Chapters 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."
Nothing more was said in what took for the entire cohort to descend completely. The pathway into the brushwood didn't get any easier, nor difficult, always filled with those treacherous stones, and fake steps that threatened to toss the unwary into the blackness, that was ever closing by. Strange, had thought Adorjan for a moment. That even though the rock wall were an indicator of how close they were to the ground, it couldn't be seen remotely. Everything was covered in shades. Like if there weren't really anything down there. An unforgiving darkness that devours the land…
Adorjan shook his head. Nonsense! Sure, it was creepy down here, but nothing else to be scared about. Dreadful places have he seen in his service with the Royal Guard, and this one was no exception. Soon this will only be another sour experience, he though, just that… Another day far from pretty.
The road continued. The sun that had threatened to lower completely for a while finally set behind the hills, its mighty splendor slowly fading behind the mantle of the earth. In perfect succession the night began to take over, tainting the land with its characteristic colors, and the moon rose by the power of the sky, that by these extensions didn't obey the will of the Princesses, bringing a horned vision above their heads. Everything then were casted under a light of blue and silver, even the ponies that vegan to venture into the depths of the nothingness.
Adorjan made halt after the stony slope ended and waited for the rest of the troop to get down there. It didn't take long before their steps had guided them under the shadow of the tallest trees, and before they know it they had already into what could be considered as a narrow glade, below a vaulted ceiling of tangled branches. The moon was still visible, though, but the stars and the rest of the light had faded into a world of obscureness that nothing else could breach. Just that horned moon above, hanging like a bowl ready for nightmares to be poured in.
The land below wasn't any better, all plugged into an unnatural mist that lurked the ground, preventing curious eyes to wonder farther than one's knees. Around, everything that wasn't a brushwood, majorly constituted of brambles or dry shrubberies, was covered in a shadow so thick that only the light of the moon could breach through, tainting the ethereal substance around them with a spectral radiance. There were no animals in the night, nor the flapping of wings, or the whisper of crickets. Everything was silent, and still. Too peaceful to be reassuring.
Adorjan walked ahead of his colts as they spread through, his breath pushing more steam into the ghostly light of the night queen from his nostrils. On the edges of the road figures and forms crawled with an unknown animation, giving the imagination a fertile ground to wonder. He tried to spy on the verge of the road, but couldn't see nothing beyond a couple of feet away. Everything was so concealed under its mantle of black that not even his eyes were capable of recon what was in front of him, just those strange forms and suppositions of movement. A trick of shadows, he calmed himself, dismissing the increasing sensation of paranoia that had started to stalk below his thoughts. How are we supposed to be able to find Pusher in this place?
"Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it" Shining Armor suddenly spoke behind him. Adorjan immediately jumped around an readied his horn for battle, taken by surprise. "Hey calm down its me!" Shining took a step back, instinctively rising his guard as well. "I just wanted to know how are you doing, thats all."
Adorjan took a second, but dropped his stance after that. "Its nothing" he sighed, loosening the expression on his face as well. "This place is getting on my good side, thats all."
"I know you there…" he took out his helmet and scratched the back of his neck nervously. "Seems like the warnings of the mare weren't all jiverish. This place is sickening."
"…And we haven't even entered yet" he turned to the troop, that had already been displayed in the forest gap. "Okay lads, lets get to work! We still have to find the entrance to this hellish place, so split up. Unicorns, make groups of five, provide illumination. Don't spread too far, pegasus, use your muskets to provide cover, and the rest of you if you got a shield you better hold on to it, 'cause this is gonna be a long night…"
The troop got to it at the instant, and started to wander deeper into the woods. Adorjan oversaw the movements of the guards for a moment before turning to Shining at his side, the stallion already clad into his armor again and fastening the straps of his broad shield to his foreleg.
"Shall we move, colonel?" he said when he was ready.
Adorjan nodded and both began to wander, the two of them directing the light beams of their horns from one direction to another. Around them the searching parties communicated their findings to one another, and the flickering of their personal spotlights were being interrupted by the presence of branches and tree trunks, that revealed anything amidst them but how abrupt was the layer of the place, aside from one or another boulder from where one could get an advantageous view of the terrain… Or spy on them without being noticed.
