Dawn of Equestria

by FeatherB

6: Fresh Wounds

Chapter 6

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Pain returned first. An all-consuming fire unlike any I had felt before. It grabbed me by the throat until I could barely breathe, ripping me apart from the inside out. Tears flowed freely, hot and sticky. And then there was the smell. The overwhelming stench of the trees, the rich, sickening scent of pine. The musky odor of dirt and moss that I was lying on, mixed with the metallic tinge of blood. My blood.

I turned and coughed up what little was in my stomach, igniting more pain; most of it shooting from my wing and foreleg.

Somepony said my name, but it hurt too much to think let alone listen. I actually wanted to die, just so the pain would stop. Or to wake up in the clouds with a sudden gasp and realization that it had all been a dream.

But none of that happened. It would never happen. I had fallen an impossible distance, and I was alive, for now. It wasn’t a dream, it was real, and that’s all I could process. That’s all I needed to know.

Silverglow’s face appeared in my blurry, tear-filled, vision. Her own eyes were red and puffy, her mane disheveled and covered in pine needles. She held a wooden flask between her forehooves. A second later it was at my mouth, water drizzling out of it and down my throat.

It was sweet relief. The burning inside me was washed away, as I guzzled it down like an infant. When she pulled it back, the droplets trickled down my chin and I didn't bother wiping them away. In all my weeks of training, I couldn't remember ever being that thirsty.

“How is she?” Roanheart asked from somewhere I couldn’t see. Or rather, didn’t want to try to.

“She’ll be alright,” Silverglow said, gently embracing me. I could feel her trembling breath on my shoulder.

I wanted to hug her back, but moving at all was self-inflicted pain. And if Silverglow didn’t have such a soft touch, I would have been screaming as it was. She was soft and compassionate. I was harsh and uncaring. It was a miracle that she was my friend, and I would never forgive myself if I let her die because of me. I tried to speak again, and ended up in a fit of coughing that pulled Silverglow away from me. She quickly administered more water, which I accepted without complaint.

“We... we need to go back,” I muttered, while staring up through the looming trees. The sky was almost entirely covered by them, except for dappled bits of sunlight. Apparently I had been unconscious the entire night.

No pony spoke, but I heard my brother kneading the ground with his hooves to my right. I turned my head just enough to find where he stood. Incidentally, it also allowed me to see my mangled wing, where it was wrapped in muddied bandages and stuck out at an angle it was never meant to bend.

Goddess, help me.

“We can’t go back,” Roanheart finally spoke. “I was already over this with Silverglow. If those soldiers picked us off in the middle of the night, then there’s no way we can go back in broad daylight. We would be easy targets, especially carrying you between us.”

“Then you go back tonight,” I said, my voice still shaking. “Get help... and get us out of here.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Silverglow added, quietly.

Roanheart just shook his mane. “I can’t.”

Oh, you have got to be kidding me. It was exactly as I expected. Now that Silverglow was with us, he was refusing to back down. He was condemning us, because he couldn’t fail in front of her.

“Don’t give me that crap,” I growled, which was rather pathetic sounding in my condition. “I would love to tell you that I feel great, Roanheart, really I would. I'd love to think that I could stick this out and go on your little crusade. But if we stay here, it’s not going to end well, for any of us.”

He got the guts to look at me then. Stared right into me with those ridiculously pitiful eyes. I could practically feel the conviction flowing off of him. “I can’t go back,” he said. “I left of my own free will, and I took things. Stole them, for our trip. They would lock me up, Dee, for who knows how long. I would never have the chance to help these ponies again.”

“And what about me?” I asked, feeling stronger the angrier I got. “You’re just going to let me suffer down here for some other ponies? I’m your sister.” I was family. You don't turn your back on family.

But he held my gaze. As if he could get me to understand by that look alone. As if being his sister meant I should be willing to suffer for him, so he didn’t have to give up on his dream. As if he was a big bucking idiot who knew I would do anything for him.

Sometimes I really hated him.

I gradually rolled my head back again, so I was looking into the sky, or at least what little there was of it. My will to fight had gone as quickly as it had come. “Silverglow, help me out here and talk some sense into him.” Please.

My friend laid a gentle hoof on my wounded foreleg. “Our first priority should be keeping Dawnfire safe,” she said. “You asked her to come with you, after all.”

He trotted over to us, his face joining Silverglow’s above me. “And I’m still asking. Dee, I can’t guarantee we’ll be alright. But this is the risk we were willing to take to help others. If I go back though, I can guarantee I won’t see you again. They won’t let me. At least down here I can still be with you, doing some good.”

