Waning Crescent

What a way to earn a permission. That, strangely, was the only thing he could think of. Others had told him that he was too rigid, that it wouldn't hurt to take a break once in a while, but he, as the typical hidebound he was, hadn't listened… At least not before.

     Now, as the sun was starting to set upon the mountains, and the cold of the night was starting to soak through the armor, his initial disposition to fulfill his duty no matter what was starting to dwindle. But it wasn't that he hadn't experienced that sensation before, or that his will to serve would be starting to hinder. Moral was something wayward when it came to the needs of the body, but his will had learned to offset it a while ago. No, it wasn't anything about that at all. Just a hunch, a deaf sensation that had accompanied him since he rose up from bed, and that seemed to try to communicate to his conscience, with little to no success, that something this day was terribly wrong.

     And perhaps it wouldn't be mistaken.

"We're here" announced a voice.

    The sound breached through his ears, and shook his skull of thoughts in the blink of an eye. The stone canyon around them then came to his eyes once more, and the echoes of his colts moving forward while they resonated in the walls. The exposition to the world once again made him suddenly snap, and without thinking, his voice took command.

"Troop halt!"

     Adorjan stopped at his own order, and the column of guards at his back did it too. The stomping of fifty pairs of hoofs sounded at unison to mark the stand firm position. Adorjan did it as well, just because of custom, but returned to his more relaxed position in a second. Damn focus! He scolded himself. I must be loosing my mind in this place. He shook his head. He was about to continue when his companion spoke to him, apparently not ignorant of his self-acting reaction.

"Old habits die hard don't they?" Adorjan didn't answer, but his companion didn't yield. "I trust that nothing's troubling your mind, colonel?"

     Beside him, clad in the officer armor of the Crystal Empire, Shining Armor had been walking alongside him since they'd left the camp, as he'd always been doing since the'd left the empire. Now it wasn't that Adorjan didn't like the joy of company now and then, but if there were something that the staff officer distasted was the unnecessary chatting, specially during a mission.

     Adorjan tried to deny the fact that he had being spoken to, but in the end he had to acknowledge it. Just as he had done for the last five days.

"Nothing to be worried, my prince" he responded. "It's just an old habit, as you said."

"M-hmm…" Shining Armor nodded slightly, but didn't sound convinced. "Now I'm not familiar with the new styles of commanding of the Royal Guard, but there's no need to be so formal. I know nervousness when I see it."

     Adorjan took a long breath. The eye of a captain, yes?

"I'm not allowed to complain about my frame of mind" he sentenced as he glanced at him. "As long as I'm able to fulfill my duty have the certainty that I will."

     That las part sounded more like a scorning than a assurance. Shining took a step back.

"Sorry, colonel, I didn't mean to question your skill" he excused. "But in the light of the events I have to wonder if the details of the mission could've have any negative effect in our troop."

     Adorjan turned to where his soldiers were waiting for them. The Royal Guards were standing in a two row formation. None of them were moving any muscle.

"Anyone feeling like changing your mind?" he asked, but with no response. "Good, because if you are, now's your only chance!" still no response. Adorjan then turned to Shining. "See, my prince? We're fine. This lads have all served under my command. I know what they are capable of."

     …Or at least the non-greeny half.

"Hmm…" Shining rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a second, then shrugged. "Then I guess I'll trust your judgement, colonel."

     Ah, at freaking last!

"Thank you, my prince" he bowed a little, then faced front again. "Hey, did you say it's here at last?" he asked to their guide, who was several steps away.

     In front of them, the figure of the guide that they had paid to lead the way, a grey earth mare with a rudimentary musket at her back, as rudimentary as her own clothing, was standing at the top of what surely was the final slope, just above the heads of the standing troop that she had been moving throughout the mountain the last two days.

"It is here" the mare said with her characteristics accent, a hint of her highland idiom. "Come and see."

     Shining and Adorjan closed by, peeking over the edge of the cliff where the mare was standing into the barren moors that lied beyond. There, after a fall of at least a hundred feet, the landscape of mountains was interrupted, broken in half by the presence of a large valley that evolved through the land like a sea against the higher ground. A seemingly endless track of dirt where the only thing that shone under the dying light of the sun were hills and hills of thick, blackened, treetops; a brushwood so dense that not even the light was capable of tearing through to see the real floor; the forbidden region; the Dark Woods… And the destination of the troop of guardscolts.

