Chapter 3: Jungle of the Ancients
Yearling followed Rain Shine out of her hut and through the village. All of the kirin they passed gave a friendly wave to their leader and she bowed her head to them in acknowledgement.
Their destination seemed to be a wooden stage, larger than some of the other ones. Upon it stood a lone kirin, singing to a sparse audience before her. It immediately struck Yearling that her appearance was similar to that of Rain Shine’s, save that she was the size of other kirin.
As her singing came to an end, the crowd clopped or stomped their hooves in appreciation. Even Rain Shine stomped one hoof, which caught the stage kirin’s attention.
“Mother!” she exclaimed, climbing off of the stage and hurrying over to the kirin chief and being welcomed by a one-forelegged hug.
“Your singing is as beautiful as ever, Creek,” Rain said. “I hope I’m not interrupting your practice.”
“Never,” Creek replied with a giggle, before finally noticing Yearling, who gave a brief wave. The younger kirin pulled away with a curious tilt of her head. “Who is this?”
“My name’s Daring Do,” Yearling said with the tip of her pith helmet. “Nice to meet you.”
“Daring, this is Creek Shine, my daughter,” Rain introduced, turning back to her daughter. “Daring is here to explore the Jungle of the Ancients and—”
“Jungle of the Ancients?!” Creek exclaimed excitedly.
“Jungle of the Ancients?” Yearling asked simultaneously with a more inquisitive tone.
Rain nodded. “It is a denser part of the Peaks of Peril. It’s believed we kirin had many villages deeper in the jungle, but gradually moved towards the Stream of Silence over time, most likely because of our nirik forms,” she explained, turning to Creek. “My daughter and her friend are very interested in exploring it.”
She turned to Yearling. “And if you seek a temple, it will most likely be somewhere in there.”
“How far does the jungle go?” Yearling asked.
“Miles and miles,” Creek said. “My friend Rune Glare and I have explored a little ways into the interior, and while we’ve found some signs of villages, we haven’t seen a temple.”
Yearling huffed, rubbing her brow. “Bet it’s stuffed a ways in then,” she remarked.
“Why is a pony looking for a temple in the Jungle of the Ancients?” Creek asked, more to both her mother and Yearling than one or the other.
“That should be discussed in private,” Rain said, quickly turning to leave. “Come, we must prepare for your departure.
“Too bad Rune is out on a hike,” Creek huffed, but followed after her mother, a giddy grin spread across her muzzle. Yearling took a glance over her shoulder, towards the jungle that surrounded the Kirin Village and sighed.
It was always jungles, wasn’t it?
Explaining the quest for the Kirinstone to the young kirin only served to inspire her further – now she had a goal deep within that jungle. Yearling smirked at Creek’s enthusiasm. She felt like a chip off of her own block.
The rest of the day was spent gathering supplies for the expedition. Creek offered rudimentary maps she and Rune Glare had made of their past expeditions, while Rain secured them provisions for their trip.
The next morning, Yearling and Creek set off on their expedition. The entirety of the Kirin Village came to see them off.
“Take care in the jungle, Creek,” Rain cautioned. “We don’t know what our ancestors left behind out there. And Yearling.” She turned to the Pegasus, her expression sterner. “Please keep my daughter safe.”
“I will, I promise, Chief Rain Shine,” Yearling said, standing taller at attention. “And thank you for the supplies.”
Rain Shine nodded. “May you both have a safe journey,” she said.
“And tell us all about it when you get back!” Autumn chirped, waving enthusiastically.
Yearling chuckled and nodded, her and Creek setting off and waving goodbye to the Kirin Village.
“Alright, we should head up along the river,” Creek said. “It’s the quickest path into the jungle itself. From there, we can venture into the interior.”
“Right. We just need to see if we can find any signs of… well, whatever we’re looking for,” Yearling said.
“There’s one more thing that you should know: you should never dip into the river itself,” Creek cautioned.
“Why’s that?”
