Crimson Trail

Chapter 3

Falling not as fun as you think

Edited by the Metallic Dash

“No arguing Akilina!”

“But father, I don't want to go with you on another hunting trip, I have plans.”

“I said no arguing, now go up to your room right now and get your knife, we need to get going.”

“But father.”

“Not another word or you will regret it, grab your stuff so we can leave or I will drag you out by your tail.”

At that I ran up the stairs to my room where I retrieved my knife and a snare wire and quickly returned without another word. Father was waiting patiently by the now open door. As I approached he spoke with a condescending tone.

“See now was that so difficult.”

“No father.”

“Good.”

Walking outside I climbed onto my father’s back and after a quick leap down the stairs, we were off soaring through the sky. Several hours later, nightfall was coming although we were still flying steady. We must have been going somewhere new because I could not remember the last time we went out this far.

“Father, where are we going?”

“You will see,”

“Is it much farther?”

“Not too much”

Several minutes later my father broke the silence and spoke.

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Uum... April 15?”

“Indeed. Do you know what that means?”

“No?”

“It means there is exactly 1 month until your 12th birthday.”

“Really? But why are you telling me this now?”

“Because it is time for your initiation into this family, you have till your 12th birthday to make it back home. If you die, you die. But if you come home after your birthday you will be exiled from the family.”

And with that he rolled upside down and before I could react he had done a back stroke with his wings and dropping me.

Before rolling back over and yelling down at me.

"30 days or die."

Falling… falling… I’m falling!

Still not understanding what had happened I stretched out my infantile wings and used then to flip myself. Overseeing the fast approaching ground I tried my best to fly, but as expected, my wings were too small and I could not get enough lift.

Have to think… have to think…

Seeing a river a couple hundred feet over I tilted my wings and started to move towards it, though not fast enough. One of my hind legs clipped the top of a tall pine bordering the river.  Pain exploded through my leg but a moment later I hit the water hard enough to make me black out. Breaking the surface of the water gasping for air, I pulled myself over to the shore as a small pool of crimson seeped out from my leg. Laying my head back and closing my eyes for a moment I thought to myself

Well at least I am alive.

~~~~~10 years later~~~~~

Weight... All I could see is white; a feeling of falling was present although it was a distant feeling hardly even noticeable unless I was to focus directly on it. I don't know how long I was in this state because before I know it, it seemed that every part of my body was being pulled apart from itself however it did not hurt.  I saw a flash of green and then blue and before I know it I was falling fast. Looking around I saw the fast approaching ground no less than 200 feet down. Without another thought I quickly stretched out my wings as fast as I could. A sharp pain exploded across my back from the sudden amount of air resistance my wings got. Though it was not enough I was still moving too fast to fully stop my descent. Looking down again I saw a large clearing with what looked to be a road running through it. But more importantly I saw forest directly below where I was falling. 100 feet... 50 feet... 10 feet... Last second before I hit the trees I tucked in my wings and hunched my legs under myself. Hitting the first tree I was ready and bounced off relatively unharmed. But then the next came. And the next.  And hitting the 4th tree I had no time to react, with a heavy crack I felt my head impact a large branch then nothing.

~~~~~ Several minutes later~~~~~

“Oh sweet Celesta my head.” I mound when rolling over.

Well at least I am not dead though I feel like that would be less painful.

Sitting up I took a quick glance around before all the memories of what had happened at the lab came rushing back.

Where am I? What had happened to the kid? How am I still alive? How did I get here? What do I do now? Where the main questions that had started rushing in my mind.  Taking a longer look around I could see I was sitting in a small clearing in the middle of a forest mostly consisting of pines. Behind me a clear path of destruction in the trees was visible. Starting to go over my self-picking out splinters of wood and such, I began answering those questions.

Where am I? Well I don't remember any pine forest near Canterlot or Ponyville, their climate is normally too hot. So that means I am somewhere farther north maybe by the griffon empire?

What had happened to the kid? If he is not here with me, he must have made it out of the explosion radius I can't be sure until I make it back to Canterlot.

How am I still alive?

