In the Pines, Where the Sun Never Shines
Clouds of swallows splatter into the sky.
You’d think after five decades of Wonderbolts tearing up the skyways, they’d get the picture and quit trying to nest in the busiest cliff in Equestria. Somepony really needs to talk to somepony about chasing off these things for good. Four days into the off-season and the moochers think they own the place.
Coming onto the runway, Fleetfoot squints through a storm of little wings arcing around her ears while forked tails skim underhoof. It’s a clean landing, but it could have been a lot cleaner. Fleetfoot shakes out the black feathers sticking to her mane and checks her time.
Four laps. Fifty-five point five seconds.
Garbage. Absolute garbage.
It would have—should have—been at least a clean fifty without swallows flapping all up in her face. Good thing there’s still the rest of the morning to fix it.
To the east, sunlight winks off the barracks’ windows, casting stripes of light across the runway like a starting line. She’s got a fresh morning, a cold front nipping at her feathers, and a long strip of skytrack all to herself for the week.
The captain’s booked with Reserve training, and poor Soarin’s stuck with paperwork, though they might join her for a couple laps this evening to keep their wings warm. The rest of the team’s using their break to visit family and special someponies, and the Academy cadets won’t hit the sky for another hour.
It’s all hers. Fleetfoot plucks a black feather from her goggles and claps her wings against her bare sides. She hasn’t even broken a sweat; time to fix that.
The second round of laps clocks in at forty-nine seconds.
The next three in forty-five.
It should have been thirty.
Spitfire could grab those laps in forty-eight. Soarin and Misty Fly in fifty (maybe forty-seven with an updraft and a good attitude). Blaze and High Winds around fifty-two. Surprise… well, Surprise either gets ten laps in ten seconds or two laps in two minutes, depending. The mare’s a wild card.
Music from a saxophone drifts through the clouds. In the corner of her eye, Fleetfoot spots Silver Lining outside the barracks, playing showtunes. He’d catch four laps in sixty-five if he ever bothered to drag his fluffy butt to the track.
Way on the other side of HQ, Spitfire’s whistle cuts clear across the Academy. Above the clouds, recruits scramble through hoops in desperate little corkscrews. Poor schmucks are probably barely awake at this hour; Spits has her work cut out for her, but she’ll make ‘Bolts out of them yet. One of them sooner than most.
Rainbow Dash could snag four laps in thirty-five. Easily.
The goggles snap back on.
By the end of this week, one of two things is going to happen: Fleetfoot gets four laps in thirty seconds, or Fleetfoot’s wings fall off. Whichever comes first.
In a clap of wings, she snatches the wind and blasts into the sky. Two laps in, she hears it.
“Hey! Fleetfoot!”
Silver Lining climbs to meet her, wings barely flapping in the smooth strokes that got him first position in the air ballet. Even after Fleet halves her speed, it takes him a good seven seconds to catch up. It would have been easier to let her finish the lap and meet him on the ground, but whatever, he’s here now.
“Morning, Lining. What’s up?”
“It’s past noon, actually.” Silver Lining tosses his fluffy mop of curls out of his eyes. It’s always getting in his face when the flight suit or goggles can’t keep it up for him. “Boss wants to talk to you.”
“What about?” And why send him to tell her? Maybe he’d been the only one around.
Without breaking speed, Lining eases onto his back in a lazy backward glide. His amber eyes roll sideways to check out recruits doing stretches below him. “If I knew, I’d tell you. Sounds big, though.”
When he catches Fleetfoot’s frown, he smiles. “Hey, it can’t be anything that bad. Thirty bits says it’s nothing worse than tearing out all your pinfeathers and demoting you to Auxiliary.” She doesn’t laugh at his lame joke, so he does it for her.
Cadets crane their necks upwards as Fleetfoot comes in to land. A couple point and call her out by name. One of them—the dark one with the mohawk who got excellent time on the dizzitron—doesn’t glance up from talking shop with his wingpony. That one’s got promise. The wingpony, too.
Above her, Silver Lining spins slow figure eights through training rings. His fluffy tail, aerodynamic as a throw pillow, billows behind him. It’s always put Fleetfoot in the mind of soupy fogs and overcast skies. Not growling thunderheads, not velvety rainclouds, but dreary skies on a lazy weekend with nothing to do.
That’s the only reason he sticks around HQ during off-season at all—nothing better to do. Not to practice, not to help train newbies, but to birdwatch and play sax on the roof. He could do all that stuff in his fancy Canterlot mansion without mooching in the barracks. Shoot, Silver Lining could be utilizing his own private track right now, complete with trainers and coaches. But no, he’d rather kill time here just because he has the time to kill.
Fleetfoot splits off into the hallway with a sigh. “At least he’s in the air.” She’d rather he practice tightening his turns, but building wing muscle with figure eights is better than nothing.
An open door waits for her. Fleetfoot knocks twice for protocol’s sake and salutes. “You wanted to see me, boss?”
Captain Spitfire nods and slides a skinny manila folder across the desk and into Fleet’s hooves. “We’ve got a search and rescue call in a forest about a mile south of Tall Tale.”
It’s standard stuff: field trip goes cross-country on a nature hike, loses track of one of their students in the woods. If Fleetfoot has to guess, the foal wandered too far from the group or got dared into checking out a spooky cave. Her sister did that once; got caught in a star spider nest and picked webbing out of her tail for days.
The foal’s been missing approximately five hours. That’s less than half the time it takes to process a missing pony report, but a school with this many laurels around its logo likely bumped up the timeframe.
Standard stuff, like Fleetfoot thought. Too standard for an entire Wonderbolt search party. “Permission to speak freely, Captain?”
“…Granted.” Though Spitfire’s tone says she’ll regret it.
“All due respect, Spitfire, this sounds more like a job for the local guard. Maybe a private detective or a forest ranger team? Somepony with this type of thing in their job description?” Somepony who doesn’t have half a day of straightaways to miss?
Slowly, Spitfire narrows her eyes. “You’re a Wonderbolt, Flatfoot. It IS your job description.”
“I—” Fleetfoot lowers her gaze.