"Anything of interest?" Adrojan asked out loud, but only to get what few negatives he could understand, much to his discontent. Oh, patience, why did you have to be so futile? "Come on, boys, if no one finds that damn gate we're not going to get out of here any sooner!" Affirmatives came from every group, that more than being heard, could be seen through the night because of the separate shines across the trees.
"No luck here either" said Shining too as he scanned his section of the forest. "I don't think we're gonna learn anything without a panoramic view of the place."
"Hmm…" Adorjan casted his sight to the heights, where the only thing that could break through was the haunting presence of the moon. "Well, good luck with calling an air recon."
"It was just an idea" he shrugged. "No harm done there."
"No" he sighed as he continued moving. "At least it could be worse."
Shining stopped. "What do you mean?"
Adorjan didn't turn to speak, nor did he stop. "Well, because I'm no cartographer or geologist, but normally the presence of such large boulders would announce the existence of a cli-"
According to his words suddenly the ground gave way beneath his hooves, and the mist swallowed his figure in less than a second. Adorjan realized too late that the truth of his supposition had been nothing less that accurate to their situation as his gravity center pulled the rest of his body inevitably towards the void, covering him in ethereal whiteness. Behind his fall he could hear the worry screams of Shining Armor, but couldn't listen too long the calling, for before he could know he had hit the ground again and was rolling uncontrollably through a keen slope, hitting everything in his path and dragging dirt, dead leaves, and who knows what else along as they got stuck in his armor plates.
Adorjan rolled and rolled uncontrollably until he stopped doing it, finally reached the bottom of the precipice. The world was spinning around his eyes, and every muscle of his body ached like if he had passed through a meat grinder. Far worse, he could feel all the filth that had entered through his plates and now was scraping his skin with every movement he made. He could hear the screams of his colts, calling for him, but somehow he didn't care. At least not as much as checking himself for anything worse than scratches and bruises.
Luckily there wasn't such thing.
"Colonel!" he heard Shining Armor. "Answer me! Are you alright!?"
Adorjan stood up, and had to cough filth and dirt to answer. "I'm fine, my prince" he responded to the light in the heights. "Just a little trip, that's all!"
"Good, I'm glad to hear that" the light flickered for a moment, perhaps as a sign of Shining's head turning briefly. "Hold it there, we're coming to get you."
"Well, it's not like I'm going anywhere" Adorjan muttered as he turned around and began to wander, his horn lighted once again, turning into every direction his eyes rolled to. From left to right, but the front. "Damn forest… Damn mist… If it were for me you could all go bu-" when suddenly, just as he had fallen off that glade, something stomped against him. "Agh, 'Tia dammit!" he immediately stepped back, tottering as his head rung inside his helmet like a bell. "What the hay is wrong with this place!? You putrid, stinking-"
Adorjan abrutply paused his cursing, for he had backed away enough to identify whatever was that he had stumbled upon, and in a minute he had already forgot the incident. For a moment such was his impression that he even dismissed the arousing voices at his back.
"Colonel!" exclaimed Shining Armor as he lead the way to the rest of the troop. "Colonel, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, my prince…" he responded, still bemused. "Form to advance."
"What?" Shining winced, confused.
"You heard…" he insisted. "Battle stations."
Shining stepped beside him, and was about to ask further when he saw it too and paused. In fact, more or less at the same time, all the troop caught with their eyes the same vision that had met Adorjan's moments ago and went equally dumbstruck.
Now there could be a million different explanations to that sight, but beginning to truly describe the arch was a task that required for one to step aside its macabre majesty that it really was. Thirty feet tall, the marble columns that held the bone white fascia were half swallowed by vines and other climbing plants, partially hiding the repulse with which its makers should have done it, for placed in the rock were bas-relief of figures of age so old that their shapes were almost unrecognizable. A mayhem of composition that surely a long time ago should be more terrible than it ought now, and of insinuations so horrid that both caused terror and grief to begin to understand half of the things they meant to represent.
