Twilights Mane Passion

by Darkonshadows

40

Twilight had gathered the necessary supplies she thought she would need. She didn’t know how far the creature flew or where it went but she wasn’t going to stop for anything until she got her best friend back. She would do the same for any friend who she knew was in danger and needed help.

Going over her inventory Twilight checked her food first. She had several apples, quite a few carrots and four zap apples. Two fully filled canteens of fresh water, one as backup in case she lost the other one. Aside from that she only had two basic tools with her, a collapsible ten foot pole that was made of a good sturdy material and forty feet of coiled rope.

She made sure Barb stayed at home where it was safe before she left and she followed the arrow to the edge of the Ever Free Forest. Well no time like the present, she already wasted fifteen minutes gathering her supplies together.

Summoning the arrow of the locater spell she took in the distance the arrow indicated to target, it had stopped moving somewhere and it was at least still within a few miles of Ponyville. Triangulation really helped her mark the general area Tress was in on a map. It just happened to be through miles of dangerous swamps and monster filled forests.

“Well par for the course Twilight. Your life was already ridiculous to begin with and you are not letting it take a single friend from you without a fight.” She said to herself as she started at a run into the dark forest following the arrow.

Not too far into the forest did she find her first obstacle, a pack of manticore that all immediately surrounded her. Twilight started to back away slightly when one got in her face roared blowing her mane back. They hadn’t surprised her and as such she hadn’t reflexively defended herself.

Twilight could have probably used Fluttershy’s help at this moment, but she wasn’t about to give up. She inhaled and screamed back in the manticore’s face till her throat was raw. All the manticores immediately backed out of her way cowering and covering their ears.

“That’s what I thought.” Twilight muttered in a gravelly tone. Her voice was quite hoarse and it hurt to talk now, but that scream had been her frustration at life messing with her in general. She continued on her way down the path ahead of her. She could either go up on the ledge to survey the area and get an idea of where she was going or she could just follow her arrow. She just followed the arrow; it was not likely that she was coming back to this part of the forest anyway if she were to be honest.

Twilight thought the trees of the Ever Free Forest looked somewhat creepy, here she was laughing in the face of danger for a friend when she was most likely to be ambushed at any moment by something dangerous like lions, tigers and bears. Well technically not bears as one was a friend of Fluttershy’s.

Looking up to the sky Twilight wondered if she’d save Tress before it gets too dark. Considering how far in she was traveling by herself, it wasn’t likely and she’d need her energy to fight the monster when she finally gets to wherever it stopped.

Continuing to follow the magical arrow pointing towards her friend, Twilight came to a roiling river that looked to be too hard to cross on her own. She really didn’t think falling in the water was conducive to living a productive life at all and it’d probably tear her apart. She wasn’t about to attempt teleporting as it was beyond her current natural range.

“Excuse me for inquiring, but who are you?” A river serpent popped up out of the water. He had a flamboyant orange hair and a magnificent mustache and he sounded rather effeminate, he even looked it too.

“I’d ask the same of you, my name is Twilight Sparkle and I need to cross this river.” Within a minute of introducing herself she noticed the river serpent looked at her sadly.

“My dear pony what happened to your voice? No matter, hold on a second and I’ll help you get you across. I’m Steven Magnet by the way; it was a pleasure to meet you. No, there’s no need to talk as we’re not likely to see each other again anyway and the river is only like this when I’m around. I hardly get any visitors as it is and you’re probably busy with whatever it is that arrow is pointing towards.” The river serpent lifted Twilight into the air and turned a bit and set her down on the opposite bank. Twilight smiled at him and waved before trotting off. “Such a nice young thing, I hope she gets better soon.”

