The heat was intense. All the clouds had long since boiled away, leaving a sky bleached of all colour. From horizon to horizon stretched the endless red desert of Didgeridoo. The ground shimmered with the heat. Even the small shrubs that survived looked as dry as kindling.
A lone pegasus soared overhead, her wings stretched to their fullest extent as she headed straight for the horizon that never changed. Her shirt was torn and rugged, suggesting long hours fighting against stubborn spinifex branches on the ground. She tipped her pith helmet, making sure the brim fully sheltered her keen eyes.
On her flank, she bore her cutie mark. Her own symbol was a compass, the symbol of the perennial explorer. Even she wasn’t used to these frontiers, though. This mare was used to tropical jungle, or to dank and cold temples and mountains. Here, her fur was slick with sweat. Despite her constant squinting, she was finding it harder to focus. It also felt like her tongue had curled up and died in her mouth. Driven by sheer determination, Daring Do ignored the strain and shifted her wings slightly.
She stopped once or twice to catch a rising thermal. Up here, the criss-crossing shears were cool and refreshing, but even so she’d been flapping her wings for hours. In any case it was still too hot for anything other than gliding. The bare patches of exposed rock below were perfect for creating columns of rising air, and she wasn’t going to miss a chance to boost her height.
There were cliffs coming up in the distance. At first, they were hazy and blue – they could have been mirages – but as she neared them, they became redder and more solid. The ground beneath her was no longer a featureless flatland, and hills rolled freely. That was a good sign.
Finally, Daring thought. I knew I was getting close.
She adjusted her flight path and flapped her wings for speed. It was all very well gliding, but she couldn’t afford to dilly-dally.
The spot was easy enough to locate: a patch of eucalyptus forest, to use the term “forest” loosely. It was simply an armpit in the desert, and frankly smelled like one. Daring landed on the outskirts and gave the trees a cursory look. They were thick-trunked and gnarly, as though they’d been writhing in pain under the desert heat. Surprisingly, they were well spaced out, and there were still gaps between the crowns of the canopy. Usually, any oasis like this would have them huddled together and fighting for every inch available.
This seems to be the place. Grab Bag Guile, you don't know how many times you've saved my bacon.
Daring had not come unequipped. Around her shoulder and forelimb was a tight strap for a holster. What looked like a bent stick or a wooden banana was tucked inside. Daring didn’t like it, but it had been a gift. Pegasi did not throw gifts away, nor did they pretend to lose them and try to explain it to the giver in those terms. It just wasn't the done thing. There was also a firework under her helmet. She took the red stick out and examined it. Then she glanced at the forest.
"OK," she said with false cheeriness. "Now what?"
Where was all the birdsong? There was no breeze or rustling of leaves. Not even a scuffle to be heard. You only got complete silence when the small animals had a reason not to be loud. Now, it could be because there’s a small predator about, like a lonely dingo. It could be that she was being paranoid.
This was a little too easy, though. Nopony seemed to be here. She hadn’t seen anyone from the sky, and even if anypony had seen her from the horizon, it would take them ages to get here. She could have whipped in, done what she needed to do, and come out again before anypony even arrived... if they weren't already here, that is.
Daring rubbed her scalp with the firework, wiping off some sweat. It was getting harder these days to distinguish paranoia from common sense. She weighed the firework on one hoof. They would definitely be coming here, whatever happened. This would just make it faster, if they hadn’t already noticed this particular patch.
If her map-reading skills were right, though, and the mountain town was not too far from the cliffs, then there would be some police officers patrolling not far from here. The Didgeri-Defence Force or DDF would be there, and they definitely didn’t know anything would be amiss unless she sent the flare to alert them. She also had to account for how long it'd take for those guys to get here. If she got in a scuffle, it would help to have backup, and there was nothing worse than a cavalry that came too late.
Well, better safe than sorry...
Daring planted the firework, so close to the ground that the shimmering heat distorted the fuse. She reached under her helmet for the matchbox.
The firework self-ignited. A blast of light streamed up towards the sun, and the explosion carried all the way across the desert until it seemed the whole continent must have heard it.
Daring stared, rather stupidly holding the matchbox in one hoof. Holy smokes, I didn’t think it was that hot out here. She shook herself and replaced the matches.
