Act II: Bridge of Dreams
“You’re absolutely sure this is the right path?”
“Look, it’s a path, and it’s going north,” Cloud Fire said. “I’m not sure what more you want, Cherry. Road signs? Maybe a local guide who can point out all the best restaurants on the way?”
It was, in Vermilion’s opinion, extremely unlikely that there were restaurants of any sort in these woods. Ever since passing the last guard post on the Equestrian border, there had been a drought of civilization or its trappings. Only the dirt path, cutting a meandering path northward through the lush forest, suggested that other ponies had ever been here at all.
Pegasi were renowned for their navigational skills, which was the only reason Vermilion hadn’t turned them around already. At Cloud Fire’s say-so, they had trekked for more than a day into the woods. Occasionally, by the side of the path, concealed in tall grasses and weeds, they found the broken ruins of wagons and harnesses, rotted wood crates smashed open and scattered, and among them animal bones as well, small twig-like things that snapped under their hooves with little pops.
He wondered, idly, if Canopy had ever paused halfway to her destination, and wondered if the company was moving in the right direction. With nearly a hundred ponies under her care, the stakes had been much higher. But then, mistakes were easier to recover from as well, for a lost company had all the resources of a hundred ponies skilled in survival and combat to draw upon.
But five ponies? Five ponies had less room for error. A wrong turn, an errant path, and they could wander these woods for days. They had no supply wagons, or squads of warriors, or mages capable of turning night into day and blasting a path through even the thickest trees. They were only two unicorns, two pegasi, and a single earth pony, hiking through the wilderness toward a town whose existence they only intuited based on a magical map, filled with foreign ponies and quite probably fantastic monsters as well.
Luna believes in you. He focused on that thought, and closed his eyes to imagine the princess of the night. She believed they could do this, and if she believed in them, why couldn’t he?
“Sorry, Cloudy,” he said. “I’m just a little new to this, want to make sure I get everything right.”
“Hmph.” Cloud Fire squinted at him, as though searching for the lie in Vermilion’s words. “You didn’t have any trouble trusting me before.”
“Nopony got killed if I was wrong before. You want me to just half-ass all the decisions from here on out?”
“Ugh, no,” Zephyr broke in. “Relax, Cherry. We all just need to calm down a bit.”
“I’m calm!” Quicklime shouted back at them. She was a dozen paces ahead on the trail, darting back and forth across it every time something caught her eye. She’d already filled a notebook with scribblings on the various plants, animals and broken things they had encountered, and kept up a running commentary on her findings to everypony in ear’s reach.
Vermilion glanced back at their fifth member, waiting for her to chime in. But Rose Quartz said nothing. She barely seemed to hear their squabbling, staring instead at the ground beneath her hooves as they walked.
“If you’d let me fly ahead, we’d know for sure,” Cloudy said. He’d made the same offer a dozen times already.
“Not yet,” Vermilion said. “The woods are too thick. You might find Maplebridge but never find us again. And remember why we’re going to this town – monsters, right? You really want to find them by yourself?”
Cloudy waved a hoof. “I wouldn’t need to get close. And if we had two pegasi who could fly, we wouldn’t have to worry about getting separated.” He ended that with a quick glance at Zephyr.
Vermilion jumped in before Zephyr could snap back. “There’s no use whining about what we do or don’t have. If you’re sure we’re going in the right direction—”
“Which I am!”
“—then we’ll get there regardless of whether or not you fly.”
Cloud Fire grumbled. The dark look on his face suggested he wanted to argue, but he couldn’t contradict his own navigation skills. “Fine”
Celestia. Was this what Canopy had to deal with? “Look, when we get to the next big clearing, you can go up and try to spot the town, okay? There should be smoke from their chimneys or lights, once night falls. Just don’t go soaring away.”
Cloudy’s ears perked up, and his wings ruffled at his side. “I can fly?”
“Once we find a good clearing, yeah. Just don’t go crazy, alright?”
* * *
It was nearly night when they found a suitable clearing. A tall, rocky hill rose up from the surrounding forest, its soil too barren to support any trees larger than shrubs. They hacked their way up from the path and waited in the failing light for Cloud Fire to circle up. His pale coat blended easily with the graying sky, and Vermilion quickly lost sight of him.
“Can you still see him?” he whispered to Zephyr. Her eyes were far better than his.
