Of The Last Millennium

by BlndDog

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The smooth granite floor sparkled under soft silver light, mirroring the stars outside. Scootaloo ran after a familiar-looking filly.

“No tag backs! No tag backs!” She shouted gleefully as she swerved between the other children in the room.

Scootaloo turned around and immediately saw a skinny blue pegasus colt doing his best to be discrete. Their eyes met, and then he was gone, setting a swift, zigzagging route with the help of his wings.

“You can’t run forever, Foggy!” Scootaloo’s own wings fluttered as she ran, nearly tripling the length of each stride. Fortunately, a certain palomino pegasus wasn’t paying attention. When he finally noticed the filly charging in his direction there was only time enough to raise two oversized wings over his face.

“You’re it!” Scootaloo announced with the colt pinned beneath her.

The griffin wasn’t amused. Two scaly claws closed around her torso. Most of the other children were screaming; the floor shook from all their running feet. She was lifted high into the air as the lion’s body extended out of the ground, coming into being through an endless black pit. Scootaloo screamed too as she tried to twist free of her captor. The beaked face was like a mask, devoid of emotion. Even its golden eyes glistened with indifference, as if dead.

The unicorn filly from earlier walked into her field of view. She had wings now. One bright green eye was illuminated by moonlight, as happy as ever. She had a brown moustache across her nose, and brown socks to match.

“Where’s your cloak, Gari?” Scootaloo asked. Any fear she had went away as soon as she averted her eyes from the griffin that held her. “Mother Luna says you should dress warm until you get better.”

A blue colt collapsed onto the floor in front of the alicorn, bouncing ungracefully with his limbs flopping this way and that; he must have fallen quite a distance. Her wings flared and she reared up in surprise. Realizing who it was, she leaned down and gently prodded him with her horn.

Scootaloo couldn’t hold back her tears. Why couldn’t she go to him too? Why must she be uselessly suspended in midair?

The griffin was still looking at her blankly. It was just a gaily-painted statue; had always been that.

The light grew bright, and suddenly the whole room was brilliantly lit like noonday. Yet it was moonlight, and Scootaloo came to her senses just before the unmoving griffin disintegrated into sparkling sand.

The other children bowed; even the alicorn. Scootaloo walked towards the multi-coloured filly, trying to decide if she was indeed Gari, but a huge shadow cast from behind made her turn to face the visitor.

“Good evening, Scootaloo,” Princess Luna greeted, her crisp voice echoing through the dreamscape despite her reasonable volume. Her mane was an ethereal field of stars, and from Scootaloo’s angle it seemed as if a waving hole had opened up in the roof. She didn’t sound angry, much to the filly’s relief.

“Princess Luna,” she said, bowing too.

“I take it you and Morning Rain are still doing well?” Princess Luna looked over the rest of the room, and the children resumed their games as if nothing had happened.

“We’re still alive,” Scootaloo said. Though she did her best to convince herself that it was all real, the room was already starting to ripple at the edges. She felt phantom aches in her legs and a fuzzy blanket that was not on her back.

“Scootaloo, you must tell me where you are.” Luna’s tone was stern but even. “The Everfree Forest is a dangerous place. You’ve been lucky so far…”

“I know!” Scootaloo interrupted. The room was shaking itself apart, and the motion made her dizzy. “Princess Luna, I know that we shouldn’t be here, and I’ve been trying to convince Rain to go back, but what happened at the orphanage really scared him. I can’t tell you where we are, even if I knew.”

Luna regarded her in silence. Scootaloo squeezed her eyes shut and flattened her ears, preparing herself to be yelled at by a princess.

“It seems there is little I can do, then,” said the dark blue alicorn without a hint of anger. “I respect your promise to your brother, Scootaloo, though it pains me and my daughter both.”

“That’s it?” Scootaloo gaped. She tried to focus on the room, but the more she looked the more unreal it seemed. The other children were faceless and colourless; even Gari had turned into an indistinct conglomeration of colours and shapes.

