• Published 20th Jun 2015
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Mortal Coil - Reeve



Rarity's Odyssey: Rarity goes on many adventures to reclaim her homeland

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VI - The Wreath

I hadn’t been wrong about Hammerhead wanting us up at the crack of dawn, as I was rudely woken from my peaceful slumber by him hammering on my door, no pun intended. Luckily I hadn’t slipped so far back into old habits that I would roll over and try to ignore him; rather I forced myself out of bed and started dressing myself. Lyra had gone ahead to find the inn keeper and pay the rent, and once I had the straps on all my satchels and the strings of my pouches tightened I went downstairs after her. I found her waiting by the bar, rapping her hoof in agitation while she apparently waited for the inn keeper to show up.

“He might be asleep you know,” I pointed out as I joined her at the bar.

“He’s not, I already checked his room,” Lyra explained, craning her neck to try and see around the open kitchen as if she expected to see him hiding behind a counter.

“Pay your debts quickly and meet us outside,” Hammerhead called from the door. “And try to get the rest of your companions out of bed before we come in and drag them out.”

“You’d think he’d be pretty eager to collect our rent after what he was saying about business being slow,” Lyra commented as Hammerhead exited the building.

“Maybe he’s just in the back or something,” I proposed, walking around the bar and entering the kitchen area.

Lyra didn’t object as I navigated my way to the pantry door, it was slightly ajar and there was no light coming from within. Still, I thought it was worth a quick search, and if he wasn’t there I would go outside to look for him. I threw open the door with my magic, opening my mouth in preparation for calling out… only to have my words fail me.

“Did you find him?” Lyra asked, only half interested as she approached from the side.

I would have replied with ‘yes’, but again, I was incapable of forming the words. Lyra discovered soon enough as she reached me, looked through the pantry door and leapt back in horror. The little, old stallion was hanging from a ceiling beam, one of the bar stools was toppled beneath him. He was quite clearly dead and my mind instantly jumped to suicide. Naturally we didn’t set off like Hammerhead had intended, as much as I could tell it annoyed him to delay the journey, he knew it wasn’t right to just walk away from something like that.

As time seemed to speed by and word of what happened spread to our travelling companions and the few townsponies who still lived in Glean, I found myself refusing to leave the inn as the reality of what had happened refused to sink in. It just made no sense, true he made out that things had been difficult for him and the town after the war, but surely our arrival meant a great boom in business for him. Of course I could never have known what things were happening in his life from one conversation, perhaps to somepony who knew him this would have come as no surprise, perhaps this had been building up under the surface for a long time.

The truth was I had no right to make any assumptions on why this pony might have done what he appeared to have done, but I just couldn’t help myself, and it was all because of his suicide note. It was one of the first things we picked up on once we managed to get over our initial shock at seeing the body. It was a sheet of fine parchment pinned to his shirt, it bore no writing however, nothing that might have indicated a motive. Instead the paper displayed a single drawing, a wreath of thorns. I was immediately sceptical that it even could be classed as a suicide note, but Hammerhead brushed it off by saying that ponies in that mind set are hardly thinking rationally, and that drawing might have meant something important to him at the time.

Still it bothered me, and it didn’t take long to realise why. The drawing was incredible, as an artist myself I could appreciate the skill that went into it as my eyes swept over it, picking up the finest of details. However I did not believe that the old stallion was such a skilled artist, and the discarded napkin on the floor beside the bar was proof of that. Sure you could argue that he was only messing around when he drew those stick figures and that even a skilled artist could doodle without putting much effort into making it look good, but I just couldn’t fathom such a range in skill being realistic.

Lyra told me I was overthinking things when I tried to explain it to her, and Hammerhead told me I should let it go, that suicide was just an unfortunate reality and I shouldn’t try to disprove it just because it was unpleasant. Reluctantly I agreed, and when Hammerhead decided we had wasted enough time and it was time to move on, I was more than willing to obey. The mare who lived next door to the inn said she would take care of the body, as well as try to hunt down the stallion's relatives to pass on the unfortunate news.

I asked if she was going to approach the authorities about it, she replied with ‘What authorities?’. I left the vacant town feeling rather hollow, and as we passed through the fields in the outskirts I realised how barren the farmlands truly were, something we hadn’t noticed as we first arrived the night before. We journeyed in silence, ordinarily Lyra would talk away, but even she was oddly quiet, no doubt she too was bothered by the morning’s events. Not everypony was feeling put off however, I did overhear a couple of upper-class mares discussing how much of a steal our stay at the inn was before having a chuckle.