As she walked between the trees, feeling the burning ground through her hooves, Daring noticed that the gaps of the canopy were filled with webbing. Barring the idea that somepony had draped fine silk over trees in the middle of nowhere, she wasn’t sure what it was for.
She stopped and watched it with interest. You never knew. It might spit out spikes, or explode, or fall down like a drop bear.
Nothing happened. It just waved slightly, as most fabrics do.
Around the bases of the nearby trunks, gravel was heaped as though the sun-scorched rock had been smashed by the trees growing through it. Daring chose her sacrificial victim with care. She picked up a nice round chunk of sandstone. Lightly, she bounced it on her hoof. She glanced upwards at the silk.
The web barely shuddered as the rock struck the centre. It wibbled and wobbled and then settled back, giving the impression that the rock was floating in midair just for the jollies.
That makes a nice change, she thought. Cobwebs outside of the mysterious site rather than inside it. Back in the Amaponian, ponies used to hang up cobwebs like drapes all over the place. Sure, they gave a nice rank feeling of gloom to a catacomb, but Daring hated them. She couldn't get close to a cobweb without feeling her entire body cringe, and the things always stuck to the most inconvenient parts. And it was pretentious when you got down to it; no sane spider would waste that much silk in the one place it was never going to catch anything.
From the branches, red dots began to converge on the rock. Before Daring had time to blink, they swarmed all over the latest catch, obscuring it from view in a ball of squirming, swarming red legs and bodies.
Daring shuddered. She did her best and tried not to look at them as she carefully stepped round their shadows, but with a horrible fascination noticed that the red dots were retreating again and that now the spot was totally clear of rockiness.
They certainly did things differently here. For one thing, the cobwebs weren’t just for show.
She kept glancing around for traps, but there were no tripwires or pressure pads, no signs of watchers. If anypony was spying on her, they could only be in the canopy (not likely, with those things in there with them) or behind the trunks. Up above, the flare’s bright blast had given way to a star-shaped cloud of smoke. It would still be visible from a long way away, if only because a cloud in this desert was such a novelty. Something of the pegasus in her felt reassured at the sight.
Eventually, Daring entered a clearing. She stopped, and surveyed the thing in the middle.
A lone wooden shack stood crisping. Whatever wood it had been, it had long since been bleached of any colour until it was unrecognizable. Bits of bark peeled off it. The one window was cracked, either by vandalism or by sheer battery from the desert air. Even as she watched, the iron chimney groaned under the weight of rust it had accumulated.
That’s it! she thought. Start’s cabin, you evasive little beauty!
Daring checked again for tripwires or pressure pads, but it seemed silly. A disused shack, however old it was, never made for great booby-trap material. Also, nopony seemed to have come here in years. The state of the shack suggested as much.
"Fresh Start’s cabin," she said. Both her eyes reflected the broken building.
The desert was an unknown terrain, and the desert of Didgeridoo was simply irresistible for explorers to try their hoof. When Fresh Start and his party had set off to explore it, he’d built the shack from eucalyptus wood as a temporary accommodation, and as a checkpoint. Only a few days later, when his friend Grab Bag Guile and the second party had caught up with him, they set off for the desert proper and left some of their supplies behind as a cache.
Nopony ever saw them again. Nopony even knew much about the shack, which was a pain in the backside for Daring, who’d been spending the last six months trying to track it down. Such was archaeology, but this was as far as her records and a daily dose of desert danger could get her.
Worth every second. Fresh Start was an explorer. Not in the wishy-washy “let’s go out and have a grand adventure” sense. He was the sort of explorer who looked for the edge of the known and then summoned the troops himself before leading a private army into the unknown. If he’d been a conqueror, expansion wouldn’t have been a means to an end; it would have been the entire point. He’d be just the sort to take to the desert. Didgeridoo was practically made for him.
The shack looked like it had been knocked up in somepony’s backyard, but Daring’s approach was almost reverential as she reached for the crude wooden door. The hinges creaked, and a pretty impressive creak it was too. Daring, who was a connoisseur for creaks, gave it good marks for forebodingness and length.
Like the outside, the interior of the walls were bleached with the heat. Daring’s eyes were drawn almost immediately to the shelves. The room seemed to consist of no other furniture. Daring stood and stared while the door slammed shut behind her.