Standing at the top of the structure, crowning two swirls of chaotically crafted visions, was the embodied sight of a majestic and intimidating bust, the shape of what surely couldn't be no other than a demon, for what its horns suggested, with arms wide opened and surrounded by a sea of nerve-racking skulls as they all smiled forward, reveling in the destruction and death around him. But for the spectators not only the presence of the dreadful creature was enough to awe them. It were the shapes and composition of those craniums what made the vision so terribly strong. Some resembled lesser animals, such as canines or magnified rodents, but most of them were terribly accurate to equine physiology… And just too many resembled to pony shape.
Surrounded with the forest and the dreary mist that opened gate stood like a vision even grimmer than the prospect of what would it keep in the land beyond it. An undying will of those who had lost their souls to the darkness that awaited, and even if half of those guardscolts had tasted a piece of Tartarus, somehow the feeling of dread that staring into the structure caused suggested that Tartarus itself wouldn't be such a bad place after all.
"Holy Celestia protect us…" Shining Armor mumbled as he blinked for the first time ever since he had set eyes in that architectonic horror. "Holy Luna guard our night."
"…May we never go astray from your sun" continued Adorjan, not any better. "And keep us from the darkness' blight."
Nothing went better after that, not even by mistake. The shadows of the place didn't yield an inch after the entrance, and the oppressive sensation that the rooftop of branches gave just became even more claustrophobic, bringing rampaging images across the tree trunk's colonnade for the corner of the unwary eyes to see.The terrain didn't stabilize further, still presenting gigantic boulders and one slope after another now and then, but at least the fog started to diminish, which in convention with the horned moonlight made it able to foretell a couple of yards away, before the natural aura of the place swallowed everything in the air. The sensation of being watched, if it hand't grew stronger before, was now an ever present feeling, stalking through the places that were away from sight, moving like a ghost around the troop of guardscolts that were opening path through the brushwood, just waiting for its maddening chance to strike.
At the front of the troop, opening path almost by their own, Adorjan and Shining were leading the way into the unknown. With their shields risen and their spears ready, the two leaders were guiding with the example, however much as they wanted to be at the back. Adorjan had to recognize that, even if Shining wouldn't be as martial as any of his officers, he wasn't any less valiant. He had been captain of the Canterlot Royal Guard after all, and that, as far as he knew, wasn't a title that somepony could earn just by standing firm and saluting. It almost made it worth the annoyance of traveling with him.
His guardscolts, on the other side, were a different issue. Although most of them were proven enough to hide it, the ones that did let the nervousness show were a bad indicator as to what degree the general morale were. Adorjan didn't want to doubt his colts, but sometimes he had to turn just to fight the necessity to reassure himself that all of them were really at his back. They won't go anywhere, he repeated every time he did so. It's not like if we'd have anywhere to go here.
Nowhere to hide…
"Wait!" Shining suddenly spoke as he rose up his guard. "Movement, up ahead!"
Immediately all the troop stopped, and even if Adorjan didn't ordered, assumed position for frontal assault. Muskets rose in the flanks, and all legs held for a second tighter to their arms. Adorjan assumed guard stance, and beside him Shining had already took his spear and had it ready.
As he had said, something in the from started to move, and through the shaking of bushes and brambles started to come their way.
"Hold it, boys" said Adorjan, but it didn't help. That tension could not be eased.
More movement. A single trace was heading in their direction without any hesitation or doubt. Colts grabbed even tighter their weapons, starting some of them to tremble as their phalanx hardened its stance, and hooves began to itch in the musket's triggers. Whatever it was in the brushwood was swiftly opening way to them, ever closing by. Adorjan lit up his horn and prepared to direct the flashlight to whatever it was. His lance was ready and his sword clamored for action. The creature was almost nigh. Adorjan strengthen his muscles. He would stand against anything, regardless of how terrible it we-
"Stop!" Adorjan immediately ordered as the creature jumped into his light. "Hold you fire, its just a bunny! Just a bunny…"
Just as the colonel said, the aforementioned creature jumped to the fore, standing unamazed before the yellow light of the unicorn and, just as it came, it went away. The troop stood firm as the critter departed, shaking more bushes in its way, and eased themselves a moment later, releasing a generalized sigh of relief.