She nodded. “He’s still climbing. Give him time.”
“We could camp here,” Rose said. Her horn glowed, and a slender maple sapling beside her tore itself up from the ground in a spray of dirt and small stones. “I can clear a spot in a few minutes.”
Camp off the path, or on it? Was there some rulebook for such things? What would Canopy say? “Uh, Quicklime, how safe are these woods?”
“Pretty safe, I guess? No spiders, I mean.” Quicklime spun in a small circle. “This is a pretty good spot. Dry, defensible. Not that I think we’ll need it.”
Okay, good enough. He nodded to Rose, then set about uprooting trees the earth pony way, with his teeth and hooves. They made quick work of the hilltop while Zephyr sat, her eyes trained on the sky, slowly moving to track Cloud Fire’s invisible form high above.
They had the tents set up and a campfire burning merrily inside a circle of rocks when Cloudy returned. He landed with a clatter, his hooves striking sparks against the rocks. They all jerked in surprise at his sudden arrival, with the exception of Zephyr, who simply nodded.
“Found it,” he said. “About fifteen more leagues. We should reach it tomorrow before dusk.”
“Great.” Vermilion ladled some of the boiling vegetable stew into a wood bowl and passed it over to the pegasus. He wasn’t sure if officers were supposed to cook, but frankly he didn’t trust the others to prepare food just yet. “Anything interesting?”
“Sort of. The town was dark.”
“Uh, yeah?” Vermilion looked up at the emerging stars. “It’s night.”
Cloudy smacked him with a wing. “Exactly. The town should have some lights set out, right? But there’s none out there. It was as dark as the rest of the woods.”
“They ought to at least have lanterns out by the gates,” Zephyr said. She nibbled at her newly sprouted feathers, as though tugging at them might make them grow faster. “And inside the houses, unless they’re all asleep.”
“It’s a farming town,” Vermilion said. “They probably don’t stay up past sunset.”
“The whole village, though?” Quicklime asked. She lay on a blanket beside Rose, empty stew bowls stacked before them. “They can’t all be asleep already. You didn’t see any lights, Cloud Fire?”
He shook his head. “None.”
Huh. Vermilion gnawed on his spoon. Farmers, he knew all too well, lived with the sun. They rose when it rose and they slept when it set. Burning a lantern at night, especially in the summer when days were so long, was just a waste of oil. But for an entire town to shutter the lights so early? It beggared belief.
“Okay,” he said. “Ideas, ponies. Why would the town be dark? Maybe they’re all asleep?”
“They might not be anypony left,” Zephyr said. “Maybe they fled?”
“They want to have lights, but can’t for some reason,” Quicklime said. “Ran out of oil?”
“They could burn torches, then,” Rose Quartz said. “Maybe they just prefer the darkness?”
Prefer the darkness? Some pegasi were night owls, but there was no way an entire town, much less a community of earth ponies, would embrace the dark. Ponies loved the sun too much for that. They were creatures of the day and of light. Summer was their season, when the days lasted forever and the nights were brief interludes in their play. Maybe they really were all just asleep, exhausted from long days in the fields.
Odd, but whatever. “There’s no use worrying about it tonight,” he said. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
Their conversation drifted to other topics after that. Soon enough it grew quiet, and the pegasi dropped out, tucking their heads beneath their wings. The unicorns lasted a bit longer, but then they too yawned and bid Vermilion good night. It was the way of things – earth ponies were ever the last to sleep and the first to wake.
He stared at the stars for a while, absorbing the darkness and the silence of the forest. Even the birds and insects seemed to slumber, and no sounds but the quiet rush of the wind through the leaves intruded on their spot on the hill. He gave the campfire’s dying embers a final glance, and then closed his eyes.
Sleep came rapidly upon him.
* * *
Vermilion woke hours later with a sharp ache in his pelvis. He grunted quietly, stood, and snuck away from the circle of ponies down the hill, careful to step on solid rocks rather than loose gravel or dirt that might wake his friends, and finally found a copse of maple saplings sufficiently downwind for a little bit of privacy while he relieved his bladder.
Cloud Fire once said, when they were taking a similar break during a long march, that finally getting to piss after hours of holding it in was the best feeling in the world. It was better than sex. Vermilion wasn’t so sure about that (in large part because he was still a virgin), but there was no denying how incredibly satisfying it was to empty out all that water. If sex was even half as good, he’d definitely need to try it sometime.
