Ch 5. Cloaks and Effeminate Sea Searpents
“All I’m saying is I just don’t understand Cutiemarks,” said Gilda. The group was still following the path they had found, as per the maps instructions. They had been following it for a few hours now. “I mean, what’s the point of having a picture on your flank?”
“Because they define who we are,” said Blueblood. “Our personalities, our special talents. What makes us special as an individual.”
“That’s stupid,” said Gilda. “We griffons don’t need pictures on our bodies.”
“Hey, they’re really important to ponies,” said Dumbbell, him and the other ponies not appreciating Gilda's rude remarks about cutiemarks. “Some fillies and colts wait a long time to get their cutiemarks. Its one of the things we look forward to the most during childhood.”
“Really?” She shook her head. “That’s just pathetic.”
“Well you’re kind of mean, aren’t you?” said Upper Crust sternly. “I bet if you had a cutiemark, your special talent would be making ponies cry!”
Gilda shrugged. “Well, I can’t argue with that. But I also don’t get WHY it happens. What is it with you ponies that makes those stupid pictures appear in the first place?”
“We told you! They appear when we figure out what our special talent is,” said Flam.
“BUT HOW? WHY DOES IT HAPPEN?!”
“It’s magic! You don’t have to explain it!” said Flim.
Gilda face palmed. “I swear, you ponies are going to drive me insane one of these days.” She looked over at Iron Will, the only other member in their group without a picture on their flank. “You agree with me, right Iron Will?”
But the Iron Will wasn't paying attention. He was glancing around them, sniffing the air.
While this was happening, Blueblood walked up next to Trixie.
“I thought perhaps we could walk together,” he said to her in an unusually friendly tone.
Trixie glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Why would you think that?” she asked in annoyance.
“Well, I just noticed that we seem to have a lot in common, you and I.” He flashed her one of his charming smiles.
Trixie could tell he was trying to flirt with her. She let out a laugh. “Oh, please. You and I have nothing in common!”
Blueblood was taken by surprise by her outburst. He was not expecting this reaction from her.
Trixie continued to speak, getting right up in his face. “I grew up with nothing! I had to struggle for everything I have, which isn’t much by the way, while you got everything handed to you on a silver platter your whole life. People like you make me sick!” And with that, Trixie sped up her pace and moved ahead of him to get away from him.
Blueblood stared at her for a few seconds in shock. “Well excuuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess!” he mumbled to himself with a snort.
"Hold up!" Iron Will shouted suddenly and held out his arm to stop the party, accidentally smacking Blueblood in the nose in the process.
“Ow!” Blueblood cried out, rubbing his nose with his hoof. He glared at Iron Will in annoyance.
The Minotaur sniffed the air again. “We’re being followed.”
This piece of information got all of their attention. They all began looking around them to see if anyone was nearby.
“There!” Iron Will pointed off to their side.
They all looked in the direction the minotaur was pointing. Just off the path amongst the trees stood six cloaked covered pony shaped figures. They were pitch black, their hooves were covered by black stockings, and their faces were covered by black masks inside their hoods. One of the figures was a little taller than the others.
The six cloaked ponies stepped forward out of the trees into the daylight. “Greetings, travelers,” said the tallest one, a male judging by its voice. “We are the Cloaked Guardians of the Goblet of Life.”
“Oh no. Not more guardians,” Blueblood groaned.
“Wait!” said the cloaked pony. “Which guardians have you encountered before us?”
“The psycho bunny,” said Score.
“How did you get past Angel?!”
Trixie grinned proudly. “I put a curse on that little hell-spawn.”
“Nonsense!” said the cloaked pony. “There’s no such thing as curses. That’s just a bunch of hooey!”
“What?” exclaimed Gilda. “Wait. So magic is real, but curses are just make believe?!”
“Exactly!”
Gilda sighed. “It’s official. This shit makes no sense.”
“Well, anyway, I suggest you all turn around and go home while you still can,” said the cloaked guardian. “We will not allow the goblet to fall into the wrong hooves, such as the likes of yours.”
“Look, we already heard all this from the little psycho bunny,” said Blueblood, greatly annoyed by this delay. “I really… err, WE really need that goblet. We promise we’ll take good care of it. Okay? So could you please not bother us?”
“Or how about this?” said Flam. “We’ll even give you a cut of the profit we make from it if you show us where it is!”
“Turn around now!” the cloaked pony simply repeated. “We don’t want to have to hurt you, but we will if necessary.”
“Yes, turn around now!” said one of the other cloaked creatures, this one with a female voice.
“Turn around, or you’ll be sorry!” added another one with a female voice.
“And what exactly are you gonna do if we don’t?” said Trixie, stepping forward in front of the rest of her group towards the six cloaked ponies. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s twelve of us, and only six of you.”
