Falconers and the Tomb of Aminus

by MadDonut

Chapter 5 Maiden Day of a Grand Adventure

Author's Note:

Bla stuff bla what day five? Going good if I miss a day thats because of school and stuff.
Leave a comment if you like or just read in general. I mean... I need some feedback ya know .-.
Kay... 5/20

“You're not looking too good,” Said Mace as they walked through the woods unbound to any trail that may have lead them. They now were in the lands of Carridian aimed for the Hexer fortress on this fine evening.

Cranking his neck Joel said, “Maybe it's because it's way too damn early. It's like.” he glanced to an invisible watch on his hoof and said, “Five?”

“Get used to it because this is a week long trip of walking,” Igneous said. “You shouldn’t let it go to waist. You could use this time to get into shape, sharpen your senses, prepare for your next hunt.”

“Maybe you could learn to summon your shield,” Mace mentioned.

“We could all learn something new,” Hillph muttered as they trotted along over logs bushes and crags. “A week is a long time. We could all be proactive in some way.”

“Were even is this Hexer fortress?” asked Mace.

“From what the book says its a... its in the Condoon forest,” Kara answers. “Knowing where it is is the easy part, but finding will be a bit more difficult.”

“Do you know how we do that? The Condoon forest isn’t exactly small in size.” Joel said.

“All that sand is going to get into my armor,” Igneous mildly complained. “No clue as to how long it's going to take to get all that sand out.”

“Look all we got to do is line the northern mountains up with some rock formation then the book says it's literally in the cracks of a canyon just below.”

“Who hides an entire fortress inside a canyon?” asked Joel.

“Perhaps some one who does not want to be found so easy,” Hilliph said from up front. “Hexers had the most powerful magic there was during the Great Rising. If any of it fell into the wrong hoofs that would spell disaster for every pony. We were lucky enough that the Hexers were so gracious in the time of their existence. So easy it is to fall to power. Most become corrupted with such a temptation”

Kara asked, “Who would be able to steal from a Hexer?”

“I sure there was plenty of other ponies who tried to steal their magic. Both powerful and not. None of which are alive now. Given it has been more than a century.” A breeze came in that rustled the leaves a bit making the forest look more lively. “Lets try not to talk so much. Lets injoy our own company and appreciate the nature abit.”

They had walked silently until noon passing through clearings over hills rockey areas and so forth until they found a sutible resting spot to take an hour long break. Well if you could call it a break. “Ok Joel you may have shot a beast eye on that monster but I'm just going to say you were fortunate if not lucky.”

Joel said “I agree with the whole luck thing. So what the plan now.”

Mace pushed the button on his ceast peace and his crossbows sprung up on either side of him. He turned towards a tree that was off in the distance, flicked his ear back and fired a bolt. It sailed through the air before hitting its mark in the harden bark of his target. “Your challenge this week will be to split the arrow from this distance.” He then hammered another bolt into the flight grove readying it for another shot.

“I don't know that seems a little far,” Joel said as he squinted to get a better view.

Mace walked by making sure to push Joel's plated button letting his crossbows spring up at his sides, “It's how my dad taught me and it's how i'm going to teach you.”

Joel winced a little when the cables around his ear stiffened, “this trigger mechanism isn't very comfortable.”

“Don't worry, you’ll get used to it,” he responded. “Now you already know how the thing works.” He pushed both Joel’s left and right sights down over his eyes.

“Why do I need two sights?” Joel asked.

He answered, “Because you're not used to it and the crossbows aim with them being opposite to one another. The foursight is the dynamic sight because it moves when you look in any direction up, down left, or right. The sight closest to your eye is fixed and stays put. Just line them up and that's where the arrow fires.”

“Um, ok. Sounds simple,” he said stepping forward. Lining up his first shot he said, “I’ve done harder thing before.”

“Ok. First make sure you have a normal sho-” Joel fired and almost instantly after the target tree exploded into splinters causing the tree to be inveloped in a plumb of dust and debree before toppling over to the ground. Joels ears were now ringing mostly because the tranquil, silence of the wilderness had soften his and every falconer present, delicate ears.

Igneous called out from over the hill that separated the two parties saying, “What was that?”

“Some mighty strong wind,” Mace answered. Then then looked at Joel, “That was an explosive tip. You didn’t double check the shot you had?”

“Hay, I only ever did this once,” he said examining the bracelet on his hoof trying to figure which symbol represented the normal shot. “How do you even know which one is the normal shot I can't even tell.” The symbols were confusing.