A perky unicorn filly smiles up at her from the case report. The kid’s got a round yellow puffball of a mane and shiny braces. A long time ago, Fleetfoot used to wear braces; you had to keep those things clean every night or they’d get messed up. It’d be hard to keep them clean lost in the middle of a forest all by yourself.
Fleetfoot folds her wings with a sigh. “Ma’am, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that a couple acres of woodland don’t need an entire fleet…”
Just a Fleetfoot. She brushes back the sweaty strands of her mane, running flight trajectory in her head. “This a solo job?”
“Of course not.”
So, company. That’s not so bad. A straight shot to Tall Tale can’t be timed and it’s not as smooth, but a workout’s a workout. The only ponies around are her fellow Primaries, but Spits has her hooves full. Can they call in Blaze from vacation? This sounds like a two ‘Bolt gig, and Fleetfoot works best with her old wingpony.
“Tell Silver Lining you’re leaving in ten.” The captain considers the sweat dripping off Fleetfoot’s mane and sniffs the air. “…Fifteen. Shower first.”
“So Lining’s gonna file the paperwork on it, or…?” Fleetfoot’s smile sinks into her hooves. “Bosslady, tell me you’re kidding.”
Spitfire blinks slowly. “Do I look like Surprise to you?”
“Captain, Silver Whining’s the slowest pony on the team! I thought S and R had to get there in hours, not days. We’re not going out for the Skiescapades. Time’s critical and he’ll—“
“He’ll slow you down long enough for you to actually search the place.” Pulling out a fresh batch of paperwork, Spitfire scowls. “I don’t want another Burning Mare on my hooves.”
Fleetfoot’s wings give an awkward little flutter. Yeesh, you lose one royal phoenix…
“Besides, the foals like Lining’s jokes, and nopony else is around besides the newbies.” Without looking up from her paperwork, Spitfire holds up a feather. “Don’t even think it. The Reserves aren’t trained for long-distance flight, and you know it.”
“Not what I was gonna say, ma’am.” Though maybe Fleetfoot thought about it for a half-second. She nods to the tower of papers wobbling past the door. “The foals like Soarin a lot more, ma’am. He’s still here.”
At the sound of his name, Soarin pokes out his head out from behind his mountain of paperwork and grins hopefully.
“Keep walking. You’re finishing those reports if I have to staple your wing to your desk.” Spitfire ignores Soarin’s agonized groan and turns back to Fleetfoot. “You’re meeting an earth pony named Martingale outside Tall Tale Woods. He saw the kid last. Get on it, Flatfoot. That filly’s counting on you.”
“Understood, ma’am. I—we—won’t let her down.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Even with her stopwatch back in the barracks, Fleetfoot knows they’re making terrible time.
“Brights Brightly!”
The only good part of this was that Silver Lining wasn’t in the mood for any chit-chat, either. At the start, he asked a couple questions about the briefing, the sort of forest they’d be searching in, that kind of stuff. Over Applewood, he sang a few bars of "Coltifornia Here I Come" to himself, and reminded her about their water breaks, but that was it.
“Miss Brightly? Can you hear us?”
The sun hid behind clouds the whole trip there. Fleetfoot told time by their shadows. When they stopped for the second water break, her shadow stretched long—way too long—over the saw-tooth ridges of the Smokey Mountains.
“Brightly! Brights Brightly!”
By the time they landed in Tall Tale, it was past four. On her own, Fleetfoot could have been here at two. One-fifty, if she skipped the shower. She pursed her lips and silently quizzed herself on the protocol for night searches.
They’d met Martingale—a pudgy earth pony wearing a plaid vest the color of mud and mustard—where Spitfire said they would.
“Brights Brightly!”
That was over an hour ago.
“Miss Brights Brightly the Third!”
An hour through dripping caves and murky shadows.
“Brightly! Please, kid, we can’t get you if we can’t hear you!”
An hour through the pines. An hour over the dry streambeds and leafy underbrush.
An hour without so much as a hoofprint. No snags of mane on a bush, no stray ribbons in a branch, no hoofprints, no voices. Not even animal voices.
Fleetfoot’s never been the woodsy type, but she’s sure she oughta be hearing some critters running around in the trees, a frog in a pond. Birds rustling in the branches, bugs making… some kinda bug noises. Something.
She never thought she’d miss those stupid swallows so much.
“Brights Brightly!”
Fleetfoot’s getting sick of the sound of her own voice. Real damn sick.
Below, Silver Lining weaves through branches and skims over fallen logs. The pines squeeze close to each other, like they’re huddled for warmth against the cold coming down from the mountains. Too tight to fly a straight line.
Above, Fleetfoot navigates an obstacle course of skinny tree trunks, eyes peeled for a flash of yellow in the dim evergreen. Of all colors, why does the lost filly have to be forest-floor brown?
She’s tempted to pull rank on the local weather team and zoom up for some cloud busting. They need more sun in here, and Fleet could use a breath of open sky before she chokes on pine needles.
But with a canopy this thick, they probably won’t get more than a few crepuscular rays. It’s not worth it. Besides, the sun will be gone soon.
“Lining, you still have the flashlight, right?”
Silver Lining alights on a canopy branch, wings flared to catch the flimsy breeze coming through the trees. It’s the first real wind they’ve gotten since they arrived. “Yup, right here.” He flicks it on and off to confirm it works. “One of hers, actually. Brights Brightly, where are you? Come on, holler if you hear us!”
Fleetfoot calls with him, voice cracked and raspier than usual. They listen to their echoes fading into the trees. Listen to the silence for a minute. Two minutes.
They go airborne again, side by side this time.
“What do you mean ‘one of hers’?” Fleetfoot asks, and Lining passes the flashlight into her hooves. Yellow lettering along the base reads BRIGHTS BRIGHTLY INC. A Family Company. “Oh.”
An heiress, that explains it. A loaded one, judging by how fast the Wonderbolts were called out. A thought occurs to her. “Somepony you know, Whining?”
“Not really; I saw her at my uncle’s place a couple years ago. His family and her family used to live in the same high-rise. I think she came to a couple of autograph sessions after a show? You might have seen her.”