     Both Adorjan and Shining stared into the depths of the nothingness with wary eyes. That weird feeling of the colonel increasing with every inch his gaze traveled over the homogeneous hassock of branches and shadows beyond recognition. At his side he couldn't tell, but most probably the prince were having a similar reaction. Like if something were trying to warn them not to come down.

"Here lies the end of civilization" whispered Adorjan. "…The last unclaimed known track of land."

"So, is this it?" asked Shining, stepping away from the edge and turning to the mare. "Is this the entrance?"

     The guide shook her head.

"This is only the pathway. The road down is following the rock wall. It will take you to the arch."

"Then why don't you take us there?" asked Adorjan retrieving his eyes from the edge as well.

     The mare instantly evaded his look, and vividly turned to the valley, ears risen in alert, but dismissed it after a second. Shining Armor didn't look so bemused, but Adorjan could notice something before she broke away. A feeling that had almost slipped his mind, even if she tried to hide it: fear.

"I told the old one" she said without turning. "And I am telling you: This is as far as I go. If you want to go down the Dark Woods is under your own risk."

     Adorjand didn't say anything else, for if the past days of this journey had taught him something was that it hadn't any point in arguing the locals to get near this forbidden region, not even by the promise of easy money. All of them were equally scared, and all of them hated Equestrian authority enough not to help them. Dammit, old colt! He had exclaimed once and another time every moment like this. Of all the places of the world why did you had to get lost in this one?

     But Shining Armor, on his way, apparently hadn't have enough negatives.

"I don't see why coming here is such a bad thing. I've taken strolls int he Everfree back when I was a rookie and I came out just fine! This shouldn't be much different…"

     This made Adorjan roll his eyes, but the mare immediately closed her distance to the two of them, facing both with a scolding look fixed upon her eyes.

"Be careful with your words, Equestrian! This is not just a feral region like the ones you have!" both stallions were suddenly taken aback by her, and behind them, the same effect was held in the troop, who instinctually reached for their arms. It wasn't the violence of the reaction, or even if she didn't intended to sound threatening, but nopony could deny that there was something in her words that was worrying. "This is the cursed moorland, and if you were any less foolish you would turn around and leave now!"

     Words of concern rose within the ranks of the guards at his back, but those were only from the unexperienced ones. The most veteran, those who had shared with the colonel a piece of Tartarus, remained silent. A trait that only seemed to recover Adorjan's stumbling initial determination.

"Thank you for the advice, but our minds haven't changed" he declared roundly. "We have a mission, and if we have to get to this hellhole to get it done, so be it."

     The mare stood back for a second, and though she remained unshaken, she lowered her head briefly; somewhat a regretful gesture, for what Adorjan could recall.

"Then I pity your lives, Equestrian, and I'll pray to Penhwa for your souls."

     Adorjan nodded in response. Perhaps he would never understand the northern customs, but at least, in all his years of dealing with them, he had learned to thank somepony's concern.

"I don't get it" put in Shining. "What is so wrong about this place that you folk don't want to come near it?"

     This earned a frustration sigh from the guide, and a bemused look from Adorjan. Shining felt both as if they'd be scolding him by equal, and took another step back.

"What? I'm only curious…" he said defensively.

"It's not the place what drives us away, Equestrian, do not be mistaken" the mare answered grimly. "We have learned long before you arrived to fear the secrets of this land, and we will continue to do so as long as no order is casted out to these dark places of the world" she turned her back to them once more and stared into the black clump of treetops as she recited. "Down there is where no light has ever breached. The trees they only hide an unforgiving darkness that devours the land, all that is holy, all where we belong. Where swamps plagued with black waters have no end, and unspeakable nightmares roam the shadowed moors that only once the moon can see, there will forever lie the children of the lost, and of the dammed…"

     She turned back again to find all eyes fixed on her. Shining and Adorjan were fully pending on her words with grim fascination, and behind them even the hardened Royal Guards had leaned forward in hopes of listening.