“You’re waking up,” Luna observed. Her wings unfolded, and with a single flap her hooves lifted off the quickly-disintegrating ground. “Stay safe, Scootaloo! Your father sends his regards!”

“My father?”

Luna was receding quickly towards a full moon that grew brighter and brighter until the dream world was replaced with blinding radiance.

“DAD!”

Something big jumped up from beside her, lifting the blanket and letting in an unwanted draft. Scootaloo’s head snapped this way and that as she took in the unfamiliar surroundings.

Rain was standing beside her in their makeshift shelter, his head brushing against the branches of the ceiling. The wool blanket was draped across his extended wings, and his eyes were darting around too as he drew deep, forced breaths.

The Everfree Forest. I’m still in the Everfree Forest.

The realization set in with a deep feeling of loss. She wished the ceiling was higher, and made of straw instead of wood and leaves; she wished that she was alone, that her father was just down the nonexistent hall.

“Are you okay?” Rain asked unsteadily, reaching out for her shoulder.

She couldn’t help it. Twisting around suddenly, Scootaloo grasped his extended foreleg and threw him out the open side of the hidden lean-to. The colt spread his wings as he passed the threshold, but with only half his flight feathers still present he barely avoided face planting in the shallow, foul-smelling swamp. Scootaloo waited for his muffled wail before burying her own face in the musky blanket. Her still-recovering ribs only added to her misery with each shuddering breath.

Stupid Rain! Stupid griffins! I Stupid Luna!

Over the last three days her longing for Ponyville had slowly grown from an annoyance to an obsession. At first it was just the itching that bothered her, and the constant walking from dawn to dusk and into the night. Then there was the food, or the lack of it. They had no proper meals, instead grazing constantly on whatever they could find along their path. By the end of the first day all of their initial pickiness was gone, and Scootaloo eagerly chewed on the dry, woody branches of a blueberry bush when one presented itself. It was much too early for fruits, and even the flowers of the deep forest were small and bland, even astringent. In three days they had encountered only one clearing, and here they stopped to strip the ground bare of its grassy covering.

In all their walking, Scootaloo thought more and more of her friends. Would they try to follow her? Would they go to Zecora for help? Surely they hadn’t given up on her?

What about that scream she had heard before she entered the forest? Had he seen her, perhaps when she passed his garage?

Did she pass his garage?

How mad would he be, if she returned home after a week of wandering the Everfree Forest? How worried was he at that very moment? She wished Luna had said something earlier. Would it be so wrong to send a message through a princess?

I’m sorry, dad. I should have thought this through. I can’t stand this anymore!

For all his talk of keeping no secrets Rain was surprisingly quiet when she asked the important questions. He talked easily enough about all the things that he and his “brothers” did at the orphanage, about his school in Canterlot, even about the Children of the Night. But when on the second day Scootaloo asked about his father, Rain simply answered that he had died three years ago.

The day was growing bright when Scootaloo ran out of tears. Her face was numb and raw, and she felt like she hadn’t slept at all. She scratched her head. Her mane was a hopelessly tangled mess plastered onto her skull.

The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we get cleaned up.

Rolling the blanket into a tight bundle, Scootaloo tied it to her back using her tattered cloak. The saddle bag had been serving as a lumpy pillow for the two children, and it was surprisingly comfortable for her quickly-recovering neck. What little she had seen of its contents was truly unnerving, and the weathered hemp also released a foul odour completely apart from the smell of old sweat.

Opening one of the bag's flaps, Scootaloo tentatively pulled out a formless, slightly-furry sack. She dropped it onto the mattress of piled-up moss as if dropping a hot cooking pot. Finding the screw-on cap, she opened the “water skin” and took a sip of sweet lukewarm water with her eyes closed, drawing her lips back to minimize contact with the leather.

What are you thinking, Rain?

The thing was definitely of griffin make; though the fur had been thinned considerably, the outer housing was clearly made of cowhide. It felt so wrong to the touch; like skin, but rough and cold and limp. She shuddered when she remembered just how eagerly she had accepted it on the first night.