A few ears twitched when he finally made it back up the hill, and Zephyr’s wings flexed in her sleep. Dreaming of flight, no doubt. He stopped and stared for a moment, then shook away the lingering guilt of her injury and settled back down on his bedroll.
The blanket beside his shifted. The dark green pegasus lying on it raised her head at his approach.
“How are you feeling, Vermilion?” Canopy asked. She pitched her voice low to avoid waking the others.
“Good, I guess?” He set his chin on the rolled cloth pillow and closed his eyes. “All the decisions I’m making, though? I’m just guessing for most of them. I don’t know where we should camp or when we should eat or what the best route is or whether I should let Cloud Fire fly above us. Everything that makes one pony happy gets another upset. And Rose…” He glanced at the unicorn’s slumbering form. Her pale coat was the brightest object in the night, an alabaster rock, gently breathing, bathed in moonlight. “She’s so distant to the rest of us. She doesn’t talk unless you ask her a question. Never complains, but… I don’t know why she’s here, ma’am.”
“Sounds like things are going well, then.”
He snorted. “Was it like this for you?”
Canopy chuckled. She nibbled at a wing, and for a moment the tang of ash filled Vermilion’s nose. “Oh, nothing like this. I had a hundred ponies to lead, Vermilion. You’ve got it easy.”
Right. He sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“I’m serious.” She pinned him with her amber eyes. “This part? Walking toward your target? It never gets easier than this, Vermilion. Soon you won’t be deciding where to sleep, you’ll be deciding if you should sleep. You won’t be choosing which of two ponies to annoy, you’ll be deciding which of their lives you can afford to risk. These moments, Vermilion? Enjoy them while they last. Learn from them while you can.”
He glanced around their little circle. Across the dead campfire, Cloud Fire and Zephyr slumbered side-by-side, their wings rubbing against each other with each breath. Quicklime and Rose Quartz did the same, though Quicklime was so small she nearly seemed like a foal huddled against her mother’s side.
“How can I lead them?” he whispered. “I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know what to tell them, what we should do. I’m only in charge because I was the first, this was my idea. Cloudy ought to be leading us.”
“But he’s not. He’s following you.”
“Why, though? What if we get to Maplebridge and everything falls apart? What if he leaves, and the others go back with him?”
“Things have fallen apart with him before, haven’t they?” Canopy folded her forelegs and stared across the ashes of the campfire at Vermilion’s sleeping friends. “I led them wrong. I led them into disaster and defeat and death. Did he give up then? Did any of them abandon you?”
“They left,” Vermilion said. “They fled. Only you and I remained.”
“You and I and the dead,” she corrected. “The rest left because I ordered them to leave, not because of fear or cowardice or dereliction of duty, Vermilion. There may come a time when you have to order your friends to leave, so that they might survive.”
“I do not want that to happen,” he whispered.
“Neither did I.” Canopy reached out with the tip of a wing to brush his shoulder. “But the world does not give us what we want, Vermilion. At various times the world will give us all that we desire, and all that we fear, and everything in between. The world is what it is and does what it does. None of that matters, only how we react. How we respond.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re dead.”
She shrugged. “We all die, Vermilion. I died, you will die, your friends will all die. Even the princesses will die someday. We are mortal; to fear death is to fear our own nature. Are you afraid of what you are, warrior?”
“I am.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against the blanket. “I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of failing. I’m afraid I will get all of my friends killed because I was too stupid or slow or rash, and their trust in me was misplaced. I’m afraid of everything, Canopy. What should I do?”
His eyes were closed, so he could not see the smile when she responded. But he could hear it in her words.
“Do your best, Vermilion. It’s what I did. Now, you have something urgent to take care of, so I suggest you wake.”
What? Wake? He stared at her, puzzled, until another sensation stole his attention. A sharp ache that throbbed in his pelvis in time with his pulse. He stumbled to his feet, trembling, feeling about to burst, when—
Vermilion woke with a grunt. The moon, high overhead, shone down on them like winter’s own lanter. He groaned at the sudden intrusion of consciousness and rolled onto his hooves. His bladder felt fit to explode, and he stepped carefully down the hill toward a downwind copse of trees.
