha.”

The three wolves told to stay outside inclined their heads in acquiescence, as did Greenwatch, but Burrfang growled irritatedly. “I suppose you have a reason for asking me to accompany you inside?” he asked gruffly.

“For ordering you, Burrfang – there will be no debate,” Streamwalker responded, with a dangerous glint in his eye. “And there is a reason. I do not trust you not to leave early and proclaim yourself alpha in my absence.”

“I - “ Burrfang started, but Streamwalker whirled fluidly away to face the mountain and began loping towards it, snarling back over his shoulder.

“Burrfang, Greenwatch – with me now!” he snapped. “Great one, if it pleases you.”

Rainbow Dash fell in behind Burrfang and Greenwatch as they approached the cave entrance, picking their way up the rocky slope towards the steaming maw of the mountain. The larger rocks, chalky and white like the mountainside itself, almost reminded her of bones. Streamwalker hesitated in front of the entrance – his snout wrinkled, and Rainbow Dash had to guess that the repulsive sulfurous stench wafting out of the darkness must have hit him at least three times as hard as it hit her. He pushed onwards though, stepping into the tunnel and into the shadow and vanishing around a corner soon after, with Greenwatch in tow. Burrfang took a bit longer, though; he eyed Dash warily as each waited for the other to enter.

“You first,” said Rainbow Dash, sweeping a wing out towards the cave impatiently.

“I would rather have a pup at my back than a “great one” whose best friends seemingly share her head with her,” Burrfang sneered. “A pup at least I could be sure would die before abandoning me. You...however much Streamwalker is taken with you, I still don't trust you.”

“Yeah, but you're still going in before me.”

Burrfang started to growl at her, but a louder growl echoed back down the tunnel. Streamwalker, of course. Defeated but still defiant, Burrfang whirled away from her and loped into the cave. With only a beat more of hesitation, Rainbow Dash followed him in and left the daylight behind.

-----

Twisting, claw-scored tunnels. Stone chips grating underhoof. The faint, tinny echo of a roar returning to her whenever her feathers rattled around a bit. The omnipresent smell of sulfur, and the omnipresent sound of water trickling, faintly, somewhere in the dark of the cave.

Not that the dark affected Rainbow Dash particularly much. She could see everything as if it was bathed in soft white illumination, like a magelight. Or like moonlight. Streamwalker and the wolves bit hold of each other's tail and then Streamwalker himself took hold of Dash's tail, and she led them all through the darkness. Sometimes the tunnel would go up, sometimes the tunnel would go down. Sometimes, for long stretches, it was flat and level. Sometimes the tunnel widened into something almost approaching a cave, but it never narrowed to less than the width of a particularly portly buggane.

“This doesn't look like a natural cave,” Dash observed after a while. “It kinda looks like the bugganes dug it all out, or maybe widened one that was already here.”

Streamwalker made a muffled noise that could be anything from agreement to annoyance.

“Oh, right. You guys can't see, can you...” She turned to Midnight, walking alongside her. “Hey, do you think you could get some of my magic away from Ghealach and Cloud Ferry for me to do a magelight spell or something?”

“I was a longma when I was alive,” Midnight answered simply.

“Right. I guess you wouldn't know how to do any magic then.”

Burrfang made a sound. Then he yelped as Greenwatch kicked him, which quickly turned to a growl, which was even more quickly cut off by Streamwalker jerking his head around to growl at him, which made Rainbow Dash let out a pained yelp of her own.

“Hey! Not while you've got my tail in your mouth!”

Streamwalker spat it out for a moment. “Apologies, great one.”

“Yeah, yeah. Could you all just try not to kill each other when you're biting my tail?”

She took their silence as acceptance of that condition, and they continued on down the winding tunnel.

Long minutes passed, and the tunnel began to gradually widen, the walls pulling back and the ceiling raising until they were no longer in a tunnel – they were in an underground canyon almost, a vast snaking cavern that curved and doubled back on itself. The wolves relievedly spat out the tails they'd been biting; large crystals, gleaming and glowing with a red light, studded the walls, allowing them to see. Or at least, to see well enough to avoid stepping over the edge of a cliff.

They all drew up short as they reached the abrupt drop-off down to the cavern's true floor. Some two hundred feet below it lay, broken and torn like some gigantic beast had come in ages past and tried to dig through it. Crystals were plentiful down there – as was whatever caused the smell. Rainbow Dash almost gagged, and the wolves retreated from the edge, as an updraft brought a potent upwelling of sulfur fumes and something else – metal perhaps; metal and lamp oil – to assault their noses.

“The floor up here continues around the walls of the cave,” Greenwatch observed, whispering. “The buggane must have continued along the ledges.”

“There is a slope on the other side,” Burrfang pointed out. “It could have descended to the cavern floor.”

“It is brighter down there,” Streamwalker said in a low voice. “Burrfang, Greenwatch, we three will search the cavern floor. Great one, as you can see better in the dark, search the ledges.”

“I'm on it.”

They split ways, the wolves going left and Rainbow Dash going right. She didn't fly, though that would have been faster – in an enclosed space, the sound her wings would make would be impossible to miss even for a buggane. Instead, she held her wings tightly against her sides and did her best to move silently, following the ledges down the snaking cavern.

After another few minutes, though, she froze in her tracks.

Something exhaled. It was loud, deep, and unmistakably the sound of something very large breathing out. The cavern walls and the ledge she was on vibrated under the force, though no dust was shaken loose from the ceiling that she could see, so she supposed that put an upper limit on the breather's size. Unless, of course, it had been there long enough that its breathing had knocked down all the dust.