Fresh Start and Grab Bag Guile had left seemingly all of their equipment. Measuring tools and gadgets and gauges lined one shelf, while below them the first aid kits and medical masks stood together with military precision. Hats lined one shelf, and some of them seemed to have corks dangling from the brims. Canned foods and bottles of water, nosebags, and drinking troughs were piled up near the back, some propped up against the shelf since they were too large to fit on it. Row upon row of books, their hardback titles faded with dust, were closer to the entrance than the other items. Somepony had put a couple of barrels either side of the aisle as mock guards.
Forgetting herself, Daring wandered down the short aisle with eyes wide open. There was, for a brief moment, no hurry. This was as close to a monument to Start as he was going to get, and a remnant like this should have been on the National Heritage List. Merely being here should have been enough to get her blacklisted. Yet nopony knew this shack existed, because Start’s and Guile's expeditions never came back, and nopony else knew the pair had set it up in the first place. It was simply another lost treasure in the desert.
Daring suppressed the urge to stop and remove her helmet. Even if he was a fellow explorer, she could pay her respects to Start another day, but not now. Unless she went up to the small window opposite, she was blind to what was going on outside. And it was still too eerily quiet.
She looked around. Now, she thought, where did you hide it, Start?
Her first port of call was the bookshelf. Quickly, she wiped the dust off the spines and squinted at some titles, but they were simply too dog-eared to read. She plucked a few off the shelves and quickly glanced inside before shoving them back into their slots.
With a groan of frustration, she dumped the last one onto the floorboards. There hadn’t been that many hardbacks to begin with; there wouldn’t have been much time for reading, and in any case there was only so much that ponies knew about the desert. One or two were simply classic novels and poetry anthologies.
Knew it couldn’t be that easy. Daring glanced around at the other shelves. Despite the shelter, she was beginning to sweat. Come on, Start. Where would you hide something so personal?
There seemed to be an awful lot of first aid kits. Maybe he’d hidden it inside one of them, but Daring wasn’t sure about this train of thought and privately felt it wouldn’t be long before she was testing for secret chambers and tearing up floorboards, just in case. Half-heartedly, she opened a few lids and peered inside. Nothing.
She flapped her wings and rose a little higher, and found sleeping bags rolled up on the topmost shelves. Now those she hadn’t noticed from the ground. All of them were dull blue and had holes picked out of them, and when she unfurled a few in the vain hope that one of them might have been Start’s, one or two threw clouds of dust and moth scales over her. She returned to the ground, spluttering.
This wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Explorers simply weren’t devious. They weren’t thinking, Let’s hide this from the enemy in the most obscure and annoyingly booby-trapped place I can think of. That was what ancient temple-builders thought, not the ponies who tried to outsmart them several dynasties later. She had to get out of that mental habit, but years of being shot at by invisible trip-wired blowguns had forged the habit out of iron.
OK, she thought, trying another tactic, you’re on this expedition, Daring Do. You have a map. You want to keep it from getting lost, but you also want to reach it when needed.
She almost kicked herself as she turned and immediately went for the hats. When the first two yielded nothing, she picked up the third one and reached inside. The hoof came out with a small quarto clenched between sheath and pastern.
Yes! Start’s journal! The deductive powers of Daring Do still work like a charm.
What are the dangling corks for?
She shrugged it off and replaced the hat on the shelf. Daring was just about to tuck the quarto under her own hat when something flashed past the window.
This time, it wasn’t ambiguous. Somepony had galloped from one tree to another, in plain sight.
“All right, Missy, we know you’re in there!”
The voice had come from beyond the walls, and hooves clopped on the hard earth. When she peered over her shoulder, Daring could see shadows under the door.
They were bushrangers. They had to be. Nopony else could talk like they were choking on gravel, and they were one of the reasons nopony else would ever come out so far from civilization.
Crud.
“We’ve got you surrounded," said the same voice, "so no trying to escape, got it?”
Daring glanced around quickly, but there was no way she could hide among this lot, and she’d already been seen. Quickly, she raised her helmet to stash the quarto, and then stopped. No, they’d suss that out in seconds. She briefly considered the front pocket of her shirt, but that would come to the same problem. Where else, then? Where?
The door burst back, its hinges almost yelping in shock.
“Well, look what we got here,” the voice said sarcastically, “a sightseeing tourist.”
