Antonovka

by Soufriere

Chapter Four: Blue Flowers and the Scorched Valley

I thought I had seen the worst the Everfree Forest had to offer in terms of impassibility when I entered it. I was wrong. Off the ancient road, the underbrush was so thick, I felt like I was underwater, only it was branches and leaves: slightly easier to breathe, but harder to navigate. At least once I nearly smacked head-on into a gnarled tree. I tried desperately to find any sort of animal trail, anything at all that would get me out of that.

Crunching, swishing, shuffling. Annoying.

Ruby was nowhere to be seen, although I couldn’t see much of anything amidst the foliage anyway despite my lantern; even if she was just a yard away, I’d never notice. Carefully I made my way through the underbrush, like stepping your way through a booby trap made up of tight wires – one wrong step and you’re liable to get slapped in the face with something sharp and painful. I have no idea how long I was in there; maybe it was only a few minutes, maybe it was an hour. Time loses all meaning in the Forest.

Eventually, I felt the terrain raise slightly. Some tiny hill or something, nothing spectacular, but it was a nice change from the flatness of the Forest up to that point. It was doubly nice because the undergrowth started to taper off, at it apparently does not grow well on uneven ground like the trees can. I never thought the feel of dirt under my hooves would be such a welcome sensation.

It was nice to finally have some visibility back. Many yards in front of me, as the little hill tapered to its top, I saw a break in the trees. I resisted the urge to run toward it, as my gut told me to wait and not risk tripping and hurting myself any more than I already had. So, more slowly than I would have wanted, I walked to the top of the hill.

I stepped out into a massive clearing. The entire rise was covered in bright blue flowers made all the more brilliant in the moonlight, which was the important thing to me. I cherished every moment I could see that night sky. Although, something about the sky seemed… off. It was almost as if there was some sort of oily film up there covering the Forest, distorting what I could see, tinting everything purple. Was it still night? Or did the weird sky only make it seem like night?

The answer did not matter to me at that point because I saw clearly, on the other side of the clearing, the giant Timberwolf with my family’s ladle still stuck in its forehead. It shuffled around in its spot, almost as if it was doing some sort of dance, then it let out its haunting howl.

“Now you’re just mocking me,” I snapped at it, the lantern handle making me slur a tad.

It was then that Ruby appeared beside me, immediately shrinking back when she saw the Timberwolf. “Annie, please be careful!” she said.

I didn’t listen. Instead, I took off at full gallop straight across the clearing, through those lovely blue flowers, disturbing its silvery pollen which kicked up around me like microscopic dust in the moonlight, hoping I could reach the Timberwolf before it decided to move. I knew it was futile, but I felt I had to try.

For the rest of eternity, I’ll swear I saw that damned bag of branches sneer as its body deconstructed itself into a floating mass of sticks – its head stayed oddly intact, probably due to the foreign object I’d lodged in it – and floated away on a nonexistent breeze.

As I reached the other end of the clearing, I let out a curse I won’t repeat here – not for young ears to hear or eyes to read – suffice to say it was enough to make Ruby briefly give me the stink eye, vivid even as the firefly light from my lantern passed through the rest of her.

“Must you be so crude?” Ruby asked.

“Sorry,” I said, not really sorry. “Lemme try again. *ahem* Consarn it! Where’d that dag-blasted thing run off to now??”

“I would honestly rather not find out,” said Ruby. “There could be other Timberwolves nearby as well.”

I gave her a look. “Why should you care? You’re a ghost.”

Ruby dipped her head again. “That may not mean anything. There is no proof that a Timberwolf or Manticore or any other sort of infernal creature cannot harm a spectre like myself. I could easily be in just as much danger as you.”

“Then why did you decide to follow me?”

Ruby shrugged. “It seemed more interesting than spending the rest of eternity wandering the outskirts of Sunny Town trying to stop ponies from entering the place.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “So, do you know what’s down that way?” I pointed my forehoof in the direction the Timberwolf went.

“Well…” said Ruby as she scratched her chin – she really was the most alive-acting ghost I’d ever seen. Actually at that point she was the only ghost I’d ever seen, but that’s as maybe. “If what I heard from some travelling merchants during my life was correct, that direction should lead to either the Putrid Bog or the Scorched Valley.”

