Celestia Goes West

by DungeonMiner

Chapter 10

Marble took the first watch.

Though, if he was honest with himself, he’d admit that Sunny told him to. She insisted that she spent more energy during the day and that during camp set up, she spent more time securing food and water and could do with going to sleep sooner. Sunny backed it up with the point that she could use magic to see what was going on around them better in the dark, which meant that it would probably be best if the unicorn took the darkest place in the night. The unicorn then followed up with a third point that if she wound up being awake in the morning, she would have a better chance of making breakfast undisturbed, and they can get moving sooner.

Marble tried to argue against it, but then Sunny brought up her best point.

She had a machete, and she was tired.

So Marble took the first watch.

The fire crackled beside him as he sat, watching the darkness for any sign of something to happen.

He sighed.

Well, here he was, stuck in the jungle with a crazy, weirdly competent nutjob of a mare who was going to take him all the way across the wilderness before letting him go back to Equestria. Why she couldn’t just take him back now, he’d never know.

But they were on the way to a Windtower, and that alone might make this whole trip worth it in some strange sort of karmic way. If he had a real chance to study one of the towers and returned with a new finding, then he might be able to fund a whole new expedition...or...whatever.

He shook his head. He really didn’t need to be thinking about this right now, between the ponies that probably died during the storm, and...well, that...he had too many thoughts distracting him. He shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than his own survival.

Why was she bothering him now, anyway? It’d been nearly a year since then, and now she’s starting to distract him when he had his own life on the line? There wasn’t a worse time for this.

He shoved it all away before it could threaten to overwhelm him in a wave of emotions he could feel begin to swirl around him. He couldn’t afford those right now, anyway. He had to worry about being eaten alive right now, and that took precedence over whatever he felt or whatever possible findings he might find.

Besides, if he was eaten, then no one would hear his findings anyway.

He sighed and stared out into the darkness, suppressing a yawn.

He really hoped nothing would eat him tonight.

---☼---

When Marble woke, he blinked away sleep and hated the palm fronds that made the worst bed he ever slept on. He rolled, turning to the side, and stared into the middle of the camp, where Sunny worked on cooking breakfast.

How dare she.

How dare she be so peppy in the morning? Who gave her the right to be a morning pony?

“Since you were complaining yesterday,” Sunny said, noticing his bleary glare, “I’ve made a heartier breakfast. Boiled taro and roasted heart of palm. I hope you like artichoke.”

“Wazztha gotta do wif it?” he muttered, his voice slowly coming back to him.

“That’s what palm hearts taste like,” she replied.

He gave a simple nod and tried to follow along as she prepared a very hearty, not-at-all-breakfast-appropriate meal. Marble crawled out of his bed before reaching into one of his bags for the coconut canteens he filled the previous night and drank until the dryness in his throat passed. He noted with a frown that it took nearly half the canteen to do that, and it was by no means a small coconut.

He sighed, but now that his mouth wasn’t bone dry, he had a much better chance of eating the meal, and he did so in silence.

Sunny, meanwhile, ate her own dish. She ate quickly but...refined somehow. The oddity of it struck the pegasus more than anything else. That was until he bit down on the palm heart.

The fragile yet overpowering taste of artichoke filled his mouth, and he resisted the urge to spit it back up. The disgust must’ve been evident on his face because Sunny smirked. “I told you that it tastes like artichoke.”

He coughed but kept the food down. “Yes, thanks for the warning,” he muttered before turning away to stare into the darkness. He wasn’t going to let that smug little unicorn get away with staring down on him like that.

He ate his food, scooping the palm heart, totally enshrouded and surrounded by the taro root to try and keep the taste off his tongue, into his mouth with gusto. He honestly didn’t have the time to sit about and—

His eye caught some movement.

He blinked and slowly set his bowl down.

Sunny seemed to notice because she called out to him. “What? What do you see?”

He continued to stare into the darkness and could swear he saw something move. Something out there, in the deep, dense jungle, slowly moved from branch to branch. “I don’t know,” he whispered back to the unicorn.

The movement stopped.

They stood quiet for a long, agonizing moment.

“It...it must be gone now,” he said.

Sunny glared into the wilderness for a moment. “Are you sure?”

He waited a moment more. “Yeah, yeah, I think so.”

“Okay,” Sunny replied. “Then let’s finish eating, and then head out. I don’t want whatever that was to follow us.”

He nodded before he followed along and began to take down the camp.

---☼---

The jungle breathed around him.

Marble couldn’t help but think that this was the furthest from any civilization he had ever been. Typically, when he went to investigate old ruins, a team of ponies set up a supply train that would keep the basecamp ready with whatever tools, comforts, or safety they needed.