Daring, who’d had her back to the door when they burst in, spun around. She felt her ears instinctively try to hunker down. The quarto was nowhere in sight.
Three burly unicorns stepped in and lowered their horns at her immediately. Like the desert sky outside, the trio were bleached of colour. Even their neckerchiefs and wide-brimmed hats looked drained. When the stallion in the middle grinned, some of his teeth were missing.
"You lost, Missy?" he said.
“Who me? No, no,” Daring said, trying to smile it off. “Just looking for the little filly’s room.”
“I think it's too late for that. Don’t move.” All three horns began to glow at their tips. “Everypony in our little gang knows how to shoot, and like I said, you’re surrounded. My boys and girls are setting up a perimeter, and every last shooting horn is pointed at this shack. You try and get past us three, you get shot. You make it out the door, you get shot. You so much as bust through the wall or leap out the window, you get shot. Heck, you even look at me the wrong way, you get shot.”
Daring risked a peek behind her, through the window. Eucalypt trunks surrounded the shack, and the desert dirt stretched on below the canopy. Cobwebs quivered overhead. Then one or two figures stepped out from behind the trunks and horn tips began to glow. All of them were colourless. Their faces were either grim or furious; they certainly glared at lot.
Daring’s mind began to race. She had no advantage as a pegasus, especially when the trio were this close. Oh sure, she could duck one or two shots in the air, but unless the leader was bluffing, there’d be many more than that waiting for her if she got out. Even a gang of bushrangers would be smart enough to focus on the doors and windows, and once she was out she somehow had to break the perimeter.
Even if she got outside, she couldn’t simply fly up. There was no way she was taking her chances with the webs.
"I get the impression you want something," she said.
“So where is it?” said the leader.
Daring tried to look innocent. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
The leader fired a burst from his horn. Daring stepped back hastily as the glowing pale flame punched into the floorboards just before her. She stared wide-eyed at the smoking crater and scorch marks.
Of course. Every scumbag this side of the desert knew the basic shooting spell. It was pretty much the only spell they were good at, and certainly the only one they liked using.
“I'll make this stupid-simple. The thing you’re looking for,” said the leader. “I’m guessing it’s worth a copper, or else you wouldn't be this far from... ci-vi-li-za-tion. Where is it?”
Daring kept silent. Typical bushranger. He probably thought she was after some treasure left behind by whoever’d stopped here. She glanced around the room; this would give the impression that she was glancing not-so-subtly towards possible hiding places of treasure. It paid to act like a newbie.
"Well now, if you don't tell me what you're looking for," she said, smiling uneasily, "how can I say where it is?"
The barrel was right next to her. As discretely as possible, she inched a foreleg towards the keg, hoping that her movement was partially out of sight from the door.
The leader growled. "You trying to be funny?"
"Well, you're not exactly a barrel of laughs," said Daring.
“I see. Cocky little gal, are we? One of them - what's the word they use around here? - sheilas, huh?" The leader turned to the others. "Search her.”
Their horns glowed more evenly along the lengths, and Daring felt her helmet rise from her mane.
“Hey, easy, easy!” she said, and snatched it back in protest. “You could’ve just asked. And get out of there!” she added. The rummaging she felt in her front pocket vanished.
“Nothing,” said the leader grimly. “I don’t know where you’ve hidden it, but you’re going to make my day by getting it for us. This is me being polite, see?” He grinned more broadly. The two unicorns either side of him primed their horns for shooting. “Not to mention it saves me the bother of blasting this shack into splinters.”
Daring took a deep breath. The trick was not to rise to their baiting. The trick was not to panic. The trick was not to think too much about what she was going to do.
“OK, OK, I’m getting it for you. Relax.” She tried to ready herself for the next bit. She’d have to be fast.
“Hey, keep that leg still!” The good humour, already in short supply, was rapidly running out of the leader's voice. “I don’t want to see that leg move.”
“No worries, there,” she said.
Instantly, Daring tipped over the barrel and ducked behind it as two shots slammed into the round shield.
A kick of her forehoof sent it rolling and rumbling straight for the trio. They didn’t have time to fire. The barrel bowled them over and continued straight through the empty doorway. A lot of confused shots were fired from a tree or two.
Daring seized another barrel between her four hooves and knocked it over, spilling the apples out of the top. Wings pumping, she took a deep breath and made a beeline after the juggernaut, over the groaning trio and out into the bright clearing.