The fragments of a dream lingered in his mind. Something about fear, and his friends. And a green pegasus whose name evaporated from his mind. And soon all the other details followed, until he was left with only the vague impression that somepony had spoken to him. He shook his head and concentrated on the business at hoof.
His friends stirred when he returned, but none woke. He settled back on his blanket, closed his eyes, and found sleep again.
* * *
“We should’ve seen somepony by now,” Rose Quartz said.
They were still a few leagues south of Maplebridge. The forest road had widened, grown firmer as they approached. The saplings and weeds growing along the path’s edge were trimmed back by a deliberate hoof. In places, the sawn-off corpses of fallen trees lined the path, more evidence of a determined caretaker. The ponies of Maplebridge cared enough about the road to maintain it, apparently.
And yet, as Rose said, there was not another soul to be seen. All morning, since they departed their hilltop campsite, the forest had belonged to them and them alone. They might as well have been the only ponies in the world.
Cloudy fluffed his wings. “Hey, want me to—”
“Yeah,” Vermilion said. “Just stay nearby. Shouting range, okay?”
No sooner said than done. Cloud Fire’s wings snapped out, and he shot up through the branches above. Broken twigs and amputated leaves rained down on them. When Cloud Fire wanted to fly, he flew.
Zephyr watched him soar away. She blinked away the sun, shook her head, and then unlimbered her spear from its spot strapped across her back. A thick canvas sheath protected the tempered steel head, and she unwrapped it with a few deft gestures. The polished metal gleamed like a star.
“Do… you think you’ll need that?” Quicklime asked. She danced back and forth on the tips of her hooves, never taking her eyes off the forest around them.
“No,” Zephyr said. She spun the spear easily, carving shining trails through the air. For a moment Vermilion saw the ghost of Canopy in her form. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
“Doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” Vermilion said. He gave the sabre looped over his shoulders a quick tug with his mouth, just enough to make sure retaining strap was unbuckled. “Zephyr, can you cover behind us? I’ll get the front.”
They moved at a slow but steady pace. The sun lit the path with a spray of golden light, broken occasionally by Cloud Fire’s shadow, racing by underfoot like a ghost. On either side the tame forest extended beyond sight, filled with rustling undergrowth and modest trees, maples and birches that didn’t reach too high or spread too wide. They knew their place and stuck to it.
Even the trees here were like earth ponies. Vermilion shook his head at the thought and continued down the path.
It was approaching late afternoon when they finally reached the outskirts of the town. A gentle river cut through the forest, across which extended a fine arched bridge, slender and graceful and polished by the years and thousands of hooves. The path led to the bridge, and beyond it the forest opened into a wide valley, leagues across and filled with farms. At the center, lining the river in the distance, rose a tidy collection of thatched houses and barns. A windmill rose near the center of the town, slowly spinning in the breeze.
Vermilion stopped at the foot of the bridge. A moment later, Cloud Fire landed beside them, stirring up a swirl of leaves.
“See anything?” Vermilion asked.
Cloud Fire grunted. “Yeah. No ponies.”
No lights at night, and no ponies in the day? This was an earth pony town – the fields should’ve been bustling with workers. They ought to be able to hear the town’s blacksmith from here, miles away. Instead, nothing. Except for the slowly rotating windmill, the town may as well have been still. It was as quiet as the forest they had just escaped.
“Think they fled?” Zephyr asked. Her voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper. He barely heard it over the wind.
“Maybe something ate them all,” Quicklime proposed.
Celestia. They were supposed to save ponies, not clean up after the monsters that ate them. He bit back the retort he wanted to fire at Quicklime. Judging by the sour looks she got from the others, they felt the same way.
“Nothing’s eaten anypony yet,” he said. “Ponies would’ve escaped an attack like that, we’d have run into them on the road. Now, come on. Uh, slowly.”
He set a hoof on the bridge, and when nothing leapt out from beneath it to devour them, another. It was made of maple, he noted, finely joined and sanded until it was smooth as marble. The tight grain and light color gleamed in the golden evening light. The ponies who’d made this bridge were right to be proud of it. Not a bad thing to name your town after.
The bridge arched over the river, and he paused in the center to look over the side. The river here was quick and wide and shallow, with large boulders emerging from the water. He could see the rocky bed beneath the surface, and here and there the darting shadows of fish. Bright sparks, sunlight reflecting off the water’s peaks, mixed with the deep shadows, dazzling his eye with a constant, shifting mosaic of light and dark. He stepped to the edge of the bridge and set his hoof on the rail for balance.