I closed my eyes. There was so much to consider. Too much. No matter how I looked at it, there was going to be a downside. Alright fine. Fine! I wanted to be part of this war, well here I am. Time to suck it up and deal with it.

I inhaled slowly through my nose, letting the overwhelming scents of the forest in. The smell of the trees was still the strongest. Thick and sweet, and not all together unpleasant. My wing still burned like... well like it had an arrow shot through it. My leg hurt as well, but compared to my wing it was barely worth complaining about. Overall, I was pretty sure I could bear the pain. I just wasn’t used to it yet.

“Alright, help me up,” I said, extending my good hoof to Silverglow.

She blinked. “Dawn I—”

“Just do it.”

After a moment’s more hesitation, she took it, pulling me onto my side and then carefully nudging me upright.

With gritted teeth and sheer determination, I was able to support most of my own weight. But what I could not, was on Silverglow. My right foreleg and wing were draped over her back, and I rested my head against her neck. Her cream coat was like a soft pillow that still smelled like the clouds. I wasn’t really sure how to define it, other than it didn’t have much of a scent, unlike everything else around us.

Unlike me. I knew I must have reeked, but Silverglow didn’t seem to acknowledge it.

Roanheart however, kept his distance, studying my wing with a scrupulous eye.

“Well, are we going or what?” I said. If he was going to make me stay down here then he didn’t get to hover over me. He wasn’t Mother... she would have had a fit if she saw me right then.

“I— I have to double check our location,” he said, turning away. “I’ll be right back.” He snapped out his wings and jumped into the space between two pines. I could still see his red body through the branches as he soared to the top of them.

A moment later he landed with a soft thud, pine needles cascading around him. His ears were flat against his head and he glanced off behind him before looking back at us.

“What’s wrong?” Silverglow asked, shifting awkwardly under me.

“Hopefully nothing,” he said, before trotting over to the base of a tree. Two saddles bags were lying beneath it. One of them was my own. I had completely forgotten I had dropped it.

I pulled my head away from Silverglow and looked down at my sheath. The sword was gone as well. But as Roanheart saddled our supplies, the hilt of my blade caught the sunlight from his own sheath. He hadn’t worn the thing since he had quit training, and he hadn’t used a sword for just as long. But now he had to use mine; a blade half the size of what he should be wielding.

We’re so dead.

“Are you alright?” Silverglow asked, turning her head as best she could to face me.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, stepping away from her a little. “Maybe just let me move my hoof, I don’t think we can walk like this.”

She nodded and held still while I shimmied my wounded leg off her back. I winced as a new stab of pain coursed through it. After it had subsided, I gingerly tucked the leg under myself, biting my tongue all the while. There were tears in my eyes and I could do nothing about them. I just had to hope Silverglow didn’t notice.

“Better?” she asked. The concern in her voice was more genuine than a mother with her newborn. And that’s exactly what I felt like; a baby that had to be coddled.

I gave my friend a curt nod, trying to keep my face hidden.

Roanheart waved us forward with both saddle bags slumped over him. “This way. Yell if anything is wrong or we need to stop.”

Everything about this is wrong. But far be it from me to hold you back, I thought.

“Ready to move?” Silverglow asked.

I took a tentative step forward, feeling the soil give under my hoof ever so slightly. It was almost like the clouds, but the ground had grit in it: tiny pieces of bark or stone maybe, which immediately stuck on.

So this is dirt. Baths no longer seemed like such a bad idea.

I continued to walk forward one hoofstep at a time, with Silverglow pacing herself alongside me all the while. It was as embarrassing as it was inconvenient. It also didn’t help that Roanheart kept glancing back to check on us, even though he was all but four pony-lengths ahead. It was a wonder his head didn’t get stuck like that.

The forest, on the other hoof, was astounding. The trees seemed to continue on for miles in all directions, swaying gently near their tops from some wind that couldn’t penetrate their lower branches. But the light could. Everything was patterned in golden hues, illuminating fronds, wild flowers, and mosses that scattered the forest floor. Now and again I would glimpse some small creature or another scurrying among the growth. Probably searching for food or trying to avoid becoming it.

There was so much life and color to be seen. And the smells refused to subside no matter how far we staggered along. It was as if the Goddess intended for the ground to overload a pony’s senses until they burst.

