Chapter Four
"I just gave one of your guards a message fer Braeburn." Applejack said as she trotted alongside the group, who in turn trotted behind Princess Luna as she led the way along the train tracks leading out of Ponyville. "If anypony in Apple Loosa sees those fillies, they'll snatch 'em up and hold 'em tighter than a starving boa constrictor."
"Let us hope that they are indeed headed for Apple Loosa." Princess Luna began. "Otherwise I will have wasted my time here before my sister takes over."
"If that's the case, shouldn't some of us stay behind to search Ghastly Gorge while the others move on to Apple Loosa?" Fluttershy piped up. "I mean, if we want to be sure to find them, that seems like the best plan..."
"Fluttershy's right. Rainbow Dash, how about you, Fluttershy, and I stay behind at Ghastly Gorge when Princess Luna and the others head on to Apple Loosa?" Twilight offered. "Our wings will make searching the gorge much faster."
"Sounds good to me." Rainbow Dash spoke up as she nudged Fluttershy, who simply gave a little nod and a smile.
"Then it is settled." Princess Luna cut in. "You three will scour the Gorge while the rest of your friends and I continue South East. I will send my guard further East into Hayseed Swamps, and we will all return to Apple Loosa by sunrise so that my sister can take over, should the fillies not be found."
"What time is it, anyway?" Rainbow Dash asked.
Princess Luna took a moment to stare at the moon, silently estimating the time by its position before she lowered her head once more to continue forward as Ghastly Gorge came into sight. "Nearly two in the morning. We have six hours until my sister will be able to take over. Good luck, all of you."
One hour earlier...
"This is now the third time you've tried to use Windsall Feathermoon." Apple Bloom sighed as the trio settled down on the forest floor and began to unroll their sleeping bags. "Sweetie Belle already said her name and that she was the head of the original Feathermoon party after Aldeus was assassinated."
"Well sor-ry that I'm a little distracted thinking about what we might find in San Palomino." Scootaloo defended. "The game is kind of lame, anyway."
Apple Bloom gave a sigh as she smoothed out her sleeping bag. It had been three hours since the Cutie Mark Crusaders found the ring and left Ponyville on the adventure of a lifetime. Three hours of endless walking on uneven ground and train tracks with nothing but a little history game to keep them awake and entertained. Sweetie Belle had proven to be the most adept at the game, even more so that Apple Bloom, surprisingly. Although Sweetie Belle could fire off names and events without hesitation, Apple Bloom had memory and never once repeated a name.
"I thought it was fun." Sweetie Belle admitted as she slid into her bag. "You two even taught me about a few ponies I never even heard of."
"Well of course you had fun, Li'l Miss History Book." Scootaloo teased with a smile.
Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes with a little smile as she stretched her hooves for a moment before turning to Apple Bloom. "What time do you want to start heading out?" she asked as Apple Bloom snugly slipped into her own sleeping bag.
Sweetie Belle waited patiently for an answer for a few moments before the sound of Apple Bloom's gentle snoring reached her ears, causing a little chuckle to escape from her mouth as she turned her head to Scootaloo. "Head out when the sun comes up?"
"Fine with me." Scootaloo yawned, before turning on her side and closing her eyes.
Soon, the only movement in the small forest was the gentle rise and fall of the Cutie Mark Crusader's chests as they slept, and Sweetie Belle herself; who slowly twirled the ring around in her magic as her eyes traced the runic carvings in the band while the ruby sparkled slightly in the moonlight.
She wondered to herself who could have crafted such a beautiful thing, and when. Most of all, however, she wondered where the map in it lead, and why there was a map at all. As she wondered these things, she slipped the ring onto her horn and let her magic flare up once more, causing the map to appear before her; casting its gentle light-blue glow on her friends as they slept.
Sweetie Belle tilted her head as she studied the map once more, noting that the slowly swirling green symbol had followed them to Ghastly Gorge, along with the moon's symbol. Is Princess Luna tracking us? Sweetie Belle thought as she watched the pair of symbols slowly flicker closer to Ghastly Gorge.
And is that swirly symbol Twilight and her friends? The Elements of Harmony? Sweetie Belle continued, before letting the map fade away with her magic as she let out a yawn of her own.
Whatever those symbols meant, the Cutie Mark Crusaders would likely be long gone before they reached Ghastly Gorge. If it really was Twilight and her friends, as well as Princess Luna, the three mares would certainly be in a world of trouble, should they be found.
Sweetie Belle smiled softly as she welcomed a world of dreams into her head, too sleepy to hear the soft rustling of the bushes on a windless night...
"Alright, we'll see everypony in Apple Loosa, come sunrise." Twilight promised as she waved to her friends while they continued on along the train tracks over Ghastly Gorge. "Stay safe, everypony!"