Something about the water’s perpetual flow drew his gaze. For a moment, the pulsing water beneath him seemed to be part of his own self, his own conscious. His own blood, rushing away. He stared at the stream, mesmerized. Fallen leaves and petals floated rapidly past, carried by the current toward the west. He followed one large leaf, a sycamore the size of a dinner plate, until it vanished out of sight.
Zephyr stopped beside him. “You okay?”
He shook his head to clear it. “Yeah, sorry, just… something just caught my eye.”
“Hm.” Zephyr’s gaze flicked out over the river, then she shrugged and trotted to catch up with the other mares. Cloud Fire circled above them, occasionally eclipsing them with his shadow as he passed by the sun.
He gave the river a final look. The cool air rising from it brushed against his belly, tickling his coat. Only the spotty scars where Blightweaver’s blood had splashed were immune. They were numb to the river’s touch.
It’s just a river. He frowned, shook his head, and rushed to catch up with the mares.
The sun was near the horizon when they reached the river’s far bank. The thick, muggy air painted the evening sky a brilliant orange-red, nearly the color of his own coat. Long shadows of trees and hills and clouds cut dark lines across the farms in the valley below. Maplebridge itself lay before them, a mile away, silent and still in the gathering dusk.
“This feels wrong,” Quicklime mumbled. “There’s nopony around. Not even in the buildings.”
“Doors are open,” Zephyr said. “Windows too. Nothing’s moving but the wind.”
“Alright, stay on your hooves.” He tested his saber again, pulling the blade an inch out of the scabbard before sliding it back in.
The final mile to the town was one of the longest of Vermilion’s life. Longer even than the flight through the winter forest outside Hollow Shades with Zephyr draped over his back. That, at least, was purposeful – he knew what was chasing him and how exactly how he would die if it caught him. But this? This slow march toward an empty town, a town silent in defiance of everything he knew from growing up in such a farmland, stole away his courage faster than the spider-filled forest ever had. He forced his hooves to stop shaking and extended his stride, moving to the fore of the group.
They reached the edge of the town. A long timber fence stretched out from either side of the road, embracing the houses. It was thin, more of a rail on stakes than a true fence, but it provided a solid, physical sense of separation between home and field. Here, on this side, was the valley and the world and all its dangers. There, on the other side, lay homes and stores and roads and hundreds of ponies’ lives. Security and peace of mind. He stared at the still town beyond the, frozen on his hooves.
Cloud Fire landed beside him. “Nothing moving in there, Cherry. Whole place might as well be empty.”
“Think it is?”
“No. Shall we?”
He let out a breath. “Yeah, let’s.” He swallowed back his fear and led them into Maplebridge.
The town, viewed from within, was quaint and pleasant. Not wealthy, but not poor either. The homes were well-made, solid wood with thick doors and windows. Timber roofs angled to shed the winter snow. The main street was solid, packed earth, with stone gutters on either side. It was nicer than some neighborhoods in Everfree.
The tall houses blocked the sun, filling the town with shadows. They would need to find some shelter soon at this rate. He chased away the urge to yawn with a shake of his head. They’d been walking all day, but it was hardly the time to rest.
Zephyr came to a sudden stop. “Body up ahead,” she whispered. “Two blocks, left side, beneath the wagon.”
Vermilion stumbled to a halt with the rest of them. Up ahead, the wagon was little more than a dark, squarish shape hugging the edge of some roadside store. The shadows beneath it were dark and gray and swallowed all detail. His heart began to hammer, chasing away the ghosts of fatigue dragging at his hooves.
“You’re sure?” he whispered.
“I see it too,” Cloud Fire said. His head turned slightly. “There’s another, right side. Leaning against the house.”
Damn pegasus eyes. Vermilion could barely make out more than a gray, slumped shape. He blinked rapidly to clear his sight. The evening light was starting to fail already.
They moved forward slowly, him in front, Zephyr taking the rear, with the unicorns in the middle. Cloud Fire kept his eyes on the roofs overhead. The loudest sound was the faint touch of their hooves on the packed dirt, and even that barely rose above the wind.
The silence was so deep that Rose Quartz’s gasp nearly startled him into jumping. He spun toward the sound, his saber half out of its sheath, when she pushed past him.
