Chapter 11
“Is everypony okay?” Garlic asked, his eyes locked on Sunrise Surprise’s wings. He felt a growing sense of concern for the unicorn filly, she was laying on the ground staring at one extended wing, her expression was one of befuddled horror. “I need to hear voices.”
“My head hurts, but I’m good,” Fogwalker said as she kicked her helmet off with a front hoof. It fell onto the grass with a soft thump and rolled over.
Chert wobbled up onto his hooves, his arms and hands out to his side for balance. “What happened?” He raised up one hand to rub the side of his face and he clutched his stomach with the other.
“Sunrise?” Garlic asked as he staggered over to the unicorn’s side.
The yellow unicorn looked up at the big armor plated earth pony, her eyes wide, her lower lip trembling, her nostrils flared as her breath heaved in and out of her lungs. The first tears began to fall as Garlic stood there, looking stupidly at Sunrise Surprise.
There was a loud “CLUNK!” as Garlic dropped down and kneeled beside Sunrise, and then he went down to his belly completely. A moment later, the sobbing unicorn had her forelegs around his armored neck and had collapsed against him, seeking comfort from the pony that was now her trusted friend.
Watching all of this, Fogwalker Fetlocks suddenly experienced a powerful feeling of love, a fierce overwhelming feeling of intense amorous affection for Garlic, this was the pony that had was her fellow solider, her companion, and her foalhood friend. This was the pony that she had regularly endured getting in trouble for, even feeling the lash a few times, sneaking out as a foal so she could go slumming with the earth pony that she called her friend. For a moment, something in her heart blazed so ferociously that she worried that she might combust. She actually felt her loins blazing with desirous fires and her breath caught in her throat.
All Fogwalker could do was stand there and watch Garlic comfort the pony that Fogwalker now called ‘friend.’ The friend who now had wings and was clearly suffering from everything that had happened. Fogwalker felt her own emotions threatening to overwhelm her and she quickly began to reassert her self control. She picked up her helmet from the grass and stuffed it down upon her own head.
“We need to head home,” Garlic said in a soft voice as Sunrise clung to him. “We need to figure out where we are and which way home is. We need to get home before dark if we can. We can have an alicorn princess to keep safe.”
“Don’t say that,” Sunrise sobbed, finally saying something. “I’m fat, ugly, and worthless, alicorns are supposed to be beautiful, graceful, and wise.”
Picking up Sunrise’s glasses from the grass with her wing, Fogwalker walked towards the sobbing unicorn and held Sunrise’s glasses out to her. “You shouldn’t say those things.”
“But they’re true,” Sunrise whined, shaking her head as she sobbed.
“Before her reformation, Princess Celestia was awfully ugly on the inside. She was cruel, heartless, and just about universally hated,” Garlic said in a hushed whisper.
Using his ever so helpful hands, Chert gently lifted Sunrise to her feet, grabbed her glasses from Fogwalker, and then gently placed the spectacles over Sunrise’s face. He had no idea what they were or how they worked, only that they belonged here. He then wrapped his arms around the strange pony’s neck and gave her a hug.
“It is so nice seeing the sun,” Chert said, in a confused voice, overcome by everything that had taken place. He held on to Sunrise, steadying her, one of his hands stroking her back.
With a groan, Garlic stood up, his armor plating clattering and clanking loudly. He stretched and kicked out his legs, arched his back, and flexed his neck. “I’ll be glad to get this off and take a bath.”
“I’m going skyward. I’m going to get our bearings and see which way home is,” Fogwalker said as she spread her wings. She took off at a run, kicked out with her hind legs, and then she launched herself skyward.
Circling, rising with each flap of her powerful wings, catching a few helpful updrafts as she gained altitude, Fogwalker looked around. The group was in a small meadow, all around them was forest, and it didn’t take long to realise that they were on the west side of what was left of Canterhorn mountain. Canterlot was gone, there was no city, the Canterhorn Peak was no more, the entire top of the mountain had been completely blown to bits. All that was left was rubble. Unable to stop herself, Fogwalker realised an enterprising pegasus might be able to pick through the rubble and find shiny treasure. Gold and silver were common in Canterlot, certainly some of it was left somewhere.
Home lied to the south and the east. Fogwalker believed they could make it home if they got started now. It wouldn’t be an easy walk, Garlic was still limping somewhat, the long climb up the gravel strewn incline had nearly been his undoing. She doubted that any other earth pony could have done what he did.
