1: The Tangle
It was slow going through the vines, but Pith Helmet had expected that. That was why they had brought enough food to last for almost a month, even though the trip was only meant to last two weeks. Granted, that was a month of living on canned rations and eating lightly, but still. They would survive.
What he hadn't bargained on was the heat. The weather had taken a sudden foul turn two days into their journey, just as they hit the Tangle proper. A storm was rolling across the plains, driving the summer heat before it, and the air was hot and thick. Occasionally, thunder rumbled in the distance. Worse, the vines here were so closely twisted together, so solidly formed, that they blocked most of the breeze.
He hacked a marking into the black skin of the last vine they had just wormed past, so they would know the path they had taken, and helped Compass Rose to her feet again. The unicorn was already too exhausted to even bother thanking him, and they were less than two hours into the day's journey.
He could understand, though. The Tangle wasn't an ordinary forest. What trees there once were had long since died, though they were still there - they had just become twisted, dried hulks that loomed up out of the darkness at odd angles. Most of them had been uprooted, but not many were actually laying across the ground. Most had been caught by the vines before they got that far.
The vines were the real obstacle in the Tangle. There were odd plants, yes, and dangerous creatures besides; cockatrices often made their way out from the fringes and terrorized the surrounding towns, and the deceptively alluring blue flowers that marked poison joke grew in thick swatches throughout it. But the vines were the real problem.
They were massive, each wider around than a pony was tall, and covered in razor-sharp thorns the size of swords. The thick black skin that covered them was tough, too, bordering on indestructible. Even his machete could barely do more than scratch the surface on one. And they grew thickly enough that there was barely room for anyone to move between them. They grew all around, twisting and turning, the thorns always catching on exposed skin and cutting lightly, blocking out all the light from the sky outside. And every so often, out of the corner of your eye, they might appear to be moving.
He straightened up and turned, letting the light from his helmet illuminate the rest of the party. There was Compass, her clover-green coat stained with mud, dirt, and sweat, and her eyes downcast. Pith had taken up the burden of carrying most of her share of the supplies, but she was still very obviously almost at her limit. He had advised against her coming for that very reason, but she had insisted. She was the cartographer, after all. If they found anything, she would want to know exactly where it was. And, as she had repeated over and over in the days leading up to the trip, it was an exploration mission. Things should be catalogued.
Tailspin was holding up somewhat better, at least. The pegasus shot him a worn, but still bright, grin. She was wearing another helmet lamp, along with the rest of Compass' share of the supplies. Between the two of them, Pith and the red-coated pegasus had managed to free the unicorn of all the weight they could. They were the more experienced outdoorsponies, after all, and by far more physically fit than their bookish companion. The only things they had left with Compass were her maps and quills - which she wouldn't have parted with anyway - and a small flashlight, in case she got separated from the rest and needed her own light source.
Compass was facing away from him for the moment, and Pith took the opportunity to shoot a meaningful look to Tailspin. She frowned, then shrugged. Your call, big man.
He sighed and stepped forward to lead the way again. "Don't worry," he muttered as he passed Compass. "We'll make camp soon."
Only three hours in and we already have to stop, said a voice in the back of his mind. This is why we should have made her stay behind.
He shook his head and shouldered a fallen branch aside. "Come on," he said. "This way."
"Ten degrees to your right," came the tired whisper from behind him. Compass' horn was shining dimly in the gloom.
"Stop that," he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. "You're overexerting yourself."
The mare lifted her head and fixed him with a glare that could have cut diamonds. "You just focus on staying on the path," she answered coolly. "I'll keep up."
He sighed and turned back to the darkness ahead. In truth, he was grateful for the unicorn keeping the three of them headed in the right direction. It was faster than having Tailspin fight her way upwards for a glimpse of the sky to ascertain their location every few hours. He was just worried that things were going to be too much for-
He blinked. His helmet lamp had just illuminated something that didn't look natural. He stopped and leaned forward, peering at it closely.
"Hey, what's up, big guy?" came the whisper from behind him. Tailspin crept up to stand by his side, frowning. "Why've we stopped?"
