Daring Do and the Wailing Mountain

by BlazzingInferno

Three

Daring had had worse days, but not many. Few days involved laying bound in a hut, patiently waiting out the daylight and evening hours for midnight to come again. Of course these ponies wouldn’t do something as simple and obvious as throw her and Calcine off a cliff, not when they had a pony-eating deity on hoof.

At last she found herself back in the crater as the dreaded hour approached, wings bound and sides flanked by two spear-wielding guards. Cloaked ponies milled around, some whispering softly while others inserted their earplugs. None of them spared her a glance. Maybe she was less than a pony to them, either because she was an outsider, or because they needed her to be something less to ease whatever shred of a conscience they collectively possessed.

Calcine lay upon the altar, everything below his neck obscured by coil after coil of rope. Clearly they weren’t taking any chances with him. Maybe somepony heard them talking the night before, or maybe him not showing up to last night’s ritual had been enough to tip them off. Whatever the reason, there was exactly zero chance he’d get to follow through with his ‘break the mirror’ plan once the traveler showed up. Not unless she could get free, of course.

A spear pressed against her side, right behind her wing. She cast the offending guard a hateful glare before turning back to Calcine. There were only two weapons in easy reach, and the business end of each one was trained on her. Somehow she needed to untie herself, disarm the two guards, and then do something about the traveler before the other ponies could stop her. Assuming Calcine was right about the traveler being the only thing that could ‘open’ the mirror, which sounded about as nuts as everything else on this rock, the time to act was during the ritual. That left barely any time to plan an escape, let alone an attack.

A hooded pony stepped into her view, a strikingly tall mare with a shining blue coat and a red mane dressed in beads and flowers. She smiled down at Daring, not even bothering to bend her neck to meet her gaze. “Our village doesn’t get many visitors, my little pony.”

“With this kind of hospitality, I’m not surprised.”

The mare’s smile broadened. “Perhaps we should have started with you, outsider. If Calcine’s blasphemies were any less severe we would have. Let us hope the traveler drains him quickly, so that you can take his place before too many nights have passed.”

Daring rolled her eyes. “Maybe he’ll choke on all Calcine’s big ideas—” she raised her voice to a shout “—like ponies should move off this stupid hunk of r—”

A hoof crashed against Daring’s temple with the force of a wooden club, not from the guards like she’d expected, but from the mare standing before her; this pony was strong! The world spun for a moment, save for the spears still pressing against her skin. She shook her head a few times, wincing as her whole skull pulsed with pain.

Still the mare smiled. “I see our former potter has told you much. Too much for anypony’s good, no doubt.”

She glanced at the guards briefly before trotting away. “If she speaks again, make sure she regrets it.”

“Yes, chieftess.” the guards replied.

Ponies took to the drums a moment later, and the crater reverberated with the sound of oncoming doom, the ominous beat to which countless ponies had already fallen victim. Daring knew she had mere seconds to figure a way out of this; no matter if the traveler was magic, trickery, or worse, Calcine was about to follow in his wife’s hoofsteps.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Calcine tilted his head just enough to make eye contact. “Don’t save me! Save the world from the traveler!”

Daring couldn’t hold back a smirk. Saving the world was her specialty.

“Silence!” the chieftess bellowed from the crowd. “The traveler comes! All hail!”

How had she heard him? Didn’t she wear earplugs like the others? How could she stand not to?

The torchlight flickering in the mirror’s reflection suddenly grew brighter. Daring stared at the mirror, her desperation mounting. She saw her own reflection looking back at her, except this time with such vividness, such perfect luster, that it didn’t look like a reflection at all. No natural surface, not even under the influence of unicorn magic, could make an image so lifelike. She might as well have been staring at a replica of the crater, occupants and all.

“Whoa.”

She braced for pain, but none came. The spears pressed against her dug no deeper; the guards probably had their earplugs in place now.

They won’t hear me if I’m quiet. Unless… unless…

A grin spread across her face just as a shadow fell upon the perfect reflections in the mirror. Spots of phantom darkness flew in from its outer edges like gathering smoke until an indistinct yet unmistakable pony silhouette stood over Calcine’s terrified reflection. The traveler had arrived.

“Hey!” Daring shouted, “Why don’t you pick on somepony your own size, you big pile of smoke! I’ve roasted marshmallows over scarier stuff than you!”

Daring felt the guards shift next to her. She knew they wouldn’t hesitate or show mercy; if anything they’d put their backs into running her through from both sides at once. Her fate rested on the next two seconds, on her dropping to the ground just before the spear points lodged themselves in her flesh, when they were still slicing through rope fibers with all the strength the two guard ponies could muster.