“Rain,” she called, exiting the lean-to through the open side. “Rain, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

The colt had covered the entire front half of his body with his wings. It would have been a perfect screen had he not been missing so many feathers. His face was still downcast. Scootaloo gently prodded his make-do dome, and barely stepped back in time as the two halves disappeared with a loud snap. Rain looked up with furrowed brows and gritted teeth. The dusty fur of his pale face was streaked with two vertical lines of slightly cleaner hair, and his nose glistened with moisture.

“You should leave,” he sobbed. “Scootaloo, just leave. I don’t need your help; just go home…”

“What did Princess Luna say to you?” She asked, sitting down next to her brother.

“It doesn’t matter!” he snapped. “I shouldn’t have brought you into this. It was selfish. Just forget you ever knew me, okay?”

“Rain, you know I can’t do that.” She put one hoof on his side, but a flick of his wing pushed her away. “I’m your sister. I know I’ve been away for a while, but that doesn’t change anything. I've already followed your around for three days; it’s just as far to go back as it is to go forwards at this point.”

“I…”

“I’m coming with you, Rain,” Scootaloo interrupted, putting one hoof under his chin to turn his head towards her. “There’s nothing you or anypony else can say about it. I’ll stay with you until you decide to go home, or until somepony else makes you go home, or until I can carry you home.”

“But your dad…”

“My dad’s going to be really mad if I get home today. Unless you’re coming with me, that beating's just not worth it.”

“Scootaloo, you know I can’t go back,” Rain hiccupped. “I… I have to figure this out. I’ve been explaining this to you…”

“I understand,” she said. “I might not agree with you, but I can tell how much this trip means to you. Let’s end it at that; you’re not getting rid of me, no matter how bad I smell. Now the sooner we get walking, the sooner we can get out of this forest.”

Rain got up after that, and Scootaloo was starting to feel a little more like herself. They took apart their shelter in silence, and Rain stuffed the lengths of leather cord used to bind the branches into a side pocket of the saddle bag. After dragging away the leaves and moss, it looked as if they hadn’t been there at all.

The shallow, expansive swamp that lay before them had initially given her hope, but the foul stench that rose from its murky brown water precluded even a quick wade.

“We’ll just keep going south,” Rain decided, and they set off together, chewing on all the bland, big-leafed plants that were so abundant in the waterlogged loam.

The colt’s sluggish pace was at least part of the reason for their slow progress. Even with the two switching loads two or three times a day he was always breathing harder and stumbling more often. After catching him frothing at the mouth halfway through the first day, Scootaloo had made a point of stopping for water. He was surely sick, and though she reprimanded herself for thinking so Scootaloo hoped that the sickness would overtake him soon.

There were plenty of potions that could cure even the worst fever, but markedly fewer that could undo a manticore mauling.

“So how many of these Children of the Night are still alive?” Scootaloo asked after some time. “I know about Gari, and she mentioned Wind Whisper, but it sounds like there were a lot of them.”

“There were forty-six,” Rain replied. “Gari was called on the first night, but a week later Luna arrived at the colony with more. She would have gathered all the orphans of the kingdom had Celestia not stopped her. The way Gari tells it, that was the real start of Nightmare Moon; all that stuff about Luna getting jealous and raising the moon on Solstice happened years later. It all started because Celestia was standing between Luna and her children.”

“But why did Princess Luna want all those children in the first place? You said she wanted to start a colony. Why not pick adults?”

“I’m not sure,” Rain admitted. “Gari says that I wouldn’t understand if she told me. The song that Luna sang to call them was really beautiful, though. Gari sang it for us once; not all of us at the orphanage, you know, just the ones who were going to be around for a long time. I wish I could sing like that, just so you can hear it too, but it’ll just sound weird coming from me.”

Scootaloo listened with one ear. Her head was always twisting this way and that as she tried to keep tabs on her surroundings. Although most animals shied away from voices, timber wolves were rather indiscriminate hunters. She didn’t think she could spot one through the thick trees, but even a second’s warning might save one or both of them. Her concern was not entirely unfounded; just yesterday they had seen the tracks: deep, round impressions with three sharp little triangles on one side. The two didn’t linger there long, but now that they were treading on soft mud Scootaloo realized that their own prints could lead to their undoing.