"Look," he said flatly. He nudged the thing with one hoof. There was a faint clinking sound.
It was a small series of chain links, heavily rusted and pitted with age. At one end, it was hooked into something larger, buried beneath the dirt.
They tugged it out together and dropped it onto the ground in front of Compass Rose. It was a long, thin metal strip, with a series of screws studded into it at regular intervals. Something had obviously been attached to it in the past, but that something had also long since rotted away.
"Well, what's this doing here?" Tailspin asked, prodding it. It clinked again.
Pith shrugged. He was watching Compass. To his surprise, the formerly exhausted-looking unicorn was grinning now, and there was a spark of energy in her eyes. "It means we're going the right way," she said. "We're looking for a castle, after all. There were probably signs along the road leading to it, right? This must have been part of one of them."
"Getting a little ahead of yourself there, aren't you?" said Tailspin, with a slight laugh. "We still don't even know if there really is a castle around here."
Compass dropped right back into her scowl. "Well, fine," she said. "If that's the way you want to be. But this does show that there's something around here, at least. Let's just get moving again."
Pith sighed as the other two sank back into sullen silence. The heat was making them all irritable. He scooped up the chain and stuffed it into one saddlebag, then turned to lead the way into the Tangle once more.
An hour later, the heat had almost become unbearable. More than once, Pith was certain that he saw steam rising off the damp earth. He was just about to call for a break, for them to wait until the heat wave had passed, when he heard Compass say "Wait."
He turned, expecting to see the unicorn collapsing, sure that she was calling for a break due to exhaustion. But she wasn't. She was standing there, horn glowing again, a look of concentration on her features. He glanced at Tailspin, who shrugged.
"What is it?" he asked.
"There's... something magical ahead," Compass said slowly. She wasn't really looking at him. Or anything, really. She was staring off into nothing, like she always did when she was working an exceptionally complex spell. "Something very magical."
"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Tailspin asked, lifting her head slightly and peering past Pith. "Maybe it's what we're looking for."
"Nnnnooooo," the unicorn said, still not looking at either of them. "This feels... odd. Strong. Stronger than any pony spell I've ever felt before. I don't think it is a pony spell."
"Then what?" Tailspin looked back to Compass, frowning now.
There was no answer for a few long seconds. Then, very quietly, Compass muttered, "I don't know."
Both Pith and Tailspin stared at her for another few moments. Then Pith shrugged. "Only one way to find out," he said, as he started to walk into the darkness again.
He heard the other two trotting lightly to keep up as he shouldered the undergrowth aside and twisted around the vines. "It might be dangerous!" he heard Compass call.
"This entire trip's dangerous," he answered. "We came out here looking for an old, magic castle, and now you've felt magic, and we're gonna check it out."
"I wasn't expecting this much magic!" the unicorn insisted. "Or any that felt this strange! Almost... hot..."
She trailed off. Ahead of her, Pith had come to a stop.
He was staring upward.
Here, the vines had vanished. They were still there overhead, but overhead, just now, was a long way off. They had stumbled into a massive, dome-shaped opening in the Tangle, almost large enough to hold a settlement. But their view of most of it was blocked by what looked like a massive, oddly-contoured wall directly in front of Pith.
Thunder rumbled somewhere close by.
"No way," breathed Tailspin, as she moved up to stand by Pith. "That can't be... Is that?"
"It is," squeaked Compass. The unicorn had moved up on Tailspin's other side.
Pith grunted. "Tail."
It was indeed a tail: a massive, purple length of scale the size of a barn, ridged with emerald-green spikes along its top and tapering very slightly off towards their right. Heat poured off of it in waves, almost scalding them as they stared up at it in disbelief.
"A dragon," breathed Compass, eyes wide. "I don't believe it. A dragon."
"There's a dragon in the Tangle?" Tailspin gaped at the scales, her voice low and disbelieving. "There's a dragon in the Tangle. Pith, there's a dragon in the Tangle."
"Yeah, I can see that," Pith grunted. He shook his head. "Must've been here since before it started growing, and the heat, or something, kept the vines off."