Fleetfoot shrugs. By the time autograph sessions roll around, she’s usually too pumped from the adrenaline to notice much of anything. She’s signed so many autographs, her mouth does it on autopilot now.
A westerly twitches through the pine needles and up Fleetfoot’s spine. She shivers, and Lining glances over with a lazy grin. “Flatfoot, don’t tell me you’re cold? Don’t you take, like, three ice baths a day?”
One, actually. Two during the summer tours.
The westerly dies as soon as it comes. Fleet’s feathers twitch and fluff and flare trying to find it again. Watching the stiff canopy, she waits for some sign of movement. Some reminder the sky is still there.
“I don’t like this place,” Fleetfoot finally admits. “It’s kinda starting to creep me out.” The place creeped her out the second she passed the first tree, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Could be worse,” Lining says. “We could be in San Palomino.”
Fleetfoot gives him a look. It is not a look to invite further discussion or clarification.
“See, the thing about desert flying is it looks awesome, but only from a distance. In books, you see all that open space to fly with beautiful sky going on for miles. Then you actually get there and realize the air’s so dry and the sun’s so hot you couldn’t fly even if you wanted to. And in San Palomino, you don’t want to.” He flicks his curly tail. “Always sort of reminded me of Canterlot.”
Fleetfoot’s not sure what the desert—totally fine for flying so long as you’re not dumb enough to do it in the middle of the day and remember to hydrate—has to do with Canterlot and doesn’t care. His talking’s better than silence, however, and if it helps guide the foal to them, so be it.
“Of all the places to get lost—BRIGHTS BRIGHTLY!—picked a good one.” He pauses, listens for a response, and continues. “There’s water to drink out here, and look, lots of grass and berries to eat. I mean, assuming she didn’t eat any of the poisonous ones. Or the trippy ones. Or those little red ones that can—”
“Thanks. I get it.” The absolute last thing Fleetfoot needs right now is the thought of a search-and-rescue turning into search-and-recovery.
The sun’s still in the sky, but it’s dark enough to use the flashlight now. Fleetfoot skims the beam of light through the woods, and it reflects little red eyes in the hollows of trees and bushes. “Huh. Animals live here after all.” She frowns. “So why haven’t we heard any?”
“Dunno. Maybe we scared them off calling for BRIGHTS BRIIIIIIIGHTLY!!”
Shadows in the trees flinch, and a silhouette of some furry thing covers its ears. None of them run, though.
Lining shrugs. “Or not. Anyway, a creepily quiet forest makes us easier to hear. If she’s out there, she knows we’re here with her. Plus, it’s hard to miss these suits—if she can’t hear us, then she’ll see us.” The reflective lightning bolts on his suit gleam where the flashlight beam hits them. “And it goes both ways. We’ll hear her easier, too.”
It’s actually a good point, but doesn’t bring Fleetfoot much comfort. She might have slept through Animal Care 101—that easy “A” doesn’t seem so great now—but she still knows critters don’t get quiet for no reason.
What sort of predators live out here, anyway? Timberwolves? Mountain lions live in the Smokies, but they still come down for a snack or five. Fleetfoot watches the ridge of peaks in the distance, waiting for one to shift into a lion’s spine any second.
Behind her, Silver Lining coughs, and she almost jumps out of her skin. “I hope you covered your mouth.”
Lining’s voice sounds from the opposite direction. “Wasn’t me.”
The cough comes again, and this time, Fleetfoot realizes how soft and small it sounds. And young. “Brights Brightly?”
Her flashlight swings across a rustling bush near the hiking trail, and in the greens and browns, she spots a flash of bright yellow.
Weak and cracking, a small voice wobbles through the forest. “…here…” Another cough, then louder, “Please. I’m over here!” Poor kid sounds like she put all her strength into it.
“Brights—Lining, over here! I found her!” In a blink, Fleet zips through the trees. “Don’t worry, we’re here to help. You’re okay now.”
Fleetfoot still can’t believe it. The unicorn filly’s only a couple yards from the hiking trail. Has she been here the whole time, unconscious or too weak to talk when the Wonderbolts passed the first time? Did she drag herself back to the path when she heard them? Doesn’t matter; she’s here now and she’s safe.
Silver Lining comes through the branches bearing the shock blanket. “Hey Miss Brightly, remember me? Wow, I bet somepony had an exciting hike.” He chuckles as if the filly’s only slipped in a mud puddle. Like it’s no big deal and there’s no reason to be scared at all.
It works well enough for the filly to smile, though she shuts her eyes against the flashlight. While Fleetfoot wraps her in the blanket, Lining keeps the flashlight on them and keeps Brightly talking. That’s good, because in the minutes since they’ve found her, the filly’s barely moved.
“What was your class doing all the way out here?”
“Research. We’ve got a class project.”
“What’s it about?”
“Uh… something about trees of Equestria? Yeah. Trees 'n' habitats.”
“That sounds awesome! I bet you don’t see a lot of trees deep in the city. Are there any like these growing where you’re from, in Tall Tale?”
“M’not from Tall Tale. Manehattan.” Listlessly, Brights Brightly touches the mud caked into what must have been a beautiful mane style. Her little face crumples. “Do I look bad? Miss Sugarcoat’ll b-be mad if I get messy.”
Fleetfoot winks. “Nah, you look like a million bits.” She strategically tucks the blanket so that it covers the rips and stains in Brightly’s school uniform.
“I know, right?” Silver Lining laughs. “I mean, we come all the way out here and then you show us up, looking twice as sharp as we do. We’re gonna have to ask the boss about updating our uniforms, eh Fleet?”
“Sure are,” says Fleetfoot, because she can’t think of anything fun to say. She can barely keep her voice from catching, because Brights Brightly’s opened her eyes in full.
Something’s wrong. Brightly’s golden eyes are grey and foggy like a cataract, except this covers the whole eye, even the whites. Cataracts are for elderly ponies, and this foal can’t be older than ten. There was nothing in her medical history about this, either.
“Hey, kid.” Fleetfoot waves her hoof in front of the kid’s nose. “Can you see us okay?”
“Yeah.” Brights Brightly smiles, showing off her shiny braces. “You’re the Wonderbolts… Fleetfoot, right? I like your goggles.”