I nodded. “Both of those sound real inviting,” I said with full sarcasm.

“To be fair,” Ruby said, “the Putrid Bog used to be called Clear Lake before the war and resulting Corruption twisted it.”

“Either way, I’m not sure which I’d rather run into less,” I replied.

Ruby attempted to pat my shoulder, but her hoof went right through me. All I felt was a brief chill touch my heart. I turned to her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Old habits do not die with the dead, it appears. Anyway, one thing I do know about Timberwolves is that when they travel, even when deconstructed, they prefer to use existing paths, for it lessens the chances any parts of their bodies would become entangled in brush.”

We found a trail leading from the clearing, so narrow a pony could barely fit on it, but it was a million times better than crawling through underbrush yet again. I decided to go first, as Ruby, although she never complained, made it clear she felt far out of her comfort zone and was beginning to regret travelling with me. After about fifty yards, at which point we were heading in a distinctly downward direction, something occurred to me.

“Ruby, why are you walkin’ behind me? You’re a ghost, right? Can’t you pass through trees and stuff?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I do not like to, because it reminds me I am not alive, and therefore of everything I have lost.”

“Well, guess I can’t argue with that,” I said after thinking about it for about three seconds, turning my head back to her as I kept walking. “But on the other hoof, you can fly, pass through stuff, and you’ve got neat glowy eyes! You can probably see all sorts of things I can’t!”

“Yes, I can,” Ruby admitted, “Like that drop in front of you.”

“Wait what?”

That was my punishment for not looking where I was going. All of a sudden the ground disappeared beneath my hooves. I tumbled end over end several feet down an earthen slope into a glen of some sort. The lantern ricocheted off the ground and flew off.

Once I regained my bearings, I stood up. Nothing broken, lucky for me. Even more lucky, my lantern lay intact just a couple yards to my right. I looked back; It wasn’t that far a fall. I could see Ruby’s glowing eyes up at the top. Slowly, she floated down to my side.

“Are you okay?” she asked, clearly concerned.

“Only my pride got hurt,” I said as I tried to brush some dust off myself.

I looked around me. There was a clearly delineated road here, not as fancy as the one that had led from Sunny Town, but a road nonetheless. It took up the majority of the glen, whose access to the sky was blocked by the ever-present tree canopy, while the rest of the floor was a narrow but somewhat deep flowing creek that had a distinct smell to it – I could never tell you what; not metallic, not truly putrid, maybe algal even though I couldn’t see any, or maybe just some type of moss (I did see a lot of moss along each side of it).

From my perspective, the creek flowed right to left – I could never tell you what the cardinal direction actually was; I may have brought my lantern, but I sure didn’t have a compass, not that it would have been much use in the Forest anyway.

“Which way shall you go?” Ruby asked me, turning her head each direction and giving a dim glance at each possibility.

Didn’t take long to decide. “Last time I went left was 90% a disaster.”

“But you met me,” said Ruby. I’d made her sad again. Ghosts, I swear…

“That’s the other ten percent, gal,” I assured her. “Plus you said there was a Putrid Bog or somethin’ out this way? That ain’t no place I wanna visit at the moment, an’ that there creek probably goes to it. I’m headin’ right.”

Ruby nodded, and we continued on our way, whatever way that was. I stopped for two seconds to pick my lantern back up, grateful it hadn’t landed in the water. Imagining carrying it in my mouth after that made me feel ill.

With no sense of time or direction, and only the barest sense of distance, I walked down the degraded road, Ruby following close behind. At one point we saw a stone milepost with arrows pointing in two directions. It was in noticeably better condition than the similar one I’d seen at Sunny Town, but it was still in that weird alphabet I couldn’t read.

“Hey, Ruby, do ya know what that sign says?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I am sorry. I cannot read the ancient runes. By the time I lived, they had already been phased out for centuries and we had no reason to learn them.”

“Well, shoot.”

We kept walking for what felt like miles through the woods – the giant old trees on both sides of the road at the bottom of the glen arced towards each other, causing a continuous leafy canopy to hang over us every inch of the way. I felt at the time that I was lucky to have found that clearing, if only because it was nice to see even a warped vision of the sky. As it was, this road almost felt like being in a cave, albeit one which produced sounds the likes of which one hopes never to hear. Were they just Forest animals, or the cries of the damned and demonic? Or perhaps both.