“See that arrow, it point to what shot you have loaded,” He twisted the bracelet to wear the arrow pointed at what looked like a sideways T. “That is the normal shot.” Then he turned and fired an new bolt at another tree that stuck in much the same way. “Now just split that arrow, and don't blow it up.”

“I can do that, I can do that,” mumbled as he twisted his other braclet and hammered the normal bolted shot, “What will you be doing.”

“Looking for lunch for us to eat,” he said as he turned to leave. “I will have to search further no thanks to that explosion you set off. You just stay here and do your thing.” and with that he left Joel alone to practice and with a mighty new question.

‘Do horses here eat meat?’

Joel turned back to the new unexploded tree with the bolt tauntingly protruding from it. “Ok yea I will just Robin Hood this bitch and get my gold metal. No problem,” he said to himself. He tried to aim but the weird sights made it so that there was some what of double vision. He closed an eye to focus better, and flicked his ear back. The bolt went flying just to the left of the tree. He closed his other eye and fired the other crossbow and it missed to the right.

He did this a few more times before he realized he was closing his right eye and firing the left crossbow and vise versa. “Stellar. Man I am just steller,” he said talking to himself again. “Just close the right eye.” He fired the opposite crossbow again, “Damn.” and fired the left while looking with his right, “Daaamn!” he hammered both shots and made the same mistake again. “Fucking shit I suck. Left eye open, and fire left crossbow.” He double checked to make sure he was aiming down the correct sights and fired. The bolt embedded itself just below the target bolt.

He did this a few more times hitting the tree but never splitting the target bolt. “Well I would definitely hit a target bigger than a gnat.” he looked at his shot and saw that some were only about half a foot away. “At least I'm doing good but this… this is just boring,” he muttered to himself once again. He knew that the others were just over in the other direction and couldn’t see him. The sense of isolation got to him and he acted a bit weird.

He hid behind a tree out of sight from the target arrow he had been trying to hit, and then suddenly jumped out did a roll and fired a shot at it trying to hit it. It missed the tree all together, “What? You looking at me,” he said to the tree. “Well I don't have time for you,” he turned away from it and looked back saying, “Aw is that a gun you got pointing at me? Well i'm just gonna HA,” he suddenly jumped around, and fired his other shot hitting the tree about a foot from the target bolt. “Yea shaken not stirred please,” he said feeling way too over accomplished.

Then from directly behind him he heard somepony say casually, “What are you doing?”

He jumped back feeling his heart jump into his chest and saw that it was Kara hovering just above the ground lightly flapping her wings. Collecting himself fast as he could and resuming a professional pose he said, “Where did you come from? You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Landing she said, “I'm on watch duty, I see everything from above.” She then started to circle around Joel. “You know I really wish you could take your duty seriously. Your fortunate you even got to venture with us.”

Joel was slowly tracking her with his head and said, “Hey I'm just happy to be here, but it doesn't take an expert on female posterior to know that you don't want me here.”

Suddenly she unfolded her right wing faster than Joel could have anticipated holding the bladed feathers up to Joels neck, “a week is a really long time and anything could happen. I won’t put up with your foolishness. You wouldn’t want to get on my bad side right now.”

Joel carefully, as to not cut his throat on her bladed feathers, slowly said, “I’ll be sure to keep my distance.”

“In the mean time try not to get any of us killed,” she politely lowered her wing taking the bladed feathers from his neck, turned and began to walk off.

Joel couldn't help but smirk. “Trust me, I know what I'm doing.”

“Your first shot says otherwise,” and she took of into the air leaving Joel to his lonesome and his practice. This time though he didn’t mess around and took his training seriously.

Igneous was sitting down concentrating as Kara and Mace were gone leaving only Hilliph in his company resting directly opposite from him. A dark hase had started to form between them that took the shape of a big rectangle. As it shape became more define the center of it briefly solidified and then it altogether vanished. Igneous let out a frustrated sigh as his effort to summon his tower shield had failed. “Just one more time,” he assured himself.

Hilliph quietly observing across from him said, “Still continuing to struggle with dark magic?” Igneous didn’t reply but kept on trying to concentrate. “Your father had said you still do continue to have difficulties with magic.”

Igneous opened his eyes and said, “I'm sure he did,” a bit annoyed at the mention of him.

“You know I’ve spent a long time with him and it looked as though neither of you are on good terms.”

“We had our problems and a few run ins. None of which ended very pleasantly for say. I would rather not talk about it.”

“I could help you with your dark magic.” Hilliph said offering some assistance.

Igneous said, “How so. You can’t summon my shield for me.”