“Do not underestimate us!” said the male voiced cloak again. “We have powerful dark magic on our side.”
“Please. Unless one of you is Twilight Sparkle, I highly doubt your magic can compare to the great and powerful Trixie’s,” said Trixie, currently still riding her ego boost from before. Trixie then flared magic into her horn to cast a spell. She levitated a long rope out of her saddlebags and then launched the rope at one of the shorter cloaked guardians. Using her magic, she quickly wrapped the rope around the pony before it they could do anything and hog-tied them, knocking them onto their back with their four legs sticking up in the air all tied together.
“Ha!” Trixie shouted triumphantly. “Beat that!”
One of the cloaked ponies, the tallest one, raised his hoof up and pointed it at Trixie. Suddenly, a pitch-black ghostly aura appeared around his entire body. Then black flames emerged around his outstretched hoof.
Trixie and the rest of the adventurers' eyes widened at the bizarre sight.
“What the…?” Trixie whispered to herself in awe and fear.
The cloaked pony then pulled back his hoof and threw a sphere of dark energy straight at Trixie’s head.
Trixie screamed and ducked down, and the blast narrowly missed hitting her head. Everybody else behind Trixie jumped to the side to avoid the fast moving dark energy blast as well, and the dark orb flew past them into a random pine tree, which exploded into splinters.
Our twelve anti-heroes stared at the smoldering spot where the tree just was, and then turned back to the six cloaked ponies.
“HOLLY SHIT!” they all exclaimed.
The rest of the cloaked ponies all began to emit a dark aura around them as well.
“You should have headed our warning,” said the lead guardian. “Now you will suffer the consequences.”
“RUN AWAY!” shouted Blueblood, turning and breaking into a gallop away into the woods as fast as he could. The rest of his group quickly followed suit, turning and galloping or flying after Blueblood to get away from their attackers.
The cloaked ponies began following after the fleeing adventurers, moving at a slow casual pace. The cloaked pony who was tied up by Trixie’s rope managed to wriggle out of their bindings and got up to join the rest of the guardians in their pursuit.
Minutes passed as out twelve adventures raced for their lives to get away from the pursuing cloaked guardians. They kept glancing back behind them every now and then to see if they had lost them, but each time they could still see the cloaked ponies hot on their tails, despite the fact that the cloaked guardians were going at a much slower pace then them.
“HOW THE HECK ARE THEY KEEPING UP WITH US?” shouted Flim. “WE’RE GOING AS FAST AS WE CAN, AND THEY’RE JUST TROTTING CASUALLY!”
“I DON’T KNOW!” shouted Flam.
“It’s some sort of strange power all horror movie villains have!” Dumbbell shouted down to them while he was flying above them. “They can somehow keep up with their victims even if they are walking slowly just because it makes them look more ominous!”
“AS FASCINATING AS THAT IS, IT’S NOT HELPING US RIGHT NOW!” Lighting Dust shouted at Dumbbell.
They kept fleeing through the woods as fast as their hooves or wings would carry them.
“Look! There’s a river up ahead!” shouted Hoops from the air.
They all looked and sure enough they could all see the body of water up ahead through the trees. But when they made it out of the trees to the bank of the river, they quickly noticed that this river was currently occupied.
Sitting in the middle of the river was a giant purple sea serpent. It had blond hair and a mustache. He was simply sitting in the water, admiring his own reflection in the surface of water. He looked up when he noticed the group of ponies emerging from the trees at the bank of the river.
“Oh, hello,” he said to them in a cheery voice. “How are you this fine day? I am just so happy today because my mustache has completely grown back! Look at it!” He pointed to his mustache. “You see my mustache had been lopped off a while back...”
“Aw, crap! It’s a gay sea serpent,” Gilda groaned while the purple water dragon went on talking, not hearing her.
Behind them, they herd one of the cloaked guardians shout. “They went this way! Over here!”
“Forget this guy!” said Lightning Dust urgently, gesturing to the still talking sea serpent. “Those creeps are still after us. Lets hurry across this river!”
The group hurriedly ran into the calm water, or just flew over the water in the case of the four pegasi and griffon. Blueblood, Jet Set, and Upper Crust, however, remained at the edge of the water, looking reluctant to enter.
Gilda noticed this and quickly flew back to them. “What are you idiots waiting for?! They’re gaining on us!”
“I don’t want to go in the water!” exclaimed Blueblood. “I’ll get soaking wet, and my royal hooves will get all muddy!” Jet Set and Upper Crust nodded in agreement with the Prince.
Gilda felt like strangling them, but then another thought occurred to her and she just snorted. “Fine. Stay there and get killed, you sissies.” Gilda then turned back around and flew over to the other side of the river, leaving Blueblood, Jet Set, and Upper Crust.