Twilight thought Steven was an oddly generous thing to meet in a forest full of monsters; she liked his mustache. She has thus far spotted a few of the denizens while probably missing many of the others at the same time. The cockatrices she saw didn’t bother her. There were Timber Wolves which she scared off by making loud noises and lighting the air on fire near her head using magic reminiscent of Barbs light spell. She steered clear of any bogs with patterned rocks in them, she has read enough about how easy it was to accidentally step on a cragadile and they were as resilient to magic as a dragon normally was. This seemed to be a common recurring trait among large lizard and reptile type creatures.

Now that it occurred to her, Twilight didn’t know what she was going to be facing. She couldn’t really recall to much of the claw that slammed her into the wall or the one that grabbed Tress. In fact why had the monster specifically gone after Tress? It didn’t seem like a coincidence at all. It smashed the café and the first thing it does is grab a specific pony and then fly off? It didn’t bother to eat any of the surrounding ponies it injured or go wild. It had to be something that had some form of intelligence and had to have specifically foal nabbed her friend for a reason.

She had to know what she was dealing with here; a unicorn attempting to fight a dragon was considered suicidal at best and that was what the creature most looked like to her. If it was any kind of draconic being they’d also be relatively magic resistant. Just because it was resistant didn’t mean it was immune and Twilight would have to plan for the inevitability of having to poach Tress from a dragons hoard. The prospect of success was laughable if that were the case, but Twilight would still try it.

If the creature wasn’t a dragon at all, but mimicked its appearance it was a much more plausible situation. Even then it was still not a very good prospect if a creature could be as powerful as a dragon, but if it wasn’t magic resistant Twilight had more of a chance even if it was large.

Twilight stopped when she came up to what looked like a ravine and a broken rope bridge. There were signs of a pony civilization having been previously here, she wondered how long has it been since anyone has been through here. She saw a need to research this later, the ropes looked really old but still surprisingly serviceable. Twilight knew packing forty feet of rope would come in handy eventually. Now how would she go about getting across as it was incredibly foggy here, she couldn’t see the other side. Teleporting blindly was a bad thing to do. Twilight couldn’t even teleport a massive distance and didn’t want to do so blind on top of that first restriction around a chasm.

Dropping her locator spell for a minute, she started levitate the parts of the rope bridge up and tugged it as hard as she could away from herself. The ropes pulled taught but didn’t snap or fray. Looking to the nearby post Twilight tied one end of her forty foot rope to it and wrapped the coils around her left hoof and once around her barrel.

Twilight started levitating the bridge again, she stepped out on to it and levitated the next portion and slowly moved forwards while giving the rope around her slack as she went. Once she reached the fog she carefully brightened the glow of the bridge beneath her hooves and continued to carefully move hoof over hoof.

After she exited out of the fog safely, she saw that the other side wasn’t too far away, she continued to levitate the bridge in sections and at the same time she levitated the remaining forty feet of rope to the posts she was nearing and tied it off with plenty of rope to spare.

Twilight sighed with relief as she finished tying the bridge back into place and tested each plank to see if any of them were rotting, the wood like the ropes for the bridge was in strangely good condition. After taking the time to retrieve her forty feet of rope Twilight recast her locator spell, only to find out that the spell wasn’t needed as much when she noticed the large shape before her in the evening hours.

Before her sat an ancient if very dilapidated and partially falling apart castle, Twilight wasn’t sure why there was a castle here in the middle of nowhere and danger town. All Twilight knew was that Tress was nearby once she did another triangulation from two different points at a distance from the castle. It was too bad her locator spell didn’t work on a vertical plane or else she’d know exactly where Tress was.

The arrow was definitively pointing Twilight to the dark spooky looking castle; she cancelled the locator spell after moving to a third spot. If Tress was here then the monster that had attacked Ponyville had to be here as well, so caution and staying quiet was how she should proceed.

Two steps toward the castle and Twilight’s stomach grumbled. She needed to eat something before she went inside. She ate all of her apples and two carrots; she was saving some food for Tress when she found her and that was mainly the reason she brought the zap apples along with her for this journey.