Up until now, he’d never even considered going into the jungle without a squadron of Royal guards, typically hired by whoever was funding the expedition, to back them up. Now he was here in the middle of the jungle, thousands of miles from anyone who could possibly give him any safety or the illusion of civilization with him. Marble had no camp to fall back on, no guards to protect him, and no comforts of home.

In the camps, the most he and Vanilla ever had to worry about was their cooling unit going on the fritz, leaving them sweltering in the jungle heat.

Now he followed a well-trained madmare who insisted that they needed to worry about zibos and thistle hydras or something like that, and honestly, Marble wasn’t sure what to think about them. Sure, she had an obvious boatload of training. Sunny knew her way around the jungle plants, but this mare also insisted that the Lusitanpec Skull totem was a monument to their fallen, which made no sense.

Why, by Celestia, would an entire nation take their fallen warriors, decapitate them, and then stack their skulls into a massive column that reached into the sky?

So, while Sunny had some frankly surprising competence in dealing with the jungle, she obviously knew nothing about ancient civilizations.

Despite that, she spoke with such authority on both subjects that Marble had to wonder how much of her training was best guesses and lucky bluffs? Did she really know how to make a canteen out of a coconut, or had that been a random attempt at sticking things together that she managed to pull off somehow?

A more terrifying thought popped into Marble’s head. What if, just like everything else, she’d somehow been right about the totem? That by some stroke of terrible luck, she somehow guessed the correct answer, just as a way for the universe to spite him. What would he have done to deserve that?

“Are you paying attention?” Sunny asked from ahead of him as she hacked at the growth that barred their path.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, staring down at her before taking a moment to take a pronounced and exaggerated look around at their surroundings.

There was nothing, just like there hadn’t been for hours.

Sure, the little noise this morning had put him on edge, but now two-and-a-half hours into their march, and his nerves unwound back to normalcy. The long stretch of silence and the constant glancing around left Marble with only a single, resonating thought bouncing around in his brain.

Being on watch was a pointless job.

He wasn’t an idiot. Marble knew that there were monsters in the jungle, but it was becoming ever increasingly clear that whatever wanted to chase them could do so without being seen at all. If something attacked them, they’d all be dead in a few seconds. Sure, he might be able to take something head-on if he had a weapon or a warning, but if one of those things ambushed them, he’d have no chance.

“Are you sure you’re checking the trees?” Sunny asked.

“Yes, I’m checking the trees,” he replied in a deadpan.

The giant, shadowy trees that betrayed no movement, no light, and certainly no would-be ambushers stood over him, where he could see nothing. Certainly not in time to save their lives if it came down to it.

He sighed as he continued flying.

This was a pointless job.

This was a pointless trip.

Sure, Sunny knew what plants would keep them fed instead of dying from who knows what kind of poison, but there was no way she would actually get them both out of this. They weren’t going to make it, and that was—

“Zorb!”

The cry nearly made Marble jump out of his skin, and he spun in a flash just in time to see a hairy, tiny, ursine creature with skin that looked like wood.

He shot into the air by instinct, but his mind already registered that it was too late. The monster would hit him anyway, and then he’d be—

A golden aura of magic surrounded the beast and slammed him to the ground.

Marble blinked before looking down at Sunny, whose horn was ablaze with power.

Before he could relax, though, another two dozen of the creatures leaped down from the trees, all roaring the word “Zorb!” at the top of their lungs. Marble shot back and forth through the air, narrowly dodging the incoming creatures as they all hit the ground.

They surrounded Sunny in an instant, and she answered with magic. Rocks tore out of the ground and swirled around her in a defensive ring. One of the red-haired monsters attacked, and stone slammed into it from the side before three more pummeled it, sending up a cloud of dust with every hit.

Marble hovered over them, watching them as the monsters tried to attack Sunny, who shot stones at dizzying speeds. Every hit against the monsters sent up another cloud of dust, but even with the rocks spinning around her so fast they began to blur, the bear-things threatened to get closer still.

One stepped up behind her, and the blur of stones shaved the hair off of the beast’s face, revealing stone-like skin beneath which chipped under pressure. The monster went spinning on its feet, but even Marble could see the stone she used shattered to dust under the attack.

“Marble!” Sunny roared. “Help!”

“How?” he asked.

“Get them off the ground!” she yelled before launching herself into the air. She landed hard before dropping the stones and pulling a giant club of rock out of the earth. The club hovered in the air, made of rough rocks that seemed barely held together, but Sunny didn’t seem to care before she slammed it into one of the monsters.

Something cracked, and a chunk of stone fell off the club, but the monster she crushed lay still.

Marble glanced around at them all before he shrugged. “Okay,” he said to himself before diving down onto one of the beasts. He tore it off the ground and felt the rock-like skin beneath the red fur. He raised it up into the air and then felt...he felt...the skin change. The thick, stony hide of the beast transformed into soft, tender flesh in his hooves.