The three upper-class unicorns looked back behind them, where they could see their cloaked enemies through getting closer through the trees. Blueblood realized he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Darn it!” Blueblood growled in frustration and reluctantly trotted into the water, Jet Set and Upper Crust following close behind him.
The water felt cold to the touch, and they hated getting their coats and manes ruined, but they knew it was either that or death. They trudged through the water as fast as they could in an attempt to catch up to the others.
Gilda, Lightning Dust, Dumbbell, Hoops, and Score made it to the other side first obviously. One by one, the rest of the group all made it to the other side of the river and climbed up onto dry land, water pouring off of their drenched fur coats and soaked clothes in the case of those who had any.
Back on the opposite side of the river, the cloaked guardians emerged from the forest onto the riverbank.
“Come on!” urged Lightning Dust. “Let’s try to make some ground while they’re crossing the river.”
The others moved to follow Lightning Dust, but Gilda stayed where she was. She looked back at the cloak guardians, and then up at the sea serpent, who by now had noticed no one was paying attention to him and had gone back to admiring his reflection in the water, and then down at the calm water of the river.
She got an idea.
“Gilda, what are you doing? Lets get out of here!” said Dumbbell, him and the others stopping when they noticed Gilda wasn’t following.
Gilda ignored him. “HEY, LAME-O’S!” she shouted over at the cloaked guardians on the other side of the river. “WHAT’S THE MATTER? AFRAID TO GET WET?”
“Gilda, what are you doing?” exclaimed Flam.
“I don’t think we want to antagonize them even more!” said Jet Set.
Gilda continued to ignore them and focused on the cloaked guardians. She grinned when she saw them all rush into the river to get across. So far her plan was working.
When the guardians were about halfway across the river, Gilda put her plan into action. Quick as bullet, she took off into the air and flew at the purple sea serpent. With one quick swipe of her claws, Gilda slashed one of the sea serpent’s mustaches clean off his face.
“HEY!” the serpent shouted as Gilda zoomed past his face. Then he noticed his beautiful golden mustache lying in the water of the river and he reached up to feel his face. Realization hit him when he realized his beloved mustache had once again been destroyed. He began to wail, and started thrashing around in the water in anguish. His giant serpentine body quickly stirred up the water, turning the once calm river into wild rapids.
And the six cloaked ponies were caught in the middle of it.
The guardians all screamed in terror as a big wave hit them and picked them up, knocking them off their hooves. The currant began carrying the six screaming cloaked guardians down the river, sending them further and further away from our group of adventurers.
Gilda flew back down to the others, who were awestruck by what she had just done.
“Smart thinking there, Gilda!” said Flim.
“Yeah, that was really clever!” said Lightning Dust. “How did you know he would react like that?”
“Simple,” said Gilda. “The guy was totally obsessed with his looks. I figured cutting of his mustache would set him off.”
But not everyone was focusing on Gilda.
“My royal hooves are all muddy now!” Blueblood whined, staring at his hooves with disgust. “And I’m soaking wet!” Jet Set and Upper Crust were also staring at their muddy hooves with revulsion.
“Oh for crying out loud!” said Iron Will. “Haven’t you upper class ponies ever been out doors before?”
“We’re all wet and muddy,” said Trixie as she was wringing out her soaked cape and hat with her magic. “You don’t see any of us whining like a baby.”
Blueblood glared at them all in anger. “I am a Prince! I shouldn’t have to deal with all of this!”
“Well you should have thought of that before you decided to go on a treasure hunt in the middle of the forest,” said Gilda.
Blueblood huffed and stuck up his nose. However he knew deep down that the griffon was right. As much as he hated getting dirty, it was bound to happen on this adventure. And plus, he was desperate. If he didn’t find the Goblet of Life, he would have to live the life of a poor pony, and that was WAY worse then spending a day or two getting a bit dirty.
‘Just keep thinking about the money,’ he told himself. ‘It will all be worth it in the end.’
“Well, it’s getting dark out,” said Iron Will suddenly. “We should probably find a place to set up camp for the night.”
The group all looked up at the sky. Sure enough, the sun was beginning to set below the horizon. And they were all starting to feel hungry.
“Excellent idea,” said Blueblood. “Lets set up camp so we can get cleaned up and get some well needed food and rest.”
So the group set off to do just that.
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And than Gilda get a weapon, what weapon will it be!?
1. slingshot
2. matchlock rifle or Flintlock rifle
3. crossbow
That chapter my friend, was downright funny! Especially with the part where Gilda cuts off the Sea Serpent's mustache. I laughed quite a bit there.
Nice chapter and I'm wondering what other hilarity will ensue with our anti-hero adventurers.
~ Super-Brony12