• Published 6th Aug 2022
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Away and Afar - PropsValroa



An exploratory crew is sent out to investigate the great unknown.

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Chapter 35

Collapse nodded to Magloria there. "Yup. Sounds good to me." she stated and proceeded to relax down next to Jump Start. As expected, Jump Start could feel Collapse's soft warmth press up against her as she lays down. As she was curled up like a ball, that meant that Collapse could easily curl up around her. She was sure to be gentle with Jump Start. Her tail flicks around herself, meaning that her tail was by Jump Start's face. Could maybe be used as a pillow if Jump Start wanted.

Collapse could feel Jump Start tighten up further as she coiled around her. The tail landing on Jump Start's face made her flinch in from the unexpected contact, but eventually she decided that it could stay covering most of her head. After a deep sigh, she relaxed again with the intent to go to sleep.

A couple large lizards wandered by the group's shelter. Not close enough to be a concern, but still close enough to be easily watched. Each were a green colour and slightly larger than them from tail to head, but lower to the ground. They were probably looking for a suitable shelter themselves.

They didn't find one here, due to the current occupants, so they kept on searching.

Collapse was more than pleased with the cuddle she had with Jump Start and she smirked widely. If Magloria was looking, perhaps she'd see it. However with the way they were laying, Jump Start wouldn't have seen that grin.

However just before she fell asleep she noticed the large lizards, however they had moved off before they could be of a concern. Like that, Collapse fell asleep with Jump Start's soft warmth radiating away into her soft cream colored fur. It was most pleasing. Collapse had whispered something under her breathe but neither of them heard what it was.

If nothing interrupted them, she would fall off to sleep.

Collapse woke up to a sudden painful sensation striking her in the head. What sounded like loud chittering could be heard somewhere, but that wasn't as important as the feeling of something *else* striking her in the head hard.

"Ouch!" Magloria suddenly cried out. She apparently saw what was hurting them, because there was the sound of magic and a rush of ice being projected upwards into the treeline, a loud amount of alarmed calls and scrambling through the trees was heard afterwards.

"And stay out!" Magloria snapped.

The shout woke up Jump Start, who blearily looked around to see what was going on.

Collapse awoke quickly due to the sudden painful sensation and pulled away from the area quickly towards where Magloria was. Instantly her heart was racing upon the situation they were faced with, and her tiredness quickly faded as her mind was focused on two things only. Ascertaining the situation and getting ready for combat. Looking to make sure that her boots were on properly, which they were she would quickly pull herself away from Jump Start while looking towards the treeline.

Her spear was grabbed instinctively in her golden magic. "Whats going on? Was someone attacking us?!" she quickly shouted to Magloria, ready to engage in combat if needbe. However it seemed that whatever it was that had came into the area was retreating away given Magloria's attacks.

Magloria looked particularly disgruntled, glaring up at the trees where now a large clump of ice sat, hanging off one of the larger branches.

"No, we're not under attack. Just some of the wildlife thought it was a good idea to act like bastards." she growled, letting her gaze fall from the trees as she turned to Collapse.

"Bunch of stupid monkeys threw sticks at us. Probably wanted to see how we'd react. Bet they didn't expect magic. Had them buggering off pretty fast too."

Jump Start got up and casually stretched, giving out a yawn before joining in on the conversation. "So... I guess we won't be having trouble from them anymore after your little... magic show?" she asked.

Magloria shook her head. "Doubt it. Probably spreading word to their friends as we speak." she said, adjusting one earring, then her other one to make sure they hadn't been damaged.

Collapse sighed of relief and looked up at the trees for a few moments as she sighs. Collapse was definitely calming herself down.

"Phew...I was worried we were going to have to fight felines today or something...just some monkeys...albeit annoying ones." she smirked as her eyes met Magloria's own, before her eyes would look to Magloria's pretty earrings. "If anything that's just a test of how fast we could react. I would say that was reasonable. Plus it gets the blood pumping for the day." she remarked as she looked over to Jump Start and smiled warmly.

"Sleep good? I sure did, and I would have slept better if monkeys didn't wake us up. Either way, I slept good." Collapse said to her. Jump Start could easily guess why that was.

"With that said, I believe we have a side of a hill to examine." Collapse added.