The humidity grew as the day wore on. When Scootaloo started to taste the swamp in her throat the air was suddenly filled with a familiar, ominous buzzing. Her ears twitched incessantly. She whipped her tail and shook her head, but her guard was far from perfect. Several times a minute she felt their spindly legs on her skin: her back; her shoulders; her legs; even her neck. They passed right under her ears sometimes, making her flinch and shake her whole body as if to shake off water. The bite was quick and startling, like a giant needle prick, and rarely was her tail fast enough to retaliate. They rose from the water like steam, and out of the vegetation, and out of the ground itself.

“I think we can cross here,” said Rain about halfway through the day. The amount of open water had slowly diminished along their path, and now the swamp looked more like a field of brown moss and mud. Scootaloo could see distant trees that grew straighter, with cleaner bark and no stilt roots.

She was about to agree when she noticed the colour of the mud and the shallow pockets of water that stood between them and dry ground.

“Quicksand,” she said. “There’s quicksand out there.”

“We’ll have to cross here,” Rain insisted. “The map says this is Clydesdale Bog, and it runs all along the southwestern side of the Everfree Forest. There’s nothing drier than this until we get to Ghastly Gorge.”

“What map is this that you keep talking about?” Scootaloo snapped. Rain jumped in surprise. His legs buckled, but she resisted the urge to help him up. “How can you have a map of the Everfree Forest? There are no maps of the Everfree Forest, and I’ve never even heard of this ‘Clydesdale Bog’. If you really have something like that, you’d better share.”

To his credit Rain did not cry. Shuffling out from underneath the saddle bag, he undid the brass clasp on the right compartment and, with his lips pulled back, lifted a large, crushed scroll from among the neatly-packaged contents. Without further preparation he tossed it onto the damp muddy ground and spat into the nearest puddle. Scootaloo grabbed it quickly lest the ink washed out, but the paper was greasy to the touch, and beads of water formed where it had been touching ground.

The material was rather thick, and even when she brought it up to her eye Scootaloo couldn’t distinguish any fibers. The sickening realization dawned on her as she unrolled the page. Had they been anywhere else, Scootaloo would have dropped it too.

The colourful ink drawings were nothing like the simple black-and-white maps that she was familiar with. Mountain ranges were marked with hairline details, and every bend of every river seemed to be accounted for. Forests were marked in dark green; grasslands in light green; desert in dusty yellow; swamps in brown. Canterlot was a series of tightly-spaced rectangles and ovals; if the image was to be believed, the Canterlot Orphanage was about as big as the Royal Palace.

The Everfree Forest was not just a compressed crescent, either. That patch of green stretched an alarming distance to the south and east. It was more of a big bean than a crescent, and sure enough the entire southern half was skirted by a thick brown line. Froggy Bottom Bogg was just the northeastern tip of a muddy mess that could be hundreds of metres wide at places.

“Rain,” Scootaloo said slowly, rolling up the waxed parchment. “Who made this map?”

“It’s a griffin’s hunting map,” he mumbled, turning away from his sister. “I… I needed a map with the Everfree Forest on it, and this is the only one.”

“And who would have a griffin-made map in the first place?” She pressed on. “For that matter, why would anypony use a water skin?”

“It’s Gari’s stuff,” Rain said, and with great effort he turned his head to face her. “Most of her traveling gear is griffin-made…”

“Rain,” Scootaloo sighed. “You said you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Alright, I stole it from a griffin.”

“And you still want to hunt down griffins?” She walked past the crouching colt to return the map to the saddlebag, always keeping him in her field of view.

“I…” Rain shook his head fiercely. “I don’t know. What else can I do? You weren’t there when it happened, Scootaloo. You didn’t see it happen. I can’t stop checking over my shoulders; I can’t forget how scary it was, going back into the mess hall with Gari, and seeing her face and…” He stopped speaking for a moment to catch his breath. “I don’t like her anymore, Scootaloo. Not after all that. I had to do something, and I had to do it immediately!”