“Thanks, Brights. I like your braces.”
“Bankroll says my braces are dumb.”
Silver Lining’s finished his double-check and nods to confirm no severe trauma or visible injury. They’re clear for takeoff.
It’s still a mile to town, so they fly slow. Not too slow, Fleetfoot hopes. Her gut screams something’s gone bad. Real bad.
“Pff, what’s Bankroll know? All the greats wear braces.” Fleetfoot shows off her amazing perfectly aligned smile. “I did. Sucks you can’t eat corn and most candies, though.”
Sucks is still okay to say in front of kids, right?
“Yeah… I miss—” Brights Brightly goes stiff and her eyes snap wide open. “Too high.” She latches onto Fleetfoot’s neck with both hooves. Hard. “Not that high! The woods—there’s… he—he’s gonna…” Her foggy eyes brim with tears. She starts to hyperventilate.
“Uh—hey, no. No, it’s okay.” Fleetfoot holds the crying foal the way one holds a cracked lightning jar. She glances at Silver Lining for help, but he’s as lost as she is. In the meantime, they drop altitude. “We won’t go high, we’ll, uh, stay right here in the trees. Okay?”
Brights sobs harder.
“Okay.”
Ahead, more flashlights wave through the trees. There’s Martingale’s ugly vest. The search party’s come to meet them, thank goodness.
“Look, Brights,” says Lining, “here comes your teacher.”
In her desperate flailing to get ahold of Fleetfoot’s neck, Brightly’s haunch slipped out of the blanket. She stares at it in horror. “My cutie mark… Miss Fleetfoot, I don’t have my cutie mark.”
Oh. Oh, that’s all it is.
Fleetfoot holds back a relieved laugh. “Hey, it’s cool if you didn’t get your cutie mark yet.” Had she wandered into the woods in some kooky scheme to earn one? Maybe on a dare? “Everypony gets their cutie mark eventually, but sometimes it takes a while.”
That’s Silver Lining’s cue to lighten the mood with a joke, or offer a cute anecdote about how he got his own cutie mark. Instead, he frowns and goes quiet for a while. “Miss Brights Brightly? What happened to you out there?”
Tears fill the foal’s cloudy yellow eyes. She bows her head against her chest and sniffles, too exhausted to cry.
Fleetfoot glares at her partner, but Lining barely notices. Slowly, he lifts his goggles, staring at the filly’s blank flank and limp mane.
He says nothing when they meet with Martingale’s group. He says nothing while Fleetfoot briefs them on where the filly had been found, her lethargy, the strange cataracts in her eyes, and hysteria.
It’s agreed that Brights Brightly must be fatigued. “We’ll take it from here.” Martingale nods to the unicorn in their party, who preps a teleportation spell.
Fleetfoot salutes. “Pleasure to help, sir.”
Silver Lining follows suit, then shakes Brights Brightly’s hoof. “Bye, Miss Brights Brightly… the third, right?”
The little unicorn nods and wipes her eyes. “Bye. Be careful.”
In a flash, they’re gone.
Fleetfoot lifts an eyebrow. Be careful? Weird thing to say, but it makes sense for somepony lost in the woods.
Something tickles her ear. She shakes her head, and pine needles scatter from Fleetfoot’s gelled mane like she’s flown through a Hearth’s Warming tree. Looking up, she finds a steady drizzle of needles trickling from the canopy.
“Fleetfoot.” Silver Lining stands in the middle of the nature trail, ears leaned forward, watching light from the teleportation spell fade into the growing dusk. “She came to our show last spring. Brights Brightly already had a cutie mark.”
“What?” Fleetfoot starts to tell him she’s too tired for jokes, but when he turns around, it’s clear he’s not joking at all. “But that doesn’t—“
There’s a thunder crack without thunder. Beyond their line of sight, the pines snap and fall.
Dust clouds flare at Fleetfoot’s hooves as she kicks into the air. Silver Lining’s already up there.
Below, rocks tremble upon the path.
Fleetfoot swallows hard. “Fly.”
Meaty red arms split the pines apart like a curtain.
“FLY!”
Fleetfoot tears away. Wind screams in her ears. The forest claws her flight suit. Leaves and branches scratch at her face, her chest, her flanks. In the corner of her eye, Lining’s goggles flash in what’s left of the sunlight.
Musk and smoke overpower the scent of the trees and the sweet smell of the wind. The smell chokes. Wood snaps behind them. The ground rumbles. It doesn’t even sound like the thing’s running, so how...
Fleetfoot looks down. A carpet of leaves and twigs scatters behind them. Buck me. Her flight path’s sliced a clean wound of open air through the forest. They’ve left a trail.
No wonder it’s not running; it doesn’t have to.
Lining bobs his head at a copse of trees. “In there. Slower.”
“Right.” Fleet gulps a breath, and it burns in her chest. She fakes to the right, claps her wings, and banks hard into the thicket.
The ground stops rumbling. Good.
Weaving through the branches, Fleetfoot frowns at dark flecks of sky above the canopy. Should they play it safe under cover of trees, or try to fly for it again? A straightaway in open sky will leave it in the dust.
Assuming it can’t fly.
Silver Lining’s good at evasive acrobatics. If he can glide through museums without breaking anything, he surely knows how to fly through a forest without leaving a path of destruction.
“Lining, do you think we—“
He’s not there. Not in Fleet’s slipstream, not at her shoulder. She can’t have outflown him.
Heart thumping in her throat, Fleetfoot slips out from the thicket, sticking fast to the low shadows.
Half a mile away, a creature—a monster—Fleetfoot has no name for towers above the hiking trail. A minotaur stitched on a war horse’s body the size of a house, red and black and heaving. Curved cruel horns scrape the canopy’s belly, and twigs fall where they touch. Even from a distance, it stinks of musk and smoke and rotten eggs—sulfur, she now realizes.
Scowling, the monster waves a hand as if swatting a gnat. When the hand comes down, Fleet sees the full and ugly contours of its face, lit by the bright streak of silver arcing toward it.
Not away. Toward.
Fleetfoot’s mouth dries up. That idiot.