She began to circle downwards, heading back down to her companions, and as she drew nearer she began to feel a stunned sense of disbelief that Sunrise Surprise had wings now. This entire time, Fogwalker had been guarding treasure of a different sort. Yellow gold indeed, she thought to herself as she neared the ground and braced her legs.
“We need to head south and then east. If we hurry, we’ll hit the outskirts of the county before sundown,” Fogwalker said, looking at each one of her companions. “I know all of you are tired, Sunrise, I know that you are confused and hurt right now, but we need be practical and keep moving. So hard march, no stopping, we’ll eat on the hoof or we won’t eat at all, is that clear?”
“Sounds sensible,” Garlic said, setting off in a general southern direction, to make his way around the base of Canterhorn mountain. The big earth pony easily fell into pace, his long legs settling into a comfortable stride for himself.
For his companions, it meant moving double time to keep up with the big earth pony.
The world around Chert fascinated him. The sun was warm, the shade offered by the trees was cool and inviting, the birds were singing, there were butterflies in the air. He had companions. Most importantly, he had Sunrise Surprise. If she moved too far away from him, he felt nervous and weird, which caused him to pick up his pace and move towards her. He couldn’t explain why he liked her, but there was something appealing about her. She was a pretty pony, she was soft, and she was a most pleasing shade of yellow.
It felt odd to be in the woods and not have his bow. These were not the woods of his home, but these were the woods, and he felt a kinship with them, even though the trees were strange and spoke oddly. He couldn’t quite make out their strange dialect, but he knew that he would figure it out in time. The bird song was strange as well, one he did not know, and as he trotted along, he carefully listened and tried to pick apart the various tunes he was hearing to decipher their meaning.
“I know a little bit about the fae… we have them here. Dryads and nymphs and a few strange creatures,” Fogwalker said to Chert as she trotted, trying to strike up a conversation with the centaur. “But I’ve never heard of your kind. You’re unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
“We don’t know where we come from, we forest folk. We weren’t always like this. We once had two legs, not four, but something changed. Something changed our world. We have found old cities, old ruins, very old ruins, and we’ve found images of beings that look like we do in the ruins, but they have two legs. We don’t know what happened, how we ended up as half equine and whatever we are. We don’t know what destroyed our cities. We have lost our memories. Sombra was very curious about my kind and he spent a lot of time looking through a mirror, looking over the ruins of my world. He said we were similar to something he called a ‘human’ but we were also very different with our pointed ears, small bodies, and slender builds. He said that many worlds have stories about the Fae and all of the different creatures that make up the Fae. He called us the ‘travelers’ and was very curious about us,” Chert said, babbling on about all of the little details that he knew and hoping he knew enough to make sense. He reached up and scratched at one of his long pointed ears as he mentioned them and continued to watch the woods all around him for signs of trouble.
As she walked, Sunrise Surprise’s wings fluttered and flapped at her sides. She walked with her head low, looking dejected and miserable, her crooked glasses somehow making everything look even worse. She kicked at every rock she passed by, every protruding root, and even kicked at sticks.
Unable to watch her friend suffer, Fogwalker tried to strike another conversation. “You know Stinky, I could totally see you becoming a Virtue,” she blabbered to the big earth pony in the lead. “We already have an alicorn in our group.”
“Virtue of what?” Garlic asked in a subdued voice, not sure that he liked what he was hearing at all. Being a Virtue came with a long list of responsibilities, social obligations, and duties that one could not ignore. It was like being an alicorn. Or in the case of Trixie, an alicorn that was also a Virtue.
“You would be the Virtue of Stoicism,” Fogwalker announced as she trotted along.
“What’s stoicism?” Chert asked.
Shaking his head at Fogwalker’s words, Garlic snorted loudly and refused to reply.
“Garlic is the definition of stoicism. If stoicism had a picture to define it, Garlic would be in that picture along with a big lump of rock. And the picture would have a caption that said ‘one of these things is a stoic’ and a smart pony would look at the picture and know that the stone was not the stoic in the picture,” Fogwalker explained. She heard Sunrise Surprise giggle-snorting softly and she felt a little better.
“I still don’t know what stoicism is,” Chert said, looking confused.
“Garlic… he endures, he continues to plod forward and no known force in the universe can stop him or make him quit. He is the very best sort of friend you could ask for. He’s too stubborn to go out and make friends, he’s the sort of friend you have to go looking for and hope that you find. When I was a little filly, I used to sneak out of my family’s fortress compound and go on adventures around the countryside. One day I found Garlic,” Fogwalker explained, smiling under her helmet.
“And she has pestered me every day since,” Garlic grumbled, shaking his head and snorting yet again, his tail swishing from side to side as he trotted along between the trees.