More nervously, she kept walking. Rocks crunched under her hooves, when they didn't hit solid stone and emit a muted clop. She couldn't stop herself from wondering what, exactly, was living down in the cavern – and why the buggane had walked so many miles to pay it a visit. How big could a buggane get, really? Was it their king that lived down here, older and bigger by far than all the rest? Did bugganes even have a king? Nobody who was familiar with them would likely admit to even the possibility of that – but then, they'd all been shocked by the genuine buggane mage, and the size of the council she'd found, and the fact that they had grasped the concept of central leadership at all. A lot was unknown about bugganes it seemed.

A brilliant flash of light and an echoing thunderclap startled her out of her reverie. She jumped back with a shocked shout, wings spasming and catapulting her backwards with a rattling crash of metal. She landed on her back, looking up at the crystal-studded cavern ceiling – and at the tempestuous face of an infuriated Ghealach.

“Where are you?” Ghealach demanded as Dash sprung back to her feet. “I turn my attention elsewhere for less than half a day and you somehow manage to vanish from my perception of this world. Where are you? What cavern?”

“You just blew my cover!” Dash snapped angrily, refusing to be cowed. “There's something huge living down here that I have to sneak around and you just made me make the loudest sound short of a Sonic Rainboom I've ever heard!”

“Where are you?” Ghealach pressed. She stationed herself directly in Dash's path, obstructing the ledge.

“What, you really can't see me?”

“It is only thanks to our soul bond that I could contact you,” Ghealach confirmed. “I see everything my stolen light hits on this world, down into the deepest caves and the strangest depths of the ocean. And, somehow, in my absence you have managed to slip out of my direct perception. I will ask one more time: where are you?”

“In a cave with Streamwalker and the others,” she answered, dropping the volume of her voice. “We're trying to find that buggane we've been chasing. I think it's just up ahead.”

“And this “something huge” you so descriptively told me of?”

“I don't know yet,” Dash admitted. “But whatever it is, it's up ahead too.”

“There is but one course of action available to you, then,” said Ghealach. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Turn around and leave this cave, wherever you are,” she clarified slowly. “There is something very large, unknown, and likely very powerful ahead, and it is obstructing my sight somehow. I will not allow my sole agent on Domhan to die of her own stupidity in persisting with a buggane hunt that does nothing to further my own aims.”

“Like hay I will!”

“Perhaps a different tack would be more effective. Ask yourself this, Rainbow Dash: does this even further your own goals? Will this place you closer to your friend? Will this aid in the defeat of Beta Centauri?”

“That's your goal.”

“And it should be yours as well!” Ghealach snapped. “Without Beta Centauri's downfall, your friend – who has done nothing to prove to Beta that she is not, in fact, the long-lost Alpha Centauri, and has seemed actually to conform to the role quite well – will not be allowed to return to Equestria. And without Beta Centauri's defeat, I will not allow you to return either.”

Focus on your mission, Midnight whispered in the back of Rainbow Dash's mind. And, reluctantly, Dash bit back an angry outcry.

“Get out of my way,” she said to Ghealach, and Ghealach frowned, surprised.

“What?”

“Get out of my way,” Dash repeated, re-settling her wings and forcing them to lay flat against her sides. She straightened and did her best to look the Dust Sentinel in the eye. “I've got a buggane to catch, and I'm not abandoning Streamwalker, Burrfang and Greenwatch down here. I'm the only one who can see in the dark enough to lead them back out. If I leave now they'll be stuck here.”

“You do not have much choice in the matter.”

She is incorporeal, Midnight pointed out. She is not capable of physically obstructing you.

And so by way of response to Ghealach, Rainbow Dash simply took a step forwards and walked through her. And then she kept walking along the ledge. Ghealach reappeared in front of her again, but she ignored her.

“Stop,” Ghealach ordered. Rainbow Dash walked through her again. “Do you have anything in your mind that even approximates a survival instinct? This should have been a decision you made yourself!”

Dash turn a corner and found, surprise surprise, Ghealach blocking her way again. Now, though, any trace of emotion had been wiped from Ghealach's features. She fixed Dash with a glare as cold as space itself and said coolly, “If you take one more step forwards, you will regret it.”

Midnight stepped around Rainbow Dash and trotted forward a few steps unhurriedly, passing right through Ghealach – who showed no signs of acknowledging her at all. Dash followed her after a beat of hesitation, memories of the empty theatre rising up to remind her that Ghealach, in fact, could maybe make good on that threat. But with Midnight helping her, she thought, she would easily be able to match Ghealach and Cloud Ferry – had Cloud Ferry even changed her mind. And so, in defiance of Ghealach again, she kept walking. From behind, she heard an angry hiss.

“You have been warned,” said Ghealach. Finally, she vanished, and Rainbow Dash turned the corner into the largest segment of cavern yet – and froze on the spot.

Author's Note:

*Fanfic exits bleedout state* "No...not like this!"

I am really, really sorry about the long delay. That was cruel. I'm not going to make excuses. Instead, as a Christmas present, here's a new chapter, with another one guaranteed tomorrow on Christmas Day. Story's going into the endgame now, and then I'll see about improving earlier chapters.

Feedback is always appreciated from readers new and old, especially in comments :) Have a merry Christmas Eve, everyone (yes, atheists and non-Christians too can have those), and I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

Comments

[Europa]

You're back! And Rainbow is being a bone-headed awesome pony! And Ghealach is being a billions-old bitch as always!