Scootaloo pondered what to say. Rain was again at the verge of tears, and she wanted to talk some sense into him. What had Rainbow Dash said to her, sitting under the stars with the waterfall roaring in the background?

“When I first heard those stories…”

She couldn’t say that!

“If there was such thing as the Headless Horse, I could totally take it on.”

“If those griffins come back, I could totally take them on?”

Scootaloo stretched out one of her wings self-consciously.

Tiny, half-plucked and definitely not blue.

“Let’s get going, then,” She said, lifting the saddlebag onto her own back. The bundled quilt shifted to the side; it was an uncomfortable arrangement. “Even if we cross today, we still have quite a ways to go if we want to get into Ghastly Gorge. If I had known about this, we would have gone right to Froggy Bottom Bogg. The trail there is muddy, but it’s a trail. We could have been in the Gorge yesterday.”

“You just said there’s quicksand!” Rain argued, hopping to his feet.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t cross,” Scootaloo smiled, mentally patting herself on the back for averting an emotional disaster. “It’s going to be hard work, but I think we can get to dry land by sundown. I’ve seen this before; the Apples have these huge pieces of plywood that they lay out on the river bank in spring in case the sand got too loose. We don’t have plywood, but I think if we tie some branches together it’ll work. Now tell me you have cord in here.”

#

An hour later Scootaloo was hanging off a long branch by her teeth, twisting vigorously to break the last stubborn fibers holding it to the tree. It broke with a snap, and for the twentieth time that day she fell ungracefully onto a crash pad of moss and leaves.

She brought the branch to the muddy shore, looking rather like a stubborn retriever dragging a log. Rain was busy cutting a spool of hemp rope into usable lengths. The short dagger in his mouth looked nothing like the flat-tipped utility knives Scootaloo was used to. Mercifully, the handle was made of sanded, unpolished wood instead of antler or bone, but as he twisted his neck to make each quick cut the fang-like blade made him seem angry, even dangerous.

“Tell me more about the griffins’ home,” Scootaloo said, sitting down beside one of two rectangular frames and picking up a few pieces of cord. “Princess Luna built her colony there, but what’s it like?”

“Gari loves it,” Rain mumbled, returning the knife to its leather sheath. “She once told me that she likes it more than she likes Baltimare, and she was born in Baltimare.”

“I thought she was called from Canterlot,” Scootaloo pointed out after pulling the knot tight and spitting out the little rope bits stuck to her tongue.

“She was born in Baltimare,” Rain said. “She doesn’t like Canterlot at all. I mean, she’s okay with it now that Luna is back, but she says she doesn’t like big cities in general. Anyways, after Luna came back she went to see Celestia, and after that she started telling us very different stories. She told us that griffins are loyal and smart, and that most of them are as kind as ponies. She said that griffins never had anything against ponies to begin with, and that a lot of ponies are just closed-minded. She told us stories about how griffins have lived with ponies in the colony for hundreds of years, and how griffins would risk their lives for ponies as easily as they do for one another. She just made it sound like such a nice place. We all believed her, you know.”

Scootaloo hissed, releasing her rope and tucking in her lower lip. The taste of copper made her skin crawl. Rain was tying a branch onto the other frame.

“The Children of the Night are all farmers,” he continued. “They were the first farmers among the griffins; before them the griffins were purely hunters. She wouldn’t tell us much about the early days, though, and frankly I don’t think it’s as perfect as she makes it sound.”

“What about the bat ponies?” The latest rope tip came out of her mouth with a tiny dot of red. Scootaloo wet her lips again.

“They’re called sylvanocians.” Rain arched his neck backwards and rocked his head from side to side. “A lot of them live in the colony too. They can do a kind of magic, but only at night. It’s not like unicorn magic. One of Luna’s guards even taught me a few things; she said they’re just simple tricks, but it took me ages to figure them out.”