“This is the Everfree Forest,” was all Ruby would say when I asked her.

After some time, we arrived at a junction with a much larger, much better maintained road. To our right was another one of those stone mileposts with ancient text neither one of us could read, along with arrows pointing three different directions. To the left of the post was another sign, a wooden one with arrows pointing left and right. It looked almost new and, for once, the words were readable, even if its lettering was in the really archaic style I had seen used by the older, stricter Tarpanites when I lived in the Hippus Valley, and saw again on some tapestries in Princess Celestia’s palace. Ruby, it turned out, could read the sign better than I could.

“It says taking the left road leads out of the Forest,” she said, “while going right will take one to the Scorched Valley and…”

I cocked my head. “And?”

“It says ‘Freedom’.”

Does that make any sense to you? Because it sure didn’t to me at the time. “What?! How can there possibly be freedom for going further into the Forest? Ain’t the Scorched Valley really close to the middle of it?”

“I believe so,” Ruby said. “So you would prefer to leave,” she asked with more than a twinge of worry that I picked up on.

“What’s wrong?”

She sighed, which was sort of strange since ghosts don’t breathe. “You are the first pony I have managed to successfully keep out of Sunny Town since the Corruption consumed it, so I feel a sort of affinity for you. However, even if I can move freely within this cursed wood, I doubt I can ever leave it, for my soul is forever tied to where I met my end. Being bound to a specific location is an immutable fact for nearly all spectres.”

“Ya ever tried to leave?” I asked her.

Ruby looked up. “To be honest, no. Once I awoke, I felt it was my mission to show young foals who wandered into Sunny Town its truth and guide them out before they were consumed, or to keep older ponies like yourself from entering in the first place. Even though I failed every attempt, I could never be sure when the next unlucky wanderer would arrive, so I had to stay.”

“Well, I’ll stay with ya as long an’ as far as I can. You seem like the type a’ gal could use a friend,” I said.

Ruby smiled and nodded as we continued on our way down the road. Along the way, we could see the remnants of what used to be street lamps – kerosene or something; they didn’t have electricity back in my younger days and certainly not a thousand years ago. Regardless, the tops of most of those lamps had long since been broken, rusted, or simply weren’t lit. The farther I walked along this road, the more I felt a tiny tingling sensation all over my body, a similar feeling to my first encounter with the ancient zap-apple grove.

I don’t know how long we were on that road, but all of a sudden it split off; what looked like the original road turned to the left and looked like it went up a now heavily wooded hill, although it was in complete disrepair, its paving stones barely visible. The other branch, better maintained but without any paving stones at all, continued straight.

“Straight?” I asked Ruby. She nodded. “Yeah, I figured. The road looks a bit treacherous, and somethin’ tells me I don’t wanna go up that hill.”

She opened her mouth to say something, which made me wonder if ghosts needed to move their lips to speak, or if she just forgot she was dead again. I guess I should have asked her, but I didn’t want her to make her feel any sadder than she already was. Then a thought crossed my mind.

“We’re gonna hafta take that hill road anyway, ain’t we?”

“It is likely,” Ruby said. “If your luck thus far is any indication.”

“Well, let’s try an’ avoid it fer as long as we can, okay?”

“But, is going forward a preferable option?” she asked.

“Let’s find out.”

As we continued along the dirt path, we quickly found ourselves in the strangest place I’d ever seen. We were hemmed in by walls at least a hundred feet high and getting higher the further we went, but the lowest twenty feet were smooth rock, like they’d been smoothed down over eons by water; above that, the walls became much more jagged, and had char marks on both sides that only got more noticeable the farther up you looked. Along the bottom of each side, we saw a few rocks that looked like they belonged up at the top; some even had bits of soil and vestigial grass on them.

This was definitely the Scorched Valley, but it was really more of a canyon.

About ten yards or so in, the path in front of us suddenly widened, revealing innumerable pieces of marble and cut stone that clearly used to belong to ancient buildings and had tumbled haphazardly into this… abyss? Many of the pieces had burn marks on them. Some further in had been taken and reassembled into things you could reasonably call dwellings.

