Never Lucky

by Ferris the 1st

Chapter 29: The Cinder Run

Blindfolded for a while and then tossed into a room, I didn't have much to do except overthink the current situation. After uttering the words to damn myself, Sunslayer was quick to make sure that I understood where things stood. My fellow agents were being held somewhere with his gang having orders to start executing them if I didn't have the item Sunslayer was after within a week. The only exception was Martial Cadence, whom the gryphon had taken as a personal hostage.

The floor beneath me vibrated and I planted my hooves as the sensation of rising took over. My best guess at the time was airship. I wasn't really sure how long I was in that room, but since I found myself sleeping a couple of times, I'd guess the same amount of days, which grated on my already frazzled nerves. They at least fed me, but it was a crappy tasting slop and don't even get me started on how embarrassing it is to use a chamberpot...

Then I found myself being forcibly dragged out of my small cell by one of the minotaur twins. I think this one had a personal vendetta against me, considering the rough way he treated my mane. Two things hit me as I was dragged out onto the deck of the airship (called it.) The first was the intense heat that caused me to start sweating immediately and the second was the thick, billowing smoke that obscured the air.

Breathing was difficult and I could feel myself building into a coughing fit before something was roughly shoved on my face. A breathing mask. Aside from the noise of my own breathing in my ears, I heard Sunslayer's voice, “Welcome to the Dragon Lands,” his voice escaped through the breathing mask he'd traded for, “specifically, the Cinder Run. Charming place. It got it's name from the locals considering that there are fires here that have been burning for over one thousand years.”

I spotted the mad bird-cat standing next to the edge of the deck, a hog-tied Martial Cadence next to him with a blade at her throat. He'd at least given her a mask as well, but that did little to alleviate the gravity of it all. Sunslayer gestured down into the cloud of smoke that hid the ground below.

“You have no idea how many years I spent trying to find this place. My family is an old one that can trace its line back to before the banishment of Nightmare Moon. While I'm sure that Princess Celestia has purged the truth of history from your own land, she could never reach the old tales of mine. Did you know that before the rise of Discord, the Dragon Lord was the greatest tyrant ever known?”

“I assume this is going somewhere?” I asked, still peeved about everything.

“Easy, if you make me tense, Martial here might pay the price for it,” he pressed the blade a little more firmly against her, “but to answer your question, yes. Back in those ancient times, gryphons had many tales about the Lord of Air and Fire, Ragnarok. A beast that dwarfed even the mighty Lord Torch and the power it took to strike him down.

Water boiled at his touch and the earth trembled beneath his claws, so what power could harm him? The same power that is monopolized by your precious princess. For all her talk of compassion and harmony, she wasn't so restrained in her youth. She subjugated all but the most powerful creatures beneath the fires of her fury.”

He gave a pointed look at the smoke cloud, “The Cinder Run also goes by another name: The Sun Scar. Everything beneath us has felt the true wrath of your princess and her power suffuses the very stone far below. However, dragons have always been highly resistant to magic, so it was no mere spell that struck down Lord Ragnarok. Somewhere below us lies a weapon thought lost to time: the Reach of Sol.”

His gaze returned to me, “To save your friends, you're going to retrieve this weapon.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, “And... how exactly have you not been able to get it?”

He scoffed, “Come now, you must recall our previous conversation. I have sent some of the best, brightest, and strongest of my number down there, but... there are creatures drawn to this place. On top of that, something else stalks this place, a force of magic that lashes out at those that make it furthest. We're going to hope, for the sake of your friends, that you fare better, Lucky Signs.”

He nodded his head to the minotaur behind me and I was lifted bodily while the bovine brute slung something on my back akin to a saddlebag that settled in the center of my back. My captor named the device as a parachute and gave me a quick rundown in its use and my eyes widened.

“Wait, you expect me to jump!?” I shouted in disbelief.

“No, Mister Signs, I expect you to fall.” Sunslayer chided me a moment before I was tossed overboard by the creature behind me. I shouted in rising panic as I flailed about in the air. I was not born a pegasus, I did not have the natural instincts of a flier and had never considered base jumping as a recreational activity.

