Chapter 1. Red the wise.
Five remains.
We are only five left.
The king sent out fifty, now it is just us.
Red, Blue, Green, Black and young Skittles.
These are us. Or them rather. Who am I? I will leave that out of the picture for now. Please, just listen to the story..
Thirsty. Hungry. Tired. Pheonix. The only four things that went through the minds of the young adults and child.
They had been wandering this desert for two week's straight now, without any break from the burning sand and freezing nights. They had stopped taking night-shifts after just three nights, realizing nothing would move in such temperature, and they all needed to cuddle in a pile to keep what little heat they could save.
The only thing that drove these ponies forward was their goal.
Their one reason, their promise and purpose.
Red shouted to the others behind her that it was time to put up camp, and even though the wind was strong, she could imagine the regular sighs of relief from her team. Just behind the red-maned pony slumped a filly into the sand out of exhaustion. The weather and heat took it's toll on them all, but for Skittles it was worse. She was still barely 10...
"Are you well, dear?" Red bent down next to the multi-coloured, sandy mane of the child, shielding her from the wind with her own body.
"Thirsty..." Was all the young filly could muster, looking whimpy and broken, but smiled a little still.
"Blue has it. Come." The sentences were kept short as always. There was never much talk, there was little to talk of.
Blue, who was second oldest to Red and the muscles of the team, dumped the giant and heavy saddlebags into the sand, where Green and Black quickly got to work on their lone tent. The twins worked with trained efficiency, and seemed to share some kind of mental bond. They could read another perfectly and cooperate both in and outside battle with no means of speech or orders, and still pull of agile and nimble stunts.
Due to the weather, the tent took five minutes to raise, as it kept blowing down. Not the twins best time, but no-one complained. They all gathered inside the cramped pyramid-shaped piece of brown, nagged and many times repaired cloth.
Food was served. Dried grass and a scope of water. They were running short on both, but no-one said anything.
They had pulled through worse...
Night shortly fell, and the tired ponies were all huddled in a pile for heat. The temperatures dropped like a stone, and they needed it. Not a word had been uttered. They ate, they drank, they got some rest, they got some sleep.
As it was every day. With nothing else to think of, one stops to think and just acts on training and instinct.
Red, however, was always thinking. Just rarely spoke, as it filled little purpose. She was always awake for a while when the others slept. She was thinking back. Remembering. Blaming herself for every loss she experienced. Faulty or not, able to prevent it or not, she always blamed herself. It was HER job to keep her team alive until the job was done.
As her eyes finally grew shut out of tempting slumber, she drifted into her empty sleep. There was no dreams for any of them. Just silent rest until the next day of endless marching.
It took the crew of earth-ponies another three days to finally reach the end of the desert. The sand had the last day started to grow less deep and became easier to walk on. Then they had started seeing more and more birds. And finally the ocean the day after. No commands were needed, they all dropped what cargo and bags, what weapons and armour they carried and darted into the salty water.
It was undrinkable, but one floated with amazing ease in the ocean and the refreshing feeling was beyond what any could have wished for. Red did not wish to spoil the now rather chipper and restored morale, and she decided that they would stay here for the next two days to rest and possibly gather supplies, then follow the coast-line.
So for the next two days, the crew played in the water, dove and collected seaweed for drying, gathered driftwood and anything else of value they could locate. The sea-water was too salty to drink, but by boiling it in a special pot and steam-gathering lid, they managed to resupply their water fairly well during the hold. And the refreshing taste of seaweed was stunning to the dried grass!
They spent four days walking along the coast-line. It was a blissful experience compared to the past weeks. The water made the sand almost sturdy to walk on, compared to the desert. The wind here was not harsh and filled with sand, it was pleasantly cool and carried a refreshing scent of salt. Even the occasional calls of the seagulls was like music! Walking, listening, feeling and all enjoying it, they finally reached something new!
The ocean to the right and the desert to the left, and in front of them towered a jungle. They had seen saplings and sprouts randomly in the sand the closer they came, and the plant life had become thicker and more mature. They had entered into the constantly growing borders of this green, lush garden.
A feast. They had made a fire on the beach, and were eating like kings! The jungle offered such a wide variety of plants to eat! Leaves, flowers, fruits, roots and barks with flavours! Even the grass was fine! The evening and a bit into the night was spent just dancing, laughing over nothing and enjoying being alive! What few songs they knew were sung over and over again, what storied had not been told enough to make ears fall off were told once more!
