Chapter 1 - Start From Under
Mountain of Canterlot, unspecified place and time
“Motherbucker…gh, ow…”
The place was in complete darkness, and I felt my face and body pressed against the ground; I fell while still in my armor, which probably saved me from a few more bruises on my body. My head was spinning and the cacophony of pained moans and shifting armor only served to increase the confusion. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and lay still, biting on my lower lip and trying to calm down until I could feel my hooves again. I was lying on my right wing, the bones screaming at me to move, but I forced myself to stay still until I was sure which way was “up”.
“Hey…” My voice was raspy and my throat was sore, as if a rock had been lodged there during the slide. I kept my eyes closed. “Is…everypony okay?” I asked, groaning in pain as I shifted my body to the side and touched the ground with all four of my hooves again.
A bunch of groans and taps answered, only a couple real words thrown in between. Well, they could make sounds; that was good. As the clamor of hooves and shifting armor started to die down, I slowly opened my eyes, panting.
There was complete darkness still, of course. Squinting, I could see the shapes of my comrades getting up in the dark, and I could see more or less how big the cave we ended up in was; about the size of a big house. There was not enough space to fly upwards, yet plenty of room horizontally . I looked again and tried to count; with the lack of light, I could make out about four or five silhouettes of ponies getting back on their hooves. My head was still spinning, so I closed my eyes again and focused on assessing whether or not I had broken anything.
Front-right hoof, front-left hoof, rear-left, rear-right….all moving. Left wing….stretching okay, could flap. My right wing was in a more painfull condition, a tingling sensation extending from the tip and running down the bone until it connected back to my body. I whimpered as I moved it a bit up and down, and when I tried to make a small circle it jerked painfully and got stuck at an awkward angle, the joint locking in place while the tip bended backwards. Some muscle had gotten out of place, but I could deal with it. I folded it back and took a deep breath. By then, the sounds had died down, which meant everypony had stood up, or fainted. I opened my eyes.
“Anypony with a horn,” I groaned. “Get us some light or we’ll have to go headbutting walls until this is over.”
A small spark flickered in the darkness, as if someone had hit two rocks together mid-air, before slowly coming back and expanding from the tip of the horn of our trusted scout, Starsnap. He was a typical Canterlot unicorn; young, white coat, and he looked like a porcelain figure even in armor.
Right now, however, he looked pretty solid, still putting on some light for the whole squad with what looked like a pretty bad bruise under his left eye. I tiredly grinned at him, nodding in approval.
“Okay,” I turned to look at the other members that got trapped. Aside from me and Starsnap, I saw one unicorn mare with a shiny green coat and a faint yellow mane. Beside her, a pegasis stallion, pure white and blonde like Starsnap, and an earth pony with a caramel coat and a ginger mane and tail. They looked pretty beat, but it was mostly around the faces and hooves, and I was relieved to see that there wasn’t anything immediately life-threatening; I saw that our second unicorn had a black eye, but it wasn't too bad. The golden armors of the day Royal Guard were full of scratches, but aside that, unharmed.
As for me, apart from the wing and a couple hits on the head, I seemed to be fine. My helmet was still firmly on my head, keeping my black mane in place and probably expecting a “thank you” for keeping the rocks out of my head; my brown coat was full of dirt but mostly unharmed. It didn’t make me feel much better.
“Well, this is fun; with one more we could’ve had a party,” I grimaced.
“Lieutenant…” Starsnap mumbled, looking at my less-than-happy expression. “What did just…”
“First things first, hold on, I’m thinking,” I cut him off and started to pace around the cave with a frown, taking in the now-visible surroundings.
The cave-in didn’t seal us like I initially thought; it had dropped us from a higher level. I looked up and saw a semi-collapsed ceiling that was hanging on just barely; a pile of hoofball-sized boulders had slid down from the huge crack and piled themselves up under it, forming a make-shift support for the bigger piece that would have broken down not long after with nothing to sustain it. We could climb it, but the thing was completely sealed and I wasn’t sure we had the strength to move the boulders.
My eyes took note of a deeper-than-normal pile near it, though, and I made a mental note to go back to that soon. I took a deep breath and turned back to face the ponies trapped with me for now and put on my command face.
“Okay, this is how it’s going to go down.” I said. “Chite, try to get some fix on that eye and then help out Starsnap; he got a facefull of rocks too.” My tone was pretty matter-of-fact, and in a moment Gale’s horn lit up with a small light as she approached Starsnap. “Gale Min, you’re going to help me out with some rocks. Monsoon, start shouting.”
“Wha?” Monsoon’s wing fluttered in confusion as the stark white pegasi looked at me in confusion. I frowned, clicking my tongue in annoyance, and extended my left wing to point at the crack full of boulders.
“Go up there and start shouting, see if anypony can hear you, because I have no idea how far we dropped. At least half the squad was with us so they HAVE to still be looking, do you get me?”