Well maybe just one, zap apples were full of energy after all. Twilight enjoyed the apple after the initial jolt and thought she could get used to this if Tress was going after another harvest the next time they came around. After she finished it off she set out for the nearby tower of the castle, if you were a pony trapped by a large dragon like monster you’d probably be in the area of highest still standing tower.

Twilight did search around the tower for fifty minutes and the only thing she had to show for it was five soft glowing stone orbs that had attracted her attention. She took the orbs and stashed them away to study later. Deciding that Tress wasn’t in the tower like the usual story book fashion, Twilight decided to try the main part of the quiet castle.

She trotted down the hallway on the second floor wary of anything that so much as moved, so far things were too quiet for her liking. Seeing an opening to her left she stepped out onto a second floor balcony area. Down below were two thrones and quite a large chunk of the room had a hole ripped into it, none of it was recent damage though.

Turning tail and about to leave something caused her ears to flick, Twilight turned back around. She thought she had heard something.

“Twilight, I’m up here. Please don’t leave me here.” That was Tress’s voice pleading for her and she was whispering, but why would it be coming from the ceiling?

Lighting up her horn and carefully not to make it shine around the entire room she pointed the directional light at the ceiling. Tress was standing upside down on the ceiling and her hooves were stuck inside some strange brown substance.

“Tre…” Twilight started to shout before she was shushed by her friend shaking her head causing her light blue hair to flail back and forth at her movements.

“Don’t talk so loudly, it’s still here and I know what it is.” Tress’s eyes were hurting a bit from the light that Twilight was shining up to her. She had been up on the ceiling for quite a while and she was quite tired, hungry and afraid of how dark it was getting outside from what little she could see.

“What is it?” Twilight whispered looking around and wondering where the creature was. “And where is it exactly?”

“Where do you think? It’s below me and if I can get out of here I’ll explain to you what I know about it, I don’t want to do that here. No, don’t shine you’re light down there!” Tress stressed this with the horrified tone in her voice that was barely a whisper. “Did you bring any food and what’s with your voice?”

“I screamed down a pack of manticores, what have you done today? You seem to be taking being on the ceiling rather well.” Twilight stated conversationally after her sarcastic remark. The monster didn’t seem to have hurt her friend in any given form except emotionally by having stuck her to the ceiling. “And yes I got some food; can you even eat it like that?”

“I cried and freaked out so hard I came full circle, I’m still very much freaked out it’s just so hard for me to express it at the moment. Please get me down from here and give me whatever you got once we’re far enough away from it.” Tress wasn’t crying, but she was very much distressed and if she cried right now her tears would hit the creature and wake it up. She just knew Twilight would figure out a way to get her down from here safely, she could already see her pulling out a ten foot pole.

“Hello is there any pony here?” A familiar scratchy voice said, on the floor of the throne room Rainbow Dash walked in holding a torch made from a tree branch in her right hoof and she revealed the face of the monster. Said monster now had its large red eyes open and they were staring down the pegasus.

Twilight face hoofed, but moved the pole up to Tress without looking at the now screaming pegasus and the roaring monster below. She now had to save both Tress and Rainbow. Will the joys of life never cease?

Comments

[xDHannibalxD]

Ooh, shit is about to hit the fan. And I'm really wondering where you will go with the elements, since Twilight tamed the Everfree Forest all on her own.

[John Tannius]

Later when Sunset Shimmer arrives to stop Nightmare Moon, "Where are the Bucking Elements of Harmony!?"

Every good dungeon delver knows to loot EVERYTHING! You never know when it might be important.

[Xaldon Ajide]

I would just let the monster kill Rainbow. But that is my opinion.

[Kage no Brony]

4017553

"Oh, sorry, Shimmer? Did you need THESE?"

Twilight and her friends show up with the already-activated Elements.

Nightmare Moon and Sunset Shimmer stutter at the same time: "What. But. You. But. How."