Twilight took a moment to watch them carry on before slowly gliding down the side of the gorge with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash in tow, before the trio planted their hooves into the banks of the river, below.
"Spread out and look for clues." Twilight instructed. "Fluttershy, do you want to peek around the caves and see what you can find while Rainbow Dash searches the area around the gorge?"
"What are you going to do?" Rainbow Dash cut in.
"I'll look around the river." Twilight explained. "There might not be any hoofprints, but if Sweetie Belle came down for water I can try to track her through her magic residue."
"Makes sense." Rainbow Dash shrugged before spreading her wings to fly over the edge of the gorge as Fluttershy gave a little cough to catch Twilight's attention.
"I don't like this place, Twilight." she said. "Something's wrong, here."
"It will be fine, Fluttershy. Just stay quiet so you don't wake the quarray eels, and we'll find a trace of those fillies in a few minutes." Twilight replied.
"But that's just it, Twilight!" Fluttershy exclaimed in quiet worry. "Usually you would be able to hear them snoring, since the sound would bounce off of the cave walls, but you can't hear anything. It's like the eels are just... Gone."
"They're probably just deeper into their caves, Fluttershy." Twilight reassured. "It is a lot colder than it usually is, tonight. Don't fret about it, we'll be fine."
"I hope so..." Fluttershy mused as Twilight began slowly walking alongside the river; head towards the ground before Fluttershy carefully spread her wings and quietly flew up towards the mouth of one of many caves.
Out on the edge of Ghastly Gorge, Rainbow Dash flew low to the ground as she kept an eye out for any sign of the Cutie Mark Crusaders; from an overturned stone to imprints in the dirt as she neared the small forest overlooking Ghastly Gorge.
If I was on the run, headed this way, I'd take a nap in these trees. Rainbow Dash reasoned as she pushed away the bushes and young trees that blocked her path until she reached a small clearing, large enough for a campsite with three crumpled sleeping bags in the center.
"Twilight, Fluttershy, come quick!" Rainbow Dash shouted as she shot out of the trees and hovered over the gorge.
"Keep your voice down!" Twilight whispered harshly as she and Fluttershy flew up to the blue pegasus. "Do you want to wake the quarray eels?"
"Sorry, but I think I found where they slept for the night." Rainbow Dash explained as she led the way back into the forest to the campsite.
Twilight nudged one of the sleeping bags with her hoof as she inspected it closely, while Rainbow Dash did the same to another. Fluttershy, however, stood her ground at the edge of the clearing and carefully parted a bramble thicket.
"This definitely smells like Scootaloo." Rainbow Dash admitted with a cough. "Always was a hassle to get that squirt to take a bath."
"So where are they now?" Twilight asked, rhetorically. "Why leave their sleeping bags?"
"Girls..." Fluttershy whispered, turning to show a tuft of thick, dark brown fur she had pulled from the thicket. "This is bad."
"Rarity, I-I'm sorry..." Sweetie Belle cried, softly.
"R-Rainbow Dash, why..." Scootaloo whined.
"Applejack, p-please..." Apple Bloom begged.
The three Cutie Mark Crusaders tossed and turned in their sleep as the three canine-like figures stood over their sleeping bodies; their eyes flashing yellow periodically as they continued to feed the three fillies nightmares while consuming their own pleasant dreams. Behind them, a smaller figure rummaged through the saddle bags; dumping out its contents onto the forest floor and sifting through them for anything shiny.
"This one has a ring!" the figure standing over Sweetie Belle signaled, prompting the smaller creature to rush forward and carefully pull the ring off of her horn.
"It's pretty!" another creature noted.
"It's shiny!" the third one exclaimed.
"Quiet, you idiots!" the small one whispered as he slapped them all. "Keep giving them nightmares, there's only one bag left to search."
The three larger creatures, with shame in their faces, turned their heads back to the fillies and continued to flash their eyes periodically; calling out the fears of the three mares to manifest in their dreams.
After the smaller creature had emptied the third and final bag and determined it held nothing of value, it motioned for the others to follow as it hurried over the edge of the gorge.
"Please don't send me back to Manehatten!" Sweetie Belle shouted as she awoke from her nightmare; sitting upright in an instant and coming face-to-face with one of the creatures.
"Sweetie Belle, what's wrong?" Apple Bloom shouted back, half asleep, before Sweetie Belle once again spoke up.
"DIAMOND DOGS!" she screamed in fear as she headbutted the canine, causing it to yelp in pain and hold its nose as it hurriedly backed away, before turning to flee into the gorge. "They took the ring!"