After a couple hours we arrived in another wood, in doing so we had to cut away from the path which took the long way around. A few of our companions expressed displeasure at that but Hammerhead insisted he knew what he was doing, and I could tell he wasn’t in the mood for ponies questioning him after how much the morning’s events had set us back. It was similar to how we crossed the Dawn Coast when making for the Wyvern Heights, except instead of hilly terrain we were faced with mud and awkward trees with low hanging branches and roots that jutted up through the earth.

Several times, some of us, myself included, would get tangled up in brambles, trip over rocks and roots or walk down what seemed like a perfectly good path but ended up being too narrow and having to back up. The guards however navigated the wood with ease, never encountering any difficulty even as they pulled the luggage cart along behind them. I was going to ask Hammerhead how they knew the route so well, but as we stepped out from the tree line onto the bank of a river my question very quickly answered itself.

We were still in the woods, in fact there were even more trees on the opposite bank. We had just arrived into a small clearing where a high, wooden bridge had been erected over the river and on the other side was a small log cabin and a loading crane sitting next to the river. I knew the river joined The Neptune to the Lonesome Lake, I also knew that there were two main bridges across it nearer to both those locations, but I never knew this place existed. I could guess however that it was used as a checkpoint for loading and unloading barges travelling along the river.

“I helped build this place,” Hammerhead said out of nowhere, appearing next to me.

“You did?” I queried earning a nod in response.

“Supply Lines are important in a war,” he explained. “It was pretty early on in the whole thing, the enemy started ambushing our supply barges further down the river, so we needed somewhere else to collect the cargo before they reached enemy territory.”

“So you did fight in the war,” I responded, I had my suspicions, and now I just had one more question. “Which… which side did you fight for? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“The rebels,” Hammerhead stated casually before gesturing to his men who were already spread out, manning the crane to pick up the cart. “We all were, it was how we met.”

He began moving towards the bridge which some ponies had already crossed and a couple others were in the process of doing so, I followed closely in the hopes of hearing more.

“It seemed right at the time,” he continued. “Fighting for the rebellion that is, but the fact that this place was just left abandoned says a lot.”

“So you don’t think they should have won?” I asked curiously.

“It’s not that,” he tried to explain. “I just think they rushed into conflict without having any idea what they would do if and when they won. Maybe if they had some plan in place, the country wouldn’t be in the crappy state it’s in now.”

When we stepped off on the opposite bank Hammerhead walked off to help his men before I could ask him anymore questions. Instead I wandered over to where Lyra stood, peering into the window of the cabin.

“What were you two talking about?” she asked as she saw me approaching.

“He was telling me about how he helped build this place during the war,” I replied.

“Neat,” Lyra said with a contemplative nod. “That explains why he brought us this way. Quicker to cut through the woods and he knew the crane would be there to lift the cart…”

It was as if fate had been eavesdropping on our conversation, and what happened next was just fate trying to spite us. Lyra was cut off by a loud crashing noise, we both spun around the see the arm of the crane had broken clean off, dropping both it the cart which had been hanging from it into the river. Many ponies began shouting and cursing as they saw their suitcases plunge into the river, Lyra and I also ran up to the bank and stared in in horror. Almost without hesitation however, the stallions whipped their weapons and armour off, threw them onto the grass before diving in to recover the luggage.

As they began hauling the suitcases out, I stepped up and skidded down the bank until I my forelegs were in the river. Lyra followed me and together with a few other ponies who weren’t afraid to get their boots wet we used our magic to take the cases off the stallions and deposit them back on the dry land. The whole process was very hectic and stressful, not helped by a number of ponies who were concerned enough about their belongings to shout and roar at Hammerhead and his men, but not concerned enough to help retrieve them. It was being asked to help clean the Siren all over again.

After a while we were forced to call it quits, we had recovered a surprising amount, however a good number had either been lost to the depths or carried down river by the current. My own case had been lost, although I was less concerned for myself than I was for the mother and her small child. They weren’t carrying any other bags so all their belongings had been in that one suitcase that we were unable to recover. There were quite a few tears from both her and the filly, I could tell Hammerhead and his men were thoroughly shamed by it, not quite as much by some others who had lost their stuff, as in the ones who had opted to stand back shouting.

Lyra had been one of the lucky few, but she along with a few other charitable souls were quick to offer their spare clothes to the mother as well as some bits to help her on her way to her old home in Arclight. I wasn’t surprised when it was decided we would spend the night there, I also wasn’t surprised at the uproar when Hammerhead revealed that the few bedrolls we had were also gone. It was still early evening, so while everypony began getting at each other’s throats, I decided to take a short walk. I wasn’t too bothered by the loss of my suitcase, sure the clothes in it weren’t exactly cheap to make, but all my important items were still on my person and in my satchels.