“Yes, Featherplume, ma’am!”
As he took off, I turned around, motioning for Gale to come with me. We trotted to the pile of rocks, but when he started to take aim for a good buck at the base of the pile, I shook my head and tapped my hoof on a small pile to the side, the ones that were deeper than ground-level. I heard a faint sound coming from it that told of a lower level.
“Can’t this cause another slide, ma’am?” Gale asked, a very uncertain look on his face. I could understand his concerns, and while I was not in the mood to chitchat, I felt like I owed him an explanation. I was the only one ranking higher than a normal guard there, after all.
Wait. I think they might all be rookies, actually…. I ran through their files on my head, but in between the dozens of names Shining Armor tried to have me and the other officers decorate, I couldn’t pinpoint anything more. I shook my head, leaving that for later, and looked the earth pony in the eyes, giving him my best grin.
“Nah, It’ll be okay. It’s too small to be holding anything important, and it’s not all that close to the main pile of rubble. We’re alert now, so I think we could escape if the whole mountain collapsed. Best of Equestria, remember?” I said, puffing out my chest and tapping with a hoof first into my chestplate, then into his. “Now nut up and help. We may be here a long time, and we’re not moving the main pile. I think we’d actually drop the whole mountain then, and the captain would get pissed if we dropped his quarters into the valley.”
I smirked as I saw a reassured smile, and then an amused grin, form on his face.
Yep, still got the touch I was feeling pretty good about myself; the situation might've been pretty crap, but getting ponies fired up had always been my ace in the hole. With a nod, Gale got to work pushing rocks out of the way; I also got to work. Near the ceiling, Monsoon was knocking on the solid part of the ceiling and shouting, while Starsnap and Chite treated their wounds and kept supplying us with much-needed light. They could hold out until help got there; too much light wasn't needed to illuminate the cave.
If they couldn’t… well, they damn well better be able to, because I was not moving randomly in the dark in that place.
“Okay, okay, enough!”
After two hours of pushing and lifting boulders, my voice was ragged and I could feel my coat dripping with sweat because of the work-out; I had underestimated the density of those boulders, and soon Gale and I were panting and trying to lift and push the rocks out of our way. Eventually I got the unicorns to help us levitate, but their magic wasn’t at full strength, both because I didn’t want them to spend their strength right off the bat, but also because of….Something else. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, but there was clearly something in those minerals that was having a bad vibe with the magic glow of Starsnap and Chite.
Gale sat on his haunches right on the spot, panting heavily while a very tired Monsoon flew down from the ceiling; his tongue was dry and mucky and he had sore throat. The only ones that seemed to be in good conditions were the unicorns. The only thing preventing me from hating them for not being tired was the fact that I was in charge; it was also my own fault.
I lay on the ground to catch my breath for a moment, admiring our work of hours alongside them. A diagonally-descending hole was in the ground. I was right, too; it was a passageway to a lower level, something that looked more like a giant underground crack than a tunnel.
“I couldn’t hear a thing.” Monsoon said, sore and speaking in a very faint tone. “Ma’am, I think we are not going to be heard anytime soon, either.”
“Fan-tucking-bastic.” I groaned. “Snap, Chite, you'd better tell me you have been cracking those pointy heads of yours this whole time before I decide to.”
The look Starsnap gave me had almost made me feel bad; usually I was not so hardass, but that was a special situation. Being underground made me feel uneasy, I realized; my wings were aching beyond simple pain. While I was busy telling my instincts to suck it up and can it, Chite spoke in a very meek tone as all five gathered around to discuss the next step.
“We couldn’t figure much out.” She said, slowly. She paused, then after a moment, she continued. “We just went, again, through what we knew, ma’am. I wasn’t right in the center of the slide when it happened, so I could observe it before I lost my balance.”
“And I think I can recognize why our magic isn’t working fully on those rocks, and maybe I can determine what caused the slide, ma’am.” Starsnap added. I ruffled my wings a bit, tucking them into a more comfortable position, and nodded. Lowering my head, I put a hoof on the edge and pushed my helmet off my head. Letting it rest on the ground, I stood up again and looked at our unicorns.
“Okay, you bunch of fillies, we’re on a mission now.” I said, earning glances from all four of them. A moment before they had been full of tension, but now it was like I was holding it all in my hooves. I grinned.
“We got separated from the main squad, and this is unknown area, and the reason itself was unknown. Which means, we are in danger alert.” I paced around the cave for a moment. “You’re all under me, and I will NOT let Armor get on my flank for letting any of you get harmed on my first important task as a Lieutenant. Also, waiting is not much of an option here.” I looked to the crack with a critical look. “We don’t know if that will slide or not, so we gotta move. And once we’re out of this rock” I turned back to the four of them. “We’re going to get a hell of a load of cider.”
“Well then.” I turned back to our unicorns. “Report in, let’s hear how this whole mess happened.”