"Who?" asked Adorjan, perhaps in the name of all his companions, but somehow not feeling well about the possible answer either.

     The guide took another breath.

"Legends cannot be mistaken, but the eyes cannot tell what lies beyond the reconnaissance of light" she sentenced. "I do not know what are you going to find down there, for I have never gone there myself, but rest assure that it is not going to be good" she turned again briefly, again like if she'd heard something. When she looked back at them her face had turned into a mask of concern and fear altogether in one expression. "Stories tell of creatures, more feral than any beast. Horned monsters that haunt these barrens in the dark. They are the stalkers of the night, the people of shadow, the… Mohan" she almost spitted that word. "And of those who venture into their land… None have returned."

     Like if something had heard them, from above a cold wind flew and rocked lightly the steams of the trees, making them move with some sort of arcane animation. The whole forest danced for a moment at the power of an unintelligible message, casted by an invisible and unnatural force. A loud whisper rose to the heights of branches at bending and became a howling call into the mountain rock. The last lament of the sun that was about to hide behind the horizon.

     It was hard to tell, but something indefinite was following that darkness. Something awkward, that resembled a feeling of being watched. Like if… something were waiting for them down there.

     Both Adorjan and Shining shared a look between each other, and even if they didn't tell, for a moment the same shiver ran down their spines with icy claws. Adorjan didn't dare to look back, but he could tell somehow that the state of the troop wasn't any better.

"Thank you for your… advise, again" Shining ventured to break the ice before that sensation could grow any larger within them. "But I guess that if you're not coming, then here's where we part ways."

"Indeed" the mare nodded as she began to find her way out. "I would wish you a safe travel into the darkness, but that would be naive of me."

"We greet your good wishes anyway" said Adorjan before she passed him. "And hope that you'll be here tomorrow."

     The mare laughed briefly, something between mockery and sympathetic grieving.

"Hope is foolish here" she said as she got passed them. "I will just pray that you can find a good spot to die…"

     And with that she went away, walking through the lines of soldiers that watched her depart until her figure got lost in the black of the glens beyond the rock wall that had the sight to that shadowy landscape. Adorjan and Shining followed too, but couldn't do nothing as, as soon as this happened, something seemed to befall over the consciousness of the troop. A sensation of being unprotected against an unspeakable terror that the presence of the mare had been keeping at bay for all the way home, and that now was free to torment them with the prospect of the uncertainty for what they'd find from that point on.

"Well, no time to waste here" Adorjan broke the silence as he addressed the troop. "Come on lads, we still have a geezer to collect!"

     The troop chorused their approval and began to move, all forming to fit into the narrow way that the mare had pointed them. The stairway into the depths of the brushwood, where the unforgiving darkness awaited.

     Adorjan lead the way, testing with his hooves any possible loose stone or slippery boulder that could hinder their travel down their destiny. The rocky ground at first wasn't that difficult to traverse, but as the soil began to stoop his steps began to become more cautious. He, again, never turned back, for he knew that the rest of the party was doing exactly the same, completely focused on his every movement.

     …Well, at least most of it.

"Hey, colonel…" spoke Shining at his back, since they had to descend in a single line. "Do you think that what that mare said is true, or was she just trying to scare us away?"

     Damn, more talking.

"I don't know, my prince, and I wouldn't want to find out" he answered without taking eyes away from his step. "...I sincerely hope it's the last, though."

"Yeah, me too" Shining stepped right over the same stone Adorjan had passed a moment before, but nothing in his voice resembled Adorjan to something near confidence about that statement. "…But what if it's true?"

"Excuse me?" Adorjan almost lost grip on the road, but recovered quickly.

"You know" followed Shining, evading the loose stone that almost had made him trip. "What if what the mare said is true, and we're heading for a total fray?"

     Adorjan kept silent. He despised the idea, even if it really was a possibility. Somehow… Something was telling him no to think about it.

"If its true" he mumbled. "If what she said wasn't made to chill us out of here, then I guess that there won't be the need to look for Pen Pusher."

     Shining puzzled.

"Why's that?"

     Adorjan then turned, his yellow eyes as shadowy as his real state of mind.

"Because then probably they'll find us first, my prince. Sooner than we know."