"Get back here, you coward!" Scootaloo shouted as she leapt from her sleeping back and gave chase, while Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle charged the remaining two Diamond Dogs; ramming their heads into their bellies to elicit a pained howl from the two canines before they, too, turned tail to flee.
"After them!" Apple Bloom ordered as she and Sweetie Belle slid down the side of the gorge towards Scootaloo just in time to see which of the many caves the dogs had fled into.
As the trio took off after the dogs into the cave, the moonlight from outside steadily reached less and less of the inside of the cave, prompting Sweetie Belle to use her magic to light the way. But it was too late; the dogs had fled far enough to where the Cutie Mark Crusaders couldn't even hear the patter of their paws on the cold stone. The Cutie Mark Crusaders slowed to a stop as they paused to catch their breath.
"Now what are we going to do?" Scootaloo whined.
"We're going to go after them!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed. "We can't turn back, especially not now! If we turn back now, we go back to Twilight without the ring we stole and without anything to show for it!"
"But these are Diamond Dog caves!" Scootaloo replied. "They could go on for miles, and who knows how many forks in the road there are, down here!"
Sweetie Belle gave a little laugh as she brightened her magic. "Don't you girls remember that Advanced Unicorn studies class I took? They taught us all sorts of things." Sweetie Belle explained as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath; focusing her magic into a ball of light that swirled around for a few moments above her head before moving forward through the cave as if on rails.
"Like how to track magic."
"What kind of fur is that?" Rainbow Dash asked as she poked at it with a hoof.
"It's Diamond Dog fur, but it's much more thick than any I've ever seen." Fluttershy explained.
"If Diamond Dogs took the Cutie Mark Crusaders, there's no telling where they could be by now." Twilight groaned. "These caves could go on for miles, and we don't even know where to start, let alone which are quarray eel nests and which aren't."
"That's just it, Twilight." Flutteshy spoke up. "When you had me look into the caves, I realized why I had such a bad feeling about this place..."
Fluttershy pulled a medium-sized bone from under her wing and set it on the ground before her friends. "This is from a quarray eel."
"So, what's the big deal?" Rainbow Dash inquired. "Animals die all the time."
"This eel didn't die of old age, Rainbow Dash." Fluttershy explained, quietly.
"There are teeth marks all along the bones..." Twilight realized as she studied it closely. "Do you think Diamond Dogs did this?"
"I don't see what else could have." Fluttershy admitted. "We haven't heard a single eel, even though Rainbow Dash's yelling should have woken them all up. In fact, I don't think there are any quarray eels in Ghastly Gorge, anymore..."
"This just keeps on getting better and better." Rainbow Dash groaned. "First, the CMC go missing, now they've been taken by carnivores."
"Rainbow Dash, I need you to fly as fast as you can to Apple Loosa and get Princess Luna and the others. Tell them what we know, and that Fluttershy and I are headed into the caves." Twilight ordered. "We can't find these fillies after the Diamond Dogs-"
"I don't need an image in my head, Twilight." Rainbow Dash glared before she spread her wings and took off along the train tracks, leaving Fluttershy and Twilight to stare into the mouth of one of many caves.
Twilight took a deep breath to calm herself as Fluttershy gulped nervously.
"Are you ready for this?"
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6022249 Seems like you have the deductive reasoning skills of Sherlock Holmes.
Wait...do Diamond Dogs have the ability to give nightmares?
6022290 I'm on the case Watson!
6022330 Celestia and Luna operate on their respective schedules. Luna is in charge of the kingdom and awake from 6pm to 6am, and Celestia is in charge of the kingdom and awake from 6am to 6pm.
6022364 I recall Luna saying something peculiar about the battle ground in Ghastly Gorge. Can't quite remember, though, maybe it's worth going back and reading~?
6022521 I suppose she needs her sleep. Still, God forbid the world goes to hell when she's off the clock.
: Meh. Not my problem till 6am
Oh.
OHHHHHHHH! Oh man, I had a feeling these weren't ordinary Diamond Dogs but this is worse than I thought. God help those three
6023182 i.imgur.com/5sBgRdn.gif
6023182 images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/11400000/Gimli-gimli-11402468-960-404.jpg
Gimli sees what you did there.
It´s not a name so it´s written small.
Ok. Read the first two chapters now - and I have to say:
It is well written, grammar is decent. The story flows nicely and nothing has distracted me so far.
The story itself has an interesting promise. It feels a bit like the movie "Stand by me" if you know it.
In short I like it. So have a like.
edit: there is some technical difficulty - it says 'Failed to save Rating' when I click for upvote... strange. So feel yourself upvoted, at least. I fix it as fast as possible...
6087806 I will admit I did watch Stand By Me the day before I started writing, so it had influence and will continue to have influence.