"Dammit!" Adorjan muttered as he rubbed the bridge of his nuzzle anxiously.
"Something wrong?" asked Shining, trying in vain to ease the atmosphere.
"Bucking rodents…" he cursed.
Shining chuckled. "Didn't thought the unspeakable nightmares, would be so bad huh? …I liked his horns, though."
Adorjan didn't answered, but smiled sideways instead. It wasn't that he didn't wanted to beat him for that, but at least he could get the part where it was supposed to be funny, even if it wasn't. Anything was better in those circumstances.
Shining returned the smile, and looked like he was about to continue when something prevented him from doing so, his ears risen in alert. Adorjan didn't need to speak again, nor to communicate to the troop, for he'd heard it too. Suddenly all the colts froze in terror, and a tremor traveled through their muscles as their minds began to acknowledge what was the reality around them. Unexpectedly, like an arrow through the air, the sound had stormed their ears, traveled through their minds, and burned down their hearts with the unmistakable beat of a heart. The dark pulse of the blackness: the steady beating of drums.
No more words were needed, for even if adorn would've spoken out loud the command, the guardscolts had it so deep within their training that they had exacted it already. In less than a minute after the drumming started all of them were already formed to advance again, and moving at the lead of the two stallions, this time ready for far more than a hell-born rabbit.
Adorjan and Shining guided their guardscolts again, cautiously and steadily moving forth at a firm pace at first, until the first lights started to sparkle in the night. At first like a dim vision, but as the distance closed began to appear like orange dots of brightness, revealing the fire that gave them their strength.
…When the drums, as sudden as they'd started beating, went quiet.
"You think…" Shining whispered, but Adorjan's face spoke for him better than words.
"Double time, lads!" ordered the colonel. "Keep your heads down."
The troop silently obeyed, and everypony paced themselves to the light trotting of their leaders. Adorjan and Shining still remained in the front, marking the ground as, behind them, the closed formation of guardscolts began to turn into an homogeneous staggered formation. Soon the lights that had been shining blurry in the dark began to clarify their shape as torches, formed into a half circle below the brighting moon, and the projected shadows of large boulders around began to draw across the surrounding grounds.
Adorjan and Shining didn't need to order again, just by starting to lower themselves as they advanced was example enough for the rest of the troop to follow until they reached the place. Then the expectancy went right, and the tension began to rose within each other with the prospect of combat until Adorjan knew it was the time.
"Now, charge!" he commanded as he pressed forth, dragging the stampede of royal guards behind him.
With a unison war cry, the troop broke through the circle of torches, spears held high and shields shining bright with he yellow light. Adorjan and Shining were the first to get through, followed by the rest of the troop, that stormed the place, trampling on everything that were in its way. Armor plates cracked and hooves stomped the terrain, everypony was ready to fight whatever was under the flickering light, from the most dreadful of nightmares to shocked locals, unwary of their violent entrance, but…
"Haaalt!" Adorjan's voice commanded. "Stop everypony!"
Battle shouts went silent, and horseshoes skidded slightly over the earth as they obeyed command. Below the light of the twinkling fire, the fifty colts that had just assaulted the empty clearing stood still in the time it took for their minds to acknowledge the order that was given. Even Shining Armor got so carried away that he didn't do it right away.
It didn't take much to realize that there had never been any resistance to begin with.
"What's the meaning of this? Where's the enemy?" questions began to rise, but they were put aside in a moment.
"Form up, guardscolts!" called Shining. "And hold your guard up! Something about this place isn't right…"
…Unlike anything to this point? Thought Adorjan as he oversaw the deployment of the cohort.
"I don't like this" he muttered to himself. "Not. One. Bit."
"Neither do I" came up Shining as he carefully inspected his surroundings. "And all this quietness isn't doing any us any favors either."
Quiet? QUIET!? Adorjan's eyes suddenly opened. All around them there hadn't been any sound, not background, nor the characteristic animal cacophony. All the inhabitants of the woods had retreated, threatened by an unspoken terror, and had left the night as silent as if everything in the world had died. And that could only mean one thing…
"They've been following us" he whispered, trying in vain not to let his utter sensation of horror lick through his voice. "But… How?"