She fell in slow motion, sensing every movement of the spears as they dragged against her coat but sliced through nothing but rope. Calcine’s screams tore apart the night air as her belly touched the crater’s stony ground and her wings flexed against their suddenly weakened bonds. She stuck out a hind leg and spun herself around, her adrenaline blocking out every care in the world aside from the monster in the mirror and the ponies standing in her way.

In one deft motion she swept the guard’s hooves out from under them, her wings straining and then snapping the ropes keeping her earthbound.

She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t take her eyes off the mirror for an instant. Somewhere behind her other guards would be rushing forward or even heaving their spears through the air, but that didn’t matter. The traveler stood in front of her, his attention focused on his latest meal rather than the pegasus sailing forward to make it his last.

Fresh screams and shouts filled the air just before she hit the glass. Her foreleg pressed forward, inches away from its own reflection and the phantom shadow somehow standing between them on the mirror’s surface.

“No, stop!” The chieftess bellowed, her deep voice rattling Daring’s teeth.

Daring merely grinned. “Hope you’ve got fire insurance, you—”

And then the traveler faced her, its looming form overtaking her own shadow. The sounds of the villagers and the chill of the night air vanished. She tumbled across bare ground, rolling over and over before smashing into something cold and hard. What happened? Did she break through the mirror? Was there a secret cave behind it like she’d assumed? Maybe it really was just a power-mad pony with a magic artifact pulling the strings.

She opened her eyes, blinking repeatedly in hopes that the nonsensical scene before her would resolve back into reality. Instead she found herself flat on her back, her hind legs resting against a stone cylinder that looked roughly shoulder height. A crystal ceiling loomed far above, some of its polished facets shimmering in blue and red.

And then a pair of invisible forelegs closed around her neck.

Daring’s instincts took over. She pushed off against the stone cylinder, twisting, pulling, and striking with every drop of adrenaline she had left. In an instant she was on her hooves again, grasping and straining against the headlock while her eyes searched for her attacker.

What she saw instead would’ve taken her breath away, if she’d had any left. She stood near the center of an expansive room walled with mirrors. Except they weren’t simply mirrors. Alongside her own impossibly vivid reflection she saw an arctic wasteland in one mirror, a jungle in another, a stone-walled dungeon, and countless other scenes even more diverse than her own adventures. The one commonality to all the mirror-bound worlds was a small pile of rock situated a few hoofsteps from the mirror’s surface. Each of those worlds had had a sacrificial altar once, now all but erased by the unrelenting passage of time.

Her own world was easy to spot. Brilliant orange light glared through a mirror to her left, flickering sometimes as waves of lava lapped against the crater’s walls. The cloaked ponies were gone, either on hoof or into the molten depths. Only Calcine remained, standing on the altar with precious inches left between him and the rising tide. The ropes holding him had burned away, and his hind legs were drawn in and ready to strike.

Do it, Calcine! Do it!

A deep gong reverberated through the whole chamber, as if Calcine had driven a wrecking ball into the mirror instead of a pair of hooves. White cracks shot through the glass, and the vice-like forelegs gripping Daring’s neck shivered and slackened.

Daring dipped forward until her nose touched the ground, shifting her attacker’s weight just enough to break the choke hold. She flipped around and did a two-leg buck of her own, slamming her back hooves against her unseen foe.

Heavy hoofsteps echoed through the room as her assailant staggered backward, and as they did she saw the hint of a shadow darkening the nearest mirror. Whatever this creature was, it cast a shadow in the weird mirrors. That’s how it appeared to the villagers, and that’s how she’d stop it from ever devouring another pony.

Calcine’s timing was perfect. His hooves struck one side of the mirror just as Daring smashed her opponent against the other. A deafening boom nearly knocked Daring off her hooves, the sound of Calcine coming one blow closer to breaking through the glass and avenging his wife.

Other, quieter sounds interested her more. She could hear loosed beads clattering against the ground and leaves crinkling between mane and mirror. The invisible creature she’d just pinned against the glass wasn’t male after all.

“Hi there, chieftess.”

The chieftess uttered a low growl, more animal than pony, and flung Daring back with the same brute strength she’d shown before. “Spoiled everything! Took my last village, my last herd!”

Daring braked in the air a moment later, seconds short of colliding with another mirror. “That’s all we are to you, isn’t it? We’re just food.”

The chieftess’ shadow grew larger, it's neck lengthening and six more legs sprouting from its sides. Her shadow left the mirror as her many hooves stumbled across the floor. Daring could only guess where in the room she was now. “You are food… you are form… you are life. I will feast upon your flesh for a hundred moons!”

Daring glanced at Calcine and cocked her eyebrow. “I taste better chilled than baked, sorry.”

The mirror imploded, and Daring’s ears nearly did the same. The mixture of shattering glass, hissing lava, and otherworldly screams almost made her black out. Almost.