Before we reached them, however, we encountered large wooden markers on either side of the path. Traditional flagpoles. Hanging from each crosspiece was a banner that looked sort of like half of the ancient flag of Equestria I saw hanging in Celetia’s throne room. Specifically, it only had the blue and white hues of the moon section.

“That looks like a gate,” I said to Ruby.

“I really do not wish to cross it. Thresholds are always a bad thing in this Forest,” she replied.

Our debate was cut off by an ear-splitting howl. We turned around and found ourselves face to face with a Timberwolf, the same one that stole my ladle, which still stuck out of its forehead like some malformed Unicorn horn. Its glowing neon green eyes radiated malice as it scraped its back right hoof along the ground like a boar getting ready to charge… which is exactly what it did, right at me. I tried to grab onto Ruby, forgetting she was a ghost and plopping unceremoniously in a shallow dirty stream, my lantern ricocheting off the wall to the valley’s other side.

I was about to close my eyes in anticipation of death, when the Timberwolf suddenly exploded three feet from me, branches and leaves flying in every possible direction. It certainly looked shocked as its infernal life met its end. My ladle also flew away, spinning end over end in a high arc that sent it all the way to some place above the rim of the valley. Of course. I would have been mad, but I was simply too shocked to do much of any reacting.

“What was that?” I asked Ruby.

“Uh, you may not want to know the answer to that,” she said, her face sporting a look of fear.

I turned around and found myself facing what I thought at first glance was a demon. Upon further inspection, I realized it was something that, at the time, I thought was far worse.

“Unicorn!” I snarled and assumed a fighting stance.

Just ten feet in front of me stood a Unicorn stallion, but not like any I had ever seen before. His coat was a greyish blue, more grey than blue, and his mane was a darker shade of the same tone. His eyes were gold, an otherworldly gold like Ruby’s, but the whites were black. He wore a hooded robe, deep navy blue with a white moon sewn on the chest. It completely covered his cutie mark. Over that he wore a cape the same colour, only punctuated with white stars laid out like the night sky constellations.

He held up his hoof, a universal gesture of peace.

“I do not wish to fight,” he said in a voice a bit raspier than I expected.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

He walked forward a couple of feet. “Verily, I should be asking you that question, for it is you who have intruded upon our home.”

“I ain’t givin’ my name ‘til ya tell me yours,” I said. (looking back on this, I am deeply ashamed of how I acted, and of how long it took me to get over my anti-Unicorn bias)

“I abandoned my slave name long ago,” he said. “You may call me Japetus, for that is my chosen name.” He bowed his head politely.

This confused the hay out of me. “YAH-peh-tus? I ain’t ever heard a name like that before. Have you, Ruby?”

Ruby shook her head.

Japetus raised his head so that his dark eyes met mine. “Now that I have introduced myself, it is only fair you respond in kind as promised.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Name’s Antonovka.”

“An unusual name for an Earth-pony. Have you a clan?”

“Used ta,” I said. “Rosales de Malus.”

His eyes widened at that, he turned back to another pony. This one was a Pegasus mare. Her coat was grey with just a hint of fuchsia in it, while her mane was a greyish apricot. She had the same bizarre eyes as Japetus and wore the exact same clothes, obviously altered so her wings fit through the fabric… with the exception that she had a gold icon with a crescent moon on it tied around her neck with a black silk ribbon.

“She has a Tarpanite clan name,” Japetus said. “Should we…?”

“No,” the mare replied, her tone even but alert. “Let us hear her out first.”

Now that got my gander up. “Tarpanites?! I ain’t one a’ them no more! They’re the ones ‘et kicked me an’ my family out of our home valley! It’s why we had to move so close to this durn Forest!” I blurted out without thinking.

“I see,” said the Pegasus mare. “Then I owe you an apology. For you see, the Tarpanites are our mortal enemies. Actually, most of Equestria would qualify as such, but they in particular we have opposed for many centuries. Allow me to welcome you to the home of the Missionaries of the Moon. My name is Rhea. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

She bowed politely and then raised her right hoof, intending I shake it. Reluctantly, I approached her and did so.

“Annie,” Ruby said to me, absolute terror in her voice, “These are the ponies I was talking about. The last thing I was told before my final trip into the Forest was to watch out for the Moon Cultists. Should we really be so casual around them?”