Thankfully, during my wild flailing, I caught the loop connected to the draw string and deployed the chute. That was the good part. The bad part, as I came to understand it, was that the updrafts from the heat below me played all sorts of chaos with my flight to the ground. I lost track of the airship in the dense smoke and could only breathe thanks to the mask firmly strapped to my face.

I was sweating like I'd been stranded in a desert for weeks when I finally hit the ground. No, that was not a figure of speech. I bounced off of the rocky ground several times as I was dragged forward by the chute before I managed to unhitch myself from it. I groaned as I tallied up several more bruises to add up in my life.

Crawling to my hooves, I tensed as the stone beneath me crackled slightly under the pressure of my weight. Every ancient instinct of ponykind was screaming at me that I shouldn't be here and every little hissing noise or rumbling of the ground made me feel surrounded by unseen monsters. On top of that, it didn't take a scientist to tell that I wasn't going to last long in this place.

I also had no idea which way to go. Lost in the smoke, I had no way of even figuring out which way I was facing in regards to the airship. This was beginning to feel like a hopeless endeavor.

I shook my head. My friends and fellow agents were counting on me and all I had to do was find a weapon of some kind. Rolling my eyes to myself, I closed them and spun in a circle for a moment and took off in a random direction after I recovered from the dizziness. All around me, I could hear fire crackling and the unseen flames cast an orange hue around me. Somehow I managed to avoid the fires proper.

Every few minutes, the ground shook beneath my hooves and I paused, waiting for everything to wrong. When it settled, I continued forward, wondering where the creatures that Sunslayer had talked about where. Not that I was eager to walk up on them. To be honest, this was starting to feel li-

Who treads upon this place...?

I froze, ears perked and eyes wide as I spun around in search of the voice's source. Sound seemed to fade away from the area as the rumbling, monstrous voice filled my ears. It sounded like the very stone around me was vibrating with the disdain that filled those words and the smoke around me seemed to be watching me now.

Do you not respect the sanctity of death? So many come now... you all come for what is mine! I will not surrender it to anybeing, not even in my suffering! Leave this place... or burn.

There was... a presence. It pushed down upon me with a force unlike anything I'd ever felt before, like it could crush me into paste with its metaphysical hoof alone. Despite the sweltering heat, my blood ran cold within me. At any other time, I probably would have turned around and sprinted away as fast as I could.

This time, however, the images of my friends filled my mind. If I stopped here, not only would I most likely die of heat exposure, but they would die at the talons of the bird-cat somewhere above me. So I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then I took a step. Then another.

...Your will is strong, but you come here on a foolish errand. Come then, little one. Come where I can see you properly. Let me look into your eyes as you fall.

I planted my hooves against a sudden gust of wind that swept around me and parted the smoke before me like a curtain. Before me, shimmering, obsidian stone was revealed where it rose into the sky. A pillar of darkness reached into the sky and made me wonder how this had been hidden in the smoke just from its size.

Welcome to my throne, little pony...

I gulped behind my mask as I brought my eyes back down toward the earth. A bright light drew my gaze to a break in the mass of shadow and I stepped forward. A cave entrance large enough to fit twenty ponies side by side greeted me. Within, the light revealed itself to be streams of lava dripping through holes in the ceiling.

A soft clanking sound drew my attention toward what appeared to be a pile of soot-covered armor hidden near the entrance. Arcane runes covered the plate, their power long since spent and now just adorning it with their scratched symbols. Other things began to show: saddlebags that bore signs of charring, weapons snapped in half, and even bones that varied in size here and there...

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...

Another gulp escaped me as I stared into the lava-lit passage, “...I am so not going to die here... I still need to get that date with Dawn...” I stated numbly before stepping in...

Comments

[Emperor]

Well, since Lucky is now at the volcano, we must be getting close to the in media res point. He just needs to journey through and retrieve the Reach of Sol now to get back up to that point. Where he can then finally get that date with Dawn Breeze. When all else fails to push Lucky Signs on, he just needs to be encouraged by that mare flank