"Or maybe," said Compass, sounding more thoughtful than anything now, "it's what it's hoarded that kept the vines away."
Pith turned to look at her, and she flushed somewhat. "Well, dragons hoard valuable stuff, right? And the magic I sensed is close now. I'm willing to bet it's part of this dragon's collection."
"Uh, 'scuse me," whispered Tailspin, "but shouldn't we be keeping our voices down?"
Compass blinked. "Well, dragons usually sleep for hundreds of years," she said. "They usually won't wake up until they get hungry or someone touches their hoard."
"Oh." Tailspin didn't seem to relax much. "Well. Let's try not to do that, then. Nobody smell delicious."
"We all stink," Pith said flatly. Abruptly, he turned and set off, following the slight curve of the tail around the perimeter of the dome.
The other two fell into step behind him. "Wait, wait, wait," Tailspin said. "Where are we going now?"
Pith glanced at her over his shoulder. "To find that magic thing Compass was talking about. She said it was close."
"Yeeaaaah," said Tailspin, looking slightly nervous. "But she also said it was probably part of the hoard, which we just established we kinda don't want to touch." She eyed Pith hesitantly as she hopped along in his wake. Every other step or so was slightly longer than the rest, as her wings fluttered involuntarily, keeping her hovering above the ground for a few moments.
"Still doesn't mean we shouldn't at least know what it is," Pith said, shrugging. "We don't have to touch it, but we're here to map the Tangle, and that means we need to know what's in here. So we go look."
He turned back to the path ahead, and the three of them lapsed into silence again.
It took several minutes' walk to bring them to the end of the tail. In the darkness, they couldn't make out much past that - until Pith stepped over its pointed tip and brought his helmet lamp around.
He let out a low whistle as the rest of the dragon's body came into view. It was massive, even for a dragon. It looked as though it could have torn mountains in half with its bare claws, had it been awake. Its towering bulk loomed upward, the purple scales glinting in the light. Every so often, the rumble of its breathing caused the ground under his hooves to shake.
It was curled around the entire perimeter of the clearing, almost forming a complete circle with its body. The only gap was about twenty yards wide, where they stood between its tail and the tip of its snout.
Or, rather, where they presumed the tip of its snout would be. One huge, leathery wing was draped over the dragon's forebody, hiding the rest of it from sight.
Tailspin and Compass stepped up on either side of him. The pegasus was shaking slightly, but Pith couldn't tell whether it was from fear or adrenaline. Probably both, he mused to himself. Compass, on the other hand, had the same iron-hard glint in her eye that he had seen earlier. She wasn't looking at the dragon. She was looking inward, towards the center of the clearing.
There wasn't anything there that Pith could see, but the light of his helmet lamp wasn't very powerful. Compass voiced her thoughts when she said, sounding more than a little eager, "It must be further in. Towards the center. This is it, though. Whatever that magic is, it's coming from this dragon's hoard." She shook her head slightly. "I can't imagine what it might be. A dragon's hoard is related to its size. The more valuable the things it hoards, the bigger it gets." She set off into the darkness, not even bothering to wait for the other two. "This must be incredible."
Pith pushed himself into a trot to keep up with her. Behind him, he heard Tailspin's wings flittering as she propelled herself into the air. He heard her mutter something about getting to stretch.
Beside him, Compass was peering eagerly into the murk, apparently convinced that, any second, the blank soil and undergrowth beneath their hooves would be replaced by the dragon's hoard. A full minute passed like that, with the three of them moving inward in a silence broken only by the deep, throbbing rumble of the dragon's breath, blanketed in smothering, volcanic heat.
Then a second.
And then a third.
Finally, Tailspin broke the silence. "You could fit a whole city in here," she said. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, but still seemed like a thunderclap in the silence. "But it's all empty. Where's this hoard?"
"It's close," Compass panted, not looking up. "I can feel it. We're so close."
Pith was about to speak up to say that Tailspin seemed to be right when he saw it. Something swam into vision at the edge of his helmet lamp's light.
He stopped and stared at it for a long moment. Beside him, Compass and Tailspin were doing the same.