But as there was a part of me marveling at it all, there was an equally annoyed side that was silently screaming. It hadn’t taken long for a piece of twig to get stuck under a hindhoof; an incessantly irritating pain just consistent enough to compete with my throbbing wing and foreleg. The longer we went, the more frustrated I became. To make matters worse, I could barely even see the sun to judge how much time had been passing. All I had to go by were shifting shadows and the rays of light that moved through the trees behind us.

Roanheart led us onward, saying nothing as we went, apparently content to stare at me with his “forgive me” face now and again. I just hoped he knew where we going.

Silverglow was equally silent, but her eyes darted everywhere. She stared at trees and plants; dipped her head to study flowers and bushes, the whole time her mouth hanging open ever so slightly. It was rather amusing. At least, until one time when she forgot I was there and walked toward a particularly vibrant plant so that I stumbled and nearly fell. She apologized profusely of course. And naturally I forgave her, but my wing smarted for a while after that.

Little did I know, staying on all three hooves wasn’t nearly the worst of my troubles.

-----

My stomach had just started gnawing at my insides when Roanheart halted in his tracks, ears perked.

Silverglow and I moved to join him, but he held up a hoof, stopping us in place.

“What is it?” I whispered, but to no avail.

Without a word, he dropped the saddlebags from his back and stepped off to the right, disappearing behind the trees.

That’s when I heard it. The huffing noise of some animal moving through the forest, smelling the air. Smelling us.

Ever so slowly I peered into the woods.

Moving toward us was a thick-furred brown beast. Its head was small compared to its body, which rippled with thick muscles as it moved. Its haunches were higher than our heads, and its forelegs were twice as thick as my own, ending in needle-like claws.

“Silverglow,” I hissed, feeling a mounting dread creep up on me. “What is that thing?”

She shifted her attention from where Roanheart had disappeared to where the hairy beast was now, all but five pony-lengths away.

She stiffened against me. “Bear,” she gasped.

It rose up on its hind legs, growing several times our height. Beady black eyes stared down at us, saliva dripping from its muzzle.

“Bear!” Silverglow screamed, shoving me back. “Go, go!”

The monster roared, showing off rows of pointy teeth before dropping back to all fours and lumbering forward.

I stumbled in my haste to move, my wounded leg making even a canter almost impossible. With Silverglow’s help, I got up again, limping through the undergrowth as she nudged me forward, her panicked breathing hot on my flank. We were getting nowhere fast.

I chanced a look behind us and immediately regretted it. The bear was already sprinting across where we had been seconds ago. It moved impossibly fast despite its size, and it was bent on catching us.

Roanheart slammed into it from the side, his momentum summersaulting him over the beast as it fell. He crashed to the ground in a flurry of tangled limbs and feathers only a short distance away.

I watched with growing horror as the bear rolled upright before my brother could, shaking its head before assessing its assailant with an annoyed snarl.

Roanheart backpedaled, barely on his hooves before he managed to wrestle his sword from its sheath.

I tried to turn back, unable to pry my eyes away from my brother as he took a stance again the beast, his legs shaking.

“Don’t stop,” Silverglow whinnied, still trying to shove me deeper into the brush.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, pressing her back. “Go help Roanheart.”

The bear lunged at my brother, massive paws sweeping the air.

He leaped back, then pumped his wings to dive forward, nicking the beast’s neck with his blade. But before he could fly away the bear swatted him from the air, its claws gouging his flank as he was tossed like a sack of hay.

“Silverglow!” She was still pushing against me, her eyes wide with panic. I whipped her across the face with my tail. “Help, Roanheart!”

She turned, seeing him at the base of a tree where he had collapsed, with the bear shuffling toward him.

She galloped after it, shouting the whole way.

The beast hesitated a few steps from my brother, turning toward the small pale pony that was charging it, unarmed.

“Stay away from him!” Silverglow yelled, circling the bear in an attempt to lead it away.

It rose up but stayed in place, unsure whether or not to follow.

But that was all Roanheart needed. Grabbing his sword, he heaved himself upright and plunged the blade into the bear’s back.

The monster roared, spittle spraying from its open maw. It twisted around clawing at my brother, but he wrenched the sword free and wove past its swinging paws.

The bear ran after him, blood soaking its fur and running down its side.

When he was but a few yards from Silverglow, Roanheart whirled around to face it, putting himself between the bear and the trembling mare.

The beast didn’t hesitate. Rising up, it lunged forward with both wicked paws, aiming to remove my brother’s head.

He ducked under them, twisting the sword so it sank into the bear’s chest moments before it collapsed on top of him.