Something moved in the upper corner of his eyes and he trailed them to the heights. In the midst of the nearly-impossible-to-bypass hassock of branches, a series of pulsations had appeared, indicating nothing else rather than what they told. That a heavy weight had been placed over them.
The branches… Somehow it was now everything he could think of, not even having room in his mind to call himself stupid for not noticing before. What mattered most in the world was that they've been watching them since the moment they arrived, and now they were cornered, at their complete disposal.
"Oh, Holy Celestia…"
"Excuse me?" turned Shining, but in less that he could realize what he'd said, Adorjan was already at it.
"FORM THE PHALANX!!!" he ordered atop of his lungs. "Muskets ready, provide cover!"
Adorjan immediately began to urge further the remaining guardscolts and Shining rose his shield and directed the already frantic guards as they returned to the cover of the troop. Everypony suddenly rose their arms and ran towards the center of the circle, but there wasn't enough time. Their watchers had been waiting for that time to strike all along.
The first sign of life that their unidentified foes gave away was that, at unison, all light suddenly banished, extinguished by unknown means as the torches died at the same time, leaving only the silver mantle over the clearing.
Shields fell in a hard mass of metal and lances, and a row of muskets displayed before them. The sudden absence of light caused screams of terror from the younger colts, but those were suddenly shut by the veteran ones. Over their heads, the branch roof, that had remained peaceful to that moment, suddenly bursted in chaotic movement, its dwellers finally giving away their existence.
"Movement in the front!" shouted a pegasus front the musket line. "I saw it!" said another. "Like some kind of tiger-monkey, with horns!"
"Stay strong!" exclaimed Shining as the wind began to fill with loud hissing and steady growls. "We're Royal Guards from Equestria! Anything that comes our way we can handle it!"
"Pegasus, form a spear tip!" ordered Adorjan. "First line, ready for fan discharge!"
The guardscolts reluctantly obeyed, aiming wit their forelegs and bending a knee for improved aiming as the rest pointed their arms to any indefinite point that had became the chaotic movement above the forest ground.
The branches in the heights began to move more frantically, shaken with terrible force by their yet unseen manipulators. Growls and hissing in the dark steadily increased until it became a concert of bestial roars and snorting. From tree to tree, hits and cracks began to stalk the wooden trunks, as they were being pounded with tremendous strength. The distribution of the startling noise was such that it made nigh impossible to determine how many were attacking, and where was the noise coming from. All what was left was that noise, trampling the tranquility of the night with much strength as it did with the ever wrecked nerves of the shooters.
"Steady…" said Shining when he began to acknowledge the effect that that horrific noise was having on the lines, making them shake and bend like if they were an unsteady critter, which judging by the state of everypony wasn't so hard to accept.
"Pegasus, ready your arms" continued Adorjan. "Fire at my command."
More movement. More hellish noises. Every second the chaos across the woods was greater, even to the point where it seemed like all the forest had bursted into life. The quantification that came to mind about the number of creatures that was required to produce such an effect ahas dizzying, as such the presence of the general atmosphere that those wild screams in the night caused.
Neither Adorjan or Shining felt it at first, but as the action in the dark became more violent, they and their troop had been subconsciously retreating, moving towards the void as if the unintelligible voices were compelling them to do so. They had moved behind the totem and almost completely into the wooden floor when branch bending suddenly started to yield, giving way to a more horrible vision.
From the heights of the woods, something suddenly dropped, beating the floor heavily in the darkness beyond the clearing. At the level of the ground more movement started to show, running and changing sides like a marauding predator, mocking the powerless moon's light, that wasn't strong enough but to give away a sense of motion in the shadow. After that bestial drop came another one, and another one, and then dozens started to jump down the trees, abandoning the psychological war they've been having and readying for the main event.
Adorjan fastened the grip on his arm, and Shining did it as well. Both ponies readied themselves for combat, and somehow transmitted that same feeling to the rest of the shield wall. Unidentified creatures were already waiting at the end of the clear, as they danced with a chaotic choreography that both startled and instigated their opponents to rush, to do something foolish…
Adorjan knew that acting first would've been the worst they could do, but they've waited too much as well. If they wanted a fight they wouldn't deny them one. So, rising his lance the colonel prepared to command fire… When suddenly, the nerves, that had been threatening to burst all along, began to take their toll.