“Pull!” Sunny yelled below her, and Marble looked down just in time to see Sunny firing a stone at terrifying speeds up at him.

He yelped and dropped the monster before the rock tore through the beast with ease.

Marble blinked as the monster fell, dead. His mind both raced and gaped simultaneously. Somehow the beast’s armored hide fell away and became soft. It had to be...it had to be some kind of magic that it had.

Sunny smashed her club against another one of the beasts, and again the stones in it broke. She threw the last few pieces into the twenty remaining monsters before pulling a wall from the ground. With her magic, she shoved the wall forward, pushing the monsters back and uprooting trees in its wake.

“Marble!” she yelled again. “Stop wasting time and pick up another one. They’re easier to stop in the air!”

He blinked again before shaking his head.

“Come on, Marble!” he mentally yelled. “You’re better than this!”

He dove into the monsters, picking up another one after it leaped out of the way of the wall. Again he felt the creature’s skin transform under his grip before he began to pick up speed. The monster tried to grab at him, but Marble moved quickly before throwing the beast into a large branch.

He heard something crack as he flew by before the monster began to fall, spinning to the ground.

Marble fellow up into the branches before he spun his body around. His legs came up, hit wood, and then he kicked himself back down in a dive. He pulled up just over one of their heads and brought his hoof around to slam it into them, only for his leg to scream in pain. It felt like he just kicked a rock.

“Get them off the ground!” Sunny yelled.

Marble grit his teeth and turned before he dove again, picking up another one of the creatures. His leg howled in pain, and Marble hissed before he began to turn. If it hurt him this much, it might damage the one in her arms more.

He dived low again and slammed the monster into another one, and he saw the one he carried slam and shatter into the one on the ground.

Yes, he had these things figured out now.

Sunny continued fighting below him, keeping them at bay with more stones and rocks she pulled from the ground. They weathered her attacks like bastions, but Marble had a plan now. He launched downward, landing just behind one of the monsters before he threw in an uppercut into the thing’s back.

His hoof struck thick, stony hide, and the monster did little more than stumble forward. That was the only opening he needed, though, as Marble leaned forward and grabbed the beast before rolling onto his back. He pulled the thing with him, off the ground and into the air.

Sunny answered with a rock, tearing the monster off of Marble’s hooves and into the air. The rest of the monsters cried out and began to retreat suddenly.

They screeched and roared before filing into the jungle.

Then, before the both of them knew it, they heard nothing but the roar of the wilderness.

“Good to know you can actually defend yourself,” Sunny mumbled as she dropped the stone around her. She sat down for a second and began feeling down the length of her hind leg. “I almost thought I had to fight them all on my own.”

“I’m sorry,” he said before he felt his face flush. “They surprised me, is all.”

“That’s why you’re on watch,” she said. “Okay, I don’t think anything’s broken. Are you hurt?”

“My leg’s throbbing,” he said. “But I think it’s okay. I can stay off of it for a while.”

Sunny nodded.

“What were those?” Marble asked.

“Those are Zorbos,” she replied. “Pack hunters, the real danger in them is how they take on the aspects of whatever surface they’re on. When they all come at you from the ground, they can easily overwhelm and surround you.”

Marble nodded. “So why’d they all run off?”

“You hit the alpha,” Sunny explained. “With it dead, the pack needed to decide who leads it before they do anything else. I will say that you picked a good target if nothing else.”

Marble blinked and nodded before something struck him. “Is that why they’re called ‘Zorbos?’ Because they absorb whatever’s around them?”

Sunny glanced up at him, a smile on her lips. “No, they’re called Zorbos because they scream ‘zorb.’ Good guess, though.”

Marble frowned.

Sunny smirked. “Come on, let’s get going. We’ve lost enough time today already, and as much as I hate to admit it, this bruise on my leg might slow us down. We’ll need to try and make up the time tonight, so let’s go. And keep watch, alright?”

Marble nodded. “Okay, okay,” he muttered before taking off into the air again.

The unicorn began moving forward, and Marble fell in behind her with a sigh.

In retrospect, he might have been a little hard on watch duty. Sure, he still wouldn’t necessarily be able able to fully defend himself. Still, if Sunny could back him up, she might be able to buy him an extra second or two, then he could actually use all his fighting skills instead of gaping like an idiot the entire fight.

“Did a great job there, Marble,” he said to himself, “You stood there for a good three seconds before you actually did anything, and once you moved, you only really managed to hurt your own leg! You’d never know that Vanilla used to count on you to defend her against whatever was living in those temples.”

Marble sighed and followed behind, leaving a clearing with the pitted ground and bloodstains as the only sign of the fight.

Comments

[djthomp]

Never visit magical jungles, it would seem.