All at once, Japetus assumed a battle stance, pointing his horn directly at Ruby. “Demon!” he yelled.

Ruby, of course, immediately hit the deck, covering her face with her forehooves. “Please do not hurt me!” she cried.

“Now what the hay do ya think you’re doin’, bone-head?!” I demanded.

Japetus stared at me like I was crazy. Maybe he wasn’t wrong. “Young lady, surely you are aware that this… thing… before us is a spectral demon, an abomination animated by the dark forces gripping this land?”

“Ya mean a ghost?” I asked him. “Yeah, I know. And you’re scarin’ the bejeezus outta her! She ain’t no demon. She saved me from some real demons! And she’s my friend helpin’ me find somethin’ I lost.”

Rhea approached Japetus and placed her hoof on his shoulder, snapping him out of his stance. “If she were truly a demon of the Corruption, it is likely she would have attacked by now.”

“But what else could she be?!” he demanded. “Look at those eyes!”

“I do not believe we have the right to speak of the oddity of a pony’s eyes,” Rhea said, rolling her own.

Japetus lowered his head, a greyish-red blush appearing on his cheeks, as he backed off.

“Pardon my deputy’s behaviour,” Rhea said as she approached Ruby. “Please, stand and tell us your name. We will not harm you.”

Slowly, Ruby got to her feet – I swear the idea that she could levitate just never occurred to her – and stuttered out her answer. “Um, I-I am Ruby, f-from Saddleback Village, but I… died… in Sunny Town.” Again she would have cried if she could.

Rhea and Japetus’s jaws both dropped in shock.

“That means you are the Spirit of Light!” Japetus said with some bit of awe.

“Huh?” Ruby and I both huh’d.

Rhea cleared her throat. “It is a story best told by our Keeper of Knowledge, Callisto. She is in the largest ruined building furthest in, trying to decipher an ancient scroll we found some moons ago. All I can say, Miss Antonovka de Rosales…”

“Call me Annie. Only my granny called me by that name, and only when she was spittin’ mad,” I corrected her.

“Annie, then,” said Rhea. “Your friend’s golden eyes are a fair indication of our suspicions being correct, though it is a surprise that she would be unaware of her own legend.”

“Uh, speakin’ of which, what’s up with y’all’s eyes?” I asked.

Rhea sighed. “It is the by-product of decades living near the heart of the Forest and its Corruption, as is the greying of our coats, though we tell new recruits it comes from finding enlightenment amidst the True History, which I prefer to believe is not a total falsehood. Our recruiters for each of the three races spend most of the year outside the Forest, so they are less affected. They are here now because the time of the Festival of the Moon – or ‘Midnight Moon Merriment’ – is fast approaching.”

She gestured over to three ponies approaching from deeper within the valley. One was an Earth-pony stallion with brown coat, darker brown mane, and blue eyes; another was a Pegasus mare with a mint-green coat (a bit bluer a tint than my own green), deep amber mane (a lot darker than my blonde braids), and magenta eyes; and a Unicorn mare with a light rose coat, dark rose mane, and aquamarine eyes. All three wore robes, albeit without the flowing capes Japetus and Rhea had.

“Those are our recruiters,” Rhea said. “Enkèlados for the Earth-ponies, Kharon for the Pegasi, and Galatea for the Unicorns.”

All three bowed politely.

“Now, if you two would please come with me. I will be honoured to show you around our home and take you to Callisto.”

Ruby and I looked at each other, skeptical, but figured we might as well.

Comments

[CoffeeMinion]

Ah yes, we wander deeper into the strange and mystical. Looking forward to seeing more!

[Mx Story Anomalax]

"Crunching, swishing, shuffling. Annoying."
I love this line. Physical descriptions followed by an abstract feeling, and the fact that it's separated by a period to make it FEEL annoying is perfect.

The description on what Annie's swear word WASN'T feels really good, and what follows immediately after.

I really enjoy the banter between Annie and Ruby and the events leading up to the end help sell the... uneven-ness of the terrain.

The new characters are really neat, and it's cool to see there's a legend surrounding Ruby.

Overall really great chapter. My only "grievance" is that they should have been following timberwolf tracks instead of wandering aimlessly, but eh. It works easily the way you have it already. I love the description of all the ponies.