“The river feeds the Stream of Silence. While the waters of the Stream are cool, the waters of the river are frigid, and grow colder the further we get from the Kirin Village. It could chill you to the bone within a minute,” Creek explained.
“No swimming, got it,” Yearling said.
Their path led them up a steep embankment and soon the sounds of a roaring river could be heard over the cacophony of tropical life. It grew louder and louder until they found themselves on the river’s banks. Smooth gravel lined either side of the river, and a light fog hung over the rushing blue waters.
Yearling glanced at it with a grimace before looking upriver. “Alright, how long before we hit the Jungle of the Ancients?” she asked.
“It’s a good two miles up the river. The plants grow far denser there – and that’s when we’ll know we’ve reached the jungle,” Creek said, pulling out her map in her magic. “From there… I am not certain. We’ve only ventured into the jungle a little ways.”
“Well, let’s cross that wooden bridge when we get to it then,” Yearling said, tipping her pith helmet forward and adjusting her loaded saddlebags. She marched up the riverbank, followed closely behind by Creek, who kept looking down at her map.
They walked in silence for the most part of the journey, focused solely on the task at hoof. Slowly but surely, the foliage did grow denser around the banks of the river until the great trees overshadowed it with their interlaced branches and drooping vines. Yearling noted some, the ones closest to the water, even had a light sheen of frost.
Finally, the gravel gave way to moss-covered rocks and sheer juts of stone that they had to climb over. On the other side, they found the gravel completely buried under an overgrowth of moss and ferns. The air closest to the river had an ever-present chill, but grew more humid the more they turned from it.
“Welcome, Daring Do,” Creek said, gesturing grandly to the world around them. “To the Jungle of the Ancients."
“It’s sure an ancient jungle alright,” Yearling said with a whistle of appreciation, tipping her pith helmet back. Though they had been walking for quite some time—by Yearling’s estimate, over an hour—they had barely worked up a sweat due to the river’s chill.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked, walking over to Creek to examine her map.
“We’ve, uh, reached that wooden bridge you mentioned,” Creek replied with an apologetic smile. “Rune and I haven’t been able to venture very far into the jungle itself, and there’s been little sign of past life save for the old villages.”
“Let’s try the nearest one then,” Yearling said, pointing at a small green “x” on the map. “That should be, what, a few miles in?”
Creek nodded. “However, the way is very overgrown, and any path you chop down will be regrown by morning. We believe the ancient kirin’s natural magic is well ingrained in the land around here, hence why it’s so overgrown.”
“Right.” Yearling huffed. “Got a machete? Because like it or not, we’ve got to make a path through this jungle.”
It was even slower growing through the thick overgrowth than it had been the riverside hike. The route through the trees and foliage was rough with jutting rocks and dense vines and ferns. It took a great deal of hacking with a machete, both Creek’s and Yearling’s, to make any headway.
They crawled over logs and under low hanging vines as they went, swatting away a plethora of biting insects all the way. Eventually, Creek resorted using bursts of nirikfire to roast them, or at least scare them off for a time.
Away from the coolness of the river, they panted and sweated. The jungle had taken on the humid air of the forest around the Kirin Village, but notched up to another degree. They often had to stop and catch their breath, with Yearling fanning her face with her pith helmet.
As the sun began to set somewhere over the dense canopy—the trees were too dense for any sight of the sky, or for Yearling to even fly through their branches—Creek pointed excitedly ahead.
Had she not pointed them out, Yearling might’ve missed them. A series of wooden huts, still standing in the dense forest. The trees that grew around them were shorter and the underbrush thinner, but they were so covered in moss that they blended in with their surroundings.
“It’s getting late,” Creek said, squinting at the canopy overhead. “We can make camp here for the night and carry on in the morning.”
“Carry on in which direction?” Yearling asked, looking around. Sure enough, from this distance, there was no other sign of even an old beaten path into the jungle.
Creek pulled out a compass and looked around the area. “We’re east of the river. If we continue to head north, we might hit something else,” she said. “Rune and I have roughly been able to figure out which direction the ancient kirin came from.”