Glancing back at the path of destruction in the trees with all the broken branches and the 4 foot skid mark across the ground. The only conclusion to why I was still alive was luck… a lot of luck.

How did I get here? I can only assume that I am here because the teleportation spell worked however, with the detonation it must have just thrown me somewhere in Equestria and not to the targeted location. Though it does not explain why I was not killed by all the raw magic and the heat waves… guess I will figure that out later.

What do I do now? Well there is only one thing to do. I need to get back.

After I finished checking myself over the extent of the damage was my left wing was badly sprained, my back left leg was also sprained but to much less of a degree. My right arm had a pulled tendon of some kind, I think my lower ribs where heavily bruised possibly broken, and there were a decent number of lacerations caused by the tree branches. But at least I had all my limbs.

Letting out a huge grown while trying to stand up I was startled when I heard a little chime of metal. Looking down I saw the pendant the professor had given me and a thought of something he said popped into my mind.

“It’s made out of an alloy we developed for amplifying magic. So long as you wear it you will always be able to channel your magic to where ever you need it.”

At this a small smile came over my beak at the realization that thanks to his gift I survived a near terminal velocity crash. But before I could continue I stopped when I heard a branch break and the sound of hurried footsteps moving away. There was something watching me.  Although a glance towards the sound revealed nothing.

~~~~~Kevin’s Perspective several minutes earlier~~~~~

I had been driving down this road for 3 hours now. The worst part about being this far out in the middle of nowhere is all the radio stations were complete garbage. So I had been entertaining myself by counting street signs not the funniest thing but it did help pass the time. then a couple hundred feet off road I saw a lightning bolt the weirdest thing was there was no clouds it was a completely clear day… several seconds later a second one then a third.  At this point I started to slow down and pulled off the road.  Several more discharges went off and before I know it a small orb of light was forming. It was so bright it looked like a second sun; I needed to shield my eyes from looking directly at it. Another thing I notes was I could see some small objects falling out if it. The objects looked like debrief of some sort. It began to expand faster and faster and with a whoosh of dissipating energy it vanished, a second later I felt a wave pass through me. Although when it hit my car it began to sputter and without warning it just stopped.  Looking back into the sky I could see what looked to be an aurora borealis which soon faded into nothingness.

What the hell just happened?

I asked myself before trying to start my car and getting nothing. Popping the hood I opened the door and walked out to peer inside to see nothing big out of place. I was no mechanic so there was not much I could do anyway. Walking back around to the driver’s seat I climbed inside and tried to turn my blinkers on, although after flipping the switch nothing happened.

Well grate the battery must have died.

Checking around for my cell phone. I pulled it out and flipped it open to be greeted with a black screen. Trying to turn it on, it came up with the same result as the car.

Great I am in the middle of nowhere with my car not working my phone dead. My sister is going to kill me for being late to the family reunion again and some type of electrical storm was the cause, so I can't blame it on anyone.

Walking around to the back of my car I then proceeded to sit down on the bumper and wait for someone to come by and hopefully let me use their phone to get a tow truck out here. Several minutes passed rather uneventfully until finally a minivan came into view. Seeing me waving them down they slowed down and pulled off the road in front of me.

“What is the matter? You need a boost or something?”

“No, I don't think that is the issue. Do you have a phone I could use to call a tow truck?”

“Sure thing, just give me a second.”

Several seconds passed before the man stepped out of his van phone in hand and passing it over to me, I turned it on to see one bar of reception.  Then proceeded to call in a tow truck.

Well great the soonest they could get out here will still be at least an hour. Giving the phone back to the nice person, I thanked him and off he went and once again I was alone. Thinking of ways to entertain myself as I waited for the tow truck I had decided to go see if I could find out what had made that electrical storm. Walking into the forest I did not have to walk long before I started to find what looked like small pieces of metal embedded in the ground and trees. Most of which were too hot to touch if the smoke had anything to say about it. I was now convinced that a weather balloon had blowing up or something though that did not account for the lightning I saw earlier.

Rounding a large tree and seeing a clearing a little ways away with something much larger than I had seen so far, I walked closer but stopped dead in my tracks when I saw it move all on its own. Peering through the trees my first thought was a giant eagle but it only took me a couple seconds to see I was wrong. What sat in the clearing was not an eagle… it was a griffin.

It sat on its hind legs and was about 5 feet tall not including the tail the length was about 6 feet I guessed. As it sat there it seemed to be cleaning out its wings and rearranging the feathers. The colors however really sent me for a loop, from what I could see the mane coloration was a lot of different shades of orange. With a redder highlight running down from the crest feathers on its head to its tail. Its underbelly was a mix of yellow and white feathers, and all across the wings at just the tips of the primary and secondary feathers there was a red tinge. All in all the coloration made this monster look as if it were on fire. The only thing not orange, yellow, or red was its eyes. They were an incredibly light blue almost silver.

The second thing I noticed was that it was badly injured. Large gashes ran across its body and several patches of missing feathers could be seen. Staring a little longer I noticed the scrape marks running across the ground, tracing them back to the tree line what I saw made me gulp. A path of mangled branches and broken trees and overturned soil could be seen and it was obvious what had caused it. If this monster had taken a fall like that and was still breathing let alone conscious and moving around with what looked to be non-lethal injuries.  I did not want to be anywhere near it… I did not want to be anywhere within a 100 mile radius of it. then it began to stand on all fours a moan of what was clearly pain came forth and that was the breaking point for me, I turned and ran straight into a low growing branch which then snapped making a noise that the griffon must have heard. Running as fast as I can I risk a glance back to see nothing pursuing me but I wasn't going to take any chances. Running for longer than I ever remember I finally broke out back onto the road and saw my car right where I left it. Climbing into the car and locking all the doors, I finally gave myself time to rest. My lungs burned with all the exercise and my heart beaded fast and heavy in my chest.

Several minutes later I was completely on edge. I was sure at any moment that monster was going to jump out of the forest and claw my eyes out. Looking out of my window I saw a truck coming over the horizon my heart lifted when it got closer and the distant parts of a tow truck came into focus. The 15 minutes it took to hook up my car felt like hours. I just couldn't stop looking at the tree line, I wanted so badly to tell the tow truck driver everything I had seen but I still had enough common sense not to. I did not want to end up in a psych ward somewhere. But still what I had seen had to be impossible, I had to be mistaken... maybe I had just seen a bird of some kind after all. I did not know and did not want to find out all I wanted to do was put this whole day behind me. So with that I climbed into the passenger's seat of the tow truck and off we went.