Finally, after almost a minute's silence, he said, "What?"
It was a house.
It was a circular house that stood in three tiers, topped with a small, steeple-like structure at its peak. The walls were turquoise, the sloped ceilings were a pink so deep that it bordered on purple, and it was covered in gold ornamentation. It looked almost... happy. In a place like the Tangle, surrounded by heat and scales and thorns and darkness, it seemed impossible.
"So... that's the hoard?" Tailspin asked, pointing at it with one hoof. "A house?"
"It... I don't know," Compass said. She looked as confused as anyone. "It's definitely magical. But it's not what I've been sensing." She squinted up at it, towards the steeple at the top. "It's up there," she said firmly. "Something up at the top."
Pith glanced upward at Tailspin, then jerked his head towards the house. She sighed. "Fiiiine," she muttered, sounding half-joking and half-exasperated. "Send me headfirst into it, why don't you. Like always." And she flapped off, towards the terrace.
When she reached it, she stopped, hovering, and stared for a long time. Then she called, "Uh, yeah, Compass, I think I found it."
"Well?" Compass shouted back. "What is it?"
"It's, uh," came the reply, as Tailspin flitted in circles around the top of the house, "it's a statue. Of a pony."
"What's it look like?"
"It's a unicorn," Tailspin answered slowly, "wearing a dress. But it's... the whole thing's carved out of some sort of crystal. It's amazing, really. I don't normally go in for the whole artsy thing, but this is impressive. The hairdo on this mare..."
"Tailspin!" Compass said sharply. "Focus! What stands out about it? Something up there is magic!"
"Uh, yeah, I'm guessing that's the ruby."
"What ruby?"
"It's wearing a necklace. Gold, really fancy-looking. And there's this great big ruby cut like a heart set right in the middle of it. It's massive, it really is. Bigger than my hoof. And it's, uh, glowing. Just a little, but it is. Oh, wait, hold on, there's an inscription at the bottom of the statue."
The pegasus fluttered in, just a bit closer. "It says... 'In Loving Memory Of'... and then it goes all fancy and curly, hold on. Errr... air... 'Rarity'. 'In Loving Memory Of Rarity'. I think this is somepony's-"
That was as far as she got before the rumbling started. It was louder and deeper than before, a subsonic pulsing that shook the ground under their feet and almost caused Compass to collapse. Pith caught her with one hoof and propped her up against his bulk. "Tails," he said flatly, "I think it's time to go."
Then he heard the other sound, and every muscle in his body froze. It was a long, drawn-out, slithering noise, the sound of a half-ton of leathery dragonflesh being moved aside.
The sound of a wing unfolding.
The voice, when it came, was so powerful that he didn't hear it so much as he felt it. Every chord resonated throughout his skeleton, shaking him with every syllable. It was only one word, but that one word was sufficient to cause him to collapse to his knees.
"Rarity?"
Stats
Page generated in 0.035 seconds
Total duration
1,025 users online
1,544,400 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
So is the pegasus named Tailspin or Spitfire? You use both names.
Anyway, it's interesting so far. I've put it on my "read later" list to keep an eye on it.
Really good start man. I like how much emotion is put into Rarity's house/statue. Would love to see where this goes. Keep it up!
Off to a good start. I'm a fan of old spike fics and I'm looking forward to the next update
definitely interesting and the vines sound like the thing discord planted
very good, keep up the good work
3768884 Ha! Thanks for catching that. It's Tailspin, but apparently "two-syllable pegasus name" is too much for my brain to handle without getting confused.
Clearly I am the best at this.
Nice. Very very nice
probable supposed to be nopony. Otherwise the line is hilarious.
Holy Shit, that ending! Loving the feels, nice start!
You have my attention. *clicks on chapter II*
4692602 GASP.
CHIBBY.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THE PONIES?
Wow... this is amazing writing! The characterization of all the ponies, the scale and wonder, all the mysteries that swirl here and there. I just cannot wait to get into this story! You sir, are a brilliant writer! You haven’t been active much but I’m excited to read what you have written all the same.