The Runaways

by Tod309

Unexpected Detour and Seperation

Somewhere along the Mississippi River, midnight
August 14, 1851

For hours Nathaniel and his black cohorts paddled up the Mississippi River in the moonless night with only the stars to light the way. In one boat was Nathaniel, Jake, Gordon, Saul and his family, Gertrude and Kenzy while the twins, Lisa, Abby, Broomhilda, Glover and his siblings were on the other. Even while he was paddling Nathaniel couldn't help but think about the Brookes and the fate that might be awaiting them. Howard and Susan would most likely be on their way to jail. Howard's punishment would probably be even more severe this time around. Susan would likely go through what Howard went through. And it's a possibility that they may've simply been lynched instead. Such things weren't unheard of. Even though the near total darkness hindered their vision, Nathaniel was glad of it since no one on the boat could see the tears that he was shedding for them, though he was pretty sure the others shed tears of their own for the brave couple that helped them get one more step closer to freedom. The Brookes didn't deserve any of that. His black friends didn't deserve to go through this whole ordeal; being hunted like dogs because they dared to flee from their masters cruel hands. But one thing he certain of: he would not let it all be in vain. He couldn't.

As they paddled they would look towards the banks for any light from torches or lanterns. But so far the only lights were from a few towns and houses they had passed by. So far everything was going smoothly. But then something happened; a storm had suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere, accompanied by a strange fog that was unusually thick and had a bluish color to it. And strangest of all the fog seemed to be glowing. But on upside at least now they could see. The water began to churn violently as soon as the storm arrived. It's arrival was so sudden that they didn't even have time to get to shore so they could wait it out.

"Where'd this storm come from?" asked Tess as she and her children began to get scared as the turbulent water churned more violently every minute.

"Dunno hun, but we best head to shore before we git sunk." said Saul.

"Yeah, we should." said Nathaniel in agreement. "Hey," he called to the other boat, "Head to shore. We're gonna wait this mess out."

"A' ight," yelled Glover from the other boat.

As they attempted to paddle to shore the river began to resemble the sea during a hurricane as the churning waters had turned into massive waves several feet high that threatened to capsize their boats and send everyone to a watery grave. By now reaching the shore wasn't possible, all Nathaniel and the others could do is try to survive the torrential waters. The air was filled with the sounds of crashing waves, howling wind, thunder, rain and screaming children and adults, Nathaniel's boat was almost flipped over by a wave, in the process losing a few oars and almost losing Ruth and Kenzi as well, and other boat just narrowly avoided a direct hit by another wave only managing to hit Lisa and Abby at the back.

"Guys," Nathaniel hollered at the other boat,"try to stay close. We gotta stay together or we're all dead."

Just then a wave began to form behind them, sending them straight towards Nathaniels boat. The two vessels collided sending Broomhilda, Betty, Toby and Kizzy flying onto the other boat and sending Gordon and Kenzi overboard.

"Gordon! Kenzi!" Nathaniel and the others called out. Gordon was struggling to keep himself afloat because of the chains still wore and Kenzi didn't know how to swim. And the enormous waves only made thing more difficult.

"Saul, Tess, Gertrude help me I can't swim!" Kenzi cried out as she struggled frantically just to keep her head above the water

"Nate, Jake, help! I can't swim with these chains!" Gordon cried out as he struggled to paddle with the shackles still around his wrists, neck and ankles.

Nathaniel grabbed one of the remaining oars and reached out to Gordon with it and at the same time Saul grabbed a rope and jumped in after Kenzi.

"Gordon, grab the oar. I'll pull ya in." Nathaniel called out to Gordon, who tried his best to swim over to the oar so he could grab it, but the current was making it difficult. But Saul had managed to help him reach the oar after he'd saved Kenzi. Everyone had managed to get back in their own boats but then an uprooted cypress tree came at them from on top of a wave, its roots straight up in the air began to fall towards them like a giant club.

"Oh shit, LOOK OUT!" Nathaniel exclaimed as everyone tried to get out of the way of the tree just before it made a direct hit on both vessels effectively destroying them both. Everyone was swimming, or trying to swim, for whatever piece of the wreckage they could stay afloat on. Nathaniel and Jake clung to part of the bow. Saul, Tess and Ruth clung to a piece of the portside. Gertrude, Kenzi and Joshua hung on to part of the aft. Gordon clung onto one of the broken roots of the tree. The twins tried to climb up on a piece of a bottom board. Lisa, Abby and Broomhilda clung to a broken piece of one of the boats starboard hull. Glover and his sibling clung to a piece of the other boats bow. As everyone struggled to remain on their makeshift rafts, the current caused everyone drift apart in different directions. Their screams were overpowered by the howling wind and crashing waves.

Nathaniel and Jake tried to call out to the others but to no avail, all the sounds of the howling wind, waves and thunder drowned out any cry he or Jake made. And they had lost sight of them as well. Nathaniel could once again feel his spirit being crushed. It was to become too much for him. First they spent a week running through the woods like scared rabbits, then the Brookes got arrested for helping him and his friends and now they were lost to this hellish storm and its weird glowing fog, most likely drowning at that very moment. He wanted nothing more than to try and save his friends, but was powerless to do so. but that would have to wait until they make it out of this storm; if they made it out of the storm. At that moment the strange storm began to quiet down. The howling stopped, the thunder and rain stopped and the water was beginning to calm down until it was a smooth as glass. Again they tried calling out for the others, but there was still no answer. And the fog was starting to dissipate revealing the clear night sky with a full moon shining brightly in the night. The 2 simply looked at the moon and themselves curiously.