True I had also been keeping my blank letters in the case, but I was sure I would find more stuff for writing letters when I reached Pivot or Mule. I hadn’t really had a destination in mind, I was just walking in a random direction… or at least that’s what I thought. If a pony walks back and forth across a particular length of ground a few times, their hoof prints will eventually wear the ground down enough so that the faintest path appears. Other ponies pick up on this slight path and feel drawn to follow it themselves; I suppose that is how most roads are formed.

In this case the path was faint, but without even realising it my hooves followed it as if with a mind of their own. It was only when I reached the end of the path that I picked up on all this, on the path that had led away from the river checkpoint and on the large tree stump in front of me. At first I was prepared to brush it off, trying to decide whether I should carry on or turn back, the stump didn’t really factor into the decision making process until I paced around and my eyes landed on what was carved into the rotting bark.

Lyra was a little worried when she saw me sprinting towards her from the woods; she probably thought I was being chased by timber wolves or something. Before she could say anything however, I grabbed her by the shoulders and began shaking her.

“You have to come quickly!” I exclaimed. “You won’t believe what I just stumbled across.”

“Rarity, wait a moment!” Lyra tried to object, but to no avail as I dragged her along the trail.

The path was easier to follow intentionally now that I knew it was there, and when I came to the tree stump I wasted no time in pulling Lyra around to the right side and showing her the carving. She didn’t speak, only stared in confusion at what was etched in front of us.

“Is that…” Lyra began, looking at me with concern.

“I think so,” I whispered back.

The wreath of thorns was clear as day, the dark, damp bark chipped away so the pale wood beneath shone through, forming the shape.

“Are you absolutely sure that’s the same symbol from the note?” Lyra asked, understanding instantly what the implications of the discovery could mean.

“I am,” I replied, whipping one of my notebooks from my bag and flipping open to one of the first few pages.

“Did you take that?!” Lyra asked in horror as she looked at the drawing of the wreath in my notebook.

“No!” I snapped back quickly, a little insulted by the insinuation. “I just drew a copy of it. But look, it’s the exact same design.”

“It really does look like it,” Lyra admitted, running her hoof over the carving. “But what does it mean? And I didn’t even know it was possible to carve something this…”

“Intricate?” I offered when Lyra couldn’t come up with the word, she nodded in response. “Well I don’t know what it means, and I noticed the drawing was also very well done, whoever made them must be a very skilled artist.”

“You don’t think it was that stallion who…” Lyra began to ask before cutting off and quickly changing the direction of her sentence. “Surely he could have come out here sometime, we’re not too far away from Glean.”

“Don’t you remember what I was trying to tell you at the inn?” I asked impatiently. “He wasn’t a good artist, we saw that napkin.”

Lyra pursed her lips in thought, when she didn’t reply I began circling around the stump, examining every inch of it for something out of the ordinary. Seeing what I was up to, Lyra joined me in investigating it. While I was crouching down, looking at its roots, Lyra had climbed up and was now looking into the hollow.

“Hey Rarity!” she called down. “There might be something in here.”

Jumping up quickly, I scurried up next to Lyra and peered in. The hollow stump was full of dry leaves and damp moss, nothing that would have been out of the ordinary, but I managed to see what Lyra had. A glimpse of something metal where a small patch of the moss had been brush aside, perhaps by some woodland animal. Lyra and I exchanged a look, agreeing pretty quickly on what to do. Together we reached out with our magic and pulled the metal object from the stump and lowered it onto the forest floor.

Climbing down the stump we examined it closely, discerning it to be a medium sized lockbox. It was fairly rusted and it was little more than half the size of the case I had lost. I didn’t know any lock picking spells, but then I didn’t have to, neither of us did. Levitating a large rock, I brought it smashing down onto the rusted catch. The padlock looked fairly new and indeed held, but the box itself cracked open, making the padlock pretty redundant.

We both knelt down before it, looking like a pair of fillies on Hearth’s Warming morning about to open their presents. I lifted the broken lid slowly and the dwindling sunlight seeped into the box, illuminating its contents. I’m not sure what I was expecting, I probably would have been surprised no matter what turned out to be in it. It turned out however to be a very interesting variety of objects, including seven arrows and two crossbow bolts, a coping saw, some sealed food and a set of knives. I levitated the knives out first and began examining them while Lyra looked at the saw. They were very stylish blades, double edged, leather wrapped grips, looked to be made of silver though I wasn’t entirely sure.