“Roanheart!” Silverglow screamed before I could.

We both rushed to the fallen animal, Silverglow reaching it first, while I limped as quickly as I was able. As I approached, I could only hope the beast really was dead. If not... well, I didn’t have time to think about it. Roanheart was counting on me.

One of my brother’s red wings was sticking out from under the massive body, but he was otherwise completely covered. And most likely not breathing.

I joined Silverglow where she was throwing herself against the beast’s weight, ramming my shoulder into its thick fur beside her. My three good legs were planted against the ground, while the other wrenched painfully against the body. It hurt to the point I was squeezing back tears, but we didn’t give up. My eyes found the point of Roanheart’s sword sticking up through the bear’s back. I focused on it, gritting my teeth, fighting against the agony.

With our combined efforts the bear slowly began to shift, revealing my brother’s legs from under it.

“Come on!” I shouted, my head still planted against the enormous body. I could feel its sticky blood running onto my face. “A little more!”

The bear rolled, its massive form tumbling off the Pegasus buried beneath it.

Roanheart gasped, coughing as he choked on his own desperation for air.

I threw myself on top of him, my good leg wrapping around his shoulders.

Thank the Goddess.

“Dee,” he sputtered, his chest heaving. “I appreciate that you care, but I’ve been smothered enough today.”

I scrambled off him muttering apologies, but growing angrier by the second.

“Thanks,” he said, gradually getting back to his hooves.

I waited patiently from him to gather himself, his breathing returning to normal before I launched my argument.

“Do you see our point now?” I demanded. Surely he had to. How could he not understand the danger we were in, especially when all it took was a wild animal to almost kill us. “We were nearly killed by the first living thing we can across!”

He ignored me, instead choosing to remove his— my sword from the bear’s chest. A vile squelching noise accompanied its removal, gore dripping from the entire length of the blade. He moved to lay it on the ground, but thought better of it and placed it against the animal’s corpse instead.

Only then did he speak. “If I had gone to get help,” he said. “Then you both would have been killed for sure. If anything, this proves exactly why I can’t leave, not even for a short while.”

Technically Silverglow could have just flown away if she needed, but somehow I knew that wouldn’t help my point. And the sad truth was, he was probably right. That didn’t mean I agreed with it, and I never would. I will always be left wondering what might have happened if I had refused to go further. But at the time any course of action seemed to have as much risk as the other.

Resigned to silence while Roanheart wiped the blade “clean” on the bear’s fur, I cast a helpless glance at Silverglow.

She gave me a sad little smile on quivering lips. My friend wouldn’t admit it, but she was terrified. Her ears swiveled back and forth, changing direction at the slightest noise, all her previous amazement had long since vanished.

Trotting over, I placed my strained leg around her neck. “We’ll get through this,” I told her. But it was also myself that I was reassuring.

Roanheart cleared his throat, grabbing our attention. He had re-sheathed my sword and fetched our saddlebags. “It shouldn’t be much further,” he said. And this time he waited, standing in place while Silverglow allowed me to situate myself against her once again. Which also gave me the chance to remove a certain pesky twig that had been under my hoof.

Using my friend as a crutch was still extremely awkward, and I figured after our ordeal I probably could have hoofed it alone. But if Paladin training had taught me anything, it was that you didn’t overexert an injured limb.

Roanheart watched stoically as we approached him. Whether it was masked concern or simply sheer determination I couldn’t be sure. But when we were close enough to touch him, he turned about and continued the way we had been headed before. As he did so, I caught sight of where the bear had caught his flank. Four ugly red lines glistened just above his cutie mark. One even overlapped it.

I have never given it much thought before; my brother’s cutie mark. The very idea of them always seemed absurd to me. That we had to be defined by our foal-conceived notion of what we wanted become. As if what made us special could always be discovered at such a young age. But then, staring at my brother’s cutie mark, I had to wonder what it meant and why I couldn’t remember what that was. Three golden-brown leaves, bent like they were all spiraling to the ground; one now split by wounded flesh.

Did he know they would lead him down here? Or is he forging his own destiny?

I looked back to the fallen form of the bear, then barely visible in the distance. I half expected it to stand again, its grizzly roar calling after us. But to my relief it really did appear to be dead.

It had only been our first fight, and we already had scars to show it. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more were yet to come.

Author's Note:

Here is the next chapter, for better or for worse. As always feedback is welcome, I know there are plenty of ways I can still approve as a writer, and this story should help me do so. Hope all of you have a wonderful week.