She almost lost her grip as she rolled to meet incoming shots from the less twitchy unicorns. Shot after shot slammed into the barrel, blasting scorch marks into the woodwork. Daring swept from side to side, wielding it like a clumsy shield. It already felt lighter as bits of apple and broken wood fell from it.
When she reached the edge of the clearing, between two trees and the two unicorns concealed behind them, Daring yelped and righted herself to meet a double shot from both sides. They both struck the underside of the barrel, cracking it in two. The shock made her drop what was already a difficult weight. Both unicorns groaned and fell back from the crash of wood between them.
Daring came down to earth running. Her wings still felt stiff and sore from the desert travel. The blood was rushing inside her, always late to the event. She galloped on. Blasts followed her, but the gang were still slow to respond to what was going on, and her head start was enough. The shots struck trees or fell short of her tail.
Come on, DDF, she thought. Drop your rounds at the pub and get over here! The shouts and curses and blasts were keeping pace behind her. If she could just make it beyond the webbing without any complications...
There was a thud.
Daring’s blood turned cold. She slowed to a stop and ducked behind a trunk, while the ignorant bushrangers blasted at her. Cautiously, she peered out at the desert beyond the forest’s edge.
No, not them! Please don’t say it’s them…
The desert was even more forbidding on the ground. Endless shimmering heat distorted the view until distance was impossible to judge. The far off mountains looked as though they had pools of water at their feet. It was strange, looking at the scene through the calmness of the eucalypts.
Stranger still were the figures she could see through the haze. There weren’t many of them, but they all seemed to move in some sort of lope. Daring glanced up at the smoking flare overhead. Suddenly, it seemed like a very bad idea.
The thuds came again. There must have been more of them nearby. Unicorns that were closing in around her slowed to a halt. The next thud made them chatter in panic and alarm. It had sounded like a private earthquake.
Large, upright beasts lunged between the trunks nearby, leaping from patch to patch. Each time they landed, Daring braced herself for the jolt shooting up from the ground and through her legs. The gravel shuddered.
One landed before them. The beasts’ feet were gigantic. Its furious snout blotted out the sun. Warily, the bushrangers nearby glanced sideways at her and backed off.
In its shadow, Daring tried her darnedest to look as small and non-aggressive as possible.
“Rats,” she whispered.
Two more of the beasts crashed into the ground either side of her. Their fists curled. Their gigantic rear paws looked quite capable of stomping her into the ground. The one before her wrinkled its nose in contempt.
Kangaroos.
Didgeridoo was a huge continent. It was also isolated. Only on such a vast island, alien to the rest of the world, could there be a place where the ponies’ roles were taken over by something like the kangaroo. Sapience more usually arose among the hoofed animals – equines, cattle, sheep, goats in their own strange way – and occasionally in other species like griffins and Diamond Dogs, but here they had never arrived. There had only been marsupials, and kangaroos did the job here that ponies and buffalo did elsewhere.
Unlike ponies, however, they’d been stuck with one of the most unforgiving continents on the planet. By way of adapting, most of the desert-dwelling ones had no trouble doing the unforgiveable.
“Dairee Doo,” he said gravely. His face was covered in red ochre, typical of the Ranga tribe.
“G’day?” she said, tipping her helmet nonchalantly and trying not to sweat too much.
“I smelled your dunny stink a mile away,” said the large one, who seemed to be the leader by dint of being the biggest and grimmest-looking. “We told you to get lost. Rufus don't like tresspassers on these here parts.”
"B-But this is miles away from your village!" Daring managed to say.
"That means nothing in the desert."
To Daring’s surprise, somepony started laughing. The three towering monstrosities barely moved, but their eyes quickly pinned down the offending unicorn.
“Kangaroos?” Another assault of hysterics made him incomprehensible for a moment. “We’re supposed to be intimidated by kangaroos? Giant hopping rats?”
He seemed to find this hilarious and nearly fell onto all four knees. Three pairs of eyes narrowed.
Before Daring could blink, one of the kangaroo’s legs lashed out. It was hard to say where it hit; it was simply too fast. The pony screamed and crashed into a trunk several yards away. Bones cracked, a shocked yelp followed, and the victim’s broken body hit the ground face first.