“He’s alive!” she said. She galloped forward, her horn lighting with a bright green glow to chase away the shadows, and she crouched beside the wagon. In the sudden light Vermilion could see a young stallion, barely more than a colt, huddled up against a cracked wheel. He had no visible wounds, but neither did he move when Rose touched him with a hoof.
He raced after her, skidding to a stop. Cloud Fire landed atop the wagon, his spear out and pointed down the road. Zephyr stayed on the ground, her spear held loosely in her grip. Quicklime ran up to Rose’s side, then danced away, as though afraid of being too close.
“He’s alive?” He felt like a fool, simply repeating her words. “I mean, uh, what’s wrong, then?”
Rose gently rolled him onto his back. The stallion’s legs flopped gracelessly, limp as cloth, and she leaned down to press her ear against his chest. “He’s breathing, his heart’s beating… I don’t see any injuries.”
“Cloud, check the other one.” Vermilion gestured across the street at the crumpled form huddled against the wall. The pegasus nodded and raced away in a flash of wings and feathers.
“Is he unconscious?” Zephyr asked. She crouched low, her spear held just inches above the street. Her straggly wings stretched out to either side and beat gently, stirring the cool air.
Rose didn’t answer. She pressed a hoof against his sternum and rubbed it vigorously. When that failed to wake him, she carefully peeled his eyelid open and shined the light of her horn onto his face.
“He’s, uh…” She set his head gently back down on the ground. “I think he’s asleep.”
What? “Okay, so wake him.”
“I tried that, obviously, what do you think—”
Cloud Fire’s shout interrupted her retort. “He’s alive! Knocked out or something, though.”
“What should we do, boss?” Zephyr asked. She edged closer to them, the tip of her spear swinging lazily back and forth to cover all possible approaches from the street.
Crap. Okay. He took a deep breath before answering. “Rose, keep trying to wake him. Cloudy! Drag that one over here if you can. Quicklime, help Rose with whatever she needs. Zephyr, just, uh, keep an eye out.”
A chorus of affirmatives followed. Even Rose nodded, though he could see from the tightening around her remaining eye that she was still annoyed with him. With everypony working, he jogged across the street to where Cloud Fire was struggling to drag a limp earth pony stallion without much success. Vermilion crouched, shoved his muzzle under the unconscious body’s shoulder and hefted him up with a grunt. Between the two of them, they were able to lug the stallion back to the others.
“There’s more,” Zephyr said. She held still as a statue; only her eyes moved, peering down the street into the heart of the city. “Dozens of them. I can’t believed I missed them.”
“Shit,” Cloud Fire mumbled. He hopped onto the wagon, then heaved himself with a flurry of wings onto the eave of the house looming above them. “She’s right,” he called down. “The streets are full of them.”
“I don’t like this,” Quicklime said. She crouched by the second fallen stallion, her horn gently aglow as she carried out some arcane inspection. “No smell of alcohol or narcotics. Pulse and breathing are fine. They ought to wake up as soon as you touch them.”
“Maybe a disease,” Rose said. “Zephyr, you haven’t touched them yet, have you?”
“No ma’am.”
“Good, keep it that way.” She stood and stepped away from the stallion. “I don’t think it’s safe for us here, Vermilion. We need daylight.”
Right. Daylight. The sky was fully given over to dusk now, and the town shrouded in gloom. He could barely see down the block now. He shook his head to chase away the fatigue slowing down his thoughts.
“Should we take one of them with us? Out of the town?”
“Probably too risky,” Rose said. She started to continue, but a huge yawn split her muzzle. “Ugh, sorry. We just need to get out, I think. We can come back in the morning.”
“Okay. Everypony, back together. Cloudy, can you fly ahead and… Quicklime?”
At his pause, all eyes turned toward the tiny unicorn. She was slumped over, barely upright. The light flowing off her horn flickered and died, and she tumbled onto her side.
He stared, frozen. You did it. This is how it starts. You got them all killed.
“Quicklime!” Zephyr’s shout shocked him awake. She raced over and tried to pull the unicorn upright. “Cloudy, help me!”
Cloud Fire landed beside them with an ungainly thud. His wings dragged on the dirt road. “We need to… uh… I don’t feel so good, boss.”