Screw navigating trees. Fleet claps her wings and dives. The forest blurs green and black.
She can’t tear her eyes from the silver contrails looping through horns, kicking at ears, tossing showers of needles and grit in the wing strokes. Every time a massive hand swipes at him, and every time the pegasus zips away. Silver Lining arcs and swerves and flits and corkscrews with all the nimble grace of a barn swallow.
The creature steps back with a scoff. “I tire of this.” The voice vibrates in Fleetfoot’s gut and stops her in her tracks.
Lining darts away, but something invisible catches him in midair. He hangs limp while the monster coolly regards him for a moment. It opens its mouth and breathes in.
A bright and terrible light ribbons from the Wonderbolt, twisting through the night and into the monster’s mouth.
Its jaws slam shut.
Silver Lining plummets.
Fleetfoot dives after him, but in the dark, she can’t see where he’s gone. She can only guess by the crunch.
High above her, the monster dusts the grit off its shoulder and blinks at the movement shuffling in the trees. It squints through the dark, shrugs, and moves on.
When the tremors fade, Fleetfoot turns on the flashlight. “Lining?” Again, her voice is the only sound in the forest.
The flashlight glints over a grey feather spinning through the night. More twirl through the air below it. The thin beam of light follows the feather trail down, down, down to a blue and grey heap in the dirt.
Search and recovery. The thought pushes bile in her throat.
“Silver Lining?”
The light beam catches in the ripped lightning bolts of his flight suit, gleaming dimly in the dark. Broken glass sparkles through his mane and along the bridge of his nose as if Lining’s flown through a diamond dust storm. His left wing’s cracked over his withers, crooked in all the wrong places.
Something white pokes through what’s left of his ragged feathers. Bone, Fleetfoot slowly realizes. It’s broken, obviously, but nothing to take him out of the sky permanently. Right?
Every Wonderbolt gets three or five nasty crashes under their belt. It happens all the time. “It’s not a question of if,” Fast Clip told them at the Academy, “it’s a question of when.”
Fleetfoot takes a deep breath and lifts her goggles, blinking away the blurriness in her eyes. She can’t find anything wrong with the other wing besides more feather loss, and there’s… not that much blood.
She’s not worried. This sort of thing happens to everypony. Rapidfire crashed like this a couple years ago, but he flies just fine now. That means Lining will be fine, too.
He has to be.
“H-hey? Are you oka—" Fleetfoot glances at Lining’s heaving sides. Stupid question. “Can you hear me? Can you move?”
His breathing picks up, rapid and desperate, and more than a little scary. Still breathing, though. Still hanging in there.
Careful of the broken glass, Fleetfoot slips off the shattered goggles and lifts his head. It lolls in her hooves. “C’mon, Whining, work with me here.”
“Fleet?” Slowly, his eyes crack open, clouded in a milky haze. The same haze Brightly had. “...Wait. What—” His teeth clench in a wince.
“Don’t move, you’ve had a real bad drop.” Fleetfoot pins her ears at her own choice of words. She’s seen crashes, and this wasn’t a crash. He’d dropped out of the sky like a hailstone.
“Aw, no.” Lining’s eyes snap wide, growing wider as he takes in the shadows of trees and the flashlight beam cutting across the forest floor. “No, no, no, NO! You’re supposed to be halfway to Cloudsdale by now! Fleetfoot, what are you DOING here?!”
Fleetfoot’s tail lashes through the scattered feathers and pine needles. “Helping an ungrateful featherbrain too dumb to fly away from a fight he knows he can’t win. Shut up and lie down before you call that thing back.”
Speaking of which, she needs a perimeter check. “I’ll be right back, don’t go anywhere.”
Silver Lining levels a flat stare.
“Oh, you know what I mean.”
In a few wingbeats, she slips through the canopy. Moonlight spills over the tips of the trees, and in the peace of the clouds, it’s surreal to imagine the past few minutes even happened.
There’s a soft sound in the wind, sharp and shrill. Fleetfoot pricks her ears. Screams. She climbs higher.
Tall Tale lurks in the distance, a mound of shadows beneath the mountains. None of the lights are on. Clouds part to let in more moonlight, glinting bright green off the—wait.
Fleetfoot edges closer, squinting.
The white and brown stone roofs have gone full rainbow. Rainbow and… jiggly. Stars shine through a transparent green clock tower. A clock tower that was red brick this afternoon. A serpentine silhouette bounces on a water tower bending in the wind, the surface wiggling and rippling with the breeze.
Gelatin.
Fleetfoot squeezes her eyes shut. It’s still there when she opens them.
The city of Tall Tale has completely turned into gelatin.
Fleetfoot shakes herself out of her stare. There’s no time to focus on what she can’t fix. She snatches mounds of cumulus and stratus and balls them up. When she’s got a cloud big enough to fit a pony with room to spare, she hooks it with her tail and drags it to the ground.
On her way down, she snaps a few branches off the pines, breaking off the leafy parts. “I sure hope I remember how to do this…” Her last first aid class was at least two years ago, and she only used it once when Soarin’s wing clipped a cactus.
Lining pricks his ears, lifting his head. “Is he still out there?”
Fleetfoot props the flashlight in the crook of a low branch for a poor-mare’s spotlight. “No. Put your head back down.” She examines the damage again, twitching her wings.
“Brace yourself,” she tells him. “This is probably going to hurt.”
As gently as she can, Fleetfoot spreads Lining’s wing over the first pair of branches, then aligns the second pair on top, smoothing the broken feathers as best she can.
Lining barely flinches through the process. She can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not.
“Sheesh, what was that stunt supposed to be, anyway? Some crazy hero act?” Fleet rips off the front left leg of his suit (already hanging by a thread) to wrap his wing in the splint. The braces need cushioning, but she has to work with what they have. And not to be a jerk or anything, but maybe a little pain will teach him not to be so darn stupid next time.
It’s a rushed crummy splint, and Fleetfoot knows it. She’s not a nurse, she’s not a monster fighter, she’s not an Element of Harmony. She’s just Fleetfoot, and Fleetfoot is a pony who can fly really fast. That’s all.