Every horn pointed at the three kangaroos – uncertainty completely gone – but even as they did so, more and more of the troop arrived from the desert. There were so many thuds it seemed to be the midst of a meteor shower as more and more kangaroos surrounded them.
“Back off!” shouted one of the unicorns, feinting with his horn. “We were here first!”
“You joey-come-lately's? This is the land of our ancestors, mate, passed on from pouch to pouch since the dawn of time, and our sacred charge along with the red totem of the Ranga,” said the head kangaroo, bending down until it was almost face to face with the nearest ponies. “So hop it, before we kick your guts out through your ears.”
The glowing tips of the unicorn horns burned brighter. One or two took a step forwards. “I don't think you get it, big nose,” growled one. “You're already dead.”
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. We're taking what we want, and no clown-footed wallaby's gonna stop us."
"And why's that?"
"We can shoot, see. What you got?"
Daring ducked behind the nearby trunk as a kick lashed out for the unicorn. The tension snapped, as did the unicorn's spine.
A hailstorm of blasts shot for the kangaroos, only to meet empty air as the beasts blurred and vanished. Thuds struck the ground. More kicks, more screams, and more breaking bones followed. Some unicorn shots met their marks, and yelps of pain were drowned out by surprised bodies slamming into the ground.
Daring watched both sides with wonder for a moment. Then she remembered herself and spun around to flee.
She hadn’t gotten far when one of the kangaroos landed with a crash before her, all four limbs splayed and ready to pounce again. Next to its huge back feet, its forelimbs seemed slightly too short.
It snorted like a bull. Around them, kangaroos and unicorns rolled, leaped, and shot towards each other. Daring ducked back as it tried to seize her between its paws.
She gritted her teeth. Technically, she was a pacifist, but sometimes it just wasn’t a winning formula.
The holster shuddered before she pulled out the bent stick, and she threw the boomerang. It scythed through the air where the kangaroo had been, and then spun around in an arc before heading back to her.
Of course, throwing the thing was one lesson she’d learned from the Outback. What she’d missed was the lesson on how to catch it when it came back.
Daring quickly ducked in alarm as the boomerang sliced through the air and struck the kangaroo that had landed behind her. There was a stunned silence, and then the body hit the ground with a surprised look on its face. Daring picked up the boomerang and weighed it in her hooves before gripping it between her teeth and hurrying on.
The barrel was just up ahead, where it had struck the base of the trunk. All she had to do was wrench the lid off and get back the–
She slowed to let the screaming unicorn soar past, and then pounced on the barrel and flip the lid off. Her look of triumph faded to astonishment as some kind of black powder poured out onto the dirt. The boomerang fell from her mouth.
“This wasn’t in there,” she said quietly. Ignoring the blasts, thuds, and screams around her, Daring leaned down and sniffed the contents. Carefully, she scooped some in her hoof and, gingerly and with every sign of reservation, licked it. She spat it out at once.
“Gunpowder?” she said, and glanced around.
Two unicorns rolled past, locked in combat with a ‘roo. Just beyond them, she spotted a pair of ‘roos, somewhat apart from the battle, carrying a barrel each and converging on the shack. One or two stopped to plant them next to the surrounding trees.
“Oh, shoot...” she began.
A thunder of hooves caught her ears. Three unicorns were closing in, clearly having decided that one pegasus was an easier target than any one ‘roo.
“This day just gets better and better,” she muttered, and picked up the boomerang.
With a thrill, she noticed another barrel one tree along and galloped over to it. Blasts scorched the earth behind her. All three unicorns kept pace, leaping over fallen comrades. When she nearly had reached the barrel, Daring suddenly turned and swung the boomerang until it scythed for the pursuers.
One was promptly knocked back, unable to brake in time. The other two spared a puzzled glance for the boomerang, then for Daring. She shrugged.
Both of them glared and encircled her, horns glowing. Daring leaped up and out of range as both shots fired. Unfortunately, they did not hit each other by convenient accident. The boomerang scythed back and both unicorns ducked to avoid it.
A squirming met her ears and she glanced up to see the dark red underbelly of a spider. Daring suppressed an urge to scream. The webbing flexed and flared above her wing beats, and she quickly dived for the ground, landing smack on top of one of the unicorns.
To her surprise, a shot fired from his horn. It lanced the fellow bushranger and carried on, over the head of a fourth who had been sneaking up on her.