"Mhm... sure." Magloria said, disinterested in conversation at the moment after what happened. Instead she instructed them all to pack up their 'bedrolls' and get ready to move again.

It seems like they had been woken up just after dawn. The sunlight was strong enough to clearly show everything, but the heat wasn't oppressive, yet.

Jump Start gave a tired shrug and started to follow after Magloria. "I could've slept better. Or longer. Do you think coffee beans grow in this place? Something similar as a substitute perhaps?" she pondered.

Collapse picks up the petals her and Jump Start had slept on and followed after Magloria. She rose an eyebrow at Jump Start's suggestion. "It is certainly possible. Coffee beans do indeed grow in these types of environments. Maybe we'll find some, and we'll brew it up if we do." Collapse smiled warmly.

Her tail wags a little bit at the suggestion, finding herself to be rather warm and giddy inside. "Hehe, who knows what else we'll find." she added.

"The hard part is properly identifying the beans, I'd think." Magloria stated. "They wouldn't just come in those little brown beans that you buy from the market. Just like how sugar cane doesn't grow sugar lumps."

"Unfortunately I don't know what a coffee plant looks like, so I can't identify one if we find it." she added.

"Neither... Oh well..." Jump Start sighed.

A few more hours of walking, a clump of bananas for breakfast and an oddly agitated monkey later, and they had reached what they knew was the top of the hill. The trees still blocked a bit from here, but they could see jungle trees everywhere.

On the other side of the hill they saw the thin trail of smoke, now mostly faded, reaching up through the trees. Beyond that was large amounts of tree canopy and a mountain range off in the distance. If they wanted to reach that it would take several days of constant travel, and even more to climb up without proper climbing gear.

Collapse sighs in disappointment. "Aww, no coffee...but maybe we could make fruit juice or something else instead." she said as they went along.

The hours of walking through the jungle were what Collapse had basically expected. At least the bananas tasted better than those other fruits. The monkeys were annoying yet also hilarious. Still though, being woken up by thrown rocks isn't the best of things to wake up to. It felt calming though, to be in such a wooded area when nobody else was around that they had known of.

Upon seeing the thin trail of smoke Collapse would speak. "What do you think was causing that? Perhaps a campfire or campsite? It seems to be thinner this time, perhaps the fire is starting to go out and weakened throughout the night." she commented.

Upon looking off to the mountain range Collapse had an idea. "I don't suppose either of you are in the mood to go up a mountain? Well, it is far away but even if we are to get some of the way up we'd get a really good view of the area, however this trail of smoke should hopefully provide some answers." she added.

Magloria scoffed. "Well I'd expect a flame to be weakened after burning for an entire night and part of the day. I'm more surprised that it would still be going. Whatever made it obviously doesn't know about fire safety." she said.

They both shook their head at the suggestion to climb the mountains. "It's days away and too steep to climb properly." Magloria pointed out as if it was obvious.

"This hill is just that. A hill. That's a mountain. We're bad enough at climbing steep rocky inclines because we slip easily compared to say... a griffon, but a steep rocky incline that's a thousand meters high is a stupid idea just to look around."

Collapse was silent for a bit as she processed the answers she was given. "Oh yeah...your right." she spoke as if she hadn't even considered that. "Scratch that then, let's just look at the fire." she suggested. Perhaps that was just an attempt to sweep away her...suggestions, but either way she definitely felt embarrassed at how quickly her suggestions were shot down. To boot, her ears went back ever so slightly.

With that out of the way, she would follow them towards the flame while keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

It was midday by the time they had arrived at the place where the smoke was coming from. A patch of the hill that contained no dirt for plants to grow on, leaving a large plate of rock exposed directly to the sun.

The remains of a campfire could be seen, several burnt logs smoldering away to charcoal. The owners of the campfire was nowhere to be seen though. There was just a large amount of big lizards about, similar to the ones that they saw the other night.

Most of them were busy laying about in the sun, letting the rays of heat flow through them. A few were looking in the group's direction, obviously wary of their presence.

Collapse looks about at the lizards and the burnt logs upon their arrival. "Lots of lizards and burnt logs. Isn't quite what I expected though. I would think that anyone this far away from a town would set up an actual camp, but if they are out this far perhaps they are hunting or logging, something like that." Collapse thought out loud.