Pony’s sake, all I wanted today was fly laps on the track. Is that so wrong?
“We’re fliers, not fighters, Lining. We’re not guards—not real ones.” Okay, they’re technically still a unit of the E.U.P., but in the same way a cow born in a tree is a bird. “Let the princesses and Elements do their job, and we’ll do ours.”
Lining blows away the fluffy mane dangling in his face to glare at her. “Yeah, and maybe Celestia would know what’s going on by now if you didn’t stop to—ow! Watch the leg!”
If Lining’s leg hurts, that means his back didn’t break. From the sound of it, his leg might have, but they can fix a broke leg easier than a spine.
“And I wasn’t attacking him, you blowhard—that monster was right on our tail and you needed a distraction. I was trying to buy you time! Time you’re still wasting!” He pins his ears, gritting his teeth as Fleetfoot splints his hurt leg. “Celestia’s sake, I would’ve been fine. It barely even hurts.”
Leave it to him to survive a crash—one that’d cripple most ponies or worse—and then complain about it. “That’s the adrenaline and your thick skull talking, Whining.” Fleetfoot gives the splint’s knot two good tugs for safety. “What, did you think I’d just take off and abandon you in the forest?”
Silver Lining grits his teeth, staring into the trees. He’d counted on it. Hoped for it.
Fleetfoot snorts. “Then you’re slower than I thought. Rule Three: Wonderbolts don’t leave Wonderbolts behind. Especially not to whatever that… thing was.”
“Right, and let hundreds of other ponies fry in the meantime? Fleet, I don’t know where this cloudstuff about honor and valor came from, but you need to kick off it.” He nods to the stars glinting in the space between the trees. “You can still get to HQ in forty minutes. Thirty, maybe.”
Thirty, definitely. Maybe twenty-five if she caught a good wind and pushed.
“Look, it’s plain logic. I’m slowest. You’re fastest and a Primary. If you need to clip a feather, you clip the Tertiary. Wings can’t fly without a primary feather.”
“Can’t fly without tertiaries either, genius.”
“You can if you just lose one of ‘em.” Lining tries to laugh it off, but it comes out as a cough. It still doesn’t stop that breezy smile of his.
“Yeah, well.” Absently, Fleetfoot’s tail gets a hold of the cumulus she pulled down earlier and pulls it closer. “Maybe I’m attached to all my feathers.”
Fleetfoot noses Silver Lining’s neck. His rainy-day coat’s paled to the color of fog, and the wet chilly skin trembles against her nose. Those are signs of shock, aren’t they?
“You’re right. I’m a Primary flier, meaning I’m your commanding officer and my stupid decisions outrank your stupid decisions.” Struggling under the larger stallion’s weight, she lifts him up and shifts him onto the cloud. “Strap in. You’re going back to HQ and you’re gonna like it.”
“That’ll take hours, Flatfoot! This is stupid—if you’re really that worried about me, just drop me off at the nearest hospital and keep going.”
“I can’t!” Fleetfoot drags both hooves through her mane. “I CAN’T!”
“Why?!”
“Because it turned into jelly!”
“I—” Silver Lining furrows his brow. “…what?”
“I don’t know, that’s what I saw!” A pinecone goes sailing with a kick. “Everything’s all messed up, Lining, and…” Fleetfoot raises her head, staring at the gaping wound of air cut through the pines. She can see the jelly clock tower from here.
There’s no telling if the gelatin and magic stealing is the work of the same monster, but Fleetfoot knows that thing’s intelligent. It’s seeking out ponies. Picking off a couple of Wonderbolts and a schoolfilly won’t be enough. If it’s hit a third-tier city like Tall Tale, then that thing’s definitely heading for all the other major cities.
Lining’s right; he needs a hospital, but who knows if she’ll find Applewood in a crater or Vanhoover evacuated or what. Besides, that just means longer detours eating time they don’t have. A straight shot to Headquarters is their best bet. The medics can fix him, or take him to somepony who can. Spitfire and Soarin are there. They’ll know what to do.
“Fleetfoot?” All the griping’s vanished from Lining’s voice. It’s weak. Scared. “Fleet. Why am I on the ground?”
He’s sunk straight through the cloud.
Fleetfoot’s heart hammers in her throat. Buck me, what did that monster do to you? Her terror hardens, and she swallows it down. Fear is for rookies. Fear helps nopony.
Alright, think: he didn’t drop through it, he sank slowly. That means if she keeps fluffing it, the cloud will hold and they should—they will make it to Cloudsdale.
Fleetfoot smiles. “Well, yeah, you fell out of it, Lining. Probably from eating all those cookies.”
Rebuild the cloud. Circulate beneath it with smooth wingbeats to keep it full.
“We told you not to eat the whole basket by yourself but you didn’t want to share.”
The cloud holds. Not firm, but it holds. It’ll be better once they’re in the air and there’s more room to fly. They can do this.
Lining lays his head in the cumulus, watching Fleetfoot work with half-closed eyes. He’s still shivering in cold sweats. They really should have brought a second blanket.
Wind five degrees north. No air traffic. Goggles on. “Okay, Silver Lining, we’re going home.”
Rising into the sky, she realizes the area’s gone silent again. The screams have stopped. No city background noise, no owls, no crickets. There’s the sound of her own wingbeats and nothing else.
Two miles out of the forest, and Silver Lining hasn’t said a word. Fleetfoot’s not sure if she can pop up to check on him without the cloud falling apart. “Hey, Lining. Talk to me.”
Through the cloud vapor, he slowly blinks down at her.
Looks like she’ll have to start the conversation. “So, uh, those cookies. I bet your mom probably baked those, right? One of her monthly packages?”
As soon as she says it, Fleetfoot regrets it. Now she can’t stop thinking of that rich old mare in the big hat who always comes to the derbies and races, even though Silver Lining almost never wins. That only leads to thoughts of what Fleetfoot may have to tell her later. She has visions of grey feathers added to a big fancy hat.
To their left, dark skyscrapers tower over Vanhoover. No lights are on. Nopony else is flying, either.
Silver Lining still hasn’t responded.
Fleetfoot tries again. “What kind of cookies were they?”