It was a single shot. A flash in the dark that imprinted everything in white for a fraction of second from the single musketeer that had finally broken down and shot to the nothingness.
"STOP!" commanded Shining and Adorjan at the same time, but all order was already broken.
More shots followed the first, and in a disorganized discharge the whole corps of musketeers had emptied the chambers of their fire arms, all in front of their terrified leader's eyes.
The shots passed their objectives, or if they hit something it didn't show. What the constant flashes of powder did reveal, were the eyes of the monsters that lurked out of sight. Two dots of white, shining like the stars, per subject. Untold dozens of them…
Shining Armor gave a step back upon that vision, and even if Adorjan had considered himself a valiant pony, in that moment what his eyes witnessed made his blood run cold with the prospect of what was about to come, most surely as with everypony else… Oh, buck!
More creatures stepped at the brink of the light, readying to burst through and strike them. The musketeers immediately began to reload, and even though if the enemy decided to attack they wouldn't have another chance to fire, the line ant on it as the action around them was starting to become more threatening than ever before. Adorjan and Shining tried to maintain order, but the moral was less than low, and the mute fear that was rampaging across the air was picking up one by one eveyporny neath the armored lines.
Somewhere a horn suddenly blew a deaf note, crossing through the glade and loosing in the precipice below, like an avalanche of sound, then another one. More angry callings from the leather throat and more instruments likewise joined the tribal concert. Some as near as their face, and some others more distant. Adorjan and Shining were still trying to impose discipline between their colts, but it was like trying to make a castle of sand at the reach of the waves. Each sonorous scream was like a blow to the determination and valor of everypony, so constant and steady that in no time the sense of security began to crumble.
"Hold the line!" Adorjan was screaming. "Hold the line, for Celestia's sake!"
The noise continued as if nothing happened. From the edge of the clearing, figures started to breach the smoke that the powder had left behind. Tall, horned creatures that walked with swaying movements, leisurely closing as they clamored for violence.
"C'me on, you stallions!" Shining exclaimed amidst them. "Don't sell your lives away that easily!"
But courage didn't mattered for what was about to come. The cacophony continued regardless of the officers' words, and the shadows of monsters began to stalk the night with more insistence. The possibility of combat became more and more present, a need for bloodlust that those dead eyes reflected in the moonlight.
…Until it happened.
Neither Adorjan or Shining saw exactly what it was, but somehow they had already backed the main force of the troop into the wooden planks, pushed back by that intimidating demonstration of savagery, and even if they hadn't noticed, their marauders did. And that marked the last accord for their funeral march.
Suddenly bursting through the milky mist and roaring atop of his lungs, the monstrous figure charged from within the blackness, waving something in his arm that resembled to a war club. Shots met him, and the remaining unicorns fired bolts of magic at him, but most of them by sapped his monstrous shape, managing only faint successes and slim hits. The creature bursted through, and to the horror of Adorjan, reached the totem that marked the place where the wooden floor began.
Now it wasn't that Adorjan of Shining wouldn't be so naive as not to recognize the movements around them, but in the second the creature reached the effigy, something sparkled inside both stallions' minds. What if… Those wooden planks weren't there to complete a circle?
Thinking the same at the same time, Shining and Adorjan turned to see each other at unison.
"Colonel-!"
"My prince…!"
"ITS A TRAP!!!"
And then, just as the realization fell upon them, the creature that had reached the totem, by an unknown mechanism set it off. The wire that used to hold together that platform suspended in the void over the precipice suddenly gave up, and the floor beneath the phalanx opened to toss them into the darkness below. Nopony had time to react, not even Shining or Adorjan as their whole cohort was sent downwards making a noise of screams and armor plates as they hit their way down to the bottom.
Last thing Adorjan saw before helplessly falling down to yet unknown reaches was the musketeer line, firing another discharge, mixing the popping noise of fire arms with he characteristic sounds of combat as their stalkers finally began their assault. Then, everything went to black.