“Which means that’s where we’ll find which way past villages were… and perhaps an old temple,” Yearling concluded. She glanced at the few moss-covered huts around them. “Still… if the other villages were older than this one, might not be much to find.”
“Well, we have to try, right?” Creek flashed a smile. “Let’s set up camp and rest for the night. A fire will keep away the jungle’s pests.”
“Like what?” Yearling asked.
And regretted it the moment the words left her lips.
A loud buzzing filled the air, growing louder as it barreled down on Yearling from above. Creek quickly reached out and pulled her out of the way of a navy blue blur. Yearling quickly whirled around, the machete in hoof.
It was a horned beetle, easily as big as a pony and standing on two legs. Two other legs seemed to be claw-tipped arms. Its golden eyes glared at the two, its elytra flaring open with a menacing buzz of its wings. The curved horn atop its head was easier longer than Yearling’s foreleg.
“Back!” Creek roared, a demonic tone entering her voice as blue-pink fire flared on her horn.
The beetle’s eyes widened in horror and it quickly complied, buzzing off into the night. Yearling watched it go with wide-eyed horror before turning to Creek, who snuffed out her flames with a huff.
“That… was the biggest bug I’ve ever seen,” Yearling croaked, slowly sheathing her machete.
Creek nodded. “The ancient trees of the forest, especially the bigger ones, provide large amounts of sap, and it would seem many bugs have grown large with them. Fortunately, most of the bugs are territorial, and not interested in you as a meal.”
“Most,” Yearling repeated. She shook her head. “Seems they don’t like fire at least. Let’s get a campfire started and hope none of his friends show up to evict us.”
Creek nodded, quickly turning to the forest floor and picking up branches in her magic. Yearling, glancing over her shoulders, made her way over to the huts to stow away her gear.
As she approached one, there was the clatter of what sounded like bone on bone. She jumped back as a tan bug of some sort barreled out of one of the huts. Much like the beetle, this one walked on two legs and had two, albeit skinnier, arms. A pair of beady, glaring black eyes sat above a vertical mouth full of sharp fangs. A pair of oversized, spiked pincers sat atop its head, which the bug was mashing together menacingly.
Yearling let out a startled yelp, catching Creek’s attention. The kirin dropped her bundle of sticks and charged over, eyes blazing. “Get away from her!” she roared, her horn alight with blue-pink flames.
The pincher bug seemed defiant of Creek’s charge, but as she drew nearer, it finally conceded and fled on foot into the undergrowth. The sound of crashing branches and shuffling leaves grew fainter and fainter.
Creek snuffed out her flames and sighed. “Seems we disturbed its home,” she said.
Yearling cautiously approached the hut, machete now in hoof. Poking her head inside, she looked around before turning back to Creek. “Looks like the coast is clear, he was the only one in here. Pretty strange bugs you have in these parts.”
Creek chuckled. “Unfortunately. Let’s hope we don’t run into further pests,” she said, going back to retrieve her discarded firewood.
“You and me both,” Yearling replied with a shudder.
A crackling campfire sat just outside the old hut they took refuge in. A lot of the forest floor debris had been cleared to ensure the fire didn’t spread. Occasionally, they heard the rustling of the underbrush as something drew closer, but then quickly scurried away. Both Yearling and Creek were curled up in sleeping bags safe inside the hut.
“So, you’re sort of the local history buff?” Yearling asked.
“Sort of,” Creek admitted. “I do find history fascinating, that’s how I met Rune Glare. We decided the best place to start was our own backyard.”
“Finding this Kirinstone must be a dream come true then,” Yearling said with a chuckle.
“It is. I didn’t even know it existed,” Creek remarked. “I wonder what it does, or at least what it meant to the ancient kirin.” She giggled excitedly. “Ooh, it’s such fascinating stuff.”
“Yeah,” Yearling said, sighing. “You and someone else it would seem.”
Creek quieted down, then hummed. “You mentioned you received a letter about this Kirinstone? From who?”