Lining’s limp tail twitches over the cloud. “Mm. Not cookies. Macarons.”
“Isn’t that a type of cookie?”
“You’re thinking of macaroons. Macarons are different. Mom gets them from Chai’s.” He shifts on the cloud, and there’s a smile in his voice again. “Probably her fault I’m still here. Earth ponies can take a hit.”
That explains the hard head, too.
He’s quiet for a moment. “You think she bought me in, don’t you?”
Fleetfoot flicks her ears and keeps her eyes locked on cloud detail. “I don’t think that.”
Silver Lining chuckles softly. “Maybe not out loud.” He’s not a hundred percent wrong.
The cold fact is Silver Frames is a huge sponsor. A sponsor and a ’Bolts widow. Silver Lining can fly, and fly amazingly well, if not all that fast. He wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise. But his background might have bumped him up the list a couple of spaces.
Even if that’s true, though, it’s not his fault. Fleetfoot twitches her ears again and sighs.
“Hey, don’t sound so grim, Flatfoot. Look at it this way: worst-case scenario, I get a spot of honor on The Wall. Maybe right under my dad.” Another smile colors Lining’s voice. “Bet he’d like that.”
Fleetfoot dares one quick glance above the cloudbed. “Blue Yonder would like you in the air a lot more, Lining.”
“For the pony in fifth place? Please.”
Before Fleetfoot can argue, Lining shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. I know I’m not that fast, but that’s alright. I do better with long-distance flights than races, so I still get the marathons. I mean, it’s usually third place in the marathons, but it’s better than sixth. Sixth is better than not being in the race at all. Either way, I’ve been lucky.”
Silver Lining glances at his busted wing, and his eyebrows rise at the sight of it. He really must not feel it if he’s this surprised. “But let’s face it: when’s the last time anypony wanted an autograph from the guy in third place?”
The cloud under his haunch is looking a little thin. Fleetfoot spins up a little extra fluff to support it. The busted leg needs elevation, anyway.
“Last summer, that’s when. Rainbow Dash wanted it after the Mustang Marathon, remember?” Fleetfoot remembers because she stuck to the sidelines for that one. Long distance racing’s never been her scene.
It’s been almost an hour since they’ve seen any lights. Everything down there’s all tiny farming towns in flyover country. Farmers usually go to bed early; maybe they’re all asleep.
Or...
“Rainbow Dash wanted autographs from everypony, Fleet.” Lining chuckles to himself. “She’s a good kid. Fast, too. Hey, look at the bright side—”
Oh, Celestia, here it comes.
“Whatever happens, I’ll need a replacement for a while, and a little bird told me Rainbow Dash is at the top of the Reserves list. You’ll get some real competition on the track.”
At least he said “for a while” and not “permanently.” “She’d just be a temp,” says Fleetfoot. “I mean, unless Rapidfire calls the captain’s bluff and retires.”
“You know he won’t.” Lining goes quiet. Beneath the cloud, Fleetfoot feels him tense up. “What time is it?”
“Dunno. We got attacked around sunset, so… eightish, maybe?”
Silver Lining leans his head over the side of the cloud—ignoring Fleetfoot’s angry protests and court-martial threats—to watch the yawning canyon pass below. “That’s Galloping Gorge.”
“Yes. Gold star on your geography test. Get back on the cloud.”
“We’re only now passing the gorge?” He shifts again, and his head disappears from the cloud edge. His tail lashes, tickling Fleetfoot’s nose. “You’d be there fifteen minutes ago by yourself.”
Ten, but who’s counting?
“Lining…”
Yelling at him again won’t convince him any more than it did in the forest.
Fleetfoot sighs. “Look. I already tried the whole ditching-a-teammate thing back at Rainbow Falls. Decided I didn’t really like it.”
Above, the cloud jolts. Silver Lining buckles with a yelp of pain—a watery, gasping cry too tired, too pained to be loud. The adrenaline’s long worn off. The cry comes again, softer this time.
In the distance, rainbows glimmer in the moonlight, spilling off the edge of a cloud to paint the stars. Cloudsdale’s never been so beautiful.
They’re so close to the finish line. Every bone in Fleetfoot’s body screams to speed up, but she ignores it. Any more acceleration will thin this cloud like a puddle in San Palomino.
Fleetfoot re-fluffs the south side, bumping her teammate’s tail back on the cloud. “You know, you remind me of somepony, Lining. Ever hear of a place called Butterfly Island? My older brother told me ponies lived there way back before the first Hearth’s Warming, when the three tribes still had wars and stuff.”
Not to her surprise, Lining doesn’t answer. That’s cool; he can sit back and listen.
“See, the pegasi from Butterfly Island were warriors, and they were like, the best. Griffons flew for the hills when Islanders entered the battle. Just one could take a dragon head-on all by herself and win. Nothing and nobody could touch these guys. You saw one and that was it, time to buy a headstone. Seriously, best of the best of the best.” She can’t help smiling a bit at the thought. “They were kinda like Wonderbolts, but with swords instead of flight.”
They could have smashed that big red road apple into strawberry jam, no problem.
“A-and I—" Lining flinches in another spasm. “I remind you of them? Me?” He tries laughing at that, but the movement’s too much and he cries out.
“The way you flew straight at that monster? Yeah, you do.” Fleetfoot cycles the cloud with big slow flaps before starting their descent. “That’s not what I meant, though. You remind me of a saying the Islanders gave each other before flying into battle: ‘Come back with your shield or on it.’”
“Oh.” His voice weakly rises above the rapid breathing. “What’s that mean, Fleet?”
Stadium lights blaze in the night. Streaks of color shoot through the sky as the Reserves fly the last laps of the day.
“It means come back victorious, come back dead, or don’t come back at all. But personally?”
The runway comes into view. Fleetfoot puts a hoof to her mouth and whistles the distress signal. Already, ponies are coming up fast to meet them before they touch down.
“Personally, I think it’s better just to come back.”
At the center of the south courtyard, The Wonderbolt Memorial arcs toward the sun in a smooth bend of gold and hematite, curving like one massive wing. Dozens of names nest in the crook of it, etched in gold and silver. If you sit at the right angle at the right time of day, the names of the fallen cast little reflections over your feathers.