The next day the team, with spirits higher than anypony could remember, they all gathered supplies. Fruit was collected, sliced and left to dry on raised strings in the hot sun and salty wind. Blue even managed to squeeze drinkable water out of some kind of nearby cacti! Red felt pride and joy rise by the moment in her chest.
Her crew, the closest thing she had to a family, were all happy. It did not take much to make soldiers happy, fresh food and decent terrain. And she knew they all needed it for the trek ahead, passing through a jungle would not be all too easy.
If she only had known...
9 days later.
Skittles was curled up against Red, who sat outside the tent on the sandy beach. The sun had since long gone down, but the heat of the water carried by the wind made it fine to stay out. The female softly stroke the filly's mane. It had taken her hours to calm down and stop crying. Even though Red felt like doing nothing else herself. She still found bloodstains.
That night she was tormented. The last week and a half rushed through her mind again and again, her subconsciousness punishing her for the failure! It started out good, they had entered the jungle and carved a way through.
They all were armed with swords, even though they had grown somewhat dull over the many years of use and the many ponies who had used them.
The food had been great. They had been able to snack at any time they wanted, and even found a pool of spring water!
They restored their water tank fully and drank as much they could muster from the pool before moving on.
First day was fine. Second was also good. On the third, the ponies had lost some of their chipper mood due to the plants and constant hacking away on vines, roots and shrubberies. There was little progress made.
But the endless supply of fresh food kept them at a generally fair mood. No animals had been sighted part from some birds, and no traces of any ground of tree-dwellers had been found yet either. So they still had no night-shifts.
And so the days went on. They cut, they walked, they cut, they walked. And just as they started hearing the sound of the ocean again, meaning that they had reached the other side, catastrophe struck.
Green suddenly screamed in agony. There had been cursing and grumbling over various bug-bites the past days, but this sent them all into battle-stances. Green had walked last in the line, and was now hovering above ground, held up by a enormous serpent! The giant snake held their friend with a thick coil around his neck, lifting him there, and even from a distance one could see the fangs that pierced through the pony's front and back torso from the bite.
Black was closest and darted to his brothers aid, sword held firmly with his back-teeth as he leapt to cut at the monster.
He landed a strike, causing the serpent to loose it's bite and hiss in pain. As the fangs left the body of the pony, he groaned and blood began to pour. Black was now hold occupied fencing with the hardened tail-tip of the serpent, which it used to try and fend of the pest.
Blue charged, leaping against his foe with his entire weight and strength behind his blade, but the serpent had learned, and quickly whipped it's tail from Black and struck blue in the side, sending the airborne pony flying to the side and crashing harshly in the foil and blushes. Red had drawn her blade as well, but had Skittles to protect.
The young filly was scared senseless of the giant predator, seeing her friend bleeding badly and the other thrown away!
Red snarled as she saw Black taking a strong hit to the side as well, and tumble to the ground. She rushed as she noticed that the serpent seemed confident now, as it began coiling up Green..
This part of her dream, her memory, was fussy and filled with images of previous losses. Images she had seen in her panic to save Green. She had just managed to fence off the tail of the serpent and reach for him, only to see his face disappear into the coils, and rapid number of cracks and pops of bones was heard. As well as a wheeze as Green's air was pressed from his dead lungs...
Red had been forced to flee. She ran back to Skittles, lifted her by her tail and just ran. She did not stop until she got out of the jungle, where she dropped skittles with a quick order of safety, before running back into the jungle to fetch Blue and Black! She was not to loose anypony else today!!
Blue had broken a rib or two from the heavy impact, and was bleeding all over from bruises and cuts caused by the many bushes and branches he passed through during the crash. He had located Black and dragged the passed-out pony to safety when Red found both of them. She helped her injured, blue-maned friend to carry Black more quickly out of the jungle and to the beach on the other side, where a panicked and frightened Skittles had hidden in the sand.
Red snapped out of her sleep, it had only been a few minutes, yet it felt like it might as well have been days. She did not trust herself with anything right now. Her best friend was having trouble breathing with broken ribs, her quickest hooves was still unconscious with a possibility of skull-fracture, and in her lap slept a still-sobbing filly who just witnessed yet another of her family getting killed...
Red did not allow herself to cry. There was many things she had often wished to do. Scream in terror, cry in sorrow, loose herself in moments and be happy. She could not. Distractions and poor attention in a leader made situations like this...
Only four left... Fifty sent, seventy dead, four alive.... She closed her eyes so hard it cramped, she would not cry...
She had promised her parents to never cry when she took over their role as leader for this mission. She would not fail where they and their parents, the original soldiers, had. The king had trusted THEM to find the phoenix.. they had too!!