“I was a curious little filly and I wanted to see how the peasants lived. It was better than being beaten up by my brothers and cousins. One day, I met Garlic. Garlic was pulling a wagon along for his mother, Red Onion Pie, and taking onions to market. He was huge, even as a colt. And he was pulling a wagon that would have took two full grown stallions to pull. Being the curious little pegasus I was, I landed on top of his wagon to watch,” Fogwalker said, now struggling to hold back a giggle.
“I told her to shoo,” Garlic grumbled, rolling his eyes as he spoke.
“He did. He told me to shoo and to get off his wagon. His mother cuffed him and told him not to talk to his betters like that and that if one of the fillies of the pegasi protectors wanted a ride on the wagon than Garlic had better just shut up and pull,” Fogwalker said, now tittering slightly as she spoke.
“What did he do then?” Sunrise Surprise asked, now distracted from her depression.
“He stopped pulling the wagon, turned his head around to look at me, and in a very loud voice, he bellowed ‘SHOO!’ at me. He then called me a winged nuisance and told me to bugger off while his mother stood there smacking the stuffing out of him,” Fogwalker answered, a broad smile upon her face.
“What happened after that?” Chert questioned, looking off to his left and his right as he spoke, watchful of the woods around him.
“I hopped off of the wagon and walked beside him, trying to talk with him. I bugged him every step of the way to town. We bumped into one of my aunts… she was about to slap me silly for slipping off and ignoring my drills… Garlic placed himself between me and her,” Fogwalker said, now frowning as she spoke.
“Your aunt hits like a sissy,” Garlic growled, shaking his head at the memory.
“She hit him?” Sunrise asked.
“My aunt told him to know his place and she smacked him a good one while his poor mother watched and could do nothing. Garlic got up and placed himself in between my aunt and me again… so she knocked him down. And of course, he got up and did it again. This happened a few more times, and my aunt started getting upset. Red Onion Pie was crying, and I was about to bawl myself, I stood there stupidly not knowing what to do and not understanding why this was happening,” Fogwalker said, her wings fluttering from the memory of what had happened.
“So how did this end?” Sunrise asked, turning her head and blinking through her glasses at Fogwalker, an owlish expression upon her face.
“My aunt, Rampart Rusher Fetlocks, she finally stopped smacking Garlic and just stared at him instead. She reached out, wiped the blood from his nose, brushed his mane out of his eyes, and told him he was a damn fool, but he was courageous,” Fogwalker answered.
“That’s not all I did,” Garlic grumbled.
“No… he did something pretty stupid,” Fogwalker stated, shaking her head as she walked, her tail swinging from side to side.
“Well?” Chert questioned, his tone making it clear that he really wanted to know.
“Garlic hit her. He hit her hard enough to completely knock her over. He thumped her a good one. The guard came… I thought they were going to take Garlic away and put him in the stocks. They were beating him down. I was crying my eyes out at this point. My aunt, she picked herself up off of the ground and she tore into the guard, savagely beating quite a few of them, and then used her rank to give orders for them to disperse and leave Garlic alone. The guards beat up Garlic pretty good… My aunt stayed with Red Onion Pie while she sold onions and then Rampart Rusher hooked me up to the wagon when the day was done and made me haul it back back to the farm, half full of onions, with Garlic laying inside of it. She told him that he had earned her respect. She is the only pony in my family that tolerates Garlic and doesn’t say a bad word about him,” Fogwalker said to her companions.
“I like Rampart Rusher. She taught me how to drop-buck an enemy and the proper way to deliver a body check,” Garlic said in a voice that was soft with affection.
“And Rampart likes you… she trusts you, you know… I overheard her talking to my mother about me and you, my mother was all kinds of worried about me sneaking off to play with you, and the dangers of little colts and fillies playing together. My aunt slapped my mother, her sister, absolutely silly for suggesting that you might do something untowards with me. My mother was spitting blood for a half an hour and screeching at her sister, my aunt. I had to bite my hoof to keep from laughing and giving away my hiding place,” Fogwalker said, turning her eyes skyward and noticing how much the sun had moved.
“I think if we hurry, we’ll make it before sundown,” Garlic announced as they continued towards home.
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I really like this story so far.
Garlic and Fogwalker's childhood is very interesting.
I'm guessing this is supposed to be an "us."
In any case, some nice backstory here from everyone but Sunrise. I'm especially intrigued by Chert. What kind of cataclysm turns everyone into centaurs? And Garlic and Foggy are so cute, they'll beat ponies bloody with their adorability.
Looking forward to more.