~~~~~Akilina Perspective~~~~~

Listening to the steps going farther and farther away I could hear something off about them. The steps were most clearly from something other than a pony do the lack of clanking that hooves made though it could not be a griffon either because moving at fast speeds griffons need to be on all fours unless flying. The sounds of these steps was that of a minotaur’s pattern but with the silence of paw pads… several more seconds of thinking and an answer finally came to mind.

Shit, it must have been a diamond dog.

I have had some bad experiences with diamond dogs in the past and did not want any repeats. Although they are normal in mountain and not found this deep in forests, it’s not unheard for them to have a mine in one. It would also explain why it ran off; if it was a scout they would not be prepared to have an encounter with a griffon. However if I am right they will soon return with larger numbers and would probably try to take me as a slave. In my current state I would not stand much of a chance in an encounter leaving only one option left… Run.

Looking around for the sun I gave a quick estimate of how much daylight was left then using the sun as a referent point I started heading east. Moving was painful at first but after several minutes of walking it became more of a background thought. As I traveled I began making a list of thing I needed to do.

Well first off I need to find a safe place to stay the night. I still had at least 6 hours of light left but I think getting as far away as I can is more important. Second I need to find a better way to treat my wounds. I really don’t want to risk infection while I am out here. Third I need to get myself a weapon of some sort. If only I can get a knife then I can probably make myself a bow and some arrows. Lastly I need to find civilization of some kind because once I see a map I can get home.

Having my goals set I continue into the forest, I knew I was going to survive this nothing could stop me. I will live to see my home again.