The lizards were interesting, not animals Collapse would wanna go up to though. They were too large to simply go and pick up like a salamander or something like that.

That was when they saw movement approaching from the trees on the other side. Something large, twice as large than them was approaching.

First they could see it's big head, coated in bronze scales with piercing yellow eyes, with a grey frill around it's neck. Then the rest of it's body came into view, everything covered in the bronze scales with various patches of black dotted in patterns across it's body. 4 short legs, each ending in claws that could tear into trees, and finally a long, flexible tail sat at the end.

However there were things that didn't match up with what they probably expected. They didn't have any wings to speak of, plus they wore a series of pouches down their back, some looking filled with supplies. They also wore a large scarf or small poncho around their upper body, colored forest green to blend in with their surroundings.

That was probably the owner of the campsite, and judging from how some of the lizards were moving towards them, they were well acquainted too.

Jump Start was understandably scared. "Let's turn back now." she suggested.

Collapse was most certainly surprised at who they had seen. Perhaps this was a parent of the other lizards around. Mama lizard maybe. If going off of how bears get when one goes near their cubs - it is best to move away. She certainly didn't want to be anywhere near this huge lizard if it was angered. That would be far scarier.

With a bit of a scared shake Collapse agrees. "Y-yes, let's turn back now. I don't wanna be lizard food today." Collapse's ears went back as she gulped. Her tail shakes a little bit at the scene in fear and she instinctively looks for Magloria like a scared filly. Magloria would know what to do. "M-magloria, what do you think of this?" she asked with a whimper.

Big scary lizard. That isn't what Collapse wanted to find. A friendly seapony? She missed the seaponies already.

Magloria just stood there and watched as the big lizard reached into one of it's pouches. Her eyes narrowed.

"I think that it's probably not your typical lizard, and that we should move on to our next task." she said as the big lizard pulled out what appeared to be a large pile of pebbles and placed them on the ground, except they weren't pebbles. If you looked close enough they were actually little beetle statues.

Magloria turned away, starting to move in the direction of the closest bit of ocean. "Checking to see if seaponies existed in these waters was our next task, no?"

Collapse agrees silently and follows Magloria away. While that Lizard seemed to be more than a normal lizard. It was probably intelligent just like they were, at least on some level she would expect.

"Well, I would definitely like to see if there are seaponies. Seaponies are a lot better than scary lizards and felines. Plus, they are just amazing." Collapse smiled sweetly as the hug with Aura Surge came to mind upon the end of that statement. Already she did indeed miss Aura Surge, for she had helped them so much. Aura Surge was also very soft.


[06-Dec-21 02:46 PM]
They were under the cover of the jungle's canopy almost immediately, obscuring their sight of the sun again and cooling them down. The downside is they had to deal with all the flying bugs everywhere again.

"There is a massive problem with searching for the seaponies however. Unless we get lucky at spotting one near the beach or on the surface, we're going to have to search through a lot of water. That's going to take a while, not to mention there are more sea creatures here. Stuff like sharks and jellyfish." Magloria stated.

Jump Start joined in on listing creatures. "And snappy crabs, slimy eels, poisonous pufferfish, lanky squids..."

"Well we'll check around the shores first before going into the water I would say. Perhaps some interesting things washed up on the shores or there is something interesting along the beach." Collapse noted.

"If its just things like sea life than I imagine we could easily deal with it, with our magic we can find off sharks and stuff but I'd rather we just avoid those situations to begin with. If there are seaponies on the surface however, they would likely be a far different group than the ones we met as the ones below weren't really aware of the surface." Collapse spoke, stating the obvious.

The sun was starting to get low by the time they reached where the closest beach was. Unlike most of the surrounding beaches that they saw, this part didn't have a lot of sand. Instead it was filled with large rocks, many of them making smooth and round slabs all over the place. In some places small pools of water had formed.

Plentiful crabs and other various wildlife could be found, most of them in the water pools. Whatever was further out into the water however was a mystery.

Jump Start looked about. "I don't see any. Do you?" she asked. Magloria shook her head in reply.

There was no signs of any seaponies nearby. A couple of seals laying on the rocks looked like seaponies for a moment, until the realization that their shape was all wrong.

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