“Heck if I know, there wasn’t a return address on the envelope. I remember it was some vintage parchment, even the envelope looked old. The hoofwriting was fancy, cursive, and it was written in this ink that looked like blood,” Yearling explained.
“Where is the letter?” Creek asked, looking across from her.
“After I read it, it and the envelope just… burnt. They caught on fire all on their own. Must’ve been some sort of delayed enchantment or something,” Yearling replied. “I remember it was strange fire too. Like, not normal orange, but more of a red.”
Creek laid back and stared at the hut’s ceiling. “That is strange… what do you make of it?”
“I think whoever sent it to me was serious enough, wanting me to keep it secret and all,” Yearling said with a shrug. “I guess I’ll find out when I deliver it. Best get some sleep for tonight – we should head out at dawn.”
Creek nodded, curling up in her sleeping bag. “Night Daring.”
“Night Creek,” Yearling replied, lying awake even as her companion slowly drifted off to sleep.
She’d never been asked to find something like this before, and it bothered her. Someone knew more than her, but didn’t want to find it themselves. Why? What did they mean by “hell on Equestria”?
With a sigh, Yearling tucked the thoughts away at the back of her mind and curled up herself, hoping to get some sleep before their long journey resumed the next day.
They extinguished the campfire the next morning, had a brief breakfast, and set off again, heading due north into the dense jungle parallel to the river.
“We’re in new territory now,” Creek said with a frown as she looked down at her map. “I don’t have any markers down anywhere around here.”
“Well, I’d say that’s a good thing,” Yearling said with a chuckle. “Means you haven’t discovered anything here yet – and that might be where we find the Kirinstone.”
Creek nodded and they pressed forward, resorting to machete hacking to help clear the way.
However, as they went, jutting rocks and overgrowth became less of an issue – replaced by the towering trunks and imposing roots of the trees. Yearling gawked at the sheer size of them, each as thick around as a house and hundreds of feet tall.
“I’ve heard of giant redwoods,” she remarked. “But they’ve got nothing on these.”
Creek flashed a sheepish smile. “I told you the trees got pretty big. These are the ones the bugs love – a little tough to get into, but the sap makes it worth it.”
“…Let’s hope none of them show up,” Yearling said quietly. Creek nodded in agreement.
They scrabbled over and crawled under the arching roots. Vines, thick as their hooves, curled around some of the roots and up the tree trunks. Closer to the canopy, they opened up with vibrant flowers that filled the air with their sweet aroma.
And fluttering around the flowers were an assortment of butterflies and moths. Much like the beetle and pincher bug before, these too were much larger than their normal counterparts, but still relatively smaller than ponies. Their wingspans rivaled those of pegasi, but their bodies were barely bigger than a pony’s head.
They seem uninterested in the two travelers below, focused intently on the sweet-smelling blooms and occasionally each other.
“That’s really pretty,” Yearling marveled, pausing to watch them flitter to and fro. Creek nodded in agreement, pulling out a pencil to scribble something on her map.
They continued on their way, leaving the flying bugs to their business. Soon, the trees grew closer together, until Yearling and Creek had to squeeze between them single file. In Yearling’s gut, it felt like the trees were forming some kind of wall.
Then, they broke through a particularly narrow gap and found themselves in a much more open area.
The clearing was entirely surrounded by the towering trees, but was sparsely populated by smaller trees and shrubbery itself. Most of the ground was covered in mossy covered stones which seemed to be some sort of ancient pavement. Vine-choked statues and stone masonry littered the clearing.
Yearling and Creek’s focus, however, was what lay in the middle of the clearing.
From Yearling’s expertise, she deduced it was some sort of pyramid. Not smooth like those of the desert, but stepped like those in the jungle. It was completely covered in vines and moss, and short trees grew around its base. The most striking feature, however, was that the entire thing was composed of some sort of black stone that stood out against the natural surroundings.
“I think… we found our temple,” Creek remarked quietly.
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I’m wondering where Rune is. She’s mentioned a lot but has not shown up despite her seeming importance.