“Is that what you did that night in my room?” Scootaloo asked, noticing the bittersweet undertone in her brother’s voice.

“That’s about all I can do,” he said. “When we get back to Canterlot, you should meet her. I think you’ll like Summer Dusk. She can do some scary things; last Nightmare Night she was pranking everypony at the orphanage by jumping out from their shadows. Seriously! She can just disappear right into your shadow, and you don’t know about it until she pops up right beside you. She even got Gari!”

Scootaloo laughed, trying to imagine Gari with a look of true surprise on her face, standing on the tips of her toes with her wings fully extended. The mention of returning also raised her spirits slightly. At least Rain had the idea in his head.

They both had cuts in their lips by the time the platforms were finished. Scootaloo was quite proud of how the lattices turned out; she even glanced back surreptitiously as Rain pushed the first platform onto the waterlogged mud, hoping to see a miniature image of the wooden frame on her flank.

Whatever; a swamp-crossing cutie mark probably doesn’t look that nice anyways.

“Come on!” Rain called, having picked up the blanket roll. “We have to get going if we want to get across before nightfall!”

Taking the saddle bag, Scootaloo dragged the other platform to the edge and stepped onto the first, hiding her uneasiness as the branches shifted under her weight. The uneven rectangle, though plenty heavy, was barely big enough for the two children to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Together they lifted the other piece over their heads and threw it right in front of their current platform, splashing both of them with stagnant water and black mud.

It too held their weight.

In this way they continued, breathing deeply, with limbs unsteady. The swamp didn’t want to release their platforms, and only did so with a loud wet squelch and a burst of mud. Soon they both looked like swamp creatures. Thought their shells were soon thick enough to dissuade even the biggest flies, they also trapped heat like winter jackets. Each chunk that flaked off provided a bit of relief, but a few steps later they would be encased once again. Scootaloo was beginning to think that they should have waded when she noticed the slimy green monstrosity, as thick as her leg, inching through the dark soup beside the lattice of branches like a giant earthworm.

For a long time the opposite shore remained stubbornly distant. Rain didn’t even bother to raise his head anymore. They had no breath to talk, and pretty soon were yanking on the frame so roughly that the knots began to loosen.

Just a bit more. Just a bit more.

Scootaloo’s mouth was full of phlegm, and her sinus burned from all the dust. She wanted to drink, but feared that she might empty the water skin all by herself.

Dusk came again, and the buzzing of the day subsided. Rain could barely put any weight on the disintegrating platform, which they could no longer lift over their heads. Over several minutes they managed to slide it along the one on which they stood and let it flop onto the mud one last time. The frame burst apart as if under pressure, sending one bit of rope flying. Rain collapsed face-first onto the debris and inhaled deeply.

It’s over.

Scootaloo wandered forwards, at first being careful to step only on the branches. They didn’t shift like she expected; the ones that weren’t straight rocked on a pivot, enough to throw her over the side and onto wet but solid ground.

She would have cheered, had she any strength left. Instead she laid there and breathed, wishing there was somepony else who could offer her a drink.

It was dark when she finally found the strength to stand. Rain had fallen asleep exactly where she left him, his hind legs still locked in a standing position.

With all her strength Scootaloo dragged the colt away from the edge of the swamp. To her relief he was still breathing. Propping his head up on a big tree root, Scootaloo slumped back down the gently sloped shore to retrieve the saddle bag.

Rain did not wake up, but he was alive enough to swallow. Scootaloo inverted the water skin in his open jaws, giving him a few mouthfuls before claiming her share. She guessed there was less than half a cup left when she capped it again.

Rubbing against a tree was enough to dislodge the heaviest chunks of dry mud from her coat (and they were heavy). Scootaloo struck her brother rather clumsily to remove his shell, eliciting only a few snorts that could as well have been directed at something in the dream world.

She unrolled the blanket over them both, and held the colt in her forelegs to fend off the feeling of weightlessness that was starting to set in.

In her dreams she wandered the empty streets of Ponyville, passing through all the open doors and dusty living rooms in search of friends who were no longer there.