“Missed,” said the bleached pony, grinning expansively.
Behind the unicorn, the boomerang swung on its new arc and came back for the lone fighter. Daring watched it in fascination before she noticed the glowing horn aimed at her.
“Goodby–”
The boomerang smacked into the back of her attacker’s head. Even Daring winced. There was a long pause before the stunned and staring body decided that it was unconscious and hit the ground.
The boomerang clattered at her hooves. Daring carefully picked it up and examined it in case it snapped into two. She glanced at the bodies.
No, she decided. I'll never grow to like it. Why the heck would you build a weapon that could conk you on the head if it missed? It went back into its holster.
At the shack, the barrels were piled high around the clearing. Some distance away, a kangaroo was leaping through the trees for it, bearing a torch.
Those monsters, she thought. Where the hay are the police when you need ‘em?
With a strike of Daring's hoof, the barrel lid hit the ground and her snout reached inside hastily, knocking out the rotten apples. At a sound of more thuds, she came out with the journal clenched between her teeth. Despite the protests of her wings, she forced them out for one last flight and galloped.
Ominous thuds closed in behind her. It was hard to tell whether the unicorns were winning or the ‘roos, but she had a feeling the odds were going to get shifted pretty darn dramatically at any moment.
She glanced up at the endless canopy of webbing. Come on! Where’s the edge? Where’s the edge!?
The thuds were getting closer. She’d seen ‘roos out on a run once too often to know it would only need a few more bounds, and then no amount of speed would help her. She didn’t dare glance back. It would only slow her down. She could see them start to close in, out of the corner of her eye.
Daring yelled around the journal out of sheer frustration before the silk gave way and she shot upwards. Something grabbed her tail, but immediately slipped, and the beautiful rushing winds came to wash over her as she rose clear of the eucalypts. Everything was so bright. She’d forgotten how sheltered and shadowed the forest had really been.
Timber exploded behind her. Pieces of flaming wood shot through the canopy. Although she couldn’t feel the shockwave from so high up, Daring was knocked off kilter. It was simply the aural shock of hearing such a loud noise at precisely the wrong moment.
She hovered briefly to look down on the scene. Unicorns and ‘roos were still chasing and mobbing each other under the branches. Fresh Start’s shack was lost to a gigantic column of flaming red, which was dying down like magma giving way to plumes of ash and smoke. Several nearby trees were on fire, but it was mere decoration next to the black streaks surrounding the clearing.
From up high, the effect was of a charcoal drawing, like the ones she’d sometimes seen on hilltops. Giant pictures of things the local tribes had found worth showing to the skies, perhaps to show the gods they worshipped what they could do. This one looked like a blackened sun, with ashy rays streaming off it and a real flame at the centre. Bits of burning woodwork littered the ground. Other bits lay smoking nearby, but she couldn’t tell what they were.
A ‘roo hopped away from the bonfire, apparently ignoring the fighting, and shook his fist at the sky. A unicorn blasted one of his comrades behind him.
“An’ let this be a message to all you invadin’ tresspassers!” he shouted.
It was hard to believe, not long before, that she’d been worrying about a few books a while back. Daring suppressed a growl.
Don’t think about it. You're alive, you're in one piece, it's over. You got the journal. Finally, six months of trekking and you've got it.
All the same, that was desecration. An archaeologist couldn't see something like that and not get affected by it.
She looked away and realized the sun was now beating heavily on her shoulders. She simply hadn't noticed, being too entranced by the action below. A flap of her wings, and she was rising again. So long as she kept moving, kept herself focused on her flight, she’d be fine. Start's legacy wasn't entirely dead yet.
As she turned for the hills, however, she finally spotted the black shapes converging on the smoke.
About time, she thought irritably.
The smoke from the flare mingled with the fumes rising from the remains of the shack, both overshadowing the large expanse of forest from which shots and thuds could still be heard. A while later, thickset pegasi soared overhead, dressed from head to hoof in ruby red barding. As one, they closed in. There wasn’t much left to do anyway. Most of the suspects had essentially subdued each other.
From behind a rock, Daring peeped out cautiously to watch the DDF at work. They looked amply distracted. Then she sighed with relief, grinned, and tucked the journal under her helmet before flying off towards the sunset.
