“You,” I said and looked down at the pony on the stretcher, “Are an idiot. Why didn’t you go asleep so I could locate you? You know I can do that!”
Swift Spear looked up at me, “I’m injured, don’t you have anything better to do than stand berating an injured pony, My Lord?”
“Yes, maybe I could be writing down what I’d tell Minuette when you get your stupid hide killed,” I told him.
Swift flinched slightly before he sighed, “...I tried,” he answered, “But we never stopped moving and it’s hard to sleep when being carried around with broken legs.”
I nodded and looked down at his splinted legs, both fore and rear leg on his left side, “How are you doing?”
“A lot better now when I have actual pain potions,” he admitted, “and when not feeling my bones grind together while carried through the jungle while hunted by something. I… have had better times.”
“Did you see what was hunting you?”
“Yeah,” Swift said and let his head lay back down, “Some sort of bipedal lizard with lots of claws.”
“Sounds like what I called a raptoroid. Nasty customer.”
“Yeah. So glad that is over with. So what’s the plan now? I’m rather tired of being hunted while carried around in a jungle.”
I smiled at him, “We’re going to carry you through the jungle to avoid things that’s hunting us.”
He stared at me for a moment before he sighed and let his head drop back down, “...At least I’ll have a stretcher and pain potions this time around.. Everypony got back to camp then?”
I shook my head, “No. Six ponies are still unaccounted for. We have some pegasi search parties out, but…” I trailed off.
Swift nodded, “Yeah,” he said with a small sigh.
I flicked my ears and glanced towards the glow at the horizon, “Get what sleep you can, okay? We’re moving soon after sunrise.”
His eyes were already slipping closed and I backed away and moved over to Rising High, “You doing okay?”
She nodded, “Just tired, sir.”
“Get some sleep,” I told her with a smile, “You did awesome keeping them alive through this. Just get on a stretcher with the other injured, we can carry one more pony.”
“I’m fine, sir.”
She looked like she’d fall on her muzzle at any moment.
“That wasn’t a suggestion, we’re going to be moving as quickly as she can and we need everypony as alert as possible and you’re about to pass out,” I told her seriously, “Go to sleep.”
“...yes sir,” she said and stumbled over towards a free stretcher the medic had already laid out next to her brother.
I flicked my ears and then moved over to the command tent, “How are we looking?” I asked Moon Dancer as I walked up next to her where she was standing by the box/table, going through a list of some sort.
“We’re on schedule,” she said and put her pen down and looked at me, “Tempest forced Midnight to get a couple of hours of sleep and I took over. As soon as everypony is awake again and we have the tents packed, we will be ready to move.”
I nodded, “Sounds good,” I agreed and sighed softly, “good,” I repeated, rubbing my eyes with my hoof for a second.
Moon Dancer looked towards the dark trees around the camp, “...Do you really think we can do this?” she asked quietly after a moment before she turned to me again and adjusted her glasses, “I’m not a nature pony.”
“Neither am I,” I admitted, “If it wasn’t for Dee, I’d likely still be wandering around the jungle trying not to get eaten. But luckily neither of us will need to be, that’s what we have experts for.”
Well, no, as soon as I could safely fall asleep I’d locate the camp and make my way here. But this was about making Moon Dancer feel better, not facts.
She slowly nodded, “I guess you’re right,” she said and then lifted the stack in her magic, “Want to double check?”
I shook my head, “if you and Midnight missed something, I’m not going to catch it either. I’m going to do something useful and go pack up my tent.”
With that I left her to it and headed towards my tent.
I didn’t have a lot to get packed, but I did have to do it without magic which made it a massive pain in the arse.
Reaching into it I pulled out my satchel and put it to the side before also pulling out the bedroll and rolled it up, struggling to get the bands tied around it to keep it closed.
Seriously, how did pegasi and earth ponies do this full time and when will this motherbucking headache go away! Go! Away! You’re not even really in my head!!
I stopped and took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a second.
Just another couple of days. Midnight said another couple of days.
I sighed and got back to work.
Well Page it's more of a pain in the brain. But you over did it with the magic and your paying the price for it. Yeah Swift barely knows how lucky he is to be alive. Minuette would have found a way to bring him back just to kill him again for scaring her like that.
I wonder if these lizards are sentient or are some form of hunting animal for the jungle natives? *Sips Tea* I doubt it would be for bat ponies but I could imagine several potential races which might use carnivorous lizards possessing keen noses to track and hunt things.
Vladimir Kilgore: “Yeah, someone is definitely making a bunch of profit-taking sell offs on word counts! ”
Hopefully when page recovers he'll take the occasional chance here and there to do things without his magic so when he can't use it, he'll be better prepared. Or ya know, not push himself to that point again because pushing yourself to exhaustion is stupid and hurts the team more in the long run.
10447901
Ohh that is a good parody movie!
This expedition is a barrel of fun... Hope the next one dont fail. Especially since this time they will prepare for one shop going down.
9 pony missing? Better few it that way: Over 100 ponys are saved! Her a pretty good exampel:
There should be a line of dialogue where Page remembers he used to have hands. Would be quite useful in his current predicament.
10448882
AI believe the word your looking for is sapient, not sentient.
Good chapter really happy Swift is alive but it's not good their gonna be hunted now
10449312
Ah, my bad *Sips Tea* I have a bad habit of mixing those two up.
Barn stayed back as he watched the rescue team arrive and remove the mare and the two injured stallions. He had used his magic to lift and remove the predator he had dispatched, so nopony would become suspicious about how the three ponies had survived without being molested by the monsters living in the jungle.
On the one hoof, he dearly wished he was going with them. On the other, he at least had another cave to call home....
10449783
Pretty sure your mixing up something... Thestral curse dont made em into undead Vampires Nice try.
10450273
True.
But the original curse that created them had to come from somewhere, and there might be a few remnants of that floating about. Like the bat that bit him.
And it’s not like we all haven’t been mixing up a whole lot of things to begin with? By my count, we already have several Bond-villainesque-super-shippers, elements of Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones (although that one’s a requirement given Daring Do is involved in the story), Young Frankenstein, several Clint Eastwood films, Jurassic Park, Lovecraft, Steve Irwin, Sherlock Holmes, Sliders, Game of Thrones, a bit of steampunk, dozens of various Japanese animes (including Captain Harlock), several FimFics of other authors here, the Wolf Of Wall-street, a small number of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson productions, and we barely missed getting everything Irwin Allen ever made tossed in a few chapters back because some unnamed soulless bastard is currently stuck with an iPhone and doesn’t have reliable access to a decent computer with Internet access when he needs it....
...Dark Shadows should be par for the course. And if you knew about Dark Shadows, there were plenty of Lovecraft, sci-fi and other genre themes in it that touch stuff we’ve already done here.
Besides, you’re not considering the interactions to come when Page and Barn meet up again. ♫ Or... alternatively, if Barn never does rejoin the expedition, then Hiver at least has one less missing team member he has to create a resolution for.
10449260
BTW, that one looks pretty good. Where is it from?
10450645
Gate / the gate. You can find season 1 on youtube. Very nice anime. Exacly showing why i would say Celestia to keep human military out of Equestria at all costs.
Damn... Imagen you being one of the 6 missing ponies. Sucks to be expandable