He responded saying, “That's true, I can’t summon a shield that has been bound to you, infact the hardest part of summoning anything is in itself summoning it to begin with.” He stood up. “The easy part is keeping it going.”

“So how do I summon it.”

“You're not going to summon anything, instead I'm going to give you a flame to keep burning.”

Igneous scoffed and said, “I don’t do alchemy Hilliph.”

Hilliph replied, “I'm not going to give you alchemy fire,” his horn glowed a deathly black and a purely black fire combusted from nothing. “I'm going to give you black fire.” It floated down from his horn with its black flames flickering and licking the air.

Igneous stood up on all fours and closely observed the black fire, “I didn’t know you could summon fire.”

“Black fire,” he corrected, “black fire is different from normal fire in that it does not need a fuel source to burn and is much less hot. Unlike fire that burns organic mater this fire can errode armor and weapons not bound to the summoner.” He floated the flame close to Igneous were as he didn’t feel much heat. “However,” he continued, “It's one of the hardest things to summon using your dark magic, but like summoning it becomes much easier to keep going once you got it. I'm going to hand this flame over to you and you will keep it burning throughout the day concentrating, focusing, and by the end of the week summoning a shield may be just a bit easier.”

“All day?” he repeated.

“All day long.”

Igneous nodded his head and said, “if that's all it takes I will do it.”

“Now concentrate on the flame,” Hilliph said. Igneous closed his eyes and focused. “I will cut my connection to the flame and then you will be the only one who can breathe life into it. Keep it breathing it feeds off magic.” he paused for a second giving Igneous some time to draw his connections to the fire. “Do you have it?”

“I do,” he answered. Hilliph then stopped concentrating and let Igneous take it from him. For a moment it flickered and looked as if it were about to go out, but then it stabilised and kept on burning gradually growing to a manageable size. He opened his eyes and saw that it was still burning. “I got it,” he said with a rare smile spreading across his face.

“Now just keep it like that for the rest of the day.”

“I will. Thank you Hilliph.”

Joel had shot the rest of his arrows and collected all thirty of them in a small pile around the target tree, but left his two closest shots that were about less than half an inch away from the target arrow. He had thought about what Kara had said earlier. A whole week and it's only been one afternoon. It would be one o'clock real soon and would soon continue walking… trotting or whatever.

Mace hadn’t come back to get Joel so he just walked over the small hill where he saw Igneous levitating a black fire and Mace Hilliph and Kara had been eating some apples. “Mace when did you get back?” he asked a bit betrayed.

“A while ago. Thought I should leave you to practice.” he took another bite of an apple. “I was about to go hunting for animals when I found a nice apple tree nearby.”

Annoyed Joel said, “Can I have something to eat?”

“Yea just bring all the arrows back so Igneous can reload them.”

“I'm concentrating,” he said.

“Ok then Hilliph will.”

“Don’t you wanna see how close I got,” asked Joel.

“No it's alright,” he said taking yet another bite. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to split it. I couldn’t.” Soon after Joel got to eat and Hilliph reloaded his shots for him separateing the tip from the shaft and slipping them into the equipment on his back and when he finnished they started off again trotting along as they walked through the forest with Igneouses black flame hovering just to the side of him.

Occasionally it would flicker and look as if it were about to go out but Igneous would suddenly stop and fucose till it returned to its original size. After the sun had gone down leaving nothing but the stars out in the night skies, did they stop and set up and finnaly rest for a considerable time.

“Alright,” Mace said as the rest of the group found a nice place to sit, “Hilliph will get a fire started and who will take the first watch?”

Igneous said, “I will take the first watch.” His black fire was still burning although it was hard to see in the dark with it itself being black.

“After you kept that flame going all day you should rest,” Kara said stretching her wings fanning them out letting Joel gawk at the spectacle.

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

“No, it's alright Igneous.” Mace said. “I'll take the first watch Joel's got second and you can take the last.”

“Don’t worry about me I will be alright.”

“You won’t get better unless you rest,” Hilliph said. “Let your flame die. You can continue in the morning after night.”

Igneous wanted to argue but he couldn’t help but agree. Rest was very much important and for a falconer that always thought long term Hilliph was absolutely right. “Fine.”

“I dont…” Joel was about to complain when Kara gave him a threatening look, “don't mind second watch. I haven't slept outside since I got kicked out as a kid anyways.”

“Ok we're good then,” Mace said. Hilliph later started a fire with wood they gathered and everypony including Igneous fell asleep on the soft green grass beneath the glisening stars while Mace silently kept watch. It had only been a day but they would still have six more till they made it to the Condoon forest. Anything could happen in six days. Out here nothing was too far fetched.