Too fast. It was falling apart too fast. He took a step toward Quicklime, then stopped and stepped toward Cloud Fire. He couldn’t help both. He wanted to shout, to take charge and order them away, but the gloom of the incipient night smothered his mind like a blanket. He was drowning in the darkness, his eyelids weighed down by stones. All he needed was a bit of rest, and—
A brilliant flash filled the street. It stripped away the fatigue, the exhaustion. In a moment he was a dozen years younger, a stallion suddenly unburdened by hundreds of pounds of weight he hadn’t realized he was carrying. He jumped back to his hooves and felt like he could fly.
“We’re under attack!” Rose shouted. The brilliant light was coming from her horn, and it painted a wide circle around them. The air sparked and shimmered around like heat rising from the desert floor.
Beyond the light, beyond the suggestion of a dome it created, Vermilion could see the shadows stirring. Smokelike, dancing, they raced through the streets and washed up against Rose’s magic. Hollow eyes peered in at them.
“What are they?” Vermilion shouted. He grabbed Cloud Fire and dragged him closer to the center of their little sanctuary. It was shrinking, crawling inward with every beat of his heart.
“I don’t know,” Rose said. Her voice trembled, and he turned to see her coat dripping with sweat. Steam rose from her horn. “It’s, uh, some kind of mind magic. I’ve never seen it before.”
He unsheathed his sabre. “How long can you keep that barrier up?”
“Not long. Not long at all.”
Crap. Crap. Okay, this was okay. They just needed a plan. “Zephyr, help Cloudy walk. I’ll drag Quicklime. We’ll start moving in three—”
He never got a chance to count. The phantoms outside Rose’s barrier suddenly surged forward like the tide, washing over the dome. It flared for a moment with a brilliant, blinding light, and in the darkness beyond Vermilion saw not only the wraithlike forms but bones and teeth as well, shark’s teeth, thousands of them in each maw, glistening like diamonds and and dripping with a voracious, endless hunger.
The barrier flashed a final time and died. The wave of phantoms fell upon their little party, and then Vermilion knew only darkness.
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Again, a beautiful build-up of ominous mood. And that ending! Talk about a cliffhanger finish.
This is such a wonderful story. I look forward to seeing where it goes next!
Lovely ambiance and escalation as per happily typical with this piece. I'm assuming these are something akin to the Nightmare Entities, since this whole piece seems to be swirling around to the eventual corruption of Luna. Interesting and somewhat disheartening to think that her noble aspirations of policing beyond Equestria's borders might somehow directly link to her downfall.
All fantasy elements aside, the town full of ponies just collapsed where they stood gave me unnerving flashbacks to watching nature films on the phenomenon of mazuku. Creeped me the hell out.
Excellent buildup. And that cliffhanger...
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I had similar thoughts on this. A future conflict seems like a natural progression, for Luna herself to become one of those monsters the heroes are sworn to defend Equestria against, but it's hard (for me) to tell at this stage.
8187714 Luna is one of my favorite characters because she's got so much potential for back story and inevitably for feels regarding her. It's hard not to feel bad for her at this stage, knowing where she is headed.
"Oh, what a lovely field of poppies! Isn't it just gorgeous, Toto?" Yawn. "It's the perfect place for a nap." Yawns again. "Toto?"
I find myself anticipating some horrible moment in the future when Quicklime's enthusiasm is forever extinguished. I really hope I'm wrong there.
And that's one of Luna's champions thinking that. A sign of what is to come.
I hope Vermillion at least remembers the Canopy dream subconsciously. Of course, if he dreamt it, then he already knows the answers to the questions he asked. He just has to realize that he does.
Wow. Fantastic buildup to a gripping cliffhanger. Definitely looking forward to more.
Not sure but I thought Rose had lost an eye earlier.Alondro the troll wanders through, "In this story? You wish! They're probably all dead or had their souls sucked out and what ate em' is now controlling their bodies like puppets! Yep, sorry to tell you yer in an Equestria as would be written by Stephen King."
The ponies immediately gave up hope upon hearing this and took their cyanide tablets.
TOLD YOU SO!!! This is why I saved them and had them all kill themselves first! Sheesh, this world sucks worse than Mordor!
I have to say I'm just a bit mildly concerned that the very first issue Luna's champions are facing has something to do with people being unable to wake up, as if they're stuck in their dreams. That feels kind of sorta maybe related to her eventual fall.
!!!
Mmmm..