They were also stored within matching leather sheaths which, I took quick notice of, would go quite nicely attached to my cincher.

“This saw looks like it was used recently,” Lyra pointed out, indicating chunks of saw dust clotting the teeth.

“Well these knives look pretty new,” I added, stowing them in my own bag before levitating out the other objects. “So do these arrows actually.”

“I wonder what all this is for,” Lyra mumbled, looking back into the box at which point her eyes widened. “Hello there! What do we have here?”

Looking over I saw her whip out a sheet of paper from the bottom of the box that we hadn’t noticed with all the other objects on top of it. The paper was covered in writing, but as our eyes scanned over it quickly became apparent that it was written in gibberish.

“Well that was disappointing,” I commented as I stood up and brushed myself down.

“Not entirely,” Lyra began. “At last now we know pan fried eggs do cartwheels down volcanos in swimsuits.”

“Good point,” I replied sarcastically. “Truly we both walk away from here enlightened.”

We shared a little laugh as we packed everything, minus the knives back into the box and began carrying it back towards the checkpoint. When we reached the cabin we spotted Hammerhead talking to one of his men, a lump of wood sat between them. When he saw us approaching he excused himself and marched over to us.

“Where were you two?” he questioned, before looking specifically at me. “I’m sorry about your bag by the way.”

“It’s fine, there was nothing important in it,” I replied, brushing it off with a hoof. “As for where we were, we found something interesting in the wood.”

Lyra floated the lock box up to Hammerhead who looked at it curiously before accepting it.

“We found that hidden inside a hollow tree stump,” I explained as he began searching through it. “The tree stump was marked with a wreath of thorns, the same wreath of thorns that was on that old pony’s ‘suicide note’.”

Hammerhead didn’t seem to have heard me however, as he lifted the saw out, eying it with a curious expression.

“Oh yeah that,” Lyra commented. “We thought it looked like it had been used recently.”

“You’re damn right it has!” Hammerhead exclaimed, dropping the box and storming over to the lump of wood I had seen, the saw in his mouth.

Lyra and I both looked at each other confused before following after him, hoping to get some kind of explanation.

“This was the arm of the crane that broke,” Hammerhead explained, gesturing his hoof angrily over it. “One of my men recovered it, notice anything odd about it?”

Unsure what he was getting at, I crouched down and began looking it over. After a moment I came to the end that had snapped off from the rest of the crane, only… it wasn’t snapped, at least not entirely.

“This has been sawn,” I stated, looking up at him for confirmation.

“That’s right,” he said, his normally soft voice sounding more like a growl. “Sawn half way so that any weight would have resulted in it breaking and whatever it was holding dropping into the river.”

“You think this saw was used to cut it?” Lyra asked, her voiced concerned.

“It seems like a pretty big coincidence that we discover this sabotage,” he began. “Then you show up having just found a used saw hidden in the woods.”

“So whoever hid that box,” I began, levitating the box back over to us. “Probably cut the crane, and might also have been involved in that stallion's death. Why would anypony do all that?”

“Maybe the note has something to do with it,” Lyra suggested.

“Note?” Hammerhead repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“Here,” I said, passing him out the piece of paper. “It’s not much use though, absolute gibberish.”

Hammerhead read over it a few times, his brow furrowing as he did.

“Does it mean something to you?” I asked, hopeful that we might get to the bottom of this.

“No,” he answered before donning a thoughtful expression. “But this writing style does seem very familiar, I’m sure I’ve seen a letter written like this before.”

He handed it back to us before continuing.

“But considering those are military rations in that box it could be some sort of code,” he explained. “Might be that you two found a dead drop for supplies. We should be careful tonight; I’ll let the guys know we’re on high alert just in case the owner of that box shows up again. You two should go get some sleep.”

Indeed the sun had set some time ago, but somewhere among all the excitement of discovery and mystery we hadn’t even noticed. As Hammerhead went to talk to his men, we found a relatively comfortable patch of earth outside the cabin to lie down for the night. Before we called it a night we quickly discussed what to do with the box's contents, since me pocketing the knives hadn’t slipped past Lyra, she gave me the coded letter to hold onto as well. The rations we split and the other items we left in the box, perhaps Hammerhead would be able to make use of them.

If he couldn’t, which wouldn’t be surprising since none of his men carried any sort of ranged weapon; I could always sell them in Pivot, which we would certainly reach tomorrow despite all the delays we had encountered. It had been an unusually eventful journey thus far, foolishly I believed the worst was behind us and once we reached Pivot it would be smooth sailing straight to Mule and home. How wrong could a mare be…

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