She darted forward and then dove low, riding the thermals so close to the lava that her fur started to smoke. More implosions followed, each one playing out on the periphery of her senses as she streaked across the room, over spreading lava, under a shower of shattering glass, and through the remains of the portal between the traveler’s domain and the real world. “Calcine! Grab on!”

Calcine, now balanced on two legs while the lava inched its away up the alter’s sides, grasped her foreleg but never took his eyes off the ruined mirror and the dark chamber beyond. “Is it done? If not then I go no further!”

She sailed across the crater’s expanse, her wings flapping wildly to support the additional weight. “She’s finished, now let’s get out of here!”

“She?”

“Tell you later. Just hang on!”

She banked to the left to avoid the crater’s steep walls. She needed to climb higher, somehow. Did Calcine eat rocks in his spare time, or something? She needed her rope and climbing gear, the supplies she’d been forced to abandon on the oasis.

“I am too heavy for you!” Calcine shouted. “Let me to perish. It is what I deserve.”

Daring shook her head, her breaths longer and more labored than she wanted to think about. “Yeah you are, and no I won’t! You saved me, I’m going to save—”

A blast of hot air pushed them higher just before an explosion hammered their ears. Daring felt as if she’d been hit by a fiery hoof the size of a building. She rocketed through the air, half deaf, fully dazed, and conscious of nothing other than the foreleg she was still holding onto with all her might. The world spun around and around as they flew, and the explosion became a rumbling, jolting roar peppered with the near-constant whoosh of volcanic ejecta shooting by on every side.

And then all at once the world righted itself. Daring suddenly found herself in the starry night sky, Calcine still dangling below her and the ash cloud of an erupting volcano spreading far beneath them.

She cheered silently as she took a deep breath of cool, smoke-free air; that alone brought back a modicum of her strength, and freedom’s elation did the rest. “We did it… We made it!”

When Calcine didn’t sound his approval, she glanced down and found him doing the same. His former home was slag, and if his former neighbors weren’t then they had a trek across the desert ahead of them, followed by some very unfriendly oasis ponies.

“You okay, Calcine?”

“I-I was merely thinking… is this what it is like to fly?”

His barely-constrained terror made her laugh. “Oh, yeah. I take off via volcano all the time.”

“I do not believe you.”

“Good choice. See that thing over there, beyond the desert?”

Daring angled them slightly west, forever thankful that she needed only to glide. Their altitude and her spread wings would keep them airborne well past the Forbidden Desert’s reaches.

“That is the sea. I may have lived in a pony-sacrificing cult, but I am not stupid, Daring Do.”

She laughed again. “Not that, the glowing thing next it. There’s a city on the coast, a big one. That’s where I’m dropping you off… and where I’m finding a hotel and a decent meal.”

“I do not know if that is wise… The things I have done—”

“The past isn’t going to change, but you did a lot of good today. Keep it up.”

“I… will do my best. Perhaps I can fight for the good of others, as you do.”

She grinned. “Perfect. You can keep the world safe for a week or two while I take a break.”

I’ve got some writing to do.

Comments

[Level Dasher]

Well that was awesome.

[Thought Prism]

A nice effort, but I feel like this isn't your genre. You're so good at writing character and relationships anything else just seems bland in comparison.

[PresentPerfect]

That was pretty darn cool. :D

[BlazzingInferno]

8774680

8774719

*cough*fixed! Thanks!*cough*

[Eroraf86]

Nice. But who was that mare, and how did she gain her powers? Are there others like her? Find out next time, on Daring Do!

[Alondro]

Daring Do and the Whaling Mountain...

All goes well until those aliens show up wanting to chat with humpbacks.

[Alondro]

“Silence!” the chieftess bellowed from the crowd. “The traveler comes! All hail!”

Choose the form of the Destructor!

epictimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/video-how-many-calories-is-stay-puft-marshmallow-man-from-1984s-ghostbusters.jpg

I... I couldn't help it! It just popped in there!

[Alondro]

8787928 Probably another Pennywise demon thing.

They all have 8 legs at some point.

[BlazzingInferno]

8794446
The thought did cross my mind while I was writing

[Bugsydor]

I might not call it "fun", per se, but that was a good read.

[BlazzingInferno]

9230928
Daring has a terrifying day job, sometimes

[Bugsydor]

9231528
So, does that mean the writing is what she does for fun?

[BlazzingInferno]

9231554
I figured she’s an idealist and adrenaline junkie, and writing is a way to keep the thrill ride going while her body recuperates. I don’t claim to be a Daring Do expect though

[Seraphem]

Good, interesting story overall. Bit fast paced and little quick and short on details/build-up, but works really well nonetheless.

[ExplosionMare]

I love the ending sentence