They call it The Wall. It’s not really a wall, but nopony really cares about that. Nicknames are a tradition around here.
In the afternoon, it offers shade to exhausted fliers in need of a rest. Twenty minutes past sunrise, light bounces off the top and blazes into the barracks to push lazy Wonderbolts out of bed before the Captain catches them sleeping. This morning, there’s no need.
Fourteen pegasi soar overhead, their hooves and bellies reflected in the black stone. The fifteenth breaks formation to skim off the top and tap the memorial once with each hoof before bouncing back into the sky.
Soarin grins as Fleetfoot slips back in formation. “Never took you for the superstitious type.”
“I’m not.” Fleet spares a glance to the infirmary behind them, where Silver Lining’s still sleeping. “But I’ll take all the help we can get. If an ex-teammate wants to toss a breeze our way, might as well encourage ’em.”
Beside her, Spitfire nods.
Ten miles out of HQ, the skies and roads of Cloudsdale are already clogged with hot air balloons, airships, and chariots. In lower airspace, ponies who don’t want or need luggage weighing them down fly for the land. Pegasi go solo, in pairs, and in family flocks ranging anywhere from three to thirty-three. Some seek family in the grounded cities; the rest are headed for refugee shelters.
“The whole city? Cap, are you sure?”
“You saw him, Soarin. Silver Lining sank through that cloud like an earth pony. That’s not a snapped wing, that’s pegasus magic. Flight magic.” Spitfire turned to the window, watching. “What do you think happens when something that eats flight magic gets to Cloudsdale?”
Soarin scratched the base of his mane, watching his paperwork flutter in the churn of a ceiling fan. “If it eats flight magic, how are we supposed to beat it?”
“We don’t,” Fleetfoot slowly said. “We keep it busy.” She followed Spitfire’s line of sight out the window and into the infirmary across the clouds. “We buy time.”
It’s a good start, as far as Fleetfoot can tell, but at this rate, Cloudsdale won’t be empty until twelve hundred hours. That’s not nearly soon enough.
Intel from Canterlot estimates Tirek’s arrival at ten hundred hours, if not sooner. Having Discord in the mix kind of makes estimates pointless, but it’s better than nothing.
Fleetfoot banks hard out of Cloudsdale, nipping at Spitfire’s hooves.
Tirek.
A name to the face. Not some mystery monster from nowhere. Tirek, escaped from Tartarus. He has a name. Whatever has a name is solid. Tangible. Beatable. Something with a name can catch a lightning bolt to the face and a hoof in the eye.
Her hoof. His eye.
She grits her teeth and claps her wings, swinging hard into freefall. Wind screams in her ears to call her on.
“Easy, Flatfoot!” It’s the first thing Captain Spitfire’s said to her since the pre-sunrise briefing. “Easy! Save it for when we get there.”
She’s right. Some of the Reserves are struggling to keep up, namely that big guy in back with all the muscles.
Soarin catches up at Fleet’s shoulder a second later. Together, they slip back in formation, a trail of blue and yellow fanning behind them.
Three.
Fleetfoot, in some air-drunk and sleep-deprived optimism, had gone to bed imagining she’d wake to a full team of Wonderbolts waiting for her.
Surprise hovering by the sink, lightening the mood with some joke about today being “sink or swim.” High Winds stretching in the locker room. Misty Fly beating the tar out of a punching bag outside. Blaze trying to do wing-ups and stuff her face at the same time.
Instead, she found three Wonderbolts: Spitfire, Soarin, and herself. Same as yesterday.
Telegraph lines went down early last night, and Cloudsdale didn’t have enough messenger ponies fast enough to find a ‘Bolt and bring them back before sunrise. (As Spitfire pointed out, an exhausted Fleetfoot needed rest for tomorrow, did not have clearance for a flight to Fillydelphia, and no, this was not negotiable.)
The closest thing to a Wonderbolt they could reach in that timeframe was Ponyville’s Rainbow Dash, who already had her hooves full helping Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Barring a miracle, the rest of the team would need to do their part wherever they were.
A mare whose name Fleetfoot doesn’t know pulls ahead of the cadet flock. She’s not in uniform, and without goggles, she squints teary-eyed in the slipstream. Fleetfoot doesn’t recognize her from the Academy—or anywhere else—but Spitfire trusts her enough to fly with them, and that’s good enough.
The emergency recruit’s grey coat and golden eyes remind her of Silver Lining if he had a lazy eye and ninety-percent less grace. She’d given everypony baked goods this morning for an extra carbo load. When she notices Fleetfoot staring, she smiles and salutes.
Fleetfoot nods and salutes back.
Captain Spitfire stood before eleven Wonderbolt Reserves, some fresh out of the Academy, most of them still in it.
Half of these ponies still puke after a round on the dizzitron, and the other half couldn’t catch a cold in a windigo stable. None of them have been through emergency formation drills. All of them shivered in the dark, either from the pre-dawn chill or something else.
“We know it’s from Tartarus. We know it drains magic—pegasus magic. We don’t know what else it’s capable of.” Spitfire paused a moment. “Understand this: none of you are Wonderbolts yet. That means not one of you is under orders to stay.”
Spitfire folded her sunglasses and faced her recruits head-on. “I won’t sugarcoat this: there’s a good chance whoever flies out today won’t come back. Anypony who wants to leave, leave now. Nopony here will hold it against you.”
None of them moved. A few grew pale, one mare got the shakes, but none of them moved besides that.
The Captain waited a moment. Against the stadium lights, her wings flared wide, golden, and proud. She grinned. “Well, alright, then.”
Soarin’s voice rises on the wind. “I see him!”
The formation tightens.
Two massive black horns curl over the horizon. He’s got his back to them. The trees only come up to his chest now.
“That’s him, alright.” Fleetfoot narrows her eyes behind her goggles. “He got taller.”
“Just means more for us.” Spitfire pulls to dive.
Not before Fleetfoot can get in the first hit. Not if she has anything to say about it.
She snatches a downdraft and cuts the air like an arrow. In the split second before her hoof connects, Tirek’s huge eye widens in surprise.