"Hey, Nate wasn't there s'posed to be no moon t'night?" Jake asked Nathaniel.

"No, there wasn't." he answered "Let's jus' git to shore an' rest an' try to look fer the others in the mornin'. I'm jus' so tired."

"Me, too Nate."

The 2 boys steered their makeshift raft towards the rivers bank and once they did they simply crawled over to the roots of a large oak tree and drifted off to sleep, but not before Nathaniel prayed that the others had survived and made it someplace safe.

Canterlot Castle
Shortly after midnight
Down the marble halls of Canterlot Castle a blue figure walked silently towards one of the castles main bed chamber, her footsteps muffled by the long dense red carpet. The figure in question was a female equinoid creature with dark blue fur and a blue mane and tail that billowed in a non-existant breeze and sparkled like the night sky itself and teal eyes. A pair of bird like wings were folded on her back like a feathery cape and on her head was a long spiraling horn. She was dressed in a regal black gown that faded to black at the bottom and decorated with glittering patterns made to resemble the stars can crescent moon patterns, black silk gloves that went up to her shoulders with a pair of silver bracers over them, black high-heel boots tipped with silver toes, a black tiara upon her head and a decorative blacke gorget around her neck with a silver crescent moon on its surface. She is none other than Princess Luna, Mistress of the Night and co-regent of the kingdom of Equestria. She approached the bed chamber of her older sister Princess Celestia. A pair of guards in full suits of polished golden armour standing outside her salute the Princess of the Night and resume their watch while Luna knocks on the large gilded oak doors.

"Come in." called a soft sleepy sounding voice from the other side. And Luna enters.

"Tis me, Tia," said Luna to her sister who was sitting in a large regal bed with the sheets covered in sun patterns and colored in orange, yellow, white and blue. The older royal wore a white sleeping gown with gold trim. Her prismatic mane was wrapped in a series of curlers.

"What is it Lulu?" the elder sister asked still sleepy.

"I wish to speak with you about some rather disturbing dreams I've encountered during this nights travels through the Dreamscape."

"Disturbing?" Celestia asked "How so?"

"Well for starters, the beings within the dream were not like anything I've ever seen before; they didn't look like Ponies but rather had dark skin instead of fur, had flat faces with only triangular-shaped nose instead of a muzzle, roundish ears on the sides of their heads and some of them had wooly black hair." Celestia only looked at her younger sibling with confusion.

"Well, that is certainly is strange, Lulu but they just sounds like the dream of somepony with a vivid imagination. What's so disturbing about them?"

"What's so disturbing about them is that they don't appear to be just dreams but memories. And all of them show these creatures in all sorts of pain and misery. Images of them being beaten, whipped and tortured by other creatures like them with pale skin. And I can even recall seeing images of what looked like the dark beings being sold to the pale beings and being made to work in fields of cotton. And all the while I could hear those poor creatures cries of agony, the cracking of whips, the barking of dogs and shouting in a language I can't understand. I dare not go into the exact details of these memories for they're just too horrible to describe, but it looked like those dark being were slaves to the pale beings."

Celestia tried to process what her sister had just told her. These memories her sister just described were indeed disturbing. In her long years of life they both had seen slavery and the depravity that went along with it; from the Diamond Dogs, The Crystal Empire under the rule of the now deceased King Sombra and the former Draconian Empire to the east.

But as for the description of the dark and pale skinned being, she could recall no memories of such beings anywhere in the world. Although she did recall her pupil-now-turned-princess Twilight Sparkle describing creatures just like them inhabiting the world her ex-protégé Sunset Shimmer now called home.

"Are these the memories of a single individual, Lulu?"

"Several actually, dear sister. About 17 if I recall. 16 of the dark being and 1 of the pale beings. Male and female, mostly consisting of children of their kind. And they all seem to share some sort to each other."

"How so?"

"Well I looked deeper into their more recent memories and they all seem to have pleasant memories of the pale being like he was their friend or something like that. And in some of their even more recent memories I can recall them all running through a forest of some sort in the middle of the night and meeting some more pale beings, one with a beard and another that appeared to be female, who lived along the banks of a large river. They offered boats to dark beings and their pale friend to go someplace upriver, but the pale couple were taken captive by other pales beings armed with torches and guns. And the last memories depicted the group of dark beings and their pale friend getting caught in a strange storm accompanied by this strange blue glowing fog. Their boats were destroyed and ended up getting separated."

"Glowing blue fog?"

"Yes. And this fog in question had some kind of thaumatic signature and I felt that signature not too long ago in different parts of Equestria. One near the Wonderbolt's training camp, another somewhere by the Crystal Empire, another near Manehatten, another near Appleloosa, another in the northern part of the Everfree Forest near Ponyville and another somewhere near Canterlot. And I have reason to believe this fog somehow brought these beings into our world."

"How do you guess these beings are from another world?"

"Because I can't recall seeing any of their kind anywhere in this world, though I do remember Twilight describing such creatures in that other world that Sunset Shimmer now calls home."

"As do I Lulu, and as interesting as all of this is perhaps it would be best to further investigate this matter in the morning. I'll be sure to send a letter about this to Twilight. In the meantime, good night Lulu." with that Celestia went back to bed.

"Good night Tia." said Luna before leaving her sisters room to resume her nightly duties.

Author's Note:

And here's where the group officially land in Equestria.

Comments

[Skyblazer9]

I'm really enjoying this story.